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Tre’ Gammage is a Social Emotional Learning Specialist focused on building social-emotional competence in school communities through program adoption, implementation, professional development, and team building. In this episode, we build out a “unit” for adult PD using a step-by-step unit planning protocol!
Unit Planning Step 1: Context/Spark Wanting to curricular-ize adult SEL professional learning experiences. Currently, Tre’ is mostly focused on working with schools and leaders on relationship and communication. Let’s build a unit around this! 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? Current offerings focus on general communication preferences as part of adults’ identities. Criticality: How will our unit engage students’ thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? Let’s elaborate on this. SEL skills are the foundation to be able to have equity conversations and changes. Group size may impact the adaptive, critical work that can be done in a generative way. We want adults to be able to stay in important situations and conversations when experiencing discomfort. Unit Planning Step 3: Driving Question Are you showing up as your best self in your community? (A lesson/activity can be defining as a group what “your best self” in community means.) Unit Planning Step 4: Summative Project (Publishing Opportunity and Possible Formats) Communication summary report for each team that includes information such as: individuals’ strengths, tendencies, whether they are people- or task-oriented and whether they have fast or slow communication styles. Application: Review these reports before and after meetings. Use the collaboration strategy list to support self and others. Final “assessment” is to address an existing tension in the school/team. Unit Planning Step 5: Unit Arc Hook: Miscommunication and high stress in the workplace as a hook. Then, take the assessment. Build the Base: Reflect on individual assessment results. Watch videos specific to your communication style. Explore high and low emotional intelligence examples. Case Studies: Case 1: Individuals think about relationships; Case 2: Strategies to support communication in your team; Case 3: Routines to help each person and the team be at their best. Project Work Time: Lower-stakes practice of team communication through “decision by consensus” options like lost at sea or lost on the moon. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on www.seleducators.com and on social media @tregammage and @seleducators. To help you learn more about adult SEL, Tre’ is sharing a bunch of informational video content with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 121 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 Welcome to another episode of The Time for Teacher Ship podcast on this one. We're doing another unit dreaming special. This is a little bit different. We have Trey on here who's talking about sel and designing an SCL curriculum for adults. Super cool. So let me tell you a little bit about Trey. Trey Gamage is a social emotional learning specialist focused on building social emotional competence in school communities through program adoption implementation, professional development and team building. After initially working in student affairs at a residential high school, she began consulting with K 12 schools supporting SCL and program implementation. In addition to becoming an international speaking champion via Toastmasters in 2016 and city council member in his local community dedicated to service, Trey is excited to continue his advocacy for student and adult well-being through his consultancy, sel educators forever learner. Trey has continued his education. After earning his bachelor's degree in psychology from Miami University, he continued to earn certifications as a global career development, facilitator dis practitioner, emotional intelligence practitioner, and certificate in school leadership, social emotional learning and character developing. 00:01:03 Lastly, Trey lives and serves by the phrase facilitating purpose, facilitate means to make it easier. And purpose means your reason for doing Rey's purpose is to make it easier to do what you love. Let's get to the episode. 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. 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. Welcome to the Time for Teacher shift podcast. How, how are you? I'm good. I'm so excited because this is gonna be really cool. Not only is it one of the new unit dreaming episodes? But it's going to be centered around adults curriculum, which is something that we, we were just talking about. Like, what is that? 00:02:09 What does that look like? Is it just a linguistic thing? So I'm really excited. Yeah, me too. Me too. This is a, a dream come true. I've, I've been working with adults for a long time and um just thinking about how to curricular, the, the things that I'm doing, which probably already is a curriculum. But thinking about how can we really measure this to, to show an impact to the school communities. Excellent. So do you mind, I'll have read your bio at the front of the episode. But do you mind just telling people a little bit about, like, what's the context or kind of the spark for thinking about the unit we're about to design today in terms of what to do and Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm a professional learning consultant. I spent seven years in more traditional or actually non-traditional education settings. I worked at a residential high school as a resident life coordinator for a couple of years living and working with 45 students on my floor. And then I worked as a dean of students at A K 12 charter school. Every year, we built a new grade. So when I started, we were K seven, when I finished, we were K 12 and all the while in between that time, I've been providing professional learning for adults