6/19/2023 120. Unit Dreaming: Sustainable Farming + Photosynthesis with Dr. Leena Bakshi McLeanRead Now
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Dr. Leena Bakshi is the founder of STEM4Real, a nonprofit professional learning organization committed to combining STEM and NGSS standards-based content learning and leadership with principles of equity and social justice. It was super fun to brainstorm a justice-centered Science unit using both of our unit planning protocols!
Here’s what we came up with: Unit Planning Step 1: Context/Spark Real-world application: What can students do? Food desserts during the pandemic in California. Unit Planning Step 2: Pursuits (from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model) Identity: How will our unit help students to learn something about themselves and/or about others? Students see themselves in the lesson. Counternarratives via situations, types of farming. Criticality: How will our unit engage students’ thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? Different communities’ levels of access to food by race, geography and income. Joy*: How will my unit enable, amplify, and spread joy? If the teachers aren’t having fun teaching, the students won’t be having fun. Phenomenon-based instruction inspires curiosity. Phenomenon-based instruction can happen across the content! Joy is in the possibilities of what can be! Unit Planning Step 3: Driving Question How do we farm so that communities of color and low-income communities have access to food? Unit Planning Step 4: Summative Project (Publishing Opportunity and Possible Formats) The public product can be selected by students. This might be a social media campaign, a letter to the school board, presenting at a city council meeting. Unit Planning Step 5: Unit Arc SHS Planning Approach: Standard: Photosynthesis Hook: Students look at photos of empty grocery store shelves. Society: How are we going to farm? 5 Es Unit Arc: Engage: Experiential, inquiry-based learning (just jump right in without vocabulary!) Show the picture(s), have students generate questions using the Question Formulation Protocol, share via a discussion protocol. Explore: Make observations. Measure plant growth. Explain: It doesn’t have to be teachers explaining to students. Students can explain to each other! Use a text-based protocol (e.g., video, written text, student-created model) Elaborate: Tell counternarratives. Show examples of farmers of color and indigenous farming techniques. Align with Social Justice Standards from Learning for Justice. Look at different contexts like hydroponics. Evaluate: Return to student-created list of questions from the start of the unit. What questions did we answer? Use Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning frame to respond to DQ. Use Circle protocol to discuss. Youth take civic action that feels authentic. Stay Connected You can find Dr. Bakshi McLean on www.stem4real.org and follow her organization at @stem4real on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. To help you design and implement your own amazing unit, Dr. Bakshi McLean is sharing her Lesson Planning Tools with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 120 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:
TRANSCRIPT In this episode, I get to unit Dream with Dr Lena Bahi mclean, who is the founder of STEM for real, a nonprofit professional learning organization committed to combining STEM and NGSS standard based content learning and leadership with principles of equity and social justice. She also serves as the board Secretary for the California Association of Science Educators. Lena currently works with pre service teachers at Claremont Graduate University, teaching STEM methods and universal design for learning. She is a former county and state level administrator in mathematics science and health teacher. She is also the author of the children's book. There's something in the Water, a story that highlights the real life of Doctor Tyrone B. Hayes, an endocrinologist from UC Berkeley. She believes that in order for us to increase our representation in STEM, we must create an identity in stem. Her research interests include science, stem education and how we can create access and opportunities for each and every student, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or socioeconomic status. Let's get to our amazing unit brainstorm session with Doctor Bay mclean. I'm educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. 00:01:12 I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerd out about co creating curriculum with students, I made this show for you. Here we go, Doctor Braxy mclean. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And this is one of my favorite topics. So I am so excited to dive right in. I am so excited to, is there anything, I mean, I've read your bio, but is there anything that you want to share in terms of like the impetus, the context for our conversation today? The, you know, brainstorm, anything that's going through your mind? I think for the purposes of our conversation, I want the takeaway to be about real world implications and looking at our greater society. What can our students do and how can that, how can that inspire our instruction? 