00:39.11

Dipesh Jain

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Tech in EdTech. On today's episode, we have Joel Kupperstein. Joel is the Chief Product Officer at Project Lead the Way, or PLTW. Before that, Joel has worked at organizations like Learning A to Z, Age of Learning, McGraw-Hill, National Geographic. Joel, I'm sure I've either missed some names or I have gotten the order wrong. So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell the audience about your background and the organization that you worked with?

01:14.32

Joel Kupperstein

Sure. Thanks, Dipesh. And it's great to be with you today. I think you hit on most of it. There are a couple other companies that I've spent some time with along the way. I was a member of Harcourt School before the merger with HMH a long, long time ago, and have been at a couple of other places along the way. But I think most importantly, I started off as an elementary school teacher about 30 years ago. Growing up, that's sort of all I wanted to be. I knew I wanted to work with kids from the time I was very young myself, and made my way into education right out of school, and spent a couple of very important years, formative years teaching elementary school.

01:55.13

Dipesh Jain

Thank you so much. And you know, Joel, I've met a lot of people in EdTech. My best kind of people are the people who started as teachers. So I think the kind of perspectives you get when you teach in the classroom and then the perspectives that you bring at work in EdTech, I think, are amazing. So very happy to talk to you. And I've known you for the last few years. And again, I think it's great to have you on the show. Thank you for taking the time today.

02:22.11

Joel Kupperstein

Thanks for being here. Yeah, I appreciate what you said about the importance of being an educator. One of my mentors once said to me, it's critical for curriculum designers, developers, and product developers to have a classroom in their mind. And I try to always keep that close to me.

02:38.43

Dipesh Jain

And so if you look at your journey, it's been… you've been working across different organizations in learning product and learning. What are the lessons? What is one lesson from all these rules that has shaped you into what you are today, or how you build products today?

02:53.77

Joel Kupperstein

Actually, these are the kinds of things I love to collect, and I've collected a lot of them over the years. I kind of call them guiding principles. Probably the number one thing that seems to be immutably true is that easier has to come before better when designing programs and products for teachers and for learning. If it isn't easy for a teacher to implement in a classroom, whether they're directly leading the instruction or just using it as a supplement. If it isn't easy, it can be all kinds of better that you want, but it's still not going to make sense for them. So, easier over better is the one thing that kind of comes at the top of my list and sort of related to that is the idea of understanding and respecting the paradigm of the classroom, understanding how teachers move around the classroom, how they set up their plans, how they interact with kids, and making sure that you design into that rather than requiring them to reinvent it.

03:54.36

Dipesh Jain

This is a very, very important point, Joel. So I want to double click on that because I see a lot of time, a lot of ed tech companies or founders making that mistake of new features, something shiny, new objects, or you know, better UI, UX. But this easier, greater than better is something that a lot of people miss. So, can you spend a little more time explaining how you take those kind of decisions where you figure out, okay, this is easier and maybe not better, but this is easier. How do you do those kind of determination?

04:26.41

Joel Kupperstein

I think you have to start by thinking about what educators really want us for, what they're looking to us as organizations to help them do. And I think we all would agree it's to help drive better results out of what they're trying to do in their classrooms. So, I think it all starts with understanding what teachers are looking to us to do for them. And really, we're all in the same place about wanting kids to get where they need to go as fast as they possibly can and as successfully as they possibly can. Our job as product developers and, you know, product deployers and supporters, is to put things in the hands of the stakeholders who support kids that will help them get there. And if you ever spend any time in a classroom, you know it's a complex environment. There's a lot of things going on. At the same time, there's a lot of demands on the teacher. At the same time, a lot of decisions have to be made. And I think a mistake that product developers make a lot is assuming that their product exists in a vacuum, and that they're the only thing that the teacher cares about in any given moment, that it's the only thing that's important to them, and that it's not unreasonable to expect them to become power users before they even start. And, the fact is, a classroom is a very complex system of interactions and decisions. And, you know, just having a realistic understanding of how what you're doing fits into that helps frame up what it really means to be easier in order to be better.

06:29.96

Dipesh Jain

This is very, very helpful. And I remember studying, reading a survey or kind of a research where it said that a district user typically like 1400, 1500 products. I don't know, the number was crazy. Your point makes so much sense that it doesn't; no product exists in a vacuum. It is one of the other tools that the teacher has to juggle. So it better be easy to use, but rather than, you know, being better looking, so to say.

06:55.90

Joel Kupperstein

Yeah.

06:55.99

Dipesh Jain

So that's very helpful. 

