Multi-Lingual: Ethan Pierce

And today I have with me Ethan Pierce, who is the founder and CEO of Adaptive Reader, and he is like myself, a fellow citizen of Maine originally. And so nice to have you back here. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Back in the day. Back in the day. Still am. Proudly Mitchell Scholar alum. This was something that I find really interesting because I don't think that when you and I talked about where you were at that point, being a Mitchell Scholar, that I understood kind of your educational background and some of the things that you were working with or had been working with academically and now knowing that these are some of the things that have actually moved your career path forward in an interesting way. I'd love to explore some of this stuff with you. You're originally from where? Here in Maine? So I went to high school up in Gardiner. I was a Gardiner Mitchell scholar, and I was really fortunate to get a scholarship to go to college, both from the Mitchell Institute and from Harvard University, moved down to Boston for that. For individuals. I can't believe anybody who is watching the show would not know who George Mitchell is or what a Mitchell Scholar would be. But for anybody who happens to be watching that does not know, could you tell us what that means? Yeah, absolutely. So Senator George Mitchell, really incredible public figure here within Maine, nationally. He has had a multitude of roles over the years, both in Congress at Disney, among other things. And he just brings so much to the community. And one of the things he did was start the center of George Mitchell Institute, which provides, I believe it's now a $10,000 scholarship to one student from every high school in Maine every year. And beyond that, the Mitchell Institute just offers an incredible community of scholars going back, gosh, I think I was a scholar 15 years ago and there were already scholars before me. So it's just an amazing community of folks and Mainers and a way to keep people involved in the Maine community even if they go away for college. And so for you as someone graduating from Gardiner High School, and obviously you have a lot of skills in your own right, but to be a Mitchell Scholar and to be encouraged that way and celebrated for the work that you put into your education, what was that like at the time? Gosh, I remember my junior year, junior and senior year of high school, I was like, how am I going to pay for college? I spent three to four hours every Sunday for two years applying for scholarships because I looked for these aspirational places that I dreamed of going from Bowdoin and Colby to other institutions outside of Maine. And I was like, wow, that is more money than I have ever thought of in my life. And so to be announced a Mitchell Scholar to see that I was going to have that financial support, I really didn't even have a comprehension of what need-based financial aid looked like at that time was just such an important support and milestone for me personally. And the Mitchell Institute has been there for me in so many other ways beyond that scholarship. So super grateful. I don't want to make this entirely about being a Mitchell scholar. That actually is not even the most interesting thing you're doing lately. But what other ways do they support you and other people? And I think the reason I think this is important is just because we often talk about the financial difficulties of making it through higher education, particularly if you're from Maine originally, but there are other things that come into play that all contribute to academic success. It was a culture shift for me as well, to come from Maine. I was living in West Gardiner in high school, a town of 3,000 people, one traffic light. And when I got to school and was around people who had lived in multiple countries growing up and traveled around the world and I hadn't been out of the United States, there was a culture shift there and it was so great to have the Mitchell Institute there, these multiple touch points throughout the year and sort of mentorship as well, people who had gone through this path before. And so not only did they provide that support at several points, I had the opportunity to get a Mitchell Fellowship in addition to the scholarship. So I studied art and art history at Harvard and they actually helped me financially to be able to pursue a couple of summer internships to explore that for myself, just an incredibly supportive organization. Well, thank you for indulging me a little bit on this kind of important aspect of your backstory, I guess I would say. But it is fascinating to me that when you came on our show the last time and we talked, I do not really recall there being any sort of focus on any learning challenges that you might've had in your life. So I don't recall that this was something that you put out there as something that you were working through. I was just struck by this is an incredibly intelligent individual who is being offered an opportunity and working with that opportunity in a really successful way. So when I learned about the work that you're doing with Adaptive Reader and the origin story behind it, I was really struck by that and sort of the important things that you're doing in this next phase of your professional life. So talk to me about your background and how that's made its way into Speaking about some of those challenges has been something that I've grappled with slowly being willing to share because there's such a shame factor in these things and maybe even especially when I got into Harvard. Those are things that you try and hide, you don't want to be different. It feels like a sense of weakness or something that you need to sort of tuck away, especially when you're surrounded by these incredibly intelligent and accomplished individuals who might've had a lot of other opportunities beyond you. And so it's really something that even over the past few years I've been, as I started working on an adaptive reader and as I started grounding in this mission and the mission of Adaptive Reader, for folks who might not know it, is we're really