Episode 156: Impact Mentoring with Dr. Scott Pickle
Dr. Scott Pickle is superintendent of the Sequoia Union Elementary School District in Woodlake, California. He is also a public speaker and best-selling author who uses his platform to champion the belief that all students can achieve at high levels. Scott used his 30 years of experience to write two published books, Upright and Impact Mentoring: 200 Ways to Make an Impact. His third book, Impact Artificial Intelligence, will be published soon.
Scott and I discuss his career in public education and how he worked his way up to superintendent. We then dive deep into his beliefs about mentoring, which we agree is lacking for teachers. We also discuss AI’s potential impact on teaching and why it needs to be regulated, as well as utilized.
Topics Discussed:
Following his parents’ footsteps into education
What it takes to write books
How teachers always need to be learning
Resources mentioned:
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Read the transcript for this episode:
Welcome to Educator Forever, where we empower teachers to innovate education. Join us each week to hear stories of teachers expanding their impacts beyond the classroom and explore ways to reimagine teaching and learning.
Dr Scott Pickle is a California public school superintendent, author, keynote speaker, and nationally recognized leader in educational innovation and equity. With more than 30 years of experience in public education, he has served as a coach, teacher, principal, director and now superintendent, always championing the belief that all students can achieve at high levels. He is the Best Selling Author of Upright and Impact Mentoring: 200 ways to make an Impact. And his latest book, Impact Artificial Intelligence explores the transformative possibilities of AI in the classroom. Welcome so nice to have you here.
Scott Pickle 0:34
Thank you.
Lily Jones 0:35
I would love for you to take us through your journey as an educator.
Scott Pickle 0:39
Well, it's my 30th year in education, and so it's been a it's a long journey. But thankfully I came from a family of educators, as my father was a middle school PE teacher for 40 years, and so I learned from the best of them. And of course, my brother and my sister and all their husbands and wives are all in in education. So I came from a family that was, it was almost ingrained upon me that I was going to be and I'm the youngest. So it was almost ingrained upon me to be an educator and and when I started, it was always my dad told me when, when I first got my my very first contract, and he said, Just remember, you will always be someone's teacher. So act like it. And you know, those that information rings so true to me, because as educators, sometimes we, we come in contact with people that aren't, and we and so I have let that be my resonance, so to speak, throughout my career, is act like you're somebody's educator. And whether I'm in public, whether I'm on the weekend, or whatever it is, I I do my best to hold true to that information, that no matter where I'm at, I'm always you know, somebody that I was in my class, or something along the lines, I'm going to run and, you know, come in contact with them at the grocery store, some idle Tuesday somewhere, and I want to do my best to, you know, to act like I'm their teacher, and because that's how they will always see me as their teacher. And so I, I'm, you know, my dad said the same thing when my first child was born, and it terrified me. And so you're a parent, so you know, I give my dad thanks for those tidbits of information. But so my journey was all about being and I taught the classroom for 10 years, first in middle school and then in high school, and it was all about wanting to affect education. And when I felt like I after 10 years, I felt like I was, I was ready to go and move to the next level. And I then challenged myself in administration and with that whole desire of which I still live by today, which is all about removing obstacles and living by that, that idea that, you know, we can do better in education and and as an administrator, my goal has always been to support the teachers do everything I can to remove the obstacles and my staff and my teachers and everybody that I've come in contact with throughout the years as a administrator, 20 years in administration, that's been the guiding light of, hey, if you need an extra desk in your classroom, I'm not going to worry about calling somebody in maintenance when I can drag it from two doors down, drag you a desk, and I've done that plenty of times, or extra books, or how that goes with the ebb and flow of class sizes and all that on the first day of school. I know how much of a struggle is being married to a sixth grade teacher, how much of a struggle it is to not have the materials there for their students on that first day that they arrive. And so for me, it's a big deal, and I'm not going to ask the librarian to run them down, or ask maintenance to go get that extra desk. I'm going to go do it. And when I tell a teacher, hey, I'm going to, I'm going to go take care of this for you, and I go and take care of and they see me doing that, the reason, I think, is all about, you know, making us all better. And when they know that I'm pulling on the same side of rope as them, they know that it's I live it and and I know how to do it, and that's what brought me to probably our you know what our discussion is going to mostly center on today, which is writing my book, impact mentoring. You know my my and it was to me that mentoring, which I learned from my father. It was it's all about mentoring those around us, whether they be teachers or not, and making sure that as a coach, I you know, I spent years coaching, and it was all about, Hey, these are, these are, this is your team. You got to make. Them all better. You can't throw some out. You don't get to do that. And in public education, we know parents send us their best. They don't keep the good ones at home and send us everyone else. They Yeah, they send us their best and and that's all they got, and they're expecting our best in return. And so we got everybody in the room, and our best thing is to mentor every one of those students. My job as an administrator is to mentor every one of our staff so we can get there. So without going into the details of my journey, that's my goal has been, really to affect education at the next level. I just recently got appointed to the ED research team at Brown University, and I'm very happy to be part of that, because that truly is affecting education at its research level, at that higher level. So I'm, I'm, I'm really proud of that appointment, and I'm and I really look to to continue my efforts well into the future of even though I'm 30 years in, I want to, I plan on doing a whole lot more fantastic.
