Chris Colley: 0:02

welcome. Uh, 2025 rolling along nicely. Uh, I will say in canada and my guest also canadian here today, jd williams we've been experiencing a tremendous amount of snow and it just seems to never stop, but we are going to move onward. Um, I apologize for my voice. With the season comes a little bit of bugs that fly around and I picked one up, but hopefully I will talk less and JD will talk way more. Having JD Williams, who is a blogger, a teacher, an educator, a consultant, a coach, all things K-12. And I've been kind of exploring your site and your blog, jd, and just really fascinating ideas and thoughts that you throw out there, so I reached out because I thought the world should hear more about them. So thanks so much for taking me up on this offer.

JD Williams: 1:06

Oh, my pleasure, Chris. Thank you for inviting me.

Chris Colley: 1:10

Now, JD, I kind of wanted to ask you about this. One thing that kind of popped out when I was looking at your materials is you consider yourself a techno-Victorian, Could you? I've never heard of that before, but I read kind of the detail of what you, how you described it. Could you describe it for us? I just find it so amazing.

JD Williams: 1:30

Oh, thank you. Thank you for asking. I have an interesting fascination with technology and I realized that as we progress through life, technology emerges and changes and transforms how we live, work and play. But when I dig deep in my use and when I use it, I realized that I always lean back to the analog experience as the place to level set and to have deeper thoughts and experiences. And while I appreciate the efficiency and optimization of technology, I always want to defer to my body as machine.

JD Williams: 2:19

So that idea of that's where the Victorian comes in, that I will always start first without the tools and then I would start picking up with intention the tools. And folks see this in meetings because when we're on the screen and you see folks looking directly I'm writing analog pen to paper. There's something, that feeling, that kinesthetic where that information gets locked in. So I hold this tension between fiercely protecting my autonomy as the human machine that's the Victorian part and cautiously embracing what's coming to augment myself. So that's what that techno Victorian means to me. Somebody else might explain it differently, but that's kind of where I'm coming from.

Chris Colley: 3:15

Yeah, very well said, very well said. And as we begin this conversation, jd, I like to kind of look at some markers in your career so far. What were some important moments or decisions that you made that brought you to your consulting practice that you do now? What were some of those important decisions or chance things that happened that brought you to where you are today?

JD Williams: 3:49

That's such a beautiful question. There are so many inflection points. I was receiving signals from the time I was at McGill University in their Faculty of Education program. The time I was at McGill University in their Faculty of Education program and being under the guidance and tutelage of Barbara Shuckett Palmer I have to call her out by name she was my cooperating teacher at the time when I was a stagiaire which seems like a long time ago, but to me it feels like yesterday and I was always thinking about that experience I had in the Faculty of Education.

JD Williams: 4:31

I emerged from the program as a product of the system and as I started to work in the system and being advised by an expert master teacher to find my way and to find my way in a sense, that when in the classroom, that the lessons and the approaches are present and what I may have learned in theory may not square with what I, what has to happen, then you start to recognize that there's this disconnect. I start to recognize that there's this disconnect between how this is. I was prepared to enter the system and what the system need right. And then, first couple of teaching, I landed my job at Wisbang School in Montreal West and we were able to push boundaries of what we can do. The administrators at the time hired a bunch of young guns that had big, high flying ideas, which would be a shock to a traditional system if the ecosystem itself didn't create that opportunity. And so there was. I saw what is possible when you think outside of the existing notion of what schooling should be. And so I want to make that distinction between education and schooling, because in my first few years of teaching, my education continued because the students that came into my space were challenging me and pushing me to think beyond me being a product of the system, because they were not your typical right. So there's that point where I started to see what was possible. So I was holding this tension. What was possible?

JD Williams: 6:22

Returned from Quebec to my home province of Ontario and landed in another school, a charter school, private school, the. You know, looking, working with the curriculum and thinking about, oh yeah, this is all great pie in the sky, but when we bring it down to my context, what I have available, I cannot operationalize this in any fidelity that meets that. So then, how can I? I kept asking how can I, how can I um, how can I um support the students in the way that they need. How can I find more time, because there's not going to be more time created they need. How can I find more time Because there's not going to be more time created right? How can I optimize my time and started recognizing that an island notion and teaching being in your classroom is not going to help you thrive.

Chris Colley: 7:14

And so.

