Archives for April 2021

Covid threw many parents into the role of teacher. Although many schools have reopened to in-person learning across the country, some parents are still managing distance learning for their children. Parents also may still be struggling with a new normal that could include a mix of in-person and virtual learning or even trying to help a child who has fallen behind academically during the pandemic.

Readability’s CEO and Founder Ameeta Jain talked to educator, entrepreneur, author and mom Mimi Nartey about homeschooling during the pandemic and beyond as well as how to bridge the learning gaps during the stresses of pandemic learning. 

An Interview with Dr. Mimi Nartey

AJ: Hi everyone, my name’s Ameeta Jain, I’m CEO of Readability. And I have a very special guest with me today, Dr. Mimi Nartey. Hi, Mimi.

MN: Hi, thank you so much for having me today.

AJ: Oh, it’s such a pleasure, and I really appreciate you taking time out of your full schedule to be with us. And speaking of full schedules, why don’t you let our viewers know a little bit about yourself?

MN: All right. Well, I am a work-at-home mom, work-from-home mom. I’ve got two kids, I have a son who’s in third grade, and I have a daughter who’s in seventh grade. And what’s really interesting about our family is about two years ago,  right before middle school, we decided to pull my daughter out of traditional school and do a homeschool hybrid program.

I talked it over with my husband, and with my daughter, and we decided to make this kind of lifestyle commitment ’cause that’s really what it is, to take a non traditional educational path. And then of course, now, because of the context of COVID, my son is also at home learning distance. So I kinda even got more than I bargained for.

AJ: Well, it’s commendable that you’re taking this on, and I and also the courage, right? I think every parent has experienced that this year, or in 2020 this whole time during COVID what it’s like to have to try and do everything that you’re responsible for, and now have to be responsible for your child’s learning. And speaking with a lot of parents, they do feel like there’s been a lack of learning. And I thought that maybe as a mom who has taken this on, who was doing it, and then taking on a much greater, I don’t wanna say burden ’cause teaching our kids is a joy and a gift, but taking this extra responsibility on. What has that been like for you?

MN: So it has required a lot of flexibility of mind, adaptability. What I would say is in some ways it’s interesting because I made this decision just ahead of the pandemic. So I was prepared in ways that other women that I know, other mothers weren’t exactly. We had had someone come in and do kind of a consultation to help us organize a homeschool classroom, and we had taken all of these steps.

It was really serendipitous that it was able to make the most out of the situation. I felt like I had a little bit of infrastructure or framework to have this happen in our lives. But definitely, even making that initial decision was a challenge. Now, prior to this, for nearly a decade I was a college professor. I taught classes in environmental science, and public health at the university level. So one would think that I would have a lot of confidence in taking on like a middle school teaching, but it really is something that, you have to just give yourself a lot of grace, you commit to the process, I think it’s really great to kind of set deliverables for yourself so you feel like you are hitting certain things ’cause there’s so much flux and flow. It really is, it grows you in the way of learning to be just very flexible, and adaptable.

AJ: So that sounds like great advice to all those parents out there that have been learning this past year is to just breathe, and be flexible. But I know that parents are stressed out. “Are my kids learning? Are they absorbing this material? Have we wasted a year?”  Is that something that you’re seeing yourself?

MN: I would say, every child’s different and every familial circumstance is different. And so I even see disparate outcomes between my two kids. I have one who’s a little bit older and a bit more autonomous, and, in some ways, she has gained and thrived a bit. But my younger son, it is a challenge. And so I think for me there’s just been a reframe. Right now, the best I can do is just support him emotionally through this, and then what I will look to do is as things open back up, as we get back into a normal rhythm, really kind of concentrate on assessing the learning gaps.

When we have that kind of stability and that security back, then that’s the opportunity to kinda go back through and say, okay, well maybe we didn’t make as much progress here, or here as we’d liked. But at the end of the day, we survived a pandemic, we learned, and we grew in many ways.

I see my children being forced to mature in ways that I might not have pushed them to. Like I said, it’s really about the framework. And then there are strategies to always close the learning gaps. First thing first is to work on and support the mental and emotional health of the children, and that’s what I think we really should focus our attention on, and that’s where we can also find some grace in our own process. We can think, this isn’t gonna be necessarily the year where you get five reading levels ahead, or something like that. But what have we learned about ourselves? What did we learn about ourselves as individuals and as a family? And in the coming year, we’ll go back through and see where we can get additional support for the learning process.

