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We did it! 100 episodes later, the Time for Teachership Podcast is still here and stronger than ever. Thank you to all my listeners, all who are new to this community and all who have been here since day one. In this blog post, I will be sharing all the links that connect to the references I made in episode 100. Enjoy! Here are my top episode recommendations by category! Episodes on a Culture of Coaching Ep 1: Creating a Culture of Coaching with Romain Bertrand Related Mindsets... "How To" episodes on this...
Episodes on Mindset Shifts around Historically Marginalized Students
Episodes on Discourse
Episodes on Shared Leadership in Action
Episodes on Curriculum and Lesson Planning
Episodes on Curriculum in Action
Episodes That Will Make You Feel All the Feels
Episodes from the Students
Episodes Featuring Bold Visions
"How They Did It" Episodes On Leading District-Wide Curriculum Change
And a final tip: You can use the search bar on this website to find episodes and posts on specific topics! TRANSCRIPT Educational justice coach lindsey Lyons and here on the time for Teacher ship podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nursing out about co creating curriculum students, I made this show for you. Here we go. Hello everyone we are at episode 100 of the time for teacher ship podcast. I cannot believe I am saying that I am so excited for this episode where I dive back in and kind of do a review of the past 100 episodes in a very short period of time. So I'm going to go back talk about the 10 kind of categories of wisdom that I have found super valuable throughout the show's existence and then I'm gonna recommend specific episodes for you. 00:01:10 So if you're new as a listener, check out these episodes first and if you've been here a while, make sure you didn't skip these. Here we go. Let's get to this episode. Alright, episode 100 I am re capping kind of the top 10 categories of wisdom and suggesting specific episodes for you to listen to. If you have already listened, these are even good for a second. Listen, I get so much value out of re listening to something that I have listened to the first time without further ado here we go first and I love that this is very appropriately the first episode of the podcast creating culture of coaching with roman Bertram was amazing. We talked for over an hour and went from kind of mindsets and overarching approaches to specific strategies. It was phenomenal. So if you are a leader thinking about creating a culture of coaching at your school or district this is a must listen, Go back listen to episode one. I have several solo shows that kind of spin off of this and go into specific mindset approaches or specific how two episodes to actually do a deep dive into some of the strategies that we either talk about or related strategies to the concepts we're talking about. 00:02:22 And those episodes are episode four. Learning is leading episode 10. What is teacher ship? These are both mindset pieces and then for how to I go into detail on personalized P. D. For teachers in episode two instructional coaching with the grow model for episode 29. So that's literally how do you do coaching cycles and how do you frame each coaching conversation? So this is great for instructional coaches and leaders who do coaching. Episode 31. Co Creating Observation. Look for is another great strategy that supports a culture of coaching. So when you go in and you do uh you know a learning walk or an observation of an individual teacher. Here's how you would frame this and here kind of all the logistical pieces and there's templates and everything for you. So all of those relate to a culture of coaching. That is our first category. And starts with episode one of the podcast. Moving on to our second category of wisdom. These are mindset ships around historically marginalized groups of students. So first my amazing friend and former colleague collude, she talks about a multi lingual habitants and this was one of the biggest I think language and kind of linguistic shifts for me that I'm continuing to think about our conversation as I use the term Multilingual learners instead of english learners. 00:03:42 Or ells is often abbreviated I think Multilingual learners is so strength based. She talks about this, she talks about a lot of theories and kind of mindset stuff, but she also talks about what does this literally look like in practice. She shares a particular geography lesson that she taught in school and how to use students prior now knowledge and capitalize on all of this wisdom that you have in a class full of students who speak different home languages and are currently learning english together in this kind of Multilingual habits. It is beautiful, it is amazing. I highly recommend that episode with collude. Another episode to check out is inclusion as a process with Kevin Schaeffer, That's episode 83 and this one is amazing as well. I really like it because he talks about working with students with I. E. P. S. And how when we talk about inclusion, it's not just strategies, it's not just a mindset, it is really thinking of inclusion as a process and he goes through all the different things that that means in terms of kind of a framework for thinking about inclusion And also talks about specific strategies. 00:04:49 So this is definitely a must listen if you are a person who works with students with I. p. s. and I didn't mention before, but concludes episode is episode five. So again, those are episode five and episode 83. Alright, next category is discourse and we're going to start the episode from Dr. Sherry Bridges Patrick. I highly recommend literally anything she does. So listen to I think she's on three episodes currently of the 1st 100. So listen to all of them. But my favorite I think is episode 45, Where she talks about safety being at the core of discourse. And so if you're thinking about how to talk about current events, race, other issues of um kind of injustice that relate to current events or raise or both. This is a must listen from a framework perspective, safety is at the core of discourse. Again, that's episode 45. Now there's a ton of related episodes to dive into after you've listened to that one. 00:05:51 For example episode 13 with april brown talking to young kids about racial and social justice, definitely important if you teach or parent or work with or live with young Children. So specifically addressing kind of some mindset stuff around our young kids ready for these particular conversations. What does this literally looks like? She lists several amazing resources for texts and books and approach is highly recommend. Alright, there's also a solo show I did around pushing back against the concept of teacher neutrality. So if that is something that you're coming up against in your school or district where you just want to kind of think through it or listen to this episode to process your thoughts. Um get some tips on that definitely a good listen, that's relevant and related. Episode 16 was another solo show I did after the attack on the Capitol and it was about how do we talk about this with white students? So if you are a teacher in a predominantly white school or district, this is important. Even if you are a leader in those contexts, I think it's really helpful to listen to this episode and listen to all of these episodes honestly, to be able to think through what does this look like in terms of leading teachers and supporting teachers to do this work? 00:07:03 I was a 25 is another good one. Building a flexible curriculum that regularly embeds current events. So how do I actually plan to have these conversations and design in a way that is flexible so that I'm not feeling like I need to fit it in when I already have an over packed curriculum that also extends to a lot of other curricular planning things will all reference leader, but you know, creating the space for these conversations is really critical. It's high leverage. It supports students emotional, well being, social skills, critical analysis, just awareness of the world, um and sense of belonging and affirmation of who they are and their experiences, right? When these things impact them, I won't go into too much detail here, but other episodes that are related, episode 35 90 or both solo shows, one is about how to teach for justice when the facts don't seem to matter. Critical piece being an education And the 90 is designing a unit around the Dob Cjackson decision. So we take a topical deep dive into this is a current event that at the time of recording had happened. 00:08:04 How do we process this specifically? So if it helps you to look at a case study, that's a good one. Alright, next theme. This is theme number four, shared leadership in action. This is just, I love this category, this is what it's all about, right. And sometimes we talk about this at the classroom level, co creating curriculum amplifying student voice in that sense. But then also how do we do this at a school or district level That is super high leverage and something that's sometimes in education were afraid to kind of do or were just maybe not sure how to do it. And so it just stays at the classroom level. It's important to be present at both. So if you're interested in how to do this, episode 32, we have former principal tearing. Give The man who talked about inclusive campus leadership teams and how she did this at multiple grade levels. Episode 43, we have superintendent Darcy Fernandez who talks about how she created structures for all stakeholder voices in the strategic planning process across her district. We also have specific how to episodes and related concepts like inclusive data streams, figuring out how our students experienced school. 00:09:11 That's episode 55. Episode 56 is in the same kind of leading for justice series, that one's on justice, justice centered process for justice centered policies. And so it's really talking about how to create shared governance structures. So how do we embed an ongoing sustainable decision making process at the school or district level that really sustains justice and equity and all the things we're working towards. And then a couple of related ones, they don't fit perfectly into this category, but I think they are related one is episode 57 which is normalizing critical reflection and adaptive leadership approach to data analysis and then related to that is episode eight, which is how to do a root cause analysis because I think if we're inviting student voices and different stakeholder voices, but we're not digging into what those voices are saying, what is not being said and really what's at the root of all of these things? If we don't get to the roots, if we don't analyze with the critical lens, if we don't build capacity staff wide and stakeholder wide to do this work, then even if we have student voices or family voices, right? 00:10:18 Community voices at the table, we're not actually going to advanced justice in the way that we could in a way that is transformative, but we have to do the critical deep work of identifying the root cause having those critical conversations using that critical and adaptive lens and really digging in and that takes a lot of practice and skill. So tips and strategies for how to do that in there. Alright. Number five, Top tips on planning. So I've selected four episodes that I think give you the highlight reel of really the most high leverage planning strategies. So one is how do you use the work less, teach more planner? That is episode 79. So even if you don't have the planner, it talks through what the planner does for you and you can just do it in a digital google doc or a physical scrap of paper every day, totally a worthwhile endeavor to listen to that, it will help you if you are in a space where like I cannot function enough or my work doesn't feel like it is sustainable. 00:11:22 Um to be able to do the really big transformative things I want to do right? We talk a lot about transformation and justice and all that stuff takes work. So we need a sustainable planning process in place to be able to do those things, so check that out first and then when you're ready and you have that process in place, episodes 38 40 and 41 are all part of a curriculum series. We talk about respectively, developing a course long rubric, crafting a compelling driving question and establishing a reusable unit art, if you can do these three things and you can coach teachers to do these three things, it is a game changer, like you are on the path to being able to create and plan sustainably and amplified justice in the way that you plan your curriculum. So this is huge. Those are my top tips on planning. Just to recap the first five categories of wisdom here, we got culture of coaching, you got to create a culture of coaching. We have a couple of mindset shifts around historically marginalized student groups that's Multilingual learners and seeing inclusion as a process for students with ups, we have safety as being at the core of discourse. 00:12:35 We have shared leadership and action and we have top tips on planning. Now, I'm jumping in here, quick to remind you that there are four free resources. Normally we have one today we have four. These are recordings of one hour workshops on the following topics, building and sustaining a culture of belonging protocol, deep dive, how to use circles for SCL and academic content, curriculum coaching, drop in design Sprint, that's where we brainstorm a driving question and summit of project ideas in 25 minutes or less. It's kind of like a mini curriculum boot camp, how to talk about high emotion topics with staff and students is our fourth one. So all of these workshops have been recorded and you can have access to them by visiting lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash blog slash 100 lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash blog slash 100. Now, back to the episode number six, we are talking about our categories of wisdom for episode 100 of the podcast and category number six is curriculum in action. 00:13:37 If you want to see what awesome curriculum looks like in the classroom, give a listen to episode 24 using music to teach for justice with Christopher Schroeder, we actually have music in this episode. So if you're like me and you listen at 1.5 speed two podcasts, you're gonna want to slow this one down so you can really appreciate the music Episode 27 Developing students criticality with my media critique project. So that's a solo show for me, this is a project that I've used at the high school and college levels Episode 42. This is part of our curriculum planning series where Laura Cruz comes on and talks about students writing memoirs and who gets to tell their story, right? And so this memoir unit from her class is phenomenal And a related episode, it's not really curriculum interaction, but it's kind of a strategy or approach to teaching and action and that's what mitch weathers. It's episode 68. He talks about hyper predictable classroom routines, so a lot on executive functioning and how you actually structure your lessons on all this great stuff. 00:14:41 So that is really accessible and not overwhelming to students. You're teaching the skill in partnership with the content. Alright, number seven category number seven is, I'm just calling it all the fields, these three episodes or episodes where I truly felt something like I felt I felt it deeply. It was just energizing to listen to these brilliant voices and whether I walked away with concrete strategies or just the sense of like, that was a wonderful experience, to be a part of that conversation and to listen in on that conversation. Um these are just, I think really powerful and I'll tell you why for each one. So the first one is episode 34, this is teaching poetry. Take away the rules with Dr. John Little Wolf. He actually reads a poem of his own, he talks about the experience that he had in school what he wished that experience would be like, and it is just so deeply honest and vulnerable and powerful and wise and just all the things. 00:15:45 I highly recommend that episode. It is one of my all time favorites out of all of these 100 episodes. Honestly. Anything dr john little Wolf does, I think you should listen to and and read and all the things because he is just a person that constantly in his presence. I'm constantly just amazed, excited, exhilarated to just be uh you know, listening and a part of the things that he's doing and saying. So episode 34 check it out, Episode 66 Be fearless and teach with fire F I R E as an acronym with Mark Taylor. This was another energizing conversation. He has his own podcast, you should listen to it, it is amazing. But Mark Taylor is a podcast guest that was just really a person that I could just be energized by. And so it was thrilling to have him on this podcast. It was thrilling to hear all of the specific approaches and strategies that he suggested in this episode. Just a real energizer. If you're kind of feeling like you need a boost energetically when you think about, you know, uh coming school year or kind of coming back after break. 00:16:54 This is a good one. And finally in this category episode 76. This is human. First Witness with jazz mpaa far. Oh my goodness. She talks about having a netflix special or, or getting at the time of the recording, Getting to um have a next netflix special that is going to be recorded in the, in the future. So hopefully by the time of this airing it will be. But no wonder she is phenomenal. She is energizing, she is reflective, she is Furthering messages of connection, right? And as she says witness, it is wonderful. She is funny, this is totally an energizer if you need a boost mid year or otherwise. So all the fields, episodes 34, and 76, highly recommend if you are craving some student voices on the podcast. Listen to episode 52 with two of my former students Rachel and L E L 59 is an episode from students that are part of actually two students and one learning facilitator from the learn life nature hub for primary years, this is in Barcelona Spain and then episode 71 which includes four students from Spring House, which is an amazing, progressive um kind of like human centered eco focused community that is in the United States. 00:18:24 So, so many good, Good wisdom providing episodes in their episode 50-59 and 71 or from the students, The 9th theme of wisdom, bold visions. So these episodes are going to kind of paint a picture for what is possible beyond maybe the traditional, they might give you a kick to the, but they might kind of make you feel uncomfortable at times, make you question the way we've always done things and I love episodes like that. So 58 is actually with dr jenny Finn vitality centered education. She is the person who has kind of helped the community springhouse who I just said those four students were from help that come to be episode 70 for education is the front line of the civil rights movement with Sean Priest. This was another just super energizing conversation that painted a picture of education as civil rights, right? And as social justice Episode 80, think about what kind of school you really want with Dr. 00:19:28 Kevin Ahern, amazing. Just really helpful from a leader lens of how we do that visioning, how we make it come to life, really inspiring creative visioning and then also the action that comes after the visioning. Episode 81 we have an education debt with Abby Korman. She is a white educator who is adamantly striving for racial justice, talks about a ton of resources in her own personal journey for how she and also we, as listeners can really do this work. Episode 82, change is not a part time job with Doctor Kim Yeon, you're Dennis, this is such a good one, definitely some mind shift work, definitely a kick in the butt, definitely worth a listen. So those are bold visions episodes and our final number 10 category, This is how they did it leading district wide curriculum change where assistant superintendents or or leaders in the district sense talk about how they did it, how they lead massive change across the district. 00:20:36 So first we have episode 89 5 components of real buy in with Dr Samuel de Nix. This was a thrilling episode to be a part of and I love that he addresses by in so this concept of buying is something that I'm always coaching around and how do we really do it in a way that is authentic and we get consensus, we get that forward momentum in that progress without all of the or at least addressing all of the maybe resistance or feelings of, I'm not sure I want to kind of move forward, I don't know how to move forward, I'm not sure if I'm committed. All of that stuff is so um so much a part of often when we do change work and so this is I think a really great listen for you again, episode 89 doctor Next episode 93 transforming curriculum in three years through a culture of coaching, enjoy. This features a Assistant superintendent, chris Chatterton and also a principle from chris's district Allison Adcock. So you definitely want to hear two folks talking about joy and coaching in terms of how they transform curriculum in three years in their district. 00:21:45 Episode 95 Dr Dr. Steven Weber, how to facilitate district wide teacher led curriculum development. So we talked about making teachers really the center of this curriculum transformation that they do in each department every so often, you know, over so many years and I love all of the wisdom that he drops in here. Finally this episode as of recording episode 100 Episode 97 is actually not recorded yet. However, I know from just our first conversation about what we will be talking about. Dr Edwards Smalls episode is going to be excellent. So he is going to talk to us about teaming practices to align protocols and language across great teams data collection, look for during walk throughs and observations and also classroom strategies for inclusive discussion. You're not gonna want to miss all of the things that we should consider as we lead District wide curriculum change. So that's going to be episode 97. All right, everybody, those were our 10. We are going to link to all this stuff on the blog again, just to recap, those are around developing a culture of coaching, mindset shifts around historically marginalized student groups, Multilingual learners and students with Gps safety being at the core of discourse and the importance and the how to of all the discourse stuff, share leadership in action. 00:23:04 Top tips on planning curriculum in action episodes with all the fields, student led episodes, bold visions and then how they did it. Leading district wide curriculum change. As a reminder, you have access to four free one hour recordings of workshops that I've done on four different topics belonging circle protocol. I've done some live curriculum coaching which is basically like a mini curriculum boot camp that I do and then how to talk about high emotion topics, whether you're talking about them with your staff as a leader or students as a classroom teacher get access to all of those by visiting my website, Lindsay bath brian dot com slash blog slash 100. I am so excited for you to dive into these and as you listen or re listen. In some cases, you may have takeaways, new takeaways questions. Please feel free to share those with me via email on our social media on the blog posts themselves on the website. Thank you so much and I will talk to you again next week if you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my live coaching intensive curriculum bootcamp. 00:24:14 I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We leave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burned out and it's just two days plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me, grab a spot on my calendar at www dot lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think Big Act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better podcast network, Better Today, Better Tomorrow and the podcast. To get you there, explore more podcasts at teach Better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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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:
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 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. --- 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. TRANSCRIPT Today on the show. I have Dr. Eric Young man who's an education leader, passionate about topics such as homework growth mindset grading and leadership. Published books he's written include the magic of growth mindset and 12 characteristics of deliberate homework as well as a chapter for 100 no nonsense things that all teachers should stop doing. He's also written numerous blogs about growth mindset and grading. This is his 21st year in educational leadership eric is the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning for Libertyville District 70 in Libertyville Illinois. Previous education experiences include being a principal in Libertyville as well as an assistant principal and teacher in Gurnee Illinois, let's get to the episode, I'm educational justice coach lindsey Lyons and here on the time for Teacher Ship podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. 00:01:02 If you're a principal Assistant superintendent, curriculum director instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nursing out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go dr eric, Young man, welcome to the time for Teacher Ship podcast. Welcome, Thank you for having a conversation with me today. Thank you so much for being here. I'd love for you to just kind of frame for us, you know, what is it? What is important for listeners to know? I just read your bio, but is there anything else that you're kind of wanting people to keep in mind or want people to know about you before we jump into our conversation today, I'm the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning in Libertyville Illinois. I'm the author of two books, 12 characteristics of deliberate homework and the magic of growth mindset. I'm also the father of three daughters. And so when I'm talking about these different conversations, I really like to talk about growth mindset and grading and leadership. But now now I look through it at the lens of a father. So how does this impact my junior in high school, my freshman in high school, my seventh grader, they're all daughters. 00:02:10 How could this help them? Um what have they seen that helps me understand through the lens of a student, what it's like in the classroom. Um Also my wife is a speech pathologist in an elementary school, so she works with early childhood students. And so again, when we're talking about initiatives for a school district, I'm also cognizant how our teachers and staff receiving those. Um and then finally, um just being a parent, I think that's also helpful as we um talk about the clarity of communication. So sometimes we have a plan, but sometimes the timing of that communication is not as good as it should have been. And same with the clarity. And so when we're talking about all of these ideas, you know, you can have ideas but when you're going to implement them, I think you need to be aware of how other people are perceiving them and you need to be Collaborative. So again, I love talking about growth mindset grading and leadership, but also I try to utilize my experiences as a father um as a husband, and then I started as a first grade teacher, but that was years ago, um now I've been an administrator for 20 years. 00:03:15 Um but again, I think you can learn from every situation of how you could make something better, how you could modify the pasting or just get a little bit more collaborative or clear with communication. And I love that you mentioned collaboration in terms of your family structure, you just have so many stakeholder perspectives, just you know, in your own experience, but then also you have the students and the speech pathologist and and as a parent you kind of put that head on and so that's brilliant when it comes to being able to think through that shared leadership kind of collaborative venture um into kind of what we're talking about today and leading um some some large scale changes. So when you think about uh your dream for education really like what what would be the perfect scenario of, you know uh curriculum and instruction just going beautifully and I often ground this and dr Bettina loves quote about freedom, dreaming dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So so with justice and minds, what's that big dream that you hold? A lot of it, I think focuses on skills that students should have. 00:04:17 Um when we talk about kindness, curiosity, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and continuous learning, um I joke, I wrote it in one of my books um but when I say goodbye to my daughters frequently I just say be kind curious um and collaborative because again or creative sometimes too, I just think they need to remember that when they're going to school, just be kind to people. Um you need to be curious um and you need to be creative. Um but along with those skills and I really like those skills because those can be connected to what you're learning about regardless of if you are early childhood student or a high school student or a teacher. Um So I think those skills, if we can focus on what skills would be helpful, those can kind of frame things, but then when you talk about the learning um I really believe that students should construct their own knowledge. Um but they need to do that with active learning, they can't just passively listen. Um they need to be able to do something. Um They need to have opportunities to be resilient problem solvers. 00:05:20 If we want our students to go out um and have a job and a life where they're contributing citizens, they need to be able to work through some of that resilience and they need to be able to problem solve. They can't just always be giving easy activities um they have to be supported um and be able to solve those problems. Um Also making connections I think is very important with learning where you can talk about even for social studies, what happened in history and then you can make connections of why that happened, whose story is being told, what are the implications. Um And then finally I think with all of this, my dissertation was on grading and it was really about standards based grading, but now I've really shifted to talk more about effective grading. Um But forget grades, let's really just talk about, it needs to be guided by feedback and reflection about some sort of success criteria. So you can be talking to a kindergarten student about science and you can just say the two quality factors that we're looking at our criteria and be. 00:06:25 And if at some sort in the process you're informally walking around and asking them questions, you can empower reflection and at some point if the students or yourself are giving them feedback, they then can improve it. Um I would sometimes read and hear about, you know, um graded and no grades well eventually to be accountable, you do need grades, but let's focus less on that and really focus on how can we get our students to reflect and how can we provide feedback and I think right now we're doing some professional development in our school district about engagement and so it's Kagan um strategies and I think the more we can get our students talking to each other um and asking those questions, you know, rather than You sitting in the class and you're the only one answering um that's maybe one out of 25, we can have all the students talking to a partner, so then we have the engagement and participation of 50% or we can have them talking in groups of four. Um but again the more we can get the students, the more people talking so they can't hide in our classroom. 00:07:29 Um I think in general I've probably listed about 10 or 15 things about it, but I think it starts with the skills that we can infuse, we can come back to and build off of. Um but really if we're talking about education, there needs to be some sort of academics that needs to be guided um and opportunities again to problem solve, but also act on feedback and reflect, Oh wow, that's so beautiful. And actually I think that aligns perfectly to what I was gonna ask you about next when I've been kind of playing around with the stages of curriculum limitation, so sometimes I'll work with the school district and they'll say, okay, I want to do this just a space curriculum thing, they'll jump right to what I would consider kind of the final stage, so we're kind of revamping lessons and we're pulling in really interesting texts and perspectives and we don't have any of the foundational things that you just described that are critical to be able to do this work. And so I heard you describe things like student voice, right? And thinking about embedding that student voice and hearing students speak for students talking to each other and getting that curiosity, thinking about how we grade, linking to standards, thinking about that assessment piece and that feedback and I think those are kind of pillars along the way to getting to, you know, affirming student identities through a particular texts in the curriculum. 00:08:42 I'm curious to know as kind of a district where do you feel like you are in that kind of progression of stages in justice center curriculum? I think with a lot of things, you kind of are at all of the stages at the same time. So I'm looking at your visual that talks about like the first stages mindset and relationships and I think mindset is critical um so you have some sort of common vision um or values or conversation and language. So I think the mindset is important and same with relationships. Um you have to be able to make people feel like they belong. Um you need to have empathy, you need to include people. Um so just at a surface level, I mean we are, we do have a common vision um and we are really focusing on relationships. The pandemic has been awful um but one of the things that it did highlight was the importance of relationships and I think schools and educators and families were reminded that that is a critical part, so um now we're making more time for that and we probably should have before um the next part of choice and voice, um I think the more we can provide our students with choice the better um kind of like a parent, you can just say there's three things you want to get done, you just give that child the choice of which one they want to do first. 00:10:02 Um you might want to say this is a mandatory task you must complete, but once you are done, choose between these or choose how, how you do it or how the product, so I think that choice is important and same with the voice where um you need to get that input, the students can't always be making all of the decisions. Um but at times you should allow them to provide feedback when we're talking about information or initiatives for a school district. A lot of the times it's just easy just ask the parents or even ask the students, the students are surprisingly extremely smart, they'll tell you how they see it. Um we added now to middle school students um to be on our school board as students and again, their first day was yesterday, but just listening to them talk. I'm really looking forward to their future conversations and input because they're experiencing it right now. Um The third part was about assessment, I think assessment is critical, I think we focused a lot on assessing academically and behaviorally, but I think now the bigger focus is how can we support, differentiate and empower. 00:11:07 So not just academics I talked about, we're focusing a little bit more on relationships now now how can we behaviorally understand how all students are doing to see if we can provide more support? Um so I really think that differentiation and support is going to be critical and then finally we're talking about affirming student identities, identities and experiences. Um I think we need to figure out what's developmentally or age appropriate. Um but really think of whose story is being told or left out when we're talking about social studies, how can we show and highlight experiences and characters and people in history who are different or are who similar to some of the people in our current society, our schools in our classrooms and I know Sims Bishop um worded it well about the mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors. So we recently have done some case studies to start talking about that a little bit more in our school district where again, I think we have to provide these opportunities for our students so they can see themselves and make connections with other people that we're learning about beautiful. 00:12:14 I love that response to, of just being in all the places at the same time. Right? And like even if you're kind of moving forward on a stage, you're consistently going back and refining. I think Covid is a great example of how many schools and districts have realized the importance of that. And it sounds like you guys are doing a phenomenal job. Super cool. How you're kind of tapping into each of those pieces and all that you're doing? I think a huge piece for this and I think you touched on this a little bit in terms of like working with the case studies and working with the content and alignment with developmental appropriateness and, and, and that kind of thing. Um, there are certainly, I think mindset shifts that need to happen when teachers or leaders or families even um are trying to see education in a way that is different than it's historically been done. And so making changes like this, especially large scale district changes can be, can be a challenge. Can face resistance and I'm curious to know what mindset shifts you have either seen helps people through, um, think are important for doing this work. I think ultimately we need to be respectful and really focus on relationships to really enhance belonging. 00:13:18 We need to help them understand that there are students in our town, in our state, in our schools um that we need to connect with and make sure that they belong. So I think you can do that in a variety of ways, um but also just, you know, empathy um and understanding different perspectives and experiences, you can say that you had an experience and that is your perspective, but how can you really value and appreciate and embrace some of those other perspectives that we might not have heard? Um same with connections, how can we empower connections um to people's history? You know what I asked them to learn about their family, so then they can build off that. So I think connections are important um equitable opportunities. I think we need to be cautious with that word, um but at the same time that can be a lens to analyze what we're currently offering. You know, can we make sure that it really is equitable um for everyone, there might be people whose parents are are less involved or who will not provide as much feedback or questions about it, but how can we just proactively support them um to really get them to perform the best they can, and then finally, you know, we can talk about a lot of things, but really how can we, when we talk about civics to how can we empower some of that positive change? 00:14:33 It doesn't need to be huge and drastic. Um but at the local level just with involvement or questions or just opportunities, I think ultimately talking about it is great. Um, questioning and reflecting it, but ultimately hopefully it can impact some positive change as well. I love that. Yeah, I think so many times we talk about, you know, preparing students for after they graduate and it's like, well what can they do now in this moment right to be leaders in their communities and have actual authentic opportunities. So we talk about assessment like, and like how can we assess from academic lens and and all of that, but also have the students make an impact right from civic engagement standpoints. I love that point. And just quickly go back to, I know you mentioned, um, being cautious, I think you said with the equity term, can you just say more about that for listeners who, who may not know? I just think it's with a lot of things. Sometimes people will put a word out there and it may not appropriately fit in. Um, but if it's set in the right way for the right purpose, um, or again, just used to to every now and then or as one of your areas to look at. 00:15:35 I think it can be helpful, but just still sometimes, um, there is terminology that is used incorrectly or used, um, incorrectly, really to leverage an impact and I think that has a larger negative impact when that is used, but without even asking the questions, we should be using that as a lens. How can we think of each of our students, How can we think of the environment and the world that they're growing up in? Um, just to understand those different perspectives. Yeah, that makes so much sense. I just think about how when people are like, yeah, adding equity to some to a practice for example, or a data analysis tool and they're not actually being thoughtful about equity and it's just like slapping the word on there doesn't make it equitable. And yeah, I think that's a great point. Um, and when we use language to be incredibly precise. I think diversity is another one that, that I often hear misused, right? When we talk about, I'll often talk about, you know, I I worked in a school that was highly diverse in a school that was not highly diverse. 00:16:38 One of the highly diverse schools with students from 50 different countries. That the diversity of countries and not highly diverse school where 99% of students were racialized as black and brown. That's not highly diverse. That's like the same racial Ization. Yet people will say, Oh, that's a diverse school, right? So it's like divers from what this kind of like treating whiteness as this norm that everyone else is deviant from and using diversity in that way is actually counter to what we're trying to do, right? When we're teaching for justice. So I really appreciate your call to be precise in our language and intentional with that. So thank you for naming that. And even with equity. Sometimes people talk about equity and diversity well, you can't create the diversity so it might be equity and inclusion, but choosing the correct words. Yeah, Excellent, Excellent point. Um, so in terms of like how we do this. So you, you talk a lot about, as you said, growth mindset grading leadership, I think you mentioned a ton of different practices kind of embedded in when you were talking about being at all the stages. What are kind of these actions that are required to get to the dream? 00:17:40 You described? What are the things that have been really successful for you as a leader in your district? What are the things that listeners could really learn from you in order to kind of bring to their own spaces? I mean, I think just awareness and collaboration and flexibility and patients are the most important because we need to be aware of the experiences of everyone, we need to work together. Um, but at the same time, some people are not ready to make a change and other people want to make an extremely fast change. And so again, I think we need to have a plan but be flexible with it and also just patients where it can't be good enough, but we need to continue to make progress and we need to continue to reevaluate, um, to just make a bigger impact on our students. I think some of the things we've been doing to do that, um We do have some district goals this year um that are helping with that emphasis. Um we're in the middle of creating a new strategic plan um where Equity was one of the key words that we wanted to focus on um for our values, so that will help guide some of these conversations more. 00:18:48 Um we're talking about different professional development, even if you just talk about equity within academics, um we have some different reading professional development happening right now. Um we're continuing to talk about engagement, like I said about Kagan, and I think that's important too, because again, it's just enhancing the opportunity and interactions of all the students in the classroom, and so Equity sometimes can look different, but it might even just be of participation. I'm sure my three daughters are great kids and they'll volunteer and they'll typically have the right answer. Um but if one of them is more shy than the other, I still want them to have the opportunity to talk with others. If someone is unsure, I would like them to first be able to talk about it with a partner um or in a small group and then they might feel more comfortable sharing. So I think some of those when we talk about equity, I think there's some academic opportunities that we can continue to build on. Um and then also we're doing some work with P. B. I. S. Where we're looking at classroom and building expectations and again, um I know there's another area we can look at within equity um regarding the equity, regarding the behavior and the consequences and the students that are involved. 