Hayley Spira-Bauer on Revolutionizing Personalized Learning

In this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast, Nate McClennen and Hayley Spira-Bauer explore the transformative potential of AI, media literacy, and personalized learning in reshaping education. The lively conversation discusses how generative AI can reduce teacher workloads, foster high-agency classrooms, and create opportunities for meaningful human connections. The conversation also dives into the importance of media literacy as a core skill for navigating today’s digital landscape, empowering students to critically evaluate information and thrive in a rapidly evolving world. Tune in to discover actionable insights on building innovative, student-centered learning ecosystems and preparing learners for the future.

Outline

• (00:00) Introduction and Guest Introduction
• (01:50) AI’s Impact on Teacher Workload
• (03:41) Increasing Human Connection and Learning Ecosystems
• (10:23) Reimagining Cross-Curricular Teaching
• (14:27) Student Agency and Self-Directed Learning
• (31:49) The Role of Content Knowledge and Skills

Introduction and Guest Introduction

Nate McClennen: Welcome to the Getting Smart podcast. This is a very special episode because we have us at Getting Smart and a special guest who’s also a podcaster. So I want to let her introduce herself. So, Hayley,

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Hi. Yeah, hi everybody.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: I’m so happy to be here. I am Hayley Spira-Bauer. I’m the Chief Academic Officer at Fullmind. I’m also the host of Learning Can’t Wait, and this is a really cool episode because we both get to share instead of just being behind the mic and asking all the questions.

Nate McClennen: It’s so awesome. So, I’m Nate McClennen, senior partner at Getting Smart, and Hayley and I met and had a conversation, I think, at ASU+GSV, and we just hit it off and started realizing that we both are thinking a lot about the ecosystem in the space that’s out there. So, excited for the conversation today and wondering, Hayley, what are you most excited about? That was our first prompt for what are the things that are really getting us excited about learning and teaching right now.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: So the world kind of turned upside down when generative AI entered the chat, and there was this incredible hype cycle, and everybody was all attuned to how our schools should change. I don’t think we’ve really seen that change come to fruition at scale yet. But what has me excited is twofold.

One, I am really excited about AI’s ability to reduce teacher workload. I think teachers are rock stars. They’re the most important parts of an education ecosystem. A great teacher makes a dramatic impact on a child’s life, and so if we can make teachers’ lives better and reduce their workload, we have the capacity to unlock a teacher’s full potential, which ultimately allows us to scale impactful learning opportunities in classrooms.

AI’s Impact on Teacher Workload

Hayley Spira-Bauer: So that’s one component of what gets me excited. The second part of that, though, is maybe less intuitive. Nate, I get really stoked when I think about how, if we can be innovative by thinking about technology in the way that I think a lot of people are thinking about technology now as a result of emergent technologies like artificial intelligence, then we can continue to get creative in how we think about a structured school day.

Nate McClennen: Hmm.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Right now, our school day is the same as it was centuries ago.

Nate McClennen: Yes.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Not much has evolved. So just to start us off, those are the two things, which are really co-mingled and related for me, that get me really excited about education today.

Nate McClennen: Yeah, that’s super interesting. I think my thoughts connect sort of, and I want to riff off both of these. I agree with the AI efficiency piece. Teachers, as both you and I know, are the most hardworking people in the system, right? They are working hard. It always feels like there’s too much to do. I know when I was teaching, it was always all day Sunday or Sunday night, and I was prepping. Then I would think about it Friday night to try to at least get ahead of it a little bit. It’s just all-consuming despite summer vacations and the breaks that are well-earned and deserved.

So I’m hopeful, along with you, that AI will increase efficiency and free up time to do things that are really valuable. But one of the things that I’m interested in or excited about is this idea where, by increasing efficiency, we can increase opportunities for human connection. Human connection out in the real world where teachers have more time to make connections with young people, which we know is impactful. Teachers have more time to plan real-world experiences. Because right now, it’s hard to make connections. It’s hard to create really interesting projects.

Nate McClennen: So, I think I’ll echo the first one you said—AI and efficiency. Then, where does it go from there? The other thing that I’m interested in, that I think we should put a pin in, is this idea of ecosystems of learning where all learning is stackable.

For example, my daughter has a summer job, and she’s working in a restaurant. There’s all sorts of learning that goes on, but it shows up nowhere in her official learning record. It’ll show up on maybe a transcript or a LinkedIn account or something, but there’s no competency documentation there. So all learning counts, is stackable, and then it counts. It’s valuable for something, whether for credit or for further employment or whatever the case may be. Those are the things that I’m sort of thinking about. Wondering, where do we go with that?