AJ: I love that so much. I love the idea of focusing on their mental and emotional wellbeing, their health, as we see so much happening in society and with our kids. Being there for them on an emotional level really speaks to me, and I’m sure it speaks to our viewers as well because parents have gone through their own stuff too, and so they’re struggling. They’re really out there struggling, whether it’s trying to work and teach their kids, and financially, I mean there’s just been such an impact on so many families out there. And do you, what would you suggest we do? Or do you have any ideas yourself on how we can bridge that gap in learning? I know that you have to assess where your child may be falling behind, whether it’s English, math, science. But what would you suggest we do to help understand where they’re falling behind, and what can we do to help them?

MN: I think again, in the coming months and over the next year or so, I’m gonna really suggest that all parents get in really close communication with the instructors. So if you aren’t the instructor yourself, again, I have the one child who will go back to traditional school. And really keep those open lines of communication, and ask for those kinds of assessments, and that feedback on where things may have fallen short.

For me as a homeschooling mom, I get to, because I determine the curriculum I kind of can see where we are, and I would say more of the challenge there is maybe I had intended for us to finish this curriculum by this time and we haven’t done that. But all of it, again, like I said, it’s a reframe. And just understanding that it seems like it’s been a long time and it seems like the impact is more immense than it actually is.

A year, even if you had to pull the child out of school for a year, people have to leave school for health reasons for a year, there are many reasons why this could’ve happened. And people are able to find some sort of resilience in a moment like this. So again, it’s just about changing what the expectations are in mind to say that, it doesn’t have to be the way that I had originally imagined it. Obviously it’s not gonna be the way that I had originally imagined it. But sometimes children, you might say the child needs to repeat, that’s okay, that’s okay. It’s one year.

AJ: It’s okay, exactly. One year in your whole life is not going to make or break you.

MN: Yeah, and I think, like I said, that’s what I mean about having the flexibility of mind, and really just seeing that there’s more time in this process than we think. That we have set an arbitrary arbitrary amount of time for an elementary education, or for the K through 12. It’s a little bit subjective what those years are gonna be. And because I have one parent who’s from another country, I have different worldviews that I borrow from. So, here we have a certain age that kids start school. What’s so funny is in my dad’s country, Ghana, he would tell me that when a child can kind of put their hand over their head and touch their ear, that’s when they say you’re ready for school. So it’s just kind of funny. So it’s not really age dependent. So when you borrow from other people’s perspectives and see that there’s more flexibility in this, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, the timeframes that we put, the pressures associated with those timeframes that we put on ourselves are really more imagined than real. Then it gives us the breathing room to be creative about what we can do to rise to this challenge.

AJ: I love that Mimi, and I’m sure the teachers that are watching us today are saying “Yes, Mimi,” and the parents that are watching are just so thankful for that hope, and peace of mind that you’re giving them that it’s going to be okay because that’s exactly what you’re saying, that it’s gonna be okay. And to make sure that you’re watching their emotional and mental health and wellbeing.

MN: Right, and I would even push it further. I always say my superpower is ruthless optimism. I think that from this, we have as a society, and especially with our kids, accessed technology in a way where after this, in the aftermath of this, if we’re very creative we can apply some of that technological intellect that we’ve gained to really improve access to education, and really improve opportunities for kids’ life through Readability and other kinds of things, ’cause the kids now have such an appetite, and the skill, a new level of skill to navigate these things. And the technology can lead to more equitable outcomes eventually. So I’m hoping that will be, in the long term, how we gain.

AJ: And you bring up a really good point. There are studies out there that do talk about how technology, things like when AI is speaking to you, kids are very receptive to it and so this is a mechanism, a way in which you can supplement their education. So that’s a really good point, thank you for that. So Mimi, I feel like you’ve given us, and by the way folks, for all of you today watching, Mimi is so humble and just like, “Oh, you know, I’m a mom and I homeschool.” She’s also a coach. There’s so much that she’s doing out there with, Mimi, I think you should tell them because I would love to hear a little bit more about the other things that you’re doing and how you’re just amazing.