00:02:21 I love that idea of real world implications and we'll, we'll go right there. I'm so pumped. So what is it? Let's start with like, what do you want students to learn or pursue in this unit that we're gonna like create on the spot here? Like what would your dream be? So I I often think of like Doctor Goldie Mohammed framework and thinking specifically, I know she has more parts in this but specifically, I think of like identity criticality, joy. Like these are the pieces that are often missing from like your traditional education. So is there anything with that in mind that you're like, yes, I want students to learn this or pursue this? Yeah, definitely, I go straight to joy because if the teachers aren't having fun teaching the lesson, then the students will most definitely not have fun. So I really think that as we prioritize joy, it's um that's a, that's a very important concept and, and I fully stand by that. I also in the the science world, we prioritize phenomenon based instruction. And it's this idea that you have this, this phenomenon, this head scratching, uh observable event that students can look at and get curious. 00:03:31 You know, we think about our students are that, that come out as they and they are so curious, they're, they're looking around, they're asking why, why and then we lose that somewhere. And, and so I think that regardless of discipline, we want to get that curiosity back. So every time I start a unit again, regardless of discipline, I know in the science world, we talk about phenomenon based instruction. I think you could have phenomenon based instruction across the content. I love so much of, I'm like writing. So many notes now. But like this idea of the curiosity being kind of the thing that that is being pursued, the joy coming out of that. I love that. And then I also love that you're also kind of jumping to like kind of the unit arc frame where like you hook through the phenomenon or you uncover it through the phenomenon and like the fact that that's observable that the head scratcher just, I love these terms that just make it feel fun. Like you're going to learn through fun and enjoy. 00:04:33 So it's like all present in what you're sharing already. Yes. Yes. And we have a tendency especially in academia to get very heady about the terms. Like, is this an anchoring phenomenon? Is this an investigative phenomenon? And while those terms are very important, we have to remember that we are teachers, what do we need to do? What do we need to teach? What do our students need to learn? What are the takeaways and anything that can really simplify unit planning? I, I love 100%. Yeah. So it, so if you were to teach like a particular unit or you were to coach someone on a particular unit, like could be any grade level, any content area, anything. So we're gonna, we're gonna make sure that there's joy present, there's curiosity present. We're gonna start with the phenomenon. What would be like the driving question of that dream unit for you? Like what's the thing they're grappling with? Definitely um as, as much as education probably does not need another set of acronyms. We have another one. And so when we think about starting any unit, we start with SHS and that is our formula for creating a phenomenon. 00:05:44 So the first S is the standard. And so that's gonna be um either in science, the next generation science standard, if it's common core, your common core mathematics standard or el a standard, any sort of state standard that you have. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, we have to teach the standards. So we want that to um to drive our, our content, then we have our H and, and I know you mentioned this word already and I didn't even have to, it's our hook. So what's that hook gonna be that's going to hook students into the standard? And I, I'm not gonna lie. There are some standards where the hook is very uh prevalent. It, it's very obvious, let's say we had a um a standard on photosynthesis. We can talk about the giant redwoods cars driving through trees because of its mass. There's a, there's a lot there and then there are standards like, um you know, simplifying rational expressions and you'll have to, you have to wonder like, you know, what's that hook gonna be? 00:06:55 And I, and I always coach teachers in thinking, you know, what can we do? Could we gamify it could we do something to make it so that there is a hook that studentss can, can grab onto and then the third s is society. And that is what I, again, when we first started our conversation, it's all about that real world implication and the connections to our greater society. And again, whether it's across the content, we, we should always be vigilant of what's happening in our world and bring that content into the classroom, especially if it's at the local context and, and connected to our local community. Yeah. So I I'm almost wondering, is there like a local context in your area or in the area of a teacher you're coaching right now? That might make a really fun unit that we could kind of like game out. We could use this approach even like the standard Hook society to like think about like what might this unit look like to create it around this specific thing? Yeah, let's, let's go. Let's um think about uh we had a small little pandemic that happened across the world and, and I know that some people are maybe COVID it out when it comes to unit planning. 