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1/12/2026 240. Leading Change in Turnaround/Low-Performing Schools: My Takeaways from RSLP (Hammond)Read Now
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In this episode, Lindsay is continuing the series on school transformation, school redesign, school leadership, and leading change. This episode focuses on the key takeaways from a recently published book by Zaretta Hammond: "Rebuilding Students' Learning Power: Teaching for Instructional Equity and Cognitive Justice."
The book is grounded by three pillars of liberatory education: personhood, information processing power, and agency, which together form the foundation for revolutionizing education. This discussion focuses on the key takeaways from Hammond’s book, with some simple action steps educators can apply to their context today. Why? From the Research Hammond’s work is essential in today’s educational landscape because we’ve had, as she describes, a “pedagogy of compliance” for too long. This model relies on orderliness, low tolerance for mistakes, and minimizing opportunities for kids to talk. This approach limits possibilities in building classrooms full of engaged, thriving students. Instead, Hammond imagines the “pedagogy of possibility”—where we can go when we center student voices in education. Hammond focuses on the instructional core and how we are engaging students in learning through curriculum and classroom discussion. Amplifying student voice is not just about having feedback on cafeteria lunch, but is much deeper, sitting at the heart of our instructional practices. What? Action Steps for Educators To begin working in the pedagogy of possibility instead of a pedagogy of compliance, educators can draw from Hammond’s insights, including: Step 1: Embrace the pillars of liberatory education by focusing on personhood, information processing power, and agency. This shift allows for a more humanized learning environment where students are empowered to advocate for themselves. Step 2: Prioritize the instructional core—what and how you are teaching and engaging students in the classroom. Part of this is teaching learn-to-learn skills and encouraging “personal cognitive algorithms,” or how a student uniquely learns and engages with learning. Learn-to-learn skills Hammond discusses include:
Step 3: Embrace one-on-one conferences with students as must-dos, not something you do if there’s time. This allows educators to coach students independently and give them opportunities to develop meta-strategic thinking (i.e., how they think about their learning). Step 4: Avoid over-scaffolding by providing just-in-time supports instead of just-in-case measures. Empower students to recognize and utilize learning tools independently, enhancing their cognitive abilities for effective school transformation. Final Tip: There’s so much more to share! Grab the book for lots of practical hands-on ideas and protocols to implement in your classroom. One example is the implementation of talk and wordplay—we learn through talking, through dialogue. So circles, socratic seminars, small group discussions all help expand our thinking. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Leader Bundle with you for free. Also make sure to grab your copy of "Rebuilding Students' Learning Power: Teaching for Instructional Equity and Cognitive Justice” by Zaretta Hammond. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 240 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
00:03 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Welcome to episode 240 of the Time for Teachership podcast. Continuing the series of kind of school transformation, school redesign, school leadership and leading change. I want to talk to you about such an exciting book I mean a truly transformative book that was just released a few months ago and, as of the time of this recording was released like a month ago or less Rebuilding Students' Learning Power, teaching for Instructional Equity and Cognitive Justice, by Zaretta Hammond. My goodness, this is incredible. So we're going to talk about kind of the key ideas from this book. I'm hoping to have Zaretta Hammond on the podcast. That would be so incredibly exciting and as we work out scheduling, you know, stay tuned for that. But here are kind of the big things that I got from the book and takeaways that I want you to have in preparation for listening and diving deeper with Zaretta Hammond herself. Here we go. So I really love that. 00:59 She grounds the work and the book itself in three pillars of liberatory education right from the get-go. One is personhood, which includes like humanized learning environments, like the whole self. Right, we're full people. Two and this is the kind of crux of the book information processing power. So this includes these learn-to-learn skills that she dives into in the book Just to get to, like you know, deeper learning, critical literacy, creative thinking like the foundation of all of that stuff are those learn to learn skills and being able to process information and finally, of course, agency. So connected, of course, to the student voice. We're always talking about self-directed learning and being able to advocate for meaningful experiences for themselves. So I think this idea of personhood, information processing power and agency as this three pillar stool that we're excited about and getting into is just a wonderful, I think, orientation to the work. 01:52 Now she talks also in the introduction of this idea of we've had a pedagogy of compliance for far too long. This is very common and it's a pervasive mental model that a lot of us have. So a couple of those hallmarks include favors, orderliness over productive struggle, low tolerance for mistakes and minimizing opportunities for kids to talk. I mean we constantly as teachers. I mean I myself have a podcast, I talk a lot, we are constantly trying to share information, teach by talking, and we've talked about a lot on the podcast and even pulled goal percentages from street data the book Street Data for how often kids should actually be talking. So I love that kind of student led discussion can actually be a disruptor of this pedagogy of compliance, in this or en route to this pedagogy of possibility that she calls it, or