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Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Driving questions, Essential questions, and Supporting questions This series, we’ve been talking a lot about project based learning. One of the main elements of Project Based Learning is coming up with a driving question. What’s a driving question? It is one that’s aligned with learning goals, engaging, allows for open ended responses, rooted in a specific context, clear, and centers justice. There are also essential questions and supportive questions. Grant Wiggins has a blog post that explains the difference between all of these. The essential question stays relevant and comes back into curriculum unit after unit, even moving between subjects and grade levels. Supporting questions are small scale. They have an agreed upon answer and they help students in answering their big driving question. All of these question types are helpful for different reasons. They all go together into completing a project that looks at an issue. What’s important here is not trying to leave any out or substitute one for the other. In this episode, we're diving into the details of a driving question. “There are different levels of questions and an essential question as the driving question for a project is not going to cut it. it's not going to be super engaging, it's not going to be contextualized in a way that makes sense for the project so students might be confused; they might just be disinterested. And the supporting or what I have been calling the scaffolding question is just way too narrow.” What make a driving question stand out? It’s important for a driving question to be exciting for students. If there’s no interest, it’s automatically going to be a less effective project with answers that may not be fully developed. We want it to be in a specific context so that it’s not too broad. It needs to be open ended so that students can all respond in their own way with something unique to bring to the table. It should be clear; students should know what is being asked of them. Lastly, it should center justice and give students a chance to be a part of real world problem solving. Examples A way to make sure that your driving question hits all of these elements is to create at least 5 rough drafts before you decide what your final question is. Additionally, ask a friend or students for feedback to see if anything’s missing. To borrow an example from John Larmer at PBL Works, if you were going to talk about math and basketball, your first draft might look something like this: How is math used in basketball statistics? Then it could progress to: Is Lebron James the best basketball player ever? There’s a clear difference here for a couple reasons. First, it’s gotten more specific. It is more compelling. People are much more interested in Lebron James as the subject. And it’s created another question about how to define best and what that’s based on. Now it would have to be edited further to include justice. Sometimes when justice is added to the question, the question may get bulkier or less clear, so you want to try to maintain a balance all of these qualities. Some of the possible directions you can go with driving questions is making it:
Here is John Larmer's post with some more sample questions to check out Closing activity: As we close this post, just take a moment to do some brainstorming. Think of a unit idea/topic that you could use for your question. Then try to come up with those 5 minimum drafts. Use the Backwards Planning Template to give you a checklist for driving questions as well as some other info you won’t want to miss. If you have any further questions feel free to reach out! For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now to create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Matthew Pimental has 15 years of experience in education. He got started with developing cultural immersion experiences for American teenagers to locations throughout the world before transitioning to a classroom position in a Philadelphia charter school serving students from the third (economically) poorest zip code in the United States. He transitioned to a role supporting students identified as “intellectually gifted” and now oversees professional development programming for teachers. He also supports a school within a school project-based learning program in a highly diverse school district in a metropolitan area. Can you remember the first time you heard about Project Based Learning? Perhaps it was from this blog, during a PD workshop, or maybe you saw your coworker teach a PBL unit. Did you think to yourself, “wow that sounds like a lot of work,”? You’re not the only one. Our guest, Matthew Pimental, says it’s common to hear teachers assume that being unconventional in the classroom means throwing away everything you know and having to start all over again. That’s what deters schools from getting into project based learning. In this episode, Matthew breaks down some of these fears and talks about why it’s really not as big of a leap as you might think. All schools should be able to make changes that will help the students The methods and ways in which people are taught do not have to be through a textbook. Many schools get a kind of tunnel vision when going the typical route. Teachers try to get through the fast paced flow of the week without remembering that there is more to education than this one way. Matthew remembers feeling like a cog in a machine as a student in middle school classes with traditional models. There was no personalized learning. Private schools seem to have more resources and capacity for unique learning experiences. But fun, enriching education experiences shouldn’t be a luxury for private schooling. Public schools deserve the same outcomes. That’s why project based learning is on the rise. The benefits are stirring conversations. Is PBL less rigorous? Some parents and principals worry that changing the pedagogy and evaluations for students means losing out on organization and quality. Here’s the secret: there’s only a risk for disorder and low quality if you allow it. Proper planning and following research based strategies is all it takes to make sure any changes are smooth. For example, shifting the grading system to align with a PBL approach does not mean throwing out all forms of assessment and feedback. “If you're not going to grade students, how are you holding students to excellent work? Right, you can't avoid that just because you're not going to use grades, and I think oftentimes...getting away from grading winds up being getting away from any kind of evaluation whatsoever, and that's not high quality education.” PBL can still meet the basic standards within your state. It’s not as radical as one may think according to Matthew. PBL curriculum still enables students to learn the most important course concepts and skills. Not to mention, he recommends that you keep using practices from the traditional model too because many of those still have value. Find what works for your students and keep it! Then, look at what’s left to change. Use project based learning as the main course (not the dessert at the end). The project should drive the learning. For teachers who don’t feel like they want to incorporate PBL into every unit, Matthew says some of his teachers choose specific units to use a PBL approach and other units are designed using a more traditional model. What do you think your students could accomplish with more project based learning? If you've already started, what successes have you had? If you're not sure about starting, what’s holding you back? Share your thoughts in the comments section below! For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now so you can create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self. More Links! During the show, Matthew refers to a student-created book as the culminating "public product" of a ninth grade PBL unit. Here are links to two of those books (2018) and (2020). He also mentioned his teachers are participating in High Tech High's Unboxed Podcast. Matthews’s email and more information on his district can be found on Cheltenham’s Website.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: One of the foundational elements of backwards planning justice-centered units with flexibility and multiple opportunities to practice skills is a course-long rubric. Getting clear on where we're going helps us as educators, and that clarity helps our students. Using one rubric for all course projects In last week’s post, I touched on project based units, curriculum design, equity, and mastery based grading which helps students deeply understand content and repeatedly practice and refine key skills by addressing one driving question throughout a unit. We cannot design application projects or create lesson-level activities for students to practice the key skills if we don't know what the key skills are. That's why a course-long rubric is step one. “Work within your department or the grade you teach to be able to co-create a rubric that has the same priority standards so that students moving class to class or grade to grade, year to year, they see the same language... and they get further opportunities to be able to practice and refine those skills.” Co-creating this rubric with fellow teachers who teach the same content or grade level will result in a better rubric that's aligned from year to year and class to class. It also saves the student the trouble of having to read through and learn new rubrics. Now, there are two ways you can make a rubric for mastery. One is called a single point rubric. The three columns are: Approaching standards, Outcome, and Above Standards. In the middle column, you will list all of your outcomes. So name the skill and under it explain what being proficient in that skill would mean. The other two columns are for you and a student to write your own notes. If a student is not quite at the standard, you will describe why in “Approaching Standards” and if they have gone above those standards you write how they exceed the standards in the “Above Standards” column The second option is a three or four point rubric with 3 or 4 vertical columns and horizontal rows for the priority skills. The difference is that you define each category of mastery on this rubric (e.g., below standards, meets standard, and above standard). Best practices:
I think you’ll find it useful to hear about the skills-based rubrics that the New York Performance Standards Consortium has developed. Many schools have adopted these standards and it’s great to see these collaborations between departments in different schools. Their four point rubric is based on these core subjects: ELA, Social Studies, Science, Math, and Engineering/Design Science. The priority skills listed for ELA are organization, analysis & interpretation, style & voice, connections, conventions (written) or presentation (verbal). Social Studies is viewpoint: thesis & claim, evidence & sources, analysis & persuasion, effective organization, understanding of implication & context voice, and a presentation format. For science they have the presentation piece plus contextualize, critique, experimental design, collect/curate/organize/present data, analyze & interpret results, revise original design. Math is problem solving, reasoning & proof, communication, connections, representation. Finally engineering/design science contains problem solving, reasoning & proof, communication, connections, representation and a presentation format. Rubric design is critical for backwards planning curriculum, and it doesn't have to take forever! Take a look at my rubric templates below to see the templates we discussed today. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module to create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: My dream for students Imagine if we could help students learn how to identify the injustices around them. One of my dreams for students is for them to be able to call out these injustices that come up time and time again. I want to be able to develop curriculum that enables them to create projects grounded in justice. These projects go beyond the grade. They should be heard by authentic audiences in the community. They bring inspiration and give students a sense of ownership in taking on these issues directly and creatively. When we apply mastery grading to projects over traditional ones, there is less room for bias and more for considering what skills are being demonstrated through these projects. What does the research say? The research on student-centered learning is revealing. This makes learning personalized to the individual needs and gives them power to be part of the creation of curriculum. Students get to progress to the next level when they’ve nailed down the concepts, not when a teacher says so. Here’s what students have shown from the research:
In addition, having more student voice has shown to greatly improve student-teacher relationships and student-student relationships. Students increase their critical awareness of the world and they naturally gravitate towards activism. This next one is so cool—when educators share power with their students, more power is created. This is known as cascading vitality. Usually, people assume the opposite. They assume that sharing power will mean chaos and that no one has enough. But I want you to reframe that mindset. Student voice engages and heals We talk about the importance of trauma informed teaching in school. There’s a reason that we need to change the pedagogy and methods with students who have been through trauma. Trauma affects the brain and impacts a child’s ability to learn. Besides SEL, students who have trauma can also benefit from this shared leadership model. It gives students control over themselves and how they learn which counteracts that feeling of powerlessness that some have after trauma. The process of restoring mental wellness and going beyond healing is called Post Traumatic Growth. Researchers find that the right environment for Post Traumatic Growth is one that involves a way to cope and regain agency. Justice-centered units and shared power are opportunities to to cultivate that. For many schools, there is a lack of connection and a lack of engagement in classrooms. Students that don’t feel like they are valued as an individual may feel this way because the traditional curriculum doesn’t reflect their identities or make room for their ideas. Our world needs young people to fight for justice, and the research tells us even having more class discussions increases students' future civic engagement. Next, I want to discuss why project based learning is impactful. In project based learning (PBL), you start with a challenging question or issue. This problem/question is one that students address throughout the unit. The summative assessment is a “public product” with an authentic audience beyond the teacher, and throughout the unit, students have multiple opportunities for critique and revision of their project. Classes that use PBL have been studied and found to improve students’ attitudes on learning, engagement, self-reliance, and overall attendance. Bonus finding: PBL teachers are happier than non-PBL teachers! “PBL also increases content retention and deepens students’’ understanding. Students in PBL actually do better on standardized tests than students not in PBL classrooms.” Reflecting on power and grading bias When teaching for justice, we have the opportunity to develop student identity and criticality which often doesn’t get the attention it deserves. When planning for lessons, take it from Dr. Gholdy Muhammad and ask yourself how your lesson will help students learn something about themselves or others. Sylvia Duckworth has something called the wheel of power/privilege. It’s a colorful and complex wheel that shows our proximity to power with all of our different identities. You can use this as an example to also ask yourself how will my lesson get students to think about power, equity, and ways we can disrupt oppression? Another aspect of teaching for justice is preventing grading bias. The data shows a clear bias in the practice of assigning a grade to students. Even when we are unconscious of it or aim to be objective, it’s too easy to judge the student rather than the quality of the student’s work or learning. The research on "mastery-based" or competency-based" grading, however, shows this approach to be more accurate and equitable. “Mastery based grading results in a 34% gain in student achievements. It increases student learning...and “achievement gaps” decrease.” Mastery-based grading really stands out because it doesn’t punish students for coming from past schools that haven’t prepared them to succeed. Usually, Black, Brown, and Indigenous students are the ones who are affected by strict grading because it doesn’t account for the gap or differences between students coming from advantaged schools and students coming from schools with less funding, crowded classrooms, and teachers that didn’t have the tools they needed. It’s all about giving all students a chance to practice the same skills and show progress/mastery in a variety of ways. I hope all of the research on these topics have inspired you to dive deeper and bring more equity into your class. If you want a simple resource that ties all of this together, be sure to click below to get my “Equity 1 pager”. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module to create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Emma Siesfeld has spent the last 10 years in public education as a teacher, coach, and administrator as well as designing and implementing support for students with disabilities that promote skill growth and independence. Dreams for education How do we support all students to be motivated, engaged, and develop their skills for success? When asked about the big dreams Emma holds for the field of education, she replies that she wants education to feel empowering to students. She wants students to feel like their voices matter and whatever they contribute is valued. Emma believes that learning can be fun and engaging to students. We just have to make sure we are caring enough as educators to make it different. As a teacher, one of our biggest goals is to make sure students feel prepared and ready for the future. Students would ideally make progress every day with the tools they’re given and come out feeling powerful in their lives and the world. Taking direction from students and their communities Emma discusses how in our standard teacher training, we take what has traditionally worked for us and then when it comes time to teach, we sort of take that same model and apply it to our students expecting it to work for them. But there are many students who will struggle with your methods because they have different learning obstacles and strengths than you. So, we have to be willing to pay attention to these needs and honor the child in that way. Another way to change our mindset is to not think of students learning when they want to. Instead what if it’s students learn when they can? This brings in a responsibility to teachers and school leaders to figure out how we can make the school setting and the learning more equitable for students who are underrepresented. “I think there are a lot of ways in which we are not fully in control...to make sure students get what they need, but certainly, looking at what we have within our roles and trying to figure out and identify exactly what we can do to really support students so that they're in a place where they can learn.” Strategies to support all students It can be scary to experiment with new methods. Changing the model can feel uncomfortable but Emma shares that it just comes down to being more open and courageous for the sake of a supportive learning environment and for student growth. Remind yourself that it’s okay to stumble or to not get it right when trying new ways. You don’t have to be perfect about it! To help yourself make the journey easier, be open to transparency with your students and even their parents if that helps. This encourages social emotional skills that we want students to learn as well. Another thing you can do is talk with peers and coworkers. Share your feelings around those challenges and ask for some advice on strategies that they might have tried in the past. You’re likely to get a lot of encouragement and new ideas by opening up about it. One key strategy Emma reveals is partnering up with parents so that they can make sure everyone's on the same page with knowing what that student/child needs to be supported by the school and parent. To hear Emma walk me through several strategies