The following transcript has been edited for readability. Timestamps have been removed and minor transcription errors corrected. Speaker comments and context have been preserved.

Opening Remarks

Rich Portelance

Hey, welcome everybody. This is Rich Portelance with the EdGate Powers Podcast. I'm excited today, I'm going to be with Amber Berry, who's from the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (MSA - CESS). She's going to introduce herself, but I want to remind everybody that if you're watching this podcast, we are going to be having a webinar coming up on June 16th, 2026, so just a few weeks away. We're talking about AI-enhanced standards alignment and dialing in precision at scale, and Amber's going to bring a new perspective. I’m super excited. Please check the link below, sign up, and register for the webinar. But why don't we let Amber introduce herself?

Amber Berry

Hi, Rich. Thank you so much for inviting me to join you today. So, I'm Amber Berry, vice president of AI and Strategy for the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools, and I have been working with this organization for about three years. You know, we are known for accreditation, and I work primarily in governance and AI for our company. I'm also the co-founder of RAIL (Responsible AI and Learning), and this is our change implementation framework for schools around the world. We're a global company, so we work with 3,200 schools in accreditation, and we work with any school that is interested in approaching AI in a responsible, ethical, and safe way. 

Discussion

Rich Portelance

Well, there's certainly plenty of opportunity to go around in that space, I would imagine. And you know, it's going to keep you certainly busy, as there are so many questions around AI today and how it's going to impact learning. So, we're excited to have you on the podcast. 

Why don't we start off, you know, as many people won't know the Middle States Association, and give us a little bit of background about the work you're doing in there, and then how that's going to tie into our discussion today?

Amber Berry

Sure thing. 

So, about three years ago, our company president, Christian Talbot, you know, already saw that AI was going to be incredibly disruptive, particularly to schools and to education. And so when I joined the team just a few months later, we launched a task team to really explore questions around what we do with AI in schools. It's interesting because from our kickoff meeting with this team, we actually, from the Middle States point of view, we posed a question and we said, you know, “How are we going to help schools integrate AI successfully?” And we paused on that word, two of our task team members said, “Integrating tech tools like we've been doing this for decades in edtech, right? And it has not appreciably changed learning and outcomes for students. So maybe let's not think about how schools are just going to integrate AI onto sometimes questionable and broken systems of schooling, and instead think about how we can use AI for powerful learning outcomes for students”. 

And so, that is the work that we do in RAIL, our first endorsement of AI literacy, safety, and ethics, is walking schools through alignment with their mission, their vision, to their “Portrait of a Graduate”, and their profile of a teacher. You know, like what is that North Star that you have for the outcomes you want for your graduates, and then what are the policies that would support that? What kind of governance structures do you need to see this through?  What kind of infrastructure? Who needs to be scaled up in terms of AI know-how? Many schools are still leaving AI with the, you know, the IT department, but this is everybody's business, and in some way, you really need to be thinking about your entire organization shifting, and this is obviously a conversation about education, but this is across any industry. This is not a singular conversation anymore. It's quite complex. 

And then our second endorsement takes that powerful learning experience to the next level. We work with schools in the essential learning experience with AI endorsement to have teachers using AI skillfully in action research sprints. So, these are the outcomes I want for my students. This is how my school defines powerful learning. It means student agency. It means student voice and choice. And then, how might AI really enhance that experience and that outcome, and do better than I was doing before, and to document that journey for your school? So you have a playbook to work with. 

Rich Portelance

Wow, that's fantastic. And we're seeing the same thing across industry, as you mentioned, that, you know, it's not just about applying AI, and it's not just about the IT department. It's really about the whole infrastructure and how it's going to be part of the culture of the company in order to make sure that it's effectively used and you get the outcomes you need. 

When you visit schools today, what are the most common challenges school leaders are wrestling with from your perspective? 

