 Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: On the show this week, I am talking with Dr. Sara Frost, optimist, scholar, and program operations manager for a non-profit. We are discussing what being an optimist means, the mindset shift needed to remain optimistic when faced with challenges, and why play-makers are so important for children. Playmakers Make Learning Special A “Playmaker” is a teacher who builds life changing relationships with kids and who helps them shine. Dr. Frost says that her big dream grounded in the critique of injustice is getting to a place where every single child has access to a high quality education. This includes providing them with the right tools and a Playmaker to help them accomplish their dreams. In addition, organizational leaders have a responsibility to promote optimism whenever possible because optimism is a magic ingredient that drives positive results. “If we have an environment where people feel like they can be optimistic, both the organization and the employees can benefit.” If you’re wondering where to find these people called “playmakers”, you won’t have to go far. Any coach, childhood education professional, teacher, or anyone else that works with kids can be a playmaker. We all have the potential to give children an environment that helps them feel empowered and ready to learn valuable skills. Don’t forget that optimism is what distinguishes these individuals as a true playmaker. To be a more optimistic person, there’s a certain reframing that needs to happen within. We need to start looking at the glass as half full even when things aren’t perfect. “Creating a world where optimists and optimism can exist is practicing that reframe. We should question, get curious, and think about how we can turn “I can’t” into “I can”.” Toxic Positivity vs Optimism Toxic positivity is something that can get mixed up in the thoughts around what it means to be more optimistic. Toxic positivity is the belief that no matter how dire or difficult a situation is, people should maintain a positive mindset. This approach will invalid the full spectrum of human emotions and experience. But optimism itself is the ability to see, feel, and focus on the good in yourself, in others, and in the world around you regardless of the circumstances. Optimism doesn’t want you to overlook the hard things. You need to acknowledge that they’re there in order to think about how to overcome them. So recognize the obstacles, allow yourself to feel whatever emotions come through, and then find the good. Focus on what you can change or control. One of the ways in which everyone was challenged mentally and emotionally recently was the start of COVID last year. 2020 was a difficult year for so many of us. There was a lot of fear, anxiety, trauma, and grief as this virus impacted families and took lives. Not to mention, indoor quarantining was a drastic change in our routines. The fear is still there as we attempt to open things up. Just remember that taking care of your body, mind, and spirit will make all the difference when wanting to stay optimistic. Be sure to make optimism a practice not just an idea or a wish. Practice putting a new lens on the situations or thoughts coming up. It gets easier the more you do it. In addition to the free "Get to Good" worksheet shared below, Life is Good Playmakers is offering a discount for listeners to get $10 off the Playmaker 101 course. Use the code: TEACHERSHIP21. Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Welcome to season 2 of the “Time for Teachership” podcast! Our first season has been a blast to produce and record. There are so many great moments from the show to look back on. Our first episode ever is still the one with the most downloads. If you haven’t heard it, it’s called “Creating a Culture of Coaching with Romain Bertrand” and I highly recommend you give it a listen. If you’re curious about Season 2’s upcoming content, you can expect to hear about efficient planning practices, shared leadership, and how to take better care of ourselves as leaders. I’m planning on decreasing the amount of solo shows to make even more space for new voices. We’re going to be bringing on more leaders, students, and families alongside the coaches and teachers to better represent the diverse roles of our audience. Students and families are at the core of what makes a school unique and it’s about time we include them in big discussions regarding education, equity, and curriculum. I’m so excited to see what you all think of Season 2. Thank you so much for supporting this show. Please leave a review so I can keep delivering episodes you love. See you next week!
 Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: For those of you who haven’t heard any previous episodes with Dr. Cherie Bridges Patrick, she is the founder of Paradox Cross-Cultural Consulting, Training and Empowerment, LLC. She is a racial justice consultant, leadership coach and psychotherapist. She works with social workers, counseling professionals, educators, and organizational leaders. And she uses a trauma focused lens in her work to build leadership capacity for racial justice. Cherie holds a PhD in leadership and change, and her research is in racism, denial, discourse, racial justice, social work and the helping professions like education. Healing Brings Us Closer to Justice Dr. Cherie Bridges Patrick is so inspiring for her continuous work in healing as a means of social justice. She knows that getting to justice comes from multiple avenues. She was particularly drawn to what healing could do for people dealing with intense feelings and trauma after experiencing racism, violence, discrimination, and more. She said healing is a necessary step in order to get to liberation because you can’t truly enjoy liberation for yourself if you aren’t healing from all the systems of oppression that seek to control you. Trauma & Polyvagal Theory One fascinating topic that Dr. Patrick has studied lately is polyvagal theory. Polyvagal theory, developed by Stephen Porges, is a theory that the vagus nerve serves an important role in emotional regulation, social behavior, and fear response. Trauma has a connection to this nerve, and our nervous system overall, because of the way that trauma shapes us and our communication with others. When someone has trauma, they feel a loss of safety which can prevent them from being able to open up to others. The challenge for teachers, parents, and community members is helping create the conditions for those individuals to feel safe not just in the environment, but in their presence. “When we can understand our own sense of safety, when I can feel safe in my body, in my skin, my nervous system is regulated...that is what I can do to contribute to safety. Stephen Porges talks about how safety is not just the absence of threat, it is the presence of cues of safety. Right, and so that means we have to understand the cues of safety—the cues that can contribute to people feeling safe and then be able to embody those.” How to Be Someone That Signals Safety It’s time to rethink that notion that we can create a “safe space” for others. It’s not for us to decide if an environment/group feels safe, right? What we can work on is our own discourse and body language. This requires us to get in touch with our own nervous systems. Paying attention to your breathing, intonation, and more is a great practice that will help you and your fellow school community. Bringing awareness into your body as you navigate through the day could help you figure out what things get you from one state to another. Drinking some more water, doing deep breathing, massaging your muscles, getting out of limiting beliefs—these are all potential ways you could enter into a different state with more calm and ease. Teachers and leaders have the opportunity to co-regulate with students and display cues of safety that students will need to perceive if they want to talk about trauma and injustices. If you want to start striving for this today, learn more about your autonomic nervous system. Get a good idea of how it functions. Then you can read about the body’s three main responses that are dependent upon the input that the brain receives from the situation/environment around a person. To dive deeper into learning how to engage students, I have great news! You can register for my free 1 hour masterclass HERE or below. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now so you can create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Why We Constantly Forget Our Goal to Not Do Too Much This year there is one thing we can all do to improve our mental health and performance—take back more time and energy for ourselves. Who here can’t help but be an overachiever? Who finds themselves doing it all no matter how many times you’ve said “okay one thing at a time”? I bet almost all of us would be raising our hand right now. And it makes sense. Doing too much is almost...too easy. I admit, I have a history of overextending myself. As a motivated teacher, business owner, coach, partner, etc, there are a lot of opportunities to join new initiatives, committees, and projects. When a friend or school tells me about the work this one organization is doing, the excitement interrupts the voice of reason. Excitement is a big motivator for us. We get excited when we get the chance to learn something new because we are life-long learners. It’s the excitement to get loud and disrupt oppression that gets us on board. It’s the excitement of imagining our students coming to life when they enter our class that gets us to experiment with new strategies over and over until we get it right. While it’s great to see how passionate teachers and leaders are, it’s not so great to see how overcommitting is affecting our minds and bodies over time. Every time I have overextended myself, I’ve noticed a sharp decline in my energy and a limitation in the capacity I have for the people I serve. There’s a set of phrases a friend once shared with me: "I'm having a rope day” or "I'm having a string day”. On “rope days”, there is room for doing more and feeling like tasks are attainable. Other people can hang on the rope with me. But on “string days”, all of that is gone. There’s nothing more we can give because we’re exhausted and the string will break if anyone else grabs on. It’s my hope that all of us will be able to have many more rope days than string days from now on. We have to learn how to stop letting it get to that point of burnout. We have to take some preventative measures. This year, it’s a big year of transition coming back from the pandemic and figuring out how to stay innovative with your teaching. There is more pressure to support your students as they navigate these times. Colleagues may also turn to us for feedback or to step in when something comes up. So as you can see, the entire school stands to benefit from you showing up as your best self. My #1 Tip For Staying Your Best Self Here’s how I suggest planning: Rather than thinking about what needs to be taken off your plate, start with an empty plate and go from there. You have a limited capacity which you can visualize as a small plate with only enough room for a few options. What you decide to put on that plate is very important; It could be something that checks off multiple boxes (like a food that has carbs, fats, and protein) if it’s going to take up valuable room on your plate. The things that I found most important to check off in my day were: supplying my students with information through a resource, making space for them to process that information, and then giving them an opportunity to apply that knowledge to some sort of project/assessment. As leaders, we need to have flexibility and be responsive to students and colleagues. For you, this could look different. It doesn’t matter why you choose to put this one thing on your plate instead of that other one because you see the value in focusing on that and that’s what will drive good results. “Making sure we have the ability to be flexible when challenges arise and that we're able to take time to listen to students, to colleagues, to families, is critical not just for individuals, but also for community and collective well being. That's what the school year calls for; and to do this well, we need to have only the essentials on our tiny little buffet plates.” Don't Be Afraid to Communicate with Your Leaders Now you may be wondering how you can have this freedom to choose when leaders in the school are telling you to work on A, B, and C. I believe that there are ways to compromise if we’re all willing to be flexible. The things we usually expect teachers to do like grading, emailing, and planning could be automated in some ways. Leaders, make sure you are making time to get feedback from teachers about what they want to change or take off their plate. See how you can support them whether that’s hiring to fill in gaps, outsourcing to another role or eliminating unnecessary processes. My last tip is to have a counselor available for educators to go to during the work day. This is an amazing way to promote their wellbeing. Make sure you sound off below how you are planning to have more rope days this year! To dive deeper into learning how to engage students, I have great news! You can register for my free 1 hour masterclass HERE or below. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now so you can create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Darcy Fernandes has been working in K-12 education for 25 years. She started her career as a social studies teacher. Ms. Fernandes then moved to become principal of Roosevelt Middle School in New Bedford where she stayed for 5 years. Her major accomplishment in this position was establishing the Amigo Center for parent support with particular emphasis in interpretation and care for ELL families. In addition, Ms. Fernandes began a program called Bridges with the President of Bridgewater State University, 150 students each year received college readiness training and academic support in math, science and ELA. Students recruited for the program were identified as at-risk students. The program is still in existence today. Ms. Fernandes is now the Superintendent of the Athol Royalston Regional School District where she is working to turnaround two schools within the district. Ms. Fernandes has spent her career working in districts with high numbers of low-income families and many of the districts she has worked in have had a high number of minority and ELL students. Ms. Fernandes has come from a background of family members who have advocated for civil rights. It is her honor and privilege to continue this legacy. She is not afraid to speak up for the rights of individuals even when it may not be popular. Treat the Root of the Problem One of the biggest misconceptions Darcy hears about helping low income students or students of color is to keep providing resources and funding without trying to fix the root of the problem. She sees this as inefficient because racism and inequity are continuing to harm multiple schools, teachers and students for every ONE that is supplied with resources. In her mind, it’s a matter of dismantling these structures of oppression if we want things to change for the future. Although Darcy attended an integrated elementary school, the systems were not set up to support the needs of all students. She remembers feeling ‘othered’ along with other students of color. There was a lack of care that went into teaching BIPOC students compared to white students. It wasn’t until college that she had a teacher who wasn’t white. There was no one that she could relate to in a sense. “So for me, I went into education with the understanding of ‘what were these structures about and how could I work to change them?’ so that more kids feel inclusive in school.” We Can Fix This Together Darcy has found through her work that time and time again, there’s a disparity in the funding that schools receive. The schools with white students that come from middle to high class backgrounds typically receive more money than the schools with lower income students. Not to mention, there are AP classes and college level classes being offered only to certain students without any opportunity to help other students master the skills needed to take those courses. Another issue that’s been identified is the lack of inclusivity in textbooks and the lack of diverse thinking. There is always more than one way to approach a subject or event, so why only teach one way of thinking? Being a teacher or school leader who wants to help their students of color shouldn’t stop at the school level. We need to embrace an activist role in order to really take down the structures that hold back many of our students. This means advocating for better policy on a district level or a community/city level. So if we want to bridge the gaps and create better schools for everyone, these are some of the issues we need to focus on. Sharing leadership and involving the community to become part of the solution was a no-brainer for Darcy. She started with having instructional leadership teams go to various schools to observe what was working and what wasn’t. These teams would then meet to talk about what needed to be changed. Recently, she has invited any teacher, student, family member, or community member to join the district's strategic planning process. She believes that giving everyone a seat at the table makes it much easier to figure out why things are happening the way they are. It is also good to have multiple perspectives on a matter so that the plans made in the future minimize the bias. Deciding how to teach during COVID building closures was one example of how the community has collectively decided how to move forward. “We found a really good solution that worked for everyone. And we kept the majority of our kids engaged the whole school year because of that.” What is the Data Telling You? When you pay attention to the data, it tells you a story. It shows you who’s benefiting, who isn’t and so on. Each person in a community will interpret it differently and that’s why we need multiple perspectives at the decision-making table. It’s possible to use those different ideas to form a plan that will work for everyone; a plan that incorporates multiple pieces and voices is just what a school needs to help it’s students thrive! To dive deeper into learning how to engage students, I have great news! You can register for my free 1 hour masterclass HERE or below. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now so you can create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
This is the sixth and final installment of the Curriculum Series. We are talking with Laura Cruz who is an avid reader who has been immersed in stories her whole life. Laura’s motivation comes from setting the stage for authentic human connection and learning. She is the senior manager of Learning and Development at BetterLesson where she designs onboarding, training and feedback systems for over 100 coaches who deliver workshops to teachers on topics ranging from blended learning to anti-racist practices.
