Marc Zollinger, Assistant Principal

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2/20/21

https://anchor.fm/oneschoolproject/episodes/1—Marc-Zollinger–Assistant-Principal-er8m0k

On my first episode of the podcast, I introduce Marc Zollinger, who is an assistant principal at 2 elementary schools around Portland, Oregon. We discuss the outline of the 24/7/365 open school. He brings up important considerations for meeting a need that exists rather than creating a need to meet. We also touch on multitiered system of supports, and how that framework allows for meeting each child’s individual needs. Marc is a great conversationalist, justice focused, and a dad that I try to emulate.

  1. great reference! the great carl is almost always appropriate. thanks for reading. any place this doesn’t jive with your understandings,…

  2. “If you want to bake an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe” Thanks for this Keevin!

Transcript:

keevin bybee 0:01
Welcome to the one school podcast. This is a series of conversations about thinking how we can make schools a 20 473 65 inviting place for our young people to be safe. My name is keevin Bybee, I’m a family physician and primary care. And today I’m talking with Mark Salinger, who is a friend that I’ve known for many years, who is currently an assistant principal, and has an experience being a Spanish teacher. And I’d love to introduce mark and get his story from his side and how he found himself on the other side of an internet microphone with me today.

marc z 0:43
Cool, well, thanks for having me today, I’m excited to talk about these big ideas and kind of a conceptual framework and kind of where I come from, see where that goes. But in terms of who I am, so I’m, I’m an assistant principal at actually two elementary schools, in a district around in and around the Portland area of Portland, Oregon. And, yeah, I was Spanish teacher, I’ve been teaching, it’s in some respect for about 22 years now. I’m loving it, and loving the impact that, that I believe, that I have on kids. Um, and, and really, that’s where, where it’s all about, it’s about coaching teachers, this kind of what I do coaching teachers to help kids. And, and that’s our job. And, and in this day, and age, you know, we might get into some of this, but really important that kids have an early start in terms of economics, acknowledging who we are as a society and a community, and being thoughtful about our impact. And so a lot of what I do is around that, along with the academic piece of what’s important for for kids to learn, so that they can get good jobs within our system.

keevin bybee 1:54
Fantastic. And I’m sure, not just good jobs, but be happy people and all of that as well. But I get what you mean, you know, we can run that back a little bit in terms of is trying to do both. And I think part of that is in what we’ll get into is the systems piece of this. And that’s where we there’s going to be kind of a run in because we have to take care of the individual, we have to teach them individual how to move within a society, that’s not perfect. Um, and so as a school administrator, as a teacher, we’re trying to do all that we’re trying to do the social emotional side, and the creation of beings that are thoughtful in their impact. But that also can be successful. And I think that’s where

things like test scores, grades, you know, what, where should the focus be? What is the importance of that? So just to kind of revisit that, but I know we’ll get into that a little bit.

Unknown Speaker 3:13

keevin bybee 2:55
And so tell me about if you think the idea of having your school open 20 473 65 with a maybe a place for kids to sleep and some robust wraparound social services. How does that idea strike you

marc z 3:13
I think is a great idea, my brain has a hard time and I go right to so my wife knows really well, I go right to problem solving mode. And so I really have to step back when you when you say something like that I go immediately to the meat of it. Okay, let’s make it happen. Because it sounds great. Um, I think we’ve talked about this before. And so we’re talking about something where medical, you know, teaching, learning, everything kind of wrapped into a food,all of the needs of a child along with the educational aspect provided at one place, am I correct? And what I’m describing is kind of what we’re thinking about

keevin bybee 3:55
That would be my pipe dream. And I recognize there’s a lot of moving parts and a lot of logistics. And so you’re 100% on board with, with what I would like to happen. And that’s exactly why I want to talk with somebody like you is to see all of these roadblocks and things that are going to take a team approach to fix, as well as, you know, identifying things that are really hard versus things that are in principle game stoppers. And being able to make sure we’re we know which one of those we’re talking about when we’re talking about a challenge.

marc z 4:36
Yeah, yep, that sounds good. So let’s Yeah, let’s let’s discuss it. I’m going to I’m going to go with an open mind open heart to saying we can do this and, and talk about, you know, do some of that problem solving that I always want to get to.