MN: Oh, I appreciate that. Yeah, I feel like I’m very, very passionate about education and I conceive education very broadly, what that looks like, and what that means. And so I do coach soccer. In the past, I was a professional soccer player and I did get the chance to compete in the Women’s World Cup.

AJ: Amazing.

MN: It’s like secret lives of moms, you kinda, secret lives of moms.

AJ: Yeah, you’re just not a mom, even though being a mom’s amazing, yes.

MN: So I do coach youth soccer. I do spend a big part of my time invested in that because I also can see that as a different kind of educational intervention. I think sports is one epistemology, one way of knowing things, and I like to support kids learning and development through that. Another project that I’ve been working on for about five years, it’s called Race, Class, and Parenting. And it’s really a social justice parenting intervention. So I host symposiums, I create content, I write books, all related to social justice parenting. I think a lot of people, especially during the same time, it seems to have overlapped much with COVID. There’s been so much social and political unrest. And I know that there are a lot of people who are looking for support through their parenting process with that, how to open up conversations with kids about social injustice, how to give them a more tolerant and inclusive worldview. And so I have a passion to help those parents, what I always say is parent to their intentions, by providing them information and support.

AJ: I love that. Parent to their intentions. And then where can parents watching today, and teachers watching today find you? Where can they find this class?

MN: Yes, so I have a YouTube channel called Mompetitor by Mimi Nartey, like competitor, Mompetitor. And I do have a lot of content there if you just wanted to, for example, see a video about what is systemic racism. I have a couple of e-books available on amazon.com under the title, “Race, Class, and Parenting”. Or you can search my name, Mimi Nartey, or you could just reach out to me directly at drmiminartey@gmail.com

AJ: Oh, thank you, thank you, Mimi, that’s amazing. And I’ve really enjoyed talking to you today. And as you can see, the audience, she’s not just a homeschooling mom, she’s so many things to so many people, and I just really enjoyed our talk today. Thank you, Mimi.

MN: Thank you so much, it’s been great. Thanks so much, Ameeta, you’re a person for whom I also have a great amount of respect, so I’m excited to be here.

AJ: Thank you. Well, I feel like we’re going to do great things together, and it’s all about our kids, it’s uplifting our children, the most vulnerable in our society. And so we have a common path there and a common goal, when it comes to our kids. Thank you.

MN: Thanks.

About Professor Mimi Nartey

Professor Mimi Nartey is an educator, interdisciplinary scholar, author, speaker, philanthropist, and social entrepreneur.  She has an undergraduate degree in Environmental Biology and a graduate degree in Climate and Society from Columbia University in the City of New York.  She completed her doctoral studies in Public Health with a Comparative Education minor.

Mimi has held a lecturing appointment at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and adjunct faculty positions at Occidental College and LMU. She is a women’s empowerment scholar, and her primary research focus is women’s health in sub-Saharan Africa.  Her research experience includes developing anti-malarial drugs; using climate forecasts to predict disease epidemics; developing interventions for maternal and child health in sub-Saharan Africa; and using soccer to promote health.  She presented research at the annual American Public Health Association Conference and Yale University.  She has been invited to keynote at the annual Global Unite for Sight Conference at Yale University, and she has been invited by the government of Ghana to share research to the Ministry of Health.

Mimi is passionate about integrating science and philosophy to teach and promote social justice.  She has been involved in pioneering new approaches to address social problems such as gender and racial inequality.  She is the Founder and CEO of RCAP (Race, Class, and Parenting), which is a marketplace of ideas for women who are thought-leaders and influencers to engage in dialogue on social dynamics and parenting in communities of affluence.  She has an e-book available on Amazon.com on this subject.

Mimi was formerly a professional soccer player.  She was a silver-medalist in the 2002 African Women’s Cup of Nations, and she represented Ghana in the 2003 FIFA Women’s World Cup.  In 2016, she was invited to give a TEDx Talk entitled, “African Women’s Soccer and Empowerment: Memoirs of a Black Queen.” In December 2019, she was named to the list of “Dynamic Women” by Modern Luxury Angeleno Magazine.

