CCB: Welcome. This is your host, CCB. And today on the ONEder podcast, we're honored to welcome Marita. I didn't ask her how to say her last name, but I'm guessing it's Diffenbaugh.

Marita Diffenbaugh: You got it.

CCB: Excellent. She's a visionary educator, a lifelong learner, founder and author of LEARNER; Finding the True Good and Beautiful in Education. With over two and a half decades of experience spanning classrooms, school leadership, innovation, strategy, and educational design, Marita brings a deeply human centered perspective to how we understand learning itself. Her book reframes education as a service rooted in connection, purpose, and measurable impact, challenging us all to see learning through the lens of the true, the good, and the beautiful. So learners not only thrive academically but contribute meaningfully to their communities in the world. This just gives me goosebumps even saying this. In this episode, we're going to explore the inspiration behind LEARNER, unpack the principles that define transformative education, and consider what it truly takes to design learning environments and systems that help all learners find hope, agency, and purpose. And as I said, I'm very excited about this conversation. Welcome, Marita. We're so glad to have you on the podcast.

Marita Diffenbaugh: Thank you so much. And I love being here and having the opportunity to share.

CCB: Perfect. So let's start with what inspired you to write L.E.A.R.N.E.R? And now you're going to have to explain that in more clarity because I'm not going to go through it. But how did your personal journey as an educator and learner shape core ideas in this book?

Marita Diffenbaugh: Well, it's an interesting story where I was not looking to write a book, and I was invited to write from ConnectEDD Publishing leaders Jimmy Casas and Jeff Zoul, and they were starting this new publishing company and asked, would I be willing to write? And I think the reason why they reached out to me is because we had been learning together in the past, about five years before this, when we were looking at how education was changing at that time and what connected educators could do differently. So we were really thinking about, well, what are we going to do with cloud based computing? And what are we going to do with these 1 to 1 devices coming into the classroom? And how does that change the whole environment? And what's the role of the principal and the teacher now and the and the learner?

So anyway, we learned together and here we were, uh, learning again. And, and this was prior to when Covid kicked off, when I said yes to this. And also in that moment, I was working on starting a school from scratch. It was a public charter school, sixth through 12th grade career technical school, where we were trying to reimagine what education could be like for the students who had not found success. And I was getting ready to invite all the students to come to our new school and to hire a staff. And I thought, well, for such a time as this, I was given the opportunity to write. I'm going to go ahead and write this book and dedicate it to my staff that I'm going to hire, because we had to really think about what is going to be different here. And the title is really the clue as to what was different. We turned our full attention on the learner. It's all about the learner, and this book supported us in how to do that. So I'll unpack the acronym if you'd like me to.

CCB: I would love you to.

Marita Diffenbaugh: Yeah. So with LEARNER, you start off by listening. There's the L, right? That's the first step. You're trying to support a learner. And we think about as an educator, what kind of oath could we take? What would that look like? Well, we would start by listening. And then we would Empower. And now we can analyze who are we working with. We've listened. We've empowered. Now we've Analyzed who we're working with. So we can now look at Resources for Needs. And now it's time to create those Experiences. All along the way, you've built this Relationship, which we know people want to work with, people they have relationships with that they feel valued, and they know that they have a part to play. And then the True, the Good and the Beautiful. It comes from a connection to Plato's work. This is old news, right? But the true, the good and beautiful really unpacks what's going on in the learning. So the True: I know I know how to do something the Good: so that I can, which helps me. And there's the Beautiful. And what we do in education sometimes is we stop. We stop at the true. We say, here's the facts. Let's take the test. Now you've got your. You've got your knowledge, but we might not always see that in applications. So we want to make sure we get to the good because that's the student actually taking the knowledge, the theory and moving it into skill. But I say we can't stop yet because we need to get to that application, which is the beautiful part. And so weaving those in while we zoom in on the learner, and then how can we provide education? It's through the true, the good and beautiful learning experiences.