Hayley Spira-Bauer: I want to go back to what you said about free time. There’s more time for human connection, but then also teachers are less burnt out. We have less of a labor shortage. We have fewer concerns about having the best teachers remaining in the classroom because they’re not as fried from doing that Sunday thing you talked about, Nate. I remember going to the public library in New York City every Sunday with my colleague and pulling books off the shelf and planning our lessons. That’s a six-day-a-week job. And that’s if I didn’t work on Saturday too.

Nate McClennen: Right.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: So I think there’s a lot to unpack.

Nate McClennen: So, what does it look like, Hayley, though? Let’s imagine, you know, we’re—let’s even talk five years from now because I think this thing is moving fast. And right now, schools are, if schools are reacting at all or districts are reacting at all, they’re in the policy. A lot of them are in the policy world. Forward-thinking districts, and more and more are adopting Brisk or Magic School or some of these efficiency tools that sit on the desktop. I just saw a study in a survey that about six hours of time has been saved, you know, when they look at average, and that’s a survey and a self-reported survey. So, what does it look like next? Do we just buy back time? And that’s a good thing because I think that there’s this overburdened project or problem. Or do we reframe what the school day actually looks like in its entirety?

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Oh, that’s my dream. That’s actually my—

Nate McClennen: Talk about your dream. What’s the dream? What does it look like?

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Teachers are human beings. And so every teacher has an innate skill set. And when I think about how we want our kids to be raised and what we want school to look like for them, we want them to be diving into their passions. And if we get back some time in the school day, and if teachers can think more about human connection, can they also think more about playing into their strengths and really diving deep into becoming subject matter experts on different topics and blending a school community to have these highly reinforcing, highly engaging school days that are both highly reinforcing and highly engaging for kids, but also for teachers? We have this disengagement crisis happening at the kid level right now in America where kids are routinely more disconnected from school, less motivated about their learning. There’s tons of research that’s been put out over the past couple of years, and if teachers were more passionate about everything they were doing because they could personalize and think more deeply about content areas that excite them, I guarantee that joy and that excitement will trickle down into kids. This is a big pipe dream though, Nate. I don’t know—you’re in schools all the time—

Nate McClennen: Yeah.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Like, tell me what you are seeing that you can step five years ahead.

Nate McClennen: So, okay. A couple of things. One is there—so the way you describe it is sort of this team approach, and ASU Prep or Mary Lou Fulton down at ASU is talking about next education workforce and teams. And they’re alluding a little bit to those structures that you’re talking about, having some teachers have some expertise, and it could be pedagogical expertise, it could be subject area expertise, and they’re working collaboratively as teams. So, I think that’s a really important ingredient because I think often teaching is isolated, and you’re with young people all day, and you don’t often have time to collaborate, etc. So, I think that’s one part of the puzzle. I think another part of the puzzle that you allude to is this idea of agency and self or interest for the teachers—what they’re interested and passionate about matters. Because we know motivation comes when someone has agency and control and sees purpose, etc. Where AI, I think, might be really helpful—and we’re starting to see this in some of the AI tools—is how do you then allow that work, say on really interesting projects driven by teacher co-design with the learner, then satisfy the requirements at the state level, right? Because that’s the pinch point right now. Everyone’s worried about—you’ve got to hit the standards because it’s assessed, etc. And so it’s easier to adopt curriculum that is already linked to the standards. However, that’s not personalized, it’s not high agency, and it’s not high passion for the teachers. Can AI allow us to do that linking in the background so that the passion projects for the students and the teachers are then linked to the outcomes that are expected, right? There’s this policy expectation and requirement that bumps up against agency. So, what do you think about that in your classroom of the future?

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Yeah, well, I’m thinking about elementary right now. That’s my—most of my background is in elementary schools, and it’s my certification area in New York State. And I think about how—what happened on those Sundays? What happened on those Sundays is I would know what the lesson told me I had to teach, and then I would go get the book from the library and I’d read it. But what if it worked the other way around? What if it—and this is how I did it in my later years, to be very, very honest, of my career. What if I wanted to teach my kids all about Basquiat, the artist, and I wanted them to incorporate Basquiat into every part of their day? AI can help me do that in a minute. It can help me talk about color theory, talk about the art of Harlem and New York City and the different artists that came out during a particular time, which is both history. It could bring in the mathematics—like all the work that I had to do in my later years of my career. I had to sit down. I had to connect it. I had to do the research. Now, AI can do it for me in seconds. So, when we talk about an approach that’s really cross-curricular or even a team approach, I could bring in my art teacher, the math specialist, to come in and could be using the art to help my students to work on their numeracy skills in early elementary school. Like, all of that could happen so fast now. Whereas before, it required really careful planning. So, when we talk about that time back and what it gives us, it gives us the ability to teach our students through the lens of one foci. That’s not necessarily the curriculum that’s provided by a specific provider. It’s actually more user-generated and personalized for the teacher and the classroom.

