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Teaching is demanding, and questions arise throughout the day, every day. Improving teaching practice is best with a thinking partner—which might be you—but you can’t be in every teacher’s class all the time. So, how can you offer instructional coaching when your teachers need it (without overworking yourself)? One strategy is to set up an asynchronous coaching option.
Why? A meta-analysis found that instructional coaching had a greater impact on instruction than many interventions including teacher pre-service training, merit-based pay, general professional development, and extended learning time. They found instructional coaching has a greater impact on student achievement than “the degree to which teachers improve their ability to raise student achievement during the first five to ten years of their careers.” While resources can be a constraint to providing teachers with an instructional coach, the authors suggest virtual coaching as an option, given the “lack of any statistically significant differences in effect sizes between in-person and virtual coaching,” (Kraft, Blazar, & Hogan, 2018). How might I set this up? Step 1: Pick a platform. Slack is the one my co-coach Kara and I like and chose for our EduBoost coaching service, but teachers may be more familiar with a platform your school uses such as Microsoft Teams or Google Chat/Google Classroom. Consider accessibility and modality features such as the ability to type a message or leave a voice note. You may also consider whether the ability for teachers to access the platform via an app on their phone is important or relevant for your community. Step 2: Establish expectations. What can teachers expect from you with regard to response time? (e.g., You will get a response within 24 hours or by the end of the school day.) What types of questions are best for asynchronous coaching? Perhaps feedback on a worksheet they developed or a suggestion for a “text” to use in an upcoming lesson are great for this platform, but you would rather do a live class visit for a teacher working on improving their student-led discussions. Step 3: Build an FAQ space. You might create a simple Google Doc with common questions or categories of questions and your response(s) to those questions. If teachers look at the FAQ first, this will save you time answering the same questions and give the teacher an answer faster. If the teacher asks you a question that’s on the FAQ doc, you save time by copy and pasting your response. Step 4: Decide if you want to offer “leveled up” options. I love creating Loom videos for teachers to give in-depth feedback. Is this something you’d want to offer to teachers? Consider whether it would be fun for you and how much time it would take you (versus hopping on a Zoom call or visiting the teacher in person). Hopping on a quick Zoom call (e.g., 5-10 minutes) may also be an option you want to offer. Perhaps you only offer this during pre-determined “office hours.” Or you may want to stick to the messaging format. Step 5: Do a small pilot. Invite a handful of teachers who are really excited about this idea. Test what works and doesn’t, getting feedback from teacher participants. Also evaluate your capacity and adjust any boundaries or promises for response time that may not be feasible. Final Tip If you have a district-wide coach traveling to multiple schools, in addition to setting up an asynchronous coaching option, you may also consider recommending the coach meet with teachers virtually to reduce travel time and the associated stresses of travel as well as increase professional learning time for teachers. To help you implement effective coaching structures in your community, I’m sharing my Coaching Call Template with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 156 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 Educational justice coach, Lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Welcome to episode 156 of the time for teachers podcast. In this episode, we're talking about setting up alternative ways for you to coach the teachers, instructional coaches, whoever it is that you are responsible for as an instructional leader. So specifically, we're going to dive into a strategy around setting up a synchronous coaching so that teachers can have professional learning really on demand. 00:01:04 Given that your resources are so limited. What does that look like for you to be able to provide the support to them without necessarily meeting them in person and giving responses to them live. So let's dive into the episode. So we all know teaching is super demanding, any sort of educational leadership is super demanding and everyone is gonna benefit from a coach. Right? There are so many questions that arise throughout our day, every single day, I can think of 100 questions even as an entrepreneur in this space now that I want to ask people and would love to just be able to send that question quickly to someone and get a response pretty immediately, right. However, we just don't have the resources to be able to necessarily provide that for every single teacher who we're responsible for, right, improving teaching practice and improving instructional leadership practice is really best with a thinking partner, right? We know this to be true, but literally being in each teacher's class all the time is just not possible. 00:02:05 I work with many instructional coaches who work district wide across several schools and the majority of their day is actually spent commuting, finding parking, being able to just get to the place where we can be in the teacher's classroom to provide the support in person vastly reduces the amount of teachers and the degree of support that that coach can then provide. Right, if that's the scenario, even within a building, just walking to that teacher's classroom, setting up a time that works for you both. Right. There's a very resource intensive process that is kind of our default here. So the question is, how do we offer instructional coaching or instructional leadership when your teachers or staff members need it without actually overworking yourself or under providing to those teachers one strategy. And this again is just one, but I'd love to add it to your repertoire is to set up an asynchronous coaching option. So I've definitely had those moments where I've been preparing for a class as a teacher. 00:03:08 I want someone to talk through my idea with me. And I think, you know, what about this resource? I want a resource that accomplishes X, right? Is there another way to approach this? Does this discussion question actually excite and energize people or is it just cool in my head? But it's gonna lead to crickets and the discussion, right? Whatever it is, it might be after school hours, it might be during the day, but all the teachers next door are busy. I don't have an instructional coach assigned to me. I don't wanna bother anyone. Right. There's all sorts of stuff wrapped up in that scenario. So we know there is a need, I think we've all probably been there. Now, the the question first is why do we wanna make sure that we are investing time and energy into developing a solution for this instructional coaching problem? Like, yeah, instructional coaching is great, but like is this really where I wanna spend my time and energy setting up something new to be able to serve teachers in this way or is my time and energy better spent somewhere else. So I wanna quickly share the research with you. 00:04:12 So a meta analysis which is basically a study that studies all the other studies out there on this topic found that instructional coaching had a greater impact on instruction than many interventions including teacher Preser training, merit based pay, general professional development and extended learning time for students. They found instructional coaching has a greater impact on student achievement than quote, the degree to which teachers improve their ability to raise student achievement during the 1st 5 to 10 years of their careers. End quote. Wow. 5 to 10 years of teachers learning and adapting and figuring out how to teach instructional coaching has a greater impact on student achievement than that. That is nuts. To me, this meta analysis also found that while resources can be a constraint to providing teachers with an instructional coach, they have reviewed the research and found that a, a high quality suggestion really is virtual coaching as an option. Given the quote, lack of any statistically significant differences in effect sizes between in person and virtual coaching. 00:05:21 End quote. We'll link to that actual meta analysis study on our blog post. So that's Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 56, if you want to check that out in more detail. But this is pretty astounding to me. So there's no difference between getting on zoom and coaching someone virtually versus being in their classroom or sitting with them in person. There is such intense student achievement gains from having an instructional coach that it is the equivalent of if not more than what a teacher is capable of doing and improving for students over the 1st 5 to 10 years of their career in education. Wow. Like there is such a valuable need and I think rationale for investing the time and resources into figuring out how to get every teacher an instructional coach or access to some kind of instructional coaching opportunity. And so because we don't have probably all of the monetary reasons and certainly not all of the time resources that you yourself can provide or if you have instructional coaches on your staff, they provide all of the teachers. 00:06:28 Let's think of how to optimize this. How could we set up an asynchronous coaching platform for on demand professional learning? So certainly one of the things that you might want to do before we even, I, I wanna say this quickly before we even get to this next piece is you could in that scenario, I shared earlier where you have an instructional coach working in multiple schools throughout the district. They're spending a lot of time literally commuting, just try to have them hop on zoom instead. So you still have the kind of face to face quality. You still have the back and forth, you can still have a screen share up. There's a lot of similarities than sitting next to a person. Right. But you're optimizing that coaches time to be able to serve more folks or just to be like more resourced themselves. So they're not overworked and then burning out and then quitting the profession. So that I think is kind of like step one. That's a really easy, easier maybe in transition than setting up something completely new. You're just kind of changing where it happens. But the other thing I would recommend after that, you still may have an unmet need. 00:07:35 You still may have a ton of teachers that don't have that service or their schedules conflict with when you or the instructional leader who is responsible for coaching them can actually meet with them, for example. So let's talk about how to set up the asynchronous coaching option. First thing I want you to do is pick a platform. Now slack is the one that my co coach, Kara and I like and we chose that for our edgy boost coaching service. But teachers may be more familiar with a platform that your specific school or district uses a lot of schools, use something like Microsoft teams or the Google suite of apps. So it might be that you have a kind of Google classroom classroom almost, right that all of the coaching exists in or you kind of house shared resources on it. And I'll get to that in just a minute and the direct message feature within Google classroom is how you're gonna communicate. Like the one on one questions or it could be that like, ok, everyone has a Gmail account. We're gonna use Google Chat or G Chat, whatever you call it. And that kind of immediate messaging the fact that it's gonna ping me on my computer. 00:08:39 Like that's what we want because we're all on laptops anyways, I'm not positive about the Google Chat feature on a phone. But I think it's the same because one of the things I would say too is to consider accessibility and modality features. Like, do you want teachers to be able to access the platform via an app on their phone or just have their laptop open? So I think different school and district communities have different rules around this. Like if you have a rule where no teacher can have their phone out during the school day, you probably don't need or maybe even want something that has a specific app on the phone. You just want it to be laptop based or maybe you're like, well, they can't have it in the school day, but most of my teachers want the support or do their planning after school. And if they're in the grocery line, they're not going to have their laptop out and they have five minutes to write me a quick question. Absolutely. Fine. So consider that it may be something where you want an app to be available it may not matter, you may just want a laptop based thing. 00:09:42 Whatever you think the other piece of accessibility and modality features I would consider is the ability to share a message in multiple ways. For example, type a message or leave a voice note, be able to link to a Google doc or other documentation that you want the the person to review, right? So like here's the thing I want to share with my coach and get feedback. I need to be able to link that embedded in the message. So just make sure we have some different features in whatever form of communication or platform that you're using. That teachers are not going to find it, unable to do the things they wanna do. I know personally if I have an idea. Well, I am like running, for example, I might want to just share it in a voice note like I'm gonna take a quick stop or I'll just keep running and share it depending on my relationship with my coach and whoever's receiving the message, I can just voice note it. I am not going to pause when I run type out this whole like correctly punctuated message and then restart. 00:10:43 Like that's just not how I would want to leave a message. Other people are like, I would never want to leave a voice. No ever. I need the ability to. So just kind of consider your audience and consider all the ways that you would want to provide options to share questions. Then I think the next step is to establish expectations. So what can teachers expect from you with regard to your response time to them or to the instructional coaches, response time to them? For example, you might say, you know what, you're gonna get a response within 24 hours or by the end of the school day or within kind of like one full school day cycle, right? So if you email me at or message me on whatever platform at three pm and our school gets out at four, I might not respond to you by four, but I'll respond to you by three pm the next day, the next school day perhaps, right? So if you say the next day and then it's like they send you that message at three pm on a Friday, are you going to respond by three pm on Saturday or are you responding by three pm next Monday? Because that's when school opens again. So kind of consider the expectations you want to set staff wide or if you are thinking about from the perspective of how your availability, how often you want to be available in your own. 00:12:00 Well, being, that's what I would kind of think about. So you want to balance the teachers need to get a quick response with your ability to kind of juggle all of this. You want to consider, you know, how many questions? Are they going to be asking? What types of questions are there certain questions that are really best for this kind of asynchronous coaching platform? Perhaps something like feedback on a worksheet that developed, you can have them send that to you and you can record a loom video and link that back or a voice note or maybe they're looking for a suggested text that they want to use in an upcoming lesson And they're like, OK, I wanna teach on this topic. Is there any sort of resource or quote text? Right? Could be like a song. I use text very liberally. But like, what would you suggest? I use as something that we can unpack as the class in this lesson on this topic. That might be great for this type of platform. But perhaps if a teacher is working on improving their student led discussions, and this is really kind of a question about like, what should I do differently that might require a live class visit? So kind of think about the types of questions that are best for the platform and also kind of the number and depth of response that are gonna be required. 