Why Students Need A Way to Tell Their Story Laura’s experience with helping students write their story comes from a required autobiography class she started teaching. The course's mastery-based projects asked each student to write their own three-chapter autobiography/memoir, a literary analysis paper of a memoir published by an author, and one art component. The completed projects were then presented to a panel of teachers that were outside of the class. Those teachers would then use mastery based grading to determine if the student had mastered the skills. Laura said “My dream for this course was really about allowing my students to figure out their identity or reflect on their identity and really dig into what does that mean and who am I?” It is a special thing to be able to hear or read another person’s story whether it comes from a well-known author or a student. Student’s need the opportunity to tell their story. Creating a memoir is one way to achieve that. When a student tells their story, they get the power to decide what they want to talk about. Keep in mind there are so many identities to young adults other than “student”. They have to grapple with all of their identities and which ones have the biggest impact on their life. They have to determine what belongs in the story as something that’s shaped their journey. Another benefit of dedicating class time to this is it fosters compassionate relationships between students. Classmates are usually very supportive of each other’s work and they can relate to the physical and mental work it takes to produce a piece like this. They can relate to the walls that they come up against at certain points in the project. Looking For Something Better Something that was very important to Laura in teaching was to give better opportunities to her students who were from low income families and marginalized. As a white woman, she felt a responsibility to acknowledge the privileges she had compared to her students and find a way to bring a high quality learning experience to the class. She said being a part of a consortium school is great because these types of leaders look for the best way to help a student learn not just the traditional way. For example, they’ve recognized how unfair standardized testing is to students and pivoted to a better method of assessment. Creating the autobiography course took some backwards planning in order to set it up for success. She had to start with visualizing what that final literary paper would look like and what students would need to demonstrate at the end. Then it was a matter of naming chapter requirements and adding in things students could read to get inspiration. The middle would be all about working on things to build sentence writing skills, topics, etc. Then there would need to be teaching on different writing styles with examples so that students could decide which kind they wanted. Laura used an activity throughout the course called memory moments. “We really dig into the writing style and then they would write in response with their own story so that they had all these drafts that we could then figure out okay what are the three stories you really want to tell in this final autobiography piece.” As students finished off this course, the feedback that they shared was a sign that overall, the course was serving them well. Students acknowledged how it was more of a challenge than expected. But getting through the challenges pushed them to grow. Other students shared how they enjoyed using their creativity in writing these stories. They enjoyed putting whatever spin they wanted on it whether it was funny, adventurous, touching, or something else. Human connection is an element that isn’t found in just any class, that’s what makes this one particularly special. To dive deeper into learning how to engage students, I have great news! You can register for my free 1 hour masterclass HERE or below. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now so you can create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Make it simple with a unit arc During my third year of teaching, I remember first hearing about unit arcs while sitting with my curriculum coach at the time. I was amazed at the possibility of using a handful of protocols again and again to save me so much time and energy as a teacher. As you’ll see, making your own unit arc doesn’t have to be scary. But it is a critical part of creating your own curriculum plans for your class. If you’re wondering what a unit arc is, it’s the pattern of purposeful learning experiences in which students engage throughout a unit. Establishing a pattern makes it predictable and simple for you to do each year. For a successful learning experience, make sure it is student-centered. The teacher should minimize their involvement while giving students the reins in solving challenges. Purposeful Protocols So what are the protocols that make up a unit arc? Behind each protocol should be a purpose. The four protocol purposes that I thought of after reading El Education’s protocols are as follows:
You definitely don’t have to come up with a hundred protocols. I recommend that you choose between 3 to 5 protocols using these 4 purposes. “Once I developed my own unit arc for my courses, I no longer spent hours determining which activity to prepare for each lesson.” Unit arc examples Unit arcs will vary from subject to subject, grade to grade, and teacher to teacher. Here’s one example of a unit arc used for a social studies class: First lesson—hook, Second lesson—establishing prior knowledge of students, Third lesson—broad overview, Fourth lesson—primary sources, Fifth—discussion, case studies, and so on. The type of unit arcs I create and help others make, focus on creating interest and engagement from students. These types of unit arcs provide students the chance to create meaningful work that tackles current issues in the present. I also believe that part of connecting students with these projects comes from allowing students to talk about these projects with an authentic audience. A great way to finish off a unit arc is with time for reflection. Students have the opportunity to consider what went well and get some helpful feedback on their work. Rarely do I find a bored student when using these unit arcs. The reason is that engaging content combats boredom. When students are engaged, they are building relationships with other students, staff, and faculty. They also take more ownership and improve communication skills and confidence. Battling boredom with engaging content is particularly if your classes are still being taught virtually. Trying to keep a student engaged while they’re watching you through a screen is challenging, and these unit arcs will make a world of difference. My suggestion for you now is to take the protocols that your students have already been loving and start building out that arc. To dive deeper into learning how to engage students, I have great news! You can register for my free 1 hour masterclass HERE or below. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now so you can create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Driving questions, Essential questions, and Supporting questions This series, we’ve been talking a lot about project based learning. One of the main elements of Project Based Learning is coming up with a driving question. What’s a driving question? It is one that’s aligned with learning goals, engaging, allows for open ended responses, rooted in a specific context, clear, and centers justice. There are also essential questions and supportive questions. Grant Wiggins has a blog post that explains the difference between all of these. The essential question stays relevant and comes back into curriculum unit after unit, even moving between subjects and grade levels. Supporting questions are small scale. They have an agreed upon answer and they help students in answering their big driving question. All of these question types are helpful for different reasons. They all go together into completing a project that looks at an issue. What’s important here is not trying to leave any out or substitute one for the other. In this episode, we're diving into the details of a driving question. “There are different levels of questions and an essential question as the driving question for a project is not going to cut it. it's not going to be super engaging, it's not going to be contextualized in a way that makes sense for the project so students might be confused; they might just be disinterested. And the supporting or what I have been calling the scaffolding question is just way too narrow.” What make a driving question stand out? It’s important for a driving question to be exciting for students. If there’s no interest, it’s automatically going to be a less effective project with answers that may not be fully developed. We want it to be in a specific context so that it’s not too broad. It needs to be open ended so that students can all respond in their own way with something unique to bring to the table. It should be clear; students should know what is being asked of them. Lastly, it should center justice and give students a chance to be a part of real world problem solving. Examples A way to make sure that your driving question hits all of these elements is to create at least 5 rough drafts before you decide what your final question is. Additionally, ask a friend or students for feedback to see if anything’s missing. To borrow an example from John Larmer at PBL Works, if you were going to talk about math and basketball, your first draft might look something like this: How is math used in basketball statistics? Then it could progress to: Is Lebron James the best basketball player ever? There’s a clear difference here for a couple reasons. First, it’s gotten more specific. It is more compelling. People are much more interested in Lebron James as the subject. And it’s created another question about how to define best and what that’s based on. Now it would have to be edited further to include justice. Sometimes when justice is added to the question, the question may get bulkier or less clear, so you want to try to maintain a balance all of these qualities. Some of the possible directions you can go with driving questions is making it:
Here is John Larmer's post with some more sample questions to check out Closing activity: As we close this post, just take a moment to do some brainstorming. Think of a unit idea/topic that you could use for your question. Then try to come up with those 5 minimum drafts. Use the Backwards Planning Template to give you a checklist for driving questions as well as some other info you won’t want to miss. If you have any further questions feel free to reach out! For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now to create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Matthew Pimental has 15 years of experience in education. He got started with developing cultural immersion experiences for American teenagers to locations throughout the world before transitioning to a classroom position in a Philadelphia charter school serving students from the third (economically) poorest zip code in the United States. He transitioned to a role supporting students identified as “intellectually gifted” and now oversees professional development programming for teachers. He also supports a school within a school project-based learning program in a highly diverse school district in a metropolitan area. Can you remember the first time you heard about Project Based Learning? Perhaps it was from this blog, during a PD workshop, or maybe you saw your coworker teach a PBL unit. Did you think to yourself, “wow that sounds like a lot of work,”? You’re not the only one. Our guest, Matthew Pimental, says it’s common to hear teachers assume that being unconventional in the classroom means throwing away everything you know and having to start all over again. That’s what deters schools from getting into project based learning. In this episode, Matthew breaks down some of these fears and talks about why it’s really not as big of a leap as you might think. All schools should be able to make changes that will help the students The methods and ways in which people are taught do not have to be through a textbook. Many schools get a kind of tunnel vision when going the typical route. Teachers try to get through the fast paced flow of the week without remembering that there is more to education than this one way. Matthew remembers feeling like a cog in a machine as a student in middle school classes with traditional models. There was no personalized learning. Private schools seem to have more resources and capacity for unique learning experiences. But fun, enriching education experiences shouldn’t be a luxury for private schooling. Public schools deserve the same outcomes. That’s why project based learning is on the rise. The benefits are stirring conversations. Is PBL less rigorous? Some parents and principals worry that changing the pedagogy and evaluations for students means losing out on organization and quality. Here’s the secret: there’s only a risk for disorder and low quality if you allow it. Proper planning and following research based strategies is all it takes to make sure any changes are smooth. For example, shifting the grading system to align with a PBL approach does not mean throwing out all forms of assessment and feedback. “If you're not going to grade students, how are you holding students to excellent work? Right, you can't avoid that just because you're not going to use grades, and I think oftentimes...getting away from grading winds up being getting away from any kind of evaluation whatsoever, and that's not high quality education.” PBL can still meet the basic standards within your state. It’s not as radical as one may think according to Matthew. PBL curriculum still enables students to learn the most important course concepts and skills. Not to mention, he recommends that you keep using practices from the traditional model too because many of those still have value. Find what works for your students and keep it! Then, look at what’s left to change. Use project based learning as the main course (not the dessert at the end). The project should drive the learning. For teachers who don’t feel like they want to incorporate PBL into every unit, Matthew says some of his teachers choose specific units to use a PBL approach and other units are designed using a more traditional model. What do you think your students could accomplish with more project based learning? If you've already started, what successes have you had? If you're not sure about starting, what’s holding you back? Share your thoughts in the comments section below! For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now so you can create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self. More Links! During the show, Matthew refers to a student-created book as the culminating "public product" of a ninth grade PBL unit. Here are links to two of those books (2018) and (2020). He also mentioned his teachers are participating in High Tech High's Unboxed Podcast. Matthews’s email and more information on his district can be found on Cheltenham’s Website.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: One of the foundational elements of backwards planning justice-centered units with flexibility and multiple opportunities to practice skills is a course-long rubric. Getting clear on where we're going helps us as educators, and that clarity helps our students. Using one rubric for all course projects In last week’s post, I touched on project based units, curriculum design, equity, and mastery based grading which helps students deeply understand content and repeatedly practice and refine key skills by addressing one driving question throughout a unit. We cannot design application projects or create lesson-level activities for students to practice the key skills if we don't know what the key skills are. That's why a course-long rubric is step one. “Work within your department or the grade you teach to be able to co-create a rubric that has the same priority standards so that students moving class to class or grade to grade, year to year, they see the same language... and they get further opportunities to be able to practice and refine those skills.” Co-creating this rubric with fellow teachers who teach the same content or grade level will result in a better rubric that's aligned from year to year and class to class. It also saves the student the trouble of having to read through and learn new rubrics. Now, there are two ways you can make a rubric for mastery. One is called a single point rubric. The three columns are: Approaching standards, Outcome, and Above Standards. In the middle column, you will list all of your outcomes. So name the skill and under it explain what being proficient in that skill would mean. The other two columns are for you and a student to write your own notes. If a student is not quite at the standard, you will describe why in “Approaching Standards” and if they have gone above those standards you write how they exceed the standards in the “Above Standards” column The second option is a three or four point rubric with 3 or 4 vertical columns and horizontal rows for the priority skills. The difference is that you define each category of mastery on this rubric (e.g., below standards, meets standard, and above standard). Best practices:
I think you’ll find it useful to hear about the skills-based rubrics that the New York Performance Standards Consortium has developed. Many schools have adopted these standards and it’s great to see these collaborations between departments in different schools. Their four point rubric is based on these core subjects: ELA, Social Studies, Science, Math, and Engineering/Design Science. The priority skills listed for ELA are organization, analysis & interpretation, style & voice, connections, conventions (written) or presentation (verbal). Social Studies is viewpoint: thesis & claim, evidence & sources, analysis & persuasion, effective organization, understanding of implication & context voice, and a presentation format. For science they have the presentation piece plus contextualize, critique, experimental design, collect/curate/organize/present data, analyze & interpret results, revise original design. Math is problem solving, reasoning & proof, communication, connections, representation. Finally engineering/design science contains problem solving, reasoning & proof, communication, connections, representation and a presentation format. Rubric design is critical for backwards planning curriculum, and it doesn't have to take forever! Take a look at my rubric templates below to see the templates we discussed today. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module to create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: My dream for students Imagine if we could help students learn how to identify the injustices around them. One of my dreams for students is for them to be able to call out these injustices that come up time and time again. I want to be able to develop curriculum that enables them to create projects grounded in justice. These projects go beyond the grade. They should be heard by authentic audiences in the community. They bring inspiration and give students a sense of ownership in taking on these issues directly and creatively. When we apply mastery grading to projects over traditional ones, there is less room for bias and more for considering what skills are being demonstrated through these projects. What does the research say? The research on student-centered learning is revealing. This makes learning personalized to the individual needs and gives them power to be part of the creation of curriculum. Students get to progress to the next level when they’ve nailed down the concepts, not when a teacher says so. Here’s what students have shown from the research:
In addition, having more student voice has shown to greatly improve student-teacher relationships and student-student relationships. Students increase their critical awareness of the world and they naturally gravitate towards activism. This next one is so cool—when educators share power with their students, more power is created. This is known as cascading vitality. Usually, people assume the opposite. They assume that sharing power will mean chaos and that no one has enough. But I want you to reframe that mindset. Student voice engages and heals We talk about the importance of trauma informed teaching in school. There’s a reason that we need to change the pedagogy and methods with students who have been through trauma. Trauma affects the brain and impacts a child’s ability to learn. Besides SEL, students who have trauma can also benefit from this shared leadership model. It gives students control over themselves and how they learn which counteracts that feeling of powerlessness that some have after trauma. The process of restoring mental wellness and going beyond healing is called Post Traumatic Growth. Researchers find that the right environment for Post Traumatic Growth is one that involves a way to cope and regain agency. Justice-centered units and shared power are opportunities to to cultivate that. For many schools, there is a lack of connection and a lack of engagement in classrooms. Students that don’t feel like they are valued as an individual may feel this way because the traditional curriculum doesn’t reflect their identities or make room for their ideas. Our world needs young people to fight for justice, and the research tells us even having more class discussions increases students' future civic engagement. Next, I want to discuss why project based learning is impactful. In project based learning (PBL), you start with a challenging question or issue. This problem/question is one that students address throughout the unit. The summative assessment is a “public product” with an authentic audience beyond the teacher, and throughout the unit, students have multiple opportunities for critique and revision of their project. Classes that use PBL have been studied and found to improve students’ attitudes on learning, engagement, self-reliance, and overall attendance. Bonus finding: PBL teachers are happier than non-PBL teachers! “PBL also increases content retention and deepens students’’ understanding. Students in PBL actually do better on standardized tests than students not in PBL classrooms.” Reflecting on power and grading bias When teaching for justice, we have the opportunity to develop student identity and criticality which often doesn’t get the attention it deserves. When planning for lessons, take it from Dr. Gholdy Muhammad and ask yourself how your lesson will help students learn something about themselves or others. Sylvia Duckworth has something called the wheel of power/privilege. It’s a colorful and complex wheel that shows our proximity to power with all of our different identities. You can use this as an example to also ask yourself how will my lesson get students to think about power, equity, and ways we can disrupt oppression? Another aspect of teaching for justice is preventing grading bias. The data shows a clear bias in the practice of assigning a grade to students. Even when we are unconscious of it or aim to be objective, it’s too easy to judge the student rather than the quality of the student’s work or learning. The research on "mastery-based" or competency-based" grading, however, shows this approach to be more accurate and equitable. “Mastery based grading results in a 34% gain in student achievements. It increases student learning...and “achievement gaps” decrease.” Mastery-based grading really stands out because it doesn’t punish students for coming from past schools that haven’t prepared them to succeed. Usually, Black, Brown, and Indigenous students are the ones who are affected by strict grading because it doesn’t account for the gap or differences between students coming from advantaged schools and students coming from schools with less funding, crowded classrooms, and teachers that didn’t have the tools they needed. It’s all about giving all students a chance to practice the same skills and show progress/mastery in a variety of ways. I hope all of the research on these topics have inspired you to dive deeper and bring more equity into your class. If you want a simple resource that ties all of this together, be sure to click below to get my “Equity 1 pager”. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module to create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Emma Siesfeld has spent the last 10 years in public education as a teacher, coach, and administrator as well as designing and implementing support for students with disabilities that promote skill growth and independence. Dreams for education How do we support all students to be motivated, engaged, and develop their skills for success? When asked about the big dreams Emma holds for the field of education, she replies that she wants education to feel empowering to students. She wants students to feel like their voices matter and whatever they contribute is valued. Emma believes that learning can be fun and engaging to students. We just have to make sure we are caring enough as educators to make it different. As a teacher, one of our biggest goals is to make sure students feel prepared and ready for the future. Students would ideally make progress every day with the tools they’re given and come out feeling powerful in their lives and the world. Taking direction from students and their communities Emma discusses how in our standard teacher training, we take what has traditionally worked for us and then when it comes time to teach, we sort of take that same model and apply it to our students expecting it to work for them. But there are many students who will struggle with your methods because they have different learning obstacles and strengths than you. So, we have to be willing to pay attention to these needs and honor the child in that way. Another way to change our mindset is to not think of students learning when they want to. Instead what if it’s students learn when they can? This brings in a responsibility to teachers and school leaders to figure out how we can make the school setting and the learning more equitable for students who are underrepresented. “I think there are a lot of ways in which we are not fully in control...to make sure students get what they need, but certainly, looking at what we have within our roles and trying to figure out and identify exactly what we can do to really support students so that they're in a place where they can learn.” Strategies to support all students It can be scary to experiment with new methods. Changing the model can feel uncomfortable but Emma shares that it just comes down to being more open and courageous for the sake of a supportive learning environment and for student growth. Remind yourself that it’s okay to stumble or to not get it right when trying new ways. You don’t have to be perfect about it! To help yourself make the journey easier, be open to transparency with your students and even their parents if that helps. This encourages social emotional skills that we want students to learn as well. Another thing you can do is talk with peers and coworkers. Share your feelings around those challenges and ask for some advice on strategies that they might have tried in the past. You’re likely to get a lot of encouragement and new ideas by opening up about it. One key strategy Emma reveals is partnering up with parents so that they can make sure everyone's on the same page with knowing what that student/child needs to be supported by the school and parent. To hear Emma walk me through several strategies from her amazing guide, listen to the episode, and feel free to share what what strategies resonate with you! To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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What do you do when facts don't seem to matter? One of the most common questions I get when facilitating with teachers and district leaders is how do I teach for justice without feeling like I’m indoctrinating my students? There’s a line that teachers and leaders want to walk, afraid to go too far into radical ideas. There’s also the point that the facts are always being put up for debate. Dr. Ayo Magwood’s article goes over how to have a historical, scientific approach to anti-racist education. She says “I do not allow classroom debate over whether structural racism exists. As Hess and McAvoy (2104) argue ‘That is inauthentic and problematic to allow students to debate settled empirical questions,’”. She is stating some questions have factual answers. Then there are policy questions which are debatable because they are a matter of opinion on how certain factual issues should be handled. Making these distinctions are a way for us to be able to hold important discussions while the facts remain important. Perspectives Consciousness Approach The other piece of this is that you should be teaching the history and sociology on these empirical topics but when it comes to the debatable parts, you might want to take a perspectives consciousness approach. This approach was made by Robert Hanvey in 1976. It centers on how we all have different views and that’s because our positionality is so varied. The intersection of our different identities is what influences our perceptions of various issues. Seek out the perspectives of multiple people instead of taking your perspective as the universal one. We see this happen with both children and adults. There’s this ‘If I didn’t see it happen or if I didn’t experience it, then it didn’t happen’ type of mentality. “This is something that is applied to the policy solution question; It's not applied to a factual question or an empirical question because then we run the risk of universalizing our personal perspectives. If we say ‘this is my truth and therefore it is fact, it is true for everyone’, that becomes problematic.” Truth decay Another helpful resource is Dr. Jon Wegin’s book, “Deep Learning in a Disorienting World”. The author explains the importance of deep learning and how to take steps towards that. One of the terms in his book is “truth decay”. Truth decay has been found to be caused by the following:
“What we're trying to do is to motivate students to latch on to that emotional piece and support action, the motivation to complete the worksheet or to complete the project or to apply the skills, whatever it is, but that emotion is really critical.” This kind of discourse thrives with equal parts challenge and confidence. We don’t want students getting too frustrated with challenges but just enough that they are able to figure it out. We also want confidence so that students are motivated to keep trying even if they don’t have success the first few times. All of these main points from each author can be practiced by students, teachers, family members, etc in order to build more capacity for discourse that challenges, transforms and promotes racial justice. To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Dr. John Littlewolf grew up in the city of Cass Lake on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation of Ojibwe, one of six bands comprising the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. He began his law enforcement career with the white earth tribal police in 2009. During his career, his positions included patrol officer, domestic violence and sexual assault investigator, and criminal investigator. He’s currently a conservation officer. He holds a Bachelors in Criminal Justice, a Masters in Public Safety Executive Leadership, Masters in Leadership & Change, and a PHD in Leadership & Change. John has always been an advocate for his Indigenous community. John is also a published author of a book of brilliant poetry and a self described activist. What does poetry do for us? Poetry has the power to reveal the common emotions and experiences that a group of people go through. Take John’s poetry for instance. His poetry teaches us about resistance, ancestral wisdom, fighting for freedom, and more. When talking about his start with poetry, Dr. Littlewolf connects poetry to his early life experiences. It was a way to process the emotions and thoughts that came up days later. He sees it as a gift that will remain a part of him no matter what. “For me poetry is...It was always there. it was this underlying river, if you will. It was always there in my experiences. It would be delayed. So I would go through something, whether it be loss or an experience and days later, what I believe was my consciousness, or my spirit, was putting it together...and days later, it would become something I never expected. Some of them, I look at them like oh my God did I write that?” No need for rules Being able to transmit emotion across space and time is a necessary part of the work to fight for justice and celebrate Indigenous culture according to Dr. Littlewolf. He shares that being able to feel these intense emotions after reading something by a poet was what inspired him in the first place. He wished that in his school, he could have been introduced to it sooner. Reading and writing minus all the rules and the standards removes the barriers that may inhibit students from writing for expression, creativity, and growth. “Nobody told me that you could take away the rules. You could just write what you feel and you don't have to write in a box. I didn't discover that until I was 26. And I wish I had discovered it sooner. I wish there would have been a teacher or a mentor or something along the way there.” How poetry connects with identity and activism Oftentimes, where poetry and activism intersect is right alongside identity. The things you may fight for or against are usually something that affects you to your core. So being able to translate those feelings into words can be therapeutic and helpful to your own activism. Not to mention, as a teacher, it’s a way of understanding where your students are coming from. If you used it to say I would like you to write down what you're feeling right now, that could make a real difference in teacher-student relationships as opposed to making assumptions about why certain students are behaving a certain way. John mentions how much it uplifts him to see the younger generations in his Ojibwe community achieving more and more success each year. These celebrations and the ability of Indigenous populations to overcome the deeply rooted effects of settler colonialism and violence are what current and future generations need to know about. So the writing continues. Of course, the barriers are still there. The U.S. still fails to meet the demands being made for justice. And so once again, the writing will continue. To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Do you ever come across an exciting resource that would be perfect for your teachers’ professional development but don’t know if you have enough in the school budget to invest in it? Today, I’m going to help you find multiple ways of funding your PD or your teachers' PD so that they can create engaging class experiences for students and you can be your best leader self. Looking at Title I If you’re a new administrator or starting to look through all of the new funding you’ve been given this year, it’s time to consider how you can get the money needed for PD. First off, Title I and Title II are the most common sources for funding professional development. Here are examples of what Title I funding can be used for:
“Providing greater decision making authority and flexibility to schools and teachers in exchange for greater responsibility for student performance.” This is where survey tools would be useful for being able to assess student/teacher/family experience. You can also use this funding to build the foundation for making shared decisions and leading in collaboration with school stakeholders. This will set your school up for sustainable success beyond one year. The research shows that this type of model which puts together multiple stakeholder viewpoints, leads us to making better decisions. Another purpose of Title I is that it should be used to elevate the quality of instruction. This could be achieved through collaboration and group coaching programs. On to Title II Title II funding can be used for:
Teacher mentoring could be a great way to get to the last point of hiring and retaining those teachers and principals with excellent skills. When we talk about studying data, I encourage you to go past the numerical data and look at perception data as well. There is definitely an emphasis on leader PD here, so use it well! Bonus: Title IV Title IV is one of the lesser known options for professional development. Just a note that this can’t be used for substitutes who aren’t attending PD that is funded through Title IV. Title IV allows uses of funds for:
“If we are in spaces, where we are trying to foster a school community that is antiracist, that advances intersection of justice, yes, we will likely decrease bullying, we will likely increase relationship building...All of these are kind of outcomes of programs that develop and facilitate generative conversations about race and anti racist policy and having an anti racist class culture. So, I think that's not explicitly named here but any programming, any professional development around this, is going to contribute to all of these outcomes that are listed in the language.” Don't forget about ESSER funding ESSER funding is the last option I’m going to name. This is relevant to COVID as it stands for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief. There are actually three different subsections under this but they all have some overlap. All three types of ESSERs can be used for planning and implementing summer learning, providing mental health services and supports, and activities that address the unique needs of students who have been historically underserved by school systems. ESSER I and ESSER CARES can be used for principals and leaders to address school specific needs. This can cover many things like raising capacity for leaders to advance student achievement. ESSER II and ARP ESSER can be used to adjust learning loss among all students in all subgroups and administer high quality reliable assessments. Project based learning, what I teach in my PD programs, is one of the best ways to have students show that they are retaining the information they’re learning and getting high quality skills from it. You can use this funding for contracts in the upcoming school years so you have a sustainable runway for ongoing, quality professional development. So, invest wisely, and don't let that money go to waste! I hope this was a helpful, comprehensive guide for you on how you can pay for your teachers PD or your own. Be sure to take advantage of the unique funding that schools have received this year and last, due to COVID, so your school can thrive from that much needed PD. To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Taryn Givan lives in Texas and holds a Bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Central Arkansas. She also holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Texas A&M University and principal certification. She has served 19 years in the K-12 setting as a teacher, assistant principal, and adjunct professor. Now in her 20th year, Taryn is the Founder and CEO of Divergent Educational Consulting LLC as well as an independent educational consultant and service specialist with Better Lesson. She is a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She enjoys dancing, reading, writing, listening to music, among other things. One of her greatest accomplishments is being a mother to a beautiful 19 year old and a wife to her