Reimagining Out-of-School Learning: A Conversation with Daniel Santangelo

Intro  

Welcome to another edition of inspired stories where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes, how they’ve overcome adversity, and explore current challenges they’re facing.

Anthony Codispoti (11:37.612)
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codaspote, and today’s guest is Daniel Santangelo, Director of Extended Day and Enrichment at Walpole Public Schools in Walpole, Massachusetts, which is southwest of Boston. He oversees the development and implementation of high quality, out of school time programs that enhance student learning and wellbeing.

He collaborates with all stakeholders to design and deliver engaging activities that align with the district’s goals and standards. He is also the founder of Motivated, where he leverages his expertise in out-of-school time as an educational consultant, providing guidance and support to private and public school-based enrichment programs. He helps clients generate and maintain new programs, manage and train staff, ensure quality control and continued education.

and improve program efficiency and outcomes. Daniel has a proven track record of success in the ed tech, education, private and nonprofit sectors with skills in data driven insights, stakeholder relationships and strategic growth. He has a bachelor’s in arts history from Bridgewater State University and a master’s in education leadership and administration from Fitchburg State University. Now, before we get into all that good stuff,

Today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cashflow by implementing one of our proprietary programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at adbackbenefitsagency.com.

Now, back to our guest today, the director of Out of School Time Learning with Motivated, Daniel Santangelo. I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Daniel Santangelo (13:39.853)
Yeah, thanks for having me on. excited.

Anthony Codispoti (13:42.102)
Okay, so Daniel, let’s start with what first attracted you to the field of education.

Daniel Santangelo (13:49.463)
So the first kind of job that I had had when I was in high school was I worked for an afterschool program in Chiron Massachusetts. And that ended up being, I’d worked for the summer camp, I’d worked for the afterschool program while I was in college. And originally I was a double major in marketing and psychology. And I had it in my head that I was going to go, I was going to be this master marketer for some big company like Nike or something, make millions of dollars.

And then I realized I really don’t enjoy doing this. So I thought about what I did enjoy doing. had a great time working with the kids at the after school program. And so I kind of changed my trajectory and continued doing that through college. Eventually became a one-to-one aid for a student in a kindergarten classroom. Went on to get my

teaching license for moderate to severe disabilities for K through eight. Worked as a teacher at the middle school level four year. And that’s right around the time that COVID hit. right after that an opportunity opened up where can be a district coordinator for after school. And that just kind of continued on to the position that I’m in now.

Anthony Codispoti (15:08.846)
So what were you seeing in your work experiences that led you to start your own consulting business?

Daniel Santangelo (15:16.023)
So one thing that I noticed as a student, so growing up, I went to public school, I went to a charter school, I went to a private school, all throughout different points in my kind of career as a student, I guess. And at least for me, I was always very bored in school. And then on the other end as a teacher, I tried to make it a point to help students not be bored in school.

And it was very difficult to get students engaged. That seemed to be the biggest issue is how do we maintain the engagement? And that’s not the fault of teachers. That’s not the fault of schools. That’s just the reality of the world that we live in. Pretty much everything is more interesting than having someone talk to you all day long, right? A lot of students now they have phones. They’re getting updates almost constantly. It’s a much more digital world, much more stimulating world.

And so for me, the question became, you rather than looking and focusing on the negatives of the test scores are saying this, the engagement levels are saying that I want to try to start taking a more proactive approach and understanding why we’re having the issues that we’re having that. And that’s beyond engagement levels of students too. there’s all kinds of issues like teacher retention. and if you really dig into stuff around that,

There’s teacher pay as compared to inflation rates over the last 20 years. Our standardized test scores compared to the amount that we’re spending on education don’t line up. And so I really wanted to dig into those and understand, you know, why is that? But once I had that understanding, helped share that with all the stakeholders involved, parents and families included.

so that communities and schools and programs could start making more informed and more responsible decisions while still getting the outcomes that they’re hoping for with student engagement and performance.

Anthony Codispoti (17:27.051)
So you make a good point that almost anything is more interesting than sitting there and having somebody talk to you all day. Do you have a different model in mind?

Daniel Santangelo (17:38.797)
Well, if I had that, you know, I’d be doing something a lot different, I think. But that’s kind of what I’m looking at. I’m looking at different models. While I was in college, I had a professor. First education class I ever took. I forget his name, which is too bad. I really wish I could remember. But first day of class, I walked in, he wasn’t wearing any shoes. And, you know, everyone’s kind of like, all right, like.

That’s a little weird, but who knows? You know, just that’s this thing. And then he pulled his shoes out from under his desk and whipped them at the wall. Everyone sits up. Whoa. You know what’s going on? And he didn’t say anything about it. Didn’t even address it, but he had everybody’s attention. And he asked everybody. Are you all paying attention? Everyone was like, yeah, because, you know, we’re sitting on the edge of our seats. Like, why did this guy throw his shoes at the wall? And they just went about talking about, you know, educational theory and stuff and never addressed it.

