—Systemic change begins with personal change—
Jaime Casap is the Chief Education Evangelist at Google. Jaime evangelizes the potential of digitalization as an enabling capability in pursuit of promoting inquiry-based learning models. Jaime collaborates with school systems, educational organizations, and leaders focused on building innovation into our education policies and practices.
In addition to his role at Google, Jaime serves as an advisor to dozens of organizations focused on learning, skill development, and the future of work. He is the coauthor of “Our First Talk About Poverty,†as a way to talk to children about poverty. Jaime helped launch the Phoenix Coding Academy, a public high school in Phoenix, AZ, focused on computer science as part of an inquiry-based learning model. He teaches a 10th grade communication classes at the school. He also guest lectures at Arizona State University.
He speaks on education, digitalization, innovation, generation z, and the future of work at events around the world.
Jaime and my second conversation is enjoyable and challenging. It was different than usual because for whatever reason we're talking about views on environment, personal action, education, and so on, but I didn't get to the personal challenge I like to. It was enjoyable because we're both into it for exchange, education, and understanding. Challenging because we have to figure out where the other is coming from. We start this conversation where we ended the last one, which is each putting forward his view. Getting and understanding another's view takes time, especially while trying to make yours available for the other to get and understand. Probably a third party will get and understand both faster and easier than either party. We end up at what will be a starting point for a third conversation. Reaching there, I suspect we'll say things that you've heard before---I'm sure he and I have both heard most of the other's view but not talked it through. Most of the conversation I felt he was asking what people were doing to point out its futility. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't, but at the close I thought he was actually asking. As I said, I think there are scales of disaster and we can avoid the worst. Actually, I think everything we do can decrease suffering for others. Anyway, I think we'll start next time with talking strategy.
“Don’t ask kids what they want to be when they grow up. Ask them what problem they want to solve.†Jaime explains what his title of Google's "Education Evangelist" means, how he got it, and how it results in him advancing education globally. We talk about education when student-driven, how that paradigm differs from what nearly all schools now do. Also how it is everywhere in life. He gives an insider's view of Google, how it reacted and transitioned from the pandemic, physically on the inside of its buildings. The most exciting part of the conversation comes at the end, when our conflicting views on the environment, the future, and technology build to a crescendo of disagreement, but also curiosity, but not checkmating each other. It's difficult to stop a conversation in the middle, so sorry you'll have to wait for our next conversation, but we've scheduled it. Disagreement happens any time two people's values differ, which means between any two people. I loved that we knew points of disagreement but instead of trying to defeat each other, we learned. I talk to a lot of people with similar views to what he expressed, but my experience so far has been that they are closed to other views. I suspect they see that resistance in me, I can't tell. With Jaime I felt we were looking for understanding the other's view, which I value.