Kristina Ishmael: Mental Health, Professional Development, Remote Learning, EdTech

Welcome to the Learning Can't Wait podcast an iTutor production at iTutor. Our vision is to ensure every child has access to education regardless of circumstance. Each episode, we will be joined by Pathfinders within and around the education space who are bringing about transformational. On behalf of deserving students, I am your host, Hayley Spau.

Hello everybody. Welcome back to today's episode of The Learning Can't Wait podcast. I am always excited about my guest, but there is like a next level excitement about today's guest for a host of reasons. You'll see why in just a minute. Namely of which when you get to know people that. Political figures that you admire and you genuinely enjoy them as a human, it gets even more exciting.

So, without further ado, I wanna introduce to you Kristina, the Deputy Director of the Office of Educational Technology. Kristina, welcome. Hello, Hayley. It's so great to be here. That's, that was the sweetest intro. Thank you. Well, listen, I have to be very honest as, as with a couple of my guests over the past three seasons, I know you via.

I know you now personally via Yep. Miss Juliana Finegan, who's episode, whose episode was titled The Power of Connectivity, so that is the most appropriate and brilliant title for her . Yeah, absolutely. And, and you know what's funny is about having met you and. Obviously I know a lot about your office. Yep.

The, actually, I'm not gonna call it the, USDOE. We decided that we're gonna call it the, the proper name, which is the US Head Office or the Department of Education. As I got to know you and through Juliana, just all these accolades and stories of, of what an amazing human you were. It really just drove home for me how much people care in all sectors of education, both on a professional level, but deeply on a professional per personal level.

And you really personify that for me, so, oh, thank you. I'm super excited to introduce you to the listeners today. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. That means a lot. I, I do not take my role lightly by any means. I carry so many educators and folks with me on a daily basis and. It, it bleeds into personal and professional.

So I really appreciate that. Yeah, I think folks will be able to hear that really shortly. I mean, why don't we start us off the way that will allow folks to get a, a little bit of a picture into who you are, what you're about, what and how you got here. So my first question for you today is how did you come to be the professional and personal version of yourself?

A lot of therapy. I'm just kidding. That. Listen, that's a great way to start . I mean, if we're gonna get real, real, no, I actually, I've been sharing this story more and more. It's one of those things where I, I do really like to talk about mental health, my own personal kind of struggles and management of that around anxiety and depression that started when I was in high school.

And honestly, my. Like foray into education started with a massive panic attack.And I know that sounds really weird, but I went to school, Arizona State for my first degree in business and mass communications had every intent to go into like marketing and things like that. Went in for one of my first interviews and walked out massive panic attack and was like, oh, this is, this is not what I'm supposed to be doing.

Like my body had that visceral reaction of going. Okay, listen. Listen to my body. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I had always considered education and was just like, no, no, no, no. I gotta go the business route. And then I went back to school. I started teaching, early childhood. I was a preschool teacher at a child development center when I went back to school.

So I was doing kind of both of those things during a, a post-baccalaureate program and went for early childhood in elementary education. Then went into the school system in Omaha, Nebraska, which is where I was living at the time, and went from kindergarten to second grade. Then I was an EL teacher, kindergarten through sixth grade at a smaller district.

And then somehow some way, like skipped, skipped up, moved up to the state level. And so I was a state edtech director for the state of Nebraska, and it was a brand new position. Got to kind of create it along the way where about half of my job was internal, developing relationships with all of the folks that are.

Education policy and content standards and all of that, and making sure that EdTech and digital were included. And then the other half was providing professional learning across the entire state of Nebraska to educators, but also like down into the classroom level when I would have. Friends that were edtech, coaches or instructional coaches that would call me and say, we're putting iPads in the hands of 30 kindergartners tomorrow.

Can you come help ? And I was like, yes, . Yeah. So like we would do cool projects like that and then, had the amazing opportunity to move out here to DC in 2016. To work as a fellow in this office leading the project called #GoOpen, which was all about supporting states and schools moving away from traditional textbooks and materials to, open educational resources.

And then was able to continue that work at a nonprofit here in DC called New America. Got kind of recruited back into government life through the Biden Harris transition team, where I was a part of the education review team. And knew I wanted to go back into public service, into the agency. And, and fortunately that happened in October, 2021.