00:08:10 Uh But there are a lot of issues that, that came with like regardless of um when you connected to supply chain issues, when you connected to food and food deserts. So we had one group of teachers, look at the food deserts in the inland Empire of California and we saw when you went into the grocery stores, there were completely empty shelves and that's what farming is to a lot of people. They go to the grocery store and pick out their avocados and say, all right, I farmed. This is where food comes from. And then all of a sudden you see these empty shelves. So that served as the hook for, um, for the students to look at that picture and say, wow, where, where does our food come from? And that was connected to the performance expectation for the next generation science standards? I believe Ls 1-7 don't quote me. It's the one about photosynthesis. And so when we take our photosynthesis standards, we're able to start with our s we've got our standard, we've got our hook, we're looking at these empty, empty shelves and then of course, implications for society. 00:09:25 How are, how are we going to farm and how are we going to use the the uh process of photosynthesis to ensure that our communities, especially our communities of color, our lower socioeconomic communities, they're getting access to food. I love that. So I'm just thinking about like the driving question being like, yeah, like how do we farm? Right? So in, in, in a way that like she almost like shifts the power dynamic or the access dynamic, right? So like I like I'm not sure what the language would necessarily be, but I mean, just the language you use, right? How do we farm? So that um you know, communities of color and low socioeconomic communities have, have that access, right? Or, or something like that. I love that as like the driving question because then they need to like figure it out like they have to answer and come up with like a better way to do things that is currently being done, which is super cool. Exactly. Awesome. Oh my gosh. OK. So I love this. I love the standard connection to photosynthesis. 00:10:29 I love the hook by looking at the grocery store pictures. Oh my gosh. Amazing. So now I'm thinking about like, what kind of would the project look like in terms of how students are answering that question? Like how they're expressing the answer to that question? Like, how do they share those ideas? What might that look like? And I feel like it could look 100 ways. But what are you thinking? So, of course, we're, we're gonna have another acronym but this time it's only one letter, uh five of the same letter and we call it the five ES. And the good news is a lot of the curriculum, especially in science. They've already laid out their curriculum in, in the five E format. So the five es are engage, explore, explain, elaborate, evaluate and, and iii I hear this all the time especially in education where we get the, you know, same wine new bottle and there's always a formula. And ultimately, regardless of whatever formula you use, we want to again, start with our hook, which is our engage. 00:11:37 And then we want students to dive right into the learning, get messy, explore, do the activities just jump right into the content so that there is this um experiential spatial learning that's occurring inquiry based and, and it may seem crazy to just go into the lab without talking about the vocabulary without talking about what they should be doing. So there is an age old debate that occurred like, well, no, I have to talk, talk about the content before so that students can understand the activity. However, sometimes students just wanna jump, jump right in and then as they are engaging in the activity, the academic vocabulary comes out within the context. So abc activity before content, we want to plan these learning activities before the formal explanations. 00:12:40 And I urge I urge teachers to try it out um even if they've tried it out before and they haven't seen success, keep trying because I, I do think that this, this type of learning really engages learners that have typically not shown success in the standard learning environment. So thinking about emerging bilingual students, students with disabilities and they just need a different angle at times. And it's very interesting uh where my husband actually very, very far into his academic career. He's uh he's probably in 19th grade. He's starting his phd and he was so frustrated because he got a homework assignment and the teacher didn't explain how to do it. The teacher said, all right, try it out. We've done some readings and we've done some, um, some lectures on this. 00:13:41 So just go ahead and, and Tinker, try the homework, see what happens. And he was, he said, you know, why am I attempting this homework when we haven't specifically gone over the, the content of how to do the homework. And I'm thinking, but it's that productive struggle, you know, like you go through it and you tinker. So all that to say, we, we want to jump right into the activities as much as possible and then we go into the explain. So having uh a a and when we think about explain, it doesn't just have to be the teacher explaining to the student. It can be the student explaining back to the teacher or the students explaining to each other. So those are, those are three for now and engage explore, explain and uh I'll pause there because I know that was a lot. No, that's amazing. OK. So I love that you're kind of jumping to those activities or those I'm almost thinking about like what are the protocols? 