‘A Fire Inside Us’: Pioneering Technology in Education with RJ Bialk   

Please note, this transcript is generated by AI and may include some errors. 

Spencer Payne (00:08): Okay, here we are with some more fun with front of the class real stories from real educators today with RJ Bialk. And RJ, for those in the education space who kind of know this world a little bit, how do you introduce yourself to other people in the education world? What is it that you're doing today? How would you describe what your work is and what you're focused on these days?

RJ (00:29): Great, great question. First thing I gotta say is, you when you work in an education, we're all teachers. So if anyone ever asked me, RJ, what do you do? First thing I say is I'm a teacher. If they do care to ask a follow up question, then I go into, I'm actually a chief technology officer for Deerfield Public Schools, a suburb right outside of Illinois. I get an opportunity to support hundreds of educators across our district on various buildings to just...

Like I said, support and accelerate the learning that's going on in the classroom. You whatever the teachers are trying to work with and teach them a learning objective perspective, I'm the guy that breaks down the walls for them to make it as easy as I can.

Spencer Payne (01:07): Perfect. Perfect.

And what was your path to become the chief technology officer, CTO of the district? You did some teaching early in your career. Just help us understand, like, how have you navigated from educator, teacher in the classroom to CTO? How did that happen?

RJ (01:22): I, you know, it's, it's not a, it's not a straight line. That's that's for sure. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, you know, it was something, you know, spent, I gotta be honest, I didn't think I was going to get into education at all. When I went to go get my undergrad, I was in marketing and advertising design, you know, around the early two thousands. I thought I was going to go into marketing. You know, I felt like I saw a movie somewhere where a marketing person was cool. And like a PR guy was the top. was like, that's what I want to do.

Spencer Payne (01:26): Those are the best stories.

RJ (01:51): But then when I graduated from my undergrad, was right away, it's time to become an adult. I was looking for a job and I ended up finding an opportunity at a local public school right by my house, a Chicago public school. And I wasn't certified, so I wasn't going to become a classroom teacher, but the role was to be an instructional assistant. I was actually supporting a child who was working with autism.

And it was a moment where you know, as a as 22 year young adult, you don't really think outside of yourself too much. You don't really put other people ahead of you. You don't really think about what their experience is like. And I was that guy 100 percent. I was more worried about hanging out with my buddies or a girl or, know, where my next beer was going to come not paying any attention to my community or the people that I live with and work within my community. So when I started working at this job, I wasn't expecting too much, but right away, like within the first week, the feeling of the positive feeling, the feeling of support and help that I was giving to another person, it really just made me feel a feeling that I had never felt before, like a feeling of like complete, like I had done something positive, right? I'd done something good for that day.

And it was a feeling, you know, once you get it, and you go away from it, you want it again. You want to keep going because you feel like you're a part of something bigger than yourself. So it was something, it was an amazing experience for me. And right away when I realized this was more than a job, this was, thought to be cliche, but it really did feel like a calling. Like this is where I was supposed to be. This is where I could do the most good. Once I realized that I committed to it, I went back, got my master's in teaching within the first six months of starting that job, I started my master's program, finished my master's program within two years, did my student teaching in that same time. And then I was actually lucky enough to find a position at the school that I was teaching at or that I was working at. It could not have been any better for me because from an opportunity perspective, I'd already built those relationships with the kids that I was working with for those couple years.

So when I walked into a classroom teacher position, I didn't have to worry about the relationships. They were already there. It was wonderful. But I did that. I was working in CPS. I started off as a fourth grade writing teacher.

Spencer Payne (04:21): Okay, fourth grade writing. So

I'm curious, how did that go from the special needs kind of autistic teacher to fourth grade writing? How did you decide on that? How did that happen?

RJ (04:30): You know, to be a certified certified teacher working with students with needs, you have to have a sped endorsement special education endorsement. And at the time, I was working as a one on one aid that instructional assistant with that child. So I had an opportunity to follow him as well as his class, you know, to all the different subject areas and stuff. So as I was doing that, you know, it kind of showed me the difference between my experience as a student going through elementary school to then my experience as an adult and as an educator going through elementary school. And it's crazy how different, know, how different that was.

