July 22, 2025
Episode 330: Tisha Poncio & Rick Butterworth
Digital Portfolios, Feedback Culture, and Rethinking Readiness with Tisha Poncio and Rick Butterworth In Episode 330 of My EdTech Life, I sit down with Tisha Poncio and Rick Butterworth, authors of Today’s Learners, Tomorrow’s Leaders. This conversation is all about transforming classrooms by prioritizing neurodiversity, digital portfolios, and building real-world readiness through entrepreneurial thinking. We dig into what it really means to shift from compliance-based learning to authentic ...
Digital Portfolios, Feedback Culture, and Rethinking Readiness with Tisha Poncio and Rick Butterworth
In Episode 330 of My EdTech Life, I sit down with Tisha Poncio and Rick Butterworth, authors of Today’s Learners, Tomorrow’s Leaders. This conversation is all about transforming classrooms by prioritizing neurodiversity, digital portfolios, and building real-world readiness through entrepreneurial thinking.
We dig into what it really means to shift from compliance-based learning to authentic student voice, how educators can reframe feedback, and why every learner deserves space to reflect, create, and grow.
Timestamps:
00:00 – Welcome and intros
03:10 – Tisha and Rick’s origin story
06:35 – The real message behind Today’s Learners, Tomorrow’s Leaders
10:45 – What digital portfolios can unlock in the classroom
14:20 – Why feedback culture needs to change
19:00 – Classroom examples of student voice in action
25:10 – Rick’s take on workplace readiness and how schools miss the mark
29:40 – Branding, identity, and giving students ownership
35:15 – Practical steps to empower neurodivergent learners
42:50 – Why educators should embrace their inner entrepreneur
50:00 – The question: “What’s your EduKryptonite?”
58:00 – Closing thoughts and reflection
🛠️ Learn more about Today’s Learners, Tomorrow’s Leaders: Inspire Your Students to Succeed in School and Beyond.
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Until Next Time, Stay Techie!
-Fonz
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00:30 - Episode Introduction
09:40 - Origin Story of Today's Learners, Tomorrow's Leaders
22:25 - Classroom Entrepreneurship and Student Empowerment
37:00 - Feedback vs. Criticism in Education
47:29 - Digital Portfolios and Personal Branding
01:12:14 - Key Takeaways and Closing Thoughts
WEBVTT
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Hello everybody and welcome to another great episode of my EdTech Life.
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Thank you so much for joining me on this wonderful day and, wherever it is that you're joining us from around the world, thank you, as always, for all of your support.
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As you know, we do what we do for you to bring you some amazing conversations with amazing educators.
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And today I am so excited to welcome two of my favorite people.
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I had the opportunity recently to be on their podcast and now they get to be on my podcast.
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I get to drill them with questions now.
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But I am so excited to welcome to the show today a great great friend, tisha Poncio, and a new wonderful great friend that I've had the pleasure of speaking with, and just you.
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We're going to be talking about a wonderful project that both of you got together to do.
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That you know.
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I know when you work in silence, it's things that you're doing, some great things, and all of a sudden I kind of see you guys kind of drop off a little bit and then all of a sudden it's like bam today's learners, tomorrow's leaders is here and I'm excited to get that conversation going so all our audience members can know about the amazing work you did through this book.
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So let's go ahead and dive in, but before we get into it, really, really into our in-depth conversation, actually for our audience members that are listening to this episode and may not be familiar with your work just yet, I'm going to ask each of you to give us a little brief introduction and what your context is within the education space.
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So we'll start off with you, tisha.
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Give us a little brief intro and what your context is in the ed space.
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So I was a teacher for over 20 years.
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I started teaching, actually when I was 18.
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And so I've always been a teacher, no matter what I'm doing.
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I taught in a public school in Texas for the entirety of my career and then, because of my students and a project that we were working on in my classroom, it led me to a tool called Wakelet, and that tool Wakelet really transformed and redefined my entire thought process.
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In my classroom, with my students, my students began leading, and then I started working with the Wakelet team and officially started working with them in 2021.
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And I was.
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I had all sorts of titles, but, as you know, titles really don't mean anything because you're still passionately doing what you believe in.
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So I was working with educators and students globally.
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That actually then led me to meet Smart and Lumio.
