So, FoodLink did not begin as a concept. FoodLink didn't begin as a project that we thought would happen. It was more, you might say, by accident. I was picking up a donation from Panera Bread one evening for a school fundraiser at Minuteman High School. And I was conversing with the manager about the different nights because they have a program in place. But you have to be a 501C3 non-profit to qualify to pick up their bread at the end of day donation. So when she mentioned to me they only had one day where someone was picking up, I was a little horrified at the fact that six days of bread and pastry and such was being trashed. And I just couldn't imagine because I know there are people who do not have enough to eat and I was brought up to really never throw out food unless it was bad.  You would think about what food you have in the refrigerator. How do you make it into another meal? But you don't throw out good food. Cold food or frozen food have different shelf-lives, you might say. But we call it now a code date, not an expiration date, because it does say expired on some, says best buy, sell buy. Different terms are used. So, for instance, on a canned good, like beans or tuna, vegetables in a can, generally five years beyond that code date something is still good. When you get into dairy, a lot of people feel like it's near that date I can't drink it or I can't eat that yogurt. According to the Greater Boston Food Bank guidelines, yogurt is suggested to be good 14 days beyond the code date. I personally have kept things way beyond the 14 days to try it and see up to a couple months. Your own guinea pig.  You'll understand that it's sour if it's milk. You won't want to drink it or you could bake with it if it's just starting to turn. But if you see mold or a package is compromised, meaning it's expanded, then you know there's something going on. Right. So then you have to dispose of it. The Greater Boston Food Bank is who provided this matrix to us. And again, it's a guideline. It doesn't mean that you would be ill from doing something else. But if you were cleaning out your cupboard and you had a can that was 10 years old, I would probably compost the ingredients and then recycle the rest. But a couple of years, it's perfectly fine. There's no problem. People used to do, I believe, more cooking at home. And if you are learning how to cook and you are willing to try foods and do different things with foods, you feel a little more comfortable with that. Some people, they see that code. You'll even find a code date on water. Water does not expire. So it's sort of a fear factor. And you sort of have allowed the marketing world to tell you what's okay and what's not okay. So it's really more of get back down to the basics, especially with fresh fruits and vegetables. There's nothing bad about them until you see there's something bad. So if your grapes are moldy, they should be composted. If you have a package of strawberries and one is moldy and the rest is fine, obviously you discard the bad one. But during the day when we sort through all that produce that we receive, so for instance each place that we pick up during the day, whether it's seven o'clock at Trader Joe's or 10 or 12 at Whole Foods, we have a team of people who sort through every piece of produce that comes in those boxes. So for instance, we then have a box that we label Volunteer Bin. So you may get a zucchini that is just broken. Well that's not bad, it's just broken. So we're not going to give it to someone to eat, but we'll put it in the Volunteer Bin so that you can then take it home as a volunteer, chop off the open end that's been exposed.  We'll get produce of lots of variety. But there's almost always some apples, green peppers, onions, potatoes, whatever. But the seasons change too. So when it's apple season or orange season, you're getting a lot of that. You'll see like today it was a lot of bananas. Then there's days we'll get flats and flats of blueberries or flats and flats of strawberries. You just don't know. So you can make a great meal of anything you like. It's just washing, preparing, eating. And the less processing you do, the better that is. But we do also get food that's prepared. We get frozen meals that are already individually packaged. We get some of everything. And the different places that we deliver the food is different every day. So although we pick up at most of the same stores every day, same time, each day is a different distribution. So where food goes on Monday is different from where food goes on Thursday. And that's how we cover like 38 different organizations in 14 towns. But it is a piece at a time. So it took seven years to get from point A to point G. Wherever we are now. And where, where right now? We're at the future home of FoodLink at 108 Summer Street, Arlington, Massachusetts. And so you're clearly expanding around Arlington. You got a whole second location opening up. So is that because of you're just getting more business and more clients coming to you for more food deliveries or how's that, how's this come about? So for many things is eventually this will be our only location. We'll have offices and all operations here where you were this morning at 117 Broadway. We'd been renting space from Arlington Food Pantry for several years. And that location is scheduled to be demolished and affordable housing put there or built there. So it's something good that's going to be happening there. And the Arlington Food Pantry will be moving into space on the main floor of the building, but there was an adequate space available for FoodLink. And so then we embarked on finding a location. And actually while we were looking for a location, we kept getting more food donations and more places to take it. So our needs increased over time. So what exactly was that process like trying to find a new place to put FoodLink? What were you looking for exactly? It was a difficult process because we thought we wanted to stay in Arlington, but initially we were looking at other locations such as Medford, Belmont and Lexington because Arlington has limited real estate, particularly commercial real estate. We wanted a location where we could have a loading dock and some vans going in and out. Once Arlington, once we were awarded a grant, an Arlington Community Development Plot Grant, then the decision to stay in Arlington was confirmed. Came a little easier. Yes. And so then we started looking at other places. We were looking at one place to rent. And after we saw how much we would be spending on leasehold improvements and other costs and then have to vacate in 10 years, it just didn't make sense. And I said, well, let's try to locate something that we can purchase. So on the topic of surrounding towns and such, what exactly is the radius that you work in here? You're located in Arlington, but you do travel over to Medford and other areas? Yes. So in some instances, we do work with a program in South Boston, but they actually collect from us. We don't deliver there. The further south we deliver is Bunker Hill Community College. And then we go as far north as Lowell and Lawrence as far as deliveries go. So we've been talking a lot about the future of FoodLink and your move here, but would you want to tell us a little bit about what exactly it is that you do at FoodLink? Oh, sure. You mean what FoodLink does? Yes. The whole idea behind it. Right. So what we do is we collect food that we call food donations.  It could be that you have a bag of apples and there's one apple that's bad, so they donate the full bag. Sometimes they have excess of a product. Sometimes it's just that there's a small bruise on something. In the case of the bananas, they had gotten, for some reason, an overstock of bananas and they were a little bit more ripe than they normally get, so they knew they had a short shelf life. So after holidays, it's usually they had, they overproduced for the holidays and now they have all this excess food and they want to donate it while it's still good and healthy to eat rather than just tossing it and wasting it. So that's where we get some of that. Most of what we get is I would consider overproduction. Right. So you say the case of the bananas, but for our viewers who haven't come into contact with these specific bananas, what exactly is the protocol that you have to run through? Do you even have a protocol for when you get just so many of one item that it honestly seems like you might not know what to do with it? So we keep a list of organizations that might be able to take extra food or we reach out to some additional recipient agencies. So one example is when we have excess bananas or apples, the Arlington Youth Counseling Center is happy to get fruit. They're not on our fruit distribution route. We tend to provide them other snacks, but when we have excess, what we call child-friendly fruit, we'll give them a call and they'll be able to take one or two cases. But there'll be other programs that can take a bit more and so we'll just start making phone calls. Do you have any words maybe of inspiration for people who are trying to get something done in society and it might just feel like it's not possible? Yeah. So I would say if you see a need out there or an issue out there and you say somebody needs to do something about it, that person might be you. If you've identified it, it's often you take it by the horns and you do something with it. And it might not be that you bring it to finish line, but at least get something started. With FoodLink, I think some people were surprised that, particularly in the beginning, that we became a success, but the success was because Julie and I were so dedicated and committed and worked so well together that without two of us, I don't think this would have happened. And it took two to get it to where we are now. Right. So you, let's touch on that a little bit if you don't mind, that dedication and that really wanting to do this, where exactly did that come from? Well, for me, I can't speak for Julie, I had retired and so I had some available time and I have a commitment to the environment and sustainability as well as hunger and knowing that there's a lot of waste, all kinds of waste. I'm not just talking about food waste, but other types of waste out there. And here is two issues in Massachusetts, wasted food and hunger that you can bring the two together to solve, not totally solve the problems, but have something that helps to remedy both of those issues here in Massachusetts. So for me, it was touching on two things that I was