National Board Certified Teacher Dale Rogers, a self-described technology evangelist, and an early adopter of teacher created video tutorials (before YouTube was “a thing”), has always viewed teaching through the lens of the learner. Join the conversation for some educator insights–from a perspective you may not have previously considered.
My favorite principal, Mr. Ed. Worley (3:05)
Fairly smart until eighth grade (4:00)
Drafting class with applied geometry led to thoughts of being an educator (5:00)
Collaboration with colleagues as a goal, in the service of student learning (5:30)
Leading edge of technology? (7:00)
You need to understand the basics before tech is useful (7:50)
The county’s first 3-D printer, in 2013 (9:30)
STEM, first used as a term in 2001(10:30)
STEM described for students, parents, and others (11:00)
Student competitions – robotics, plus (12:15)
Teaching students and teaching teachers – professional career goal realized (12:30)
Frankel students coming off of a first-place finish in 2019 (14:15)
2020 competition cancelled due to the coronavirus (15:10)
Technology evangelist (15:45)
Moving from the classroom to industry (17:40)
Developing teacher-made video tutorials – years before YouTube (19:15)
Developing video tutorials for employees on the manufacturing plant floor (20:00)
Human Resources becomes yet another role (20:15)
Skills gap resulting from the push for all high school graduates to attend college (23:00)
Creating an initiative to incentivize the pursuit of a manufacturing career (24:00)
The Kalamazoo Promise concept leads to the Tribar Promise (24:45)
Connecting learning institutions and industry for mutual benefit (25:30)
The host puts words in the guest’s mouth – Ha! (26:55)
Society’s view of what teachers do (27:15)
Respect for educators (27:45)
Teachers’ challenged with 30+ students in a class are now tasked with designing work in a new way (29:00)
Technology resources need to be used and we need to support teachers in the transition to new tools and learning formats (30:15)
Stepping up to the plate with technology and generosity, to help during a time of crisis (32:15)
An expected “no” turns into a “yes” and accelerates production (35:30)
Navigating school guidelines and timelines, and intersecting with others to assist medical providers (36:00)
Guest blogger on Education week (37:30)
Inspection vs. quality processes (38:00)
Consider changes to core components of the teacher preparation structures (38:30)
A shout out to some great teachers (39:00)
Acknowledgment matters, greatly (40:30)
Relationships matter more than rules (41:30)
The 40-40-40 concept (42:45)
Getting to know one’s students and allowing one’s students to know you (44:45)
Dale Rogers – LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dale-rogers-nbct/
Dale Rogers – blogpost – the flipped classroom
https://lookatthiscowbell.blogspot.com/2020/05/the-flipped-classroom-its-not-just.html
Dale Rogers – Education Week guest column
TV news spot about the face shields from 3-D printers
The Frankel Jewish Academy
David Reynolds: What matters most in learning? The challenge? The thrill? The benefits? Interacting with other people? Or something else entirely? What is the connection between leading and learning? Does change drive learning or does learning drive change? What's more important? Teaching or learning? Is everyone a leader? A learner? A teacher? Want answers? Listen in as we address these intriguing issues through commentary and with guests who share their thinking and tell us their stories. Lead. Learn. Change.
Dale Rogers: As I entered my sophomore year, I took a drafting class. And all of a sudden, I'm doing all this math and applying it, doing geometry and algebra, and then later on took electronics and applying ohm's law and using trigonometry, and it all clicked for me. And that's part of what made me want to be a teacher. I want to be the teacher that could teach kids how to apply what they're learning in the other classes. One of the things later in my career was, fighting against this notion that everyone should go to college. What I see is, schools and politicians and society looks at test scores. In education, we put so much emphasis on the 40 day stuff, and not the 40 year stuff. Being a teacher is not just being a teacher. And in retrospect, after the experiences I've had, I've always had respect for my fellow colleagues, but even more so nowadays.
David Reynolds: Today, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Dale Rogers joins the growing list of lead, learn, change guests. Dale, thanks for spending some time with us today.
Dale Rogers: Thanks for having me. I feel honored.
