Enjoy the conversation with Dr. Kishimoto and Dr. Minor-Mitchell below.
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The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Dr. Kishimoto
Hello everyone. Welcome to 2025. I am so excited. I’m Dr Christina Kishimoto and I am here for our first edition of the New Year. And how appropriate for me to have a dear friend with me. Dr Brione Minor-Mitchell, a school principal, not just a school principal, but also an outstanding national leader making waves in all the right ways in public education. I am so excited, Brione, to have you with me as a friend, a colleague, a dear person to start off the year in conversation.
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
Thank you, Dr Kishimoto. Thank you so much for having me on your show.
Dr. Kishimoto
So, 2025! New Year’s is always like this big deal for my family and for me, whether there’s a reason for it to be a big deal or not, we make it a big deal. There’s closure for the year before entering into the new year. I’m wondering how you’re feeling coming into 2025?
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
I want to say I’m feeling hopeful for 2025. I’m feeling restful as well. I think this is going to be a big year, not only to reflect on the years prior, but also to reflect on where we’re going in the future. And so, I’m excited about 2025 but also, I think this is a year of just rest and really opening our eyes and just learning so that we can get better.
Dr. Kishimoto
I’m glad you used the word restful and rest within like the first minute of having this conversation. That’s not a highly used word amongst educators, especially when you’re leading schools, leading districts. I’m wondering whether you did something during the holidays that made you feel more restful, or whether you’re just good at this and you know how to center yourself, enjoy and rest?
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
I think since the pandemic, everyone has been through so much, and I think as a collective, of educators, and a collective of women, a collective of people of color, a collective of people who have been through this pandemic, I think the new word out there is rest. It’s restful, it is hopeful. It’s all those things. And I really want to take that seriously and really apply that this year.
Dr. Kishimoto
I love that!
And you know, we in Voice4Equity and the network, and the women leading across the country have a big event coming up. It’s the Tech, Power and Equity conference. In three weeks’ time we’re going to get together as leaders across the country to talk about what’s happening in the world of technology and AI and the opportunities it brings, as well as, how do we get ready for it? How do we leverage it, how do we take advantage of it? And I thought it was appropriate for us to have a conversation today about the work you’re doing. You’re an elementary school principal. You have been leading the work of technology and computer science. You are thinking deeply about AI. I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about how you’re leading in this space.
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
I am a principal at an elementary school that is in the heart of Las Vegas, Nevada. My population is a population in need. We have about 150 kids who are homeless. 100% of our students or families are under the poverty line. So, we are a very high need school, and I’ve worked with wonderful partners that are in the forefront of technology, in community, in computer science and AI.
One of the skills we wanted to empower our students in our community with was AI and computer science, because computer science kind of leads into some of that advanced technology, such as AI. What we’ve been doing is setting up labs so that kids have hands-on experiences with computer science, with technology, and then eventually with AI, so that they are ahead of the game, so they enter middle school and high school ready to go. As you know, as most educators know, in the US, most of our students of color, most of our students who are affected by poverty, most of our students who are marginalized, they do not get those opportunities. So, we want to be one of those schools who provides those opportunities.
Dr. Kishimoto
So that’s interesting because so often we have been caught up in the conversation around developing the early skills that they miss, building in the social constructs and supports that they need. But you have been very intentional in being focused on rigor and opportunities and hands on learning and exposure in a way that is admirable. I love the impact you’re having. I love the mindset you bring. How does mindset play into this in terms of making sure you have the support surrounding you, you have a team around you to lead in this way instead of leading by intervention?
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
That’s a great question, because I have to be honest, we’ve not always had people with that mindset. We’ve had a lot of, well, kids need to learn how to read and write. And that is true. That’s very true, but additionally, kids need to also learn the other skills that other kids are learning at the same time. So, it’s a both for us, it’s not an either orl. In order to get people with that mindset, we had to be intentional in hiring.