passionate about and bringing them together to help each other. Do you sometimes feel as though you're kind of low on the pipeline that you're like cleaning up a mess that could be solved possibly with legislation or with more proper city planning that these people that you're supplying are often, despite some being disabled, they're often low income in poverty or in projects. Do you think that there are ways that we can fix this sort of food desert situation that one day might in a weird way hopefully put food link out of business? Yeah, I mean, so I wouldn't say if you say one of our top ten goals. But a goal we have out there is that there's no wasted food and no hunger. We would love for food link to be out of business if there were neither of those two happening. We don't see that happening, but I do think we can work with education and policy. So what has happened in Massachusetts, there's more food that's being recovered because of some of the policies in Massachusetts, the waste ban policies. So if a vendor has or a retailer has over 2,000 pounds of food waste in a given week, they are required to either compost it, convert it to energy or donate it. It's tax advantage for them to donate to organizations like us. So, and they're trying to bring that quantity down. So that helps at least on the wasted food side. Then they're also from the state policies that provide more funding for people to have more access to food at farmers markets and such like that. But I don't... I can see where we can support policy to help make changes. Right. And so that addressed mostly the, you know, one half of your mission is the food availability and then another half is food waste, which you help out with and turn that into food availability. Do you feel that there's room for improvement with educating the general population about how you can handle your food waste or properly buying? Absolutely, absolutely. And that's what we have that is like one of the things we feel that we want to do and we do do is education. One of the things we try to do is educate the public about dates on food and to help them reduce their food waste. Well, also if we give a presentation or talk, we'll talk about how your freezer is your friend. So like if you bring home leftovers from a restaurant or you've cooked something up and you don't feel like eating it, freeze it. You know, you'll have it in a couple of weeks or in a month. And so we do try to provide information about reducing one-owned wasted food or food waste. We have presented at the Green Team and gotten the Green Teams at some of the schools involved with doing different things. They get a box of food and figure out why it was donated to us. And we start to... So the children try to figure out why something was donated to us and then we provide them information. I do know the town of Arlington is working with the schools about food waste and making sure things are at least composted at a minimum. And I think in the future, there'll be more about saving some of the food that is still good that a child may not want, like a carton of milk or an apple, things like that. But I would hope that they could somehow integrate it in the curriculum. That would be quite wonderful. Because when children know about these things, they bring it home and their parents and they embarrass their parents into getting the knowledge so that the parents can raise up to the child's knowledge. I grew up in the Chesapeake Bay region of Maryland, pretty much right on the water in a town that had historically-benefitting town. Our roads were literally paved over oyster shells. And it was an industry that at the time was really on the downhill slant. Previously, lots of boats would go out to rake oysters and catch crabs, and every year it felt like they were coming in later and later. I wasn't directly involved, but that knowledge of that really affected me in ways that I couldn't understand until I was older and working with farmers really. But another part of that too was just kind of my family's relationship with food in general.  And I was really encouraged to be part of it. One year, when I was only like four years old, my parents gave me a section of it to kind of tend to myself, and I grew zucchinis. And when you grow zucchinis, if you don't harvest them pretty much right away, they grow massive. And so there's this great photo of me with a zucchini that's about twice the size as I am at that point in time, and just a lot of pride that I had grown that thing. And that really instilled in me a love of fresh food and an appreciation for what it takes to produce it. These folks who grow our food work incredibly hard to get it to our tables, and it's a complicated thing. It's hard to predict what the market's going to want the next year or how the weather is going to be, and those things drastically affect what they should be growing and planting. And yet they do it every day, and it's hard work. So that has really impacted the way I think about the food that we handle and kind of the care that we should have for it. We waste 40% of what we produce every day while one in eight folks in this country experience food insecurity or hunger. And that doesn't have to happen if we're wasting so much food. So we already have an abundant society. We really are good at producing food. It's a matter of figuring out where it goes. So we're able to leverage those resources that exist in our community of the excess food that's happening at grocery stores and cafes to make sure that folks have enough. Food insecurity in the U.S. is an interesting thing because it sometimes goes a bit unnoticed. It doesn't look like hunger does in other countries. You're not necessarily seeing people who are skinny because they're not eating enough or malnourished in those ways, but they tend to still be malnourished. There's high rates of obesity and diabetes and other diet-related illnesses within food insecure populations in part because the food that is available tends to be high in sugar and high in other kinds of bad calories. And this in part exists because of the way we've built our food system. Healthy, fresh, affordable foods are not in all communities and oftentimes the healthier foods are more expensive. So food deserts exist across this country. What a food desert is is a place that in an urban area there is not a grocery store within a one-mile radius within a rural area, it's within a five-mile radius. And not having access to a grocery store can really limit folks' ability to have fresh and affordable foods. Oftentimes you'll see folks in these communities relying on corner stores for their food. And the other thing is food is actually fairly expensive in this country, especially on the fresher end. So being able to afford it when you're on a limited budget, especially if you look within the greater Boston area where our housing prices and our housing costs continue to expand, that leaves less and less money for folks to be able to buy food for their families. We tend to have so much food waste in part because of our expectations. We want to walk into a grocery store and have this kind of plethora of food. We want to be able to buy whatever we want for the new recipe we're trying. And that tends to create a bit of waste because if only five people are going to buy this cool new kind of kale, then the rest of that kale is going to go into the waste stream. And what we do is we are the people standing between the grocery store and the waste stream and trying to get that food while it's still good and can feed people. One of the challenges that we've been having with FoodLink over the last few years is that we keep getting more food and we need to store it. As much as possible we kind of work on this just-in-time model where we're taking food directly from one place to another. But that's not the best for some of our agencies that don't have any storage and would really like to get things like dairy and meat. So that means we need more refrigeration as well as a clean and food-safe operating space to be in. Our current location is being demolished sometime this year and so we have been- we were searching for a long time for something and we're really excited when we found the building on Summer Street because we could see the potential. It certainly was in an interesting shape when we got it. It was an auto part store and it kind of felt like someone's garage. And so we were so thankful to be able to purchase it and it's been quite the road to try to envision what that's going to look like once we get in it. There's quite a bit of TLC that needs to happen to the building and we're excited on how we can create that to be more of a community space and something that is beautiful to walk by and that the community feels welcomed into once it's done. But probably one of the things I'm most excited about is that when we finish getting this space together we're going to have a lot of cold storage. We'll have a walk-in refrigerator and a walk-in freezer so we can better manage the food that we receive and also start to take more perishable foods. And I'm also really excited to have all of our operations in one space. Currently we have an operation space as well as some off-site freezers and our office is in a different place in town. So once we're all in one place we think we're going to be able to rescue even more food efficiently. We think we'll get close to quadrupling what we do. We've grown in the time I've been here from two staff members to four and we've expanded our intake of food greatly. I think we're doing around 300,000 pounds when I started and we're doing over half a million pounds every year now. So I see that growth and I see it for a number of reasons. I think it's in part because of the great leadership of our co-founders but also that there's a growing interest in this issue in this community. People are becoming more and more aware both of food waste and of hunger and they're hungry to be involved in that. And so we are always onboarding new volunteers who are just really passionate about this and that has helped us kind of sustain that growth. Most of our deliveries are done by volunteers and I love that about the work we do because it gives people a chance to see something they might not have seen before in their own neighborhood as well as connect with people that they may have never connected with. There's lots of folks who have formed friendships through that kind of thing and that's a really impactful thing and I think speaks a lot to this town and how much they just care.


