Welcome to Cultural Connections Lab. I'm your host, Kelly Forbes. We are here to talk with
educational professionals around the world to impact and influence the education system as we
focus on cultural connections and the education of multilingual diverse students. We're excited
to have you join us today and we sincerely hope you enjoy the show. Hello everyone. My name is
Kelly Forbes and I am excited to be here for the very first podcast episode of Cultural
Connections Lab. I am here with Mike Overholt, our producer, and also our very first guest with
Dr. Jeffrey Taylor Tribble. He is the current president of EduSkills. It's a locally based
educational software service provider that helps schools increase funding, simplify compliance,
and support academic achievement for bilingual and emergent bilingual students. Dr. Tribble is
also a former Spanish and ESL, ELL educator and administrator with extensive travel and volunteer
experience around the globe. In 2014, he received his Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Leadership
and Policy Studies from the University of Oklahoma. He also holds a Master's of Education in Bilingual
Education, as well as a Master's of Education in Educational Administration from the University
of Central Oklahoma and currently works as an adjunct, no, does not currently work anymore as an
adjunct professor, but did work as an adjunct professor at the University of Central Oklahoma.
He does work, just not as an adjunct professor currently. His research though was focused around
four topics, Native American language, revitalization, bilingual education, language
policy and planning, student assessment and evaluations, as well as ethics and educational
administration. It is truly an honor to be with a good dear friend and calling of mine, so please
welcome Dr. Taylor Tribble. Thank you so much for having me here. I'm excited for being here.
Yes, yeah, good times. It's really kind of unreal to be in this space with you after knowing you. I
was thinking about this morning, I've known you for 15 years. That's wild. It's really, really wild.
15 past years. Just considering how we got to know each other in the field of bilingual education,
helping me get into this field of education whenever that wasn't my background. As people
that do know me, I wanted to be a dancing bilingual veterinarian. You still are. Who doesn't?
That's the best question. I just quickly realized that I loved animals and not surgery on animals.
I needed to focus on- You're not cutting up your chihuahuas at home?
Definitely not. That is good to know. But anyhow, it's just really been exciting to
reflect back upon whenever I first met you and what my own growth in culture and understanding
about cultural proficiency, my current focus right now in my life in the field of education,
but then knowing everything that you've done through your leadership and education, as well
as through EDGE skills and the impact that you are making in our global community and our global
society. Tell us a little bit just about, introduce yourself, who you are a little bit and
why are you such a big deal in this realm of cultural connections, which you are?
I would not say I'm a big deal. Small deal, but I've just been blessed with many-
It's a matter of perspective.
Yeah. Many amazing opportunities connected with many wonderful people like yourself.
I am many thanks to many people.
That sounds deep.
Yes. As my wife likes to say, every few months I take on a new portion of me. Right now,
I think I'm probably at a Taylor 16.3.
That's a good version in control, by the way.
I just did Kelly 2.0.
Over time, I guess I just really love diversity of thoughts and I'm learning a lot from different
types of people, but foundational to my background and experience and passion for supporting
people of many cultures and languages and religions is my background with travel.
Out of high school, I had the fortunate opportunity to go live with my uncle in Sweden,
18 years old. Didn't know what the heck I wanted to do when I grew up and I'm still not sure that
I do know, but my uncle lived in Sweden after he played professional basketball there.
I didn't know if I wanted to go to college right away and so my mom, I think, regretted making this
recommendation, but said, hey, you should go live with your uncle in Sweden. I thought,
that sounds like a heck of a-
Heck yeah.
Yeah. Let's roll.
18 year old, my uncle had a coffee shop in this, I mean, it was just pristine, beautiful place,
small town in Sweden and basically in the forest. He had remodeled a farmhouse,
a bar and basically, and turned it into a coffee shop.
So had the opportunity at 18 to go work for him in a coffee shop and he let me work as much,
as little as I wanted, make a little bit of money. I'd work about 12 hours a day for two weeks,
save up some money and then travel around Europe. And so coming from the background that I came from,
being brought up in a fairly conservative community, just going outside and traveling
around Europe and seeing different way of living just had a huge impact on me and gave me a great
excitement, appreciation for other languages and cultures and religions. And just knew pretty
quickly that I wanted to continue exploring. I knew at some point I wanted to get my degree,
but I was in no hurry to do it. And so I would, some through lonely planet travel guides at the
time, there was no real internet to speak of. So you couldn't search information. I would go to the
libraries or just buy lonely planet travel guides and look in the back, they'd always have a section
on volunteering and I would find places to go volunteer and started to become real interested
in developing nations, developing worlds. Kind of wanted to experience something a little unique.
