Thank you so much. We're going to be joined now by my colleague Jessica Cardishon who is director of our DC office here and our federal policy initiatives Jessica also taught in New York City and Then actually worked in congressman and senator Bernie and Sanders office before she meandered her way over to the learning policy Institutes, so we're delighted to have Jessica who will help moderate the panel and introduce the rest of the panel I will welcome up our panelists We will start with Seguin Eubanks if you can join us, please He's the inaugural director of the Center for Education Innovation and Improvement and visiting professor at the University of Maryland College Park Dr. Eubanks also served as serves as the chair of the Board of Education for Prince George's County Public Schools 132,000 students school district bordering Washington DC We were also really excited to have Antonio Iglesias who is a earth science teacher It's very hard at East side high school in Newark, New Jersey We're who taught for the past six years and he's a graduate of the Newark Montclair urban teacher residency program And last but definitely not least is Nyla Williams a student leader and board member with the California for Justice In Oakland, California. She's currently pursuing her high school diploma diploma through Gateway to college at Lainey College and plans to become a teacher Lots of great perspectives, so we will start with you, Seguin You're currently the chair of the Board of Education at Prince George's County Public Schools We saw the calculator for Prince George's County and Desiree's presentation. Yes Could you share a bit of context for the information that Desiree shared regarding Prince George's County and the impact of teacher turnover on your district? Sure happy to first. Thank you very much for having me and most important Thank you for continuing to make this issue of teacher turnover Central to the work that we do in improving education We mentioned Prince George County's a hundred and thirty two thousand student district bordering DC one of the 17th or 18th largest in the country When I read the report, it's interesting when you look at the demographics County and when you look at the indicators For teacher turnover, we pretty much have the trifecta This proportionally high number of title one schools we have about 64 percent of our students who receive free and reduced lunch We have we are a predominantly minority school district about 60 percent of our students African-American another 30 percent are Latino Hispanic a number that has about tripled over the past 15 years We have we are actually a district that has Predominantly minority teaching workforce I think is unique to a whole lot of other districts in the country We are both proud of that fact and at the same time when you look at the data about turnover It indicates that Some significant challenges and so when I look at that data you're Our numbers are slightly different, but pretty much the same basically We have About 10,000 teachers and so the number that you have represents about a 10 percent annual turnover And that is about what our data tells us that we turn over about 10 percent of our teachers Every year now 10 percent in one sense is like an average number when you look at what's going on But in a district our size it means we have to recruit over a thousand new teachers each and every year Just to keep up with the pace of our turnover rate And so it is indeed an ongoing challenge. It means that we have Gotten we're also in a state in Maryland that is that is not a high producing state So we have a pretty much international recruitment system We go all over the country and in different parts of the world to meet our recruitment needs In a district that spent I think a lot of time early in this process getting really good at recruitment And and now have started to pay more attention to that other end of it I think that we spent a lot of time just thinking hey, this is part of the process What are we gonna do? We need a thousand. Let's get a thousand. We need a thousand. Let's get a thousand We got pretty good at it But but we started to need to pay significantly more attention to how we keep the folks who we get My only other thought when I look at that number 25 million There's fair to say If we cut retention in half as a school board member, I salivate about what I might do with 12.5 million dollars We are currently in negotiation with our employees now the recession hit our county hard and we have recovered at a slower rate than the rest of the region so our Employees are pretty far behind in the salary schedule and 12.5 million dollars represents pretty close to about a full step in salary for our workforce When I look at things like we have 209 buildings We have some of the oldest buildings in the state of Maryland and around the country We have a multi-million dollar maintenance backlog But I wouldn't do a 12.5 million dollars just to hire a second shift of maintenance so that people can fix our building This is not to mention the new buildings. We have to build this is just to keep the ones that we have running We are still I was at a parent and community advisory council when a parent came to me last night And that's why there were 40 teachers in her middle school algebra one class And what we could do to reduce class sizes. So when you look at what the impact of Of this number is it's pretty dramatic and I think if we were able to do something about it It could make a significant difference in how we can can help students in our district Continue answering that question around impacts. So now that you're a senior in high school in the Gateway to College program Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and how you've experienced effects of teacher turnover? well Public school for almost more than Remember a lot of it in my freshman Freshman years usually it starts off really unorganized It's your first chance in dye school. You're not really prepared. So the last thing you want to see is the teacher But that was my experience I had this pre-algebra teacher who only lasted two weeks It was clearly she was clearly unorganized the class was unorganized and But the students in check she wasn't in check either so eventually she she ended up slapping one of the students and A few days after she she resigned before she got fired I guess but Clearly the reasons why she left was like she says that she she wasn't really ready Had a lot of kids. She was tired. She didn't want to do all the reading. Oh It was clear that she just wasn't prepared to be a teacher at the time I wasn't in California for justice. So I was kind of questioning mode. How did she become a teacher? I didn't I didn't understand the process at that time Didn't get the proper training due to the fact that great if everyone gonna make sure the red light is on and just pull the microphones a little closer Antonio so you've heard And I'll talk about it from their experience. Are you observing the same turnover in Newark public schools? And if so, what do you think is contributing that turnover and yours? Thanks everybody and thanks for having me. I would say definitely It's definitely what we're seeing in Newark for example So I'm entering my sixth year now and in just my department in the science department We have 15 positions and now entering my sixth year I have seen 16 teachers leave so pretty much every position has been lost and replaced in some capacity And I think it's what was in the research. What's a goon and what Nile have been talking about It's a mix of everything half of it is compensation. I'm from a district where For whatever reason the salary schedules ended up the way they were many teachers who are earning masters actually earn less Money for the same steps as teachers who have bachelors, which is a whole other fun side story Beyond that. It's a lot of as Desiree was saying in the research where we all have science backgrounds, especially So we are leaving for these lucrative positions We are seeking opportunities that cater to our needs because we've really invested in this world of science And we want especially as I do as a teacher. I want to share that world of science with them but the reasons for us staying become less and less and also echoing this idea of administration where And I think it's also compounded by the fact that when you have many new teachers on top of it now that same Administrator has to cater to the needs of many new teachers and then the exhaustion of these resources where on top of it If the administrators not prepared now on top of it They're catering to many teachers who aren't prepared and it just becomes this feedback loop To the point where it's like, you know defense of the dark arts and Harry Potter and it's just every year It's a new teacher and so I think I'm really seeing the same exact thing It's it's just every year. It's a new face for the not only for the students But for the teachers and for the administration and and I think the frustration of That also caters to it too because there's there's no It's always in transition. It's always in flux. There's no sense of being static So I definitely seeing a lot of the same things So this idea around teachers leaving because not where they are It's not an affordable profession. I know Desiree spoke to it during her presentation In Prince George's County, you hire First-year teachers often stay for a couple of years and then move to more affluent districts such as Counties such as Montgomery and Howard counties. Can you speak to this phenomenon? Why it occurs and what you're doing to try and make sure that you keep those excellent teachers in your district? Sure Yeah, that is a phenomenon that we've dealt with for a long time particularly in the in the Washington, DC You know a lot of perception and then some combined reality And the fact is that we do have seen I can tell you there's a lot of movement in between counties Again just this week. I met with a teacher who left for DC Who because the salary was higher? But like the working conditions back in Prince George's County and came back for a pay cut To come back to the county so so part of what our struggle is one is clearly one of Compensation I mentioned I mentioned that we're significantly behind our colleagues in other counties and we battle We have a relatively constant battle of perception for our county again. We're a county that is That when you really peel back some of what we do we're incredibly successful Our data shows that our African-American students are achieving at rates higher than African-American students in any other county in the state Possibly across the nation But at the same time overall We're still the second lowest performing district in the state of Maryland based on most other indicators And so we battle this constant battle of perception that Prince George's County is not the place You want to be that if you get your stuff together and you get you come in through Prince George's County We have a pretty big alternative route program.  