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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is often siloed as something separate from the day-to-day curriculum and instruction that occurs in schools. This doesn’t work. Curriculum needs to be designed with justice and belonging at the core.
Why? DEI is too often siloed from curriculum and instruction. It must be embedded in our curriculum work to be sustainable and make lasting change. Too often I see educators using the “add diversity and stir” approach (to go off of Sandra Harding’s “add women and stir” critique from the 1990’s. Here are 3 ways to bridge the current gap between “DEI” work and curriculum design… Develop a pedagogy of student voice. Dugan and Safir talk about this in their amazing book, Street Data. They write, “Equity work is first and foremost pedagogical” (p. 4). They explain student agency is critical to healing from and transforming oppression, and they cite research that shows agency is one of the most significant factors in restoring well-being for marginalized groups (p. 104). I share an overview of their 6 “rules” in the episode, but I’ll highlight one key point here: learners should be engaged in conversation with their peers a minimum of 75% of each class time. This should be a district-wide “look for.” To help make this a reality, we can help each team define and refine the highest-leverage discussion-based protocols they use. Design Driving Questions and Projects That Advance Justice. Our unit questions (or driving questions) and summative assessments should have a purpose beyond the grade and an audience beyond the teacher. To make sure students are interested in the topic or project, co-create the projects with students. Invite students to creatively apply what they learn in class to actually advance justice in their communities. Curate Resources and Content that Affirms Students’ Identities. In doing this, make sure students’ multiple, intersecting identities, experiences, aspirations, and (hi)stories are reflected and affirmed. We want to avoid treating demographic categories as monolithic, and represent various intersections with depth—beyond a “single story” (Ngozi Adichie). We can also invite students and families to share resources or their own expertise as part of the curriculum. Note: this should be an invitation, not an expectation. We don’t want to put our work on our students or their families. Final Tips Curriculum Directors or Assistant Superintendents of Curriculum and Instruction, partner with your DEI counterparts (e.g., Assistant Superintendent of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). Share funding sources, and co-plan professional learning experiences. Don’t separate the DEI Task Force and Curriculum Committee meetings. Every committee should be a DEI committee. At the bare minimum, if it must be separate, each committee—including the Curriculum Committee—should have a member on the DEI committee. Remember: Sustainable, embedded approaches to what we do (i.e., curriculum and instruction) will go so much further in advancing educational equity than one-off initiatives. If you’re ready to audit your curriculum for justice, sign up for a complementary Curriculum Audit from me or choose to DIY it with my mini course. If you’re interested in the book, Street Data, you can get it here. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 104 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 Educational justice coach lindsey Lyons and here on the time for Teacher ship podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nursing out about co creating curriculum students, I made this show for you. Here we go, welcome to episode 104 of the time for Teacher Ship podcast to D. We are talking about a mindset shift that is critical to doing this work and doing it well in a sustainable way. And that is that D. I or D. E. I. B or D. E. I. J. Whatever you're calling it diversity equity, inclusion, this kind of stuff and not be separate from your curriculum can be, we're going to dive into that right now. 00:01:03 Here we go, why can't this be separate D. I. And curriculum should not be separate. They should not be siloed, They are often siloed. They must be embedded together. Curriculum must be designed with justice at the core, with belonging at the core, with educational equity at the core. It cannot be separated if it wants to be sustainable and actually advance justice in a meaningful way. We have seen time and time again, initiative fatigue and this styling of D. E. I from the bread and butter of what we do, which is curriculum and instruction as educational institutions just not get anywhere not make actual changes. There is sometimes a fear in doing this. There is a hesitancy amongst well meaning teachers and leaders who are thinking, you know, we need to know more, We need to get this right, get this perfect before we roll out new curriculum. We don't want to further harm anyone. 00:02:05 Of course, of course, all of that is completely understandable. And at the same time, we are actively harming students who are not affirmed by the current curriculum, who do not see themselves, their experiences, their backgrounds, their multiple identities in the curriculum. They do not have compelling driving questions that frame units that invite them to grapple with with injustice and how to further justice in the world. They are detached, marginalized, de centered all sorts of things that make it so that educational inequity happens and is more likely to happen to groups who have been historically marginalized, so can't be separate, has to be connected. And why I say that it has to be at the core of all the curriculum we write is because my approach in my two cents here is that we can't just add diversity and stir right. We can't to to kind of go off of Sandra harding's from the nineties and saying add women and stir when she talked about this in the sense of bringing women into, you know, ceo positions and executives in boardrooms and companies, right? 00:03:13 We have to ultimately change the systems and processes with how companies are run if women are actually going to be successful in those places, right? That was her kind of thing. Same with D. I work, right? We can't just add diversity and we can't Sprinkle in a couple of texts from a few authors who are racialized as black and brown and call it a day, right? That doesn't advance justice. Sure. Maybe that's better than just a completely white male cis gendered, you know, authorship of all the texts were reading, but there is such a better way to do this and that is designing with justice at the core. So that requires us to think about what is at the core. What is the process of curriculum, writing and not having separate conversations about justice in one space and our D. I. Task force for example and curriculum in another. Right? These have to be co created and collaborative. So I'm going to share three ways on how to do this. 00:04:16 How do we actually bridge that gap that silo ng of D. I in curriculum first. I love the book street data. I feel like you've probably heard me talk about this a ton but dr jimmy Logan and dr Shane staff here are talking in the book street data about a ton of great stuff that they talk about, this idea of a pedagogy of student voice. This puts language to the stuff that I've been talking about for so long. And I love it. So this idea of a pedagogy of student voice is central to educational equity. And they say in the book on page four Equity work is first and foremost, pedagogical. Yes, we as educational institutions are all about pedagogy, right? Regular instruction. How we teach, what we teach. This idea of pedagogy, right? How we teach is central to equity. So if we Sprinkle in a few additional texts to a very whitewashed unit that is taught through a pedagogy that is very teacher centered and not student centered and doesn't invite students to talk and grapple with and lead inquiry around what we're doing. 00:05:25 It is not equitable, right? So this equity work, as they say, is first and foremost pedagogical. They talk a lot about student agency and feeling in control of their lives as being really critical to healing from and transforming oppression. So they actually cite research on this idea of student agency as being one of the most significant factors in restoring well being for marginalized groups. They talk about this idea of a pedagogy of student voice and they share six simple rules on how to do this well. So one is to talk less smile more. And so I love the quote from Hamilton and they talk about how and I love that they get really specific here, learners should be engaged in conversations with their peers, a minimum of 75% of the time as curricula. Leaders listening to this podcast right now? You can't go in and say this is our goal when I come in or when your coaches or your principles come in to your class, like our goal or you kind of just watching the video of your class as a teacher, right? 00:06:29 Our goal as a community Is a minimum of 75% of the time. The learners are engaged in conversations with their peers, they are talking and grappling not the teacher talking. Right? So that teacher talk time has to be less than 25%. That's the goal. The 2nd rule they give for pedagogy of student voices, questions over answers. So as much as possible we are posing questions to students. We are inviting students to pose their own questions, right? We're constantly enquiring and seeking more and more questions and following that trail, creating space for students to actually do the research and follow up on the their questions that they have to get more answers and address those big questions. So really we have this inquiry feel of our classroom and the learner questions are guiding it. We as teachers often I do this so often I want to answer their questions right? What we, as teachers can be thinking about and us as coaches and curriculum leaders can be thinking about coaching teachers to ask more questions. 