00:13:07 And you're kind of guessing when you first of course, start this off. But think about the capacity that you have for answering all of those questions. If you have 10 teachers who are going to ask you 10 questions every day and they're all requiring a lengthy response or a loom video where they're screen sharing and you're kind of giving feedback on a worksheet that they shared with you. Like that's pretty intense. It's going to take a lot of time versus hey, off the top of your head. What do you think of this question for my discussion tomorrow? Is it engaging? Boom, you could give your two cents on that probably within a minute. So just kind of think about those expectations you want to establish next. I would build a frequently asked questions space. So again, we're thinking about your capacity to be able to field all these questions. And I think it's a pretty good guess that you're gonna have some common questions or questions that fall into particular categories where if you just created something like a simple Google Doc with all of those questions and your typical responses to those questions, they can go there first. 00:14:16 If you want to kind of recommend that practice, that'll save you time answering the question at all and get the teacher an answer even faster. Or if the teacher kind of skips over that you don't want to make it part of your practice. If the teacher asks you that question anyways and you know, it's on the fa Q doc, you can just save yourself some time by copying and pasting your response from that FA Q doc. So either way it's gonna save you a bit of time and it may even get the teacher their question answered faster. I think the next thing you'd want to do and I kind of mentioned this a little bit earlier, but there's a lot that you could possibly do within the asynchronous coaching kind of landscape. And so I think of this kind of as a leveled up series of options that you wait, you might say, hey, this actually is great. I wanna offer this or you might say if I turn down this road and I offer these things, I'm gonna get so overwhelmed with requests for these specific styles of kind of leveled up coaching options that I am not gonna be able to sustain this anymore and it's just not even worth it to start. So two ideas that I'm thinking right now, one loom videos, I absolutely love creating loom videos for teachers. 00:15:26 When I want to give in depth feedback. There's the screen share. I can share my face if I want to or not. I can have that voice over. I can highlight or change things in the moment. It might be something that you wanna offer your teachers. It might not, but consider a couple things. Will it be fun for you? Are you going to actually enjoy this platform? And how much time is it actually gonna take you? Right. Versus just waiting until the next meeting that you have scheduled with the teacher. If you're still doing those kinds of meetings or hopping on a zoom call, visiting the teacher in person and kind of making a separate meeting out of this. It may save you a ton of time. I think it usually will. But if you're not a tech person or you just absolutely hate this platform or you're like, you know what, I'm gonna limit it. I'm gonna say I'm gonna take one kind of question that requires a loom video response per month, per week, whatever it is like, go ahead and, and put that into your expectations document or the communication that you're gonna have with that teacher about. What kinds of questions can you send me? And what kinds of responses can you expect from me? The other option? I was thinking of was kind of a leveled up thing is hopping on a quick zoom call once in a while. 00:16:35 There is a question that's just like, you know, it's gonna take maybe five minutes, 10 minutes tops to answer. It's pretty short. It doesn't require a full visit or meeting with the teacher, but it's not gonna be as efficient to kind of go back and forth in the asynchronous venue. We need to just kind of have a quick back and forth live. So maybe that you wanna offer that like, OK, and again, in your expectations, five minute zoom call on demand when you need it, ping me and message me whatever. Tell me you want this five minute zoom call option and maybe you only have, you know, 11 per month or two per semester or whatever that you kind of put again in your expectations. But then you, you know, also let them know any other expectations affiliated with that. For example, you might only offer it during predetermined quote, office hours, right. If you have your typical office hours where you could kind of drop in and get support here, great. Otherwise I might be in a class, right? You can't always expect the instructional leader to be available for a five minute zoom call. 00:17:40 So it also may be an expectation that's like you can ask for this. I'm gonna tell you yes or no because then whether I can but like that could also be a natural evolution from OK, we're going back and forth. You asked me a question, I sent you an answer. There's some confusion, you know what I can make the call in that moment as the instructional leader that I'm going to say, hey, if you're free now, let's just hop on this call. And again, I think you also wanna consider platform wise from step number one. Do you have a platform that enables you to get on a call quickly? So if you have the Google speed of apps, you can use something like Google meets. Do you have Zoom integration? If you're using something like Slack, you have an ability to huddle, right? And do the the kind of slack based video chat that may also be a consideration that you have or you might say, you know what I never want to do that. The whole point of this is asynchronous. If they want a full meeting with me live, they can book that on my calendar, like using a calendar link or some other sort of system that I have, right? Or a typical coaching call. Totally fine. And then the last thing I would say, we've talked a lot about like you kind of got a guess at the beginning of this launch and you might not know yet and you might learn as you go. 00:18:52 So I recommend doing a small pilot and just naming is that looking for a handful of teachers who are really excited about this idea. I'd love for you to help me test what works, what doesn't I want you to give me some feedback and then that will also help you evaluate your capacity and then you can adjust those expectations or boundaries, promises, whatever you give them for what kinds of responses and the time that it will take you to respond if your initial guess was not as feasible. So I do think there is an opportunity for again those early adopters, those really excited teachers who are like, yeah, I've been waiting for something like this my whole life. I'm ready, right? Do something like that with them. OK. So that is all we have for today, set up your asynchronous coaching platforms. Let me know how it goes. I am so excited for you to just free up some more of your time and serve more teachers now to help you implement effective coaching structures in your community. I am sharing a related resource which is my free coaching call template. 00:19:55 You can grab this at today's blog post for the episode at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 56. See you next time if you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, Sair and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think. Big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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3/18/2024 155. The #1 Structure for Sustainable Family Partnerships with Ari Gerzon-KesslerRead Now
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In this episode, Ari shares tons of insights on building Family-Educator Together (FET) teams. These teams aim to deepen the connections between schools and families, creating a dynamic and inclusive space where voices from historically marginalized backgrounds can share insights and drive transformative change. Ari shares practical ideas, specific examples from actual FET teams, and gives us a link to several of the ready-to-use resources in his book.
Ari Gerzon-Kessler leads the Family Partnerships department for the Boulder Valley School District (Colorado) and is an educational consultant working with schools and districts committed to forging stronger school-family partnerships. He has been an educator since 2000, having served as a principal and bilingual teacher. Ari is the author of the new book, On The Same Team: Bringing Educators and Underrepresented Families Together. The Big Dream To embrace an innovative spirit that honors the whole child, incorporates families more into the educational process, and reduces the overwhelm for educators. He envisions more connected school communities that are inclusive, equitable, and where trust is a key lever for change. Ari references Dr. Bettina Love’s words, "We have to actually trust the people we say we want to empower to make structural changes, not just tinker at the edges of injustice." Mindset Shift Required Move from a one-sided family involvement approach to one that truly values parent voices as experts on their children and partners in change. As Ari notes, "We shift the traditional paradigm of family engagement to a more collaborative and empowering model," where trust and psychological safety are paramount. Action Steps While many of the practices in Ari’s book are useful in many family partnership scenarios, he specifically shares ideas for creating and leveraging an FET team. Once you understand what FET teams are and the goals behind them (i.e., strengthen relationships, build trust, and co-create meaningful change) and you as the leader are ready to invest in one… Step 1: Build Your Team There are 5 educators (including the principal) and 5 family members. More are welcome, but the ratio should be even. Educators should not outnumber family members. Step 2: Prepare Ari suggests taking an hour to plan for each 90-minute FET meeting. Logistics to tackle include funding, organizing the meal, securing interpretation (typically meetings are held in the most common home language of families), determining dates/times/location of meetings, and securing child care. Step 3: Facilitate Your Meeting(s) Following a meal and team-building activity, invite families to share their experiences and ideas. There are many specific prompts in the book. It could be: What do you want us to know? After initial trust building, the team will decide on an action project and work towards that goal. Challenges? A significant challenge is the initial trust-building with families who have never experienced such a collaborative space in schools. Creating a comfortable atmosphere where families feel safe to share honest feedback is crucial. Additionally, educators must navigate how to bring family-driven changes back to the staff in a way that encourages co-creation and buy-in from all parties involved. One Step to Get Started For educators looking to make immediate improvements in family engagement, Ari suggests starting with simple yet impactful actions like making positive phone calls to parents to share good news about their children or asking families: How do you prefer we communicate with you? These examples are both energizing and practical, laying the groundwork for deeper connections and future collaborative efforts. Stay Connected You can connect or follow Ari easily on LinkedIn at or reach him at [email protected]. To help you implement FET teams in your school(s), Ari is sharing several reproducibles from his book with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 155 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
Today on the podcast, we're talking about what I would call like the handbook for Family Partnership. We are talking with Ari Giron Kessler who leads the family Partnerships department for the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado and is an educational consultant working with schools and districts committed to forging stronger school family partnerships. He has been an educator since 2000. Having served as a principal and bilingual teacher. Ari is the author of the new book on the same team, bringing educators and underrepresented families together. This is amazing. Let's get to it. Educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons and here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about co-creator curriculum of students. 00:01:08 I made this show for you. Here we go. Ari, thank you for coming on to the time for a teacher podcast. Welcome. Thanks. It's great to be here, Lindsay. Thanks for having me. I am thrilled to talk about your book today. Like I cannot wait. So I will just say you have a new book and I'm sure there are other things you want to share about what listeners should know as we enter the conversation today. Sometimes people like sharing about themselves. Sometimes it's like this is the thing I've been working on and thinking about lately, feel free to share any, any sort of launching point you would like for today's conversation. Great. Yeah, I'm just eager to talk about how schools and districts can deepen their partnerships with families, um and really create a true space to listen to families and have that kind of be a spark for innovation and deeper relationships. Um So that's on my mind. Um I, you know, I, my first job was at a bookstore. That's the point in my mind when I was 11. So I've always had this deep love of books and, and, um you know, I started teaching a little more than 20 years ago and wrote some articles, but this dream of a book has been, you know, full of ups and downs. 00:02:18 And I just am so thrilled to be at this point where I can share um an offering that I think can be truly meaningful both for teachers at an individual level, but also for a school community because I know there's many books I've loved in education and they inform my thinking, but I don't often get to then go and create something. And so I'm excited about the, the on the same team book because it really gives people a chance to create a new structure for transformative change. Um So, yeah, it's just, it's great to be able to, to share more about it. I'm so excited to dig in and I, and I think my first question is, is kind of big not necessarily directly tied to the book, but I think you, you may have even just answered it a little bit. I like to talk about freedom dreaming and Doctor Patino love talks about it as the dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, which I just love that quote. And so with that, what is your big dream for education in general? Yeah, I love the question. I mean, I my hope is that we can embrace them innovative spirit that really honors the whole child incorporates families more um and reduces the overwhelm for educators while finding ways to regularly kind of renew the fire and passion we have um for the work and that we can create more connected school communities that are both more inclusive and equitable and also where trust um is this key lever for change? 