401: A Farmer is Fixing it with Brent Haken
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Hey guys, it's The Way I Heard It, and what we have for you today is what you call a very special episode of The Way I Heard It. It's called A Farmer is Fixing It. Chuck, tell us all about it.

I knew you were going to do that. Well, you see, Mike, the thing about this one is that I wasn't there when you recorded this. So I don't know a whole lot about it as yet. Well, when I say it's a very special episode, I mean it's very special for that reason in part. But also the timing is just something I couldn't ignore. MicroWorks will be 16 years old.

on Labor Day and in real time. That's just about a week from now. So this would be our Labor Day episode. I think it's episode 400. Is that right, Chuck? That is wrong, but I'll tell you what it is. It is episode 401. 401. Well, file it under who cares what number it is. Yeah.

But it's a conversation that I absolutely love to have in part because I had no idea I was going to have it. The backstory is this. I was in Oklahoma filming a new tranche of materials with my friends over at OERB, the Oklahoma Energy Resource Board.

And in the course of this year's campaign, we are tying in a lot of the messages to trade schools.

because, you know, there's a ton of opportunity in the energy industry and the people who are pursuing those opportunities need to learn a trade. So it's a great thing for our foundation, but it's also a really fun way to combine forces with some people who are on our side in this whole conversation about skills training. So anyway, I'm in the middle of the state

at a tech college that I had never heard of before called Central Tech. Central Tech, yes. And I'm just getting a tour and I'm getting kind of agitated as the tour goes on because I'm just meeting example after example of what I think ought to be going on right now all over the country.

Men and women, young men and women getting trained in a super hands-on practical way for virtually every job in the energy industry, but also the construction industry. They have a huge truck driving school within this facility. They have nursing. They've got everything. And as Chuck, it looks like you want to say something.

Yes, because you're reminding me, because I have listened to this conversation, but you're reminding me of stuff from the conversation. And what's great about Central Tech is that it is basically this vocational high school. It's not a high school per se by itself, but it's a vocational high school that is surrounded by all these other high schools.

where the high schoolers will get out of school a little early, head to Central Tech and learn a skilled trade. It's sort of a continuation. It's like a vocational program that extends the day for high schoolers to learn specific trades. And there are all kinds of trades covered in this. Well, that was the precise moment when I decided I was going to do this without you.

Because I was standing there in the lobby of this place talking to a guy named Brent Haken, who's my guest, who you're about to meet. And I was, first of all, just blown away with the breadth of this guy's knowledge. He's a farmer.

by training, I suppose. He grew up on a farm, his work ethic is second school teacher, principal, and then a supervisor. And now he's the- Superintendent, yeah. Right. And now he's the director of the entire CTE program in Oklahoma that's basically leading the country in this whole effort. So

Obviously, my slip is showing, but I'm really enjoying talking to this guy. And as we're talking, I count 17 buses pulling up filled with kids from high schools all around the area. And they all come in, to your point, to get the training they need to get jobs that actually exist. And I literally interrupted my conversation with Brent to say, hey,

Can we just start this over, but can we do it for my podcast? Because I think what you guys have done here is an example for the whole country.

He said, of course, I'd be happy to do it. And what you're about to hear is a totally spontaneous and really honest conversation with a farmer who I believe is going to be a key component of fixing our busted relationship with the trades. They're doing it in Oklahoma. They're doing it at Central Tech. It's a model that can be copied virtually anywhere. He'll do a better job of explaining it than I'll.

I will. But once again, as I've been saying since episode one of Dirty Jobs, you want to get it done, give it to a farmer. A farmer. A farmer can fix it. A farmer can fix damn near anything. And Mr. Haken is well on the way to fixing this. It's a happy birthday to MicroWorks. Chuck, I'm sorry we won't be hearing from you during this episode.

Yeah, I'm very sorry as well. And so I'd just like to recite a little bit of poetry before we go to the conversation. You know what? Let's go ahead and honor our commitment to our sponsor and then come back for some brief poetry from you. Not going to happen. And then we'll meet Brent Hagen. You're going to love it right after this. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-dum.

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Brent, thanks for doing this, man. I'm glad to be here. I mean, this is, I think, at least in the history of my little podcast, this represents a new level of total spontaneity and taking advantage of a situation. Yep. For me. I like it. Yeah. I'm here in Oklahoma working on this project with OERB, and you and I just had a conversation at this school called Central Tech, and it just made me think,

lot of people need to hear what's going on here so I agree couldn't agree more so you've agreed to sit and talk with me until things get boring which almost never happens on this you might wish you didn't do that so where do we begin the fact that you grew up on a farm the fact that you used to be a principal or the fact that you organized the funding to create what I think might be a truly transformational school I think all of those tie in together yeah so you

The fact that I grew up farming and ranching and that's part of our livelihood, Custom Harvest crew, and then I got passionate about education really led me where I was. I mean, I'm that typical kid that's like, "I'm gonna go to college, but I don't really know why." And then I had an experience because of CTE experiences

I was like, I should go be a teacher. And you have to have a degree to be a teacher. Cause I loved what I was doing in summer camps and conferences and helping these students realize what their goals are, their potential. Cause I hate that word dream. I'm not a big dream person. I'm like, have a vision, have goals. So, you know, figure out what you're going to do. Right. But it needs to be real, not abstract, like a dream. Like this needs to be real. What can we do? So I decided I want to teach. And then that led me into, we could do it better. I'm going to be a principal so I can do a better job. And then a superintendent at a school district. And then finally, uh,

This opportunity came up about 15, 16 months ago and I'm like, I love CTE. I think I should try. And here we are. And I'm excited about what we're doing. You know, Oklahoma is unique in how we approach

approach trades education and what we do. So we have 60 campuses that do what Central Tech's doing, 29 different school districts. We have 140,000 kids that are in course only offerings within their high schools also. So we really try to wrap around how do you get exposed to careers? How do you figure out what ones you're good at? And then we're going to train you so that you're ready for a job as soon as you get out. All right, back to the farm. Okay.

