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In this episode, I’m thinking about the question: How can I better use a shift in language to connect with the districts, schools, instructional coaches, and teachers already doing this work? To meet the moment of new state civics requirements (which are happening in many states in the northeast—MA, NY, NJ—and I’m sure others), I want to help schools meet new state mandates and do justice-centered work! Civics is About Engagement as “Citizens” Concepts I love from the existing research… Justice-Oriented Citizens (Westheimer & Kahne, 2004) Justice-Oriented citizens “know how to examine social, political, and economic structures and explore strategies for change that address root causes of the problem”. There’s a critique of systems of oppression and action to fix them vs. “participatory citizenship” which is more volunteerism (Martell and Stevens, authors of Teaching History for Justice, say It’s the difference between holding a food drive and asking “Why are people hungry?”) Transformative Democratic Citizenship (Banks, 2017) As defined by Banks, this is “the ability to implement and promote policies, actions, and changes that are consistent with values such as human rights, social justice and equality.” Student Leadership (Lyons, Brasof, & Baron, 2020) “Students working collaboratively to affect positive change in their educational environments with support from adults and mechanisms in the school.” What is Justice (to me)? Justice allows all of us to be our full selves. It’s intersectional. There is a presence of a culture of positive peace that enables us all to thrive. Common Pitfalls We limit our work to an “add diversity and stir” approach. We get nervous about making a mistake and wait until something is perfect to act. We also view (and teach) change leadership as an individual endeavor instead of collective civic engagement. How do we support teachers to create really good Civics projects, units, and courses? Support teachers in all content areas (and in all grades) to design summative assessments that give students opportunities to apply whatever content they learned in a way that advances justice. Design PD experiences or staff meetings that enable all staff members to design civics projects that connect to their course content. How do we enable all students to practice civic engagement within our schools and districts? Meaningful opportunities for student leadership. Take a look at your school’s decision-making structures and make sure you have equitable student representation on all committees, including the leadership team. From the research: Mitra and Gross’s Student Voice Pyramid (2009) reflects three levels of student voice: listening to students, youth-adult partnership, and building capacity for student leadership. The earlier levels actually cause more turbulence than higher levels because students are invited to share concerns, but not encouraged to co-create solutions. Partnering with students and families is critical. Half measures (listening without partnering to take action) is not enough. Tips for Implementation Designing Civics Projects: Use department team meetings to align your state’s civics project standards to the department or summative assessment rubric. Help teachers and teams pick a publishing opportunity where student projects are shared. (This could be the school website or the school’s social media accounts.) Coach teachers to think about how to connect civic engagement projects to course content and also leave room for student voice. Student Leadership in Governance: Collect data on the student experience. You can do this through the SLCB Survey linked below or any of the various methods named in the book, Street Data. Invite students onto school committees. Audit these committees for representation (i.e., it’s not just one token student or all of the sports captains, students with straight A grades, or members of Student Council). Support and train students in the tools and skills they can use to be an effective representative for students. To help create space for student leadership in your school or district, I’m sharing my statistically validated Student Leadership Capacity Building survey with you for free. (Use this to measure student perceptions of leadership and civic engagement opportunities in the school!) As another resource, check out my 5-minute tutorial on How to Measure Equity and Student Voice to see how you can personalize the survey for your context. To learn more about the MA Civics Project requirements, I made this short video summary for you. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 112 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. TRANSCRIPT Educational justice coach, Lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for Teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerdy out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Hello, everyone. Welcome to episode 1 12 of the time for leadership podcast. Today, I want to talk about a mindset shift for me. So I talk a lot about justice centered education. But what does that actually mean? Right. What does that mean to me and how can I tap into the language already being used? The initiatives already top of mind for leaders and educators in my field. So for me today, we're talking about my shift and my connection to civics education and all the civics mandates that are happening in many states across the northeast. 00:01:12 And how that connects to everything. I always talk about teaching and leading for justice. Let's get into it. So, talking about justice seems divorced from what educators are doing right now. What is top of mind in this moment in many states in the northeastern part of the United States have new civics requirements. They might be civics projects, they might be a course that has new civic standards or revised civic standards. Many states that are grappling with this currently as they record this or have been grappling with this for the last couple of years include Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey. I'm sure there are a tonn of others. And so I'm thinking, how do I shift my language to help and get in front of educators who are grappling with? How do I do this civics thing? Leaders who are trying to support their teachers to create a new civics curriculum and project based curriculum that is rooted in a civics project or what I often call an activist project for students. How do I do this within the political context of everything that's going on? Maybe specifically thinking about the communities that people are in the states that people are in the legal ramifications of certain states and certain communities. 00:02:20 All of this staff is top of mind for people, people are doing this work of reworking their civics and social studies curriculum more broadly. And here I am talking about justice which is absolutely critical, but it's not necessarily connecting the dots for folks who are looking to immediately serve the need of their educators and their curriculum, given the new mandate from the state. So here is what I want to do in this episode, I wanna talk through those connections. I wanna think about next steps. I want to think about bringing in all of the research and, and making these connections really clear. So that when we're doing this work around civics education, we're not just doing the work to meet the mandate, we're doing the work in a way that feels truly aligned to what listeners of this podcast and myself believe that justice centered education is the direction we want to go. It is values aligned. It is why we are in this work. It is what is best for students. So let's think all of that through. So here is where we're gonna start. Civic is fundamentally about engagement, right? 00:03:26 Civic engagement is actually a direction that I was going to go in my dissertation work. It was my initial kind of place that I, that I wanted to study. And then I, I kind of moved more broadly to the student voice field, which is like adjacent to civic engagement. So I have a bunch of research that's just kind of been sitting there and I wanna kind of bring that back in to the work that I do and I think it would be relevant for us in the civics conversation. So civics is about engagement, civic engagement, there are so many definitions of citizens and citizen when I'm gonna speak about citizen in this podcast episode. And more broadly, when I use phrases like citizens, I'm talking about an incredibly broad definition of citizen being a person who resides and participates in a community, not affiliated with legal status or any form of documentation. So citizens as community members and participants in a community. So how do we define, define citizens? There are so many definitions I have always loved and have used in my research in the past Westheimer and Kane's definition, they have four typologies or, or types of citizen. 00:04:32 Theirs that talks about justice oriented citizen is my favorite. So when they talk about justice oriented citizens, they're talking about being able to identify and critique oppressive systems. Westheimer writes that people who do this justice oriented citizens know how to examine social, political and economic structures and explore strategies for change that address root causes of the problem. You know, I love this definition because I love root cause causes and I love thinking about examining those structural pieces. We have to be able to teach students to do that. Yes, it looks different at every level. For many of these civics projects, we are talking about middle and high school levels. Certainly this is something that they are capable of. I think in different ways. This is certainly also possible. And could be happening again in different ways, the language might be slightly different. The level of critique might be slightly different in elementary schools. But it is absolutely possible when we think about this critique of systems of oppression and taking the action to fix them. 00:05:36 This is contrasted with another type of citizenship. According to Westheimer and Ken, they contrasted with participatory citizenship, which I think of as more like volunteerism, Doctor Chris Martel and Doctor Kayleen Stevens, authors of Teaching History for Justice. They were members of our guests on the podcast. Earlier in the show, they say it's the difference between holding the food drive, right? Collecting the cans for people who are hungry. That's participatory citizenship or volunteerism. First is asking why are people hungry? That's thinking about the system that's thinking about the root cause of the problem and ultimately leading for to a different approach to change, right? So when we, we think about change in that sense, we're thinking about how do we solve this underlying why when we figure out why people are hungry, oh, it's because of, you know, not being able to be hired when someone emerges from uh the prison system, for example, because people are, these structures are not in place to support them because they are required to identify that they have been incarcerated. 00:06:48 Like all of these things. Now they can't get a job and now they're hungry and now they can't pay for food all these pieces. Well, what can we do four steps before they get hungry, right. How do we support people who are transitioning from being incarcerated to participating in the community that they now live in? How do they provide for themselves? How do we as a community support them? Right. That's a very different action from collecting food and handing it out. Not at all to say that collecting food and handing it out is bad or problematic, but it certainly isn't sustainable. It isn't getting at the root cause it isn't changing structures and critiquing systems. So justice oriented citizens, that's the type of unit curriculum object that I want teachers to think about. How do we critique the systems, how do we support students to take action that's actually going to make a difference that's going to have a sustainable impact that's going to push back against these notions of doing a volunteer project and calling it a day and going home back to your community that might not have these problems or back to your house. 00:07:55 That doesn't grapple with these questions that doesn't have a sustained connection to the people that you helped in that one moment, right? It it it becomes like this separate activity, it becomes charity, not liberation. When I think about another definition of citizenship that I love is, is from Banks and Martel and Stephen talk about this in their book, Teaching History For Justice. This is Banks 2017. Talks about transformative democratic citizenship. So it is Transformative Democratic Citizenship Banks says it's the ability to implement and promote policies, actions and changes that are consistent with values such as human rights, social justice and equality. So again, thinking about that action, we are actively promoting policies and changes that are consistent with values of human rights, social justice and equality. So there is the presence of that value system that I mentioned earlier that is critical to this type of citizenship when I think about how I define justice, which was going to be the initial kind of thread of this podcast was actually gonna be my definition of justice so that I could share that. 00:09:10 And I'm, I'm happy to do that and I will do that in just a moment. But I think the connections now are the new lens with which I'm looking at this episode and, and talking through this stuff, how does my definition of justice now, I've been holding on to that and you know, ever changing it because I learn new things and it's constantly evolving. How does that connect with all this civics? Talk, all of the new civics project development, the unit development, the curriculum development around civics mandates. So I see justice as first of all central to curriculum design and the student experience and the sense of belonging and all the things that we want justice to me is intersectional. So it is all of our identities it is allowing us to be our full selves, all of us, teachers, students, leaders, all the people and it is allowing us not just a negative piece but a positive piece. So often we talk about peace as like the absence of violence, right? So in positive peace, not only is there an absence of direct and structural violence, there's also a presence of a culture and of systems working together to enable all of us to thrive. 00:10:23 So it's not just the absence of violence, it's the presence of the people of the culture of the systems that enable us to thrive that presence of thriving in all the things that go into enabling that to be true. And of course, again, it's intersectional. Let's not forget that piece. So we're not just looking at one part of identity and saying we're going to have justice and positive peace for people who hold this identity. We're thinking about all the layers are multitude of identities that we all hold. This is intersectional justice. There is positive peace. I've talked through in previous podcast episodes, many common pitfalls of doing this work of justice center curriculum design, for example. And we often strive to just add diversity and stir, but we often get nervous about making a mistake. And so we wait until something is perfect before we launch it. But learning is absolutely central to this. So I would say that justice also requires the capacity to learn the capacity to be open, to change, to be curious, to be reflective, to learn from missteps, to learn from people to learn in community and collectively make change. 00:11:46 I think in a curriculum lens we often teach change thinking about. For example, the Black freedom Movement and the civil rights movement, we teach change as individuals led this change. We have individual heroes in the book, Teaching History for Justice Martel and Stevens talk about this as as not the direction we want to go, right? We we need more of a collective activism, collective movements, movement building. That is what sustainable change comes from. So how do we do that? How do we replicate that in our communities and our educational spaces in our classrooms, in our curriculum and the way that we enable students to govern and engage in share leadership practices in our schools and districts? That is what I grapple with, right? And I think that is very connected to civic engagement and civics curriculum and civics projects. Another piece that I want to pull in from research is my definition of student leadership that I put forth initially in my dissertation and then later and publish articles which is student leadership is students working collaboratively. So again, we have that collective movement building students working collaboratively to affect positive change in their educational environments. 