keevin bybee 4:53
Same here I am. I’m an engineer by former training and I love jumping to problem solving. and what I need to get better at is a little bit more of the listening portion of that. So that’s why I want to have the conversation. So I can hear from people who actually know what’s going on, rather than some family doctor who is trying to deal with their vicarious trauma in a more productive way. What would you say? When that problem solving mind comes up is the first big barrier that you would anticipate?

marc z 5:28
Well, the first thing that my mind always goes to I just have a lot of questions. And so that’s not a problem to be solved, but kind of a series of things to discuss. It’s a series of discussions. So the first thing that I think about is

the kind of the who and the need, and are we creating something in this that is a firm need? are we creating the need to solve, you know, and so that’s my first thing is this kind of conceptual framework of it, and then the the need to ask questions of the community to make sure that people are going to be served in ways that make us make sense for them. Because what I find is, when I don’t ask questions, I’ve been thinking about this within my own practice, you know, with a particular family even. And if I’m not asking enough questions of the family, and finding out what their actual needs are, and then also their perception of who I am and who the system is, then what I’m trying to do is fix something for somebody that maybe they don’t even want fixed. And whereas I might see this as a problem for them, they’re completely content, or they might not realize that they’re not completely content. And they might look at me as somebody who’s trying to tell them what to do. So when we’re talking about, like, a 24 hour school, I just would want to, I always kind of want to know that area? And is this is this a depressed areas, socioeconomically? Are we talking? What role is race playing in this? And so as a white male, I’m always thinking about my impact as a white person, and am I trying to

be performative? Or am I trying to listen to people and help solve problems at their side? So I don’t know that I’ve just described a particular singular problem, like we need a building, you know, I’m going to make some assumptions on things like that, like the conceptual framework, the actual physical thing is there, I’m going to make that up.

And I’m just going to try to think and so maybe what I do, for the purposes of this discussion, is I accept that there is a community that wants this service that wants to things that we would provide. And that’s part of the fact finding is where that is. And then

then I go to resources. So we have we have a building Do we have, and I think you and I have discussed this, I don’t know how much you’ve discussed in like your previous podcast with this. But

I think another assumption that we sometimes are making is that we have the money for something like this. And, you know, so those, that’s where it all started, I’ll step back right now, because that’s where my brain jumps to. And so I guess I’m trying to figure out what assumptions we’re making. And what thing is that we can then just talk around those assumptions as if they exist, or, versus what kinds of things we actually need to be talking about are the problems. So maybe you can help me there a little bit, and then I can focus in a little bit better.

keevin bybee 8:40
I absolutely love where your first place to go is thinking about what do we actually need? And what do the families that we’re hoping to care for? What do they perceive their needs to be? And school revolution has been a thing ever since there’s been schools and everybody’s got the next best thing. And so I certainly recognizing I’m stepping on the shoulders of giants who have amazing egos who want to fix everything. So I am trying to come into this with a lot of humility, and, you know, recognizing projects like the Zuckerberg, Newark, New Jersey project, and the podcast, nice white parents, where people

go in full bore. And, you know, this term colonization, in some circles is calling it controversial in some circles, certainly not controversial, but avoiding anything that could even be perceived as more colonization. And so

marc z 9:43
I don’t have the answers to those questions. But I love that you’ve thought of them and they’re things that I want to be very sensitive to. But I don’t know who to ask yet. So that’s why I figured I’d start slow and make sure that I’m having the conversations with people who are smarter than me and have the experience

keevin bybee 10:00
I don’t have to be able to do this the specific school, where would it go would be

a number of factors. My grand vision in 20 years would be that this is how every public school operates. And so what would be the good pilot school? would be a, I’m sure a number of factors versus that would include things like, Is there a school that would be willing to do this with us? And what are their particular demographics? And knowing what are the needs that that community needs? In my episode zero, I’ll have talked about a really poignant story for myself about a young child who was labeled as ADHD and odd sorry for the non jargon mystic of us attention deficit disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder, but,

and was getting kicked out of school every day for his behavior. But when he came to my visit, his mom was in a wheelchair for a neurodegenerative disorder, fleeing intimate personal violence and domestic violence. So you’ve got a kid who is the product, maybe products, not the good word, but has experienced a lot of trauma, both personally and vicariously. And then we slap some labels on him, kick him out of school. And so how do we make the school the place where that nobody gets kicked out from regardless of time of day, because there’s always going to be at least one person who needs a safe place to go. And right now, that safe place to go is the emergency department, which is, in so many ways, not the right place for somebody to go for any need that they might have at any hour of the day. And so, that’s where I’m coming from, and what’s the the actual need in terms of statistics, I’m doing my research, and I definitely want to flesh that out. And I don’t have great numbers. But that’s, again, part of why I want to start these conversations is hopefully I can get somebody in public health to give me really good numbers to back up what the need actually is. But does that kind of get to your concern?