00:07:36 Right, so a student comes to us with a question. Well what do you think? Where might you find the answer to that question? How could we tackle that problem that you're having right now? Right. Getting the learner to kind of take on that skill of finding an answer, finding a solution to a problem. They have the third rule for a pedagogy of student voice they share is ritualized reflection and revision. So often the big shift from how I used to teach to how I how I teach now. After the shift right would be that I build in more time for reflection in each lesson. And then also when I look at a whole unit, I want a weekly moment of reflection at a minimum. I want one whole lesson at the very end of the unit, for example is always a reflection on the unit. Before we go into the next unit. What worked. What didn't, what do you want to learn about next? What do you want to bring forward into this next unit center? The student voice in an opportunity for us as educators to learn. Right. And so as coaches, we want to help teachers to do this. # four make learning public. This is huge. 00:08:38 And this actually goes into the second way I'm going to share from my own lens about how we design assessments and what we do in our classes, but we want to make the learning public. We don't want to keep it within the four walls of the classroom. It has to have meaning Right circle up. So they specifically referenced circle which I love as a protocol and activity for a class to be able to share and talk as a community. I love the idea of protocols and so having a student centered unit arc where you have consistent protocols or ways of students grappling with the material. This is critical to being able to sustainably create and consistently create new units that are connected to an ever changing environment in ever changing student interests and aspirations and current events and all the things have student centered protocols. If we do nothing else, right. For a pedagogy of student voice, let's try to have that marker of 75% student talk time. How do we do that? Best. We really think about our protocols and ideally we share protocols as a department or a grade team so that students don't have to do the cognitive switching of holding all the different protocols in their brain. 00:09:53 If there's 50 across all of the subjects that they go to all the teachers, they go to making sure that we have students brains grapple more with the content and the big inquiry questions. Unless on the logistics of how they go about answering that question or discussing with appear via protocol. Lastly there. Six rule is feedback over grades, highly agree. Let's give more formative feedback. Let's focus less on the grades, but more on the learning. Okay, so pedagogy of student voice is idea number one. Let's focus on the pedagogy. Let's make sure that's equitable. There's a bunch of ways to do that also get the book street data because it is fantastic, highly recommend. Let's go on to number two. It's the next way that we really merge and center justice in our curriculum conversations. We want to design driving questions. So those are questions that frame the unit and projects, those summited assessments that end or or kind of really exist in an ongoing way throughout a unit. And then we have kind of a culminating presentation or share out of that project. 00:10:58 We want those driving questions and projects to be designed in a way that connects to students lives what is immediately relevant to them. What are the topics that are relevant and actively invite them to creatively advanced justice. We need creativity. We need new ideas. What we have been trying has not working has not been working right. This is a consistent, persistent problem, inequity, racial injustice, gender injustice, right? We have so many issues. They have continued to be issues. So let's get students brains going before all the creativity is taken from them by our rigid educational institutions, right? Let's invite students to actively make a difference in their communities for the purpose of advancing justice. Let's leverage that creative spirit and let's design projects and driving questions that pull that out related lee to that point from fear. And dugan is to ensure that projects have a purpose beyond the grade, make learning public in that they should also have an audience beyond the teacher, not just the teacher and even not just the class itself sees the project, but other folks from our school community, other classes, other teachers, administrators, community folks, family members, business owners, local, local people in the community, Right? 00:12:19 Invite folks in published this work, in a sense, whatever that looks like. If it's actual writing, you can literally publish it. If it is a presentation to a school board, make that public, right? That's a public opportunity. If it's a product that students have designed, that's going to address an injustice, have that be available for people to purchase right? Or people to get their hands on. So so far, we've talked about the pedagogy, the pedagogy of student voice. We have talked about the curriculum design from the standpoint of driving questions and projects that invite students to advance justice, great things that are relevant to them. Let's pursue justice. Let's leverage that creative spirit and let's make that learning extend beyond the classroom. Finally tip three or idea three for centering justice and curriculum is that we want all of our resources and the contents that we frame our curriculum in what our students learning right? What are they engaging with? That affirms all 100% of students multiple intersecting identities experiences, aspirations, histories, Stories, all of that is affirmed. 00:13:30 So, we want to be really intentional in our choice of resources. We want to be thinking about the lens of intersectionality and how students identities are not monolithic, right? Not every single person in this gender category have the same story. Not every person in this racial category have the same story. Not every person who has this immigration status has the same story, right? There are intersecting identities that we hold. We want to make sure that when we are representative and trying to be affirming of these different identities that we don't treat them as monolithic uh, jimmy Amanda negotiate talks about how, you know, we have a danger of a single story. You may have seen that ted talk that is exactly it. Right. We don't want to treat stories or identity groups as having one story. We want to make sure that they are varied. So one kind of check the box. We have this identity within this unit is not ideal, right? We want a varied sense of depth and multitude of experiences. 00:14:34 We can also invite. Very important that the invite word is used here. So, we're not putting this on students or families, but we can invite students and families who have particular experiences or expertise to be able to co create the curriculum with us to identify different resources that may center experiences or identities or backgrounds that we may not be familiar with, but our students are totally experts in or our students family members are experts in. They may themselves be wanting to do a presentation again. That invitation not expectation to put our work on students. Right? But we want that invitation to consistently be extended. Some last tips to just consider curriculum directors, Assistant Superintendent of curriculum. You can partner with the Superintendent of D. E. I. If you have one or your D. I. Team or task force in terms of creating professional development, in terms of sharing funding and budget lines to pay for or support this idea of designing curriculum for justice, ideally, you don't even want to separate your D. 00:15:48 I. Work and the meeting structure or the committee where the D. E. I task force should not be a separate committee, in my opinion from the curriculum committee. Right. Every committee we have should be infused and designed from the core of the Ei. Right? And so if that means that we have uh kind of D. E I task force in existence. Okay, well, let's make sure that we have someone from that task force on every single other committee and this is just kind of a clearinghouse to kind of come back together and be like, okay, let's continue this work, in a sense that we are truly embedded and infused into everything else that we're doing again, sustainable, embedded approaches to what we do, which is what we do as education institutions, our curriculum and instruction. That's why students come to us right, they will go so much further in advancing educational equity than one off initiatives. I think educators, as well as leaders are really overwhelmed and frustrated by the lack of success of one off initiatives. 00:16:51 We don't want to keep piling things on our plate, especially when they're not moving the needle forward in terms of equity and justice. We want a deep embedded sense of how to do this work. And so even more than designing the curriculum and leaving it, because I see a lot of really great work being done in terms of curriculum redesign and then it's like, oh, it's done, we're good, there's great work being done. So we wanna acknowledge that and at the same time, recognize that if we don't internalize the process of how, if we don't make that process easily repeatable and sustainable and not a massive lift every time we do it, then we're just going to leave that curriculum and call it a day and 10 years from now, we're gonna look back and say, wow, we are totally disconnected. That was maybe at one time a great curriculum, but we're totally disconnected to our current students and what's interesting to them and the current events that are happening today. So we want to design really flexibly and we want to internalize that justice centered curriculum design process. So the teachers can and departments collaboratively ideally can do this work on a consistent basis. 00:17:57 So we're consistently talking to the students we have in front of us in that semester in that year and the current events that are happening that are ever changing day to day, week to week, year to year. If you are interested in a free resource related to this episode, you can go to my website www dot lindsey beth Lyons dot com on the main page. We have redone it recently. So you will find an option to sign up with me for a free curriculum audit. You can pick a time on my calendar right there on the home page. If you scroll down a little further, you will also find an invitation to do this a synchronously. If you do not have 20 minutes to find on my calendar. Absolutely no worries. I got you. I will send you a series of four videos, one per day for the next few days where you can do in 20 minutes on your own, your own curriculum audit. I hope that helps you. I'm so excited to hear how it goes. Please let me know and I'll catch you next week if you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my live coaching intensive curriculum bootcamp. 00:18:59 I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We leave current events into course content and amplify student voices, which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit, which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me, grab a spot on my calendar at www dot lindsey beth Lyons dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach, Better podcast network, Better today, Better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
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Namita Prasad is a confidence educator. When times were tough in her life she has had to rely on the “why not” or “Confident Mindset” approach that her father instilled in her as a child. She and her team created a school program so that all children understand how to become confident. Today, we talk about her approach to teaching confidence!
