218. Leadership Simulations as PD with Dr. Richard Bernato

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In the podcast episode, our guest, Dr. Richard Bernato, delves into the transformative potential of simulations in education. Drawing from his extensive experience as an educator and leader, he discusses how simulations—role-play scenarios in a game-like environment—can empower educators to foster experiential learning that supports student learning through doing.

Highlighting insights from his book Co-Creating the Future, Dr. Bernato illustrates how the collaborative nature of simulations enhances decision-making skills and prepares for potential future scenarios.


The Big Dream 

Dr. Bernato envisions a future where educational leaders and educators are empowered to catalyze each other through professional development and experiential approaches. In doing so, educators can recognize what their mission and purpose should be and apply them in the classroom.

He dreams of a landscape where simulations are widely adopted in educational settings, allowing for innovative and transformative learning experiences. This vision extends to fostering international collaboration, enabling a global audience to engage in collective learning about reform and personal growth, ultimately leading to a future rich with innovation and empowerment.

Mindset Shifts Required

A key mindset shift highlighted by Dr. Bernato is the need for educators to move from reactive to proactive approaches in education. He emphasizes the importance of engaging in "futuring" and simulations to build capacity for dealing with probable futures, rather than merely addressing immediate challenges. 

Action Steps  
Educators who want to embrace “futuring” to build capacity for dealing with future issues and situations can start by implementing simulations as a tool for experiential learning. Here are some steps to follow, which are elaborated on in Dr. Bernato’s book, Co-Creating the Future:

Step 1: Embrace the concept of simulations as a tool for experiential learning. Dr. Bernato explains that a simulation is a set of role plays within a gaming situation. 

Step 2: Create the scenario and context for your simulation. Consider any game or video game—there’s always a scenario that needs to be thoroughly understood so players can move through the game. Your scenario will have economic, demographic, or commercial premises, and value systems will be involved. 
Step 3: Give the players a role. Within the context of your scenario, the players need a role such as president, community leader, politician, business leader, etc. How do these players interact together? How do they understand the scenario? 

Step 4: Let the players find their purpose. Why are they there? Players gather together to discuss what their goals are and what the purpose of this simulation is. 

Step 5: Introduce futures options. What’s probably, possible, and preferable? For example, demographic changes are probable—what’s the impact of that? Then, of what’s probable, what is the most preferable? The facilitator can add new dimensions for players to consider. 

Step 6: Act out scenarios. Create a website, newscast, obituary, etc., that explains the particular scenario of what could happen. What does the world look like in this simulation under these conditions?

Step 7: Debrief. Discuss the experiences all the players had to understand whether adaptation or transformation is necessary. 


Challenges?

One challenge is the tendency for educational groups to opt for adaptation over transformation. Overcoming this requires a commitment to embracing new methods and a willingness to question the status quo. 

Additionally, implementing simulations in time-constrained environments like K-12 education can be challenging. Creative strategies like hosting it on Zoom or doing it once a month can help make simulations more accessible for educators struggling to find time. 

One Step to Get Started 

One small step for educators is to start by looking internally. Get honest and ask: Are you really satisfied with what you’re doing? If so, carry on. If not, it might be time to consider integrating new ideas like simulations and experiential learning in your educational practice. 

Stay Connected

You can find this week’s guest on email, SolutionTree, and LinkedIn.

To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is offering a 20-minute conversation about how futuring meets your school district needs with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 218 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.

Quotes: 

• 11:48 “Many educators, whether they’re teachers or have stripes on their shoulders, are extremely passive … They feel victimized by whoever the decision-makers are and are perfectly willing to sit back and accept whatever they think the probable future is that they have to deal with.” 
• 6:48 “If you look at think tanks or corporate think tanks or governmental think tanks, they’re futuring all day long. That’s what they do … They think about, ‘Is this a potential scenario, a potential future, a probable future? Is the probable future our preferable future? And if it isn’t, what’s the gap?’”
• 16:49 “...That one with Chevy Chase where he’s exploring the Hoover Dam. He puts gum on one hole, and the next thing, he’s got 10 holes in the dike. That’s how we operate—that’s reactive, not proactive.”

​If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

TRANSCRIPT

00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Dr Bernato, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 

00:06 - Dr. Richard Bernato  (Guest)
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to meet you and talk to you and have this conversation. 