Amber Berry

I would say that if I'm talking to a school leader, what they will say to me behind closed doors is, you know, “All the children are cheating, what do we do? How do we stop it? There is this responsible, ethical use of AI, isn't there?” Some of it is haphazard. For younger learners, they don't understand the difference between trying to use AI as maybe a resource or tool, versus kind of giving over all of their thinking, and the outcomes are coming from AI. 

And I think the bigger question I ask back is, you know, what is the value of the work that we are assigning our students right now that there would even be a temptation to use it for outsourcing that work? And what's interesting for schools that have taken the time to, you know, do these deep dives with their students, and have consequence-free “I've heard from my friend” kind of conversations in, like, an advisory setting to dig deep. Some students are outsourcing their thinking because they're like, "Look, I already know all of the answers. I have a really difficult math assignment to focus on. I chose to use AI for those things because they don't matter. It's just busy work. And now I get to dedicate time to level up my skills on things that are complex and take time for me." 

That is fascinating, and not the assumption I'm sure many parents and educators have about some of the choices. Other students would be vice versa, right? Like, I'm happy to do the homework that was easy for me, or not challenging, or the work that was assigned, but this was so insurmountable for me that I ran out of time, I am over-scheduled, I don't know how to do it, and so I relied very heavily or entirely on AI to just get it done. And there's everything in between, but I just appreciate that there is nuance to this conversation. 

And so I talk about good questions and better questions. You know, a good question is, should AI be allowed in student homework? But the better question is, what is the purpose of homework? And if schools aren't willing to answer that first question, there is no solution to the “students are cheating” conversation right now. 

Rich Portelance

That's a fascinating observation. I appreciate you sharing that, because it does add nuance that I don't think people would normally think about. So, now we start to think about these things, how young people are utilizing the technology, and what we can do to support them and not just punish them for using the technology that we created. 

Independent schools often have, you know, greater flexibility than public schools. We know that. How does that shape the approach to innovation and change from your perspective when it comes to AI and some of these new technologies? 

Amber Berry

You know, we are noticing in our partnerships that we, you know, RAIL has been more appealing to independent schools, and that's more of our audience. And what I see in these spaces is, you know, that I mean, by definition, the independent school teacher often does have a lot of latitude toward experimentation and new ideas. There are often many, many pockets of early adopters already in these spaces, and so schools are harnessing that great momentum, talent, interest, and running with it because I've yet to meet a school where all teachers are bought in. Right? Of course, you're going to have skeptics. There's definitely a bit of a bell curve there, of like, who's already in it and who is, you know, threatened to leave if they ever get forced, and everybody in between, but schools that have more flexible models are able to jump into this work and think about their strategy. 

You know, one piece of RAIL is that there's a marketing strategy and a change strategy that comes from it. So, schools are making decisions. I know my population. I know this is going to take a little time to convince, you know, some of my teachers. So, what does it mean to go slow or to go fast in our approach forward? It doesn't mean that AI literacy training is on Monday. It might mean that it's in six months, and here are all the things we're going to do to prepare our teachers, get them ready and excited through storytelling and little small soft touches before going kind of hard in our next direction. 

I also see that independent schools tend to have really flexible professional development models where they can add time, they can add funding, really change their approach often on the fly by next school year, and incentivize their teachers, like, “Who wants to do some work over the summer? Who wants to get ahead? Who wants to try new things? Pop up a professional learning community, pop up an AI task team and invite folks in”. These kinds of cultural structures in independent schools just lend themselves toward the ability to move alongside RAIL at a clip, and to make progress not in three years’ time, but like, 6-to-12 months time, 18 months time, that you can make significant cultural shifts in a community. 

Rich Portelance

Conversely, are there misconceptions about independent schools that you think you could potentially clear up in terms of how people, you know, think about these, maybe a little too loose goosey or flying by the seat of their pants? 

