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1/29/2024 148. Hiring for Transformation and Building Effective Teams with Dr. Eric SkansonRead Now
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Given the challenges of hiring during a teacher shortage, Dr. Skanson takes us behind the scenes to look at his process of how to effectively hire teachers who are a great fit and then build a values-driven staff community. Dr. Skanson also delves into the strategies he employs to navigate biases in the hiring process and the vital role of mindset and disposition in hiring.
In addition to being part of the foundation of School Pro K12, Dr. Eric Skanson has over 17 years of experience in public school administration and 24 years of education at large. He is a seasoned leader focusing on positive change, outstanding culture, and collaboration. Through his doctorate, Dr. Skanson’s academic core focus was on the use of collaboration for organizational improvement. The Big Dream Providing opportunities and experiences for students that they wouldn't have access to otherwise. Dr. Skanson emphasizes the importance of nurturing a mindset that views education as a means to impact communities positively. His ultimate goal is to enhance student growth and make schools a nurturing and compassionate space for students. Alignment to the 4 Stages: Mindset, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Content Dr. Skanson believes in the importance of mindset in the hiring process. He argues that a positive disposition is essential in educators. Specifically, Dr. Skanson is looking for educators who are positive, kind, and supportive, emphasizing the human aspect of education. Pedagogically, he stresses the need for diversity and balance in teaching teams to create an enriching learning environment. Regarding content, he encourages educators to be conscious of the context, and craft their teaching approach based on their specific school and student community. Mindset Shifts Required We need to acknowledge and challenge the biases that often surface during the hiring process. How do we hire effectively? Here are the key ideas Dr. Skanson wants leaders to keep in mind… Key 1: Emphasize character, competency, and craft in hiring, over mere credentials. Step 2: Conduct a systematic and thoughtful interview process, focusing on asking the right questions (ones that ask about a candidate’s actual experience versus just a theoretical approach) and understanding the candidate's actual impact on students. Step 3: Ensure diversity and balance in the team, considering the specific needs and context of the school community. Challenges? There can be tension between internal and external candidates during the hiring process. Dr. Skanson suggests having a good succession plan in place and controlling the process to make it fair for all candidates. “I think every interview, especially for school leadership positions, should have a balance of an internal and an external [candidate]. However, you have to control the process to make it fair for internals and externals…people will bring in extra information about the internal candidates…let the person talk about their experiences and leave about all the other things [horns bias],” Dr. Skanson said. One Step to Get Started Slow down the hiring process and take the time to understand the candidate's character, competency, and craft. Rather than rushing to fill a position due to a scarcity mindset, he advises leaders to focus on finding the right person who will truly contribute to the school's success. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on www.schoolprok12.com and on social media @skansone. To help you implement the ideas of creating a new staff community following new hires, I’m sharing my Staff Meeting Agenda series starting with co-creating Community Values & Agreements with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 148 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT Today, I'm speaking with Doctor Ericsson. In addition to being part of the foundation of school pro K 12, Doctor Eric Scan has over 17 years of experience in public school administration and 24 years of education at large. He is a seasoned leader focusing on positive change, outstanding culture and collaboration. Eric has served on the executive board of Mesa Minnesota Elementary School Principals Association since 2014. In 2019, Eric was elected as the Minnesota Elementary Principals Association, Mesa president and 900 member professional advocacy group. He represented Minnesota in 2019 as Elementary principal of the year. He's an adjunct professor for both Bethel University and Saint Cloud State University. He received his doctorate in education from the University of Minnesota in 2016 to the Department of organizational leadership and policy development. His academic core focus was on the use of collaboration for organizational improvement. Eric has used his developed models to help shape the purpose and outcomes of collaboration in multiple organizations for positive change. Let's get to the episode. Educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons and here on the time for teacher 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. 00:01:09 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 nering out about co-creator curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Doctor Eric Sam. Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today? I am great. It is uh a nice cool fall day here in Minnesota. And I'm so happy to be on the show with you and um excited to talk about how we can do education, do it better. I mean, that's our job, right? Is, is uh to do it better every season. Yes. Always striving for growth. Absolutely. So, I know a lot of people want to add things to their bio or they want to like, you know, go away from either the professional or talk about what's on their mind at the moment, which a static bio doesn't really do. I just want to give you space first off to say anything that you think listeners should keep in mind or know about you as we jump into the conversation today. 00:02:13 Well, uh, gosh, outside of bio, I think, uh, one thing that people should know is, uh, I have a, a brood of kids at home. So I've got five kids at home um ranging from ages 16 down to five. So everybody's in school is here, which really, I think it's really good for us as educators to remember that. Um our main constituents out here are the students and the parents and sometimes we forget that right. We get, we get locked in our own world of uh education and talk, ed, talk and uh we forget at the end of this logic model, it's about kids and students and families and communities. And, uh, uh, it's good, it's good to have that many kids and to think about like, how does that impact my viewpoint on education as a parent? So that's, that's a cool thing to add, I think. And I think a little tidbit, uh, I like to tell people I know how to juggle fire and knives. So that's just, uh, that's just a, like a freebie that I'm gonna throw in there. I love the out of left field ideas. 00:03:14 Those are the best. That is a very impressive, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Only burned a few times. I was gonna ask how dangerous is this? Um, ok. Well, that's good. And, uh, as we think about, like, I think the, the grounding that you gave us for, like, thinking about students, families and communities, I just love that. And I, and I think a lot about what I, when I can center that in conversations with with the people. I work with teachers, leaders oftentimes we're we're thinking of freedom dreaming, which Doctor Bettino love talks about his dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So like, how do we do that school better? Like you're talking about every year, how do we get better and how do we ground all of it in the work of supporting and partnering with students and families and communities? All of those are big considerations. So I'm wondering kind of like, what's the dream look like for you considering all those things? Well, you know, one of the things that I always, I, I try to end my conversations with or my writings with um I always give out three letters which is PKS, which is positive, kind and supportive. 00:04:19 And it's a really simple concept, but it's amazing how much we need to like ground back to these ideas that everybody is human and how do we treat people, treat, treat people in a human way, which for me, I like to boil it down to those pieces. Can we stay positive? Can we stay kind? Can we stay supportive? And that does not mean that it's free from hard conversations does not mean that um we don't take context into consideration with that. Um But I, I do think that is a reasonable ask is that when we're working with people that we stay positive, kind and supportive. Um So that's kind of the lens that I always try to, to, to deliver on is a positive kind and supportive and uh some days are easier than others, but I would challenge everybody out there uh to really think about what are your words that, that you can boil down to three letters and, and uh and make that part of your motto, part of your life, part of your, your work going forward. I stole that honestly from a friend of mine named John. Um he used it and I was like, I love that. 00:05:21 I said, I'm gonna use it. I'm, I'm gonna run with it. And I have um I talked to students about it, I talked to teachers about it. I talked to administrators about it. Like that is the frame in which uh I like to try to move that dream forward. Um So I like if to make that even bigger. Uh you know, I think education is about opportunity and experiences. And for me, the dream is how do we provide opportunity, experiences that, that, that people would not have an opportunity to do without our help. So whether that's on a small scale, if that is um you know, making sure that we, we take particular field trips or, or experiences that give access to our students that they would not previously have had um or on a on a larger scale, a scale is, is how do we provide an education that makes kids and communities believe in what they have as a resource. Um so that they, they can be contributing partners. And in this commonwealth going forward, I, I really believe that it's one of the larger ideas that we have lost is that this idea that we have a commonwealth in our nation. 00:06:32 And, you know, if it's, if it's a nation or if it's your state or if it's your school or your community, we all contribute to this, this community or this commonwealth. And that would be my hope is that at the end of the day, we've contributed to the commonwealth. I love that so much. That is so good. And I, I think there's so many things that you just said that I wanted to make sure that listeners heard and I think that that's a huge one, right? Like contribution to the commonwealth, giving access and, and the experiences that students might not otherwise have outside of education. Um I think about this in the context of like student leadership, a lot of people talk about individual skill building, but it's really, especially with youth, right? It's about the supports we offer to build up the the leaders and give the access to that opportunities to be leader. So it's kind of this interplay of the individual and the community, um which I just love that you, you anchored this conversation and, and then I also wanted to say you anchored the, the pks in or you, you caveat it the pks with, like, we're still having hard conversations, we're still considering context. 00:07:34 And I just think that is brilliant because a lot of people could take pks as a concept and be like, oh, just be nice to everybody, you know, and, and avoid the hard conversations because that hurts people's feelings. Right. And I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, uh, it's more of a way of thinking and, um, in that we can have hard conversations, we can have uh hold people accountable, but it doesn't mean that we can't do it in a positive kind of part of way, you know, because that's modeling, right? And you, I like that. You talk about student leadership. Absolutely. Student leadership is about building themselves but it's also about their impact on their community or their commonwealth because that's really what we need is, is young people to grow up and be leaders who see the world in a place that they can affect that they can um impact and have that impact. But what if, what if they hadn't had that experiences or those opportunities? There's, there's leadership lost, there's a, there's a, there's an opportunity gap there that I wanna make sure that people have that opportunity to lead in their communities. 00:08:38 I love that. And I, and I think it makes me think about too, like beyond the, you know, being leaders as adults too, like, even sometimes when students lead projects within their student years right? It is like transformative sometimes when the students like it just makes adults listen more when it's like, oh students are leading this charge. Like I am going to either adapt my behavior, listen differently, interact differently with this project because it is student led and I care about students. And so I think there's such potential there too, which is is fun. Oh yeah, I mean talking with students with the student change, it's like a wedge in the door, right? Like we wanted to do this as adults. Oh wait, no, it's actually the kids that are leading this which opens that door, right? Just enough to, to open minds and open uh hearts for, for these change makers and these, these deciders in our, in our communities uh let the kids have access to them 100% let the kids have access to them. It is, it is a different approach. 00:09:40 Absolutely. And, and it makes me think, I know we wanted to talk a little bit about from a leader lens. Like how do you kind of create this community? So typically what I think of is I think of things like the mindset of the educators, the adults, right? Which I think is a huge factor in what we're talking about now. It's also, you know, the pedagogy of how do you build up the skills for all students? Not just your typical quote un leaders, right? That are like the the people who are like captains of the sports teams or presidents of the classes, right? And, and also it's like, how do we assess and have those authentic experiences and projects that are beyond? Just like, you know, the tests and things that school typically is historically and how do we make sure the content is, you know, co created by students, how do we make of that? And so I, I just wonder like as a leader who is responsible for creating that, that culture school wide and hiring folks who are going to contribute positively to that. What are the things that we, we have to consider as leaders? Well, I'm so glad you brought up hiring because that's, this is one of the things that I'm really passionate about in, in that um finding the right people curating the talent for your organization. 