Nate McClennen: Yeah. And it’s not—it’s actually, I mean, in some ways it mirrors the real world, right? And I hesitate and put that word “real world” in quotes because we often say we’re prepping students for the real world or getting them ready for the real world, but nothing about school, at least the traditional school, actually is real for the students. Meaning, the school is real—they’re going to school, and it’s their real lived experience. But in the real world, say you and I are going about our day-to-day, we have projects that we do. We work in interdisciplinary teams. We’re finding out things, we’re using technology to solve problems, and we’re advancing a project forward in some way. School doesn’t work that way except for, you know, folks that are on your podcast or on our podcast. There are a lot of innovative examples of project-based learning schools or schools that are doing real-world learning. So, there are a lot of people out there playing on the margins. But what I think is that AI will enable us to connect the margin players—those that are doing the work that is actually more mimicking of what happens when you’re an adult—and the requirements that are expected of them. Because I don’t think we’re going to go into this freeform where everybody is, at least in the public sector, where everybody can choose their own outcomes and their own standards. That’s not going to happen. There’s still going to be some regulation.

But it’s the linking of the passion projects, the work of the students and the teachers that are of interest and purpose and work towards the common good or whatever the case may be, that then check off all the expectations along the way that are expected by the state. I think there’s—that’s where AI can play a super interesting role as well.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: What do you think the challenges are of trying to bring some of these more progressive project-based models, like we see at High Tech High, to scale? Like, I think you’re kind of calling them out in subtext there, but I want—I want you to put a pin on it for me.

Increasing Human Connection and Learning Ecosystems

Nate McClennen: Yeah, I think—okay, so number one is there’s a compliance challenge, right? So, most teachers, especially in the public sector, feel like they are trying to meet a set of standards. And those standards are going to show up, especially if you’re in ELA and math, and in sciences and history in some states. They’re going to show up on the standardized test, right? So, there’s the fear of missing something, right? And especially if some of your salary or whatever the case is linked to performance, that’s a challenge. And that’s not in all states. So, you have compliance as one issue. I think comfort—confidence—strong PBL work, project-based learning work, is not taught in most schools of education. It might be a peripheral course or a part of the practices course or pedagogy course, but it’s not an entire section. It’s not ubiquitous through most schools of education. So, most folks are feeling not as secure in that. And I think, you know, there’s a platform you might be familiar with called Inquire. And Inquire is one of a couple of different project-based learning platforms, and we’ve been playing on that with a couple of partners, and it makes project-based learning way easier. And so, I think—and it’s using AI tools to quickly link and make suggestions to standards to cover once you enter your project. And it’s built on High Tech High’s framework, so it has some—a lot of practice and pedagogy behind it. So, you have compliance, you have comfort in doing that. And then I think there’s something around releasing control with students, right? Giving agency to students. And in a school that’s really strong in project-based learning, whatever you want to call it, the classroom is just humming because the students are finding purpose, they’re finding agency. But that takes a little bit of letting go.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Oh yeah.

Nate McClennen: Those are the things I would say. What would you add to that? What else?

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Well, first I just have to give an anecdote. My favorite story is about the first time I had laryngitis in a classroom, and my kids ran the classroom themselves. It was actually eye-opening for me. I was like, oh, we’ve set up the structures and routines. They have enough agency, they have enough motivation, they’re bought in. They actually can run the classroom without me. And it became a goal every year if I got laryngitis that my kids were self-sufficient enough to be able to dig into the learning themselves. Because ultimately, that’s all I cared about.

Nate McClennen: Right, right, right. So interesting. What grade was that? What, like what age?

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Yeah, you know, I had a similar experience. My first year of teaching, I was absolutely lecture-based because that’s how I was taught. I was writing notes on the board, and every day my voice—I would lose my voice, my hands would be covered with chalk because we were still using chalkboards in that day. And by the time I ended my teaching and moved into bigger picture work, I realized that if I built a playlist, we had a lot of options and choice in it. The students could all work at their own paces. Right. And that made sense to me, and suddenly I was giving up control, and that felt so different from where I started, you know, 22 years earlier. So, similar transition. But you mentioned something interesting that I want to think about. What’s your perception on—you know, a lot of standards are content-based. You know, there’s a body of knowledge that standards sort of try to articulate and a set of skills. But then we have this whole other conversation about competencies and durable skills and transferable skills, of which learning being a learner is one of. How do you balance those things? How do you put those things in combination?

