Alec Patton 0:05
this is high tech, high unboxed. I’m Alec Patton. When I was a high school teacher, I’d often have the feeling that I had countless problems and no ideas about how to solve them. Occasionally that was true, but more often, I actually had a different issue, because, in fact, a flood of ideas would come to me throughout the school day, good ideas, bad ideas, tiny tweaks to help one student, and wild visions for completely overhauling my class. So my problem wasn’t actually a lack of ideas. My problem was that I didn’t have a way to capture my ideas, evaluate them, decide which to try, and monitor what happened once I did try them, I can’t tell you the number of times I had an idea, gave it a try and then completely forgot about it. I mean, I literally can’t tell you the number of times because I wasn’t tracking these ideas or these tests. I’m bringing this up because today’s episode is about big, bold, transformative ideas for making schools more humane, inspiring places where everyone can learn. But in particular, it’s about how educators can take those ideas and make them into reality by observing, testing and documenting to host this conversation, I’m excited to welcome back Stacy Callie, Director of the National Coalition for improvement in education. Stacy’s interviewing Cornelius minor, who’s the author of we got this equity access and the quest to be who our students need us to be. He’s also a co founder of the minor collective, and he teaches Middle School. Actually, he’s kind of got a dream gig. He works four days as a teacher and instructional coach, and spends one day a week on research and writing. Stacy has followed Cornelius work for years, but she wanted to talk to him now because she heard him give a truly awesome keynote at this year’s learning forward conference. And speaking of conferences, you still have time to book tickets for the National Summit on improvement in education and for the deeper learning conference. They’re both happening in San Diego from March 30 to April 1 this year in San Diego, California, if you like what you hear in this episode, you’re probably going to be excited about both conferences. So we have a link to a video in the show notes that will help you figure out which conference will conference will be best for you. Now here’s Stacey’s interview with Cornelius minor.

Stacey Caillier 2:08
Cornelius, I’m so happy you are here. I’ve been your fan for a long time, going back to when we were starting our first literacy network. So when you delivered the keynote at this year’s learning forward conference, the vision of education that you described felt so familiar and deeply aligned with my own. You called on all of us to be bold at a time that feels really challenging, to create schools that are life and identity affirming, rooted in possibility and curiosity, cultures where adults and young people are learning together, where we’re compassionate with each other, while also being courageous about redesigning the systems that cause harm.

Stacey C 2:50
What surprised me the most about your talk was how you talked about getting there so without ever using the language of continuous improvement, you laid out an approach that mirrored the heart of improvement, listening deeply to those we serve, slowing down to understand the problem before jumping to solutions, testing ideas on a small scale with colleagues you trust, collecting simple data to know what’s working and what’s not, and then spreading what works so we can do better by more of The young people in our care. So for those of you who are listening, who maybe haven’t yet discovered the magic of Cornelius, let me just tell you that he is a Brooklyn based dad, educator and coach. He’s the author of the fabulous book we got this, which you should definitely order if you have not read it, and the co founder of the minor collective. He works with educators and communities around the world to reimagine literacy, learning and equity by starting where it matters most, listening deeply to kids. And I reached out after that learning forward keynote, because I wanted his brilliance to reach more people, especially those of us invested in continuous improvement and the hard but really hopeful work of building more humane schools. So Cornelius, I’m so grateful that you are here today. Thank

Stacey C 4:25
that’s a big, weird space.

Stacey C 4:42
All right, thank you.

Stacey Caillier 4:45
Okay, well, I want to dig in, because in your keynote, you began by acknowledging the professional heartbreak that many of us as educators are experiencing right now, and I wanted you to just talk a little bit about this professional heartbreak, and how you talked about how it can dull our ability to sense our own power. Can you just riff on that for a little bit?

Cornelius Minor 5:09
I think I’m growing a lot in life period. So not just as an educator, but as a father, as a community member. In so many ways, I am figuring out, like, who I’m still becoming. You know, I just turned 47 which is exciting, but then it presents these challenges where you think you’ve got it made professionally, but then, like, life throws weird things at you. My parents are aging. I just lost my dad. I’ve got kids who are in the throes of being like teenagers and figuring out what life is for themselves. And so all of these challenges start to show up, but then all these feelings accompany those challenges. And so I have become quite an intimate partner to joy and to excitement and to wonder and to curiosity, but also to heartbreak. And so I’m exploring the contours of heartbreak as a person, and then I’m also experiencing life as an educator in 2026 and I am beginning to recognize that those same feelings that I sometimes feel in life, I am also feeling those things professionally. And so as you know, a newly minted 47 year old, I am still developing tools to really figure out what heartbreak means in life, and I realized that as a professional, I’ve got to build those tools as well. And so as I am building those tools, I find that it’s really helpful to talk about them in public. Right? We have this language for how we describe our triumph in public. We have this language for how we describe our discoveries in public, but we don’t have language for how we are exploring the very real sense of heartbreak that we feel when this country is disappearing children and their families off the street, the very real sense of heartbreak that we feel when folks look at teachers and say that you are not qualified to develop your own thinking about What should be in classrooms. So we’re going to sell you this thing in a box. You know, that sense of heartbreak that we feel when communities are turning their backs on education, from the funding level, from the access to books level, all of these things we’re feeling but nobody’s talking about. And so I really just wanted to develop a very public facing and professional language to talk about the things that hurt, right? We talk about the things that happen, but we don’t always talk about the things that hurt. Yeah, I felt like that really landed with folks just those words professional heartbreak. It’s like heartbreak is a really good description of what many of us are feeling right now. Yeah, what I really appreciated about your message was that we can feel that, and we should, and we are powerful, like we have the power to make a difference in students lives by focusing on what matters, getting to the root of what’s really going on for them. And so I just really appreciated that. Thank you. Thank you. And I really have loved everything that has happened. The more I talk about it, the more people volunteer their own and then the more we can come together in community to talk about, Hey, first, this is how we feel. We’re going to feel the feelings, but then after we feel the feelings, or while we’re feeling the feelings, we get to really be creative and do incredible work that a lot of people forget that, you know, the twin sibling of heartbreak is creativity, and so I always want to hold on to that too, that while I am profoundly devastated by some of the things that we feel in our profession and in our communities, I am also keenly like thrilled by and excited by the prospects of what we could do.

