Rachael Maves: Hi everyone, you are listening to the Rachael Maves podcast and I'm Rachael Maves, your host. Today I am speaking with Stacey Cool, program administrator for curriculum and instruction at Merced Union High School District. Stacey has served at Merced Union High School District since 2005, beginning her career as a science teacher before advancing to her current role as program administrator overseeing math, science, data, testing, and various special programs. Her passion for education is matched by her love of travel, which I can't wait to hear a little bit more about this, Stacey. Having visited approximately 30 countries, including two year, a two-year service as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa, Stacey brings a global perspective to her work, with a deep commitment to learning and educational. Equity.

Thank you for joining me today, Stacey.

Stacey Cool: Thanks, Rachael. I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Rachael Maves: So, I can't wait, just knowing your background and all the traveling that you've done and the service, to hear why you chose the, a focus and a career in education.

Stacey Cool: You know, it's, it's funny. I've been listening to your podcast and I've noticed a common theme. As a lot of us said, this wasn't our plan. And for me, this was not my plan. I never planned to be an educator. I was.

I think one of the first times it kind of stood out to me was I was in undergrad in college and in a quantitative analysis chemistry class and presenting some lab things, and I had my note cards and my 3x5 cards and at one point I just chucked the cards and started talking and my professor, who I respected very much, was just like you know, you really should consider teaching. And I'm like nah, you know. And then a couple of other folks along the way. And when I graduated, I actually went into private industry as a paint. Formulator. And I was, you know, working for Union Carbide, who became Dell Chemical and you know, in my mid20s, and was just kind of like, do I really want my big contribution to the world to be a better wall paint?

Yeah. And I ended up researching grad school in Peace Corps, which it had always been a dream of mine. And I ended up joining the Peace Corps, but I quit my job early and did some traveling. And it was funny. I remember I was in Honduras. The power had gone out.

I was writing in a journal and trying to figure out what to do with my. Life. And I'm like, you know, maybe I should look into education. And so it was just this defining moment that I actually memorialized in my journal and that I hadn't started my Peace Corps service yet. And so I served for two years in the Gambia, West Africa. And I just, you know, that just stuck with me.

And when I completed my service and was ready to kind of get back in the swing of things here in the US, I went into the field of education and started as a science teacher, a chemistry teacher in high school.

Rachael Maves: So tell me a little bit about. That. I was a former high school teacher, too. And I have found that people either love high schoolers, or they go to the primary grades, or they go to middle school, but there aren't very many that can cross over and do, you know, multiple pieces. So, what drew you to the high school group?

Stacey Cool: So, so it's funny. I just never really was, like kind of this maternal sort of person. I didn't babysit as a kid. I've been paying taxes since I was 15 years old. I just worked. The few times I babysat, it was like, "Hi, you know,.

What do I do?"? Yeah. And I mean, I had a younger brother that I helped took care of, but it was my younger brother. And so, when I said I wanted to go into education, everybody was like, "Are, you don't do kids?" And I'm like, "H, it's teenagers. They're different.". And yeah, it really was.

I mean, part of what drew me to was I was bored in my job. I knew I never wanted to be a researcher, that the repetitiveness of that's required for research didn't suit me. I always needed something kind of new and engaging, and teaching brought. That. And I'm like, well, teenagers, they're just, they're just young adults. And that's how I treated them.

And that was the relationships I built with them, because that's a lot of the feedback I'd get from my students. Was it just like you just tell us how it is and you treat us like people? And you know, which was kind of how my parents, Yeah. Treated us as we were growing up and everything. And I just really loved the sophomore junior years. Those were my favorite ages to teach.

They were just in this amazing developmental stage of just becoming less like children and more you were starting to see the adults they were growing into, and it was my favorite. Time. It's a huge maturity shift at those two years.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I loved those ages. My daughter, it's so funny because I, you know, taught high school and it was ninth and tth graders and then had three daughters, and one of them last year she was a sophomore and I remember saying to her something like she was just talking about the year and the weight of it and you know the blah. And I said, "Yeah, you know, it's kind of called the sophomore slump." And I was sharing a little bit about her and you know, in her mind I'm.

Mom. I don't know anything about anything else. Like, how do you know about this? It's like I used to teen sweetie. It's a thing. But it's.

There is something about that age where they're still curious and excited and navigating their own self of who they're growing into and getting to interact with them. I just feel like it's such a privilege. It really is. Yes.

Stacey Cool: You know, talking, hearing your story, I said a friend of mine, she would call me the teenage whisperer. She'd sometimes call me, you know, with about one of her children. She's like, "What do you do?". Cuz you know, at that point, what I'd seen: a thousand 2,000. Teens. And I'm just like, but you know, it was just really interesting, too, just how much of a better person it made me.

Having all those interactions with the different people and personalities.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. So traveling to 30 different countries and then being in education and just having I loved your bio at the beginning. This really, I mean truly a global perspective. How did that shape what you were bringing into the classroom and the way that you were interacting with the kids or teaching lessons, or just that world view in your practice?