00:03:46 And I know you're, you're a big fan of Bettina, lot of the quote that I often share from her that really speaks to the heart of these families and educator together teams is she says for equity work to work, it must be handed to the community. We have to actually trust the people, we say we want to power to make structural changes, not just tinker at the edges of injustice. Um And that those words and, and, and just some of the kind of experts in the field of family partnerships really inspired me to think about how do we create an ongoing vehicle uh for, for change? Yeah. Some of the people, the research that you ground the work in are just like, yeah, just phenomenal leaders and in the field and it, it is just so the way you set it up like the intro chapter itself, I'm like, did I highlight and underline every word? Like it is just so good and like dense with all of that, like meaty stuff, like quotes like that research like that. That's like, yes, this is the work and it does such a great job of I think making an argument for the, the do you call it fet or fet teams. 00:04:56 OK. So the teams, I think that is just so beautiful that you're like eager to get into chapter one and like just give me the how right? Because you've set it up so beautifully. I especially when you're talking, I was thinking about how you named like this is valuable for many stakeholders. It's not just for families, it's not just for students, it's also valuable for educators. And I love the three column table that you have in there where it's like here's all the benefits for each of these stakeholder groups. It is not just one that benefits. So I love that. Thanks. Yeah, I feel like it's really important. I know time is this major barrier as well as some other ones. I mean, I know um teachers feel passionate often about connecting with families. But what was interesting when I dived into the research, Lindsay to discover that the area that teachers feel least confident is actually engaging with families. And that was really revealing. And so so um to me, one of the powers of this work is especially in that it's bringing together underrepresented, often, often immigrant families with mostly white teachers, school leaders, this space for learning across cultural and linguistic differences. 00:06:02 Um And this space where we shift the traditional paradigm of, you know, typically family engagement is one way and we say, oh, they came to conferences or they didn't or they came to back to school night. And, and I have a lot of regrets for my principal years because even PT A meetings and other things like that, I mostly gave updates and talked a lot and then said, do you have any questions at the end? Whereas what, you know, I've learned through the Fed teams over hundreds if not thousands of meetings is that when we truly center parent voices and treat them as the experts on their Children, as well as experts on. How can we as educators get better at collaborating with them? Um Some pretty powerful shifts happen. And as you were saying, um in some ways, the fed teams are just as meaningful for the educators uh because of what comes out of the relationships they build and just all the insights they get um from listening to family, share their perspectives, ideas. Um So it's, it's really been this unique structure that in the fifth year of doing it finally refined it enough to realize, OK, these are the ingredients, a great gathering. 00:07:05 Here's how we create psychological safety and trust across um all these differences we're bringing together in one room this one night a month. So yeah, it's been a really dynamic experience that I felt almost obligated to capture in writing so that it could be a benefit in other school communities. Yes. Oh my gosh. And there's like 400 directions I want to take it because there's so much good stuff here. I mean, just when you're talking about the research, my my mind went to some of the things I wrote down of just things that I literally wrote like, wow, in the margins because I just didn't know that like, for example, 73% of teachers believed families were not interested in supporting their students education or their child's education. It was just like, wow, that's a very uncomfortably high number. Um And that families actually have higher trust in teachers and educators than educators have in families. It was just like, whoa, like just really shifting that narrative. A lot of times where we and I think you use that word blame at at sometimes is that we have this narrative sometimes of like the blame, the Externalizing like, oh if only the families, you know, cared more, right? 00:08:08 And there's so much underneath that, that we dance around or we yeah, externalize the responsibility for we don't directly confront. And then it's like this is what you're talking about with the Fed teams is like this is how we confront it. Like we literally confront it. But we also do a lot of the foundation work to create the space where we can confront it versus just like naming things without doing all of that groundwork. So I just think there's so much right? And like in what you bring to the table of like here's what's happening and now and now here, here's where we go next. Yeah. Well, and I know some of your other podcasts, you talk about a culture of partnership and I think that's at the heart of this work is shifting from the old family involvement approach. Pretty one sided. The other day, I was reading another book in the field and it talked about you know, we're the host as educators and they're the guests. Uh And there's kind of this critique then of how are they, how are they showing up? And I'll say, I mean, I wanna acknowledge as educators were utterly overwhelmed by such an array of responsibilities um that I believe we should have like two of us in every classroom to make it sustainable. 00:09:17 And, and that said, like it does feel like it is about a mindset shift that when we actually, you know, move from guessing what families want to listen to them and then moving to act like co created action. It's really incredibly rewarding. And I remember one of the other pieces of research was when educators build stronger connections with families, they stay in the profession longer. Um But a lot of those pieces often aren't scared. So families, I know when I was a teacher principal at times, it was like, oh, it'd be nice to do that. Um But I don't have time for it. Whereas actually now knowing what I know my perspective is more like if you carve out efficiently but meaningfully some time to engage in some of these best practices that we learn from families. Um It's, it makes it, you know, a huge difference. And I think about you were talking about how we, we can be quick to judge. I think about one minor shift which for every teacher in August I would recommend is ask families how would you like to be communicated with? 00:10:20 Because one theme we're hearing consistently in set team gatherings is we're overwhelmed by emails, we're not reading them, they're not coming in the language we prefer, please text us. And, and that's been a pretty simple change at a handful of schools that's just been incredibly powerful um as well as just this shift in, let's forge a two way relationship. I mean, I'm thinking about this example of a, a, you know, a teacher who told me a couple of years ago, they were upset when they reached out to a family that they easily could have judged as not caring because they didn't return her call. And when she reached out twice because the, the, the young student was absent. Well, she came to find, after doing a little judgment, the family had traveled across from Colorado to Texas to go to a family member's funeral. And that was the reason she didn't get a call back. So just this piece of like, can we, can we come from a place of uh of trust and curiosity and, and a kind of a spirit of inquiry um and, and make the investment at that time because it just pays off. 00:11:24 Yeah. What a great example. I, I love all the examples in your book too and I love that they are often like, here's what we learned when this happened. Like we learned a huge takeaway from this and then you have like really great lists of like, pure is kind of like all the things we learned in a bullet point list duties. This will be great. Um And I, and I think one of the, one of the things that I wanna do first because there's so much in here and I'm just thinking about the person listening, who's like, talk more about these f teams, like first before we get there. I'd love to just have you give an overview. I know you talk in the book about like who's on the team? What are the goals of the team and that those are really important. Do you mind just like starting there for us? But like, what is this? What does it look like? Absolutely. Yeah. So that teams gather once a month um beginning with dinner. It's usually the aim is at least 500 represented family members and five educators including the school leader at some of our schools. It's more like 30 parents and nine staff members in the principal. Um In some of those gatherings, many of them are held in Spanish, which is of course, incredibly with 20% of our students um in, in our school district being Latino, it's been really valuable for families to have a meeting held in their language just that in itself has shifted a lot. 00:12:39 Um Some other teams and schools hold gatherings in English and we have like three or four or five different interpreters in the room. Um So we're still really letting everyone engage in the language they feel comfortable in. And over the years, we've really refined the structure for the ideal meeting. Um A lot of it's informed by what I learned around social, emotional learning in, in, in the classroom and as a principal. Um and there's time for families to engage in learning because I think one of the big things we've discovered is there's so many gaps we've unintentionally created as schools, especially for families more on the margins, not just the achievement and opportunity gaps, but communication gap, trust gap, access gap. I mean, there's seven or eight of them that, that we kind of explore on the teams. And so we create time for breaking bread together. Um some learning about what's happening at school um making it easier for families to navigate our school system so they can access more opportunities. But then the heart of the Fed meeting is listening to their perspectives and ideas and experiences. 00:13:43 So usually half an hour of the 90 minutes is in small groups or back in whole group really uh posing a couple questions that will give us tremendous insight on how do we create a more collaborative equitable school. Um And so it's really, really structured in a way that um we're fostering relationship building throughout the hour and a half together. Um So that's kind of the essence of it. It's usually led by a few teacher leaders, parent leaders, um who, you know, put a lot of planning. I think just like great teaching. We've learned that about an hour of mapping out an agenda and getting all the logistics ready has really led to success across many school communities um regardless of who's leading it. Just that, that, that fosters a gathering that's truly grounded in, in purpose and, and uh meaning for everybody. Hi everyone. It's Lindsay just popping in here quickly to tell you about today's episode. Freebie. This is from Ari. So we talk a ton about how his book has a ton of reproducible and lists of things, appendices, all the things that you can just grab and use immediately. 00:14:50 He is sharing several of those free reproducible from his book and you can grab those at the blog post for this episode at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 55. Back to the episode. Yeah. It, it's fascinating to look at the 90 minute breakdown too of like how you structure the agenda and how intentional all the pieces are. I mean, even to the point of I looked at one of your sample agendas where it was literally like who's taking on the meals, who's taking on this, the note taking task, who's like it was. So it was so thought out like clearly from the result of like doing this so many times and figuring out what works with, doesn't it? I mean, one of the things and you started with like, there are meals that, which is beautiful. You also have child care for people to be able to, like, bring their kids if that's a barrier. Now it is no longer. And I'm just thinking now as a parent of a toddler, like how lovely it would be to like, just be like, ok, park the kid, get the dinner. All right. Like we're gonna talk now I'm here and it's funny, I'm also a parent of a, a toddler and um and I joked with a couple of f leaders just last week before our break. 00:15:56 I I said, oh, you know, fat could almost, we could almost like portray it as Date Night for, for some families because they're, they're getting a free delicious dinner. Child care is there and they're getting to be together. And also, of course, build community which I think in the wake of the pandemic and the isolation and loneliness. So many of us in this country feel that's yet another benefit of uh of creative space. But yeah, it uh we joked about it actually being date night on top of many other uh other benefits and outcomes. Well, I think that's a really interesting mindset chef, right? Like we often talk about like how to reduce barriers, but like it's also not even just reducing the barrier. It is like a draw, right? Like here is the free food, here is the setup where like not only do you get to go in and talk about, you know, your experiences and like your kids education and everything, but like, you're truly, you're finding friends, you're finding community, you are fed. You don't have to worry about your toddler for 90 minutes. Like that just sounds beautiful. 00:16:59 So cool that you create like this. And you're reminding me of like two, I think powerful examples. One is on the family front that one of the six main purpose of F is to build a network between families to kind of harness their collective agency and build connections. And I was at an elementary school a few weeks back and a mom had just arrived three weeks earlier from crossing the border with a couple of her youngest kids to reunite with her husband. And everything about the school was overwhelming her first time in a US school. And we were in a small group and a, a mom who'd been at that school for four years. Also a Spanish speaking parent um said, basically, hey, call me if you have any questions, well, that reduces the load on the educators and builds this, this wonderful, you know, sense of comadres networking uh and support. Um And then on the, on the, you know, parent educator front, I'm remembering and I think I, I share this father's story in the book where he says, you know, and it hit me hard. 00:18:02 He said as a Latino parent knowing the principal didn't speak Spanish, I often felt like I kind of needed to hide or be invisible when I came in. And now after, you know, a year and a half of seeing the principal every single time we gather once a month in the set meetings, having her listen to us, hearing her try to, you know, speak Spanish as best she can. Um She says, now she says, now I feel comfortable to just go up and have a conversation with her and that opens the door for all kinds of mutual learning support connections. Um So just creating that space and that's where I feel so passionate about the fe teams because many events in our schools today are once or twice a year. And there's rarely this ongoing structure that's focused on the more humanizing part of education, not, not on fundraising, not on other pieces, but really on fostering relationships and mutual learning. Oh, there's so many pieces I wanna, I don't wanna touch on here. So one I know you mentioned this, that Spanish is the language that typically that in your experience, that has been the, the language of the gathering. 