Hayley Spira-Bauer: So I want to call out—I have a little bit of a bias here because I’m neurodivergent, and I didn’t know this until recently, probably like four years ago. But my entire childhood, I had trouble memorizing content. I was labeled gifted and talented, but retaining information was hard. I didn’t really know why. And so when I look back at my own education, the content in that—I don’t remember it. I don’t even remember when I finish a movie what happened in the movie. But I know—I know how to think, and I was taught how to think, and I think that has served me well. So I say that because I do think a lot about personalization and individualized learning, and so I feel really strongly that—you know, it’s that proverb: We teach a person to fish, they fish for a day—or you give a man a fish, they eat for a day. But if you teach a man to fish, they fish for a lifetime. I think there is a movement right now in our country towards this competency-based learning, and it is focused more on what skills—sort of like you said with your daughter. Like, she has this job. It’s not translating on paper to her everyday life, her school, and her career. But if we give our kids these skills and we really work with them on critical thinking and productive struggle and engagement with peers and all these other things that feel very soft, we know there’s a ton of research. It serves people well for a lifetime. And so I am eager to see learning focused on that.

Nate McClennen: Yeah, knowledge certainly is no longer sort of the—you know, held by just the teacher who then delivers it. Like, that’s obvious and started with the internet and now is getting easier and easier.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: There’s an article about how SEO is dead, and now it’s—I just read it this morning. Literally what you’re saying is that agents and the summaries that are provided are replacing complete use of individual websites for information.

Nate McClennen: Right. So it’s pretty easy to find information. I think that’s clear. I think my take is somewhat similar, but maybe I’ll take it a different tack on this. I still think that there’s a set of core knowledge. So you taught in the younger grades, and basic mathematics, basic literacy—although there’s some semblance, you know, as more and more becomes audio. I am curious about the written language, and this is not because I don’t want—I really appreciate the—I write a lot. I love it. But sometimes in the back of my brain, I have this little flag that’s saying, huh, we can become a completely verbal society that’s just video back and forth. But let’s say for now, my take on this is still core literacy, core math. There are some core skills just to survive in life in the modern world. And then it feels like there’s some—we’re pretty bullish on this idea of media literacy. There’s some part of media literacy that’s really, really important. There’s some part of civic engagement that’s really, really important. And to be civically engaged, you actually have to have some knowledge of how the government works and how your local community works. So I guess when I start to unpack the skills of the durable skills of collaboration, communication, creativity—all those kinds of things that we know are really, really important—I don’t think they can operate without context. It’s not what you’re saying, but I’m just saying I wonder about the knowledge that sets up that context. And is it locally derived, regionally derived, nationally derived, like Common Core did, or something like that? Those are the things I wrestle with in terms of—

Hayley Spira-Bauer: No, it’s an important callout. And I would argue, like going down the vein of civic engagement—it’s a topic I talk a lot about on the podcast. It’s something I’m personally interested in and I think our country could use more of at the moment. I think that civic engagement, as an example and a callout—you absolutely need to learn about the history. You need to learn about the branches of government. You need to learn about voting. And can you do that through the context of being out in the world and learning about different organizations and how they function? Going to Washington, D.C., if you can afford it through a school or a grant or whatnot, to actually see it in action. Take part in protesting, even if it’s within the school. Like, I love when the kids in a school building are protesting—they want a longer recess. Like, yes, let’s teach kids how to put a coherent thought together into writing, into oral form, into all different media forms as well. So I do—I go back to this idea of like, what does my dream school environment look like? It absolutely has some direct instruction, but it can happen collaboratively. It could happen with students and teachers tackling it together. But it also happens with teaching kids how to grapple with said content, not just trying to pour that information into their heads and hoping that they retain it.

Nate McClennen: All right, so let’s circle back to your first excitement that you talked about, which is the use of AI. Do we think collectively—you and I—that AI will start being better at teaching those core skills because it will be able to hyper-personalize? Does that take care of the core skills part? Because we really haven’t done a great job of getting every kid up to speed in core skills. We know that. And a lot of it has to do with personalization. And then the teacher’s focus is really on these projects, real-world stuff, increasing civic engagement, media literacy, understanding the world around them, and empowering students to understand the things that they’re interested in. Are you bullish on that? Is that going to happen? Or is it going to be a co-pilot scenario? What do you think?