The Big Dream Educators and caretakers will believe and adopt the approach that, “No one is born confident, but anyone can become confident.” She’s excited for this dream to turn into a reality within a few years! Namita found confidence means different things to different people. So, she and her team define confidence as: A feeling that you don’t start out with. You get the feeling after actions of practice. Alignment to the 4 Stages: Mindset, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Content A culture of relationship-building is a good foundation for this work. Namita suggests a quick, powerful practice called the One-Word Check-In. Adults can ask each child as they enter the school or class or home how they feel in one word. Additionally, the culture should foster 3 pillars: courage, character, and commitment. Student voice is a major part of Namita’s ACM (A Confident Mindset) Program. In the program, students self-evaluate and tell adults their strengths, areas for growth, and fears. They develop their action plan and create their own Circle of Confidence (in step 6), which includes identifying people who are their “rocks” and “champions” and asking if each of those people are willing to be part of their Circle of Confidence. ACM’s 6 Steps:
Namita’s tip for giving feedback: In 2 minutes:
Namita believes A Confident Mindset is critical for us to be able to face the challenging realities of the world. She says it’s most effective when we all take this approach as adults and children in all areas of our lives. Challenges Adults often put lots of pressure on ourselves and think we can’t help children be confident if we are not confident ourselves. That’s not required! We can learn with our children. Another challenge is thinking we are too busy to do this work, but it’s actually a one-time “forever change,” in our mindset that we can keep practicing in all the things we regularly do. One Step to Get Started Ask yourself: What is YOUR “Why not?” Then, go practice! Remember: Mindset comes before skill set. First, have a confident mindset or a mindset that’s positive and then try to learn a skill set. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on her website and Facebook. To help you implement A Confident Mindset, Namita is sharing tons of free resources with you. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 103 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 Today's guest has a super interesting take on confidence. Now Prasad is a confident educator, author and speaker and she wasn't born with confidence. It was a mindset that she developed when times were tough, where she was at a crossroads in her life. She had relied on the why not approach that. Her father, a soldier had instilled in her as a child. This approach to life is called a confident mindset and has had a deep impact on her life as a single parent and entrepreneur. Understanding how a mindset of confidence can change the trajectory of one's life, led her to become a confident educator and along with her team comprises of educators, they created a year long school program so that all Children can understand how to become confident. Her mission in life is the why not movement so that the whole world has a cohesive understanding of the meaning of confidence and the steps to develop it. She believes mindset before skill set and that nobody is born confident but anyone can become confident. Let's get to our conversation with Prasad. Educational justice coach lindsey Lyons and here on the time for teacher ship podcast we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. 00:01:04 I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal Assistant Superintendent curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nursing out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Welcome to the time for teacher ship podcast. Thank you lindsey, thank you for inviting me of course. So at the front of the episode I will just read your, your bio and I am curious to know, you know, beyond all that professional kind of like stuff that we do. Um what is it important for listeners to know about you or keep in mind as we jump into our conversation today? Absolutely. So Lindsay, I'm an educator and an evolving mother. I call myself evolving mother because I feel like I'm trying to better myself every day. Um we um and have a confidence educator. So this is a term I coined um several years ago, I focus on how to instill confidence in Children and in adults. 00:02:16 I love that. So I think this is is really connected to all the work that we do, but I I don't think we've ever had a guest actually talk about this specifically. So I am very excited for our conversation today and we'll move right to that, that first core question that I always start with, where dr Bettina Love talks about freedom dreaming and she describes his dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so considering that considering what you even just said, you know, what's that big dream that you hold for curriculum and instruction for education for students. You know, my dream. um I think will come true. So it won't be a dream after a few years because we're going to spread the word to educators, to parents, to Children, to professionals that no one, no one Lindsay is born confident, but anyone can become confident. So that's my dream, that's going to come true. I love that. I love the whole idea of becoming right and and learning and growing and evolving as people. I think this is, this is so good and so in within this episode we'll get to exactly how we do that, how we support ourselves and our Children to, to do that work. 00:03:25 I am curious to know in your work and the work that you do, I often talk about, you know, in the curriculum that I helped to co create. How do we embed things like mindset relationships with students? How do we embed student voice in our pedagogy? How do we inspire student creation and how do we affirm student identities and experiences. So I'm curious to know if one of those or more than one of those resonates with you and the work you do. Um it's interesting you say that because it sort of follows the path of our program, so we have a program called a confident mindset program um that within a school can change the culture of the school with how Children approach anything it's called the why not approach? So the first thing you talk about is like mindset and relationships, right? So for example, one of the things that we do in and we say the program to to implement in school is called a one word check in. So when a child walks in you just ask them, tell me in one word, how do you feel right now? You know, if it's a very talkative child, they're going to spend 10 minutes if it's a child that's a teenager there adam, but if you say one word, usually you'll get something out of them and in the line of work we've noticed that we really connect to a child's energy and where their mind is over the course of time. 00:04:37 Like you can map it if a child, I'm tired, you know, sleepy. So one word check. It has been a huge, great way of building relationships between teachers and students and also between teachers and teachers, like you're coming in and you want, you know, mrs Suzy to help you with something, but she's just had a child that's sick all night. How do you feel right now in this moment, in one word tired, that's not the day to, you know, put that extra. So so having that connection is very important for just developing, starting the development of relationship as far as student voice. I really believe that mindset comes before skill set. Um it's that it's that one thing that I really feel that our movement is a lot about Lindsay is instilling the mindset and then they can learn anything right and to do a mindset, you really need to hear what a child's thinking right? Like what are your strengths? You know we think we know a child strength, we really don't when they do a self evaluation and they're able to talk about what they think they're good at and the areas for growth because nobody has a weakness, it's just an area for growth. 00:05:47 They're able to have a voice of their own, they're able to say like this person cares about me, this is where I am. These are the fears that I'm facing. Another thing that our program talks a lot about Lindsay is students need to understand they don't need to overcome fears. Um but they can face fears right? A personal fear of minus I'm afraid of cats, but I'm working on overcoming that fear right? I may never totally overcome it, but I know how to face it. Um The third thing you talk about a student creation, right? Student creation means when a child feels ownership, right? They go this is what I'm feeling and my teachers receiving. So our program to build confidence in through the A. C. M. Or a confident mindset program is six steps first is believe in yourself. Second is face your fears. Could be good to yourself be good to others practice because we will focus a lot on practice and then get better at your practice by getting feedback. So the student really becomes in charge if you may and the teacher becomes more like a guide or a coach? 00:07:00 I love that. Do you mind saying those six steps? One more time for our listeners? Because I was trying to chop them down and I'm imagining listeners are two. Absolutely. And I just expand briefly. A need step. Right? So, first of all, before I talk about steps to confidence, can we just unpack what confidence is? Absolutely. So Lindsay, how do you feel? What is confidence? What is your understanding of it? Oh wow. I feel like in every conversation I've had with you so far. My definition, my old definitions kind of get scrapped and it evolves further. So I can't wait to hear what you have to say, but I will say right now um the ability to kind of do something scary and feel good about myself in doing it. Wonderful, Thank you for sharing. And my second question to you, I know it's your podcast is do you believe it's important for Children and adults to be confident? Yes, I think the energy that we bring to a conversation to anything that we do when we are confident is a very different, more creative, more like energetic, more connected energy than when we're not confident. 00:08:12 Thank you, Thank you. So it's interesting, you know when I started teaching confidence building back in 2014 and 15 I would talk to people and say like, what does confidence mean to you to teach us at? You know, principals at the school programmers and everybody had a different definition and I began thinking if everybody has a different definition, what is his child hearing? Is mom saying something is, you know, Miss Lindsay in classroom saying something is the principal saying something in my soccer coach is telling me something totally different. So now I'm really confused, but everybody's telling me it's important, right? So we agree that it's pivotal and we agree that's important, but we don't have a cohesive understanding. So the first thing we did in the ACM program is define what confidences. So as a world we can get on the same page, right? So the way we define confidences, confidences, a feeling that you don't start out with, it's a feeling that you get after actions of practice. 00:09:14 So Lindsay, I'm on your show today, I don't have to be confident. But if I do enough of this podcast, I can become confident. It takes the pressure off of me for performance right now and I'm just in the moment focused on being the best guess that I can be right. So that's what we want Children to know is that you I don't have to be confident anything. And what a child's hearing is, you're at the pool and your mom says just get in the pool and be confident and the child goes, but how, like, I don't know how to swim. I know I have this snazzy little swimsuit, but I don't know how to swim, what do I do? And if mom would just say, you don't even have to be confident, you don't have to know anything, but you'll become confident with every class you take, and the child's gonna go, okay, why not? So we really instill in people and, and Children the why not approach. That's what the book is called, The power of Why not? Um, but that's a little bit about confidence. Are we? Now, I can go to the six steps if you're okay. 00:10:18 So it's really important to kind of put a stake in the ground to understand what confidence is, right? So, as I started teaching confidence building, I realized that if something is so important, it's so pivotal, can we please come up with a way that every single child can learn it step by step. So we have a six step program that we teach in schools, We do start with professional development, we have a whole onboarding and then the teachers can kind of become confidence coaches, and this does not matter what their personal confidences. A teacher's personal confidence does not matter because it's a step by step program and any well meaning adult can teach it right? Because sometimes I'll have moms and dads and teachers, but I don't feel confident and now you want me to teach my students to be confident. And I'm like, look, it's a step by step process, anybody can do it, right? So the steps are as follows, Number one, believe in yourself, right? Each of us have a lot of strengths that we need to just focus on, right? 