Transcription
Um, so, uh, we're trying to make this useful. Um, I know that for a lot of schools, and I'll be honest, I'm in one right now. Um, for a lot of schools, advisory committees turn into something that becomes a tedious checkbox operation as opposed to something that's actually a valuable part of our programs. Um, and, uh, I'm just going to be blunt upfront. I don't like lying to people. So, here we go. Um, a lot of what I'm going to be sharing here is my experiences with previous districts, previous schools, previous other things. Little bit of best practice I see some for from some other people scattered in. Um, but I'm going to be honest and I understand the limitations. So, like it's really easy for somebody like me to stand up here and be like, you should be doing this, but also respecting that the locus of control isn't always with you, right?
So, um, for example, I've got all this cool stuff. I've been doing this presentation for about 10 years now. Um, my own district doesn't let me do this. Okay. So, uh, okay. Um, but my previous one did and it was great. And the districts I participate in, I'm on a lot of advisory committees because I still have a foot in the industry. Um, the ones that I'm on that work like this do really well. Um the ones that don't I'll be honest I don't even join those ones because I don't want to be part of like I don't have time for box checking so I don't even I don't join those ones.
Um, so, uh, the core I think the core takeaway and that's going to kind of get echoed through this entire stream is we want our advisory committees, okay, and this sounds like crazy. This sounds like low bar kinds of stuff, but I feel like we don't actually hit it all the time. Is you want your advisory committees to be meeting regularly enough to be helpful, be meeting in a way that's helpful for you, and be doing something that impacts kids education. And I know how crazy that sounds. So, um, but seriously, that's how it's supposed to go. Okay.
Um, and I realize that, especially at like the state level, we don't really get a whole lot of guidance on this. In fact, that's going to be a that's that's that's a whole slide by itself here. Um, we don't really get a whole lot of guidance on this. We don't get a whole lot of like best practice advice. And and often district um I'm going to say district dogma or district routine actually inhibits our ability to do this. Well, um, and so part of my mission has been to try to, you know, influence those CTE directors and stuff like that to be like, yo, this could work. Promise, promise it can. We just got to think about it different. Okay.
Um, so, uh, some some questions. We're not I'm not actually going to answer these out, but, um, I think it's worth thinking about. Do you have an advisory committee? I've met CT teachers that are like, no, I don't have one. And I'm like, you're breaking the law. And really the answer is you probably do have one, but your CTE director and CTE staff are doing it for you and you're not actually connected with it, which is usually the more accurate statement. Um, but if you're not interacting with it, how's it helping you? Um, who's on your advisory committee? Um, and this one's where I have a lot of polite disagreement with a lot of people on how that should look. Um, I'll share my opinions here in a minute. Um, but according to the state guidelines and the ASPI guidelines, what we're looking for is those business leaders. Um, and I agree that they should be there. I just don't agree with they're leaving out a lot of other people that also ought to be. And then what do they do? Um, I'm going to get into that one first. So, um, I'm going to I'll swing back to that question. Um, I'm going to skip this.
Okay. So, what is an advisory committee? And here's the official answer from I don't remember. It was some brochure I got from OSPI a while back. Um I know it was an OSPI source, but here we go. Um provide information to update, modify, expand, and improve quality of programs. Support and strengthen partnerships between business, labor, the community, and education. Make recommendations that will strengthen and expand the CTE curriculum. Provide assistance in implementing those recommendations. Identify and validate academic and occupational competencies. Determine priorities and review and evaluate programs. Communicate long-term goals and objectives of the CTE programs to students, parents, employers in the community. And basically, how much of that is actually helpful text to any of you? Okay, it's a lot of neat words, okay? It's a lot of neat words that are not ultimately terribly helpful. Um, they're vague where they shouldn't be vague. There's not a lot of detail in there and there's literally no how. Okay, we don't have any implementation guideline whatsoever. We just hear, yo, these people should meet and talk about stuff and evaluate stuff. Thanks. Okay.
Um, there's really and and here's the here's the bigger question is when I ask what's an advisory committee, I get multiple different answers. And here's the crazy part. The reason I get multiple answers is because there's multiple kinds of advisory committee. And everybody thinks of advisory committee in a different way. So, um, and if you've been to multiple sessions of mine, I'm going to beat the dead record drum. Um, is, um, I like definitions, okay? I like to know what I'm talking about. So, here's some definitions. Um, there's really two types of advisory committees. And I take this a step further personally. I feel like there's three advisory committees. And the one that isn't part of the state's definition and state guideline is actually the most useful one. Okay.