So we really tried to fight that perception. We've actually Interestingly kind of contrary to the data. We have a resident teacher program and over the past several years we've been able to reduce our actually our attrition through our resident teacher program is significantly lower than Then then across the rest of the district We believe that's partly because most of the teachers who we recruit in that program are local teachers people who live in the county Live in this live in the state of Maryland. I Will I can't say this without Linda being right here put an editorial comment that It was up to me as school board chair I would turn our resident teacher program into a true residency model is what it really needs to become so that we deal with Not only with doing better with retention, but we're getting folks who are better prepared To be effective from day one on the job that we have work to do in that area But those are kind of just a few of the ways in which we kind of continue struggle I will mention we've tried to be creative with that a couple of years ago We started a middle college program in the health sciences and We've had our second cohort of graduates who graduate from High school and community college on the same day is a great program and this September We launched a new one specifically related to careers in teaching and education. We're very proud of our teaching career Academy And so we have our first cohort of 50 students who just started as freshmen in our career Academy with the idea of Really building grow your own programs and having grad graduates who graduate four years from now with both a high school diploma and An associate's degree on their way to careers in teaching So we're trying to do a lot more to kind of keep a build good grow your own programs Thank you one of the efforts that you described was the residency program Antonio You're a graduate of the New York Montclair Urban Residency program Can you talk a bit about how that program prepared you for teaching and did it have any influence on your decision? So yeah, thanks for Sigu and for hyping up residency programs for speak It's It's very multifaceted the really amazing experience that I had with my residency And so just to really clue people into Residencies and Desiree sort of primed it as well as this idea of sort of like a medical residency But with teachers instead and so we travel as a cohort my cohort had eight of us And we were individuals who were in the schools from day one with our mentor teachers And we took classes together and we were a small community And I think that's one of the cornerstones for why we felt so prepared first of all was just support This idea that we knew people that we identified with we were always placed with them So they would try to put us in pairs or trios in schools so that when we were placed We had familiar faces that we could rely on as resources But beyond that it's really about the philosophy of the program that I was in so it was only math science education So first off really trying to hit that niche market of areas that tend to not be well prepared But on top of it well, I'd actually just elaborate on that giving the sense of changing also the way you teach science So it becomes inquiry driven it becomes student-centric this idea this paradigm shift of you are no longer Instructing students about rote memorization, but you are trying to put the ownership with the students as well And then on top of it We were also trained in having social justice in our classroom and and that caters in both directions Not only for the students where you're really trying to foster democratic policies or processes in the classroom But on top of it for why I stay right? I stay to advocate for them I was learning how to really be a social advocate on behalf of them And so you know when they were trying to turn our school into a turnover program that would see us have longer days for a Very small stipend We felt this was not in the needs of our students and many of us within our cohort spearheaded this response to not permitting this because we're there for the students We're there for the communities the stakeholders that are most valuable are them And then just to go back full circle back to how the residency furthers their cater support is we also have induction So this idea that once you are Released into the wild of teaching you are not abandoned. It's this idea that For three years after I had retired teachers who would visit my classrooms periodically and make sure that I still felt Supported beyond my mentor my in-school mentor and it comes to the point where the program becomes so sustainable that now Full circle. I'm now working with the induction program And so this idea that it creates cultures in small microcosms that are meant to build So we started in one school as a lab and now we really have impact or three or four high schools So that's really the idea is that they're they're small at first and there's a lot in the to put up front, but The residual effects of it really addresses a lot of what this whole idea of turnover is it's reducing that And I think it's an important to point out that you also spoke to not only Providing you with the support that you need but also to develop the skills that you had to be a more effective teacher which I think efforts Nilya you are a board member with Californians for justice and you work with them on Relationship-centered schools. Can you tell us a little bit about that campaign? Why teacher turnover is an important issue for the campaign and what you're doing to adjust? so the relationship relationship-centered school campaign is more about Making sure that students and teachers feel supported in their schools and each region has a different way of Targeting targeting solutions regarding this campaign or campaign has a three bucket list So the first one is investing in staff. The second one is creating space space for relationship building and the third one is Implementing student voice so currently in Oakland. We are focusing on investing in staff and one of those solutions is one definitely better pay of course and the second one is Really upgrading the way we train teachers, especially high-quality principles We specifically want to upgrade our training for newer teachers so that when they come into The teaching environment they're the classroom environment. It's not you know as disorganized Effort so before we turn it over to the audience for questions Just want to ask each of you a final question before the audience questions What's one thing that you think it's important for our audience to understand regarding the impact of teacher turnover from your perspective as A school board member a teacher and a student. So maybe we'll start with with Naila Oh If there's one message you want the audience to kind of understand around the impact of teacher turnover What can be done about it? What would you like to share with them? Well for an example as an impact I am a definite impact for For me I had some good teachers in public school as well as one of them was a history teacher of mine and She kept the students in check. She checked on their grades. She had a positive relationship with them and she she Made the classroom environment very comfortable in a way where the students were able to Learn good habits that they needed to learn in life more than just in school. So I feel like You know teachers like that Are need to be more like more into teacher training We need to have teachers like that into teacher training so that we can have teachers like that able to Stay in the district Because those are the kind of teachers that that they stay there and they really build a positive relationship. I Feel like Every student like the teacher I had every student should have a teacher like that. So I feel like that really just goes into the way of how we train and How we just really support her staff So I think for me from hearing just the comments and I think the big challenge when your teachers You're just so in the realm of teaching that you forget that there's this whole world existing outside of that and I think with teacher turnover, it's just this reminder that it impacts everybody it impacts the students who are there, obviously That's the most direct impact But it impacts the teachers who stay and keep witnessing the frustrations that both you have and the students have Impacts the administration it impacts the community who you want to engage But they feel disenfranchised by this idea that you can't create a safe space because there is no Sense of being static and it impacts above I mean it impacts the policymakers who don't know how to solve the problem because it is so multi-faceted and I think we're This is definitely going in the right direction, but I think it's just this reality that Everybody is affected in some capacity. I think that's really my takeaway so I Think my one take ways is so much that we can do We believe that doesn't take resources however Really hard to think of of doing this without making the investments I think about what I could do if I if we cut attrition half and save 12.5 million But I also think about the fact that I need 12.5 million to invest in order to cut attrition in half so for example, we We have a new teacher Academy. We have an induction program We have a really good peer assistance and review program But fewer than half of all of our new teachers get those services Because we don't have enough mentors. We don't have enough peer review coaches Everybody everyone gets the kind of new teacher Academy weekend, you know two days before school Everyone gets that but once they get into the classroom and they start to struggle Those with the highest need get get support But the everyday teachers who are doing their best who seem to be hanging okay Tend not to get the support that they need and deserve And so if we were a if we would be to get more mentors or to or to expand the kind of resources that we had Then then I think that that we go a long way But it is about how we combine a different approach to being more bold about the investments that we make With approaches to change in the cultures of our schools in ways that don't take money But changing culture is a pretty hard thing to do as well For our next panel we have time for audience questions for Sugun Antonio Nila and for Desiree as well We have a microphone at the center I thoroughly enjoy the presentation Excuse me today. I find it very very exciting, but my question is this When we talk about teachers we talk about students our voices tend to be lost in In the in the nation, how do we build? Coalitions, how do we build and bring in policymakers because we cannot do this by ourselves? We already know success stories exist in other countries, you know Linda's been doing this for decades and decades and decades and decades and should I say decades? We know what works, but how do we build? How do we build that coalition? How do we bring the coalition and have folks up there the parents that community members very alongside of you? Echoing the same things that you're saying. Yeah, sure. Why not? So I mean, that's really that's the number one challenge right now is how do you get your voices heard? And it's just Focusing on publicizing as best you can and you have to start small I mean, we have very strong ties to the councilman in our area and Really trying to get the sense of creating neighborhood schools again and making it a community where you start small and you have to keep Advocating I mean that's all it really comes down to and it's exhausting and tiresome and but you have to work and finesse the networks that you have I mean, I work very closely with Montclair State And I will forever use them as my advocates But you have to find those people who are willing to speak up because I mean and it's weird because especially from Newark, New Jersey We received that Facebook money all those many years ago, and it went to nothing Basically went to the administrative costs that it went it found many ways So I think it's it's making sure that the message is heard of where the money should go to and Reinforcing that that it should be going to preparation. It should be going Not necessarily more bottom-up than top-down because I think that's our frustration But how to get that message heard that's been the frustration since at least I've only been in it for seven years day one for me but That's what I've seen ever