00:11:19 And we have things that we need to work on which are areas for growth. This is where the student sort of mindset feeling, voice comes in. Let's talk about that. You know, let's let's talk about what you're really, really good at. The second thing is about, you know, facing your fears, there's a lot of pressure in society and Children to be like just overcome your fear. I just told you I'm not going to overcome my fear for cats, but I'm hoping that over time I learned how to face it now, kind of just stepping back for a second. ACM also has three pillars of courage, character and commitment. The first two steps are about courage. When you define what confidence meant to you Lindsay it was all courage, right? If I believe in myself, I can do what I want to do. So courage is something that people sometimes with due respect, confused with confidence, but courage is me just getting off my chair and saying I believe in myself and I'm going to face my fears now that I've decided to do something and take action on my why not? 00:12:22 Like what's holding me back? I need to think about what are going to guide these actions and that's where the second c of character comes in because courage without character, you and I both know is directionless, right? So we want, you know, our positive character values to guide it and being good is first being good to ourselves. Like having gratitude, being organized, things like that and being good to others kindness. Um so these character values now are guiding our actions great, we have courage and we have character, but Lindsay you and I both know as parents and as educators, if you don't do those actions of practice, all the courage and characters lost. Right? So we encourage Children to find things that they want to work on and then come up with plans to practice. So we we tell them that, look, this is not about the outcome, it's not about the result, it's about you just becoming a better view. And I think that's very important because we know all Children start at a different point, right? 00:13:27 And to really make this equitable for all Children, it's important that they just become the best that they can be that's possible, that's possible, right? We're not asking to be the best, we're just asking you to be your best. Right? So then we talk about, you know, coming up the actions of practice, but now repetition of practice is not good. You need to surround yourself, you're not alone. We encourage Children to then make a circle of confidence. It's people that can support them. These people can be rocks or champions. Rocks could be mom or a teacher that's always there for me and a champion could be my little friend in third grade who's telling me, hey, you can do this. So like in school sometimes we make walls called circle of confidence and kids will come and post like little posters and say, I can help with, you know, you know, cleaning your desk up or I can help you with like kicking the ball or something. So they feel really good about themselves and somebody can pick, pick this up and say, hey, you know, Michael, can you help me with this? So we're creating a very supportive environment where other kids and teachers are stepping up and helping each other by being Rocks and champions. 00:14:36 Right? And the moment you help someone, usually you're willing to accept help as well, right? It's kind of interesting people think that, you know, to help once you help you like this was not bad. That's kind of cool. Let me ask for help too. So that's something that we encourage and the last piece that you talk about a student identity experiences. You know, once a child, I'm going to focus on the child right now understands I uncovered what my why not is I found my strengths. I faced my fears. I created a group of people, my circle of confidence I did match as a practice and I got better at this. I can do that as well. So they make that connection in their mind that anything is possible. If I'm willing to do these six steps, we don't talk a lot of fluff like anything is possible, know anything is not possible, okay. Anything is possible if you do this, this and this. And I think it's being really realistic in the child's mind and helping them face what's going to happen in their lives. 00:15:42 Like I know we are sort of behind Covid, at least we want to believe that Covid is behind us and you know, and that was, you know, a pandemic, but you know, life is full of pandemics, right, some personal, some universal and having this mindset of a confident mindset is going to help prepare our Children and our educational system to be prepared for what what life brings. So that's why these six steps cannot come into play. I love these six steps. And I also thinking a lot about like, even beyond just youth, even beyond Children, like adults using these six steps and school systems and districts, right? Like I'm thinking about that again, that Bettina love idea of freedom, dreaming and like dreaming of what's possible. And there's so many things I think sometimes that adult Are held back by not having the mindset and this clear process that you laid out with the six steps that we don't, we don't try to get to that place where things are possible because we're like, oh well, you know, this is a barrier, this is a barrier or we haven't done this yet. 00:16:46 So it's probably not going to happen this year. We'll extend our timeline 10 years or something. There's so many things in here that I think are not just relevant for Children, but adults as well. And so I really am connecting with these steps that you're sharing. Thank you, No thank you lindsey. And that's why, you know, I got a one day and I realized that, you know, to bring change true change. I'm not talking about like true change that's sustainable. There has to be a movement for confidence education, a movement for confidence. Education where Lindsay at work is hearing the same thing, Lindsay is a teacher is teaching the same thing and little lindsey in the classroom is hearing the same thing. So all everybody's on the same page about what confidence is, you don't have to be confident. You can become confident and the six steps and understand the courage, character, commitment. Also those pillars that can make you become confident. So we talk a lot about common language. I do this with my 14 year old when I picked her up from school, I'm like, okay, what's your one word? Check in tired, tired is not allowed and then we talk about like, you know for eggs, you know, we as teachers, parents even as you know, managers or business owners, leaders, principals, we do a lot of feedback. 00:17:59 Give you a small thing that we use. This is part of our common language, which I encourage, you know, our listeners to use. It's called a glow and grow. So feedback the word itself is like as if you're telling me how I can become better and my mind's already maybe shutting down. If you tell a child I'm going to give you a glow and agro you'd be like, okay, well I wonder what the glow is. And so the one, the first thing I suggest is, you know, address the child by name if possible. You know, you know, Mark, here's a glow for you. You did a really great job with, you know, studying for this math test. You know, you got this this and this time, here's a girl for you. You're not taking the time you're rushing through. You're not picking the right things from this answer. So you know what this question, Can you really like spend more time on the question before you start solving it. He was like, okay. I mean at least he noticed that I did all this right. And by the way, let's look at the wall of, you know, a circle of confidence. I think that Susan said she's really good at what problems, How about you do connect and then at the end like, hey Michael, what's your one word check in, I'm excited. 00:19:10 So we had this whole conversation that was less than two minutes, told them what to do, made them feel empowered and connected them with someone. This is how I see the world becoming. I know it sounds lofty but that is that's why this is a movement, it has to be across all dynamics of a person's life. Yeah. And I like it because it doesn't, it's not, it is a beautiful kind of like dream and and kind of goal and I do think it's also realistic, like you said, because there are clear steps and you're connecting them with people, you're making clear the people in their lives who can be part of that circle of confidence and then you're like in that example you're modeling, look at the wall, we've already established these people who can help. And so you're not just saying like go do this thing, you're giving clear kind of processes and supports and I like that so much and at the end of it doing the one word check in. So I know when you leave, like sometimes teachers give instructions and the thing the child got it, but we don't know if they did or not because of the child that confused. 00:20:13 I'm gonna spend that extra, you know, minute or two helping them. I think the one word check in is just a game changer and so we do a confident mindset, We do a lot of like common language. So everybody in school knows it and then if your mom is taking the same sort of program at work, she knows what a one word check in is and that's how we bring everybody on the same page. I love that and I think we spoke a little bit already about mindset, but I just wanted to open it up because I know mindset is really critical to the work that you're doing and this program. So I was just curious to know if you had more to say on that idea of a confident mindset, you know, a confident mindset, thank you for asking me that something was so passionate, so close to my heart. It's just a way of life, right? It's how I get up in the morning, how I make my bed, you know, how do I go to school? You know, how do I eat in the lunch room? It's all a confident mindset. So when we do, we know when we work with educators and you know, principals in school, we tell them that this is not an extracurricular activity. 00:21:16 This is part of the who you are, the essence of the school, the fabric of the school, it's how a teacher communicates another teacher, it's how a student communicates to a teacher, it's how the student voice and their self reflection just becomes a part of who they are and what we do at school. So that's where the mindset comes before the skill set and unfortunately, you know, teachers are overwhelmed, there's so much on their plate, it's like test scores and you have to get this done and this is what the state requirements and this is what common ground, this is so much right, but if we take a step back and just do this set up as I call, like the setup, I believe that all the skills of the Children to learn will have a different outcome and that's why mindset has to come before skill set. That makes so much sense. Thank you for explaining that in a little bit more depth. I'm curious to know you already gave us this beautiful six step process and you gave us some great depth in each of those, anything else you want people to know in terms of those brave actions that either leaders can take to support their teachers in doing this work or teachers can take to support their students or even I know you mentioned several times like parents and caregivers, you know, um what what recommendations would you give for for any of that? 00:22:33 I love that question. So it's interesting, but when we go to a school, the first thing we do is we have, we work with the staff itself to uncover their, why not? Like if you believed in yourself, right? And if you face your fear, what would be your, why not? You know, what actual practice do you need to do? Who and who is in your circle of confidence, Who can you get a glow and a girl from and it's, it's interesting like I have to have teachers cry. I've had teachers like hug each other or me or whoever the conference creator is because once the voice, you know, I love your, you know, you talk the voice the voice of not only the student, the teacher matters to write, Once a voice comes out and our inner strength and, and, and areas where growth come out, it just opens up our mind. So in our world of mindset we focused on about, on why not? Like what's your, why not? What is your, why not Lindsay? Like right now, you know, what is your, why not? That's something that you think you want to do, but something that you're holding back on. 00:23:35 Mm my why not? I think for this year has been trying to peek into