Below is a transcript of our conversation with Joe McBreen, assistant superintendent of innovation for St. Vrain Valley Schools in Colorado. During the conversation, Joe discussed a number of new opportunities for students through their Innovation Center —
The chance to graduate as a licensed drone pilot and how many high school students are already traveling around the US on weekends to run drone shows.
The chance to work as an employee through the district while in high school and be placed in local businesses.
The chance to build underwater drones and use them to solve local problems.
The chance to earn a cybersecurity certificate.
The chance to take courses in AI, entrepreneurship, video arts, and game design.
Joe discussed how starting in preschool the integrate Stanford’s design thinking model and in every single classroom, every single grade districtwide, pre-K through 12.
Of course, I pushed Joe on expanding debate throughout his district (3 of the 60 schools have debate teams) and even suggested the Innovation Center could be a great place to hold a district-wide debate tournament. :)
Anand Rao
Well, today we’re really pleased to welcome Joe McBreen, assistant superintendent of innovation for St. Vrain Valley Schools in Colorado, where he leads a really bold vision for student centered future ready learning. He’s a former teacher, principal, chief technology officer who has really deep technical expertise. And Joe blends culture first leadership with cutting edge innovation. He oversees the district’s innovation center, is helping to integrate AI and industry partnerships into K12 education in really transformative ways. Thanks for joining us, Joe.
Joe McBreen
My pleasure. It’s really an honor to be here. So, yeah, I’m excited to talk to both of you.
Anand Rao
Excellent. Well, we’ve been looking forward to it, too. And I want to start off with something that I I think we might have in common. When I was in college, I had a second job where I worked on the night janitorial team. And as I understand it, that when you were maybe in high school, you were working on the janitorial team at your school.
Joe McBreen
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. In the summer and on the breaks. Yeah, that’s right.
Anand Rao
Wow. That’s great. Character building.
Joe McBreen
Yeah, definitely. Character building is a nice way of putting it. Yeah, it’s work. Let’s just say lots of gum was scraped off from underneath a lot of desks.
Stefan Bauschard
That could be your next startup. You guys share. We need embodied janitorial teams, maybe.
Joe McBreen
There you go.
Anand Rao
Well, what’s amazing to me is that you’ve gone from working that job when you were really young to now assistant superintendent of innovation. How does that on the ground perspective and also as a teacher obviously, how does that influence how you view the human advantage, especially when we’re talking about AI automating so much?
Joe McBreen
Oh my gosh. That’s a great question. You know, for me it I just I just think coming from that place and having been blessed to experience all those different roles, you really get an appreciation for the genius, the wisdom, the contribution that every person on a team contributes, regardless of their role, regardless of their title. And no, I just think that deep sincere appreciation makes the magic happen. And I don’t think you can fake that. I think when people — I think people can sense when others don’t really respect them and yeah so that this this really is a team sport and you need to have everybody on the team. So that’s kind of my philosophy.
Stefan Bauschard
You know, when I when I, you know, kind of first got to know you on LinkedIn and then, you know, I saw you ran the center for innovation and, you know, you’re doing all these really cool things like, you know, I noticed you had the students with the drones at the FETC, but when I was preparing for this and I was, you know, just went on the district’s website and looking how like how large the district is and how many high schools there are, um, you know, seven or eight, but, you know, tons of elementary schools. It said like 60 different schools, online school. I’m not sure if your center is kind of its own school. Seems to be listed there with the schools or if it works with the others. So, I wonder if you could just kind of give our listeners like you know an overview of like you know the totality of the St. Vrain like school district and then you know what your center is. It’s really large and kind of how it fits in with the you know the overall thing — is it kind of more standalone or does it kind of work you know kind of with the high schools?
Joe McBreen
Yeah, that’s a great question. I’ve got to share. I honestly believe I have the best job on earth and I work in the coolest K12 educational facility in the world. And let me make my case to you. You know, we’re actually a preschool through 12th grade program. It’s not just high school. That’s part of the magic. And so we do serve all 60 schools as a center. Technically, we’re also our school district’s second CTE, career and technical ed center. But really, from the beginning, the innovation center has been designed as a like a research and development facility, almost an incubator to test ideas that scale at large. And so when I say we’re a preschool through 12th grade shop, that is not an exaggeration. We focus starting literally in preschool with Stanford design thinking model and in every single classroom, every single grade districtwide, pre-K through 12, we infuse design thinking into every content area. And so a lot of people — that I think is pretty special, but that’s one of the focuses here at the innovation center at the elementary grades. And then we go on up through middle school and high school where we have two different elements to the high school program and I think that’s where both of you originally got interested in learning more. Of course, we have high school classes during the day. We have 11 different pathways and you can hit our website, but some of them won’t surprise you, right? Cyber security, artificial intelligence, underwater robotics, which is kind of a crackup since Colorado is the most landlocked state in the union. Anyway, underwater robots, entrepreneurship, video arts, game design. We recently installed a motion capture lab. I don’t know if you’ve seen those or use those at your universities or whatnot, but if you ever come to the innovation center, I would love to put both of you in a black velcro suit with a little reflective dots on all the joints and turn you into a video character or analyze your athletic performance. So, that’s what we do at the high school level during the day.