Stacey Caillier 8:44
Yeah, I mean, one of the things I’ve been struck by lately is I keep hearing people myself included, talking a lot about navigating or getting through this current moment. And I just really appreciated your encouragement and invitation to instead be bold like in your talk? Yeah, you this was a direct quote that I loved so much. You were like, boldness is innovating different approaches when something isn’t working for our kids. That’s one way we educators get to be bold every day. And so what do you think boldness looks like right now? Like, what dispositions do we need to embrace as we’re trying to be bold, actually. Interestingly, want to start with what boldness doesn’t look like, and here’s why, yeah. Like, as you know, I am a child of the 80s, and I came up on all the 80s media. I was just actually talking with a friend this morning. So the Rocky movies, the Ninja Turtles, the transformers, oh, yeah, right. And as I consider all of this media, I think we were sold an idea of boldness that looks nothing like us, right? We were sold this very kind of masculine, this very aggressive, this very be out in front, kind of boldness. And I just don’t think that that’s how it works most times. You know, as an adult, I’ve gotten an opportunity to read and to experience like love.

Cornelius Minor 9:59
Lots of different communities of people, and the boldest people I find are the mothers in our communities or the listeners in our communities or the healers in our communities. And so when I think about what Boldness is not, it is not this idea that we’ve been sold that it’s the person in the front calling the shots. Boldness is not the loud one or the aggressive one, or the one who boasts about having the best ideas, I think boldness starts it’s the people who listen right, because those are the people who were most keenly aware of what’s actually happening. And so if I want to be bold, for me, step one has always been like, get close to my people and listen. And so you might enter a room, and you might be looking for this very kind of stereotypical idea of boldness, but Boldness is usually like bold. The bold people are the ones who are like quietly listening, and that’s a real thing we think about research. That’s the data collection. And so the person who is boldest is the person who has the most data. And you come at that data in a community by listening to other folks. But then boldness also looks like the people who are gatherers. So who are the people who are willing to extend the invitation for more people to be in the room like the gatherers want to hear from folks, the gatherers want to build alongside people. And so for me, boldness looks like, hey, Stacy, I’m having a really hard time, and I know you’re in the math department and I’m in the English department, but I was wondering if you could come over and think with me for about 15 minutes during your lunch today, because I have this idea, right? That’s bold, like, you know, like gathering, yeah. And that’s really exciting to me, that, like that, I can reach across departments, or reach across the school, or, dare I say, even, you know, reach across the district, that those are really bold moves that, like we are kept in these like instructional and institutional silos that prevent us from being great, right? And so the gatherers that’s bold, but then also the people who are willing to reflect and revise, right? That there’s no easy way forward, right? And so we’re going to make mistakes. Things are going to be weird. And so I’ve been thinking a lot about like, what does it mean to try something completely, fail at the thing, own the failure, and then revise the thing in public. That, to me, feels like bold. And so people who are willing to dream big ideas in community with others, and then make bold attempts. And here’s the thing, that iterative design, like failure, is a part of it, right? But we’ve taken that out of our culture, especially out of school culture, right? And so this idea of embracing iterative design and saying, like, Yep, I tried a thing that was really ambitious, and that was version 1.0 and the thing didn’t work. So here’s how I am revising the thing for version, you know, 1.1 Yep. And really, for me and my team and for the people who are close to me, developing the language and the sense of comfort to talk that way, that’s bold. And so like when I’ve been trying to build what bold is. Bold isn’t me being Donatello from the Ninja Turtles, even though I want to be him bold. Isn’t me being Optimus Prime from transformers, even though I want to be him bold, isn’t me being she ra even though I want to be her bold really is like being willing to listen, being willing to gather and being willing to revise.

Stacey Caillier 13:20
Yeah, I love that so much. And I love also just that Boldness is being willing to make mistakes and, like, own them and learn from them and share that. We’ve often joked about, how fun would it be to have, like, a spectacular failures party, where everybody just comes and shares, like, something that they’ve tried that didn’t work, because we learned so much from those moments, too. I really love that. I mean, one thing that you also talked about in your talk, that I loved was you talked about like Boldness is believing in kids absolutely, and that looks like innovation, flexibility, curiosity, appreciation, not just certainty and judgment, it’s, you know, learning like being that observer, that listener, that gatherer, so that we can actually see them and really show up for them

Cornelius Minor 14:10
Exactly. You know, one of the things I’m learning from my old children, my own children, is that idea that, like so much about being an adult, is about like pretending that you’re certain and so really adopting that stance from like, my own teenagers would be like, All right, like, we’re wildly uncertain about this thing, but we’re moving forward. Yeah, we’re gonna figure this out together, and we’re moving because you feel like this is the right way to go for you. And so as an adult in the space, to be able to look at my teenagers, to be able to look at the kids at school and to say, All right, I’m going to trust that this is the thing that’s going to challenge you and grow you. And so even though it’s unfamiliar to me, even though it feels strange to me, we’re going to be moving in this direction. We’re going to figure this out together. And so Boldness is that trust that we can be in community.

Cornelius Minor 15:00
With teenagers. We can be in community with first graders. We can be in community with like, university folks, and we can trust that they know what’s best for them, and we can work it out together.

Stacey C 15:12
Yeah, I feel like that’s what wisdom is, too, is realizing all the things that you really are not certain of. There’s just so much as I get older as well. I’m 49 coming on 50, and I’m like, dang, I’m less certain than I ever was. Yeah. So I wanted to talk about a story that you shared in your keynote that kind of grounded your whole talk, because I loved it so much, and there’s so much, so many dimensions to it that I want to unpack with you. It was a story about kids hanging out in the halls during class, and the evolution of what you noticed, what you learned, what you ultimately did, how it was different from those early assumptions. Maybe can you just share the story of the kids hanging out in the hall during class.