trying to make literature and content reading materials accessible for every learner, irrespective of those learning differences, irrespective of maybe different language backgrounds that they come from. Because I remember going through K-12 with undiagnosed dyslexia, I hadn't learned to read at the end of third grade, I failed every spelling test I ever took coming back to that college application season. I remember taking the SATs and I did very well on the reading and writing section. I had kind of come to overcome some of those reading difficulties, but I got the lowest score you could get on the writing section because it was still handwritten and I still haven't been able to overcome those spelling difficulties without the aid of a computer. It's not that I'm an inarticulate writer, it's not that I can't craft an argument, but my brain works a little bit differently than other people's. And so I was just so grateful that so many of these institutions, Harvard included, didn't count that against me, which I didn't know at the time. And it was such a relief to know that that wasn't going to be held against me. But it's one of those things I think where looking back and looking at all of the things that had to happen for me to have some of the opportunities that I've had, the Mitchell Scholarship, getting into a great college, being able to afford a great college, I just feel like I was really, really lucky. And that luck really shouldn't be playing a role in the opportunities here. So how do we make sure that every student and wherever they are in that learning journey, whatever challenges they have, that it's not too late for them to be able to successfully engage with the curriculum in a way that preserves their dignity. Because even when you adjust these things, I remember being in pullouts as a kid where I was pulled out of the class and you feel different and shame education is so fundamentally psychological and emotional. It's a social context. And so our mission is to make sure that you're able to stay in that class, that you're able to participate with materials that allow you to fully comprehend the material, to engage, to keep increasing your skills without feeling different than the other students in the class. I'm so appreciative of this, not only because of the academic, well, we'll just go with success, the academic success that I think is impacted by the ability to have access to appropriately accessible reading materials. But also you brought in a book that is well known to many, Frankenstein, and it's translated into Vietnamese, I believe. And I think to myself, if I hadn't been able to read and read very well and quickly from an early age, my life would've been incredibly difficult. I mean, I just feel like it, well, maybe not difficult, different because I guess you wouldn't really know one way or the other, right? So because I think for me, there was a richness and the ability to escape into these other worlds that were created in these books that I would just devour. So when I see a book, you bring a book in and I'm like, oh, what's that? I would like to look at that. I can't read Vietnamese. But I mean just it's so important to have books available to everybody who wants to enjoy them. Does that ever come into your conversations with people? Is the enjoyment of reading made possible by Adaptive Reader? Oh, absolutely. And I think looking at Maine, I think I was reading that Portland now has 53 languages spoken in the Portland school system, and this is a small city. It's a big city for Maine, but it is a small city. And so within any given class, you can have students who have different learning differences that make it more difficult for them to engage with grade level material or perhaps for whatever reason because of interrupted education, maybe they're reading behind where their peers are reading. And then you also have students from very different backgrounds, English language learners, we like to call them emerging bilinguals, these students who are grappling with learning a new language. And they can be at very different points in that. And so the idea with Adaptive Reader is that we were able to take the content that everyone in the class is trying to grapple with. I chose Frankenstein because it seems very timely. It's about creating something, creating a creature that takes on a life of its own, which just seems very timely in terms of the age of AI as well. But we take these books and we actually use a combination of AI and human editors to change the vocabulary and simplify the sentence structure. So we can take this book, which is written at 11th grade reading level and bring it down to an eighth grade reading level or fifth grade reading level without changing the meaning. We really want to preserve the author's intent, but we can allow students to engage at that at different reading levels. And then we also translate it into 30 different languages. So this book here is at a sixth grade level in Vietnamese. We have 90 different versions of Frankenstein that you can order right now. And I'm assuming this is a print on demand type of approach that you're using. So my career has taken some wild turns. And one of the funny ones, serendipity is a weird, funny, wonderful thing. I was in an Uber once and the guy in the Uber with me worked at Vistaprint and he referred me in. I ended up being in product and design there. And so that was my introduction into this world of being able to use these print on demand vendors to create really unique things in a very cost effective way. So we transform these books and then we're able to print them on demand so that they're really unique and specific to that individual student. And now actually, we're just introducing this QR code on the back where you can scan it into your phone. We have these numbers actually in the passages it says 170 right here and 171 right here. So we break it into these little snippets and you can type that into your phone and it will read it aloud to you in Vietnamese with a natural human sounding voice. Because we know that so many of these students, even if they're fluent in their first language, that