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Iuri emphasizes the importance of moving away from reactive crisis interventions towards embedding positive psychology and growth mindset principles within school culture. He talks about providing skills to students from positive psychology best practices as well as offering support and early intervention.
The Big Dream Iuri Melo's big vision is to bless all families on the planet by revolutionizing the educational system to include mental health and wellness as a core component. Drawing inspiration from evidence-based wellbeing programs at higher education institutions like Harvard and Yale, he dreams of implementing similar proactive approaches at the middle and high school levels. Mindset Shifts Required A necessary mindset shift involves adopting a more inclusive approach to student wellness. Iuri and Lindsay discuss moving from a deficit-focused perspective to recognizing and leveraging assets within students and the broader school environment. This means focusing on mental excellence and fitness rather than solely addressing mental illness. The other mindset shift is recognizing how this applies to different contexts. Superintendents, principals, counselors, and educators all have unique challenges and needs to be met through mental health tools and resources. Mental fitness or excellence is important across the board, but there are different targeted solutions to different parties. Action Steps Educators and educational leaders looking to engage in more mental fitness and mental wellness learning and resourcing in the their contexts can start the journey with these action steps from Iuri: Step 1: Engage both families and students in the mental health conversation. Proactively sharing positive psychology content consistently through emails or texts, and offering follow-up resources, can help address issues before they arise. Step 2: Offer resources that are engaging, fun, and meaningful to students and what they’re struggling with. Instead of focusing on what not to do, positive psychology resources should also offer information on what to do instead. Step 3: Integrate ready-made, evidence-based activities and videos into school curriculum to reduce teacher preparation time while delivering impactful wellness education. Iuri’s platform, School Pulse, integrates these steps and makes mental health resources available to students, families, and educators. Students can access live texting with a real person (no AI), and research-backed content that’s fun and engaging. It’s a practical way to scale-up school-based mental health support that’s often stretched too thin. Challenges? Schools can be slow to make changes, competing against entrenched ideas and ways of doing things. So, implementing proactive wellness programs requires collaboration among superintendents, counselors, and teachers to overcome systemic barriers and develop sustainable cultural shifts within educational institutions. One Step to Get Started Start each day with positive momentum for both students and staff. Educators should strive to begin and end their day on a positive note, fostering an environment of optimism and wellbeing that can ripple through the school community. This doesn’t have to be a huge thing, but can be something simple like offering encouragement or greeting kids with a smile at the door. Stay Connected You can connect with Iuri Melo by email at [email protected] and learn more about his organization on its website, School Pulse. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing a page of mental health resources with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 251 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
Lindsay Lyons: Welcome to the time for teachership podcast. Iuri Melo: I am so happy to be here. And there's a good vibe, a good aura. Aura, that's the word, right? I mean, I'm, I'm in with teens all the time, so aura is like the word right now. There's a good aura about you. I'm loving it. So anyways, thank you so much for the invite. I'm happy to be here. Excited to see where we take it today. Lindsay Lyons: Awesome. I'm excited to put off a positive aura. That's my goal. What do you think as we come into this conversation, is really important for our listeners to either know about you beyond the, you know, typical bio or, um, to kind of keep in mind as we jump into the conversation today. Iuri Melo: I'm a dad. I'm a husband. I've got five incredible kids. Uh, I've on a, I've been a therapist for 20 years, which I've absolutely loved. Uh, and over the past seven years, we've kind of started this school company called School Pulse. Um, but as we've engaged with schools, as we've engaged with districts, as we've engaged with thousands upon thousands of students in live text conversations. Um, one of the things that I really noticed specifically as we talk to schools a lot is that sometimes we almost become a little bit in my, this is my opinion, of course, that we become a little bit enamored with just providing crisis intervention. We're almost waiting for crisis to happen so that we can then intervene. Right. I, I had a, a great conversation with an individual the other day who said. I agree. I, I feel like sometimes we're just like a fire extinguisher on the wall, right? We're kind of waiting for that moment of crisis and then we break the glass and we Right. We spray all over the place. Um, and of course. I'm being a little judgmental. The reality is this is how I live my life too, right? I, I don't go to the doctor unless something is wrong is happening with me. Like I said, I need to take my own medicine for sure, but I think this, this happens in schools, right? And, and so sometimes we we're often so concerned with the crisis or the intervention part that we forget about the other things that come before or that even come after. And I think that that's one of the things that as school posts we've really tried to do is we try to not be reactive. Our goal is to proactively tap kids on the shoulder and put at their fingertips in their brains, right, the best positive psychology, the best growth mindset, and the best cognitive strategies that are like the golden standard of clinical practice and have been for a while. And to put it. Right where they are in a way that is fun, that is engaging, that's not boring. We're intervening in early ways, early intervention, and providing some skill building, and then yes. There's the crisis intervention part, and then there's the postvention, right? There's the, the fact that we continue to provide that support. And so that's one of the things that we've tried to bring, that's one of the paradigms that we're trying to shift, right, is, is we're not just gonna wait. We're gonna provide skills, we're gonna intervene early, and then we're gonna provide that support ongoing. And so I think we've really created this. What in schools, they kind of call us a multi-tier system of support. Right. Or a positive behavior intervention system. Right. And we really aim to be just a complete solution to schools, uh, in a way that provides a ton of value with very little lift. That's, that's like our goal. That's what we wanna do. I have a, an older daughter that's, uh. She's a special educator right now, and I mean, this is her first year. She loves it and, and, you know, and totally feels overwhelmed all the time. Um, and so our goal is to provide some tools that provide easy to find, easy to access stuff that is not gonna create problems for them. Find that schools at times, they're hard to move, but obviously we're in the change business, right? Lindsay Lyons: Schools are institutions, and so it is so hard, right? To be like, oh, we've done things this way for a long time, let's do them differently. Uh, but that's why we're here, right? You and I both. And so I, I love that, and I, I think you started to kind of paint the dream for us. One of the questions I like to early on ask in these conversations. Um, Dr. Betina love says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. With that in mind, what is that big dream that you as an individual or school pulse as an organization kinda hold for the education space or for students at large? Iuri Melo: Yeah, I really, I'm gonna have to give some thought to that quote. It. Sometimes, right? We, we become resistant to the critique, right? Uh, because in a way we, we become, we can become a little defensive, like somehow we're failing or we're not doing well. And, and if we can, if, if we can be a little bit more humble and meek, I think, in our approach, then I, then I think we, we, we perhaps would be more willing to make some small adjustments. But let, let, let's go back to. Your question. I'll tell you what my, my vision is, like, my, my vision is, is to like bless all the families in this planet. Like is to bless the families on earth. Like that's my big vision. There are a couple of authors out there that I think I, that I follow pretty regularly. One of 'em is Arthur Brooks. He's kind of the, uh, he wrote, uh, maybe it's The Art of Happiness, uh, really good book. Uh, there's a couple of great podcasters out there. Basically what they do is kind of at the collegiate level. They have found like a, specifically at Harvard, at Yale, at Stanford, at some of these big institutions, some of the most attended classes. Our classes on wellbeing, right? The science of happiness. The science of wellbeing, grounded in evidence and science, right? Uh, but that also address Eastern philosophies or religious, uh, practices, et cetera, but that are based on like creating more joy, right? To create more optimism, to create more academic and student success, right? Better relationships, right? I'm like, why are we not doing this? At the middle and the high school level, like we absolutely should and it would not be difficult, Lindsay. It would not be difficult. I mean, we have hundreds of videos that that schools could easily use for that in a proactive educational early intervention way. Instead of, right. We're just waiting for the bullying incidents. We're just waiting for when a student is, you know, gonna, you know, perpetrate violence, or we're just gonna wait until somebody is self-harming, or this, or that, or the other. We're dealing with these institutions and they're highly politicized institutions. Right. This is very challenging. I mean, we have a state contract with the state of Idaho, which is absolutely fabulous. We're in every single one of their, uh, secondary schools. We have to make sure that our content is, the, the best word that I can describe is diplomatic and benign, right? We have to provide benign content that these administrators feel good about sharing with the public, right? And, and, and a variety of, you know, belief systems or not belief, whatever it is, right? But I would love at state levels. For them to just look at some of these pieces, right, that we are seeing at Harvard or MIT or Yale. We could be delivering this same content that, by the way, would increase academic performance. Student engagement in participation, improvement in behavior, increased wellness, better relationships, and better relationships are like the hallmark of short and long-term happiness. And so there's my dream Lindsay Lyons: proactive, positive relationship building. I have a question about that. First, I just wanna clarify like one piece, so you said benign around your content. Yes. Can you explain a little bit more about what do you mean by benign? Iuri Melo: Yes. Earlier today, I had a conversation with, uh, three administrators and two counselors when, when we say mental health education, his concern was, I think we're more focused on mental illness than we are on mental excellence than we are on mental fitness, right? Than we are on say, positive psychology on growth mindset strategies. Right. I feel like that that's where, that's why I love specifically, like, I mean within my own private practice as well, but why I love positive psychology, growth mindset and even cognitive strategies overall is because I feel like they're benign, right? They're not conte, they're not connected to a specific methodology. Or political affiliation or religious affiliation. These are topics that are so general, that are based and grounded on research and evidence, right, that we can present to an atheist, an agnostic, or someone who's religious or not, or somebody who's a monk or a Buddhist or whatever identity, and it is good content. It can be fit into whatever their perspective is. And provide positive outcomes. Lindsay Lyons: The translation to like teacher speak, I think Iuri Melo: give it to me. Lindsay Lyons: Well, we have definitely like an asset based approach, right? So you're, you're talking about like recognizing assets and taking a positive psychology lens of things, um, versus a deficit lens, which is like the traditional mindset of this is what's wrong. What I hear you saying is really that inclusion is important, that this is actually inclusive of everyone. Yes. And also what I'm hearing is the balancing act is really just in, in, in navigating, which so many educators have to do part, particularly educators who are like all about inclusion and justice, right? We have to navigate sometimes state legislatures ban in particular words like SEL, we know it's good work for everyone and so linguistically, whatever we name it like. It's still good for all people and it's going to help all people. So that's kind of how I'm hearing you explain that. Does that feel Yeah. Right. Iuri Melo: Ab Absolutely. There's a reason why we call what we do, right? More along the lines of student wellness or student success, uh, or even, you know, psychological excellence or mental excellence. It's because unfortunately, right, there have been these. Odd associations, right. With SEL and and other things, right? When we promote like these social and emotional learning components to students, like the evidence is pretty good that not only improves academic performance individually, but also culturally and climate wise within a school, like the improvement is pretty sustainable. Lindsay Lyons: No one wants someone to be socially unwell or emotionally unwell. Right? Like logical, but yeah. So I, I appreciate your honesty and just, y'all have to navigate the like climate and we can do the work that's important, so I appreciate that. When you're talking about building proactive positive relationships, here's what my teacher brain says. There's so much curriculum to cover, and this work is so important. Like, how do you coach leaders or teachers or kind of have that conversation to switch the mindset to like, oh no, this, this is actually a valuable use of our time, whether it's student time. Out of the classroom as like a homework. I'm not sure how exactly, um, school calls all fits. Iuri Melo: Sure. Lindsay Lyons: Or if it's like literal time in the classroom where you're building student to student relationships while you're live in person or teacher to student relationships. What is that aha moment that you've seen people be like, oh, right. Like this is why it's important to do. Iuri Melo: We do visit, obviously with a lot of individuals that are decision makers, right. All the way from say, a superintendent. To a school administrator, to a school counselor, uh, to student service directors at the district level and other, and sometimes some curriculum leaders, et cetera. And I feel like each one of those, right, has specific. Places of pain. Right? Where, where, so for example, say with a superintendent, school safety and liability protection is very important for them. Like, I'll give you an example. I had a, uh, a superintendent that I was working with, and he was involved in a civil lawsuit where he was being sued by a couple of parents because a couple of students had taken their life by suicide. But, but as I was talking to the superintendent, he said to me, man, Yuri, I. I wish that I had school posts in my pocket walking into that school room for a superintendent, right at the district level. Right. Creating some of this, you know, student safety, um, liability protection. Like that's for them. That's like, yes. For principals, right? We're talking more like you know, the school, like the school culture and climate. These things are gonna do two things for you. Number one, they're gonna impact student behavior, right? What does that mean? That means less problem, right? That means less disciplinary issues, right? This is gonna move the academic needle for you, and this is gonna impact the overall culture and climate of your school. We wanna make this environment better for you by insti, by instituting this systemic right kind of enrichment, evidence-based content that shows. These things will improve over time, you know, even if we're just talking percentages. Right. And then of course with counselors, I feel like that's our easiest population, right? Because in a way, they're viewed as kind of the mental health hub of the school, even though a lot of their work maybe has more to do with college readiness or, you know, dealing with scheduling and things like that. But they're, they're still viewed as, as the mental health hub. And man, we come in, we walk into a school and we just provide them with like just the. Like the most comprehensive mental health resource in the world, like truly. I know that's so cliche to say, but it really is. And, and I would say for teachers, I would say for teachers as well, uh, you know, whether it's a special educator, whether it's a teacher or maybe you're in charge of like, you know, you have to have this kind of SEL minute or, uh, you know, provide some sort of student wellness type thing. We can provide you with a tool that requires no prep time. That allows you to deliver the awesome evidence-based content if you want to engage with the students. We have it all done for you and it's, and it's digital, it's cool, it's fun, and you can finish that and you can go about teaching math or whatever it is that you're teaching and feel like you've been able to deliver that without like, oh my gosh, like now I've gotta be in charge of like providing the student wellness content. Lindsay Lyons: Live text conversations. You said there's like little videos. What can you tell us more about, like what are these different avenues that students actually get to engage with the content? Iuri Melo: Live text-based support, I would say is, is completely unique. Like nobody else is doing that out there specifically with the school. And so that was kind of where we were born. And then since then, as we've listened to other administrators and supers and um, and other counselors, we've, we've listened, we've heard their challenges, their gaps, right? I. We've tried to create these really targeted solutions, right? To just address those. Our email campaign, I'll just start with that really quick, is the school provides us the emails for, for parents and students, and we just begin this proactive email campaign. It's one email per week. It's not spammy where we deliver the student these student success activities, right? One per week. That's usually based on the time of the year. Um. Whether it's the holidays, whether it's the end of a quarter, whether it's the beginning of the school year, the end of the school year, we're aware of what students are struggling with during those times, and we provide these student success videos. We provide them to parents. Transparency is huge for us. We want them to have great tools and we deliver them to students as well. Email is good. It allows us to do this kind of tier one universal. Everybody gets it. Then we have kind of our, our text-based support. And I would say that this is probably the most powerful tool we have. It's powerful because we're actually engaging with actual parents and actual students, right, who may be doing really awesome