David Reynolds: Dale is an extraordinary teacher who currently hails from Michigan, is originally from Tennessee and spent a significant amount of time in Georgia. Dale has served as an educator in three high schools, has taught at the higher ed level, and has shared his expertise with more than a handful of people in sectors outside of education in recent years. Today, Dale teaches at the Frankel Jewish Academy. Dale has worked as a draftsman, a CAD consultant, has developed a training system for adult learners as a self described technology evangelist. If we travel backwards in our respective careers, Dale and I both taught at Forest Park Junior High School in the metro Atlanta, Georgia area in the early 1980s. Perhaps more important, Dale was the first friend that my wife, Debbie and I made in Georgia after we relocated here in 1982. Dale moved on, but we still keep in touch. And one of our most recent phone calls led to today's conversation. Dale, what do you remember about those early teaching experiences in Georgia?
Dale Rogers: Wow. I always think about big Ed Worley, he's still my favorite principal. The fact that he supported his teachers, no matter what, if you were wrong, he still supported you. He would take you to task over but he still supported you. And that's why he's still number one in my book. I've had other principles that's been very supportive, but that stood out. And in Clayton County, we were pretty well funded as far as the industrial arts and vocational education. So, that allowed us to do some pretty creative things, and I feel supported. Dr. Broughton and Jack Hinson, names from the past, always been supportive in supplying the technology and supplies that we needed.
David Reynolds: So tell us why you became a teacher and what unfolded for you so that you could land that first teaching job?
Dale Rogers: Well, up until about eighth grade, I thought I was pretty smart. I always felt I was top five, smart kids in class. And then in ninth grade, I hit this subject called algebra. I was pretty good with math, as long as it had to deal with numbers, but we had them dang letters. They really messed me up. And I guess, I was too, I don't know, I didn't maybe apply myself or there was just too abstract. I was involved at the time I was president of my backyard, Rogers Wiffleball Association. So that consumed a lot of my thought processes, just never quite kicked in for me. And then, the smartest kid I knew, who later became our valedictorian, he suggested that, we were in ninth grade was a junior high, and he suggested we go to summer school at the high school, so we'd kind of get a feel for the school and take geometry.
Again, summertime, wiffleball, concentrating on geometry, doing proofs, I could always get the given, but other than that, I was pretty lost. But then, as I entered my sophomore year, I took a drafting class. And all of a sudden I'm doing all this math and applying it, doing geometry and algebra, and then later on took electronics and applying ohm's law and using trigonometry, and it all clicked for me. And that's part of what made me want to be a teacher. I wanted to be the teacher that could teach kids how to apply what they're learning in the other classes, and try to develop interdisciplinary activities. And my goal was to work with other teachers and bringing them into my class, and go into their class, and try to develop projects and activities that would help kids realize what they were learning and how that could be applied. I always have this saying, we need to teach less math and more how to use math. That's one of my mantras. And I thought I wanted to be an architect. When I started into drafting and learned you had to be artistic, had to do sculpting and painting. But figuring that I had a hard time learning, and by having that experience I thought would make me valuable as a teacher.
David Reynolds: And you mentioned technology when you referenced Clayton County's experience early in your teaching career. And you mentioned that extensively and anything that you post or write technology is a part of that fairly often. And hearing you say that, that's going to be one of those great tools that helps people make connections across disciplines. So, how do you stay on the leading edge of emerging technology? And what do you do that ensures that your students are exposed to, and use those most effective tools and processes?
Dale Rogers: To be honest, the last few years, I've felt I'm not quite on the leading edge anymore. I've got out of education for a few years. And in retrospect, sometimes I look back, and I would find a technology and tried to make it fit into what I was doing, instead of trying to figure out what I needed to do, and if that needed to technology, then using that technology. So, I've gotten familiar with some tools that I use and I've kind of, depend on them. I read, I follow people on Facebook and on Twitter, and I read educational articles about what's going in technology, but again, even when I transition from teaching drafting and teaching CAD, CAD was just another tool, you still had to know the basics of technical drawing. So instead of using pencils, erasers and triangles, you were using a mouse on a computer to draw with.
David Reynolds: Go back to that statement where you said, in retrospect, you sometimes think that you found a new tool, and you probably thought, oh, wow, this is cool, which is great. And tried to make sure that, I could use that tool versus waiting to have that, the need for that tool emerge and connect with whatever the problem was that kids were trying to solve, obviously, an appropriate practice as an educator. And you said, looking back a few years, you thought that you did that, if you're not doing that now, how do you decide which of the emerging tools and technologies should be used for your kids?