00:19:58 So um again, I think there's a lot of areas, um a lot of areas for growth, but I think we're having a lot of positive conversations to kind of build some momentum and I love that. I'm just trying to think of like diving into a topic here. I love that you've talked about the strategic planning process a little bit and like what that kind of looks like what your goals are. And I also know that grading is a huge area of expertise for you. So I'm curious to know if there's one of those that sounds like you might want to dive in and kind of tell us a little bit about what that was like. So I don't know if you you know where the district was in terms of grading and we they are now and talk about how that process move forward, like what what did it look like in practice to have that collaboration be present or in the strategic planning process. I'm always interested in like how people are doing that and getting stakeholder engagement collaboration there as well. Um either one, either one I can talk about both briefly, I mean for grading events essentially we were looking at standards based grading at elementary, so because that was a need for our school district, that's what I wrote my dissertation about. 00:21:00 But as we implemented it, um it works well for k through five, but again there's that transition um of the parents based on their this is and what they are used to. Um So regardless what you call the grade, I think it really needs to be backed by effective grading practices. So now, to me it doesn't matter if it's standards based or not, what are some of those effective grading practices. And so some of the things are not penalizing students with zero that can completely decimate their grade if you're grading already on a scale from 0 to 100 that's 101 um Different options. And that's going to create some challenges too. But if you give them a zero and you average that with two nineties, you know, they're great, is is an f essentially and so they don't need to be allowed to redo every activity um or every assignment or every assessment, but you can provide a process of what they need to do and what they need to reflect. 00:22:01 And then they can make up portions of some assignments or assessments because again you want them to have the learning and the understanding more so than the grade. And so for those final assessments don't allow any reduce but building up to that um kind of like the athlete, you don't want to penalize them for practicing before their performance. And so I did my dissertation. I've been working on it for a long time. I think I've I finished it maybe five years ago, but even since then I continue to, you know, read literature about it. I really like what tom dusky um says with a lot of his recommendations. Um but a lot of it is just, you know, how can we also for example provide feedback during the learning process because if you have an assessment and you give the feedback and you move on to the next unit, they're not acting on any of that. So even if you could provide feedback at half or two thirds through the learning before you give that final assessment um That's another option, so I can talk about grading forever. 00:23:03 I'm passionate about it. Um and I think there's a lot of changes that we can make just to really get the focus on learning um for strategic plan, we're starting to build on one right now where we talked about our values and a mission statement um and then now we're going to be sending out a survey and then including stakeholders in the process and um new this year will also be involving um some current and former students. So I think it's good to get their voice um in the process as well. Um and again, the better questions we can ask up front um that can kind of guide some of our decisions and I think we really do want to be future focused. Um if we're talking about preparing students for jobs that aren't even available right now, we really need to think a little bit differently. And that's why I think having those um, core activities or skills um is really important to build off of as well. I love the idea of including former students too. I didn't even, I haven't heard anyone actually intentionally include former students, but what a brilliant source of ideas and you know, the student experience than someone who's been through the entire system. 00:24:14 I love it. So super cool. Thank you so much for sharing that and any time you want to Sprinkle in wisdom about grading, Happy to listen. So I think that was really, really helpful as well for people who are really grappling with the kind of do we grade and how do we allow retakes or or reduce? And I love the idea of not penalizing for zeros and not penalizing for the practice, Right? Because like why would you do it perfectly the first time you never try to skill you wouldn't And so why would we put that on your permanent record? I think that's a brilliant philosophy and and really grounded in uh in equity for someone who didn't have, you know, the additional resources, the outside tutoring all things and gets it perfect the first time because of all those things. Right. That's, that's why we do it. So I could also under doubt about grading all day. So I'll move on to my next question, which is, have you faced a, is there, I'm sure you face challenges. Is there a particular challenge that you have faced in doing this work and in shifting mindsets around grading for example, or or moving through the strategic planning process. Any of this work where you face a challenge and you're either in it right now and you want to just describe it and what you're trying or that you move through and you're able to kind of talk us through how you work through that challenge. 00:25:25 I think it's probably just a lens to look at, which also could equate to a challenge. So developmentally appropriate conversations, you know, what's appropriate for a first or second grade student compared to a middle school student and who's judging that. Um, so I think based on adults experiences, they may think it's not age appropriate. Well now some of the students are encountering scenarios at an earlier age. So maybe it wasn't then. Um, but to some capacity it is now. And even if you talk about the topic, what language vocabulary or depth do you go to, Um, which still allows you to talk about the topic, um, but not go quite into depth about it. So I think when we're talking about um gender identity and equity, I think that's something that's important to think through. I think we need to understand what do our students need to know. Um but also be aware of what um the thoughts and beliefs are of the stakeholders to, so we can kind of find that alignment, but I think finding and targeting that developmentally appropriate conversations and language is important. 00:26:34 And then the other thing is preparing students to live and work in a world that we don't um know how it is, yet we're preparing them for jobs that don't exist and so we can think about at this time, they may not need this, but they're gonna graduate high school pretty soon. A lot of them will be going on to college and graduate pretty soon. Um thinking of my daughter, she's a junior in high school, you know, in six years, she'll be working in another job um graduated from college. And so how can we prepare them? Because even as we looked at the pandemic jobs right now look very different. Um a lot of people are now working from home, not typically within education, but a lot of the other jobs and when you do that, you can have those conversations with those people as well about how maybe working from home is beneficial for someone who is a veteran who has been in that job for a while, but it might be more difficult for someone new because they can't build those connections. So I just think that's an example of how can we build different skills like collaboration and problem solving and creativity, because again we're preparing our kids for opportunities that we could not even anticipate. 00:27:45 So the more we can do within our classrooms, within our schools where the students feel comfortable um where they are resilient, where they do learn from Phil um again, I try to talk about learning from mistakes and challenges. I don't really talk about failure because if we just have a little mistake or a little challenge and we can embrace those and we expect to learn from them, it's not that big of a deal, but if we stigmatize it and we're having people be afraid of those, then that's gonna be a problem once they are in the real world and do have a job um because they're not used to making mistakes and learning from them, but if we can just show them that it's just part of the process um that's really where the growth happens most. If you just think of any learning that is occurring um and you're on a trajectory, you're just gonna kind of stay on that trajectory. But if you make a mistake, if you have a challenge and you have to think through it, you're then actually going to change some of your thoughts and your strategies and that's where the larger growth will occur. 00:28:45 So I think collectively um that would be my response to some of the challenges and ways to help with the challenges. Just pop it in quick to interrupt this episode, saying that the free resource for the episode which are links to blogs that dr eric young man our guest today has published can be found on our website. To access them. Just go to Lindsay's clients dot com slash blog slash 99. Back to the episode's intolerance. They have banded standards. So it's like if they're four categories of standards, they have like K I don't know if it's K three K five, you know, it's like really young kids and then all the way up to high school. And so they adapt the standards from um year to year band to band and then also um so my background is an intersectional feminist. So um sex education and K. 12 consent standards have been heavily worked on by a few organizations. And so that goes all the way K. To 12. Like what do we I know you mentioned gender identity, Like what do we talk about in kindergarten? Right? And so like consent is like a thing that should be part of kindergarten conversations and maybe you don't call a consent or maybe you do, but and the examples are very very diff from high school, but that concept is core to just being human, Right? 00:29:59 And so it's like yeah. How do we build on these and and talk about it and not write it off as inappropriate to an entire topic like you said, how do we make sure we are directing the information and the examples in a way that is targeted appropriately. So thank you for that. Um wondering what as we kind of go to our final call to action, I'm wondering what one thing would be that listeners can kind of start doing? So we were kind of all over the place and a bunch of different spheres of of things people can do. And so I'm curious to know like what's the starting point? What would you say would be a good place for people to really start and live in alignment with some of the things we've been talking about today if they could just do maybe one thing and when they stop the episode, I usually don't just have one answer, so I still combine a couple, but I think it's empathetically and reflectively valuing experiences and other perspectives. I think it's important, it's not just your own, but how can you understand others? How can you make them feel welcome? I think maximizing the capacity and capabilities is critical. 00:31:00 How can we maximize the capacity of our teachers um and also of our students um they may have different trajectories, but how can we look at each of their skills and abilities and just continuous improvement, help them to continue to grow. And then finally I mentioned it kind of in the previous answer. But again, how can we just help people reflectively persevere with a growth mindset? I think we all, every day face some challenges and just our mindset about those, about how we can become stronger, How can we reflectively learn from everything. Um My daughter's play a lot of soccer, basketball, and golf and I've finally grown up too as I'm getting a little bit older and I just asked different questions now. Um it really isn't if they win the game, if, if if they lose, it's, you know, what did you learn from your opponent? How can you get better? And I think they may have a tough game where they might get less playing time or are frustrated with a certain thing, but how can we build them up so they continue to be confident and understand how they're growing and that same with math, they might have one unit that's challenging. 00:32:07 Um, but how can we help them understand the growth that they've made and where they're improving. So I think that perseverance um is another part, Yeah, that's such a huge piece and I can never remember, I need to just figure out who this is. I can never remember this example, but somewhere in my, my leadership research at some point came across a company who does like, I think it's a $5 million mistake or something and they, they celebrate these people who in the company have cost the organization like at least a million dollars or $5 million dollars and they like put their name of and have this huge celebration because it's like if you're not doing that, then you're not kind of pushing us forward and off to the point where we're learning and actually growing and you're a valuable asset to the team, right? And so I think that's a huge when it comes to growth mindset always makes you think of that. Um I also love the idea of asking better questions, right? What a beautiful kind of thing that we can try to start doing as a call to action like as a next step, right? How can I ask better questions today, That's just so powerful. I mean of course maximizing capacity. 00:33:08 I think the more you can build capacity in your other stakeholders is the better you are as a leader able to do your your job right? And kind of steering the ship and and focusing everyone and kind of giving people what they need so that you're not just taking the the entire district and putting it on your shoulders, right? You have this built capacity and everyone's doing better and research has shown that that you know, we do better when we have that build capacity. So I think in the spirit of learning and growing and you have said that that is, you know, a key piece to this work into your district values. I'm curious to know just something for fun that you have been learning about lately, it can be related to your job, it could be totally different like golf for example, but anything that is interesting um that you've been learning about, I talked about strategic planning and the engagement structures, another one is um sometimes I'm able to read books before they're published and provide feedback to the author. Um so I'm reading one right now about assessment and the beginning of it talks a lot about john Hattie's um effective teaching strategies and so I think it reminds me basically anything I connect to, I I talk about effective T teaching and learning um and grading and growth mindset, but it's just a reminder that there are some really high leverage instructional strategies. 00:34:25 Um one of them being feedback actually a lot of them have to do with growth mindset, but I think just for good instruction, good professional development for our teachers, we can come back to that because if we're trying to help our students the most we should understand which instructor strategies have the largest impact and so again it wasn't purposeful, but as I'm reading that, that I'm making connections with that and same with growth mindset, I present a lot about growth mindset and I try to make a lot of images and I share them out on twitter, just try to promote some conversation or reflection that students ultimately can use because when I talk about growth mindset, I know teachers and educators, it's a challenging time and so sometimes I'll get some pushback when I'm talking about growth mindset and the teachers are going through a difficult year and so I've purposely the last year has just shifted the language to say, how can you empower your students to have a growth mindset? And typically the educators will be modeling that in the same capacity, but I think changing that a little bit um is also helpful, but I think as we're talking about growth mindset, we can also talk about looking at others. 00:35:34 And so I've been reading some articles lately about failure and it's hard to analyze your own failure. Um, but if you're looking at the mistakes or challenges of someone else, you can explain it and you're more open about it. So I think the more we can learn about other people's mistake and talk about it. Um if you're learning grammar or math and you provide an opportunity for the students to be the teacher, they can talk about what the mistake was and it's just a larger, more open conversation. So I think really learning from other mistakes as an area I want to focus more on and then also just different people within science. We talk about equity. Um, but same with resilience, what are some people we can learn from in history, um people of different backgrounds, um and really learn about how they persevered because the more if we're just reading a story when we talk about the character um or we're talking about someone in history, the more we value and analyze some of their skills and attributes, then hopefully our students can then try to emulate those and learn from those as well. 00:36:37 I love that. So I know you mentioned a little bit on twitter, where can listeners learn more about you connected? You see those awesome images and promised around growth mindset. Where would you direct, folks connect with me on twitter at eric underscore young men and it's er I k um I spend a little too much time on twitter, just trying to learn from other teachers and educators throughout the US and the world actually, and then I do have my own website. Um So eric youngman dot com. I have some of my blogs that I've written probably about 12 blogs up there about grading or growth mindset or parenting lately. I've been asked to write about parenting, so I have a couple of blogs about that. Um and then my books are there as well, awesome and as a new parent myself, I'm excited to check out your section on parenting. So I will definitely, I wrote two blog in the spring, so check them out. Excellent. Excellent. And thank you so much dr eric young man for being on the show today, I really appreciate all of your wonderful insight and we will link to all of those pieces that you mentioned in the blog as well as the folks can find them. 00:37:40 Thank you for your work Lindsay. I appreciate the questions and your areas of focus because I think they're important for our educators, our parents and most importantly our students, thank you. If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my live coaching intensive curriculum bootcamp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We leave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit, which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me, grab a spot on my calendar at www dot lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash contact until next time. Leaders continue to think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network, better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at, teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode Today on the show. I have Dr. Eric Young man who's an education leader, passionate about topics such as homework growth mindset grading and leadership. Published books he's written include the magic of growth mindset and 12 characteristics of deliberate homework as well as a chapter for 100 no nonsense things that all teachers should stop doing. He's also written numerous blogs about growth mindset and grading. This is his 21st year in educational leadership eric is the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning for Libertyville District 70 in Libertyville Illinois. Previous education experiences include being a principal in Libertyville as well as an assistant principal and teacher in Gurnee Illinois, let's get to the episode, I'm educational justice coach lindsey Lyons and here on the time for Teacher Ship podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. 00:01:02 If you're a principal Assistant superintendent, curriculum director instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nursing out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go dr eric, Young man, welcome to the time for Teacher Ship podcast. Welcome, Thank you for having a conversation with me today. Thank you so much for being here. I'd love for you to just kind of frame for us, you know, what is it? What is important for listeners to know? I just read your bio, but is there anything else that you're kind of wanting people to keep in mind or want people to know about you before we jump into our conversation today, I'm the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning in Libertyville Illinois. I'm the author of two books, 12 characteristics of deliberate homework and the magic of growth mindset. I'm also the father of three daughters. And so when I'm talking about these different conversations, I really like to talk about growth mindset and grading and leadership. But now now I look through it at the lens of a father. So how does this impact my junior in high school, my freshman in high school, my seventh grader, they're all daughters. 00:02:10 How could this help them? Um what have they seen that helps me understand through the lens of a student, what it's like in the classroom. Um Also my wife is a speech pathologist in an elementary school, so she works with early childhood students. And so again, when we're talking about initiatives for a school district, I'm also cognizant how our teachers and staff receiving those. Um and then finally, um just being a parent, I think that's also helpful as we um talk about the clarity of communication. So sometimes we have a plan, but sometimes the timing of that communication is not as good as it should have been. And same with the clarity. And so when we're talking about all of these ideas, you know, you can have ideas but when you're going to implement them, I think you need to be aware of how other people are perceiving them and you need to be Collaborative. So again, I love talking about growth mindset grading and leadership, but also I try to utilize my experiences as a father um as a husband, and then I started as a first grade teacher, but that was years ago, um now I've been an administrator for 20 years. 