And so I think it's just through all of, all of these steps, you know, taking the time to reflect on, the learnings within each of these parts of this journey and, knowing that. It takes a lot of work to get here. Recognizing my own privilege in all of this, amplifying voices that may not necessarily be heard in the process, and always coming to policy in particular with that practitioner lens, which is really important to me so that we can make sure that we're implementing policy that makes sense.

Ooh, that is . Like, well, I, you know, I'm, I'm taking notes as we're chatting here, cuz my brain is a siv and if I don't take notes, I won't remember. But, you know, I, I, I'm starting, I wanna start at the top, right? So, first of all, okay. Explore your vulnerability in disclosing, you know, your own struggle with mental health.

I think it is so important, particularly for people with platforms to be open. I, I talk very openly about my own disability, which is a, a physical health ailment. I have chronic illness. You know, people very close to me in my life suffer with severe mental illness. I myself have suffered as well, but people have such a stigma, like nobody bothers me when I'm like, oh, I need to go on another medication because my joints are hurting and I can't walk today.

Right, right. But when you, you say, I have to go on another medication because I suffer from anxiety. There's so much like, shh, hush hush about it. So. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. , thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I imagine that. And being more open. You have lots of people connecting whether they tell you it directly or not.

With Yeah, that story. But also the way that you framed it here, just that the panic attack was your body telling you a message. Like Yeah, that is profound. And you know, good thing you were listening. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, I've heard you speak before about how it is no surprise that you were an early elementary educator For folks, for folks that haven't had heard you give that quip, which I think is so amazing, and as childhood educator myself, I see you.

I get it. Thank you. Why? Why does that matter? ? Oh, it's so funny. I, I love, I love kids at that age. That's always been a thing and it's always been like preschool through second grade. Those are the grades that I, that I just naturally kind of gravitate towards. I, I think it's a background perhaps in, in theater and just being silly and with improv and bringing that to kids and.

Gosh, it, I do miss the classroom whenever you bring that up. Cause I'm like, okay. Okay. Even, you know, in, in March of 2021, I was working with a school district in the Midwest, a pretty large school district in the Midwest, that they didn't have coverage for. They're online teachers for their k2. And so they had about 600 families that decided not to go back in person at that time.

And they needed an online teacher. And so I was not licensed necessarily in that state, but they were able to like figure it out where I could be their asynchronous virtual teacher for a couple of weeks. And so I got to put, you know, flex those teacher muscles again and it had been a while. And then get just a very.

Small glimpse into what teachers were doing because that was the question I would reach out to a lot of my, my former colleagues or or friends that I knew that were teaching those grades, going, what are you doing in K2 right now? Because this seems so, so challenging. And of course it was. But being able to play with that and so like, I would be sitting on a Zoom recording myself, being silly, doing the weird things.

You know, like every time, I would record a new day, I would put on a new scarf. And so they, like, I talked about that. I was like, I'm gonna wear a new scarf every day. You know? And I still, that was still one of the greatest experiences. And so, I don't know, it's just, it's a fun side of things, but yet knowing that those are critical years.

For numeracy and literacy and language development and just being there to be a part of that is, is pretty incredible. All the things, you know, I, I specifically wanted you to answer that. I had no idea how you would answer it, but there, there's a, there is a regionalized. Teacher shortage in our country.

Yeah. And I, I don't go into podcast episodes hoping folks will sell people to become teachers. Sure. However, however, I think it's important to hear the good sides Right now, R is really inundated with a lot of the challenges teachers face. Yeah. Rightfully so. Yeah. And, you know, maybe there's a theater, a, a theater geek that really I know, never pictured themself in a classroom, so it's, I know something, hear you share.

That that particular experience inside of you translated beautifully into being a teacher and, yeah. You know, I used to describe it, to my husband as he, he used to film television shows. He's an artist, but Okay, okay. He actually makes a living. And I would say like, you know how your people on camera are on for like 45 minutes.

And they have to like put a lot of energy in and they're on tv. Yeah. I'm like, I'm like that for six and half hours every day. Yes. Hi. Like play show, doing lots of things with them and like, but yeah, like I want people to know there's, there's space for that too in a classroom. There is. There is. So back to the, the online teaching thing, I was living in Washington State at the time, so in Tacoma, Washington.