Dale Rogers: Well, to back up a little bit, we had a conference up here called the McCall conference, the Michigan association of computer users in learning. So you go to these conferences, you go to different sessions, you see the keynotes, you see people use these tools, and think, "Wow, that's cool. I should use that." But really, I didn't need to, I was just trying to force it, instead of letting it flow naturally. So now, I guess, over the last few years, 3D printing, for example, has become an emerging technology that I've tried to stay up to date on. I think having that experience, and developing some 3D printing skills has gotten me to the job I have today. I'm looking back at my calendar, I have a note in May, when one of the local newspapers came out to my school in 2013, which is what? Two years ago? Seven years ago, right?
And my pictures on the front page of this local newspaper where we had gotten the first 3D printer in a high school in that county. So I saw that, I don't know, it just clicked that, that was something that was going to be, we had heard about 3D printing for a while and it was fairly expensive. And then this company came out with one that was $2500 that fit on a desktop and so, I jumped into that and that really was valuable, because I was teaching three dimensional CAD at the time, and students could see the connection between what they were drawing and how it would actually become a product in real life.
David Reynolds: And we're going to cycle back to 3D printing later with a specific question about a current endeavor that you're involved in. So, let's jump over to the broader concept of STEM. I actually had to look that up this past weekend, to see when was that term first introduced? Turns out it was 2001, as per the National Science Foundation, but that concept of it has really always been embedded in the subject areas that we taught when we were teaching industrial arts as you alluded to earlier, and that's because STEM really means the curriculum for and career fields in science, technology, engineering, and math. So, the specialized skills based classes and career pathways that are connected to STEM, really do cross over into other traditionally academic areas. So, when you describe STEM to students, or colleagues, or parents, what is it that you tell them? How do you convey the scope and importance of these areas of study?
Dale Rogers: I guess it goes back to my basic philosophy of why I became a teacher. Provides a good platform for introducing interdisciplinary activities between science, technology, engineering, and math.
David Reynolds: Do you hear or see evidence of those same bills going off in your kids through their conversation or other ways that they say, "Wow, I see how this pertains to so and so, we use this in trig." You talked about geometry and trig connecting to your area earlier, do you see that with your students?
Dale Rogers: Yeah, particularly in math.
David Reynolds: Let's keep going back in history for just a second and then jump straight forward to where you are now, because when you and I were both in Clayton County, in Georgia, we used to accompany students to statewide competitions, when we taught industrial arts. You're still involved in student competitions today, but the events have changed significantly. Tell us about what those competitions involve today, and make sure that you mention the students that you're working with now.
Dale Rogers: As you mentioned before, I am working at the Frankel Jewish Academy. They call it the Genesis lab, their STEM lab, I'm their manager. And I also teach two classes, and this is basically what I've been wanting to do my whole life, is to teach a couple classes and then work with other teachers to help them integrate the technology into their classes. So, one of the classes I teach, we just call it engineering technology. But every year there's a university in Israel, the sponsors and engineering contests. And the whole purpose of this class was to give the kids time to prepare to go compete in this engineering competition. Last year, they did it as a club. So, they met after school and they put everything together in six weeks to go compete. And there's a number of different categories.
The category we were preparing to compete in was an autonomous car competition. The competition is actually called robo traffic. So, one was the autonomous car it was like an RC car that says car, that had to be programmed to use an Arduino computer brain to program it with, but we also had to design and 3D prints and parts to customize the car. So, we had a group of kids working on that, about four kids. And then we had another team working on the 3D design component. The previous year, the challenge was to use 3D CAD to create a fuel injector. So, the Frankel kids had completed that project, plus, they had 3D printed their part. So, when they got over to Israel to compete, they discovered they were the only school that had brought a 3D printed part in addition to their 3D CAD file, and they won first place.
So this year, the project was an oil pump. So, it was a multi part project. And we had a team of four kids that work together designing the CAD files, and then we utilized the 3D printers to print all those parts out and tweak them. And we actually had a working model of a 3D oil pump. And then the third competition we were going to compete in was a safety, technology innovation. Again, a team of four kids, they had worked on researching automotive safety and the technology they decided to develop was a futuristic high tech, heads up windshield, and they actually researched what would be needed to go into that. They prepared a very excellent PowerPoint presentation. And then we also utilized their 3D CAD skills, the 3D printers to print out a little mock up of what it might look like. But lo and behold, because of the COVID-19 crisis, about two weeks before we were scheduled to leave to go to Israel, that Israel clamped down on all conferences and conventions, and that was canceled to at least October. Unfortunately, we want to take six kids and four of those kids are graduating, so I'm not sure where we'll be in October to go back.
