Speaker 1: A group of high school students.
Speaker 2: High school students Elizabethan High School students started a project
Speaker 2: to research a string of unsolved murders. Their research led
Speaker 2: to the identification of the killer.
Speaker 3: Investigators now have an answer to a thirty four year
Speaker 3: old question.
Speaker 4: Once you start getting a few tips, or a few leads,
Speaker 4: or few identifications, then the cold case isn't so cold.
Speaker 4: In the normal there's a pretty good chance he's still alive.
Speaker 4: Everything that the students predicted through their profile turned out
Speaker 4: to be accurate.
Speaker 5: Redhead Killer profile mail Caucasian, five nine six, two hundred
Speaker 5: and seventy pounds, unstable home, absent father, and a domineering mother,
Speaker 5: right handed, a Q above one hundred. Most likely a heterosexual.
Speaker 4: There is no profile of this killer except for the
Speaker 4: ones the students created.
Speaker 1: Just because some of these women no longer have people
Speaker 1: to speak for them, it does not mean that they
Speaker 1: deserve to not.
Speaker 5: Be so anymore.
Speaker 3: What if this guy's still alive?
Speaker 2: Like, what if becomes after us?
Speaker 1: Consider you're gonna kill me a year.
Speaker 3: This is Murder one oh one, Episode eleven, The XQ Institute.
Speaker 3: I'm Jeff Shane, a television and podcast producer at KT
Speaker 3: Studios with Stephanie Leidecker, Courtney Armstrong and Andrew Arnau. In
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, I came across a story about a group
Speaker 3: of high school students who set out to investigate a
Speaker 3: series of unsolved murders in their community. It was an
Speaker 3: incredible story that here at KT Studios we felt needed
Speaker 3: to be explored further. As you've heard, the original project
Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen stemmed from a grant students had won
Speaker 3: from the XQ Institute. Founded in twenty fifteen. XQ Institute
Speaker 3: is the nation's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving schools
Speaker 3: across the country. We thought it would be important to
Speaker 3: showcase the incredible work XQ is doing and give listeners
Speaker 3: a chance to figure out how they them selves can
Speaker 3: get involved. I had a conversation with Anne McKinnon, a
Speaker 3: senior advisor, and Carrie Schneider, who works as head of
Speaker 3: Editorial and Publishing at XQ. You previously heard Carrie in
Speaker 3: episode three.
Speaker 2: My name's Ann McKinnon. I work in Brooklyn. I live
Speaker 2: in New York, but I work for XQ. I'm a
Speaker 2: senior advisor now at XQ. I've been with XQ since
Speaker 2: before we even had a name, and have been part
Speaker 2: of designing and executing on a whole lot of ambitious
Speaker 2: plans that we've had from the start, including the original Challenge,
Speaker 2: which is where we met our friends from Elizabethton.
Speaker 1: I'm Carrie Schneider. I'm head of editorial and Publishing at XQ.
Speaker 1: I'm a former second grade teacher turned writer who gets
Speaker 1: to cover and talk about and learn from educators and
Speaker 1: students all across the country who are doing really cool
Speaker 1: things to change schools in their communities.
Speaker 2: XQ is completely dedicated to transform high schools. Our purpose
Speaker 2: is to help the entire country understand that high school
Speaker 2: transformation is necessary and that it's possible, and that it's underway.
Speaker 2: And we try to accelerate and amplify what it means
Speaker 2: to be underway. And so as a result, we are
Speaker 2: supporting schools that are doing very innovative things. We're working
Speaker 2: on learning experiences that will transform learning and and we
Speaker 2: have developed a design process that is community led that
Speaker 2: brings many, many more people into the process and the
Speaker 2: work of transforming high schools.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I would just add to that too. I
Speaker 1: think when we talk about transformation, you're exactly right that
Speaker 1: it's necessary from an equity standpoint that you know, high
Speaker 1: schools have never worked for everyone. They've always worked for
Speaker 1: certain populations of students or some more than others. But
Speaker 1: we really believe that from an equity standpoint, from a
Speaker 1: preparing students for all the future has to offer a standpoint,
Speaker 1: and from communities really knowing what's best for the students
Speaker 1: that they serve, that folks can come together and get
Speaker 1: a big vision for what they hope high schools can
Speaker 1: be for those kids, so that they come out with
Speaker 1: everything you remember from high school, but also a whole
Speaker 1: lot more so they come out as generous collaborators and
Speaker 1: original thinkers and critical thinkers. And in order for high
Speaker 1: school to accomplish those things beyond just you know, good
Speaker 1: grades on a test, learning has to look a lot
Speaker 1: different while students are there. So when we talk about
Speaker 1: transforming high school, it's really transforming teaching and learning, getting
Speaker 1: educators the agency and the freedom to design lessons that
Speaker 1: really engage students, giving young people a voice and shaping
Speaker 1: what and how they learn, the really having the school
Speaker 1: match what the needs are of young people when they
Speaker 1: come out of high school and go onto their future.