from her amazing guide, listen to the episode, and feel free to share what what strategies resonate with you! To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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What do you do when facts don't seem to matter? One of the most common questions I get when facilitating with teachers and district leaders is how do I teach for justice without feeling like I’m indoctrinating my students? There’s a line that teachers and leaders want to walk, afraid to go too far into radical ideas. There’s also the point that the facts are always being put up for debate. Dr. Ayo Magwood’s article goes over how to have a historical, scientific approach to anti-racist education. She says “I do not allow classroom debate over whether structural racism exists. As Hess and McAvoy (2104) argue ‘That is inauthentic and problematic to allow students to debate settled empirical questions,’”. She is stating some questions have factual answers. Then there are policy questions which are debatable because they are a matter of opinion on how certain factual issues should be handled. Making these distinctions are a way for us to be able to hold important discussions while the facts remain important. Perspectives Consciousness Approach The other piece of this is that you should be teaching the history and sociology on these empirical topics but when it comes to the debatable parts, you might want to take a perspectives consciousness approach. This approach was made by Robert Hanvey in 1976. It centers on how we all have different views and that’s because our positionality is so varied. The intersection of our different identities is what influences our perceptions of various issues. Seek out the perspectives of multiple people instead of taking your perspective as the universal one. We see this happen with both children and adults. There’s this ‘If I didn’t see it happen or if I didn’t experience it, then it didn’t happen’ type of mentality. “This is something that is applied to the policy solution question; It's not applied to a factual question or an empirical question because then we run the risk of universalizing our personal perspectives. If we say ‘this is my truth and therefore it is fact, it is true for everyone’, that becomes problematic.” Truth decay Another helpful resource is Dr. Jon Wegin’s book, “Deep Learning in a Disorienting World”. The author explains the importance of deep learning and how to take steps towards that. One of the terms in his book is “truth decay”. Truth decay has been found to be caused by the following:
“What we're trying to do is to motivate students to latch on to that emotional piece and support action, the motivation to complete the worksheet or to complete the project or to apply the skills, whatever it is, but that emotion is really critical.” This kind of discourse thrives with equal parts challenge and confidence. We don’t want students getting too frustrated with challenges but just enough that they are able to figure it out. We also want confidence so that students are motivated to keep trying even if they don’t have success the first few times. All of these main points from each author can be practiced by students, teachers, family members, etc in order to build more capacity for discourse that challenges, transforms and promotes racial justice. To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Dr. John Littlewolf grew up in the city of Cass Lake on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation of Ojibwe, one of six bands comprising the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe. He began his law enforcement career with the white earth tribal police in 2009. During his career, his positions included patrol officer, domestic violence and sexual assault investigator, and criminal investigator. He’s currently a conservation officer. He holds a Bachelors in Criminal Justice, a Masters in Public Safety Executive Leadership, Masters in Leadership & Change, and a PHD in Leadership & Change. John has always been an advocate for his Indigenous community. John is also a published author of a book of brilliant poetry and a self described activist. What does poetry do for us? Poetry has the power to reveal the common emotions and experiences that a group of people go through. Take John’s poetry for instance. His poetry teaches us about resistance, ancestral wisdom, fighting for freedom, and more. When talking about his start with poetry, Dr. Littlewolf connects poetry to his early life experiences. It was a way to process the emotions and thoughts that came up days later. He sees it as a gift that will remain a part of him no matter what. “For me poetry is...It was always there. it was this underlying river, if you will. It was always there in my experiences. It would be delayed. So I would go through something, whether it be loss or an experience and days later, what I believe was my consciousness, or my spirit, was putting it together...and days later, it would become something I never expected. Some of them, I look at them like oh my God did I write that?” No need for rules Being able to transmit emotion across space and time is a necessary part of the work to fight for justice and celebrate Indigenous culture according to Dr. Littlewolf. He shares that being able to feel these intense emotions after reading something by a poet was what inspired him in the first place. He wished that in his school, he could have been introduced to it sooner. Reading and writing minus all the rules and the standards removes the barriers that may inhibit students from writing for expression, creativity, and growth. “Nobody told me that you could take away the rules. You could just write what you feel and you don't have to write in a box. I didn't discover that until I was 26. And I wish I had discovered it sooner. I wish there would have been a teacher or a mentor or something along the way there.” How poetry connects with identity and activism Oftentimes, where poetry and activism intersect is right alongside identity. The things you may fight for or against are usually something that affects you to your core. So being able to translate those feelings into words can be therapeutic and helpful to your own activism. Not to mention, as a teacher, it’s a way of understanding where your students are coming from. If you used it to say I would like you to write down what you're feeling right now, that could make a real difference in teacher-student relationships as opposed to making assumptions about why certain students are behaving a certain way. John mentions how much it uplifts him to see the younger generations in his Ojibwe community achieving more and more success each year. These celebrations and the ability of Indigenous populations to overcome the deeply rooted effects of settler colonialism and violence are what current and future generations need to know about. So the writing continues. Of course, the barriers are still there. The U.S. still fails to meet the demands being made for justice. And so once again, the writing will continue. To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Do you ever come across an exciting resource that would be perfect for your teachers’ professional development but don’t know if you have enough in the school budget to invest in it? Today, I’m going to help you find multiple ways of funding your PD or your teachers' PD so that they can create engaging class experiences for students and you can be your best leader self. Looking at Title I If you’re a new administrator or starting to look through all of the new funding you’ve been given this year, it’s time to consider how you can get the money needed for PD. First off, Title I and Title II are the most common sources for funding professional development. Here are examples of what Title I funding can be used for:
“Providing greater decision making authority and flexibility to schools and teachers in exchange for greater responsibility for student performance.” This is where survey tools would be useful for being able to assess student/teacher/family experience. You can also use this funding to build the foundation for making shared decisions and leading in collaboration with school stakeholders. This will set your school up for sustainable success beyond one year. The research shows that this type of model which puts together multiple stakeholder viewpoints, leads us to making better decisions. Another purpose of Title I is that it should be used to elevate the quality of instruction. This could be achieved through collaboration and group coaching programs. On to Title II Title II funding can be used for:
Teacher mentoring could be a great way to get to the last point of hiring and retaining those teachers and principals with excellent skills. When we talk about studying data, I encourage you to go past the numerical data and look at perception data as well. There is definitely an emphasis on leader PD here, so use it well! Bonus: Title IV Title IV is one of the lesser known options for professional development. Just a note that this can’t be used for substitutes who aren’t attending PD that is funded through Title IV. Title IV allows uses of funds for:
“If we are in spaces, where we are trying to foster a school community that is antiracist, that advances intersection of justice, yes, we will likely decrease bullying, we will likely increase relationship building...All of these are kind of outcomes of programs that develop and facilitate generative conversations about race and anti racist policy and having an anti racist class culture. So, I think that's not explicitly named here but any programming, any professional development around this, is going to contribute to all of these outcomes that are listed in the language.” Don't forget about ESSER funding ESSER funding is the last option I’m going to name. This is relevant to COVID as it stands for Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief. There are actually three different subsections under this but they all have some overlap. All three types of ESSERs can be used for planning and implementing summer learning, providing mental health services and supports, and activities that address the unique needs of students who have been historically underserved by school systems. ESSER I and ESSER CARES can be used for principals and leaders to address school specific needs. This can cover many things like raising capacity for leaders to advance student achievement. ESSER II and ARP ESSER can be used to adjust learning loss among all students in all subgroups and administer high quality reliable assessments. Project based learning, what I teach in my PD programs, is one of the best ways to have students show that they are retaining the information they’re learning and getting high quality skills from it. You can use this funding for contracts in the upcoming school years so you have a sustainable runway for ongoing, quality professional development. So, invest wisely, and don't let that money go to waste! I hope this was a helpful, comprehensive guide for you on how you can pay for your teachers PD or your own. Be sure to take advantage of the unique funding that schools have received this year and last, due to COVID, so your school can thrive from that much needed PD. To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Taryn Givan lives in Texas and holds a Bachelor’s degree in elementary education from the University of Central Arkansas. She also holds a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Texas A&M University and principal certification. She has served 19 years in the K-12 setting as a teacher, assistant principal, and adjunct professor. Now in her 20th year, Taryn is the Founder and CEO of Divergent Educational Consulting LLC as well as an independent educational consultant and service specialist with Better Lesson. She is a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority. She enjoys dancing, reading, writing, listening to music, among other things. One of her greatest accomplishments is being a mother to a beautiful 19 year old and a wife to her husband. Her motivation each day stems from Galatians 6:9. Leader in Me and Campus Leadership Teams explained Leadership is something we can constantly redefine, especially when it comes to our students. The organization called the Leader in Me aims to empower more educators with practices that connect culture, academics, and leadership. They use methods like the 7 habits of highly effective people and social emotional learning to increase student confidence, give students more leadership skills, help school staff feel supported, and drive school achievements. They use Campus Leadership Teams to help carry out these frameworks and methods. Campus Leadership Teams are made up of the campus principal and key school leaders like administrators, counselors, academic support specialists, etc; They are responsible for the development, implementation, and monitoring of the targeted improvement plan, monitoring student performance, and determination of student interventions and support services. Not only do they develop educational policies for the school based on observation, data, and research, but they also make sure that there are resources available to support these changes. Communicating with your team There are benefits to collaborating with other school leaders on campus. When a leadership team brings on people with diverse experiences and identities, everyone in it can learn how certain parts of school policies or their school culture may be fine for that person in the group, but harmful for this other person and some students. The first thing these teams need to do is gather the information they need. These teams can instruct principals on how to listen to students of color and practice more inclusivity. When getting together with the other members in your group, you can do quick check-ins in the form of “huddles” and longer full meetings. Huddles can be done on Monday morning where you and the team huddle up in an open area. Each person goes around the circle going over anything that might’ve come up over the weekend and then announcing some key dates coming up that week. “Our huddles, just standing up in a circle, sometimes I go to my right, sometimes I go to my left, and we will go around—big rocks for the week, this is what I need from you, etc, all hearts clear, hands in the middle, go!” Make all children feel seen and heard Oftentimes, adults in school will only see children as an extension of the communities they come from. Taryn notes how teachers may look at a child and be unfair with how they measure their potential and gifts. School leaders need to do more to ensure that not only are students from all backgrounds accepted, but they are allowed to be whoever they want to. Kids are beyond capable when it comes to shared decision making! They know what they like, what’s interfering with their education, and what might be better. They have the potential to contribute amazing ideas about representation and diversity in schools whether they’re in elementary school or high school. Everyone can offer different perspectives because all our experiences are so unique. It’s all about bringing something new to the table. So if you want to make sure your Campus Leadership Team gets the right results, part of the information gathering should be getting direct feedback from students. “I think that if you want to learn how to best meet their needs, we have to involve the kids...In order for us to really have a mindset shift, we're going to have to make sure that we're bringing children to the table and giving them an opportunity to really share with us.” One of the methods that Leader in Me uses is the seven habits of highly effective people. You may have heard these habits in other contexts, but it is something that can be implemented in a school too. The seven habits are being proactive, beginning with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek first to understand then to be understood, synergize, and sharpen the saw. But keep in mind that it’s not enough to just have these habits live on a poster on a wall, they need to become part of the school culture. In meetings, use the same language that’s part of the Leader in Me program. If you want to be a school who practices the Leader in Me ways, you need to bring in the actual coaches from the organization so they can properly implement the curriculum and the culture. Be sure to do your own research going into this as well. It takes a commitment to get to those goals but it is so worth it! To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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In this episode, we are talking about look fors, co-constructing them with teachers, and how you can make them clear for your students. An important part of creating effective professional development is setting clear expectations. Look fors help establish standards for high quality ideas in the classroom and close the gap between learning what to do and actually doing it. A look for is a clear statement that explains an observable teaching or learning behavior, strategy, outcome, product, or procedure. Observers have a list of look fors to watch for when they visit a classroom or examine student work. Teachers can reflect on look fors to compare their teaching practices to current standards, explain what they learn through professional development, and be able to make their own descriptions for practices in their classroom. School and district leaders can use look fors to define standards for all classrooms, identify improvements that could be made, and unify a school around a common goal or practice. But something that breaks away from the traditional style of observation look fors is co-constructing them with teachers. The Danielson rubric is a good example of the traditional look fors for assessing a teacher's performance. The only issue is that it doesn’t get clear on what the look fors are or emphasize collaboration with teachers. “Ideally, we actually want to co-construct these look fors with teachers, so that it's a collaborative effort. We are sharing in the process of determining what a great class looks like, sounds like, feels like, to be a part of.” It is beneficial to give teachers a say in the creation of these look for lists because it makes them feel more personally connected to the process. When they take ownership it is much more motivating than if the observer were to do the planning on their own. In the Danielson rubric, there are four domains. Those are:
Rubric three (instruction) is what we’re going to focus on for right now. In this domain, there are several components. Those components tell observers how well teachers are communicating with students, questioning and discussing techniques, engaging students in learning, using assessment in instruction, and finally, demonstrating flexibility and responsiveness. The language used in the rubric grading from lowest to highest is unsatisfactory, basic, proficient, and distinguished. Frankly, I don’t quite see the point in actually giving attention to those lower three ratings. It’s harmful to teachers and students to set standards that are getting some to strive for proficient or even basic as opposed to everyone aiming for distinguished. The criteria needed to get distinguished in the first component are as follows:
Here’s how I would co-construct those look fors:
Feel free to use these as examples as you co-construct your own look fors. “I think we inspire a lot of people when we just show them what's possible. When we create from research, from this base of well documented Danielson rubric pieces, we can innovate from there; we don't need to stay there, right, we can push toward a more student-centered model of look fors. We can push to co-create with teachers and not just leave this as something that every school is going to adopt when it's potentially not that clear.” For more support on instructional coaching and more PD for teaching and leading, you can subscribe to my Micro Course Library here. To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Lejla Bilal Maley currently works as a manager of product at McGraw Hill International. She is also a co-founder and consultant at Transform·Ed Collaborative. She has seven years of ESL and foreign language teaching experience in the K-12 and Higher Education setting, including The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, where she resides. She holds a Bachelor’s in Linguistics, a Master’s in Applied Linguistics and TESOL and a Ph.D. in Leadership and Change. Her research focus is on global virtual teams (GVTs) and the experience of teaming at a distance. She regularly presents at international conferences on education leadership, global virtual teaming, and team science. Her publications include topics such as professional learning communities, adaptive leadership, and team science. She is the Past President of the Ohio TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages). Her hobbies include walks and hikes with Skywalker, her pup, listening to podcasts, and traveling with friends and family. Adaptive leadership is necessary when addressing long-standing challenges that have no easy solution. This often typically involves a leader working together with their school community to find solutions to such challenges. As a group, so much can be accomplished such as eliminating practices, policies, or norms that do not stand to benefit everyone within the group or setting. Adaptive leadership asks us to identify our own biases and inequitable practices first because the inner work enables change on a larger scale. Adaptive leaders are always open to feedback, even if it’s critical. They show that they’re willing to make students, teachers, and faculty feel heard and given fair opportunities. This model is a way to stop going after buy-in from stakeholders. It is more effective and takes some of the pressure off of your shoulders as a school leader. You’re more likely to get ideas and solutions from others that you hadn’t thought of before. It also shows that you aren’t simply doing what you think is best for everyone else but actually doing what others say is more equitable. Stakeholders feel valued when you create space at the table for everyone. As a result, schools actually make better decisions than when leaders try to make important decisions on their own. “So really it's engaging in a collective process of identifying value that others bring, once you can understand that within yourself. And then two, I think it's the need to invite stakeholders across many different aisles to take part in the work that's identified. Once we can lay down our egos, our experience, our authority, anything that creates power, and this distance of expertise, then we can have a real conversation about what truly are the challenges we're facing here and what sort of learning is required to even tackle these challenges.” A 2016 Center on Education Policy (CEP) study found that nearly half of teachers who surveyed reported that their input is not considered in school-wide decisions and that they feel frustrated and excluded. As leaders, we know we can do much better than these numbers. It’s easy to say “It’s those other schools; my school wouldn’t reflect that.” But the truth is, we only see what we want to see. We don’t get to hear and see everything that happens in the daily setting of teachers and faculty. We can’t assume that everyone’s happy and benefitting from the things in place. It’s good to want better. There’s always room for progress in this work. Adaptive leadership teaches us that we have to take some ownership of problems that arise so that we can collectively problem solve with those that are being affected. Incorporating adaptive leadership goes hand in hand with bringing in more social justice. To promote justice, there needs to be more self-awareness. When thinking about decisions that affect the people within your school, ask yourself, who is benefitting from these things and who is not? How can I distribute some of the power that’s on my shoulders to students, teachers, and faculty? Change this significant doesn’t have to be scary. Change can be empowering! Here are Dr. Bilal's recommendations for engaging in adaptive leadership:
To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Today, we’re examining the GROW Model lesson from my new micro course library. The library is filled with short but impactful video lessons that you can use as personalized PD for yourself and your teachers! Breaking Down the G.R.O.W. Model The GROW Model stands for goal, reality, options, and what you’ll do next. This model is used to structure effective instructional coaching conversations. There are four stages of this model. The first is to determine what the teacher’s idea of success is for their classroom. What would they like to be able to do or achieve after the coaching session? How does embodying this goal feel to students? Knowing this goal allows us to keep on the right track and ensures that we’re centered in the teacher’s vision. You can enhance this first stage with using a rubric and making the goals S.M.A.R.T.I.E. (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time-Bound, Inclusive, and Equitable). “We [might] say the end goal is for students to be able to write these narratives and we have the teacher describe what that all will look like, sound like, feel like for students.” Reality phase The next phase is Reality. In this part I ask the teacher to think about a range of things such as: What’s going on in your class right now? What have you been working on? What are the challenges you’re facing? These give you, as the coach, an idea of what the teacher's current reality is and what kind of things the students are experiencing in the class. It’s important to establish this because we can’t make or measure progress without first marking where we start. Options Phase Then we move on to what our options are when moving forward. Here you want to open up to any ideas on how to work through these roadblocks that have been identified. Don’t limit the possibilities! Encourage teachers to share anything that they've always wanted to try. Of course, if teachers are struggling to come up with anything, that’s okay too. When this happens, I like to suggest coaches create an online document where you can store new strategy ideas anytime you come across one in your day. When you think of all the podcasts you listen to, all the meetings, things we’ve seen others try, recent PD, etc. there are lots of places to collect new teaching strategies. “If, in the moment, you take a glance at your doc and you don’t have anything, I think it’s really important to identify a website or resource hub of some sort, that you can go to during a coaching call so that you can bring it up on the laptop together and just browse through what’s available.” After you’ve gone through the options together and listed them out, you can decide which one you want to try for now. Lastly, what’s next? Now it’s time to take action. Come up with one to three next steps that you will work on before the next coaching session. I find it to be super important to assess where we’re at during each new session. For example, I’ll say things like “Last time we met, you said, in the W phase, you were going to do this next. Did we achieve that goal? Can we move on to a new goal or do we have to revisit that goal?” Now that you’ve learned all about the GROW model, I want you to create a coaching log that you will share with your teachers while coaching. This could be a single Google doc with a table that’s split into four sections for each stage of the model. Make sure to include key questions that the teacher is going to answer. I hope you were inspired by this behind the scenes look at one of my micro course library trainings. If you want to start learning all the best strategies that’ll help you feel more confident, increase equity, and save you time, then click HERE to see what you’ll unlock in my Micro Course Library. To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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Sheldon L. Eakins, Ph.D. is the Founder of the Leading Equity Center and host of the Leading Equity Podcast. With over 11 years in education, he has served as a teacher, principal, and Director of Special Education. Dr. Eakins has a passion for helping educators accomplish equitable practices in their schools. He has earned a B.S. degree in Social Science Education, an M.S. degree in Educational Leadership, and a Ph.D. in K-12 Education. Right now, the need for equity training at schools is is in high demand. According to Dr. Eakins, the goal is for school members to get all the tools they need to take charge of their own social justice efforts. This is an important shift for them to make because when an outside trainer is coming in once a month, the participants are expecting the trainer to tell them what to do. But in order for the trainings to be long lasting, the participants have to learn to hold themselves accountable when there is no trainer. During all the days that teachers and staff are on their own with students, they shouldn’t be afraid to have tough conversations and make bold decisions. Dr. Eakins followed with, “I'm not going to change your life within an hour, 90 minutes, two hours, three hours..That's work that you have to do on your own. They need to see that comes from leadership as well.” In order to be successful in leading for justice, it takes changing your mind, admitting your previous understanding of issues like racism and inequality were too narrow, or recognizing that you have privilege. Mindset work is not easy, but it’s the only way forward. We could all be more self aware of our behaviors and take the time to analyze why we think the way we do. Dr. Eakins emphasizes how moving school to online doesn’t change the equity issues that were already there before. Countless times, he’s heard the same thing: “I don’t need this because I make sure all students are treated the same or equally.” That explanation in itself shows that they are more focused on equality and not equity. Another misconception that comes up is that white teachers don’t think that it’s their problem. They think whatever affects Black, Latinx, or Indigenous people should be handled or discussed by that group. Dr. Eakins shared one example of when this came up with a teacher. He said, “I remember having a conversation with a teacher. That was teaching their students about blackface and there was like one student black student in the class. And the teacher pointed at the student and said well your people find this offensive. And I said well, as a teacher, I would think you would find it offensive as well. Like, this is not Black people’s problem. We're not putting paint on our face to look dark skinned, like, these are things that white people are doing. So I would hope that you would be offended that some of your peers might be doing these things, or have done these things in the past, as opposed to passing this off as “this is someone else’s issue."” It is challenging but necessary work to critically self-reflect. It is challenging but necessary work to lead change in our schools and teach for justice and equity. Teachers and leaders who are "willing to put their jobs on the line" as Dr. Eakins says, are needed to bring about change in our schools and communities! Let's challenge each other to name injustices, take bold action, engage in challenging conversations, and question traditional ways of "doing school" so that we can all have a brighter tomorrow. To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Intro to Media Critique As a former high school, and current college professor, teaching feminism and media literacy, one of my favorite projects has always been a feminist media critique. Students have consistently cited this project as one of their favorite parts of class, and I like it because it gives students an authentic opportunity to think critically—using an intersectional feminist lens—about the media they are consuming. I backwards plan my curriculum, so I will explain the goal of the unit first. Students choose a piece of media (i.e., film, song, ad campaign) that features a person, organization, genre of music/film, etc. you like and answer this question: Does this piece of media (re)produce or interrupt oppression? To support diverse preferences for expression and varied skill sets, this year, I plan to invite students to submit their responses as one of the following formats:
In addition to the overarching question, I ask students to share the piece of media they are analyzing as an image, link, or video clip. I also remind students that a high quality analysis does not require an extensive summary of the piece of media. I ask students to include thoughtful connections to at least two relevant class texts (e.g., readings, podcast episodes, films, class slides). I also ask students to speak to the specific identities portrayed in the piece (e.g., genders, races, sexualities) as well as the relevant context(s) (e.g., historical, sociopolitical, economic) related to the piece. To support students, I ask scaffolding questions such as: Does the piece reinforce or challenge stereotypical depictions of individuals and groups? Does it recognize and address sociopolitical issues and contexts or does it avoid or gloss over important issues and contexts? A note on how this project has changed: Historically, I didn’t have one succinct question that framed this project. Instead, I used all of the scaffolding questions listed above. While these questions are helpful, they are best used as supports to break down the larger question into concrete bites. The project needs a clear and compelling driving question that’s exciting to answer and allows students to take a clear position: It (re)produces oppression; It interrupts oppression; or perhaps, It’s complicated. Grading Criteria Before students begin working on the project, I tell students how the project will be graded. I use a mastery-based grading system, which specifies the outcomes in which students will need to demonstrate mastery. A student’s grade will indicate that they are meeting the standard, have gone above the standard, or are still approaching the standard (and will have an opportunity to revise the project after receiving feedback on specific areas for improvement). I group my course outcomes into three categories, aligned to three of Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s four literacy pursuits. Criticality. These outcomes seek to develop students’ understanding of power, oppression and justice. My specific course outcomes are: I can recognize the ways in which gender and race are socially constructed; I can recognize and describe the structural causes of injustice experienced by members of various identity groups; and I can ask “What about women” and also “Which women?” when analyzing false universals (assuming a single identity/story/ experience). Intellect. Outcomes in this category build students’ ability to apply what they have learned. My specific outcome for this project is: I can apply a feminist lens to a conversation, text, event, or issue. Skills. In this course, discourse is an important skill. My discourse outcome is: In written and verbal discussions, I can engage with curiosity, own the impact of my words, pause before responding, treat others with dignity, and hold myself and others accountable. While students do not demonstrate this skill within their independent project, once finished, they share their completed projects on a class discussion board. To prepare students to engage deeply with this project, I assign the following “texts” for students to read, listen to, or view independently:
During class lessons, I introduce Martha Nussbaum’s types of objectification and Layla Saad’s aspects of white supremacy (from her book, Me and White Supremacy). Following the introduction of theory, students have a chance to practice analyzing ads and other pieces of media in small groups prior to undertaking the independent media critique project. For practice, I have used images such as Post-It’s “for the little things you’ll forget” ad and Nando’s chicken ad as well as video clips such as Kylie Jenner’s Pepsi ad and Johnny Depp’s Sauvage Dior ad. I also share professional examples of media critiques with students so they can see what a high quality feminist critique looks like. I have shared this one from Anita Sarkesian on gendered tropes in video games, this one on one of the latest Star Wars films, and this one on Cardi B and Meghan Thee Stallion’s song, “WAP.” Over the years, my students have analyzed many songs from Beyonce (e.g., “If I were a girl” and “Pretty Hurts”), Maddie & Tae’s “Girl in a Country song,” advertisements from Old Spice to Hardy’s, television shows like AJ and the Queen and Good Trouble, and news coverage of police shootings. Perhaps the best evidence of this project’s success is the positive feedback I receive from students after completing the unit. Here’s one: “I learned in the semester, about a whole new way of thinking. I never really thought of these kinds of things before this class. Now I put a whole new lens on how I think.” That’s the power of an authentic, justice-based assessment. If you’re interested in creating your own feminist media critique unit, you can use my free Backwards Planning Template to get started. To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Make Time for Current Events I regularly talk about the purpose of creating a justice-centered curriculum that talks about current events but today I am going to explain how that’s done. For a quick refresh, this is important because what happens in the world largely impacts our students’ understanding and problem solving. Having discussions about recent issues also connects students to larger themes throughout history. Furthermore, many of these occurrences are likely already affecting students who identify with groups that are continuously targeted based on race, class, gender, and other parts of their identities. Now that we’ve covered that, here are the steps you need to make this work for your units. Step 1: Pick a protocol for discussing current events with your students The goal is for students to be able to process their thoughts and emotions about the event through discussion. You may find it helpful to start with providing a piece of content about the event. Students would be able to read/listen and then engage with the information by annotating or journaling. Then when it comes time to connect as a group, I recommend either a verbal or written protocol where students are speaking with each other about the event or perhaps writing down thoughts in a virtual chat setting. “My favorite has always been circle protocol: a conversation where every student has the opportunity to weigh in and just share something in response to the current event or the topic at hand.” I’ve seen some teachers use additional student centered protocols as well. Student presentations are a great example of that. Step 2: Build the protocol into your flexible unit arc A unit arc is the progression of lesson activities that occur over the course of a unit. There’s a “hook” you want to have at the start of this arc. Your hook can be introducing the event to the class. Then on a different day, you could naturally have that discussion built into the unit. This means you won’t have to put your schedule of lessons on pause like you would without that flexibility. Rethink how you can deliver the objectives without pulling everything out of a textbook. When you switch from memorization of pre-made curriculum to a 4 unit model that’s project-based and centered in current justice events, the outcomes are phenomenal! For one, it enables more deep diving into a specific topic rather than just skimming the surface. Secondly, it will strengthen engagement because students are naturally more focused on what’s happening now in their lives. So leaning into that means you’re now able to go with the tide of attention instead of against it. Step 3: Let Students Lead Now that you’ve figured out how you want to set it up, you can give students the opportunity to lead discussions, choose the current event, and pick the media that they will interact with in the first stage. It’s so fun to see how much variety there is when everyone gets to bring in something they thought of themselves. If you would like some more ideas, the template that I’m sharing with you today is specifically made for student-led discussions around a current event so be sure to check that out! Step 4: Connect the Curriculum to Justice It takes work to relearn your curriculum design because traditional methods do not incorporate enough social justice. But it is so much easier than you think, you just have to be willing. So let’s make a goal right now: In every unit, I will teach for justice. This Is a Major Benefit of Planning Your Own Units When I say that this model gives you room for current topics, I mean it. In one of my classes, current event circles made up 25% of class time each week. I had the freedom to plan on the spot for things that came up. This might not sound like an easy thing at the moment because many teachers haven’t had the PD or clear administrator support to make their planning more flexible. Something that’s really given me more time to be present