00:10:47 And we need to remember again, that context matters. I I it's one of my axioms that I have lived my life on is, is context always matters. So whatever it can happen in, in, in situation A but that doesn't mean that you can apply that in situation. B always, always be aware of the context. And to be honest, Lindsay, this comes back, I was a driver head teacher at one point in my career. And um you know, one of the things that I would always teach kids is yes, we need to know where we're going. You need to have the destination but along the way, we have to make sure that um we're making small adjustments based on the context around. You're always, you're always teaching about risk assessment. Um And I don't like that term in this, this instance, but uh you know, we, we have to know what's happening around us so we can make the best decisions. Um So coming back to hiring uh these opportunities for students for me, uh how do I say this? I've, I've, I've evolved in my thinking around um teacher licensure. 00:11:50 Uh I for those that don't know, I am a uh I'm a director of a charter system uh in Minnesota. And right now, we're in a teacher shortage. So we've had to really work to fill our positions and in Minnesota, we call them tier one. So these are people with four year degrees that um we, we have a good background in the content that we're bringing them in to teach. And what I have found is that, that disposition um for PKS is really, really important. So they may be the best art teacher. They may be the, let me back that up. They may have a really good understanding of art or science or you name it. But if we can't kind of tease out that disposition of how they approach their classroom based on the context of your school, uh that there's no guarantee of, of success there. So, um I think we really have to find that character piece first. So I'm gonna drop an another acronym here. CCC three CS of what I look for in hiring. 00:12:54 Number one is character. They have to have top character first because I don't care who you are if you don't know how to treat people, right? Positive and supportive, if you don't have a good work ethic, um, it doesn't matter. Number two is around competency. So this is where we're starting to talk about. Uh Do we have a competency in science? Do we have a competency in math? Do we have a competency in art? And then finally, the, the really fun part I think about teaching is craft. Um How do you approach it? Uh And you know, what's your particular flavor for what you do? And I think that's, those are really three things that you have to examine when, when hiring people to bring in your school notice. I didn't, I didn't uh add 1/4 C which is credentials. Um That's not in there. Um I really do believe it's character and competency and craft that uh determined who is the best fit for your particular school? Oh, those are good. I love all the acronyms too. This is very fun. It's easier to remember it. Right. Totally. Totally. And so this is really interesting. So I think about the mindset piece that is usually the term that I use, but I love the idea of a disposition, right? 00:14:00 So, if we're not looking at anything else, we're just looking at the disposition and the mindset and the willingness to engage with students as partners, families, as partners. Right. I think that, that absolutely makes sense. As kind of like the first. Like, if you don't have this, then you don't even almost, I don't know if I'm right. You can correct me. It almost seems like you don't get to the competencies in the craft, right? Like that's, it doesn't matter, doesn't matter, it does not matter. I would, I would challenge people when you are interviewing people and talking with people. We have to stop, we have to stop asking theoretical questions because, and you can answer those. So, you know, if, if you're interviewing with me and, and I say, you know, what's the best way to, you know, approach classroom management in a, in a, in a, in a high poverty school? Um Anybody can answer that. Anybody can answer that. But if I change that question just a little bit, and I say, Lindsay, tell me a story about a time where your classroom management really impacted the success of the classroom. 00:15:06 And I have no problems in uh interrupting you. If I'm interviewing. If you're not answering the question, I'll say no, no, no, no, tell me about your impact because sometimes people will, will kind of wrap it together with. Well, we did, we, you know, we did PB is at our school and, you know, we had a, you know, you, you name it, you know, we had the, the Spartan way or whatever, whatever it could be. No, I wanna know your impact Lindsey. Tell me what you did on the PB A S team to, to, to work on standards of, of character. And um, and that's where you really get at the disposition of work ethic of character of, um, you know, are you positive kinds of hor you can tease those things out and we have to do a better job of asking those questions. I really like the idea of storytelling as, as kind of an entry point. And it, it makes me think too about the opportunities for the existing staff, like the staff that's already on, on the team to story tell around some of these too because sometimes I think, you know, we ask the questions in an interview, we get everybody sorted and then like the person who hasn't gone through an interview in 10 years, like, do they know what story they would tell in that instance? 00:16:15 And what would be the benefit of having an audience for that story or the story from last week or, you know, almost like storytelling is like an ongoing, I don't know if it's check in, but just like almost honoring of the human teacher experience as well, right? Um And so I think this is, this is really cool idea of this offering the opportunity to share the stories almost as a space for reflection as well. I know this is probably not where you were thinking of going. I think it's good. Yeah, I wonder what those possibilities are for. Like, I think what I'm thinking is you hire people who come in, right. And you have these great hires and you hire, well, and you have a bunch of folks who are already in positions and, and what does that look like in the hiring process kind of bring people together around pks around the dispositions and the, the, the classroom style and the craft and the like, what does that look like um to merge the new folks and the folks who have been here? Well, I, I think it is your responsibility as an administrator to know your team and know your people well. 00:17:17 So it goes beyond just hiring, it, it goes into a, a depth of, do I know who you are at your core? Do I know what your values are? Um, love to do values exercises with people so that I, that we can kind of tease that out? And the reason I tell you that we have to know the whole team is because, you know, if we're hiring a bunch of, um if the team is already like an A and a and a, do we really need to hire another, a, they may be a, a great candidate, but I would challenge people to think about diversity on your team. You know, when you, when you go back to um Bruce Tuckman's work around um group formation, um There's some really interesting ideas there about uh letting people pass through kind of the, the storming stage uh so that they can have this group identity. And in the end, uh we, we wanna focus on task conflict, task conflict is good. It means that in the end, we have a better product for our kids, for our teams, for our school, for our community. 00:18:20 Just Lindsay popping in here to tell you about today's freebie for the episode in relation to Eric and I talking about co creating community values and agreements. I think you'll love my staff meeting agenda series which starts with a whole staff meeting agenda and the slide deck for co creating community values and agreements. You grab that at Lindsey Beth lions.com/blog/one 48 back to the episode. Uh The, the trap there is that when we have relational conflict that, that creeps into our team. So the reason I say that is, you know, maybe if, if you have four people on your team and we're trying to hire 1/5 1, do we wanna hire another A or do we wanna actually bring somebody in who adds something extra to the team? So if you're forced, you know, in the end, you have choice A and Choice B and they're both really good. I would always, always go with choice B and that's really hard for the interview team sometimes. Uh because they, they are attracted to light people like, oh, they'd fit in so well. Well, then you're all gonna be doing the same thing, right? 00:19:24 You're all bringing the same strengths to the team. So, uh it's about balance and diversity and making sure that uh that we have a nice balanced team going forward. Yeah, it makes me think of the the the mm middle of these interviews. Usually I'm, I'm talking about brave actions and it makes me think of brave actions on multiple levels like brave actions as the leader, right? Who, who is coaching almost the hiring committee to make these decisions, uh brave actions for the parameters or the almost like checklist of like we are going to focus on character first and competencies, then craft, right? Like we, you're kind of putting that out there and then also bravery and like, how do you almost like, how do you assess bravery in the candidate to be hired as well? Right? In the, in the storytelling and, and those things. So I don't know which one of those directions you want to take it, but my brain is going all of my um well, bravery. Yes, I I love brave people. Um That sounds like such a like generic statement but yes, I love brave people, um courageous people, people who are willing to speak up and talk and again, that doesn't mean we get to be a jerk about it. 00:20:31 Right. So that comes back to that disposition of pks. Like, how do you find those people that can do that in a way that is positive and supportive? Um Yeah, I, I mean, part of this for me points to the fact too that we don't do a good job of, of training our interview teams before going into these interviews and setting expectations of what it is exactly that we're looking for like, all too often. I think we just, hey, do you want to serve on the team? Yep. Come on in, we're interviewing Tuesday at one. Um Oh, you're not available. Ok. You know, and, and that's how these interviews are usually set up and I'm appalled because a lot of it even goes all the way up to our top school leaders like the haphazardness that happens when, when we're pulling um an interview together, it has to be so much more thoughtful and, you know, what are the outcomes we're looking for? What is the exact skill set that we're looking for? Um, on top of, you know, character competency craft and what ha I, I mean, I've seen it so many times we ended up in interviews and there's these biases that happened and without the training on the front end and really bringing out uh a specific talk around, you know, this idea of like confirmation bias or um stereotyping bias or halo effect bias. 00:21:51 I love that one. that, that's when we're influenced by one positive aspect of, of an interview person. Oh, they said they were really great at technology really. They said they, you know, they had a Google classroom, you know, we like, we, we attach meaning in, in interviews and without the training that happens at the front end, um, it's really set up for disaster similarity bias. That that's the one I was trying to think of in that. Oh, I really like this person. I feel like I could, you know, be best friends with them. That's not what we're asking for here that we're not interviewing for your best friend. We're even for a great team member. Oh, I love that idea. So I I'm just kind of like taking notes here. It seems like we have the clear expectations of who we want in the interview committee set those, we have the training for the interview committee. Um We have the outcomes beyond the CCC and also like the skill set that we're looking for in addition to considering the existing team that that person is coming into and diversity there. And then all throughout, we're kind of checking against that training for all these biases. 