Would you guys grow? So we did, when I started out young, we were all wheat farmers. Okay, we were growing wheat to harvest. And then through times when it were not good, we turned to cattle. So we turned everything back into cattle, a cow-calf operation, a stocker-calf operation. But every summer I had a unique experience. My grandpa started a custom harvesting crew in 1948. What's that mean, custom? So that means you travel the country harvesting crops for other people.

So every year when school would let out, Dad would have everything ready, and we would load up. We'd live in an RV all summer, and we would travel really from Texas all the way to Montana cutting wheat. Did you ever do the tassel removal thing with corn? Oh, yeah. Yeah. What a special slice of heaven that is, man. Yeah. Yeah.

So I've cut, I mean, soybeans, sorghum, corn, canola, sunflowers. I've been on all those harvesting. That's how I grew up. That's what I knew. So I didn't know anything different other than we're going to go get in a truck and live in a camper all as one happy family all summer. And then in the fall, dad and mom would go because we didn't have hired hands. We did it all as a family unit. So mom drove a truck. Dad drove a combine. We'd go to a new location. And then the kids became the hired hands, you know.

all the time. So we just spent time together. In the fall, they would go at spurts of different times when Milo's ready or when Korn's ready and then we would go see him on the weekends or whatever and grandparents would take us. How many brothers or sisters? So I have one brother, one sister. Hmm.

- So you were the indentured servants. - Yeah, well, but my dad has two brothers and their kids were part, so we traveled as a family unit. So all three brothers, my dad's two brothers, we travel and we still do this. So my cousins still do this. I'm gonna go to college and teach. And a lot of them are still harvesting and that's what their livelihood is. - 99% of the people listening to this are trying to get their heads around the image you just described.

All right, a couple uncles. - Yeah. - A traditional sounding family. - Very traditional. - But coming together, like if this were like Chevy Chase, this would be like a farmer vacation, right? And so you just literally, you're going all over the state or all over the country? - All over the country. So from Texas to Montana is where we traveled. So that's the range. - Yeah, that's, I mean, and so how young were you? What's your earliest memory of the first trip?

Oh man, probably I can remember being three or four years old, setting in Gleaner combines and watching wheat come in the header. I mean, that's pretty fond memories. And then as you grow up, your cousins and you riding bikes all over small towns across the Midwest and meeting people that you never thought you'd meet.

Our vacations every year were, oh, it rained. Let's go see Mount Rushmore. We're nearby. Hey, it rained. Cheyenne Frontier Days are going on. Let's go see that. So that was just what we knew. And it was a really good opportunity. We enjoyed it. We loved it. Kids now would hate it. If it wasn't raining, you were working. Oh, yeah. Sometimes 18, 19 hours a day in the field. You don't stop because that's everybody else's livelihood, too. I've got to get this crop out as quickly as I can because when it rains, it deteriorates the crop and you lose quality. So you have to do it.

So the old bromide, right? You make your hay when the sun shines. That's right, yeah. That's rooted in something like reality. Yeah, yeah, yeah, rooted in reality. Thanks so much. Oh, thank you very much. I didn't get your cream, did I? No, it's okay. Did you? No, I'm a black coffee guy. That was Brian, by the way, bringing us a couple cups of coffee. Because, you know, I should have been more clear. This conversation is happening in a kind of, what is it, a tool? This is a tool room, yeah. So we're in a tool room at Central...

Yep. And if I'm looking down from space at Oklahoma, where are we precisely? We're very central. We're closer to the eastern side of the state than we probably are the western. So Drum Ride, Oklahoma is a very small town surrounded by a lot of other small towns that is in the middle of a lot of oil production. So farming, oil production, all those things right here at the heart of it, we do our

statewide truck driver training from here we do pipeline programs poly fusion welding everything here because that's the industry that lives here and drum right is the closest town yep yep okay

I wanted to start with the farm thing. I had no idea that was a story you were going to tell me, but at some point, work ethic needs to be a big topic of this whole thread, right? Because everything we've talked about before in terms of what the school has accomplished is rooted in tangible, tactile things.

practical proofs that we can look at, see and understand. But you can't look at work ethic or like you can't measure somebody's initiative at a glance. So what's going on here with regard to that? And as you formulate whatever the answer is, think if you would about everything you just said and how that laid the groundwork or the pipe.

as it were, for your understanding of work ethic? So, oh man, you posed a great question. And work ethic, I think, drives everything. I always told people when I became a very young principal, I'm 38 years old, leading the country's largest career tech organization, and that's all attributed to work

I'm not very smart, but I can outwork everybody around me. It's been my mantra is I want to work hard, okay, because I can prove something, you know? But that's not what my family built. I mean, there's nothing that we can't work through, and that's what family built for me. Our schools do that.

