97. From Student Apathy to Active Learning: Innovative Strategies for Reigniting Teacher Passion & Engaging Students with Special Guest Dr. Diondraya Taylor

[0:00] One of the reasons that students are apathetic and disengaged is because they don't see the point or the value in learning.

We have talked in this short mini-series about apathetic students and disengagement and some real strategies and mindset shifts that we can make as educators to reduce the burnout from these types of behaviors.

We need a way to reignite our passion but to also intrinsically motivate students to see the value in lifelong learning.

Last week we talked about adding productive struggle to our classrooms to support students in building those life skills necessary.

But this week, I want us to get into the nitty-gritty of taking this a step farther and implementing project-based learning strategies that can really transform the way that students see the value in their education, where we shift from this traditional sit-and-get method to a more hands-on, minds-on approach where students aren't just passive recipients but really active participants.

That's why in today's episode, we are chatting with Dr. DeAndrea Taylor, Taylor, who is the founder and CEO of Mindset and Milestones.

[1:01] Mindset and Milestones is a social enterprise that helps schools and youth organizations create real-world learning programs using project-based learning.

They provide a weekly project newsletter for teachers and program development services for admin who want to take their schools to the next level.

Dr. Taylor fell in love with entrepreneurial thinking through her own roles in different startups, but this is where she recognized that applying problem-solving to real world is an amazing tool for educators to encourage innovation and ambition in their students.

Dr. Taylor is a triple Bruin, having graduated from UCLA with a bachelor's in psychobiology and entrepreneurship, a master's in education, and a PhD in education and organizational change.

Between her business and her research, she is committed to the preparation of youth for the future of work and transforming classrooms into spaces for real-world learning.

If you are looking for a way to transform how you teach your disengaged students, you are definitely going to want to listen to today's episode.

So let's not waste any time and let's get into it.

[2:17] I am super excited to have Dr. Taylor here on the show. Welcome to the show, Dr. Taylor.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.

Yes. So one of the things that we've been talking about here on the podcast is really just the issue that we're all having with apathetic students and student disengagement.

And so we're kind of taking a deep dive on that.

In the last couple of episodes, we've talked about about ways that we can kind of address this.

But I think your stance on this is really, it's really neat.

Can you share a little bit about maybe the issue of student engagement and the real world relevance in the classroom?

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me on.

I'm excited to talk about this because exactly what you're seeing from your fellow teachers and audience members is something I'm seeing from teachers a lot too in the work that I do with my organization mindset and milestones.

So our focus is creating real world learning experiences, really rooted in entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial thinking, but expanded out to any subject that you want and really focusing on project based learning.

I think we all know, you know, we've heard a lot about project based learning and about the benefits that it has and all the value.

So I'm not going to rehash all of that. What I will say for us is the focus.

[3:37] Around finding ways to make sure that the classroom today feels as relevant as it used to.

And I think students are having a lot of questions about that because in a world where there are 16-year-old YouTubers making more than the average person's salary, they're asking relevant questions.

Like, why do I have to go to school? Why do I have to come to math class?

And why should I care about this? And I think the faster the world changes, the harder it is to answer those questions in the immediate.

Because, of course, we know that these skills are going to help you.

You're going to need them as an adult. You're going to need to know how to do basic math.

You're going to need to know how to read and write. All of these things are really important to your development as a human and to be able to live in the world.

[4:18] But the difference between those sort of more latent, those more latent kind of gratification versus why am I here right now?

Why should I give you my time and attention at this moment is really a struggle for them.

And so for us, real world learning is a way to say, let's take your math class and let's put a really interesting project in there that's not just a fun activity for the day, but something that truly does show them the value.

So we've worked with several educators, and that looks like creating websites in the classroom.

That looks like making YouTube series and TikTok videos and finding ways to help them see that the skills that they're using and learning right now in the classroom are ones that other people are using to make a full living, create whatever experience they want.

And I found so much, so much joy in going into classrooms and kind of being that new voice.

But also I've heard from the teachers that have used the approaches that we give them and they are, they're astonished by how much kind of making that, that little bridge of a connection between the skills in the classroom and the skills and the sort of outside world fit together can change and really sort of get at some of that apathy.

Yeah. I mean, I'm just thinking about this personally. My husband is anti, I don't want to say he's anti social media, but he is.

[5:39] He's anti social media. And my daughter loves to do things like I do.

Like she's always on Canva building things and making flyers.

And she's very creative in that. And I see the real, like, I guess, relevance to those types of skills and the future that she's going into.

We've talked a little bit about AI here on the podcast, too.

And I definitely see that as something that students need, those 21st century skills.

