293 | Building a More Diverse Teacher Pipeline with Dana Bryson
Our guest this week on the pod is Dana Bryson. Dana is the Senior Vice President of Social Impact at Study.com, an urban policy expert and a social investment strategist with more than 25 years of experience.
This episode is sponsored by the coaching company of our host, Zelizer Consulting Services.
Resources mentioned in this episode include:
Building a pipeline for more diverse teachers - an interview with Dana Bryson
NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer this transcription by Otter.ai for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer, Dana Bryson
Paul Zelizer 00:02
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneur. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do review on your favorite podcast app that helps more people learn how to have a positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. So today, I am thrilled to introduce you to Dana Bryson. And our topic today is Building a More Diverse Teacher Pipeline. Dana is the Senior Vice President of social impact@study.com, an urban policy expert, and a Social Investment Strategist with more than 25 years of experience. Dana, welcome to the show.
Dana Bryson 00:53
Thanks, Paul. Thrilled to be here today.
Paul Zelizer 00:56
There's some pretty exciting things happening. And you were all we're going to tell people about a new award and all kinds of great things that you have going on. But before we do that, Dana, tell us if I'm a listener, and I'm like, Who is Dana Bryson? And what would I need to know about you and your career journey to have a sense of what you bring to this work now?
Dana Bryson 01:18
Well, I think what I'd say is that I'm a product of my upbringing, and a product of my ancestors and the work that they've done to fight for justice. And I grew up as a child, really, Denver Public Schools grew up as a biracial woman of color, mixed race parents. In fact, my parents had the first legal interracial marriage in the country after Loving versus Virginia in 67. And they were social activists. And so that's what we talked about at the dinner table, we talked about equity, we talked about justice. And I went on to do that work as a young person, and then did graduate studies in public policy. Really, Paul, to understand how you build systems because I wanted to take them apart. But I didn't want to keep them broken, I wanted to then rebuild them. And so it's really been a lot of work around advocacy, but looking at a systems approach, and really bringing a policy perspective to the work. So community based, but also based in in data. So that's been a bit of my why is that I experienced, you know, I had this upbringing where I saw what a difference you could make by standing up and standing out for something you believed in. And I have really tried to make it my life's work as a mother, a mother of 11 and 13 year old as a community member, as a nonprofit leader. And I'm thrilled to be able to be applying so much of what I've learned in this role@study.com Right now that's really focused on access to education.
Paul Zelizer 03:10
And for anybody who's listening, like what is the loving decision, I'm going to put a link in the show notes to everything we talked about. But if you care about equity and inclusion at all, this was the landmark decision around interracial marriage in the US, I'll put a link that you can get a sense of some of that history if you're not familiar. So this topic data, building a more diverse teacher pipeline, first of all, like, what if somebody's not very familiar with who's in our teacher pipeline right now? And what are some of the issues in terms of recruiting teachers, and the impact of who's in our classrooms and the effect that it has on the kids in those classrooms?
Dana Bryson 03:56
Well, all of us have an experience with teachers, right? And we know them as these devoted and dedicated and probably really wonderful individuals who helped shape us right, because we've been students or maybe we have children who've been in school. The teaching profession, I don't even know where to start on this on what I can say is broken in
Paul Zelizer 04:22
so many ways, right are so many doors.
Dana Bryson 04:27
We know and the data shows that having a teacher of color or same race ethnicity teacher, as a student will, will prove out better outcomes, better student outcomes in terms of really important things such as academic performance on standardized test scores, graduation and college attainment, social emotional dispositions, specifically increased self esteem and higher excellent quotations of students of color if they have a same race, ethnicity, teacher, I mean the teaching profession. And it really is a profession, we need to better respect our teachers. And we need to understand the incredible burden and responsibility that we give to them and place on them. And really look at the systems that are that can be supporting them and the systems that are not supporting them. And so that's what I'd love to get into today. But right now, you know, 50% of the students in the US are from what I would call a diverse racial, ethnic background. And only 20% of the teachers are so there's at a, at a national scale, there's a real mismatch. And some of the data is pretty alarming when you look at what's actually happening in various states around the country.
