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In this episode, we’re exploring the list of 10 elements of white liberalism developed by Dr. Cheryl Matias and Dr. Paul Gorski, which I read in their call for proposals for the book, The Other Elephant in the (Class)room. 

Why? 

In the Introduction to their book, Matias and Gorski write “we often have the hardest time finding traction in schools with large numbers of liberal-ish white educators: the ones who are enthusiastic about celebrating diversity and learning about cultures, but squeamish when it comes to more significant efforts to redistribute access and opportunity,” (p. 1). 

They explain “liberal” is, in alignment with McLaren’s (1997) use of the term, as in contrast to “critical,” writing “critical approaches go right to the heart of the matter, uncovering systems of advantage and disadvantage, privilege and oppression…In that absence [of critical approaches], the liberal stuff creates the illusion of antiracist movement, the optics of racial inclusion, but not actual racial justice. We can’t Multicultural Arts Fair our way to racial justice,” White liberalism, they write, “individualizes racism and obscures systemic oppression…undermines antiracism efforts, and…poses no serious threat to racial injustice.” (pp. 1-2).    
 

What are the 10 elements of white liberalism?

1. Mistaking celebrations of diversity for racial justice progress
2. Equating peace—the absence of tension as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., described it in his Letter from Birmingham Jail—with justice
3. Relying on good intentions rather than good actions
4. Slowing racial justice progress by insisting on “baby steps” and “developmental processes” that protect white people from having to grapple seriously with racism
5. Adhering to a savior mentality or some other ideology that positions white people as the “fixers” or “saviors” of students and families of color
6. Misconstruing equity as equal numbers or representation rather than the elimination of inequity and oppression
7. Superficially expressing a desire for diversity but rarely engaging in meaningful practices that substantially incorporate the voices and desires of racially marginalized communities
8. Refusing to acknowledge the expertise or authority of people of color, even on matters of racial equity
9. White educators manipulating the narratives of people of color in order to position themselves as “well-intentioned” or “innocent”
10. Engaging in “toxic positivity,” insisting that conversations about racism are too “negative” and we should focus on the “positive.”

What do we do? 

This school year, actively notice where these elements show up in your school community, in your own individual actions. Nurture a community that celebrates such identification, and pivot to the critical end of spectrum. 

In the authors’ words, “Although some may argue that it is out of line to critique the well-intentioned actions of others, we see it, instead, as an act of love and justice,” (p. 15). 



To help you consider ways to sustainably advance racial justice in your school or district, I’m sharing my Systems Transformation Playlist with you for free. (You’ll want to check out page 3!) And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 181 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. 

TRANSCRIPT

0:00:02 - Lindsay Lyons
I'm educational justice coach, lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for teachership podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting, because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant, superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerding out about co-creating curriculum with students, I made this show for you. Here we go. Welcome to another episode of the Time for Teachership podcast. 

I am very excited today to talk about the 10 elements of white liberalism, so we'll really dive into what is white liberalism. How do you know it is happening and be able to identify it yourself in your educational community? Now I'm exploring this with you because this is actually a list of 10 elements that was developed by Dr Shira Matias and Dr Paul Gorski, which I read in their call for proposals for the book the Other Elephant in the Classroom, and Dr Cherie Bridges-Patrick and I contributed toa chapter to that book, which is super cool. Definitely grab the book, but here we go, we're going to get into it. Let's do this. So this episode is really going to be kind of a microcosm of, or maybe even just an intro intro to the book, the other elephant in the classroom and I'm very excited to kind of share some quotes, share the elements that are really the framework for the book, that I first saw in the call for proposals for chapters for this book. So let's get into the why. I'm going to use the author's own words, because they're just awesome. And so in the introduction to their book, dr Cheryl Matias and Dr Paul Gorski write, quote we have we often have the hardest time finding traction in schools with large numbers of liberal-ish white educators, the ones who are enthusiastic about celebrating diversity and learning about cultures, but squeamish when it comes to more significant efforts to redistribute access and opportunity end quote. 

And they contrast this directly with, like, the openly racist folks in spaces, right. So actually those folks are very transparent about what is happening and they are very honest about their stance on racial justice, and so it's actually really hard to get traction because we're not even speaking aloud, we're not even to use a less ableist term like acknowledging, right, the racism that is part of, really truly embedded in and formed from the structures of white supremacy, right. If we're not acknowledging it, then we can't really do anything, and if folks are just openly acknowledging where they stand, well, we could like address it directly. So I think this is a really big mindset shift. We often talk about mindset shifts on this podcast and I think this is a big one. So we have to redefine what anti-racism activity looks like, what racial justice activity looks like, and we have to be open to acknowledging white liberalism, which is not racial justice, which does not advance racial justice and often, to the author's point and the contributors to this book's point, collectively it actually inhibits racial progress, racial justice and racial transformation. And so, I think, racial justice transformation. There we go. 

I think what I really want to do is continue with the author's words here in their introduction to the text and I keep saying authors, they are the editors of this volume, they authored the introduction and then they did a beautiful job curating all of these chapters together. So let's dive into their words from the introduction a bit more. So they explain that liberal in the term white liberalism is actually in alignment with McLaren's 1997 use of the term liberal, in contrast to, maybe, the term critical. And so they write, quote critical approaches go right to the heart of the matter, uncovering systems of advantage and disadvantage, privilege and oppression. In that absence of critical approaches, the liberal stuff creates the illusion of anti-racist movement, the optics of racial inclusion, but not actual racial justice. We can't multicultural arts fare our way to racial justice. I love that quote. So it really gives a framework right for why white liberalism is simply not enough right. And white liberalism specifically, they write quote individualizes racism and obscures systemic oppression, undermines anti-racism efforts and poses no serious thought to racial injustice Excuse me, serious threat to racial injustice. So I think this is a really good point that if we are truly to be dismantling racial injustice, if we are truly to be anti-racist activists in the context of educational spaces, then we truly need to acknowledge that white liberalism activity is just not enough. 

And so the question now is what is white liberalism activity? How do I know that it's not actually racial justice? What do these things look like? What are the things that I personally might be doing, or that I might see fellow colleagues, teachers, staff members participating in, that they might not even know is actually white liberalism and not contributing to racial justice? So we're going to walk through those and, again, these are from that list that the editors developed in their call for proposals, so I will link to that document as well. But I'm just reading straight off this list and then I can go into a little bit of depth as well for each one. These are also listed on the blog post for this podcast episode, which is located at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 181. So if you're driving and interested in catching them all, you do not need to take notes. 

Know that that is written for you in a safe location and you can access it later when you need it, perhaps to share it with your staff and have everyone do a kind of introspective, reflective activity where it's like where have we seen these things or where have we actually participated in? Not just observed, but what have we participated in, because it's really hard to acknowledge our own stuff. However, that's a huge part of this and I really love the author's sentiments of really this is an act of love to be able to critique and highlight when we're just not doing enough. And we know that if we are pursuing this, pursuing racial justice, and we call ourselves anti-racist educators or whatever the phrase may be that you name yourself truly to do it well. We want to do it well. Right, if we name ourselves that and truly to do it well. We need a community of folks who are contributing to highlighting when we're not doing well enough, and we need that for ourselves. So with that in mind, here we go. 

What are the 10 elements of white liberalism? Number one mistaking celebrations of diversity for racial justice progress. So, again, in the words of the editors right, we can't multicultural arts fare our way to racial justice, like that's what it is, when we have these culture days, when we have these moments of like, learning about different cultures or celebrating different foods or music or clothing. Right, that's not that it's bad, it's just not enough, right, we can't have an absence of the deeper stuff. So if that's where your kind of quote unquote, dei initiatives end, that's just not going to contribute to racial justice. 

Number two equating peace, the absence of tension, as Dr Martin Luther King Jr described it in his letter from Birmingham jail with justice. So the idea of equating peace with justice, right, that's not racial justice. Right, racial justice is not. Oh, we don't talk about it. So there's no tension we're avoiding, we're all good. Right, that is not justice we have to be able to have the constructive conflict, the disorienting dilemmas, all that stuff that we've talked about before on this podcast many times, one of the quadrants of discourse that is not contributing to racial justice. Right, this is avoidance, this is peace as the absence of tension. And we've been folks have been saying this, right, people have been saying this as the collective we for a very long time, right, dr Martin Luther King Jr's letter was decades ago and he was calling it out then, and he was calling it out then. Peace is not justice. No-transcript. 

There are so many times in my life that I have had good intentions and the impact did not match the intent and I felt defensive. I think we've all been there, right, I continue to do that, just in daily, day-to-day things. Right, maybe not racial justice related specifically, but oh, I didn't mean to say it that way, oh, I didn't mean right. And so that defensive response is natural and normal, but we have to interrogate it, we have to critique it, we have to reflect on okay, what was the impact? What were my actions? What was the impact in terms of the felt experience of whoever experienced my actions? Right, and it doesn't really matter what my intentions were if my impact was bad. So we have to have actions that promote racial justice, not saying, oh, we tried but it failed. But, well, create space for accept and transform our actions based on any sort of feedback that someone wants to give us that the impact was bad, right, that's a huge growth moment for us. That's a very big risk that someone is taking to highlight, even internally, right To reflect on your own stuff, to say, ooh, actually my impact was not good. That's good on you for reflecting, right. So that idea of being open to critique, I think, is a kind of corollary here that I'm personally just adding All right. 

Number four slowing racial justice progress by insisting on quote baby steps and quote developmental processes that protect white people from having to grapple seriously with racism. So this idea of I will share an example that I think often of in this case and I think it's related. So it's the idea of setting in a strategic goal conversation, setting goals where the percentage of students who achieve the goal is not 100%. This bothers me so much. Now I understand things happen and it is hard. It is very challenging to reach 100% and there are many factors to consider. However, if our goal is to educate all students. Our goal is to educate all students, and all that other stuff is on us to figure out. And if we don't quite get there, like, okay, we figure it out some more, we go a little bit further, we reflect, we learn more right, all of the things that we do as educators and really as learners. But we don't say that the goal is only 80% of our students are going to achieve, only 80% of our students are going to achieve, only 80% of our students are going to be able to read by the end of this year. Right, like 100%. We can't say, oh, these are our baby steps on the way to 100%, that we will get to eventually someday, maybe in the future, but in the meantime, all of the students who are here are just not going to achieve and suffer, right? So this idea of, like, demanding action now, this sense of urgency, this sense of the students in front of us deserve 100% to be our goal, I think is really important here. That's what that number makes me think of. 

Okay, number five adhering to a savior mentality or some other ideology that positions white people as the fixers or saviors of students and families of color. So this idea that I am helping, I am giving back to community. This is like a sacrifice for for me to like, go in and like do this thing gross right, like, no, like. Why are you doing this work? Dr Cherie Bridges-Patrick has said to me you know, as a white person like Lindsay, you need to do this work for yourself. You can't do this work for me because in the long run you are not going to stay committed because you're doing this for someone else. You have to believe that you, as a community member in this, in this space on this earth, as a member of the human community, are harmed by the racial injustice that impacts fellow about right. That happens to white people when we are complicit or participating in or even just observing silently or just like living in right this racial injustice, right A society that perpetuates racial injustice, right? So this idea that like the savior mentality, or like we are the folks with the answers, as white folks, like no. I think also this speaks to the shared leadership component that we often talk about on this podcast, where it's like Ayanna Pressley says this best Her mom has the quote of like the people closest to the pain should be closest to the power, or something I might be paraphrasing a bit, but the folks who are experiencing the negative impacts need to be part of the conversation of how to dismantle white supremacy. So I think that's another piece that, like the knowledge, the wisdom, the experience, the ideas for moving forward, the felt experiences are in the space. Like those folks should be leading the way and we as white folks I'm speaking as a white woman should be allies right, should be co-conspirators, should be whatever name you give it, all right. 

Number six misconstruing equity as equal numbers or representation, rather than the elimination of inequity and oppression. I see a lot of folks who are in the leadership space who are saying things like we are going to increase our numbers of BIPOC teachers by this percentage this year, great, awesome, you should. And if you are saying that is enough, it's not enough. Folks are not going to come to your space and stay in your space, or perhaps they will out of necessity or whatever, but they're not going to enjoy it and be thriving if we don't eliminate the inequity and oppression that prevented people from applying in the first place right or prevented people from being hired in the first place, and this is a huge piece. 

Number seven superficially expressing a desire for diversity, but rarely engaging in meaningful practices that substantially incorporate the voices and desires of racially marginalized communities. So, again, I think the same point that I was just talking about right when we actually engage in shared leadership, in decentering our white selves right. Again, I'm speaking as a white person here because I'm just being reflective of my own experience and things that I've learned and I'm still learning. But if white folks, white liberals right in this white liberal space, are not decentering ourselves, white liberals right in this white liberal space, are not decentering ourselves, then we are just engaging in white liberalism. We are expressing the desire for diversity but not engaging in the meaningful practices. Number eight refusing to acknowledge the expertise or authority of people of color, even on matters of racial equity. Do not tell people what their experience is and what the answer should be. Right, this is I've I've repeated this multiple times in the last few points, but I think I think this is a big one. 

Number nine white educators manipulating the narratives of people of color in order to position themselves as quote well-intentioned or quote innocent. Again, this is related to some previous numbers on this list and some conversation and ad-libbing that I've done around this, but the idea of thinking you can use someone else's words to make yourself seem well-intentioned, a good person, whatever the narrative is, even when you have messed up, even when you have ignored racial injustice, when you have contributed to white liberalism and not engaged more fully in thoughtful conversation, pushing the boundaries, being critical of the structures of white supremacy. You can't just take someone else's words who happens to be Black or Indigenous or Latinx or Asian American or whatever right Native. You can't just take those words like oh, this person likes me, so like I'm cool. No, number 10, engaging in toxic positivity, insisting that conversations about racism are too quote negative and we should focus on the quote positive. So again, I think this one is similar to that idea of avoidance and the confusion of peace and justice. Right, conflating the two. 

Really important that, even if it's uncomfortable, we lean into that discomfort. We will not have growth without the discomfort and that's something we really want to and should be normalizing in our spaces. We have to be able to grapple with discomfort. I mean, even on a, on a super basic academic level, students need to be uncomfortable with being wrong. Right? Students make mistakes all the time. That's how we learn. We learn from the mistakes with formative feedback. Right, that's how learning works, and we are institutions of education. We need to tolerate, engage with, lean into the discomfort and view it as a learning opportunity, experience it as a growth moment. That might not be comfortable, but boy am I going to be better after, right. 

So what do we do with all this? This is a lot and, honestly, as I was reading this, I'm like, yes, I can identify an instance, at least an instance of every single one of these numbers on this list, right, that I have personally engaged with. That does not feel good. So what do we do with this? I think the school year as a very first step. I often end podcast episodes with, like what's the one next step to gain the momentum. So there's a lot of steps, right. There's a lot of structures we could look into. I will link to my systems transformation playlist on the blog post. You can check out page three, which is all about racial justice. Lots of resources and guests on the podcast who are way smarter than me and have a lot more expertise and wisdom to share on this, but you can check that out. If you're looking for bigger things, you can certainly buy the book, and so we'll link to that as well in the blog post. The other elephant in the classroom again is the name of that. But again, I think the first step to get the ball rolling here is actively notice where these elements show up in your school community this year. 

Reflect on your own individual actions. Where are you engaging in these, even in this moment? Reflect, even listen to this podcast episode again, or open up the blog post and read through and identify for each one. Where have you most recently done this? Right, it's okay, no shame. Done this? Right, it's okay, no shame. Just like acknowledge it and then do better, right? Also, nurture a community that celebrates that identification of when it's showing up, that kind of calls each other in, so to speak, to the conversation and says, hey, I noticed this. Right. And, of course, being able to pivot to the critical end of the liberal critical spectrum, that community piece, tolerating the discomfort, engaging with it, seeing it as growth, being able to truly celebrate as growth opportunities and celebrate the vulnerability of whoever is pointing it out as well. Right, that is huge. If you can create a culture like that, you are on the path to sustainable success. That is a winning culture of true justice. Right, you have to have that community built to be able to do this work. In the author's words I'm just going to conclude with those because they are brilliant and again, author's editor's words. In the introduction which they authored they write although some may argue that it is out of line to critique the well-intentioned actions of others, we see it instead as an act of love and justice. 

If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazzed as I am about my coaching program for increasing student-led discussions in your school. Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. 

If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm how I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan, witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy, no strings attached brainstorm call at lindsaybethlyonscom slash contact. Until next time, leaders think big, act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at teachbettercom slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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In this episode, we talk with Dr. Rita Harvey, Partner of Systems and Transformation with the Center for Innovation in Education. With 10+ years of experience in urban education, she is passionate about developing and implementing inclusive programs that engage a range of students. 

In our interview, Dr. Harvey shares her profound insights on the transformative power of inclusive and empathetic educational systems, underscoring the need for educational environments that foster a sense of belonging for all children. 

She also discusses the importance of community engagement and the necessity of listening deeply and setting boundaries to ensure all voices are respected and feel safe to engage in important conversations and change.


The Big Dream 
Dr. Harvey’s big dream for education is to develop and implement systems that are expansive enough to hold all children—particularly those on the margins. Inspired by her dreams for her own young daughter, Dr. Harvey dreams of systems that ensure every child feels safe, welcomed, and included. 

Further, she emphasizes the importance of developing systems grounded in inclusivity, empathy, co-creation, and reciprocity, which collectively contribute to a sense of belonging and ownership for both students and parents.


Mindset Shifts Required
To achieve Dr. Harvey’s big dream of expansive education systems, we need to embrace a few mindset shifts. Her work with the Center of Innovation in Education centers on four key habits that tie-in here: inclusivity, empathy, co-creation, and reciprocity. In particular, Dr. Harvey believes that building mindsets around inclusion and empathy is important to create a system that holds as many children as possible. 

Dr. Harvey encourages us to think about developing inclusive and empathetic mindsets by first asking how we can make the education system a safe space for all children. Then, there’s a mindset piece around empathy that needs to be cultivated—we have to understand the humanity in each other to really begin to transform systems. 


Action Steps  
Dr. Harvey’s work with the assessment for learning community requires getting to the center of the spaces that need change and bringing in people from the margins. Annual convenings with education stakeholders actively work to build a space and foundation so everyone feels a sense of belonging, community, and belonging. 

Stepping into spaces that aren’t always kind to concepts of anti-racism or anti-patriarchy is challenging, but necessary. In this space, conversations are held with empathy and curiosity so honest dialogue can take place. 

This work can be done by taking these action steps in your specific context:  

Step 1: Start by getting to know the students and their families, particularly those who seem uninterested or challenging. Build genuine relationships based on understanding and empathy.

Step 2: Engage deeply with the community by holding regular meetings and listening to their stories to build trust. This ensures that all voices are heard and respected.

Step 3: Create safe and welcoming spaces for dialogue. Prioritize the protection and respect of participants, and set boundaries to ensure that the needs of marginalized groups are met.


Challenges?
Educators are facing significant burnout, exacerbated by the lack of respect for the profession and the increasing demands placed on them. The challenge lies in creating healing spaces within educational systems that can support and hold taxed educators facing burnout and overwhelm.

The other challenge is building spaces of hope and connection, especially when educators are tired and drained. How do we create those healing spaces for folks to continue to do this good work? 

One Step to Get Started 
Begin by focusing on a single student or their family who may seem checked out or disinterested. Make a genuine effort to understand their background, needs, and motivations. This small step can lead to a deeper connection and serve as a foundation for building more inclusive and empathetic educational practices.

Stay Connected
You can check out Dr. Harvey’s work on the Center for Innovation in Education website, and connect with her directly by email at [email protected]. 

To help you implement today’s takeaways, Dr. Harvey is sharing her principles of practice from the Assessment 4 Learning community with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 180 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.

Quotes: 

• 3:55 “When I think about education and the systems that I want to create, I want to create systems that can hold my child and be expansive enough for all that she is, but also for the other children that exist and enter these systems, especially those that exist on the margins.”
• 7:07 “Building mindsets around inclusion and empathy are really, really important as we think about building systems that can hold as many children as possible, as many of their dreams as possible.”
• 16:47 “So the brave action is saying, ‘Let me put aside my assumptions about a community, about a person, and really begin to invite them in and listen to what they need so that they feel safe coming in.’”
• 25:52 “You cannot get children what you want them to do without taking care of their basic needs in these ways. But to put that burden on the teacher—you can’t just put it on the teacher. So the whole system has to hold the educators, the child, and their family. I just think about interconnection and interdependence in that way.”

TRANSCRIPT
0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons
Rita Harvey. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 

0:00:06 - Rita Harvey
Hello, thank you for having me, Lindsay. 

0:00:09 - Lindsay Lyons
I am so excited. I'm excited to learn more about you, I'm excited to be connected with you and your beautiful work. I am particularly just from before we hit record just excited about all of your ways of thinking that extend my own thinking and ways of grappling with some of these questions. So really excited. And I think for the first question, it's just you know, what do we want to keep in mind? What do you want us, what do you want the listeners to keep in mind today as we jump in? 

0:00:38 - Rita Harvey
This was an interesting question for me and thinking about what do we want to keep in mind? 

And so, in thinking about myself, I think there are two really important things that I've been grappling with lately as a Black woman, black mother, and thinking about sort of my history, and I think it's the idea that in this particular moment, I think it's part of my academic intellectual history, but I think Black women are a bomb in this world, and so I think about even the exact moment when we're doing this recording and the things that have been happening and the importance of Black women in particular and my history with Black women and being what it means to heal as a Black woman and as a Black mother. And then the second thing that I've been thinking a lot about is in summer of 2023, I was diagnosed with autism, and so I think about a lot and I approach a lot with an understanding of myself as a neurodivergent person, and I think it comes up sometimes in sort of my even sort of the linear idea of my thinking, and so if I get too divergent, just bring me back. 

0:01:52 - Lindsay Lyons
Thank you so much. That is such a helpful framing, just from like neurodivergence framing and also in like the beauty of that right and like where that takes us in ways that we need to go to be able to break out of like the way things have always been done, because those don't work, in addition to the healing, and also to contextualize your point, just for listeners to know. So this episode will be published a few months from now and so we are recording this on July 23. And this is just after the weekend where presumably we'll see what life brings us, but Kamala Harris will be the presumptive presidential person on the Democratic ticket. So very exciting things happening and lots of conversations to happen. So thank you for contextualizing us in the time we're in. 

I think one of the big questions that I love starting with is Dr Bettina Love talks about this so eloquently, about freedom, dreaming. She names them as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So I like to contextualize kind of our big dreams for education, for the world, even if you want to go that big. But thinking about that with that quote in mind, what are the big dreams you hold? 

0:03:03 - Rita Harvey
I think on the sort of most macro which I think is also very micro is that we eventually develop and implement systems that are expansive enough to hold all of the children that exist. 

When I entered teaching I was very young. I was 22 and fresh out of college, having majored in African-American studies, and so it was a very sort of Teaching became the application of a lot of things that I believed in In terms of cultural responsiveness, in terms of I was a special education teacher making sure that I met the needs of those children, but it was still very sort of philosophically grounded. I was faced with these children, and now I am 39 and I have my own daughter, who is just turned four, and so when I think about education and the systems that I want to create, I want to create systems that can hold my child and be expansive enough for all that she is, but also all of the other children that exist and enter these systems, or especially those that exist on them and on the margins, because I think that would also hold those who are currently centered in many ways in the systems. 

0:04:19 - Lindsay Lyons
Absolutely. I love this notion of expansiveness too, because I think it speaks to like. The problems that we have currently had with our systems is that they are the exact opposite. Right, there is this one way to do school. There is this it is narrow, it is defined. I just love the possibility in the word expansive as well. There's so much possibility there. It's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that as the kind of grounding for the next few questions. One of the things I think, and even that in and of itself could answer this question as well. But I think there's a lot of mindset shifting that has to happen before we do transformative work or transform systems to be more expansive, and I think that can be such a challenge for folks who are trying to live that out. What are some that like? What's a mindset shift that you've either seen coached people through, benefited from? What are those like that come to mind when you think about that question? Absolutely. 

0:05:20 - Rita Harvey
So I think, in the work that I do at the Center for Innovation in Education, so I think in the work that I do at the Center for Innovation and Education, we, as a small organization, we think about how to develop systems that have four habits, which, in many ways, habits are the beginning of those practicing those mindset shifts. And the four habits that we focus on are how to build systems that are inclusive, empathetic, filled with co-creation and reciprocity. And all four of those habits are, I think, very, very important. But for me, I think I'm really drawn into the idea of how do we make and build inclusive mindsets and empathetic ones. And so when I say inclusion, it's how do we make sure that people feel safe coming into the system of education? How do we make sure that children feel safe coming to school? How do we make sure that parents feel safe being in their school systems and not only feel safe coming into them but feel a sense of belonging and ownership in those spaces and ownership in those spaces. 

And then, for the second part, it's the idea of empathy as a mindset that needs to develop, because I think we have to understand the humanity in each other in order to really want to begin to transform systems, and I think empathy and the idea of belonging they play into so many other things that are important for me, such as a culturally responsive mindset or a culturally relevant mindset, and if we get into anti-racism, you have to be able to empathize and understand where people are coming from. And I think I start with the idea of inclusion leading to empathy, because you have to believe that your own needs are going to be met by a system before you can begin to empathize with others in many ways, and so I think, for me, building mindsets around inclusion and empathy are really, really important as we think about building systems that can hold as many children as possible, as many of their dreams as possible. 

0:07:20 - Lindsay Lyons
Wow, that's really great. I'm just thinking about your words around, just the idea of you have to believe that your own needs will be met and before you can start to empathize with others, I think there's so much that I want to like sit with. That's really good and, I think, probably a huge mindset shift, a huge pivotal piece to some of the transformative work that that you do and you help others do so. I'm curious now, with those kind of four habits in mind, or focusing on those, the inclusivity and the empathetic habits thinking about the brave actions required, what is it that either you've done, coached folks to do, seen folks do that really leads that kind of transformative work, or has led to transformative work? 

0:08:09 - Rita Harvey
So I think I'll focus specifically on sort of the assessment for learning community and I think, well, brave actions. That's such a challenging concept for me because I feel like frequently I don't think of myself as particularly brave. I think not necessarily the opposite of that. But as a deeply introverted person who would rather stay in my little cocoon, I think even facilitating learning communities that are grounded in the idea of inclusion and empathy, and making sure we do an annual convening and we really, as a design team when we have a design team that's for the assessment for learning community that's comprised of largely women of color, queer women, and we come together and it's how do we build a space or build a foundation so that people can come and be, feel, experience that sense of belonging, that sense of community um, a sense of empathy. And we frequently do the work in spaces that are not necessarily kind to concepts of like anti-racism and the things that I believe, and so stepping into those spaces and creating spaces that are filled with love, I don't think that's brave. 

I think it's necessary um creating spaces where people can speak the truth um about institutional racism and, you know, patriarchy, all of those things, colonialism and the impact they have on all of us. So how do you create a space like that where you can hold many people? And so I think we do that in many ways. I do that a lot of ways by understanding myself but decentering myself. So how do I create an inviting space that allows people to do that? And so I mean maybe it would be braver if I like shared a little bit more about myself. Maybe that's the next step and because I do like to decenter myself in a lot of the work that I do, um, create space for the voices that I think are really vital. 

0:10:22 - Lindsay Lyons
Yes, oh, wow, there's so much, there's so much. I love the introspection and the authentic like thought process as you're speaking, to think about what you're saying as well. This is just. I'm just so appreciate you, thank you, and I I'm curious to know too, before we hit record you were saying you know that sometimes those those brave moments are really at those that that personal level it's, it's kind of those micro moments as opposed to like the big things, and I think your answer speaks to that. I'm wondering if there is kind of a moment in mind or a scenario in mind or just kind of like a general approach to kind of key moments that you've seen really unlock a transformation in someone or build that space and deepen that sense and experience of belonging for folks. Absolutely. 

0:11:09 - Rita Harvey
And I'll start by, I think, the idea that the brave action. I think a lot of times we're in this moment where people do say that they're inviting folks in and so part of it is actually doing that. So let's see our latest convening. I guess this is not a space that is not unfriendly to. I'll actually talk about our convening in Tucson, in Arizona, and Arizona has a really complex history with culturally responsive, culturally relevant practices and but they have a really in the city of Tucson they have a really robust culturally responsive program. So when we were planning our assessment for learning convening in Tucson, we wanted to make sure that they felt safe and so we built these bridges and so it really required, I think, even stepping outside of my comfort zone, in the sense that we went to Tucson, we would meet weekly with members of the Tucson community and began to understand what their story was, truly, listened to the things that they were saying and I'm just thinking. I'm thinking about the idea of invitation, not just inviting in, but the, the slow process that's required to even endure, just like the awkward moments when people don't necessarily be, the awkward and uncomfortable moments when you want to fill a space with noise or you want to fill a space and I think this can happen with students as well in the classroom the need to be the expert, but really step back. So my colleague, soraya Ramos and I were planning this meeting in Tucson with two members of the culturally responsive department, and I remember the first meeting. We were online and they just couldn't believe that. You know one meeting after the other, with both allowing ourselves to be human, but also learning their story, learning about the traumas that they faced as a community After their state superintendent had basically gotten a ton of them fired and the ways that they endured to make sure that they could have this culturally responsive department of education and the same commissioner that had done state superintendent that had done that. He was in the year that we were doing the convening. He was re-elected as their state superintendent, and so they were. 

We had to create a space where they felt safe and we honored the work that they were doing. So I think that was one where I don't know. I don't know if it was brave on our part, but it was brave on their part to be able to do this, and so it meant that we took steps that we wouldn't necessarily have wanted. We wanted to be able to record some things, but we didn't want to put any of them at risk. We wanted to share their story in a way that felt safe for them. So and that's what I'm saying, I don't know if that's brave, but it was. It required immense listening and just stepping back, and, to this day, roshanda and Lorenzo are people that I respect so much because they are brave all of the time, but they have to do it in a way that also ensures that the teachers that work for them are safe, and so it's both. It's stepping forward, but also knowing when to create boundaries to protect folks. 

0:15:11 - Lindsay Lyons
Yes, I, I was thinking that, as you were saying, that sounds a little bit of a prioritization of you know, like, yeah, I want to go do this thing, we need to do this thing, and I have this other thing that's really important in the protection of people and and I think about that a lot I think you and I have academic backgrounds in addition to, like, practitioner backgrounds. I think about that a lot in terms of, you know, research and and, um, like you know, you need to record things or you need to do this, and it's like what, what's the balance between the human piece and the piece of, like, check the box? We need the thing for some file or whatever, right? So I think that that speaks deeply to me. 

0:15:50 - Rita Harvey
And I think there's like two sides to I think what I'm. 

I think there's that there's the actual connecting. 

But I think, like right now I'm working on a small research project in Kentucky and we're trying to figure out how to get to the margins of the community. 

And it is not a racially diverse community to get to the margins of the community and it is not a racially diverse community. So what the margins look like is like different than sort of how I've conceptualized the margins at other times. But we find that even as we're working with the district, even they don't know how to get to the margins, and so I think that's brave, but I think I think it's a thing from from the classroom, when you have those students whose parents you know you need to talk to but you're afraid to like, call their parents, um, the same thing it it sort of happens time and time again, and so the brave action is saying, you know what, like, let me put aside my assumptions about a community, about a person, and um, really begin to invite them in and listen to what they need so that they feel safe coming in and not just like, okay, they don't want to be here. 

0:17:15 - Lindsay Lyons
Right, oh, yes, that for sure. I am also wondering how, with some of these this is a bit more of a technical question, I guess, but thinking about creating these spaces in communities where you're inviting in folks at the margins, what are the? What kind of stakeholder groups are those? Are those educators or those families or those community members who are not maybe formally linked to the education system at the time? Are they young people? 

0:17:36 - Rita Harvey
Are you talking specifically about the one in Kentucky? 

0:17:38 - Lindsay Lyons
About any of them really. 

0:17:39 - Rita Harvey
But yeah, I think it can be. It can be all of those folks I think in the work that we've done. It can be those educators who do their job and then want to go home, which is a position that's. It can be those who aren't necessarily tapped for all of the like, insider, like let's build up this system. It can be the teachers of those students that you, you know. It can be your teacher of your special education students. It can be those who are doing technical, the sort of the technical and career education it can. It's also a lot of the time, I think, when folks tap students, like in the work that we're doing in Kentucky right now, we've noticed that a lot of the students are those who are already centered and they are actually pushing us. They're saying we know that there are some folks who are excluded. Um, how do we make sure that, not just the, the research work, but like, how are they included in this broader initiative around assessment that's happening there? Um, and also the families, and I think that's been. 

I think that's some of the hardest, um, hardest in getting, because there are sometimes time constraints, there are sometimes language barriers, there are people who have had their own trauma with schools and don't necessarily want to reenter those spaces. 

So how do we, simultaneously, while we're trying to rebuild a system, make it minimally viable for folks to come in so that we can actually build something that's transformative, and understanding that it's not? 

It can't happen all at once, so you can't be dishonest and say like we have already transformed when you're in the process of transforming. So what are those first steps? And that's something there's no singular answer for what that first step is, because the things that make people can remember, even in grad school, going to communities that my mother probably would have been very upset that I was visiting, because it would have. She would have viewed it as unsafe, but those were the folks who needed to be at the center of the work. So I think it can. It can look like a range of folks, but I think it can. It can look like a range of folks, um, but I think for me, my brain often lives in those spaces that can be conceived of as untouchable and that other they get those labels of unsafe, um, in some ways right, because I mean, if those folks aren't at the center of making decisions, right? 

