Mariah Presley: Throughout history, technological innovations are often met with uncertainty or doubt. When radios first arrived, Nicola Tesla himself called them quote a distraction.
GA Buie: I remember being the math teacher that said in, you know, in 1992, well, it's not like you're gonna have a calculator in your hands all the time.
Uh, well, I guess I look like the fool, right?
Mariah Presley: And remember texting that was supposed to destroy the written language entirely. Today we're having similar conversations, but this time it's about artificial intelligence.
Mike Hines: Artificial intelligence without human connection is going to be very destructive. And so our teachers or students, that's the human connection, right?
We can't strip the human element out of it. The creativity, the innovation. AI can't duplicate that.
Mariah Presley: Our guests today have spent decades on the front lines of education, witnessing firsthand how classrooms and workplaces have evolved. We're excited to welcome GA Bowie, executive Director of United School Administrators of Kansas, and Mike kinds national education sales leader at TRA
Across the country. Educators are asking, how will AI impact the classroom learning experience? Could it lighten teachers' workloads, bring up more time to connect with students? Could it possibly be a tool that students use to enhance their own learning? And how can we make sure that students are ready for a rapidly evolving world of work that is already relying on AI to be productive?
I'm Mariah Presley, education and industry programs leader at Trane, and you are listening to this educational life. Let's dive in.
GA and Mike have spent their lives dedicated to education, though their paths look a little different. GA started in the classroom as a math teacher nearly four decades ago, and today he supports district leaders across Kansas as executive director for the United School Administrators of Kansas.
GA Buie: I've been in education for 37 years now, and so spending a lot of time really going through the introduction of the internet, if you will, and education and, and now we're kind of moving through it.
Mariah Presley: And Mike comes from the business side, having spent 35 years working closely with educators across the country, inspired by his father, a principal at Iowa School for the Deaf. Mike's passion is using technology to unlock. New opportunities for students.
Mike Hines: As I tell people, my father was my hero. Education and educators are near and dear to my heart, so I've been really blessed to be able to have that experience with educators and helping them, and really it's about the students and giving them more opportunities and walk alongside the minute.
Mariah Presley: GA and Mike have seen education evolve dramatically from overhead projectors to smart boards, textbooks to tablets, but nothing compares to the impact of artificial intelligence. AI promises huge opportunities for students, teachers, and administrators. But like we all know, change isn't easy.
GA Buie: I was working with a group of principals yesterday and we were talking about how do we elevate the level of our teachers and have high expectations for our kids?
And the process is not hard. I. What's hard is change. There are gonna be things that teachers and kids have always done that they're gonna have to give up and they're gonna have to move in a different direction, and then that's gonna be hard. And we've gotta make sure that we have professional development for them.
'cause change is not gonna be easy for our educators.
Mike Hines: And Mariah, I would just add to that really, before it was. Business was in their own swim lane and education was in their own swim lane. But the pace of technology and the amount of change that GA's talking about, we have to swim together in the pool.
We can't have lanes because the lanes are gonna really isolate us and we're gonna end up realizing that we're all alone swimming, and with the amount of change and the rapidness of that change. It's really gonna be a disadvantage for our teachers, our students, and for business people if we fall behind in that.
Ironically, the students, they don't have any problem with the technology change for the most part, but what they're lacking is having that breadth of experience and wisdom behind that critical thinking and all the things that we're talking about, and that's why these types of relationships with GA and others.
Is essential and critical moving forward. 'cause it's gonna help in that change process.
Mariah Presley: And I think there's a little bit of like a pace of change piece to this too. How do you see AI and that kind of pace of change unfolding with an industry and why is it important that we're working with GA and and others like GA to make sure we're on the same page and swimming in the same pool?