But I think what you two will find really interesting and your listeners hopefully — I think the best part of the innovation center happens after school from about 3:30 p.m. to 6:00, 6:30 p.m. on any given night. We actually hire on our payroll as school district employees. We have 264 kids on our payroll right now. So they have two different log on. They log on as a high school student and then they log on as a St. Vrain employee. And what are they doing you might ask? This is where it gets interesting. They do real work for real clients. So we have 33 different teams and some of those teams I mentioned — underwater robotics.
Let me give you an example. The students on that team did their biggest most successful gig recently. They went to our local city’s water treatment plant because the water engineers were having a problem. The plant was operating around 80% efficiency. They couldn’t figure it out. And so on a whim, they hired the innovation center students to go out there, send their little robot under the water, get all the data analysis they could, lo and behold, they found out that there was a type of algae growing that shouldn’t be there. And when they eradicated it, plant’s back up to 100% efficiency. And so now they proactively send the underwater robot team out there every 3 months to make sure that things are good. And every other surrounding school or city has hired the team as well. I can send you the newspaper article if you’re interested, but that’s an example of how our students after school are doing real work for real clients and they’re getting paid for it and it’s a self-funding mechanism. And so with that money that they get, not only do they get paid, but they can buy more equipment. And so it’s entrepreneurial in nature. It’s it’s it’s real problem solving. It’s authentic and that’s just one of countless examples I could give you.
Anand Rao
I love that, Joe. I mean, it’s astonishing to hear that you’ve been able to build it to that level. How long did it take to get to the point where you have over 200 students working? Because I wanted to ask you a bit about this like where does it stop being school and where is it workforce entry? But you’ve gone well beyond that. I mean to the idea where they really have those multiple roles.
Joe McBreen
Yeah. The short story is about 2013 is when the idea of the innovation center started in a classroom and then it moved to the wing of a building, then a bigger one, and then in 2016, we built this standalone facility thanks to a a bond that our community passed. And right now, we’re in the process of doubling the building to 110,000 square feet. And so, I would love for you or your listeners to come visit us sometime. It is a very special place but I want you to hear it took way over a decade to get to that point. Lots of trial and error successes and failures.
Stefan Bauschard
Now most of the students you have like during the day are they there — is this like kind of their primary classes or however we want to describe them. Are they also doing some regular classes? I know your district is huge. Maybe you could talk about the geographic scope of it. So, how how do you manage kind of the geographic scope with the center being in the one location?
Joe McBreen
Yeah, that’s a great question. So, our school district is the seventh largest in Colorado around 33,000 students. I say it’s a Goldilocks size district. It’s not too big, but it’s not too small. It’s just right. In all of our high schools, every period, every day, students go from their home high schools. So, I want you to hear the innovation center is an enrichment program. It is not their home high school. We are not a school. We’re an enrichment program. We’re every period, every day, we run buses and kids can or if kids have their own car, they can drive here. But they can take a bus, take a class, and then they go back. And so, the thing that I love about the innovation center is it’s a place where students can test drive careers. We don’t lock kids into career pathways. That’s one problem I have with traditional career and technical education is, man, once you start going down a pathway, you’re kind of locked into it. And we’re the exact opposite. The students who flourish the most here are actually the ones that bounce around to different areas. Maybe they try a little cyber security. Maybe they try to be a pilot. Maybe they try something totally different, video game design. And so it’s a it’s an enrichment program. And the other thing that a lot of people are confused about is it’s not just technology. We have a very robust entrepreneurial pathway. Super strong video. It just goes on and on. So AI is a huge part of it. We’ve got a really successful AI program. I’d love to talk about that if you’re interested. But what I want you to hear is it’s not a gifted and talented school and it’s not a technology school. Yeah. That’s it’s just really a — everybody can come pursue your curiosities and passions and just be a kid and be hungry to learn.
Anand Rao
Let me ask you kind of a two-part question there and lead into your offer to say a little bit about the AI programs you have. When you’re — what’s really the design philosophy behind deciding which programs to build out? You have so many of them. How do you avoid kind of chasing shiny objects or how do you respond to that critique? Then you know we’ve heard on our campuses you know oh you’re just viewing AI as the new shiny object. How do you make that decision and then tell us a little bit about what you were able to do with that with the AI program for students?
Joe McBreen
Okay, one of the more important things that I I would love for anybody listening to this or watching this to understand is that we — you’ve already heard how we blur workforce with education. The other place where we really blur lines is on any given day after school, we will have dozens of business people in our facility working side by side with those after school work teams or project teams. So that blurring of historically separate industry from education is very intentional. Every one of our focus areas has an advisory board made up of top-flight professionals and they don’t all live around here. Some of them, you know, do virtual meetings and we also have an overarching advisory board for the innovation center in general. And so, here’s a great example. Colorado is one of the nation’s leaders when it comes to the topic of quantum information sciences and technologies. And so about two and a half years ago, our advisory board started mentioning like, hey, this is coming down the pike. Hey, we might get this Elevate Quantum grant, blah blah blah. And so because of that, right now today, we have I believe Colorado’s only intro to quantum class and we’re going to have a big conference next fall. And not that we’re so special, but I do think it’s unique that a K12 education facility intentionally seeks out expertise in the form of these advisory boards in every day in the form of mentors. So that’s where all the ideas come from. And also one of our guiding principles is strategic abandonment. We’re not afraid to decommission programs or pathways that you know their time has come or it’s not generating a ton of interest. So yeah, so we we’ve turned off a few programs too. It’s not just additive.
