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In this episode, we talk with Molly Arbuthnott, an educator-turned-writer who is now the author of 18 picture books for children. Her stories all have animal characters and often dive into real-life themes that champion the underdog and help build up self-confidence and self-belief.
As a champion of children’s literacy, she shares her insights into the transformational power of picture books for children and adults alike. Molly advocates for a shift in perspective regarding how these books are perceived and utilized in education and at home. The Big Dream Molly's big dream is that of self-belief, in line with the theme of the “underdog” in many of her own books. She also wants to redefine picture books as a resource not just for children, but as literature that holds value for all ages. She aims to transform picture books from entry-level reading material into versatile and profound stories that resonate universally. Mindset Shifts Required To fully appreciate the value of picture books, Molly suggests breaking away from the idea that they’re only a starting point for young readers. Instead, picture books have rich narratives that offer opportunities for all readers to explore complex themes. It's about understanding the depth possible in art and story, encouraging all participants to view picture books as tools for lifelong learning and conversation. Action Steps Picture books can be a powerful tool for learning and growth in both the home and school settings. Molly recommends these steps to start using picture books to their full potential. Step 1: Don’t “dumb it down.” Molly’s own books feature deep themes like death, and she believes it’s a disservice to our children to gloss over things they will have to experience at some stage in life. Instead, the picture book format makes it possible to engage in these important topics in an age-appropriate way. Don’t shut down questions, but engage in those conversations. Step 2: Introduce picture books in varied settings beyond primary education, such as in literature circles in higher grades or within family reading time. Increased exposure to picture books helps people of all ages engage in and learn from them. Step 2: Encourage children to interpret picture books independently and express their unique perspectives through discussions. It’s also important to allow children to pick their own books and make choices around what they want to read and learn. Step 3: Allow picture books to lead to broader conversations about real-world concepts, current events, and personal growth, exploring topics that matter to children and their communities. This can be particularly helpful when engaging in high-emotion topics around identity. Picture books, like those that use animals as main characters, can help us engage in topics without attributing identity markers Step 4: Keep it fun! Picture books are full of joy, and stories bring the imagination alive. Lean into this. Challenges? A significant challenge lies in balancing adult-driven book markets with fostering children's preferences and choices in reading materials. Ensuring that children are actively involved in selecting what they read and discussing it can counteract this imbalance and empower young minds. One Step to Get Started Begin by selecting a picture book that resonates with a current topic or theme your children are encountering. Use this book as a springboard to facilitate discussions and relate the narrative to personal experiences or broader societal issues, thereby making reading a more interactive endeavor. Stay Connected You can find out more from Molly and her books over on her website and Instagram. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing their course Animal Story Kit with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 261 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Molly, welcome to the Time for Teacher Shift podcast. Hi, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I'm excited you're here. I am really excited, particularly as this is airing in a kind of miniseries directed towards both teachers and families, thinking about families supporting kids as they read, whether they're reading picture books, whether they're, um, you know, chapter books. Whatever they're reading, I'm really excited about your background as an educator and involvement with books specifically. Um, that's kind of what is on my mind as we enter this conversation. Is there anything on your mind as we enter the conversation that you want people to be aware of, kind of as we continue? Um, not off the top of my head. I'm just really happy to be here chatting about the joy of picture books. Awesome. All right. Well, so I think my first question is the first question I have for every guest, which is really in line with freedom dreaming, which Dr. Bettina Love describes as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. What is that dream that you hold, whether it be for education, for kids' reading lives, for picture books broadly? Like, what's that dream for you? Um, the dream, I guess, well, all of my books are kind Molly Arbuthnott: of about the underdog who kind of comes out on top, so I guess it's the dream of, of self-belief, the American dream. And also, um, that a, the dream of, of a picture book being not just a children's book, but a book for, that anyone, um, reading it can get something out of. I think it's really important for adults to start embracing more picture books. Lindsay Lyons: I love that, and I can say actually just yesterday, colleagues of mine, all educators, are, were in this group chat around picture books, and like we're reading it for ourselves, not even for the kids. Molly Arbuthnott: Oh, amazing. Well, it's great. I mean, it's not... I, I think it's really the fault of the way we... This is going off piece a bit, but it's the fault of, well, not the fault, but it's the way that we teach reading, where the picture book's kind of the bottom rung of the ladder. And, and you then, you start with the picture book, and then you progress onto the chapter book or the bigger book. But really, the picture book should be top of the ladder because it is the one that most people can get something out of Lindsay Lyons: I, I love that. And as a former high school teacher who used picture books in our class- Yeah ... I can say the kids are really into it, too. Molly Arbuthnott: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. They, well, it, it uses a particular part of the brain, and it's a really easy way for particularly with parents having less time in, in modern life to read with their kids or having other priorities, it's a really easy way to engage with a child, um, just by looking at, uh, because it's kind of, it gives the kid kind of, it's a two-way interreaction rather than it just being from one person. So it's a really fun bonding experience beyond just being a story. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, I love that. Okay, so you've already kind of shared a bunch of mindsets or mindset shifts for- ... people. I think that's brilliant. Are there any other things that people should be aware of or have a sp- particular mindset around as they, particularly families I'm thinking of, that are reading with their kids as they encounter this situation where, where they're opening a picture book together. Is there a particular thing they should have in mind as they read? Molly Arbuthnott: To not dumb it down. So I very much have, uh, death, uh, in my books. I've got all sorts of concepts that are quite, uh, deep. Um, and I think that it's a great disservice to a kid if we kind of gloss over things that they potentially or definitely will experience at some stage in life. I mean, it's, it's in an animal form, all my books, so it's kind of a degree of separation. It's not as in your face as it would be otherwise. But I think they're still really important topics, and to not, if the kid raises it, to not just brush it, brush over it, but to actually take the time to answer their questions and, and sort of give them a sense of understanding, because then they'll be much more confident in it as a subject if they kind of know. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, I love that. And so is there a particular either scene or storyline from one of your books that you wanna give us an example of? Like, here's something that happens in the book, here's how a child might respond, here's how you as a family member m- might respond or engage in that conversation. Molly Arbuthnott: Sure. Well, I mean, there are two quite deep stories off the top of my head, I'd say. I, I've written, for anyone, uh, sort of zoning into my books for the first time, there are 18 different picture books, um, about different animals. They all deal with different concepts, different stories, different locations, different adventures. But, um, the one that springs to mind, Angus the Robin, is about a, um, there's a house and there's an accident essentially that happens. And suddenly, I don't, I don't, uh- Expressly say what's there, but I say that there are blue flashing lights, and then it's up to the reader to interpret that as they choose. Um, but then so that kind of leaves it fairly open to chat and discussion about what the blue flashing lights could be, where they could be going, why, what they could be taking, and that kind of thing. And then in, um, in Athena the Cheetah, there is actually a physical death. The- or two brothers, one of them, um... I, I lived in Kenya for a while, so that's what inspired that story. One of them, um, one of the boys gets his foot, um, uh, there's a, there's a crocodile in the river, and the crocodile gets one of the brothers. So again, obviously chances are most readers will not be beside crocodile-infested lakes when they're reading the story. So it's not a literal kind of discussion, but it's a discussion about importance of, of staying together and what happens if someone you really care about has an accident. And accidents do happen all the time, um, and so you can maybe sort of switch it into being an accident that they might relate to or understand and how you can deal with it and, and understand. In the story, I'm not gonna give the story away completely, but the boy who's left, he goes, uh, mute. And so then as well that could lead to the discussion with parents as to why he doesn't talk because, I mean, the kids might come acro- there are, uh, pe- kids who you find don't talk for whatever reason, and so then that can lead into discussion about that and why they might not be talking and what you can do to help and what they might be feeling inside and all that kind of thing. Lindsay Lyons: Thank you for sharing those examples. And just I, I love the broadening of how, yes, we read this thing, but then what does that mean f- for these other maybe related concepts or related- Mm ... applications in your life. I think that's a really nice takeaway for families and teachers to be able to facilitate conversation and sense-making. I, I know also that you are really interested, I think you use the phrase children as gatekeepers. And, and so can you talk about, a little bit about how, like, we as adults can support children in, in making choices around books or, or what that kind of means for you in, in that phrase you use? Molly Arbuthnott: Yeah, well, I, I... it's a really important, um, concept for me because very often as a writer of, I mean, inevitably as a writer of children's books you are kind of having to appeal to two markets because it's the kids who will be reading it, but it's the parents who will be buying it. So it's quite a tricky kind of balance. But it really essentially is you have to be gearing it at what the kids- need, and, and, and they're the ones kind of driving the, um, driving the decisions. It was really because I've started applying for competitions for my books a bit more, uh, constructively this year. It's something that I've never done before, and I kind of was figuring that, well, great, but again, it's the adults kind of driving the demand and driving the books that you see on the shelves, and driving what comes out on top, and driving what wins. And all of these algorithms and things are generated by the people who work rather than by the kids themselves, and how you can shift that. I'm going off to Bologna Book Fair next week, and again, that's a fair for kids books, but it's, it's very much the adults who are there. And so as a kid, I, I mean, you have very, they have very little power inevitably of what they pick and choose to do with their lives. But how to address that kind of power and balance, and to give the kids a bit more say over what it is that they want to read and they want to find out and they want to learn. Because even in a curriculum in school, I mean, you're very much told what to do and think. I mean, up until about six or seven, and then it kind of, there's that shift of when you're supposed to be educated. And I think in some ways it kind of de-educates, because you kind of lose your independence of thought in some ways. Anyway, sorry, I feel I'm segueing a bit. But- I mean, Lindsay Lyons: that's very connected to all the things we talk about on this podcast, so you're in good company. Molly Arbuthnott: Um, but I think it's, I, I, I don't know what the answer is personally, but I feel that there needs to be a way that kids can articulate what it is they want to know. But then in some ways as well, they're figuring out the world, and so they maybe don't know. I mean, it's, in some ways it's a responsibility as a adult who kind of knows a bit more to, um, to articulate what it is you think they want to hear. I mean, an example at the moment from, for me, from my perspective, is I'm having to write, well, I'm, I've been asked to write a story about two guinea pigs, Mocha and Latte, who are in this school, Greenside Primary School, and I'm having to sort of direct it from the guinea pigs' perspective. Um, and try and kind of articulate how, I mean through a guinea pig, how a child would kind of see the world- And I mean, y- uh, you're much more... I think children are very much better at kind of living in the present than an adult, because as an adult, you kind of, not intentionally and not always, but you kind of put all these different layers on top of who you are, just in the nature of how your life kind of, how s- well, not always, but how sometimes your life pans out, that you have layers of parents getting older, layers of properties, layers of travel, layers of work, layers of relationships, layers of... You get all these, um, many, many more layers, and that kind of can, um, it can just cover up kind of your, uh... And, uh, a way to sort of be more in the present and actively appreciating what's around you, because you're covered up with all these layers all the time. So to kind of get into the child's mindset, you have to be very, you have to sort of take all those layers away and be very much aware of your surroundings, aware of what you hear, aware of what you see, and aware of how you interpret it. Because, um, that's the nice thing about books as well, that no one can say what you're seeing or thinking or feeling is right or wrong, because it's just your interpretation, and your interpretation could be the same as the person next to you or it could be completely different. That's kind of the joy of being a independent human being. And so, and so I guess, y- as a writer, you can never satisfy everybody, because everybody's views and opinions are different. But you can make it try to have resonance with as many different people as you can Lindsay Lyons: I love that too from the perspective of e- either a teacher or a family member who is working with kids and, and reading and having that experience of engaging in a picture book with kids, that there is no wrong answer. I think a lot of times in schools, right, it's right or wrong. It's like it's- Mm-hmm ... two and two is four. That is ... Anything else is incorrect. Like, there is a little bit of shyness or fear from students sometimes in speaking up and sharing what their thoughts are because they are fearful that they will be wrong, right? And so I love this idea of art, m- even more broadly beyond picture books, but picture books as a specific representation of art being one of interpretation and one of connection. And I, I also am very much thinking about, like, civics and, and civic conversations, uh, are- Mm-hmm ... I think particularly challenging in the States right now and thinking about how this is a beautiful, um, less emotionally charged perhaps example of how we can talk across different interpretations of a situation i- around picture books and, like, what a great practice opportunity to have different kids read the same book and have a different experience with it and be able to share that. Molly Arbuthnott: Exactly. Yeah, it's kind of a safe space for, um, articulating and, and learning actually to have your own opinion, which is really important and, and that it's all right to think something different from the person Lindsay Lyons: next to you. I'm also envisioning, you know, in high school we do a lot of, like, literature circles around a theme, but it sounds like maybe teachers could also use because you have such a wide range of books, right, that are maybe on particular topics, it might be, okay, we're gonna think about this topic of accidents, for example as you mentioned earlier, and invite students to choose maybe one book that speaks to them and, like, read and engage in, in that book and then be able to have conversations with kids who read different books. Do you think that w- would- Molly Arbuthnott: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, uh, that's as well the joy of, um, of, of ... Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, you can take a broad subject generally in schools I would say anyway, that's kind of how the curriculum's sort of centered around a broad subject, and then you find books that kind of relate to that in different ways. Um, and even ... I mean, it doesn't i- for, for, um, discussions like that it doesn't necessarily need to be just picture books. I mean, there are wonderful picture books that relate to all sorts of different subjects, but you can get a bit out of, out of a chapter book too. I mean, I feel like the whole, I mean, the whole thing is really to encourage- Uh, creativity and, uh, encourage imagination. And so any way that, that can do that is really good. I mean, my books, I tend to ... They're not super woke. They're kind of sticking to traditional values, which ... Just because that's kind of how I am. And, and for me, I kind of had to write about things I know rather than trying to make it something you don't know, 'cause I feel like you fall short in, in that respect. Lindsay Lyons: Certainly there are a lot of school districts who have, like in the United States anyways, like very much, like legal pressures for different things they can and can't talk about. So I think that will be appreciated there. And I think there's also so much connection to, like you said, in, in the broadening span, like people can have an entry point into whatever current event might be happening or whatever is happening identity-wise with them or their, their friends, um, to be able to enter into conversations and expand them beyond the book as well. Molly Arbuthnott: Yeah. Well, I mean, the nice thing as well, though, about an animal is that it's not irrespective of, of your, your stance on, on, on sort of who you are as a person. It, again, is a space where you can be anything because it's why I choose animals, because they're not high-bound by the rules and regulations that you are as an adult or as, as a person of having to sort of go to get up, go to work, go to school, come have lunch, go home. It gives you a lot more creative freedom, and with that it means that then you can have the freedom of interpretation. But going back to the themes you were saying, one of them is, um, I deal with climate change with David the Pizzly Bear, and that's about this bear who gets lost or goes out on an adventure and gets lost in, um, a, an ice field. And then, and then the ice melts and then he, they have to swim back home in order to get home. So that can open up about ... It's based on David Attenborough. Um, so again, that can lead to interpretation of him. And then also that, um, uh, ice fields, why they're melting and, and what we can do to help and to, to sort of stop the, um, climate crisis. But again, it has a happy ending, so it's kind of not all ... It's showing that even though things might be going wrong in the world, you, you kind of work around it and you just make it a new concept of it. And then actually also Conrad the Spider, that's a guitar-playing spider, and that, um, he loses his legs. He uses his legs as his guitar strings, then he loses his guitar and so he loses his legs. And it's about how you can go from great fame and fortune to being very poor and how people- the community around you kind of react and interpret that because, um, inevitably you, I mean, you're in- you're always kind of influenced a little bit by what people think and feel, and how you can And so then you can build resilience kind of up against that. And also they end up in a crisp packet, um, with a ladybird because obviously a spider's much smaller than a human, so that becomes their home. And then that can lead into concepts that, well, you can, um, just have an adventure kind of with a crisp packet or in your wall, in your garden behind your house. You don't need to, um, that especially when you're a kid or even when you're an adult as well, you can still have adventures without needing to travel to the other side of the world. I mean, it's all kind of in your mindset. So every day can be an adventure if you want it to be. It doesn't sort of have to be this great going on holiday that's the release. You can just make that be part of your day-to-day life. It's just a kind of different interpretation. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, like the expansiveness of how differently you could interpret that. Like, my brain immediately was going to, you know, uh, the crazing of, crisis of people being unhoused and like you know, like, well, you, you know, you could look up all of that research as well. So I think, you know, whatever your kid or kids, if you're in a class, right, are interested in, I think there's a lot of, like, follow-up research you could do to your point about the climate change and, like, who is this particular person that it's based off of? But also what are the, what's the information right now, and, like, how do we look at graphs over time? Like, there's so many jumping o- it's like a jumping off point into so many different areas, which is really cool. Oh, thanks. Well, Molly Arbuthnott: yeah, I hope so. I mean, I can't say I'm a massive environmental ... Well, I, I don't, in that respect, I don't preach what I teach, in that I do still travel. I have to travel quite a lot for work. Um, and so I do take planes, I do take, I do drive, I do do things that probably aren't so good for the environment. But then I balance it out in other ways. I mean, no one, we do still have to, have to live. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, great points. Um- Any- anything else you would like to tell, uh, families, educators? Any, um, advice that you have for engaging students and letting students lead the picture book conversations before we move to our final closing questions? Molly Arbuthnott: Um, just to keep it fun. Um, I find particularly with my work, I've always promised myself that if I ever stop enjoying what I'm doing, I'll change something. Um, for me, I spend- Most of my time, uh, doing my books, doing my work. And so it's really important for me that I really enjoy what I do, and I feel very lucky that I've been able to find that because a lot of people, um, a lot of people don't. And, uh, so I try and put joy into the books, so I'm hoping that the joy radiates out of the books. And then make it fun when you're sharing it. So I've got loads of costumes, I've got loads of resources that if anyone wants, I can very happily share, that bring each of the stories alive. And I love coming and reading the books and, and to kind of just let your imagination go. So, um, anything, anything can really happen because they're pretend animals, pretend places. Try and as well kind of think what the... When you're reading it, think from, try and kind of transform yourself into the animal that you're supposed to be being, and then it will give a lot more authentic, um, interpretation. That's Lindsay Lyons: great. Thank you for that advice. I'm, I'm imagining that, you know, someone is, is preparing to read perhaps for bedtime a story after listening and engaging with this episode, uh, and they're, they're ready for that now. Oh, good. Is there, uh- Thanks. Something that you have been... This is a fun question we like to ask all of our guests 'cause they're all lifelong learners. Something you have been learning about lately, either related to your work or just completely different. Ah, gosh, that's quite a good question. Um, well, this Molly Arbuthnott: school that I'm doing the guinea pig story about was designed by Goldfinger, like, you know, James Bond Goldfinger. So I've been researching, um, Goldfinger a fair bit recently. Um, and also I'm teaching, I'm learning the ukulele so that I can, um, play it when I'm doing, uh, story events. So I've been, uh, learning a bit of music as well. Lindsay Lyons: Wow, that is so- ... fun. I love it. And so you mentioned you have things, resources in addition to your books. You have all of your books. Where can people go to get that information, to connect with you online? Is there a place they Molly Arbuthnott: can- Well, I've got my website Um, and you can send a message through that. I have all the books available through my website. I don't think I have the resources. I could... I need to, I need to, um, work on that. Travelers is... Or the more books you do, I thought it would get way easier, but it gets so much harder. There's just so many things to suddenly think about. Um, and so it kind of eats into, uh, um, um, time a bit. But yeah, so I would, um, look on my website. They're available on Amazon as well and all good wholesalers. And I, uh, I'm coming actually to New York, because you're in Boston, so not too far away. Um, my publisher's in New Jersey. Uh, I do an annual book launch, and so I'm coming to New Jersey and I'm going to launch in September, and we hire a paddle boat and paddle around the Hudson River, and it's always very fun. So, so reach out to me for that if you'd be interested, and the more the merrier. Um, and it's always just really nice to hear from people. Um, and so do, uh, do send me a message. Maybe you could send... If, uh, whenever I go and do events, I always ask the kids what their favorite animals are, and it kind of can help inspire. Um, uh, if they have a favorite animal, it might end up in a, in a future subsequent book perhaps. That Lindsay Lyons: is awesome. Molly, thank you so much for your time and conversation today. Oh, well, thank you. Gosh, it's gone in a flash, but it's been lots of fun.
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In this episode, we’re talking with Doug Bolton, PhD, who is a clinical psychologist, educator, and author of the book Untethered: Creating Connected Families, Schools, and Communities to Raise A Resilient Generation. Against a backdrop of current all-time high stress levels for both students and teachers, Doug emphasizes the importance of focusing on relationships over achievements and how the pressure to excel in academic settings can undermine mental health.
He also introduces the "Circle of Courage" model, highlights current research in the field, and shares meaningful mindset shifts from focusing on data and test scores to nurturing relational and personal growth. The Big Dream Doug’s big dream is to redefine what it means to be successful. He wants to see our system go beyond traditional metrics such as test scores and school selectivity and help students grow with robust intrinsic motivation, grounded in community, and encouraged by healthy emotional and social connections. Mindset Shifts Required There are some significant mindset shifts to move the focus away from data-driven success towards personal development and wellness. This includes reducing the emphasis on test scores, allowing children to experience and manage stress constructively, and recognizing the vital role of relationships in achieving holistic well-being. Action Steps While many people might say that they want kids to be holistically well, there is still a lot of pressure in the academic setting. This causes high stress for students, but also teachers and parents in the system, too. To start redefining our metrics of success for children or students, Doug encourages educators or leaders to start here with some of these action steps. Step 1: Understand the research. Achievement testing has been found to undermine mental health and cause higher levels of stress and anxiety… without producing higher test scores. The system is broken, and understanding that is the first step to change. Step 2: Engage in community-building activities within educational environments. Research shows that a sense of belonging through strong relationships is essential to all the metrics we care about: mental health, academic performance, attendance, etc. Step 3: Implement schedules that include “pause and ponder” times (a concept borrowed from Mary Jo Barrett) for children and adults alike to rest their nervous systems. To really engage with the world, we need to give our nervous system a rest through good sleep, quiet time, and less pressure, so that we can then go forward and learn, engage, and grow. This can be implemented in a school or home setting. Step 4: Use the Circle of Courage model, which is born of Native American tradition, and emphasizes the four main needs we get from community: belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity. When a child is struggling, we ask, where is the circle broken? What do we need to focus on? Doug unpacks this model in further detail in his book Challenges? One of the main challenges highlighted is overcoming societal norms that prioritize academic achievement as a sole indicator of future success. There's also the challenge of reshaping institutional policies that place undue stress on students and educators, potentially leading to burnout and disengagement. One Step to Get Started Doug’s biggest action step to start putting this all into motion is the pause and ponder. He recommends using family dinners as one way to do this in the home, or for educators to purposefully build it into their classroom schedules. These moments to pause should be protected and prioritized before scheduling other additional activities. Stay Connected You can stay connected with Doug Bolton on his website, and grab a copy of his book to dive deeper into everything we discussed today: Untethered. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Co-Creating Class Agreements slide deck with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 260 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Doug Bolton, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Doug Bolton: Lindsay, it's so nice to be here. Thanks for having me. Lindsay Lyons: I am so glad that y- we're both here at the same time talking about this. This is so important, and I, I just ... I, I am really excited f- because you talk about, like, you know, building resilience and, and, and building resilience in kids. Um, I also think about, like, how stressed out a lot of w- l- like, children now are. I mean- Speaker 3: Yeah ... Lindsay Lyons: you know, across the years certainly, but you read about the anxious generation, and that's, like, very- Yeah ... top of mind for me as well. So I'm wondering, as we jump into the conversation today, is there something on your mind that you wanna bring to the forefront or that people should just know as they engage with the episode? Doug Bolton: Well, thank you. You know, I think that the thing that strikes me the most as I think about this work and the crisis of resilience is it's not just kids who are struggling right now. Um, you know, the teachers, there's never been a time when teachers have been so stressed. The teachers, Gallup found that K12 teachers are the most stressed profession in America right now. And the, and the surgeon general recently released a, uh, advisory for parents, that just being a parent puts you at risk for mental health problems. So I guess I, I wanna say the whole system. I think kids are the down- are kind of downstream of a system that we've created that's stressing everyone out. And I, I guess that would be my hope, is to take a look at that whole system as we talk about this today. Lindsay Lyons: That's a really good segue into my next question. Hmm. So I think, uh, you know, Dr. Bettina Love talks about dreams grounded in the critique of injustice in, in terms of- Yeah ... dreaming. And I am wondering, like, what is that dream you hold for young people, whether it's families, whether it's through the education system? Like, yeah, what's that dream for you? Doug Bolton: Yeah, no, I love, I love that quote. Um, I'd never heard that before. It's beautiful. You know, I think my, my dream is that we can redefine what it means to be successful, um, and, and in doing so, recognize that, um, our metrics for success, which has typically been, um, achievement test scores, um, um, enrollment at a high-achieving school, um, whatever that looks like, um, are things that have, um, really, I think, um, been damaging to everybody in the system. The, the people who find that hard, find it hard for them to reach those goals, um, because their, their brain isn't suited to, to how we do education and they're ... Um, or the people who are really good at it who then begin to define themselves by their achievement and not by who they are, and parents who begin to define themselves by how successful their kids are, um, educators who define themselves by how many of their students go on to high-achieving schools, high, I mean, highly selective schools. And so, so I guess what I would like to do, uh, um, a lot of the research and reading I've been doing now has been, um, really focused on- How when we set a goal for something, when we say, "This is what we want," oftentimes, um, uh, uh, in order to, um, um, uh, I think they call it obliquity, which is this, this, um, when you're seeking profit as an organization, you end up oftentimes tanking the organization. When you seek high-quality products, the, um, y- you know, the, um, the money comes, the money follows. But when we focus, it... So we've gotta be careful what we focus on. And what the research has said all along is that when we invest in relationships and our relational lives, um, we're happier, we're healthier, we're more successful, um, achievement comes easier. Um, when we focus on achievement, um, all of a sudden those are the things that are the first things to go, and, and it's ended up with, I think, a, a whole system that is overly stressed. So did I answer the question with my dream? So my dream is we redefine what it means to be successful as a child. I think that that would be, that would be what I would say. Lindsay Lyons: I love that, and I love how you painted a nice holistic picture of how that touches everyone, right? Yeah. And that touches everyone, but all children, but all people involved in children's lives as well, and I- Yeah ... I love that dream. I know you mentioned a lot about the research, and I know you've been steeped in the research for writing your book, for just all that you do. And, and I'm curious, can you share, uh, you know, a, a little bit more about any of the research you've learned on, you know, mental health? And like, oh, y- you talked about, you know, all spectrums in terms of achievement from a school perspective- Speaker 3: Yeah ... Lindsay Lyons: um, of kids. Like, you know, why, why is it so important that we take this seriously? Because a lot of times I think even though people have that dream in the back of their mind maybe, that they're like, "Yeah, I want my kid to be really, like, mentally well and, and, and holistically well." However, I feel also this stress around schools, and, like, I want them to be successful there, and there's this- Yeah tug. So why is it important that we do focus on, on redefining that success? Doug Bolton: Well, well, so it's, it's an interesting thing. The, um, the research, um, on attending a high- highly selective school is not, uh, is not the, does not, um, um, suggest that people who attend highly achieving, uh, high, uh, highly, um, highly selective schools are gonna be any more successful in life. There, there's a... And so if we take a look at that research, for instance, um, you know, kids don't learn more at a, um, highly selective s- college. Um, I'm from Illinois. It, um, you don't learn more if you go to a Northwestern versus a Northern Illinois. Um, and there is one thing that determines how much someone learns in college, and it's not how selective or how, um, high, uh, um, highly achieving the sc- the college is. Do you know what that is? Lindsay Lyons: No. Doug Bolton: How much you study Lindsay Lyons: Oh, nice. Doug Bolton: Right? So, so- Yeah ... uh, uh, wherever you go, if you study and invest, you're gonna learn, right? Uh, in, in a lot of these high, um, highly selective schools, y- you are learning from, um, teaching assistants and research assistants as much as you're doing anything. So, so, so that's one thing. D- do you make more money? No, you don't make more money. They did some interesting research where they had, um, uh... I don't know how they find this research, but they, uh, they took a look at people who got into high, uh, highly selective schools but couldn't go for one reason or another, and ended up going to a less selective school, like near, uh, uh, near home or whatever because they couldn't leave, versus people who did end up going to highly selective schools. And, uh, um, 10 years later, they, they were making, uh, uh, there was no difference in the money. The, the interesting thing was that the people who went to the highly selective schools often felt underpaid because, uh, you know... So, uh, so these are... So the, the things that, um, that we think are the drivers of success are not the drivers of success, and but they are the drivers of stress, and, and our desire to get kids into these highly, um, high, highly selective schools, to get them into AP classes, to get them to believe that they've gotta be in the top 10% of their class, the, um, worrying about homework, worrying about, uh, about these grades as if this is a, that they're, uh, they're either gonna get or lose a ticket to success in life. None of that holds, and, and yet this is what drives so much of, um, parent, teacher, and student stress and anxiety. Lindsay Lyons: Wow, that was a really good synthesis of, like- ... why you shouldn't focus on this, and why you should focus on this instead. Thank you. Um, I love that you talked about investing in relationships a little while ago. Mm-hmm. And I would love if you could expand on that. Like, what, what is the kind of mental health value or the, you know, value in general of doing that, i- investing in relationships and community? Doug Bolton: Yeah. You know, it's a, it's an interesting thing. Um, there's a, uh, um, a, a metaphor. It's a public health parable actually that I think is a metaphor for our, um, for our mental health crisis today. And, uh, these two people are sitting by a river having a picnic, and, uh, and they look up and there's a child in the river drowning. And they dive in, and they get this child to safety, and they're exhausted. And they look up, and there are two more kids in the water. They go back in, and they get those kids to safety, and then they turn around and the river is filled with these kids who need their help. And, uh, and one of them just dives in and starts pulling kids out of the river, and the other one goes up on shore. And the one in the water says, "What are you doing? I can't save these kids on my own." And the one on shore says, "I'm going upstream. We've gotta figure out why these kids are falling in." And- And, you know, when we take a look at what's upstream of mental health, what's upstream in resilience is our interpersonal connections and relationships. So, um, a couple, a couple of things is they, is, that are r- related and connected to this. First of all, when you're embedded in a belonging community, um, you're more motiv- motivated to learn, you perform better academically, you have better attendance, you're healthier, you have better mental health, right? All of the things that we worry most about. Um, so... And, um, for the kids who are s- most stressed, the kids-- it buffers, um, the impact of stress and trauma. And so, so when I-- if I was to look for a school now, it wouldn't be based on test scores, it would be based on where are the communities that are going to be healthiest, where my child can ex- fully experience belonging. So that's, so that's one bit of research. And then, um, the other is the Grant Study. Um, and the Grant Study was done in Boston starting in 1938, and they took sophomores from Ca- from Harvard, um, and then they, uh, and then they wanted to expand it. So they had two hundred sophomores from Harvard, but then they, um, expanded it to people in Boston more generally, men in Boston more generally. So it was a, it was a male cohort of about seven hundred or eight hundred people. And what they wanted to do is they wanted to see what makes people happy and healthy in their lives. So this is a longitudinal study, one of the most famous longitudinal studies they have. They're still studying the people who are still alive. And John F. Kennedy was one of the people who was, uh, um, was in, originally in the study. So, um, so they've had, they've got eighty, ninety years of research now and, uh, and, and what they say is that, um, if we take a look at what leads to, to health and happiness and, and success, it is not, um, money. It's, it, it is, um, relationships. And, uh, the, one of the, um, people who ran the study for a while, um, um, George Vaillant says, um, you know, uh, twenty million dollars, eighty years of the Grant Study comes down to one five-word conclusion. Um, it is, uh, happiness is love, full stop. And so, so if we want our kids to be happy, if we want our kids to be well-adjusted, we invest in relationships because it, uh, because it's a false promise when we think that, uh, achievement or s- selection to a highly selective school is what's gonna get us there. Lindsay Lyons: I love that. I, it makes me think of just, like, the m- micro moves that I've been making as a parent lately to kind of make sense of current events or things like that. Sure. It can be really hard, particularly with young... I mean, my kid's almost four at this point. Yeah. So it's, like, hard to translate that, and I've been trying to be like, "Well, we believe that people are more important than money, and some people are making choices because they think money are more important than people." Speaker 3: Yeah. And Lindsay Lyons: that's, like, one of the ways to grapple with this, this reality and this hard reality. But I love that it's backed up by, by science, is actually, yes, people are more important than money to your happiness and wellbeing. Doug Bolton: Exa- exactly. And, and, you know, I think that one of the things that's really hard about, um, about what's happened in our school systems, um, is it, it's, it's everybody's drinking from the same water at some level. So at, at four years old, it's, it's one challenge. But at 14 years old, it's another challenge, and at, at 24 years old, it's another challenge. Because in so many ways, and I think, um, as a society, as a culture, things, uh, uh, you know, K12 education really began to change, I think, from, um, in 2002 with the passage of No Child Left Behind. And, and, uh, and really what No Child Left Behind, and I think it was well-meaning. It, it's saying we want people to achieve, right? And, uh, um, we, we want everybody to learn, and we want... And the, the goal, the way we decided to measure that was through, um, test scores of, of high-pressure tests. And so, um, teachers began to believe that this is how we define success and growth and learning. Um, kids started to believe that this is how we do it. Um, parents started to believe that this is how we do it. And so now we seek out those schools with, that are the highest achieving schools. And, and if you take a look at, um, the research on high-achieving schools, what you'll find, and this i- this really came out in 2019. The Robert Wood Johnson Na- Foundation named the top environmental conditions harming adolescent wellness, and we knew the first three: trauma, discrimination, poverty. But the fourth is this excessive pressure to excel. And so all of a sudden, people are mortgaging their homes to get their kids into these high-achieving schools, and yet just being enrolled in a high-achieving school puts you at risk three to seven times, um, higher for anxiety, depression, and substance use. And so, and we've got 25 years of research now on, okay, so did it move the dial, all this focus on test scores? All this anxiety we put on people, we must be learning more, right? And the fact is that, that, that the, the, our test scores have stayed flat. And so, and so this idea that, um, that this focus on achievement testing, it, it re- It undermines our mental health, and it doesn't work. And I just wonder, when is it that we're gonna realize, and, and why would we develop a system and stay with a system where every stakeholder is experiencing significant stress, parents, teachers, and students? And, and yet we continue to, to grab onto this and say, "No, we just need to come up with a new secret for how we get these test scores up," instead of saying, "Let's not look at test scores anymore." Um, one last thing. I'm sorry, but I'll, I'll, uh... But, you know, it, it's fascinating to me because, um, you take a look, and 15 years ago, the head of HR at Google said, "We are no longer looking at, at, um, grades in our work." They say-- 'Cause what he said was, um, it's a, when we look at grades, there's no correlation between success. So, so, uh, you know, it's not showing up in business, 'cause what, what happens is what we do is we get people who are highly compliant, and the people who are highly compliant do well in our schools, but that's not what businesses are looking for, especially in this age of, of, uh, of business and, and work, is we want people to come in with new ideas and, and new solutions to problems instead of just saying, "Tell me what to do, and I'll do it." Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh, that was a great synthesis of like why it is so important that we do things differently. And so now my questions are gonna change to kind of how do we- Yeah ... do it, like how do we... Do you have suggestions for teachers or families or both to kind of... I, I think you had talked about like, um, positive stress in some of your work, I think I was reading. And it- Yeah ... to increase that positive stress but decrease the toxic stress, to build that resilience up for kids. Doug Bolton: Yeah. Yeah. So there's a, a couple different things that show up for me. The first, um, is a model that I talk about in my book. It's called the Circle of Courage, and it's, um, it's a, um... It's actually born of Native American tradition. Um, um, the research and the work of, uh, they had a, um, a group of three researchers, psychologists, and one of them wa- grew up in the Lakota tradition. And he was able to say, "Oh, the research we're coming up with about what, what is, um, what are the qualities of a community that support resilience are the same things that were part of my tradition." So they call it the Circle of Courage, and what they talk about is that there are four main things that we need to experience from our community in order to be successful. And the first is a sense of belonging, um, that we, we matter. We feel cared for. We feel- Safe within this community. The second is mastery, and, and this is where kind of positive stress can come in, that, that we want kids to experience stress. That the only way for us to learn how to manage stress is to experience stress, and so we wanna be able to have kids experience stress, that that's essential. And I think that's what I, uh, uh, that's one of the things I really like about the anxious generation, is it speaks to how we, uh, w- and our protectiveness, um, um, w- kids don't learn how to cope with stress 'cause we don't let them experience it. Adults swoop in too fast, right? And so, so, but mastery is getting better at something that's meaningful to me, and, and it allows me to then suffer setbacks and stay engaged, right? Um, um, it's a, you know, Csikszentmihalyi's kind of, uh, idea of flow, right? That that's, to me, that's kind of our mastery piece. The next is independence, this idea that I can set a goal and I've got the skills I need to be able to achieve it, and, and people aren't gonna undermine my independence, right? They're gonna support me in, in growing and, and making decisions, and making mistakes that way, and learning from those. And then the last is generosity, and I think about generosity in a couple ways. One is that, um, that I've got gifts to give to the world, right? To recognize what those are, and to then have the opportunity to share those gifts. And so when I think about the circle of courage, what I think about is when a child is struggling, I think, you know, where's the circle broken? And then how can I, you know, if it's, uh, if, if people are saying, "I'm, uh, I'm lonely," um, or if there's bullying or I'm being bullied, that's a belonging issue, and then let's, let's, let's get at belonging. If somebody's saying, "I'm bored," or, "I'm overwhelmed, I can't do it," that's, that's probably a mastery issue. Um, you know, if people are becoming defiant or too, or too deferential, that's probably an, an independence issue. Um, if people are feeling very, uh, uh, they don't have anything to give to the world, there's a, um, that I'm a, um, you know, there's a, I'm, I'm useless or I'm worthless, then that's a, that's a generosity issue. And so, so that's one of the ways, that's one of the frames that I use to, uh, um, to think about things. And then the other frame that I use is, um, this idea that Ross Greene talks about, and Ross... uh, not Ross Greene, um, Bruce Perry, I'm sorry. Um, Bruce Perry in his work, um, you know, he's a, he's an expert in trauma, in childhood neuroscience, and, and what he says is that w- he calls it the three Rs. We need to be emotionally regulated and we need to be connected in relationship to access our full brains. And, and w- and when we struggle to access our best brains, our best selves, it's generally because we're dysregulated and/or we're feeling disconnected. And so, so the work in schools, I think, is to make sure that every class period we're giving time for kids to be emotionally, to emotionally regulate, to quiet that nervous system so that we can learn. And then the other is learning has always been social. And so how can I make sure that, um, that, um, that we're learning together, that it's not sitting down and doing, um, desk work or... That may be part of it, but making sure that a- in every classroom we're investing some time to emotionally regulate and to be connected in relationship. Lindsay Lyons: I love these frameworks, and I can envision many situations where I've had a child in one of my classes or my own child, like, having difficulties with any of these things. And so I imagine- Yeah ... you know, people who are engaging with this episode right now are also having those kids come to mind. Um, any advice you would have, if you wanna, like, take one of them, for instance, and say, like, "Okay, you know, someone is struggling with belonging," or, "Someone is struggling with dysregulation." Like, what's a, what's a move that a family member or a teacher could make once they hear, like, the diagnosis is kind of stage one, figure out where is this coming from, what's the issue, and then what do I do in response to it? Any advice? Doug Bolton: Yeah. You know, the, um, a couple things. The, there's a, a guy named Stuart Shanker, psychologist, um, in Canada, who I just love his work, and what he says is misbehavior is stress behavior. This is a, he wrote a book called Self-Reg that is a great book, and this has been really helpful for me as I, I, when I think about this, is that when... And this is true for me, too. When, um, there are times when, um, I handle a really stressful situation beautifully, right? And then the same situation could happen tomorrow, and I totally lose my cool. And it's not about the situation. It's about the stress that I'm bringing into the situation. And so the same is true for kids. And so the, the first step is not figuring out what can I do to change the behavior. It's I wonder what the stress is. I wonder why this is stressful now. So that's, that's one piece. The other piece that, that comes to mind is, um, the idea of, uh, that Mary Jo Barrett, she's a social worker, um, and a, an amazing thinker and practitioner in the world of, of supporting families who've experienced trauma. And, and she talks about the, the concept of pause and ponder. And so the, you know, the, what she's able to talk about is that, that our lives have a rhythm, that our nervous systems have a rhythm, that we're constantly expanding and contracting. And, and, but in order to expand, in order to fully engage with the world, we need to quiet that nervous system first and give it a, and give it a rest. And that there's, that when we're healthiest is there's this rhythm between, you know, we get a good night's sleep. That's the contraction, and then we expand. We, uh, if we're a student, we do our, uh, our work day. You know, we, we go to school. We, um, do what we need to do, and then we rest at night so that we can then be our best selves. Same thing for us. You know, we'd never say, "You've got an important meeting coming up. You should stay up all night working on the agenda," right? We'd say, "No, you need..." Because we know the idea is... And so, and we wanna make it predictable so that our nervous system knows that this is coming, you know? The, we play hard for a first half, but then we know this, uh, that there's gonna be halftime. We're gonna be able to rest, and then we engage again. And so this idea of, um, she calls these down times pausing and pondering. And what, what happens, I think what's happening, um, people who experience stress, their nervous system never gets a break, right? Because, because their nervous system is constantly activated, um, being hypervigilant about, um, what, what's happened and what could happen in the future. And when we push our kids, when we teach bell to bell, when we, um, when we push our kids and then they, they come home from school, they've gotta do homework, and then they've gotta go to their r- um, their travel team practice, and then they've gotta go to their tutoring, and then, uh, um, boom, boom, boom. And the, they're not getting those breaks. And as parents and as educators, when we're teaching bell to bell, and then we've gotta get our three kids to their three travel teams. And of course, then we gotta get 'em all to therapy 'cause everybody's, uh, nobody's doing well. Um, what I would say is what we need to do in our classrooms, what we need to do in our homes is to build in these predictable times when our nervous systems can quiet, and that will mean that we can then engage better later on. Lindsay Lyons: I love that, and I love that you're connecting that both to, to students or, um, like the school setting, like with teachers planning bell to bell and not planning for that pause and ponder, as well as for families. And I, I just am reminded of, like this week I think I was saying to my kid, like, "Oh yeah, when I was in high school, you know, I would have after school, like I would have practice or away games where I had to ride a bus for an hour and then play a game- Right and then watch the other team play the game and then go home, and then I would go to sleep." And he's like, "When did you have time to play, like to just relax and play?" Yeah. And I was like, "Wow, that's exactly what you're talking Speaker 3: about." Exactly. Exactly. Lindsay Lyons: The wisdom of small children. Love Speaker 3: it. Yes, exactly. Lindsay Lyons: And so I guess I, I, I think there's so much stuff, and I know people can read your book for, for more details on all of this. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So there's so much that you talk about, and honestly, I've been taking so many notes. I have, like, a laundry list of to read next now books and research. That's great. Doug Bolton: Yes. Lindsay Lyons: But where would you encourage people to start? Like, the first thing they do, they've engaged with the episode, they're really jazzed about some of this stuff. Like, what's the first thing that they could put into action right away? Doug Bolton: Yeah. I think that, um, if we can, I would do the, the pausing, the pausing and pondering. You know, the, the thing that, that I think is most important, you know, that's the, that's the regulate part of the R, right? Regulate and relate. Um, and, and, you know, the... I think that things like family dinners have become endangered species because we're so busy, and people will say, "Well, my kid wants to be a part of three travel teams, so I'm just doing what they wanna do. But in the meantime, um, I'm stressed trying to take care of all these things, figure out, you know, who needs helmets and who needs shin pads and who needs the, um, who forgot the bow for their violin," right? "And, and do I have all the, the work to get to the, from school to get to the tutor?" All of these pieces, nobody's getting the breaks that they need. And so if I was to do anything, uh, you know, what... So, so what I would say to parents, they'd say, "Well, they want to be part of all these three teams." And I'd say, "Well, they probably also want three ice cream sundaes before dinner," right? And would we... A- but we, it's easy to say no to that, right? Um, and yet I think that there, just because, um, kids want it doesn't mean that it's healthy for them or for us. And I think I would say, how do we build in these pauses in our lives, in our family's life, in our kids' lives, before we build anything else in? And then figure out what we can add, but, but make sure that those are sacred. That that would probably be the first thing that I would do, because I think that our nervous systems are, um, are under attack. And what we need to do is we need to protect those so that we can then show up as best we can as, as, um, as parents so that we can, so the kids can show up in a classroom on a good night's rest and not feeling so stressed. I wouldn't worry about things like homework. If it's, if they've got too much homework, you know, kids in Finland, they have, uh, um, 2.7 ni- hours, 2.9 hours of homework a week, and in America, it's 2.7 hours a night. And, and Finland, and, and the kids in Finland are doing a whole lot better on these standardized tests than we are. They, we, we should learn something from this, right? That, that, uh, that this homework assignment isn't the end of the world. This, this, uh, C minus is not the end of the world, um, that we're gonna be okay. What we wanna do is make sure the relationships are solid and that we're getting, that we're getting breaks. And when we do that, we're gonna have healthier kids. Lindsay Lyons: I love that. I was just reminded of, uh, when I was a high school teacher, we would do this, like, plan out, a little executive functioning, like plan out your day. Like, when you get home, like, what do you do? And you know, a lot of kids- Yeah ... would work after school, and then they'd have to fit in homework. And I, if I could go back and redo that assignment, I'd be like, "Okay, and plan your pauses. Like, plan your..." Exact- Doug Bolton: yes. Right? That'd Lindsay Lyons: be cool. Let's, Doug Bolton: let's put those in first, Lindsay Lyons: right? Yes, exactly. Exactly. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Well, I'm very inspired by all this. I'm sure, you seem like a person who is constantly learning. You're constantly referencing, like, research or s- Doug Bolton: I, I, yeah, I, I... That's the thing, is I love, I love the learning part of this, yeah. Lindsay Lyons: I was gonna ask, what are you learning about lately? Like, what's new and exciting on your mind? Doug Bolton: You know, the thing that I, I, I, I mentioned it earlier, is this idea that, um, that w- that when we hit a target, when we shoot for a target, um, uh, the, like, uh, like sales, like this idea of, of, uh, um, high achievement. What happens is we do, uh, when we focus on that, we undermine all the things that can lead to that. And so what I would say is, how can we focus on helping kids be engaged in school instead of helping them get good grades? I would think about, how can we help, um... You know, I think that we've gotten very good. Our focus, um, you know, it used to be, let's focus on how do we develop kids, and now we're focused on how do we develop data. And as a result, we're not getting as good data, and our kids are not developing in the way they need to. And so I would say, how can we shift that? And I'm, I'm, uh, I'm fascinated by all of the examples, um, you know, in, uh, um, in Boeing, they, uh, at Boeing, they used to be, "Let's just make really cool airplanes." And, and as a, and as a result, they got all these profits. And then they had a CEO come in and say, "We're gonna be profit-focused." And all of a sudden, we've been seeing more and more problems with, um, the safety and the design and everything else of these planes, because when we build a plane, um, to make profit, um, it's very different than we build a plane so that it's gonna be the coolest plane we can build and, and answer a certain, uh, uh, a certain problem in the world, right? And so, so I, and so that's the research I've been doing, is just trying to better understand that, 'cause I think that that's happening in our parenting and happening in our, uh, with our kids, uh, in, in our parenting and in our schools. Lindsay Lyons: I love that example. Thank you for making that- Mm-hmm ... that come to life for us. And finally, where can people connect with you or learn more about you? Doug Bolton: Yeah, so, um, I've got a website, um, drdougboulton.com. D-R dougboulton.com, B-O-U-L-T-O-N. And, uh, um, and you can get my book, and my book tells a lot of stories about my work as a therapeutic school principal and psychologist, and, uh- The thing I love about the books is that I feel like the students are telling the stories. And, uh, um, and I tell stories about my own family and my, uh, my, mostly my struggles as a, as a parent, and what I've learned from those as well. So, so I think that my, uh, um, my book would be one way, and I think my website's another way to kinda get a picture of, of, uh, the work that, that, um, that I'm doing, so. Lindsay Lyons: Thank you so much, Dr. Bolton. This was such a humbling, amazing conversation. Thank you for being on the podcast. Doug Bolton: Lindsay, thanks so much. I, I've loved it. I, I feel like I, we could have talked for ages. So, uh, so thank you so much for, um, what a great interview and what a, a, um, I'm just so, um, grateful for your time and your energy and, and what you're bringing to the world. So thank you for letting me be a part of it. Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely 5/25/2026 259. A Collaborative Team Meeting Structure that Elevates Instruction with Kurtis HewsonRead Now
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In this episode, Kurtis Hewson joins host Lindsay to discuss his book, Collaborative Response, and the innovative concept of Collaborative Team Meetings (CTMs). Kurtis emphasizes the importance of these meetings as the missing linchpin in multi-tiered systems of support in schools.
By implementing CTMs, schools can reduce the number of overall meetings by focusing on proactive and collaborative strategies, allowing educators to better support students. This episode is full of practical advice and strategies to implement in your school context. The Big Dream Kurtis’ big dream is captured by the idea that every child deserves a team—an educational environment where no teacher works in isolation and no student's success (or lack of success) is solely the responsibility of one person. He aims to transform schools from isolated islands of excellence into collaborative communities that leverage the collective expertise of educators to support every student's needs effectively. Mindset Shifts Required Kurtis sees three key mindset shifts for educators who want to work better as a team of support to their students:
Action Steps Implementing CTMs begins with the understanding that there are four layers of team, as Kurtis lays them out from the least to most intensive:
Building these layers of support help schools decrease the number of meetings they have, but increase the quality and impact of them. By using the collaborative team meeting as a linchpin in the process, more will be resolved there without having to bring in so many support team and case consult meetings. With those layers in mind, teams can establish a new meeting rhythm with these action steps: Step 1: Start by establishing CTMs every three to five weeks, integrating them into existing PLC structures if necessary. Step 2: Assign roles, set norms, and prepare for meetings with specific data-driven objectives, focusing on yellow students and key issues without sharing students' names. Step 3: Utilize structured reflection and feedback processes to continuously improve the effectiveness of CTMs and ensure they are solutions-oriented and impactful. Step 4: Get really granular about the issues you are facing, focusing on the strategies and solutions, not the specific students and their stories that can distract from how you will move forward. We go into further detail about the CTM in this episode, and Kurtis outlines it all in his new book, Collaborative Response. Challenges? The primary challenge in adopting CTMs is remaining true to the structured processes and timing of the meetings. Many educators may initially resist the level of structure required, preferring more organic discussions. However, the structure is crucial to maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of these meetings and must be adhered to for long-term success. Another challenge is overcoming the desire to discuss students by name and story, which can derail the focus from solution-building to storytelling. One Step to Get Started Download the CTM starter kit from Jigsaw Learning, which provides necessary resources such as meeting templates, role cards, pre-meeting organizers, and facilitator guides. This kit acts as a launching pad for schools to begin their journey towards transformative collaborative practices. Stay Connected You can find more from Kurtis Hewson on the Jigsaw Learning website, where you can also get a copy of Kurtis’ book, Collaborative Response. You can also tune into the Building a Culture of Collaboration podcast, or connect with Kurtis on Instagram and LinkedIn. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing an Overview of Collaborative Response article and a CTM Starter Kit with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 259 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Curtis Hugin, welcome to the time for teachership podcast. Kurtis Hewson: Oh, thank you so much, Lindsay. It's an absolute pleasure to be able to join you for this conversation. I've been looking forward to it. Lindsay Lyons: Me too. Okay. I am so excited. And what's on my mind as we go in is your book Collaborative Response, so I have it here with me, particularly the chapter on collaborative team meetings or CTM as you call them. And so just wanting to like preview for people that this is an exciting thing we're gonna get into in this episode and that it is. From what I've seen markedly different from anyone else doing stuff in this space. And so it's really exciting. What is on your mind as you kind of enter the conversation? Anything people should kind of keep in mind as they engage Kurtis Hewson: with that? Yeah. I, uh, in the book we talk about four layers of team and Lindsay, I've been at this for almost 20 years now from when we first started, some early iterations of this within my own school, and then how this has evolved. Past, we've actually discovered that every school, regardless of size, configuration, location, they need to think about four layers of collaboration with the collaborative team meeting being one of them. And so I really do want to dig into that, but if we could even take a moment here in the conversation to discuss what are those four layers? Because when we talk about a collaborative response, we talk about having our collaborative structures and processes, these four layers. Data and evidence that feeds into those conversations in time. And then developing continuums of support that really clearly articulate how will we respond. These three pieces are important, but in the, the visual, the framework, visual, the collaborative structures and processes is twice as large of a piece visually than the others. And that's intentional because it's really important. And within that, I would say the collaborative team meeting is the engine that. Drives it all. Lindsay Lyons: Well said and I, now that I am bringing up that visual in my brain, in my memory, you're right, it is bigger and that makes so much sense that it's intentional because that was the part that particularly jumped out to me as people aren't doing this and it's super important. Kurtis Hewson: Absolutely. So when we talk about the four layers, the great news is, is most schools can identify for sure to. Probably three. And we often say, we're gonna reduce the number of meetings in your school by adding one more, which is the collaborative team meeting. And again, mathematically it makes no sense that we're gonna reduce by adding, but we do. What we find is if we can get this collaborative team meeting, um, operationalized within the school and having impact, we see less meetings or less students needing the higher levels. Or more intensive meetings. So if you can give me just a few mo moments, I'll describe these four layers really quickly, and then we'll dig into that collaborative team meeting if that works. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, totally. Kurtis Hewson: Okay, so four layers, and I'm gonna start from the least intensive to the most intensive in time. These align with the tiers within our continuum of supports, but the first layer we call collaborative planning, it's when teachers are coming together to work on things that will impact all students. So all students across a grade level, across a division, across a subject area, maybe across the entire school. Um, they're usually at this layer. Looking at data, determining what is our response, what do we need to do? And in these conversations, we're not typically looking at individual kids, we're looking at trends. So any school that's engaged in professional learning communities or PLCs, we'll go, okay, this layer, we got it. This makes sense. Um, and the reason we didn't call it PLCs, uh, even though we were doing a variation of that, but then we had some other structures that still fit in this layer is we've seen schools that are not necessarily following the PLC model, um, with Fidelity, but they have other ways that they're collaboratively planning that are. As effective for them as well. So again, think of these layers as like categories. So that first layer again, any school that has PLCs goes, check, we got it. The second layer is the collaborative team meeting, and we'll skip it for a second. Third is what we call the school support team. So this is intended to be the, the team that's meeting on a regular basis, usually biweekly or weekly. Uh, it involves administrators, um, learning, support coordinators, maybe instructional coaches, those that have more specialized roles. And essentially this conversation is about. Who are the students that need support beyond the classroom or in addition to the classroom? When a teacher puts in a referral for support, this is the team that. Handles, handles this and determines, alright, what do we need to do for the student? Or sometimes it's, what do we need to do to help the teacher? We often say, teachers are not necessarily in involved in this conversation because the conversation might be about the teacher, and I mean that with all due respect. It might be how do we support, how do we coach, who could we connect this person to, to help them in this particular situation? But sometimes it might be about escalating the student. Um, for some higher levels of support. And our fourth, um, layer is what we call a case consult. Um, but really it's the broadest category of all because it's, anytime we meet with one kid on the agenda, this falls into that layer. So I worked with a large high school, uh, once here, Lindsay, where they named all their different meetings that they were having. They put it up against these layers and went, oh my goodness. Virtually the, all the things we're doing, and it was a school of about 1200 students. All the things we're doing are falling in that case, consult that one student at a time and they went, oh, this makes perfect sense why we're drowning right now. We we're, the, the term they used was, it feels like we're playing whack-a-mole, just putting out fires everywhere, but we're trying to do it one kid at a time and what we're trying to do. Is if we can build these layers with fidelity, with the collaborative team meeting, almost being the bridge between the collaborative planning IE PLCs. And the school support. We're going to see less and less students reach this school support in case consult layer, and the ones that do absolutely need to, but the collaborative team meeting becomes essential. This is why any school that's engaged in multi-tiered systems of support work, MTSS work, they see this and go, oh, there's our missing piece that we have all these other pieces in place, but that collaborative team meeting is the linchpin that's that's missing. Lindsay Lyons: Hm. That makes so much sense. So much sense. I've seen that in so many schools as well. And so, okay, this, this totally is, is a great framing for the conversation. I wanna zoom out a little bit first before we get into CTM and think about like, what is your kind of, why, what's your big dream? I like to ground this in, Dr. Patina loves, uh, talk about freedom dreaming. She says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So kind of what's that driver for you in this work? Kurtis Hewson: For me, the driver is what you see if anyone's watching the video. Uh, right on this shirt is the idea that every child deserves a team. And what I mean by that is I think our children deserve the best of what we have to offer collectively. And what I mean by that is. No one should be feeling isolated on an island in a silo and that no child success should ever be the responsibility, or, or, sorry, lack of success maybe is ever the responsibility of one person. My dream is that we can shift this profession from one that is, I, I used to refer to it in my own school as isolated islands of excellence. Great people doing great things in their room, but collectively. We had centuries of teaching experience available to us. How could we leverage that in a really intentional way that's gonna help each and every kid? Lindsay Lyons: Oh, I love that. I wrote down isolated Islands of excellence. I think that's totally what happens in most places. And you know, it's actually inspiring me. I've been thinking about families a lot and family school partnership and, and teammates together. Also families, right? There's so much. If we could just do like this kind of wraparound, like hug in support of, of kids, it's like we're gonna build skills together everywhere we are, whether it's in or out of school. It's pretty cool. Kurtis Hewson: Uh, Lindsay, I can tell you too that I hear it over and over and over again of schools that I'll come in and work with or districts where the schools will say, we thought we were collaborative until we started this work. And then we've taken it to a whole nother level. And I usually have schools that when they say. You know, we, we collaborate a fair bit. We have good team structures. I go, oh my goodness, then you're gonna love this because it's going to pour gasoline on a fire that's already lit it. It's just gonna take it to a different level that, um, I think our kids deserve. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, I, I love too that you've covered, I, in all the things you've said so far, you've already kind of covered some, some mindset shifts. Yeah. And I, I wonder, I usually ask that question at this point. Is there anyone you wanna like, double down on or say that we haven't said yet in terms of the leaders and educators who are wanting to do really meaningful collaborative work, but maybe they even thought they were Right? And then what's the shift in terms of like, what's different with this approach? Is there some sort of thinking that needs to change? Kurtis Hewson: Yeah, there's, there's. There's three that I think are pretty critical. The first, and it's when we put all those three pieces together of collaborative structures and processes, data and evidence and continuum of supports, when we put them all together, it's about shifting our mindset so that we stop tiering kids and we tier the supports. To me, that's a critical mindset, and it might sound like a simple shift in language, but it's massive when we tear the kids. It's too easy to say, well, that's a tier three kid, not my responsibility. When we tier the supports, it places all the attention back on us. What are we as the adults doing to support and, and, um, it becomes a much more reflective exercise. One that's more hopeful, I think, and one that really is about, okay, well let's keep examining what could we do? And it builds high, high levels of collective efficacy in organizations. When it's, alright, that didn't work. What else could we try? What's our next step? Uh, so that's one. The second, and this is becomes critical with the use of data and evidence, I, uh, work with schools to start color coding their data. And then we emphasize that, especially in the collaborative team meeting, we focus on the yellow. And what I mean by that is if we used a simple. Um, color coding where red means who are the students, not yet meeting expectations based on whatever data set we were utilizing. Yellow is the students who are approaching expectations. They're close. They're not quite there yet, but they're closer than the reds. And then the green are those that are meeting expectations. And then I also have a fourth color we use of blue of exceeding expectations because in time we want a conversation about those, um, students as well. But in the collaborative team meeting, we make sure that we are not focusing on our reds. And what I mean by that is, and we're not saying that those children don't deserve a conversation, they absolutely do. But this is why the layers of team become important because we trust that their needs are being met in our more intensive layers of team. In the collaborative team meeting, let's focus on the kids who are close and what could we do that would lift them to that next level so that we often say we're providing support for your most at risk students by not focusing on them. In the collaborative team meeting, which again, huge mindset shift. If I was to come into a room and say, Lindsay, who would you like to talk about today? Your mind instantly goes to the kid that's furthest away from where you'd like them to be. Probably the one that's consuming 95% of your attention and energy. And what we're trying to do is let's shift the focus off of that student because there's already conversations happening in our other layers of team. Let's focus on the ones that are, we sometimes hear schools call these our bubble kids or the, I saw a high school where they said, these are our fifties, the kids who are just passing, but by the skin of our teeth. And what could we do, um, to help them? And the mindset shift here is the, uh, by being proactive, the kid who is yellow based on our data right now, we save them before they potentially hit that red, um, months or years in advance. And then I think the third mindset shift is being comfortable. With being uncomfortable. And what I mean by that is when we're in really powerful collaborative conversations like the CTM, the collaborative team meeting that we'll discuss here in a bit, we want to get to a place where people are okay being slightly uncomfortable. And what I mean by that is we set up mechanisms to build high, high levels of trust and vulnerability that. I'm always gonna have a small sense of discomfort in the conversations because people are gonna push me on my thinking, they're gonna ask me questions about my practice. And, um, what we find is, um, it takes time to be able to get there, but it is a powerful conversation. And I believe true collaboration is when we get pushed. Further than we could have on our own. And that push is done in a respectful, professional, but challenging way for us. So it, it takes time. But I, I love going into collaborative team meetings knowing that everyone's gonna walk away just a little bit stronger than when they went in. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. This has me thinking about so many things. I also think about, you know, student led discourse in, in classrooms just from the teacher hat. Yeah. And it's like, it's the same, it's the same thing with adults and with students, right? Like we enter a conversation kind of knowing that our ideas are gonna get better as we engage with others and get feedback on our ideas like. It's that trust building, but it's also the structures that you have in place that enable it to come forth. Yes. Which is why I'm really excited to talk about the CTM structures you have. Um, there's so much, so I mean, I, I just wanna like read through what I got outta the chapter and maybe you could like elaborate or say more. Kurtis Hewson: You got it, Lindsay. Lindsay Lyons: Okay. So first I, I love that there's some pre-meeting work, like there's some, something you have to do first. I love that you grounded norms or agreements. I love that there's some positive like success share kind of stuff and I love that there's a reflection after on the process, which I think too often is skipped in both classes and adult meetings. And then I like starred multiple times that page that has your key issues flow chart because there's so much in that one graphic. I mean that we, there's so much so any or all of those things. Do you wanna like expand upon those words? Kurtis Hewson: Let's break this down. Okay, so the collaborative team meeting, we want it essentially every three to five weeks within the school. And where we found the most power is if you have PLCs already established. Awesome. Let's say they're meeting every week. Uh, they were in my school. What we would do is every fourth week, we'd transfer that into a collaborative team meeting. Now I see the greatest power start to happen in schools where you collaboratively plan, again, think PLC. With those, you share a common teaching experience with either at the same grade level, same subject area. Maybe it's multi graded depending on the size of your school, but we, collaborative team meet. With people we don't share. So what this does in a school is creates two layers of collaboration where I, my, for instance, my department team, if I'm at a high school, uh, I'm working consistently with my science department colleagues, but then when I get into a collaborative team meeting, there's a good chance that I'm going to have myself a mathematics. Um, teacher, a, uh, English language learner teacher, a immersion teacher, potentially someone that's teaching phys ed. The, the possibilities become endless, uh, for us. So what we do then is the collaborative team meeting is coming up, and we know that it is, let's say, focused on literacy. Let's say the school has, we were really trying to impact literacy achievement within our school. So the pre-work that you talked about means that every teacher comes ready. For this conversation. And we usually say, when you start, start simple, come ready with a celebration and come ready with a student. And a key issue, and I'll describe that key issue here in a little bit, and it's the game changer, uh, for us now in time, we start to say, come ready with a student to celebrate based on your data. And a student to discuss that is yellow based on our data and a key issue that you noted. But we don't have that right away, uh, unless, uh, again, I've worked with some schools who have really strong data analysis processes where this makes total sense to them. Okay. So we come in and like you said, we start with norms. Here's our norms that we set out. And I often now don't read every norm. We pick one that we're gonna practice. So let's say today we're gonna focus on our norm of being solutions oriented. And Lindsay, I'd love for you to just, um. Put down a, a tally of every time you hear the words what if, because at the end we're gonna talk about how many times did that happen? When we're using the phrase, what if we're activating some solutions oriented thinking? We find a way to practice that norm. And then, like you said. At the end, just have a quick, how did we do? What did that look like? And this may seem minuscule. In fact, I was a person who did not believe norms were critical for teams. I thought in our school, people get along great. We don't need norms. And we didn't, until we got into challenging conversations. And then we had to say out loud, we agree, everyone's opinion matters. We agree, we'll arrive on time and prepared. And then we had conversations about what does on time and prepared look like? Do we all have a common understanding? So we, we do that norm thing and in time it just becomes. Totally natural for us. And then we start with celebrations. And here's the key, Lindsay. When I say, Lindsay, who would you like to celebrate? And you say, I've got, uh, I don't want to celebrate all the students in my class. They've done such, uh, incredible work. Adjusting to our new flex block that we've established years ago, I would've said, that's awesome. Let's write it down. Yay. Great celebration. Anyone else have one? But now we go deeper. I would say Lindsay. Who's a student that really stands out for you? One, that's that you're surprising with the success in the flex block, what this is doing is activating a deeper level of reflection that is gonna help the next question. So when you say, you know, I guess Sharif, Sharif is really surprised me. I thought the kid would not know how to utilize that time effectively for himself, but he's really utilizing it now to, uh. To impact what, what it is that he needs to do. Now the next question is the critical one where someone in the room is going to say, that's great. What do you think you did that led to that success? So this is activating some, some deeper reflection for us. It's identifying that these things are, and when you say, I don't know, it must be a miracle, I'm going to jump in and say, okay, what do you think you did that led to that miracle? Um, and, and, and this is helping us to understand that what we're doing is having impact. And when you say, uh, it's nothing big, I've got a little a checklist that he completes to help him figure out where to go during flex block. Someone in the room is going to go Genius. Can I see a copy of that checklist? Um, we're sharing strategies right in that celebrations part. So that part's really, really important. Make sense? And then, and then we're gonna get to the key issue here in a moment. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, this is, I just wanna say like, this is so critical, that question of what did you do and how it leads to just natural sharing as opposed to, I'm gonna force people to share. I'm like, it's so beautiful. And I love the the focus on one student, because I think about the emotional connection too. Yes. You're now bringing in addition to that specificity of the context, like which leads into the key issue, I'm sure. So I'll stop talking and let you talk about it. Kurtis Hewson: I'm just, well, and really. You're going to see, and you're the people listening or viewing this podcast are going to understand that we're actualizing universal design for learning in these conversations because when you were reflecting on Sharif and your uses checklist, that actually might be something you're using with everyone. It's really helped him, the idea of intended for one, good for all. And then this really impacts in the, in the, um, key issue process. Okay, so let's go here. I'm going to say, Lindsay. Okay, let's get started. I know you've brought a student. Please don't say their name. What is the key issue? 