|
9/2/2024 179. Systems Change Comes from People Closest to the Learning with Julianna Charles BrownRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
This episode features Julianna Charles Brown, who goes by Charlie, a champion for student-centered learning. The conversation highlights the transformative potential of education through a focus on collaborative change, equitable grading, and systemic reform.
With over 10 years of experience working with a variety of educators and a background in history, philosophy, facilitation, and anti-oppressive education, Charlie supports the development of dynamic change efforts to drive equity. Charlie is passionate about connecting the worlds of policy and practice with a critical lens to create more meaningful, responsive, equitable and lasting systems for every learner. Charlie’s career began at the New York City Department of Education in policy, working with schools on programming and providing guidance on working within state regulations. Charlie also worked on the Quality Performance Assessment Team at the Center for Collaborative Education, helping teachers and schools implement equitable performance assessment systems. Additionally, Charlie co-founded the NYC Mastery Collaborative, supporting schools in their implementation of competency-based education practices and advocating for the work to grow across NYC. The Big Dream Charlie’s dream for education is rooted in centering those closest to the learning process, including students, educators, and their communities. This differs from the current top-down approach and imagines an education system where decision-making is turned on its head and done by those closest to the learning. With this approach, Charlie believes the system can be meaningful for students and teachers alike. Mindset Shifts Required To move away from traditional, top-down systems and towards a student-centered approach, educators can use the power of dialogue and conversation to change mindsets. To break free from the current mold, teachers can have open, honest discussions about the changes they want and why they want them. This is the starting point to shift mindsets towards student-centered education and shared decision-making that energizes teachers and students. Action Steps To shift from top-down decision-making to collaborative, student-centered decision-making, educators can: Step 1: Initiate deep conversations between educators, students, and leaders to unpack beliefs about learning and co-create shared values and goals. Honest and open discussion is the first step to dig a bit deeper and create a new system. Step 2: Exercise autonomy within the classroom to implement equitable grading practices that prioritize feedback and growth over arbitrary marks. Students often internalize grades as identity markers, affecting their self-worth, so it’s important for educators to move away from this system. Step 3: Engage in cross-pollination of ideas between educators, policy-makers, schools, and school districts. This fosters important interdisciplinary dialogue that helps everyone learn from various educational models and strategies to develop a culture of continuous innovation. Challenges? Ultimately, this type of change to the education system involves disrupting systems of oppression, as the traditional academic models are inherently oppressive to students by sorting and stratifying them. To become more equitable and help learners thrive, the major challenge is overcoming the entrenched nature of these systems and the resistance to change. It’s important to be very clear on the why behind these changes to get educators to really pursue new ways forward. One Step to Get Started For educators seeking a new path forward, the first step is to figure out who you’ll have your first conversation with. Open dialogue is key to change, so determine who you want to talk to and explore ideas around the type of pedagogical experiences you want to see in your classroom. It all starts with a conversation! Stay Connected You can connect with Charlie on LinkedIn. To help you implement today’s takeaways, Charlie is also sharing a free PDF with our listeners: Beyond The Horizon: Blazing a Trail Toward Learner-Centered School Quality Systems. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 179 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 0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons Charlie, welcome to the time for a teachership podcast. I'm so happy to have you on today. This is going to be such a fun conversation. I'm so looking forward to it. I think first just like what is important for our listeners to know, either about you you have the coolest bio in the world or what do you want people to think about as as we jump into the conversation, like what should be in people's minds yeah, yeah, so what would it be helpful to say a little bit about me and where kind of how I come to this work? absolutely. We'll put the bio at the front of the episode so people will have just heard it. But feel free to share additions to that highlights from it yeah, sure, sure. 0:00:42 - Charlie So sort of just contextualizing some of the stuff that I've done. I've had the great fortune to be involved with education and educators now for a little bit over a decade, to work with just like some of the most caring, innovative educators who are just like the people who raise their hands and want to try to do what's best for kids and want to think really creatively and differently about that. And over the course of my time doing various pieces of the work, I've just learned so much from people who are really taking this work on in the classroom, taking this work on in the classroom. So I think a lot of my view of this work is informed by those educators that I've learned from. So anything that I share today know that, as I stand on the shoulders of giants and I just, you know, would express up front my gratitude to all the great colleagues and collaborators that I've had. So let's get into it and talk about some systems change. 