Can you believe it? Football is back and for the 52nd and final time, the Vikings will take over Mankato for training camp. Rookies reported yesterday to their dorms and hit the turf for the first time this afternoon for practice. That includes their first pick, running back Delvin Cook, who have a lot of eyes on him this pre-season. But he's excited for the challenge and competition in the backfield. We're gonna push each other and I think the good thing about this backfield is we got some work horses in the backfield. We got guys that's gonna push each other to the next level and go get the best out of each other. So having those two guys in a meeting room with me is good, man, because they never let yourself get comfortable with yourself. So that's the good thing about us. Rookies practice again tomorrow afternoon. Veterans report on Wednesday, but still Rookies practicing and a full team practice on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 2.45 to 5.10. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


Now, we talk about these various parts of digestive tract one by one.  In this diagram, you can see that the digestive system, the human alimentary canal starts from mouth, mouth is to ingest the food, ingest the food inside. Then comes the oral cavity, there are different parts of oral cavity. You can see that there are different types of glands associated with the oral cavity. There is a submandibular gland, there is a sublingual gland and there are salivary glands which are associated with this oral cavity. Then there is the tongue is important part of the oral cavity, the teeth are the part of oral cavity. Then comes the pharynx which is actually present on the back side of oral cavity, just below the nasal cavity and above the trachea and esophagus. Then we can see a long canal or long tube called esophagus. After esophagus we can see the stomach, esophagus actually enters inside the stomach. Then stomach enters inside the intestine, a highly convoluted small intestine which enters into a large intestine and that large intestine as we can see ends into a rectum and an innus. We also can observe in the diagram on the left side a large organ called liver and just below the liver the gallbladder, below the gallbladder is the pancreas. So, this is a generalized diagram of the digestive system of human beings. You can see two other parts attached to the large intestine. One of these is called cecum and the other is called appendix. Appendix is a vestigial organ in human beings. Appendix is of no use apparently sometimes it get infected and by a surgery we have to remove it. But in few other organisms appendix is very important for example in rabbits who have to eat up the vegetables. This cellulose, this cecum and appendix these are very long structures and they have certain enzymes called cellulases and certain bacteria which break down the cellulose present inside the plant material. So, they can acquire a lot much more energy from these plant materials in comparison to the human being. Now, we come next sensing the food as we know that acquiring food is itself very important property. When we start acquiring food first of all we sense it, we look at the food how it looks like, is it looks good in its appearance, we smell it, is it smells good or it smells bad, if it smells bad we reject it. If it smells bad then we assume that there is a problem in the food and we reject it. This is also a property of human beings, a quality, in the same way organisms, animals also in the same way if there is a smell in the food and it does not smell good then we reject it. So, we look at the sensory qualities of food as this is the first step of food selection. If food looks improper it is rejected, it is not ingested. Then comes the oral cavity, through mouth food enters inside the oral cavity. Oral cavity also have its own selection, our tongue have taste buds, when food enters inside the mouth we taste it, our taste buds feel it, that what is its taste. If it tastes bad it is again rejected, so this is another part of food selection that even it smells quite ok, it is looking ok, but its taste is bad then this is again rejected. So, food selection is a very important property of particularly the human digestive system. Now the second function of the oral cavity is to grind the food, we have teeth to grind the food. Because the next parts of the digestive system the alimentary canal the asafigas or stomach or intestines need smaller parts and food is there food that we take in or ingest by mouth is in larger pieces. Teeth help in grinding of the food, teeth grind the food and convert them into smaller pieces. Then the next property of oral cavity, your next function of oral cavity is to lubricate the food, that is add some water and salts to it. As we know that salivary glands, the submandibular glands and sublingual glands all of these produces some sort of mucous and they also have some enzymes for example, from salivary gland MILase enzyme is released which break down the starch and the mucous released by different enzymes and different glands lubricate the food that is make it wet. So that when it goes into the next parts of the alimentary canal it do not gives any resistance to those parts. Then another part of the oral cavity, tongue, tongue also have its own function, tongue have to roll up the food into the form of a bolus, tongue roll up the food and convert them into a rough circular mass which is called a bolus. This bolus can then go down the asafigas, the next part of the alimentary canal between the asafigas and the oral cavity, there is another part called pharynx which is present behind the oral cavity above the trachea and asafigas and below the nasal cavity. The pharynx have one important part called because we know that asafigas and the trachea the wind pipe which is going towards lung are going side by side and when food is going down from the oral cavity inside the asafigas body have to or organism have to make sure that this food should not enter inside the wind pipe or the trachea otherwise it will be blocked. There is a small part on the back of the oral cavity which is called epiglottis which is cartilaginous, when tongue make the food convert the food in form of a bolus and throw it back then the epiglottis goes down and close the wind pipe and the upper part of the oral cavity, the roof of the oral cavity goes slightly up and closes the nose so that food when it is going down towards the asafigas through pharynx cannot enter into the asafigas cannot enter into the wind pipe the trachea due to epiglottis because it is covering the trachea and it also cannot go into the nasal cavity because the upper part of oral cavity is closing the nasal cavity so food goes down into the asafigas. So, asafigas is the next part we call this process swallowing we are swallowing the bolus part of food. If we have a look on the diagram above we can see that there is tongue on the back of the tongue there is an extension which is called epiglottis and epiglottis is just present just above the trachea and on the back of this trachea we have asafigas. So, when tongue rolls up then the roof of the oral cavity goes up and block the nose so food cannot enter into the nasal cavity and this epiglottis you can see it is in slanting position towards upside it goes down and closes the trachea so that food directly goes down into the asafigas. Here in the diagram you can see the process of a bolus going down bolus is shown here with the help of a yellow color you can see in the first diagram A from left side a bolus is going down in the diagram B it is present it is passing from the pharynx and in this position you can see that epiglottis is closed and the nasal cavity side is also closed in the third part you can see the food is entering into the asafigas. Now the asafigas after pharynx asafigas starts asafigas is a muscular tube which on one side it is attached to the pharynx on the other side it is connected to the stomach. In the asafigas food is present in the form of the bolus which is coming from the oral cavity the muscles of the asafigas contract and relax at specific intervals so that the bolus move downwards that is from oral cavity towards the stomach and this happen due to the alternate contractions and relaxations of the muscles of the asafigas. Asafigas is specifically designed to move the food down we call this type of movement parastalysis. Sometimes we experience a situation that is opposite to the parastalysis we call it antiparastalysis when we are ill we are not well we experience a vomiting that is actually due to the antiparastalitic movements that is the muscles of this asafigas rather they are contracting and relaxing towards the stomach they contract and relax in an opposite direction that is from stomach towards the oral cavity. The result is this that food goes out of the stomach and asafigas from the oral cavity and out so we experience vomiting. This is the function of asafigas that is by parastalitic movement transferring food the bolus from the oral cavity to the stomach. Here in the diagram you can see a bolus is moving down the asafagas towards the stomach. One part of muscles of the asafagas you can see are contracting and the other parts they are relaxing in this way this parastalitic movements they continue. Now we talk about the stomach. Stomach is more precisely a storage organ stomach is for the temporary storage of the food. As you can see in the diagram in human beings stomach is continuous from asafagas and on the other side it enters inside the small intestine. Stomach have three parts as you can see in the diagram. Main part called cardiac the main body of the stomach called fundus and then come the third part of the stomach called pylorus. Cardiac is the part in which the asafagas enters. Then the pylorus is the main the fundus is the main body of the stomach and then the pylorus is the lower part of stomach which is enters entering inside the intestine. Now what are the functions of the stomach? Stomach also have highly contractile walls. Inside the stomach when food enters in the form of bolus the stomach releases three major things. One is bucus that is to lubricate the food further then its walls releases HCl the hydrochloric acid to acidify the food with the help of which microorganisms in present inside the food they are involved and an enzyme called pepsinogen. This enzyme when it is interacted with the HCl the hydrochloric acid released by the walls of the stomach convert the inactive enzyme pepsinogen into pepsin. So HCl performs dual function number one it gives the microorganisms in the food and it activates the inactive enzyme pepsinogen into pepsin. Pepsin is the enzyme that break down the proteins it means that digestion of the proteins starts inside the stomach. Now we know that digestion of start is already started inside the mouth because of the mylase enzyme produced by the salivary glands. Digestion actually continues in the stomach by the action of pepsin proteins are broken down into peptides. Secondly stomach by its contractions its strong contractions causes mixing of the contents of the food. Food which is present inside the stomach is mixed up with the mucus and HCl and the pepsinogen and the pepsin enzyme due to the contraction and relaxation of this walls of the stomach. We call it churning the churning process that is food is ground further and mixed up with the enzymes HCl and the mucus. Now one important thing stomach releases the HCl the hydrochloric acid which is a very strong acid is the microbes help the pepsinogen and convert it into pepsin but how the walls of stomach stomach itself are protected from the HCl. Actually the walls of stomach have a layer a thick layer of mucus present upon them which is secreted by the gastric cells itself. When we use them gastric is always something related to stomach. So the cells of the stomach the walls of the stomach releases mucus thick mucus which covers the layers of the or walls of the stomach and protect them from the action of hydrochloric acid. But sometimes what happened that if there is a abnormal condition stomach is not able to produce enough mucus or HCl is released in higher quantities HCl can start digesting the walls of the stomach and this may lead to a very serious condition called ulceration ulcer of the stomach. But normally walls of the stomach are covered by very thick layers of mucus and they are not affected by the hydrochloric acid.