Paul Zelizer 06:03
Yeah. And I live here in New Mexico, people, I don't like this language, Dana, but this is the language people use. People call us the first majority minority state. Because we have very large Latin X population and the second highest Native American or indigenous population behind Alaska, and then other lots of other diversity, but certainly with those very, very large populations plus the other diversity, like if you walk into a school here, it doesn't look like a lot of America. You're like, wow, I you know, it's one of the reasons I love living here. But this issue in our schools is particularly pronounced the discrepancy between what the teacher looks like and what their kind of lived experiences, and who's in the classroom and what their lived experiences. That's a very significant disconnect here. And we're not alone. But it's particularly poignant here because of who lives in New Mexico. So I just giving that as an example.
Dana Bryson 07:09
Yeah, appalling. You're exactly right. And I've spent time in New Mexico code inside of some of the schools in Albuquerque and some of the surrounding areas. And it's, it's the way that the country is going, as we know, by 2060, all these numbers will look very different. And we'll be we will have more, it'll look more like it does in New Mexico. And it's, you know, we're really at a crisis point, as far as I'm concerned in terms of needing to talk about the issues of supporting teachers how we support them. And but specifically, how we not only fill the teacher pipeline with alternative pathways, not just one river, that people float down to, I don't mean float down as in, they're not working but kind of cruise down to become a teacher through a traditional pathway, but also non traditional pathways. That that I have been exceptional, that data really shows they are exceptional ways to bring more diverse teachers into the pipeline. And then we also need to talk about how we retain them, which is just as big of an issue as is recruitment. So
Paul Zelizer 08:20
So help us understand before we get into like, the innovative and what's working, let's, let's unpack a little bit about what's broken. We don't want to spend too much time there. But if you only jumped to the solution, you know, it's like, mindfulness approaches to change are really, really successful. Because if you're like binging on sugar, you don't say stop being engaging on sugar as the first step you say, help me understand, like, what's going on when you're, oh, you're having a big swing of emotions, and you don't know what to do with it. So you break out the ice cream, right? Right, we need to understand what's not working before we try to change anything. So from that perspective, unpack with us a little bit. There's who's in the pipeline, what kind of recruitment strategies, and then there's also some of these pathways like the more formal pathways to teacher recruitment. Leave some folks off the table who in the solutions, you're finding creative ways to bring into the conversation about teaching. So tell us a little bit about like, how does it work now, and where are some of the challenges in the existing pipeline?
Dana Bryson 09:29
Great. So I'll start by saying, you know, one of the biggest barriers to becoming a teacher is passing the national your state certification exam. Oftentimes, it's praxis, that's a very common test that's given in almost half of the states or some states have a state specific exam, like Florida, California, Texas have their own exam. And we know that 50% of the folks who take that exam will fail the first time, and 25% of folks will never pass. Wow. And that's I mean, that's 25 that this is these are folks who have a bachelor's and they wanted to be a teacher, right? They came up in high school, elementary school, high school, maybe they had family members who were educators. It was a respected profession that they were passionate about. And they went to get a degree, usually in education, but not always. And then they went to take an exam to become a certified teacher, and one in four, don't pass that exam. But here's where it becomes a bit more alarming. If you are black, African American, on average, black African American identified teacher candidates will pass that exam at 38%. That means fewer than half of the teacher candidates who have a bachelor's degree and are wanting to become a teacher will pass the exam. It's 57%, for Latinx, Hispanic, and it's in the low 70s. For white Anglo. And Paul, it was really that data, combined with the data around the importance for student outcomes of having the same race, ethnicity teacher, that led us to build this program called Keys to the classroom, which directly directly addresses part of the problem, not the entire problem, but part of the problem and that piece around passing the test.
Paul Zelizer 11:48
Got it? So these tests aren't biased or anything. There's no there's no bias in our educational institution, right. I'm kidding. Listeners, if you've been here for a while, you know how I probably answer that question. Of course, there's bias and tests like this. Getting into college, for instance, we know whether it's the LSAT or the AC T, folks from you know, you know, I'm white, and I'm Jewish, like we tend to over perform on those tests. And, and somebody from a black African American background tends they're just not fair. Those tests. There's so much data about it's not intelligence, they don't measure intelligence very well. They really measure your sort of cultural experience growing up, and they're absolutely biased for more money, for more privilege, and for certain ethnicities over others. Exactly, exactly.