00:13 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I'm so excited and to talk about your book specifically, it is so cool. It is very different from any book I've ever read, very like video game-esque and like the inner gamer in me was very excited about the kind of simulation piece here. So we're going to unpack all of those pieces today. But kind of at the top I just want to know you know what is important for listeners as they're engaging with this podcast episode to know either about you or just to kind of keep in mind about the things we'll talk about today. Anything upfront you want to share. 

00:50 - Dr. Richard Bernato  (Guest)
You only have a half hour. I have a chance to talk about myself. I could just go on and on and on. Well, obviously, just by looking at me you can tell I've been around the block a few times. I have been in education, k through doctoral for longer than you were alive, for sure, and, you know, traveled my way around. I was very fortunate early on when I came out of undergraduate school again before you were born, to be provoked by my first principal. 

01:21
I guess I was a seventh grade social studies teacher at the time when he hated my first observation and I was just thrown for a loop because I thought I was John Dewey incarnate and here he was criticizing all these things that I had not done. And he said something to me I took to heart and that was Richie kids, this age learn best by doing. That had never occurred to me. I have age learn best by doing. That had never occurred to me, I have to confess, at the time, and I took it to heart on a number of different levels and I really devoted my professional life to several things. But the first thing, I guess because of his provocation, was to find anything that was creative, to get students engaged, actively participating, to use an old-fashioned word and to learn and discern things that aren't easily taught or have much more motivational value than not. And so I went along developing simulations and role plays and experiential approaches almost from the get-go and accidentally discovered the provocative, catalytic nature of how it gets students of any age to truly decide things, evaluate and transform. 

02:50
I don't like the word transform because it's so overused, but it's a hard word to define, so what I try to do is to change it to a little bit of a phrase I call new ways to realize that's what transformation really is about. It's an alchemy, as we joked about before. We got online where you turn light into gold and it's kind of marvelous to see it happen, certainly in the K-12 world, and to have fellow instructors. Which is what I wound up becoming was a coach, instructional coach, and then ultimately, I thought that it was probably best that I use an old-fashioned model to become a principal and instructional coach in any number of administrative roles where I finished up as an assistant superintendent for instruction, which was like the ideal job for a guy like me, and I was also lucky enough to be teaching methods courses in any number of local colleges and that got me into getting leadership positions, as I said before, and it's been fun. 

03:58
It's been really a wonderful ride, and this particular book, co-creating the Future, has been a warning for some time, in different aspects of it. Anyway, and I went up sitting down I said I'm going to make a simulation about leadership and about weaving skill sets that most leaders may have, naturally, because of whom, whoever they may be, on their own experiences or may not be aware of, in terms of the ability to enable fellow administrators, fellow leaders, what? And? Or teachers, instruct the stakeholders to um I use my favorite word here, and I use my favorite word here to catalyze each other, to empower each other, to take charge of what. I'm trying to remember who the author is Sharma calls the emerging future, and you know. 

04:56
I was just talking to my class last week one of my classes and I said and we were talking about decision making and about futureing I have to come back to that word if you don't mind. And I said to them it was, I think it was the day before election day and I said you voted or you're going to vote tomorrow, and what you're going to do is pick a candidate who is going to, you think, meet your preferable future. You're going to try to figure out what he or she stands for and you're going to go from there. The choices they evidenced shows a preferable future. That doesn't necessarily jive with where I come from, but at least I helped them understand what it was they were trying to do and it was something I said that I wanted to come back to. Oh yeah, and the word futuring weaves back in with simulation, which is where I didn't define simulation. I apologize. 

05:56
A simulation is a role play within a gaming world. You know, we simulate all the time. In a sense, this podcast is a simulation. Certainly every video game anyone's ever played. I'm a terrible video gamer, by the way, but I love to play them. You go into the cave to kill the dragon and the dragon kills you, you go back and you do it again because you're not really hurt, and that's the beauty of a simulation. So when I give students a chance, gave students a chance to decide whether they wanted to fight world war one or not, back in the day I had one class say to me when, when he says they were stupid to go to war, we're not going to war, so so the world would have been different. And and that's what simulation and gaming can do, if you shape it correctly and the word futuring begins to insert itself into. In fact, if you look at think tanks or read about corporate think tanks or governmental think tanks, they're futuring all day long. That's what they do. And business corporate, as I said already, they do it all day long. They think about this is a potential scenario, a potential future, a probable future. Is the probable future our preferable future? And if it isn't, what's the gap? And what do we do to either adopt the probable, because it's unavoidable, or to change what we do to enable the preferable future and future? 

