The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 401: Brent Haken—A Farmer is Fixing it

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

The former farmer and lifelong educator works as director of the Oklahoma Department of Career and Technology Education (CTE) where he brings his get-it-done farming mindset to education. Brent discusses how Oklahoma's Central Tech is using competition to help prepare students for real-world opportunities and focusing on a mastery of skill rather than a time-based curriculum. 

Hey, guys, it's the way I heard it. And what we have for you today is what you call a very special episode of the way I heard it. It's called A Farmer Is Fixing It. Chuck, tell us all about it. I knew you were going to do that. Well, you see, Mike, the thing about this one is that I wasn't there when you recorded this. So I don't know a whole lot about it as yet. Well, when I say it's a very special episode, I mean, it's very special for that reason.

in part. But also, the timing is just something I couldn't ignore. Microworks will be 16 years old on Labor Day. And in real time, that's just about a week from now. So this would be our Labor Day episode. I think it's episode 400. Is that right, Jeff? That is wrong.

But I'll tell you what it is. It is episode 401. 401. Well, file it under, who cares what number it is. But it's a conversation that I absolutely love to have in part because I had no idea I was going to have it. The backstory is this. I was in Oklahoma filming a new tranche of materials with my friends over at OERB, the Oklahoma Energy Resource Board. And in the course of this year's campaign,

we are tying in a lot of the messages to trade schools because, you know, there's a ton of opportunity in the energy industry and the people who are pursuing those opportunities need to learn a trade. So it's a great thing for our foundation, but it's also a really fun way to combine forces with some people who are on our side in this whole conversation about skills training. Anyway, I'm in the middle of the state at a tech college that I had never heard of before called Central Tech. Central Tech, yes. And I'm just getting a tour and I'm getting kind of agitated as the tour goes on because I'm just meeting example after example of what I think ought to be going on right now all over the country. Men and women, young men and women, getting trained in a super hands-on practical way.

for virtually every job in the energy industry, but also the construction industry. They have a huge truck driving school within this facility. They have nursing. They've got everything. And as Chuck, it looks like you want to say something. Yes, because you're reminding me, because I have listened to this conversation,

but you're reminding me of stuff from the conversation. And what's great about central tech is that it is basically this vocational high school. It's not a high school per se by itself, but it's a vocational high school that is surrounded by all these other high schools where the high schoolers will get out of school a little early, head to Central Tech, and learn a skilled trade. It's sort of a continuation. It's like a vocational program that extends the day for high schoolers to learn specific trades. And there are all kinds of trades covered in this. Well, that was the precise moment when I decided I was going to do this without you

because I was standing there in the lobby of this place talking to a guy named Brent Haken, who's my guest, who you're about to meet. And I was, first of all, just blown away with the breadth of this guy's knowledge. He's a farmer, but by training, I suppose. He grew up on a farm, his work ethic, his second school teacher, principal, and then a supervisor. Superintended, yeah. Right. And now he's the director of the entire CTE program in Oklahoma that's basically leading the country in this whole effort.

So, you know, obviously my slip is showing, but I'm really enjoying talking to this guy. And as we're talking, I count 17 buses pulling up filled with kids from high schools all around the area. And they all come in to your point to get the training they need to get jobs that actually exist. And I literally interrupted my conversation with Brent to say, hey, can we just start this over? But can we do it for my podcast? Because I think what you guys have done here is an example for the whole country. And he said, of course, I'd be happy to do it. And what you're about to hear is a totally spontaneous and really honest conversation with a farmer who I believe is going to be a key.

component of fixing our busted relationship with the trades. They're doing it in Oklahoma. They're doing it at Central Tech. It's a model that can be copied virtually anywhere. He'll do a better job of explaining it than I will. But once again, as I've been saying since episode one of dirty jobs, you want to get it done. Give it to a farmer. A farmer. A farmer can fix it. A farmer can fix damn near anything. and Mr. Haken is well on the way to fixing this. It's a happy birthday to MicroWorks. Chuck, I'm sorry we won't be hearing. We'll be hearing from you during this episode.

Yeah, I'm very sorry as well, and so I'd just like to recite a little bit of poetry before we go to the conversation. You know what? Let's go ahead and just let's go ahead and honor our commitment to our sponsor and then come back for some brief poetry for me. you, not going to happen. And then we'll, uh, we'll meet Brent Haken. You're going to love it right after this. Shamedless plug. Long before she was Peggy Roe, my mom was Peggy Noble, daughter of Carl and Thelma Noble. It was her father, Carl, who inspired me to pitch a show called Dirty Jobs to the Discovery Channel and later start a foundation that honored the kind of work Carl Noble did

for a living. Trade work, skilled labor. That foundation is called MicroWorks, and today I'm proud to tell you that we've helped thousands of people get the training they need to begin a career in the skilled trades. In fact, we'd love to help you. You can apply for a work ethic scholarship right now at microwworks.org. We've set aside $10 million for this year's applicants, thanks to a number of very effective fundraisers, including the one with my grandfather's name on the label. I refer, of course, to Noble Tennessee whiskey, K-N-O-B-E-L, which is now available in a variety of delicious mash bills, all of which you can peruse at noblespirates.com. In fact, if you spend 100 bucks and use code Carl, C-A-R-L, you'll get one tube of

orange bitter-infused sugar cubes for free. That's code Carl with a C to get nine sugar cubes, ingeniously engineered to make nine perfect old fashions every time. It's my favorite way to support microworks and my favorite whiskey to sip responsibly after a long day of interviewing people on this podcast. Pick up a bottle at noblespirits.com.