Lily Jones 6:02
Yeah, I love so much of what you said. I mean, I appreciate the advice your dad gave you. And I'm thinking a lot about teachers as teachers, but also teachers as learners, which I think is where the mentorship comes in. And I would even posit like everyone has times in their lives where they're teachers or learners, and ideally both, right, right? And so I love this idea of mentorship too, as being something that's so essential, not only to our own learning, but just of being a good teacher like we also have to be in that learner mode too.
Scott Pickle 6:31
Right right. Well, what we what I found out, and my book is packed with a lot of research, because I happen to love research, but I think as an educator, I need to model that there is so much research that is done in the area of education, but educators are the least effective at utilizing research in our profession, even though it's probably one of the areas next to medicine, where there's most research being done. What is what makes an effective educator? What, do we do best, and how do you how do you impact kids in the classroom? All of that stuff is going on, and there's a ton of research out there that's so awesome. So each one of these 200 points in my book, I really draw it and really boil it down to some real important research as to why that's effective. Why is humor effective in the classroom. And there's some research in there that talks about the importance, and so I would tell you that, yeah, it's, it's, it's that mentoring is important, not between just the teacher and the student, but between every teacher. And it's not, it's not something that I could I could have 30, you know, educators in a room and they all say, oh, yeah, mentoring is very important. Then I can ask them, Well, how do you do that in your district? And you you'll have crickets because they don't. They know it's important, but okay, well, we assign them a mentor teacher. Okay, what does that mentor teacher do? Oh, they meet with them weekly to do what to lesson plan. Well, hold on a second. Have you talked to them about maybe, as a new teacher coming into a district, maybe you should focus efforts on on the curriculum and on the skills that build those interpersonal communications, those professional relationships with students, because, as we all know, slow down to go fast, right? If you slow down in the beginning and build those relationships of students, you know they don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. And you know, if we allow that and mentor that new teacher and tell them, Hey, it's okay, it's okay to play some games on those first couple of days. It's okay to build that relationship, because it is vital. At the end of the semester, when you're really pushing them into some heavier concepts, they're going to work for you. If, if, if you've slowed down at the beginning, and have we talked to the new teachers about that, or did we just lesson plan? Have we talked to the new teachers about possibly looking at their administrator, their their supervising administrator, and telling them, No, I don't want to do 14 dances and 30 extra duty assignments. You know? I want to focus on my classroom. And let's have the veterans do that. There's a problem right now in high schools where, and it's all across the nation where, as a high school teacher, when you have put in your time and earned your stripes, so to speak, and you know where I'm going with this, right the high school teacher, you have some of the best high school teachers that are with regards to classroom management and the wise teachers that know all the tricks of the trade, they are teaching the best students in the AP classes, right? And so what? Where do we take the new teachers and we put the new teachers that have less than sufficient classroom management skills? Classes, and they're challenged with not only their knowledge of the curriculum, because we all know you learn your curriculum better when you teach it. And so we take those new teachers and we throw them into a freshman class, absolutely and we give them freshmen classes, and then we say, Hey, here's the book, here's the pacing guide. Good luck to you. We'll see you around November and that's not mentoring. That's that's throwing our new teachers to the wolves. And you, when you see them midway through the year, they're looking burned out because and and then you say, Oh, wow. The administrator says, Oh, hey, let's partner you with one of these veteran teachers. And my thing is, why should we? What we should be doing is taking the veteran teachers that know how to do this, know how to how to, how to manage the classroom, and putting them in these younger student classes, and so we can then mentor those students on how to behave in that high school curriculum. So by the time they get to the upper level classes, the teacher that gets them, they're in their better shape to do that. So I think that mentoring is at multiple levels and at schools. What I have seen is we don't do it justice. That's kind of the message.