00:14:43 Like, what does that literally look like? So for like that engage, right? Like that might look like and this is just me brainstorming here, but that might look like showing the picture and then inviting a class discussion, it could be like a certain discussion. It could be like, just like talking groups and then share out like some sort of like, let's get everybody talking. It could be like a write around. So I'm just thinking like, what are some of the things that you see in each of these stages as like the protocol or like the kind of like where the discussion or learning kind of lives or how that's structured. Exactly. So with the engage you show these photos, these shocking photos of empty shelves and or maybe dead gardens. And then you can have students like you said, have a talking circle, they can brainstorm questions. We like to use the question formulation technique to get those questions going and again, giving the students having, having the students be the driving drivers in, in coming up with all of these questions and then in the explore activities, perhaps they're looking at a seed in a bag. 00:15:49 So they're uh looking at how a seed grows and making observations, looking at their at the plant growth chart, measuring how a plant grows. And my view, these are students that they don't know what chlorophyll is yet. They don't know what the photosynthesis terms. They're just taking a seed, putting in a bag with water and seeing what happens. And so that's what I mean about the whole exploration. And then in the explain this is where you would incorporate that informational text so it could be a book on how plants grow. It could be an informational video on what's happening with the plant as or what's happening with the seed as it's as it's growing. It could also be students creating um a visual model of what the plant looks like and and labeling the terms, perhaps looking at um some vocabulary terms and together creating this consensus model of what they're seeing. 00:16:50 So all of that to say that the explain comes after the messy exploration. Oh my gosh, so much that I love, I also really want to highlight that I think the creation of the visual model as part of the explain phase, like at, you know, at phase three, not all the way at the end is like something that I think is a huge mindset shift for some teachers of like, oh that's the type of assessment that in a traditional classroom might be at the very end. And like you said, it might be explained first and then they're doing this thing. And I, I just love that there's so much of like, let me find out what I'm interested in, let me just kind of see it happen and then I can learn the words to put to it and then I can explain it back and yet that's still only phase three, like there's more to do, there's more creativity to be had in curiosity you. So like this is just so exciting Yes. Yes. And so as we kind of think about those next ones, I wanna make sure I get the ease right here. So elaborate and evaluate what are some of the things that happened there or what protocols could we see there? So, in the elaborate, I always think of elaborate as OK, so you know how to drive. 00:17:58 However, can you drive in downtown L A in rush hour? You know, so you have the the initial skills of driving. Can you drive in a different context? And this is where this is where I see elaborate as the opportunity to diversify your content. This is your opportunity to tell the counter narrative to bring in um examples of indigenous farming practices and um use how how indigenous people have been able to farm and continue to farm to this day and, and be able to utilize those practices. You can also show examples of um farmers of color, you can show examples of scientists of color that are are doing this work. This is our opportunity to be culturally responsive and, and, and really, you know, culturally responsive teaching should be all teaching. 00:19:00 And so when I, when I talk about how to incorporate a lot of the these other things that can, that can build the cultural capital of our students a lot of times it is during the elaborate phase and then you can also uh bring in the social justice standards. So these are a set of standards from learning for justice. And they have, I believe they have about, they have 20 standards and it's divided into identity, diversity, justice and action. And this is where teachers as the driver can decide. Well, how do we build in that connection to the social justice standards? Do I want to think about it in terms of diversity where um we look at how students can respond by building empathy or respect, perhaps for the other, other parts of the world, other parts of the United States or even other parts of their state. 00:20:01 Sometimes when we think about poverty for some reason, everyone goes to Africa and I'm like, no, you can go right to San Francisco, California and look at poverty. Hey, it, Lindsay just popping in to talk about today's freebie for the episode. Doctor Bay mclean is sharing with us her lesson planning tools for free and you can grab those at Lindsay with clients dot com slash blog slash one, 20 back to the show. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yes. All the things. So I love the idea too that embedded in the driving question that you initially came up with is all of that right? Like the the question that you came up with in the project that you kind of envision from the start it centers all of that stuff. Like to know I'm looking back at our question here but to know how you might want to be able to farm in the ways that are all very justice centered. Like you have to know indigenous farming techniques and you have to hear the successes and you have to know about like the different communities that you're naming now and and the impact of the way we do things now. Like it's so justice centered from the very start of this conversation. It has been. 00:21:04 And so I love that this is the way it can kind of like flourish and you can really dive into, I typically call them like case studies like you were using, I think the language of like um different contexts and diff diversifying