the keynote industry of conferences. I've done a lot of presentations, I do a lot of workshops but that keynote thing just feels kind of far away. It feels like, you know, for people who are much more professionally known where like educational celebrities and so it has not been something that I have tried out yet. Exactly. And and something that we would do together with a group of people would be like, okay, that's your so my why not is like really real and true to me, like my why not? Is like why not play golf? Like I've been, it's been like seven years that I've been trying to think about learning golf. Like I'm not gonna, you know what should, but I'm, if both of us told each other like look, we don't have to be good at this. Like I don't have to be the greatest of my keynote right now. But if I practice it, I'm going to get better and with each keynote I'm going to get better. You might be like, why not? Like I request you and I plead to you say why not? 00:24:36 And apply to the next conference? Not as you know, podcast, but as a keynote speaker right? And for me I'm like, I'm gonna sign up for golf lessons and I'm going to go up to practice and the next time I meet you, whether online, offline or whatever, I'll be like, I actually know what to do want, you know? So at a golf course. So I think it's important that you know, so when we do work with educators, we first work through their process because one the Aha moment comes to like each child also has a why not? Or maybe several. Why not? And the moment we are able to figure out this, why not? We unlock unmet potential. I believe you have so much unmet potential as a keynote speaker that you know, you probably don't realize it, but I see it. But once you face your fears, you'll know that it's there for you. Hey, it's Lindsay just popping into this conversation to say today's free resources and there are tons are provided by the media, we can find posters, confidence cards, all sorts of stuff for instilling a confident mindset in our Children in her website. 00:25:40 You also have an opportunity to sign up for monthly freebie. So there's an ongoing, amazing nous that can happen. So go to www dot lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash blog slash 103 back to the conversation because I feel now, you know, so talking about circle of confidence, like in my mind as I'm talking to you, you know, I wanted to be part of my circle of confidence, but the way I look at circle of confidence, I on my own unilaterally can't say, oh lindsey is part of my circle of confidence after the podcast, I have to reach out to you and say, hey Lindsay was nice connecting with you, Do you think that you could be my rock or champion for this? And is it okay if I reach out to you and that's the other layer we teach Children is like, look just in your mind thinking that uncle john's going to help you is not enough. Have you talked to Uncle john, have you asked him, have you told him exactly? What are a few things you might reach out to him? Because when you need him, he knows what you're calling. So we make Children go through this whole exercise of actually reaching the rocking champion and asking them ahead of time because when you are in a tight spot, that's not the time you want to go over your story. 00:26:50 So I think having support systems, like just think about it if pre covid we had the support system, how different with the outcomes have been. So that's why I believe that, you know, having the circle of confidence and I said, yes, you know, I'm gonna lean on you. Perhaps you lean on me. Isn't that how we made this world a better place? Absolutely, yes. What a great idea. And such a valuable again, like to every age group, this is a valuable skill to be able to have awesome. So I imagine that there are many challenges that people name and I think you mentioned overwhelm a little bit. I don't know if you want to expand on that one. But I think any work that we do when we're trying to make the world a better place, we're trying to advance justice. We're trying to, you know, help you feel affirmed and confidence. What challenges have you seen and how have you seen people kind of face them address them? What does that look like? So I'm just gonna ask you a question for this. Are you asking me how they received the program or like can you dive a little deeper into this question? Oh yeah. 00:27:51 When when looking at kind of okay, so I want to teach for example, I want to teach confidence and I want my students to kind of follow these six steps. What is kind of the thing as teachers are kind of maybe listening for example to this podcast or an educator um leader is listening to the podcast and like yeah, I want to do this uh here the reason to hear the barriers to kind of doing this work in my school or something. Right? Like what is that typically for people And then how do you kind of help them through it or what recommendations would you give to someone who's feeling that particular barrier? Absolutely. The first and foremost is that adults love putting pressure on themselves right there. Like I have to be confident if I'm not confident in how can I need a child to be confident And that's what I alluded to earlier. You are all you need to be is a well meaning adult. Right? I love acronyms by the way, the whole program has acronyms right? Confident. My so called ACM actions a practice there called a O. P. You are a W. M. A. A well meaning adult if you are a well meaning adult, that's all I need because here's a step by step program. So please Dear teacher, Dear Principal, dear curriculum director, your personal confidence. 00:28:56 Side note side note my change after you start teaching the program, but that's not a prerequisite, right? Because first of all, you're gonna, you're gonna realize that the meaning of confidence is very different than what you thought. The second barrier that people feel is like I am so busy now. One more thing really, you really want me to do this too, and I think that, you know, once you understand it's a mindset shift, that's a forever change, like a forever change that has to be done once and every school year, the child is just learning deeper and deeper about a confident mindset, the onboarding is not so much and and you yourself, you know, Mr and mrs teacher are also going to feel the positive change, you'll have a more confident classroom, a more confident school and when you go home you might have a more confident family because your sort of, your interaction with your own Children will change. So that's, you know, that's why that's the second thing, like I'm so over so over what comic, how can I do? 00:29:58 The third thing is this is all well and good, thank you for sharing your six steps now, how do I teach it? Right, So being an educator, what we do is, you know, it's very simple if you follow the process, it's really a step by step process, like going to the gym, you know, you have a warm up and then you learn the exercise and then you repeat it and then you have a coach who tells you how to make it better and it can happen. So it's it's doable and it kind of goes back to the first thing, believe in yourself, have the courage, have the character and have the commitment and you can make a school wide change, a classroom changing and hopefully personal change. I love that, thank you so much. We have talked about a lot of things in this episode and so I'm sure that ideas are kind of swimming around in people's heads and I'm wondering what is that one thing as we start to kind of wrap up the episode that you would encourage people to start with? What's that kind of like one next thing that people can do, can I just say to absolutely one is mindset comes before skill set as an educator, as a parent, as a professional. 00:31:05 First have a confident mindset or a mindset that's positive and then try to learn a skill set. The second is No one is born confident, but anyone can become confident, I love that, I feel like that should be on the banner of every school entrance, right? Like it's just one of those phrases that are amazing, that's the dream that's going to come true, Excellent that and what's your, why not? Which I also let's unlock your unmet potential by discovering it. Why not? I love that. So, we kind of talked already about our kind of what we've been learning about lately and what are Why not is within the episode. So I'm thinking I'm gonna I'm gonna end with two questions. One, I'd love to have you unpack this idea of the movements if you want to say more about that, I know you've mentioned start a movement and then I was thinking we could end with a one word check in for both of us because we could use the practice that you shared. Um so the movement again. 00:32:06 So like everything in my life, you know, everything is very organic. I didn't set out to start a movement. You know, it came to me, I I really believe I set out to, you know, instill confidence and people instilled confidence in me about what I'm doing, right? It came full circle. So, the movement to me means is every human being, irrespective of age, irrespective of our social economic background, is irrespective of our of our race or whatever diversity we have understands that are only mindset should be is to becoming the most confident self that we can become and that we are in control of that, we are in control of our own confidence journey. If we have courage to get started the character to lead our actions and the commitment to stay on task. It can happen, anything can happen, and that's what I believe, and that's what this movement can instill across all stratas of society. 00:33:09 I love that so much in terms of locus of control, right? Like we can control that. Like there's so much in the world that needs to be changed and we should be working towards that changed collectively as schools and districts. Absolutely right. That I think of that as like the kind of the circle of confidence, like these are some things we can do to support people in their journeys and at the same time what can we control is is I think a very positive thing to be able to focus on when sometimes other things beyond our control, just feel so overwhelming. Here's what I can do. Like, I think that's really positive. Thank you. Thank you. It's really cool stories of a little child, you know, I'm your champion, Like helping a student that's three grades older, you know, ahead of them in school because once you become a champion age is not a bar, a little kid can help a big kid, right? That's that's the movement about like everybody is empowered, Everybody has a mindset, let's change the world and we can do it. Yeah, I love that. I think about all the things I've learned from my students, I'm sure I'm going to learn from my kiddo, right? Like there's so much we can learn from young people, but so would you like to engage in the one word check in to kind of close us out here. 00:34:18 And I mean what my one word check in would be grateful. Oh, that's good. I think mine is going to be inspired. I'm feeling very inspired by this conversation and I'm sure other people are going to want to continue to feel inspired. I'm sure they are feeling inspired as they listen. So where can people find you online and connect with you further? If you just google a confident mindset, it'll tell you all about our movement, what we do, how we do it and why mindset comes before skill set. Excellent. I will link to that in the show notes and on the blog post. Prasad. Thank you so much for being on this podcast today. You've invited me Lindsay. Thank you so much. If you're leaving this episode, wanting more, you're going to love my live coaching intensive curriculum bootcamp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We leave current events into course content and amplify student voices, which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. 00:35:21 It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit, which saves time and money if you can't wait to bring this to your staff. I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me, grab a spot on my calendar at www dot lindsey beth Lyons dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think Big Act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better podcast network, Better Today, Better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach Better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
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I love the idea of inviting listeners and readers to share an idea for an interdisciplinary unit idea. If you’re interested in sharing a topic, question, or resource you want to develop a unit around or coach teachers to develop a unit around, let me know in the comments below or reach out via email. This episode is a glimpse into my own brain’s process of taking a unit idea from a text I heard (and loved) to a full unit outline.