06:58.57

Joel Kupperstein

One other thing I might add on that is that that's why it's so important to get into classrooms. And I think a lot of people will visit classrooms with the intent of watching one thing sort of in isolation, but it's really important to watch what happens in and around and before and after a classroom experience, because you can get a feel for how the teacher thinks about setting up her day and putting things in place and planning. And you can see firsthand how many different things are happening at the same time. So I would encourage anybody who wants to visit classrooms in order to become a better product designer and developer to not limit their experience to just watching the moments in the class, but also what leads up to that and what follows it. Because all of that drives the successful implementation of whatever materials teachers are using.

07:51.88

Dipesh Jain

Yep, that's so powerful. Which, actually, you know, we've looked at your journey, and it brings me to your current company and current role. So what made you excited to join Project Lead The Way and Lean Institute Mission? I follow PLTW, I follow David. I mean, I'm very impressed with what you're trying to achieve. Would love to hear your perspective when you joined the organization, and what was the point that made you join PLTW?

08:18.79

Joel Kupperstein

A lot. There were a lot of things, actually. Part of it was the feeling that I got as I got to know our CEO, Dave Dimit, and the team. It's just the kind of culture I wanted to be part of. You could see that we were all pulling in the same direction with the same kind of goals in mind. And right away we shared laughs together, and there was no ice to break even. So it was a great feeling being with the team as I got to know them. And that was exciting. Also, just kind of selfishly, I was excited to do something a little bit different. So I spent most of my career in K-8, particularly focused on early literacy and then some on early mathematics and early numeracy.

And so working across K-12 and with a pretty strong focus in high school would give me the opportunity to learn a lot of new things, experience a lot of new things, with people that I could tell was going to be fun to do that with. So selfishly, that was… that was pretty appealing to me. But I really wanted to look closely at the kind of impact that the organization has on kids before making the decision to join. And it was not hard to see how powerful this work is and how much impact we're having on kids. And not just during their education, but probably even more importantly, after they leave school and as they get ready to think about their lives after high school, and whether it's post-secondary education, whether it's directly into the workforce, whatever it is, it's pretty easy to see that there's a powerful impact that Project Lead The Way has on the people it cares most about. And I think not just a little bit, that comes from us being a nonprofit organization and being able to be just kind of laser-focused on our mission at every turn and making all the decisions that we make in the interest of our mission. So I wasn't necessarily looking to start a new position, but as I got to know Dave and the team, I got more and more excited about the opportunity, and I'm thrilled that they offered it to me. And it's been great so far.

10:27.90

Dipesh Jain

That's awesome. Those are the best kind of journeys, right? I think the thing that really, one of the things among others that I saw at Project Lead The Way that really kind of, you know, made me think very differently about learning was a full pathway approach. So, can you explain that full pathway approach and, opposed to a single course or app, like how do you see that and why do you think some STEM challenges require that?

10:55.78

Joel Kupperstein

This is something that I continue to learn about. As I mentioned, my background is in a pretty different curriculum area. So our team has done a great job of catching me up on the kinds of things you're talking about. But I think it has a lot to do with the breadth and complexity of the concepts and really the pathway through them as you get into, you know, very, very broad and complex subject areas like biomedical science, like engineering, and computer science. It can go in lots and lots of different directions. Sure, you can do a survey where to get kids an overview of what those areas are, but in order to help them see how they fit, how those topics fit into their future, you really do have to dig in. And it really is about the experience of the learning. That's a really critical part of our pedagogy is experiential learning. And those things don't happen through, you know, cursory, surface-level explorations. You really do need to get in and get deep and understand, you know, the critical aspects of each one of those things. And it doesn't happen in a semester. And in many cases, it doesn't happen in a year. It happens over the course of a year. In fact, one way to think about this is that a pathway in high school is like a major in college. So you're committing to this area of study and diving deep on it, so that you can really come out with marketable expertise in these very complex areas.

12:29.07

Dipesh Jain

And that's very, very important, especially today. And I, again, you know, have a section on, I want to talk about, I want to get into AI. I don't want to do it right now. But I think, as we see how education is evolving today, I feel this is becoming more and more important to gain that kind of depth rather than overall, you know, just a transactional kind of learning. So I think I would love to get into that in-depth in the upcoming sections. One thing that Joel, you, and I spoke about when we met one time was, and which really stuck with me, was a tool that is a utility versus a luxury. And I have given this example to at least five people after we met. So when you design tools, or anything for teachers, like how do you see this as utility versus luxury, so that it is usable? And can you explain that to the audience?