30 seconds or less. And when people first start, it's hard to get. Succinct on the key issue that they're experiencing. Sometimes we're used to telling stories, and I think there's a place for stories, but not in the collaborative team meeting, potentially in that school support or that case consult, where the story of the student really, really matters. But in the collaborative team meeting, it actually is counterintuitive for the process because we want you to get succinct on what's. Add challenge that you're seeing for this student. So the key issue, and let's say that we're having a literacy focused conversation and you say, I've got a student in mind and my key issue is inferencing. Okay. Now we might ask a few questions of what do you mean when you say inferencing so that everybody understands around the table what it is you're talking about. And then you say, well, the student just, they can read all the words, fine, but they can't. Envision the the meaning that's happening. They can't make the mental picture of what that is creating. So we'd say, all right, so inferencing, uh, creating mental pictures. Have we got it? And you say, yeah. Then we go, okay, great. Everyone else identify, ask student where you're also seeing that. Write down their name. Don't say 'em out loud. And then we're going to start having a conversation on what could we do to impact students who cannot, who can read, but can't make the mental pictures, uh, for it. And we just start throwing out ideas. Now, why it's so critical that we have everybody else think of a student put in mind is because we don't want this to be a conversation where everyone turns to Lindsay and says, Hey, Lindsay, you could, you could, you could as a facilitator, I'm gonna go, whoa, these are we. These are just possibilities that we could do. And do you notice what happens when we don't say the name? It helps us focus on the solutions oriented instead of a second. You say the name Curtis. People in the room are gonna go, oh, I know Curtis. Yeah. Yeah. I've, I taught his sister, I taught his mother ev. It goes off on these tangents and we're just trying to leverage the student to have a conversation about practice. Okay, so now we start sharing out ideas and in time we start. Referring to our continuum of supports for ideas and suggestions that we've co-created over time. We won't get into that here today, but it becomes a solid resource and we just generate ideas. Now, the beauty of this is, um, no idea is a bad idea at this point, but people start riffing off each other's things so that when you say, I try this in my room, I go, I do something similar, but what if. We did this and what if we tried this? And then what we want to come back is after we've generated that possibility. And I have to tell you, I'm almost in my 30th year in education, I've been in hundreds of these collaborative team meetings, either as an observer or as a facilitator to model. I have yet to walk out of one where I didn't hear something I've never heard before, which is crazy. Crazy. But it, I think it just, um, reinforces how incredible educators are. Um, every time there's a new website, a resource, an idea, a strategy, a modification, I had never considered that come out. And then what we do is, um, from that we say, alright, Lindsay, who's the student? Just the name. What's one thing that you're willing to try and you say, I really like Angela's idea. I think I'm gonna try that. And we say, okay, by what date will you put that down? And then I go to the next person and say, alright, did you have a student in mind? Just the name and what's one thing you want to try? So what we're doing is building everybody's capacity over and over and over again. And I often say the collaborative team meeting looks like you're talking about kids. But you're not, the conversation about the student is really just a name. The conversation about practice and solutions is the main focus. And so we go through that. Um, if there were five teachers in the room, we go to each of the five and say, did you have a student in mind? And what's one thing to try? And again, when a teacher said, well, all of my kids struggle with that, we still say, just pick one that you wanna focus on for this strategy. Then we go and say, alright, let's start our next key issue conversation. Who do you have? Don't say the name. What's a key issue you're experiencing? What this does is when we see schools first start, people reach for low hanging fruit. We hear things like, well, I was planning to try this anyway, so just put me down for that. But when we start to build up that trust and vulnerability, we start to hear things like, I love Lindsay's idea, but I'm not quite sure how to do that. And that's where me, uh, myself as a leader are in there to say, oh, could I cover your class for 20 minutes tomorrow so that you can go and connect with Lindsey around this? Or do you need to see what this looks like? We, we refer to this as distributive coaching, and what it means is that everyone in the room is an expert. Everybody's also a learner, and you do not have to hold the title of instructional coach to teach somebody else something that you know how to do. That idea of distributive coaching is we could all learn something from other people, and this is where the real power happens outside of these meetings, we start to build up that capacity building that. Idea generation, that sharing, and then all of a sudden when I struggle with someone with a student, I don't wait for a meeting. I run down the hall to talk to Lindsay because I know you have a toolbox that's equipped for this type of thing. We, I, I'm, I'm always fascinated that sometimes we can teach across the hallway. Decades with another person and not necessarily know their instructional strategies, processes, practices. This is a way to access it, and what we see through this is everyone's capacity just keeps growing and growing and growing. Everyone's leaves these collaborative team meetings with two or three things they hadn't considered before, or we often see people start to stretch. Um, their own practice to start to challenge their own thinking. And this is where that power starts to happen, where all of a sudden, a year, two years, three years from now, I get that student, um, that I would've been referring to the special ed or school support team or whatever language you're using in your school. But now I have the toolbox to help support, and this again, is how we reduce the number of meetings by adding one more long term. It's the, the collaborative team meeting is powerful, really powerful. Lindsay Lyons: And I love that you are accomplishing all the things that I think instructional coaches, that team meeting facilitators want, but it's just the intentionality of the structure and the culture you build through those conversations and that structure. Kurtis Hewson: Oh, Lindsay instructional coaches love this because when somebody says, I'm gonna try this, they now have an instant access to say, would you like some help? Could I help you with that? Would you like me to model that for you? We saw that where with teachers who were. Uh, hesitant and I would even say a little bit fearful to have another person come into their room to watch or to help whatnot. Where now it's not that they're coming in because you're lacking in some area as a teacher, they're coming in because you said you're gonna try something for this kid, and can I help you? For that, that student, it, it, it just diverts the attention ever so slightly. And for me as a leader, I would be listening for that. Where it might be the, how could, you know, knowing what I know about Marcel and you said you're gonna try this. I also think Lindsay's idea would be really impactful that for that student, can we help you do that? And it was a way where I could start pushing people's. Instructional practices, but in a really supportive and, um, non-judgmental, uh, way. Lindsay Lyons: That is so cool. I mean, there's just, there's so much potential here. I mean, there, there's actualized things that'll come out of this in the work you've done, which is so cool. I, I'm wondering, is there a particular challenge that you've noticed when people are trying to shift to this kind of way of collaborating and, and being in these types of meetings? What's like the biggest challenge you've seen, or one challenge you've seen, and how did, how have you helped people overcome it? Kurtis Hewson: Yeah, so the, uh, the biggest challenge is remaining true to the structures and processes of it. So a school where they go, well, we just collaborate really well naturally. We, we just let, let it flow, we let our meetings flow. Um, I will say that's wonderful. I promise. If you put in these structures that are going to feel a little mechanical, a little awkward when you first begin. I promise they will take you to another level. So when I say structures or processes, it's things like we have norms established and we're going to review them at the start. We have roles in this meeting where I'm the facilitator, Lindsay is the recorder, Douglas is the timekeeper. And we might even have, I've seen lots of schools that introduce the role of the interrupter, and it's that person's job too. Knock on the table. If anyone goes off into story and they're not doing it to be a jerk, it's just we've agreed that's how we stay focused. Um, and so being able to say, alright, we're going to move to celebrations. Uh, Douglas, can you set a, uh, eight minute timer for this and let us know when we're down to one minute. Lindsay, let's start with you. What's a celebration that you've seen? 30 seconds or less, and then we're gonna dig into what we did. Sometimes people are a little bit afraid of that type of structure of having things timed of all of the, the things I, I often have people, when they watch a video of me facilitating one, I get the, you're kind of like a drill sergeant within that, and Yes, I am, because. We only have 40 minutes. We want to maximize that 40 minutes, and I hear it repeatedly of people that were hesitant to put the structures in that. Once they do and then people get comfortable. They love it and they often start translating it into other meeting places. All of a sudden, staff meetings have timers and clear agendas and note documents. Um, we go to meet with a parent and we start off with norms of, we all agree we're here for the best interest of your child, and that we'll do whatever it takes for their success. Saying some of those things out loud become really powerful. That, that's what I see as the biggest challenge is people feeling a bit uncomfortable with structure, but the structure is critical for the success. Lindsay Lyons: I That makes so much sense. I could totally imagine that that to be a challenge and that the structure just like kind of believe it and, and it'll happen. It seems like a good approach there. Kurtis Hewson: Yeah. Well, and the other challenge I see too is we're so accustomed, and this is the huge mindset shift that comes. We're so accustomed to coming into a meeting and if someone says, who's a student you like, and this is why we often say, don't say the name. Out loud. We're so used to saying, here's everything I know about this student. Everything I've tried, all the things that have worked. And when people start to say, maybe we could do this, maybe we could do this, then me as a teacher go, oh, I've tried that already. No, that wouldn't work. Let me tell you more about what, what's happened. Um, this shifts that on its ear and it's really hard sometimes to focus on the key issue because I've got Daniel in my head and I. I want to talk about Daniel, but this is where we say, okay, if you need to have a conversation with Daniel, awesome. It doesn't happen here. That sounds like a case consult layer meeting. Who do we need around the table? I love that, and that's gonna get scheduled somewhere else. This is what, again, why the layers are so, so important for us. Lindsay Lyons: I love that. Oh my gosh. So there's so much richness in here. People should obviously grab the book and read all the details, but what is maybe one thing you would encourage listeners or audience members to do once they've just ended the episode? They're walking into school or like walking into their office, preparing for the upcoming school year? Like what's one thing that could get them on the path? Kurtis Hewson: We have what we call our CTM starter kit, and I'm going to give, uh, the link to it for you. So go check the show notes out, um, or go to jigsaw learning.ca/free and you'll find it, it's one of the free resources in it. It has a adapted story of a collaborative team meeting so that you can see it, it has links to video of it, it has, here's your meeting template, um, uh, notes document. Here's your roll cards. Here's your pre-meeting organizer, all the things that you might need. There's even a facilitator's one pager that says, here's the process, here's questions you could be asking. Um, all of that, it's all built together. And if anyone's walking away from this episode going, I'm really excited about this. My piece of advice is just start, just start the, the meetings will feel awkward. Your first one will not go. Um, as well as you would imagine it, it will. Um, I think we often hear schools say it turned out better than we thought it was going to, but it takes time, it takes practice, but it is well worth the investment because it transforms the way we, we think about the work we do and the way that we support, the way that we collaboratively respond to the needs of our students. And we also, uh, Lindsay, we have, uh, at this point in the recording, I know that this will get released later, so hopefully the book will already be out. But we are just finishing a book all about the collaborative team meeting. Just that one structure, it's coming out mid May is what we're aiming for. So, um, check that out. Go to jigsaw learning.ca. It'll be on the website. Love to, uh, be able to share. We've seen schools that have. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 years, um, in, uh, from engaging in this work that their collaborative team meeting is just so rich and so layered. Uh, when you look at it, you go, this is insanely complex how this is set up. And it never looked like that to start, but it got there over time. Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. You beat me to that question. That's awesome. And, and finally, I know you mentioned your website anywhere else that people can connect with, with you as a, as a human or, um, other places to go in terms of your work. Kurtis Hewson: I would say the easiest is that website, jigsaw learning.ca. Um, I'm Canadian. I live in, uh, Alberta, Canada, so that's the.ca part of this. Um, if you want to check out on any of the socials, uh, search for Jigsaw Learning, or, I'm in most socials as Houston K two seven. To, uh, connect with me on Instagram or Facebook, LinkedIn. Um, yeah, would love to have a conversation and, um, to help any of the schools that are trying to implement this, this work that we see have such incredible impact, not just for kids, but for the adult supporting the kids. Lindsay Lyons: Great point to end on. Chris, thank you so much. This has been such a rich conversation. Kurtis Hewson: Uh, thank you Lindsay. I really appreciate the opportunity. Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely. 
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, we talk with Adam Fletcher about student voice. Adam is an author, speaker, and consultant specializing in the area of meaningful student engagement and, in our conversation, he shares how we’re at a key, transformational time in education where students can become the main drivers of change.
Adam advocates for the democratization of learning and highlights the need for student-adult partnerships, facing adultism, and fostering personal engagement in schools to enable students to become empowered learners and community members. The Big Dream Adam’s big dream is a future where education is grounded in the meaningful involvement of students, defining it as a framework to implement justice in a fair and transformative way for the benefit of all. This vision includes students being active participants in decision-making processes, such as curriculum development and budgeting, transforming their roles from passive learners to engaged leaders who shape their educational experiences. Mindset Shifts Required To achieve meaningful student involvement, Adam identifies three key mindset shifts needed. First, the focus must move beyond mere student voice to fostering equitable student-adult partnerships. Next, it involves recognizing and addressing adultism, which is the bias towards adults that limits student empowerment. Finally, Adam stresses that educators should embrace personal engagement, encouraging students to consciously choose to engage with their education in ways that matter to them. Action Steps For educators who want to be guided by student voice, Adam recommends the following action steps that address the mindset shifts he’s identified as necessary: Step 1: Foster Student-Adult Partnerships. Encourage collaboration between students and adults where power and abilities are shared equitably. To make this possible, educators need to use the structures available to them. Adam explains the “three-legged stool” that allows students to be meaningfully involved:
These three domains allow educators to begin thinking about where they need to prioritize student voice and create those adult-student partnerships. Step 2: Recognize and Face Adultism. Educators must acknowledge the impact of adultism in educational settings and work towards dismantling it. While adultism—the bias towards adults—is appropriate in some scenarios, like an emergency situation, there are other times where students are capable of making decisions, but they’re simply not brought in by adults; they’re not given a voice. Recognizing adultism lets you then fight against it and empower students in the decision making process. Step 3: Promote Personal Engagement. Create learning environments where students are motivated to engage personally, driven by genuine interest and personal relevance. For a long time, student engagement is almost a proxy for compliance—when the student does what an educator wants, they’re engaged. But personal engagement moves beyond this and allows the student to be part of it again and again. Challenges? One of the significant challenges in implementing meaningful student involvement is overcoming the competitive mindset prevalent in educational systems. Competition, rather than collaboration, often dominates the priorities of educational institutions, and can hinder progress towards democratizing learning environments. One Step to Get Started The journey toward meaningful student involvement begins with educating yourself. Adam acknowledges that this is not innate or natural—we all have to learn about this, whether you’re a teacher, leader, parent, or student. The first step is to learn about meaningful student involvement, which can then lead to practical applications, gradually integrating the concepts into everyday educational practices for meaningful change. Stay Connected You can learn more about Adam Fletcher’s work on his website, which has a huge number of free resources for educators to check out. You can also connect with him on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing a framework for meaningful student involvement with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 258 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Leah Ellis, welcome to the time for Teachership podcast. Leah Ellis: Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Lindsay Lyons: Thanks for being here. I am just really excited. We are airing this episode as part of a series on youth voice and leadership, and so this fits perfectly in there. Um, one of the questions I've been playing with to start is just kind of like what people want, uh, what you want people to keep in mind as we jump into our conversation. And so I'll just share like what's on my mind is that you reached out and were like, Hey, we do this cool thing where. Like kids actually start real businesses and take real action in the community. And I was hooked. So te tell us more. What else should we keep in mind? Leah Ellis: Okay. So I'll tell you my biggest, most scandalous controversial topic, subject, one sentence ever. Uh, children are not the future. So the thing I wa I, yeah, I know it, it gets every teacher right in the heart. 'cause we're like, wait a second, they're our babies. Yes, yes they are. They're our babies. But they're not the future because they are students of leadership right now and they're amazing human beings right now. And the more we say children are the future, the more we defer into not allowing them to leave now. And the more we program them. To believe that they can't yet, but then we never tell them when yet is. Lindsay Lyons: Love that. I love that so much. As a secondary school teacher, I always was frustrated when we were like, what do you want to be? It's like, what are you, what can you do today? Like. Leah Ellis: Yeah, exactly. That's, um, I have this challenge and I tell people all the time, 'cause you know, I do the podcasts and people are like, what is the one thing you wanna leave us with? And I'm like, okay, well the one thing I wanna leave you with is go find a child and ask them what thing happens in their daily life that they're annoyed with and how they would fix it. Because they probably have already thought about it and they just didn't feel comfortable telling you. So when you open the door, they will tell you what's wrong and how to fix it. Lindsay Lyons: I love it. We got it right at the start of the episode, so great ideas Leah Ellis: jump in. Lindsay Lyons: So one of the things that I like to ask everyone on the show is kind of stepping way back in kind of the big dream that you hold for education, learning, youth voice. Feel free to answer in whatever way. Um, but really inspired by Dr. Patina love talking about freedom dreaming, and she says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So what is with that in mind, what is that big dream you hold? Leah Ellis: Okay. So again, I don't believe children are the future because I think they're leaders now, but they are also the leaders of the future. And so for me, I think my big audacious, hairy dream is that we have a generation of children who become adults, secure in themselves, their ability to lead their communities and their ability to solve problems throughout society. So we have now. A generation of mostly apathetic, frustrated, angry people who feel like we have no power, and if we can teach all these kids what their power is when they're young, then when they reach adulthood, they are advocates for other people. They're advocates for their communities. They're advocates for solving problems, and they don't feel like they need to stay quiet. Lindsay Lyons: Love that. And I think one of the mindset shifts you've been consistently talking about since we we started recording is that idea that it's like not the future, it's now. So I think that's a big one that people should take away from this episode. Are there any other mindset shifts around like, you know, I think about youth adult partnership a lot and youth voice a lot. And there is something that has to happen in the brain of an adult, I think, to unlearn some things before we can truly get into this. So what would you, what advice would you give us? Leah Ellis: So I'm actually, instead of just giving you blatant advice, um, I'm a teacher, which means I teach through story. So I'm going to tell you the story and then let you kind of pick through some of the things that I had to unlearn, and then we can discuss what that felt like and what it was like. So I had an in-home daycare and I taught engineering curriculum to 3-year-old girls. It was fabulous. But then we discovered. A in a house that I had owned for 18 months, we discovered 10 years of black mold in the walls. So we had to move into a hotel, we had to tear apart. Most of the ground floor of our house was awful and that meant I had to shut down my daycare. 'cause you can't run an in daycare, um, in a hotel. That's just not feasible. And when we went back, we were set to reopen our daycare on March 17th, 2020. Which unfortunately was the exact day that our county issued the stay at home order for COVID, and we did not get to reopen, and my husband and I decided to pivot and launch a financial coaching company, but he was deployed. So I was home alone with an 18 month old and a 4-year-old, and that meant I had to figure out how to do my training while also watching my kids. So I put a lot of business training videos on our living room tv. I watched them while the kids played and I'd watched them while I was washing dishes and whatever I was doing, they were just the background noise of our house at that time. So my 4-year-old looked at me and said, I wanna start a business too. And of course, being a mother, I said, no way. You're four. You can't start a business. And being a 4-year-old child, the number one word in her vocabulary at the time was why. I didn't like have a good answer. Like I tried to come up with a logical, justifiable reason for why she couldn't start a business, but there wasn't one outside of year four, and nobody's done it before, but especially at that time, we were all doing things that nobody had ever done before. So what was one more new thing? So I made her tell me what she was gonna sell. We used a Facebook group to vote on her name. She did her launch and she created her business in May of 2020 at four and a half years old. And that then became her doing an art show as a featured artist, her doing her first children's business fair as a child entrepreneur at six years old, and me realizing. Like the only thing that was holding our children back is the adults. And then when we started the Society of Child Entrepreneurs and seeing that, it wasn't just in my household, but it is a societal thing where we expect 18 year olds to act like adults, but we expect 17 year olds to behave like children. And if we really want our 18 year olds to act like adults, we have to start letting our seven and eight year olds know what an adult does. Lindsay Lyons: Wow. Love that. So sorry, continue if Leah Ellis: you want. No, no. So it was, it's a long story, but that's kind of where we came from was what do we want the future to look like and how early do we need to start to get it there? And the answer is, elementary school, we need to start an elementary school teaching them these problem solving these life skills so that they're second nature when they reach 25 years old. Lindsay Lyons: For sure. And I love, I mean, as the parent of an almost 4-year-old, I'm like loving this story of like, yeah, why, why not? Like why? Tell me why. Love it. Um, also just love your. Adaptability in that moment. Right. I think a lot of adults, sometimes it's like we are kind of hit with this like moment of wait. Yeah, why not? Or wait, wow, this is possible. And you went there. And I think that's such an inspiration to people who also are going to confront those moments where it's like, oh, I can shift and, and then we all shift together. Leah Ellis: Right? Well, and it's so easy to just be like, because I said so, but then we're like, well, but. I mean, nothing in that, nothing at life was normal at that point. So it was, well, what's one more abnormal thing to throw into the ring? And now she's the junior executive director of our organization at 10 years old. Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. That is so awesome. I am thoughtful of a couple things here. Two groups of audiences and, and sometimes over overlapping. So we have mostly our audience of people who are in education, right? They have a formal role in education, their teachers, um, maybe leaders. Instructional coaches, but we also have people who, and maybe are also in education, but are family members and thinking about like youth voice at home. And so I'm, I'm seeing and, and, and noticing in your story that really, this can be both, right? This can be what we do at home and it's also likely in partnership with what we're doing at school. So any advice you have for either or both. Kind of hats the family hat or the teacher educator hat. Leah Ellis: So both one. Um, for teachers and educators, I've made this super easy for you. At the Society of Child Entrepreneurs, we've actually developed a 36 weeks school curriculum that's two hours a week, so you can literally buy our curriculum and stick it in an afterschool program and teach this in your building. Plug and play. The worksheets are already there and everything, so you just make your copies and read from the lesson plans, so it makes life super easy for you. But for families, because we all know the best way for anything to stick is to do it at home and in school we created an organization called the Sochi Circle, and it's an online platform. And every week I post a family challenge and it's like, here's a short story. Here's why it matters. Here's the challenge for your family to stabilize financial literacy, leadership, or problem solving for your kiddo at home. And when you can take that program at school and these challenges at home, then it becomes a part of the culture and not just like this one hobby. Lindsay Lyons: That's super cool. I think that's exactly right because I, I don't think that anything that is true student voice or youth voice can just be this one siloed activity. It has to be part of the culture and the way we do things and the way we treat kids and interact with them. Right. So I love that. Um, are there moments or kind of wins or projects or businesses started that you want to highlight? And I mean, specifically I just looked on your website. Today and I was like, oh, there's this update since I've been on there and it's talking about like a 10-year-old trying to get a crosswalk in their community, like standing in front, right? Like so there's just. So many wins, I'm sure. Do you wanna share some with us? Leah Ellis: So the 10-year-old on the blog post, that's my oldest daughter. Uh, so she's the one who started all of this and yeah, she walked into my office and she was like, we need a crosswalk. I'm going to city council. And she stood on a chair, told the mayor, paint a si, a crosswalk right here. Then sent an email to the city administrators that was like, okay, now that we've discussed it, what are your next steps and what do I need to do to make sure it continues on? So she has a meeting on Monday with the Main Street Planning Committee to work on getting her crosswalk put in. She is amazing, and I could tell like 500 stories just about melody because she inspires me daily, but she's not the only kid in the Society of Child entrepreneurs and she's not the only one doing amazing things. So we have another kiddo. You mentioned that you're in secondary education, so you know very well that reading for pleasure drops off statistically at a massive level after fourth grade. So by the time they get to middle and high school, nobody's reading for fun anymore, and the ones who are labeled nerds and all that stuff. I have a, one of our members, he's a 14-year-old super avid reader. He loves books. He loves talking about books, but none of his friends were talking to him about books anymore. Once they got to middle school, they had all stopped reading and he hated it. So he created a company called Troy's Top 10. And you tell him one book you enjoyed, just tell me one book that you liked and he will find he has created bookmarks and on the back of each bookmark is the genre and 10 recommendations for that genre. So if you tell him I loved Divergent, then he's like, oh, cool. Here's my top 10 dystopian future novels. These are what you should read next. And then he's encouraging kids his age to read again because he's telling them exactly what to read and exactly what they'll like. But then he takes it a step further because he puts that list on a bookmark so you don't lose it. And then he goes to one of our local book Bulk Sales Places and he buys dozens of books at a time for a dollar a piece. And then he bundles them the books with his bookmark. So it's also super sustainable 'cause he is taking all of these books that would've ended up in the trash. And he's reselling them with recommendations on what else to read. At 14. This is the business he's running. Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. Leah Ellis: Oh, he's fabulous. Lindsay Lyons: I am like, I, I am a book nerd. Like, let's talk Troy, gimme your top 10, Leah Ellis: right? I, I have some of his bookmarks. They're so cute. Um, and then we have another kiddo. Um, she's one of my, it's, this is one of my favorite stories to tell right now. So we're piloting our full 36 week curriculum and week one she sits down and she's like, I am a child. I cannot be an entrepreneur. My mom forced me into this class and it's done. And I was like, you are gonna be my star student. And she was like, no. And she was like, I wanna be a paramedic. There's nothing that a paramedic can do, starting at 12. And I'm like, well, you know, I teach first Aid to Girl Scout daisies and we teach them check call care, and like, they can't do much with care, but they could do like a, an ice pack or a bandaid while they were waiting for an adult. So. Couldn't you make like a a child or teenager friendly first aid kit that doesn't have all the extra stuff that kids don't need? And she was like, yes, but first aid kits are always clear. And I'm an adolescent girl and I really hate clear bags because I need privacy for my stuff. And I was like, that's completely valid. And so I thought that her business was going to be creating these really cool first aid kits. And then she comes to me in week three and she's like, I have a different idea. And I'm like, okay, what is it? And she was like, I've been thinking about phone cases and how sometimes I wish I could do more with my phone case, but I can't. So I was thinking about like if we made something that would slip on and off of your phone case to change what its function is. And so I showed her pair glasses and how pair glasses work where you have a frame and then you can pop different designs on top of that, like a cap to personalize your glasses for your day or your outfit. And I was like, so do you mean like pair glasses for a phone? And she was like, I've never heard of pair glasses, but yes. This is exactly what I was thinking because I could have it where like it's a wallet for when I wanna go out and I don't wanna carry a whole purse. Or I could have it where it's a dry erase board for me to doodle with my friends when we're bored. I could dress it in a tutu, so it's just cute when I'm stuffing it in my bag. And I was like, yeah, you can do all of those things. And so now she's going to the dollar store and buying super cheap phone cases just to practice cutting them apart and building prototypes. When she started literally a month ago with child entrepreneurship is stupid. Lindsay Lyons: That is incredible. And I'm, so, I'm thinking, okay, there's two trains of thought I have I'm having right now. One is like, what is that in the moment response to like as an adult, you notice this kid who you are like, I'm eager to cultivate the leadership of this child. I see a spark of an idea here, right? Like. What is that move that you make with that kid to kind of foster that trajectory? And then I also am interested, so you can take either one at a time, uh, is thinking about like the curriculum that you built, so like in a class setting or an after school setting with multiple kids. Like what is, what are the things that, what are the activities that you're doing in terms of maybe skill building? Maybe it's like ideation, like what's the kind of framework there? So any or both. Leah Ellis: So I'll do both first. How do, when you see the kid who, like, I, I know this is gonna get to you, but you've gotta get over your own preconceived notions first. Um, ask a question and then when they answer, ask another question and get really curious. Like, get 4-year-old level curious. Ask them questions until they're annoyed, because they will start realizing that you might be the first adult. Waiting for their opinion instead of telling them what to think. Um, because even when I was like, well, here's an idea, how would that work? And then she was like, well, I have a better idea. And then it's, okay. Well, but the how is that work? How do you make it, how do you create it? I know that. So I'm one of her elective classes. I know that her following elective is a sewing class. I'm like, okay, well with these two projects, how would you make it work? And watching them. Build on their own ideas while you are simply questioning and encouraging and keeping your mind open and not like, like it's like improv. Always say Yes. Yes. And what else? Yes. And how, um, so that they can keep going. And then for the curriculum, we have it set up into five units. So the very first unit we start with what is an entrepreneur? And the kids start out by discussing like, what are the traits that an entrepreneur has to have and. Then they write a mantra for themselves. Um, and they have to write not who they are, but who they are becoming. Lindsay Lyons: So we make the, oh, I don't have one right here. I thought I might, Leah Ellis: we make them write like, I am becoming the kind of person who looks for solutions when I'm frustrated because nobody's gonna write down. I am a problem solver 100% of the time. And I want them to understand that. Like, it, it doesn't have to be black or white, like we're allowed to live in that gray area. And then after they've established what an entrepreneur is, we discuss how entrepreneurship works. Then we start market research, product development. We do mission and vision statements. We do brand voice and personality and core values, and then we talk about social entrepreneurship, and then we talk elevator pitches. Then at the end of the curriculum, at the end of 36 weeks, they actually do a children's business fair where they have their product in their booth and they sell to their community. Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. That's so, so cool. So I am now thinking about challenges that may arise either for the students or for the adults who are involved in something like this. Anything that you can think of that's like a big challenge in this work and how you have. Yourself or seeing others kind of get through that challenge. Leah Ellis: So for the adults, the biggest challenge is that your job with this is to be a guide and a sounding board. You are not in this moment, the teacher or the manager. You can't tell them how it works. You have to just guide them for finding their own solutions. And that can be really hard as a parent because you want to do, you want your kid to just get it right. And it can be really hard as a teacher because you're like, let me spell it out for you. And sometimes you have to step back and you have to let them fail. You have to let them build the resilience, build the confidence of recovering from that failure, because I will tell you, I'll shout it from the rooftops, the best way to build confidence is to recover from failure. And that means letting them fail. Even though as a teacher and as a parent, that's the last thing we want to do is let them fail. And then for kids, it's kind of twofold. Um, the biggest like. Just hang up that gets kids stuck is lack of resources. I mean, when we work with underserved communities, we have to have grants that will give 'em startups costs so that the kids have materials to start their businesses. Because simply having the resources is something that a lot of us take for granted. And so making sure that we have systems in place so that every child has access to the resources, whether that means a 3D printer in a library or a cricket for school-wide use. Um, creating, you know, this is our community craft space and anybody can take anything out of the space and making sure that they have those resources. And then the second one is the mind shift change for the kids of the fact that they might be in a place where they are developing skills their parents haven't developed yet. Having to live with that middle of knowing that their parents could do it, but their parents don't know how, and trying not to let it pull them back down and trying to maintain that open-mindedness while they're developing themselves and teaching upward mobility and societal pressure and all of that stuff, and telling them like, it's okay for you to have a better future for your parents and it's okay to drag them along. Lindsay Lyons: I think about so much of that, like our kids do things better than us, as as adults. Right, Leah Ellis: right. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah. I love that. Right. You can bring them along with you. Um, okay, great. Wow. There's just so much here. I love that we've kind of gone from like. Well, a kind of back and forth between both big picture, what is possible, like painting a picture for us, like what is possible. Because I think that's sometimes a big hurdle to overcome for adults is like what even is possible, right? But then you also gave us the concrete, like, what do you do one-on-one with a kid? How can you coach Traject trajectory? That's not a word. Uh, like what's the trajectory? Of kind of that curriculum. And so I'd love to kind of move to close here with a few closing questions. One being, if there's one thing that folks can leave the episode and do immediately, what do you suggest that is? Leah Ellis: Always, always, every single time ask questions. Like I want every adult to get in touch with their inner 4-year-old and ask questions and allow the child in your life to be the subject matter expert in their life. Pretend that they know more about themselves than you do, because it's actually the truth and it's just hard for us as adults to come to terms with Lindsay Lyons: Love that. Great advice. And then this is for fun, could be related to our topic of conversation today. Could be something totally random, but what is something that you personally have been learning about lately? Leah Ellis: Oh gosh. So I am in an all women's networking group for, um, it's mostly neurodivergent business owner women. So it's a really unique kind of place to hang out. And our conversation this week was on. Um, but becoming like, who are you becoming and the stories that you tell yourself in every situation, and how those stories can shape who you are. And one piece of advice that they gave that I had never heard before, which was brilliant, is whenever you have a situation in which your initial gut reaction is some kind of like constricting response, like, oh. They didn't answer my email because they hate me. Um, then every time you come into that like gut wrenching response, then force yourself in the moments that matter to come up with two alternative stories, one that's positive and one that's neutral. So then you might also say like, they didn't answer my email because their computer. Broke, and that's very neutral. Like that's just nothing against, or for me, their computer broke. And then the third one might be like they didn't answer my email because they're waiting to reply until after they secure a $500,000 grant for me. And so then you're like, okay, so any of these stories are equally likely to be true, so why should I not believe. The positive one, instead of believing all the time, the self-deprecating versions of all of those stories. Also, if you have a $500,000 grant for me, email me. I will take it. Lindsay Lyons: That is incredible. I love that. And so immediately actionable. So I'm gonna start using that. Thank you. Uh, Leah Ellis: yeah. I loved it when she taught it, and it's one of those things that we can teach the kids. Lindsay Lyons: Uh, oh my God. Great points. And the last question is just people are gonna wanna connect with you and figure out like what you're all about and and your program. So how do people do that? Leah Ellis: So, um, you can go to SO cce i ct.org. That'll take you to our website. It has all the things you can see the blog that Lizzie was talking about with my daughter standing on a chair, um, on Facebook and on Instagram. We're just. Society of child entrepreneurs. And then if you really want to get involved in getting those weekly challenges in the lesson plans that I post online, it's school.com/s O-C-E-C-I-R-C-L-E, so it's, it's S-K-O-O-L school.com/sochi circle, and that'll give you the information and that one, one of the levels to join is free, so you don't have to pay to be a member of that. Lindsay Lyons: Awesome, and we can link, if anyone's driving or running or anything, we'll link those in the the show notes so that you don't have to capture that on audio. So thank you so much, Lee. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on. Thanks for sharing all your wisdom. Leah Ellis: Thank you so much for having me. 5/11/2026 257. Cultivating Youth Agency & Entrepreneurship Using "Yes, And" with Leah EllisRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, we talk with Leah Ellis, the founder of The Society of Child Entrepreneurs. Her non-profit fosters an entrepreneurial spirit, leadership, and financial literacy in young people through hands-on experience.