0:20:26 - Lindsay Lyons
isn't it Ayanna Pressley who said the people closest to the pain are close should be close to the power, or some version of that? Right, yeah, I, I think that this probably is really um, it's very important for folks who are listening to hear it, who may live in the technical spaces of. Okay, so give me like a five point. Like what do I do? And I think it's really important when we often kind of rush to action and like do the thing, and we haven't built the foundation, as you said, you don't get to a place of transformative change. It's why we keep doing the same old things right again and again, and so I hope folks are taking away that this, this building it takes a while and like it is absolutely essential to do, to do the thing you're trying to do right in in a just way. 

0:21:15 - Rita Harvey
Yeah, and I think sometimes I like it almost. It's almost like a snowballing, like we I think about. You know, many schools have a family resource person who's supposed to be a connection to that community and in this research we've been trying to think about, like how do we get to that? But even they only have their layer. So then it's like, okay, if you can put me in touch with those folks, can they put me in touch with someone else? And can they like, put me in touch with someone else? And that does. That takes time. It takes courage to do all of those things, to go into those spaces. 

0:21:50 - Lindsay Lyons
Absolutely. And I wonder I'm sure there are an enormous, like a number of enormous lists, there we go, of challenges that folks could name in this work because it is so big and so important and so complex in some ways. Are there challenges that you know, folks have repeatedly surfaced for you or you've repeatedly seen in action? And and how might a person listening who's like I'm anticipating this challenge, perhaps work through that? 

0:22:18 - Rita Harvey
That's so interesting when I saw that. 

So I saw these questions ahead, obviously, and I was thinking about it in a in way, and I can still address that. 

But I think right now, in this moment which I'm not even thinking in terms of what it is micro in the grand scheme of things but educators are being asked to do so many things and I think before COVID there was already burnout and then, like you know, a new initiative comes along and you're like, okay, let me just like play along with this until until it fades out, right. But I think the biggest challenge right now is educator burnout because there has been such a lack of respect for educators and I think COVID just exacerbated all of that. So I think building if you're talking about systems level leaders, building spaces that can hold the educators who are taxed is, I think, a massive challenge, because if you're asking someone who's already sort of like doing so many things and facing so many barriers and challenges, and to ask them to do one more thing is just like so much, and so I think that is the thing that comes up the most. 

0:23:44 - Lindsay Lyons
That was not what I was thinking of, um, but I mean, maybe it's connected and I'm curious to know how you did interpret it or what direction you wanted to take it. 

0:23:53 - Rita Harvey
Well, I guess it was going to be very, it was going to be very hard and it was just the idea, and so this is why I say maybe it's connected, but returning to hope and like building spaces of hope and connection. It's really easy to get tired and want to give up when you're the idea of the challenge is how do we create healing spaces so that folks can continue to do this work when it's really tiring and draining? 

0:24:32 - Lindsay Lyons
That is excellent. Yeah, absolutely Right, absolutely Okay, that's. I think that's really connected to what you initially said, connected to all the events which, right we, we sometimes pretend in school systems like we're gonna ignore the outside of the school building and it's like what? No, that impacts how we live lives, like every day. It can't be ignored day. 

0:25:02 - Rita Harvey
It can't be ignored. It cannot be ignored and it I mean we can put it in packages like culturally responsive teaching. But I think even there are spaces um in. In Aurora, uh, colorado, we did a convening with um at a school that was for parenting teens and others in the community who needed the space, and it was a very small school, but you could see the commitment because the principal was trying to hold the space for the teachers, to hold the students, to hold their children, and so it's just like you can't, you cannot escape from any of the components. It all comes into the school. 

So even if I say that I just want to teach English or I just want to teach math, it's not possible, and I don't I'm not saying that from like a moral, or it's just like. Even if I like, even if it is a moral imperative to me, that's not what it is. Just you can't, you cannot get children to do what you want them to do without taking care of their basic needs in these ways. But to put that burden on the teacher, you can't just put it on the teacher. So the whole system has to hold the educators, the child, their family, and so I just think about interconnection and interdependence in that way. 

0:26:13 - Lindsay Lyons
That was so well said that I'm going to leave it at that. That's going to resonate with me for a while. Thank you, I think just to close us out if someone is and I think you spoke to this a little bit earlier, so you feel free to double down on that response but I think when we do this, sometimes it feels like such a big thing. Cultivating the space where people feel a sense of you know, belonging, a sense of perceived safety, you know, all of that is big, big. What's like the first kind of get the ball rolling momentum builder that you would suggest folks do if they're listening to this and going ahead and like entering the day with hope on their brains and in their hearts um, if you're a teacher, I mean there's that student that you're convinced, like as you go into your school year, that is not interested in being. 

0:27:01 - Rita Harvey
You get to know them. Um, if you're a systems leader, in that way, you get to know the family of that that student. Um start very, very small um and understand and not in a condescending way. Um, like I genuinely want to know who you are. It can be the student who is not interested, but it can also be that student who just drives you crazy. We know you have that student who annoys you. We know that there is someone who you're like you talk too much. Why are they doing that? What is the need behind that? Begin, if you have the capacity to employ a little bit of empathy to understand what's happening in whatever part of the system you're in. 

0:27:48 - Lindsay Lyons
Awesome suggestions. And then, just to close with that, I love this question for absolute fun. Does not have to relate to what you're doing in your work, but again, what is something that you've personally been learning about lately? 

0:28:05 - Rita Harvey
This is really. It's very silly, it's not silly, it's not silly. My family, we moved from Massachusetts to Texas in 2022. And we bought our first house in 2023. And I have a garden for the first time and I really want to be successful at gardening and I have killed a number of plants. I am a succulent. I've killed succulents Like it doesn't matter. I killed. So I'm both gardening and learning about gardening from books, from the people in the community, from my dad. So I've been learning and thinking about gardening and ecosystems, which very much so could relate to education, but I'm doing it in the sense that I just I'm learning about what it means for me to get my hands in the soil and get dirty. So that's one thing that I've been thinking about and learning about. 

0:28:59 - Lindsay Lyons
That is beautiful One I resonate. I kill every plant about and learning about. That is beautiful One I resonate. I kill every plant ever given to me. So I just wish that that wouldn't be my experience. I want to live vicariously through you and it reminds me a lot of Adrienne Marie Brown's writings with like fractals and like just all of the nature-y things. So super cool, I'm so excited. Lastly, people are going to be really excited about your work and interested in connecting with you. So if you're comfortable with it, where can folks learn more about you, connect with you or your organization, if that feels like a better place to direct folks? 

0:29:30 - Rita Harvey
Sure, I was going to say I think my email address is on there. I can say my email address. It's Rita at leadingwithlearningorg and I believe our website is leadingwithlearningorg. I believe it's not Center for Innovation and Education and if you look, if you search for Center for Innovation and Education, you will find me there. But it will also say that our organization is closed. It is not closed. It's just that we're no longer housed in the space where it was before. 

0:30:04 - Lindsay Lyons
Amazing Rita. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and brilliance. It was really a pleasure. 

0:30:09 - Rita Harvey
Thank you. ​

​If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

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This episode features Julianna Charles Brown, who goes by Charlie, a champion for student-centered learning. The conversation highlights the transformative potential of education through a focus on collaborative change, equitable grading, and systemic reform. 

With over 10 years of experience working with a variety of educators and a background in history, philosophy, facilitation, and anti-oppressive education, Charlie supports the development of dynamic change efforts to drive equity. Charlie is passionate about connecting the worlds of policy and practice with a critical lens to create more meaningful, responsive, equitable and lasting systems for every learner.
 
Charlie’s career began at the New York City Department of Education in policy, working with schools on programming and providing guidance on working within state regulations. Charlie also worked on the Quality Performance Assessment Team at the Center for Collaborative Education, helping teachers and schools implement equitable performance assessment systems. Additionally, Charlie co-founded the NYC Mastery Collaborative, supporting schools in their implementation of competency-based education practices and advocating for the work to grow across NYC. 


The Big Dream 

Charlie’s dream for education is rooted in centering those closest to the learning process, including students, educators, and their communities. This differs from the current top-down approach and imagines an education system where decision-making is turned on its head and done by those closest to the learning. With this approach, Charlie believes the system can be meaningful for students and teachers alike. 

Mindset Shifts Required

To move away from traditional, top-down systems and towards a student-centered approach, educators can use the power of dialogue and conversation to change mindsets. To break free from the current mold, teachers can have open, honest discussions about the changes they want and why they want them. This is the starting point to shift mindsets towards student-centered education and shared decision-making that energizes teachers and students. 

Action Steps  

To shift from top-down decision-making to collaborative, student-centered decision-making, educators can: 

Step 1: Initiate deep conversations between educators, students, and leaders to unpack beliefs about learning and co-create shared values and goals. Honest and open discussion is the first step to dig a bit deeper and create a new system. 

Step 2: Exercise autonomy within the classroom to implement equitable grading practices that prioritize feedback and growth over arbitrary marks. Students often internalize grades as identity markers, affecting their self-worth, so it’s important for educators to move away from this system. 

Step 3: Engage in cross-pollination of ideas between educators, policy-makers, schools, and school districts. This fosters important interdisciplinary dialogue that helps everyone learn from various educational models and strategies to develop a culture of continuous innovation.

Challenges?

Ultimately, this type of change to the education system involves disrupting systems of oppression, as the traditional academic models are inherently oppressive to students by sorting and stratifying them. To become more equitable and help learners thrive, the major challenge is overcoming the entrenched nature of these systems and the resistance to change. It’s important to be very clear on the why behind these changes to get educators to really pursue new ways forward. 

One Step to Get Started 

For educators seeking a new path forward, the first step is to figure out who you’ll have your first conversation with. Open dialogue is key to change, so determine who you want to talk to and explore ideas around the type of pedagogical experiences you want to see in your classroom. It all starts with a conversation! 

Stay Connected

You can connect with Charlie on LinkedIn. 

To help you implement today’s takeaways, Charlie is also sharing a free PDF with our listeners: Beyond The Horizon: Blazing a Trail Toward Learner-Centered School Quality Systems. 

And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 179 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.

Quotes: 

• 03:56 “We have a very top-down system of education right now. Decisions get made at the federal level, additional decisions get made at the state level—that gets pushed down to districts, that gets pushed down to schools, that gets pushed down to the classroom, that gets pushed down to learners. I think that having a system of education that really authentically turns that concept on its head and puts those that are closest to the learning at the center of all decision making around education, it would just be a completely different way to operate and I think that we would get to learning experiences that were authentically meaningful for learners.”
• 9:48 “For whatever level of the system you operate in, there are things that are coming down that you may have to do. And then, what are the ways that you can interrupt them so that students can lead?”
• 15:58 “What do they say about their grades? Do they say ‘I have a B-level competence in algebra,’ or do they say, ‘I’m a B-student’? Because young people internalize their grades as an identity marker, they carry that identity marker through the way that they experience the rest of their learning.”
• 31:24 “Current traditional academic policies are inherently oppressive. They are designed to sort and stratify students. When we start to talk about the whys and why we would make some of these changes, it's because we believe in and we want a more equitable system and we want all learners to actually be able to grow and thrive.” ​

TRANSCRIPT
0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons
Charlie, welcome to the time for a teachership podcast. I'm so happy to have you on today. This is going to be such a fun conversation. I'm so looking forward to it. I think first just like what is important for our listeners to know, either about you you have the coolest bio in the world or what do you want people to think about as as we jump into the conversation, like what should be in people's minds yeah, yeah, so what would it be helpful to say a little bit about me and where kind of how I come to this work? 

absolutely. We'll put the bio at the front of the episode so people will have just heard it. But feel free to share additions to that highlights from it yeah, sure, sure. 

0:00:42 - Charlie 
So sort of just contextualizing some of the stuff that I've done. I've had the great fortune to be involved with education and educators now for a little bit over a decade, to work with just like some of the most caring, innovative educators who are just like the people who raise their hands and want to try to do what's best for kids and want to think really creatively and differently about that. And over the course of my time doing various pieces of the work, I've just learned so much from people who are really taking this work on in the classroom, taking this work on in the classroom. So I think a lot of my view of this work is informed by those educators that I've learned from. So anything that I share today know that, as I stand on the shoulders of giants and I just, you know, would express up front my gratitude to all the great colleagues and collaborators that I've had. So let's get into it and talk about some systems change. 

0:01:47 - Lindsay Lyons
Yes, oh my gosh, that's a beautiful introduction. I absolutely love that you're honoring, like all of the work that happens collaboratively, because sometimes it very much feels like when we're asked questions or in the space of like leadership and education, it very much can feel like here's this idea that I just came up with out of nowhere. 

0:02:08 - Charlie 
It's like no, no, this is all very collaborative, Right, right, you know, and I would never want to come on a podcast and be like this is all my brilliant thinking. It's like very, very much just having learned from some of the most brilliant educators in the business. So so cool, Thank you, Thank you for sharing that. 

0:02:21 - Lindsay Lyons
Yeah for sure, for sure. The first question I really want to get into is the dream. So thinking about freedom dreaming Dr Bettina Love writes so beautifully about this. This dream's grounded in the critique of injustice. What is that big freedom dream for you? 

0:02:38 - Charlie 
Yeah, 100%, and I love this question and I am just so inspired every time I have the opportunity to read or hear from Dr Love. So I love that we're starting here. See what I did there. And I think for me, the dream is really kind of connected to this concept that I've been trying on lately, which is really centering people closest to the classroom, right, so I come from and within the student-centered learning world, which I think that's a fabulous and beautiful dream, and I also think that including a slightly larger table of people that are closest to the learning is really what comes to mind for me lately, which is to say that you have two well, you have lots of people in the classroom, but you have learners and you have educators, and then you have the families, communities, guardians that surround those learners. Right, and so for me, when I think about those closest to the learner, closest to the learning, that would be my vision or hope for what we would have as a future of our education systems. 

Right, because right now our systems very much do center levels of the system. So, for example, we have a very top-down system of education right now. Right, decisions get made at the federal level. Additional decisions get made at the state level, that gets pushed down to districts, that gets pushed down to schools, that gets pushed down to classroom, that get pushed down to learners. 

And I think, for me, having a system of education that really authentically sort of turns that concept on its head and puts those that are closest to the learning at the center of all decision making around education, it would just be a completely different way to operate and I think that we would get to learning experiences that were authentically meaningful for learners and learning, an experience of the profession for teachers that would just be a lot more fulfilling, grounded and closer to what most of us got into this business to do, Because I think, you know, none of us really got into this game to be millionaires right, we all got into it because, you know, we generally care about young people and their learning, and what would it look like to have a world and a system that allowed us to live that dream every day in the classroom. 

0:05:10 - Lindsay Lyons
I love that there is this honoring of student-centeredness and this honoring of teacher well-being and just like fulfillment in your words, so good, so good that we can have both. It's very much like a both and not like an either, or, which I really appreciate. 

0:05:29 - Charlie 
Yeah, and you know what? 

I think that this is like kind of unpacking that concept a little bit more is that when we think about how our systems are constructed right now, often what they do is they're constructed in such a way that it forces us to do things to learners that we don't actually agree with right. 

So I think a really good example of this is grading policy right, or the standards that we're required to teach right which is not to say that I'm anti-standards and I'm anti-assessment right, like I'm very much for those things. 

But because of the way we've constructed those systems in that very top down way, what ends up happening in the classroom is you're living out a bunch of decisions that were not made with those people in mind, and so, as an educator, you're in the classroom and you're doing grading to a student in a way that, if you really think about it and unpack what is happening with grading, I think most educators wouldn't actually agree with that practice, right? 

It's like this horrible feeling that you get when you have to put a number or a letter at the top of a kid's piece of work and you don't actually have time to provide them the meaningful feedback and you actually are reporting that feedback in a way that doesn't help them get any better. But you have to do it, and you have to do it 50 times, and you have to put that in a grade book, and it's like all of these things that we, as educators, are forced to do because of the way we've set the system up, and if we thought about designing the system from the center out as opposed to from the top down, we would end up with a very different set of we would end up with a very different set of sort of operating procedures. 

0:07:13 - Lindsay Lyons
There is so much going through my mind right now. I'm not sure what question to go with next, so I'm going to share some thoughts and then you can tell me where you want to go. Yeah, I can roll. 

One thought I'm thinking is the way in practice that educators try to get around that, but not from kind of a systematic lens or like a structural, like we're changing the system from the ground up. It's more of like in practice, what I see is okay, well, we're just going to grade this for effort or something Right. And so then you like to your point. You don't get the feedback on the standard that we're trying to improve. So we're just going to kind of manipulate the system we have to work in, but not in like a cohesive way that gives students feedback on the thing they need Right. And? And then there's also this idea of like. I think what that path looks like is probably listeners are probably thinking what does that look like, right? That feels so different from how things are done, like. What are the possibilities for doing something like that in my school or my educational community? So feel free to go either direction. 

0:08:15 - Charlie 
Yeah, 100%, 100%. I mean I think that there are some really powerful techniques that, as an individual educator, are within your locus of control, right so, and there are some really good, just like evidence-based practices that you can build into your classroom level grading policy. So I would encourage everybody to read Grading for Equity and with the acknowledgement that, depending on the context where you're teaching, you may or may not actually have the authority to make that decision, and that's like we're the real crux of centering students and educators and their communities in the design for learning systems. That's. There's a big piece of work there, because I think if you are not empowered as an educator to be involved in that type of decision making and by that I mean setting of a school or a district level grading policy then it can be hard to navigate the change. And so I think that, while change efforts or systems change efforts, should be grounded and led by educators, students, in ways that feel appropriate for them to be involved. I also think that for any leaders that may be listening right like, it also requires leaders to think and move in a very different way, with full acknowledgement that, like, principals and district leaders, are being compressed from the top as well. So it's not necessarily. You know, we're all kind of in this top-down workflow. 

So I would say, for whatever level of the system you operate in, there are things that are coming down that you may have to do, and then what are the ways that you can interrupt them so that students can lead or whoever you know? Whatever level of the sandwich that you're at, you know the people that you're responsible for facilitating and supporting. They have maximum amount of autonomy and the maximum amount of support and guidance, as opposed to sort of like just leading with authority and that's like all sort of very amorphous. I think that until you use an example like grading Right. So it's like as I, for example, as a school or district leader, there may be some systems with which you have to comply as a result to reporting grades, crediting policies, things of that nature. But what does it look like to support your staff in having a conversation about how can we make what we have to do most meaningful? 

So, and then this thing can be true for an educator or a group of educators, perhaps at a department or at a grade level. You can say you know, we understand that we have to report grades. Maybe we have to are required to report them in a particular format, and what logic can we put behind how those grades are generated to maximize the amount of feedback that we're giving to students, so that those grades aren't just your? You know you're getting a b or an 80 and you just have to sort of like internalize that with no understanding of where that comes from or what to do next and so, and then I would encourage people to work together to say you know, once you've started to work within what is in your locus of control and identify the barriers. If you have a few people having that conversation with whoever is sort of the next up the authority chain, that's a very sort of interesting way to start to make changes. 

So if you hear from a whole department or a whole grade band team that, like we've tried some stuff out, we found this particular grading practice to be really impactful, here's the barrier that we're experiencing, right, like that's a very different conversation than, like you know, one person kind of going in alone, or what often happens is you just kind of like close the classroom door and do what you think is right, but maybe I'm not sure it's right, and so I would encourage people to like see how you can do what you're required to do in the way that is, like, most aligned with your values, and do it with others who share your values. And then for system leaders, I think it's like look for that type of leader. You know you have people in your schools and in your buildings who are interested but maybe not activated, and you know part of what your job is as a leader is to activate people and support them and provide them cover. 

0:12:52 - Lindsay Lyons
Quite frankly, and I notice you know this person is maybe the chair of a department really eager and interested in, like you said, maybe not activated yet. What is the thing that you have found? Or maybe a couple of things. Sometimes I see this like aha moment. When we rethink grading, we like, for example, it's about feedback, not the final number that goes in the grade right, or some sort of like mindset shift that's like whoa. This unlocks possibilities for me. Do you think there are those things that, as a leader, I could tell that chair of a department to kind of like nurture these mindset shifts in the team to be able to then try the thing? Does that question make sense? 

0:13:42 - Charlie 
Oh, it totally, totally does, it totally does. And I would say that I think that again, kind of going back to that spirit of collaboration, co-construction, right, like I think that the power of dialogue and conversation amongst so say, like you and I are that teacher and leader, right, like we should get together and have really deep conversations and unpack what we believe to be true about learning, because that'll do a couple of things right, and this can be true, right, so this can be a principal teacher, this can be a teacher, student, you know. This can be a, you know, district leader, principal. It could be a district leader, student, it could be you know what I mean, right. But these conversations, when we actually start to get into what do we believe to be true about teaching and learning? And I would venture to say, unless people have gotten very jaded, which also happens but like, most people believe that young people can learn, most people believe that, you know, young people have great capacity and if somebody doesn't believe that right now, that's a whole other conversation to have, right, I think that's one thing, but I think we're talking about you see somebody in your building or you see a student who you perceive to be a possible leader, I think, engaging in a dialogue, coming to some shared understanding about what are the key, either changes we want to see key understandings about. Again, maybe using the example of grading policy, like what are the key shifts that we might want to see and why? Because I think human beings crave, why, and I think also when you provide somebody a really good why, it's very, very difficult to go back from that. So again, I'll use grading as an example because that's, like you know, kind of my thing, but also it's just a good through line for that conversation. 

But if you take people through the thought experiment about, like one that I find to be particularly powerful, for grading is like when you talk to a student about their grades, especially if you're in a very traditional academic setting, right, what do they say about their grades? Do they say I have a B student? Right, and because young people internalize their grades as an identity marker, they carry that identity marker through the way that they experience the rest of their learning. Right, and so that's. And for that B student it gives them very little information about. Maybe I'm the kind of B student that puts a lot of effort in, but like is a little bit, needs a little bit more support to master content. Maybe I'm the type of B student who, like, tries very little but just the content or the you know transferable skills or whatever. They come very easily to me, but I don't know that I'm just a B student. That's like a lack of information for the, for the B student, but they have internalized that identity. 

It's devastating if you're a C student or a D student or an F student, because that is very, very difficult to unlearn and it doesn't just impact your academic identity Like, it impacts your self-worth as a person. And I don't think teachers want to do that to kids. I really don't. You know, 99.999% of teachers don't want to be harming young people and so if they understand that the pedagogical practice has an impact and we need to change it, and that's why and we have that conversation now you've got an ally and we need to change it. And that's why and we have that conversation Now you've got an ally and we are on a team and we are going to make this change. 

How do we have the next set of conversations and bring in additional allies? Right, because, like, change can't be mandated, it just cannot. Right, like, change is Change is very, very like ecological, I think. In its nature right, it spreads slowly but it does make sense, you know, like if you think about the way like seeds move or forests grow, it just like it's slow but it's continuous, given the right set of conditions Anyway. So I'm going a lot of different directions there, but I hope I answered your question. 

0:18:10 - Lindsay Lyons
Wonderfully. Oh my gosh, I just think about. I was taking furious notes. One of the things I wrote down is the idea that students internalize grades as as identity markers and that it affects their self-worth. I mean, if there's no other takeaway from the conversation, like that is huge, right. Like that's huge to recognize, and my brain went to like I started numbering some of the things you were saying. It's like is this the process, right? So like one to unpack beliefs about learning and how powerful to do that with students not just teachers, but with students, right. And then to try something as a team, like, okay, we're gonna try. We're just gonna try some things out. We're gonna notify our leaders when we have a. We're just going to try some things out. 

We're going to notify our leaders when we have a barrier. We're going to look for that ongoing support and space to tinker, kind of. Is that kind of correct? What would you add to that? What would you? 

0:18:58 - Charlie 
change. I think that's it. I mean, and I think it's about establishing the type of culture within your learning community where that's the workflow right. I think that we are so, and again, I'm talking about our more traditional learning environments. But, like, our more traditional learning environments are very sort of like perfunctory in their collaboration and iteration, right. It's just sort of like well, here's our strategic plan. I'm going to present on it at a few staff meetings. We're going to get some PD in this. You know what I mean. 

It's like it just kind of happens in this way that doesn't really like engage or inspire. And again, I'm not saying every school is like this. I think there are a million billion fabulous schools that are doing like really cool stuff with PD. But I'm saying, like, in a traditional learning community it just sort of feels perfunctory, whereas if you can establish ways of working together that center young people and their feedback and their thoughts and then provide educators the space to like process, what that means for pedagogy and then has sort of like a leader that understands their role is to make all that happen, not actually make a whole lot of the decisions right, but provide the conditions for the people who are closest to the learning to make those decisions and what that looks like. It's not hard. I think you've really sort of nailed it. 

It's like give people space to have the conversation, to try things out, to iterate, and if you have those workflows built into the way that collaboration works in your building or in your district or even in your state, that can be really transformational, because things will you know, if people have the space to have those conversations, things will start to move, especially if you are able to bring in new and exciting ideas at strategic moments. So I think that's another piece of it is like who are we who and how are we partnering to bring in new ideas and how are we doing that in a strategic way? So it doesn't. It doesn't feel like every couple of months there's a new thing we're doing, right. So I think that's like getting that sort of workflow down and then understanding how new things are going to be tested and tried and supported in a strategic way. That doesn't feel like. It's like that Goldilocks principle, right. It's like it's enough change in momentum, but not so much that people feel overwhelmed with all the stuff we're trying to get done. 

0:21:36 - Lindsay Lyons
And what that makes me think about is that underlying why. So if you've had the conversations and you recognize, wow, students are internalizing their grades as it affects their self-worth, then you are like, okay, I'm willing to receive and engage with all of this new PD because it's strategically supporting the fact that I don't want my students to internalize a C identity, right, and I want them to grow their skills. So I will now engage with a possibility of switching to competency-based feedback or, you know, rating on a one to four scale instead of zero to 100 or whatever the thing is Right, right, I think that's really cool, that there's like that anchor there. 

0:22:15 - Charlie 
Right, because if I understand, like what are the principles or the values or the commitments, or whatever you want to call them behind it, the decisions make sense and they become very clear, right. So again, right To the point of standing on the shoulders of giants, my a good friend of mine and close collaborator, meg Stentz. What's up, meg? New York City Competency Collaborative says teachers are responsible for making more decisions a minute than almost any other profession, with the exception of air traffic controllers. That's a direct quote from Meg and that can be very overwhelming unless we understand what is the reason between taking one decision direction versus another right. And when you have those core beliefs about what you believe to be true, about students, their capacity to learn, how you want to support them, those decisions become much more clear as opposed to just feeling like an onslaught. 

0:23:09 - Lindsay Lyons
Absolutely yes, when you have those core values you're like. Well, this is the clear next step. 

0:23:14 - Charlie 
That's it. 

0:23:15 - Lindsay Lyons
We hope it's usually that easy, but I think when you mentioned competency, collaborative I actually was thinking about could there be, is there either a school or a pattern amongst the schools that you worked with, either then or in any other capacity where you've been since, that you've seen kind of? This is kind of phase one of a transition from maybe a traditional grading system to really having that like ground up systems, change for grading for equity kind of thing. 

0:23:44 - Charlie 
Yeah, I think I think the competency collaborative is a great example in New York City. Yeah, I think the Competency Collaborative is a great example in New York City. So those that don't know about it, it's a well, in New York it's considered a small program I think they have like 50 to 75 schools a year, depending on how many but also just a lot of cross-pollination around grading practices, competency-based education. So from a district level that's been really interesting because you have schools from all across the district with very different learning models, still able to learn from each other and there's like that meaningful sharing across schools. And then I would also just say sort of like the context of New York in general. The district is set up in such a way that teachers have a lot of time. They just have a lot of time like individual work time, collaborative time, and schools in New York have really set up you know, of course, not every school, but schools that are really thinking and leading in this learner, human-centered way really use that time in a very impactful way. So you've got sort of like in the building time and then you also have this cross-pollination effect where we're learning from, yes, some folks who are experts in coaching roles and also coaches in that model really understand the value of sharing people who are working on life problems, right. So it's that that tends to be the most impactful, which is to say, like I can speak to somebody who maybe is currently trying or recently tried the thing that I'm about to do and see how it went for them, consider the implications that they learned about, and then I think that space of collaboration can be really helpful. 

I think that in general, right so that cross-pollination model we my current organization, knowledgeworks we do that in learning communities from South Carolina, North Dakota, nevada, and it's core for us because we feel like if you are kind of on an island, it's very difficult, so you can actually see this kind of as a structural model at each level, right. 

So in the building you need to get outside of the walls of your individual classroom and I actually think some of the most powerful conversations can be cross-curricular, right. Like I think people think like, oh well, like I'm a humanities person, I have nothing to learn from a math person or vice versa, and actually when you really start to talk about pedagogy, like those can be some of the most powerful conversations because there are meaningful, just like discipline, specific differences in the way we construct knowledge and the way we understand the world, and there are meaningful alignments. So, like having opportunity to learn from people in your building and then, anytime right, you can get people out of the building, even if it's in a virtual way or in like a you know Zoom type coaching thing. It just that that really helps people just get inspired and, and you know, energized, I would think. I would say I love this. 

0:27:09 - Lindsay Lyons
This is amazing. I love the structural nature and so, like when we were at Manhattan International High School, they used to the international network would say one learning model for all. So there was like, as educators, you do this right and invite the students to do the same things. And so I really love that and I see that in the structural pieces that you're saying on this level, on this level, we're doing it repeatedly, Right, right. 

0:27:33 - Charlie 
And often the okay again, not a knock on anybody, right, like the system is this way, but like the people who are at those higher levels of the system are the least accustomed to working and moving in that way. Because, I mean, I think it's the nature of the beast in some of these, like district leader roles, these state leader roles, it's very, very difficult to a there's just like a huge crush and demand on time. There's a lot of different things that people are considering, right, like those people are thinking about facilities and funding formulas and like there's a lot going on there. And I think also it's just difficult in that at that space, to have the time and the space to be a learner. And I have a lot of admiration for a lot of the visionary leaders who do make that space, even though it's very sort of antithetical to the way a system would typically be set up. But I think it's also very freeing, right, because at any level of leadership, if you are actually distributing leadership, then that's like one less thing. I mean, you all are ultimately responsible for the decisions and their execution, right, but it's like you're sharing the load in a way that really you can have more confidence in the decisions that are coming forward because it's like, well, we made this decision together, it didn't go the way we planned, now we can pivot, or we made this decision together and it went fabulously and now we can all share and own it. 

So but I do think that it's it's it's harder for for, you know, once you get at those higher levels and then I think, at the federal level, it's it's, you know, not to get like way, way out there, but I think it's it's just harder because our, our federal leaders have very little connection to the world of the classroom and understanding of what the implications are of big decisions that they make and how they show up in the classroom. So we can talk about that if that's an area of interest. And actually one of the resources that I did share was a fabulous conversation that we had the opportunity to support that brought together people from every level of the system so students, educators, building leaders, state leaders, federal leaders to talk about what it might look like to build student-centered assessment and accountability systems. Right, and that was the most like. 

It was one of the only opportunities I've had in my career in this space to see all those people kind of together and understanding and learning from each other. Like this is what this actually looks like and feels like for you. It's a very cool opportunity. So it's the Beyond the Horizon Report, so I've definitely encouraged people to check it out in the show notes. 

0:30:26 - Lindsay Lyons
Absolutely. Yes, we'll definitely link it in there. I, that sounds beautiful. That sounds so, so cool. I'm wondering for the listener who is thinking like I'm I'm not there yet, or like I don't have access to that system or whatever yet. What is like I'm imagining something is going through their head, Like, oh, there's going to be bumps along the road, right, we're going to hit these barriers, like what's the challenge that you've seen people kind of frequently come up against? And then how have you like seen them overcome it, coach them to overcome it? That kind of thing, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. 

0:30:57 - Charlie 
That's a great question I would say. I think that, right like at the core of what we're talking about, we're talking about systems change and we're talking about I mean, I think my orientation, a lot of the orientation of the listener, will be like we're actually talking about disrupting systems of oppression, right like. So our current like not our like, but current traditional academic policies are inherently oppressive. They are designed to sort and stratify students and when we start to talk about the whys and why we would make some of these changes, it's because we believe we want a more equitable system and we want all learners to actually be able to grow and thrive. 

And systems of oppression are very sticky, very difficult to undo. It takes a lot of effort and then there are going to be times where the work maybe doesn't go well. And then what a system like that? So like any oppressive system, it will say like well, that didn't work, we should go back to what we were doing. 

And that is, I think, the most dangerous conversation, or that can be like a very dangerous point for any change effort, because just because what we tried didn't work doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue to try to make the change and it doesn't necessarily mean that the why behind what we were doing is wrong. It just means, like that iteration of what we were trying didn't work the way we hoped. And I think it's important to norm up on that at the start, at the middle and every moment all the way through, because your change effort will go through iterations, your first grading policy or your first set of competencies that you ever write like you're going to look back on them in a few years and be like what on earth were we thinking? 

But progress through that, because the why is still there and that doesn't change, but sticky systems will try to retrench you to where they were. And then there are going to be considerations right, there are people and communities that are benefiting from that sorting and stratification system. Right, like, let's get real. Like they port inside schools ratings into the real estate software now, so you go on Zillow and you've got an inside schools rating on there. And when you start to come up against that type of backlash, it's a whole different conversation. And that's where, right, we also need leaders to step up and provide some covers for people. And again, continuing to return to that why? Because you are doing this for the right reason, so keep it moving, yeah. 

0:33:44 - Lindsay Lyons
Oh my gosh, brilliantly put and great example with Velo I have. That is a frustration I continue to have. I have thoughts, yeah, agreed, I think, as we kind of wrap up our conversation, I'm curious for that listener who's like I want to get going, I want to get started. What's that next step after they're done with the episode that they could take to kind of build that momentum? 