00:12:57 So we're specifically defining in this definition because it's student leadership, not just youth leadership, we're defining the community as the educational environment. So they're working to affect positive change in their educational environments with support from adults and mechanisms in the school. And I added this piece because in all of the research that I was doing, I was realizing that support piece is critical, the structures piece is essential to my dissertation and my research because without it, we don't have those sustainable changes. We don't have effective meaningful student leadership. We have kind of this invitation for student voice where we kind of check the box and say we asked students, but it's not like a meaningful shift in practice. It's not an authentic partnership with students. And that's the huge difference, right? When we're enabling students to have meaningful civics projects up a unit or a course that enables students to find and tap into their inner leader, right? 00:13:59 We all are capable of being leaders. We all have that innate ability when we equip students with the skills and the opportunities, not just one but multiple opportunities over the course of their academic career. Over the course of a unit, we enable them to have those opportunities repeatedly and we bolster those skills and provide the different tools they might need and the access points, they might need to be able to enact change that is meaningful and important to them. That's student leadership, that's a good civics project. So those are the questions that should be running through our mind as we think about supporting teachers to create really good civics projects and really good civics units and civics courses. The other piece of this that I want to add before I get to, to more research here is this can be and, and many of these states who have put forth these mandates have said this can be and should be expanded beyond the typical social studies domain or content area. Civics projects can live in math classes, they can live in social studies, they can live in pe classes that's not usually talked about because, you know, maybe some students don't have access to pe or don't have a lot of time in pe compared to maybe a core course, but it can, right? 00:15:20 So think about how each content area can be supported to do this. Think about staff P D that is about civics projects that is content agnostic and great agnostic where everyone can tap in to the strategies and the approaches and the mindset shifts that enable us to do civics well throughout the school in every course. Wouldn't that be cool if every single project in every single grade in every single content area was a civics project was an opportunity to make change. Now, if I take five courses and I have four units or four summit of assessments per year, I have 20 opportunities to make meaningful change in my community every single year as one student. And now we say, you know, maybe there's a 1000 students in that school or in that district or however big your district is, that's 20,000 opportunities for meaningful change every single year, right? We are going to move the needle. That is what I think is possible and that is what I want to shift. When I think about my impact in doing justice centered work and connecting to that civics movement and connecting the people right now, the leaders who are thinking about how do I make sure we comply with the civics mandate and also do it well, do it connected to our values, we tap into those resources around justice centered curriculum design and teaching and leading for justice. 00:16:42 That's it. That's the vision. And I also want to think about, you know, the mechanisms here, I think there's two mechanisms. I've been talking a lot about curriculum design. So I do think that student voice and student leadership that is the mechanism for attaining justice and sustainable justice in school communities. You can do this through activists or civics projects as summit of assessments in course units. You can also do this as another mechanism through decision making structures and equitable student representation on leadership committees. And I have had a whole series of the podcast episodes before about how to do this. And I have a whole course on this, like I've talked enough about it that I don't need to talk more about it now. But there are multiple avenues here as a leader, you can think about governance structures, you can also think about supporting the curriculum. So think about where you fit and where you want to support where you have questions, what questions those might be, feel free to send those. To me. Another research based idea that taps into both of these is that da and came up with this una voice pyramid. And I've talked about it a little bit before on the podcast and in my blogging, she partnered with another researcher. 00:17:53 So Mitra and Gross together came up with the student voice pyramid that reflects not just the three levels of student voice she initially came up with but mapped onto a turbulence theory. So me talks about at the bottom of the pyramid listening to students middle of the pyramid, youth at all partnership and at the top of the period pyramid building capacity for student leadership, the earlier levels, the lower levels of just listening to students can actually cause more turbulence than higher level level ideas because building capacity for student leadership actually will decrease turbulence because there is active, I don't like the word empowerment. There is an active connection to inherent student agency partnering with students in that middle piece is critical because we are co creating solutions. When students are able to actually take action to make the change, they're able to collaborate with one another, with their peers, with adults, with the systems and structures that are present in an education community. 00:19:07 That's how they decrease the turbulence, they calm down because they're like, ok, action is being taken. OK? We couldn't do that thing that I wanted to do. But I now understand why because someone actually sat down with an hour with me for an hour, invited me to a meeting and I now know why I understand the legal parameters we're working within or if that's the case, I fired up the whole team to get excited about pushing back against that law, right? Or whatever it is, they're part of the conversation, not just someone you're listening to, they're not just filling out a survey and never hearing from you again. And now they're just frustrated, right? That increases turbulence. So let's talk about a couple of things you can do before you go because this solo show is getting a little long. Here we go. Tips for your civics project design. Use department t meaning to align your state's civics project standards to the department or summit assessment rubric. So if everyone has their own course rubric, make sure they align each of those assessment rubrics to the civics project standards. I think it's way easier to just design a department wide rubric. 00:20:14 It's part of my process for curriculum design anyways, it fosters alignment. It's easier to do this task when you're just aligning to one versus like 10, but a line in whatever way you do that next tip pick a publishing opportunity. You could offer the school website or the school's social media accounts as mechanisms for sharing student projects. So once they've created something, they created a short documentary, they created a podcast, they are calling for a legislator to pass this bill and they need signatures. Whatever it is, use the school opportunities to share with the wider community, the school platforms to enable the students to reach a wider audience. Beyond the the class finally connect to content and leave room for student voice. So connect those civics projects, the current events, the things that are happening in students' lives to the the course content to the student experience of, of of life. 00:21:18 To like I said, current events news, bring all that together, make sure that the the civics stuff that they're learning, whether it's the skills, the content, make sure all that stuff they can apply it, they can use it to do what they want to do because they're choosing the action or the subtopic. For example, if you have a pe activism unit, right? They're doing some sort of civics project for pe let's say that they are really interested in um having access to a basketball court because that is what a lot of the students want to do. That is a fun form of exercise for people and there is no gym space in their school, right? That is gonna be really interesting to the students who like to play basketball, for students who do not like to play basketball, they might go in a completely different direction. They might talk about, um, equipping students with, I don't know, this is data technology but like a Fitbit or some sort of way to track and maybe even compete socially with other students in terms of ways that we could like, actually have like a healthy competition in tracking steps or something. 00:22:31 Um, because they, they enjoy walking around, they maybe aren't sports people, but they like moving their bodies and they, they want kind of a social way to do this and, and motivate them, right? So maybe they are petitioning the school board for some money for this social software. All right, those are my tips for civic project design. I'm always happy to collaborate on some brainstorming civic projects. We're gonna have a whole series coming up in, I think June and July definitely some summer time where we are in a live brainstorm unit, like activist based units or like project based like make a difference units in like quote unquote real time. But during the recording of the podcast, so we're gonna have some guests on, it's gonna be good stuff. Now, tips for student leadership and governance structure, collect data. So again, think about me pyramid, we don't just want to collect data, we want to do something with it, partner with students, enable them to be leaders, but we do have to collect data in some way so that we know how to partner with students effectively. I have a survey that I will link s today's freebie. So again, freebies for every episode are located at the blog post for the episode. 00:23:36 This will be Lindsay beth lions dot com slash blog slash 112. So it's episode 1 12, Lindsay beth lions dot com slash blog slash 1 12. So there you'll be able to find this is a research validated survey. You're also going to want to check out street data pod or the book Street Data. Absolutely love the methods and they're really good for collecting quote unquote street level data from students. Also invite students onto school committees, not just the leadership committee, all the committees, curriculum committee, discipline committee, all the committees think about how well each student identity is represented. Don't just have one token student, but think about do we have equal numbers of students and adults? Like that's the kind of shift we want support and train students in the tools and skills that they can use to be a meaningful representative for other students, for the students in their community or identity groups or peer groups. This is really challenging work and this episode has gone long already. But this is just kind of a mindset shift a starter for thinking about civics and how we live it out in our curriculum and in our government processes in the school. 00:24:47 What I love about the governance structure of peace is that this is the way that civics comes to life. This is the way that we live out civics in how we do things and what we teach and how we invite students to apply what they learn. It's all civics, it's all civic engagement in service of that justice oriented citizen from West Timer and Kaine or that transformative democratic citizenship from banks. Make sure you check out the freebie. That's the S L C B survey, the student Leadership Capacity Building survey. There's also a youtube video tutorial. That's less than five minutes that I will link to the blog post as well that tells you how to use it and what it looks like. I will also link to what are the requirements for the Massachusetts Civics project with a short five minutes or less youtube video that will be released in March. So it will be out by the time of the airing of this episode, check out all the things and please tell me how you are using this. How are you thinking about civics in your school? What have you done so far to implement the projects and all the state mandates? What questions do you still have? If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my life, coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. 00:25:53 I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students we, we current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academics. It, it energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at w W W dot Lindsay beth lions dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
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Dr. PJ Caposey is the Illinois State Superintendent of the Year and a Finalist for the National Superintendent of the Year through the American Association of School Administrators. He’s a best-selling author, dynamic speaker, and a transformational leader and educator with an incredible track record of success. The Tension Between Pragmatism and Idealism + The Big Dream Dr. Caposey first poses the question: Is our purpose to design a system that absolutely best serves kids and gets them ready to be critical thinkers and contributors to ever-changing society and democracy or…are we designing schools to…be of service to society and the community and to support parents and to prepare kids for (the best that we can) for tomorrow? He believes geography shouldn’t determine a student’s access to high quality education. Student Agency Dr. Caposey does a senior exit interview with every senior. One result has been replacing all of the water fountains. Another result has been helping students see the behind-the-scenes realities of decision-making and the complexity given the rural district’s resource constraints. Currently, students may perceive their voice and impact in the school/district is limited to less consequential organizational decisions, but that they do have more agency in their own futures. Whatever a “student’s tomorrow” is, Dr. Caposey believes it’s their school’s job to get them there. Identity and Justice Conversations in a Predominantly White District Elementary teachers are less fearful. Our community is perceived as being unwilling to engage in these types of conversations. There’s a large difference in reacting to individual students than a justice or identity-based concept. Because when it’s a kid, it’s “Do what you need to do for the kid.” When it’s humanized, our community’s been pretty awesome. And we still tiptoe into justice-based conversations. Students of color have reported a different experience than white students in senior exit interviews. It feels harder to change the overall experience than to change a policy. In the last two presidential elections, half of the staff was in a day of mourning the day after (with different groups being in mourning each time). We have to have the conversations. It’s always a consideration of will we open a gaping wound if we just start the conversation and talk about this on one staff PD day? It feels scary to not feel like an expert in this area. It’s also important to consider who can facilitate a helpful conversation in our community. One Step to Get Started Talk to kids and figure out what their experience is. And if it’s fundamentally different [from what we want all students to experience], then we have to act. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on his website: www.pjcaposey.com and on most social media platforms @MCUSDSupe. To dig further into Dr. Caposey’s ideas and experiences, he’s sharing his popular TED Talk with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 111 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. TRANSCRIPT Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 1 11 of the Time for Teacher Shit Podcast. Today, we get to hear from Dr P J Capo who is the Illinois State superintendent of the year and a finalist for the national superintendent of the year through the American Association of School administrators. P J is a best selling author, dynamic speaker and a transformational leader and educator with the incredible track record of success. Let me tell you this conversation went in a direction that I typically don't go. We went a little off script with the different questions that we had, but we hit all of the same themes and it was a joy to go down that rabbit hole. So I can't wait for you to hear from Dr Capozzi. Here we go. Educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerdy out about co creating curriculum with students. 00:01:11 I made this show for you. Here we go P J. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for being on the time for teacher shit podcast today. I'm very excited to be here. Thanks Lindsay. Yeah, of course. And, and you are here through sickness and all of it. So it's dedication right there. And I feel like everyone's been fighting that battle for the last 30 months or whatever it is. So, um it's ok to play her once in a while. Yeah. So today I, I think we're gonna get into some really cool conversations and at the front end of this episode, I will have just read all of your like professional bio stuff. Is there anything that you want to say beyond the professional bio or anything that you want to contextualize today's conversation? Anything that's on your mind or things that will frame our, our talk today. It's interesting because um like one of the best and worst things about having a bio is that people read it particularly before you speak. And then it feels really weird getting on stage after you hear someone like essentially give you like living eulogy before you get on, on a stage. So, I don't know, I, I think the context for any of that is just that um my primary job. 00:02:17 And the thing that I value the most is still doing the work, right? So a lot of times people get into the speaker consultant, write author, um world and then that becomes their world and I love that space and uh that's not to mention anyone that's in it. Um But I'm still in the, the grind with the rest of the educators in the in the country trying to, to make things better. So um that's the one thing is that I just try to remind people because a lot of times people feel like, oh you wrote all these books, you talk all over and um I'm, I'm still in it. Um The same way that we, we all are. Yeah, that's a wonderful uh context for this conversation too because I think it's, it's helpful to be both out of it and in it at the same time to be able to like see all the things. So you bring some really unique perspectives to this conversation. So I'm excited we'll dive right in. I always start with Dr Pea Loves quote about freedom dreaming and she talks about it like dreams grounded in the critique of injustice which I love as a framing. So like we can dream all these dreams, but we ground them in the critique of injustice. There, it gives a little bit of bite to like the dreams that we have for education. 00:03:21 And so I'm curious to know what your dream is in that context when we're thinking about critiquing injustice for like designing curriculum instruction, leading leading people to do that work um that advances justice in the classroom. Yeah, I mean, I'd say one step kind of be before the, the design of instruction is the design and functionality and of school, right? I mean, so if we, if we even take it one step further and think about the purpose is our purpose to design a system that absolutely best serves kids and gets them ready for um to be, you know, critical thinkers and contributors to uh ever changing society and democracy or are we designing schools to a be a service to society in the community and to support parents and to prepare kids for the best that we can for their tomorrow? Given the confines of that as society continues to change, kind of logarithmically or exponentially, we're changing on a linear scale. 00:04:23 And like I do think schools are changing quicker than they've ever changed. So like kudos to us, but like still not close to where society is changing. And so um I think you have to answer that question first before you can get into what it is because you could argue that it's an injustice that schools are designed as a mechanism to allow society to run smoother as opposed to in order to maximize the actual critical thinking ability to um curate information, analyze it, connect um synthesize it and then communicate it to others, right? Because if we were just doing that, it would look different. Um So like you hear arguments about the four day work week, you hear arguments about well, schools should start later because all the science, especially at the high school level support that. Well, that's great. But when we are a function of society funded by taxpayers that like essentially become and I, I don't mean this disparaging it at all but like a function of what we do is child care so parents can work and then so they can contribute to society. So I think there's like peeling that apart. 00:05:25 I think you can get to it at the really macro level or you can get to a really micro level. Um and I'm happy to get into both or go further. But that's, that's just where my reaction is when, when you bring up that question. Yeah. Oh my gosh. So many things because I, I absolutely, I, I mean, I, we were just talking before we hit record like I have a parent of a very young child and like that child care is so expensive. We as a, as a society do not value child care workers. We do not value education as separate from child care because we don't fund child care systemically for everyone. Um And oh my God, we could go down, we could go down that path for a long time. But I think that's such an interesting point about like what we want school to be and, and I, for me, I see this idea of school being this opportunity to better society in ways, right? Where we have students as like change agents, we offer them opportunities to be change agents to make it to the society isn't treating education as childcare or, you know, whatever the the issue is. So I'm curious to know like, how, how that conversation that we're having that maybe adults have right about like what school could be or what do we want the purpose of school to be? 00:06:31 Like, how does that translate into like conversations with students about what school can be or, or does it, does that make sense? I think it does in terms of trying to figure out how do we offer courses and how do we design things for that? Right. So um like where I live, I give this example frequently is like we have a state of the art Welding lab in our school because that's what is very employable in our region, right? So if I were designing a school, would I have the state of the art thing in our building? Be welding? Well, maybe, maybe not, but it is because we have, you know, students that are leaving the day after graduation, making more than the teacher teaching them how to weld um immediately. So like then it becomes ok, a school designed to create employees or a school designed to create people that are going to improve society and, and help us think differently? Or is it the same thing? Can we do both or can we not? And if we, if we're, we're focused on not doing both, then essentially getting to in a much more European model, right? Like where we're kind of tracking kids and going to different places and if we're designed on like everyone has to become this critical thinker that's creating, then we might be doing a disservice to other kids, right? 00:07:41 So it's very interesting because if you asked me that 10 years ago, I would have had much less pragmatic thoughts about it. I'd had much more idealistic thoughts. But as I've gotten in and understood, like, hey, you know, the kid that's leaving here and making $87,000 at 18 and has incredible work ethic and is going to support his family forever and not move and be a contributor to this community forever being in small rural. That's a really awesome thing. Like we've done a really nice job by that kid. Um Now do, does that mean that that kid is going to change the world in some way? Like maybe because maybe the fact that he is going to raise a great kid, that kid might, right? Like, so you just don't know. Um whereas I would have told you 10 years ago, like, I would have thought much more in platitudes of like we all have to do this for all kids. I just don't think that that necessarily is true. So it's this very weird dynamic of trying to figure out what is pragmatic in terms of what we can actually do versus how do we not lose the idealism which is necessary for leaders to have to encompass a vision and to create a y for people to stretch and try harder. 00:08:49 Oh My gosh, I want to go like completely off guard for what I have planned to ask you because this is such an interesting like conversation. I'm curious to know a couple of things. One, I'm wondering how conversations with individual students can shape like that decision. You know what I mean? Like does it have to be that teachers decide one way or the other or like you're saying, like, can it be both and like, can it be both for specific students in different ways and like, how do we involve students in that conversation of what they want and what they would benefit from? Like, do they want to just go get the job and also can they go get the job and then also be a part of their community? Like without being like a civil rights leader or something as like their job title. Can they participate civically, you know, in, in local elections or um changing like a small law in their local community or something? Right. So I'm curious to know like the specific student experience, like how that's brought to light in some of the decisions about what courses you offer or things like that. What do you think? Yes. So I think it's like there's three elements to that one. 00:09:52 I would just to say the one like the aspect of because when I first became a principal that I was 27 very idealistic, like I was college for all. Like that was my mentality. I remember really struggling because I knew some kids weren't going to get there. And now I see some of those kids like that live in the biggest houses in our communities and are, are getting ready to serve on the local school boards. And so they're doing exactly kind of what you're talking about. They're, they're incredible community contributors, they're great, you know, uh husbands and wives, mothers and fathers and all of those things are happening without, you know, having to be college for all. So I think that it certainly can happen in, in different realms and avenues, I would say for me, the most um influential thing and this just started over the last couple of years, kind of started with COVID as I do a senior exit interview with every graduate that we have in the district um where they tell me what's good, what's bad, what's not. And so some of it is again, like incredibly poignant and deep and then some of it is like, we need bigger portions at lunch, which is also like, um, like meaningful. Right? So, like, we've replaced every water fountain less in, in the last year because they told us our water was terrible and I didn't really realize our water was terrible because I drink out of a different one. 00:10:58 Right? Like, um, so some of those things have been, like, very practical but then others, you know, we, um in some cases misguided and there's a lot of assumptions that took place, for instance, like, well, we fund football at like this level that we don't fund other things. Like, we don't really fund football, it self sustaining. Um other than like helmets, right? Like so like, and, and so helping to explain and dispel some of those things were really good, but then some of the cases were like, well, why don't we have this? Um And for us in small rural, like those choices as to what we offer are painstaking because we can't offer everything, right? So it's one of like my fundamental things that I'd like to fight for, again to go back to the theme of injustice is the fact that geography shouldn't indicate or determine the quality of your education or your access to high quality education. Um And so I think a lot of times like it's talked about urban, right? Like that, but I think it's more pronounced rural, having worked both, um I, and I think there's many, many things that make urban, incredibly difficult and tough, but I don't think access to high quality necessarily is wonderful. 00:12:05 I, I should say that is pronounced as it is in rural. So, like for us, um right before the school year, we lost our physics teacher. Like it's like impossible to find one. Right. Um And so we were able to like, create a uh very unique partnership with a neighboring district where we shared theirs in order to give our kids access. Um But if we weren't kind of thinking outside of the typical, you know, box that serves education, our kids would just lose access to that, which is dramatically different than many other places of means and um that create different opportunities for kids. And so for us, as you know, I kind of explore these things and as a kid try to give students as much voice as they can into what they want, it's never what they want, it's what they want and then are willing to give up, right? Like, so it's almost like doing your household budget, right? Like I would love to do this great, but that if we don't change the, the revenue, then the out. 00:13:06 So then we just have to change how we're spending it. Um And so for us, like, like one of the things that comes up a lot, which is family consumer science, it's the our kids want it and I always say like if we are going to do it, I am fine if we do it. Well, like if we lead to a culinary arts program or due to a childcare certificate, like if we go somewhere with a witch, not having these random electives, but then my follow up question is great. So, are we getting rid of egg? Are we getting rid of industrial arts? Are we getting rid of business? Are we getting rid of graphics? Which one do you want to get rid of? Like we don't want to get rid of any of them? I'm like, ok, well, me either. I'm like, so this is, this is the, this is the rub, right? Is for us to, to figure that out. And that is again just fundamentally different from district to district state to state, region to region. Um And I think that's part of what ails public education, right? Is that the fact that kids in our zip code 61084 have a different opportunity than kids that are 40 miles east of them. Um Despite the fact that we've worked our butts off to try to provide more opportunity. Yeah, absolutely. So many directions we can go with this. I I I love the Student Exit interviews. 00:14:10 Like I, I think that's, that's a brilliant idea to just like get and, and the fact that you're taking action on them too. I just want to highlight that for listeners too who are like, yeah, I'm gonna do this, like, I'm gonna survey students and see what they need. The the key is the action because otherwise students are going to take it seriously and they're not gonna like, great, like, share honestly. Um But also I love that you're bringing students into the conversation of like, we have a finite amount of resources, decisions have to be made. And so bringing them into those conversations, helping them see behind the curtain of how those decisions are made and and bringing them into making the actual decision is like a huge win for systemic like student involvement in and talk about civically engaged in their school community. Like that's it. Right? And I think from, from my perspective, just as a, I was a student of a very rural district and then as a teacher, I was in a very urban district. So it was like upstate New York to New York City kind of like differences. Um So I I'm totally hearing also what you're saying about like the unique challenges of that. And one of the things I learned from my research and surveying a lot of students from a, a very rural district was that there was this um lack of like voicelessness. 00:15:16 Uh This idea of like, um I remember some of the comments were like, why did my, why did my family move me here or something like that where it was just like, I feel completely divorced from all decisions being made about my life. And so I'm wondering, have you seen any teachers in, in their curriculum or, um, departments who have kind of tackled that voicelessness feeling or tried to address in, like, how they've designed instruction, like to amplify that and give them a sense of that bigger voice. Yeah. I mean, I think we have a handful of teachers that do an amazing job of that and I think systemically we're trying to become more. Um I think what a row round it would be the, the word that we typically use because we don't see a ton of diversity um in our, in our district, we try to meet it where we, we can but we just, there's not a ton of it. Um doesn't mean there, isn't it? I just wanna be clear but it's not an overwhelming, I would say the thing that has had the most profound impact is um one of the things that we found is that, you know, like, you know, the I, I don't, I forget what the title of the association is, but essentially the National Association for School Counselors. 