But, you know, when I got my master's in education, it was a general education classrooms teaching certificate. So that's where I kind of just jumped right in and doing that. At the time, we were also doing, we still do it, inclusionary practices. So there was not a special education program that was unique to those students with those needs. It was a general education program and our students with needs would come in and push into the classroom. So during my experience, I had an option opportunity to do both kind of that general education teaching as well as supporting the students with the special needs.

Spencer Payne (05:46): So here we are now you go from 21 22 years old fresh out of college want to be the cool marketing guy to An aide to a special needs student to then like your life completely changed flipped He said this is I'm actually going into education right now You decide to go get your masters two years in now. You have a full-time fourth grade writing teacher job You're maybe still two years into your career at this point. No more marketing now. You're an educator now still.

How in the world do you go from fourth grade writing teacher to CTO of a school district? How did that happen?

RJ (06:23): You know, was so, and I say this, I say this as acknowledging the blessings that I have in my life. But the computer teacher at the school at the time, was one of the other faculty members. His name was John BN, amazing guy. He was a little bit more of a seasoned teacher. He was kind of approaching the end of his career. And something occurred over that summer where he realized retirement was amazing. And he was gonna decide he was gonna do that.

So I guess he gave the administration not a whole lot of notice a couple of weeks before the school year started. And at that point, I had volunteered to be the yearbook coordinator for the school, brought in my marketing and advertising design in that sense, I was going to design a yearbook, know. And from there, I just started, you know, showing the kids how to use cameras and how to export pictures off of cameras and how to take them and modify image quality and size.

Spencer Payne (07:08): Okay, Yep.

RJ (07:21): and how to put it into a yearbook page and what that would look like if you move, you know, just lay out organizational structure of the book itself. And from those usings of those, even back then, what I would consider just basic technology. It was something where when Mr. BN retired, the administration said, Hey, RJ, listen, we got this opportunity. Would you be willing to become our computer teacher, you know, for the school? And as you mentioned, man, by that point, it was maybe year three for me, you know, just having gone through this. So much occurred in those first two to three years from the time I was at 22 to 25 timeframe.


Spencer Payne (08:05): And now as a result, people just bring you coffees.

RJ (08:08): That was my superintendent. sorry about that. Sorry about that. No. So, you know, it was a situation where the opportunity presented itself. I was in the right place at the right time. And I was excited about continuing that support of integrating technology into the kids' lives. Because it was something that I always saw their excitement. When you tell a kid, hey, listen, we're going to go around the school and take pictures of some action shots to put in a yearbook.

That's not something that most middle school kids are told at that point. Here's a camera. Here's an adult. We're going to go do this. Most of the time it's not like that. So I saw the passion and the love that came out of the kids when they were using that instructional tech. And I was like, man, man, this has been going great. I'm going to keep doing it. And then I opened up the door to the computer lab and realized that there was no computers in the lab. I was like, guys, what's going on here? I think we had maybe three of the old IMAX, you know, that barely even worked. 

Spencer Payne (09:09): And so if we place ourselves, is 2003, four-ish, something in that range, and you've got a computer lab with four computers in it, so what did you even sign up for? What did you even say yes to?

RJ (09:15): Exactly. Well, and that was the thing. was that moment where it was just like, oh shoot, what did I just give myself into? But you know, and that's one thing I got to say about teachers in general. I got a lot of friends and a lot of my mom's a teacher, my wife's a teacher. When you come to a point where there's no other resource where you don't know what to do, teachers find a way. We don't hold back. We figure it out because I mentioned this earlier, we're part of something bigger than ourselves.

That's honestly what I felt like for the students I was supporting at the school. was just like, RJ, yeah, there's three computers in here. And if you look at a classroom with 38 kids and go, sorry, guys, we got to take turns of 10 because we only have three computers. Exactly, exactly. But it was just a situation. was just like, RJ, that's not an experience you would want. It's not an experience you would want your kid to have.

Spencer Payne (10:02): Yeah, you each get three minutes, go.

So what in the world do you do? Did you go figure out how to go from three to 30 computers in a month? Like what happened?