07:30
Ring is really a word I made up. I think I made it up and that would be it's a noun, it's a verb, it's a gerund, whatever that is, and essentially it's about careful forecasting. And so I was just reading a paper a student sent me grading it and it was a graduate class and she says something about the fact that her school is going from a 789 to a 678. And clearly she saw all kinds of issues associated with it they hadn't planned for, they hadn't forecast for. And I said to her in a video last week I said whoa, you're going to have a lot of cultural issues there because they're not looking at all of the potential impacts. An impact is something that you have to recognize. That someone's like a card game. If I have a pair of threes and I don't know what you have it's likely you have better than my pair of threes. I'm talking too much. 

08:37 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
No, this is great. Oh, I love all of the definitions too, because all of these kinds of things are probably very different from the traditional way of not just teaching but, you know, pd for leaders, right, and thinking about how we do kind of training exercises or anything with leaders. So I just really appreciate that grounding and all of the definitions that people may not be familiar with. And actually this idea of futuring connects perfectly to the question I was going to ask you next. 

09:04
So I usually ask about freedom, dreaming and Dr Bettina Love talks about it as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice and so I also love the kind of pairing with this idea of a preferable future, right, and so what is kind of either your freedom dream or your preferable future, or some amalgamation of both, for kind of leadership, education or supporting leaders to kind of do really um, you know, trans transformative team to not have a better word work here well. 

09:35 - Dr. Richard Bernato  (Guest)
To come back, I need the name of that author you mentioned. I'm not familiar. I'd love to take a look at that myself. Um, my vision is to empower, is to use professional development and experiential approaches to enable would-be leaders, teacher leaders, stakeholder leaders and leader leaders to catalyze each other and leader leaders to catalyze each other to recognize what their actual mission should be and their actual purposes should be, because too often we go off half-cocked, shooting our gun at the first solution we think is there and then only to find out that we just twisted ourselves into another mess is there, and then only to find out that we just twisted ourselves into another mess. And so the more nearly we can engage more people to empower each other, to listen to each other, dialogue with each other to use a Senge word, peter Senge the more likely we'll be able to recognize what the icebergs are out there and recognize that what lies beneath the sea is what takes down the ship. And so we need to work to do that. 

10:50
I just read today. It's a little off the topic, but it kind of twists back to what you're talking about. I was reading a quick article this morning. I might have been out of fast company. I'm not sure it said that DEI is dead company. I'm not sure it said that DEI is dead. It said that it's old hat and corporations shouldn't even get involved with it anymore. And my soul twisted inside and out. I said well, what does that mean? I don't know what it means. I think I can project that, though, because it suggests a rock and a ripple and the pond whose ripple effects are preferable futures. It's scary. 

11:33
What I have found in all the different kinds of instructional experiential things I developed for students, you know, younger kids and for graduate classes in different ways, doctoral classes especially is that many educators, whether they're teachers or leaders or have stripes on their shoulder, are extremely passive. I don't have any research to show that, but I would say that they have a. They just kind of feel victimized by whoever the decision makers are and are perfectly willing to sit back and accept whatever they think. The probable future is that they have to deal with, whether they particularly care for it or not, and it's kind of disheartening. I had a principal call me up last year. I had her in a class. She was in a Brooklyn charter school I think it was a charter school and she said that her superintendent somebody had called her it was a Monday had called her Sunday night and said you're going to have 17 new students in your building tomorrow. These were all students who had migrated from Latin America and had various stages of preparation and so forth. And she said what do I do? So my first question to her is, she says have you built the capacity into your staff to future for these kinds of events? Because everyone knows these are the kinds of things that educators all around the country have grappled with? And she said no. So I wanted to say that you didn't equip and create the capacity for your colleagues to prepare for that. 

13:23
Now you get to these social justice premises. They're hard to deal with even within the simulation, but they will occur in this simulation, because what will happen is when I get two groups together. Because what will happen is when I get two groups together, they will often recognize demographic shifts as an issue. And what I try to do in the first state, the seven phases in the simulation, is teach them how to truly information gather, not just assume that they know everything there is to be known, when in fact they haven't spoken to people. All they've read is achievement data. They haven't considered the environmental factors out there. By environment I mean the political and economic factors that are shaping so much of what we're grappling with now, and they don't do that, and that's one thing that the simulation will teach them. 