Leah’s “controversial opinion” is that children are not the future — they are leaders in their own right today. In the episode, she highlights successful youth-led initiatives, such as a child's campaign to introduce a crosswalk to her community and another kid's efforts to inspire middle school classmates to enjoy reading again. Through real stories, Leah illustrates the impact of seeing children as capable contributors and leaders. The Big Dream Leah's big dream is a future where children grow into adults as confident adults who are capable and confident of who they are, their ability to lead, and their ability to solve societal problems. By fostering leadership skills in youth now, she believes we can overcome apathy and frustration that currently plague many adults. Mindset Shifts Required The key mindset shift for adults is to transition from seeing kids as future leaders to recognizing their potential as current leaders. Rather than dictating to children, adults should engage in dialogues, ask probing questions, and genuinely listen to young voices. This unlearning process involves understanding that enabling kids to take charge now equips them to handle responsibility and be proactive. Action Steps For adults and educators who want to start partnering with children as leaders can take the following action steps. Step 1: Start with your mindset — how do you think about young people and what they’re capable of? What beliefs do you need to challenge in yourself? One way to start seeing how brilliant kids are is to simply ask one to express issues they're annoyed with and what their solution is. They’ve likely already thought of it, but haven’t had the opportunity to share. Step 2: Embrace school-home partnerships. The best way to make anything stick is to reinforce it in schools and in the home. Leah recommends the SoCE Circle, an online platform that has weekly challenges and stories that help enforce leadership and problem solving at home. Step 3: On the school side, educators can implement programs like the Society of Child Entrepreneurs' curriculum to embed entrepreneurial thinking within school systems. Step 4: Listen to and share stories of what children are doing. This is important because it shifts our mindsets as adults to see what children are really capable of. In the episode, Leah shares stories of children working with the city to get a crosswalk put in, creating a company that recommends book choices, and many other creative business ideas and initiatives. Challenges? The biggest challenge here is for adults to shift their mindsets around what children are capable of right now, not just in the future. For adults, it’s challenging to be a guide and a sounding board only, not a teacher or manager when students are creating their own solutions. On the other side, children have challenges accessing resources can be a significant challenge, especially in underserved communities. Additionally, they often face the challenge of growing in environments where they may develop skills surpassing those of their parents. One Step to Get Started The first actionable step is for adults to reconnect with their inner child-like curiosity by continuously asking questions. Engage children in conversations where they are recognized as experts in their own lives, fostering a supportive environment for their ideas to flourish. Stay Connected You can find out more about Leah’s work on her website, The Society for Child Entrepreneurs, and their Instagram. Free and paid resources are also available through the SoCE Circle. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 257 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Leah Ellis, welcome to the time for Teachership podcast. Leah Ellis: Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Lindsay Lyons: Thanks for being here. I am just really excited. We are airing this episode as part of a series on youth voice and leadership, and so this fits perfectly in there. Um, one of the questions I've been playing with to start is just kind of like what people want, uh, what you want people to keep in mind as we jump into our conversation. And so I'll just share like what's on my mind is that you reached out and were like, Hey, we do this cool thing where. Like kids actually start real businesses and take real action in the community. And I was hooked. So te tell us more. What else should we keep in mind? Leah Ellis: Okay. So I'll tell you my biggest, most scandalous controversial topic, subject, one sentence ever. Uh, children are not the future. So the thing I wa I, yeah, I know it, it gets every teacher right in the heart. 'cause we're like, wait a second, they're our babies. Yes, yes they are. They're our babies. But they're not the future because they are students of leadership right now and they're amazing human beings right now. And the more we say children are the future, the more we defer into not allowing them to leave now. And the more we program them. To believe that they can't yet, but then we never tell them when yet is. Lindsay Lyons: Love that. I love that so much. As a secondary school teacher, I always was frustrated when we were like, what do you want to be? It's like, what are you, what can you do today? Like. Leah Ellis: Yeah, exactly. That's, um, I have this challenge and I tell people all the time, 'cause you know, I do the podcasts and people are like, what is the one thing you wanna leave us with? And I'm like, okay, well the one thing I wanna leave you with is go find a child and ask them what thing happens in their daily life that they're annoyed with and how they would fix it. Because they probably have already thought about it and they just didn't feel comfortable telling you. So when you open the door, they will tell you what's wrong and how to fix it. Lindsay Lyons: I love it. We got it right at the start of the episode, so great ideas Leah Ellis: jump in. Lindsay Lyons: So one of the things that I like to ask everyone on the show is kind of stepping way back in kind of the big dream that you hold for education, learning, youth voice. Feel free to answer in whatever way. Um, but really inspired by Dr. Patina love talking about freedom dreaming, and she says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So what is with that in mind, what is that big dream you hold? Leah Ellis: Okay. So again, I don't believe children are the future because I think they're leaders now, but they are also the leaders of the future. And so for me, I think my big audacious, hairy dream is that we have a generation of children who become adults, secure in themselves, their ability to lead their communities and their ability to solve problems throughout society. So we have now. A generation of mostly apathetic, frustrated, angry people who feel like we have no power, and if we can teach all these kids what their power is when they're young, then when they reach adulthood, they are advocates for other people. They're advocates for their communities. They're advocates for solving problems, and they don't feel like they need to stay quiet. Lindsay Lyons: Love that. And I think one of the mindset shifts you've been consistently talking about since we we started recording is that idea that it's like not the future, it's now. So I think that's a big one that people should take away from this episode. Are there any other mindset shifts around like, you know, I think about youth adult partnership a lot and youth voice a lot. And there is something that has to happen in the brain of an adult, I think, to unlearn some things before we can truly get into this. So what would you, what advice would you give us? Leah Ellis: So I'm actually, instead of just giving you blatant advice, um, I'm a teacher, which means I teach through story. So I'm going to tell you the story and then let you kind of pick through some of the things that I had to unlearn, and then we can discuss what that felt like and what it was like. So I had an in-home daycare and I taught engineering curriculum to 3-year-old girls. It was fabulous. But then we discovered. A in a house that I had owned for 18 months, we discovered 10 years of black mold in the walls. So we had to move into a hotel, we had to tear apart. Most of the ground floor of our house was awful and that meant I had to shut down my daycare. 'cause you can't run an in daycare, um, in a hotel. That's just not feasible. And when we went back, we were set to reopen our daycare on March 17th, 2020. Which unfortunately was the exact day that our county issued the stay at home order for COVID, and we did not get to reopen, and my husband and I decided to pivot and launch a financial coaching company, but he was deployed. So I was home alone with an 18 month old and a 4-year-old, and that meant I had to figure out how to do my training while also watching my kids. So I put a lot of business training videos on our living room tv. I watched them while the kids played and I'd watched them while I was washing dishes and whatever I was doing, they were just the background noise of our house at that time. So my 4-year-old looked at me and said, I wanna start a business too. And of course, being a mother, I said, no way. You're four. You can't start a business. And being a 4-year-old child, the number one word in her vocabulary at the time was why. I didn't like have a good answer. Like I tried to come up with a logical, justifiable reason for why she couldn't start a business, but there wasn't one outside of year four, and nobody's done it before, but especially at that time, we were all doing things that nobody had ever done before. So what was one more new thing? So I made her tell me what she was gonna sell. We used a Facebook group to vote on her name. She did her launch and she created her business in May of 2020 at four and a half years old. And that then became her doing an art show as a featured artist, her doing her first children's business fair as a child entrepreneur at six years old, and me realizing. Like the only thing that was holding our children back is the adults. And then when we started the Society of Child Entrepreneurs and seeing that, it wasn't just in my household, but it is a societal thing where we expect 18 year olds to act like adults, but we expect 17 year olds to behave like children. And if we really want our 18 year olds to act like adults, we have to start letting our seven and eight year olds know what an adult does. Lindsay Lyons: Wow. Love that. So sorry, continue if Leah Ellis: you want. No, no. So it was, it's a long story, but that's kind of where we came from was what do we want the future to look like and how early do we need to start to get it there? And the answer is, elementary school, we need to start an elementary school teaching them these problem solving these life skills so that they're second nature when they reach 25 years old. Lindsay Lyons: For sure. And I love, I mean, as the parent of an almost 4-year-old, I'm like loving this story of like, yeah, why, why not? Like why? Tell me why. Love it. Um, also just love your. Adaptability in that moment. Right. I think a lot of adults, sometimes it's like we are kind of hit with this like moment of wait. Yeah, why not? Or wait, wow, this is possible. And you went there. And I think that's such an inspiration to people who also are going to confront those moments where it's like, oh, I can shift and, and then we all shift together. Leah Ellis: Right? Well, and it's so easy to just be like, because I said so, but then we're like, well, but. I mean, nothing in that, nothing at life was normal at that point. So it was, well, what's one more abnormal thing to throw into the ring? And now she's the junior executive director of our organization at 10 years old. Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. That is so awesome. I am thoughtful of a couple things here. Two groups of audiences and, and sometimes over overlapping. So we have mostly our audience of people who are in education, right? They have a formal role in education, their teachers, um, maybe leaders. Instructional coaches, but we also have people who, and maybe are also in education, but are family members and thinking about like youth voice at home. And so I'm, I'm seeing and, and, and noticing in your story that really, this can be both, right? This can be what we do at home and it's also likely in partnership with what we're doing at school. So any advice you have for either or both. Kind of hats the family hat or the teacher educator hat. Leah Ellis: So both one. Um, for teachers and educators, I've made this super easy for you. At the Society of Child Entrepreneurs, we've actually developed a 36 weeks school curriculum that's two hours a week, so you can literally buy our curriculum and stick it in an afterschool program and teach this in your building. Plug and play. The worksheets are already there and everything, so you just make your copies and read from the lesson plans, so it makes life super easy for you. But for families, because we all know the best way for anything to stick is to do it at home and in school we created an organization called the Sochi Circle, and it's an online platform. And every week I post a family challenge and it's like, here's a short story. Here's why it matters. Here's the challenge for your family to stabilize financial literacy, leadership, or problem solving for your kiddo at home. And when you can take that program at school and these challenges at home, then it becomes a part of the culture and not just like this one hobby. Lindsay Lyons: That's super cool. I think that's exactly right because I, I don't think that anything that is true student voice or youth voice can just be this one siloed activity. It has to be part of the culture and the way we do things and the way we treat kids and interact with them. Right. So I love that. Um, are there moments or kind of wins or projects or businesses started that you want to highlight? And I mean, specifically I just looked on your website. Today and I was like, oh, there's this update since I've been on there and it's talking about like a 10-year-old trying to get a crosswalk in their community, like standing in front, right? Like so there's just. So many wins, I'm sure. Do you wanna share some with us? Leah Ellis: So the 10-year-old on the blog post, that's my oldest daughter. Uh, so she's the one who started all of this and yeah, she walked into my office and she was like, we need a crosswalk. I'm going to city council. And she stood on a chair, told the mayor, paint a si, a crosswalk right here. Then sent an email to the city administrators that was like, okay, now that we've discussed it, what are your next steps and what do I need to do to make sure it continues on? So she has a meeting on Monday with the Main Street Planning Committee to work on getting her crosswalk put in. She is amazing, and I could tell like 500 stories just about melody because she inspires me daily, but she's not the only kid in the Society of Child entrepreneurs and she's not the only one doing amazing things. So we have another kiddo. You mentioned that you're in secondary education, so you know very well that reading for pleasure drops off statistically at a massive level after fourth grade. So by the time they get to middle and high school, nobody's reading for fun anymore, and the ones who are labeled nerds and all that stuff. I have a, one of our members, he's a 14-year-old super avid reader. He loves books. He loves talking about books, but none of his friends were talking to him about books anymore. Once they got to middle school, they had all stopped reading and he hated it. So he created a company called Troy's Top 10. And you tell him one book you enjoyed, just tell me one book that you liked and he will find he has created bookmarks and on the back of each bookmark is the genre and 10 recommendations for that genre. So if you tell him I loved Divergent, then he's like, oh, cool. Here's my top 10 dystopian future novels. These are what you should read next. And then he's encouraging kids his age to read again because he's telling them exactly what to read and exactly what they'll like. But then he takes it a step further because he puts that list on a bookmark so you don't lose it. And then he goes to one of our local book Bulk Sales Places and he buys dozens of books at a time for a dollar a piece. And then he bundles them the books with his bookmark. So it's also super sustainable 'cause he is taking all of these books that would've ended up in the trash. And he's reselling them with recommendations on what else to read. At 14. This is the business he's running. Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. Leah Ellis: Oh, he's fabulous. Lindsay Lyons: I am like, I, I am a book nerd. Like, let's talk Troy, gimme your top 10, Leah Ellis: right? I, I have some of his bookmarks. They're so cute. Um, and then we have another kiddo. Um, she's one of my, it's, this is one of my favorite stories to tell right now. So we're piloting our full 36 week curriculum and week one she sits down and she's like, I am a child. I cannot be an entrepreneur. My mom forced me into this class and it's done. And I was like, you are gonna be my star student. And she was like, no. And she was like, I wanna be a paramedic. There's nothing that a paramedic can do, starting at 12. And I'm like, well, you know, I teach first Aid to Girl Scout daisies and we teach them check call care, and like, they can't do much with care, but they could do like a, an ice pack or a bandaid while they were waiting for an adult. So. Couldn't you make like a a child or teenager friendly first aid kit that doesn't have all the extra stuff that kids don't need? And she was like, yes, but first aid kits are always clear. And I'm an adolescent girl and I really hate clear bags because I need privacy for my stuff. And I was like, that's completely valid. And so I thought that her business was going to be creating these really cool first aid kits. And then she comes to me in week three and she's like, I have a different idea. And I'm like, okay, what is it? And she was like, I've been thinking about phone cases and how sometimes I wish I could do more with my phone case, but I can't. So I was thinking about like if we made something that would slip on and off of your phone case to change what its function is. And so I showed her pair glasses and how pair glasses work where you have a frame and then you can pop different designs on top of that, like a cap to personalize your glasses for your day or your outfit. And I was like, so do you mean like pair glasses for a phone? And she was like, I've never heard of pair glasses, but yes. This is exactly what I was thinking because I could have it where like it's a wallet for when I wanna go out and I don't wanna carry a whole purse. Or I could have it where it's a dry erase board for me to doodle with my friends when we're bored. I could dress it in a tutu, so it's just cute when I'm stuffing it in my bag. And I was like, yeah, you can do all of those things. And so now she's going to the dollar store and buying super cheap phone cases just to practice cutting them apart and building prototypes. When she started literally a month ago with child entrepreneurship is stupid. Lindsay Lyons: That is incredible. And I'm, so, I'm thinking, okay, there's two trains of thought I have I'm having right now. One is like, what is that in the moment response to like as an adult, you notice this kid who you are like, I'm eager to cultivate the leadership of this child. I see a spark of an idea here, right? Like. What is that move that you make with that kid to kind of foster that trajectory? And then I also am interested, so you can take either one at a time, uh, is thinking about like the curriculum that you built, so like in a class setting or an after school setting with multiple kids. Like what is, what are the things that, what are the activities that you're doing in terms of maybe skill building? Maybe it's like ideation, like what's the kind of framework there? So any or both. Leah Ellis: So I'll do both first. How do, when you see the kid who, like, I, I know this is gonna get to you, but you've gotta get over your own preconceived notions first. Um, ask a question and then when they answer, ask another question and get really curious. Like, get 4-year-old level curious. Ask them questions until they're annoyed, because they will start realizing that you might be the first adult. Waiting for their opinion instead of telling them what to think. Um, because even when I was like, well, here's an idea, how would that work? And then she was like, well, I have a better idea. And then it's, okay. Well, but the how is that work? How do you make it, how do you create it? I know that. So I'm one of her elective classes. I know that her following elective is a sewing class. I'm like, okay, well with these two projects, how would you make it work? And watching them. Build on their own ideas while you are simply questioning and encouraging and keeping your mind open and not like, like it's like improv. Always say Yes. Yes. And what else? Yes. And how, um, so that they can keep going. And then for the curriculum, we have it set up into five units. So the very first unit we start with what is an entrepreneur? And the kids start out by discussing like, what are the traits that an entrepreneur has to have and. Then they write a mantra for themselves. Um, and they have to write not who they are, but who they are becoming. Lindsay Lyons: So we make the, oh, I don't have one right here. I thought I might, Leah Ellis: we make them write like, I am becoming the kind of person who looks for solutions when I'm frustrated because nobody's gonna write down. I am a problem solver 100% of the time. And I want them to understand that. Like, it, it doesn't have to be black or white, like we're allowed to live in that gray area. And then after they've established what an entrepreneur is, we discuss how entrepreneurship works. Then we start market research, product development. We do mission and vision statements. We do brand voice and personality and core values, and then we talk about social entrepreneurship, and then we talk elevator pitches. Then at the end of the curriculum, at the end of 36 weeks, they actually do a children's business fair where they have their product in their booth and they sell to their community. Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. That's so, so cool. So I am now thinking about challenges that may arise either for the students or for the adults who are involved in something like this. Anything that you can think of that's like a big challenge in this work and how you have. Yourself or seeing others kind of get through that challenge. Leah Ellis: So for the adults, the biggest challenge is that your job with this is to be a guide and a sounding board. You are not in this moment, the teacher or the manager. You can't tell them how it works. You have to just guide them for finding their own solutions. And that can be really hard as a parent because you want to do, you want your kid to just get it right. And it can be really hard as a teacher because you're like, let me spell it out for you. And sometimes you have to step back and you have to let them fail. You have to let them build the resilience, build the confidence of recovering from that failure, because I will tell you, I'll shout it from the rooftops, the best way to build confidence is to recover from failure. And that means letting them fail. Even though as a teacher and as a parent, that's the last thing we want to do is let them fail. And then for kids, it's kind of twofold. Um, the biggest like. Just hang up that gets kids stuck is lack of resources. I mean, when we work with underserved communities, we have to have grants that will give 'em startups costs so that the kids have materials to start their businesses. Because simply having the resources is something that a lot of us take for granted. And so making sure that we have systems in place so that every child has access to the resources, whether that means a 3D printer in a library or a cricket for school-wide use. Um, creating, you know, this is our community craft space and anybody can take anything out of the space and making sure that they have those resources. And then the second one is the mind shift change for the kids of the fact that they might be in a place where they are developing skills their parents haven't developed yet. Having to live with that middle of knowing that their parents could do it, but their parents don't know how, and trying not to let it pull them back down and trying to maintain that open-mindedness while they're developing themselves and teaching upward mobility and societal pressure and all of that stuff, and telling them like, it's okay for you to have a better future for your parents and it's okay to drag them along. Lindsay Lyons: I think about so much of that, like our kids do things better than us, as as adults. Right, Leah Ellis: right. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah. I love that. Right. You can bring them along with you. Um, okay, great. Wow. There's just so much here. I love that we've kind of gone from like. Well, a kind of back and forth between both big picture, what is possible, like painting a picture for us, like what is possible. Because I think that's sometimes a big hurdle to overcome for adults is like what even is possible, right? But then you also gave us the concrete, like, what do you do one-on-one with a kid? How can you coach Traject trajectory? That's not a word. Uh, like what's the trajectory? Of kind of that curriculum. And so I'd love to kind of move to close here with a few closing questions. One being, if there's one thing that folks can leave the episode and do immediately, what do you suggest that is? Leah Ellis: Always, always, every single time ask questions. Like I want every adult to get in touch with their inner 4-year-old and ask questions and allow the child in your life to be the subject matter expert in their life. Pretend that they know more about themselves than you do, because it's actually the truth and it's just hard for us as adults to come to terms with Lindsay Lyons: Love that. Great advice. And then this is for fun, could be related to our topic of conversation today. Could be something totally random, but what is something that you personally have been learning about lately? Leah Ellis: Oh gosh. So I am in an all women's networking group for, um, it's mostly neurodivergent business owner women. So it's a really unique kind of place to hang out. And our conversation this week was on. Um, but becoming like, who are you becoming and the stories that you tell yourself in every situation, and how those stories can shape who you are. And one piece of advice that they gave that I had never heard before, which was brilliant, is whenever you have a situation in which your initial gut reaction is some kind of like constricting response, like, oh. They didn't answer my email because they hate me. Um, then every time you come into that like gut wrenching response, then force yourself in the moments that matter to come up with two alternative stories, one that's positive and one that's neutral. So then you might also say like, they didn't answer my email because their computer. Broke, and that's very neutral. Like that's just nothing against, or for me, their computer broke. And then the third one might be like they didn't answer my email because they're waiting to reply until after they secure a $500,000 grant for me. And so then you're like, okay, so any of these stories are equally likely to be true, so why should I not believe. The positive one, instead of believing all the time, the self-deprecating versions of all of those stories. Also, if you have a $500,000 grant for me, email me. I will take it. Lindsay Lyons: That is incredible. I love that. And so immediately actionable. So I'm gonna start using that. Thank you. Uh, Leah Ellis: yeah. I loved it when she taught it, and it's one of those things that we can teach the kids. Lindsay Lyons: Uh, oh my God. Great points. And the last question is just people are gonna wanna connect with you and figure out like what you're all about and and your program. So how do people do that? Leah Ellis: So, um, you can go to SO cce i ct.org. That'll take you to our website. It has all the things you can see the blog that Lizzie was talking about with my daughter standing on a chair, um, on Facebook and on Instagram. We're just. Society of child entrepreneurs. And then if you really want to get involved in getting those weekly challenges in the lesson plans that I post online, it's school.com/s O-C-E-C-I-R-C-L-E, so it's, it's S-K-O-O-L school.com/sochi circle, and that'll give you the information and that one, one of the levels to join is free, so you don't have to pay to be a member of that. Lindsay Lyons: Awesome, and we can link, if anyone's driving or running or anything, we'll link those in the the show notes so that you don't have to capture that on audio. So thank you so much, Lee. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on. Thanks for sharing all your wisdom. Leah Ellis: Thank you so much for having me. 
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In this episode, we dive into a discussion about youth-adult partnerships with guests Lindsey Halman, Jacoby Soter, and Ana Lindert-Boyes from UP for Learning, an organization committed to reimagining and transforming education through youth-adult partnerships.