RJ (10:24): Well, that also helped growing up in the city of Chicago, my scrappy side. I ended up going to local businesses actually that were around the school, just telling them who I was and just letting them know, listen, I'm trying to create a curriculum based around technology supporting instruction. And these are for the kids in our neighborhood. These are our community kids. I said, there any chance you might have some extra old computer equipment that you might not need for right now or might be able to kind of give up so that I could take it and try to do something with it with the kids? And it was amazing to honestly how many businesses came together and were like, yeah, I got a computer for you. How many do need? I'm like, I don't like two. And they're like, yeah, here you go. Here's two. And here's two monitors. I was like, this is great, man.

So again, it was one of those beggars can't be choosers. You just take what you can. And that was, I got to be honest, another game changer for me because at that moment, I realized I don't know how to network a lab of computers together. And if I want my kids to be able to experience something great here, I got to step my game up. I got to remove all of the walls, the hurdles that I think are in front of me from learning how to network a computer or a computer lab. I got to just do it because I got kids coming and I want to do the best I can for them. So we were we were able to do it. We were able to get everything networked. I borrowed my dad and my brother for some help on a couple of weekends.

Spencer Payne (11:30): Yeah. Yeah.

RJ (11:48): We got some folding tables. built shelves on the bottom of the folding tables with just plywood, four by eight sheets of plywood, set the computer lab or the computer towers underneath the tables, had the monitors on top of the tables. And we went from three computers, I think, to we had 34 when all was said and done.

Spencer Payne (12:06): Incredible.

So for, for a little bit of elbow grease and maybe the cost of some pieces of plywood and maybe a couple of beers for your dad and friends and family, you end up going from 33 to 34 computers in the course of just, I don't know, a couple of months, a couple of weeks. Like that's incredible. Like, so I mean, kudos to you. Congratulations. Right. Cause now all of sudden, mean,

RJ (12:15): Yeah.

Couple weeks actually, it was quick, yeah.

Spencer Payne (12:32): You said yes to something you didn't really know maybe what you were saying yes to. You realized like, this is not good enough. There's no one around me who can change this other than me. And you just went and made it happen. Like that's incredible.

RJ (12:44): You get after it, man. And I'm not, appreciate, you know, the way that you're saying that Spencer, but it's something I got to give accolades to, all my colleagues in the education profession. It's just something, it's a fire inside of us. And any one of them will do exactly what I just did in their own right, in their own capacity. It is a, it is a certain group of people, the salt of the earth that, that think that they're part of something and they want to do something that's greater than themselves. So it is exactly like you described, man. It's one of those things when you don't know what to do.

You buckle down and you figure it out.

Spencer Payne (13:14): Yeah.

I mean, yeah, kudos to you to figure that out. That's an awesome story. And then, so, so now you're still three, four years in your teaching career. You've just taken over this computer program. You've just outfitted the whole room. So it's actually functional for a full class. now what you, you still, you still have a marketing and advertising background, educational background. You don't have a technology background. like, how did you go learn all the things needed to become the CTO of a district? Like where did, where did that enter into your

RJ (13:20): Well, know, in a lot of this, you know, in my in for helping me was was good with timing for myself. So exactly like you just described. All right. Great. You got a lab. Now you got computers. Now what are you going to do on the computers when the kids come to the room? Not to mention exactly, exactly. Exactly. Great. You got a room now. What? You know, not to mention it was a situation where you have kindergarteners, five year olds all the way up to eighth graders at 13, some 14 year olds.

Spencer Payne (13:58): Yeah, what are you gonna teach him? Yeah.

RJ (14:14): The scope is huge in terms of what you're actually going to teach, what's academically appropriate for the age level of the student. And then what are the expectations that you're going to have knowing that you had to pull together a lab from donated computers from around the neighborhood? You can't expect the kids to go home and work on a computer. They may not have one.

Spencer Payne (14:34): They may not. Yeah. Especially at that early, early two thousands, like many, many people probably did. And many people were, didn't have a computer at home at that time.

RJ (14:43): Exactly, exactly. So it was something where I did, you know, kind of take a step back and I looked at my experience through college. And I was like, what was I using to navigate college? What was I doing? I was using Microsoft Office, you know, at the time that was that's what we had. It was Word, PowerPoint, Excel, you know, like those basic things. But it was a situation where the kids that I was teaching the kids that I was supporting had never seen some of that before, like they were going all the way to eighth grade.