marc z 12:16
Totally. And and again, understanding that this is the beginning of a larger conversation. That makes total sense that that would be, you know, I think it’s on it’s gonna be on both of our minds in anybody’s mind who wants to get involved in something like this, or you at least you would hope that on everybody’s mind is to ask the questions and get the data. Because none of this happens if we’re not doing that at the front end. And if it is happening, it’s going to go very poorly. I can I can look at data, but part of it is having the expertise to interpret the data. And so not that I want to terribly cognitively offload on a bunch of people to do it for me for free. But at the same time, I could, you know, garbage in garbage out if my information processing on this specific data isn’t great, then it’s not going to be helpful. And so yeah, hopefully people who do have a conversation with you can provide context to make that data useful. Let me refer a little bit because you brought up a couple things. And so you brought up this kid that has been identified a lot of acronyms, probably flying at him and his parents. He’s ending up, you know, the things that you just talked about, make me think about the school to prison pipeline. And make me think of the current state of systems especially educationally related. It’s so much it’s so big, I think about the last four years who’s been at the helm? Um, you know, you know, we’ve had, we’ve had Trump for the last four years and Betsy DeVos. And I think it would be hard to look at the data and not see that the places where she did some touching up, which I’m not.That’s the date I’d like to look at. But at the same time, I wouldn’t, because my feeling is that there’s been a lot of I know that as an educator, we were really worried that a Trump second term might happen. And all of the initiatives that we’ve been talking about for the last 10 years to fix a system that admittedly is not a great educational system, especially for our Black and Brown students. I was going to be if you remember the end of the Trump administration, they were really locking down on diversity, inclusion, diversity workshops and things like that. I believe within federal circles, anywhere that they had control. They were trying to wipe that stuff out, and the department education is going to fall there. So with former Trump years, it appeared to me that a lot of the work that we did to really unpack racism, white supremacy, diversity, equity, and collusion was going to kind of just be out the window, and it was not going to serve our keep coming back to our Black and Brown students, we’re not going to be served. Um, so when I think about what we’re doing, and what I hope is working, it’s the cultures that we create within the schools. And so as you talk about that identified kiddo, that you were just that you were just telling us about, I think of a system built to send him to the emergency room. And I don’t think of a system built to envelop the child, and the parents and help. Not that the people that are that are there with him aren’t trying to do that. But there’s a systemic piece that we keep missing. And when I think about what’s happening right now, with a pandemic, and everything is moved online, I recognizing that I’m also part of this system, I’m recognizing that we have something like this, we have shifted on a dime to an, to a computer, you know, a comprehensive distance learning model. So kids are at home on computers. Meanwhile, we’re going into schools, as adults, we haven’t started our Lippi or are limited in person instruction, or our hybrid hybrid instruction yet. And this would be the ideal time to blow up the system wherever possible, so that when we come back with it, not now just blow it up, blow it up, and then put it back together in a more equitable fashion. So that when we come back, there’s a change. So it’s, we’re not coming back to the normal, like a lot of people were talking about, let’s come back to normal. And what’s been shown with schools, or let’s take the, let’s take Black Lives Matter, and all of the social injustice that’s been around, if you’re talking with a black or brown person, this never went away, Obama didn’t take it away, it was it was here. And it just became much more clear to white people over the last four years, especially. And then over the last year in particular, um, and so for to say, let’s get the pandemic over and then go back to normal. My caveat for that, as always, it’s like, I don’t even say this with my wife anymore. Like, it’s assumed that getting back to normal means getting back to a lot of the ways we didn’t have to wear masks or social distance, that type of normal. But there’s a whole other piece that we don’t want to get back to quote, normal, we want to put we need to take this moment and make it something that lasts for the good of society. And so I’m kind of going Broad, and want to bring it back to schools now. I, my problem is I don’t see us right now, blowing up the system and putting it back together. And my big problem with that is time, because we’re having to be so flexible and agile, and deep whenever necessary. That’s taking up the time. And so we’re focusing on online learning, yes, we got computers to everybody, fantastic hotspots, we’re trying to pull out and provide wherever we can. But we’re still losing those students who you would predict that we would be losing. And meanwhile, we are not as much as we try. And as much as we speak as much as we want to be making the system better when we come back. It’s just hard to do. And there’s no fingers to be pointed at anybody. It’s just hard to do. And it’s been ingrained in who we are as educators and as a society for hundreds of years. So as I have the conversations, I think that I think where it works. And where I see hope is the conversations that people are having. And it’s but it’s it’s just going to be small, and it’s going to take time. And so one of the things I remind my staff as we’re doing the work where we are instilling in our language and in our mission statement of who we are as our schools. We’re instilling a lot of these social emotional practices, along with our equity practices and anti racist practices. And recognizing white supremacy and recognizing each each individual’s experience is different in that race. And racism plays a role in that. And as we’re teaching that, as I, I’m in a position where I’m trying to do everything I can to learn about this stuff, and also teach teachers about this stuff. Let them teach me because I don’t certainly have all the answers and instill it in the the building blocks the basis of our school, so that when students return to school or luckily what’s happening is public Prior to the return to school, we’re focusing on these things. And we’re building anti racist language into the culture of the school. And a lot of that is the asking of questions of teachers, parents, students, community members, and getting their buy in. And the thing that keeps being difficult, and I’ll wrap this up is time, I always think about time and its relationship to all the things that we need to do, and the things that we have to do to support these kids in these families, and these teachers. And that’s where I keep coming up and saying, Man, I’m out of time, and I gotta go to bed. And so I imagine being the parent of a, in a household of three, four or five kids living in a trailer, and everybody’s got a computer, which is great. But that’s the, that isn’t the case. And you’re not allowed to go anywhere, because there’s a pandemic, and that is, well, now I’m way off track. But that’s, I just, you know, our recent, we recently had a snowstorm, which caused a lot of people’s power to be out. And when my power is out for the first time in years, and all of a sudden, all the things I take for granted are gone. We were not prepared with our food, I start to think about what might some of the families that I’m working with be coming up against,I just do the best I can to take care of my family. Um, you know, that’s, that’s kind of where I land in that moment.And I, you know, I just always am trying to wrap my brain around how we can do for everybody.