I've always had a passion for anthropology and cultures outside of the United States or outside
of Western world. Just really became more interested in experiencing something completely unique to
what we, the day-to-day life that we live. And so had the opportunity to volunteer, work, travel
in over 20 countries outside the United States from the age of 18 to 25. And I think the kind
of most life-changing experience for me was living six months in India. And then, but beyond that,
I hitchhiked all the way from here to Panama and back and was treated so well by so many people.
That's nuts.
Yes. If you don't know me, I am a little bit nuts. Now I have family and kids and so that's
tempered my risk take inside, but it still exists. And make long story short, obviously happy to
kind of dig into some of those experiences that I had traveling. But those experiences, people
treated me so well. My family, my mom in particular was so nervous about all the travel that I was
doing, but I was just feel like protected. There was nothing bad, weird, anything like that,
that happened all through my travels. And I was not staying in luxurious places. I was
flying in the cheapest place to stay, places that you would think that you might have a bad
experience. But people just treated me so well. Like I said, from all different languages, religions
and that, those experiences kind of built in me this excitement and passion for helping people
that come to the United States that are trying to make a better life for themselves. And so
that's kind of where my journey towards passion and appreciation for people of other languages
and cultures came from. It was all through experience and just the kindness and generosity
from people of all languages and religions. You literally have a background that I am so
envious of to be able to travel to so many different countries. I believe that it is so
important for people to have those experiences because they're life changing for us. And it
sounds like your uncle is really the root cause of you being exposed to opportunity to learn about
other people. How did that really impact you though as a person?
Well, I think I've alluded to it a little bit that it is true. My uncle was kind of,
as I said, being brought up in a more conservative community.
I understand that.
Yeah. He was kind of on the outside and I, over time became one person in my family that I felt
like kind of could relate to me very well. He also, like I do, appreciated my upbringing and
the religion I was taught, but he also experienced other cultures. And so as I started to explore
and experiment with other thoughts, he was always there and supportive of me.
So having someone in my family that supported me when I'd come back from travel, oftentimes
I'd get a lot of strange looks. You wouldn't recognize me. You're talking about Taylor,
but what did I say? 16.3 right now we're talking Taylor.
That was Taylor 2.0.
Yeah, maybe more like 6.2. But long beard, long hair, traveling through Central America,
people would call me, hey, Seuss. I look like I walked straight out of one of those pictures.
Listen, if you could see him now though, his short hair, collared shirt, totally professional.
There's no long hair.
No, you would never guess.
Never.
But I think one thing to point out, you were talking about how life-changing travel is.
I think a lot of people assume that there's this cost barrier. And I know there are definitely
safety concerns to think about, but it does not have to be, you don't have to have tens
of thousands of dollars to be able to travel. And I think that's a very important thing.
Tens of thousands of dollars to be able to do what I did. It was in 1998 that I was traveling
in India for six months and I spent, not including a plane ticket, $1,200 for six months.
Traveling through Central America, $1,700. And again, I understand most people are going
to be hitchhiking like I was doing, but I spent a month in Guatemala. I lived with a family
while in Guatemala for a month. They had a family stay. I signed up, they have programs like this
all throughout Central America. Went over a summer, stayed for a month with a family and had
Spanish language instruction five days a week for half a day. And then would be able to do
travel experiences outside of that. And that was really where I picked up a lot of Spanish very
quickly. And that was 400 bucks for a month. And again, I haven't looked to see how much it
costs now, but my point that I think I want to make is I agree with you, Kelly, that travel is
really influential and life-changing and that more people should take the opportunity to do it.
And oftentimes people think they can't because it costs too much. And my point is that it does not
have to cost. Yeah, we're not talking about the all-inclusive resort travel. We're talking about
traveling and going to be spot-lutists waiting to have a nice... We're talking about being part
of a community, part of a culture learning from them. And that's what gets me so excited
because we bring all that back here. So how does that impact what we do in our lives? And
so from my experience is that whenever I get to leave the border of my country and go experience
the lives of other people and be in their homes instead of their table and eat their food and
learn their language, it just makes me understand more about my own culture. And I appreciate more
of who I am as a person, as an open gay man in a very conservative state here in Oklahoma.