doesn't mean that they're reading at grade level. And often for students for whom English is their first language, being able to listen can be that extra support that makes it so that they can understand and build confidence in their reading skills. So would you mind repeating, so you said emerging bilingual speakers, is that the term? Which I do love because I think it's so respectful of the fact that first of all, language is a process, but then also that there already is another language and that you're trying to do two things at once, which I think most of us struggle with as adults. And so it's such a positive and strength oriented way to apply words, I think. Absolutely. And there's so much research about this, the NYC public school system, which is the largest school system in the state and also in the US and also one of the most diverse, they have over 150 languages among 950,000 students. They've really led from a research perspective, from a practice perspective, how to support these emerging bilinguals and their approach. And the research which really backed this up is that these bilingual learners benefit so much when you think of their home language, that first language as a strength and allow them to keep using that in the classroom for a long time to make sure they're fully accessing the materials and the skills they built in their first language transfer into English and actually help them support developing that English language vocabulary and fluency. One of the things that I learned about you as we were just coming in is you yourself speak multiple languages. So repeat again the languages that you speak. Yeah, so when I was in college, I was lucky enough to study a bunch of languages. I studied Spanish, Portuguese, German, and Dutch. I think I mentioned, I studied art history and studio art as an undergrad, and my dream was to be a museum curator. And so did a lot of research in these languages. And that was part of my sort of training as well, was to be able to understand research and work that had been written originally in those languages, in that language. So really fell in love with languages, got very nerdy about it, but also realized that it is so hard and it is so draining. I spent three summers doing research and interning in Germany, in German, and you try even after all of this work to study this language, try living a day in that language. And it gave me such empathy for students who are still working on English. Their brains are working triple over time to process and to grapple with new concepts that they're learning in school. And so I have so much respect for that and so much empathy for that because it's hard and how do we make sure that we're supporting them well? And what's amazing about your languages is that you are not just talking about all of the romance languages, for example, are all Germanic languages. You've sampled, well, I don't even want to call it sampled. You have studied in very, very different language structures, which means that your brain has to really be firing in a lot of different very specific ways in order for you to be able to understand and speak and interact in those languages. It's so fun. I know that there's this fear that now with AI being able to instantly translate content that people are going to move away from learning languages. But it's been kind of one of the great joys of my life. After college, I studied Chinese Mandarin and had an opportunity to do some work in China and traveled there for a little bit. And it's such a special, incredible thing to be able to, even if you only know 1500 words, to be able to experience the culture and the people in their language and show the respect that you've taken the effort to meet them where they are. So I don't think that's going to happen. I think people are still going to learn languages and maybe even more so now than before. I hope so, because when you describe the use of AI and humans to create this product, I think that's the ideal use of AI because in my field in medicine, many people, because written about AI, I think AI is a tremendous tool. And the response to the writing that I put out there is very fear-based. We're going to lose our jobs, we're going to lose our humanity, there's so much, it's not much about loss, but what you're describing is exactly the highest use of what some people are calling augmented intelligence as opposed to artificial that you're actually still incorporating people who are human to create these works of art. Just different works of art. Absolutely. And I think there's a lot of fear out there. I think we can look back historically to all of these different sort of platform shifts, the adoption of electricity, industrialization, all of these times when our lives have changed really quickly and the way we work changes really quickly. And it's tough. And so for me, that was kind of a call to action actually when I saw this technology coming out and I was like, okay, there are going to be a lot of struggles and challenges here, and what can I do that will use this technology and how can I get out there and do it in the most responsible way possible? And so that's really been a grounding part of our vision and mission for Adaptive Reader is to make sure that we can do the sort of quality version of this that is really human. And so that's why from the human in the loop element, from our editorial process to little design things like the covers of our books all look exactly the same so that when students have them in your class, it's not like, oh, that's the sixth grade version of Frankenstein, or, oh, that's the pash two version of Frankenstein. So we've done, I think 85 research interviews with educators, interventionists, bilingual coordinators and experts to think through how can we provide these materials in a way that supports every one of these students? How can we provide these materials so that we're lifting every student up to be able to engage with the original text because we value the original author's words. I love the craft of that language. It is not about getting rid of that. It is not about taking any of that away. It is about offering as