since my journey has begun. I just know and obviously we have to build these correlations and from just from a kind of a Local level Getting student voice involved in engaged in this and getting parent voice involved in gauging. It's actually I published to mention this earlier It's pretty exciting for us that we have a parent and community advisory council And the parent co-chair brought before our parent council that the issue that the council should focus on this year Is teach a morale in order to address teacher attrition? So these parents who are active in the schools are looking around and saying hey, we're sick of seeing Long-term subs for our for our students who are sick of seeing new teeth new faces every year And they want to be involved and engaged in being part of that solution for us So building those local community particularly bringing student voice and parent voice into the mix. I think is important as well And the organization in California for justice we we are all about Student voice and we try to make we try to make sure that we have students speaking to a Lot of decision-makers like the school board in the school district as much as possible We we always go to the school board the district and we tell them that that it's important to have student voice in our schools and our teachers really understand that and We've had a lot of meetings with our teachers and for members for students are able to just say what really needs to be going down I feel like that should be something all in a nationwide student voice is very important and what our organization does is Organize those students so that they have a platform where they can just say their voice have an opportunity to say my experience and What's going on in my classrooms and it gives a really good insight like right now on Well, really what we really need for our schools Thanks. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you panelists great question I think forums like this help keep this on the policy radar and build that advocacy movement So I appreciate what you're doing today. My name is Ash Vasudeva Carnegie Foundation advancement of teaching My question for you is in the report. You identified Accountability as a major source of teacher dissatisfaction Can you talk about how that's playing out in your systems? And whether or not you see these these pressures changing with SL legislation So I guess from what I'm gathering from the report from accountability it has to do Basically what's expected of us on the day-to-day and there was that one slide where it talked about, you know I think it was that first one that really hit hardest for me Which is this idea of this is the one teacher who had the expanding sense of duties and responsibilities for the same pay And I mean hey, I was on a contract freeze for three years So I know that more so especially now And the reality was that every day and it's always the science department because we're we're always pushing ahead But then it's like oh, you're doing that. Let's do more. Let's do even more data. Can you collect even more data points? Can you have even more expansive? Lesson plans to the point where you're writing hours of lesson plans and time It takes to write one physical lesson plan is longer than teaching the lesson and it's just like where is this going wrong? And I mean I've been doing this for like seven years So I have the opportunity to sort of rehash and reimagine and reflect on what I've been doing But I think the challenge is that this accountability ends up feeling like compliance a lot of times And I feel like I am complying with the the needs and wants because what is the new hot button trend of this next? Cycle of teaching because there's always one there's always one I'm trying to think right now it's literacy in the classroom I've been teaching literacy because every teacher teaches literacy, but they're getting it to the point where they don't know their Pedagogical intentionality for why they're doing it They just think if they see the results then obviously they were the reasons why it happened and it has nothing to do with the teachers Because we're giving them a hundred and ten percent all the time and that's really the challenge with the accountability And that's that's the frustration on top of it so I think number one you bark bring up a really good point Osh because When I when I looked at a lot of what we've learned about teach turnovers and particularly new the Accountability pressures that are that are in this data. I think is is showing That just as many of us have suspected particularly those who represent the teachers for so long that the accountability pressures are having a Significant impact on teachers willingness to stay in the classroom From I'll be honest from a at a local level our teachers Haven't seen or heard any real change When it comes to essa right it's still I think that Our teachers like a whole lot of teachers probably have a Skeptical wait-and-see. Yeah, right. We'll believe that it's going to be less pressure when we see it And so you know like a whole lot of other places are right in the middle We just put our plan in and And I will say that over the last couple of years We've gone through a rather rather significant process of test reduction A lot because of what we've heard from teachers and parents that said this test thing is getting out of control And we I forget the number. I think we're at about 15 or 16 percent less time in testing this year than we were last year And so hopefully that will begin to address it But I think really the jury is out on on the impact the SM might have on teachers I'm Saroja Warner with the Council of Chief State School officers But I'm asking this question as an advocate for children and communities right now Sugun I want to come back to a comment you made earlier because it Really spoke to my spirit when you called out that this work can't be done pro bono and for free It will require an investment of resources. And so I'm really curious to hear I think particularly from you Sugun and where you sit in your experiences working in Prince George's County about How this question of stakeholder engagement, I think this is bigger than this This is about being able to see where people's priorities are by where they invest their resources This for me is a civil rights issue at its core. I look at this data. Thank you, right? I look at this data and these are the Students who are living on the margins and their families who are most impacted by what is happening with teacher turnover So how else do we make this argument that there is no greater public good right now? That we need to be investing in then in solving this problem Syros you can answer the question too if you want Look, I'll just say briefly You know I've been on the board for four years and had a long 30-year career In education before that and this is no joke when it comes to how we look at issues of investment We tried in Prince George's County to get bold And put a huge tax increase reform in that was going to dramatically be able to Increase compensation for teachers and and put it in a crashed and burned quicker than anyone can imagine and was still recovering from that at the same time with you know, it's it's always a very heated debate with you know We do we still have a where I have a 1.9 billion dollar budget So our teachers are telling us right now Use what use what you got to give us what we need and it's a reasonable argument And we're kind of kind of it's always a kind of back-and-forth about how you By how you can Make make these tough choices I will just say you know our data shows that while we're you know We think that given our circumstances would do pretty good at teacher turnover We're still at about double what our surrounding counties are With the exception of DC the Maryland counties that surround us a four or five six percent turnover each year And they're at about 15 to $20,000 per student Higher than they are than we are in spending Everyone wants to think that that's some kind of a weird coincidence It's hard to imagine by the time is said and done how you don't begin to make those investments but part of it is about kind of faith that that Communities and voters particular need to have in school districts in order to demand it because until they do Until they demand it The policymakers are not are not going to touch investing in education with Temple And I don't know can you pick up on that kind of in the work that you're that you're doing Do you see it being communicated as a civil rights issue? Is that how it's being talked about? Particularly on in your work Yeah, I mean that was the whole foundation of why the residency exists the way it does It's it's really to become agents of change and to create these voices for the students And that's why we are about Fostering democracy in the classroom because we we got to make sure that they are the voices that get to be heard As the key stakeholders and recipients of education because if it's not for them then for whom else? So just to briefly address it. Yeah, absolutely Um, I definitely think it is a civil rights issue It's pretty clear that many of our teachers Are really struggling because the lack of you know the perception that it's just really lacking support to our teachers People have a really poor perception on teachers. So Definitely How how are we going to fix this is to shift our perceptions that we have the teacher Um Specifically to more like a more supportive perception I know In in Singapore their teachers, they're called nation builders and Because they're they're they're moving their knowledge. They're giving their knowledge about their nation to to the next generation And I feel like we should really have that perception on teachers our districts. Good morning Before I ask my question I would like to preface by saying that I just graduated from high school So and I actually attended a title one school in Colorado one of the lowest performing academic environments in the state of Colorado predominantly Hispanic and In my experience I had six different principles over the course of four years. So the turnover was actually More experienced at the administrative level And I felt I know that you guys talked a lot about the residency programs for teachers and how to support our teachers but I feel as though this is really kind of like an inverted pyramid our Legislators at the state aren't in I feel as though they're not in touch with our nation or like our leaders at the national level and Our state Leaders aren't in touch with our school boards our school boards aren't in touch with our teachers Our teachers aren't in touch with our community and our parents which leads to the students therefore it is a chain reaction and I feel as though I Just I would like to know in your experience as an educator as a student and as a member of school board What we can do to prepare our administration. I had a lot of administrative members who never step foot in a classroom policy was being made in a way that I think It said yeah, let's have community forums Let's talk about this and we did put our input, but it was never actually implemented and so a lot of these things look great on paper But they're not actually being enforced and Yeah, so I was just wondering because I Am very very passionate about it and I just feel as though a lot of administrators a lot of teachers and a lot of policy members Basically just use these title one schools as a stepping stone for their career and not really because they're invested in the civil rights aspect and in the actual community We do have time for Rob's question But maybe we can talk just around kind of maybe soon the administrative support around what some efforts Maybe