Um, so what you have is your general advisory committee and this is the thing that usually gets built first and that's the problem is we go the wrong direction. Okay. Uh, the GAC is the general advisory committee. They are a little bit of everything. They're kind of the district level advisory. They're supposed to oversee all of CTE. And because they are so broad, they don't really do good at anything. It's kind of like that jack-of alltrades, master of none thing. We got too many trades and we ain't mastered none of them. Okay. Um they basically turn into a box checking thing. I I dread anytime I have to sit through a GAC meeting. Like I don't even want to go. They're not helpful at all. Usually what it is is a quick song and dance from some kids, which I do actually enjoy, but I'm like this could have been an email. And then a bunch of box checking kinds of paperwork. And I'm like, neat. Well, I'm glad I got to see some kids do some stuff, but I could have gone down the hallway if I wanted to see Hosa. Okay, they do really cool things within my school. I don't need to go to a GAC meeting to see that.
Um, second one is program advisory committee. This is a little bit better, but then it's how do we define program? And this is a hotly contested debate. Is program part of your program pathway? As in I teach programming, so I must be part of the business pathway, which doesn't even make sense. um is program like programming is here and marketing is here and accounting is here which makes some sense to me. Okay, how does that look on the bigger scale and a lot of districts do and the state actually really likes to use program pathways which are again so general nothing is helpful. Manufacturing is a really big umbrella. It's too big of an umbrella. health services. It's a really big umbrella. Okay. Um my skill center started the other direction. Uh we use separate AC's for each course. So every single course in the skill center had its own advisory committee. That was the program advisory committee. You got two different courses in the IT stream. Neat. They each have their own advisory committee. And maybe there's a little bit of overlap and maybe sometimes they can work together. The game design and the animation ones had a lot of overlap. So we met together because it made sense for us. But in general, the idea was separate aces. That makes sense. Okay.
And then it's how do you build? A lot of times what I see most commonly in school districts, especially the larger ones, a lot more bureaucracy to try to get through is we've got a really really big GAC or not even necessarily a really big GAC. We meet, we check the box, it's big enough, and then they're like, "Okay, if you're more interested in this program pathway, go over here and you're the PAC. And if you're interested in this PAC, go over here." And some of the PAC's got a lot of people in them. And some of the PACs don't got a lot of people in them. Okay. What about and my pathway? I'm a game developer. Literally, by the time you get down to my program level, no one in my uh PAC at my current district actually has ever set foot in the game industry before. But that's my advisory committee. Okay. So, at Snow, we did things a little bit backwards. We started from the bottom and we said everybody needs a PAC. We're going to skip over that middle one because we got we're doing it down here instead of up here. This is great. We're just going to use this one. We'll skip that. And the GAC, we just had every program and especially within pathway clusters. Hey, can you give us like one or two of your advisory members that wants to be part of the GAC? So, the GAC, the PAC's weren't built by splitting up the GAC. The GAC was built by PAC's contributing people. Guess what? They got a lot more done because all the programs were represented. Okay? At least most of them. Most of them were there. Okay.
So, who should be on my team? And this is where I politely disagree with the state. Um, and we had a presenter a couple years back um actually here at GreatWolf. I think it was 2016 2017 talking about GAC's and he's like, "And only industry leaders because those are the only people we want." And I'm like, what are you talking about? This is insane. Okay, so who should be here? My opinion, anyone who's going to join? There is no such thing as a bad resource. Okay, like anybody. You want to be on my advisory committee? Come on in. That's cool. Great. We love you. Okay. My favorite recruits. Here's the people I'm going to talk to. Here's the people I'm going to seek out. Okay. Industry leaders. No kidding, right? like D. But it turns out I can't get the CEO of Xbox on speed dial. I know that sounds crazy, right? Like what a loser. Okay. Um I can't get the the CEO of Xbox on. I do have the design director for Xbox, but not the not not the CEO. Okay. So, I can get some industry representation. I get some industry leaders. Um but I can't, you know, I can get some pretty good names, but I can't get the names that necessarily I'd want. It's good enough, right? Okay. Um, that's a that's a no-brainer. If if if we're struggling with that one, like if we're struggling with conceptualizing that one, we got it some problems. Now, your individual situation on the ground might be different because if you are teaching out on the peninsula or across the mountains, you're not going to be able to get anybody from Xbox to be physically in your advisory committee because nobody in the tech industry lives in those places. And I'm exaggerating with nobody, but I'm sure you felt it. Okay.
