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I met today’s guests at the 2022 NCSS Conference when I attended their session on elevating and prioritizing teaching hard histories in the ELA classroom. Both curriculum specialists for the school district of Philadelphia—which includes about 250 schools—Christy primarily works with middle schools and Alison primarily works with high schools.
The Big Dream Christy’s dream is that all students can access grade level texts, and they are on the way to achieving that dream soon! In addition to Christy's dream, Alison’s dream is autonomy for students and teachers to make the best choices for their needs. Alignment to the 4 Stages: Mindset, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Content The culture of partnership seems to be in place in many places. Leaders share the vision of partnership. Sometimes it doesn’t happen in the way it’s envisioned. Paraphrasing Dr. Ibram Kendi, Christy shared that racist policies lead to individual racism, not the other way around. The hope is personal mindsets will shift when we introduce new curriculum and have honest conversations as educators wrestle with it. There is a legacy of heavy-handedness around pedagogical practices, so there is a bit of fear around having the autonomy to do things differently than they’ve been done in the past. Another tension is due to emergency certifications and the larger context of teacher training, teachers may not have been equipped with the tools they need to be culturally responsive to the needs of their students. Christy shared an analogy: We’re not trying to give people overwhelm with a bunch of dieting recommendations, we’re saying eat nourishing meals and eat a walk every day. We’re not inventing something brand new. We’re trying to take away some things that were added to teachers’ plates that were not helping teachers and students. Action Steps The simplified goal: Read good books. Talk about them. Write about them. Curriculum Created: For each unit, we share a core text and provide daily lesson guidance documents, which includes core components of a reading or writing lesson. Each unit comes with an overview, which includes Essential Questions, big ideas, and alignment to Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s HILL model (5 pursuits). Step 1. Try to align ELA novels and texts to grade-level History units and content. Step 2. Choose culturally relevant texts. Choose one canonical text and teach it critically. Step 3. Develop lesson guidance, not lesson plans. (This enables teacher autonomy and offers opportunities for personalization in response to students’ identities in each classroom.) Lesson guidance includes things like: an opening, mini lesson, shared reading, discourse, write in response to reading). Step 4. Develop a writing-based summative assessment (multimodal writing or traditional writing). Recommendations for Leaders Doing Similar Work An Approach to Implementation Challenges: Particularly in high school, teachers are often attached to the texts they’re teaching. There’s some sticky spaces around that. They’ve pushed it back to schools to determine what they were comfortable with and what their students needed with the lens of Am I just falling back on what I know? Am I pushing myself? They’ve learned to trust schools and leaders to make those decisions and honestly communicate when that’s a struggle. Being open to the conversation is critical. Not Starting From Scratch? If you’re working with existing resources, there is still room for shifts. ”We think that novel-based units are the way to go…We start with the premise that there is no wrong text to teach in a classroom. It’s how you teach it.” We have to work within our locus of control. For example, if there’s a short story with problematic messaging, relate it to the identities present in the classroom (the teacher’s and the students’ identities), and determine how to talk about the text. Positive Deviance: Parable of the Sower and Sula units were made and previously taught by teachers prior to this district-wide curriculum design work. These units were already received well, so it became part of the standard curriculum. In fact, all units were designed by teachers and coaches in the district, which helped build trust in the curriculum. Book “Home Runs” for Students: The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo and Born a Crime by Trevor Noah One Step to Get Started Shift conversations about ELA instruction to building knowledge. Books teach us about the world. What knowledge are we choosing to build? How is that built by the books we teach? Skills are very important to reading and writing, but without knowledge, they are kind of useless. There’s a lot of research on this coming out now! Stay Connected You can connect with Christy via email at cchang@philasd.org. You can find Alison on LinkedIn. You can also find the School District of Philadelphia’s secondary ELA curriculum here. To help you begin to think about leading teams to create new curriculum, I’m sharing my Curriculum Boot Camp Planner with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 117 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 here. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain how to talk about current events with your staff:
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DESE is releasing their new (free) Investigating History curriculum for grades 5, 6, and 7 in the 2023-24 school year. In this episode, I walk you through what’s in the curriculum and how you can support your teachers to engage with the curriculum and prepare to teach it to their students in a relevant, personalized way.