This is before one to one. This is before Google. This is before all of that stuff. we did we came together, say the royal we, you know, came together, me, myself, and I was like, let's, let's set up some expectations that we want each grade level to be able to achieve. So for example, by the time a student were to have graduated eighth grade, we wanted them to know a basic understanding of word and be able to format a one page, five paragraph written essay, you know, so we had to talk to them about what does bold mean? When would you use that? What is a line character when you drop down to the next line? When would that work? Just basic stuff of navigating a computer screen, a keyboard. Again, this is back in 2003 to 2004, 2005. Our kids had not experienced anything like that before. So anyway, I started off the year focusing on the office applications and just kind of swimming through it.

Spencer Payne (15:43): Yeah. Yeah.

RJ (16:10): You know, like, let's see what the kids do. Let's see what we come up with. And the first parent teacher report card night, I had a line out my door from parents who I wasn't even expecting to meet, who had lined up to come in and tell me how much their kids enjoyed my class. The one day a week I had them. It was like, wow, for 45 minutes a week, we're working on this computer stuff.

Spencer Payne (16:31): Incredible. Yeah.

RJ (16:39): And I got this line of parents that want to tell me how much it's impacted their child. Man, I was flying high that night. was just so happy that all of the effort that I had put in had actually done something good for the kids I was trying to support. It was just awesome, absolutely awesome.

Spencer Payne (16:59): If you don't mind, I'd love to just like pause here for a second, right? Cause so far now you're, you had this incredible year, right? Where it seems like you have, you had a lot of autonomy to go figure out, like no one, no one, no one told you. seems like, Hey RJ, we want you to take over this program and here's the curriculum and here's all your computer. And you have a fully equipped everything you didn't, you walked in with none of that. Right. And so you kind of created it, knocked on business doors, got the computers figured out what's the curriculum. What do I teach the 7-year-olds versus what do I teach to 12-year-olds? Like, am I doing? Which can be really scary and intimidating. It can also be really fun for someone who likes to just kind of figure things out and be autonomous. I guess, could you speak a little bit to like the creativity involved, the autonomy that you had to go build from nothing?

And it seems like you're smiling talking about this. It seemed like that was maybe an unexpected benefit of getting into teaching, where sometimes it feels like the curriculum is this, I'm supposed to do this on Tuesday and then this on Wednesday and this on Friday, but your experience was completely different. You had autonomy to go create. Can you describe maybe how that felt? And also, do you still have some of that autonomy to create today? Is that still something that you get to tap into? Because we can clearly see you're excited talking about how you just created stuff out of nothing. Do you still get to do that today in your profession?

RJ (18:15): Yeah.

You know what it is? It is. I appreciate what you're saying that that it was one of the coolest things about, the beginning of my career is exactly like you say, kind of navigating the unknown, you know, almost kind of like a little bit of a pioneering type effort, you know, but but it is it was a situation and it's still like this in a lot of places where it was so new technology and technology and education that there wasn't any standards for it. Learning standards.

So there wasn't, we didn't even know what we wanted to teach the kids at that time, you know, from that. you know, when I, when I talked to my principal at the time and I'm like, Hey, listen, can I get some money for a computer lab? I don't think she left out loud. But I know in her head, she's like, money for a computer lab? We're a public school, RJ, what are you talking about? You know? But, but it was a, it was a situation. It was just like, still at that point having conversations with her, she's like, you know, I see what you're trying to what you want here, you want the kids to experience something that they've never experienced before. And that's great. And RJ, I don't know how to help you. I barely, we're still getting into email. You this was CPS back in the early 2000s. We had just started this program called First Class where we were emailing back and forth. And some teachers were like, I don't want to do email. I'm still going to leave notes on that. It like, it was a shift in the way teaching was, it was a shift in the way education was happening.

Spencer Payne (19:39): Yeah.

RJ (19:46): You know, like, shortly after we had the computer lab, and we saw a lot of the positive feedback from the community and the parents and the kids. We actually put in a request to CPS, like the district office, and said, we would love some laptops. We want a laptop, you know, like, how can we get some laptops? And they were, we were able to do a program where we got one cart of 30 laptops, but there was no Wi-Fi anywhere.