0:34:08 - Charlie 
100%, and I think I'll just could take to kind of build that momentum 100%, and I think I'll just go back to kind of like the first conversation is like who do you want to have your first conversation with? Like who is going to be that person? Who you, you know, maybe they they're on your, maybe they're on your team, maybe they, you know, there's somebody that you went to school with and they work at another school or another. You know, maybe you're a school leader, it's another school leader, or you know, just find your person or your group of people who you want to go through this with and start to have those questions about why, why we might want to make this change. 

Because, again, I think that's just such an important thing and you know that you know, if you're looking about where to start that conversation, it's like what is happening in the pedagogical experience of our classroom and do we believe in it? And if we don't, what would we want to see that we could believe in, that we could be proud of that, we would be excited to get up and go to work every day to do. And then how do we get from where we are right now to here, and that's you know. Once you start to have that conversation, I think it's very hard to go back. 

0:35:19 - Lindsay Lyons
So yes, oh my gosh, that's so good and a conversation is such a nice starting point because you can do that tomorrow, like you can find the person and go start the conversation tomorrow. 

0:35:28 - Charlie 
You don't have to wait. Yeah, I think that, um, you know, this is hard work, but it's good work, and it only um, you know, we can really only do it together, yeah, yeah. 

0:35:40 - Lindsay Lyons
Oh, well, said so, I am curious what is something that you have been learning about lately? This is like a fun question that you could answer related to your work, or it could be something totally outside, like Charlie, as a education person. 

0:35:55 - Charlie 
Okay, I'll share a fun example. 

So so I'm really you know, in our work we do a lot of like relational thinking, deep thinking, right and, and sometimes at the end of the day, I'm really just like I need to do something, that it's like I can do it, I can see the outcome, and so I've been really leaning into learning about home restoration and building techniques and I've actually been taking some classes and it's been so fun because it's just like you have a nail, you have a hammer, you drive it. 

And it's been so fun because it's just like you know, you have a nail, you have a hammer, you drive it, it's, it's done. And so I think it's really important to find a balance of you know, when you do the type of work that we do, how do you also, um, find things that ground you in the moment and in like impact that you can feel and see and hold? Maybe that's crafting, maybe it's cooking, maybe it's, you know, messing around in the garage, but I think that having that balance to make sure that you have the energy to go back and continue to do the heart work and the brain work all day, every day, is a, it's just a. It's been really, really powerful for me. 

0:37:07 - Lindsay Lyons
That so deeply resonates. My dad was a PE teacher for elementary school students and he was like you never see the growth. Occasionally kids will come back and tell you the impact they had on you, but what he would do in the summers, on summer break, was paint houses and he was like you can see it is a finished product, it looks good and I did that right. It is so different work, work, and it's so cool to have both. I would. 

0:37:31 - Charlie 
I would encourage anybody to to to get that sort of like immediately gratifying activity or work that they can do, cause it's, it's, it's fantastic. 

0:37:42 - Lindsay Lyons
Yeah, absolutely Okay. Last question when can people learn more about you? Connect with you online, connect with your organization, all the things? 

0:37:50 - Charlie 
Definitely so. My organization, knowledgeworks, has a fabulous website. The resource that I shared is on the KnowledgeWorks website, so I would definitely encourage people to check out. We have tons of different articles, videos, things on that website. I also have a bio on that site and then I'm also sharing my LinkedIn page things on that website. I also have a bio on that site and then I'm also sharing my LinkedIn page. If anyone wants to reach out and connect, I'd be more than happy to chat on LinkedIn and or, if you want to, you know, use that as a way to have a deeper conversation. 

I'm I'm here for it, so Charlie, thank you so much. 

0:38:20 - Lindsay Lyons
This has been wonderful. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. 

0:38:23 - Charlie 
It's been a real pleasure and you know, anytime you you want to talk grades or or you know systems change, please just let me know it's been, it's been an honor. ​

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In preparation for the upcoming school year, I’m discussing my favorite strategies for building and sustaining a culture of belonging and community within classrooms. To do this, I’m turning a blog post I wrote 5 years ago into a podcast episode! Enjoy the original blog post below, and check out the podcast episode for an additional leader lens as well as ideas I’ve learned from brilliant teachers, coaches, and leaders in the field over the past half a decade. 


​One of the most common struggles I’ve heard talked about by and for new teachers is “classroom management.” I struggle with the phrase “classroom management,” and prefer to see my role as a teacher as cultivating a positive classroom culture.

To me, this simple switch in language interrogates the idea that I am there to “keep students in line” or punish them when they break a rule. I don’t think that should be a central part of my job description. I do think ensuring a positive classroom culture is an extremely important part of my job description, if not the most important part. 
 
For more on this idea, check out Afrika Afeni Mills’s article “Classroom Management Reconsidered” and Teaching Tolerance’s “Reframing Classroom Management: A Toolkit for Educators”. 
 
If you’re still with me, I’ll share some ideas about my approach to cultivating a positive classroom culture. Here are my top 5: 

1. Co-create class norms with students
2. Foster relationships 
3. Allow for student choice and autonomy and explicitly teach self-regulation 
4. Restorative practices in place of punitive discipline
5. Shared leadership, specifically involving students in the creation of school policies 

 
Let’s break it down.
 
Co-create class norms. This works best at the start of the school year, but it can be done at any time of the year—better late than never! It will help with student investment in maintaining a positive classroom culture. 
 
How do I do this? 

• Elicit student-generated norms. You can approach this in different ways. It could be a whole class discussion in which you are writing norm ideas on a poster as you go. You can make sure you get all students’ input by collecting one written norm from each student and then eliminate repeating norms and clarifying vague norms. 
• Use an agreement protocol (like fist to five) ensuring all students can agree to the norms before they are finalized. 
• Discuss with students how we should remind one another of the norms when they are not being followed, and what happens when a student does not follow a more serious norm. 
• Have a norms tune-up conversation as needed when the class is struggling to follow norms.

 
Foster relationships. I love this because it is proactive instead of reactive, and it works! 

How do I do this?

• Schedule class circles regularly. I had one, 60-minute circle a week. 
• Design circles to explicitly foster relationships. At the start of the year, I would use circles to have each of us (the students and myself!) share something about ourselves. I liked to use the “Story of My Name” as an open-ended prompt for students to share how they got their name, how other people used it, nicknames, whether they liked it, what it means...anything! Midway through the year, I would do an appreciation circle where each student had to write or verbally share one thing they appreciated about the other students in the class. I loved this activity, and so did students. Everyone loves getting some love! 
• Design circles to have students talk about content. Having weekly circles did not mean I gave up teaching content for an hour each week. The vast majority of the time, it meant I had students engage with the content in discussion-based format in which we could all listen to one another’s ideas. You can build relationships and content knowledge at the same time! I liked asking opinion questions related to the content and asking students to draw connections from the content to other classes/contexts, current events, or their life experiences. 
• Design circles to discuss social-emotional skills and work habits. Building skills like collaboration, assertiveness, and perseverance help students be more successful in school and in their lives. We used circles to share stories about when we exemplified certain values and to practice these values as a class. (Check out the Values in Action site, which when you click on each strength, gives definitions, prompts for reflection/discussion and ways to practice each value!) 

 
Allow for student choice and autonomy and explicitly teach self-regulation.  This one is a balance. Choice and autonomy are motivating and promote ownership of learning, but we need to help students learn how to self-regulate and problem solve on their own without constant teacher intervention.
 
How do I do this?

• Set up independent work time so students can work on what they need. This requires students to know what they need to work on, so a prerequisite to this might be helping students identify the different skills or content knowledge they need to master to be successful in class, and then helping them determine which areas they have not yet mastered. It also requires having different activities for students to work on during this time. Technology can be a big help, with instructional videos on Khan Academy or YouTube supporting students when you can’t be at each table. If you aren’t a fan of this idea, you could also make your own videos for students to watch using Screencastify or Edpuzzle! 
• Insert choice in other ways. You can set up your delivery of content or students’ demonstration of learning as choice boards. You can support different learning styles through the types of content on the choice boards or even the spaces in the room in which students choose to work (i.e., sitting on the floor or at a table, solitary spaces with headphones to cancel outside noise or near other students who want to be able to ask each other clarifying questions or verbally process what they learned). 
• Teach self-regulation to the class and then, and this is key, don’t rush to help everytime they say they need help. I generated a list of about 10 steps students can and should take before asking me a question. (Examples include: Not sure about the directions? Look at what the rest of the class is doing and ask a classmate if you’re still confused. Can Google answer your question? Google it!) I posted the 10 steps chart and walked students through how to use it. We laughed together because many of the steps were obvious, but I had established a culture up until that point in which they could wave their hands and say “Miss,” and I would immediately run over. With that system in place, why would they take the time to Google a definition of a tough word? We need to teach them self-regulation, and then let them put it into practice. 

 
Restorative practices in place of discipline. Traditional discipline policies disproportionately negatively affect students of color and students with IEPs. Being suspended decreases the likelihood of graduation, and contributes to the school-to-prison-pipeline. Restorative practices have been shown to reduce disruptive and violent behavior in schools, increase attendance, and improve school culture and problem-solving skills (WestEd, 2016). 
 
How do I do this? 

• In your classroom, build community with circles, and when harm is done, provide the option for a restorative conference in lieu of punitive disciplinary action. This site has great resources on the history of the practice as well as steps to facilitate such conferences. The gist is: participants share the impact of an incident on them (speaking from the I), and by the end participants share how they can act to repair the harm, relationship, or community.  
• Use circles from this book for use with your class as needed. For example, there is a re-entry circle to be used when someone is returning to the class after being out for disciplinary reasons. You can also use circles from Morningside Center. They create class circles to help communities process and respond to difficult current events as well as more general circles on building community and SEL. 

Shared leadership, specifically involving students in the creation of norms and learning activities. Students and teachers will buy in to norms and engage in class activities more if they helped co-create them. 
 
How do I do this?

• In your classroom, co-create the norms as we said earlier and have tune-up discussions as needed. 
• Gather information about lesson activities from students via surveys or exit tickets. Ask them how it went and what changes would help them be more engaged and learn better in the future?  
• Be flexible with your own ideas. Be willing to break with “the way things have always been done,” and keep the goal of student learning at the heart of the discussion. That’s why we’re all here, after all!  

 
If this is new for you, I admit, this is hard work, but I will also share that it has the power to transform the culture of your classroom. If you’re already doing this, invite other teachers to see your class in action! Share your brilliance and show other teachers that it is possible. 



To help you build and sustain a culture of belonging, challenge, and discussion in your community, I’m sharing my Culture Playlist with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 178 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.

​TRANSCRIPT
​0:00:02 - Lindsay Lyons
Welcome to another episode of the Time for Teachership podcast. I am so excited today to actually turn an old blog post written five years ago hard to imagine into a podcast episode today, bringing it new life, giving some thoughtful reflections on what I've learned since I wrote this and really all about cultivating a positive class culture. So something everyone's trying to do leaders are trying to support teachers in doing students are directly benefiting from. This is a foundational component of particularly the start of the new year, which is why I think it's such a great opportunity to dive in today. Let's get to it Cultivating a positive class culture. I'm going to talk about five specific ways that you can do this or, if you're a leader, that you can support teachers to do this. Or also really lead and support the positive class quote, unquote class or staff culture right In your staff and in your broader school community, whatever degree of community you are responsible for in your role. So, in preparation for starting the year, I think everyone kind of has those go-to strategies for building and sustaining that culture. I really want to center this on a culture of belonging and community, a culture of appropriate degrees of challenge. A culture of appropriate degrees of challenge, one that affirms all students' identities and staff identities, one that enables discussion of critical issues. Right again, this is also critically foundational, and so I will be kind of riffing on the original blog post, and you can check out the original blog post at our show notes lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 175. I can't believe it's episode 175 already. Okay, so as you kind of think about this episode and the ideas are percolating, I want you to also think about your specific role, as I just kind of spoke to the idea of being a leader. How might you put this into practice? Coaching teachers or with your staff, thinking of your staff as a quote unquote class, all right. 

So one of the things that I have heard a lot I heard a lot five years ago, I still hear a lot now, although it is shifting a little bit in its language is this idea of classroom management quote unquote. And classroom management is a phrase I don't really like. I think that we lead and lead through example. We don't necessarily manage. Although there are management aspects to a class, I think it's more about the culture that you create, where, if you create a beautiful culture that is positive and affirming and one in which everyone feels that they belong and are also responsible and a contributor to that positive culture. There are less management issues, and so I think, kind of, the goal of classroom management is ultimately to create the culture where there are less management issues. So I'm cutting right to the chase and we're going to use a positive class culture as the phrase we're using throughout. Right to the chase and we're going to use a positive class culture as the phrase we're using throughout. 

So I like this, this shift in language, for the reason I just described. But I think it's also important to reflect on our practice and have teachers reflect on their practice and, you know, also in conversation with family members, to reflect on what we think of in terms of classroom management and what we maybe remember from our classroom experiences K-12s, right about what class was like. And just because that was our experience doesn't necessarily mean that it is something we want to perpetuate, right? So I want to interrogate that idea that the role of the teacher is to keep students in line, or even you know that the role of the principal is to keep students in line, or even you know that the role of the principal is to keep teachers in line, right, um, or punish them when they they break a rule right. I don't think that's a central part of a leader as a job description. I think it's we're cultivating this culture that we're all contributing to positively, and we're going to lean on each other and kind of call each other in when we need to to be able to right that ship, so to speak, but it's not like the most important thing that we do to call people in or, you know, hold people accountable if we've done the important work of building that foundation. Well, there are a ton of other resources that I think do a great job of interrogating this idea that I think do a great job of interrogating this idea Africa, fad Mills. 

I linked to a blog post of hers in the blog post Classroom Management Reconsidered, which she posted, I believe, on Better Lesson website. Yeah, the Better Lesson blog and Teaching Tolerance at the time was their name when I first published this article. But now Learning for Justice has a reframing classroom management, a toolkit for educators blog post. That's pretty good, okay. So if you're still with me, here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at the top five strategies, right, so I'm going to run through them super fast now and then I'm going to elaborate a little bit more. So here we go. 

Number one co-create class norms with students Super important. Do this also with adults in your adult communities. Do this with your staff. When we have agreements that we have co-created, we are more willing to be held accountable to them and we are more responsible and kind of accept more responsibility for the whole class abiding by those. Number two foster relationships. I think this is the number one thing that teachers can identify that they're really good at. Like I don't think we actually need a ton of support for teachers in fostering relationships. Because we came to this profession, because we love kids, we're good at fostering relationships for the most part. Maybe a strategy here or there is helpful. We know that this is foundational right. 

Number three allow student choice, voice autonomy, ownership, all the things. And to do that well, I think a kind of corollary to this is explicitly teaching self-regulation. So if students are struggling with self-regulation and I think of you know, just like my toddler who has a lot of big emotions and struggles to manage those emotions because, of course, right developmentally that my toddler who has a lot of big emotions and struggles to manage those emotions because, of course, right Developmentally. That makes sense and a lot of our students may have, may still be at that developmental milestone or they may be at a point that is later age, wise, um, and they should have kind of moved through that or learn those strategies. But they haven't. And so they need that support, um later in life that maybe they didn't get early on to learn that self-regulation, to then be able to take advantage of things like choice, voice, ownership, number four, restorative practices in place of punitive discipline. 

So this is also I think a lot of these also are a nod to larger structural supports that can be in place and then really enhance the teacher experience in the classroom when we have the larger pieces to support our work with individual students or small groups of students. If you don't have that, it is also possible in your class and I'll speak to that a bit. But just the idea that we want to repair the harm and we don't want to punish because students didn't do what we said right away. Right, we're not looking for compliance Again. We're building that culture of responsibility, accountability and and affirming that you know, you are all good people. We are all good people Right, we are inherently good. I think of Dr Becky Kennedy's good inside right. I am good inside and my actions are not helping the community at the moment and they need to change and I need to repair the harm that I've caused and I need to take accountability for that right. It's all the things. 

Number five shared leadership. Specifically, when I talk about shared leadership, I use shared leadership instead of distributive leadership because in education, distributive leadership often refers to teachers taking on leadership roles in the school, which I love, but it excludes students. And shared leadership is generally a more broad kind of all-encompassing of all stakeholders, lens on leadership and strategy for leadership. So that's specifically what I'm thinking of in not just co-creating norms right for the class but co-creating learning experiences, co-creating school policies, that kind of level of authentic voice that really makes a difference. So let's get into some of these co-creating class norms. 

You can do this in a variety of ways. I've talked about this before. I think you can really get students ideas on a poster, on index cards, whatever, in a variety of ways, right. You can't have them do this digitally on a Google doc or a jam board, although that's sunsetting. Whatever tech tool you want, you can have a gallery walk of posters. Lots of different ways. You could do a circle protocol, but you want to make sure you reach consensus. However, you get all the ideas. We got to streamline them down. We don't want like 45 ideas. How do we decide on the final five or whatever number is memorable for you? So we had to collapse them together, condense them, and we have to agree. So I would use a protocol. I like fifth to five, anything. Three and above is consensus. Great For younger kids. You could use thumbs up, thumbs down. We need everybody to have thumbs up and then talk about it if we don't right, if we don't have consensus. 

I also think it's really important and something that I've learned since the publication of this initial blog post is that we have one specific norm or agreement, that is, an accountability agreement. So how will we hold each other accountable? And then I also have learned in this past year a really helpful concept of accountability, like what are the baseline assumptions and I can't remember who to give credit for this too, but baseline assumptions, this is an important concept that we are saying. For example, I think the example that this person had used was like we believe all people deserve food, water and shelter, right, or something like that, like what are the basic assumptions about humanity and conversation and whatever, and so like mine is usually dignity, like every human deserves dignity. So we're going to craft our conversation agreements and our class agreements based on these baseline assumptions that either I, as the teacher, can come in with or you can kind of build with students prior to doing the norm generation. So I like this idea as kind of an additional piece to what I initially thought of. I also think you know these are not static, they're ever-changing. Return to them again and again, anytime you have an important class discussion. Return to them. They are not like a one and done at the start of the year. 

Okay, number two, let's go to relationships. Here are the ways I like to do relationships. I had class circles regularly. One 60 minute circle a week was. I was very fortunate to have 60 minute class periods. But you know, having that regular time and attention where we all look at each other. We all look at each other in the eye, we all pause and listen to what one another are saying or sharing, and I think you know designing those circles specifically to foster relationships. Share something of yourself. Story of my name is my favorite right. Everyone can usually say something about their name, their nicknames, do they like it? You can do appreciation circles. I use the values in action website to their 24 character strengths kind of give us a vocab bank of appreciation things we could appreciate about each other. 

Basically, any topic you're doing, you can invite students to share a story about that concept or theme. You know. Whatever it is a question that they have, how are they doing on the project, what's a challenge they have? There's a lot of things where students can kind of be invited to storytell. I also think it's really important kind of to know and I forgot I had gone into this in this blog post but this idea that relationships and content knowledge are mutually exclusive is just a false dichotomy. Right, you can do both. As I said, talk about the theme, invite students to share a story about the topic you know, draw connections to current events, life experiences, other classes, like have them do what is actually a harder, like a higher DOK level, higher Bloom's taxonomy level, work right Activity is like building those connections and solidifying those pathways. That's going to be great. I also think you can do like specific non-content related stuff like social, emotional skills, work habits building. You know ways to resolve conflict and repair harm, building empathy or something right? I think there are definitely spaces for that as well, but don't think that they're mutually exclusive content and building relationships or building social emotional skills. 

Next, allowing for student choice and autonomy, ownership all the things. I think it's really a balance right. So we need to help students learn how to self-regulate and problem solve on their own and, honestly, we benefit from that. So, as educators, we have to do less when the students can take on more, and they're not going to be able to take on more until they have that self-regulation piece. So it's kind of like a we don't want to support too much, right. That's the whole idea of scaffolding is we support until they don't need it anymore, and then we have to remember to take it away, and so I think it's really just constantly being aware of what your students need and that some students are going to need this scaffolds longer, and that's the whole concept of personalized learning and just to kind of be thoughtful about that. 

Independent work time is a really good opportunity for students to be able to work on what they need. Here's a reflection that I've had since writing this blog post. A lot of schools have identified this as an important thing and they have created time in their schedules to do it. Awesome, and in talking to a lot of the teachers that are responsible for that time, it doesn't always feel meaningful. Sometimes it does. Many teachers have reported to me that it just feels like a bit of a waste of time. 

They might be working on, you know, a computer program which may or may not be helpful and may be helpful to some students and not others. Program which may or may not be helpful and may be helpful to some students and not others, but standardizing. You know, all students are going to work on IXL for this 30-minute block. That might not actually be what that student needs. Yes, everyone needs literacy support, but many students might be getting the literacy support that they need in their class to be sufficient, to be on grade level, to be whatever, and they actually really need something else. They actually really need an opportunity for social connection. Their mental health is suffering. They need an opportunity to have a group counselor, facilitated session or something right. So I think being able to truly give students what they need is at the heart of this and not okay, we're going to standardize the time for it and we're going to standardize what is being done in that time, because the whole idea is not standardization, it's personalization. Not to say that IXL or any other tech-based stuff is not going to help students. That is a great way to differentiate and personalize within a topic or area as best as you can for all of those students. So not at all to say if you're doing that, that that's bad, but just give some thought behind it. 

There are other ways to insert. You know, choice support, different learning styles. I love choice boards, the idea of inviting students to say, hey, you can learn about this topic in these three ways a video, a article, you know some other way. You can do a little mini lesson with me in a small group, right? So the process of how they learn, but also the content. Can they be content specialists? Can they subspecialize within a broader umbrella topic and be the experts in this subtopic that they're super interested in? Their peers might not be. You might not have, you know, all the time in the world to go into all these subtopics and this is where students really get to shine. 

Also thinking about, like standardized tests. I've done a lot with investigating history as a curriculum recently. You know there are these assignments that exist in the curriculum. As part of the curriculum, they they could be adapted and they could be, for example, a you know five sentence paragraph or something Great. You could also verbally share that with me and I would still get that. You could do a claim, evidence and reasoning. Right. If that's what I'm grading, I don't necessarily need or assessing I shouldn't even say grading but assessing I don't need you to necessarily write it out, right, you can tell me how would you like to demonstrate mastery of the things I am assessing? And if you can do it in a creative way, great, right. So give that option of product in addition to process or content. 

So I think also, you know, having some sort of wall chart, anchor chart, standard reminder of students as they're engaging in these really student-led activities, that what I need time, that choice that's given to them. Students are in 10 different topics across the room. There is not maybe a person they can go to to get help. Maybe you can't be running all over the place trying to help them. I think it's really helpful to have like a three before me list or I had like one that was 10 before me but, right. For example, don't know what you're doing, like, look at the rest of the class and ask the class, me and Google answer your question, google it right. So, whatever the system is, whatever the things you want students to do before they raise their hand to ask you for help, just remind them of that in a really gentle way. If they're shouting your name every two seconds, just point to the anchor chart, the poster on the wall, you know whatever it is. Have a little hand signal that reminds them. I think that could be really helpful. It's just like this gentle reminder, and not just reminder of what they can literally do, but in in, you know doing some like sleep training and stuff with my toddler. 

I've been thinking a lot lately of you know this. The importance of and Dr Becky Kennedy talks about this too is like we believe you can do it Right. So if I'm lingering around a student, I might be demonstrating to that student. I don't think you can do it on your own. I'm just waiting for you to ask me for help, right? But if I move away and I say, hey, three before me, you got this. I have faith in you. I'll be back soon to check. I'm here if you really need me, but I know you can do this. That conveys a very different message and we have an opportunity for students to decrease their dependence on teachers for that, like minute level support, like the day-to-day, like small stuff. They can do that on their own and then, when they really need us, we can step in. I also think again, as you think about your role in your school, think about the educators, the adults who also would benefit from things like this. I believe you can do it. I trust you. Here are the supports Go do the thing. I'll be here. If you mess up, it's okay. Like we're going to, I'm going to be here, we're going to get through this, but you can do it. I believe in you. I want to give you autonomy. It's one of the reasons that teachers leave the field so much I've seen some really interesting research on this right is that there is a lack of autonomy and trust, and so giving that, whenever we can, to students and adults is really critical. 

All right, restorative practices in place of discipline. We know that traditional discipline policies disproportionately affect students who are Black, brown, indigenous, students with IEPs. We know that Black girls have been suspended for the same behaviors that white girls have gotten any punishment for. There's so much inequity in this and I honestly think that we as a society are moving in a good direction here. So I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this, because I actually do see this shift, or at least this recognition of this, as being important. Is it done well? I mean, that's another complication, but restorative practices have been shown to reduce disruptive and violent behavior, increase attendance, improve school culture, problem-solving skills. 

It's good, right, we know this, and so to do this, I think it's good to have a culture of circles, where you do circles already. Then you can have a restorative circle with the whole class when necessary. You can also have a restorative conference, one-on-one or in small groups of students, where you're basically inviting students to speak from the eye. I've had episodes on this in the past. You can go check those out, but in the end the participants are really wrapping up by saying how they can act to repair the harm. So really good stuff there. Having again a system-wide place in your school is great, but you can do basic things like that in your classroom if you are an individual classroom teacher or if you're a teacher leader excuse me supporting an individual classroom teacher who wants to do this when you don't have the whole staff behind it yet. Finally, shared leadership, specifically thinking about, you know, students in this, in your class. Again, we can co-create norms, co-create learning opportunities, giving voice to the process, product and content of how they're learning. We also can really leverage street data, or what I've been calling student experience data. So again, that's from Jamila Dugan and Shane Safir, thinking about how we learn from students what their experiences are and invite them to share those with us and, if they'd like, invite us to share the actions that would make their experience better, better and then implement it. 

I think a lot about Lundy's kind of four areas of student voice and thinking about how we don't just need the space that's like part one of four. We need the space created for students to share their voice. We need the voice, but we need to help facilitate it. We need to give students appropriate information, skill based training to effectively share what they're thinking or even come to the idea of what it is that they're thinking or that they need. Many adults, I know, don't necessarily know what they need in a moment of challenge. They just know that it's challenging, right, and so there's, there's more there as well, as you know, being that audience that's really authentically listening and trying to, to commit, being that audience that's really authentically listening and trying to, to commit. And then I can't remember what the fourth word is that she uses, but really that we're coming back and telling students, yes, we can implement the thing, or no, we can't, but here's why. So we're giving that information. 

So those are kind of four things that I'm thinking of as I as I think about this shared leadership as well. Anytime we conclude, you know either a segment of learning, it could be a week, it could be a PD for your staff, it could be a unit, right. Anytime you can give some surveys or some, you know, exit tickets, something quick. That's just like what do we think? Please be open to all sorts of feedback here, but that feedback is probably going to be way more valuable than you know, not asking the question or just independently thinking about how you, as the teacher, thought it went. Students are going to be honest if we cultivate that honesty in our classes and they know that you're not going to punish them for their honesty, right? 

So I think the final thing here for me is this idea of shared leadership comes with this giving. I don't actually hold on wait. So this idea of power over versus power with is actually kind of a people have called it cascading vitality, right? This idea that when you open up the sharing gates, right, we are actually amplifying the amount of power. And a student who sees their peer as successful, they're now going to think that they can do it, and all of these things. So we're not necessarily giving up power when we are sharing. We are in the distributive language distributing, yes, but also we are just 10x-ing the amount of power in the space, right, because everyone holds onto their own power and it becomes this generative force for creating and creating and creating this kind of life of the community. 

And your answers? Right, we talk a lot about adaptive leadership on this podcast. Your answers to these big, longstanding challenges are crowdsourced from the people closest to the pain, in the words of Ayanna Pressley, right? And so, if they're closest to the problem, we need their input and their feedback. Again, I'm thinking adults from a staff lens, students from a class lens. This is where your answers are going to come from. 

So we need to just cultivate that willingness on our own part to hear it all, to sift through it and again return to students or staff and tell them this is why we can't implement this if we can't, and this is how we're going to move forward with your idea if we can. So this is potentially hard, challenging work, particularly if you're a new teacher and you're like what I have to do all these things. You don't. These are ideas. Take one nugget, run with it, come back for more when you're ready. If you are a leader supporting a new teacher who might be overwhelmed, share that sentiment. Right. 

You can identify as well the places where this is going well, the places in your school community where a teacher or a leader is fabulous at creating a thriving, positive class culture, one where students are willing to make mistakes, eager to learn from each other, sharing openly and honestly, and people are receiving it well and non-defensively. There's tons of empathy all around. Everyone's identities are affirmed. Right. Find those places and invite teachers to go see that in action, or set up a success. Share where teachers get to share what they tried and how it worked. And what was that? Student impact data, right. What does students say about this? What was their student experience of this lesson or this thing that you've been doing and once we foster all of that, we are going to be thriving all around. So, to help you build and sustain a culture of that, we are going to be thriving all around. 

So to help you build and sustain a culture of belonging, challenge and discussion in your community, I'm going to go ahead and share my culture playlist with you for free. I created it earlier in 2024, and realized I don't think I've ever shared it on the podcast, so it's in the blog post for this episode at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog slash 175. It is going to give you all of the things that you need to build and sustain this culture. There are so many resources I'm guessing around 60. There's so many podcast episodes, youtube tutorials, templates for you in there and it is completely free. Go grab it. Let me know how it goes and reach back out if you have questions. Until next time, 
​

​If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

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In this episode, authors Beth Pandolpho and Katie Cubano chat with me about the transformative potential of education through emotional intelligence and civil conversations. They share their vision for an equitable education system where every student can thrive and every educator enjoys intellectual freedom and resources that equip them as professionals.

Beth Pandolpho is an educator, instructional coach, writer, and consultant with over 20 years of experience. Beth is passionate about engaging in work that promotes equity and access for both teachers and students. 

Katie Cubano is an educator and instructional coach with over 15 years of experience. Katie’s focuses on supporting teachers and schools as they design and implement curriculum and instruction that effectively and equitably meet students’ needs. 

Katie and Beth co-authored Choose Your Own Master Class: Urgent Ideas to Invigorate Your Professional Learning, which we discuss more in this episode. 


The Big Dream 

Beth and Katie's big dream for education is twofold. First, for students to have full access to education—their right as citizens—that enables them to grow into who and what they want to be, while also becoming the engine of social mobility. 

Then, the dream is for educators to work under conditions that enable them with intellectual freedom, material resources, and professional learning opportunities that help them do the job they love to the benefit of all their students. 

Mindset Shifts Required

To achieve equitable outcomes for teachers and students, you need to focus on the teachers and offer best practices. Beth and Katie explain how the whole book is a mindset shift because it offers research-backed information for any teacher to apply.

Some of the biggest mindset shifts required revolve around the structure and delivery of professional development. Teachers deserve the same responsive, choice-based learning experiences they provide their students. Additionally, educators can embrace that being wrong is the way we learn, and mutual understanding should be a high priority in the classroom. 

Action Steps  

Step 1: Listen to and serve the students who have been most underrepresented and marginalized. It’s not about trying to give them a voice—they have one already. We need to listen and implement what they need.  

Step 2: Embrace being wrong and know it’s a path to learning and growth as an educator, and offer opportunities for mutual understanding in the classroom. 

Step 3: Access and utilize resources that help teachers explore urgent educational issues and respond to their students' needs in both curriculum and classroom culture.

Challenges?

One of the biggest challenges Beth and Katie foresee is overcoming set mindsets many educators have about what’s right and wrong, or what’s good for themselves and students. This makes it harder to partner with people you disagree with, a challenge to achieving equitable outcomes. 

One Step to Get Started 

Beth and Katie suggest that listeners start by making one small change, such as rethinking a debate or choosing one chapter or issue to focus on. This small change can have a big impact on your students. 

Stay Connected

Connect with Beth by email at [email protected], and with Katie by email at [email protected] or on X at @katiecubano.

To help you implement the lessons from today, Beth and Katie are sharing their Reproducible Chart with you for free. You can also purchase a copy of their book, Choose Your Own Master Class: Urgent Ideas to Invigorate Your Professional Learning to learn more about this important work for educators.

And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 177 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.

Quotes: 

• There's a Starbucks quote, “The one who sweeps the floor should choose the broom.” Not that teaching is like using a broom, but why are they being told exactly what to do? Why are they not just given the stimulus of what to think about and then figure it out in response to their students?” -Beth Pandolpho
• “Sure, kids today are more sensitive and that’s great. Sensitivity is a superpower that can be harnessed to make everything in a person’s life better—to help them become so much more self-aware, to help them understand their reactions.” -Katie Cubano
• “The biggest challenge would be the mindsets about what’s right and wrong and what’s good for themselves and what’s good for children. I think that is a big challenge—how do you partner with people you don’t necessarily agree with?” -Beth Pandolpho

TRANSCRIPT
0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons
Beth and Katie. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 

0:00:07 - Katie Cubano
Thanks for having us. 

0:00:08 - Lindsay Lyons
Thank you. I'm so excited to have you. I mean, I have told you this before we hit record, but I absolutely love this book. Every teacher and leader in school needs it. I'm thrilled to be having a conversation with you about it. I am curious to know. There are so many things in the world that we all like encompass. There are so many things that we can talk about in this book. What is important for listeners to know? Either about you or just that you want them to have in mind as we jump into our conversation today? 

0:00:38 - Katie Cubano
Okay. So, um hi, I'm Katie Cubano and I've been in education for over 15 years now. Um, I taught English in the secondary grades for over a decade before becoming an instructional coach, Worked on the same team as Beth until last June when I resigned to be home with my one-year-old so my now one-year-old. So I'm working in the paid workforce right now in a part-time role. So I'm doing student teacher supervision for the College of New Jersey and taking care of my little one and Beth, and I also published Choose your Own Masterclass in 2023. 

0:01:16 - Beth Pandolpho
Hi, I'm Beth Pandolfo and I've taught English for over 20 years at the high school and college level. I'm presently an instructional coach for grades six through 12. And I think one thing at this point in my career that's important to me is just working toward equity and access for teachers and students. 