Amber Berry

Well, I don't know if I could even draw a line over whether it's independent schools, public schools, or learning service providers that we work with. But, many schools are finding that when they do, once again, I highly recommend the non-punitive exploration in your community. But when folks really disclose, when your faculty and staff disclose what they're experimenting with and how, those IT directors are getting a little nervous, right? Because if they're not already AI literacy trained, they don't understand, and they're not AI fluent, so they don't quite understand how to use the tools, even if they know the terms, there are some mistakes that are happening. And so safety, security, you know, that kind of data privacy, you find out that folks are practicing some things that aren't best practice. So there's a chance to intervene, which is great, but I wouldn't say that's based on any particular community. I think we're all like, "Oh, that was an interesting ad I just got”, and click, click, sign up for a trial. But being really careful to understand your organization's protocols is critical, and I think many of us are behind in that knowledge, for certain. That's a really good question about how that falls along lines. 

One misconception I think is that sometimes folks think that you have to be very well-resourced to be doing this well. And I say that, at least financially, you have a lot of financial latitude. But I am finding that schools with much tighter budgets are finding really creative ways to attack this problem at a high level. And so it's not just well, we had so much funding sitting around, you know, of course, the school is able to successfully navigate this moment. There are many, many, many free resources and creative ways to think about doing this very skillfully, and organizations that we partner with and recommend. Like, just for one example, you know, we have the CEO, Amanda Bickerstaff of AI for Education, on our RAIL team task force, and we recommend to all of our schools looking for AI literacy training to consider that free training as the starting point for your community. And that's just one example of, you know, yes, you could actually have all 200 of faculty and staff trained for free, and then feeling like you're in a safer space to move forward as a community. 

Rich Portelance

That's a great resource, thank you for that. 

If you had to identify one thing that someone from the independent school market could learn from public schools, and then conversely the other way around, what would that be? Do you have something that you would pinpoint and say, “You can learn this from public school”? You know, in the way they operated, and “You could learn this from an independent school”? 

Amber Berry

You know, I don't know if I, again, would just like to divide it on that stark line, but I will say that in my conversations with some of the public schools we work with, you know, we require executive sponsorship for RAIL. So, whoever's at the top of your organization has to commit. So, you can't come to us as an eager department chair or classroom teacher and bring RAIL to your school. That head of school or superintendent has to sign off and say, “This is a top priority for our institution”. 

So when those conversations happen well, the head of school didn't sign up the school without talking to constituencies. Bring it to your senior leadership team, have conversations with faculty, preview it to the board, and to the parent body. You know, schools that are successful have really thought about including many people in the conversation, and they're not dropping this AI direction into the community. That doesn't go over well, as you can imagine, and it means that changing the plan means going even slower than perhaps you thought you needed to, or really diving into that marketing plan, like, “How are we going to convince this constituency that we left out of the process from the beginning?” 

So I would say anyone who is going through, yes, the decision maker makes the choice to do RAIL, but going through a process of bringing your community on board, getting them excited, and not nervous about it is really important work. Yeah, and I would say we've seen models on either side. Maybe public schools nail that perhaps better than independent schools, but I think any healthy community nails that process as opposed to, you know, what type of community it is. 

Rich Portelance

So, if you're a school talking about innovation, what I'm hearing is that the schools that have the systems and the support probably can sustain that innovation better than, you know, some schools that just kind of implement without getting that support system, right? Is that it? 

Amber Berry

Yeah, it's the top down. Plenty of schools have updated their policies somewhat, but did they get any faculty voice into that updated policy? And I'm remiss in not naming students in this conversation. The most successful schools we work with include student voice in some way, shape, or form. 

Rich Portelance

Yeah. Okay. So, that's terrific. And that's really it, it's good to hear that schools are taking that voice from students and applying it, because this is all new to everybody, and you know, if they don't have that student understanding, I think they're probably missing great opportunities, right? 