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So I am now at the Smart and Lumio team as a lead of education and community, but at the heart of all of that, it's all about empowering students and teachers and really just empowering people.
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Excellent, and I can definitely attest to that, tisha, because the last time you were on the show, I mean, that's really what we talked about and you can definitely hear the passion and obviously about the work that you're doing and how you really worked with empowering your students and now you get the opportunity to empower educators too.
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All the while that trickles down, still, to empowering students so awesome.
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Now, rick, on to you.
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I would love to hear your you know little brief intro and then, of course, your context.
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I know your road is a little different, but not quite still a lot of similarities, but I'm just really excited to for our audience members to get to know you a little bit more too.
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Yeah, thanks.
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Fonz.
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So, yeah, I was one of the founding members of Wakelet, where Tish joined us later on.
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So I started that back in 2011 as a designer front-end developer and over the years, really, as as Tish says I've had numerous roles at the company.
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I've done day-to-day operations, product management, I've joined a couple of webinars with Tish from the marketing side, but my core focus has always been around product developing, the product enhancing the user experience for, for educators around the world, and then about who would be two, three months ago.
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Now, end of april, um, I stepped down from that uh position and focused more on our book and, obviously, our podcast, as, as you mentioned, fonz, and, yeah, just trying to empower as many educators worldwide, excellent.
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Well, I'm really excited because I know that in the short span that you have put the book out, I know it has received definitely a lot of attention.
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I know that you, especially at ISTE recently, you know you definitely had a lot of presentations there.
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The book is out and I'm just really excited to dig in deep because, as you know, like every idea has an origin story.
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So I would definitely love to get started with the origin story of this book.
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So, rick, I'm going to go ahead and start off with you and then that way you can give us a little you know idea of how you and Tish got together and said hey, you know what, let's put our ideas together and let's make this wonderful product, this wonderful book for our educators, out there.
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Yeah, so I mean, tish has the longer version of this story because she was the one that really had it initially, but I won't spoil the fun from her side because it was definitely a journey.
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But really, we both went to ISTE 2023.
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It was my first time going to ISTE.
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It was my second conference I'd been to.
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I'd been to and Tish had mentioned that ISTE had approached her about a book and wanted me to to come along to say see what was actually going on with it, and we went down.
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I think we went for breakfast, um, with our editor and, yeah, they were passionate about the things that Tish has done, because her background is incredible, her experiences and what she brings to the table is amazing, and we realized that with her experience as an educator and with my entrepreneurial skills, we realized that's where the book really came to become a reality.
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Really.
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And for myself, I'm dyslexic.
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Tisha's also also neurodivergent.
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I will also let her go into all that.
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I won't spoil that, uh.
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But we realize that we have a common ground, uh, some similar visions, similar passions, and we wanted to create something that isn't tool focused.
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There's more around the process.
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That's more about the educators in the classroom.
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What can they do right now and that's what we wanted to really lead with within the book itself and from there it was literally just one after the other different ideas that were coming to fruition.
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We'd already got loads of different visions of how the book can be presented, but it really started to mold itself as we progressed through it and having things like digital portfolios, which is massive for Wakelet and Tish's.
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I will say it, she is like the central point of digital portfolios.
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She is shaking her head and I know why, but I will say it.
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She is like the central point of digital portfolio.
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She is shaking her head and I know why, but I will say it.
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And there was a lot of things that we both learned in ourselves with regards to feedback and reflection, student success and the challenges that both of us had had even when we were at school as students that we had to face.
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And for me, one of the biggest things that I learned from TCA was, I thought, being dyslexic.
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I thought I was the only one, I thought I was the person that was always falling behind, didn't understand the things in the same way to my peers, but I realized massively at that point that I'm not the only one.
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There are so many people out there that are essentially falling behind because they don't understand what is actually the challenges for them and what their actual strengths are.
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So that's what we tried to really hone in on to ensure that every student, they are a leader, they can be successful and they can go on from the classroom and beyond into into their working life.
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So I love really the passion behind the book.
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I love it.
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I love it, and there's so many things that I can see how, what you bring, and definitely what Tisha has brings with her years of experience, I mean it just makes sense now.
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I mean just getting to hear just this backstory.
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So, t Tish, I want to come to you too, you know.