you're doing around keeping administrators in the district as well Sure. I mean, it's just if it did the same study on administrative. I think we find we find some some similar work in Prince George's County. We have we work with the Wallace Foundation for the past five years on For to to Support principles. I think it's interesting when we've done a Lot and actually been nationally recognized for the kind of leadership development work We've done we still have work to do when you look at some of our feedback from our Numbers of teachers who don't feel supported by their principal is Remarkably high, but how we support and and sustain our our leaders is Is equally as important to this effort and and I and I I would just say the way We deal with teachers and administrators traditionally in public schools is we don't Don't pay you for your hard work So our reward structure is that you move to easier jobs that is still the primary Structure and so of course you started a title one school as a teacher and you cut your teeth as a new teacher in a title one school And when you've gotten some experience in some seniority under your belt You move to an easier school and principals are doing the same thing so until we can flip that reward structure and start to reward Our most capable folks for taking on the most challenging assignments that whole process of Principle and teacher movement between schools Won't be solved. So we have time just for one more question And I'll make it quick. That was an excellent question by the way Thank you, Jessica panelists Linda and your team. My name is Rob. Mahaffey. I'm the executive director of the rural school and community trust We advocate on behalf of the 12 million children that live in rural and remote places And I'm really struck in the research. So Desiree. I turn to you That the states the two states that have the highest turnover rate are Arizona and New Mexico State the two states that have the lowest turnover rate are my home state of West Virginia and Utah Those are for very rural states. You get outside of Charleston and Salt Lake City Phoenix What are you seeing in the data that makes a difference in rural communities because we know The rural teachers tend to be there their lifers. They come they start they stay they never leave and and that has its advantages and its challenges, right or Teachers are on a constant churn. There isn't sort of this core set of teachers Like Antonio that have been there six seven eight years So are you finding anything because this is a key issue for us at the rural school and community trust? pretty consistently that Schools in cities have higher turnover rates no matter what region you're looking at But that rural schools were sort of Different from cities and that in some places in the West in particular rural schools had especially high turnover rates higher than Mix up my my stats, but I want to say it was higher than cities in in Western States Versus in the South the Midwest the Northeast Rural schools had some of the lowest turnover rates. So it is an interesting question. It's not one that we investigated deeply but It you know, I think it's it's one that we will want to dig into a bit more You know, it's hard-looking specifically at you know specific state data using the the source that we were looking at but regionally that is that is a Something that we noticed I wish I could tell you give you some some reasons why that might be But it's not something that we looked into I'd like to thank our first panel for setting the stage on What this looks like in practice and we will now turn over to our policy panel who can talk more about the solution side Although that can help support actually the solutions that you're implementing at the local level. So thank you all very much


The Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs is employing patrons as well as concessionaires of the San Dusha Jazz and Arts Festival to strive to maintain healthy habits and avoid any form of recklessness that can potentially compromise their personal safety and that of others. Ernie Pier, Senior Environmental Health Officer and Program Manager for Food Safety at the Department of Environmental Health, says his department is working closely with the event's company of St. Lucia to ensure compliance in several areas during the St. Lucia Jazz and Arts Festival. We are not only looking at food safety as well at the event – we are looking at water, water-quality, availability of toilets, water management among other things. But to focus on food safety, a list has been provided to us of all the vendors that will be partaking in the event. We have been mobilizing our inspectors at the places where the food is being prepared. They are being inspected as we speak, a lot of them have been inspected. The persons are obtaining the licenses to operate. Notwithstanding that we have trained a number of the food handlers that are partaking in the event that includes those that are at Moshi Martial at the event that took place recently. We work very closely with those vendors to ensure the safety of food. We are also working with the vendors at Main Stage that is at Pigeon Island to ensure food safety. They are visiting our office ensuring that the health cards are in order, obtaining the temporary permits. Food safety falls under the ambit of the Public Health Act and so there are certain requirements that must be met in order for one to engage in food vending. According to the Senior Environmental Health Officer, officers from his department will have a presence at Main Stage at Pigeon Island on Sunday to ensure that the food that has been offered for sale meet all of the standard requirements. Officer in charge of the Substance Abuse Advisory Council's Secretariat, Natasha Lloyd-Philix, says for its part, the Secretariat would like to see people take personal responsibility for their health even amidst their festivity. For us, we are particularly pleased to see the manner in which people have been able to enjoy themselves from the launch up to this present day where we haven't heard of any significant incidents or accidents but we see people truly coming together in a very celebratory manner. With that being said though, from the point of view of the Substance Abuse Advisory Council's Secretariat, we encourage all to be mindful of the manner in which they go about celebrating, ensuring that they pay due attention to their health practices, particularly drinking habits. Alcohol is legal for adults and we encourage you as you may choose to have a drink or two to ensure that you pay attention to having it on a full stomach. It's actually protective of your health and your well-being and those around you as well. We ask you please to not drink and drive. If you are in the company of others, designate a driver. It protects you from accidents, from incidents as well as other members of the motoring, commuting and pedestrian public. Cigarette smoking is actually not allowed in public spaces. As of 2020, we had new public health legislation which put a ban on smoking in public spaces, which would include locations where festivities are being held. But more so, not so much a policy perspective, we appeal to you from a personal perspective to take responsibility of your health and the health of those around you. Secondhand smoke is dangerous to health, is harmful to health, does cause illness, does cause also death. And so we ask others who are around who may be smoking to not smoke in public spaces. Smoking is actually a very big health risk in terms of human health damage. And with that being said, we encourage all to go through your celebrations in a very festive manner, but bear in mind that we want to see you happy, healthy on a very long-term basis and we encourage you to protect your health and those around you. Additionally, the Ministry of Health has suggested a list of actions that, if practiced, can reap great rewards. One, drink at least 8 to 10 glasses of water daily and avoid direct sunlight. Two, get enough sleep, aim for 7 to 8 hours per night. Sleep deprivation also contributes to vehicular accidents. Three, seek medical attention if you are feeling unwell. Four, always be aware of your surroundings and protect your life and the property. From the Communication Unit of the Ministry of Health, Wellness and Elderly Affairs, Julia Tepita reporting.


You are sitting in the podcast equipment and tools session Hopefully by the end of this you're gonna know everything that you need for getting started getting launched why it matters the right questions to ask all of that So I want to start with a story of a farmhouse table. This is something this isn't mine in particular But it's one that's very very similar to the design I made built it with my family probably two years ago and And got the got the initial design from this website. I think it's Anne and a white She's this really awesome woodworker. I think out of Alaska and went through the whole process of building it and After a couple seasons of living in Michigan With the breathing of the table and the wood and everything the top began to crack and now for me I'm kind of a perfectionist, so it drove me insane. I'm like, why is this table so messed up and my wife's like it adds character so I'm glad she likes it, but it pisses me off to no end and After going back and looking at the design I saw that she recently updated her design and so anybody that does woodworking This was one of my first like larger endeavors I grew up in a home where my dad did everything like he'd pay somebody to do it once and watch him and then he would figure out how to do it and so the initial design you had to take all the boards Across the top and then you had like these giant wood clamps to sort of squeeze them together And then it was just like quarter inch beams that were underneath and then you were drilling up through the bottom in into it And as I was putting it together, I kind of had this intuitive feeling I'm like, I don't think this is the best way to go about it And when they ended up redoing the the plans of how to create this it's actually these other ones called like pocket joints and it's when you lay all the boards next to each other and Then you drill into them sideways and so the like each board as it's laying drills into itself And it keeps it nice and tight and it will last longer than the the current design that I have Now the reason I bring this up is because there's not a single white right way to do this Clearly I built it one way. It's all right There's another way that I wish I would have built it like and that worked out a little bit better The second thing is that because I didn't have the experience I needed up front It left me at a bit of a disadvantage opposed to somebody that's been doing it for a long time And so podcasting is very much the same way and you're gonna hear me repeat this a few times I'm going through a variety of technical Aspects of this the tools that I'm using the equipment that I'm using the software that I'm using But let me be the first one in the room to say there is no right answer I don't care that Joe Rogan is using a specific type of microphone or that maybe you want to get the exact same sound as this Other person Tim Ferriss or whoever it might be Different situations will have different right answers. And so I've been doing this for a while But there's there's a lot of ways that we can go about it So from this entire session, we're gonna be covering three things you're gonna walk out of here with three different things The first is what are the right questions to ask if you want to start a podcast or maybe you're in the planning phases already What are those right questions? The second thing is I'm gonna give a pretty solid