Episode # 65
Partnering Schools with the Community
January 28, 2025
About This Episode
On this week’s episode, we are joined by Tony Perry, an Assistant Professor in STEM education at the University of North Dakota, about successful school-community partnerships and the obstacles they can face.
Guests
Tony Perry
Tony Perry is an Assistant Professor in the College of Education and Human Education at the University of North Dakota. His research investigates ways to create more equitable and engaging learning opportunities in STEM and emerging technology fields. Before joining UND, he completed a postdoctoral appointment at MIT’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. Dr. Perry’s Ph.D. Is in Curriculum & Instruction from Texas Tech University.
Transcript
Kara 0:00
Today’s episode is sponsored by Learning Blade. Middle school is the ideal time for career exploration. With Learning Blade, you can easily integrate STEM and career awareness concepts into your classroom. Find out if this resource is free in your state at learningblade.com thanks, Learning Blade. Hey! Is this thing on? Are we recording? Can I get a tech person?
Caryn 0:29
Oh, for the love of Ed Tech.
Today we’re talking to Tony Perry, Assistant Professor in STEM education at the University of North Dakota. Hi Tony. Thank you so much for joining us.
Tony 0:45
Thanks for having me. Great to see you, all.
Caryn 0:48
this works. We are so excited. So we always start out our podcast kind of the same way, asking you about your journey and education and how you ended up kind of doing what you’re doing now the path that you took to get there?
Tony 1:04
Yeah, my journey, like many educators, is a winding path. So I went to get my undergraduate degree in astronomy and physics, and I knew that I loved science, I loved doing a lot of hands on projects outside of school, that my appetite was not sort of fulfilled through a physics degree, and I wasn’t quite sure exactly what I wanted to do after graduation. Applied to a bunch of jobs, and the first place to say yes was the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
Kara 1:46
Oh, cool.
Tony 1:46
So my very first job, I drove 150 miles down the road from Madison, Wisconsin, and I was giving tours on a rescued World War 2 U boat that was captured during World War Two. I don’t know if anybody has been there. It’s very cool. The U 505, it’s still there.
Caryn 2:09
Yeah, I’ve heard about that.
Tony 2:11
And it was I really enjoyed talking about science, being around science and technology, and connecting with the public around my passions, so that was great. Started there, worked my way up at the museum for a couple years, and working in Chicago, and living in Chicago, I started to think a lot about who has access to these super exciting places of learning, like a museum. And I love my museum educators. I love my museum education experience. Let me preface that. I think they’re wonderful places, but our large right museums, it costs so much money to get there, to bring a family to park and then eat while you’re there. I wasn’t sure that I was having the impact that I felt like I could have working in public programming, so I shifted gears. Moved in to be a classroom teacher, a high school science teacher in Chicago public schools and the sort of started the next step of my journey, as I started with a brand new school, a brand new school model, where we were partnered with IBM, as they have this model called P TECH, and the idea is that it’s an early college, STEM school. So all of our students were accelerating in math and science, all of our students were connecting with and preparing for the kinds of high demand, high pay occupations that places like IBM have huge openings in lots of IT fields, for example. And it’s really a blended model that really connected students and gave some context and coherence to our curriculum. How does you know physics or English or PE connect with it? Right? Everything really comes together, and it’s a coherent high school day. So that was a ton of fun. Did that for a couple years, and then I ended up moving across the country to Boston to take a job at MIT in one of the coolest job titles that people can have an invention education. So I took
Kara 4:43
Oh cool,
Tony 4:44
Yeah, yeah. I took what I learned from the museum, from working at the high school, and we ran a national grants program where we provided grants of up to $10,000 for teams of high school students across the country to conceptualize design and build their own inventions. So students would identify an issue in their backyard, and then they would use the grant to go from good idea to actual working prototype over the course of a school year. And then they would all come to MIT at the end of the year. They would meet other inventors from across the country that would showcase their inventions, get, you know, become a part of the MIT community. That was a real blast.
Kara 5:29
Did the funding go away for that, or does that still exist?
Tony 5:33
The program still exists.
Kara 5:35
Okay,
Tony 5:35
The Lemelson MIT program.