Let's expand a little bit. How about college and tech school representatives? Okay, what is your kids' next step? I promise you, your kids's next step. We all want to pretend otherwise. We really, really want to pretend otherwise. But your kids are not going to graduate your program and go be the CEO of Boeing the next day. It ain't going to happen. I don't care how talented they are. It's not going to happen. They're going to need more training. Okay. Now, I'm a big proponent of we should not be trying to cram every kid into college, but some more training. Maybe that's college. My industry, that's college. Some industries that might be a tech school. There's your mechanics and machinists and people like that. Some kind of tech school. Maybe that's an apprenticeship. A lot of your mech machinists also may be that way instead. Most of your tradesmen, okay, apprenticeships. But there's some other training. How about we get some of those people in the room because they're the ones that know what your kids need to be able to do. Not 10 years from now when it actually won't even be accurate because industries change, but tomorrow when they graduate. Isn't that what matters? My job is not to prepare my kids in game development to be the CEO of Xbox. My job is to prepare my kids for their next step, which is probably college or a tech school. I need to get them through that. The college and tech school's job is to get them through the internship. The internship's job is to get them into junior level programming. And then at that point, they're the company's problem. And I'm joking around with that, but okay. Um, but it's our job to get them to the next step, not 10 steps down. Okay.
Industry interns. Again, your kids are going to start at the bottom. Maybe we need them to be talking to people who were in that spot because those people are the ones that have the life experience that they're going to be living soon. Okay. How many people do you talk to that are, you know, haven't been in or haven't been in junior roles in the last 20, 30 years that actually don't even know what a junior role is like anymore. Okay. My dad used to tell me all this advice and it was well-meaning, don't get me wrong, but like this is how you need to get a job. Pound the pavement, fill out application forms. And I'm like, "Dad, they use the internet now. Okay, I understand your life advice was accurate for you and your your meaning really well right now, but your advice isn't helpful because it's 20 years old, and that's not the way the world works anymore. Interns know what it's like today. uh current college tech school students. This is even better. I mean, and and again, your committee should be all of these people, not just only these people, okay? Because they're doing the students's next step. They're doing that training. This is what my day is like at my new tech school. They have perspective on the students's next steps. And also, these are the easiest ones to recruit. And the reason these are the easiest ones to recruit is because you already know them. They graduated from your program last year. They probably hopefully already like you. They already possibly have some commit connection and commitment to the school. Okay? They're easy to recruit because they still feel like they owe you something. All right? Um so you recruit them and guess what the cool thing about these people is? is they graduate from their college and tech school and become an intern and then they become uh possibly a representative but or they become a mid-level somewhere and eventually they become the industry leader that you're trying to recruit but you don't have to recruit the industry leader because you recruited the student back eight years ago. Okay.
Former students, again, people who are in industry. Um, and the other nice thing about the former students, the people up here, they don't know what you do dayto-day. They have a vague idea, but they don't know, oh yeah, that project that you guys do in December is really rough. You know who knows that? The kids that just graduated from your program. Man, I wish you would have done this and that project cuz that would have prepared me better for this other thing. The only people that can possibly make that connection are the people who used to be in your room because they know where your strengths were and where your gaps were. Uh my other favorite that often goes unlooked is district uh employees in related or helpful positions, especially your classifides. Okay, you're teaching accounting. Your building probably has a bookkeeper. You're teaching mechanical, anything, I guarantee your bus garage has some mechanics. Okay, we have all of these. Most of the CTE positions we have, you're teaching medical, I bet you somewhere in your district, you could probably find a nurse. Okay, we have all these positions available to us and they like helping out because they're doing those jobs. Most of them, most of them are underpaid compared to what they'd be getting in their other industries. So, they're probably here because they want to do something with kids. Give them an opportunity to do something with kids. Their bosses will probably let them go for a minute. And plus, most of the meetings are after school anyways. Okay.