But from that point forward, I walked in every day like, what’s he gonna do today? Right? So am I telling people to start throwing shoes at walls? No. I think the point of that is he found a way to get people engaged right away by being a little different, right? Being unique and being himself. And there was a video that he showed on the first day of class. It was an RSA animated video.

of Ken Robinson talking about education. Ken Robinson, he actually passed away a few years ago, I think he had cancer, but I really found everything that he had to say very interesting. I really dove into, I read all of his books, I watched all of his videos. And he had this idea that there’s two pillars in education. There’s the economic pillar, and then there’s the more societal pillar. And, you know,

He explains very well how those two tie together. And ultimately his opinion was that the reason that education had become so disingenuous and not engaging for our students is because we had modeled it after the industrial revolution, right? Everyone was broken up by age. was all bells and whistles. Once you hear a bell, you go to this location and do this job, et cetera, et cetera. And his opinion was that.

Daniel Santangelo (20:06.707)
education as a whole had lost the ability to engage, you know, the human spirit, essentially, right? It was no longer this engaging thing. It was more of a rigid boxed out checks and balances type deal. I agree with a lot of what he says, you know, I’m kind of trying to form my own opinion based off of that.

But definitely something that I found very interesting and that really influenced my kind of progression through my own thoughts and analysis of the system as a whole.

Anthony Codispoti (20:45.464)
So, Daniel, define for us what is out of school time? Is it before, is it after, and why is it so important?

Daniel Santangelo (20:53.847)
So out of school time is before school, after school, school vacations, the weekends, the summer, anything that’s not happening during the scheduled learning hours of the school day, which would typically be eight to three, seven to two, whatever it might be. The reason that it’s important is a lot of, and this has been pretty much agreed on.

for a while in education. In order to get the best results in a school district, a school community, you need buy-in and engagement, not only from the students, but from the community as well. Students perform better when their parents are more involved in their education. Students perform better when their community has different levels of support.

for families that might be economically disadvantaged, maybe both parents work and you need that extra level of support so that students can have child care but also receive access to academic support outside of school, right? Homework help, tutoring, things like that. There’s also the social piece and the communal piece of it where if you can create this identity and culture and community where we value education, we value our students, students internalize that.

And as a result, you start to see increased outcomes. So the benefit of out of school time is you have the social benefit and you also have the academic benefit for the students that extends beyond the classroom and creates a more.

Daniel Santangelo (22:42.263)
whole student approach is how they would word it, right? So you’re identifying the social needs of the student, the academic needs of the student, and also the communal needs of the student as well.

Anthony Codispoti (22:54.082)
So before we get into your consulting company Motivated, I’d like to hear a little bit about your role in the Walpole City Schools there in Massachusetts. What is it that you do?

Daniel Santangelo (23:08.301)
So I started in Walpole last year as my first full year with the school district. This is my second year. And so we run before and after school programs at four elementary schools in the district. And we have about a little over 500 students enrolled in our programs. One thing that we were looking at

Anthony Codispoti (23:33.622)
in your program, not meaning 500 students enrolled in the school, but somebody who’s enrolled in either before school or after school activities. Okay.

Daniel Santangelo (23:41.941)
Right, and those are students that are. Their students in the district, right? They go to the schools in the district. But a little over 500 are enrolled in our programs either before or after school.

Anthony Codispoti (23:55.79)
Okay.

Daniel Santangelo (23:57.357)
And so one of the things that we looked at from last year coming to this year was how do we increase that community engagement piece and how do we relay the message to our students of, know, what does it mean to be a good member of your community, an active member of your community, a supportive member of your community? And so we built out a community engagement curriculum, so to say, that we’re working through this year where

families can come in and tell us, you we’d love to raise awareness around this subject, whatever it may be. So we’re doing things like, we have a senior center in town. So the students make Christmas ornaments and Christmas cards for the seniors in the senior center. We have letters that we give to first responders in town.

the students can make. do food drives, we do paper good drives, we do a year long partnership with the Ronald McDonald House where students can bring in pop tabs. Those pop tabs then are recycled. And I believe it’s like a penny per pop tab or something like that. And all that money goes to the Ronald McDonald House charity. help families that have

medical bills they can’t pay, that may need to travel for medical bills for their children, stuff like that. And so just finding different ways to, you know, get the students to understand the world around them and giving them the opportunity to participate in that. You know, it’s all totally optional. We send out a newsletter every month to parents. We encourage parents to come into the program, see what their students are doing with, you know, in the program, but also with their friends at the program.

Right? So we’re trying to create more intentional touch points where families can get involved with their student so that it’s not, how was school today? And they’re like, I don’t know. Right? It’s they come in, they see that their student is building this tower out of blocks and they’re like, wow, that’s great. You know? And maybe they’re doing it with their friends or whatever it may be. And for me, I think that’s really important because the more intentional we can be about developing that relationship.

Anthony Codispoti (26:02.37)
Hmm.

Daniel Santangelo (26:15.605)
and creating those opportunities for parents to engage with their children and their children’s friends, I think that’s really beneficial to their overall development. So that’s kind of what we’re focused on right now.