focused on emotional intelligence, A K A adult sel. 00:03:18 So we've been doing this for about seven years now. This is year seven um have done work with over 500 adults, 18 different school communities and got some great results that I'm actually finishing up a poster presentation for a workshop. We're gonna be presenting this research on April 27th in Atlanta at the Black School Psychology Summit. So definitely excited to, I just get some publishing stuff, put, put the research out in the world. That's amazing. And, and so much like, goodness, I think can come from the research because there's so much focus on the youth, right? Youth SCL we need so badly, we need adult sel and I'm so glad that you're doing this. So really excited to dig into this. Would you kind of like say that there's a spark in terms of either what you're already doing and you want to kind of think through a little bit more in terms of curricular or is there something that you're like, I kind of want to do something new and here's kind of the spark or where I'm kind of thinking about going and then we gave it out from there. 00:04:22 Yeah, I, I mean, I think, um let's go ahead and just work with what we've already got with what I've already got because there's, there's three components I, I've really focused on one component of my training thus far and that's just it because that's how much time schools have. So really focus on the relationship and communication aspect of our curriculum or of our trainings and there's multiple sessions that go into that. Um Then there's an emotional intelligence component where we're reviewing and assessing your actual emotional competence. And the third piece of the work that we have as far as like assessment and curriculum is workplace motivation. How do we assess your, your motivation in the workplace and making sure that we're putting you in a position to thrive? Hm. OK. Super cool. Is there one of those pieces that are, do you see these as kind of like separate using K 12 language like units so to speak? Yeah, I would, I would see those as different units. So I would say the relationships and communication would be the first unit. 00:05:25 I think that's where you, you come in really under, that's where we start to speak the same language. This would be the equivalent of your setting expectations. At the beginning of the school year, the emotional intelligence would be the the second unit where yeah, now you understand yourself, you understand the environment, you understand communication styles and preferences. Now let's dig a little bit more into you. And so with emotional intelligence to sel there's two loops and the first one is understanding yourself, which we really tackle in the relationship and communication piece. The other loop is understanding others. So your social awareness, your social management and it gets really reflected in that piece where we can pinpoint, hey, these are specific strategies for developing goal setting strategies or, or for understanding the the impact of your decisions, tho those types of things. Is there one that feels like you want to focus on it today as the kind of dream out a unit like one that's maybe like I could do a little bit more with this or I want to like that a little bit more uh let's, let's do the relationships and communication one because that's one that I was, again that most of the time schools will just do the first session. 00:06:37 But I've had time over this year to really do four and five sessions. So I love to think about how that could be pieced together in a, a semester or even an annual PD framework for adults. I like to think about like either monthly PL CS where we just include 15 to 20 minutes in your monthly PLC for SCL or if it was quarterly professional development, I think that those would be two ways that would be great to implement an adult sel curriculum. I love thinking about it too as like kind of this like year long package or unit too because then it is a, a commitment, right? We're not just doing this for 10 minutes one time. Yeah. So I love bringing in at this point of kind of the early brainstorm and I know you already have a lot too so you can kind of do a blend of like what we already do and, and what do you thinking? But Dr Goldie Mohammed's Hill model, I think is really good and she talks about the five pursuits um two of which are like skills and intellects, which is really content. We do those I think as PD providers, teachers even like we do those like just kind of naturally. 00:07:43 But the three that I think are less used uh or leveraged or touched on whatever is identity, criticality and joy. So are there, are there pieces that you think we either you already do and you want to like amp up a bit or just highlight or that you want to kind of add in to any or all of those pieces that's uh can you give me a little definitions of this? I mean, I think I know what most of those words are. But yeah, so I think for identity, I think of intersectional identity. So like we all carry so many like a multitude of identities. So I'm often just personally a friend of mine for me is usually race, gender, uh linguistic identity. Um Maybe national identity, immigration kind of status identity. And what that means, maybe a um it could be sexual orientation or membership in the LGBT qi a community. It could be even like I'm even thinking for like, I often think of for students, but actually for adults too is like your family dynamics, like for students, I often think, are you part of like a, you know, a single um parent household or are your parents divorced, that kind of thing? 