So, um a great question to ask yourself is how do we get advisory members? And if we're following the rules of what are we supposed to do as advisory committees and we're thinking about this as our three meetings per year and all that stuff that we usually do. I had a person ask me so partway during snow during my time at Snow. I'm about 5 years in at this point so my advisory committee is doing pretty okay. And she was struggling and she's like I can't get them all in the room at the same time. And I'm like, "Why are you trying?" I'm like, "I mean, they aren't all going to be able to meet at the same place at the same time. Like, they're adults with schedules. Like, that happens." And she goes, "Yeah, but like I mean, then it feels like there's only a few." And I'm like, "Well, how many members do you have?" And she's like, "Five." And she's like, "How many do you have?" And she's like, "Juggling five people's schedule is hard." And I'm like, "Yeah, it is. It really is hard to juggle five people's schedules. That's crazy." She's like, "How many do you have?" And I'm like, "30." And she's like, "How do you have 30 members in your advisory committee? And how do you get them all in the same place at the same time?" I don't. But if you have 30 and you say, "Hey, we're doing this thing at this time." You might be able to get five of them to show up. I'm playing the numbers game. I don't try to get all 30 of them in a room at the same time. They wouldn't fit. How about we just get five of them at a time doing certain things and when there's 30 of them, they can kind of spread the load? How do you get 30 advisory members? That's crazy. Well, first off, I started asking kids. Um, and as they got older, they stayed. Okay. But then the other thing is is is how are you asking your advisory committee? How are you trying to get recruits on your advisory committee? And people are like, well, you know, I'm like, hey, we're trying to get some people on our advisory committee. We meet like three times a year. And I'm like, okay, cool. Yeah, you know what? That's neat. Um, hey, working professional who's really busy and likes their family, can you spend like two extra evenings a year doing a meeting where you're going to check a bunch of boxes for me? It's a terrible pitch. Okay. And after I hear what people say when they're recruiting advisory committees, it starts sounding a little like this. [Music] Every year, 3 to five mandatory meetings go virtually unattended. That means uneaten bagels, undrunk coffee, and paperwork that can go unfilled for months at a time until it meets its untimely end at the angry teeth of a shredder. With your contribution of only a few hours a month, that's less than one soccer practice with your kids or date night with your spouse, you can be a sponsor and help that paperwork grow. You can help mission statements get written and have legal compliance fulfillments. re fulfilled. Please volunteer before it's too late. That works in a lot of different contexts, by the way. I got a flat tire this morning. Okay. Um works really. This is why I'm late. All you got to do is play. It starts at 1 minute 8. It's Sarah McGofflin's Angel. Started at 1 minute 8 seconds in. It's the perfect spot. I didn't even check it this I just set it to the timer and then you just talk really slow. When you can nail that monotone, you've got it. Today I had to present it. Great wolf lodge. I enjoy it, but it sounds depressing. Okay, so um it's terrible. It's terrible. Don't do the pitch. Don't do the pitch. It's just sad. It makes me sad. Uh I'm sad now. Okay. Um don't do it. Nobody wants to go to meetings. Do you want to go to meet? Okay. How many of you want to be on my advisory committee? I'd like you all to come to an extra couple of meetings a year. No hands. Yeah, that never works. Okay.
Um, okay. This is counterintuitive. Here's my system. It works. Uh, don't invite people to your advisory committee. That's that's that's rule one. Okay. Uh, it's kind of like fight club. We don't talk about advisory committee. All right. Um, sounds really freaking counterintuitive. All right, here's what I do. You're like, "Well, then how does that work?" Uh, this guy might be crazy. I am. Okay. Um, invite people to do an activity. That's it. That's it. One activity. Hey, can you come in and do a thing? Hey, Nelly, I know you're really active within the game design community. Can you please come in to my class? And I know that, you know, based on her other comments and activisms and things like that, I know you're really, really interested in making a less toxic atmosphere for women in the game design community. You want to come in and talk about that with my class for a day? Yeah, I'd love to come in and talk to your kids about that. Cool. Come on in. Got to get some paperwork done with the school district, but we got this. All right. And then later on, you're like, "Hey, Nelly, we're doing this panel thing. saying, "Do you want to help me evaluate some student work and and give some feedback to some kids?" Hey, Nelly, we're doing this thing because at every stretch in this phase, I'm having that person interact with the kids and that's the part they like. Nobody joins the school system to do paperwork. And if you did, you're probably in the wrong field. Okay. Um, also like I was raised by Sicilians. I cook. Um, every time I do any kind of committee meeting or anything, I just cook up some pasta. Um, that's a draw. Let's just put it that way. Okay. Um, but people can be bribed with food very, very easily. Especially those college students you're trying to recruit in the beginning. Can you come uh hang out with us for the day and evaluate student projects? I'll buy you lunch. Food. Food. Okay. Um, and that leads to our ideal team size as big as possible. Okay. My fundamental like my ideal advisory size would be 100 people. Are they all going to show up at one time? God, no. And I hope not. It'd be crazy. But the more people I have, the more leverage I have and the more things I can do, right? Not every team member will be at every activity, and that's