Because we are able to build that kind of grid in a program where you're here at a long-term basis. You're here a half day at a minimum, or you're here a full day in some instances, and you're here the whole year long, and we're going to teach you what the industry is actually doing. And many times, it's the industry person. So we're not babying you like you might be in your classrooms typically, which, oh, you got a bad grade on that. We'll retouch that. It's...

That's not gonna cut it on the job site. You're gonna get fired. And it's like, but it's okay. Let's cut it out, let's start over. Let's knock that wall out, let's start over. We're gonna teach you how to do it right. So it's showing people reality, but then giving them support.

I heard Larry Ellison say one time when somebody asked him to explain the greatest advantage he had in leading him to becoming a gajillionaire. He said, "Growing up, I had just the right amount of adversity." And so I worry a lot about that collectively because I think a lot of kids, even in this school,

Look, if your earliest memories are being three years old and taken off with this traveling circus of cutters you described, you don't have a chance to form other opinions. This is it. It's laid out for you. What a gift that was. Beautiful, yeah.

So how do you instill it in 17 or 18 year olds who show up not having that experience? Oh, it's tough because you'll hear many times, oh yeah, it's too late. It's too late for them, too late. It's not ever too late. Yeah. So what you do is you tie...

the what do you need to the what do you want. So many times to build hope in people, you show them what can get there and then you've got to cultivate this is what it's going to take to get there. And what's great about our teachers and being industry professionals, they have that and so they work alongside it. I will be here with you because you can't build hope and you can't build a work ethic if nobody supported you. I wasn't a kid growing up and they just turned me loose.

I mean, my parents showed me that kind of work ethic. So when people see that, it's like discipline. Discipline is absent in our world so many times, but people crave it. They crave also a work ethic. They want to see success and success is measured in all kinds of ways. John Wooden said it best, you know, it's earning the best of which you were capable. So when we show people that and we work alongside them, it builds, it builds. Most people want to do the job right.

Nobody wants to disappoint. I mean, that's just not life. But they want to do it right. When they don't have, you said, just the right amount of adversity, if they don't have hope,

they're not going to do it. Right, because just too much adversity will crush you. Yes. And not enough will make you soft. Yep. Right? But discipline's an interesting word, too, because it exists all by itself, and in most cases, when people hear that word, they associate it with a thing that is being applied to them. But when you hyphenate it and put the word self in front of it, now you're approaching something a little more affirmative. It is. So how do you cultivate discipline?

Self-discipline, how does that rhyme with work ethic? So self-discipline is about self-worth. It's about value of your work. It's about goals. And we talk, I get tired of this, and I taught it for a long time, smart goals and all these things. We've got to teach steps to goals. Like what's realistic in front of me now, and then what leads me to a long term. So if I'm going to be self-disciplined about something, then I'm after something.

If I don't have any goal, if I don't have any direction, I don't have a vision for what I'm going to have, what do I need to be self-disciplined about? So you have to create that ambition first, I think, to be self-disciplined. It's like an athlete or a tradesperson or a competitive public speaker, which we do. All those things are about what's your goal and how we're going to get there. You do competitive public speaking here? Oh, yeah. We'll take tradespeople and they will give delivered content. So we teach public speaking in every aspect of what we do.

- Dude, that's brilliant. That is so lacking. To be able to make a case for yourself is a critical skill, but it's so universally ignored in the trades. Why isn't that taught everywhere? - I don't understand it. What we do that I think makes us very successful, we have what's called CTSOs, Career Tech Student Organizations.

Every student that is in one of our disciplines needs to be a part of a CareerTech student organization. That allows them a platform to be competitive, whether that's the trade itself, public speaking, whether I'm presenting a project, whatever it is, it gives them different categories to be working toward a goal.

So now I'm gonna get to show off what I've been working toward in front of the industry professionals that are judging me. And many times I'm getting job offers after that. So I'm teaching competitiveness toward a goal and I'm applying it to industry and everybody supports it. So what we have to get out of our mind is that where athletics is the only thing that's competitive.

Life is competitive. Every single thing is a competition. This podcast right now. I started doing this podcast seven, eight years ago. I should have ramped up my game. You should have, man. We have literally hundreds of people listening. We get our share, but I was just talking to a guy before we sat down. There's like 3.6 million podcasts out there right now. So I absolutely ask myself the same thing. What can you do to make it better? And why would you expect people just to...

to listen, you know? And look, I'm not giving myself any credit. I'm just saying it's a very delicate balance, right? You can produce a thing and you can plan a thing and you can identify and you can execute a thing or you can be where I happen to be today and run across a guy in a purple shirt who's well-spoken, who really seems to give a damn and say, look, let's do one right now. I think my point is if you found a way to teach flexibility...

What are we hearing out there now? Is that auto shop? So what we've got is students coming in to their shop classes that are next door. So students, because they come from several sending schools, will be coming at different times depending on when their lunch breaks at the different sending schools. So we've got a student probably pulling up in auto services right across the road. So they're getting ready to go in there and learn, and they came back from lunch at their sending school. Let me just kind of say the same thing in a slightly different way. There are a dozen schools, probably more, around here, right? 17. 17 schools. Send here.