CCB: You are amazing. And I was I was thinking about this and the LEARNER book and your description of education as a service to learners. I've always loved the term servant leader and it just like kind of kept sitting on top of me there. What does the shift from content delivery to a service design mean for educators, leaders, and learning environments?

Marita Diffenbaugh: It's a realization of my number one job is to support the learner and their process in learning, whatever that might be. And that might be a mindset shift for an educator, or even for a learner or a student coming into a learning experience because we're kind of used to this exchange, which is I'm going to deliver something, then you're going to show if you know it and then carry on. But for a service of learning, it goes deeper. Imagine the service that you get at a doctor's office. Imagine a service that you get when you are well, you're trying to redesign your house and you're trying to create something. You want to work with people who are listening to you, who are hearing what your vision is, but then helping empower you to what's realistic. Okay. Like we can do this, but let me help you understand these resources for these needs.

Marita Diffenbaugh: Sometimes dreams need a little bit of guidance. So you want to dream. But ultimately we know we want to dream. Eventually, after that, we design and now we can deliver, right? We need to pause and take that time in a service of education, to dream, to explore, to get to know the people we're serving. That's the service part. But there's another equally important part, because this is an equation. There's the job of the learner as well. So yes, there's the service of education. But do the learners know? Do students know that there's a job that they have as well? And that job directly connects to everything that people want to hire them about. They're a team player. They show up. They are willing to try. They are willing to ask for help when they need it, right? All of those pieces. And so in the book, I also just really try to imagine where's our what is learning? And then what's valuable to learners and what will support learners. And that's where those, um, those kind of features came that would help create a template for somebody to be able to use.

CCB: So you were writing the book at the same time as you were opening your school and hiring people and getting new students. And I'm curious how the, what's the kind of practical application of this that you feel in your school, in the practice?

Marita Diffenbaugh: I was looking for people that wanted to help somebody see that they had value and to help them in their next steps of growing and moving forward so that they could become tributers. Um, working at our school, we were working with students who had not felt part of the educational system in a successful way. And we needed to change that narrative for them. So I really wanted us to focus on building the relationships and knowing what was it that sparked the joy in the people we're serving, and then how can we try to teach through that lens? And, um, it was very successful that way starting in that way, starting with that, you know? And then you can do some of the hard things. If we think about learning, even just the relationships and what helps us grow. Sometimes we think about learning. And if you think school, I still have a school vision in my mind because I was part of that of rows and desks and, and a teacher up front and a whiteboard. And this is what it's like. However, some learners, decades and decades before me had a vision of learning as I'm an apprentice and I'm watching the master work, right? I'm watching the expert work.

Marita Diffenbaugh: And now I'm learning in this application way. And somehow that disconnect in the name of trying to get everyone to learn a certain amount of skills fell apart. Fast forward to here we are in the 21st century, 25 years into the 21st century, we have more information than we've ever had, and it's like, we need to go back to that apprenticeship model because we need support in sorting all the information. And I know all this so that I can do this, which helps me do what? Like we really need a mentor to guide us through that whole progression. And so that's what I was looking for in a hiring. And that's what we were delivering as a service. And in, in turn, our students started to show up as real, ready to go learners to the point they could barely wait to share with people coming into the school as to what they were working on. They had pride in their work. They could look in the eye, shake your hand, and it was in a. It was a very functional but also inspiring space to be.

CCB: You just brought up the space word and it does make me curious about the space. So what? Uh, in a career technical environment, I'm imagining labs or makerspaces or how do you get hands on?