Scott Pickle 6:31
Yeah. And in that example, also, if we have teachers in the school building who know how to do this, then they could also be mentors for these new teachers. You know, they've been through this themselves. They know how to work with these students, and have figured this out, so bringing them in to support the other educators really makes sense. But also, I'm aware, as a former teacher myself, you know how little time or energy or brain space teachers have. So it also seems like there's a systems level component of this, or like structural component, where we need to build in time for that mentorship.
Scott Pickle 10:26
Absolutely, we have to give them some pull out time to do this. Because you're right, the teacher that's next door might have all the answers, and I truly believe that the answers that are, that are the most effective, are found within your teaching staff, because they know the culture and they know the climate of the school. And at every campus around the nation, around the world, there are educated people, highly educated. You know, I've never been to a campus that doesn't have multiple people that have master's degrees or higher level degrees, that's an educated working staff, and we have to acknowledge that by knowing that, wow, the teacher next to you might have all the answers, but they just don't have time to help because they're buried in all of their own curriculum matters, and so we need to do a more effective job, and that's really what my kind of my message is, and my bully pulpit is to stand up and says, Hey, as educators, we can affect education, and we can do a better job. We just have to take the step in the right direction, not in the wrong direction. It doesn't it doesn't take giant moves. Takes, you know, little baby steps, but we have to at least make those steps in the right direction.
Lily Jones 10:26
So going back to Impact Mentoring ,your book. Can you talk a little bit more about kind of the most impactful ways that educators can support each other?
Scott Pickle 10:26
Absolutely. Well, I I had a situation when I was a principal that I hired a teacher out of the blue. We were interviewing for math. And as you know, math was a is in especially in California, but I know all across the nation math, math teachers at secondary are very hard to come by, and so I we went into it was an interview for an office position, and we had this individual came in, and I looked at their resume, and I saw that they had a math degree from the University of Chattanooga. And I'm like, Well, you know, that's got a math degree. And I'm thinking, Why on earth are they come in for a office manager position? And I asked that question, and, oh, I'm just, I just relocated here and just wanted a job. And, and have you ever taught? Oh, yeah, I've taught. I taught English in in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and I thought, You okay, you've, you've taught foreign on a foreign soil, in an exchange program, some of you taught English. And you, you have a math degree? Yeah, I wanted to get into math and the, you know, more of the lab setting as a mathematician. And I'm like, Okay, have you ever thought about teaching math? No, well, I want to hire you as a math teacher. I want, I want you to teach math. And so he Okay, I'll give it a shot. He came in and I said, I promise you, I'll be with you every day. I'll help you out. And as a former science teacher, I got it and I so I worked with him every day, and I helped him with classroom management. Talked to him about, you know, slowing down to go fast and and his pacing and all of that. By the end of the year, he was wildly successful and wildly popular on campus. And his second year teaching started off with a bang. And ended up, got it, got a nomination for Teacher of the Year that year, and didn't have any designs on wanting to teach. He still now, and that was have been gone now that that was about 12 years ago, and he's still at the same high school, still teaching math and has now accepted physics. So he teaches math and physics and and credits me for for basically saving him and getting him into the this career that he absolutely loves. And I always tell him, I said, No, you saved me. Because if you wouldn't have been there on that particular day, we were, like, two days before school started, I know who's going to be teaching math right in that class. So I said, you actually saved me, and I just so happened to, you know, find a diamond in the rough and but what I credit that situation to is my ability to mentor, and I didn't throw him to the wolves, and I, I taught him how to build a lesson plan. I worked with him every day. I gave I was after school, meeting with him non stop, and it, it took a lot of time and effort, but I was insistent upon