overview of the recording equipment that you may want to use There's no way that I can get through everything That's gonna be helpful or that you might possibly use but I'm gonna at least kind of walk you through my own setup And then I'm gonna talk about the tools that I use for everything else So project management and all those kind of things communication what have you Now first, I think it's important to establish why Podcasting matters just a quick show of hands. How many of you already have a podcast? Okay, a few people a few people and it sounds like the rest of us are probably interested for one of these next few reasons First of all people are listening and a lot of people it's beginning to grow tremendously If we're looking at the numbers There's a study that comes out from Edison research and Triton digital and they've been producing this for quite a while now almost 125 million Americans have listened to a podcast and Over 70 million Americans listened monthly and nearly 50 million listened weekly When you break this down on a consistency level, we've seen positive growth almost since 2005 We've definitely there was one tiny dip from 2012 to 2013 But otherwise we've seen positive growth of 10 to 20 percent every single year Outside of the one year that I just mentioned and so a lot of people will talk about these things like oh This is a fad or whatever it might be and I'm gonna argue that it isn't it's not we've seen consistent Dependable growth in terms of this particular medium. It's not the next hot social media It's another entirely different way that we're consuming information and one that's a lot easier than say some of these other ones So first one of the big things that I pay attention to is audios unfair advantage There's a book called zero to one and it's by Peter teal and he talks about a lot of his different like philosophies when it comes to starting a business and entrepreneurship and he talks one in particular where it's how we underestimate our competition And it's the it's either the scale of competition to the competition of scale I forget what the order of the phrasing is but essentially so for example We I had a client at one point when I was doing web development work who had a specialty bakery And she only thought her real competition were other specialty bakeries But what teal would make an argument for is that anyone else selling food at breakfast time was her competition So now when I take that principle and I look at it from a consuming Content before out there. We're pushing out blogs or articles or whatever it might be a blog post demands attention from your eyes And so you might think if you're in a specialty niche Maybe you do designer shoes or maybe you have like homemade goods or whatever it might be You might only think that other designer shoe blogs are your competition But I'm gonna argue that all other blogs are your competition along with physical books along with the latest Hulu or Netflix series or YouTube videos of silly cats doing ridiculous things or going outside to play with your children There's a ton of things that demand the tension of our eyes But when you look at audio specifically Audio is the one medium that you can listen to while doing something else For most of us if we're listening to a podcast It's while we're on the way or coming home from work It might be while we're working out or doing the dishes or some yard work or whatever it might be And when you start to look at it from that angle the only other real competition for that particular platform would be other audio So you have things like other podcasts audio books and music and When you scaffold it in that way or when you sort of organize it in that way all of a sudden It becomes a lot more interesting to see that you have a huge potential to reach people that Otherwise you're gonna have a lot more barriers if you were going a visual route Another reason that people might want to podcast and why it's important is that you can build authority through association So this is just a the cover art of my podcast and you're gonna notice Several of these people are here. These are people in the WordPress community that I've happened to interview with Carrie Dills Sarah Dunn's here Joe's here Kyle's here Chris is here And my hope is because these people are awesome and they were on my show by default You're gonna think I'm awesome And so it's this proximity that I'm talking to these experts in these different niches and after a while you build this association that wow Jeff must be cool because he's talking to really cool people And so that's something that we might want to do if we want to become a leader of an industry or a particular niche or whatever it might be Other stuff kind in the same vein is the networking and referrals that you're able to receive from podcasting So if you host a podcast actually let me back up Let's say you don't host a podcast But you have somebody and whatever industry you happen to be working in that you really really look up to So for example for me, I I like content creation I'm a big fan of copy hackers and Joanna weave is the the main person behind them Now if I would have just emailed her and been like hey Joanna, can I talk to you for an hour because I think you're cool The likelihood of her getting a hold of me is is not very good But the fact that I emailed her and I'm like hey Joanna I have a podcast or I'd love to feature your work want to talk and that she was like yeah, that'd be great So we have a I'm gonna call her out. We have an all-star Sarah I just had you on my last slide as one of the cool popular people I hung out with So see she just walked in and the room just got cooler So anyways with this networking thing you all of a sudden have an excuse to talk to people that otherwise are untouchable And then beyond that you start getting referrals I had a podcast for a while ago now when I was running a board game publishing company with some friends of mine And we interviewed we were basically doing interviews on the business of board games So how did a board game actually get created? We looked at design. We looked at manufacturing We looked at all the aspects of it we had a listener out of Cape Town, South Africa who became became a big friend a fan of ours and Turns out he's been running his own presentation company. He basically teaches CEOs how not to suck at public speaking He's been doing it for 20 years or so and we became pretty good friends out of it from him in Cape Town I have a small network developing now and it's not I'm not saying this to make it about me But through rich I met my business coach through him I just interviewed a gentleman the other day who's a cryptocurrency expert and he's created Platforms that are like as big as and similar to mint. He's going to be the episode that launches on Monday From him Simon the gentleman that I just interviewed He's going to be putting hopefully in contact with the gentleman that created ghost, which is another CMS So I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about other CMS is at the WordPress conference but it's another pretty major CMS and He's the founder of that company and it's just through simply networking through having this podcast as a medium That I can talk to new people all of a sudden I'm getting put in contact with just amazing people left and right and Probably the biggest thing for me is that you get to learn something new when you host You can both teach and learn all the time like it's ridiculous and you'll see it a second I we produce them my agency produces podcast So I have one that one that we create for a real estate person person that works in the real estate space and he interviews these High-end real estate people on a regular basis like it a lot of the guys gentlemen ladies and gentlemen Don't remember their names off the top of my head per se but people responsible for like the Chicago skyline and these major buildings in Philadelphia and people that have built internationally and The amount of information that I'm just learning as we're working with him the stuff that I learned from my own guests It's ridiculous And so if you want to get a quick hard-fast education start interviewing experts in whatever area it is you're interested in The other thing that we should probably understand is how this works And so some of us might not know yet and it's sort of a it can be a nebulous idea of how does the whole podcast Structure work and how is it set up? For us for my agency we break it down into basically four pieces The first part is the planning and like any good content. I take a Lot of I take a lot of nods from say someone like Andy Crestedina runs orbit me Out of Chicago join a weebs and other person that I mentioned a minute ago And they'll do a lot of research up front and so it's a matter of what is the goal of the podcast What's who is your target audience? What is it that is trying to accomplish? How are you going to accomplish that doing all that leg work up front because when you begin to research something? It's really easy to just wake up and say oh, I have a good idea I'm gonna write about it or I'm gonna blog about it I'm gonna podcast about it and then you post it and then you're like Why is no one reading this and it's because you didn't do the leg work up front if you start researching and you see what people are Already looking for it's much easier to drive Users and consumers to that content and so we're doing a lot of planning up front of how we're gonna execute this cast Along with other things like what format should it be would it be better to be a story-based one? Should it be interview should it be a solo person a lot of things come into that up front? Second is the part that most people are familiar with the actual production aspects. That's like what equipment do I need? How do I use said equipment? What are we doing from the editing process? How do I make it sound as good as these other podcasts? I listen to her as good as radio or even better and Getting it out there. Where am I putting it once? I'm done once I have this mp3 file. Where does it go? The third part is the actual promotion piece and so that's finding a home for it on the internet That's how am I getting it out to the people that I want to hear it in all of those aspects? And then the final piece if you're if you're really kind of thinking it through is it tracking the progress? And so looking at how how did we define success in the beginning and are we doing that? What is it that we need to pay attention to is it listens is it downloads is it? Site traffic is it click-throughs on email that we're sending out regarding the podcast There's a lot of ways that you can define success, but it's it's paying attention to these four aspects are sort of holistically What we need to look for when we're building a podcast and So again, this is kind of a just a quick rundown you're the person with the idea maybe you like books and You're gonna do your planning you'll get the recording done You're gonna edit those episodes and then you're gonna publish those episodes It might be on a podcast platform like YouTube or SoundCloud or Stitcher or Google Play or Spotify Whatever you'll probably have a website where it lives as well And then that's where the person the listener is able to find it go. Hey, I like books, too I want to learn about this podcast and so this is just like a really simplified version of the process and how it works and like I said in the beginning when you start to Look for these things when you start to try to figure it out. It can be incredibly overwhelming For me personally, I have a background in music anyways I was a musician before I mean I think it was almost my musicianship that started to turn me on the idea