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In this episode, we’re continuing a mini-series that looks at how to support students to critically analyze power dynamics, specifically looking at how they relate to race, racialization, and nation.
We explore Iris Young's critical framework, Five Faces of Oppression, and other strategies and tips to bring this important conversation and understanding to your classroom. Why? Students today need to be equipped with the skills to critically analyze power dynamics. These conversations, though, can be challenging to work through. Educators may benefit from taking a systematic approach to these topics in their classrooms. By understanding frameworks like Iris Young's Five Faces of Oppression, educators can provide students with the tools to challenge societal structures and empower marginalized voices. What? Educators can use the same four steps discussed in episode 203 to analyze power dynamics related to race, racialization, and nation: Step 1: Select a theory or framework that works for your context. Iris Young’s Five Faces of Oppression is a useful one for this topic. The five faces are:
Step 2: Simplify the language of the framework for accessibility. Ensure all students can engage with the material regardless of their language proficiency. With the Five Faces framework, you may:
Step 3: Apply the framework to engaging and high-interest media. This allows students to practice critical analysis in a relatable context. You may show a short news clip, talk about a movie or TV show, or bring in a viral social media trend to analyze these concepts. Step 4: Integrate the framework with course content, such as historical sources or novels, to deepen understanding and application. For example, NYU has a culturally responsive curriculum scorecard, which you can use to analyze different content. Some metrics to look at include:
Step 5: Bring in other resources and tools to your curriculum. For example, the Stanford History Education Groups (SHEG) outlines historical thinking skills such as sourcing and contextualization. Both skills help students better analyze and understand historical sources. Further, Facing History has great lessons around stereotypes that help students grapple with and counter stereotypes. Final Tip Frame the analysis of power dynamics with an understanding of intersectionality. It will vary based on language and age levels, but you want to ensure we’re not just looking at one thing while ignoring other aspects of identity. There’s nuance in the intersection, and it’s important to this conversation at all grade levels. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Critical Analysis Resource Bank with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 204 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:
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In this episode, we are talking about empowering students to analyze power dynamics, using the example of gender identity. We explore some strategies that can engage learners from preschool to high school and facilitate this important conversation.
This episode is part of a mini-series that’s designed to help educators design curricula for students to understand and analyze power dynamics at any age. Why? Equipping students with the ability to analyze power dynamics and challenge societal norms is crucial for fostering a socially just and inclusive learning environment. Engaging students with relevant and modern media allows them to practice these analytical skills in ways that resonate with their context and empower them to think critically and openly about power dynamics at play. What? Students of any age can analyze power dynamics. Educators can adjust their units to be age-appropriate by choosing the right framework and engaging media for analysis. Here are four steps to follow: Step 1: Find a Theory or Framework That Works For Your Context The first step is to find a theory that is suitable to you and your students, fitting the classroom’s needs. You can find one that’s quite broad or specific to an identity group. Choose one that’s suitable for you as a place to start. For example, if you’re looking at power dynamics and gender, you may look at Nussbaum’s theory of objectification. Step 2: Break Down Complex Theories Depending on the age of your students, you may need to break down the language used in your theoretical framework into simpler concepts. You can simplify language, condense the number of attributes, or just think about how your students will understand these complex ideas. Continuing with the example of Nussbaum’s theory, you can identify what terms are relevant to your setting and which ones weren’t. When I taught using this framework, I broke it down into three simplified categories that connected back to Nussbaum’s theory: Women as “powerless,” “property,” and “disposable.” Step 3: Invite Students to Apply Frameworks Bring these topics to life by applying the framework using modern, interesting media. This is so key in engaging students in the topic, so think of media like advertisements, TV shows, or music videos. Eventually you can apply the framework to historical texts or other documents, but it’s important to start with something that’s highly engaging and interesting to your class. With my activity using Nussbaum’s theory, I used real advertisements that related to each category, and students did a gallery walk to assign them appropriately and analyze the representation of women in media. You could also do a “gender box” activity that gets students to generate ideas of traditional gender “roles,” looking at how they’re reinforced in media and popular culture, and then discuss how to break out of those boxes and why it’s important to break stereotypes. Step 4: Create a Visual Reminder Use something like an anchor chart and hang it in your classroom to reinforce learning and encourage application to course content. Final Tip Once you’ve decided to approach this conversation on dynamics, be on the look out for positive examples of justices, joy, and equity. Curate and share examples of gender expansiveness (or other social justice themes) with your students to inspire and fuel their imaginations and critical thinking. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Critical Analysis Resource Bank with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 203 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:
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TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Welcome to another episode of the Time for Teachership podcast. We are digging into kind of my favorite new miniseries and this is inspired by a lot of different people being like. I want to help students at all ages, all the way from a pre-K we're working with a preschool right now and family members and educators in that preschool to help pre-K level students in like three, four years old, all the way to high school students who I have taught and have helped with the same exact thing. And what we're talking about is analyzing power dynamics. So when we support students' criticality, when we get them to analyze power dynamics, I want to first introduce kind of the steps to this and kind of a broad level how I would approach this, and then I want to give some concrete examples to you and I'll be throwing a bunch of links into the blog post for this episode as well. So if you're a person who wants to follow along or just write it down and come back to you later, that's going to be at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 203. All right, let's get to it. So here's the very first thing that I would do I would find a theory or a framework that works for you. Now you can find one that's really broad. You can find one that is specific to an identity group and kind of go from there. But find some theory or framework that speaks to you and I'll be sharing several over the next couple of episodes. Then I would break it down as needed. Some of your students are not going to need the breakdown and some of the theory is going to need to be broken down, especially for your younger kiddos. So, simplifying language, condensing the number of attributes, that's the kind of thing I would do for a breakdown. And again, you may break it down. And then your students are like actually, I like the nuance of the other thing, I can do that and great. But again, I'm thinking very intentionally about the broad range of a three-year-old all the way to an 18-year-old who might be doing this, or above. You know, you might have some students who are 20, 21. So, thinking about all of this and I mean even at the college level I think it's helpful to think about this. So do what's best for your age range. 01:59 Now, find theory or framework, step one. Step two break it down. Step three invite students to apply it and here's the kicker using modern, interesting media, something that is interesting to them. I have often used things like advertisements or TV shows or movies. Music videos particularly for older students, is really exciting Anything that is relevant to them. It could be a story you're reading in class, but just make sure it's a really interesting story and something that students are excited to do. Now, of course, you can use it in anything you write. You can apply these to historical documents, you can apply these to a novel that is not super interesting, but I think to practice it at first, we want to do it with things that are really high interest for students, so that they're talking about it, using it, figuring out the nuance. High interest for students, so that they're talking about it, using it, figuring out the nuance. And then you'll hang your visual reminder like an anchor chart in the classroom somewhere and you will invite application to more of the course content or texts that you ultimately want students to be able to grapple with and apply these frameworks to. So again, find the theory framework, break it down for students, invite students to apply it using really interesting things, interesting media. Then hang the visual reminder and apply it to course content. That's the flow we're working with. 03:08 So let's actually just dive into an example. We'll start with a high school example that I used in my gender studies class. Now I use because I was familiar with it with my gender studies background Nussbaum's theory of objectification, so I will link to that in the blog post for this episode and I kind of broke it down. I taught multilingual learners who are fairly new to the English language at the high school level, so I wanted to keep the concepts really rigorous. I wanted to have interesting media that they have seen in their lives or could easily connect to conceptually, but I didn't want the barrier to be the really high academic words that, to be honest, I had to look up. I mean, like she uses words like fungibility and I was like I have no idea what that means. You know and at this point I had a master's degree I'm like this is just something that needs to be broken down for most people. So, all of that considered, and maybe I would do this differently were I to do it again, but here's what I did and I will actually link to a PDF version of the slide deck that I use with my students. 04:04 Again, this was like your three of my teachings, so perhaps not my best work. Feel free to critique. But this is what I did. I showed the exact kind of wording that Nussbaum uses. So I think she has like seven or eight elements and I put those on the screen for students and then I said, okay, listen, we're gonna break it down. I'm gonna give you a visual and kind of a more simple word to understand kind of the three categories that she's talking about and that I want you to be able to apply, and then we're going to look at print advertisements that relate to gender and you're going to analyze them for the applicability of any of these categories. So how I broke it down were three categories as follows One, powerless. 04:43 So the idea of women being depicted as powerless in these advertisements was something they were looking for. The second was property women being treated as property, something that is owned, something that is kind of used as a tool of instrumentality, and women being disposable. So again, this is like considering the gender binary, considering presentation of gender. Right, there's a lot of stuff here that we're like asterisking, but just for like simplicity's sake, we have powerless, property and disposable. Now you can think about how to go beyond the gender binary in applying these, but these are kind of the three categories that we put up there in connection to Nussbaum's theory of objectification of women. 