Dan Gonzalez | District C - Transcript

Jeremy Singer: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Education Equation podcast. Today's guest is a friend and former colleague, Dan Gonzalez, the co-founder and co CEO of District C, a national nonprofit dedicated to preparing students for the modern workforce. Dan's career blends engineering, education and corporate leadership.

He began his career as a classroom teacher teaching physics. From there, he moved to the corporate world with a test prep company, Manhattan Prep. He rose through the ranks to become president of Manhattan Prep, uh, right after its acquisition by Kaplan, which is where we met. And then in 2016, Dan and his wife Ann Jones, launched District C to tackle a critical gap between academic learning and real world collaborative skills that students need.

Their solution is Teamship, a reimagined internship where students solve actual problems for real businesses, preparing the next generation of diverse talent for the modern workforce. Welcome to the pod, Dan. 

Dan Gonzalez: Jeremy. Good to be with you. Thanks for [00:01:00] having me. 

Jeremy Singer: So, listen, you've had, uh, a broad set of career experiences, uh, from an engineering degree to teaching to music and corporate leadership.

Uh, you've spoken, and I've heard you say you found passion in music, but purpose in test prep. Uh,  can you explain that distinction? 

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah. Um, found some purpose in maybe the un unlikeliest of places.  um, I'll take you back to March, 2012. I was just, uh. uh. Couple of months into leading Manhattan Prep and we got hacked.

We had some, uh, Russian hackers bust into our system. They stole, uh, 40,000 student records credit, like everything, credit card, passwords, security codes,  um, my, our,

Jeremy Singer: our listeners worst nightmare, by the way. 

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah, yeah, totally. And mind you, this is before the days when this like, you get to notice every month these days that this is happening.

So for us it felt really kind of existential. We were really worried about our brand and reputation. And I remember we had gone through this process of, of like building the communication plan. We were about to [00:02:00] send the email out to 40,000 uh, students, and we were all gathered the whole full-time team, all hands on deck in this room.

In the moments before we were about to release this email and, uh, tensions were high, emotions were at their peak. Um, and I remember thinking like, wow, this is a group of people that really cares about this work, and I guarantee you no one in that room. Grew up dreaming of being, like making a career in test prep.

But what what struck me was it wasn't about like passion or not for test prep. Um, it was this like common purpose towards protecting something we had built together. Um, doing right by our customers, uh, accountable for each other and how we do our work. And I think that was for me, like a, a moment where I realized, wow, this is where I'm like most.

A alive in my professional life is being with people, um, who believe in, uh, setting the same like level of [00:03:00] quality and going after it and really building something together. And so thought a lot about that and I think yeah, that's how I think about kind of a purpose driven, uh,

profession. 

uh, 

Jeremy Singer: And it's sort of a crisis led to forging of that, um, unified purpose and, and, and rallying together as a team. 

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah, absolutely.  

Jeremy Singer: uh, the people I end up closest with and where I feel out the strongest colleagues are people where we've been in a battle together.

And, um, you know, when COVID hit. For us, one of the questions was with advanced placement was two thirds through the year, do we just cancel it? Et cetera, et cetera. Mm-hmm. And the um, more resource schools had a mechanism to deliver the courses even remotely, but the less resource schools really didn't.

And we ended up deciding in very short order to build. Uh, tape videos of, uh, teachers talking about each of the lessons, each part of the framework for every AP course. So this is thousands of videos, and we did in matter about six weeks and put them out for free Oh my, uh, to try to allow for all students to [00:04:00] still have that experience even when the, the school shut down.

And I remember. This is something that the way college board typically move would take five years to do if we knew normal, but we did it in a matter of weeks and we really forged bonds. So, um, I get your point and I think that is very true. Uh, lemme shift. So. I talked to a lot of entrepreneurs, as you know, we know a lot of entrepreneurs and so many started, um, in the classroom as a teacher.

Help our listeners understand your physics teacher. What insights there, what lessons do you bring to your career, um, um, going forward? 

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah, in short teaching's really hard. I mean, it is really hard and it takes, um, um, I had, uh. Uh, kind of my second year, I had a really phenomenal mentor, um, um, who kind of took me under his wing and showed me the ropes a bit.

I got to observe him a bunch. It just, uh, it is often a field in which people feel like they don't have a ton of support. Talked with a teacher just a couple months ago who said. [00:05:00] I go into my classroom, I shut the door. No one else in the building has any idea what I'm doing. I'm just like on this island.

