Michael Conner: [00:00:00] Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome to another episode of Voices for Excellence. I am your host, Dr. Michael Conner, CEO, and founder of the Agile Evolutionary Group, and of course the proud host for VFE and today's guest. Yes, we are in our black excellent series celebrating Black History Month, and we have known other than.

Michael Conner: Someone that I just absolutely adore look up to his work, specifically his work that he's been underscoring with disruptive innovation technologies and ai. I would like to welcome to the Black Excellence Series, Mike Yates. Again, like I said, Mike, he's one of the founding members of Alpha Schools, and then also he is leading.

Michael Conner: The leading Teach for America's reinvention lab. So he's a national voice. I've heard Michael speak many, many times, and I will never [00:01:00] forget Mike. We were in Los Angeles. I mean, it was, we were at dinner and it was like a who's who at that table? Talking education, talking ai. I mean, having Sabba there, Jacob there.

Michael Conner: I mean, it was just, just a great, great dinner. And then Mike, some of the stuff that you were bringing up, I was like this on my phone. I was eating and then I was putting. Some little nuggets in my phone at the same time. So without further ado, we wanna welcome Mike Yates on VFE. Good brother. How are you today?

Mike Yates: I'm so good, man. Thank you for having me. I, I'm, I was really looking forward to this. Pretty excited to be here.

Michael Conner: Yeah. Mike, Mike, no, it's great to have you again. Hey, if we could emulate anything of the conversation that we had at dinner, look, I'm telling you my, my audience would be absolutely in heaven with this.

Michael Conner: And again, Mike. Happy Black History Month to you, brother.

Mike Yates: Yeah. Happy Black History Month to you too. I'm, I'm, I mean. We don't do enough sometimes to celebrate. Like I feel like in the last couple years after [00:02:00] COVID, we've been mailing it in. So it's good to do something for black history, like something really, really cool.

Mike Yates: Good to be with other black people even virtually. So that's what's really good. I'm happy to be here.

Michael Conner: Absolutely. Mike? No Mike, now I'm telling you. No, it's good. Good to have you on. And again, just to unpack your electrical property, for my, for my audience, this is just a treat for them. So, and again, like I said, we're highlighting black excellence throughout the whole month.

Michael Conner: You exemplify that to the 50th degree or to the 50th power, however you want to contextualize it. But Mike, your work really covers the breadth of the education landscape, right? Specifically when we think about innovation in AI in this interface. Uh, dynamic. So you're founding member of Alpha Schools, your leading AI initiatives at Teach for America Reinvention Lab, and serving as I, as I stated at the outset, one of the National Voices in Education Innovation.

Michael Conner: But for my audience, or for those that do not know Michael Yates, what song defines your core work in the [00:03:00] ecosystem?

Mike Yates: That's a, that's a great question and I think the song that I would choose is, um, I think it would be Doomsday by MF Doom. And the reason why I would choose that song is because it's like mf.

Mike Yates: I actually have, I should have, I should have brought it. I actually have the, so if you're not familiar with MF Doom, he is a rapper that's originally from the UK and then moved from the UK to New York and in New York City just sort of embodied New York City, like Embodied New York hip hop. So he is a lyricist.

Mike Yates: He's got these like amazing sampled beats where he'll sample like. A section from a comic television show. So like the X-Men, like you'll hear that voiceover and then he is got these, like, he got these really super intricate beats. Like he'll sample Sade and then like lay over the X-Men theme song. Like he's like, I think he, I think he's a genius.

Mike Yates: He died young, but he would wear this, uh. Gladiator, this metal gladiator [00:04:00] mask. That's what the mask actually is, but it's also the mask that embodies the character, the the super villain, MF Doom. The reason why I gravitate towards him and that song in particular, in particular, is because doomsday sort of encapsulated what he was trying to do with that imagery, which was he was making people fond of the villain and he wasn't like.

Mike Yates: It wasn't like, I'm gonna humanize the villain. It's not like I'm actually gonna be a villain. He's like, I'm gonna take what you think of as a villain and I'm gonna spin that and I'm gonna use my, I'm gonna, my lyrics, my rhymes, and I'm gonna tell the truth about society. And that's kind of like the way that I have approached my career is like, I don't mind being the villain at certain points in my career.

Mike Yates: Um, I don't mind putting on the mask and standing up in front of everybody and saying, Hey, that's, that's wrong. We should think about this a different way. And that, that came because. I grew up hating school. Um, I also like to think of myself now as, as I've become more mature [00:05:00] and done this work for longer.

Mike Yates: You know, when I was young I used to be obsessed with credit, like getting the credit. It's like people should know that I am brilliant and now I just don't care so much. And that's why I feel like, again, like Doomsday is a deep cut. Like if you know that song, then you are a fan of MF Doom. And that's kind of how I'm starting to think of myself is like, I don't need.

Mike Yates: To have the biggest following anymore. Like, if you know my work, if you know the things that I'm doing, then I hope that you're gonna link arms with me and keep doing the work. And if you don't, then I hope somebody introduces it to you like a, like a mixtape. So that doomsday has to be the song.

Michael Conner: I, Mike, I, I, I, I love the association, right?

Michael Conner: Because as you were unpacking. The example that you were providing for Doomsday MF Doom? Yes. I, I, I, I don't want to characterize it now, Mike, as us being villains, right? Because when we now speak the truth. About where [00:06:00] education is, where education is going, and kind of the mainstay of the fossilized model.

Michael Conner: If we don't think differently, we're gonna lose two generations, generation, alpha, generation, beta. You're right. You know, and I think that, you know, there are many students or many kids. That had that same experience right now where they don't like school because of how the model is being operationalized and their lived experience, you know, getting the credit, getting the grade, you know, age graded classrooms, six and a half hour academic days, uh, that is late.