0:01:47 - Lindsay Lyons Yes, oh my gosh, that's a beautiful introduction. I absolutely love that you're honoring, like all of the work that happens collaboratively, because sometimes it very much feels like when we're asked questions or in the space of like leadership and education, it very much can feel like here's this idea that I just came up with out of nowhere. 0:02:08 - Charlie It's like no, no, this is all very collaborative, Right, right, you know, and I would never want to come on a podcast and be like this is all my brilliant thinking. It's like very, very much just having learned from some of the most brilliant educators in the business. So so cool, Thank you, Thank you for sharing that. 0:02:21 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah for sure, for sure. The first question I really want to get into is the dream. So thinking about freedom dreaming Dr Bettina Love writes so beautifully about this. This dream's grounded in the critique of injustice. What is that big freedom dream for you? 0:02:38 - Charlie Yeah, 100%, and I love this question and I am just so inspired every time I have the opportunity to read or hear from Dr Love. So I love that we're starting here. See what I did there. And I think for me, the dream is really kind of connected to this concept that I've been trying on lately, which is really centering people closest to the classroom, right, so I come from and within the student-centered learning world, which I think that's a fabulous and beautiful dream, and I also think that including a slightly larger table of people that are closest to the learning is really what comes to mind for me lately, which is to say that you have two well, you have lots of people in the classroom, but you have learners and you have educators, and then you have the families, communities, guardians that surround those learners. Right, and so for me, when I think about those closest to the learner, closest to the learning, that would be my vision or hope for what we would have as a future of our education systems. Right, because right now our systems very much do center levels of the system. So, for example, we have a very top-down system of education right now. Right, decisions get made at the federal level. Additional decisions get made at the state level, that gets pushed down to districts, that gets pushed down to schools, that gets pushed down to classroom, that get pushed down to learners. And I think, for me, having a system of education that really authentically sort of turns that concept on its head and puts those that are closest to the learning at the center of all decision making around education, it would just be a completely different way to operate and I think that we would get to learning experiences that were authentically meaningful for learners and learning, an experience of the profession for teachers that would just be a lot more fulfilling, grounded and closer to what most of us got into this business to do, Because I think, you know, none of us really got into this game to be millionaires right, we all got into it because, you know, we generally care about young people and their learning, and what would it look like to have a world and a system that allowed us to live that dream every day in the classroom. 0:05:10 - Lindsay Lyons I love that there is this honoring of student-centeredness and this honoring of teacher well-being and just like fulfillment in your words, so good, so good that we can have both. It's very much like a both and not like an either, or, which I really appreciate. 0:05:29 - Charlie Yeah, and you know what? I think that this is like kind of unpacking that concept a little bit more is that when we think about how our systems are constructed right now, often what they do is they're constructed in such a way that it forces us to do things to learners that we don't actually agree with right. So I think a really good example of this is grading policy right, or the standards that we're required to teach right which is not to say that I'm anti-standards and I'm anti-assessment right, like I'm very much for those things. But because of the way we've constructed those systems in that very top down way, what ends up happening in the classroom is you're living out a bunch of decisions that were not made with those people in mind, and so, as an educator, you're in the classroom and you're doing grading to a student in a way that, if you really think about it and unpack what is happening with grading, I think most educators wouldn't actually agree with that practice, right? It's like this horrible feeling that you get when you have to put a number or a letter at the top of a kid's piece of work and you don't actually have time to provide them the meaningful feedback and you actually are reporting that feedback in a way that doesn't help them get any better. But you have to do it, and you have to do it 50 times, and you have to put that in a grade book, and it's like all of these things that we, as educators, are forced to do because of the way we've set the system up, and if we thought about designing the system from the center out as opposed to from the top down, we would end up with a very different set of we would end up with a very different set of sort of operating procedures. 0:07:13 - Lindsay Lyons There is so much going through my mind right now. I'm not sure what question to go with next, so I'm going to share some thoughts and then you can tell me where you want to go. Yeah, I can roll. One thought I'm thinking is the way in practice that educators try to get around that, but not from kind of a systematic lens or like a structural, like we're changing the system from the ground up. It's more of like in practice, what I see is okay, well, we're just going to grade this for effort or something Right. And so then you like to your point. You don't get the feedback on the standard that we're trying to improve. So we're just going to kind of manipulate the system we have to work in, but not in like a cohesive way that gives students feedback on the thing they need Right. And? And then there's also this idea of like. I think what that path looks like is probably listeners are probably thinking what does that look like, right? That feels so different from how things are done, like. What are the possibilities for doing something like that in my school or my educational community? So feel free to go either direction. 