And so I think for me, that kind of mentorship opportunity and just getting the support that I needed at that time in my career. Has shaped the way that I think about how you deliver, uh, you know, educational programs through schools. I mean, uh, educators need support. They want support. They want to feel like they're a part of a community.

I think that's been a big thing for us at District C is building a community of educators who get trained by us to be Teamship coaches. And that's something we really try to stress and, and really elevate in the work.  

Jeremy Singer: Uh, resonates to me Teaching can be so isolating and lonely in some ways.

Yeah, and I think great organizations do a lot to try to, um, scaffold and give frameworks and support to teachers. It's like the individual sport versus the team sport, maybe, uh, with, , how you're really on your own. Yeah, absolutely. Going back to test prep, um, I wanna recognize that there are, you know, critiques of test prep as a [00:06:00] whole.

Uh, it's often derided as, uh, further widening the achievement gap. Uh, I clearly felt some guilt 'cause uh, uh, first thing I did after I left Kaplan to join college board was I did a partnership 'cause Sal Khan and Khan Academy, where we offered, um, uh, free test prep to everyone, world class, uh, resources. Uh, one of many attempts we we do to try to level the playing field, you know, how did you think about that when you were in that space?

'cause clearly a lot of Manhattan Prep, the majority of Manhattan Prep clients were probably fairly wealthy and, uh, resourced. 

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah. By the way, I remember reading the headline for that announcement and just being kind of mind blown by the, I mean, for those that are listening that don't have tons of experience with test prep.

This was like a seismic announcement. Um. So congrats on that really, really cool and I, I was just reading some of the data on that. It's only proven to be really effective it seems in terms of helping lots of students. Um. Increase their scores on the test?  Um, so. I started in test prep from really the ground up.

I was a test prep tutor for many years. Um, at one [00:07:00] period I was, tutoring like 30 hours a week, you know, had 30 students on my portfolio. That's, um, yeah, it was a ton. And I think what I learned, like these were predominantly students whose, um, families had money. They maybe had money themselves. And what I.

I think I learned through that is that,, you know, people with money, they're battling demons themselves. They, you know, maybe it's the GMAT student. I remember the first GMAT student I. Coached. She had been told her whole life that she was terrible at math and she was trying to get past that.

And I hope I was able to support her a little bit through that. High school students with just like enormous pressure from their parents and expectations from their schools and their communities. Um, and so, yeah, I think it does perpetuate some of the inequity that we all know about.

But a lot of these students, um, I felt a little bit of like mission calling for them as well, just trying to help them through the demons. They were battling, but then, you know, you get to a point where you see an opportunity to do something that might, um, impact more students at scale.

For [00:08:00] us, that was district C? Yeah. For you it was the, the Khan relationship. Um. And, you know, it feels great to be able to do that. 

Jeremy Singer: Yeah, we'll come to all that I should say, look, some of the best colleagues, some of the smartest mission-driven people I've worked with were at Kaplan, just to be clear.

Um, uh, and I really enjoyed my experience there. I should also put a. This is about data. Uh, you know, the free resources and test materials that we did with Sal and Khan Academy have had some impact. What we've struggled though to solve is the fact that, um, most, uh, students, um, need some sort of adult support, whether it's a coach or a, a tutor or a cheerleader.

And that's hard to scale, like the technology could scale for free, but. Um, you can't scale tutors in the same way. We've tried a lot of things, but for future discussion. Um, I'd also be remiss if I didn't say that, uh, one of the founders of Manhattan Prep was Andrew Yang. Uh, and he was a long time,  uh, colleague of yours.

He's has his own nonprofit. He's been busy, running for president and New York City mayor. Uh, share with listeners, like what's something you [00:09:00] learned working, uh, uh, with Andrew that informs your leadership approach? 

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah. I got to work with Andrew for many years. Um, and for him for many years, I would say the thing that stood out to me and still does about him, this probably comes as no surprise.

He's a big thinker, um, and a vision caster. 

Jeremy Singer: Right. 

Dan Gonzalez: Um, and one of the things I think he was really good at that I. Experienced as one of his employees and a team member for many years. He's really good at getting really talented people to buy into his vision. Um, and then I think the most important part, he's great at making sure that those people know how important they are to this vision, to this mission.