Michael Conner: And with, I always like to say monolithic instruction, that regurgitates information and. It doesn't really show the true geniusness of our students as well. So I'm I'm with you, brother. That's why you, we gonna listen, we gonna tell the truth about society, Lord, and, and you are absolutely right. It is not about how many likes we [00:07:00] get.

Michael Conner: It is not how many retweets or reposts that we get. It's a matter of the impact and the work that we are doing. So well stated brother. So well stated. Now I wanna focus your work, focus on the work that you're doing for Teach for America, and you are really, Mike. And again, kind of going back to your answer at the outset and knowing your work intimately, you are really redefining traditional educational models with leading this work in the reinvention lab.

Michael Conner: Now, let's level set from this lens of 2035. Right. How are you leading AI through the reinvention lab at TFA? And if I was a student, right? Because if I was a student now, I wouldn't like school very much because again, it is this fossilized model that our students were, we have the gen age and alpha students.

Michael Conner: But if I was a student, what does this learning experience look like within the academic year?

Mike Yates: Yeah. I mean, one, one of the things I'll say is. [00:08:00] To start is I'm incredibly, I find myself incredibly grateful and fortunate to be at the reinvention lab. Like there, there was a point in time in my career back in 2015 where I got rejected from Teach for America to be a one of the corps members, one of the teachers and the woman who started the reinvention lab, Michelle Culver.

Mike Yates: I used to carry this like a, like a chip on my shoulder. And one day she said to me, she was like, Hey, have you, have you ever thought that like. Maybe it was a good thing that you didn't get into the core. And I was like, not really. She's like, yeah, you, you would've hated it. Like it's not that they would've hated you, you would've hated it so much to where she's like, I, and it would've just been a waste of your time.

Mike Yates: Like, she's like, maybe you don't go off and do the things you do if you're a part of the core. And I had never thought about it that way. So I found myself, you know, in, in, in 2020 joining the reinvention lab just. With this really, I was just so interested that that organization that Teacher America chose say like, Hey, we're gonna do things differently.

Mike Yates: We don't really know what that looks like, but we're gonna go [00:09:00] hire weird people who we know will disagree with us, and like they are gonna help change the way that the organization thinks and the way the field thinks. Um, so in terms of like what we're doing with ai. Essentially the whole organization, which I'm, it's, it is crazy to say that, but I'm very excited to say that the whole organization is, is essentially following the lead of our CEO who has said we're going to pursue recruiting, training, and maintaining the future educator for the future of learning.

Mike Yates: And that might be the first time that Teach For America has actually said language like that. People may roll their eyes when they hear it, but I'm, I'm here to tell people that like. This time, teach for America means it. 'cause I'm, I'm one of the people that they said no to in 2015 and then brought back into the organization was like, Hey, take on some of this work.

Mike Yates: Um, what we're doing is building a training pipeline that go, that covers all of our audiences, new prospects. So college students [00:10:00] before they even decide to join the core. We're having our recruitment team run AI hackathons on college campuses, and what we've found is like, if you wanna talk about data, the matriculation rate, let, so like the, what we found that this is a really important lever to get people to be interested in teaching as a profession.

Mike Yates: The, the conversion rate that they look for, typically when they do recruitment events of any kind on college campuses is 3.5% to get into the core or into any other program. And we're looking at 4.9%. From these AI hackathons. So we're seeing that this like piece of information, this, this type of learning experience is pulling young people towards teaching at a faster rate than, than other things that we've offered, which we're really excited about.

Mike Yates: So sample size is still small, but we're gonna expand that beyond. College students, every single Teach for America core member. So every new teacher coming into a classroom all across the country, they're required to take a 90 minute virtual AI course. And then we, like, I literally travel the country and we do in-person [00:11:00] AI hackathons, teaching them how to build their first AI tool, how to solve problems with ai, how to integrate that into their instruction.

Mike Yates: So basically just using AI as a lever. To sort of help people become more effective at their jobs. We have staff training and alumni training, so like we do all, all, all of that. The reason why we do it, AI in itself is not innovation and it's not even that exciting to me. I. The reason why I'm so excited about this moment at Teach for America is because this is saying like, Hey, we recognize that this is one of the nodes, or like one of the, like one of the pieces to the puzzle to create this future educator.

Mike Yates: There are others, and we'll figure those out as well. And when we figure those out, we will offer them to our court members and maybe even create. A whole new product like the, the reinvention lab works on more than ai. One of the projects that we're working on is actually called Reinvent Teaching or Reinvent Core, where we're thinking about like what does it mean to build a whole new type of [00:12:00] teaching core model.

Mike Yates: For innovation competencies where project-based learning, AI tech, interest-based learning is all at the center of what those, those teachers learn. And being able to compare that to what is happening with our traditional course. So, incredibly fortunate to be at the reinvention lab in this moment, but that's what it looks like.

Mike Yates: It's, it's a lot of, uh, like us traveling around and in terms of like responding to. Basically the, I used to have a podcast that was called School Sucks, like, and I, and I used to say on that podcast like, this is the most popular phrase among students. And so responding to to that, one of the things that we're also doing is trying to figure out, like, I'm always trying to figure out what are the applications of ai.

Mike Yates: Nobody's paying attention to that, that nobody's thinking about that people in academia would turn their nose up. So like, how do we create AI sneaker design? We, we built a, uh, like a four round, we called it Four Round Feud. Uh, it was four different AI challenges that we ran with high school students. So one of 'em was [00:13:00] like.

Mike Yates: You know, Taylor Swift lost her voice and she has to go on the Today Show in 20 minutes, clone her voice and do the interview for her on the Today Show. You know, the Houston Rockets need a New Jersey and they need it tomorrow night, like use AI to design. So it's like these artificial challenges that feel very real and we make them time bound.

Mike Yates: So it's like figuring out how you, how you use AI as a hook and as an on-ramp to talk about and teach other forms of innovative pedagogy and teaching and learning.