Mimi is married to Kofi N. Nartey, MBA (luxury real estate broker and television personality).  In 2018, she and her husband co-founded The Nartey Sports Foundation to support sports-related interventions for underserved youth. The couple was  named a 2018 and 2019 “Los Angeles Power Couple” in Modern Luxury Angeleno Magazine and LA Confidential Magazine.  They live with their two precocious children, Liya and Lincoln, in Playa Vista, CA.

In 2020, Mimi launched a YouTube Channel (“MOMPETITOR by Mimi Nartey”) where subscribers can follow her life as a wife, mother, activist, coach, and philanthropist.

The report cards that list grades as letters might be eschewed for an educational approach that emphasizes grading students on mastery and fluency. Competency-based learning typically includes number grades denoting and correlating to a child’s mastery of a particular subject.

While standard grading systems favor grade percentages that correlate to a specific number grade, competency-based learning analyzes the child’s overall performance to assess fluency and mastery and denotes grades in numbers or may not assign grades but instead note the level of progress (e.g. exceeds the standard).

Students might not be expected to master a particular standard until the end of the year, and the competency-based grade may reflect this expectation. For example, children may receive a 2 or a description of “not yet mastered” or a similar descriptor.

Parents, though, might be confused at this new system, preferring the easier-to-understand grading scale of their own youth. Readability’s CEO Ameeta Jain talks to educator Jabez LeBret about why competency-based learning may be our future and why parents should embrace it. 

An Interview with Jabez LeBret

AJ: Hi everyone. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Ameeta Jain. I’m the CEO of Readability. And today we’ll be talking about Competence-Based Learning. What does Competence-Based Learning mean? Why is it so important? And as parents and educators how can we implement or apply this in our homes and school?

I’m super excited because we have an expert in this area to help us through all of this. His name is Jabez Lebret and he’s got a vast bio, and I thought I’d pull out some things that I found really fascinating and interesting about him. Jabez got his start as a financial analyst managing a multimillion dollar P&L at Nordstrom. He has delivered over 1200 presentations around the globe and is a bestselling author and a journalist for NBC and Forbes. He sold his award-winning award-winning marketing agency to pursue an ambitious project in education. After five years of research, Jabez and his wife opened up the nation’s first tuition free all girls school in San Diego, California with a focus on social, emotional learning and competency-based assessment. And what I love is he’s a gin enthusiast and a drinker of coffee in large quantities. Hi, Jabez.

JL: Hello, thank you for having me.

AJ: Thank you for being with us. So let’s just jump right into it. Tell us what is Competence-Based Learning.

JL: So we’re all familiar with our normal traditional grade set for most of us that went to school here in the U.S. We have our A, B, C, D’s and F’s, and that has been the standard approach for many, many, many, many decades. Competency-based assessment is basically trying to focus on proficiency. And so the question is, can we test how much of something you know, and how well you know it? How competent are you? How proficient or what’s your mastery level of that information? Not just, can you give me an answer on a test or fill out a homework assignment and show some sort of single linear answer. It’s really trying to kind of broaden our approach in education to understanding what a student knows.

AJ: Amazing.  When we think about Competence-Based Learning and we’re looking at a classroom setting, what does that look like in a classroom setting?

JL: Yeah, it’s important to understand why classrooms were set up the way that they were set up in the current system that we have now. And it really hearkens back to the industrial age where we needed factory workers. We needed farm workers. We needed to be able to pipeline some students into professional services like lawyers or doctors. But for the most part, we were trying to move people through kind of like an assembly line. And so what we did is we created these classrooms that resembled a kind of a factory. You’ve got rows and rows of chairs. You’ve got the teacher up front and then they’re espousing information. And then they’re trying to make sure that some of that information sticks so that when that student eventually graduates from high school, they may or may not go on to college but whatever they do next, we have kind of a general idea of where they stack up to each other.

How do they fit into the world that we have back in 1905? I mean, we’re talking like over a hundred years ago this system was put into place. Today’s world has dramatically changed over the, I mean not to mention the last 10 years, but the last 30 years. Oh my gosh. Like we have computers in our pockets that we walk around with. I remember my math teacher used to say, “Well it’s not like you’re going “to carry a calculator around with you everywhere you go.” And I was like, “Well, now I actually carry it around with me everywhere I go.” So it begs the question. Should we be changing our approach to how we view knowledge? What kind of knowledge students should learn, and how do we assess that kind of knowledge?