Um, I felt that every day he doesn't like really, really small kind of everyday ways. Um, and, you know, having the chance to shadow him for about a year as I was getting ready to take over for him. I got to talk with him about that stuff and see that stuff in action. Um, but that's like, that's his mode.

Like [00:10:00] he's great at casting a vision, he's great at communicating that vision and then he mobilizes people to, um, to get on board. And, um, I think that's why he's achieved so much success in the political world and, running for office. Um, yeah. Yeah, it was pretty cool to watch., 

Jeremy Singer: you know, my boss David Coleman is similarly like a very big thinker, uh, and great at articulating the vision and getting support.

Um, you, you know, I worked with him in the nineties at McKinsey and we would go to a client. Big corporate client and the partner had worked with that corporate client for like 30 years, but we would put David forward. He was like one year into McKinsey to lead the conversation because he was just so good.

Uh, can relate to that. let's move to the main course. Uh, you co-founded District C with your wife, Ann. What was the problem you were solving? Why did you make that move in 2016? 

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah, it was really about this gap between the things that we were seeing in the professional workplace around things that, uh, employers were valuing in their employees, namely, the ability to work with other people to do really hard things and leverage the strengths of [00:11:00] others.

To solve hard problems. Um, and so as you know, professionals in the workplace, we were seeing teammates, um, those who thrive were really good at those two things like mobilizing others and tackling novel problems, uh, breaking down complexity, testing solutions, et cetera. And, you know, reflecting back on our, both of our experiences in, uh, teaching and in education.

I think we felt just like there weren't a lot of opportunities for students to practice those skills and develop those mindsets. And so we decided to build, um, an education experience called Teamship that would, um, help students in a safe way, in a low stakes way. Develop those kinds of experiences.

Uh, and so that's what we did. We kicked it off in early 2017. Um, built it together for six years or so and has since stepped away and has started another business. Um, but yeah, we're, keeping on. It's still rolling, so we're, we're excited about that. 

Jeremy Singer: So just give a sense of the program.

Describe how Teamship works way. 

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah, so as you mentioned earlier, teamship is, [00:12:00] you can think of it as a reimagined internship where. Teams of three or four students work together to solve a real problem for a real business in the community. Um, and through that process, they get coached by an educator who has been trained and certified by District C.

Um, and so. The experience kind of follows a bit of kind of a design sprint arc. We're preparing students by giving them, um, the tools they need to optimize their collaborative work and to optimize their problem solving. And it culminates at the end with an opportunity for teams of students to propose their solutions back to their business partner in kind of a live, kinda showcase setting.

Jeremy Singer: Great. And so these are typically seniors in high school or. Or all grades. 

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah. These are, um, typically high school students. We've gone as young as seventh grade. Wow. Um, higher ed students also participate, but the, the vast majority, I'd say 95% are, you know, nine to 12. 

Jeremy Singer: Got it. Got it. Wow. Um, and it's [00:13:00] very local.

I assume it's with local businesses or local companies, uh, uh, near the school 

Dan Gonzalez: That really depends on what, what our school and school district partners want for their program. Um, most of the time they prefer to have businesses in their backyards, but you know, there are a lot of cases where we are bringing in.

Um, business partners from around the country who, uh, zoom into meetings with students. Um, and some schools prefer that they want to kind of get their students exposure to professionals and businesses outside of the community. 

Jeremy Singer: That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. So, my understanding is there's sort of three critical constituencies involved in the Teamship model.

There's the students themselves, there's the employer that's providing the professional. Reaction, and then there's the coach. Mm-hmm. I want to dig into each a little bit. So let me start with a challenge. Uh, every year I get an email from some consulting club, either at a college or business school saying, uh, you know, Jeremy Singer, we would love to send a team, volunteer a team for [00:14:00] six months to help do consulting, a college board, blah, blah, blah.

I'm very, uh, uh, diligent. I always take that email and forward it to our head of strategy and to some other people, depending on what the group is, say, Hey, we could have this team of motivated, smart, uh, college or business school students, uh, to do work. Uh, and universally every time I get, sorry, we're not interested internally from my, colleagues saying that the amount of work to make that project a success outweighs the value we would get.

So, you know, and I can't imagine as you go earlier, those students would have more set of skills to bring to professionals. So, help us understand the value proposition to employer. And I know you've had employers that have re-upped, they've done it and they come back. So what do they say? Why do they come back?