and we want to keep that going. Right. Once again, we're a positive psychology service. And then of course, I mean, we have students who. Are texting us or parents by the way, who are themselves suicidal, struggling with substance abuse, going through a divorce, going through, uh, you know, custody battle or whatever it is, all the way to students, you know, who, who have reported, you know, physical or sexual abuse, who are self-harming, who are actively suicidal, who are actively homicidal, and we are providing a live touch point that's not ai. When you think about, you know, how do we increase capacity at a school, right? How do we, you know, take this ratio of, you know, one counselor for every 400 or 500 students? How do we increase capacity? Well, this is how we do it, right? We create these proactive campaigns. We have live support that goes on after school, through the weekend, over the holidays, through the summer, and that's how we build these positive outcomes. One student at a time. So when students engage in this service, right, whether the school ops them in, or you can see here in my little screen, I have this little QR code. Like we put these throughout the school and the kids just walk up. They scan that and, and it s them in, it's not an app. They don't have to create a username or password. It literally just shows up as a text on their phone. Like, Hey, welcome to school Pulse. From that moment on, right? Every Tuesday and Friday, we're gonna proactively text those students with cool content. That's fun. It's engaging our student, our videos as well. Uh, and then anytime that they engage with us, then we have a live, live. People like live support, like people who are just excited to talk to them, grateful that they're there, there to support them, cheer for them. Uh, and the, the cool part about the proactive piece, I just wanna say is it's really important, right? This is as a comparison to the kind of passive only crisis based type responses that you and I were talking about, right? This is 85 to 90% of our interactions with students happen on those two days, on Tuesday and Friday when we tap them on the shoulder and say, Hey, check this out, or What do you think about this? Or. Students just respond, right? Simply because we're not waiting, we're engaging. And then that allows them to communicate in a really simple, very easy, right? It's convenient, it's private, right? They don't have to walk down, you know, to the counselor's office, which we want them to. We want them to be connected there, but I know that many times they won't. Like, they're not going to. Then of course our goal is always we wanna connect those students to their primary network, right? With whether it's a parent or a guardian or whoever is with them. Number two, to the professionals at the school, and number three to other resources should we need to, but, and then of course we have right these other activities, right? Which. Can either be delivered as part of a kind of disciplinary process or what I would call like restorative justice or restorative practice or corrective discipline, uh, all the way to material, right? That's more specific to what a counselor would use when somebody comes into their office and they're overthinking or they're having problems with their friends, or you know, this, they're having problems with their parents at home, or they're experimenting with whatever, right? And we have all of those specific activities that are. Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. That is so cool. Yeah. I mean, two things that are just like really highlighted for me. Iuri Melo: Yes. Lindsay Lyons: One is the family and student connections. So you have both at both levels. Both tiers, which is super cool. Yeah, and I just think about how many schools struggle with family partnerships. So that's so valuable because often the dynamic is we don't reach out until there's a problem. Right? So we're completely helping. Schools rethink, actually you can just reach out to share positive content. Yeah. And the, the second idea is just this, um, student success activities that you named. I love that there are just like these practical things that are like engaging. And I'm curious, do you mind sharing one of your most popular activities or ideas or Iuri Melo: one of the ones that we created over the summer because there was a huge need for, so we actually created some videos specifically for like inappropriate use of ai. Or really appropriate use of ai. So we actually created some really cool videos for that and one for misinformation as well. Our most watched video is our video on tardiness part of schools, you know, kind of corrective discipline, right? Is they want to provide, not just like, Hey, don't do this, but. Do this instead. Right. And that's what really our videos are about, right? Is can we just, can we show you what to do better or why to do this better? We did one on, uh, once again at the request of a principle, profanity and inappropriate language and inappropriate language. You know, it is, whether it's like highly sexualized language or sometimes, you know, the very common, you know, kids will just throw stuff out like, you know, I'm gonna kill myself, or, you know, I'm gonna shoot up the school adults. Like, we're gonna get triggered really quick and we've gotta respond. And so we have lots of videos there. Uh, one of my favorite videos that we, that we created was as my phone, a friend or a frenemy. We're not just saying the don't do this, we're, we're saying like, here's some reasons for why to not do this, or maybe to modify or adjust or tweak your current perception of that. So I think we've tried to, to not just to deliver content that's rich, that isn't just prescriptive, but like that captures the meaning and the purpose behind it. Another one is like bullying videos. Of course we like those are shown a lot. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah. I definitely watched a few and one that's stuck Oh good. Was around like relationships, like how do you talk to someone? Like how do you continue the conversation over a time? Iuri Melo: Oh yes. Lindsay Lyons: You know, like I just feel like those are so practical for a kid who maybe struggling with anxiety or I don't, I can't name one friend, which is a common stat that we like hear on research is really cool that that's like proactive and socializing. Iuri Melo: I think on that one, we actually created a couple of acronyms on that one, an acronym, which is cash, like compliment, ask questions, smile, offer to help, and then I think one for kind of keeping conversations going. Which was swift. Right. I kind of used Taylor Swift, but uh, she's the queen of course. Just fun stuff like that that I hope is practical. Right. That's, that's the hope. Lindsay Lyons: Okay. One thing that listeners could do once they end the episode that would kind of bring to life some of this stuff in their. Iuri Melo: You parents start and end your day right with your kids. Like this, this concept of momentum is, is one that I really like. Um, and I think it matters, uh, you know, whether it's like at a, you know, at a soccer game or a football game, you know, and you, you can kind of tell when it's, when a team starts a game and they have this like, positive momentum and they're, and when they don't, right? They're out there, they're dragging, you know, heads are down, whatever. And so I would say, um, and I would say for your spouse, for your partner, for your child, whatever it is. Just start your day with positive momentum and when possible, end it that way. And it, and I'm not talking about, it doesn't have to be this big, remarkable thing, but just like we're just talking about like just, you know. Spend your kid to bed or saying, I love you or I care about you, or, today was hard and tomorrow will be better. Like, we got this. Like, whatever it is. But just manage those momentums is what I would say. And, and I think if you start it well, the chances that it will stay well or improve, it doesn't guarantee it, but it, it's improved. So I would say manage your momentum, start your day great. And end it great. And, and man, I, I think life will be a lot happier for you. Lindsay Lyons: I would even argue teachers can use that too. Start the class in class. Oh yes. Iuri Melo: Oh my gosh. That is a great idea. You should put that into your, I'm sure you've got some sort of cool training thing going on. Do that. Manage the momentum of your classroom. Right. Start, well, you know, by greeting kids at the door with a smile, with fist bumps, with cool. Whatever it is. Then, you know, even though the classroom may be a total disaster in the midst, but like, end it, well, you know, end it, well greet them again as they're exiting and just trust the process, right? Trust that process. It's gonna yield good outcomes. Lindsay Lyons: That's right. Okay. One. Iuri Melo: Yeah. Well done Lindsay. I like that. Sorry. Lindsay Lyons: Thank you. One thing you're learning about lately could be related to work, but doesn't have to be, Iuri Melo: oh my gosh. You're gonna absolutely go crazy with this one. So this the latest thing that I've done that I've just had so much fun with, I'm totally blown away. So I use, uh, like Chatt, PT, and Claude, which is like two ai. I'm, I'm sure most everybody or if not everybody is totally familiar with those. Um, but I started about three weeks ago. I, uh, opened up my little chatt PT on my app on my phone, and, uh, and I, and I said, I, I want to create a, like, little mini course. And I said, I want you to take, um, like, 'cause I'm, I'm. I'm, I just love like thinking, I don't know how else to say it, but I really enjoy philosophy. I enjoy obviously psychology. Like this is what, like my whole degree is in. I love spirituality and so I asked Chad PI said, Hey, can you create a daily? Like mini lesson program. And Lindsay, I challenge you. Go do this. I promise you'll love it. And create, and, and I just said I, I love philosophy, I love psychology. I love like eastern philosophy and, and like, uh, some of these other religious practices. And I want you to create a mini daily lesson that I'll like prompt you to start every day. That just includes right, and almost kind of synthesizes some of these things together. And every day I just go next and it launches it, you know, all the way from Aristotle to Mahatma Gandhi to Viktor Frankl and all the way to, you know, Albert Ellis and cognitive behavioral therapy. And it just creates these little mini lessons that lend from right all the way from like, you know, Taoism to like cognitive behavioral therapy. And it's just like packed with goodness and just these little tiny like lessons that I can read through. Um, talk about creating positive momentum at the beginning of your day, I promise you. Like, just start with that and it will inspire you. Like I, so anyways, that's been one of the little tools that I've started. That I would say just add a little bit about your life. Hey, my name is Lindsay. I'm 27 years old. I'm, I'm trying to create this and I'm looking for inspiration from, you know, Eastern philosophy approaches or philosophy or the master's in psychology, whatever. And can you create a daily course? And of course, Jackie PT will be, you know, that's such a wonderful idea, Lindsay. Let me set that right up for you. But I'm telling you like. There's some really cool things that, that you can do with that technology and it's been totally, so that would be my suggestion to you is try it out Lindsay and to all of you listeners, just give it a go and have fun with that. Lindsay Lyons: Super cool. Thank you for that suggestion. Yeah. Last question before we wrap up. Where can people learn more about you or connect with you? Iuri Melo: Yeah, well you can go to, uh, you can go to school pulse.org, uh, or you can just. Email me. Uh, my name is Yuri. It's a strange name. It's Portuguese, but it's, it's spelled IURI. It makes no phonetic sense, so [email protected] and you can just email me or go to our website and find out more about us. And man, let's, let's change the world. Let's do some good. Let's be proactive about it too. Not just reactive, but Lindsay Lyons: nice. Positive ending. Like, you're like, Iuri Melo: yes. Good momentum. Lindsay Lyons: Awesome. Thanks Yuri. I really appreciate this conversation. Iuri Melo: Absolutely. Best of luck to you, Lindsay. Lindsay Lyons: Thank you.
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In this episode, host Lindsay Lyons delves into the transformative power of stories and civic imagination. She draws on insights from the book, "Practicing Futures: A Civic Imagination Handbook" by Gabriel Peters-Lazaro and Sangita Shresthova, offering strategies to help educators, leaders, and community facilitators co-create shared values and community agreements.
She emphasizes the importance of imagination as a process to bridge differences and foster action-oriented discussions within classrooms and larger community settings. Lindsay also offers practical ways to guide a 60-minute session to co-create shared values as a group. Why? The concept of civic imagination is essential in fostering environments where community members can envision and enact change. Lindsay shares the distinction made by the authors that civic action is distinct from political power struggles, focusing on shared beliefs, values, and trust that facilitate collective action. Pop culture often influences civic imagination, allowing communities to express social concerns and envision new possibilities for democracy and social justice. Lindsay emphasizes the fact that imagination is both individual and collective and, as educators, we can draw on that collective imagination to address the real issues and open up possibilities for brand new solutions. What? Drawing on the insights from the “Practicing Futures” handbook, here’s Lindsay’s 60-minute session outline to help implement a civic imagination workshop, whether with educators as professional development or with your students. Step 1: Begin with an opening circle where participants share stories of fictional characters or real persons who inspire them to think about the future. This sets the stage for community building by sharing personally. (10 minutes.) Step 2: Share an opening frame for the session such as, for example, introducing a guiding quote. Lindsay shares one from Henry Jenkins: “ Before we can change the world, we have to be able to envision the possibility of change. We have to be able to imagine what kinds of change would be desirable. And we have to be able to think of ourselves as people capable of making change. This is what we are calling the civic imagination.” (5 minutes.) Step 3: Facilitate a collective brainstorming session where attendees imagine something new and transformational. A prompt might be: “Imagine it’s 2056. What would an amazing learning experience feel like, sound like, or look like?” Encourage fantastical thinking by suspending realistic constraints. As the facilitator, you could set the tone by coming up with your own response that is fantastical and creative. (15 minutes.) Step 4: Now, after imagining these future scenarios, get the participants in small groups to start creating stories of how you’re going to get there and create a path to the envisioned future. Groups should incorporate elements from each member's ideas and engage in multimodal storytelling techniques. (15 minutes.) Step 5: Have the groups share what they came up with, either by physically acting it out or creating “freeze frames” about what is happening. People could also draw and share through a gallery walk. Conclude by discussing the values and actions identified through the stories. Encourage reflection on how imagination guided the storytelling process and how these insights can integrate into real-life practices and policies. (15 minutes.) Final Tip Encourage participants to view imagination as a powerful tool to navigate civic life and foster dynamic community interactions. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Values via Civic Imagination slides with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 250 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
Lindsay Lyons: Welcome back to the Time for teachership podcast. This is episode 250. Wow. Today we are talking about stories and civic imagination as an avenue to elicit shared class values and ultimately co-construct community agreements for discourse for how to be together in classroom or a larger school community. The context for this episode is that I've read the book, practicing Futures, A Civic Imagination Handbook. Uh, that is absolutely amazing. Uh, Peters Lazaro and stress Dova are the authors. They are fantastic. They also have a website with a bunch of, I actually think you could get the book on the website for free. And they also have a lot of images and slides and agendas for the variety of workshops they share. So it is truly an amazing resource. I wanna share a little bit of my ahas from the book and then walk you through kinda an adapted version of one of their workshops that I've tried to fit into a smaller time span for use. In, in my setting, like conferences, right? Because we usually have 45 to 60 minutes. Similarly, I think leaders and teachers who are working directly with students as well as any other facilitators of communities. So this could be, um, family or PTA spaces as well. Uh, it could even just be like family units right at home. I think there's so much value in this, um, after school programs and the applications are really truly endless. But I wanted to share kind of a backdrop, some guiding ideas, and then walk you through what you could do in like a 60 minute. A spot of time, wherever and with whomever that is for you to have kind of a co-creation of shared values as a group and get to those via stories and civic imagination. So here we go. I love their distinction right up front at the start of the book. In the forward actually. Um, so it's, it's actually not the authors, but civics versus politics in the Forward is distinguished as. Follows The civic represents the shared beliefs and values, the underlying trust, which makes collective action possible. While the political encapsulates struggles over power within the decision making process and end quote. So you have a lot of structure, right, and, and kind of power dynamics and negotiating of influence in the political sphere, the civic. Is more in my mind, community, right? It's the community piece. It's the shared beliefs and values. It's the trust, it's the relationships. That's what enables us to take action. And the action might be, uh, in the political space. It often is in, in the political space, but it is. N not the same as like, um, fighting over power, divorced from the community piece, which I, I just think that's such an interesting distinction. Um, and I love it. Also, they talk about imagination, right? So the whole book is on, um, civic imagination that's in the subtitle, and they talk about imagination as process. And again, this actually comes from the forward, but here's the quote, something we actively produce together. It goes on to say it allows otherwise opposing groups to find a path forward together. End quote. I love this idea because opposing groups is what we're seeing. Play out what we're witnessing. Play out in many public spaces, in political discourse, in in general discourse. And our goal, and what we often talk about in the podcast is thinking about how we actually bring together in community people across differences of opinion so that we can live generatively together so we don't violate human dignity, right? And so if imagination is, is thought of as a process where we're actively. Coming together across differences, across differing ideologies to forge kind of a path forward. I love this as a possibility. Um, they also talk about how it's really notable the authors now we're talking about state, that groups frequently throughout history have tapped into pop culture to translate and express social concerns, which is so cool because you see that kind of come up in their workshops and in throughout their book, how tapping into pop culture. It actually feels like a nice avenue forward by considering what elements of pop culture figures, um, what elements of our superheroes or our kind of shared stories that Netflix show that everyone watched, you know, whatever it is. How can we tap into elements of that or values that underlie that character's actions in the world, even if it's fictional to kind of express social concerns about the reality we are living in. And think about how those values or actions of those fictional folks actually kind of come to, uh, can come to fruition in our lives, to advance justice and help us live better together. They also talk about the others, talk about the shared values. That, uh, the importance being of shared values, that it supports the functions and structures of democracy. And so they're talking about how effective democracy really requires its members to feel their ideas are valued and that the system values them. I think that's where a lot of people are very disillusioned or angry with. Um. Our current systems in the United States anyways, as we record this in early 2026, um, of, of perceived democracy because there is not that feeling of my ideas are valued, I am valued by the system. Um, and so this idea of shared values, particularly in systems like schools where we can co-construct with authority figures such as teachers or leaders in those spaces, really is going to support. The, the truth of democracy, the real functioning of democracy, because it's an opportunity to co-create, be fully valued in the process of that co-creation and notice the policy implications and kind of ways of being, uh, that are present in those systems in a way that maybe isn't when we don't co-create, or we don't even talk about values, right? Or we talk about values, but put them on the wall and don't do anything with them. Um, I love this point about Maxine Green saying imagination is individual and collective. So again, we have this imagination that we often celebrate as an individual thing in students, oh, that student is so creative, or that student's super artistic. We don't cultivate that collectively as part of a whole class activity or part of a prompt or, or even assessment that is. I want you to civically imagine and we're gonna actually, that's gonna be the focus of our conversation and we're gonna build off each other. 