And through my experiences, through the field of bilingual education and helping multicultural,
diverse backgrounds of many of our students or rather not helping the backgrounds, but helping
and serving students and educators that have multicultural diverse backgrounds, it's just
really impacted me to understand and want to understand more about who I am and where am I
in this continuum of being culturally proficient, of being an ally, not just an advocate, of having
intercultural connectivity and things like that. But how has learning about all these other cultures
really made you learn more about who you are in your own culture and from where you come and your
ancestors originate? That's a great question. I think that it's only fairly recently that I've
kind of started to dig a little bit more to my background. I think one of the things that
we lose sight of when trying to learn about other cultures is the fact that we have our own,
we have our own culture and background. And I think we as white males, Americans, sometimes think
that it's like we forget about this fact that we do have our own culture and we kind of think of
culture as something outside of us that comes from other countries, similar to I think what
sometimes people think about their accent. Like they all, people generally think they don't have
an accent. Other people have an accent. Being in Oklahoma, we have-
I ain't got no accent.
No, no, why? Those people up in the Northeast, they're the ones having an accent.
They're crazy.
They're crazy. So I think that we forget too that it's similar. We forget that we have an accent.
We forget we have our own culture. And it is important to understand that background,
who you are, where you came from. So yeah, over the past few years,
I kind of started digging into that a little bit more. Being a white male, definitely have strong,
dominant European, Western European background. It appears that last name came from Normandy,
France, traced back to Sweden as well. So I've got a lot of the, a lot of Americans have
a background from Western Europe, France, also a lot of Scottish, British.
Mine's German.
I have some German too. So we may have, we might be long lost cousins.
We might be. Strange.
You never know.
35 times or maybe. So, but I did have an opportunity to go back to where my uncle lived.
He actually passed away this year. And so I was able to go back and see the family and visit the
place, the coffee shop that I worked in. And I definitely have taken more time to understand
the history of those nations and kind of where my roots are from. The first Tribble is from England
that came, we traced back all the way about 400 years ago that the Tribble name came from England
over to the United States. And so it's been fun. I definitely, you know, through my research on
Native American language in Oklahoma, what did comment from my family, like, you know,
you're, why are you so focused on helping people with other cultures? Why don't you help people
of your own culture or understand your own culture better? And it wasn't, you know,
I didn't take that so much as, it could obviously could take that as a negative challenge to
what I was working on, but it did make me think a little bit about, I haven't throughout my life
really taken a lot of time to understand my own culture. I've spent more time trying to understand
other people's and trying to help them out and not that a majority group white males need a whole
lot of help here in the United States. We're pretty good. But so again, it didn't make me really
think, oh, I need to help the white males out more, but it did make me think I do probably need to
spend more time trying to understand my background and culture. But, you know, a lot of what I do is
based on the two experiences I had traveling and that has to this day kind of really
built me the desire to support people who are coming here from other countries that speak other
languages that might feel a little bit lost trying to help them find their way.
I think it's really important to mention about how vulnerable you have to be to try to learn about
your own culture and about the cultures of others, because through that process, you're going to be
on this journey and you're going to recognize things that you do that might be culturally
destructive and other things that might be culturally proficient, right? But whenever we're
looking at cultural proficiency and these connections that we have to how it impacts the
educational practices and pedagogies and the systems of our students, it's just important
to recognize that what you're talking about right now is so real in the aspect of being
exposed to other cultures, but also understanding that this is a journey that starts from the inside
out, that we're not able to help support other populations unless we can first understand
ourselves and from where we come at that same time. But that experience can be intimidating
sometimes. While I've been doing my research from Randall Lindsay, Nury Robbins, Raymond Turrell,
and Dolores Lindsay as well, thinking about cultural proficiency, it just is incredible to see how
leadership really matters and their experiences matter. And so coming back to the title of this
podcast and cultural connections, you've made a huge connection from your background and your past
into creating, and I know this isn't about EduSkills, but an incredible platform that I
personally have been able to work with to help elevate a better and more equitable education,
being an advocate and an ally for students and other populations that have linguistic
and different diverse needs in their educational settings. And so in your experience and what
you've been doing through EduSkills, and again, thank you, EduSkills, for being a
sponsor of this incredible podcast, but just on a personal note for just Dr. Taylor Tribble right
here, what have you learned from this experience and how have being the president and CEO of
EduSkills that is helping truly so many educators reach students and other families
in multiple languages, et cetera, but how have your past experiences and what you're experiencing
now through EduSkills, what have you learned through both of those processes and how has that
connected to the impact that you're trying to make or wanting to make in the field of education?