13:20.21

Joel Kupperstein

Sure, I'll do my best. And it's very flattering that one stuck with you. It kind of goes back to what I was saying before about understanding what's happening in the classroom and what teachers look to us to provide them. So, if you're going into a classroom that, for example, is teaching principles of engineering, whether or not they use Project Lead The Way's courseware, they're going to teach principles of engineering. So our role isn't to give them something they don't have before. Our role is to help them do the thing they already know they need to do and want to do and are preparing themselves to do, which is to teach that particular course. So, in that way, our resources, the equipment and supplies, the training that we provide them, the instructional support materials, the assessment materials, our utilities to help them teach principles of engineering or whatever clerk course that is, rather than creating some brand new thing that they weren't able to do before, our job is to make them more effective, more efficient, more impactful for the thing that they're already there to do. So I guess in that way, our resources really are tools and utilities to help them do the job that they're already there to do.

14:41.08

Dipesh Jain

Yeah, and that's definitely very, very insightful. I think the way I look at it, as teachers, I think again, with having so many tools, having these many number of students; it just becomes so important to get every moment correct. I was just talking to a district superintendent or district head of operations in a school district, and they mentioned one thing that really stuck with me. They said a lot of time when edtech providers they build features, and they see that there are issues reported by schools, they feel that this issue is a small one, but you never realize the impact of that issue. Even if it's a small one, how big it can be. They gave me an example of a parent communication portal.

15:27.51

Joel Kupperstein

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

15:28.06

Dipesh Jain

They said that there was a time when they went for a field trip and the buses were delayed. They had to communicate to parents that the buses are going to be delayed. There was one issue with that communication. They couldn't see sent messages. And while, if you think about from an edtech perspective, it might seem like, okay, yeah, it's a small bug. But at that time, it meant everything to that district. Because if they don't know whether they have communicated on time, whether they have communicated, are they communicating too many times? So, I think when you talk about these things about how do you think about the user and their journey, and with the myriad of things that they're doing in the day, it just makes it even more relevant for me.

16:09.57

Joel Kupperstein

Yeah, yeah. The key to all this is empathy as product developers. And I know when I talk about the difference between utility and luxury, there's a risk that I might be diminishing the complexity of the development work and the expertise of our team. And that's not at all what I intend to do. These are very, very complex challenges and jobs to be done and problems to solve for sure. But the thing that's so important to understand is the context and in which what you're doing will operate. And that all comes out of empathy. So, you know, there's a… you have to be humble enough to recognize the context you operate in. And that starts with understanding the person. So, the question of empathy isn't what would I do if I were in that situation? The question of empathy is why did that person do what they did, because you can't map your own experience onto it. It's not the same. But understanding what it is about that person in that moment that led them to need or want or do whatever it is that came up is critical. So maybe, in that example you gave, the lack of empathy led to them thinking that something that was really a big deal to their customer, internally, they didn't think it was such a big deal. But I don't know, who are we to say? You know, if we're trying to solve a problem for somebody or do a job for somebody, better understand how they think about what that job is to be done. So yeah, empathy is kind of in the middle of everything.

17:43.22

Dipesh Jain 

Yeah, the definition of empathy that you just gave was probably one of the best I've heard. It's not about how you think, it's about how they think about their situation. And it's definitely one of the best ones I have heard. So thank you.

17:57.42

Joel Kupperstein

Thanks.

17:57.53

Dipesh Jain

I, you know, find edtech to be one of the most interesting areas because you have so many stakeholders, right? You have students, you have teachers, you have admins, you have parents.

18:04.74

Joel Kupperstein

Mm-hmm.

18:10.62

Dipesh Jain

And you are supporting so many personas. How do you, when you develop a product, you know being a product leader, when you develop a product or a feature or anything that you're thinking in your roadmap, how do you balance between the priorities and trade-offs, right? What are the kind of trade-offs that you have to do? How does that come into… how does that decision-making happen at your end?

18:31.58

Joel Kupperstein

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I'm glad you mentioned the diversity of stakeholder groups. I mean, I hate to be repetitive, but it comes back to empathy again. It doesn't take a ton of energy or time, and it's certainly a good investment, to work on having empathy with every single one of those stakeholder groups, and then sort of measuring them against the overall impact of what it is you're trying to accomplish. I was in that planning session with some folks in the organization a couple of weeks ago when we were doing something just like this. And our list of stakeholder groups numbered 10 or 11. I mean, we were really thinking expansively about it. But, because we're so close to this market, and it came pretty naturally to us to put ourselves in the shoes of some of these groups that you might think are pretty far away from the student, but have a potentially tremendous amount of influence. So once you've established that empathetic context, you can then determine how to divvy up your effort in attending to each one of those points of view. So, for example, in this particular exercise, we wound up organizing the stakeholder groups into primary groups and secondary groups, where we said the ones in the primary set were the ones we were committing to design for, at least initially, you know kind of to your point earlier, sometimes the things you think aren't important turn out to be important. You've got to revisit what you were thinking.