David Reynolds: You mentioned that this was your dream job, because you were having an opportunity, if I heard correctly, to help other teachers as well, do that as the other half of your job. So is this where the self described technology evangelist comes in?
Dale Rogers: I hope so. And it's been a challenge, because the person who preceded me was not an educator, he was more of the engineering realm. I'm not sure how well he connected with the teachers coming from that background, whereas, I've come in and reached out to teachers, and we still haven't accomplished as much as I wanted to, but I think I'm laying the groundwork going forward. Also, we had the challenge this year, the teachers had switched from a traditional six period day to an alternating block where they teach four classes every other day. So teachers were first trying to get used to that, before they, I guess, wanting to tackle integrating technology so much.
I have reached out to the physics teachers and the math teachers, we've ordered a stress analyzer that the physics teacher seemed really interested in using. So, I think ground works there. And again, we have great support. Our technology director who's working with a third party company that would come in, and he was trying to get a staff development session, before teachers left for the summer, where they would actually come in and do a project that would take them through three or four pieces of the technology in the lab and maybe get them to thinking over the summer, what they could do in the upcoming school year.
David Reynolds: The door is open, at least for people to do that. You mentioned sectors other than education in that response with your predecessor coming from engineering, but just a few years back, you worked at a place called Tribar and tell our listeners a little bit about that company and spend some time talking about the employee training processes in place and what parallels or distinctions that you discovered working with adult learners, compared to high school students.
Dale Rogers: Actually, I had kind of become disgruntled with my teaching position after 34 years. So my resume ended up at Tribar and they invited me in for an interview. And they had not had any kind of formal training, they had not had a training person whatsoever. The company had grown from a family owned business with a few dozen employees to well over 400 employees. So the need for training was there. The president of the company, to his credit was kind of concerned about me jumping out of a career into something of the unknown for me, and suggested I do a summer internship.
So. I spent four weeks on the plant floor, I believe is three or four weeks. It was a plastic injection molding company. They made the emblems or what they called the badges for the automotive industry. So, I worked, I think it was a week and a half for two weeks in the injection molding side, and then a week and a half for two weeks in the assembly side, actually assembling the little badges, working in different teams. And then a week in quality control, a week in engineering. And then after the fourth week, the president came up, saw me in the office and so he was impressed I was still there, that he knew how hard it was to stand for eight hours in a hot environment out on the plant floor. But I think he saw that I was really motivated to take on this challenge. And so, I was offered the job.
One of my claims to fame as a teacher, I started back in the early, not early 90s, late 90s, developing my own video tutorials. And this was long before YouTube. Fortunately, I had my own server in my classroom. I developed web pages or whatever to make the links and to develop self paced video tutorials for the students. So, as I went through my career, kind of, fine tuned my techniques in developing video tutorials. And that was part of the reason I think I got the job, because I was able to show them some of the things I had done as an educator. So, I started developing training videos of how the injection molding process work for different parts or how different emblems were assembled and put together.
So the idea was that, on the factory floor, there would be tablets that the workers could actually pull up a video and see the process for assembling the parts, because before all they had was printed diagrams, pictures, photos that weren't always as clear as they could be. And then working with adult learners, well, one thing, the adult learners can be fired. So that makes it a little bit easier to keep their attention and keep them interested, but they seemed very appreciative in the endeavor I was undertaking, because they recognize that the training wasn't quite what it could be at this growing company.
I started there in the summer of 2016. And in January, the human resources manager was let go abruptly. And all of a sudden, I'm thrust into helping with interviewing and hiring people. I took on the role of hiring manager, but one of the things I had done as the training specialist was I ran most of the new employee orientation sessions, the onboarding process. So, that was a big role for me already. So, I continued that and took on the role of trying to recruit, and hire and orient, and get people placed. The company had a fairly high turnover rate. So, it was a constant challenge to keep up with the demands of this growing company to have enough employees to keep production going.