okay. My rule when I'm talking to advisory committee members is, "All right, look, now that I got you as part of the crew, here's how this goes." Everybody gets their speech a little ways in. Okay, here's how this goes. I'm going to invite you to like a crap ton of things. I'm going to invite you to so many things. It's going to overwhelm your calendar. And here's the deal, and I'm saying that upfront because I don't want you to feel overwhelmed. You don't have to say yes to everything. You're not going to hurt my feelings if you don't say yes to everything. I actually expect you to say no to more things than you say yes to. But I'm going to be inclusive and invite you to everything. And if it works out for you, say yes. And here's the extra. You don't have to tell me no. Because a lot of people struggle with no. Don't tell me no. Just don't show up. If you say yes, please be there or or tell me if you're not gonna because I'm now I'm counting on you. But if you didn't say anything, I'm going to assume you're a no. And not only that, I'm going to help you out a little bit because some people feel guilty. How many people feel guilty saying a no sometimes, right? Okay, here's my deal to you. If you don't answer or you say no, and I'm a big fan of no is enough, okay? Like, you don't have to give me a reason. I got you. I understand you work hard. No's enough. That's okay. You got kids. I get you. But if you don't answer me at all, here's what I'm going to or you just say no and don't give me a reason. I'm going to make up a cool reason in my head for why you're not there. Okay? You are not here because you are off fighting ninjas. Okay? Like that is going to be way cooler than anything you're probably doing. Okay? I don't need to know a reason. I'm just going to assume that you're doing something really super cool. You don't got to justify that to me. Okay?
Um, one of the most profound bits of wisdom and and you're all gonna you're you're going to think that this is hilarious, but I'm gonna I lead wrong. Uh, one of the most profound bits of wisdom I ever heard came from the Olsson twins. Just going to let that sit for a second. All right. So, Elizabeth Olsen, which is not one of the twins, when she first started getting famous as Scarlet Witch in Marvel, um, some people asked her, you know, how do you decide which projects to take and which projects not to take? and how do you you know like what's that like for a new newish actress and stuff and she goes you know I got this really good piece of advice from my sisters that would be the twins she said you know they always say no is enough and the idea there is we just need to get it in our heads that like yeah we don't need to justify every single moment of every single thing that we turn down sometimes we're just tired like I want to just be able to say no and be like yo not right now and I don't want to have to justify that cuz that's energy, right? Like I don't want to have to say, "Well, my fatigue syndrome is kicking in today." You don't need to know that. Just know. And once you get good at it and once you've started doing it, it's actually really empowering. And so I try to share that with the advisory people. I'm like, "No is good enough for me." Like, I get you sometimes. I say I say no a lot, too. No is enough. Okay. Be like the Olsson twins. It's not a phrase I get to say very often. Okay.
Um, so I invite and again no pressure. Some of my advisory members when I was at Snow I would see regularly like almost everything. Some of them I saw once maybe once a year sometimes once every other year and I am super excited to see them when they come. There's no, "Oh, I haven't, you know, there is usually like the oh I haven't seen you in a long time. How are you doing?" But it's not like oh you're finally showing up. I'm excited because I haven't seen them in a while. like, "Cool. This is great. Thanks for being here." Okay. Um, and that's okay. There's no pressure on this. Okay.
So, what should they do? And this is where the cheating comes in. I'm a gamer. Like, I don't want to play the game the regular way because the regular way is usually boring and it doesn't get you the best results. Okay. Um, so this is an interesting one and and I have an AI story. I know that this the conference is kind of AI focused. Here's my AI story for the day. Um, advisory committees should meet at least three times a year to discuss program goals and improvement. You're going to notice that big giant asterk. Here's the interesting thing about that asterric. Um, according to RCW, and I've been hunting this for about 10 years now. That is the only official duty under RCW or whack that I can find. However, why is there an asterk? The reason there's an asterk is I can't actually find that number anywhere codified in law. Not once, not ever. And I've had CTE directors, I've had program facilitators, I've had all these people come up to me all very, very convinced. It's three a year, it's one a year, it's two a year. First off, none of these people agree. Most often I hear three. That's why it's on my slide, but I can't find the number anywhere. My school's policy, you have to meet three times a year because because of state guidelines or because of state law. And I'm like, "Cool, show me the law." No one can do it. This last conference this summer, I gave this exact same presentation. Someone came up to me the next day and they're like, "Hey, I found it. I used AI." And they said, they quoted it was one meeting per year and here's the relevant RCWs. That's awesome. Great use of AI. So, I looked up the RCWs. One of them refers to work-based learning. The other one is program definitions for something that's completely different. And the other one mentions advisory committees and that they should exist, but it doesn't site a number. Sometimes AI just tells you what you want to hear and it looks right. It looks like what we expect to see, but it doesn't do a very good job at quoting law apparently because even after AI certainty, I still don't have a number for that slide. I cannot find the number anywhere.