K-N-O-B-E-L-Spirits.com. Soon may the noble men come to bring a bottle for everyone. One day when the waitin is done we'll take a drink and go. Brent, thanks for doing this, man. I'm glad to be here. I mean, this is, I think, at least in the history of my little podcast, this represents a new level of total spontaneity and taking advantage of a situation.

Yep. I like it. Yeah. I'm here in Oklahoma working on this project with OERB, and you and I just had a conversation at this school called Central Tech. And it just made me think a lot of people need to hear what's going on here. I agree. Couldn't agree more. So you've agreed to sit and talk with me until things get boring.

which almost never happens on this podcast. You might have wish you didn't do that. So where do we begin? The fact that you grew up on a farm, the fact that you used to be a principal, or the fact that you organized the funding to create what I think might be a truly transformational school.

I think all of those tie in together. So the fact that I grew up farming and ranching and that's part of our livelihood, custom harvest crew, and then I got passionate about education and really led me where I was. I mean, I'm that typical kid that's like, I'm going to go to college, but I don't really know why.

And then I had an experience because of CTE experiences where I was like, I should go be a teacher. And you have to have a degree to be a teacher because I loved what I was doing in summer camps and conferences and helping these students realize what their goals are, their potential. Because I hate that word dream. I'm not a big dream person. I'm like, have a vision, have goals. So, you know, figure out what you're going to do? Right. But it needs to be real, not abstract, like a dream.

Like, this needs to be real. What can we do? So I decided, I want to teach. And then that led me into, we could do it better. I'm going to be a principal, so I can do a better job. And then a superintendent at a school district. And then finally, this opportunity came up about 15, 16 months ago. And I'm like, I love CTE.

I think I should try. And here we are. And I'm excited about what we're doing. Oklahoma's unique in how we approach trades education and what we do. So we have 60 campuses that do what Central Tech's doing, 29 different school districts. We have 140,000 kids that are in course-only offerings within their high schools also. So we really try to wrap around.

how do you get exposed to careers? How do you figure out what ones you're good at? And then we're going to train you so that you're ready for a job as soon as you get out. All right. Back to the farm. Okay. Would you guys grow? So we did, when I started out young, we were all wheat farmers.

Okay, we were growing wheat to harvest. And then through times when it were not good, we turned to cattle. So we turned everything back into cattle, a cowcalf operation, a stalker calf operation. But every summer I had a unique experience. My grandpa started a custom harvesting crew in 1948. What's that mean? Customize? So that means you travel the country harvesting crops for other people.

So every year when school would let out, dad would have everything ready and we would load up. We'd live in an RV all summer. And we would travel really from Texas all the way to Montana, cutting wheat. Did you ever do the tassel removal thing with corn? Oh, yeah, yeah. What a special slice of heaven that is, man. Yeah.

So I've cut, I mean, soybeans, sorghum, corn, canola, sunflowers. I've been on all those harvesting. That's how I grew up. That's what I knew. So I didn't know anything different other than we're going to go get in a truck and live in a camper all's one happy family all summer. And then in the fall, dad and mom would go because we didn't have hired hands. We did it all as a family unit. So mom drove a truck, dad drove a combine. We'd go to a new location and then the kids became the hired hands, you know, all the time. So we just spent time together. In the fall, they would go at spurts of different times. Milo's ready or when's corn's ready and then we would go see him on the weekends or whatever and grandparents would take us in all How many brothers or sisters? So I have one brother one sister Mm-hmm, yeah, so you were the indentured servants. Yeah, well, but my dad has two brothers and their kids were part. So we traveled as a family unit So all three brothers. My dad's two brothers. We travel and we still do this. So my cousins still do this. I'm going to go to college and teach and a lot of them are still harvesting and that's what their livelihood is. 99% of the people listen to this are trying to get their heads around the image. you just described.

All right? Couple uncles. Yeah. A traditional sounding family. Very traditional. But coming together, like if this were like Chevy Chase, this would be like a farmer vacation, right? And so you just literally, you're going all over the state or all over the country. All the country.

So from Texas to Montana is where we traveled. So that's the range. Yeah. That's, I mean, and so how young were you, what's your earliest memory of the first trip? Oh man. probably, I can remember being three or four years old, setting in gleaner combines and watching wheat come in the header. I mean, that's pretty fond memories.

And then as you grow up, your cousins and you riding bikes all over small towns across the Midwest and meeting people that you never thought you'd meet. Our vacations every year were, oh, it rained. Let's go see Mount Rushmore. Or, hey, it rained, shire days are going on. Let's go see that. So that was just what we knew. And it was a really good, we enjoyed it.

We loved it. Kids now would hate it. If it wasn't raining, you're careful. were working. Oh yeah. Sometimes 18, 19 hours a day in the field. You don't stop because that's everybody else's livelihood too. I got to get this crop out as quickly as I can because when it rains, it deteriorates the crop and you lose quality. So you have to do it. So the old bromide, right? You make your hay when the sunshine. That's right. That's right. That's rooted in something like reality. Yeah. Yeah. Rooted in reality. Thanks a much. Oh, thank you very much. I didn't get your cream,

did I? No, that's okay. Did you? No, I'm a black coffee guy. That was Brian, by the way, bringing us a couple of cups of coffee. Because, you know, I should have been more clear. This conversation is happening in a kind of, what is it, a tool? This is a tool room, yeah. So we're in a tool room at Central Tech. Yep. And if I'm looking down from space at Oklahoma, where are we precisely?

We're very central. We're closer to the eastern side of the state than we probably are the Western. So we're a little, Drum Ride, Oklahoma is a very small town, surrounded by a lot of other small towns that is in the middle of a lot of oil production. So farming, oil production, all those things right here at the heart of it. We do our statewide truck driver training from here. We do pipeline programs, polyfusion welding, everything here because that's the industry that lives here. And Drumwright is the closest town?