I can’t tell you how many times we’ve had people who were gung-ho with working with us, and then they figured out they didn’t have the same mindset as us, and so they had to find other opportunities. And then we had to intentionally hire those who had the same mindset of not only can these kids do this, but they will be doing it, and they will be doing it at this level, not just reading and writing and math, but also with the new skills that the 21st century and beyond kids are learning now.
Dr. Kishimoto
I’ve heard you present before, and you speak to the broader literacy that students need. So, it’s the reading and writing, certainly the literacy and math. But you’ve also talked about the literacy in these computational skills and reasoning and thinking in other ways that brings in technology. Do you feel that that’s the right direction to be taking the community? And how do you find the support to keep moving in this kind of way?
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
That’s another great question. Here’s the deal. Technology is here. People are interested in it, whether it is gaming, talking on the cell phone to cars that are now either led electronically or they don’t even have a driver anymore. We’re in that digital age. And so that is something all communities are affected with.
One thing I didn’t mention is we are a school with a high chronic absenteeism issue, and that’s because students are not interested in school. So, if we wanted to keep our kids interested in school, we had to find things that they were interested in. Technology is one of those things, and through technology how can we try to improve reading and writing, because they’re so interested in the technology world.
So and this year, I have to be honest, we haven’t done as much as we wanted to, because we’ve adopted new curriculum, so we focused on that, and since then, we had a little bit of a drop in our scores, and we’ve also increased in our chronic absenteeism. So, we know that we have to go back focusing on things that kids are more inclined to do, which is our drone program and our AI systems and our computer systems. Students will be sick as a dog and come to school when they are doing those things. That’s how we get them hooked in school and learning, through those things.
So, as they’re coding, they’re learning math skills. As they’re reading how to put this together and how to fly it, they’re actually reading and using instructional skills to do that. It goes together for us. And so that’s how we’ve been able to incorporate both and really have the buy-in from the community and get the kind of the skills up for kids as well.
Dr. Kishimoto
Brione, it’s interesting to hear you talk about bringing those opportunities back in, because you had to take a little bit of a step back in doing the things that kids are interested in, and yet the things you’re mentioning are computer science skills and coding and drones and the engineering behind that. Those are high level, high-capacity skills that require high levels of literacy and math skills and science, critical thinking, computational thinking and so forth. So, bringing that back is interesting. Bringing it back because it brings kids to school. So, kids want to come to school to do the interesting, complicated, high level work. I mean, that’s what I’m hearing from you. As adults, we need to think about how we’re designing for the reality of today, the opportunities of today.
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
Yes, and this is why it goes back to that second question that you asked me about the mindset of adults. I feel like we have two types of educators. We have those with that mindset, and then we have those without that mindset. And it is teaching those without that mindset how to kind of switch theirs, and then it is keeping those with it and enhancing their skills so that they’re able to develop and enhance kid’s skills with all of the technology and AI components within education. So that’s been its own thing, and I almost wish that other companies would also have that in mind as they develop reading and math textbooks and curriculum. But we’ve had to do some of that background work ourselves, just to just to keep up with things.
Dr. Kishimoto
Well, it sounds like you’re not only keeping up with things, but you may be potentially pulling others along, including partners who can be very helpful, but also need to be on this really steep learning curve.
There’s a lot of speculation around how AI is going to impact students. It’s going to impact our learning design. It’s going to impact education and schooling. It sounds like our elementary students are already thinking about this, even if we are a little slower as adults to think about what this means for our work, our design, our leadership.
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
Elementary students think about AI, it’s not on the forefront of their brain, but they’re so used to using it. It’s an everyday thing for them. It has become a learning tool, especially at home. So, if you have a little device and you want to learn how to do something, they’re on that computer, and they’re learning a skill from either AI or from some website. So, is it on the forefront of their brain? No, but it’s the way of learning now. It’s just the way that it’s become a part of life.
And for high school and middle school, it becomes a class, so then it becomes the forefront of their thinking. Because now I have to take this computer science class and pass it, and then it’s really incorporated in high school, it’s a part of some of their curriculum. But for elementary school kids, I think they just become a beast at computer skills.