00:08:49 But also like as an adult, are you a member of that community or were you raised in that like that kind of his identity too? Um So basically her question that she asked in her model is like, how will this help participants to learn something about themselves and for others. So we're digging into the self, like you said, and we're also digging into the other. I think that's very aligned to what you're saying. So that's identity, the criticality piece. Um She talks about how does it, how does it engage people thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? So we're kind of analyzing power and equity, which from a se to me is like there's kind of a lot of emphasis on the personal development, which is important, but there's also all these structures that make it, you know, hard and we can investigate those. Um And then joy, how does it enable amplify and spread joy like of the participants and of people more broadly? Yes, thank you for breaking that down. So I would, I would say criticality would be the the component to explore and to elaborate there. I think for the identity piece a little more generically, I I typically look at your natural communication style versus adapted communication style or your your workplace preferences versus your personal preferences. 00:09:56 So those obviously have cultural impacts and, and experiential relevance. But for generality and in this case, is, is important to be able to be general and say, hey, this is how I operate at home. Here's how I operate and work and you know, you may call that code switching if you want a more relevant term, I guess. But the criticality piece you know, something that I sometimes struggle with and sometimes it's super easy. I walk into some school buildings and, and folks are gung ho about SCL and there's no explanation needed. Whereas other communities, they don't really get it. They don't, they, they have a hard time connecting the dots. Whereas you and I understand, hey, sel our foundational skills from there, we can do equity, diversity, inclusion, restorative practices, character development. We can build anything on top of these foundational skills, but we've got to build those skills first. And so I think an area where I think that can help folks understand the impact more is to really look at the criticality and how understanding yourself and your communication styles can impact power and equity in your classroom and the school community. 00:11:10 I love that. That is so good. And it makes me think a lot about um adaptive leadership being at the core of, right, like what we're doing here because often we confront an issue in education or something. And we say, ok, well, here's the path forward. We're gonna kind of pd our way out of this and we're just gonna have a bunch of trainings and it's gonna be good, but we don't dig into like the core because it's a comfortable and so we don't have the emotional intelligence to be able to have the conversation as adults. And so we just don't touch it and then the same problems repeat. So there's some really interesting things that can be blurred there. Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And, and it's so, you know, it gets so nuanced with it again. I've, I've typically, I'm working with teams of 30 to 50 school school leaders or, or educators, I should say, departmental folks. And this is hard to get that much depth even if it is 2 to 4 hours. But when I'm, and this might be even something to shape you set adaptive leadership, maybe it's more important to focus on a senior leadership team or a small team of, of 5 to 10 in the school community on this curriculum. 00:12:13 So it can have a deeper trickle down effect because the reality is in schools, I mean that, that you just don't have the time to, to truly dedicate and implement um some of these components right now, but from a leadership standpoint, 4 to 10 lines that need to get on the same page in regards to adaptive leadership that can impact the entire building. Yeah. And I think about that's such a good point. And II, I also think about what we can do it, you know, size wise in a conversation, like having a smaller group, you enable better dialogue and more people get a place to truly like listen and speak. And I just think so much of that adaptive skill set is very much dialog and the SCL skill set can be very much practiced in dialogue and if we're already doing dialogue all the time, we're already having conversations and meetings. It's not really like an add on. It's just you're already doing this. So let's just do it better. Let's just be aware of our emotions in the moment or self regulating or you know, whatever. 00:13:16 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I so super interesting in terms of that criticality piece. Are you thinking? So in the next kind of thing I want to think about is like as a driving question of your unit, what is the ultimate kind of goal or question that you want people grappling with so that they are able to do these things, build this foundation and also have a sense of that criticality throughout. Yeah, man. Uh This is an interesting question. I'm I um I can be a little philosophical in my head so, so make it more concrete if I need to. But my main question is, is really, and, and this is a variety but are, are you showing up as your best self for your community? Hey, everybody. It's Lindsay just popping in to tell you what your episode. Freebie is going to be. Trey is sharing his youtube channel, which has tons of great stuff. Not only does it have full podcast episodes with the video, but he expertly clips segments of conversation where you could just pop in and grab 30 seconds of brilliance from his guests on over 200 episodes. It is amazing. Go to Lindsay Betances dot com slash blog slash 121 to grab that. 00:14:23 What when I'm, when I'm saying, are you showing up in your best self? Is there a bi bias and baggage you're unaware of? Is there the people that are getting on your nerves? And I use this example for myself. I, I, I've worked with administrators. I didn't like, you know, not that just that they get on my, I don't like you. Um But am I aware enough to recognize that? Am I professional enough not to let that