Yep, yep. Okay. I wanted to start with the farm thing. I had no idea that was a story you were going to tell me, but at some point, work ethic needs to be a big topic. of this whole thread, right? Because everything we've talked about before in terms of what the school has accomplished is rooted in tangible, tactile,

practical proofs that we can look at, see, and understand. But you can't look at work ethic or like you can't measure somebody's initiative at a glance. So what's going on here with regard to that? And as you formulate whatever the answer is, think if you would about everything you just said and how that laid the groundwork or the pipe, as it were, for your understanding of work ethic. So, oh man, you posed a great question.

And work ethic, I think, drives everything. I always told people, when I became a very young principal, I had 38 years old, leading the country's largest career tech organization, and that's all attributed to work ethic. I'm not very smart, but I can outwork everybody around me. It's been my mantras. I want to work hard, okay, because I can prove something, you know. But that's what my family built. I mean, there's nothing that we can't work through.

And that's what family built for me. Our schools do that because we are able to build that kind of grid in a program where you're here at a long-term basis. You're here a half-day at a minimum, or you're here a full day in some instances, and you're here the whole year long, and we're going to teach you what the industry is actually doing. And many times it's the industry person.

So we're not babying you like you might be in a, you know, your classrooms typically, which, oh, you got a bad grade on that. We'll retouch this. That's not going to cut it on the job site. You're going to get fired. And it's like, but it's okay. Let's cut it out. Let's start over. Okay?

Let's knock that wall out. Let's start over. We're going to teach you how to do it right. So it's showing people reality, but then giving them support. I heard Larry Ellison say one time when somebody asked him to explain. the greatest advantage he had in leading him to becoming a goodillionaire. He said, growing up, I had just the right amount of adversity. And so I worry a lot about that collectively because I think a lot of kids, even in this school,

look, if your earliest memories are being three years old and taken off with this traveling circus of Cutters, you described, you don't have a chance to form other opinions. This is it. It's laid out for you. Yeah. What a gift that was. Beautiful, yeah. So how do you instill it in 17 or 18-year-olds who show up not having that life experience? Oh, it's tough because you'll hear many times.

Oh, yeah, it's too late. It's too late for them, too late. It's not ever too late. Yeah. So what you do is you tie the what do you need to the what do you want. So many times to build hope in people, you show them what can get there. And then you've got to cultivate, this is what it's going to take to get there. And what's great about our teachers and being industry, professionals, they have that, and so they work alongside it. I will be here with you. Because you can't build hope and you can't build a work ethic if nobody supported you. I wasn't a kid

growing up and they just turned me lose. I mean, my parents showed me that kind of work ethic. So when people see that, it's like discipline. Discipline is absent in our world so many times, but people crave it. They crave also a work ethic. They want to see success. And success is measured in all kinds of ways. John Wooden said it best. You know, it's earning the best of which you were capable. So when we show people that and we work alongside them, it builds. Most people want to do the job right. Nobody wants to disappoint. I mean, that's just not life, but they want to do it right. When they don't have, you said just the right amount of adversity. If they don't have hope, they're not going to do it. Right, because just too much adversity will crush you. Yes. And not enough

will make you soft. Yep. Right. But discipline's an interesting word too, because it exists all by itself. And in most cases, when people hear that word, they associate it with the thing that is being applied to them. But when you hyphenate it and put the word self in front of it, now you're approaching something a little more affirmative. So how do you cultivate self-discipline? How does that rhyme with work ethic? So self-discipline is about self-worth.

It's about value of your work. It's about goals. And we talk, I get tired of this. taught it for a long time, smart goals and all these things. We've gotta teach steps to goals. Like what's realistic in front of me now and then what leads me to a long term? So if I'm gonna be self-disciplined about something,

then I'm after something. If I don't have any goal, if I don't have any direction, I don't have a vision for what I'm gonna have, what do I need to be self-disciplined about? So you have to create that ambition first, I think to be self-discipline. It's like an athlete or a tradesperson or a competitive public speaker,

which we do, all those things are about what's your goal and how we're going to get there? You do competitive public speaking here? We'll take trades people and they will give delivered content. So we teach public speaking in every aspect of what we do. Dude, that's brilliant. That is so lacking. To be able to make a case for yourself is a critical skill,

but it's so universally ignored in the trades. Why isn't that taught everywhere? I don't understand it. What we do that I think makes us very successful, we have what's called CTSOs, Career Tech Student Organizations. Every student that is in one of our disciplines needs to be a part of a Career Tech student organization. That allows them a platform to be competitive,

whether that's the trade itself, public speaking, whether I'm presenting a project, whatever it is, it gives them different categories to be working toward a goal. So now I'm going to get to show off what I've been working toward in front of the industry professionals that are judging me. And many times I'm getting job offers after that.

So I'm teaching competitiveness toward a goal and I'm applying it to industry and everybody supports it. So what we have to get out of our mind is where athletics is the only thing that's competitive. Life is competitive. Every single thing is the competition. This podcast right now.

I started doing this podcast seven, eight years ago. I should have ramped up my game. You should have man. We have literally hundreds of people listening. We get our share, but I was just talking to a guy before we sat down. There's like 3.6 million podcasts there right now. So I absolutely ask myself the same thing. What can you do to make it better?

And why would you expect people just to listen, you know? And look, I'm not giving myself any credit. I'm just saying it's a very delicate balance, right? You can produce a thing and you can plan a thing and you can identify and you can execute a thing. Or you can be where I happen to be today and run across a guy in a purple shirt who's well-spoken who really, you can identify. You're really seems to give a damn and say, look, let's do one right now. I think my point is if you found a way to teach flexibility, what are we hearing out there now? Is that auto shop?