00:16:18 So, whatever the acronym you know of that is, um they have a recommendation of how many students per counselor. And so we worked hard to, to meet that. But what we found is even in doing that, the majority of those school counselors work isn't in the college and career prep area. It's just in social, emotional and dealing with the crisis. Um So we added a department for college and career readiness and, and making sure that we had individual people set up for internships, internships um to get kids to school visits to have people come to us because again, um it's kind of bang for your buck. Right. Like if you're in university, you're gonna go to a school that has 1000 potential seniors as opposed to one that is 100 and 10. Um So we're kind of fighting for that and getting the people into our buildings and in doing that, I think we've given our, our kids just a, a glimpse as to what is possible, right? Like, so that's the, the air avenue that, that I like in, in and in the exit interviews. That's kind of what they said it was like, that was the best decision they ever made. Um And a lot of them are like we had no idea why you were doing. It just felt like you were just add another, you know, kind of pseudo administrator until and then, and now, you know, we have somewhere to go to help with our essays, someone that hounds us down for scholarships, someone that like in all of those things that in your head, like a school counselor could do. 00:17:27 But like anyone that's been in a school in the last five years, like our school counselors are plenty busy with stuff other than that. Um, and so that taking that, so that has given, I think our students, they've, I think agency, right. Like, so I don't know if voice is the right word or whatever, but I think it's given them agency in their future because they have somebody outside of their parents, um, outside of a singular teacher that is hounding them about what is their tomorrow, right? Like whatever your tomorrow is, is fine. I can find you an internship at a dairy farm. I can get you in, at a nuclear physicist place, um an aerospace place or we can just think about getting you into, you know, teacher prep, like whatever it is, that's our job to figure that out to help plan it with you. So I think that our kids have much more agency in their future right now than they had five years ago. I don't know that they would tell you they have more voice, right? Like I, I think they see those two things as different. Um And that, and they may be right and seeing it different, right? Like I think that they feel like they have voice on less consequential organizational decisions. Um like water foams, right? 00:18:29 Like, um but I think that they feel like they have more agency in their own future than they did five years ago. Hey, everybody, it's Lindsey just popping in here quick to tell you that. At Lindsey Betances dot com slash blog slash 111, you'll find the free beat for this episode, which is Doctor Qu's amazing TED talk. You gotta listen to it. Everybody back to the conversation. That's a super interesting distinction too because I've never, I've never heard of it broken down in that way. But that's absolutely like, they're, they're different and equally important components. So that's super helpful to like to see that breakdown. I'm, I'm curious too, like you mentioned the lack of diversity. I imagine like racial religious, like all the diversities that you, that you could typically imagine in small rural communities. But I'll, I'll let you respond. Yeah. So, I mean, I'd say that, you know, I mean, I would just think that the majority of studies would show that, you know, in terms of LGBT Q stuff like that's pretty evenly spread, right? Like, so I think we have an equal distribution of that. Um Outside of that, we're about 90% white um with the majority of the 10% being our um E S L uh Hispanic Latino students. 00:19:32 Um And then we just have uh a small handful of uh African American students. OK. That's really helpful to know. I, I was just thinking about like, yeah, so, so then linguistically, to an extent, racially religiously, probably um you know, like, how, how do you feel like your, your teachers have been or your departments have been having conversations about like the mirrors in a Currie or, or bringing current events around religious uh linguistic, racial injustices or justice to the table for your predominantly white students. Because I know that just being a student in one of those schools, um, was something that was, wasn't just touched on very much. Yeah, it's interesting. I would say, I would say it's really different. K 12. Um, and I would say that our K five teachers are much more open. Um, I should say it's not our teachers, I'd say our K five teachers are less fearful. So I, I think our community is perceived and I don't even know if it's accurate, right? Like in terms of its unwillingness to engage in these types of conversations. Um, meaning when we have it, I think there's a large difference in how we react collectively to individual students who, um, are open about whatever their sexuality or the, I think we react much differently to a kid than we do the concept as a, as a community. 00:20:59 Um Because then when it's a kid, so then just do what you need to do for the kid and whatever. But when it's conceptual, it's this like, well, why would we do that? Right. Like, so it's when it's humanized, I think our community has been pretty awesome. Um, especially for small town Christian conservative, um, you know, uh, area that doesn't mean that when we tiptoe into those areas that we aren't tiptoeing Right. Like, we're like, people aren't taking a jump into whatever. Now that said, um like our probably most revered teacher at the high school level is social studies and he can talk about anything he wants to because he's been there forever and people understand and respect and, and kind of get who he is. So, um he is able to bridge lots of um different areas and he's our sociology teacher. So it kind of lends naturally to some of that curriculum. So, um there's like some natural benefits in that and then in terms of like selecting books or curriculum materials that where kids are feeling more represented, um like, again, no one has a problem with that, right? 00:22:06 Like it's just um it's so, I i it's a very interesting, it's just a tip toe. Like it's a, it's, it's a like, um but it hasn't been um like when we talk about openly trying to do D E I work, there's resistance. Uh I mean, there, there just is resistance, there was no other way to say it. But when I talk about gatekeeper policies that accentuate gaps, people are fine with me trying to fix them. Right. So it's, it's one or the other, right? So, um it's been an interesting way to try to figure out how to get things done because there's then as the leader, it becomes a two part conversation, I can get things done by calling it gatekeeper. I can get things done by saying that we have some gaps, we need to close. But I also, then I'm not calling out the the elephant in the room. And so it becomes this kind of a two front war in a way of like, hey, we got to get these things done. 00:23:09 But at some point, we have to have the conversation too, right? Because what my senior Act interviews would tell me is that um many times our students of color in particular feel that they have a different existence, then our students that aren't right. Like, and um a lot of times they won't say it's terrible. It's not horrible. It's not, they're not going to like we're not gonna be on the news, right? But it's different. And so therefore, to me, like, we should have a moral and ethical imperative to potentially act on that. Um And, but different isn't enough to necessarily cue different things, right? Like now if it's a, a policy thing that I can fix or recommend, then that's different. Um So it's just this really interesting dance. Yeah, super, super interesting. All of the, the different kind of like categories of the, the idea of like the language piece and like, you know, we, we're gonna try to get things done that we can by just shifting the language and getting the buy in that way. And then there's also the that idea of difference of, of all the pieces that make up that feeling, right? Of difference. So probably policies are like an an element, like, like you said, you have a bit more control over so you can kind of adjust those then, like, do I see myself in the curriculum? 00:24:11 Are we talking about the things that are current events that are important to me? Right. Are my peers talking about those things? Like, are they not talking about them because they don't have an opportunity to talk about them in the curriculum? Like there's so many different pieces and then there's just a matter of like when I look around, who do I see and as a function of being the community that it is with the demographics that it is, it's like, ok, well, that's also influencing, you know, my experience. So I think there are some things that we have more control over and some things we have less control over. Yeah. And I think one of the things that from the superintendent lens that isn't talked about enough is how, um I think our country is as divided politically as it's ever been. Right? Like, I think that or at least in my lifetime, right? I can't say it's bad. Um, like we forget that that's our school too. Like our, so not just like, and I'm not talking about the kids in the community, I'm talking about our staff, right? I mean, the day after election day was the, the last two presidential election days were like, days of mourning for half of our staff just a different half each time. Right? Like, and so the, like, that's a massive issue. Like when you're sitting across a P L C from somebody that you wear your political ideology very strongly and they wear theirs. 00:25:15 And now all of a sudden the conversation is different. You're not talking about calculus, right? Like, or you are, but you're in the back of your mind thinking one way or the other about this other person like that, that's been a real challenge as well. That is, wow, I'm so glad you brought that up because that is a huge challenge that I think many districts are facing, particularly in with similar like geographies to what you're describing in demographics, to what you're describing psycho graphics to what you're describing. Uh That is, is I'm curious to know like as a leader, are, are you what feels like a step that you wish that you could take that? That maybe feels like you're in the kind of tip toe space that you described? They're like, it would be really cool if we could do this thing as a staff to be able to address this? Like, are there some like possibilities you've dreamed up of like, oh, I'd love to try this, but I'm not sure about this kind of thing. Yeah. So I think that and this might be Pollyanna, but I still think that there's more unites us than divides us. But in order to have that conversation, you have to have the conversation, right? And so that conversation is probably not a 40 minute conversation, right? 00:26:19 So then it becomes, hey, we've got four P D days a year. Are we gonna have one day where we just rip off the scab and get to it? Um And maybe open up this gaping wound instead of resolve it or like, so it's, it's not like there's this thing that I want to do that. I feel like I can't do. I think my board would be supportive and I think my community would probably shake their head at me and roll their eyes, but trust me in, in letting me do it. Um But again, it's like, I don't know that six hours is gonna make it better, right? Like, so it's one of those things where then it's like, and then the return on investment, like we're doing well as a district and I'm proud of it and I can talk about our accomplishments, but like we've got a long way to go to. So it's always like, it's not like, hey, we're gonna spend this time because we just have nothing to do, right? Like we've still got plenty of other stuff to do. My dog is about to lose her mind because the the mail lady is coming up. So I apologize if you hear. No worries. I hear that ok. I have a dog that does the same thing. Mortal enemies. Yes. All right. I think we're, I think we're past it. Yeah. I think that's absolutely. I, I love, um, the, you know, that framing, I love that idea of like, it is something that you don't want to just dive into and then open the gaping wounds with no plan moving forward. 00:27:32 Right. You have to kind of like, make it a priority and like it has to be this like long term thing. And then people also need to, like you were saying you have to buy it from the board and there's kind of the eye rolling, like navigate that piece of this is a commitment. We are committed to this. It's going to serve all of our students and it's also going to be really hard, like it's gonna be hard work well. And the the other part of it is like, and I, so we outsource much of our P D but I am, I feel very like what I, I go travel and do P D all the time, right? So I do culture stuff, I do evaluation stuff. I do social media, like you name it all right. I've done the P D on it. This is not it for me, right? Like so I, I I can, I am not qualified. I don't know, I'm gonna go into a teaching strategy here, but like with the people that I have found that are the very best at Socratic seminar, right, which is an old school, but everyone still reveals it are the people that have enough confidence and swagger about their content knowledge that they know, no matter how far off the conversation goes, that they can ask the two questions to get it back and about everything in P D I kind of feel that way. 00:28:36 I don't necessarily feel that way if we get off on a, on ad E I or a social justice issue that I can do that. Um And so therefore it makes it even scarier to, to touch. Yeah. And thank you, thank you for saying that because I think a lot of listeners are probably in the same exact kind of experience where they're like, I know this is important. I know these are the things that would take, it would take a lot of time, it would take a lot, you know, and like, I'm not quite sure like that, I'm the person to lead that conversation, you know. So I, I think that that's just like huge for people to hear that. Like it's ok to be in that space, you know. And so I just appreciate your, your honesty there. That's really awesome. Well, and the other thing is like, it just like everything in education. Whenever it becomes the trendy P D thing, the market then becomes flooded with people that are now experts on it. And then it becomes really hard to sort siphon through and be like, OK, who is actually the expert? And then I think with D E I stuff and, and social justice stuff in particular, it's not just who is the expert, but who is the expert that could work given my unique context. Um Because like, I'll just say one of my favorite presenters in the area is Sonia Whitaker. 00:29:40 So just, I don't know if I'm allowed to give her a shout up. I'm going to and I adore her and I think she's brilliant, could not work in my district. She just couldn't, right? Like, so like knowing the presenters and knowing who they are, knowing your district, I think is really important in that thing too. Yeah, such important advice. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. And I, I realize we're kind of closing in on the 30 minute mark here. So I won't, I won't take up too much of your time. But I'm curious, it's like a kind of wrap up. We talked about a lot of different things and we went, I think towards a different path than I typically ask guests, which is super cool. So as people are kind of like stopping the, the episode and going about their day in leadership or even a teacher listening in their classrooms, what would you advise them to like, think about to, to do next to maybe get the ball moving a a mindset shift and action stuff they could take um as they end the episode. And so for me, the, and the thing which changed my behavior, right. So, like, I, I don't know that my beliefs or ideology have shifted in the last decade. Like I think I've believed what I've believed. But the thing that made me take action was when I finally talked to students and they expressed to me that they had a fundamentally different experience. 00:30:49 Now, fundamentally different experience is my words because that means I had to talk to other students to understand their experience, right? But when you have students come across and say like, you know, in junior high kids start saying inappropriate things to students of color. Ok. And so I'm like, all right. Well, did you let the the school know? Well, yeah, what did the school do they react? They did everything it says in the disco. OK. Good. So we're not ignoring it. What happens? It gets worse. OK. So then what happens? We'd say again, then they get punished again. Then we realize it's just easier not to say anything. So almost by proxy, then we were creating, you know, like if we say to go back to the beginning of the episode and talk about like we want kids to be community contributors if by our action or inaction, we're creating kids that are like silenced and almost disenfranchised in their schooling experience because it's just easier to keep your head down and keep moving to me as an educator when you hear that, that gives you the moral imperative to act. And so if you are like, if you are listening to like, yeah, but, or maybe not here or it doesn't seem like that for then maybe it's not like, awesome, but maybe it is. 00:32:01 And so if I were you, I'd just say like, hey, just talk to kids and, and figure out what their experience is and if it's fundamentally different, then we, we have to act and like the way that I would say like our kids would describe their fundamental difference is like there are teachable moments where they find that some of the adults in the room are selectively deaf and then they'll tell me that those same adults go bend over backwards to support them and do everything they can. But when in those, so they, they don't think those adults are racist or mal intentioned. But when there's that moment, they tend to back away from it. And so for me, that's the thing, like, how do we get those adults to, to understand they can intervene in that moment in a community like ours and still be protected, supported and still move kids forward in the right direction. Like that's where that rub is. And I think that's probably where a lot of teachers are right now. I was like, yeah, I know. And I love these kids and I'm doing what I can for them. But in that moment, do you know who that person's dad is? And if I correct that, then what's this going? And there's all this calculus going on in their head. And at some point, we just have to be ready to have that conversation so powerful. 