0:01:37 - Lindsay Lyons
I love that. I think that is a shared belief and goal for all of us and I think that's actually a really good segue into the big first question that I usually ask people. So this idea of freedom dreaming comes up on every episode of this podcast, and Dr Bettina Love describes it as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. Considering that, what is the big dream that you hold for education? 

0:02:01 - Katie Cubano
So I think that we'd love to talk about this in two parts, the first part being our dream for students and then the other piece being our dream for teachers. So I think you'd love to talk about this in two parts, the first part being our dream for students and then the other piece being our dream for teachers. So I think you know our dream for students is to make sure that every student has full access to their right, to their civil right, to an education which enables them to not only succeed academically and follow their passions, but also to grow into citizens who are able to create a more just and humane world, to sort of and this is my frere Ruth speaking to humanize and be humanized in turn by their relationship to learning and to community. 

0:02:35 - Beth Pandolpho
And just to continue that I think a lot about students having the ability to become who and what they want to be, and education as the engine of social mobility. And then our dream for teachers. Katie, do you want to start on our dream for teachers? 

0:02:55 - Katie Cubano
Sure. So we feel so passionate about the work we do, about the students we love and about the colleagues who we love and we work alongside. And we want to make sure that teachers work under conditions which enable them with the intellectual freedom, material resources and professional learning opportunities that help them to do the job that they love and benefit, to the benefit of all of our students. 

0:03:20 - Beth Pandolpho
And I think part of you know why we wrote the book is that we feel really strongly about teachers being treated like the educated and creative professionals that they are. 

0:03:32 - Lindsay Lyons
Oh my gosh, I love both of these streams. Excellent, thank you. That was really also very succinct. I'm very impressed by you all. So, as you think about kind of the path to the dream, I'm curious to know being instructional coaches, being in that space, thinking about you know, working together on the book. I'm just envisioning this, this path. What feels like? You know, the blocks along the path, where, where along the path, do you see yourself having accomplished great things? And then kind of like what snacks? I usually think about some buckets. Like you know, there's a lot of mindset work. There's a lot of like you guys call them, I think, like introspective reflection sections of your book, right, there's the pedagogy pieces and instructional pieces, like what does this look like with students? There's like the assessment, the content, right, there's all sorts of different things that I think good quality teaching and the structures that enable these teachers to thrive in the ways you described. There's just so much. So where do you see kind of yourselves along this path? 

0:04:37 - Beth Pandolpho
Yeah, and I think for Katie and I, we both were thinking about students and teachers, because a lot of times we work toward equity for students and then we're seeing things happen systemically that feel really not fair. So, in terms of students, I feel like right now in my career, my focus is listening to and working to serve our most underrepresented and vulnerable student populations and creating opportunities where there weren't any before. And then, in terms of my work with teachers, I'm very interested in how we can provide scaffolds and supports in the classroom, because often what works for our most vulnerable students works for everyone. 

0:05:17 - Katie Cubano
Yeah, I love that, beth, that's so true and I shockingly, I agree with you completely. I think that when I think about the path to the dream for me and sort of where I've been and where I'm going next, a lot's really been rooted in my approach to the teaching of ELA, both in pedagogy and thinking about content, working with a lot of students whose needs have not been fully met by both education and society at large and, as a result, they're working to improve their skills and I'm sure that you have plenty of other guests and plenty of other listeners who have talked about the problem with thinking just about remediation as our lens, right. So really I've focused my energies both as an educator and an instructional coach and I think also in the way that Beth and I think about and talk about teaching and learning and students and teachers in the book, really focusing on providing students with engaging and relevant curriculum and instruction that meets them where they are and helps them be lifelong readers and writers, not just people who are assigned reading and writing. I think so often in the ELA classroom we're like teaching as though this is like a college English course and our students have chosen to major in, you know English literature or something, when what we really need to be doing is focusing on what they need to grow into people who have reading and writing at the core of their identity as they move forward, or at least as like a part of their identity that they can appreciate and see as something that matters to them in real ways. So for me, this has always included like a very robust, independent reading program, with all the attendant efforts that go into making that happen. And so as an educator in my own classroom, as an instructional coach, supporting my colleagues to do that kind of work and advocating for the funding necessary to get the texts they need, to help them find great texts, to listen to what texts they want, and try and get other people to pay for that. Beth and I did a lot of work like that with our other teammate as well. 

And then in the book, beth and I also talk about the importance of an independent, robust and independent reading program. We think about our values for our students. We have a chapter on um lining up. It's on a decreasing um um decision fatigue, and we talk about lining up our values with our practices and how so often they can get trampled when we're not very intentional. Um, those values we can just get swept up. So robust independent reading, strong writing workshop approach, that really honors the fact that even our high school learners need writing instruction, maybe even more so than our younger learners, or at least as much as our younger learners do. 

And then I think the other piece, both as an educator and an instructional coach, really thinking about comprehensive article and vocabulary study, which maybe seems small and unimportant but was really important in my classroom and foundational to helping students build background knowledge about how systems and levers of power work and helping them become sort of aware and justice-minded citizens who can use that knowledge to advocate for change. A lot of times that knowledge is withheld, intentionally or unintentionally. We can get into a whole discussion about that, but they've missed it and they need it. So a lot of that work too. So that's sort of the content and pedagogy piece. 

And then in terms of dreaming, our dreaming for teachers both of us, we're interested in really supporting them to explore the issues we talk about in the book, which, you know, urgent is in the subtitle. It's a nice long subtitle which I'm very happy about. So it's choose your own masterclass urgent ideas to invigorate your professional learning, and we want to support teachers to explore these issues so that they can draw inspiration directly from the thought leaders that we've, um, we've we've explored, who are all from outside of the field of education, and use those insights to reflect on ways that they can immediately and creatively respond to their needs, the the needs of their students, in both curriculum and instruction, also in climate and culture in their classrooms and schools. Because we feel really strongly that teachers really deserve a responsive and choice-based professional development, professional learning experiences. That's what they give their students Beth is always saying so beautifully and that's what we want in our work and throughout, you know, through the book, to give back to them. 

0:10:06 - Beth Pandolpho
Yeah, I just want to add onto that, Katie. That is something that I say a lot. Like why don't we give teachers what they give their students? Like, why are we not giving teachers what they give their students? And there's a Starbucks quote and it's like the one who sweeps the floor should choose the broom. 

And I mean, you know not that teachers want to be, you know, analogous to like. You know not that teachers want to be, you know, analogous to like. You know that teaching is like using a broom. But also, why are they being told what to do exactly what to do? Why are they not just being given the stimulus of what to think about and then figure it out in response to their students? So I feel like those are mantras that Katie and I are always thinking about. And so for us, like writing this book was really an act of love for our colleagues and our teachers, Like we wanted this to be like a gift. If we could do anything to make professional development better, we felt like this was what we'd want our colleagues to have. And for the administrators, when we got the peek behind the curtain, we thought, wow, these people need some support. So it was with both of those things in mind. 

0:11:14 - Lindsay Lyons
Amazing, and I'm sure in some of these questions we will talk about the format of the book itself and kind of that idea. I feel like that for me, was a huge mindset shift that I have seen in leaders as they are thinking about designing PD for teachers and what that could possibly look like. I think your book is a beautiful answer to that. I'm curious to know if that's a mindset shift that you want to unpack here or if you have other mindset shifts that you were thoughtful about in terms of like, what is it that teachers leaders like? What mindset journeys do they really need to go on, or how should they shift to be able to get to that place where we can achieve the dream that you described? 

0:11:56 - Beth Pandolpho
Yeah, I do think we wanted to talk about it in terms of the book. When we were thinking about our mind shift, I said you know, katie, what's our mind shift? And she's like, our mind shift is the book, that's our book. So I said you're right, because we think in order to achieve more equitable outcomes for teachers you know and outcomes for teachers you know and students, you have to also focus on the teachers. So for teachers, this is a way. It's a book of six chapters. They're standalone, they're like long research articles. So you can begin with chapter four and if you only read chapter four, you have a full experience. If your colleague reads chapter two, there are jigsaw questions to have cross-curricular conversations. 

All of the thought leaders are from outside of education because, you know, we've decided that social and emotional learning is really important, but also, like psychology knew this was important for decades to say teachers are really busy. Here's some urgent ideas from outside the field of education. You don't need to wait 20 years to find them out. Like, here they are, and then it's not what Beth and Katie think about them. Like, what do you think about them? These are people that are doing the work you know in other fields. So the way we identified the topics for the chapters is we made a gigantic chart, but then we also just took people from our school and said like okay, here's our PE teacher, here's our very resistant, whatever teacher. And we were like we need to if we want to make equitable professional development. We need to think about all of these people. And so there were things. It could have looked very different if it was the Beth and Katie book, because we would have just done what we liked. But we did it what? Which would have been fun. 

0:13:37 - Katie Cubano
That would have been a lot of fun, no, but only we would have only our family. 

0:13:40 - Beth Pandolpho
It would be for us. 

Yeah, it would be for us, so yeah, so we had to challenge ourselves because there were times like there were teachers that would not want to read the Beth and Katie book. So the things that we decided were urgent in education. The first one is emotional intelligence, and people talk a lot about you know that's not what we're here to do in school. And oh, kids are so much more sensitive, you know, than they were previously. So like we don't want to feed into that. But really emotional intelligence and academics, like they're intertwined, you can't do one without the other. So one chapter is on chapter one is on emotional intelligence. 

0:14:17 - Katie Cubano
Katie, and I just want to add to that One of the things Mark Brackett talks about, who we bring into that first chapter he talks about. Sure, kids today are more sensitive, and that's great. Sensitivity is a superpower that can be harnessed, you know, to make everything in a person's life better, to help them become so much more self-aware, to help them understand their reactions to you know conversations both with in the home, out, you know, in in school as educators, right Too, or so we're talking about both student self-awareness and teacher self-awareness in that piece. But we love what Mark Brackett, how he frames that like, yes, they are more sensitive and that is okay and that is something that we can use to help them move forward, not something that holds them back. 

0:15:02 - Beth Pandolpho
And you can't separate your emotions from academics, like if you come in and you had something happened at home or something with a friend that is going to impact you. We can't separate it. If you feel nervous or unsafe and there's an exam you're not going to do as well, I mean, these are not things we could just say, this does not belong in school, like we bring our whole humanity to every space. So, katie, do you want to talk about chapter two and balancing technology? 

0:15:29 - Katie Cubano
Oh, you know I do so major mind shift here. This chapter is called balancing technology use in the classroom, and you know we were seeing a lot, and we still are seeing a lot. We're very happy to see this conversation about the importance of schools helping students not be so attached to their phones, right? So what can schools do? Some schools are banning them entirely. They're putting them in lockers. I actually advocate for that approach, but there's lots of approaches, you know, all along the continuum, and what we weren't seeing, though, was a reckoning with the degree to which we're tethering students to their devices in the classroom and when they go home for the day, and we felt like there needs to be a major mind shift here, because you know it is our responsibility to give, to help students receive an education which respects, you know, their need for healthy lives and health, healthy balance, including time away from their screens, and not only in the classroom, again, but at home, time for play in nature, time for family and time for community, and we are not striking this balance right now with the degree to which we ask students to access their education on the computer, and, you know, when we think about the original goal of that we talked about of students having a full access to their to their civil right to an education. You know we got these one to one devices with so much enthusiasm and now we need to pause and say is the current state of affairs providing students with a full access to their civil rights to an education? And we would argue that it's tipping into such an unhealthy territory with the amount that we're having them on the screens. The great news is we're very well positioned to help stem this tide of tech overuse and help our students understand the problems with surveillance, capitalism, big tech's role in both their education and their lives outside of school. And we have some really practical strategies and exercises that educators can use to start to think about how they, if their pattern tipped into sort of digitizing as the default, which many of us went that way, especially with the pandemic that's totally understandable how we can start to walk that back. So just one quick example and all of these are free, free printable reproducibles if people want to check them out and adapt them in ways that work for them. But on our website for the book. 

But one quick example would be just simply auditing your tech tool usage. So thinking about. You know how many are you using and what is the defense for the use of each, and is there any duplication happening? You know, are you using? I'm not gonna be able to think of the name of it now. I know Pear Deck, but what's the other one that my friend wanted, the one that's just like Pear Deck? Anybody, anybody, pear Deck. But what's the other one that my friend wanted, the one that's just like Pear Deck, anybody, anybody has such a silly name too. 

0:18:18 - Beth Pandolpho
I'm not going to be able to oh, I know I know which one you mean, but yeah, but so I mean where Katie's going with this is. People say, like I heard about this tool and it's like right, it's exactly Pear Deck and we have a premium subscription to Pear Deck. So let's like so I mean also in there with the best intentions teachers want to do, like the newest, the best, the most engaging, interesting, and it's just like right, it's Pear Deck, it just it's the same exact thing. 

So, save your energy and your goodwill, and so you know, we're really just to be like link it to your instructional outcome, and if you're already have something that that fits that bill, then then that's sufficient and maybe what you have that fits that bill is not using the screen, Maybe it's doing it in paper and that was working great. 

0:19:06 - Katie Cubano
You know, Beth shared this really great example the other day. She was saying like she was saying, like you know, great example, digitized for the pandemic. I'm going to let students choose from these four articles, and I always do this. I have these four articles curated. I love them. Oh, I found a new one in the Times this week and I'm going to add that. So now I've got five beautiful articles, I'm going to put them all up on Google Classroom. Right, the students even to get to that post, sometimes the exercise in willpower and attention resources just to get to that post on Google Classroom. 

0:19:42 - Beth Pandolpho
And then five to choose from five, and then some open them all up. So now they have six tabs open in addition to whatever else they had open. And how do you pick these articles that? Your teacher, you know, was just waxing poetic about all of them. So I said to Katie I mean, at some point you want to just say here's a pink article and it's about this, and here's the yellow article, which is about this. The pink one's longer, you'll find the yellow one a little bit shorter and a little more user-friendly. What are you feeling today? 

0:20:13 - Katie Cubano
I mean, for me it's going to be three. Let's be honest, it's going to be at least three in my classroom. But yes, point being, print out the articles, put them on the desk and bring it back to your desk. 

0:20:23 - Beth Pandolpho
And now you can attend. And again, we're not talking about wasting paper. Save them. I mean, I started saving things from year to year, but they don't. If they're not writing on them, like, I'll have those back, or if you want to annotate them, I don't need them back, but we're doing something wrong. And now we've spent all this time and we're only on to our second chapter, but we just feel, we feel so strongly that we've gone too far in one direction in a way that's detrimental to kids. 

0:20:52 - Katie Cubano
Yeah, and I think that and this is the last thing I'll say about it it's so much more than just curriculum and instruction too. So in the chapter we highlight three thinkers there Jenny O'Dell, who wrote how to do nothing, resisting the attention economy. Cal Newport, who wrote digital minimalism excuse me. And Johan Hari, who wrote stolen focus, why you can't pay attention, and how to Think Deeply Again. And I just really I really encourage folks to look at the resources, because the free resources, because we dive into so much more than what I just mentioned about auditing, auditing the tech tools you're using we dive into deeper concerns about, again, surveillance, capitalism, the attention economy, helping students come to understand those things, and thinking really intentionally about ways that you can opt to do something different, to operate in a third space Jenny O'Dell would call it while still serving your students and being a part of the community of teachers where you work, yeah, and so we don't have to continue answering this question. 

0:21:53 - Beth Pandolpho
if you want to move on, or we can, you know, kind of just like highlight some of the other few chapters. 

0:22:00 - Katie Cubano
We were going to talk about civil conversations next. 

0:22:04 - Lindsay Lyons
Yeah, let's maybe just like a quick view of the rest of the chapters, just kind of topical level, and then maybe for the next question we can focus on the civil conversations, because I'd love to talk about that. 

0:22:16 - Beth Pandolpho
Okay, so the chapter three is on fostering civil classrooms for a more civil society. Chapter four is supporting student growth and mastery through teacher leadership teachers in the classroom as leaders. And the next chapter is really an introspective chapter for teachers, reducing decision fatigue, because teachers are tasked with so many micro decisions in a day, and we called it reducing decision fatigue to increase equity, because we think it increases equity for teachers if they can manage the amount of decisions, and also for students, so we're not giving students different answers because we've managed these decisions. And then the last chapter is called telling stories that lead to liberation, which is really about the way we think about and talk about students, that we have a more positive framing because it actually matters, because when we put negative labels on people, we actually put an artificial ceiling on what they can achieve. 

0:23:14 - Lindsay Lyons
Oh my gosh. Yeah, I wish we had like four hours for this conversation, cause I'd love to get into all of these. They're so good. But I'm I'm wondering about you know like maybe we take the chapter three, for example, or we can take like the broader idea of personalized PD and kind of like what your book gives leaders. But however, whichever direction you want to go, but I'm thinking about like the action step, so like if you're talking to leaders about you know what, what will make this possible in their spaces? What are the actions that this looks like to implement or for teachers, what are the actions that this looks like? I know you have so many tangible things at the end of each chapter. I'd love to, I'd love to get into those a little bit. There's there's so many follow-up questions I'll probably insert here, but I'd love for you to just give me your initial thoughts and then we can take it from there. 

0:23:59 - Beth Pandolpho
Katie, can I just I'm gonna start on this one because I feel like I can anchor it to a chapter, because I hadn't thought about it in this way, but this is something that I'm doing at work that I feel like answers. What are the brave actions we need to take? And that made me think. If I said Katie, if I said that our mindset is represented in this book, this really is about telling stories that lead to liberation. And one thing that we're doing at our school is we took all of the student affinity groups, like the Black Student Union and we have a Muslim Student Association, and I'm not going to list them all, but we actually just decided we need an affinity group like these groups. They don't have paid advisors and we've actually just we sat with every single group. The assistant principal did and I did, and we just said what are your goals and objectives? How can we support you? And now they're presenting at a faculty meeting. They're going to have. They have. 

If you had the question is, if you had eight to 10 minutes with teachers, what do you want them to know and how can they support you in the classroom and beyond? The Muslim Student Association went to one of our elementary schools and did a lesson about their culture and how students, and they came with all the students' first names in the class written in Arabic and they helped the kids write their names and they visited, I'm going to say, 20 classes, pairs of students. The Hindu Culture Club is doing a Bollywood movie night. These are things that they can't accomplish without adults in the building and you know the assistant principal can't be their advisor and I'm not in a position there's no advisory position but what we can do is listen to them and get it on the school calendar and make sure they have chaperones. So I feel like what's the path to the dream? It's listening to students who have been historically, you know, marginalized, underrepresented and not heard, and you know we don't have to give them a voice. They actually have a voice. We just have to create the opportunity and the space for them. 

And right now and my job is very busy and multifaceted, that is the most joyful part of my job sitting around a conference table with students and they are so grateful and when I want to say, all I'm doing is just saying, yeah, you could do that. Sure, I know who to email, you can email me, and they're so. They feel so liberated, and now we're working to connect them with the middle school because also their club enrollment drops off when they graduate, and so now we're working to connect them with the middle school because also their club enrollment drops off when they graduate, and so now we're working to recruit the eighth graders. So that's something that I can do and our DEI coordinator can do. We partner with the middle school. How can we now get them to interface with the eighth grade? So that's, I feel like that's my path, and it doesn't I mean, I know it says brave action, it actually doesn't feel very brave. It feels. It feels just like what we should be doing. 

0:26:38 - Katie Cubano
Beth talked about her immediate context, so I guess I'll do the same. I'm not working in a K-12 building right now, which is so weird. Worked in a K-12 building not only for the over 15 years of my 16th year this year, but then throughout my college preparatory program, so it's just so weird to not be in the rhythms of the building. But because I'm not, it feels kind of futile for me to list things I did when I was those feel like past actions. 

0:27:09 - Beth Pandolpho
Oh, I'm sorry. I was just going to say one thing that I think sort of encompasses. You know and again, it would never be a waste of time to listen to all of the things that Katie did, because it's kind of amazing but I also think that one of the challenges that we all go through is that we need to. We have a broken system and we need to fix it while it's still operating, and so it's this moving target. So, but sorry, katie, I didn't mean to. 

0:27:32 - Katie Cubano
No, that's okay. No, so like the piece of the of the puzzle I'm working with now is in my student teaching supervision role, um, and what I'm finding is that's a little shift for me is that I'm learning to serve students and work alongside students who may already have privilege and power in ways that maybe the communities, um, that I worked alongside before did not, and that is its own challenge worked alongside before, did not, and that is its own challenge. So I've been reading and rereading this Carla Shalaby essay. You must accept them and you must accept them with love. You must accept them and accept them with love, which is a James Baldwin quote, and she talks exactly about this specific thing and it's it's been such, it's been very supportive to me in thinking about how do I help pre-service teachers enter the profession ready to cultivate excellence in their work, provide culturally and developmentally responsive and equitable classrooms for their students, do so in a way which honors, like, what they desire for themselves and the vision that they have for themselves, not just the vision I have for them, right, so it's a lot. It's sort of supporting them in their pre-service work to anticipate where do they need more support, what resources do they need. 

How can I model teaching that's sort of rooted in a love of all students and again, while helping them be the teacher they want to be and not the teacher I want them to be? 

Because now, like we're back in a in a power relationship, I don't want if that's what I'm doing is trying to get them to become me. Essentially and Beth and I have talked about this a lot with you know, in our experiences in general in education, to be a leader is not to. You can't be a leader by just wanting people to follow the same path that you took and wanting them to do it the same way you did it. That's not leading, that's not responsive at all. So this is a new challenge for me and the brave action is sort of I'm not sure what part of it it feels admitting that it's hard for me to work in a situation where I'm serving students who have privilege and power and to do that in a way that's rooted in love and not sort of get resentful or get annoyed at things that they may privileges they may have, that even as myself, as a pre-service teacher and as a young teacher I didn't have and just to serve them genuinely. 

0:30:00 - Lindsay Lyons
I love that. I also wanted to share, if it's okay with you, all things that I was reflecting on from what you shared that just were the brave actions that I think would be super cool or like action steps perhaps you could say to consider. So things that I talk about but were just novel to me in the thought process. So these are kind of my ahas for the book, particularly around that chapter on civil discussion. So one I love that you distinguish between norms and baseline assumptions Mind blowing. I was just like this is incredible and I'll mute myself actually after that one, just because I want to know do you guys want to just kind of explain that a little bit? 

0:30:37 - Katie Cubano
Sure. So I want to shout out my friend and Beth's friend and both of our colleagues One of my best friends, justin Dolce-Moscolo Garrett, and we's friend and both of our colleagues one of my best friends, justin Dolce-Moscolo-Garrett and we worked together to sort of develop this concept of baseline assumptions. We didn't develop it in a vacuum and we have lots of resources in the book for folks to look at to start to understand that. But it came from I guess what it came from was this realization that lots of people were norming with their classes but there was still something missing. Like the norms were dictating what was happening in the class. Like we're trying to dictate the actions in the classroom, but there was never like a baseline discussion of. Here are the things, here are the assumptions that are going to guide the discussions. Here's how we'll have the conversation is great, but there needs to be some guardrails around what we're talking about and whether what we're agreeing to are the conditions of our understanding of society before we can actually get into the how we're going to have the conversation and respecting other people. Through the way I show up in my conversation, you know and I'm careful of my conversational quirks and things like that and we really did feel like that piece was missing. 

And I think that a lot of times folks are worried and scared to say to their students you know, in this classroom we are going to operate on the assumption that, but it's our belief that we have the intellectual freedom to do so. 

So, you know, for me, one of the ways this manifested as a teacher of English is, I would say to my students in this, in this classroom, we're not going to debate whether people who are gay should be able to get married. They should and and and. You don't have to agree with that personally, but in this classroom you have to respect that view personally. But in this classroom you have to respect that view and you know that's teaching is not apolitical, we know this. So it is. I'm glad that you brought it up as a brave action, because it is. You know, does it mean that some people might disagree with you? Sure, but it, and that doesn't mean that every baseline assumption has to be what I just said. They're both things that you as the, as the teacher, bring to the conversation and they're called professional learning with teachers because they did like lunch and learns. 

0:33:08 - Beth Pandolpho
These baseline assumptions are really important because they did devolve into things that were not really up for debate and they could click back a few slides and say like, oh, you know, that's not part of the conversation, because we sort of established that everyone can have clean water and that's brave to do with colleagues. But I feel like it gave them the language because they thought about it before. So I'm going to say that's a brave action to do it with your colleagues. So it's sort of then it's neutral, it's not judgmental, it's not like you said something wrong, it's like ooh, right. Also, remember, that's not. We're not debating that or discussing that. 

0:33:50 - Katie Cubano
And what it kind of does is. 

It gives people an opportunity, and I think that people initially meet this with fear. For many reasons backlash, but another reason is they don't wanna tell a student what to think about something. One of the things we talk about in the civil conversations chapter is sometimes what you're actually doing with. A baseline assumption is giving a child an opportunity to try on an identity that they're not going to get to try on anywhere else in their life, and that can be really. You can say to them you don't have to think this in your own life. You have to respect it in here, though, that this is a guardrail in our conversation in here, and it really does. It gives them the opportunity to see what that would feel like, and then they can let it go as soon as they leave if they want, if that's what their families want, if that's how things go for them, but at least in that moment it gives them that chance which they might not otherwise have, but at least in that moment it gives them that chance which they might not otherwise have. 

0:34:44 - Beth Pandolpho
Another thing that Katie says about civil conversations that I also really like is that in school, you know it's like let's have a debate. You're going to have, you know, one class period to research this issue and then your job is to just debate the other side. And you know the more we've been thinking and we have enough of that going on in society, so we're just like we need more conversation. So Katie and I have been using the terms like inquiry and conversation. We're going to look at both these issues and we we cite work from Francis Kissling in the chapter like what is good in the position of the other. You know, and I and you know Katie used the example of, you know, gay marriage. 

Know, katie used the example of you know gay marriage, like I used the example of, like you know, everyone should be able to buy a cake from a bakery for their wedding, like you know. And let's talk. We're not going to debate, you know we're not going to debate it whether you think they should or they shouldn't. And also, like, where are the people coming from who didn't want to sell the gay couple the cake? And we talked about religion and what could you admire about them as being religious and trying to adhere to their faith. So just looking at it as a complex issue instead of like I think they shouldn't get the cake. Well, I think they should get a cake and I think that we have enough polarity that we don't need to nurture that in our classroom at all and that it's okay, yes, oh, oh my gosh. 

0:36:05 - Lindsay Lyons
There's so many things that I want to jump in on. You guys are brilliant. So one thing I wanted to say is that, yes, the around that, like the Adrienne Marie Brown quote that you used about being wrong oh my gosh, so good, right, and just the idea of being wrong, right, like that, we learn a lot and grow a lot from being wrong. Like the, the goal that you shared about mutual understanding. I was imagining, like if, instead of the rhetoric outcome right, or the make a claim, defend it outcome that we typically I mean I use that as a teacher, I encourage, I literally was coaching people this month to use that as a teacher and now I'm like, huh, what if it was instead mutual understanding? That was the outcome, like, literally as a priority standard on a rubric. How cool would that be right? And you guys have a ton of like. Um, page 96, page 107, I mean there's a bunch of prompts that you guys share about, like here are the question prompts that you could hand to a student when they see an argument or an opinion about something and you could unpack it right. And you could unpack it right and you could to your point, beth, like what is valuable about this argument? Right? Like what is the underlying value? I think there's so much in that we talk about or I talk about using like the positive psychology's values and actions and I think you guys actually cited them as well as kind of a culture builder, but how cool would it be if we actually integrated it into academic conversations as well. Right, where are the values in this? 

I also loved the, I think, related to what you were just talking about, this idea of asking students to just think about what they think about, as opposed to what's your opinion on this go, and that just made me think about you know what? How do we create? You also write about flow states, but I love Chiksmahai's work and, like thinking about, you know, carving out time free from distractions. That's what enables us to be creative. That's what enables us to like have the time to consider what we think and how. You know all the different things. I think they merge together around. This question for me is like, what does the class look like, or what could it look like when it enables us? I know that's a big question. I just want to know if you have thoughts on that Did you say class, yes, yeah. 

0:38:11 - Katie Cubano
So I think one very concrete thing is you know, when we think about planning for rhetoric, when we think about planning for you know, thinking through persuasive, being persuasive in our writing. So often those units rush to picking a position to defend and I think that, excuse me, an essential piece that often our units are missing is like a whole lot of time for students to just learn about the issue. Just, they have knee-jerk positions, sure, I mean for many things, not for everything, but for many things. But before even asking them what their position is, what is a topic you're interested in? I don't even want to know what you think about it yet, because I don't even think you fully know what you think about it yet, and that's not your fault, you haven't had the time to figure that out. 

So, like, let's spend some time just building our knowledge around this issue before you decide what your position's going to be on that, to the degree that that's possible. I know that. You know there would some there. You know there's some argument that our positions are sort of going to create our arguments, that our positions are already set. It's not going, we're not necessarily going to be swayed by information, but I do think that maybe, while that may be true of adults, we have an opportunity with students to take some time to build background knowledge before having them jump into defending you know one position or another and using rhetoric toward that end. 

0:39:46 - Beth Pandolpho
Yeah, and I just want to add one thing that I'm thinking years ago, before I had the language for it, I did a four corners activity and I had told every student, like go to the corner that you believe in, and if you end up in the corner by yourself, I will come and stand with you. 

And one student I don't want to say what it was, but he went to a very unpopular corner, something that I could not, you did not agree with, and I went and I stood next to him and I just said tell me why you think that like share with everyone. But just it gave him a chance to like interrogate that knee jerk decision without I didn't criticize him, I stood next to him and I think there's something that now, when I have language for it, I would think it's that cancel culture, but instead I was like calling him in. You know, like here are some reasons. I think it's problematic. Where were you coming from when you stood here? But I mean it changed the whole feeling of the class that I went and stood next to him. And again, when you talk about brave action, it, but it felt pretty brave to go stand there with that opinion that he decided he strongly agreed with. 

0:40:55 - Lindsay Lyons
Thank you both for those concrete examples. I think I'm looking at the time. I totally lost track of time because I've been so engaged in this conversation. Maybe we could do a lightning round for the next couple of questions. One I'm wondering what the biggest challenge that you faced or that you anticipate facing as you continue this work is, and feel free to both answer. 

0:41:15 - Beth Pandolpho
I mean, I think the biggest challenge would be that people have really set mindsets about what's right and wrong and what's good for themselves and what's good for themselves and what's good for children. So I think I think that is a big challenge, and how do you partner with people that you don't necessarily agree with? 

0:41:34 - Lindsay Lyons
Agree, yeah, so good, and everyone should get the book to read more about how to, how to partner with people to do that Um one thing that you would encourage listeners to do when they end the episode. What's kind of that? First, next step. 

0:41:50 - Beth Pandolpho
I think that everything feels so big. And but if you could do one thing, one small change, if you decide you're going to rethink your debate, right, rethink your debate, you know, just like it's choose one chapter, choose one issue, choose one thing, because small changes have a big impact. 

0:42:11 - Lindsay Lyons
Something you're learning about lately. This does not have to relate to your profession or this conversation. It can be literally anything. 

0:42:18 - Beth Pandolpho
Well, I'm going to I like I'm going to say something first, and I feel like Katie's going to have some kind of beautiful wrap up. I think what I'm continuing to learn is that we can't change everything we want to, but what we can always do is we can show up for people, we can show up for what we feel is right, and maybe not always, but sometimes that's enough. 

0:42:38 - Katie Cubano
I just finished Ta-Nehisi Coates' the Water Dancer, which was published a long time ago now, but I don't always get to books the year that they're published and it was, without a doubt, the best book I've read this year and I'm going to be honest with you guys, besides short form pieces, I'm only reading fiction right now in my life. My brain, with a one-year-old, cannot handle weighty nonfiction. So I'm reading the Water Dancer, or I was reading it. I just finished it and there's this beautiful passage in there about abolitionist. Corinne Quinn is the name of the character. 

The narrator says about her that she loved the idea of abolition, she loved the idea of of. She loved than them, but she did not love enslaved people. And I just ever since I had I read that it was just so beautifully put I did it. Zero justice, everything. Tanahasi codes touches turns to gold and I hope he writes more fiction soon. 

But it's really had me reflecting on like what are the times in my life when I was solely operating or not solely, because I don't think I was ever solely, but I was at least in part operating out of ego when I was advocating for, against injustices, and then like, what are the times in my life when it has been only pure and genuine love for students? 

And then how can I reflect on those times and what I was doing and how I was feeling, to make sure that it only ever falls on the side of doing it, because I love students and I want them to have full access to their civil rights education all the time and never fall on the side of. I'm doing this because it makes me feel better than other people or it makes me feel like a purpose for my life, because it's not about me, it's not about us, it's about the work of of, it's about the, the freedom, dreaming right, that's what it's about. So I love that he's had me, he's had my head there. In this kind of time when I'm um in education, but not sort of in the school building right now, it just feels like the right time. There's no wrong time to be reflecting on that, but this feels like a particularly right time. 

0:45:10 - Lindsay Lyons
That was so beautiful. Thank you, thank you, guys. So the last question I'm going to ask is just where do people learn more about you, connect with you, get your book, all the things? 

0:45:21 - Beth Pandolpho
Well, I have a website and it's bethpandolfocom and that's just kind of like a landing page for all of my things, um, and my email is on there and it's connect at bethpandolfocom, and I'm more active on linkedin than I am on what is now x katie yeah, so folks can just reach me via email at. 

0:45:43 - Katie Cubano
It's just Kate Cubano at gmailcom, kate, and then Cuban with an O at gmailcom, and I'm not super active on X and I don't have a LinkedIn. I just I'm just not doing it right now with our book is on Amazon and on Barnes and Noble. Also, though, I would love to share, we to share. We would love to share with you, lindsay, the link to the book website on Solution Tree, so that folks can access those materials that we mentioned. 