showing my superintendent, because he thought I was crazy to hire him. And I said, No, show me a guy that likes kids. Show me anybody that likes kids, and I'll show you somebody that can teach. And I so I spent an inordinate amount of time mentoring this teacher, but I felt like it was the right thing to do, and it turned out to be. And so that, to me, is epitomizes what I wanted out of my book impact mentoring is make an impact and and, you know, my my personal, you know, side hustle business I call impact, and it's a, you know, and my subtitle is igniting passion. It's all about igniting passion for what we do as educators. And we know that when we can ignite passion in kids or in anyone it's going to want to draw them to the subject matter, because they're going to want more, and they're going to want more, and they're going to want more. And so that was my my whole goal with him was to try to ignite that passion and show him there is a path to greatness with what you do, and you will never forget what you do for kids, especially in the area of math. And then, of course, when kids, after the fact, come up to you, like I said, and meet you in a grocery store, and they come up and say, Hey, you're my teacher. You remember me? And that's always the situation. When they come up to you and they say, Hey, you remember, you know my name. Remember my name. And I'm like, Oh yeah, yeah, I do remember, you know. But the funny thing about me is I can remember, and I always trip out because I never remember their name. And I tell them, I'm not going to remember your name years from now, but I will remember where you sat. And teaching in high school, I never changed the seating chart. They got their seats, and that was what they said in all year. And I but I could tell them, Oh, you were, you were row three, seat five, and they're like, oh my gosh, you do remember so I remember your name, but I know the grid. It's just the way my brain is set.Very great thing.
Lily Jones 18:11
Impressive. And what a wonderful story. I mean, I think the impact and the passion are why many of us get into education, and sometimes, you know, with everything else that's going on, we can get a little disconnected from that. So I think reconnecting with impact and passion for anything that any humans doing are great ways to have this compass of what's really important.
Scott Pickle 18:34
Yes, and following that, I have my my next book is coming out this at the end of this month, which is very close. We're right in final stages of it. Impact artificial intelligence and the, you know, AI and artificial intelligence is a big component of what's going on in education right now, and what this is, and of course, with impact on it, it's, it's about making an impact, more from the standpoint, not curricular lily of taking and saying, Okay, you can use a, b, c, d, of these different artificial intelligence programs that you can utilize in the classroom. My book is centered more around how do educators regulate with policy and procedures the use of artificial intelligence, we can't just say no. And it kind of goes back to mentoring. We have to mentor that, and we can't just say no. Like, I mean, could you imagine if we would have just continued on the no and said no, we're not going to we. We have these typewriters. They work just fine. We're not going to use computers, sure. And of course, we have that now with with cell phones where, okay, let's but I believe as educators, we need to brace embrace technology, and we need to find ways to promote digital citizenship and teach kids how to become better digital citizens so they can utilize that well into the future beyond the classroom. And so that's what my book on artificial intelligence is. It's all. About making an impact through the use of artificial intelligence, not shunning it and saying, oh, kids are going to cheat. I got news for us, for us all, and we know it. Kids have been cheating. They've been cheating, and artificial intelligence is not going to make them better cheaters. They're still going to, you know, but what we need to do is teach them how to incorporate artificial intelligence, because when they leave the classroom, artificial intelligence will still be there. And if we can teach them how to model good behavior and how to utilize it as a tool, then it becomes such an effective thing. And so yeah, that's, that's my next project. That's the one that's coming out soon.
Lily Jones 20:39
Wonderful. Congratulations. And what a good topic. I mean, so timely, and I think so many of us are wrestling with how to use AI or not use AI, both with ourselves and with students. So do you have any advice for those teachers who might just feel hesitant about using some kind of new technology that they're not so familiar with?