Okay, it looks like we're live. Can we just get a confirmation? Yeah. Welcome on behalf of the K-12 online conference. This year's conference has taken a new form. We're delighted to be hosting the second in a series of panel discussions based on the keynote presentations. Tonight our panelists will be talking with David Jakes about the ideas presented in his four-part keynote reimagining the spaces in which we learn. Feel free to put comments or questions in the chat. If you tweet please tweet with the hashtag K-12 online conference just ending with the CONF. My name is Susan Van Gelder. I'm joining you from Montreal and Canada. On the panel we have David Jakes who's joining us today from Mexico. Brian Ham from Monterrey in Mexico. We have Kevin Jarrod from New Jersey, not in Mexico. And we have Mike Morrison from Laguna Beach in California. Carolyn Foote from Texas. And now I will turn things over to David. Thank you Susan. I appreciate that and welcome everyone. It's my honor and privilege to be involved in the K-12 online conference this year as a keynote talking about reimagining spaces and the keynote up with an engaging discussion tonight with four people that are doing really exceptional things in schools relative to learning spaces. So we're excited to bring you some insights from practitioners that are actually doing things and we hope to bring you and give you some ideas that will help move you forward in terms of how you think about spaces in terms of how you roll that space is plan learning and how you might craft better spaces for kids. So with that in mind we have a range of questions that we're going to ask and we're going to ask the panelists to begin by responding to the very first question and that is really giving each an opportunity to sort of ground the conversation by explaining exactly what they're doing with learning spaces. So I'd like to begin with Carolyn if that's okay and Carolyn's done we can just we'll just jump in and anybody else can take over after that. So go ahead Carolyn. Okay great. So my name is Carolyn Fudd and I'm a district and high school librarian at Westlake High School in Austin Texas and I've been both involved in learning space redesign as a librarian with a quite large renovation of my own library seven or eight years ago and then more recently I've been leading a pilot in our high school to make our classrooms better reflect the student experiences that we want to have and so we've been working with 25 model pilot classrooms this year and myself and our instructional partner who works with our humanities teachers have led this work along with the help of David and and a committee of teachers and students at our school and so we've been doing a lot of surveys and gathering data from teachers in order to see if we were accomplishing some of our goals of changing some of the classroom expectations and allowing teachers to try to do things that they had not felt like they could accomplish before in their their previous setup in their classrooms. So it's been a really fascinating process. Kevin go ahead. Kevin are you there? I can't hear him. Brian go ahead. Hello everybody well good to be here so I'm at American School Foundation of Monterey, Mexico and we're kind of doing something similar to Carolyn so I'd love to touch base and see some of your prototypes and what they look like but really we're carving out the what we want the learning experience to look like with user groups and we ran some prototypes with students and we're bringing on parents and teachers and really developing what we call inspiring learning spaces and I think that's similar to terms that you probably used at your schools and it's really exciting I'm in a room right now that's been in prototype mode for two years now and it's continually growing and being modified and changing and I think it reflects what learning we want to see in the classroom and so I think we need to be agile we're starting to see that slowly and so it's exciting time to be an educator today. Okay Mike. Yes so I come up to this conversation with three hats I was a teacher and I was I'm the chief technology officer for the district but I'm also a business owner in Irvine so we have a we have a space there and that's how it was invited into this conversation because in that space we moved to locations and we had an empty spot and we had to think about what we were going to do what kinds of things we were going to do at work and what what kinds of activities we were going to do and how the space would support that so in that process I started realizing that technology has actually damaged our learning spaces in schools and I'll explain what I mean by that they basically when I walked into classrooms the lights were out the blinds were drawn and the projector was showing and it was very dim and I call it the learning dungeon so what's happened is that our spaces have kind of turned into this bad thing as a result of technology which we thought it would improve those spaces but it doesn't so we started a process it's been about three years of redesigning our spaces in our district with a holistic approach so we look at like the smell of the room the the the temperature the everything that affects a person as a human we looked at and safety the feelings the emotions everything that goes into that space we thought about and we researched it so we paid teachers to do the research and they came back with ideas and we did what good what a good process would do is test them out pilot and and we came up with some ideas and we have about half of our spaces done and so we're still working on that and they're really never done because I have teachers that want to revise now so we're starting that process with the first group but that's kind of where we're at where I came where I was invited into that process and I do speak around the country about this and I invite other people to join us in rethinking learning spaces so all right Mike thank you Kevin I do I teach design to middle schoolers in Southern New Jersey and a maker space we both have ourselves with the assistance envisioning help of David Jakes and July of 2015 I was given the opportunity to create a steam program from scratch and I was influenced very early on by the work of Emily Piloton in North Carolina and the movie if you build it could change my world view dramatically when I've given the opportunity to create a program and so we decided to not just make a steam program like anyone else had but to build one based on design which is what we've done and I'm already jealous that I'm not in my classroom because Brian's looks pretty amazing and I wish mine was in the background to be but we have a great opportunity we've created a learning space that is giving kids an unprecedented amount of control over their learning they're extremely excited to be there they're doing things that schools have ever been done before and we have helped we're hoping to transform the school culture and which making out okay thank you so we've got a we've got a wide range of opportunities the kinds of things that are taking place in in schools there's some commonalities associated with with your work it's about improving spaces for student learning I'm interested in and we'll get to this about exploring the processes that you use because there's some patterns in there that will be helpful for others to know about the next question I have for you and anyone can jump in and ask this is or answer this I'm sorry you know what what you started on this why why the urgency or why the process and why stepping into this now and might you as you talked a little bit about why you did that but maybe the others why a reason was spaces why now and what was the motivating factor for moving forward with for us it was several things one is comments coming from students about their discomfort and individual teachers especially at our elementary school taking it upon themselves to work with their students and coming up with better spaces but a big driver at the high school was that we went one-to-one iPads six years ago and we felt like the spaces weren't really reflecting the mobile practices that the technology was affording and they weren't creating very flexible spaces for teachers to try new things even though we were encouraging them to try new things so we were really trying to make spaces that we also have a big focus on social learning so we're really trying to bring all those pieces together and design or allow input into spaces by students and teachers and design spaces that were more responsive to what our teaching actually what we wanted teaching to look like in our classrooms so Carolyn just go quick and I'm interested to you're saying that the one-to-one program suggested that there was an opportunity to redesign spaces to support technology more effectively correct right right we're working on a little bit because there's things where teachers are still tethered to projectors and we're working with Apple TV setups and different parts of the building but but we really wanted teachers to be able to move around the room a lot more flexibly and they were trying to innovate some of them with the instruction they were doing and have students collaborate more and team more and the spaces were just crammed full of deaths our rooms are all different sizes and our building was built in 69 and then added on to so we've got a lot of different spaces and so the giant old desks with the racks underneath were just so tight in some of those rooms too so we were really trying to make it more mobile and adaptable okay how about some of you so just briefly I just like what Carolyn said about setting up the battle between the curriculum and what we're asking teachers to do in the classroom we define the battle and we started to define why why what are they battling on a daily basis what the curriculum is asking them to do and why they're trying to what they're trying to do to battle that which which set us up for our project is to to really define the battle lines and say okay what do you what are you struggling with and that really helped us to to kind of get a direction on where we wanted to go Brian go ahead well ours kind of was similar to Carolyn's and that yeah we rolled out the one-to-one program and we expected to see certain behaviors and representations of learning that we didn't see at an institutional level and that became quite frustrating and so we we tried to say okay well what could accelerate this and and you know really the building of this space the one I'm in now was kind of it to build it and they will come model if we build spaces like this you know students will come and all of a sudden they'll be creative and we found again that didn't work so a lot of our discovery came out of failure that we were searching for answers and thinking like why isn't this taking and it wasn't until we really started you know becoming exposed to design thinking and the process of design and working with people like David where we were kind of realized that you had to be very intentional about how you develop spaces and what learning outcomes you want to see and so we started doing that and even doing low fidelity small prototypes we started to see an increase in that type of behavior so you know we've gone common core and it's rooted in design and making and modeling and revision and iteration and we found we evaluated our space we don't have any spaces that reflect that behavior reflect creativity exploration you know even research working kids go and research in