The newest direction and where education is trying to move towards is to say we no longer are as concerned with whether or not you have rote memory of a list of tasks. We are now more concerned with do you know how to learn? Do you know how to think about things analytically? Do you know how to put on a critical thinking cap, to approach problem solving? How do you tackle a problem? How do you build perseverance and how do you build the ability to go out and install something that you’ve never seen before? 

Now, if you’re talking about trying to build that kind of graduate at the end of a high school or college career, what you need to start focusing on is how do you test and how do you assess what they know. Because we all know that what we test is and what we measure is what we get. And so if we’re going to keep measuring in A, B, C, D, F then we’re going to get students that simply are striving towards that rank file. If we’re going to say we want students who know how to learn and understand things and can think about things, we have to change the way that we assess them, and that’s moving towards a competency-based approach.

AJ: Oh my gosh, I love that. And I can imagine a lot of the educators that are watching today saying, “Yes, yes.” Because they are also fighting the system, I think, with our education today and how it is. And I know a lot of parents are not really for the traditional grading system that their child shouldn’t be just put in a box that way. And I 100% agree with the idea of developing critical thinking skills in our kids. And that’s vital to their ability to learn and to do anything really is those critical thinking skills.

JL: Yeah. And if you want to study something like, we landed on the moon in 1969 that is an amazing feat, no question about it, but is it important to know that that happened in 1969 in and of itself as just a date? Not really. What’s more important to us is to understand the geo-political nature of what was happening in the world that led to us feeling as though we had to get to the moon first, right?

We were in this locked battle with the mighty USSR and we were in the Cold War and all of those big things that were pushing this moment in time that seemed very scientific and was, but the science was being driven by the politics as much as it was being driven by the scientist. And understanding those dynamics makes for more well-rounded education and a better suited student to understand that life is about layers. It’s not about just the simple answer we landed in 1969. That really isn’t the most important part of the story. And competency-based approach is a challenge, I think, for some because one, it’s kind of difficult to assess somebody’s proficiency or mastery at something. It takes more time, and it takes a lot of effort. And it’s a little scary as a parent.

You’re a parent, I’m a parent. And I’m thinking, I went to college. I wasn’t very good in K-12, but I did end up getting into college. And it was a great experience. Maybe I want that for my little one. And if I don’t align with the standards, am I now going to miss an opportunity for my child? So I push on the system and I say, no, no, no, no, no, no. I want to see A, B, C, D’s or F’s. I don’t want this competency whatever proficiency mastery, because what I want to see is that my kid can get into XYZ college. And that’s just a need for educating parents on the fact that colleges are shifting the way that they accept students. And that by the time your little one’s going to college if they go, it’s going to be a very different landscape than you or I faced.

AJ: Yeah. And I do see that. And speaking about grades, you and I had talked about this offline. When my son was in fourth grade and flash forward, he took the ACT, got a perfect score without studying. He had like a 4.83 GPA. He took every AP course there was, he worked really hard in high school to have what he thinks he needed to get into college. But when he was in fourth grade, we had a specific teacher that probably had biases and wasn’t healthy for my son. What was subjective was his writing skills. And she kept grading him well below his abilities, even though his third grade teacher said he had such an amazing voice that the summer he should write a book and that she’d help him get it published. To go from that to fourth grade saying “He can’t write.” “He doesn’t know.” “He doesn’t have grammar.” “He doesn’t have sentence structure.” And you’re just like, “How can that be? How could he have gone downhill so fast?”

Even though I had all these meetings with her to try to figure out what was happening, she had biases, and she did mean things in class like she would open up her arms wide to the whole classroom and say, “Competent.” And then to my son just narrow in and point to him and say, “Incompetent” in class, in front of everyone. And he would come home and he would tell me about these things. I talked to the counselor, talked to the principal to no avail. She basically tortured him the entire year.