00:03:15 Um but again, I think you can learn from every situation of how you could make something better, how you could modify the pasting or just get a little bit more collaborative or clear with communication. And I love that you mentioned collaboration in terms of your family structure, you just have so many stakeholder perspectives, just you know, in your own experience, but then also you have the students and the speech pathologist and and as a parent you kind of put that head on and so that's brilliant when it comes to being able to think through that shared leadership kind of collaborative venture um into kind of what we're talking about today and leading um some some large scale changes. So when you think about uh your dream for education really like what what would be the perfect scenario of, you know uh curriculum and instruction just going beautifully and I often ground this and dr Bettina loves quote about freedom, dreaming dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So so with justice and minds, what's that big dream that you hold? A lot of it, I think focuses on skills that students should have. 00:04:17 Um when we talk about kindness, curiosity, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and continuous learning, um I joke, I wrote it in one of my books um but when I say goodbye to my daughters frequently I just say be kind curious um and collaborative because again or creative sometimes too, I just think they need to remember that when they're going to school, just be kind to people. Um you need to be curious um and you need to be creative. Um but along with those skills and I really like those skills because those can be connected to what you're learning about regardless of if you are early childhood student or a high school student or a teacher. Um So I think those skills, if we can focus on what skills would be helpful, those can kind of frame things, but then when you talk about the learning um I really believe that students should construct their own knowledge. Um but they need to do that with active learning, they can't just passively listen. Um they need to be able to do something. Um They need to have opportunities to be resilient problem solvers. 00:05:20 If we want our students to go out um and have a job and a life where they're contributing citizens, they need to be able to work through some of that resilience and they need to be able to problem solve. They can't just always be giving easy activities um they have to be supported um and be able to solve those problems. Um Also making connections I think is very important with learning where you can talk about even for social studies, what happened in history and then you can make connections of why that happened, whose story is being told, what are the implications. Um And then finally I think with all of this, my dissertation was on grading and it was really about standards based grading, but now I've really shifted to talk more about effective grading. Um But forget grades, let's really just talk about, it needs to be guided by feedback and reflection about some sort of success criteria. So you can be talking to a kindergarten student about science and you can just say the two quality factors that we're looking at our criteria and be. 00:06:25 And if at some sort in the process you're informally walking around and asking them questions, you can empower reflection and at some point if the students or yourself are giving them feedback, they then can improve it. Um I would sometimes read and hear about, you know, um graded and no grades well eventually to be accountable, you do need grades, but let's focus less on that and really focus on how can we get our students to reflect and how can we provide feedback and I think right now we're doing some professional development in our school district about engagement and so it's Kagan um strategies and I think the more we can get our students talking to each other um and asking those questions, you know, rather than You sitting in the class and you're the only one answering um that's maybe one out of 25, we can have all the students talking to a partner, so then we have the engagement and participation of 50% or we can have them talking in groups of four. Um but again the more we can get the students, the more people talking so they can't hide in our classroom. 00:07:29 Um I think in general I've probably listed about 10 or 15 things about it, but I think it starts with the skills that we can infuse, we can come back to and build off of. Um but really if we're talking about education, there needs to be some sort of academics that needs to be guided um and opportunities again to problem solve, but also act on feedback and reflect, Oh wow, that's so beautiful. And actually I think that aligns perfectly to what I was gonna ask you about next when I've been kind of playing around with the stages of curriculum limitation, so sometimes I'll work with the school district and they'll say, okay, I want to do this just a space curriculum thing, they'll jump right to what I would consider kind of the final stage, so we're kind of revamping lessons and we're pulling in really interesting texts and perspectives and we don't have any of the foundational things that you just described that are critical to be able to do this work. And so I heard you describe things like student voice, right? And thinking about embedding that student voice and hearing students speak for students talking to each other and getting that curiosity, thinking about how we grade, linking to standards, thinking about that assessment piece and that feedback and I think those are kind of pillars along the way to getting to, you know, affirming student identities through a particular texts in the curriculum. 00:08:42 I'm curious to know as kind of a district where do you feel like you are in that kind of progression of stages in justice center curriculum? I think with a lot of things, you kind of are at all of the stages at the same time. So I'm looking at your visual that talks about like the first stages mindset and relationships and I think mindset is critical um so you have some sort of common vision um or values or conversation and language. So I think the mindset is important and same with relationships. Um you have to be able to make people feel like they belong. Um you need to have empathy, you need to include people. Um so just at a surface level, I mean we are, we do have a common vision um and we are really focusing on relationships. The pandemic has been awful um but one of the things that it did highlight was the importance of relationships and I think schools and educators and families were reminded that that is a critical part, so um now we're making more time for that and we probably should have before um the next part of choice and voice, um I think the more we can provide our students with choice the better um kind of like a parent, you can just say there's three things you want to get done, you just give that child the choice of which one they want to do first. 00:10:02 Um you might want to say this is a mandatory task you must complete, but once you are done, choose between these or choose how, how you do it or how the product, so I think that choice is important and same with the voice where um you need to get that input, the students can't always be making all of the decisions. Um but at times you should allow them to provide feedback when we're talking about information or initiatives for a school district. A lot of the times it's just easy just ask the parents or even ask the students, the students are surprisingly extremely smart, they'll tell you how they see it. Um we added now to middle school students um to be on our school board as students and again, their first day was yesterday, but just listening to them talk. I'm really looking forward to their future conversations and input because they're experiencing it right now. Um The third part was about assessment, I think assessment is critical, I think we focused a lot on assessing academically and behaviorally, but I think now the bigger focus is how can we support, differentiate and empower. 00:11:07 So not just academics I talked about, we're focusing a little bit more on relationships now now how can we behaviorally understand how all students are doing to see if we can provide more support? Um so I really think that differentiation and support is going to be critical and then finally we're talking about affirming student identities, identities and experiences. Um I think we need to figure out what's developmentally or age appropriate. Um but really think of whose story is being told or left out when we're talking about social studies, how can we show and highlight experiences and characters and people in history who are different or are who similar to some of the people in our current society, our schools in our classrooms and I know Sims Bishop um worded it well about the mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors. So we recently have done some case studies to start talking about that a little bit more in our school district where again, I think we have to provide these opportunities for our students so they can see themselves and make connections with other people that we're learning about beautiful. 00:12:14 I love that response to, of just being in all the places at the same time. Right? And like even if you're kind of moving forward on a stage, you're consistently going back and refining. I think Covid is a great example of how many schools and districts have realized the importance of that. And it sounds like you guys are doing a phenomenal job. Super cool. How you're kind of tapping into each of those pieces and all that you're doing? I think a huge piece for this and I think you touched on this a little bit in terms of like working with the case studies and working with the content and alignment with developmental appropriateness and, and, and that kind of thing. Um, there are certainly, I think mindset shifts that need to happen when teachers or leaders or families even um are trying to see education in a way that is different than it's historically been done. And so making changes like this, especially large scale district changes can be, can be a challenge. Can face resistance and I'm curious to know what mindset shifts you have either seen helps people through, um, think are important for doing this work. I think ultimately we need to be respectful and really focus on relationships to really enhance belonging. 00:13:18 We need to help them understand that there are students in our town, in our state, in our schools um that we need to connect with and make sure that they belong. So I think you can do that in a variety of ways, um but also just, you know, empathy um and understanding different perspectives and experiences, you can say that you had an experience and that is your perspective, but how can you really value and appreciate and embrace some of those other perspectives that we might not have heard? Um same with connections, how can we empower connections um to people's history? You know what I asked them to learn about their family, so then they can build off that. So I think connections are important um equitable opportunities. I think we need to be cautious with that word, um but at the same time that can be a lens to analyze what we're currently offering. You know, can we make sure that it really is equitable um for everyone, there might be people whose parents are are less involved or who will not provide as much feedback or questions about it, but how can we just proactively support them um to really get them to perform the best they can, and then finally, you know, we can talk about a lot of things, but really how can we, when we talk about civics to how can we empower some of that positive change? 00:14:33 It doesn't need to be huge and drastic. Um but at the local level just with involvement or questions or just opportunities, I think ultimately talking about it is great. Um, questioning and reflecting it, but ultimately hopefully it can impact some positive change as well. I love that. Yeah, I think so many times we talk about, you know, preparing students for after they graduate and it's like, well what can they do now in this moment right to be leaders in their communities and have actual authentic opportunities. So we talk about assessment like, and like how can we assess from academic lens and and all of that, but also have the students make an impact right from civic engagement standpoints. I love that point. And just quickly go back to, I know you mentioned, um, being cautious, I think you said with the equity term, can you just say more about that for listeners who, who may not know? I just think it's with a lot of things. Sometimes people will put a word out there and it may not appropriately fit in. Um, but if it's set in the right way for the right purpose, um, or again, just used to to every now and then or as one of your areas to look at. 00:15:35 I think it can be helpful, but just still sometimes, um, there is terminology that is used incorrectly or used, um, incorrectly, really to leverage an impact and I think that has a larger negative impact when that is used, but without even asking the questions, we should be using that as a lens. How can we think of each of our students, How can we think of the environment and the world that they're growing up in? Um, just to understand those different perspectives. Yeah, that makes so much sense. I just think about how when people are like, yeah, adding equity to some to a practice for example, or a data analysis tool and they're not actually being thoughtful about equity and it's just like slapping the word on there doesn't make it equitable. And yeah, I think that's a great point. Um, and when we use language to be incredibly precise. I think diversity is another one that, that I often hear misused, right? When we talk about, I'll often talk about, you know, I I worked in a school that was highly diverse in a school that was not highly diverse. 00:16:38 One of the highly diverse schools with students from 50 different countries. That the diversity of countries and not highly diverse school where 99% of students were racialized as black and brown. That's not highly diverse. That's like the same racial Ization. Yet people will say, Oh, that's a diverse school, right? So it's like divers from what this kind of like treating whiteness as this norm that everyone else is deviant from and using diversity in that way is actually counter to what we're trying to do, right? When we're teaching for justice. So I really appreciate your call to be precise in our language and intentional with that. So thank you for naming that. And even with equity. Sometimes people talk about equity and diversity well, you can't create the diversity so it might be equity and inclusion, but choosing the correct words. Yeah, Excellent, Excellent point. Um, so in terms of like how we do this. So you, you talk a lot about, as you said, growth mindset grading leadership, I think you mentioned a ton of different practices kind of embedded in when you were talking about being at all the stages. What are kind of these actions that are required to get to the dream? 00:17:40 You described? What are the things that have been really successful for you as a leader in your district? What are the things that listeners could really learn from you in order to kind of bring to their own spaces? I mean, I think just awareness and collaboration and flexibility and patients are the most important because we need to be aware of the experiences of everyone, we need to work together. Um, but at the same time, some people are not ready to make a change and other people want to make an extremely fast change. And so again, I think we need to have a plan but be flexible with it and also just patients where it can't be good enough, but we need to continue to make progress and we need to continue to reevaluate, um, to just make a bigger impact on our students. I think some of the things we've been doing to do that, um We do have some district goals this year um that are helping with that emphasis. Um we're in the middle of creating a new strategic plan um where Equity was one of the key words that we wanted to focus on um for our values, so that will help guide some of these conversations more. 00:18:48 Um we're talking about different professional development, even if you just talk about equity within academics, um we have some different reading professional development happening right now. Um we're continuing to talk about engagement, like I said about Kagan, and I think that's important too, because again, it's just enhancing the opportunity and interactions of all the students in the classroom, and so Equity sometimes can look different, but it might even just be of participation. I'm sure my three daughters are great kids and they'll volunteer and they'll typically have the right answer. Um but if one of them is more shy than the other, I still want them to have the opportunity to talk with others. If someone is unsure, I would like them to first be able to talk about it with a partner um or in a small group and then they might feel more comfortable sharing. So I think some of those when we talk about equity, I think there's some academic opportunities that we can continue to build on. Um and then also we're doing some work with P. B. I. S. Where we're looking at classroom and building expectations and again, um I know there's another area we can look at within equity um regarding the equity, regarding the behavior and the consequences and the students that are involved. 00:19:58 So um again, I think there's a lot of areas, um a lot of areas for growth, but I think we're having a lot of positive conversations to kind of build some momentum and I love that. I'm just trying to think of like diving into a topic here. I love that you've talked about the strategic planning process a little bit and like what that kind of looks like what your goals are. And I also know that grading is a huge area of expertise for you. So I'm curious to know if there's one of those that sounds like you might want to dive in and kind of tell us a little bit about what that was like. So I don't know if you you know where the district was in terms of grading and we they are now and talk about how that process move forward, like what what did it look like in practice to have that collaboration be present or in the strategic planning process. I'm always interested in like how people are doing that and getting stakeholder engagement collaboration there as well. Um either one, either one I can talk about both briefly, I mean for grading events essentially we were looking at standards based grading at elementary, so because that was a need for our school district, that's what I wrote my dissertation about. 00:21:00 But as we implemented it, um it works well for k through five, but again there's that transition um of the parents based on their this is and what they are used to. Um So regardless what you call the grade, I think it really needs to be backed by effective grading practices. So now, to me it doesn't matter if it's standards based or not, what are some of those effective grading practices. And so some of the things are not penalizing students with zero that can completely decimate their grade if you're grading already on a scale from 0 to 100 that's 101 um Different options. And that's going to create some challenges too. But if you give them a zero and you average that with two nineties, you know, they're great, is is an f essentially and so they don't need to be allowed to redo every activity um or every assignment or every assessment, but you can provide a process of what they need to do and what they need to reflect. 00:22:01 And then they can make up portions of some assignments or assessments because again you want them to have the learning and the understanding more so than the grade. And so for those final assessments don't allow any reduce but building up to that um kind of like the athlete, you don't want to penalize them for practicing before their performance. And so I did my dissertation. I've been working on it for a long time. I think I've I finished it maybe five years ago, but even since then I continue to, you know, read literature about it. I really like what tom dusky um says with a lot of his recommendations. Um but a lot of it is just, you know, how can we also for example provide feedback during the learning process because if you have an assessment and you give the feedback and you move on to the next unit, they're not acting on any of that. So even if you could provide feedback at half or two thirds through the learning before you give that final assessment um That's another option, so I can talk about grading forever. 00:23:03 I'm passionate about it. Um and I think there's a lot of changes that we can make just to really get the focus on learning um for strategic plan, we're starting to build on one right now where we talked about our values and a mission statement um and then now we're going to be sending out a survey and then including stakeholders in the process and um new this year will also be involving um some current and former students. So I think it's good to get their voice um in the process as well. Um and again, the better questions we can ask up front um that can kind of guide some of our decisions and I think we really do want to be future focused. Um if we're talking about preparing students for jobs that aren't even available right now, we really need to think a little bit differently. And that's why I think having those um, core activities or skills um is really important to build off of as well. I love the idea of including former students too. I didn't even, I haven't heard anyone actually intentionally include former students, but what a brilliant source of ideas and you know, the student experience than someone who's been through the entire system. 