0:08:15 - Charlie Yeah, 100%, 100%. I mean I think that there are some really powerful techniques that, as an individual educator, are within your locus of control, right so, and there are some really good, just like evidence-based practices that you can build into your classroom level grading policy. So I would encourage everybody to read Grading for Equity and with the acknowledgement that, depending on the context where you're teaching, you may or may not actually have the authority to make that decision, and that's like we're the real crux of centering students and educators and their communities in the design for learning systems. That's. There's a big piece of work there, because I think if you are not empowered as an educator to be involved in that type of decision making and by that I mean setting of a school or a district level grading policy then it can be hard to navigate the change. And so I think that, while change efforts or systems change efforts, should be grounded and led by educators, students, in ways that feel appropriate for them to be involved. I also think that for any leaders that may be listening right like, it also requires leaders to think and move in a very different way, with full acknowledgement that, like, principals and district leaders, are being compressed from the top as well. So it's not necessarily. You know, we're all kind of in this top-down workflow. So I would say, for whatever level of the system you operate in, there are things that are coming down that you may have to do, and then what are the ways that you can interrupt them so that students can lead or whoever you know? Whatever level of the sandwich that you're at, you know the people that you're responsible for facilitating and supporting. They have maximum amount of autonomy and the maximum amount of support and guidance, as opposed to sort of like just leading with authority and that's like all sort of very amorphous. I think that until you use an example like grading Right. So it's like as I, for example, as a school or district leader, there may be some systems with which you have to comply as a result to reporting grades, crediting policies, things of that nature. But what does it look like to support your staff in having a conversation about how can we make what we have to do most meaningful? So, and then this thing can be true for an educator or a group of educators, perhaps at a department or at a grade level. You can say you know, we understand that we have to report grades. Maybe we have to are required to report them in a particular format, and what logic can we put behind how those grades are generated to maximize the amount of feedback that we're giving to students, so that those grades aren't just your? You know you're getting a b or an 80 and you just have to sort of like internalize that with no understanding of where that comes from or what to do next and so, and then I would encourage people to work together to say you know, once you've started to work within what is in your locus of control and identify the barriers. If you have a few people having that conversation with whoever is sort of the next up the authority chain, that's a very sort of interesting way to start to make changes. So if you hear from a whole department or a whole grade band team that, like we've tried some stuff out, we found this particular grading practice to be really impactful, here's the barrier that we're experiencing, right, like that's a very different conversation than, like you know, one person kind of going in alone, or what often happens is you just kind of like close the classroom door and do what you think is right, but maybe I'm not sure it's right, and so I would encourage people to like see how you can do what you're required to do in the way that is, like, most aligned with your values, and do it with others who share your values. And then for system leaders, I think it's like look for that type of leader. You know you have people in your schools and in your buildings who are interested but maybe not activated, and you know part of what your job is as a leader is to activate people and support them and provide them cover. 0:12:52 - Lindsay Lyons Quite frankly, and I notice you know this person is maybe the chair of a department really eager and interested in, like you said, maybe not activated yet. What is the thing that you have found? Or maybe a couple of things. Sometimes I see this like aha moment. When we rethink grading, we like, for example, it's about feedback, not the final number that goes in the grade right, or some sort of like mindset shift that's like whoa. This unlocks possibilities for me. Do you think there are those things that, as a leader, I could tell that chair of a department to kind of like nurture these mindset shifts in the team to be able to then try the thing? Does that question make sense? 