Why support the design of interdisciplinary units? From the research (and from practice), we know interdisciplinary units deepen understanding and nurtures students’ creative genius. Interdisciplinary unit questions and projects enable students to make connections and innovative applications relevant to their lives. This means learners are more engaged than in a siloed curriculum. Finally, it presents a wider range of options for students to advance justice in different areas and supports what Westheimer and Kahne call “justice-oriented citizenship.” Inspiration to Interdisciplinary Unit Outline: What is the process? Note: For context, I’m envisioning a Math, ELA, and Social Studies interdisciplinary unit, so I’ll brainstorm with those content areas in mind. Step 1: Inspiration. I was inspired by a poem by 2018 MacArthur Fellow, Natalie Diaz, called, “American Arithmetic.” Step 2: Brainstorm Initial Connections to Subjects. ELA: Literary choices and connections to lived experience and emotion. Social Studies: Histories and present day perspectives of indigenous people, the origins of the concept of race, and systems of governance and equitable representation. Math: Students’ experiences of math. Step 3: Essential Question. This is a year-long question that is relevant in all of a year’s units, even each lesson can connect to the EQ. Possible EQ: Is math more likely to mask injustice or make it visible? In a math class, we can visibility to statistics, geometry (e.g., gerrymandering), algebra (e.g., intersectionality). Step 4: Driving Question. This is a unit-specific question. In an interdisciplinary unit, this is used in all classes. Possible Question: What is the most powerful strategy to advance justice for indigenous peoples: math, language/poetry, or history? This enables students to create an argument for the subject area they most gravitate toward. Step 5: Project Idea. The project is the way students can answer/address the DQ. Possible idea: Performance poetry with math visuals in background. (I’m thinking something similar to how Hasan Minaj used visual graphs and images to do political commentary on his show, Patriot Act. Step 6: Lesson-Specific Activities or “Texts.” I aim for one “text” (resource) and one protocol (activity) per lesson. Possible text ideas: clips from Hasan Minaj’s show Patriot Act (use for project medium inspiration); Dr. John Littlewolf’s poem (he read this on episode 34 of the podcast); research on the longstanding injustice of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls; and Native-Land.Ca to have students research the land their community occupies. Final Tip Coach each teacher to develop a student-centered unit arc first. This will make it much easier to create new curriculum and build interdisciplinary units.
In lieu of a free resource, I’m inviting you to share a topic, resource, or question that you want to think through. Share your idea or question in the comments below. I might feature it on an episode (or invite you on, if that’s your jam!) And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 104 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 Educational justice coach, lindsey Lyons and here on the time for Teacher ship podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nursing out about co creating curriculum students, I made this show for you. Here we go. Welcome to episode 102 of the time for teacher ship podcast. I am so excited for today's episode. I have been binge listening as I do when I find a new podcast that I absolutely love to brave new teaching which does some similar things in the sense of curriculum design and inspiring teachers to design new units. So some of the episodes have been around a specific unit idea or brainstorming a specific question for a unit to kind of framing unit and I was like, this sounds amazing. 00:01:07 I'm going to just do this with some episodes. Ultimately, I would love to be able to invite listeners to share a unit that you as an individual teacher if you're a teacher or if you're a coach or administrator or curriculum lead, just want some practice getting into the coaching space to be able to invite one of your teachers to share or share an idea that you might have that you want, might want to use as an example for teachers to kind of coach them through this process that you'll be able to share. It is my hope via email or something. Here's the question or topic or resource that I'm interested in developing a unit around or coaching a teacher to develop a unit around, do an episode on this or bring me on and coach me through it. So that is kind of my hope moving forward for our case study type of solo shows or maybe with a guest, we will get to that later. But for now know that we are going to dive into a unit that I have kind of plumbed my notes apps, the depths of my notes up for resources that over the last few years I've collected and said, hey, it would be cool to develop a unit around this, Wonder what that would be. 00:02:12 I hope someone does this and I'm just going to game out what that might be for a resource that I found. So get excited for this episode. Here we go, All right, as I said in our lengthy opening here, this episode is going to be around the design of a unit that is based off of a resource that I came across and thought, hey, this would be a super cool unit for someone to do and I'm just gonna put it out there in this episode, but anyone can kind of take this and run with it add to it. I am just kind of brainstorming, whatever is going on in my head in this moment kind of live, so to speak on the podcast as I think about and really highlight the process of what the unit creation like mindset questions, all this stuff in terms of process are when we create these new justice energy units. So here we go. This will be a bit of a different one. I want to frame the episode before I even get into the logistics and the content specifically. Like why are we talking about this particular thing? So I for context, I'm going to be brainstorming what could be a Math L. 00:03:19 A. Social studies interdisciplinary unit. You could use any of the two of those content areas. I think math in L. A. Was the first thing I thought. But I think any of these really clearly works and you can also bring in science too. I just hadn't brainstorm that far. But why is this important we know from the research and from just tangible experience with students. If anyone has tried interdisciplinary units before this really deepens students understanding and it nurtures creative genius and students, when we ask students to do innovative things, innovative projects, creation based projects that really ask them to synthesize a multitude of content areas. This is gold. This really nurtures that creativity that working with things in new ways. It is far beyond regurgitation or memorization of information and we reduce the silos that are all too common in education where we say this is the subject area that stays here, this is this subject area that stays here. We get students to weave it all together and really make meaning of it in a way that applies to their lives that advances justice, that helps them be better learners and what Westheimer and king called justice oriented citizens. 00:04:31 When we think about that concept of citizenship and citizenship, in a broad sense of people who reside here in participating communities here, not in illegal, they have documentation and citizenship status, but that idea of a just oriented citizen, one who advances justice and participates in communities to ensure justice for everyone. That's what ultimately I think education is all about and what we're striving for here and why we create Justice center units, interdisciplinary units with the goal of advancing justice really do this well. And while we're focusing on a driving question as the way we drive engagement around this idea of advancing justice and intersectional unit planning is critical because if that unit, I've talked about this before, if that unit doesn't have a driving question that is engaging, it compels students to answer, we are not going to have a very successful unit, it might engage students at the lesson level for occasional lessons, but that through line has to be present and has to be compelling. 00:05:32 That driving question really makes or breaks the unit. So here we go as we get into this again. The context is potentially a math L. A. Social studies, interdisciplinary unit. And the inspiration for this unit comes from a poem that is features featured on lit hub. It's called american arithmetic. It's a poem from Natalie Diaz And Natalie Diaz was actually named a 2018 MacArthur fellow as well. And this is the poem. I will read it for you and I'll also link to it in the notes. Native Americans make up less than 1% of the population of America. 0.8% of 100%. Oh, mine, efficient country. I do not remember the days before America. I do not remember the days when we were all here. Police kill native americans more than any other race. Race. It's a funny word. Race implies someone will win implies I have as good a chance of winning as we all know who wins a race that isn't a race. 00:06:43 Native Americans make up 1.9% of all police killings higher than any race and we exist as.8% of all Americans. Sometimes race means run. I'm not good at math. Can you blame me? I've had an american education. We are Americans and we are less than 1% of Americans. We do a better job of dying by police than we do existing when we are dying. Who should we call the police or our senator At the National Museum of the American Indian 68% of the collection is from the us. I'm doing my best not to become a museum of myself. I'm doing my best to breathe in and out. I am begging. Let me be lonely but not invisible In an American city of 100 people. I native American less than one less than whole. I am less than myself. Only a fraction of a body let's say I am only a hand. And when I slip it beneath the shirt of my lover, I disappear completely. So that's the poem that I came across. 00:07:51 I loved. There's so much in here. I think this could be the core text of a unit. There is depth of emotion. It talks very specifically about the lived experience. It centers the lived experience of this indigenous author. There's so much to dive into here. You could also unpack the histories and lived experiences and math in linguistic choices. Right? So again, we're looking at all of the content areas, math, ela or literacy, social studies or history. That you could pull together to dive into. What is this author trying to tell us What is this author's lived experience? What is the emotionality of that lived experience. And then looking at pieces like I'm just going to name some of the things that that popped out to me. We have this idea of math running through, right. The title even american arithmetic runs through. So there's this like less than 1% as this math number or stat that the author returns to again and again. 