0:46:14 - Lindsay Lyons
Brilliant. We'll put it in the blog post for this episode in the show notes Awesome. Thank you guys. So much, Katie and Beth. It was an absolute pleasure. Thanks for joining. 

0:46:22 - Katie Cubano
Thank you. 
​

​If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

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In this episode, I’m borrowing research and strategies from the fields of counseling and psychology to help educators apply healthy relationship concepts in school communities. Specifically, we’ll explore how Gottman’s State of the Union meeting is relevant for educational spaces like classrooms and staff meetings.     

Why? 

From Dr. John Gottman and Robert Levenson’s research on thousands of married couples, they were able to predict which couples would remain married vs. get divorced with 90% accuracy. Why? During a conflict, happy couples had a ratio of 5 positive interactions to 1 negative interaction.  

To help couples reach and maintain this 5:1 ratio amidst conflict, Dr. Gottman developed a “State of the Union” weekly meeting structure. We’ll unpack that below with applications for educational settings.  

As you review the following steps, consider your role in education and which type of setting you are most likely to use this structure. 

• Examples for leaders: a staff meeting, 1:1 supervisory/mentorship/coaching meetings, facilitating a leadership or department team meeting, resolving conflict with a colleague or student  
• Examples for teachers: a class circle/advisory, 1:1 or small group conferences with students, a department/team/PLC meeting, facilitating a student-student conversation about a conflict, resolving conflict with a colleague or student  

What are the steps to the State of the Union?

Step 1: Start with 5 appreciations 

Identify a specific value, characteristic, and/or action that a student or staff member demonstrated in the past week. Share this with them, and repeat it 4 times. (If you’re facilitating a group, you may point out 5 individual actions or highlight 5 things the group has done. You could also have participants turn and talk to a partner so each person received 5 appreciations specific to them.) I like to use VIA’s character strengths for a vocabulary bank. 

Step 2: Praise what’s going well 

If student-led discussions are a priority this year, share positive feedback from students or your observations of what is going well. If you’ve been struggling to improve everyone’s capacity to listen deeply, share how you’ve specifically witnessed it get better. You could also generally point out who’s doing amazing things. (Example: Kaya’s class is doing fantastic with asking inquiry questions this year. If you have time, stop by a launch lesson!) 

Step 3: Process a challenging incident or issue 

Partners may alternate sharing. In a group setting, you can also invite participants to each share an incident. Throughout, Gottman encourages non-defensive listening and empathy. The goal is to seek to understand. As the sharer, share your emotion, the specific thing that happened, and your need. You may use the sentence stems: I feel…about _______. I need…

For example, in a situation where a teacher is talking 1:1 to a student about an incident, the teacher may say: I feel worried about you when you are not in class. I need you to tell me why you missed my class so I can help you succeed. 

Step 4: What can I do next week to make you feel more loved?

Invite ideas from one another (or all participants in a group setting). Each person asking what they, individually, can do to help one another feel loved demonstrates a commitment to their own responsibilities for and clarity on the goal—all people should experience love.   


Final Tip

Make this a routine! Schedule it into your lesson plans, your PD calendar, your team meeting agendas. If weekly doesn’t work, try monthly. You don’t have to wait for the SOTU meeting to share appreciations with one another. Embed appreciations into your regular practice too!  



To help you build a sustain a culture of belonging with your students or staff, I’m sharing my Staff Meeting Agenda Series with you for free. (You can use the same activities for students—one learning model for all!) And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 176 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.

TRANSCRIPT
0:00:01 - Lindsay Lyons
I'm educational justice coach, lindsay Lyons, and here on the Time for Teachership podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting, because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant, superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerding out about co-creating curriculum with students, I made this show for you. Here we go. 

0:00:39 - Lindsay Lyons
Welcome to episode 176 of the Time for Teachership podcast. In this episode we are bringing in some research and strategies from the fields of counseling and psychology to help educators apply healthy relationship concepts in their school communities. Specifically, we're going to look at Gottman's State of the Union meeting, which he counsels married couples to engage with, and we're going to talk about how it's actually relevant for educational spaces like classrooms and staff meetings. Here we go. So let's get into why you might want to have a State of the Union meeting for your class or, if you're a leader, for your staff. Let's first look at the research. So, from Dr John Gottman and Robert Levinson's research on thousands of married couples, they were able to predict which couples would remain married and which couples would get divorced with about 90% accuracy Mind-blowing. During a conflict, they watched people basically work out a conflict for about 15 minutes. I think they would observe how many positive interactions that a couple engaged with in that time and how many negative and happy couples had a ratio of five positive interactions while negotiating conflict to one negative interaction. And when I think about the number of times I interact one-to-one or even large group with students, like as a teacher, how many times do I interact with every student right, and how many times was that interaction positive? How many times was that interaction negative? I think about the number of touch points that families have with educational institutions and their children's teachers, how many of those phone calls home where those outreaches are positive and how many are negative. When I was being trained as a teacher, a lot of it was, you know, the positive sandwich, for example. So here's a positive, here's the challenge, here's like where I think we're going and how you know this kid is going to do. Well, that's still only a two to one ratio of positive to negative. It's not enough, which is mind blowing to me. So there's a lot there. That's kind of the foundational level of this research. But then to help couples reach and maintain the five to one ratio amidst conflict, which is of course inevitable in partnerships, in romantic relationships, in family dynamics that are non-romantic, in classes, in staffs, right, like yes, this happens, conflict, yes, we know this. So to help everyone maintain the five-to-one ratio, dr Gottman developed a state of the union, what he called state of the union weekly meeting structure, and so we're going to unpack that today with applications for educational settings and I want you to think about your role in education. 

As you listen and think about this, which type of setting you're maybe most likely to use a structure like this. So if you're a leader, for example, you might use something like this with a whole group in a staff meeting. You might use it in one-to-one meetings with teachers, so this might be something you call supervisory meetings, mentorship meetings, coaching meetings. If you're an instructional coach, or even if you're the principal, but you have a coaching relationship Facilitating a leadership or department team meeting, have a coaching relationship facilitating a leadership or department team meeting. It might be in resolving conflict with a colleague or a student, either colleague-student conflict or your conflict with a colleague or your conflict with a student. Similarly, for teachers, this could be that you're facilitating like a lesson with your class, so a class circle, maybe an advisory period, you know whatever it is. It could be one-to-one or small group conferences with students inside or outside of the school, like class lesson. It could be during a department or team or PLC meeting time with your colleagues. It could be you facilitating a student-to-student conversation about a conflict, like a restorative conversation, for example. It could be you again resolving conflict yourself with a colleague or yourself with a student. So a lot of different opportunities I think for this here and it fits most naturally, given that partnerships or romantic relationships that Dr Gottman designed this for a one-to-one, when you have scenarios that are you and another person right, or you're facilitating a conflict resolution process with two people one-to-one right. But I do think there are still applications and general principles that we can use for those larger kind of class-wide or staff-wide opportunities. So keep whatever lens or opportunity for this to be used in your role that you would like in your mind as we go. 

So what are the steps of the state of the union? Here we go. Number one you start with five appreciations. The very first thing that you do when you're doing your weekly check-in is you say here are five things I appreciate about you. Now I typically with my partner, we usually do this we go like one-to-one, like I'll share one, he'll share one, one, one right. So you can do that. You can also share. Here's my five, here's your five. 

Doesn't really matter, but what you want to do is identify a very specific value, characteristic or action that a student or a staff member demonstrated in the past week so it's got to be recently, particularly if you're doing this every week. If you're doing this a little bit more spaced out, like once a month, okay, in the last month, that's fine, but it has to be specific. So I usually like to say, like here's the action that I saw you do and I really appreciate it because it was emblematic of this character trait you have, right, or this value that you exemplify, right. So really getting into, like the thing that you really appreciate and I want you to share it with that person and then repeat it again, like four times. So you have five times total that you will be sharing this. 

Now, if you're facilitating the group, there's some different options here, so you might point out five individual actions. So if you have a group of 20 people, you're not going to share five individual actions for all 20 people. You just don't have the time. You may point out like five individuals from the group. You can highlight five things the group has done. As a group, you also could have participants turn and talk to a partner so that each partner does receive the five appreciations that are specific to them, because that receipt of appreciation is, you know, likened to deposits in a bank, like these are good, we can draw on these later if we have conflict, like we always want to build up the positive, and so if you want to be really strategic in partnering people with maybe colleagues or fellow students that do not typically talk to one another, that could be good. You're building that, will there. So I really like a vocab bank for this. I think students and generally people of all ages benefit from a vocabulary bank, because we're not used to appreciating one another using specific language. We're just not. So I like to use values and actions, character strengths. They have a list of 24. I'll link that in the blog post for today's episode if you want to check it out, if you haven't already. Again, that blog post is at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 176. All right, so we do the appreciations. Everybody shares five appreciations. Ideally, everybody gets five appreciations. 

Praise what's going well is the next step. So if student-led discussions, for example, are your priority for this year, instructionally, you would share positive feedback from students or your observations of what is going well. So again, this works at a class level. Hey, students, I've noticed that you know we did these five things really well and again, it doesn't have to be five, but here we're just praising, like we. I noticed that in the last conversation you all did really good with equity of voice and you invited students who were quiet to share and just made sure they had an opportunity. Right Again, as a leader going in, you know this person's class. 

I saw this great discussion on this. Here's what went well. I also got to see this person's class. You get the idea If you have been struggling to improve something, maybe like as a staff and as a whole school community, we're really working on listening deeply. That's something that's really important to us. This year we weren't very good at it. We got some survey data that said we were pretty terrible at it and I've witnessed it get better. Here are some examples. Like, I'm noticing this is going well, it's improving. You could also just do a general point out of like so-and-so is doing amazing things right. This is just what's going well in general. Kaya's class is doing fantastic with asking inquiry questions this year. So if you have time, stop by a launch lesson if that's okay with Kaya, right? So whatever is going well, we wanna have space for it there. So again, we've just done the first half of the meeting, where we just say five things we appreciate and we get some appreciation back and we praise what is going well. So it's all positive, right. 

And now we get to the second half of the meeting and we have step three as processing a challenging incident or issue. So here's the moment where you, as the facilitator of a group, perhaps could share out what your thoughts are. You could also invite participants to each share an incident that's important to them that they'd like to navigate, talk through. If you are in a partner dynamic, you can alternate sharing, right. So if it's a one-to-one, I share a challenging incident, we talk through you. If you are in a partner dynamic, you can alternate sharing, right. So if it's a one-to-one, I share a challenging incident, we talk through it, and then you have an opportunity to share a challenging incident, right. 

But the important thing here is that throughout, gottman really encourages non-defensive listening and empathy. In fact, he has a whole acronym, I think it's ATTUNE A-T-T-U-N-E. I'm not going to get into all those, but the most important thing that I think is not kind of a given or the thing that's hardest to do, are those non-defensive listening and empathy which I believe are the N-E of the acronym, a tune. So the goal is really seeking to understand I feel like that's become a theme of a lot of my work lately is seeking to understand is the goal versus being heard, right, of course, as the sharer, you want to be valued, you want to be heard, you want to be like you know, given the space that you see someone is receiving your words and deeply committed to you know receiving them. So, as the shar share I think sentence starters might help but kind of parameters to share with whoever is sharing at the moment is that you want to share the emotion that you're experiencing, or experienced, if it was like a challenging incident that occurred in the past, again the past week, we're not bringing up like old, old stuff, right? Whatever it is that this week, if we're having weekly meetings, is that we want to talk about. Share the emotion, share the specific thing that happened. So not attacking like this is something you failed to do, like you didn't do this, right, but here's the thing that happened. And then your need, right, so the sentence done, for example, I feel about blank, I need whatever it is. So here's an example If a teacher is talking one-on-one to a student about an incident, skip class, for example. 

Right, the teacher might say to the student I feel worried about when you are not in class. I need you to tell me why you missed my class so I can help you succeed. Right, I feel about, about, I need. So we're processing that challenging incident and we can have an open conversation. It doesn't have to be that the person shares the challenging incident and we just leave it right. We actually do want to process, and we've built up all of that positivity early on in the conversation, that we should be equipped enough, drawing from the bank, all of those deposits we should have enough in there that we can navigate the challenging end of it. And then, step four, we wrap it up with what can I do next week to make you feel more loved? 

Now, some people may problematize the word love in classroom spaces. I personally have had students. I would tell students that I love them and I have personally had students tell me like no other teacher, no other person today told me that they love me, like this really was important, like I know that you love me, that you care about me. Right, so it could be. What can I do next week to make you feel like you matter, that you belong, cared for? Whatever word you want to use, fine, I'm just going to use Gottman's words, because I do think that love is at the heart of what we do, and I'm not afraid to say that. So identify whatever phrasing works for you and go with it. 

But what you want to do here, what can I do next week to make you feel more loved, is to invite ideas from everybody. So all participants in a group setting or, if you're again a one-to-one, like you, would ask the question, your partner would respond, and then your partner would ask the question and you would get to respond. So what this does is that each person asking what they individually can do to help one another feel loved. I think it really demonstrates a commitment to their own. Like, each of you have your own responsibilities. Yeah for and clarity on the goal, which is that in this case, all period, all people excuse me should experience love. So that experience of love should be given to everyone. You are committed as an individual to giving that experience of love to everyone and you're open to receiving the ideas from the other person. 

So you're not just you know I'm thinking about love languages here You're not just like loving and gift form, like I got you all these gifts and someone else's love language is actually, you know, like words of affirmation, like they just needed you to say thank you when you did this thing. Right, like cool. Like we're not communicating in the same way. It's very important that we know how people want to be loved so that we can love them in that way, and I think this is really relevant for staff and classrooms. Like we don't always communicate in the same ways that other people need to receive communication, and we think we're helping and we're putting so much effort in and we're trying so hard for this student or this colleague and they just don't get it Right Totally. I've been there. I have been there, and by inviting the question, by asking the question, inviting the responses, we are now engaging with that dynamic and to say I'm committed to doing this thing for you. You just got to tell me, right, I'm inviting you to tell me and I'm going to listen to your answer and I'm going to act on it, that is powerful stuff what a way it flows out to save the union. So that's the last piece, I think. 

The final tip I want to share with you, though, is that this should be a routine schedule it into, if you're a teacher, your lesson plans, if you're a leader or coach, your PD calendar, your team meeting agendas, whatever it is. And you know what, if weekly doesn't work, don't say, oh, I'm just not going to do this. I can't do it weekly, Totally fine, it can happen monthly, it can happen every unit, like as often as you can do it, right, but don't completely write it off because you can't do it weekly. Also, just want to name this is probably self-evident but very important to make sure we we leave this conversation with this understanding. 

You do not have to wait for the state of the union meeting to share appreciations with one another, right? You can embed appreciations into your regular practice. You can write every single day. You can write a student or a colleague an appreciation note. Here's just how I start my day. I arrive at school, I take 30 seconds to rip off a post-it, write someone's you know action or value, whatever that they exemplified, and put it on their desk or in their mailbox in the office or whatever. Send an email. That simple 60 seconds. I start my day this week at one person a day. That's a lot of appreciation you're sending out into the world, right? And imagine a class full of students who are growing up with this being just how we do things. This is how we exist in community with one another. How beautiful. 

So to help you build and sustain a culture of belonging with your students or your staff, I'm going to share with you in today's blog post my staff meeting agenda series. It's completely free. There's an agenda and a slide deck for 60 minute increments. I think there's four total. You can use these activities for students. It is designed for staff, but it is only designed for staff because I believe in that one learning model for all idea of we do this with staff so that they can do it with students right. So, regardless of your role, that will be relevant. You can grab that at the blog post for today's episode, which is lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 176. Until next time, if you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazzed as I am about my coaching program for increasing student-led discussions in your school Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice. 

In their book Street Data, they say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm how I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan, from full-day trainings and discussion protocols like Circle and Socratic Seminar to follow-up classroom visits where I can plan, witness and debrief discussion-based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy, no-strings-attached brainstorm. Call at lindsaybethlyonscom slash contact. Until next time leaders, think big, act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at teachbettercom slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. 
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In this episode, you’ll experience a behind the scenes planning conversation between Kara Pranikoff and I as we develop an agenda for the first day of professional learning for 3rd and 4th grade teachers across the state of Massachusetts to engage with and prepare to implement a pilot of these two new grade levels in the state’s Investigatory History curriculum. Specifically, this segment of our conversation is focused on designing a 45-minute discussion-based activity that involves the core pedagogical principles that underlie this curriculum and will take place on Day 1 of the professional learning series. 

Here’s Some Context 

DESE’s Investigating History curriculum is designed around 4 core pedagogical principles: Historical Inquiry and Investigation; Historical Empathy and Human Connections; Civic Engagement and Current World Relevance; and Culturally Affirming Pedagogies. The conversation in this episode is designing a discussion-based activity to highlight the latter 3 of the 4 principles.   

Our team of coaches—Kara, Eric Soto-Shed, and I—support the development of Westheimer & Kahne’s (2004) justice-oriented citizens. This type of citizen “know[s] how to examine social, political, and economic structures and explore strategies for change that address root causes of the problem.” There’s a critique of systems of oppression and action to fix them vs. “participatory citizenship” which is more volunteerism (Martell and Stevens, authors of Teaching History for Justice, say It’s the difference between holding a food drive and asking “Why are people hungry?”) We try to keep this in mind as we design the question and the experience of this activity. 


What did we design?

Here’s what we came up with…

Step 1: Set agreements and a baseline assumption.  

We’d like to co-construct the baseline assumption with the group. Given the time constraint, we’ll suggest using discussion agreements from Glenn Singleton’s Courageous Conversations about Race and Cobb & Krownapple’s Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity. We’ll ask if anyone has anything to add, ensure we also have an agreement about how to hold each other accountable, and link additional resources for how to co-create agreements with students in the agenda. 

Step 2: Share a compelling Discussion Question and the relevant texts. 

Our draft is: How can we heal from the impact of white settler colonialism on indigenous peoples and the enslavement of African and African-descended peoples in the United States? 

Texts: Excerpts from Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You (this is the version of Ibram X. Kendi’s book written for young people) and An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.  

*Note: We ultimately decided we won’t bring the texts in until the next conversation about this question on Day 2 in order to make this first conversation (on the first day we meet participants) less high-stakes and more about sharing initial ideas in community.  

Step 3: Introduce the format or protocol. 

Educators will participate in a human barometer activity with a scaffolded version of the Discussion Question: Is it possible to heal from the impact of white settler colonialism on indigenous peoples and the enslavement of African and African-descended peoples in the United States? (Participants who think “Yes” will move to one side of the room. Participants who think “No” will move to the other side.) We expect lots of complexity in participant answers when we ask “Why did you choose Yes or No?” We’ll give participants a chance to converse with a partner about their reasons, and we’ll have facilitators note some big ideas.  

Note: For the next discussion (on Day 2), we’ll have the large group (approximately 150 people!) break into 6 smaller groups with 25 participants and 1 facilitator per group. They will engage in a Socratic Seminar protocol on the full question: How can we heal from the impact of white settler colonialism on indigenous peoples and the enslavement of African and African-descended peoples in the United States? using the texts listed above as evidence to utilize in conversation. 


Step 4: Reflect. 

As a whole group or in a smaller—25-person—pod, we can share trends in our conversations and identify similarities and differences across the large group based on the Singleton’s Courageous Conversations compass. (i.e., Where were/are you on the compass?) 

We can introduce a post-discussion reflection prompt teachers can use with students: 

• Where are you now? (emotion/compass check-in) 
• Now I’m thinking (content ideas, i.e., Did your idea about the question change or grow?) 

We’ll also invite participants to reflect on our facilitation and design of the discussion: 

• What did we do? 
• What could we do better? 
• How can we as facilitators provide space for learners to get support based on how they're experiencing the discussion? 
• Which core IH principles did you experience in this activity? 

Final Tip

I’m still growing in terms of making adult professional learning truly aligned to the experiences I coach teachers to facilitate for their students. This conversation stretched me, and I highly encourage you to find a thought partner who will stretch you as well! We plan learning experiences SO much better when we have someone that we can bounce ideas off of. 


To help you get some thought partnership, Kara and I are inviting you to one week on our Slack-based coaching platform, EduBoost, for free! 

Interested? Sign up here. It starts on Monday, August 12, 2024. 

And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 175 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.

Wondering who Kara is? 

Kara Pranikoff is an educator in New York City. She has worked as a classroom teacher; reading interventionist; Instructional Coach; curriculum designer; and an adjunct instructor at Bank Street College of Education. As a consultant Kara partners with school to nurture independent thinking, voice and a sense of belonging for all members of the community. She supports educators in deepening their practice of inquiry-based teaching of social studies and writing. Kara’s book, Teaching Talk: A Practical Guide to Fostering Student Thinking and Conversation (Heinemann, 2017) shares ways to foster productive and independent student discussions in elementary and middle school classrooms.    

You can contact Kara at www.eyesopeneducation.com, LinkedIn, or Instagram.  

TRANSCRIPT
​0:00:00 - Lindsay Lyons
We are going to do something a little bit different for this Time, for Teachership episode. So in this episode you're going to hear a behind the scenes of my fellow coach, cara Pernikoff and I co-creating and really thinking through an agenda for a PD series we are doing in conjunction with Eric Soto-Shedd and our amazing administrative assistant, gianna Martin shout out to the team for investigating history as a pilot of the grade three and four curriculum written by Educurious. So we are very excited for this opportunity to work statewide with amazing, phenomenal teachers. And we are in this clip that you're going to hear discussing our day one agenda where we really give folks an orientation to the curriculum and primarily the pedagogy is behind great teaching and how it is embedded in this curriculum. So what you're going to hear is really just us diving into this section on the core principles that underlie the investigating history curriculum historical inquiry and investigation, historical empathy and human connections, civic engagement and current world relevance and culturally affirming pedagogies. As you jump in, we're really thinking about a discussion-based activity that's going to last about 45 minutes where we're focusing on primarily the last three principles, so historical empathy, human connection, civic engagement, current world relevance and culturally affirming pedagogies. So you'll really hear us think through what exactly is happening in those 45 minutes and we have, as we're starting, really a general question in mind, which is how can we heal and we are thinking about texts that are not actually from the curriculum but maybe for adult learners, using Stanford in the beginning for young people. So, yes, adult learners, but also we like to use the young people text so people could use it in their classroom if they wanted, as well as an indigenous people's history of the United States for young people. So that's kind of where we're at and you're going to hear the rest. 

I'm excited for this. Here we go. I'm educational justice coach, lindsay Lyons, and here on the Time for Teachership podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting, because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant, superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerding out about co-created curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go, all right, so we have the discussion in general idea, but then to start with setting agreements, how do you want to do? You want to? 

0:02:52 - Kara Pranikoff
give them a baseline assumption. Do you want them to co-create a baseline? 

0:02:55 - Lindsay Lyons
assumption we have an hour. Yeah, I do think we could probably borrow from other times, but we have. I was thinking if the reflection on the core principles is like 15 minutes, then we'd have 45 left for the actual discussion activity. 

0:03:09 - Kara Pranikoff
So I think the best case scenario is for us to co-construct a baseline assumption because ultimately, we want them to be able to do that in their classroom, right? We want a model that you want your kids involved in the co-creation of those agreements. So I feel like we want to do that here. 

0:03:27 - Lindsay Lyons
And I think maybe have one in mind, just in case they're like, I don't even know what that means. Maybe we share a couple. Yeah, okay, great. I like the authors of the book that I learned that from. They said everyone deserves food, water and shelter, or something like. That was like a sample one. Yeah, so if we believe this, then how do we proceed? Yeah, yeah, okay, great. And then are we co-creating? Are we taking the time from the 45 minutes to co-create agreements, which would probably take 25, 30 minutes out of that that, or do we want to? 

0:04:05 - Kara Pranikoff
I think we offer those four. I also like the ones from um what is belonging with dignity. So I sometimes share both of those and say is there anything that you have to add Right? 

0:04:19 - Lindsay Lyons
But I don't think, I'm not familiar with belonging with dignity. What are those? Hold on? 

0:04:25 - Kara Pranikoff
I'm going to pull, pull it off because I can't do it off the top of my head. 

0:04:28 - Lindsay Lyons
I do love the title. It infers like a lot of the things that we regularly talk about belonging through a culture of dignity. Wow, I need to read it okay you know what you've seen. 

0:04:37 - Kara Pranikoff
One of the um, you know the, the visualization, or the visual representation of integration, where it's like colored dots and then like full integration is everybody's got another. So that comes from this book. 

0:04:59 - Lindsay Lyons
Got it Okay. Oh, that's fun. Yeah Right, there's a little I wish I didn't read. 

0:05:05 - Kara Pranikoff
I wrote it until I read like I'd seen that and actually used that before, and then I was like oh, that's where it comes from. I'm not going to find them here, but I've used them in the past. I'll link them. I've got them perfect. 

0:05:17 - Lindsay Lyons
Who is the author of that book? I'm going to make sure I look it up Lloyd Cobb and John John John Crown, apple. Okay, amazing, it's a good one. Okay, perfect, so okay, awesome. And I think, too, we can link, um like a couple I think I have a resource for how to co-create norms that we could just link it Like. If you're interested in doing this, yeah yeah, explore this in your choice activity later or something you know we could. 

0:05:43 - Kara Pranikoff
Yeah, great, great this in your choice activity later or something you know we could. Yeah, great, great, I mean. And then, because we've got this out, when we gather again at our whenever our next one is October I think we can have a conversation about how are you using the agreements? Have you had to add agreements? Is there a time you've called them into discussion, like, how are those? How is it a living, breathing document in your classroom? So yeah, I think we should do that Amazing. 

0:06:14 - Lindsay Lyons
I love that idea. Okay, because I do think there's a tendency, even for people who do this well, to just like I'm done and it's static, and we're never returning to it, we're never losing it. Yeah. 

0:06:26 - Kara Pranikoff
I'm done and it's static and we're never returning to it. We're never using it. Yeah, and I think when discussions go awry, it's so powerful to pull them out and talk to your kids about you know where, what. What happened here, and is there another agreement that we need so that X, y and Z doesn't happen again? Like, how are we going to caretake our community? Is there something that needs to be added? 

0:06:44 - Lindsay Lyons
I love that. I also was just thinking I don't know if the belonging through a culture of dignity has an accountability agreement, but I do think that was another thing I learned from this other book. That was like make sure, one of the agreements is how do we hold each other accountable? So I mean, I like the one that's just like if you number the agreements you hold up the number of fingers that's being violated. So it's like two point to the poster, whatever, something simple we can offer that if we're stuck. Yeah, I think that's great. 

Um, okay, so the question I don't know if we want to like wordsmith the question a little bit, or if it's just like how can we heal from harm in general? But I'm wondering about the how we can heal and maybe it's like a little bit more history, specific, because it is a history thing, like how do we heal from like white settler colonialist influence on indigenous people and like the enslavement of Africans, like I just I wonder if we just like put it all out there in the question or how much is general, and then we kind of facilitate through the primary sources, like let those speak for themselves, kind of, and then have teachers bring it up what's your? Where do you lean on that? 

0:07:59 - Kara Pranikoff
So my instinct is to be really specific, because I feel like one of the growth edges of teachers in general is just like say the thing and say the thing a lot, and we're not used to saying the thing right, we're not used to talking about, you know, the harm of, of white colonists, so necessarily, so I I kind of feel like we front load it okay. 

0:08:27 - Lindsay Lyons
So how do we want to word it? I just kind of riffed there. But how can we heal from like the impact of white settler colonialism on? Is that? So let's maybe pause there. What's the language we want to use around? Is it white settler colonialism? Is it like from the impact of colonization, imperialism, trying? 

0:08:55 - Kara Pranikoff
to think of the language colonization, because I think that that's the language that investigating history uses, more than imperialism. The thing that I'm playing around with is do we want to say so? If we're saying impact, do we want to say ongoing impact? Is it implied that the impact is ongoing? Do we want to say historical impact, or do we want that to come up in discussion? You know what I mean. 

0:09:22 - Lindsay Lyons
Yep, that one that's such a good question, that one one, my, my leaning and I can be swayed is to leave it as impact and then encourage people to bring it up and, if they don't, to actually highlight that inner reflection portion of like. You actually avoided any connections to the present. Interesting, why were you avoiding Like kind of digging into, maybe using those four quadrants of like? We didn't actively avoid the question from a historical perspective maybe, but we totally avoided the modern connections, I wonder. I don't know. 

0:09:59 - Kara Pranikoff
Great, I'm all for it. I'm all for it, I just want to have our radar. It also dawns on me that in a conversation, I think one of the pieces of debrief has to be what did we as facilitators do to nudge the conversation but not take it over, introduce other ideas? And so I could imagine somebody making a comment about you know that impact being long ago, or whatever the language is, and asking the question of was the impact only in that thing, or was it, you know, is that the only moment of impact? Or whatever it might be Like. I think we could play around with nudging. 

0:10:38 - Lindsay Lyons
Yep, I do love that idea because I also my brain is also starting to go to where, how, how do we, what protocol do we use? Like how do we enable the discussion to flourish? And so sometimes, if we choose, for example, Socratic seminar, I am very much like a sit back and let it happen, Like encourage the students to ask each other questions and in this case, adults to ask each other questions, and like there is a moment where, if the discussion is totally not fruitful or bringing in misinformation or something like there could be a moment that we do interject. So that'll be really interesting to think about how all of this fits within the protocol itself too that we just choose to use For sure For sure. 

0:11:20 - Kara Pranikoff
I also, just logistically I am curious about so we've got a lot of people in one room, or are we going to break up even into thirds? Like maybe a fellow doesn't necessarily lead this, but maybe we break up into thirds, and I think it would be interesting to record the conversation, even just with notes, and then see the similarities and differences in the three charts. Like could we, could we envision something like that? 

0:11:57 - Lindsay Lyons
oh, I love that right and just if we have three. So I'm just thinking that's about what 20, 22, per good, that's a. That's a good chunk of people, but not overwhelming in terms of numbers. Maybe 25 max. I think that's comfortable. I mean, it's not everyone's probably going to speak in this time, but that's real. 

0:12:21 - Kara Pranikoff
Except, like everybody, isn't it more than that, isn't it a hundred? And oh, it's? 

0:12:27 - Lindsay Lyons
yes, it is, it's like 125 you're right, okay, so I'm wondering if we do six, we do the pods with six groups, pods of about 25 each to simulate the classroom size. Yep, but that we do still. Do you think that's feasible to still do similarities and differences across, like if we use a protocol that's going to be, for example, collect and display where the facilitator or we could do more, but, thinking for time's sake, the facilitator highlights some trends, puts it on a sticky note, brings it to the front of the room, and then we can kind of collect the sticky notes and organize them into larger trends quickly, yep yeah, I think we would have to do some front loading of organization and then the trends. 

0:13:13 - Kara Pranikoff
I think we would have to. I think I guess we just have to make sure that the fellows are cool with that. 

0:13:21 - Lindsay Lyons
Yep I also think if we do have a framework. So, for example, maybe we reflect as a group before we do the reflection section, individually or with partners, whatever it's like, okay, we're reflecting as a group with whatever framework we're using. We're using the compass, the courageous conversation compass, great, like what were the trends in our group, based on the framework. Or if we're using the discussion quadrants, where did we fall? So maybe that's helpful to just pick the framework. Or, if it's two frameworks, to be really clear about how we're condensing the information shared in that reflection. 

0:13:59 - Kara Pranikoff
Yeah, yeah my instinct is to use one framework as a way in, because even in that we'll start to get a sense of trends, and then it there's a clear line of thinking for that reflection. Yep, right, I do think it's hard to have a big conversation and then be metacognitive about it. So like I always suggest to teachers if you're doing it in the classroom, like be metacognitive about it. So like I always suggest to teachers if you're doing it in the classroom, like be metacognitive to the next day. You know what I mean. Like have a quick thumbs up, thumbs down. How do we do? But like really unpack the conversation the next day, cause I think it's hard, I think it's hard for adults also, so do you think that actually that reflection using the framework like, for example, we use the compass that actually that does live in the reflection section. 

0:14:45 - Lindsay Lyons
After they have gotten out of the circle or whatever like space that they're in for conversation, and now they're back at their desk, they took two minutes to walk around and think. Then we ask the question there. 

0:14:58 - Kara Pranikoff
And then share out. Yeah, I think we need a break. I think we need I mean, I think we could stay in the circle, but I do think we need to have a discussion and then have the circle close. I'm imagining a circle but like have the circle close, take five minutes. You could come back to the circle and do the compass, or we could do it individually, like back in our regular place, but I think we do need a minute. 

0:15:23 - Lindsay Lyons
Perfect, okay, and that way we could have like kind of fellow. We can identify what we're actually sharing out whole group, whether it's like fellows analysis of how the conversation went or like trends of ideas. Conceptually maybe they're. They focus on like one thing, like each of us who's facilitating focuses on maybe content and then the courageous conversations. Compass is an individual reflection that's focused on how I experience it. Right, because that's what that is. 

0:15:47 - Kara Pranikoff
Yes, great, I love that. And then that's really clear because also, if we're modeling for teachers, teachers need to have clarity that students may or may not are going to have a emotional reaction, whatever that emotional reaction is, and we've got to have some kind of way as an educator to tune into that or or provide space for that Right. Like one thing that comes to mind is you know, in a classroom you're in an intense conversation and about history or current events or whatever it is, and at some point in the conversation like seven kids are done, yep, but seven still need to talk Like how do you handle that? Because both things are both. You have to acknowledge both things. You know what I mean. 