JD Williams: 7:14

I started to reach out and pull on experts and build my social network and build my nodes of individuals and organizations that can shore me up and secure more time, like I was using them as a time, like finding time measures, in that they had the expertise I didn't have to level up, so I've saved time that I can now dedicate to my students. So through that experience I I looked at thinking of is this being in the system? I'm trying to understand the system that I'm in and so and you'll see the ecosystems I swim in. So I jump out of the education system and I said, okay, I've had, I've had enough, I've seen it. I don't think we serve each student. I think we do this baseline, level setting, and then there's a lot of students above and a lot of students below, and so you know, some teachers are really good at holding that tension and making it work, but for me I had more questions than answers. So each of those little signals leads to me jumping and seeking. I'm seeking answers of is there a way to do this in a way where each student, each teacher, not this monolith, because we get grouped in these big groups?

JD Williams: 8:31

And then I realized that there are many roles to play in education. So I jumped out and then I went system adjacent, call it. I work system adjacent. I am a champion for the everyday teacher who has the strength and fortitude and drive to do the good work despite some of those barriers, and I strive to work with them to make those barriers opportunities and I action. The opportunities I put in the time I go, seeking being that time-saving measure that I was looking for when I was the new B teacher. So, and then there are other journey along the ways, but it's a lot of question asking. I'm constantly questioning the question and my basic adage is if we can't serve each student in a way that they all need to be served in the current state, then how could we disrupt, adjust, reset, redesign, case by case, because it's not going to be systemic, because what I learned from my work, from urban to rural, to the Arctic hamlets, is that place context, it's not a cookie cutter recipe.

Chris Colley: 9:53

Right, yeah, for sure, for sure.

Chris Colley: 9:55

I'll stop there and it's no. But I I love what you're saying too, because we are not um cogs in a machine, right? We are individual and unique and learn differently and view the world in different ways. Um, so it's hard to say, okay, we're all going to, here's our baseline. Hard to say, okay, we're all going to, here's our baseline. Like you said, when did you, when did Pinnacle Educational Services begin? And what was your? What was the crux of starting, of venturing out on your own like that? Was it so that you could address these things individually as you were mentioning what?

JD Williams: 10:44

was your first kind of intent that you wanted to establish with your company, your organization? Again, a very good question. But at the heart of it is the relationships I had with students who I had the opportunity to coach, mentor, tutor, and the growth that I saw could happen when we had the time to listen to what the gap was or what the disconnect was and to work directly one-on-one to strengthen it. So it started as a coaching, tutoring, performance strategist type of practice and in those sessions, hearing the students narratives about their teachers and I wouldn't, I wouldn't give it oxygen I would say, first and foremost, let's be clear I'm a teacher. I'm not here to replace your teacher. I'm here to support you and to help you to build your strengths and capacities and competencies so that you could thrive in formal school setting when you go from being 1 to one to 30 to one, right, right. And so I recognize that I was in a position of privilege and not everyone has that opportunity to step out and say I had no idea what was going to happen. I just knew there was a need and I heard my students saying you know the pace, the pace at which they were not necessarily in my class. The pace at which the content is moving is moving faster than me, and it's not that they didn't have the ability, it was just that they just needed that little shore up, a little coaching.

JD Williams: 12:23

Every, every student, every child needs a champion, someone that can like, listen, lean in, and part of a lot of it was negotiating and teaching those social skills with them, in that I didn't just sit down all of a sudden and start teaching them. It was connection before content. I got to learn who they were, so I had levers that the school system didn't necessarily have to be able to activate and to. You know cajole and to entice and to get. If I teach you this, then you can teach me this, you know cajole, and to entice and and and to get.

JD Williams: 12:55

If, if you, if I, if I teach you this, then you can teach me this, you know like, because they all, they had knowledge of their own and I each interaction with each student. They, they taught me from juggling to their guitar riffs, and so the parents would look and say, what does guitar have to do with science? Because that's their thing, and so science is my thing, and I need them to be able to see that what matters to them matters to me too as well, and in the classroom setting that's one of the things that I found that we don't have all that time to do that, and so stepping out was really for me to feel that I was actually contributing in a way that was meaningful, and if I was doing it one student, one family at a time it's a little slower than a system level, but I think I reached those who needed it the most.