Amber Berry

Absolutely. you know, one of the public schools we work with, they have a student AI club in the high school, and they just talked about how, before they even got into the second endorsement and doing the action resource, like, what does it mean to consult with those students and get their ideas of, you know, where are you already noticing AI is being used well among your peer group? What about the teachers that you work with already, and use that for inspiration? Teachers are incredible. They're gifted, they're smart, and they can do this work on their own. But think about how much more the students are invested in the work because they got to be part of the process. Like co-creation, it's back to powerful learning. You know, they are agents, and they have, you know, opinions. They're not going to necessarily be the decision makers, but to leave them out of the conversation is a mistake. Even with younger learners. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. so how can school leaders create alignment as you're talking about without creating too much bureaucracy? Obviously, they don't get mired down, and you know some of those things. What's the magic formula there? 

Amber Berry

I mean, you have to know your own community, and I imagine for some schools they're not going to get away from that. It's interesting because RAIL is a small team that works through the majority of the process. We recommend about five to seven people. We have worked with schools that have insisted on a team of 12, and there were a lot of voices in the room. They missed their deadline by a couple of weeks, and it you know took them longer to hash through. 

Other groups, other teams that have worked through RAIL, they decided to delegate a little bit, give assignments to different team members, and then they come together to offer feedback together, but they don't co-create every single thing. And I have just one example of the hundred schools we've worked with where they met live. I mean ours. They met as a small team and created everything together. And that fit them culturally, and it's how they chose to approach it. You can imagine it's not a sustainable approach for every community. And so knowing how your teams function and how you're going to get the buy-in matters. We recommend you have teachers on your RAIL team, but we don't insist. A couple of schools have included board members on the team. I think one school at least had a parent on the team. 

And so, I think you really have to know your community and think about what is going to help us cross that finish line of having the cheerleaders who are moving the work forward. And if that means having parents and, you know, having a different constituency in your RAIL team, fine. It might mean moving a little slower and being a little more bureaucratic. But if you know how your school operates, and you can move more nimbly through that without quite as much at the front end, then really you're just thinking about the back end. So yeah, the team took a stab at revising the mission statement a little bit for the age of AI. That's how you start the RAIL process, and now, like, who needs to digest that and in what way? So, how are you inviting teachers to have a voice in that process? And they're not changing the mission statement. They don't have that authorization, but they do imagine a world in which the mission shifts for this moment, and they digest, like, what does that mean for their community, and is it even necessary for their community? 

Rich Portelance

It sounds like a powerful tool set and way to go about things and getting buy-in from everybody from top down, which is critical. 

As AI is dominating educational conversations, what are the school leaders asking you most frequently? 

Amber Berry

So, plenty of school leaders are asking, you know, is it just me? Is it just us that are struggling with X, Y, and Z? Particularly, are the students cheating in other communities? Or is this like an us issue? Is this about our own morals and ethics? And I will say, I have yet to meet a school leader who had an outlier experience of all the issues that are coming up for schools, teachers, students, and parents, and, you know, we're in this interesting moment with parents in our country right now, of, do they want computers to kind of disappear? Are we banning cell phones? 

And so this technology conversation is nuanced and complex and very, very hard for all school leaders. So they are definitely looking for community, and looking for you know who is doing this. Well, one thing we developed very quickly for RAIL is an asset library. So here are examples of schools that might look a little bit more like yours. Here is a public school example, a religious school example, a single gender example, a boarding school example, so that schools can see themselves reflected a little bit of “Are we so far off?”, and it's they're just finding it more reassuring. They were doing great work on their own, but I do see more and more schools just looking like, you know, a little bit like our students do, right? It's a bit of the comparison game of "Am I doing this right? Tell me I'm on the right track”, that assurance. 

Rich Portelance

And in that paradigm, as you're listening to these leaders, are there certain concerns that are coming up regarding AI adoption that resonate across the whole spectrum? 