Dana Bryson 12:47
And we saw, you know, when we were speaking of, you know, social impact, and sort of where did we come up with this idea to create a program that did this is that we thought, well, we can't boil the ocean here, right? We've got to really be very data driven, and specific about identifying what is our Northstar Northstar is better outcomes for students more, more students of color and more students in general, being successful with whatever the right measure is, whether it's test scores, self esteem, college, graduate, high school graduation, college, persistence, etc. But when you look at the relationship between same race, ethnicity, teachers, and student outcomes, it becomes very compelling to say, well, what could we do? And that's what we asked@study.com where I lead our social impact work. What could we offer that would be an intervention that would be specific enough that we could actually at a systems level start to begin to make changes in the pass rates, because it is not accurate? It's not intellect. It's not knowledge. It's not experience. It is one measure of aptitude that states require. And so we want to make sure that that aspiring, you know, teacher candidates, regardless of their race, ethnicity, but especially for our diverse teacher candidates, have access to free materials. And I'll talk to you about that program in a little bit.
Paul Zelizer 14:24
So we're going to talk about the program just a second. Before we talk about the program. I have to congratulate you. Right before we hit record. You told me that Fast Company just gave you an award that they think it's working pretty darn well like one of the best in the world. Is that correct? Did I understand you?
Dana Bryson 14:43
Yeah, yeah, we're pretty proud and humbled about that award. That Fast Company announced last week. It was number four, most fourth most innovative company in the world for corporate social responsibility, and it was specific to our keys to the club. restroom program, which is the program, one of the few that we have@study.com. But it's the program that's specifically looking at diversifying the teacher pipeline. So thank you.
Paul Zelizer 15:11
Yeah. So we booked this interview before that happened, because I was like, wow, this is really cool. And then Fast Company was like, this is really cool. And here's an award so
Dana Bryson 15:21
fast company saw we were on your show, Paul, you know, that's a
Paul Zelizer 15:25
company. Thanks for listening. It wasn't even live yet. Right? This isn't even live yet. So I can take no credit whatsoever. But I can celebrate, like hack, like, this is an amazing program data. And this sort of just, I just share that to give you a to celebrate with Dana and your team, but also to say, when you know, it's not just Dana and Paul, who think this is an innovative program. That's what I'm trying to communicate here. This is really, really incredible. So congratulations. And I hope you and your team are celebrating in some wonderful, wonderful way. Thank you. So tell us about the actual program. The one that's most relevant to the teacher pipeline is called Keys to the classroom like, Okay, we understand a little better that it's broken, we understand that some pretty, you know, people with some gravitas think it's awesome. How does it work?
Dana Bryson 16:15
Yeah, great. So we grounded in this data around student outcomes, the relationship between same race, ethnicity, teacher, and student outcomes. And knowing the problem around pass rates, we thought, well, we@study.com, or an online learning platform we have, we focus in K 12, higher education and test preparation. So we have teacher test prep materials for all 50 states. And we know from our own internal data that we have very high pass rates for the folks who come in to use our tester, teacher test prep materials. So we put all that together and said, What if we focused on a variety of innovative programs that are preparing educators, preparing individuals to become educators in all kinds of ways. So really, it's the strength is in a variety of programs that we partner with and have donated to, and I'll talk about some of them. If we donated our test prep materials, and worked with them to collect data on who was doing well, we could start to tell a different story around outcomes and and gather better information about what would work so we to date have donated 6000 licenses to 25 different programs in 20 states. And these are various educator pathway programs. And I say that, because there are some very traditional programs that we've donated to where you get a bachelor's degree you study education. And, and so we partner with state agencies to help support the cadets that are coming up through a traditional program. But we really have focused on non traditional or alternative pathways to becoming an educator, you know, a lot of folks like maybe you or I might decide later in life that we really actually are calling is to become an educator. And so there are a lot of pathways available now through states to go back to school, or not go back to school, but to have a fellowship or you know, to become to become an educator. And so we're supporting