Our conversation highlights the immense potential of redefining educational spaces through shared leadership between youth and adults. The guests discuss the importance of valuing youth voice, fostering systemic changes in education, and embracing non-traditional learning methods to create environments where all participants can contribute and thrive. The Big Dream The vision shared by the UP for Learning team is an education system where equity is not a mere privilege but a fundamental human right. At its core, the dream is to create environments within schools where both students and educators are seen as partners in learning. This involves breaking down existing structural barriers that have been deeply embedded over centuries and fostering practices where every participant's unique background is leveraged as a source of strength. Mindset Shifts Required A significant theme in the conversation is the necessity for adults to cultivate a mindset that views youth as capable partners rather than passive recipients of instruction. This includes recognizing students as valuable contributors and reframing their roles to empower them in decision-making processes. Ana, Jacoby, and Lindsey each emphasize the need to embrace discomfort and openness to new ideas, dismantling entrenched educational structures, and adopting project-based and personalized learning approaches. Action Steps For educators, leaders, and other adults seeking to strengthen youth-adult partnerships in a meaningful way, our guests suggest the following action steps: Step 1: Initiate personal reflection on how educators perceive students. Start by considering students as holistic individuals with valuable insights to offer beyond traditional academic metrics. The mindset shifts that see youth voices as necessary in this partnership is the key piece to any future work. For educators and adults, this is the key place to start. Step 2: Make use of practical tools like "64 Ways to Strengthen Youth Voice" to find small yet impactful actions educators and community members can adopt to infuse youth-adult partnership principles into everyday practice. Step 3: Implement tangible activities, such as classroom circle discussions, to foster reflection and empower students. By redesigning classroom settings to include collaborative discussions, educators can practice and facilitate the integration of youth voices. Challenges? The resistance to building youth-adult partnership often stems from long-standing educational models. Many educators and leaders may find it difficult to relinquish conventional roles and embrace new ways of interacting that center equity and shared leadership. This shift demands patience, persistence, and a willingness to be uncomfortable but are crucial for systemic transformation. Stay Connected You can learn more about the organization on the UP for Learning website or Instagram. Keep in touch with Jacoby via email at [email protected] or on LinkedIn; and Ana at [email protected] or on LinkedIn To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing The P.O.W.E.R. Framework and LETS ACT Framework with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 256 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
Ep 256 Ana, Jacoby, & LindseyLindsay Lyons: Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast, everyone. So I am here with Lindsay, Anna, and Jacoby. Thank you so much for being here today. I would love to just open it up to whoever wants to share first. Um. Just sharing kind of what is on your mind today or what people should kind of know about you. Um, the Up for Learning program, I have always been a fan of this program, kind of watching from afar on your email list and knowing you guys are doing really cool things in the student voice space. Um, and so would love to get your take on what folks should know and what you're passionate about. Lindsey: Would you all like me to start? Great. Well, thanks for having a flimsy. Um, my name is Lindsay Hallman and I'm the executive Director at Up For Learning, which actually stands for unleashing the Power of Partnership for Learning. But we like to say up for learning because it's much easier to remember and easier to say. And, um, uh, our work really is, uh, guided by our mission to reimagine and transform education. Partnerships. So our why is that youth and adults need to be together, working together to create systemic change, um, in authentic partnership sharing power, voice, and responsibility in order for us to create. Changes in a system, educational system, or any kind of in structural system that, um, has, uh, been really deeply rooted in, um, adult ways of being and mindset. So our work is about changing our. Mindsets our mental models and then working together as youth and adults through, uh, youth participatory action research to ensure that we're bringing in the voices of the community, um, to create changes that are gonna benefit all. I'll pass it on to my colleagues. Jacoby: Yeah. Um, thank you Lindsey. Um, and thank you Lindsay for having us. Um, my name is Jacobi. I am a youth program specialist with UP for Learning, and I'm currently a senior in high school. I think what's really important to understand and think about our work is that, you know, although our mission is to kind of go into schools and kind of help create youth adult teams in schools, we live that mission in our work every day. We have youth on our staff, we have adults on our staff. We kind of have like. People in between the youth and adults. We really kind of have everybody, um, of all ages really working together so that we're able to go into schools confidently and understand some of the challenges that they may be facing. 'cause we have probably figured out ways to overcome those challenges ourselves in our organization, which is something that a lot of organizations, um. Maybe cannot necessarily say as confidently as we can, that we really do live and breathe our mission every day, which is super exciting. Ana: Um, thanks Kuby. Um, thank you for having us, Lindsay. I'm really excited to be here. Uh, my name is Anna. I usually her pronouns. Um, I'm a program associate at for Learning. Um, and I'm also a senior at Boston University. Um, uh. Yeah, I think I'm gonna echo a lot of what Jacoby said. I think that's like one of like the biggest standouts, um, and aspects of OP is the fact that we live our mission. Um, so I actually started working with Up for Learning when I was, um, a freshman in high school. So it's been about seven years now. Um, and I remember, you know, in high school I would go to like conferences and like be able to like be involved in like the education world and sphere. Um, and you get like a lot of organizations and people talking about youth adult partnership. But then like you'd go to like a breakout and it was just like adults talking about youth partnership. Um, so I think like what's really, really impactful about up is that there are youth involved in like every aspect of the work. Um. I think just like knowing that and like, like literally like growing up with the organization in that way. Like so much of like the way that I think and, um, I'm majoring in education right now. Um, so much of that is just influenced by like up and ups values and, um, the way that I've been able to be involved. Lindsay Lyons: Wow. Thank you guys so much. It is such a cool, unique organization. I love that you've highlighted different aspects of it. I also think you've started to answer my next question, but I would love to see if you have anything else to add here. So Dr. Patina loves, she talks about this idea of freedom dreaming, using this phrase, dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so with that kind of in mind. Um, what do you as individuals kind of wish that school or maybe even learning in general? Um, could be or would be? Jacoby: I think we, one of our core values is that we view educational equity as not just a privilege, but as a human. Right. And so we see that when schools aren't working in partnership with young people operating in the width category of restorative practice and really engaging in equitable pro processes to engage young people who come from all sorts of backgrounds to really take charge in their learning. We see that as an injustice, um, in our dream, um, which we're able to actually really see tangible impacts happen in all of our teams, but we're able to. Create spaces where traditionally like young people who come from certain backgrounds may not be in your typical student council student. But what we're able to do is when we go into schools, like we require that our teams have people from all backgrounds. And so we're really empowering both, um, people who would be typically involved in a student leadership or a school transformation group. Um, but we also bring in people who you, we try and build a breakfast club, um, of folks to join our team. We, because we understand that in order to change a system, we have to look for the people who experience the system in both the ways that are really positive and some of the people who are, you know, targeted by the system. And so how can we make that system work with everybody and actually support them instead of bringing them back and preventing them. From learning and taking a really, um, and really taking charge of their own education. Speaker 4: Um, yeah, I think for me at just like a foundational level, um, just hoping to create like a future where. All people in a school system and community. So thinking about like youth and adults, students and teachers, um, community members and families really feel represented, um, and engaged and excited in their roles in their schools and communities. Um, so like a lot of what we do, like that Jacobi just mentioned really gets at that. Um, I think a large part of it is like, I'm like a really big advocate for like personalization, um, in education and like curriculum because I've had like really. Probably like life changing experiences with like opportunities to be able to like personalize my own learning, um, in a way that's really special to me. Um, making sure, you know, that there are like connections to real life, you know, like getting at students' actual interests, um, real life applications, um, and then like structured support from adults. Um, so yeah, I think like personalization and really like getting to know the student and then like making sure that everyone feels really valued in their spaces. Ana: I would add. So for me, um, my dream, um, I really had the opportunity to realize in many ways what that dream could be. I was a middle school educator, a public middle school educator for 15 years prior to coming to UP for learning. And during that time, um, I had. Uh, leadership that really had a strong vision for, um, how we could ensure that we were addressing every young person's, uh, unique learning styles and needs and, um, and really transform the system. So I was able to create, um, a school within a school, uh, called the Edge Academy for about a decade of my teaching career. And what I know from that is that you. You can, these dreams that we have about, um, centering equity and justice in our educational systems can be a reality. If we have, you know, both the leadership, so at that high level of like leadership and vision to do that. And then we have educators who ha feel empowered to be able to change a system that has operated in a particular way for 150 years plus. And um, and there's that support from the community. There's, um, buy-in from the community and that they feel they are a part of it. Um, and that. That communication is really, um, very strong between both the community and the school. Um, and so when I was teaching with the Edge Academy, um, I was deeply, uh, partnering with the youth that I worked with. It was a multi-age group of young people. We, um, centered, uh, education for sustainability. Um, in our work. So really centering like economic, environmental and, um, social justice and everything we did. So, um, that involved both young people as really authentic partners. They helped to co-create the curriculum. It was project-based learning. We had many community partners where young people are getting out into the community and engaging in, um. Projects that supported, uh, positive change in their community. And, um, we also, I have a big, you know, one of my dreams is like the big kind of, uh, slowdown of schools. Like everything is so fast and there's so many transitions and we're always functioning at this, this like, frenetic pace. Um, and so we were able to like really take larger. Blocks of time, personalize it. As Anna said, um, every young person, um, before really personalized learning plans and flexible pathways were really kind of buzzwords. We were, we were doing that work, um, and really. Looking at each of the different structures that are in place and asking why are these in place and who are they serving? And then working to dismantle those structures in order to ensure that young people were really centered in, um, in their unique abilities and needs. Lindsay Lyons: Wow. Thank you, all of you for your thoughtful responses there. I what you were just saying, Lindsay, you just made me think about, you know, the, the. Enduring kind of like 150 year long cycle of this type of traditional structure of teaching. Um. We, we to transform it, I imagine, takes a different kind of mindset or approach, right? And so I'm curious from each of you what your, your thoughts are around, like what are those really powerful like moments of, oh, someone has shifted their mindset, or this collection of adults has shifted their mindset and they are approaching youth at all partnerships in this particular way, or they're engaging with youth in this particular way, like. What are those mindsets you could advise the audience members of this episode on? Um, like, if we can think this way, we're gonna have a lot of opportunity open up to us in different ways of being. Jacoby: Yeah, I think, um, a time for me would be for the amount of time that I've been in high school, um, we've had kind of like our personal learning plan coordinator, um, had assumed that role and. Just in talking with her, she's my club advisor and we do a lot of work together. She is, um, an independent learning for English advisor for me as well, and. She has told me on multiple occasions before, like getting all, um, her certifications and project-based learning, um, and like the personal learning plan and career pathways. She was an English teacher and she had just taught novels, just really taught like these ideas and would've never allowed like Grammarly or AI or these other things that really. Kind of suppress a student's ability to take pride in their work because they may not have had a strong foundational level in English. We were taught how to read wrong. Many of us were because of a lot of things, and a lot of times, just because those are some of the harder parts of the language. Um, and she has said on multiple occasions, if she were to go back to being like a regular classroom, a teacher, that she would not do another novel. She would not teach another novel. She would do an entirely project-based, like backwards design approach to looking at what's the end goal and moving backwards and setting steps for individual students. Uh, she's actually designed a course for next year as an introduction to work-based learning. And in Vermont, every school is required to have flexible pathways and work-based learning is a way for that. And a lot of people only get access to junior or seniors on a disciplinary route. However, at our school, I'm on it and I'm not on a disciplinary route. Um, and this is gonna be offered for ninth and 10th graders as a way to get their feet wet and a way to really engage in a project-based learning English class, um, with a teacher who has actually like, had a total mind shift in like. There's no, like, there's no resources that you're allowed to use to help you on this. And instead is now encouraging the use of, um, AI in smart ways and teaching students how to like actually expand their work, um, and grow their knowledge using both AI and, um, research that they come up with. Really doing that in a way where she's a facilitator and a agent of learning, and not necessarily a sho of knowledge into people's brains, but as somebody who's able to really pull it out and help people, um, who traditionally don't succeed, really find belonging and joy in their classes. Speaker 4: Um, I think for me, uh. Like the most basic level of like youth adult partnership and the mind, the mindset shift that people kind of need to make to feel comfortable in that. Um, what comes to mind first is like adults need to view youth voice as valuable and necessary. Um, they also need to view youth as, um, capable and like agents of their own learning. Um, and then I think. A large part of it too is just keeping, like, keeping a really open mind. So like being open to valuing different types of learning, um, apart from like the conventional types that we often lean into. Um, and then being open to like Lindsay or was talking earlier about like dismantling structures. Really being open to like being uncomfortable. Um, because we know is not gonna be like a simple, easy process to change, like structures and things that have been in place for hundreds of years. Um, but yeah, I think the biggest thing is just like. If you don't believe that youth are going to be able to step up into their roles as leaders, then it will not happen. Um, so I think this, like, this, this sense of like belief and confidence in them. Ana: Yeah. I really appreciate this question, Lindsay, because um, our work it up for learning, it starts with shifting our people's mental models because you need to change your mindset. You need to have that paradigm shift and really have a different mental model for. Um, what schools could be in order to do this work, and it's. That's really hard work to change our mental models. We know schools as we know them, right? They've operated in this way. And so to, to start helping people really shift their, um, their mindset around, uh, what it would mean to partner with young people and, um, takes time. So that's the work that we do, is like we start by. You know, establishing really strong youth, adult teams that are getting, you know, really building their sense of like, what does it mean to work in partnership, exploring their own mental models. And then, um, once they've really developed their own partnership on their team. It already creates that buy-in, right. So, and often on our teams, we have superintendents, we have principals, we have educators, we have community members, school board members. Of course we have young lots of youth, but it's really important that young people and adults are. Have the opportunity to sit together and have these conversations around, around what school is and what it could be, um, in order to change that mindset. And I think the, the thing that is really niche about up for learning and important is that there's a lot of, you know, student voice and amplifying student voice and elevating student voice and et cetera is fundamental to what we do. But what is really, really niche about what we do is. The work around partnership that, you know, we really believe fundamentally that youth and adults should be sharing power, voice, and responsibility in their educational journey. And in decision making. And so that takes a lot of time and tending to relationships and tending to the climate and the culture of the school or the organization. Like I said before, it also requires that the leadership buys in, um, or at least has a willingness because again, when you're shifting mental MI models or mindsets, it might be really uncomfortable, like Anna was saying. It's, you know, there's this level of discomfort and so we just need a willingness. To begin the work. And then once people start doing the work, they, they recognize that this is, oh, this is the way I wanna be operating. So then we are working with, you know, teams for, for, you know, multiple years as they continue to think about what is the next structure in our school that we wanna change and dismantle so that we really are centering young people in decisions. Lindsay Lyons: I am just so blown away by all of your thoughtful responses, but also like all of the stuff that I know just prior to hitting record that you all are doing. And so I'm curious now if we can transition to like, what is an example of youth adult partnership or like a, you know, a learning experience or however you wanna interpret that. Um. It's had like a big influence on either you, the community, both. I think, you know, there's just so much research that youth developed. Partnerships are good for individuals and communities. But I would love to hear like kind of the story behind something that you've worked on and felt is important. I. Speaker 4: I can talk to kind of my own experience. Um, I mentioned earlier that I've been working with up for a really long time now. Um, and I think like. Originally, like when I was in middle school or even like early high school, I was never like, just didn't talk very much. I was like very shy, like erred on like the, the quiet side. Um, and didn't really like view myself as any sort of like leader in my community or like any sort of particular advocate for, for a particular cause. Um. But I think that being involved with that and like, yeah, that was 2018 was when I met Lindsay for the first time. Um, and that was like my first experience being like, oh wow, like this is like a completely different way of interacting with adults. Like we're partnering versus like they're my teacher. Um, that's their sole role. Um, and it just feel, it's like, yeah, I think a lot of it is, uh. Like the mindset. Um, so like, I feel like working with like Lindsay, I really did feel like, oh, like she believes that like, I can do this. Um, and that bolstered me a lot. Uh. So, yeah, I just feel like that like continued relationship and like growth and support really changed, uh, kinda like the course of my life, honestly. I think like it would be like very different if I had never gotten involved with up. Um, and so now I do view myself as like a, a type of leader. Um, and I would not have said that before, before getting involved and getting, being able to experience like True Youth Digital Partnership. Jacoby: Yeah, I think. For me, like, um, a big shift has been, I feel like, kind of on the other side of what Ana said, like I, well maybe in a same, a similar way, but I always thought that being a leader meant that you were the one who talked the most and really took charge in a meeting. Um, that's what I strived to do. And then through my work with up and then just kind of learning from my superintendent and then kind of teachers and principals like. That it's harmful to do that, and you suppress other people's voices. And then the person who's doing that, in this case myself, ended up being the person who had the burden of doing all the work because there wasn't the shared trust, um, and the shared power and buy-in. Uh, and a big thing that was really changed in starting working with up, at least I hope has changed, um, has been that I have, I feel like. Stepped back, but allowed other people to step up and kind of take more on and be okay with not doing everything, be okay with filling the silence, allowing other people to speak my truth. And a lot of those are, are meeting norms that we say once a week and we highlight and revisit as a youth, adult, um, team, and. And the school team that I work with, it's really been a good impact and I can feel confident in the sustainability of people wanting to carry on the mission of our school board, our student school board group, and our mission to voice our students' perspectives and our school district. I can feel confident leaving, knowing that that mission is going to be carried on. Not because I did everything, but because I stepped back and allowed other people to take charge and do their own projects and really feel empowered to do that work. And I think had up for learning outcome to my school. And had I not gotten to learn from the people at up for learning and then the schools that we work with, I think that, um, I would be in a different place. Um, and the people around me would also be in a different place. Ana: And I guess to add on, so I've had the privilege of like really witnessing, um, the growth of both, you know, Ana and Jacoby and myself, you know, through my time at Up for Learning. And so I think, you know, they were really speaking to the, um, the power of. The work that we do both internally and externally. I'm sorry if my wifis going in and out a little bit. It's okay. Um, and, um, so this, you know, everything that we. Is that our, you know, our core values and principles is the way in which we operate internally. You know, shared decision making, shared responsibility, um, shared power. And, and that's, and because we are so, like, that's what guides our work every day, the way in which we approach our youth, adult teams and the communities that we serve. Um, you know, it's, it's really authentic and it's meaningful and we've developed really deep relationships with our partners in the community. I think what Jacob spoke to define leadership. The student council representative, or the representative to the school board, or the person who talks the loudest or has a lot of social capital. But we know it up for learning that everyone has leadership within them and that there's lots of different types of leaders. So our work is really to, um. Elevate all those voices, right? To bring the every voice to, to their community to be able to share their experiences. And it's really, really important that young people, especially those that have felt that they have not been as engaged in their educational experience or seen or valued, are really, their voices are really lifted up in our process because that's, those are the changes we need to make. We keep listening to the same voices over and over again. As much as those voices are great and valued, we're really only listening to, you know, the same narrative over and over again. And we're not creating the changes that we need for all of our students. And, um, and what I, we, some examples of that, we talked to the internal piece. Um, we've had some really unique, um, like. Like the, the local level, but then state level examples, both in Vermont and in Delaware and in Massachusetts. We've partnered with, um, our state agencies of education, our departments of education on, um. Systemic projects to infuse youth, adult partnership and youth engagement into, um, both state level decision making. So in Vermont, I would say we did a, a statewide project on school safety. I can tell you as an educator, and I imagine Ana and Jacobi can speak to it as students, school safety, both like. The school safety, like protocols and procedures like, um, and also school climate and culture is not something that young people are often asked to provide feedback on. So we really shifted that model to make it, to ensure that young people, um, were provided space to, um, share their experiences with school safety, develop recommendations for state teams, and then hopefully put those. Recommendations into practice. Um, and so that's one example. We also have some, um, major, uh, educational transformational transformation work happening in our state. And our agency of education has been very clear that they want youth engaged at, um, all levels to provide feedback on, um. On both the policy, but also like the, the new structures too statewide. Graduation requirements. We don't have statewide graduation requirements in Vermont. Um, in Delaware through our, um, partnership with the Delaware Department of Education. We've now been, um, expanding our work throughout the state at, um, districtwide to ensure that every school, um, right now we're in two districts and we're continuing to expand. Every school in these large districts have student voice advisories. And so both from elementary school for, for example, one school district, the Brandywine School District, um, in Wilmington. Um. There are nine elementary schools, three middle schools, and three high schools. All have student Voice Advisor, where there's youth and adults working together through the YAR process using participatory action research. Looking at the data. Um, of, of their data and their peers data to really create change. Um, that's been like, so that's what gets to the systemic change, you know, part of it and the sustainability part of it. So, um, and that is continuing to grow. We're now in another school district. Um, so what I'm really, um, encouraged by is the state level partnerships. I'm also really encouraged by our local level partnerships. All of our partnerships, but I the fact that, you know, Vermont. Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire are really seeking to have youth and adults partnering in, in big systems change work. And they're, they're valuing, valuing this work. Um, and so, um, I guess those are some examples I would speak to. And then I think also, you know, just knowing that many of our teams that we've worked with continue to. Engage either with us or ultimately our hope is that you don't up for learning, doesn't need to be there to facilitate the process or they've gone to a place where they are, they have created changes in their system where youth and adults are partnering on a variety of different, um, whether policy or practice level. So we see that, you know, across the board, particularly in Vermont, where we started and have been for a very long time. Lindsay Lyons: I love those concrete examples and I just wanna make Space Jacoby and Ana, if you wanted to jump in on at any of those, either local or state level kind of policy projects, like any, anything to add in there? Lindsay kind of opened it up and I wanted to like make sure you actually had space to answer. Jacoby: Yeah. Um, I would just say that artwork would the Vermont Agency of Education and Department of Public Service School safety work. Has was the first time, um, in the United States where young people were actually asked to provide input, and that was presented in front of state, um, safety officials, including our governor. And it was a really impactful experience being one of the young people who presented that data of over 1500 young people from around Vermont, which is a really big number for Vermont. Um, and to be able to present that and kind of be a representative of that work and carry that weight was a really humbling experience. And to just kind of look out over all these adults in this room and be one of the few youth in the room who's actually presenting that work. Was a really interesting process and the process that we did it, you know, talking about school safety is a really hard topic. Um, and through our work in youth adult partnership, restorative practice and then trauma informed, um, practices as well, we were able to take students who didn't know each other and they, um, came in this room and shared really vulnerable stories by the end of an hour and a half meeting, which really shows that this does work. Speaker 4: Yeah, I think I would just echo how powerful it was to be involved in that project. Um, it happened over the summer and so we held a number of focus groups that, and I got to facilitate a lot, a number of them. Um, so I think, and I think also like, like Jacobi and Lindsay both already mentioned, it's such. A new topic to include students on? You know, I, I think like typically when we think about like, focus groups and the work that we do, you know, we talk a lot about like belonging, engagement, youth, adult partnership, but like school safety is like, kind of like an unprecedented, um, thing to talk about with, with students. So to be able to like facilitate and hear like firsthand, like these stories that I've never really gotten to like hear before, um, and experiences that, you know, maybe they haven't really gotten an opportunity to share before was really, really powerful. Lindsay Lyons: Incredible. Thank you all for sharing about that. That's so inspirational to a lot of people who might not even realize that we're talking about that level of student voice and youth adult partnerships. So thank you for that. We'll do kind of an abbreviated closeout here. Um, we'll do maybe a lightning round where I'll, I'll maybe have two questions and we could each. Answer quickly. So one thing that you would encourage adults, educators to do like today or tomorrow, once they end the episode, like what's one thing they could do to kind of put this way of being in partnership with youth into practice? Ana: I can start. Um, I would say just to like, have kind of their own reflection on how do you see your, how do you see if you're an educator, how do you see your students? Do you see 'em just as a student or do you see 'em as a full human? And how can you, um. Work to understand that like there is much more to the teacher student relationship than just, you know, um, content or, you know, structures that, so really starting to explore like, what is it that I think about my, the young people in which I work with. Speaker 4: Um, I think for me, we actually have a resource set up called, um, 64 Ways to Strengthen Youth Voice, and it's just a list of, um, 64, like very seemingly small, but like tangible actions that you can take, um, in school or in your daily life. So just start thinking about like. Um, now that you have a greater understanding of Del Partnership, um, how can you start to implement it and, um, infuse it into like the way that you live and the way that you engage with students? Jacoby: I would say whatever the plan is for Wednesday, May 6th, whatever that plan is, I would. Say to rearrange your classroom and do a circle and just invite everybody and just kind of have a pulse check. It's gonna be the end of the school year. Um, and ask us for some reflection about how this went. Maybe pass out some paper so that people can jot down thoughts beforehand and come to the circle with some things to share. But I would just really encourage that moment of reflection and empowerment of young people, because although that may seem small, it is gonna be really impactful. Ana: Wow. And Jacoby's referencing our, maybe he already told you, but our power squared summit on May 5th. Lindsay Lyons: Love it. Alright, last question. Where can people learn more about you as individuals and or the, maybe Lindsay, you can take the, the, the actual upper learning kind of handles or, or say. Ana: Well, you can learn about all of us at Up for learning. Um, dot org. Dot org. Um, you can find our bios there and then, um, uh, you're welcome to reach out to us at any point. You know, they, people can sign up for our, um, biweekly newsletter. We have an Instagram that we post to regularly to showcase the work that we're doing in lots of different communities throughout the country. And, um, yeah. And that pass over to Anna and Jacoby to add their, and so. Speaker 4: Yeah. Um, I think, yeah, my up email, all the up emails are pretty straightforward. It's just first [email protected], so on it up for learning.org. Um, I also have a LinkedIn, just Anna Linder boys. Um, but yeah, however, whatever works best. Jacoby: Yeah, definitely. I'd say up website. Um, jacoby up for learning.org is my email. I have a LinkedIn, which is Jacoby Soder. I think that's my LinkedIn. I'm not really sure. It's a little complicated. Um, or just kind of like tune in to like up for learnings Instagram and a lot of times you'll see us on there and we'll be talking or you'll get to see, um, the hundreds of youth that we work with too and just how they're really making impact. Lindsay Lyons: Amazing. Thank you all so, so much for the work you do and for your time to be here today. Jacoby: Thank you. Ana: Thank you. 
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In this episode, we sit down with Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver, a full-time teacher and coach who is engaged in many community outreach and support initiatives. In our conversation, she shares valuable insights that emphasize the importance of belonging in the classroom, the necessity of equipping students with strong literacy skills, and the power of recognizing students' innate genius.
Our discussion revolves around the practical strategies and mindset shifts required to achieve these educational goals in light of real-world challenges facing educators and students today. The Big Dream One thing that Caitlin holds onto is the reality that the world is hard and full of injustice, yes, but she wants all students to know that they can make it better — their voices matter. Her vision is to empower students through education, equipping them with the critical literacy skills necessary to challenge injustice and create a better world. Mindset Shifts Required A few mindset shifts can help educators in today’s complex educational environment, including the importance of making space for what’s going on in the world and bringing that into the classroom. Acknowledging external circumstances is a starting point for all educators, and, from there, we can work to ensure all students feel safe and like they belong in your classroom. Other important shifts include: recognizing the inherent genius in all students, valuing students' existing knowledge, and resisting the urge to simplify complex texts or issues. Rather than performing tasks for students, teachers should guide them as they navigate difficult readings and discussions, stressing the importance of honoring students' lived experiences and perspectives. Action Steps For educators seeking to bring these shifts to their classrooms, Caitlin outlines her “literacy is liberation” approach, which is based on a recent talk she gave at the NCSS Conference (outline available here). Here are some action steps educators can implement: Step 1: Focus on creating a sense of belonging in the classroom by valuing students’ voices, experiences, and backgrounds. This foundational step is crucial for any learning to occur and a big part of it is simply acknowledging what’s happening politically in the world and talking about it in the class; even when it's hard to do, it’s better than staying silent on the issues that matter. Step 2: Listen to students. Ask questions about how they are and their well-being, and then learn and listen from them. This is how you can start seeing kids as geniuses that we can learn from, too. Step 3: Encourage students to engage with rigorous texts — a lot of them. Even when students have lower levels of literacy, it’s still possible to engage in rigorous texts when we support them through scaffolding that helps them tackle difficult material. Educators can also focus on building up background knowledge and vocabulary that support learners in their literacy and understanding of content. Step 4: As you work to build literacy skills, honor the hard work of learning by acknowledging its challenges and celebrating student progress and achievements. Facilitate an environment where overcoming obstacles is part of the learning process. Challenges? Caitlin reflects on how teachers — and maybe Social Studies teachers in particular — love the content and love teaching everything. So, teachers may also struggle with how to cover the right amount of content with limited time to both plan and teach. It can also be challenging to adequately provide background knowledge and motivation necessary for students to engage with complex texts. One Step to Get Started Teachers can start small by simply highlighting and teaching key “tier two” vocabulary words found within texts. These are the words you have to know to make sense of the text. This practical step can be implemented in daily lessons and has the potential to significantly impact students' reading skills. Additionally, school leaders can prioritize conversations with their educators, focusing on what they are already doing well, and exploring ways to support their literacy teaching strategies. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on Instagram at @2025vtteacheroftheyear. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing her presentation outline from the NCSS Conference: Literacy is Liberation: Strategies for Supporting Struggling Readers and Work Towards Justice. It is full of resources that will support educators in the themes discussed in this episode. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 255 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Caitlin, welcome to the time for teachership podcast. Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here. Lindsay Lyons: I am really intrigued by, uh, a lot of different things that I, that you bring to the table as an educator and coach, and. One of the reasons we reconnected is around your NCSS presentation on literacy as liberation and thinking about like the social studies context and literacy. And I just, I was really intrigued by that, but I also know that you have a wealth of knowledge and information and like passions and all the things. So what's kind of on your mind today, or what do you want audience members to be thinking of today? Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: Um, well, I am, uh, still in the classroom full-time in addition to many other things, and classroom spaces are hard right now. We're talking at the end of December. Um, last night we did another huge food distribution to our students who are really hungry. So I was just right before this call, cleaning up from that. Um, we're supporting, I'm heavily supporting a second grader of ours who was detained by ice, um, at the be over the Thanksgiving break. So I was. Emailing back and forth with that. Um, and then we have a huge Somali population at our school in Winooski. It's a refugee resettlement city. Um, and after, uh, Trump's remarks calling the Somali people quote garbage, we've done a lot of support for our Somali population, um, which has, uh, been hard in some ways. Like we've been very atta uh, targeted and attacked. So even just now, like I was in the hallway and just continuing talking to kids about how they're processing everything and December is dark and it's. You know, going into break. It's a hard time for kids anyways, so there's a lot on my mind right now. Lindsay Lyons: Thank you for naming all of the things, because I feel like things are constantly evolving and changing. So yes, we were talking December, 2025, and whenever folks are engaging with this episode, at whatever point, like. Hopefully things will be different from the better, but it's a good reminder that this is where we are right now and these are all the things that are affecting not just educators, but students as well, and families. So thank you for just like situating us in that, and I think connected to, connected to that, but maybe like a, a positive spin off of like what is possible. I always try. To lead with the question around Dr. Betina loves quote on freedom dreaming. So dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. Like, we know all of this stuff is happening and we know there is a better possible future. So what does that future look like for you? Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: Yeah, I love, uh, Dr. Patina loves work and I think what I hold onto in one of my north stars is that the world is hard and it's full of injustice. And I want kids to know that they can make it better, that their voices matter and that they can change the world. Um, and I want them angry by what they see, but I want them knowing that they will play a role in dreaming us. A better world. Um, and then specifically like as an English and as a social studies teacher, we play a big role in then helping them get the skills they need to do that. So making sure that they're really strong readers, um, making sure they have a strong awareness of our, their past, our nation's past so that they can understand why we are where we are today, making them. Become brave writers that can cite evidence and use good sources and make sense of misinformation, and then to communicate their ideas strongly. Um, so even though things are hard at the end of December, that's why I like can't get away from the classroom. 'cause there's so much hope for me in my four walls when I'm working with kids that like I get to be the one that helps them make sense of what's happening and do something about it. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. I love it. And I love that you're already getting into like all of the specific skills and things that we have the power to like amplify in our kids who, like many of them have these skills, right? And our job is just like coach 'em and, and improve them, um, and find ways that they can use those skills in real world like settings. I love that. And I'm also thinking about. You know, the, the teachers, I think most people who are listening to this podcast or engaging with this podcast are people who know justice is important and they know that this is what they wanna do. And I think for some it might be like. I'm not quite sure how to bring this about, or I'm not quite sure how I do this and I, you know, do X, y, and Z that my administrator requires. Or for an administrator, listen, li listening, you know, and engaging, it's like what, uh, whatever they have right on their shoulders that is being, coming from a above. Like, here are we, were talking about like languaging, right? Here are the terms you can't use, or here's like the state law on this. And so I'm imagining there's a lot of like mindset stuff going on for people. Are there any powerful like. Shifts in mindset or kind of like big ideas that have helped you or helped propel others that you know towards doing some of this work. Amidst all the things going on. Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: Yeah. I think what comes to my mind first is I don't know how we do the work of social, being a social studies teacher, being a classroom teacher, if we don't address everything that our kids are bringing with them into the classroom, if we don't make space for what's going on in the world. I had a student say to me recently when we were kind of talking about how do teachers respond to what's going on, what feels good for you? And, um, I'm a teacher that's like always talking about it with, with the world and being relevant. And she said something powerful, which was that when her teachers don't talk about it, she assumes that they agree with everything that's going on. And I know that that's not the intent of the teachers. But it was a moment for me of recognizing the silence carries so much meaning for our kids, and this was just one kid. I'm like, oh, do other people think that about this teacher and this teacher? Um. So for me, kind of like two mindset shifts is like, number one, yes, this work is hard and I don't know any other way. Like kids have to feel like they belong in your classroom for, to do any learning. And it seems like often, um, a talking point from the right wing of like, oh, just teach reading or just teach math and it. We can't just do that if kids don't feel safe, if they don't feel seen, affirmed, valued, et cetera. Um, and then I also think that there's a big shift in terms of like really valuing what our kids are bringing into the classroom. Um, and not just like lip service of like, oh yeah, languages are, are strength, but really like showing that in your classroom. Um, and I think a lot about. Honoring our kids as geniuses and like really this mindset shift of like, they are a genius. And it's my job to bring that genius out of them. And how do I do that? Um, how do I facilitate a learning space, a classroom space? How do my instructional decisions align with this underlying principle that like, I am so lucky to be with 20 geniuses today. How do I get that out of them? Um. We read this book, uh, in one of my English classes, the Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, and a character says to another character, um, the world's been waiting for your genius a long time. And I printed it out on my classroom. And like when we read it, I look at kids, I'm like, have, have teachers said that to you? Like, do you feel that? And sadly the answer is no often, but like that is something that I try to hold onto as much as possible. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh, there is so much there. I mean, I just fiercely writing notes about like, you know, the valuing of, of, of things beyond just like naming them, but like truly valuing the, the idea of genius. I mean, you're like bringing in Goldie Mohammed here. Like, I just, I love all of this and I, I totally, I mean, I can literally think of colleagues as well as my own teachers as a student who. Did not talk about what is happening in the, the politic political landscape, the politics, the current events, whatever. And totally, that's what happens is everyone thinks like, oh, well then you must be just fine with it. Which in populations where we're our students are, uh, marginalized in various ways and identities and groups that they belong to, it's like, oh, you, so you don't value me. Right. And, and how to your earlier point, like how can we engage with students, partner with students and families. If we are not specifically addressing it and, and saying we're against all of the oppression that's happening. So I just really love that all of this is like threading together what you're saying. And I I also love your segue into how, right, so you start, you left off kind of saying like, how do I do this? I'm curious like, what does the, how look like, that's a huge question, but I know there's like different components that, that you think about. I mean, you talked about literacy as liberation. You talked about like elevating the genius. Setting up classrooms in specific ways, elevating student agency. Like there's, there's so many components. I don't know if you wanna like pick one or just kind of share a smattering of ideas, whatever works for you. Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: Yeah. Um, my presentation around literacy is liberation. I was like trying to distill a little bit of like, what am I doing in my history classrooms, in my civics classrooms that is working. Um, and I think a lot around, um. Well, even backing up, I think a lot around the need for kids to be strong readers and strong writers when they graduate high school. I think so much of my students who have graduated high school and sadly have not graduated college within four years or six years and life gets busy and you know, they're often coming from families that are in poverty and. It's complicated. Um, but I think about how can we better prepare them with these real concrete skills to then live, you know, our freedom dreams. Um, I think a lot about how do you first create belonging in your classroom? And it's not like. Switch that you can flip and you have it one day and you don't have it the other day. Is this ongoing reflective process of all the stuff that I'm sure your listeners, uh, are aware of, you know, like diverse texts and really leaning into checking in with kids. This is one thing I've been talking about a lot recently is during COVID I feel like we did a great job of like really slowing down and just like. Asking kids, how are you? Do you have enough food? What's going on? But we're past COVID now, and it's back to normal. And it's like we lost something there. And I intentionally, especially since the new administration have been really slowing down and trying to check in with kids, like, are we okay? And it's really through that listening that we learn about our kids. And there's that mindset shift again of like. I am not the expert like you are bringing so much into my classroom. How can I learn from you? And I think kids see me as that type of teacher. I think hopefully that really listens and then like. My doors like never close. They just keep coming in and keep talking and like you keep learning more stuff about them. And then it's like the books we're using and the, this is why I love teaching also. It's like every decision carries so much weight. Are all of our curriculum decisions, the text we're using, what we're teaching, what we're not teaching, what we're emphasizing, um. All of that. It's like it's messy and we show up in really small ways for kids, but then also showing up in bigger ways. Like we, our school raised the Somali flag after Trump's comment, so we show up in these big ways, or we have this big food distribution things. But I think kids see belonging over the course of, you know, the year or many months. Um, so that's the first thing. Kids gotta feel like they belong. And then I have a whole lot, like been thinking a lot around what does this mean from a literacy perspective? Um, and I think a lot of the science of reading research, um, is fantastic. Of course. And like most states now have adopted science of reading legislation. Most of the legislation is focused around K to three. And that makes sense of like addressing the root of the problem. Um. And I think about our high school kids that are kind of left behind from some of that research and what that means. And I started as a, uh, US history teacher in Boston. Um, and I was trained as a history teacher and I did not know what to do with struggling readers. Like that was not where our pedagogy was. Um, and you know, through many years in different jobs and stuff, I went back to school to become a reading specialist, just 'cause I felt like I needed more skills of like. What do we actually do as content teachers when we have kids that don't know how to read? Um, and I'm really enthused and, you know, hopeful 'cause their research is like pretty obvious and we know what to do. Kids will only understand attacks if they have strong background knowledge about it and if they have vocabulary about it. It's kind of like one thing. And then second, they need to read a lot and they need to read rigorous texts and they need to read a lot of them. So kind of those like four things of like belonging first, a lot around vocabulary, a lot around building background knowledge and what that means. And then like the actual reading strategies and what that looks like. But I'm left hopeful of like the research supports that as social studies teachers, there's so much we can do to support kids being successful readers and writers, and then into their future. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh, yes. I, I love that belonging is central and because you can't really do anything without that. Right. And then I, I do love bringing in like the science of reading stuff. I know that so many, I mean, you just named three incredibly important things from the research and equally three challenging things. I think that teachers ask as a coach, they ask me or. Say like, this is my biggest struggle. Like these are the, the most particularly background and, and reading a lot, like how do I get kids to consistently read and how do I get kids if they have no knowledge of a particular group of people we're studying? And I'm like, okay, we're gonna start this inquiry lesson where you're gonna ask questions. And they're like, well, I don't even know who we're talking about. Right? Like. There. These are two challenging pieces and I'll just say what I've been thinking about and then I would love some of your thoughts because I've been reading TTA Hammond's latest work around like building students' capacity to learn and thinking about how information is processed and how we support students to use tools to like do it beyond like the teacher always being there and so. One thing I'm thinking about is the engagement of students with any sort of text and how if we could make it more meaningful to them, like they're gonna be motivated to read more. And so that's something I've been like just interested about. Like that motivational aspect as well as like the literacy skills themselves. I feel like there's something there, but then also like the background knowledge piece to me, my move and tell me if there's like other ways. 'cause I would love other ways. My move lately has been to think about. Like frameworks, like funds of knowledge or, um, cultural capital from Yos o like thinking about. What are the background knowledge, things that you might already know that might not be like this period in time or this particular geographic area we're studying in history or this person, but there's some sort of like, oh, we're talking about migration. Okay, well, I have a personal experience with migration, right? There's like things that we can pull on that we don't always think about in the classroom. That could be leveraged, but tell me what you think about these. Like what do you do with these pieces? Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: So I love that. 'cause so many times it's like, oh, kids don't have background knowledge, so I have to give it to them. And I do see some role in that, but it's like, no, how are we honoring what they do know already? And. Learning, reading, it's Velcro, it has to stick to something. So figuring out what it's sticking to first. So it won't work if we're only front loading. Like, here's a video and here's some pictures. Like now you have background knowledge. We have to connect it to something that they already know of to begin with. Um, and then I do think there is a role in like. We're gonna like use a video as a text before we actually read the text so that you have like, we're having a shared common experience before we dive into it. And like a starting place at least. Or, you know, showing pictures or reading a small short text before we read the bigger text. And thinking about how we're leveraging like text, text. And what our core text is, like, what we're trying, how we're using reading in itself to build that knowledge. But kids have knowledge, they're bringing knowledge into our classrooms, and they'll be more motivated to do the work if you're honoring what they already know, rather than treating them like they're stupid and they don't know anything in the first place. Um, and I haven't read the Reddi Hammond's new stuff yet, but I want to, and I've been doing, uh, we had a really nice. Uh, professional learning session recently with, uh, Trevor Reagan from the Learning Lab. Really thinking about growth mindset plus and really honoring that learning is hard for kids. And I have a five-year-old who's also l doing a lot of learning right now, and learning's really hard and I hear him sometimes saying this like, I give up. I can't do this language. And the research is really clear. It's like you need to honor. That it is hard and not just say like, no, it's okay, like you can do it. Like, no, this is really hard. Like I get it. And it's a skill and you can get better at something or worse. And then especially in high school, um, kids don't wanna do hard things like their life is hard enough already. And, um, at N-C-S-S-I was like, how many teachers. I have kids that like immediately go to the bathroom when you pass out a reading and it's like, it's everyone. They don't wanna look stupid in front of their peers. Um, so how we can build our culture in our classrooms, in our schools, we're like, no, we're, it is hard and we're gonna do something hard together. And I got you. And like, not dumbing down the text, not making it easier. I started teaching in 2011, I think, and there was a lot of like scaffolding texts, making it easy, the news ELA stuff of like, oh, I'm just gonna change sentences. Like now my kids can read it. Um, and the, it's, the pendulum has really shifted. It's like, no kids need to be reading rigorous texts, so how are we then scaffolding the challenge so that they can read the text, but they're the ones doing it? 'cause we know they're not gonna get better at reading some reading if we don't ever give them a chance to read in the first place. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh, yes. For naming the, the pendulum swing for sure. I mean, 2011 is when, I think that was my first year of teaching, and it was exactly, it was like, here's like all, here are all these apps that will make it easier, so just use these. Right. And now it's like, okay, that didn't help. Um, yeah. Oh my gosh. I, I love the idea of honoring the hard. I also have a almost 4-year-old. And so it is like, right, we are, we need to, like, we can do hard things right now like this. We're in it together. Um, and I, I just really appreciate that this analogy of Velcro and like it's going to stick to something. What does it stick to? Like that really resonates because I think sometimes we think that there is literally nothing. There's, right. It's like the very much like the banking model, it's very much kids don't have anything coming in like. The No, it's sticking to something and if it's not sticking to something, it's 'cause we're maybe not like facilitating the, like, recognition that it's sticking to something. And it's just a kind of a, a lack of like us being like, it's sticking. And so I, I am curious in all of this, I mean in literacy challenges, in like talking about all the hard history that we have to teach. Like what is maybe a large challenge that you faced as a history teacher and what like. What's a way that you've kind of gotten through it, thought about like a different avenue into it. Like what advice could we give to social studies educators who might be like facing this big challenge that, that you've noticed yourself as a teacher or that you've noticed in other teachers? Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: I think one challenge is like we love our content. As social studies teacher, we wanna teach all of it. And like the more, the older I get, the more I learn. I'm like, oh my God, I never learned this. Like one random thing that happened. I was like, we have to do this. This is amazing. Um. And so for me it's like taking things out because we know if reading is hard, we gotta give them the space to process it on their own. And I know that sometimes when I'm short on time and I'm like, oh my God, I really wanna finish this unit before winter break. I'm like, I'll just read it for them. Like I'll just do this for them. And we start like doing more of the work for kids. Because we love our content. We, we think it's important for them to know. And I'm not saying there's never a place for that, which is what I love about teaching. It's like just being reflective and intentional about all your decisions. And I might make that choice tomorrow, Lindsay, but like I'm doing it with a reason. And I know in January we're not doing that, you know, certain things. But, um, I think really honoring, uh, and giving space to do this work of reading, of making sense of, um, you know. Figuring out what their genius is. If I'm giving them a text and I'm telling them what it means, like I am, that's still banking model, I'm still owning the meaning of that text and really creating space of like, I've read this text 5,000 times, but I'm reading it again with you, and you're bringing a whole new perspective into it. Um, but it's. It does take time and like even I, I know how important vocabulary instruction is and how important recognizing morphology like, you know, prefixes, suffixes, and roots and words is, and when you have diverse classes of learners, when you have so much at play in any given class period, sometimes it's easy to. Do some of the things that you know are good because you wanna get to your end goal. So I keep telling myself a little bit to like really just slow down and like honoring kids for, and giving them the time and space to do things. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. Again, with the, this is like exactly what all the challenges are. It's like pacing is number one. I literally have a post-it note that says slow, like right by my, because it's always right, like we can do less is more slow it down, like yes. Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: And it's hard too. I had a student teacher a couple years ago that decided she didn't wanna be a teacher, and I'm like so happy she made that decision. But one thing she said to me was like, I just had no idea like how hard this work actually is. And I think just honoring that it. It really is so hard to do this well, takes so much planning time and across the nation teachers planning time is being cut left and right, and like to teach one lesson with one strong primary source, let alone like a whole DBQ or background text. Like it takes a lot of intentional planning to do it, and when that's cut short, uh, it's easy to fall into bad habits or just like trying to push through to get to certain content, et cetera. Lindsay Lyons: That's such a good point too for leaders who are like. Engaging with the episode. I think how much time we can give teachers is so critical. If there is anything we can do to increase planning or preparation time for lessons. Your, your comments today have just been such a good illustration that teachers know what is good practice and they usually are like, yeah, I have all these things in my head as I'm planning and I have the realities of the situation to like work within. And so as if we can just like support that structurally in any way, like. Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: Meetings. More planning time, please. Lindsay Lyons: Yes. Oh my gosh, that that's exactly it. And so I am just, I'm going to move us to kind of our clothes soon, but I am feeling like I wish I was a student in your classroom, and so I am just curious if there is a favorite lesson you've had recently or a favorite moment where like a student had this aha or like made you think differently. Like is there any, any sort of kind of like moment that in, in the moments of hard that you attach to and are like, oh, but this was great. Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: You know why I love teaching is there's a million moments like that, but this is the one that just happened a half hour ago. But I was kind complaining to a colleague, I'm like, I'm trying to have this rigor, like I want the essay due, like, and kids just aren't doing it. And we're like, oh, it's a hard time of year. It's December, like, and I was like, I know, I'm just kind of setting myself up like I wanted to do revision circles, but. They don't have a solid draft yet, so I think I just have to give them more work time. Um, and then this kid came to me in her study hall and she's like, miss Caitlyn, will you look at my essay? And Lindsay, it was so good. I mean, it was amazing. And we're a small school, so I've been working with her in various classes for three years. And to see the growth in her writing was. So powerful. And she's writing, it's for the Bernie Sanders State of the Union, um, essay contest that our Senator Bernie Sanders does. Um, so they choose an issue that they think is the most pressing issue in the country and describe the challenge and come up with their solution. And like she's talking about ice, uh, detaining American citizens and she has a strong solution. So it was like all of this is coming together and like, you know, there'll be plenty of kids that. Don't have their first drafts done this afternoon and we'll deal with that also. But meeting with her for a half hour and looking at her essay with her was really powerful and uh, it was a nice moment. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. I love that for so many reasons. I mean, the student agency, the, like excitement that she's seeking out feedback like outside Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: I know. Lindsay Lyons: Incredible. And also just this idea of a growth trajectory. I mean, a lot of people can't, um, for structural reasons, like they don't see the same students o over and over, but many do. I mean, when I worked in a small school like you, absolutely do. You some teachers even have looping like there even in a one school year or one course, however long it is for you. Like the growth is, is part of the joy, I think, and sometimes in the pacing. Stresses and all of that. We, we kind of forget about like the growth and the, the student joy, and I just love that that story encapsulated that. So it's just like a nugget of a reminder for everyone too. Engage with that joy, engage with that growth and, and seek it out if it's not already seeking you out. Um, uh, beautiful. Thank you. And I think as we're closing, just kind of a few quick questions. One being like, we talked about a lot of big ideas and I'm curious if there's one thing that's like a implementable today or tomorrow kind of thing where. When they end the episode, they can go ahead and just do something to get started in one of these. So it might be like, I'm gonna do this in the lesson tomorrow. It might be something a leader could do. It might be something, um, where you've like, kind of painted this big picture and like, what's one, one step forward? I. Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: Um, yeah, for teachers, I was just reminded of this in my block one, uh, English class today of just, uh, highlighting tier two words, these words that show up in texts all the time that you have to know in order to. Make sense of the text. Um, so we were reading an article about how technology lowers students' emotional, um, intelligence, and there was a lot of words that were synonyms for the word lowers, so it diminishes, undermines, weakens. And just like I was doing so much with my hands just to help kids, like verbalize like it's going down, it's going down. Um. And just pay attention to those types of words in your text and how, if you didn't know what that word meant, how you wouldn't understand the text to begin with. Um, and then any administrators, listen, listening. I just think having conversations with your teachers and like the same way we try to, um, honor the genius in our students, honoring the genius in us as teachers. Um, so not coming in like, oh. Like I heard about this new way to teach vocabulary, but like, what are you already doing to teach vocabulary? What does teaching tier two words already look like in your classroom? Tell me about a moment of reading, you know, whatever it is, but just like honoring all the good work that's already happening in classrooms around literacy instruction, I think is important. Lindsay Lyons: I love that. I'm envisioning leaders putting up a little post-it that's like, what are you already doing? Dot, dot. Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: That would be a win. Lindsay Lyons: That would be great. Um, okay. This one is just for fun. What is something that you have been learning about lately? It could be education related, but it could also be anything. Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: Okay. I thought of two things. Um, one, one of my students for this essay she's writing in civic class around the biggest problems in our world is writing about, um, moratoriums on building data centers for AI use. So I've done like a deep dive around. The climate and global warming impacts and environmental impacts of AI data centers. And we have some state legislation, um, in Vermont for next session. It looks like our senator is proposing some national stuff too. And just like what this means and like I'm kind of just like on the sidelines of this, but this student's top topic, I was like, I gotta learn more about this with you, what's going on? Um, and then I'm also in my English classes. I'm reading a ton of science fiction right now, and I, it's just been really fun. It's not what I would ever read for on my own, but what a way, like if we want kids talking about their world and like having classes where we're using literature and using history to understand our current context, just a huge plug for, uh, science fiction reading in classes. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my God, I am such a science fiction nerd that yes, like I totally love that you named that because I, every time I read I'm like, this is a blend of the things I teach. Like this is a blend of like the ELA and the freedom dreaming of like, often it's dystopian, but like also it's what is possible and how do we tinker with that as well as like grounded in the past. Oh my gosh. Yes. Love it. Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: It's so fun. And then because I have this joint role where I'm English teacher and history teacher, like we read this story just now in my English class where I was like, oh my God, we actually gotta read this in my history class too, because the connections that we can make are so strong. Lindsay Lyons: I feel like we should do a sci-fi episode down the road. We'll do Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: down. Lindsay Lyons: And then finally, I mean, you do so much. I mean, you just presented at NCSS, like where can people connect with you or learn more about you? Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: I don't have a huge online presence, but I have my Instagram at 2025 VT Teacher of the Year. Lindsay Lyons: That's right. And huge celebration for being Vermont's teacher. Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: Thank you. I know the year's almost done, so it's coming to a close. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. Caitlyn, this was so fun. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Caitlin MacLeod-Bluver: Thank you, Lindsay. 
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In this solo episode, host Lindsay dives into a crucial challenge many educators face: engaging students who lack critical background knowledge about a time period, historical event, or people you are discussing in class. She troubleshoots this issue by providing simple frameworks to bridge the gap and engage students in what they already know..
Highlighting her passion for teaching social studies, Lindsay offers actionable strategies that expand the concept of “background knowledge” and empower students to make connections between their lived experiences and new learning content. Why? Addressing the background knowledge gap is important because it impacts a lot of different pieces of learning, particularly in the social studies context. Effective inquiry-based pedagogy, synthesizing information, and student-led discourse can all be limited without “background knowledge” around the topic area. This can make it challenging for educators to teach—yes. And, it also presents an opportunity to expand the idea of “background knowledge” to help students pull from personal experience and media exposure; this validates diverse forms of knowledge and cues students to link new content with their personal lives. What? Educators who want to address a background knowledge gap in their social studies or other classroom settings can implement these action steps: Step 1: Expand Your Idea of Background Knowledge This is an important mindset shift to start with. Instead of narrowly looking at background knowledge as only key dates, events, or people, you can broaden the understanding to include personal experiences, media consumption, and cultural narratives. Step 2: Implement Cognitive Routines Lindsay walks us through some of Loretta Hammond’s “learn-to-learn” skills as a key starting point. First is to figure out what we already know—to “scan the hard drive” and look for existing knowledge (ask: "have we seen this before?"). Then, it’s “chew and remix” — think about how it connects to what we already know. Teachers can help students make sense of new information by connecting it to what they already know. Step 3: Use Frameworks Apply educational frameworks to your context. For example, Funds of Knowledge is a foundational exercise that helps students connect information with what they know. You would ask students if what they’re learning connects to things like their family traditions, experiences of people you know, or things familiar in the home environment. Lindsay dives deeper into this framework and the Cultural Wealth Model, which is an asset-based understanding that all children bring something valuable to the table. Step 4: Level-up Analytical Skills After laying the foundation of connecting to what students already know and drawing on frameworks that explore their background knowledge, then educators can level up their thinking and analytical skills. This can be done by generating questions, student-led discourse, writing an evidence-based paragraph, or other options. Step 5: Create Connection Cues Co-create a slide or something on physical paper that has all the connection clues and ideas you discussed in the class. The visual aid will help students remember things and independently make connections to curriculum content. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing these resources with you: If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below: And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 254 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. TRANSCRIPT Lindsay Lyons: Welcome to another episode of the Time for teachership podcast. This is episode 2 54, and today we're talking about student background knowledge, particularly troubleshooting the concept of students having no or limited background knowledge. So I'm really passionate about this. I've talked about this before, um, but just want to. Kind of get into some examples of what you can offer students when the knowledge about a particular time period or group of people or individual historical event or person appear to be lacking. So let's get into it. For context, the struggle for a quote, lack of background knowledge is ever present in particularly my social studies, um, coaching. And I first wanna validate it is it is a very challenging thing when we go in to teach something and we expect or anticipate students have prior knowledge of particular events, vocabulary. People in a historical time period that we're teaching, and then we realize they don't have that and then we need to adjust. So validating the hard there and also a gentle push. We can expand our concept of what background knowledge is and cue students to connect to concepts or themes or personal lived experiences, other forms of media in which they have. Seen similar things, experienced, uh, different events that maybe people in history have experienced in different ways, of course. And I think that Loretta Hammond's work in the learn to learn skills that she has put out in her 2025 book. As well as the cognitive routines she talks about in that book can help inform perhaps like a reusable slide or anchor chart, some sort of cue that students can use as tools in their own learning. They can use both inside the classroom and outside of the classroom so that teachers aren't always doing the scripted kind of heavy lifting for students, making those connections for them, filling the background knowledge gaps, but that students can access. Background knowledge that might be relevant and identify where the sticking points or areas for further inquiry are this struggle. I wanna name impacts a lot of different. Pieces of social studies, pedagogy, particularly inquiry based pedagogy, question generation. Anytime we're analyzing or synthesizing all the learning that's happening, we're in student led discourse and conversations about how to answer an essential question for a unit by putting all of these various learnings together, like that lack of background knowledge, and I'm using air quotes there. Is important. So let me front load one more kind of thing that's on my brain and then let's get to some frameworks that can support connections to existing background knowledge. And that's Loretta Hammond's Learn to Learn Skills, specifically Her Skills two and three. She lists five of them. So two and three. Kinda after you figure out what you know, the prompt or the question or the thing is that. That we need to engage with. We scan the hard drive. She says, right, this is step two of learn to learn progression. Have we seen it before? Have we seen something similar? What's the opposite from what we're seeing? Right? So we're, we're scanning our hard drive. We're noticing if there's anything that looks familiar. Then in the next stage, number three, chew and remix. How is this connected to what I already know? Right? This is happening in a child's brain or in an adult's brain, really a learner's brain. Is there anything confusing? How can I make sense of this, right? That's the key piece that sticks out to me is the sense making. How do I make sense of this and how to make sense of it in terms of connecting to what I already know. And so specifically here, we could think about the four cognitive routines. Which one could I use here? And she lists those out. D. S RRP are the kind of four initials of that. So distinctions, systems, relationships, and perspectives. And we'll get into these a little further in the episode. But these are in my brain as I am thinking about this challenge of a quote, lack of background knowledge. So here's what we might be able to offer some students. Frameworks such as Funds of Knowledge, which comes from Mall, Amman, Neff, and Gonzalez, uh, 1992. It's used a lot in Headstart programs, so a link to some, some things here in the show notes, but Funds of Knowledge is one that we could definitely use. And so kind of an adapted version of this, I would say, is inviting students. Whenever we are introducing a topic or a prompt for discussion or, or consideration prompting students, does this make you think of your kind of, do imagine a, a slide with like a dot, dot dot, right? And then a list of things, ideally with a visual and then a short kind of name. So one could be home language, right? Does it make you think of something, um, that maybe there's a, a word or a term or. Some experience that has kind of peppered with your home language, that connects to this term you're now seeing and whatever the language of instruction is, is there a family value or tradition that this could connect to? So in whatever you're engaging with content-wise, does this connect to something that you, as a family believe in, or discuss or have experience with in terms of a, a tradition that you, you live out right? Does it connect to any experience, activity, um, identity set of your friends or your family members? Are there any jobs that your family members or family friends do that connect to what we're learning about? Right? So just thinking about the things that kids know, even young kids, right? This is being used in Head Start. We're talking preschool, pre-K. Young kids are familiar with language used at home with what they do with their families and friends and who those family and friends are, the, the jobs they have, the identities they hold. Right. And finally, for funds of knowledge, anything related to chores or caretaking. So again, students have rich lives outside of school. What are those things that they're engaged? In at home might be chores, might be, uh, just interaction with siblings or other young children or older siblings. Um, any kind of like meal prep that they do, right? There's so many things that they're bringing to the table. So if we are learning about ancient civilizations, hunter and hunting and gathering right? Oh, well, I prep, you know, I prepare lunch for myself. I can make a sandwich with access to, you know, my, my cupboard and my fridge at home, right? And that's pretty easy to go to the fridge versus like going and getting a meal from like, nature, right? So like there's something in there that we can connect to. And so again, we don't necessarily need to name the connections for kids. We wanna think about what's the thing we can give them that acts as a tool for them to make that connection and that the tool can then go with them to another classroom or content area, or beyond the school environment to support learning and sensemaking more broadly. Now that is the funds of knowledge framework. I do wanna offer one other framework, which is the cultural wealth model from Yo O published in 2005. And again, we'll link to like a summary of this, but. I have changed a little bit the language in slides that I've used with students, particularly young students, although I certainly think secondary schoolers could engage with the, the language of, uh, yoo's original like language in her forms of cultural capital. So here's, here's what basically the, the premise is, right, is like all forms of cultural capital, like are, are present. In children, and we need an asset based understanding of kind of bridging school to home connections and thinking about the things that. Children bring to the table, right? There's so many assets that we overlook or devalue because of the culture that we live in that is steeped in white supremacy or white dominance. And we think about how do we value what students are bringing to the table? That sometimes you'll, you'll see in the language here, I actually confront or directly resist, um, that oppressive society and what society purports to value. With this own, like this strength, right? So here, let me just read her things. The six forms of cultural capital, according to yoo, are aspirational, linguistic, familial. Social navigational and resistance. And so here's what this might translate to for like a prompt to cue students to connect to some social studies content in perhaps like third grade appropriate language. So you might say, does this make you think of your, again, think of like a dot, dot dot, and then a list with like an image and a short title for each cultural capital aspect. Does snake you think of your hopes and dreams? Your language, which could be interpreted in anything, right? Like, uh, language, it could be English, but just the way that I kind of code switch between different audiences. It could be home language as a distinctly different language. Um, you know, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, whatever is home language. Just spoke at home. Um. Could it be related to your family and community, your friends? So again, some, some strong overlap here with funds of knowledge. Um, and then I think the two, uh, aside from hopes and dreams at the top, but the two last pieces of her cultural wealth model I think are, are the, um, distinguishing factors here as well. And I think it lends itself more to like social studies content, um, that is, has a more critical lens, which is always what I gravitate to. But one that yo so-called navigational, I would name kind of like, or term figuring out rules and organizations and have a little picture of like an institution, like a school or something. Um, and I would explain this to students. 'cause when you're introducing this, you might need to explain a little bit some things don't need cues at all. Right? Like friends and family. We got it. We understand. Um, but figuring out rules and organizations or navigational capital, right? Thinking about how you have to. Figure out how to go into, you know, whatever it is. Maybe it's a religious organization in the community, maybe it's school, maybe it's, um, somewhere that for older kids that you work or where your parents work, right? You have to figure out how to navigate and what like the unspoken and unspoken rules are in those systems to be able to get by. Right. And to maybe succeed and thrive, maybe to just not get in trouble, right? Like there's, there's so much navigating that kids do. Um, and so you have figured out the rules, both things that were told to you Yes. But even harder and perhaps more importantly, things that weren't told to you explicitly. That is an asset. And so how do you see this happening? When we look at historical societies and communities and people having to navigate the both unspoken, unspoken rules, the fair and unfair rules, right? There's a lot there that students can draw on their own experience to connect to social studies content. And then the, uh, term that you also uses is resistance. You can totally use resistance. I think, I don't know exactly what grade that, that might be unfamiliar language for, but for young, young kids, you might just say like, you know, naming and fighting against unfair things. I think that's, you would be able to use that with a, right. So like when you recognize something is unfair. And you say that's not fair, right? Or you fight against it or whatever language you wanna use. But that's a concept that certainly like two and three year olds are grappling with. So it is a concept that many, many students are going to, um, latch onto and be able to draw connections to social studies or historical content or current event content with. So again, I think these all prompt things that students have access to, they have this cultural capital, um, as part of their lived experience. They can connect, but they need the prompting to be like, that's a valid, right? Like that is a valuable connection. You are figuring out rules in your local church, you navigating where your dad works and being present in that space where you're never even told what the rules are, but you kind of. Figure it out on your own, like that is what other people are doing in history, and you could see the implications as we read about historical content or current event content. Where is that happening now in other settings? Right. I, I think that's something that, again, our role is queuing and validating as opposed to filling. Like an empty vessel, right? Like the banking model from Ferry is like we're, we're not necessarily needing to fill the background knowledge. Yes, we're gonna teach them, you know, terms that are relevant. Yes, we're gonna teach 'em about things that have happened, but I would argue that one of the most important things about social studies and really analysis in any capacity is like. Can you understand the big enduring conceptual themes that extend from setting to setting from time, point to time, point across history? And those require some practice like to do that well. Those require students to access and connect with their own lived experiences and background knowledge connected across time periods, compare and contrast, right? All these big skills. And so I encourage us to, um, use whatever framework works for you. I'll also just quickly share that not knowing any of these frameworks. When I was a teacher, I just use a simplified slide just thinking about what connections I make. So I like to like unearth or like uncover my own processes sometimes to figure out like, how did I get there? And then maybe this will help kids, right? And then, and then go from there, but use that as a starting point. And so I just would put up a slide. Does this make you think of a story from your life? Current events? Um, some kind of media, like TV show, movie, song, video game. Like I would list a bunch of media places or another form of media, like book or another subject in school. Kind of like school media, right? Like does this connect to, if I'm teaching social studies, ELA, science, art, pe like, you know, what other place could you connect to math? Um, so think about what works for you. You can take or, or leave pieces that take pieces that work, leave pieces that don't make it your own and, and change the language or imagery, certainly. But I will link in the show notes and blog posts for this episode. A resource that has some of these that I'm describing, these slides you can just take and use or you could adapt 'em. Now I wanna talk through, before we close, just an example of what this looks like or could be like in action. So recently was working with a bunch of teachers in Boston public schools, some elementary and middle and high school social cities, teachers. And thinking about Loretta Hammond's Learn to Learn skills and those cognitive routines, as well as this challenge of kind of quote unquote lack of background knowledge. And what did we come up with? We came up with a framework. We came up with a lot of stuff, but, but what I wanna talk about now is a framework that invites students to generate questions with a little bit of queuing and structure to support students who may be struggling to ask a question about. Like a new topic or were you learning this new unit? What questions do you have? Right. And that's kind of all we've got is like a quick question or prompts or image, like a very short amount of information. Small amount of information I should say, and then go time ask questions. So here's what they decided, they said, okay, so there's kind of two things happening. We want students to ask about some important social studies themes. So the content is important, but we also want students to do some like skill-based stuff, like some cognitive routines as Loretta Hammond would describe them, right? So again, that. Uh, DSRP is what we're thinking about at this point, so. We want students to think about distinctions, like comparing and contrasting. We want them to think about the systems like part to whole hold apart, right? Uh, relationships, like how does thing, how do things happen over time? Like what is the cause and effect relationship, for example, or perspective, right? How is perspective important? Certainly very important in social studies. So that's DSRP or the cognitive routines. So we want both social studies, content themes, and we want the skills or the cognitive routines. And how do we invite students to do all of that? Well, they came up with a slide that's kind of like two halves. And so they're like, okay, so ask a question about, and then they gave a few examples that, and then they gave a few examples of cognitive routines. So in the content themes, I'd be like, ask a question about, and here's on the imagine like the left side. People or land connections. This connects to, um, NCSS or the National Consult for Social Studies, themes, people, places, and environments, uh, is a very common theme. Um, seen in many social cities, uh, content areas in ch in chapters in history, as well as it also connects to like First Nation concepts of wellbeing. Um, so I'll, I can link to some of that, but people and connections is a content theme. Or you could ask a question about another content theme, people's hopes and dreams. Again, that's directly from cultural wealth, um, but it also is present in the national social studies, civic ideals and practices theme. Uh, ask a question about community care practices. So this was kind of adapted from, uh, yo's cultural wealth, also funds of knowledge, right? We're thinking a lot about family and community, um, friend groups, but also this is present in First Nations concepts of wellbeing. And then the fourth one, um, that they decided to include in this framework is what people did or can do to better the world. So thinking about like a justice orientation, uh, collective action, civic action thing, right? This is certainly present in the national theme for civic ideals and practices. This also present in yoo's cultural wealth framework, um, with resistance particularly. So again, the content themes, people land connections. People's hopes and dreams, community care practices, and what people did or can do to better the world. These are the big things that we're often talking about in a social studies environment, right? This particularly one that is, uh, angled towards like advancing justice and, uh, power with, right? I'm thinking about the Berkeley frameworks here. Um, a criticality lens, thinking about Goldie Muhammad, right? This is all really important. Now the cognitive routines side of this, right? So ask a question about one of those content areas. Is there a pitch that does one of these things connects to today? So you got like some systems there, like part to whole hold apart. Like how does this all fit together in the arc of history? But it also connects to relationships, right? I would say like cause and effect, like what happens in the past affects what happens today. And also NCSS, uh, their theme of time, continuity and change. So definitely still connecting the content themes there. You could say, um, asking a question that compares or contrasts that we have. Distinctions that considers cause and effects. You have relationships there or the uplifts identities, so. Inviting students to push back on or ask the question of whose stories or voices are missing. So again, we have that perspectives. Or also I would say systems like understanding systemic oppression, right? And how systems work to marginalize, I think is also present in there, depending on where students take the question or the analysis that follows. So again, we have a framework that BPS used to pull on social studies, content themes from various frameworks. And national standards, as well as inviting students to use a cognitive routine stemming from the work of, um, that Zaretta Hammond highlights and the work of independent learners and kind of how they make sense of things when they chew and remix in her learn to learn skill series. So example, questions stems that come out of this. Um, could be, and I mean this is a little high level, but we, we wanted to come up with something that was really meaty for an example. Um, but like. If we take, ask a question about the, uh, people land connections and we do something about, um, connecting to today for the cognitive routine, that might be how my indigenous people's connection to the land inform how we interact with the land today. And that's the question. And that might be a question that students come up with. In third grade when we're learning about indigenous peoples in Massachusetts, that's the particular curriculum they were talking about in the unit they were talking about. And so they were like, that is something that would be really high level for a student to ask, but also is like very possible even if they just asked part of that question. Um, because this cues them to think about those things. So obviously we took this in a direction in, in the BPS work and thinking about this framework in a direction that is. Um, far from the background knowledge, like we end up in a really analytical, kind of heady space, but we get there by first thinking about that content knowledge. So again, we're thinking about that Zaretta Hammond progression. We're scanning a hard drive. Have I seen this before? Have I seen something similar? We are chewing and remixing. How is this new content connected to what I already know? How do I make sense of it? And which cognitive routines can I use? Right? So as students are making sense of the new information, they're accessing background knowledge, what is familiar, they're using maybe one of those frameworks to do that. Then that's where they can start to make sense of things because they do have that affirmed background experience or connection to other media. They have experienced this before. They have valuable, um, kind of knowledge and insight. So now we're gonna apply a cognitive routine and we're gonna elevate that into a critical question or a level of analysis that's going to truly. Level up the historical thinking skills and the analytical thinking skills in the class. Whether we're generating questions, we are participating in student led discourse, we are writing a claim, evidence reasoning paragraph, whatever it is. So here is what I would advise if you're just getting started with this or background knowledge feels really hard. Um, what I would do is I would pick a framework. So one of the ones that we did either, uh, funds of Knowledge or cultural Wealth Framework. Or pick a piece of that framework and just invite students to make connections using that one queue. Does this make you think of, you know, how you've learned to figure out roles and organizations, right? Whatever the, the queue is, right. Often these connections can lead to very insightful analysis, and you can do this at any point in the unit. It could be just when you're starting, if you're inviting students to kind of access that background knowledge, like a typical KWL chart, like when you would do that, use that queue there. You could also use it at the very end of a unit or anywhere in the middle, but at the end of the unit it might be like when we are trying to, we got really granular, we learned a bunch of facts in the social studies unit, and now we're trying to analyze and draw bigger kind of key ideas. Maybe answering the essential question and we're trying to connect possibly likely to the present. That is where that lived experience of someone in the present could do that, right? You're gonna tie it all together. You're gonna expand through connections. You started by like entering the conversation and entering the social studies content with a connection through your background knowledge linkage, and now you're expanding it outwards in your analysis at the end, right? So you kind of start big, start broad, get narrow and get granular, and then you broaden out again for analysis. I think that's a very common kind of arc. Okay. And the number two option to get started, if that feels like, you know what, that's a lot to introduce a new framework to my students. Fine know instead where the connections are already being made by students. So your students are probably doing this to some degree, or maybe they're just about to make them like they get really close. Maybe they make some offhanded comment about how it's similar to something in their lives, but they're making it. As a joke or something, right? Like whatever it is, share what you're noticing with students and then what you can do, and this is so cool, co-create your own slide or physical on paper anchor chart with those connection cues, because then they'll be rooted in the student ideas, which lends even more validity to this concept and this tool, and something that they could actually use. They'll remember it better. Okay, that's what I have for you today. I will drop a link to the various frameworks in the show notes and blog posts for the episode. We'll also drop that, uh, free resource on generating questions, resource bank, which will have that slides for queuing background knowledge, connections from those, uh, kind of three categories we shared today. All of this information is gonna be at lindsaybethlyons.com/blog/254. 