Anthony Codispoti (26:28.058)
You said something that really struck a chord with me because I’ve got two boys who are eight and ten and Good kids, but every day I picked them up from aftercare and I asked them. Hey what went on at school today? I don’t know nothing What what happened at aftercare? I don’t know nothing and Like I can’t like I don’t have any idea what’s going on inside those walls I trust what’s going on inside those walls because I know the administrators. I know the teachers my kids have gone there for years

If I ask the teachers what’s going on, they’ll give me a picture. But yeah, I can’t really seem to get a dialogue going with my kids about how they see their experience taking place inside the school.

Daniel Santangelo (27:09.995)
Yeah, and I think that’s a big part of the problem, right, is…

When we talk about engagement in the public school system and before after school programs, the question that I have is how do you measure engagement? You know, do you have someone walking around with a clipboard going, yeah, looks like they’re paying attention, right? Like, how do you know, you know? So it’s a really, it’s a difficult thing to measure. there’s no standardized test for it. There’s no magic formula for it. It’s, it’s more things like what you just said, right? Like,

What are the answers that they’re giving? If the answer they’re giving is, I don’t know, maybe they weren’t as engaged as they could have been, right? So that’s one of the things that we try to address with our newsletter is when we send it out, we send it out once a month to families and we try to include pictures and we try to tell them what we’re going to be doing the next month. So that way parents can ask their students, you know.

did you do the turkey trot yet? Or did you do this? Or I saw a picture of you doing that. You know, that way the student could also still just say like, yeah, don’t, I don’t know, you know, who knows, but at least then there’s the opportunity to talk with specific things and hopefully we’re getting them engaged.

Anthony Codispoti (28:26.87)
And that is something that we found helpful in our home is that at least the teacher for my oldest son, they sent home like a weekly newsletter. Here’s what we’ve been working on. Here’s what we’re going to be working on. And so if I ask a very specific question of my son, like, Hey, how was that project that you guys did for social studies today? He’s how did you know about that? And then, and then that kind of starts a little bit of a conversation there. It almost feels like.

Daniel Santangelo (28:49.591)
Yeah, right.

Anthony Codispoti (28:55.806)
Because I hear what you’re saying if I’m asking the question and I’m not getting a very good answer could could be an indicator that they’re not very well engaged It also could be that I could come up with better questions to engage them like something very specific What you know, how was that project in social studies? Tell me about the math test that you took today Can you explain you know? multiplication that you guys are learning now things like that would you

Daniel Santangelo (29:21.281)
Yep. Right.

Anthony Codispoti (29:23.138)
Would you agree? Is there something that could be done to sort of prompt parents to ask those better questions?

Daniel Santangelo (29:31.745)
well, that’s actually something that I’m working or we’re working with, with our staff on right now, is my viewpoint of it is more, what could we do better as staff, as educators, as parents, as opposed to asking the question of, know, why aren’t our students paying attention? My point of view is what are we doing that’s not encouraging them to be as engaged as they could be.

Anthony Codispoti (30:00.75)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel Santangelo (30:01.439)
And I think like you just said, you made a great point because it’s the same way with adults too, right? If you’re not getting the answer that you’re looking for, maybe that person doesn’t have the answer, but maybe your question is also being poised the wrong way, right? You know, is there a better way you could ask that question? Were you specific enough? Did you ask about the right part of that question or was your question too general? Right? Like that’s

One thing that I’ve found with students at the elementary high school and the middle school level, actually the most at the high school level, I’m a wrestling coach also at the high school. You have to be very specific with high schoolers because otherwise you’re not going to get anything out of them, right? Everything’s just like, yeah, whatever. I don’t care. This, that, the other thing, right? But if you’re as specific as possible, especially if it’s something that you know that that particular student enjoys or is engaged with.

you’re probably a thousand times more likely to get some type of answer because it’s something that they enjoy talking about.

Anthony Codispoti (31:09.656)
What have you learned from COVID times and coming out of COVID times and maybe gaps that we’re seeing?

Daniel Santangelo (31:20.279)
So that’s one opinion of mine that…

Not everybody necessarily agrees with, I think it’s something that we need to spend a little bit more time looking at. One thing that you started hearing right away with COVID, I agree, it is a thing that happened was learning loss. You heard about learning loss a lot, right? How are we gonna measure the learning loss and all of this stuff? Because all students were at home, right, for varying amounts of time, but they were no longer in the classroom.

We have these Google classrooms, Zoom classrooms, stuff like that. One thing that I observed from it was that I had some ideas prior to COVID around our education kind of system. And what it was, was if you look at the spending of our education system in the country from 1999 to 2023, 2022,

We had a 1714 % increase when adjusted for inflation on educational spending. It’s a lot of money. We went from 6.4 billion in 1999 to 810 billion in 2021. At the same time, so you would think then, wow, right? Must be, right? With that much increase in spending, actually what you see is stagnation.

Anthony Codispoti (32:47.02)
We must be getting better results.