during class discussions is giving students more opportunities to handle things like outlining the discussion and filling in as moderators. It was powerful to see them facilitate these parts of class and practice those leadership skills. “We’re all sitting in this conversation together and we all get to see each other in these different lights of stepping up to lead or stepping back to be a participant.” Now that you’ve learned the four step process to creating more flexible curriculum with current events, click the link below to access the Circle Planning Template that you can give to your students for holding important conversations in the classroom. To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Boston-based musician, educator, and arts advocate, Christopher Schroeder is a catalyst for social change through music and arts education. With nearly 15 years of arts leadership and teaching experience, he has successfully established programs and influenced music ecosystems within the Boston community and throughout the United States. Schroeder currently serves as the Executive Director of the Boston Music Project, Module Director for the Global Leaders Program and is a guest conductor and education clinician with Conn Selmer, Inc. Most recently, he was recognized as a Boston Future Leader by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and a quarter-finalist for the 2019 Grammy Music Educator Award. The Power of Music Music is a great way to unlock students’ creativity but did you know that it can be utilized for social justice and activism? There’s been surprising scientific research done that reveals students who play and listen to music reflect not just more self confidence and creative energy, but also higher drives to change the status quo. The exercises that Chris teaches in his music classes are aimed at deepening students' sense of identity. “The work that we do at the Boston Music Project is centered around ensemble-based learning, social emotional learning, civic action, and creative self expression.” The idea that inspired one of their main projects was what if we could use our knowledge of music to communicate messages about social justice. What if our music could inspire people to take action? So that’s exactly what Chris and his music group set out to do. One of their pieces was heard by families of victims from school shootings. This type of musical activism gives children a chance to build and expand their own identities. But then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and he was presented with a new challenge—how do they keep the mission going? He started small, asking students questions to generate more conversations that could keep engagement circulating even while everyone was stuck at home. Then, the music advisors in the project started leading sub groups of the class to foster closer communities. The secret ingredient was incorporating poetry into the work. Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” became a valuable resource for creating their next music project. He shares, “We established a pulse that was associated with the mood. And then we started to get into the text. Which lines of text connected with a child more than another?” Embed Social Emotional Learning Over time, they created a digital music production that was able to flourish with support from teaching artists from the Boston Music Project. Chris shares that he made sure the routines that were done in person stayed the same during virtual class time to help students make a smoother transition. The students had the same clear expectations, mindfulness practices, warm ups, etc. He recommends that students should be given more opportunities to voice their ideas. If they have more control over their projects, they are much more likely to want to stay involved. In addition, SEL plays a big role in these processes. The Boston Music Project hires SEL specialists to help translate concepts and inform their practice realizing how social emotional learning drives self-awareness, awareness of others, and responsible decision making. I hope this talk has inspired you to think outside the box with your teaching methods and social justice based learning. If you want to connect with Christopher, you can find him on the Boston Music Project Website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and email. To continue the conversation, you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Today is the last installment of the Planning Series! Over the past few weeks, I hope that you’ve not only picked up on some great planning strategies, but have renewed your mindset by throwing out those old limiting beliefs so that you can show up as an empowered leader in your school community. First, a necessary mindset shift From personal experience, I know the following to be true: “Covering” content lowers engagement and achievement. And I believe the quickest way to drive up student engagement and build students’ skills is to stop trying to cover the traditional curriculum map and, instead, create 4 justice-centered units. Student engagement is way more likely to come from creating lessons that have students explore their skills, make mistakes, revise their work, learn from feedback, collaborate, and learn deeply. The mindset shift we need to make is to have a goal that is more than “fit it all in”. How about we instead find what really motivates students to explore what they're interested in? So before doing anything else, the most important shift is to move your lesson plan goal from “covering content” to developing independent learners. I found when I used terms like “cover content” and “get through,” the students weren’t retaining what I wanted them to anyways. It was better to focus on doing less, but make sure students were actually learning it. The things that may have been important to teach 50 years ago are Google-able now. Therefore, it’s more important students are able to find, analyze, and apply new information than memorize a predetermined list of facts. “Once I made that mindset shift, that was a huge shift in advancing my student’s learning and definitely an increase in their engagement.” Cut down on time If you find yourself spending hours making mini lessons, you might ask yourself: How could I teach the same content and have the students practice a different skill than listening and note-taking? For example, when I prepped for lectures, I would read through a textbook, make a slide deck, and create a guided worksheet. This took about 4 hours per lesson. But if you want to make this lesson more student-centered then you need to find a text(s), generate 1-2 big questions to answer, and choose a text-based protocol from my resource bank. This process only takes about 30 minutes which saves you 3 and a half hours compared to the original method! If you stay dedicated to student-centered learning, planning will be easier, and your students will develop great text analysis skills. If you feel like your lesson plans need to be formal or by the book, you might be spending too much time on the surface when you need to dig down to the root of your curriculum, the purpose of it. We want to plan from the lens of hitting the broader course goals. To me, an effective lesson plan is one that works for you. It’s an outline of your ideas and a check for alignment with your larger unit or course goals. It is the basis from which your lesson materials emerge. A more streamlined lesson plan You get to put your own spin on it, but here are the core elements of a lesson that I think serve the needs of both teachers and administrators: The End Goal Know exactly what students need to do for your summative assessment at the end of the unit. What are you working towards? Lesson Focus Narrow it down to ONE thing you want students to walk away knowing or being able to do. Students who are able to focus on 1 or 2 topics are going to learn more deeply than trying to get them to take on several skills. If the goal is to help them master and retain the knowledge, then giving them too many things will work against this goal. Phase of Learning Make sure there’s at least one lesson per phase for each unit. Consider whether students’ students are new to this skill or have been previously introduced. If they have been previously introduced, there are multiple ways you can have them practice or expand so that they feel they are really advancing in this area. These guidelines will help keep your expectations for student performance in line with the amount of time students have had to work on a skill. There’s a tendency to provide less time than is needed for students to really master a skill, and cite a need to “cover content” as our rationale. Don’t have time? Focus on fewer skills and content. Depth over breadth! Lesson Flow [The Activities] These are your core protocols for the lesson. Stick with one main activity for student work time. Then, you can add in a hook and assessment activity to bookend the main activity. Within this section of the plan, you may want to note 1-2 key questions that students are answering during each protocol. For example, how much time do you think each activity will take, and what resources are needed? If you like to lecture, you may want to decrease your talk time so that students can have more time to do independent work where they can apply what they’ve learned. I have found that trying to limit my number of slides helps me narrow my focus to one core concept—try using 10 slides per mini lesson with a maximum teacher talk time of 15 minutes. It’s not a hard and fast rule, but pick numbers that work for you and stretch yourself to streamline your mini lessons. Certainly, there are more things that could go into your lesson plan, but odds are, you’re probably already thinking about those things as you plan. If not, add them to your lesson plan, but only write down what you need to organize your ideas and ensure this lesson gets students where they need to go. To help you write a lesson plan with just the essential elements, I’ve made you a template called the Streamlined Lesson Planning Template. Thanks for following along with this series. Please share some of your highlights from this episode and the past episodes or something you were excited to learn. And if you want me to take you on an in-depth walkthrough of how I saved 700 hours of planning time in one year as a teacher, my self paced online course, Work Less Teach More, is now open for enrollment. The course is $197. What's your professional and mental wellbeing worth to you? For me, my wellbeing is worth way more than $200. Enroll in the self-paced online course today at bit.ly/wltmcourse If you’re a school leader wanting to help your teachers free up the time and energy to tackle big transformative things, you can purchase this course for your teachers as a pilot for one department or grade team or for the whole school. Want to chat to see if the course would be a good fit? Connect with me at hello@lindsaybethlyons.com