get in the way of our working relationship? And am I yeah, still professional enough to work with you collaboratively to, to meet the end result? So I had to show up as myself. I had to check my stress, my frustration and say, hey, how can I communicate with this person who I don't like? And they're making my life hard, how do I communicate with you effectively so we can get the outcome for these kids. If I did not have a sense of confidence or emotional intelligence, I would have quit like that administrator ended up doing later down the year, but I would have quit but because I am showing up as myself because I am practicing these skills and abilities, I'm, I'm able to stand in that fire and in that heat or in that, that situation where there is confrontation and conflict, I'm able to stay in it, maintain my self, maintain my boundaries and get the outcomes from my kids. 00:15:46 At the end of the day, we slash I was able to follow through that person was able to get to the end of the road as well. They literally quit right after the year. And um but, but uh that's the question. Are you showing up as your best self for your community? I, I think, yeah. And I love the layers that are part of that, that you were just kind of unpacking because I think the stay in it while it's uncomfortable is the core of so much of our work, right? And, and also like, what does it mean to be my best self? So sometimes my best self as personally, I'll just think about this for myself. I hold the value of justice very close, but sometimes because of discomfort, I might not speak when I should speak or I, you know, these different things. So it's like, what does it mean to be your best self? Seems like it would be kind of an activity within this unit. And then also being like, what are the skills that I need or what are the checks that I need to have in my head in a moment? All that. Yeah, like for me and I tell folks for me it's routine. I mentioned to you before, I'm I feel off today. Um But I understand why I, I had a flight that was delayed for five hours. 00:16:51 I've been overstimulated with my family the last 24 hours I have, I have my time to do my morning routine to say my little prayers to, to, to write in my journal. I haven't had time to do that for about four days. And so it's got me a little discombobulated. But because I know that once I had the time this morning, even though I like to get started with my day after I drop off my son, about eight o'clock, I spent two hours making sure I plan the day, making sure I took the time for myself. So that when we jump on this call, I can be at my best self II, I can be operating where I need to be. And so that's yeah, that we gotta find out how to operate at that place at all times. And if we're not, you gotta be aware enough to, to know that. So going back to this example and, and again, I'm this my anecdotes make it real for me. In that same scenario. When I was a dean of students, I was having to do things like create schedules and, and check course codes and, and all kinds of I dotting T crossing rule following items that I am not good at. 00:17:54 However, again, I recognize that I recognize the stress that came with it, recognize that I was over adapting to something that was not a strength, but I also recognized it was necessary because that's what my role called for at the time. And so again, I, maybe I wanted to quit or I wanted to say I'm not doing this. However, I recognized that that was an imperative skill or something for me to go through to be a better version of myself. I love that and I love all of these anecdotes that I think they do make it so tangible to be like, oh, that's exact, I've had that same situation or something similar, right? And so I think listeners can connect to that. Thank you for sharing those. II, I think also, I'm wondering um you mentioned something earlier about when you're reflecting on your best self to be doing that so that we are not, I don't know the wording you use, but I was thinking the application being a teacher comes in or a leader comes in not at their best. And then they are creating a power dynamic, enhancing, maybe a power dynamic that already exists, right? 00:18:57 And, and they are um kind of exploiting it or making it more intense or making, you know, a student or a staff member who's a subordinate kind of just have a harder time being their own best self if that makes sense. So there's kind of the reflection in self, but then there's also the criticality lens I think enables us to reflect on our best self in community as Well, um and so I think that's what I think what I think I'm getting at is the driving question to me, makes so much sense and there's that kind of opportunity to unpack. What does that mean? Yeah. Yeah. It's II, I don't know if I read this somewhere but there was something about ambiguous leadership or sometimes am leadership can be ambiguous because there, there's just so much nuance in it and I personally have a hard time pinpointing exactly what the question may be or exactly what needs to happen because it is rather relatively general. And then the the specificity is is up to the individual if you will. Yeah, absolutely. 00:20:01 And actually thinking about that specificity, I'm wondering so typically we think about in a unit, you know, that student facing, what is that final Summit of assessment or project? And usually I, I like to make this really actionable relevant, like, you know, and, and so my brain immediately is kind of going to, what is that project? That thing where each participant in your session or in your kind of unit sessions are thinking about this question and they're able to go through and answer that question for the semester of the year, the whatever I think on a daily level, people can answer that. But also like, what does that look like as a, as a sum? What are you thinking for that? Um Great question. So I think in, in this and I can see a couple of iterations. But through the assessments that we're using, there's a communication style summary. And in that summer you're essentially going through your and I'll see if I can pull up a uh a PDF of it. But there's, there's a, a summary of your style. So it'll be, here's what your strengths are, um what you need to be motivated or what you bring to the job, some of your tendencies? 