So on the southern side of the Puget Sound from Seattle. And I had one of my favorite hikes, which was forest for like the first part of it. And then it comes down right alongside the sound. So you get to see the ocean. Beautiful. And so I used an app where I was able to like video things as I was taking my hike.

And we were doing some living and non-living and science of course. And so I'm going through and I was recording myself. I had my AirPod in one year. , like talking to myself doing a think aloud, you know, like as a teacher does, and people are looking at me as I'm hiking . What is she doing? Like don't worry.

It's for the kids inside . That is amazing. Amazing. I I really appreciate being able to share joyful moments of, of classroom learning and experiences like . Thank you. Past three years have been tough, as you say. Absolutely. Like, you know, this has been for many professions, but especially those in and around schools exceedingly hard, and edu and really.

Edtech, educational technology has really become this shining star throughout all of this. Absolutely. Yeah. So like how have you seen, you've had experiences in schools, you've had experiences as a fellow for this department, at New America now back as the deputy director. How have you seen public sentiment around educational technology change over the past three years, especially?

Oh, that's a mixed bag. , , I wish I could say it were all positive because it was able to, ensure that we had continuity of learning. Unfortunately, that's not the case. In fact, that is the one thing that keeps me up at night still. I was worried about it whenever coming into this position in October of 2021, and it's still something that I worry about is that.

People experienced emergency remote learning, which we know, you know, is like not best practice. No. We wanted to make sure that there was continuity of learning in some way, shape or form, and stay connected to our kids in this terrible, terrible time that no one knew what was really happening and. We didn't, we didn't put our best practices together necessarily.

And so what folks experienced was a hodgepodge of things and perhaps folks that had never used EdTech. We, we certainly had kind of our early adopters and folks that had been. In a one-to-one environment for many years that were able to quickly adapt to things and it just kind of seamlessly carried on.

And then we had others that really struggled. And then of course the whole kind of spectrum in between. But that is definitely one of those things that I. Think everyone just seemed kind of like they're clamoring to get back to the normal, the pre pandemic life. And we've brought all of these devices in.

We've helped ensure that there's home connectivity. Still a lot of work to do in that space as well, but how do we now like change the practice and, and the instructional models to accommodate the use of these devices and the edtech for really incredible kind of interactive experiential learning experiences.

And it comes down to professional learning. It comes down to funding that and making sure that it's ongoing high quality professional learning that's embedded. It's not going to a training on one tool, but it's really talking about, okay, if we're gonna move to inquiry-based learning or project-based learning, Here are all of our options as far as tools that we can use, and being able to incorporate those to provide voice and choice, which is so critical for, for learners, whether they are early childhood or they are our juniors and seniors that are getting ready to go into some sort of college and career life.

what, what is, what does that look like post-secondary for. So it, it's that the sentiment is definitely a mixed bag and I think for the most part, I like to say that it's been positive, but I'm also just an optimistic person and, and really wanna continue to think that way. Well, and mixed bag makes sense, right?

If we've learned nothing, it's that No two schools, no two. And no two students, no two teachers are the same. Yeah. So Ms. Bag is, is expected and the diversity of human experience and educational experience has pros and cons as well. But I would, I would expect that. And so, you know, recently your office PO published this Dear Colleague letter.

I think it really, you know, if you haven't read it, listen. That was the time . But it really is a profound piece of writing that speaks to where we are today, in 2023, with EdTech. So what inspired your department to write this dear colleague pu piece published that you publish just recently? Yeah, absolutely.

So one of the tools that the federal government uses regularly is this kind of, this approach called a Dear Colleague Letter, and it is, Little GE guidance. That makes any sense. So it is, it is certainly not something you must do, but it is given to the field to say, Hey, here are things for you to consider.

And there have actually been a number of these dear colleague letters around funding edtech from the Office of edtech before, and the most recent one, if I can even say recent, cuz it feels so long ago at this point, was from January, 2017. So like right before the change of administration and then of.