Yeah, that's a good question. Now we're moving on past those earlier versions of Taylor into more
monitors. Yeah, I think we're getting there. As the story continues, his hair gets shorter
and shorter and shorter. That's true. I mean, here before long, they'll probably go bald and
we'll have a choice. Hey, welcome aboard. The transition from somewhat of a vagabond to a
professional really did come from that desire to support students that are coming from other
countries, trying to make it in this world, trying to fit into the world of the United States and our
fabric and trying to make it through school. So I started teaching in the early 2000s,
taught Spanish and then moved on to teaching multilingual students because I didn't really
feel like I was making as big of a difference teaching Spanish as I could teaching students
from other countries to learn English and obviously promoting the retention of their own language
because I'm a huge advocate of bilingual education and believe that's really the only way to
grow students from other countries, but then also for native English speakers to become
proficient in other languages. It's just essential that we really spend more time focusing on that
in public education, but getting back to that initial portion, moving on to a career teaching,
I wanted obviously to make an impact and help kids, but there were times that my principal
would ask me to shut down my classroom to do paperwork and it just impurated me because I
felt like- You don't find paperwork fun? Not particularly. There are unique souls who do
and it's a little ironic that I've taken on a challenge that means that every day I'm
faced with those challenges, paperwork and compliance issues that I was faced with as a teacher,
but I really, the ultimate goal is to try to take that off the plate of the educator so that they
can spend more time with kids because I know as well as you guys do that teachers do not have
enough time to build a relationship with kids and the relationship is what really matters.
Today, kids can get information in so many places. We don't need another place to get
information. Kids need relationships and that can't happen on a computer. That can't happen
isolated in a home. Obviously, it can happen to some extent through Zoom, but especially kids
from other countries need those relationships and so I felt that was so important for me to
build relationship with my students when a principal would come in and tell me to shut down
my classroom to work on paperwork and it was just infuriating and that's what spurred the idea of
eduSkills. I didn't initially at that point, I had no intention of being an entrepreneur. In fact,
I called myself an accidental entrepreneur. It was not something that I had planned out,
but I faced the challenges that many educators face when supporting students learning English.
You want to build that relationship to help them learn and then there's all this paperwork and at
the time I didn't realize how connected it was to funding and compliance and so I had a lot of
learning to do, but at the time I knew that this was taking time away from kids, which is not what
teachers should be required to do and so over time I just really kind of thought out what a technology
tool might be like that could simplify compliance, kind of offload some of that paperwork and
compliance, data tracking, and then something that could be a tool and a resource as well
to provide instructional support to students and as I moved on through my career working as an
administrator, I actually approached the IT team of the school district that I worked for and proposed
doing something internally similar to the services that eduSkills provides today and I was always
turned down. They said now is not the time and so I just kind of put that on the back shelf and when
I was working on my doctoral program at the University of Oklahoma, I felt like maybe that
was the time that I should start exploring options for software development and how it might be able
to help students and teachers and I wanted to do a research assistantship at the University of
Oklahoma and again I had no intention of being an entrepreneur. I was just thinking about different
ways that I could get through the PhD program, put food on the table for my kids, had two daughters
at the time, now I have four. He's craving. Yes, we already kind of established that.
