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In this episode, we chat with Dr. Annalies Corbin about the nature of “wicked problems,” which are complex and multifaceted challenges without singular solutions. She emphasizes the importance of fostering agency among students and educators to promote engaged learning environments.
Additionally, Dr. Corbin highlights the significance of understanding and incorporating students’ cultural backgrounds and passions into teaching practices to create a lasting impact. The Big Dream Dr. Corbin envisions an educational system where students and educators discover their passions and find freedom in learning. Honoring our passions and our collective humanity will bring solutions that we’re often looking for. She believes that embracing individual interests and encouraging deep engagement can transform both the learning experience and the education system as a whole. Dr. Corbin is passionate about bridging research and practice to solve pressing educational challenges collaboratively. Mindset Shifts Required Dr. Corbin defines “wicked problems” as big, bold, complex, global problems that have many small pieces that are so intertwined and, because of that, there are numerous solutions. There are no singular solutions. They’re great for learning and teaching because they serve a societal need as we solve them. With this in mind, Dr. Corbin recognizes the necessity of shifting the mindset from traditional siloed education to an integrated, transdisciplinary approach. This requires educators to focus on the intertwining of systems and human aspects, considering broader socio-political dimensions when tackling educational problems. Action Steps When embracing your “wicked problems” and finding solutions that work in your context, Dr. Corbin recommends educators take these steps: Step 1: Invite your students to start thinking about something bigger than themselves. You start with something about the student — what matters and is relevant to them — and then expand it beyond themselves to bring the learning deeper. Step 2: Foster agency by inviting students to co-design learning experiences and engage them in collaborative problem-solving. When addressing something so big and broad, start with what you and your students are passionate about, engaging in it together. Step 3: Scaffold the collective set of experiences in your classroom by understanding your learners and their cultural contexts and incorporating those insights into the curriculum to make learning relevant. Step 4: Prioritize what Dr. Corbin calls the “five threads” of effective education practices: agency, cultural responsiveness, mastery, transdisciplinary teaching and learning (to stop teaching in siloes), and problem-based. The things that stick have those five elements. Challenges? One key challenge Dr. Corbin discusses the difficulty in transitioning from a disciplined school structure to a cohesive, transdisciplinary model. Often, educators are hesitant to leave the safety of subject silos due to systemic constraints, but when done, it leads to a more authentic learning environment that reflects real-world complexities. One Step to Get Started Begin by integrating agency in your classroom by giving students the opportunity to voice their ideas and choose how they wish to demonstrate their understanding. This approach not only empowers students but also begins to shift the educational culture towards one that values both learner autonomy and diverse paths to mastery. Stay Connected You can learn more about Dr. Corbin and her work on The Past Foundation website, or grab a copy of her book, Hacking School: 5 Strategies to Link Learning to Life. Stay connected by email at [email protected] or follow her on Instagram, X and LinkedIn. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing their page on The Past Foundation website with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 266 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Dr. Corbin, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Dr. Annalies Corbin: I am so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, I am, I'm really excited to dive in. So I certainly have on my mind some of the things that we corresponded, uh, about prior to this show. So thinking about, you know, wicked problems is on my mind. Mm-hmm. And thinking about the airing of this episode being right at the start of, of school for many places- Yes ... across the United States, and thinking about, you know, all the things that we talk about on the show, like a kind of a collaborative approach to learning and, and leading, and just our capacity for resiliency, I think has been of great interest to the podcast recently. So those are the things on my mind as we enter this conversation. Is there anything that you have on your mind that you wanna share to frame the conversation today? Dr. Annalies Corbin: No, but I think that that's perfect timing. Actually, just before our conversation here, I've been editing three years' worth of research that we're getting ready to, to let go of, and we talk about these very things as so impactful and how we can actually see them be the things that move the needle. So I'm really excited to talk about it. I think the timing's perfect, so yeah. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, that's perfect. And I am such a research nerd, so I'm very excited. Yeah. Like, the fusion of research and practice will be a great thing. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Exactly, exactly. Lindsay Lyons: So I guess big dream-wise- Mm-hmm ... so thinking of the idea of freedom dreaming, Dr. Bettina Love talks about it as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. Mm-hmm. And I'm curious to know what that big dream is that you hold for education. Dr. Annalies Corbin: So for me, it's all about, you know, students and educators finding their passion, finding the freedom in learning, right? Just the act of engaging very deeply and spending time, energy, and effort in the things that I'm curious about, that I'm interested in, and that I can then translate whatever that happens to be that I have the opportunity to dig deeply into, into who I am and why it's meaningful to me. And we have to do that both for our learners and for our teachers, right? We have to allow that freedom of expression, and it's not just one or the other. And oftentimes the conversations are about, "Oh, well this is broken," or, "It's so-and-so's fault," or, "This is about, you know, this issue." And the reality is it's, there's systems issues that we're working on collectively and collaboratively, but sometimes when we roll up our sleeves and we do that deep and meaningful work, I think that we forget, we forget about the humans in the middle of all of this. And that if we just honor those passions, that humanity upfront, it would actually solve many of the things that we're working on. Which is why I like wicked problems to come full circle to how we started this conversation, so. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh, maybe now would be a good time to define wicked problems. Do you mind going into that for us? Dr. Annalies Corbin: Sure, sure. And I, and again, I love, love, love the idea of wicked problems, and I do feel like the, the global education system is a, is a, is a big old giant, hairy, audacious, wicked problem, right? Um, so wicked problems are problems that are big, they're complex, they're bold, they're incredibly meaningful, um, because they stretch literally across a collective set of ethos, or I like to say they're planet wide, they're global. And they have numerous solutions because they're so complex. They've got all these small pieces and parts that are all intertwined, and I can solve for one of those. If I'm super lucky, I can solve for one of those. And the other thing is, a wicked problem doesn't have a singular solution. That does not exist, and that's the beauty of them, right? Because solutions have to be tailored to the place in which the problem you're trying to solve is going to be applied. And if we don't do that, then it's not gonna work. It might work for me, but it's not gonna work for you clear on the other side of the world or in another neighborhood even. I mean, they can be close proximity and still not work because we haven't collectively, um, internalized the culture, the community, the environment, the constraints, the joys in which that solution is going to sit. So wicked problems are fabulous. They're great learning, they're great teaching, and honestly, they, they, they serve a societal need. We solve a thing that needs to be solved. Lindsay Lyons: Thank you for that definition. I often think of adaptive challenges, and I've heard these- Mm-hmm ... used interchangeably. Is there a distinction there, or can those be used interchangeably? Dr. Annalies Corbin: They can be used interchangeably, but I do think that you have to be mindful, because whatever somebody has in their head, you just need to understand that as the outset, right, of the way you're going to approach it. But, but the reality is, the wicked problem also, I think, and this is my opinion, has one sort of step back, right? And that step back for me is that it's really comprehensive of recognizing that there's often this massive sort of policy, geopolitical, sort of s- systems-driven thing. It's so, it's, it's not just about the human, right? It's about all of the interplay of the bigger, broader systems piece. So that's the other reason why I sometimes will, will think of the wicked problem as just being one step removed. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, I love that. Okay, now I'm gonna be all about wicked problems. 'Cause we can't disintegr- or dis- aggregate the system- Correct ... from the human, right? Yeah. Dr. Annalies Corbin: You... And, and every time we try, that's when we bump up against these really giant roadblocks. And those are real roadblocks, right? But if we would step back from them and re-sort or evaluate the way that we're thinking about or even seeing it as a roadblock, and again, we connect the system and the humans with the environment, with the geopolitical, with, you know... If we, if we design or try to problem solve with all of those elements in mind from the get-go, we will see a very different picture, and the narrative, the narrative and the journey that goes with that narrative will be very different Lindsay Lyons: Okay, this is really cool. So now I'm thinking about, I usually ask about mindset. So you kind of touched on, you know, you have to approach it in this particular way. Is there- Mm-hmm ... some advice you could offer us or, like, a, a question or prompt- Mm-hmm ... that kind of cues people to think about things in this way that would lead them to be successful with