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah. One of the things we worked really hard on at the beginning was building a model for business engagement that would make it really hard for them to say no. And I think one of the keys to that is the amount of time that they commit. So the time commitment is [00:15:00] five hours total over smart, generally four to six weeks.

And two, making it clear that you business partner are not responsible for mentorship of the students you will attend. And, and this is I think, key to like pitching this. There are three discreet opportunities for you to meet with the student teams that are gonna be working on your problem. They last for X number of minutes.

Here's what to expect in each of them. You don't have to do, uh, any preparation. The student teams are gonna be running those meetings. So your job is to work with us to build a problem that is gonna work, and we handhold them through that process and we actually write the problem scope for them, and then we tee them up to attend these three meetings with the prep materials they need to show up and kind of represent their problems.

Yeah, so it makes it really easy for them to plug in. 

Jeremy Singer: Right. Really smart. So you've made the, like, if we think of a return on investment uh, for an employer, you made the investment incredibly light. Um, in essence, you've, you said, Hey, you're not gonna be the coach. We [00:16:00] gotta coach. We said, it's only five hours.

And even when you come to meetings, we're gonna. Scaffold it. So, you know, you just jump in. So that's really a great way. So you've made the investment very light. Um,  give us example of a, project that students do. 

Dan Gonzalez: So they typically fall into three categories, and this is, uh, part of making these kinds of things accessible for.

You know, high school students. Um, one is operations slash process improvement, two is marketing or growth, and three is like human capital or culture problems. So when we are working with a business partner who's new to the process, we're generally coaching them to think about their problems in those three areas, and we ask them to think about the stuff that's keeping them up at night.

So for students. What motivates and engages them is something that is real for the business. That's a real pain point, and them having an opportunity to contribute to that business's thinking is, is really motivating. I'll give you one, one example. So there's a. CEO of a company called Opi-Aid [00:17:00] in Wilmington, North Carolina.

This is a tech startup. They use data science to optimize care for opioid addicted patients. He came to a team of Teamship students and he said, look like this space is really popular. I've got competitors popping up all over the place. I spent half my time trying to track what my competitors are doing,  um, is distracting from my other work.

This is a real pain point for me. It's keeping me up at night. I really want you to think outside the box. So this team of students work for four weeks. They came back to him at the end and they said, Hey, we've got a plan. We're gonna walk you through this plan, and this plan is gonna turn your competitors into your customers.

Um, and so that's kind of really high level summary of that particular problem. But, um, a lot of times these companies are blown away by what the students can create. And if you set a high bar for students, they will inevitably meet it. Um, and so it's really, it's really cool to see those interactions.

Jeremy Singer: Yeah. Uh, it sounds great. Let me shift, uh, to the coach side of this. Mm-hmm. Um, coach is central to your model, as you've [00:18:00] explained already. Um, and I've heard you talk about how, uh, teachers are trained, um, in one method and, aren't always the same. And I, I know it's a generalization as as coaches talk about the distinction and then what you do 'cause I assume most of the coaches are teachers that you're transforming into this role. 

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah. Most of the coaches are teachers who are adopting Teamship for their students in their schools. That's a really important part of the kind of equity model.

Um. Students with social capital and family connections tend to get these kinds of opportunities. We're really trying to build something that can be embedded at scale, in schools. And so of course, training teachers is critical. The thing that is really important for this is helping teachers understand what their role is.

If it's not standing up in front, delivering content. So if I'm not standing in front talking about the stuff that I know, what do I do? When students are working in their teams and that's, you know, students working in teams is core to the model, we want to give them the autonomy and the agency to do their work.

So then what is my role as the teacher [00:19:00] slash coach? That's what our training really focuses on. Um. So District C Coaching Institute is what it's called. It's a 35 to 40 hour experience. And what we're doing is we're giving teachers the tools and philosophies they need to play a critical role in that team-based problem solving process.

Um, that transition is not always easy, but it's, uh, fun. It's challenging. I think teachers. Figure out and they recognize that the things they're learning in the Coaching Institute, they're able to adopt not only in coaching Teamship, but in other parts of their teaching work as well. 

Jeremy Singer: Yeah, yeah. They bring it back to the classroom, I'm sure.