'cause we're always better together. Right? I'm again thinking about, but thinking a lot about his, uh, words. But James Nottingham is talking about when we talk, we want to help each other say something new or think about something in a new way. We want to expand our thinking. And recently having worked with a bunch of educators on a, uh, student led discourse workshop. In pursuing the goal of student led discourse, many, many teachers who are doing amazing things have said one of the hardest things is to get students to build on each other, to listen deeply to each other, and to build something new together as opposed to just reiterating what they thought going into the conversation. This is such a hard thing and such an important thing, and so again, Maxine Green saying imagination is individual and collective. I think this is such a great space and opportunity to build that skill. The last framing I will share before I dive into to this is, uh, the authors say, quote, when you start with creativity and imagination, you don't abandon the real problems. Ah, so important. Okay? They go on to say rather, you learn to approach and see them in brand new ways, opening up possibilities for brand new solutions. End quote. I love this because I think a common pushback is, oh well we can't just like dream up this space that is gonna be so hard to get to, that's gonna be quote unquote impossible to get to. Right? We have to live in the, now we have to be realistic. Right? This is such a interesting polarity or tension that is common and I actually think would be super fruitful to position as a prompt for discussion and discourse in, in the classroom space. Is this polarity, uh, of. Realism and optimism. I, I think that is so crucial and intergenerationally that conversation, that polarity, that kind of value tension can bring up so many interesting perspectives and stories that underlie those perspectives. This could be really, really fruitful, but I think even just posing this idea, right, or posing this quote for conversation amongst students, amongst faculty, amongst a mixed group of students and faculty, Ooh, this would be so good. Families and students, right? Intergenerational conversations would love that. Okay. So we're not abandoning the real problems. We're learning to approach them in new ways. We're opening up possibilities for brand new solutions. Okay, keep that in mind. Here we go. We're gonna transition to thinking about like, how, what does this look like? Okay. How is this gonna happen and how can we start doing something like this in a span of time that's maybe only 60 minutes at a staff meeting. Right. Or, or 60 minutes at, uh, if you have 60 minutes, uh, for something like an advisory period or a community block. Right. Okay. So here's what I would say, and I'm gonna link. In the description, um, in the, excuse me, show notes, uh, for this episode, I'm gonna link this slide deck that, again, is based on this practicing futures book, uh, resources from them, from how they've done things. But they've often done things in like a multi-hour, like half day session. And so I'm just kind of truncating this quite a bit to try to think about how this might be practical for you in 60 minutes or, or even less. So feel free to adapt this, um, download it. Adapt it to how you need it, um, that is going to be located for folks who are driving, we'll drop this link, of course, in the extended show notes, but that will be lindsay beth lyons.com/blog/ 2 5 0, and you'll be able to find that there. Okay, so here we go. First thing I would do is. Start with an opening circle where we're sharing a story. So ideally, this is not the first time that we're ever meeting someone. However I have, and we'll continue to try to do this in conferences where we're bringing people who've never met each other before into a space. Um, this requires a bit more vulnerability when folks don't know each other but is possible. Okay, here's the opening prompt. Share a story or character or real person, for sure. You could also do that, but I'm just leaning into that pop culture idea here. That inspires you to think of the future. I would also just have a line on the slide here or a cue verbally to let them know. This could be a book, a movie, a TV show, a song like Get Creative and Think about who inspires you. I recently did this a couple of days ago with a team. That was just like a person. I, I think I said it could be fictional, but we actually as a, as a group, um, leaned very heavily into the real people in our lives. So much so that I don't think one person brought in a fictional person. So feel free to lean as much in as much into either direction you want. Okay. So you're sharing someone that inspires you to think of the future. Okay. Once everyone has shared, we have brought the personal in. We have shared who inspires us. We've shared it succinctly. I'm thinking this is 10 minutes. So if you have a group of 20 people, you know, you're sharing 30 seconds each quick, maybe two sentences, one sentence to describe who they are and kind of what they embody, what they do. Maybe one sentence to explain why that's important to you or how you kind of came to be connected with that person. Um, or character. And then we move on. So we have kind of this community building. Okay. Then I would share an kind of an o, an opening frame, or if you're doing traditional circle format, this frame can go first and then you can have the, the circle. Um. As kind of like the main circle activity and then close out the circle formally, that's fine too. Um, I'm just kind of mixing it up a little bit 'cause I think it's a nice segue. This would be a quote from Henry Jensen Jenkins, uh, on civic imaginations, kind of how it guides action. So the quote would be, before we can change the world, we have to be able to envision the possibility of change. We have to be able to imagine what kinds of change would be desirable. And we have to be able to think of ourselves. As people capable of making change, this is what we are calling the civic imagination. So I think this is a nice segue, although we could also work first because we just had people talking about who inspires us towards change, and now we're making the transition to think about how we could embody that sense of like change agency. Right. We have, I love that we have to be able to think of ourselves as people capable of making change. Okay. So then what I would say is kind of learn our hats on, let's do a thing that you could do with students, um, if you're working with staff. Otherwise we're just kind of just proceeding with, with students. Um, if you're working as a teacher through the stack. Yeah. And the, the prompt would be we're gonna collectively brainstorm a future world and I, you know, they typically make it like 30 years out, so, okay. It's 2056. Right. What would an amazing experience, a learning experience, schooling experience, whatever it is for you, what would it feel like? Sound like look like? Like what would the experience be like? Describe the amazing learning experience and I'm changing it right now 'cause I had school experience. I think learning is more expansive. Invite people to share just one sentence and also I think this is really, really, really important. Tell them temporarily suspend realistic constraints like the fantastical is possible, is language that they use the book. I love that the fantastical is possible. We did this at a conference, uh, at NCSS in 2025 with Erica Carr and myself. And, uh, we had one person get really fantastical. They were like, time travel field trips. And I was like, yes. And everyone else was like, oh, I want students to feel loved. Okay, great. Love it. Love that. Students can feel loved. I also think that's very possible tomorrow. Like I don't think we need 30 years for that. Right? Like what? Might we, what is so transformational that it would take 30 years to enact, to come to life, right? I think that's the framing we want. And if you would like, I often do this when I'm doing circle shares, if you wanna set the stage that might affect how others answer and so you can be the one to share your idea first and get really creative. Think in advance if you're the facilitator. What's a super time travel field trip? There you go. Handing that one to you. Gift from a participant at NCSS, but. Share something that is going to set the stage for the fantastical thinking and get folks to, if they were gonna say something like, oh, I want students to feel happy, like. Get them to transform that into something a little bit grander, right? So I also love think time. I would give people like, you know, three minutes to think here, draw a picture, write a key word, like do your independent thinking. Get them to really push their thinking. You could even share yours and then pause and say, we're gonna give everyone time to think, because they may have thought and then they were like, oh no, that wasn't fantastical enough. Right. I think this whole circle share could be about 15 minutes. I mean, these, these first two activities are really like almost half the session. But then after everyone has shared their ideas, here's what we do. We say, okay, we're in 2056. These things have happened. How do we get there? And we are going to retroactively as a group, create the stories that got us there. So they're gonna form a group, three to five people. Choose one of the topics. So ideally, someone's kind of charting. Maybe you as the facilitator are charting some of these ideas as people are sharing in the circle. So we have some different topical themes come up, choose a subtopic, choose a theme. Each group gets a different one. Uh, you know, write your number, uh, the group number next to it on the chart, your initials on the chart so other people know what's taken. And then you're gonna get into a group. And there's a couple things you could do here. You could do kind of like a formal, uh, discourse protocol, like a discussion diamond. And work through kind of your own ideas for a story. Everyone writes their ideas down and they kind of share very formal, structured, kind of share their ideas. Um, and then they have some time to kind of, you're gonna have some time to remix. Like, how do we integrate everyone's individual ideas into one cohesive story that borrows at at least one element from each individual in this group? Right? Um, you would have a, a story that. Has a character or group at the center, a conflict that they face and a resolution that ultimately gets them to that future we described. Now, you could also do this in a variety of other ways. You could make it way more multimodal, you could make it way more artistic. Um, you could have like a storyboard. So I'm thinking about the elementary kind of storyboards, where it's like, okay, here's the character. We're gonna draw a picture of the character. Here's the conflict that they face. Like, that's the middle box. Here's the third box. This is the resolution. And you could draw a picture and or caption it to kind of set the scene. Okay, so then once you've had that small group time, and I'm thinking about 20 minutes here, um, so another kind of large chunk of time, um. I'm now wondering if I made this like a 75 minute activity, but you can adjust any of these pieces that you'd like or you could cut out whole activities if you'd like. Um, but basically what we now wanna do, uh, is give a few minutes for one or more groups de depending on how long a time slot you have here, each group could kind of share out for just like 60 seconds I think is all, all that's needed. Um, you can act out. Like physically act out, uh, key pieces of your story and have one person kind of do a voiceover, uh, kind of like a skit style. But I actually find that skits can be really, um, hard for particularly adults. Uh, but skits can be hard. But what you could do is you could have kind of like a, I don't remember what they're called, but where you physically kind of move. You have like a moving, um. Seen like almost like you're a statue and so you have kind of like these three freeze frames and so you as a group are kind of freeze frame one, and then you have one person kind of talk through what's happening here. Okay. Freeze frame two and, and it's easier for the group to kind of move but not verbally share. And then just one person kind of reads through the notes and verbalizes you also as a group, if you're. If you've got some visual artists, you could do a kind of mini mural or drawing and then have one person kind of explain that or even just hang up the mini murals, maybe capture them a little bit so we know what we're looking at, but kind of do a gallery walk where we're walking around there. Um, I think a nice audience move here as you are either kind of watching and or listening or engaging in gallery walk is just to notice what values are coming up. What do you infer the values of this group or this story Were. And then we're kind of charting them. Um, and now I think that what happens next, again, if you're working with staff, um, you're gonna have kind of this teacher hat moment of like, how could I bring this activity to students? If you're working directly with students or your purpose is really just to do this with staff, I don't think you need the, how do I teach this kind of side of things. Um, but I do think there is. This sense of, you know, what values came up for us. So we have, you know, 10 minutes of discussion here. Maybe what values came up in the stories, like let's name those. You might have jotted them on your own individual paper, but let's get them out in the space. What actions were present. Like what did people in these stories do? Were they young people? Were they adults? Were they working together in youth adult partnerships? So cool. Right. And what did you notice about your experience of the civic imagining process of the story creation and synthesizing with team? Like what did you notice about yourself and other participants, other peers in this process of doing this thing? Like how do we communicate with one another perhaps differently? Than we normally would when we're talking about social issues and how can imagination serve us in our civic lives. This is a question from the book that I really, really love, so I wanted to work that in. Um, but I love this idea of imagination serving us in civic lives. So how do we like kind of just put that out there? Maybe not as a question, maybe it's just a, oh, what a cool thought. Um, and maybe that's something you end on, I think another kind of. Angle to look at this with is like, we just painted this vision that we all care about, that we think there is a path forward, however fantastical, but we think there's a path forward to actually get there. We just made those stories and so how might we, or how can we, how will we, right? Whatever verb you wanna use, help this vision come to life in our school and so. We can invite conversation, like how do we do that? How do we get students and school stakeholders to talk about these shared values? How do we get ourselves to practice and lift up these shared values that we just identified are important through story? How do we make that a living part of the way we are in the school and the way school is, and the way we are as a community together? How do we nurture actions in our classrooms? How do we make sure our policies are reflective of this? What pedagogical moves, uh, can we borrow? We're if we're students that we can, or sorry if we're teachers and then we can use the students or, uh, what moves can we use? Um, if you're doing this with a group of family members and caregivers. Like, what can we share with our, our kind of family units, right? Our, our children and the home space. So that is a long list of things. Uh, don't feel like you need to remember that all or take notes because you do have access to these slides for absolutely free. Again, they are based on a fantastic book, kind of truncated as much as possible to like this 60 to 75 minute range. Feel free to edit and adjust more. I'm sure I will actually go in and as of this time of recording in January, 2026, they look one way and they're gonna probably exist in a very different way as I iterate and do this with different groups and, and learn as the authors of that book did, what works well and what can be adjusted so. I will continue updating live in this Google Slide deck. So if you're listening in 2027, this may look different than I'm describing now. And good for you. You've got the updated version. So again, that is going to be [email protected] slash blog slash 2 5 0. You can go ahead and grab that resource, uh, make it your own, make a copy, edit it to your heart's content, and let me know how it goes for you. 3/16/2026 249. Cultivating a Culture of Belonging, Challenge, & Agency with Dr. Jennifer BerryRead Now
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In this episode, we chat with Dr. Jennifer Berry, who discusses the importance of cultivating a culture of appropriate challenge in classrooms, particularly among STEM students. She emphasizes that a student's self-belief in their ability to belong, master rigorous challenges, and make impactful contributions is crucial across all fields, not just within STEM.