a wicked problem? Dr. Annalies Corbin: Yeah, so I would tell, I, and I tell teachers this all the time. So as you're getting ready to, to go down one of these roads, and let's just, um, use one that's simple that everybody talks about, either sustainability or the environment, right? Whatever, right? You know, that favorite salamander in the pond down the street is suddenly disappearing, right? So your conversation with those kiddos needs to start with somebody else, right? Because this is that big sort of global skill. We're always constantly trying to relate the content, what it is that we're doing to our kids, and at the end of the day, that is absolutely necessary, and it needs to be foundational. But if we really want our kids to work on something that's much, much, much deeper, we have to get them to think beyond themselves really quickly. The easiest way to do that is to say, "Hey, you know, we're about to lose the salamander in our pond on the edge of our elementary campus here. How do you think that that's gonna make the kid in the next state over feel? What do you think somebody else would think about that?" And that cues that sort of, I'm going to really think about something that's a little bit bigger than just me. And, you know, as a great educator, we're gonna bring it right back to the kids in our classroom as quickly as we can because that's gonna then give them the reason why they care about it, right? You start with the thing that's about the kid, but you immediately take it someplace else, and you bring it right back to do the work Lindsay Lyons: Oh, that's really cool. I like that it's, it's a both/and, right? That you Dr. Annalies Corbin: were- Exactly, yes. Yeah, yeah. Lindsay Lyons: Okay. This is super helpful, and super tangible- Mm-hmm ... 'cause anyone can apply that as- Dr. Annalies Corbin: Right ... Lindsay Lyons: to whatever lesson. Okay. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Yeah. Lindsay Lyons: Great. So I love how tangible that was, and I'm wondering if there are other tangible kind of actions that teachers or even leaders- Mm-hmm um, can take as we encounter wicked problems in education systems or in, in lessons delivered to children. Like- Dr. Annalies Corbin: Sure ... Lindsay Lyons: yeah. Dr. Annalies Corbin: So one of the things that I will often talk with educators about, especially educators that are... Like, they're frustrated or they're tired. I mean, our incredible teachers are exhausted, absolutely exhausted right now. And so one of the things I hear from them frequently is, like, you know, "I really wanna change what's happening. Perhaps, you know, I don't really like this lesson," or, "My district has chosen this particular curriculum, and there's nothing wrong with it, but it doesn't... I'm not excited about it. My kids aren't excited about it." And I will often tell folks, and this is, this relates to the wicked problem because when we're gonna tackle something that's so big, so broad, so overly meaningful, it's really, really important that we, we, we tag it to something that matters to us. And so I will use the phrase teach your passion or help your kids find the things they love. What's their passion? So whatever that thing happens to be, tie it back to something that you care about because as soon as you care about it, your kids will care about it, right? And so I always want people to start there. Yes, I have to teach this unit about X, and I'm, you know, I'm interested in it. It's in my topic area. I trained for this. But do I love it? Maybe not. So how could I translate that into something that I love so that I can lead with the enthusiasm and the wonder that I wanna model for my students? They will pick up on that Lindsay Lyons: That makes so much sense. And I, I'm thinking about topics that if I were to teach them and be like, "Hmm, I don't..." I- if I could- Yeah ... connect it to my passion for like criticality and like- Yeah ... collective justice, right? Like, it would always make every single thing better and more interesting to me, and like- Dr. Annalies Corbin: Exactly. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, love Dr. Annalies Corbin: it. Exactly. And then the other thing that you're doing when we're doing that is you are fostering agency. And we know that classrooms that lead with agency, the, the level of engagement in those environments is, is exponential, right? There's so much incredible research that shows that, and yet we are often back to that wicked problem. The system that we're functioning in often does not let us either incorporate or honor or celebrate agency in ways that, as a practitioner on the ground, we know is just gonna make it all better. So by sort of s- shifting that narrative again, it's that journey we talked about earlier, let's shift the narrative a little bit so that you can in fact pull those things in even under the constraints that you have. What might it look like? It could be small. Doesn't have to be huge. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, that makes me think of, you know, the intertwined nature of all this stuff, too. Right. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Mm-hmm. Y- Lindsay Lyons: you started at the top of the episode really talking about how wicked problems have no like one clear solution, and we have to have- Mm-hmm. Right? I think about adaptive challenges all the time. We're talking about the community members in that community working to offer the solution. Correct. And so how are we not leveraging the brilliance of the students and the teachers in these educational systems to adjust the system? Dr. Annalies Corbin: Right. Lindsay Lyons: Mm-hmm. And how do we design that system to be more, you know, offer more agency, provide more opportunities for agency? Is there any insight you have around how we do o- offer opportunities to kind of co-construct or, or collaborate to find those solutions and ways forward? Dr. Annalies Corbin: Yeah. Well, I get to ask this question a lot as well, and what I could tell you is that every opportunity that you get as an educator to sit down and co-design with your students, take it, right? I mean, it can be as simple as, "Hey, you know, we need..." I'm just gonna choose a very generic, we study the solar system K through 20, right? Um, it comes up over and over again, right? So whatever, whatever area I have to touch, where- wherever we are in that progression of my students, high school students, middle school students, elementary students, we're looking at that. You know, sit down and start with a simple question to your students, right, that is related to that lesson or that unit that I have to teach, and ask them what they know. And if it's crickets that you get, which sometimes it is, and it's not really because they don't know. We all know that. It's because they don't want to say, right, oftentimes, especially as our kiddos get a little bit older. Um, and so, you know, as we think about some of those things, you know, if we just step back and ask what we know, and when we don't know, just grab one of the things we have to touch on and say, "Okay, we have to learn about this. How would you propose we get there?" That's agency, right? And it doesn't t- you know, have to stray you too far. Other educators who are really, really comfortable with that co-design, man, it's as simple as here's the standard I have to hit, here's the topic we're trying to explore, here's how, you know, it's going to play a role in our bigger universal sort of queries that we're engaged in with it, whatever the topic or subject area happens to be. How are we gonna get there? What do you wanna demonstrate? What are you gonna show me? What do you wanna learn? And then, you know, those, those students are y- they're really learner-centered, right? They're student-directed in their entirety, and that's really, really freeing. But we have to scaffold not just our students, but we have to scaffold ourselves, and we have to scaffold our community to be willing to take and embrace that type of instruction Lindsay Lyons: For sure, right? 'Cause it's, it's totally a different way of teaching than many educators themselves were taught, right? So there's a shift. Correct. Correct. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Mm-hmm. Lindsay Lyons: Right. And I'm also thinking about all the work, uh, that I've been doing with history teachers in an inquiry pedagogy around- Yep ... like, how do you, when you launch a question or an inquiry cycle, and you say, "Okay, what questions do you have?" And then there's crickets, right? To your point- Right. Mm-hmm ... sometimes it is just, "I've never been asked, so I'm, I'm nervous to even say, 'cause that's not a typical question I get." Right. Right. But also, how are we scaffolding, to your point, right, of can we connect to background information? Can we leverage the experience that's already in the room, and can we expand- Dr. Annalies Corbin: Right. Right ... Lindsay Lyons: our connection, our connections. Yeah. So I think there's so much pedagogical, like, scaffolding that we can do as teachers to present that to students, but it's the possibility that you're painting is very exciting, that it happens. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Sure. Lindsay Lyons: People are doing it. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Yeah. And, you know, there's all kinds of strategies, right, which is a completely different conversation. But there's all kinds of strategies to get students to engage in conversation, right? So if you've got a room of crickets, right, there's lots of things that you can do to sort of change that dynamic. And if you use those tools on a regular basis, your students will just get used to this is how this is gonna work, and we're going to engage, right? Because the individual teacher is not gonna let up until suddenly there's, there's a room filled with, you know, amazing conversation. So again, those are those little scaffolded opportunities, but they grow agency. Yeah. Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely. And I think another related thing, I think, is the kind of culture of appropriate levels of challenge, and what we do- Mm-hmm to coach resiliency in classes. Yeah. Right? Because if I'm a leader that says, "Okay, I want all of my teachers to make sure there's student-led conversations- Right ... and, you know, the students have all this agency," and then there's this challenge they're confronted with. The go-to for my classroom was always like, "Miss, Miss," you know? And I would have to run over and support. Right. And then I realized that's not helpful. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. We can coach resiliency. So can you tell us a little bit about, about that, about how that works or what we can do to, to grow resilience or how that's connected to what we've been talking about? Dr. Annalies Corbin: You know, again, I think the, the, the scaffolding is really important, right? And I also think that the other, the other thing is making sure that we know who our learners are. That's part of agency, but it's also part of that cultural responsiveness, um, that as an educator we also wanna roll in. Um, you know, and so- Some of that is we have to scaffold the collective set of experiences. It's not so-- You know, it's not scaffolding one thing or another. It's not, you know, transitioning my classroom to be entirely problem-based pedagogy, for example, right? That's big. That's a huge, huge lift, right? Especially if all I do all the time is nothing but wicked problems. That's, that's a lot. It can be overwhelming for everybody involved. So I think that the, the, the, the really key is to say, "We're gonna take this in bite size." Is we're gonna start by knowing who am I learned... Who's in this class? Who's, who's sitting in front of me? Who am I trying, um, to be that facilitator of learning for? Um, and if I understand who's, who's in here with me, right, then we can start to build the small building blocks that will lead to resilience. But if we just l- l- leap in, you know, o- one big thing, too many, it, it'll crash and burn really hard. I, I always tell people, you know, I-- Folks who, who hear me speak frequently, they, they know the different pieces and parts even that I'm connecting here because I, I feel so strongly about them. I call them the five Kevlar threads. Um, you know, and these, these pieces and parts. And I tell folks, "If you're not doing these things automatically in your classroom, it's just not innate for you, don't try to do them all at once. You'll drown. Your kids will drown." Um, and so, you know, if you wanna build resilience, start with the small pieces that you can just do right out of the gate. And practice. Just do it often Lindsay Lyons: Can you tell us more about those, those threads that you just referenced? Dr. Annalies Corbin: Yeah. So the five Kevlar threads. Uh, that's t- that's tied to, um, I have a book called, um, Hacking School: uh, Five Strategies to Link Learning to Life. And, and all that that really is is, like, about 25 years of going and working with really, really incredible schools or teachers or programs around the world, and just trying to understand the ones that are really, really phenomenal. Something happens. Either they sustain, they're around 10 years or so later, and they just keep going, and they get better and better. But most really amazing innovations tend to die pretty quickly, and that happens for a variety of real and tangible reasons, but I was really curious about the ones that, that really, really stick. Are there some commonalities? Are there some common threads? And what I found is that the ones that really last a long time, they have, they all have these five things. They have other things because they're all locally derived, right? They're, they're, they are about the community in which they're, they're functioning, but they have these five. So the first one is agency, right? That it is, uh, agency led. The second is that they are culturally relevant or responsive, whichever term you prefer to use. But basically, it's, I know, I know who my community is. I know who my kids are. My kids know who I am, right? We have this mutual respect about the humans in the middle, right? So I'm gonna give you autonomy, agency. I'm gonna help you build resilience and grit and all of those pieces and parts, but I'm also have a deep understanding of who you are, and you understand me, right? Um, and the things that we're gonna teach, we're gonna find a way collectively to make them relevant to you And then the third one is mastery. That idea of competency. We're gonna let go of that, that old school traditional seat time and say, "Hey, you know, if, if Annalise needs, you know, uh, extra time to understand this concept, then I'm gonna honor her need to dig a little bit deeper to understand." So mastery, which is defined lots of different ways too, most of these terms are. Um, the fourth one then for us is transdisciplinary. Uh, transdisciplinary teaching and learning, and that's just the idea of stop teaching in silos, right? That's not how the world works. It is one of the things that students today are pushing against the most, even if it's not articulated. We're not having it in traditional education conversation necessarily. But it is the thing when you actually sit down and do a lot of research with the students, with the learners, you hear them. They don't use that term, of course, but what they'll tell you is, "I don't understand what this has to do with me. The world doesn't look like this." And that's exactly what they mean, right? We don't go to math class and then to learn math, right? Solely for... I mean, that's not what the world looks like, and then somebody rings a bell, and I move on to something else. That's not authentic in any way, shape, or form. And then the fifth one for us is problem-based, and that gets to that wicked problem sort of structure. And it's that idea that if we could take all of that and we can roll it into a very applied, hands-on, deep opportunity to spend time with something, that it's gonna be meaningful because it will address all those other four things we just