But I think what happens for teachers is they may say, yeah, I can get my students engaged with those types of things.

But how do I do it? it? Like, how do I, how do I get started making these relevant, you know, changes to a more project base and still be, you know, with the standards that I'm kind of required to do? What do you say to those teachers?

I will say first, I have taught in the classroom before, and the subjects that I was focused on were particularly around entrepreneurship because the school that I was at was really interested in how do we help to bridge the gap?

And also So entrepreneurship is more than, it's, it's not a subject, especially in my personal opinion, it is more of a skillset, a domain of, of.

[6:57] Ways to approach things. And so equipping students with an entrepreneurial mindset, entrepreneurial skill set is incredibly important to me.

And so when I'm doing that in the classroom, when I'm consulting with other schools about how they can make that standards alignment make sense, I think the first thing that I always recommend is to start with the skills that you want them to develop.

So if we start at the top of whatever the idea is with what are the skills that we want want them to develop as a result of completing this project.

And then we kind of dive deeper into how much time do we have for this, then it's a lot easier to kind of compare the skills that you want them to develop to the standards that you really need to focus on for that set of time.

And so I think that getting carried away with the idea sometimes makes it difficult to work backwards or to work sort of forward in that way. So I always recommend working backwards. words.

And this is as an aside, I have an ebook that I created that I gave out to some teachers for free when I was working on my methodology around this.

So I'm happy to share that with your listeners if that's at all of interest. Yes.

[8:01] That would be awesome. I would love to be able to do that for sure. For sure.

So I'll make sure that I get access to you. But that ebook is basically me kind of walking through the process that I use, taking what I normally do in my brain and trying to put it in a process that somebody else can follow.

But it's around how do you build real world projects that have concrete deliverables that students can add to their resumes and build their portfolios while they're in school.

And that'd be perfect for someone like your daughter, because I mean, Etsy shops, for example, are incredible passive sources of income, because you build this thing one time, and you put it up there, you know who your market is, You know what they need.

And then this is a thing that just goes.

I have a few things on my own Etsy shop. I know a lot of educators like yourself have things on Teachers Pay Teachers.

There's so many ways to use that skill set. If you are good at identifying who is a market that's being underserved and how can I create something that serves them, you can use that in whatever domain you're interested in.

[9:02] I love this. I love it because when you say entrepreneurial mindset, it makes me think of one of the struggle areas for, or what I've seen with students today is they struggle with that productive struggle, like the having that growth mindset and entrepreneurial mindset is that, like that you keep going and that you learn in the struggle.

They're learning in the struggle, And I just think that is so amazing that you've kind of bridged that gap for students to really learn those personal skills and meld it together with the way that our education system works today.

[9:46] So for teachers who want to do this, what are some strategies for incorporating those better class projects, helping students kind of generate those robust deliverables?

You always have to be thinking about on the other end of this what is a portfolio builder what is something that they could show to a future employer or that could help them to start their own venture how do we help them build something in the classroom that they can leverage outside of the classroom and so when i'm thinking about whether something is like a regular class project in an activity versus something that qualifies a real world class project that is sort of that That number one signifier is can you really articulate that crossover?

Who would I show this to? Who is this going to help me to...

[10:32] To demonstrate my skills to. And so with students, they're always wanting to figure out why, why do I have to do this?

We all hear it all the time. You know, the Pythagorean theorem is the age old example. Why do I have to learn the Pythagorean theorem?

And the thing that I like to say at this point is the more we can match those projects with something real, with something tangible and useful while getting what we need out of it in terms of standards and skills acquisition, the more we're going to see them kind of revitalize and they're in their interest in learning and see the point in what they're doing.

So number one thing is first pick a deliverable. I have in that ebook that I'm going to send to you, there's a list of at least 20 activities.

So anything from or a deliverable, anything from TED Talks to students putting together their, excuse me, students putting together their own websites.

But there's also things that are a lot more more sort of design heavy, like putting together branding guides or being able to create a logo.

There's even activities where the students put together their own scripts.

They've had poetry slams. I mean, anything that you can think of, as long as we found a way to capture it that we can share with someone else.

[11:45] We've sort of hit that check mark in terms of it being a real world deliverable.

So if you're doing a poetry slam or a TED Talk, this needs to be recorded.

It needs to to be something that they can retain and choose to share if they want to, but something that they can keep for the future to put on their resumes to link out to other people.

And then outside of that, really think very honestly about the level of deliverable that you want from them.

Because we might be able to say that the students and my students, based on where they're at, we can get this done in five work hours.

So that might mean that two of those hours are in the the classroom and three of those hours are outside of the classroom.