Stacey Cool: You know, I grew up in Southern California, outside of Los Angeles, about 45 minutes outside of LA. And when I first returned, back from my Peace Corps service, that's where I taught was inside Los Angeles, a small prep school that served again a disenfranchised student population. And it's just so. I'd seen a few things before I left the country and then more afterwards, and it just gave me a lot of perspective and it helps grow your world view and your. You know, not just appreciating what you have, but just seeing there's other ways to be successful out there in the world and in life. And so it just kind of helps keep me grounded.

I mean, sometimes we all have to regground ourselves. But yeah, just seeing how other places do things and I wasn't, you know, a lot of that was just personal travel, but you know, you talk to people along the way, all their different systems, and it just teaches you to respect a lot of different people and a lot of different cultures and that serves us really well in. California.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Yeah. Well, in creating that culture too, for students in the classroom or for the district that you're working at, you know, of there's such value in the diversity of perspectives and lenses and experiences that we all bring into that space.

Stacey Cool: For sure. Absolutely. In fact, you know, when I hired in here in 2005, I was interviewing with the assistant superintendent, you know, and we'd kind of finished the formal interview part and we're doing the chatting and everything, and she's like, I want to offer you a job, but you're not going to take it. And I'm like, well, yeah, you know, I'm not going to move 300 miles based on 20. Minutes. No.

And there was another school district nearby that was courting me as well, because at this point I'm still living in Los Angeles, not in the central valley. And she's just like, "Yeah, that other district, you're going to be bored.". You know, cuz it was just a little more homogenized student population. She's like, "You want the challenge of here, you know?"?

Rachael Maves: And well, she had your number, huh?

Stacey Cool: Yeah. I mean, that was 2005 and here I sit. So, and I mean, like I said, I wanted I need to be kind of, have that stimulation, and it is never boring. Anytime I find myself kind of getting bored, or I'm in a rut, you know, I change roles, you know, or I take on a new project. One of them was Parsec.

Rachael Maves: So, as you think about education and the current landscape, Stacey, and coming off of a pandemic and still dealing with the aftermath of that and then everything that we're kind of sorting through right now, what really keeps you up at night as you think about education?

Stacey Cool: Well, you know, the pandemic brought a lot of things to light that many of us had been saying, you know, who are trying to keep that equity lens. It's just like, yeah, we knew this and the pandemic made it worse and then we got excited there for half a minute of the opportunity to blow up the system and we didn't, you know. I think really kind of what keeps me up at night is just it's honestly, it's it's literacy. It's we're going backwards. I feel, around literacy, not just reading, but mathematic and scientific literacy. I mean, that's, that's my background.

So, I'm very passionate about. That. But, that concerns me. In fact, that's why I got into science was I was a real big reader when I was a kid and I was, I loved math and was strong at it. And to me, science blended the two and I'm like, you need all these pieces.

Rachael Maves: That's interesting.

Stacey Cool: Yeah. Yeah. And so just. This. Yeah. Really, it's just this right now.

The last few years, mathematical literacy, because that's something I've just been focusing on a lot in my district, but I'm about to shine the light on our science. Yeah. Yeah. That's what keeps me up at night, which always goes back to reading. So it's like literacy in general, but these subsets are my specialty.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Well, and I think that you're so right. I remember being, when I was at the Department of Education at California during the pandemic, talking about how the pandemic has highlighted the things that were cracks, that are now chasms and what do we need? Like it's not that they it suddenly. Existed. It's always existed, but now it's even greater than it was before, and what are we doing to navigate that?

You're the first person that I've heard talk about literacy from the mathematics standpoint or the science standpoint, and I'd love to hear, like just a little bit more Stacey around as you're thinking about how to address that in your district, like what are some ways that you guys are, things that you've put into place or ways that you're starting to build that capacity and skill set within students.

Stacey Cool: Well, you know, I think we have there's great foundations on paper from the state, you know, around the mathematical practices and MGSS science. Yeah. But they're very complex and they're they're very challenging to I, many of our current teachers, myself included, we were not taught that way. Yeah. And so I mean people have been in education a long time know, at least at the beginning you start out teaching the way you were taught. Yes.

And that really doesn't lend itself to this multi-dimensional. Understanding of these concepts. No longer can we be satisfied with just computation and knowing. The mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. You know we have computers for that. So it's really that application and creative thought is the hardest thing to teach.

Yeah. And the most valuable thing that we have that we need to go for. That's something that we can't replicate with computers and won't anytime soon. So, you know, in our district, I've been working with our math teachers now for a couple of years and we're starting to. We've been doing some work about a lot of people have been using the building thinking framework and everything. And that's something we've been working on too, trying to get our high school teachers using more manipulatives.

That's not typically a high school thing, or. So working in that regard, the science work that I'm just on the background of doing now, my district's been wanting to do, we've been moving back towards local assessments, you know, sometimes called benchmarks. And one of the things I want to do with our science teachers, and I hope none of them see this and get freaked out,. I'd really like to do a signature lab. I mean, I'm starting to date myself here. The Golden State exam had that hands-on lab component, but instead of just giving a multiplechoice test, I would.