those kinds of programs. We're supporting what are called Grow Your Own programs, where we work with places like Clark County, Nevada, fifth largest school district in the country, to support their 2000 paraprofessionals. AKA teachers aides are folks in those types of roles, who have, who live in the community, have experience in the classroom. Probably likely children have gone to school in those communities. And they want to go back to school too. And they want to become a teacher. And so we've donated a couple 1000 licenses to the paraprofessionals program in Clark County, Nevada, just as one example. What I love about their program, it's two things. The first is that they have an expedited one year bachelor's degree with UNLV, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. So not only could a teacher's aide who's always wanted to be a teacher, but maybe time wasn't right to finish a degree and get on that pathway. There's an expedited one year degree, and then there's all the resources and support and mentoring in this partnership to help them get into the classroom and Paul, just one more word on why this example in Clark County is so profound is that in Clark County, like many school districts, it's the student body is 80% students of color and about 20%, white Anglo. And I don't have the data in front of me, but that's about what it is that exactly matches the racial ethnic breakdown of the paraprofessionals. And it is just, and so right now, 80% of the teachers generally in Clark County, are our white Anglo. So to build this paraprofessional pipeline and get another 1000, or 2000, teachers into Clark County really helps to build this more diverse teacher pipeline. And we're working in a lot of other places with programs, some of which are focused on high school students. So getting student high school students interested in becoming teachers, we're doing that in South Carolina, for high school students, so that they can be familiar with some of these materials, while they're still in 10th 11th grade, and focused on those that are interested in going to historically black colleges or universities, or HBCUs. And so, in some places, we're working with the teachers union, which is incredibly exciting. So we've got a real diverse partner set. And what we're seeing is that 50% of the folks who are enrolled in our program identify as a teacher, Cadet of color. And I'm gonna say it again, 50% of the folks enrolled in keys to the classroom, identify as a Teacher Cadet of color. And so that's, that's, you know, for black African American teacher cadets, which right now we're about 7% of the national teacher workforce. That's more than five times the national average for black teacher cadets. And so the other piece that's that we're very proud of is that 60% of the teacher cadets identify as first generation college students. So we know that we're getting to a non traditional pipeline of potential future educators. And we know that's going to be good for our students.
Paul Zelizer 22:16
Beautiful day, and I'm thinking of a neighbor of mine, who I think it's equivalent in, at least in the Albuquerque schools called educational assistant. I don't know if that's exactly like a teacher's aide. But yeah, the, you know, pretty similar, if not exactly the same. And have some sense of how this person is with kids make a fabulous teacher. Exactly. But if you're an educational assistant, or a teacher's aide, the budget to go back to school, like we vastly under pay our teachers, but if you're wrecked, if you're an aide or an educational assistant, you want to talk about underpaid, right? Oh my gosh, so just love the A, I'd like immediately thought of this person's face and their presence and their emotional intelligence in their care for kids. And I was like, genius, could I see this person being an incredible teacher, but the family resources to get them through a four year degree? Just it wasn't there? Right. Right. And and should they become a teacher, I would certainly celebrate in our communities saying this person would make the world a better place, right? So just genius. And I immediately like, Wow, can I think of somebody who'd be great. And I have a very clear sense of somebody in my first career, community mental health, we did a lot of work with young people in schools. Like I could just think of so many examples of folks, who would be like my neighbor, who would just add to this, what a genius strategy. That's, that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing well,
Dana Bryson 23:51
and you're exactly right, Paul. And we're partnered now with some large national nonprofits, the New Teacher Project, a highly respected teacher, led educator led nonprofit to do exactly as you're saying, to build out more of the Grow Your Own programs, we're partner with teach.org. And so we're really thrilled that we're able to expand our work that we know is working, and that the data is showing is working. To get more of these, these highly qualified individuals who've shown a commitment to education and have experience to finish up and make it easy, make it easier for them or at least eliminate barriers so that they can work hard to get it done.
