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Joe V: My name is Joe Vollard and welcome to who needs school, a podcast,

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which explores the future of education through conversations with educators,

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innovators, business leaders, and citizens about something we all do school.

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Our guest today is educator and visionary father, Eddie Reese, the Jesuit priest,

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who has been a very successful high school principal and president for most

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of his 50 years in secondary education.

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Heis now in his fifth year as president of San Ignatius college preparatory in

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San Francisco, where his vision is not only to provide access to promising San

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Francisco, youth who otherwise might not be able to attend private school.

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But also to renovate an aging campus into a learning complex where teachers can use

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technology to design learning experiences.

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Well, welcome father Reese. Thank you for joining our podcast who needs school?

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I thought we might get started by asking you to take us through

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what school was like for you. What was that educational journey?

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Reese: Cool. Well okay.

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So I think my first few years of school, I'm not sure I knew why I was

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there or what I was doing kindergarten.

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I think I went through the naps the First grade second grade and third

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grade , I was in a Catholic school.

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I think the sisters were in their teens who taught us and we had

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we'd have 60 kids in a class.

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And I think I kinda liked it.

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I don't know. And then at the end of third grade The sister told me I was

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gonna re repeat third grade.

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Well, when I realized years later is that, that was probably the reason my parents

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took me to meet some other non who.

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Interviewed me. And I think I took tests and things like that.

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I th I think today I would have certainly add or something like that.

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And and I think I have a mild case of dyslexia probably, but

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I certainly couldn't spell. And that was a big thing.

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So anyway, I repeated third grade and all of a sudden, I don't think

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school was quite as much fun. Although I was bigger than everybody else.

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So I got to play football. I made a very serious, well flawed out decision in my eighth grade to go

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to Loyola high school in Los Angeles.

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In spite of the fact that my mother taught at the local public school

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was just as happy for me to go there.

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My my father had gone to Loyola high, but never put any pressure on me at

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all to go with a well thought out decision was based on the fact that

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my girlfriend's brother was there. So yeah, that's why I wanted to go to, well, hi, of course I was turned down

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at Loyola high school because the only entrance test they really corrected,

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I found out later was a spelling test.

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And if I got two words, right out of a hundred, that would have been a miracle,

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but my father had gone there called somebody and somebody else called.

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So anyway, I got in which incidentally is why I'm never allowed to be on the

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admissions committee at any of the schools I've been at because the kids always get

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in, especially the ones that can't spell. But, but I think the point of that is school.

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Was okay. But it wasn't something I was particularly excited about.

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High school was okay. I, I did much better academically in high school, I liked Loyola, especially

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like didn't got to know the young Jesuits there and was impressed by them.

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As I guess every Catholic kid in those days, every boy anyway,

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thought about becoming a priest. I thought, well, if I'm going to do that, I'm going to be like those guys.

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So I joined the Jesuits and probably never looked back, but

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even in the Jesuits, there's lots of things you can do as a Jesuit.

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So , teaching in a high school was never, it wasn't something I avoided by any

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means, but it was something that I wasn't.

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Excited I had to do and I, in fact, for a brief time, I was scheduled

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to go on and teach philosophy at one of our universities.

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There were that was unusual at the time, but there was a couple of the

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young guys that were doing that at the last minute they got me and my brother

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mixed up, my brother was gonna go.

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Too loyal high school to teach as what we call scholastics, I was going to go to

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ASI at the last minute that got switched.

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My brother went to SSI and has never wanted to teach in high school.

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Again, I went to, I went to the loyal line school where I had it gone.

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Spent three years, two years in the same classroom I'd spent my sophomore year

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and absolutely fell in love with it.

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I remember walking out of the. And I've taught English, which of course I couldn't, I wasn't very good at.

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And I taught modern European history of which I knew nothing but just absolutely

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loved both of those loved teaching the head of the school bumped into me

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and said, Hey, any of the new guys. Know anything about football.

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And I laughed. I said, are you kidding? A I'm the only one that even played when, and that was only when I was a freshman.

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And he said, well, good. You're the freshman football coach.

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And so I, I was luckily enough.

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I was an assistant freshmen football coach for the next three years.

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I, again, never had as much fun in my life is doing that.

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And so I was, I was bit by the bug, loved teaching high school kids

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that impact and, and been doing it for the last 50,000 pounds,

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Joe V: 50 years. Sure. When you were in high school, I have to imagine that it was a.

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You know, you were as a chalk and talk type thing.

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Right? Did the teacher was the commander and you're just absorbed the information,

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but was there anything, and I'm assuming that's the case, and you can comment on

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that, but what really impacted you or formed you when you were in high school?

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I was a class or an Reese: experience in high school, or when you were in

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high school as a student, Yeah.

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Yeah, I think, yeah, that's a good question.

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I there were some things I was very good at math.

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I was good at and anything that required kind of discussion and that sort of thing.

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And even in those days, yeah, it was chalk and talk, but the talk

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wasn't just the, from the teachers the Jesuits in those days encouraged

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us to express our opinions.

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And I think they kinda liked even when we disagreed, if it was

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you know, you had to be polite. And you had to think about what you were saying.