A lot of things have changed in six years, quite a bit. Yes. So it, the, the idea was for us to think about that sustainability of all of the things that we have funded during the pandemic, but also we know that there's still quite a bit of money out there as far as relief dollars are concerned that need to be spent down by next year.

And. How can we encourage school districts to look at a really comprehensive kind of approach when they're looking at edtech? And so that was really the, the goal with this dear colleague letter. It starts with kind of a, a, a letter part from Assistant Secretary of Roberto Rodriguez, who is, serves as my director.

And then it goes into kind of the specifics within the section. One, it goes into like, how can we think about titles one through four and IDEA dollars, to spend on EdTech? And then we added a piece this time, which is section two, which really focuses kind of, we got the questions after the last Dear Colleague letter that was like, okay, great.

See all of different options to fund this stuff. Now what? And so that's where we came in with section two, which really focuses on some of those big questions to ask. We cannot, as the federal government, like dictate things to you all, local control states rights, like all of these things, but it, they are certainly questions intended to provoke kind of your team that comes together.

Thinking about, okay, we've got these ideas for funding streams, now let's start, we need to start with a needs assessment. We need to understand our infrastructure. We need to understand our procurement process. We need to under, you know, like all of these different pieces. And so they're, they're big questions to wrestle with as a team, we really encourage the team approach.

You're, you're including your teaching and learning, or your curriculum and instruction. , your IT or your tech side because you have to work together. You cannot work separately. And then of course, we, we really encourage teachers to be a part of this process too. And, and if you wanna go so far, students, I would encourage that as well.

That student voice is critical, but not everyone considers that as like in that selection process.You're like, we're, we're choosing tools. Yeah. Let's, let's hear what the kids have to say is that's part of this too. ? Yeah. Yeah. In most cases. Most cases, yeah. So, you know, Kristina, for folks that are not close to, well, actually, let me back up.

Yeah. On episode from season two. Of the Learning Can Wait. Podcast I had on Tafshier Cosby, who works for the National Parents Union and one of their pushes is to have families understand what their, what their school has allocated to them and what they've spent so far and what they can spend the money on.

Interesting. And I think that like edification is a really important point because a lot of folks, Don't even know why it is a school might not be spending the dollars. So, yeah. Yeah. From your perspective. Mm-hmm. , what are some of the barriers that schools encounter when trying to spend down this money?

Like, why is it that we had to write this letter? What challenges prohibit that ? Yeah. So many. I think one of the, the first things that comes to mind is EdTech is simply one thing. In a whole list of like a laundry list of things that can be, used with these dollars. And so there are just, there are competing priorities.

You know, if I think about the secretary's priorities around accelerating learning and making sure that we do any sort of learning and recovery for loss instructional time, we need to provide kind of career, pathways, like all of these different pieces. Edtech has to compete with those, and so sometimes it's just not considered or that we have focused so much on.

The devices and the connectivity, whether, whether it was through mobile hotspots or whatever the case may be, that that's where we focus and we haven't put money towards professional learning or we haven't thought about the sustainability of all of these things. And so I think that those are, those are probably the biggest challenges whenever we're looking at spending this.

And then let's be real. Supply chain issues are also a huge problem, . So, you know, the, the money can be spent in mitigation, strateg. For folks to update buildings and make sure that there's, clean air that's coming through through the HVAC systems and the, it is really, really tough to get that to happen right now.

I've heard of stories like from a school district in Virginia that they put an R f P out to come work on the HVAC system to update their HVAC system. They put the RFP out, it was out for 30 days. That's a request for proposals for 30 days. No one bid on. So then they had to repost it for another 30 days.

They finally got two bids, and then the two bids that came in. They chose the one that they ultimately wanted to to go with, and then they could not get the supplies to do the actual work for 18 months. Wow. And so like you're talking about, if these dollars have to quite literally be spent like allocated and spent down by 2024, this long runway of time, like you have to always remember that it can't just be spent tomorrow.

We have these lovely procurement processes in place. For a reason. They're not always done, you know, like very efficiently by any means. In fact, if I were super nerdy and I ever wanted to run for a public office, I think I would run on like expediting and some procurement processes, . But like, we have to think all of that way.