00:22:53 Does that sound like a good summary? Yeah. Yeah. And this is why it gets so uh jacked up about interviewing and like the hiring process is we, I don't think people do it. Well, to be honest, I think there's a lot of people that um fall trapped to the, the common missteps and they are not diligent about setting up the interview in a balanced way. Um I would even challenge, you know, sometimes when we have uh these, these interviews for our, our largest and biggest ed leaders in a district, there is a trap there to be. This sounds weird but too inclusive where, where all of a sudden our interview team is 30 people around the table and um more than likely close to 30 of them have never been part of an interview process before or have taken any work in um hr and, and know the legalities of what you can and can't ask. Um So then it actually makes, if you're going to do that, you have to spend the time training the interview team on what what you can and cannot ask. 00:24:01 You have to bring out these ideas around. Here's some bias you may experience. So giving them the language to identify the bias when they, when they hear it. Um It's just, it's so important as we're to do this with some, some fidelity and some intentionality. So that because again, at the end of this logic model, all these things affect how our schools run, how our schools contribute to our commonwealth and the success of our kids going forward. Um It is all interlinked and, and we have to do a better job of recognizing the links between hiring to our school success, to um happy, healthy classrooms and communities. I love this and, and it, it made me actually think about the Inclusive Feast. I, I definitely have been in, in an interview position where there's like 15 people around the table and you're like, who do I look at? And like, there's questions everywhere. I, I also have thought about, you know, the process that a lot of folks go through demo lessons with students from the school they'll be going into. 00:25:04 I wasn't sure if you have like a recommended kind of series of things like, is there the interview, the demo lesson are students part typically part of the interview committee or is there feedback when they're part of like a demo lesson? I, I'm just wondering about the student voice in this as well. Yeah, I mean, that, that really depends on how much you can allocate um for time and, and effort. And I would argue that you should like to whatever end degree, slow down, make good decisions include the people that you want a voice from. Um As long as you know, everybody has kind of been well informed of what we're looking for. Um And I, I do love the idea of student voice in there. Um Again, I think it's really important that if we're bringing students in to share their voice, how do we give them some information of what to look for some look for us um talking about, you know, what does, what does a good teacher look like? And in the end, we're building student leadership, right by bringing them in and training them. So, um yeah, I think it's, it's really important, you know, when I think about kind of the standard protocol that I would go through, um I definitely would have an assessment up front for the, the school body or the organization that allows everybody to kind of have input into the skills that we're looking for. 00:26:22 Or even more importantly, the skills our school doesn't have. So I don't like the deficit model, but I think it's really important as we're looking for somebody new to bring in that we're not just getting more of the same. So having a AAA systematic look at what our, our organization or our team currently doesn't have. Um You administer the assessment, you assemble the team, um You train the team, conduct the interview which again, very deliberate about what questions we're asking. Uh If we're, if we're not looking for a classroom manager, I don't know why we wouldn't. That's a bad example probably. But you know, take whatever skill it is. If we're not looking for that, then don't ask questions about it because in essence, our, our schools got it covered like we're, we're good there. Um And then you have to have a moderated deliberation with somebody who is not invested in the outcome. I really, really believe this like to have a facilitator or moderator so that when all the ideas are coming out, somebody can go. 00:27:27 That sounds a lot like the halo bias. You know, our um you know, we're not gonna discuss that. That's actually not a legal question. You know, somebody who can in it can, can facilitate that interview. And typically it, it does fall on a school leader because the, you know, we're trying to move so fast, so fast in our hiring. And I believe that is because we are in a scarcity mindset that we're, we're gonna move fast and pick somebody because if we don't, somebody else is gonna get them. I challenge the narrative on that slow down. You will find the right person. Yeah. What one of the things I was going to ask you about, I think you've probably covered it but I wanted to give you space for it is like the challenges that that happen in this work is there one challenge that you're thinking maybe AAA leader who's listening would be facing either that you've addressed and you're like, this is the one to focus on and this is how you get around it or something you haven't brought up yet. You're like you should be aware of this. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think there's always tension around internal, external candidates and I think if you do not have a good succession plan in place in your organization. 00:28:33 I really challenge leaders to think about that and, and that doesn't mean that we can't go externally. But I think every interview um especially for school leadership positions should have a balance of an internal and an external. However, you have to control the process to make it fair for internals and externals. I would say especially internals I've seen over and over where um people will bring in extra information about the internal candidates, you know, as an internal candidate, they're gonna know a lot more about you. So how do you control for those biases that we talked about? Um, you know, this is where you'll get like the, uh I think it's called the horns bias, you know, like, like bad person horns. Um in that, you know, one person had a bad experience with this person and they now have moved that bias to a whole new level of they're gonna be a horrible principal or a horrible school leader. Well, I, I don't think, you know, that actually, you know, let the person talk about their experiences and leave about all, leave out all the other things. 00:29:38 It's almost like in a jury where um you have to take into consideration everything that was said. Um And there's some evidence, it's like, no, that you cannot consider that. I think it needs to be a lot more like that. Um But it's very difficult, it's very difficult. I I fully acknowledge that in the front end. Oh, that's such good advice. I, I had never even thought about that balance and all the considerations that go into that. So, thank you. I'm I'm really glad I asked that. Thank you for that answer. And, and I think as we kind of wrap up our conversation, there's a lot that leaders have to consider and it seems like a lot more set up than we typically do out of that scarcity mindset, the rush, all that stuff. So if there's one thing that a leader listening can kind of come away with and say, like I'm gonna at least start here. What would that one thing be that you would recommend to start with? Well, I would say do your pre work and be intentional about uh everything leading up to that interview. I know that a lot of districts or a lot of organizations maybe won't have um the resources to do it to the nth degree that I'm talking about. 00:30:45 Um But I would also challenge that. It's, it's not that expensive to, to make a, a right choice you think about the cost of attrition um or turnover that happens in districts. Um not only uh the, the physical dollars of it, but um the mental anguish and the starting over and the resets that happened, we don't have, we, we, we cannot do that anymore. We, we have to stop treating it like the, the the weekend picnic where we bring the chat and we throw everything away at the end of the picnic. Um We, we have to consider this more like a gramma's fine. China is that when we are having somebody come in, we want to treat them well, we want to take care of them, we want to promote them so that we can build them up and take care of this fine China instead of throwing it in the garbage and then starting over again. Um so be intentional with how you set up the interview, how you set up the interview team, how you train the interview team, um the skills that you're looking for the whole process should uh feel very, very intentional and not haphazard. 00:31:49 That is such a beautiful point. And I think it connects to this idea of like a lot of times people will say we're hiring for racial diversity or, you know, whatever it is and these are great goals. But if you don't actually treat the process like the fine China, if you don't build the culture where someone coming in is going to merge well with the team and to feel like they belong and are valued, then that is, it's going to be a rotating door because you can't bring someone into a hostile culture and like be like, oh, well, we quickly hired like no problem. I think that is something throughout hiring that I constantly see struggles with and it's like exactly what you're saying is the antidote, right? Like, well, and, and think about it in four different coins and this is probably leads into like, we could have a whole another show on this. But we really were just talking about one aspect of, of organizational success here is, is this hiring and search process once they're there, we gotta build up the whole organization around them, you know, and that means the best speakers, the best, um you know, the best trainers and don't be afraid to reach out for resources externally. 00:32:58 I I see this mistake over and over is that we'll do it, we'll do it ourselves, we'll do it ourselves because it in some ways, it feels easier. But there are people that spend their lives, work in these particular areas, you should lean on them. The third part is, is personal development. How do we make sure that our, our school leaders, our teachers, everybody is also in the space of personal development. So outside of pedagogy, outside of these other areas, are they balanced? Are they coming to school healthy? And then finally, a really good strategic planning process that is not just a poster on the wall that is actually linked to actions that is linked to outcomes. Because all four of those areas actually linked together in a in organizational success. We have to take care of the macros, the micros and the future and the now, wow, that's, that could be a whole other, but that is a great framework and, and it actually leads to my next two questions. They're related to those first two, I think you shared. So the one about personal development, this is neces, not necessarily academic, personal development, but I'm curious to know from each guest. 00:34:01 I always ask what's something you've been learning about lately? And this could be anything, what have I been learning about lately? Um I have been trying to be a better cook and griller. Um Up until this point in my life, I have not been a great cook and I, I feel like I've really increased the pitch of my um my productivity in the last uh 34 months with my grilling by smoking. Um I did some, some jambalaya last night that I thought was actually really good. So I feel like I'm trying to learn more in that area. Oh, that's very impressive. Excellent. And then the last thing I want to ask is you recommended people reach out and there are people who do this stuff, right. So, and I know that's very tied to another role that you have in addition, in addition to what we've been talking about today. So where can listeners learn about what you do? Do you want to share a little bit about that recommendations for how to connect with you, that kind of thing? Sure. So I have a day job. Um uh my W-2, as I said earlier is uh executive director, but I also have a whole uh side thing that I'm really passionate about. 00:35:10 Um it's called School Pro and you can find us on internet www dot school Pro K twelve.com. And I want you to think about this as an educational concierge company. Um and we work with people across the nation. Um the best of the best we do. Uh kind of what I talked about earlier, just a like a curating and a screening process to make sure that um the right people are matched to the right organizations. So there's no haphazard um attachment of you have to have this person, you have to have this person. It is more of tell me about your local context to make sure that the right person can come in. So we provide um keynote speakers, professional developers, executive coaches, skilled mentorship, um all those areas of the, the four quadrants that I talked about. Um strategic planning. Um Again, our job is to make sure that, that you're successful. Um So that's what we do. We, we match the right people to the right schools in the right districts. And uh it has been an amazing experience to be honest, uh to be able to offer these, these services to schools who come knocking. 00:36:14 Amazing. And we'll link to all of that stuff in the show notes in the blog post for this episode, Doctor Sanson. Thank you so much for being on today. It was a pleasure. Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you so much for having me Lindsay and uh enjoy and stay pks positive, kind and supportive. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, Sapir and Jamila Dugan, talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period. I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality? I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay with lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach better podcast network. 00:37:20 Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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As coaches, administrators, and teacher leaders, we often design and facilitate professional learning experiences for teachers. This episode helps us think about ways to help teachers experience awesome pedagogy as learners, so they may be more equipped—even more interested—in using these pedagogical moves with their students.
Why? I was recently talking to Dr. Dawn Bentley, Head of Schools at RFK Community Alliance. She referenced Triple Track, an approach developed by Thinking Collaborative. In this approach, professional development workshops are designed with three tracks in mind. Track 1 are the strategies used to support teachers’ learning in the PD itself. Track 2 is to consider applications for these strategies with adult groups, and tips for sharing them with other educators. Track 3 is for applications for these strategies in classrooms with students. We’ll focus mostly on Tracks 1 and 3 here. What? I’m breaking these down into specific categories of pedagogical moves, similar to how I think about protocol purposes. Moves During to Set Up
Moves to Personalize I like using WIN Time with the following options:
Moves to Engage
Moves to Close
More Moves… For reading “texts” or critical analysis. Final Tip My favorite tip for PD facilitators and teachers is to create a common slides resource bank of the moves or slides you regularly use (or want to use). That way, when you’re planning, you just pull the ones you need over! (If you love this idea, you will absolutely love the resources I have for you below.) To help you get a sense for some of the moves I model, check out the video series below! In it, I walk through specific slides I use for each protocol, and then share the slide decks with you for free through a link in the video description. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 147 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript here. If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain how to improve the quality of discourse in your school: 
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I talk a lot about collecting student voice data or “street data” (Safir & Dugan), so in this episode, I discuss systems and scheduling strategies you can use to identify times during the school day that teachers, counselors, and other school stakeholders can regularly listen to students. You may be willing to invite students to share their experiences and ideas, but you may not know when this might happen. Let’s think about some ideas.