00:19:09 And then there is English interpretation. And I love how you, you even get really granular to be like, and we've learned, you know, like to wear headsets so that it's synchronous so that we're, you know, being efficient in time and also being able to like watch and get accuracy for the interpreters to be able to like, just do this. This is how we do it just so many things where a leader might be like, hesitant to do something. And it's like, well, it's valuable and we've worked out like all of the potential challenges and here is like, what we've learned that's just kind of handed to you. I, I just think that's super cool all the way down to like where the budget comes from. So like, you know, it could be at the school level but your district has taken on all interpretation. So like that's there. And then like, from like, you know, here's, here's how much we factor in for like the cost of meals. And like, I think you said $2000 for the whole year has been what you found to be doable logistically. I mean, just some of the things that I think listening to this, you know, a leader might say great. These all are, these are all great like stories and like research based, like we should do it, but it feels so daunting, but you really break down in the book, like all sorts of tips, like ideas literally down to the dollar amounts of like what things cost. 00:20:16 You have a whole appendix of like, here you want to do team building, here's like 30 team building activities and like all sorts of things from like a planning checklist for people who are who are doing this work. So I just want to say like really cool stuff in the book. If, if this sounds overwhelming to any leader, just get the book and you'll be totally fine. And I also, I appreciate you bringing up leadership because I do think often as a former principal, I know there's this feeling or expectation of the principal has to hold a lot of that partnering with families role. Um And I think what principles at the, you know, 24 schools that currently have fet teams have said is not only do I now connect with all of my communities more fully, but I'm distributing the leadership and, and really, as many principals say, I love just getting to show up. And my only real job is just to sit back and listen. Um And yet they also are pivotal in helping us once the the team leaders learn in the meetings from families and from their colleagues, what changes are truly needed. 00:21:21 The principal jump in, you know, for 15 minutes a year, often of a quick check in. Oh, let's let's bring this back and launch this with the staff. Um So it really is, as you're saying, um an easy load on the principal yet it drives not only a lot of great learning for them and, and their colleagues um but they're distributing leadership and cultivating parent leadership that can make such a huge difference in that school community. Yes, yes to the cultivating parent leadership. Also, I love that point. And like, I think you, you may have said this, but I just wanna emphasize for listeners that the the principal, you, you paint a really clear picture that the principal needs to be present at each of the meetings. You, I think you shared a case study where like that wasn't the case and the team just kind of fell apart, right? Yeah, I'm, I'm grateful you mentioned that. And also I'm just thinking back what you said about like how granular and specific I've been in the book. I mean, part of what I should say is that we held hundreds of fe meetings over the first four years at more than 10 schools. And I learned not only from the successes but the the meetings that fell short or the couple teams early on that struggled. 00:22:26 And so it was really in year five, realizing a host of ingredients that were key for an effective team, which I really laid out in the book. Um And one of those pieces really was the school leaders consistent presence because that shows to the teachers who, you know, they're coming at night after a full day, usually in the classroom at school. So it shows, ok, my principal truly cares about this effort enough to be there themselves. Um Not to mention when we want to enact change if they haven't sat there in that space and been moved by the stories and insights of families, they're less likely to feel invested in helping us core that change. So, yeah, that was one of the, the biggest and most profound learnings in the first few years because a couple teams really didn't flourish because the school leader um wasn't deeply invested in it. And to your point about change, I think that's, that's one of the big learnings for me in terms of a fat team versus PT A or something like this. 00:23:28 Like, actually, I saw so many parallels to the arguments that I make around student leadership. Like often I'll be like, oh student council, it's just like planning prom and planning the senior class trip. It's so frustrating, like you're just doing these events, but you're not brought into academic conversations about like, how should be great, what should our policy of A P enrollment be like real things that matter? And that's kind of what it to me sounded like between like PT A is often very like event planning and this is truly you're building relationships and it's culminating in or, or kind of like paired with like action planning, like we are creating change and that's the goal, right? Yeah. Well, and I could share a couple of brief examples because 11 of the things that was really important path of these seven years with fet teams was in year four or five, I realized, wow, we're really building this dynamic community families are loving the space educators are appreciating it, but we're not consistently at every school creating systemic change. We're not able to say in May. 00:24:29 Wow, the staff is doing this differently as a result of fe so these last three years, I've been really intentional and persistent. And luckily, I've built solid relationships with our fe leaders where I actually now in January or February are prompting them with. OK, what questions are you gonna ask at this next meeting so that you can devise concrete action plans for January to March so that the changes are in place. And you know that at one school, for instance, parents told us, hey, conferences aren't very meaningful for us with the teacher. Um And by listening, then it was two really subtle easy changes. One was we added 10 more minutes. So it was half an hour because all the families were using an interpreter and it wasn't equitable for them to have essentially half the time other families had. And then I did a 20 minute PD for staff on how do we create a more relationship centered and culturally uh sustaining approach to um to conferences? And those two pieces alone led families to come back in March and share having a radically different experience. 00:25:33 They also said there's a huge language gap and we literally put in place this wonderful app talking points and that prompted thousands of texts to go back and forth the following year, um, in, in place of that void of communication, relationship building previously. So sometimes it's, it's pretty easy changes because we know teachers can't take on too many more big things. We've got to make them, you know, easy meaningful. But, um, but efficient efforts. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, there's, there's so much that I could, like, talk to you for days about this book. Uh, but one of the things I'm wondering is if a leader is listening and they're like, again, yes, I'm interested and, and I will get the book, but I have like these fears of like it not working or, or something like what's a challenge that you could speak to? That's like, you know what? Yeah, we've seen this as a common challenge to the work and here's like how we've helped people address it. Yeah. Yeah. Great question. And you mentioned the team builders in the appendix and that, that's one of the resources I'm most proud of because I've for a couple decades, been a trainer in SCL and, and those are some of my favorite team builders for students and also for adults. 00:26:43 And, and it's reminding me of one of the challenges. So one of our high schools launching a team and this was before we learned a powerful lesson which I, I should have known already from some of my training that we didn't gather in circles and, and so families came in and teachers had already arrived, they were sitting in a row basically facing the parents and the challenge was, wow, everything is kind of awkward and tense here. There's language barrier here as well. And we did a 2.5 minute team builder um that brought us into, you know, a, a whole group and led to immediate laughter and immediately broke the ice. And, and so that, that is a challenge that for families who've not had this space ever at a school, initially, they might not trust that we're truly there to do most of the listening. They might need to know. Ok, can I truly be honest? I mean, we've had to really be thoughtful about building the space month to month that first year. 00:27:46 Um So I do feel like the book lays out all of kind of the map to do that effectively because it is uh it is difficult to train a lot of us as educators haven't been trained in how to do this deeper work with families across so many differences. So, um that, that's a challenge as well as um I think bringing change ideas back to back to staff and really having a wonderful birth with them that they can go back to the team. Um because it's not just family saying, you know, you gotta make A B and C changes and it's just happening and they truly are co created. Hm Thank you so much for sharing that. I think I'm hopeful that, that like, kind of dispels any sort of like, I'm not sure what this is gonna go like. And I, and I think that that is so comforting to be like you've done this so many times, I think you had like 400 meetings or something. I mean, just like so many times and that you have seen the challenges you've worked through them and therefore, like, you know, consult the book and, and you'll, you'll even see some of those case study challenges like laid out and like, here's, here's what we did. 00:28:50 So I love that, that is a resource for listeners. I'm thinking for the, for the listener listening who maybe feel kind of overwhelmed with like this is a big project and I'm not quite sure where to start what is like step one like they end the podcast and they're like, I just want one tiny step to get started. What would you recommend that be? Yeah. Um I think creating spaces really listen more, take off that kind of teacher expert hat. Um And that could be, you know, a welcome phone call to start a new school year. It can be engaging in, you know, a relationship centered home, visit with a couple of your, your students families. And I think, you know, diving into the book where even if you don't spark the creation of a team right away at your school, I've really infused the book with a ton of everyday practices and ideas um that are really, really straightforward, easy to do. Um, you know, positive phone calls is, is an example. 00:29:53 One of my favorites were literally carving out 10 minutes once a week to call three families and share some sort of good news academically or about character of a student, something kind they did to for another student. Um So I would say there will be morsels in the book right away that um I think are both energizing and very practical. Excellent. Thank you so much. And I think to, to close, I have two questions that I like to ask people. The first one is just for fun. It does not have to relate to your job at all. Although it can, what is something that you personally have been learning about lately? Hm. Um Yeah, I love that question. Um One of the books I'm reading right now um is about Zen and I've been studying Zen now for eight years. My um my wife is uh a monk, uh you know, a, a secular monk. Um And um so I'm reading a wonderful book by this author Charlotte Joko Beck um about Zen. So that's, that's an area of learning. 00:30:57 And I've realized this, this month, having this time off, this last week when I have more time down the road, I wanna learn how to be a better cook, learn how to be a better dancer. Um Those are like 22 areas that I've, I felt recently inspired around deeper. Oh, my gosh, I love those. Thank you for sharing those. I love when people share things that are not related to their job, it just rounds them out as like a full human, which we all are beyond our job. But also, I mean, as, as a, as a father of a 15 month old, like I, you know, grew up volunteering as a middle schooler at a head start. I have a lot of background with like 3 to 5 year olds and then I, I taught and was a principal in elementary schools for 15 years. But I, I'm definitely not an expert on a 15 month old. So been reading a lot about parenting and been excited to see like some of the parallels of what we, you know, what we learn as educators. But also it's been consistently humbling too. Tell me about it. Oh my gosh. Mine is 22 months and it is like, I learn every day. 00:32:02 I know nothing. Exactly. Yeah. Awesome. I, I am so glad that we had this conversation. This has been so wonderful. I think a lot of people are going to be like, let me reach out in addition to grabbing the book. Can they reach out to you at a certain location or are you on social media? Like, where can they maybe follow what you're doing? Yeah. Um The best way would be to connect with me or follow me on linkedin. That's where I'm regularly posting new articles. I'm writing quick practical ideas. Um So that's the best space. And folks are also welcome to just email me directly at A E giron at gmail.com and can also find more about the book at solution tree.com/a. E Amazing Ari Thank you so much for joining the podcast. This is such a pleasure, Lindsay. Thanks for your energy, enthusiasm and just great conversation. Really appreciate it. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, Sapir and Jamila Dugan, talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. 00:33:09 They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network. Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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Whether your teachers are developing their own curricula or adapting “off the shelf” curricula, all teachers need to figure out what it will look like to actually implement a curriculum. In addition to factoring in holidays and field trips and other school events, if you’re supporting teachers to create classroom cultures that prioritize student voices and personalized learning, you’ll want to help teachers consider how to embed flexibility and co-creation with students into their pacing calendars.