Daniel Santangelo (32:57.389)
across the board in math for the United States. We have not improved anywhere near the level that we should have. And you could say, well, maybe the test got harder. You should still see some improvement if the tests are harder, In reading, we’ve seen a couple decreases actually in our performance levels. So I think one thing from COVID was that that issue

was a little exasperated, right? It came to light a lot quicker. And because of that stagnation, the flaws in the system were a little bit more highlighted, right? And now the question so much isn’t why was there stagnation? was how do we overcome that stagnation and recover what there was learning loss. was, you know, the social piece of it that affected students.

and families, know, so now it’s how do we make up that lost ground? And for me, even more so how do we make up that lost ground, but do so in a way that’s sustainable for, you know, economically for our schools, our school districts and our families without increasing spending excessively and in a way that that isn’t going to be sustainable for the future of the district.

Anthony Codispoti (34:25.23)
My wife is a speech therapist in the local school district for preschool aged children. And coming out of COVID, she will echo a lot of the things that you’re talking about there because they saw more kids who needed special services and more severe cases than they’ve ever seen. And I don’t know that it’s quite tapered off yet. And so I asked her, said, why do you think this is the case? She’s like, kids were in isolation.

for a long time. That’s not good. And especially in the lower income school district that she’s in, you know, a lot of these kids would have been spotted earlier on as needing help that didn’t get noticed. That, you know, now they’re one, two, three, you know, years older than they would have been when they would have originally gotten spotted and sort of directed towards the resources that were available. So I’m kind of curious, Daniel, from your point of view.

you know, do you have ideas on what can help close that gap?

Daniel Santangelo (35:32.149)
Yeah, so there’s a couple, and this is where I spend a lot of my own kind of time personally looking at a lot of these issues. And I had the grand idea of, you know, I’m going to write a book and I’m going to make this book super easy to digest. And, you know, it’ll be a New York Times bestseller and all these parents, you know, buy it. I’m like three pages in. It’s very tough. So, yeah, I’m not going to, but, you know, it might.

Anthony Codispoti (35:54.924)
Don’t give up Daniel, we need this book.

Daniel Santangelo (36:01.761)
takes me about 30 more years to get there. So when I look at the issue overall, I try to look at it as a system, you know, and what are the different pieces of the system? And I think a big piece, and you’ve been, we’ve been seeing this in the news a lot the last few years, is teacher pay and teacher retention. So if you look at teacher pay, same thing from 1999 to 2022.

The average pay nationally, there’s all kinds of variables for it, Different cost of living in different states, but the average teacher pay was around $57,000. By 2022 is around $66,000. So you look at that, you’re okay, teachers getting paid more. That’s a 16 % increase over 23 years. At the same time, inflation increased by 80.6%.

Anthony Codispoti (36:58.732)
Wow.

Daniel Santangelo (36:59.469)
So you had a 16 % increase in pay, but you had an 80 % national increase in inflation. So teachers’ real money are actually making less now than they were then.

Anthony Codispoti (37:11.534)
quite a bit less than what you’re describing.

Daniel Santangelo (37:14.207)
Yeah. And you look at the re rising cost of higher education at the same time. If I’m looking at it from a cost value analysis as an individual that wants to go into education, it’s not very, you know, it’s not very lucrative, especially given the fact that the raises are not keeping up with inflation. And so you’ve seen a lot of school districts address this and a lot of states try to address this in the last year or two, which is awesome.

glad that it’s getting the attention that it is. And, you know, there’s different approaches to it. I’m not well versed enough to sit here and give a TED talk on that. But, you know, the fact that there is a honest effort to address that I think is important. At the same time, the highest level of teacher turnover is within the first five years of an educator’s career.

So you’re having these young people come into the field and then you’re having them transition out relatively quick. And so, you know, I think we really do need to look into that and address that. On the flip side, we also have to be mindful. School districts don’t have an unlimited amount of money to pay teachers. If they are going to increase, you know, their capacity to spend.

that’s going to directly affect the families in that community. You’re seeing a lot of places try to pass override, override votes in towns, right? So that they, the amount of property tax will go up and schools will then have more funding. That’s one approach, but you know, like I said, it’s important to keep the community in mind too, right? We don’t want to put too much of a burden on our families.

So it’s a very like sensitive and complex issue. But I do think that looking at a teacher pay is a good place to start and looking at, you know, the budget of the district as a whole or the budget of the program as a whole. And, you know, asking a very honest question, which is, are there ways that we could make our spending more efficient?

Daniel Santangelo (39:35.903)
you know, are there things that maybe we can go without for a little bit to be able to maintain some type of smaller increment of pay scale increases over a longer period of time? And, you know, that’s a difficult thing to do. And it’s a difficult conversation to have, I think, for a community because of

By and large, what I’ve kind of found is that lot of parents, lot of families don’t understand the education system, right? Most people don’t really know. They just think, yeah, it’s a school. My kid goes there, they learn, and then they come home and that’s good. But there are a lot of factors that go into that, a lot of funding sources. so finding a way to get people to…

understand that, be more educated in that, and make more informed decisions is, I think, a very important first step.

Anthony Codispoti (40:43.374)
So we kind of touched on this a little bit before, and I want to dig a little bit deeper and see if maybe you’ve got any thoughts on this, because I don’t think anybody would disagree with you that being able to attract the best teachers possible is nothing but great, right? We all had teachers that we thought were amazing growing up. We all had teachers that we couldn’t wait to get away from. Maybe you scarred us a little bit growing up. And I’m sure that the saying continues to exist today.