of entrepreneur to begin with so I have about 15 years worth of audio experience and then I ran our company Come alive creative for about five years now where I used to be a teacher and I resigned from teaching started come alive Creative we started as just a sort of generalist web dev shop Played around with some different niches like e-commerce and things, but it was about partway We've had about a solid year now or partway through last year One of the services that we were providing was podcast production And I just got to a point where I'm like I don't want to do websites anymore There's a lot about it that I didn't care for and I really really love audio And for a lot of the reasons that I listed in the beginning I just think it's such a wonderful medium to solve people's problems And so I said okay, we're gonna got everything and we killed all our other services and the only thing we're doing now is podcasting and so I'm able to Look at it a little broader than just walking into it Whereas I can give you an example of a podcast that I recently was on The the gentleman sent me the audio back of the episode and there's humongous discrepancies in terms of the quality my volume super super low his volumes really high it'd be very difficult for anybody trying to Listen to it and I had to spark this conversation and the point is he started telling me about well I watched this YouTube video on it and this is what it said to do and I'm like, oh Let's start there like let's start to figure this out. So it can be very overwhelming to try to jump into something new But as long as you find the right sources and the right resources, it's a good bet like you can go for it So so don't get overwhelmed by that It doesn't have to be as complicated as it may seem as you're coming across this information And so like you see on the slide I run come alive creative come alive creative as an agency We produce podcasts usually for professionals and for businesses come alive Academy is the education portion of things That's getting revamped if you go there You might see some major changes over the next month or so as I continue to improve it I just was at North Cross's GDPR talk and I'm freaked out about selling anything online to people So that's a little nerve-wracking and then my personal site. I talk a lot about just the Kind of the things that I find interesting within business and in what I'm learning personally and that's the home of my podcast Beyond that we produce a lot we can see we have two internal casts where it's mine the the branding of it's like It's just me It's my sandbox and I get to interview really really awesome people So that's been great podcast bites is a good one for if you want to just I answer a single question About how to podcast and then otherwise a lot of those other ones that you see your clients of ours people that we've worked with And that we've helped produce So the first question This is the I told you you're gonna learn three things the first thing the first question you want to ask when you're starting is what is your budget? I'm gonna repeat this over and over there is no right answer. You might have a budget of nothing You might have a budget of several thousand dollars. It doesn't matter. Just know what that budget is The second question that you really need to understand before beginning is where are you recording? Are you in a studio?  Is it gonna be in one place all the time? Are you gonna record in the field? Do you need to get those b-roll sounds of the car engine starting or people talking at a coffee house the sound of the rain on the Sidewalk, maybe you're telling a story that those things are necessary and Depending on where you are and make heck heck maybe you're both maybe you have opportunities for both locations a Lot of that will determine what equipment you need depending on where you are And the last one is how many people will be on your podcast So do you have a co-host? Is it just you? Are you doing just a monologue style thing? Are you interviewing people? Are you interviewing people live? Are you interviewing people remote? All of these things play a factor in what you need in order to pull off your podcast So you have to have answers to those three things those are three like hands-down questions I ask right off the bat when I'm talking to new people So now this this leads us to the equipment One of the things that I've learned is the more you learn about something the more you realize you don't know It's what it comes down to and it's funny like part of the conversation that I said it's coming out on Monday I don't remember the quote exactly, but it was really good And he was talking about how I considered him an expert in crypto And so everybody's really especially December before everything exploded Bitcoin was going like gangbusters at 18,000 a coin and all this other stuff And a lot of people have sort of jumped on the bandwagon and said like oh, I know all about crypto Well, this gentleman in particular he's been working in it since it was a dollar in 2011 and he's been building software and apps and all these things to work with it and he was telling me he's like I Just learn more and more how little I know like the more that he knows you listen to him Like you'd just be dumbfounded in the amount of information he has but he was very humble about it in the sense of like there's so much to learn Equipment is changing all the time I have a post that I've put out there that I wrote originally in 2015 that is I need I've already updated on my site And then the guest site that I've I've Wrote it originally on I need to send them to my updated copy because anybody that reads it would say I was an idiot Based on the stuff that I was previously recommending and so these things completely vary These are just some personal preferences. It's stuff that I've used. I think that's good But it is not the gold standard by any means you've got to figure out what works best for you So first to mention the free free exists if you want to record a podcast and you have one of these Go for it. There's apps like anchor that allow you to just record right out of the gate You don't need anything else outside of your phone, but I'm going to give you a caveat There are definitely things With just like any software services that we use when they're free There's going to be some downsides one quality will be an issue if you're recording from your phone It will work and maybe that's all you need right now to even just see if you like it But your audio quality will not sound as good as serial or anything from NPR or startup or any of those that you're hearing Like that's professionally done full teams producing these things very much like a television series or something So you just don't expect the same quality now the other thing Usually when you put slides up like people automatically start reading But the thing that I'm going to put out there was some of these free services You need to be careful in terms of what you're giving away because like we've already found out even if you're in The last session our data is being pulled all the time and there's a few things even in this user agreement say for For anchor in particular that says things like that sink it line down where it's like you understand and agree that the services may retain Server copies of your user contact even if it's been removed or deleted and so it's stuff like essentially I again I'm not a lawyer, but when I read this terminology the first thing it tells me is you retain all the rights of your ownership But then they proceed to tell me why they retain return all the rights of anything that I create and put on their platform So if you're using a free software like understand what you're getting into They might be able to take your content and reuse it or repurpose it or or whatever it is So you have to understand the terms that you're using so just if you go in the route of free proceed with caution That's all I'm saying Now in terms of the actual equipment and setup There's lots of different ways to do this and the big argument usually is software versus hardware Now there'll be a lot a lot of people that will make a big argument for a software based System and what this means is you typically have a microphone and in some fashion or another It's going into your computer and being recorded by actual software on your computer It might be something like audacity or garage ban or a million other different softwares I Personally do not care to do it that way and there's a few reasons One is you can get a lot of technical feedback noise and different things from the actual device itself If you have a bad ground like if you're plugged into something that's not a stable connection like you can get that little like You're like what is that sound? It's insane Other things that can happen is that you can potentially lose episodes So I had I was testing out a service I was testing out Zencastr for the first time Zencastr is neat because it has two channels that record your guest from their end And you from your end and then it merges it and it has all these really neat tools that you're able to edit it quickly And easy and seamlessly online within my first three interviews I lost one due to technical difficulties and Fortunately, I was using hardware to back it up because I was basically just testing the service out to see if it was something I could reckon to my clients and Any chance of losing the episode? I just don't have room for some of the people that I'm interviewing they don't have time to reschedule an interview I couldn't imagine if I some of the guests that I've had to go Hey, by the way that got deleted. Can we do it again? I Don't have room for that and so hardware for me is a very solid standby for the digital recorders that I've been using I've recorded over 300 episodes. I've never lost one ever. I've never had one compromise Anything like that and so again for me personally, this is why I'm convicted in this manner You might blatantly disagree and you know what that's okay Like I'm not offended you do your thing and if it's working for you great But for me, I'm gonna make a big argument for the hardware now the one that you see up here is the zoom H6 There's a bunch of different ones and what I'll show you at the end of this presentation is I have this printout one-page list And I'm gonna give you access to You don't even have to trade me anything for it. It's just free and it's a full list of like everything that I would recommend But this one in particular is the one that I've upgraded to I had some other ones for a while And I like this a lot for some different things like you can see those kind of circular Holes on the side of it for an XLR cable so you can plug a microphone directly into it Which will give it a better sound it's got individual volume knobs on the top like you can decide which things are gonna record You can record up to four things at once for people at once There's the microphone up on the top So if you're just like live in person you can do it that way with the condenser mics if you need to The blue thing allows you to switch off that microphone and add other inputs if you need it And then it does some other fancy stuff like mix-minus, which basically is without getting super technical It's a way if you have a guest say you're listening to or interviewing on Skype To have them hear you but not get their own volume sent back to them because when that happens It creates this like echo of death and it sounds terrible on the recording You don't want to do it so this has been a really really great device for me And so this would be one piece of the entire setup. This is kind of the backbone. It's what everything gets recorded to Now beyond that you have