Um, okay. So, here's my deal. I think advisers should be working on kids with their projects. If you have a fa a group of people who's functionally faceless because they're just sitting at the district office meeting in the boardroom once in a while and they're not in your trenches, how do they even know what you are doing or should be doing or anything? How about they get in there and sometimes they come in with these really really big lofty ambitions like they should be able to scratch write code uh and use polymorphism and C and you're like I can't even get them to put a semicolon on the end of the line and you want me to do polymorphism and most of y'all in the room are like huh exactly you're in the same spot my kids are. Okay so maybe if they're in the trenches with us a little bit they have a little bit better perspective. Okay, you guys have projects in your classes, or at least I hope you do. Bring some kids or bring some bring some adults in there. Hey, this person really knows about blank. They're going to hang out with us today. They like doing it. It's a break for them. Okay. It's like when your admins, how many of you guys have the admins? They're like trying to feel like what it feels like to be in the classroom. they want to sub for you for a day and you're like that's not really an accurate experience because I still had to do the lesson plan you're going to follow and I'm the one that has to follow up with the parents afterwards and I'm the one that has to and I'm the one that has to and I'm the for you this was just a vacation day for them it's a vacation day and that's a good thing makes them happy they get to be like I'm not going to be an accountant for today and I'm just going to help kids with math this is cool neat let them bring them Okay. Be a guest speaker. Kids often have a completely alien idea on what the careers are, right? How many of you have had like, "This is what I want to do in this career when I grow up." And you're sitting there as the teacher going, "You sweet summerchild, you have no idea what this is going to be like." Okay. Um, at least they can talk about those experiences. And here's the weird thing and and I I get this notion. Okay, so I hang out with Scott Luke a lot. You guys may have been in some of his presentations. I'm on his advisory committee. We both teach game development. Here's the crazy thing, and I see it happen all the time, and this probably happens to you guys, too. Okay, so when I'm in Scott's room, I'm not a game design teacher. I run I do run a studio, and so like this is Jim, he runs a studio. It's not, "Hey, this is Jim. He teaches up in Everett." And I'll come in and I'll say something like, "Oh yeah, know the iterative process is really important." Which to me is like, "Done, no kidding." And it's the stuff I tell my students every single day. And and and here's the deal is it's the stuff that Scott tells his kids every single day. And I know he's saying it cuz I hear him say those kinds of things, but nobody listens to it when you're the teacher, but some expert comes in the room and says the exact same thing you've been saying all along. You know, I was listening to Jim yesterday and he said iteration is really important and maybe we should be doing more of that. And Scott is like, "No kidding. Really? Really? You think sometimes those guest speakers just reinforce the stuff that you've been trying to teach them all along?" And I even do that with Nelly. Nelly comes in and talks to my kids quite a bit and I'm like, "Hey Nelly, I'm having kids have trouble with like debugging their own code and actually looking and reading the error messages." And every single time she finds a way to slip that into whatever she's talking about, she reinforces the stuff that I'm trying to get her to reinforce plus whatever she's doing. Like, here, sneak this in. Okay.