Amber Berry

I mean, repeated yes. We try to reframe some of them as, you know, I already gave an example of the difference between cheating on homework and re-evaluating your homework practices, right? So, yes, we definitely get the cheating conversation all the time, we get “Which tool is right for my school?” or “Which suite of tools is right for my school?” That's a great question to ask, but first, we need to understand what powerful learning means for your community, and like, I'm not going to recommend a particular branded school tool, but I will share here the range of tools I have heard of, and I'm happy to connect you with a school that uses this tool or that tool, and you could learn from them. 

But it's, you know, I think we're… And maybe it’s also when I do trainings with adults, as well as with parents, teachers, school leaders, and executives, they're also asking, "Well, should I use this branded tool or this branded tool?” and I say, “I use many tools, and it depends on the task”. Some tools are better, you know, are better used for certain asks than others, but it's also just really difficult because folks are just looking for the answer. And I see this more as a moment of experience, and you kind of have to experience some things and test some things to understand what's going to work or not work, what's limiting and what's freeing for you or for your community. 

Rich Portelance

So, in the middle layer, of you know, every school, you have the top layer, you have your administration, and then you have your students, and in the middle are the teachers. What are the technological and, I guess, more importantly, what are the structural things that you're seeing that need to be put in place to support teachers as best as possible, because they're probably the least AI literate of the two groups to some extent, and probably struggling with what the expectations are. And then, as you're talking about some of the students and what they're doing and how they're approaching it, what are we telling teachers in that space? 

Amber Berry

We have a lot of recommendations for supporting teachers adequately. I mean, of course, there's this baseline “get going with some AI literacy” something, because plenty of spaces still have not done that, and teachers aren't speaking the same language. They don't have the same understanding or experience. The other is AI fluency. So, creating those sandbox experiences for teachers, like how do they experiment safely? Where do they go to do that kind of practice? And you know, is it optional? Is it required? That's up to you and your community. I recommend starting with the optional and ideally gaining some momentum over time. 

Another thing we highly recommend is that you use the word storytelling, but it's probably more like show-and-tell. So infusing into your community's practice the ability for teachers who are using AI to tell stories of outcomes all the time should be embedded in your department meetings, embedded in your faculty meetings, it should be part of your school your school's social media campaigns of here are in interesting learning experiences that are happening, and AI might have been a piece in this being a powerful learning experience for teachers. 

If teachers aren't seeing that value, it's difficult to tell someone who's been a professional for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, this is something you should be doing now, and it might feel really different from your approach before, particularly. I mean, think about art teachers, PE teachers, history teachers, and the creative uses we are getting from educators across the world right now. It's blowing my mind. I'm steeped in this work, and I'm used to it, but I just didn't realize I'm still wowed, and I appreciate that because I'm definitely more of the optimistic side of the equation, perhaps than some other teachers out there. 

So, I mean, one more thing that I left out, what do teachers need? Teachers do need policies. And I say policies because I think school administrators like to hear that word. It feels safe. I recommend guidelines. So let's think a little more flexibly. This could change week-to-week, month-to-month. It can adjust. It's living and breathing. But what are the parameters, those safety parameters, those guiding principles that guide our work? Teachers do need that. And some schools are hesitating because they don't know where to draw the line, but we need some lines, and you can always adjust them. 

Rich Portelance

So, I want to build a bridge here between, you know, what you're talking about now, and what we're going to be talking about on the podcast with Jeremy and Brett, and you just touched on a component of this, so I think there's a tie-in. Schools are increasingly dependent on, you know, data standards, competencies, digital systems. What makes the difference between technology that creates clarity and technology that creates complexity from your point of view? 

Amber Berry

Hm, I don't know if… I think any change, and we're talking about AI, but the change could be anything. Any change creates complexity, and this is a complex moment. I don't see a clean-cut way through this work. I think this is difficult, messy, and uncomfortable for all of us in some stretch. And ambiguity tolerance is something that we talk about at the Middle States Association quite a bit. Everyone has a different level of tolerance for what it means to not quite know. And we know that we've made mistakes with technology in the past, and believing that we're doing the best for students. But getting evidence now that perhaps that wasn't the right approach to support their learning. So, I don't know that I'm willing to take a stance on, you know, clarity versus complexity. I quite frankly think this is a very complex moment for education. 