Cornelius Minor 16:02
Yeah, you know. And I think before I share that story, I want to frame it in the language that we’re using, right, continuous improvement, right, like and one of the things that I want to acknowledge is before we had proper nouns to describe things, we had these communal practices that we engaged in and and so a lot of who I am becoming, I have borrowed from some of our foremothers. And so I think about Fannie Lou Hamer, who really spent time in community with folks, listening and determining what people needed, not just believing what the label was, not just believing what the visitors description was, but like really listening to people. I’m thinking about foremothers like Elaine Brown, who was the first woman to lead the Black Panthers in Oakland, right? And who really sought to understand what community needs are. And so, you know, as I tell these stories, one of the things I’m always doing is I’m always borrowing from the wisdom of our foremothers, and really kind of thinking about, well, what would these people have done, or what questions would they have asked, or what assumptions would they discard as they sought to learn more, and as wise as I try to be still make these profound mistakes, because, you know, we I share that we have these boys in and I’m in mostly seventh and eighth grade spaces and

Stacey C 17:21
married to a middle school educator.

Cornelius Minor 17:23
Shout out to all my middle school people. But like, we have these boys, and they they exist in almost every middle school, and I can never figure them out, right? They’re the ones who, they come into class and they sit, they’ll take out the pencil, the notebook, they’ll do the thing for maybe two or three minutes, and then usually about four minutes into class, like, they’ll raise a hand and they’ll ask to go to the bathroom, and then those kids stay gone, 3540 minutes, right? And the bathroom pass is gone. No one else can go. You’re trying to figure out, where are they? Where’d Kevin go? Like, you’re just like, you know. And for us, it became worrying, because we have about four boys in one of the cohorts that engage in this ritual regularly. And so they’ll come, they’ll leave, and so we’ve got about four boys who are missing two to three days of instructional time each week because they’re in the bathroom, and we know they’re not really in the bathroom, right? We know this, right? No one stays in a public school bathroom for 35 minutes. That’s just not the place to be. But they’re in the hallway, and what they do is they walk down the hallway and they gather other friends, and then so next thing you know, especially in my school, you we have the end of the hallway, and they’re this place where the two hallways meet, and it’s just out of security cameras, so security can’t see you if you hang out in that corner. The teachers can’t really hear you if you hang out of that corner, and so they just hang out there. And they have like, you know, they have party time. But what’s weird is my room is down there, and so I hear them, right? And so I have the great professional misfortune of being the one that has to stick my head off the door, you know? And All right, boys go back to class, you know, like, I’m that guy, right? And nobody wants to be that guy, because, yeah, it’s, it’s hard to be that person. And so you stick your head out the door, and those kids, they look at you, they shoot, you mean, looks, you know, if they’re feeling really spicy, they’ll talk, you know, like all the things, right? Yep, and, and it just became this battle, and I didn’t want it to be, because that’s not who I want to be as a professional. And I was really trying to figure it out. And I remember one day almost like being near tears, not the sad tears, but like the angry tears, like the ones like, I cannot get this thing to go. I’ve got kids like, again, four children missing three to four instructional periods a week is not okay. I mean, even it guys like just doing the math. If I have a classroom at 25 one kid is 4% and so four children I’m looking at, 16% of my class is in the hallway. That’s just not okay. And so I’d gone. To the health teacher about this, and he’s like, Yeah, I’m feeling the same thing. And then the social studies teacher, yeah, she’s like, Yeah, I’m feeling the same thing. And we kind of noticed the trend, they’re all escaping in the first four minutes. And so we asked ourselves, what is it about the first four minutes of class that makes children want to escape? Right? Because all these kids can’t be, quote, unquote bad kids like, right? And in educator circles, sometimes we can be quick to label, and I’ve learned over time that there’s no such thing as a bad kid. We know this, right, that no kid comes to school as a bad kid. Parents send us their best kids, right? And so we’re like, what is it about the first four minutes, if we were to invert the question and really kind of think about class structure, what is it that’s happening in a learning environment in the first four to six minutes that’s turning kids away from us and driving them into the restroom or into the hallway? And so we couldn’t figure that out. So then we asked the question, well, what would happen if we rewrote the first four to six minutes of class in a way that made kids a feel welcome, and then imbued a sense of like radical possibility that if after the first four minutes, every kid felt like, Oh, this is something that I can be successful at. And so what that’s what we did. We decided to rewrite the first four minutes of each class to feature activities that were social in nature, activities that were inclusive, and activities that people could feel successful at and feel this sense of radical possibility. And then we just decided to measure it. So we’re like, we’re going to rewrite the first four minutes, and we’re gonna do that for 10 days. 10 days is two weeks of school time, and we’re just gonna see what we observe when we do that. And so we did that for 10 days,

Cornelius Minor 21:38
and there were three big observations that we discovered. The first was, of course, that more kids were in class most of the time, like fewer kids tried to escape after the first four minutes. And so that was a win, like right there. That was a major win. And another thing that we discovered is that kids were more willing to share with each other. And so what was fascinating is they were less willing to share with us but more willing to collaborate with each other. And so that was an interesting thing. We’re like, okay, they talk less to us when we do collaborative welcoming activities in the first four minutes, but they talk more to each other. And that’s kind of a win. That’s a learning win, that they’re talking less to us and more to each other. And then the last thing that we discovered was they were more likely to actually be on time, like, you know, you know, and so they wouldn’t breeze in, you know, late or tardy. I hate that word. School is the only context where use the word tardy, and I want to do an investigation of that word at some point, and that’s a whole nother podcast, but like, but we had these but we had these findings. And then we’re like, oh, we think we discovered something. And so the three of us, it was me, the gym and health teacher, the social studies teacher, and then we went to go get the math teacher, and we’re like, look, here’s what we discovered. We discovered that if you do your first four minutes like this, kids are less likely to be late, less likely to escape, more likely to talk to each other,