Stefan Bauschard
You know, the one thing I think about — I mean, you know, so much traditional education, right? It it’s centered around the AP courses or IB, you know, whatever you have and, you know, doing well in school generally and then of course, you know, doing well in the SAT, ACT, getting your letters of recommendation, right? That that’s kind of your traditional profile. And obviously within your program, you might have some students who are not going to college. You know, maybe it’s a direct career pathway, but you have other students who are going to college, but I mean my guess is that most of these students are at least — especially on the experiential side of learning — are far ahead of right like other students you know are kind of entering universities. Like so how do you how do you think about that? You know are there certain kind of universities you recommend or types of programs and like how do your students think about that because my guess is they have a lot more hands-on experience and you know even the best students coming out of other really good schools.
Joe McBreen
Yeah. One of the things that we always try to provide the students is opportunities for them to differentiate themselves and it and it happens quite naturally when they follow their curiosities and their passions. Let me give you an example. In Colorado, one of the premier scholarships that students can get is called the Boettcher Scholarship. And we’ve had numerous students get Boettcher scholarships because I swear it’s not just the communication skills and their ability to talk about teamwork, not just theoretically, but in reality. I’m thinking of last year’s winner, a really amazing young lady who is one of the leaders in a conservation effort to save a little frog called the leopard frog and working with Colorado Parks and Wildlife. She — well and her whole team basically helped this little frog thrive in Colorado. And I think those sorts of real examples separates out students whether they’re pursuing a scholarship or trying to attend a college of their choice. It’s just it’s not made-up BS. It’s not fake. You know, I’m just trying to jam crap into my resume so that I can get into a better college. It’s very real. And I and I particularly love the fact that kids again will bounce around from team to team to team. And that’s actually a strength. That’s a —
Anand Rao
Yeah. Yeah. I love that model of collaboration. And that’s something that that I’ve been pushing for a lot on our campus is for students to have those opportunities because, you know, the technology almost secondary to it because the experience of working together, team building, working authentically, those communication and collaborative skills are so important. Give an example and this is something that I just love seeing in my LinkedIn feed from your drone team. Tell us just a little bit about the drone team. It’s astonishing not only that you have a drone team, but that they’re going and doing these professional shows. And I’ll include some footage, if you don’t mind, from maybe FETC so that our viewers can see this. But tell us a little bit about the drone team and how did that come about? To the — were they — I mean, they’re FAA commercial drone licensed pilots, aren’t they?
Joe McBreen
Yeah, they sure are. Yeah, we have a whole team of it. Yeah, it’s pretty special. And by the way, I’d also love to share an example from our AI leadership team that I think would impress — hopefully it would impress you too. Anyway, so the drone team, boy, I’ll tell you what, a couple years ago, we got this crazy idea to become the world’s first high school drone performance team. And step one is we had to go get the equipment, the systems, the drones, the servers, the networks, all that sort of stuff. According to our procurement policy in our district, we had to go out to a competitive bid. And we shot that bid out worldwide, I think, to 30 or 40 different vendors, and we only had six reply. And when our purchasing department reached back out to those companies like, “Why aren’t you replying?” Some companies were honest enough to say, “High school? Come on. Really? There’s no way high school kids can do this.” And okay, fair enough. So anyway, we partnered with this amazing company, all American-made out of Michigan named Firefly Drone Systems because they bought into the education side of thing. Again, that partnership between industry and education, it’s blurred. It’s not somebody providing equipment. It’s like we’re in this together. And so, literally 22 months ago, it was only 22 months ago, our lead teacher and two students flew up to Michigan, got trained, and now we have over 50 shows under our belt. We just flew one in Orlando as Stefan mentioned and we’re looking at flying at ASU GSV in San Diego the closing ceremony there on April 15th. And so literally in less than two years because our students are doing such mind-blowingly cool work and I can get into the — I can lift up the hood and get into the nerd knobs if you’re interested on why we pursued this. But the upshot is is that it’s emotional, it’s visible, it’s induces pride, and I just think it’s the coolest thing ever in STEM.
Stefan Bauschard
And my — I I’ve done some work in China and have a lot of connections and I see a lot of stuff on my social feeds about these amazing drone shows that are happening in China. And then I see your FETC show and it’s just kind of like, you know, this is kind of America. You know, New Year’s Eve my friends are posting the fireworks and in China my friends are posting the, you know, the drone shows. I was kind of a little, you know, a follow-up and connecting back to, you know, the AI to to talk about the AI. I mean, there’s AI and everything obviously in drones, right? But I’m wondering kind of if you — you know both talk about your program, but how you approach things like, you know, okay, AI literacy, you know, some idea of understanding like how the technology works. If you do, you know, then people say the next thing is the social applications, but also I mean when every — every all technologies, right, at this point, we have some AI, right? And you know, entrepreneurs are going to want to learn how to use AI. So I’m kind of wondering how you approach it both generally and then, you know, in terms of the specific applications.
