Lindsay Lyons
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1/23/2023

99. Building Skills and Stakeholder Capacity with Dr. Erik Youngman

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​How are we effectively educating students through a lens of equity and inclusion? 
And how are we preparing students for a future filled with unpredictability?
These are two of the questions that framed our recent conversation with Dr. Erik Youngman on episode 99 of The Time for Teachership podcast. As an educator, a father, and an author, Dr. Youngman draws from years of diverse experience to pinpoint some of the important goals and directions for educators today. 
We covered a lot in this interview, so make sure you have a listen. Here are some of Dr. Youngman’s key insights that educators should take note of. 

Preparing Students for an Unknown Future
Dr. Youngman’s big dream for education is to see all students develop important life skills. He names a few of them: kindness, curiosity, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and continuous learning. 
Why these skills? Two reasons: 
  • They can be developed at any grade level and through various disciplines in a school setting.
  • They provide students with the necessary abilities to face an uncertain world after graduation.
The pandemic showed us that the future is uncertain. Just think about a concept like remote work becoming normalized in a short period of time—no one predicted that. So, are we preparing students to face those changes and challenges that are inevitable to come? 
By focusing on skill development like critical thinking and problem-solving—through disciplines of social studies, math, science, and everything in between—students are better equipped for their futures. 

Bringing Equity to the Classroom
There are two equity lenses that are important in the classroom. Dr. Youngman discussed equity of learning opportunity and justice and equity-focused curriculum. 
The first, equity of learning opportunities, is related to strategic decision-making, grading practices, and curriculum delivery. The key question here is: Are all students equally able to learn, contribute, and have a voice? 
Consider the difference between a talkative student who always speaks up in front of class and one who doesn’t—do they both have equal voice? Centering student voice is essential to effective education, so think through how you are providing equal opportunities for all. 
The second discussion on equity relates to championing justice and equity in the classroom. Dr. Youngman emphasized the importance of defining and using terms correctly and not simply throwing “equity” around as a buzzword. 
Instead, it revolves around the concept of empathetic understanding to create belonging. It’s about ensuring all voices are heard. And it’s about asking the question: who’s story is being told through the content that’s being taught. 

Effective Planning and Grading
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To grade or not to grade—the much-debated question in any educator’s circle. Grading, in Dr. Youngman’s perspective, is essential to track progress and provide objective standards. 
But grading is not about the grades. It’s about the learning.
So, how do you set up your grading system, rubric, or method that promotes learning, encourages, growth through “failure,” and doesn’t penalize students as they grow. 
One example Dr. Youngman provided was giving students “zero” on an assignment—what’s the purpose? It skews their grade so dramatically and effectively penalizes them in the trial and learning phase. Instead, think of ways you can give students another chance to promote their learning and engagement with the material, rather than demoralizing them and halting progress. 
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As you can see, we covered a lot on the podcast with Dr. Youngman! Make sure you listen to his full interview to capture all the nuggets of wisdom he provided. You can also follow him on Twitter at @Erik_Youngman, where he’s very active, or check out his website. 


Quotes: 
  • 8:17 “The pandemic has been awful, but one of the things that it did highlight was the importance of relationships. And I think that schools and educators and families were reminded that it’s a critical part, so we’re making more time for that.”
  • 22:20 “The better questions we can ask up front, that can guide some of our decisions. We really do want to be future-focused—if we’re talking about preparing students for jobs that aren’t even available right now, we need to think a little bit differently. 
  • 29:38 “Maximizing the capacity and capabilities is critical. How can we maximize the capacity of our teachers and also of our students? They may have different trajectories, but how can we look at their skills and abilities and continue to help them to grow?”
​​
Click to see Erik's most recent blog posts
If you enjoyed this episode, I'd highly recommend you take a look at this video on getting teacher buy-in.