Dr. Berry highlights that achieving this involves creating a conducive learning environment, allowing for productive struggle, and integrating hands-on learning with real-world applications. The Big Dream Dr. Berry's vision is rooted in the right of all students to thrive as the best versions of themselves. Her dream is to break down the structures that hinder many youth from realizing their potential, empowering them to rise above their circumstances. She envisions an educational landscape where students are equipped not only to face challenges individually but also to collaborate and push against systemic barriers collectively. Mindset Shifts Required Dr. Berry argues for the critical mindset shift that recognizes the importance of allowing productive struggles, rather than stepping in to solve problems for students. This can be against educators' natural tendency to to step in and help solve everything. But by pausing before responding to students, you’re encouraging students to explore solutions themselves. Action Steps For educators wanting to enable their students to learn through “productive struggle,” Dr. Berry suggests the following action steps: Step 1: Create a learning environment that promotes collaboration, movement, and the integration of hands-on tools. This could be a dedicated space in the classroom or a specific area in a school that encourages project-based learning. Step 2: Design curriculum activities that connect STEM tools with real-world issues and industry pathways, helping students see the relevance and applications of what they are learning. Step 3: Actively engage the broader community by inviting mentors and professionals to share their experiences, thereby providing students with diverse role models and real-world insights. Step 4: In all this, resist the temptation to jump in and solve, fix, or help students immediately. Let them have space to figure things out and engage in productive struggle. With practice, educators will know when you need to step in and when you don’t. As Dr. Berry says, “Pause before responding, pause before answering.” Challenges? The most significant challenge in fostering STEM identity is ensuring that all elements of learning, from curriculum design to community engagement, work together seamlessly. Teachers may become overly focused on one aspect, such as the technology involved, rather than integrating it with practical, real-world applications and wider educational goals. One Step to Get Started Start by integrating a short pause before answering student questions in class. This simple action encourages students to think more deeply about their queries and explore potential solutions, reinforcing their problem-solving skills and growing their confidence. This approach sets the foundation for a broader shift in mindset, fostering a more inquisitive and resilient learning environment. Stay Connected You can find out more about and connect with Dr. Jennifer Berry on her website, SmartLab Learning, or on LinkedIn. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Culture Playlist with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 249 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:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Dr. Jennifer Barry, welcome to the time for teachership podcast. Dr. Jennifer Berry: Oh, thank you for having me, Lindsay. I'm so happy to be here. Lindsay Lyons: I am so excited that you're here because as we were saying right before we hit record, I'm really interested in this idea of like class culture and how we kind of build up, uh, a culture of appropriate challenge and all of that. And I think your work is so, um, like it. Helpful in how we can like, make that actionable. Mm-hmm. Particularly for, for STEM classrooms, but I think honestly for, for every classroom, yes. It's so valuable no matter what you teach. Yeah. And so that's what's on my heart and mind this morning. And so I'm curious to know what is important for listeners to know that maybe you're thinking about today or that you want people to kind of keep in mind throughout. Dr. Jennifer Berry: Yeah, I love, I loved how you mentioned what's so key for students, whether they're in a STEM classroom or whether in they're in any kind of learning environment. But I also would translate that and transfer that even into a career, um, focus, right? Because as we're educating youth and as we're educating, um, uh, students in the classroom, we should always be thinking about what is their future, right? Like obviously we want kids to be, um, you know, whole and best versions of themselves. And have, you know, the mental health capacity to survive in this kind of ever changing, in some case, some cases, scary world. However, we should also be as educators thinking about how are we setting up for them up for success, for future careers to be and, and, and be in and thriving in, uh, future industries, some that already exist and some that are yet to be, to be existing in existence because they're be. Being developed as we speak. Right? And so I always like to say to myself and to others, and to my, my team who's developing our curriculum at Smart Lab, um, what do we think about, uh, as, as to what skills do students need in order to thrive in a career and be. Not only the best versions of themselves, but the top of their game and lead in, in whatever they choose to, to focus on in life. So it isn't just okay when they're in the STEM classroom or when they're in the learning environment, but how does that connection connect to the broader, uh, life that they're gonna have, right? And, and their experiences that they're gonna bring to this world and how they're gonna contribute to this world in meaningful and positive ways. So, you know, we have coined this sort of. STEM identity, uh, definition, which, you know, STEM identity has been, uh, studied for years. Right? And I know that I, the word identity can be very controversial, but the reality is, um, when you put the word stem in front of it, um, it, it really kind of loses that sort of polarizing perspective because it's really about thinking. Uh, how, how do you think not can you use a STEM application, but how do you think, right? And so we've defined STEM identity as a learner's self-belief that I belong, I can master rigorous challenges and my ideas make an impact or have an impact, right? That cuts across any industry. Right. I'm not, I, I, man, you know, I am a CEO of a STEM company, but I don't consider myself a scientist, right? I don't consider myself, although I love math, I don't consider myself a mathematician or in that field, right? I consider myself a leader. I consider myself a visionary. I consider myself somebody that really galvanizes an idea or people and move us forward so that we can be, again, the best versions of ourselves and contribute to this world meaningfully. So. When I think about that, I think, oh, I actually have STEM identity because I do believe I belong in this seat. I do believe I can master rigorous challenges, and I do believe that my ideas make an impact. So somewhere along the way, through my early learning all the way through till now, I, I had that cultivated through mentors, through parents, through my community along the way. And so that's my. That was my learner's self-belief, and now it's my adult self-belief and it translates into the industry that I've chosen. So I really like to think about STEM identity as beyond the STEM. Uh, acronym and really think about it from the standpoint of a learner's self-belief, right? Because we all wanna belong. We all wanna believe that we can master a, a challenge. And like that challenge doesn't define us like we can. We can work through that challenge and get it to the other side, um, or decide, hey, that challenge is not even worth solving because it isn't really, uh, something that I can solve and bring in others and collaborate with others to help kind of get to that solvability. Um. Or that place of, of solve. So you know that that's really what I think we as humans, even for, and I was talking to somebody the other day, they're like, oh, oh, so STEM identity is acquired? And I'm like, Hmm. I don't know. I think babies come out with STEM identity, right? Like I think they come out believing, oh, I belong here. Right. I, I, I can master rigorous challenge because guess what? When I cry, somebody helps me in most cases, right? I know that's not in all cases, but in most cases I cry and somebody, right? So that was a challenge, and I overcame it by making sound, right? Uh, my ideas have impact, right? Because when I smile, a, a, an adult smiles back at me, right? So that was an idea. So, I don't know. It's sort of, I know that's a little heady and maybe too meta for a lot of people, but I actually believe that people, um, as individuals come out with this sort of identity that they belong and that they can master rigorous challenges and their ideas have. And so therefore, because we've defined that as STEM identity, I believe people come out of the womb with STEM identity. Now, what I do believe is that, that they need to be cultivated. They need to have environments that cultivate that identity. They need to have, um, people around them and systems around them that support the fact that they belong. Right? We know that there's systemically that's not always the case for all individuals, and so we need to work very carefully to make sure that all. All humans get that inalienable right of, um, care to thrive with their own belief that they belong here. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, absolutely. Oh my gosh, I, I love this so much. There's so much that I wanna like tap into. I think that this idea of, um, you know, every, every person just for the greater good of humanity and for their, like, role as a community member in a larger world. I mean, we talk a lot about civic action and kind of like that social studies lens and this. Podcast. Yes. But like, that seems so relevant, right? Like, you want to be impactful, you want to be agentic, you want the sense of belonging and you wanna foster it for other people. You want to be able to tackle hard things instead of just shut down when the world is like nuts. Right? Yeah. And, and I think that totally, totally resonates for civics as well. Dr. Jennifer Berry: Yeah, I agree. Lindsay Lyons: I mean, that's what, that's just me kind of painting my dream. But I, I always try to ask at the start ish of episodes like. For guests. What, I'm curious what your freedom dream is. So Dr. Bettina love describes this as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. Dr. Jennifer Berry: Mm. And Lindsay Lyons: so you kind of alluded to like right, like some systems and structures are not just, and and like what you're painting a vision of is maybe counter two what some of the systems currently are. And so you maybe have already addressed this question, but I'm curious, is there anything you would add here around like the dream you hold for education? Dr. Jennifer Berry: Yeah. Um, I think it is rooted in, um, all students' rights to thrive and be best versions of themselves, um, and that sort of breaking down of the structures around them that prevent that for many youth. Um, so my dream is to sort of figure out how to bust the structures down and to, to protect the youth at the center of that so that they can thrive. Whatever environment they're handed. Right? And so, because not every envi, not every student is handed the same environment for various reasons, right? Based on socioeconomic background, based on race, based on gender, based on, um, religion. You know, you can name, you can name all of the reasons why maybe not all, all students have the structures around them that support their, their learning. So, you know, when I think about my sort of. Focus is to try to figure out in a small way, right? I, I don't, I, you know, I'm not able to solve all of the problems, um, across, across the u United States and world. Um, but I do believe that in a small way, if we can sort of. Bubble students to be able to thrive in whatever, uh, environment they're in so that they can feel like they matter, right? And their, and their ideas add value, as we talked about earlier. And so to create an environment around them where they're almost protected, um, from some of the, the, the, the structures that. Down so that they can stand up on their own two feet and look up and go, wait, I can break down that barrier. I can push through that barrier. I, collectively with my peers, can collaborate together to be the force that pushes against whatever is pushing against them. Right? So that I, I think, you know, to layer in. You know that, you know how I, how we as my an organization have defined that STEM identity term. You know, that's very narrow 'cause we run a STEM company, so that's very narrow. But when I think about my own sort of seat in that as a CEO, it's bigger than that for me. It's really to make sure that the students that are in an environment that, that any environment of learning, that they can really thrive to be best versions of themselves and. See that they're better than their circumstances and that if they themselves as individuals and they can grab, gather collectively around them and build community, they can bust through the circumstances that are sort of pushed and forced upon them. And then of course, my personal dream is that those that are outside of the student learning environment are also pushing from the, uh, outside in so that the students are pushing from the outside out, inside out. We're pushing from the. Outside in so that we can really crumble some of the stuff that really is, um, you know, disenfranchising a lot of, a lot of youth from being the best versions of themselves and being able to be productive individuals and be collective in their unity for society. So. Lindsay Lyons: I love that dream. Thank you for sharing that. Dr. Jennifer Berry: Yeah, of course. Lindsay Lyons: I, I think now about like some of the actions that educators can take or, I mean, honestly even like family members, right? Supporting kids, like you're saying, like learning environments kinda are everywhere. We're like doing this kind of whole human wise now and in the future. Dr. Jennifer Berry: Yeah. Lindsay Lyons: I think often as a teacher, I will raise my hand on today that I, for sure when someone was like, miss, miss, like I'm struggling. It would be me running over from person to person helping, and I realize now, in retrospect as a coach, that was not helpful in the moment. I wasn't letting 'em, you know, rise to the challenge and figuring out ways to tackle the problem themselves. Mm-hmm. And certainly my goal was to like alleviate their stress. Mm-hmm. Right. And to help, but it wasn't actually helpful, so. Mm-hmm. For me, this has been a mindset shift that I've gone through, but I'm curious, are there. Other mindset shifts that you think are really required for educators to make to be able to actually cultivate this STEM identity? Yeah. That is different from how maybe traditionally school is done. Dr. Jennifer Berry: Yeah. I'd say there's two things to that. So the first thing actually is exactly what you were saying, and I can even speak as a parent. So I have an 11-year-old daughter and. The natural instinct is always to jump in and solve, or to alleviate the stress or to help, um, and, and that natural instinct is because we're trying to make sure that they are feeling safe and they're, you know, not struggling. Right. And we work a lot on this, even our curriculum set for, for Smart Lab, where we focus on teaching the facilitator how to allow productive struggle. Right. And that's key because you don't want a student to struggle past the point of, um, or where they give up or where they, um, sort of reach their pay grade, if you will. They reach their level of, you know, capacity to like push past their, their amygdala firing and that fear of fight or fight happening. So there is this sort of productive struggle, um, zone that we really try to get facilitators to in our. Professional development of our facilitators in a smart lab because that productive struggle is really, really important. Like, let the student struggle enough, kind of push through and fail enough times that they, um, can then see like, oh, I can go another place in my brain and try to get that to solve, you know, solve. Solve that, or I could walk away because I'm too frustrated right now. I'm allowed to walk away and come back to it later and then pick up right where I left off. But there is that zone of productive struggle that's really important because you don't want to go past that zone. Because if you go past that zone, then students actually can retreat and that and their amygdala, right? Their fire or flight, um, uh, uh, nerve fires and then, and then your. Then they're not productive, right? So there's that zone of letting 'em struggle enough without letting them get to that fight or flight zone. And even sometimes we actually do teach. Sometimes getting in that fight or flight zone is good because sometimes when you're fighting with the answer, there's ways that, I mean, we do this in life, right? There's ways in which you need to walk away. Do some breathing, get out in nature, you know, read a book. Really get out of your environment so that you can come back a, the better version of yourself. Right. And I, I, I had this issue with my daughter last night. You know, she was, she was tired and she didn't wanna do her, her 20 minutes of reading that she's supposed to do every night. And, um. She had just come from karate. And so I could tell she was just in this like zone of, of past the point of, I can, I can't even, I can't even figure out how to get into the bathroom and brush my own teeth, right? And she was just like, can you help me brush my teeth? And I'm thinking, you're 11. I don't need to help you brush your teeth, right? But my natural reaction was like, yes, because I need, and I need you to read and I need you to go to sleep. So I'm gonna grab your toothbrush and I'm gonna brush your teeth for you. Right. And as I'm doing this because I'm, you know, although I talk about this a lot, I fail at it often. I'm brushing her teeth and she's standing there with her arms down and her eyes closed, and I'm thinking. Oh, I have just enabled her to use me essentially because, and I could see in her eyes like, oh, I got you. Almost like, or I could see in her body language, I got you. And I know that's not, I don't think she was intentionally thinking that, but I think in her mind she was like. Oh, I was able to cry a little bit. I was able to like pretend I don't know how to brush my teeth or I can't function right, because I am tired, right? And so I calmly put the toothbrush down. I said, okay, Jayla, I started this for you. I need you to finish and I will meet. I'm gonna go do my own. Brushing of the teeth and washing my own face and I will meet you in your room with my own book and we will read together. Right? And but it took me, it took me that moment of doing to then also have my own moment of, wait a minute, I just got tricked here. Or I just fell into a pattern of trying to help and solve because I could see my poor child was tired and dah, dah, dah, and I had to really stop and I could see begrudgingly she was sort of like, Ugh. But she picked up that toothbrush. She finished brushing her teeth, she got herself in bed. She opened her book and she was waiting for me to come in and she was reading, but by the time I got in there with my book to sit on the floor next door to read. So it was really powerful moment for me. A small example, but a very powerful for moment for me that we, we can jump in. Like you said, you're walking around the classroom and you can jump in. But also when we're, we're mature enough to go, whoa, I've overstepped here and sort of. Kick it off for them and then walk away. So I don't, I think sometimes I see facilitators across the country like, oh, I'm supposed to just be hands off with everything and let them sort of, and it doesn't mean as an educator, you can't guide, you can't start, you can't maybe add value in the middle of, um. You have to know when to back away. You have to know when to let them push through that obstacle. Right? So anyway, that's a great, that was a great example of something that happened to me last night that I had a moment of realization and, and I know despite that she was sort of. Angry about it. I know that, you know, she's more than capable of what I, you know, the tasks that she was trying to do, and it had I continued to help her, I would've been enabling her to lean on me too hard when things got hard for her. Lindsay Lyons: I love that example of, thank you. Very relatable. I think that's great. Um, and I, yeah, I think that's also your idea, that it's okay if you find yourself in that moment and you can then step back. It's very forgiving. Yeah. For the people who are in transition from, like, I used to run to put out fires and help get too much and over scaffold. Yes. But I can notice in the moment and remove myself. I love that. Like reframing of like, I kicked you off. Like we, I got you started. Here we go. Now it's you. Dr. Jennifer Berry: Yeah, now it's you. Yeah. Oh, and I had said there was a second thing, the second thing, and be, you know, and because we're a STEM organization, although I just believe this, in, in general, putting in a, a hands-on approach or some sort of tool or some sort of STEM application, whether it's a hands-on, you know, I believe STEM applications can even be paperclips. Like sub application doesn't have to be, you know, an ai, VR, glass, you know, v ar VR glasses. Like it really could be just a paperclip, right? So I believe putting in some sort of hands-on tool into a student's learning process can help open up the brain in ways that, um, that. All humans need, right. That, that, that kind of going back to the root of play. Right. And, you know, you, you, you play when you're young, but when you're, when you're, you know, elementary, middle, high school, and then even, you know, higher ed and even as an adult with me there, there's moments where I have to like pick up something and play with it to, to open up parts of my brain that can then. Find a solution to something, right? When you're stuck in a problem, you have to that, that act of hands-on play. Now, in most cases, you want that act, that act of hands-on play to be connected to whatever you're trying to solve. But sometimes that act of play is, um. Is really just opening the, the brain up, right? I, I had this conversation, somebody was interviewing me last night for, for something they were doing for their, uh, their MBA program and they were asking me sort of what were my tips and tricks and I said, you know, I sort of have this weird act of rebellion thing that I do, and it's, and they were like, Ooh, tell me more active rebellion. That sounds really like gritty. And I'm like, actually, it's like sometimes I just drive home a different route. Sometimes I just listen to a different radio station. Sometimes I just, uh, brush my teeth with my left hand versus my right hand. Like this active rebellion doesn't have to be so. Rebellion esque. It could be some small things that you're doing slightly different that open your brain up to think about new ideas that think about ways to solve a problem in a way that maybe you hadn't thought of before. So I, I kind of like this active rebellion. Maybe I'll write a book about it someday, but this sort of active rebellion that's very simple, acts during the course of your day. To get you out of routine. And I believe in structure. I believe in routine. I believe in discipline, but you have to sometimes break those norms in order to have your brain open up for really amazing thoughts that are trapped, right? And so when you, I don't know how many times you've been in a car and driven and go, I don't even know how I got here. You know, I have no idea how I got here. And, you know, uh, although if you force yourself to go a different route, then you're like, oh, wait, do I have to turn right? Do I have to turn left? Wait, where am I going? I'm in a different way. So I do that every day. I try to do this active rebellion in very small ways that sparked the brain. So I can think about in a, in a classroom setting, a teacher, an educator, trying to think about maybe changing up their routine instead of walking the classroom and the, you know, they normally. Because teachers I know find themselves doing, I'm gonna always go to this side of the room first, and then go around to the left side, go the other direction and see what happens. Right. You're gonna make the kids go. 