Kara 5:38
Okay,
Tony 5:38
You can, you can look it up. And the Lemelson Foundation was started by Jerry Lemelson, who was a prolific inventor and really wanted to inspire the next generation of inventors. So we were funded through that foundation. They continued to be funded and continue to grow the invention education network while I was doing that work again. This is, this is all corners of the United States. I got to travel a lot, so I got to see what education looks like in a lot of different contexts, from, you know, my experience in Chicago to New York City public schools to small rural communities and everything in between, that was a really great place for me to learn a lot, to see what really connects and engages students, and also to think about the systems and structures that support our teachers and students to have These kind of really big Capstone types experiences, what? What kind of supports do you need to make something like that happen? It is that is a big lift to do, right? And I have such great love and respect for what our classroom teachers do and their work day to day, and sometimes our systems aren’t doing great to support them. So I started asking questions that directed me towards doing some research, enrolling in a PhD program. So I did my doctoral studies, looking at some of these systems and structures. How do we support students? How do we create more of these learning opportunities? I loved working with, you know, 15 or so communities each school year. But right there are 10s of 1000s of high schools across the country, right? Right? If we really want to make a difference, we’ve got to think, you know, a little bit bigger in order to make a change. So that led me to my doctoral studies, and that really convinced me that, you know, I can make a difference the best that I can through scholarship and then through being in academia to support students, you know, undergraduate students and graduate students. So that’s kind of my long, winding path. So about 15 years as a practitioner, and now I’m in my second year here as assistant professor at the University of North Dakota.
Kara 8:24
Wow, that’s pretty wild. That’s pretty wild. But I also appreciate the fact that you’ve had the opportunity to have experience in all different types of school settings like because it’s definitely valuable, especially for your perspective. And how did you get involved with STEM education? I mean, it’s like your path makes sense, yes, to STEM but how did you kind of land in that realm, I guess, and specifically surrounding partnerships?
Tony 9:04
sure, sure. So part of it was, was again, having those lived experiences out there in the world. So when, when I was doing that work with IBM, you know, seeing the value that one that my students saw when we would bring mentors to the school so working professionals, our students were excited, right? Maybe they weren’t, you know, like, oh, I want to have career X that this person has. But they’re like, Wow, an adult is excited about who I am and what I do, and they’re not my teacher and they’re not my parents. That’s really cool. That’s really motivating and engaging to students, to see the mentors who are maybe like a little, you know, they’re coming from industry. They’re not trained as educators. They’re maybe a little. Timid, but to see, when you put them in the right environments, they light up too. They see what our young people are capable of, what classroom teachers and people who work in schools every day see and know about our students. We can teach the community like we’ve got something special here that we need to support and we need to nurture and then, as I left the classroom and did that work in invention education, every single project relied on local community experts, whether that was somebody who had technical skills, maybe it was their occupation, maybe it was their hobby. They relied on people who can contribute in lots of different ways, right? We asked the students to travel to to MIT from wherever they are, and that isn’t cheap. So people would step up and contribute through fundraising or supporting media outreach. It really takes a village to do this work, and when the village comes together around the needs of our young people, they set aside whatever differences they may have, they figure out how to work together, and something that a school alone, or, you know, an external partner alone, could never do they really have, the way, I like to describe it as complimentary skill sets and assets that they bring to the table. And it’s really, it’s more than additive. It’s, you know, the the whole is greater than the sum of the parts kind of situation.
Kara 11:45
So how can schools create meaningful partnerships?
Tony 11:50
Yeah, yeah. So that’s like the most exciting question to me, both as a researcher, but also when I’m talking to folks, you know, working in schools all the time, right? How do we do this work? That’s part of what motivates me. Because we can point to right, like, for example, that that IBM Model, and we can think of all the reasons why we can’t, okay, well, in Chicago, we have large businesses. Maybe we don’t have that in our community, IBM can donate all of this money. Well, maybe we only have small or medium sized businesses. They can’t, you know, get a bus of 200 employees and bring them to high school, right? I get those are real concerns and real constraints. So what I have learned about how to get started is to start small and look for opportunities to bring together students and outside mentors. That is really the magic moment when I talk with some folks. There’s somebody that I’ve interviewed, and he describes it as like, that’s the start of organic growth. You start to develop trust with each other. Students trust the mentors. Mentors trust the students. That’s really essential. But then when we think about our teachers, one of the teachers told me, when she was first starting this work that she was terrified to have her students put their work on public display. And I get it, she said, you know, my students successes are their successes, but their failures are my failures. So when we put it out there. It’s as much about putting ourselves as classroom teachers out there, and that’s a scary thing, and that’s a real thing that that is not built into part of our regular practices. So the more we can create those little moments to bring people together, whether it’s Hey, my students did a project, come and see, just come and see, tell me what you think. Tell them what you think. Little moments like that. And then that can start to snowball and build trust throughout. And then when you’re excited about it, like invite the principal. Hey, come check out what my students are doing, and check out what you know, talk to their mentor, and then they start to have some conversations. And then maybe, you know, the the principal starts to talk with, you know, somebody else at the business and say, oh, like, thanks so much for for sending your your employees over. You know, one evening, it really meant a lot to our kids. Maybe the business doesn’t even know, because, because, you know, one employee came out of the goodness of their heart, yeah, and then these bigger things start to happen. So it’s a long road, but if you start with short, deliberate youth, adult interactions, you can really build the trust that these kinds of systems need to flourish.