But that complexity that you're talking about there, it is real. I think that the complexity of decision-making in K-12 is like no other product decision-making process we know of. Who's the customer? I mean, that's a hard enough question to answer sometimes. And it's not always the same. So, having that understanding is the place to start when you're making decisions. And I really do think the trade-offs you choose are situational, you know, but what matters in one product's context might be different than another.

20:30.97

Dipesh Jain

Yeah, that's… It's definitely one of the most. Like, whenever I talk to some EdTech leaders, you know, you all have, we all have, limited, there's a roadmap we need to prioritize. And then that prioritization is what keeps a lot of people up at night; that you should have this teacher feature versus this admin feature, because each of them is looking at a product very, very differently.

20:45.74

Joel Kupperstein

Hmm.

20:54.00

Dipesh Jain

For an admin, what matters is the usage, the adoption. For a teacher, what matters is just-in-time help. So how do you prioritize? And it's a very, very important question, in my opinion.

21:07.58

Joel Kupperstein

Yeah, and I know you didn't necessarily ask me this, but gosh, it makes me think about the difference between, you know, as a product developer, we want to get into classrooms and we want to stay there. But what it takes to get into a classroom and what it takes to stay there can be really, really different. The decisions that drive initial adoption and the decisions to drive retention and renewal are really, really different things. In fact, they can be completely separate.

21:37.60

Dipesh Jain

Yeah, and on that topic, I think one important area is professional development or teacher training, which I did want to cover in a bit of depth. I think with these tools, supporting teachers or teacher training becomes very, very important. But there is a fine line between support training them and ongoing support versus overwhelming them. How do you approach teacher training and ongoing support while knowing fully well the teacher already managed so much? So how do you do that?

22:08.30

Joel Kupperstein

Yep. Well, first of all, we think about teacher training as a component of the product. So it's not a separate thing. It's not an add-on. To me, a product is an array of components and services, and features that lead to a desired outcome. And, in our case, teacher training is an essential one of those components. So you've got to think about it that way. It's not separate. The second thing we think about is the long-term impact of the training that we provide. It's important to keep in mind that Project Lead The Way's mission is built around experiential learning and hands-on learning. And that involves a lot of materials. It involves a lot of complex concepts and equipment. And, if anybody, if you've been in a classroom for even a day, you know it doesn't feel great to not be ready to go. And, when, especially, when you get a lot of moving parts. So training is critical. It takes away that feeling of insecurity and makes you know you're ready to go when the kids show up and the curtain goes up. So training is critical to get that feeling. And it's also pays off down the road because the more prepared a teacher is to teach, the more successful their outcomes will be. And when it comes, comes time to decide whether or not they want to stick around with the program, that's going to increase the likelihood. So, um, that's very, very important. 

I think another thing that I think about a lot is the difference between training and professional development, where training has something on the other side of it. So as a teacher, I train to do something so that when I'm done, I can go do that thing, whether it's teach principles of engineering or operate a piece of software or whatever. Professional development doesn't always have that same kind of outcome, but rather teaches you conceptually how something can be done, or should be done, or might be done, or what the best practices about that thing might be. But it doesn't have the same expectation on the other side. One analogy that has occurred to me in the past, that might be a little bit silly, is sort of the difference between driver's ed and having to go to traffic school. So, you know, when you're a young person wanting to get their driver's license, you go take driver's ed and you're excited to do it and you'll be there for every minute of it because you want that driver's license on the other side. On the other hand, if you get a ticket and you get sent to traffic school, you're there because somebody thinks you're not as good at something as you ought to be. And you're doing it because you sort of have to. And, you know, at times, professional development can be that. It doesn't have to be, and it certainly shouldn't be. But there's a big difference from the attendees' point of view about what they're getting on the other side of it. And we definitely think about the core training that we provide as more of the former than the latter. And we do see a lot of excitement in teachers attending our training and building their community and cohort, and then building their readiness.

One other thing I might say about that is the difference between training in person and training virtually. And of course, we understand that logistics, convenience, and economics make virtual training valuable, and we're there to support it. And we do provide a pretty excellent virtual training experience. But, I don't know that it can ever compare with being face-to-face with your colleagues and your trainer and getting your hands on materials. But, while we definitely are thrilled to have folks participate in our virtual training, we always want to encourage them to participate in hands-on one if they can, in-person one.

