Episode Details

What if learning could feel like a team sport instead of a pressure test? Lyle "Lee" Jenkins, PhD., a longtime educator, shares how a chance encounter led him to a Deming conference specifically for educators in 1992, which transformed his thinking. Deming emphasized defining learning outcomes, rejecting numerical goals, and avoiding ranking. Lee explains how Deming methods prevent "cram and forget", celebrate small wins, and rekindle students' natural love of learning. (Lee shared a powerpoint during the episode, which you can find on our website.)

TRANSCRIPT

0:00:02.3 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm talking with Lee Jenkins, who is a career educator in public school, ending his career as a school district superintendent. It was as a superintendent that he was introduced to the teachings of Dr. Deming, and he has been applying it to his life and work since then. In his business, Crazy Simple Education, he publishes books and schedules speaking engagements. Lee, how you doing?

0:00:38.4 Lee Jenkins: I am doing just great, Andrew. Yeah, this has been fun to put together. And just to highlight, I haven't done this before, just to highlight just simply what Deming taught. We've obviously, over the years added other things, but today we're just talking about what did he teach, just the pure form of it and our implementation of that.

0:01:01.6 Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And I think you and I have already met once and gone through this. It's pretty interesting, you know, I think what I enjoyed about our discussion, truthfully, what I liked, was your energy and the energy about the teachings of Deming and how we can apply that. And so I'm looking forward to seeing you bring that to the audience. Now, for those that are listening, we're going to have... Lee's got a PowerPoint and a presentation he's going to share, but we'll walk you through it. It's not like it's full of very complicated things. So, Lee, why don't you take us through a little bit about what you've prepared here?

0:01:38.3 Lee Jenkins: Okay, I can do that, Andrew. I was like anybody else as a school superintendent. I went to a meeting of the Association of School Administrators. I can't even tell you what city or state it was in, but I was there. And while I was in the hallway between sessions, Lew Rhodes, who worked for AASA, he came up and he said, "Lee, I think you'll enjoy this next session." And that's why I've called this, One-Minute Invite That Changed My Life. So I went in and no idea, I just liked Lew. I trusted him. And it was David Langford's an administrator. And that's how I was introduced to Deming and spent a lot of time after that, reading everything I could get my hands on and absorbed it. And I knew that he was correct in how organizations are operating. And so that intrigued me a great deal. But it was the same information that he shared with all organizations. I just took them and applied them to education. But then two years later, in 1992, American Association of School Administrators, under... With Lew Rhodes' leadership, sponsored a Deming conference. So I went to Washington, DC in January that year to hear him speak.

0:03:20.2 Lee Jenkins: We were there four days. He was assisted and was a part of it for two days. And for two days it was him on stage, the red beads, you know, all the things that listeners know about with Dr. Deming. And I would say that the first part of it was the things you would normally ex