0:13:42 - Charlie Oh, it totally, totally does, it totally does. And I would say that I think that again, kind of going back to that spirit of collaboration, co-construction, right, like I think that the power of dialogue and conversation amongst so say, like you and I are that teacher and leader, right, like we should get together and have really deep conversations and unpack what we believe to be true about learning, because that'll do a couple of things right, and this can be true, right, so this can be a principal teacher, this can be a teacher, student, you know. This can be a, you know, district leader, principal. It could be a district leader, student, it could be you know what I mean, right. But these conversations, when we actually start to get into what do we believe to be true about teaching and learning? And I would venture to say, unless people have gotten very jaded, which also happens but like, most people believe that young people can learn, most people believe that, you know, young people have great capacity and if somebody doesn't believe that right now, that's a whole other conversation to have, right, I think that's one thing, but I think we're talking about you see somebody in your building or you see a student who you perceive to be a possible leader, I think, engaging in a dialogue, coming to some shared understanding about what are the key, either changes we want to see key understandings about. Again, maybe using the example of grading policy, like what are the key shifts that we might want to see and why? Because I think human beings crave, why, and I think also when you provide somebody a really good why, it's very, very difficult to go back from that. So again, I'll use grading as an example because that's, like you know, kind of my thing, but also it's just a good through line for that conversation. But if you take people through the thought experiment about, like one that I find to be particularly powerful, for grading is like when you talk to a student about their grades, especially if you're in a very traditional academic setting, right, what do they say about their grades? Do they say I have a B student? Right, and because young people internalize their grades as an identity marker, they carry that identity marker through the way that they experience the rest of their learning. Right, and so that's. And for that B student it gives them very little information about. Maybe I'm the kind of B student that puts a lot of effort in, but like is a little bit, needs a little bit more support to master content. Maybe I'm the type of B student who, like, tries very little but just the content or the you know transferable skills or whatever. They come very easily to me, but I don't know that I'm just a B student. That's like a lack of information for the, for the B student, but they have internalized that identity. It's devastating if you're a C student or a D student or an F student, because that is very, very difficult to unlearn and it doesn't just impact your academic identity Like, it impacts your self-worth as a person. And I don't think teachers want to do that to kids. I really don't. You know, 99.999% of teachers don't want to be harming young people and so if they understand that the pedagogical practice has an impact and we need to change it, and that's why and we have that conversation now you've got an ally and we need to change it. And that's why and we have that conversation Now you've got an ally and we are on a team and we are going to make this change. How do we have the next set of conversations and bring in additional allies? Right, because, like, change can't be mandated, it just cannot. Right, like, change is Change is very, very like ecological, I think. In its nature right, it spreads slowly but it does make sense, you know, like if you think about the way like seeds move or forests grow, it just like it's slow but it's continuous, given the right set of conditions Anyway. So I'm going a lot of different directions there, but I hope I answered your question. 0:18:10 - Lindsay Lyons Wonderfully. Oh my gosh, I just think about. I was taking furious notes. One of the things I wrote down is the idea that students internalize grades as as identity markers and that it affects their self-worth. I mean, if there's no other takeaway from the conversation, like that is huge, right. Like that's huge to recognize, and my brain went to like I started numbering some of the things you were saying. It's like is this the process, right? So like one to unpack beliefs about learning and how powerful to do that with students not just teachers, but with students, right. And then to try something as a team, like, okay, we're gonna try. We're just gonna try some things out. We're gonna notify our leaders when we have a. We're just going to try some things out. We're going to notify our leaders when we have a barrier. We're going to look for that ongoing support and space to tinker, kind of. Is that kind of correct? What would you add to that? What would you? 0:18:58 - Charlie change. I think that's it. I mean, and I think it's about establishing the type of culture within your learning community where that's the workflow right. I think that we are so, and again, I'm talking about our more traditional learning environments. But, like, our more traditional learning environments are very sort of like perfunctory in their collaboration and iteration, right. It's just sort of like well, here's our strategic plan. I'm going to present on it at a few staff meetings. We're going to get some PD in this. You know what I mean. It's like it just kind of happens in this way that doesn't really like engage or inspire. And again, I'm not saying every school is like this. I think there are a million billion fabulous schools that are doing like really cool stuff with PD. But I'm saying, like, in a traditional learning community it just sort of feels perfunctory, whereas if you can establish ways of working together that center young people and their feedback and their thoughts and then provide educators the space to like process, what that means for pedagogy and then has sort of like a leader that understands their role is to make all that happen, not actually make a whole lot of the decisions right, but provide the conditions for the people who are closest to the learning to make those decisions and what that looks like. It's not hard. I think you've really sort of nailed it. It's like give people space to have the conversation, to try things out, to iterate, and if you have those workflows built into the way that collaboration works in your building or in your district or even in your