What is student experience data, and why do we need it? Let’s start with the second part. There are many benefits to gathering data about student experiences, both for youth and adults. I’ve covered these in previous episodes. For now, I’ll say: schools and districts make better decisions when students help make the decisions, just as organizations in general have better organizational outcomes when diverse stakeholder groups are part of the decision-making process (Kusy & McBain, 2000). In their book, Street Data, Dugan and Safir (2021) write a comprehensive model of school transformation could consist of “...stitching together four often-siloed elements: equity as the fundamental purpose, pedagogy as the fundamental pathway, adult culture as the vehicle, and street data as the GPS system that keeps us on the path of equity-centered transformation” (p. 59). As educators, when we look at data, it’s often what Dugan and Safir call satellite data (broad, quantitative measures such as test scores, attendance patterns, graduation rates) or map data (social-emotional, cultural, and learning trends within a school community which may include rubric scores or surveys). Deeper dives into data sets may include street data (students’ lived experiences that illuminate how students are performing or feeling about their learning environment and themselves). Street data, or what I’ve been referring to lately as student experience data, could include a student sharing what’s impeding their ability to thrive or suggestions for what adults can do differently to improve instruction or other aspects of school. However, these deeper explorations of student experience typically occur every five or so years during strategic planning processes and are rarely practiced on a daily or weekly basis. If you have the willingness to engage in this work, but can’t find the time, this episode is for you. Where might we gather data and listen to student experiences? Below are some ideas for where this may live in your school(s). Advisory, Mentoring, or Morning Meeting Develop prompts for students (whole group or individually) to share ideas about what’s great about the school, what’s not so great (and what the impact has been on the student), and what could/should be changed. Counseling At the end of a group or individual session, ask if students are comfortable sharing their ideas (e.g., what they like, dislike, or want to be changed), with adults in the school (e.g., a leadership team) to help improve the school and the students’ school experience. Let them know the ideas will be shared without any student identifiers, so adults will not know which student(s) shared the ideas. College, Career, Civic Planning sessions or IEP Meetings Prompt students to share experiences of what their aspirations are, to what degree school stakeholders and structures (e.g., course offerings) have supported these dreams, and what could be more supportive. Main Office or Restorative Room The students who are sent out of class are likely the students who are not feeling successful or supported at school. These are the students we want to learn from! Setting up a system, whether it’s a person to talk to, a space to record their thinking (verbally, in writing, or as an image—drawing or selecting/taking a picture) in response to some prompts similar to ones above would help us learn how to support that student and other students who might have similar experiences or ideas. End of Lesson, Week, or Unit Conversations in Academic Classrooms Instruction is a central part of why we’re all in schools. All students take academic classes, so this is an opportunity to invite all students to reflect on their student experience in relation to curriculum and instruction. (You can also invite students to share experiences and ideas about school supports and policies beyond curriculum here.) Final Tip Once you have the structures in place, you can regularly invite students to share their experiences and ideas for change. For how to do this, check out the upcoming Student Experience Data Strategy series on my YouTube channel starting February 7 (2024). For now, you can check out a related video below! To help you start to gather student experiences right away, I’m sharing my Student Leadership Capacity Building survey with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 146 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 I'm educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for Teacher 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 nering out about co-creator curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Welcome to episode 146 of the time for leadership podcast. You know, we talk a lot about collecting student voice data or street data as Shane Ser and Jamila Dogan talk about. So in this episode, I'm discussing systems and scheduling strategies that you can use to identify times during the school day that teachers, counselors, other school stakeholders can regularly listen to students, they can hear and witness their experiences around school and really think about how we act to support them. 00:01:08 So this is how and where and when and whom collects the student experience data. So you might be willing to invite students to share their experiences and ideas, but you may not know when this could happen. So in this episode, we're thinking about some ideas. All right, let's start by naming what student experience it is and why we need it. I have talked about this concept of street data or what I've lately been calling Student Experience Data on various podcasts in the past. So feel free to check those out in more depth. And I actually have a great youtube series coming up next month in February, that's going to do a five minute video series of walkthroughs of which uh types of student data collection strategies you may use to actually gather this data. But in this episode, what we're going to talk about is how we structure that in a way that invites students and also the adults that are, that are in conversation with that are listening to that are prompting students to share their experiences. We're gonna talk about the systems and structures that enable those conversations to happen within the school day itself. 00:02:14 So no one's having to stay after school. We don't have to pay teachers per session or expect that they're going to do this. And we're not going to expect that students are going to do this as well because sometimes the students we need to talk to the most are the students that need to leave, right? As the school day ends. So starting with the part about why we need it again. We've talked about this a lot in various podcast episodes regarding the youth benefits of student voice and the adult benefits of student voice. Feel free to listen to prior episodes on that. But for now, I'll just say, and if at the school level, schools and districts make better decisions when students help them make those decisions. So we see this in various organizations, right? Organizations in general have better organizational outcomes when diverse stakeholder groups are part of the decision making process. So knowing that knowing there is a compelling reason for the individuals in the organization, as well as the organization as a whole moving forward and being successful. Let's think about the student experience data and like what, what is the tie to that? 00:03:19 How do we figure out like what exactly that means? And then when can we collect it or gather it or you know, be in community with students to kind of experience that. So in their book, Street Data, Jamila Dugan and Jane Ser write a comprehensive model of school transformation could consist of quote stitching together for often siloed elements. Equity is the fundamental purpose, pedagogy as the fundamental pathway, adult culture, as the vehicle and street data as the GPS system that keeps us on the path of equity centered transformation. I just love this as an orientation to this conversation because it pulls in all the things Right. We're here for instructions. They talk about a pedagogy of student voices. I talk about that a ton. We're talking about equity as, as the purpose, as the core, everything that we do is from there. We're talking about how adult culture really needs to be worked on. Right. So that, that is something that we need to invest time and energy into so that it can be the vehicle for equity and, and to develop our pedagogy. 00:04:29 And what keeps us on the path of that is the street data, right? That's our GPS system in this analogy. And so I think that it's really important that if that is the case, if, if we subscribe to this idea, we think it's great, we need to make sure that we are regularly collecting and analyzing that street data. I think we have often in schools and districts, these data collection kind of sources in our minds that are not street data and we'll get into some of some of these in just a moment. But I think if we want to truly use it as a GPS system, I think about driving a car, right? And I often don't know where I'm going. If the GPS shorts out or loses connection to the satellite or whatever, like I am going off road, I'm not gonna get where I am going. I need it to be on all of the time. So I need to collect that street data regularly if I'm truly going to use it as a GPS system, if we're really leaning into this analogy here. And so to do that, I need to embed it into the existing systems. And if the existing systems don't let me embed it, then I need to adapt the systems so that they are able to be a space for that gathering of street data and student experiences. 00:05:41 So I think that's, that's kind of a great frame for this episode and gives us a strong way. No, like I said, we do look at data, we probably have like your favorite data analysis protocol for different meetings or maybe you only use uh that data analysis protocol in your leadership meetings and you don't use it in your teacher teams or maybe your teacher teams only look at specific kinds of data, maybe that's just grade data or attendance data, right? So often what we look at whether it is the leadership team, possibly your teacher teams when we, when we talk about things publicly like the paper or online in the paper that feels very antiquated. But do you know what I mean? It's often what do and interfere call satellite data. These are broad quantitative measures, test scores, attendance patterns, graduation rates, lots of numbers there or it might be map data. This is your kind of social emotional cultural learning trends within the learning community. So it could be like rubric scores, surveys like these are kind of getting closer to the street level, but they're still not quite at like what is that individual student experience? 00:06:44 So we may get into the individual student experience, we may do those kind of deeper dives into data sets that include students lived experiences, right? Where students are telling us how they're experiencing or feeling about their learning environment about themselves within the learning environment as learners. So this street data or what I've been referring to as a student experience data, this, this might also include students sharing. Like here's what's hurting me or here's what's impeding my ability to thrive here. Here's what I wish the school might do differently or what this adult or this teacher might do differently to improve my learning, to improve their instruction, to improve the system of schooling. And so all of those things are great. It's just that we don't usually do those aside from maybe every five years or however often we do our strategic planning processes. So they're not practiced on a daily or weekly basis if you're going from every five years to now wanting to do every day, right? That's a big stretch. So I say I say weekly because maybe that's like an easier kind of stopping point, but that's still a massive shift if we've been doing every five years. 00:07:51 And now we're thinking weekly, like, where does that live? It needs a spot, it needs a container. Um We need these systems and processes and also the expectations and kind of accountability for saying every time we meet as this committee or this group, we are checking in and sh sharing our street data. What information did you collect? What students share with you their experience today, their feelings about school, what can be changed? Right. And if if we don't have that accountability paired with the structures that allow people to be successful in gathering these student experience data. And also I have to say, I think this is sometimes um just something that I, I talk about so much that I'm like, oh, this is second nature to just think, think about this and I don't have to say it, but I will say that there has to be a interpersonal classroom and or school wide culture of trust in students and trust in the relationships in the community at whatever level you're gathering the data on. So if it's a one on one conversation, a classified discussion, um you know, at the school assembly, whatever it is that we have created the conditions for which students will perceive trust in in the adult, asking them to share their experiences and trust that it will be um anonymized when relevant, right, that it will be used not against the student and it will actually be considered and perhaps not always acted on in the exact way as an idea may be suggested by a student, but that it will be considered in a deep way. 00:09:28 And if it is not acted on that, we will return to either that student or if it's anonymous, you know, the broader student body and say, hey, we received this idea. Here's why we, we tried to work it out. Here's why it just couldn't work out. So we just want to help students understand that their ideas are going somewhere, they are meaningful. We're taking them seriously and we're acting on them. And if we can't act on them, we are um being accountable to the student who's adjusted that or the student body at large. And we are sharing, you know, this is, this is how we grappled with this. We're open to maybe additional ideas. But here are the parameters that we just can't work outside of right now. And so it's not a possibility at the moment, but we again are appreciative of your ideas and sometimes it takes a lot of internal work for adults to do when you're being told, I wish you did this differently or, you know, sometimes it's, it's um maybe not said that that politely, but I think that's another thing, right? Creating the conditions and creating the culture, which we have conversations that honor our adults and students, individual, human dignity. 00:10:33 And so are quote unquote, respectful in that way where we honor the dignity but can be critical, right? Like we can ask for more and it comes from a place of like strength and admiration and acknowledgment that like we have a high expectations from you, but we'll also support you, right? Like I, I think that's, that's the beauty of the culture. So a little s little aside on the culture here, but I think that this is kind of an underlying piece that if we don't have it, we can't really do any of these other things. So let's get to where we might actually gather this data and listen to student experiences. These are just some ideas for where this might live in your school and the stakeholders who may or may not be associated with this gathering of data. This invitation for students to share more. I'm sure there's like a ton more. These are the the the five that came to mind. As I was thinking, if you have more, I would love to hear this, by the way, feel free to comment at the blog post. This blog is Lindsay Beth lions.com/blog/one 46. 00:11:37 OK. First thing I was thinking so this could live in a period that might be called advisory for you. It might be student mentoring or it might be morning meeting. Now, I know these are kind of like grade level, they might be different. Like each of these might fit into a different grade level. You may not have mentoring at your school. You may not have advisory at your school. You may or may not do morning meeting right. So, so maybe this isn't a good fit or maybe um that is something that you want to create as a school. Like we need an advisory period to kind of house these things. So what you would do here, I envision you develop prompts for students, whole group or individually to share ideas about what's great about the school. These are gonna be very general. Obviously, you can get specific here with your question language. But what's great? I think you always want to invite the questions of what's great one, it makes the feedback easier to hear, but also two, it celebrates the things that are going well. We don't want to overlook those and perhaps take resources or time or energy away from those. If those are supporting students, we want to really know what, what we are doing well, what's not so great and, and ideally and um Sophia and you can talk about this a little bit in their book is like, what is the impact that Ha has been had on the student? 