Mike Hines: Here's a, a business story that I'll tell strategic planning and business just a few years back was the axiom, was that you take three steps and then look in your strategic planning. I was told by someone in our organization at a high level for strategy is we're now able to lift our foot only. Meaning the technology's racing so quickly, we're integrating it every day that we have to be so careful in our choice of picking up our foot and putting our foot down to the next level of strategy that we literally could be a mile off.
And so what that means for us in that story is we have to be careful. But if we can really impact students earlier with that kind of knowledge and pace. Then we're gonna be able to plan more efficiently moving forward. Ga said early on, we can't afford to stop the process and move backwards to try to educate and train.
We need to build on really solid foundational training and those human enduring skills of collaboration, communication, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, that all has to work together so that we can take that really educated. Next step. So that's swimming in the same pool coming together on, that's gonna help everybody move forward in a very strategic and positive manner instead of retrograding on that,
Mariah Presley: on top of navigating the pace of change and getting education and industry to swim in the same lane as Mike. Says we also have to shift our expectations of what success and education looks like. The tools have evolved dramatically in the past decade, which means the skills and behaviors students demonstrate have to evolve right along with them.
GA Buie: Our kids hold the power of the world in their hands every day in a cell phone. I remember being the math teacher that said in, you know, in 1992, well, it's not like you're gonna have a calculator in your hands all the time. Well, I guess I look like the fool, right? Because we've got scientific calculators in our hands every single day.
We've got mortgage calculators in our hands every day. You know, the member rope memorization that we used to have. The amount of information that we have available to consume in today's world makes it impossible for us to have that rote memorization. And I think that's where we've gotta be able to have these conversations with people and say, Hey, education is more than what it used to be.
Our kids are learning and adapting to a world that's around them, and we need to educate them for the world that they're gonna move into, not the world that we've moved past.
Mariah Presley: So what I think I'm hearing, and I'm gonna go out on a limb here 'cause I know I've got two baseball gurus on this call, but like whether we're swinging with a metal bat or a wooden bat, we're still swinging at the ball, right?
The rules of the game aren't changing. We we're hitting the ball, we're running the bases, but we do have to adapt based on the tool we've got in our hands, right? So it might look a little different, but at the end of the day, we're just equipping people for that next phase of success and being really conscious about how we're doing that and training on the tools.
GA Buie: Yeah, and just to add on to what Mike's saying, I think the challenge that we see on the education side is businesses more adapt at professional development and building for change. And in education we're really not, I, I keep referencing back to a group of principals I was work with yesterday and they said that the next time that I have to work with my staff on PD will be August of 2025.
And we just can't live in that world because things will move through two or three stages by the time we get back to work with our staff. So we've gotta find a mechanism in education that we can grow. And train and support our teachers to support our kids in a more robust manner because we've gotta figure out a way to continue to help keep our teachers trained.
Because if we don't, they're gonna fall behind. And if our teachers fall behind, then our kids are falling behind.
Mariah Presley: Both GA and Mike agree that educators and industry can't afford to operate independently. The future depends on bridging this gap and equipping students and educators not just to use ai, but to strengthen their human enduring skills to be able to engage with it critically. And in Kansas, GA and his team are already finding creative solutions to do exactly that.
GA Buie: Kids are gonna see AI in one way, but that's not necessarily the same way that we need them to see it in education and or the business world because they're gonna see it as. As a way to get through something quicker, but we need them to, to use AI as a tool that's gonna make them be more efficient and more timely.
How do we utilize these tools to enhance the work that needs to get done?
Mike Hines: Just to add to that, business is never gonna replace education, right. But I think the exciting part is, is a willingness now from both sides to really have some complimentary activities. I know at Trane we're providing certifications around some of these competencies, not to add to the teacher's workload, but to really compliment and maybe replace some of the textbook material with some real world, uh, application and opportunity.
So there really should be complimentary. And if they're not, then we need to throw those away.
Mariah Presley: I completely agree. One of the biggest pieces that I have experienced with change management is around like reducing that uncertainty just a little bit, right? A little bit at a time and consistent little boosts so that people can really start to familiarize themselves with this very, very uncertain, high change world.