It might mean that we're working on this for a full month of class time, but really figuring out how robust of a deliverable do you want this to be?

Because that's truly what's going to dictate how long it should take.

Because I have students, you know, activities where I'll say, I'm going to give you seven companies that already exist and I want you to put together a pitch for this company if you were pitching to me like it was new.

If Netflix never existed, or if you know, the iPod was never a thing, how would you pitch this to me as a new idea.

And they have so much fun with that. And I've done those in flash sessions where I'm like, you have 30 minutes.

[13:01] Let's see what you can come up. And then there's other, there's other things where like, we're going to take a full, you know, week and I want this to be a production.

I want a video. I want sound effects, like give me the whole nine.

So I think figuring out how robust you want it to be is also a big piece of figuring out where you, where this will fall in terms of real world usefulness.

[13:22] Yeah. So what is the role of the teacher in the classroom when all of these things are happening?

Cause I know that there's at least one teacher out there who's thinking, And this sounds like something that I want to be able to do, and I think it really would get my students excited and engaged.

I think maybe I could pull in some of my standards, but at the end of the day, what am I doing?

How do I help those students in the classroom to meet that with the time that we have?

What kind of things do you have to say for that?

[13:51] That's an incredible question, something that we battled a lot when we first started. because you would hear entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial thinking and be like, well, I don't know anything about entrepreneurship.

I'm not an expert in entrepreneurship, so I can't teach that subject.

There's two really big challenges that I want to kind of offer to anybody who's thinking that right now as we're talking about this.

The first one is entrepreneurial thinking is the type of work where there is no right answer and no one has the right answer.

And so you can't get stuck in the same kind of mindset that you might have from that class or an English class or a science class because there is no right way to do it.

And truly, in a lot of ways, there isn't even sort of a right process to recommend to students.

And so your goal in those moments is, one, to be really good at helping them ask good questions because if they can listen, if they can sort of think of an idea and then do exactly what you just did in this situation, you're listening, you're thinking about your audience and you're thinking about what they need and what they don't need, and then you start asking those questions, that's what good entrepreneurs do.

They don't know the answer right away, but they are the best at figuring out what pieces am I missing?

[15:07] And who do I need to ask in order to get the right answers, the most, not even the right answers, to get the most effective answer to that question that's going to serve my audience.

So as a teacher, your role is to facilitate that good, thoughtful question asking, and then to support them in going to find that information, whether they need some time to go do some interviews.

That's part of what, you know, part of our curriculum, our empathy interviews, to go figure out what does your customer need and who are they going to for their support. course.

The second side of this is really just understanding how much encouragement they need in this new type of learning.

Because like I said, this is not your math class. This is not your science class.

And so they need a lot of encouragement in being inspired to do something that doesn't have the right answer that is going to force this very productive struggle.

And when you're grading, you have to ensure that they're not going to be penalized for getting the wrong answer.

[16:03] You have to be focused on rewarding the process. And so that's why a lot of the deliverables that I have that I recommend that teachers work on, especially when you're first starting to do programs, real world learning of this nature, is to try and think about deliverables that do reward the process.

So I'll have students do a report on what they learn from interviewing five different people.

Or I'll have students put together a survey and then give me a report on on what the outcomes of that survey were and how their hypothesis about what they should build has changed.

So as much as we can incorporate opportunities for them to learn from the experience and that that is the focus of your grading, they're going to start to see the productive struggle as being part of the learning and not them just getting the wrong answer.

[16:50] Yeah, like I've talked about this, I think with one person on the podcast before, I can remember going to school and it was a lot of sit and get.

I could regurgitate a lot of things and I did not learn that way.

And I don't think that these kids nowadays need that type of education where they're just sitting and getting.

They need more of that experimental type thing because we don't know the jobs that they're going to have in 15, 20 years.

What kind of jobs are they going to have? Because now we've got artificial intelligence, we've got automation.

So really having that mindset that you're bringing in to the classroom and bringing to teachers is so important because when they can start to have that experimental thinking and realizing that there is no true right answer, that you can just keep on trying again and have that productive struggle again.

[17:45] They're going to evolve with the times and not get stuck into, you know, used to it. There were only so many jobs you could have.

You could work at a factory. You could be a teacher. You could be a doctor.

[17:58] These jobs that are coming up are so are going to require somebody who has that entrepreneurial mindset.

I just think that is so fascinating and so awesome. I mean, I guess because I have an entrepreneurial mindset, I think it's really cool.

I love this. I think that your Your platform is the perfect testament to what happens when people, students especially, when you're encouraged to try out your ideas and you have space to just say, let me just see if people respond to this, if they actually need what I think that they need.