en route to this pedagogy of possibility that she calls it. And so, in order to get to this pedagogy of possibility she talks about a lot of different things and we'll dive into a few here, but I do just love that she focuses on the instructional core. 02:54 Like, we have to focus on the instructional core. We can't just have, you know, kids talking about, like, what they liked, about the cafeteria lunch, right? We can't just, you know, do all of these things that might satisfy a desire for belonging in the external school space but don't actually change anything about how we teach kids how to learn right. And so, in service of that, she talks about teaching students learn to learn skills and critically encourages teachers to reduce the excessive scaffolding. I'm going to say more on that in a moment, because I think this is really important and really make sure that there are many opportunities that we are actually coaching kids how to think, like we're giving them opportunities to develop their metastrategic thinking and metacognition and we're actually having one-on-one instructional conversations, which she says are required. Like these one-on-one conferences, they're not like a nice to have, they're a need to have. And we're coaching students. 03:50 I love that she calls it like kind of a personal cognitive algorithm. We're helping kids learn to figure out how they're learning and what cognitive tools they have that align with you, know what works for them, what's available to them, and get to learn on their own so that it's not just our class they're benefiting in right, it's all classes, it's all both in and outside of school learning experiences. And, of course, to do this well, we have to have the structural support from policy and administrators and be able to make sure we're all on the same page in terms of what the goals are regarding instructional coaching and instructional leadership. Ideally, what we have when we create this space for leaders is we have, excuse me, for students and learners is that we have independent learners, not dependent learners. And she talks about how really you want those independent learners to be able to perform their own kind of gap analysis where they're saying you know, like, how do I get from where I am to where I want to be right, what needs to change so that I can, you know, improve my skill, improve my conceptual understanding? I do love that she talks about conceptual understanding a lot. 04:57 Having just read James Nottingham and the importance of conceptual understandings and grasping a concept, this was really, really powerful for me and if you haven't listened to the James Donningham episode, please go back and listen. That was a few months ago. Really phenomenal conversation about his recent book, teach Brilliantly. The third question she says, you know, is like how well am I grasping this concept? So again, conceptual knowledge. And then where are my leverage points for adjusting my learning tactics? So again that metastrategic thinking what tools do I have that will support me? And I don't want to give the whole book away. I mean this is kind of like her introduction introductory chapters, but I just love this orientation. 05:38 As we think from a school transformation lens and a school design lens, are we focused on the instructional core? Are we thinking about cognitively coaching kids and making sure that they have a sense of how they process information and what cognitive tools they have to be able to get better at it? Are we taking time and making sure that, amidst all of the typical school redesign? Or maybe we're not, if we're lucky doing all the typical school redesign things, or maybe we're not, if we're lucky doing all the typical school redesign. Things like grabbing a high quality instructional curriculum, handing over a pacing guide and saying follow this to a T right. I love that Zora Haman gets into hazing guides and it says you know like we need to not just follow them rigidly right when we are actually responsive. Putting the responsive and culturally responsive teaching right when we are actually responsive. Putting the responsive and culturally responsive teaching right, which we often forget or sidestep or choose not to do because of these external pressures like pacing guides. We don't enable kids to figure it out at you know all at different paces, in different ways, because they have different personal algorithms. So we maintain the high expectations, but we take the time to responsibly coach students and have one-on-one conversations, even if they're just three minutes long. So I really love this idea. 06:56 I think the big thing I'm latching onto is this idea of cognitive coaching or this cognitive apprenticeship. She calls it, you know teachers as what she calls cognitive mediators and supporting students metastrategic thinking so that they can be better information processors. Like I love this thesis. This is what we are here for. This is what real school transformation is about and, as we are trying to grow structures and processes for great schools, I think this should be at the core. So ideally you are able to work with Zaretta Hammond for multiple years and in an ongoing way, because that's what this truly requires. If you are not, please buy her book and dig deep into this. But I think there are so many spaces for us to think about as individual educators, as instructional coaches and leaders, as teams, like departments, or in our team meetings and our PLCs. How do we center this work? And I've talked a lot about PLCs in the past year and had some great experts on and folks who have published wonderful books with concrete strategies around looking at student work and aligning expectations and standards. 