Um, help evaluate student work. Theoretically, our kids should be doing work at industry standards, right? Like, that makes some sense. Who's better qualified to assess whether something's industry standard? Maybe the people doing it. Okay. And not that y'all aren't qualified. I mean, I feel like I'm qualified in most of the stuff that I teach, but like it's it's different. It's still different. Okay. Um, I'm still working part-time in industry, but like there's some stuff that I miss sometimes. And sometimes my my advisories are like, "Well, what about this?" And I'm like, "Aha, that's a good catch. Thank you. That's cool." Okay. And then my favorite one is participate in super activity. And I'm going to swing back to that one. But basically, at the end of the year, we do something big. And my advisory committee is usually part of that. Okay. And again, they like that. Um, the advisory committee likes that. The kids like that. They get a connection. And then when you need it, they also act as the core of your booster club. When I say, "I need this piece of equipment." It doesn't land the same way. I'm just a teacher. I always want stuff. As when my advisory committee comes in and says, "No, no, no. he really needs that because this is the industry standard equipment. And then sometimes if you train them well enough and some of my advisories are already pretty good at this because they have to politic in their normal jobs. They say things like, "Well, I mean, you know, if you want your program to be effective, you're going to need to do this. Well, the other schools I work with, they got this kind of thing." And they say it in those kind of ways that they like basically guilt trips, right? They're like, "Ah, I need my program to look cooler than that district's program. I guess we got to buy the thing. doesn't work every time, but it works a lot of the time. And then my favorite, so at Snow, we used to have to pick student of the year for our respective programs. Um, that's that's a political fight. Okay. You always pick Sally. Johnny, you always like Johnny better than me. I don't pick. My advisory committee picks. And I give advice. I'm like, here's, you know, here's a bunch of kids that I think kind of deserve it, and here's kind of why. You've worked with them on some of these projects. You've seen some of their student work. You've been around them in super activities and as guest speakers. You guys make some decisions. I'll answer questions, but it's your call. And usually, here's the deal, is they pick probably the kid I would have picked in the first place. But now, when parents come back, you're always mean to my kid. I didn't pick. Nelly picked. Nelly doesn't have that problem with your kid that you think I have. So, okay.
Um, and all across the way, I think my guiding principle here, advisory committee members are human beings. No one wants to be a rubber stamper. Okay. Do you want to do that? How do you feel when your administrator hands you like yet another like tedious paperwork data collectiony kinds of thing to do? Right? I don't got time for this crap. I'm working. Think they feel any different? But when you give me something satisfying to do, hey, I want you to work with my kids on this. um one of the law teachers at this the previous law teacher at the school I teach at now um I do a lot as as part of my side business I do a lot of work with contracts like a lot of work with contracts and so she was like hey don't you do a lot of contract stuff I'm like yeah she goes do you want to come in and talk to my kids about it and I'm sitting there because I it's it's her law class is the same period as my prep and I'm like well I'm going to miss out my prep that day and I got a lot of stuff to do but you What? That's more important. I'm going to go do that because I'm working with kids and that's fun. If she would have asked me to do a meeting during that period, I don't got time for you. But yeah, I want to work with the kids. That sounds like fun because I'm not just rubber stamping something and I can actually make it a little bit of a difference there. Kids ask me crazy questions about law. It's really fun. Okay. Um I don't always know the answers and I admit that when I don't, but some of the questions are pretty cool. Okay. Um, advisor committee members wants to want to see that they make a difference. Like, does the thing that I'm doing actually make a difference. You put them in the classroom, they're going to see the difference. It's not just hypothetical no more. When you can see it with your own eyes, it's real. So, bring them in. Okay.
Um, include them in activities with students. Okay. Um so super activities um basically I love super activities and I encourage them everywhere I go. I try to include them in as much as I can when I have locus of control over my space. Um basically the notion is is pick a big project. Okay. At the end of the year, my game design students spend eight weeks making a game. And it's for a basically, it's not literally a um CTSO, but it's sort of a CTSO. We're working on it. And basically, we do everybody makes a game. Everybody makes a game. Um, in teams of four, they make their games. It takes eight weeks to get through. That's an eight-week project. That's massive. And then at the very very end, I bring in some advisory committee members. They score projects and they decide who goes on to state. Okay. Um all of my kids did the project. The AC members are involved and the way they get involved um and especially at the state level because our state advisory committee is really strong. They get involved by actually feedbacking. Our event runs a lot like American Idol. My team is going to stand up here. We're going to present our stuff. Here's my neat game that I made. Here's my cool game. There's a panel of people. the pe the advisory committee members are going to be like, "Hey, this is what worked for your game. This is what's not doing it for me. This is really cool. I feel like you could have spent more time on that." And they give all those qualitative feedback kinds of things. And number one, that basically serves as the basis for my score. So now my grading on my projects is done. And also, the kids got really, really cool feedback that they're not going to get anywhere else. Okay. When we do projects normally, like when I was in school, I do a school project. It took a couple weeks. Who sees that? I see it. My teammates of course see it. The ones that actually bothered to participate. My teacher saw it. My parents see it if I decided to share it with them. But also, let's be real. What' you do at school today? Oh, nothing. Okay. Um, so maybe my parents didn't see it. I put a lot of effort in for what? One human to see it. That's a crazy like that's a big lift. Like when we assign projects like I think we need to think about that. Who's seeing it and what is what's going to happen to it? Kids invest a lot of time in stuff that doesn't ever really see the light of day. That's crazy. Okay, so now someone's seeing it. Kids will not work. Kids do not care. Well, let me let me astric that. My kids don't care what I think about their projects. If we're being totally honest, I'm just a teacher. Who cares? The weird thing is is when I show up in Scott's room, his kids care what I have to say because I'm an industry person, but his kids don't care about what he has to say about his projects. But you know what they do care about? I did a project and Christa Reed, the narrative director at Bungie, said that my game was cool. That hits a little different. Okay.