Kara 14:59
Can you share an example of a partnership that’s had significant or positive impact that you’ve seen, just like within your either your research or just what you’ve been involved with?
Tony 15:17
Yeah? Yeah. You know, from a research perspective, this is something that I’ve written a little bit about, and there’s more coming soon. But I think about a school near you in Akron, Ohio, where the one of the STEM schools there is partnered with Goodyear. Goodyear is their sort of large corporate partner, and if you look at it today, you will see again, this really robust system, so many people involved, and it’s hard to imagine. Well, how did they get to there? Well, it started with those small commitments, that organic growth, it’s then that’s created a lot of goodwill, to the point where one of the their corporate partners actually loaned an engineer to work with this school so that the teachers had, you know, technical expertise on call, whether that was curriculum planning, whether that was working on projects with students that was in house. What? What a show of good faith, right to give those kinds of resources and their system today, you know, they’ve got all of these, these district level supports, their corporate partner, get your is the largest. They’ve got ways to connect with the school, connect people. They’ll say, you know, yes, there’s some some money exchanged, but it’s really about the people and the relationships and the connections. And then that’s broadened into the broader community, where they have students designing enrichment toys for the zoo, for example, lots of really fun things happening in the community. And what have they seen as a result, they have really seen the number of students who are graduating, kind of with a workforce readiness bent, who are able to the state of Ohio has some extra seals you can get on your high school diploma, so their students are among The top who are getting this seal for, I forget the actual name of it, something like workforce readiness, because they have the external validity from all of their interactions with external adults. Over their high school career, they have transformed the school day. They have transformed what it’s like to teach and learn in that community, and the students are really starting to show the effect. And it was, you know, deliberate, and it was over time. This is not an overnight success, right? These, these are 5, 10, 20 year journeys, in some cases, in some of the schools that I’ve studied, but they all start with those small, intentional moments. There’s another school in rural, upstate New York, when I say rural, there are about 60 students in grades nine through 12. So this is a very tiny rural community, and their students are working on authentic projects in the community two days a week. So they have sort of three days a week of you know what maybe looks a little bit more like a traditional high school day, two days a week, they’re out in the community doing real projects. What they have seen is high school graduation rates soar because the students are connected and engaged. And this connects back with a lot of what we know from the career and technical education research community, that’s sort of my area of expertise. And yes, we’re excited about the workforce outcomes. We’re excited when students, you know, who take a CTE pathway and then go on and get their first job in that area. But what we see time and time again is that these partnerships really engage students in their learning. They get them connected to something meaningful. And that’s the power of these partnerships, and that’s what’s really allowing youth to flourish, and that’s what gets part. Of what gets me excited about this
Kara 20:01
work. It makes their learning more meaningful and really authentic. Yeah. What’s not to love about that you it helps, I guess, stifle that question of, like, when am I ever going to use this
Caryn 20:13
Right? Sounds like, Yeah. Sounds like there’s a lot of buy in from the kids.
Kara 20:19
Yeah,
Tony 20:19
yeah, the kids buy in. And again, right? That’s what’s exciting about this work, is that the kids buy in. And when we come into education spaces with that mindset, that’s what gets teachers to light up and buy in when their kids buy in. That’s what gets, you know, the systems level administrators to buy in when they can see the students connect, and that’s what gets our external partners excited when they see the students. Those external partners see these students like as their neighbors, as their neighbors, kids, as their children, as people they see in the grocery store, and then to see them light up is really special.
Kara 21:05
Teachers, you can now earn contact hours toward grad credit for listening to the podcast.
Caryn 21:10
Visit for the love of Ed tech.org, for more information.
Kara 21:15
Okay, so where in your and maybe this is like your dream world, or just be in reality, either way. But what would you say, or, I guess, how do you see the role of partnerships in K 12 education, kind of evolving over the next 5-10, years?