05:21 So again, I presented Nussbaum's language, broke it down into these three categories, had a clear visual with each one, one per slide, and then invited students to go on a gallery walk where I put printed advertisements around the room and then they had to label. I can't remember if I did this on their note sheet or they had to put like a sticky note up. I don't think I was flush with sticky notes at this point, so they might have just written on a note sheet which you know like station one or advertisement one was which one of these? Or are there multiple kind of categories present in this advertisement? And then we would discuss it all at the class. So again, this was during a media critique units and we did a gallery walk of those high interest visuals and use the theory, broken down into those three categories, to apply. 06:05 Now, if I were teaching elementary school, this would look probably a little bit different. I actually love the idea and I've done this with I think it's always fifth grade, but I think it could work even lower. I would do a student-developed framework and I would invite students to do the gender box activity where students are going to list like traditional gender expectations and again, I would be very specific in my framing of this Like this is not what we in this class believe, but what we often see in advertisements, in people talking about this, that we're like oh, this is such an old, gross idea of, like women have to be this or girl I would actually use girls and boys language, probably but girls are this and boys need to be this, and so really naming that like this is something we're actively working to change. But like, here are some of the gross messages that we've kind of heard. So with girls, I might kind of like cue them if they need a prompt. They probably don't, they're probably eager to talk about this, to be honest. But if they needed a prompt, I might cue them to like beauty standards or kind of like physical weakness or whatever right. Like I might invite them to think about like what about sports? Like what do people say about girls in sports? And maybe it's all positive and that's actually awesome, that's really exciting. And then you can kind of select some advertisements that might counter that and be like wow, that's a really old, outdated thing. Like look at all this great stuff that we brainstormed. So feel free to like, go with the flow of whatever your students are saying, um, but you know, like boys, often we have like the physical strength or like violence being prevalent, and so what I would do at that point is, once you have kind of the boxes of genders and, again I think, problematize the fact that this is like a gender binary construct and to be like actually like boys can be all of the things, girls can be all of the things and we don't even have to identify as one or the other whatever. Wherever your students are, wherever you are in this kind of language, please feel free to lean into any of that. Now what I would do is, once students have kind of identified their own framework or kind of considerations or elements of kind of gender oppression, because it's bad for boys, it's bad for girls, right, it's bad for non-binary folks, it's like bad to even have the boxes. 08:03 Once we have kind of developed that student impression framework, then we're going to have an activity and I'll link to some examples in the blog post again of inviting students to analyze some sample advertisements. Now, the sample advertisements I'm going to link are actually really interesting. They are video advertisements of toys targeted towards girls or boys, and they are some of the examples used in a study of, most interestingly, music that was very gendered in toy advertisements for children. So I just think there's so much richness in this. Students can analyze the music elements. They can analyze the visuals, the color palettes, who's in there, what are they doing, all sorts of things. But they can use their own framework to analyze those advertisements, which I think will be so cool because it's co-constructed with students. So again adds that motivating factor and that usability factor. 08:55 So then, once you are done with that, I would if they didn't come out organically in the gender box activity, I would invite students at this point to share any examples of either stories. I mean, think about the stories they read. It could be a picture book, a story they've read on their own. It could be an advertisement, a movie, a TV show, any sort of examples. It could be like their friends who are, like you know, just living examples of gender expansiveness and joy. But invite students to share any examples of gender expansiveness and joy. But invite students to share any examples of gender expansiveness, you know, going beyond the binary gender, bending like all of the, just like breaking out of the boxes and invite students to share that. And, you know, come up with your own too. Just in case students are maybe not having examples at the ready, you can be ready to share some of yours, to show them what is possible. Because I think one of the things that I did when I was teaching early on that I would like to do better if I were to go back and reteach those same students in that same unit would be to think about the ways in which we counter oppression that could be fueled by joy, right, and could be fueled with like. This is kind of the way that we like things to be. 10:13 I think often about the interview with the creators of Schitt's Creek and how they very intentionally wanted to develop something that doesn't have homophobia as like part a one of the main characters who identifies, as I think he identifies as pansexual in the show. I think he identifies as pansexual beyond the show, but anyways, I think that that is a really important component is that we make sure that we envision a world and then, of course, work in our lives to create that world and make that come to life that is fueled with joy and not oppression. So I think the the next piece of this is to invite that. If students generate, it, great. If you can add some ideas, great. 10:59 One of the resources I will link to in the blog post for today is a clothing company called primarycom. I didn't realize they existed until someone recommended them for toddler clothes, which I absolutely love because they are very intentional in designing gender neutral clothing. They have a whole article about gender neutral clothing design and the principles behind it and the why and the how. It's super fascinating. So I'll actually link to that article in the blog post. 11:24 But like that's an example, and so something as simple as like, from a design standpoint, considering gender expansiveness or the intentional selection of a male presenting child to, or a male identifying child to wear a dress, to model their dress, that they have right, like that is a choice, that is a gender expansive, socially just world, beautiful, making choice right. And so just maybe to have a couple things in your mind that you've identified. And one of the beautiful things about this right is that as teachers, we can be on the lookout for things like this. We can be kind of constantly collecting and curating these examples to be able to share with our students when we're ready to do a unit like this or as it comes up naturally in student conversation. And I think that's just one of the really fun parts of being a human and a person who is constantly learning and on this learning journey of life. But that's something that you know, you can consistently look out for, now that you're kind of thinking about it, curate that ready to share. 12:29 So, again, I will link to all of those resources I have named in this episode in the blog post. I will also link to a free resource which is a slide deck for promoting students' critical analysis in general, so you'll see things like an intersectionality wheel. You'll see some of the questions posed by Dr Goldie Muhammad from her book Cultivating Genius, where she defines criticality for us. There are so many resources in here. I want you to go grab all that stuff and that's going to be at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 203. I'm super excited to learn how you're going to use these frameworks in your class and what kind of activities you'll go through, but I'm also really excited to learn how your students engage and what kind of cool conversation and observations and creations come up. So please let me know how this goes. 
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In this insightful episode, Erik Francis delves into the transformative power of inquiry-based learning and the role of belief in education. Erik is an educator and the author of Deconstructing Depth of Knowledge and several other titles. He believes that kids can do anything, and it’s often the adult’s limiting beliefs that prevent a child from achieving, excelling, and succeeding.
Erik emphasizes the necessity of nurturing curiosity to help students excel, advocating for a shift from traditional cognitive methods to contextual learning, which is significantly enhanced by Depth of Knowledge (DOK) strategies. He further discusses the importance of teaching through questioning, which encourages students to ask meaningful questions and become active participants in their education. This approach not only transfers instructional responsibility to learners but also fosters a dynamic and empowering learning environment. The Big Dream Erik’s dream for education is that students love to learn—that they live through and beyond their potential. His belief is that answers come free, so ask questions! Curiosity and asking “why” is central to a good education that enables students to thrive. This dream extends to reevaluating educational standards, both in design and purpose. Mindset Shifts Required To embrace inquiry-based learning, educators must adopt a student-centered mindset. Inquiry and curiosity is an experience, a process—not a program that you can do on demand. This shift involves rethinking traditional teaching methods and embracing a questioning lens. Educators must be comfortable transferring instructional responsibility to students, encouraging questions for the purpose of teaching and learning. Action Steps Inquiry-based learning draws on students’ natural curiosity and desire for understanding. You can cultivate this in your classroom by taking these steps: Step 1: Start small by incorporating inquiry into everyday lessons. Begin by asking students how they can apply their knowledge and encouraging them to explain their understanding. Welcome questions from students and engage in your own process of questions and exploration, too. Step 2: Utilize Depth of Knowledge (DOK) levels to structure questioning, ensuring students progress from recalling information to applying and creatively using their knowledge. DOK levels include:
These won’t be all captured in one classroom setting, but will get deeper over time as knowledge grows through curious questioning. Step 3: Transform educational standards by using curiosity and questioning to demonstrate learning, not just for the purpose of assessment (i.e., right or wrong answers). Get students to just start explaining—talking about their observations and understanding. Let curiosity be a driving force for knowledge instead of rigid assessment models. Challenges? One of the challenges educators may face is the fear of losing control in the classroom when turning over responsibility to students. There is also the challenge of re-teaching students how to ask effective questions, as traditional classroom settings often discourage this natural skill. Additionally, educators may struggle with differentiating instruction to cater to diverse learning needs and overcoming the constraints of rigid educational standards. One Step to Get Started To get started, educators can begin by transforming their standards into inquiry-based questions using simple question stems like "How can you…?" or "How could you…?" This approach not only engages students but also encourages them to take ownership of their learning journey. Your goal is to have the students start explaining their thoughts and sharing their questions and ideas about the topic with you. From a book, for example, instead of them identifying a core theme (i.e., “family”) get them to start exploring family—what it is, who the family members are, how they’re related, how they feel about those characters in the book, etc. It’s about questioning and exploration. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on their website, Maverick Education or on X (Twitter), LinkedIn, and YouTube To help you implement today’s takeaways, Erik is sharing a video for free: Deconstructing Depth of Knowledge - Discard the DOK Wheel. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 202 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:
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In this episode, we are talking about transforming classroom dynamics by designing discourse opportunities that build overtime. This concept, “threading,” is from Matt Kaye’s book, “Not Light But Fire,” and is useful in creating open conversations in your classroom. It’s a vital approach for fostering empathy and understanding—especially before addressing emotionally charged topics.