08:03 I also highly encourage people to utilize the time, as Zaretta Hammond suggests, to practice that one-on-one coaching with students, because it is so unfamiliar. This is something that we have not experienced in our teacher prep programs most likely, and is going to require a big mental shift, a huge, you know, increase of skills in terms of being responsive and thinking about all of this, maybe new information that's new to us as well as students around information processing and how cognitively our brains work to, you know, take in new information and connect it to what we already know and make it stick right. So we'll just share a couple things from her book and I'll do a quick version because I think I want to give you a taste and I want you to actually dig into the whole book because it is. It was one of those books where I was folding down every other page and underlining like every other line. It was just like I've realized, like I've read it basically twice now, because you need to kind of go back in and use it as a living text and you learn something new each time. It's just that dense and it all the pieces are really necessary to go together to be able to actually move forward. 09:19 And she talks about that right For true change. You don't want to just like run right in with this stuff. You want to think about your approach. You want to reflect deeply yourself before you're implementing anything. So here we go. Here are some learn to learn skills that she talks about. And she prefaces this with like kind of what is information processing? I just want to dig into these learn to learn skills. 09:40 So she's like right, the first thing we do is we size it up and break it down. So does this seem hard? How do I need to organize myself In investigating history we talk about as part of the investigating sources routine. That first kind of step is like what kind of source is this right? What am I attuning to? Is there an author, right? What's the bias? So that kind of thing right. How do I organize myself, get ready, are there strategies that I'm already thinking I can use? Then we scan the hard drive. Have I seen something similar to this before? Have I seen this thing before? What's the opposite of the thing I'm looking at? So we're trying to access that prior knowledge. 10:21 If you will, my favorite part of this and I think the places where she offers the most support and I think could be the most transformative we could really lean into here, particularly based on some of the feedback we've gotten around investigating history is chew and remix. So this is the third step. So questions a learner might ask themselves here how is this connected to what I already know? Is anything confusing? How could I make sense of it? Which of the four cognitive routines can I use? She elaborates on this. But basically it's, like you know, distinguishing, like how are different things similar or different systems right? Whole to part, part to whole? What are the kind of interrelationships of this concept Relationships, action, reaction and perspectives right, these are kind of therelationships of this concept relationships, action, reaction and perspectives right, these are kind of the four cognitive routines distinctions, systems, relationships, perspectives. 11:15 But what I really want to lean into here is that one of the biggest pieces of feedback we've gotten from the grade three and four pilot in the state of Massachusetts for our investigating history curriculum that was just piloted in the school year 24-25 is our kids don't have enough background knowledge about this content to be able to engage the way they need to. And I think an expansive view and you've heard me say this a lot, so sorry, but an expansive view of background knowledge in the sense of, like, what experiences have we had? What metaphors and I love that she uses this as a tool what metaphors can we link to? How is this similar to something I have literally experienced in my life, or something that maybe is not a scholarly source quote unquote but is something that I am aware of? I know about this concept in this other space. 12:04 Like, how can I link to that so that I can engage in this step three of chew and remix? Like I am thinking about this thing, I'm connecting it, I'm remixing it in my brain, I'm making it my own. And then I can go on to step four and five, which are skillful practice, where I'm kind of like you know, practicing, applying. I'm kind of like you know, practicing applying, I'm making some small changes and stretching myself, monitoring my progress, you know that stuff. And then five, making it sticky. Making it sticky, so I am using the skill, I'm teaching someone else or telling someone else about it, maybe engaging in some retrieval practice. But that chew and remix, like how do I link it from, like the new thing coming in to what I already know? 12:41 I think is gold and such an opportunity, given all of the kind of frustration or kind of not knowing what to do with the fact that teachers are reporting that their students don't have quote the background knowledge for some of this historical content. So I mean, one of the things that I want to kind of name is that she talks about collectivist cultures and these five principles she lays out of collectivist cultures and then she links what she calls cultural learning tools or these cognitive tools in these four different categories to support kids in their information processing or in those kind of learn-to-learn skills. And so the four kind of categories of tools are around memory, so kind of building schema and connecting to those existing funds of knowledge that we just talked about Making a metaphor is an example that she shares. I love that, as well as talk and wordplay. I love the idea that she is connecting to collectivist cultures like gravitation, to oral histories and dialogue and connects to sociocultural learning theory. Like we talk and think as we talk. I am a verbal processor. I'm learning this more and more as I grow up, but I think a lot of kids I've seen it in circles, socratic seminars, small group discussions in my own classroom there is something that happens when we talk to one another we expand our thinking. 14:06 And talking to James Nottingham in that that earlier interview I referenced on the podcast, he kind of expanded my ideas of you know what is the purpose of a discussion? The goal should always be that we're expanding our one another's thinking right. So when we engage in a discussion we don't want to come out as being right. We want to come out as having kind of our minds blown right, like our, our an expanded sense or more nuanced sense of a concept than when we went in with our own original ideas. Right Patterns and puzzles is another kind of of thing. So this could be like an open source I've always loved open source or like drawing a concept map. So thinking about how different pieces are connected within a concept, as well as perspective taking, which we do all of the time in history. But something like a protocol, like World Cafe or, I've heard, like talking heads or something like this right is like ways that we could kind of bring perspective taking to the forefront. I also think about leading change for adults as well as students. 