many entry points as we can to make sure that we reengage learners who otherwise because of shame really have stopped engaging, have stopped learning. And I don't think it needs to be that way. No, I agree. I mean, I love the idea that you can offer parallel paths and that somebody can go in and put a number in and they can hear it, but they can also read it at the same time. Because that's the other side of it for me is the spoken versus I guess I don't know what it's called in educational terms, but written language perhaps even though it's typed I guess, is that there's a different artistry to each, right? That what you hear and the syllables and the linguistics around it and what you see each has its own special benefit. And if it's in different languages, more the better I would think. Yeah, and I think we have a digital version of this as well. We do really talk about the print version because there's so much research coming out saying that reading comprehension and retention is much, much higher for students when they're reading print, which is really interesting within this context of getting kids off screens. Right now, the research is actually showing that print is super valuable for that. But we have a digital version where I mentioned those passage markers earlier where it says like 170. So a teacher can say, go to 170 and every student, the kid who's reading in pash two is at exactly the same point in the story as the kid reading the sixth grade English version. And they can all cross-reference to see, okay, that's what Mary Shelley's original words were here. And so everyone can get exposure to that while also having access to a version of the text that they can fully comprehend. I know that one of the things that you talked about was getting in a taxi and having an experience with somebody from Vistaprint, but you also had an accident related to, I guess it was an Uber related to a taxi that also impacted you. So I guess moving vehicles seemed to have some sort of import in your life, whatever that looks like. Hard to know what the next one will be, but tell me about that. Oh gosh, I've never thought about it like that before. Maybe I should stay out of cars, but no, it was so funny. And again, I sort of think of it as serendipity now, though I certainly didn't at the time. My senior year of college, I had just finished my finals in December for this semester, and I was in a taxi during a snowstorm and the taxi driver ran a red light going over the BU bridge, and we were t-boned by one of the city snow trucks, not like a small pickup truck, one of the towering massive snow trucks. The cab was totaled. We took out of all of the lights over the intersection and I came away from that accident with having sustained a pretty significant head injury. And it was a scary moment because it was three or four months where I didn't know if I was going to be able to read again, that's a scary moment as an adult, which also gives me so much empathy for people who struggle with reading apart, even just from my experience of struggling with dyslexia when I was growing up. But that was a really transformative moment. And so actually instead of graduating that Spring, I wasn't able to complete my Spring coursework, had to take a limited set of classes because I wasn't able to make my way through that reading material. So my school year extended into the following school year, and it was such a weird moment because, and weird in a good way because it just gave me time to explore things outside of art and art history that were very reading oriented for me. And I sort of fell in love with the creative side of technology and its ability to touch so many people. And I was like, wait, this is kind of very artistic actually. It's very, very much a creative process and it's using a different part of my brain. But I look back at that sort of taxi accident, I'm like, oh my goodness, I was on my way to do an art history PhD that I would just be graduating right now and trying to go off and do my find my first job. And my life took a very different turn at that point. And I'm so grateful because it's led me to some really wonderful experiences including Adaptive Reader, which I'm working on now, and gave me the opportunity to build the skills that I'm using for it. I give you so much credit for that because I think being injured in any way is hard, and having worked with many people over many years that have had injuries that are very serious or other setbacks from a physical standpoint are hard. But if you are somebody who is very tuned into your intellect and your brain to have your brain actually injured, especially during a time where I think we're just starting to understand the actual impact of that, I mean it easily could have taken a different turn for you. Yeah, those were a few really scary months, and I didn't know when I was going to start thinking like myself again or feeling like myself, and I didn't know what new limits and could impose upon me. And so I'm really grateful that I made a full recovery from that and not everyone does, and that's also something that I'm very conscious and aware of. But it comes back again, always to accessibility for me. My life had these impediments or opportunities where I could have had limitations on me from these challenges. And I've been so lucky to have teachers lean in and support me through those family support me. And I know that not everyone gets those things. And so trying to figure out how do we make technology work for us to make those things more affordable and accessible for everyone? Because everyone should have access to quality curricular materials in their home language irrespective of how small that language is. I know we talked to a school system in South Dakota and we translated some books into Lakota for them, and that was such a special interesting thing. It's like how can technology help us not only with Spanish or Mandarin or these big common languages, but what does it look like to really change the calculus on our ability to support every language and on every student? So there's so many ways in which I think that I can relate to what you're