Yeah. Um, so if we spend time looking at a lot of successful educational initiatives, organizations. Um, so much of the success is often driven by a few individuals. Mm-hmm. And when they try to scale it broadly, uh, it's really hard to replicate. So if, imagine, uh, you have a great, a dynamic instructional leader, an incredibly skilled teacher, and you have a lot of success in an instance, uh, but then you try to scale [00:20:00] to, you know, from 10 schools to a hundred or whatever, and it, it, it, it, it breaks on its own.

Mm-hmm. When you think about scaling district c. Like where is the challenge? Is it getting enough coaches, enough employers? What's the just getting district buy-in, where is the challenge, the biggest challenge in your view, and, and how do you plan to address it? 

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah, the biggest obstacle to scale, that I'm feeling right now as we're trying to go out to more school districts, is getting school districts and teachers to say, yes, we're gonna adopt this thing.

Even in some cases where they have funding through a grant or some other source, there are just so many priorities and so many other things that are going on for school leaders, for district leaders, for teachers. The thing that I think we've realized is, if we were writing new algebra curriculum, it's really easy to go to a district leader and say, Hey, we've got this better algebra curriculum.

They know exactly where to put it. It goes in the algebra class for Teamship. There's no existing vessel for that. And so in our [00:21:00] sales conversations, we're always working collaboratively with district leaders to figure out with them, based on what you are doing and your programming and your goals, where can we like angle this in?

And the hard part is when push comes to shove and other things become priorities. If it doesn't have its own place, it's easy to kind of be the first thing that gets set aside. So I think that's the biggest problem we have to solve is create, is to create the space for this kind of work, 

Jeremy Singer: What you raise is very important, and I've seen a lot of really brilliant or great ideas. Never, uh, take flight. Because both the, classroom itself. So if you ask most teachers, they already stretched to the limits to deliver all that they have to deliver.

So very few teachers saying, Hey, gimme something. 'cause I have 15 minutes of dead time every day I need something to do. That's almost never the case. They're trying to Race through all the things that they already have to cover. So you have to either fit into the classroom, but you also Good point.

Which is, or fit into the school. Right. And if it's [00:22:00] something that isn't already part programmatically of the school experience, it's very hard to get that. And I think it's really smart to do that. I think probably good news for you is, uh, this concept of we're not.

Producing graduates of high school of college today that are as ready for the workforce as they need to be, particularly today's workforce. Mm-hmm. So high schools and systems are grappling with that, which only means there's gonna be more things where district C could fit in.

Um, I've heard you say, and I you use a basketball analogy of. Uh, it took very long when the NBA for people to figure out that a three point shot is worth more than a two point shot in really moving in that direction. Uh, you know, I'm a big, uh, Steph Curry fan, so I, I'm a big fan of it.

But , tell us more about like , the miss of , what education is doing or has been doing versus what is needed for success in the play. And you mentioned some of it, the collaboration skills and teamwork before. But what else is with within that. 

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah, this kind of goes back to the why of District C and Teamship from the beginning.

The basketball analogy [00:23:00] is. Um, you know, if you are a two point player in this age of basketball, you're not gonna have much success. Even if you're a tall player, women's game, men's game, college game, et cetera, you need to be able to shoot the three. Um, and so, you know, I think unfortunately our education system, uh, continues to prepare two point players for what has become a three point economy.

And so what Teamship tries to do. Is help students develop the three point skills they need, especially in an age where, you know, the labor market is gonna be upended by AI in, in some form or fashion. Um, and so as we think about what are the things that students need to be great at, they need to be great humans.

And at its core, that means knowing how to mobilize others, coordinate with others around common purpose and common problems. Um, and I think if that is your. Sweet spot. If you are good at those things, you're gonna find a place in the modern economy. Those are gonna be skills that are valued by every employer, across every sector, across [00:24:00] every job.

Um, and so that's what we're trying to prepare our students for. We're trying to give them the three point skills they need to compete in this economy. 

Jeremy Singer: Yep. Well said. So I wanna turn toward evidence. Um, clearly one way you can measure your impact is just the volume of students you've reached, the number of schools you've partnered with.

What are, give me the rough, latest numbers of students that have, been part of Teamship and Schools. 

Dan Gonzalez: We're about to hit our 10000th student. Um, we'll probably get there this year. Um, almost 700 business partners have engaged. Uh, 400 coaches have been trained and certified. So those are, those are the rough numbers.