15:06 Thinking about facilitating and helping people come to the realization of a disorienting dilemma by just sharing a little bit of information that causes people to say, whoa, this isn't what I thought it was right. I am having a little bit of disorientation here because I thought things were this way and this new information is just kind of blowing my mind and making me think I need to rethink this. And research has shown that doing that in groups, having that disorienting dilemma and being able to verbally process it in a group setting, is actually most beneficial. Because you can quote try on other ways of thinking, which I absolutely love. Because you can quote try on other ways of thinking, which I absolutely love. 15:46 So thinking about, like how we coach students using some of Zaretta Hammond's ideas around learn to learn skills. Actually, I mean, she says you know, we literally teach this to kids. We teach them how the information processing kind of arc works and we teach them learn to learn skills and we help them become aware of this and we help them recognize and literally hand over to them Don't like control it as the teacher. We're all going to do this thing now, right, we're going to use this tool, but to say to students hey, these are some tools, recognize what works for you, recognize when you might use it and be able to use it on your own. And what I love is that she encourages people to just play. Just play with the tools, like low stakes. Just play with them at first right, figure them out. Don't try to control it as the teacher, but do prompt the reflection of the students. And I just think this whole thing is just so, so cool and so meaningful. 16:46 So I think the large piece here this is a little bit of a different episode because I'm kind of like just spewing ideas that I'm hearing, but I think the one big piece in terms of mindset is around cognitive coaching is key to school transformation, like doing this well as a teacher, as a team of teachers, as a school, is super important. And how do you do that? Well, one, you yourselves as educators, and we ourselves as educators, as coaches right, we need to know this information. We need to know how kids learn. We need to know the five learn to learn skills ourselves. We need to be aware of some cultural learning tools that students can use when they're thinking strategically and meta-strategically. We also have to be aware of the key concepts we want kids to grapple with, as James Donaghan says. 17:37 Zaretta Hammond also says this concept being able to conceptually grasp things is super important and she shares a conceptual grasp scale in the book that goes all the way from like a zero out of zero. It's a zero to six scale. So the zero is like I don't even know what I don't know, basically all the way to six, where it's called a symphonic grasp, which I love, which is like now I can use this concept in new ways. I can see the less obvious relationships. I can critique other concepts and ideas because I'm all the way here, right, and of course there's like different pieces along the way, but to just know one what concepts are important that I need my students to know, like what's most essential? Two like how do I know that they actually know? Like where are they in that zero to six scale and how do I know that? Right, and and then, when we are thinking about how they are learning and grasping those concepts, we are thinking about those learn to learn skills and those cultural learning tools we're exposing kids to and we're thinking about those one-on-one cognitive conversations that we have structurally made time for in the actual instructional, either period or school day for younger kids in elementary settings. And finally, I think again. I said I would return to this later, but this idea of over-scaffolding is something that every passing week, month, year, I am just more and more aware of. 19:07 And I love Zoraida Hammond's language around responsive right, we talk about culturally responsive teaching. We need to lean into the responsive part. What she says is we have too many just-in-case supports, right. So like sentence frames that don't ask kids to actually like make sense of these multiple, complex ideas, pre-written sentence sums that they're they might not even need overuse of note taker worksheets, excessive anchor charts. Like we have all of these things that we're like well, we'll give this and we'll give kid does need and turn over, ideally, the tools to a kid themselves to figure out oh, I need this, right, I need something, and this tool is available. This will work for me because I know how I learn Right. And so we want the just in time supports versus the all of the just in case supports. 20:01 So she has a ton of really helpful kind of quote, unquote look fors for over scaffolding. That's like, oh, are you doing this? You might be over scaffolding, right, and it's a beautifully laid out table with lots of details. So I highly again encourage you to get the book and check all of that out. Okay, this was basically a love letter to. This is a red I haven't in her book, but I hope that you got some concrete ideas out of it and, if nothing else, that you are thoughtful about how we center students cognitive processing power and rebuilding that up in your school transformation efforts.
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AuthorLindsay Lyons is an educational justice coach who helps schools and districts co-create feminist, antiracist civics-based curricula, discussion opportunities, and equitable policies that challenge, affirm, and inspire all students. A former NYC public school teacher, she holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Lindsay believes all students deserve literacy, criticality, and leadership skills. Archives
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