This method emphasizes foundational communication agreements and intentional curriculum design to empower students and center their voices. It can be used in whole-class discussions and discourse experiences, as well as small-group conversations. Why? Topics like race, injustice, and any sort of identity-based injustices can be high-emotion conversations in the classroom. Learning to navigate those conversations effectively is an important skill for educators to develop. Using protocols to design discourse opportunities that build overtime is one way to foster empathy and understanding, leading to effective classroom discourse. What? Better classroom discourse comes by design. Building out a curriculum, unit, or activity around a high-emotion conversation requires careful thought and intention. Here are steps you can take to do so: Step 1: Start with the Foundation of Discussion Before introducing high-emotion conversations into your classroom, practice the art of discussion with other topics. You want to build this skill with your students so that they are comfortable to speak with each other. Do this by co-creating communication agreements about how you’ll speak with each other and making sure everyone knows the baseline assumptions surrounding the conversation (i.e., “we never debate someone’s right to food and shelter”). Step 2: Design the Conversation Prompt Once the foundation of conversation is established, you’ll design the conversation prompt—what are you asking students to engage with? Depending on the format, you’ll likely start with some kind of prompt—a text, image, video, infographic, etc. This is the factual basis that kicks off your conversation together. Step 3: Select Protocols There are a variety of protocols you can implement over the course of a discussion, and having them “build” on each other is a great way to go deeper while ensuring safety and openness in the conversation. Here are some protocol options to try during class-wide conversations:
These are just a few of many protocols you can use, but the idea is to use them in a progressive way, deepening the conversation by building trust and empathy in the classroom. Step 4: Build Time for Reflection It’s important to allow students time to reflect on the conversation that just took place. They can provide self-feedback or feedback to others, based on a rubric you’ve co-designed with your students. You can also dive deeper to understand their experience with the conversation by having students share their feelings through drawing, photos, text, talking, or any other format they’re comfortable with. Final Tip When preparing for classroom discussions that can be emotionally-charged, focus on designing protocols in succession. You build your base of trust, comfort, and empathy, then go a bit deeper through facilitated conversation, until eventually students are leading and sharing what they’ve learned. To help you continue implementing discourse, I’m sharing my Discussion Resource Bank with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 201 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
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TRANSCRIPT
00:01 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. This is episode 201. Today we are talking about designing discourse opportunities that build over time. They build on top of one another, and so you don't have for thinking of Matt Kaye's concept of threading. You don't have the idea that this is the only conversation about this topic that you will have. I've kept that concept from Matt Kaye in my brain for a while, since reading Not Light but Fire, which is his phenomenal book about talking about race in classrooms. And, of course, this is not the only conversation you're going to have about high emotion topics. Topics like race, like injustice any sort of identity-based injustice is really what my heart goes to, and so we have talked on the podcast a lot about general steps of building curriculum and class culture around discussion of injustices and striving towards justice. So in the context of all of that, I want to name there are many, many resources previously on the podcast that you can listen to for other components, but today what we're focusing on are the specific protocol options for discussion and discourse in your class, particularly, for the most part, whole class discussion and discourse experiences, although I will name at least one that is a smaller group level piece, of course, always using things like turn and talk as well. But I think the large classroom pieces are where we sometimes struggle for ideas for how to build and at what point of the unit we use which type of protocol. So that's what we're getting into today. I'll kind of go through the general steps first and then you can always reference previous podcast episodes for other components that you want to dive deeper into. So, general steps here is the overview of how I would build out kind of curriculum and a unit specifically around a particular topic. 01:52 First, of course, you want to have the foundation of a culture of discussion built. Before you introduce any high emotion topic. You can discuss things and practice the art of discussion with some lower intensity topics. So you want to build the foundation. You want to have things like baseline assumptions or agreements in place. For example, we never debate that people have a right to life and water and housing or something right. We want to have communication agreements. So this is how we will communicate with one another. We will not talk over someone else, whatever the things are right. 02:26 And then, once you've kind of built the foundation for culture discussion, you design the prompt what is the particular question that we are asking students to engage with and discuss. Potentially, depending on the particular discussion format, you will select a text or texts. I always use texts in air quotes, so that could be a video, it could be an infographic, it could be a lot of things, but it's kind of the fodder for conversation, the factual basis. Then you will select the protocols. So, again, you want to thread them over time. That's the focus of this episode. So what protocols are you going to do? We'll talk more about that momentarily. 03:01 And then, finally, after students have had conversations, you want to build in time for reflection. So build capacity for student discourse by giving them feedback and having them give feedback to each other and self-reflect, giving themselves feedback. And this should be based on a rubric that you design, and ideally co-design with students, and or a framework which I've talked about before. The discourse analysis framework that Dr Shrubry, bridges, patrick and I have used and published is a good one. We also want to make sure that we're gathering student experience data in multiple ways. So having students share their feelings, drawings, photo, voice, whatever kind of format it takes. We want to make sure that students are sharing their experience in the classroom, in the class discussions, specifically with you so you can make adjustments based on their experience. We don't know students' full experiences until we ask, so we want to make sure we build in time for that. 03:52 Okay, that was a very fast overview of all of the pieces. Now we're going to dive deeper into the protocol options. So that was step number four selecting the protocols to thread throughout the unit all around a particular topic. So what we're going to talk through are kind of general protocol options and then I will give you an example of how these kind of come to life in a particular unit based on identity and I'm pulling from Boston Public Schools has a really cool identity unit. I think they call it like unit zero for the start of the year, and so I love this concept and have been working with them. And so just thinking about how do we maybe apply this concept of discussion threading and discourse threading, building a conversation on a previous conversation around the concept of identity, because we're talking about identity-based injustices. Those can have heightened emotions and it's even more important to be intentional about how we design the curriculum. So possible protocol options, again thinking about specifically class-wide conversations Whenever I am building a unit or starting a topic where we haven't gone there before, we haven't discussed this topic, it might be unfamiliar or it might cause high emotion. 05:06 I like to start at the beginning with building some empathy and some emotional engagement and censoring students' experiences and stories. Now, my favorite protocol for this is circle practice, and so I like to come together in circle right no desks, chairs in a circle, ideally. Obviously, different people have different spatial requirements in their classrooms and spaces, but we see each other's bodies. We are connected to the stories students are sharing and we invite students to share a story connected to the topic, but maybe a story about their own lived experience or feelings on a particular topic. So we're really centering in students where they are in the moment they're coming into that first class discussion. They are not concerned with necessarily like factual things. It's more of kind of an emotional lived experience thing. However, students can certainly bring in facts that they know and we want to honor and value that expertise. But if we have misconceptions here, know that we have time to address them later. We're not engaging in debate here, we're just learning about each other and again, I think it's really important when we're giving feedback to students to identify specifically what the purpose of each discussion is, I would say, at least for you as an educator. What we want to know about the beginning stages is we want to encourage and foster curiosity, a deep understanding of others, a practice of listening deeply, of emotional engagement Like that's the beginning stages. We also I think we also want to make sure that students see value in what they are bringing. Their current experiences Often particularly for students who feel very disconnected from traditional schooling have not maybe been successful, quote unquote, in a traditional way, in a grading way in school. 06:57 I think a lot of that brings itself into class conversations and when you see the students who might be shutting down a lot of times, that might be because they're fearful that they're going to get an answer wrong or they don't have the correct background knowledge. And I think sometimes we use the phrase and I've talked about this before background knowledge as like this very specific set of factual things that students must bring in with them from, like the previous years of formal schooling. And we don't value as much I'm saying this as a we, because I've done this as well, of course we don't value as much the things that students are bringing from their own lived experiences and lives and things outside of formal schooling and so when we invite all of that, we also invite that engagement. That might not happen if we introduce this topic in a more formal discussion setting where we're citing evidence immediately and that kind of thing. Okay, so after the beginning stage we have built community with circle. We have emotionally engaged students, we have valued their experience. 07:58 Coming in Then kind of along the middle parts of the unit, we could vary these, we could use several different protocols. Here's my two favorite for kind of the middle portion of a unit or discussion kind of thread. One is human barometer. This is great for inviting students' initial thoughts. So take a position and we're going to discuss your reason for taking that position in small groups wherever you're standing. 