content and counter narratives which I love as well. And so like this is where it can just kind of like explode like all of the beautiful stuff that like typically feels like an add on like this is this isn't an add-on like this is this is it, you know. Yes. And, and for the purposes of the unit that we're building, I believe our teachers were talking about looking at hydroponic systems and looking at how that has been able to, that concept has been able to uh drive a lot of the farming techniques. So, uh again, this is your opportunity to explore the concepts and the content of photosynthesis and then seeing how it's applied in different areas. I love it so much. And there's also there's just so much in terms of like sustainable futures, like there's so much impact of, of this project and this unit, I'm wondering what the evaluate stage would entail like, what are those activities? 00:22:15 And this is actually, you know, when I hear the word, evaluate an assessment, I as a and as an educator, I cringe as a student, I cringe, I'm like uh test test taking and so much of the evaluate it, it goes so much deeper. It's not just a multiple choice test, it's not just a final, it's a way for students to just show what they know. And I in a way that's so uh non, non judgmental essentially and not evaluative even though it is the evaluate phase. But it is the, it's an evaluate for us as teachers to say, OK, what land is, what do we need to do? So this is where I love to get very creative. And you talked about having a circle talk and, and doing that as an engaged, I would love to do that as an evaluate too and seeing what students are coming up with or maybe even going back to the list of questions that the students um brainstormed in the beginning of the unit uh of the lesson and then coming back to it and saying, OK, well, uh what, what questions did we answer and what more questions do we have? 00:23:30 And you can also look at how um students can craft their own explanations we use the frame, the claim, evidence and reasoning. So perhaps they're making a claim about the driving question and then coming up with all the pieces of evidence and the evidence that they've built out throughout the unit and the lessons. So for example, maybe they have evidence from seed in a bag, maybe they have evidence from um researching hydroponic systems and observations there. So a lot of that evidence can be built into to strengthen their claim. And then you have the the reasoning piece and that can come from your informational text and the lectures and the informational videos that can support that can ultimately support their claim. So evaluate can be oral, it can be the academic discourse that you as the teacher can listen to and hear what students are talking about. 00:24:33 Uh This is also great for students that have a hard time with writing and you can still be able to assess them. This is also good for students that have the opportunity to speak in their home language. So if they're able to express their content and and and you're somehow able to gather that information, that's definitely something to consider uh evaluate can also be through writing of course. So the written process and the written products that students are able to turn in and it can be free response. It could be multiple choice. But I think the most important part is in the evaluate, what can you evaluate like what and, and it's not necessarily an evaluate of your teaching, it's what do they know and where do we need to go back and reteach? I love the opportunities to that can come out of this particular project in terms of like students are almost making recommendations for like a better future and a better way of doing things and, and the people who need to hear that are out there in the world doing unsustainable farming or you know, like there are people who are not practicing these things that would actually be beneficial for the world, for humanity. 00:25:52 Like, and it, it might be interesting too. I always think of like an authentic audience beyond the classroom or be on the teacher on the grade. So like the purpose being like, let's actually impact these practices. I wonder what publishing, I always call them publishing opportunities because like it's a very el a like brain that I have but you know, like, what are those opportunities for them to like share beyond the teacher? And so like, I don't know, you are more familiar with this world than I am. But like I'm wondering like, what are the like are there like science people or is this like a politician thing or do they go right to the farmers? This is a fantastic question. And when I think about evaluate we connect, evaluate to youth and civic action. So this is your opportunity to think about what are the opportunities for civic action, for students. And what can they do that again, that truly feels authentic. So that very first picture that we showed with the empty shelves. And another picture that we showed was um a dead garden that dead garden was from the same school district. 00:26:56 So it was a dead garden in, in one of the schools that, that hadn't been kept up for some odd reason. And so this was again a way for students to write letters to the school board to generate a campaign so that they can revive the garden and bring it back to life and have it be a way to feed the school feed uh the community and just have that. Um There are some other elements that I wanted to talk about when we do think of youth action and that is, I think we talked about authenticity. So having that we don't want to just say, OK, we, we'll pretend to write to our uh council member. No, you write, you write to them, you let them know about themselves and, and, and we have all this evidence to use it. So we have claim evidence, reasoning, what better way to do it than to actually have an audience. Uh There's also having student voice and choice. 