0:16:36 - Lindsay Lyons
Yep. So I'm just writing like how can we as facilitators and this is like a reflection question, I think, for everyone, not just us in the space, but we as the collective educators provide space for learners to get support based on their how they're experiencing the discussion? Yep, great, okay, I just want to make sure that aligns with what you're thinking. What do you think? Maybe we go to protocol now, so we have the six groups. What is the format for the discussion in terms of like, is it Socratic, seminar style? Is it circle style? I also have in the back of my head that this lingering question of this is like a long-term, like arc. I want to like get to all these things long-term, but I just want to kind of slot them depending on where they fit best. Okay, so, yeah, so my thought is there are several discussion protocols I have in my head. Some of them are great, for I'm opening the question we're going to do human barometer and you're going to just take a side of the room and then you're going to talk in small groups and share out a couple like way lower touch, way lower intensity. The experience is a little bit easier. 

We're not citing sources. Yeah, circle is very like right, like everyone is listened to, everyone has the talking to use their hands. I often feel like that's like the personal connections come out best there, like here's my personal story or whatever I don't. Sometimes I center text in those, sometimes they don't, and then Socratic feels very much like a cumulative end of the unit. We have several texts to pull from and because we're pulling from two texts, I'm wondering like I'm leaning a bit towards that. But I also value the other pieces and I'm wondering if, because we're going to have them like this day, this is day one and the next day is day two and we're opening a unit, and so I'm wondering if one of those others like, for example, if we did Socratic today does circle or human barometer work as kind of a beginning of a unit, like that's a more common protocol for the beginning of the unit. And since we're unit centered in that way, I'm just yeah, those are my thoughts. What do you think? 

0:18:48 - Kara Pranikoff
those are my thoughts. What do you think? Oh so, my pedagogical instinct is always to do socratic like it's. It's there and I also really think that you know. So, at the beginning of third grade or beginning of fourth grade you might not be fully socratic, but certainly in week two the teacher doesn't need to be calling on anyone. I can, somebody can put their thumbs up and I can call somebody up, like there's immediate ways to center students from the second week of school. You know what I mean, even if it's not fully Socratic. My concern is we've just met everybody. It's 11 o'clock in the morning and this is heavy. Are we? Is this too much? Do we like? We just like, dump them in this? Yep. All of it's heavy and hard, yep. So if I hold on to that and we know they're coming back, is there a way we maybe we look at the documents, whatever they are right? I'm imagining some kind of visual document and two pieces of text. Do you want to say something? 

0:19:54 - Lindsay Lyons
No, I'm with you, keep going. 

0:19:56 - Kara Pranikoff
Is there a way that we like look at the text I have my own experience I gather some ideas or some things that I might want to say in discussion. I turn and talk to the person next to me. There's like a very low level, like I'm in the work but I'm not publicly in the work, really big, and then we can go back the next day maybe and have a conversation. Or like when people like we go back and have the larger discussion the next day. 

0:20:31 - Lindsay Lyons
Okay, I love this, I love this, love this. Yes, let's keep the same question for today. And I so, yes, so I'm with you and I'm wondering what the? I just wrote a bunch of things on our collective doc, so, like one iteration of that could be just, yeah, simple, turn and talk. One could be like what did you call it? A museum walk? Earlier? I liked that Same thing. Yeah, um, the. 

The human barometer I would envision is like we do a entry, entry level instead of it's how do we heal, it's is it possible to heal? And so that's like the agree, disagree and we start surfacing those ideas, or it could be a circle, and we, we model, like what we would do with students, where it's like is it possible to heal from harm, and it's, it's general, um, and it's like, okay, I'm thinking maybe about my relationship with my parents or my siblings, or like a personal thing, and it's like how does healing happen? And so we take it from the personal to the content and model how that I think there's a lot of options. Yes, I love that. Do you feel like you're gravitating towards one form at over? 

0:21:41 - Kara Pranikoff
another, so my the top two. If I like, contextualize this first day and all of that I kind of want to do, turn and talk, and human barometer, I think we could probably do. Yeah, and we can have a more public ideas conversation discussion the next day. 

0:22:03 - Lindsay Lyons
Yep, I wonder oh, go ahead, no, no, go ahead. What if we did human barometer and then sit down and turn and talk? Or even in your groups, turn and talk, Great, great. I love this because it's so excited. It's yeah, it's so exciting Cause it's like really modeling. Right, we did just meet you. You will meet your children and immediately dive into all of this content. That is hard. And what is the way? Like sure we set agreements, sure we, you know, validate and comfort and do all the things that we do as teachers to build relationship with people. And like we cannot expect, I don't like when people are like this is a safe space, I have declared it, it is so. And it's like you can't do like that kid's perception of the safety is like not there yet, and so I get that we're basically doing that because we're like, okay, we've spent like seven hours with you and then tomorrow we're going there, but like you're also adults and we're trying to model quickly. So I think that's. 

0:23:04 - Kara Pranikoff
I also want to make sure that we don't tell them we're coming back, because I also think there's a real strength in modeling the power of returning to documents after you've had a conversation and some separation. I'm a different person, right? Even if I've just talked to one person, I return to those documents in a different space. Also, we will have been thinking about those four core values for the rest of the day, so I'm entering those documents in a different place than I did the day before at 11. So I think the kids do that also. 

I think sometimes one of the challenges for educators is to look at a primary source and get it quickly and forget that there's layers and you're talking to eight-year-olds and they haven't seen as many things, and I need to process what my classmate said and it's great to come back to it, right, or even the pedagogical practice of like, if there's a source that's really important, leave it up at your board and have it there for two weeks, whether or not you're talking about it, like kids are returning to it, and I think that we can model that also. That was a lot. 

0:24:24 - Lindsay Lyons
No, that was awesome and I just want to clarify. So you were saying we would tell them that we're coming back to a day two. I wouldn't tell them, you would not tell them. Okay, I think I'm missing that part. Why would? 

0:24:35 - Kara Pranikoff
because why wouldn't I tell them? 

0:24:41 - Lindsay Lyons
Cause I agree with everything you said in terms of like we're in a different space when we need the time and reflection. 

0:24:48 - Kara Pranikoff
So I think I wouldn't tell them because I want them to be fully engaged in that experience. And I think the debrief the next day of, like we're coming back here. How is it different this time? Why would it be different? I don't want to know that I'm coming back. I don't know why am I having this sense? There's some kind of sense of I want to be my fullest self on day one and not wonder about why we're coming back or know that I'm coming back. I want to say the things that I need to say. And then I want a bit of the disequilibrium the next day when we say, okay, we're going to have a Socratic seminar, these things probably look familiar. Why might we talk about these things? Like I'm wanting the disequilibrium so that we can kind of construct why we would come back. But I can be veered Like what's the benefit of letting them know? Let me ask you that. 

0:25:47 - Lindsay Lyons
Yeah, I think that's so interesting to hear that, and so I am acknowledging that. That is totally how a lot of people probably feel. It's like I and I do want them to be their their full self. So a couple of one possibility that's like maybe, uh, together, maybe, I'm not sure One idea was okay, I let them have the conversation. Then, after the conversation, say like we'll be returning tomorrow because this is why because I usually will do this opener with the same question. 

That happens for a month or two months, however long the unit is yeah, yeah, to say like I think it takes the pressure off from I'm thinking of Matthew Kay, who talked about like you can't just have one conversation on race, like and that's it, like that's that puts too much pressure on the students and the teacher to have the conversation, and so I wonder if some students might be like, well, if I don't have any other opportunity, I want to say all these things and I have to get it right and I have to be perfect and I there's so much pressure on, this is the one time because maybe we've never talked about it in any other grade before, and this is like I have things to say and you know, I, whatever, yeah, and so I wonder if it is like this is not the conversation, we will be back and we want you to be fully present in today, so we have no expectation of you pulling from Any sort of documents at this moment. 

Yes, and then just kind of lower the pressure that way. I don't know if you feel like that checks the box, though, or if that somehow takes away from the presence that you were describing. 

0:27:20 - Kara Pranikoff
No, I mean, I think, at the end of the day, we're agreeing that anything that's in the classroom, you want to, you want it to have its fullest life, right? You want and we want teachers to know that it's important to go back to things that kids have seen right, especially if we're thinking about the inquiry cycle. We want students, ultimately, we want students to say in the middle of a conversation remember the map we talked about last week? Or like, I'm going to grab that map we talked about last week because it's relevant to this conversation, right? So, but I agree with you and I remember that bit from Matthew K. I think you're right, it's not just, it's not everything in this conversation. So let's, let's let them know we're coming back, okay. 

0:28:04 - Lindsay Lyons
And we can do that. Do you think the best place for that is after they have the conversations, day one like not prior or prior, I think no, I think. 

0:28:15 - Kara Pranikoff
I think after they have the conversation right, I think. 

0:28:18 - Lindsay Lyons
I think that will be like. So we had the conversation. I think I'm like going back a little bit on what some of the reasons that I said, but I I do think it still works because it's like someone may be sitting and like but I had more to say, or I said that wrong, or like actually I would may be sitting and like but I had more to say, or I said that wrong, or like actually I would change my answer and like that can be eliminated. When we say hey, we're coming back tomorrow. Like more time, wait a second, wait a second. 

0:28:38 - Kara Pranikoff
Here's an idea, okay. So something that I often do in the classroom when discussion is established and I think you and I've talked about this is in preparation for a conversation, we'll like decide on what the question is, whatever, and then I'll have kids write like what are my first ideas about this question, and then at the end of the conversation, like draw a line Now I'm thinking, whatever it is that I'm thinking, or now I'm wondering, or tomorrow when we come back, here's what I want to talk about. So I wonder if we introduce some kind of in the reflection, some kind of like where are you now, you know, like what's something that you're wondering after this conversation, or where's, like, the place that your head is? Or is there something that a colleague said Like you know some kind of reflection on the conversation and how the conversation, even the turn and talk and barometer, push their own um, their own thinking about the documents. Could we? 

0:29:42 - Lindsay Lyons
do something like that. I love that and I actually so the socratic seminar template that I usually share, which credit to all of the people who like co-created this. They have a section. Page three is to be to be completed in the last five minutes of a class, or like a discussion, like we've ended the discussion formally and yeah, it's like there's three questions. It's like what? I think it's something like what ideas are remaining with you, or kind of sticking with you, what have you changed your mind? Or how has your, how's your thinking evolved, and also a process question of how did we do with our community agreements? Like would you add a new one? Did you know? Yeah, so we can use something like that, but like maybe tailor it down to third grade as opposed to like this was a high school created thing right, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, and I think that that is like now, I'm thinking like what you know? 

0:30:37 - Kara Pranikoff
or, or, uh, sometimes I use the language of did your idea like grow or change? Oh, I like it. Yeah, it's the same. 

0:30:48 - Lindsay Lyons
It's just third grade language yep, great, great, awesome, I think. I think that's good for the discussion part. Okay, cool, okay. I hope you truly enjoyed that conversation between Cara and myself. I am so excited to learn and collaborate with folks. I am totally still growing in terms of making, for example, adult professional learning truly aligned to the experiences that I coach teachers to facilitate for their students. 

Sometimes, when we're facilitating PD or when we're designing learning experiences in general, it's just really hard to take yourself out of the content you want to deliver and think really thoughtfully about the pedagogy, and so this conversation really stretched me. I highly encourage you to find a thought partner who's going to stretch you as well. So we plan learning experiences a ton like way, way, way, way, way better when we have someone that we can bounce ideas off of. So to help you get some thought partnership, cara and I are inviting you to one week on our Slack-based coaching platform, eduboost, for free. It starts, if you're listening to this, as soon as it airs next week, on Monday, august 12th 2024. You can sign up at the blog post for this episode at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 175. And if you're listening later on, don't worry, you can still head there. Click on the form on the blog post and you'll be entered into our wait list. We will do these again in the future. We are dedicated to this coaching model and we are so excited to work with you. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazzed as I am about my coaching program for increasing student-led discussions in your school. 

Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling at yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm how I can help you make this big dream a reality. To brainstorm how I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan, from full-day trainings and discussion protocols like Circle and Socratic Seminar to follow-up classroom visits where I can plan, witness and debrief discussion-based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy, no-strings-attached brainstorm call at lindsaybethlyonscom contact. Until next time, leaders, think big, act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network. 

0:33:14 - Kara Pranikoff
Better today, better tomorrow, and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at teachbettercom slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. 
​​

​​If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

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In this episode, we continue to talk about the PLC at Work® framework with Dr. Chad Dumas!  He discusses the importance of asset-mindedness, time constraints and the development of refined collaboration skills in teacher teams.

Dr. Chad Dumas is a Solution Tree PLC at Work®, Assessment, and Priority Schools associate and international consultant, presenter, and award-winning researcher whose primary focus is collaborating to develop capacity for continuous improvement. With a quarter century of successful leadership experience, Chad has led significant improvements for both students and staff. He shares his research and knowledge in his books, Let’s Put the C in PLC: An Action Guide to Put the C in PLC, and upcoming Teacher Team Leader Handbook, and consulting that includes research, stories, hands-on tools, useful knowledge, and practical skills.


The Big Dream 

People see the inherent 'gems' in others, moving away from deficit perspectives to nurturing humanity's potential. He envisions a world where educators can identify and cultivate the qualities in people that may be hidden, leveraging education as the key to unlocking these treasures.

Mindset Shifts Required

Foster an asset-minded culture. 

Example: Instead of starting an IEP meeting with all of the problems that the child has, everyone shares characteristics or attributes or virtues that the student manifests. 

Action Steps  

Step 1: Begin by developing rapport with others, matching their physical behavior and intonation to build relationships effectively.

Step 2: Align team focus and actions through shared agendas and strategies that maintain rapport, like the "third point" and collective note-taking.

Step 3: Learn and apply effective collaboration techniques, ensuring that meetings focus on impactful practices that drive student improvement.


Challenges?

Finding time for collaboration: This is about prioritization. It has to be a priority. Learn from others and make it happen. 

Collaboration skills. Help teams learn how to collaborate well. 

One Step to Get Started 

See in others what they don't yet see in themselves…and get Dr. Dumas’s book! 

Stay Connected

You can find Dr. Chad Dumas on the following platforms:

• Website
• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

To help you implement the lessons from today, Dr. Dumas is sharing his page of free resources with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 174 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.

Quotes: 

• “My focus is on building capacity and helping to draw out from people talent and skills that maybe they don't even know exists themselves.” 
• “Write in…each level of the bullseye, characteristics or attributes or virtues that this one particular person manifests. And after this, then it was used in different places and I remember in an IEP meeting, instead of starting with all of the problems that the child has, they started with this…Everybody got a bullseye and everybody in the room— teacher, administrator, para, a parent I don't think students were in the room for this particular meeting—but they started with that, and it completely shifted the way in which those conversations then flowed.” 
• “[The lack of time…] it's really a mindset shift, because there are thousands of schools, maybe tens of thousands of schools all over the country and world, who figured it out. It's a matter of getting some people in the room to sit down to think creatively, to look at some other schedules, to look at some resources and let's together look at our constraints and let's make it happen…Now, once the time is set, there is absolutely no research that says you get a group of people in a room breathing the same air at the same time of the day that you're going to improve student learning….If they're not focused on the right stuff, it can have a negative impact on student performance and professional practice…It can become toxic… And so that becomes the second big challenge is to help teams do the right work, because we're not trained in collaboration…”

TRANSCRIPT
​0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons
Dr Shad Dumas, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 

0:00:07 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Thank you so very much for having me. 

0:00:09 - Lindsay Lyons
I'm really excited. I've already enjoyed all of the conversations like pre-hitting record that we've been having, so I'm excited to dive in and I think one of the things I like to frame the episode with beyond the very traditional bio that is, you know, sometimes feels like in 60 characters or 60 words or whatever, it's very limited in terms of who we are Is there anything that you want listeners to be aware of beyond that formal bio or to keep in mind as we jump in today? 

0:00:36 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Well, I suppose. Well, first of all, thank you for having me. It's been a mutual admiration in the few minutes that we've been able to talk and I'm so blessed to be able to join you and engage with your listeners a little bit today. In terms of what people might want to know about me other than the typical bio is I'm an educator first. Right. I was a classroom teacher, professional developer. Classroom teacher, professional developer. Even when I was a principal and went on to the really dark side of central office administration, I was still. I still considered myself an educator first and foremost. Right. And still to this day now, as a consultant working with designated leaders, teacher leaders, classroom teachers, the whole gamut of folks. Right, my focus is on building capacity and helping to draw out from people talent and skills that maybe they don't even know exists themselves. 

0:01:34 - Lindsay Lyons
I love that phrase building capacity. I think that'll be a good one to thread through the conversation. I think there's so much richness about building capacity in your book where you actually have ideas that are concrete, tangible reflective pieces for leaders. I'm getting a little ahead of myself here, but I think there's there's so much in there that is a testament to exactly that and how you help coach people to do that. So thank you. 

0:01:58 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah. Building capacity is this fascinating thing because it's a. It's a term that's been thrown around I don't know a quarter of a century, maybe more. I think about Linda Lambert's work, right, I think 1999 was her first foray into building capacity, and since then people just like it seems like we use that term without a clear understanding of what it means, and so that's been a point of reflection for me. Recently is okay. So what does this mean to really build capacity in folks? 

0:02:29 - Lindsay Lyons
Yeah, and I feel like we'll get into that a little bit today. Is there anything that you want to kind of share at this point? In the conversation to kind of tease for people what that looks like. 

0:02:39 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Yeah, kind of like as a hook. So my thinking has really gone along the lines of two different areas in building capacity. And many times when we think of building capacity, when we're clear about it, we think about what people need to do, like we build the capacity in doing X, y and Z, and that is important. Correlated with that, or on a similar, you know, parallel path, is also helping people to understand why we're doing that what and not telling them why, but helping them to craft their own why through reflective practice, through connection to their past experiences, to connection to actual practice and then reflection on that practice. So that's kind of where my mind has gone with building capacity is is not just the what which we think about right away, but the why we do what we do. 

0:03:34 - Lindsay Lyons
That is so good Cause when we get to thinking about like buy-in versus co-creation ownership right Like oh yes, so many things and we'll, I think, we'll we'll talk a bit about, like those action steps, the what as well as the why, today. 

But I think I want to take a step back first and think about, you know that, the big idea I often quote Dr Bettina Love at the start of these episodes. You know she describes freedom dreaming as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, which is poetic, beautiful, powerful. And I'm wondering, with that in mind, like what is that big dream for you that you hold for the field? 

0:04:11 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, just like that quote really resonates with you and I love that I have not heard it before, so I appreciate you raising that for me. You know, dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. One of the quotes that really has resonated with me throughout my career is a quote that comes from the 19th century, so about 200 years ago, right from the founder of the Baha'i faith, and he says that he says to regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value, man and you know we're talking 1900s, right? So human beings, right as a mine, like you know, like a gold mine or whatever. And he says that as a mine in in um, rich in gems of inestimable value, right, I mean. I mean I think about the, I think about my kids and and colleagues, and imagine, you know, the rubies and the diamonds and the pearls and all of these inestimable value gems. 

And then, and then Baha'u'llah goes on and he says education alone can cause it to reveal the treasures and enable mankind to benefit therefrom. So, you know, so each person has all these gems and only through education can we reveal those gems and then allow them to be put to service right, to make humanity better make the world a better place. So, in terms of that question, you know what's the big dream that you hold for education. My dream is that we're able to achieve that right To see each other and the children in front of us not from a deficit standpoint but from an asset. You know what are those gems and how do we go about uncovering them, and then how do we help those individuals put those to the benefit of humanity. 

0:06:08 - Lindsay Lyons
I love that and I think a huge piece of that being asset-minded right is thinking about that mindset shift for some folks right, we often identify challenges. How do we fix it in education? Can you speak a little bit more to that kind of shift and its importance in leading education spaces? 

0:06:24 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Oh man, it's huge. I remember I think I was a central office administrator at the time in Hastings, nebraska, and sharing with I'm pretty sure that's where I was. It may have been before that, when I was a principal, but I'm pretty sure it was when I was a central office sharing with colleagues the I don't remember what the exact strategy was called, but it's like a bullseye and every person in the room got a bullseye right, so it's got these many layers and the task was to write in the bullseye each level of the bullseye, characteristics or attributes or virtues that this one particular person manifest. And after this, then it was used in different places and I remember in an IEP meeting, instead of starting with all of the problems that the child has, they started with this and parents, and so they started with silence. Everybody got a bullseye and everybody in the room teacher, administrator, para, a parent I don't think students were in the room for this particular meeting, but they started with that and it completely shifted the way in which those conversations then flowed after that. 

Right Cause, then we were thinking from an asset based as opposed to your child can't read, they're only reading at this level, they're only computing at this level Right. Instead it was all asset based and genuine, like it wasn't sometimes. Sometimes we've been in IEP meetings where you can feel it going downhill quick and then somebody needs to throw a token praise comment in right. 

And it doesn't help, right. It's like, okay, yeah, thank you, token appreciation. Let's be genuine and authentic and, from the get-go, drawing out those great assets, those gems of inestimable value. 

0:08:27 - Lindsay Lyons
Oh, that's so good. And I love that example of the IEP meeting. I mean people could do that tomorrow, right, listening to this episode, like that's great, right, yep, yep, I love it. And I'm thinking too about this idea of building capacity and how a lot of times I'm just thinking about if there was a student in that meeting, for example, and being able to practice identifying their own strengths right, or even any of the stakeholders in the room like being able to routinely build that skill of identifying strengths pretty easily or quickly, because if we're not used to it, I imagine it could be hard. 

I think there's a tie there to that sense of building capacity, and so I kind of want to like use that as our segue to think about what are those action steps that a leader can take to build capacity, to lead in that way, to focus on assets, and I know that you list from your dissertation, I think, your 10 elements of principled knowledge. So I don't know if this is a space for that as well, but I just love to say, listening to this, buy it into the dream. People are eager to get something moving in their systems, in their buildings, like where do, where do they go? What's kind of the, the roadmap for them? 

0:09:33 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think the the the biggest thing is our own selves, right, you know, looking in the mirror, I don't remember who said it, but there was a particular quote that says something like our greatest fear isn't that we can't achieve something, the greatest fear is that we have all the power in the world to achieve it and yet we fail to marshal our own efforts to make it happen. Right? So, thinking about, and that starts with each of us, right, with each of us and within each of us, by being reflective about our own practices, by being intentional about our own practices. And so you mentioned, like you know, those 10 elements of what it takes to build a collaborative culture. From my dissertation, and then book, let's put the CMPLC. From my dissertation, and then book, let's put the C and PLC. 

And my mind goes directly to the first element which, by the way, they're not in any particular order. Like the research doesn't say start here and then go here. I put them in that order and I didn't put them in a particular order other than the first one and the last one. Those two were the first one is charismatic leader isn't, isn't necessary for long-term success, right, it's about relationships, relationships, relationships. And then the 10th one I put in that place because it's about okay. So how do you lead change After all of this? Now, what Leading change? So those two are I put in that space. Everything else just happened to fall where it is space, everything else just happened to fall where it is. 

So the first one of building relationships many times we think that we're really good at building relationships and maybe we're not as good as what we think we are, and so I share some specific skills and practices that maybe are helpful with that right, and so I refer to them as the three plus one, although I should have called them the one plus three, because really the one comes before the three and the one is developing skills and behaviors and really an attitude of getting into developing rapport with others, and so, again, that's, you know, people talk about. Well, I have rapport, what do you right, like? And so rapport manifests itself in our physical behavior, right. So when we're in rapport with each other, our behavior starts to mirror each other, not mimic, but mirror, right. So like you move your head, I move my head, you mirror right. 

So, like you move your head, I move my head. You know, I move my hands, you move your hands right, and there's, like these physical manifestations that people don't even realize when you're not in rapport. It's very obvious. And so the challenge is, especially with people that you don't have good relationship with, is to get into rapport with them so that then you can then start to build those relationships right. And so if I'm with someone who so, for instance, if you see me, my head tends to move a lot when I engage with folks, right, because I tend to have a pretty approachable voice and approachable sense to me, right, so that means my head moves a lot. So when I'm with people who don't move their heads a lot and they're very formal in their movements, I need to match that right, I need to mirror that, to get into rapport, and so that then enables them the three skills but that's the foundational like developing with rapport with people, paying attention to their intonation, to their body language and their gestures. 

0:13:16 - Lindsay Lyons
That's so good, and I think one of the things that I absolutely loved was that grounding in relationships in your book, and I saw it come up and the three plus one. 

Actually I I think I in my notes anyways this is probably not how it's organized, but in my notes was um, connected also to the section on teams and dialogue, which I love, that linkage of I mean you quoted fairy, which I also love with like dialogue, it's the act of creation, I mean lots of cool stuff in there. But I I was thinking about that too from a perspective of like plcs and teams and the uh power of being in real relationship with people in a team, and how high functioning teams are, like rocking, and and then the dysfunction of a team that's not in relationship with one another could just totally kind of scuttle everything. And I I'm wondering if there's either a story that you wanted to share or like a something to be aware of or mindful of or watchful of as a leader, as you're kind of creating these teams or nurturing the team's relationships, because I think that's a really tough thing to do. 

0:14:22 - Dr. Chad Dumas
well, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah, and I think what you're getting at is one-on-one. It's easier to do, right? I can get into rapport with you and I can pay attention to your movements and work really hard to match and mirror, not mimic Again. People don't, you know that ticks people off, but if I'm doing it well, nobody will notice that I'm getting into rapport with you, which then will enable us to then move forward in a productive conversation. Now, in a group it's a little bit different, right, because how can I, if I'm with six people, how can I get into rapport with five different people who have five different sense of body? You know hand gestures or intonation, and so, as a leader, you tend to be more with groups of people, right, when you're leading meetings and such, and so I'm really glad you asked this, because it's actually one of the first things I addressed in my next book that'll be coming out, I think, end of August, early September, and it's Solution Tree is publishing it and I'm really excited about it. I think it's I'm hopeful that it will have a significant impact on the field. It's called the Teacher Team Leader Handbook, so it's really focused on teacher team leaders, and then the subtitle is Simple Habits to Transform Collaboration in a PLC at Work, and one of the skills that I share in that book very early on is that of developing group rapport. Like, how do you develop group rapport, if I can call them? 

Colleagues Michael Grinder and Kendall Zoller really go after this and have figured out that synchronicity is really the key to group rapport. And so, as a leader, if you don't have synchronicity in a group and so synchronicity means like we're all looking at the same direction or we're all breathing from the same location, like that's really important to pay attention to. We need to do something to develop synchronicity. And so many times you walk into a meeting and you'll see one person's on their computer, one person's on a phone, one person's taking notes, one person's you know like like we're not in sync. And so it's really important early on in a meeting to develop synchronicity, and so that can happen a number of different ways. And basically synchronicity means we're all doing the same thing at the same time. That's it right. We're just doing the same thing at the same time. 

So what does that? That could look like we project the agenda on a screen and I say, if I'm the leader of the meeting, hey, hey, friends, glad to see you all this afternoon looking as brilliant as always. Really glad to have you all here. Let's take a look at the agenda that's posted on the screen and together let's identify which out of these elements of here are you most interested in today. And what you can see on the screen is I turned my head and looked at the agenda, I paused and I stopped talking, which felt probably awkward to your listeners and will feel very awkward to you as well. 

But what that does is, first of all, my people's eyes tend to follow each other's eyes, right? If you're having a conversation with someone and their eyes dart over to the side, what happens? You tend to look. It's just a natural reaction. Our eyes follow people's eyes. And so if my eyes now look at this screen and I stop talking, even if I wasn't paying attention, my brain now does, because something different is happening. The brain notices differences, and so just by that we have developed synchronicity. Now we can move forward. So creating so that's called the third point, right? Another way you can develop synchronicity is through laughter. Laughter is a magical tool, right? Because then everybody, people laugh from the same location. It's low and deep in their diaphragm. It gets endorphins going in the brain, it makes us feel good and it helps us be connected to each other. So laughter is a great way to be able to establish synchronicity. 

There's a little sticky note on the table in front of you. Would you take a moment and jot down what's the most important thing we need to be talking about today in the meeting? Please take 30 seconds about today in the meeting. Please take 30 seconds Synchronicity, now everybody is, and then we'll share it out. Right, or turn and talk. Turn to the person next to you what on the agenda is most interesting to you. 

Out of the outcomes that we've identified today, is there anything that needs to be added, changed or deleted to meet your needs today? So these are. I think I just gave you about like four or five different ways to establish synchronicity, to get that group into rapport with each other so that then the relationships are more likely to be sustained. Now that rapport isn't going to hold out the whole meeting, right? So as a leader, we have to be paying attention to that, because at some point we're going to go out of rapport. Then what do we need to do? Establish synchronicity again. Third point get some laughter, a turn and talk, write something down Everybody doing the same thing at the same time. 

0:19:29 - Lindsay Lyons
Wow, that's so cool. I was so excited that you went there, because that was unexpected and not in the book, the preview. 

0:19:37 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Yeah, preview of the next one. 

0:19:39 - Lindsay Lyons
It's incredible and it'll be good timing, cause when this is out, it'll be like a month away. Yes, yeah. 

0:19:44 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Everybody can put it on their calendar or they probably can pre-order it by the time it's gone. 

0:19:48 - Lindsay Lyons
Oh, that's cool, that's exciting. 

So I think one of the things that, as a leader, I think people are thinking or maybe thinking as they listen is okay, this is, this is super cool. 

However, for example, just throw this out there, cause, talk about the book a little bit. You know we don't have a lot of time, like time is a as a resource that we don't have enough of to be able to get people in teams to do this work, or which I think you, you share a beautiful resource from learning forward in the book, about which I was like oh yeah, this is great, you know, or there's, you know, there's a variety of challenges. I think is the point I'm trying to get at that people will say, yeah, but what about this thing? And I'm I'm curious to know what do you find is like the biggest challenge that people have leading this work, facilitating PLCs, putting the teams together, you know, whatever aspect of it we want to latch on to and talk about. But I'm curious to know what the challenges? And then, like, what have you seen people do to kind of overcome that challenge? Or or even preemptively, like get rid of the challenge? 

0:20:46 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Right, right, yeah, so so I've seen basically two. If I can boil it all down to two challenges that I've seen folks struggle with, one is you mentioned, like, the time. How do we find the time? And my question is, if we don't find the time, that's not a question, that's a statement we don't find the time. Here's the question Do we value the collaboration, anything we value? 

We will make the resources align to that value. Right? So, like I'm thinking about, like when I was first year teacher, making twenty thousand nine hundred fifty dollars a year, um, you know, back in lincoln public schools, and um, you know, with student loan payments and my wife was home with our kids and we had two mouths to feed, right, like there was no money, yet we found a way to go to Amigos once or twice a week. Right, we made it happen. Like we prioritized that, even though the funds weren't connected for right. And so it's the same in schools, like if we prioritize it, let's put our money where our mouth is and let's figure it out. And so that's the first challenge and it's really a mindset shift, because there are thousands of schools, maybe tens of thousands of schools all over the country and world, who figured it out. It's a matter of getting some people in the room to sit down to think creatively, to look at some other schedules, to look at some resources and let's together look at now our constraints and let's make it happen. So that's the first part of finding the time. Now, once the time is set, there is absolutely no research that says you get a group of people in a room breathing the same air at the same time of the day that you're going to improve student learning. It doesn't exist, right, and actually there's research that says that people are in the same room breathing the same air, doing the same thing. If they're not focused on the right stuff, it can have a negative impact on student performance and professional practice. Right, it becomes toxic. It can become toxic. So it's not just that people are meeting in the room, it's that what are they doing when they're in the room? And so that becomes. 

The second big challenge is to helping teams do the right work, because we're not trained in collaboration, right, we all are highly educated people. We've got our bachelor's degrees, master's degrees, doctorate, specialist degrees people who are highly educated, and not a single I don't. I've never seen a course at university level that says here's how to collaborate. We don't know. Nobody has taught us how to collaborate, and so we need to learn what that is. We have picked up over time how to figure out the Bs of schools, buildings, buses and budgets, but that's not going to improve student learning. Figuring out when the next field trip is and how to schedule the buses and communicating with parents and parent permission for like, those things need to be done and they do nothing to improve student learning. And so what? 

We that was a strong phrase, I shouldn't use it they field trips, please. I hope I am not being misunderstood. Field trips are really important, powerful part of our students learning experiences, and they don't improve our practice that results in student learning. Let me put it that way powerful part of of our students learning experiences, and they don't improve our practice that results in student learning. Let me put it that way. So, so, helping people to understand. Okay, so what? What is the work of collaboration? And then how do we navigate the interpersonal dynamic associated with that? 

0:24:27 - Lindsay Lyons
I yeah, that's, that's so good. And I also think I think about this phrase one learning model for all, which is um, the international network for public schools that I taught out in my last four years of teaching always said that like you do something as an adult, you do the same thing with students. Right, it's like one learning model, and I think about that with collaboration. If you learn as an educator, as an adult, how to collaborate with your peers, you're then able to passively address some of the this is group work is hard or my kids don't work well together issues, because you're like well, I know how to do it. Now I've done it myself and now I can teach it better. 

0:24:58 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Yes, yes, exactly. It's not the same as just getting, it's not the same as a meeting, right. 

0:25:03 - Lindsay Lyons
Right, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Oh my gosh, this is. There's been so many beautiful gems in this conversation. I've really really enjoyed and I think it has gone an interesting like. I think there are a lot of branches right, a lot of different directions, and so I'm curious for the listener who's ready to, like step in the school building, they're done with the episode, they're ready to possibly start the school year by the time they're listening to this. What is the one kind of first step Like? What's the thing they do when they end the episode and kind of like start laying the foundation, start taking action? What would you say that should be or could be? 