talked about, and it will. Um, and so there is a progression if folks don't have those elements in that we recommend, but that's just what I've seen over many years. And it was just really that realization that the things that stick, they have all five, and they're doing them. It's part of their DNA. It's not, "Oh, I forgot about mastery today." Lindsay Lyons: Wow, okay. Those are so good and comprehensive and connected to so many things that we talk about on the podcast. Yeah, yeah. I'm curious, is there, like, a particular one that is most challenging for folks? Or is there a challenge in general that as people are trying to do this work that you're- Mm-hmm ... noticing, "Oh, this one's, this one's big"? And then what do you tell them when- Yeah ... you notice that? Dr. Annalies Corbin: It, that's an interesting question because what, what educators will tell you who are like, "I really wanna do this, but I don't know where to start," it's fascinating. They'll tell you, "Oh, I can't do mastery. W- uh, you know, we're not allowed to do that. It's not acceptable here. You know, we still issue grades in the traditional sense." And so the, the internal perception is that mastery is the hardest because it requires a policy change, but that's not actually true. Yes, comprehensive mastery will more than likely in most places require some type of policy shift. But in your individual classroom, you could do mastery, you can be mastery-based in your classroom and still give a grade, right? So, so that's one of those disconnects that I see a lot. The one that's truly probably the hardest at implementation is transdisciplinary, and that's a systems problem. Um, educators will often be more than happy to embrace that. I find that it gets more difficult as you move up in the curriculum, so the closer you get to high school, because we love our silos in high school. We love them. I cherish it. You know, I'm the science teacher. I'm the English teacher. Don't you dare touch my content. And that's a huge, um... it's a mistake, and it's a disconnect, right? But that's a structural thing, right? We've built that. We've created that haves have the nots, wills will not sort of ecosystem, and we're, we're, um, we're continuing it to our own detriment, honestly, because that's not saying that there's not value in all of those individual topics or content at all. That's not the case. What we're saying is do them together, right? You know, why don't you have an integrated, you know, science and social studies or science and ELA? Teach them together. The minute you do that, it changes everything, and it, it saves a ton of money at a systems level, right, when you do that. It's super, super more cost-effective too. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh, there's so, there's so much possibility here. Yeah. And I know that schools are, some schools are doing this too- Yes, Dr. Annalies Corbin: yeah ... Lindsay Lyons: that it is viable, and it's just- Yes, Dr. Annalies Corbin: yes ... Lindsay Lyons: we are stuck so much in how we've always done things, it's hard to break out. Mm-hmm. And, and you mentioned that if, if people didn't have, uh, these five elements, that you said that you recommend things to, to do- Mm-hmm like a progression. I'm not sure if that's, uh, at, at the start, or that's to kind of counter not having any one of those. Is that, like, what they would do immediately to get started? Dr. Annalies Corbin: Yeah. I mean, basically, you know, I have educators ask me all the time, "Okay, I wanna make this shift, but I don't even know where to start." And I'll, I will tell them, "We're gonna start with agency." Mm-hmm. You know, I wrote them in a particular order in the book for a reason. You know, if you don't do these things, just start, start at the beginning, and just work your way through, because they truly do build on each other, right? Agency says, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you cho- you know, voice and choice. We often talk about it that way. It's, it's more than that, obviously, but that's, that's the phrasing that lots of folks are familiar with. Just start right there, because suddenly now I've empowered an individual. And then the next thing is I'm gonna understand who that individual is and why that's powerful to them, right? And so that gets you into that sort of cultural relevancy, if you will. And so there is a progression to it, so if you're not doing it, just start, start working your way down, right? Lindsay Lyons: I love that, and I love just the tangible nature of, you know, get to know the pe- your people, right? Mm-hmm. So if you're a teacher, get to know your students. I also love the, um, I used to work for a network that talked about one learning model for all, so the same things teachers do with students, leaders can do with teachers- Mm-hmm ... and teachers can do with one another. Right, Dr. Annalies Corbin: right. Lindsay Lyons: So this idea of, like, leaders get to know your teachers, right? And it's the whole- Dr. Annalies Corbin: Exactly, exactly. Well, you know, for years I, I used to, and I, I do it every once in a while, I still get asked to do it, but y- I don't, I don't see it on the same scale anymore. But I used to do this program, I called it Cultural Baggage. I'm an anthropologist and an educator, right? So it's my background. And so I used to do, do this program, and we would do it with kids, we