So are there any other examples that come to mind for either of you where you see this kind of bridge between AI and education and maybe industry partnerships working really well?
GA Buie: I think there's a lot of examples out there that we don't recognize. I love to look back at, uh, Lisa Owen's work with the Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
The first thing he talks about is trust, and I think we lack the trust between education and business. That second level of, of Lisa Owen's work is. Avoiding conflict. So as we build the trust and we work through the conflict, that's when we start to see the, the successes start to flow. But we've gotta get through that so we can make ultimately the commitment and, and then have that accountability.
Which gets us to the top of his pyramid is the results. And I think one of the programs that we've seen that we've started working with, um, Joe Coles, who is a great partner for us out in western Kansas, is our Western Kansas career Showcase. And we're bringing businesses in as partners, and we're bringing our kids from southwest Kansas and even northwest Kansas together to listen to our businesses and talk about how did they get there, what opportunities are, are there in their local areas for these positions?
Engineers to, to nurses, to doctors, to healthcare, whatever it is, educators, but there are jobs in the area, and this is what I did to get there. And here are opportunities that we'll help you create along the way. 'cause I think there's business and industry are creating more and more opportunities for kids to find successes.
And so we have to, as educators, we have to be able to trust what's going on in business and industry that they're looking for the same thing that we're looking for. It's just good employees that are gonna come in and be able to do a job and ultimately get the results that we need. To build the product or make the product or to save people's lives.
And if we can't get past the commitment parts of that pyramid, then it's not gonna work. And so we've gotta find a way to be committed to each other or avoid the conflict, uh, along the way to make this work.
Mariah Presley: And Mike, so kind of transitioning it over to like industry, right? So when we think about AI as a skill or AI literacy, maybe as a workplace skill, how are those sorts of collaborations that she just talked through, how is train working to maybe move some of that forward?
And how, um, have you seen some of that implementation happen as an industry collaborator?
Mike Hines: One of the things that Trane is doing, and we're very intentional about it, is we're providing certification around AI and not about how to develop it or program it, but actual the practical use of it. What is ai?
What are the faults of AI right now? What are the things you need to be looking out for? And so these are just some ways along with what GA's doing and others is really having a practical side for these students. They know how to use it. It's do they know how to use it well and use it correctly? And again, that's the big question that we're all facing.
So we're trying to do that and bringing some work reality into it. Obviously there's the educational reality to all of that. So that's one example. And again, come back to the foundational. Skill sets, right? And we can determine that together along with the critical thinking and the analytical thinking and the emotional intelligence.
If we can start that earlier and that becomes part of the change and part of the culture, they will come to any organization and thrive. They will thrive through the technology. Technology won't be an impediment to it. And then the last thing I'll say is. AI really is a universal tool. I know we have to get there technologically, and I know there's some challenges there, but the use of AI is going to be for a small rural school district in Mississippi as well as in inner city urban areas like Miami-Dade County.
So that's those skill sets and that thinking and the use of AI is going to be. Throughout all of our society, we'll have to get there, but we need to be training right now and doubling down on it.
Mariah Presley: Yeah, I appreciate that. I think, Jay, you started off talking a little bit more about supporting the staff in those school districts.
So when you think about the opportunity that AI has for students, but also in within schools, considering the staff and the leadership to make a difference, what does that look like and what have you seen so far maybe already happening that's really been a real impact?
GA Buie: So I'll tell you some things that are just really basic, that are amazing.
So first of all, you know, professional development is really something that's really big to us. Right on our front page of our leadership ai, we've got a chat bot to develop your own professional development. So you type in the timeframe, the people you're gonna have there, what you're trying to accomplish.
You click return and it says, looks like you're trying to do X, Y, and Z. Would you like to do this, this, and this, or would you like to do this? And so in a matter of five minutes, you developed a half a day or a full day. PD plan with activities, with information, with knowledge, and all you have to do is to take it and move forward, and I think we see the same thing.