Cornelius Minor 23:04
and and so then she tried it. And so then there was, like, four of us who were like, We think we’re on to something. And then she, because she’s really outgoing, the math teacher was like, we should lead the whole staff, PD, and share with them what we discovered. And so then we, like, went to the whole school, and we’re like, hey, we know that all of you are probably experiencing the same thing that we’re experiencing on the seventh grade Hall. So here’s the thing that we discovered on the seventh grade hall that we think might work for everybody. And so it was this really beautiful thing where, you know, I think the hardest part of all that for me, there was this day where I had gone to the dentist. I had my first cavity, and I had to get filled. And I have my dentist is strange. So my dentist can only see me, like, 943 like weird dentist times. And so I had to, like, come to school, leave school, go get a cavity filled, and then come back to school. And when I was coming back one day, I came back at this awkward time that I’m not usually in the hallway, and I ran into six boys in the hallway, and it was a very difficult moment, because it’s usually the part of the day where they have free reign of the hallway. But because I was an adult in the hallway, I kind of saw them doing their thing, and then they saw me seeing them. So it was just like a really strange moment and but before I went to teacher anger, why are you in the hallway? I went to teacher inquiry, and my brain was like, Oh my gosh, these aren’t boys who are escaping class because they’re horrible people. These aren’t boys who are escape in class because they have no disregard for rules. I looked at the six of them and I was like, these are the six kids who struggle most profoundly with reading, you know. And so what i. Realized was we didn’t have a hallway problem, we had an engagement problem, we had a reading problem. But what happens in school space often is we treat the symptom and not the root cause. And so what me and my colleagues were able to do, we were able to really look at what are the root causes here, what is the thing that’s driving kids out of classroom space, and it is not any kind of irresponsibility or any kind of flaw. Rather, it is like and I think this is true of both you and I, Stacy, like both of us. I think if we were put in space in front of our peers and forced into doing things that made us feel like less than or made us feel inferior, we would escape too. And so they were they were engaged in the real human response, like this is what I’m going to do. I’m feeling embarrassed, I’m feeling isolated, I’m feeling like alone, I’m feeling singled out. I’m going to escape to some sense of community and safety. And so I think what I’m interested in under this umbrella of boldness, what I’m interested in is just not accepting the diagnosis that some kids are bad or that some kids are disobedient, or that some kids aren’t built for school, that everybody is built for school, every Well, everybody’s built for learning, right? Like, you know, like, yeah, yeah, everybody.

Stacey C 26:21
Schools may not be built for our kids, but every kid learning.

Cornelius Minor 26:25
Yeah, everybody’s built for learning. And so like, I think just asking big questions and making like, big attempts is the way forward, especially in 2026 where we’re in this moment where there is so much debate about, like, the right way to go in literacy and math and, you know, special education. And people spend so much energy on the debate, very little energy on the children. And so I am not interested at all in debating anymore, and I am more interested in innovating in community space where the people are,

Stacey C 27:03
yeah, yeah. Oh my gosh. Cornelius, there’s so many things about this story that I want to, like double click on and dig into. I mean, one of the things that I think is really striking, like I’ve written in other places, about rational disengagement. How, like, when kids are disengaging, it is a rational process. They are reacting like in the same way that you’re saying like we would to context, where they don’t feel safe or celebrated or like they can be successful or powerful. And so I think what I love about that moment of you like noticing the pattern, oh, it’s always in the first four minutes, but then getting curious about, like, what’s underneath that, why is that happening? And the question kind of putting it back on us to like, what can we do in the first four minutes that are going to help kids feel like, like it’s possible, like they’re powerful, and how can we restructure what we’re doing. I just think that’s such a powerful thing, because we misdiagnose the problems all the time. Like, I love that inside of like, we don’t have a hallway problem, we have a reading problem, and then the things you try are totally different from the things you would try, if you’re just accepting that you have a reading problem or a hallway problem. So it also just makes me think about like, you know, boldness is not falling back on the same old tropes or telling yourself the same old story, like Boldness is being open to telling yourself a new story and discovering what that story is. And I would love to hear just a little bit of how, how do you think we can support each other to, like, build that muscle of looking past the symptom and getting to the root cause and really avoiding, like, jumping to solutions before we really understand the problem?