25:59.60

Dipesh Jain

Yeah, no, I think such powerful analogies. Thank you for sharing that. I, you know, I think I, when I did, when I was doing some research for this episode, I came across a couple of quotes from here, which I think make a lot of sense over here. One is, I think, education technology's job is to make teachers incredible. It is, it was from one of your talks that I heard. Seems very powerful. The second one was, you can't be it if you can't see it, which kind of resonates with the empathy piece that you mentioned throughout. I think that's, it just embodies what you answered right now. So yeah, it's very helpful.

26:38.99

Joel Kupperstein

Thanks. I'm glad you mentioned that last one. The idea of it is you can't be it if you can't see it, is most frequently coming to mind for us in terms of the kids. And, you know, hoping students see their future is critical to our mission. And we feel like, you know, they can't be something, they can't pursue a career, if they can't see what that is and know what that looks like. And, you know, the interests that we have are based on what we're aware of, but our aptitudes may not be. So, it's really important for helping kids see the breadth of the opportunities that might be out there for them. But, at the same time, you reminded me that if you can't see it, you can't be it applies to educators too. And something that's really important to us, and to me as a product developer, is helping people see themselves using our product. You have to make it easy for them to say, Oh yeah, I can see myself doing that tomorrow.

In fact, I can't wait to. I remember when I was a teacher and I would go to a conference that was really inspiring, and I couldn't wait to get to school the next day and, you know, I wanted everybody to do everything I just learned because it was the most important and amazing thing.

We want to make it so that all the stakeholder groups can see themselves using our programs and are really excited to do that, whether it's from an administrative point of view or an instructional point of view.

You know, I like, I like what you just gave me there, which is that, for our educators too, if they can't see it, they can't be it. So we want to, we want to help that way also.

28:16.01

Dipesh Jain

Yeah, and that's actually when you mentioned about seeing it and then the breadth of our opportunities, which kind of is a perfect segue for this topic, which I'm personally very excited about. Again, artificial intelligence. We've all seen it. We all hear it every day. But I have, again, a quote from you which prompted me to think about this a little deeper. It is, generative AI is possibly the most disruptive and certainly the fastest to proliferate technology I've observed in my career. I kind of agree with that. I mean, I've not seen a lot of technologies. I think the last one I remember was mobile, probably was kind of disruptive iPhone. But this one feels much more faster and stronger than that one. So, with that in mind, how do you see the impact of AI and, more importantly, where do you see it as showing promise, whether it is curriculum, teacher support, student engagement? What are your thoughts on that?

29:16.90

Joel Kupperstein

I think, first of all, the one key reason AI is different from any of those other disruptors, including the ones you mentioned, is because with the others, it seemed a little bit more possible for the existing systems to control the drip as the technology entered the ecosystem. You know, we could slowly let mobility, or even the internet, or whatever the technology was, make its way in, or not.

And there have been a handful along the way that seemed to poke their heads above the surface and then not really generate a lot of return, so we move away from them. But AI stormed the scene and has been very democratic and in how accessible it is. I mean, it's probably the case that just about every single person in the American educational system is using AI almost every single day now. Whether or not we have harnessed it and we haven't, I mean, we're just starting to. So, you know, as they say, the cow is out of the barn, I guess. And it doesn't matter whether we like it or not, that's happened. So that has to do with the speed of the disruption and the kind of sweeping breadth of it. For sure, I see a lot of promise in what AI is going to offer for curriculum development, for teacher support, and for student engagement. And I think we're still just, kind of, sorting through the early stages of this.

As far as you know, teacher support goes, tremendous potential for AI to help teachers personalize instruction efficiently. I think personalizing instruction has been a North star for teachers for a really long time, but it's very difficult to do when you have two dozen kids in your classroom and, you know, they have unique needs, and you're one person trying to meet them all. Not just, you know, in real time in the class, but also designing the instructional plan that's going to get you there. So I think AI can certainly help streamline that. And then just access to information in real time for professional development, you know, for being able to keep front of mind what it is you need or want to do. It's unrealistic to think that teachers can take all the training information they need up front, internalize all of it, and then bring it to bear whenever they need to. They're going to need some help. We all need some help remembering what we learned a while back. And I think AI has the potential to give teachers access in a really easy, accessible sort of way to that kind of information. And then on the student side, it's enabling their learning journey to be as personalized as possible. And not just in terms of making content interesting to them, but also making it meaningful because of the ability to understand what they need in any given moment in order to progress, and attending to that in time. I think this one is still pretty early on, but I know a lot of people are thinking about AI as a tutoring partner, a tutoring service, if you will.