keevin bybee 21:44
Right. And that’s my whole impetus for this. I’ve had the dice fall in my favor, day after day. And my dad’s a family doctor, and one of his best sayings is the best decision one makes in life is picking your grandparents well. And hopefully, we can see the irony in that statement. And so I want to help pay it forward as much as possible. And I think that we’re coming up with a lot of cultural momentum, not to be too snide about it. But change happens when baby boomer death at a time, and like you said, we instill this language in our children at the youngest age. And then we can only hope that the next generation is better resourced than we were, how do we promote, like intergenerational transmission of culture and information in a robust way? If that’s not what education is, then I don’t know what education could possibly be? And so how do we re envision our schools and I know there’s a lot of people talking about it. And there’s a lot of siloed projects. And so every every concern that you have is exactly the motivation why I want to do something like this, because one a time we’re burning our candle from both ends a lot, and some people have smaller candles and hotter fires. And again, just not something fair, and I don’t have the personal tools to help that many people and how can we fix it on a systemic level. And again, that’s why I think re organizing, or re envisioning what we call a school and what it’s capable of can help. And unfortunately, it’s going to take, you know, a generation or two to make any headway on that, but got to start somewhere. What Yeah, one guy I’ve been listening to is a educational theorist named Zack Simon, who he defines education as the intergenerational transmission of cultural information. You’re highlighting exactly the points of why this project is, I think, important, so. And we were just talking about how environment is going to influence people’s experience of themselves in the world. And that’s what motivates me is how environment influences how people develop. Part of being a primary care physician is being curious as to somebody circumstances that may make it difficult for them to adhere to my treatment recommendations. And what I learned time and time again, is an unfortunate uncomfortable amount of their difficulty at hearing or being able to stick to a plan that I would recommend stems from childhood trauma in their childhood or lack of resources that they didn’t have that their environment didn’t have. And you mentioned in passing or not, you’d mentioned previously that one of your particular areas of specialty is multi tiered systems of support. And so I think that is a great place to talk about how we could bring that into the educational environment. I mean, you’ve already brought it to the educational environment, but they tell me what that looks like.