00:21:06 What kind of environments are you the most effective in? What are you motivated by um under stress? How are you perceived? What did, what, how did you respond in conflict behaviors? How can you increase harmony in conflict behaviors? What are your preferences for communication? Dos and don't. So I, that's a lot. But those questions can be compiled after we've had time to sift the, the data after we've had time to analyze our results, we can really determine, hey, this is the kind of environment I need to succeed. This is how I would like people to respond to me under stress. This is how I want people to do, communicate with me this way. Please do not communicate with me that way. And at the end, you've got a summary of your communication preferences for yourself. So when you get stressed or, or you, you take on an assignment that's not in your forte, you can recognize where that stress is coming from. At the same time, we can share this summary with the rest of our team and they can review those preferences before they meet with us as well, or they have AAA an item that they can utilize that will give them some tips on how to be an effective communicator with me. 00:22:18 When they can tell I'm not on my a game, but I like that having this kind of almost sounds like quantitative measurement of like here's what it is. It's kind of an inventory for me. But in practice, it's useful to review before or after for myself and for others, I'm in community with o of what that is. So there's an actual like impact in the community it sounds like. Mhm Yeah. There, there's that and I've also used a um and I'm gonna share this with you. There's a tension style summary. So this is probably one of the most fun activities that I have and, and work with, with groups. But they'll will look at OK. There's two questions. Are you fast paced or slow paced? Are you open or guarded or, or regular people oriented or task oriented? Based on those two questions, you're one of four communication styles. And based on that communication style, here's how I should communicate with you. And so there's a attention style exercise where we can say, hey, Lindsay, you're fast paced Trey, I'm slow paced. 00:23:22 That's what we're gonna butt heads when we go into meetings or partnerships together that might be where we have conflict where somebody else say, hey, I'm people oriented, you're task oriented. So we jump into a meeting. I wanna catch up with everybody and figure out what's going on and you want to stick to the agenda. So now we're frustrated with each other doing an activity like this. I can understand my preferences, understand your preferences and then we'll explore different strategies to adapt like slow down, speed up, send an agenda in advance, add a line item to the agenda to make sure that we have time to discuss the simple tips like that. Um Some people that are more slower paced, they're not gonna be ready to make a decision at the end of the meeting. So plan to give three days before you need folks to respond super simple strategies that you can use to truly impact your community. So think about a think about a principal who has some of these strategies in mind when they meet with a stressed out teacher, their instinct might be to solve it in the moment, but that teacher might just need some time and some perspective to go back and think about it. 00:24:33 And y'all need to follow up in a couple days and see what the solution is. That is fascinating because it's also making me think of a as kind of a summit of assessment like if it was a student group, for example, I might say if this is the question and we're focused on communication, um you know, between as a group and between individuals and, and adapting based on a strategy list that we've co created of how to help ourselves and others. Maybe the final assessment is also like we have a really challenging conversation and we see how we do and it's, you know, that's the assessment. I'm wondering if there is some sort of, yeah, like thing that people do as a final activity and it could be with you, it could be on their own, but then their reflection is with you, right? And it's like, what is this challenging thing? It could be a strategic planning around a contentious issue where it could be. Uh Let's, let's literally talk about this current event that's like super interesting in our community. But like, let's just see how our like we're solely focused, not on the words that we're saying, but on like the communication and the, you know, I, I don't know, maybe both words that's great. Like doing your own case that I haven't considered that piece. But yeah, role play and where um some strategies to adapt, maybe you're, you're looking at either addressing the conflict that you, that you have or not even a conflict, but a attention have that conversation with somebody figure out some strategies to adapt in your next meeting, like actually applying the strategies that we learned I think would be great. 