00:24:14 I love it. So super cool. Thank you so much for sharing that and any time you want to Sprinkle in wisdom about grading, Happy to listen. So I think that was really, really helpful as well for people who are really grappling with the kind of do we grade and how do we allow retakes or or reduce? And I love the idea of not penalizing for zeros and not penalizing for the practice, Right? Because like why would you do it perfectly the first time you never try to skill you wouldn't And so why would we put that on your permanent record? I think that's a brilliant philosophy and and really grounded in uh in equity for someone who didn't have, you know, the additional resources, the outside tutoring all things and gets it perfect the first time because of all those things. Right. That's, that's why we do it. So I could also under doubt about grading all day. So I'll move on to my next question, which is, have you faced a, is there, I'm sure you face challenges. Is there a particular challenge that you have faced in doing this work and in shifting mindsets around grading for example, or or moving through the strategic planning process. Any of this work where you face a challenge and you're either in it right now and you want to just describe it and what you're trying or that you move through and you're able to kind of talk us through how you work through that challenge. 00:25:25 I think it's probably just a lens to look at, which also could equate to a challenge. So developmentally appropriate conversations, you know, what's appropriate for a first or second grade student compared to a middle school student and who's judging that. Um, so I think based on adults experiences, they may think it's not age appropriate. Well now some of the students are encountering scenarios at an earlier age. So maybe it wasn't then. Um, but to some capacity it is now. And even if you talk about the topic, what language vocabulary or depth do you go to, Um, which still allows you to talk about the topic, um, but not go quite into depth about it. So I think when we're talking about um gender identity and equity, I think that's something that's important to think through. I think we need to understand what do our students need to know. Um but also be aware of what um the thoughts and beliefs are of the stakeholders to, so we can kind of find that alignment, but I think finding and targeting that developmentally appropriate conversations and language is important. 00:26:34 And then the other thing is preparing students to live and work in a world that we don't um know how it is, yet we're preparing them for jobs that don't exist and so we can think about at this time, they may not need this, but they're gonna graduate high school pretty soon. A lot of them will be going on to college and graduate pretty soon. Um thinking of my daughter, she's a junior in high school, you know, in six years, she'll be working in another job um graduated from college. And so how can we prepare them? Because even as we looked at the pandemic jobs right now look very different. Um a lot of people are now working from home, not typically within education, but a lot of the other jobs and when you do that, you can have those conversations with those people as well about how maybe working from home is beneficial for someone who is a veteran who has been in that job for a while, but it might be more difficult for someone new because they can't build those connections. So I just think that's an example of how can we build different skills like collaboration and problem solving and creativity, because again we're preparing our kids for opportunities that we could not even anticipate. 00:27:45 So the more we can do within our classrooms, within our schools where the students feel comfortable um where they are resilient, where they do learn from Phil um again, I try to talk about learning from mistakes and challenges. I don't really talk about failure because if we just have a little mistake or a little challenge and we can embrace those and we expect to learn from them, it's not that big of a deal, but if we stigmatize it and we're having people be afraid of those, then that's gonna be a problem once they are in the real world and do have a job um because they're not used to making mistakes and learning from them, but if we can just show them that it's just part of the process um that's really where the growth happens most. If you just think of any learning that is occurring um and you're on a trajectory, you're just gonna kind of stay on that trajectory. But if you make a mistake, if you have a challenge and you have to think through it, you're then actually going to change some of your thoughts and your strategies and that's where the larger growth will occur. 00:28:45 So I think collectively um that would be my response to some of the challenges and ways to help with the challenges. Just pop it in quick to interrupt this episode, saying that the free resource for the episode which are links to blogs that dr eric young man our guest today has published can be found on our website. To access them. Just go to Lindsay's clients dot com slash blog slash 99. Back to the episode's intolerance. They have banded standards. So it's like if they're four categories of standards, they have like K I don't know if it's K three K five, you know, it's like really young kids and then all the way up to high school. And so they adapt the standards from um year to year band to band and then also um so my background is an intersectional feminist. So um sex education and K. 12 consent standards have been heavily worked on by a few organizations. And so that goes all the way K. To 12. Like what do we I know you mentioned gender identity, Like what do we talk about in kindergarten? Right? And so like consent is like a thing that should be part of kindergarten conversations and maybe you don't call a consent or maybe you do, but and the examples are very very diff from high school, but that concept is core to just being human, Right? 00:29:59 And so it's like yeah. How do we build on these and and talk about it and not write it off as inappropriate to an entire topic like you said, how do we make sure we are directing the information and the examples in a way that is targeted appropriately. So thank you for that. Um wondering what as we kind of go to our final call to action, I'm wondering what one thing would be that listeners can kind of start doing? So we were kind of all over the place and a bunch of different spheres of of things people can do. And so I'm curious to know like what's the starting point? What would you say would be a good place for people to really start and live in alignment with some of the things we've been talking about today if they could just do maybe one thing and when they stop the episode, I usually don't just have one answer, so I still combine a couple, but I think it's empathetically and reflectively valuing experiences and other perspectives. I think it's important, it's not just your own, but how can you understand others? How can you make them feel welcome? I think maximizing the capacity and capabilities is critical. 00:31:00 How can we maximize the capacity of our teachers um and also of our students um they may have different trajectories, but how can we look at each of their skills and abilities and just continuous improvement, help them to continue to grow. And then finally I mentioned it kind of in the previous answer. But again, how can we just help people reflectively persevere with a growth mindset? I think we all, every day face some challenges and just our mindset about those, about how we can become stronger, How can we reflectively learn from everything. Um My daughter's play a lot of soccer, basketball, and golf and I've finally grown up too as I'm getting a little bit older and I just asked different questions now. Um it really isn't if they win the game, if, if if they lose, it's, you know, what did you learn from your opponent? How can you get better? And I think they may have a tough game where they might get less playing time or are frustrated with a certain thing, but how can we build them up so they continue to be confident and understand how they're growing and that same with math, they might have one unit that's challenging. 00:32:07 Um, but how can we help them understand the growth that they've made and where they're improving. So I think that perseverance um is another part, Yeah, that's such a huge piece and I can never remember, I need to just figure out who this is. I can never remember this example, but somewhere in my, my leadership research at some point came across a company who does like, I think it's a $5 million mistake or something and they, they celebrate these people who in the company have cost the organization like at least a million dollars or $5 million dollars and they like put their name of and have this huge celebration because it's like if you're not doing that, then you're not kind of pushing us forward and off to the point where we're learning and actually growing and you're a valuable asset to the team, right? And so I think that's a huge when it comes to growth mindset always makes you think of that. Um I also love the idea of asking better questions, right? What a beautiful kind of thing that we can try to start doing as a call to action like as a next step, right? How can I ask better questions today, That's just so powerful. I mean of course maximizing capacity. 00:33:08 I think the more you can build capacity in your other stakeholders is the better you are as a leader able to do your your job right? And kind of steering the ship and and focusing everyone and kind of giving people what they need so that you're not just taking the the entire district and putting it on your shoulders, right? You have this built capacity and everyone's doing better and research has shown that that you know, we do better when we have that build capacity. So I think in the spirit of learning and growing and you have said that that is, you know, a key piece to this work into your district values. I'm curious to know just something for fun that you have been learning about lately, it can be related to your job, it could be totally different like golf for example, but anything that is interesting um that you've been learning about, I talked about strategic planning and the engagement structures, another one is um sometimes I'm able to read books before they're published and provide feedback to the author. Um so I'm reading one right now about assessment and the beginning of it talks a lot about john Hattie's um effective teaching strategies and so I think it reminds me basically anything I connect to, I I talk about effective T teaching and learning um and grading and growth mindset, but it's just a reminder that there are some really high leverage instructional strategies. 00:34:25 Um one of them being feedback actually a lot of them have to do with growth mindset, but I think just for good instruction, good professional development for our teachers, we can come back to that because if we're trying to help our students the most we should understand which instructor strategies have the largest impact and so again it wasn't purposeful, but as I'm reading that, that I'm making connections with that and same with growth mindset, I present a lot about growth mindset and I try to make a lot of images and I share them out on twitter, just try to promote some conversation or reflection that students ultimately can use because when I talk about growth mindset, I know teachers and educators, it's a challenging time and so sometimes I'll get some pushback when I'm talking about growth mindset and the teachers are going through a difficult year and so I've purposely the last year has just shifted the language to say, how can you empower your students to have a growth mindset? And typically the educators will be modeling that in the same capacity, but I think changing that a little bit um is also helpful, but I think as we're talking about growth mindset, we can also talk about looking at others. 00:35:34 And so I've been reading some articles lately about failure and it's hard to analyze your own failure. Um, but if you're looking at the mistakes or challenges of someone else, you can explain it and you're more open about it. So I think the more we can learn about other people's mistake and talk about it. Um if you're learning grammar or math and you provide an opportunity for the students to be the teacher, they can talk about what the mistake was and it's just a larger, more open conversation. So I think really learning from other mistakes as an area I want to focus more on and then also just different people within science. We talk about equity. Um, but same with resilience, what are some people we can learn from in history, um people of different backgrounds, um and really learn about how they persevered because the more if we're just reading a story when we talk about the character um or we're talking about someone in history, the more we value and analyze some of their skills and attributes, then hopefully our students can then try to emulate those and learn from those as well. 00:36:37 I love that. So I know you mentioned a little bit on twitter, where can listeners learn more about you connected? You see those awesome images and promised around growth mindset. Where would you direct, folks connect with me on twitter at eric underscore young men and it's er I k um I spend a little too much time on twitter, just trying to learn from other teachers and educators throughout the US and the world actually, and then I do have my own website. Um So eric youngman dot com. I have some of my blogs that I've written probably about 12 blogs up there about grading or growth mindset or parenting lately. I've been asked to write about parenting, so I have a couple of blogs about that. Um and then my books are there as well, awesome and as a new parent myself, I'm excited to check out your section on parenting. So I will definitely, I wrote two blog in the spring, so check them out. Excellent. Excellent. And thank you so much dr eric young man for being on the show today, I really appreciate all of your wonderful insight and we will link to all of those pieces that you mentioned in the blog as well as the folks can find them. 00:37:40 Thank you for your work Lindsay. I appreciate the questions and your areas of focus because I think they're important for our educators, our parents and most importantly our students, thank you. If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my live coaching intensive curriculum bootcamp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We leave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit, which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me, grab a spot on my calendar at www dot lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash contact until next time. Leaders continue to think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network, better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at, teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, I'd highly recommend you take a look at this video on getting teacher buy-in.
1/16/2023 PRACTICE: An Assessment Tool to Measure Curriculum Implementation Success via Student VoiceRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
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:
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:
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. --- 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. TRANSCRIPT educational justice coach, lindsey Lyons and here on the time for teacher ship podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal Assistant superintendent, curriculum director instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nursing out about co creating curriculum students, I made this show for you. Here we go. If you are looking for an assessment practice to assess curricular implementation for your teachers, how are they doing to what degree with their implementation of a new unit successful. This is the episode for you. I can't wait to dive in. Let's get right to it. Okay, so you're here because you want an assessment practice that helps you assess and collect evidence or data around? 00:01:09 Was this implementation of this new unit actually successful? How did students receive it? What is kind of the student voice that is often missing from assessing teacher implementation or teachers skill? How do we weave that in? How do we really center the student experience in this? So we're going to talk through a strategy as always going to give you a free resource that's going to save you time to just grab at it and go, let's get right to it. So first why would we want to do this. So we need to know if a new unit is successful or not and likely we're going to see that it lands with some students, it's engaging to some students. It's not engaging to other students and we're going to need to coach teachers to make some changes to optimize that the next time they teach it, if they do teach it again, even if they're not planning to teach it again, maybe it was hyper focused on this group of students because they're really interested in this topic or a current event is happening now won't be as relevant next year. 00:02:10 The bones of the protocols or even the process with which they went about creating it and co creating hopefully with students to some degree can be reflected on. And so it's still really critically important that we know wasn't successful. What was the student experience of the way that it was implemented? Design and implemented and then how would we change and adapt in the future because we always want to be taking forward action and growing our practice. The other piece that I alluded to is student voice is often absent from the assessment of teachers and I think personally my best feedback was often from students, right, they would tell me this was not engaging this was engaging, here's what we could do next. This would be really exciting to work on a project on this topic. I'm curious about this, that is really, really important data that would coach me to be better in my unit design, my unit implementation and it facilitated a co creation process with students over time. So this data, the student voice data. 00:03:14 This experiential perception data is critically important and this practice today or this tool that I'm offering is super helpful to be able to invent this. Also the tool that I'm sharing is actually a kind of pre then post approach in the first kind of pages of of the survey that I'm sharing with you. And so this approach is actually research has found more accurate because the thing is we don't know what we don't know before we start learning about a topic or learning and experiencing learning in a new way and I think the experience or anecdote that kind of drives this home the most for me is when I would ask my high school students how they wanted to learn what they wanted to learn about the topic. How did they want to engage in this research, you know, what protocol do they want to engage with? Often they would just be like, Miss You tell me the information and then you test me on it. That is how education works. That's how I've always experienced education. I don't know what you want from me, right? 00:04:15 Like we've always done things this way and we kind of drive out the creativity from students by the time they reach high school and likely even sooner my experience has just been in high school students. It has been so long since they've been able to follow their creativity or suggest ideas about how classes done that they it doesn't even come to the front of the mind, right? They really need some coaching around, like what is it that you actually want here? The expansive opportunities we can provide here are other examples of how we might do this and it takes a little bit more work and time might be easier for younger students might not. But I think it's it's important to note that kind of experience that I've had in that way. Because if you don't know what else is possible, if you haven't experienced schooling in any other way, then you're probably just going to say, yeah, it was fine. It was school, right. If you experience it in this new way, then you can look back and say, oh, well up until this unit actually, school was not super engaging or maybe, you know, it was engaging. 00:05:17 But I never realized we could do it in this way and this was better. Or actually like the other way that we used to do units in this kind of experimental unit did not work for me. I'm gonna tell you about that. So, we don't really know what we don't know before we experience the new thing or start learning the new topic. Pre then post asked us to reflectively think back before we started this unit, what was your experience now? After what was your experience of the same construct? Right? So that pre then post acting at the same time point afterwards. And asking reflectively is going to give us more accurate information then if we asked at the very beginning and then again at the end because we don't know what we don't know. So how do we do this thing? How do we assess unit implementation and design center, student voice and leverage a pre then post approach to our survey. So first I think baseline, even like step zero is to facilitate a youth adult partnership mentality among staff. Michael Fielding in the student voice literature calls this radical collegiality. 00:06:24 I've talked about this before, but basically seeing students as partners and the learning process in the development and implementation of learning in a school community and seeing each other as having the this shared responsibility for student success. If that's not present, it's going to be really difficult to design and implement in a student centered way to have that unit that you're designing and implementing, be engaging to all students and inspiring and affirming and asking students to take part in any form, even if it's super low stakes, it's not actually tied to any sort of outcomes or, you know, going on your permanent record asking students to participate in any sort of assessment of teacher practices without the teacher having this youth adult partnership mentality or having that be part of the culture of the school or district, it's just not going to fly right, like there's not going to be a desire to learn from students in this way in this particular practice, if that inherent desire and that seeing students ideas as valuable and seeing students as partners in the learning process is already present. 