This is one of my favorite things that we've been able to help a couple districts do. I have married to an English teacher. She was a senior English teacher, and she felt writing was so important for her kids, but I'm not exaggerating here, three o'clock every morning she woke up. To start grading papers, and it just was a routine for her because that's the time she had and she was focused.
Well, today we're working with school districts and we're helping teachers develop a tool based upon their work and their examples and their principles of good writing. And they take a student's work, they dump it into the, the, uh, AI tool, the module, and it spits out, here's what's good about the paper, here's the challenges of the paper, and it starts asking questions.
And so now the teacher's not sitting there reading and evaluating the paper. They see the quality of the paper, what, what it has and what it's missing. Now I get to have a conversation with the student, not just say, here's a paper full of red ink. You figure out what I'm trying to say. I. I get to spend five minutes or 10 minutes with the student say, Hey, here's how you developed your paper.
Here's your work. Great job here. We need a little bit more data right here to kind of explain your thoughts. Or we need a better lead in word right here. Or you're, you're using this word, see that you've used this word 12 times. How about finding a different word there? And we're having those. Person to person conversations, helping that student grow rather than saying, oh, good luck with this.
I know you don't do a lot of writing. So we've taken the pressure off the teacher and given it back to them as the instructor, and that's powerful and that's the work that are, is out there that's available that we need to be harnessing those opportunities to give back and give our teachers more opportunities to be instructors and not just evaluators or graders or, or whatever it is, because that's something else can do that today.
Uh, we need to be able to connect with their kids and help them grow.
Mariah Presley: So I'm gonna ask one more question around solutioning for bridging that gap between the challenges we're seeing with AI and education to UGA. So if you were gonna say like the two or three pillars, right? Another state executive comes to you and says, Hey, ga, what are like those two or three things I need to have in place to replicate some of the work you've done?
What, what would you say to them?
GA Buie: One of the biggest things I would say to them is you have to have your administrators ready because this is coming. AI is here and it's coming, and if our administrators aren't ready to embrace it, it's gonna be horrific. This is the internet and email on steroids. The second thing is we've gotta continue to build the collaboration.
Amongst our, our teams and our business partners because it truly is a holistic problem that we we're here to solve. You know, uh, using Mike's analogy, you know, if we're not all in the pool together, it's, we're not gonna be successful. And then I think the third thing is we've gotta be willing to understand that I don't have all the answers.
And I have to be willing to turn to others that do have the answers. I have to be able to lean on others that have more knowledge than me and can support. Our mission moving forward.
Mariah Presley: The potential that AI can unlock in education is two-pronged. It's both inside and outside the classroom from GA's team using the technology to ease workloads and make room for stronger connections between educators and students to industry collaborators like Trane who are providing workplace.
Certifications that complement classroom learning. It's clear that the two worlds of industry and education can swim in the same lane, and when they do, students gain the skills and confidence to succeed whichever path they choose.
Mike Hines: There's a story with a large company that we were dealing with a school district and community where they were moving into economically really changing the landscape, uh, with all the businesses coming in, and the thought coming from the director of development and education from their business standpoint, they were working with a number of school districts and the community colleges.
The quote was, we need people on the production floor. The people making the things they need to have analytical thinking, they need to be able to think critically. And then this person said, we need to move to the engineering room in this particular plant. We need to have people that can think analytically and they can think critically in that.
And then they said, we need to have people in the boardroom, the leaders, to be able to think critically and analytically and have all those human endurance creative skills. And then the seminal moment for me was this person went back and said, remember, we have to hire a number of production for workers.
We can't hire them if they don't have these critical thinking and analytical thinking skills and all those human during skills, we can't hire them because the process won't move forward. So that for me was a really a one seminal moment. There's been many, but that's where I get excited because I. We have the capacity with working together to be able to really foster that up.
