Molly Zucchet:
There was nothing that I would’ve changed about that or nothing that I think was wrong with it. It just felt like school.

Alec Patton:
This is High Tech High Unboxed. I’m Alec Patton. And you just heard the voice of Molly Zucchet, a senior at High Tech High in San Diego. We’re doing something new in this episode. To explain, we need to go back to September 2020 when we released a guest episode from the podcast, This Teenage Life about remote learning. It’s season two, episode four, check it out if you haven’t heard it already, it’s a classic.

And Molly Josephs is the teacher who works on This Teenage Life said this one thing that I couldn’t shake.

Molly Josephs:
I obviously am a teacher, I love teaching, but the vibe of This Teenage Life feels a bit different.

Alec Patton:
I know exactly what Molly means, but I don’t feel great about it. Because if I have a single basic belief about public education, it’s that it should be inclusive. Kids shouldn’t be segregated by perceived academic ability or by anything else, including self-selection. Because what kids choose, not to mention what they’re encouraged to choose by adults, is influenced by their gender, their race, their social class, a bunch of factors that should not determine the quality of a child’s education.

This principle of inclusion is at the heart of High Tech High. And it’s one of the main reasons I moved from London to San Diego to work here. But one of the big things that makes the vibe of This Teenage Life different from class is precisely that it’s a self-selected group. And I’ve experienced this difference myself, both as a student and as a teacher. Self-selected groups just feel different. And let’s call it what it is. They often feel better. To some extent this doesn’t matter.

The ideal of public education is for classrooms to be diverse, inclusive spaces that include both students who love the class and students who would rather be anywhere else. If achieving that goal means losing a certain vibe, it’s still worth it.

But it just doesn’t sit right with me for school to be relegated to this category of not quite as good as self-selected extracurricular groups. I couldn’t shake this feeling. So I emailed Molly about it. And then I invited the people I most wanted to learn from onto the podcast to talk it out.

So today’s episode features Molly Josephs of course, she teaches at the Dalton School in New York in addition to creating This Teenage Life. It also features Molly Zucchet and Olivia Ho, high school students who co-founded This Teenage life. And who’ve been students in the High Tech High system since they were in elementary school. And Rodrigo Arancibia, Co-director of the CARPE College Access Network at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education. And before that an after-school program leader, teacher and district coordinator.

But the first person you will hear from is Sarah Fine, who wrote In Search of Deeper Learning with Jal Mehta and now runs the San Diego Teacher Residency. And I started the conversation by asking Sarah the obvious question given the title of her book. So where did you guys find deeper learning when you went in search for it?

Sarah Fine:
Well, we found it in really surprising places, Alec. We started our journey looking mainly in the sort of core academic courses of study at a whole bunch of very high profile, allegedly really awesome, high schools around the US, public high schools. And we found it in pockets, some really amazing stuff happening in academic courses.

But much more often we would ask kids, we would hang out in the cafeteria during lunch, and we would ask them, when in your day does time fly by? When in your day do you do things that you bring home with you willingly, that you talk about beyond that particular class or activity? And inevitably they would tell us about their elective courses or about their extracurricular activities. We ended up calling it the periphery of school. So the kinds of spaces and activities at schools that often fly under the radar from the perspective of policy makers and people who talk about school.

So we got very interested in what was different about those spaces. And why they were more promising for producing deeper learning for kids than so many academic courses were.

Alec Patton:
So that sounds like exactly the opposite of what was intended was happening.

Sarah Fine:
Can you say more about that?

Alec Patton:
Just that one’s intention is that deep learning happens in academic courses and electives make it palatable and give you sort of exciting things to pursue. But broadly speaking, if you’re imagining the kind of vision of American public schooling, you’re sort of thinking, everybody learns deeply about history and some people are going to play in band and that’s cool, but we’re not really expecting that that’s a core part of being a citizen as an adult.

Sarah Fine:
Right. So yeah, we saw kind of the mirror image of what you might hope for. Although the question we ended up asking was, how can the academic core learn from those spaces? And/or how can we totally blow up the organization of our schools so that more of those types of activities sit at the center of what happens? And both of those questions I think are relevant. I don’t think it’s an either or there.

Alec Patton:
Awesome. The other thing that inspired this, bringing you guys together for this conversation, is Molly Josephs, you were talking about how you really love your podcast group, it’s fair to say.

Molly Josephs:
That is true.

Alec Patton:
What is it about that group that makes it so special?