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So I, I remember kind of, I guess it would probably be more, the Socratic

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method, I guess, is probably how it would have been described in those days.

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So that was interesting. I think I was just influenced by, I don't know, the, the attitude toward.

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Whatever we were talking about. And then the outside the classroom, we were almost, it

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was almost all Jesuit teachers.

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So just getting that opportunity to talk and get to know.

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The teachers, although I coach football, I only played, I think about 10

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minutes and that was enough for me. And I joined the choir and love scene in, was in the plays that

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the plays were all musical. So I was in those, which again, gave me an opportunity to see teachers on

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a, in a different, in a different. A way as friends in a, in a, in a, you know, how an older person

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can be your friend, a mentor.

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So, Joe V: and, and kind of connecting those two.

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And this is really one of the questions I want to ask you is because

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Jesuits have been known for 450 plus years of being renowned educators.

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And the world has clearly changed over 450 years, and yet Jesuits

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and Jesuit schools remain. You know, kind of a highly regarded as a great educators.

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Well, what I, what do you think the kernel is?

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What's the secret sauce to Jesuit education, do you think?

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Reese: Yeah, I, you know, they, they reuse the, the term corrupt

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person as, you know, care for the person and yeah, it meant, you know,

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caring for people liking that's it.

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But I think it was respecting.

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And I've come to see this more in retrospect, in respecting the individual

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person and encouraging the us as high school students to think for ourselves.

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Now that the pedagogy, the skills of these, some of these, these

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were young guys that had just come out of studies themselves.

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They didn't have any education classes.

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They didn't know any of the jargon or even any of the theory behind teaching,

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but they, they, they were good at making us think for ourselves, which.

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Automatically changed the focus, more of how the taught so to do that, you have

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to find out what the kid is thinking.

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So encourage more dialogue and that sort of thing in the classroom without

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really knowing that they were promoting group work or anything like that.

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Joe V: So, and so fashion forward to the 2020s, how do you think

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that manifests itself today? Like what's your, where do you think we're heading with that?

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Reese: Well, I, I, yeah. Yeah. I think our schools today are for one of a better description or better word are

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far more professional in the sense that teachers actually the, the teachers that

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are teaching in Jesuit schools today.

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Are much more aware of pedagogy and much more aware of the different

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ways students learn and respect the different ways teachers can,

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can teach and present the material.

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Having said all that, I think the basic loving their kids, loving their students.

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Is really what matters and trying to figure out what what works best that

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my, my first month or so here at St.

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Ignatius, I was walking around and it just bumped into some kids

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sitting out on one of our terraces.

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And I said to him, guys got talking to him about school.

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And I said, well, how do you like the teachers union?

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And he said, well, I liked the teachers.

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And somehow we got off on an example of one particular teacher that he

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was doing an, a work pro project for and didn't do very well on it.

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The teacher sought him out and said, Hey, I think you could do better on this.

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Now what we're using anyway, what do you described?

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Is this teacher coming up with a different way for him to do

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the same material and took time.

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And he, he did so much better in any, he was amazed that

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this teacher did that well. That's pretty consistent.

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And with Jesuit education, we have groups of kids we're interested in, we try to

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teach, but each one of them is I always think of it as the parable of the good

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shepherd go and find in that one, that one lamb that wandered off and figuring

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out why he, or she warned it off.

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Joe V: And that's and that, that, you know, that kid, that kid

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will remember that, you know, that's, that stays with you.

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That's the kind of thing that, you know, you're going to forget them

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Pythagorean theorem, but the fact that a teacher believed in you and

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took the enough time to push you Reese: stay.

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Oh yeah. I can still remember a couple of teachers just conversations that I

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had as a 16, 17 year old, 15 year old.

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And, and one of the, one of the real blessings of being a teacher, it doesn't

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happen a whole lot, but every time you do run into a student that's years later,

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that remind you, I don't remember, but what remind me of some conversation.

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I had something I said that made a big impact.

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Yeah, that's the rewards or didn't we don't make a lot of money teaching that

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that's the reward of being a teacher. Joe V: You're you've got a great track record with.

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Really encouraging and pushing the use of technology in in education.

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And when you were president at Brophy college prep in Phoenix, you were one

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of the very first schools to, to use laptops in the classroom and had a, I

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know you had a great freshmen class where the students would really get introduced

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to circuitry and coding and working together and using technology in there.

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And their experience. Can you talk about that a little bit?

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Cause you know, everybody loves to jump on technology and education,

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but it's a lot easier said than done and I know you've thought a lot

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about it and have experienced it. What do you, where do you see us heading with that?

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Reese: Well, when I, yeah, when I first got to Bellarmine high school, the, the,

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the office, they moved me into it didn't have much in it, but somebody had left.

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Computer in there that I started playing with.

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And then I also had a terminal that connected us with the County office of

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education, where we did our scheduling and I just started playing with the

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thing and got hooked and trying to make it do stuff that I couldn't make.

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It there's a, so the first thing was I just got interested and then

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started sort of about, you know, what, what these computers could do.

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And the early days it was word processing and some kind of data

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stuff, files, FileMaker, provost, which is playing some are figuring

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how this could certainly be a.