I love all of our bio teachers across the district. We got 11,000 high school students across three cities. We all have a two signature labs we do a year. I don't care when you do it. Yeah. But you're going to do it because that's one of the things I've seen happen with the pandemic.

Lab's challenging to do as a teacher, particularly with growing class sizes. So, you know, you got 40 kids in a chemistry lab and it's chaos. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I learned I had a split labs. We had an A team and a B team.

Only half the kids in the lab ever at a time. And, and that's its own challenge, but it helped a lot. Well, with the pandemic and the way we slow rolled back into school, you know, we're having school, but social distancing lab went out. Yeah. And it hasn't come back. In a lot.

PhET is an amazing tool. The PhET simulations, I've used them myself, you know, but a lot of people now rely on these digital labs which have a time and a place. Yeah. But it shouldn't be the entirety of the experience. I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday about this, who's also a science teacher, and she's just like, "I got into science cuz I like doing things.". Yeah.

And our kids aren't doing things, you know? So, I want our kids doing things in that. Yeah.

Rachael Maves: I love that. I wish that was a. I think most educators are at the heart of that too and are just trying to figure out how do we navigate that in the midst of all the time and inc. Like you said, increased class sizes and lots of pressure and but yeah, it's so. Important. So you, Oh, go ahead.

Stacey Cool: Oh, I was just going to say: and how many teachers have we hired who are still in those first stages of the career and never had that prepandemic experience?

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's very true. So what are two ways that you feel like we could move forward? As you're thinking about the things that make you anxious and nervous? What and wanting to, you know, shift those things. What are two ways that you feel like we could move forward?

Stacey Cool: You know, it's really part of this is really coming down to a mindset shift, and none of this is. New. This idea that we need to prioritize math and science literacy. I feel like reading literacy gets a lot of attention, and rightfully so, and they're struggling there too, but it can't be. We're going to fix the one and then we'll work on the math, you know, and when you have people who have been in education, you know, 20, 30 plus years and or well, you don't even have to have been in education that long when you're starting to espouse like, you know, well, I'm not a math person, or we just get through the math and I'm like,. Well, you know, it's like I literally hear educators go on about their growth mindset and then, in the absolute next sentence, talk about how they don't like math, and it sucks.

And I just got through it. I'm like, okay, you just yourself. I sometimes will point that out, but you know. So, I mean, I think there's just this. I think everybody understands there's a problem. Yeah.

But, you know, fortunately, I worked with the leadership that's allowing me to try and push the envelope in some of these ways, but it's it's hard when you're constrained by certain systems. But, yeah, recognizing we've got the problem and really, just I think it also comes back to let's, let's look at other countries again. I'm I'm going to bring this back, you know, because a lot of other countries don't have the problem we have around literacy. Yeah.

Rachael Maves: [speaker uncertain] Yeah, that's very true. And there's some I mean best practices out there, not just in, I think, pedagogically, of what we're doing in the classroom, but I think, like that whole through line of teacher preparation, the viewpoint of the profession in general and the steam that educators are held in and the requirements around it. You know, like there's, I think there's just a lot in the way that education has been positioned in general as a field. That's that we could learn from another countries for.

Stacey Cool: Sure. Yeah. And I think you know the other thing too. Maybe a second thing, and this is something my district's trying to transition to is move more towards skills based. So, like I said, getting away from that just doing algorithms and applying routines you know memorization, but just really what skills do we want them to walk away with, like in a bio class, in a math class, in an English class. Yeah.

It. It's. That's the attitude in the CTE world and the career technical education world, but we're not necessarily applying that mindset yet to core curriculum. Yeah. And it's a different way of looking at it. Particularly with high school teachers, they're used to content standards and we're like, "Okay, but what are they going to do with it?".

That's right. We know about the mitochondria. What are you gonna do with it? Why is it important? Why did yell? Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Final question, Stacey, as we wrap up our time together. What question in education are we not asking? Are you not hearing about that? We really should be?

Stacey Cool: I think, you know, are we school based on, you know, what we know is best and what we've learned is best through science and observation and other countries and things, or are we just doing what's convenient? And you know we've mentioned a couple of times today about, you know, blowing up the system. But we can't because of the way society is structured. You know, parents count on school to be de facto child care, you know, so can't necess there's. There's challenges then in restructuring the school day or only having kids come certain time, you know, so it's just like. So, yeah, it's a really big thing to untangle, and that's kind of the thing I'd love to see is if we could just, you know, are we doing what's what's best or what's convenient?

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, it's a that's a good one. Well, thank you, Stacey, so much for your time today. I really appreciated our conversation.

Stacey Cool: Yeah, I enjoyed it. Thank you for having me, Rachael.

Rachael Maves: Everyone, as a friendly reminder, Parsec Education's early bird sale is live. Get 50% off tickets for the 2026 Measure What We Value Summit happening February 4th through 5th in Fresno, California. Don't miss this limited time offer and the opportunity to experience our incredible new MC, no, not me, Brandon Leak, season 15 winner of America's Got. Talent. Secure your tickets now at parsecsummit.com.

---

This transcript was created from the episode's captions and lightly edited for readability. It may contain small errors; please refer to the audio for exact wording.