Molly Josephs:
I think there are a few factors involved in those spaces. One is consent. Young people are choosing to be there. Two is usually the thing that you’re making is genuinely authentic. It’s one thing to make a thing for an exhibition, it’s another thing to make something for an audience that you think is outside in the world. So yes, I think exhibition is extremely powerful, but making a film for an adult film festival could also be potentially more powerful because it’s not just people in your school communities who are seeing it, it’s people out in the world.

Anyway, that’s all to say that I think those types of qualities are what make a lot of extracurricular spaces really powerful. In terms of the podcast, I think what makes it special is the feeling that the social contract between me, the adults and the young people involved is very much, we are on a team. So I am not their teacher. I’m much more of a facilitator or someone who holds the space and helps to make things happen instead of being an authority figure.

And then also I think that because we don’t have this idea of turning over every year, we’ve had continuity, and we’ve developed relationships over now almost two years that have allowed us to really connect with each other and build a real community.

Olivia and Molly, what am I completely messing up and leaving out?

Molly Zucchet:
Yeah, I definitely agree. And I was going to mention what you said about, first of all, the social contract between you, the adult and the rest of us who are high school students. It feels definitely like a partnership or a team and a community. And not to say that I haven’t had that with other teachers because I feel like I definitely had. But I think the difference here is that in other settings, it’ll be like, the teacher comes up with this project and then maybe you’re working super closely and you develop a great relationship with them, and that’s great.

But this, it feels like if Molly Josephs proposes an idea, I feel like I have the freedom to say, actually, I don’t know that I love that, here’s this idea, let’s talk and work towards something that we’re both excited about because we both have equal stake in what we’re working on.

Olivia Ho:
Yeah. And I think to go along with that idea, a lot of what is very freeing to me about This Teenage Life is that we really are choosing what we want to do. And so it’s never a question of, oh gosh, this is yet another responsibility that I have heaped on my plate. It really feels like something that I’m excited about and that I can look forward to.

And I think that feeling is mutual among everyone who participates, which I think is really special. Especially when contrasted with a lot of the ways that your requirements for school make you feel as though you’re just doing the work to do the work.

Molly Zucchet:
Another reason that it feels special is because it does feel like a real world thing. We’re publishing these episodes across various streaming platforms and all that kind of stuff. It feels bigger than, I mean, definitely bigger than a school assignment, but it also feels definitely bigger than a traditional hobby. It definitely feels like something significant.

Olivia Ho:
Yeah, it’s interesting because we started out really not knowing what we were doing, which I think was refreshing because it was exciting to learn new things alongside other people.

Alec Patton:
Molly Zucchet and Olivia, I want to ask, you guys have been at a project-based school for a very long time. Have you had a project during school hours that had these qualities that you’re talking about in This Teenage Life?

Olivia Ho:
There have definitely been projects that I have been equally as passionate about and equally as excited about. But I would say that I think within the framework of being at High Tech High, a lot of what we did didn’t have the same sort of feeling of true agency and self-driveness. Because a lot of times it makes sense, your teachers come up with the project, and then it’s your job to make it into what it is. Which is you’re already given a lot of agency in that. But I think with This Teenage Life, because it is really, I would say, detached from any sort of notion of what it should be. It is just what it is. Meaning that we do the things that we want to do and we’re able to meld it into what we are.

So I’d say that there are projects and different things that I’ve done that have similar qualities, but nothing really has the same feeling. But I’d be curious to know what Molly thinks. Because I may be missing a project or two.

Molly Zucchet:
Yeah, I was basically going to say the same thing. I don’t know that I even really have specific projects in mind, but I think that my favorite projects are the ones that I’ve felt the most engaged in, have definitely been ones that involve the highest amount of freedom given by the teachers. Which is in some senses what This Teenage Life is. But also it feels sort of uncomparable because This Teenage Life I feel like I have, I mean, control isn’t the right word because I don’t control This Teenage Life, but I have full freedom in This Teenage Life in a way that I have never really felt in school before in that teacher-student class dynamic.

Sarah Fine:
I don’t think it’s comparable in some ways, because we don’t have to ascribe to any of the structures of school because we’re not a school. And so that’s really lucky.

So anyway, thing one, to summarize, that I want to say is, I think it’s an unfair comparison because we don’t have any of the laws of physics that govern school. So that’s thing one.

Molly Zucchet:
Exactly.

Sarah Fine:
But thing two, is my question to you, Moll, what do you think makes it different?