Rich Portelance

No, I think that's fair, and you know, we're seeing it organizationally outside of education as well. It's just very complex, and it's messy. So I appreciate your answer, and, you know, it's hard to be definitive right with any one thing. 

How important is it to have a strong underlying framework or system when schools are implementing some of these new initiatives, and what does that framework look like? 

Amber Berry

You know, I obviously lean toward my framework, which I think is quite successful, and like our framework, we apply it to AI, but we also apply it to governance. We apply it to any change. We have ours based on an economic model, Stewart Brand's Pace Layer model, which we've adapted to education. So we feel with our company's frame again, being accredited, how do you make changes over time to sustain a community and to achieve longevity? We guide schools with this bottom layer that changes very slowly. That's your mission, vision, values. We call it the cultural identity. In any society, culture changes very slowly. So, start there, and once you've oriented your community, now you're moving up a layer to governance. Then you're moving up a layer to infrastructure, to program, and to practices. 

And if you think of practices like, as classroom teachers formerly, Rich, you know I taught French, and in the middle of a class period, I could look around the room and say, “I need to make an adjustment”. That practice can change in real time, any time, but my school's culture changes, I mean, it could take years to shift culture, actually, and substantially. Maybe I'm almost going to accelerate some cultural shifts, but generally speaking, you're not changing your mission statement, sometimes ever, or maybe every 10, 20 years, and so, when you're going about change starting at that cultural level, and then getting to practices, which is not this AI moment. There are a million edtech tools to hit on your classroom practices, but we're forgetting things like where the policy is and where the responsibility is across the organization. 

So, our point of view is that your structure should be bottom to top. Now, Pandora's box is open, and obviously, practices are already in motion. So, it's not like schools can go back to the starting line, but it's never too late to orient down there and say, "Where are our current practices aligned, and where do we maybe need to shift now?" 

Rich Portelance

Okay. All right. That's very helpful. And if schools want to become more agile and future-ready, what foundational capabilities should they prioritize first?

Amber Berry

I mean, is this maybe a chicken-and-egg situation? Again, I think that in some ways, schools already have some policies, already have some teachers doing practices, already have students embedded in practices. So, I don't know if there's a perfect order, but I would say bringing your community on board for what, like, coming back to center, would look like. It doesn't mean we're going to stop all of our practices. It doesn't mean all of our policies change, but like to get them on board with, you know, why did we start this in be to begin with? Why are we in this space? What is our commitment and our promise to our students and their families? No one's going to say no to that, but it is maybe a little bit slower work to reorient and then to go back to the practices that you are kind of already doing. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. 

And you know, I do want to look ahead a little bit with you and ask some questions about the future, but is there anything else, you know, today, you're talking to an administrator at any school, what's the one thing you're telling them today that they can do to prepare better to help their students and their faculty along this paradigm, because it's shifting no matter what, right? 

Amber Berry

I would say a couple of things. One is like, get started. If you're feeling a little analysis paralysis and you've been hesitating because you're waiting for your state, your county, your peer school, someone to make the first move, don't wait. And any progress is positive progress. Even just starting conversations is positive progress. The other thing I might say to a school leader right now is that, unfortunately, I feel like AI kind of opens the door. It's like there's so much incoming, and it can be a little bit hard to know, like, where do I pay attention? How do I filter out noise? And so look for those reliable spaces that, you know, exist for you. 

I mean obviously I have a point of view for middle states that, you know, we do curate and have a newsletter that we think is really helpful for a school leader, but go to this, like, most organizations have some sort of AI thread right now, and I would recommend trying the best you can to keep up with some of the headlines because it's moving very, very quickly and as we pivot to think about future, you know, agentic AI is going to disrupt things much more than they currently are, and so I just think it's really important. 