The same thing happened at the beginning, at the beginning of the pandemic with access to devices, right? We had folks that couldn't get computers for. To, you know, nine months and so to, to ensure that continuity of learning. It just, it was really challenging. Yeah. These are, these are big, big rocks, so to speak.

Big rocks talk about theory. These are big boulders. Some might call them. Yeah, that would prevent that. So, Thanks for, thanks for explaining that For listeners who may feel like they don't really, they don't fully understand why the money isn't being, like, there's all this money. You can spend it on your team.

Yeah. You can help them. Like, why are you not spending it? But, you know, for me, I, I also think about the flip side. So like, you get the, the, you buy the thing, you spend the money. Yep. , what are, what are some key challenges you hear, from schools about implementing the tools? Mm-hmm. That they buy, because once you spend the money, there's a whole other thing that you have to implement effectively.

The tools you buy, the services that you purchase, all the things that's a whole other part of this process. Yeah. Yeah, so I think back to when I was in the classroom, I was a part of, so let's, I'll, specifically focus on when I was an EL teacher in a smaller school district in Omaha. So there were six elementary buildings, one middle school, one high school coming from.

The largest school district in all of Nebraska at 54,000 students. This is a very different kind of environment, but I was, I was able to be a part of like the edtech re tool review process, and it was something that we all like kind of just created. We like reached out to other folks across the state and said, Hey, what are you doing?

But then we created our own process with like a basic form so that if a teacher wanted to request a tool, it went through that and then we would meet on a monthly basis, review it. See what it like the application and the, the instructional application and then if we would wanna purchase it. And if there were certain like numbers as far as like how many student licenses you had a price break and like going into all of those specifics, that is not something that all teachers are involved in.

And so in fact, with schools that were really, really far out from any sort of one-to-one program or maybe. Didn't have strong folks at the district level as far as edtech was concerned, they might not have even had that process. And so I think that that has been a huge barrier for folks that are trying to implement different edtech tools because we also know, according to, the Elementary and Secondary School Act, ESSA, that was signed in 2015.

We need to look at tools that are evidence-based. So that's levels one through four. And if they don't have it, which is very often for EdTech because EdTech tools change so quickly, we need to start with a level four, which includes a logic model, which includes, you know, the if then statement. If we implement this app, then we expect this, and then we need to monitor for that.

And that is just not something that everyone is ready. And that, and that's okay. But we have to think about choosing those tools wisely as well and making sure that we're not duplicating like how many folks are using a learning management system in addition to their Google workspace and they have access to classroom, but they're also paying for a learning management system.

Like those types of things where you can possibly reduce some of the redundancies when it comes to tools. So that has been the biggest thing. And I would also say that back to the professional learning. It's, it is not the same to go to that training on X tool as it is to talk about instruction or pedagogy and practice, that we can then integrate a variety of tools to help, serve our students.

Yeah, the, you know, You're naming a, a lot of key issues that I remember when I was a teacher and a school leader that I found challenging about integrating and implementing tools. The professional learning piece is really resonating with me, like when I read the Dear Colleague letter the first time, that's the the big point I took away from it.

What, what schools? Yeah. . Yeah. Yeah. . Point achieve or like, you know, and I think like, you know, when you, there was a, there was a study by LearnPlatform that quoted the number of edtech tools on average schools were using and teachers were using, and everybody's eyes went absolutely to saucers on their faces.

And thinking about even, it was somewhere in the thousands that schools were using like thousands of tools. 1,417 . Okay, good. Thank you so much for having that done, that research prior to this call. I'm just kidding. I think it's probably you're like, this is my job I use, I use that data quite frequently and I know it very well.

Yeah, so, so 1400 tools about. The professional learning on 1400 tools. Yeah. Just from a logistics perspective feels like a barrier. So the culling, you're naming this idea of culling of tools, looking for duplications. Yep. It all goes hand in hand. You can possibly get professional learning that's effective.

Yeah. For 1400 tools in your community. . Right. Unless nobody sleeps and everybody works around the clock, which I would not. No, no. We need boundaries. Boundaries, right? Yeah. We need healthy boundaries around our work and personal lives. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And that's why, so it's, it's not only the, like district-wide, school-wide, maybe grade band wide professional learning.