00:07:38 So I talked a lot about this before you can listen to past episodes, you can take a moment to kind of think about what that means for you and kind of take stock of your current culture around youth adult partnerships. You can reach out to me. I think this is a critical kind of baseline, foundational piece. Once this is in place, let's go to step one. So what you want to do is you want to coach teachers or you know, make sure they have a coach or a support system or course or something where you're coaching teachers to help them develop a unit that is focused on appropriately challenging students, affirming students multiple identities and inspiring them to create something new. So, these are the big hallmarks, I think of a fantastic curricula. Again, that's appropriately challenging students, affirming students multiple identities and inspiring them to create something new. That would be a fantastic unit. That does all those things. Right. And that's what we're measuring in the survey tool that I'm going to give you as a free resource for this episode. So that's our goal, create with those things in mind, Once that is created, the teacher will implement and then on the last day of unit the unit and I think this is important from a leader perspective, you want to make it routine in this particular teacher if you're working one on one or as a school and district level practice I think is even better to make it routine to invite students reflections as part of. 00:09:02 Well, the last day of every unit is just inviting student reflections, right? We're having reflective day, that's how we end all of our units. We value student voice, we make space for this, that's an expectation. Could look different, could be really flexible, could just be a survey, could be a whole class discussion, but there is this reflective piece that centers student voices and the perception of student experiences is highly valued. Could even include families. Right inviting families to share. How did your student experience this? What were your conversations at home? Like did you have any conversations about this unit at home so much data that can be so valuable and inform our next steps of how we either adapt that unit we just implemented or how we would coach a teacher to create something new in the future with these pieces in mind either for the same students if it's the next unit in the school year or a unit for next school year with different students perhaps. So create that culture of, we invite student reflections at the end of each class period or sorry, unit period and It's okay if it takes an entire class period. 00:10:14 My mind was going too fast. That's what I want to say. 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 and hopefully this will also take the pressure off teachers to feel like they have to race and cover things and they don't have time to illicit student responses and to give space for student ideas and reflections. So as a leader, thinking about that normalization of that in the culture. So coach teachers to create, you can have them adapt this free survey that I'm going to share with you today, but give students some sort of opportunity either in survey form in posing questions and having them answer in a class discussion or answer in a written journal prompt. Um ask them some questions. Right coach of the teachers to ask students really powerful questions that measure what you want to measure, to really get out the student experience. Again, keeping in mind we want to make sure that the curriculum in the unit was appropriately challenging. 00:11:16 Affirming of students multiple identities and inspiring them to create something new of course, if there's other things you want to measure as well, definitely include those in the questions that you ask. I also think it's a really good idea to incentivize this by asking for this data as part of either a coaching cycle. If you're coaching this teacher one on one or they have a coach who is working with them one on one in a coaching cycle or as part of a portfolio piece that either if you want it to be kind of part of their permanent record or something in a portfolio piece in that sense. Sure. But I also think just normalizing and making routine success shares, which I've talked about previously on the podcast, some sort of portfolio piece where they are sharing out like this is part of my learning journey I'm sharing so that I can tell other staff and perhaps admin and even other staff from other schools who might be visiting our school. This has been what worked here is evidence of this. I think everyone is curious about student voice and student experience. 00:12:16 This is a wonderful way to collect that data. So I'm going to walk through a couple of questions for you if you're thinking, alright, I'm with you on the, you know, youth adult partnership mentality as kind of foundational coach teachers to develop the unit, yep, that's a big ask, but let's say we did it. And then all right now we invite student reflection to normalize the cultural reflection on the last day of the unit and now teachers ask the questions why, what questions should they be asking, how should I coach them to do this. Again, I'm sharing the template with you and that's going to be located at lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash blog slash 98. So that's where you're gonna be able to get this post student survey for students, you can make a copy of it, you can edit it, it's gonna be in google form format so it'll be easier for you to do, it'll save you some time. But here are some of the questions that are in that survey and it's broken down that you actually first back up and tell you the categories of kind of the pages of the survey. So first section of the survey is going to ask students to think about their experience with lessons before and then after with regard to different constructs and a lot of these concepts. 00:13:24 A lot of these questions have been pulled from Panorama student survey which I highly recommend checking out. They share all of their students surveyed questions for free on their website. I've mentioned them before. They are awesome. I work with them actually as a contractor, They are phenomenal. So how was your experience with lessons or units before this unit and then how was it in this past unit? So again that pre then post and then the very last page students are asked qualitative questions that enable them to share other thoughts about their experience with, how they learn in class, what they learned in class, what they suggest for change or future unit ideas. So here we go. First section we are doing the pre then post. So first question is how often did your teacher take time to make sure you understood the material before this unit? There's a question and then there's a scale. What about during this past unit? Same scale. Same question. How high are teachers expectations of you? 00:14:27 What about before this unit? During the past unit? How often are you asked to challenge usual ways of thinking or explore how underrepresented people experience a situation again before this unit during this past unit? How much do you feel like you belong in this class community? Same sub questions. How much do you feel like all your identities are affirmed in the curriculum? You might want to give some examples of identities here define firm. So I define affirmed as when people are supported to feel happy, healthy and safe and who they are again you have the before and during this past unit. I also I like asking a sub question here if you answered anything other than extremely affirmed in the question like what, which identity or identities specifically were not fully affirmed before the unit And in this case um I would make it a check box so they can check more than one. And so the next question as we kind of continue on this list. How excited were you going to go to class and before this unit, during this past unit, how eager were you to participate in class. How often did your class assignments aspire you to create something? 00:15:41 Original. How much did the work you completed for class make a difference in your community and that's the end of that. Pre then post section. So again, those are really focused on getting at the constructs of appropriate degree of challenge. Affirming multiple identities and inspiring original creation. The last section is for deeper reflection and feedback. First there is a quantitative scale. How much did you enjoy this unit? Scale of 1 to 10? Right. And then they're all qualitative. So what was helpful about this unit? What was the most important thing you learned or took away? What changes would you make? How can you make sure how can your teacher make sure the curriculum is challenging? Affirming and inspiring for you in the future. So just naming that goal for them and asking, how do we do that? Take a moment to think about these questions that may be really stood out to you. Do you want to take all of these, you want to add to them? Do you want to adjust them? You want to take them out what might be a focus area for you as you're thinking about coaching teachers around some of these objectives and some of these questions using them really as compelling data points for unit? 00:16:50 Not only implementation but you don't design right at that step of the process as well. And then going back to kind of this overview right of we got the youth adult mentality as kind of step zero step one coach, the teachers to make that unit step to normalize and encourage student reflections as part of the end of the unit and have the teachers go ahead and ask those questions. Right? Give that survey the last step. Step three is that we want to have the teachers synthesize and share class themes, right? If it's not already open class discussion that way, I mean, we could probably synthesize with some chart paper, right? And just kind of highlight takeaways at the very end. But if it is kind of submitted anonymously via survey, for example, Synthesize share out the class names. We don't have to identify students that said particular things. Have the teachers ask for clarity. Again, seeing students as partners, ask for clarity, be in that space of of learning that orientation. To be curious what you know, folks said this student said this, I'm wondering a little bit about that. 00:17:55 Can someone tell me more? Can someone teach me a little bit about what you what you experience and what I should do next. What are some suggestions for the next unit? Right, I can go ahead and adapt that. Here's my plan right now, but what pieces could change what, you know, what specific topics or specific activities do you want to do again? Right, start that co creation conversation even invite students to select, you know what you want to be responsible for pulling in a current event. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna invite you to, you know, pick two and and bring them to me and we'll choose the one. That might be the best bet. Oh, you want to kind of help facilitate the circle on this topic. Great. So we can, you know, meet me after school or we'll save 10 minutes of class time, you know, on Friday and will kind of connect and see how you can prepare for that. Great. So that co creation, co design, co implementation, huge piece of student learning and student leadership and amplifying voice. So that's the last piece, right, Synthesize and share class themes and also make sure you take action on the action steps suggested by students wherever possible. 00:18:56 And if you can't as always, anytime you invite student voice and you can't take action as suggested name that I heard the suggestion I want to name that I heard it, here's why I don't see a password implementation right now, if you see something different, let me know, but like here's why it might not be possible at the moment. Happy to work through alternatives and we can maybe co create something together, but I just naming that, I heard you and here's why it won't work. That goes a long way, right? That goes a long way to say, I heard you and I thought I racked my brain for how we might do this. It just can't happen right now or in that exact way. But I am so happy to collaborate with you and figure out a plan moving forward that honors the intention of that suggestion. All this stuff is possible. All of this stuff is going to amplify voice and I think you can start with a small pilot start with one or two teachers, start with the department. But I think this is a powerful process to expand school wide district wide and make it part of just a learning orientation, a spirit of curiosity, a spirit of youth adult partnership in your curriculum design, implementation and reflection process. 00:20:10 So with that I'm encouraging you to go grab that free resource. The post unit student perception survey is google form format. Again, that's lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash blog slash 98. I cannot believe it is episode 98 already. While we are two episodes away from 100 let me know how you're using it asked me if you have questions, get excited about what this will do to increase student engagement and student academic success. I cannot wait to hear from you if you're leaving this episode wanting more. You're going to love my live coaching intensive curriculum bootcamp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We leave current events into course content and amplify student voices, which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit, which saves time and money. 00:21:16 If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me, grab a spot on my calendar at www dot lindsey beth Lyons dot com slash contact Until next time leaders continue to think Big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach Better podcast network, better today, better tomorrow and the podcast. To get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
Want to continue learning more about curriculum development and implementation? Watch this video on how to develop district curriculum that challenges, affirms, and inspires:
1/9/2023 Developing a Short List of High-Yield Instructional Strategies with Dr. Edward SmallRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
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 [email protected]. 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 below. TRANSCRIPT My guest today is DR Edward Small. Dr Small has been an educator working with urban youth since 1999. He has held positions as a middle school teacher and principal at every level. He currently serves a medium sized school district in Delaware as an assistant superintendent during his time as an educator. His accomplishments include recognition by the Department of Education for raising student academic outcomes and being nationally recognized for his creation of and work with a high school to college academic bridge program. He likes to think of himself as a husband and father before all else. This drives his work with schools and students. I cannot wait for you to have a listen in to this conversation with Dr Ed Small. Here we go, I'm educational justice coach, lindsey Lyons and here on the time for teacher ship podcast we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal Assistant superintendent, curriculum director instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nursing out about co creating curriculum with students. 00:01:16 I made this show for you. Here we go Dr Edward Small, welcome to the time for leadership podcast. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, Thank you so much for being here and I just read your bio at the front of the episode but I'd love to know is there anything that you want to add to that professional bio or say to us to kind of frame the conversation as we jump in today. Sure. I guess I would just say I'm a typical guy and the husband to a beautiful wife, the father of the two beautiful daughters growing up. I was the youngest in my family, grew up in philadelphia and I lived in the heart of the city. My father and my mother were both home, which is unlike many of my friends and those who I grew up with table always had clothes on my back, a roof over my head. I had to learn how to navigate my surroundings a bit differently than some of my friends. My parents had a standard of excellence for me. So I had to learn to code switch and take the psychological advantage sometimes beyond script, sometimes an off script. 00:02:24 Other times as you probably read in my bio, I'm now the assistant superintendent for medium sized school district in Delaware. I've been in education for over 20 years. I've been in schools of privilege and poverty and I say all of those things because they all have sort of colored my life in one way or another. Sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad, Sometimes we color inside the lines and sometimes outside of those lines. Thank you so much for that framing and I think it just reminds everyone to that like us as adults and leaders and educators and also students are very much shaped by their experiences and they're so varied, right? When they all come together into this place of school. So I think that's really a valuable frame for a conversation today. Thank you for sharing. And so I'm curious to know, I love this quote by Dr Bettina Love, which talks about the idea of freedom dreaming. She says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And I just think that's so powerful. And we think about the freedom dreams that we have for our schools and education more broadly. 00:03:26 What's the big dream that you have specifically thinking about like curriculum and instruction and these types of things that we do in schools. So I would say that I think schools should be about helping kids to see what they want to get and how they so sort of what they want to get and how they get it through education. Um think of education as one of the three pieces of a triangle. Um whereas the community is one the Emily slash home as the other. And then the third is the the school or the the educational landscape for a particular student. And my big dream is that curriculum and instruction or the the the piece that I really matter for as an assistant superintendent would be so so novel like so provocative or so sexy if you would that or the other two areas, the community and the family when needed. 00:04:28 Probably a really terrible analogy, but I think of it sort of like drugs if people turn to drugs for all kinds of different reasons. If we could make the school curriculum and instruction the educational landscape similar to that feeling that a person yearns for so that they say okay, I know things are going poorly and at home where I know things are going poorly in my community, maybe my, the institutions in my world have let me down. But I know I still have school, I can still turn the corner and pivot back to the fact that I still have the learning going on in the relationship with my teachers and my school in my back pocket all the time. So that's my big dream. I want kids to think of school as they think of six flags, great adventure. That is beautiful. I love that so much. And I love the analogy for why you know, kids are turning to drugs for a sense of belonging or peace or joy or you know, something that we're not getting elsewhere. 00:05:33 So why not make education a place that they get all of those things. I think that's brilliant. So thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. I'm curious to know too. I think about like all these kind of different pieces along the way to get into a dream like that consisting of Kind of the mindset for, for folks to, and educators to be like, in partnership with students wanting to amplify student voice. I see part of that being the pedagogy of just literally letting students talk and grapple inside the class on, on a daily basis, right? Also just like the things that we're having them, I love the idea of, you know, thinking of S6 flags, right? Like having them get really excited about something like a project they're doing, right? So like that kind of thing and also the curriculum, like what texts are we using? What videos are we showing? That's like, oh, I see myself in that, I see my experience in that my background in that and so I'm wondering of these kind of like pieces that I just named, is there something that either resonates with you as something like you all have done in your district or um kind of like a sticking point for folks in terms of like, oh, we do this, but not quite this piece yet. 00:06:42 How do you kind of see some of those elements playing out in your district. So, um in my district or in in the work that I do sort of on the side and kind of brought to my district. Um I believe it's important to have um systems in place academically, so that the instructional framework, that is student experiences is is pretty much the same from space to space now, not the same in, in the sense that it's mundane, but the same in that the student doesn't have to learn the lingo of, of the class or learn to code switch. I used in my opening that I had to learn to code switch as a kid as I grew up in my neighborhood. So I knew in certain situations, I needed to be the tougher and small or the person who voiced that he didn't care about something when I knew in the background that that wasn't true, but I needed to code switch. As a result, I don't think kids should have to code switch in class in school. 00:07:44 I don't think they need to need, I don't think they need to have to determine what's um meritocracy in this class or what's the merit of this particular behavior in that class or how to communicate well with this particular teacher or um anything to that extent. I think that even goes to the instructional framework, so warm up in one class should be called to warm up in every class and if you think that it should be called to do now, it should be called do now closure should be the same thing in all classes. Every school should have an agenda with uh the plan for the day on the board with the amount of time that's estimated for each of those particular things to occur. So I believe that in order to make this a reality, students should only have to grapple with the content that is trying to be taught to them by the teacher as opposed to the culture that they're learning. What I think culture is what people believe to be normal, a group of people believe to be normal, so mhm can eliminate that or at least mitigated to the extent that students don't have to grapple with it. 00:08:55 Then all they're grappling with is the teaching and the learning, the content that they're intending to come to school to learn, like no kid gets up in the morning and says, well I need to make sure that I learn how to behave well in this class. They just think of it as, this is what I normally do. This is how I behave. So if that's normal for every class, because of the fact that that's not the thing that students grappling with, I think we're in a better position for them to learn and grow on a regular basis. So I do that on the side and do that um in my own particular district and saying we need principles of instruction, we, we need high yield instructional strategies. It's funny that we're talking about this because I'm literally working with a partner right now to refine the instructional strategies for our district because there are, let me count them up 12345, they're like 16 of them right now and I think we need to get down to about eight or nine so that folks can um internalize them and use them on a regular basis as opposed to having to do what I just did, which is kind of look behind me to figure out how many are there in total. 