Marita Diffenbaugh: It's it's all that. It's making sure that everything is flexible that can be moved about for whatever the activity is. I had an opportunity to go to Stanford Design School last summer, and they had these reset posters on the wall that showed all the furniture in the room, but reset it back. And it was almost like they pushed all the furniture in the middle of the space. Nobody could use it that way. It's just pushed in the middle, like as if you are at home and you're trying to clean and vacuum underneath of everything. Everything's pushed in the middle. And then it said, please, when you're done, reset back to this. And when you come, please set it up in the way that best serves your needs. I loved that, and that's what we did basically at Elevate Academy North at our school where we had everything mobile on wheels. We had garage doors open between the classrooms so that faculty or the the staff could work together and they could collaborate about projects they were working on while the students were right there. The word we used a lot was co-design. How can we co-design? Co-design with my neighbor who if I'm teaching math and they're teaching English, what's an important connection that we could do because we teach the same learners connection to the learners? Hey, we're thinking about this. Is this something you'd be interested in doing? We don't have it all the way figured out yet. That's an invitation to learn and not just an invitation to do. And so that kind of by having mobility in this space. And then we also gave the people permission to move about the space in such a way. And that is something that we really need to do because we might be having multi-generations working together. And some people need to know it's okay that you might sit on the floor or stand up, or walk around or move about, or sit tall or sit low and then realize we're not going to hold you here for more than a few minutes before we get you active.

CCB: I want to go to school there. I, um, Yes, yes. Can I come?

Marita Diffenbaugh: Where? Where I'm at now. You know, here I'm at North Idaho College, and I tell the students that I'm at your next school because I really believe our next work is how we can reimagine taking these workforce skills and putting it right into what has been known as traditionally, the lecture room. There's so much goodness that happens in we have such wisdom in our higher ed with instructors that have wisdom and wonderful things to share, and our students leave us and don't stay in that environment. So by having our instructors start to match the workflows, going back to listen, empower and analyze, having our instructors listen, empower and analyze with our industry and what's going on outside of school, since that's where our students are going. And now we can create the experiences that will match. And all the while, we get to do the beautiful work we've always done, which is build those relationships. And so it's actually for such a time as this as well. Even more important to have the master teacher being willing to learn themselves so that they can do that matching.

CCB: Well, I just love listening as the start listening because the more I am always astonished by what I learn when I'm talking to students of any type, because there are concepts, there are experiences, there are things that I have I'm nowhere near. I'm nowhere near. And the more that I listen, the more my world enlarges, but also empowers me to be able to tell the stories more effectively. Yeah. Wow. I have a couple of questions. And one of them is the, um, the finding the right staff looking for people that really have that kind of passion to work with students in this new old way. In a funny way of putting it. I'm wondering how plentiful are the folks thinking that way?

Marita Diffenbaugh: You know, it's interesting that, um, hiring a staff that was coming into teaching from right, from the career field versus in the traditional setting and this kind of teaching and learning, which was more applied, more around projects, more cross-disciplinary, and really almost like allowing the learner to experience that learning chunk, have it be a, a five week process or a ten week process. If they're, they have a problem to solve. They're designing for it. They're showcasing about it. Right. Just giving them that experience and then unpacking all the standards that happened in retrospect. And they grew more than what you could imagine in that kind of environment. That was really exciting. I thought that that was going to be a lot of extra work on our career technical side, because I'm thinking they've never taught in a classroom before. They're going to need a lot of help with the classroom management skills and all of that. And what I found is I had hired incredible managers of people anyway, and they were already master teachers, just in a different venue, not in a classroom. And so that transferred really well. What I noticed what a gift for us because in education historically, I mean, unless you're intentionally looking out and intentionally looping it in time is short, it's not because people don't want to.

Marita Diffenbaugh: It's just the system hasn't been set up in such a way that refreshes a lot. And as much as it needs to with our new information. So I found it very interesting to see that the academic side of the house was learning so much from the career technical side of the House. Fast forward to where I'm at right now. This is why with a strategy we're launching called North Idaho College X labs, I'm really asking people to think about cross collaborating, different disciplines, working together with a problem, a project that they want to work on. Having the students there, working through that, having industry there and having community experts, which could be retirees or it could be staff that's not necessarily teaching, but whoever should be there, that could help us go through the design process of noticing, experimenting and sense making about a whatever it might be. And some of those things might be very tangible. We need to make a product that's going to solve for a problem, or some of those might be an idea. We might prototype an idea that could be further explored and researched. So yeah.