- Yeah. - Send their kids here after school, so not for intramurals, not for sports. - Both, so we have flexible starting, you mentioned flexible, man, we are education that's nimble. So they can come in the morning when they have a block of time and they don't have to have course, they can come in an afternoon, they can come after school. What fits them, that's what matters.

- So also before we sat down, I took a walkabout, ran into a couple nursing students. They said, "Oh, you gotta come down and meet our instructor." So I said, "Okay, I think her name's Holly maybe?" - Okay, could be, yeah. - So I go down there and as I'm walking, I ask them why they're doing this and what they like about it.

And one of them said, "What we love about this program is that it's not stuck in an 18-month curriculum." That's right. You learn what you need to learn. We've had people who have fully matriculated after seven or eight months. Yes. So what the hell is that all about?

- It's focusing on competencies. I mean, you focus on when do I get mastery of a skill? That's what's important. 'Cause the industry doesn't care how long somebody was in school. If I need an employee, I need them to be good at this. I need them to know these things. Well, why not teach that way?

Why do we need to continually supply what we've always done? And so I refer to education in two different categories. We have supply education and demand education. Well, we've thought a long, hard time about supply education. Well, we need this many degrees or we need this many diplomas, this many enrollments. And we try to focus off

"How many jobs do you need in welding? "How many jobs do you need as highline technicians? "How many jobs do you have in this area? "What industry is growing? "That's in demand, that's the program we're gonna offer. "How many nurses are you gonna need? "Let's get that going."

Education, we viewed as you know as something that is just always constant that's a right. In education probably should be a right for people but it needs to be built around the kind of life I want to live. People will find all kinds of career opportunities if they see I can be successful at that and I can raise my family the way I want to raise it or I can get out of poverty or I can be a leg up on where my parents

They want to see those life goals. That's what we're all about. So if they can get to those things because of a career link that was in demand, they'll do it. They'll live what they want. The American dream, right? That cliche of the American dream. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do

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♪ A-U-R-A-U-R-A-U-A ♪ ♪ Frames.com ♪ ♪ Slash Mike ♪ Well, let's talk about that. Wall Street Journal.

Four months ago had a headline that got my attention and triggered a whole lot of things in my world. But it said 64% of Americans believe the American dream is either dead or no longer applicable to them. That's harsh. Well, 64%. You're coming up on, right, two-thirds. So at some point, something really big.

really tragic is liable to happen if we get to a critical mass of people who lose, would you call it hope? - Hope. - The American dream is hope personified. So you take that away and your job as an educator

I don't know how to do it. I mean, I don't know how we do it if we don't show people you can do more, you can do better. When I was a principal at the high school I was at... Public high school? Yeah, public high school, our motto became, and it was totally by accident, I was trying to get these kids fired up, and I said, we ought to want more. And they're like, more of what?

more of what you want, whatever you want. That's what we ought to expect more out of ourselves as teachers. We ought to expect more. And that's what you're talking about is if we don't believe that the American dream is still there,

What are we working for? What are we educating? So I hope that we can turn the tide. And I think in Oklahoma, we wouldn't poll the same way. I think we have built a system where people believe, "I can do something different. I can do something more. I'm not stuck in the rut that I am." But too much adversity does crush that. It's never gone. Never gone. And we've got to talk about how we wrap around anybody that's faced severe adversity.

But we have to build it back. We have to build it. Let me bounce this off you then I happen to agree with you violently that the difference between a Like a vision and a goal is a very different thing than a dream. Mm-hmm, right? Yeah, and you're suspicious of dreams and I'm suspicious of the idea that people should follow their dreams Separate and apart from whatever skills correct might have been blessed with and yet we call this thing the American dream and

Why isn't it the American vision? - Man, I didn't know we were gonna get so deep. - Why isn't it the American, hey man, I got an hour to kill and I'm in a tool room, so we're gonna go to some places. But I mean, I look around at all these tools.

And I think about the challenge of humanity is to arm yourself with a tool that you understand, that you can wield, right? And all of a sudden, things get dreamy. When I read that article, I thought, yeah, maybe on the other hand, the American dream should be on the ropes because maybe the time to dream

has evolved into the right but that's what you're doing yeah you're about the american vision that's right we should every student should have a vision for the the life that they want to live and what are the goals that get me there what are my steps i got to take to get there and so that's what we try to build early in a student's career or later in life that's why we're flexible you can come to our schools at any time there's no age limit come when you need to come and we will take care of getting you back on track for what that vision is so i think

I think that's a good concept. Maybe you and I could rewrite that. - I think we should. - Yeah, I think we should. - I mean, we'll start with a book. We'll launch our own podcast. - Well, you talked about skills people are blessed with. Mine, probably not writing.

Well, I mean, look, I can tell a story anecdotally. I think it has a value because I think people need to see dirty jobs. You know, people need to be entertained before they can be persuaded. That's what I've learned. Yes, they do. They do. You're right. But the most persuasive things I've seen, the evidence that really demands a verdict are the kids and the young adults.

who graduate from places like this because you've armed them with a new set of tools and watching them work and then circling back to tell their stories, that I think can move the needle. - It can. And you know what I loved about Dirty Jobs for the last however long we've been watching it now,

is that it broke stigmatism around certain careers. 'Cause I would have students as an educator all the time that were interested in a certain career. I don't wanna be known as the plumber. I don't wanna be known as that guy. I'm like, that's ridiculous. I loved growing up that way. My dad's friends, that's all I knew was trades-based people and there was nothing wrong with those people. They're great people. So why is it a stigma that we live like that? - And why is it so,

completely counterintuitive. I mean, okay, you don't want to be a plumber, so you don't want to make six figures, you don't want to set your own schedule, and you don't want to keep the pipes connected that allow civilized life to exist. That's not for you. Yeah. Okay, well, then what? Yeah.