'cause they also know, oh, she's gonna get to me last, so by the time she gets to me, I'll show her that I'm working on something. Right. But I'll be maybe doodling before she gets around to me. Right. But now, if the teacher's changing their walk, now you're, you're changing that student to go, oh, I have to be actively engaged now because she's not doing her normal. Her normal left to right walk or right to left, walk right. So, I don't know, little things like that I think could be really helpful for a teacher. Um. Uh, you know, have the student have, you know, maybe the teacher sits on the floor one day outta nowhere, or sits on the desks, or has the kids sit on the floor, even if they're in high school, just like change it up and do these small acts of rebellion. That I think can really, um, open up those spaces for, um, being okay with failure, for being okay with change, for being resilient when things aren't always as, as you've imagined them or are used to them being. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, I love this idea that you're just like opening the brain up. You know, that like, I, I, that is so cool. I'm latching onto that piece. I also was thinking about you describing your guide for facilitators. Mm-hmm. And so thinking about instruction and instruction design, like both the pre-planning, like I'm gonna design in this particular way to help kids, like have this opportunity for, for grappling and productive struggle. But then I also. Like, I think we focus a lot on that and, and I know that that's super important and this idea of like the responsive piece, like I'm gonna see what kids can do and then I'm gonna respond accordingly so that they're in that zone you're describing. Dr. Jennifer Berry: Mm-hmm. Lindsay Lyons: I'm curious if you could share some of those tips that you have in your kind of coaching of facilitators and facilitation of how to. How to do this. Uh, if you know someone's listening and they're like, I'm gonna try this out today in class, you know, is there something that you could do differently to be more responsive? Dr. Jennifer Berry: Yeah, I think two things that pop to mind. Um, you know, without going into the full facilitation training that we do, but two things that I think are really simple, like you said, what could they do today is, um. Pause before responding, pause before answering. Um, you know, even a student that raises their hand and says, Hey, I have a question, right? This is my question. Instead of going, well, let me answer that for you because I'm the teacher, I'm the person that knows I'm supposed to, supposed to answer this question. You know, pausing and saying, you know what? That's a really quick question. Tell me more about why you're asking that. Tell me more about what, what, what the point is of that question. Are you a, you know, do others have an idea to help that Stu, you know, to help that? Like, really putting the question back on the student. I do this at work a lot and it throws people off actually many times. You know, when you're the CEO of a company, I, I didn't know this until I became a CEO, but people ask you the things that are like. So low level that as if you're supposed to know every answer, you know, and um, or even high level as if you're supposed to have all the high level answers, right. And I find myself a lot going. I don't, I don't have any, I don't have any idea or that's a really interesting question or I haven't thought about that yet. Um, and, and I. I've now started to use this sort of, it's a, that's, that's a really good question. Tell me why you're asking. What is, what is, um, what do you think we would get from that? By, by solving that or by, um, you know, that, that solution or that, if I answered that question, if I even dare to know the answer to that question, what would you get from that? Is there a point behind your question? Do you, what do you think the answer should be? That actually makes people uncomfortable? They're like, oh. I asked you what I, of course, I don't know, but I'm like, no, I'm, I'm curious what, how do you think? And then all of a sudden they're like, well, I think we should do it this way, and I think you should do it that way. And I think maybe if we tried it this way and I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Maybe we should try that. Maybe you could own that. Maybe that's a project you wanna take on. Right? And that opens up this sort of pause before you just jump in and answer. So that would be my one. One tip for people is just pause before you answer and sort of put. The question back on them, or maybe not the question back on them, but put the why they're asking back on them, because then it can force them to think about like, why am I asking that question? What will that serve this discussion? You know, is it just because that it popped in my head and I'm that kid that just likes to ask questions? Or is it, I'm really curious about this and I think. Help me. If I understood this, it would help me understand that, you know, and make that kid sort of think through why that question matters. And then of course, of course engage the rest of the class to maybe help them solve it rather than you, you know, standing up being the expert in the room. Right. Um, so that's one. The other, the other thing is this, um, this idea of when you see people struggling actively walk away. And you know, had I done that last night with my daughter in the toothbrush moment, I guarantee her standing in the bathroom with her arms down and the tears streaming, you know, you know, staring at the mirror. But like, I'm not, I don't know how to brush my teeth. Had I walked away from that circumstance, she would've had to. Regroup. She would've had to eventually pick up the toothbrush and brush her teeth because she does know how to brush her teeth, right? So, had I done that rather than like, oh, I'm just gonna jump in and help you grab the toothbrush and shove it in your mouth and start the process, um, she would've had to work through. Feelings in that moment and work through, like, I do know how to do this. I'm not gonna just stand here and cry all night. I need to pick up that toothbrush and brush my teeth and go into my room. Right? So that would be the second sort of like quick thing, the moment you see struggle or somebody frustrated in the corner. Maybe just actively walking away, keeping your eye on them to make sure they don't get past that point of like, now I'm a wreck and now I'm hiding under the table, or now I'm arguing with my peer or whatever. Right. Or throwing things at the teacher. You know, those things can happen too, but walk away and sort of allow them to have their moment because most humans need those moments that they can figure out how to work through. Right now there's some right that we, we know, that need other accommodations to help support them in their, in their time of need. But for the most part, you can identify like, Ooh, I'm gonna let that child struggle a little bit more. But I, as a teacher had to actively walk away because just like at the playground when a student fall or, or where a kid falls, they look for their parents' reaction. And it's the same thing as you get older, right? Your, your, your, your, your rebellion in the classroom is looking to see, is somebody noticing, is somebody seeing me? Right? And sometimes walking away from that is them going, wait, I can, I can solve this. Or a peer jumps in and goes, let me help you. Right? So those would be the two things that I would recommend, um, that people can do out of the gate and that we try to really make sure the facilitators are strong at in a stem learning environment. Lindsay Lyons: I love those. Thank you so much for those. Those are, yeah, immediately actionable. So super, super helpful and concrete. And thinking back to kind of at the start where you were talking about, and I wrote this down, how do you think like the idea of like STEM identity and like, you know, coaching students around this. It's important to coach like the thinking, right. And the thinking is what we want to do. Yeah. Especially in like humanities, I think a lot of times we prioritize the way that you get the thinking out, like on a paper in writing, for example, and then the kid struggles of writing. It's like, oh, I can't see the thinking because I'm not thinking about the various ways that the thinking can come out. But it really is about. The thinking mm-hmm. That we wanna cultivate. Um, and I'm also thinking about kind of your definition of STEM identity and thinking about that belonging, the rigorous challenge. Um, and then the third one, I can't read my own Dr. Jennifer Berry: hand. My ideas have an impact. Thank you. Lindsay Lyons: My Dr. Jennifer Berry: ideas have an impact. Yeah. Lindsay Lyons: Ideas have an impact. What is, is there like an aspect of, of those pieces that you. Find that teachers have the most, um, kind of challenge with, or is there kind of a particular struggle that people face in, in cultivating that stem identity and, and kind of focusing on the thinking. Um, and, and then how do you like coach through a, a challenge like that? I imagine it's not super easy to make that transition for teachers. Dr. Jennifer Berry: Yeah, so we, you know, smart Lab really focuses on an integrated ecosystem. So, you know, our, our, our, our tagline is we're an integrated ecosystem. That's that, uh, sparks, aha moments, that, and build stem identity for learners. That's sort of our tagline, right? And we, we think of aha moments is that sort of sudden realization that learners have when they connect, um, ideas in new and meaningful ways. Right. So that's, that's how we define an aha moment. And if you have multiple aha moments, that's what's building your stem identity. If you have multi, multiple aha moments, you're starting to get that self-belief, that learner self-belief that you, you know, belong, can master rigorous challenges and your ideas add value. So this, this, um, idea of, um. What is the hardest part of getting students? Their STEM identity is really allowing for multiple aha moments to happen. And so when we talk about the integrated ecosystem, you know, the environment matters. Right? At Smart Lab, we help, uh, we help classrooms. School districts, you know, schools themselves, uh, customize their learning environment to make sure their learning environment is conducive for hands-on project-based learning. 'cause not all learning environments are, and you can customize a corner of a library to do that. Or you can customize a room that you can lock and call it your STEM lab, right? So no matter where, or even in the classroom, a corner of a classroom, you can create a customized environment that is conducive for hands-on project based learning. So at Smart Lab, we help. Schools do that. Um, but a teacher themselves in a classroom can create an environment in their classroom that is conducive for hands-on project based learning. And that's being really intentional about what that learning environment looks like. Is there collaborative spaces? Is there room for active play? Is there room for movement? Right? Is there mo room for bringing in a STEM application to sort of use to facilitate learning, right? So that, that sort of. Customized learning environment is, is really key in this ecosystem, right? But as we both know, ecosystems are only as good as everything that's in 'em, not just the environment. 'cause otherwise that environment could just be a storage unit, right? So you wanna customize learning environment that optimizes for learning, but then you also need the curriculum that is designed to optimize learning, right? And so in our case, we design our curriculum all based on state standards and align. But, and, but really we, what we do in our curriculum is take STEM applications. That students can use in a hands-on project based way and connect them to real world challenges as well as industry pathways. So that way there isn't just a, um, a, oh, I know how to use a 3D pen, but it's, oh, I, I've used a 3D pen, but let me tell you about the use case for that. Right. Again, I'm gonna do a great example. I had a, a group of five fifth graders in my car the other day and um, we have brought Smart Lab to my daughter's elementary school. It's a public elementary school in San Diego and we have brought Smart Lab there. And, um, the foundation actually was so invested in getting stem, it's an IB school, but they were so invested in getting STEM into this public school that the foundation. Uh, use their jogathon money and all of the donation money to put the Smart Lab in the school. So I had these five fifth graders in my car, right, where I'm taking them to their dance, their dance class, their dance team, um, class, and I asked 'em, Hey, how was Smart Lab this week? And they were like, oh my gosh. Did you know we did the shadows in motion, um, uh, uh, unit. Did you know that in a field, the opposing team makes sure that the, uh, or the, the, the, the field, the, um. Home team makes sure that the opposing team sits with the sun in their eyes. And so when the shadow comes over the stadium that the opposing team has the sun in their eyes, did you know this mommy? And I'm like, oh wow. Yeah, that's amazing. You know, this is cool. And all of them are rattling around like, yeah, and then this, this, use it for a shadow and this use for a shadow. And so, and I was like, well, what STEM application, what we're using? They're like, oh, we were using a 3D pen. And I'm like. Oh, so they weren't talking about the, the, the thing that's really cool and exciting, they were actually talking about the use case for it, right? They were designing something with their 3D pen for the shadows in motion type activity that applied to something in real world. So they were actually more excited about the real world application. So that curriculum and how you use the hands-on tools and equipment is so important and can be, um, where. Facilitators fail when they're just very, they're admiring the 3D pen and they're really excited about the, you know, the CNC machine, or they're really excited about teaching kids how to use a, a, you know, a 3D, you know, a 3D printer, you know, and so they're really excited about that opposed to how do you connect that thing? To a real world problem. How do you connect that thing to learning that really gets the student to think about a real world, uh, industry or some sort of problem that can be solved through this use of this STEM tool. So that could be, uh, an area that people really need to think about because we, many times I see random acts of STEM happening in school districts, right? Meaning the kids are getting to play with this stuff and they're very excited about this stuff, but there's no. Connection to anything. It's sort of like, okay, but what is the connection to that thing that you got to play with that now applies in real world, right? And now you and I know this AI powered world we live in, living in, eventually AI is gonna do all of those STEM applications. It already does most of them, but it's gonna use those already gonna be able to do those STEM applications. So we want students to be able to know how they work, maybe play with how they work so that they can actually have that hands-on tools. But also more importantly, how it applies in real world, so that when they get to the real world, they know when to bring in that AI tool to do that thing because they know what it's used for. Right? So they can lead in an AI powered world opposed to AI leading them. So that would be part of the, and then, so yeah, so the environment's important. The curriculum and the hands-on tools and equipment is important. We've already had talked about how important the facilitator is, right? And we certify our, our facilitators so that if it's a librarian that. Becoming the, the STEM teacher or if it's a, if it's a, the, you know, the lead math instructor at the school becoming the stead or the science person that's becoming it, or they put a paraprofessional in that becomes a stem. Um, a facilitator that we make sure that we set them up for success so that they can understand the curriculum, understand the kids and equipment, understand the STEM applications, but more importantly, understand how to allow students to have a productive struggle. While they're learning. Right? And then lastly, it's really the support and partnership, right? The this, this idea, when we think about our ecosystem, it's these five things and the support and partnership is really key. Now, support could be everything from, you know, at Smart Lab we have customer success people and we have tech support people. Like, that's all support. But really I like to overemphasize, whether you're in a smart lab or you're just in a classroom trying to do this, or you're, you already have a STEM lab in another, in another. Is that you figure out how to bring the community into your environment, right? Even if it's in the humanities class, even if it's in the social studies class, even if it's in, you know, a STEM learning environment, to have the community come in so that students can see themselves. Right. So they have representation. They see themselves in careers of the future. They can hear from potential mentors that maybe aren't their parents or aren't people that they get to see every day. Um, and that the, the facilitator or the adult that's coming into this environment to share their own experiences, gives reasons to believe that you don't have to be, you don't have to have the highest scores all the time. You don't have to always go to the best schools. I always have to look a certain way to be successful in this world. So bringing the community in so that students have a variety of people that they get to see themselves in, I think can be really, really supportive. Supportive to that, to that optimized learning for, for kids future growth. So I sort of roundabout answered your question about like, what is it that facil. Struggle with the most, and I think it's sort of making sure that all of the pieces are integrated together to optimize the learning, right? They focus on maybe one aspect of the learning environment or one aspect of the kits and equipment or, or to your point, focus too much on the designing of the curriculum, right? Instead of like, how do I make sure the ecosystem is optimized? Is the learning environment strong? Is the, the curriculum developed? You know, in a way that's gonna optimize learning is the way in which I facilitate that. At at peak capacity, it am I bringing the community in to give real world examples and to give mentorship to these students. So really making sure that you're thinking of the whole ecosystem, I think is where people struggle the most. Um, because they get overly fixated on one aspect or another. I Lindsay Lyons: love the ecosystem frame. Love the components. Those are so good. Thank you for sharing that. And I think as a final question that I'm gonna sneak in as we close here, um, where can folks learn more about you or connect with you or Smart Lab online or, or otherwise? Dr. Jennifer Berry: Yeah. Yeah. So I hope people go to our website, um, and that's smart lab learning.com. So Smart Lab Learning spelled as you would expect.com. They can go there. There's a ton of free resources. We actually, on November 7th, have a, uh, what we're calling STEM Identity Day. So there is national STEM identity or national. STEM Day. That is on November 8th, but it's a Saturday, so we wanted to make sure schools got to participate. So we're calling it, um, STEM Identity Day in support of National STEM Day. And we're inviting, um, the community into schools and we can help facilitate that so that it's all, you know, credentialed. Everybody's credentialed and has their visitor passes and knows what to do, but we're inviting, um. Community into schools, not just smart labs, but schools, any school doesn't have to be a smart lab, any school to come in and share their stem identity story. So to take our definition and say, oh, where, where, where do I think I, um, gauge my own STEM identity along my journey and be able to share that with students and then for them to think about like, what's. STEM applications do I use in my job and be able to share that with students as well. So that's on, uh, November 7th, so please have, you know, if you're interested, go to our website and learn about STEM Identity Day and come volunteer your time at a school districts across the country so you can share your own STEM identity journey with students so that we're really starting to make this movement a thing across. For all students, as we talked about earlier. Um, so that's one way. And then of course there's tons of other tools and resources, um, on the website for people to, um, look at. And, and if you're like, oh, I don't have students, but I wanna participate in this, you know, we can help you match you with the school. So you could donate money to the school or donate money to the, the foundation of that school so that they could put, you know, either a smart lab or some sort of stem learning environment into the hands of that. So we can match, we can match people that are interested in donating, uh, to schools and to to stem identity for students up with school districts in their community or across the country. So we can help people do that. Um, and also we just really hope that people engage in this conversation and know that, you know, we want, um, we want Smart Lab to know, but we really want all students to know that they belong here. They can do this. They add value, and really they're future ready. So that really is important to us. People can also look me up on LinkedIn, Dr. Jennifer Berry. I'm happy to talk to anybody, have to mentor. Happy to engage in conversation. I'm always here for people because I, uh, that's how I learn best. Lindsay Lyons: Awesome. Thank you Dr. Berry. And we'll link to all that stuff in the show notes in the blog post for this episode as well. And it's been an episode. Pleasure talking to you today. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. Dr. Jennifer Berry: Thank you. You're amazing. I'm so happy you're doing this. And you told me earlier you've been doing this for five years. What an impressive, I can't wait to like follow you and start listening to all your episodes. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, thank you. Dr. Jennifer Berry: Yeah, thank you. 