And I love GA's example of being an instructor and a mentor that the technology's gonna maybe enable us to have that more customized one-on-one, which should develop and spark more creativity, more innovation that GA was talking about.
Mariah Presley: I agree and I really appreciate the reflection on connection as an educator in general.
I'd say in industry we see that too. Like, and this is a, a narrative I appreciate and love so much that it's surfacing in a lot of the research we're seeing come out on ai, which is that like with the rise of technology almost at the same level, you have this rise for human connection and collaboration.
And if we embrace the technology in a way that. Allows us more time. So some of those repetitive tasks that we can offset with technology, we have more time to connect with one another because I think at the end of the day, no one becomes an educator to grade the papers. Right? They become the educator to connect with the students and to really uplift that next level of learning or next level of life for these kids coming through their doors.
So, so true.
Mike Hines: One quote that just hit me in the last few months was that artificial intelligence without human connection. Is going to be very destructive. And so our teachers, our students, that's the human connection, right? I mean, we can't strip the human element out of it. The creativity, the innovation, AI can't duplicate that.
So that's why I think it's such a great opportunity.
Mariah Presley: So I'm gonna ask another like big question. What is really possible in the perfect world where education and industry are working together on this subject, specifically AI and how we can really leverage it as a platform to empower kids? What's your vision?
GA Buie: Very simple, endless possibilities.
Mike Hines: I don't think I can add to that. That's, it's wonderful. Yeah. There are endless possibilities and we have to do it together. I guess that's the only thing I would add. Endless possibilities. Working together.
Mariah Presley: Any like lingering advice that you guys might give?
GA Buie: Don't be afraid to ask if you don't have the industry partners.
If you don't know where to go, don't be afraid to ask. Somebody's gonna direct you in the right direction. Somebody's gonna point you to the person you need to talk to because there's enough people out there that are engaging in these conversations that we can bring everybody up to speed. We just have to be willing to do it.
Mine's
Mike Hines: just a life lesson. Uh, we don't know everything as GA said, and you need to check your arrogance at the door, right? We can't do it alone. It can't be business coming in and saying, this is the way to do it, and it can't be education bucking that from the standpoint of we're educators who know how to do it.
We have to be humble in all this because the technology, again, we talked about it a lot, but if you realize that. AI has consumed all the human knowledge and all of human history. It's already consumed that it's now starting to learn on itself.
Mariah Presley: I've never thought of it like that, Mike, but thank you for giving me that very, um, visceral image.
I felt it in my bones when you just said that.
Mike Hines: So to GA's point, if we think we can do it on our own, uh, it's a fool's game. And just to add to that, we have to get back to the basics. But to know the basics are super and critically important. We need to stop chasing the shiny object. We need to stop trying to catch up with technology in the sense the students will be able to adapt to that.
But what we need to do is really double down on the basics. So that they can adopt and be able to use effectively and efficiently those technological tools that are out there, including AI and what's beyond that. So change is coming, but we can prepare for that change and really doubling down on the core.
Principles.
Mariah Presley: I love that. Endless possibilities. Stay humble and double down on the basics. Those feel like good principles to be guided by. A big thank you to GA and Mike who sharing their insights and experiences ai Mike. Feel daunting, but as history shows, new technologies always bring both challenges and opportunities.
The key is embracing it together and strengthening those human skills that help students thrive no matter what comes next. If today's episode resonated with you or you'd like to share your own experiences, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at this educational life@train.com or suggest a topic for a future episode.
Don't forget to rate. Review and follow the podcast wherever you listen, so you never miss an episode. New episodes come out every two weeks. Thanks again for joining us on this journey. Until next time, let's keep building schools that make a difference for today and tomorrow.
Disclaimer: This podcast is for general informational purposes only. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the panelists and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of trained technologies. Trained technologies makes no warranty or guarantee concerning accuracy or completeness of the content presented in this podcast.