Michael Conner: Yeah, yeah, Mike. And we use VFE as an asynchronous tool for professional learning pedagogy. And my audience, what Mike stated in his last answer, there was roughly about four or five different strategies that you.

Michael Conner: Be able to apply within your specific professional practice at the classroom level, or even thinking about it at the systems level. But Mike, I wanna unpack several statements, so I apologize in advance because there are two [00:14:00] specific statements that I want to be able to unpack. One is creating the future educator, right?

Michael Conner: You talked about reinventing core, reinventing pedagogy, reinventing teaching, the the whole core model around innovation, interest-based learning, project-based learning, experiential learning, artificial challenges, Mike. Those are all what I call 22nd century indicators for the new AI centric learning ecosystem.

Michael Conner: Can you, and, and you talked about higher education, challenging the academic world. I live in that academia world as well. M Mike, you're basically essentially redefining the teacher education or the teacher preparation program, that whole model. When you're, when you're talking about the future educator, can you unpack that, um, just down to maybe some isolated threads where.

Michael Conner: What does preparing [00:15:00] the future educator look like specifically around this 2035 baseline that we always talk about?

Mike Yates: Yeah, so. One of the things I'll say, one of the assumptions I lead with when I talk about this is now, you know, I used to have to really prime the pump with people because there was a time when nobody was talking about Alpha School on purpose, which is, it's also weird for me to say Alpha School.

Mike Yates: 'cause when we renamed it, so when I started there that that project was called Emergent Academy. It was not called Alpha School, and we actually rebranded it. We just called it Alpha. 'cause we didn't want the term school or academy associated with what we were doing. So when I started at Alpha, that process is what I think about a lot.

Mike Yates: And now that everyone's holding Alpha up and saying, look at this, like regardless of if they're upset about it or if they are. Too excited about it. It is causing people to think differently about what it means to embrace ai, what it means to teach and learn. And I got to live that. I got to live and create that, [00:16:00] like the recruitment process where we were using Facebook ads that were like too, they, they look too good to be true.

Mike Yates: Like the hiring process where we would bring people in for a. Full day before we even interviewed them. We bring them in and like have them work with students. Like we did all kinds of crazy stuff there. And what I learned is that the most important thing when you're thinking about the future of learning and preparing a teacher for that is actually there's a lot of unlearning that has to be done.

Mike Yates: Initially and we, we made decisions at Alpha to force the unlearning faster. 'cause we didn't have time to wait on people to get comfortable. We needed to sort of sort and select for people that already had the competencies. Like at Alpha, this may make many people listening cringe, but one of the things that we did was every single student was allowed to call adults by their first name.

Mike Yates: And. A lot of, a lot of teachers [00:17:00] in a lot of environments were like, I don't know about that. Mike and I, and I'm, I was also, when I got there, I was like, listen, I'm a coach. I was a basketball coach. I coach track. I was like, nobody, everybody calls me coach, or they call me Mr. I don't do this. Like, you know, and, and black folks, we don't do that.

Mike Yates: Like you don't call. But the reason why we were doing it was because we were trying to figure out how can you quickly challenge the power dynamic in the classroom? How can you quickly put learner and teacher on journey together? And what was so funny is most students defaulted to calling me Mr. Mike because of my affect.

Mike Yates: Just 'cause of the way that I was. They were like. I can't just, I can't just call this guy Mike, but it's be like, I learned in that situation, I was like, oh, like from being on the same playing field, I, I built respect for, for me in their minds to where they [00:18:00] were like, I can't just, I can't just call this guy Mike.

Mike Yates: So what I learned is that like respect doesn't come from my position. Respect comes from my relationship, which is something that I really always knew. As a basketball coach, like, you know, nobody calls you Mr. Coach like it's a basketball, you know? So like I had to learn that from my basketball players and I was able to apply that in that situation.

Mike Yates: So I think like there's the unlearning. So like taking everything that you think you know about teaching and kind of throwing that out for, for, for some time. And then there's the repurposing of what you actually already know. The one thing that does bother me about this conversation in the field is that people act like, like we've gotten nothing right over the last a hundred years.

Mike Yates: Like, like there is no part of traditional teaching actually, like the, the, let's take, uh, like lecture for example. I, I am a very loud, uh. Opponent of lecture-based learning because I did [00:19:00] speech and debate competitively in high school and college. I, I have like actual trophies to show like I was one of the best competitive public speakers in the country at any given time when I was in high school and college.

Mike Yates: I think that anybody who did that activity. Could command a room for 45 minutes at a time. I know that I could put them in front of a room with no plan and they could any class, they could command the room. But I don't know that that's true for most Americans. Public speaking is the number one fear in America, and so if that's the case, why should the majority of a class be comprised of making someone do something?

Mike Yates: That's the number one fear in America. They'll just do it poorly. So. I say like get rid of all lecture, but it doesn't mean that lecture is an in. You can't throw that all out. In my college experience, one of the greatest lecturers I've ever experienced is a man named James McWilliams from Texas State University.

Mike Yates: He had this giant 30 foot bamboo stick. He taught this lecture hall full of [00:20:00] 300 history students, and I kid you not. Nobody was dazed, dazed, like people came early to get a seat. 'cause this guy, it was like going to the movies with this guy, he figured out like how to use lecture to draw us into learning.

Mike Yates: So it's not that you should ever throw that out, like the, the, that's why I think the second point is really important. It's, you should figure out how to repurpose what you already know works. So that whole like, oh, I've, I've gotta figure out how to earn the respect of my players. Same thing. In a heavily learned, centered environment.

Mike Yates: And I think the, the big thing, number three in terms of like what does it look like to train the future educator for the future of learning, is that you actually have to, you have to get really, really comfortable with holding a high bar and a, a high bar with a, with low ego. So as a school leader. Most school leaders believe I know exactly what [00:21:00] grade instruction looks like, and I will make sure that every teacher is doing X, Y, and Z.