14:25
And then there's I think I said earlier, there's sets of skills that aren't customarily taught in graduate classes, preparation or leadership classes of any, I don't think of any kind. One of them is creativity, creative problem solving, which is the only place you can really deal with the social justice and DEI needs. Because that, because you're forced to grapple with these issues and look at them through a different lens, and they don't know, they only know one lens. So until you teach them how to use new lenses to see new futures, an array of new futures, it's very difficult for them to meet Einstein's definition of insanity, something like I think he said it. 

15:10
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and it continues to fail is a definition of insanity. And we have this leadership insanity because we just continue to use the same worn out, inadequate solution approaches, often unilateral, and understandably unilateral in one sense, because some of these things come down and hit people between the eyes, like this poor principal with no time to reflect or to engage her colleagues to work with or stakeholders to help us solve these things. But it's doable if they learn. And that's just one set of skills. I don't want to bore you with all of them straight away, but they're all in the book, actually in various forms, and a couple of other books I've written as well, and I'm talking too much again. 

16:03 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
No, this is great. So a couple of things I want to flag. One I love I usually ask a question about mindset shifts and it sounds to me like there's kind of two mindset shifts necessary or kind of coming through your book. One is kind of I'm thinking about that principle example that there is so much benefit in futuring or engaging in the simulation, building capacity for these kinds of, you know, probable futures, versus I'm just putting out the fires today, I'm just going to deal with what's urgent or in front of me now, and if we don't do the other things, then we're just going to keep having all the fires to put out. 

16:39 - Dr. Richard Bernato  (Guest)
Right, if we don't well, like peter sinker, talks about the thumb and the dike. You know and I was there, chris what is the uh las vegas vacation? Uh, one with chevy chase, where he's he's exploring the hoover dam, I think and he puts gum on one hole and next thing he's got 10 holes in the dike. That's how we operate. That's reactive rather than proactive. And you know what? In the business world there are futures forecasting skills. So what I've done is I've only isolated about four because it can be kind of overwhelming, but there's so many out there I'm going to recommend everybody check out a woman named a professor, named Amy Weber. Amy Weber, she's out of NYU who teaches future in courses, and I would love to work for her, but she's written all sorts of books that not only go through technological changes, which is clearly obvious enough, but she also offers I don't know how many different kinds of futures forecasting skills. 

17:45
I only show three or four and I classify them as basically two-dimensional and three-dimensional. But the minute I begin to immerse folks in that, I just wish people could see what happens, even when I do something as simple as the ripple effect, you know, throw a rock in the middle of the pond an analogy I used before, or a metaphor, I guess it is lights start to go on. They start to realize well, if we didn't throw the rock in the pond then that wouldn't happen. Or if we tried another pond, maybe we'd get a different result. Because it's not the natural way we do that, except we naturally future I mean squirrels plant acorns. They're futuring Farmers turn their fields over for the next growing season. 

18:41
You decided to put your hair up today because you thought it would. Whatever it is the reason, you thought that, and it's fine, I can't put my hair up. And we try to decide whether our shoes match our clothes. That's all about future. And we decide whether our shoes match our clothes. That's all about future. And we decide whether you know we're going to go left or go right to it. It's a natural part of what we're doing and we don't pay attention to how we can sharpen those futures forecasting skills within our own personal practices, let alone our own decision-making leadership practices. 

19:21 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Absolutely. I am realizing too we should probably. I would love to have you walk through kind of what the simulation is so we could define that for our listeners who haven't picked up the book yet. Can you talk us through like so? What do people do once they get into the simulation, like what are kind of those phases that you list out? Do you mind Thank you? 

19:40 - Dr. Richard Bernato  (Guest)
Sure, no, I'm glad you asked. Thank you for asking. I actually wrote that down beforehand because I sometimes forget them myself. First of all, I always make the point again, a simulation is a role play, sets of role plays within a gaming situation. And again, if you think about Candyland or if you think about the latest video game, they all really assume the same premise. There's always a scenario, and the more detailed the scenario is, the more information you have or you can discover along the way, as you would with a video game. That's why it's so bad Adam. So I never know what the dragon is. 