Daniel Santangelo (41:07.735)
Yep. Yep.

Anthony Codispoti (41:13.41)
good people, great people, and not so great people in every profession. And teachers is an especially important one, right? Because they are educating and helping to inform and helping to raise the next generation. So attracting great teachers, yes, 100 % on board. What can we do? Let me know, sign me up. But it also feels to me like there needs to be…

a bit of a fundamental change in the way that we approach education. I I forget the exact line that you used. Like nothing is more boring or uninteresting than having somebody talk to you all day. As grown adults, we feel the same way as kids who are, you know, they need to be moving. They need to be interactive. having them sit down at a desk all day and, know, mostly anyways, be talked to and lectured to. Yeah, it’s no wonder that

you know, maybe they’re not engaged and some of them aren’t super excited to get up and go every morning.

Daniel Santangelo (42:17.207)
So.

The simplest answer that I could get to this is.

A lot of times if you start to dig into this, you’ll hear a lot of people talk about the Scandinavian countries, right? And look at Sweden, Sweden’s students are performing so well. They’re teachers, you know, the profession as a whole. To become a teacher there is the same as becoming a lawyer here. It’s a very in-depth process. That scene is like a very noble profession. I think over the last…

four or five years, there’s been a discussion going on kind of nationally where people maybe don’t trust the schools, they don’t trust the teachers as much, know. So maybe getting that discussion a little bit more controlled and bring some respect back to the profession publicly could be great, but as far as getting students engaged,

If you look at educational theory, there’s, there’s, at least when I look at it, there’s John Dewey and there’s Howard Gardner. and they discussed direct instruction, which is, you know, two plus two equals four. Do that a hundred times, and then you’re going to know two plus two equals four.

Daniel Santangelo (43:43.211)
Then there’s the more holistic approach, which is, you know, if you want to know how a tree grows, plant a seed and watch it grow, right? Make a garden, watch it grow, put your hands in the dirt and really get out and engage with the world around you and learn from the world around

I think that both of those are very important, especially for different subjects, stuff like math, science, you want more direct instruction. Things like the arts and English or language, whatever that may be. You probably want a little bit more holistic of an approach. I always hated standardized tests. I was good at them because I just was good at taking tests. Yeah.

It’s not because I necessarily was better at any other thing. I just am a good test taker. There’s a real conversation going on about standardized tests and the benefits they have. And both sides have good points, you know, but it’s actually on the ballot today in Massachusetts if we should get rid of standardized tests in schools.

If you’re going to get rid of them, that’s fine. But I think if you’re going to get rid of them, there needs to be another way that we are able to still kind of measure the retention rates of our students, right?

Anthony Codispoti (45:11.692)
We have to know if what we’re doing is working or not. We have to have some way to objectively or subjectively measure it.

Daniel Santangelo (45:19.211)
Yeah. And, you know, we can’t just get rid of it and say, you know, we’ll figure it out as we go. I don’t think that’s the appropriate response. But what I do think is, is it’s very important that we take the time and think honestly about, you know, can we create alternative pathways in education? Because the system as it, as it works or as it’s working now doesn’t really work. Right. We know that we’ve seen that.

If it worked, we wouldn’t even be having the conversation. So project-based learning, I think is awesome. I think it’s really great. I think it’s amazing if you can integrate different subjects into the same type of project. Right. If you’re doing a project, say you’re, you’re building a tower or a bridge or something like that. Right. Can you have students sketch out that?

There’s your geometry, there’s your physics when you actually build the tower. Can you have them write out a proposal? Can you have them do a budget? How much is this going to cost? That kind of thing. Can you have them come up and do a presentation on that? Explain to the rest of group why they chose to build it this way. Articulate their thoughts into words. So now you’re getting into English standards, you’re getting into language standards, you’re getting into math standards, all through one assignment.

I think that’s really great. think if we can find a way to kind of create an ongoing student portfolio where let’s say you start that portfolio in second grade and that carries with you and now you’re in 10th grade, your 10th grade teacher can look at all the work that you’ve done since second grade, Measure, you know, the progress that was made, see where the errors were, see where the improvements were.

I think that’s one way that would really benefit a lot of students.

Daniel Santangelo (47:26.209)
How sustainable that is in terms of you know the logistics of it. I don’t know that’s well above my pay grid But if I get there at some point, I’ll put it in the book and I’ll share it with everybody And then the other piece of it too is you’re seeing a huge Kind of resurgence in What they call CTE career and technical education

A lot of families, a lot of students are really showing interest in that. And the last time we saw that was probably in the fifties. It was actually.