private spaces so it became out of failure for us and and now we're on a journey to collaboratively design through student voice teacher voice community voice spaces that reflect the type of learning experience we want okay you know one of the things like that here in this conversation and I'd like to explore just for a second is is that you design spaces around instruction or around learning you focus on teacher behaviors you focus on student learning what's the principal driver here I think this is a point that's really worthy of exploration for helping the audience understand we're talking about why are you stepping into this is it to improve teacher practices and to improve student learning or perhaps is it to be both what's your primary focus for us it's student learning and that's taking a lot of growth I think if you did a snapshot like a photo walk of our school we've done that like done learning walks and evaluated that there a lot of more set up for the teacher when we're here to be focused on student learning and that's a sad thing and so it is it's a tough process to continually refocus to that student aspect of that students entered centric kind of model but that's that's what we focus on okay so one one thing that we there's three parts to that I think David when I thought about your question one was we went and visited places in Silicon Valley and in Irvine like progressive companies and what we saw is that they had spaces that were designated for certain types of activities that we can't afford to do that in a classroom necessarily in the library maybe there's spots that we can do that but in a classroom we have to have the space shift into those different modes so we designed our space not only for teaching or didactic teaching or all different kinds of teaching but also for the kids to learn but there's a component that I think people forget about and that's just the optimal space to be as a human I mean one of the things that we thought about is like what's the ideal temperature it's not just for learning it's just for to live and what's the what's the greatest what's what kind of smells you know make you comfortable and and feel safe and things like that and like for example we looked at the the walls the color of the walls and we said what color should we paint these walls we found out a lot of people there's a lot of research to show that different colors have different impact on learning and so we ended up saying well let's paint let's just point few lights at these walls and change the color with our iPad so we adjust the color of our walls based on an iPad we try to be creative in our solutions but I think part of it is like really thinking about people and and and just like how people where you would want to be as a person so it's about understanding human beings right and about understanding and being intimately you are being tapped into that and using that as design in the process design one of the things I want to mention that if you're watching live online or live on and you can certainly chat and the K-12 online conference slash live or you certainly feel free to communicate and share ideas using the hashtag K-12 online conference I'm sorry K-12 online conference so okay so Kevin you know in terms of in terms of your spaces and going into that it's also a little bit about I'm sure your perspective on the focus of your program as well as your space and how they're linked together well we had a great opportunity to vision the program as I mentioned earlier in July with a group of cross-functional team of stakeholders with notably absent and as a learning point for us with students unfortunately but we had administrators teachers school board members librarian and David and several other folks spend a day with us answering the question of what a 21st century learning environment look like and although that phrase gets a lot of abuse and it's often discredited it was a great context for discussion with productive tensions that David expertly latest walked us through throughout the day that helped us develop a manifesto that right in turn helped us come up with a mantra which guides our work today which the four words are care things design an act and so that was really a function of my being fascinated with the work again in the movie if you build it and we realized that if we were going to bring back shop class which is what we wanted to do we wanted to orient the projects around things this community needed there's so many examples of wonderful scene programs that do wonderful projects were as Chris Lehmann might point out they are sort of recipe-based we wanted to avoid that I like to play you want to be unique and different and so we decided to fix our own design as the center of the program which was pretty terrifying since I have no time background at all and although I think the greatest learning point is that my learners see me and my peers see me as in the mix learning with the students that David would say we learn design like doing design and that had a very successful first year the students ended up doing calzone projects that a lot of attention they were directly community related the seventh grade one which is the one I mentioned this time was a collaboration with Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia where the students studied the propagation how they can make possible for scary for children which resulted in the three top teams being brought to the Philadelphia to Jefferson where they presented the projects to the folks there and the products are in various stages of being potentially implemented at the hospital so we wanted to make a program that was grounded in reality authentic experiences as we said and the space we've created does that it's flexible it's student-centered they do things that they've never been able to do before rightable services it's a very simple the walls that protect themselves and so it's really created an environment as I said it's unprecedented in terms of what the kids can do and they tell me every day okay so you know Kevin you alluded to you started talking depth about the process and and I want to explore that a little bit with the panelists and we're gonna get started in a real easy way so people are thinking about space change whether you're an individual teacher or whether you're a member of an organization that is moving forward how do you get started what's your recommendation getting started where do you begin Mike's Mike's smiling but but you know how do you step forward you can answer it either in through the lens of an individual teacher or perhaps an organization that wants to move forward what do you do how do you get started and well one thing I would say is find like-minded people on your campus or in your organization we had a committee that we invited students to be part of that committee as well as teachers as well as administrators but a lot of the people that were on the committee already had a pre-existing interest in design and so I think that helped further the conversation more quickly because you weren't having the conversations about should this be done we were already on the same page about that one place I like to suggest for individual teachers to start as Edutopia has a terrific video series that you alluded to in your in your program on K-12 online conference which is remake your class and it's a three-part video series and then they have several articles that talk about how you can gather input from teachers and do I mean from the students in your class from teachers and rethink a space and I found that really inspiring thing to share I share it with librarians all the time as well because I think it's valuable for librarians to consider how to gather input also what Carolyn stop mentioning is the videos the three videos that were done by the third teacher plus and it's looking at redefining classroom space and math classroom over two days of time with $1,000 US so so finds like-minded people and get started what else you guys what else can you people do to get started I'll jump in well obviously we're all going to be doing some sort of online research and I would say that I've had some of the best luck following Carolyn's comment by finding like-minded folks on this service I just want to particularly that it's been very helpful and that's the K-12 FAM Labs group in Google I highly recommend that for folks doing this work a very select group of folks that are very innovative and very willing to share and learn a great deal about these technologies and what works when it doesn't work from them in addition on Twitter the hashtag DTK12 chat has been a terrific resource to identify folks that have ideas that I want to learn more about and connect with face-to-face when not getting the opportunity so I would look for an additional website which is fabulous as well Twitter and Google groups okay thank you Brian I'm sort of interested you know in terms of the context of the question of getting started about building a space and having the expectation of building the mail come would you recommend that as a way to get started just to to build the space first and then expect that will be used in my in my experience that doesn't work and actually attended the NAIS conference last year in the Bay Area and they did a survey on a lot of the NAIS schools survey them all and asked them you know how long it take for you to see kind of the returns you were expecting when you invested in a space such as a maker space a STEM lab a library and the heads of schools and principals that were surveyed said it generally took five to six years to see the returns they were expecting and then they compared and contrasted that with the build it with them and they will come and they asked them the same question they said that they saw sustainable returns right away that they saw return on their investment even during the process and and some one director that was a part of it actually said she walked into a school and they'd already started building a maker space or a new library or whatever it was a new kind of showcase space and she made everyone stop she's like the contractors everything should stop what you're doing right now put down your hammers we're going about this the wrong way and then archive the whole process and went through it and that's been my experience and with teachers now we you know when we're starting small scale in a classroom we kind of run them through some group empathy activities and get them to focus on a driver and and launch early a bit we want some the lot launch early iterate throughout and you know learn from prototypes but we definitely see the value in gaining empathy from the user and teachers have reflected that they didn't know how much their students cared they didn't know how much impact it could have and we've done that and facilitated that we hear back and back saying oh we should we should have students a bit more about curriculum alignment we should ask students more about their e- portfolios and it's amazing how much like even still we know student voice is important we know it's essential in it and important to learning but still there's still areas of improvement and that's kind of starting with students is a good place as well you know in terms of you know Brian mentioned some time lines in terms of seeing impact would you agree with that in terms of how long you get started and how long does it take to see an impact it has to be you see it right away there has to be a sustained effort to get where you want to go yeah I think I