Hayley Spira-Bauer: You know, I feel like I’m more in a co-pilot scenario. I see teachers as the harbingers of productive, joyful learning experiences, content included. And I could see artificial intelligence playing a pivotal role in helping the teacher to personalize their learning and providing practice opportunities for kids. Like, I would’ve loved if, when I was in front of a classroom, to have in front of me on my hands: these five kids have already mastered X, Y, Z; these four kids haven’t; here’s the play you make with those four kids; and here’s what the other kids are working on. Or, pair these two kids together. My brain can do that, but I can’t analyze information as quickly as computers can. It didn’t exist when I was in the classroom.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: I would’ve loved if, when I was in front of a classroom, to have in front of me on my hands: these five kids have already mastered X, Y, Z; these four kids haven’t; here’s the play you make with those four kids; and here’s what the other kids are working on. Or, pair these two kids together. My brain can do that, but I can’t analyze information as quickly as computers can. It didn’t exist when I was in the classroom. I was still using a clipboard—just not to age myself at all. But Nate, I’m curious—where are you? You have such a different vantage point than I do. What do you think is going to be the role of the AI teacher or tutor or co-pilot in the future?

Nate McClennen: Yeah, I think it’s going to be a co-pilot scenario. I do think that in terms of specific teaching—teaching to read, teaching basic math—that that will probably be done on some sort of rotation model where the students are just like a classroom rotation model now in a personalized classroom. They’re going to be doing individual work. The teacher will—and already can in some tech platforms, as you allude to—quickly get a sorting of who needs what every single day. And there’s been so many great experiments, like School of One in New York City has done this for a couple of decades, where when I observed one of their classrooms, they had a resorting at the end of each day. Every day, the kids would come in, and the kid would have a screen in front of the classroom. It would be 150 kids, and they’d resort it into classrooms of 25 based on their performance at the end of the day. So, we’ve been experimenting with this for a while, but the technology has been pretty rudimentary. So, I think AI shifts that game.

The human part of it—the teacher part—will be twofold. One is to facilitate that experience of a bunch of students altogether. Because I don’t think we’re going to go into this everybody’s homeschooled one-on-one at home. I think that the socialization matters. I think that the system of school, especially public school, allows different types of students from all different backgrounds to come together, and they’re actually forced to work together in collaborative ways. And that’s a really very, very important way to allow for the success of a democratic country. That discourse matters, right? So, facilitator, I think, of making sure that students are in the right place at the right time. Connections—so that if someone needs extra help, that teacher will certainly be an expert there. And so this is a co-pilot. And then planning—how do you make every student engage in purposeful and meaningful experiences for them? And they’ll have more time for that. And it might look like, “Hey, these particular students have mastered these top couple sets of skills and the standards. Technology sends me that, and they might be ready for a project at this level.” Great. The teacher can then start planning the project in partnership with an AI tool, like say, Inquire, or whatever other tool you’re using, so that they can quickly plan a project that’s relevant for those students, in partnership with those students, especially as they get older.

Reimagining Cross-Curricular Teaching

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Nate, in this world that you’re painting a picture of right now, there’s a critical component—media literacy plays a huge part in our ability to help kids learn to interact with emergent technologies, help them understand the world better in this rapidly evolving space. What does ideal media literacy look like right now to get kids ready for that future?

Nate McClennen: Yeah, for me, it’s—as I tell my own children—it’s to be skeptical of anything you see online. And the only thing you truly can believe is at least what the person is telling you is something that you see and observe. Meaning, I observe something happening in the real world, thus it is true or not on the screen. Or it’s a conversation between two people where at least you know that, you know, I’m talking to you, Hayley, and you had said something. That means that Hayley said it. Because I’m pretty sure I’m not talking to an AI avatar right now, right? In the future, that may not be as sure—there may be challenges there. So, I think media literacy—I actually think we’re doing a huge disservice to young people right now as we’re not putting media literacy at the core center of all curriculum. Because I think it’s becoming—information has always played an important role in the evolution of cultures. And I think the rate and the speed at which information is being sent to us, and the rate and speed at which AI is generating more and more percent of information—it is really challenging. And so that should be embedded in all areas so that students have a really healthy skepticism. And adults too. Really assume everything that you see is not true until proven otherwise, which is a really negative way to look at it, but I actually think that may be the way to go. What do you think?

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Yeah. So, as you kind of alluded to earlier, I am a big believer in reading—reading and math proficiency, specifically by grade three, being the non-negotiable priority. Related to that, I agree with you. We should be doing it now, and we should be doing it early. We need to get our youngest minds before they are fully molded to understand how—how different the world is today because of technology like artificial intelligence. How different it is because—I’ll give you an example. My kids don’t have a full picture of fake videos and fake images yet. They don’t really know about AI chatbots. They hear me talk about it, and we have larger conversations about society, but they haven’t experienced it on a device. But one of my friends did. And she was saying that her kid showed her this horribly graphic video. He’s 17 years old, and she didn’t know what to say. She was like, “This is fake.” He’s like, “Well, how do you know?” And because it was the first time that he had had that conversation, she was like, “I don’t even know how to explain it to you, but we have to have this conversation.” She didn’t even know where to start. And so I do believe, somewhat like the way I feel about really ensuring solid foundations of math and reading proficiency by grade three, we also need to be starting it very, very young with kiddos so that they know how—again, they know how to think about the world, even if we can’t predict what the world will look like.