Mike Yates: Well, it's, I actually think in the future when you have AI tools that are better than some of your teachers at content dissemination and information synthesis, you really have to figure out like, what are the experiences that I can help my teachers create that the AI cannot? Like what are the experiences that happen in this school building that cannot happen anywhere else?

Mike Yates: There's a teacher name's Andy Dutton, and he really loves sneakers. He has a big Instagram account where he does photography and sneakers. If I were his school leader, all of his time would be spent figuring out how to teach students industrial design, photography, social media. All of his time because he is better than any AI system at that.

Mike Yates: He's better than any human in the building at that his, his like 600 [00:22:00] plus thousand followers show that he's better than most people at, AT influencing. So I think once you figure out those three things, it's like the unlearning, like taking what you know and repurposing that, and then school leaders setting.

Mike Yates: Up the building to be able to do what they're uniquely gifted and powerful at. The AI and the technology really can fill in the gaps. Like it. I, again, I tell people I lived it, like the, the academic gaps, the, the non-academic gaps. Some of some, ironically, some of the social gaps like the AI really can fill it in, but empower the people and like get out of their way, get all the way outta their way and let them build what's really special.

Mike Yates: I think you'll start to see like really interesting results.

Michael Conner: Yeah, Mike, uh, re uh, and I tell you right now that that example that you provided, redefines pedagogy, redefines education holistically, I always state that when we go through this collective unlearning, that's the transformation. Right. That's the [00:23:00] holistic transformation that we embody in education, and I, I always like to challenge.

Michael Conner: Right? And Mike, again, this goes back to me, uh, your answer at the outset of you being a villain, I'm a villain as well, is I always like to challenge. When we talk about this traditional continuous improvement mechanism, I always state that it's not continuous improvement, it's continuous reframing, and you put it in such a simplistic form of repurposing what you know, what works that epitomizes what continuous reframing looks like.

Michael Conner: I, I really love the example. That you provided with that, but you started talking about alpha schools. Right. And, and Mike, and again, people cringe when I bring this up, but I think that we have to talk about this, and I've been stating this ever since basically 2017, is that market-based reform. I should say market-based competition and education is needed [00:24:00] because ultimately we want to be able to produce or to generate the best educational institutions, learning organizations for our students.

Michael Conner: Market-based reform is here. We're starting to see it now. Right. And people are like, doc, you were talking about that, you know, seven, eight years ago. I'm like, well, it, it, it, it took a pandemic for us to be able to, to realize and recognize that there are other education models out there. Alpha Schools, Mike Alpha.

Michael Conner: Wow. Taking off, you started to allude, allude about Alpha Schools. In your previous answer, can you unpack. What is what? What are alpha schools? What does it look like? Content delivery. Content dissemination, information gathering, synthesis, the ta, the taxonomies, I should say. How is this fundamentally different from the traditional operating model that we see in education today?

Mike Yates: Happy to. So one thing [00:25:00] I'll say about Alpha schools is like, what you see now is the sort of like McDonaldization of it, right? Like it's, it's, it's scaling faster than we can, you know, so there's, there's quality loss. We always knew that would happen. I, I remember at one point the guy who funds the project saying.

Mike Yates: Austin will always be the epicenter. It will always be the most interesting version of Alpha because this is where we built this thing. So Alpha School is essentially, if you haven't heard it is, or actually I'm sure many people have heard, but lemme give you the most accurate version of what it is. It is, it is two things.

Mike Yates: It is using technology, not necessarily AI apps that, you know, Khan Academy, freckle News, ll like all, all the apps that you know in place of direct instruction. So that you can maximize the time in the school day so that school doesn't suck for kids. Uh, alpha. At Alpha, we, I, they, they, I'm pretty sure they have kept these, but we came up with these three promises that we made to parents because there was several paradigm shifts that were, were pretty intentional.

Mike Yates: [00:26:00] One of them was that the, the school, the messaging of the school will always speak to parents. And if you look at most of the advertisements right now, it's not like, Hey, kids wanna join the super cool school model. You know, it's like, Hey, parents. Do you wanna join Texas Sports Academy for free? Are you a homeschool parent?

Mike Yates: Here's $10,000 for your elite athlete to come join, right? Like it's always promises to parents. The three promises to parents is that one, kids will love school, and these promises are in order of importance. So the number one. Most important promise was that kids would love school. And when I was there, we obsessed over that literally more than anything else because the belief was just like they have slides and ping pong tables and chefs at Google.

Mike Yates: If you love where you spend six hours a day, you will likely do better work there. So kids would love school sometimes we went overboard with that. I will say the problem number two is that uh, kids will learn twice as fast. And promise number three is that kids will learn life skills. Each one of these promises [00:27:00] stack on each other.

Mike Yates: They are order and ranked of importance, and life skills does not last because it's truly last in life, but. Learning twice as fast enables learning life skills in school. So everybody would say, you can't really teach public speaking in school, we lived, you know, Austin was a city that was getting rid of public speaking programs in public schools, and my first big project at Alpha was create a public speaking program where there's no human feedback.

Mike Yates: At all. And what we found is that like that's almost impossible if you want them to be good like you can. So it was like create one with minimal human feedback. So I became the coach at the end of the process and what we found is that we could produce Ted, Ted talk level speeches from students as young as eight years old.

Mike Yates: We're just using an AI coach up until the week before the final presentation. I mean, it was amazing the things that we were learning at breakneck speed 10 years ago. I mean, this is 20 16, 17, 18, right? So like we're doing this and the [00:28:00] only person, by the way, if so, if you're listening to this, you're like, Hey, lion.