So the cart came in and the Wi-Fi module was literally on the back of the cart. You had to plug it in every classroom you went. And if there was a data port, it worked. Like it was crazy, just absolutely nuts. But it was that moment where you got to get from point A to point C. And point B is just a bunch of logistical hurdles. No one's sure, no one's done it before. I'm not, because I haven't done it before, I'm a little bit nervous to move forward with it. I luckily right away because of the feedback, the positive feedback from the parents, the positive feedback from the kids. It was like, I just pushed a boulder down the side of a mountain and it started rolling. And once it started rolling, it was like, hey, let's just hop on and ride this wave. The kids are loving it. Society's starting to change and shift with looking at one-to-one learning inside the classroom. And what could that be like if a student had a device right with them all the time? It was just, it was a lot of moving, a lot of shaking.

And also at the time, just, and this is something from an educator's perspective, you hold on to, it was that moment of I, what am I doing here? You know, like, what did I come in this profession to do? It wasn't to change the world. It wasn't to make a million dollars. It was to grow humans. It was like, were they better on Friday than they were on Monday? Then RJ, you did, you did a good job, you know, and then slowly just taking those little bits of those growing humans. And then all of sudden, man, half a year has gone by. got curriculum. Kids are doing projects. Parents are loving it. Administration is loving it. The high school that our kids are going to is calling because they're like, what are you guys teaching them over there? When they come in as freshmen, they're so much more advanced than the other kids. Like, what are you guys doing? know, there's just good stuff, you know.

Spencer Payne (21:56): Yeah, yeah, Yeah, that's awesome.

If you could flash forward maybe say from that first year, that first full year of the computer lab, flash forward say five, 10 years in the future. Are you still the computer teacher? Do you now have a budget that's gone from zero to X if you don't mind sharing? Like what happened next? And not just maybe the next year, but over say the course of the next five, 10 years, like what happened next after you kind of built this thing from effectively nothing.

RJ (22:27): Well, we were rocking and rolling for, I'm gonna say like three years or so. Computer lab was going, everything was moving fine. And unfortunately, due to budget cuts at the CPS district office, the lab was restructured. We had to put in a classroom, we had too many kids in the school, we didn't have enough space. We were putting classrooms and bathrooms, unfortunately, like it just got kind of nuts. At that point, I had already tasted what that was like to bring technology into instruction. And I saw the value.

Spencer Payne (23:00): Okay, I'm sorry, real quick. So three years after you create this program that everyone likes, all of sudden it's just gone?

RJ (23:09): That fast, That fast.

Spencer Payne (23:13): What happened next? What did you teach next? Did you have a chance to go recreate it? You just built this thing for three years that everyone's loving, but now budget, space constraints, et cetera, it's gone. Now, what did you do then?

RJ (23:30): Well, luckily for me, I absolutely loved teaching. It wasn't just about the tech, it was about teaching. And when the district cut funding for different positions, computer teachers, librarians, music teachers, those type of roles were reduced. And because of that, I went back into the classroom as a fifth grade science teacher, as a matter of fact. Loved it.

I was one of those things was like, love tech, but I love teaching more. So it was great. I just had to go back in the classroom. And I did that for another year. But within that year, when I was teaching back in the classroom in fifth grade science, there was this love, this this light that was inside of me that I was just like, man, really, really enjoyed bringing that experience to kids with that instructional tech side of it. And from a from a district perspective, CPS, it just did not seem like they had the same vision I did. Let's say, let's call it that. So I made the hard decision that I was going to leave CPS and go to a different district. I ended up going to a little bit more of an affluent district, Kenilworth School District, which is another suburb just a little bit outside of Chicago. And this was right around the 2010-ish timeframe.

Well, luckily, right as I had joined Kenilworth, that was also the first year that Apple released the iPad version one, gen one. And normally, you know, when a new technology is released, at least right now, a lot of tech leaders kind of wait on it a little bit. Let's see how it goes. Let's let someone else figure it out first and we'll go from there. Well, because of the district that I was in and the resources that were available, when the iPad came out, the parent organization right away,

Spencer Payne (25:00): Okay.