You made a comment earlier, maybe we think students or administrators are the most “in-the-know”, and teachers might be the most behind. I've met a number of folks who are leading schools that are like relying on their teams, and they're like, I'm just trying to manage these other things and I'm just getting going myself. And so I do think at the top, that the administrative team needs to get AI literate and fluent yourself. I know you're not student-facing in the classroom. Those aren't maybe even the skills you need to have mastered, but I would definitely prioritize that, too. 

Rich Portelance

All right, that's fantastic, and I think it's sound advice, you know, as people are going forward with all these changes, and I agree that agentic AI is going to further disrupt what we're doing in a massive way. We're seeing it now in a lot of other spaces. So, it's what's coming.

Amber Berry

Yes.

Rich Portelance

What trends are you watching most closely in education over the next three to five years? Is there… obviously AI, but you know, and agentic AI, but is there any other trend kind of in that space that you're saying you know keep an eye on this? 

Amber Berry

I'm really keeping an eye out for higher ed, and I don't want to be disparaging in any way, but I had an expectation a few years ago that higher ed would be farther along in some respects and leading the way. And I see incredible strides, especially in this past year. But again, I saw a lot of hesitancy, and a lot of a lack of cohesion that students that I've interacted with and schools that I have interacted with are talking about professor-to-professor in the same department have dramatically different rules than those in school handbooks. Even in the 2025/2026 school year, it'll say that you cannot use AI as a tutor. I'm like, isn't that an equity conversation? I'm confused how that can be a conclusion of a higher ed institution dealing with adults, right? Like, these are adults who should be able to use any resource available. So, in an ethical way, I'm really curious how higher ed is going to be forced to pivot. I'm curious about the model of like four years to specialize in a major. Like, what is that really going to look like? You said three to five, I'm thinking 10, 20 years out, does higher ed look the same? And I really question that it could possibly look the same as it does right now for future jobs, for future readiness, for the employee of the future. 

You know, I greatly appreciate my background. I was a French and Italian major, I did education training, I did African-American studies as a minor, and I have two master's degrees. I would gladly go back for my doctorate now, but I don't know that the next generation of students is going to have the same choices that I've had or even if it would be wise of them to do the same pathway that I had. So, I just have a lot of questions that I think might be kind of resting in future jobs and higher ed's preparation for the future for adults. I have a lot of curiosities there. 

Rich Portelance

I would agree with you. I think that it's such a changing landscape, and, you know, I hosted a panel a couple of weeks back on the future of work, and we were talking about durable skills, how those are impacting, and how important they are for the future of work because we really can't define what that future is. 

So, you know, how do we bring that back into the schools? We had workforce, educators, and ed tech providers on that panel, and you would have been fantastic. It would have been nice to have you in that conversation, but you know, I think we made great strides in kind of exposing some of that conversation, and, you know, likewise, college needs to ask these questions. How do we play into that space so we can best prepare these students for jobs that are very hard to define and sometimes impossible, right? 

Amber Berry

Yes. And I will say that what I think I hear the most at this level is that content area specialists across industries are still going to be necessary, because we have to sift through AI garbage and AI noise as I call it. But I wonder, like, at scale, how many do we even need in the future? You know, I wonder what the counterbalance is. I'm not an expert in this conversation but I'm really curious. 

Rich Portelance

Well, it's I think an ongoing conversation that we can have, and something that we can watch with great interest to see what happens, right? 

What gives you the most optimism about the future of schools? So, again, we're looking ahead. What are you optimistic about? 

Amber Berry

I'm going to go back to something I said a few minutes ago about when you frame the conversation around, like, what do we want for our kids, everyone is excited to talk about the mission realized in these young people. 

So, I'm excited for schools that orient around their mission, and what they owe these students for preparation for the future, for them to get wise, and think about what that looks like, realized in their buildings, and ideally, over time, a little cohesion. You know, what does it look like in our state? What does it look like in our country? What does it look like in our world? I wish this were more of a cohesive global conversation and not so individual still. And certainly, I will say that I point to overseas, there are some great models of much better cohesion with federal standards or regional standards that are really helping support schools. So I hope that becomes more pervasive in a good way. 