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In this episode, we talk with Dr. Sarah Burnham, a postdoctoral scholar who works at CIRCLE (The Centre for Information & Research on Civic Learning) at Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. She primarily works on projects related to K-12 civics education. In our discussion, she emphasizes the transformative power of civics education and shares ways to create inclusive classrooms where both teachers and students are supported. Dr. Burnham discusses fostering critical consciousness and anti-oppressive attitudes within educational settings. Civic education, according to her, isn't about politicizing students but equipping them with tools to engage with their communities and society effectively. Sarah Burnham is a postdoctoral fellow at CIRCLE focusing on civic learning and development in K-12 education. She received her Ph.D. from Suffolk University in Applied Developmental Psychology. Her work aims to help teachers and schools embrace culturally sustaining pedagogies authentically so that all students feel affirmed in their lived experiences to effectively engage in civic action for themselves and their communities. She is also passionate about positive youth development and developing critical consciousness and anti-oppressive attitudes across the lifespan both online and offline. The Big Dream Dr. Burnham's vision for education is a landscape where classrooms nurture support and belonging for both teachers and students. She believes that this starts by paying teachers fairly and diversifying the teaching workforce to create a strong sense of community. Additionally, students should have access to resources reflecting their diverse experiences, creating genuine engagement with their learning environments. Mindset Shifts Required To begin creating classrooms that nurture support and belonging, Dr. Burnham emphasizes the need for educators and administrators to embrace participatory decision-making in classrooms, allowing students to have a say in their educational experiences. This involves teachers reflecting on their comfort with flexible classroom dynamics and administrators supporting these changes. Further, it means prioritizing social studies and civics education—and new ways of teaching—even when it feels noisy or messy. Action Steps A lot of Dr. Burnham’s work surrounds pedagogical practices that foster critical consciousness in anti-oppressive attitudes. For clarity, critical consciousness refers to the ability to recognize and analyze oppressive political, economic, and social forces that are shaping society, and to take action against those forces. Anti-oppressive attitudes require someone to actively acknowledge power disparities and work for equity and liberation. Ideally these two are working in tandem in education, and educators who want to embrace this in their classrooms can begin with these steps in their civics education practices: Step 1: Understand the purpose of civics education. It’s not to push a specific ideology or push students to become overly politicized outside the classroom. Rather, it’s helping students see the connection to their community, what’s happening, and their part in it. Step 2: Prioritize students' voices in decision-making processes within the classroom, ensuring their experiences help shape the learning environment. It’s important to also include more diverse voices in the curriculum, ones that are grounded in the students’ identities, histories, and communities. Step 3: Engage in self-reflection. Educators need to ask the question: Am I okay with being this flexible in the classroom? Because centering students’ voices means creating space for lived experiences and different ideas, which can be uncomfortable at times. Step 4: Implement participatory exercises that don’t just deliver content, but shape experiences of community. Shared decision-making is practicing democracy in the classroom. For example, a group budgeting exercise helps students learn about real-world issues that matter to them. Challenges? Educators may find it challenging to shift from traditional methods to more flexible, student-centered approaches. They need administrative support to explore these new pedagogies and incorporate them effectively, and there’s a need for quality professional development to guide educators in these transitions. One Step to Get Started One way to get started is for educators to identify local representatives and explore their positions on funding for schools and public goods. Engage students and families in discussions about these issues and encourage them to participate in community activities like voting or local meetings to demonstrate the practical application of civic involvement. Stay Connected You can stay connected with Dr. Sarah Burnham on LinkedIn or send her an email at [email protected]. Keep up with CIRCLE’s research on the Tufts website. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing the Curricululm Playlist with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 253 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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Transcript:
Lindsay Lyons: Dr. Sarah Burnham, welcome to the time for teachership podcast. Sarah Burnham: Thank you for having me. Lindsay Lyons: I'm really excited. I know we've been kind of nerding out just a little bit right before we hit record, but would love for folks who are engaging with this episode just to know you know who you are beyond maybe the professional bio. Sarah Burnham: Yeah, of course. So, um, just to iterate, my name is Sarah Burnham. Um, I am a postdoctoral scholar, um, at Circle. Um, I primarily work on projects related to K through 12 civic education. Um, I've been super into this. Uh, the new social studies curriculum in Massachusetts called Investigating History. Been working on it for about three years, and I'm really excited for what I've seen and the growth for the teachers. Um, I even have a sticker on my water bottle for investigating history. Um, but beyond the, uh, professional stuff, I was born and raised in the suburbs of Boston. Um, I just finished reading, um, rabid by Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy. Um, very interesting nonfiction book about the cultural history of rabies. Um, and I'm also really digging the new Sabrina Carpenter album. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. I love this. I love the whole humanness of your response. Thank you. So now for a more, uh, potentially academic or, or work related education related question, I love starting with this. So, Betina love describes freedom dreaming as dreams, uh, grounded in the critique of injustice. And I'm curious just what is your freedom dream for education? Sarah Burnham: Mm-hmm. Yeah, this is a great question and I spent a lot of time thinking about this. Um, so my freedom dream is that, uh, is making classrooms, places where both teachers and students feel cared for and supported. So I think that mostly starts with making sure that teachers are paid fairly for everything that they do. Um, and I think if that happened, we'd probably see way more teachers from all kinds of backgrounds sticking around instead of burning out or leaving. Um, and then when teachers are coming from different backgrounds. Students are feeling more connected and they actually feel like they're part of the classroom community. So that's the one part of it. The other part is also. Uh, getting more relevant resources that reflect the diversity of students and their experiences. So, um, circles research has shown that less than half of young people say that they actually feel like they belong at school. Um, and that's a huge red flag. So that feeling of belonging isn't the same for everyone and particularly for, um, minoritized groups. Um, they feel it less than others feeling like they don't belong. So let's tell us there's a, that there's a lot of work to do in caring for both students and teachers. Um, so what is really exciting me and something that I would love to work towards and help, uh, teachers and practitioners work towards is making the idea of classrooms where students are not just learning about democracy and theory, but are. Practicing it. So things like participatory budgeting or, uh, group decision making where students get to use their voice and feel like they matter and feeling like they're belonging in this community. Um, and having that kind of hands-on experience also builds confidence, um, not just in school but also outside of school. Um. Then also to go back to the teacher side of this, um, school leaders and administrators need to have teachers' backs. Um, I know that this is a crazy time for everyone, um, but they, uh, administrators at the very least, can protect time for social studies, um, and civics because often those are relegated towards, um, prepping for, um, standardized testing, um, or often for supplemental services. Supplemental services should also be prioritized, but often kids are being pulled out of social studies for those supplemental services. Um, and so prioritizing social studies and civics and encouraging teachers to try new ways of teaching, even if it feels noisy or messy, um, and making sure that like it's, they feel okay about it. Um, so that was a lot that I just said, but. Making sure both teachers and students are cared for. And that starts from caring for teachers, caring for um, uh, students, and then also making sure they're protected by their administrator and their institutions. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. I am like furiously scribbling notes. This is amazing. I love all of this. I love the concept of pr, practicing democracy in theory, like Sure. Budgeting. So cool. I love the idea of protecting that time for social studies because one of the things we've found out from the third and fourth grade pilot with investigating history of Massachusetts is like, no one has time. Like it's not, it's just not allotted. And so then it's like how do you create that time? Well, what is it being used for? Like you said, it's like standardized test prep and. It is so disheartening when it's like this is civics is like how you engage with the world, with your community. This is a lifelong thing that people need to develop capacity for, and yet we routinely kind of erase it from the structure of how school is done, particularly at lower levels. And it is so depressing. So thank you for naming that. I really appreciate that. And I also just love your idea of like risk taking, like the idea of like risk taking pedagogically and like supporting that as an admin. So often I think as a teacher there's kind of this fear of like an observation is happening and it's gonna be punitive. And it's like, how cool would it be if we had admin who are like, yeah, I support you trying that new thing, and I'll come in and I'll collect data for you and we can reflect together. And I know it's gonna be messy and it might be loud. And like all the things that traditional schooling tells us, it's like not good pedagogy, but like is great, you know? Mm-hmm. I just. Oh my gosh. All the things. Yes. Thank you. Sarah Burnham: Yeah, and like, so we would do like classroom observations for the evaluation and like teachers were so nervous and I was like, please do not be nervous. I don't, I don't care what you are doing. I wanna see how this, this, the classroom is functioning like as a whole, like it are the students engaging. Like this is not evaluative, I'm not sharing this with anybody. This is all confidential and I think that was hard for teachers to kind of get over the, because like so often it's a higher up that's in the classroom. I'm just like, I am just here to take notes. Just here to take notes. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, I would love that culture broadly to permeate like the school, like both for outsiders, but like internal, like peer-to-peer teacher, like observations and things would be so lovely. Um, and I know, so thank you so much for sharing so much of the research, that statistic about less than half of young people reporting belonging at school is like soul crushing makes me so sad. Also though, the hopeful part of me, the critical, hopeful part is like, how cool would it be if that is a metric that schools were tracking internally, right. To just be like. Okay. Like, we're gonna measure this every three months or something, and we're gonna just like make moves towards increasing that number. So I, I do think for people who are engaging with this episode, like, you can do this, this is something that you can track and value it just as much, if not more, right. Than those standardized test scores that we devote so much time and energy to. Um, but I know you have a lot of, a lot of research knowledge. Would love to, to learn from you in all of that. So curious what the research says about civic education in whatever way you wanna take that. I know that's. Super broad field of research, um, but also thinking about. Specifically, I know you research like anti-oppressive attitudes in youth critical consciousness. Like what pedagogies or pedagogical practices foster critical consciousness in anti-oppressive attitudes. 'cause I think that's what many of us are in the work to do and would love to know what the research has on that. Sarah Burnham: I. Yeah, that's a great question. And so before I get into like kind of the meat of this question, I just wanna make sure that, um, I'm clarifying what I mean by by critical consciousness and anti-oppression. So, critical consciousness, um, developed I think in the mid 19 hundreds. Um, so this refers to the ability to recognize and analyze oppressive political, economic and social forces that are shaping society and to take action against those forces. So critical consciousness, um, and a lot of, at least the developmental sec. Uh, psychological literature, which is my background, um, has like three distinct, uh, dimensions of like critical reflection. So understanding kind of like your own positionality, um, political self-efficacy. So understanding what you can and can't do kind of in your position. And then also sociopolitical action of like what are the actual actions that you're taking. Um, so that's my understanding of critical consciousness. Um. And then anti-oppressive attitudes. Um, so that's requiring someone to like actively acknowledging p power disparities and work for equity and liberation. So these two concepts should ideally be working in tandem in education and then create a school climate that cares for teachers and students. Um, so, but to get back to the question at hand, um, so I think, um. I think this is a lot something that educators are grappling with, right, right now. But research paints a pretty clear picture that when done well, civic education works, right? It's linked to better civic outcomes, like stronger community engagement. Um, understanding how, a better understanding of how government works and how you can affect government. And then also a deeper sense, deeper sense of a responsibility to participate in your community. Um. And so civic education is boosting knowledge, civic dispositions. Um, but I also wanna emphasize that based also on circles, research that, um, having robust civic education, um, is not leading students to become overly per politicized outside of the classroom, which is I think something that, um, uh, a lot of, uh, naysayers against civic education. Um. Might have a concern about, um, it's not linked to partisan outcomes. It's not links to ideological indoctrination. Um, what it's doing is giving students tools to make sense of the world and see themselves as people who can have a say in it. Um, and I think that's the core of civic education. And then, um, the critical, conscious and anti oppressiveness of like, understanding that you can affect your community and you have a responsibility as a citizen to kind of make things better for both yourself and for your community. Um. So, um, I think one of the key shifts is around how we teach civics, um, not just what we teach. Um, and I think investigating history is a great example of that, where inquiry-based learning is a huge part of, uh, transitioning how we're thinking about teaching civics. So when students are encouraged to ask real questions and investigate issues that matter to them, um, and engage in dialogue with their peers, they're starting to build those critical thinking skills in the classroom. And then those skills transfer far beyond the classroom, like in their afterschool activities, um, or maybe in, uh, even just in conversations with their families, which I will get to at a later point. Um, but also, uh, fostering critical consciousness. Um. It also re requires, um, making civic learning relevant to students' lives. And I think that's also connected to having a classroom community where students feel like they belong, right? If they don't feel like they belong, then they're thinking that civic, civic learning is not relevant and then they're not fostering critical consciousness, um, which is kind of not where we wanna be. Um, so it's. It about also about including more diverse voices in the curriculum and grounding the entire learning experience in students' identities, histories, and communities. Um, one of the things that we learned from the teachers during these, uh, evaluations was that, um. Social studies, classrooms, and lessons, um, often act as like windows, um, where we're looking out at other people, other places and other times. Um, but we need to have more mirrors or spaces for students to reflect on their experiences, their own positionality, and how they fit into the broader social and historical context. Um, and this was something that. People like appreciated about investigating history was that it does provide some of those, um, mirrors, um, rather than like kind of the windows. Um, and then. Yeah. So civic education is not just about kind of government structures or historical timelines. It's building the habits of democracy, um, feeling like you're connected to your community, your classroom. Um, and when students kind of see themselves in the story, then they kind of see that they have the power to shape kind of what comes next. Lindsay Lyons: Amazing. Oh my gosh, what a great synthesis. Thank you. And, and I'm thinking about the teacher who might be, um, listening or reading the blog posts and, and thinking about their specific actions. So maybe they do have investigating hist history as a curriculum. Maybe, you know, they're, they're in a different state. They don't have that. But they want to shift pedagogically, like how, you know, they're doing things. And I know you mentioned the inquiry being huge, like en engaging students and asking, I like that you said real questions. Real questions that mean something to them. And investigating those sources as well as having dialogue. I love also just the idea of building habits of democracy. So how do teachers, I mean, what have you found in the research or how have you, how have you learned about. What specific practices may be things that, that teachers can do to kind of implement or, or bring about some of this learning for students? Sarah Burnham: Yeah. Um, so, um, first I think it means centering student voice and like not just a buzz buzzword, but like in a way that's like real and consistent. Um, so creating classroom environments where students' opinions, questions, and lived experiences actually help shape, um, what happens in the room. Um, and that can be really uncomfortable. And I think that also requires some self-reflection on the part of the teachers of like, do I feel okay with being this flexible in the classroom? Um, and but they also kind of need, again, their, uh, administrators to support them in making some of these choices. Um. Uh, in some of circle's research, and Ill be, these are with kind of older grades, but having that shared decision making framework, like participatory budgeting has been really effective in students feeling like they have a voice in kind of what happens in the classroom and what happens at their school. Um, so that is really kind of centering student voice, um, and. Um, we've also heard that like having, um, adjusted materials can also, um, like adjusted materials to reflect kind of, um, student um, experiences in the classroom can also be really helpful. So, um. Like, uh, if it's, if they feel, if teachers feel uneasy discussing things, um, like they can ask for help to do so, um, and making sure that they feel okay to ask for help. Um, and having kind of robust professional development is also really important. Um, and, um. Yeah. So for teachers, like it's, it's kind of like they're not just delivering content, they're also kind of shaping students' experiences of community, um, and kind of of democracy when they're trying, when they're doing this shared decision making in the classroom, if that's, um, an avenue do they decide to, uh, pursue. Um, and yeah, so it means kinda doing a lot of self-reflection and then also feeling okay with. Exploring some of those more uncomfortable or uneasy kind of pieces that either about themselves or about kind of history, um, at large. Lindsay Lyons: Love the different components of, of what you shared. What I really latched onto my like scholarly student voice brain was like, ooh. Shared decision making structures. I love that. Are you, have you seen in the research the, like an example that you could share around either a class-based decision making structure, like something that you would invite students into to like. Help make a decision around, or even, I know you said upper grades, even if it's like a school based decision making structure, like an advisory council or anything. Um, anything that you've come across that, that feels either interesting to you or just like you've, you've seen it come up in the research and, and wanted to share it? Sarah Burnham: Yeah, so I can actually, so I wasn't, I'm not involved in the, um. Illinois kind of democracy school project as much as my colleagues. Um, but there was a big participatory budgeting, um, project in the Illinois Civic hub schools where, um, there were, they highlighted a couple of, um, high schools, um, where they were given like a small amount of money. Um. And they were thinking about kind of what students needed. So, um, there was one, um, school where, um, they, uh, used the money to create a resource closet, um, for students. So, um, things like, um, clothes, um, hygiene supplies or food. Um, so students like basic needs could be met. Um, so that was one way that that kind of showed up in one of the high schools that they worked with. Um, there was another, um, school that they did a similar project with participatory budgeting, um, where they looked at, um, students. Like students when they were like divided into, um, groups, um, especially with like different like abilities, they came up with like different ideas. Um, and then they had like, and this is also part and parcel with the participatory budgeting process of like generating ideas and then voting on some of the things. But it was really interesting some of the ideas that came up. Um, of like new speakers having a coffee bar, um, having a digital media room. Um, ultimately that particular school, um, chose to set up like a calming room, um, so students could feel like comfortable and safe in their school. Um, but yeah, it like having students, like having their ideas heard, even if they weren't voted on. I think it's still a very generative process for the students. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. Thank you for those concrete examples. I love those. And especially as a former high school teacher and, and thinking through the lens of like maybe a principal or someone who's listening to this from the high school lens, oh, I wanna measure student's sense of belonging. That's gonna be a metric for our success. How do I do that? Well, I open up the floor for conversations and ideas like this. And if we aren't gonna go for a particular idea, someone nominated, we at least get back to them and say, I think that's one of the components of like Laura Lundy's, four pieces of voices. Like, you gotta like get back to 'em and like let them know why, why we didn't choose something. Um, and I, I love that. So, such clear examples like of what can come out of inviting students into that process. I think I've even seen in as young as first grade in the student of voice literature that like even just co-designing the classroom space can be something, right? Like, well, how you know it, there's like a weird impediment to like how you come into the classroom and hang up your stuff in your cubby and like how do we redesign that or. I need a calming space. How could we make that happen? Um, just last night, my, my kid was like, I, we have a corner in our preschool where I don't feel mad because you could just squeeze a stuffy. And I was like, I love that. Would you like to make that at home? And he was like, we, we can do that. What? Yes, like just the tiniest things sometimes are just so valuable. So I appreciate your concrete examples and I think to transition to, to family life at home, I, I think. A lot of families or a lot of educators actually wear kind of two hats where they're like kind of parenting or supporting a young person in some capacity in their families and they're like, yeah, I do this at school, but maybe I don't think about bringing it home. Or How could I bring it home? Or someone could like, share this episode with a family member, the of their student. Um, how can families also support? So we kind of have this dual support from both school and home. We have this kind of partnership around civic engagement. Any recommendations you have for families? Sarah Burnham: Yeah, so I think that's a great point. And I think that like, you know, civic education is kind of also happening like all the time. Like I think a lot of times we think it like happens in schools like no, it's happened like all the time. Like when you're going to the grocery store and like even just like returning like. The carriage like that is still like making things like better and easier for the other, um, folks at the grocery store. Um, but like, yeah, families are a huge part of the picture. Um, so, um, more often than not, young people are usually getting information from their immediate family members. Um, so, uh, seeing their, uh. Parents or even their, or just caregivers talking about local issues, voting, attending different community events, or just having, um, like thoughtful conversations about what's happening in the world. Like young people are noticing that. Um, and they can see that like, Hey, this is something that matters to my community. So what can parents do, um, or any family member do, like an older sibling, an aunt or an uncle of like just. Helping them volunteer or even just like taking your kid with you to go vote and see what the process looks like. Right. It's like it's, uh, at least, uh, when I was voting in Somerville a couple months ago, like it was pretty easy. Everybody was so friendly and like the stickers are like so much fun to get. Um, I currently have a collection of I voted stickers, um, just like pasted on one of our cabinets. Um, and like. Young people are pick up on these things. They pick up on this. And, um, having family support is just really important. Um, and then it's also kind of, especially before they turn 18, is like reinforcing those ideas, like of participating in democracy. So doing like, like bake sales, um, or just like going to like some of the afterschool, um, programming things. Um, or, um, modeling even just, uh, modeling, respectful disagreement during dinner conversations that can also. But also be really effective in helping, uh, young people understand how to have those kinds of disagreements and to respectfully disagree. Um, because I think that's also something else that can come up in the classroom is how do we have those res, the respectful disagreements. And I think that's a great place to kind of see what's happening at home and then model that kind of in the classroom. Um, so. I think like families, like don't need to be experts obviously, in this work. Um, but they kind of need to be open and engaged and kind of willing to show like their kids or, um, other family members that their voice matters, um, kind of now and not just when they turn 18 and they can vote. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. I love that you said that because that is consistently one of the kind of points of frustration of schooling as we always say. Like, oh, we're preparing them for this future time. And it's like, no, they right now they can do that right now. Yeah. Sarah Burnham: Yeah. One of my colleagues like keep, like, keep saying in these conversations with civic education, we can't expect students to practice all these things at 18 when they haven't gotten any experience with it. Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely. And, and we can't instill this idea in students that their voice matters and their ideas have impact. If, if we're not actually like doing that now, right. They're gonna be like, I guess only adults have that. 'cause you keep telling me to wait. I am so fascinated by all of that. You have shared, I'm sure there's so much more to that you have come across in the researcher. Is there anything that we, before we get to kind of our lightning round questions, is there anything that we did not talk about that you wanted to bring up? I. Sarah Burnham: Um, I don't think so. I talked a lot about things and I hope some of this was helpful Lindsay Lyons: For sure. Um, yeah, no, for sure. It is. And I, and I think one of the things that people like is usually at the end we ask, uh, our first lightning round question, well, I'll just get to it, I guess is like some sort of first step. So like an action I can take today or tomorrow. Upon ending the episode and being like, I wanna implement something. I know we talked about a range of things, both at home and in school. What do you think feels like an attainable, kind of like starter people could do soon? Sarah Burnham: Um, yeah, so I at least, 'cause I mentioned being in Somerville, I know like our. Municipal elections are coming up. So looking up who is running and what they stand for. So, um, there's been a lot of talk about funding the schools, um, in Somerville, um, and also libraries. So thinking about who your local representatives are, who's running, and find out what they stand for in terms of like fair compensation, um, and then public, like public goods funding, and then. Like that also feeds into some of the, what I said before is like when teachers are feeling supported, um, it can create the kind of classrooms where students are empowered to ask these big questions. Um, and I know it might be. Harder for like, not cities, but it seems like a lot, at least in my experience, people who are running for office like are fine with like talking to you, like just sending like an email. And if they're not fine with talking to you via email, then maybe you've focused your efforts to somebody else who's running. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, I love that. I have a, a, a colleague, I'm pretty sure this was Cara, who, you know, Cara Pranov, who, who was saying, you know, actually all of my, like my kids and my niece and my nephews, like, they know and have talked to all of the people in their, um, like local, like people that represent them because it is possible to do, it is attainable. You just have to like reach out. So I love that you brought that up. Um, and I, I really love this idea of like. Considering not just who's writing, but I I think you also mentioned like funding and I am so fascinated when you even hand over, like the hypothetical question of like, if you were to control the budget, where would you allocate money to? Anyone from high school all the way to like a preschooler, right? I mean, the preschooler probably say like toys, which is the usual answer I get. But like, other than toys, where would you spend money? Um, but making sure that people have. What they need as kind of that lens and through line is like, where do you think people have a need? Where do you, right. I think that's such a great conversation starter. 'cause every kid's gonna have a different answer. And so if you're at home, cool, you learn more about your kid and what they care about. And if you're in a school system, like, okay, in this class we had like 25 different answers. So how do we, how do people actually decide where to, like, that's such a lovely entry point into, um, conversations about civics and government and, and all of that. Um, so I love that that lens of like, who are the leaders? Right? How does the funding get allocated? And then there's such a beautiful, um, kind of inquiry map that you can start there to dive into all of the structures and ways decisions are made. Sarah Burnham: Exactly. Always inquiry all the time. Lindsay Lyons: That's right. Um, okay. This one is kind of just for fun, but it can be research based, but also just in your life in general. What are you learning about lately? Sarah Burnham: Um, so I've actually, this is research based, so it's not like as fun or exciting, um, but it's fun and exciting to me 'cause I'm learning. Um, I've been attending some weekly webinars about research practice partnerships, um, or RPPs. So they're like collaborations between, um, education agencies and researchers. Um. So there's like, they've been doing some short webinars, especially they've been kind of over lunch, so I don't really like talk. Um, but um, learning about like what makes a successful research practice partnership, I think like, uh, people may be more familiar with like the U Chicago, um, consortium where they primarily partner with, um, Chicago Public Schools, um, to, um, increase or improve, um, different aspects of, uh. Just schooling of like, I think there's like computer science, education, um, reading and literacy, but they're like really purposeful, um, partnerships that people like Foster. Um, so I'm learning more about that. Um, but it seems like a very powerful way to connect evidence to poli policy decisions like in real time. Lindsay Lyons: What that is fascinating. I have not heard of this, so I need to investigate. Thank you for that. Um, and then finally, how can our audience connect with you? Continue to follow your research. Check out what Circle is doing all the things. Sarah Burnham: Yeah. So, um, I am on Blue Sky, um, as Bernham Burglar, that is my last name with burglar added to the end of it. Um, I had been meeting about, I've been meeting to be better about using Blue Sky. Um. You can also follow me on LinkedIn as SL Burnham. Um, for more formal connections, you can email me at my Tufts email address. It's just, uh, sarah dot [email protected]. Um, and then for all circle research, which is not just on civic education, there's many aspects of young people civic life. Um, I think we just posted something about, uh, rural turnout, um, and also youths connect, uh, young people's connection to social movements. Um, you can check out circle.ts.edu and there's a ton there. And you can also find more about some of the things I was talking about, especially with the participatory budgeting, um, project and some of the other work, um, in Illinois. Lindsay Lyons: Amazing. Dr. Burnham, thank you so, so much for talking to us today. Sarah Burnham: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure. 4/6/2026 252. Processing ICE and Resistance using Think Feel Do with Kara Pranikoff and Dr. Eric Soto-ShedRead Now
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In this episode, host Lindsay talks with Kara Pranikoff and Dr. Eric Soto-Shed. They introduce a thoughtful framework designed to help educators navigate high emotion topics in the classroom. They specifically frame the conversation around current events involving ICE, and the intense emotional and political responses nationwide. Grounding the conversation in what’s currently impacting students today, this episode offers practical and hands-on knowledge for educators to apply to their classroom settings today. Kara Pranikoff spent more than two decades in NYC schools as a classroom teacher; reading interventionist; Instructional Coach; curriculum designer; and an adjunct instructor at Bank Street College of Education. As a consultant and coach she nurtures educators in developing inquiry based practices in social studies and writing that develop independent student thinking, voice and a sense of belonging for all members of the community. Dr. Soto-Shed is a lecturer in education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His research centers on curriculum development and teacher training, with his work aiming to promote inquiry and equity in education. He also consults on school district initiatives and conducts professional development workshops for educators of all levels. Why? At the time of recording (end of February 2026), over 30 people died in ICE detention facilities in 2025, six people have died interacting with ICE agents in 2026, and ICE arrested around 3,000 people over six weeks in Minnesota in early 2026. This has all led to widespread protests and fear among immigrant communities. Emotions are high, and anyone working with youth is wondering: how do we engage with this in a thoughtful way? This episode walks educators through the “Think, Feel, Do” framework to engage in this and other high-emotion topics with students and young people. What: Understanding the Framework The goal of the “Think, Feel, Do” framework is to both honor the range of natural responses that students would have, and then broaden their responses. The framework centers on the student experience, who will all respond differently:
Understanding these differences helps educators respond in a range of different ways. How: Implementing “Think, Feel, Do” To begin engaging students in high-emotion conversations, like what’s happening with ICE, educators can implement the following action steps: 1. Lead with content While it’s not always the first thing we think about when addressing high-emotion topics, it is very important to leverage high-quality, accurate content about the topic. This grounds the conversation in facts and what’s really happening and helps students sort through the volume of information they’re exposed to. Content is a starting point for the conversation and will really engage the “think” side of things. 2. Reflect on values In addition to the content, the facts, it’s also important for educators to start by lifting up fundamental values. What do we hold as true and important? How do these values influence our understanding of immigration policies and human dignity? This gets at the heart of the issue and connects with what we believe to be important. 3. Create space for all responses Knowing that students will engage in these conversations very differently is a key truth to start with. Some will know very little about the situation, whereas others may be actively engaged in protests or resistance. It’s important to create space for all responses—they’re all valid, and we can learn from each other. 4. Engage students compassionately When approaching high-emotion conversations, it’s also important to note that some students are directly (or materially) impacted by what’s happening. Educators can lead with compassion and understanding, checking in with students and tapping into that “feel” side to ensure they are safe and doing okay. 5. Find joy amidst challenges Bringing in experiences of joy and hope can offer a powerful compliment to the oppression and adversity people are going through. Educators can actively bring in these expressions of joy, like artistic forms of resistance and resilience, to emphasize our shared humanity. 6. Partner with families Similar to how educators need to understand the different ways students engage in high-emotion topics (e.g., “think, feel, do” orientation), parents can benefit from understanding this, too. Even in the same household, children can have a range of responses. Parents can lead with authenticity, showing their kids how they’re responding to the news, and then process it with their children. They can also model media literacy and good media habits to be mindful of what information is being consumed in your house. There also needs to be strong communication between educators and parents, offering guidance on how to continue these high-emotion conversations at home. One Step to Take Today To begin integrating this framework into educational practice, begin with a reflective practice. Educators can do this by considering personal responses to current events through the lens of the framework. Stay Connected You can stay connected with our guests via their websites: Eric Soto-Shed and Kara Pranikoff. To help you implement today’s takeaways, we’re sharing our Think Feel Do cards with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 252 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Welcome to another episode of the Time for teachership podcast. Today I have my amazing adored colleagues, Dr. Eric Soche and Kara Proff here to talk to you about, uh, something that I think is coming up a lot for us all in all of the. Communities that we coach and work in and with, um, which is how to enter a conversation about ICE in this time. Um, we're airing this in April 7th. We're recording this on February 20th, 2026. I just wanna like, contextualize that piece for everyone, but really we're kind of thinking about. Where we are in time. I'll set the stage here with some factual context and then kind of what do we do to respond to this time in partnership with fellow educators and thinking about the youth in our spaces, whether that's families or teachers. So let's get into the context. So at least 32 people have died in ICE detention facilities in the year 2025. Six people have died interacting with ICE agents in 2026. And in early 2026 ICE arrested 3000 people over six weeks in Minnesota. I think that's an important context to set first because there's this been long history, right, and that's only looking at the last year, year or so. Then Amids protest. Renee Good was shot and killed by an ice agent. Later in January, Alex Preddy was shot and killed by federal immigration agents while filming those agents and the Trump administration has called both victims domestic terrorists. Widespread protests have ensued and widespread fear in immigrant communities has resulted in reduced school attendance in an education setting and close many businesses. So, so much is happening. Emotions are high, and I think anyone working with youth is wondering how do we help youth make sense of this? If they're seeing this on the news, how do we process and talk about this? What do I say if it comes up? Do I bring it up? So many questions. And one of the big questions that we've gotten from educators is, how do we do this without further traumatizing students? Like, this is already like a hard thing. Um, and how do we do this in a thoughtful way? So with that, we have developed kind of a, a framework for, um, social studies, instruction and pedagogy generally. Cara, can you talk us through kind of the why behind the framework and how it connects to this moment? Kara Pranikoff: Yeah, so thank you Lindsay. I'm so happy to be here with you and Eric talking today. Um, in many of our conversations, again, trying to figure out the best way to address what's happening in current times with students and with families. We were looking. For a way to both honor the range of natural responses that students were going to have, and then also broaden their responses. So we thought about a framework that really centered kind of the student experience. It's the think, feel, and do framework. So it's composed of kind of three different questions. So students, when they're. Brought to a current event or a, um, high emotion topic. Some students are gonna respond by thinking about what do I think? So they're going to be curious. They're gonna want some more information. They're going to really delve into the desire for more content and some criticality. Some students are naturally gonna respond by thinking about how they feel. These are the students who really connect with their identities, connect with the emotions, and, um, lead kind of with empathy sometimes, um, even with joy. And then some students are going to be thinking about, what can I do? They're going to be called to action. How can they respond? What are the skills that they can develop? To respond. So in the creation of this framework, the think, feel, and do framework, we were really looking for a way that teachers could respond or support their students in responding in a range of ways, and also kind of deepen their response, um, to the issues that come into the classroom. Lindsay Lyons: Thank you for that overview. And Eric, what advice would you give us as we're thinking about all that stuff? Like what's on your mind? Eric Soto-Shed: Well, you know, the first is, I'd love to know, ping back maybe a follow up, uh, to, to you Lindsay, and you talk about, you know, how do we sort of address this with our students without, you know, further potentially traumatizing or traumatizing students. I'm, I'm curious if you could like, maybe unpack for us in the audience, like what do you mean when you say traumatized? Um, students. Lindsay Lyons: I so appreciate that question and I, um, I'll definitely open it up to, I'd love to hear what all of your thoughts are. Not sure exactly what the each individual teacher who has asked a version of this question has meant, but what I interpret it to mean is really like, how do we engage and not avoid hard, like what I would call high emotion topics in the classroom. And, um, particularly I'm thinking for students who are, you know, deeply feeling for students who are, whose backgrounds and experiences might be connected to whatever we're talking about, right? Like recognizing the opportunity for them to either step away, um, giving some space for just like the human response, to not be so overwhelming that now I can't function, I'm feeling. Like, I'm, I'm debilitated for the day. Like I'm, I'm down and out. Um, and so what's the, what's the way we engage in kind of that optimal zone of emotional engagement where I can feel discomfort, but I am not so uncomfortable, um, that I am like unable to function. Eric Soto-Shed: Appreciate that, that's really helpful. And I just think it's really, um, you know, important to sort of define the terms that we use because when we look at history, we look at current events, there are things that are hard, that are tough, that evoke a strong emotional responses. And those are things that we want to engage in responsibly as a teacher. At the same time, there are real sort of trauma and impacts that we really wanna avoid in our classrooms. And so I think that distinction you made is really, um, helpful. Boy, there's so much we could say, but maybe lemme just jump in with a couple of points and, uh, you know, I'd love to just be in dialogue with y'all. And so when we think about like, how do we address this, you know, I'm gonna name two things that I think are particularly useful to think about, particularly when we think about our framework. So, from the think, uh, part of our framework, we, we, we highlight curiosity and. Criticality, which I think are really high leverage, but I would, I would lift up content here, which is often the least sort of sexy and maybe appealing, but I think it could be really, really important because what content knowledge does is it provides. Context and explanatory power. And as Cara mentioned, you know, kids are gonna be curious like what's going on, right? And some way we sort of help sort of meet that curiosity or engage with that. Curiosity is through content, is through explaining like, here are some facts, here are some backgrounds. So when we think about, you know. And the particular, and at our current sort of moment right now, I really think it's important to take sort of a broad, sort of 40 year view of the history of sort of asylum, of the history of immigration or the more recent history of immigration. And that can really allay some fundamental, uh, content that can demystify what's happening. That can provide some, some context and some explanatory power, and that could really help young people begin to make sense. Potentially take a stance or think through deeper or begin to engage with some other feelings. So I think content is really important. And then I'll just lift this up and then, you know, Carl, Lizzie, maybe you wanna riff on, I think values are really important because I think values are kind of a nice sort of, um, they sit in between, I think both feelings and thinking, right? It's like, what do I hold to be really important? Some fundamental values. And I think through, um, lifting up values, it's a way to begin to, um, understand and explain. Certain policies and the impact of those policies and how we want to judge those through something that is, I think, on one hand could be a bit cerebral in sort of these values with these specific definitions. But on the other hand, gets to the heart about what do I feel and what I believe to be true. So I think content and values are an important, uh, place to begin to start. Lindsay Lyons: I love that. Thank you so much. Cara. Do you have thoughts at the moment? Kara Pranikoff: You know, I was just gonna say that I'm so glad that you started with content, Eric, because I think one of the challenges of our current day is that students come in with really with a range of content. They come in, some come in with a lot of information, some come in with misinformation. There's a lot of conversation that happens with students that can be really activating outside of the classroom. So I think if we are really clear about developing the, like leading with content, here are some facts. So that everybody can be on the same playing field, I think it can really kind of deescalate, um, and, um, help students feel safe in order to be able to engage with the, um, the ideas that are coming up in the classroom. So I just wanna amplify that. Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely. And I mean, I, I'm going to a couple, a couple thoughts. One, just as we're talking, I'm, I'm thinking about. How my almost 4-year-old is like engaging with this like, imagery that's happening on the front page of the paper. Right. That comes to our house. And so how I've had to, you know, explain that and then thinking about like the traumatizing, like how, how big do you get when you're talking with little ones versus high school students? Right. And so there's a range. Um, what I love about our framework though is that it's. It's agnostic to grade, right? It's agnostic to age. You can enter anywhere. So that content might look a little bit different for a 4-year-old, right? Than like a 14-year-old. Um, but that, that, that is just kind of like on my mind and what a cool, um, approach it is to kind of enter into any conversation with values regardless of how old they are. Um, and so I've been thinking about like, what's the values? We use in our home with young people. Right. And then how, what are the values that I've used in high school settings with older kids? And so like one of the things that we've talked about with a lot of current events is like, uh, are people more important than money? Right. And like, who's making, you know, like, we believe people are more important than money. Right? And so like what are kind of, in this case, it's not money, but it might be like a larger systemic like power, which is a little more. Maybe difficult to understand as a, as a 4-year-old, but more high school. Um, I think about the idea of safety being really present here. Right? And so my initial thought was like, what's the value, tension, safety, and what? But I think even before that, you unpack safety for whom, right? So it's like, oh, I wanna feel safe, so maybe I am like very, um, I, I want like strong borders. I'm air quoting here. For folks who are listening and this idea of safety, like, well, who gets to feel safe then? And who, who is safety for? Right. In that scenario. And so I think there's some like unpacking around values that could come up once we surface them. I'll stop there. I wanna know what you all are thinking. Eric Soto-Shed: It's great. I really appreciate how you unpack, uh, some values and if you wanna like look at, I think, um, you know, immigration policy from the broadest perspective, maybe the values start around as fairness, right? And it's like, what does it mean to be, treat people fairly who gets treated fair? Um, and I think there's just a lot that you can begin to do with just the, the concept of fairness and, uh, and get then get into some of the more minutia that was around like, you know, temporary protected status and how that was removed and. I think you can go both big picture around immigration, uh, policy and enforcement, as well as sort of more of the important policies that are having real implications under the lens of fairness. Kara Pranikoff: Um, I wanna. Just name two things first. Lindsay, you mentioned that one of the reasons that we really have enjoyed playing with this framework is that it is kind of grade agnostic. I also think the nice thing about this framework is that it is applicable not only in every grade, but in every, um, situation, right? So it, right now we're talking about ice, but something else will come up, and this framework just provides a steady way to engage with events that are happening. And I know that as. Parents and as educators we know we want to talk about hard things and sometimes we wonder, well, what's the best way? Right? So this framework really allows us to develop some muscles and our young people to develop some muscles, some ways into these conversations, um, and into listening to other folks responses. Um, in this situation when we're thinking about ice, I think it's interesting also to think about what can I do and what are people doing? And I think there's a interesting range there to look at. Um, you know, what are protests? Who is protesting? What do those protests look like? Are the protests peaceful? Are they not peaceful? Who is helping support the protestors? Who's bringing food, who's bringing warm coffee? Who is teaching students who are not feeling safe going to school. And so I think that this, um, moment in time, it can also allow us to show our young people kind of the range of ways that people can support moving forward towards good, towards safety for all, um, even in hard times. That it really takes all of us in a variety of ways. And I think young people can see that. Lindsay Lyons: I love that you, you brought it there. I, I was also thinking about, there's research somewhere that a colleague when I was teaching and I was teaching about all these hard things, right? And she was like, I just wanna let you know very kindly that the research says, you know, kids who learn about all this hard stuff and current events and all this oppression that's happening and have even just a very small. Recognition that there are people who are against this oppression and fighting back. They are just like so much better off than all the people who just learn the oppression and don't learn about the resistance. Kara Pranikoff: Hmm. Lindsay Lyons: And so that's such a great point and I think about. Uh, what that makes me think of is yes, the, the range and the focus on the civic action. And I also think about the kid who's not quite there yet and entering in a different space and they're kind of stuck in the field, or not stuck in the field, but they're entering in the field. And so I'm thinking now of a teacher who is designing a lesson or who's facilitating a class conversation, maybe that bubbled up. We have these various entry points, which I think the framework enables, but what considerations do, do you think a teacher should have when we have some kids who are like, yes, like I went to a protest immediately with my family, or I want to go do something right now. Then we have other kids who are in this other kind of state phase or parts of this three-pronged framework. Um, how do you design for that? Or like what considerations should you have or maybe language to provide to teachers too. Deal with that situation. Kara Pranikoff: So I think that's such an interesting question, Lindsay, and um, it makes me think about the courageous, uh, conversations Compass introduced by Glenn Singleton. And so Glenn Singleton introduced a compass that kind of introduced ways to. People respond when they're talking predominantly about race. And here I, one of the things that is strong about that is the recognition that all of the ways that we respond are okay. It can help us understand why somebody might. Um, have a really large feeling that kind of stops them, that they might get stuck in that feeling while somebody else might jump up and say, we've gotta make policy changes right now. Right. So I think to take it back to the think, feel, and do framework, I think in the classroom, the first thing the framework does is it typifies or normalizes the fact that all of us can hear the same information and have a variety, kind of a spectrum of responses, and they are all okay. I also think the next step is how can we learn from someone else's response? So if we were in a classroom and, um, Lindsay, you, you know, jumped up and you were like, I gotta go, go protest right now. Eric kind of took a step back and said, wait, I need some more information. I might, as an educator in that space say, okay, that's interesting. Eric, can you explain to Lindsay why you feel like you need some more information? Let's see. Lindsay, can you hear that? Lindsay? Can you explain to Eric what is making, you just wanna get up and go protest? Eric, can you hear that? So it's ultimately, we want our young folks to understand there's gonna be a range of response. All the responses are okay, and we can really learn. About other ways like expand our responses by hearing other people's natural reactions. Is that clear? Eric Soto-Shed: Yeah. If I could build off of that. I think like, please, I just wanna amplify and say like that would be, I think the most important takeaway, what card just said that sort of getting the students in different places to actually engage with each other about those different places as a way to connect learning. So I think that is like just such a powerful takeaway. That would be my like, headline. Um, one or two other things that I would note along with that is, um, also when we think about, um, you know, our, our framework, we talk about what can I do and we really kind of highlight skills and if you wanna kind of anchor kind of what's happening in the field, but what many teachers are doing, you can think about the C3 framework and this idea sort of wrapping up a learning or inquiry arc with like. Take making a claim and taking it informed action based on what you've learned. Right. And I think if I had students in different places, I might lean into those sort of two different sort of parts of that, uh, of, of, of that, uh, sort of end of the inquiry arc by the C3, which is to say either you can sort of make a claim or begin to wrestle with a claim about take a stand on this issue. Or you can actually act upon that and think about how do you want to get out there in the world and impact. I just think that offers two different options for students that are still sort of processing well, can we begin to take a stand and think about the other position, the other side, right? And, and make that claim, right? Mm-hmm. If you're like, I'm really convicted, I've thought this through, and then what? How do you want to act? So that'd be my one small sort of thing I think you could do in addition. And I think what, um, is deeply in on all of our minds, but hasn't been said. And so I don't wanna say it explicitly, right. To me, the biggest difference isn't, so it, it, it, the biggest difference that I would be thinking about all the possibilities of my students are who are my students that might be directly impacted by these policies. Right? And then that's a big game changer. And that's, I think first and foremost where my attention is going to, is like, how can we both learn about this event? But make students that have real material sort of threats to their existence, um, feel that this is a place where they can process, think and belong. And so I would lift that up. Um, I mean, it just, it it is not lost on us, right? That we have students that are not going to school right now. Um, and so for our students who are showing up, how can we really meet them where they're at? Um, I think just be the other thing that I'd be really considering. Lindsay Lyons: It makes me think too of just like the importance of that foundational culture of discourse about anything hard or high emotion, right? Is like this idea of a baseline understanding, for example, of like all humans are worthy of dignity and existence and safety and whatever that is for your class, but like that has to be in place because we can't have people coming in being like there are people or identities that people hold that have no space here. Right? That's like not, that's just like a no go. And I think that's important to note because I think. People are nervous sometimes in teacher positions or even leader positions that like we have to remain quote unquote neutral. And it's like, well, human dignity is not a thing to be neutral on. Right? Like we can take the stance of like, we're not going there. That's not up for to be. And I just wanna like name that for teachers who are nervous. Eric Soto-Shed: Thanks Lindsay. And just to like, you know, jump back to our framework too, when we think about like, those, you know, students that might be directly impacted by these policies, I think, you know, it might, you might wanna jump into the feel first, right? Really get a sense of like what's going on with their feelings. Um, recognizing that students, regardless of not their impact, could have all sorts of strong feelings, but really important with folks that have like sort of real material threats in their lives to just do the check in around the feeling piece first, some processing and metabolizing. Getting back to this idea of not further traumatizing students. So given a place for this to come to the service to work with this. And then move into the think right? And some of that more, or the skill piece. Whereas if um, you know, I feel students aren't gonna be as directly impacted, I might feel like, Hey, you know, a good entry point might be to build up, let's start with the content knowledge piece, right? And so that's just one of the many considerations for teachers. Kara Pranikoff: I also am thinking now, Eric, about where you started with this idea of content. 'cause I think when I think about this issue and our youngest students, our elementary school students, when they see a five-year-old, you know, detained, they do come in without understanding, but they know what a, a little child looks like, right? And so I think about the content of, um, explaining how and why that happened and explaining. Who are the helpers in your, in your community? Who can you look to right here? To your point, Lindsay, that we always wanna make sure that our students, um, feel, feel safe and feel, um, like protected, right? And so we've gotta understand where our students are, are entering, um, and that the fears are, are real, um, and present. Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely. I, and I'm thinking this is a, maybe a drastic shift now, but I'm thinking about earlier in the conversation, Cara, you mentioned Joy as you were explaining the framework and you were saying, you know, maybe, maybe joy comes in for some people that took me in a variety of directions mentally. And so I, I mean, I could, I could remember, um, like, uh, you know, a moment in the, the 2016 Trump election, for example, where I had won student. In the class who was excited that he won, and a lot of other students who were actively sobbing and fearful. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so there's like that dynamic when it comes to, to joy in our framework. I think about like also joy as, um, like artistic expression, which makes me think of like bad bunnies, super Bowl, halftime show and like how that was. So connected to all of this, right? And so political, but expressed through, through joy, through through dance and like critical joy. I, I would, I don't know if that's a phrase, but you know what I mean? Like there was both, like there was both the critique and then there's both the presence of joy so as not to be extinguished amidst the oppression. Like I think there's something there and I think sometimes. I mean the classic, like people who are so uncomfortable, they laugh at funerals, right? Or something like that. There's like these emotions that bubble up in these high emotion scenarios. So whether someone is laughing because they're nervous or joyful because they have a difference of opinion, or trying to find that joy so that oppression doesn't crush 'em, right? Like I think there's sometimes, um, questions around joy and expressions of joy. And, and seeking joy in moments like these that can be such a conundrum for teachers. Any advice here? Kara Pranikoff: I'm so glad you brought it back there because as I was explaining the framework, you know, I know that Joy is one of them and I was thinking it, it came out of my mouth almost before I could like think about it in this context. That said, I do think in this context there's something that is, maybe, I wouldn't use the joy word, but maybe I would use the word like affirming. I think there is something affirming to having a group of people stand together. Um, in resistance, right? So I, I think that you can look at some of the protests that are happening or some of the resilience that's happening and find some affirmation or some joy in the human spirit of coming together, right? Or, you know, you brought up Bad Bunny. We could also think about other artists who are having a response to these, um, policies and to what's been happening. Um, in our nation, and we could think about how they are channeling their creative expression, um, in a way that kind of affirms their humanity, which is joyful or affirming. Do you know what I mean? Like, I, I think that there is a. We can think about that word in a variety of, of ways. But I think that fundamentally when we come together, um, even as we're protesting something awful, there is something that feels we are supposed to be in community working together. Right. And so I think that that taps into that affirmation or joy, bit of humanity Eric Soto-Shed: again, car, I think, I think that's, that's a great point. So I want, I wanna headline that please. Um. And also offer up, you know, um, the idea of also finding joy during oppressive times or oppressive moments, right? Mm. We can't look at. Um, you know, enslavement and say that there was no joy for folks who were enslaved, right? That just is denying their humanity and denying their existence and de denying the record, right? Like the people do. So how do you hold both is really hard. But at the same time, I think, you know, when we are gonna talk about ice, we're gonna talk about immigration policy, you're gonna see a lot of the negative and a lot of the oppression, right? So are there al also moments say, let's take a total look at this and what are the examples? What are the stories, you know? And I can just say. A small aside that I was, um, at the gas station a couple nights ago in Massachusetts, Massachusetts, it was freezing cold and I saw a family kinda walk by the gas station. It was looked to be like a husband or wife and maybe a 10-year-old child. This is like 10 o'clock at night. And there's like, this is not like a place where you walk. It was driving right. And I immediately, like my heart goes out to this family. I'm trying to figure out, they have a big thing of luggage and I'm trying to think like, what can I do? And what I notice is that the boy seems to be playing this little 10-year-old seems to be playing with the cart, with the luggage and kind of jumping back and forth and like it's kind of like boisterous from from afar. And so on one hand I had this like heavy moment of this family and then the other. Talk about resilience, talk about humanity. Seeing this young boy in this moment feeling that way and um, and so I don't wanna make any light of the situation, but I just want to acknowledge the full, that people experience joy. That's part of being human. To humanize folks and really get into stories and see examples, I think is just a powerful compliment to the very necessary attention to both the oppression and the resistance. Lindsay Lyons: You're making me, that's, I love Eric. You always bring it back to like some really good, amazing example. I thank you for that. And you're making me think of, um, Goldie Mohammad's work, which we like intentionally thought of when we thought of like criticality and joy in our framework. And I was just pulling up some language from her. Around joy and she, she said, yes, studying what joy was for the ancestors. Happiness is more immediate, but joy is long term. It's sustainable. Joy is what you have when adversity continues to strike and you retain your happiness. Mm. Find as wellness, healing, abolition, working toward a better humanity. For all beauty aesthetics we recognize in ourselves and within humanity. Cara, to your point, it's centering love and music and art and our learning experiences and our children's voices. It's a collective, it is wide. Gold ham, man. Kara Pranikoff: Uh, I I'm stress. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah. So I think, man, it's hard to come after gold ham. Sorry guys. Eric Soto-Shed: Take a pause. Kara Pranikoff: Yeah. Seriously. Eric Soto-Shed: Deep breath. Scene two. Lindsay Lyons: So I think I am wondering, now we talk a lot about teachers 'cause we're, we're with teachers, right? A lot. Families, Eric, to your point about just even seeing the family, right? Mm-hmm. And knowing that families are grappling with, with, with this, with, with lots of heavy stuff. Um, what can families do? Is it the same? Is there something different to consider for families who are supporting, you know, young kids or, or older kids, children at any age, I suppose, to grapple with the news and what, what's been going on? Eric Soto-Shed: That's great. I'm thinking of my little 2-year-old right now, so that's a bigger jump for me. But I'm also trying to think. That's a great question. Mm-hmm. I mean, I feel like definitely I, I don't see anything we haven't said that you really wouldn't wanna. Apply as a family thinking about like, do I really need to engage with some background and help my child understand a little bit more of the context? Do I really need to engage feelings and kind of surface for them, uh, what, what, what they might be feeling? So I do think much of what we said with the classroom applies, but Carl, I'm interested, said if you're also seeing some things around like family specific. Kara Pranikoff: It's so interesting. So when I think about the family work, um, I think it's important for families to also understand that kids are gonna respond in a range, and that if you've got more than one child inside your house, they might also respond differently and that's okay. So we know that there are some kids that aren't ready to talk about what's on their heart and mind, and you kind of need to. Wait for it. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that they're not feeling it. You've gotta cycle back and check in. I would say for families, um, you might want to bring up, here are some things that are happening in the community that we could do. Here's what I'm drawn to do. Do you wanna come do that thing with me? Whatever it is. Whether it's protests, whether it's, whatever it might be. But I think that we can act as, um, role models. And I also think, as with families, I think we can be clear with our young folk about how this is settling for us. I think you can say to your, um, child, whatever their age is, you know, I. I am really feeling concerned, or I really had a hard time sleeping last night because I saw this image or listened to this recording and I, um, it was hard for me to get out of my head. Right? And this is how I am processing, this is how I'm caretaking. Um, I'm wondering how you are feeling. Right? So I, I think that, I guess two things. There's gonna be a range of responses, even if you're in the same house, and I think you wanna be clear about. Having your own chance as a parent to respond, um, and then figure out how to talk to your, to your kid, but be honest about, um, where you might fall, right? Or do you need more information? How are you feeling? Is there something that you are looking to do? Eric Soto-Shed: Yeah, I think if I could maybe add to, you know, maybe slightly older, you know, children, you know Yeah. 10, 12 and into the teen years. You know, in schools we talk a lot about media literacy. Um, and I think a unique role that the household can play is media habits, right? Particularly now that the media has become so just, you know, bifurcated and kids have access and it does intersect with what we mean in terms of media literacy, in terms of like, how are you being criddle? Call your con of, of what you're consuming. But let's step, take a step back and ask what are you consuming? Right. And you know, I can think back in my household, there's two things that I could tell you that every morning my dad listened to. 10, 10 wiz, you know, you give us 22 minutes, we'll give you the world. Anytime I got up early, he was in the kitchen with a little radio listening to that. And that, um, he always got the Sunday paper, the New York Times and the Daily News like, and so while my dad never sat me down and said, you know, son, it's very important that you become informed. Guess what I do? Every morning I listen to NPR. Guess what I do every weekend? I read the New York Digital Times, right? And so in this, you know, increasingly broadened, uh, land, and it doesn't have to be traditional media, but increasingly broadened landscape, is there one or two ways you can kind of share with the young people in your household? Here's the thing that I'm reading, maybe check it out. You know, or just even just sharing what you do as a, an example as a model to say that there's, you know, there's all the stuff I'm seeing on my little social media feed, but then there's also this resource that I sit down with and digest and it puts it in context. And so I think those examples and that modeling of sort of media consumption Lindsay Lyons: mm-hmm. Eric Soto-Shed: And I, and the habits that you have in terms of consuming, I think could be really also beneficial. Lindsay Lyons: I love both of those answers and it makes me think about school, family partnership and communication, right? That is, that is two way. And so my initial thought is like all those things you just said, like somebody type those up and put them in a little template letter to go home to families, right? It's like, I think. What we car you and I have tried for, for grading conversations is like, here's how you support at home. Like a shift in how to grade, right? Like I think you could do that here easily or with any current event. Here's how you support at home. Here's how you think, feel, do at home. And I think if you just had a few bullet points to give some guidance, and it's not instruction, but I think it's like an offering, right? An invitation for families. I think families, I, as a family member would feel personally like invited in and supported, um, rather than feeling like I was being given homework. And so I, I like that idea that, um. You know, there's so many ways that you can support, so thank you all for those. Any other advice you'd give for that school family partnership or communication around talking about these things in a classroom? From the teacher point of view, communicating to families? Kara Pranikoff: I would just say that I think that communication is essential, and I think the only thing that I would add is the teacher. I might say, here's the content that I was shared, and here are some of the ways that your students responded, because I think sometimes. Families can't imagine what those conversations look like in any grade. And we want them to understand that they're happening in a way that, um, is supportive to students and in content that is bite-sized for students to understand. And so I think that can help families and it can also serve. Kind of to your point, Eric, of, of a model of how we explain to our students, um, where we're gathering our information, what media we're showing or not showing, and that it's important to be talking about what's happening in the world, but I think parents like to see, or families like to see kind of what content was shared. Eric Soto-Shed: Yeah. And the only other thing I'll add, and I think it's um. It might be a little bit of nuance and just a reason to give pause, but I think it, it's worth mentioning, right, to say that you know, what happens when, you know, the families that we're working with, those educators might feel differently around the current events that we're talking about, right? Mm-hmm. And so, one thing I'd like to lift up is I believe this. Statistic is 54% of, uh, voters, uh, for in the 2024 presidential election were broadly in support of mass deportation, not quite understanding what the policy would look like once it took inact, but when you given that sort of, that policy question, 54%. So it's both, you know, both sides of the political, uh, spectrum. Um, and so with that being said, you know, I think what you can do when you're also thinking about that, that. Uh, community, the family and school partnership is really kind of leaning into the values and the content piece, right? And so even when there might be some different views on the policy, if we are talking about values around dignity and what we're trying to do in humanity, and we are talking about content in terms of understanding policies, I think that that could be a nice sort of, um. Sort of way to bridge if you're dealing with different views, right? Again, teachers know their communities, they know their families, and so you can obviously curate to to, to the audience that you have. But there are a lot of teachers out there that have audiences where, uh, there might be some differences in opinion there. And so I think really leaning into both content and values can be really powerful there. Kara Pranikoff: Hmm. Lindsay Lyons: Great idea. And it's also making me think of the importance and possibility of hosting family conversations too in evenings or something, right? Eric Soto-Shed: Yes. Love that. Love that. Lindsay Lyons: Alright, last question. In our final minute we'll do a speed lightning round. Uh, we talked about a lot of things. What is one thing that a listener or audience member could do to day? Like, where could they start? Eric Soto-Shed: I know this is a lightning round, but do we have more questions or is this it? This is the last question Lindsay Lyons: I was gonna invite you to share, kind of like where people can, can find you online, but if there's any other content you wanna share, go for it. Eric Soto-Shed: Okay, cool. Um, so what, uh, so can you ask the question again? That way I can hook you up with your edits. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah. One, one thing that someone could do today. Eric Soto-Shed: All right, I'm gonna go with one and, um, it's kind of, uh, uh, I'm cheating here 'cause I wanted to get this in somehow, but I really think you could do it. Um, and I think it would be, if you're thinking about, you know, supporting young people thinking through ice, thinking, through immigration policy, um, how do you do this with this framework where we're think talking about, think, feel, and do. I would encourage you to purchase and read the book. Everyone Who Is Gone is here by Jonathan Blitzer. It is a powerful account. Of, um, the sort of US foreign policy, the history of immigration policy, and it's done through, uh, you know, powerful vignettes of about five or six people. And I mean, it will have you thinking and understanding content and broad notions of policy. It will have you really like, sort of identifying and feeling people that are in these experiences. You will see, uh, people reacting, taking action, everything raging from being in protest with gun fire and shootouts. Lindsay Lyons: Mm. Eric Soto-Shed: To offering mental health services to people in their community. Mm. It is just a powerful and profound sort of take on sort of how we got here. Um, and I highly recommend, uh, educators, parents reading that build out your own knowledge, but that is something you can definitely share with the young people that you work with and or live with. Kara Pranikoff: I love that, Eric. It's immediately added to my PBR pile, so thank you. Always good. Um, I'm gonna go a different, uh, different angle. I think as we are thinking about our framework of think, feel, do and the current situation around ICE and immigration policy. I think I would encourage educators and family members to take a pause and think for themselves about what they think, how they feel, and what they can do, and try to tap into where their natural space is and think about can they expand that right? And really, I'm like still back thinking about the resilience and the joy. And I'm wondering if we as adults are, um, in a space, can we access. That kind of humanity and that resilience and how might that shift things for us? So I would encourage, um, adults to think, feel, and do on their own and experience, um, experience a framework that way. Lindsay Lyons: I love it. I would add that people, we will link this, but people can download our framework along with some key questions that you can just have, like print it out or keep it on your computer and have to be able to consult while you are reflecting or while you're supporting your child to reflect or your student to reflect. Okay. The very last question. Where can people connect with you all online? Who wants to go first? Eric Soto-Shed: My day job is at the Graduate School of Education in Harvard, so you can find me there. Kara Pranikoff: The easiest way to find me is through my website, car proff.com. Lindsay Lyons: Awesome. Kara and Eric, thank you both so much. It is really inspiring to think that amidst hard times, there are people doing this good work and that resilience and joy and critical thinking and collective action are possible. Um, and I would argue probable because we have such great educators and family members in the world with our young people and our young people themselves are amazing. So for all the resources on this, you all can go to lindsaybethlyons.com/blog/252, where we'll have a detailed show note section as well as that free resource. |
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AuthorLindsay Lyons is an educational justice coach who helps schools and districts co-create feminist, antiracist civics-based curricula, discussion opportunities, and equitable policies that challenge, affirm, and inspire all students. A former NYC public school teacher, she holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Lindsay believes all students deserve literacy, criticality, and leadership skills. Archives
May 2026
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