20:26
The scenario has to be thoroughly understood within the simulation. I even leave room for people to use their own district or building scenario If they wanted to do that, that's. But I kind of always recommend that that gets saved for after you finish the simulation so you can take the skills from the simulation and then weave them back into your own problem solving approaches. But to begin with the scenario, it's going to have economic issues. It's going to have demographic issues, commercial premises, value systems that have to be included. I provide a scenario in the book that's quite detailed, thanks to my editor. She was terrific about that. There's a little map and we have names of different places and what's the rich part of town, what's the poor part of town, whether the change is going on within the community. Because that suggests too that when you try to change anything within school systems, I think that school systems sometimes don't pay attention to what I call the world out there. And so what I did was I created two teams. I created a world out there team and an educational leadership team, and they're not competing with each other. They could be at odds with each other, but they're not trying to defeat each other. That's a different kind of simulation, and this simulation is really about how well they can collaborate, which requires a different skill set than trying to attack the Germans across the ditch, so to speak. And so what happens is each there's two teams and they all, they know their overall role, r-o-l-e, and then within each team forgive me, this gets a little didactic the education leadership team has at least five roles. It's always a superintendent, it's always a assistant superintendent, a pupil personnel director, a principal and a teacher, who might often be the union leader, depending on how we shake that out. You can make more roles than that, but that's as simple as I can make it. And then the educational leadership team I'm sorry, the community world out there team. There's always a board president, there's always a community leader, an economist, slash demographer, a politician, and I'm leaving one person I can't remember. Now I'm getting to leave them a little more complicated. 

22:59
Each role player has another role, so they play two roles. One is, for example, the superintendent, plays the superintendent, but she also plays the culture specialist. The culture specialist on the other side would be the PTA president. I think that's how I set it up. So, in other words, they have counterparts on each team so that those skill sets, and then I provide material within the book to enable them to be very familiar with what their roles, what their skill sets should be and how they have to play those roles. It's really, it's a charge to see how they start to really play their roles. They really take the roles. I'm smiling because it's it's just fun to see how they start to really play their roles. They really take the roles. I'm smiling because it's just fun to see how it works out. 

23:51
So once they've gotten their roles down and they've reviewed this scenario, you move to the second phase, which is to. Each group will then take response and they put them in separate parts of a different classroom or two different rooms that don't even hear each other. So each group identifies how they're going to gather information in order to really drill down, distill what their purpose is. That's hard. Obviously, they can't do a survey, so I usually give them a survey result or something along those lines. But basically what I want them to do is use what they think the scenario information is to drill to a purpose. Now you might be the world out there group and I might be the, you know, the education and leadership team and we might have. You might generate, with your group, a purpose and I might generate one, and it's probably not, you know, at odds with each other all that much, but there's usually fine issues among them. 

24:54
We do is go back into another room and we and we exchange the points of the purposes and they talk about it. Then I send them back into their old rooms and then they and I say to them let's figure out a way to amend what we need to do. If you think so, that takes a few minutes and then I give influence cards to each group per role. The culture specialist always has more cards than everyone else, because culture is the underlying answer to everything. Then I give them a break answer to everything. Then I give them a break and we go to a coffee machine or whatever we've set up for them and they go there and they begin to negotiate with each other for the influence cards, the trade votes, trade premises. Then we go back and they vote and then the vote will then dictate what the purpose is. 

25:43
And once the purpose is in the ground, then we move to the next phase, which is where we introduce futures wheels and that's a ripple effect chart, where they begin to identify what I call the three Ps what's possible, what's probable and what's preferable. You know, most anything is possible. But if we say, well, the demographics are going to change, all right, that's a possible, and it's also a probable, all right. And then what's the ripple effect of the of the demographics changing, and what's the ripple of that? And then we go out a little bit, so they begin this project, out future impacts, and then I say to them okay, now figure out of the probables which one you think is most preferable. So they kind of get to drill for that. They do the same process I explained before about voting on the purposes. And then we can move to another skill set, another two-dimensional skill set called cross-impact matrix, which is a fancy word for a chart. And we say, well, impact matrix, which is a fancy word for a chart. And we say, well, okay. 