RJ (25:25): Was like RJ, you know, what do you think about this? What do you think about iPads in schools? And I told him I said guys this is gonna change education as we know it the idea that a student would have access to information that the internet could provide them one day a week when they go to computer class is So different than having a one-to-one learning device that you just carry around with you all day that when you need access to information or you need access to homework or this or that, it's right there ready for you. Like, and I told them, I said, think about this from your perspective as parents, when you guys go to work, do you leave your computer at home and then go right on paper all day? Or do you go to work and work on a computer, email it to yourself and come home and continue working on it? Why would we have a different experience for our children than the real world? And they loved it. They absolutely thought that was a great analogy.

And in terms of preparing our kids for what the real world is going to give them, they said, let's do it. Let's get after it. And we were one of the first schools.

Spencer Payne (26:26): So you go from this computer program building it from scratch, oh, 304 ish, to three, four years later, it's just gone, to science teacher, to, I miss the tech side. I'm gonna go join, I'm gonna go find another school district that seems more aligned with embracing the technology aspect, to now all of a sudden you're a pioneering school, I'm guessing it sounds like across the country, of unleashing iPads in the classroom. Call it, I don't know, maybe that's 15 or so years ago. So all of sudden you're like, again, you're riding a brand new wave, then the wave is just gone. And now you're riding a whole nother brand new wave a couple of years later. And I guess I'm assuming, like, so what were you teaching then? Like, what were you leading as your role in this new school in terms of unleashing iPads? Are you back in like as the computer teacher? Are you teaching English again? Like, you've done so many things. What were you doing at this point?

RJ (27:24): Well, at that point, the idea was then not just getting devices or access to devices, but really leveraging those devices to support learning. So when they brought me in, they brought me in as a district technology, instructional technology facilitator. So my job was to work with all of the other classroom teachers across the district to understand how to best support the learning in their room with leveraging technology.

Spencer Payne (27:55): Got it, so you're in this role now where you are no longer in the classroom, but you're, I guess, as you said earlier, you're an educator at heart, but guess, correct me if I'm wrong, you viewed it as instead of me teaching my 30 kids in my class, I'm now creating the infrastructure to teach all 1,000, I'm making that number up, I don't know how big the school is, who are in this entire school on the backbone of the technology that I'm going to unleash. Is that a fair kind of way of thinking about it?

RJ (28:20): Absolutely, absolutely. was it was a situation because you know, RJ, you already opened your mouth and told the parent organization that this was a good idea. They jumped on board and they're like, All right, let's buy iPads. And then it was like, wait a minute, we need a Wi Fi network that can handle hundreds of new devices. Now we didn't have before. gosh, how is that going to look? And then it was like, from a filtering perspective, all of these devices are going to have access to the internet. Are we going to filter this through the same way we did before, you know, like all of these other opportunities now start coming into conversation. And again, there wasn't anybody there wasn't anybody else.

Spencer Payne (28:58): Yeah. So you just, who are you consulting with at this time to go figure out how do we, yeah, how do I get me, how do I make sure my wifi connection can go from making sure that right now 40 devices are on the network to 600 to, yeah, what are we going to block? How do we even block things? Like who are you consulting? Cause at this point it's all on you to figure this out, right? Like who, are you navigating this when there's all the other, all the other teachers are looking at you of like, well,

You're supposed to figure that out. Don't ask me, you're supposed to figure that out. Like how are you figuring this out in a world where, again, you got a marketing and educational background, like how are you going to navigating all this?

RJ (29:26): Right, right.

You know, I realized early in my career that one of the best learning opportunities for me as an individual, as a teacher, was to watch those that had come before me and learn some of the things that they had mastered over years of teaching. And what I found was the same held true for tech. I was bumping elbows with other tech people in other districts.

Got their phone numbers, email addresses. That's when we started doing listserv emails. Twitter had come out not too far around there. We were doing tweets. We were doing hashtags. You just follow these groups and follow these people who are like-minded, who are in exactly the same situation that you're in. Like, hey, I'm a teacher. And all of a sudden, I was good with tech. Or I know how to send a job to a printer. And now I'm running the network for the building.

Spencer Payne (30:27): Yeah.

RJ (30:28): And it is it's something a lot of you know, unfortunately a lot of trial and error one of the things like for example that we realized was that when Apple released the iPad in 2010 They didn't release it with an idea that schools were gonna pick it up They released it as a one-to-one personal device for individuals. So when it came time to for example buy an app and push it out to hundreds of iPads that hadn't been figured out yet, it was like

Spencer Payne (30:42): and then

Yeah, that was not a use case that they even considered. Yeah.