husband. Her motivation each day stems from Galatians 6:9. Leader in Me and Campus Leadership Teams explained Leadership is something we can constantly redefine, especially when it comes to our students. The organization called the Leader in Me aims to empower more educators with practices that connect culture, academics, and leadership. They use methods like the 7 habits of highly effective people and social emotional learning to increase student confidence, give students more leadership skills, help school staff feel supported, and drive school achievements. They use Campus Leadership Teams to help carry out these frameworks and methods. Campus Leadership Teams are made up of the campus principal and key school leaders like administrators, counselors, academic support specialists, etc; They are responsible for the development, implementation, and monitoring of the targeted improvement plan, monitoring student performance, and determination of student interventions and support services. Not only do they develop educational policies for the school based on observation, data, and research, but they also make sure that there are resources available to support these changes. Communicating with your team There are benefits to collaborating with other school leaders on campus. When a leadership team brings on people with diverse experiences and identities, everyone in it can learn how certain parts of school policies or their school culture may be fine for that person in the group, but harmful for this other person and some students. The first thing these teams need to do is gather the information they need. These teams can instruct principals on how to listen to students of color and practice more inclusivity. When getting together with the other members in your group, you can do quick check-ins in the form of “huddles” and longer full meetings. Huddles can be done on Monday morning where you and the team huddle up in an open area. Each person goes around the circle going over anything that might’ve come up over the weekend and then announcing some key dates coming up that week. “Our huddles, just standing up in a circle, sometimes I go to my right, sometimes I go to my left, and we will go around—big rocks for the week, this is what I need from you, etc, all hearts clear, hands in the middle, go!” Make all children feel seen and heard Oftentimes, adults in school will only see children as an extension of the communities they come from. Taryn notes how teachers may look at a child and be unfair with how they measure their potential and gifts. School leaders need to do more to ensure that not only are students from all backgrounds accepted, but they are allowed to be whoever they want to. Kids are beyond capable when it comes to shared decision making! They know what they like, what’s interfering with their education, and what might be better. They have the potential to contribute amazing ideas about representation and diversity in schools whether they’re in elementary school or high school. Everyone can offer different perspectives because all our experiences are so unique. It’s all about bringing something new to the table. So if you want to make sure your Campus Leadership Team gets the right results, part of the information gathering should be getting direct feedback from students. “I think that if you want to learn how to best meet their needs, we have to involve the kids...In order for us to really have a mindset shift, we're going to have to make sure that we're bringing children to the table and giving them an opportunity to really share with us.” One of the methods that Leader in Me uses is the seven habits of highly effective people. You may have heard these habits in other contexts, but it is something that can be implemented in a school too. The seven habits are being proactive, beginning with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek first to understand then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw. But keep in mind that it’s not enough to just have these habits live on a poster on a wall, they need to become part of the school culture. In meetings, use the same language that’s part of the Leader in Me program. If you want to be a school who practices the Leader in Me ways, you need to bring in the actual coaches from the organization so they can properly implement the curriculum and the culture. Be sure to do your own research going into this as well. It takes a commitment to get to those goals but it is so worth it! To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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In this episode, we are talking about look fors, co-constructing them with teachers, and how you can make them clear for your students. An important part of creating effective professional development is setting clear expectations. Look fors help establish standards for high quality ideas in the classroom and close the gap between learning what to do and actually doing it. A look for is a clear statement that explains an observable teaching or learning behavior, strategy, outcome, product, or procedure. Observers have a list of look fors to watch for when they visit a classroom or examine student work. Teachers can reflect on look fors to compare their teaching practices to current standards, explain what they learn through professional development, and be able to make their own descriptions for practices in their classroom. School and district leaders can use look fors to define standards for all classrooms, identify improvements that could be made, and unify a school around a common goal or practice. But something that breaks away from the traditional style of observation look fors is co-constructing them with teachers. The Danielson rubric is a good example of the traditional look fors for assessing a teacher's performance. The only issue is that it doesn’t get clear on what the look fors are or emphasize collaboration with teachers. “Ideally, we actually want to co-construct these look fors with teachers, so that it's a collaborative effort. We are sharing in the process of determining what a great class looks like, sounds like, feels like, to be a part of.” It is beneficial to give teachers a say in the creation of these look for lists because it makes them feel more personally connected to the process. When they take ownership it is much more motivating than if the observer were to do the planning on their own. In the Danielson rubric, there are four domains. Those are:
Rubric three (instruction) is what we’re going to focus on for right now. In this domain, there are several components. Those components tell observers how well teachers are communicating with students, questioning and discussing techniques, engaging students in learning, using assessment in instruction, and finally, demonstrating flexibility and responsiveness. The language used in the rubric grading from lowest to highest is unsatisfactory, basic, proficient, and distinguished. Frankly, I don’t quite see the point in actually giving attention to those lower three ratings. It’s harmful to teachers and students to set standards that are getting some to strive for proficient or even basic as opposed to everyone aiming for distinguished. The criteria needed to get distinguished in the first component are as follows:
Here’s how I would co-construct those look fors:
Feel free to use these as examples as you co-construct your own look fors. “I think we inspire a lot of people when we just show them what's possible. When we create from research, from this base of well documented Danielson rubric pieces, we can innovate from there; we don't need to stay there, right, we can push toward a more student-centered model of look fors. We can push to co-create with teachers and not just leave this as something that every school is going to adopt when it's potentially not that clear.” For more support on instructional coaching and more PD for teaching and leading, you can subscribe to my Micro Course Library here. To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Lejla Bilal Maley currently works as a manager of product at McGraw Hill International. She is also a co-founder and consultant at Transform·Ed Collaborative. She has seven years of ESL and foreign language teaching experience in the K-12 and Higher Education setting, including The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, where she resides. She holds a Bachelor’s in Linguistics, a Master’s in Applied Linguistics and TESOL and a Ph.D. in Leadership and Change. Her research focus is on global virtual teams (GVTs) and the experience of teaming at a distance. She regularly presents at international conferences on education leadership, global virtual teaming, and team science. Her publications include topics such as professional learning communities, adaptive leadership, and team science. She is the Past President of the Ohio TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages). Her hobbies include walks and hikes with Skywalker, her pup, listening to podcasts, and traveling with friends and family. Adaptive leadership is necessary when addressing long-standing challenges that have no easy solution. This often typically involves a leader working together with their school community to find solutions to such challenges. As a group, so much can be accomplished such as eliminating practices, policies, or norms that do not stand to benefit everyone within the group or setting. Adaptive leadership asks us to identify our own biases and inequitable practices first because the inner work enables change on a larger scale. Adaptive leaders are always open to feedback, even if it’s critical. They show that they’re willing to make students, teachers, and faculty feel heard and given fair opportunities. This model is a way to stop going after buy-in from stakeholders. It is more effective and takes some of the pressure off of your shoulders as a school leader. You’re more likely to get ideas and solutions