would do it in the summer, or we would do it during the academic year. And several times over the years, I had, uh, either a building or a whole district say, "Hey, would you come and run Cultural Baggage program with us? We wanna do it at the beginning of the year. We wanna do it as just part of our onb- you know, our, our launching of the new year with, with our teachers." And I would go into these places, and the first thing that I quickly discovered is teachers didn't know each other's names. Right? So if I only know you, right, as Ms. Lyons or Ms. Corbin or Mr. Smith or whatever, and that's what the expectation is that the kids call their teacher, fine, whatever works, right? But I have no idea who you are, then how can I possibly know who my learners are? I just have never bothered, and you've been teaching across the hall from me. But it was remarkable how many teachers didn't know the first names of the other teachers in their own buildings, much less across a district. And I said, "This is a systemic problem It's things like that, right? It's things like that. Lindsay Lyons: Wow. That blows my mind a little bit, but that, I could see how that could happen with- Yeah the mind that you do. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Mm-hmm. Lindsay Lyons: Wow. Okay. So we have talked about so many things. Thank you so much for all of the, the wisdom that you- Sure ... brought, like big picture as well as tangible, like, what can I do today? Love that. Yeah. Um, I am curious, especially because you're a researcher, I bet you are actively just learning lots of things. Mm-hmm. So what is something that you have been learning about lately? So I know you said you published your book. You're just starting to- Mm-hmm ... like bring all this- Yeah ... research together. It could be related to this. It could also be not related to work at all, it's just something you're learning about. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Yeah, so I mean, some of the things that... So I love technology, love technology, right? I- it's one of those things. I love the tools. I love the application. I love trying to understand, A, how does it work? How could I use it for something it wasn't designed for? Um, and so of course, you know, there's so many conversations right now around AI, especially in schools. And so one of the things, so I am trying them all, like everything, and not just like tangible, I'm gonna try it, but I'm gonna use it deeply and understand what I can do with it and what I can't do with it. Um, because I think that's really, really important, you know, in a space where, you know, educators and, a- and administrators are saying, "We don't even know what to do with this thing. We, we believe that it's about to cause this sort of rampant dysfunction somehow." And I think about it, you know, in, again, that researcher brain, I think back to when the internet showed up. Well, we had the exact same conversation then that we're having now. It was, "Oh my gosh, you know, students aren't gonna go to the library anymore. They can look anything up online. It's gonna be rampant cheating. It's gonna be," you know, so on and so forth. And we have to approach all of these things with great caution, absolutely, but we also have to approach these things with an understanding of what it actually is, right? And the world is changing, and our kids are deeply enmeshed, deeply enmeshed. So we need to understand that from their perspective. So for me, like, that's one of the things that I'm, that, uh, you know, I'm spending a lot of time just trying to understand and learn, and I love to learn, so. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah. Thank you so much for that. I think there are a lot of people grappling with that as of the time. Oh, Dr. Annalies Corbin: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah. Okay, so people are gonna want to maybe get your book, connect with you- Mm-hmm ... learn more about you. Where can people go to do that? Dr. Annalies Corbin: So the easiest way to get information is gonna be at pastfoundation.org, P-A-S-T foundation.org. Um, and you can go there, and you can get information about me. You can get information about the things that we do, um, uh, about, about the book Hacking School: 5 Strategies to Link Learning to Life. You can also get that at, you know, Barnes & Noble or Amazon, wherever you, you wanna buy books. Um, but we also have a whole, um, asynchronous, um, as well as, um, some, some non-online options around. Like, if you wanna do a deep dive into some of those, those pieces and parts as an individual educator, you can do that. You can we- you can join our research community, um, our community of practice that we- We have around all the Hacking School ecosystem. Um, you can, we can come, you know, to your school or your district. Um, we engage very deeply in lots of different ways, um, across the educational spectrum. So just reach out. Um, you can find me anywhere @AnaliseCorbin on pretty much all the different social channels if you're so inclined, so . Awesome. Lindsay Lyons: Dr. Corbin, thank you so much for today. Really appreciate your time in this conversation. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it.
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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
July 2026
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