Speaker 3: Explain to me, like, what are the tangible things that
Speaker 3: you try to get schools implement.
Speaker 2: What we did in the original competition was create materials
Speaker 2: that helped schools think much more originally and much more
Speaker 2: ambitiously about how to create schools where there was a
Speaker 2: really coherent culture and sense of purpose, really meaningful and
Speaker 2: engaged learning, youth voice and choice, community partnerships, and schools
Speaker 2: that use time, space and technology in expansive ways. More recently,
Speaker 2: we've run similar competitions in the State of Rhode Island,
Speaker 2: all across the state of Rhode Island, with select schools
Speaker 2: in New York City and most recently in the District
Speaker 2: of Columbia. And what we've done in those areas is
Speaker 2: take schools where there was a critical mass of people
Speaker 2: who felt that they were ready to change their high
Speaker 2: schools and make them more engaging and more modern. Students
Speaker 2: would graduate ready for the future and with a sense
Speaker 2: of what the future might hold for them, and school
Speaker 2: communities that felt they were ready decided to engage with
Speaker 2: us and went through a really really rigorous design process.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of knowledge out there about how high
Speaker 2: schools can and should change. It just isn't permeating necessarily
Speaker 2: to all the places where it's most needed. So we've
Speaker 2: made those materials and the whole process available across the
Speaker 2: District of Columbia and in Rhode Island and have helped
Speaker 2: people come to a greater understanding of what they can do,
Speaker 2: and they are doing extraordinary things. There are two schools
Speaker 2: in the District of Columbia that we selected as a
Speaker 2: result of the most recent process, and one of them
Speaker 2: is taking the concept of afrofuturism, an incredibly important intellectual
Speaker 2: and cultural concept, and making Afrofuturism the very center of
Speaker 2: the school and the theme around on which the school
Speaker 2: is organized. The other has organized itself around the theme
Speaker 2: of entrepreneurship and financial independence for students who graduate. So
Speaker 2: what that means is that in both of those schools, educators,
Speaker 2: young people and community partners are designing learning experiences, reshaping
Speaker 2: the culture of the school.
Speaker 1: XC doesn't come in with like a cookie cutter and
Speaker 1: say here's how you transform high school and then you
Speaker 1: just stamp it on the dough and get the transformed
Speaker 1: high school. I think it's much more. We create the
Speaker 1: space for those community conversations to be held and convene
Speaker 1: people and bring them together around guiding questions, and then
Speaker 1: they come to their own articulation of what that might
Speaker 1: be in their community. Whether that's afrofuturism, or whether that's
Speaker 1: community partnerships with industry in the area, or whether that's
Speaker 1: a school inside of a museum or a school that
Speaker 1: serves housing unstable students. It really is very different depending
Speaker 1: on the local context. But that's really the beauty of it.
Speaker 1: It's about really giving kids a voice and what they
Speaker 1: think they need to thrive in their communities after they finish,
Speaker 1: and really looking at bigger and contextual factors too, like
Speaker 1: workforce development. There's a school in Indianapolis that really that
Speaker 1: whole high school was created out of knowing that the
Speaker 1: state was going toward renewable energy and wind and solar
Speaker 1: and a lot of things that they weren't graduating enough
Speaker 1: high school students to fill really high tech, stem, high
Speaker 1: paying jobs. So I think it's just a lot of
Speaker 1: what we do is create the space and create the
Speaker 1: guides for those conversations to be had so that each
Speaker 1: community can form their own vision, and then we help
Speaker 1: them along the way with access to experts and other
Speaker 1: design tools and research and all of those pieces so
Speaker 1: that they can make those visions a reality.