But I guess my optimism comes from really thoughtful, caring adults are part of education and always have been. Those are the folks who just bleed for students and are really excited about supporting them, who are still in schools. So, I have a lot of hope that even if there are some mistakes made along the way, what does this exactly look like? I think some schools are going to look back in a few years and say we went too slow, and I think others are going to say we went way too all-in. Certainly, but ultimately, I hope that students don't pay the cost of any of our errors, and you know, to some extent, of course, they will, and no one's perfect, but yeah, we all collectively care for children and always have, and that's just a societal norm. So, I have confidence that we're going to do right by our kids. 

Rich Portelance

Well, I hope so. And I would agree that that is a societal norm that we want to see continue to flourish. 

What is one thing educational leaders should stop doing right now? 

Amber Berry

Ohhh. I'm not saying that they're all doing it, but if you are not in motion, if this is not a top priority, it should be. This is a top priority. 

Rich Portelance

Okay. And start doing? 

Amber Berry

Yes. If you're not, goodness gracious, start somewhere. 

Rich Portelance

All right. Get going. 

So, let's talk about the upcoming webinar. If, you know, in your mind, if attendees take away one idea, what do you hope it is? What are we going to get out of that conversation?

Amber Berry

I hope attendees don't just get one thing out of it, you know? I hope they get different perspectives. I genuinely feel like there is not yet one way because, if there were one way and it was perfect, then someone would be the headliner all the time right now, and you know, getting all the money and the accolades and retiring tomorrow. 

So really, I think it's about sifting through the perspectives that are offered in this conversation, and I hope that moves any audience member to a conclusion of, “You know, I was thinking that, and that is an alignment that does make sense for my community”, and is able to take steps forward because of that conversation. So I guess the one thing I hope that folks get is inspiration towards some sort of action. We all have a sphere of influence, so I'm not assuming that every audience member is going to be the head of school or like that ultimate decision maker, but everyone has some agency, so doing something. 

Rich Portelance

So, Amber Berry, I thank you for this conversation because it was very enlightening, and I'm looking forward to our webinar coming up. 

I want to kind of conclude the conversation today with a thought because you have spoken about things like a “Portrait of a Graduate”, framing up, what does the school of tomorrow look like today, building mission statements, doing really important work at a foundational level within our schools. So, I appreciate that, and I want to get a picture of what you believe a future-ready school looks like, and you know, and then I think we understand a little bit about the work to get there. But give us that picture so everybody has that in mind, and then you know how we're going to progress towards that. 

Amber Berry

I love this. Oh my goodness. I see the future-ready school as like I guess as one that is modeled after continuous improvement as an ethos, modeled after a desire and a heart for wise change. And you know that is what my company wants for everyone. Like, what does it mean? No school, no experience of a student going through education should be static. So what does the dynamic community look like? And that future-ready school is ready for AI, but they're also ready to tackle the many other major forces at play in schools. Mental health and other things in teacher attrition, all of these waves that school leaders are having to manage, and many of them are happening at the same time. That future-ready school is able to handle any of them because of thoughtful approaches, because they are flexible in their thinking, because they're accustomed to adjusting, and creative in that solution and that source finding to find their way.

Rich Portelance

Wow, that's really powerful. The concept of being future-ready is being able to accept and navigate change effectively, efficiently, and keep growing.  

Closing Thoughts

Rich Portelance

Thank you. Amber Berry, is there anything that I've forgotten to ask or anything that you would like to conclude with? I'll let you have the last word here on the podcast. 

Amber Berry

Not at all. I am really looking forward to June 16th. I'm looking forward to meeting Jeremy and Brett and continuing this conversation. I appreciate the invitation to be here. 

Rich Portelance

Awesome. Thank you so much for today. I appreciate it, and I appreciate you