00:12:49 So like here's something that's not great, but like, tell me about it from your lived experience, right? This is um part of a question they suggest for like Kiva panels, I think. But what is not so great and how has it impacted me? Right? As the student, I'm gonna share again that lived experience and then finally, what could or should be changed? So this idea of action suggested action. The next thing I think, and I think you can use some of those same kind of ideas here is that this could live in, in, in the counselor's department. So at the end of a group or individual session, you might ask students, hey, you shared a lot of things here and what came up ended up being, you know, some things that fell into those categories, maybe something they liked or disliked about the school, maybe an idea for change or maybe they didn't concretely say it as like this should be this way, but that the idea or the experience that underlies, perhaps an idea would be valuable for adults to hear. And we want to protect the confidentiality and enmity of the students in the session. But you, you might as a counselor say, hey, I'd love to share just your ideas with adults in the school, maybe a leadership team, maybe just, you know, other adults to help improve the school. 00:13:59 And ideally your and other students who've had similar experiences of school, um their experiences as well. So that's my goal is to like, make school better. Can I share little nuggets of what you shared? And I will share those ideas without any way to identify you. I'm just going to share in a very broad general sense and I might even say if I'm the counselor there, you know, here's what I kind of want to say and then share the language and ask if that's OK for the students. And so just to say, you know, I will protect your confidentiality. And I think this is a really powerful thing that I think we should take action on or to strongly consider or grapple with. Can I bring it there? Right. Because there's a lot shared there and then it often doesn't go anywhere or it's shared from the counselor's perspective as like this is a thing the counselor wants to do and it's actually originating in a student experience, but we don't always know that it's originating in a student experience when we're in adult meetings. And we're kind of like conflicting over like this adult wants to do this and this adult wants to do this. And so like, it's adult versus adults kind of like conflict or disagreement and it's like, no, no, no, this originated in a student experience. 00:15:03 We need to value that. I think there's a different uh dimension there. Next, I thought college career, civic planning sessions or IEP meetings. So typically students with IEPs, right? You have your annual meetings, you do a lot of transition planning. This is a moment for adults, youth families to come together. So this is a wonderful moment to be like, hey, what's working, what's not what should change. But I also think um you know, working in Massachusetts and they have their system of my c where they, they want to broaden sixth grade through 12th grade, like basically that transition type of planning where we're focusing on college career, civic pathways, like how do we learn about that? Focus on that tailor it to individual student needs and develop the systems and structures in the school around that, to support each students, you know, aspirations. Like though that kind of thing doesn't need to just be for students with iuts. So any sort of like this kind of routine planning and sometimes this happens within, you know, a a classroom, like a specific lesson, sometimes it's meetings with counselors or like mentoring, right? 00:16:08 It can live in different spaces. But anytime we have a session around this transition in college career, civic ip these kind of things, I think it's great to prompt students to share experiences of what their aspirations are, which is typically part of the regular process. But then to also ask to what degree have school stakeholders, right, the school adults and also the structures, this might be maybe the courses that are offered, you know, it could be a lot of things have supported these dreams, right? To what degree? So have they supported? Have they not supported? Where are they on the continuum and what could be more supportive? So it's really like, yeah, what are your dreams? But also how can we help and how we maybe falling short at the moment and how could we be better, right? Just putting that out there to individual students or students, like, you know, if you're doing a class lesson on college career and civic pathways, like invite all the students to share either individually in writing, um you know, or share a whole class, right? And then take some notes. Another option. I think one of the the central things that I I love about the Book Street Data and just the concept of collecting student experience data in the service of equity that we want to really get to know the experiences of students who have been marginalized, right, who are living on the margins of the school experience. 00:17:26 So why not create a space or a system for students who have been sent out of class, right? These are likely the students who are not feeling successful or supported at school in the moment. So this may be how the main office, if you're a school that sends folks to the main office or like a restorative room, if you are a school that practices restorative justice practices, then you have kind of a space for um like resing, refocusing, repairing harm, whatever, whatever that looks like. But I think, you know, these are the students that we want to learn from, they have so much to teach us. So if we can set up a system, whether it's, you know, here's a design, a person to talk to, here's a space to record your thinking verbally in writing or maybe even as an image right, drawing or selecting or taking a picture that kind of exemplifies their experience in response to some prompts. Like they could just be the same as the ones above, right? Like what has worked, what has not worked? What would you change just to help us learn how to support that student and other students honestly, who might have had similar experiences or ideas to share with us. 00:18:27 Right? What a great opportunity and then it makes the kind of being sent out of I I don't like, I, I don't think that's necessarily like what we want to strive for. But if a student is sent out of a room, right? Like let's make that opportunity a meaningful one for everyone involved. Let's make that student feel heard and that the supports are gonna change. So that that student doesn't feel the way that they did as they were leaving the class, right? Because I'm sure that student is like, is not celebrating, right? Their um dismissal from class. So the last piece I'll share is I think, you know, instruction is a central part of, of why we're all in school so that all students are taking academic, academic classes. Therefore, this is like the opportunity to, to get all students um invited, right, to reflect on their student experience. And so at the end of a lesson at the end of a week of instruction or even at the end of a unit, I would have a conversation in like a typical classroom. So it might be like the social studies teachers take this on as a thing that we're gonna do once a week or something. 00:19:29 Right? Or, or maybe each week like a different teacher takes it on. And so you can invite students to reflect on your personal, like curriculum and instruction for your course. I think that's great. You could also expand it out so students could share experiences about curriculum and instruction more broadly, right? And then you just rotate the teacher asking so that it's like everyone kind of is covered each week, you have something to say, or you can even invite students to share beyond the academic experience and just talk about like ideas for school supports and, and policies and things like this. OK. That was a five point list. I think once you have these structures in place and you don't mean all of them, I think even if you have one awesome, then you can regularly invite students to share their experiences and their ideas for change. Now, for how to do this, what are like the ways that you would engage students and prompt students and the format they can respond in. Please check out the outcome student experience data strategy series. This is on my youtube channel where I do five minute tutorials each week. That's gonna start February 7th of 2024 if you're listening in the distant future and for now I'm going to link a related video that kind of gets you started with students experience data. 00:20:37 Um That's another five minute tutorial on the blog post right below this summary. Also, I am going to share my student leadership capacity building survey with you. So that is gonna be linked on the blog post. You can start collecting student experience data right away with like an existing tool that has been uh you know, valid, validated and, and done all the things to make it make sense. So how you get that is Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 46. All right. I'll talk to you next time. Everybody. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, Sair and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. 00:21:49 Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders 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.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain about the types of discourse in schools:
1/8/2024 145. Be Present for People: Wisdom for APs and All Leaders with Dr. Frederick BuskeyRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, Dr. Buskey explores the crucial role of humanity and empathetic leadership in education. He challenges the pervasive 'pedagogy of fear' and advocates for creating spaces of learning that nurture students' agency. He also emphasizes the importance of understanding and aligning with the needs of educators and fostering an environment of growth.
The Big Dream Dr. Buskey’s dream is to transform the education system into one that recognizes and respects the humanity of each student. This means not only understanding students on an individual level but also creating an inclusive and empathetic learning environment. It's about shifting from a fear-based pedagogy to one that fosters students' agency and allows them to voice their thoughts and make their own decisions. Alignment to Mindset, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Content Dr. Buskey emphasizes the importance of being present and empathetic. His pedagogical approach advocates for serving students' agency rather than imposing an educator's perspective. He proposes knowing each student individually, making sure they feel seen and valued. Mindset Shifts Required Dr. Buskey discusses moving from a 'pedagogy of fear' to one that serves people's agency. He emphasizes the importance of educators being present for their students and offering them a space where they can express themselves freely. Additionally, he urges educators to understand their students better, know their names, and make a positive impact through small gestures. Action Steps What can we do to make the dream come to life? Step 1: Prioritize work around priorities instead of tasks, focusing on what's essential for the students. Step 2: Know each student individually. Make sure they hear their name each day, receive eye contact, and are smiled at. Step 3: Challenge the 'pedagogy of fear' and create positive spaces for learning and growth for educators. Challenges? “I think the biggest challenge is organizing our work around our priorities instead of around our tasks,” Dr. Buskey said. The noise of the external world constantly seeks our attention. Balancing urgent tasks and important ones is a challenge. Additionally, understanding each student on an individual level may seem daunting, especially for high school teachers who handle many students each day. (See the quote below for Angela Maiers’s 2-second advice for one idea.) One Step to Get Started An excellent first step is to ensure every student hears their name each day, receives eye contact, and is smiled at. These simple acts can make a significant impact on a student's day and can lay the foundation for a more empathetic and inclusive learning environment. Stay Connected You can find Dr. Buskey on the following platforms:
To help you implement some of what Frederick and I were talking about, I’m sharing my Values in Action posters with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 145 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT Today, I have a wonderful conversation with doctor Frederick Busy. Frederick helps assistant principals live and lead better by teaching them how to escape the black hole of urgency. Building on 32 years of K 12 and higher education leadership experience. Frederick provides simple frameworks and tools to improve life and leadership. His upcoming book takes school leaders through a journey from spending time putting out fires to investing time in growing teachers. Frederick hosts the Assistant Principal podcast. Love it. You should definitely listen and writes a daily leadership email, read more about Dr Busy on his website and connect with him on linkedin. Let's get right to this episode, which is a wonderful conversation. I'm educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher 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 nering out about core curriculum of students. 00:01:08 I made this show for you. Here we go. Frederick, welcome to the time for teachers podcasts. Lindsay. I'm so excited to be here and thank you for your patience and getting this arranged. Of course. Oh my gosh, life happens. And so as we, as we kind of dive in, I think life happens is a great like segue into the first question of like, what either about your life or about the world and, and life at the moment. What should folks keep in mind as we jump into our conversation today? What do you want people to know? Wow. You know, I always ask people at the end of my show, what's one thing you want people to take away? So I guess I'll, I'll lead with, with that. Um In one word, it's presence, there's so much going on in the world and you and I have had conversations just how some of the global events and, you know, events in the US have just impacted us. And um, you know, three years ago today, I lost my mother-in-law. Um who is just an amazing, amazing person. 00:02:12 And the gift that she had was to make your world stand still. Every time I walked in the door, she would stop everything and she would look at me and her face would light up and she would say why Frederick and my world would stop. And I knew that at that moment, I was the most important person to her. And I think we all have that ability to give that gift within us. And in this time, trauma just seems to be so common and we never know what trauma anybody is carrying. And, but in a sense it doesn't matter because we can be present for people. And then if they want to open up and share they can, if they don't want to, they don't have to. But I just think that gift of presents. And so if you take nothing else from today's podcast listeners, be present for people, make that your priority because people are the purpose. 00:03:26 Wow. What a great start this conversation. That's incredible. OK. I love this, be present for people. And I also just love this. Maybe one of these is gonna be the title of the episode, I think Make your world stand still. I just, I love that in a and especially in us context, right? Where we are like capitalist go, go, go, productivity, efficiency, all the things, right? It's like we are constantly told to keep moving and to not pause and pauses. I was, oh, I was just recently reading um the book of Delights by Ross Gay and he had an essay about loitering and he was like this idea, this concept of loitering is so like such a capitalist one. Like it's like criminal to loiter to just stand and be still and like, just fascinating that like, loitering or being still or being present is like, almost like an act of rebellion sometimes around the systems that kind of like, shut us down at times. Can we take that one step further? So, you know, I've got a lot going on in my business right now, I'm getting ready to push out a book and I'm doing some courses and it's all great stuff. 00:04:35 And what I find is there's still a lot of processing to do. Right. And a lot of lining up the dominoes and on the days that I discipline myself to leave my phone in my desk and I go into the kitchen to make my salad or go in the restroom or whatever it is. If I resist the urge to put on a podcast, a video, even music. If I just leave things quiet, inevitably, I will get one helpful idea or thought while I'm doing that other stuff. But on the bad days where I just feel like I need to shove stuff in my head and I can't stand the silence. I don't have those thoughts and, and so even it's not just even loitering, it's not, not drowning yourself in external noise. Wow, that's good. Yeah. Yeah, I, I do that all the time. I'm like, oh, I have five minutes. 