Why are realistic pacing guides important? Without considering pacing that creates intentional space for student voice and personalized learning (and all of the places those priorities can take a class), teachers are set up to feel pressured to just “cover” content in a rushed manner because our idealized pacing calendar is too unrealistic. When we strive for fidelity, what we often get is rigidity, which does not serve personalized learning and co-creation. Research on fidelity in “off the shelf curriculum implementation” suggests an optimal approach to curriculum implementation is a scaffolded one, in which teachers first focus on implementing a curriculum with fidelity before adapting it. To ensure adaptations are still effective, teachers should have deep knowledge of the theory(s) behind the curriculum. This is more likely “if the fidelity phase is framed as an opportunity for teachers to learn the program before adapting it, as opposed to being framed as the end goal,” (Quinn, 2016, p. 42). An additional consideration is that curricula may be more likely to be used over time when teachers are able to adapt them to their specific contexts (Dearing, 2008, cited in Quinn, 2016). I acknowledge this research and also recognize many off the shelf curricula could do a better job of embedding space for student voice and personalization within the curriculum and suggested pacing guides. For the purpose of this episode, I’m focusing on how to realistically pace a curriculum (whether your teachers wrote it or you’re implementing an existing curriculum). How to Create a Flexible Pacing Calendar:
Final Tip To account for the unexpected, I suggest building in even more “blank space” days. They can be named “Flex Days” or designated as Workshop Days if the idea is that it's okay to skip them when needed. This way, we’re decreasing the pressure to “cover” everything and concentrating on doing fewer things better while preserving a culture of student voice and co-creation. To help you effectively support your teachers’ curriculum planning, I’m sharing two resources with you for free. If your teachers are internalizing an “off the shelf” curriculum, try my New Curriculum Training Agenda. If your teachers are designing their own curriculum, try the Curriculum Planner I use in my Curriculum Boot Camp programs. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 154 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 Educational justice coach, Lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for Teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Welcome to an episode of time for teacher shift. This is episode 154. We are talking about pacing calendars that enable student voice and personalized learning. So whether your teachers are developing their own curriculum, their own units or they're adapting to an off the shelf, so to speak curriculum. Every teacher needs to figure out what it's gonna look like to actually implement the curriculum that's on the paper. 00:01:05 In addition to factoring in holidays, field trips, other school events. If you're supporting teachers to create classroom cultures that actually prioritize student voices and personalized learning, you're gonna wanna help teachers consider how to embed flexibility and co creation with students into their pacing calendars and that can be a hard thing to do. So that's what we're talking about in this episode. In this episode, we're talking about pacing calendars that enable student voice and personalized learning. So first, let's talk about why pacing guides are important and specifically why it is important to develop pacing guides that are realistic. So without considering casing, that it creates really intentional space for student voice and personalized learning and all the places those priorities can take a class, right? There's like 100 different directions that we could go into if we consider all the ways that we enable student voice. And now the student says this thing in a discussion where the classes they want to learn about this thing, right? And now we're going to go in a totally different direction that is a little scary at times, especially if you're new to student voice and personalized learning, we need to make sure that teachers are set up to feel that they're, they're able to cover all the things that they wanna cover and more than cover because cover is a touchy word for me, something, right? 00:02:26 We don't want the idea of like, oh I'm pressured to cover the content in a rushed way because my piece and calendar just isn't realistic and I'm never gonna get it done. So I need to like cut things I need to, you know, all the things that go through a teacher's mind. Right. So, without considering that intentional idea of like, from making space for the student voice for the co operation for the things that go either way we didn't expect or for those unexpected interruptions. Like, hey, we're actually doing a field day this day or something. Right. So we want to make sure that we actually are deeply committed to the un underlying intention and purpose of our curriculum, whether we made it ourselves or we are taking something off the shelf and making it fit our particular class space. So that brings up for me the thought about fidelity. And so when we strive for fidelity, what I often see us do is actually rigidity, right? And that doesn't serve personalized learning or co creation at all. 00:03:30 So while thinking about, yeah, maybe we can, you know, use a curriculum that's already out there. Totally fine. Yes, of course. We want to adapt it to our own context, to our own teaching styles, to what our students want and need. We don't want to lose sight of why we chose the curriculum in the first place, which I'm guessing if we're listening to this podcast was because it did center student voices, it did center meaningful engagement and recognized personalized learning and scaffolding and all the good things that are involved in strong curriculum. If we strive for fidelity, but get rigidity and we sacrifice all those underlying purposes like there was no point right to go very briefly into the research on fidelity in the off the shelf curriculum implementation. What we find is there is an optimal approach to curriculum implementation and that is a scaffolded one. Ideally, teachers first focus on implementing a curriculum with fidelity as written before they actually adapt it and personalize it. I have some thoughts but, but this is what the research has found has been, has been good. So I do think always just a quick note about my thoughts. 00:04:37 Do you think we do wanna be mindful of our students at all times? And if something is just not connecting with them, I think teachers should reserve the right to make those connections a little bit clearer for them. Uh If there is something I was recently working with someone who has um like there is a project at the end where they're selecting artifacts and like creating captions. If you want to do that as an Instagram series of posts, go ahead and do it the spirit of the project of the task itself. You're still assessing the same skills, you're still kind of doing the same thing. If you're putting a spin on it that makes your students excited and motivated to do it like heck yes, do that. Absolutely. But I think what this research is getting at is that fidelity to again those core principles and really making sure that like we do it for the most part, the same. So if you're gonna change a final project, for example, make sure it still assesses the same skills or uh you know, recognizes the same content needs to be brought into it. 00:05:42 The same content understandings are assessed. Ok. With that note, let's do more research. So to ensure adaptations are still effective to any off the shelf curriculum, teachers should have deep knowledge of the theory or theories behind the curriculum. OK. Similar to what we were just saying. And this is more likely if quote, the fidelity phase is framed as an opportunity for teachers to learn the program before adapting it as opposed to being framed as the end goal, end quote. That's from Quinn 2016. And you can link to the full research in the blog post for this episode at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 54. So interesting. So the fidelity phase really should be like here's how you learn it. You just need to internalize it for a year or whatever, then you can adapt it. And that is ultimately our end goal is that it best fits you. So that's a really interesting thing that I don't think we say when we're encouraging folks to adopt curriculum off shop. So an additional curriculum from the research, same researcher is that curricula may be more likely to be used over time when teachers are able to adapt the curricula to their specific context so it actually is going to last longer. 00:07:00 Like teachers are gonna keep using the same units and curriculum if they're able to adapt it. Ok. So we definitely want that. I mean, if you went through the time to choose a curriculum and all of the, you know, conversations that, that entails and all of the research that, that entails, like you chose it for a reason, you wanna keep using it, you want that investment to be like not thrown out the window in two years when they're like, I'm done with this, right? That's also really important. So, and we went off on a little tangent here about fidelity. But I do think if you are taking curriculum off the shelf, fidelity yes, is important. And also we don't want it to turn into rigidity. We want the end goal to be that beautiful adaptation. So when we think about all that beautiful adaptation to me that includes embedding space for student voice and personalization, and we do that best when we have a very clear pacing guide. So for the purpose of this episode, that's where I'm focusing. How do we realistically pace a curriculum, whether you wrote it yourself or you're implementing an existing one. So first thing I would do if I am creating my flexible pacing calendar or I'm coaching a teacher to do so, I'm gonna block my non instructional days first. 00:08:09 So I am going to literally have teachers open paper or a digital calendar, whatever they use. I like using like a Google sheet or I used to use a table of Google Docs before I realized Google sheets are amazing and you can like move things, but that has all the school days written on it. So if you don't have like an agenda that you buy your teachers or something and they plan in, in physical paper, maybe create like a template or something. I think as a leader, this would be a lovely gift to save them the time of entering all the dates in themselves, then get out the school or district calendar. If you haven't done this as a leader already, they can do this themselves and block off any holidays, any field trips or other reason that students would be out of instructional time. These might be grade specific school specific, district specific. So if they are kind of those grade level pieces, of course, you're gonna have the teachers go in and do that. But if you have like the district level stuff or the school level stuff already done for them, that would be really, really nice. And then I think this is a, a nice to have, but I I would do it anyways because again, the goal is a realistic pacing calendar that's not going to result in teachers feeling pressed for time and then rushing to surface level cover content instead of staying true to the purpose. 00:09:19 And like the deep learning I would block each day before a long break. So if you're about to go on like a two day break or something, or you, especially like those week long vacations that are usually like December, February, April, you know, somewhere in there for sure, the day before, like my experience as a teacher, those are not always super meaningful in terms of adherence to or fidelity to a curriculum. Right? Not gonna implement that in the same way as written. So I'm either going to kind of do a deeper dive to wrap up like the day before I might go outside of the planned curriculum to do something fun. I might do like just a team building a circle where we share our feelings about the upcoming brick, whatever it is, but it's probably not going to be one you can count on for like a curriculum implementation fidelity piece, right? So the next thing I would do after that, you've blocked off all of the holidays, events, days before long holidays, then I would block off class culture building days. 00:10:24 Now, some schools and districts have a community wide set of days that are allocated to building relationships and community agreements at the start of the year. So district wide, you may say the first two weeks of school we are doing SCL work, whatever that looks like you can decide, but you're not expected to start your typical curriculum for 10 days, instructional days, whatever. That's an example. Right. But it could be like our school, I worked at a school once that had like, the first two whole days were blocked off for like school wide relationship building activities. And so that was what we did for two days. Like no one had a typical schedule. The schedule is all different, whatever it is. If there are days like that block them off if within your grade or within your department were just within you, right? You want to as an individual teacher have some culture building days. I highly recommend it. I think it's a great idea. Lo those days off next then number three, I would open with a hook day for each unit or content arc so day one of unit one, I would mark in my pacing calendar that we're going to have what I would call a hook lesson. 00:11:36 You can call it whatever you want. And that's gonna be inviting students to consider the essential question of the unit or project question or whatever you call it in relation to their own lives. And you can do this in any way. I love using circle here. Make sure that students leave this class. The whole purpose of this hook day is that they leave the class with an understanding of why the unit or at least the essential question for the unit matters like in their lives. Why is it relevant? They need some sort of personal connection to this. So often I hear teachers who are disillusioned with a curriculum they've written or adopted and they're just like I am sensing that my students just don't care. There's no motivation there. We need to build in the motivation and, you know, your students better than any curriculum writer. Even if you wrote this curriculum, you probably wrote it before you met your students on day one of the next year. Now, as you learn about them, right? You've done your culture building days to lead up into your day one of unit one. Now let's use that relationship building as a launching pad to actually get into. 00:12:44 Well, how do you think about this essential question in your life? And of course, this requires that the essential question is good. So you may have to modify it a little bit if it's just really not getting the students hearts, they really can't connect with it. Ok? Like let's play with it. Maybe students kind of forming a little inquiry lesson here, generate some questions around the essential question or similar to the essential question that they can connect with. But here the whole purpose of this is we are building that motivation. We wanna make sure that it connects in terms of like motivation, research, right? We wanna make sure that it connects to their prior knowledge, their lived realities and experiences, the things they care about, right? All of these pieces um need to kind of be in place. And again, our goal is to build relationships prior to this day so that we can do that well. Right. This is the, the one of the essences of culturally responsive and sustaining teaching. Number four, once you have done the first three steps, you're gonna start filling in the lessons. So literally how many lessons or days we're gonna be in each unit, fill those in on the calendar. 