CCB: Wow. So, um, back to the book for just a second. The book calls for a remix and how we measure learning success. And so I'm wondering, you're kind of addressing some of these, but what are Our alternative metrics are indicators that you think better reflect meaningful growth.

Marita Diffenbaugh: You know, I'm curious how we might do this. This that chapter was the hardest to write. It still gives me fits when I read it my own self. I'm like, how are we going to do this? I know it needs to be done. We have not yet designed it to where it can be done, because we still are trying to do the square peg round hole thing there. So. So when we allow people to learn and grow and we do pretty much in our system, we, we meet students where they are as a system and education for the most part, and they get a chance to either get the gap filled or they get a chance to be enriched. And then when we measure their success, we put them all back in an average bucket and we say, this is your success, which is fictional and.

CCB: Always has been.

Marita Diffenbaugh: It always has been, you know, end of average. Todd Rose talks about how there is no such thing as average. Like we need to stop letting that be a thing. So I'm curious as to how might this look connected to more competency based? Right. Like, um, really studying industry and, you know, even thinking about the field that you're in, KB and your team, the proof is in the product or the, or the process that you're going through and your success in that. And then when you go through and you build something and you make something or you deliver something, then you can look at where the gap is, but you can also celebrate what the winds were. And if there's a way to do that, to make sure that people are growing, that they're learning, and that they are wanting to come to school. I don't know what's more important, like, what if we could measure the service of education and the job of the learner and the content that we teach ebbs and flows because it absolutely does.

CCB: I am reminded of I've had all sorts of interesting jobs over my career. And one, I got into the nonprofit world and I was the executive director for a service dog training agency, and we taught middle school and high school kids to help us train the dogs. So we taught the kids to train the dogs. So learn that communication skill that, you know, patience, that, um, clarity, consistency. And then the dogs went to work. They were trained to 90 or 100 commands. It was absolutely crazy. And then the dogs went to work with people for people or with people with physical, developmental and psychiatric disabilities. When you saw like a, a third grader or a fourth grader or a fifth grader, because we did, um, after school programs too for little kids, um, being very clear and, and receiving direct feedback because the dog would sit, the dog would perform the command that they asked them to do. You could just see the joy, but also this recognition of what the value was that they were offering. And every single parent would just be glowing in appreciation for that. These skills that again, these many of the kids that joined were not the athletes. They were not the stars. They were, you know, they were a little bit, less social. And so this relationship that they were able to build and then gift to someone else was amazing. So I think about things like that where you're just looking. Yeah. How, how can you and how might we, you know, quantify that by, by some of it is the experience and understanding what happens.

Marita Diffenbaugh: Taking your example of students working with service dogs, you had the true, the good and beautiful, which could also be talked about as you had the skills. You had the theory and you had the application. They had to learn how to help a dog sit or stay or those things. That's the skill part. But why were they doing that? They also had to understand why that's even important, which is the theory part of it. And then the application was on that showcase day when they did it or they didn't. Right. And so really that true, that good, that beautiful system and finding a way to do whatever storytelling we need to do so that people in our community would find the value of the educational experience because that's where testing comes from, right? Testing comes from the fact that we want to make sure that we're spending a lot of money on education, we're spending a lot of resources, is where's the ROI? And I feel like we will have even less conversation of the mystery of the ROI, because internally I see the ROI every day. It's incredible. And every teacher does. And it's hard to tell your story because there's so much deep work going on, it's hard to show it, right? However, what if we're working on projects together and the industry is actually part of that project? They already are experiencing what that teacher is experiencing and the and the student. And it ends up being almost like less important, that test score at that point and more important about what we just did together. And did we get better, or did we learn more so that we could ask more questions? Where are we?

CCB: Well, and also there's the relationship, that relationships are built by working together, which we see in our world on a regular basis. People do want to work with people that they have relationships with, given the, you know, given the choice. So how can schools and communities build these stronger connections? I mean, is there a is there a template for what are the interactions that should be required or should be promoted? So learners feel supported not just academically, but socially and emotionally.