Allentown or Georgetown, Pennsylvania, it was in a Time magazine. had a six page spread on it, right? The high school opened up a soda shop. That’s what people used to do back in the day and say, I guess they drink pop. And so the kids would go in there, they’d work in the soda shop. They could come in, they could buy it. They built a garage on campus. And that was just, you know, part of their curriculum was students could.

could opt in to do that. And we’re seeing a lot of transition back towards that right now, which I think is interesting. And I think what’s most interesting about that is those students are engaged, right? Because they’re choosing to do that. They’re still learning, they’re still gaining the tools they need, but it’s their choice to do it. So how do we increase, you know,

student choice in what they’re doing and their own kind of autonomy in their education is very important while also still making sure that we do have some level of standards there so that you we can kind of ensure that at least a certain level of ability is met by the end of their tenure through the public school system.

Anthony Codispoti (49:28.719)
Daniel, what role, if any, you think AI either has in education today or should have in the future?

Daniel Santangelo (49:38.765)
I don’t know. AI is an incredible thing.

Daniel Santangelo (49:48.391)
It’s, you know, Thomas Jefferson came out when, when, moving pictures, right? Like the movies first came out and he said, you know, this is going to revolutionize education. not Thomas Jefferson, sorry. Edison. Edison came out and said that, and he was like, textbooks are going to be gone. He wrote, he wrote a whole article in it. he’s like, textbooks are gone. We’re not even going to need teachers anymore.

I think it was a little off the mark on that one. Right. But, there’s a great book called failure to disrupt that kind of goes into this, right? Every time there’s a new technological sort of advancement, we get really excited about it. We’re like, this is going to change the way everything works. and we tend to overreach a little bit in our, in our hopes and our anticipation of that.

The role that AI plays in education right now, there’s some really great stuff. You know, the Khan Academy is using AI pretty effectively in terms of tutoring, right? And that could be a great way for students to get a little bit of supplemental help with those things that involve more direct instruction, right? This is how it works. The system doesn’t change.

right? It can analyze where you made the mistake.

On the flip side, like I said earlier, the areas that we’ve seen, you know, the most, the biggest dip in terms of standardized test results are reading and writing and reading comprehension. I’d be very wary of using AI in that area, especially because of the results that we’ve seen. Right? So now we’re going to make it even easier for people to not even write an essay, but turn in an essay.

Anthony Codispoti (51:50.926)
you

Daniel Santangelo (51:51.277)
You know, you don’t have to read the book anymore. Even when I was in high school, you know, you could go on Spark Notes, you know, and what happened in chapter two of A Tale of Two Cities and, know, would give you the highlight points and, you know, your teacher would look at it and they’d go, well, I’ll give you a C because I know that you didn’t read it, right? Now teachers are putting in essays from students into like a reverse AI

you know, system and it says, yeah, no, this is an AI essay. And then students on the other end now can write an essay on AI, put that AI essay into a different system that humanizes the AI essay. And so it’s kind of this like war of attrition right now where it’s like, and this is always how students are is they work harder to not have to do the work. You know, like it’s like, you could have just.

Anthony Codispoti (52:48.344)
Well, we want the shortcut now, right? I want it easy now. And as human beings, we’re like this. Even as grown adults, we’re like this. We don’t always see what the benefit would be for us down the road. The students looking for the shortcut now just want to get done with it it’s boring and they want to go play video games. But they don’t realize that they’re losing out on a skill that’s going to be helpful to them later on. Yeah.

Daniel Santangelo (52:50.656)
Right.

Daniel Santangelo (53:12.863)
Yeah, but is it? You know, mean, part of me also.

Anthony Codispoti (53:16.238)
Well, I think the ability to consume and synthesize and understand information is going to be important in virtually anything that you do in life. So even though you might be able to get a shortcut on a book report, you’re not sort of building that mental skill, that mechanism to be able to do that with information that’s going to come at you in a different format down the road. That’s my take.

Daniel Santangelo (53:42.817)
Yes, no, I don’t disagree with that at all. What I think is often overlooked though is

You know, it’s, well, I asked you to do it this way. You didn’t do it this way. And so, you know, you’re wrong. I think a big piece of the puzzle and part of the problem here is, critical thinking. and so AI is not going away. You know, and this is one thing that I kind of struggle with as I, as I’m getting older, you know, I’m almost 30 now. So, you know, yeah, getting up there. And, so.

You know, I think of, had a teacher in high school, math teacher, huge guy, big, loud, you know, force of nature, man. And he would, every day he would say, if he called on you and you gave him the answer, it wasn’t good enough. You had to come up on the board. had to explain to everybody as you did it out loud, how you got to your answer. And he said, you will not participate in mindless memorization in my classroom every day.

same thing. You will not participate in mindless memorization. And then I would go home and I would open up to the back of the book and I would just write the answers in because that’s where they were. And I kind of see that as, you know, AI for kids now, right? They know the answers there. And they’re going through, if you think of it on one way, you could say, well, they’re taking a shortcut, right? They’re not doing the work. If you look at it,

And from a different perspective, you could say, they’re using the tools that are in front of them, which later in life, I mean, I use AI. You know, that’s what I do. I use Google all the time. I use chat GPT. I think it’s cool. I think it’s interesting. And it synthesizes data way quicker than I ever could. so am I saying that students should not do their work? Absolutely not. I’m not saying that they should do their work. Important. do their work.