00:13:51 So you might have like a little numerical guide. So you don't have to like write out like the title of each lesson or whatever that might be like you 1.1 or something, right? Unit one day one. Then the fifth step is any time that you have a class that is going to feature a class discussion the next day, make that an opportunity to debrief the discussion. So there's a couple of things that you can do with that day. It can be used to discuss how well the discussion agreements were followed. So more of like a process day like, hey, we co created these discussion agreements. Here's what went well here. What didn't, here's what we wanna do differently as a class next time. Maybe we need to add this discussion agreement. Maybe we need to edit this one, right? Oh This one didn't work well. OK. Well, what, how might that look next time or this is usually when I have found that I needed the day for it can be used to continue the conversation if the conversation was cut short. Like, oh, the bell rang the period over, ah, we're running out the door. 00:14:54 Ok. Conversation is not over bad management of the time on my part usually. But sometimes we just have a really bubbly discussion. That's like, yeah, this is like, why I became a teacher. This stuff is amazing. I want this to continue. Kids are doing great. I'm just sitting here and listening and taking it all in. That is amazing if it's great and there's more discussion to be had. Let's let it bubble over into the next day without feeling that unrealistic pace and calendar push to cut the discussion short and then just follow the as written pasting calendar with zero flexibility, right? That's the kind of stuff that's like, oh, that's hard. Now, another thing that I found to be very useful for like a day to debrief discussion day is to use that second day to interrogate any comments or claims that may not be true. So I would often call this like a fact checkers lesson. So if we are in a discussion class wide and some student throws out like a statistic. That's just like, hm Wow, about that. If I write that sentence down like this is what the student said was a fact with like a question mark or whatever kind of annotation device that I have. 00:16:03 I am going to collect things like that throughout the discussion. And I might have, you know, 3 to 5 by the end of the discussion. And I'm like, oh, we need to interrogate these statements, whether they were statements of presumed fact. And I think they might be inaccurate or they are like, jumping to conclusions that I think are, like, wildly problematic. Right? Or, I mean, if they were wildly problematic I would interrupt immediately. But if there were things that are just like, oh there's a lot of context missing there and we need to do a deeper dive on the research and to dig into that. I wanna make space for the next day to do the digging into. So I might say at the end of lesson one, you know, we had a few things today that I wanna like unpack tomorrow. So tomorrow I'll get ready to put your fact Checker hat on or whatever. And then the next day, you know, I've, I've done, I think a podcast episode about this, but like in short, put those up on the board have groups of students kind of tackle them, interrogate them, do some research around them. And then at the end of the day, you basically come away with like this was true, this was false, this was in between and here's why and what the context is and then talk about like source bias and stuff in terms of where they get that information. 00:17:09 So debrief day following a, a class discussion day. Now, when I think class discussion day, I mean, like a big one. So if you did like, I don't know, like a class discussion of like, what did you like about this reading? And I'm just gonna like popcorn a couple of hands at the end of the day. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about like, student led takes most of the class time. We're talking about a big question, maybe like a Socratic seminar or like a circle discussion or we're really getting into it. And majority of the day is a discussion. Like it's a big discussion on a big topic. You're pulling together and synthesizing lots of different information from different sources that we've learned throughout the unit so far to get. It's a big thing, right? Then we want to have a debrief day for that. If it's like a short, I asked the class a question and like we had a couple people answer like that's not what I'm talking about or even like a circle that was like a check in circle. Like, hey, how are you feeling today or what do you want to go differently in the group work project that you're doing? Like everyone, every single student might answer that in a circle. 00:18:13 So it's like a class discussion, but it's not something that needs to be debriefed afterwards. It's not like really rooted in the content. We're probably not gonna need to have an an extra day for like bubbling over conversation. You can use your own discretion, but that's kind of my thought there. Ok. Then the final step. So to recap, you have blocked your non instructional days. You have blocked your class culture building days. At the start of the year, you have put an opening hook day for each unit. You have filled in your lessons done a debrief day, the day after each discussion. The final step is to determine how often you want to have days where students can work on specific skills. They either need extra practice with or like catch up time with or whatever you call it or where they're just like crushing things and they just need some extensions that are gonna like really stretch their skills. So I would call these usually like workshop days or win days, like whatever I need, um I might call them conference days, what, whatever it is for you to meet with a few students or students to be working on whatever it is that they need. 00:19:22 Personally, I like to do these once a week. So this might be a nice Friday activity, for example, but they can definitely be integrated into each day of a student project week or, or some other sort of thing. So like if you're like, OK, we've done a lot of learning, we're gonna just like press pause on the new learning and we're gonna do a lot of Synthesis Monday through Friday this week. So students are actively working on their projects and I might say like, OK, every single day you determine if you wanna move forward with that project or something is kind of a sticking point for you and you need a little bit of review, you need to meet with me, you need to talk to your group and, and practice like group decision making or you need some reading support. So here's like a strategy or the project is about writing. So here is, you know, some writing tips and a mini writing workshop that you can attend for 10 minutes virtually or like come and sit at my desk, right? Whatever that is, that's the personalized learning coming to life. That's the time where you're like, well, my students really didn't get the last two weeks of instructions. 00:20:25 So I feel like I shouldn't move forward, but I have to move forward because the pacing calendar says to move forward, right? So that's where we want that flexibility embedded where you're not feeling the rush, you're able to pause again regularly, make it once a week, make it so that it's integrated into every day of like a week of, of project days, right? I think as long as you build it in and you encourage your teachers to build it in there is less and less pressure put on moving fast and more and more awareness that we can take the time to invite, allow, encourage students to leave the conversation, leave their learning and to support and scaffold any sort of extension or remediation that students may need in specific target skill areas. Right? That's what good teaching is. That's what good personalized learning is. That's what co creation is, but we need the space for it and we need that space to be written on the pacing calendar, which means that we may have less like quote unquote, you know, curriculum has for days. 00:21:35 So the final tip, I would suggest to account for the unexpected, which always happens. I would build in even more blank space days. Now, you can name them. I used to call them flex days or you could just designate them as more workshop days, right? The idea is these days are I, you know, either skippable or you can use them as placeholders for a particular like, right, that was written and die in this way. Again, the whole goal is we're decreasing the pressure to cover everything, concentrating on doing fewer things better while preserving a culture of student voice and co creation. So to help you effectively support your teacher's curriculum planning. In addition to this episode, with all the tips and you can find the tips written out in the blog post version of this episode located at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 54. I'm also sharing two resources with you for free. So if your teachers are internalizing an off the shelf curriculum. You can check out my new curriculum training agenda for how you would help them do that. Internalization. 00:22:38 Some of the activities are in there, check them out, pick and choose what you'd like if your teachers are designing their own curriculum and they need help writing out what some of those are thinking through the unit arcs. Placing the things on the, on the pacing calendar, right? The days. What is each day gonna be that kind of thing? You're gonna look for my classic curriculum planner. This is the one I use in my curriculum boot camp programs. All of these resources as well as the blog post again are at the blog Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 54. Until next time. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, Sapir and Jamila Dugan. Talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book street data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period. I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. 00:23:49 Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better podcast network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I reveal discussion moves to increase engagement:
3/4/2024 153. Leading Equity Takes Belief, Vision, Systems, and Acknowledgement of Barriers with Dr. Don ParkerRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, Dr. Don Parker talks about the necessity of relationship-building, developing a robust equity-based vision statement, and policy alignment to systematically embed equity in your school.
Dr. Don Parker is a transformational keynote speaker and professional development provider. He specializes in SEL, supporting teachers to build trusting relationships with students, restorative practices, trauma-informed practices, and improving the culture and climate of schools to enhance students’ and teachers’ feeling of belonging. Dr. Parker is a former principal, frequent conference presenter, and the author of Building Bridges: Engaging Students At-Risk Through the Power of Relationships and Be the Driving Force: Leading Your School on the Road to Equity. The Big Dream Equitable schools and classrooms provide high-quality, equitable educational experiences for every student. Dr. Parker elaborates saying, "we can provide each student with a quality education, support their social, emotional learning needs and really truly help them reach their highest potential." Mindset Shifts Required To enact change, school leaders and educators must genuinely believe in the value of equity and the possibility of transformation, as this belief will drive their actions and commitment. Action Steps There are more concrete ideas in the book, but we discussed the following: Step 1: Equity-Focused Vision Statement Develop and adopt an equity-based vision that is robust and reflects actionable outcomes for historically marginalized groups. From there, it’s easier to determine if all school policies and practices are in alignment with the vision. Step 2: Systematize Relationship-Building One example is Dr. Parker’s implementation of dedicated time for student-teacher connections on Monday mornings through the school. There’s a dedicated hour built into the schedule just for this. Step 3: Consistently gather input from students Use surveys and action items to measure and drive improvements in school effectiveness regarding equity. Challenges The biggest challenge, according to Dr. Parker, is overcoming the "acknowledgement gap," where schools fail to recognize systemic inequities. Overcoming this requires a collective commitment to identifying and addressing these issues head-on. One Step to Get Started Engage directly with students, particularly those from marginalized groups, to understand their experiences and needs. This direct interaction lays the groundwork for developing targeted strategies to support student success, so go ask a student how you can better support them! Stay Connected You can find Dr. Parker on his website or send him an e-mail at [email protected] To help you implement equitable change, Dr. Parker is sharing his survey on Leading Equitable Practices with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 153 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT Hi, everyone. Stay on the podcast. I'm talking with Doctor Don Parker who is a transformational keynote speaker and professional development provider. He specializes in SCL supporting teachers to build trusting relationships with students, restorative practices, trauma informed practices, and improving the culture and climate of schools to enhance students and teachers feeling of belonging. Doctor Parker is a former principal and served at Posen School in Posen Illinois where he improved the school climate, staff, collaboration, parent engagement and student achievement. Before that, he was the principal of Lincoln Avenue School A K A school in Dalton, Illinois, where he improved the culture, implemented a resilience program, managed the implementation of restorative justice and increased attendance at student achievement. Doctor Parker has a strong belief in creating a school in which the entire staff strives for excellence to meet the academic and social emotional needs of each student. He is presented throughout the US at distinguished educational conferences including A S CD. Every student succeeds Act conference, the National Principals Conference, Illinois Principals Conference, Oklahoma Secondary and Elementary Conference, the raising a student achievement conference, transforming school culture conference and the innovative school summit. Just to name a few Dr Barger is the author of the book Building Bridges, Engaging students at risk through the power of relationships and his newest be the driving force leading your school on the road to equity, which we'll talk about in just a moment. 00:01:10 Let's get to the episode, educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Doctor John Parker. Welcome to the Time for Teacher podcast. Thanks for having me, Lindsey. Good morning. Good morning. I am so excited for our conversation. I was just saying before we hit record, your book is excellent. I loved it. So I think there's so many things that you might wanna share your new book being. But I think a lot of times like I, I like to ask the question right off the bat, like what is important for listeners to know either about you or like something that you've been doing or thinking about lately that's gonna ground our conversation today? 00:02:19 Ok, great. All right, thank you. So, um I am, I am very passionate about working with students and working with teachers to help teachers become more trauma informed, that helps students with their social, emotional learning to teach students prosocial behaviors. And so teachers can, you know, touch the heart before they touch the brain. And so that's what my expertise is in. I've had experiences being a high school health teacher. And if you know anything about the health curriculum, it really teaches students how to make healthy choices, teaching them problem solving their skills, critical thinking skills, all those things that students need in order to be successful, not only in school, but also in life. And so that position transitioned me into being a dean of students where I was teaching students prosocial behaviors, doing a lot of authoritative counseling, building relationships with students. And that's what led me to this work now is helping other teachers be successful with those students who may have challenging behaviors. Oh, I love that. And actually, I don't mean to go into your book so soon, but I want to because it was so good. 00:03:23 One of the things that I did not know but makes so much sense having just been in schools was that one of the things that you decided to do was to use Mondays as like an extra relationship building time because often the researchers found that the trauma could spike in the weekends and I was like, yes, this makes so much sense. So let's make space for it. Absolutely. So, um, when I was the principal of my school, I noticed that we had students who had a lot of trauma and teachers were having a lot, a hard time. They said we want to build a relationship, but we don't have time to build relationships and we want to attend the students, social emotional learning, but you know, we don't have the time. So in order to make anything successful, you have to automate it and you have to sys systematize it. And so I just built a system where I worked with the uh president of our teachers union. I say, hey, look, this is what my teachers are asking for. I wanna do this at my school instead of having home room where it's only 15 minutes in the beginning of the day where teachers come in, take attendance and basically transition students to the next class I wanna build in an hour on Monday mornings. 