David Reynolds: When you said, Well, for one thing, the workers can be fired. I neglected to mention in my intro, that you have also had a few stints as a stand up comic. So, I want to make sure people understand that sometimes you're approaching this with some humor tongue and cheeks sort of commentary, because they may not have known that. They should have picked that up real early in our conversation already, but I want to throw that out there as an official blurb. You also spent a little bit of time in a few other non-school environments. And one of those was a short stint in a public library.
There were some efforts that you were able to spearhead there. Thinking about that job, and any others that you've held between the first season of your education career and the one that you're back in now, are there any other key accomplishments in those positions that you've worked in, that you would point to? And or, are there any other lessons that you've learned, maybe related to designing work, or professional learning, or leadership or anything else?
Dale Rogers: Well, one thing I meant to speak about at Tribar was, they had a growing need for skilled people. For robotics technicians, for assembly technicians to work on the assembly equipment, and it was really hard to find those kind of people when we did have openings. One of the things later in my career was fighting against this notion that everyone should go to college. That practically killed the vocational and industrial technology classes at my high school was, when Michigan adopted this Michigan Merit Curriculum where kids had to take so much science, three years of math, including algebra too, and so on, and so on.
And so, in Michigan, particularly manufacturing, the skills gap grew quite large, where you had a lot of people college educated, but not enough people with say, community college degrees or technical certificates that could do the technical work that manufacturers like Tribar needed. So that was one of my goals as training specialist to help develop talent locally that Tribar could grow, from the high schools and so on. So, I was reaching out to high schools trying to develop field trips, going out and making presentations, taking some of the engineers or technology people, technicians with me, to make the presentations. I had developed a proposal called the Tribar Promise. I don't know if you ever heard of the Kalamazoo promise. Have you heard of the Kalamazoo Promise?
David Reynolds: No, I'm not familiar with that.
Dale Rogers: Okay. Well, Kalamazoo Michigan, years ago, some wealthy philanthropist promised every student in Kalamazoo a college education if they graduated high school, and that was a pretty big deal. So Tribar at the time had a tuition reimbursement program, but I tried to tweak it a little bit to make it what I called the Tribar Promise, that if a student at a high school will come work at Tribar in the summer, working on the plant floor, and then pursued a career in manufacturing, maybe in robotics or some type of technical career, to community college or even if they went on to engineering school, that Tribar would provide up to whatever the IRS allowable was in tuition reimbursement.
So the idea is, they would work at in the summer at Tribar, maybe stay on part time during the school year, and then return the next summer, and continue that until they graduated, and Tribar would basically provide for some tuition reimbursement. I also had made connections with some universities around Michigan, one particular university, Kettering University. It used to be the General Motors Institute, GMI, but basically at Kettering, kids go to school for a semester, and then they do an internship for a semester. And they do that throughout five years or whatever they're at Kettering. So, when they graduate from Kettering University, they have a lot of, on the job experience, and a lot of cases, they get hired by the companies they did the internships with. So I had started that, actually, Tribar had done that in the past, but never consistently, but think I got that model going pretty consistently, and it was still in place after I left, which kind of pleased me to hear.
David Reynolds: Well, it sounds you've really made a lot of efforts to bridge the understanding gap between industry and education. I think you once told me, if I'm not mistaken, feel free to correct me that, one of the reasons you felt led to work in industry, after you retired from your public school teaching role was because you wanted manufacturing managers and leaders to have a different view of educators as informed, intelligent, insightful, and valued contributing members of a team. So you were doing your part to dispel that notion of, those who can't do and those who can't teach. So talk about that a little bit. And to what degree was that successful?
Dale Rogers: Well, everything you just said was pretty much your words. I don't know if I ever said it in that precise of a manner.
David Reynolds: Did that summarize your I want to make sure I'm not misstating what I thought I heard.
Dale Rogers: You did it in a very eloquent manner, more eloquent than I probably ever would have. Yeah, that always bothered me that society looked at teachers as somebody that worked six hours a day eight, and drew a big salary, and go with benefit packages. And that's all they could do. And I always felt, maybe it was personal that I wanted to prove to myself that I could do something more than, and I think just being a teacher. But being a teacher is not just being a teacher. And in retrospect, after the experiences I've had, I've always had respect for my fellow colleagues, but even more so nowadays, considering, what all has transpired as far as school funding issues, teacher evaluation programs, and other things like that, that really put a lot of pressure on teachers nowadays, I really have a soft spot for them.