So what we've got is students coming into their shop classes that are next door. So students, because they come from several sending schools, will be coming at different times depending on when their lunch breaks at the different sending schools. So we've got a student probably pulling up in auto services right across the road. So they're getting ready to go in there and learn, and they came back from lunch at their sending school. Let me just kind of say the same thing in a slightly different way.

There are a dozen schools, probably more around here, right? Public schools. 17 schools. Send here, yeah. Send their kids here after school. So not for intermurals, not for sports. Both. So we have flexible starting.

You mentioned flexible. Man, we are education that's nimble. So they can come in a morning when they have a block of time and they don't have to have course. They can come in an afternoon. They can come after school. What fits them? That's what matters. So also before we sat down, I took a walk about.

ran into a couple nursing students. Okay. They said, oh, you've got to come down and meet our instructor. So I said, okay, I think her name's Holly, maybe. Okay, good me, yeah. So I go down there, and as I'm walking, I ask them why they're doing this and what they like about it. And one of them said, what we love about this program

is that it's not stuck in an 18-month curriculum. That's right. You learn what you need to learn. We've had people who have fully matriculated after seven or eight months. Yes. So what the hell's that all about? it's focusing on competencies. I mean, you focus on when do I get mastery of a skill.

That's what's important because the industry doesn't care how long somebody was in school. If I need an employee, I need them to be good at this. I need them to know these things. Well, why not teach that way? Why do we need to continually supply what we've always done? And so I refer to education in two different categories. We have supply education and demand education. Well, we've thought a long, hard time about supply education.

and we need this many degrees, or we need this many diplomas, this many enrollments, and we try to focus off, how many jobs do you need in welding? How many jobs do you need as high line technicians? How many jobs do you have in this area? What industry is growing? That's in demand, that's the program we're gonna offer.

How many nurses are you gonna need? Let's get that going. Yeah. So education, we viewed as something that is just always constant that's a right. In education probably should be a right for people, but it needs to be built around the kind of life I want to live.

People will find all kinds of career opportunities if they see I can be successful at that and I can raise my family the way I want to raise it, or I can get out of poverty, or I can be a leg up on where my parents were. They want to see those life goals. That's what we're all about. Yeah.

So if they can get to those things because of a career link that was in demand, they'll do it. They'll live what they want, the American dream, right? That cliche of the American dream. Do do, do, do do do do do, Dumb. Well, people are still raving, raving, I tell you, about my mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial. And if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page and read the comments.

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Wall Street Journal four months ago had a headline that got my attention and triggered a whole lot of things with my world. But it said 64% of Americans believe the American dream is either dead or no longer applicable with them. That's harsh. Well, 64%. You're coming up on, right, two-thirds. So at some point, something really, really tragic is liable to happen if we get to a critical matter. of people who lose, would you call it, hope? Hope. The American dream is hope personified.

So you take that away, and your job as an educator goes upside down. I don't know how I do it. I mean, I don't know how we do it if we don't show people, you can do more, you can do better. When I was a principal at the high school I was at, I. Public high school? Yeah, public high school. Our motto became, and it was totally by accident, I was trying to get these kids fired up, and I said, we ought to want more. And they're like, more of what?

more of what you want, whatever you want. That's what we ought to expect more out of ourselves. As teachers, we ought to expect more. And that's what you're talking about is, if we don't believe that the American dream is still there, what are we working for? What are we educating? So I hope that we can turn the tide.

And I think in Oklahoma, we wouldn't pull the same way. I think we have built a system where people believe I can do something different. I can do something more. I'm not stuck in the rut that I am, but too much adversity does crush that. It's never gone, never gone. We've got to talk about how we wrap around anybody that's faced severe adversity, but we

have to build it back. We have to build it. Let me bounce this off you then. I happen to agree with you violently that the difference between a vision and a goal is a very different thing than a dream, right? And you're suspicious of dreams and I'm suspicious of the idea that people should follow their dreams separate and apart from whatever skills they might have been blessed with. And yet we call this thing.

thing, the American dream. Why isn't it the American vision? Man, I didn't know we were going to get so deep. Why is it the American, hey man, I got an hour to kill and I'm in a tool room, so we're going to go to some places. But I mean, I look around at all these tools. And I think about the challenge of humanity is to arm yourself with a tool that you understand, that you can wield, right?

And all of a sudden, things get dreamy. When I read that article, I thought, yeah, maybe on the other hand, the other hand, the The American dream should be on the ropes. Because maybe the time to dream has evolved into the, right? But that's what you're doing. You're about the American vision. That's right. Every student should have a vision for the life that they want to live.

And what are the goals that get me there? What are my steps I've got to take to get there? And so that's what we try to build early in a student's career or later in life. That's why we're flexible. You can come to our schools at any time. There's no age limit. Come when you need to come. And we will take care of getting you back on track for what that vision is.

So I think that's a good concept. Maybe you and I could rewrite that. I think we should. Yeah, I think we should. I mean, but we'll start with a book. We'll launch our own podcast. Well, you talked about skills people are blessed with. Mine's probably not writing.

Well, I can write. I mean, look, I can tell a story anecdotally. I think it has a value because I think people need to see dirty jobs. You know, people need to be entertained before they can be persuaded. That's what I've learned. Yes, they do. You're right. But the most persuasive.

things I've seen, the evidence that really demands a verdict, are the kids and the young adults who graduate from places like this, because you've armed them with a new set of tools and watching them work and then circling back to tell their stories, that I think can move the needle. It can. And you know what I loved about dirty jobs for the last, however long we've been watching it now, is that it broke stigmatism around certain careers. Because I would have students as an educator all the time that were interested in a certain career I don't want to be known as the plumber. I don't want to be known as that guy.