00:27:59 So if you can come up with multiple options of an assessment, students can decide how they want to demonstrate they, they're learning. And there's, this is what we call the public product. So I, I think when we talk about the authentic authenticity in the audience, where is this public product going to go? Is it going to be a social media campaign? Is it going to be a letter to the school board? Is it going to be, you know, attending a account council meeting, a city council meeting? So all of this to say is that when we have these components together, we can really think about assessment again, that goes beyond the multiple choice test and actually get students out of their seats and and doing some youth action. However, I do want to go back to our our self uh simplifying rational expression because there are people that are thinking, OK, this is all great for science, for history and all that. 00:29:03 However, I just need to know how do we simplify rational expressions. And so another thing that I talk about is that learning math and and mathematical processes in and of itself is a social justice issue because math is a gatekeeper to so many careers and and uh school pathways and tracking systems. And so sometimes it's good for, for students to understand that so that they see like, you know, this is not just a, I'm not a math person kind of thing. This is a no, we we need to understand this because we need to break down these gates that are keeping students in their, in their labels and in their boxes. So that can also be a a method of civic action, such an important point. And I hadn't heard that before, just like framed in that way, like just learning it in and of itself is a social justice issue. 00:30:07 I also think so many social justice issues can be supported, explained um like per like counter explained like all the things through math. And so math is like this language like you're saying is often like this gatekeeping like mechanism often right or wrong, like people in high positions, whether that's like teachers or government leaders, like they speak the language of numerical data and the quantitative data. And so if we can enable students to do that while also pushing back and saying qualitative data is also important and student experiences are important, right? Like this is what's going to get people to listen to us and like hear what the students have to say. And so I I also think, I think the reason I struggled in math as a high school student was because it wasn't contextualized enough, it was just discrete skills, but math is like connected to everything and we can explain so much and connect those skills. I I almost see and I think we had talked about this maybe before we started recording about like the interdisciplinary nature of so much of this work and that I just see as a great opportunity. 00:31:12 Yes. And especially in the science world. We, we value interdisciplinary instruction. That's our only way to survive in elementary because of the assessments that are so very much focused on mathematics and, and English and language, arts. A lot of the instruction is focused there too. So science is very much oftentimes uh pushed to the side and we're not getting that daily science instruction and what, what's happening there is OK, fine. Maybe you have some nice test scores in math and el A. However, you're keeping an entire discipline, an entire subject, an entire domain away from students. And typically this happens in lower socioeconomic districts where the emphasis on testing is is increased and more so. Yeah, such an important point. And I think the same happens with social studies too to an extent in elementary spaces. It's just like these, these are just extras, these are luxury items and it's, it's so not right like, yeah, OK. 00:32:17 So this has been amazing. I want to be mindful of time and listeners capacity to, to, to listen to like episodes. So I'm gonna kind of merge two questions here. Is there anything else that you would want to add to the unit slash reflecting on the process? How did like what do you want to highlight for people about the process? Because it was kind of fun like merging like my process for unit creation with your process, for unit creation. And I I don't know if there's anything you want to share on, on the process end, I do wanna circle back to Doctor Goldie's work and uh I remember even having a conversation with her about both of our units and, and again, it's there. So when, when we look at Standard Hook in society, we're, and, and then we're, we're incorporating those social justice standards. We're a whole, we're doing that because we want to make sure that our students see themselves in the lesson. That's why we have the connection to society and community because we want their identity to be seen. 00:33:18 That's why in the elaborate we, we have those connections to diversifying your content area, telling the counter narrative, ensuring that multiple authors and multiple situations are, are shown and demonstrated to your students. Same thing with, with criticality. It goes back to civic action society. What are we gonna do when we're thinking about our students and how they're thinking about power and equity going back to the empty food shelves is that only happening in the inland Empire? And the answer is absolutely not because, you know, you're gonna have a very, very full shelf in, let's say, uh Palos, Verdes, California. So you think about the haves and the have nots. And then ultimately, I started with joy. I want to end with joy. I want, you know, of course, the topic is kind of sad like, oh gosh, food insecurity and access. However, being able to teach photosynthesis in a way that ignites student learning, student thinking and, and civic action that brings joy to me as an educator where I'm, I'm not just going over the photosynthesis equation. 