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1/16/2023

PRACTICE: An Assessment Tool to Measure Curriculum Implementation Success via Student Voice

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​Have you ever wondered whether your new unit or curriculum was successful? 
Or, more basic--how can you even measure success? 
Educators often design and implement new units without a clear idea on how they’ll measure its success. But without knowing that, there’s no room to improve. And there’s no affirmation that it’s met the learning goals you want to meet. 
That’s why I’ve developed an assessment tool that measures curriculum implementation success. It’s framed by listening to student voices and soliciting feedback from your class about the unit. 

Why Student Voice Matters for Assessment 
Some units will “land” with students and others won’t. Or, within the same unit, you might have some who loved it and others who couldn’t keep up. But how will you know this information? 
You’ve got to ask. 
It’s simple: asking students for feedback on a unit will give teachers insight and understanding into the success of that unit. Teachers can then take their feedback and incorporate it into the next time they teach the unit or their next unit plan. 
Student voice is the essential piece to this. So often we ignore student voice or don’t consider it important for the assessment of teachers. But their opinions and feedback on the units are some of the most important data points we can ever collect about how we’re doing.

​Assessment Tool to Measure Curriculum Implementation Success 
To effectively assess curriculum implementation success, you need to first facilitate a youth-adult partnership mentality among staff. I love how Michael Fielding calls it “radical collegiality,” or the idea that students and staff are partners in learning. 
Once that is established, you can move on to implementing this tool with your staff: 

1. Coach teachers to create their next unit plan
Start by coaching your teachers to develop their next unit plan. If you don’t personally coach them, provide support by way of mentorship or a course. This unit should meet three criteria: 
  • Appropriately challenge students
  • Affirm students’ multiple identities
  • Inspire them to create something new

2. Create a feedback culture
After implementing the unit, teachers should invite students to reflect and provide feedback on the unit. This should be more than a one-time thing but become a culture of reflection that always happens on the last day of the unit. 
This is where my assessment tool comes in. It’s a simple questionnaire that can be tweaked or adjusted to what you need and is designed to elicit honest, open, and useful feedback from students. 
The questionnaire is designed to reflect on pre- and post-unit feelings or outcomes. It’s helpful to know how students felt about their learning before this unit and how they feel after it. 
Here are some of the questions: 
  • How often did your teacher take time to make sure you understood the material before the unit? (Before this unit and during this unit—same for all) 
  • How high are your teacher’s expectations for you? 
  • How often are you asked to challenge usual ways of thinking or explore how underrepresented people experience a situation?
  • How much do you feel like all your identities are affirmed? 
  • How excited were you to go to this class? 
  • How much difference did your work make in the community? 
Then, there are some open-ended qualitative questions. This is where student voice is really amplified, as they’re encouraged to give honest feedback. Some examples are: 
  • What was helpful about this unit?
  • What changes would you make?
  • How can your teacher make sure the curriculum is affirming, inspiring, and challenging in the future? 

3. Synthesize and share class themes
After collecting feedback, you want to synthesize the class themes and share it back with students. Get curious about what they’re saying by seeking clarification on certain points. 
Then, assign yourself (and teachers) homework by taking up the action points the students provided. If you can’t act on a suggestion, be transparent about why that is. This process is integral to showing your students that their voice matters and will impact how teachers move forward teaching them. 
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This entire process has to do with curiosity. Curiosity about how unit implementation is going and how students are receiving it. With this feedback, teachers can move forward with confidence knowing what works and doesn’t work and how to adjust things for the future. 
To access this assessment tool, simply click here. You can download the tool and adjust it based on your context. And, if you’re looking for more information and some examples on how to use it, listen to episode 98 of the Time for Teachership podcast, where I cover it in-depth. 