I'm like, that's ridiculous. I love growing up that way. My dad's friends, my dad, that's all I knew, was trades-based people. And there were nothing wrong with those people. They're great people. So why is it a stigma that we live like that? And why is it so completely counterintuitive? I mean, okay, you don't want to be a plumber.

So you don't want to make six figures. You don't want to set your own schedule. and you don't want to keep the pipes connected that allow civilized life to exist. That's not for you. Yeah. Okay. Then what? Yeah.

Well, we tied that American dream that we were talking about to certain careers. We started, oh, you gotta be a doctor, or you gotta be a, we gotta have doctors. Like, I depend on them, but I also depend on HVAC. I like air conditioning, we're not getting it right now. You depend on, yeah, that's right.

It's a little toasty in the tool room. Yeah. But HVAC is the thing you rely on every single day. Every single day. The doctor is a guy you see once or twice a year. He sticks his finger up your butt, turns your head, you cough, you do, you spit, you're right, whatever. And hopefully you just get on with your life. That's right. So to me, it's always two sides of the same point. It just seems like, why do we work so hard to promote one form of education at the expense of the others? Workforce, it's a team sport. We got to have everybody. We've got to have

everybody. And so we need to see that in all forms of education. We need to see that across all policy measures where we got to have everybody. I mean, how many of those that were living that dream and oh, I became a lawyer? Well, I don't know how to change my tire. I mean, that's a problem. That's a problem. You've got to have those people that specialize in skills because we all depend on them every single day. Oil and gas. How am I going to get to work? Okay. I don't think we're going to all ride. In Oklahoma, you're a long ways from a major city. You're not going to ride your bike. You're not going to ride a horse anymore. We need oil and gas. That's reality of what we need. We depend. And that's why the trades jobs pay so well now. We figured out, oh, there's a demand.

You had a quote long time ago. I think I remember it. We spent a long time getting to the corner office and we forgot how to build it, something like that. Well, we got so enamored of working in the corner office. We forgot how to build a corner office. Yeah. That was a long time. time ago. I was just trying to get the foundation off the ground and on dirty jobs everywhere we went, you could see, you know, visual proof that the world's always under construction. But yeah, I'm not sure how much of it has changed. I am curious, though, as a principle, what's fundamentally broken, if anything, in our education system? And again, as you kick it around, I'm thinking of a guy named Frederick Taylor, who, 100 years ago, is probably most responsible

for the public education system, the way we have it, like in terms of classes and like a bell rings, the classes change. All those protocols were rooted in factories. That's right. Right? So do you think that an approach to mass production has somehow infected public education? Yeah, we're the factory, right? I mean, that's what they say in public education, that we are a factory of departments.

diplomas, basically. But not all is bad either. Teaching people to show up on time is good. You need to get your work done. Okay, employers need that. But do we all need to be on the same page at the same time? What we did is we standardized. We're not an assembly line. We shouldn't be an assembly line. We're all unique people. So, yes, we've got to have a different approach to education. And what we need is we always paint the picture of a highway. You've got to have a lot of on-ramps and off-ramps. People need to have the opportunity. Kids need to have adults. I got to explore this career. I think I might want to do it.

Okay, that's not going to work. I'm coming back on the highway. Okay, then I find another one. And I've got to be able to get on and off when I find those things are available. But if we're going to standardize everything and measure it with just specific tests, how do we let a student have creativity

in creative thinking about what could be? How do we create those great inventions that America was known for if we're going to standardize everything? Because that's not how we did it. That's not how we built what America is because we were creative, we were exposing them as something, we would teach a concept.

And especially when AI is coming to life, not AI artificial intelligence. We're not reading anything right now. But if that's going to come to fruition like we think it is and what it's already doing, if we're going to have all this automation, what we need to go back to doing now is teaching, how do you think outside the box? We're going to have to look at something different. Problem solving is our biggest hurdle that we have to overcome as a society.

Because the problems, are changing so fast that the existing solutions are no longer relevant. Yeah. That person that has a background like I grew up, farm and ranch, where you're exposed to a million different things, those don't exist very often anymore. So we've got to cultivate that within our education system. You know, what is it less than 1% of our population is involved in production, agriculture?

I'm a huge agriculture fan because that's how I grew up. I told my wife when we were starting to have kids, I said I've got to get a foreign because that's the only way I know how to teach kids and expose them to all these things. So we've got to bring project-based education to life in every school. Project-based gives us creative thinkings. I'm going to apply trigonometry or I'm going to apply scientific method, but I'm going to do it in a way that they have to create on their own.

And everybody might come up with a different solution, and one of those solutions might be great. So we've got to get to a factor in education where it's not that I need to score a 90 on this test. It's like, oh, you solve that problem we haven't been able to solve. Yeah. That's different. You would love the guest on this podcast, Todd Rose, who wrote a couple of books. One was called Collective Illusions, which is great, but the other is called The End of Average. And that's what you're talking about.

And he makes the point that the military spent an absolute fortune trying to figure out the perfect dimensions of a cockpit for a fighter pilot, right? Because you're mass producing these things. And, well, what they came up with was a cockpit based on the average dimension. of the current crop of fighter pilots, and it fit no one. Yeah. So the average actually fit nothing. Yeah.

Right? So they had to totally rethink flexibility, adjustability, adaptability, all of that stuff. And that's just one example in a cockpit. What we're doing to kids, rubbing off the jagged edges and making everything smooth and same, I don't see that happening here.