think in our situation I come about this as more of an administrator looking to get a lot of teachers involved so it for us it started with that invitation and volunteers because we we didn't want to push this on people that didn't want to do it but I will say that anything good starts with an invitation and and people people really took up the challenge and one of the things that I I appealed to their inner rebel side because we talked about breaking down every traditional thing you've ever thought about a classroom and analyzing it like why do you put student work on the walls why is that in our observations when teach when principals come in and they look at your room is it really effective and our teachers found out that it you know to be quite honest it really isn't on a on a if it stays up there a long time which most of those most of that work stays up there too long so we we did a lot of research on like just rethinking everything and being like kind of rebellious and that was fun for the teacher the teachers kind of like that feeling of like hey we're the rebels we're gonna rethink this the problem with that though is we're seeing that principals don't always agree with our ideas and but you have to empower those teachers to to make decisions that might fail for example right now we have a teacher that wants to paint their the ceiling black because they've seen that it opens up the space instead of white traditional white now it seems like a simple thing but the principal doesn't like this idea I don't think but but the teachers really like it and we're gonna I'm gonna figure out a way to let them do that and and experiment and see if it does do what they think it it's going to do which with the panelists agree that moving forward with learning spaces there has to be a culture of trial and error of acceptance of trying things and seeing what works and what doesn't does that make sense and not be afraid to try these things I think so completely and you know one of the things we did in our pilot was the teachers applied to participate and we had questions for them based around our design drivers to see you know how kind of get them to start thinking really it was a tool to get them to start thinking about it but I feel like we by inviting them in that way we had more better participation because they like you were saying we weren't forcing it on anybody it was people who were voluntarily coming in to to participate in the process and I do think that that made a difference throughout and with the other thing we did was provide professional development support so we actually had a day and a half we had a day with David Jakes and then partway this fall we identified some things in our survey where we felt like teachers the classroom learning wasn't adapting to the space in certain areas and so we folk had a really focused PD session that was both on using your space more creatively but also on good instructional practices that were much more students centered and teachers went right back and use some of those strategies and so and then just giving people choice like Michael was saying I'm giving teachers options to pick colors and give input into the design when we were initially working on it and very specific input I think that also and giving students that same opportunity I think that also really made an impact on the speed with which we've seen changing have changes happening is what I'm trying to work with my way around to that because the grassroots voices were listened to and because they were voluntary participants it feels like the change in the practices is happening faster and that is really what you want Caroline with you know with in any you can jump in here when space is changed do you see an expansion of the kinds of instructional practices teachers do you employ is it a catalyst for rethinking the way in which it takes place and we see new kinds of practices emerge as a result of space change I don't think it would have happened for us with if it had just been furniture if we hadn't had a process if we hadn't done professional development support I don't just furniture by itself I don't think would have given everyone that same sense of we're in we're having an experiment we're in here to make some changes okay in the keynote in my keynote one of the things that I that I mentioned a number of times throughout each of the four segments is focusing on an experience first and things second and so I want to just jump into really quick maybe a couple minutes of discussion around process you know all of you are mentioning all of you are mentioning different kinds of pilot experiences talk to me a little bit about your processes and what what has worked Kevin do you want to leave us off and tell us about a product yeah I think you already talked about process a little bit it was the most successful thing in what your process or supported or guaranteed in your experience on the most successful part of the process for us has been is my okay everybody can hear me alright yeah sorry about the background noise on the most successful part of the process for us has been embracing design thinking through the activities that we do in my in my program we call them design experiences I was very opposed to the idea of a quarterly STEM rotation class and specifically for the issues involving you know seeing people for a certain amount of time and then you know not seeing them for the rest of the year so we designed a series of experiences where I see the students for five days in a row and then unfortunately it's six weeks until I see them again but it's really worked well for us because I've been able to create an arc of experiences throughout the school year that culminated in a very powerful set of learnings for the students this is specifically around the capstones that they completed at the end of the school year so we had the time to intentionally explore design what it meant for these students which I should point out when we started to give kids control of their own learning they were perplexed they honestly did not know how to react they were used to being told what to do and we told them incidentally there's no grades in my class they were completely confused while what no grades what and you know how is this going to work and so what we're able to find is that by once they got the the notion that they were actually in control of the experience that their interest level went off the charts they the creativity and the things they've been able to come up with the solutions they've been able to design are amazing we've got kids working on projects through their lunch hour so it's clear that we have created a safe space where they can express their creativity and the learnings that they are applying the skills that they're getting in their other subjects it's just been amazing okay let's focus on you know where much tabs in the process you know anybody can jump in here what do you have to have in a process you know Carolyn mentioned professional development what else I've processed the process to be honest we've jumped to solutions a lot and purchased furniture for example we purchased the node chairs we purchased the verb desks and all those things and put them in a class and didn't support them and didn't put them in there with any discovery process and now so we're 2400 student school and through 12 and we're going into classes and through 12 with our kind of lead innovators we have a kind of team like Carolyn was talking about of people who wanted to join and we have 62 people on the team 62 educators who want you to be a part of this one of four groups and so we're redesigning like 16 spaces with them and going through and flushing out well what does the discovery process look like for a nursery student for a grade 3 up to grade 12 now what does iteration look like what does you know prototyping so on and so forth so the the kind of transference of skills for them I kind of echo what Kevin said they never thought they'd be given a voice never thought they could be that creative and the solution you really have to relinquish control because it's so easy to go into a space and think oh I know it would be great and and and that's the biggest challenge for me is like avoiding jumping the solutions with everyone you work with with students with teachers and committing to the process and being like all right well this is this is something that we believe in and that we can then once we develop our drivers kind of refer back to that becomes our rubric right and and kids love it when you say they say there's gonna be no rubric for this there's gonna be no grades they're like what no grades how are we gonna how are we gonna evaluate this well we're gonna go through the process we're gonna connect to the drivers which you helped us develop like wow I'm like yeah that's how the real world works that's how everything you're wearing works everything you're touching has gone through this process so selling design as a creativity and product development process has been kind of a big epiphany moment for us when I first started working with design thinking that wasn't my mindset or our mindset in our community but now we're seeing that you know what this is a skill that every kid needs really because it's transferable now it's not transferable when they graduate right it's not transferable later so that process and I guess committing to it was a big thing for us like I wouldn't I want to prompt you with this you've done it for a number of years now and what's changed over time in the process so I think I was thinking about process and you guys have hit on a lot of the things that we've done but a couple things that stand out to me as things that I I didn't realize were important until a little bit later and that was including parents in on the conversation and getting them I've gotten them to actually donate money to the rooms the reason this is important isn't necessarily the money which is good to have for the rooms but it's also the fact that they are invested in the process and they and they care about it so one of the things that we we've raised about a half a million dollars for those rooms in in the last three years and based on you know like showing them what we're doing and having them sit in the rooms and talking to them about the rooms so that process was important the other thing that was really important and I didn't realize how important is to meet the basic needs of teachers before you redesign their rooms so it's really important to sit down with teachers and make sure that the copy machine is working and everything else is working because if you don't have the basic needs working and you start doing this crazy what seems to be kind of you know expensive and extravagant they're gonna be really upset with you so that that was one of the key things for buy-in is to make sure we talked to these teachers and made sure all basic needs were being met and then the last thing I was thinking about that really impacted our program is having people tour through our rooms every week every other week we have people coming in from Russia or all over the world actually we have people from Sweden and all over California comes through our rooms and look at them and that really solidifies the teachers commitment to the room but they also like to show their room and they're proud of their room and I think having that as part of the process is really important that they they're gonna be relied on to share what they've learned in our district with other districts so I think