RJ (30:58): Exactly. So I was like, oh, now what do we got to do? We got to log in with one Apple ID in every single device? Like, oh, is that the right way? That seems weird. But even Apple didn't have anything. They were like, you're doing what with it? It was like, So even that was very interesting number of conversations from our Apple resellers. It was like, guys, you're selling us these iPads, and it's great. We appreciate it. And how do I push an app out to it now?

Spencer Payne (31:13): Ha Yeah.

RJ (31:27): You know, and they're like, oh, we're still trying to figure that one out. Hold on a second. It's like, oh, God. So.

Spencer Payne (31:28): Yeah.

So you are now an educator who is pushing Apple to go create things that they didn't even know that they needed to go create. That's the role that you're in at that point. Incredible.

RJ (31:40): It was and that was the that was the interesting part because right around 2000, I want to say. Don't quote me, but 2012 2013 Google had just come out. Then when I say Google, I mean Google workspace for schools. It's a free service that Google has been offered to schools for the last 20 years or so, and it gives them access to Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Drive, which are all of like the web based version of Microsoft Office applications.

Um, but when that came out, even that, example, I remember this, like it was yesterday, they open it up for educators and gave everybody access to Google docs. Teachers went on to start creating docs. And then they're like, well, how do we save them? It was like, well, on a computer, you save it to your desktop or like a downloads folder, but in Google, it's all online. There's no desktop. Like, what do you, what do you do? And then Google was even like, oh, we don't have folders. We call them labels. It was like, stop calling them labels, call them folders. The teachers need folders. That's what they understand. So just seeing how the big tech companies back then were so thinking about this as tech and not instruction and how it's evolved over those years to try to blend itself so they're complimenting each other. It's been cool. I got to be honest. It's been fun to see.

Spencer Payne (33:01): It seems like it's been a wild ride for you from again, like marketing advertising to first real job is actually kind of an aid to a special needs student to in the classroom teacher to then just being on the bleeding edge of tech in the classroom for the better part of two decades. And obviously showcases that even in the teaching profession, again, to those who might think like, I don't want to do the same thing all day, every day. Like that doesn't have to be your path. If you don't want it to be like that might be your path. It doesn't have to be. There's a lot of ways to go do this thing. and if I may, we're, we're coming up a little bit on time here. So I'd love to hit a couple more rapid fire, quick hitter questions. these will be a little more sporadic cause we were just kind of like so ingrained on this, like what the heck did you do next? But I'll hit on a couple other questions here, kind of rapid fire. So,

RJ (33:31): Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah, right.

Spencer Payne (33:52): For new teachers, people who are maybe about to go into the profession or in their first year, what is the number one piece of advice you might share for new teachers? Or what advice might you go back and give yourself when you were still in the classroom on how to navigate that first year as a teacher in the classroom? So again, we're gonna take off your tech hat and put on your teaching hat here for a second for this question.

RJ (34:18): Um, you know, one thing that I, that I realized and kind of looking back, um, is that when I was young, um, I had a lot of, a lot of, um, a lot of, a lot of energy, a lot of strength, a lot of, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to change the world. Um, and what I, what I realized was that I had high expectations for myself. I had high expectations for my kids. I had high expectations for education in general. Um, and I found that I hit a number of times I'd have a stressful day. Something didn't work the way that I wanted it to. I came to school with lesson plans for a math lesson and in the middle of the math lesson, the fire drill got pulled. We all had to leave. Two kids were sick. Half of my kids were on a field trip because they were, you know, it was so, there were so many things that had come up that were challenging and just not easy.

And I remember a number of times feeling stressed and feeling frustrated and just feeling like, man, why is this so hard? Why is this, you know, and what I realized as my profession went on is if I thought it was going to be easy, I was, I was, I wasn't looking right. what I, what I, what I should have looked at what is, was that this was going to be fulfilling. This was going to make me feel like I am doing something greater than, than myself.

And when you look at it that way, you stop putting so much emphasis on the things that don't go right and more emphasis on the things that you should keep your eye on. For example, earlier I mentioned in the conversation that phrase of growing humans, just as something as simple as a student walking into your room in the morning who's not looking too happy and not looking too excited. And you look at them and smile and you just give them that smile and you say, Hey, I see you today and I'm glad you're here.