It's also thinking about hiring coaches to help with this in that process as we are moving to like new instructional models. Again, I keep coming back to this because I think of all the work that I've done in open education, we've seen greater success when they are implementing new instructional models in that process.

So let's look at an inquiry unit. What is our essential question and what are all the resources that that learners can choose from and the tools that will help them in that process. And so, But we, we do need that additional support outside of the classroom teacher taking that all on themselves. And so the coaches can certainly help with that.

any sort of job embedded professional learning. So if coaches maybe aren't an option for your school district, then what about an external consultant that can come in and help with the coaching? And so it, it's also just creating that overall ecosystem of support that we're, we're still missing. And we need everyone kind of on board.

And that's the other thing, like again,the thing that keeps me up at night is that people put away the devices once they came back to in-person learning.And we, we certainly don't want that, but how are we going to successfully integrate into a regular classroom now and develop the support systems for learners and educators in that process?

Seems like a little bit of a call to action for us. Right. It takes everyone, it takes everyone. It's called by like one office in the US government. This is gonna have to be solved by all the peoples. All the peoples. Yeah. With maybe, maybe even a little bit of an onus on the edtech vendors that are creating these tools too, right?

Like we've spoken a lot about the perspective of school leaders and school instructional coaches and teachers and students, but. We kind of omitted the vendors here who have maybe the biggest responsibility Yeah. In seeing this carry through. Yeah, I agree. That is something that we also do as an office.

I mean, our, our office is to develop national edtech policy. We do that through our, our flagship document, the national edtech plan, and then all of the other priorities that we work on. Whether it's publications or convenings and call to action and, and leveraging kind of the bully pulpit of the office, the agency itself, or the president for that matter, but it.

We also bring those developers together, which is not always possible in in other spaces. And so the fact that we want to have, right now we have one of our new team members who is working on accessible edtech, and it's, it's someplace we have. Always consulted our colleagues at OSEP, which is the Office of Special Education Programs that funds all of like the big grant funding to cast to which are the ones who created Universal Design for Learning and our big advocates for accessibility.

But we've never had someone that specifically focuses on that. And so we have a team member that's working on that right now and. It's incredible the conversations that we've had, even as a team to come in and talk about the difference between UDL and accessibility and how do we, how do we think about that through all of our policy making as well.

But it, it goes back to like making sure that we're prioritizing those things, that we can make sure that we're always meeting the needs of learners and educators in that processes, you know, as. That is so incredibly exciting. Yeah, it is. I am, I'm, I'm bringing the developers in. Yes. That's Clutch is key.

It's totally key because it can't just be the, the owners can't just be upon schools to pick the right thing. . Yeah. Like we all have to be aiming with the same goal in mind. I talk a lot, I talk a lot, at dinner parties, also while I'm doing work professionally. Thinking about , thinking about not just like, is it working in edtech?

Are you cooking? But like, who's it working for? Right? Yeah. Like who exactly is it working for? Because not every learner is the same, and not every learner is the same. And just when you think about the number of disabilities that exist, there's like 13, 13 diagnoses, or 13 recognize disabilities, I believe.

And then the sub, the subcategor of. Disabilities that could be set. It's just learners are so unique and so it has very much so everyone's collective responsibility and I love that this has become a focus and has a team like explicitly thinking about this. Yes. That is so cool. Yeah. That is so cool.

We're the, the most interesting thing right now is having conversations with EdTech developers that focus on the development of IEPs. And we know as classroom teachers how cumbersome that paperwork can be, but also how necessary that paperwork can be as well. And making sure that parents and caregivers are involved, making sure that Stu, the students are involved in that process too.

And so even like hearing from the developers how they've created these tools to serve learners and the educators that are supporting them, it's just, it's fascinating. Oh, I'm gonna have to dig into that. I'm gonna have to dig into. Yeah. Kristina, I wanna go back to funding for one more question. Okay. I know we kind of veered away from it on some important topics, but there many folks are concerned about a looming fiscal cliff in 2025, on federal funds.

How are you thinking about the end to ESSER funds as it relates to technology innovation and school adoption? That is the big question, right? ? Yeah. Yeah. No, so we, I mean, that was the, honestly, that was the goal of the Dear Colleague letter was to think about the sustainability of these funds because title funds are there.