Molly Zucchet:
Well, I mean, just as a first thing, I don’t think it has anything to do with grading. Obviously since we’re not a school, if you were grading us, that would, I mean, obviously feel very weird. But yeah, I don’t know. Olivia, if you have any thoughts?

Olivia Ho:
Yeah, I mean, I guess I was just thinking about how a lot of times, like Molly was saying, the requirements of school can take away this feeling of you as an adult and as an individual because you have to be here at this time and then you have to go to class in five minutes. Can you figure that out? Do you know what time it is?

And I think part of what makes this change feel very different and very distinct from school is that, yeah, we don’t have a specific time we need to be there. I mean, we have meetings that we schedule, but it’s not like, I don’t know, I mean, we’re not graded on attendance and there’s no real requirements of us. Which is also different from other extracurricular activities where you will be, maybe not graded on your attendance, but that will impact your performance in that thing.

But I kind of agree. I don’t know how comparable it is to school considering that it just has a very distinct and different format.

Rodrigo Arancibia:
Hey y’all, this is Rodrigo, just had a quick question from the students. How big of a role does relationship play in that? Because if I’m looking at how you participated in any other project versus how you’re participating in this work, it sounds to me like there’s definitely a strong relationship that you’ve built with Molly. How important is that to the work and being able to have that license and that freedom?

Molly Zucchet:
Yeah, I was actually just about to bring that up. I think first of all, what’s, I mean, definitely been super huge is all of the students’ relationship with Molly Josephs. But also one thing that’s important to note, even if maybe it obviously doesn’t apply to many other extracurricular activities, when we started or when Olivia and Molly started This Teenage Life, it basically just became what already was our friend group. Or maybe a slightly extended version of our friend group, just hanging out and talking, which was super important. Because we had already sort of established that comfortability with each other. It wasn’t some super clique-y close knit thing, there was definitely new people coming in and out. And now we’ve developed this core group of people that are really passionate about the project.

But I think relationships are huge, especially when you’re creating something like our podcast that’s very personal and requires a high degree of trust within the group. I think that’s definitely made a huge difference.

And with our relationship with Molly, we’ve talked about it, it just totally feels like a team or a partnership. It doesn’t feel at all like there’s any sort of hierarchy to it.

Rodrigo Arancibia:
And Sarah, is that consistent with what you guys have seen across the board in terms of the research? Or what similarities are you seeing with that?

Sarah Fine:
Yeah, I mean, I think a huge amount of research, well beyond ours, suggest what a lot of us I think know intuitively, which is relationships are the key. The thing without which none of this can happen. And the stronger the relationship networks among students, and between students and teachers, the higher the ceiling is for the quality of the work that can get produced for sure.

I was going to add though, one of the things that Jal and I thought a lot about when we were trying to make sense of the patterns we had seen, is that in a lot of the peripheral spaces, assessment just took on a completely different quality. So, on the one hand learning happens via process. And so, even if you’re producing something that isn’t compelling to a broader audience, kids might learn something in the process and it could be meaningful to them.

But we also noticed that a lot of the places it seemed like kids were experiencing really powerful learning, they were producing something where the sort of assessment was well beyond anybody in the room. So, it wasn’t the teacher really doing the assessing or the coach or the facilitator, it was the standards of the field. You’re producing a thing that exists in a world that professional people do. And the standards of the field become the thing against which your artifact is held.

So, podcasting as a thing, and when you put a podcast out in the world that you’re producing for a public audience, there’s the question of how many people listen to it? How many people engage with it? To what extent does this podcast have some of the qualities that characterize the most compelling work at the highest level of work in the field? Same thing with, for example, a school play or a newspaper.

And so that’s just fundamentally different from what happens in so many classrooms. Where it’s unclear what the set of standards are. What is the alignment between what you’re doing in math class in 11th grade, and the standards of mathematical knowledge in the field. There often isn’t a clear relationship. At least it’s not clear to students and often not to teachers.

So it does strike me that This Teenage Life has some of that, where what you’re producing, it’s not really about how any of you all assess the work, it’s really about the impact the work makes in the world. And that is so far beyond the test focus, grade focus paradigm that it just changes the game.

Rodrigo Arancibia:
What that makes me think of, Sarah, is after school’s role in a lot of the service learning that we do. A lot of our service learning, whether it’s some sort of community-based work or reaching out into the community, whatever that is, that’s our authentic audience, that’s who we’re trying to support and serve.

And so the assessment component isn’t necessarily as rigid as it would be in the school day, but it’s still very, very much alive and in the real world. And I’m sure, Molly and Olivia, whether it’s making a podcast or making a documentary, that’s a big thing. It’s not like it’s a little task, you know what I mean?

