Rachael Maves: Hello, everyone, you are listening to the Rachael Maves podcast and I'm Rachael Maves, your host. Today we are talking to Dr. Liz Norton. Liz is the president and founder of incessantly relentless leadership, not to be confused with IRL in real life, where she empowers education leaders to make bold, audacious moves that transform schools. She is the driving force behind the AI Education Summit.

A first of its kind gathering for Tennessee superintendents, CAOs and CIOs, district leaders and principals focused on responsible and strategic AI adoption in schools. A former state and district leader, Liz brings experience from the Tennessee Department of Education where she spearheaded statewide literacy initiatives, championed high quality instructional materials, and led initiative school models work and from Knox County Schools.

where she served as a literacy coach and district leader. Liz, I am super excited to have you join the podcast today.

Dr. Liz Norton: So happy to be here.

Rachael Maves: And I love that we are matchy-matchy in our fall red colors. We are vibing and channeling the cool weather to Tennessee, please. Well, I'm excited to jump in. You and I have known each other from working at the department and then in this season of Life After. But I don't know if I've actually ever heard your story about

Dr. Liz Norton: I know. Cozy today.

Dr. Liz Norton: Yes, bring it on.

Dr. Liz Norton: Mm-hmm.

Rachael Maves: how you ended up in education. So tell me a little bit about that. What drove you to choose a career in this crazy world that we're

Dr. Liz Norton: Yeah, so I actually landed in education, I think almost by default. And I think this has become kind of a part of my story because it's about, it resonates with the importance of career awareness and helping kids be able to navigate and understand all the different possibilities that are out there. Because I became a teacher because the only women I knew who were successful and out in the workforce were doing one of two things.

they were teaching or they were in healthcare. And so I didn't have exposure in my family or in the families that were around us to any women doing anything else other than secretarial work, right? My grandmother was the secretary. But I knew I did not wanna do healthcare. So I thought, well, I will be a teacher.

Rachael Maves: interesting.

Rachael Maves: Hahaha!

Rachael Maves: Mm.

Dr. Liz Norton: I grew up in poverty. We were very poor. My grandfather once came over for dinner and he was like, it's not tuna casserole, like, how is it? And it was. And yes, it was. And so I wanted to find a way out of that. And so I knew I needed to go to school. I knew I needed to go to college. And teaching felt like it could be a path out of that.

Rachael Maves: And yes, yes it is.

Dr. Liz Norton: that could give me something different and something different that I could do as an adult than what I had lived in as a kid. And so that's the path I ended up going down, which has now taken lots of twists and turns because I didn't stay a teacher for very long.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, so I was going to say, like, elaborate on that a little bit because you started out as a teacher and then I don't know your trajectory until you got to the Department of Education and then now into the work that you're doing. help give us that picture of what that looks like for you.

Dr. Liz Norton: Thank

Dr. Liz Norton: Yeah, so I started as a substitute teacher, just trying to get exposure in the district that I lived in, because I had gone to college away from Knoxville and Cookville, which isn't that far away. But I didn't have like the network of connections to find an immediate teaching job when we moved back. So I started as a sub and then I got a position for a retiring teacher.

Rachael Maves: Mm.

Dr. Liz Norton: in February, the first year after I had graduated. And that role was as a Title I teacher. And so it was doing some push-in into classrooms to support literacy and then some pull-out, like resource type groupings. And so I started there, my very first teaching job, I didn't have my own classroom, I didn't have any materials.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Liz Norton: I didn't even have a desk, so there was this church pew outside of the front office. And that was my spot for lesson planning and lunch. And if Liz was not in your classroom, you could find her on the church pew in the front hallway. And so that early experience though really shaped how I think about teacher support now and how I think about leader support.

Rachael Maves: Gosh, that's wild.

Rachael Maves: Yeah

Dr. Liz Norton: because it's really important that all of the foundational pieces are in place. But also the principle I had was very aware that I didn't have what I needed. And so she was continually checking on me, right? She was saying, hey, I see you, we're gonna get this taken care of. Every time she passed me on that church pew, she would go, working on it. Working on it.

Rachael Maves: Mm.

Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: Until she finally found a place for me, which was in the old locker room in the gymnasium. I did that for maybe two years before reading first became a thing. And we were a school selected for the reading first grant. And so I actually became one of the first people to do the three tiered model of intervention.