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Obviously I want to hear you know where this idea came from because, again, knowing how passionate you are and how vocal you are about education and not and I say that in a very respectful manner because we definitely appreciate it I know I have been a longtime follower of your work, so tell me again just how this idea came about.
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I know Rick gave us a little bit on his side, but now how these two worlds married to come up with this wonderful book.
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I don't know, alfonso Fonz, I don't know if you're ready for my answer here, like you guys are, like Fonz, I don't know if you're ready for my answer here.
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Like you guys are like, just chill, and I'm like, I'm like a horse, a horse ready to like go out of the gate.
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Here's the thing.
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First of all, I want I, for the first time ever, I'm going to address something and, as you guys were talking, it just kept coming back up multiple times, back up multiple times.
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I have been asked, rick has been asked what does Rick bring to this book?
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Because he's not an educator, and I'm just going to say, first of all I want to address that, because that's kind of how this book came about I had the foundation, I had the knowledge, I was an educator in the classroom, I was creating the classroom that operated like a business, but I was not a business owner and I was not an entrepreneur in the sense that everybody sees an entrepreneur.
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I didn't have all of those skills.
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If you had thrown me into a CEO meeting with someone and told me to do, you know, an executive summary, I would have had no idea what you're talking about.
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I didn't know the back end of that, and so I get really passionate about this, because we have been asked by multiple people that we have admired what do you guys bring to the table?
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Like you know, we know Tisha knows this, but what do you know?
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Here's the thing I am so tired of people being divisive in any capacity, right, of people being divisive in any capacity, right.
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So what I want to say to that, and my challenge to the listeners, is, instead of looking at things in that way, like I'm the expert of this thing and you aren't, so what could we possibly do together?
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Like I really think we need to start looking at all of our roles, our skills, our experiences and how do we, as you say, marry them together to create something bigger.
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And I think that's really where Rick and I look at things completely differently than everyone else.
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We are neurodivergent.
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Now, I didn't know that when I was teaching, I didn't know that when I was working at Wakelet in the beginning, but as I started understanding neurodivergency and how our brains think, it made complete sense why Rick and I were aligned on, you know, our school experiences, on even our work experiences, on the passion that we had for students, those students that haven't figured out how to play the game because their brains don't think like the game.
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I think that is where our passion comes in.
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It's all about pushing back.
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This entire book is about pushing back on the old systems that have been in place that do not serve all the people.
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That's essentially what the book is about, and it is going to challenge you, if you're reading it, as a student, a leader, a teacher, an instructional coach.
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It is going to challenge you.
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I had someone actually tell me the other day because they've been reading it.
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You know, tisha, there's not like.
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There isn't a ton of like.
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Oh my god, I never knew that things in this book.
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We really have just pulled it together and said you know all of these things, you are aware of them.
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How are you putting them together for a powerhouse for your students to launch them into the world?
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That is a reality right now and so that's really it.
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We're just bringing everybody back to the foundations.
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I mean, we're not trying to claim that we know every ed tech tool that there is and how to implement it into your particular classroom.
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What we are saying is you, as an educator, you are an entrepreneur.
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I know that now I've learned those skills.
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We have written this book for educators so that they can model for their students how to become entrepreneurs and leaders, and it has to start with the educators.
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So this book is, they told me, so funny.
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I was like I want it for everyone, and they were like no, just for a specific group.
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And I was like, okay, but it's for everybody.
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And they were like no.
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So it is labeled high school and middle school teachers.
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That is the audience.
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But I will tell you it doesn't matter who picks up the book.
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There is going to be, on any particular page, something for you to take away, whether you are in middle school or elementary school, whether you're a PE teacher with a group of PE students.
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It really should work for anybody.
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And so I'm very passionate about this because, as we were writing it, I told Rick, I said this entire idea pushes back on education today and yesterday and a hundred years ago, right.
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So that's where it really came together the passion for us to kind of change how people were doing things in the classroom Excellent.
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Now I want to add to that because I know, like you said, you know, a lot of people may think those things initially.
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You know like, hey, you know a lot of people may think those things initially.
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You know, like, hey, you're the educator.
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And then, of course, like you made the comment, what does Rick add to it?
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And I am one of those that I will stand by you and saying like, hey, I never wanted to be an educator, I came in from business, I came in with a marketing degree into education.