Well, we tied that American dream that we were talking about to certain careers. We started, oh, you got to be a doctor. You got to be, we got to have doctors. Like I depend on them, but I also depend on HVAC. I like air conditioning. We're not getting it right now. You depend on, yeah, that's right. It's a little toasty in the tool room. Yeah. But HVAC,

is a thing you rely on every single day. Every single day. The doctor is a guy you see once or twice a year. He sticks his finger up your butt, turns your head, you cough, you do, you spit, you're right, you're whatever. And hopefully you just get on with your life. That's right. So...

To me, it's always two sides of the same coin. It just seems like, why do we work so hard to promote one form of education at the expense of the others? Workforce. It's a team sport. We've got to have everybody.

We got to have everybody. And so we need to see that in all forms of education. We need to see that across all policy measures where we got to have everybody. I mean, how many of those that were living that dream and, "Oh, I became a lawyer." Well, I don't know how to change my tire. I mean, that's a problem. That's a problem. You've got to have those people that specialize in skills because we all depend on them every single day.

Oil and gas. Yeah. How am I going to get to work? Okay. I don't think we're going to all ride. In Oklahoma, you're a long ways from a major city. You're not going to ride your bike. You're not going to ride a horse anymore. We need oil and gas. Okay. That's reality of what we need. And that's why the trades jobs pay so well now. Yeah. We figured out, oh, there's a demand. You had a quote a long time ago, I think.

I think I remember it. We spent a long time getting to the corner office and we forgot how to build it. Something like that. Well, we got so enamored of working in the corner office, we forgot how to build a corner office. There you go. Yeah. That was a long time ago. I was just trying to get the...

the foundation off the ground and on dirty jobs everywhere we went you could see you know visual proof that the world's always under construction but yeah i'm not sure how much of it has changed i am i am curious though as a principal what's fundamentally broken if anything in our education system and again as you kick it around i'm thinking of a guy named frederick taylor who

100 years ago is probably most responsible for the public education system the way we have it like in terms of classes and like a bell rings the classes change all those protocols were rooted in in Factories, that's right, right. Mm-hmm. So do you think that an approach to mass production? has somehow

infected public education? Yeah, we're the factory, right? I mean that's what they say in public education that we are a factory of diplomas basically. But not all is bad either. Teaching people to show up on time is good. You need to get your work done. Okay, employers need that. But do we all need to be on the same page at the same time? What we did is we standardized. We're not an assembly line. We shouldn't be an assembly line. We're all unique people. So

Yes, we've got to have a different approach to education. And what we need is, we always paint the picture of a highway. You've got to have a lot of on-ramps and off-ramps. People need to have the opportunity. Kids need to have, adults, I've got to explore this career. I think I might want to do it. Okay, that's not going to work. I'm coming back on the highway. Okay, then I find another one. And I've got to be able to get on and off when I find those things are available. But if we're going to standardize everything and measure it with just specific tests, then

How do we let a student have creativity in creative thinking about what could be? How do we create those great inventions that America was known for if we're going to standardize everything? Because that's not how we did it. That's not how we built what America is because we were creative. We were exposing them as something. We would teach a concept. So, and especially when AI is coming to life now.

AI, artificial intelligence. We're not reading anything right now. But if that's going to come to fruition like we think it is and what it's already doing, if we're going to have all this automation, what we need to go back to doing now is teaching, how do you think outside the box? We're going to have to look at something different. Problem solving is our biggest hurdle that we have to overcome as a society. Because the problems are changing so fast that the existing solutions are no longer relevant. Yeah.

That person that has a background like I grew up, farm and ranch where you're exposed to a million different things, those don't exist very often anymore. So we've got to cultivate that within our education system. What is it, less than 1% of our population is involved in production agriculture. I'm a huge agriculture fan because that's how I grew up. I told my wife when we were starting to have kids, I said, "I got to get a farm because that's the only way I know how to teach kids and expose them to all these things." So we've got to bring project-based education to life in every school.

Project-based gives us creative thinkings. I'm gonna apply trigonometry or I'm gonna apply science, scientific method, but I'm gonna do it in a way that they have to create on their own. And everybody might come up with a different solution and one of those solutions might be great.

So we've got to get to a factor in education where it's not that I need to score a 90 on this test. It's like, oh, you solved that problem we haven't been able to solve. Yeah. That's different. You would love, there's a guest on this podcast, Todd Rose, who wrote a couple of books. One was called Collective Illusions, which is great, but the other is called The End of Average.

And that's what you're talking about. Yeah, and he makes the point that the military spent an absolute fortune Trying to figure out the perfect dimensions of a cockpit for a fighter pilot Yeah, right because you're mass-producing these things and well what they came up with was a cockpit based on the average dimensions of The current crop of fighter pilots and it fit no one. Yeah, so the average actually fit a

Nothing. Yeah. Right. So they had to totally rethink flexibility, adjustability, adaptability, all of that stuff. And that's just one example in a cockpit. What we're doing to kids, rubbing off the jagged edges and making everything smooth and same. I don't see that happening here. It's not what we're doing.