that's important okay so we've been we've been focusing on process and you know in an organizational level to go to make changes in a school level with district level you do need a process design and being intentional and being inclusive and providing professional development and iteration you can learn more about that in the keynote so I want to shift gears a little bit and move away from an organization kind of construct to individual teachers and let's help individual teachers understand some ideas about spaces what I want to talk about now for a second is things consider classrooms and the kinds of things a difference for teacher practice okay and I'm going to ask you to give me that as each one of you has given me I've found it to be extremely valuable and when we're talking about learning space change in what it can possibly be. So some things that we found valuable I'm in a library but I've been working with this classroom pilot one thing is teacher desks that roll and having some sort of different sort of teacher desks ours are from two different vendors but their tables that roll and we have rolling small podiums so teachers can move the piece of furniture and so we're talking about what pieces in particular or what unique opportunities some specific pieces of furniture have offered us or for the classroom for people to get started in our library we kind of I'm trying to think of library and beta mode now and so we redid a computer lab that had stationary tables with folding flip tables that can flip down their whiteboards so students can write on them they can roll to the side we can put them in all sorts of different configurations so our library computer lab went from being a lab to being a brainstorming space so those the flip tables I think are important and then students wheels that has been in our surveys of students we got some take chairs with wheels and some without and the teachers were very nervous about having all wheels but overwhelmingly in our surveys for both teachers and students the idea of having wheels and being able to twist and turn and that allows the teacher to be in different parts of the room too because the kids can just turn around look wherever they are so that's been a piece if you're looking at specifics that that we found valuable okay so what we're looking for is a 32nd explanation of you know when you think about classroom design what are the things that have made a difference for teachers in classrooms because teachers want to know you know in terms of time to take a step in what's going to be the biggest thing to think about whether the thing wins 30 seconds what what work I'll jump in David writeable desk surfaces we use a product called sketch pad which is a clear paint coating go on top of desks and it completely transforms how the kids interact with each other and the material okay so so yeah right of a surface correct yes sir all right keep going game what else so we've got different kind of flexible furniture right of a surfaces what else for for us really removing the teacher desk realizing the kind of ecology of the space and how much that teacher desk tends to take up it can be upwards of 30% in the classroom and so students won't use that space so changing the configuration of the room not to be single focused front focus but to be maybe dual focused or tri-focused so having multiple spaces for sharing collaborating present presenting that was there were two kind of big tipping points okay so it's breaking in us and now for me struggling with bad over here in my hood going we'll just keep talking so you've got flexible Michael you want to go what I'll be sure I'll go so I was thinking about this and the one thing if I was going to buy one thing it really when we think of a space we think of the atmosphere and everything that has to do with the space not just the furniture or physical things but if I was going to buy one thing I would do audio amplification in a classroom it's made the biggest difference for our teachers to create an environment that's calm and collected and studies have been really good about audio amplification reducing teacher stress level increasing language art scores and lowering discipline problems in the classroom so that's the one I would do if I was going to do one thing would be a mic and we're experimenting with a thing called a catch box for the second mic for the kids and you take this box it's like a styrofoam box and you throw it and it has a mic in it and that's what the kids speak into for their answer so so that's the one thing I would do because I find that teachers that are really loud it makes them be calm and teachers that are really quiet it gives them that voice they need in the classroom yes I know it's an old-school old-school thing but that's what I would do first okay anything else you you want to add into this what else I think teachers step into yes I really like we've put portable soft seating in all the rooms like hockey stools or buoys from steel case and the teachers and students all really love them the students like that they can pull up to someone else's desk sort of in an informal way and even if you couldn't change the desk in your classroom I think adding these sorts of mobile stools create more of a sense that students can move around sit next to someone position themselves differently and teachers like them because they can pull up a stool to a teacher's desk and really sit face-to-face and it creates a different dynamic so I think that's if I could do only one thing that might be the a good starting point for me okay something sorry some know what Kevin said Kevin said writeable desks I know something that has worked well at our school's writeable walls as you can see behind me just the opportunity to have ideas everywhere whether it's this is in a classroom or in a common space and and leaving prompts for kids and giving them the opportunity to write down their idea and then someone from the next class can come in and build on that that was a huge thing for us and and that was kind of like one of those big like the new iPad moment like oh wow everyone once it worked for one person and all of a sudden everyone wanted it so that was pretty a big big hit for us so if we move forward in this you've obviously made a number of changes and and talk to us a little bit about the impact that's had and in the changes in learning I'm specifically interested in when you can you add writeable service when you remove the teacher desk and give kids or repurpose that space when you add movement into the and all the things that the panelists have talked about what are the big shifts in learning and do changing the space is really impact how kids learn when you're not so much teaching so what's been the what's been the difference that you've seen by making those changes so we surveyed our students before last spring before we put the classrooms in place and we've surveyed them about three weeks ago to see you know how their impressions had changed and we did it around our design drivers so we were looking at things like did they feel like they had more ability to collaborate in class did they feel like they have more ability to be creative did they feel more ownership of their learning and the responses were just astounding they it was clearly clearly had had an impact on how they felt about their ownership of their learning and and how they felt about being creative in the classroom and so that was really empowering to see those results self-reported results okay so ownership being you found that they've had a greater degree of ownership but that's resulted in a more creative approach for learning and collaboration collaboration okay and when anybody want to jump in in terms of the impact on learning yeah I'll jump in I have to say that one of the most rewarding aspects of the program that we've seen is the students that we are reaching the student body that we've got is in our school probably fairly typical for our socioeconomic area where we are but what we've noticed that's really fascinating is that we're reaching students that we never reached before by giving these students an opportunity to express their creativity and give them design challenges that require them to collaborate and the ability to use tools and to solve real-world problems we are we have students that in the past struggled through sitting through class and were had difficulty paying attention and had issues with each other that absolutely are on fire when they're in my room and doing the work that we do so it's been incredibly satisfying to see kids transform literally we've had multiple instances of students that were unrecognizable to themselves by the end of their year with us a one of whom incidentally is a student at Science Leadership Academy and who I hope to be presenting with at educon this year about his experience okay Brian single biggest factor in terms of learning what's what's changed with learning as a result of your spacework well something in our elementary school which I haven't mentioned or that haven't mentioned is we developed a space that focused on the social emotional learning aspect so we developed an open mind zone that upon first class might resemble a sort of analog maker space and it was our counselor and one of our tech integrationists that really proposed it and really their focus wasn't creativity it wasn't exploration it was teaching kids to share teaching kids to cope with you know having to rebuild something over and over again and and the impact on learning that had which has been significant kids that room is the most booked room in the elementary school and the most accessed when kids have a choice and to go in there and see kids that normally didn't have a place now have a space and the joy that they have being in there from a social emotional learning aspect has been revolutionary for us and that wasn't something we thought we'd see that wasn't something we're even really looking for I'm I really took a leader and a counselor to kind of say you know let's give this a try and it's a great mix between those two worlds and so the impact on learning we've seen an increase in risk-taking you know kids when you ask them how do you feel when you come to school and you know a lot of them will say stressed bored tired and you know anxious but when they come to that space it's joy wonder comfort relaxed and so now how do you export that to other spaces is kind of a challenge yeah that's interesting right when you see something that works like that a magnet space right you see that kind of event the question is is how do you take the successful components of this that space you know large and general areas to go to scale so to speak Mike same question for you single biggest impact that you saw with your space changes I think I think the biggest thing I see is just more activity active learning so when I when I go into spaces that are the traditional deaths and which we have a lot of those left it seems very passive and even the way kids sit and the way they're interacting with each other but the minute you go into one of our new spaces and if you sit there a whole period you'll see a range of activities where in a traditional class you'll see maybe one shift or or maybe that shift is for the whole week but in these new classrooms you'll see changing like active students that are doing different things that you know with each other or or there could be points where it's just the old style of just getting information but I think it's it's just that the ability to shift