Mike Yates: If you scroll back far enough, search my name. In Alpha, I was the only person that has been consistently speaking about Alpha since the beginning. So when it was called Emergent Academy, you'll see videos of me walking around the city of Austin with my camera like, Hey, this is what we're doing today.

Mike Yates: Like this is what's happening today. So. That, that those three promises though, the way that they reframed sort of everything, not just for the school, but for me, my big unlearning was like, yeah, I've had this ax to grind with the system, but I didn't know how to organize any of it. And those three promises organized the ax that I had to grind with the system.

Mike Yates: I was like, oh yeah. Traditional school sucks because kids don't love being there. Traditional school sucks because kids are not, kids aren't learning. Like in the state of Texas, before I get really got fed up with the public system, I will never forget being in a meeting where we were talking about lowering the bar for star testing our state testing in Texas, [00:29:00] lowering the bar to 47%.

Mike Yates: So you had to make a 48% to pass and, and. We still couldn't get enough kids to pass, and I'm like, wow, this is the bar that we're holding for our students. We're saying. Uh, just, just learn a little bit, little bit less than half of the info. I'm like, nah, man. Like we can hold a higher bar. We can be more excellent.

Mike Yates: And obviously, like I have bought and sold four, four-ish, five houses in my lifetime before I was 30 years old. And it was because I had a real estate agent who said to me, he was a friend of mine, he was like, Hey, have you thought about buying a house? And I was like, I can't buy a house. And he said, Mike, you can buy a house.

Mike Yates: He was like, when I'm done with you. You're basically gonna be your own real estate agent. And he did not lie. He, he taught me real the game over time. And when I think about that experience, I'm like, where was that in school? Why didn't I have that in school? What if we built a place where that was possible?

Mike Yates: And that's what Alpha is like. We, we, we built a place where it's possible [00:30:00] for students to love where they learn, where they can learn academics, tr and truly be great, be in the 99th percentile of the nation, but in half the time. So what we did was in the mornings from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM and people have to get the traditional school building out of their mind.

Mike Yates: So from nine to 11, that's what we call core skills. That's when students got on apps like, like apps. Now people would say AI apps, but that's when they get get on their learning apps, 25 minutes a day on math, reading, language, and science. So a hundred minutes total per day. And when you think about this, don't picture computer lab.

Mike Yates: A picture, WeWork, everybody in the building. Comfortable seating. Sometimes kids are laying on the floor in a group laying, you know, like, and we, the, the educators, the guides we had, we could see the back end of each of these apps. And so our job was never to be really punitive, but it was always to coach and motivate.

Mike Yates: So if I knew like, oh, this kid's [00:31:00] getting on Minecraft during the day. I'm just gonna go sit with him and be like, yo, I'm, I'm doing my work. You're doing your work. And just the presence of me sitting at the table. He's like, oh, I, I guess I can't be on Minecraft. Like, or have the conversation with him like, Hey man, look, you, you gotta give me 500 minutes on these apps per week.

Mike Yates: If you want to take two days and do Minecraft. All day and then grind at it for three days. Let's see how that works. He did. It learned that sucked. So I'm not gonna play Minecraft, right? So after 11, 11 30, you have lunch, and then after lunch the building literally transforms. It is the coolest thing to actually see.

Mike Yates: Because the second half of the day we, where we do the life skills, it's these hyper engaging workshops. It is. I'm talking literally kids setting stuff on fire, blowing stuff up, like flipping stuff on eBay. Like all of these workshops you take a. Particular skill, [00:32:00] one singular skill. And it's the job of the guide or the the teacher in the building to build a workshop that is compelling enough that not only one will students choose, but two students will make it through your entire workshop and they'll rank it very highly, right?

Mike Yates: So like I, for example, one of the skills that every parent says they, they want their kids to have is financial literacy. And I was like, well, you can't be financially literate if you don't have money. So the beginning of financial literacy is how to make money. So I created a workshop called The Flip. I gave every kid 20 bucks.

Mike Yates: We went to the thrift store. I was like, buy as much as you can with that 20 bucks, and then you need to 10 x my money. I need to see 10 x return on the money I gave you. And so students start flipping stuff on eBay, they get scammed or they, they learn what a scam looks like, right? And so at, at the end of the workshop, the only way that you can actually pass that workshop and go to the next one was to actually 10 x the money.

Mike Yates: Like I need to see where's the cash at? Like, where's your account? Right. And it was [00:33:00] rooted in the real world. There was risk, like every workshop had real world stakes like it was. Alpha when I was there was the best place that you could be if you wanted, if you cared about the future of learning. And it, I'm, yeah, you had to be lucky to find it, like, 'cause nobody was talking about it, but it was literally the best place on earth where I learned the most I've ever learned in my entire career.

Mike Yates: Worked on the, one of the best teams I've ever worked on in my whole career. It was, it was really a special place.

Michael Conner: And to my audience. Right? And as Mike was unpacking the alpha model, it completely defies the traditional bureaucratic, I always like to say step function of our traditional schools. If you think about it, and Mike, and, and again, I, I wanna, I wanna go through kind of like the shared unlearning with my [00:34:00] audience.

Michael Conner: Two hours of instruction, various apps being utilized, and application of real world core life skills. Right. Defies the traditional model. Mike, just some, some people might say, how is that possible? But Mike, I know the data, I know the students, I know the families that are engaging in Alpha. Can you just provide some context for my audience about how in demand Alpha schools are right now?

Mike Yates: Yeah. It like, you know, one of the big, one of the big assumptions that we made. One of the big things that people said to challenge us in the early days is they were like, you know what, this only works for rich kids. And I was like, so I was at Alpha, by the way, to Robinhood the whole thing. I was like, I'm about to learn this and I'm going to the hood and I'm gonna build, I'm gonna build one of these.

Mike Yates: And we did it in stop, six in Fort Worth. So if you know about Stop six, it's, it's an all black neighborhood, low income, [00:35:00] and ran the model there for three years and it worked just the same. So for people out there who are with their deficits, like it works. It works in so many different environments. It doesn't work for every kid.