00:25:54 And then, and then following up with a discussion or a summary of OK. Yeah, I think that would be so cool because I'm just thinking about like how I see all of this work as so relevant for the work that I do when we're talking about discussions of, of current events, of race, of gender, of injustices in the world, right? Like we need these as baseline to do this. So like how cool would it be to, to do it? But after having built the base, knowing that we're still not gonna be perfect, we're still gonna have these struggles. So like how do we reflect in a way that's generative and adding to that strategy bank or reflecting one on one or whatever follow up is needed. Do you, do you envision that that would be something that people would do without you and then you would reflect or would you want to do that like with people? That's a good question. I um I'd be open and, and I think it would depend on the actual implementation. So if we're, if I, if I would be around, even if it would just be to facilitate the conversation. And again, I, I like, I gotta make stuff real some time. So there's a, a client I'm working with now and we're doing, we did a uh initial session where we debriefed their assessments, understood their style. 00:26:59 We did a follow up where we explored the tendencies of the team and now, we're actually, so this is I'm going off a little bit, but this is just helping me bring it together. I can actually pull a collaboration report. So this is a small team of four. So I can pull your report, my report and your report, Lindsay, put them together. And let's walk through our, our preferences, our strengths, our weaknesses, our limitations, and then we come up with a collaboration strategy. So um based on some of those strengths and limitations. So that's, that's more of AAA one on one or a partner rather than a small group. But I think if there was a way, yeah, I guess that could be done with a small group, you know, and, and so I think so, yeah, and in my head, we would be able to, I would be able to provide, you could do it independently, but I would want to provide folks and what I've done here, each team member. So there's four team members. I gave each of them a collaboration report. So you can see how you collaborate directly with everybody on your team and then independently they can, you know, take those reports and come up with a collaborative, collaborative report for each individual and then together as your team. 00:28:11 And that could be done in PL CS in senior leadership teams, um grade level unit, whatever, however, your school breaks down its professional learning communities, we could do it that way. Oh I love that. It's actually making me think of the driving question frame that I sometimes use. It's like, what's the formula for? So it's like, what's the formula for acting as your best self or showing up as your best self in the community? And like, it might be that like, it's a combination of all these different strategies and these different elements that everyone's kind of, but it, it turns out as like formula or recipe or, you know, like whatever that it could be. Um But that's super cool. I think this is going to be highly relevant for people that even if they're just listening to this, I mean, one, if you're listening to this as a leader, you should kind of and, and do this with him. Um but even someone who just wants to test out this process on their own, like try it out at your next staff meeting, like try out like thinking about some of these pieces because I think they're so valuable and, and I'm wondering as you think about this now as like a unit, right? As opposed to like just kind of a standalone session or sessions, what would kind of like your and, and this could be built on what you already do. 00:29:15 I'm thinking usually I plan out three kind of main phases and then there's kind of 1/4. So one is like, what's the first session or what's like the hook activity that's like we're gonna explore this through some sort of highly relevant thing, then we're building the base, which sounds to me like it's the foundational pieces of identifying and digging into the self and like, what are your communication styles and all that? And then I usually try to do case studies. So like, what's the application of that base we built in certain scenarios or do we uncover certain scenarios or maybe we're looking at different strategies. So like a case study could be using um theater of the oppressed as a strategy to re enact a conflict that happened and then redo it or, you know, like whatever it is. Um I'm curious to know what you're thinking for anyone or multiple of these phases. You said case study. What were the first two, case studies? Yep. Hook is like the first session or the first activity. So how do you hook them in? Um Usually I use something typically I'll try to use like a current event or maybe a conflict or some sort of something that's interesting, but it could literally be anything. Then there's like the build the base, which is the foundation. 00:30:18 So that's phase two. And that seems to me like it's a lot of the inventory that you do of like identifying communication styles and case studies. Three. And then the fourth one is like, I usually do like project time or project work time, which to me is probably just the practice for teams and for individuals of like having the conversations digging into and like actually applying the strategies and seeing if they're working. Yeah. So I'm, I'm um open to your feedback. I would love your feedback here based on what I'm currently doing. The hook would be um I'm just thinking of individual session, but the hook would technically be the assessment. So there's when II I send a welcome letter to the participants, they read, what is this all about this assessment? And then you watch some generic videos that, that show you how not generic but specific to the style that kind of talk about. Hey, here's what this is, here's what you need to know about it. Here's how it impacts the workplace. And so something I've even been doing recently is showing what is high emotional intelligence look like versus low. 00:31:24 Um How does, how does miscommunication show up in the workplace? What does high stress look like at the workplace? Those are kind of my introductory topics to the session and then our foundation building that's like. So there's three sections of the report that you get. The first one is understanding this, which would be that hook if you will and really tying it into to stressors and workplace development. The foundation is gonna be the debrief. That's when you've already taken your assessment. Let's talk about your results and, and I mentioned that summary. So we're actually exploring your, your tendencies, your strengths your styles that it's very reflective for the folks and they're able to go and see that information. That's why I take a lot of time in a four hour session. That's like that is the crux. That is the meat of it where we're really digging and learning. Um The case study is where, that's where the style for me, that's where the style of tension comes in place. 