It's not what we're doing. And I think educators want to do that. But what I've learned in my 18-year career is probably not enough. But I have learned that we need leadership. We need people that say it's okay if we fail at that. It's okay if it didn't work this time because what it creates is that grit and that person that wants to be more. It builds all that hope. When we just work toward the average or, hey, how am I going to be above state?

I heard that all the time as a principal. oh, we need our scores to be above state average. I'm like, above state average, what is that measuring? You know, where are we after? I need to be after something different than that. I need to be able to make sure Susie has their goals and they're working toward those and Johnny has his goals and we're working toward those.

I don't need to be working toward the average. I need to be working toward their interest. I need to be working on that. And educators want it. They want it so bad in every grade level. Whether it's pre-create or whether it's 12th grade or post-second, they want to do it, but we've got to lead them in that direction.

So when we take a system that is, motivated, funded, graded, based on the average, then we have a problem. So we've got to create a leadership that is okay with if we look different. It's okay. Can you think of a more hairbrained, boneheaded decision in the history of education than removing shop class from high school? I still can't fathom why would it happen? Why did we do that?

I mean, you know, I know all the reasons that I've heard. Not to mention the fact that we're losing. shop class for the sake of teaching great skills and discipline, we are losing a project that a person can put their hands on and be engaged and we can quit saying that Clay's a problem in class and we can say look what Clay can do. Right. I mean we just lost our whole mindset we lost our minds on what education should be and shop class is a great example of that and that's what we do here as we bring shop class back. We're not in the school but we're serving 17 schools at Central Tech. We're serving nine at another school. We're serving 33 at another school.

We can bring them together and we can bring that back. What level of enthusiasm do you see here among the students compared to the school where you were a principal? Yeah. Yeah. So everything that these students do here is something they wanted to do, wanted to be a part of. So enthusiasm is just their norm now. I mean, it's not like where I came from as a principal of a high school, I'm trying constantly to pump people up. How do I energize them? What are we bringing? What's the new thing? Who's the speaker? What's the game, the challenge? You don't have to do that here. It's every day. They show up early. They stay like, hey, I'm almost done with this project. Can I stay a little longer? Can I stay a little longer?

I mean, you see that all the time because they're motivated on their own. I mean, intrinsic motivation is so important if we want to see people really be successful. And that's what we do here because it's their interest. Yeah. It's valuable. It means something. I'm still stuck though. How do you teach it? Or can you teach it? Is it enough to simply encourage it by making the tools available

and surrounding students with not just teachers, but mentors? This guy Phil, who I was talking to before, he had absolutely no interest in being an instructor. Zero interest. The guy worked on the pipelines, and he got to be a certain age. And I think he told him, his wife suggested he'd do it. He was like, no.

It's just, it wasn't. It wasn't his dream. That's right. I don't even know if it was part of his vision, but all of a sudden, he's here and he's loving it. He's enjoying it, yeah. So you hit on something that's been big for me. We say the word teach. How do you teach it?

Well, maybe we're approaching it all wrong. Education is not about teaching standards. It's about letting people find motivation, and that's what I firmly believe. What I founded all of my education background on is when I let a student find what they're excited about, then they are successful. I have a master's degree. I'm not a doctorate like people think I should probably have in the position. But I never read a full book until I was in my master's program when I enjoyed it.

I'm like, I am good enough to pass your test, okay? Yeah. And I know what I want to go work. There's thousands and thousands and thousands of millions of students just like that. Okay, we are trying to focus. You've got to do this. You got to do that. We've got to teach them.

And instead, we've got to say, hey, you want to try this project? and you find out what they're interested. That's what our teachers do. Hey, we got a 350 small block here. Let's tear that apart. Oh, yeah. Let's do that. Yeah.

Or, hey, we're going to work and pass this pig through this pipeline today. You guys interested? Yeah, I'm interested. So it's less about teaching because what education really needs to be is how do I make sure students have tools where they can learn on their own when they're ready? Because I'm not going to teach you all the things you need to know in a class. Yeah. I'm going to show you, you can be good at this.

If you're ready to learn, come find me. The federal government is not going to close America's skills gap. They have an important role to play for sure, but if we're serious about reinvigorating the skilled trades on a national level, we need more organizations like Skills USA making a real difference on a local level. These guys have been around since 1965, and today they are relevant like never before. four with hundreds of chapters in schools all over the country and hundreds of thousands of students

participating and competing every year. Nobody is doing more to train the next generation of skilled workers than Skills USA. And I'm encouraging you to at least consider being a part of this movement. Skills USA advisors and volunteers aren't just teaching trades. They're launching careers and strengthening the backbone of our country by mentoring the next generation of industry. leaders. In high school, you could be among the people who are making this movement explode. Join the skilled trades movement. Support career and technical education programs through Skills USA. There's no better way to do it. You can volunteer at a local chapter. You can start a chapter in your own town. Or you can just go to their website and see the impact for yourself and see too how easy it is to get

involved. Thousands of kids are being introduced to the trades in a way that's absolutely positively moving the needle. The goal is a million members by 2030. I think it's doable. I'm doing what I can to help them. Learn more at skillsusa.org slash mic. That's skills usa.org slash mic. I'm talking skills, U.S. Skills, U.S.S.S.S.S.S. USA. What about relevance? Like, do you see a difference in inspiring, encouraging, motivating a kid who has decided that they want to be successful in marketing or accounting or social media. You want to be an influencer. Versus energy.