Cornelius Minor 28:55
Yeah, yeah. You know, there’s, I have a very, like, wise colleague who refuses to let me tell just one story. And so every time I talk to her about how the classroom is, she asked me, and this is her exact word, she always says to me, what if that wasn’t the story? What else could the story be? And so if I come to her and I’m like, yeah, the kids keep leaving class, and they keep asking for the bathroom pass, and they don’t like, you know, they’ll never come back for like, 3540 minutes. She’s like, All right, put that to the side. What if that wasn’t the story? Tell it again. And then I have to really think. I’m like, Oh, the kids maybe feel isolated, and so they leave to find community, you know, like, but I have to, like, I have to, like, actively not accept, yeah, the easy explanation, or the story that’s going to kid blame, or the story that’s going to like shift responsibility to some other place that like, and so that practice of holding each other accountable by refusing to accept the cliche story you know. And I think in school spaces, sometimes the cliche story is that, oh, these kids aren’t like they used to be, oh, they’re on their screens too much, or oh, they’re not as respectful as they used to be last year. You know, these are these cliche things, right? That we and so to have a friend in the building who will never let me rest on a cliche story, I think is important. So I’m kind of passing that forward, you know, like naming that that that’s been really, like powerful, and it was really interesting, because, like in Lauren, Lauren Scott is who I’m naming. She is a principal now, but as we’ve grown together, I always go back to that like that, she would never let me be in the same like this, like, cliched story. And then another thing that like has been really, really helpful, just for my own self esteem and for my own sense of like, well being as a practitioner, there’s so much about this historical moment that has taken power away from teachers, right? We are handed scripts go teach the thing you need to be on page four, when we say you need to be on page four, you need to be on minute 20, when we say you need to be on minute 20, right? That’s disempowering, right? There’s so much about this historical moment that has taken power away from teachers, and so I am really hugging the question, like, what can I do? And in a real way, like, and, and I think about that question in all of the nuanced ways, like, you know, like, it’s this idea that, like, I have power here, you know, that I am not powerless, even though there are so many messages in our contemporary ecosystem that say that we are, or so many messages that say that, like, oh well, wait to ask permission from this one. Or wait to like, you know, and so like, really asking that question, like, what can I do? And sitting with that question. And so anytime I’m looking at conditions in a classroom, I’m looking at conditions in the hallway. I’m getting used to doing this in community, where we just look at each other. I’m like, What can we do here? And we just like, don’t allow ourselves. Because, like, I think, you know, there’s a saying, you know, Frantz Fanon, who wrote The Wretched of the Earth and black skin and white mask, and so many, like really powerful, like decolonial books, one of the things that he says, The last place the oppressor leaves is your mind, right, you know? And so, so really, kind of adopting this belief that there’s a thing that I can do here and and I won’t let that go ever. And so when I’m thinking about this moment, I’m thinking about who we are as practitioners. Those have been the practices that have really kept me institutionally safe and kept me curious.

Stacey C 32:50
Yeah, yeah. I love that we all need a Lauren in our lives saying, What else might it be?

Cornelius Minor 32:58
Yes, exactly, exactly.

Stacey C 33:01
Yeah, I want to go back to to this idea that, like you came up with this because you were asking, What can we do? What can we do? You came up with this idea that was, like a bold idea. You didn’t just try it once. You tried it, like over 10 days with a couple trusted colleagues, and just this idea of we don’t have to tie ourselves in knots trying to do everything on a large scale right at the beginning. It’s actually wiser, and in some cases bolder, to take a bold idea and start it on a small scale. Recruit some close friends, set a goal you can measure simply. Essentially, you guys were asking, like, we try this thing, how will we know if it’s getting better? Well, your kids will be in the hallway and kids will be more engaged in class. Like these are really simple, observable things, data to gather. And sometimes I feel like we so over complicate this idea of data that we lose sight of what we’re actually trying to do, which is just to know if something’s working or not for ourselves.

Cornelius Minor 34:09
Yeah, it’s well, it’s like the idea that data has become a proper noun that is not owned by us, right? It’s owned by, you know, whoever you’re paying your money to to like, you know, set your kids in front of machines. And so they were kind of like in this very radical way, taking back the idea of data that like that data is things that we observe in our classrooms that we can use to inform our teaching tomorrow. It’s really powerful to

Stacey C 34:34
know, yeah, are there particular pieces of that kind of data that you have found most useful in your practice or things that you find yourself keen into over and over again to know if what you’re doing is working.

Cornelius Minor 34:47
Yeah, my favorite form of data that, like I have been using recently, is and I do this religiously every day, where I will stop right when it’s time to clean up about three minutes before the bell and. People are putting things in backpacks, and I will ask people outright, like, Can you name for me one thing that worked for you as a learner today? Like, and so that’s your exit question. What’s one thing that worked for you as a learner, and what’s one thing that absolutely did not work for you as a learner? And those have become the defining questions of my practice that like, what worked for you today, what did not work for you today. And I think it’s really important that young people see me writing this down, and so while they’re talking like I write it down, and then tomorrow I bring it back up. I say, so yesterday, some of you named that this thing worked really well for you, so I am replicating that practice. Yesterday. Some of you mentioned that this thing was not working out so well for you, so I refine that part of the practice. So what you’ll notice in today’s lesson is we’re going to do a little bit more of this, a little bit less of this. And the way that kids come to life when you name their idea in public space, totally is arresting. It is completely, like, it’s really, really powerful. And so, you know, people all the time ask me, they’re like, Cornelius, how come the kids listen to you? And I’m like, Well, I listen to them. Listening is not unilateral, like, right? It’s like, it’s, you know, it’s a thing that we can invest in, really and so, but that has been, I wish I would have known to do that 25 years ago, but that has been the single most transformative thing in my practice. Just like asking kids, like, what worked well for them, what about today worked really well for them, and then going home and really thinking about it be like, okay, they told me that when they had opportunities to share their ideas in a low stakes way, that worked really well for them. And so how do I ensure that they get opportunities to do that as often as possible?

Stacey C 36:51
Yeah, I love that so much, because I think a lot of times, even when we ask kids, what’s working and what’s not for them, we don’t always loop back to share, like, here’s what I heard, which is so important, because then, like, you’re saying, then they know you’ve been listening, otherwise they don’t know that we’ve been listening. And so I just love, I mean, that’s one of the things I loved about your book, too. We got this, you talk a lot about listening to kids, like, not as, like, this slogan or something we do, like, in words, but like as a daily practice that we enact Absolutely And so, like, what do you have other tips for us who are wanting to listen to young people in ways that will change, like, adult thinking and decision making? Like anything you’ve learned?