Joe McBreen
Yeah, happy to talk about that. I’d like to separate my response into two different parts. One is districtwide and then the other one’s more innovation center specific. So districtwide understand that since 2013 our district’s been a one-to-one iPad district and so we have a very mature technology adoption from that perspective. And so when AI hit the radar in November of ‘22, November of ‘22, literally January of 2023, every month, our administrators started getting trained on some aspect of AI to the best that we could. So we tried to get in early, bringing in the school board, bringing in the teachers, bringing in the student advisory groups, and that was in the spring of 2023. And since then, we’ve developed a framework we call Ethos, which I’m happy to email to both of you in case you want to share a link with in the notes of this show. But, our district has been very methodical about leaning into AI responsibly. So, we are in no denial that AI isn’t a thing, and we’re definitely not the type of district to turn it off or whatever, but no, it’s like, let’s lean into this and use it responsibly. So, we’ve standardized on tools so far like Google’s Gemini for the LLM. School AI is another layer of our of our stack. But rather than getting into the what’s, just know that like countless hours of discussion with parents and students and teachers have gone on in the last several years and it’s resulted in this framework or philosophy where we’re just — it’s like we don’t say pilot, we say prototype. We’re prototyping to do things. We’re not piloting things cuz that implies they may not work, but oh, this is going to work. It’s just we’re prototyping.
Anand Rao
So, it’s so impressive that you as a district were able to move that quickly that early. I mean, there’s some schools that are still several years later still taking those initial steps. I would love to hear a little bit more about the Ethos framework. You know, at my campus, we’re really focusing heavily on the ethical implications, and it really sounds like what you’ve been able to do is to help navigate some of those gray areas for the use of generative AI or study of generative AI. Could you tell us about the Ethos framework and then maybe separately tell us a little bit about the AI leadership program that you have at the innovation center?
Joe McBreen
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Again, I I’ll provide links or notes or whatever for the listeners to check out, but Ethos was a very clever approach to the philosophy or framework of how we’re going to engage with AI. It’s really kind — one of the things I love about the spirit of the teachers in our school district and our leaders is we years ago we came to this realization. It first started with the iPad, but we’ve applied it to AI and other things. Think of a Venn diagram where a lot of schools focus on obtaining — I’ll send you this little diagram that I made like 12 years ago too. A lot of schools focus on obtaining things, obtaining hardware, a Chromebook, an iPad or whatever. Obtaining a chatbot, right? But then they give very little thought to training if any thought like thought or it’s a one-shot wonder, right? We’re going to give you an inoculation of training and then go on your way, right? So obtain, train. But then the third one that people always forget about is sustainability. How are you planning to financially sustain that investment in hardware? How are you planning on sustaining that investment in training? And so consequently, the professional development department in our school district is just world class. They’re always doing something. It’s a constant drip, a constant presence of upskilling our teachers. For example, in two weeks, we have a lady named Catlin Tucker coming to talk to all of our teachers on a Saturday, and we have around 2,400 teachers. There will be at least a thousand teachers there on a Saturday in February because it’s just part of the — well, dare I say, ethos of our district.
Anand Rao
That’s excellent. Tell us a little bit about the AI leadership program that you referenced in the innovation center. What does that provide for students?
Joe McBreen
Yeah. So, again, there’s two parts to the innovation center in high school. One is during the day. We have AI classes. Yay. Neat. A lot of lot of high schools do. Maybe not as good as my teachers, but anyway, just kidding. I’m very proud of my — Her name’s Mai Vu. She was a lawyer and then she became a teacher and she’s just got — Anyway, her heart is as big as her brain. So, she’s our teacher. But the AI leadership team that you keep asking me about happens after school. It’s one of those after-school work teams, if you will. And so the AI leadership team for several years has existed way before November of 2022. As a matter of fact, you may have heard of the World Artificial Intelligence Challenge for Youth Competition, WAICY. In the last four years, Mai Vu and her students have won gold, silver and bronze. And last year they won the design medal for the best design of AI projects. And I can talk to you about a couple different examples of those. But I just want you to hear that AI is so much bigger than just LLMs and — well and agents now, right? Even though that’s huge and I’d love to talk to you two about that. But yeah, so the AI leadership team again does real work for real clients. And let me give you an example of real work for real clients from 3 years ago. Back in the year 2013, our area suffered a 500-year flood and it washed out our local river called the St. Vrain River. That’s what our school district’s named after, St. Vrain Valley. So, it washed it out, caused all sorts of problems for the local fish species. So Boulder County Parks and Open Space wrote a grant for $1.3 million to develop a fish passage so that the fish could continue to spawn around the damaged area. Isn’t that neat? One problem, guys. How do you know if it worked or not? Well, you could do it the old-fashioned way. You could hire a bunch of employees and volunteers and get out there and hip waders and nets and electrocute the river and have the little fish float up on their bellies and you count them. Get a statistical analysis and yay, right? And so what’s really neat is one of our partners said, “Hey, AI kids, do you think you could come up with a better way for us to see if this was successful counting fish?” And so our students under Mai’s leadership literally went over to Best Buy and bought off-the-shelf stuff, you know, GoPro cameras, T-Mobile hotspots, they set up an Amazon Web Services account. And what they did is they set up these underwater cameras. And so that when fish would swim by the underwater camera, step number one in the in the model’s challenge was distinguishing between a fish and the debris or turbidity in the water. And once they figured that out, they started improving this computer vision model to the point where they could identify whether it was a brown trout or a rainbow trout or whatever. And then later they were working on — by the way, there was a series of these cameras underneath water. It wasn’t just one. They would put them behind little rocks and trees and stuff as the little fish swam upstream. So what they would do guys is as the fish would swim by they were improving the model to the point where they could tell if it was the same fish that swam by so it wouldn’t be counted twice and in real time it would — it would the model would recognize that, up to the Amazon cloud update or real time dashboard and people could literally all around the world watch and see the tickers go up aslittle fish would swim by. So, that won them the gold medal in the World Artificial Intelligence Challenge for Youth.