0:25:44 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Yeah. So I guess I would have two first steps. The one is tongue in cheek go buy my next book, because that would be that it really you know there, there, there isn't much literature in the field around teacher team leaders and, and and that's the title, but really anybody who picks it up and is in a collaborative environment, um, will benefit from it. Or if they're not in a collaborative environment and they want to learn how to make their environment more collaborative. So, even though the title is geared towards teacher team leaders, well, first of all of all, anybody's a leader, right, but second of all, there are people who are in those designated positions. So that's tongue in cheek, but it may be helpful. The second thing that I would say is not tongue in cheek is to really think about this. 

Coming back to that quote at the beginning right, regarding other people as minds with gems of inestimable value. Right, it goes for kids, it goes for colleagues. And how do we, through education, uncover those gems? And so, thinking for yourself and your mindset, like reflecting on what are ways in which I see those gems in other people and maybe help to draw those out, even though they may so. 

So one of my mindsets that I identify in the teacher team leader handbook. I identify three mindsets that I think are important, and the first one is to see in others what they themselves don't yet see in themselves. And I think that's this idea like shifting that mindset to see in others what they don't yet see in themselves. And I think that's this idea like shifting that mindset to see in others what they don't yet see in themselves, and then take specific actions to draw that out. And I think if we all could do that, that could really transform our meetings, our systems, our schools. If we thought of everybody from that lens of how could I draw out from them what they don't yet even see in themselves. 

0:27:37 - Lindsay Lyons
Wow, that's good. What a beautiful world that would be. That would be so cool. I love that, yeah, yeah, and so I think, as the kind of final questions that I enjoy, asking this is fun, but also, I think, in addition to fun, just like really, it genuinely piques my interest of all the things that are out there to learn about. So I'm curious to know what you have been learning about lately, and it does not need to relate to your job or this conversation, although it can. 

0:28:06 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Oh man. So one of the things so I view myself as a learner you know the Gallup organization has those strengths finder things and every time I've done it, learner is one of my top five things and so it's really hard to pinpoint like one thing that I'm learning about. And one of the things I love about being a consultant is I'm constantly learning. Right, like people think that you're the one who's presenting, yeah, but you know what I've got to be learning myself. So I'm constantly reading. So I love if your listeners have never seen the Marshall memo, look up Kim Marshall. He's in Massachusetts and he has a weekly memo and you can sign up, like I think it's. If you just do it by yourself, it's like 50 bucks a year. Well worth the 50 bucks. 

And what he does is he reads through all of the educational journals you can imagine, like Ed, leadership, jsd, mathematics, educators, education, like all things, plc, anything you can imagine. He's got like I don't know 100 different articles, journals that he reads through whatever comes out that week and then he pulls out, like from his perspective, and he's got criteria for it, like the top eight or 10 that he thinks are like the most important or really would be useful to the field, and then he does a summary on them. And so every Monday I get Kim Marshall's memo with it's a I don't know, maybe eight pages a Word document with these articles with summary. So I don't even have to read the whole article. Although he always links them, you can go back to them and find the full article, and it covers everything right From teacher evaluation to professional learning communities to the reading science of reading stuff, math, math, like anything you can possibly imagine, so that that really that's probably the best source of my learning that I have personally. 

But of course I'm also, you know, like learning more about. Of course I'm an associate for solution tree and PLC at work, so I'm constantly learning more about that type of thing, right. Every time you pick up learning by doing, you learn more right. And every time I pick up RTI, the RTI handbook, taking action or any of the tools, I learn more and so all of these things. But Kim Marshall, his stuff is really fantastic. 

0:30:25 - Lindsay Lyons
Wow, that's incredible. I did not know about this resource. I'm like jotting notes frantically. I will be looking into that. 

0:30:31 - Dr. Chad Dumas
I think it's marshallmemocom. 

0:30:33 - Lindsay Lyons
If you just like Google that, it'll yeah, yeah, we can also link that in the show notes for listeners too. That's incredible. 

0:30:40 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Thank you, and I'll reach out to him and let him know that he'll be getting some subscriptions and some cuts coming your way, awesome. 

0:30:50 - Lindsay Lyons
I think one of the things I want to close with is just how much, how much I really enjoyed the putting the C and PLC book and how much I'm looking forward to your next book. 

And I I do want to just highlight for our listeners, um, the, the resources that you have at the end of each chapter, in addition to all of the information in the book itself, which is great. I just think there's so much value in like the little surveys that you had at the end I don't remember if you called them a survey, but like the little statements and you have the agreement scale, I think there's so much value in taking those, using them, having them be a reflective tool that everyone literally just grabs and uses tomorrow. Again, so easy to just take it. And I just want to kind of highlight that that's not just the content of your book but the organization itself. I really enjoy books that are organized with things that are like easily usable immediately, and you have that. The listeners just know I'm sure that will be in the next book as well. 

0:31:47 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Yeah Well, thank you, and your listeners can actually those self-assessments. I have them all on my website for free. You can just go and get all of the websites directly and download them and that website is tinyurlcom and then slash, put the C in PLC, put the C in PLC, so those and then there's a few other resources. Are there too, totally free? 

0:32:10 - Lindsay Lyons
That's incredible, thank you. We'll link that in the show notes and the blog posts for this episode. That's incredible. Thank you for sharing that. And where else can people like follow what you're doing? Where should they look for the next book when it's about to come out? How do they be in touch? 

0:32:25 - Dr. Chad Dumas
Yeah, yeah. Well, my website is my business name, which is next learning solutions. So nextlearningsolutionscom is my website, but I'm active on Twitter and it's very easy. I must have gotten on early. Without any numbers or anything, it's just at Chad Dumas, c-h-a-d-d-u-m-a-s, and then Facebook and LinkedIn Chad Dumas as well on there. So those are the places to track me down. 

0:32:54 - Lindsay Lyons
Amazing Chad. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. 

0:32:56 - Dr. Chad Dumas
I so appreciate your time my pleasure, thank you. 

​

​If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

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In this episode, Dr. Barbara Cirigliano discusses how PLCs are critical for early childhood educators and shares ideas on how to do them well. We talk about appropriate assessment methods for young children, the critical role of collaboratively developed standards and the transformative power of vertical alignment in curriculum planning. 

Dr. Barbara Cirigliano has been in Early Childhood Education for her whole career, as a teacher, coach, and principal. She authored the book, Success for Our Youngest Learners, and she loves to work with schools and their youngest learners.


The Big Dream 

Early childhood education is fully integrated into the professional learning community process. Educators assess young learners in developmentally appropriate ways, setting them up for high achievement from the start. All early educators learn the PLC process and use that process to develop teacher practice and to help kids learn at the highest levels. 

Mindset Shifts Required

Leaders and educators of older children should recognize early childhood education as an integral part of the educational continuum. 

A big “aha” for teachers in this work is the importance of consistency and equity in standards across classrooms. 

Action Steps to Take in PLCs to Determine Essential Standards   

Step 1: Review state standards and essential standards with a team.

Step 2: Individual teachers pick out the ones they really want students to learn.

Step 3: Come together to reach consensus on what you will all teach. 

Step 4: Create job-alike, vertical curriculum teams and align curricula vertically from Pre-K to Kindergarten and up. (Early childhood educators should be part of these district-wide PLCs!) 


Challenges?

1. Time. The leader has to “find time for teachers to do this, and sometimes it takes throwing away the whole master schedule and starting over, and that's really hard for some teachers”. Dr. Cirigliano said she used to have her teachers whose minds worked well with schedules design the schedule. 

1. Team dynamics and collaboration. You can employ strategies like using a talking piece or creating specific team communication agreements such as everyone shares an idea beyond “I agree with her.” 

One Step to Get Started 

Arrange meetings where teachers can begin discussing essential educational matters, paving the way for trust and collaboration. "Just start teachers getting used to coming together at a certain time, being on time for that meeting and talking about important things," she advises. This initial step is crucial for setting the foundation for more detailed work on standards and assessments.

Stay Connected

You can connect with Dr. Cirigliano via email at [email protected]


To help you implement these ideas in your context, Dr. Cirigliano is sharing several of the reproducibles from her book with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 173 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. 

Quotes: 

• I worked with a school in Atlanta and I had all the four-year-old teachers together and I said to them so what does it look like? Or I had the kindergarten teachers together too what does it look like when your students write their name, what is proficient? And one teacher said well, if I can read it, it's fine. And another teacher said no, no, no, no, no, it has to be capital letters, finger space, blah, blah, blah. And I said do you see what's happening here? This isn't equitable…So I think it's the equity that the light turns on for some kindergarten teachers.”  
• ”My early childhood teachers talked about shapes for about 25 minutes. What are the most important shapes? A triangle, square, circle, you know? No, a triangle. They don't need to know a triangle when they're three. They need to know a triangle when they're four. There's no right or wrong. They just have to agree on what's most important…It's more consensus than 100% [agreement], so I think that's important.” 
• “Lots of times we do observation assessments and children might be playing and you might…have everyone go through this center where it's a math center and it's counting, and…sit and watch or give a prompt. It’s the same prompt everybody's giving—’Count these blocks for me. How many can you count? How many do you see?’ The prompt has got to be similar. It can't be one teacher says, ‘Count the blocks for me.’ [and] the other teacher says, ‘Count one, two, three, four, five.’ It has to be similar. But while they're playing you do that and I used to just record things on a sticky note…” ​

TRANSCRIPT
​​0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons
Dr Barbara Sirigliano, so nice to have you on the Time for Teachership podcast. Thank you for inviting me. I am so excited for our conversation today because I think the little ones don't get talked about enough, and so, thinking about the PLC process, particularly with educators of young children, and particularly as a parent right now of a two-year-old, I'm really, really in that space and so really interested in you know what does that look like for young learners? So before we even like dive into that conversation, I'm really curious to know is there anything beyond the traditional bio or anything that people should know about you that you want to kind of anchor our conversation in? 

0:00:43 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Not really. I do. Now have three grandchildren five, three and one and so I really focus in on I'm really able to focus in on early childhood and in watching them develop. It just hits home to me and makes what I do seem more important than ever. 

0:01:03 - Lindsay Lyons
What a beautiful connection. I love when it goes beyond the professional bio to like we are full human beings with many people in our lives. 

0:01:10 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Right, yeah, so just watching, you know. And my daughter-in-law says should he be doing this right now? He's only 18 months. How many words should he have? And you know, my daughter with her three-year-old should she go to preschool right now or should you know what should we do? Why is she doing this? Is this okay? So it's really fun to be able to see them grow and develop, because I love that age. That's my favorite age. 

0:01:34 - Lindsay Lyons
That's incredible and they have such a good resource to be able to ask you Right, I know. Oh, awesome. Well, one of the first big questions I usually like asking guests is this idea of freedom, dreaming. So Dr Bettina loves talks about it as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, which I think is a beautiful phrase. And so, considering that, what is that big dream that you hold for the field of education, either broadly or specific to the younger ages? 

0:02:04 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
I think that it I would focus more in on early childhood. I think that early childhood has been forgotten, and especially in the. When you talk about the PLC process, because the in a professional learning community, you know we assess children and so many early child teachers says we don't assess that's developmentally inappropriate. 

We don't test kids, we don't do this. So you know, and I would have said that 20 years ago, before I started and before my school became a professional learning community and now I think you really need to assess and there's a right way to assess young children, and so my hope and dream is that all early educators learn that process and use that process to develop and to make kids learn to high expectations, to the highest levels, and it starts at early childhood. You know their brain is developing so fast and so much is going on that that's where we need to really really start. My middle school principal, whenever we had big team meetings or whatever, would always say tell your teachers, thank you, barb, for giving them all these kids such a great head start. So she understood that and she was appreciative of the work that the early childhood educators in my district did. 

0:03:32 - Lindsay Lyons
I love that you really that you shared that story, but also that you center so much of the early childhood in the continuum of the district right Like we're incorporating early childhood educators in conversations in PLCs that are district-wide or otherwise, and I think that's a huge, maybe mindset shift for leaders. I'm curious if you know what are the mindset shifts associated with this work. What's kind of the aha moment that you've seen, even in a district leader or someone who's maybe more of a building leader in this work? 

0:04:06 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
I think that for so long, special ed and early childhood has been oh, they're down there, they're down the hall, they do this, they do their own thing. And I think what really comes to mind is I worked with a school in Atlanta and I had all the four-year-old teachers together and I said to them so what does it look like? Or I had the kindergarten teachers together too what does it look like when your students write their name, what is proficient? And one teacher said well, if I can read it, it's fine. And another teacher said no, no, no, no, no, it has to be capital letters, finger space, blah, blah, blah. 

And I said do you see what's happening here? This isn't equitable. And they're like oh yeah, when you tell a child to spell cat and you say spell cat. Or you say spell cat, it's not equitable. And so when you assess kids, we really need to work on that with young children, and we never did before because we never talked about assessing kids as a team. So I think it's the equity that the light turns on for some kindergarten teachers. And I had the principal at the school tell me well, when my child had this teacher, they said they knew the ABCs. And then the next year they didn't know the letters of the alphabet because they were assessing them differently. And parents notice that. Parents wonder and the principal's like oh well, let me check this out. 

0:05:41 - Lindsay Lyons
Yeah, oh, my gosh, I love, I love that you went there, because one of my favorite chapters of your book was chapter four, where you talk about, like, literally breaking down that question of PLCs, of like what is it that we want students to know and be able to do, right, right. And I think that that really is a struggle for a lot of teams and a lot of you know schools and communities to just know how to even approach that conversation. Do you mind kind of walking us through, like what are the steps that a team could take to determine those essential standards? 

0:06:15 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Well, what we did is. The first thing we did is we looked at the state standards for kindergarten and at that time there were no early childhood standards 20 years ago so we had to crank them down. So you need to look at your state standards for early childhood. Or you need to look at some people use creative curriculum and they have a ton of standards and you need to go through the process of individually teachers go through and mark what is most important Because I talk about. You can't teach all of the standards, they can't learn them all, so you need to pick out the ones you really, really want them to learn, and so the teachers individually go through that. They're on their own. And then they come together and say how about this one? Who said this 4.1 was most important? Nobody, okay, not one we're going to worry about. Or everyone agreed on this one. So this is one we're going to worry about Because you need to have about a third of the total number of standards as your essential standards. That doesn't mean you're not going to teach the other ones, but it means these are the ones you are assuring that students will learn, and that's important for going on to the next grade. 

My first year I had 15 kindergarten classrooms and I looked at the report cards and saw so much variance and these kids went to all different first grade teachers and they go. Some of them know this and some of them know that and some of them know this. So these are the things that you're going to tell the four year old preschool teacher, you're going to tell the kindergarten teacher. You can tell the first grade teacher. They know these, they know these. So you don't have to start over at the beginning. You don't have to obsess them to find out. I'm telling you they know these. So when you go through that process, you decide which ones are most important and you really have real. You have to do it as a team. You can't take mine from my old schools and use mine because you have to talk about them. 

My early childhood teachers talked about shapes for about 25 minutes. What are the most important shapes? A triangle, square, circle, you know? No, a triangle. They don't need to know a triangle when they're three. They need to know a triangle when they're four. There's no right or wrong. They just have to agree on what's most important and what. If it's a triangle, then it's a triangle and everyone has to agree to agree. It's not. It's more consensus than 100%, so I think that's important. 

0:08:51 - Lindsay Lyons
I love that and just the specific example about the shapes and I think in the book you talked about colors. Right Like these are tangible things we can talk about. 

0:08:58 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Right, right, right. You don't think well, you know, I mean all those things. I have the background experience to know this works. I've, we've, done it. I know how the conversations go. Sometimes they're not pretty, but I've seen it in action and I've seen how kids do better. 

0:09:22 - Lindsay Lyons
So yeah, I wanted to touch on that because you brought it up about the assessments, right, and I think you shared in the story, just a story in the book, thinking about. I think it was your child who was really upset about the bubble filling out. Yeah, do you want to share that story? We're not doing that. 

0:09:41 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
We're not doing the bubble choices. I mean, the teacher was shocked. How am I going to know what he knows? I go lots of other ways, surprise, surprise. So you know, assessment is important, but it needs to be done appropriately and everyone has to agree on how it's done, because it has to be done in a pretty similar fashion and at the same time similar fashion and at the same time. 

0:10:09 - Lindsay Lyons
So yeah, do you mind talking through a couple of those examples? Because actually, as I was a former high school teacher and I was thinking, wow, those assessment options are assessment options I could use in high school as well, like they're not exclusive to the younger grades. 

0:10:18 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Right. So ways to assess children you're talking about. Lots of times we do observation assessments and children might be playing and you might say today I'm gonna have everyone go through this center where it's a math center and it's counting, and I'm just gonna sit and watch or give a prompt same prompt everybody's giving count this, these blocks for me, how many can you count? How many you see? And the prompt has got to be similar. It can't be one teacher says count the blocks for me. The other teacher can't say count one, two, three, four, five. It has to be similar. But while they're playing you do that and I used to just record things on a sticky note and pile them on my desk and by the end of the day I had a million. So you all kind of decide how you're going to do that. You can also do more, a more formal way of assessing young children in small groups and have them all sit at your table, like in a reading table in kindergarten. You can have them all sit there and you can, one by one, have them point to words or point to letters or anything like that. So you can do a small group, you can do observation and you can do an activity that's totally geared at assessing, but it's not a paper and pencil assessment, it's not a filling in the bubbles. 

So I think it's sometimes a lot harder for teachers of young children to assess, because some days a young child will know all the letters of the alphabet and the next day they won't. So I talked to teachers about part of it is your teacher education, your gut feeling too. They didn't get it today because you know they got off the bus crying and they were hungry and whatever you know. But I know in my heart they know them. The other piece is that when I talked to kindergarten teachers they did a letter recognition assessment and they wanted like 95% of the kids to know all the letters and when they did the assessment one teacher had four students that were on the cusp. They only missed one letter and they knew what that letter was and they were able to really focus on it for the next week to get them to that point. Instead of going over all the letters, you really get a specific item to really make sure that students learn. So you know. 

0:12:44 - Lindsay Lyons
I love those examples, I love how concrete they are. 

0:12:47 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Just like this is doable right, we can, it is doable, it is doable. And that's me. I'm the example queen. I don't tend to know it all, but I, you know, and I think I'm more believable to teachers because I have that experience. I've been sitting there, you know. I sent 200 report cards off to first grade and it said your child does not know all the letters of the alphabet. Well, which ones? Which ones don't they know? You know? Right, yeah. So that became really important and that's why assessment is so great, it's so wonderful, it's so useful. It's so useful. It guides your instruction, it's telling you how we're going to continue on instructing these children. 

0:13:34 - Lindsay Lyons
So yes, I love that that's such an integral part of the PLC process and thinking about like coming together to look at the data to identify the things we need to do next right, like a little action research process, and that I think that's so important because a lot of teachers, I think, get in the weeds of this is particularly in the older grades. I'm not sure about this in the younger grades, but you know we have this curriculum to cover, so we must proceed right, as opposed to the pause. Let's understand what's going on. What does the data say? How do we respond? 

0:14:10 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Right, when those kindergarten teachers got together about the letters of the alphabet, there were four classrooms and each classroom had two or three students that didn't know, like B and D, you know, because of the reversals and all that. So they took those four, two, four, six kids into a group and did interventions with those students, just those, and one teacher worked on those letters with those kids. So the other kids didn't have to suffer through that, you know, and that's how they learned them. 

0:14:38 - Lindsay Lyons
So that makes total sense. 

0:14:40 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Yeah, and all kids all of them are all our kids. 

0:14:45 - Lindsay Lyons
Yes, Right Back to those equity roots. Right, that's so good. And I think the other big thing that I was an aha for me when I was reading your book was thinking about the organization of PLCs and thinking about the inclusion of early childhood educators in vertical curriculum teams, I think is what you were calling them. They're like the job alike teachers, right? You know, we all teach social studies, pre-K through five. We're in a team and if there's, you know, four pre-K teachers that you can have one go to each subject area if possible, and we did yeah. 

Right, can you talk through a little bit about that Cause I think that's a huge mindset shift for some district leaders. 

0:15:29 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Well, I think it's important you can take the three-year-old essential standards, four-year-olds and five-year-olds and first grade ones, and you can line them all up on a wall, say in math, and see that there is a continuum. When we did that in our district we did it district-wide all the way up to eighth grade we found out that they were teaching the Civil War in third grade and fourth grade. It's like why are you doing this? Why you know? Oh, we didn't know you were doing that. 

So I think it's important to be able to share and talk about those types of things, and especially for preschool teachers and early childhood teachers, because so much is developmental. So I think the bottom line is not what do we want these three-year-olds to know and be able to do, but what do we want them to know and be able to do after kindergarten? To go to first grade, because that's where it becomes so much more concrete. And so for first grade, second grade teachers to know maybe they didn't know this at three but and maybe not at four, but they will know it before you get them. So I think looking at that continuum is really helpful and seeing how early childhood teachers teach it, you know. 

I think that because it's different and some of those strategies first and second grade teachers can use right High school teachers can you? I was going to say high school, probably. So I think for continuity of programming and curriculum it's important and for everyone to see what's coming and what's going, you know where are we going with. This is really important for that vertical alignment. 

0:17:06 - Lindsay Lyons
Yeah, I love that example of right, like we're teaching the same social studies content into next door grades and we didn't even realize we didn't even know it. 

0:17:14 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Yeah, Nobody's teaching this. You know, nobody's teaching this important piece. I thought you were. No, we thought you were so yeah, yeah, what. 

0:17:23 - Lindsay Lyons
what powerful work to be able to bring people together with that focus and then illuminate some of these things that otherwise, without the structure, you would never identify. Right, like that's right, you wouldn't you wouldn't. 

0:17:34 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Yeah, I didn't. 

0:17:35 - Lindsay Lyons
I got that big scope and sequence when I started teaching and teach it and be on page 17 on October 30th or you're in trouble okay, right, right, I I'm curious to know I'm thinking about the listener who is interested in this, wants to do some of this work but feels like you know it's new, it might be scary, it's a different way of doing things. I'm wondering if you could talk us through, like maybe, a common challenge that you know you've seen educators or leaders face with this work and then like how did they overcome it or what was a strategy they used to kind of work through that or find the good in? 

0:18:13 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
I think there's. I think there's a couple challenges. One is for leaders to give the teachers time. So many teachers are used to having their planning time and doing what they want and what they need to do and for some teachers that might be taken away and they're not happy with that because they have to do all these things, because we are overloaded as teachers. So it's up to the educate, the leader, the principal, whatever to find time for teachers to do this, and sometimes it takes throwing away the whole master schedule and starting over, and that's really hard for some teachers, really hard. 

I could not do the master schedule in my school, I didn't have the brain for it, but I had a team who did it of teachers and they did it and it worked out great. So, however, you need to do that, finding them the time. The other piece is that sometimes leaders have to monitor the work of the team because teachers aren't used to collaborating and talking to each other and new teachers might have the teacher who's been there for 27 years and they're not going to say anything because she's there and she overloads the conversation. So there might need some strategies to be put in place to facilitate those kinds of dialogues within a team meeting and sometimes the leader has to do that. You know if it's the talking stick or the, I don't know. Whatever you know, I want to get everybody's opinion on this and you can't say I agree with her. You have to say something else. So I think that can be really hard the time and talking openly. 

I had one teacher in a team meeting used to say okay, you guys, you're all going to be really mad at me for saying this, but you know she opened up with that because she was going against what they were talking about. But she was a speaker mind person and I really emphasize when I talk to teams is you cannot go in the school parking lot and talk about this. That's not being a true team member. If you're going to talk in the parking lot, you got to talk about it here and we're not going to go talk about you in the parking lot either. So that whole trust thing takes a while and there's sometimes where leaders of schools have to reshuffle the teams move teachers. You might have fourth grade that's got four bosses and two sitters or whatever, and sometimes you have to reshuffle that and that's hard for teachers to change is really hard for teachers. It's really hard, I'm you know, like we always did know, like we always did it this way. We always did it this way. Well, was that make it right? 

0:20:57 - Lindsay Lyons
Right, that's the question, right yeah. 

0:21:00 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
And to be open. You know, I was like we did some bus thing one time and we did it for two days a bus lineup. It was a disaster. And so as a leader, you need to be able to say oh, this is a mess, I'm sorry, let's try something else. So to be able to teachers know that if it's not working, they need to tell you and they need to fix it. A schedule we didn't do at Arkansas. They started in January, hard for teachers, middle of the year, and they had teachers come for three weeks straight in a row talking about the schedule and what the problems were and what. Three weeks straight in a row talking about the schedule and what the problems were and what wasn't working and what they didn't like about it. Every single teacher and the leadership team fixed it, hallelujah. 

0:21:44 - Lindsay Lyons
That's such a good example. Yeah, I love that. I think the same with teachers and students, or you got to be able to hear the feedback and change course. 

0:21:53 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Right, right, going in a different direction. So absolutely. 

0:21:58 - Lindsay Lyons
So there are so many I just want listeners to know too in your book. So the book is called Success for Our Youngest Learners and I think there's so many tangible things in there where it's like, oh, you don't have an agenda for your PLCs, like here's this data form right, like use this, or you're not sure what a schedule could look like to have people collaborate and meet. Here's an example of schedules that you have Like. You have like the Fist of Five protocol. You have how to create your missions and values. It's so good. I just want listeners to know, like, this is a microcosm of the book in this conversation. This is a microcosm of the book in this conversation. But people need to go get the book and I am wondering, you know for the leader who is, you know, ready to do this, got to go get the book, but wants to do one thing tomorrow before the book comes, that they would really start kind of the foundation building. 

0:22:59 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
What would the one thing, as soon as they're done with this episode like they can do it tomorrow what would that one action be? 

To get started, I think if they could get their teachers at a grade level together to talk about just what they're doing, get them to learn how to come to a team meeting and have some kind of agenda and talking about specific things. 

Now, you know, so many times teachers go oh, we have a team meeting, what are we going to do there? I don't know. You know, because they have no agenda, even if it's not about PLC things in the beginning, come together, we're going to talk about these four things and then, you know and some teachers have to put the first five minutes as the bitch and moan section we're going to vent now, we're going to all complain and crab and then we're done and then we'll move on. So I think, just to start teachers getting used to coming together at a certain time, being on time for that meeting and talking about important things, so that they have, you know, kind of learned beginning of trusting each other and understanding each other's point of views, then to be able to dive into determining essential standards. So I guess it's finding the time for them to get together is the first thing principals need to do. 

0:24:05 - Lindsay Lyons
Yeah, I love that. And maybe looking at different I know you link to different things in the book of examples of schedules and stuff maybe doing a little bit of research what could this look like? Or handing it over to your teacher teams, like you said, right? 

0:24:16 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Yeah, yeah, you know, and maybe another important piece is forming a leadership team. You know, getting together grade level teachers and having a leadership team who can, who are behind it, who understand professional learning communities are, you know, gung ho about it, and so they can start, you know, working too. So it's not just a leader edict, it's coming from your peers as well, and I think that's that's helpful. 

0:24:47 - Lindsay Lyons
Definitely. Yes, I totally agree, and I and I just remember the phrase that I think you'd use in the book for one of the kind of come together to talk things that folks did was like shop and share, Like here's how I taught this thing, and then they all shared different ways. They taught something which I find such a cool thing that you could totally do tomorrow right, yeah, you can do that tomorrow. 

0:25:07 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
And I always used to start meetings with what I called a whip, without hesitation, invite participation, and I'd throw out a question not school related, not anything just so teachers could learn more about their colleagues. You know, like, what's your favorite sandwich? Go around the table, oh, you like salami. You're kidding me. You know just those kinds of things. Just a crazy question. Your favorite movie, Favorite all-time movie? You know just those kinds of things. Just a crazy question. Your favorite movie, favorite all time movie? Just so we learn a little bit more personal, personal things about the people we work with. We're with them, all you know, in the same building all day, every day. 

0:25:44 - Lindsay Lyons
So I love that idea. I think about that with students and, you know, culture building at the start of a school year or something Same with teachers, right? Because when we see the humanity in our fellow teachers, if we get into a disagreement about a pedagogical move or this standard should be essential or not, you know we still see the humanity in the person. 

0:26:04 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Right right, which I think is really important. You know we're all in this together and you're a human being and you have you had a crabby husband this morning, or a crabby two-year-old, and sorry to hear it. 

0:26:14 - Lindsay Lyons
So Exactly, exactly, yeah, so I guess this is my next question is a little bit more of the the humanity piece too, getting to know you. So one of the things I love asking every guest this could be related to work and the things we've been talking about, or it could totally be different. What is something that you have been learning about lately? 

0:26:35 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Oh, I've really started to a couple things gardening, because I'm retired and so I'm doing gardening at home and I'm going to run out in the yard and do that, learning that. But I'm also doing a lot of learning and thinking about how young children's brains develop, like that cognitive development and how maybe because I've been watching a lot of Dateline too, you know murders and stuff is that at the age of 15, your brain's still not totally developed, your frontal lobe isn't totally developed. So I think that helps people and it helps teachers and helps me understand why young children do some of the things they do, why teenagers do some of the things they do, why young adults do some of the things they do. It's just become really fascinating to me that, just how that develops and what parts develop. 

0:27:35 - Lindsay Lyons
That is fascinating. Also very excited for your gardening life because I know nothing about that, but I am fascinated by the people who could do it well. 

0:27:42 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
I'm working on it. You know it's time consuming but keeps me busy and I can share that experience with my grandchildren. We go out and pick, you know, tomatoes in the summer and things like that, and they really like it. It's down to earth, too, where they are low, low to the ground. 

0:27:59 - Lindsay Lyons
Yeah, oh my gosh. Yes, I, my car was hit recently and we had it's in the shop, so we had got a rental and my, my kid is just like I like this new car because it's low to the ground. 

0:28:10 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Oh, yeah you can get into it yeah. 

0:28:14 - Lindsay Lyons
We don't think about those things, I know. So the last question I have for you is just people are going to want to get in touch, learn more about you, get the book, that kind of thing. Where would you suggest that they go to learn more about you, connect with you, anything related to that? 

0:28:31 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Well, probably through Solution Tree. I'm not, you know, I'm retired, I'm old. I don't have my own web page and my own podcast and my own all my boyfriend's like you need a Twitter account. You need a Twitter account, you know. I just don't have any of those things they can. So they can certainly email me and they can certainly get in touch with Solution Tree. 

0:28:56 - Lindsay Lyons
Perfect, and we can link to those things in the blog post for this episode. 

0:29:00 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano
Yeah, I'm happy to. Why don't I turn my phone off? So I'm happy to. You know, I'm happy to talk to anybody and help anybody out, because I'm really passionate about this and have been for my whole educational career. So I'm I just think this is where it starts, this is where it begins, and if we don't get it right when they're little and give them this joy of learning and give little children the success of oh, I learned this, oh, I can say my ABCs, oh, I can read a book, we don't give them that spark and that joy when they're little, then I don't think they're going to get it for a long time. So I think it's really important. 

0:29:42 - Lindsay Lyons
Absolutely. Oh my gosh, this has been a wonderful conversation. Dr Strickland, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I enjoyed it. It was great. Thank you so much. 

​If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

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In this episode, Bob, Sheline, and Maren share how we can effectively use Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) to elevate teaching through reflective practice. In our discussion of their book, Simplifying the Journey: Six Steps to Schoolwide Collaboration, Consistency, and Clarity in a PLC at Work®, they emphasize the importance of student ownership and co-creation in their academic journeys, and effective strategies for coaches and leaders (they list tons of great coaching questions in their book). 

Bob Sonju is an award-winning educational leader, author, and speaker who is nationally recognized for his energetic commitment to coaching teacher teams and educational leaders in research-based processes and systems that create the conditions for lasting success. Bob has led two separate schools to national Model PLC at Work® status; one of his schools also received the prestigious National Breakthrough School Award from the National Association of Secondary School Principals. As a district leader, Bob led the implementation of the professional learning communities (PLC) process in a district composed of over 50 schools. He is committed to making the work of collaborative teams and school leaders both simple and doable.

Maren Powers is a national award-winning teacher, instructional coach, associate and author in St. George, Utah. Throughout her time in the Washington County School District, she has worked at two Model PLC Schools. In 2020, Maren received the Rebecca Dufour Scholarship that celebrates ten women educators across the country who demonstrate exceptional leadership in their school community. Maren earned a bachelor’s degree in English education and a master’s degree in educational leadership with an endorsement in school leadership. Maren is passionate about helping other educators implement, coach and lead through the PLC process.

Sheline Miller is currently an Assistant Principal for the Washington County School District. She has also been a Learning Coach and Social Studies teacher for the same district. She has worked successfully with teachers and teams to help establish two Model PLC Schools - Fossil Ridge Intermediate School (FRIS) and Washington Fields Intermediate School (WFIS). 
In her capacity as Learning Coach, she has had the opportunity to act as the lead Intermediate Coach to help bring clarity and consistency to schools in the district. Her presentations include Meaningful Goal Setting and Gaining Clarity. She is also the lead instructor for one of the classes offered for the district leadership certification titled, Leading in a PLC.

The Big Dream 

The guests articulate a unified vision for education where every student, irrespective of their background, can achieve at high levels. They dream of a future where students are empowered to take an active role in their education, understanding the relevance and direction of their learning. The collective goal is to view all students as partners in learning, utilizing collective expertise to ensure every child's growth.


Mindset Shifts Required

1. Embrace the belief that students can take ownership of their learning and be comfortable seeking help when they don't understand. 
2. Students are learning partners. 
3. Focus on learning progressions rather than aiming for scores.

Action Steps  

There are six actions in the book. In this episode, we talked about the following actions: 

Step 1: Identify essential standards and skills, distinguishing between the critical standards and those that are less essential, and establish a common understanding within the team.

Step 2: Gain shared clarity on what proficiency looks like, facilitating discussions that bridge differing opinions among educators and align on expectations.

Step 3: Employ effective questioning and coaching strategies to support teacher development and reflection on data, ensuring that teams can articulate their learning targets, strategies, and what the data reflects.