00:04:28 So my teachers can have time to do social emotional learning activities and build relationships with students. So during that time, we did morning meetings, classroom circles and there was a time where teachers didn't have to feel rushed, they could really talk to the students find out what was going on in their lives, find out what kind of social academic support that they needed. And it really just set the tone for the rest of the week because there's a phrase that says you're gonna pay now or pay later. And so if we don't tend to these, our students social emotional learning needs, we're worried about this reference throughout the school day. It's like if we can settle them down at the beginning of the morning, you know, uh, give them what they need in order to be successful, give them the coping strategies that they need. It just helps the smooth day, the uh the school day go a lot smoother. I, yes, I love it. And I love that you use circles as the specific practice within that time. Just so much of what you said, like teachers not feeling rushed. Like so to be able to say like we have the the system or the structure built in a lot of times I hear from teachers that it's like, I don't have that system structure. 00:05:33 So now I have to sacrifice the content that I'm teaching or whatever, just squeeze it in and then I feel rushed and it's not really authentic. And like I just love that this was a school wide initiative to be like we're doing it. We're giving you the time here. It is right. You're right because everything has to be research based, evidence based. And what the research says is that Monday mornings are the most traumatic time for not only students but also teachers like teachers sometimes have a lot of anxiety coming to school on a Monday morning. This does give everyone the opportunity to just breathe, you know, and you know, just getting the right mind frame in order to have a good school day. I love that. And so yeah, like backing up a little bit because I think we just dove right in there with like a concrete thing that people could do as a takeaway for this episode. But I also want to know at kind of a larger scale. I love how Doctor Patina, love talks about freedom dreaming as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so I love thinking about schools and educational change and leadership in this way. 00:06:37 I'm wondering, and you've touched on it a bit, I think, but what is that big dream that you hold for education globally? Wow. You know, um it goes to the title of my book. So the title of the book is Be The Driving Force leading Your School on the Road to equity. I would just like equitable schools, equitable uh classrooms and just equitable opportunities for students so that students can get what they need in order to be successful. All right. So we're talking about funding, we're talking about curriculum, we're talking about experiences. All right, every student deserves a high quality education and I know it sounds pie in the sky, but that's really uh what would be my big dream for education and that we can provide each student with a quality education, support their social, emotional learning needs, and really truly help them reach their highest potential, such a simple but powerful and massively effective dream. I love it. So when we think about the path that that takes, I love, I love all of the the the big metaphor of cars that you use in your your latest book. 00:07:45 And so I think about, you know what that path looks like on the road to that dream for, for leaders, for schools, for districts, right? As, as they're kind of making all those changes and you, I mean, we could even just like read through your table of contents because it, it really lays it out right there for each of the sections. But what are the things that you think are, are most important or come first to mind when we think about kind of those stepping stones or those pieces to, to put in that path? Sure. OK. So we're familiar with the phrase that starts at the top and so be the driving force in your school on the road to equity is really a how to book for school leaders on how to promote equity and enhance equity in their schools. And so what I think is the most important is the chapter that I write when I talk about vision. And so, as you know, throughout the book, it's a metaphor that has to do with the car or have to do with driving. Uh and I tie that to a school leadership principle. And so when we talk about vision, when we talk about driving, ok. Um I used to teach driver's ed. I was a driver's ed and pe teacher. 00:08:49 And when we taught students how to drive, we would teach them to look further than just, you know, one or two cars ahead, we teach them to look as far down the road as you can. All right, you have to have vision in order to see far down the road and what we teach them is that it helps you to avoid hazards and it, it keeps you focused on where you're going. And so when it comes down to school leadership, uh school leaders have to have a robust vision and they have to not only have a vision but they have to have their school staff, students and community buy into the vision that they have for the school right now. We know as, as teachers and you know, even like uh student support personnel, how there's a lot of work that needs to be done and we're doing a lot of work. But leaders, yes, you have to do the work. But at the same time, we, we're paying you to think we're paying you to be a visionary. Like my boss used to tell me, Don, you're the CEO of this school. So we have to think about innovation. We have to think about the future. We have to establish the vision and then we have to influence all stakeholders in order to work towards that common vision that we have. 00:09:54 And so just like a driver has to have vision far down the road, a school leader has to have a vision that's far down the road of what you're trying to accomplish and what you want your school to be and then influence everybody to work towards that end. I, I love that and I, I particularly love, I think it's page 83 that there were examples you have like a whole table of like the equity based vision statements. And I love this because I cannot tell you how upset I get when I look at someone's website and they have like this really like ineffective equity statement. And I'm like, yeah, no, you're not, you're not doing that work like, and I just know right. And so it, it is so cool, I think for leaders to actually go in open the book to that table and just be like, hm, does our vision statement that we say is like ra ra equity actually effective. Does it dig in or is it just super surface level? And I, I just loved some of those examples that you shared because I was like, this is it. Thank you. I love it. 00:10:56 You're right because you know, when you have a vision statement that encompasses equity, uh it has to talk about what outcomes, all right are going to be accomplished as a result of that vision statement. So you may have a vision statement that may mention equity in it. However, the outcomes it was really determines equity, what results are we getting? Are we really accomplishing what it is that we're setting out to do and not just saying it absolutely. And I mean, some of them to really like one of them is like, do you mind if I like read the first word? So one of them is ineffective would be we strive to treat everyone equally, right? And so it's just like, oh man, like we're, we're gonna not even say we're going to do something, we're gonna say we're striving to do something. And then, but like also the thing that you're saying is like when it's effective, it's not just like treat everyone equally or even treat everyone equitably, but we're recognizing and addressing systemic inequities. So we're actually identifying the thing and um we're recognizing that they've created disparities in educational opportunities and outcomes for historically marginalized groups. 00:12:06 So you're saying, like, we're not just saying it surface level equity is good. We're saying we recognize and we're going to specifically identify in our community. This stuff is going on behind the scenes and we're committed to consistently digging it up identifying it and making that part of our equitable process, which I just love. Exactly because the, the thing is we can say a vision statement. But in order to really accomplish the vision, you have to do the work. So I have attached the work to what the vision is and telling people what you have to do in order to accomplish this. These are things you have to do. You have to really look at historically marginalized groups. How can we better serve these students? Right, uh inequitable policies, how can we change these policies so that they're not harming, you know, certain groups and then you have to do that work in order to accomplish whatever the vision vision is. So I attach that to the vision statement. So people know exactly what needs to be done in order to promote an advanced equity. I love it because you could just, you can be looking at a policy and say, well, does this do the thing that we say we're doing? 00:13:09 Right. And, and that was one of my favorite chapters is chapter seven where you talk about revising school policies and procedures. There's so much in there that I loved. I mean, just kind of high level, you talk a lot about student voices being central to the process of uncovering and digging into some of those policies and co creating or revising policies. You talk about restorative practices, you talk about A P enrollments, you talk about like what are the structures and mindsets and things that we have to work through to do that better and give everyone access like it was just amazing. And so I don't know if there are pieces that you want to talk more about here to kind of illuminate for listeners. But I, I just loved all of those pieces. Well, here's the thing, Liz. When we talk about equity, people are used to talking about the achievement gap and the opportunity gap. But some people don't even wanna discuss the acknowledgment gap where they don't want to even acknowledge that their inequitable practices or inequitable policies are things taking place that actually harm students. And so we have to look at the barriers, you know, that are in place that need to be removed and dismantled so that students really can't get that quality instruction and have opportunities. 00:14:15 And at first we have to acknowledge and say, you know, what um are we even recognizing, you know, how we are either promoting our students to be successful or how we are hindering their success? And once they acknowledge it, then you can start saying, OK, ask those deep questions of what do we need to do in order to make a more equitable school environment for all students and not just historically marginalized students, not just low income students, not just black and brown students, but all students. It's for everyone. We want to see every single student be successful. Yeah, I love that you included research in there too, right? That like white kids are massively benefiting from having like teachers who are a different race than them, of learning about diverse stories and histories and authors. Like it is beneficial to everyone like the end. Right. Like you're exactly right. 100%. And so I was talking to equity expert and they explained it like this. All right. Um There was some law where we had to make sidewalks accessible for handicapped people who had to use disabled people. 00:15:24 I should not say handicapped for disabled people who needed to be pushed around in wheelchairs or roll themselves in wheelchairs. And so you know how they had the curb, but now they have this ramp. And so they said now this was built for a person in a wheelchair, however, just think about a mom pushing a stroller and they could just easily push that stroller up. So it not only benefits the people who are disabled, but it benefits people on a larger scale. And so that's what equity work does the same. Um, the same, I guess what do you call it the same uh accommodations or modifications and variety of teaching skills that we're using to help students from a different group will also help the majority of students. So we're doing it for everyone. That is such a good example that you shared. And I, I also reminds me, I'm pretty sure, I don't know if this is a base of research, but I heard this from someone that uh texting came about because they were trying to create a support for people who are hearing impaired and couldn't use the phone like auditorily. 00:16:29 And it was like, now look at texting, like people, there are like young people who are like, refuse to call someone on the phone. I only text. That's a great analogy. You're exactly right. That's another perfect example. Lindsey. Look at you. Uh So there are so many different things in this book where you really, you really break it down for people. And I, I love that like, you know, there are surveys in there so people can just grab the book, take the survey, assess where they are and then figure out the next step for them. Is there anything else as people kind of think about going through the the pieces of this book or how to engage with the book that you would recommend for people kind of on a um process level of work through some of this stuff? One 100%. Yes. So, absolutely. Um when you read the book, look at the research that's included in the book, this this book is research rich. However, I understand how people need a more practical breakdown of the research and how can they actually put this research in action for themselves? And so what I do is I talk about what this looks like in the real world and I'll talk about my experience and uh doing these evidence based practices in order to promote equity in my school. 00:17:37 And then, uh, the book gives a survey where it asks you, ok. Well, how effective is your school at, you know, at XY or Z and promoting equity? But then beyond that, there's another section of each chapter that talks about action items where it gives them clear activities, clear actions that they can take to advance equity or to um, accomplish whatever topic there was in the chapter so that they can promote equity and equity practices in their schools. Hi, everyone. It's Lindsay, just popping in here to tell you about today's episode. Freebie, Dr Parker and I talk about all the resources and reproducible in his book. He is sharing one of them with you for free on leading equitable practices. You can grab it at the blog post for today's episode at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 53, fact, the episode, whatever you want to call it that you can actually use in action right now today. And, and I love it because it, it spans the whole range of like the person who is research minded. I'm thinking of a leader who's like, you know, kind of leading this team of individuals who have different affinities for like just give me the action right now versus I need to be convinced that this is even worth doing, right? 00:18:52 And I think individual leaders the same, right? Some leaders are gonna want the convincing of give me all the research and tell me why I need to read this chapter and then other people are like, oh, yeah, I'm familiar with the research or I don't need to be convinced. Like, give me the list where you're like writing in bullet points. Give me the reproducible survey and I'm going for it and, and you know what, why that's important is, is because when it comes down to change, whether it's organizational change, whether it's systems change, whether it's change in schools, ok. Uh But I've learned when we talk about managing change in schools, they say the first step, the very first step in promoting change is creating a sense of urgency. And so we have to state the problem and we have to show uh what the problem is and why that problem exists and we have to show if this problem continues, you know, how detrimental it can be to the school or the organization. So if we continue to, you know, go to school every day and you know, do school the way we've done in the past, right? And to sweep the problem under the rug, the problem is just gonna grow and when it comes down to school equity, what the problem is, the students are gonna have uh less sense of feeling of belonging, right? 