Cornelius Minor 37:39
Yeah, you know, it’s, it’s kind of funny. I I’m also, I also worked, and I have to shout out all these people. These are all some of my, like, Brooklyn mentors. But I had a colleague who eventually became a principal, who eventually became a district person, but like, we would have, like, staff meetings, and she would insist that if you’re going to talk about kids, kids need to be at the table. And so we would be having professional learning. We would be having plan time. And she would always insist that, like, kids sat at the table with us, and the way that that started to inform practice was almost immediate, yeah, like, because, like, there are things that I learned that I’m like, Oh, I’m afraid to say this at the table if a kid is sitting here. And then I had to ask myself, well, should that thing be said? Then, anyway, like, you know, like, if we’re not willing to say it in front of a kid who’s got equal skin in the game, like, then we probably shouldn’t be saying it at any planning table. It’s this idea. You know, during the disability rights movement in the 70s, there was a slogan, nothing about us without us, and that, like, I think that that really exemplifies that belief that we’re going to do planning here, but we cannot without students putting at the table, or we’re going to do professional learning here so that we can be in better service to kids, but we cannot do that professional learning without students at the table. And so making that transparent has been really, really powerful for me. And so that’s been a thing that has really reoriented my stance just having kids at the table, like, what does it mean to ask this question about my practice with a kid sitting here, you know? And what does it mean, then to honor their feedback, or to honor how they might see a thing that has been really, really big. But then Stacey, another thing for me, and I’m at the point of my career now where some of the people that I that were kind of like the established people in the building when I started are now starting to retire. So so people that I came up with, and I’m looking around, I’m like, Oh, I’m it’s you now, yeah, I’m the old dude here now. And so I have spent a lot of time, like listening to some of the old timers. That has been one of my. Favorite things to do. And I think, and I can be honest here, I think sometimes the way that we listen is steeped in a kind of institutional lore that leans toward the toxic right that that sometimes when teachers get together and talk about kids or talk about practice, sometimes we lean toward the toxic. And so I have really been investigating, what does it mean to listen to people’s highlight reels, right? You know, I’m a huge basketball fan, and we watch those old videos of Michael Jordan, they string together all the highlight reels. You know, you watch these old videos of like Dr J or Kobe Bryant, and they string together the highlight reels. And so I’ve been sitting with some of the old timers, and I just want to hear their highlight reels. Like, I mean, like, what was the year that, like, social studies really became the thing for you? Or can you tell me about the one field trip that really kind of changed your relationship to kids? Or can you tell me about the moment where you know, and so, like, those things that people have so much wisdom like my fear is that as things change so rapidly in our country, right, we’re watching the Department of Education be dismantled, right? And, and I don’t fear the loss of institutions. I fear the loss of institutional wisdom, right? And, and so I have personally been wanting to warehouse just the experience of the people who are retiring, the people who are leaving districts and really asking the nuts and bolts questions like, How did you do that thing? So tell me about the one field trip that changed the trajectory. Change your relationship to kids. All right. How did you do that? How did you organize it? What did you do? Who did you ask for support? That has been some of the best professional learning for me, just allowing like people to tell their stories. And I am lucky that I’m in a position where I get to go around and talk to different people, and so that I get to, like, learn from people in that way. And so those are kind of my top three, like, when I find myself professionally frustrated or heartbroken, the thing that usually lifts me out of that is hearing about other people’s like experiences,

Stacey C 42:09
yeah, yeah. I still think of when I first came to high tech, high I spent the first three years basically the shadow to one of our founders, Rob Reardon, who’s like, we refer to him as Yoda. I mean, he’s, like, so wise and just like magical. And it was completely transformative for who I was as an educator, as a human, to spend that much time with him and just, you know, he had, like, hard fought wisdom over decades of doing this work in really different contexts that, yeah, it was really powerful, and we can’t lose we can’t lose that. I mean, I have one more question, unpacking a story that’s like a little bit but, but I really want to ask it, because one of the things you also talked about in that keynote is you were cautioning, folks, as you’re trying something new, don’t worry about getting buy in from everyone. And you and you said this quote Many a great idea has died on its way to consensus. And I, like, laughed and cried when I heard this, because a norm, a norm that the founders of high tech, high Rob, being one of them, kind of insisted on whenever somebody proposed a new idea or something to try, was like, you don’t need to do it, but you can’t prevent others from doing it. Was the norm, and it was a way of encouraging innovation, of like, giving new ideas a chance. And, you know, as an improver, I really embrace the power of testing bold ideas on a small scale, not burning a bunch of energy and goodwill trying to get everybody on board with ideas that are like half baked, you know, because there will be failures, so there will be learning that needs to happen, but once we’ve discovered something that actually works for kids, then I want to spread that and get more folks on board so more kids can benefit in the same way that your story kind of ALEC, we started with this, and then this teacher got on board, and then we’re doing a PD, because we’ve learned some stuff we want other people to know. But what anything else that you’ve learned about, like how to nurture ideas so they kind of can get a fair shot and then help those good ideas spread?

Cornelius Minor 44:33
Yeah, I think two things, and this word is overused, and so I’m saying this with great caution. We talk often about transparency, and so I want to be really clear like that. I’m really been interested in transparency, that if I want an idea to have time to grow, if I want that seed to germinate, I’ve got. To be transparent about what I’m doing. Here is what I’m doing, and here’s why I’m doing it. But the way that I engage in transparency has shifted. I don’t believe in telling anymore. I believe in showing. So, yeah, so, so, so it’s like, hey, Stacey, come to the room, because we’ve been trying this thing in the first four minutes. And I want you to watch how some of our heavy hitters so I’m talking about Devin, I’m talking about Sean. I want you to watch how some of our heavy hitters now engage in the first four minutes. And so I no longer hate telling you, hey, here’s the thing that we’re doing, but I am like actively inviting you to the room to come experience it with me. And for me, that kind of transparency feels undeniable, that like, you know, because I’m asking you to come see the students that you care about, I’m asking you to come see them in a different context, and I’m asking you to come see them in a different light, right, you know? And so, so if we want change, we can’t just be descriptive. We have to be visionary that like people cannot walk toward a horizon that they can’t see. And so I have become obsessed with providing vision for people, right? Because if they only have my vision to go off of that means you got to really trust me, and I don’t have that kind of intimacy with everybody yet, right? But if I can show you the vision and you can see it for yourself, then we can walk together. And so I am less into descriptive these days, in pursuit of consensus, and more into being demonstrative. Yeah, and so I think, and that’s how policy fails, right? Because policy is descriptive, right? That’s how so much of traditional leadership fails, because so much of traditional leadership is to do the thing, trust me, right? Very little of traditional leadership is Invitational and and truly visionary. Hey, come with me. We’re going to go see the thing together, and then we’re going to think about how we architect the path toward that thing and so so as I mature, I think a lot of my leadership is changing. Yeah, I talk way less now show a whole lot more.