And I think there's a lot of exciting development to come there. So yeah, this is happening.  It's really exciting. I think there's tremendous potential. And, you know, just to say it on the development side of things, AI is already accelerating some of the work we do in design and development. But, it's also really important to say that we do and will, for the foreseeable future, rely really heavily on our subject matter experts. I don't want to belabor this too much, but for me, product development has five basic steps. You've got to, first of all, identify a need, then you define the requirements, then you take a shot at creating the thing, then you check to see if the thing does what you wanted it to do, and then you put it out in the world. And the first two and the last two of those five things are so critical to have the super-talented experts that we have on our team involved. And, maybe, AI can help us create the first draft of the output, but we still have lots to do in deciding that it's necessary and making sure it's meeting the requirements. So, I suppose I understand, and I'm excited about what AI can do on the development side, but really excited about how it can help teachers and students in classrooms.

34:12.01

Dipesh Jain

Joel, I think if I give anything to you, you can convert it into a process. I feel you have a way.

34:16.57

Joel Kupperstein

I'm not sure that's a good thing. Yeah.

34:18.48

Dipesh Jain

No, I think it's a good thing because you know I've understood this now. So you said need, requirement, create, check, and put it out. That's it. This is the best way I learn. So that's a compliment. That's great.

34:32.37

Joel Kupperstein

Thank you.

34:34.48

Joel Kupperstein

It's the art of oversimplification, I guess.

34:38.12

Dipesh Jain

Because I remember in our conversations as well, it's like, okay, this is how the framework is. I loved it. Absolutely loved it.

34:44.49

Joel Kupperstein

Thanks.

34:44.82

Dipesh Jain

I don't want to, like, you know, we can go on and on about AI, but I just have, like, maybe one question, maybe one and a half. The one big question is, I think I'm a parent to a seven-year-old and a two-year-old. All of us are parents. We see what is the future. If you think about skills that are important five years from now, what are those skills that you think would be very, very important? Students who are studying today in K-12, what are the skills that they will need most? And how can companies prepare to help them? This is five years down the line.

35:17.69

Joel Kupperstein

I don't know that we can afford to wait five years to get on top of some of these things. But the one thing that comes to mind is the concept of digital citizenship or digital literacy, which is the kind of thing we've been talking about since I was in college, since, you know, kind of the dawn of technology, that we didn't really put enough weight behind it.

But, you know, oh my goodness, with what we were talking about before regarding the speed of the proliferation, it's not hard to see how critical it is to guide students to both learn with and learn about AI and to use it ethically and responsibly. But equally as important are what, at least at Project Lead The Way, we refer to as transportable skills. And to us, transportable skills include problem solving and critical and creative thinking, collaboration, communication, and ethical reasoning and mindset. And the really purposeful modeling and practice of those skills has always been a central part of our approach to teaching and learning because it's always been an important thing for people to be able to do in, you know, a rich learning, productive environment, whether it's in school or in the workplace.

And it's pretty easy to see why those things are only going to become more important, you know, as technology automates an awful lot of what we do, things like critical and creative thinking, collaboration, communication, and oh my gosh, ethical reasoning and mindset are going to really kind of either set you up for success or not as you get into the workforce. I mean, imagine two students entering the workforce where one has advanced and well-developed transportable skills, but the other doesn't.

That's going to come out really quickly, and it's going to serve the person who has them well. So, as educators, as the educational community, I think we have a critical responsibility to make sure that kids have those kinds of skills well developed as they leave school and enter their adult lives.

37:30.92

Dipesh Jain

The critical thinking is something that I think about, you know, quite often, like how will kids know what to use? One of the most important one is, you know, AI will give you answers, but it is up to you to decide, is this the right question, first of all? And if yes, are these the right answer options? Can I make assumptions here? Like those kinds of skills, almost like thinking about thinking,

37:57.58

Joel Kupperstein

Yeah.

37:57.84

Dipesh Jain

are going to be so… so important. Metacognition, critical thinking is going to be so important as we go along.

38:02.60

Joel Kupperstein

Yeah. This is actually an example of where easier before better can be dangerous. So, you know, as a consumer of information that comes through generative AI or any kind of AI, it's really easy to get, and it's really easy to not question. And it's really easy to say, that sounds good. I'll move on. I got what I need. It's much more convenient to trust it than to interrogate it. So, you know, in a way, it's become the prioritization of easy has created some jeopardy, some danger. So I think, you know, you said you're a parent of a seven-year-old. My kids are much older, but that doesn't mean the problem has changed. Making sure that you understand, as a consumer of this information, how important it is, even though it's super easy to not question what you get, it's really, really important to make sure you're challenging it and understanding where it comes from and making sure there's a good reason to trust it.