Nate McClennen: Yeah, totally agree. There is some more and more data that young people are getting more and more of their news from TikTok. And I’m not a huge TikTok user, but I track it a little bit. As you know, and our listeners know, one of the things about TikTok is anybody can put anything out there. So, people are reporting as news rather than a centralized news system. And there are pros and cons to that. There’s real power in the voice of individuals. The problem is that if it’s used to manipulate or provide strong opinions to push someone in one direction or another, or it’s just misinformation, we have to make sure young people can quickly discern that and ask hard questions about it.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: You know, but Nate, it’s not new. I agree with you. I’m on TikTok actually quite a lot because I am fascinated by what you just named—the proliferation of information, both fake and real. It’s not new. Like, we sort of missed our boat already with Facebook. Right? Like, there is quite a lot of deep diving into how Facebook has changed our democracy, both electorally with the spread of misinformation on both sides of the aisle. If we want to really think about what might happen and look forward—not be pessimistic, but be really realistic about it—we need to think back to when I was a freshman in college, before Facebook existed, and how we received information then versus how people receive information now. Because that is really the best predictor of what generative AI and various tools are—how they’re going to really quickly shape information gathering for the next generation of kids.

Nate McClennen: Right. And there was an article I read recently, I think it was in The Atlantic, about the advent of information and how, when newspapers emerged as widespread, the worry at that time was very similar to the discussion we’re having now. People were saying, “We’re being manipulated. People are reading it voraciously. They’re addicted to their newspapers. Everyone’s reading it more and more.” There were newspaper boys out selling newspapers, and they were pushing you with all this propaganda and drama because that’s what sells—accidents, challenges, and all those kinds of things.

It’s ironic that, over 100 years ago, when things started emerging that way, the same reaction was happening. I still go back to my premise that it’s now at hyper-speed. And I think we’ve talked about this—Mason and I have talked about this a little bit on our podcast Catching Up. The book Nexus by Harari is really, really good. He wrote Sapiens as well, and he talks about the thread of information and how the idea that we’re accelerating the volume of information, accelerating the possibility of misinformation or manipulating information, and the volume of information—it could be good or bad. More and more people are informed, and more and more people are able to say what they believe, and that’s representative in so many ways. But how do you discern it is really important. So, I think there’s a thread here where we’re tying this up. We probably need to be thinking about it more and more in schools, and it needs to be tied into thinking about AI as well—as a part of the learning experience, not just AI as a tool to help teachers create more sustainable and more interesting, more engaging lessons. But also, students need to understand what AI is. It is a predictive modeling tool, right? It’s just predicting the next word based on the previous set of words in a large set of models. And then, what is media? What does it mean to be media literate in the modern world? That might be a core for me, going back to your question—you asked—that should be in the core, along with literacy and numeracy.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: If you have a high school classroom and your teacher isn’t literate about Snap and TikTok and all these other tools that kids are using all the time, you probably have a classroom that’s a little bit out of touch. You know, Mike Yates from the Teach for America Reinvention Lab—I love when he talks about school because he really hits the nail on the head with what an in-tune classroom, teacher, and school community looks like. And if you go back to this idea of integrating early literacy and numeracy skills with project-based learning and AI, how do you do that? You do that by living in the real world with the kids. If you’re studying plant growth, you should then go watch a BrainPOP video about plant growth. Go look for TikTok videos. Go look for generative AI videos of how plants grow. Compare the three, right? That seems maybe not what a parent thinks a kid should learn about in school, but actually is what kids need to see in order to understand what technology is and how it changes our perception of the world. And then it just solves all of our problems.

Shorts Content

Student Agency and Self-Directed Learning

Nate McClennen: I love things that solve all of our problems. So, I think we’re starting to center on this idea of educators being co-learners with the students, right? And so they are masters at facilitating. There’s this magical piece, and great educators do this already. They have this dance of being in a classroom, and you know when you walk into the classroom because the kids are independently doing the things that they need to be doing. They can quickly articulate, “This is where I’ve been. This is where I’m at now. This is what I need to do next.” It’s all full of—I call them high-agency classrooms, right? Classrooms that have tons and tons of agency. I think maybe what we’re getting to is we need every teacher to be able to facilitate a high-agency classroom or learning experience because it might not happen in a classroom. And that takes a specific set of skills, confidence, and practice that I think many, many educators actually just don’t have an opportunity to develop. They may want to do it, but they don’t have the opportunity to do it. So maybe the direction we need to take this is: How do you build these learning environments that are high-agency, where the educator is learning alongside? They don’t have to be the content expert, but they do have to be the facilitation and coaching expert. And that’s maybe what we need to really focus on.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Yes. Yes.