00:09:59 And that's just the instructional strategies, that's not the SCL or the environment strategies. So we need to make it smaller. Doing less, is doing more here. Oh my gosh, I love everything that you just said. So I also love that you have the list that you, I know you guys said you have to look at it, but I love that you have the list. I am so curious what are some, can you share like one or two of these instructional strategies that are like really strong. Absolutely. So clear learning intentions and success criteria. Um if you don't have a goal for what it is that you're looking to do with students and if students don't know that goal, the rest of the things that I'm about to say as far as the other strategies don't really matter, it's a waste of time to say well we're doing these amazing things. It's like when I was in, I tell this story as I explained it to my, my my principles on a regular basis. In 1st grade, my teacher uh gets saltine crackers out in the strawberry jam substance that we all helped in putting the ingredients and to mix and put together and for the life of me, I don't remember what MS Robinson was teaching us, but I remember the taste of that strawberry jam or substance that was on the steam crackers in the same way we mixed baking soda and vinegar together in fourth grade in science class. 00:11:22 And I can tell you now that it was chemical reactions, but in fourth grade, I I just came home and said the top popped off of the bottle and everybody was laughing. And so there wasn't, there was a goal that was possibly articulated at those times, but I don't remember that goal because that wasn't the most important thing, it was more about the particular experience that I had. I think the linking of those two is what education is about clear intentions, learning intentions and success criteria. And so another one would be um, that I think is pretty cool is classroom discussion or Socratic seminar, which I think needs to just be tweaked a little bit and talk to talk about from the perspective of collaborative structures in the sense that those are two collaborative structures. A Socratic seminar or a discussion technique that can be used as a collaborative structure. So I think those are two critical pieces, collaborate structures, I think is important because if students aren't collaborating, they're likely not learning if they're sitting and listening to the teacher for 48 minutes or 90, 90 minutes. 00:12:29 It's crazy to listen to a teacher for 90 minutes. But unfortunately sometimes in schools, in our nation and our state and our school district, we have things that are going on where kids are listening for a long period of time and we know if you sit and listen. So if somebody's listening to this podcast for a long period of time, they're gonna miss some things. So you need some some some ways to collaborate. Some ways to structure that time so that you have individual chunks of time with different things happening, which is another one chunking. So rather than going through the entire list, those are three collaborative structures chunking, clear learning intentions and success criteria. Oh my gosh, I love it. And I love how specifically you are saying to the collaborative structures like have a couple of pieces underneath them as well, right? Like Socratic seminars or or like a circle or another discussion protocol. Like I think that is so wise to be able to say like yeah, maybe you have some some flexibility in choosing. Like what's the specific protocols, what is the step by step that students are doing? But like overall we all have these pieces and maybe department by department is like, okay, these are like this is our discussion protocol or something, right? 00:13:35 Or this great team says like this is the what the step by step, we're doing. So kids don't have to learn the step by step, as you said in each different class agreed. So I would even push to say I would go so far as to say that there should be four collaborative structures that school says these are the collaborative structures that we want to use and only these and once we get really good at those then let's introduce four more. As opposed to saying I use this one Lindsay you use that one, this is the one that I brought from my old school district that I didn't do very well but I liked it and as a result kids don't get a really good experience with it instead why not? When they go into your class in my class, they understand what a stand up hand up pair up means because they do it to the point where they say I got it, I know what a hand up stand up hair means, I know what I need to do, so you don't have to teach it, You talked in your class by the time they get to my class for the second corps of the day, they got it already and then we expand from there as opposed to saying let's use collaborative structures and what you want to do under that, let's adopt a mechanism before we adapt it. 00:14:42 I love that so much. It reminds me of E. L. Education says 3 to 5, they're like 3 to 5 protocols for like the year ever. Just that's it, right? And so I love the idea of reducing so good, so good and so beneficial for students, right? Then they grapple with the content. They don't need the cognitive time spent or the cognitive energy spent on this other stuff awesome. So I'm thinking you kind of alluded to some of these things already, but like one of the things I I think we we had talked about previously is thinking about, you know, the data that we want to collect, for example when we go into a class and we're doing an observation or a walkthrough or something. And and we're kind of looking at some of these protocols or the student experience of interacting in this class setting. Um Like what are the ways that we or what are the strategies that you use or encourage coaches or instructional leaders to use when they're in these classrooms and looking at some of these things in order to collect data that gets at, you know, the student experience, educational equity and ultimately coaches teachers to kind of do this work well. 00:15:50 Sure. Um So really smart guy once said to me that when you go into a classroom you should be looking to paint on a canvas. Um but you need a canvas to paint on before you can start painting. So some classrooms you go into, you can see the canvas pretty easily and that there's an agenda, there is a continuous use and revisit of the goal that happens for that particular time, there's chunking that's occurring during the work that's happening during that time, um, there's time for students to talk their student discourse going on. There's collaborative structures that are happening. Um teacher has essentially released the responsibility of the learning to the students so that they can productively struggle and grapple with as opposed to being a sit and get or a situation where the teachers driving all of the instruction. Um, so I'm looking for those kinds of things. I'm looking essentially for the high yield instructional strategies, re wash two point oh, the ones that I'm working on right now, um, in order to go into the classroom and see those things, I think you have to have that canvas there now. 00:17:00 In the, on the other hand, you have some situations where you go into a classroom and you don't see those things happening to the extent necessary, then it's incumbent upon the instructional leader of that building to say which of these is the high level strategy that this particular teacher needs in order to impact the learning. Um, so if maybe the students are moving about the room without the teachers inter interjection intervention or even direction to do So let's lean into that. Let's use that as an opportunity to say, let's do a turn and talk or let's do a um everybody stand up and move to the left of the room. If you agree with this statement or move to the right of the room. If you agree with this statement, use that energy because they they're telling you behavior is communication. They're communicating. We need to be able to get up, get up and move around and we're not in a position where we're willing or listening or willing to listen to what it is that you have to say if you're saying it in a means that allowed or forces us to sort of sit and get sit and listen to the to the interaction that's happening, the information is being shared right now. 00:18:04 So um, so I share with our principles that those are some of the things that we need to be looking for as we go into the States. Now that's only half the battle because if you see or don't see something that you want to see or don't want to see, then you need to know how to say it in a way that frames the conversation around. We need you to do this. So we use the three part pre statement of three part um, growth action statement. So three part pre statement is something like I noticed that you were using advanced organizers. Those are really great for having students to process the information that they've learned over the course of time and it directs them right back to the clear learning intentions and success criteria. Third piece will be something like great job kudos awesome souls something that shows that you're telling them continually do this, don't stop doing this particular thing and then growth action is obviously the opposite. I noticed that you were doing this, telling them what you saw a replacement strategy, Maybe you try this as opposed to that and I'm looking forward to coming back to your room. 00:19:07 So sometime soon, maybe in a week, maybe in a month, depending on how frequent your visits are in order to see that happen. Now, if it's a month, you should be saying, I plan on coming back and you need to have had this conversation already either with the coach in our building, but we can then leverage to have that conversation with that particular teacher and bring value to both of the relationships or we need to sit down and talk together. Have a need a need in order to talk through what it is that you need to do in order to master this particular thing that I'm asking you to do differently. So we use that essentially and um, we just, we just had a principal's meeting about 23 weeks ago when we were talking about that those particular things in order to make sure that everybody had a clear understanding of what we're looking for when we go into the spaces. I love so much about that like idea of starting with praise because I think there's so much stress anytime like, you know, as an educator, somebody like people walk through the class like, oh no, what am I doing wrong? So just to be able to start with that praise and be like, there are things that are good, so great and then also to be really just specific about the growth and and say, you know, like here's the thing we'd like to try out and I will be back, like I'm not just leaving you hanging, I'm coming back, I'm going to check it out like in this like kind of just the way you presented it just almost kind of felt like this like celebratory, like you're gonna go do this thing, it's gonna be great and then I'm gonna, I'm gonna come check it out, I'm gonna see it, it's not like this, you know, scary, I'm gonna be back thing, it's, I'm gonna be back and see how great this has evolved and grown and supported Children agreed. 00:20:43 I mean and I would even say so I I tend to, when I was a principal and now when I go into schools and I give feedback to principles about what I saw, I tend to say things like let me know your thoughts on that or let's sit down and talk about it if it is something that you're confused about or you have some concern about because at the end of the day, I want you to go home and say, I know what ed small thought of me if I'm the principal of the building or I'm the teacher in the classroom, I'm not confused in any way about what it is that this feedback is trying to get me to do. Here is something that was great, keep doing it. Here's something that I think you should do differently. Let's talk about it, let's have a conversation. Um let's connect. But by the time I come back we needed to have connected so that you can give me context to say, well this is why I chose the thing that I did say, hey, tell me more about that particular strategy, Tell me more about the thing that you're asking me to do so that I can do it to the extent that the kids are benefiting from it as opposed to doing it from the perspective that you've asked me to do. 00:21:49 Mm I love that. So I'm wondering if in doing this work, because there's a lot of, you know, big asks in this, right? There's a lot of coaching, there's a lot of, you know, reducing like we're not doing 100 strategies were really condensing, we're getting clear. I'm wondering if there are some challenges in doing this work or challenges that teachers have had or, or even principles or instructional coaches have had um, in in kind of creating the plan for or enacting the plan for this kind of vision for instruction and curriculum, is there any like challenge that comes to mind for you or, or way you work through that. Absolutely. So um I guess the biggest challenge that I face on a regular basis with this kind of work while it's important work and everybody believes it to be important work is that nobody really likes to be critiqued. Nobody really likes to feel like you're telling them, hey, do this differently because it's essentially feeling like to the person you've taken their hard created planned work and time, you've picked it up, held it as a single sheet of paper and dropped it in the shredder. 00:23:01 Or it's another way of saying, I'm trying to tell you to choose between your two babies, which one do you not want anymore and nobody, nobody likes that. So it requires trust, it requires relationship building, it requires an opportunity to sit and talk with you about the things that matter to you and then use that as a sort of a leverage point or a mechanism to talk about the things that matter to us together. So if I can understand your values, then I can help in sharing my values and create them and share values together. Um and then develop those relationships over time. There's, I typically say to um I usually say this to my wife, like she and I can argue about something and on worst days the next day, the worst argument we've ever had, maybe a day or two goes by before everything's back to normal. Normally it's more like two or three minutes, two or three hours we, I watch a television show, she reads a book or I read a book, she watches the show, then we come back together or something happens in our family. 00:24:08 That makes us have to come back together anyway and everything is normal. That same relationship doesn't normally exist in the professional atmosphere because when I tell you something that you don't like, you don't have that same level of trust with me because you don't know that my intentions are for you to win because if you win, then we win and as a result, I lift all the boats. Usually you're thinking the way you're winning could be that you're trying to get me off the bus and that doesn't feel good to me. So I don't have the trust there for you. The only way that I can fix that is through time. So that I think the cost of leadership is time. The, the definition of leadership has influenced the challenges, conflict, the results has changed, but the cost is time the time that I have to invest in the conversations, the interactions, the, the time that needs to be invested in you in order for you to gain that level of trust. 00:25:16 Sometimes it's possibly too much for a person and, and other times it's just right for a person. Um, so I believe that the challenges is trying to make sure that we're in a position where when I'm when I'm telling you do this differently you see it as always trying to help me. This is not something that's saying he's trying to get me off the bus. He's putting me in the right seat on the bus in order for us to move more efficiently from one location to the next. I love that idea of just like were like as leaders like we're rooting for you teachers we're rooting for everybody to succeed. And this idea of the cost being, time is so valuable. It makes me think on all levels like staff culture and even individual class culture. There's kind of a view of a trade off like in a classroom for example I have to cover this curriculum so therefore I can't build relationship with students right? Or staff have so many things on our plates or we have to do this P. D. In this way so we can't take the time to build relationships. 00:26:20 But that time investments right pays dividends when we have that relationship building is just part of how we do things staff wide and classroom wide when it comes time to that conflict right? And that trust we have to leverage and all of that. I think that's such an interesting way to look at it. I had never thought of that before. Yeah And so I think we're getting close to our our 30 minutes. I won't I know you're incredibly busy, I won't keep you much longer. But I am curious to know all of the things that we talked about today, what is kind of or something new, what is kind of a thing that as listeners are kind of wrapping their minds around all the stuff that they could be doing as leaders or ways to support this vision, What's like a starting point? What's maybe one action step that enables them to kind of live in alignment with the values that you've described today and the vision you've described today. So I would say take an inventory of your relationship with your teacher or if you're the teacher of your leader and ask yourself, have there been opportunities for us to grow together in the relationship? 00:27:27 Is there something that I can point to to say this is why I'm not really trusting of this person to be able to give me feedback that helps us together as opposed to giving me feedback that sort of writes the paper that is put in place in order to get rid of me, because I think that's the divide the thin line between doing what it is that the person is asking you to do, trusting in them and having that lack of trust that you're looking at something either a narrative that someone else told you or your own narrative to say this is why I can't trust you to actually be in my corner and want me to win if you can't identify something that you have a personal connection with. Here's the situation that happened, here's the event that occurred then it's somebody else's narrative that you're listening to. And then I would say don't trust that narrative speak to to that narrative and say I'm gonna trust this leader, I'm gonna trust this teacher to do the right thing and to work with me so that we can move together if there is something that I'd say talk about it, have that conversation with that leader or that teacher spend some time building the relationship because it will work wonders in the end or you will learn through those interactions that this is not for me my vision and this person's vision is not lining up. 00:28:40 And do you really want to stay in that particular position if the visions are not aligned, it probably is working against your own particular energy, your knots energizing. So it's your energy versus their energy. Yeah that that right there is gold I'm thinking about like yeah that idea of just constantly hear it referred to as like buy in But I but I think really that the way around I think by in or Yeah I think the way around buying is we co create that vision together so that it is a shared vision right? So that we need to have the values discussion. I know you referenced that earlier is the shared values and I think that's so critical to kind of preemptively thinking about that conflict, right? That is that is inevitable. Yeah. Okay, cool, well thank you so much for today. I have two final quick wrap up questions for you. One is for fun. I ask every guest what is something that you have been learning about lately and this could be professional, but it could also be like I learned how to play golf or something completely random. 00:29:44 That is not educational related. Okay, three things. Um I just learned how to solve a Rubik's cube um for My entire life I've been trying to learn. So I've been watching some YouTube videos and I figured it out and I can solve it in like probably 20 minutes as compared to the person that can solve it in like a minute. So I still feel ashamed that I'm not fast at it yet, but at some point I'm going to get to the point where I'm able to say Lindsay watch this. Hey everybody, just a quick interruption to the episode. A reminder to grab your free resource for this episode with dr Edward Small. You can grab the freebie at lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash blog slash 97. Let's get back to it. This person is my main crush. Um I would say if you have not listened to Malcolm Gladwell's revisionist history. There's some amazing podcast. There's one called puzzle rush. Um there's like 10 of them rather than naming them all, I would say just listening them get your top 10. My top 10 is my top 10 and I'm gonna keep it selfishly to myself, but definitely that's something that I think everyone should do and then maybe listening to or reading the books, I do a lot of audio books because I have a long commute um Jason Reynolds. 00:31:00 Um he's got a book called A Long Way Down or I think it's called actually just long way Down. Um he's also got one called stamped from the beginning that I think he's the reader for um that is written by another gentleman. Um Kindy, I believe his last name is that author. Um but I think those are three things that I'm I'm grappling with experimenting with right now listening to enjoying in my spare time. Those are amazing. Thank you so much for sharing so, so much of that and then finally, I'm sure people are going to be super curious to just get in touch with you or or kind of following on social media or something if they have questions or just want to learn more about you and your context where could people go to be able to connect with you if they're interested. Sure. Um so it's funny that you ask that question as I was looking into preparing for our podcast today, I started looking because I've actually never looked to see what I originally wrote for my, I guess my name on instagram and twitter and things of that sort. And then when I looked it says for instagram, dr is small, but there's no period. 00:32:05 So it's just dread small. So I'm thinking to myself, well maybe I should change that at some point, but dred small, no esta bien, I'm not a relative of the guy from the sand lot or biggie smalls. There's no s at the end Um Dr is small on Twitter, I think it's a small on Facebook or the easy way. I'm sort of an older gentleman and an old soul and that you can just shoot me an email at the small [email protected]. That would be the easiest way to get in touch. Perfect. And we'll link to all those in the show notes in the summary of the quest as well. So, thank you so much. Dr Small is a pleasure talking with you today. Thank you lindsey. I appreciate your time If you're leaving this episode, wanting more. You're going to love my live coaching intensive curriculum bootcamp. I help one department or grade team create feminist, anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We leave current events into course, content and amplify student voices, which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. 00:33:07 It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit, which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me, grab a spot on my calendar at www dot lindsey beth Lyons dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach, Better podcast network, better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