00:05:37 I should listen to a podcast. I should always be learning. I should always be instead of having the reflection on whatever learning I've already had. Right? Like, wow, this is good. What a great start. This is, this has been a good show, Lindsay, I'll talk to you next time. The shortest show ever, but very powerful. So I think, I think that actually is a, is a great segue to like the larger kind of reason for education and right, and like what we, what we would like students to experience if that's like our dream for experiencing, you know, humanity as just adults, like, you know, what's the dream for, for students? And, and I link this often to Doctor Bettina Love's quote about freedom dreaming where she says, you know, it's dreams grounded in the critique of justice. So just recognizing that there are all these injustices, right? And, and school has historically been a way to like keep that injustice happening, right? Like what are the ways we counter that? Wow, I was afraid you might ask me a question like that. I I'm gonna, I take a really different approach. Um when I landed here in rural Appalachia coordinating principal licensure programs. 00:06:44 I and, and in South Carolina, I work with a lot of educators who don't share my political viewpoints and the way that I see this world. And yet they're all just amazing people, they care passionately about kids, but there are some, some moral viewpoints that, that they reject. And I made a decision 17 years ago that the best thing that I could do was not to try to get people to think like me. But if I could get them to continue to connect to their own humanity, their own best selves, then I was helping make things better because even the people that would issue the idea of, you know, wokeness or, or whatever those people still really care about kids as individuals. So I think it is valuable work to remind people and give people support to be them best their best selves, especially when we're living in a world where there are so many voices trying to make them be their worst selves. 00:08:02 I like that. I think, yeah, this idea of common humanity and, and I think what you're saying resonates. I've heard other folks say this as well. This idea of like the politicized nature of identities and lived experiences, right? Often creates this like polarization where it's like we have to take a stance. Um And humanity is kind of that grounding space to kind of bring us all together in that space where we can say, I do see, I do see the humanity in, in this child. I think there are kind of like multitudes of, of like layers, right to this. Like this is such a complex like that, that individual child like they can see and then when it's politicized, they can't, there's like so many pieces there which is like where a lot of times where my work comes in and then it, and it is fascinating um to, to think about how we get there. But I also think if you're not, if you're not doing what you're saying, right. If you're not seeing the humanity of each child and you're not seeing the community in yourself as an adult, like we can't climb up those layers, we can't get to that next thing um because humanity is essential to everything. 00:09:13 Right. Right. And it's interesting to me, I think that there are people who will, you know, if I say people like Lindsay, uh that will be rejected. But if we get to talk, but if that same person talks to Lindsay, they'll recognize all of those traumas, they'll recognize all the things that that person is carrying around and they will engage with them to, in a, in a positive way to say, OK, how, how can, how can I support you? You singular? They just can't, you know, em, embrace that. But I, I mean, in a sense that's OK. Right. I mean, if that's what we have, if we can get people to that point and I'm, and I'm engaging with the 3025 elementary kids in my classroom individually. I, I still, because I'm a caring person should be building a lot of the supports and things that kids need. Yeah, I think that's such an interesting idea. So I, I think this actually ties into the next thing I want to ask about where there's like all these components, right of education. 00:10:16 And there there's all these things. So the first one I feel like we've been kind of talking about is like this idea of mindset. And so often I think about this as like a culture of partnership with students, like seeing the whole students being able to partner with them. Um It, it just kind of like a willingness to see the humanity, I think in, in to use some of your words. I think that idea of humanity is essential to that mindset piece. So there's so there's that and then there's also like the pedagogies that I have that might be influenced by my mindset, they might be influenced by um other things like my participation in collective action or, you know, a a religious service or like literally any we pull from how my family is organized and, and talks about things and learns things, right? Like we pull from all these places to inform our pedagogy and also our assessment and also the content that we pull in and the text that we use and, and, and, and with that, right? What whose texts and stories and histories and, and author identities are excluded or, or centered or, right? How are these all interconnected or like what are the pieces that like humanity having that mindset of humanity can like, and I, I don't think there's a right answer to this. 00:11:25 You're just like thinking through this as I'm asking this question and it's a big one. I, I'm wondering how that humanity can like lead to um innovation or um kind of human centered pedagogy assessment and, and content selection. Does that make sense? That question? Yes. So I think the the really narrow answer is it is brutally hard in our current educational context to be able to do that right at the, at the discrete finite rubber meets the road level, that's really hard to do. So, the second piece of that is something I learned in my graduate program. And when I was in my thirties, just starting my, my doc program, I believe that I had all the answers. I, I'm always been pretty confident but I was arrogant back then. And I, and in my leadership, I just tried to help people see the way I saw because I said, if we're all like me, you know, we're gonna be good. And I didn't mean that in a mean way, I just thought I had it all figured out. 00:12:32 And so I thought leadership was the idea of trying to get people to think like you. And in the end of the first year of my doc program, I read this essay called Uncaring by Milton Meyer off. And what Meyer off said is if you really care about someone, then you are going to try to help them grow in the direction that they want to grow. You are going to serve their agency and I that was such a mindset shift. But it also created so much uh disequilibrium in my brain because I viewed myself as a caring person. I was a caring person. And here's meer off saying, ok, if you're really caring, you're trying to help people be like they wanna be not like you want them to be and, and through the process of wrestling with that and coming to embrace that idea as a leader, I think I've become much better, right? Because now I can serve people instead of try to make them over. And I think we can take an approach like that into our classrooms. 00:13:37 Like my job is to help this kid grow up to be someone that has agency in their lives. And so instead of me trying to push in what worked in my life, I need to be getting to know them and listening to them and thinking about, ok, how do I give this child tools so that they have their voice so that they can make their decisions? I love that. Yeah, because, and I, I think I still grapple with this, right? I think about these moments in the classroom where we're talking about some high emotion issues and I'm like this is the right answer. Like this is the stance of justice. And I'm like by saying that by saying like you must believe this, that kid is now just entrenched in their position, right? Like versus these conversations that center community that help people get to where they wanna be. And, and I, and we were saying that my immediate thought, this is the thought that I'm not proud of went to like, well, what if people just want to be in a place of hate, right? And hatred? And they wanna like, that's the and then my like more humane like Lindsay, like better version of Lindsay thought was like, no, I don't, I don't believe in my heart and I don't think many educators believe that anyone wants to be in a place of hate. 00:14:48 I think people spew hate or, or whatever out of fear, fear of lack of safety. Um And you know, an uncertainty of something, right? Like there's something else going on and if we can connect back to that humanity, right, then it's like we can help you be the best version of yourself as you were saying. And that's not the hateful part. That's the, that's like I can, I can have safety and security and I can have that for, for everyone and not just me. So it's like expanding that thing that they care about to the collective, to the whole community, right? And I think that's the kind of thing where, where people thrive, am I off on that? I don't think so. I we are in a time where the one of the dominant pedagogies of our time is the pedagogy of fear. And that's not coming just from within education, is coming from outside education at educators, but also at students through social media, through everything, right? 00:15:50 The the if I wanna keep people's attentions, if I want them to give me something, the best way to do that is to create fear. And then from fear, I can leverage anger, right? And fear and anger will keep people engaged on my platform. It will keep people mailing me money, it will keep people listening. And, and so how do we combat the pedagogy of fear? I think you just talked about some ways that we do that and I'll go back to presence and, and that's not the only answer. Certainly. That's just the beginning, right? There's all kinds of layers, but I feel like so many of us don't ever get to the beginning part. We don't get the foundation, right? And so if you're fearful, if I can be present to that fear, and if I can start to empathize with your fear instead of saying that's silly, that's a stupid worldview, that's not gonna happen, right? But if I can hear your fear and I can start to help you disentangle that fear and what that, what's that really about and how you know, what will make you feel safer beyond the big political movements. 00:17:06 I I think then we can help people reconnect and find their courage so that their pedagogy then can move more into that positive realm. That is such a beautiful segue because that's what I was thinking is like, it takes a lot of courage, it takes a lot of brave action to be able to, to do that, right? And to have these conversations and to, to be an educator in a time of like you're saying, the pedagogy of fear, I just, I love that framing. And so I'm thinking about, you know, you've talked about learner learning centered um kind of spaces and, and, and I'm probably getting the language around here. But I think this idea is like really powerful and perhaps one way um that people can kind of think of wrap their minds around what the actions might look like, what, what it might take to kind of do some of this work, feel free to add to that. But I know that's something I wanted you to talk about because it's brilliant. Yeah, I, I used to be a big purpose driven schools thing, right? What's our mission? What's our purpose so into that? And I have left that behind. It is people before purpose. 00:18:12 And when we talk about our aligning our organizations to support teachers work, what that means for me is that our structures, our physical structures are legal policy structures and the invisible structures that we create through rituals and, and those kinds of things, those structures need to be aligned to support teachers work. Our resources, not just our money, but the two most important resources, time and attention, right? We cannot be chewing up teachers, time and attention on stuff that isn't about serving their students. And then we have to have clarity of purpose, but the purpose is not what should drive teachers because going back to where we were before, people are carrying all of their own histories and narratives and traumas and triumphs into their teaching roles. And the vast vast majority of teachers, they know why they're there, they're there because they want to impact kids. And that, that desire by the individual teacher at that level is much more resilient, systemically resilient than all the political garbage that's happening. 00:19:22 The, the number of times that school leaders will say, uh how do we make decisions about who's gonna get reading intervention? Well, we looked at our bubble kids, right. That is, that is a warping of purpose. It's, it's not, it's not conscious, it's unconscious. But what we're doing now is we're making decisions based on our based, not based on our test scores, but based on driving our test scores, right? And, and conversations like that send a message about what our purpose is. And so our purposes are all screwed up right now and they're always, there's always been competing purposes anyway, if I want a promotion, right. I'm gonna do what the assistant superintendent, my area coordinator or whatever wants me to, I'm gonna please them not because I'm a terrible person, but because I ha I have a purpose too. So we need to get back to facilitating teachers work and trusting them more and then facilitating their growth. And the first step in doing that is by being present and engaging and hearing what, what they want, what they need and then helping move them there. 00:20:36 I love that sense of co creation and, and just support of educators in a time when it is, it is very hard as, as it always has been. But particularly now it feels like it's really hard to be an educator. I mean, I think, I think a lot of things that you shared too that I that idea of like um you said something about like connecting to the fear, like connecting to the fear underlying what, what people are sharing. Like I, I think we talked about it in your podcast, which if folks that have not listened to your podcast, they should, we will link to that in the show notes. But I think, you know, people can um can use that just emotion as like a circle check in at the start of each day or something, right? Like it's so simple to just invite the emotions to be shared and then you don't need to take it anywhere you can, but you and you create this space where you're saying like people can share more or they don't have to, but just to, to make that space where you're centered on like the human experience and students ability to have and share optional, the student experience or at a minimum, the emotion that's happening in their bodies and to, to name that as important, right? 00:21:37 I think so many competing commitments and in competing priorities. I'm thinking of a teacher, right? Who's like, well, I have to cover the content, but I also want to be like, probably got into the profession to be connected to students, humanity and like which one wins, right? So I know you talk a lot about priorities in terms of supporting leaders. Um It, you know, what, what kind of challenges do you folks have around that or, or around anything? We don't have to go down that route. But like, what are the challenges with this work? And what would you say to folks who are experiencing that challenge? I think the biggest challenge is organizing our work around our priorities instead of around our tasks. And again, we live in this noisy world that's always wanting our time and our attention. And so many of the systems have been specifically designed to be really good about capturing our attention. And as long as we try to get everything done and we run our lives through a checklist, what we do is we set ourselves up to respond to the most urgent tasks first. 00:22:48 And so we prioritize that idea, whatever is urgent and once we get into urgent mode. Anything that pops up is gonna be urgent, right? Because I'm, I'm already in that mode. I gotta do this. I gotta, it's like it's gonna be 25 degrees tomorrow night in our place. And I think our lowest up to this point was 35. I got all this stuff to do in my garden and I go out there and I'm just kind of overwhelmed and I start, you know, pull some weeds here and take this and oh, go harvest some tomatoes and then I run and I'm not get, I don't even know they're getting the most important things done because I'm just reacting and, and so the place to start is to understand that you cannot get everything done through time management. What you can do is get the most important things done through priority management. So, as a teacher, I think about what do I need in order to be ready for my kids tomorrow and then that other stuff I, I'm, that's gonna have to wait and that probably will lead to some uncomfortable conversations with, with people. 00:23:51 But the number of times principals say, oh, I couldn't get into classrooms today. I could, I got a first year teacher. I know she's struggling. I need to go support her, but I've been too busy. What's more important than that? Tell me, uh I, I, we, you know what I really wanna see. I, I wanna see the principal that comes into the district office meeting the principal's meeting 30 minutes late and the district person to say, where, where were you, why are you late? And then to say sorry, I have a teacher that's struggling that's thinking of leaving the profession and I needed to be there for her. I mean, what's that person gonna say? Oh, that would be incredible. How, how great an example of how those priorities could be lived out. Love it. Oh my gosh. So OK, so we've talked about so many things in the last 25 minutes or so. We, we have covered some really deep things. We've also gotten really actionable. We've, we've covered like so much that I think a listener is probably like thinking about the priorities of what do I do first? 