The best way to foster and ensure equality in STEM and beyond is for those who have reached success in less-than-diverse industries to help guide others to follow in their inspiring footsteps. This is the concept behind an IT Pipeline. Dr. Rhonda Talford-Knight, Belonging & Inclusion Project Director, chats with Dr. Chantell Manahan, Director of Technology at MSD Student Councils in Angola, IN, about the unique challenges of ushering women into the field to make the world of tech a more inclusive and welcoming place for all.

Rhonda Talford Knight:

We talk about preparing folks for the IT pipeline, historically underrepresented groups, specifically women. Can you talk to us a little bit about your journey?

Dr. Chantell Manahan:

I began my career fresh out of college as a French teacher. People always think that’s very strange, that the French teacher became the CTO. My school district had tuition reimbursement, so you were expected to earn your master’s degree. I earned mine in secondary education…but then had three principals in three years.

Rhonda Talford Knight:

For folks in education, if you’ve had a different principal every year, something’s not clicking. Something’s not right.

Dr. Chantell Manahan:

Teachers deserve better than that, more support. They deserve leadership. I added a second master’s in Administration. But in the meantime, how do you bring the world of French speakers to students in the Midwest, living in the middle of cornfields? Technology was the answer, and my technology director was very supportive of all of my ideas, giving me access to tools and applications to help. When I transitioned to a new district, I had already been an early adopter of Google tools, so I was tapped to help train others in technology integration.

Rhonda Talford Knight:

The key part was while you were on a pathway, you allowed your passion to interrupt that road.

Dr. Chantell Manahan:

Yes, it was my passion for giving my students and colleagues the best experience possible that positively interrupted my path. It was never about my students speaking French the rest of their lives. My job as a teacher of languages was to make sure they had an exposure to other ideas and other cultures, while also fostering a greater understanding of their own language and culture. I grew up in rural areas, and books and the French language gave me a window to the world. One of my favorite stories with my students was starting a discussion about culture, our own and others. My students said, “We don’t have culture; we’re just us. Culture is what other people, different from us have.” It was eye opening, and we had fantastic discussions defining our rural, Midwest culture and examining French speaking cultures for similarities and differences. They usually found more similarities than differences.

Rhonda Talford Knight:

Culture is other people—Wow. When we use the term diversity, it’s really about culture. There are certain teachers who grasp and understand the foundational understanding of your own culture and how important that is.

Dr. Chantell Manahan:

My real passion was to help them see more of the world, and technology was an accessible way to do that. Technology became a part of our classroom culture, which I took with me as I started teaching English in my new district. It was a way to create and share outside of our school walls, such as epic rap battles of Romeo and Juliet they created and shared on social media. We also created Twitter accounts for all the characters, and they interacted online in modern language, retelling the play’s happenings in long Twitter threads.. It was something that they had agency in doing. The assessment was in communication rather than a test, and technology was my vehicle.

Rhonda Talford Knight:

It allowed for agency, the commitment, the motivation, engagement. Technology engages.

Dr. Chantell Manahan:

I was the point person for our school district’s successful accreditation process, and afterward, the superintendent came to my classroom. “Chantell, you’re the go-to person for training in the district and this building is not getting help tickets because of your tech fixes. We have technology administrators, would you be interested?” I don’t know if I would have applied, but he came to me. He asked me, and he showed confidence in me.

Rhonda Talford Knight:

You never know who’s positioned to be in a role until you ask. Part of the absence of women and historically underrepresented groups in IT and tech ed is because folks aren’t asking. Research shows women typically won’t even apply if they don’t know they check all the boxes.

Dr. Chantell Manahan:

I had no idea what I didn’t know when I began as the district technology Director, but I knew I had a lot to learn. I immediately applied to be in a cohort of other new or even seasoned tech leaders who wanted to grow and to earn the CETL certification. In our Indiana program, the CTO2B, you get assigned a credentialed mentor for the year and meet in person several full day learning experiences, with virtual connections in between. I learned about CoSN’s framework of essential skills for K12 CTOs, studied up on the technical aspects of the job, and earned my CETL certification at the end of that year.
It definitely was not easy when I began! I was a female leader with four men who worked for me, some who’d been there since 1993, 1999. We’re all friends now, but I had to earn the trust of my team as a leader and a technologist.

Rhonda Talford Knight:

There are folks who are IT purists, and the way that they look at the work that they do is different from homegrown.

Dr. Chantell Manahan:

They weren’t very excited about a younger woman as their boss, especially one who didn’t know the technical side. I was self-taught and brought a classroom point of view they didn’t always understand. But I earned their trust and respect slowly. I listened to them and trusted their expertise. I gave them access to training that had never been a priority before, and I even invited them to attend instructional technology conferences to see what educators were discussing and doing. I invited them to spend time in classrooms to see technology in action past solving a help ticket, the human side of technology.