Speaker 2: Which is not to say that anything goes. A design
Speaker 2: team works through this series of questions and challenges and
Speaker 2: does a whole lot of research on their own and
Speaker 2: does a lot of reading, has a lot of hard conversations,
Speaker 2: and they answer the questions that are part of the
Speaker 2: design process that come together into a school design. And
Speaker 2: then we and other experts look really closely at that
Speaker 2: school design and give feedback and rate them for quality.
Speaker 2: So every one of our schools, all as different as
Speaker 2: they look, has been through a test for quality of
Speaker 2: their idea and their quite detailed proposal. So because there
Speaker 2: are certain common things that every school needs to do well,
Speaker 2: they don't need all to be done the same way,
Speaker 2: but they all need to be done well.
Speaker 3: Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in
Speaker 3: a moment. Murder one oh one. The purpose of XQ
Speaker 3: is to connect with schools all across the country.
Speaker 1: I grew up in a small town in Ohio with
Speaker 1: a high school that a lot of people would say
Speaker 1: wasn't the best place to learn. I drop out rate,
Speaker 1: and you know a lot of opportunities that some high
Speaker 1: schools around me had that I didn't have. And I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that really drew me to
Speaker 1: EXQ as a former teacher and as someone who came
Speaker 1: up through that school system, is that high school transformation
Speaker 1: can actually happen anywhere. It's not just something that happens
Speaker 1: in big cities, or something that happens with a ton
Speaker 1: of support from people right in the community, or just
Speaker 1: you know, on different parts of the country. It really
Speaker 1: is happening everywhere in small pockets, And a big part
Speaker 1: of the work that we get to do is to
Speaker 1: find those examples and connect with them and learn from
Speaker 1: them so that we can tell others what they're doing
Speaker 1: and inspire more more work and more changes across the
Speaker 1: country from their examples and from their stories. So I
Speaker 1: was really drawn to Elizabeth In for that exact small
Speaker 1: town a lot like the one I grew up in
Speaker 1: that proves that this kind of work can happen.
Speaker 2: Anywhere exactly, Carrie, and I came from a town like
Speaker 2: that myself, and I was on the original the people
Speaker 2: who were originally looking at all the at all the proposals,
Speaker 2: and I looked because I came from a very small
Speaker 2: town in far upstate New York. That's a lot like Elizabethton,
Speaker 2: in a really rural area, and so I did take
Speaker 2: a I'll admit I did take an extra look at
Speaker 2: the proposals that came in from rural areas. I was
Speaker 2: really struck by Elizabethton. I may even have been the
Speaker 2: person who brought Elizabethton to the attention of our final assessors,
Speaker 2: because they they scored well in the when they in
Speaker 2: their proposal. Their proposal scored well, but it was not
Speaker 2: in the very top top ones. But there was something
Speaker 2: just so special, so unusual about the way they put
Speaker 2: their proposal together. It was twenty fifteen. In the fall
Speaker 2: we issued the challenge, and the challenge was, if you're
Speaker 2: interested in redesigning your high school, raise your hand, send
Speaker 2: us a quick concept, and we'll get back to you.