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In this episode, host Lindsay reflects on a pivotal conversation she had with educational thought leader Zaretta Hammond on episode 247 (take a listen to the full episode!). Lindsay goes back to a part in the conversation where Zaretta challenges her thinking on the concept of student voice, a framework and theory Lindsay frequently draws on from Shane Safir’s work in Pedagogies of Voice.
Lindsay discusses how Zaretta challenged her thinking and encouraged her to pursue a more nuanced approach to effectively teach both independent and dependent learners. Why? Research emphasizes the importance of adaptive change in educational spaces, particularly the need to incorporate both student voice and cognitive coaching. Zaretta Hammond suggests that while student voice is a powerful tool, it must be coupled with coaching strategies that help students understand and articulate their own learning processes, especially for dependent learners. What? To strike this balance—the balance of student voice, yes, but also reaching all learners—Lindsay explores the Kubler-Ross change curve in relation to how she’s processing the challenges Zaretta brought to her thinking. The Kubler-Ross curve goes from denial to frustration, and then to depression, experimentation, decision, and integration (in order). Lindsay recognizes that her response in the moment to Zaretta’s challenges, follows this curve. She started with a sense of shame or embarrassment for not understanding something, but Zaretta responded with information that helped her reflect more deeply on this and adjust her thinking about student voice and transformative leadership. Here are some key reflection points: 1) Start with Communication and Information Begin by addressing the initial denial stage of the change curve. It's crucial to communicate clearly with learners about the purpose and structure of educational approaches. Providing information helps demystify the learning process and encourages engagement. 2) Reflect and Support During the stages of frustration and depression, support learners through reflective practices. Encourage them to watch, listen, and express their frustrations in a safe environment. Use coaching to help them process these emotions and integrate new strategies. 3) Experiment and Test Ideas Engage in playful experimentation with new ideas and practices. This stage involves testing out strategies and reflecting on their effectiveness. Zaretta Hammond's "chew and remix" approach allows learners to make sense of new information in a way that is meaningful to them. 4) Scan Your Hard-drive Assist learners in scanning their own experiences and understanding past learning moments, just as Linday did after this conversation. Educators can encourage students to draw from previous successes in adapting new learning strategies, facilitating personal growth, and reflection. 5) Commit and Practice Finally, encourage learners to commit to new approaches and integrate them into their regular practice. Focus on building emotional stamina and resilience, fostering an environment where new learning strategies become embedded and habitual. Final Thoughts The takeaway here is that it’s not student voice or cognitive coaching—it’s both. Both are important, just as literacy and critical thinking are important. But just as you can’t skip over literacy to reach criticality, Zaretta’s challenge was that we can’t skip over the “learn-to-learn” skills that help dependent learners and only focus on student voice. Finally, it’s always important to connect with learners on a human level by validating their experiences and emotions throughout the change process. This is the foundation for all our work, whether the emphasis is on student voice, cognitive coaching, helping dependent learners, or other areas that educators and coaches are focusing on. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Discourse Analysis Framework with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 248 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.
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TRANSCRIPT
Ep 248Lindsay Lyons: Welcome back to the Time for teachership podcast. Last week we had the amazing Retta Hammond on the podcast. If you have not listened to that episode or engaged with that episode, please go back. Check that out. If you have not, and you insist on watching, listening to this first, uh. Feel free to engage knowing there was a conversation last week, and I'm gonna actually pull pieces of that conversation that we're gonna debrief or I'm gonna kind of unpack, uh, my own thinking around because Red Hammond makes you think and she has made me think, and I continue to think about our conversation in a particular part of our conversation. So I'll be playing parts of that recording and that conversation. But for the larger one, you can go back and return to last week's at Lindsay beth lyons.com/blog/ 2 4 7. And then this is episode 2 48, so here we go. Reflections on my conversation with is Retta Hammond. There was a moment in the conversation last week in which Zaretta Hammond stopped me and corrected my thinking. That student voice was this kind of end all, be all like supporting all students. And I'm gonna play part of this conversation and I'm gonna unpack my thinking of it. And I encourage you to think with me. If you're a person who. Kind of would've thought the same way I thought. Um, which just for context prior to what I'm about to play you, which is her response I was saying, I read her book, um, rebuilding Students' Learning Power in Conversation, and at the same time as. Pedagogies is a voice, uh, by Shane and her colleagues. And I of course love street data and talk about it all the time. Shane's previous book that she wrote with Jamela Dugan, um, on the podcast, and I was like, oh, this is the answer. Student voice is the answer to how we do kind of instructional observations, and we coach teachers and we, you know, assess what's happening in a classroom and in the learning environment, and students can just talk about their learning. And so here is what she says. Zaretta Hammond: I would, I wanna stop you right there because I think that is another core proxy, right? I love pedagogy of voice. I love Shane's work. Shane, I used to be coworkers, so I know her work and the kind of the foundation that it's on. And I think it is powerful. It is geared toward independent learners. So if you actually understand that who's talking, who actually has the understanding, because this is why I wrote the book. So I think they're, they are compatible, but they are the continuum. We have a tendency to gear things around students who just may not be motivated, but they are not dependent learners. They are not so far behind. They're not three, four grade levels behind. They're not non-readers. These are the students. Those dependent learners are the ones we have a tendency to forget about because it becomes a little more sexy to actually focus on, well, let's talk about students that are learning. The ones that actually can engage us in that conversation don't necessarily need our support. And I'm not saying young people don't need our support. Every student needs to continue to grow until they are finished with their K 12 experience and they are, they have the tools and the confidence and the disposition to go forward, but there is a lot of students who are just being passed through and will never reach that graduation point with that full concert of disposition and skills. That is what my book is focused on. That's what I hear from leaders. So talking to students about their learning is very different when you are trying to give them new tools for the learning because they can't tell you that. They can't tell you why they get stuck. They don't know what their own choke point is. They have a belief that I'm just either broken as a student, as a learner, and I can't do that. They don't necessarily understand the role of effort, so they can't even speak to that. So what I'm saying is we need that full continuum. We need what pedagogy the voice brings, particularly as we wanna level up those students who have said, yes, I wanna step into my learning. I got something to say about that. But the majority of folks. Students that leaders are worried about is the silent majority of dependent learners. And so I do think they're complimentary. I think the reality though is we shouldn't think. We can just interview students, give them more voice is going to teach them those five, learn how to learn skills. Lindsay Lyons: Okay, so I sat with that for a second and I'll play you a little bit more of that conversation and my response in the moment. But I want to really break down, uh, kind of the Kula Ross change curve, the changing of mental models, kind of the whole conversation that Tta Hammond and I were having, which is that it is hard to make this shift. And leading change involves some human elements, some strategic thinking, right? It is an adaptive change we're asking teachers to make here, to coach. Students cognitively and to help students recognize and learn their personal learning algorithm in in her words. Right? And so I'm just kind of breaking down my reflections immediately in the conversation. Here's what was going through my brain and I'm being very transparent 'cause I want to recognize that a lot of us experience these moments of. Uh, discomfort and disorientation in the research from Mero who talks about this. Um, so I had this moment of like embarrassment and shame. Oh my gosh, I got this wrong. I am not smart. I said this silly thing instead of in front of the red Hammond, and she had to correct me, right? Uh, that was like my initial number one, like red cheeks and very pale skin. Like my, my cheeks get really red, so I'm like, oh, and now she sees my embarrassment. Um, then my immediate next piece was a little bit of defensiveness, so. I was like, oh my gosh, my identity as a teacher, as a scholar, as like this, this space I have pursued, um, as, as my title that I call myself as an educational justice coach, right? This, this pursuit of educational justice, like I am a failure. I was not actually serving the students that I wanted to serve. Oh my goodness. Like, and as a result. Because there was all of this, like this shame spiral, right? A adaptive leadership scholars would call this like, hi fits. We call this resistance as loss, right? The loss of my identity in that moment, or the perceived loss of my identity, right, is like why? I'm like, oh, then that there must be some part of this that is actually wrong, that I am still right. Right. So we have the embarrassment, the shame, the defensiveness. Then my brain just completely kinda shuts down. I had this like. Moment of pause where I'm like, I have no idea what I'm going to say in this moment. 'cause my brain is like shutting down. And actually, I, I will talk about this, uh, a little bit further in the episode, but like, I. My brain shut down so much that as I was processing later on, like I was having drawing these conclusions and learning these things, and I went back to re-listen to the recording and I was like, oh, actually there, there was so much of this that Loretta Hammond was giving me, he was offering me, was sharing with me, with, with our audience. And I like, didn't, I wasn't able to take it all in. It must must've been there somewhere in my consciousness 'cause it came out and as I was thinking more, um, but that, that. Wasn't something that I immediately was processing and sense making in the moment because it was so, like my brain was in this, doing this other thing, like my brain and body were in the shame spiral, the defensiveness, the like learning can't happen there, right? And so I think there's so much of this that is instructive for us as adults, but also for students and like what is optimal learning? But that's a different episode. So the Cooper Ross change curve is something I wanted to bring up because it is featured in one of our episodes, I think episode one 90 on leading Change. Um, and so I, I thought a lot about this and I actually wanted to like map my experience both onto leading change theories and stuff that is present in episode one 90. And we'll link that in the extended show notes for this as well. Um, but also. Retta Hammond's, like key point about learning to learn and the five learn to learn skills that she has brilliantly come up with. And so I'm going to process this, uh, in, in kind of integrating both of those. So here we go. So the Kubler-Ross change curve. It goes from denial to frustration to depression, to experiment, to decision to integration. And so in the denial stage, my response, um, they say that the reaction is like shock and denial here. And the state is kind of just like we stay at the status quo. And the approach to coaching through this is to communicate information. So here, here is what my response was, right? Embarrassment, shame, brain shut down. And Retta Hammond's solution in that moment. I mean, we're also on a podcast, but like brilliant, she just shared information, right? So her frame is like, it, you know, it's helping students with, with um, low motivation, but who are actually still to a degree, independent learners, right? That's the fact. Like it is not that student voice is messed up and ineffective, it's actually just helping this group of students. And if students can't articulate what's happening in the learning process, then. Like it's not super helpful to just ask them a bunch of questions about their learning. Right. Helpful information, right? Then the next phase of this Cooper Rush curve is kind of this frustration and depression space, and this is the state where they're like, you're in a state of kind of disruption. Right? That's why I said like my brain was kind of shutting down. Maybe that's kind of this phase as well, and the approach here for leaders or coaches in this space is to watch, listen and support, and so. In my response rate, I have this kind of defensive mood. I have this loss of identity sense. My pursuits are failures, and so my, my approach was to deeply reflect, and I'm lucky enough to have a coach on my team as well, who really just helps me like, reflect and prompts reflection and give space for the emotions in the thinking. And that was great because what I would do is I would have, I have my phone when I run. Um, and that's often a really good reflective time for me. And so I'm kind of sense making as I'm running the days after this conversation, leaving myself some written notes, some audio notes. I had just kind of this consistent journaling, um, activity. And so I'm just doing a lot of thinking in this time. Um, so again, the watchlist and support resulted in just like thinking for me if I'm doing this on my own. Um, and then we have the experiment phase, and so this is really a place to kind of like play with and test ideas. I connected very much to t Hammond's kind of chew and remix phase of learning. Um, I know there's like the five learn to learn skills and there's the process and, and to me that one is like the, the most interesting, um, because there's like, that's the sense making that was like lacking in the moment. For me in this conversation. And so here's kind of what I've been playing with and grappling within the days after and like testing out this, like understanding that it's truly a both and, right? And, and I know like, we'll all play with the clip for you, the next clip for you in a minute. And I know she said this in the last clip I played, but it is, that's what she's saying, right? It's, it's like a both end. It's a continuum. I love her language around that. Um, but this idea of like the learn to learn skills, uh. I think is, is applicable here. Perhaps it's just like the first three in this particular stage of the curve, but size it up and break it down as sort of step one, right? And so I'm thinking, okay, so the pieces are really student voice here. We have student voice as like an approach, um, and student voice. I also wanna like clarify for anyone who's listening and thinking like, oh, voice and choice is this kind of like tool or strategy in school spaces. So my, uh, orientation to this work is very much like in the student voice, um, research field in the sense of like student voice in the un rights of the child. And so thinking about like, voice in all that I do and, and that this is something that, uh. Like students should be able to just make decisions about their lives. So extended beyond the classroom, but also like the learning environment and other factors of the classroom that most of the world has ratified in the United States has not, which is interesting, but digression. Okay. Specific groups of students is another piece. So we have dependent learners and independent learners. So she's talking about and clarifying that distinction here for me. And then skills, I'm, I'm thinking about the skills that are prerequisites to enable students to effectively participate in student voice opportunities when asked, right? What, what they, uh, what decisions they want to make or what they want their learning environments to be. Um, like that's another kind of component of this conversation as well as kind of this arc of change theory in this mental model, um, shift that is happening f for me in this moment, and for educators probably. And so the next phase that she talks about is scan the hard drive. And so I scanned my own hard drive. I've been scanning and think, Hey, I've had to unlearn before I've had, I've been in very uncomfortable moments where I have had similar feelings. I survived. I am better for it. And I actually look back on those moments and say, wow, I'm so full of gratitude for the people who have like, kind of beared with me. I think that's the past tense of bear, uh, bored with me. Um, and, and. Just created like a space for me to learn. Like just, just we're willing to correct, to push back, to expand my thinking. Right. Again, I'm thinking, I'm thinking every day now, every conversation. I feel like I had mentioned the James Ingham comment of like, when we are in conversation with another, our goal is to expand our thinking so we're not just leaving thinking the same things that we came into the conversation with. Right. And I'm just so grateful when that happens because when I end a conversation with someone who. We just were head nodding the whole time. It is not the same feeling. Might be comfortable, might be smiley, but it is not the same feeling as, wow, I really grew here. Like I really, my thinking has pushed. It will result in some action. Um, and we're gonna get to that in a minute. But I, I just wanna like acknowledge that that like scanning a hard drive actually helped me realize I have been here before. I have been in the discomfort. The discomfort is actually good. I talk about this all the time. Like living it is a little bit different, right? Having the, the real emotional, um, component is very different than just like, academically talking about information. But like, this is, this is the thing, okay, I'm affirmed moving to chew and remix, which is her step three. Um, or the third learn to learn scale. So here I, I talk about, um, or thought about, excuse me. My experience with Student Voice, I had so many moments in the student created units that I would do, um. And then students would just tell me, I mean, really great students as well, like definitely independent learners did this as well. Um, but it's just really interesting to me to think about, uh, that moment of, okay, like what would you like to learn about or what is interesting to you about this? Or how would you like to, like, demonstrate your learning? I mean, just like all sorts of of things. Conversations that I would have with students and a lot of students would tell me, just tell me what to do. Like you're