For sure in the state of Tennessee, but I think sort of on the national landscape too, that was a new thing. And so I started doing intervention groups. I did our tier two and all of the tier three for the school that I was in and got to be a part of really a huge change in the outcomes we were seeing for kids. Pre-reading first, I think we were at

Rachael Maves: now.

Dr. Liz Norton: 40 some odd percent proficient. And even just in the Dibbles testing we were doing, like it was very apparent kids could not read, right? They couldn't pull the words off of the page. And we were able to turn that in a three year span. I think we were at 89 % proficiency. And just the, when we started Dibbles testing, we were like,

Rachael Maves: Wow.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: I love it.

Dr. Liz Norton: there's no way kids are gonna be able to read these passages. Like they must be really just way too hard because the kids struggled with them so much until at the end we were like, they were zooming through all these passages. And it was just so very clear that we had made a difference, right? That we had done something that was impactful, that you can change student achievement when you're focused, when you have a plan, when you execute that

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: plan in really rigorous ways. And so that experience really became the foundation for how I think about change management, how I think about strategies and implementation. But it was also a big driver for me of this is not my seat. Right. I can do something more than the seat that I'm in.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: And so I transitioned into a coaching role working with teachers. My first big move was I wanted to reduce the number of kids who ended up in the intervention classes. And I felt like the way to do that was to support teachers better with their pedagogy in tier one. And so I moved into an instructional coaching role. I then was fortunate to move into

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, tier one, yes, that's right.

Dr. Liz Norton: a similar role as a master teacher under an IET's TAP program, which layered on then structures for, mentor teacher roles, really sort of a teacher leadership pipeline, right? which included leadership at the district level. And so I ended up in that district level role where I was able to coach leadership teams. So I coached principals and master teachers and mentor teachers.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Liz Norton: in how to support their teachers with strong pedagogy through the lens of the team evaluation rubric and how we could support teachers both through professional development in their PLC time, but also through the lens of really high quality feedback with the rubric. And then from there I landed at the DOE.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Well, I mean, you're really rich background in literacy and early literacy. mean, now I'm connecting dots of the work that you were holding in Tennessee and that you led there. This is pretty good, Liz, yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: Yeah. No, it's been a fun journey. really, I enjoy thinking about from that early experience at a school to the experiences that I had at the DOE. How do we do that same level of change at scale? And what do people need to be able to manage a change at the school level? But how do we get that at all the schools?

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that's right.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: So that's always been sort of my perspective on it.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, yeah, that's where our affinity for state work also comes in, think is what could be what can be. So I mean, that's a perfect segue. I'd love to hear your thoughts now as you think about our current educational context, some of the things that we see with districts and the things that they're grappling with right now. What are the one or two things that really keep you up at night?

Dr. Liz Norton: I know.

Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: Yeah, I think one for me is always literacy. Like my heart is always gonna be in helping kids learn to read. It's where I started and it's definitely like a big part of all the work that I do. I think for that too, there are so many potential solutions right now to how we can solve the literacy problem. And I think it just, it's gonna require sustained effort.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: Right? So when I think, again, thinking back to that early experience in turning around a school, it's the focus, it's the dedication to the structures and the processes. It's the continuous monitoring of that work. That's so important to sustain it long enough that you see outcomes. So that's one, literacy keeps me up at night. Math keeps me up at night.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: For math too, it's not just are we getting kids the foundations they need in their early math experiences. It's are we building their perspectives of themselves as math people, right? That they can do math and math is a part of just being a person and you're not a math person or not a math person. And so how do we help that math self-identity?

And then how do we reimagine the math pathways as we move into secondary? Particularly, and I think this is true with how workforce will likely change with AI, but given that there are multiple ways that you will be applying math dependent upon the career that you want to go into.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that's right.

Dr. Liz Norton: And so I think there's an opportunity to reimagine what our math pathways look like so that they better support career preparation in a more meaningful way versus our traditional Algebra 1, Algebra 2 geometry.

Rachael Maves: Yes.

Rachael Maves: Yes. Yeah.

So I need to go off on a tangent a little bit on that one because the math pathways make me crazy. And I really do feel like for anyone who's not an educator listening to this, I know this is getting a little bit in the weeds on the Ed side, but right now the pinnacle of math is considered calculus. And that is like, if you have reached this, then you have accomplished what you need to in K-12 math at its very best.

And then that's what universities are looking for too. But then when you think about one practical application and the professions that actually need some of those skill sets and knowledge, there are other things that are just as important as that. And I would argue like statistics, if everyone had a really strong grounded understanding of statistics, we might be having different conversations as a nation.