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At, you know, as a non speller spellcheck was a miracle.

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So things like that. And then we at the first time I tried it, it was at Bellarmine.

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We were able to get, it was when the laptop first came out, it was a Tandy

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was able to get two classrooms full of Tandy laptops and got a couple

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of teachers just to volunteer to.

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And this was before internet or anything like that.

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Just to volunteer, to see how they could use these things to change education,

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or by the time I got to Phoenix in the late nineties, of course, a lot more had

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changed if there were actual educational software products that could be.

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And it just made sense to me that, that there were things that the computer

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could do and that freed up teachers to do the things that only teachers could do.

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And then as the internet got stronger and group work and all that, it just

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seemed to me a no brainer that we should introduce it into the curriculum.

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And I was fortunate enough to find some teachers that wanted to try it.

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The first couple of years in Phoenix, when we went where the whole school

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was using computers, the mantra, my mantra to the teachers was the role that

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would be reversed more often than that, they would ask the kids to show them.

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How to do something with the computer.

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And that was true and that created a different kind of learning environment.

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But th that's how I got in the, the more I have seen people use technology.

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Is it, what it really does ultimately is bring people together.

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And to do things collectively they, they can't do by themselves.

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And then to free up both teachers and students to do those things they

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can only do as teachers and students.

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I don't know if that makes sense. That makes Joe V: perfect sense.

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Instead, that that personal connection is still important.

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As you, as you teach a kid, but technology can, can really enhance that experience.

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Could certainly save a teacher, some clerical time and grading

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and all that kind of stuff, and really give you a chance to focus

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on, on how you teach the students.

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Reese: I, yeah, another thing on a personal way to check is also see with

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students is, you know, I spent three years in Sydney, Australia at a school

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there and I still keep pretty good contact with friends in Australia.

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Did I know I simply would not have done without technology.

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It had been one or two letters a year, maybe a phone call, something like that,

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where with everything from internet context, Instagram, that sort of thing.

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I'm in contact with friends for years now.

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Yeah. Now Joe V: we just have a couple of minutes left and I, I can't let you go without

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asking you about another area that you really have led in, been a visionary in

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at both Brophy college prep and Phoenix, and it's, indignations in San Francisco.

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And that's about the middle school academies that you started.

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Can you, can you just talk about kind of why you did that and

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and the impact it's had on those Reese: communities? Yeah.

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Almost all the schools I've been at Loyola high Bellarmine in

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San Jose, early days at Brophy.

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Brief time I spent at we've all had outreach programs to younger kids.

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To encourage them to come to the high school.

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And these were kids from challenging backgrounds, generally low income, maybe

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under-serving schools, that sort of thing. And.

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In all those schools, that struggle was how to really prepare those kids

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so they could take full advantage of ice was then it was just sort of

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something we all always talked about.

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How could we do, and we'd bring in tutoring programs.

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We'd kids might take two classes of English or something.

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We'll postpone modern language just to get.

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Catch up to speed, they would just, and then we had a, a facility at Phoenix.

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It was really under utilize the older classroom going.

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So I thought, well, why not just get these kids and have

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them start three years early? Which is what we did with the Academy model.

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And then the more, it developed a stronger, I felt that a

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couple of things, the kids, they had to come from low income.

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So this was something that we were gonna, we were going to

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help them financially do it.

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There's a full, full financial aid.

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Then the other thing is it, I really felt, and, and have just been

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reinforced more and more is the kids.

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But the junior high kids had to be on the high school campus.

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So they could live and breathe and walk around with and see what they

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were going to be on the campus.

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And, and, and I didn't know it at the time, but now the people a lot smarter

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than I am talk about sort of the hidden curriculum, the, the ability to adapt

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to an environment that's different. Well, they were doing all that and the gentler easier way as sixth graders.

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So when they came in. And this has happened when they, they become ninth graders, they

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own the school they're already up.

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And plus the fact that their academic preparation is, is so, so much better.

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The other thing that would be, it was equally important in this

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program was that there be some adult support at home so that we could

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partner a couple of times that.

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And adult supports grandma or somebody, but it's and it just, I think it it's,

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it's the most, it's very efficient. There are other ways other models that do similar things, but I

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really believe in this model of bringing the younger students on as

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early or as early as possible, the sixth grade seemed to be a good.

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Good way to do it. I don't know. Did I answer your Joe V: question in the big scheme things?

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It's still kind of, you know, those are young programs, but

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you've seen some success already. I know that in Brophy, some of those kids are in college now,

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Reese: right? Yeah in Brophy, the first class or in juniors in college.

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And they, when they graduated from high school every one

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of them got into university. One had elected to go into the military and was going to, I think it was the Navy.

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It was going to go to the Navy. And then there was some physical disqualification.

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So he went on to. To university too.

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And they're all, they're all doing, doing well and their challenges, not, not every

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kid that starts the program is able to finish it, but a good, good number do.

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Yeah. Yeah. Joe V: That's awesome. Well, father Reese, thank you so much for your time.

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Continued good work at St.

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Ignatius with your endeavors and we'll get you back on and a conversation going.

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Reese: Thank you.