When it came to the last day of school and I knew he would be getting his report card, I had just made a decision that what she thought and what she was doing was very harmful to my child, and I had to do something that would eliminate or eradicate that harm. And so what I did was I told my son, I said, “You’re going to get your report card today. And I do not want you to look at it. You’re going to hand it to me.” And he said, “Okay.” And I got to school waiting outside his classroom. He came running. He was so excited. And I said, “Did you get your report card?” He said, “I did.” I said, “Did you look at it?” He said, “I didn’t.” I said, “Great hand it to me.” I took that report card and I tore it up.

I tore it up and I kneeled down to him and I said, “What she thinks is irrelevant and inconsequential to you and your future. I do not want you to give her a second thought. You’re brilliant. You’re meant for greatness. And that’s how it is.” And he was so thankful, so relieved that even though he worked so hard and he probably did get fours and maybe she gave him a two in writing, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered to me. It was his emotional wellbeing at that very moment that mattered. And in that summer, I put him in a writing program for young kids. I put both my son and my daughter in there because I needed to change that narrative. I needed to adjust the concepts in his head that he did have abilities. And he was able to express himself.

JL: Your children are lucky to have a parent who is as aware and as able to navigate that sort of situation, right? And I always try to encourage parents who don’t know, maybe it just never dawned on them to think about it that way, that to think that the actual grade is an assigned measurement by the teacher, there is a subjective nature to it, period. And it is not a measure of intelligence or capabilities, right? I mean, I’m a high school dropout. So I got lots of F’s in high school. No problem. That was not the hard part.

AJ: And look at you now.

JL: And it worked out in the long run, despite that and I don’t recommend going to the extreme, but the point is we need to throttle back on the reliance on grades as the measurement and we need to start really asking ourselves what outcome do we want? What do we really want for our children? Do we really want our child to be obsessed with an A or a B, or do we want our child to be obsessed with learning? Obsessed with problem solving? Obsessed with going out there and thinking about things critically? That’s how with tinkering and figuring things out. That’s what we want. Not, “Oh my gosh. If I don’t perform well on this test.”

The pressure and the anxiety and the unnecessary nature of how we’ve approached modern day education is something that we all play a role in. Administrators need to stop leaning in on how easy it is to use grades and test the assessments, numbers. Universities and post-secondary need to continue their work. Parents are a part of this puzzle. Everybody does this in education. Everybody says, “Well, it’s the teachers in the District.” Or the teachers say, “Well it’s the District and the parents.” And then the Districts say, “Well it’s teachers and the parents.” Everybody points to everybody else. We all need to take a step back looking in the mirror and say, “What the heck do we want out of this thing?” Like, what do we really want out of our kids? And let’s build that.

AJ: I love that. And I agree wholeheartedly. And as for the parents who are watching today what are some of the first steps that they can take? Because when you talk about the pressure that is on our kids today, and all the things that they have to do just to get into school, it is crazy. And we see, these kids now have anxiety, they have stress. And we’re seeing a level that has just skyrocketed in the last 15, 20 years. And it’s not okay. So as parents, what is your suggestion that we can do at home to really advance Competence-Based Learning? What can they do?

JL: Step one, knowledge is power. I would say, go check out a really good school to look into, for example, One Stone up in Boise, Idaho. They graduate students with zero GPA’s. They don’t give out GPA’s. And those students go on to plenty of great, amazing, incredible colleges. So make yourself feel comfortable. There are people doing this, and it is working. And arm yourself with a little knowledge. Go to your school, ask the teachers, ask the principal what are they doing when it comes to Competency-Based Learning to understand what are students really proficiently and mastery level understanding of the knowledge.

Remember that your knee jerk reaction for things being done the way that you had them done when you were growing up is not necessarily the best way for them to be done now. And that’s a tough thing to let go. I only know it one way, and it’s a little scary. And so you have to keep reminding yourself there could be a better way, just like there’s a lot of better ways that I do things now than I did 20, 30 years ago. There’s a better way. And let’s embrace that and try to encourage that in our schools and give our kids the freedom to explore those options and really grab on to that kind of learning.