the teacher, just. Choose for me, like just, I will do the thing. You can tell like, and I think there's so many aspects to that that when I now think of student voice, um, and over the past couple of years I've thought about like there should really be a leadership coaching for students in concert with coaching for teachers to invite student voice like that would make it effective and to. When you are just expecting students to answer when it's like the first time they've ever been given choice in something like it's not gonna, it's not gonna potentially be fruitful. It might, the student might have, um, experience outside of school, external to school and be, uh, thinking about yo's cap, cultural capital, uh, cultural wealth model and cultural capitals that she discusses. And there's a lot of, like, I've had to navigate institutions like I've had to. You know, push back on things. Like, I have had that experience and now I'm ready because I, I have been in those spaces, um, perhaps not in your class, but in others, and I'm gonna bring that skill set in. Other students have not. Right. It's been, I, this is, I've been fairly successful in school. You tell me what to do, I do this. Okay. Again, digression, sorry. The cognitive routines. I love that. Za Red Hammond talks about cognitive routines and these have actually been really interesting to map a lot of my thinking and processing on, in, in the last couple of months since I've read her book. Um, but distinctions is one of them. So one of the cognitive routines we do, and we're kind of sensemaking is, uh, these distinctions, and I apologize if I get any of this language wrong 'cause brain science is super interesting, but definitely not. Uh, I'm, I'm not an expert and so I am on the learning journey. Um. Distinctions. What I was thinking about here is that there are kind of different skill sets that we wanna build. There is to her point about like you're not going to talk at a kid. No amount of discussion or talking to a kid is going to like teach them what a long O sounds like, or, I can't remember exactly what she said, but that the point being like the literacy skills, right, are a skillset and. Um, you know, purpose purposefully building literacy is, I think, a different skillset than purposefully building, uh, communication and expression skills in a leadership context and, and building the researcher skills to that I often talk about and build a capacity for with students. Um, there, there are different skill here and I wanna like distinguish and just make that distinction. And I've, I've heard a Hammond on another podcast say. You know, we often jump to criticality and so this idea of skipping literacy and the learning algorithm and just jumping to criticality is a thing that we often tend to do. I certainly tend to do, and I think it's really important. She said, similar to what she said here in, in a similar vein, is like. Both are needed, but we can't just jump over literacy. We can't just jump over and say, well, you can't read, but you're gonna be a critical thinker. Right? Like, both are critically important. Right. And so I have realized that my space and area of learning and research and scholarship and practice in the teaching space have very much been like my skillset is coaching on criticality. Um. And that is where I've kind of been, I've certainly been a literacy teacher, but I don't know that I could call myself a super effective literacy teacher. Uh, I, I, let me rephrase that. I cannot call myself a, an effective literacy teacher when I jump over literacy to, to prioritize criticality, right? Both are, are needed. And so I think also about, um, the cognitive routine relationships as I'm processing here, and I've been thinking about how. Like various skills, including literacy skills and knowledge about students'. Personal learning algorithms enable students to make the most of student voice opportunities. So I do think there's an element of like, it's helpful to have students understand their personal learning algorithm because it will lead to more effective advocacy with student voice opportunities. That's what I think Sotta Hammond is saying. And I also think, you know. That voice can be helpful first. Like, I don't necessarily think voice exclusively comes after. I think that's the, that's the piece that I'm so grappling with is that yes, it's a continuum, but, but maybe it's more of like a circle. Um, and, and that voice can actually help come first to support the enabling conditions so that we then. Can get to work on the learning algorithm and then it's then we're gonna get to do this unit voice around the learning process, right? And become, as she was talking about metacognitive and meta strategic thinkers, right? So I can now know, oh, this is what I need in this moment. I can utilize this tool because I know my learning algorithm and I know the learn to learn skills and I know the tools that are helpful for me in that moment of learning. Um, and so. I, I think about right. That's super important. And the thing that can come first to support the enabling conditions might be, and this is, so this has been something I've hung onto a lot from my conversation with Loretta Hammond, is this idea of, like, I often talk about adaptive challenges and I cite or quote, uh, hefe scratch Linsky who talk about how, what we really need to get at, um, what underlies adaptive challenges, like the value, habit, and loyalty. And then she was like, actually, uh. You know, she said, it's a story, right? And I, I'm like, whoa, I have like, never made that connection. 'cause I'm always talking about stories and personal connections and, and this, this entry point in it is the story. Of, for example, she was saying the story, the students were saying, I'm broken as a learner. This sense of identity that comes from the story that we've been telling, students have been telling, teachers have been telling the student. Right. And I think part of what Student Voice can do is that it can first, um, surface, it can support the surfacing and, and kind of dispelling the story of I'm Broken as a learner. So that we now have more enabling conditions so that we can now do the thinking about our thinking. So we can be metacognitive, meta strategic, do the learn to learn skills, and then we can advocate, um, even more intentionally around learning and utilizing those various tools. So I think that's, that's my current understanding. I mean, ask me tomorrow and it might be really different, but, um, that is my current moment in time snapshot of what my brain is thinking. It's a both, and it's valuable for and after students become independent learners, but in different ways, like it's gonna, it's gonna look different. And so I think now the final phase of the change curve is decision and integration. This is where we commit, right? So I, we commit and we make a plan. So I know that my research and practice is absolutely supported the low motivation kids. I've had so many success stories of like the low motivation kids who maybe actually are independent learners but have had not a lot of entry points. Um, and yeah, that's great for them. And I can acknowledge that and commit to growing my ability to help dependent learners because I have not done a good job with that. And. I need to, and, and when I'm working with dependent learners and it's very much been like the Russian and like I will just hop from table to table and then you call me over, I'm not actually coaching, uh, coaching cognitively, um, you to understand your own personal learning algorithm. I'm just kind of like over scaffolding, which is like a frustration as a coach now and like reflecting as a, as a teacher, I really wish someone just like pushed me hard in that area, um, because. If I get an opportunity to go back to the classroom, that is something I will grow. And as a parent, I certainly am growing more, my capacity to, um, support dependent learners in, in building, in rebuilding their learning power. So here's what I think, uh, I making the commitment to help students who are dependent learners as a teacher, coach, parent, in all the areas I am now reviewing in terms of an action step. I'm reviewing all my coaching and workshop approaches to determine how to integrate kind of this both and like yes. Student voice that is, I am. That is my, my training, my background, my experience, and I think it is valuable. Um, and I wanna be very clear about the purpose of the activities, the students' skills that are served with each. Each thing we're doing, cognitive coaching, student voice, like they work together. But they have to be, I think we have to be really intentional and I have to be really intentional about this is what we're building and this is what this activity leads to. And, and actually I've been thinking a lot about outcomes-based contracting and really linking payment of people like myself, uh, educational consultants and contractors. To the actual student learning that's happening. Um, and I wanna use this to kind of support transparency in my work and commitment in my commitment. Um, the last two parts of, uh, Retta Hammond's Learn to Learn Skills, those five skills would be skillful practice. And so this is where she says, you know, you adjust your emotional stamina, you self. And so I'm thinking about, you know, my coaching and, and spaces of integration. And as I've said, there's kind of this emotional kinda adjustment that's had to happen in my processing so I could truly sense, make and take action. I hope that's been transparent here, uh, and that it's not been too much. And then the fifth piece is to make it sticky. So this is the actual. As I understand it, embedding and implementing. Um, for, for this particular piece for me is embedding and implementing this idea and this new mental model into my coaching and my workshops, um, and being really intentional around that. Like, I am so fortunate, I think I said this at the beginning, that this was recorded. We don't always have the ability to go back and re-experience a conversation. And I did. So when I realized the recording, it's so funny that many of the ahas I had in thinking about it were actually present in the conversation. Like what I said in the immediate, I totally forgot I even asked that question. I was just like so outta my head. And what's right. I Hammond said back to me like I was so focused on my discomfort and disorientation. I really couldn't process or sense make in the moment. But here is what happens, uh, next. Absolutely. That makes total sense. I have a follow up. Yeah, do, do you think that there is value in talking to the students who might be dependent learners, not necessarily about their learning, like cognitive processes, if they haven't learned that piece yet? They don't know their choke points yet. But could um, could it be more about like learning environment things that are preconditions to that learning? Zaretta Hammond: Well, a lot of times they can help you. They can be informed. So this is a key point I made in culturally responsive teaching in the brain that you should be in a learning partnership. This is what I say in this book around a cognitive apprenticeship. You're not trying to do anything to students. You're doing it with them. The challenge is these students will resist. These students don't know what to ask. These students can't tell you what should be put into place. They can tell you how they feel, but again, remember the mental model conversation we just had. If they're explanatory story. Is actually, uh, I don't have the capacity or that compliance is the way through. They are actually going to be undermining their own process. So this is why, as you read through the book, as it progresses, it's how do you get the student to be both metacognitive and then ultimately meta strategic? How do you get students to actually create the dispositions? Because they have now they can wield cognitive tools. And part of that means you are listening to them. You are in conversation. But remember the apprenticeship model, novice journeyman mastery, you're moving students to that place where they have a greater voice. But that means I first have to unlock my understanding of what my own learning algorithm is. And I think we have a tendency to wanna just jump to voice and choice, and we think more of that in this relational realm is going to actually shift. Instruction. It does not. We've tried that. There's nothing new about that approach, and I'm not suggesting it's not good. I'm just simply saying it's not unique in what we've tried in the past. I think there are great tools for doing that with a equity lens and a, a much more culturally responsive way. But you're now talking about working with students who are on the other side of that inter independence that's not gonna get the, the, the students who are on the other side of cognitive redlining. Lindsay Lyons: She's so brilliant. I am so grateful. Thank you. Ruta Hammond. For your brilliance and for your willingness to share and, and push on that. Um, I. Wanna just name that we talked in this whole conversation with Loretta Hammond. Um, and my whole conversation of like the mental model shift for me and the change experience for me reflectively in this episode. You know, there's so many parallels to what I academically talked about in, uh, episode one 90, um, on leading change. So we'll link that in the extended show notes, but this is like, I guess the applied Human experience version. And it, it makes me think actually of Dr. Shari Bridges, Patrick's and I, uh, publication, which is adapted from Juan Eel's work. On kind of the four quadrants of discourse and how when we're in generative mobilizing discourse, we're connecting and we're growing, and the distinction from that and kind of the share information or the intellectualizing, what we called it in the publication quadrant of conversation. Is that there is no emotion, like the human aspect is divorced from the information. And I feel like I do a lot of that. And so one of my pushes to my own self is to kinda feel deeply, um, reach into like the human side of things, uh, both my own feelings and values, but also the values of others. And like connect on a human level. 'cause the connection and the emotional human part, I think, and the story part as, as an avenue into that space is where we grow is where we learn is where I would prefer to be than just, oh, I heard this, or here's this citation, or here's this evidence, or this book, or this scholar. There's a lot of intellectualizing, I think, in, um, particularly white liberal spaces and discourses, and I participate that in that a lot. And I want to move more to the connecting growth space. So thinking about that and also thinking about this leading change and trying to integrate these, these ideas of kind of the head and the heart. Um. One of the things that I, I just kinda wanna run through some of the key points that are present in there and that I'm hanging onto here and might be beneficial for our audience. Um, one thing that is discussed there is to kind of have a clear focus vision. My translation to that as I'm processing this conversation was, TTA Hammond is like, which students and skills are, is, is the PL supporting, is the PD supporting? Right? I think that's like the vision in contracting, in conversation into the design of workshops and coaching. Cycles. It's like, what's the focus? Let's get real clear, right? What's the clear focus vision? Um, the next piece is like making time for the change. So less to focus on prioritization, right? So this is what we're doing. We are supporting dependent learners. We are gonna have time to play with it to test things out. I love that in our, the conversation, not any of the excerpts I played for you today. But my conversation was redham and she said, you know, this is a book you can return to year after year and learn more after the next reread. And I really appreciate that kind of permission, um, because I do think there's so much that we missed the first time around. I mean, even in just this, this one conversation, even in this like 10 minutes of conversation that I had with her that I just replayed. And then replay for you. And like the third listen is like, oh wow, I'm still getting more and more. Um, so go back, reread, write time to test, time to integrate. Time to reflect in partnership with colleagues and professionals in the education space. The third point is to connect with the heart. So Kotter and Cohen talk about, uh, feelings that motivate useful action. I think that's really important because a lot of times what we do is we confront a discomfort. We experience discomfort. And we kind of avoid, right? We focus on the feelings of discomfort and we don't focus on the feeling or the, what I would even argue is like a value, uh, a value alignment or the story I want to tell, right? The story I want to be true. Um, I want to be a justice focused teacher. I want to be a coach who supports dependent learners. I want to support the kids who are not supported by other people, right? I, if that is the story I want to connect with. Then I need to connect with that story, that value, the feeling that, oh, that's not true yet. That feels uncomfortable, but that's where my heart is. So like I need to go there and now need to take action. Right? Feelings that motivate, useful action. Thank you Ter and Cohen for that language. And then finally creating dissatisfaction and trying on other ways of thank you, uh, of thinking. So thank you Zoe Hammond for helping me to do this. I think about the work of Mero, my former. Uh, professor John Morgan. And so, um, there's a change formula. We have, uh, glyco change formula that we put in the episode one 90, um, extended show notes, which is change equals dissatisfaction times, vision times first step is greater than resistance. So if we wanna outdo resistance. Then we need to have dissatisfaction, vision, and a first step. 'cause if any one of those are zero because they're being multiplied, the whole equation, like a zero, that side of the equation is zero and resistance wins. So the dissatisfaction is like Retta Hammond's comment sparked that disorienting dilemma for me. Right? Thank you Mero for that phrase. I have not been supporting kids to build their learning power. Whoa. Right. That is dissatisfied. I am dissatisfied that that is the truth. Right? So that's my dis disorienting dilemma, my dissatisfaction. Now. I need a vision. Okay? I wanna help dependent learners. I want to be a person who helps the kids who are not being helped, right? Who need, who need support. Um, I wanna help dependent learners become independent learners so they can do this on their own so they don't need handholding so they can, um, feel affirmed and all the things, right? And I still need one more thing. I need a first. And so in my estimation for this moment, I think the best first step is to apply Zaretta Hammond's learn to learn skills to ultimately integrate these ideas and be a more effective coach and educator and parent and human. Um, so that's where I am right now. Please check out I was Ata Hammond's book. Rebuilding students' learning power. It is absolutely incredible. Read it like six or seven times. Listen to and engage with the episode, um, last week. And this one, share this with a friend if that feels helpful. If they're going through a, uh, mental model shift or change journey, um, you can find the extended show notes and any relevant links for this [email protected] slash blog slash 2 4 8. And thank you everyone. 
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In this episode, we have a compelling discussion with Zaretta Hammond about transformational change in leadership. Zaretta recently authored "Rebuilding Students' Learning Power,” which emphasizes the core idea of cognitive justice and offers practical steps for educators to follow.