08:22 So imagine a classroom where one side of the room is agree and one side of the room is disagree, and then I have recently come to love the part in the middle. So I think sometimes we particularly part of, I think, us culture we are like you know. We're going to create arguments, we're going to stand firm in our position, and I think students have seen a lot of that in the political landscape lately. They are very familiar with take a position and defend it and I want to foster and encourage kind of a nuanced understanding of topics and the ability to change one's mind based on deeply listening to others. So I have renewed my interest in the middle standing in the middle, not fully agreeing or disagreeing, but you have to explain why and it has to be kind of a thoughtful nuance and, honestly, many times when students stand there and explain that nuanced opinion, I really I think that is sometimes the most thoughtful opinion or the most thoughtful stance is like one a person who really truly understands the depth of the topic. So I don't want to exclude that. 09:31 And if it turns out that everyone in your class stands in the middle, you know you might have to be like, okay, where are you like 75% leaning towards stand on that side of the room just to like, foster a better discussion. But, human barometer, take a stance. So you would share a statement. You would have them take a stance on one side of the room and then, wherever they're standing, turn and talk to the people next to you. Why are you there? And then you're going to have one person be the spokesperson to kind of share out to the larger group and you can invite students to move where they are standing, based on whatever the group said, if they are convincing, so, encouraging that deep listening. I also want to name, of course, if your students are more comfortable or if there are physical considerations to take into account, like you don't have to physically move about the room. You could do this digitally. You could do this on like a scale. I've done this via Zoom where we annotate like a line. You can hold up fingers one, two, three. There's a lot of different ways that this could look, but just envisioning kind of one example how I've used it in my class. 10:32 The second example of a protocol in kind of the middle range is a discussion diamond. I get this from Investigating History, which I think this protocol specifically was written by EduCurious, which is an organization out of Seattle, I believe Washington, and they I just I love the opportunity for written and verbal discussion in groups of four. So they propose that students get a question. Usually it's like the question for what they call a cluster or a set of like five lessons or something where they've been learning about things. They can certainly cite evidence at this point and they are asked to think about their response to the cluster question or the kind of like mini essential question or driving question for the week and students will have some think time. They will get a piece of paper with a diamond drawn on it and because there's four people, the diamond will be divided into four quadrants and each student gets to write in one of those quadrants On the paper. You could also do a chart paper, you could also do post-its that go on the paper. So whatever you need for accessibility, students will think, write the response on the post-it or the square of the diamond and then, after everyone has written, they will verbally kind of share and explain a little more deeply because maybe they just wrote one sentence or two sentences, their idea. They will have about one minute to share and then they will have a few minutes after everyone has shared their initial idea, to come to consensus or at least synthesize their understanding, and they will write that in the middle of the diamond, in the center of the paper. And so that's just another example of a way to engage with the discussion diamond. 12:07 Now there's with a question, excuse me, is a discussion diamond. There's a ton of other things you could use in this middle kind of format where we're starting to base our opinions and ideas of things on factual information. We've already started examining sources and that kind of thing. You could certainly do something like a collect and display. Everyone gets a Post-it. What are your thoughts on this? Write it on a Post-it, come stick it on the wall. We're going to cluster our collectively, our class's, ideas into different categories and group them based on themes we're seeing emerge. There's a lot of different things you could do, but these two are my favorite. 12:42 Um, finally, to kind of end the unit, I really like Socratic Seminar and I specifically like it because it's very student-led. The teacher ideally does not even sit in the seminar itself. They sit kind of behind the seminar. And I'm encouraged by a recent book I've been reading. I think it's called Hands Down Conversation. I'm interviewing the authors on this podcast. I'm very excited about it, so stay tuned for that episode. But this is something that is possible even at the K through five level, because that book is specifically about elementary students in kindergarten through fifth grade and how this is possible there as well. 13:16 But students are really leading the conversation around a question. This is really good for nuance. This is great when students can cite sources so they've really done a deep dive not just looked at one source, but they've been looking at sources for weeks now. They have fully developed their kind of opinions as much as they can in a unit of study right, and this is where they have enough that they can just kind of take the conversation and go with it. They do not need constant teacher intervention or redirection or further kind of active questioning in the sense of oh, they don't understand this and they need to clarify. But this is where they really thrive and so I like some sort of structure that gives them the ability to run with it. And, of course, as a teacher, you are on the outside right, or as a coach, you are collecting information, maybe writing a transcript, identifying misconceptions to, of course, address later. 14:08 Or what I love about that hands-down conversation book is that there are several mini lessons where it's like, okay, if this is happening in discussion, this is a skill students need to build or this is a gap in the skills. Here is a three to five minute mini lesson where you can teach them this idea of, for example, building on one another. Here's a poster that's like step one, two, three, that you can teach them this idea of, for example, building on one another. Here's a poster that's like step one, two, three that you can have as an anchor chart for this mini lesson or skill and then we can teach it to them in the next day. And then we come back to this idea where we're constantly building skills. So all that say Socratic Seminar are some sort of whole class, completely student-led conversation where we can get to nuance, where students can cite a plethora of sources and, of course, having more sources or even opportunities where students have like a kind of like a jigsaw, but even more like students do their own research or we have a ton of sources and students can take on the ability to be like the quote-unquote expert in a particular, like niche area of this topic, so that we have a lot of students bringing very different sources to this conversation and we're not all citing the same three sources. I'm sure we've all engaged in conversations where we're like, okay, yes, we got it, we've heard the source cited and this specific sentence of the source cited like 10 times in this conversation, like let's get something new going. So again, also a testament to your selection of texts and make them varied and make Socratic Seminar come at the end of like a really robust unit where students have had many chances to find sources. Okay, that's enough talking about all of the protocol examples. 15:41 What I want to do now is take you through a specific kind of progression for an identity based unit. So here's an example. Again, we're starting at the beginning. Let's do a circle. I might do an opening ceremony. So circles have opening ceremonies, closing ceremonies and kind of a full circle round, or more than one. So here's what I would do to start the circle In one word or movement or image, if you have, I like using climber cards, which are just I'm sure there exist in different iterations, but then these have some art from the author and they're just kind of like metaphors for how you might be feeling, and so I like giving students the option to pick one up and say that you know, this is how I'm feeling in an image. So how do you feel right now? Get everyone participating in some form, perhaps not verbally, but some way, so we kind of get to experience everyone's where they are. 16:31 Then for the full circle, I might invite students to say what is the story of your name? I might give some sentence starters. My name means I like my name, because the person who gave me my name is my name makes me feel right. So tell us about your name. Every student is going to have something to contribute, at least in conceptually right. Content-wise, we might have some supports available for students who need a translation partner or think time to be able to translate, but the story of their name, like all students have an opinion about their name, or maybe it's. I totally don't have an opinion about my name, but that is something I can share. Right. 17:09 Then, as a closing ceremony, I would invite students again the practice of deeply listening is what's important here to share something, just one thing that they learned about someone else during that circle. Okay, and then from there, what I would do is I would maybe move on to a human barometer protocol. Right, I might say, you know, actually, first I would do maybe an adaptation of this where we're doing four corners. Okay. So when I'm describing who I am, the most important thing I first say is about my hobbies or skills. If that's true, go in quadrant one of the room my family or friend groups. Go in quadrant two. If the most important thing to you is your race or gender, go in quadrant three. Most important thing is the language you use or where you were born or where you lived growing up. Quadrant four, right. And so then we're kind of seeing what's most important to people. So, again, kind of a witnessing and building on of our previous conversation, learning about students' names, then formally start human barometer, perhaps with agree, disagree or like even more basic, like a yes, no, do you think would be how I would start these questions. 18:19 Do you think people are treated unfairly because of their race in the United States? So again, we're building on these identity concepts, yes or no? Right, move your body to one side of the room, stand with the people nearby. Why are you standing there? Right, do you think people are treated unfairly because of their gender in the United States, because of their language or nationality in the United States? Right, you would keep going with this progression. Then you might say do you think people are treated unfairly because of their race in this school, their gender in this school, their language or nationalities in this school? Right, we're kind of building conceptual understanding and starting to get to some more perhaps high emotion or kind of intense, maybe uncomfortable topics, particularly for the teacher or school leaders. But we are inviting students to share these opinions and they are based, again, in student experience, predominantly at this point. But then I think that the last one I would do for human barometer again, we're building on previous human barometer questions Do you know of any news or current events that relates to people being treated unfairly based on their identity? So now we're inviting students to bring in factual understanding and things that they've noticed, their lived experience outside of class right. So we are kind of inviting a wider variety of things there. 