I want to play a role in powering the country. I want to play a role in something you can fill in the blank with whatever aspirational pursuit you'd like. But is there a difference in relevance when it comes to the subject a kid? has chosen to pursue. For sure. Relevance is what drives the motivation. And so we have conversation in this state all the time about rigor. You hear that conversation about rigor constantly.

Well, it needs to be rigorous. It needs to be as rigorous or as algebra one. I say, what does that mean? And nobody can explain it. Because every time they start explaining, they talk about standards. So that's not rigor. That's not what you said.

You said it needs to be as rigorous as that. Tell me what that means. Because rigor means how much effort is it going to take to get it down? And so when it's relevant, and so I always use this concept with our legislators, it needs to be relevant for the rigor. So when you talk about how important that relevance is, that's what drives the student. Because whether they want to be in marketing or oil and gas or whatever it is, they see that this makes a difference. People innately want to make a difference. I'm a firm believer in that.

The reason you do what you do is because you want to make a difference. The reason I do what I do is because I see light bulbs come on for kids. I want to make a difference. That's my relevance. I did oil and gas for four years to get through college. I was doing all those things. That wasn't my passion. That's not where I'm going to make a difference,

but a lot of people, it is. They make a huge difference in their families. They make a huge difference in the state. They make a huge difference in the industry. So people have to see, where's my purpose? I mean, that's the skills we're given. The scary thing, and also the hopeful thing, is that, you know, while that's super true,

there's no age where you flick the relevant switch. And this goes back to the standard thing and to the average thing. I feel like for me, when I decided I want to be in this industry, I was so delighted to finally find some success in it that I truly didn't care what I was doing. So I spent 15 years hosting shows I wouldn't have watched,

narrating books I would never personally listen to, infomercials, sitcom, this stuff, you know? Yeah. And honestly, Brent, I loved it right up until the day I didn't. It's like all of a sudden cotton candy, like it occurs. It's like, oh, this hurts my teeth and it's probably making me crazy. And so, you know, Dirty Jobs was an attempt to do something as silly as it was in some ways

that had a mission. And then my foundation and so forth. And now at 62, I do feel like I'm doing something. And I feel really different than I did 25 years ago. So I don't know if there's a point in that except to say that if you're working on a rig, go back to your childhood, man. You're feeding people. That's right. There you go.

Yeah. Hard not to feel relevant when you're feeding people. Yes. Yeah. What are you feeding these kids here? We talked about it. You're feeding them hope. They don't see the grit part.

That's a product of what we do. But you're feeding them hope and what my future looks like. Because all through my experiences, I didn't know what I was gonna do. Maybe that's the circumstances they're up against. They had some adversity. I don't know what I'm gonna do. I don't know how I'm gonna find the success that I want.

So we feed them hope in that way. Or maybe the same classroom will do the same thing for a totally different student, the person that came from a great background and had a vision the whole time of what they were gonna do, but I don't know the next steps. So we build hope that way. It's all about how do you link things together

so that they see what the next step is. I mean, it's no different than anything that we do in life, just like you talked about, where you were doing one thing and that wasn't fun anymore. I started to build some hope. Then I start build a foundation. All these things come together. I'm a firm believer, probably too personal, but that God's going to put me in the right place to make the next action. It's not going to be the final action, but it's the next step. So once I make that step, it's going to lead to something else. I didn't plan to be here. Right. That's how it works. Yeah. No, no, look, I love that. literally recording a podcast in a tool room in the middle of a shoot with my friends at

OERB and these guys are now but probably in overtime Brian so you're you're probably freaking out right none of this is in the plan none of it's in the plan but you said thing like six times in one sentence and I think the point is is it's not the thing in the same way it's not the job necessarily if that were the case all garbage men would be miserable All movie stars would be happy, self-actualized, fulfilled people. Not how it works. It doesn't work. So I mean, that's the tension.

There is no such thing as a relevant job beyond your own ability to assign relevance to it. Doing the best of which you are capable. Yeah. Yeah. Whatever that is. So... We've made it more complicated than that, don't we? Well, it seems self-defeating to me.

to me. In my world, I say, well, what are the barriers between what I'm trying to do and letting people see something that feels authentic? And you can list them, right? There are any number of things. Why do we make it so hard to get the degree that we say is so important? Yes. I don't know. On the other hand, isn't it weird that in 1955, the average GPA out of Harvard was 2.55? Yeah. And today, it's 3.98. Are we that much smarter? I don't think so, man. Yeah, we're not.

No, we're still the same people. We've just changed what we're grading or how we're grading it. So I had a lot of fun when I first started teaching agricultural education, and I would go through the books from 50, 60 years ago, and I said,

those concepts are more difficult than what I'm teaching now. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm like, we're going backwards to make it easier. Instead of saying, it's okay if you get a C. It's okay because you're learning, you're growing. So one of the biggest frustrations I would have when I first became a high school principal, students would come from the

elementary and we had a fantastic elementary school. But they had been used to being helped along the way to get my grade where I needed to be. I had a stray days all the way through elementary school. I came to junior high English and I got a C and I would tell the parent, okay, well, they're not a C student. Do you know that? wouldn't you rather them fail here than fail in life? I'm like, let's figure out the outputs they're going to have to have to get where they want to be. It's the same way with discipline. I would tell parents all the time, don't you want me to discipline them out of love for them, out of caring for them,

then they go out into the world and they get disciplined by real life? That's going to suck. Wouldn't you like to know that you can't sing before you go on American Idol to find out? I don't want my family seeing it. Right. In front of 30 million people, right? I mean, we're not doing kids any favors. No.