39:06.48

Dipesh Jain

Yeah, it's important. We'll move to the final section before we go to the lightning round. So this section is something that I find very important. Also, for people who are listening, a lot of them are thinking about how do school leaders take program decisions. So, in your experience or opinion, when schools or districts consider a new program, what convinces them to move forward? What kind of evidence outcomes are they looking for when they're looking for a new program or considering a new program?

39:34.88

Joel Kupperstein

Obviously, it's an array of things, and different districts and schools will prioritize different information sources. Certainly, when it's possible and available, efficacy research, the research that shows the effectiveness of an educational program, is really, really helpful. However, it's not also always very realistic for that kind of research to exist. And I think over time, the community educational community has understood that there are limitations to interpreting results from research. So, I think, you know, it's not always a must-have sometimes efficacy research sounds great, but it's not always, you know, realistic or even that useful because we just can't necessarily control all the variables in a real classroom, which is why I think there's probably not any more valuable evidence for a potential customer than testimony from another school or district that they know or trust or see as similar to them about the program. So, you know, a decision maker in a district might take a look at some kind of efficacy study, even published third-party independent efficacy research, and find it interesting. But if they talk to the principal at the building down the road or the superintendent from the district next door, and they tell them how fantastic the program is and how well it's worked and how much teachers love it, that's going to carry a tremendous amount of weight.

But as we talked about earlier, what it takes to get started with a school or a district can be very different from what makes them continue on. And inevitably and rightfully so, that has a ton to do with the teacher's experience in the classroom. You know, if teachers are reticent at the beginning, they may still be willing to move forward with it. But if teachers are resistant at the end of a period of time, they're not likely to, but if teachers come back after a year with a program and say, I can't imagine my life without this thing, then it's going to stick around. And, there will be ways to find the funding for it, and there will be ways to support the implementation. And, um, you know, I just think that there's a difference between knowing that a program can work and seeing it work in your school.

When you see it firsthand, and you see the effectiveness of it, and you're able to demonstrate that effectiveness that supersedes any kind of research paper or white paper documentation you might've gotten externally.

42:22.12

Dipesh Jain

Yeah, and you know it's, as you said, it's always a tricky area in terms of research versus then having references. But this has been helpful. So, Joel, this has been really good. We have a final lightning round that I'm very excited about. We'll ask you a few questions, um,  and you know I think this, let me start with this one. It is my favorite. What is one personal habit outside of work that makes you a better product leader?

42:51.12

Joel Kupperstein

Well, the thing that comes to mind immediately is something I said earlier, and that's practice empathy. Empathy is everything, not just as a product developer, but as a father and a husband and a friend. And as a professional, I always try to practice empathy as best I can. Definitely not perfect at it, but I think it's key.

43:14.04

Dipesh Jain

Yeah, I read I'm not in products, so I was not aware of this concept of dog fooding, but I heard this podcast from the chief product officer at Uber, who spoke at length about dog fooding, like how they are asked to be Uber drivers for a certain number of days or whatever. And that kind of helps them give a perspective of how people are using their product.

43:36.72

Joel Kupperstein

Absolutely.

43:37.02

Dipesh Jain

So, I find that that's a very, very interesting one, dog fooding. So yeah, it's kind of similar to what you just said.

43:45.05

Joel Kupperstein

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's one of the reasons why it's important for, you know, it's not a hundred percent essential, but definitely makes a difference to have experience in a classroom when you're going to be a product developer. I've known some great ones who didn't have that experience, but just speaking for myself, the relatively short time I spent in the classroom is forever part of me and influences my ability to hopefully support teachers as well as I possibly can.

44:13.66

Dipesh Jain

Yeah. The second one, one trend in education that you're cautious about despite the hype. I probably think I know the answer, but I'd love to hear from you.

44:21.18

Joel Kupperstein

Yeah. I don't think it would be right to say anything other than AI. Are there any other trends? I don't think so. I think everything, in fact, yeah.

44:30.30

Dipesh Jain

No, right now everything is AI. You go to conferences, and every session is AI. 