19:31 I would do an emotional check-in after this. I think that would be really important. And then you know, I would do obviously several other pieces throughout the unit. But then to just skip to the culminating piece, once we've really engaged in lots of texts and understanding and grounding in facts, built our skills over time, I would do a Socratic seminar. So, socratic seminar usually I push all the desks together. 19:55 I like to give students, unlike Circle, some space to write. I would want them to have something, whereas Circle we're just truly listening, purely listening. And Socratic we might be taking notes, we might be preparing a response to something someone else said. We might be like, ah, that's so good, I need to like remember that concept. So light, if any, facilitation by the teacher desks together. Teacher sits outside of that kind of desks together, circle or square and students are really leading us. And again, I would give a worksheet to kind of track your thinking in real time. Also, some students just really like the idea to pause and think. So there might be moments where you pause the discussion, the Socratic seminar, and say all right, we've, you know, we've heard from half the class. At this point I'd like others to speak. Maybe we need a little quiet think time. If you already spoke, feel free to, like you know, write down something that you heard or kind of engage with the worksheet during some quieting time. So my discussion question for the Socratic seminar might be what would it look like if the United States enabled people of all identities to thrive? Right, so what would it look like if is a really good question starter, because you are inviting students to envision a future that does not already exist. So again, there's not a right or wrong here. All possibilities are welcome. The other thing I really like about this is McAvoy and Hess. 21:10 Diana Hath and Paula McAvoy have written and I've interviewed them on the podcast, about how, when we discuss political topics, it is better not to discuss, like the factual things, but and I'm totally forgetting exactly what they call this but kind of like, oh, policy, policy issues is like where it is most fruitful to discuss because we can agree that something is an issue. We don't need to debate the facts about whether all people are thriving in the US. We know that people are not. I imagine we have built that understanding over the course of our unit and now we're inviting students to say like how could, how could it be better? Right, what would it look like if there's no wrong answer? Like what would it look like if, as long as we're holding to our baseline understanding or assumption that all people deserve life and you know water, food, shelter, healthcare, all the right, whatever your baseline understandings are in your class? 22:10 Within that context, and remembering our agreements for communication that we have built the foundation for in previous conversations, discuss this question right. And so we have some generative, creative ideas where students are building on a factual understanding not to be right or wrong about something, but to create a possible future that is more free, that is more just, beautiful, more desirable. I guess is what I'm going for. So I think in that progression and of course it's not perfect, of course it's not fully fleshed out. You can kind of see the building from the initial circle to the human barometer, to the Socratic of ways that we center student voice and leadership in the conversation, to ways that we grounded students experience and imagination and the possible, and we are thoughtful about our own kind of actions or interactions as we are kind of pulling out or designing some of the questions to surface student discussion in ways that are not super teacher driven in the moment but are really thoughtful in the design principles of how we create the space for students to really thrive and lead conversation once the class starts and once the discussion begins, because we've set them up for success in that way. 23:22 So, as you are heading out today to go do your thing, I want to leave you with a resource which is the Discussion Resource Bank. Several of the examples shared today, including Human Barometer, which could be a new setup for some folks have these kind of template slides that I use and I share with folks who want to engage in those. So lots of templates for discussion-based activities in this slide doc. I'm gonna link it in the blog post for today's episode. You can access that at lindsaybethelyonscom slash blog slash 201. 
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this enlightening episode, Allison, a dedicated librarian who transitioned from teaching high school English, shares her passion for empowering students and fostering a lifelong love for reading. She highlights the unique role librarians play in guiding students to make their own reading choices and offers heartfelt anecdotes, along with top book recommendations like "Letters from Max: A Poet, a Teacher, a Friendship" by Sarah Ruhl and Max Ritvo. Additionally, Allison explores the transformative power of empathy in education through Jamil Zaki's "The War for Kindness," and discusses the importance of diverse perspectives with works by Jen DeLeon, such as "White Space," "Don't Ask Me When I'm From," and "Borderless."
The Big Dream Allison's big dream for education is to empower students to make their own choices and cultivate a love for reading. She envisions a world where librarians play a pivotal role in guiding students and teachers toward discovering the right books, helping them design a reading life tailored to their own curiosity and interests. Allison emphasizes the importance of librarians in education, not just as keepers of books, but as connectors of essential resources and support for the entire school community. Mindset Shifts Required Empathy as a Skill: Understanding that empathy is not a fixed trait but a skill that can be nurtured and developed over time. This mindset shift can help educators focus on building empathy in students and themselves, preventing empathy burnout. Literature as a Tool for Understanding: Recognizing the power of literature in navigating multiple cultural identities and fostering empathy. Books like Jen DeLeon's "White Space," "Don't Ask Me When I'm From," and "Borderless" can provide valuable insights and should be included in school curriculums. Librarians as Educators: Viewing librarians as integral educators who support teachers, students, and school staff by connecting them with valuable resources and guidance. This shift can lead to more collaborative efforts and better utilization of the library's offerings. Action Steps Step 1: Explore Diverse Literature Incorporate diverse books into your curriculum that reflect various cultural identities and perspectives. Start with recommended reads like "Letters from Max," "The War for Kindness," and Jen DeLeon's works. Step 2: Cultivate Empathy in the Classroom Use literature to teach empathy. Create activities that allow students to explore characters' emotions and situations, helping them understand and connect with different perspectives. Step 3: Leverage Librarian Expertise Collaborate with your school's librarian to find resources that align with your teaching goals. Librarians can provide valuable recommendations and support for both fiction and nonfiction texts. Challenges? One of the main challenges educators may face is overcoming the perception of librarians as mere keepers of books rather than integral educational partners. This mindset can limit the collaborative potential between teachers and librarians and restrict students' access to a wealth of resources. One Step to Get Started Reach out to your school's librarian and start a conversation about your current curriculum needs. Ask for book recommendations or resources that could enhance your lessons. This simple step can open up new avenues for collaboration and enrich the educational experience for both you and your students. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on Facebook. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Independent Reading Selection Guide with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 200 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.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Allison, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited. Thank you, I am incredibly excited. I am an avid reader and just very excited to be talking to a real-life librarian. I'm very into this conversation we're going to have today. I'm wondering if, just to kind of ground our work today, I think people love hearing the why behind why people chose education or why people chose specific professions, and so I love. Dr Bettina loves thinking about freedom, dreaming, and she says you know their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so, with that in mind, what is that big dream that you hold for education? 00:47 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) in mind. What is that big dream that you hold for education? Well, if you know, if all things could be magical and true, I the reason that I ended up in the library world is because I love being able to guide kids to making their own choices and helping them to learn all the options that are out there in the world and then giving them the structures to be able to make choices that work for them in terms of their own curiosity and interests. And all of that and I felt like being in the library was a place that allowed me to have that kind of a teaching life and get to know what kids were interested in, without the boundaries necessarily of like. Here is the curriculum that we must follow to be able to work with kids to design their own curriculum of. I'm interested in this enough that I want to follow this particular path, or this dream or this interest, whether it's fiction, nonfiction or non-book resources. To be able to help kids to design a reading life for themselves is the most exciting part of education for me. 01:51 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Wow, that is super exciting. I feel like there's a quote out there somewhere that I saw once no idea who to credit, but it was like you basically just haven't found the right book yet. Like no one hates reading, you just haven't found the right book yet. Yeah, strong believer in that. So that is so cool. So you get to work with students and I imagine you also kind of coach teachers in a sense of like you have all of this knowledge of all of these books and teachers might be kind of head down. 02:18 Here's like the thing that I'm teaching, and I'm teaching like looking for those resources, and I'm I'm curious to know. You know there are teachers who listen to this podcast. There are leaders, there are instructional coaches who are supporting teachers in that same way. There may be fellow librarians, I'm not sure, but I think you know I'm wondering for them if this episode could be kind of a go-to place for, like here are some super cool texts that are out in the world, and if you're designing a new unit or you're doing the same thing, guiding to students to figure out what they want to read, maybe we could give them some ideas of kind of where to go. And so I will just kind of open it up. I know you have some books in mind, and so do you want to take us through some books that you are just like loving lately, that you would recommend high schoolers check out? 03:05 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) Yeah, I'd love to, and absolutely. And my first thing before I recommend any particular books is don't be afraid to ask your own librarian, because they probably know you better than you realize. So I know you know when I'll always be listening for people dropping a little piece of intel about what they're interested in or what they're thinking about next or what they heard about, and so and I'm always thinking about how I can help find somebody finds like the just right book for them, whether it's a kid or a grownup or anybody. So here's some books that I like. But ask your librarian they they might say something like oh I'm so glad you asked, because they've been dreaming up some good recommendations for you too. So I brought with me some ideas both in fiction and nonfiction. 