Available September 17, 2024
Find New View EDU on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and many other podcast apps.
For the past six seasons, Tim Fish has been the voice of New View EDU. Now that he has departed from his role at NAIS to start his own firm, NAIS President Debra P. Wilson and Vice President of Leadership and Governance Morva McDonald will be taking the reins. But first, Debra sits down with Tim to reflect on his 60 episodes of the podcast, what he’s learned from his long career in education, and what he thinks may be next for independent schools.
Tim and Debra begin by reflecting on Tim’s favorite episodes. Although he says he could find something meaningful and special about every episode he’s recorded, Tim mentions several specific interviews (which are all linked below in the “related episodes” list). He favors his conversations with students above all, and he also mentions the talks he had with authors such as Catlin Tucker, former co-host Lisa Kay Solomon, and JayMcTighe; psychologists such as Lisa D’Amour, Shimi Kang, and Mary Helen Immordino-Yang; and school founders such as Orly Friedman, Josh Dahn, and Tyler Thigpen.
Tim says if there were one theme that stands out, it’s the importance of student agency, and how a connection to the work and a sense of mattering transforms students’ experiences in school. He shares with Debra a new idea he’s working on, which is a redefinition of “excellence” in education, contrasting “old excellence” with “new excellence.” To allow for student agency and “new excellence,” Tim says his dream school would be designed with a smaller student body, more flexibility in age groupings and class sizes, a creative and more minimalistic approach to physical plant, and a well-defined, central role for teachers that also allows for the influence of innovation and technology.
Debra and Tim discuss artificial intelligence and its place in the classroom and how they’re both influenced by reading Sal Khan’s work on the subject. Tim shares his thoughts that AI can be used a “time machine” to manufacture usable time for teachers, taking over some of their administrative tasks and allowing them to spend more time working hands-on with students. He and Debra agree that the role of “teacher” has never been more important than in the age of AI, and that the human interactions in classrooms are where students can really be pushed to excel.
Key Questions
Some of the key questions Tim and Debra explore in this episode include:
- Reflecting on 60 episodes of the podcast, what are some of your favorite episodes and takeaways?
- In talking to psychologists and experts in student well-being, and also talking with students about their optimism for the future, how do you reconcile the dichotomy that we see between the fairly dark picture of mental health in schools and the energy and passion of the students themselves? What ingredients go into creating environments that promote that greater well-being in students?
- Knowing all that you know about independent schools, education, and design, if you could design a school from scratch, what would it be like?
- What is the role of the teacher in the age of AI? How do you think AI presents an opportunity for education?
- What are the “big questions” ahead for independent schools?
Episode Highlights
- “When flow is present, when those things are present, when you have agency, when you care, like it's actually really good for self-efficacy and it lowers depression and it gives you more self-worth and it makes you like, so all those good things we want about well-being, they happen when we're in this environment. And so for me, it's this thinking about, as school leaders, how do we design the environment, how do we create the context for these things we want to see with young people to emerge? That's what I'm really interested in.” (7:23)
- “In my head, I almost think about AI as a time machine. And I don't mean something that transports us to the past or the future. I mean something that manufactures time. So we think about it, It's the number one thing. For all my career, 30 plus years, whenever we talk about, wouldn't it be great if we could do this, this, or this? Yeah, but I don't have any time. I have no time. Give me more time and I'll be able to do that. Well, AI can actually give us more time.” (21:58)
- “My sense is that parents are often stuck in something I call old excellence. That sort of excellence from when I was in school, which was largely teacher-centered, largely exam-based, largely grade-based, right? Lots of papers, lots of homework, not a lot of agency, not a lot of engagement. And I think that in the age of AI, in the age of where we are and just everything going on, I don't think old excellence has the relevance it has. But I also find that parents don't imagine or ask for new excellence that's highly engaged, based in well-being, high agency, teacher as an architect and designer, more get out of the way ... we have to help the parents walk across the bridge from old excellence to new excellence.” (27:55)
Resource List
- Check out what Tim is up to now at his company’s website.
- Read Tim’s various articles for Independent School magazine.
- Get Tim’s book, Leadership and Technology at Independent Schools.
- Read Mihalyi Czikszentmihalyi’s book Flow, one of Tim’s favorites.
- Check out Sal Khan’s book Brave New Words, on both Tim and Debra’s reading lists.
- Read Joel Rose’s article on “Changing the Grammar of School,” referenced by Debra in this episode.
Full Transcript
- Read the full transcript here.
Related Episodes
- Episode 60: Student Voices on Learning Self-Reliance
- Episode 59: Schools and the Emotional Lives of Teenagers
- Episode 56: Helping Students Shape Dynamic Futures
- Episode 52: Designing Education for Transfer
- Episode 47: Schools for Future-Ready Minds
- Episode 45: Designing Schools for Blended Learning
- Episode 40: Student Voice and Agency in Education
- Episode 35: The Relationship Between Emotions and Learning
- Episode 33: Innovating for the Youngest Learners
- Episode 31: AI and the Future of Education
- Episode 23: Designing Schools for Self-Directed Learning
- Episode 21: Creating a Generation of Super Collaborators
About Our Guest
Tim Fish is the founder and partner at Two Chairs Studio. Prior to creating Two Chairs, Tim was the first chief innovation officer at the National Association of Independent Schools and the host of the New View EDU podcast. He has deep roots in the independent school community, including a long history at McDonogh School in Maryland, where he served as associate headmaster, among other roles.
Tim also was the founding president and CEO of the FolioCollaborative, a nonprofit community of more than 160 schools worldwide focused on working together to build a flexible faculty/staff development process grounded in strong relationships and meaningful conversations.
Tim is the co-author of the book Leadership and Technology at Independent Schools. He started his career as a fourth-grade teacher and has served as a founder, board member, and consultant for a variety of schools, organizations, and companies. He has served on six nonprofit boards and recently completed his service on the board of Viewpoint School, a 1,200-student, PreK-12 school in Los Angeles.
Tim has an undergraduate degree from St. Francis University and a master’s in education from George Mason University. Tim is also the father of four children (The Four Fish Sticks). Tim and his wife, Diane, live outside Baltimore.