Daniel Santangelo (55:52.311)
for the reasons that you just said. But there is a piece of it that I think is important. We try to find a way to…

Daniel Santangelo (56:03.945)
not so much encourage, but more, you know, relate to students. I understand why you’re doing this. And if we can turn that into a positive somehow, where it’s, you know, students using this technology that’s not going to go away, but building that into a process that encourages them to think critically and take that information and do something else with it. I think that could be pretty beneficial.

Anthony Codispoti (56:33.56)
So rather than, if I’m hearing you right, Daniel, rather than trying to hide or run away from some of these tools, it’s like, hey, this is a tool that’s going to be here and continue to be here going forward. Let’s instruct them on the right ways to use it and leverage this to help make their work and their output better.

Daniel Santangelo (56:54.657)
Yeah. And a lot of districts are doing that where they’re coming up with, you know, standards built around responsible use of technology and AI. I haven’t seen any, you know, electives or classes that are, are kind of built out around using AI. but I think that that could be an interesting angle to take with these students.

And honestly, a lot of them could probably teach a lot of the teachers more about it. And again, that could create a very intentional touch point where then a real relationship is being built between the teacher and the student, if there’s a way to get the parents involved.

Technology, the rate in which technology is growing and improving is only going to be more more astronomical year over year. I can’t even imagine where it’s going to be in the next 10 years, right? And how that’s going to affect our schools. But I think that, you know, we do need to embrace it to a degree, but we need to make sure that we’re being intentional and responsible in how we do that. And the more that we can involve and encourage our students.

be a part of that process the better.

Anthony Codispoti (58:17.388)
Let’s shift gears now and I want to hear more about your consulting business motivated. Tell me what it is that you do there.

Daniel Santangelo (58:25.303)
So, well, actually speaking about AI, one of the things that I tried doing, and luckily I have some friends that know how to code, so they were able to help me with this, but I went into AI and I said, hey, chat GPT, build me out the code to take a PDF and turn it into a spreadsheet, like Google’s Google Sheet or Excel spreadsheet. And it shot me back within a minute, some language that I don’t understand.

And so I sent it one of my friends and I said, is this feasible? this work? He said, almost. He fixed it up. And so one of the things for after school programs or childcare programs is if they’re going to accept funding and depending on what state they’re from, they need to follow very specific guidelines on how to do that. And if you’re not familiar with those guidelines, they can be very convoluted, very difficult to navigate.

And there’s not a lot of people that really have an understanding of those because the standards for those are different than the standards from school day. And so I put that system out and now it’s very easy for me to navigate any of the 50 states as take the PDF and it transfers right to a spreadsheet. And most of them are pretty similar. But then I can look at that. You know, I can say here’s exactly what you need to do to get licensed.

Here’s what you need for your staff. Here’s what you need for your facility. Here’s what you need. Some states require that you have a two year operating budget on hand before you even license, right? So that they can make sure that you’re being economically responsible and your program isn’t just gonna close and then leave all these families without childcare. So that’s kind of one piece of the service that I offer. The second piece is that

Out of school time programs are fundamentally different than programs during the day. They tend not to be academic programs, right? We tend not to have a curriculum where it’s you have to do X, Y, and Z. The goal is to keep students safe and to keep students engaged and to build out and build on what was taught during the school day in that more kind of holistic, engaging, and less structured environment. And so that’s kind of what I offer to

Daniel Santangelo (01:00:53.141)
all these other programs and districts and all of anyone that may be involved in it is I can give you a model, a template for staffing, for pay scale, for everything that will work. I can also help you navigate the licensing should you choose to get licensed. And then, you know, I can also make sure that over the first year or two years we’re checking in, we’re creating

PD opportunities for your staff. If you are having trouble finding staffing, let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about ways that we can increase your reach, that we can target certain candidates if you need a certain candidate for a certain position. How do you communicate with families, especially for programs that aren’t affiliated with a school district. They may not understand the language that families are hearing from the school day.

Right? And you want that language to be the same. You want to make sure that your staff are responding to students in the same way. And so what kind of acting as a liaison for these private companies that may not have that vocabulary. So those are the three kind of biggest areas that I tend to help people navigate and consult on.

Anthony Codispoti (01:02:13.344)
And so the folks that you’re consulting with, they typically public schools, private schools? Do they fall in a different bucket?

Daniel Santangelo (01:02:21.677)
So a lot of them would be for-profit startups that might run after-school programs. That’s something that you’re starting to see that sector is starting to grow. As districts try to navigate through the loss of funding from COVID, it may be more economically feasible for them to outsource an after-school program, right? So that’s one area.

Public school districts, I don’t tend to work within a consulting capacity too much because if they’re doing it in-house, they have someone like me who works for the district already. And then the other piece would be like nonprofits, like the Boys and Girls Club, YMCA, stuff like that. If they’re being brought into a district as a vendor, or if they’re running something on site or opening up a new location, then I would come in and help make sure that

they’re dotting all their I’s and crossing all their T’s for their licensing and things like that.

Anthony Codispoti (01:03:23.864)
So you talked a little bit about one of the things that you could help with. If folks are having trouble staffing there at a school time program that you might be able to help there. What kinds of levers have you seen people pull to bring folks in and retain them?