26:53
So Lindsay's group said that the demographics are changing and it's going to challenge us economically. Okay, who are the people, places and things or ideas that will be affected by that? That's a probable future. And so they begin to project what they think the impacts will be on these other groups. And now they start to get deeper on these futures premises I've been talking about. They do the same thing they exchange them to see which three of the ideas seem to be dominating the conversations, and they go to the next phase, which is the one I like the most and it's hard to explain in a short time, but essentially what I do is I have them, write scenarios and then enact them. 

27:45
So, for example, the book shows this better than I can do with my hands. I'm, for example, I wish I the book shows this better than I can do with my hands. I'm Italian, so I can do with my hands. There's an axis that shows. The up and down axis may say a high will to do things versus a low will. This axis, the horizontal axis, will show that they have the capabilities the capacity, to use your word from before, and this group slides down the other way. So if you think about it now, you have four quadrants high-low, high-high, low-low, low-high. And then I put them in four groups and I say okay, now create a website, create a newscast, create an obituary, an autopsy report which you're going to present about that particular scenario. 

28:41
One where there's no resources and there's no will to change, is an example. What does that look like? Tell us a story about that. Typically, that's the most interesting one, because what happens is people say, oh, this is really dismal and the world is over. And then they begin. But 10 years later, people begin to move in with the money to buy up these old dilapidated areas and so on and rebuild the school, and the next thing you know that's the place everybody wants to move to because that's how they see the future outcomes evolving. 

29:10
So what happens is they present in a in a and again they negotiate all these things and then we vote on which we think is the most probable future, not necessarily the most preferable, the, the most probable, and what happens then is one of those four will win. And here's what happens to it Inevitably, the probable future will not be the one they want. This happens organically, which is great. I've never been experienced where they say, okay, we're good with this scenario. So what happens is then we say, okay, well, what do we do? And that's where you just take the cork out of the bottle and they recreate a future with all the action, design, strategic planning approaches that everyone will have learned about from the planning person, and there's the new plan that they've made. 

30:13
Then what I do is in a simulation. I know I'm talking too long, but in a simulation it's absolutely imperative that you have a debrief. It's sort of like taking people on a field trip and then coming back and never talking about it, because all these experiences I can't even count the number of experiences and interactions that are going on. Now you have to debrief it so they can decide whether they want to adapt or transform. Unfortunately, I have to tell you, most of the groups I work with choose to adapt, don't choose to any drastic transformation, which bothers me. 

30:51
I don't know why that. I think it's just because they're built in, it's built into them. And then, but then I have a plan. Now I turn around and say to them now let's go back to your, your district, so tell me about your district and tell me how you would take these, this plan, and apply these processes to the, to the uh uh, your or your school district or your church. I just use school as the backdrop, but it could be most any organization. I know I'm talking too much, I apologize. 

31:19 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
No, that's fantastic. I mean you have to, because there's so much detail in the simulation. It's fantastic. I love that. This is just out there in the simulation. It's fantastic. I love that this is just out there in the world, and I think we talked about early on, you know, your dream for maybe having a bunch of people doing this on Zoom from across the country. Do you want to kind of speak a little to that at this moment? 

31:41 - Dr. Richard Bernato  (Guest)
Yeah, my wife calls me a Disney idiot savant, and I know where every bathroom is in disney world. 

31:49
Let me tell you all that because disney is the is the ultimate simulation, if you think about disney world. 

31:54
But at any rate, uh, if I had some pixie dust, I would sprinkle it all around all the uh, all the people who will have read the book. 

32:01
And if I could get 10 people to volunteer, I would love and and this is going to be a little crude because I haven't tried this yet, but I would love to see how this would work out I would love to have you know Lindsay say, okay, I'd like to be part of this, and Joe Smith and Mary Jones and so forth. 

32:24
And what we would do is I would set the simulation up cross-country and then we would interact exactly along the way of what we just talked about, how I described it, and see how a national or even an international group could walk through this simulation and see what I can't even I can project, I can future forecast and say I think we would have some really marvelous ideas and certainly what an understanding we could do, what a tipping point a critical mass of people could do to promulgate. That's a word I never use out loud Promulgate this whole idea of simulations with futuring, with change, reform and having new ways to realize what they can do for the future of how we school kids in a 21st century accumulating set of challenges. 

33:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I bet that will be the group that finally chooses to transform and not just adapt to the past. 