00:09:04 But there's also this concept of I'm not good at math. Can you blame me? I've had an american education, right? Those two lines are powerful and that we can have students dig into that concept of how does math and make invisible, not just from a stats perspective in how we report math and how we use math but also making students and learners feel invisible in that math is not for them because we often historically have taught it in this one way. There's so much in here. The historical or social studies ties to um you know like policing. And then also do I call my senator right? Like so there's also this idea of who is representing me and what does that representation look like and what are historically and currently what has been done by the american government on behalf of indigenous folks right? There's so much in here. The concept of race itself. You pull in attacks like stamp from the beginning. Um there's that that middle school version right? 00:10:06 That you can pull in um for for kind of a youth friendly piece from doctor in Mexico City. So there's so much that on an inspiration level right? Like step one be inspired by something that is out there. A resource that you come across. That inspiration then can lead you down this process of developing the unit around the inspiration. So let your brain kind of mind map around that core text or that key resource. It sometimes might be a key question that you heard posed by someone on the news or in conversation at a dinner party or whatever. But whatever it is, you want to kind of go all the different directions with your brain first and then I'll tell you the process, I'll walk through it right now that that might look like and you might want to coach teachers around to get to the end goal of a clear unit where we have a lesson by lesson plan. We have a driving question that frames the entire unit and is the through line throughout and we have a project where students are addressing that question in a creative way. So we have the poem, The next question that we want to ask is what kind of essential question. 00:11:13 This is a question to me. Essential questions. And I've talked about this many times before. So definitely go back and listen to some other episodes on essential Question, crafting an essential question, the curriculum planning series. This is a really good place to go. There's an episode on that. But essential questions to me are the ones that frame an entire year. So, these are things that at any point typically in a lesson throughout the year, you can tie back to one of these essential questions because they're always relevant when we think of a unit framing question, we think of a driving question and that's contextualized a bit further. So an essential question that this ties to, let's say I'm a math teacher, but my math essential question for the year, one of maybe one or two could be, is math more likely to mask injustice or make it more visible. Right? So this idea of math making people and experiences and injustices visible or masking that making invisible is something that I might want to have students grapple with every time they interact with the math, they have this question in their head, right? 00:12:17 Every single day, every single math problem or situation where using math to explain Is the way that I'm using math or the way that this person is framing math in a documentary, right? We might watch a movie like 13th, for example, is that math that they're using the graphs, the way that the math is displayed or discussed. Is that masking injustice or is it unmasking injustices it? Making injustice more visible in a way that historically has been made invisible. Right? And so how is Matthews historically and how is it used in this piece? That's just an example of a lesson that in the course of a year it could happen. So I'm thinking about this essential question of this idea of math making justice visible or invisible being used as a tool to do either one of those things and I can use this for a lot of math classes. Right? At the high school level. There's often talk about, oh well if I taught statistics would be so easy to teach about justice. Okay well sure. Statistics. But also you can do things like this in other specific subject areas. 00:13:20 For example geometry you could talk about math and gerrymandering and how do people get represented or not represented? How is justice advanced or halted by the way that we use math to give people access to voting, right? We can use it in something like algebra. So looking at the way that we use math in looking at the wage gap. And do we make the intersectional nature of the gender, wage gap visible or invisible? Right? So do we look at the intersection of gender and race, gender and ability, gender and sexual orientation, gender and immigration status. Right? So often we talk about these concepts. How can we use algebra to make them more visible rather than less visible or more monolithic in the way that we're using that math. I think that's essential question works really well for a variety of math spaces now, for our unit. Specifically we want a driving question that makes a little bit more context specific. 00:14:26 If we're using this text again, american arithmetic as the framing for unit either in a math class or an intersectional unit right? Where we're pulling in things like L. A. And social studies. So totally just brainstorming here. But it could be something like what's the most powerful strategy to advance justice for indigenous peoples? Maybe that's your driving question. So then you could have kind of like a colon and then you could say is it math? Is it history or is it language or poetry even more specifically for the L. A. Lens. So you can almost frame like these three subject areas, Math L. A. And history as kind of which tool is more or which you know, way of thinking or approaching a problem is more valuable, right? In terms of advancing justice? Is it math? Is it language of poetry? Is it history? What is the most powerful information or kind of tool that is given to us through this content area to be able to advance justice. 00:15:35 And so I love that because it kind of compels students answer in the sense that typically there are people who are more interested in math or more inclined to write or perform, right? So that language or poetry aspect. And then there's other folks who are really interested in factual history research uncovering narratives kind of stuff. So you have all of these students who have these natural inclinations for these different subject areas and you kind of not pit them against one another in this like competitive sense. But this idea of like OK justify your preference for this discipline or subject area in how it and your positioning this in the context of how it advances justice, how it enables us to advance justice, not just which subject is the best and why, Right? But we're truly contextualizing it in the sense of like, what are we here to do? We're here to learn yes. But in the concept of justice oriented citizens from Westheimer and Kane, right, that's the purpose. 00:16:39 We are advancing justice and we're learning how to do that here and learning how to take all the information and skills. We're learning in these different subject areas and apply them in a way that does that. So, that could be a cool question that compels students to respond based on their personal kind of preferences or just the way the brain works. Right? I am really gravitating towards this subject area. So that is the subject area, I wanna explore more, and ultimately they can choose an answer, do a whole project on that answer, do an amazing job and then see the other students final projects and answers and then be swayed by those students actually change their mind after they've completed the summit of assessment, which is totally fine and cool. Right, So, I love this. I think there's definitely room for improvement and you may come up with ones that are even better. So this is just what's in my brain at the moment. Please feel free to leave comments on the blog post, to email me and tell me all the better driving questions you've come up with. I would love to hear them and I think the next step here. So just for a recap because we've talked a lot, we have the inspiration which was the poem american arithmetic. 00:17:40 We have the brainstorm of an essential question, something that lasts the whole year. Then we have the driving question that is specific to that unit of study. And then we now come to the point where we ask how well students do this. How will they show us or demonstrate their learning, their content knowledge, their skills that they're developing. I always try to have the project answer the driving question. So the question is more of a format one. What will this look like? How will they present or or share their answer or response to the driving question. So you could have them do. I think this would be super cool. I think it's always great to open it up to students. But if you want to kind of give a goal and then they can kind of deviate your personalize from there. You can or if you want it completely open ended, you can. But one thing I think would be super cool again based on my bias of how I take in information. What I think is interesting would be to do some sort of like performance, poetry piece with like math visuals in the background or like pictures or photographic evidence of like the various history stuff kind of like uh manages Patriot Act that was on netflix. 