Paul Zelizer 24:44
So let's do this in a minute. And I want to come back and hear a little bit more about how the program works, how you fund it, and what some of the outcomes are. Before we do that, I just want to take a quick break and hear word from our sponsor. It's no secret that I'm a big fan of LinkedIn. In fact, I've recently been sharing some of the experiences I've had of getting business consulting contracts from my LinkedIn connections. But let me give you a few data points that will help you understand why I'm so excited. LinkedIn has users in over 200 countries, and 53% of LinkedIn users have a high monthly income. Only about 1% of LinkedIn users actually post on the platform regularly. Compare that to Instagram, where it's over 69%. So it's much harder to get your content see. And lastly, marketers see 2x higher conversion on LinkedIn than any other social media platform. Maybe you've heard about LinkedIn, and you've thought about using it, but you're not really sure what to do. How do you attract higher level opportunities through LinkedIn, I've been doing a lot of sessions with people on this exact topic, LinkedIn for Social Entrepreneurs. If you wanted to, you could use my strategy session format to do a LinkedIn profile review, where we'll do things like look at your headshot, your timeline, photo, your bio, your about section and your experience, and tailor them all to your ideal client. And in addition, we'll do a simple LinkedIn marketing plan for your business based on your goals. To help you leverage this powerful platform. If you'd like to find out more, you can click on the link below. And just let me know you'd really like to uplevel your game on LinkedIn and get more results. So welcome back, everybody. Dana, in the second part of the show, we like to joke about putting on our social entrepreneur glasses. So you've done a fabulous job of helping us understand why the pipeline is broken, how the keys to the Classroom program takes some really innovative approaches how it's having great, you know, outcomes, it's just as wonderful and I'm, I was even more impressed hearing about it in more detail than I was in the pitch. And I was thrilled to barely get this person on this show like now, right? So I'm just so impressed with what you're doing. Talk to us a little bit like, especially at scale, right? You're giving away 6000 licenses here. And then like how does somebody? How can we help our listeners who care about impact and want to have it at scale? But are oftentimes trying to answer the question, how do I fund this? Right? We do social change work at scale and, and pay our bills and pay the people that work with us and for us. So talk to us a little bit about like, how does it work in terms of revenue? So how much of it is like you have school systems paying for it? Or individuals do you have granting to the school systems themselves pay for just like unpack the financials of this, specifically, the keys to the classroom part of what you're doing?
Dana Bryson 28:02
Great. So that was one of the reasons I wanted to come to work@study.com is that I have done been doing this social impact work for over two decades. And to work for an education technology company that has that is a mission driven company, a values driven company where our founder, as a first gen immigrant from Argentina came here in high school didn't speak the language, built this company and 20 years later is still running it. The biggest thing, the biggest reason it works is that we've got you know, he and the co founder and an AI are completely aligned on the value of this been important. So we know that that is true if there isn't that buy in and alignment at the top. Good luck getting your thing done. Second thing I'll say is that the the way that we deliver our education technology, at study, we do micro credit micro learning so we do seven to 10 minute animated videos that have we basically have a lot of way to access the information for different types of learners. And when we look to build out this keys to the Classroom program outside of looking at the data, we said we are bootstrapped no outside investment. We're not in a position to give away millions of dollars, but we are in a position to find the product that would make the most impact and donate that and that's exactly what we do. There is no money that's changing hands. This is a this is a donation only program right now keys to the Classroom. And we do have a sales team that sells other products into school districts, we have about a million people a day who come to the website, we have learners and educators and over 10,000 school districts using our products, we have 1500 different test preparation resources. So we were very specific and tactical about, here's the data. Here's the problem. Here's the product, that if we donated this product, a license, a SAT, it's a SASS platform donated this license to this specific institution. That's where we know the difference would happen. And so we can scale for that reason, because we backed into exactly what the intervention needs to be. And we are able to offer these licenses at scale. So we're at 6000. Today, I hope to be at 20,000 Next year, and really start to see a difference in the past rates of these educators, and and who's getting into our classrooms. And we're tracking all of that. We're tracking all of it so we can tell the story. And we're really, Paul, one thing I know works. And I have had this experience over and over again. And I'm still delighted and surprised with the power of coalition building. I mean, we have such a strong coalition of educator preparation programs of diverse teacher, advocacy, nonprofits, and organizations who have come together and want to see this data around what's working, and are making recommendations of other programs, some of which might have 10 Teacher cadets. And some, like large other large school districts we work with have 2500 folks who need access to these licenses. So we're just eliminating that barrier.
Paul Zelizer 32:09
And this was part of what I was really fascinating about and it's not, there are a lot of folks trying to do this. But it's as I'm learning more and more about what you're doing@study.com it just feel like you've done it really well. In a couple of things, I would hope you could help us unpack a little bit data. So first of all, so let's just widen back a little bit. And like study.com give our listeners some sense of like, what's the scale of the company? Like how many people work for it? What kind of like, how many different products do you have, right? You're you're doing a lot in the education space and way beyond the keys to classroom programs. So give us a sense of the larger company, and the products then team size etc.