Just reinforcing. So I was kind of exploring options for putting food on the table to be able
to make a little bit of money to support the family. Started doing some training. Actually
resigned from the school district that I was working for and took on the research assistantship
that paid hardly anything and was just laying up at night thinking how could I kind of create a
platform because I had no experience with software development and that's kind of been my history
so far. Really, I consider myself sort of the jack-of-all-trades. I'm not an expert at anything
to be frank. I just know a lot of really good people and I'm willing to take risks and try things
and at the time I found a group outsourced software development here locally with a group that I call
the Yes People. They were software developments that charged quite a bit per hour. I racked up a
lot of debt on a credit card and to be able to create a system that, as you know, Kelly,
you were the very first customer and it worked. The platform worked for you guys and it worked
well but it was a lot of time on the back end. My wife and I were staying up late at night trying
to make things work on the back end for data to flow correctly and so I knew that there wasn't a
way forward with that model. It wasn't sustainable. I couldn't grow the company and have a large group
of customers without doing something. Or a life. Or a life. Yeah. My wife and I did not want to be
staying up late at night indefinitely. I'm very fortunate to just randomly talking to one of my
friends from high school that I grew up with. I would go over to his house growing up for Bible
study and I knew who his family was but I didn't know what they did and didn't know what his dad
did and so I was just talking about my challenges and he said, you need to talk to my dad.
So I did. Went and spoke with his dad. His dad has been in software development for decades.
Has a lot of experience but an IT director for a school district before many years ago.
And so he really had a lot of background experience that has helped EdgeSkills grow to
the point that it is today. He's been a wonderful mentor as a current business partner.
But he kind of helped bring together a team that actually could develop the software.
And Mike being one of those that he, my partner has known Mike since he was a baby.
A very long time.
Since he was born.
Yeah. So long history there as well.
But he'll tell you plenty of stories about how he helped me when I was just born.
I'll only be a pathologist.
If only you asked.
I don't think you have to ask.
Yeah, fair enough. He might just put it out there.
He's a storyteller.
Yeah. Yeah, we'll go with that.
So long story short, he's the one that really has been able to help me put together a business that
actually is sustainable, can grow.
And we're continuing.
Our focus is customer support.
We really pride ourselves not in focusing on growth but focusing on our customers and
growing the program to make the program better and to provide more support for
for educators.
At the beginning, we were very much focused on offloading compliance.
So we were compliance focused.
But since then, we've really built out to providing instructional support for teachers
and to now really focusing on ways that we could support families and parents.
And we're getting creative in that area.
They also obviously need resources.
And so we're trying to be innovative and creative about
resources that we can provide to educators without kind of stepping too far into
a super competitive market.
The curriculum market is very competitive.
We're in an itch space and try to be very intentional about the types of services and
support that we provide.
But we definitely are really working on building out support for families.
Your impact has truly been remarkable in the field of education.
And you're incredibly humble all the time whenever I talk to you about things like this.
But the reality is that what you do and you allowing yourself to really reflect upon your
past experiences and then you come and you really have such a big, huge heart for
people in general, but especially for underrepresented populations.
And so you've allowed a space for educators like myself to be able to leverage the type
of equitable practices that we want to see and that we read about in our textbooks that
whenever we're in college, we're learning about what we're supposed to be doing.
And then it's just sometimes ironic that in education, we're all about research,
but then whenever we want to implement research, we can't do that.
I don't necessarily understand why.
But then there are people like you that come along that took the time that sacrifice time
with family, family sacrifice time to help with the business, to create a platform where we can
make these connections.
And so compliance might be that door that was opened up to allow us to get in there.
But then the conversations around that really help elevate the voices of other students,
of other families, of other educators.
And so I first of all, just want to come from a place of gratitude and say thank you because
you've allowed me to be a better person and a better educator to impact the lives of other people.
And I so thank you for that.
Yeah, it's a blessing to be able to help people.
Definitely, I feel like I'm grateful that I can be a conduit to do those types of things.
As I said before, I don't feel like I'm an expert per se, but I do know a lot of people.
I like helping good people connect with good people.
And I'm happy to continue to do that for you and others to help really emphasize the importance
of equity and culture and language, multilingual America, which I think is really important.
I really believe that is through our diversity that we really find so much more unity.
You know, but man, it's just really exciting to be thinking about everything that you've done
and the big impact that you've made in the state of Oklahoma and across the entire nation.
And obviously 20 plus different countries at the same time.
But truly, the work that you do has just changed the whole conversation in other
districts where I've been able to work.
And so the work that everything that was happening before until now was all happening for you and
not to you because it's now created a whole path for other people to do incredible things that
were not even accessible before.