And giving them as much practice as possible to do that in safe environments, it's going to make them feel a lot more confident doing that in the job market because you're absolutely right.

[18:38] Employers are looking for entrepreneurial people, but even more broad than that, they're They're looking for problem solvers.

I think me kind of living in the space that I am, you know, I focus a lot on education, but I'm also having a lot of conversations with founders, with employers, with companies.

The thing that they're looking for the most in new recruits and new candidates and new employees are people who can take a problem and just say, I'll go figure out a solution and I'll bring you back some options.

Those are the people that get hired in a market where we don't know how long we're going to be able to keep people. We don't get all of this uncertainty.

And on the flip side of that, I think we've all learned the detriments of having a single stream of income.

Whether you want to be an entrepreneur or not, you don't have to want that as your full job. You can absolutely still do a W-2 job.

I am a strong proponent of having multiple sources of income, but also multiple ways to express what you're interested in and what you like. And so-

[19:38] The more they can have space and learn that like, yeah, I can start this YouTube channel.

I can figure out a way to kind of make this work on the side while I'm going to school, while I'm in college.

I did freelance makeup when I was in college.

I did, I started consulting when I was in my graduate school program.

All of these things just kind of created their own environment for me that I wasn't always worried about whether or not my funding was going to come through immediately, that there were ways for me to support myself and what I wanted.

And I want students to have have that same ability.

It may not be that the idea that they come up with in your classroom is the one they're going to run with, but I'll say it as best I can through one of my students.

You know, we did some post interviews to just hear how students were feeling about the programs and where things were at, especially in our early days.

And one of our students, she said, I don't think that this is the idea that I'm going to go with. This one doesn't inspire me the way that I want it to.

But she said that I love that I feel like if I have that idea or or when I have that idea, I know what to do.

And that's all I want. That is all I want. I want students to leave the classroom, whatever classroom they're in, feeling like they know what to do when that idea comes.

Yeah. I love that. I love that so much.

And I really do think that what you're doing and kind of this mission that you're on to help students is kind of that piece that might be missing for a lot of teachers in their classrooms working with their students.

[21:07] Working to get them engaged and less apathetic, really making those real world connections, but also something that's connected to their interests as well.

So I'm just really excited for the listeners to hear kind of your mindset on that and what you're kind of bringing to the table.

So can you share like where, you know, the listeners can find you, where they can learn more from you, where they can kind of get their hands on some of these tools that will help them to, you know, boost an entrepreneurial spirit in their students?

[21:41] Absolutely. So, well, first I'll say my email, we'll put our kind of general company emails, hello at mindsetandmyelostoons.com, and I'll make sure that you get that.

But the other thing I want to share is that in response to a lot of the questions that we were getting from educators about how do I make this work in my subject, in my class, because we don't have an entrepreneurship class or I don't teach entrepreneurship.

We have launched, it's very, very new for us, but I'm really excited about it.

We've launched a weekly newsletter for teachers. And every week you get a full class project that's based in real world learning that has a deliverable attached to it for students.

And so those weeks it will fluctuate. There will be a science project some weeks, there'll be a math project some weeks, but other weeks they'll just be a more general project and we'll even have weeks that are focused on the theme for the month.

So, you know, February is Black History Month, March is Women's History Month. There's so many kind of.

[22:34] There's so many ways for teachers to engage their students. And so we'll incorporate those into our projects every week as well.

And so I'm happy to share that because I think that is probably the best way to get started with us.

And then teachers that do really find that, they're like, I want my hands on more.

We definitely have more. But I think that's the best place to start.

Yeah. So we're going to put the links for how to get on the newsletter and your email address, us, your website, all of that in the show notes. Are you on social media?

[23:06] Yeah. So we are on social media. We do have Instagram.

We are working on building our TikTok. So stay tuned for that.

But I'll make sure you have the link for anyone who's interested.

And then we also do have some posts on LinkedIn as well, especially some of our larger pieces. And we'll share our blog on there.

So things of that nature, LinkedIn is probably the the best place to find a little bit of a more robust understanding of our philosophy around things.

Yeah. So we'll put that in the show notes too, just so that everybody can go and check you out on all the different platforms, get more information and get signed up for your newsletter.

I know that a lot of teachers are looking for something like this.

And so I'm excited for them to learn more from you.

So thank you again, Dr. Taylor, for being a part of the podcast and for just sharing your mission.

Thank you. It was really great to talk with you. It's very rare that I get to talk to someone who has so much experience in both sides of this.

So I think having your, you know, kind of perspective on it and moving the conversation through, through your eyes was really, really helpful.