Scott Pickle 20:57
Yeah, I had a I did a presentation at the Small School Districts State Conference in Sacramento this last March, and I, I was talking about kind of the embracing of these different technologies, and how schools have embraced these, these technologies that have totally changed the way we do things, and, and I went all the way through back from the 1800s and brought this list forward as that was the very beginning of my talk. And and then talk to them about how to and showed them examples of policies and and how to incorporate it with with guardrails and things like that. And after my presentation, and my daughter was there. She was taking some film clips of me and my my daughter happened to be there, and the first time she ever got to hear me speak. And so this, this one superintendent, came up to me after and she came up and thanked me for the topic. And I said, I appreciate it, of course, very gracious. And she said I was reticent to to incorporate AI in my district, but after hearing your talk and how easy you broke it down and how you explained how we should be embracing technology, that we need to find a way to be comfortable with it, she goes, I'm ready to go back to my district now on Monday and start that process. She came up to thank me. And, of course, usually, when you speak at conferences, you usually don't have that immediate feedback, but to have her come up after it was and have my daughter see it, of all things, it was very, very wonderful. But I, I think that really came down to it is we need to break it down to its simple form and just know that this is another tool, just like when the computer came in, it was a disruptive technology, and this is another disruptive technology that's new to all of us. And so let's break it down to its basic form and say, okay, yeah, we can utilize it in a whole different realm, but it's really generative AI that we're all worried about, because we don't want kids to be, you know, generating essays and those types of things and so. But having AI be a collaborator with a student, almost like a like a tutor sitting there next to them and helping them ask questions about an essay and things like that. AI will do that very effectively, and so, and the essay can then stay in a student voice. And so as I explained that to the participants in this seminar, they were like, Oh, wow. I never really thought about that, because you're right, generative, AI, is the one thing that we are all as educators fearing, because that's the one that creates essays and all that stuff. But I it's even though it's really good if a sixth grader puts out an essay that's written at a 11th grade level, you can tell regardless, you know, just like they told they could tell when I copied the encyclopedia, they can tell.
Lily Jones 23:53
Yes, we can tell absolutely even now I run a curriculum certification for teachers, and we have teachers who, you know, we don't want to use generative AI in their curriculum samples, but when sometimes that happens, it's pretty clear, right?
Scott Pickle 24:08
And I wrote my book, and I even did the opening of my my impact artificial intelligence book, I said that I utilized a lot of different AI components when I wrote my book and I, and I credit AI as a co collaborator, because chat GPT has a co Cola, chat GPT 5.0 as a co collaborator. But I credited that, and I've come out right out from the get go. Hey, this was I created the outline, I then I utilized it. I gave chat a name, and I then I utilized it with conversation back and forth. How do I? How can I get better and in this particular area, and so utilizing it as a co collaborative, and modeling that activity, I was able to complete the book, and then writing about how I utilized it, utilizing chat, GPT and and Grammarly and Hemingway editor, those were all things. I did that, I think gave me a very good manuscript that talks to the point, and I modeled that when I built the book of how teachers can model that in classrooms. So for me, it was a, it was a kind of a passion project.
Lily Jones 25:17
How interesting? Yeah, it's like you're modeling and learning in real time too about the topic that you're writing about, right, right? And so talk to us a little bit more about the process. I mean, I know you've now worked on two books, and just, you know, What's the process like for you of writing a book? How has it affected you or helped you learn new things?