03:53 Before I was a librarian, I used to be an English teacher, also in high school, and so I pretty much exclusively taught fiction when I was teaching English, and becoming a librarian gave me this whole new world of resources and nonfiction that I've loved reading and learning about, and so I'll give you some nonfiction and then I'll like go back to my comfort zone and give you some fiction as well. So the first book is called Letters from Max, a poet, a teacher, a friendship, and it is coauthored by Sarah Rule and Max Ritvo. And Sarah Rule you, if anybody, is a theater fan. She's a playwright and theater is one of my first loves. That's, like you know, my happy place. And she is a wonderful playwright. And I came across this book this summer while I was doing some research work for a friend and colleague who was directing a play by her. So I was looking into her life and her background and this book came up and I tore through it and I think I never would have necessarily found it otherwise. 04:53 But it's a book of letters between Sarah and Max. And she was a professor at Yale, and still is, and was teaching a playwriting class. And Max, who is not a playwright but was a poet, a student, walked into the class and said I know I'm not a playwright, but I would really love to take this class, can I take this class? And she was charmed by him and said sure. And that began this friendship between the two of them that started in class and her being his teacher and mentor in terms of playwriting and developed over the years into this mutually wonderful colleague relationship as writers where they would share their work with one another and comment and it really developed into this beautiful friendship. 05:41 And unfortunately Max passed away young from cancer. So this book she put together of their letters and emails and text messages to memorialize the work that he had done as a writer, but also as a memorial to their friendship. And it was so moving because so often teachers, we have these really, really special relationships with kids that in media I've never really seen great portrayals of healthy adult relationships where you can really share with your students. This happens more obviously in high school than elementary school, but I've developed friendships with my students that have lasted into our adult lives. We live in the same community and this book was such a celebration of those kinds of relationships and it was, you know, a tissue vest it was. It was so very sad but also so heartening to see this friendship between these two people. 06:37 So in terms of its use in school, it may be one of those books that it just. It's the book that you need as a teaching human being to validate like, yes, I am doing something in this world that is important to me, but I can also really imagine it being useful for an ELA class as a way to look at texts that are structured as, as a dialogue, as letters, as emails, as and as a way to help kids replicate that kind of text creation. Like, maybe imagine, like, take a text conversation between you and a friend and like, with their consent, see how could you turn this into a story or something like that. So there's also lots of SEL component stuff you know each letter you could take and excerpt a little piece of as a way of starting off a conversation about maybe a difficult topic, or it was beautiful. I absolutely loved this book and it was such a special find. 07:32 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh my gosh, that sounds amazing and it reminds me. I love the structure idea because it reminds me of I just started reading Oye and then I put it down because I was like I actually want to listen to this. There's an audio book version by Melissa McGolan, I think, and so it's. It's the same idea of like it's a structured, it's conversations, like a one-way phone call, and then so it's like her version, but she's like talking to her sister and it's so. It's so cool and innovative that I love the idea of just not just content wise, but unpacking structure too. Super, super cool. 08:05 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) Yeah, and it's always fun to feel like you're peering in on somebody's life, like the fact that we get to read somebody else's emails feels so private and intense in a way that just reading a straight up you know prose nonfiction doesn't feel so I feel really connected to both of them as writers and as thinkers. 08:26 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Those are so good, awesome. I'm sure you have more, so I will stop talking. What else you got? 08:32 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) Yeah, no problem. Okay, I have two books by one author. Her name is Dashka Slater. We had her come to visit our school a couple of years ago and she was a fantastic speaker. The books are called 57 Boss and Accountable and these could be looked at from lots of different perspectives Social studies, ela, social, emotional psychology. Like runs the gamut. Sarah I mean sorry, not Sarah Doshka Slater is a journalist. She's a magazine writer, newspaper writer. She writes for lots of different publications and these books, oh, she also is well-known because she writes a series of picture books about gosh, that snail I forgot the name of it, but it's a French-speaking snail. It's very cute. So this is a totally different side of her work. 09:22 57 Boss is a YA nonfiction. Ya means young adult, young adult nonfiction work, though it was read by lots of adults in our building and it was well liked by everybody, and it's lots of short chapters where she expands on the reporting that she did on a particular story for the newspaper in California that she was working at at the time and she followed this one case and the case. She's changed the names of the people involved because they were underage Sasha and Richard and Sasha. They were a student who was riding home from school on a public bus and wearing a skirt, even though they were male presenting, and Richard is an African-American boy who was also riding home on the same bus from public school and, for reasons that he has trouble articulating after the fact, decides to light Sasha's skirt on fire and Sasha is deeply injured. And Sasha is deeply injured and it kicks off a criminal case that ends up with Richard not being able to finish school and ending up incarcerated. And so she follows both of these young people through the process of the case and the emotional process of the healing and grieving and forgiveness or lack of it. 10:46 And because we're looking at these two figures, who are so marginalized in so many ways, you really start to understand the complexities of the situation and it doesn't give you any easy. 10:57 Well, like that's right and that's wrong because facts. So the chapters are super short and it really gives the reader and the teacher, the kid, whoever's participating in this text, lots of ways in and lots of possible angles that you could talk about. So that's 57 bus, and then a couple about a year ago she came out with a book called accountable, which when she came and talked she said well, I wasn't planning to write a second book about hate crimes but like I became the hate crimes lady, so she followed this case for several years, also in California, about a high school student who started a social media account. It was a private social media account explicitly for the purpose of making memes that this kid thought were funny, but the butt of the joke was often like racist content and so he thought it would be fine because it was like just private to a few friends who also thought this was like wry and ironic and because it's the Internet, nothing stays private for long. 12:06 And this became public and he used pictures of other kids in the school as the base of the concept, the school as the base of the content. And so the book is called Accountable because it's again one that seems like on the surface is like an easy open and shut. You did an awful thing, you have to leave our community kind of situation. But then when you start to understand like all the nuances of the situation is not nearly as clear. So this one is, I would say it's met, it's totally readable by students. 12:39 But I would hope that teachers would read this one for their own knowledge, because it gave me a greater insight into the workings of kind of aspects of social media and the internet and the way that it's being used in ways that I did not grow up with. So it was really helpful for me to have like a line of sight into that. And also it was one of those like bury your head in your hands slow moving disasters of how the administration handled it and like if there was a wrong move to be made, they made it, and it was just such a cautionary tale that I thought about a lot since, in terms of our tale that I thought about a lot since, in terms of our our as teachers and administrators way of approaching a situation, that it would be really great if other people could read it before this kind of thing happens at their school, or maybe it already has and you have a different way of thinking about it. 13:31 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, oh, my gosh, I love both of these sound fantastic. I love that you chose them, or or maybe I don't know if this is why you chose them, but I love that you chose them. Or maybe I don't know if this is why you chose them, but I love that they have complexity in them. And I totally see how that could be like a social studies ELA crossover or something where you're investigating, especially because they're like actual, it's actual reporting, to be able to unpack the themes from that in an ELA class, for example, and then have like an interdisciplinary unit where in social studies, they're unpacking events either current or past. I just feel like that could be so interesting. And the other piece that I love about that is that the same, you said, the same author writes like a fun children's children's series. Like I just love the example of range right, Like I think in high school particularly, there's kind of this feeling of this is the person you will be forever, and it's like no no, you can have an evolution of the thing you're into. 14:23 You can have both. I think it also just speaks to like the human soul being capable of many things. 