00:24:58 What is like, you know, the biggest bang for my buck or whatever, what would you say is like something that a leader listening can do, you know, tomorrow or something to really get started with some of the things we've been talking about. OK, I totally stole this from all the great people that come on my show. I've heard this over and over again from people. Change begins with you. So if you want to behave differently, you need to go inside first. And I think the place that I would encourage you to go is I want to know each student. I wanna know each student, not just their name. I wanna know who they are. What do they love to do? Where do they come from? What are the struggles they face? What are their joys? I mean, if you're an elementary school teacher, that's probably a lot easier than if you're a high school teacher and you got 100 and 50 students a day. Like that's hard. But if you don't know your students in this day and age with all the distractions and all the things, making it really hard to teach kids, why should they listen to you? So if you wanna start somewhere, the easiest place each day, make sure every kid hears their name, make sure every kid gets eye contact from you, make sure every kid is smiled at and that's, that's the place to start. 00:26:20 It's, you know, it's so basic. But, and if you've got that, then they need to, you know, go Lindsey, listen to more of your stuff and, and you'll help them do that next step. I just want to encourage them to get to that first step. Oh my gosh. I love it. I mean, I've heard the name thing before, but just the smile, right? Like just how easy is it to smile at a child, right? Like, wow, so easy. Like any listener, there's no way you can't do that tomorrow, right? Like, um people need to look up Angela Myers and it's ma Ie RSI had her on the podcast a while. Back. I can't remember which episode, but she has this whole thing on mattering and she's great and, and what she advocated for her elementary kids was she had this 252, right? The first two seconds of every interaction are the most important. That's what people remember. So if I see you and I light up say, oh Lindsay, it's so great to see you. That makes a huge difference. And I don't need a 10 minute conversation. Those two second Lindsay. 00:27:25 So glad you're in class today. We missed you yesterday. And then I'm on to the next kid. So that's two seconds and then five choose five kids a day and make sure you do something that you communicate to them that they matter if you're in a high school class. I've got 30 kids in that class. Maybe I can choose three, maybe three kids. I know these three kids today. I am gonna make a comment too and guess what? Every month every kid gets at least one comment from me that I notice them that I know who they are that I see them because imagine these high school kids going through seven classes a day or even four classes a day and the whole day and nobody says their name the whole day and not a single adult looks at them and says, how are you? Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's great. And I, I think that pairs nicely with I, I often talk about the positive psychologist who came up with the values in action resource. 00:28:30 So, so that website is really good. They give you like, basically they would populate my my student notes or my student conversations where I would just choose one of their 30 positive attributes and be like you, you know, said, not demonstrated bravery today because you XYZ, right? Like, so I think there are ways that you can just scaffold this and make it even easier like a sentence starter for adults and like just do it. And if you miss the live opportunity, like you can do it as a note, like no kid is gonna be like, oh, how dare you give me a note instead of telling me to my face, right? Like if you miss an opportunity, it's not game over like you have another shot. Yeah. Oh, that's a great idea. I love that. And so I am just so curious, Fredrick, you are just such an interesting human being. I want to know this is what I ask everyone, but I'm really excited about your answer. What is something that you have been learning about lately? So this does not have to relate to your profession though. It can uh but it could be anything in life that you're learning about. Hey, it's Lindsay just popping in to tell you about today's episode. Freebie Frederick and I have talked a lot about relationship building and we talk specifically about acknowledging individuals I referenced in our conversation, the values and action posters. 00:29:39 You can grab those. I have those linked in our show notes at our blog post at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 45. Back to the episode and discipline and I always focused on the management and the discipline and about done it a couple of months ago, it just hit me. I'm through this whole thing and I'm saying relationships with the foundation and I never deal with relationships. And at the same time, I was digging into a project on how can assistant principals work with veteran teachers because it's so intimidating, especially we have a lot of a PS that are 30 years old. And then they've got people that have been teaching longer than they've been on the planet. So how do you do that? So I've been digging into that and asking a lot of teachers and administrators. And so I've been doing a lot of thinking about relationships and I'm someone that I, I can burn very hot and I love people. I care about people deeply. But when I get fired up and passionate, I don't attend to everybody equally. 00:30:48 You know, I will go to the wall for my kids, but I don't care about the people in the room next to me. That's, you know, you take care of you. I'm doing everything I can for my kids. And so it was hard for me to learn that I actually had to care about all the people around me, not just the ones that were my charges. So I think I've always had to think a little bit more about relationships. And so now trying to figure out how, how can I package, right? How can I package relationships into something that somebody like me at 25 years old would understand and say, oh, these four things? Ok. I can, I can do that. And that would lead me to help build a relationship until I gain the wisdom to really understand. Oh my gosh, I see like a shared webinar in our future of like kind of co creating something like this. That would be so fun. Oh my gosh. And, and thank you for, for just like honestly talking through that because I think that a lot of people haven't had that introspection that you have. And so I think that's a really great moment for it. 00:31:52 At least me because I'm hearing you to pause and be like, where am I in my relationship journey? And like, where, where do I go next? So, so thank you for that last question. I think people are going to want to connect with you. So how do they do that? Do you want to say a little bit about what you do and how they get in touch? Yeah. My big goal is to improve life and leadership for leaders. I drill down into the Assistant principal space a lot because I spent 13 years preparing people to go into the Assistant Principal ship. And so I feel like I know their pain, uh you know, more than, than a lot of others, but I'm passionate about leadership, teachers or leaders. So I think the easiest way to get to know me is to go to the Assistant Principal podcast and listen, find the episodes that you like you are on and I've got all kinds of people that just do great stuff. That's just leadership, right? A lot of the episodes have nothing to, it's a secret. They have nothing to do. Exclusive to assistant principals. It's anybody, right? So, so there's that I love communicating with people. 00:32:56 So if people would email me at Frederick at Frederick bussy.com, I will reply, I love that. And then I just go to my crummy website to find out more. And that's um Frederick busky.com. Beautiful Frederick. Thank you so much for being on the show today. This is a pleasure. Oh, this was so fun, Lindsay. Let's do it again soon. Yeah, if you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane sapper and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school? Talk for 75% of each class period. I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar. It's a brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth clients.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think Big Act brave and be your best self. 00:34:04 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.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I show you how to embark on a policy change:
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In this episode, I’m sharing ideas for how you might approach conversations about the violence in Gaza within your schools and classrooms. Many adults have told me they do not feel equipped enough to facilitate or engage in this conversation, however world events are happening and impacting adults and youth. At a minimum we should make space for students to share their emotional responses and experiences related to this trauma.
And as Michelle MiJung Kim wrote, “Even if you don’t understand the full history, you can draw on your knowledge of power dynamics, characteristics of white supremacy and colonialism, and the use of dehumanizing narratives to justify ethnic cleansing. Even when emotions are running high, you have the skills to create big enough containers to hold and validate people’s grief and fear, while guiding people to challenge the conditions that create violence. You know how to connect the dots to explain how all of us are implicated in this humanitarian and moral crisis.” Note: This episode was recorded on October 31, 2023. What’s happening? First, some historical context: Between 1947-1949, known as the Nakba, an estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed, including in dozens of massacres, and an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes in a capturing of historic Palestine to create the state of Israel ("What’s the Israel-Palestine conflict about? A simple guide"). In the last 16 years, Israel’s occupation of Palestine has created the largest “open air prison” in the world, with Palestinians being banned from travel, including to the West Bank, despite it being widely acknowledged they are both part of a “single territorial unit.” This is clearly not the only context. For more details, you can reference the first link in this paragraph. Most recently (as of this episode), on October 7, 2023, the Palestinian armed group Hamas killed 1,400 people in Israel, many of whom were civilians. Since then, more than 8,000 people have died in Gaza—many of whom were women and children—as a result of Israeli attacks. (Note: This is data as of October 29, 2023.) Additionally, Israel has blockaded Gaza, cutting off critical supplies. In the last several days, Israel has cut off cell phone and internet access for residents of Gaza. Access to health care and clean water are concerns for many, including the estimated 50,000 pregnant women and girls in Gaza. Israel has denied visas to UN officials following a comment that Hamas attacks “didn’t happen in a vacuum.” How do we talk about these events with students (and adults)? Step 1: Establish discussion agreements that center the dignity and humanity of ALL people. A specific clarification of agreements for this conversation might be: antisemitism and Islamophobia will not be tolerated. And critiquing actions of a nation, group, or leader are not antisemitic or Islamophobic. We should be able to critically analyze a government's decisions. This is not the same as expressing racism towards a group of people for who they are. Step 2: Invite folx to share their emotions, and if helpful, personal stories and experiences. (Just speaking from the “I” here.) Step 3: Invite inquiry: What do we want to know or learn more about? What specific questions do we have? Step 4: Level-set on researched facts, and analyze sources and context for power dynamics. Step 5: Practice criticality (Muhammad, 2020) with support. I like to use questions adapted from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model: What do you think about the power and equity at play here? How are individuals or groups disrupting oppression? How might you/we? If you are a social studies teacher, you may want to pull in a resource you’ve used. For example, the Genocide Education Project’s Stages of Genocide resource is one that could help students think through the relevance of the term genocide in relation to Israel’s attacks on Gaza. It would be particularly helpful to examine the Holocaust genocide case study in relation to the previous idea but also to provide the additional context of the Holocaust to deepen analysis. If you are practiced in using a gendered or feminist lens, for example, you may investigate the interplay of militaristic violence and intimate partner violence. The example in this academic paper by Dr. Simona Sharoni is one that illuminates these parallels. Final Tip We cannot have conversations about challenging, high-emotion topics without the grounding in our collective acknowledgement of each person’s humanity. We don’t need to push particularly traumatized individuals to talk about this in classroom spaces when this could be further traumatizing. We also don’t want to avoid conversations about hard things because we don’t feel equipped. We can build our capacity to talk about hard things. We can seek to learn information we don’t yet have. We can enter conversations humbly, and ready to acknowledge our mistakes, while centering justice and human dignity. As an example of how to set a foundation to build up to harder conversations about current events, I’m sharing my Staff Meeting Agenda series with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 144 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript here. TRANSCRIPT I'm educational justice coach, Lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for teacher 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 nering out about co-creator curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go for this episode. I want to address how we talk about the violence in Gaza in our schools, in our communities. So I'll be sharing ideas for how you might approach conversations about the violence in Gaza within classrooms within your school communities, even as adults. So we're taking both a student and adult lens here. Now, the context is that many adults have told me they do not feel equipped enough to facilitate or engage in this conversation. However, world events are happening and impacting adults and youth and at a minimum, we should make space for students and adults to share their emotional responses and experiences related to this trauma. 00:01:11 I'll give you some more in the episode for reference. This episode was recorded on October 31st 2023. So the specifics of the context, the events happening will be slightly outdated as of the airing, which will be in January 2024. So how do we talk about the violence in Gaza in our schools? I think what's a really important thing to note and the context for I think having this conversation specifically within the realm of the so called DE I World is a, a comment on linkedin which I reposted from Michelle Mizon Kim and she wrote an extended post, but I will just share a clip of it briefly quote. Even if you don't understand the full history, you can draw on your knowledge of power dynamics, characteristics of white supremacy and colonialism and the use of dehumanizing narratives to justify ethnic cleansing. Even when emotions are running high, you have the skills to create big enough containers to hold and validate people's grief and fear while guiding people to challenge the conditions that create violence, you know how to connect the dots to explain how all of us are implicated in this humanitarian and moral crisis. 00:02:17 Again, the quote is far longer. I've linked to it in the blog post which you can access at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 44. I'll be sharing that link again because throughout this episode, there are many references that I have linked within the blog post. It's one of the most heavily linked for a lot of reasons. There are a lot of resources I want to direct you to. There are also a lot of facts that I want to make sure I'm citing. So all of the the links to those are are in here. So let's start with the grounding of what's happening because I think one of the major things that many adults have told me is like, I don't feel comfortable navigating this conversation, even with another adult because I don't feel fully informed. And of course, that means that I don't feel comfortable navigating this conversation with Children and educating and facilitating the conversation with Children where I am responsible for the factual understanding of those kids, right? And so I think part of this work is skill based in, in building the capacity for having the discussions about anything, right? And I talk about that a lot on the podcast. The other piece is for each specific instance, you know, we as educators, as adults, as people, we don't have to have all the answers to everything. 