Molly Josephs:
I think something that’s really interesting here that’s both an unfair comparison, but I think one that’s really interesting to think with, this is unrelated but tangentially related, is that, Sarah, the way that you talk about what deeper learning is, to me, what’s so beautiful about it is that it doesn’t think with the grammar of school first. It starts with thinking, what’s in the world and how does it work? And why does it work if that makes sense?

And I think that when you start a band, or if you start a restaurant, you’re not like, is this better than school? People are obviously learning things and making things and doing things, but there’s no comparison to school. And I think what something that’s interesting is oftentimes when we make things with young people, we compare it to school. And it’s interesting because we associate young people with school. But it’s an interesting thing to think with, what if we thought with restaurants and bakeries and art studios instead of with school.

And I think that’s where the comparison becomes also unfair. Again, I just want to emphasize that we have none of the constraints of school. No one’s forced to be there. I don’t know, we just don’t have to deal with anything like that.

And I think, Alec, you brought up in your email self-selection, and I think it’s a really interesting question to ask. How do you think about creating these kind of spaces where not everyone in the States is there by choice or is there consensually?

And I think my answer is oddly, is elliptical a word, like oddly like a snake eating its tail. I think the more and more that places or contexts are consensual, where kids are choosing what they’re doing, the more divergence that’s allowed, the more that you’ll end up seeing high quality work or high quality experiences.

Alec Patton:
I want to kind of get to the thing that I find very disquieting about all of this. Which is that fundamentally we are not talking about a desegregation, this idea, we’re talking about the power of self-segregation. And I don’t mean that racially. I don’t mean that economically, although that does tend to happen as well.

But it concerns me that it seems like something special happens when students self-select. Because we talked about the various regulations of school. And a lot of those are bad and a lot of those are poorly thought out. But the one thing that’s kind of irreducible is that public school is supposed to provide an education of value to every single student, whether they want to be there or not, whether they come with a basic set of skills or not.

And I think one of the things about This Teenage Life is if a kid came to This Teenage Life and they were like, “You know what, I don’t really like podcasting. I’m not into this.” You wouldn’t be like, “Oh, well, you have to come back next week.” But if someone was like, “Oh, I’m not into reading, I’m not into reading, I don’t really like this.” You wouldn’t be like, “Oh, it doesn’t sound like English is for you.”

And so I wonder, is the reality just, yeah, public school is great, but there’s a thing, the really great thing you aren’t going to have, but we can probably give you the next best thing. Is that the best we can hope for? Or is there a way of bringing this magic into something that is designed to be for everyone, whether they want it or not?

Molly Josephs:
This ends up being a tension in a lot of conversations in ways that are really interesting. But I think the place where there isn’t attention is, I feel oftentimes the way that it’s treated is, reading is like you have to eat your vegetables. But actually I think if you find out what a young person cares about and you see their magic, and you help match-make them to a medium they really care about. If you have something as broad as storytelling, then I don’t think it has to end up with self-segregation. You could end up potentially with kids who have shared interests, doing stories on things that they care about.

Sure, there might be some segregation there, but I don’t think it means that it results in only certain people get certain things. Which I feel is often the argument about interest based learning, is that it’s not equitable because not everyone will get the same thing. But I think that argument ends up being false if you actually start with the individual and think less in terms of information transmission and content transmission. And more think in terms of, okay, you are a human, the thing that we’ve created that you’re going to be exploring is broad enough that whatever taste, interest and identities you bring to the table, we are going to figure out how to use this medium in a way that’s expressive of you.

Sarah Fine:
Yeah, I mean, Alec, I think that is the question. And I would hate to leave any potential audience thinking that I or any of us are anti-school. I mean, I think the idea of creating a public via public education that is as integrated as we can make it is inherently valuable.

And so the reason that Jal and I are always asking the question, how can the core learn from the periphery and bring in the elements that make the periphery powerful within a more constrained space that has certain goals that might not be attached in the periphery? I think that is the question. I don’t think I’m ready to blow it all up.

But I do think that the strongest classroom spaces, even if they are compulsory, even if kids have to be there, I think that if they can look to some of those qualities, that Molly and Rodrigo and others were describing, how do we embed choice, real choice, within some kind of common strand?

How do we look to an authentic audience or an authentic client so that students are actually creating something that is less fake than the fake things we usually create inside of school? How do we look to the standards of the field to kind of determine the quality of the work that we’re doing? How do we make sure that there are opportunities for students to create something that’s more than the sum of the parts?