AJ: Well, I think that maybe conversations would be part of that. Where the parents are constantly talking to their kids about what’s happening at school, what they’re learning. And what’s important about what they learn. I know that, for me, when my kids were given books as assignments I loved to read those books with them and just have conversations, stuff like that. And I was never one to really push grades or anything like that on my kids. And it turned out that that was the right way to go because they have excelled in so many ways. My son got a full ride to get his Master’s and that’s incredible. And there was never a focus on grades. It was always like, how does this make you feel? What do you think about this? And so that’s what I think that maybe my suggestion to parents would be is those conversations are so important when it comes to their schoolwork.

JL:  Yeah. And ask about failure. If we want to think about what it really goes into learning something well like becoming a master of something includes a significant amount of missed shots. So if you’re going to excel, missing shots is important and talking to your kids about that is important and saying, “Hey, what did you fail at today?” Or this week?” Like what didn’t go well and didn’t work out. And what can we learn from that?” is a wonderful way to start approaching building up the reflex of competency-based approach as opposed to just simply saying “Regurgitate an answer for me.”

AJ: Right. And I think we’ve all learned in the last 10 years that it’s not really failing, we’re failing up. I like to use the word failing up because those lessons are important. And really we’re just getting better and better as we go through things in life. And we learn from those, it’s all a lesson it’s really never a failure.

JL: Yeah. I want to take failure back. I want to reclaim that word. I want to own that word for a positive, like it’s not a negative thing. And it is taught that way in school. I always thought it was fascinating how the letters go A, B, C, D and they skip E on purpose to go to F, and there’s only one reason why that happens and that should tell you everything you need to know about the grading system and why it’s not a good idea. And it’s not about being soft on our kids’ feelings.

It’s about being smart in the way that we choose to approach learning and being more thoughtful about how we want our outcomes to manifest at the end of their educational journey, which hopefully never ends. And if we want them to be lifelong learners, then we have to start focusing on competency-based approaches and stop focusing on assessment based. Otherwise we’re just never going to get there.

AJ: I always tell my kids, if you’re not learning you’re dying. Learning is a lifelong thing. You’ll never stop learning. So thank you, Jabez. Do you have any last piece of advice for our viewers today, for educators or for parents?

JL: Oh, I always say open up a dialogue. Don’t be afraid to embrace change. The system is changing, and it can feel as though it’s not and it can feel as though there’s nothing you can do about it. But if every one of us takes a little moment to have one more conversation about how we can make this thing better including the students and bringing them into the conversation, I think that we’re going to actually start seeing real change happen that is both necessary and overdue.

AJ: And I agree 100% because I really believe that if we can really expand on these critical thinking skills helping children develop those skills, we can really lift our kids, lift humanity. We’ll have so many thinkers out there, not just people who just follow blindly, but they’re thinking for themselves. And I think our society needs that.

JL: A hundred percent. And don’t forget about the kids who seem like they’re not learning. I was the third grade student who couldn’t read, and it was because of my home life that it just hadn’t happened. I mean, I would have killed for an app like what you guys have at that age but the technology didn’t exist at the time, but do take a step back and think that there is a way to approach and reach those students. And I think competency-based approaches are a magnificent way to really help out. And I just appreciate you sharing the information about this and wanting to share this sort of conversation with your audience because it really is important.

AJ: Thank you, Jabez. I know we’re like-minded in that because reading really is the foundation for all learning. And so if we can teach our children to read well but not just read but comprehend what they’re reading, right? Using those critical thinking skills. When they’re reading we are setting them up for a lifetime of success, because, again, if they can read well they can do anything. And I know that that’s like one of my biggest goals to lift our children through reading. And I really appreciate you, appreciate what you do for the girls in San Diego, California. I know because of COVID that school shut down. And I really hope that that opens up very soon. Things get better.

JL: Thank you. Appreciate that.

AJ: Thank you Jabez. Thanks for having, love to have, having you. Thank you.

JL: Well, thank you for having me. It was a pleasure to be here.

About Jabez LeBret

Jabez was a homeless highschool dropout. After getting his GED he decided to pursue a degree in finance and marketing from Gonzaga University. From there, it was off to the races. He became a financial analyst managing a multi-million dollar P&L at Nordstrom, delivering over 1,200 presentations around the globe, a best-selling author, and a journalist for NBC and Forbes. He is a seasoned entrepreneur who has built and sold multiple companies, even opening a tuition-free all-girls boarding high school for underserved youth.