14:29 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) Right, and a writer's life isn't just one thing. Our interests change over time, and that's true of our kids. Like there's plenty of freshmen who come in loving one kind of thing and leave as seniors being totally interested in something else, and that's the way things should work. We shouldn't just be interested in one kind of thing forever and ever, the end. 14:47 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely. Oh my gosh, these are amazing. Okay, I can't wait to hear more. What else you got? All right? 14:53 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) My next book is by Jamil Zaki. It's called the War for Kindness. The subtitle is Building Empathy in a Fractured World. This one came out a couple of years ago and he has a new book that just came out like days ago, called Hope for Cynics. And I haven't read Hope for Cynics yet because it's literally just had its birthday. But the War for Kindness is. 15:17 He's a psychologist from Stanford who runs a lab and he focuses on the study of empathy, so how empathy works in human beings. And a lot of people in the past thought that empathy was a trait. So you were born with X level of empathy and that's just that's the way that you were. But his work and a lot of other recent work with psychologists looks at empathy more as a learned skill and as, like he uses the example of it being a muscle that you have to continually work in order to build that skill. So he talks about certain situations being like an empathy gym and how you can like work out. 16:02 So it's not as much a how-to book but more a summary of recent research and he's a great writer, so a lot of science writing. It can be a little bit challenging for people to access if that's not their field, but this is really accessible. If that's not their field, but this is really accessible. And so each chapter has its own kind of focus, and one that I think is super interesting for teachers is about kind of like empathy burnout. So it focuses on people who are in our field and in nursing and medicine and what we have to do all the time in terms of our empathy work and what happens when that muscle gets overworked. And I thought that was a particularly interesting thing for those of us who live in this empathy gym all the time to think about what that means for our own mental health and well-being. 16:59 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Wow, yes, I mean there are people who leave the profession for that reason. Right, I mean that's just Wow, yes, and I also just love that the so much of I'm doing a lot of work with the younger students kind of social studies curriculum that the state is doing investigating history, and so much of that is like one of their core state is doing investigating history and so much of that is like one of their core pillars is called historical empathy and human connection. And so it's how do we cultivate this empathy, like it can be cultivated one, and how do we cultivate it as we're looking at historical events and different things, and so I see so many ties again to like the possibility of I think this is my social studies heart but like the possibility of looking again past, present, current events, historical events and just the day-to-day, like the empathy gym that is school, right, right. 17:49 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) And this has a lot of ways, different ways, of looking at ways that you can help others to develop empathy, as well as yourself. So, yeah, I would definitely recommend that for people who are who are doing SEL work with any kind of kids or or young adults. 18:06 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh, that's incredible and I know a lot of schools particularly. I mean I think this would be a great read for high schoolers. And I also know that, like I think even middle schools have like wind blocks or what I need blocks where it's like, yeah, like what can we work on, or like sometimes they even have like SEL blocks specifically. But having those spaces be opportunities to read a text like this would be so cool. 18:27 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) I think that'd be a good one, right, and to know like no, really it's science, like this can be done, right, we're not just making this up. 18:36 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Exactly, exactly, oh my gosh. Okay, I love it, I think. The next one, I think you had what is related to both categories of fiction and nonfiction. The next author right, I'd love to hear kind of that crossover of like how you might be able to use an author's multiple text as like a set perhaps. 18:53 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) Yeah, yeah. So the next author's name is Jen DeLeon and she teaches at a university near us, so she teaches at Framingham us being folks in Massachusetts. So she teaches at Framingham State University. And I'm going to talk about first her series of essays. It's called White Space and these are personal essays where she talks about different moments in her own past. 19:22 She grew up in suburban Massachusetts and is from a family who emigrated from Latin America when her parents were younger. She grew up in Massachusetts, so she has the experience of being in multiple worlds and talking about, like, her sense of feeling, like she does and does not fit in in different situations, which is definitely something that many, many of my students at our high school can really relate to. So these essays are short, they just look at like a minute slice of life, and a lot of them are from when she was in high school and college, so they're really, really relatable for our younger high school students and even middle school. A lot of them would be, I think, really accessible for middle school students. And she's also the author of several YA novels which we've had on our summer reading list and we've also had white space on our summer reading lists for our high school students. 20:22 So the novels are called Don't Ask Me when I'm From and Borderless. And Don't Ask Me when I'm From takes place in a suburban Massachusetts high school and it focuses on a young woman who is bossed to that school from her, where she lives in Boston, through what in Massachusetts is called the METCO program I imagine there's similar kind of acronyms in different states so she is, similarly to the author in her own personal essays, dealing with similar feelings of fitting in in one aspect of her life and not in another. So that one's called Don't Ask Me when I'm From. And then the other book, called Borderless, takes place. The first half of it takes place in Guatemala and the second half in the United States. 21:12 And the young woman who is the protagonist in that novel, she is a fashion design student. So she's in college and she is studying fashion design and she's at the studio and she's making new designs and then, through a series of unfortunate events, ends up in a dangerous situation and has to leave the country and has to make a lot of really challenging decisions about who's going and how am I leaving, and so it really gives you a wonderful perspective on the choices that she does and doesn't have available to her. And then we follow her through the complexities of being a refugee and dealing with the American immigration system and so that one's called Borderless and that one just came out, I think about a year ago Don't Ask Me when I'm From is a couple of years back. So both of them would be such a nice text pairing with like any one of Jen DeLeon's white space essays and you could see a really beautiful connection between the nonfiction and fiction. 22:18 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That is super cool. I also imagine I mean my teaching when I was a teacher was in a New York City high school that was designed to be all students who had just recently immigrated to the States, and so I imagine working with those students. For example, my students would have a lot of things to say and wanting to say about their own experience and contrasting or finding similarities to these stories. So imagine, depending on the population of students people teach like that could also be a nice entry point of like are there things you'd like to share, or or not, but like are there? That's an invitation. I think that would be kind of cool too. 22:53 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) Absolutely yeah, and being able to see that done by someone who has has multiple different works to their name and is really like aiming to share. Jen also spoke at our school once and she was phenomenal speaker and is is really, really generous with her, her work with students, so she really reaches out and it's important to her that students feel seen. 23:20 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, right, and I I I almost feel like that's my students. We would also do these like projects where we would choose a line of activism, for example, and kind of like pursue that. And this is one of the topics that would usually come up, like how do I use like my life understandings that I have? And I use like my life understandings that I have and I would like to share with others that may not have had that experience, or I need to like be essentially what Jen is doing, like being this model right Of like this is what it could look like to use your lived experience to like help and support these other people. I imagine there's like a tone of activism there as well that students could kind of unpack there in her writing absolutely yeah super cool. 24:01 All right, the next one I think you had on this list I am very intrigued by, because I hadn't heard about it. But as, like a literary nerd and as a feminist scholar, I'm like yeah, this sounds cool yeah, this one was like written for you then. 24:15 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) Um, this book is called enter the body and it's by Joy McCullough, and you don't really need to have read a lot of Shakespeare in order to enjoy it, but it definitely would crack open a new line of inquiry for you about Shakespeare if you're a Shakespeare nerd. 24:32 So it takes place in the imaginary space underneath the stage where the bodies fall. So you know, like, if you imagine, like when the Wicked Witch melts right, she like melts into a trapped door and falls under the stage Like surprise, that's how it really happens. So it's set in this trap space, which is kind of like this netherworld, in between life and death and also the space underneath the theater, and it focuses on four female characters from Shakespeare plays who all die young and all in like unfair, grievous ways. So it's um Cordelia from King Lear, ophelia from Hamlet, juliet from Romeo and Juliet and the last one very few people have read is Lavinia from Titus Andronicus, and she goes in the worst possible way. So we have these four young women whose lives were cut short by pretty much the violent actions of men, whose lives were cut short by pretty much of the violent actions of men no-transcript space in between worlds, underneath the stage, and they start telling their own stories out loud to one another. And the act of telling the story is like you're talking about before, like this act of self-determination, um, and the way that it's written is in, uh, it's inverse, which could be really intimidating because sometimes people feel like they don't know how to read poetry. 