Our conversation highlights how educators can transition from a pedagogy of compliance to a pedagogy of possibility by understanding and applying the principles of equitable teaching and cognitive justice. We delve into the importance of disrupting existing mental models and exploring instructional strategies that genuinely meet students' needs. The Big Dream Zaretta’s big dream for education is cognitive justice, the idea that every student becomes a powerful learner. She emphasizes rethinking the systems entrenched in educational inequities—rooted in colonization across the globe—that underdevelop the cognitive capacity of marginalized populations. To achieve this cognitive justice, Zaretta encourages educators to recognize and counterbalance these systems to foster a more equitable learning environment. Mindset Shifts Required Zaretta recognizes a tendency amongst educators to “treat the symptoms” or look for the newest teaching and learning strategies without digging a little deeper. But to achieve cognitive justice, a big mindset shift is required. Educators can address the mental models that underlie educational practices by first listening to and collecting the stories that are being told in their context. From there, educators can examine and interrogate those narratives, rewriting them in a way that allows for increased cognitive justice. Action Steps For educators who want to prioritize cognitive justice—helping every student become a powerful learner—and are willing to dig deeper into their own mental models of leadership and change, Zaretta suggests the following key action steps: Step 1: Collect and interrogate the stories and narratives present in educational settings. This involves listening to the assumptions and complaints within school communities to identify the underlying stories influencing learning. Step 2: Decolonize the classroom and repatriate the classroom. This is about giving students space for talking and giving space for productive struggle. It’s a cognitive apprenticeship, bringing students up as a novice through to higher levels of mastery. Step 3: Reimagine pacing guides and professional learning calendars to include productive struggle and learning targets, integrating them into curriculum pacing and addressing both content and skill development. Step 4: Develop a culture of continuous improvement and collaborative inquiry to promote meaningful discussions about instruction and instructional decision-making. Note that Zaretta also outlines five specific action steps in her book, which is a great starting point for educators who want to join the movement toward greater cognitive justice. They are broken down into more detail, exploring themes, for example, of how to spot poor proxies for learning and what to focus on instead. Challenges? One of the significant challenges highlighted is moving beyond poor proxies for learning—observable behaviors that are mistaken for learning without assessing genuine understanding and progress. Leaders must also resist the allure of compliance and quick fixes, instead committing to instructional transformations that empower students. It involves continually disrupting ourselves—challenging but necessary. One Step to Get Started For educators looking to begin this transformative journey, Zaretta suggests starting with a commitment to understanding students' learning processes deeply. This involves working as a cognitive apprentice and focusing on how students learn to learn, supporting them in becoming independent, confident learners. Stay Connected You can find out more about Zaretta and stay in touch via her website and LinkedIn. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is inviting you to join their free newsletter on their website linked above. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 247 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
Lindsay Lyons: Soreta Hammond, welcome to the time for teachership podcast. Zaretta Hammond: Thank you for having me. Lindsay Lyons: I am really excited about this conversation. Really excited about your latest book. Um, I was just saying I've been telling everyone about it. Definitely people should read it. And today I'm really excited to talk to you specifically about change leadership In connection with the book. There are so many rich ideas. There are so many great ideas for teachers, and I think there are so many important implications for leaders that I'm really, really jazzed about the conversation today. And I also wanted to just invite you to share. Like, what do you want us to, to keep in our minds for myself, for the audience as we jump in today? Zaretta Hammond: No, just what we're gonna talk about. Just those things that you talked about. You know, just the idea that change is hard and the more that we can come together to better understand, um, how we make change. I think people will have a tendency to be listening for strategy and, you know, actionable things and Oh, interesting ideas for teachers to do. Versus how do I actually change? How do I make a change? How do I stop doing what's not helpful and start doing the thing that is going to be the most high leverage? And so I think that's what I want people to really keep at the forefront. Lindsay Lyons: Awesome. Thank you for naming that. And that comes through really clearly in your book too. I'm glad we got that, that at the top. And so I, I really like to start conversations with, um, Dr. Bettina loves quote on freedom dreaming, so she describes them as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So I think your, your book and your, your larger collection of work speaks to that. But I'd love to just hear your thoughts today. What's, what's the big dream you hold for education? Zaretta Hammond: I, I think I, the big dream I hold is the thread that runs both through my first book, culturally Responsive Teaching the Brain and this new book Re Rebuilding Students' Learning Power, teaching for Instructional Equity and Cognitive Justice. So that big dream is cognitive justice. The idea that, um, part of what we want for every student is for them to be a powerful learner. And the way that we do that is by looking at the systems that have been constructed, particularly in America. But it's true wherever colonization has its footprint all over the world. Right? Australia has the same issue with Aboriginal and Tores Strait. Um. Uh, people. And, uh, you have the same thing in New Zealand with Maori people. You have, uh, there are folks reading my book in India. Why? Because the caste system does the same type of marginalization, even more so when Britain came in and start to colonize. So everywhere we turn. The, the aftermath of colonization means we have to really put cognitive justice at the forefront because the mechanism it used was to, first and foremost, to under develop the cognitive capacity. Uh, marginalized populations. A lot of people, you know, wanna protest in the streets and think it's about other things, but there are mechanisms that are quite invisible once they're put in place that do this kind of invisible sorting. And, you know, people can say, well, I'm not actively doing anything. Well, the system is set up and designed to do that. So I really think that the way we get to that. Dream is to recognize the mechanisms that are in place and what's the counterbalance, what's the medicine, if you will. Lindsay Lyons: I, I love that. And I, I think that for a lot of folks, there's a big mindset shifting that has to occur here, um, because we have like done education this particular way, right? In teacher school, it's like. Compliance. Compliance. Right. And it's not, um, the pedagogy of possibility that you describe in your book. Um, it's don't smile until December or whatever weird stuff, you know, that we got in teacher school. And so, uh, one of the things I think about from a change leadership perspective is that you talk about how it's important to reset our mental models to disrupt cognitive redlining. And I love that you had mentioned, um, kind of two pieces I'd love for you to elaborate on if you want. One is kind of like identifying the narratives and how we discuss problems. Like how are we attributing the root causes? Where, where did the belief come from, is a question from your book that I really appreciated. Um, and you also talk about, you know, this idea of trying on alternate perspectives, um, which makes me think of like merose disorienting dilemma or like, um, John Morgan talks about like. Uh, leaders can kind of create a constructive disorientation, whether through mindfulness, through art, or, you know, otherwise. Um, and so I'm just curious if you could talk a little bit about the, that process of resetting the mental models and, and what that entails for leaders to consider. Zaretta Hammond: Yeah, I think it is an important piece that's often overlooked. We have a tendency to treat the symptoms and like, what's the newest strategy to get, or, you know, oh, there's the newest thing from visible learning, or, oh, it's about teacher clarity. But we don't go deep enough to actually examine the mental model, that explanatory story that drives our actions. And it's more than beliefs. It's the explanatory story, right? It's just like we understand how physics work. There are certain things we're not gonna do. Why? Because we understand how physics work. Nobody's jumping off the the roof of their house. Why? We understand how physics works and you are gonna end up at the bottom. There's no floating that's going to happen. We don't even examine these things 'cause we just know that's what's gonna happen. Same thing in education. We have been doing certain things for so long that even most progressive educators. Are complicit in maintaining cognitive redlining and sometimes are at the forefront. That would be something they would tell you, oh no, I'm not sure you are that poor baby syndrome, that sentimentalist that, oh, you know, they, they don't need to read because that's not in their culture. Like all the, these little things that I have heard, particularly from progressive educators and progressive leaders actually work against. The kind of change they wanna see, that instructional equity, that cognitive justice. So I think that the examining the story one tells oneself even before you get to your beliefs, 'cause your beliefs are predicated on these stories. Um, that's a really critical piece for us to do. Uh, and again, I think for instructional leaders, they have to first. Collect the stories. What story are people telling at your school? Right, and you have to just listen. You can go into the teacher's lounge and sometimes that's not being in front of people that's just listening. What? What are they complaining about? What are they just assuming that's the way it is, or that's how those parents are. That's how those kids are. We hear it all the time, and so I think being able to collect the stories and then to do the work around is this interrogating. Those narratives, like, why would we be holding this narrative? Where did this come from? Right? And then looking for the roots of that, that mental models don't shift, but just because you are exposed to something, they shift because you rewrite an internal narrative and explanatory story as to why that happens. Lindsay Lyons: Yes. Thank you for that. And, and I, I think about, um, uh. That quote that you shared, the, that, um, that information is now transformation that you share often. And I, I think about kinda a leader who is, uh, doing PD or pl right? Professional learning and how there's a lot of like, here's here is the strategy or here is the thing. Um. But that what takes so much more work and what is so much more powerful is that examining of the story. And, and, and what it makes me think is of leaders who have their professional learning calendar, similar to how a, a teacher has a PD calendar or, or a, excuse me, a pacing guide. Mm-hmm. Right. And it's, I've heard you talk about pacing guides and, and, uh, I would love just kind of your thoughts and how that might translate to kind of leaders expectations of pacing through professional learning or otherwise. Right. That. Yeah. Zaretta Hammond: Well, yeah, I can dig into both of those first. You know, I do, I have strong feelings about pacing guides, right? That they are part of the pedagogy of compliance, but you don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Right? And a lot of schools, that was actually one of our first equity moves because teachers were just all over the map. Right. Even with No Child Left Behind, right, young progressive teachers like, oh, that was, you know, from the Devil. And I'm like, first you need to understand, no one was disaggregating data before. No Child left behind. We didn't even know. What schools were hiding that their black and brown indigenous students, neurodivergent students weren't achieving. They just were okay with it and just kept covering it up. Had we not had no child left behind, we would've never started disaggregating data. So this data diving that folks take for granted came about because some people said, no, no business as usual. No child will be left behind. Were there some missteps? Yes. We overcorrected to maintain cognitive redlining through assessment. Right. And this wasn't the, the bill did that. It's those people that were, you know, wanting to maintain things the way they are in terms of schooling. So. And, and Joel Meta from Harvard, uh, school of Education talks about this as the grammar of schooling, right? It's not just me ri, you know, getting riled up about it. It is, you know what? People have already recognized. Schooling hasn't shifted in much in 150 years. It looks pretty much the same. So. While we know there is always a challenge, a pacing guide can be reimagined. It's one of the things that I talk with the instructional leaders about. Imagine adding productive struggle, um, uh, learning targets around learning how to learn so that now you are integrating those into what you need to be pacing. And the problem is we think it's a all or nothing either. It's I gotta cover all this content. Well, if you actually design the pacing guide where you are trying to do both. Why? Because the only way the students are going to take in the content better is by improving their learning to learn skills, their information processing skills. And as long as we don't acknowledge that we are going to continue down the road. So from the perspective of leaders in their PD calendars or their PL calendars, the biggest challenge we have is. Coming to a session, no matter how well it is designed for teacher voice and you know, engagement, there's usually crickets. Once the teacher leaves that session and goes back to the classroom, there's no guidance. So now, uh, what did I remember about that? So now I might be doing it kind of half-assed and like, oh, okay, I like that part, but this part seems so hard, so I'm gonna just leave that out. 'cause I don't really like that. Right? So now we're just all free styling out there because there's no focus on inquiry. And when we do, all we're doing is, you know, go try it and come back and report. We're gonna do A-P-D-S-A cycle, right? Let's go try it and study it, and then you just come and report all that is about the teacher. And we have lost sight of the student as a primary actor, right? The thing I say is information that transformation. The other thing I say ad nauseum is only the learner learns. So both the guide, uh, a pacing guide and the for the classroom content coverage and the curriculum moving through the curriculum as well as what professional learning should look like, have to center on how do we get the student to level up their learning. And I think that is often what we miss. Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely. And I think, you know, I said we'll focus on the, the change leadership. I also would love to just give some space here for, if you wanna just talk about some of the key aspects of your book. There are so many things, like I took probably like 20 pages of notes. It was ridiculous. There's so much in there. Um, but I, I wonder what you wanna highlight as kind of the most important, um, pieces as we then kind of transition to thinking about like what that instructional leadership can be to bring that to life in teachers' classrooms. Zaretta Hammond: I think the biggest challenge is, um, let me start this way. Someone on LinkedIn, I think it was, um, was sharing a reflection about the book and she said, this is a not a book you read. This is a book you use and I think that is why it's so rich in. Stuff to do, not as one off things, because what I say at the end of chapter three, which is about the pedagogy of compliance, but how do we shift from that pedagogy of compliance to a pedagogy of possibility? Well, I outline the five steps that if instructional leaders. Instructional coaches and teachers get aligned. They can support the student to level up their learning and that I outline the five steps. The challenge I find is people like to strategy strip. So there are things to do that, you know, s Morgan's board, so I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that. Well, there are steps. Nobody does a recipe like that. The recipe says, here's what you prep. You've gotta mix it. Do I fold the ingredients in, which is a technique in and of itself. Do I separate the dry and the wet ingredients? And then I mix. Them there are steps because when you don't follow those steps, you get something that is not appetizing to look at or actually to ingest, and then you, you know, shrug your shoulders. I don't know how that happened. Well, hell, you weren't following the recipe. So I want people to think about this book. 'cause a recipe, this should be a book that they're gonna use for a year. It doesn't mean that, ugh, I won't see any results for a year. It's just gonna mean. The, the, the learning is so deep, you are gonna start to build this momentum in terms of starting to like step one. You know, step one is, um, uh, decolonize the classroom and repatriate the classroom. Well, what does that mean? So now how do we take out the compliance? Repatriating means how are we giving students space for talking? How are we giving space for productive struggle? How are we setting up a cognitive apprenticeship? Because that is kind of a cultural way of learning for a lot of students in their community. You learn by doing. You learn by having a. A person who's a little further down the road show you the ropes and give you feedback. It is a very active way of learning. This is what a carpenter does. This is what any craftsperson does. When they joined a guild, they have joined an apprenticeship to move from novice to journeymen to master. We don't have that process when we talk about how do we get students to a level of mastery, how do we get teachers. To that level of mastery. So I think I really want people to think about it as a recipe, right? This is something that I can use and I can do it in the chunks that I have the time and the bandwidth for. I don't have to look at all those steps and say, well, I'm gonna have to do all that in the next six weeks. No, there's no way. You can't, because you're gonna hit upon something that is like, oh. I really need to go deep. This is where I might have resistance, or this might be something that I hadn't even understood before, that, you know, how do I actually coach this student? I'm used to presenting my content, not coaching students. Around their learning behavior. So there's so much you keep coming back around to it. You can go through it, all those steps first, you know, uh, pass at it and then you could take another pass at it. Because as educators, we're never done. Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely. I, I, there are so many things that you said we could dig into. Um, I am. Thinking about the leader who is trying to observe, not observe in like a gotcha sense, but like observe mm-hmm. As like a, I'm gonna do some quote unquote look for, although I hate that phrase I'm trying to look for I know, Zaretta Hammond: I know. I'm, I'm with you on that one. Lindsay Lyons: And so I, I mean, you've talked about the poor, poor proxies of learning, right? And that you just, that really deeply resonated with me that you just can't. You can't see the five learn to learn skills in action by dipping into a class for five minutes. And so I'm curious to know how you would, um, reimagine that a little bit. Like what can leaders shift in their approach to kind of checking in on a class or, or communicating with students or knowing what's going on in terms of the learning? Zaretta Hammond: Well, I think two things. This is why taking an inquiry stance and having a culture of continuous improvement using collaborative inquiry con, collaborative analysis of student work, there are a variety of. Approaches that are beyond simple, you know, PDSA, uh, approaches, right? There's nothing wrong with that or action research, but they don't create the culture of talking about instruction. So one of the things that I think leaders need to be able to do first is develop their capacity, uh, and to to talk about. Instruction from a science of learning perspective, not brain-based, you know, as opposed to what the kidney based at learning. I thought, what are you talking about here? Um, but from the perspective of we understand how learning happens, we understand how that's facilitated. So now when I look at what's going on in a classroom, I actually have a lens that informs me. Because without an informed lens, just having this list of look fors will land us back on that list of poor proxies. Poor proxies are, uh, the idea that certain observable behaviors equal learning students are busy and engaged, so that must mean they're learning. Well, that's a poor proxy. We know that's not true. You can be very engaged, you know, digging into it, you can repeat. The learning target to any stranger walking to the room. But the reality is that student is still not progressing. We don't see their achievement going up, or their reading is not, um, grade level. Uh, and so we then just double down on more engagement. So we know these are poor proxies, and that comes from Robert Cole's work where he really lists those. Another good piece of work around that called in, uh, uh, the, um, instructional illusions. A new book that's out, spin out probably, you know, four or five months. Another great one. He just says, here are 11 illusions now. Instructional leaders need to know those because I think what we have a tendency to do is, oh, I should be looking for this, but you should also understand what you shouldn't be seeing and not to be fooled by the look for, because it actually might be a poor proxy, it might be an illusion of learning. But without that, the leader then can't calibrate with the teacher. When it's time for people to be talking about instruction, I can tell you one of the biggest challenges I have is that we are not talking about instruction in our schools as part of our professional learning. And I don't mean that we have to all be doing a, you know, in depth book study or reading in depth articles, but we have taken the professionalism out of education. And to the point that no doctor, you know, my brother-in-law is a doctor. He's always reading, he's always going to a conference to, to talk about the newest technique. So they're all, that's just part of it. My. Husband, late husband was a, um, a lawyer. They always had to do continuing education and they were always talking about newest precedents and how that was going to impact. There was just a professional conversation that informed their lens, even as the law changes, even as medicine changed. We don't do that in education. We're looking for the strategy or the look for. To make it quick, we're gonna insert it. Nobody knows what they're doing. So now what we do is get hyped up on a jargon. So now if I can, so the poor proxy for professional learn learning is the use of jargon. So the teacher has used productive struggle, but when you look in their classroom, or they actually able to coach students to engage in productive struggle. Lindsay Lyons: Wow, this is so good. I, uh, I, I'm taking that in and I'm like, where do I even go next? Because I'm so deeply listening. Um, oh, that's, I wanted to just connect that I was reading your book at the same time that I was reading Pedagogies of Voice. And they were |
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AuthorLindsay Lyons is an educational justice coach who helps schools and districts co-create feminist, antiracist civics-based curricula, discussion opportunities, and equitable policies that challenge, affirm, and inspire all students. A former NYC public school teacher, she holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Lindsay believes all students deserve literacy, criticality, and leadership skills. Archives
March 2026
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