00:33:07 And I, and actually I'll just make a quick connection to you. I just a couple of hours ago, interviewed Doctor Neil Gupta who told me that uh one of his students in this pivotal like conversation where they were asking students there for feedback. Uh He, she was like, we need more conversations in the classroom about issues that are important to us. And he had said something this was years ago, like, you know, well, our teachers don't have the training necessarily to feel comfortable responding always in the moment. And she said, Neil, you need to train your teachers highlighting just like the relationship, like you, you mentioned a lot throughout this episode. I think the trust and the relationship that enables you and, and the community to like do work or, or work with students that may have had these like difficult experiences, but like that trust is so foundational to any sort of change that we can make. And, and just that use of the first name to like an administrator and to say it so directly like that trust was foundational to being able to invite that student honesty, I think, which is really critical as well. Yeah, and so amazing. I have loved this conversation. 00:34:08 Thank you so much for coming on. I usually ask two final questions just as a, as a quick wrap up. The first one is for fun. So everyone who comes on the podcast usually identifies as a lifelong learner. They're constantly learning something new. It could be anything from like piano to a new book you read. What is something that you have been learning about lately? So I reject the term lifelong learner. Not that I, so I like. So here's the deal. Um I prefer unfinished just simply be like, like I, I feel like a lot of people continue to say they are learning but then they're not acting on it. I think unfinished means that you still have to continue to act. So, um that would be, I guess that uh one of the things that I am trying to do is so this um and learn right now is I have um never in my life marketed myself. So he like, I feel like I've done a really good job and a lot of the recognition our district gets is because I've branded and marketed district, which I have zero problems about, I'll make a zillion calls for that. But if it's about me, it is terrifying. Um And because especially everyone in the space that I typically market to our peers as well, I think it makes it even worse. 00:35:13 Um So that is kind of the New Year's resolution for me. Um, which I don't really love New Year resolutions either, but like it, like, I'm going to try to reach out and market myself in a more strategic manner and learn how to do it, um, in a way that, uh forces me into being uncomfortable. Um Just to see again, I think it's been a really good year for me accolades and recognition wise, I'm trying to parlay that to see where it goes. Um And so trying to, to figure out how to do that has, has been interesting. So I love that. That's what you said because I'm gonna give you an opportunity to do that now if you're comfortable or maybe even if you're uncomfortable to say like, what can listeners like first, how do they connect with you? But like if a listener is like, oh wow, this guy sounds awesome. I really want to invite him to do a keynote or whatever, like, what are some of the things that you want people to know about you and the things you do and, and how they can reach out? Sure. Um So I, you can connect me on uh pretty much every social media at MC US D soup. I'm an S U pe soup guy, not S U P T. 00:36:17 Um But even my name is pretty unique. So even if you just Google my name, it comes up everywhere. Um, and my website, it's pretty comprehensive in, in terms of what it looks like in terms of like, things that I, I do outside of the typical, you know, 9 to 5, which is really more like, like 6 to 6. Um, job. Um, I always laugh. I got like, four or five full time jobs. So, um, I, I have eight books out in the last 10 years and I've got three more coming out this year. So it'll be 11 in 11 years, I think at the end of, of this year. So, so look for those. I'm really excited about like, I like all the books that I've written but, um, have one coming out that is intended for high school athletic coaches. I think there's a really unique space where if you talk to a bunch of kids, like, obviously, the theme of this conversation has been, they'll tell you a lot of them will tell you that the most impactful person they've had in their educational career has been a coach and that's not always a positive thing, right? Like it's not always like, oh my God, it's like, oh, this person ruined my life or I used to love baseball and now I hate it. Um And so we know this and then we pay them very little as a school system and give them no training. They like, hey, good. You passed the background check, go. 00:37:19 Um, or like you played college baseball. So now you must know how to interact with 18 year olds, right? Like it doesn't work that way. Um So I think it's unique in that space. So I'm excited about that. Um I coach a lot of people like from the executive leadership coaching, both inside education and outside education. Um I think coaching is much different than mentoring. So people will be like, how do you coach CEO S because I can help them learn about themselves and leadership is leadership. Um And so that, that is probably my favorite thing that I do. Um I teach at a handful of universities um wearing a Columbia shirt now. So, um that's, that's one of them. And then the speaking keynote in consulting thing is, is very interesting, right? Because um there's no feeling like getting a standing ovation after a keto like there, that's the best feeling in the world and do it and it's great and travel and do all those things. Um But I like consulting way more. Um So two of the things that I come in and do is kind of this unique um culture assessment that I've worked up and kind of go through and, and give people real feedback as to what their culture is because I think far, far, far, far too often people think climate is culture, which are dramatically different things. 00:38:22 So, right now, I don't know when this is going to air. Um But say it airs in February. Um That's when everyone says their culture dips, your culture doesn't dip, your climate dips. Your culture is like cement, it's really hard to change. Um And so to get in and actually do a culture assessment is, is a unique thing. Um And then the second one is uh evaluation to me is the lowest return on investment um thing we do in education. We spent thousands of hours in almost every district on it. Every year. Every everyone you would talk to says it actually is a negative R O. I doesn't improve teaching practices, decreases climate. Um And so I go in and, and help to reformat and re envision that process um for people agnostic of tool, whether you're Marzano Marshall Danielson, whatever. Amazing. Wow, that was so great. I'm really glad that you did that because I think a lot of people will reach out after this. So I hope that's ok with you with your four jobs. But thank you so much P J for being on the podcast. I really appreciate your time. It was awesome. I appreciate the opportunity. If you're leaving this episode, wanting more. You're going to love my life, coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. 00:39:33 We weave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit, which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at w w w dot Lindsay beth lions dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
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In this episode, we’re looking at one possible format for project-based summative assessments. As always, we’re focused on how this project format enables students to have a civic impact and an audience beyond the teacher. Why do a podcast as a summative assessment? Project-based learning. PBL classrooms have higher student engagement, student motivation to learn, student independence and attendance compared to traditional classrooms. Students using PBL understand the content on a deeper level and retain content longer. Also, PBL students perform as well or better on high-stakes tests than students in traditional settings (Buck Institute for Education’s research summary). Student Voice. Research has found students who engage in leadership activities, have demonstrated improved peer and adult relationships (Yonezawa & Jones, 2007); positive self-regard, feelings of competence, student engagement (Deci & Ryan, 2008) and academic performance (Mitra, 2004). What Feldman and Khademian (2003) call “cascading vitality,” can occur, where students inspire and empower others, lifting up students that may be experiencing structural, political, and/or social marginalization. What can I do to support my teachers with this? Leaders, host a content- and grade-agnostic professional development session with your staff so they can experience podcasting and plan how they might use this in their courses. Frame the session with these questions that staff can create a podcast on: What needs to change to make the world/your community more just? or What perspectives/experiences/topics does the world/your community need to hear? Invite staff to get into groups, choose an episode format (e.g., multiple segments, interview show, co-host banter), and a role for each group member. How to Support Teachers to Use Podcasts in their Courses: Step 1: Use podcasts as “texts” in lessons. Then, debrief the content AND the podcast format. Step 2: Offer a simple frame or steps for how to record. (e.g., Use phones to record audio.) Step 3: Give access to simple editing tools or edit for them (and ask the creators to tell you what goes where.) Step 4: Create a podcast or find an existing podcast on which students can publish their episodes (i.e., an authentic audience beyond the teacher!) Final Tips for Coaching Teachers to Use Podcasts Embed opportunities throughout the unit for audio recording. Example: Students record their voice answering each day’s exit ticket. Encourage staff members to visit other classes where they’re doing podcasting! To help you develop and facilitate a staff PD on podcasting, I’m sharing the slide deck I used in the podcasting conference session with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 110 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. TRANSCRIPT Educational justice coach, Lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerdy out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Hey, everybody and welcome to episode 110. In this episode, we are doing a case study where we're thinking about podcasts as summit of assessments and for the case, I'm actually using a conference that I use. I had 2 60 minute sessions with different groups of students and treated it almost as if it were a class where we were actually doing a podcast in that class period, just the 60 minutes. So I'm gonna walk you through what that was and then I'm gonna give you some tips for what this would look like. 00:01:06 As a leader, thinking about inspiring your teachers to do this as a sub of assessment, to give students some more choice and voice in terms of what they are talking about, how they're conveying their message to a wider audience beyond the teacher, beyond the classroom walls. Here we go. OK. So let's start with the why, why would you do a podcast as a summit of assessment? So project based learning research, student voice research, let's kind of hit both of those pieces PB L classrooms have higher student engagement. They have higher senses of student motivation to learn student independence and attendance is better compared to traditional classrooms that are not using a PB L but more of a lecture and then test for S A a kind of approach. Students using PB L understand the content on a deeper level and they retain the content longer, which also means that they perform better on high stakes tests. So not about teaching them to test personally. But if this is a reality in our lives, we don't have to sacrifice the test scores, we just teach PB L and then everything is better, right? So that is I think a part of the why this approach is really great. 00:02:11 Another element of this is student voice with student voice. Research has found students who engage in leadership activities or student voice activities where they get to use their voices in a meaningful way in a way that expands the possibilities right in and puts them in the kind of driver seat of change enables them to be a change agent. That kind of leadership activity. Students have demonstrated improved peer and adult relationships, which is critical when students are feeling very low senses of belonging, completely lowered post pandemic or during the pandemic as well. Um but it was low even before that positive self regard, feelings of competence, student engagement, academic performance, all of these things are increasing when we offer students more authentic voice, an opportunity to change what should be changed. And so when we're thinking about this podcast as Summit of Assessment, we're thinking about again, that civics mindedness that activist project, how can we enable students to take what they learned in the unit and put it into a project that actually makes a difference that calls for change in their communities, whether hyper locally, right in their classrooms, in their schools, in their neighborhoods or even more broadly in their cities in their states and nationally globally. 00:03:25 So thinking about these pieces also, I I wanted to bring in Feldman and Cade. I need to learn how to say this person's name. I'm so sorry. Uh They talk about cascading vita vitality, which is where students are able to inspire and really support others to see themselves as leaders if they are experiencing structural political or social marginalization. So students who typically don't see themselves or people in their group in the school or in the larger community as being able to lead in this way. If a member from their community, their identity, someone they connect to is in a position where they are having this leadership role, enacting change, seeing results, seeing adults listen to them and take action as a result of what they are calling for that vitality that the student leader experiences actually cascades to the rest of the community and people who identify with that student who is in the leadership role. So it actually expands even beyond the students who might be in the class where you're doing podcast assum of assessment, but to that student's friend group or even just people who identify with that student and may not even be connected to that student. 00:04:38 So really, really cool research based possibilities here in terms of improvement in the overall student experience and learning um in, in your school or district. So I wanna talk about now like, what does this actually look like? So if you are listening at the leader and you're thinking, wow, this would be cool. I'm not sure that teachers would go for this or maybe my teachers would be really excited about this but may not be sure how viable it is or what kind of shift that they would need to make in their class based on, you know, what they, how they do things now, that kind of thing. I think multiple things that you can do to or multiple ways that you can help them see the possibilities whether that is a teacher who might be like, uh I don't know about this and for the teacher who's like, yeah, but I don't know how right. Those are two different groups. Typically you can achieve kind of both of those goals or meet the teachers where they're at in both of those scenarios. If you were to do this as a staff P D, this is going to be one of the most helpful staff P DS aside from maybe like AAA protocol that you could use every week. 00:05:44 But giving teachers the opportunity to experience something as a learner like as kind of the student hat is put on their head, they are engaging as a learner. So they're experiencing the possibility of what their students could feel if they were able to enact something like this as a project. I think that would be awesome. And this is great agnostic. You might need to scaffold a little bit more for younger students, but this is also subject agnostic or content, agnostic, meaning anyone can do this, right? The art teacher can do this, the pe teacher can do this, the E L A teacher can do this, the math teacher can do this, right? Everyone can do this. And so if you did a whole staff meeting, this would be really awesome because it is leverage and usable in all content areas no matter what you teach. Also a huge piece of this too, I think is to involve pair professionals if you're not already in your staff meetings, enabling them to see the the viability or the possibilities with this kind of tool and equipping them with the skills of how to actually create with this tool. Just as you are with the teachers, really ensure is that this project is going to be even more successful for the students who rely on those paraprofessionals for support and honestly, paraprofessionals support the entire class community, not just the student that they are attached to. 00:06:58 Um typically, right, in my experience, that's been the case. So let's really leverage paraprofessionals, wisdom and expertise and just amazingness, right, for what we can do in our classrooms, especially when we're taking on this new challenge and we might be a little nervous about it. So do a staff P D where you do this. Now, what could this look like if you have a 60 minute staff P D? Well, I will share with you a little bit about what I did in my 60 minute workshop session with students and adults. Also, I'm going to link the slide deck that I used for that session as the freebie for this episode. So make sure that you grab that. That's going to be at Lindsay Beth Lions dot com slash blog slash 110. That's for episode 1 10, Lindsay, Beth lions dot com slash blog slash 110. All right. Here's how I would do this. I would offer the prompt for your teachers. What needs to change, to make the world or your community more just like what should be changed? What's the change you want to see in your community or they can choose to answer one or both questions or what perspectives, experiences, topics? 