marc z 25:00
So you’re talking about MTSS, multi tiered system of supports. So it’s kind of like so the Ask goes on the end of the word, support, and on system, because the idea is that a system of supports for the children, and it’s, you know, in quick terms, or, or we kind of put the system into three tiers, there’s the, and I think of it as a pyramid, and the bottom part of the pyramid, I’m capturing about 90% of the kids, maybe my percentages off 8080 to 90% of kids, kids. That’s what everybody gets offered. That’s what everybody you know, everybody at the school gets offered that tier of support, then you have your kids and it might be behavioral. Or it might be, it might be what’s the word, I’m like, intellectual into education. So what I’m looking for crafting it. It might be curricular, education, educational, is the word I’m looking for. It might be behavioral. It might be academic, there we go. Good lord. So So you have your initial tier, I was looking for the word academic, because the word I was looking for. And so so you have your you have your bottom tier, which is what’s offered to everybody at the school. And that’s like the mission statement. That’s, that’s all of the guiding principles of the school. At the class level, it’s that everybody in the class knows that there is a specific set of jobs for people and how that all that whole system works within the class, then there is a second tier up from that, so we’re capturing less of the students. Because if you have a strong tier one, then you’re going to have a lot less to deal with in tier two and tier three. So this is the this is, this is a concept I believe in. It’s all about climate of the school. It’s all about setting up systems that work. And if you can, if you can drill down on systems that and I don’t mean drill down in a in a negative way. It’s actually very social, emotional, related, when we’re setting up a climate of the school that 90% of the students are well served and benefit from that client, that that climate, then you go to a second tier for kiddos that are either academically or behaviorally struggling in that first year, and you offer a host of kind of this is where the supports would come into play. So what kind of plans are going to work on for these, this next 5% of kiddos, five to 10% of kiddos that need it, and then you might even go a step up from that. And then then you’re looking at the tip of the triangle. And you are trying to figure out that third tier, what are the supports that these kids need? It might be supports for the kiddo at the school, it might be something needs to be changed within the climate of the class or the school, you need to bring in the parent, you might need to bring in specialists, you know, and this is where we have our sped departments, our slps, our speech language, language pathologists, any of those people that occupy those roles. Because what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to you’re trying to not manage students as much as manage climate. So that that kiddo that’s been identified for every single acronym that there is, we start to peel that away, what you find is those things that you were that you were ascribing to that child aren’t necessarily true, he or she is acting out because there is a system in place that is that this is trauma related that through the trauma of their lives, their experience, or trauma at the school itself, is causing them to act out in ways they might not where they’re better tier ones put in place, for example. And so, so that’s just the brief on the MTSS. And so as we think about that, within the context of what what we might be trying to build, you know, something like that, and something that where there is a system of supports set up at each level for these children to make this successful. Um, and so building that as a piece of it. building that is something that is critical to the district that I’m in, and it’s critical to the school that I’m in right now as well. So that would be a piece that we are working on in order to when we come back to school, be able to help kiddos with the trauma that they might have experienced over the past year.

keevin bybee 29:47
Great, great. I mean, that’s just it because it’s all about the systems and the environment in the soup that that we all live in that ultimately determines how we’re going to behave. I don’t know if you’re familiar with a guy named Robert Sapolsky and his book “behave“. But you know, every decision we make, you can’t really take it out of context from the neuro chemistry that led up to it in the last five seconds to the most recent 5 million years of our neurologic evolution. So how do we make those systems as robust as possible? And I guess that kind of ties in with a question like, I would love to think that we could have an Individualized Education Program for all students, like we’re all individuals. And so talk to me about or if you have any thoughts on what it takes to go from our current, what appears to me as an outsider, assembly line model of education, and sorry, if that’s offensive from somebody on the inside, just to recognize my anger, ignorance is now tied to what would it take to get to an IEP for every student?