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I fell into education, fell in love with education, and so I see things very different but very similar to the way that you see it, where I am always kind of customer service oriented.
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So my students that's who I care about the most, knowing that not every single one of them is going to buy the subject matter in the exact same way, I need to sell it to them differently, and so I can see that entrepreneur spirit in me coming into the classroom and applying that into teaching and then, of course, teaching that to the students as well.
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I think it's magical and I think that there are quite a few.
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Maybe there is a larger group, but I always see that it's usually kind of just a small group of us that may see things in a very different light, and sometimes it it bothers people that we see things differently because I'm like, well, I'm an outside the box thinker.
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I'm like you said you, like you said you're you're that horse that's ready to take off.
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I'm like that corvette that they keep in the garage and every once in a while they'll let me go ahead and do you know some some cool tricks, but then they put me back into the garage because they don't like, you know, to be uncomfortable.
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And then, going back to your book, I really do agree with you and say that this is for all, all grade levels, not just middle school and high school, because even as an elementary teacher, when I was doing sixth grade and I was doing fifth grade, we would have projects we would do.
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You know, students would give presentations, they would have to prove their case, and empowering students and giving them voice is something that's so important, which I want to talk to next.
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So this was a nice segue into the classroom reality.
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One thing that you talked about is all of the tech tools.
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This is not a heavy tech book.
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It's more about good practice and reminding teachers hey, you know what you are already doing this, now let's take it up a notch.
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And then, you know, just kind of start putting things together to have that discourse in class, that discussion amplifying student voice.
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And you know, going into the portfolios, giving them their, you know looking at the thought process, you know, and, of course, how they work towards that finished product.
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So I want to ask you you know, let's talk a little bit about that.
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You know enhancing the student learning through.
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You know entrepreneurial skills.
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All right, so we'll start with you, tisha.
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What are some ways that you describe in your book?
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And you know, let our teachers know how these two worlds can work together in a classroom.
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Well.
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So I think that you know I spoke about.
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I didn't really know if you had put me in a corporate environment or startup environment.
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I wouldn't know the things.
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I did know the things, I just didn't know what.
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They were called Right, and so the entire class that I created with my students.
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I essentially had to put together this quote unquote pitch deck because I had to prove the validity of this class.
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I had to prove that it matched CTE.
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As I was proving this point to my administrators, it also made me thoughtfully think through what do I want my students to leave my classroom with?
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Well, I knew I wanted them to have certain certifications and skills, so I kind of went backwards.
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You know, it doesn't matter if it's Google certified trainer things that I was teaching them, or you know it doesn't matter if it's Google certified trainer things that I was teaching them, or you know, google level one and level two.
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It was more about the skill.
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It was more about the process of how they got from, you know, not being certified to how they were being certified.
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Then I started looking at okay, well, what do I want them to learn about working with people?
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So then I started thinking about now I need a little customer service area, and so I just started building it kind of backwards, if you will, which is what we talk about in the book.
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It's design thinking, it's backwards thinking and I think for the three of us and many people who are listening who are neurodivergent, we do think in that way.
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We see the big picture first and then we sort of break it down for everyone else.
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We see patterns that everybody else may not see, and so I started really working on it that way and it was slow, it was not perfect, it didn't.
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It wasn't this book right out of the gate, right this.
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I started that class in 2017.
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And so when I went to Wakelet, that was in 2021.
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So I had years to sort of refine what I was doing, and one of the things that I will tell you is I started getting student feedback.
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That's something I started when I was a new teacher, and I very vividly remember sending out a survey it wasn't electronic, yet, like it was actually on paper to my students, and someone walked by my classroom and said what are you doing?
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And I said well, I'm just asking my students feedback on the lesson so that I can make the lesson better for this and that was.
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I was a brand new teacher and you already know how that hit.
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They were like why would you do that?
00:20:33.031 --> 00:20:35.820
It's like, why would I not do that?
00:20:35.820 --> 00:20:44.741
So I had been doing that already, but then in that classroom, because of how I structured it, we didn't have regular desks.
00:20:44.741 --> 00:20:54.742
The truth of the matter is, fonz, they put me in a closet with my students, so I had to make a classroom out of the closet, which I made into an office, because that's just how I think.