00:08:05 Does your community need to hear? Right. So what are some underrepresented topics, perspectives, voices like what does the world need to hear? So, basically helping them to think about, if you had a podcast or you were tasked with making a podcast episode, what would it be about? What would your topic be? Whose voice would you elevate? Would it be your own story you wanna share? Would it be someone else in your community? Would it be someone outside of your community that you want your community to hear from or hear about? So, thinking about that and then thinking about what is the format that would take, would you do an interview style podcast? Would you just kind of think to yourself and, and do like a reflection? Would you have a little bit of funny banter where you have a colleague come in and you guys are doing a reflection on current events or on what happened in your community this week? Something like that. And then I ideally given the short time frame, if you only have 60 minutes for the session. I would have people break up. You could do it by department teams, grade teams. You could also do it just by topic area and interest. That's what I did for the conference session and have people within each group define a role that they want to take on. 00:09:10 So some people absolutely hate being on camera. Luckily this is not video. I used to do documentaries with my students and that was an added kind of barrier for voice when someone didn't want to be on camera, this kind of lessens out a little bit, but some people still don't like listening to their voice and that can be hard. So not every, every student or in this case, not every teacher needs to actually be in front of the mic needs to actually record their voice. Sometimes what you'll find is people will get more comfortable with the idea once you start recording and then they'll want to jump in. Totally cool. But from the get go, you don't have to say everyone has to participate in that way. So what I would do is have every group member choose a role that they want to have. So this may be that if you have participants edits, you may say you're gonna kind of frame out the episode and you're gonna edit it all together, you're gonna kind of be even if you're the one taking on the editing and kind of pulling it up together or you don't even do editing with the teachers just think about like what it would look like to edit. OK. This is gonna be our opening, this is gonna be the middle section. We're gonna pull in this kind of quote unquote, bro. 00:10:11 I don't know if it's called, bro. I don't know if that's just documentaries or if this podcast as well, but you know, the background noise, it's kind of creating the vibe or someone's going to create the, the music. So maybe someone is responsible for doing the intro outro music, um someone might be the interviewer, so they want to ask the questions, they don't want to answer the questions, someone might be the narrator. So if you take a particular format where you're telling a story, you might insert different interviews with people. Um and someone is kind of connecting those dots or bringing us along the journey, you might have someone who is the researcher. So you learn something from an interview where you have someone kind of talking about a current event. So if someone's gonna bring in the factual information they found online and cite it do all the things that could be another role. So have the group choose their format and the role and of course, the topic which you kind of came up with or they came up with when they were answering those prompts, what needs to change and what perspectives, experiences or topics need to be elevated. So you have your topic, you have your format, each person has a role and then you just let them go say use your phone, use the audio notes app or you can even use video and then we'll just take the video part out whatever you want. 00:11:21 But you're gonna use your phone, a device you likely already have each person has in their hands. So we're not gonna use any fancy equipment. Go record, take 15, 20 minutes, scope it all out record what you want. It could be a three minute clip totally fine for this, this conference that he did. And you'll hear this actually, by the time this airs, you will be able to go back and listen if you missed it previously to the student's actual podcast that they came up with and they created in that actual 60 minute session. So some of the clips you'll see some groups recorded three minutes of content and other groups recorded like 20 minutes, I think one was 20 minutes long. So there is a range that you might have. Then you were going to bring everyone together at the end and ask them to reflect on what the process was like. So with teachers, you might ask them, what was the experience like to do this same question you would probably ask students but then also put on that teacher, how, how might you do this with students? What potential challenges that you face. How might you address those? What's really cool about this? And you're excited for your students to experience. Is there an upcoming unit where you could actually do this? 00:12:24 What lesson would you introduce this concept? Those kinds of process questions are helpful too. So what I love about the very end of this is that not only are you asking them to reflect, you're asking them to play a little bit of a clip. So if you have a Mac, they record it on an iphone, you can use something like airdrop really fast. So as you're presenting, you just kind of play a piece of the clip as it comes up as they drop it to you, you could also set up a Google drive folder and no matter where they recorded it or what type of computer you have, they're kind of like dropping it in there. So have those both as options. That's what you did in the conference seemed to work very well. That is how I would run the staff meeting. And then at the end of course, maybe as an exit ticket or kind of part of that reflection, thinking about how might we embed this and have a few volunteers who, who are ready to go, ready to try this out in, you know, the next couple of weeks in the next unit, whatever and see, you know, if other people want to come into the class, see if that teacher is OK letting people come in so you can all learn together. It's not gonna be perfect. It's the first time that it was tried, but just try to learn together and have that spirit of like we are going to take an informed risk here. 00:13:28 Feels a little daring, feels a little daunting, but we know that this could be really exciting and powerful for students. Your students may end up disliking the podcast genre and you could easily pivot to some other form of something, right? Like a documentary, like a uh slam poet experience, right? You could switch up what the actual project is, but the process of poking teachers into the possibility of doing this with their students as a summit of assessment, maybe even helping them, you might do a part two to the staff workshop, thinking through what would it look like to assess this? How do your standards still get to be assessed during something like this? This is the cool stuff, right? This is the cool stuff that you're like. This is why I got into education. I am all in it for the student excitement, enjoyment, big learning opportunities. So this is how I would frame it. Now, when we think about the pieces for uh a teacher and how they might kind of break this down. How might you have a conversation with them and maybe a coaching conversation preparing for something like this. I would suggest using podcasts as like the texts, I often call them texts, could be written, text, could be videos, could be audio files, could be images, right? 00:14:39 Any text we use where we're taking information from that text is a text. So in your lessons, when you're introducing a text or new information, use podcasts as one of those ways students get information, then you are able to debrief the content as you're teaching it, right? What content did you get? What did you learn content wise from this podcast? And then you also have an ability to ask them either in the moment or reflecting maybe after a week or two, where you've listened to many podcasts. What are the different formats? What did you like about how that interviewer asks that question? What did you like about this person's hook? Right. How did they wrap up that episode? How might you take all of these ideas and put it into your podcast? So there's a lot of opportunity there just by using it as a text type, students are then familiar with a range of types of podcasts. If you choose from a range of types of podcasts that they can then pull on and draw from, to create their own. I also would offer a very simple, just as I described for your, your staff meeting, a very simple framing or guidance for recording. 00:15:43 Everyone choose a topic, a format and each individual take on a role, go record, right? So it's going to be that simple. Give them a very simple task with a very simple, you know, audio device. Do you have a computer that they're working with an ipad? Our students using their phones, if they're allowed to use their phones, give everyone an opportunity to use a device they're familiar with and is part of your classroom routine already. I wouldn't go ahead and start with introducing the podcast mic or anything like that. Then I would say if you're doing editing with them, give access to very simple editing tools. They might already be familiar with imovie. You might want to provide maybe a five minute tutorial of you going through it or something you find online, maybe have a student who is really excited about it. Take on that role, not all the students have to edit it, maybe they can come up conceptually with where things should go together, but then one person puts it together or you can ask, you can edit it and ask them, where does this piece go? Right. And just label part one part two, part three for me or something like that. Finally, as a teacher, and you can also do this with your staff too, but think about where you're going to publish this. 00:16:46 You might want to create a class podcast that actually gets published or you might want to find, for example, NPR'S podcast competition, an opportunity to submit the student podcast for publication, right. So some other place that it can be published and reach an audience beyond the teacher in the classroom. So those are all things that I would, would suggest. Another tip actually is if I were teaching in this way where so I didn't find out about podcast until after I left the classroom, I used to do documentaries which were much more of a heavy lift. But something that you can do with podcasts is you can have them instead of exit tickets or maybe in connection with exit tickets that they are maybe writing at the end of each class, have them record themselves, reading the exit ticket at the end of each class. Then by the end of three weeks, you have 15 little 32nd audio things where they're pulling a piece of evidence together, right? Or creating a claim based on evidence depending on the age, you know that they are, you could have them already have all that recording. 00:17:53 And so you don't actually have to record too much more of just the synthesis of things that they learned throughout. So you could also leverage it that way if you don't want to do a ton of recording at the end, or you're thinking students might miss specific lessons and you really want them to capture all of it. That's another tip. Now, additional resources for you, I told you I'm going to link the uh conference slide deck. So I'm gonna link that you can grab that at the blog post for this episode which is gonna be in the show notes. You can also get embedded in the slide deck, the winners, the past winners of N Pr and Code switches student podcast competition. Those episodes are linked in there and I actually recommend specific like 30 to 62nd segments of a couple of them to play. As examples of students have never listened to a podcast or in the case of your staff meeting, teachers aren't unfamiliar with the podcast or unfamiliar with the possibility of student podcasts. You can play a couple of quick clips at the start to kind of frame what is possible before they get into their own. There's also a really good student podcast on inequity in sports. 00:18:56 It's actually co-produced by W N IC I think. So it's like highly like professionally produced. The other ones are very cool, but they're, they just have a different vibe because they are totally student created and they're not like co-produced by a huge organization also episode one oh seven of this podcast. So Lindsay beth lions dot com slash blog slash one oh seven is where you can actually hear the student podcasts that were created during those 60 minute sessions of the conference. So if you want to see what's possible, just with 60 seconds never met or 60 minutes never met the students before, totally introduced the whole podcasting thing to them and have them record and come up with all this stuff within the 60 minutes. You can see what is possible by listening to that episode. All right. That's it for me today. Please let me know how this goes. Which teachers are, you know, putting it into their classes, their units, which are using it as summit of assessments. Let me know, I cannot wait to hear. Have a wonderful day, everyone and I will see you next week. 00:20:00 If you're leaving this episode, wanting more, you're going to love my life coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We weave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at w w w dot Lindsay beth lions dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network. Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
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Dr. Warren’s philosophy of teaching is based on her educational experiences, starting with taking the AP test and realizing she didn’t know how to answer the questions about women. Her teacher said there wasn’t enough time. “[Teachers] have a lot of power to do good and also potential to do harm.” The Big Dream For all students to be seen. To get a more comprehensive history in front of students in an integrated, authentic way in which multiple identities and histories are woven throughout the entire course. “Not everyone is doing it in that authentic, holistic way. They’re doing it in a checkbox way. Maybe even our leadership is telling them to do it in a checkbox way.” The dream is for us to sit with truth and sit with joy. We can learn about who the people are that are making change happen and how they’re doing that. Alignment to the 4 Stages: Mindset, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Content Dr. Warren and her colleagues developed a curriculum and presented it to students to see if it met their needs and wants. They created an identity wheel that considers access to structural power for each identity group, which has been a helpful tool for students to grapple with these ideas. The vast majority of teachers and students are able to use this well. It’s led to beautiful, nuanced conversations. It’s designed for teachers to be able to use it to their comfort level. For example, it may be used to explore the identities and access to power for an author of a text like Ida B. Wells. The wheel works well to grapple with big essential questions like: Who is an American? Using primary sources to learn about U.S. History is a way to frame the conversation in truth and breaking down any myths students may have learned in younger grades. A Thematic Approach Teaching thematically has engaged Dr. Warren’s students through U.S. History I content, when the minutiae doesn’t feel very relevant to students. Each unit goes through the 100-year time period for the course (1820s-1920s) through different themes. Here are the themes Dr. Warren uses for U.S. I:
Unit Design Pieces Start with Questions: Course-long Essential Questions, Unit-specific EQ, and Guiding Questions Establish the historical context. Lesson-Level (Skill-Building) Protocols Include:
Summative Assessment Example: Annotated Bibliography (common assessment) paired with a Student-Led Research Project Mindset Shifts Required Make it authentic to your style and your classroom. Don’t allow your discomfort to get in the way of what your students need. We are adults. We will survive being sweaty. Ask yourself: How can I make more of my students feel seen? What do they really need when they leave my classroom? Ask your students: How do you learn best? One Step to Get Started Trust students with difficult things. Give students opportunities to reflect in writing and verbally. Stay Connected You can find Dr. Warren on LinkedIn. To help you design curriculum and instruction that centers historically marginalized identities, Dr. Warren is sharing her Identity Wheel with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 109 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. TRANSCRIPT I am so excited for you to hear this episode with Doctor Lindsey Warren. She is an adjunct instructor and high school teacher at public institutions in New Jersey. Her course offerings span her professional interests relating to gender and sexuality through historical and contemporary lenses and also highlight her graduate work which focused on genocide and trauma when she's not teaching. Lindsay enjoys spending time with her wife and four pets. You guys. This is an amazing episode. She talks about all the things that are part of her history curriculum. We talk about thematic versus chronological. We talk about lesson level activities, big essential questions, a amazing tool that she's going to share actually as a freebie to this episode that they created in her district called the Identity wheel. Let's get to it. Educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. 00:01:10 If you're a principal, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerdy out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Doctor Lindsey Warren. Welcome to the time for teacher shift podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here. Awesome. I'm so glad to get started in this conversation. I think we're gonna talk about some amazing topics and there's so much in just your bio and the context in which you teach and the multiple contexts in which you teach that just resonates so much with me. So I at the very front of this episode will have just read your like professional bio. So in addition to that or um adding some contexts or layers to that, is there anything that you want to say to kind of frame our conversation today? Yeah, I think, I think my, my perspective for teaching and, you know, often considered philosophy of teaching that I've written ad nauseum for different things over the years. But I think so much of it's framed by my own experiences, my own educational experiences um from being an A P US history student knowing I wanted to be a history teacher hitting that A P test and realizing I didn't know how to answer any of the questions about women. 00:02:19 And when I asked, my beloved was beloved, is still beloved A P US. History teacher. The response I got back was there's just not enough time for all of it. Um As an 18 year old that didn't sit well with me, I was reading literature that was kind of opening my eyes. I was doing that sort of typical 18 year old, um jaded a critique of the world around you thing. And I went to college and I just let myself kind of explore, um, explored courses, explore my own identity came out, um got a W G S minor and ended up sort of having a very um very what we would call today, very much social justice, but really just a very inclusive view of history and how it should be taught. And I think that sort of those moments as a, as a high school student very much launched me into that path of, you know, who isn't in the historical narrative, who doesn't have their stories told and knowing I was going to be a history teacher even in that moment. 00:03:20 It was like, ok, well, this is a problem, how am I as an individual going to approach, kind of solving this problem? And uh and the journey sort of just continued from there. Wow, I love that. I mean, it makes me reflective of my own conversations with myself as a child and like in, in high school and in that, and I also think of all the, all the people who have been on this podcast or who I've just talked to, who have shared those moments in their classes, like often when I open a workshop, it's like, what was it? Who was a teacher that you could think of? They can immediately identify a teacher that has shaped the trajectory of their life. And so what a wonderful reminder that like, what we talk about in our classes and in our curriculum and how we navigate that is so central to a every single child's like long term memory of school and like a lot of things, yes, we have a lot of power to do good and also um potential to, to do harm. Yes, absolutely. And I think that's a beautiful turn to like thinking about the, the do good component and the not doing harm component. When I think about Doctor Bettina Love's quote about freedom dreaming, right? This idea of dreams grounded in the critique of injustice just really shapes what like the possibilities of school can be through that lens. 00:04:26 I'm just wondering what your freedom dream is around curriculum, around instruction. In that sense. I just want kids to feel seeing, you know, I, I recognized in that moment that I, I didn't feel seen in that, that instruction in A P history, even though I understood it was teaching to the test, I was like, even it was even on the test, right? Um I, I knew uh in traditional textbooks that I didn't really have to read the stuff in the boxes. You know, I'm a, I'm an old millennial and so I knew that the boxes were extra. Right. And, you know, going into college classes and kind of examining what is, what is that doing to the, the messaging we're sending to kids that if the box about Children or truth isn't integrated into the text and, and, you know, many places my district included were pretty much away from textbooks. And so those boxes aren't an issue. But when I was coming up 16 years ago and really 20 years ago, going into college, it was a situation where I wanted to, to approach the situation of how do I get a more comprehensive history in the hands of my students. 00:05:30 And so for, for me, it's about trying to help them feel seen and it's, it's impossible to do it every day in every lesson and do it in authentic ways because that matters too. I don't want to just be doing the like, oh, it's Black History Month. We're gonna cover a famous black person every day. And then we get to March and we move on to women and then, you know, we move on from there and it's like, but I haven't talked about black people the rest of the semester, the year, et cetera. And it, to me, if it's not integrated, it's not authentic. And if it's not like thought out and woven throughout the course, um it's not, it's not gonna resonate the same way for students. And so, um that's my personal philosophy and I feel very grateful that I teach in the State of New Jersey where we have like numerous content mandates, especially in social studies where we, we have to do it. And I'm also aware of the fact that, you know, not everyone is doing it in that authentic holistic way. They're doing it more in the checkbox way and maybe even their leadership is telling them to do it in the checkbox way. 00:06:32 And so for me, I, I've literally seen the power of, you know, my queer kids hearing about queer soldiers in the civil war, hearing about queer suffragist in the, the suffrage movement in the progressive era. And I've seen even in their little 14 year old selves, like little light bulbs and little moments and little recognition of, of, oh, oh, wait a minute. This, this suddenly matters to me in a way that industrialization didn't matter, right? It didn't, it didn't click into their lives in the same way uh because it didn't resonate. And so like my, my, my dream, really freedom dreaming is that um we can move beyond the, the myths of American history, the um folklore around American history as an American historian primarily, um and classroom teacher primarily and, and, and sit with the truth, sit with the, the reality of the history at the same time that we're able to celebrate joys of all these different groups as well. 00:07:37 Like where are the struggles? Sure. But also who are the people that are making it happen? How are they making it happen and how are they, they celebrating their success when it, when it's happening? And not just sticking in that? Like, I think that very often um easy to kind of fall into trap of like, well, it's all all bad for this group of people or it's all awful for, for these various ethnic minority groups. And um trying to find that balance is difficult, but that's sort of my, my freedom dreaming for sure. Oh, wow, there's so much, there's so much there that was so good. And, and so let's see, where do I want to go next? I think one of the things that I wanted to just touch on very briefly that you mentioned is is this idea of like that integration and, and the meaning and the authenticity of doing this, right of, of making sure it's not an add on. So I think of like Sandra Harding, the feminist who was like a woman and stir when getting women into like the right that doesn't work. We have to add women and start, we have to change the whole thing. And so I think about that a lot in terms of how people are trying to just like add bipoc authors and stir add your authors and stir and like my R E A class is great. 00:08:45 Now, our history class is great. And I think when we, when we can fundamentally shift like a unit driving question or a unit project that centers like stories that have historically been marginalized, histories that have been marginalized or even just like enable students to take action to address the things that it matters to them. Now using the historical, you know, whatever that they learned that is so much more meaningful to students. And so I just, I'd love to kind of think about how you shared that for your queer students for, for example, seeing themselves in history, seeing people like them in history, that identity connection like has an impact. And I I'd love to hear more about like either what that impact is or like what you think leads to that impact. So I often talk about like that culture of partnership, the pedagogical pieces and student voice in the classroom, the assessment and then also seeing yourself in the content. So there's like all these pieces that are important. Do you want to speak to like any of those being like this is the thing my students connected with? Sure. So there's, there's a number of directions I can go with this. 00:09:48 Um One of the things that I want to start with is that um my district as a whole was actually pushed by students to do more of this. Um Despite the mandates and everything else is, um, in the really 2020 2021 where as many places across the country were grappling with the aftermath of George Floyd's murder and sort of the reckoning that was occurring around race, which is part of that, the Long March, right, the Long Movement. Um But for them, they're, they're gen Z. And so they're, they're activist generation. And so they came to um teachers that they felt like they could trust and they went to some administrators, they felt like they could trust and they basically worked to um push to create a, a comprehensive multiyear social studies curriculum that would teach on bias and prejudice and discrimination and be woven in and be um teaching kids skills about how to identify it in current events and how to identify it themselves and how to identify the history. And um thankful in, in the situation that I'm in, I'm very thankful that my administration um ran with it to the point where we actually uh develop some of these curriculum materials that we use and then are standardized across the board of our, our three required classes. 00:11:04 We brought the kids in and we presented it to them in the summer and said, does this look like what you were thinking? Is this along the lines of what you, you wanna see? Um You know, some of us had been doing it, we've been doing sort of that rogue, you know, pedagogy of Um I'm tenured. I'm gonna do it, let's see what happens, right. And it was successful. And so we had sample lessons to kind of go off over. We had uh some best practices to use and, and we built that in, in uh additional sample lessons for our colleagues that maybe wouldn't feel as comfortable. We, the big thing that we created um to try to make it as authentic as possible was an Identity wheel. And this is actually what my colleague and I have been presenting uh at some of the conferences in the fall, both at the state and at the the national level. And it's something we're really proud of because it's, it's unique to our needs, but it's also really universal. It is looking at 13 different identity categories that you could argue there could be more, there could be fewer. These are the ones we landed on. Um my colleague did a beautiful job with graphic arts and graphic design. 00:12:07 She's, she's the talent there and basically created this beautiful rainbow wheel and it has layers of um of power sort of implied in the center. It's, it's designed to get you thinking about who has the most power in the middle, sort of layers of the circle, uh who has some degree of power and then the outside where groups are more marginalized. So it sort of works on that level. Um the least power and this is a great way for us to introduce primary sources, introduce units, introduce topics to students and sort of say, ok, what do you already know we, are we gonna do a historical lens? Maybe, are we gonna talk about today? Maybe it works in all of those ways. If they don't have any idea, it's a good opportunity for us to teach and talk about it. Um, neurodiversity and ability are on there. Uh Some of them know what neurodiversity is. Some of them don't depending on the age range and their own sort of personal connection to it. And so it's, it's just been a really great tool for us uh, to, to use it was something the kids saw and they like, oh, wow, that's, yeah, that's really fantastic. 00:13:12 Um, it's been, you know, a little bit of a learning curve for colleagues that maybe don't have like the, the women and gender studies background like I have or haven't been doing as much work in, in anti bias education, anti-racism education, but the vast majority of people are doing it. They're trying it, they're getting more comfortable with it. The kids are, are great and kind of, are able to recognize things pretty much right away and they're really sharp. And so if you're talking about socioeconomic status, they tell you right away, it's more power. If, if you're talking about race, they can tell you right away. It was more power. Um, they may get a little bit trickier in certain conversations about some power, but that leads to really beautiful nuanced conversations. And you know, the way we created it sort of um broad format is that teachers can use it to their comfort if you want to use it with one specific document and say, OK, this is a, this is a document by I W Wells Great who is Ida B Wells map her on this. 00:14:12 Let's talk about that. Let's talk about what her sort of bias and perspective as a person is trying to help them understand that bias is not really a bad thing. If we're talking about a place of bias, there's sometimes even more attaching a negative view to it, right? And it's really just perspective and saying, OK, like now we know this, what do we do with these pamphlets that she wrote about lynching? How is that informing sort of her work as a reformer as a journalist, et cetera? And so it's, it's been a great journey to incorporate sort of what the kids were literally asking for. And also um in the case of New Jersey, we meet our mandates because we do have numerous mandates for inclusion based historical um content. And um and for me, I I think I also sort of truly try to challenge my department in one of the key areas that I think our, our initial like overall course question in both us history one and us history two needs to be who is an American because there's the history, like you're not putting it in boxes that you check off different months. 