Dr. Liz Norton: Mm.

Dr. Liz Norton: Yep.

Statistics? Yeah.

Rachael Maves: I mean, maybe that's just me, but I do feel like at some point there does have to be this discussion of how do we shift that mindset that we've been so rooted in in K-12 and even in higher education that allows for and venerates some of those other math focus areas outside of just calculus.

Dr. Liz Norton: Yup.

Dr. Liz Norton: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think the same is true when we think about like Algebra 1 is the gatekeeper, right? There's so much connection between Algebra 1 and enrolling in post-secondary, persisting through post-secondary. And so why, this is sort of my, I guess, hypothetical theoretical question, but why do we, if all of, if that content is so important,

Rachael Maves: Yes. Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: Why is it only in a single course? Right? And why are we requiring kids to hang their entire future on whether or not they do well in this course? Especially when rates for passing that course are not great. And so clearly having it in the course is not working. So yeah, I think that keeps me up at night because I want kids to do well. I want...

Rachael Maves: Right? Yes. Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: I want education to be the path to something better. And in order for it to be the path to something better, we have to be creating the opportunities that give kids something better. And so I think some re-imagining has to happen in the math space for that to work. And then of course AI is keeping me up at night too. And it's connected to literacy and math.

Rachael Maves: Yes.

Rachael Maves: Yes, that's right.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: right, in that I think there's potential for AI to help us solve some of the unsolvable issues we've been having in making our instruction work in those spaces. But I think there's also a lot of risk to mitigate in just shiny, flashy tools that end up exacerbating what is already a very full supplemental materials market that takes

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yes.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: sometimes instruction away from core high quality material.

Rachael Maves: Yes, yeah. So in those three areas, Liz, and you touched on a couple, but in literacy, math, and then AI, what are one or two ways that you feel like we could start to move forward?

Dr. Liz Norton: Yeah, I think definitely high quality instructional materials. So if you are not already on the HQIM bandwagon, and it's certainly a space where we haven't perfected it, right? I think there's still an opportunity for us to work collaboratively, both at the state level, at the district level, at the products and material level, to think about how we're strengthening.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: continuing to strengthen the materials that exist in the market. Certainly a lot of work has gone into that in the last 10 years and a lot of work has gone into supporting implementation. But I think we're at a critical point in that where either we stay the course or people start to look for the next flashy thing. And so I think particularly with AI coming on the scene, it's important for us to think about how do we stay the course?

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: and think about where we might need to improve quality or improve outcomes within what we're using versus throwing that out and moving something else in. So that's one for sure. And then the other, think, and this is probably true of both how we go about re-imagining math, but also how we think about

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: vetting AI tools and thinking about the tools we want to use is really sort of this, for me it's a comeback because I did it for a while and then moved away from it for a while. So it may not be a comeback for everyone, but really leveraging improvement science as a way to start small, to learn and understand what's working, what's not working.

at the classroom level before we scale things to the school or the district or the state so that we know that we're scaling things that work and we can learn what it takes to scale it successfully. So this idea of start small, really leveraging the PDSA cycle as a way to learn and understand

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: how either a product is working or a new potential set of standards or a new way of thinking about mastery when it comes to math. This idea of start small, I think, is one that's resonating with me right now anyway.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, yeah. I think you had actually commented on this post that I put on LinkedIn a little while ago, because I share some of your same fears around AI, Liz. I do feel like it's the new, really flashy thing. I think that it is an easy thing to go to to feel like, OK, we're doing something, right? And maybe this will work.

But even before we get to the starting small, mean, for me, it's the backing up and saying, getting really clear on what is the problem that you're trying to solve. Yes. Like what, why are, why are you bringing in this tool? What do you think it's going to help with? And then what are the success criteria? Like, how would you know?

Dr. Liz Norton: What is the problem? Yep.

Rachael Maves: that this actually got you the results that you wanted it to. So that as you're in those PDSA cycles, that there's some real clear benchmarking that's happening at versus, okay, we've heard great things about this. Now let's just bring it in and adopt it. And teachers go through, I call it the white binder effect where, you know, they onboard yet another thing, they spend hours getting trained on it. takes away from that tier one instruction that I think is critical. And then everybody uses it for a while, but then

Dr. Liz Norton: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: nothing changes in the results and then people are frustrated and it reinforces to the educators will see like there's nothing that's going to change these results versus getting really clear around the why behind it before you even jump in.