marc z 30:52
Gotcha. So that’s interesting. So saying, Man is so an IEP for every student? So first of all, I think, oh, man, that was your take the stigma away for being a student with an IEP, if everybody around you had, you know, and I realize it’s kind of maybe a little bit facetious, but I see your point. How can we individualize education for everybody, and focus on their strengths, and focus on their lagging skills in ways that are going to be productive and benefit them? you know, I live my first my first thing is time, because it’s a, it’s a, it takes a lot of work to figure out, it takes I mean, you spent a lot of time on one child, figuring out the IEP, you got, you know, I guess we’re not talking necessarily about something where you’re going to have lawyers at the table for every single student, like you might with an IEP, that’s really intense and law contentious. But so time to figure out what those plans are, I guess, that’s the building of, you know, kind of funny, I think about my dissertation that I did for my arm, that I did get my master’s. And the idea was to take students and figure out learner types, and not limiting it to like three, but like thinking about a student, what is the student’s learner type, and there’s a whole bunch of work that we need to go into that, um, and then you have a list of learner types and what works for those learner types. And if you could build a system that that can do that. I think, I guess I think it’s less about individualizing it for each student, but giving student choice. So if you have the student engaged, and with Byun, you’re not having to create that. So I’m going to go back on what I just said, I’m going to focus on climate again. If you have a climate that is dialed in for 90% of the students, then you’re going to have engagement, you’re going to have buy in, and you’re going to spend less time trying to figure out 15 to 30 extra percent of students, and you’re going to start to you’re going to really focus on the figuring out of those students who are who aren’t buying into the climate for whatever reason. And it could be trauma, it could be the climates, not right. Um, it could be a host of social social factors. So I guess I would shy away from the, you know, an IEP for every student on something like that, in that that’s what you get through student buying. That’s what you get through a good through a good climate. That’s how you serve the child and the family. Through saying, and understanding and being thoughtful, and being patient. As we know, of being parents and educators and doctors. If we can just be patient, then it’s kind of like half our work is done. Because any time I’m not patient, it’s like I’ve just increased my workload. And it happens.

keevin bybee 34:25
Tell me about the podcast calm parenting that you’ve turned me on to emphasize is that time and time again. So I’m slowly learning and I absolutely love what you say about climate because I wasn’t necessarily saying you know, we all need like you said the IEP process can be quite extensive and resource draining. But the spirit of it was how do we give each kid the environment to help them learn the best and like you said, it can come down to climate and, you know, you can prevent a lot of second tier problems with the probe. Climate and resources in tier one, right? So we’re bumping up against a hard stop. In terms of important questions that I wanted to touch on, you know, I think teachers should be paid, you know, on the order of magnitude of, you know, if not physicians close to physicians, like professional level salary, and I think we need three times more of them. How would you go about running numbers or convincing people that we need more of you, and we need to pay you more.

marc z 35:38
I mean, the, the big piece of that is data, that one of the things we’re up against, that I didn’t know, as a kid we would ever be up against, I don’t even think I knew it. Five, six years ago, is a shared understanding of the truth. Um, and so because data,

keevin bybee 35:57
my truth or your truth,

marc z 35:59
Ah, oh, well, exactly

keevin bybee 36:01
which facts that those alternative, exactly. Sorry, didn’t mean, he really.

marc z 36:06
And so you know, that’s why discussions are so hard. I feel like discussions are really hard to have now. Political especially, but it goes into almost every arena. And it’s because depending on who you’re talking to, you’re not even starting from the same starting point in terms of what’s factually accepted in in each of your brains. Some of that, so Okay. But when it gets to where it seems to be now, where there’s two specific truths, there’s two specific sides of the truth. And I don’t know if that’s divided on anyway, that’s going into some stuff we don’t need to get into. But I think you start with that you start with what is true. And that’s by looking at the data, if you can, if you can start from knowing that having the same true is the same data set, then you can show people on paper. And so that’s one of the big things in terms of convincing is looking at numbers. So what are those important statistics that you could actually show people and say, hey, look, if we are reducing, if we are increasing our preventative measures, then we’re reducing all of the things that happen reactively. And that’s saving us money. And so if you can, if you can find those pieces, truthfully, and present a solid fact, based case, that step number one, and in the case would be Hey, we need to focus on the child, we need to focus on the social emotional impact that we have, that parents have, that society has. And that through doing that, we can impact the child in a positive way, the community and positive way. And we’re spending a lot less time dealing with all our two, tier two, tier three stuff on the streets. And we’ve got our good climate, or good or good climate are good tier one climate all set based on facts and evidence. And hey, you know, well, who was important to that teachers, and you know, what, we could use more of his teachers, and we could use more social services. And if you can continually prove that and disprove the benefit of having, you know, a robust police state, then, you know, I have to believe we can start to bring people on board. epinet. And then that’s where I talk about my two different truths in the world that we live in right now. And that’s where it’s hard.

keevin bybee 38:44
What do you see any, what were that? What are the current obstacles other than just facts? Like, what are what are some of the beliefs that might be holding people back from thinking teachers should be paid more why we don’t, you know, invest in educating more of them.