Why I Like It and the Research It’s Based On: It’s grounded in justice-centered research and frameworks. The 4 Instructional Principles:
The 3 Pillars:
Content Covered in Each Grade: *Note: This curriculum is constantly evolving based on feedback from students and teachers, so this is the outline as of this episode’s recording (March 27, 2023). Grade 5:
How to prepare teachers to engage with this curriculum and prepare to teach it? Suggested outcomes for a professional learning experience:
Leading Curriculum Implementation Tip: Co-create ongoing structures of coaching support, success shares, and resource banks. For reference: DESE’s Design Specifications document for the Investigating History curriculum. To help you get started with preparing teachers to teach this curriculum, I’m sharing my Investigating History PD Agenda with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 116 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 here. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I reveal an instructional strategy and how to build community:
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Dr. Darrin Peppard is a leadership coach, consultant, and speaker focused on organizational culture and climate. He’s the author of Road to Awesome and continues to be an educator at heart.
The Big Dream Every adult and kid in a school feels seen and valued and heard. Every single kid has an opportunity for a better tomorrow and to figure out what they’re interested in. No one gets put in a box. Mindset Shifts Required Develop portraits of a learner instead of portraits of a graduate! We can lead from the middle or the back. We don’t always need to lead from the front. Help teachers see what’s possible and give themselves permission to teach in innovative ways. Action Steps Hand over the curriculum decisions to teachers (e.g., to align curriculum and instruction to their three academies: Health, Energy, and Fire, Law, and Leadership). Dr. Peppard had three incredible leaders leading those academies, and just let them go. Of course, he was still in their classrooms all the time, but they led them. Protect and shield your staff from outside (and sometimes even inside) forces so they can do their work. Build a groundswell of interest. It can’t just come from just you; it’s gotta come from staff. Put a team together and invite someone who’s not an early adopter. Visit other schools doing great work with teachers. Ask: Who’s doing that well? Invite students from other schools doing the work you want to do to talk to your students and families. One Step to Get Started Have a vision. Be clear about that vision. What’s the shift in reality you want to see in your school for your kids? You can then make decisions about where to allocate your time and resources to make it happen. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on www.roadtoawesome.net or @DarrinMPeppard on social media. You can get the revised edition of Dr. Peppard’s book here. To help you be the best leader you can be, Dr. Peppard is sharing his free ebook on 5 mindsets to level up your leadership. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 115 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 here. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain how to co-create community values and agreements:
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Leaders, if you need to navigate challenging staff and/or larger community contexts or disagreements.
Origins of this Episode Leadership Coaching Question: How can we work with differing opinions among staff or between administrators and families? (How do you arrive at a common understanding?) Another Leadership Coaching Question : How can we bring our DEI team’s “theory” work to the whole staff in a practical way? What Can We Do? First, some grounding context: Upholding the dignity of all people and advancing justice are the goals. We can’t lose sight of those. Facts matter. Scholars, Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy distinguish between settled empirical issues (these are factual realities and we don’t debate them) and policy issues (we can debate what’s the best way forward). Action Step: Ground the work and discussions in shared values. In processing injustices and conflict, center human emotions and “BASE” needs (i.e., (belonging, autonomy, survival, and enjoyment) instead of personal opinions. When we disagree, if we can identify the underlying value that’s the reason that we take our specific position, it’s more likely we can connect and hear the other person. For example, if someone says the value that underlies my position is that I am afraid for me or my family’s safety. That is something we can likely all resonate with to some degree. Tip: If you haven’t already identified shared values as a staff, I recommend doing this as your next meeting activity! (You can get a sample agenda for such a meeting here.) Action Step: Collect data on students’ experiences and center staff conversations in “street data.” (Check out the book, Street Data, by Jamila Dugan and Shane Safir!) Action Step: Invite students to staff meetings and have students on leadership teams as much as possible. Action Step: Use staff meetings to practice via protocols staff can also use with students, families, teams, and/or community members, depending on their role. What’s in the 4 Staff Meeting Agendas Freebie? .