Dana Bryson 32:56
Yeah, you got it. So, based in Mountain View, California, founded two decades ago, by as I mentioned, a first generation college graduate, an immigrant who man who emigrated here from from South America, and didn't speak the language, and really was struggling to fit in struggling to, to learn inside the US system that he found himself in in high school, and who has a brother who has special needs. And that just helped him to even to make it more poignant about what didn't exist for their family when they got here, and what he thought should exist. And so fast forward almost two decades, we are in an online learning platform we have, as I mentioned, learners and educators and about 10,000 districts around the country, get about 30 million folks a month who come to the site. We have a full fourth K through 12 academic product. So we're in as I mentioned, a lot of schools partnering with a lot of, you know, superintendents and curriculum directors. And that is, you know, teachers love us. And that's that's oftentimes how we get into schools is that teachers use us and they love us and they ask for us. So we're in. So we're in school systems. We have a call it over 230 college level courses. We've helped save folks about $300 million in the cost of college, through our college transfer products we have basically come into study.com and taking the courses that you need to transfer in to another school or we also run a nonprofit called the working scholar Fund, which is a debt free college degree, which is we can talk about later or maybe on another show. And then we also, as I mentioned, have worked with a lot of professionals. And so we have many, many test prep materials for both academic test prep, LSAT, AC T, that kind of thing. And professional prep, nursing, finance, real estate, that kind of thing. So we, we have about 150 employees and Mountain View, we have over 1000 in our Creator network. And those are folks with masters and PhDs who are experts in their subject area. And the one of the things that's very different about study.com is that we write all of our n own all of our own curriculum, it is we set very high standards. Our curriculum is aligned with whatever, you know, state or national, you know, testing protocols that exist. So if it's a public school system, it's common core. It's the federal essa requirements aligned. And we're really proud that we invest in creating this high quality content that you can trust that's engaging, and we own it. And so nothing is crowd sourced, which is what you were you can find a lot of other places. So yeah, k 12. College professional prep.
Paul Zelizer 36:33
So people are paying steady market rates for LSAT prep or getting ready for your accounting or nursing test or, you know, whatever, or course you know, psychology 101, I'll take it online, then transfer it because it's more affordable. And then when I get into my major, I'll pay for those courses in person, but it's much more affordable through study.ca. So all of that people are paying for, right?
Dana Bryson 37:02
Correct? Yeah, exactly. It's a SaaS platform where you have a subscription. And then you have access to whatever it is that you're looking for. You know, we're in a b2c market. So as I mentioned, about 30 million folks a month, come to the site and use it direct to consumer b2c, we also have an b2b business that really took off, as you might imagine, during and after COVID,
Paul Zelizer 37:29
COVID was really good for you. Well,
37:33
you know, we had
Paul Zelizer 37:34
for education in general, but for you all, I bet was not terrible in terms of sales.
Dana Bryson 37:40
Well, we primarily donated honestly, we primarily donated 100,000 licenses, right when COVID hit. And we've made sure that more than 50% went to Title One schools, because we you know, we're parents, we're in here, too. This is a this is a problem. And it was bigger than, you know, another dollar of revenue, it was about how can we we've got something that can be part of the solution. And that's, so we made that donation. And, you know, I don't know, within two weeks of things shutting down, we sort of, you know, all hands on deck inside the company to figure out how to make the donation, get the licenses out, get the word out, do anything on the back end to help, you know, educators and parents who needed this access. So you know, it's a Northstar the company to make education accessible, and we're really thinking about that underserved learner, the one who, you know, just need someone in their corner just knows they can do it has some self doubt, but, you know, wants to find a pathway that works for them and their lives. And that's really what we've, what we've built here. And our social impact work is really just amplifying what already exists in our products, and with our partners around teacher diversity, as we've talked about today, but also around college access. And stay tuned, because there's more coming. We're building new initiatives.
Paul Zelizer 39:16
So I'm really curious dean of what you might share some more typically, when people think social entrepreneurship, we think of somebody founding something from scratch and building a company around it. It's not the only way to do it, but certainly that's more common, right? I'm really curious what you might share about how it is what it's like, it's almost like you're doing intrapreneurship, social intrapreneurship way back when we did an episode on the concept of intrapreneurship, which is being an innovator inside of a larger company, and you like explicitly moved into the company, and I would imagine it's Different to have the horsepower. That's very 30 million views a month Did you say? Right? Yeah, that's a lot. There's already a lot of like, traction. And you're not asking the question, how do we help people find out you're like trying to balance a lot of balls in the air. And there's revenue streams, and what do we give away? And it's complicated. But the horsepower that of the company you're working with very significant, much higher than most of the folks who are listening to our show, anything you could share about what's it like to work? You know, what's both, there's I imagined some really immense benefits to working with a company that has so many resources and has a brand and has established relationships. And I imagine there's some challenges as well talk to our listeners a little bit about what's it like to work in this kind of an ecosystem?