in and we're also seeing a lot of use of our outside spaces now our mics also have a little pod that goes with them so the teacher can listen in on the groups so you can actually hear what's going on in the groups the kids can take that pod out with them outside and you can hear what's happening so we're using our outside spaces a little more okay alright so we're winding down here we've got a few minutes left and so we want to finish with with a statement from each one of you about about if you have a chance to sit down with a teacher or or someone that wanted to improve their spaces what's the one recommendation that you would make for that teacher so 30 seconds to a minute about what's a single recommendation you would make help teachers move forward okay go ahead got one minute yeah so I think so many teachers are so busy with so much going on in their lives and so much that they need to do that they're intimidated by the idea of a wholesale redesign of a learning space so my suggestion would be for them to take carva section of a day an afternoon even an hour to put the kids in charge of a learning space and really just sit with them and say if we were going to do this material in a different way or give you more control over your space in terms of how it would be arranged what would it look like what would you change and see what you can make happen okay so the first step is sitting down the kids and talking about spaces what they mean for learning correct okay simple thing easy to do is next well that's exactly what I was going to say and I'd say that whether it was a library or a classroom I think there's a lot of different ways you can get student feedback to whether it's talking with them in class or doing a visual board where you have them put sticky notes on it which a jitopia the third teacher recommends or having them do video interviews of themselves with a GoPro as they go through their classrooms there's lots of ways to get that gather that student input and really get a bird's eye view of a student's view of the classroom okay so you're looking at continuing to understand the relationship of space to learning through a student lens their space right okay Brian what could you do what's the one recommendation because it seems like I'm cutting out yeah you're okay okay cool so you're getting feedback from students correct no I'm asking about if you had one recommendation for teachers to get started what would the single thing be that they could do to get started one single comment of teachers I was for them I would I like the idea of giving it over students but kind of having that collaborative day of just you know talking about what do you want learning to look like what do you want learn to feel like connecting with the emotion of learning I think that's that's in in standards in rubrics in a seven I think that's about very much I think if you have a discussion with students and parents and teachers about what you want it to feel like I think you can really connect and then build spaces that as well okay so again it's it's about an inclusive process about sitting down and talking about about how learning takes place and how space can support that yeah I was thinking about this I would I probably I know this sounds strange but I would get an intervention partner to come into my classroom and look at the clutter in my classroom and just to declutter my classroom because one of the the studies have shown like that clutter in the classroom really has a big impact on ADHD kids and and a variety of learning issues so I would start with decluttering and it's free it's cheap and just start with decluttering and then I would get us you know an account on Pinterest and I would tell them to go to IKEA because start with inexpensive things that you can do and and Home Depot and DIY because some of those things you may not want to have permanent so start some start with some you know simple ideas that are that they could do that are very inexpensive and then I would go with them you know then that's the start of the process that's a good start okay all right so you know as we talk it was as we summarize some of this you know we're talking about some the opportunity to make significant changes in terms of learning about opportunities to help teachers look at the way to because they inhabit that space as well so I think the Palace has done a great job of providing ideas about process some of the impacts that have taken place as a result of their actions and some really you know appropriate strategies for moving forward so hope that you you take some of these ideas and see them through your lens and perhaps take a begin to initiate some changes in space and given that you know it's about trying things it's about learning about iterating and prototyping and moving forward in the meaningful tough away all focused on engaging the kids right and having them as design partners so I'm going to turn it over to Susan and at this particular time I'd be half of all four of the panelists and myself thank you for spending time with us tonight I'm sure that you can follow their work online at Twitter certainly and Susan it's all yours thank you very much well it's me who would like to thank all of you you've really given us a lot to think about a lot of first steps to begin for those who might not be as brave and want to jump in completely it's students first and that's what we're all about an education and I think that's really what you've been talking about today so thanks again we can continue the discussion in voxer and via the slow chat you can join our voxer channel at bit.ly slash k-12 online conf voxer and chime in please tweet with the hashtag k-12 online conf your tweets will show up in our slow chat at bit.ly slash k-12 online chat the chat as well as on Twitter keep watching the k-12 online conference org space for information about our upcoming mini conferences the next one will take place the week of January 9th to 13th in 2017 with the theme of design thinking so I think that will be sort of attached to some of what you've talked about but really looking a lot more at the students themselves the keynote speaker will be John Spencer so thanks everyone for joining us good evening from the free conference you can always come back to thanks all


The narcissist will lead you on without any clear plans to pursue the relationship and their non-committal behaviors will leave you confused about where your connection is hidden because they will string you along with small nuggets of communication but they will never fully commit to a relationship. They will send out flirtatious but non-committal signals. They will give you just enough breadcrumbs of their attention and interest to give you hope and to keep you on the hook but not enough to make you feel comfortable or sure that the relationship is going well. Some people are more susceptible to this than others. It tends to be those who have high empathy who fall for these tactics because people who have high empathy will tend to exaggerate the worth of the breadcrumbs and the reason why narcissists do this is because they're very insecure. They have low self-esteem so when they leave a trail of breadcrumbs and they see you coming back for more it makes them feel wanted and worthy. It is typically people with narcissistic tendencies who engage in this type of behavior because they want to feel powerful and special and to give some the attention that they crave so they will just give the occasional message or phone call. You might go on a date with them once in a while but it happens at a regular intervals. It's every now and then it's not regularly or consistently they don't follow up with anything and people who don't follow up should not hold a significant position in your life. People who express approval or support of you sincerely without taking any significant action while you are putting your heart and soul into things for them but they cheat you by giving you something insufficient in return. They treat you unfairly by giving you less than you deserve. They don't use all of their strength and resources the same way that you do. They don't put in the same amount of effort as you. They don't celebrate you the way you celebrate them and you should not tolerate that because they are invalidating you. They're saying that you're not good enough for better treatment as though they can give you breadcrumbs and you will put up with it and this is one of the main tactics that narcissists use because then they can get a lot out of you while giving you little or nothing in return but the irony is that although they treat you as though you're not deserving of them they're actually the ones who are not deserving of you because they are harming you. They're a liability to you. They're not serving you because they're capable of doing more. They have the means to do more but they choose to give you less while still expecting the same priority from you without giving you anything in return but if they want the best out of you there should be an equal exchange. They should compensate for it but instead they don't even support you. They're never there for you but they expect a lot from you and they don't even have the decency morality or respectability to see that they never put out anything for you yet they're expected to be a priority to you when you should not settle for that. You need to know that you are being breadcrumbs. You are being given less than you deserve because you deserve better. You deserve more. You're always treating them with respect and dignity. You're putting them before yourself. You're constantly giving. You're constantly putting out but you're not getting anything back in return. You're not receiving anything in return to replenish yourself so something must be wrong with it because people are meant to recognize what you do and they're meant to give something back to you in return. There's meant to be a fair exchange but you're always the one who is paying for everything and while they may keep you around it's only because they're getting something out of it because they can benefit by keeping you so they do understand your value but you also need to understand it and you need to align yourself with people who will be able to reciprocate your value people who will be able to put out for you just as much as you put out for them because that is how we build and grow but this is why narcissists don't get very far because if you confront them on it they will ghost you if you want them to disappear really fast just loan them some money you won't hear from them for months and the more money you give them the longer they will be gone but we need to protect ourselves from these types of people because there are a lot of people out there like that they will take as much as they can from you without you confronted them on it without you openly expressing your opinions without you putting a limit on what you will do or allow to happen because you sense that something is wrong which is why you need to be aware of it because they will try to lead you on they will try to get as much as they can from you without having to put out much to get it thank you for watching if you found this video helpful please give it a thumbs up share your thoughts in the comment section hit the subscribe button to receive the notifications if you would like to support the channel you can donate at paypal.amyslashnarksurvivor you can book a one-on-one with me on my website it's narksurvivor.co.uk thank you for watching and I'll talk to you soon