Mike Yates: Every kid is not a self-starter. And unfortunately, I do think I learned this from my TikTok comments. The school system has beaten kids into submission to where there are a number of, maybe more than we would. Like to recognize, but there's a number of students that believe the school system doesn't need to change, and it's a game.

Mike Yates: They're gonna play it, they're gonna get through it. Alpha's not for those students. So Alpha's super in demand because they've done an amazing job at marketing, but also because I do think that Joe Mont, who is now out in, in, in public, he's doing the podcast and all that I got, I mean, Joe is. Joe's a brilliant guy like, and he never actually intentionally set out to teach me anything, but spending multiple years around him, [00:36:00] asking him question after question to him, never lying to me, just answering point blank, I learned so much from this guy, whatever.

Mike Yates: If anybody thinks they're ahead of him right now, in the way that you're thinking about this, you're not. He's letting you believe that he's got, I mean, the, the dude's brilliant. One of the smartest things that he did was when the AI hype cycle kicked up, he said, oh yeah, these are not adaptive learning apps.

Mike Yates: They're AI apps. AI hype cycle, and I think people's, I think the COVID, the post COVID, you know, during COVID, the school system, I said this a lot, the school system was caught with its pants down and people were like, what is going on? So when you have. Parents that are now like one year removed and they're like, actually homeschooling is not what I thought it was.

Mike Yates: Actually, I don't think I, I'm, I, I don't think I'm actually cut out to homeschool or my kids don't like homeschool, but I don't wanna go back [00:37:00] to the traditional system. Well, now here's this brand new shiny offering, and they're like, Hey, guess what? We got you and our kids perform better than everybody.

Mike Yates: Like, yeah, I, I mean, it's super po you got. Linda McMahon showing up. You got kids on the news. Like the popularity of Alpha I do think is like somewhat hype cycle, but some of it is real because the thing I used to do the most with people is when people would disagree with me online, I would say, Hey, if you feel so strongly about it, show up at the front door and I'll walk you through the building.

Mike Yates: And to their credit, there were like five or six people that showed up to the building, like from other states. Like they like flew into Austin and came and we would never turn people away. We'd tour. I had, I'm telling you, I've never had a person come into that building and walk out going, yeah, this is all a lie.

Mike Yates: Like when you see it, it really changes. So any parent that goes into. Because like you said, [00:38:00] it is so different than the traditional school. It is not this top down learning system. It really is more of a learning community. Like parents walk out and they're like, that is what I want for myself. That's what I want for my child.

Mike Yates: So I think it's like the hype, but like a lot of the hype is warranted. Now I will say the wheels are gonna fall off. And, and the, the reason why I think that's important for your audience is because for this particular audience, when the wheels fall off at Alpha, you actually get to take the best pieces of Alpha and implement them.

Mike Yates: Like right now, like I actually think that if we strip alpha for parts right now, there are pieces that could work in the public system. Like that's what I'm dead set on trying to figure out at Teach for America. And I think anybody who has a systems lens, when you think about system change, the thing that I would say is to say, okay, take the pieces of Alpha, take the core skills part, the part [00:39:00] where they're on the apps.

Mike Yates: How do you create that, even a taste of that in a traditional model. Right now, the the thing I've learned about systems change since being at Teach for America, I never had to be concerned with that when I was in the private sector because it's just like you just do what you do. But I've learned a great deal from, I have to shout out our executive director of the lab, Shand, who's taught me a lot about diplomacy.

Mike Yates: Like, how do you. Truly make sure that both sides are being honored for what they know and what they can contribute while also saying the change is needed. So at Teach for America, the Reinvention Lab be, we became much more successful when we started saying, Hey, we see you. When we started showing up to people's region and saying, yo, like, we're here to help.

Mike Yates: Instead of like, Hey, we have this new shiny thing, y'all need to get on board. No. It's like, Hey, we're all doing the same work. We do it a little bit differently. Let me show you how we do it and if it's valuable to you. And what we found is that people around the country are like, Hey, we want what you got.[00:40:00]

Mike Yates: And I think like if you are in charge of systems change, man, like this is, this is the moment. If it's the. If it's not the AI part, figure out like, how can you create a network of workshops in your school where like they can only work in your school. How can you challenge your educators to say, Hey, we're gonna hold an exceptionally high bar for what you design.

Mike Yates: Like I, I, I never once did Alpha Design something and on the first time they were like, yep, good to go. Never. I mean, even if I thought, I remember I had designed this workshop and I, I remember thinking to myself, this is bulletproof. There's no way this is bulletproof. And I get in the meeting and they're like, yeah, I just don't think kids are gonna be interested in this.

Mike Yates: And I was like. Guys, I think I got you. I think I got, I think I finally got y'all like y'all. And they were like, no, I mean like you need to prove that kids are gonna be interested in this. And it turns out kids were like, it was this great moment in my, in my life. 'cause I was like, I finally got 'em. They no notes, but like that is, [00:41:00] that is only because.

Mike Yates: The way that I built that was I got radical feedback from students four weeks preparing for this meeting with other adults. The system forced me to be so much better from the way, like at the end of that, I look back, I was like, man, I think about my first project plan. That compared to this, I, I could see my own growth.

Mike Yates: And so if you're holding an exceptionally high bar for the teachers in your building for like what they're designing, giving them the power and the freedom to design, there's even like little things that like no one knows we did, like we would. This is something that I think somebody could actually take and do implement.

Mike Yates: If you want new ideas for new workshops or new classes or new electives, one of the things that they used to do for us is they'd say, all right, we're gonna lock ourselves into the building until midnight. We're gonna build a hundred projects before midnight. And a lot of people would think that sounds crazy.