Quotes: 
  • 5:37 “Facilitate a youth-adult partnership mentality among staff. Michael Fielding in the student voice literature calls this radical collegiality—basically seeing students as partners in the learning process.” 
  • 7:30 “Coach teachers to create a unit that is focused on, appropriately, challenging students, affirming students’ multiple identities, and inspiring them to create something new. These are the big hallmarks of a fantastic curricula.”
  • 9:25 “Create that culture of, ‘we invite student reflections at the end of each unit … And it’s okay if it takes an entire class period to do this … an entire 30, 45, 60 minutes. Because we’re saying, ‘we value this.’”
​​
Get the Post unit perception survey here
Want to continue learning more about curriculum development and implementation? Watch this video on how to develop district curriculum that challenges, affirms, and inspires:

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1/9/2023

Developing a Short List of High-Yield Instructional Strategies with Dr. Edward Small

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In this episode, we get to learn from Dr. Ed Small who has held multiple teaching and leadership positions and has been recognized for his work at the national level. He’s now an Assistant Superintendent in Delaware, and I love how he says that being a husband and father drives his work with schools and students! 

The Big Dream 

Schools should be about helping kids get what they want. Educational landscape, the community, and family/home are 3 points of a triangle. We want students to yearn for school and their relationships with teachers. We want kids to think about school like Six Flags! 

Alignment to the 4 Stages: Mindset, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Content

The school systems and instructional framework should stay the same in all classes so students don't need to learn to code switch. For example, the warm up in one class is called a warm up in every class. Students should only need to be grappling with the content, not the culture or expectations. 

Currently, the district has 16 common instructional strategies as a district, and they’re working on getting down to 8 or 9 so everyone knows what they are. Doing less is doing more! Some of our current  instructional strategies include: clear learning intentions and success criteria, collaborative structure (e.g., Socratic Seminar), and chunking. Dr. Small recommends schools or districts have 4 collaborative structures everyone uses, and then once those are really going well, adding a few more. 

Action Steps

He cites advice he received: “When you go into a classroom, you should be looking to paint on a canvas, but you need a canvas to paint on before you can start painting.” The canvas includes the high-yield instructional strategies. An instructional leader can identify where a protocol can leverage the energy present in a class. Behavior is communication. A coach can suggest a movement-based activity to focus a high-energy class. 

We use praise statements and growth action statements to frame coaching conversations. Praise might be: “I noticed you did X well because it’s good for Y. Keep doing this!” Growth action statements might look like: “I noticed you were doing Z. Maybe try ___ instead. I look forward to coming back in a month to see how it’s going. Let’s talk about it to make sure kids are benefitting from this idea.” 


Challenges?

Nobody likes to be critiqued. It requires trust, relationship-building, and the chance to talk about it. Teachers need to know that leaders and coaches want them to win. When teachers win, we all win. The cost of leadership is time. Leaders have to invest time in conversations with teachers to gain that level of trust.   


One Step to Get Started 

Leaders, take an inventory of your relationship with your teachers. (Teachers, you can take inventory of your relationship with your leader.) Have there been opportunities for you to grow together? And if the relationships need to be improved, spend time building relationships. 

Stay Connected

You can find this week’s guest on Twitter @DoctorEsmall or via email at  Edward.small@capital.k12.de.us.


To help you start building your list of common instructional strategies, I’m sharing a recording of my Circle protocol workshop with you for free. (This is my favorite protocol of all time.) And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 97 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 here. 


Quotes: 
  • “If we could make the school, curriculum and instruction, the educational landscape, [a]  feeling that a person yearns for so that they say ‘...the institutions in my world have let me down, but I know I still have school…” 
  • “Students should only have to grapple with the content…as opposed to the culture that they are learning…[so] all they’re grappling with is…the content that they’re…coming to school to learn.”
  • “There are like 16 [common instructional strategies in our district] right now, and I think we need to get down to about 8 or 9 so that folx can internalize them and use them on a regular basis…We need to make it smaller. Doing less is doing more.” ​​
​
Click here to watch my workshop on circle protocol
If this episode grabbed your interest, take a look at this video below where I share a strategy for reducing cognitive load and teacher planning time:

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1/2/2023

PRACTICE: How to Start Personalized Learning Plans With Your Staff

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​We know how important personalized learning is for students, and many of us are working to implement it in the classroom. 
But it’s important for educators, too. 
Each educator is a unique individual with a different learning style. If we want to see educators step up into their best, most engaged and effective self in the classroom, personalized learning plans are a must. 
On episode 96 of the Time for Teachership podcast, I dove into how you can start personalized learning plans with your staff. Check out the full episode or read on here for the key takeaways.