Daniel Santangelo (01:03:41.751)
So pay is one of them, right? There’s a couple of different models that you could use in terms of the staffing. Because of the hours that the programs typically run, they’re a little different, right? Sometimes they’re from seven to nine and then three to six or something like that. And a lot of people don’t really want to work three hours a day, two hours a day, or a split schedule of five hours a day.

So then the question becomes, is there a way that this person can become a full-time staff member, which benefits them because now they have a more stable income and benefits the program because now you have more consistent staffing. So it’s easier to control any variables that you may have because you have the same person or people working in the morning and the afternoon. They’re using the same language. They’re performing the same way. When you train them,

You have more control over, you know, the techniques that you’re using, things like that. So that’s one approach. The other approach that I’ve found is pretty useful is looking in the area around where the program runs and reaching out to colleges that have education programs. Especially if you’re working with a school district, that creates a built-in incentive, right?

You come work at this after school program. I know at some point in order for you to graduate, you’re going to have to do student teaching. So is there a way we can work with the school district that when you approach the point where you have to do student teaching, we can get you into a classroom to do your student teaching? Because now you’re already on site, you’re getting your student teaching done. And once you finish that during the day, you’re already there to work the afternoon or whatever. You’re there in the morning, vice versa.

The benefit of that is you also have employees at that point that are getting the most up to date best practices, all of that stuff in real time. They’re gaining experience, you’re gaining staff members that have a more in-depth kind of insight to the field. Typically you can pay them not as much as a licensed teacher at the point, right? But then if they do get their license, they do stay in the district.

Daniel Santangelo (01:06:04.767)
Now you have someone who’s a licensed teacher who can work at your program. And then creating those pipelines and relationships with the local colleges so that every year you continue to get that staffing. Because you know that college isn’t going away.

Anthony Codispoti (01:06:23.868)
Daniel, completely shifting gears. What’s a fun or interesting fact most people wouldn’t know about you?

Daniel Santangelo (01:06:31.021)
a funner and interesting fact most people wouldn’t know about me.

I’m pretty open book, Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti (01:06:42.498)
What’s a fun or interesting fact I don’t know about you?

Daniel Santangelo (01:06:46.615)
Funny fact you don’t know about me. Well, you know that I recently started golfing and you know that I’m not that good at it. Because we touched on that earlier. You know that I coach wrestling. I have a six month old daughter.

Anthony Codispoti (01:06:59.502)
Congratulations.

Daniel Santangelo (01:07:00.885)
Yep, that’s pretty fun, very interesting.

Anthony Codispoti (01:07:04.546)
Are you sleeping yet? Is she sleeping yet?

Daniel Santangelo (01:07:06.949)
She’s yeah, since like, we, we, everyone asked me that question. And it must mean that I’m very lucky because she just has slept through the night almost consistently since she was born. Yeah. That’s what everyone keeps saying. Yeah. So that is a very fun and interesting fact right there, you know.

Anthony Codispoti (01:07:21.09)
That’s awesome. Yep. You’re one of the anomalies. Good for you.

Anthony Codispoti (01:07:31.534)
I just have one more question for you, Daniel, but before I ask it, I want to let people know the best way to get in touch with you. What would that be?

Daniel Santangelo (01:07:39.785)
The best way to get in touch with me would be if it’s for consulting purposes. They could look me up on LinkedIn. I’m pretty active there. Or they could send an email to my consulting email address, which is asostconsulting at gmail.com.

Anthony Codispoti (01:08:00.546)
Great. Any reason people might want to contact you for your Walpose City Schools position? The work that you do there?

Daniel Santangelo (01:08:08.013)
If they wanted to reach out to me for that or if they just had any questions and they think that I may be able to help them with their program, I’m always willing to help people. That email address is desantangelo at wallpole.k12.ma.uf.

Anthony Codispoti (01:08:27.99)
We’ll have both of those email addresses in the show notes, folks, as well as a link to his LinkedIn page. So last question for you, Daniel. What do you think the big changes are that are coming to your space in the next couple of years?

Daniel Santangelo (01:08:44.013)
Specifically for the out of school time space, I think one thing that you’re going to see a lot of is, and this will tie into school districts as well. I think what you’re going to see is just kind of a fundamental change in the approach of the entire model and system. You’re going to see a pretty active push for community engagement, which I think is great.

you know, more family involvement. I think that you’re going to see an increase in need in these programs. Year over year, we’re seeing more and more students and more and more families need these services. And so as that continues to grow, you know, you’ll see more opportunities for both private and public childcare before and after school. And I think you’re going to see, hopefully, a more

intentional attempt at partnerships between companies like, you know, Mathnesium, Kuma and stuff like that, those tutoring services and ways that they can push into these programs, whether it be digitally or in person to help students kind of deal with that learning loss from COVID that we talked about.

Anthony Codispoti (01:10:06.626)
Well, Daniel, I want to be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.

Daniel Santangelo (01:10:12.929)
Yeah, thanks for having me on. had a good time.

Anthony Codispoti (01:10:15.704)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories Podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.