David Reynolds: Let's spend a few minutes on even more current challenges. How are you and your students continuing the teaching, and learning now during the face to face, no shutdown component of school as we know it, and we're recording this in April 2020. So, if anybody's listening to this, years later, this is what we're referring to COVID-19 situation that we're dealing with. And your kids aren't showing up at school, but you are still meeting with them per conversation you had with me on the phone. Tell us about how that's going and how students are responding.
Dale Rogers: Fortunately, at Frankel, it's a small school. We have, I think, less than 130 students this year. My class sizes, my engineering technology class has nine students, my engineering basics class has seven students. So it makes it really manageable. I'm looking out and seeing what other teachers are having to face with their 25, 30, 35 students in a class. I couldn't imagine tackling that at this point. I have the advantage that I've developed tutorials, videos over the years, so I've kind of have a library of stuff I could depend on, and have, I think the technical skills to develop what's needed in this time and place, whereas other teachers, maybe not so much. That was one of my qualms.
When I was a public school teacher was, the district I taught was very wealthy, and I always had plenty of technology, but we never spent the time I thought that was needed to teach teachers how to use it. I would see all this technology that had been procured by the school district just kind of sitting and not being used and that was part of my frustration, I wanted to be that technology coach or technology integration specialist that could help teachers achieve that. I always felt I had pushback. There was other initiatives to compete with, as far as what the staff development priorities were.
I think, had we been able to do what I wanted to do, the teachers there would really have a leg up and be ready for this time and place of what's going on right now. I see, I'm reading tweets and things on Facebook about the challenges teachers have. And basically, what I'm perceiving is, the governor on Thursday night, March 12, announced that schools were going to be closing that following Monday, and that they needed in whatever case they could, move to some kind of online format. And within the next week, schools were trying to do that.
I'm thinking that the right way to do it would have told the students, "Okay, you're going to have a few weeks off, and we're going to train the teachers, we are going to take two or three, maybe a month, two or three weeks, or maybe a month, to train teachers how to do this and to deliver this instruction in a new way as best as they can." But I don't think that's really been done much. I hear stories of teachers wanting to take document cameras home, because that's something they used in their class, and district say, "No, we're not going to allow you to do that." Or teachers needing to get into their school to maybe 3D print something they could use in class, and no, you're not allowed to go into the school at all. So, I just think things could probably have been thought through a little bit better in this time of crisis.
David Reynolds: That's almost full circle back to your opening comments about always feeling supported and having access to the resources you needed, as a real key to helping teachers do what it is that they're really stepping up to the play and doing every day before this crisis hit and during. Now, I saw you on the news a few weeks ago, as a result of something you're involved in because of this current crisis. And you were serving your community, you and a colleague in a real generous way, did involve something you just mentioned, which was bringing equipment home that you might be able to put to good use. But it wasn't about providing instruction or engaging in teaching and learning exchanges with your kids. It was a 3D printed project, but I would like to not give a spoiler there, and let you tell everybody what that project is, how it started, who's gotten involved and who it's helped?
Dale Rogers: A few weeks ago, one of our English teachers at Frankel emailed me and our tech director about a school in New York that was producing face shields for the medical profession. So basically, how this face shield is produced, is they 3D print what's called a visor, then a piece of overhead transparency, I don't know if your listeners will, their age, if they know what that is. But overhead transparency sheet that has holes cut into it that then attached to the 3D printed visor.
David Reynolds: So basically, that's a clear sheet of acetate?
Dale Rogers: Right, eight and half by 11. Fortunately, there's a couple ways you can make the overhead transparency into a face shield. You can modify a three hole punch, to punch the holes, or you can use a laser cutter, which fortunately, Frankel has two nice laser cutters. So the laser cutter, we actually have an Adobe Illustrator file that rounds off the corners, the bottom corners of the transparency and then cuts the six holes that are needed to attach it to the visor. My tech director and I started out, we had one 3D printer that had the capacity to produce these. And we figured out we could produce, we could print three at a time and they took about two hours and 10 minutes to print.