Stefan Bauschard
Yeah, I bet. You know, I helped some kids with the Trump one, right? The Department of Ed AI competition, presidential challenge, and they’re from the Northeast. And I even just flat out told the kids, I said, “You know what? We’re lucky we’re not in Colorado because there’s this school district that reigns.” And I was like,we would have no chance. I said, but you know, I think we have a chance in our own state. But, you know, as you were describing the projects, it kind of made me think of that.
Joe McBreen
One of the things that you’ll be pleasantly surprised to hear is that our teachers completely empower the students. Like they go back to the — remember Boy Scouts, the Pinewood Derby Challenge. But you know that kid who wins every year, it’s not him doing it, it’s his dad doing it, right? Our teachers take the exact opposite approach where they literally empower the kids. They own it. They’re more like guides or coaches. They don’t they don’t put their ego in it. It’s just the results speak for themselves. So Stefan, I think the New York kids are very super well qualified and likely to do super well.
Stefan Bauschard
Kind of — so I wonder, you know, you have this this building with, you know, 50,000 square feet, 110,000 square feet. Like how many rooms are in this building?
Joe McBreen
I could count — not as many rooms as you might expect because we have lots of common meeting space. Right. Right. We have a really robust aeronautics program, you know, pilot ground school which requires big simulators. We are always doing elementary school STEM field trips here. We take every elementary school in our whole district here twice per year. Like literally thousands of elementary kids and their parent chaperones come here. It’s kind of a recruiting center to be honest with you. The parents come and then recruit. I want to go — I want to go over there right in that building. Yeah. You know, another cool thing you guys might appreciate is to fund all these technologies and experimental things. We run summer school programs. And so on any given summer school, we have around 750 to 800 students participating in all these really cool summer camps. Wait for it, the high school kids teach the preschoolers through 8th grade. My staff is literally just supervising the high schoolers. So, it’s success — success and you know, little kids teaching or older kids teaching younger kids. It’s just it’s a lot of fun.
Stefan Bauschard
Yeah. Well, you know, the reason I asked about the rooms is, you know, you know, I have this debate background, right? And one of the things with running a debate tournament is you got to find all the space and it it’s really complicated. So, I was like, “Oh, well, you know, they have this building. It probably has like hundreds of rooms.” I’m like, they have 60 schools, right? And that they could all have debate teams. I looked it up like three — and three are high schools and the one middle school has one. And then you told me the teachers love professional development. I was like, there’s like a thousand teachers who could be debate coaches. So, you know, I’m going to — we’re going to have to come out there and we’re going to have to put together a debate tournament in this innovation center with all the schools.
Joe McBreen
You know what? I’ve got to turn the tables on you for a second. I don’t know anything about debate, but I appreciate your work so much that I’m like got to get into that because if Stefan’s saying it, I’ve got to do it, man.
Stefan Bauschard
Thanks. Yeah. You know, and I appreciate that. And you know, to me, you know, I started — actually was my first job as a teacher. I was a computer science teacher. It was more like a hobby, but the school needed a debate coach and they needed a computer science teacher. So I was like sure I can teach this you know and it was pretty basic stuff like HTML you know just kind of really basic. So I got into it and then I did some technology stuff and debate and you know I saw the old you know the old generative AI but like 2, 2.5 — it barely works so I half read the article but then when 3.5 came out I was like wow you know this is really going to have a big impact on education. So that’s how I got into it and I remember I don’t know if Anand remembers but I called him one day and I’m telling him about it right and we’re going through it but you know the more the more I learned about it and the more I thought about it and especially the transformative effect — I was like a lot of this has to be about instructional redesign and not just using the chatbot to kind of do everything you’re going to do. You know obviously it’s pretty good at writing — it’s great, good at writing papers. You know, writing’s still important, but I I think we’ll have a little more orality. And you you referenced that when you’re talking about entrepreneurship and, you know, there’s a lot of teamwork, kids working together, you know, iterative debate. They’re constantly improving. So, yeah, I mean, I’d I’d love to come out sometime and, you know, three of your high schools do have debate teams. So, you have, you know, you got the — we just got to get it to all 60 schools. The online school, there’s online debate tournaments. You got to get it in the innovation center. So, yeah, that’d be wonderful.
Joe McBreen
Yeah, that’d be super cool. Maybe we could have a man versus machine thing.
Stefan Bauschard
Oh, yeah. Well, I don’t know. I get, you know, Jeff Hinton says it in — he said like in 15 years that the AI will always beat the human in a debate. And I don’t know if that’s like his definition of AGI, but he — anytime I listen to it, I’m like, “Oh, don’t say that. Don’t say that.” You know, that that’s me, right? Like don’t — but it is fun. The kids can practice against the AIs, you know, they get better with their questions and their answers and testing their evidence, right? So, you could have a — you could have an AI debate lab set right up in the innovation center.