Dr. Kishimoto
That’s fantastic to hear about the ways in which they’re thinking about it, and the way that you’re thinking about integrating it, bringing it in, leveraging that for the learning design. The reality, though, is that since the Bush administration, and every administration after that, we’ve had high stakes testing at the center and core of our accountability systems. Our accountability systems are not about whether you can apply these complex learning and thinking designs, but it’s really about these exams and these tests that assess different areas of knowledge, what you know. And during that time period, the intent was to try to close the achievement gap, to be accountable for that, right? So, intention certainly was there to do the right thing. But the issue is really that there remains a gap between how students of color are performing as compared to their non-student of color peers, mostly along lines of SES and opportunities. So, we talk about the opportunity gap. We haven’t fixed that through these accountability systems. We’ve made progress in some areas.
Are you concerned as a leader, what this now means to introduce a technology that maybe won’t be as ubiquitous in opportunity, as it is right now to kind of get on and play with chat GPT or Claude, AI or any of those systems, but at the heart of instruction and access to jobs and what happens in college and who has access to that. Are you concerned that the opportunity gap will broaden, or are you hopeful that there are ways in which we can still move the needle on closing the opportunity and achievement gap?
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
That’s a huge question. When I give my presentation at every convention, or every learning opportunity, wherever I am, that is the number one question that educators, superintendents ask. About the opportunity gap. And is it closing? And then I usually hear this from people who are over schools with predominantly black and brown kids, how do we keep them from cheating, or how do we not use AI?
So, I’m going to answer this question in a roundabout way, but hopefully I get to the point. I feel like number one, AI has been out since 1950 and probably even before that. So, people with access had access to some of these wonderful tools and they’ve been using these things to help them do other things and get to other places. Where are the people who are marginalized or did not have access, did not get to use these things, and therefore added to the opportunity gap.
If you don’t have the tools to do the wonderful things Group A is doing, you’re not going to do what group A is doing. You’re going to keep being in Group B. And I do think that it is a way to introduce the great equalizer. It gives more opportunity to those who didn’t have that opportunity. So, I always caution those with this question to not be afraid and not limit because Group A who had this access didn’t limit themselves, they actually improved through this access and improved the AI component itself.
Why are we limiting access for Group B? And that’s always been my delivery. Will kids use it to write papers? They probably will, so maybe we need to teach them not to?
Dr. Kishimoto
Or teach them the writing process through the AI. We have to think differently.
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
That’s exactly it. Even for me, I send about 20 or 30 emails a day to my staff or other people. And when I do that, I want to be very clear in my message, so I run it through chat GPT, probably four and five times. And I’m like, I don’t like the way this sounds, can you make it sound like me? And chat GPT, literally, can make it sound exactly like me with the nuances in my language and my culture. I mean, it sounds exactly like me, and I send it out and oh my gosh, it’s very clear to the reader, and yet it didn’t take away from me.
And I do think kids are able to do the same thing. They are able to write that paper. Or write paragraphs of that paper and ask AI to help them with more clear, concise thoughts. It’s a teaching tool. I can use it as a teaching tool. I think our educators, superintendents, and those who are over districts need to understand that and really help kids use it, because they’re going to use it anyway. And we need to help kids use it in a way that makes their work the same as group A’s work, and so that they can perform in that job market eventually.
Dr. Kishimoto
You mentioned the job market, and the job market is where a lot of the conversation is happening right now. You know, we’re in the world of education, so, we’re thinking about the classroom. We’re thinking about efficiencies and operations of complex systems, but in the job market, broadly, education is such a tiny slice of the conversation in AI. The conversation is about what the workforce will look like and which workers in the workforce will be most impacted. And we know there are some jobs that are at higher risk of being eliminated or being changed. Some of our own parents and families in our most struggling communities may be impacted in outsized ways.
Now that’s not true across every industry. Service industries will continue to still be important and may not be impacted as much, but there are some other areas that will and so as our families get impacted, potentially with changing job markets. And the classroom starts to change as well, in terms of learning design. As the school principal, how are you putting yourself in spaces to think about how to better prepare parents to be part of the conversation about their responsibilities in education, but be better prepared to be there for their kids to have those conversations, knowing that it will also build their skills as parents out in the job world?