00:20:54.742 --> 00:21:06.811
Then we got into the classroom, the students are in the classroom, they're doing the things I have outlined and it really begins to operate as a business they are having to talk to each other about.
00:21:07.374 --> 00:21:12.044
Is this graphic ready to go out on the big billboard for the entire school?
00:21:12.044 --> 00:21:13.211
You know have.
00:21:13.211 --> 00:21:15.298
Did I spell everything correctly?
00:21:15.298 --> 00:21:16.471
Are the colors right?
00:21:16.471 --> 00:21:17.433
Can you see it?
00:21:17.433 --> 00:21:19.940
It was little things in the beginning.
00:21:19.940 --> 00:21:28.112
Then they were doing their portfolios and they were reflecting and decision making, and I think for me, that's really where the shift happened.
00:21:28.112 --> 00:21:52.213
I was giving them time to think Imagine that as a teacher and then I was giving them time to make decisions, and that is really where the shift happens, and I think in school even for me in the beginning I was not giving them decision making time, so we didn't put tech tools in the book, because you're going to go to a job and you don't know what tech tools they're going to be using.
00:21:52.213 --> 00:21:54.958
I'll give you an exhibit A Fonz, are you ready?
00:21:55.097 --> 00:21:55.578
I'm ready.
00:21:55.939 --> 00:21:57.000
When I went to SMART.
00:21:57.000 --> 00:22:07.523
I went in as a Google certified trainer who had been using Google forever, except for the early days when I was teaching Microsoft Office to adult trainers.
00:22:07.523 --> 00:22:13.138
But I go into SMART and I'm like, oh, we're using Google and we're using Microsoft.
00:22:13.138 --> 00:22:25.842
Oh my God, Like I sort of had a mental meltdown because I thought I'm going to use both of these ecosystems at the same time and I knew that for me, the code shifting, the shifting and going back and forth from platforms.
00:22:25.842 --> 00:22:34.854
But because I had built up resiliency with other platforms, I was able to get in there and go okay, this makes sense, I can find a workflow.
00:22:34.854 --> 00:22:36.477
That's really what it's about.
00:22:36.477 --> 00:22:39.663
Doesn't matter if you're using Book Creator, Love Book Creator.
00:22:39.663 --> 00:22:46.974
Doesn't matter if you used Flip before, loved Flip.
00:22:46.994 --> 00:22:48.602
Whatever you're using, the goal isn't really about the tool, it's about the skill.
00:22:48.602 --> 00:22:49.465
It's about learning the versatility.
00:22:49.465 --> 00:22:53.176
It's about getting in there and being able to see how do they work together.
00:22:53.176 --> 00:22:55.643
How can they help me do the thing I need to go do?
00:22:55.643 --> 00:22:57.797
Doesn't matter what the name of it is right.
00:22:57.797 --> 00:23:00.789
So that's kind of how my classroom started.
00:23:00.789 --> 00:23:10.778
And then I started realizing, oh my God, these skills are so transferable to what they want to do outside of this classroom, so it really was an aha moment for me.
00:23:11.230 --> 00:23:14.874
I love it Now going back going into that All right, rick, here we go.
00:23:14.874 --> 00:23:15.376
Moment.
00:23:15.376 --> 00:23:16.762
For me, I love it Now going back going into that.
00:23:16.762 --> 00:23:17.787
All right, rick, here we go.
00:23:17.787 --> 00:23:20.673
That and this this just came to mind.
00:23:20.673 --> 00:23:26.875
Like you were saying, you're prepping them there in in in school, and one thing that I loved is everything that you added in a class, which can be done, you know, but oftentimes it's teachers.
00:23:26.875 --> 00:23:28.942
They feel the pressure of the curriculum and so on.
00:23:28.942 --> 00:23:32.304
I it was funny, like I would always bundle lessons.
00:23:32.304 --> 00:23:34.625
I say you know what, I'm going to take my time.
00:23:34.625 --> 00:23:36.867
This goes with this, this goes here.
00:23:37.171 --> 00:23:50.910
But I'm going to take my time and make this a long drawn-out project and give them that time to process, and that's one thing I want to hit on is that there is not enough processing time given to students in a regular day-to-day.