Nate McClennen: How does that happen? So, can we get ed schools to pivot? What does this look like? Do we start with ed schools, or is it done in the districts? What does it look like?

Hayley Spira-Bauer: I always go back to Relay because I do think they’re on the cutting edge of preparing teachers as learners for co-led classrooms. I’m sure there are more examples—that’s just the one I’m the most familiar with. I got the good chance to interview Mamie before she departed as the head of Relay. But, you know, I’m sure there are others. Do you have other good examples?

Nate McClennen: Well, High Tech High—I think High Tech High’s Graduate School of Education does it, right? So, I think those are two good examples of graduate schools or schools of education that are doing things differently. The challenge is, that’s like, what, 1% of the system?

Hayley Spira-Bauer: It’s not the norm, right?

Nate McClennen: Yeah. And so, I don’t think it’s for lack of interest. I mean, certainly there’s all sorts of—and probably, you know, Mary Lou Fulton down at ASU—they’re thinking about this because they’re thinking about competency-based learning, learning ecosystems, and team teaching. And there’s a bunch of other ones, but they sit in a bureaucracy that’s really hard to pivot fast. So, it’s almost like they need R&D centers within these teaching education schools that are actually saying, “What does the next generation of teachers look like, and how can we move that faster?”

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Yes.

Nate McClennen: Okay, so we’ve talked a lot about the education side. We’ve talked a lot about what classrooms should look like. We’ve talked about outcomes and what the outcomes with durable skills versus knowledge should be. Where are you seeing—let’s just talk briefly about systems change. What do you think about what makes something—I use the word “sticky” a lot—what makes a system change and pivot to become more innovative and better reach all students? What, in your experience, whether your own experience or your podcasting experience, are the things that make it stick for the long run? Because sometimes it feels like to me that it’s so personality-dependent—great teacher, great leader, great school board, great state-level leader.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: I’m obsessed with organizational psychology, and I think it answers the question somewhat—my take on organizational psychology. So, first of all, I believe that any change you’re making in a system, the leader needs to be exceedingly clear about who is making the decision on said change, right? Like, is the leader making the decision? Is the leader gathering input and then making the decision? Is it democratic? Are we all making the decision? I think as a first step, if that doesn’t happen, change won’t stick because community members will feel like changes are happening to them.

The second ingredient that I feel is very important for systemic change to stick is that even if the leader is making the decision, they need to be a listener. And Nate, I’m a talker—you probably gathered that by now. But really great leaders have to listen, and they have to listen to everyone. So, they need to listen to community members, they need to listen to families, they need to listen to kids, they need to listen to teachers. That aspect of this ultimately means that even if they make the decision independently that is going to be enacted, they’ve gathered data points and will be able to integrate those data points into the decision.

Nate McClennen: Yep.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: And then my last piece—and these are just three callouts of what I feel are really important for systemic change—the last piece is that you have to think small to think big.

Nate McClennen: Yep.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: You really have to invest in individuals. And I know you, Nate, are a really big believer in personalization. But even with systemic change, you have to think about personalization. You have to think about how you’re crafting the conversation for what change is going to look like for each individual stakeholder. How are you crafting it for communities of stakeholders? Maybe you’re not personalizing every aspect because, at scale, that’s impossible. If you’re talking about a system as large as, let’s say, Atlanta, it’s not possible to talk to every kid in the community. But you should think about those kids. You should think about all the kids in the system before you’re enacting a change. You should think about how your messaging will land with them, how you’re best going to reach them.

The Role of Content Knowledge and Skills

Nate McClennen: I really appreciate what you said there—that adults have to model it. I think also creating a culture in a system where it’s safe to make mistakes is huge. The psychological safety of knowing that, you know what, we tried this experiment. It actually didn’t work for kids. And here’s how we’re going to rectify that gap of what kids lost out on, and here’s what we’re going to change to do differently. I often don’t think it’s easy to do in schools because of the political nature of school board appointments, superintendent appointments, etc. But if we can unlock that and allow for growth mindset, you really will see more stickiness to your original point.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Yes.

Nate McClennen: Which means that there has to be a strong, agreed-upon value set of how we operate in the system. And I think great districts and schools—or whatever the scale you’re working at, because it can happen at the classroom scale as well—have established a set of values. This is what we believe in, and we’re all going to hold each other accountable for those, and we’re going to practice and model those over and over.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Yes.

Nate McClennen: All right. Now that we’ve solved all the problems in education, let’s—

Hayley Spira-Bauer: We’ve solved everything. We’re done.