Joe McBreen
Lucky — I mean you could because it is especially with you know you guys you know I’ve done this kind of informally getting the chat bots.
Stefan Bauschard
We have we have some friends working on a project called Debater Hub and you know one’s super technical — he has a master’s in machine learning and you know you kind of — they’re kind of doing that side of it. But yeah I mean and that can help kids with any subject right like you know and you know even just presentations in class. So that’d be so cool. Even kids who maybe they don’t think they’re really into tech or they don’t they don’t care about AI or something maybe they don’t like it but that might be their bridge into your into your center, you know, and the parents — the parents would be like, “Wow.” Right. That would really send the parents —
Joe McBreen
These are these are great ideas and I think we’re going to have to continue some of those discussions.
Anand Rao
I want to ask you a little bit, Joe, about what really stands out to me about the model that you have for the center is something that I mean Stefan and I have been talking about for the last year or two in trying to encourage other schools to develop this model, this interactive model. It’s very collaborative. There’s a lot of student leadership and there’s a great role for student agency. I mean, they’re really driving a lot of this work and you know, not just the entrepreneurial lab, but also these other — all of the other teams. It sounds like they’re really taking a leadership role in how this is developing. Now, you’ve you pointed out that this is a separate center than a lot of the other high schools. How do you see that playing out as they go back to their host high schools or for the other high schools? Do you see that kind of permeating as a model for other areas of education in the county?
Joe McBreen
Honestly, I don’t at this point because there’s a — because each one of our home high schools has a a focus area and we have open enrollment in Colorado. So focus area might be cyber security and leadership at one high school. It might be, you know, anyway all of our high school. It might be energy at a different high school. And so it’s not that — Yeah. I just I just don’t know if there’s capacity to inject what we do in the traditional or home high schools to be honest.
Anand Rao
And that that makes sense. I mean, I think that’s probably true for a lot of schools. I mean, I think that what you’ve outlined, what you’ve developed over the last 10 years is really the right model at all levels of education, even starting in grade school. I mean, having students working that collaboratively is really amazing. I also wanted to then ask as a bit of a follow-up what that means for those students when they go on for those that decide to go to college. When they get to college, I imagine some of them are a little disappointed because there aren’t a lot of colleges that are working at the level that you’re able to do with the innovation center, especially in terms of kind of that collaborative model. What are the students telling you when they come back?
Joe McBreen
You know, you actually nailed it. They are surprised that higher education doesn’t offer more opportunities for authentic learning. Yeah, that’s really it. Disappointment. Surprise is the most common reaction. Makes us feel good in one way and then totally disappointed in others, right? Or sad.
Anand Rao
Do you have many students then that when they see that or they recognize it or maybe they’re just so empowered by the model that you developed that they just they don’t bother going to college, they just go right into the industry? Because it sounds like you’ve equipped them with so many skills and a great knowledge base that they’re — I mean, if I had an FAA license when I was in high school, I don’t know that I would — I think I’d probably want to go off and keep running drone events.
Joe McBreen
You know, it’s an and — they go to college and here’s the thing, the entrepreneurial spirit kicks in that they do their own side gig, their own side hustle. For example, many of our students have that from our video arts program have their own production company. Trying to think. You mentioned the drones. On any given Friday, one or two of our students are going to Denver International Airport and being flown somewhere in America to fly a commercial drone show for some other company. And they are making ludicrous amounts of money. Good for them. But what’s really kind of cool is when they land, somebody from the comp — they either have to Uber them there or somebody has to pick them up because they can’t rent a car. And so, so it’s an and — they go to college and they do their side hustle.
Stefan Bauschard
You know, I saw this earlier, you know, in the early on in the AI debate and it’s even more possible now with all these agentic tools and, you know, they’re getting easier and easier for anybody to use. I’m like, they’re going to be — students in high school are making a lot of money and it’s going to create kind of awkward situations. I mean, they’re going to make more than, you know, some of the employees of the high school, unfortunately, because, you know, teachers are not very well paid. And, you know, then I kind of joked, you know, at the time I I was kind of all angry about the writing detectors. I’m like, “Yeah, they’re going to make like $10,000 over the weekend, then they’re going to, you know, they’re going to go to class and getting in trouble because they’re going to get flagged for flagged for using AI.” But what kind of on a more serious note — would I want — you know are smaller colleges in in around your area or you know even larger places where the students are going that are you know reaching out to you. We always kind of see like the innovations coming from you know college to K12 but in in this case it seems like they need to go in the opposite direction. So, I’m wondering if you’ve had — you’ve had people from higher ed reach out to you to, you know, see what kind of programs they might make part of their universities or even community colleges.