And I think educators want to do that. But what I've learned in my 18 year career is probably not enough, but I have learned that we need leadership. We need people that say it's okay if we fail at that. It's okay if it didn't work this time because what it creates is that grit and that person that wants to be more. It builds all that hope. When we just work toward the average,

Or, hey, how am I going to be above state average? I heard that all the time as a principal. Oh, we need our scores to be above state average. I'm like, above state average? What is that measuring? You know, where are we after? I need to be after something different than that. I need to be able to make sure Susie has their goals and they're working toward those and Johnny has his goals and we're working toward those. I don't need to be working toward the average. I need to be working toward their interests. I need to be working on that. And educators want it.

They want it so bad in every grade level, whether it's pre-grade or whether it's 12th grade or post-secondary. They want to do it, but we've got to lead them in that direction. So when we take a system that is motivated, funded, graded based on the average, then we have a problem. So we've got to create a leadership that is okay if we look different. It's okay. Can you think of a more harebrained person?

boneheaded decision in the history of education than removing shop class from high school? I still can't fathom why would it happen. Why did we do that? I mean, you know, I know all the reasons that I've heard. Not to mention the fact that we're losing shop class for the sake of teaching great skills and discipline. We are losing

a project that a person can put their hands on and be engaged and we can quit saying that clay's a problem in class and we can say, "Look what clay can do." Right. I mean, we just lost our whole mindset. We lost our minds on what education should be and Shop Class is a great example of that. And that's what we do here is we bring Shop Class back.

We're not in the school, but we're serving 17 schools at Central Tech. We're serving nine at another school. We're serving 33 at another school. We can bring them together and we can bring that back. - What level of enthusiasm

do you see here among the students compared to the school where you were a principal? - Yeah, yeah, so everything that these students do here is something they wanted to do, wanted to be a part of. So enthusiasm is just

their norm now. I mean, it's not like where I came from as a principal of a high school, I'm trying constantly to pump people up. How do I energize them? What do we bring in? What's the new thing? Who's the speaker? What's the game, the challenge? You don't have to do that here.

It's every day. They show up early. They stay late. Hey, I'm almost done with this project. Can I stay a little longer? Can I stay a little longer? I mean, you see that all the time because they're motivated on their own. I mean, intrinsic motivation is so important if we want to see people really be successful. And that's what we do here because it's their interest. It's valuable. It means something. I'm still stuck, though. How do you teach it?

Or can you teach it? Is it enough to simply encourage it by making the tools available and surrounding students with not just teachers but mentors? This guy Phil, who I was talking to before, he had absolutely no interest in being an instructor. Zero interest. The guy worked on the pipelines and he got to be a certain age. And I think he told me his wife suggested he do it. He was like, no, it's just, it wasn't his dream. That's right.

I don't even know if it was part of his vision, but all of a sudden he's here and he's loving it. - He's enjoying it, yeah. So you hit on something that's been big for me. We say the word teach, how do you teach it? Well, maybe we're approaching it all wrong. Education is not about teaching standards, it's about letting people find motivation and that's what I firmly believe, what I founded all of my education background on is when I let a student find what they're excited about, then they are successful.

I have a master's degree. I'm not a doctorate like people think I should probably have in the position. But I never read a full book until I was in my master's program when I enjoyed it. I'm like, I am good enough to pass your test, okay? And I know what I want to go work. There's thousands and millions of students just like that. We are trying to focus. You've got to do this. You've got to do that. We've got to teach them. And instead, we've got to say, hey, you want to try this project?

and you find out what they're interested, that's what our teachers do. Hey, we got a 350 small block here, let's tear that apart. And they're like, oh yeah, let's do that. Or hey, we're gonna work and pass this pig through this pipeline today, you guys interested? Yeah, I'm interested. So it's less about teaching because what education really needs to be is

how do I make sure students have tools where they can learn on their own when they're ready? Because I'm not going to teach you all the things you need to know in a class. I'm going to show you, you can be good at this. If you're ready to learn, come find me.

We've had a lot of conversations on this podcast about what's broken in public education, and I've talked to more than a few experts with big ideas about how to fix it. But until it's fixed, a lot of people are looking for alternatives. And one of my favorites is K-12.

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and check them out. There's still time to get started for the fall at k12.com/ro. That's the letter K, the number 12, .com/ro. What about relevance? Like, do you see a difference in inspiring, encouraging, motivating a kid who has decided that they want to be successful in marketing or accounting or social media, you want to be an influencer, versus

I want to play a role in powering the country. I want to play a role in something, you can fill in the blank with whatever aspirational pursuit you'd like, but is there a difference in relevance when it comes to the subject a kid has chosen to pursue? - For sure. Relevance is what drives the motivation and so we have conversation in this state all the time about rigor. You hear that conversation about rigor

"Well, it needs to be rigorous. "It needs to be as rigorous as Algebra I." I say, "What does that mean?" And nobody can explain it. 'Cause every time they start explaining, they talk about standards. So that's not rigor. That's not what you said. You said it needs to be as rigorous as that.