Marita Diffenbaugh: I think about this a lot, and I have been reading for years about how to best ensure that the learning that is happening in educational settings that I'm in and that I'm providing service for is actually relevant and, and hitting the mark because everyone wants to make sure they're hitting the mark, right? And then you hear these conversations about bridge, and I've used it a lot myself. I'm challenging myself on this word of bridge. Well, we need to bridge education with industry and we need to bridge education with community. And yes, we do. But more than that, we need to all get on the bridge together. Everybody needs to be on the bridge. We all need to meet up and work together on projects. And I think that the way we do it is just a project at a time to build that trust, because we can actually flip and use the learner acronym, right, in that when we get together to solve a problem. Ah! Are we listening to each other? Are we empowering each other? What are we analyzing? Are we ready to design something now? Now we can go to work and match needs with resources. Making sure that we are creating experiences that are relevant. It sounds very simple. The words coming out of my mouth. This is a very challenging thing to do, because it means that we need to have people come to the table. If you will meet on the bridge and be learners together. And that means we don't have it all figured out. We don't have the whole end figured out. What I loved about working with one workplace team and just even in our conversation, is every single one has been a learner and hungry to understand where I'm coming from, when I'm having ideas or things like that, and leaning in. We're on the bridge together. We're working together on that bridge. You know, we're not yelling at each other from on the other side of the bridge or trying to move things across the bridge to each other's spaces. We're on the bridge.

CCB: I'm going to say, and I think it's about building the bridge. You're building the bridge together. So yeah, you're on it. It's not even just there because sometimes it has to be built.

Marita Diffenbaugh: And maybe it's not even there. Right. And then you have to build it.

CCB: Yeah. And you need to work on that. You just made me think about that. Your work speaks to learners of all ages. And so what do you think shifts when we treat learning as a lifelong activity as opposed to a phase of life?

Marita Diffenbaugh: I think it keeps wonder and play alive. And I write about this a little bit in one of the chapters, but I had an opportunity to take my my mom and my stepdad to Italy. And, you know, they were there, um, a little up in years. Right. And, uh, when we were at this bed and breakfast, the guy that owned the bed and breakfast, he asked how old they were. And I told them, I told him how old. And he said, no way. They can't be that old. And I said, oh yeah, they are. And he says, well, you know why they're young like that. You know why they're curious. And that will always stay with me. May we always be curious. May we always wonder. May we always be willing to try new things. And I think that's the joy of being a human, right? And, um, not to go too far off on a tangent, but you can't almost talk today without saying the letters AI. And it's okay. We're going to be okay if we keep learning together, no matter what tool comes and goes. We need to stay curious. We need to experiment so that we know what our boundaries are. And then we need to work collectively as a community to set those so that we can keep functioning the way we'd like to. But I just see this, um, going back to who is learning, what is learning? Where is our attention? You know, those those are some of those bridge building questions or on the bridge questions that we could do together.

CCB: Totally. Oh my gosh, I can't believe it's like the end of the time. And I haven't even reminded everyone that there's going to be a web page that will have Marita's contact information and some of the things we've talked about so that you can reference back and get in touch with Marita. But I'm, I'm gosh, it is like the end of the time. I'm curious, how do you want to end this? How do you, how do you see human centered principles from learner shaping the future of more than just education?

Marita Diffenbaugh: I don't know, I think it's important that everyone realizes their value, that we all have something to share and we all have something to learn. And keeping that very open and a day to day is a really healthy thing to do. And so you might see or hear about this book or even other books that are talking about learning. And you might think, I'm not an educator. I'm for teachers, everyone's a teacher and everyone's a learner. And so I really think that there are some resources in there that would help people with, um, all their relationships and their own personal learning journey.

CCB: I completely agree with you. I am enormously grateful for your time and for sharing kind of the lifelong push. Let's invite. It's the invitation. No, the invitation for everyone to to keep that up. Um, and I will remind us all that, uh, the wonder podcast is on all the streaming services. We are always delighted to have conversations with people that are passionate about what they're creating. And Marita, you are one of those people. Thank you.

Marita Diffenbaugh: Thank you so much.