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:
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: 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:
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:
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! TRANSCRIPT educational justice coach, lindsey Lyons and here on the time for Teacher ship podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nursing out about co creating curriculum students, I made this show for you. Here we go. Hello and welcome to another episode of the time for Teacher ship podcast. We are an episode 96 that is bananas. In this episode, we're talking about personalized learning plans. So if you are a leader who is excited about personalized learning, not just for students but for staff, I want to figure out how to do it, how to fine tune kind of what you might already be doing. This is episode for you. Let's dive in. Alright, so in this episode we're talking about personalized learning plans. 00:01:10 Personalized learning of course is great for students. We already know this and more likely already making strides to do this and to do it well. However often we don't provide the same level of personalization and choice and voice in a growth plan, personally or professionally for educators, for staff for teachers, for leaders, this is what we're doing here in this episode, we're gonna talk through the, why the steps of how to do it. I'm gonna give you some tips to implement and I'm also going to give you as always a free resource. So here we go, why would we do this? Well, when we provide teachers with the opportunity to develop their own personalized professional learning plans for the year, we have a lot more what is often referred to as by in but really commitment to the shared goal. So this is huge. When we look at the research on shared leadership, this is a big piece, right? There more invested when that goal is co created, they're more invested in the commitment, they're more invested in any sort of kind of step along the way of training of learning. 00:02:16 Um folks in a team are more kind of committed to one another and in support of that goal when they've all kind of co created that goal. So there's a lot of kind of commitment and follow through that happens. There's also just more joy and excitement and feelings of self efficacy and collective teacher efficacy more broadly, which we know from john Hattie's research on effect sizes of what actually moves the needle for student learning, that is the biggest impact on student learning. Everything else that was studied, had less of an impact than collective teacher advocacy. So this is huge in terms of its importance in terms of its leverage for student learning in terms of just teacher joy and ultimately teacher joy, I think contributes to staff retention, which is a huge issue and has been a huge issue in the past couple of years, even more intensely than pre pandemic. So this is excellent to be able to kind of make teachers so excited that they want to stay in your school, in your district and continue to learn, they see your community as a place where they can grow and thrive and be just like students appropriately challenged and supported at the same time. 00:03:29 So again, I'm gonna give you a shared template and kind of figure out how exactly this logistically works. But I just want to know that you want you to know that the y is really strong here, We're supporting teacher professional development, we're sustaining kind of this culture of growth. So this is a real culture change shift refinement, you may already have a culture of growth, but this is really going to kind of 10 X that and it also, I think this is pretty cool, it builds coaching capacity, it builds capacity for kind of a self coaching model where in collaboration with a teacher, you are kind of coaching them to figure out how to fill out the plan and to implement and to reflect on it. But ultimately, on a day to day level they're coaching themselves, which is uber cool when you don't have to have the financial or staff resources to give every single teacher a coach, the next best thing is to, if you can't do like peer coaching or lead teacher or something or other. 00:04:32 The next best thing is to make an investment in self coaching capacity and I think this is a huge step, but honestly it's not too hard, it's really about culture building and just putting in a few parameters that logistically make it a bit easier and just part of how we do things as a community that's going to get you there, that's going to get that capacity built up very quickly with not too much effort. So those are the things we love, big wins, not a lot of time, investments and just ripple effects for a long time. So here we go, how do we actually do this thing? So what I would do and I've talked about this before is make sure as a leader, as a staff, as a community, ideally this is co created, you are clear on one or maybe two at the absolute most focused topics for the school year. So these are your areas of growth as a community. Once you have that, then you're ready for this. But that's kind of the pre step here. Once you're ready, you can go ahead and communicate the value and importance of teacher autonomy, I'm sure you won't have to do a lot of convincing with staff for this, but just kind of communicate that you recognize the importance of teacher autonomy and personalized learning for adults. 00:05:46 You already use this model for students. I'm a firm believer in the one learning model for all philosophy, which I got from the international network for public schools, which has amazing resources, an amazing philosophy on how to teach for all students. This is huge. We do this for students. Why don't we do this for staff? So also communicate the focus topics for the year. If staff aren't already familiar for those, you're gonna want to do some more work here. But as I said, that's usually a pre step prior to implementing this particular strategy. Once we're good on that, you are going to invite each staff member to create one or two individual goals for the year that align to the 1 to 2 staff wide focus topic. So either schoolwide District wide, whatever those 1 to 2 focus topics were that you did initially in the pre work, each individual staff goal has to align or fall under the category or the broader umbrella of one or both of those focus areas, teachers may want some time to think about this, especially if it's relatively new to them. 00:06:52 Hearing about these kind of overarching focus topics, they may need to think a little bit about how what they personally want to do kind of fits within that. But usually those topics are broad enough that most things will fit under there, it might just be putting kind of a spin on what they're initially going to do. And I also think it's kind of helpful to look at the rubric with which teachers are being evaluated. So there's coherence there. So it doesn't feel like we're working on these focus areas because I was told to do that, that's our school or district. But then when my administrator comes in, I'm being evaluated and this is going on my permanent file based on a rubric that actually doesn't even have alignment to our focus areas. So that's kind of a caveat to make sure when you're choosing your focus areas as a school or district, there is alignment to how teachers are being evaluated and I would emphasize we want that alignment to be present if it's not already in the rubric. If we didn't do that when we made the focus area goals, make it part of the rubric. Right, add that to the rubric. Have some flexibility there because we want coherence in terms of what we're asking teachers to do and focus on and what we're evaluating them on. 00:08:05 Right? So teachers may want some time to kind of play with the Danielsson framework, play with the idea of the two priorities. But when they're ready, you're gonna have them document their goals and the corresponding component of whatever rubric you're using. So that might be Danielson, that might be something else and I have a template for you for this. So just make sure you go to the blog post, I'll share that link shortly, but just make sure you check it out, download that link and then you can share that with teachers, they can just make a copy and edit right away. Once you have teachers document this, they have stated their goal, they've stated the alignment to whatever evaluation Rubert criteria you're using and the focus area or areas for your school or district, then they need to further define the success criteria of their goal. Often we skip this step, you may have a 1 to 2 sentence goal, but what does that actually look like? How do we actually know that a teacher has hit that goal? How does the teacher themselves now? So ask a question or use this template that has this question about it, what will it look sound and or feel like in your classroom or in your environment if they're a non teaching staff member when you have met this school look sound, feel like have them take a few moments think about what would it actually look like to walk into a class where this goal is being met, what would it sound like? 00:09:27 What are the things that I'm hearing students say, because we want to focus heavily on students and the students are acting, experiencing, talking about things during this kind of class atmosphere or during this um intervention that you you're working on or this focus area once they've named what it sounds, looks and feels like, then ask what portfolio pieces or what kind of pieces of evidence will you gather to show your progress towards the school. I like portfolio pieces because when I was a teacher, we used like these success share kind of formats where maybe once a semester at the end of each semester, we would gather with other teachers who are working on goals that were similar to ours. And as an administrator, you can kind of, you know, you'll get everyone's goals, you can kind of put people in groups in that way or use existing teaming structures departments, grade teams and have people just take, you know, an hour share out what has been successful, what was your goal? What's been successful and like share some student work or share some other evidence of success so that we're really celebrating what is working. 00:10:36 And of course you can get some feedback on how that's going, how you can strengthen it further what your next steps might be. And of course that's really helpful. But I think a focus on success, especially when teacher retention is slow, morale is low. Um, that mid year boost and the end of the year kind of celebratory feel can be really powerful. Also from the field of positive psychology, that idea of positive deviance, like what is going well when things may not be going well or things aren't going well in this area in other spaces, other classrooms, The rest of the school went well for you. So let's study that and learn from that and expand upon that. So after that we've set the goal, we've defined success. We've talked about the portfolio pieces that are often very student centered, what our students saying what their student work look like, how are we measuring that? We hit that success criteria. What portfolio pieces would we share out at a successor then and only then once we have to find all that stuff, then we're going to say, what actions are you going to take to help you meet the school? 00:11:43 At this point you might be able to step in and say hey here's what we have slated for P. D. For the year. Kind of as a school community or district community. You can pull from those or maybe you have to go to some of those so figure out how they align. But I think the important piece here is to offer suggestions beyond that. So if we're truly talking about personalized pd plans, we're talking about other formats than whole staff pd meeting for example, pure visitations which I've talked about before. I've had episodes and blog posts before about this. I've shared free resources regarding how to set up your visitations. I think this is a huge peer to peer coaching model that just invites this level of professional growth in in our culture that just isn't present without that. I think it's a beautiful way to kind of amplify teacher growth and normalize and kind of agree upon, We are committed as a staff to our own professional growth and we're going to do it in this way in a way that's non evaluative but certainly multiplies our our growth beyond what it would be if we were siloed in our classrooms and just doing our own thing and never kind of checking in to see how students are experiencing other classes. 00:12:57 So pure visitations is an example of a different pd format. Other P. D. Formats might include a self paced course, there's a ton of these online what's available to teachers. Maybe have teachers kind of look a little bit into this that there are not already familiar, but just kind of throw it out there. Yeah, if you come to me with a self paced course, you want to take it great. We're going to find the pD funding for you. You can go ahead and take that and then just have these checking moments with your team, with your coach, with me as an admin. That's a format engaging in inquiry cycles for the P. L. C. So to support this, you may say, okay, here's what our typical PLC agenda looks like. We have these moments of inquiry, We have these rotations where we look at a unit or an assessment that a teacher is going to be doing in an upcoming lesson. We get feedback on it, right, this is just part of how we normally do R. P. L. C. S. And then you can say right this is a great opportunity for you. This structure exists as a teacher. How are you going to leverage this structure to do some personalized P. 00:14:00 D. It might even just be like reading blog posts from A. S. C. D. Or teach better or a utopia like wherever. Learning for justice, reading those blogs and searching out different resource banks, listening to podcast episodes doing kind of a research deep dive into whatever area it is that they're focused on whatever is aligned to their goal. There's so many different categories of pd beyond the traditional everyone sits in a room or in a virtual zoom room experiencing the same pd especially when you have a large staff. But even if you have a small staff to be honest, that's probably not going to meet the needs of every staff member. So this personalized PD approach should be personalized in more than just what is the content or strategy or pedagogical approach that you want to focus on. So it's more than the content. It's also about the process of how teachers are best able to learn and experience kind of growth. 00:15:03 A cycle of kind of self coaching that should be expansive as well as the content. Again, just like we would do for students, we know that this is important for students. We also want to provide this for staff. So as I said earlier, you want to collect all the staff plans. I would just give them maybe half an hour in a staff meeting to kind of complete these. But also you know people like to take them home and think on it and and come up with some more creative solutions over time totally fine as well. I think people learn and process differently but I don't think you have to offer more than 20-30 minutes in a staff meeting for those who just want to complete it and then use those all those plans to support staff throughout the year through targeted observation where you're saying I'm coming in just to look at this piece. I know this is your focus area that's what I'm gonna do. Use it for coaching, communicate with their coach if you're not there coach. If they have a peer coach or a hired, you know it's actually the role to be their instructional coach or department team. Lead, offer opportunities for PD whenever you hear about them. 00:16:09 So if you're online or you're in a network leadership meeting and you hear about this opportunity that maybe is not going to be a whole staff meeting but it exists out there. Like we're not hiring this person for PD for the staff but maybe they have something that would be you know available for a teacher to attend as an individual share that stuff with them, share blog posts, share things that are aligned to their topic area. And remember the format of P. D. That they like engaging with if they like listening to podcasts. Try to listen to a few podcasts and see if that would be recommended to them recommended to them and see if they would like it. Check out twitter, check out certain hashtags about certain topics and if someone else listened to a podcast maybe you don't even have to listen to it but you can kind of forward it along if you are interested in doing this but you're like whoa that seems like a big shift from how we currently do things. You can pilot this strategy with a few teachers before starting this with the whole staff instead of a staff wide goal. Also you might want to focus a little bit narrower so each department ridge team defines a goal or focus topic for the group and then they ask each member within that team to align their individual goal to the group's focus topic. 00:17:20 So these are a couple of different ways that you could you know play with or adjust the strategy if it just feels too big too soon and it's kind of too much of a shift from how you're doing things you want to test it out in smaller ways that those are both ways to do that. And I think this is a really adaptable strategy. You can adapt the template that I'm sharing. You can change the degree of structure. It can be a lot more free form, it can be a lot more kind of rigid in terms of we do things this way and these are all the things that I need as components of your plan. I think what's really essential is that you have a aligned goal for the teacher and by line, I mean it's aligned to your school community focus area and to the rubric that they're being used, that you're using to assess quality teaching, right? That you have a clear view of how that teacher to find success and it's aligned to how you're defining success in that rubric. And then also that they have, you know, a couple of action steps is really important as well and if they can't think of action steps, coach them, suggest some, you know, work with them. 00:18:28 I do think this works well at the start of the year, but honestly at any point in the year I think teachers are going to be open to the idea of we get to do personalized learning, like we get to pick what RPG plan is. We get to pick from all these various topic areas and formats. Yes, we're in. So I think this can be honestly started at any time and finally what I want to just name is there are several examples of states who do personalized learning out there. So for example Dallas I s. D amazing personalized instruction and so there's actually a personalized learning rubric for staff which they use in their coaching and feedback cycles. And I can link to that in the blog post but super powerful to be able to do this work. I am so excited to see what you come up with and how this works for you as you implement. Please feel free to share questions to share successes with me. My email is hello at lindsey Beth Lyons dot com and I'm always really excited to hear from you. You can always leave a comment as well in our blog post. 00:19:30 So to get that freebie that I mentioned and to read the blog post for this episode, you're going to go to lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash blog slash 96 that's for episode 96. So Lindsay deadlines dot com slash blog slash 96. And you will find there a personalized learning plan template for your teachers, take this share with them, you can edit it if you want to just make a copy and then they can just go ahead and fill it in. This will save you probably 30 minutes of trying to figure out how to create your own template. Just grab at it and go, all right, that's it for this week. I will hear you and you will hear me in your earbuds next week. Well if you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my live coaching intensive curriculum boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We leave current events into course content and amplify student voices, which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. 00:20:35 It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit, which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me, grab a spot on my calendar at www dot lindsey beth Lyons dot com slash contact Until next time leaders continue to think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach, Better podcast network, Better today, Better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode Quotes:
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
March 2025
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