Stacey C 47:20
I mean, that completely resonates with me as well. I think just being at High Tech High now, 18 years, we’ve always been kind of like, we can’t just talk about it. We people have to see it. But even in in our improvement networks that we lead like I think one of the things that’s been most powerful has been it’s not just like writing up your ideas, it’s actually taking folks to visit a school that’s doing amazing things with kids who look a lot like the kids they serve, too, and having them experience like what that looks like, and be able to unpack it together and kind of figure out what does the course look like for me to for us, To be enacting this in our setting. Just the scene is really and experiencing is really important. I mean, one of the things that I have such a deep appreciation for the ways that you and your work attend to the importance of doing this work in community, like, you know, a theme and everything you say is like, we cannot do this alone. We do this together. I know you’re thinking a lot about community right now, what it means to you, and I was really struck in your talk, how you talked about that. You know, another way we are bold is collaborating and moving through conflict and disagreement, because it’s inevitable in community. And I’m going to quote you again. I just keep quoting you. I took a lot of great notes. Cornelius, you said, you know, we can be soft on people and hard on the systems that cause harm, and I’d love to hear from which is a norm that we often say, like, soft on the people, hard on the content. That’s like, a norm kind of we we’ve had for years. But what does that look like in practice to you, especially when change feels really personal or emotional or messy?

Cornelius Minor 49:09
Yeah, there was a moment in contemporary progressive culture where in our race to brighter tomorrows. It kind of became a purity test, right? I eat more whole grain oats than you do, or I do like, like, or I, you know, or I work at more co ops than you work at. Or like, you know, that it like that, that contemporary progressive thought was kind of infiltrated by these, like, holier than thou sentiments, and that really worried me, because, like, I’m wildly imperfect. You’re wildly imperfect all of us. Like, I eat whole grain oats and I like barbecue, right? Like, and so, like. So, so we’re all so complex, right, you know? But the same thing happened in school culture, right? Where there was this race to brighter tomorrows, and so it became this series of like purity challenges, and that just doesn’t serve anybody. And so I was really thinking, I want to be really forgiving of and soft with, like, people, of course, like, because we all have these complicated humanities, like, right? We all have these complicated identities. And the problem is never the people. The problem is always a system. You know? It is a way of doing things that does not serve students, that does not serve the adults who love and educate them. But when we go and we have these conversations, if we’re not careful, we end up blaming people. Well, it’s Stacy’s fault because, you know, she believes in, you know, doing stuff on screens with kids. She had a Kahoot the other day, and, you know, if she was old school like me, you know, you know, or, Oh, it’s this person’s fault because, you know, they let the kids walk around the classroom, and they have flexible seating. And if they were hardcore like me, those kids would be in their seats, right? And so we get in these conversations where we’re blaming each other, and really I’m like, what if that were to stop? What if we were to kind of all pause and really look at, well, what are the systems here that are preventing us from being fully human? What are the systems here that are preventing students from being fully themselves and fully curious, fully present. Let’s talk about those things and so. So it’s just a stance that I have really been thinking a lot about, especially whenever I have an opportunity to stand on a big stage in front of administrators and superintendents, I want because, like, that’s when things get really dicey, right? Like, when we start having these professional conversations, you know, people use these frameworks that we’ve been blessed to, you know, use, but then these frameworks get perverted, right? So we have this Danielson Framework, but now it’s toxic, right? Like, so all these frameworks get, you know, and so really, to say, hey, our people are all on a journey of being the best that they can be, and at various points on the journey, I’m gonna show up in a lot of imperfect ways. I’m gonna show up in a lot of ways that are flawed. I’m gonna show up in a lot of ways that illuminate the areas where I still need to grow and learn. So I’m gonna show up as a human that doesn’t mean that I don’t belong in this school like, right? You know, that doesn’t mean that we don’t belong in the school together. And so again, how can we make space for the imperfection of the humans who attend school and work at school while being really hard on the systems that prevent those people from being the best that they can be? I think that’s a relatively easy thing to do if we take the

Stacey C 53:03
time, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. It makes me think about, I mean, one of the reasons I even fell in love with improvement at the beginning was just this shift from like, focusing on people to focusing on systems. And you know, when we’re spending all of our time in righteous judgment, blaming other folks, we’re actually letting the systems just kind of continue on as they’ve always been, and we’re not changing anything. It also makes me think about Elena Aguilar, like, talks about like people can’t learn from you if you think they suck, yeah, which people can feel it when you think they suck, and there’s, there’s not really a way forward from that. So I just really appreciate that, I mean, and this is kind of going back to something you mentioned earlier, but you talked about how, like, there’s this balance, because in loving communities, we need to tend to tend to each other, be compassionate with each other, not be so holier than how that we can’t like see each other as imperfect humans, all doing our best, and we also need to move each other along. And you talked about how, you know sometimes in doing this work, it can be really easy to fall in love with the pain points, or fall in love with the pain, and spend all of our time and energy kind of talking about the pain, what’s going wrong. And when you said this, when you mentioned like, you know, sometimes we take so much time talking about the pain points, we fall in love with the pain. There were like, Uh huh across the audience. I mean, it really like people, clearly, you hit, hit on something, and you actually recommended a protocol of sorts. You were like, Yeah, you get two minutes to complain about what’s wrong. We need to acknowledge that we can’t stay there. So is there anything? Else you’ve learned about, like, how do you support people and each other, yourself and moving past the pain so we can get to that informed action?