Um, alternatively, and and like Crystal's wonderful. I love her. Um, she's really good at the compliment sandwich. Okay. But if she's rough rough on you, like you just got schooled by like the narrative director for Bungie. Um, fortunately, most of the kids rise to the occasion. And that's the thing is is they'll rise to the occasion because they want to impress cool adult. They don't care about impressing you. My kids don't care about impressing me. Like, I want to pretend otherwise, but they don't. But they do want to impress Bungie and Xbox and all these other people that I managed to bring in. Okay. Um, so those kind of people. So, they're they're helping me out with that. Um and it and again it hits different um students will achieve more for the industry member than they will for you. Uh AC presence. The other thing is it shows relevancy. Okay. If I give a project and I'm like you have two weeks to make this thing and the kids are like yay. Do they really know it's relevant? They have to trust. And and trust is tough. And some of the kids that I work with, they don't have a lot of trust for any adults. They've been betrayed by too many adults in the past. They don't trust me. Some of them do. Not all of them. There's a few I'm I mean, I teach high school. Let's be real. There's a few who still trust you just because you're the teacher, but by the time you get up to the upper levels of high school, that's that's dwindling. Why is this project actually important? And how many kids are like, "What? When will I use this in real life?" Okay. Well, here's the deal is if I'm like, and then Crystal is gonna come in and look at your projects. If the narrative director at Bungie thinks that this thing is important enough that she's giving up time in her day to come check it out, there's a good chance I'm not off base on this being important. Again, it hits a little different. Uh presentation demonstration also allow helps you to align to common core standards, right? Like if we are saying, hey, you have to get up in the front of the room and say this is my game. Common core says we should be teaming and we should be sharing and we should be communicating the stuff that we did. This is good stuff. Okay. Uh CCRS, let's let's let's do it. Okay.
Um, and then some other things that we do with my advisory committees is assist with things like pitch panels. Um, for those of you who aren't initiated, pitch panels is basically like this is what I'm going to do for my project. And you do like a viability, health check, status check before it even starts. Okay, this is my scope. And it's a chance for you as the teacher to go, maybe you could scale that up a little bit. Maybe you need to scope that down a little bit. Like I believe in you, but I don't believe that you could do that in two weeks. That's too a little too ambitious. Let's bring that back just a little bit. How about this, this, and this. And then if you have time, this, this, and this. Okay, those kind of discussions. Uh, mid-carter evaluations. They can do mock interviews. You know who the best people at doing a job interview are? The people who do job interviews all the time. Okay. Um, so stuff like mock interviews. Um, and I've had some of my my ex- studentents, one of my uh one of my girls several years back, um, and she's running code ninjas now. Um, one of my girls several years back was, uh, she she was literally like the manager of a little like ice cream shop, but you know what she and so she graduated high school, she became the manager, and she's hiring in she's she's dealing with all the HR stuff for this little tiny shop. She's only 19, but she interviews people every day. She can run a mock interview. She's running an ice cream shop, not a game studio, but she can run an interview. She does it all the time. Okay. Um, so we use everybody for their different skills. Um, and now she's running code ninjas, which puts her back in my industry again. Um, but she never left my advisory. Okay. She works with us at the state level now. Um, so, um, there's some really cool stuff going there. Okay.
Um, that's about it. We wrapped a little early this time. Um, so does anybody have any questions on any of this or discussion points or anything they want to add? Still too early in the morning. That's fair. All right. I think we're good.