00:34:34 I'm actually talking about the implications of what this looks like for our greater good. Yes. Oh Yes. OK. So I also love that like the joy is also in the possibilities because students are like creating new innovative solutions to the problem, right? So there's so much joy to that and I love that you specifically name that teachers can also experience the joy, right? Like we want to design joy for students, but also teachers like teacher retention is so low right now. Like teacher morale, teacher overworked. It's all like such a struggle that it's really important to identify spaces where and like processes of pedagogy where it's like, yes, we are experiencing joy in teaching this way and that's really important. It is so true. I mean, I I'm constantly talking about teacher joy. Yes. Yes, because uh and mostly because of our students, happy, teachers equal happy students. And so every time I'm working with teachers, I'm always looking at, you know, is this PD joyful, are you having fun or are you in the back with sunglasses on grading papers? 00:35:38 Because that's, that would be my worst nightmare. And I wanna make sure that that teachers are always having fun, especially like you said, in a time where we're losing our teachers, we're losing our workforce and I really think it's a call to administrators to step up to step up. Remember that you are the ceo of your school and district and you have to think about teacher retention. So, and, and this means re reevaluating processes like, oh, I'm gonna dock you for half an hour because you were, you were sick, you know, like thinking about the nickel and diming of teachers and to actually take a step back and say, ok, who are my professionals? And how could I really feed into them to ensure that they are getting their needs met? Oh my gosh, that could be an entire other podcast episode. But yes to that, like, how do we innovatively think about supporting teachers and take a step back? Oh my gosh, I love it. So I want to make sure people follow you. So I just for listeners, the reason that I or I guess the way, not the reason, but the way that I found Doctor Bray mclean is that actually she um has her own podcast. 00:36:51 It is amazing. It is so good. And so I was like, oh my gosh, please leave me on my show. That's why she's here. So I just want to give you time and space to be able to say what you do and where people can listen to you, find you all the things. Yes, definitely. Thank you. We would love to have you as a listener as well. And and just uh for your audience, we, we have a podcast called Teaching Stem for Real. And we talk about all things stem and a lot of times like I said, we rely so much on interdisciplinary instruction. So many times the instruction and the, the techniques they apply across the content. And so we have a nonprofit Stem for real STEM. Number four, real. And it's all about using lesson study and professional learning to create communities where teachers are excited about their learning. They want, we want to observe each other, analyze student work and and again, create an uh the next generation of of lessons and instructional materials that ignite us and bring us joy and get us excited to, to teach. 00:37:59 And I'll say to continue to get us excited to teach and I'll say to get us excited to teach again, especially for those that have lost their flight. Oh my gosh, such a powerful way to wrap up this show. And I will link to all of the things in, in the show notes. I think you also were gonna provide a uh a link where you did provide a link to me that I'll link in the show notes as well where people can go get some of the amazing things that you have on your website. So there's specific resources there that you suggest and I, I think people should definitely check those out. Exactly. This was a whirlwind episode of planning So if you wanted a little more time to sit with it, we have example lessons of the exact method that we use um that, that I've sent over and everything is on our website www dot stem for real dot org. Perfect. And you can always learn more about our work and what we do. Perfect. Oh my gosh, Dr Roxie mcclean. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to connect with you and your audience. If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my life coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. 00:39:03 I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all studentss. We weave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at www dot Lindsay beth lions dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think. Big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts. And we'll see you at the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain how to talk about using practical strategies to support student inquiry:
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Time for Teachership is now a proud member of the...AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
November 2024
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