We would take turns, I would maybe go over there, start three printing, stay for a couple hours and retrieve those and then start a new batch. And then he would go over later on maybe retrieve those threes then start a new batch. So, we went back and forth, and for me it's a 35 mile drive. There's no traffic right now so it's not that big a deal. And for him it's probably a 20 mile drive or whatever. So, not real convenient for us to go back and forth every couple hours to do this 3D printing. It is a Jewish school so there are certain Jewish laws we abide by as a school. One is, on Shabbat, Saturday, the Jewish' Sabbath, we're not to use any school equipment or enter the school from Sunset on Friday till sunset on Saturday. So, that right there cut out one day a week that we couldn't produce any parts. And then, right in mid April, or early April, we were approaching Passover that we can have, that we were going to be not able to produce anything.
So, I approached my tech director, I said, "You're probably going to say no to this, but what would you think of me taking the 3D printer home? And that way I could produce more each day than us running back and forth." And he thought it was a good idea. He ran it by our principal, and we got it approved. And lo and behold, I brought one home and started printing. I think I could do between 21 and 24 a day. As soon as I got out of bed trimmed the ones that printed overnight, start a new batch and I downloaded a new timer for my phone. So, I knew two hours and nine minutes is time to go check on the printer and did that all day and started the batch route before I went to bed.
So, then we were featured on the news, like you said, Channel Four news here in Detroit. And the very next day, some benefactor offered up a donation to purchase another 3D printer and 17 rolls of filament, which was an $8,000 donation. Passover started on that Wednesday night. So, we had to get the purchase order everything processed and submitted before the end of Wednesday, into business on Wednesday and Friday, it arrived at my house. So since then, I think, I'm well over 600 face shield that we've printed and distributed.
David Reynolds: Those are going to a particular entity, that's then making sure they get where they belong in and the first line medical responders-
Dale Rogers: Right. So, we've had medical responders reach out once they heard this program. So we have a list of priority of who gets what, how many they need. So, I take them over to school or to one of our directors houses and then they call up whoever is next in line and they come retrieve them.
David Reynolds: That's great. And we'll include a link in the show notes to that news clip. Is there anything else that you'd like to share about your teaching career, things you've learned something we failed to uncover during this brief conversation?
Dale Rogers: A friend of mine used to have a blog on education week, and she would occasionally invite me to be a guest blogger. And one of the blogs I wrote was about Edwards Deming, father of quality control, and how there's always with politicians and people in business saying, "Schools should be run more like a business." So that was the thesis of my article that, they always say this, but they don't really want to apply some quality control principles that Deming talked about in his philosophies. One was not to rely so much on inspection, but build quality into the process. And what I see nowadays is, schools and politicians and society looks at test scores.
So, we're relying on the inspection part, the test scores, to ensure quality instead of trying to build quality into the educational process. And some of the things I outlined is, well, what could we do to build quality into the educational process? Well, we could train teachers, more like we train doctors, have them do internships, and maybe instead of giving the new teachers the hardest, most challenging jobs, maybe have them work with co teachers and ease them into the profession as they're learning how to be a teacher. We could look at class sizes, we could look at the school calendar, other things like that, that I pointed out in the article. So, just wanted to put that plug in.
David Reynolds: Sure. You've mentioned a number of things that really demonstrate your respect for your colleagues and great teachers. Is there a great teacher to give a shout out to>
Dale Rogers: Yeah, but I would cry talking about it.
David Reynolds: I just always had to give people an opportunity to do that, but only whoever you'd like.
Dale Rogers: Well, it's a few teachers. Mrs. Macmillan, a high school English teacher, kind of took me under her wing and I learned how to write with her and when I first had my first professional article published in, used to be called school shop, what was it called? Technology education monthly or whatever. In 1992, she was one of the first people I went and shared it with it. I wanted her to be proud that one of her students had gone on to be published. And then my tennis coach who's also a psychology teacher, Lynn Skelton in high school, we've kept in touch. I was president of the Key Club, he was the Key Club sponsor, again, a very supportive person.
In college, Dr. Robert Hansen and Dr. Randall Pierce. I went to the University of Tennessee, and to me at the time, that was a big school, it was 30,000 students, I was worried about being in such a big institution. And would I just be a number? Would I get lost in the crowd? And there's always this idea of, you can't make it through your freshman year. Thanks for hard and I had some little stressful moments as early freshmen, but I had been to one of Dr. Hanson's classes, seemed like a really top notch guy. And later on, I was walking down the street going to McDonald's during lunch, and here comes Dr. Hansen with two or three of his professor colleagues, and he makes a point to come over and call me by name.