Speaker 2: So we were surprised we got seven hundred concepts. We
Speaker 2: were thinking we would get twenty or thirty, or maybe
Speaker 2: seventy or maybe one hundred. They came pouring in. We
Speaker 2: got seven hundred concepts, and we screened them really quickly
Speaker 2: for those that wouldn't be possible. You know, we were
Speaker 2: only funding in the United States. We weren't funding parochial schools,
Speaker 2: so a few got told you know, sorry, but we
Speaker 2: don't want to disappoint you. Later, most of those concepts
Speaker 2: got a green light from us to go forward and
Speaker 2: create a design. So then they rapidly created a design,
Speaker 2: mostly through early twenty sixteen. Some of them got started earlier,
Speaker 2: but they came back from their holiday break and worked
Speaker 2: really hard and put their proposals in. We got those
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen. They went through a very rigorous judging
Speaker 2: process and all the selection process, and we were able
Speaker 2: to make the announcements in September of twenty sixteen. Some
Speaker 2: of the proposals were for brand new schools. Some of
Speaker 2: the more intriguing ones were for redesigns. They were existing
Speaker 2: schools where community people had come together and said we
Speaker 2: want to change the way we do school. So no,
Speaker 2: it wasn't try to win millions of dollars to build
Speaker 2: to put a new wing on your school. It was
Speaker 2: take this money and think about what you'd really do
Speaker 2: to transform teaching and learning. Students really did the work,
Speaker 2: and those teachers, mister Campbell and mister Hensley, opened the
Speaker 2: door for students to do something really original, and they
Speaker 2: they really did. They worked through every detail of our
Speaker 2: competition process and wrote really really original and interesting answers
Speaker 2: all of the questions that made up the proposal. They
Speaker 2: were really the only ones who did that, and that
Speaker 2: was entrepreneurial teachers who had a vision for a different,
Speaker 2: better way of learning. They had been talking about it
Speaker 2: theoretically among themselves for quite some time, and when one
Speaker 2: of them saw our call for proposals, our original challenge. Well,
Speaker 2: the story that I've heard is that Dustin Hensley was
Speaker 2: looking for grants because he needed a new carpet for
Speaker 2: the library, and he came across the XQ opportunity and
Speaker 2: showed it to his friend Alex Campbell. And the two
Speaker 2: of them had been reading and talking together about the
Speaker 2: need to change high school for quite some time, and
Speaker 2: they said to each other, well, is it time to
Speaker 2: stop talking and start doing something? Should we give this
Speaker 2: a try? And so they put this little concept in
Speaker 2: to just raise their hands and say they wanted to
Speaker 2: be part of it. And then when they heard back
Speaker 2: from us that their concept had been accepted, that's when
Speaker 2: they got really inspired and they said, if we really
Speaker 2: really mean what we've been saying, we would bring students
Speaker 2: into this process, and that's what they did. They organized,
Speaker 2: I think it was mostly mister Campbell, organized a spring
Speaker 2: semester course, an entire course, an elective for a group
Speaker 2: of students around the EXQ proposal. And so they dug
Speaker 2: into the history of public education, what education is supposed
Speaker 2: to do, what high schools are supposed to do, how
Speaker 2: you could create a high school that really met all
Speaker 2: of their expectations. And they called it, confusingly for many people,
Speaker 2: they called it the Bartleby School, after the character in
Speaker 2: the Herman Melville story, the one who famously says, I
Speaker 2: would prefer not to over and over again to his boss.
Speaker 2: And so they had kind of connected this idea that
Speaker 2: students had and that they felt was present in their students,
Speaker 2: that they would prefer not to have a boring education,
Speaker 2: They would prefer not to just learn out of textbooks
Speaker 2: and take quizzes and tests. They would prefer to do more.
Speaker 2: And they produced a really good school proposal. They learned
Speaker 2: a lot about education at the same time, and so
Speaker 2: we were really pleased with what they'd done and felt
Speaker 2: proud of them and wanted to recognize the work that
Speaker 2: they had done and give them some money and some
Speaker 2: leeway to try to do more, which is exactly what
Speaker 2: they did. They're very entrepreneurial bunch. They will take what's
Speaker 2: available and turn it into gold over and over again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, A big part of what we believe in and
Speaker 1: what we see happening in schools across the country connects
Speaker 1: to what we all know about what motivates and inspires
Speaker 1: each of us when we were young and today right
Speaker 1: following your curiosity, getting intrigued by something, all of the
Speaker 1: stuff that like you have a hobby or you want
Speaker 1: to learn something that you do as an adult in
Speaker 1: schools that's often really stifled. So a big part of
Speaker 1: what we mean when we say high school transformation or
Speaker 1: what the original challenge in our ongoing work over the
Speaker 1: years intends to do is help people create the space
Speaker 1: for that curiosity and that passion and following interest and
Speaker 1: learning to be actually meaningful and engaging and attached to
Speaker 1: real life for young people. So I think it's really
Speaker 1: an example of where we know what young people need.
Speaker 1: They know what they need, but the way schools are
Speaker 1: structured with kids in classrooms and kids following a bell
Speaker 1: schedule just isn't conducive to that. So you have teachers
Speaker 1: like those at Elizabethson but all over the place really
Speaker 1: getting creative about the way that they organize the day
Speaker 1: or the way that they organize classers. They teach things
Speaker 1: in a more interdisciplinary way, or they have projects, and
Speaker 1: that really does create the space for kids to actually
Speaker 1: drive their own learning in a way that follows their curiosity,
Speaker 1: their passions and lets them explore who they are, which
Speaker 1: is ultimately what high schools can be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are two things that I think are important
Speaker 2: to bring out. One is we know that the job
Speaker 2: of high school for high school students is to build
Speaker 2: their identity as an adolescent. Brain science tells us that
Speaker 2: one of the most important jobs to be done is
Speaker 2: to build an identity, and so it's important for students
Speaker 2: to have learning experiences where they discover who they are
Speaker 2: and imagine who they might be. That's what prepares them
Speaker 2: for adult for college and for adult lives, and routine
Speaker 2: high school learning often doesn't let students develop identities that
Speaker 2: are lasting, that are authentic to who they are. The
Speaker 2: other is that we know that it's important for teenagers
Speaker 2: to have caring, trusting relationships in their schools, and many
Speaker 2: many schools and they large ones, obviously, but even some
Speaker 2: smaller ones are pretty anonymous places for students. And one
Speaker 2: of the features of our schools, and one of the
Speaker 2: elements the design principles that we stress a lot, is
Speaker 2: the importance of caring, trusting relationships, and organizing the school
Speaker 2: so that adults really know students and care about them
Speaker 2: and can help them build their identities. That's one of
Speaker 2: the things that Elizabethan is most outstanding at doing. They
Speaker 2: really know their students well, and they also create learning
Speaker 2: experiences where students can discover themselves, discover what they can do.
Speaker 3: Let's stop here for another quick break. Murder one, oh one?
Speaker 3: What excuse?
Speaker 1: Ultimate goal?
Speaker 2: Excuse? Ultimate goal is to see transformation happening in every
Speaker 2: high school. One of the reasons that we're doing high
Speaker 2: school is because we think it's the hardest thing to change.
Speaker 2: We also think it's the most important thing to change.
Speaker 2: High schools are infinitely more complicated than K eight schools.
Speaker 2: They have departments, they have grade levels, they do tracking,
Speaker 2: they do a million things, and as a result, they
Speaker 2: have developed some standard, routine, status quo ways of getting
Speaker 2: the work done that have calcified the system. That's why
Speaker 2: the typical bell system that sometimes exists in middle schools
Speaker 2: but is absolutely the standard in high school, where the
Speaker 2: day is broken up into blocks, where student learning is
Speaker 2: divided vertically into certain subject matter areas where they have
Speaker 2: to develop their capacities. High schools are very complicated expectations
Speaker 2: associated with standardized testing and with being ready for college.
Speaker 2: All of those things create deep structures in high schools
Speaker 2: that are just difficult to budge. A lot of people
Speaker 2: want to make change, but they are working within a
Speaker 2: structure that's rigid and it's very hard to change.
Speaker 1: I think one of the other important things and why
Speaker 1: XQ focuses on high school, is because high school exists
Speaker 1: right at the center of K eight and then everything
Speaker 1: that comes after that too. So for most young people,
Speaker 1: it's sort of the last stop before adulthood, right, and
Speaker 1: it's not too late. As An has mentioned the science
Speaker 1: of learning and of adolescence at that time, it's the
Speaker 1: perfect time to really expose young people to new and
Speaker 1: different experiences so that develop who they are and they
Speaker 1: come out into the world as young adults really equipped
Speaker 1: to thrive. Instead of having just gone through the slog
Speaker 1: of high school and going, oh, check that box, I've
Speaker 1: got a diplomb onto the next thing. But if you
Speaker 1: change high school, then that puts pressure on KA to
Speaker 1: make sure that students are coming in prepared for what
Speaker 1: the new high school experience will be. And then that
Speaker 1: puts pressure on the higher education system and the workforce
Speaker 1: to make sure that people are coming into jobs and
Speaker 1: careers and higher education with a whole new set of
Speaker 1: skills and experiences, so that higher ed will have to
Speaker 1: change to accommodate that too. We say high school as
Speaker 1: a fallcroom for change, but really high school at the center.
Speaker 1: If you focus there, then that impacts KA and higher
Speaker 1: ed and across the system too.
Speaker 3: We discussed what XQ had coming up next.
Speaker 2: So a year ago we launched a really important partnership
Speaker 2: with Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. They're one
Speaker 2: hundred year old organization, probably older, and their name is
Speaker 2: the name associated with the Carnegie Unit. The Carnegie Unit
Speaker 2: is the organizing unit for all of high school and
Speaker 2: most of higher education as well. It's also known as
Speaker 2: the credit hour, and what the Carnegie Unit did and
Speaker 2: what it continues to do, is equate learning with the
Speaker 2: amount of time that a student has sat in a class.
Speaker 2: So that's why we talk about the credit hour, which
Speaker 2: is also called the Carnegie Unit. So this partnership with
Speaker 2: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching gives us an
Speaker 2: opportunity to think about what would be a more appropriate
Speaker 2: way to measure and a credit learning that would be
Speaker 2: more flexible, that would measure learning as opposed to time
Speaker 2: and a seat. And it sounds simple, but it's actually
Speaker 2: quite complicated to make change in this area because so
Speaker 2: much of our system is built around this unit that
Speaker 2: is probably invisible to many people, called the Carnegie Unit,
Speaker 2: but it is an assumption that is baked very deep
Speaker 2: into the way high schools are organized. We think that
Speaker 2: it's holding high schools back from the kinds of change
Speaker 2: that they need to make. It really is time, it's possible,
Speaker 2: and it's time for us to be measuring student life,
Speaker 2: learning and attainment and not just how much time they've
Speaker 2: set it in a seat learning biology or learning world history.
Speaker 2: So there might be a learning experience where students learn
Speaker 2: about the Harlem Renaissance, but because of the project that
Speaker 2: they're doing, they would also learn a great deal about
Speaker 2: collaboration and original thinking and research and other skills that
Speaker 2: are not necessarily covered by the academic standards, but that
Speaker 2: are equally important in the development of a whole human
Speaker 2: and so we're exploring what it means to create learning
Speaker 2: experiences that do all that.
Speaker 1: We're simultaneously supporting people as they do the work of
Speaker 1: high school transformation and their goals and districts in the
Speaker 1: ways that we've talked about, by creating the spaces and
Speaker 1: providing the resources and tools for those community conversations and
Speaker 1: focus groups, and digging into the data about how students
Speaker 1: are doing in high school. So we're doing that, and
Speaker 1: we're also showing people what's possible and giving them examples
Speaker 1: of the work that's underway to inspire other high schools
Speaker 1: to take up this work in their own communities. So
Speaker 1: I think when you ask what's next for us, it's
Speaker 1: continued work in both of those areas, supporting people doing
Speaker 1: the work and showing people what's possible so they can
Speaker 1: join us.
Speaker 2: One of the things that we see over and over
Speaker 2: again through our work with XQ is that students really
Speaker 2: can do anything if they're given the opportunity. And it
Speaker 2: also helps to organize a team. It helps that they
Speaker 2: are not necessarily working alone. That One of the things
Speaker 2: that is special about Elizabethton is that they design projects
Speaker 2: where students can put their heads together, solve problems together,
Speaker 2: figure out a way to get things done as a
Speaker 2: team and also as individuals, and they have a spirit
Speaker 2: and a desire to get work done that has an
Speaker 2: impact in the world. They bring a lot a lot
Speaker 2: of empathy to their work, and actually most students have
Speaker 2: a lot of empathy for the people in the world
Speaker 2: around them and want to put their creativity and their
Speaker 2: hard work to work on problems that matter. It's one
Speaker 2: of the things that we hear from students all the
Speaker 2: time that they want to be engaged in work that's
Speaker 2: really relevant and that's authentic and that is not just
Speaker 2: practice for the real world. They want to be engaging
Speaker 2: with the real world right now. They did that in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen when they put together a proposal for a
Speaker 2: school that really caught the attention of EXEQ, and they've
Speaker 2: done it over and over again in Elizabethton. Actually, that's
Speaker 2: what we gave them the grant to do that. That's
Speaker 2: what they said they wanted to do most of all,
Speaker 2: was create opportunities for students to do community projects, to
Speaker 2: serve their community, and they have found a multitude of
Speaker 2: ways to do that, and it's a very inclusive process.
Speaker 2: It's all the students in that school are part of
Speaker 2: this ff for to have a different kind of experience
Speaker 2: in their high school years.
Speaker 1: One of the things that really drew me to XQ
Speaker 1: when I was first learning about it was there all
Speaker 1: of the technical details around high school redesign and design
Speaker 1: principles and learn outcomes and all of those really specific
Speaker 1: things that support educators and leaders in doing the work.
Speaker 1: But I remember having early conversation with Anne, and the
Speaker 1: way that Anne you broke it down to me was
Speaker 1: XQ believes in the potential of young people. We're not
Speaker 1: cynical about teenagers. We don't roll our eyes like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're just kids. We really do believe in the potential
Speaker 1: of every young person and believe that high school can
Speaker 1: be a place to unlock that instead of a place
Speaker 1: to stifle it. So I think that's something that the
Speaker 1: Elizabethan story really illuminates, because they were able to do
Speaker 1: things that adults weren't able to do, and they were
Speaker 1: able to accomplish things that went well beyond what you
Speaker 1: would ever think would happen in the context of learning
Speaker 1: and at the same time pick up all of the
Speaker 1: skills that are important coming out of high school, writing
Speaker 1: and researching and advocating for yourself and learning and all
Speaker 1: of that, but at the same time really grow as
Speaker 1: individuals and as people. And that is an example from Elizabethton,
Speaker 1: But that's playing out in high schools all over the country,
Speaker 1: not just XQ schools everywhere.
Speaker 3: How would the listeners get involved if they want to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we actually hear from everyone, which is really important
Speaker 1: because we do believe in community led work that has
Speaker 1: a seat at everyone for everyone around the table. So
Speaker 1: whether you're a student or a family member, or a
Speaker 1: school board member, or a teacher, or someone who owns
Speaker 1: a business or someone who works in a community, there's
Speaker 1: a place for you in this work in your town.
Speaker 1: And as part of this national movement, we use the
Speaker 1: phrase rethink high School across all of social media. That's
Speaker 1: an easy way to find us at XQ America across
Speaker 1: all socials too. We invite everyone to find a seat
Speaker 1: at the table with us. We do host challenges in
Speaker 1: districts and other communities based on some of that those
Speaker 1: conversations and really our work just continues to evolve to
Speaker 1: meet the needs of people in their communities and defining
Speaker 1: they are and how we can help. If you're interested
Speaker 1: in learning more about XQ, you can find us on
Speaker 1: all the socials at XQ America. You can visit our website,
Speaker 1: which is XQ Institute dot org, or you can use
Speaker 1: the hashtag rethink high school across all the social platforms
Speaker 1: to find content and resources not just from us, but
Speaker 1: from educators and students all over the country that are
Speaker 1: sharing examples of the ways they're rethinking high school in
Speaker 1: their own communities.
Speaker 3: Murder one oh one is executive produced by Stephanie Leidecker,
Speaker 3: Alex Campbell, Courtney Armstrong, Andrew Arnot, and me Jeff Shane.
Speaker 3: Additional producing by Connor Powell and Gabriel Castillo. Editing by
Speaker 3: Jeff Twa and Davey Cooper Wasser. Music by Vancor Music.
Speaker 3: Murder one oh one is a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 3: Katie'stue Udios. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 4: This is Alex Campbell, co host of Murder one oh
Speaker 4: one we hope you're enjoying season one. We ask that
Speaker 4: if you know anything that could help police solve these cases,
Speaker 4: that you contact the appropriate agencies with any information you
Speaker 4: feel can help with their work to bring justice to
Speaker 4: these women and their families. But we also ask that
Speaker 4: if you feel you can help us continue to tell
Speaker 4: these stories, that you reach out to us with any
Speaker 4: of the following information. Number one, if you have any
Speaker 4: personal experiences with these victims that could help us tell
Speaker 4: their stories as real people. Maybe you grew up with them,
Speaker 4: worked with them, or are even related to them. If
Speaker 4: you can shed light on the investigations going back to
Speaker 4: the nineteen eighties, then maybe you worked with the cases,
Speaker 4: such as a police officer, or maybe you were a
Speaker 4: witness or even a journalist, that would also be very helpful.
Speaker 4: And finally, if you have any information on our side suspect,
Speaker 4: maybe you grew up with him, you were in the
Speaker 4: military with him, incarcerated with him, or maybe involved with
Speaker 4: him through law enforcements such as his jailor guard or
Speaker 4: parole officer. All those things can be helpful. We would
Speaker 4: love to hear from any of you. You can reach
Speaker 4: us at info at ktdshstudios dot com, or message us
Speaker 4: through Instagram at kt Underscore Studios