Dana Bryson 40:59
The Great question. So the majority of my work and social impact has actually been, as you described, and as many maybe maybe many of the listeners are experiencing in their own ventures, is been with small, smaller scale, more community based,
Paul Zelizer 41:21
scrappy startups, we're
Dana Bryson 41:23
also scrappy startup, where you just you your heart is there, your passion is there, and you're gonna get it done. And I've been doing that in the urban food movement for almost two decades and lots of different roles in different places, and had been an advisor and an investor and an, you know, a board leader and that kind of thing. So I absolutely know what you're saying, Paul, when you talk about this, this is a bit different. And it's exactly for that reason that I wanted to play in this playground. Because I'm with a background in public policy, and this ethos, you know, this activist and an equity mindset. I thought, what would it mean if I could work as a leader in an in a company that had a product that was a social good, so I don't want to I don't need to work for a company that, well, I don't need to say where I don't need to work, let's just say that education was really important to me because it is a human, right, a basic right and an equalizer, and we know this. And so to work for a company, that that could scale that we're I didn't have to blood, sweat and tears every day to get to scale. But if you got the data, and the alignment, and the coalition building, correct, that you would find out pretty quickly if you were on to something or not. And let me say a couple things that don't change. The first is that your instincts are still always right. No, I mean, I really believe in trusting your instincts, especially as a woman, especially as a biracial woman, to really trust your instincts, around around people around what's possible, and to really dream of what's possible and go for it. And it was really, but it had, but you asked about, you know, sort of some of the positives, and then some of some of the educating I needed to do. My first year there, I thought, I just need to educate everyone around me about what's going on. And then I thought, no, I need to be educated. I need to listen, to understand what's happening inside of the culture that I've come into, to figure out how to be successful. And that was a, that was a turning point for me. Because I had a way of doing things that I knew to be true in a lot of different contexts. That was not necessarily true. And I needed to listen, you know, which is the other truism around social entrepreneurship is really listen, listen to yourself, and listen to the people in the coalition's around you. And if you're able to let go of what you believe and listen to what is being communicated. I think you'll get to where you're trying to go a lot faster. Did that answer your question? Totally
Paul Zelizer 44:36
did Yeah. And, and listeners I just want to say you know, I've been in this work in one way or another for 16 years now. And I want to say that I'm seeing your story data like being in the scrappy in the community and I'm still like, I don't work for a giant company or anything like that. But I am seeing and actually getting approached to do part airship coalition and consulting work with much larger organizations than I ever thought I'd be working with. And nobody's offered me a job yet, but I'm not like it wouldn't surprise me as much in 2023, as of with the Paul Zelizer of 2013. So I just want to say listeners does know that this space is growing very quickly. And that some times the impact or sustainability conversations in large corporations, I think their impact washing and greenwashing, and I'm not the only one, there was $1 $50 million penalty for an organization in Europe that the EU, penalize them for $50 million. So I'm not the only one who thinks that, you know, sustainability washing and greenwashing and impact washing is a thing we know it's a thing. But I do want to say, there might be a company that in some way has some incredible infrastructure and resources in place. And if the values truly are a fit, please be open to the possibility that you can have more impact if maybe it's an employee, maybe it's a contractor, maybe it's a collaborator, this space has grown and there are much more leveraged organizations that are open to these more innovative approaches, and understand some of the challenges that we're facing more so than 10 or 20, or 50 years ago, that's my sense. Would you agree with that? Dana?