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
One of the first things when I met with our partnership, and one of the people I met with was Uly, when I met with our partners, one of the things that we talked about is our changing job market. And parents do understand that, because they’re either in a field where it’s changing for them, or they’re looking for jobs, right? And so, one of the skills is computer literacy. So, they do understand that for themselves. So how we’ve been able to really get them to come along, and I don’t want to say everybody, but for most people to come along, is, if you need this, for you, guess what, your children are going to need it too. They’re going to need it. And this is how we are preparing to teach them.
We have a computer science teacher. We have these things, so this is why we need you to bring them to school every day. Because they get the opportunity of learning the things that you need even to get a job. So that’s kind of been our selling point with our parents.
The other bit that we’ve been talking about, we haven’t gotten it off the ground, but maybe someone else can pioneer it. We want to offer some of those classes to parents, because we are not just supporting your kids. We want to support you too. And that has been a conversation on the table. Just because you may not necessarily hold a degree, but a certificate will probably make you more competitive in the job market, so that you can take care of your family and really help your kids and even help them understand technology in the way that they need to so that they can go to that eighth grade computer science class and be successful after they leave elementary school.
So, these are all the conversations we’ve been having with our families, with our partners, and with our teachers. Now, have we been successful with full implementation? We haven’t, but, it’s a conversation, and it’s on the minds of the people that work at our school.
Dr. Kishimoto
Your critical role as the education leader in your school, and as a part of the education team for the district can’t be stated enough. And yet, it can’t just be the school system you just spoke about, just the impact of these kinds of innovations and changes in technology on families and communities and the future workforce, right? That is so much broader than your mission as part of the Clark County School District and the leadership team there.
And so, I love how you bring in partners constantly. There are also partnerships even from a policy perspective, in terms of how Clark County School District is putting its arms around its scope of responsibility, and whether the system is leading with policy that then you’re working under, or whether it’s leading with innovation, which allows your work at the school level to eventually inform district policy. I’m wondering which approach is happening there.
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
I’m wondering the same. The beauty about this is, I can’t speak for the school district itself, but I will tell you our state superintendent, and all the people that work under her are really looking at this policy and have been in the forefront of trying to get this work into schools. They’ve done a lot of this work in high school and middle school, and yet you don’t really have it in elementary. That’s where those foundational skills are, and probably needs to start there, but they’re thinking about it. It has been a conversation. The state has really been at the forefront of, hey, we kind of need it in all places and spaces to get our workforce ready, to get our students ready. And so, with that said, I do feel like policy is coming first versus innovation. And I think both need to be at the forefront. I think there needs to be innovation and policy at the same time.
Dr. Kishimoto
I appreciate your response to that question, because it’s a response that’s pretty common across the nation right now. Why? Because, unlike some other policy areas, where it was really obvious that the policy should come first or the innovation should come first, this is an area that is really tricky because the access to things like chat GPT and Claude AI and some of those LLM’s, and those opportunities have overnight became available broadly without a lot of understanding of what is this. What does it do? How can I use it? What are the opportunities? How do I keep myself safe from it? We had more questions and need for understanding about what it is?
And so, it’s a back and forth in each state. And you have these various levels, you have school level, you have district level, you have state level, and then you have legislators as well, trying to figure out, do we lead with policy? Do we have policy lag and lead with innovation? And it’s a tough thing, because we know that AI is changing. Our understanding of it in the marketplace is changing every day. And education doesn’t shift that quickly to be able to keep up with daily change. And so, it is a difficult space to be in.
How do you keep yourself informed? What are the spaces you go into, and who do you interact with so that you are best informed to best serve your students?
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
My space has really been with a lot of my partners. I think partners have been so key for me. There are some educators who may not teach it to their kids, but they are using this space like never before. I have some teachers who are able to use AI technology, almost like they work for Microsoft, like you almost want to fire the top and put teachers in there, like there are some people who are using this space so fluently, and it is just mind boggling.