33:29 - Dr. Richard Bernato  (Guest)
I would give my house for that. I would just love to see that happen. 

33:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love that. I think oh, I wanted to name too one of the appendices that you have is really helpful, I think, for people who might be listening and thinking I don't know if I have the time to do this with my staff, right, and so there's so much in there. People just need to get the book and read it. But there's so much in there about you could do this monthly. You could like kind of set it up that way. You could do it online. I love that you just paid attention and gave so much real estate in the book to that reality. 

33:59 - Dr. Richard Bernato  (Guest)
It absolutely deserves that, because a yes but to simulation, as in teaching instructional technique, is that it takes time, and that's probably, I think, why a lot of K-12 teachers, if they're aware of what a simulation is, most are not. But what I found is that if a person I use social studies as my example all the time people make a typical eighth grade social studies teacher teaching the American Revolution isn't spending three weeks on the American Revolution. I did because I just liked it, but they may spend three, four days, and so if you want to get into something where the Tories and the Patriots and the British try to negotiate a treaty, that takes time and unfortunately the time is the coin of all teaching, someone once told me and so they move off of it and the same with PD for our teachers and administrators, and one way to handle it would be to do it in the way I described it in the appendix. I thought that was a helpful support for enabling people to use this book. 

35:07 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Absolutely Well said, yes, okay, I have three more questions for you. There'll be like a lightning round, all right. So this simulation is a big thing, right, people will need to get the book and kind of go through all of this. I'm wondering about one small next step that people could take after they listen today that could kind of launch them into either this way of thinking or practicing, or thinking about PD. What's one thing people can do when they stop the episode. 

35:37 - Dr. Richard Bernato  (Guest)
Wow, that's a great question. One small thing would be, again, other than reading the book, would be to watch this podcast. That would be one thing that comes to mind. I guess maybe this is an unfair question that I might ask of other folks, and that would be are you really satisfied with what you're doing? 

36:01
Because if you are, then we're going to go along to get along, but if you're not, this is a good set of answers for it plural we're going to go along to get along, and, but if you're not, you know this isn't, this isn't a good set of answers for plural, for what you want to have happen. 

36:14 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love that. Just ask yourself that question. That's beautiful, all right. One thing I ask for fun is something you've been learning about lately. This can totally relate to what we talk about in education, or it could be. I learned how to cook this dish, or something. It could be anything, or it could be I learned how to cook this dish or something. 

36:28 - Dr. Richard Bernato  (Guest)
It could be anything. I've discovered mysteries the past six months. I never read mysteries well, marcia because I can never figure out who did. I still can't. But all of a sudden I'm reading Agatha Christie, I'm reading Connolly, I'm reading all these people and I'm having a blast. I'm also always trying to lose weight and and play golf, but really the new, the newest thing is uh, besides hanging out with the, with uh, my grandsons, when they're willing to be hung out with uh is uh, it's a mysteries that's phenomenal. 

37:01 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I'm a huge mystery fan, so that's awesome. That resonates. And finally, where can learn listeners learn more about you or connect with you online? Obviously, we'll link to the book in the show notes, but where else can they find you? 

37:13 - Dr. Richard Bernato  (Guest)
My email is rbernado B, as in boy E-R-N, as in Nancy A-T, as in Thomas O, at gmailcom. I'd be happy, I'd be thrilled to answer anything. You can find me. I don't have a website anymore. I did, but not anymore. I guess you could catch me through Solution Tree Pretty sure you can. Who's the publisher of this particular book and who has been really terrific and supportive of everything I've tried to do? And I'm all of a. If you Google me, I have like 10 different. There's all different things about me, different places, awesome. 

37:59 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Thank you. 

38:01 - Dr. Richard Bernato  (Guest)
I'm very appreciative of the chance for you to smile at me and to be interested in what I'm saying. 

38:07 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Oh my gosh, it's a fascinating concept. I'm really, really excited. 

38:09 - Dr. Richard Bernato  (Guest)
I can't wait till we get that critical mass of people internationally playing this movie fantastic yeah, volunteer, that's great let us know I think I have two people now want to do it and I just uh, I don't promise anybody that it will be a smooth sale, uh, but I think that we could have a. We could learn a lot from me about each other and about ourselves, as well as what the whole idea of reform actually really means absolutely, dr brown. 

38:36 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Thank you so so much for your time.