00:18:57 So that could be kind of like something that you watch as a specific lesson level idea of resource that you have students explore. Like how does he use all of these really powerful like math graphs and statistics and visuals of math to make his point in a comedic way? Right. So he does comedy. But he uses and leverages all of these really cool interesting visuals to be able to make his point. How might we do that in the sense of, you know, telling more stories using poetry, all this stuff. So I'm envisioning that students would actually come together as a group and we have like a math oriented person, a history oriented person and an L. A oriented person. And they're kind of like working as a group of three for example, each within their own kind of affinities and working together to share information and resources and then kind of specializing in the writing of the poetry with of course feedback and edits done as a group, the mathematical or graphical representations of the data they have uncovered and the deep dive into the primary sources, the, you know, evidence historically to bring that to life. 00:20:12 So we each kind of gravitate to our own places in the summit of project throughout the lesson or throughout the unit. Excuse me, we would want students doing all of these skills and practicing all these skills and of course they're working together. But I think it's also okay if students answer to this driving question right? The most powerful strategy is X to do the X right to focus on the X in terms of their final project. So math is the best strategy for advancing justice for indigenous people. And here is all of these math visuals that are going to do that. My group members are going to do the other pieces and together we're gonna have an amazing project. So no matter what the answer actually is to the viewer or listener or audience member as they watch our project or hear our project, we have covered all of our bases to be great. We've we've actually bridged all of these approaches. So I think that would be very cool. Is that ultimately as units are like, oh, the combo, right? The combination of math and language and poetry and history, that's what's most powerful is leveraging all of these pieces. 00:21:15 So it's really cool. I think at the end of this unit to have space for students to reflect and kind of come to that consensus or maybe not, maybe they choose an answer. They don't have to have one right answer. But I think it'd be cool to make space for that reflection after all of the students have presented or shared their project in some way and the whole class has kind of been able to see it and check it out and then make sense of it and say yes, my answer has changed or no, it has not. So other things that I might consider in terms of just a quick brainstorm of activities or resources to use in a unit like this. Dr john Little Wolf is an indigenous scholar and poet who is on our podcast. You can actually pull the episode and use his poetry that he reads aloud on there. I would do something like that to give more experiences lived experiences of indigenous folks and get a poetry sample at the same time. So you're kind of looking at the lived experience piece and you're also looking at poetry as a way to talk about lived experience to kind of collect some of those. 00:22:19 I would also, in terms of the history and current events, ties look at missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and what is going on there in terms of the media, the under representation in the media of just this huge issue that is not being publicized nearly enough. And what's going on there and how is math being used to make this either more visible or less visible in different circles and spaces also taking a look at if we're if we're looking at the idea of language more broadly and not just focusing on poetry, you could think about other spaces where language is used or not used. So for example using native dash land dot c a as a website to explore the indigenous lands that we currently occupy, What would it look like to use or how beneficial would it be in advancing justice? It may, it may not right. That's something you can discuss as a group to, to talk about amongst themselves with other classes, with adults and people in the community, with people outside of the community. 00:23:24 What would it look like to use? The language of the land that we occupy, right? The native nations, right? The indigenous nations that we currently occupy as opposed to or in conjunction with what that community, city state, whatever is currently called, right? What are the native lands that were occupying in that space with that type of language shift, advanced justice right into what's a grade. So there's so many things here um, as a kind of tip. Additionally, when we're designing units at any point, I think it's also beneficial to have a student centered unit arc in place first before you actually get into the content of the unit. Before you even get to that piece of like project inspiration and going to the essential question and then the driving question and then the project and then the lesson level activities just to summarize what those steps were. I think it's really great to have a student center unit in place and to do the curriculum building from there. You already have all of these student centered activities where they're going to be grappling with all of these resources as you're free resource for the episode. 00:24:33 I'm actually going to invite you. It's going to be an invitation as opposed to a google doc. It's going to be an invitation to submit a topic resource or question that you want help with regarding creating a justice centered unit or coaching someone around the creation of a justice centered unit. And I will either feature it on an episode where I'll do something like this and kind of brainstorm and pose some questions around this and talk about the process. Or I will invite you on the podcast and we'll have a conversation and we'll coach through it together. So with that, send me an email. If you're interested in that invitation and responding to the invitation, you have a topic resource or question you want to design around and I will talk to you next week if you're leaving this episode, wanting more, you're going to love my live coaching intensive curriculum bootcamp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We leave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. 00:25:37 It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money if you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me, grab a spot on my calendar at www dot lindsey beth Lyons dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach, Better podcast network, better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
Want to continue learning more about curriculum development and implementation? Watch this video on how to develop district curriculum that challenges, affirms, and inspires:
2/6/2023 101. Teaching History for Justice with Dr. Kaylene Stevens and Dr. Christopher MartellRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
Former social studies teachers, current university professors, and co-authors of the book "Teaching History for Justice: Centering Activism in Students' Study of the Past,” Dr. Kaylene Stevens and Dr. Christopher Martell talk about how and why we need to teach justice, activism, and movement building in schools. They jump right into the conversation by giving credit to all of the teachers they’ve researched and learned with. I absolutely loved their book, so it’s no surprise I also loved this conversation.
The Big Dream The values of our country will change if we teach for justice! Survey data shows that the majority of people in power in the United States think everything’s okay (i.e., race, gender, and class-based oppression are not issues.) Most teachers are still white despite most students being students of color, so there’s hope that white teachers can be activists and antiracists. Alignment to the 4 Stages: Mindset, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Content Mindset is foundational for all of the other stages. Each of the stages are like buckets. The book is intended to be practical, offering a “how” to teach for justice, which is often overlooked in academia. Kaylene encouraged educators to think deeply about the content addressing justice and joy. Chris pointed out these 4 buckets can be done in an anti-oppressive way or an oppressive way. So, educators can be self-reflective and thoughtful about our positionalities. Their framework also supports a problem-solving pedagogy (Freire). Given oppressive laws and book-banning, it’s important to know the context in which you work and identify allies to do this work collectively. We can start local! We want to teach our students to be activists, but we don’t necessarily need to tell them what to care about. It’s about teaching students to use the levers of democracy to make changes. Teachers can be renegades (Agarwal-Rangnath) or subversives depending on the context and limitations of your state’s legislation. Teaching is a political act. It doesn’t need to be partisan. We do this for the students! Action Steps Step 1: Communicate with families and caretakers. If families are concerned, listen to those individuals. After a conversation, families often realize Step 2: Create or join a community of educators/learners. Reach out to others who are doing this work. Listen to BIPOC teachers. Pick one text a year on a topic that you don’t know a lot about. Get students out in the community (e.g., field trips, invite community members into class as guests, family/community interviews). Research shows one of the biggest ways to combat “-isms” is exposure. Step 3: Trust students. Students can use the tools of doing historian work to make the world a better place. We should try to get schools to look more like life than machines. We need to be comfortable with students wanting to change our society’s systems. We can invite debate-oriented pedagogy and give students a chance to bring their own opinions into the class. One Step (or Two) to Get Started Figure out where you are and go from there. Read one of the recommended books below! Think about the complexity of our social identities (and the intersectionality of these identities) as we plan curriculum and do this work. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guests on the following platforms: Dr. Kaylene Stevens:
Dr. Christopher Martell:
Referenced Links and Recommended Readings: Teaching History for Justice book Racial Literacies and Social Studies book Critical Race Theory and Social Studies Futures book Intersectionality Matters podcast Visions of Education podcast episode with Dr. Kaylene Stevens Bettina Love website To help you implement teaching for justice, I’m sharing my _____ with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 101 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript here. Quotes:
Want to continue learning more about teaching history for justice? Watch this video on culturally responsive and sustaining education:
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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
November 2024
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