microphones like I have one sitting right here next to me I'm talking into this one this little love and then I got I have a lot or a wireless microphone on me right now There's a million different microphones that you can use and a ton of them are fantastic Now I'm kind of old-school in the sense of I just use my SM sure or my sure SM 58 This is a classic stage mic if you've gone to any concert at all Like the majority of the bands are using an SM 58. It's a hundred dollar microphone For me it has a really great mid-range sound because I'm I have a little bit of a deeper voice and I have a tendency of mumbling So whereas some of these higher-end microphones like you might look at something say like the Another fancy getting technical a sure SM 7b is the same one that say someone like Joe Rogan uses that has a little bit more of what People in the audio industry might consider a muddy sound or a darker sound that might not mesh well super well with my voice Even though it's a better four hundred dollar microphone and so there's stuff all over the place I just saw somebody the other day using an audio Technica I think it's like the 2100 and it has an XLR input so it can plug into the digital recorder or a USB input And it can plug straight into your computer again. There's a lot of options. This is the one that just works best for me I like it I've had it since I was a musician and I've used it for probably over ten years now and I've never had an issue with it Again depending on where you are matters and so if you're out in the field This is the audio Technica and again all this stuff if you're vigorously taking down notes I have a sheet for you. So don't worry about it But it's the audio Technica AT. I think it's the 8035 and it's the same one that Alex Bloomberg used on the startup series if you're familiar with that and it's the Same type of microphone that you'll often hear in different MPR type things and it's when you're out in the field It's really long, but essentially you just point it at stuff and it captures the audio extremely well So this is another good one if you're thinking about doing stuff in the field You get into this really fun realm of preamps and sometimes they're called different things the blue boxes that you see are actually called Mike activators and the thing underneath is a preamp But essentially they're doing the same thing with the dynamic microphone This is another part of the conversation that we didn't really talk about it I could go when you look at microphones you really there's several different microphones But the two main kinds that people are using our dynamic or condenser Condensers sound beautiful if you're in the right setting Condensers pick up everything and so you can get real it, but the problem is It also picks up the dog barking outside and the cars driving by and all this crazy stuff that goes on because they're like a High-fidelity microphone they're gonna pick up everything if you In your chair like it's on there for sure And so most of us don't have like actual legitimate studios that we're recording our podcasts in and so for me That's where a dynamic microphone like the shers that I've recommended and some of these other ones Come in better because they're more directional. They're a little more durable You can just control the sound a lot more, but the problem with them is that they're naturally quieter And so what I mean then is you have to turn up the gain or the volume on your source really high in order to get a decent Sound this is the solution to that and so these are two devices that I own both of them And I like a lot the first one is dead simple.  So you're not Ramin the the volume all the way to 11 The second one is a little more fancy. And so if you have a technical edge It might be something that you're interested in it's a dbx 286 and the cool thing about that one Is it has a bunch of other knobs and those other knobs do things like there's terminology might hear like a gate And so sometimes when you're recording as I'm talking hear that Maybe you don't cuz you're not used to it hear the air conditioner That gets picked up But if I have a gate on it kills sound below a certain decibel level So as long as my voice stays above a certain You can cut it out automatically Otherwise you're cleaning it up in the after the fact when you're editing and that becomes a pain in the butt And it does a lot of other really neat features like that to enhance the sound right up front to save you a ton of time and editing later The audio interface or a mixer is think of it essentially is the way to get the sound from the microphone Into the computer and so eventually you're gonna need to get it there if you're talking to your guest If you're doing a Skype interview or whatever it might be There's a lot of different ways to handle this for about four years I used a mixer board like that and I ran that mix minus thing that I talked about where the computer would send the guests audio into my mixer and Then the mixer would send my audio back to the computer so my guests could hear me After about four years I think my mixer just got too dusty and it started to have a bad electrical sound And so I replaced it with the thing up in the corner of the red one That's a focus right scarlet 292 and this is a digital interface that basically allows you to plug an XLR cable Which is like a true mic cable into that and then it converts it into your computer for you via USB cable It's really simple as a super small footprint on the desk, which I liked a lot I wanted to free up desk space and so that's been a great solution and The last one and this is a setup that I haven't seen that often Was going back to the zoom the zoom actually works as a digital interface too You can plug it into your computer plug your microphone straight into the zoom and the computer talks to it And it's like oh, hey, I know it's a microphone. That's cool. That works. I'm gonna listen to you The neat thing is without needing the mixer board and all of those crazy knobs You can set up the exact same mix minus that I was talking about with a zoom And so all of a sudden I basically replaced that entire mixer board and a variety of other things with a single device And that's been really helpful too You need a way to listen back To your mix you need to listen up a way to listen to people the the only advice I don't have huge opinions on this There's people that definitely feel much more strongly about the best headphones ever and the best monitors ever than I do I kind of don't care as long as you can hear it and as long as it sounds good The big thing is if you are on a budget and you have to choose hands down pick headphones the reason you want to do that is because when you're interviewing the guest if you have your your Microphone and they're coming through the speakers if they get picked up if their voice gets picked up on your microphone All of a sudden they're bleeding over into your track And so let's say I'm talking and all of a sudden somebody over here So it's coffee it's gonna be on my track and it's gonna be a pain in the butt to edit that out after the fact So when you have headphones it keeps that sound contained Secondly the majority of people are listening to podcasts on headphones And so it's a nice true way to hear back what they're actually going to hear when you get into the editing process If you have the budget go beyond that and grab yourself some decent studio monitors these both of these things are Better than what you'd find at a local store The ones the the headphones in particular. These are just sort of Audiojournalism radio standard of the Sony's and then the I just have the Mackies. There's a CR series There's an annex series. There's a Yamaha series. It's pretty good And there the headphones are like $80 headphones the speakers are I think I paid a hundred or a hundred and fifty for mine And they've done the John did little done the job.  It doesn't matter. It's preference Otherwise stands there's just how ours. How's the microphone being held this? It's on this little bendy arm thing I had a stand on my desk for a super long time I just switched over to a boom arm like this because I wanted to move it out of the way So again, just preference. It doesn't matter. They sell the stand right there. That's a hundred dollar boom stand I bought mine for like 15 bucks. It's a cheap knockoff version, but so far it's to do in the job So I don't care a whole lot Beyond that this is where it gets a little more Kind of a pain in the butt you need power and cables and so essentially all you need is you need to protect your equipment You just want some sort of decent surge protector But I'm gonna point out that Furman makes actual surge protectors that are designed for audio And so a lot of their versions not only will condition the power So it's in case there's a surge in case there's a big electrical blast or something It's not gonna fry all your equipment But it's also gonna filter out some of those kind of obnoxious noises that can happen technically with those And then cables, there's a million cables. We got quarter inch cables. We've got 3.5 cables We got quarter inch to 3.5 cables. We've got XLR cables That can be very overwhelming and honestly at 100% depends on your setup So there's no possible way that I can tell you what to get I can talk to you about them once you get them or what you might need if you knew the rest of those main pieces of your setup But it's completely dependent on what you're doing So that's equipment and again, this is just a very technical talk This I'm gonna talk a little bit now about say our production and the software and the tools that you might want to consider Just like equipment, there's a million different softwares that do a million things differently There's I haven't found a single project management software that does everything I want it to I don't think anyone in the history of the world has and so it's like you just deal with the best what you can with What you got For audio editing, there's a lot of different things. Sometimes these are commonly referred to as a DAW It's a digital audio workshop. And so I just use audacity. It's free. Some people will scoff at me for that There's audacity gets kind of a bad rap in different circles, but it does everything. I need it to I've never had an issue I have another person on my team who will use What is he's using logic and so he's using logic pro I have another person on my team that uses Adobe Audition It just depends on your preference The only piece of advice I would give you is find something that you like and stick with it Because then you get to learn the nuances you get to learn the shortcuts It's just like if you happen to be a developer or anything You just pick a program and stick with it and then you'll just become much more proficient at it You'll find out the things that it doesn't do well the things that it does do well, etc Additional tools some of these are really good for beginners Level later is a tool that's like the development on it's been discontinued for quite a while I think since like 2014 maybe but essentially what it does is it takes that problem I gave you earlier about my volume being really really quiet and my the host's volume being really loud it takes it and it does a variety of fun effects that I won't get into but it just makes it even and So it doesn't matter if somebody's recording at this level and the other person's recording at this level It'll take it and I'll go okay We're gonna fix it and it just makes it even so it's a consistent listen for whoever the person is and it does it Automatically it's not going to give you the most perfect sound in the world Like you can get nitpicky after a while it once you're working