00:32:26 And so like this past weekend, what I did, I, I used myself as if I said, OK, am I, how long have y'all known me? 20 minutes? All right. Am I fast paced or slow paced? Boom, you're fast paced. Tell me what, let you know that the way you're talking this, this, that all right. Am I open or am I guarded? You're open? Cool real time case study. Y'all understand my communication preferences now, based on those, what would be our difference in communication style and how do you close that gap? So the case study, but they would do it with, amongst themselves. I can tell you to think about a personal relationship, complete and then go and mingle with the people around and do the same. Um My final project, I kind of like what we talked about before though for the final project with the collaborative strategies. But um another kind of game, this is more fun, probably less curriculum is a decision by consensus team building game. There's a couple games called Lost on the moon and lost at sea where you, you're stranded on the moon and you've got to work with your team to organize the, the final materials that you have left in order to survive. 00:33:41 And it's not a place where it will. Since you said it, we'll just go with that. The, the idea is how can we make decisions by consensus using some of these styles or strategies to accommodate the rest of our team? I actually love that as seeing it as project work time. So one of the things that I think is, is unique to this specific example is we're practicing skills and we want there to be like that authentic final assessment which very well could be, we're talking about a conflict or whatever, but that working on the project, you know, it, we're not writing an essay, we're not doing like one paragraph today, we're practicing the skills. And so how cool would that be to have the decision by consensus be the project work time where we're practicing the skills with a little bit lower stakes? And then, and then the final assessment is a little bit of an elevated stakes because we're talking about a real thing. Um I think that would be super cool. I like it. And then I, I think to me the, the hook as the assessment, I'm wondering if assessment could be part of the hook. I wonder if the almost like a kind of an inversion necessarily. But I'm really interested in when you were talking about miscommunication and high stress in the workplace. 00:34:47 I just feel like some people could really be engaged with highlighting those upfronts of like, it could literally be like, you know, get people up and moving, like see to the side of the room if you've ever had an incident where saw this miscommunication style or something, you know, like whatever it is, I think just people having an identification with like, yep, I know that I'm kind of like in that head nodding zone, like I've kind of committed to like learning more about how do we overcome that or how do we, and then it's kind of like, ok, we're gonna, in order to do that, we need to know our individual styles and now we're gonna go ahead and assess or something. So it's like assessment is part of the hook, maybe it's like the wrap up of the hook and then we're reflecting as kind of the building the base and then doing kind of the rest of the piece, the pieces, but like bringing some of that up front. Yeah, I think that makes sense to me. Yeah, I think that would be super cool because so many people just want to talk about the struggles, right? And, and to see themselves as like I am seen, you know, like my struggles are seen with what's going on. 00:35:48 Um And then the final thing I want to say is the case studies. I love the idea of, I almost wonder if it could be like a couple, couple options here that I was thinking one is you think about various relationships and each relationship is a case. So you almost have like a uh like an internal gallery walk almost of like this is how I interact with my partner and this is how I interact with my child or, you know, whatever. Um But then I also wonder if that's like one case, like one session is kind of this gallery walk of interpersonal relationships. And then the next session is um you know, we're, now we're exploring some of the strategies or we're exploring some of like I love what you said early on, you talked about routines. So here are some routines that would support this particular thing. So now I'm kind of doing a case study of this routine or these type of routines in action. I, I wonder what, what you think about that? I think that's, that's golden because I think um yeah, right now, even with what you're saying, I think some things that might keep uh people that they might not necessarily know about SCL or the importance of emotional intelligence. 