from others that you hadn’t thought of before. It also shows that you aren’t simply doing what you think is best for everyone else but actually doing what others say is more equitable. Stakeholders feel valued when you create space at the table for everyone. As a result, schools actually make better decisions than when leaders try to make important decisions on their own. “So really it's engaging in a collective process of identifying value that others bring, once you can understand that within yourself. And then two, I think it's the need to invite stakeholders across many different aisles to take part in the work that's identified. Once we can lay down our egos, our experience, our authority, anything that creates power, and this distance of expertise, then we can have a real conversation about what truly are the challenges we're facing here and what sort of learning is required to even tackle these challenges.” A 2016 Center on Education Policy (CEP) study found that nearly half of teachers who surveyed reported that their input is not considered in school-wide decisions and that they feel frustrated and excluded. As leaders, we know we can do much better than these numbers. It’s easy to say “It’s those other schools; my school wouldn’t reflect that.” But the truth is, we only see what we want to see. We don’t get to hear and see everything that happens in the daily setting of teachers and faculty. We can’t assume that everyone’s happy and benefitting from the things in place. It’s good to want better. There’s always room for progress in this work. Adaptive leadership teaches us that we have to take some ownership of problems that arise so that we can collectively problem solve with those that are being affected. Incorporating adaptive leadership goes hand in hand with bringing in more social justice. To promote justice, there needs to be more self-awareness. When thinking about decisions that affect the people within your school, ask yourself, who is benefitting from these things and who is not? How can I distribute some of the power that’s on my shoulders to students, teachers, and faculty? Change this significant doesn’t have to be scary. Change can be empowering! Here are Dr. Bilal's recommendations for engaging in adaptive leadership:
To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Today, we’re examining the GROW Model lesson from my new micro course library. The library is filled with short but impactful video lessons that you can use as personalized PD for yourself and your teachers! Breaking Down the G.R.O.W. Model The GROW Model stands for goal, reality, options, and what you’ll do next. This model is used to structure effective instructional coaching conversations. There are four stages of this model. The first is to determine what the teacher’s idea of success is for their classroom. What would they like to be able to do or achieve after the coaching session? How does embodying this goal feel to students? Knowing this goal allows us to keep on the right track and ensures that we’re centered in the teacher’s vision. You can enhance this first stage with using a rubric and making the goals S.M.A.R.T.I.E. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Bound, Inclusive, and Equitable). “We [might] say the end goal is for students to be able to write these narratives and we have the teacher describe what that all will look like, sound like, feel like for students.” Reality phase The next phase is Reality. In this part I ask the teacher to think about a range of things such as: What’s going on in your class right now? What have you been working on? What are the challenges you’re facing? These give you, as the coach, an idea of what the teacher's current reality is and what kind of things the students are experiencing in the class. It’s important to establish this because we can’t make or measure progress without first marking where we start. Options Phase Then we move on to what our options are when moving forward. Here you want to open up to any ideas on how to work through these roadblocks that have been identified. Don’t limit the possibilities! Encourage teachers to share anything that they've always wanted to try. Of course, if teachers are struggling to come up with anything, that’s okay too. When this happens, I like to suggest coaches create an online document where you can store new strategy ideas anytime you come across one in your day. When you think of all the podcasts you listen to, all the meetings, things we’ve seen others try, recent PD, etc. there are lots of places to collect new teaching strategies. “If, in the moment, you take a glance at your doc and you don’t have anything, I think it’s really important to identify a website or resource hub of some sort, that you can go to during a coaching call so that you can bring it up on the laptop together and just browse through what’s available.” After you’ve gone through the options together and listed them out, you can decide which one you want to try for now. Lastly, what’s next? Now it’s time to take action. Come up with one to three next steps that you will work on before the next coaching session. I find it to be super important to assess where we’re at during each new session. For example, I’ll say things like “Last time we met, you said, in the W phase, you were going to do this next. Did we achieve that goal? Can we move on to a new goal or do we have to revisit that goal?” Now that you’ve learned all about the GROW model, I want you to create a coaching log that you will share with your teachers while coaching. This could be a single Google doc with a table that’s split into four sections for each stage of the model. Make sure to include key questions that the teacher is going to answer. I hope you were inspired by this behind the scenes look at one of my micro course library trainings. If you want to start learning all the best strategies that’ll help you feel more confident, increase equity, and save you time, then click HERE to see what you’ll unlock in my Micro Course Library. To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Sheldon L. Eakins, Ph.D. is the Founder of the Leading Equity Center and host of the Leading Equity Podcast. With over 11 years in education, he has served as a teacher, principal, and Director of Special Education. Dr. Eakins has a passion for helping educators accomplish equitable practices in their schools. He has earned a B.S. degree in Social Science Education, an M.S. degree in Educational Leadership, and a Ph.D. in K-12 Education. Right now, the need for equity training at schools is is in high demand. According to Dr. Eakins, the goal is for school members to get all the tools they need to take charge of their own social justice efforts. This is an important shift for them to make because when an outside trainer is coming in once a month, the participants are expecting the trainer to tell them what to do. But in order for the trainings to be long lasting, the participants have to learn to hold themselves accountable when there is no trainer. During all the days that teachers and staff are on their own with students, they shouldn’t be afraid to have tough conversations and make bold decisions. Dr. Eakins followed with, “I'm not going to change your life within an hour, 90 minutes, two hours, three hours..That's work that you have to do on your own. They need to see that comes from leadership as well.” In order to be successful in leading for justice, it takes changing your mind, admitting your previous understanding of issues like racism and inequality were too narrow, or recognizing that you have privilege. Mindset work is not easy, but it’s the only way forward. We could all be more self aware of our behaviors and take the time to analyze why we think the way we do. Dr. Eakins emphasizes how moving school to online doesn’t change the equity issues that were already there before. Countless times, he’s heard the same thing: “I don’t need this because I make sure all students are treated the same or equally.” That explanation in itself shows that they are more focused on equality and not equity. Another misconception that comes up is that white teachers don’t think that it’s their problem. They think whatever affects Black, Latinx, or Indigenous people should be handled or discussed by that group. Dr. Eakins shared one example of when this came up with a teacher. He said, “I remember having a conversation with a teacher. That was teaching their students about blackface and there was like one student black student in the class. And the teacher pointed at the student and said well your people find this offensive. And I said well, as a teacher, I would think you would find it offensive as well. Like, this is not Black people’s problem. We're not putting paint on our face to look dark skinned, like, these are things that white people are doing. So I would hope that you would be offended that some of your peers might be doing these things, or have done these things in the past, as opposed to passing this off as “this is someone else’s issue."” It is challenging but necessary work to critically self-reflect. It is challenging but necessary work to lead change in our schools and teach for justice and equity. Teachers and leaders who are "willing to put their jobs on the line" as Dr. Eakins says, are needed to bring about change in our schools and communities! Let's challenge each other to name injustices, take bold action, engage in challenging conversations, and question traditional ways of "doing school" so that we can all have a brighter tomorrow. To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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AuthorLindsay is a educator and leadership coach who helps teachers develop engaging project-based curricula, fosters student and teacher voice, and works to advance racial and gender equity and culturally responsive practice. Archives
September 2021
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