Joe McBreen
Yeah, we’re actually starting to see that depending on the college or university and depending on the subject area. For example, CU Boulder has a very — Colorado University Boulder campus has a very strong aeronautics program. We have a very strong aeronautics program. And so we’re starting to see more and more kids go there and upon conversation find out that like yeahI’ve been talking with this professor and I don’t think it’s so much recruiting as it is just natural conversation. We encourage all of our kids to develop their professional network, LinkedIn accounts, go to meetup events, go to conferences, and this starts when they’re 15 years old, right? So, for example, our film crew has gone to the Austin Film Festival couple of years, and they are right up front, dead center, asking the questions, and Sundance Film Festival is coming to Boulder next year. I guarantee you these kids are going to be developing their professional networks because they’re passionate about it. It’s not an assignment. They want to do it. So, yeah.
Anand Rao
You know, you mentioned that this drive that they have, you know, this passion that is that they have about the work that they’re doing. One thing that we’ve talked a bit about in other episodes and I continue to talk with colleagues about is how do we help students develop that intrinsic motivation? And there’s so much about traditional education that kind of drives that out of them. I’m curious and if you could say a little bit about that and maybe to start with — when students are seeking out, they’re joining the center for innovation. Do you think that these are students that already have that intrinsic motivation and so they’re self-selecting or is there something about the process that you have, the school as you’ve set it up as the center, that it helps build that intrinsic motivation for those students?
Joe McBreen
Yeah, I think there’s two distinct camps. There’s those kids who always have known they want to be a pilot to be a, you know, fill in the blank. Those kids are easy, right? The other ones I I believe and I honestly believe this — starting at those elementary field trips, those summer camps, tons of outreach, we have two different mobile labs that are always going out into the community doing STEM experiences with families and communities. I think just all those multiple touch points in talking with the staff members at the innovation center, the students and families really get a sense that it’s a safe zone. Like the staff members at the innovation center love the kids and they love them where they’re at and it’s okay to explore. I can send you a video, I will, of a young lady named C, Sienna Ariano, who came to the innovation center completely lost, just didn’t know what else to do. And completely thrived and flourished because she had opportunities and because she was loved unconditionally. So, yeah, I think it’s — Yeah, I think there’s a human nature and I think there’s a — Yeah, I don’t know if that helped.
Anand Rao
It’s not It’s not just the technology or the coolness of it, right? It’s also like, yeah, kids need — and anybody needs a place where they can belong, right? And kids find that in different places. And it seems that one of the places they’re finding that is in the center.
Joe McBreen
It’s pretty — One of our biggest problems is kids love it here so much. They’ll gravitate here even on days they don’t have classes. It’s like, what — you — what are you doing here? You had class yesterday. And it’s like, oh, I just love being here type of thing. Yeah, it’s very it’s very rare.
Anand Rao
Let me pull in that thread a little bit because that example that you give of that young woman and it’s something you mentioned a little bit earlier about students kind of experimenting and jumping from one thing to another. It’s not necessarily the I want to be a drone pilot but I want to be there because of the process or maybe the way it’s — it’s the community is built. How does that how does that work for those students? I mean, when — do they have to apply to be part of it and maybe that’s a little bit of it or is it that they’re thinking more about, hey, I just want to be there because when I’ve come as an elementary school student, I always had a good feeling when I was there. How do you build that sense of community?
Joe McBreen
I think it — I think it starts with just the multiple touch points, field trips, blah blah blah. But I just keep going back to the teacher variable. If when you both visit, you can come here. Let me give you a quiz. What percentage in a typical K through 12 school in America during the month of April, what percentage of the staff is just like beaming and positive and on fire from bell to bell?
Anand Rao
Not very many — is getting ready for AP in the end of the school year.
Joe McBreen
Yeah. And it’s just it’s just the drag, right? In there. But what’s really fun is when you come visit in April or any month out of the year, guys, every single teacher here is truly on fire. Heart out, face. They can be going through personal stuff like you wouldn’t believe, but there’s so much love for the kids that that so overcomes that that fear or that awkwardness that a lot of teenagers have. I just think our staff loves them through it. To be honest with you that I can’t believe I’m talking about love with you two higher ed AI studs — that fantastic.
Stefan Bauschard
I think too but you know it kind of makes you reflect back you know when Anand was asking you okay well how easy it is and you infuse it into the other high schools or whatever and it can be complicated for different reasons but that that can be infused everywhere right like that that that kind of love like that excitement that energy you know and you know I see you on LinkedIn right it’s like you have so much energy, right? You’re always kind of showing like and you’re always showing the kids like what are the kids doing, right? Or you know, there’s programs and the center — I like, you know, every time I look there’s like neuroscience and Python, you know, you got all the all the things and that, you know, the kids are doing stuff. But I also kind of have this thing, I said it once, it’s like, well, a lot of people basically spend about a quarter of their lives in school, right? I mean, you know, kids enter anytime, you know, three or four years old. You know, people stick around till they’re 24, 25, right? They live to be 80 — that that’s you know 25% of their life. I’m like school should be like kind of a more exciting like fun place, right? Like you — if you’re going to live 20 — you know, obviously than other people like us, you know, we work in them, but it should be a happy place, right? For the most part, it should be happy and you really seem to kind of allude. I mean, I’m sure your leadership helps, right? All the all those teachers, you know, kind of project that kind of excitement. You know, I was talking with someone the other day about, you know, debate and kind of expanding debate. Like you need to focus on the places where the leaders want to do exciting things. Yes. Right. If you go to a school district and they just don’t seem like they want to do anything, it’s all right. Well, we’ll come back in five years. Because you’ve got you’ve got to you know, you have to have leadership that that has excitement. And I do find that on LinkedIn. I mean, there aren’t people posting on LinkedIn who aren’t excited, right? So, you know, it’s just kind of a it’s a really energizing social network.