state, that can be really transformational, because things will you know, if people have the space to have those conversations, things will start to move, especially if you are able to bring in new and exciting ideas at strategic moments. So I think that's another piece of it is like who are we who and how are we partnering to bring in new ideas and how are we doing that in a strategic way? So it doesn't. It doesn't feel like every couple of months there's a new thing we're doing, right. So I think that's like getting that sort of workflow down and then understanding how new things are going to be tested and tried and supported in a strategic way. That doesn't feel like. It's like that Goldilocks principle, right. It's like it's enough change in momentum, but not so much that people feel overwhelmed with all the stuff we're trying to get done. 0:21:36 - Lindsay Lyons And what that makes me think about is that underlying why. So if you've had the conversations and you recognize, wow, students are internalizing their grades as it affects their self-worth, then you are like, okay, I'm willing to receive and engage with all of this new PD because it's strategically supporting the fact that I don't want my students to internalize a C identity, right, and I want them to grow their skills. So I will now engage with a possibility of switching to competency-based feedback or, you know, rating on a one to four scale instead of zero to 100 or whatever the thing is Right, right, I think that's really cool, that there's like that anchor there. 0:22:15 - Charlie Right, because if I understand, like what are the principles or the values or the commitments, or whatever you want to call them behind it, the decisions make sense and they become very clear, right. So again, right To the point of standing on the shoulders of giants, my a good friend of mine and close collaborator, meg Stentz. What's up, meg? New York City Competency Collaborative says teachers are responsible for making more decisions a minute than almost any other profession, with the exception of air traffic controllers. That's a direct quote from Meg and that can be very overwhelming unless we understand what is the reason between taking one decision direction versus another right. And when you have those core beliefs about what you believe to be true, about students, their capacity to learn, how you want to support them, those decisions become much more clear as opposed to just feeling like an onslaught. 0:23:09 - Lindsay Lyons Absolutely yes, when you have those core values you're like. Well, this is the clear next step. 0:23:14 - Charlie That's it. 0:23:15 - Lindsay Lyons We hope it's usually that easy, but I think when you mentioned competency, collaborative I actually was thinking about could there be, is there either a school or a pattern amongst the schools that you worked with, either then or in any other capacity where you've been since, that you've seen kind of? This is kind of phase one of a transition from maybe a traditional grading system to really having that like ground up systems, change for grading for equity kind of thing. 0:23:44 - Charlie Yeah, I think I think the competency collaborative is a great example in New York City. Yeah, I think the Competency Collaborative is a great example in New York City. So those that don't know about it, it's a well, in New York it's considered a small program I think they have like 50 to 75 schools a year, depending on how many but also just a lot of cross-pollination around grading practices, competency-based education. So from a district level that's been really interesting because you have schools from all across the district with very different learning models, still able to learn from each other and there's like that meaningful sharing across schools. And then I would also just say sort of like the context of New York in general. The district is set up in such a way that teachers have a lot of time. They just have a lot of time like individual work time, collaborative time, and schools in New York have really set up you know, of course, not every school, but schools that are really thinking and leading in this learner, human-centered way really use that time in a very impactful way. So you've got sort of like in the building time and then you also have this cross-pollination effect where we're learning from, yes, some folks who are experts in coaching roles and also coaches in that model really understand the value of sharing people who are working on life problems, right. So it's that that tends to be the most impactful, which is to say, like I can speak to somebody who maybe is currently trying or recently tried the thing that I'm about to do and see how it went for them, consider the implications that they learned about, and then I think that space of collaboration can be really helpful. I think that in general, right so that cross-pollination model we my current organization, knowledgeworks we do that in learning communities from South Carolina, North Dakota, nevada, and it's core for us because we feel like if you are kind of on an island, it's very difficult, so you can actually see this kind of as a structural model at each level, right. So in the building you need to get outside of the walls of your individual classroom and I actually think some of the most powerful conversations can be cross-curricular, right. Like I think people think like, oh well, like I'm a humanities person, I have nothing to learn from a math person or vice versa, and actually when you really start to talk about pedagogy, like those can be some of the most powerful conversations because there are meaningful, just like discipline, specific differences in the way we construct knowledge and the way we understand the world, and there are meaningful alignments. So, like having opportunity to learn from people in your building and then, anytime right, you can get people out of the building, even if it's in a virtual way or in like a you know Zoom type coaching thing. It just that that really helps people just get inspired and, and you know, energized, I would think. I would say I love this. 0:27:09 - Lindsay Lyons This is amazing. I love the structural nature and so, like when we were at Manhattan International High School, they used to the international network would say one learning model for all. So there was like, as educators, you do this right and invite the students to do the same things. And so I really love that and I see that in the structural pieces that you're saying on this level, on this level, we're doing it repeatedly, Right, right. 