00:20:01 You're not gonna get a quality of instruction. And if you can, if you just imagine if you forecast about 5, 1020 years. If, if students don't like school, if teachers aren't enjoying teaching the curriculum and, and uh attending to students, social emotional learning needs, then imagine what school will look like 10 or 20 years down the line. OK. We have to have a sense of urgency in order to not convince influence but have teachers to buy in and say this is the right thing that we need to do for our students, staff and community. Absolutely. And I, I often think about like the structures like you were talking about systematizing things and I think if you have those structures and, and it's systematic, like when we, you know, regularly review our policy, we include student and family voices, right? Or like whatever the pieces are. And it's like if this is just the way we do things then like those systems and structures aren't just for this year's policy that we're reviewing or whatever it's for every succeeding policy we review. 00:21:03 And so you're really kind of laying a foundation for doing this work more smoothly, more quickly, more efficiently, later and more equitably, right. You're exactly right because like you said, it's ongoing and becomes part of our process. And it's just, you know, the thing that, that, that we do where that isn't hard anymore because it comes so naturally to us now. Absolutely. And, and so one of the things that I think is there's two kind of questions, I, I wonder if they kind of will have the same answer. I'm not sure, but I'll, I'll pose them both to you and you can choose which one or both if you want to answer them. One thing I'm wondering, especially with equity work is like, is there a mindset shift that you have seen kind of unlock action or um uh the new way of thinking really like moves the path forward more quickly with that sense of urgency or something. So one question is about the mindset shift, is there a mindset shift that you've seen be effective for leaders in this work or two? Is there like a big challenge that you've seen districts face, you faced as a leader, you know, a team has faced and, and you would recommend like a way to like get through or move through that challenge. 00:22:13 So yes, it's absolutely a mindset. So when we talk about the New Year and people setting goals that they want to accomplish, whether it's fitness goals, professional goals, personal goals, all right, whatever it is, you have to make the decision that this is exactly what I'm going to accomplish this year. And it has to be a mindset because uh Oprah has a quote that says you should create the highest vision for yourself because uh what you believe is what you become. Ok. So it all starts with how you think, what you uh think in your head and what you believe in your heart. All right. So a perfect example would be my wife. She loves running marathons. Ok. I hate long distance running. I love weight training. Right. And so my wife one year asked me if I would run a marathon with, but for all my life I never like, really, I never liked doing long distance running. Even when I was a high school pe student, we had to do the mile run. I would always come in last place because I would get tired. It's just, I'm just not good at long distance running. 00:23:18 However, I'm really good and I learned this when I was a pe major when I studied kinesiology is that some people genetically have what you call, um, quick fire muscles. All right. And some people have what they call like long distance muscles where the body is just built where they have slow twitch muscles. All right. So we have fast twitch muscles and slow twitch muscles. And I just imagine that I have fast twitch muscles because when it comes to birth to speed or just like, you know, high power reps, I'm good at that. So I told my wife, you know, what if I had to go to increase my bench press by £50? Like I will, I believe I, I would do that. I would be enthusiastic about it. I'll be energized to do it because I believe I could do it when it comes to long distance running. I don't believe that I could do it because, you know, and then we was, when it's time for us to train, you know, I would have a bad attitude, you know, I wouldn't be enthusiastic about it and I would just pull you down. All right. And so the bottom line is all right, our actions, all our beliefs dictate our actions. 00:24:20 Right. So when it comes to mindset, if we don't believe that we can accomplish something, if we don't believe it's important, we're not gonna work hard towards it. But if we believe that we can accomplish it and we adopt the mindset that this is something that we can do, then we're going to do it. And so think about it, if I said I was gonna do equity work, but I really didn't believe in equity and I really didn't believe that I have to take in order to influence my staff and my community that this is what needs to be done. Then when I step into my school every day, I'm just going through the motions and here's the harm in that Lindsey if I'm a school leader and I step into the building and I'm just going through the motions, then imagine what would my staff community and students do? They would step into the school just going through the motions. However, if I really believe in this, then my actions are going to be dictated by my beliefs. And so I'm gonna work hard towards equity. I'm gonna uh influence my staff that this is what's going need to be done. They will see my actions and then they could follow. And so belief and mindset is so important because your actions are dictated by your beliefs, uh what you think in your mind and what you believe in your heart. 00:25:29 I love that response. And I was, I was smiling because you're literally describing the dynamic between you and your wife. The same conversation happened like a year ago. I'm a marathon runner. My partner is a Kines theist and he is way into weight training and not long distance running. And literally, I don't know what it was about the last year, but he like did some long distance writing and he was like, you know what I'm gonna do it did, it loved it. Now he wants to do a half iron man. And I'm like, this is your future there. It is his mindset switch, right? And that's what has to happen, that mindset switch because people, they're either whether they're aware of it or unaware. What really happens. What the bottom line comes to is that your mindset dictates your act? Absolutely. And I'm wondering, do you think that is the biggest challenge that that people have with this work is just like right off the bat, just not believing in it, believing that they could be effective in doing the work. And so they just don't even kind of get to the second step of the process. But think about it. Yeah, because if you looked at a task and it was so overwhelming, right, then you're gonna procrastinate. 00:26:35 Are you're gonna come up with every excuse as why not to do it? OK? But winners when they look at challenges, they look at it as opportunities for growth and they look at it as these are things that I can do in order to improve. And so they take that challenge on because they know the importance of doing the work and they know what the outcome would be. And so a winner isn't um discouraged by the problem, they're motivated by the result. And so that's what school leaders, teachers, community members, they have to be motivated by the end result as opposed to being defeated by that challenge. I love that so much. And I think about your book and the way that it's laid out and the case studies that you kind of share of just like, here's what my experience was and here's the result that we got. I just sometimes I think that leadership can be so isolating, right? If you're just in your own space and you don't, especially if you're in a like a smaller district, there's not as many people doing the same work as you or something, you might not be in a PLC with like other leaders or principals or whatever it can be really hard to know what is possible unless you pick up a book and see this person did this, this was the context, this is the action subs they took, this is the result. 00:27:44 And then that can even if you've never met the person, right? Just reading about them or listen to a podcast about something like can give you then the picture of what is possible and then allow you to be motivated, I think through that, which is 100% 100%. And what you're describing is called vicarious learning. And so where we may feel like it's not possible for ourselves, but then once we see somebody else have done it now, we can say, hey, you know what he did this or this person accomplished this, I can accomplish this too. It's like the person who first run a marathon, who would you a marathon runner who would think that it's possible that you can run 26.2 miles. And then they found that uh I forgot the person's name who broke the uh what was it? The six minute mile and then the four minute mile. They're like, wow, this is possible to do. And so when we can sometimes do experience vicarious learning, we can say, ok, this is a huge challenge. We know that it would be a huge undertaking yet we can be inspired because we've seen that this has been done. And so it's a process and So, since we're talking about the workout analogy and getting in shape, we know that you can't just go to the gym once and get in shape. 00:28:55 All right, we understand that it's a process. And so what we know about getting in shape that it's comes down to consistency and it's setting that vision of what our goals are. And so it's the same thing with the school, what school leaders need to do is sit down with their staff and community and write out what are three or four important goals. And now we have to think about what is the work that has to be done in order to achieve this goal. And now we're gonna step into our schools and to our school districts and we're going to just consistently work on achieving this goal. And next thing, you know, like I said, it's a process, it's not gonna happen overnight, but a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, we could be proud that we accomplished the goal. Excellent. I think we've talked about so many different things that I'm wondering as a, as kind of like a final call to action or action step. What is the starting point for someone listening to this episode and then saying like, OK, I'm, I'm going to start, I want to do one thing, start building that momentum like that first trip in the gym that usually happens around new Year. 00:29:57 So like that went well. I'm doing another one. What does that first action step look like? Or could it look like for a listener? OK. So it can, it can look like going to talk to a student and then say, OK, that's what empathy is, is putting myself in someone else's shoes and learning uh what their experience is and just asking students who may be from a historically marginalized group, who may be LGBT Q plus, right? Who may be low income or just AAA struggling learner? And just asking them, what are some of the things that we can do to better support you academic? What are some of the things that we can do to better support you socially and emotionally? OK. And ask them what has, what has your experience been in this school? And how could we make it better? OK. And then just, just taking notes, writing down some of the things the student says and they're taking it back to a committee, you, you can establish an equity committee and say this is what we're learning from our students experience. OK. And so what can we do in order to create a more um environment that supports student success and start there and then have your goals drafted because each school is going to be different that each, each um school district has its own unique set of challenges that schools leaders can do in order to uh overcome. 00:31:19 So that's one place I was, I was start. It's simple. It's practical and everyone can do it. Anyone can do. Yeah. As soon as you're done with the episode, walk down the hallway, find a student, right? Or you can find groups of students and survey them through the same questions and then uh take that data and say, OK, what are the themes that we're seeing here? Ok. What are, what are the things that continue to come up? And so these are obvious issues that we know that we need to address and then they can pick up a, a copy of Beta Driving Force and they could find that issue in my book, whether it's policies, whether it's uh you know, something that has to do with uh school vision admission statement, whether it's something that has to do with uh curriculum, whatever it is and they can look for that in the book. And they could say, OK, here's some, some solid action items that we can take in order to achieve our goal. I love that reminder because people aren't just like, you know, getting, collecting the information, learning about the challenges and the experiences of students and not knowing where to go next. There are several ideas of where to go next in your book. So excellent point. 00:32:22 And I think to, to wrap up and you're kind of leading us down that way. I think this is a perfect opportunity for our close two questions. I usually ask people. So, so the first one is something that you've been learning about. So we talk a lot on the show about like, how we're helping people learn on this, in this conversation for people who are listening. What is something that you have been learning about? And it could literally be anything does not have to relate to education? Ok. Well, you know, I am gonna relate to education because it's just so uh poignant for the time that we're in right now. All right. So I started my career in 1997 as a pe a health teacher. And I love that job. I love the school where I got hired in because you could walk from one end of the hall to the next end of the hall and you can hear about six or seven different languages. The school was so diverse and I love that. So I was a pe teacher for like five years before I became a dina students. And when I became a dina students, I worked in an all black school. And then when I became an assistant principal again, I moved to a school where it's an all black school. And my first principal job was in an all black school. 00:33:27 But my second principal job was in a school that was 70% Hispanic and 30% black title, one low income school. And so I had to learn more about the uh Hispanic culture and how I can accommodate them and build equity for them. So they have a sense of belonging. And even now when we talk about, you know, immigration in the United States and how many diverse students that we're getting? Ok. So I'm learning more and more about different cultures about how they learn about uh how they do things. And so what is teaching me is teaching me to be more informed about uh how to better accommodate these students in these student groups so that I can, you know, support their education in a way that they see it as support in a way that helps them that accelerates their learning. I love that answer. Thank you for sharing that. And I think the last question is just where can people get in touch with you? I think people are going to want you to read your book, learn from you, continue the journey with you. So is there social media website anything like that where they can 100%? 00:34:34 So my website is Dr Don parker.com. That's my website and you can email me at Doctor Don Parker at Dr Don parker.com and they can follow me on Twitter at Doctor Don Parker one. And so I keep it simple. So as long as you know me, you can find me as long as you know my name, you can find me beautiful. Thank you so much, Doctor Parker. This is a great conversation. Thanks for coming. On the show. Thank you, Lindsay. I appreciate it. I love your energy. I love your enthusiasm and I love how you want to just uh share great tips and things that your listeners can do to become better educators to create a better experience for teachers and students. Thank you. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane Sapir and Jamila Dugan, talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period. I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. 00:35:39 How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network. Better today. Better tomorrow. And the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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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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