Tell me what that means. 'Cause rigor means how much effort is it gonna take to get it done? And so when it's relevant, and so I always use this concept with our legislators, it needs to be relevant for the rigor. So when you talk about how important that relevance is,

that's what drives the student because whether they want to be in marketing or oil and gas or whatever it is they see that this makes a difference people innately want to make a difference I'm a firm believer in that the reason you do what you do is because you want to make a difference the reason I do what I do is because I see light bulbs come on for kids I want to make a difference that's my relevance I did oil and gas for four years to get through college I was doing all those things that wasn't my passion that's not where I'm gonna make a difference

But a lot of people, it is. They make a huge difference in their families. They make a huge difference in the state. They make a huge difference in the industry. So people have to see, where's my purpose? I mean, that's the skills we're given. The scary thing, and also the hopeful thing, is that, you know, while that's super true, there's no age.

where you flick the relevant switch. - No. - And this goes back to the standard thing and to the average thing. I feel, like for me, when I decided I wanted to be in this industry, I was so delighted to finally find some success in it

that I truly didn't care what I was doing. So I spent 15 years hosting shows I wouldn't have watched, narrating books I would never personally listen to, infomercials, sitcoms, just stuff, you know? And honestly, Grant, I loved it

Right up until the day I didn't. It's like all of a sudden cotton candy, it's like, oh, this hurts my teeth and it's probably making me crazy. And so, you know, Dirty Jobs was an attempt to do something as silly as it was in some ways that had a mission. And then my foundation and so forth. And now at 62, I do feel like I'm doing something crazy.

And I feel really different than I did 25 years ago. So I don't know if there's a point in that except to say that if you're working on a rig, go back to your childhood, man. You're feeding people. That's right. There you go. Yeah. Hard not to feel relevant when you're feeding people. Yes. Yeah. What are you feeding these kids here? Ah.

We talked about it, you're feeding them hope. They don't see the grit part, that's a product of what we do, but you're feeding them hope and what my future looks like. Because all through my experiences, I didn't know what I was gonna do.

Maybe that's the circumstances they're up against. They had some adversity. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I don't know how I'm gonna find the success that I want. So we feed them hope in that way. Or maybe the same classroom will do the same thing for a totally different student. The person that came from a great background and had a vision the whole time of what they were gonna do, but I don't know the next steps.

So we build hope that way. It's all about how do you link things together so that they see what the next step is. I mean, it's no different than anything that we do in life, just like you talked about, where you were doing one thing and that wasn't fun anymore. I started to build some hope. Then I start to build a foundation. All these things come together. I'm a firm believer, probably too personal, but that God's going to put me in the right place to make the next action.

It's not gonna be the final action, but it's the next step. So once I make that step, it's gonna lead to something else. I didn't plan to be here. Right. That's how it works. No, no, look, I love that. We're literally recording a podcast in a tool room in the middle of a shoot with my friends at OERB, and these guys are now probably in overtime, Brian, so you're probably freaking out, right? None of this is in the plan. None of it's in the plan, but...

You said "thing" like six times in one sentence. And I think the point is, is it's not the thing. In the same way it's not the job, necessarily. If that were the case, all garbage men would be miserable. All movie stars would be happy, self-actualized, fulfilled people. Not how it works. It doesn't work. So, I mean, that's the tension. There is no such thing

as a relevant job beyond your own ability to assign relevance to it. - Yeah, doing the best of which you are capable. - Yeah. - Yeah, whatever that is. We've made it more complicated than that, don't we? - Well, it seems self-defeating to me. In my world, I say, well, what are the barriers between what I'm trying to do and letting people see something that feels authentic?

And you can list them, right? There are any number of things. Why do we make it so hard to get the degree that we say is so important? Yes. I don't know. On the other hand, isn't it weird that in 1955, the average GPA out of Harvard was 2.55? Yeah. And today it's 3.98? Yeah.

Are we that much smarter? - I don't think so, man. - Yeah, we're not. No, we're still the same people. We've just changed what we're grading or how we're grading it. So I had a lot of fun when I first started teaching agricultural education and I would go through the books from 50, 60 years ago and I said, "Those concepts are more difficult than what I'm teaching now." And I'm like, "We're going backwards to make it easier."

Instead of saying, "It's okay if you get a C. It's okay." Because you're learning, you're growing. So one of the biggest frustrations I would have when I first became a high school principal, students would come from the elementary and we had a fantastic elementary school. But they had been used to being helped along the way to get my grade where I needed to be. I had straight A's all the way through elementary school. I came to junior high English and I got a C. And I would tell the parent, "Okay, well they're not a C student.

"Do you know that? "Wouldn't you rather them fail here than fail in life?" I'm like, "Let's figure out the outputs they're gonna have to have "to get where they wanna be." It's the same way with discipline. I would tell parents all the time, "Don't you want me to discipline them out of love for them, "out of caring for them, "then they go out into the world "and they get disciplined by real life?"

That's gonna suck. Wouldn't you like to know that you can't sing before you go on American Idol to find out? I don't want my family seeing it. Right, in front of 30 million people, right? I mean, we're not doing kids any favors. No. I heard somebody say the other day, I think it was Dave Ramsey, he said, "To not be clear is to be unkind."