00:03:26 We don't have to be experts in every single content area as current events come up by definition, they're current, right? They're they're ever changing. We don't always have all of the information at hand. And so I think part of that is being able to say I don't have all the answers as an adult, as your teacher, right? So when we're in a context of students, but even as we're adult adult conversing, right, in a staff conversation or something we can say, uh you know, based on what I know, here's the thought. So I just wanna level set again. This is based on a recording of, uh this is the recording date here is October 31st 2023 due to reduction processes and all the things. This will not actually air until the beginning of January of 2024. So I I get that there is, you know, a two month lag here in terms of up to date data. So I'm just gonna share what feels relevant in this moment and what is hopefully still relevant to you in the future? First, the historical context. There's so, so much of it and I've linked to more of it here, but I, I am not an expert on all of the facts. So I will just share what I feel like is relevant to contextualize for our conversation today. 00:04:29 So between 1947 and 1948 during which Israel identified itself as a nation and was created as a nation. Um This period of time to the Palestinian people is known as the nwa of the catastrophe in Arabic. An estimated 15,000 Palestinians were killed, including dozens of massacres and an estimated 750,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes in the capturing of historic Palestine to create the state of Israel. There is a link to a much longer and more in depth guide if you would like more context. Now, in the last 16 years, specifically Israel's occupation of Palestine has created the largest open air prison in the world. With Palestinians being banned from travel, including to the West Bank. Despite it being widely acknowledged, they are part of a single territorial unit by international nations and organizations. Now again, clearly, this is not the only context for more details. Please dive into these links. Um I I do not purport to be a a scholar of um Palestine or Israel most recently as of the airing of this episode or as of the sorry recording of this episode on October 7th 2023 the Palestinian armed group Hamas killed 1400 people in Israel, many of whom were civilians. 00:05:44 Since then, more than 8000 people have died in Gaza, many of whom were women and Children. As a result of Israeli attacks, specifically, I want to name these are attacks by the Israeli military Israel government. So additionally, Israel has blockaded Gaza cutting off critical supplies in the last several days. As of this recording, Israel has cut off cell phone and internet access for residents of Gaza access to health care and clean water are concerns for many many people but including as they often take a feminist lens in these things, an estimated 50,000 women and girls who are currently pregnant and living in Gaza Israel recently in, in the last week or so has denied visas to un officials following a comment that Hamas attacks didn't happen in a vacuum. And that's, that's quotes around, didn't happen in a vacuum. So recognizing the context there. So these are all of the facts that are circulating in my head. These are the things that I am thinking about and of course, this is steeped with emotion, additional context. I don't, I don't have the space or the knowledge to get into. 00:06:50 But what I do know is that students and adults are going to need to process this in some way. So for some of them, they can process this with their families. For some of them, they're processing individually internally um with friend groups, with peers, some are trying to, you know, look to the internet and, and finding people that they follow on social media and what they say and they're repeating that creating, you know, perhaps a container that may not be the most fruitful for generative discussion about emotional events. And so with that understanding, here's what I would suggest and it, it is parallel to many other times I've recorded episodes like this and recorded episodes that are both generic and specific. I know a few years ago I was recording, how do we talk uh with white students about the attacks on the Capitol, right? That that happened in early January as well. So this is kind of reminiscent of of a lot of the structure that I would use in talking about a lot of current events. The first step is to establish discussion agreements that center the dignity and humanity of all people. So this is critical if you don't have this, you can't engage in this discussion, right? 00:07:55 And which is why I think social media is a really challenging place to have discussions like this. We don't have that shared connection. We don't have that co created community. We don't have clear agreements that we all have consented to um enact or, or abide by, right? This is the unique difference that we have in communities of care, communities of educational environments, of friend groups, of, of families, places where we can center the dignity and humanity of all people. And we can specifically agree to that through consensus and we can specifically core how that looks for us. What does it look like in practice? What do we do to call each other to account when that is not happening, we have a unique space in classrooms and school communities to do this work. And so I think if it's not happening in their friend groups and family groups or it's happening, but it's not happening in a way that centers the dignity and humanity of all people, here's even more reason that we do it here, we do it in our spaces in schools and educational communities whose whole point is to learn and to think critically and to have um disc course with folks, right? 00:09:00 And then hopefully, ideally, students and adults take that and bring it into their own spaces of discourse with families and friends and loved ones. Now, I would want to specifically clarify an agreement or create an agreement for this particular conversation about Palestine because we want to say very clearly that anti-semitism and Islamophobia will not be tolerated, right? We are never tolerating racism that violates the inherent centering of dignity and humanity of all people. It just goes against the core principle that we're developing agreements around, right? So obviously, that's not tolerated. And at the same time, we can critique actions of a nation group or leader because that in and of itself is not anti Semitic or Islamophobic. So we should be able to critically analyze a government's decisions, for example. And it is not the same as expressing racism toward a group of people for who they are, right, for their identity and the identity group they belong to, right? So these are not the same step two invite folks to share their emotions and if it's helpful, personal stories and experiences, again, I think really important that it's personal here, that it is speaking from the eye that it is not. 00:10:13 Here's my opinion on this or here is um you know, this like fourth hand account that I saw on social media and I'm completely divorced um from in terms of like my own personal connections, like I just don't think that's the time or place for this. I think there might be a time or place for that at some point. But initially, we want to start again to see the humanity in each of us to see the humanity of the folks in the room in the conversation, what emotions are they experiencing? And again, it can, it can stop at just the emotion at this point, right? You don't have to share stories that's up to you and your facilitation. It's also up to the community in terms of what they're willing to hear, able to hear the next step. I think after we've done this, after we've acknowledged, you know, the agreements, the emotions in the space, potentially personal um stories or, or experiences that resonate with them in that moment. Step three is to invite inquiry. So notice we haven't even like gotten to like a complete factual like, you know, like here is exactly what's going on in all the things. Yeah, I do think there is a degree of factual grounding just to enter the conversation. 00:11:18 But that could literally be like a headline or um a, a still image of like a, a website, a news website or something, right? Like just to say like here's what's going on in the world in like snapshots and like headshots, like maybe a visual like that is not traumatizing. But like, I think we don't need to get to all the granularity of the facts just yet. Because again, all of these first initial layers and steps are to make sure that beyond anything else, we are practicing again and again, that centering of humanity and human dignity across the board across our group. So in step three, inviting inquiry, what we want to do is ask questions like what do we want to know about? What more might we want to learn about as a class or you as an individual? Right? Even again, thinking about doing this as a staff PD two for adults to grapple with this to then maybe go talk to students about it, maybe not, but I think adults need practice with this as well. What specific questions do we have? So we're listing all of those out and then we as a class collective or maybe a group, each, each student group or each adult group chooses a question and kind of like goes on, you know, an academic research journey, right? 00:12:28 We pursue inquiry just like we would pursue inquiry in anything in a historical way, right? And about a historical event, we want step four then to be that we're kind of level setting on the research facts we're sharing out, we're also analyzing sources, we have a critical lens we're specifically thinking about the context, right? Nothing, nothing does exist without context. So every kind of thing we're, we're kind of putting together, right? Some of the questions they overlap and help us contextualize like, oh, this group found that, well, I found this in, in my group. So, you know, let's contextualize it all. Let's look at the specific power dynamics, right? If we're censoring justice, we are looking at power dynamics, we are putting on a critical lens. And I think that's step five, right? We're gonna elevate and and further practice criticality, which is a phrase that Doctor Goldie Muhammad uses in her book Cultivating Genius and her Hill model of curriculum development and pedagogy, right? And I think there are supports that go with this and I've talked about these before, but I'll, I'll just talk a little bit about what I would do in this scenario. I I like to use questions that are adapted from Doctor Mohammed's Hill model. 00:13:31 So she has one on criticality that is mostly for people who are creating curriculum. So as you develop this lesson, how do you center criticality, that kind of thing, specific questions that I would pose to a group of students or adults for conversation around a current event would be adaptations from now. So for example, what do you think about the power and equity at play here? Right? Who holds the power where lies in equity? Those kinds of questions? Also, we don't want to just analyze inequity. We don't want to just sit in the injustice, right? I think I've, I've heard this from like anecdotally from people in my classes. I've heard it from colleagues who know the work that I do. I've, you know, seen it um in, in, in terms of research studies, it is also critically important that we do the second part of Doctor Mohammed's criticality question as well where we're talking about disrupting oppression. So also naming, you know, how are individuals or groups disrupting oppression right now? And how might you as an individual, how might we as a collective group disrupt oppression right now? 00:14:35 So we're not all just steeped in the injustice. Yes, we are. But we also can name agency in what folks are doing, acknowledge that work and then what we can do. So we don't have to um we, we can, right, create the space for the emotion and then we can also create a path forward if you were a social studies teacher. So these next couple of recommendations for step four where we're really like practicing that criticality. Like you might bring in some different resources depending on what your class is familiar with what you've used before. I always like to leverage things that you've used before and be able to use that as a lens. So for example, if you're a social studies teacher, you may want to pull in a resource you've used like the Genocide Education project. I know has a lot of grants. So you might use their stages of genocide resource packet that's helping students think through the relevance of the term genocide in relation to Israel's attack on Gaza. So you might actually go through the stages and be like, do we see these? Right, how do we see these? Um if you're practicing in uh like an el a class or social studies class or some other class using a gendered or feminist lens. 00:15:37 For example, you may investigate the interplay of militaristic violence and intimate partner violence. There's an a powerful example from Doctor Simona Cirone, who was one of my uh feminist teachers in college. She wrote an academic paper that kind of illuminates these parallels really well and I'll link that again in the blog post. Um One more time that blog post for listeners is Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 44. Now, as I'm kind of wrapping up, we've, we've said a lot, there's been a lot. This is an emotionally heavy episode. I do want to name the final kind of takeaways I think for this particular conversation about the violence in Gaza. But also any current event, anytime we're talking about an event or series of events that are unfolding in the world that are impacting us that are carrying with them high emotions and long historical contexts that we as individual educators may or may not fully um be aware of all of those things are, are important to name and consider and, and build around, right? 00:16:40 But II, I wanna say these final things to, to kind of leave us, we cannot have conversations about challenging high emotion topics without the grounding in our collective acknowledgment of each person's humanity. We don't need to push particularly traumatized individuals to talk about this in classroom spaces when this could be further traumatizing. This also includes things like using visuals or videos um or even sounds right that are emotionally traumatizing. We have folks at different, in different emotional spaces. And I think that's another value of inviting folks to share their emotions. Of course, every everything, every share opportunity is an opportunity. And so it's not mandatory, but I think inviting that emotion share out helps us as facilitators of these conversations to know where exactly everyone is. Um And how, how like emotionally raw um some folks are and, and, and I think that makes, helps us make decisions accordingly. Um We also don't want to avoid conversations about hard things because we don't feel equipped, we can build our capacity to talk about hard things. 00:17:45 We can seek to learn information. We don't yet have, we can enter conversations humbly and ready to acknowledge our mistakes while censoring justice and human dignity. And if we can do those things, that is my freedom dream for all classrooms, for all educational spaces, for all staff meetings and team meetings amongst adults, this is my hope for all families. This is my hope for all friend groups, right? This is it, this is the generative dialogue that is at the heart of making sense of our world is at the heart of expressing our humanity and seeing the humanity in others. This is the heart of restorative justice, peace building. This is at the heart of why I went into education, right? Because I wanted to build a better world. And I think youth are the the place and educators who are lifelong learners and committed to the journey of being better, always and creating co creating better futures with our youth. This is where that dream is most possible and most likely to flourish. 00:18:54 If you have these conversations, please reach out to me and let me know how they go. If you have additional recommendations or things that you've tried that have worked well in terms of having this conversation, please reach out if you like this episode. I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, Sapir and Jamila Dugan. Talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book street data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders 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.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I show you how to embark on a policy change:
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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
August 2024
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