Dana Bryson 46:30
I do. And I do think, you know, keep your eyes wide open around what you know, to be true and real and leadership matters. values matter. diverse representation matters. But I will, I will say that there has been an guess, an outcome I didn't expect doing this work, and very specifically, the keys to the classroom work, where we're donating licenses at scale. Which is that, because we're we're, we really are getting to know the partners and understand the need and having conversations around values around data. With these parts, you know, 25 partners and growing, that we're really finding out that, you know, we haven't donated $1 to the key, so the Classroom program participants. And I actually know, and have experienced that donating licenses that are exactly the intervention that the nonprofit, the union, the community based organization, the State agency needs, is building a stronger sense of collaboration and coalition building, because it's, you know, a lot of companies can donate money, and it's, maybe it's helpful, and it's usually not that interesting or inspired, I would say it's been my experience. But when you're working enough to know that, you know, the design and user experience of our test preparation materials are based on learning science. That's not just studying white learners, it's all kinds of learners and different interventions that will work for retention for visual learners, audio learners, those that really want to read something versus watch something all of which is available on study, that we really do the research behind the product to make sure that the product that we're delivering will have a strong impact in terms of an educational outcome. And that's what we're donating. Or that's what we're selling. I don't sell it, there's a sales team, or people come to the site and buy it. But because we've done the work behind the product, in terms of learning science, and because we have, you know, it's funny, you call us a big company, and I don't know if I'm, I have mixed reaction to that, because we think we're so small and so scrappy, we're bootstrapped. We have no outside investment. So everything we do for 20 years, we've had to earn the revenue to grow one more half of an FTE, you know, a person. And so probably our CEO would love that word, calling us huge, but we certainly don't have
Paul Zelizer 49:46
your right next to Google in Mountain View there. That's a pretty big company. I totally say so. Yeah. So then I can hang out with you all day. You're doing such amazing work and I know you're really busy and our listeners Bizarre to listeners, we'll put links to everything, including the keys to the Classroom program to study.com and a bunch of the other resources in the show notes, all the links will be there. So know that, Dana, if there was something you were hoping that we were going to get to today, and we haven't touched on it yet, or there's something you want to leave our listeners with, as we start to say goodbye, what would that be?
Dana Bryson 50:28
I'm thinking about our teachers. And not just because I have an elementary school and a middle school student. And I actually did make a Greek salad for the teacher potluck, brought it over this morning. But I think about you know, we talk a lot about respecting our teachers and honoring the hard work and professionalism that they bring in the dedication. But when we really think about and we talked about pathways to becoming an educator, and how to help with these barriers, have a test. But there's a leaky bucket, right, because the teachers get in and and if you I looked at some data, actually this morning to make sure I was right on these numbers, because I thought this can't be right. 54% of teachers who are currently teaching in a recent poll by Pew said, they're somewhat or very likely to leave in the next two years, more than half of the teachers in the US education system. And I think about what if that were airline pilots, or what if that were neurosurgeons? We would be in a crisis mode. And so we really need to be thinking about how we retain our teachers. And so I want to say, we need to show our teachers respect. There's a bill in Congress called the American teacher act, that has a floor of $60,000 Minimum teacher's salary as a start. That was introduced last month, check it out the American teacher act, we need to recognize that our teachers are humans, and the struggles of their students become their struggles. And so we need to give mental health support, more flexibility, reduction of administrative burdens. And we need to, especially for all teachers, but especially our teachers of color, and make sure that we have an anti racist school culture, that is allowing our diverse teachers to flourish inside of existing systems. So that they can so all of this work that they have put in, and collectively the system is put into having them become an educator of our sweet children. That it's that it's valued. And so that's what I would say is, thank a teacher, appreciate a teacher and and to your listeners, you know, continue your work, you're doing a phenomenal job. This work is intersectional. It is not obvious. It can require explaining which can be exhausting. And if you're doing those things, you're doing it right. Because our work is at the intersection. And that's, that's why we love it. And that's also why every day we get up and go okay, here we go. Let's get this done. So thanks, Paul.
Paul Zelizer 53:40
And thank you so much for being on the show today. So listeners, let's do what we do at this community. Let's amplify let's tell people about the keys to the Classroom program. Please share it with your networks. let folks know about this incredible work. And let's celebrate with data and the team. This new award. How cool is it the bass company is celebrating a program like this. That's freaking awesome. I do want to say before you go it happened again. We love listener suggested topics and guests and Dana was referred by Julie Frey. Thank you so much. Julie has been a listener and has referred many great guests here. I share that too to say I'm not kidding when I say we love it when our listeners say here's an awesome story. That's please get it on the show. If you have an idea, please go to the AWARE printers website. And on our contact page, we have three simple guidelines. We try to be transparent about the kinds of stories we're looking for. And if it looks like a fit, please send your ideas on it. So for now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for in our world.