26:09 But this is really really it grabs you. There's a lot of white space on the page. It's easy to read verse, um, and so you're flipping the pages really fast because you're getting through them really quickly and it's really, really gripping. A lot of it is actually verse that's found text from the play itself, um, so it has a fun extra layer if you're reading that play, to read, like juliet's real thoughts that she didn't say out loud perhaps in the play. So this one is awesome. If you're a fan of the musical six I know a lot of people love six, I do this kind of has a feel of like six, like the six wives of Henry VIII. Speaking back to history, this is like that, but for Shakespeare. 26:57 Okay, this might be like my favorite book and just haven't read it yet, I know it got wonderful reviews when it came out, but I think it's a hard one for people to understand if, if you don't get that sell. So, yeah, I really love this. We had this one on our summer reading list and in fact, our staff book club is going to be talking about it tomorrow, because we always try for our staff book club to read at least something that the kids read over summer reading, so that we have a way to chat with them about a book that maybe we crossed over with them. So I'm really looking forward to seeing what everybody says about that one tomorrow. That is super exciting. 27:32 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I also love the connection to sex because I do think you could do like. I mean, this is from a former New York city teacher, so I get. There's maybe not quite as much access in other spaces, but imagine you could do a field trip to like actually see a play and do do that. 27:47 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) That would be so yeah, romeo and juliet is going up at the art in cambridge, near us in massachusetts in a couple months, so this would be a great tie-in also in terms of um, if there was a theater teacher who was looking for something. These make great monologues, like they're. They're basically a contemporary version of of shakespeare, so there would be a really neat monologue pairing with like here was the original monologue or here was a man's monologue in the play. 28:12 And here was the um, the monologue that didn't get spoken in the play by the, the female character so yeah, there's a lot of really fun stuff with that book that you could do. 28:21 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I am also imagining like something student written, where they're reading other books that don't have the, the here's the female perspective, like you write that or like that, doesn't have the. The here's the female perspective. 28:29 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) Like you write the or like the, it doesn't have to be female, but it could be whatever missing characters. 28:32 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, absolutely Okay, someone build that out and then get back One more. 28:36 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) And this one is like a little bit outside of my wheelhouse Cause it's sort of more designed for a middle school reading audience. But this one is because my daughter and I both read it and she was like you have to talk about this one. So so the last one on my list is the Probability of Everything by Sarah Everett. So this is a novel that is aimed at a middle grade reader, though honestly, I found it fascinating as an adult and I think that most of my high school kids would really love it too. It's from the perspective of an 11 year old young woman named Kemi Carter, and she understands everything. She's a she's a science brain and so she understands everything in terms of, like it's, numerical space in the world. So she's fascinated by statistics and probability and so she has this like wonderful family and they're really supportive of her. Even though, like science isn't necessarily the thing that most black girls are encouraged to love, this is the thing that she does love and she's really supported in that. 29:41 And then, um, this asteroid shows up over her town. It's called and plus 68. And she starts calculating, like, the chances that it's going to implode the world and, um, she doesn't understand why everybody else around her isn't reacting to it in her same like, well, there's an 84.7% chance that this is going to do that and she's processing it really differently than everybody else around her. Um, and we follow her for four days and she's not understanding why she's seeing the world right now so differently than everybody else. And I don't want to spoil the the ending of it, so I'll just say that perhaps perhaps it's not an asteroid. Say that perhaps perhaps it's not an asteroid. 30:35 And so this book is really underneath, about social justice and about issues in the way that young Black people have to behave with the police. There's a lot that's going on underneath the surface that she doesn't necessarily understand, and the way that she's processing it is the way that that she can process something through math. But as a reader, you start to pick up on clues about that. There may be a different problem that she's dealing with in her community. So it's so, so good. My daughter and I both like when I I finished the book and I gave it to her and and I was like, just it's a little bit sad. And then she, after she finished, she's like but it was a lot more sad that you thought you know puffy eyes. So, um, we both got a lot of out of it and we ended up having a lot of really big conversations after we read it, so this would be a really good one. 31:30 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) And you were saying for a lot of different angles middle school. 31:33 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) right, this is, yeah, it's aimed at middle school, but I think it could be right in high school, Right? Um yeah, but it's definitely at a reading level that middle schoolers would be absolutely into. 31:42 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) You know it reminds me of, um, my life as an Ice Cream Sandwich by Evie Zaboy, which is a middle school book and also very much like. This, is like kind of she's very into NASA. The main character, who is a young black girl and like raised a lot by her grandfather, her grandfather's like well, I don't want to give things away either, but like very into NASA and there's just a lot of themes of science there, but there's also that underlying, like what is actually happening in the world piece. 32:10 And there's also the piece of about like how to be a black girl but that's into science, and like other peers are not right. And then also like how do I exist in a world where I might be it never comes out and says this, but a lot of things are very much like like she might be on the spectrum. It's like also just how she's interacting with people and like how it can be so hard to be interested in different things and just be a different like way of operating, way of looking at things as part of your processing of part events. So I think there's some really cool text that could happen there. 32:43 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) That sounds like a really good combination, yeah. 32:46 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I imagine I'm thinking, so many of these have such similar themes, I'm also imagining literature circles across these books. For, like, an ELA teacher who's like let's just get students excited about things like reading, get a few copies of each book and say to your students, like, read the one you want to read, but we'll have conversations in groups or a whole class about the overarching themes that don't all need to be related. Like, I think a lot of times we think literature circles have to be related to the specific book but they could be thematic and I think there's opportunity here for this to be like your list, to use that with. 33:28 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) Definitely. Yeah, that was that used to be. One of my favorite things to do in my ELA classes was to do book clubs and then to all come together and talk about how, how the connections happen between the books, even though they hadn't necessarily read that book, and then they had the benefit of becoming interested in reading that other book and having that cross-pollination. 33:46 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, oh, my gosh. This has been such an absolute joy to learn about all these things from you, allison. Thank you so much. Is there any kind of like final librarian wisdom that you would like to impart? 33:56 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) Oh boy. 33:57 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, I'm thinking about. Like me, as a teacher, I don't think I ever thought to seek out a librarian and maybe didn't even know what that would look like or when I should go see a librarian. Is there a specific example or like an idea of like? Here's a moment when you can come to me. 34:13 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) Yeah, so often people say I'm really sorry to bother you and it's like no, literally this is my job. My job is to help you do your job better. And because there's almost nobody in a building whose job is to help the other teachers do their job, we're not always comfortable with asking for help because we think that it will mean somebody else is taking their time to do it. And it is actually my job to help you figure out, like I have this idea for a research project but I'm just not sure where to go with it. And I've seen lots of people do similar projects and I have examples of ones that might work and the kinds of questions that would elicit good interest. And so, like, if you ever have that instinct of saying like I'm really sorry, don't start with I'm really sorry, start with like I'd like to ask you this question, and your librarian will be just like yay, this is my purpose. 35:11 I see my role as a librarian to be kind of like the chaplain for the school, and not in any way in a religious way, because I'm not religious at all, but as the person who can be available to help anybody, no matter what their role is in the school, whether it's a kid, a custodian, a teacher, a administrator, parent, I I'd like to be available to help them connect with the information resource or whatever other resource they need to be successful. So that's how librarians see our role. So always ask us, because it makes us feel like we are needed and we are loved. 35:48 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Amazing and I imagine, like you said, reach out to your own librarians people who are listening or reading this blog post and if people want to see some of the work at the Framingham High School Library, is there somewhere where they can go or to either connect with you or just the school space? 36:04 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) Sure, I mean, framingham High School Library has a Facebook page, which I sometimes am really good about updating and sometimes I forget about for a little while. Also, the Framingham Public Library. We all do a lot of like cross work with them and yeah. 36:23 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's great, perfect. Thank you, oh my gosh, thank you so much. This was really really fun for me, so I really appreciate you coming on, allison. 36:31 - Alison Courchesne (Guest) Yeah, my pleasure. It's been great to talk to you. |
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
March 2025
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