marc z 39:04
Teaching zz um, you know, teachers get paid too much. So why are people thinking? So, I don’t know more documentaries about what a teacher’s life looks like. I’m more. I guess stories about teachers that made a difference. I’m a reconciling with like, there might be people that don’t believe in the system for very good reasons. So learning from that, recognizing that that’s true, not trying to sweep it under the rug. I think, recognizing white supremacy and the role that racism plays in the educational system as much as we’re working against that, doing what we can. Again, like I said earlier, we’re working against something in a lot of cases that’s been hundreds of years in the making, and if you think about you know, slavery, I mean it, it plays a role in where we are. And I think the more people we can help understand, I guess empathy is where I’m going to kind of end up with that is people understanding. And I need to do that with people that might disagree with me, I need to be able to empathize with the trauma that has taken them to where they are just like they need to recognize or empathize my with my trauma, and I think about less for me about trauma. But I think more about the experiences that I’ve had that have led me to have the beliefs that I have. So if you can recognize me for that, and at least empathize with that maybe that gets you a little bit closer to seeing why education might be important. So empathy I have, if we can, I can’t have my three pillars. If we can get students or whoever to trust us, then we can teach them about impact and empathy. If we are not a trustworthy source, then we’re going in I want to make sure I’m answering your question I’ve gone I’ve gone kind of off. So the question is, so if we can create schools, that people trust and a system that people can trust, we can teach students and and I guess I want to focus on the students, if we can create students that trust us, or we can do what students need to find trusted us, then we can help them understand their impact and have empathy for others. And I think if you’re doing that you’re creating people who are going to be more thoughtful about things like social justice, or the needs of people and the needs of educators, and the need to have educators, because you’re creating those stories that kids have about that awesome teacher or that awesome school that they had. And it’s less I got out of there, thank God, and more, how can I contribute to that. And then, you know, in the problem with that’s time, that’s culture, that’s climate that’s creating things that are going to take time to do especially when we’re in a place that has with students have a lot of trauma, or areas that are that have experienced a lot of trauma. So I’m a firm believer that educators and social social workers and, and doctors are really critical. And that, but that’s the lens that I’ve been working with through my life. So how can we bring other people to that lens? This is a really long answer. Sorry, about my rambling.

keevin bybee 43:01
Well, there’s I mean, no, it’s it, there was a fun, easy way to put a fine bow on it, somebody would have done it already. And it, there’s so many bleed ends that get to any one point that it’s only natural to end up with, that seems to be a ramble. So I do recognize your hard limit, I want to be respectful of your time. And, you know, everything that you mentioned, brings up more questions. So maybe if the post production of this makes a sound really good, you’d be motivated to try round two. And we can dive into a few more details.

marc z 43:37
This is it’s a ton of fun to discuss this at the like a conceptual framework and to think through my experiences. And my opinion, you know, I am by nature, I’m, you know, insecure in a lot of ways. And so when I’m being asked to come in and talk about what I know about education, the first thing I think is I don’t know enough to talk about that. And I think there’s I mean, there’s, you know, countless books that I haven’t read in time that I need to take. But I think having an opportunity to talk like this helps me kind of conceptualize what I have learned and what I do know. And maybe if we if we do, I’m more than open to doing another one. Maybe I need to, I don’t know, I just kind of roll with it. And I know, we’ll kind of see how it goes. I’m open to it. Yeah,

keevin bybee 44:33
I mean, again, these are conversations to help enlighten me and hopefully iterate, like, what I’m calling my proposal. Part of that is finding out the next subject matter expert. We mentioned briefly, you know, somebody in potentially education of educators. But do you have any recommendations for next steps where I could turn to talk to somebody else who might give me a little less ignorance on the topic.

marc z 45:06
My my buddy Jeff de Franco, community college president down in Lake Tahoe Lake Tahoe Community College, awesome friend of mine and a leader, an educational leader like through and through

keevin bybee 45:17
no pressure and appreciate any any any thought given to it at all. Again, Mark, I just really want to thank you for your time and your your insight. We all are vastly under educated for living in the world today, but we still got to do it in some way. So I appreciate you working through your discomfort and sharing what you do know it’s certainly a lot more than me and you have like you said 20 years of experience. We’ll be in touch Okay.

marc z 45:45
All right, brother man.

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