Tip: Check out the 5-minute videos for each of these available on YouTube. Sneak Peek: Next month on the podcast, we’ll be starting a brand new #UnitDreaming series featuring educators who create a justice-centered unit outline right on the show! To help you do this work with your staff, I’m sharing my Staff Meeting Agendas with you for free. (You’ll get one agenda per week for a month. Yes, slide decks and live links to all related resources are included!) And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 114 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 here. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain how to diagnose an adaptive challenge:
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Author of Open Windows, Open Minds: Developing Antiracist, Pro-Human Students, Afrika Afeni Mills is back on the podcast! Afrika wants to build community and help folx keep their chins up through this challenging work.
The Big Dream
For us as educators to be courageous and strategic. (The kids are doing it, but they shouldn’t be alone doing it!) Mindset Shifts Required White-identifying people should do antiracist work for themselves. All people want to be whole and healed. We can look to white antiracist role models as guides and for motivation and encouragement to do this work. Many white folx have heard they need to decenter themselves, and so they may lean back. Instead, we can offer an alternative way to be. There’s a nuance to decentering. It doesn’t mean silence or to not be represented at all. It means what’s beautiful should be represented. Young white-identifying children don’t have great books to learn about people who look like them that have been doing antiracist work (both in the past and the present). Caterpillar to Butterfly Metaphor: The hard transformation happens in the chrysalis, and we can’t open it up early or the caterpillar will die. Actions Educators—Specifically White Educators—Can Take Pause and reflect. (Engage in these activities as you read Afrika’s book!) Write an obituary of the way we used to believe something. It’s hard to face this stuff! Write a letter to your younger self as part of your racial healing. Maybe even create a story to share with your students based on your story. Do these things to understand our own foundations and how things got to be the way they are before taking action. This will sustain the work. Leaders: Make space for teachers to 1) Do racial healing and identity work, and 2) Take action with students. Do this work yourself too! One Step to Get Started Use a framework. A great, free example is the CARE Framework! Also: Give teachers space to do this. Partner with families. Have the will to do it, have a plan for how we’ll keep this work going in the face of inevitable resistance. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on www.afrikaafenimills.com, on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Referenced Links:
To help you do anti-racist, pro-human, healing work, Afrika is sharing an amazing resource-packed Padlet with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 113 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 here. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain how to revolutionize behavior management in school:
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In this episode, I’m thinking about the question: How can I better use a shift in language to connect with the districts, schools, instructional coaches, and teachers already doing this work? To meet the moment of new state civics requirements (which are happening in many states in the northeast—MA, NY, NJ—and I’m sure others), I want to help schools meet new state mandates and do justice-centered work! Civics is About Engagement as “Citizens” Concepts I love from the existing research… Justice-Oriented Citizens (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004) Justice-Oriented citizens “know 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?”) Transformative Democratic Citizenship (Banks, 2017) As defined by Banks, this is “the ability to implement and promote policies, actions, and changes that are consistent with values such as human rights, social justice and equality.” Student Leadership (Lyons, Brasof, & Baron, 2020) “Students working collaboratively to affect positive change in their educational environments with support from adults and mechanisms in the school.” What is Justice (to me)? Justice allows all of us to be our full selves. It’s intersectional. There is a presence of a culture of positive peace that enables us all to thrive. Common Pitfalls We limit our work to an “add diversity and stir” approach. We get nervous about making a mistake and wait until something is perfect to act. We also view (and teach) change leadership as an individual endeavor instead of collective civic engagement. How do we support teachers to create really good Civics projects, units, and courses? Support teachers in all content areas (and in all grades) to design summative assessments that give students opportunities to apply whatever content they learned in a way that advances justice. Design PD experiences or staff meetings that enable all staff members to design civics projects that connect to their course content. How do we enable all students to practice civic engagement within our schools and districts? Meaningful opportunities for student leadership. Take a look at your school’s decision-making structures