Why is wellness something we should dig deeper into? Well-being is critically important for school culture and student success. Researchers found that employee health directly impacts the success of organizational success. The second reason is that a principal’s sense of well-being is related to the well-being of students and teachers. Similarly, educators report that they flourish when their students flourish. So many schools have high turnover rates and are feeling the time crunch to improve scores quickly. Schools that are flourishing are doing these five things: 1. Filling the culture with trust, hope, compassion, and purpose 2. Engaging in their work and connecting purpose to it 3. Having a shared leadership mindset 4. Adapting to any situation and 5. Prioritizing their well-being. How wellness contributes to high performance The well-being of an entire organization can only come from the bottom up. So an individual stakeholder’s well-being is an essential part of the process. Schools that are performing at an amazing level are:
All of the work that school leaders put into their own growth and helping others around them can have a profound ripple effect on the school as a whole. That’s why it’s important to also support the well-being of those around you. Make sure your organizational environment is reinforcing healthy behaviors (not as an add-on, but as part of the fabric of how you do things). Foster well-being through positive interpersonal communication.These teachers and leaders are not afraid to have difficult conversations and speak up for social justice. So lean into your own values, because they will get you far. You have a choice as a school leader, you can choose to promote well-being, or you can choose to harm well-being and perpetuate oppression. The reality is that many schools today are facing high turnover rates. The turnover rate in the nation’s K–12 schools is an increasingly acknowledged but still poorly understood crisis. Teachers are feeling more crunched for time. There is high demand to get students to retain their information and perform well on standardized tests. There’s too much focus on making sure the public data looks right. Teachers can definitely get stressed out by following this model too closely. We know that teacher stress has a big effect on student’s performance and well-being. So there is good reason to turn to wellness. If schools instead put more energy into cultivating wellness in teachers, there is more potential for them to feel supported and meaningful in their work. Types of Wellness The National Wellness Institute breaks down wellness into 6 dimensions. Those are:
Here’s what they say about wellness: “it is an active process through which people become aware of and make choices toward a more successful existence.” It is simply making choices consistently towards a healthy and fulfilling life. It’s important to remember that a single habit like exercise, only fulfills one or a few dimensions of wellbeing. So the key is to think about how you can achieve wellness in each area. For example, to work on my emotional well-being, I check in with how I’m feeling in my body. I lower my shoulders and try to connect to emotions that are coming up. These could look completely different for you. You could hit multiple pieces of wellness by engaging in movement and socializing at the same time. You could connect spiritual to emotional with deep reflection and writing. Or perhaps think of something you’ve done an incredible job with this week to really fuel yourself up. Once you’ve thought about what types you want to hit, set a monthly wellness goal with three concrete actions that are listed underneath it. After that, how will you plan to track that progress? If you don’t have something set up, feel free to use my wellness tracker below! Think about how you can fulfill each month’s goal. There are plenty of opportunities to merge one well-being with another type so that you don’t have to spend more time than you have trying to hit all of them. Let it come naturally and in all the ways that bring you happiness or peace. This entire planning series was made to help you reconnect to wellness and plan ahead for more satisfaction and growth. Make wellness the priority more consistently and you’ll be so excited with the results you get. Be sure to come back for the last part of the planning series next week! And if you want me to take you on an in-depth walkthrough of how I saved 700 hours of planning time in one year as a teacher, my self paced online course, Work Less Teach More, is now open for enrollment. The course is $197 and I don’t know about you, but my professional and mental wellbeing is worth way more to me than $200. You can enroll today at bit.ly/wltmcourse If you’re a school leader wanting to help your teachers free up the time and energy to tackle big transformative things, you can purchase this course for your teachers as a pilot for one department or grade team or for the whole school. Want to chat to see if the course would be a good fit? Connect with me at hello@lindsaybethlyons.com
A clear mind can provide you with so many great benefits. Two big ones that we would all love to have are more energy and more creativity. We want to have a mind that’s not so cluttered with all the crazy to-do lists and worries, but how do we achieve this when there’s so much to think about? Let’s take the same approach as schools who have a 4 day school week or those entrepreneurs that inspire us with their 4 day work week. First you need to figure out what is essential in your work and your goals. Greg McKeown’s podcast episode 23 talks about the magic of a 4 Day Workweek using essentialism. Essentialism is the view that certain properties of things are an essential part of that thing’s identity and function. “By having a culture focused on essentialism, it actually democratizes the workplace.” Ask: What’s essential? Make sure your school leaders are on board with helping you increase your productivity and reduce stress. So the next time your boss asks you to stop what you’re doing for another task, you can ask whether it’s more important than the project you’re trying to get done. This can change the culture and help everyone realize what’s really moving the needle forward. I coached a leader last year who did an exercise with her team to determine what tasks are in alignment with their goals. All it requires is writing on some post-its or a padlet of all things you are doing. Once you’ve done that, categorize what is essential and in line with your purpose and categorize what can be taken off the plate. If it’s something you still want to get done you can move the task to someone else or automate it. Team brainstorming will still have a time and place for you and your team. Just be thoughtful about when that’s most helpful vs. just meeting to meet. A Productivity System David’s Allen’s Getting Things Done approach involves having a place that each idea is documented. To figure out how to document these, he tells us to ask: Is it actionable? If it's not actionable, it goes into a long-term list we look at less frequently. If it is actionable in 2 minutes, do it now. If it will take longer, you can delegate it or defer it (on a next action list or—my favorite—on your calendar. Multi-step actions go in a projects list. “You need no new skills to increase your productivity and reduce your stress—just an enhanced set of systemic behaviors with which to apply them.” - David Allen Here’s my approach:
-Reference - appropriately categorized Doc in relevant folder If your tasks will take less than two minutes, then do it now. But for everything else that takes longer, you can either delegate it or put it into a system that you will come back to next week. It’s good to put those deferred things on the calendar because otherwise, you’re not going to have it fitted into your day like everything else on the calendar. These are all going to contribute to a mind that is more clear. When you have things on your mind, get it onto paper or into your files so that it has a place to go besides taking up valuable space in your brain. David Allen, the creator of Getting Things Done says that 80% of the things you keep thinking of can be resolved with just listing an outcome and next action while the other 15% will require a little brainstorming first. Only the last 5% will take longer project planning steps. This practice is called distributed cognition and it will help you cultivate more creativity overall. To help you get your energy and creativity back in hand, I’m sharing the Productive Planning Template as this week’s freebie. Next week we will talk about advancing wellness in part 5 of the planning series. Also, if you want me to take you on an in-depth walkthrough of how I saved 700 hours of planning time in one year as a teacher, my self paced online course, Work Less Teach More, is now open for enrollment. The course is $197 and I don’t know about you, but my professional and mental wellbeing is worth way more to me than $200. You can enroll today at bit.ly/wltmcourse If you’re a school leader wanting to help your teachers free up the time and energy to tackle big transformative things, you can purchase this course for your teachers as a pilot for one department or grade team or for the whole school. Want to chat to see if the course would be a good fit? Connect with me at hello@lindsaybethlyons.com
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AuthorLindsay is a educator and leadership coach who helps teachers develop engaging project-based curricula, fosters student and teacher voice, and works to advance racial and gender equity and culturally responsive practice. Archives
July 2021
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