David Reynolds: Makes a difference, doesn't it? So what's next for you? Professionally, personally, projects, plans, anything you'd like to share? I think there's always a what next for Dale, because every time you and I talk, there's, "Hey, have I told you about so and so since we talked last time?" It's like, "No, you've done a couple things since we talked last." So, I know there's always something you're looking forward to. So, anything else? You've mentioned writing a few times, I'm just curious, what's in the works for you next?
Dale Rogers: Well, going back to Robert Hanson, Dr. Hanson, trying to instill in people, in teachers, in the profession, that relationships matter. That the relationships you develop in September, will mean more in May, than the rules that you've given to the students in September. And I guess, looking back, seeing kids on Facebook, in Georgia, and here in Michigan that talk about, how they like my class, sometimes it's subject related, because they've gone on to be architects and engineers and learning CAD was important to them, but thanking me for being the person I was and the relationships we had. And that's one great thing about teaching at Frankel, it's a small school, and you get to know the kids pretty much on a one to one level, and develop relationships and having those relationships matter a lot in helping kids to learn and value education. So how am I going to do that? I don't know. Maybe just be a role model for them and try to speak about it as much as I can. Well, one thing I was thinking about today, in preparation for this, was this whole idea of the 40/40/40 concept.
David Reynolds: I saw your tweet this morning, and read that right before we called. And we didn't talk about this notion of what's important and how to make decisions about which content to emphasize?
Dale Rogers: I was honored to be selected for a curriculum development workshop in the state of Michigan back in 2010 to introduce us to this concept called understanding by design. And it just enlightened me to things I had kind of been doing my whole life was, begin with the end in mind, then that was always my idea and drafting that we were going to, at the very end have some big design project that the students would create, and they needed to know these skills to get there. And that's how we progressed. But the other thing was this idea of the 40/40/40 concept. 40 days, things you need to learn and remember to get you through a unit, and then 40 months, things that are a little more important that you need to remember at the end of a high school career or at the end of a college career, but then things you need to learn that will last a lifetime, 40 years, big concepts. And it just seems in education, we put so much emphasis on the 40 day stuff, and not the 40 year stuff.
David Reynolds: Any other pearls of wisdom?
Dale Rogers: The guy that donated the 2500 transparencies, he had texted me back at the beginning of the school year to ask me, he remembered I had once mentioned this 40/40/40 rule to him in passing. And he remembered it. He remembered it for 40 months, I guess.
David Reynolds: Yeah, absolutely. And something you mentioned to me the other day was that the classes are small and your students are bright, and the concepts that are being introduced at this point in the year are not necessarily brand new to them. They're building on existing knowledge and understanding. So, it's not taking you a significant amount of time to convey what it is that they need to start pursuing next yet. After 10 to 15 minutes of conversation overview, Q&A exchanges occur, they are asking you to hang around, "Can we stay on the zoom call or Google Hangout a little bit longer?"
Dale Rogers: Right. Of course your viewers, your listeners, I should say won't be able to see but I have, usually, I have knickknacks behind me during the Google Hangout video and they've gotten where they inquire, "What is that back there behind you today?" So, I'll make a point of adding some little knickknacks that maybe they'll notice that we can talk about and I've shared with them my blog. So again, it's about working on the relationship part of me being a human being and trying to have a sense of humor.
David Reynolds: You may notice in the background, the Domino's Pizza CO2 dragster back there.
Dale Rogers: Oh, well, yeah.
David Reynolds: Our days of building those vehicles with our students. All right, Dale.
Dale Rogers: Okay, well, it's good to see you.
David Reynolds: Yeah, you too. This is good I think-
Dale Rogers: We should do this more often.
David Reynolds: This has been a real pleasure for me today.
Dale Rogers: All right. I feel honored and it's great talking to you too.
David Reynolds: Well, you have a great day and say hi to Leanne and keep in touch.
Dale Rogers: All right. Say hey to Debbie and Jackson too.
David Reynolds: I'll do that. Yeah, and your boys as well but they don't know me. Thanks for listening today. Find the Lead. Learn. Change. podcast on your search engine, iTunes or other listening app. Leave a writing, write a review, subscribe and share with others. In the meantime, go lead, go learn, go make a change, go.