Chris Colley: 13:47

I totally agree. Relationships. If you don't establish those with your students, it it will affect their performance in your class, cause they're just going to have nothing invested in it, Right? Um, even though we have to push this stuff forward in the content and the testing. And, um, if they don't feel like you have a sense of attachment to them or care, they won't, and it's something I think that building relationships is a soft skill that we're teaching them without teaching them by doing it, by interacting and having those relationships and being curious about their experiences. It brings me to this question, jd.

Chris Colley: 14:33

We've seen that technology has really started to proliferate throughout education. I mean, it's ongoing all the time, and now we have the dawn of AI coming into education. Are you finding that technology is removing those relationships from our classrooms, our schools? And I'll just like I've been reading a lot about the Anxious Generation Good book, excellent book and scary at the same time. Just looking at the stats of what's going on with our kids and this kid generation and the well-being, depression, the anxiety that is percolating. When do we bring technology and when should we remove technology so those relationships that are so crucial to education conform? Because you're not forming relationships if you're behind a screen or you're distracted with social media or your whatever it might be Like. Where do we find that balance? I guess I'm I'm I'm getting that. It's a huge question. I guess I'm silent because I'm letting it.

JD Williams: 15:50

I'm letting it.

JD Williams: 15:51

I'm letting it sink in and I'm feeling my somatic response, like I could feel the hairs on my arm standing up, because it's such a. It's such a robust and complex question, but not necessarily complicated, because there is a difference between calm. I believe there's a difference between complex and complicated, which means with the complexity there isn't a one right answer or one pathway solution, as we're seeing now with the whole notion of action reaction. We're gonna ban phones, but yet student achievement doesn't change and this is a recent report out of the Guardian in the UK in terms of action reaction. We're going to ban phones, but yet student achievement doesn't change and this is a recent report out of the Guardian in the UK in terms of, you know, the action reaction system and that the action from the school didn't garner the outcome in terms of feedback that they expected, because there's another lever, there's the home element, there's you know. So it's never.

JD Williams: 16:47

It's not like one side or the other, but I think technology and the thing, it's such a beautiful question. Technology can make certain things possible, things access. It can make access possible. It could be the level setter for equity from some regards, but at the same time, if the infrastructure is not there it becomes an equity challenge, but it holds so much potential but I'm going to lead with this that it's the intentionality and the purposeful use that the value and its impact rests in and that, as you are becoming, we're constantly in a state of becoming, from the first time we leave our home education frames and enter into the formal notion of schooling, we're becoming, and there's some foundational social skills that we must learn, model and practice.

JD Williams: 17:52

And so I'm a qualified teacher in junior, intermediate and secondary and not primary, because I give hats off and oceans of respect to the teachers who work with that level of those you know those essential skills that are needed to then come into the space where I'm comfortable, which is grade four, five, six and onward right, and it has a place, it has its purpose, but it should never trump human communication, human human collaboration, human interaction. It of technology in and of itself, I think its value is nominal without the human touch. Um, I am, I am a strong, fierce protector of my digital identity. It's something that was on my radar of my digital identity. It's something that was on my radar from, I think, 2012.

JD Williams: 18:52

And I said if it goes out there, where does it go? So there's the questioner of questions when does it go? What happens to it? And then those questions started to be answered. I started to see these things come up in the news about what people can do, and now what AI can do and the deep fakes. So we have to learn how to be human and relate to each other in a human way, and then we augment our interactions. The technology should not place our interactions, it should augment our interactions. I love it.

Chris Colley: 19:28

I love it. I mean, this podcast flies by so quickly. Your answers to my questions are so thoughtful, JD. I mean I just love your reflective capacity kind of on the fly because I've been throwing out some pretty biggies but I really, really appreciate you taking some time. I would love to continue this conversation with you in a part two, because I feel that we could talk so much more. I like to keep these relatively short, just so that we have a capsule of thoughts and ideas, and I want to thank you for taking some time out of your day to come and share some of these amazing ideas that you have. Pinnacle Educational Services is a great thing that you're offering, and I will definitely promote that in the descriptor as well. So people go check out and see what JD does. She has a great blog, too. Please read some of her articles. I really hope this isn't the last time we speak.

JD Williams: 20:35

I hope so too. I hope that it is not the last time we connect, because those little nodes that I build in the network just makes it possible to see and get a more thorough view of where innovation and excellence is happening in education across the pan-Canadian context. So thank you for inviting me for a chit-chat.

Chris Colley: 20:57

Awesome. Thank you so much and enjoy the snow.

JD Williams: 21:01

Thank you.