Tony 21:39
So in my little world, the biggest thing that I’m seeing is a real interest in work based learning. So we might think of and most commonly, work based learning is thought of these cumulative experiences at the end of high school where a student gets an opportunity to go and, like, have an authentic work experience. Maybe it’s for a quarter a semester, and they get credit, maybe they also get paid for it, and it’s a culminating experience. There’s a lot of interest, particularly within the career and technical education world, in developing and in increasing the number of students who have access to work based learning. So that, to me, is kind of the opening to looking and thinking more about work based learning as a continuum, where maybe it starts in younger grades, where an industry mentor is coming into a classroom and giving students advice on a project they’re working on. So it starts smaller, lower stakes, and it starts to build up some of the trust with the students, some of the trust with the trust with the mentors and the institutions themselves, so that more students are ready and excited for Work Based Learning at the end of their high school career. So that’s what I see happening. Okay, all across the US, work based learning is like the new thing, but we’re not going to be successful if we’re not thinking about it first as developing these mutual partnerships, if we’re only looking at the end as this transactional things that happens where my students go to you, and you know you take care of them, and we’ll figure it out later. You know, you can’t leave that stuff up to chance. Students maybe have a good experience a bad experience. Employers may have a good experience or a bad experience, and as a result, partnerships aren’t sustainable. Students aren’t getting what they could out of it. If we’re starting by thinking about partnerships, then what will emerge are really meaningful work based learning experiences across the continuum, including those sort of Capstone experiences that maybe are most familiar to us.
Kara 24:22
Yeah, well, and I feel like those are so meaningful. Just, I mean, just giving kids exposure to different opportunities and options for the future.
Tony 24:35
So students get exposure. They find out what they like. They find out what they don’t like. Yeah, and in those environments, right? One way we could think of it as that, you know, we want to prepare students all the way along so they can be successful, but maybe being in that authentic environment. It is what likes lights to spark for a child, yeah, and that’s their moment where they see, wow, I gotta step it up, or they shine in ways that a school environment never allowed them to shine. So I’m tend to be a little wary of conversations about where, oh, we need to limit work based learning. There are these concerns. Are those concerns? No, we need to have partnerships throughout so that all of our students have the opportunity to experience sort of the joy and the aha moments that come along with work based learning.
Kara 25:37
So are there obstacles to consider when trying to create partnerships, and how can educators and the community leaders work through those?
Tony 25:50
That that’s a really important question. So let me start one of my mentors, he liked to say, Never let reality stand in the way of what’s possible. So I like to be optimistic about what’s possible, but I think it’s also important to be pragmatic about some of these challenges. I’ve hinted at some of them. So just to be really clear, there are like, just like structural challenges, right, where mentors can come and work with students is not typically where students can work with mentors. So there is travel, time, travel distance. You know, if you don’t, if your students don’t have access to transportation, how do they get out into the community, if you only have these short 30 minute blocks, you know, at odd times during the day, can your industry mentors get to you? So time is a challenge. There’s ways and cultures of working right. If you’re in industry, you might be in a more fast based, project based environment, and if you’re a classroom teacher, you might not check your email between 830 and three, so a whole lifetime maybe has come for your partners, and you weren’t able to participate in that because you were busy doing what you needed to do to be present with your class and Your students. So that’s a challenge. There are cultural misconceptions about, you know, in STEM fields, about, you know, engineers or scientists or technologists, there are cultural misconceptions about teachers and teaching. What I’ll go back to is, what I said at the beginning is that the way to overcome these barriers is to develop trust, to create small opportunities to see the magic happen. And when we can do that, the way we overcome these barriers is going to depend on the local assets in your backyard. But when you start to trust each other and believe in the power of partnerships for your students sake, you take the time to figure out how to do it. That’s been the lesson that I’ve seen time and time again. So I hear folks all around the country who are excited to be a partner who are excited to invite partners in. And what I would encourage you to do is to start with small moments where these external adults can connect with students and have an eye towards building something robust, but know that it’s going to start small and it’s going to grow and problem solve over time.