That's the way we have approached a lot of life. I mean, I have conversations now as somebody that manages a large group of people all the time with things that I hope are clear but not what they want to hear. But that's how we get better. That's how we grow. It's the same way in education. We've got to be honest with people. And we have sugar-coated everything for so long we can't be honest anymore. Well, in the spirit of not sugar-coating it,

What's your take on the Ivy League? What's happening in higher education today? What should we learn from it? That's a good question. And I don't ever sugarcoat when I'm talking about what we invest in education, because we invest heavily in this country in education. But there's a lack of relevance in what we're doing in higher education right now. And when we say higher education, this is a problem that I have. We lump the colleges together.

but we're higher education also. I mean, we are elevating a student's education. So if you looked at it that way and you said all of higher education, well, look at every trade school, that's higher education and there it's relevant. So if we start putting that together, then we change the dynamic of what higher education is. There's a lot of people that are going to college that don't need to, but we send them.

And then they will not complete and they will come back to us. Shouldn't they have came to us the first time? Shouldn't they have been told that they should have come to us? But what we've done is we've built up this mantra of you've got to go there, you've got to have the experience.

Well, why in the world are the rest of us paying for everyone's experience? I don't get it. I mean, I don't get this. I went through college and I stacked feed at Stillwater Mill and I was able to pay for my education. I paid for mine. I don't want to pay for everybody else's. I mean, those are all of the different struggles. You pointed out one struggle, but all these things we're facing with higher education, it is not a right.

It is not a right for you, that's my opinion, it's not a right for you to have a certain level of education. It is a right that we help train people. It is a right that we help provide a public service, just like we do safety or anything else. But it is not my right to baby you forever and give you everything that you ever wanted. That's not my right. - Since we're in a tool room, I think a lot about this. This is my cell phone, right? And I got an internet connection down here. And look, this, I mean, the mischief

And the time wasted and the various portals that this thing can open, you know, we all know. Unreal. But when did you go to school? I graduated high school in 2003. In 2003. So...

I guess maybe you had this in college, didn't you? Yes. Yeah. So I remember Facebook coming out in college. Yeah. So I had, we were on wheat harvest and I was 16 years old and dad said, hey, you can drive back to a leadership camp. I was in Nebraska and he said, if you want to drive home and go to that leadership camp you've been going to, we could do without you for a while. He said, I bought you a cell phone. It was, you know, flip phone. I was like so excited. Yeah. It's changed so fast. I just, I mean,

In 1984, I was finishing college, and this technology wasn't even, you know, it wasn't possible. But my liberal arts degree today, it's available here for free. I know. 98% of the known information, including, by the way, how to weld.

You can go to YouTube and you can watch all the videos. Exactly. So, I mean, how do you think about the existence of all this information that's truly useful? And what role, if any, can it play in the goals at Central Tech or in higher ed or anywhere? We use it. I mean, we use it all the time. And I think it's...

We're blind to say that we have to have something created for us anymore. It's already there. What we're doing, we talked about earlier about problem solving. Well, we take all of this knowledge that's out there on the World Wide Web and our job is to make it applicable. So we have to take, and our role as teachers are changing where we're not just giving you content, you've got content.

We're going to help you use it. And so we've got to put it to work. And so that's a different form of education that is more in demand than the supply we've always been giving. The encyclopedias are gone. We have a wealth of information. I don't need that. I need somebody to tell me what's going to make me successful at work. What's going to make me successful when I get there. You're so right about the language, though. And I want to be clear, too. When I say higher education, it's in quotes in my mind. But...

that expression is inculcated in the minds of millions of parents. But of course, what's sort of pregnant in it is that, okay, if there is such a thing as higher education, then what is this? You know, we wouldn't call it lower education because that'd be too demeaning. But we might call it alternative. That's right.

A lot of people might look at this place at a glance and go, yeah, well, that's where my kid would go if they're not cut out for this other thing. Oh, we hear that a lot still. How crazy does that make you? Yeah, nothing infuriates me more when we hear that conversation. And it was the same when I was a principal, same when I was a superintendent, because that was my background. So I'd get defensive about it. And I had to learn...

It's not their fault. That's all they've ever heard. That's all they've ever known. So we changed the model of how we were guiding students and how we were advising parents and changed the fact that you can look at education differently. You don't have to think about it the same way your parents told you. So it's very infuriating that we think that it's less than. It's not less than. It's different. We're getting full on our media cards. Good. All right. I was just looking for a sensible way to land the plane. How much time do we have? I got it.

- Four minutes. - Oh, four minutes is beautiful. - Yeah. - Good. So in four minutes, sum it up, man. What can central tech mean and do for the rest of the country as a model? - Well, I hope that everybody will come and see what we're doing here. And they will see that

The education needs to be driven by what is available in industry. If it's not there, why are we teaching it? Because nobody can make a livelihood out of it. That's one piece that I want them to see. And I want them to see that it can be attached to what we're already doing in high school and it can be post-secondary. So it's real easy to just think about it more creative. What are we giving students is what they need. So let's do that and less of what they don't need. Website? Yeah, we have a website, OklahomaCareerTech.com.

So that is a great way to find all of our schools and what we're looking at.

I've been to every state half a dozen times. I've worked in every state. I've visited a lot of schools. I think the answer to so much of what's busted is right here in the middle of Oklahoma. I appreciate that. And I think what you're doing is yeoman's work, and it's important, and I appreciate all the time. Thank you for helping shed a light on it. That's also the purplest shirt I've ever seen. My wife picked it out. It's the color of kings. That's right. Thanks, Fred. I appreciate it. Awesome.

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