0:27:33 - Charlie And often the okay again, not a knock on anybody, right, like the system is this way, but like the people who are at those higher levels of the system are the least accustomed to working and moving in that way. Because, I mean, I think it's the nature of the beast in some of these, like district leader roles, these state leader roles, it's very, very difficult to a there's just like a huge crush and demand on time. There's a lot of different things that people are considering, right, like those people are thinking about facilities and funding formulas and like there's a lot going on there. And I think also it's just difficult in that at that space, to have the time and the space to be a learner. And I have a lot of admiration for a lot of the visionary leaders who do make that space, even though it's very sort of antithetical to the way a system would typically be set up. But I think it's also very freeing, right, because at any level of leadership, if you are actually distributing leadership, then that's like one less thing. I mean, you all are ultimately responsible for the decisions and their execution, right, but it's like you're sharing the load in a way that really you can have more confidence in the decisions that are coming forward because it's like, well, we made this decision together, it didn't go the way we planned, now we can pivot, or we made this decision together and it went fabulously and now we can all share and own it. So but I do think that it's it's it's harder for for, you know, once you get at those higher levels and then I think, at the federal level, it's it's, you know, not to get like way, way out there, but I think it's it's just harder because our, our federal leaders have very little connection to the world of the classroom and understanding of what the implications are of big decisions that they make and how they show up in the classroom. So we can talk about that if that's an area of interest. And actually one of the resources that I did share was a fabulous conversation that we had the opportunity to support that brought together people from every level of the system so students, educators, building leaders, state leaders, federal leaders to talk about what it might look like to build student-centered assessment and accountability systems. Right, and that was the most like. It was one of the only opportunities I've had in my career in this space to see all those people kind of together and understanding and learning from each other. Like this is what this actually looks like and feels like for you. It's a very cool opportunity. So it's the Beyond the Horizon Report, so I've definitely encouraged people to check it out in the show notes. 0:30:26 - Lindsay Lyons Absolutely. Yes, we'll definitely link it in there. I, that sounds beautiful. That sounds so, so cool. I'm wondering for the listener who is thinking like I'm I'm not there yet, or like I don't have access to that system or whatever yet. What is like I'm imagining something is going through their head, Like, oh, there's going to be bumps along the road, right, we're going to hit these barriers, like what's the challenge that you've seen people kind of frequently come up against? And then how have you like seen them overcome it, coach them to overcome it? That kind of thing, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:30:57 - Charlie That's a great question I would say. I think that, right like at the core of what we're talking about, we're talking about systems change and we're talking about I mean, I think my orientation, a lot of the orientation of the listener, will be like we're actually talking about disrupting systems of oppression, right like. So our current like not our like, but current traditional academic policies are inherently oppressive. They are designed to sort and stratify students and when we start to talk about the whys and why we would make some of these changes, it's because we believe we want a more equitable system and we want all learners to actually be able to grow and thrive. And systems of oppression are very sticky, very difficult to undo. It takes a lot of effort and then there are going to be times where the work maybe doesn't go well. And then what a system like that? So like any oppressive system, it will say like well, that didn't work, we should go back to what we were doing. And that is, I think, the most dangerous conversation, or that can be like a very dangerous point for any change effort, because just because what we tried didn't work doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue to try to make the change and it doesn't necessarily mean that the why behind what we were doing is wrong. It just means, like that iteration of what we were trying didn't work the way we hoped. And I think it's important to norm up on that at the start, at the middle and every moment all the way through, because your change effort will go through iterations, your first grading policy or your first set of competencies that you ever write like you're going to look back on them in a few years and be like what on earth were we thinking? But progress through that, because the why is still there and that doesn't change, but sticky systems will try to retrench you to where they were. And then there are going to be considerations right, there are people and communities that are benefiting from that sorting and stratification system. Right, like, let's get real. Like they port inside schools ratings into the real estate software now, so you go on Zillow and you've got an inside schools rating on there. And when you start to come up against that type of backlash, it's a whole different conversation. And that's where, right, we also need leaders to step up and provide some covers for people. And again, continuing to return to that why? Because you are doing this for the right reason, so keep it moving, yeah. 0:33:44 - Lindsay Lyons Oh my gosh, brilliantly put and great example with Velo I have. That is a frustration I continue to have. I have thoughts, yeah, agreed, I think, as we kind of wrap up our conversation, I'm curious for that listener who's like I want to get going, I want to get started. What's that next step after they're done with the episode that they could take to kind of build that momentum? 