We have increased Title I funds in this presidency, so we know that we're going to hopefully, fingers cross continue to advocate for the increase of those. We've also seen more funding towards IDEA. And so it's thinking about the sustainability of the funds as well as leveraging the partnerships, the community partnerships that have been developed throughout the pandemic.

We have seen, whether it's in small rural areas, like really great connections with local telecommunications companies to ensure that kids have home access or, and continuing those partnerships long beyond, the relief dollars. And so that really was the, the original goal of this dear colleague letter.

It is certainly a way for us to think about how to spend down the, the relief dollars, but then for us to think about, moving forward, how are we going to continue that? So I, I don't have the answers other than saying like, there are mechanisms that are already in place for us to continue to think about funding EdTech in general.

And then within that, like the professional learning, the access to the content may, you know, continuing to facilitate the collaboration communication. Not only between educators, but with our parents and caregivers as well. Using those tools, I, I've learned so much about so many different types of tools, or not even edtech specific, but Child Development Center, an early child development center here in Washington, DC.

It's a dual generation program, so the, the majority English learners. And so the parents come and take English classes while their children are in preschool. And so they're teaching the whole family quite literally. And at the beginning of the pandemic, they went straight over to WhatsApp. . And so they were using WhatsApp for like a recipes channel to share at home, and then they had a whole channel for activities to do with like the three-year-olds at home.

And so it's, it's being able to make sure that that collaboration and the communication between our, our school environments and our home environments can continue. And then, of course, the, the continuation of the devices and then the home connectivity as well. Yeah, I appreciate that. I think it's on a lot of people's minds right now.

And of course, and again, just another plug to read the Dear Colleague letter so they can understand some of the perspective that the, office of Educational Technology is really taking on this. So my final question on every episode is, what advice would you give a teacher starting their career and.

You know, given to someone who started their career as a teacher, you can, yeah. Hopefully remember back to them and think about. All right. , what advice would you give knowing what you know now to a teacher who's starting their career? You know what I'm, I'm gonna think about the mental health piece again.

I know that folks have just, I think it's been over just even the past couple of years where we've really had time to slow down because of the pandemic and think about things that we had previously done that maybe we don't want to do anymore. I, I very much consider myself an extrovert, and then now having had more time to be at home and be out on the trail by myself.

Oh my gosh, I, peeing is really hard for me. . Yes. Ok. Yes. I feel the same . So, so there's that. So I would also say, and I don't mean to use like the therapy speak always, but boundaries, like it really comes down to setting some really healthy boundaries. I know that I can say this because I'm not in the classroom anymore.

Continuing to work longer hours beyond your duty hours or working on the weekends, like limit it as much as possible because you need to take care of yourself and it's, it's so trite, but it's put the oxygen mask on yourself first before anyone else. And we could go to all of those kind of like cliches there.

Yeah. But I, I really do think for our, for our newer teachers that are coming into this work, it is like drinking from a fire hydrant. Sometimes you've got this professional learning coming at you. You've got these resources coming at you, you've got everything that's been, talked about on TikTok and Twitter, and you're like, oh my gosh, I have to try.

Choose one thing like, but also have those healthy boundaries so that you're taking care of yourself in that process. What a full circle moment. I, I really appreciate that's the way you went with this, and it is not an answer I've heard before in, in two seasons of recording. So grateful that you named it Kristina.

Oh, thank you. Oh, I'm so glad that I did then . Yeah. Yeah, me too. Me too. I'm like, I'm like sad. End this episode. This has been so rich and so important, and you've shared such valuable insights and information. Kristina, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Of course. I'm so thrilled that I have the chance to share with your audience, and thank you everybody who tuned in listening today.

See you next time.

Thanks for listening to the Learning Can't Wait podcast if you liked what you heard. Please rate, review and share this episode. Be the first to know when we have a new episode by subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts. If you'd like to be a guest on the show or have a suggestion for an episode, email us at podcast@itutor.com.

Grow your teaching staff with just one click. ITutor partners with state licensed teachers from across the US to help schools provide additional instruction to students. Whether you need them part-time or full-time, our educators are standing by to get you started right away. Head to iTutor.com to learn more.