Scott Pickle 25:36
Well, the AI book that I have this coming out in two weeks is that's actually my third book. My first book was that I learned how to write. Was upright. It was a book on my survival from from my bat with covid I was in I was one of the first wave covid survivors. I was in the hospital when everybody was everybody's Pat may we're having the death count on the hospital screen all those days. Oh my gosh, I was one of the ones that was fighting them, trying to put me on a ventilator and all of that. And so my that book was a kind of notes to my wife that I kept on my I talked into my phone, and when I got out, i i then compiled it into a book form, and it's basically a day to day recount of everything that that I went through in the hospital and what I saw during that horrible time. So then I realized, wow, I can. I can take that and apply it to what I want, have always wanted to do in education and to affect education at another level. And so I, I then said, All right, well, I can, I can do this. It's really just about taking little essays and putting them together and and so I, I went to a few book writing seminars and and then talked to other authors and and realized that authoring a book and trying to get it published through one of the big five publishing houses. It's almost non existent. You have to have, and I can see you nodding, and you have to have an agent who agents won't take unsolicited manuscripts, just like the publishing houses won't and and so if your agent is is accepting something, that's because you have a history of book sales. And how do you get a history of books? Well, you got to be able to sell a book, right? So, so I started my own publishing company called indelible, and what I do indelible is, now that I've published, is I help other independent authors publish, and I work with them, and I only work with them for credit. I don't work with them for any sort of funds, as consulting fees or anything. What I do is I ask for them to give me credit in their credit page that they they credit indelible and as a help, and not necessarily spine credit, I know, indelible on the spine, but I Yeah, because I think the process of putting a book together and then finding an editor and all of that is it can be an artwork, and all of that can be, you know, you know, heavy duty situation. And so once you have them, and I have a few of them that I work with, but finding and getting to me now with AI is so, so much better because that you know the the onus of writing a book used to be on your copy editor and and you used to go through three different edits with different editors, and that's what they do with the big houses. But now with AI you get to you can hone that down to a final edit. And all the proofreading is not done by a human. It's all done through AI. And so I've I took my AI book and put it through that process of starting first through just your basic spell check and Word and and getting all those and then putting it through Grammarly and Grammarly make sure your sentence structure and all of that is sound. And then I went through the copy editing process with chat 5.0 and that was phenomenal with regards to flow and keeping the same voice. And what I had done is through my blog pickle bites, is I actually uploaded my my my blog information, into chat, and said chat, this is the voice that I'm writing in. And so when you're evaluating my document, I want you to evaluate through this lens, because I want this to be my voice. And it was really effective, because the suggested edits really did sound like they were coming from me. And some of them, I was like, Okay, I wouldn't say that. So, you know, that's why I credited as a co collaborator, because that's exactly what my editor did. My editor, I know on impact mentoring, my editor would say, Okay, I need you to do this. That the other thing and change this. I'm like, Ah, but I think that. Takes my voice away, and so I as an as an author, I get to have that right to say, This is my work, and I want to keep my voice there, so that that artificial intelligence component has been, has been big. I haven't had to worry about the the human error of skipping over a word or a chapter number that's misplaced, or something like that, because that doesn't happen with AI. They it takes care of that. What a lot of the artificial intelligence writing does is they utilize, utilize a lot of colon semi colons, hyphens, lists. And I'm not a big list maker. I'm not a usually, my prose is not that way, and so I don't use a lot of hyphens or colons, or I know how to use them, but, yeah, probably not effective, right? You know. So I think that especially hyphens. I'm not a big hyphen writer, you know. And so I have to make sure to straighten that out with regards to when I'm utilizing the AI component as an editor, because before I know it, they've the computer has slipped in a couple of hyphens or colons in there. I'm going, No, because I don't write like that. So you still, you can't just say, Okay, this, this online artificial intelligence editor has now done my book. It's done. I can wipe it off and and send it to Amazon to be published. There still has to be human eyes on that, and people that are, that are sending out artificial, intelligent work and passing it off as their own. It's just not, it's definitely not going to go very far, because people will...
Lily Jones 31:33
Agree, yes, you have to have a critical eye and use it, just like you say, as a thought partner. But it's so interesting hearing about your process creating this book, and all of your books and all of your work. So I appreciate you coming on the podcast. Can you tell people where they can connect with you?
Scott Pickle 31:48
Certainly through pickle bites@blogspot.com that's my that's there's a link there to for messaging. I'm more than happy to respond and help everybody with with anything they want to, especially independent authors. I really like to work with independent authors. And, yeah, I'm, I'm open to to that, and there's more to come.
Lily Jones 32:13
Wonderful. Can't wait to hear all about it. Thank you so much.
Scott Pickle 32:17
I certainly appreciate being on the show.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai