Episode 197: AI, Education, and the Classroom Revolution with William Grube

Darrin Peppard (: 00:01

All right, my friends, welcome back into the Leaning into Leadership podcast. This is episode number 197, and my guest on the show today is William Grube. Now, before we dive into today's episode, I have a super exciting announcement that I cannot wait to share with you. Culture First Classrooms, Leadership, Relationships, and Practices to Transform Schools will be live and available for purchase starting tomorrow, March 17th. Folks,

I've got my first copy right here in my hand. For those of you watching the video, I've got the book right here in my hand, folks. It is absolutely beautiful. I'm so proud of it. And I'm so excited about it. Katie Kinder and I, along with 24 absolutely amazing educators, poured our heart and soul into this book because we truly believe that culture has to come first in our classrooms for us to achieve everything else that we want to achieve. And I can't wait for you

to this book in your hands. I will tell you that down in the show notes, folks, you will find the link to both Barnes and Noble and to Amazon, and the link just might allow you to order the book today. So make sure you get down there, grab a copy of the book, Culture vs. Classrooms, Leadership, Relationships and Practices that Transform Schools. Now let's get on to today's episode.

Today, we're gonna dive into a topic that has made its way into every corner of our lives, especially in education, and that's artificial intelligence. Look, AI is changing the way we work, the way we learn, the way we lead, and today, my guest is someone who has dedicated himself to helping schools navigate this transition. Joining me is William Grube. He is the founder of Gruvy Education, which is a company that...

helps and partners with over 100 schools and state level organizations to provide AI training. He's gonna share his journey of how he moved into this AI space. He's gonna talk about how AI is reshaping education and why schools should be embracing it. He's gonna talk a little bit about some of those big misconceptions about AI and some real practical ways that teachers can utilize AI in their daily work.

He also has a little bit of insight for school leaders on how you can leverage AI to help you manage your priorities and to really stay focused on what truly matters. Folks, this is an absolutely awesome episode, so let's not waste any time. Let's get right to it with William Grube.

Darrin Peppard (: 00:01

All right, everybody, welcome back into the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. Today on the show, we're going to dive into a topic that has made its way literally into every corner of our life. And specifically, we're going to talk about how that has made its way into education. And that is, of course, artificial intelligence or AI. And my guest on the show today has some really interesting takes on it and also

has created a business around that to support you in your schools, to support your students and support your teachers in your schools. So William Groobie, welcome into the Leaning into Leadership podcast.

William Grube (: 00:40

Thank so much for having me. I'm looking forward to it.

Darrin Peppard (: 00:43

Yeah, absolutely. let's just do this really quick. Maybe share a little bit of your story that maybe explains how you have found your way into this AI space and the work that you do to support schools. So as far back as you want to go, just maybe give us a little bit of your background.

William Grube (: 01:05

Perfect, awesome. I'll talk about really how it started because of course I don't even know this was even really a thing that schools could get service through professional development so it's like this thing that I've eventually found out and kind of really built a business around but when I was a

Sophomore in college is when ChatGBT came out, or a junior in college is when ChatGBT came out. And as I was a computer science student, right in that computer AI realm, and I just saw how I was going to completely change everything. I mean, I was handwriting code on exams, and then I'd go home and ChatGBT could spit out the same code in a matter of seconds. So I really saw a discrepancy between where we were at with technology and where education was at. And I saw it as a good opportunity and really knew

is very important to get it in front of educators eyes and making sure that hey this is a thing and all my internship work was actually done at a service co-op that service schools with cybersecurity so that's where I just first got hands-on with schools and technology. I just got to learn how it worked in schools and also got to learn who to reach out to if you want to do something with their staff so I did a little quick Google search hey let's find a bunch of superintendents across the states of North Dakota and Minnesota and I essentially just reached out saying hey can I

I come you have a one-hour presentation to your staff about AI I am a student at North Dakota State University studying computer science and I actually ended up giving like 30 of those presentations in like three short months and it was very crazy time but from their schools came back and said hey can you actually come teach our schools how to use AI and how they can leverage it so that from there I started groovy education and now we deliver AI training to well over a hundred different school districts all across the nation and what that looks like

is us showing up and kind of delivering four hours of training, well delivering four hours training to the whole staff all at once, but they're also getting access to our online training portal where teachers can go in and earn continuing education hours and partner with North Dakota State University. They send out badges as teachers complete the training inside of the training portal and things like that.

Darrin Peppard (: 03:12

I think that's fantastic. really do for a dozen different reasons. Partially because as an entrepreneur, seeing that entrepreneurial spirit in you and you seeing, you hey, here's a niche that I can definitely, you know, not only fit, but I'm really interested in and that definitely schools need this type of support. then the other thing I really love about it, it's making me think a lot about

Probably the two or three camps that educators tend to reside in when it comes to AI the nope don't want anything to do with it Yep, I'm all in on it and then the probably the large group is just this like AI curious Like I don't know what it can do. So maybe talk a little bit about what you've seen I mean, I know like you said it kind of started with superintendents, but ultimately I'm sure a lot of it is working with teachers. What what do you see?

What do you hear from teachers when they walk into a professional development activity or a webinar with you? What's on most of their minds when they're thinking about AI?

William Grube (: 04:22

Yeah, and has kind of been this evolution because right when chat.gbt came out, the only sole talking point that was talked about in education was, hey, students are going to use this to write all of their papers. So that was kind of right away. That was like you had to bring them from there to, really changing their mindset around it. And I think that's kind of why it's been so helpful. And so many schools have brought it in is because really just shifting the educators perspectives around AI, not fearing it, not pushing in a way, but understanding its presence and importance, understanding that,

Every student will use AI in their career. How can we make sure we're preparing them for a world where they will be using AI in their career? So right off the bat right when it started it was a lot of a lot of hesitation But now when I show up to a school I would say about 25 % of the room would call themselves regular AI users and about 50 % of them are in that AI curious group that that you mentioned about 25 % of them are like AI push awayers as you know, this is this is not good and that students are

never gonna learn again. And so it's like this wide range, you really have to meet everybody where they're at. Because if you come in and don't explain why you should be using AI and why you should be preparing students for a world where AI tools exist, they're not really going to listen to any anything when we do get hands on and they're not really going to want to follow along. But once you really take them from hey, this is why here's what we can do to capitalize on the positives while mitigating the risk. Let's do exactly that. Let's do x, y and z.

and then taking it from there.

Darrin Peppard (: 05:56

So I'm curious, I want to dig in so much more on this, but as somebody who, you know, was a building principal, as a superintendent, I know those personalities. You know, I can see faces like that I worked with in each of those camps. I'm curious, what's like the craziest thing that you've heard, just the most like wildly inaccurate about AI that you have heard when you've worked with schools?

William Grube (: 06:24

Man, that's a really good question. The wildest thing I've heard. You know, most of the time, like, because I have this smile and I look like I'm 12 years old, usually like I rarely get any pushback because I mean, I'm coming in, I look young, maybe they're like, you might know some more about AI than me, I don't know. So I really haven't heard anything too crazy. But I would just say the biggest misconception.

that I see around is that students are just going to never learn again because these tools exist. And then you just kind of take them through like, no, this just probably means we need to change the way we're teaching a little bit to take into account that these tools do exist. So what can we do to make sure we're pushing students to go further than what AI can offer? And what can we do to make sure students know how to use technology in a productive way? So when it comes to out of the...

out of this world, like this is the craziest thing I've ever heard. I honestly can't pull on anything because I really haven't heard all too much. I think everybody knows there's a lot of misconceptions around it, so there might be a little bit tentative to speak up a little bit. And lots of the things people bring up are very valid as well. Like, hey, what's this gonna do to critical thinking skills? What about information control when these big organizations get to control what we all see on our screen? Like most of those things that teachers bring up are

Darrin Peppard (: 07:33

Yeah.

Darrin Peppard (: 07:37

Sure.

William Grube (: 07:51

very valid and I haven't heard too many things that are like out of the box and I'm like, no, it's time to stop.

Darrin Peppard (: 07:57

Yeah, yeah, well, it's okay. Yeah, you know, I could imagine, you know, there's probably some people who are thinking things, maybe they just won't bring it up. you know, you mentioned a couple of things there, though, that certainly are valid concerns, you know, whether that's information control, or, you know, what happens to critical thinking skills. Let's let's go with the critical thinking piece.

when you hear that and it sounds like you hear that one frequently, what is a typical response or what do you share with teachers so they aren't just simply thinking, kids can use chat GPT to never think again.

William Grube (: 08:40

Yeah, I mean, first off, we kind of start off the day showing like the story of a student who would bring home maybe like a physics problem, throw it in a chat, it's going to take it. It's going to spit out all the steps along with the answer. The student were to do that, even for having them do it on a piece of paper, they can blindly stare at the screen and write down all the steps along with the answer without necessarily thinking at all before the pen hits the paper. So we do bring this up and hey, if students over rely on AI.

diminish critical thinking skills, diminish problem solving skills can absolutely happen. So they don't have to think, how do I start this problem? Where do I go from here? So when we talk about what we can do about that, we really talk about terminating this arms race that happens between education and anti-cheating technology, and instead making it more impossible to cheat by the way we're giving out the assignments, the way we're delivering the course, to make sure we're pushing students to go further than what AI can offer. And what that looks like is, hey, we can have more.

local environment based questions that make students interact with their surroundings because that's something that technology cannot just do for them or more in class activities, more projects. And those are actually the first things that we do when we hop onto the AI tools is we do these things that push, we create things that push students to go further than what AI can offer to really show them that like, we have this opportunity where we can use AI to bring education into the 21st century. So it's kind of like the story we're telling, Hey, this can happen.

But we don't want this to happen. And AI is not going away. We go over how fast it's getting better. It's only going to keep getting better. It's a race between countries who has the best AI tool. So how can we make sure we're preparing students for a world where that is going to continue? It's kind of the way we go about it. And it's very, very well received. And I think it's just very eye-opening once you take a look at the numbers. How many students are using it?

How fast is AI getting better? It's very eye-opening. It's like, we do need to do something about this.

Darrin Peppard (: 10:38

Yeah, no, I think that's awesome. You know, in what I do, I work with a lot of school administrators and we talk frequently about different ways that as a school leader that we can utilize AI. I'm kind of curious. I'd love to hear your take from the leadership perspective. So what are some tools that you're sharing with school leaders in terms of, as a school leader, here's some ways that you could utilize AI.

Then then I want to come back to the classroom and talk about ways that teachers can utilize it.

William Grube (: 11:10

Yeah, school leaders, I would say they are very proactive and they love, they love AI. Once they figure out how much time it'll save them, they're like, let's go. So, so they're like a very, very fun group to work with because they're like, what else can I do? What else can I do? What else can I do? But with, with the leadership trainings that we do, we typically hit on four topics. hit on communication, of course, things like

Darrin Peppard (: 11:18

yeah.

Yeah.

William Grube (: 11:35

handling difficult parent emails and things of that nature. Of course, general email efficiency, whatever it may be. Maybe you need to send a letter out to the community for whatever. So there's that. And then we dive into things like human capital. So maybe helping with drafting improvement plans or how to get wording for a difficult conversation that we need to have with a staff member. Okay, we need to get this improvement plan, but now we have to this conversation with the teacher that we have to present the improvement plan to. So that sort of stuff.

And then we get into, when I'm working with superintendents, we do a lot of business services type things. We do behavior things with principals, whether it's a behavior plan, intervention strategies, know, a whole cast of different things. And then the biggest thing that they love is the data analysis aspect of it. They have all of this data and in these spreadsheets, and it's just been locked in these spreadsheets, and now it's never been easier to just take that data and make more data-driven decisions for your school.

and also just turn that data into actual plans. Based off of this, what can I do to improve this? So they find that aspect very, very helpful. But then also things just like inside of ChatGPT, creating something like a custom GPT that's trained off of their school policy that will give, like if a superintendent made that, they can give it to their principals and the principals can go to it, hey, this situation happened based off of policy, list out the steps that I need to take and we'll break it down for them. So things like that, and that was actually...

I was at the AASA AI Super Summit in Tampa last month and that was actually a standalone breakout session, not even really a breakout session, they ran it every single breakout session time, if that makes sense. Like you could go to the breakout sessions or you could go and create this custom chat bot that really like lowers the amount of communication you have to respond to because instead of everybody coming to you for the answers,

You can kind of take that knowledge, okay, put it in this chat bot, you can go ask that chat bot for the answer, and it's gonna give it to you probably even more clear and less the time instantly. So school leaders love it because there's just endless use cases to it, and they are operating a school and they just see, can go there, it can go here, it can go here, and just really helps them so much.

Darrin Peppard (: 13:50

Yeah. Yeah. I think it's incredible what, what we're able to do utilizing that, that chat GPT tool. mean, I use it constantly. think it's, it's an unbelievable time saver in, in so many different ways. So, so what, what are some tools or some methods that you suggest for teachers to utilize AI in their classrooms?

William Grube (: 14:20

Yeah, I think there's the two biggest things that I see that like have a profoundly positive impact would be one, when it comes to creating standards aligned content, of course, it's never been easier because whatever we're making with ChatGBT, make this thing or make this thing and then align it to this specific state standard, make this align to this state standard, make this align to this state standard. So it's just so easy to create standards aligned content.

So I see them really picking up on that and like, my gosh, like this is incredible. And then the other thing would just be modifying assignments for diverse learners. Like you can get modified assignments in a split second. Hey, this is a seventh grade math assignment or seventh grade English assignment. need it at a fifth grade reading level for a student with dyslexia.

Or maybe we have a gifted student, I need to make this assignment a little bit harder for the students. So just being able to meet students where they are at so much more effective, like quickly. Like if you knew you had to modify an assignment, teacher probably take a step back and maybe take a deep breath and think, okay, this is the next hour of my life is breaking down this assignment to something that's a little bit simpler. But now they can just get that first template draft done in a split second and then they can just go and tweak little things that they know.

would need to be tweaked and then give it to that student. Just such a big time saver in the diversification of assignments.

Darrin Peppard (: 15:43

Yeah, no, it's an amazing tool. really truly is. So I'm curious, maybe stepping away from AI for just a minute. So what I heard you say early on, you were a computer science major, not an education major, correct?

William Grube (: 15:58

Correct. Yes.

Darrin Peppard (: 16:02

So just listening to you talk, you have learned a tremendous amount about education. Just talk to me a little bit about like, what you have learned about what is happening inside of education and just all the ins and outs that, I mean, a lot of people would be very surprised that somebody without an education background understands education as well as you do.

William Grube (: 16:31

Yeah, I think the biggest, most surprising things to me were from a high level, like for the superintendents, I didn't really, as a kid you don't realize that they are really just operating a business. It's kind of like the CEO of a business. They have to make everything, you don't really think about that. That's something that I was like, that's actually kind of a fun, cool job. You're really just kind of running a business in a way, in a little different structure, but there's that. then it's just, the teachers struggled.

the teachers struggle day to day, you don't notice it until you're helping them. And then it's like, well, what about this? What about this? What about this? And it's like, oh my gosh, there's a lot of variables to their job that it's just a really tough job. It truly is. student behavior might be down a little bit. one of the...

questions that they answer on our feedback form is what's your number one pain point in education right now. So that's been super helpful. And like the biggest things are student motivation. And I know I wasn't the best student in high school. that, that, so I was probably part of that problem. And it's just seeing like, you know, they, they truly, truly want these students to learn. And then the student just lacks motivation and they just don't want to do it.

So that sort of stuff, it's like, like this is a really tough job. You show up every day and like really give it your all and really want to make sure that you're setting the students up for success. sometimes students are motivated or there's just behavior issues in the class that make the classroom really hard to run because we have to take care of this issue. So there's like little things like that that you don't necessarily notice. It's a very tough career to go into.

Darrin Peppard (: 18:13

Yeah, though that it definitely is. it, I mean, it in many ways, it just, it just gets more and more complicated and more and more challenging. But, certainly having somebody out there who's working to, to not only stay ahead of, also to bring methods and techniques to classroom teachers, to building leaders, to superintendents around how you can utilize AI. think it's just absolutely fantastic. So

Talk a little bit more. Let's, maybe go up a little bit higher level here. Talk about just the, the launch of groovy education and maybe you've talked about it kind of throughout the show, but, maybe talk a little bit more specifically about what it is that you guys do at groovy education so that, you know, some of our listeners, I guarantee there are school leaders, district leaders who are listening to this going, wow, I've got to get in touch with, with William. So talk about what

what groovy education really is.

William Grube (: 19:15

Yeah, it really is just this like, it is professional development. Like we come, we train your staff for four hours, but like we take them from, you know, that wide range of teachers using AI a lot to teachers never using AI to the teachers that don't feel tech savvy enough to use AI to the teachers again who use it a lot. Just this wide range and we take everybody and really move them, move them from.

from here and we take everybody and move them into the next step. So it's a four hour training at a school. We show up the first module, there's four different modules, one for each hour. The first module is really shifting everybody's perspectives. It's more almost like a keynote, really gets everybody fired up, excited to learn how to use AI, but also just knowing like, it's here. This is how we capitalize on the positives and this is how we mitigate the risks. And that's how the training is set up. And then in module two, in the second hour of the training,

That's where we're really focused on learning how to use ChatGBT and giving them the 20 % of the information that's gonna get them 80 % of the results. But in the process of doing that, the first things that we're creating with ChatGBT are terminating the arms race happens through an education anti-cheating technology. So we create things that students can't just cheat on with AI and really push students to go further. And if they were to use AI, they'd be using it as a learning tool and not as a complete crutch.

So that's module two is really learning how to use chat, you'll able to really tie in the story of making sure we're preparing students. And then in modules three and four, that's where you really get to dive into the other educator specific AI tools like Magic School, like EduAid AI, and really also learning how to use it with students through Magic Students, through School AI. So then we're just diving into those platforms and really just taking the teachers and giving them the tools and the skills and also just the confidence.

to use the AI tools, because some of the teachers don't feel like they hear AI and they're like, that's just for the techie folks, not for me. They don't realize, hey, if you can search on Google, you can also use ChatGBT. It might seem scary at first, but you'll send one prompt through and you'll be like, okay, this is incredibly easy and this is something that I can easily do every single day. and I mean, the average teacher that goes through the training saves about three and a half hours every single week on prep.

Darrin Peppard (: 21:15

crime.

William Grube (: 21:36

preparation, content creation, and administrative tasks. We also focus on how to use AI responsibly with students. And just through surveying the educators a month after they complete our training, they see about a 25 % boost in student engagement when they use AI in the classroom. And we're seeing about a 28 % boost in meeting the needs of diverse learners after going through the training as well. So it's really, hey, let's make sure we're bringing AI into the school in a way that's helpful for everybody, for the teachers.

for the students, for the students' future, et cetera.

Darrin Peppard (: 22:10

Yeah, no, think it's fantastic. I really do. And again, I'm grateful to know that there's somebody out there that is that is doing that work so that, you know, teachers don't just feel helpless or feel lost or can maybe move past that, you know, that mindset of all the kids are just cheating with it when there's just so much more to

William Grube (: 22:32

Mm-hmm.

Darrin Peppard (: 22:32

artificial intelligence and my gosh, there's just so many incredible things you can do with chat GPT. I'm really glad that we had a chance to talk about the administrator side too. My brain is spinning around other things that I can do with all of the different school leaders that I support to help them to really lead into that too. So I think that's fantastic. Man, I'll tell you what, our time has just absolutely flown by. So William, I want to ask you the same question that I ask everybody here on.

William Grube (: 22:41

Yeah.

Darrin Peppard (: 23:01

leaning into leadership as kind of our final question of the day. You've shared a lot about the work that you're doing, but I'm curious what else maybe you would say you're doing to lean into leadership right now.

William Grube (: 23:14

Yeah, I think my huge focus is really helping more and more people in the AI realm because it goes deeper than just education. I'm immersed in AI stuff, so sometimes I might think everybody's paying attention to it, but they're really not. And there's never been a better time to just get more time back to your life and do more stuff that you want to do instead of that busy work that we all have to do throughout our day.

And I really just want to help people get back time to their own lives and do more stuff that they want to do and, you know, automate their own lives and things of that nature. It's never been easier to go from idea to implementation much, much faster. The ability to be creative, AI does not diminish that. It just allows more people to be creative if they know how to leverage it in the right ways. For example, like a teacher, they have an idea for an in-class activity before AI, they probably take a step back. That's going to take way too long to create all the materials for.

but now they can just get it all out and then go and deliver that in class activity like they wanted to. So it just like gives everybody in education and outside of education a way to be more creative, to have more time back to their lives, to create stuff that they like, to do more stuff that they like. And I really just want to continue to spread that message and help more people be able to do those things.

Darrin Peppard (: 24:37

I think it's fantastic. really do and certainly appreciate not just not just what you're doing with groovy education, but also your mindset around this and about being able to really just support as many people as possible. People are definitely going to want to contact you, whether that's just to pick your brain or because they're like, hey, I want to talk to you about groovy education and getting you to my school. How did they go about getting in touch with you?

William Grube (: 25:02

Yes, if you go to our website groovieeducation.com, g-r-u-v-y dot com, there's contact forms on every page at the bottom, you'll see contact me button additionally. You can email me at william.groovy at groovyeducation.com, g-r-u-v-y education.

Darrin Peppard (: 25:20

Nice, outstanding. We will make sure all of that stuff is down in the show notes for you folks. Make sure that you get in contact with William and the folks there at Groovy Education. William Groovy, thank you so much for joining me here on the Leading Into Leadership podcast.

William Grube (: 25:34

Thank you.

All right, my friends, that was such an outstanding conversation and I genuinely appreciate William joining me here on the show. mean, holy cow, since this episode was recorded, William shared with me the how to build your own GPT as a school leader. Holy moly, I've started to play around with that a little bit. And just being able to utilize that tool to shorten

some of the steps that you have to take to help you navigate your way through some of the different things that you see can just be absolutely phenomenal. Check out everything down there in the show notes with William Groovy. Some awesome stuff happening at Groovy Education. And now it's time for a pep talk. Today's pep talk is gonna be short and sweet. I just simply wanna say thank you.

I just simply want to share the amount of gratitude, love, joy, and pride that I have for my co-author, Katie Kinder, for the 24 remarkable educators who contributed to the new book, Culture First Classrooms, and to my entire team at Road to Awesome. I will tell you that getting this book in my hands earlier this week was just really something special.

You know, it's pretty amazing. This is not the first book I've written. This is book four, actually, for me. But, man, I think this might be the book I'm the most proud of. And I wouldn't be as proud of this book as I am without Katie and the 24 contributors to this book. So I just simply want to say thank you. I just simply want to share how much each and every one of them mean to me and how

important, I think the work that every single one of them put into this book, how that is going to impact schools, how that's going to impact kids. had a conversation earlier today with a principal in South Carolina who was one of the people who pre-read the book. And she told me she thinks it's one of the best education books that she's ever read. and I truly

appreciate her words. I appreciate the kindness from her. But it's not about me. It's about the 24 contributors. It's Katie Kinder. It's the Road to Awesome team. It's everybody who came together to put Culture First classrooms into the world. So again, folks, there are links down in the show notes, go get your copy order right now.

If you want an autographed copy of the book, will tell you that you can go to our website, roadtoawesome.net, and I will have a link there for you to go and grab a copy of the book. We'll get an autograph for you and get it sent your way. Thank you so much for joining me here on the Leaning Into Leadership podcast. Get out there, folks, and have a Road to Awesome week.