I think part of the problem of normalized school is that the thing we’re trying to produce is individual achievement. We’re not organizing our school to produce good for the community or for society or for anything. What we’re interested in, and the way that we measure, and the way that we incentivize our schools, is a kind of person by person basis. And then we get into that whole scramble for badging and meritocracy and who’s on top and so on.

Whereas a lot of those spaces outside of school, and something like This Teenage Life, kids are creating something that they could not create on their own. There’s real differentiated rules, there’s real interdependence. The thing that you create in the end could not have been created by any one or two kids ideally.

And so if we can reorganize our classrooms to do that and still embed a through line that allows kids to develop the skills that we’ve agreed we think they need to develop. I think there’s real possibilities there. And maybe there is a ceiling because school is a manufactured environment in a way that other places are not. And that’s never going to go entirely away. But I think we are very far from bumping up against the limits of what core academics and schools could be.

Molly Josephs:
Sarah, that was so beautifully said.

Alec Patton:
And Olivia and Molly, just to follow up on that. What can your academic during the day teachers learn from This Teenage Life? What do you want to tell them about?

Olivia Ho:
Yeah, I think for me the biggest thing is I think like Sarah was saying really integrating choice into what you’re doing even while everyone has to be there. And there’s very little choice in that sense. But even in the smallest decisions I’ve noticed that I’ve had teachers who consult students when they are curious about when something should be due. And things like that I think go a long way towards making a culture that is more based around mutual benefit and collaboration and benefit of the group as opposed to the individual. So I think that’s something that I was thinking about.

Molly Zucchet:
Yeah, I definitely agree with that. And I also think one thing that makes a difference between traditional school environments versus This Teenage Life is that This Teenage Life is a group of, in a lot of senses, very similar people or like-minded people.

And so I think one thing that’s really important for teachers to understand. And I mean, I think this goes along with what Olivia was saying about choice, but just that every student in their class is very different. So it’s going to require a lot of individual choice really, just allowing the students to try to craft their experience. Even if it is really different from someone else’s in the class or what someone else wants to do in the class. That’s fine, if they’re both learning a lot from it.

Molly Josephs:
Moll, how would you say though, given that people are so different and given that diversity is such a beautiful and important thing, how would you say that you create a culture where people form relationships across difference?

Molly Zucchet:
Yeah, that’s interesting. And obviously it’s really important. Also just in school in general, if you have … I think it wouldn’t necessarily be successful to have a class of 30 different people working on 30 completely different things. That doesn’t totally make sense to me as a school environment.

So I think one thing that’s important, and I mean, to be honest, I don’t even know if this is really true or if I really believe this, but I think structure is important to a certain degree. I think a teacher with a clear idea of, I don’t know, these are the guidelines, this is generally what I think, but whatever you need, whatever you want, you can do within that.

And like Olivia said, small choices along the way would help. And I mean, I also, I think at the end of the day, if the students are happy about what they’re working on, and if they’re excited, then that’ll in itself promote them to talk with each other about what they’re working on because they’ll be excited. If you were bummed out about a project and didn’t feel you were doing good work, that would never prompt you to go up to somebody and be like, “Hey, look what I did.” You only do that if you’re excited about something. So I think that’s how it would help promote connection.

Rodrigo Arancibia:
I’m so glad that, Molly, you shared a structure, because that’s so consistent with really, really high quality programs that we’ve seen across the nation. It’s not just about sitting with students and just, we’re hanging out. No, we’re not rolling the balls out. There are thoughtful structures in terms of, yes, we are going to achieve this goal. Or we meet Tuesdays and Thursdays, or Mondays and Wednesdays, and on Fridays we do something …

When we start to think about relationships or creating culture, there is a misnomer that, yeah, it just means free for all. It just means just hanging out or whatever. That’s completely the opposite of how really, really strong relationships are built.

And especially in this out of school time space, some of the students that we work with typically don’t have a lot of structure in their lives or in their circumstances. So having the structure of being able to go to school and hang out and then be able to stay with an adult who cares about you and who you know is going to be there after school at the same time or online in the same space. There’s a certain comfort to that. And students then are able to open up and say, hey, I trust this person because they’re there for me. And I think that’s a huge point about that structure. So thank you so much Molly for bringing that up.