Jeremy Singer: That's great. So beyond just those numbers, which you know, are value , uh, in themselves, you know, you're trying to teach these skills you've talked about, we could call 'em some subset of durable skills or, you know, essential skills. Um, these are hard to measure. So how do you think about the actual, like how much you move the needle with these students?

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah, that's such a good question. Um, so we do some, tracking of [00:25:00] self-reported student data and what we find is. On a five point scale after Teamship compared with prior to Teamship, students are, reporting, self-reporting a more than one point increase in their confidence when it comes to teamwork and problem solving.

Um, I think that's a great start. It's self-report, so you know, it is what it is.  uh, the least satisfying answer I can give you is . If you know what you're looking for and you watch for it, you can see the gains happening. Um, that of course is not an approach for scaling assessment of development of these skills, but I think we feel confident that improvement is happening. Um, ideally long-term.

What I would love to see is like longitudinal studies that demonstrate that students who have had rigorous teamship experiences. Are demonstrating higher levels of wellbeing, better career outcomes, higher salaries, that kind of thing. Sure thing. Um, it'll take a while to get there. Um, but I think in terms of assessing this, like you first have to know, of course, [00:26:00] what it is you're looking for, what it looks like when it's happening, and then what is the context in which students can demonstrate that they're doing the things that you want them to be doing and thinking.

I feel like teamship, um. Allows for all three of those things. I think the challenge is how do you do that for 50,000 students a year or a hundred thousand, or whatever the number is. Yeah. That I think, is a big open question. I'm curious your take on it too, given the work you all do. 

Jeremy Singer: These skills are important. Let's start with that and then naming that and, and telling a student like, these are things that will help you. And just them thinking about it, like, um, intentionally that has value in itself. Mm. Then, uh, the, even the self-reported confidence I think is something, 'cause now they've sort of internalized some of that and they're thoughtful about it and they've had experience applying it.

And hopefully they. Their learning won't stop after the teamship. They're gonna continue, hopefully, building those skills and be more intentional about it. Um, yeah, we are looking and these are very hard. Some of these, uh, uh, non-cognitive or [00:27:00] durable or softer skills are very hard to measure. I think you got into one is

sometimes people try to do it through observations. Um. You were, uh, nodding too. Uh, we are hopeful that with ai, um. You could start to measure these more effectively, through simulations that students could do, you could see how well they do it, and you can run a simulation much less, uh, expensively using ai.

You could imagine we're playing around with a Socratic method of asking questions and getting the answer. The. AI bot keeps, um, more sophisticated. So there are avenues into that. Um, I still think it's early, but we will talk as we do that of whether any of those work. But with that, let's, let's shift to AI briefly.

Um, yeah. So are you guys using AI as part of District C in any way? 

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah. Um, by the way, I love hearing, uh, , the stuff you all are looking into. Uh, so we have a team, um. Chat PT account. Um, we have regular meetings where we update each other on the team about things that we're trying or things that we're noticing about developments in the models, [00:28:00] et cetera.

Um, we don't have any strict policies or rules. Um, we just have, uh, like a culture of encouragement around. You know, Hey, look for ways. This is for staff. This is for staff. Yeah. 

Jeremy Singer: Yeah, 

Dan Gonzalez: yeah. Um, our adoption so far has been internal for internal operations. Have you thought 

Jeremy Singer: about it for the students and actually the working on the teamship with the coaches?

Y 

Dan Gonzalez: Yeah. We have done a little bit of, um. Uh, PD sessions with coaches on, alright, so how can AI be a tool for team-based problem solving? Um, and so we've just started to kind of dip our toes into those waters. I think there's a lot of untapped potential there. Um, you know, one of the things that we really believe is that if you are solving a complex problem, that complex problem. probably, um, has some like human element to it. Humans are driven by emotion and so AI is not gonna be great, at least not yet at tapping into those like, you know, innate human needs and emotions to inform some solution. Right, right. But AI can be a tool to help you brainstorm, to help you analyze data, et cetera.

So we need to do a little bit [00:29:00] more on that front. So far it's been. You know, mostly, yeah, just internal operation. I, 

Jeremy Singer: I'll ch I'll challenge you on that last point. I mean, I, I saw some crazy stat of the number of people who are using, um, um, gen AI for therapy, so. Mm-hmm. Uh, so people are using it for emotion, but, uh, more seriously, I do think, you know, trying to connect two pieces of what you said earlier, like.

have a very rigorous professional development, uh, for your coaches, and I think it sounds great and their learning skills,  um, but it's still 30 hours or whatever, three, five hours, so it's still a very hard thing to do. Well for those who've coached, learn, you get better you do reps.