Why is Personalized Learning for Staff Important? 
I always want to start with the “why.” Why is personalized learning for staff so important? There are a few key reasons: 
  • Co-creating learning plans increases engagement, investment, and commitment to a shared goal. 
  • Allowing educators to explore personal areas of interest in their unique learning style leads to increased joy, excitement, and self-efficacy. 
  • Investing in educators through personalized learning and professional development makes them more effective in the classroom, with tangible positive impacts on student learning. 
Quite simply, personalized learning makes for happier and more impactful educators! 

How to Create Personalized Learning Plans for Educators
As a pre-cursor to creating personalized learning plans for educators, your school or district needs to identify 1-2 focus areas for the year and be clear on them. When your team is familiar with those big 1-2 focus areas, you can start creating personalized learning plans. 
Here are 6 steps to follow: 
  1. Communicate the importance: Start by naming the fact that you recognize how important autonomy and personalized learning is.
  2. Create 1-2 goals: Invite educators to identify 1-2 goals that align with the school or district-wide goals mentioned before. These should also be aligned with the rubric or evaluation criteria that teachers are expected to meet.
  3. Document the goals: Write. Them. Down. And, link the goals to a corresponding evaluation component (check out this personalized learning rubric). When teachers write down their goals, it’s easier to stay aligned and on-track through the year.
  4. Define success criteria: Ask, “What will it look, sound, and/or feel like in your classroom when you’ve hit this goal?” Focus on student behaviors and what they’re talking about. Visualize what it will be like to walk into a classroom where the goal is being met and be clear on that criterion. Then, determine some portfolio pieces that will celebrate the accomplishment of that goal—something to positively affirm that teachers met their goals.
  5. Determine action steps: Don’t skip to this step! The other four lay the groundwork here, and once you do that you can identify what action steps are needed to reach your goal. This is all about professional development that will help you get there. Think beyond all-staff meetings and towards alternative methods of PD like peer visitations, self-paced, courses, PLCs, and deep dives into blogs, podcasts, and other resources.
  6. Follow-up: Once educators have created this plan, follow-up on them over the year. Make sure that you, as a leader, are using these plans for mentorship and coaching throughout the year. You can also be intentional about providing the PD methods that best help them reach their goals. 
Developing personalized learning plans can vary between more rigid to more of a free-form exercise. The biggest thing is that there’s alignment between overall focus area and evaluation rubrics as well as some meaningful action steps. 
Listen to episode 96 of the Time for Teachership podcast to hear more about this topic. And, make sure you check out Dallas ISD’s Coaching and Development Rubric. It’s an awesome resource to help you on this personalized learning journey! 


Quotes:
  • 8:30 “What will it look, sound, and/or feel like in your classroom or environment … when you have met this goal? … Think about what it would actually look like to walk into a classroom where this goal was met. What would it sound like? What are the things that I’m hearing students say? Because we want to focus heavily on students and the way students are acting, experiencing, talking about things.”
  • 13:47 “There’s so many areas of PD beyond the traditional ‘everyone sits in a room or virtual Zoom room,’ experiencing the same PD. Especially when you have a large staff … that’s probably not going to meet the needs of every staff member.”
  • 17:18 “What’s really essential is that you have an aligned goal for the teacher. By aligned, I mean it’s aligned to your school or community’s focus area and to the rubric that you’re using to assess quality teaching.”
click here for the Personalized Learning Plan Template
If you enjoyed this episode, take a look at this related content on rubric design for assessments:

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    Lindsay 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. ​

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