Mike Yates: And we said, that is crazy. And they were like, nah, nah. [00:42:00] Trust us. This is gonna be awesome. So I'm like, well, I guess this is my job. I don't want to get fired so I'll be here until midnight. But it was some of the most fun times that I could remember. 'cause there would be music playing, there was food, there was drinks.

Mike Yates: So we like it. Got to where I like, I looked forward to it. I was like, man, we about to have some ideas. Like it would be everybody, no matter what level you taught, everybody would be there. So you'd be like, Hey, if I'm, if I'm building this, how does that stack with what you're doing with our eight, nine year olds?

Mike Yates: And all of a sudden you had this like. Bulletproof suite of projects where like I knew that from a public speaking perspective, uh, kids who were eight and nine years old, they were learning to do magic workshops, and that fed into my poetry and storytelling, which fed into the TED Talk thing. Like we, we had, we were able to plan it.

Mike Yates: So obviously you don't, you don't have to go that extreme. We, we were very extreme with everything we did. But what if you said, Hey, every, you know. Once a month after school, we need new workshop and project ideas for our classrooms. We're gonna [00:43:00] stay until 7:00 PM and we got y'all on dinner like, we'll, you know, dinner, music, whatever.

Mike Yates: And then everybody who, who, who stays to the end, give 'em a gift card to go get some, get some lunch or something. Right? Like you would change the culture in your school if you start doing things like that that are out of the box.

Michael Conner: Wow, Mike, that, that, to my audience, that was a, a great example of what I call disruptive innovation, right in, in my framework or my conceptual model.

Michael Conner: Mike, I always talk about this coherence process. Three serial disruption. You provided that context, and I love the example that you. For systems change, systems transformation. You used the word very intentionally, uh, design and absolutely there are various segments from your example, from the Alpha model that can be integrated.

Michael Conner: I, I like to say, you know, with some. Some, some intentional ambidextrous type of design where there will be tension, [00:44:00] right? Because you're challenging some of the traditional nodes within the instructional model. But again, those variants and segments that you highlighted are critical. Yes. Absolutely using various applications, AI apps into the actual model, the challenge, direct instruction.

Michael Conner: You know, when you think about, you know, specific workshops, absolutely move away from traditional learning to demonstrate mastery. We're now the workshops are there, and what I loved about your design approach was you crowdsourced it. Right crop based innovation and getting it from the students. I think that one thing that you always talked about, or you talked about previously, is the intentionality around the unlearning.

Michael Conner: And I think that traditional, the traditional cultural dimensions that we see in education today, that would be challenged the mindset, but I really love that. But Mike, I wanna underscore again. Continue talking about this alpha model because [00:45:00] I love it, Michael and, and Mike. It is. It is. It's phenomenal. I remember we were in LA talking about it.

Michael Conner: I was asking you questions about it because I had to go back and research more. I'm like, Mike is onto something. But Mike, when we talk about, you know, ai, right? And now when we talk about the, uh. Super intelligence. When we talk about these frontier models, a agentic ai, where do we see all of these new AI features or these new dimensions of AI playing into the Alpha model, but moreover challenging the traditional model in education?

Mike Yates: Yeah, so part of the way I'll answer that is what I find so cool about this and what I love about talking to you is like we actually have a very similar set of ideas and we see the world. Very similarly. It's so, it's so, it's been so interesting 'cause you're like, Hey, when you said this, like I've got this framework, this is how I, I, and that's why I can say like, school leaders and systems leaders, yo stay attached to Mike Conner [00:46:00] because you have the frameworks that fit with like the, I don't have the way to say it, to people who think about systems change.

Mike Yates: And that's the example of the community that we need is. A person who's like, Hey, I got this idea. And you're like, well, I've been thinking about this for a long time. Here's how I've turned your idea into a framework that people can use. That is how we move this. Like that's the system. That's how we change it.

Mike Yates: I think in terms of like all the advanced AI technology, one of the things that like, I really think there's, there's really two things to consider. One of them is that you have to find. Like The reason why I intentionally use the word design so much these days is because I actually think, like a group of students asked me this earlier.

Mike Yates: I actually think that the position of designer, product designer, any kind of designer becomes infinitely more important. In a world where AI can do so much, because now it's a matter of like, how do I have a person who is hyper talented with bright ideas and how do I [00:47:00] give them the tools around them to make those ideas come to life?

Mike Yates: And a gentech ai, generative ai, like any AI tool, it's just one of those tools in their tool belt. Like if you have bright ideas for designing sneakers, if you couldn't draw. Six months ago, you couldn't break into the sneaker world, but now your designs can come to life if you partner with AI in the correct way.

Mike Yates: One of the things I, I love about the world right now is I actually don't see companies racing to get rid of humans. Obviously there, there will be job loss, but when you look at the designer level, when you look at like, even like the level of like bartenders. AI cannot replace bartenders. And the, the woman, there's a by way of example, there's a woman who made this, this Tito's vodka, automatic bartender, and it's so funny, she makes it, they get the first contract and then she decides to stop drinking alcohol.

Mike Yates: So now it, like, it makes smoothies [00:48:00] and stuff like that. But the real reason why they pivoted to smoothies is because people were like, I don't come to the bar to get a drink made. Come to the bar for the experience. I come to the bar for all the things around the drink. And I think it's the same thing, like people don't necessarily come to school to learn history.

Mike Yates: If you really talk to parents, you really talk to students. Like one of the things that we learned at Alpha, our biggest competitor, you, you, you talk about like sort of like market forces. Earlier in school, the biggest thing that we were concerned with was sports. Soon as you had a kid that was locked in, in the city of Austin, in Texas, football is everything.

Mike Yates: In Austin, there's two programs. There's Westlake and there's Lake Travis. And those football coaches both make more than the president like they are a. They're huge programs. They had more of a gravitational pull away from us than anything else. It was the, the theater program, it [00:49:00] was prom, it was all these things that sort of floated around the school model.