Joe McBreen
Well, I I’m very sincere. I would love for both of you and anybody listening to this to come visit cuz it’s one thing to talk about it but I would love for you to see it in person anytime.
Anand Rao
Well, let me ask you this then. Let’s say a teacher from you know a school district in one of our areas comes. This is — many of the other schools are far behind in terms of that timetable of integrating AI, responding to AI. What advice would you give given that you all have — you were so proactive and you now have several years of experience of dealing with generative AI in the classroom? What’s your advice to another school district that’s just saying, “Look, we we’d love to get to where you are, but how do we get there? How do we start? What would the first steps look like?”
Joe McBreen
I I think it goes back to that old African proverb of if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. So step one, you got to form your team, parents, community members, leaders. It’s — this is too big and too important for a group of small — a small group of school administrators, especially at the district who hasn’t been in a classroom in years to make the guiding decisions for thousands of souls. This is just way too big. I mean, this is an operation gang tackle type effort. We — many brains. Many brains. So that’s my advice is step number one, get your team. Step number two, focus on your values. Like how do you want to be before you worry about what you want to do? That’s the biggest mistake, right? People jump into should we block it, should we not? And it’s like, whoa, what do we value? You know, what’s our vision? You know, so anyway, it’s just basic stuff. Basic leadership stuff.
Stefan Bauschard
Professors kind of assume, you know, kids come in with a certain set of skills. And of course, you know, the grumpy ones are like, well, they don’t they don’t even have these skills. You know, I’m starting I’m starting back here. You know, they don’t know how to write. They don’t know how to read. They, you know, they kind of — you got the grumpy ones, but, you know, they’re definitely like, you know, your students are going to enter in a different kind of place, so to speak, than most students. So, what kind of advice would you give to professors, you know, when students like yours like show up in their classes?
Joe McBreen
Gosh, that’s a great question. My gut reaction is have a conversation with them. I mean, when was the last time a professor honestly conversed with every student in their class? I would ask that. Here’s a fun example, and I hope this doesn’t make any of your audience cringey, but my best friend from college and my wife and one other person were recently talking about, “Tell me who the most influential professor was for you in college.” Out of all the dozens of professors, I could name one like that. The other ones, I’m like, crap, I can’t even remember their name. But one professor who I could remember actually talked to me with respect, with sincerity. And so, I don’t know, maybe just have a conversation with people like they’re human.
Anand Rao
Yeah, that should be part of every professional development that we offer to faculty. That’s fantastic.
Joe McBreen
It ain’t happening, though. I’m telling you, man, it’s not happening.
Anand Rao
Well, I love too, you know, just to reflect for a second like when we ask you advice how to get these started, you bring it back to so many basic human things like have a conversation, get people together, talk about your values and like where you want to go, have some energy like when you engage the students, right? These are not — when you know somebody might see innovations, you know, they get all — well like technology, right? I I don’t know AI and they kind of run away. But that’s not really the starting point. The starting point is the human qualities.
Joe McBreen
You’re right. And the other thing I — when you visit here, you’ll probably be impressed that a K12 building looks the way this one does. It’s very shiny and very impressive. Has a Silicon Valley vibe to it, right? I at some levels I think that’s doing a disservice cuz we have people that visit us. Hundreds and hundreds of people visit us every year from all over the world. I almost think that’s a disservice because everything our teachers and students are doing, you don’t need a fancy building. The design thinking preschool through 12 — that’s free basically like literally come on man. And then all the — I think the secret sauce besides the after-school work teams or project teams you know doing real work for real clients — I think it’s that partnership like reaching out to local business people and saying hey — here’s the other thing we never ever ask for a handout. I think that’s a huge mistake that K12 schools do. They ask for handouts. We’re so broke. Our AC doesn’t work. Dude, nobody wants to invest in that. Nobody. But if you go to him and go, “Look at all these great things we’re doing. And if you give us a little bit more, we can do even more.” And you’re infused with people from the Rotary and the Optimist Club and, you know, local city chamber of council. They’re just part of your vibe. Dude, you’re going to pass that next bond and mill levy. You’re going to. But don’t just go asking for a handout because nobody wants to back that. That’s my two cents.
Anand Rao
That’s not the school. Thank you so much, Joe. This has really been — We do look forward to meeting you.
Stefan Bauschard
Yep. We need to schedule a time to come and visit. I think that’d be — I would love to come and see the work that you’re doing. Joe, for everybody that’s watching or listening, how can they find out more? How can they find more about your work or about the center for innovation?
Joe McBreen
Yeah. The innovation center is innovation.svvsd.org and I’m on LinkedIn and yeah, I just love to connect with people that care about students and it’s such an honor to talk to higher educators. It’s just we have great partnerships with our local higher ed institutions, but to talk to you too, super cool. So, thank you for the opportunity.
Stefan Bauschard
Thank you. And I think you’re basically already in higher ed or at least in what higher ed ought to be. All right. Thanks a lot.
Anand Rao
Thanks, Joe.
Joe McBreen
Appreciate it.