and make sure you have equitable student representation on all committees, including the leadership team. From the research: Mitra and Gross’s Student Voice Pyramid (2009) reflects three levels of student voice: listening to students, youth-adult partnership, and building capacity for student leadership. The earlier levels actually cause more turbulence than higher levels because students are invited to share concerns, but not encouraged to co-create solutions. Partnering with students and families is critical. Half measures (listening without partnering to take action) is not enough. Tips for Implementation Designing Civics Projects: Use department team meetings to align your state’s civics project standards to the department or summative assessment rubric. Help teachers and teams pick a publishing opportunity where student projects are shared. (This could be the school website or the school’s social media accounts.) Coach teachers to think about how to connect civic engagement projects to course content and also leave room for student voice. Student Leadership in Governance: Collect data on the student experience. You can do this through the SLCB Survey linked below or any of the various methods named in the book, Street Data. Invite students onto school committees. Audit these committees for representation (i.e., it’s not just one token student or all of the sports captains, students with straight A grades, or members of Student Council). Support and train students in the tools and skills they can use to be an effective representative for students. To help create space for student leadership in your school or district, I’m sharing my statistically validated Student Leadership Capacity Building survey with you for free. (Use this to measure student perceptions of leadership and civic engagement opportunities in the school!) As another resource, check out my 5-minute tutorial on How to Measure Equity and Student Voice to see how you can personalize the survey for your context. To learn more about the MA Civics Project requirements, I made this short video summary for you. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 112 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 here. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain how to plan a lesson in 5 minutes:
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Dr. PJ Caposey is the Illinois State Superintendent of the Year and a Finalist for the National Superintendent of the Year through the American Association of School Administrators. He’s a best-selling author, dynamic speaker, and a transformational leader and educator with an incredible track record of success. The Tension Between Pragmatism and Idealism + The Big Dream Dr. Caposey first poses the question: Is our purpose to design a system that absolutely best serves kids and gets them ready to be critical thinkers and contributors to ever-changing society and democracy or…are we designing schools to…be of service to society and the community and to support parents and to prepare kids for (the best that we can) for tomorrow? He believes geography shouldn’t determine a student’s access to high quality education. Student Agency Dr. Caposey does a senior exit interview with every senior. One result has been replacing all of the water fountains. Another result has been helping students see the behind-the-scenes realities of decision-making and the complexity given the rural district’s resource constraints. Currently, students may perceive their voice and impact in the school/district is limited to less consequential organizational decisions, but that they do have more agency in their own futures. Whatever a “student’s tomorrow” is, Dr. Caposey believes it’s their school’s job to get them there. Identity and Justice Conversations in a Predominantly White District Elementary teachers are less fearful. Our community is perceived as being unwilling to engage in these types of conversations. There’s a large difference in reacting to individual students than a justice or identity-based concept. Because when it’s a kid, it’s “Do what you need to do for the kid.” When it’s humanized, our community’s been pretty awesome. And we still tiptoe into justice-based conversations. Students of color have reported a different experience than white students in senior exit interviews. It feels harder to change the overall experience than to change a policy. In the last two presidential elections, half of the staff was in a day of mourning the day after (with different groups being in mourning each time). We have to have the conversations. It’s always a consideration of will we open a gaping wound if we just start the conversation and talk about this on one staff PD day? It feels scary to not feel like an expert in this area. It’s also important to consider who can facilitate a helpful conversation in our community. One Step to Get Started Talk to kids and figure out what their experience is. And if it’s fundamentally different [from what we want all students to experience], then we have to act. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on his website: www.pjcaposey.com and on most social media platforms @MCUSDSupe. To dig further into Dr. Caposey’s ideas and experiences, he’s sharing his popular TED Talk with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 111 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 here. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I lead you through a series on unit design:
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In this episode, we’re looking at one possible format for project-based summative assessments. As always, we’re focused on how this project format enables students to have a civic impact and an audience beyond the teacher. Why do a podcast as a summative assessment? Project-based learning. PBL classrooms have higher student engagement, student motivation to learn, student independence and attendance compared to traditional classrooms. Students using PBL understand the content on a deeper level and retain content longer. Also, PBL students perform as well or better on high-stakes tests than students in traditional settings (Buck Institute for Education’s research summary). Student Voice. Research has found students who engage in leadership activities, have demonstrated improved peer and adult relationships (Yonezawa & Jones, 2007); positive self-regard, feelings of competence, student engagement (Deci & Ryan, 2008) and academic performance (Mitra, 2004). What Feldman and Khademian (2003) call “cascading vitality,” can occur, where students inspire and empower others, lifting up students that may be experiencing structural, political, and/or social marginalization. What can I do to support my teachers with this? Leaders, host a content- and grade-agnostic professional development session with your staff so they can experience podcasting and plan how they might use this in their courses. Frame the session with these questions that staff can create a podcast on: What needs to change to make the world/your community more just? or What perspectives/experiences/topics does the world/your community need to hear? Invite staff to get into groups, choose an episode format (e.g., multiple segments, interview show, co-host banter), and a role for each group member. How to Support Teachers to Use Podcasts in their Courses: Step 1: Use podcasts as “texts” in lessons. Then, debrief the content AND the podcast format. Step 2: Offer a simple frame or steps for how to record. (e.g., Use phones to record audio.) Step 3: Give access to simple editing tools or edit for them (and ask the creators to tell you what goes where.) Step 4: Create a podcast or find an existing podcast on which students can publish their episodes (i.e., an authentic audience beyond the teacher!) Final Tips for Coaching Teachers to Use Podcasts Embed opportunities throughout the unit for audio recording. Example: Students record their voice answering each day’s exit ticket. Encourage staff members to visit other classes where they’re doing podcasting! To help you develop and facilitate a staff PD on podcasting, I’m sharing the slide deck I used in the podcasting conference session with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 110 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 here. Quotes:
Eager to hear more about unit design and planning for success? Check this out below:
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Dr. Warren’s philosophy of teaching is based on her educational experiences, starting with taking the AP test and realizing she didn’t know how to answer the questions about women. Her teacher said there wasn’t enough time. “[Teachers] have a lot of power to do good and also potential to do harm.” The Big Dream For all students to be seen. To get a more comprehensive history in front of students in an integrated, authentic way in which multiple identities and histories are woven throughout the entire course. “Not everyone is doing it in that authentic, holistic way. They’re doing it in a checkbox way. Maybe even our leadership is telling them to do it in a checkbox way.” The dream is for us to sit with truth and sit with joy. We can learn about who the people are that are making change happen and how they’re doing that. Alignment to the 4 Stages: Mindset, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Content Dr. Warren and her colleagues developed a curriculum and presented it to students to see if it met their needs and wants. They created an identity wheel that considers access to structural power for each identity group, which has been a helpful tool for students to grapple with these ideas. The vast majority of teachers and students are able to use this well. It’s led to beautiful, nuanced conversations. It’s designed for teachers to be able to use it to their comfort level. For example, it may be used to explore the identities and access to power for an author of a text like Ida B. Wells. The wheel works well to grapple with big essential questions like: Who is an American? Using primary sources to learn about U.S. History is a way to frame the conversation in truth and breaking down any myths students may have learned in younger grades. A Thematic Approach Teaching thematically has engaged Dr. Warren’s students through U.S. History I content, when the minutiae doesn’t feel very relevant to students. Each unit goes through the 100-year time period for the course (1820s-1920s) through different themes. Here are the themes Dr. Warren uses for U.S. I:
Unit Design Pieces Start with Questions: Course-long Essential Questions, Unit-specific EQ, and Guiding Questions Establish the historical context. Lesson-Level (Skill-Building) Protocols Include:
Summative Assessment Example: Annotated Bibliography (common assessment) paired with a Student-Led Research Project Mindset Shifts Required Make it authentic to your style and your classroom. Don’t allow your discomfort to get in the way of what your students need. We are adults. We will survive being sweaty. Ask yourself: How can I make more of my students feel seen? What do they really need when they leave my classroom? Ask your students: How do you learn best? One Step to Get Started Trust students with difficult things. Give students opportunities to reflect in writing and verbally. Stay Connected You can find Dr. Warren on LinkedIn. To help you design curriculum and instruction that centers historically marginalized identities, Dr. Warren is sharing her Identity Wheel with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 109 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 here. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I lead you through a series on unit design:
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This episode helps you get the important things done—the things that you got into this job for. We’ll talk about what batch planning is, why I love it, how I’m using it, and how it can help you too. What is batch planning? It’s doing the work you have for a specific task that you have to repeat daily or weekly in one multi-hour chunk of time. Why? You can do the work faster. (Less task switching means saving hours of time!) You then have more time to spend on the important things (i.e., curricular and instructional leadership). Instead of this time-saving awesomeness, we often spend too much time putting out fires or playing calendar jenga. Then, we feel worse because we don’t get all the things from our never-ending to-do list done. This results in us having less energy and hope for ourselves, our colleagues, our students, and our families. This approach also makes us better at naming and upholding our priorities, which results in lots of good things—results for student learning, more efficiency and productivity at work, and more joy and wellness for ourselves. How do we make it happen? Start with a clean schedule. This approach of adding to the blank schedule is way easier to prioritize the important things rather than taking things off of your existing schedule. If you run out of time, we have to let go of the less important things. Coach and podcaster, Neill Williams encourages her clients to the question: “If I only had this much time, what would I do or prioritize?” This forced constraint of limiting how much time you have to do something—for a specific task or the total hours of your work week—forces you to prioritize and be efficient. Determine the tasks to batch. What are the 3 big tasks you repeat regularly (i.e., each week?) Coaching teachers? Engaging in professional learning for myself? Planning structures and PD opportunities for my staff? These can be tasks that require you to create something on your computer or activities that you want to be fully immersed in and not available for people to interrupt you. Schedule the batching tasks. Find a minimum of 90 minutes each day to allocate to a task that you will batch. You can schedule two batching sessions per day, but more than that may be unrealistic. Create a schedule that feels doable, but be honest with yourself and push yourself to find at least 90 minutes a day even if it seems too difficult. Then…don’t schedule over this time! Treat it like a meeting. Schedule wellness. Add “tasks” to your schedule like mental breaks, lunch, peace and quiet, and/or movement. If you’re like me, you may work through lunch to get a task done and then feel completely depleted and grumpy the rest of the day because you went 8 hours without eating anything. Put all incoming tasks in your calendar. Any tasks that come in—often, these come in via email—schedule the task in your calendar based on the estimated time it will take. I like this approach instead of adding it to a to-do list that only grows because it’s the forced constraint principle again. You only have a finite amount of time, so you need to ask yourself if it’s worth taking up space on the calendar. If not, you may decide to delegate it or you may decide it doesn’t actually need to be done at all. Final Thoughts In the last few months, I decided to reschedule all of my weekly tasks to one day per month. Instead of making one YouTube video for my YouTube channel each week, I now take one Monday per month and batch record all 4-5 videos that day. Then, I’m done with my video recording until the following month. Another great use for batching: You can coach teachers to use batching to plan more efficiently. Help your teachers break down their planning process and tasks. Then, help them use each of their planning periods for one type of task. Teachers lose so much time on switching tasks! This is also a reason to give teachers back to back planning periods whenever possible. If you’re ready to start creating your new batching schedule, grab my Batched Schedule Template. For more planning tips, you can also check out my 3-page Planner Preview for Leaders. The podcast episode on which Neill Williams was talking about forced constraints is here. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 108 the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript here. Quotes:
Want to continue learning more about teaching history for justice? Watch this video on culturally responsive and sustaining education:
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
April 2023
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