So there is ability potentially where you could use an AI agent to be. Sort of the scaffolding for a coach, and I'll give you an analogy of how we use it. Like for our, um, customer support team, uh, we have an ability for AI to. Be, uh, processing in the background of what the, individual person is texting or IMing or, or saying on a call.

It can process so much faster than we can as [00:30:00] humans. And so it's giving possible answers or possible diagnoses of these things. It could do just so much more sophisticated, it's ability to, mine mass amount of data instantly and say something. Um, Salesforce actually has a product called Whisper, which is sort of.

As, you know, it's whispering to the agent of what could be the issue. Mm-hmm. So I think there could be a great opportunity there, and I hope you have a chance to use it as you go. Um, so I wanna shift, I always ask, uh, my guests four uh, uh, rapid fire questions. Uh, I've not prepared you, so, um, there's no right or wrong answer.

So number one, what's one education buzzword you wish we could retire? 

Dan Gonzalez: Um. I'll give you a phrase. Finish your homework. 

Jeremy Singer: Uh, bad childhood memories or something, 

Dan Gonzalez: uh, um, I think we focus too much on developing in students a completion mindset instead of an exploration and a contribution mindset.

Jeremy Singer: Yeah. Uh, second question, what's your favorite book on education?  um, 

Dan Gonzalez: Um, read a couple of decades ago Savage Inequalities. Yeah. I dunno if you've read that. [00:31:00] Yeah, 

Jeremy Singer: yeah, yeah. Yeah.  Uh, Uh,  that was before you went to.

Manhattan Prep or after? 

Dan Gonzalez: that was before. 

Jeremy Singer: Oh, wow. Uh, three name, uh, one thing that makes you bullish on the future for learners. Um, 

Dan Gonzalez: I would say having spent hundreds of hours working with young people through Teamship over the last number of years, this, uh, uh, generation, they. They are a unique, they really have each other's backs.

They're empathetic in a way that is, um, super impressive. Uh, I just, every time I work with a young team of students, uh, you know, individuals, I just, I'm heartened about, uh, the future really, really phenomenal. 

Jeremy Singer: Yeah. I often tell people you gotta get back to the classroom with students. 'cause it does, it gives you so much motivation.

And last one, what is one class you wish all students had to take? 

Dan Gonzalez: Ah, this isn't a class, but if I could wave a wand and require something for all students, it would be, spend at least six months working in food service. 

Jeremy Singer: Yeah. 

Dan Gonzalez: Um, [00:32:00] develop like the service mentality, like chaotic environment, um, dealing with all kinds of people.

Um, I think that would be, yeah, I think it 

Jeremy Singer: skills. It's also, uh, uh, an outlook. I waited tables, I was a dishwasher. Um, and you learn a lot more empathy, you, you know, for that. I'll tell you the one, I, I canvassed for a nonprofit and that was the hardest one. 'cause going up. Randomly the doors knock and ask for money is, is super hard.

Um, I became a local favorite when I lived out in, in the suburbs where people would come 'cause they knew I was a sucker, would give a lot of money 'cause they knew how hard it is. But it does teach skills, uh, long lasting skills. 

Dan Gonzalez: Of course, like it was without saying a teamship course first and foremost followed 

Jeremy Singer: up.

Yeah, yeah. You, you, I gave you a softball and you swung a miss. But, um, alright, let's go three years from now, um, what change in education would make you most proud and where does district C fit in that story? 

Dan Gonzalez: goes back to something I said earlier. , I think in three years what I would love to see, is a place for programming [00:33:00] like Teamship, whether it's Teamship or something similar, um, uh, like having a discrete place where this fits in the school day for students.

Um, if we can solve that challenge, which I think is, solvable in three years, um, I think that that changes the dynamic and changes the game for lots of students. 

Jeremy Singer: Great. Well, I wanna thank you, Dan, uh, one for being on the podcast, two for, uh, uh, starting district C and all the work you do. I think you're onto a really important challenge in today's society of getting students ready for the workforce.

So, um, thank you for that and I appreciate all the time and I hope to see you soon. 

Dan Gonzalez: Thanks, Jeremy, so appreciate being on.