Kara 28:46
I like that, and I also think that we should touch on the fact that these partnerships don’t necessarily have to offer students an opportunity to build X, like, just like, I guess, going back to the zoo enrichment things, that is the coolest project ever. And Sam talks about that on his episode, which I think if you want to go back and listen to it was like in November, maybe. But it could even be something at like, the students are designing, like, a logo for a local business, or trying to, like, solve a problem. So maybe you have, like, a teeny Mom and Pop, like T shirt store in town, and they’re struggling with X, whatever it is, and they don’t have time to deal with that, because there’s only say, two on the staff. That’s something they could give to the students to come up with a problem and work through, like that whole engineer design process piece, right? I mean, that kind of it doesn’t have. To be,
Tony 30:00
this doesn’t have to be a big production. This doesn’t have the expensive it doesn’t have to be a ground breaking project. But right, if you start with, you know, that small business, I bet that the students, maybe it’s a business that they walk by or drive by, or if it’s, you know, the T Shirt Company. You know, maybe some of them wear their T shirts. They know about it. They’re bought in these. These are people that they care about. And a lot of times in smaller communities where it is, you know, more small or medium sized businesses, they maybe have those specific tasks. They don’t have an HR department that can roll out a big six week internship program do something meaningful, and they can also do something tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, and sort of some of the smallness gives a lot of flexibility and autonomy that maybe can be an advantage too. Yeah,
Kara 31:01
yeah. Sorry. I just thought that was, like, kind of important to point out. Is that too it? You can think about it in all facets of getting involved within the community. So, you know, no matter Yeah, how big or how small,
Tony 31:17
yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, you know, again, you know, my kind of STEM lands as always. You know, we go with the scientists and technologists and engineers, but right, these are full people who have, like, a wide suite of interests or hobbies or skills or expertise that may have nothing to do with their actual occupation. Yeah. So being able to open up doors and connect with folks that way is really exciting and helpful too. You know, I want to have the playbook. I want to have the prescription. If you just do x, y and z, then you’re gonna have these amazing partnerships. Are gonna last forever, and it’s gonna transform student learning. But I really, you know, just want to come back to the idea that there are North Stars out there that can point us in directions. That’s part of what I’ve been writing about. You know, let’s think about what’s possible, but knowing what’s in your backyard, what are your assets, what are your strengths, and how can you start to connect your own dots? That’s how you get to those robust and enduring partnerships. So I’m sorry I don’t have the playbook, but I don’t know.
Kara 32:43
Here’s the build it and they will come,
Tony 32:46
yeah, yeah. But there’s, there’s so much. When you start doing this work, your students light up, your educators light up, your external partners light up. And then you start to solve those big accountability level problems like high school graduation rates or student other post secondary types of outcomes, and that comes but to get your community connected through these partnerships, I think, is really worth the investment of your time?
Kara 33:21
Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. And I think it’s just yeah that this movement or this shift toward this is exciting really,
Tony 33:33
yeah, yeah. I really hope that folks can can come into this sort of as these policy wind shift, and we can come in with an open mind and really think about what engages our young people. How do they want to get connected, you know, locally and connected to their learning in the classroom, and that partnerships can be one avenue to explore that that really makes that possible.
Kara 34:01
Yeah, I think that’s great. Are there any resources you would point teachers to if they like, really want to learn more? Or,
Tony 34:11
yeah, what? I can share a couple of resources. So I have some some writing that I can share some case studies of some of those North Stars. I think that might be helpful to imagine what’s possible. There are some national organizations that are excited about helping folks get started on this pathway for next generation learning, big picture learning. NAF used to be national academies foundation. There are many others that are excited about working on the systems level in supporting you on this. Journey, but really, again, it’s about starting small. If we’re going to change systems, it can feel overwhelming, but there’s small things that you can do, and you can do them tomorrow, and that’s invite a partner into your classroom. Or if you’re that partner and you want to get excited, ask a teacher you know, are your students? Are students doing any projects? Love to see maybe there’s some ways we can connect and start there.
Kara 35:31
Yeah, that’s great. Thank you so much for such a great conversation. Tony,
Tony 35:36
Yeah, my pleasure, and I would love to if any listeners want, want to connect and talk more. I’m always looking for other folks that I can share and uplift your work, or if you’re, if you’re, if you’re facing some of those obstacles and just want to talk them through. I’m happy to do that as well.
Kara 35:55
Yeah, that’s great. That’s great. And all your, I guess your contacts and stuff will be on our website, like, I guess, with the show notes.
Tony 36:06
Perfect. That’s wonderful.
Kara 36:09
So, yeah, cool. Thank you.
Tony 36:13
Yeah, thank you, my pleasure. And you know, again, get started something small. Do it tomorrow.
Kara 36:21
I love it.
Caryn 36:22
Thank you so much for listening to this episode. We hope you found our discussion interesting and insightful. Don’t forget to check out the show notes on our website, where you’ll find more information about today’s guest resources we mentioned, and information on earning contact hours for listening.
Kara 36:37
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share it with your network and check us out at for the love of edtech.org, this podcast is produced by SOITA, the Southwestern Ohio Instructional Technology Association, in partnership with think TV and CET, the local PBS stations in Dayton and Cincinnati. Until next time, keep exploring new ways to empower your students through tech, and we’ll catch you in the next episode.