Step 4: Ensure time and support for PLC work. Leaders, validate and celebrate the work and student learning successes! 


Challenges?

Teams need time and support to do this work. 

Identifying time for PLCs could be: creating common prep periods, finding flexible funding in budgets to purchase substitute teachers so teachers have the time to collaborate, utilizing instructional aids to cover.

The authors remind me that we also need to be clear on what teams collaborate about (these are the 6 actions steps in the book), and there are several protocols and worksheets the authors made to help you navigate these challenges, ensuring that collaboration is effective and focused on student learning. (See the link to the free reproducibles below!) 

One Step to Get Started 

Gain shared clarity among educators regarding what proficiency looks like for essential standards, as this is “most often missed step”. 


Stay Connected

Here’s where you can find this week’s guests:
Bob: Instagram: @bob_sonju
Maren: Instagram and X: @learningpowers  and email at [email protected]
Sheline: [email protected]

To help you implement today’s takeaways, the group is sharing their free reproducibles from their book, Simplifying the Journey with you. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 172 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.
Quotes: 

• “We see students, all students, as our students, not yours and mine, and we're gonna use our collective expertise, talents and experiences to ensure that all of our kids learn. That's my dream.” (Bob) 
• “My big dream would be to have students be empowered to be a part of their own education, so that they can understand and see why and where they're going, so that it's not just coming in and sitting in a class and trying to memorize dates or memorize something and spit it back out for the teacher, but to really understand how this might be applicable to our, to my future, how it might help me communicate with others.” (Sheline) 
• “Being able to have themselves reflect and reflect on their learning and understanding that, you know, a grade isn't necessarily you know, this is my grade the end all be all, but it's more just feedback for us teachers to be able to say, okay, you're close, you don't quite understand it. Here is some feedback that I'm taking and then let me see what I can do to help you so you can learn at a higher level.” (Maren) 
• “We collectively believe that good coaching is just asking very quality, targeted questioning questions of teams, and so we've included a lot of just great coaching questions.” (Bob) 
• “The L in PLC stands for learning and so we always ask you know, is that for student learning, adult learning, both learning, what is that for? And it's actually for teacher learning, and so kind of the idea of the PLC is for teachers to be able to learn what to do in order to get our students to grow at these high levels.” (Maren)
• “We can, as a team, sit down and say, okay, what's a student going to look like at each step of this learning journey? We can communicate that to students…They're amazing at self-assessing when we're crystal clear on the steps…they're going to be taking toward mastery.” (Bob)
• “We're going to have some people that are hitting it out of the ballpark, we're going to have some that are still just learning, and so and that's fine, because just like our students are going through a learning progression, so are our teachers. So none of our teams are failing. They're just all in different places and different levels, and that offers us the opportunity to let other teachers come in and part of their celebration could be hey, this is what we've done. It's worked really well. It might work for you. Maybe we can have learning walks where our teachers actually go and observe other teachers who have moved into that mastery format.” (Sheline) ​

TRANSCRIPT
0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons
Hello everyone. We got Bob Shaleen and Maren today. How are you all Good? 

0:00:10 - Bob Sonju
Doing great. 

0:00:12 - Lindsay Lyons
So good to have you on the podcast today. Really excited about this. I think we'll just dive into the first meaty question of you know I talk about Dr Bettina Love writing about freedom, dreaming with her quote, dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, so really centering that justice and equity piece in our work. So, with that in mind, I'd love for each of you to just share what's that big dream that you hold for the field of education. 

0:00:39 - Bob Sonju
Erin, you want to take a? Take a shot at this uh, sure, okay. 

0:00:43 - Maren Powers
Um, I will say my dream, I think, for education especially, is just to be able to ensure that all students, no matter their backgrounds, are able to achieve at high levels. So I think, as especially from a teacher's perspective because I'm still a teacher and so especially from my perspective, being able to really support all of my students and in whatever needs that they may have, um, and keep um kind of just those expectations at really high levels for them, um, I think if we were able to do that in education across the board, I mean how life-changing that would be for all of our, all of our people. 

0:01:23 - Bob Sonju
So that's fine well, chalene, what do you think? 

0:01:30 - Sheline Miller
go ahead, um, I'll go ahead, um. So I think my big dream would be to have students be empowered um to be a part of their own education, so that they can understand and see why and where they're going, so that it's not just coming in and sitting in a class and trying to memorize dates or memorize something and spit it back out for the teacher, but to really understand how this might be applicable to our, to my future, how it might help me communicate with others. I don't know just any of that kind of stuff where students are empowered. 

0:02:11 - Bob Sonju
Love it so great and I kind of echo what my colleagues have said just this idea of just students being partners in learning that we see students, all students, as our students, not yours and mine, and we're gonna use our collective expertise, talents and experiences to ensure that all of our kids learn. That's my dream. 

0:02:38 - Lindsay Lyons
Oh my gosh, I love it and it's so aligned with all the things we talk about on this podcast, so what a beautiful episode this will be. I am particularly interested in reading through your book. I loved your book and I think I love the concept too of like we're simplifying the journey. Here are the things, here are the things you can do. There's reproducibles that listeners can grab online right and use immediately, which is so cool and tangible, and I think there's also, before we get to like those specific action steps, there's also kind of this first thing that needs to happen, where we're kind of shifting our mindset around some practices, or we're shifting our mindset around like what is PLC work really? Or there's a bunch of kind of mindset things I think that have to happen for this work to go well, and I'd love to know what your thoughts are on. Is that accurate? And if there are mindset shifts, you know what are those. 

0:03:32 - Maren Powers
Yeah, I think Shalene kind of touched on it but a big piece that we and it's one of the steps within our book but believing that kids can take ownership of their own learning and so being able to have themselves reflect and reflect on their learning and understanding that, you know, a grade isn't necessarily you know, this is my grade the end all be all, but it's more just feedback for us teachers to be able to say, okay, you're close, you don't quite understand it. 

Here is some feedback that I'm taking and then let me see what I can do to help you so you can learn at a higher level. So I think just that mindset shift of you know, students taking ownership and being comfortable to tell the teacher hey, I don't understand this, can you help me? Because inevitably that's our job. So I think that is one big kind of just shift that I don't think is necessarily a huge broad thing, because I think most teachers would also agree that that is super important and we see the most growth out of kids when they can do that. So Beautiful. 

0:04:40 - Bob Sonju
Yeah. 

0:04:40 - Lindsay Lyons
Yeah. 

0:04:42 - Bob Sonju
Kind of going along with that. I just think we need to. We advocate for just rethinking a traditional mindset regarding school. Just kind of that giving my kids, giving my class and leave me alone, I'm going to try to cover. There's an urgency to cover all of the standards. It's my job to teach, it's their job to learn, using assessment for a score in the book. Just rethinking all of those traditional, maybe antiquated, mindsets regarding school and see students as partners in learning. I love this idea and we write about this just students taking ownership in their learning. But that starts with the professional teachers and that team getting clear on what students have to learn. 

0:05:32 - Sheline Miller
So yeah, and, just kind of to add to that, the focus on learning. So we talk a little bit about learning progressions. That part of that mindset needs to change, with students as well as teachers. That it's okay not to know everything, as long as we know the path that's going to get us where we want. 

0:05:58 - Bob Sonju
Yeah, and I love that, Shaleen, it's not right or wrong, it's learning is a journey, right, and we take steps on our pathway to mastery of these absolutely critical things that all kids need to know and be able to do, grade level by grade level. And so less is right or wrong and more as learning is a journey. 

0:06:21 - Lindsay Lyons
I think this is a really good transition point to this next question of like what is the journey for educators then to like learn how to like what are you know what are those stages of kind of activities they're doing in PLCs? And also like what are kind of like any? I guess it's two questions kind of in one. Like as you identify places where challenges may come up, what you do in the book I love how the book is laid out, by the way like you know, coaching ideas and like leader questions and places where it lives. Also thinking about, like be wary of or be mindful of these things that could be challenges, super awesome. If there are things like that that stick out to you as we kind of go through these action steps, feel free. 

I'm wondering for the listeners. They might be familiar with the general PLC work framework, but I like how you all break it down into. I think you had like six steps. You conclude with this as well, like, which I think is really succinct. On that left one of the last pages of just like here are the six kind of bullet points of this work. Do you mind walking us through that, maybe to start? 

0:07:29 - Bob Sonju
Bob, I'll start the conversation, but these two really are experts in this. We felt like that just in our travels and our experience as practitioners in schools, that we know that the professional learning community process is best practice in the field. It's research-based, it's the science of our profession. But, that being said, there's four critical questions that drive the work of a collaborative team in a professional learning community. What is it we want them to know? How are we going to know if they learned it? How are we going to respond collectively if they didn't, and how are we going to extend the learning for those who already know it? 

I think most schools and educators know these questions, but what we've discovered is answering these questions. What does that look like? That's where we tended to struggle a little bit, in schools that we've worked in, as well as schools that we've seen around the country, and so the idea behind this book was based on this PLC framework how to answer these four questions in six action steps. Six clear and concise action steps, providing clarity for each action step, as well as examples and templates, and so on. So, maren Shaleen. 

0:08:48 - Maren Powers
Yeah, I want to add to kind of to that kind of and we talk about this a lot, just as like colleagues. But the L in PLC stands for learning and so we always ask you know, is that for student learning, adult learning, both learning, what is that for? And it's actually for teacher learning, and so kind of the idea of the PLC is for teachers to be able to learn what to do in order to get our students to grow at these high levels. So, for this book in particular, focusing on these six action steps, when we were setting them up, the biggest piece of it was we wanted to make sure that teachers and leaders and anyone in a school can take from our book and be able to implement it and have these actionable steps with the reproducibles and be able to implement it into any grade level, any subject, really anywhere, and so and be able to show that you know you can do this step-by-step in this process. 

0:09:51 - Sheline Miller
So yeah, yeah, and then, kind of just to add to that, if you think about a PLC, quite often as schools start to dabble in PLCs or even say that they're actually working as a PLC, it's usually a broad umbrella that we put a whole bunch of stuff underneath and say, oh, we're PLCing, this is what we're doing. And our book has kind of focused that in or focused down into, like we've said, like I think each of us have said, actionable steps. It's not some broad overarching idea. It's actual steps that teachers can do that will help them answer those questions very specifically. That can be drilled down to specific skills, specific students and specific strategies that teachers are using in their classrooms. 

0:10:47 - Bob Sonju
Lindsay along with that. I'm super motivated by quotes. I have just lists of quotes right from all of my reading, but one quote that's always resonated with me. That kind of you'll see it in our work. But Rick Dufour said that it's not the fact that you collaborate that will improve student learning, it's what you collaborate about. And I think far too often in schools we say, okay, I've given you a collaborative time, now go forth and collaborate, but it's what you collaborate about that will influence student learning and increase teacher efficacy. And so that was really one of the drivers. Let's get clear on when we collaborate, what do we collaborate about? So, Awesome. 

0:11:32 - Lindsay Lyons
I love this framing and so thinking about this for the listener who's thinking about the four questions. Thinking about what does it really look like? What are the actions rooted in teacher learning? Of course, great point, maren, about like that L is for teacher learning. Thinking about what happens in a PLC. Could you walk us through what some of those activities might be that you discuss in the book? Sure? 

0:11:58 - Maren Powers
I can start. So kind of my background is with as a teacher and so and a teacher leader and a team leader and so for me working with my teams and what that looks like. For each step we break down very specifically. So, for example, step one, identifying essential standards and skills, we have a way where you can break it down into what you think is essential. You know the like do or die essential standards versus you know maybe the standards that aren't as essential and we have a very specific way of doing it. 

And throughout the book I want to point out that we also acknowledge that there are inevitably going to be people that maybe disagree on teams. 

You know different levels of understanding. We have veteran teachers and first-year teachers and so being able to talk through and figure out how to get through each of these steps with a variety of individuals. We do try and kind of pinpoint in throughout the book but different activities. So, for example, like step two, for gaining shared clarity, me and Chalene figured that this like works really well with teams who maybe disagree on what proficiency looks like for a standard. Talking about how you know as a group, maybe you write down what proficiency looks like without talking at all and being able to then come together and you can have an instructional coach come in and support you and put everyone's up on the board and you might realize we actually are saying basically the same thing, maybe just a little bit different, and so coming together and being able to tighten that vocabulary and what the expectations are. So we go through each step and have very specific here's exactly how you would work each step as a team lead or a principal or someone who's leading it out. 

0:13:57 - Lindsay Lyons
That's one of the things I loved is there are very specific protocols and that specific challenge of team dynamics whether it's veteran, new teacher or just like we have a lot of different opinions. Those protocols directly address that challenge that I think a lot of folks are on perhaps a team, whether it's really a PLC or in that broader umbrella that, shalini, you're talking about. I think there are those challenges. So I love that your protocols really address that directly and inherent to the activity. Yeah, yeah. 

0:14:30 - Bob Sonju
Our first. Our first action step, obviously, is we got to get real clear on what kids have to know in this course, in this grade level, and so we're going to shift our focus away from trying to just cover everything and just ensure that students learn some high leverage things grade level to grade level. That's not saying we're eliminating standards, but we're just kind of reallocating our time. So our first action step is just simply let's get clear on identifying what those essential standards and skills are. But that's only a first step and what we've seen is that's where a lot of schools will stop. We've identified them and then we lit up the lamination machine and we'd laminate them, put them all over the walls of the school and then nothing happens. That's because we haven't our action step. 

Number two we haven't gained shared clarity and clearly defined what does mastery look like for that? So we know it when we see it. That's a critical step in this process. Once we're clear on that, that moves us right to action step three. Students can become owners of their own learning because they can self-assess their work as compared to mastery work, and so it just kind of works. It just connects together. So, Chalene, Ditto. 

0:15:50 - Sheline Miller
I was going to say you guys have just said everything, so I was going to say something about student empowerment by knowing that. But it's very important and it's I both people have covered this that we have to know what mastery looks like, like. There has to be something specific there. We have to know what that target is and it needs to stay like right there. It needs to be where teachers know what it looks like. Students know what it looks like. Something that hasn't been mentioned is maybe we've got some of those high-low examples we're giving. We're letting them know this is what success looks like. This is what it looks like if you make some of these common mistakes that we have seen, and so we can fix those mistakes before they ever occur or happen, and so I just think that that's part of what's really important, and then, again. 

That allows us to be very specific about what our kids are missing and what they are not understanding. It doesn't become this general well, you just didn't do well on your project. It becomes you didn't do well on this, this and this, you did well on this, this, this and this. We just need to work on this. It's a much more positive outlook. Students feel success regardless where they are, even if they still have to work on something, they're still feeling that success and feel like they can continue to work on something and do it because they know what it looks like. 

0:17:23 - Lindsay Lyons
That reminds me that I think one of the things that was really cool two things actually, bob related to what you were saying, I think the lamination, like problematizing the lamination and just leaving it it made. It pushed my thinking when I read that you all talked about like rethinking, like revisiting, re-plotifying each year at the end of each unit even and that was kind of mind-blowing to me because I had never thought about doing that I was like, oh, this is just kind of what it is and maybe if there's something wrong then you can go back and revise. So that is a really cool idea, I think, to keep it fresh, to keep it relevant, and also speaks to the idea of student ownership and co-creation. If every time you get new sets of students, you get more and more feedback from the students about does this make sense, is this clear? We'll get more examples of the high low, shall we to your point? 

And I love also that in the categories you have the categories of proficiency as, like one was supported. I had a teacher ask me that literally last week like what if they can do all the things? But it takes so much support? I'm like, right, that's just a level of proficiency. And then now you all have given me the language and the frameworks, be like right, that's level one on the proficiency. That is exactly what that is. 

0:18:28 - Maren Powers
So thank you, and I, and I want to add, kind of when you were talking about you know, we always have new students coming in every year. I also want to point out we also have new teachers that come in every year, and so when you get new teachers on a team and maybe you get another new teacher next year who hasn't gone through this work you want to go back through it every single year and kind of revisit it and see, kind of like you know, what do we need to fix, what do we need to tweak? Let's look at our data I think the biggest piece of it too, and we talk about this a lot. But if you have a team that has been a team for a while, you do still need to revisit it every year. But maybe the process is going to go quicker because you all already know what's going on. So just the idea of revisiting it every single year, no matter how well the team knows this, I think, is really vital to the success of the teachers and our students. 

0:19:30 - Sheline Miller
Absolutely, and then to piggyback off of that, the last part of each chapter is reflect to elicit change, and so every time we do something, we need to reflect on it. There's always going to be something that we through our learning, and it might be as simple as oh my gosh, I found an article that you to look at that and tweak it and see what the issues were with kids, with teachers, with understanding, with CFAs, with alignment, and it just helps us, as teachers, become better at our profession and that translates into higher student learning. 

0:20:23 - Lindsay Lyons
Bob, are you going to say something too? 

0:20:25 - Bob Sonju
Nope, I think that's great Okay. 

0:20:28 - Lindsay Lyons
One of the things I also Shalene your comment earlier about, like you know, student ownership and self-assessment made me think about the checklist rubric. 

I don't know what you all called it and I don't think it's maybe a reproducible, maybe just an example, but there was basically a rubric that you had turned into a checklist where at each kind of proficiency level, students could kind of check off where they were and what I really loved, and that part was cool. But what I really loved was then there was the question so it would be like what's my next step? So if I self-assessed at like a three out of four, like I'm not at a four, so what's my next step? And even at the level four you had like okay, so how would you apply this to the real world? So there's always that next step built into the self-assessment and I have never seen that and it's so simple and so great and thank you for that. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or any thoughts on your favorite, either examples from the book or reproducible templates from the book. I'd love to just hear what you think like. 

0:21:42 - Bob Sonju
We needed just a simple and doable framework for teachers and students to see learning as a continuum, not as right or wrong. And then we had conversations about what should it look like at each step? And so when we're clear on what mastery looks like, and then we can, as a team, sit down and say, okay, what's a student going to look like at each step of this learning journey? We can communicate that to students, and they can. They're amazing at self-assessing when we're crystal clear on on the steps you know, on their steps that they're going to be taking toward mastery. So, yeah, thoughts Maren Well. 

0:22:18 - Maren Powers
I, and I'll just add to it, because that rubric you're talking about specifically is for actually writing and as an English teacher, I mean us English teachers are notorious for bringing work home and grading and it takes forever outside of work, which is wild. 

Um, but what we found is because the mindset shifts from, instead of us grading students, it's now students self-assessing and taking ownership of their own learning. Um, our grading for writing has, I mean, cut down drastically because it's the students who are literally just self-assessing where they're at. And then I'm able to look at the rubric and I can kind of compare it to their writing and say, oh my gosh, you're absolutely right, here is the one piece, the one thing that you're missing in your writing. Just go back and fix that. You know exactly how to get there, because it's so clear, as Bob said, where mastery is and then above or beyond, and so being able to have that clarity for our students, it just it adds to student ownership. So I would say that, and the team reflection pieces at the end are my personal favorites. The coaching inventory is really useful as a coach to trying to get teachers to reflect. 

0:23:38 - Bob Sonju
So and Lindsay, just a plug for you, I was listening to your grading for equity, your competency-based learning episode, and I was like oh, she's speaking our language right? Yes, so well done. 

0:23:54 - Lindsay Lyons
I absolutely wanted to have you all on, especially as I was reading the book and like, oh my gosh, yes, there's such alignment here. So, thank you, this is amazing. So I, yeah, there's, there's so much that I love. I'm trying to be succinct in my questions here. I think another big question that I have is think of maybe a challenge it could be like a chapter of of the book, Cause I think you, as I said, a challenge, it could be like a chapter of of the book, Cause I think you, as I said, broke down what could challenges be in each section and like can you walk us through some of the leader coaching questions that you had for that specific challenge? 

Cause I thought those were brilliant. It really just for for listeners who have not yet read the book. They basically break down right, Like here's a potential thing that could happen and with a particular scenario, which also great scenarios, very real, See, I've seen most versions of them. And then it was like here's the leader you could ask these three questions to follow up or something right, Like so good, I don't know if you all have a particular favorite set of those, but I'd love us just to get a taste of one maybe. 

0:25:01 - Sheline Miller
I was going to say that's all. That's kind of learning coach stuff and it's what I was dealing with. So most of those are questions that I was just like okay, what are, what are we doing? So we have a question bank and I'm I'm thinking that's kind of maybe a little bit about what you're talking about is we have these question banks that you just can go through and ask, ask yourself these, and then our goals are what's something I can start, stop and continue. 

So those are things that I think were really good for me to be able to go into a team and look at them and say, ok, you say you have all this. Show me, can you articulate what those learning targets are? Do you articulate them as a team? Do you articulate them to your students? And just asking those questions can either tell me if a team is doing something or the team is going to be saying no, I can't, and that will lead us to where they need to be. So have you done this, have you done this? Oh, so you do actually have those, and sometimes they do actually have them, but they just don't know that they have them. 

And so these questions at the end um, and then the questions um, with the scenarios, just help us learn where teams are, because our teams within our buildings are going to be in all like all over the place. 

We're going to have some people that are hitting it out of the ballpark, we're going to have some that are still just learning, and so and that's fine, because just like our students are going through a learning progression, so are our teachers. So none of our teams are failing. They're just all in different places and different levels, and that offers us the opportunity to let other teachers come in and part of their celebration could be hey, this is what we've done. It's worked really well. It might work for you. Maybe we can have learning walks where our teachers actually go and observe other teachers who have moved into that mastery format. So it just opens up a lot of avenues for us to help our teachers learn by using those questions and looking at these scenarios and seeing ourselves in those scenarios and going oh, maybe I did that. Maybe some of those scenarios were me. 

0:27:32 - Bob Sonju
And we collectively believe that good coaching is just asking very quality, targeted questioning questions of teams, and so we've included a lot of just great coaching questions that elicit the work that you're looking for there From a leadership perspective. Oftentimes leaders don't quite know what to do in regards to these six action steps, how to lead it and questions to ask, and so we outlined just four steps that leaders need to take. They need to think about this pattern as they're leading. Number one we have to clarify what the work is. We can't just say, go and collaborate or go identify essential standards. We have to clarify what that work looks like or go identify essential standards. We have to clarify what that work looks like. 

And then step two is we have to support teachers and teams as they learn, together with time, with resources, with coaching, with all of these things. And then next we need to monitor, and that's not to say micromanage, but just like we constantly formatively assess in a classroom, so we can provide feedback, targeted feedback, for a student regarding their strengths and next steps. We need to do this as well with our, with our colleagues. We monitor by asking targeted questions, and that helps us identify strengths as well as next steps for teachers and teams, as well as next steps for teachers and teams. And then, finally, the fourth step I think is crucial for all leaders is to validate the work when you see it and celebrate that with teams. And I think sometimes we forget this in the busy of schools. We forget to take time to validate the hard work teachers are doing and celebrate. And so, yeah, those four things, maren. 

0:29:25 - Maren Powers
You know, spot on for both leaders and coaches. 

0:29:32 - Lindsay Lyons
I wanted to follow up too on that validate and celebrate. I love how you get very specific and you offer some language and concrete examples in the book of if you're a leader, who who is now to Jalene's point. A lot of times we look at scenarios and we're like, oh, that's me right. If you're a leader thinking, oh, that's me, I totally don't validate and celebrate enough. I'm maybe not familiar with how to even do that. Well, there's a ton of examples in the book, so, never fear. 

One of the things I also was thinking about as a challenge I've heard a lot with you know organizations that I coach like you know networks, district school level or just folks in general who are listening to the podcast, like, well, I'm not sure about where this lives a lot of times right, like we don't have the time built in currently to our schedules. Or you know how do we get PLCs like together at the same time? You all offer some different ideas in the book about this. Do you mind running down like a couple of things? Identifying where it can happen or when during the day it can happen is a really helpful kind of starting point for leaders to get over that initial challenge and get into the work. 

0:30:38 - Bob Sonju
Yeah, yeah, I can take a crack at it here and just share a couple of things that we've discovered, I think, as well as what we've seen in other schools. 

But just creating common prep periods, finding flexible funding in budgets to purchase substitute teachers so teachers have the time to collaborate, just utilizing instructional aids to cover just different ways, that you create time for teachers to collaborate I think is absolutely critical. But that's only the first step. Then we have to get crystal clear on when you have this collaboration time, what do you collaborate about? In chapter seven we just get real clear here's what you collaborate about and essentially it's our six action steps. But there's questions. There's questions that teams can ask as they plan their units of instruction, as they're in the middle of their unit and then at the end and they're reflecting on their unit, as well as questions that evidence based questions that leaders can ask of teams to monitor how they're doing. And so it's more than just creating the time. It's getting real clear on what happens during that time and then supporting teachers as they learn together. 

0:32:13 - Maren Powers
And I'll add to that too, what's nice about the reproducibles, because there's so many of them within the book and there's very specific kind of like goals or targets that we want to get to for each action step. Obviously it makes it really clear for learning leaders or principals to be able to say here's exactly what I want to see happen today. Are you getting through steps one and two? Just step one, what is it you're working on? And then for teachers to be able to say here's exactly what we worked on and here's all the evidence to show, kind of, where we got to. It then creates a way to have dialogue between teachers and principals and to talk about okay, what are our next steps, where do we need to go from here? For principals it's how else can I support you, do you need more time? Or it looks like you guys are really on the right track. You know so different ways. That kind of creates that dialogue back and forth between teachers, coaches and principals and knowing exactly where the support is needed within that collaboration time. 

0:33:35 - Sheline Miller
Well said, yeah. And within that framework it also allows for those critical conversations to occur without the judgment or the I'm the process in their learning, so that we can offer them specific help. 

0:33:53 - Maren Powers
that's not judgmental, but it is student learning focused what Shaleen's saying too, because we are practitioners and we literally did this at our school from my perspective as a teacher, when Bob, who was our principal, would come in and be like, where are you guys at, what are you doing? It made it so much easier to communicate to my boss here's exactly what I'm doing, here's what we're doing as a team, here's where we're going. And so it made it to where it was just really easy to be able to talk to my boss, rather than feeling like he's coming down hard on us, like you know, you have to do this and this. Instead, it was more of a conversation, and he held us accountable, but we were also able to reach those goals because we knew where they were. We could see the target. 

0:34:47 - Bob Sonju
So Boss sounds so harsh. How about colleague on a learning journey? 

0:34:54 - Maren Powers
You technically were our boss. 

0:34:57 - Sheline Miller
He's our friend boss, though. 

0:34:59 - Bob Sonju
He is. 

0:34:59 - Sheline Miller
He's our colleague boss. 

0:35:03 - Lindsay Lyons
I really I appreciate so much kind of that teacher perspective, one on, like this, accountability and the way that accountability happens actually is helpful to us as teachers, like versus threatening or imposing or whatever Like that is. I think a really helpful perspective saves teachers or ELA teachers in your example time when students right, there are like not just benefits for students, there are benefits for teachers in all of this work as well. And, shalene, to your point about really decreasing that judgment, I saw that show up a lot in your book when you were talking about how, when we look at the data, it's about the data and a leader. I really thought about this. One like a leader or a coach is helping teachers look through the data. Ask about what you are learning from the data, versus giving the kudos like your team is doing or your students are doing great Rah rah, you right, it's like what are we learning? It's not about the individual teacher's success or failure. It is about the student learning at the heart of everything, which really, I imagine takes a lot of pressure off of teachers as well, right, and so there's so many benefits to teachers in all of this, which is awesome, I think. 

In closing, I'm curious to know if you all will have one shared answer to this or if you have different perspectives. Would love to get this too. But what is like that one first thing? When the administrator or teacher person listening is done with the episode they're driving to work, they're like I'm going to start today. What is that thing? What is that first thing that they can do right away after listening to this episode to get started with some of the things that you lay out here? 

0:36:51 - Sheline Miller
with some of the things that you lay out here. I'll jump in. I think and I think we bring it up in the book the most often missed step is step number two, which is gaining shared clarity. So if I were to start with somebody, that's where I would go. I would look at and I and like, I think we're assuming that they, they, have these essential standards and skills and they, they, they're like I'm on my way, I'm on my way, but do you agree? 

As a class, is it going to look the same in teacher A, teacher B and teacher C? Because quite often we hear T. You know, and this is something that I heard friends would call me up and they're like hey, what language arts teacher should I put my kid in? And I, at our school, would literally say, well, yes, I would say Marin, but I would literally say you know what? You put your kid in any of my language arts classes, they're going to leave our school with the same knowledge base because our teachers are aligned and they understand what mastery looks like and so you're going to get the same education regardless of teacher. 

So that is the one skill, and I think Maren is going to agree with me I don't know if she can jump in here and I think, bob, because they they just don't, aren't aligned together with what mastery looks like, so it looks different, even though they've talked about what's essential and they've even talked about it. But then they go to their classes and all of a sudden, this person emphasizes this and this person emphasizes something else, and then we all take our cfa and they're all different because we've never come to what shared clarity is, what mastery looks like and what it means, and we're not on the same page and I think, and I agree and kind of adding on to Shalene too just even just the word clarity, whether it's clarity on mastery, clarity on expectations, clarity on collaboration. 

0:39:19 - Maren Powers
I think that clarity piece from principals, from instructional coaches, from team leaders, is vital in this process and just in PLC in general. So, starting off with getting really clear as a leader, especially if I'm a principal or a team lead, that's driving home, you know, after listening to this, getting really clear on what I want to do with my teams, where we want to go and then how I'm going to get there, which I think, at least in our book, through these steps, that's how you are going to get there. But that clarity is just so important. 

0:40:04 - Bob Sonju
Yeah, and I would say, gosh, as educators, you're doing good work, but we're bombarded Just the sheer number of initiatives and shiny things that we have thrown at us every year, that sometimes we build up this defense to what Doug Reeves calls initiative fatigue. We just are like, oh, what's the latest flavor of the month? And so if I could share anything, it would be just this. There's a lot of great things in education, a lot of things that are wonderful, but let's simplify and focus on some things, some research-based, high leverage strategies that we know make a difference in student learning and in teacher efficacy. And then let's just get really good at those things, and that's really at the heart of our book. These six action steps are just they're simple, they're and doable. They're not, they're not easy, but but simple and doable to move you forward in your learning, but simple and doable to move you forward in your learning. 

0:41:07 - Lindsay Lyons
Amazing answers, I love all of those. And, shalina, I will hold on to the example you used to indicate yours. Like whose class should my kid be in, right? Like whoa, that's a deep question. Like, thank you for that example. So this is going to be a little bit of a lightning round, I think, for each of you. So this question is just for fun. So this is going to be a little bit of a lightning round, I think, for each of you. So this question is just for fun. It could totally be unrelated to your job, to the book, to education in general, or it could be totally up to you. What is something that you have been learning about lately? We've been talking about learning a lot today. What have you been learning? 

0:41:43 - Bob Sonju
I can't wait, maren, let's hear yours. 

0:41:47 - Maren Powers
Well, I have a newborn and a two-year-old. I'm on maternity leave, so I am learning how to manage two small humans at the same time. So that is what I am learning at the current moment. That's a lot of learning. 

0:42:05 - Bob Sonju
I actually called Maren and I said hey, what are you reading right now? And she's like I'm reading about dinosaurs and sharks and cars and cars construction sites, yep, all of those fun things. 

0:42:21 - Sheline Miller
Shalene, I'm almost learning kind of the same things. I have a grand, a brand new little three week old grandbaby, but um, really what I'm learning is I just moved into from an intermediate school sixth, seventh grade into high school. So I'm an administrator now in high school and um, dealing with, uh, student behaviors and all sorts of stuff that has never, been like my wheelhouse. 

So I think I'm having to learn how to still think I'm an effective person when lots of parents and students hate me. So I'm still trying to learn how to navigate all of that. So that's kind of just that opening being real that as an administrator we have to wear a lot of hats and sometimes kids and parents are going to react well and love you and respond, and then at other times they're not going to agree with anything that you do, regardless of what you say or do. And I still have to believe I'm being effective. So I'm learning how to do that. 

0:43:31 - Bob Sonju
And Lindsay for me. I was introduced to this term a few months ago and it's really fascinated me, and so I've been doing a lot of reading and studying. But this idea of intellectual humility and it's a term, it's, it's really kind of cool if you check it out, but it's, I think it's something that we're losing in the fabric of our society, right, but it's a term, it's really kind of cool if you check it out, but I think it's something that we're losing in the fabric of our society, right, but it's recognizing and owning that our own intellectual limitations, right, that our opinions, beliefs, viewpoints, they may be flawed, but there's research saying that we all believe that 90 of the decisions we make are the right decisions, right? Um, and? And this intellectual humility idea is just being a just being able to recognize that your opinions and your thoughts may be flawed, your beliefs may be flawed, and we need to continue to learn, listen to opposing opinions and continually pursue understanding and truth and be more compassionate with one another. So there's intellectual humility. 

0:44:40 - Lindsay Lyons
Wow, those are all so deep. Very good answers. Wow, impressive, all of you All right. Final question Very good answers Wow, impressive, all of you, all right. Final question when can folks either connect with your book, engage with your book, get your book or follow any or all of you collectively or individually? Feel free to answer that in whatever way you'd like. 

0:45:00 - Bob Sonju
Yeah, you can find. We can find our book on on solutiontreecom and also for sale on Amazon, and, and I can be reached. I've got an Instagram. I know it's a miracle, you too. Wow, I'll finally create it, but Instagram at Bob Sanju. 

0:45:17 - Maren Powers
So and my Instagram learning powers and yeah. 

0:45:25 - Sheline Miller
I'm. I'm just in good old email, so if you'd like to reach out, it's mill M-I-L-L. Shaleen, s-h-e-l-i-n-e at Gmail. 

0:45:36 - Lindsay Lyons
Amazing. Thank you all so so much. This has been a beautiful conversation. Thank you all for being here today. Thank you so much for having us. 
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