Just watching them, using it myself, and just being around people who this is what they do, and they own this space has really helped me not only be on the forefront, but also put me in spaces that help me learn and be on the forefront as well, because someone always knows someone, right? We’re six degrees away from Kevin Bacon, so somebody knows someone, and you get invited to places and spaces. And they’re like, check this out. You know, do you have a struggling reader? Hey, we have a whole thing that helps struggling readers, and it is a whole application. And you’re like, oh my gosh, and it’s AI based. It’s always learning from the student to really help the student. And it changes, because that to me is the AI component that’s able to adapt to the learner and help that learner go to that next level.
I would have never known that without being in a particular space and place at a particular time with a particular friend who was using this to its fullest. So, it’s about your connections, number one, and it’s about going places like a technology conference. You might learn a lot from the technology conference, but you will also connect with people who are in that work. And that’s where the real learning comes, is that connection. So, it’s really the community.
Dr. Kishimoto
I mean, that was powerfully said, you can’t lead in isolation. I mean, the best work happens through these networks, through these partnerships. I have to make sure I pull out a statement you made about some of your teachers who are engaging with AI in ways that are surprising to you, and you’re learning so much from them. I think there’s this opportunity for teachers to re-engage with the field of education and be excited about it again in some different ways.
And we know we need to keep innovating and growing our field of education and teaching to make sure that we don’t have the vacancies that we have right now in the field, and the questions about where the field is going, there’s a lot coming into play here. And as I hear you talk about these opportunities, I just get excited about them, as opposed to fearing what we need to be careful with and still fix and make sure we have safety measures in place, but that the opportunity for innovation is just tremendous. And I’m wondering if you would close this out today with some advice to your peer leaders around those opportunities, and how you’re thinking about it.
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
So, number one, some of our teachers, especially our new teachers, our new educators, that are coming into the field of education, just like our students, growing up with technology. We’ve kind of grown up in the field of education. We grew up with computers. They grew up with computers, and now I think AI and computer technology has gone to the next level, and they’re not afraid of using it. And so, to embrace that, instead of shy away. To embrace that, to me, is the only way to go, especially if you’re leading a school. If you’re a principal, or you are higher level than a principal, leading schools, leading districts, we have to learn to embrace what people are already using, which is technology, and especially AI, they’re already using it. They’re already writing lesson plans with it. They’re already sending emails that go through chat GPT, like I do, they’re already embedding that in their work. So why not get in front of it? Why not embed that into the work that we already do? Because like you said earlier, it makes the job easier, it makes you more efficient and more effective, and it takes education to the next level. So why not be in the forefront of this in your district or in your schools?
Dr. Kishimoto
Well, I am older than you, and we won’t say how much older, I can say that my days of no computers, to desktop computers, or word processing systems that just blew our mind in terms of being able to type on a word processor rather than use correction tape on a typewriter. That’s embarrassing to say, but yes, that’s the generation I’m in, to where I am now, interacting with, partnering with multiple generations experiencing this AI impact and this AI generation now that we’re in.
It’s mind blowing, to say the least. But, like you said, the teachers coming in now, the kids coming in now, are all coming in from a computing and gaming generation. And I think the opportunities for innovation are here, front and center. And I’m excited that leaders like you are leading schools through this time period.
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
Yes, thank you for that. And I am.
And I just wanted to add one more thing, I’ve had conversations with curriculum companies, and they are even thinking about, how do we change? And yes, they have things on the computer. Yes, you can read, but it’s still not interactive enough. It’s not catching up with what’s going on in the technology world. And they’re thinking, how can we change the way we actually write curriculum so that it catches up with the technology world? So the question is out there, how do we all embrace it?
Dr. Kishimoto
Well, Dr. Brione Minor-Mitchell, I am so excited that you are representing this whole generation of thought leaders leading in schools and districts today. I’m glad we had this conversation. I invite folks to come and be part of our conference and hear you present along with amazing women who are leading across our nation. And I thank you for what you do for our nation’s students and young people every single day.
Dr. Minor-Mitchell
Thank you.