And so this is why I really wanted to be able to talk with you on this very first podcast session
is to say thank you to Edgeskills and thank you to you.
But you've changed my life and I know that therefore you've changed the lives of other
people.
And if that's what we're meant to do on this great earth is to leave a legacy,
well, then you're definitely an exemplary model for that.
Thank you.
Very kind statements.
It's all true.
I don't even know how to.
You made it up.
But with that, so like my kind of final wrap up question with this is based on everything
that we've talked about right now and we're able to be in this incredible space.
And again, thank you to our sponsor, Edgeskills for this.
But we're able to have these conversations.
We're going to have more conversations, many more people that we're going to interview
from very, very different backgrounds.
We're going to learn from all of them.
But I want to hear from you.
What is your hope and what is your dream for this podcast?
This is really a special moment.
I feel like in my personal journey and my professional journey and then as well with
both of you here today with Mike and with Taylor.
But truly, what is your dream for this?
What's your hope?
Reaching for the stars.
What's the biggest hope that you have for this podcast?
Yeah.
I hope to inspire others to get out there and to really start to understand kind of
what we started out at the beginning discussing not only their own backgrounds,
but the backgrounds of other and being being vulnerable and willing to listen to people
that have different views that might be from other countries that speak other languages.
Unfortunately, in this country, we've created a monolingual, monocultural society and too
often close ourselves off to things that could really benefit us and benefit the nation as well.
Again, I'm just really believe firmly in the importance of diversity of thought
and that that makes us better, not worse from all spectrums, right, left, in the middle.
And so I'm hoping that this podcast kind of is able to highlight those multiple views,
not just the views that we might have, but views all across the spectrum from multiple
cultures, religions, language, and a space where we can learn from each other and learn to respect
one another for our differences and try to grow together.
So that's kind of the general goal and hope is hope that we'll be able to kind of bring a voice
and opportunity for people to kind of share their experience and backgrounds in a way that
can be broadcast all over instead of just a conversation at a coffee shop like other people
are able to hear this all across the world and connect each other. I love connecting good people
to good people, as I said, and I think through this experience, we're going to be able to
get the word out in ways that we never have before and make a difference in communities that
we would not even think possible today. So that's the real goal is just, you know, in the name,
cultural connections, trying to bring cultures together, to learn from one another so that we
can advance society and move forward together, not only in the education space, but just day-to-day
life in general, just help bring an appreciation for language and culture and diversity in the
United States and across the globe. I'm really excited about this because I cannot wait until
we interview some people and have some really like pinpointed hard conversations. I can't wait to be
pushed myself, you know, out of my thinking and just always coming back and remembering that we're
all on this journey. We're all just trying to be the best that we can be and if you're not, well,
I'll tell you, that was try harder. But truly, this is a journey.
Yeah, all in respect for one another. Yeah, truly. And whenever we've lost that respect, I feel like a lot in this country, like we're pitting one thought against another and we're not learning from each other.
Yeah, I think a lot of that rhetoric gets in the way of empathy, of compassion, and of understanding. And I appreciate that you set a respect. Whenever I first got into the field of education, I taught a classroom that represented seven countries in eight different languages, and I only spoke English and Spanish. And so I got to know a lot of people
who spoke English and Spanish and so I could communicate to some of the students through the mode of Spanish, but the other students I couldn't so you had to find many other ways through, you know, translation, family pictures, gestures, you know, whatever it took to communicate with them.
But with that, though, we had with the seven different countries, a lot of different religious backgrounds as well and so we just had one one expectation, and our number one rule was just respect, and we knew if we could just respect each other, everything else would fall into place.
And so whenever I saw that happen with 27 middle school students sixth through eighth grade, then to me that means there's no excuse for adults to be able to do the exact same thing.
So, take it from the kids right. Any last closing thoughts that you all have for today.
No, I think if you've made it this far listening. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you guys. Thank you everybody out there. Thank you, Kelly for everything you do, and for your commitment to being the host of the podcast.
I'm really excited about what's coming over the next few months and upcoming years. This is truly a huge honor. Thank you to everyone who is watching. Thank you to our guest today Dr. Jeffrey Taylor Trible, and we appreciate you so much.
Kelly Forbes here finding out we appreciate it. You connected to. Thank you so much for the opportunity.