Mike Yates: And so I think that's like, that's kind of the way that humans operate. It's never the one thing. So I think like. If you find the right person who's creative enough and you empower them enough and you sort of like let them lead their work enough and then you surround them with the right AI tools, it really is about, I don't like the term augmented human, but like it really is that it's like using the technology to augment the work.

Mike Yates: And when I think about Alpha, when I think about what we do at the reinvention lab, that is where we really get it right at, at the reinvention lab. I teach for America. Man, we had, we, we made these two hires when they came on. I was like, man, this is it. Like we got the squad now. Like we got, we got the heavy hitters and they are all, everybody on the team, which is why I love all these people.

Mike Yates: Everybody on the team could literally sit in a room by themselves and using the right amount of [00:50:00] tools, they can design a new project, new system, new school model, new whatever. Alone if they needed to. And I, I, I really do think when we are thinking about the future of school, the future of teaching, the future of learning, a lot of that, like a lot of that is important.

Mike Yates: Students will, I don't see a world where students are walking into buildings and there's no, there's no teachers. I don't see that. I, I don't see a world where students learn everything they need to know from an AI companion. I just, I just don't, I mean, it's like people wanna be together, people wanna be in community.

Mike Yates: And I'm telling you, like in 2018, we built an AI teaching assistant called Coach Bot. Kids hated it. It was terrible. They hate it. They hate con Nigo, but, but I think the, the world that you can create when there's a talented person in the middle and the tools surround them to make them better at whatever it is they're doing, that is where the sauce is.

Michael Conner: Absolutely. And Mike, what what I appreciate about your answer. Is that [00:51:00] you have this equilibrium where you're empowering the learner, empowering the designer, and I'm using that word intentionally because I always said that lesson plans when teacher says, we're, uh, creating our lesson plans, I'm like, that's static, right?

Michael Conner: And I was like, but if you're intentionally designing. For students, you're being intentional with that. But I love the empowerment that you're focusing on and then the right tools. Right. And, and, and, and Mike and, and, and I think we, we, we had this conversation before, right? Is that I see a lot of this AI adoption without strategic intent.

Michael Conner: How are we, how are we creating that level set between what's the intent of the adoption with the AI tool and how is this going to synergistically impact student learning, teaching, and learning pedagogy in itself, and I loved how you say it, that whether it be generative ai, whether it be a Gentech ai, we're [00:52:00] augmenting the learning experience, which Mike, that is 20 AC 2035.

Michael Conner: I always like to say AC 20. I've read this, but Mike, I'm gonna try to limit you, brother, and it's gonna be hard to, but I'm gonna try to limit you. So three words.

Mike Yates: Oh, I got you. I got you.

Michael Conner: Only three words, my brother. But listen, take it how it is because nobody listens to me. But what three words do you want our audience to leave today's podcast regarding AC 2035 ready to compete globally?

Michael Conner: The AC stage of education.

Mike Yates: Oh, my three words are, do it now.

Michael Conner: My brother. Please expand on that, Mike.

Mike Yates: Well, I see a lot of planning right now. I hear a lot of people planning, having the conversation, trying to chart out the system, and I think if it along your roadmap or your plan, if you can, whatever [00:53:00] you find when you're like, oh, we'll do that next year. Try it today.

Mike Yates: Because one of the reasons why I'm actually, this is one of the few conversations where I'm glad that we talked about Alpha. Um. One of the things that I think is important to know about my experience there is everything that a lot of people are trying right now for the first time we already did it, like people are.

Mike Yates: We're gonna build the, you know, AI native school model or whatever, like we're gonna have AI try to design projects for us. We did that. We tried it like, and I actually think that you will learn more about your local context. If you just get your hands dirty, stop doing the planning. Like, no, let me, lemme take that back.

Mike Yates: Don't stop doing the planning. Stop. Only doing the planning there. There's gotta be a balance of like planning, trying, planning, trying. Like as you build the plane, you should try to fly it and see what pieces of your model don't work. See what pieces of your model really do work. Like sometimes when you try something before you think it's ready, when you put it out there to get feedback or to get the [00:54:00] communities take on it, like that is where you'll find the really, really special stuff.

Michael Conner: Absolutely, Mike. I'm gonna use that. Do it now.

Mike Yates: Right? Do it now.

Michael Conner: Mike. Mike Yates. Man, listen, thank you for coming on VFE. I like, I, it is just, it is always just a pleasure, man. Just to, to talk with you. I know that a few weeks ago we were on a Zoom where we were just chopping it up, man talking. Crazy stuff, but Mike, for my audience members that either want to visit Alpha School, want to talk to you about these AI hackathons that you're having, these various different workshops that they could design or even segments of various AI applications that they can disrupt their traditional MTSS or instructional model, how would they be able to get in contact with you?

Mike Yates: Uh, you can contact me through LinkedIn if you just search Mike Yates and then if you wanna put it in the show notes, I'll give you my email address and they can, you can email me as well, especially if you live in a Teach for America [00:55:00] region. If you know, if you like know Teach for America's in your backyard and you wanna do work together, contact the executive director of that region and say, Hey, Mike Yates told me to reach out to you and like, something cool will happen, like we can make something happen.

Michael Conner: Absolutely, Mike. Thank you for coming on VFE. I want, I wanted to highlight you. I asked you a while ago, last year when we were in LA to be on VFE. You agreed. And I was like, wait, hold on. No, I wanna get you on the Black Excellence Series. Yeah. During Black History Month. And guess what we did a good brother.

Mike Yates: We did it.

Michael Conner: Mike, I appreciate you so much for coming on. Thank you, thank you, thank you. My audience. This is a truth for them.

Mike Yates: Thank you for having me.

Michael Conner: Absolutely. And on that note, onward and upward, everybody. Have a great evening.