Cornelius Minor 55:11
Yeah, no. And I think that’s exactly it. Just like, there is enough about school that’s hard and and so acknowledging that it’s hard, and then really protecting the space to do two things, to work toward better realities that aren’t as hard, and then to be engaged in just joyful community with each other. Because there’s also a lot about school That’s hella funny, and there’s a lot about school that’s like, cute, and there’s a lot about school, yeah, and there’s a lot about school that’s like, weird, you know, like yesterday, I spent, you know, probably 30 minutes debriefing the Grammys. I don’t know when this is going to air, but we are recording this on February 3, and the Grammys just aired this weekend, and so I had all kinds of like, weigh ins about wardrobe and song selection. And it was just really joyful to be in community with kids and colleagues while people talked about, like, Lady Gaga song, right? And and I think everybody that knows me knows that, like, I absolutely adore her music. And so it was just really fun, just to be around kids like, and so to be like, Yo, I can be here talking about all the things that are broken, and we’re already doing that work, right, and we’re already making those sacrifices, and we are already spending the extra time and investing in kids and so protecting the space to just like, laugh together. Some of the kids were giving me wardrobe suggestions. They’re like, well, if you like Lady Gaga, you need to do more of it and like, and I’m like, there will never be a day where I, as your educator, will wear feathers. But like, thanks for the suggestion. But like, but that’s, but that’s like, it’s just fun. Like, you know, and even like, coming home last night out of everything that happened yesterday at school, thing that made me smile the most before I went to bed was just that silly conversation about, like, you know, celebrities in their wardrobe selection, you know, I think those things are important, yeah,

Stacey C 57:17
yeah, those moments of joy and delight are also, it’s like we, we sometimes approach them like they’re a nice to have, but they’re so essential for young people and adults like all of us moving through the world and in schools and to keep the good work going. Okay, I want to end with something that you said in your closing, which you said in 2025 now 2026 we can move informed by our own experience. We don’t have to wait for experts to tell us what to do. We can innovate alongside our young people. And right now, you know, I hear, as I said at the beginning, lots of people talking about getting through, navigating. And I just really appreciated that you noted there was a profound difference between moving through and boldly facing difficulty, and that moving through implies we need to just wait. Hold on. It doesn’t really address the reality, but boldly facing means we acknowledge the reality, but also the possibility that, in your words, again, we are the architects of our experience. And so just this profound message of like, we have agency, we can be the architects. And I’m just would love to end with like, what does that look like for you in 2026 it

Cornelius Minor 58:39
just looks like believing myself like, you know, like I had a soccer coach one time who was an expert, like he used to work with, like the Olympic team. He was, like, a certifiable, like, expert in soccer. And I remember one time going to him, and I’m like, yo, this dude on the left side is, like, grimy. This guy is playing dirty, like this guy on the left side, like, we got to do something about it, and it can’t just be 125 pound me and my soccer coach, who is the expert. He’s like, Well, that can never happen. That’s not within the rules of the game. So that’s not happening. And I’m like, No, I am telling you my experience is telling you that this dude on the left side is grimy. And he’s like, no, no, that can’t be. He would never do that. Like the rules of the game state you can’t do that. So that would never happen. And he really that my experience was not correct. My experience, my teenage expertise, was saying, this kid is grimy, right? But my coach, the global expert was just like, Well, theoretically, that could never possibly happen, so it’s not happening. And so the plays that he was asking us to execute wouldn’t work, because this kid was being grimy, and I remember having a decision to make. I was like, okay, he’s asking me to execute this play. My expertise is telling me that it’s not going to work, because I’m seeing. In this seeing this kid like not do what he’s supposed to do. And so I have this choice between trusting the expertise of this institution or trusting the expertise of my experience. And at that time in life, I was too young to understand how valuable it was to trust my own experience. And as I look back on that moment now as a teacher, I recognize how many times we’re asked to trust the expertise of outsiders while ignoring the expertise revealed to us by our own eyes and experiences. And so I am really trying to move to a place personally and collectively, where people feel comfortable to say to themselves that this thing is happening. I see it, I feel it, I experience it, and I can do something about it, alongside what the experts are saying, despite what the experts are saying, while the experts are saying, you know, I think that that is a real important tension to continue to explore, and I’ve yet to resolve it right, like, you know, there are real moments where experts are barking things that contradict what my experience is showing me. And living in that tension is an important professional responsibility. I think ignoring that tension has gotten us to where we are now, yeah, and we can’t always resolve it, but just like living in it, just to be like, there is a tension here, my eyes and experience are showing me a thing that the experts on the sidelines can’t see, because they’re all the way on the sidelines, you know? And so I think that that should important thing that I want to leave with people, that we will continue to feel that, and that you feel that does not mean that you’re a bad practitioner, that you feel that does not mean that you’re, you know, you’re not a good employee, that you feel that simply means that you’re human and that classrooms are nuanced, and you were the right kind of human for a nuanced experience. If you continue to listen, if you continue to try new things, if you continue to reflect on your experience, and if you continue to work in

Stacey C 1:02:11
community. Thanks, Cornelius, is there any other anything else you want to say before we close?

Cornelius Minor 1:02:18
I’m really happy to be here. Stacy, just like thank you for the work that you all are doing. It feels really, really good to have peers in this way and to be seen and to be validated and so like for all of the listeners on this podcast, please know that like we see you, we appreciate you. You’re getting all the virtual high fives and hugs from us. Thank you for not just your dedicated service to kids and community, but for your real like dedicated attention to your own growth. I think that that’s what 2026 needs, and I’m happy to work and be a colleague alongside all of you.

Stacey C 1:02:55
All right, thank you so much, Cornelius, we appreciate you so much. Excellent.

Alec Patton 1:03:05
High tech. High unboxed is hosted and edited by me Alec Patton. Our theme music is by brother Herschel. Huge. Thanks to Stacy Callie and Cornelius minor for this conversation. In the show notes, you can find links to Cornelius’s work, as well as the National Summit for improvement in education and the deeper learning conference. Thanks for listening. You.