saying, and when you're talking about students, I often think about it from a patient perspective, and I often think about it from a health literacy perspective. And I think about the idea that in health and wellbeing, we're talking about people's bodies and their own ability to access information that will enable them to engage in health behaviors. And yet what do we do? We're like, here, take this piece of paper that's usually written in English, although we're getting much better, we are getting so much better than we ever once were, but usually written in English. And even if it's at a sixth grade level, what if you can't read it all? What if you don't interact with information in the way that maybe other people do? Then essentially we've just taken away your agency. We have taken away your ability to actually have information that enables you to be as well as you could be. So I think that what you're describing from an educational standpoint has direct ramifications in the larger wellness of humans. And that's why I also agree with you that whatever tools we have, technology, whatever it is, technology humans, how do we make those interface well so that we can actually benefit people and give them more access to what they need in order to live fully A thousand percent\! And this is where it's always a yes. And for me, yes, these technological shifts are scary and they're challenging and there's a lot of work to do to make sure that we're implementing it in a way that is safe and makes sense for everyone. And also at the same time, there is so much capacity to use this technology as imperfect as it may be with what it's really good at right now. And what it's really good at right now is actually helping to transform language into something that is framed a slightly different way with different words so that everyone can engage with it. And that's a really exciting and powerful thing. So how do we make sure that we're not letting our fears get in the way from putting the time and energy in to thoughtfully and responsibly and with that human in the loop, get materials out there to make really critical content accessible for everyone. One of the things that as we're talking I'm just struck by is my ongoing appreciation for the creativity and artistry of education. And I went back after many years and finished a second doctorate and this one was in leadership studies and I hung out with a lot of educators and they were amazing, and I loved what they were doing with universal design, and they were talking about digital literacy, and they were doing so many things that I was thinking, wow, we should be bringing this into medicine. This would be so fantastic. And I'm wondering what your experience has been as you've been interfacing with the educational system, because I don't want to presume that yours has been exactly the same, but I just think there's such value in having people whose expertise is around "how do we learn?" Yeah, I definitely agree. And I think educators are, it's the hardest job. It is. So the hardest job. It's funny, I spoke about that sort of at that time where my school life was a little bit atypical where I wasn't on the four year track. I actually took some of that time and went back to my old high school as a substitute teacher for a little bit. And wow, it is the hardest thing in the world to have 30 direct reports there and you're trying to meet all of them. And I have so much respect for teachers who are trying to not only make it through that day, but also to put the extra in to make it better and to innovate and incorporate things. And so I think it's a special thing and it's a great thing to be doing these sort of innovative things. One thing that I'll sort of caveat there though, with the sort of promise of digital and innovation is that I think we're running a risk right now with all of the talk about hyper individualized one-on-one AI tutors and all of these things. There's a lot of chatter among technologists about technology taking the place of some of the roles a traditional teacher would have. And that's where for us, I always ground this in, education is fundamentally social. It fundamentally doesn't happen one-on-one with a computer. It is something that happens within the social context of a classroom. And a teacher is so much more than just regurgitating a set of curricular information. It is about emotionally creating the place for every one of those students to be able to engage in a way that preserves their dignity, builds their self-esteem, and allows them to develop skills that are often soft skills within the classroom. And so that's another reason that we say paper as powerful because I think when you get kids off of computers and engaging with that teacher and with one another, especially if you're able to layer in some of the amazing supports that technology can bring from a differentiation perspective in terms of making things accessible for each student, that's where real magic happens. Yes, I absolutely agree with you. And I think I could probably take exactly what you said, not that I would, not that you've copy written it or anything. And I could say exactly the same thing for so many other types of fields that are undergoing this real sense of fear that their jobs are going to be replaced. And in particular, and again, mine is just healthcare. So I think that the doctors and the nurse practitioners and the physician assistants and the nurses, everybody who's thinking themselves, oh my gosh, this technology is going to take my job. Absolutely not. I mean, patients don't come to see us because they want to interact with a screen. They want to build a trusting relationship. So I would say that wellness and health are also a social activity. And I love that you have this as part of your just sort of inculcated into the work that you're doing right now with adaptive reader because it's so respectful of what humans bring to the table. And we need to be aware of that as we move forward with this. Absolutely. And I think medicine is one of those areas that I have a lot of hope for with this. I have several friends who are doctors and they lament to me how