Molly Zucchet:
Yeah, definitely. And I totally agree with what you said. And it’s just interesting that a common misconception, I think with both students and teachers, is a class focused on individual learning means free for all, do whatever you want. But really that’s obviously not the case as we’ve seen throughout multiple projects and in classes and stuff.

Molly Josephs:
Yeah. And that circles back to Sarah’s point about, if you’re making something that’s in the world, the standard of quality is set by the parameters of the world. So if you’re putting on a stage production, if your audience is going to think it’s cool, you have to do certain things to make it cool. And doing that requires a lot of work. And I think this ends up being a reinforcing loop where it’s the relationships form when you’re doing something real and when you’re doing something real, you’re making something that’s a product or a project that’s truly out there in the world. And I think that helps create a relationship.

Sarah Fine:
The only danger there, and of course I’m doubling back on something I myself was saying, but process matters a lot. If you’re coaching a soccer team, and your soccer team is on a losing streak, it does not mean there hasn’t been meaningful progress and development with consequential learning that’s happened for the players in the process of preparing for those games. So similarly, in project based learning, the danger is always that we get overly focused on the product to the detriment of the process and to the detriment of the learning that might happen along the way at different rates. It might look and sound different for different kids.

And so I’m always thinking in PDL, how do we on the one hand think really hard about truly authentic products that align to the standards of the field and so on and have real audiences. And also not so overly weight that, that we forget about the learning that happens along the way, which is also really important.

Molly Josephs:
Yeah, I think that’s a great point. Sarah, I’m wondering in schools, what do you think of as the equivalent of the soccer game?

Sarah Fine:
Well, in traditional schools, unfortunately it’s like the test or the essay, which is clearly-

Rodrigo Arancibia:
I was just going to say, how are they testing. For sure, testing is the soccer game because it’s just-

Alec Patton:
Because it’s so fun.

Sarah Fine:
Because it’s so much fun. Right. Exactly. You just get into the flow of it. No, I mean, I think in a project based school where, or even not, where kids are working toward something more authentic, it might be a production or an exhibition or the debut of the play you’ve created as a class or the screening of the movies or podcasts or whatever. So, the game time where all the pieces need to come together in order to create something that produces some effect on the world.

Molly Josephs:
Yeah, one thing I feel funny about is, I feel really grateful for This Teenage Life and I feel like it’s a really, really special space. And I just don’t want it to sound at all like I think it’s better than school or something. I think school is the hardest, I’m remote teaching right now, and it’s a constant process of vacillating between enabling choice and making sure everyone’s getting everything. And also, I just think constraints really make a big difference. And so it’s a useful comparison to think with, but it’s also one that I acknowledge is very unfair too. So, I just wanted to say-

Sarah Fine:
Molly, I’m not worried. Yeah, I don’t feel worried about that.

Molly Josephs:
Okay. Cool.

Sarah Fine:
I mean, at least from my perspective. I think if everybody was doing amazing work within the walls of K-12 schools and academic courses, I would feel differently. But I feel like we just are nowhere near bumping up against the limits of what we can do. And so looking to other spaces as inspiration, not as comparison, it’s not apples to apples, but what are some of the qualities that made This Teenage Life work? And which of those qualities, clearly not all of them, can we import into our core classrooms? And how might we adapt them, given the concerns we have around shared experiences and shared content? That just seems like the right question to ask, not an annoying one.

Molly Josephs:
Thank you, Sarah.

Alec Patton:
There is a ceiling, but we’re so far from bumping into it, that we really don’t need to worry.

Molly Josephs:
We’re not there.

Alec Patton:
I want to see if Olivia, Molly wanted to add anything?

Olivia Ho:
I was just thinking about how interesting it is to peek behind the curtains on the students’ side of things. And yeah, it’s been really enjoyable talking to all of you.

Molly Zucchet:
Yeah, I definitely agree. I don’t think I really have anything else to add. But I thought this was a great conversation.

Molly Josephs:
The one thing I want to add is that I don’t think I ever in my life until This Teenage Life really had the opportunity to work with young people truly as my teachers and my collaborators. And I depend on them and it’s somewhat vulnerable in some ways in the sense that I work really hard and invest a lot of time without any funding to make this thing that I really care about. And it depends on this team of young people. And I think really believing in young people means doing that. And I feel so grateful to have that opportunity. And I hope all educators get to have that opportunity in whatever capacity they’re in.

Alec Patton:
High Tech High Unboxed is hosted and produced by me, Alec Patton. Our theme music is by Brother Hershel. If you want to check out the work of our panelists, check out the links in our show notes. Thanks for listening.