Nate McClennen: We’re at 45 minutes. We can go on for a long, long time. Let’s finish with maybe, what would be the biggest change that we could make, that you could make, or that we would decide to make, or I would decide to make, that would have the biggest difference? Which means, for me, better outcomes for more learners. So, better outcomes for more learners, however we define that. What’s your list of key changes? We talked about a lot today, so maybe it’s just what we talked about, but how would you summarize it?

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Mine—I definitely shared mine, but I’ll put it more concisely here. I believe that we need to ensure that students are proficient in reading and math with early numeracy skills and decoding, phonics, and phonemics by third grade. I think we need to fund personalized learning, whether it be high-dosage tutoring, targeted small group instruction. We can use all the AI practice tools. We’ll build that in so that kids have the opportunity to practice with the learned knowledge they gained from their teachers. And related to this, I think we need—I don’t understand why we don’t have universal early screening for so many things. I cannot tell you the times in my life where I had fifth graders or sixth graders in my classroom who had dyslexia and they just never knew. And they got to sixth grade without reading proficiently, competently. They couldn’t do any part of their school experience because they were missing this one fundamental piece. And so, if we were able to rectify this by third grade, if we really poured investment into early childhood in the ways that I’ve named here, I fully believe we would have the ability to dive more deeply into areas of interest and make more of the changes that we’ve discussed here on this podcast a reality.

Nate McClennen: Yeah, I agree with all those. And maybe what that’s really coming down to is—I think I’m just going to stick with one thing: personalization. We know that every human is different, right? Every human brain is different from every other human brain. And yet, we know that there’s a set of skills, maybe some level of knowledge—early literacy, early math, etc.—and some sense of how the world works and a set of big-picture competencies that will help them thrive. So, we have a sense of what those are. We know what the target is, and we know that all humans are different. And so, we need to build a system that maximizes for that person’s brain how to get to those established outcomes. And that is personalization. I think AI is going to help us with that. I think better schools of ed and systems that create more agency, more relevance, etc., will help. All the things we talked about today will help us better personalize so that every student comes out feeling like they understand how to thrive in the world, they understand the path they’re going on, etc. So, I think you’re right on, and I’m super hopeful. This doesn’t sound like a pessimistic conversation, and we’re not just talking in the, you know, 100 years from now because I think both you and I are talking to people all the time, or we’re observing people all the time in districts that are doing this work all across the country and the world. There are people that are doing really, really interesting work that are actualizing what we’re talking about today. We just need to have it become mainstream.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: I think that’s why I really love the fact that you and I both have this opportunity to podcast because the storytelling allows us to shed a light on communities others might not know about, projects others might not know about. I get the chance, both through my podcast and through Fullmind, working in hundreds of districts across the U.S., to see the very best of the best and what’s working really well. So, by sharing those stories and turning the mic on for them, it really allows more people to learn about how greatness can happen and what building blocks and stepping stones they need to get on in order to make it happen in their own community.

Nate McClennen: So excited. Hayley, what a great conversation today. So excited to catch up on a public podcast and hope we can do more of these occasionally.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Yeah. This was so fun. Thanks for letting us merge our audiences for the greater good.

Nate McClennen: Yeah, it’s awesome. All right, well, have a great day, and thanks so much.

Hayley Spira-Bauer: Thanks, Nate.

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Guest Bio

Hayley Spira-Bauer

Hayley Spira-Bauer is a dynamic educator and advocate dedicated to expanding equitable access to quality learning. With nearly two decades of experience, she began her career with Teach for America, teaching kindergarten through 8th grade, including a pivotal role as a 5th-grade teacher in Harlem, where she inspired a love of reading among her students. Her passion for addressing educational inequities led her to co-found a New York City elementary school and serve as a school leader, mentoring teachers and driving instructional excellence. Currently, as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Academic Officer at Fullmind, Hayley has built the organization’s Academics team from the ground up, crafting innovative, research-based frameworks that support virtual learning, teacher development, and student success nationwide.

In addition to her leadership at Fullmind, Hayley is an influential voice in the education and EdTech space. She advises OKO, serves on the advisory board for Inspiring Educators, and mentors future leaders through Catapult at the University of Pennsylvania and StartEd. As the host of the nationally recognized Learning Can’t Wait podcast, she engages with thought leaders to explore pressing educational challenges and solutions. At home on Long Island, Hayley enjoys life with her husband, two young sons, and their lively rescue dog, Luna—mirroring her own unstoppable energy and drive.

Links

• Watch the full video here
• Hayley Spira-Bauer Website
• LinkedIn
• Fullmind
• Learning Can’t Wait Podcast