I heard somebody say the other day, I think it was Dave Ramsey. He said, to not be clear is to be unkind. That's the way we have approached a lot of life. I mean, I have conversations now as somebody that manages a large group of people all the time with things that I hope are clear, but not what they want to hear. But that's how we get better. That's how we grow. It's the same way in education.

We've got to be honest with people. And we have sugar-coated everything for so long. We can't be honest anymore. Well, in the spirit of not sugar-coating it, what's your take on the Ivy League? What's happening in higher education today? What should we learn from it? That's a good question. And I don't ever sugarcoat when I'm talking about what we invest in education,

because we invest heavily in this country in education. But there's a lack of relevance in what we're doing in higher education right now. And when we say higher education, this is a problem that I have. We lump the colleges together. But we're higher education also. I mean, we are elevating a student's education. So if you looked at it that way and you said, all of higher education,

well, look at every trade school. That's higher education. And there it's relevant. So if we start putting that together, then we change the dynamic of what higher education is. There's a lot of people that are going to college that don't need to. But we send them.

And then they will not complete and they will come back to us. Shouldn't they came to us the first time? Shouldn't they have been told that they should have come to us? But what we've done is we built up this mantra of, you've got to go there, you've got to have the experience. Well, why in the world do the rest of us paying for everyone's experience? I don't get it.

I mean, I don't get this. I went through college and I stacked feed at Stillwatermill and I was able to pay for my education. I paid for mine. I don't want to pay for everybody else's. I mean, those are all of the different struggles. You pointed out one struggle, but all these things we're facing with higher education.

It is not a right. It is not a right for you. That's my opinion. It's not a right for you to have a certain level of education. It is a right that we help train people. It is a right that we help provide a public service, just like we do safety or anything else. But it is not my right to baby you forever

and give you everything that you ever wanted. That's not my right. Since we're in a tool room, you know, I think a lot about this. You know, I'm just, it's my cell phone, right? And I got an inter-net connection down here. And look, this, I mean, the mischief and the time wasted and the various portals that this thing can open, you know, we all know. Unreal. But when did you go to school?

I graduated high school in 2003. In 2003. So I guess maybe you had this in college, didn't you? Yes, yeah. So I remember Facebook coming out in college. Yeah. So I had, we were on wheat harvest and I was 16 years old and dad said, hey, you can drive back to a leadership camp. I was in Nebraska and he said, if you want to drive home and go to that leadership camp you've been going to, we could do without you for a while.

He said, I bought you a cell phone. It was, you know, flip phone. I was like so excited. Yeah. It's changed so fast. I just, I mean, in 1984, I was finishing college and this technology wasn't even, you know, wasn't possible. But my liberal arts degree today is it's available here for free. I know.

98% of the known information, including, by the way, how to weld. You can go to YouTube and you can watch all the videos. Exactly. So, I mean, how do you think about the existence of all this information that's truly useful? And what role, if any, can it play in the goals at Central Tech or in higher ed? Oh, yeah. Or anywhere. We use it.

I mean, we use it all the time. And I think it's, we're blind to say that we have to have something created for us anymore. It's already there. What we're doing, we talked about earlier about problem solving. Well, we take all of this knowledge that's out there on the World Wide Web, and our job is to make it applicable. So we have to take, and our role as teachers are changing, where we're not just giving you content.

You've got content. We're going to help you use it. And so we've got to put it to work. And so that's a different form of education that is more in demand than the supply we've always been giving. The encyclopedias are gone, you know. We have a wealth of information. I don't need that. I need somebody to tell me what's gonna make me successful at work.

What's gonna make me successful when I get there? You're so right about the language though, and I wanna be clear too. When I say higher education, it's in quotes in my mind. But that expression is inculcated in the minds of millions of parents. But of course, what's sort of pregnant in it is that, okay, if there is such a thing as higher education,

then what is this? You know, we wouldn't call it. We call it lower education because that'd be too demeaning. Yeah. But we might call it alternative. That's right. A lot of people might look at this place at a glance and go, yeah, well, that's where my kid would go if they're not cut out for this other thing.

Oh, we hear that a lot still. How crazy does that make you? Yeah, nothing infuriates me more when we hear that conversation. And it was the same when I was a principal, same when I was a superintendent, because that was my background. So I'd get defensive about it. And I had to learn it's not their fault. That's all they've ever heard.

That's all they've ever known. So we changed the model of how we were guiding students and how we were advising parents and changed the fact that you can look at education differently. You don't have to think about it, though, same way your parents told them. So it's very infuriating that we think that it's less than. It's not less than. It's different. Yeah.

We're going to have to, we're getting full on our media cards. Good. All right. I was just looking for a sensible way to land the plane. How much time do we have? I guess four minutes. Oh, four minutes is beautiful. Yeah.

Good. So in four minutes, sum it up, man. What can central tech mean and do for the rest of the country as a model? Well, I hope that everybody will come and see what we're doing here, and they will see that the education needs to be driven by what is available in industry. If it's not there, why are we teaching it? Because nobody can make a livelihood out of it. That's one piece that I want them to see, and I want them to see that it can be attached to what we're already doing in high school, and it can be post-secondary. So it's real easy to just think about it.

more creative what are we giving students is what they need so let's do that and less of what they don't need website oh yeah we have website oklahoma career tech dot go okay so that is a great way to find all of our schools and what we're looking at I've been to every state half a dozen times I've worked in every state I've visited a lot of schools I think the answer to so much of what's busted is right here in the middle of Oklahoma I appreciate that and I think what you're doing is is yeoman's work and it's important and I I appreciate all the time.

No, thank you for helping the shed a light on it. That's also the purplest shirt I've ever seen. My wife picked it out. It's the color of kings. That's right. Thanks, Fred. Thanks, I appreciate. Awesome.

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