in audio But it was a great solution for me for probably the first like year or two that I was podcasting Audio phonic is a software as well. This one's a paid They might have a free version, but otherwise it's paid and it does a lot of the same things It just basically automatically makes your audio sound good and the last one there with that weird creature on it is the ID 3 tag editor and so this is kind of like SEO for a mp3 file and what it'll do is it'll tag it so anytime You have those things show up in your players where it's like this is the artist. This is the album. This is the date It was recorded. That's all embedded on there via an ID 3 tag editor Some of the audio software does it automatically I just use this one because it allows you to add in covered art as well in different things So like my actual podcast cover art will show up if anybody downloads one of my episodes And it's a nice convenient way to work with it Hosting the podcast has to live somewhere that media file just like your website You're probably using some host in order. Maybe it was one of the hosts that are sponsoring us this weekend The file itself has to live somewhere and so some people are like, can I just put it on my host like my wordpress.com No, don't do that. It'll break like I didn't when I did my first podcast I intentionally was like, okay How long until I can explode this shared server and I think I was on Bluehost at the time And I got to about episode 11 and all of a sudden we hit this spike because we just joined a podcast network And we got a lot of traffic and my podcast went down and my website went down and I'm pretty sure some adjacent websites went down I'm like, okay. This is about the max that we can do. I need to get a server now And so these are dedicated specifically for audio files. And so blueberries awesome Lipson is awesome. Simple cast is awesome I use all three for different reasons and again pick something you like pick something you feel good about if you had to Blueberry and Lipson are definitely the most dependable. They've been around the longest I know the CEO of blueberry and he's great if you care about statistics If it matters like if you're really worried about sponsorships and you need accurate numbers Blueberry is awesome for that. But really all three of these brands are great Okay, this is again preference. You're so you will need to live somewhere as well So the mp3 file lives on the media host and then it gets distributed from there Like it's the central source and then iTunes will link into it and all these other things will tap into that original source Usually you've run that through your website your website will create what's it called an RSS feed and it feeds iTunes and all the other things of hey, this is my podcast listen to my podcast And that's how you get that automatic updating every single time. It's because of your SS feed This is again just preference. There's a lot of really great hosts out there. There's a lot of really great platforms I normally just to whip up a fast site. We use WordPress I'm typically building on Genesis and I'm doing whatever tweaks that I want to it Site ground is who I personally use for my host But again, I would fully back a lot of the different hosts that are out there Power press is the plug-in that lets me sort of create the pod or the podcast on my website Or seriously simple podcasting is another plug-in that allows me to create the podcast on my website And so these are just one round of tools that are possible to put out there to use Now in terms of communication you got to think about it if you're running with a team You want to talk to your team that's making the podcast my team works remote people are scattered across the US Nobody's in the same time zone You might need to communicate with your guest. There's a variety of things Hopefully these are familiar to you slack is great for just internal communication for ongoing conversations You can categorize it. It's just a really really excellent tool if you're doing any sort of team work We do not email on my team. We talk via slack The second thing is that I'm using base camp base camp is also our project management software I'll get into in a second, but there's communication possibility on there So if we have a question about a particular to do or a particular task We just keep it internal right there on base camp. So it's simple. It's like big ideas or slack Base camp is for very specifics. And then the last thing I use You might have your own CRM, which is like a I don't even remember all the acronyms it's just to keep track of the people you're talking to and streak Integrate straight into gmail I like it because it replaces things like boomerang like it allows you to send emails later So I can do a bunch of work late at night and then schedule my emails to go out the next morning So my clients are like, wow, he's up at 5 a.m. Look at him go I can do other stuff like snooze And so if I'm pursuing somebody like if I got a really good conversation going it's easy to forget about that email I can snooze it. So if they don't email me back, it'll pop back up in a week or in two weeks And all this is just based straight out of my gmail And I use it to communicate with like our say our clients and I use it to communicate with people that have been on our Podcast to let them know what's going on that type of thing. So those have been really really helpful in my world But again, there's a million. There's a million choices Project management, there's a lot here, too. I used trello for a long time Trello is a really great free option But then we just got to a point where the the type of work that we're doing We needed something a little more robust and base camp was a really great solution for us Other ones I've used asana can work really really well. I know teams that function totally on asana And so it just pick pick your poison and run with it So in terms of next steps for you This is where you can find that cheat sheet and the cheat sheet will be way easier than all of the information That I just spewed upon you today and it's a full list of everything from each one of those categories that I talked about in all relevant links You can just go to my website jefflarge.com forward slash thanks, that's it and it's right there Below the download below the little link is if you want to sign up for my newsletter Again, I was talking about this with some friends yesterday I get really irritated when I have to trade my email for the thing that I want and so you have the option I'm running the test on you guys today that if you want to sign up for my newsletter Go ahead and if you don't just take the thing and leave and I hope you have a good life Beyond that if you want more help if you want more help than beyond just that print off Equipment for podcasting is a site that I built because I got sick of answering the question What equipment is good? And so that just sends you through a nine email series of exactly what I would do a lot of what I talked about today And then the second one is the podcast about podcasting very meta. I know But I just take each episode answers one question about podcasting And so I'm typically either getting stuff from my clients. I'm getting stuff. I found on quora We've dug through a lot of amazon book reviews and we're just answering the questions that people have If you have a question ask and I will gladly make an episode about it because that's just all it is every week And so again, I run come alive creative. My name is jeff I know we're going to lunch. I think I have like a minute or two for questions But otherwise happy to answer and help in any way I can Shoot Are you talking like bumpers? Okay, the question was should podcasts have bumpers essentially that that standard tag I think it's 100 preference. We have been conditioned to think that there's always the bumper There's a lot of people that will sell I'll create your bumper for five dollars on fiber type of thing And sometimes they work and sometimes they're not necessary. It really depends on the format I personally am moving more away from there's there's I guess two trains of thought one is consistency people like consistency And so having a podcast go out at the same time every week is important having the intro Depending on what it says can be important that that music will often trigger Sensor because we're sensory people and so it'll trigger that but on the other hand from an artistic standpoint I like podcasts that are starting to play and that might open with a quote and a story and then go into the bumper Whatever it might be. So I say I I think you should just do whatever it fits the best question in the back Unfortunately, I don't know of any that I can recommend the question was Are there free hosting options for the media files themselves? I don't know of any It's one of those things that you'll probably need to bite the bullet on you can do things like some Some companies will allow you to post a certain amount for free But I can tell you say with something like soundcloud is a popular one that will come up for this conversation I don't recommend using them Just because they've run into a variety of financial issues They've laid off a ton of people if anybody's kind of followed their story and the problem is when you Lose control. It's the argument between like do you control your content or do you put it out on a third party? There was a thing I just saw I just posted online the other day on twitter where youtube was randomly selecting people to Create thumbnails for their videos and somebody was like youtube Why is my thumbnail different and then youtube's like well? We randomly decided that we're going to do this thing and technically they can because they're controlling that content But that's sort of the issue you run into and if you create your rss feed or the thing that tells like itunes This is my podcast on someone else's platform All of a sudden if that changes if their policies change if they die like Oops, sorry.  I'm going to eat food and you can ask me whatever you want. Yes Do you have any tips? The big thing is it helps so the question was He's on soundcloud and then he just got scared by the advice I gave him Now he wants to run which is not a bad idea and so To do that pick a host that's knowledgeable So say somebody like blueberry could easily walk you through the steps of that But essentially very very similar to like a website if you have a page that no longer exists and you need to do Whatever 301 redirect in order to not lose that clout and that traffic and things you can do that with your rss feed We had one that recently For a client of ours that we had to migrate over from soundcloud. They had actually I lied they were on some cloud But they had their rss feed set up specifically through blueberry and not their own website And we built the website wanted to take control of that rss feed and blueberry helped us Apply a 301 redirect so all of they had like I don't even know they were getting like 10,000 listeners per episode type of a thing And we don't want to lose that traffic if you just kill the rss all of a sudden all your subscribers are gone But when you do a proper migration like you're talking about then it helps in that capacity So all right again, I'm available all day and I hope you have a great lunch. Thanks


Transitions are a really, really big thing for autistic people. For me, they tend to be a little bit longer than average, like it takes me a bit of time to transition from one thing to another, compared to most people, but when my mental health is really bad, when I have really significant burnout, it's even longer. It extends even further and it can really eat up into the time that I have in the day.