And we're going to do something great today because we're here together and just seeing what that can do to another person, even if the student just completely changes their dynamic and their world to have that kind of power to have that kind of relationship ability in my mind is the thing that if I were to go back, RJ, focus on those relationships, enjoy every minute of it. At some point, that first kid you taught that first year as a fifth grader at 10 years old in 10 short years is going to be 20. And when you go to cost school, you're going to see them at a cash register and they're going to look at you and go, Hey, Mr. Bielk, my gosh, you were the best teacher I ever had, man. Thank you for all that you did for me. Like, and you look at that and you're like, wow, I wasn't BS. I was part of something bigger. You know, it was something special. You know, that's one thing I would tell all, all new teachers that are starting off.

Spencer Payne (37:08): Yeah.

RJ (37:14): Don't get into the profession because of summer break. It's great. Don't get me wrong. it's not worth that. Don't get into the profession because you think you're going to get rich. There's money here. Don't get me wrong. It's a consistent pay. Don't get me wrong. But this is the only profession I've ever worked at where you had the opportunity to make such a positive impact in so many people's lives every single day you go to work. That is just one of the most special things I've ever seen.

Spencer Payne (37:41): I would say my next question was going be what to you is the single best thing about this profession, but I think you just answered it. If I may, it the, again, the ability to have an impact on people's lives, create community, and have truly meaningful, long-lasting relationships that are bigger than just yourself? If I may. Feel free to correct, but that's what I've heard you say so far.

RJ (38:02): Spencer, couldn't have said it better myself, man. It's those relationships. It's phenomenal.

Spencer Payne (38:04): That's a pretty good answer. That's a pretty good answer.

On the other side, just to be realistic, what in your opinion is the single worst thing about this profession? Or if there was a magic wand and you could point that magic wand at one thing and just change it overnight, where would you point that wand?

RJ (38:20): Unfortunately, what I what I feel like I've learned is that, especially when it when it comes to teaching, it needs, we need to as a country, really need to kind of change some of the ways that we look at education, we need to elevate it, I think higher in our society's priorities, then then it currently is. And what I mean when I say that is education is always important. I know people say that it's important.

But when you actually really think about it, our education system is preparing our future generations. And those future generations are running our country. They're the ones making those decisions for how the world is going to continue. When you look at it from that lens, education should be our priority as a country, like above all else, hands down. And looking back at education, is there something that I could do different or just something I would like to have education be a little bit different or maybe just adjust. It's, you know, looking at those, those, those people who have gone through education classes and have gone through teacher training and have committed themselves to the benefit of kids and benefit of people outside the world and really understand that they're, that they're there because they see their value in helping the greater good. If everybody could just look at the greater good is a priority a little bit more. think that education as a whole would kind of elevate and I think that us as a society would really kind of help prioritize what we should be as a people, I guess.

Spencer Payne (39:59): Well, one last quick question. What, if anything, do you want to share last words of wisdom, advice, et cetera, that maybe we haven't already hit on? Or anything else that you already hit on that's just so important, it's so powerful that you're just like, I'm going to say this a second time because it's not valuable. So anything new or anything worth re-highlighting is the last words of wisdom.

RJ (40:20): I just you know, last last words if I could if I could say education from what I've seen in the years I've been on this planet, I don't know another profession that is so directly connected to helping and supporting so many people on a daily basis. That if that is something that you as a person feel would help you and benefit you as a whole. Don't look anywhere else. Get into a classroom, get trained, start making a difference in the world. Education is the place to do it.

Spencer Payne (40:53): Yep, awesome. Well, thank you so much, RJ. Certainly highlighting the range of what is possible in this profession, from being in the classroom, multiple different subjects being taught, to the backbone of the technology, to being at the forefront, to knocking on doors and asking for old donations from businesses, to just not accepting no as an answer. So thank you so much for sharing your story. It was really awesome. Obviously, you got a great energy, great smile. So it seems like, yeah, your infectiousness.

in a good way for the classroom and for your students definitely seems like it goes a long way. So thanks so much for sharing your story.

RJ (41:27): Appreciate you having me, Spencer. Thanks so much.

Spencer Payne (41:29): Thank you.