44:35.00

Joel Kupperstein

That's funny. I think it was actually you, Dipesh, when we last met, I told you I'd been at a conference about AI, and you said, isn't every conference about AI now? So if you've stolen some things from me, I stole that one from you. And I've said that at least five times myself. I think it's really true. And I think it'd be irresponsible to really think that much about anything else because, I mean, yes, there are lots of other things, but it has to be front of mind just because it's such an unbelievably impactful thing. And I say this as a person who has worked hard over the years to try to put things like this in context and say, you know, I know that this is the shiny thing right now, but how real is it? How much is it going to stick around? How much impact is it really going to have? Uh, and even after interrogating AI like that, I'm convinced that it really is as sweeping as we all think it is. And it's really as permanent as we all think it is. And it's really as impactful as we all think it is. I'm trying to do everything I can to learn about the potential implementations, the potential implications, potential risks, and just how to make sure I can continue to do my job well, and our organization can do its job well in an AI world.

45:56.07

Dipesh Jain

I agree with you, it's the biggest thing right now, but at the same time, it, you know, makes you very cautious about what is going to lead into. So, yeah, one last question, which is, I think, very important. I ask this question and get different answers and very interesting answers. So, what is that one metric you track that says more about like, that talks about program success other than sales or revenue. What is that one metric, not multiple, we have to have one metric that talks about program success to you as a product leader?

46:05.01

Joel Kupperstein

Yep.

46:27.55

Joel Kupperstein

I'd say retention. And I was, I was recently in a meeting with the team at Project Lead The Way that works on the PLTW launch. That's our K-5 program. And we were talking, I think we mentioned this earlier, we were talking about our approach to teacher training. And we agreed that the key measure of training success isn't so much how they feel about the training when it's just over, but how it impacts the success of their implementation over weeks and months and years. And everything we do should be in service of the goal of having schools be really successful with the implementation. And that means wanting to continue with it for a long time. So, you know, we're a very mission-driven organization. We do a lot of measuring, and we really do think very hard about retention and making sure that people stick with us. You can't have the impact you want to have in short bursts of time. It has to be something that's built up and sustainable, and we really want to be part of the fabric of a school. As a matter of fact, one of my proudest moments as a Project Lead The Way team member was at my first school visit, not long after joining the organization. As I drove up to the front of the high school, there was, it looked like, a 20-foot banner on the fence in front of the school that said “A proud Project Lead The Way school”. And it was just amazing to me to realize I was in a place where we were part of what they were doing, and that's the kind of thing that I think about. So, short answer to your question is that the metric that we track regularly, that says a lot about program success, is retention.

48:04.13

Dipesh Jain

Yeah, that example is awesome because you feel a part of a larger cause when you see something like that. 100% agree with that.

48:09.36

Joel Kupperstein

Yep.

48:11.32

Dipesh Jain

And, I think retention is probably one of the North Star metrics that drives all other metrics, including sales, right?

48:16.21

Joel Kupperstein

Sure.

48:16.38

Dipesh Jain

At the end of the day, that's a great answer. So yeah, I think we are at the end of our show. Thank you so much, Joel. I'm sure I've not asked you many questions that I would love to, but we could just go on and on. But this has been a great session. Anything, Joel, before you leave? Any final parting thoughts? Any question that you think I should have asked but I've not asked, and you want to share some thoughts?

48:39.13

Joel Kupperstein

Oh my gosh, well, I guess what I'll say, as we wrap up, is that I am thrilled to be a member of Project Lead The Way, and I want everybody out there to know how amazing this organization is. And the work that we do is: we're a different kind of organization, we're one that, I think, people are proud to participate in both as educators and as team members. And, if you're hearing this, and you don't know about Project Lead The Way, I want you to. We have a LinkedIn page. You can learn more about us there. You can visit pltw.org. You can follow us on social. But hey, get to know what we do, get to know the kids that we serve, listen to them talk about the impact that we've had. I was at a school showcase just last week, I think it was, and we asked the panel of students, these are high schoolers about the impact of Project Lead The Way. And one student, before the question was even finished being answered, his hand shot up in the air, and he had this big grin. He was a student in our biomedical sciences pathway. And he said, you know, my mom's a nurse and she always wanted me to go into healthcare.  And, I thought, you know, okay, maybe, whatever. And I wasn't that excited about it. He said, until I got here, and I started working with these teachers in the Project Lead The Way program, and he said, this is me, this is who I am. This is what I'm supposed to do. And he said it all with this gigantic grin on his face. And that's the kind of impact that I've seen, and the schools that I visited, and it's really inspiring. So, proud to be part of this organization, proud to see what we've done so far, and really excited about what's coming in the future. I appreciate, Dipesh, having the opportunity to talk with you about it, too.

50:23.93

Dipesh Jain

Thank you, and that was such a powerful story to end the session. Thank you so much, Joel, and thank you for your time, and thank you for all the insights.

50:33.47

Joel Kupperstein

My pleasure. Thank you.