Dr. Liz Norton: Yep, I think that's right. Well, and if you think about improvement science, really the foundation of that is understanding your system and understanding the problems that you're trying to solve, right? So if you haven't taken time to really break down what's working and what's not working from that system level, right? That's sort of the first step and then figuring out what tools or what solutions might be worth going after.

Rachael Maves: as well. Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, that's right. So this is our last question for our time together, was, what question in education are we not asking that we really should be?

Dr. Liz Norton: Yeah, I have a hard time with this one and I think it's because I ask too many questions. But I think one of the things is really, think, it comes back to this improvement science piece and AI. And that is, and maybe we are asking it, but maybe we just need to ask it more, is how am I?

Rachael Maves: Hahaha!

Dr. Liz Norton: going about my own learning when it comes to AI, building my own literacy around it so that I can successfully guide other leaders, teachers, students in their AI literacy paths too. I think in education when we have a new initiative or a new thing that's coming on,

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: As leaders, we tend to think immediately, I need to train other people or I need to get other people trained. And we don't often stop to think about what is the learning I need myself in order to make that training happen. Sometimes we're fortunate enough to have gone through that learning to figure out it's learning we need to give to others.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: But in this AI space, it's just different, right? Everything's coming at us faster than we can keep up with. I heard someone say you're never gonna be caught up on technology ever again. So like, get used to it, I guess. That's been in norms.

Rachael Maves: Hahaha!

I mean, this year is changing so fast right now. I feel like, yeah, it It's hard.

Dr. Liz Norton: So just accept like this isn't like the first iPhone when you can be an early adopter and all of a sudden you're up to speed, right? Being an early adopter in AI does not mean you are up to speed because it's just changing so fast. But I think that's the question that I would be asking is how...

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Yeah, that's great.

Rachael Maves: No, that's right. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: How am I with intentionality in the same way we think about intentionally building out a strategy or intentionally managing change for others when we're leading, is how am I being intentional about my own growth and development, particularly in this AI space?

Rachael Maves: Yeah, well, and one of things I really appreciate about you, Liz, is that when you see like those types of gaps or holes, you're like, I've got an idea. Here I go. And I feel that way about the summit that you're pulling together and putting on. So share just a little bit about the summit, the intention behind it, what you're hoping to achieve, anything else that you would like to just be able to tell people and get the word out there.

Dr. Liz Norton: I'm a filler.

Dr. Liz Norton: Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: Yeah, well, this summit is again, saw, like you said, I saw a gap and I wanted to fill it and it not just a gap for others, but a gap for myself too. Right. And so the summit is really about bringing leaders together so that we can create a peer network of lead learners. Right. I have used this term lead learner a lot throughout my career to sort of set the stage for an expectation that as a leader.

Rachael Maves: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: You have to be constantly leaning into learning, modeling that learning, being transparent about that learning, being vulnerable in that learning, because that's what creates the culture for those who follow you, right? Or those who you are led to lead to be vulnerable to and to lean into their own learning and to be vulnerable in their own learning. And so this was really about creating a space for that to happen.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: a place where folks can come and build awareness around what's possible with AI. I have been in this process continually amazed with, the different products that are available, the different things that AI can do, the different ways that you can use AI products that I've been dabbling with. And all of a sudden there's some new thing they can do or some new thing they have done for a while that I just didn't know about. and so it's really just about.

Rachael Maves: Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: creating that space, bringing together experts and early adopters who've done some learning, who've done some failing that can share it so that we don't make the same mistakes others made and really help us move to whatever's next in our own AI journeys, right? So it's a space to come, to learn, to grow, to network, and to build a community together.

Rachael Maves: Yeah.

Dr. Liz Norton: of folks who are leaning into it, who are trying to learn it, who are trying to figure out how it can apply, what problems can it solve. And that can then connect moving forward to continue to learn and grow together.

Rachael Maves: Yeah, I love it. I'm really excited. Looking forward to it next month. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Liz. It's just good to see you and I, as always, appreciate the conversation.

Dr. Liz Norton: I'm excited too.

Dr. Liz Norton: I love it. Thank you, Rachael.

Rachael Maves: Alright everyone, thank you for your time today. We don't have the normal summit outro, but I will say if you're interested in the Parsec Summit out in Fresno, California, February 4th, you are able to secure your tickets at parsecsummit.com.

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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.