The biggest breakthrough in our relationship came that second summer, when we changed student information systems (SIS). We had a very short timeline and ended up understaffed for the transition. We weren’t certain we would be able to complete the heavy workload. But I wasn’t going to start school with no SIS, no attendance, no demographics, no data. I spent 16 to 20 hours a day in their office, an old portable classroom, 12-hour days on the weekend, all summer. We were going to be ready for that first day of school. It wasn’t complete, but it as functional for that first day, and afterward my team sung my praises. They admitted that previously they would have been left to do the work by themselves, then blamed when it was not done. My willingness to dig in alongside them, to keep the team going, and to forego my own vacation days to make the project a success was the final “proof” they needed.

I also began to send my team members through that CTO2B program, while at the same time returning as a mentor to the program. I am committed to growing other leaders and to helping everyone see themselves as a leader. With the CETL certification covering Leadership and Vision, the Educational Environment, and Technology and Support Resources, the certification is attainable whether someone is from the classroom or from a technical background and provides cross training to create well-rounded technology leaders.

Rhonda Talford Knight:

It says something about your understanding as a classroom teacher— the value of having that data for teachers, for administrators. I love that you push for your team to earn the civil certification for that critical balance. Earning the certification affords an understanding of what the classroom is like, even if you’ve not been there.

Dr. Chantell Manahan:

One of my team mates who was the most difficult to win over has earned his CETL, and it has completely changed his approach. When we are planning projects now, this technology purist is the first person to say, “We should ask the stakeholders. I am sure they have ideas that will make this smoother!”  I always giggle and say, “Your CETL is showing.” He has stayed with us, but some of my team have earned their CETLs and found other opportunities. One is even the CTO at a nearby district now, and having colleagues who share that common understanding and vocabulary around edtech makes us all better. It was difficult to let him go, but I am so happy for his success.

Rhonda Talford Knight:

The goal is to develop them so they can go out the front door. Because when you sit on folks, they end up going out the back door anyways, and that’s not a good exit.

Dr. Chantell Manahan:

My strategy has been, who’s the next person up? When I walk our buildings, I am watching, listening to what people have to say about each other. Who’s helping, who might want to learn more. Who is putting in a help ticket that explains the problem and the two or three things they have already tried to solve the problem. We do not get many applicants for open positions in our small and rural area, so most of my team has been built from within.

It’s extremely hard to teach someone leadership skills; it’s much easier to help people improve them. Some people call them soft skills, but I think that’s a misnomer. They are the most important thing. The first data specialist I hired for the district was one of our physics teachers, a man who had coded his own Google extension to help teachers efficiently use rubrics to collect data and provide feedback. When he left, the next data specialist was the middle school secretary who had amazing customer service and troubleshooting skills and was the power user on the front end of the SIS. My tech coordinator was a teacher with experience in special education, first grade, and elementary STEAM classes, and she had been the first one to sign up when we offered training and conference opportunities. Watching her grow in her own training skills and pulling in those different teaching and service experiences left me no doubt she would excel in our technology department.

Most recently, we noticed we weren’t getting help tickets in one of our buildings, and it was due to the work of their media center assistant. She was proactively solving hardware issues and helping teachers with software, well above and beyond her job description. We had just received approval for hiring a tier one technician, so I asked, “Would you like to come work on my team?”

Rhonda Talford Knight:

You are modeling for her what she can turn and eventually model for others. It’s the IT pipeline. It impacts our children, so they see this as a career path and opportunity.  “I’m taking myself and my family to another level because of this type of career I never considered.” Fundamentally, we know IT does that. It’s about being in the position to ask. You more than anyone know the impact because you were asked.

Read more about CoSN’s Belonging & Inclusion resources here.

chantell manahan headshotDr. Chantell Manahan, CETL, CCRE

Director of Technology at MSD Student Councils in Angola, IN
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chantell-manahan/ 

Dr. Chantell Manahan is the Director of Technology at MSD of Steuben County Schools in Angola, Indiana. She spent nearly ten years teaching high school French and English before moving into the Technology Director role, and Chantell is focused on keeping teaching, learning, and data at the center of decision-making. She has earned Master’s degrees in Secondary Education and Educational Leadership and a doctorate in Educational Leadership, holds a Six Sigma Green Belt certificate, maintains certifications as a Google for Education trainer and a Google Administrator, and is a Certified Educational Technology Leader (CETL). Chantell currently serves as Chair of the Indiana CTO Council, a board member for CoSN, and a mentor for Indiana’s CTO2B program. She also sits on several advisory committees for organizations including Project Unicorn, the Ed-Fi Alliance, and Indiana Wesleyan University. Chantell is passionate about student agency, data interoperability, and technology’s impact on educational outcomes.

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This interview has been made possible in part by a grant from Chan Zuckerberg initiative DAF, an advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

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