0:34:08 - Charlie 100%, and I think I'll just could take to kind of build that momentum 100%, and I think I'll just go back to kind of like the first conversation is like who do you want to have your first conversation with? Like who is going to be that person? Who you, you know, maybe they they're on your, maybe they're on your team, maybe they, you know, there's somebody that you went to school with and they work at another school or another. You know, maybe you're a school leader, it's another school leader, or you know, just find your person or your group of people who you want to go through this with and start to have those questions about why, why we might want to make this change. Because, again, I think that's just such an important thing and you know that you know, if you're looking about where to start that conversation, it's like what is happening in the pedagogical experience of our classroom and do we believe in it? And if we don't, what would we want to see that we could believe in, that we could be proud of that, we would be excited to get up and go to work every day to do. And then how do we get from where we are right now to here, and that's you know. Once you start to have that conversation, I think it's very hard to go back. 0:35:19 - Lindsay Lyons So yes, oh my gosh, that's so good and a conversation is such a nice starting point because you can do that tomorrow, like you can find the person and go start the conversation tomorrow. 0:35:28 - Charlie You don't have to wait. Yeah, I think that, um, you know, this is hard work, but it's good work, and it only um, you know, we can really only do it together, yeah, yeah. 0:35:40 - Lindsay Lyons Oh, well, said so, I am curious what is something that you have been learning about lately? This is like a fun question that you could answer related to your work, or it could be something totally outside, like Charlie, as a education person. 0:35:55 - Charlie Okay, I'll share a fun example. So so I'm really you know, in our work we do a lot of like relational thinking, deep thinking, right and, and sometimes at the end of the day, I'm really just like I need to do something, that it's like I can do it, I can see the outcome, and so I've been really leaning into learning about home restoration and building techniques and I've actually been taking some classes and it's been so fun because it's just like you have a nail, you have a hammer, you drive it. And it's been so fun because it's just like you know, you have a nail, you have a hammer, you drive it, it's, it's done. And so I think it's really important to find a balance of you know, when you do the type of work that we do, how do you also, um, find things that ground you in the moment and in like impact that you can feel and see and hold? Maybe that's crafting, maybe it's cooking, maybe it's, you know, messing around in the garage, but I think that having that balance to make sure that you have the energy to go back and continue to do the heart work and the brain work all day, every day, is a, it's just a. It's been really, really powerful for me. 0:37:07 - Lindsay Lyons That so deeply resonates. My dad was a PE teacher for elementary school students and he was like you never see the growth. Occasionally kids will come back and tell you the impact they had on you, but what he would do in the summers, on summer break, was paint houses and he was like you can see it is a finished product, it looks good and I did that right. It is so different work, work, and it's so cool to have both. I would. 0:37:31 - Charlie I would encourage anybody to to to get that sort of like immediately gratifying activity or work that they can do, cause it's, it's, it's fantastic. 0:37:42 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah, absolutely Okay. Last question when can people learn more about you? Connect with you online, connect with your organization, all the things? 0:37:50 - Charlie Definitely so. My organization, knowledgeworks, has a fabulous website. The resource that I shared is on the KnowledgeWorks website, so I would definitely encourage people to check out. We have tons of different articles, videos, things on that website. I also have a bio on that site and then I'm also sharing my LinkedIn page things on that website. I also have a bio on that site and then I'm also sharing my LinkedIn page. If anyone wants to reach out and connect, I'd be more than happy to chat on LinkedIn and or, if you want to, you know, use that as a way to have a deeper conversation. I'm I'm here for it, so Charlie, thank you so much. 0:38:20 - Lindsay Lyons This has been wonderful. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. 0:38:23 - Charlie It's been a real pleasure and you know, anytime you you want to talk grades or or you know systems change, please just let me know it's been, it's been an honor.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
1 Comment
Leave a Reply. |
For transcripts of episodes (and the option to search for terms in transcripts), click here!
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
August 2024
Categories |
RSS Feed