00:36:53 Some of that, some things like for me, I, I understand the application but it's hard to explain in laid terms. So I think that's a great way to say a Godly walk up in a personal relationships that puts a light bulb on for me to explore your specific scenarios. And that's what I get a lot of times is, hey, can we dig deeper into this section right here? Can we dig deeper into these tendencies? But we don't necessarily always have time to practice it. And I, I typically think about practicing what amongst the people. But I think that'd be a great idea to, to really think about how in your life, your interaction and your relationship show up with them would, would provide more depth. I also love this idea in terms of, I mean, we're both PD providers and so we communicate with leaders about like what we're choosing to do and what the plan of PD is for, for educators and teachers. And, and I'm actually thinking about this almost too as like a helpful tool of communication with that point of contact at the school or district to say like time is required to dig in deeply. 00:37:56 And here's the feedback I've been getting for participants, they wanna dig deeply into this thing. So why don't we make these full day or full session however long the session is case studies and then you can choose or we can say we're gonna do two cases or three case cases and the team like the, the whole group is going to choose what they are, but we're gonna build in space for like two deep dives or something and, and just kind of like that framework sometimes can be helpful to acknowledge how much deep work is required to do it. Well, good, good. I'm listen, I'm thinking about who I can go talk about this to next. Um I think this is, this is super, super well because, and you hear, even with some of my conversations, I try to keep things a little more generic or general because it can be so specific based on what you want and what you need. But I think even from my standpoint, when I'm going to talk to a school community, being able to use some of these terms and talk about it in the curriculum format would be very helpful as well because that's the language that, that folks understand PD is obviously a language too, but PD is more so seen as extra where curriculum is required. 00:39:06 So that, that might be AAA nice mindset shift that would, would help folks recognize the value in this curriculum as well. That's such a great point. I never thought about it that way. But yeah, you wouldn't like teach a unit as like just a one off. Like, like you wouldn't call like two lessons, a unit, right? Like you have to, you can't skip this stuff and so to frame it that way. Yeah. Oh, cool. So I'm wondering how like this is a super selfish question. So how in terms of the process and, and the kind of what we went through, what feels most relevant or most of like a, a helpful kind of tool in planning out some of this stuff because I'm just trying to, you know, constantly refine this process for other people. So I'd love to hear what you're thinking. Yeah. So I think what's helpful in this process, I like the phases that you talked about, of curriculum. You mentioned the hook, the foundation, the case study and the project. I think that's wonderful and not necessarily terms that I always think in, I I understand that and I'm more of a visionary if, if I were so I can see the end result and I can see where we're going. 00:40:09 But telling you those steps and giving them to you in detail, that's just not my cup of tea. So I need stuff that's more concrete and you talked about those phases that was super helpful. And I think even the idea part of what's helpful about this process too is, is just talking about it with you out loud. So I i it's helpful for me because I already have a structure, but it's helpful to have you because you've already built these curriculums and design these units. So I think I picked up language on what would be more attractive to school leaders. I think that the work that I'm doing an adult seo is attractive to school leaders. But if it can be structured in this way, I think that would be even more effective and more attractive. And even as I'm going to recruit and call schools instead of me being generic or general. And, you know, more of lame and take Eqsel, here's what we do. You know, we've got a curriculum focused on developing educated well-being and this is the process that we go through. 00:41:16 So instead of it being a PD day, it's a gallery walk, it's a, you know, I think that just is more specific PD in my head and I'm, I, I provide fashion development but the PD can be, it's a filler. So if I want, hey, we got PD this Friday, what are we gonna do for PD? Let's make the agenda, you know, and it's just on the back burner. Oh, yeah. OK. We need a speaker for PD. We need somebody for PD. It may or may not be aligned to what we have going on, but this is coming up in three weeks and we need a solution. Whereas curriculum I can say at the beginning of the year when you do your PD, this is what is gonna be done. And so it's a scope and there's a sequence to it and we can really map it out more specifically. Wow, you just did a lot there. Yeah, that is absolutely true. Um So in that vein of people are thinking now about curriculum knowing that you have a great one where can listeners find you connect with you. Have those calls with you. Yes, at SD educators dot com. We've just updated the website to include a lot of the stuff that we've talked about today from consultant to, to professional development. 00:42:24 I need to change it to curriculum and also school engagement for parents and families as well. So SCL educators dot com on youtube at Sel Educators is where you can find our 240 podcast episodes and on social media. I'm me Trey Gamon on linkedin Instagram and that's really Facebook too. That's really the ones I use. Amazing Trey. Thank you so much for coming on and doing this today. My pleasure. It was a great time. Lindsay. If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my life, coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. 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. 00:43:32 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 a strategic plan for increasing student voice in the next few years:
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
March 2025
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