00:23:50.910 --> 00:24:02.012
I mean, what happens is you're a teacher, center stage, the first two rows raise their hands and you think, just because the first two rows know and raise their hands, what about the last two rows?
00:24:02.012 --> 00:24:03.056
What about those students?
00:24:03.056 --> 00:24:04.078
What are we doing for them?
00:24:04.078 --> 00:24:06.215
Are we giving them enough processing time?
00:24:06.215 --> 00:24:08.625
And usually it's like, nope, we got to go, go, go.
00:24:08.625 --> 00:24:12.881
And the teacher just kind of gauges their lesson by the first you know two rows.
00:24:12.881 --> 00:24:18.078
And so I love the idea of giving that feedback and say, hey, students, what could I do better?
00:24:18.078 --> 00:24:19.956
And that could be very scary.
00:24:20.150 --> 00:25:14.618
But now going to those transferable skills, like you mentioned, rick, you coming in with that entrepreneurial background into the business sense and so on.
00:25:14.618 --> 00:25:36.902
Going along with what Tish said, how important are those skills, from high school, elementary high school, to your current setting or where you lived in the entrepreneurial space, business space, what are some important things that you can highlight that Tish mentioned and so we can highlight to our teachers and say hey, these are the skills that they really need.
00:25:36.902 --> 00:25:40.576
It's not just focused on one platform, but on problem solving.
00:25:41.317 --> 00:26:09.721
Yep, well, I'll give you a study that we actually presented on Artisti this year and it was found that there was a thousand, almost a thousand, hiring managers from different companies that were asked about recently graduated students and they found that 60% of them have fired at least one graduate that they'd recently hired within less than six months and that was last year.
00:26:09.721 --> 00:26:23.563
And they listed out the top 10 reasons and they were like lack of professionalism, which I always look at and think well, you've got someone coming straight from either university or straight out of school going into the workplace.
00:26:23.563 --> 00:26:24.571
What do you expect?
00:26:24.571 --> 00:26:50.335
But the ones that really shocked me were difficulty actually receiving feedback, poor organizational skills, unable to time manage their actual workload, unable to adapt into this kind of professional way of working, and it got us really thinking about that one, especially because students are coming out from a very structured format.
00:26:50.335 --> 00:26:54.022
This the way that the classroom is, and stuff me.
00:26:54.123 --> 00:26:56.392
Me and tish did the research in for the book.
00:26:56.392 --> 00:27:00.318
This goes back over a hundred years.
00:27:00.318 --> 00:27:11.951
This was Perusian model, which was introduced from Europe, and its students are in rows and columns, teachers at the front, and the design of it which was taken.
00:27:11.951 --> 00:27:17.190
It was in Germany that it was originally formed and the design of it was the best.
00:27:17.190 --> 00:27:23.364
Students will either become engineers, doctors, high quality careers.
00:27:23.364 --> 00:27:25.337
The rest of them will go to the army.
00:27:25.337 --> 00:27:39.545
Well, that's not the real world now, but we're still keeping with that kind of methodology and because of these ways of working, like you were just saying that I think teachers are so stuck to this.
00:27:39.891 --> 00:27:40.949
We've got a one hour lesson.
00:27:40.949 --> 00:27:43.177
What do we need to get done in that one hour?
00:27:43.177 --> 00:28:11.019
Rather than thinking well, we have seven weeks right now, there's seven hours that we can actually progress on, diff on a single project, and actually come back to over and over to basically distill in them that it's not just a one project, you're done, start the next one, start the next one, which is the mentality that I definitely had in school I know Tish also did, because we've talked about it that you do a project, you get your grade, you move on.
00:28:11.019 --> 00:28:14.215
There's no, no kind of feedback.
00:28:14.215 --> 00:28:19.893
There's no way of going back and looking right, what can I do better to actually improve?
00:28:19.893 --> 00:28:21.172
It's just no, you've done that.
00:28:21.172 --> 00:28:28.037
Tick a box, move on to the next imagine if you had done that with wakelet yeah, I mean, that's again.
00:28:28.157 --> 00:28:38.023
That same mentality was brought into into wakelet and I think you've, we've seen it every company that it's always this, the next thing, the next thing, the next thing.
00:28:38.023 --> 00:28:45.317
We have that mentality in school so we end up bringing that into the actual workplace when really, especially as a designer, user experience.
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