00:15:20 Now, if you are doing like that as a through line through both of your classes, no matter if you are like me and like to teach it thematically, no matter if you're like many of my colleagues that prefer to teach chronologically, keep asking that question, keep bringing them back to that question and keep saying like in this moment in this time, who is an American? If you're looking at a primary source and you're looking at our wheel citizenship is on there, drawn back to it each time and say, OK, to what extent is this person able to be an American to what extent do they have what we consider to be like full civil rights in the country? Uh And in what ways do they not? And it takes away so much of the like potential for critique and pushback. And um well, you know, this, this isn't the history. Yes, it may not be the history you learned, but it we have the primary sources. Um Let's, let's take a look back. Let's take a look at People V Hall 18 54 California. Really? What does it say? 00:16:21 OK. Very good. What do you make of that? Oh Is that what you make? OK, that's your realization. Oh Asian people were not full people, they couldn't testify against white people. OK. That tells you a lot. All right, good. What are we gonna do with that information? You know, when are we applying it to this next source or this next piece of information that I'm presenting or you're gonna be digging out yourself? And it really, I think has framed the conversation in our classes, um from the perspective of breaking down those myths, breaking down some of those, those just misconceptions about America that, that, you know, no shade directly to their elementary and middle school teachers. Um But they may have reinforced those myths with various lessons and techniques and practices and so often they get to high school and what we're doing is um opening their eyes a little bit more, helping them understand the nuances. And it's just a really good overarching curricular pedagogical approach to say, all right, who's got power? 00:17:22 Who doesn't, when do they have it? How long does it take? How does it ebb and flow for different groups? And I mean, you could, you could go in a number of different directions with it. And that's kind of the, the nice thing about my, my school, my district, my department is that there's a lot of freedom in how we teach and what we teach. And so a class, a question like that to kind of over ach our, our two classes is great because people can kind of roll with it and are still being um inclusive than they were before. Wow, there's so much in there that I want that I want to highlight just I, I think the idea of presenting curriculum for, for two students and getting feedback from students is huge, like amazing just as a a process. Um So I, I hope some listeners and district leaders can like take that away from this conversation because that, that right there is amazing. Um Also just all the things. So I am curious, there's so many follow up questions I have, but I will try to limit myself to two. I'm curious about the themes. I think this is a huge conversation in history, right? Thematic teaching versus chronological. 00:18:25 So I'm curious just about some of the themes that you might teach on if you're willing to share and then, oh, awesome. OK, cool. And then I'm also curious about the protocols or like activities like it sounds like you have a very discussion based class where we can like have these conversations and discussions. And I'm just curious, like, are they what those activities look like if they're like whole class discussions? Do you use it? Like Craic seminars circles? Are they like document based? And yeah, I'm curious about all the things. Yes, basically. Um So I primarily teach us one which for uh my district is 1/9 grade course. Uh And then us two is 1/10 grade course. I have a one little section in an alternative program of, of us two so I'm not, I'm not, that's not my area of expertise and not, I mean, I know it, but it, I haven't worked on that curriculum as in depth. Um, I do teach it thematically but like no one else does and I'm like, why people this works. Um, but it's ok. Us two is a behemoth in ways that US one is not. Um, but for 16 years I have taughtt us one and so I have very much, um, gone through pendulum swings in what we've been asked to teach and sort of, to some extent how we've been asked to teach it. 00:19:27 Um Right now we do 100 years of history in each of those courses. And so For better or worse, we allow our various middle schools because it's a regional high school to get them up to um antebellum, shall we say America. And so we start really loosely 1800-1830 depending on the topic. And because I do it thematically, it kind of does depend on the topic. And then we really go to 1929 with the stock market crash. Um chronologically I do it and several of my colleagues do it in a really interesting thematic approach. And I think it, it just really lends itself in us one because the minutia is not interesting to kids, especially in us one. And they just really don't care about all those g age presidents. They just, they just don't, they all melt together to them. And honestly, me too. And so we do um the causes and consequences of national conflict, which is just a really fancy way of saying the civil war, right? Causes and effects of the civil war. And so we do each unit that 100 years. So we're going roughly 18 twenties, 18 thirties pulling back a little bit if we need to moving um ahead as we, as quickly kind of as we can. 00:20:36 And then we get to in that first unit, I'm not pushing necessarily all the way to like 1930. I'll kind of blend in some of the 1900 stuff in my third unit. I'll get to that in a second. Um But it's really more antebellum, more reconstruction a little bit into um Jim Crow and then us one second unit is um political and economic changes. And so it's tying together the major um economic themes of that 100 years. So really market revolution, industrialization, tying an immigration, urbanization, Getting to the, the 20s uh kind of as quickly as you can because you don't have all the time in the world and then getting to the crash to like get them ready for understanding the Great Depression more in the us too. In unit three. It's um social change and reform. And so it's again, going all the way back doing anti baum reform movements helping them see sort of like a long trajectory of change, which I think for this generation in particular is really important because they're activists, but they want to change right away and, uh, the world doesn't always move quite that quickly and institutions and systems definitely don't move that quickly. 00:21:49 And so they're able to sort of see, like, ok, it's, it's generations of people that had to work toward things like prohibition, you know, will debate how good it is. But they had generations of people working toward it. There's generations of people working to just even the broad women's rights movement, but especially the right to vote and, and like blending in, um as many sort of different movements all the way through progressivism and then doing some of the fun stuff in the twenties at the end with sort of social change in the twenties, like, ok, well, we've got prohibition and we've got the vote. So how's everybody doing? Um, and it's, it's nice to be able to do some happier things like the Harland Renaissance. Um, and, uh studying a little bit of the, the fun of the twenties. And then in the fourth unit, we do territorial expansion. So we've done the Civil war, but we haven't done anything else in terms of conflict and even just like sort of negotiation for territories. And so this, I, I love this unit because it does such a beautiful job of helping them understand settler colonialism and then colonialism and showing them that just trajectory that um America goes from, you know, this size in 18 2018, 12, 18, 30 whatever. 00:23:02 Ok. 18 48. What with Mexico? OK. What's that about? Why is that going on? Oh, let's talk about Texas a little bit too. Why they need that in pendant. OK. Circling right back to some of the things from unit one going forward into um treatment of indigenous people, kind of going forward and backward with that. I try to do uh a couple of lessons on helping them understand like we, we're in New Jersey and they had different groups and let's actually dig into that. And some are like, oh yeah, in fourth grade we did that like, ok, well, let's do it at a high school level now and, and see what the tribes themselves say about themselves. Um Try to do a lot with just helping them understand the realities of the reservation uh system and, and the, you know, wars and what they really involved. And then we go right into imperialism and they're just like, oh, ok. And so you bring that question of who's an American right back? Ok. Interesting. You know, why do these people need democracy and Christianity when they have Catholicism? 00:24:05 What's going on? Why, why do they need to be a part of America? But aren't really ever really a part of America? Why are certain things extended to Puerto Ricans when they live in the United States? But not when they're Rico, what, what? And so we do end the, the year when I do it this way with um World War One. So it, it shifts a little bit into sort of that more foreign policy. How is the United States is getting involved in a foreign war? But there's also the issues of, of what is this democracy really fighting for and how democratic are we at that point? Um You've got ties back to the suffrage movement. You've got the critique of Alice Paul and others. You've got uh Eugene V Debs is a labor leader saying, you know, wait, wait a minute, what's going on here? And it's kind of a nice way to tie it together and it does a good job. I think of helping prepare them for that next level where they are gonna look a lot more at international relations and foreign policy. And I argue their little brains are ready for it more so than they were earlier in the year. So it's a, it's a trajectory I'm really proud of. It's something that my department and I worked on for, for years to kind of fine tune it that way. 00:25:08 It is a beautiful trajectory. And I think just at one takeaway if someone is listening and like wondering how that shift if they're currently teaching chronologically, you know, how do I make that shift? I think just repositioning like just the positioning of what it is that you teach and like putting it in order or in this kind of frame or in this unit to like think about territorial expansion and all those pieces within that category, just like you said, it's like, oh oh OK. Now I am tying all these things together that have never been tied together and I don't even need as the teacher to tie them together because I'm just presenting them in this order now where it's like, OK, students can make those connections much easier. So I think there's so much wisdom in what you do and so much like cool possibility to think about as I hear you like, talk through this, I'm hoping listeners are feeling the same like energy to kind of create in this way and redesign in this way. Um I'm, I'm also thinking that people are probably thinking, you know, how do you help students make those connections? And so from an activity standpoint, like, what are those activities? What's like a typical or like one of your favorite class activities for helping students make those big leaps. 00:26:13 So we're doing a lot with uh essential questions and guiding questions from the very beginning. So the who's an American is sort of that course, broad question. Each unit has its own essential question. We're driving um document analysis with a lot of questions. Um What I typically am doing is trying to get them set up with basics, you know, sort of establishing the historical context. And then we pretty quickly in most of the units are getting into, documents are getting into, um, trying to understand primary sources where The wheel can come in, sort of to help us understand the broad topic and sort of the broad idea as it existed then as it exists in our, our time. Now, the unit I'm in right now, I focus on socio-economic uh, status and, and that identity marker. And so we did a lot of, OK, like we know about 1840s, antebellum Southern States. Let's just sort of talk about who has economic power, who doesn't. And they're, we just did that in unit one. So they're right there. And I'm like, OK, well today who has economic power and who doesn't? OK, cool. And so like this whole unit, we're gonna be mostly looking at economics with some politics and, and political decisions thrown at. 00:27:19 And um we're, we're doing a lot of informal discussion. I do a lot of group work where my kids are sitting in pods and in groups of like four and five. And I'm asking them to bounce ideas off of each other to work together. Um analyze the document together, come up with information together. It really helps the reluctant ones. It helps in a class that is um just highly spread on the, I don't even want to say ability level because I hate that language. Um but just spread on their confidence in school and their belief in themselves and maybe they haven't ever really been shown, a a high number of primary sources before and something from like 1850 is a little hard. They have some kids who might be more comfortable readers and more comfortable with primary sources and would be able to sort of more uh guide that conversation. And so I do a lot of um really trying to be very methodical with the scaffolding. And then um we're working toward a lot of document based skills with those documents, but also comfort talking about them. 00:28:26 So, s Socratic seminar is a key piece. Um We actually just did a unit two summit of assessment, which is a score discussion based on a fish bowl style s Socratic seminar. And they're always like, well, why can't we debate? And I'm like, because the world is full of debate and I want you to be able to use evidence to support a common understanding. And then everyone in that circle, everyone in that group is actually having This like this conversation where you're building on ideas and you're not contradicting each other. And they're like, 01 or two people in there to contra. I'm like, I am doing this for reasons. I'm like, I have been doing this longer than you have been alive. Please trust me. And then they finally like get over it and they, they get it. Um And the same thing there, there can be a lot of trepidation with speaking, some of them are very comfortable with it. Others are, are very unfamiliar. And so I've developed a lot of approaches over the years to kind of help. We, we do partners, we do time outs. We, we kind of build that, you know, you don't know how to talk to each other, especially after the pandemic. So we're gonna build this skill from the ground up. 00:29:29 We're gonna practice it a few times throughout the semester. You're gonna do it in other classes. I know you are because in my school and it is, it is going to be something you're hopefully taking well beyond my class. Um We also do research projects that are usually inquiry based and so they'll start with like sort of the essential question for the unit, like in the fourth unit with territorial expansion. That essential question is like, I don't know what we were like, what, how much caffeine we were drinking, but we were like a professorial like, I don't know, dissertation type level question, but we break it down together and we say, what does this mean? What like what are we trying to get at? OK. We're trying to get at these key ideas in this unit and OK, now it's your turn, you run, you start asking some questions after we've done a little introduction to the unit. We usually in us one, we don't give them like the whole unit for the inquiry. We do, um, often I do like imperialism through the inquiry and, and getting them to try to, um, really dive into like, what, what do you wanna know more about? 00:30:30 And then we have sort of a guided piece to it because of ninth graders. They're, they're not as able to do the free range inquiry the same way that, you know, a p research and seminar kids are able to kind of thing. And so they are um taken through this process of looking at some of the things that are in the essential question, but kind of doing it in their own way. Oh, ok. You wanna focus on Puerto Rico? You're Puerto Rican? Oh, great. You wanna focus on Alaska because you went there. Great, beautiful. I'll help you find resources. And so it's, um, it's kind of trying to bring a lot of those um primary source and data analysis skills to um an, an extended level where they're finding the sources. We're walking through databases, good use of, of internet tools and searches and stuff like that. And um, it usually works out pretty well with the scaffolding kind of building them to that point where they're, they're able to be more articulate about it. Um They could do, they could do kind of whatever final product they want, the research and the process is the important piece. So if they're comfortable presenting, ok, you present, if you want to write something you write. 00:31:35 If you want to draw something, you draw something. Um I just need you using the insights that you gained and maintaining your sources. We have an annotated bibliography that they have to do. Like, that's kind of our common assessment piece for that unit with um The entire us one team. So it's it's pretty skills driven and pretty much designed to kind of really grow them so that they can go on to us two as just like much more competent young historians than they came to me as. Wow, I so cool. I never thought of an annotated bibliography as like the shared assessment to like, I feel like often there's this desire to have a shared assessment, but then there's also, I love student voice and like being able to have as many possibilities of like what it looks like at final iteration. So I love that compromise of like you could do the Anno biography and then you could do whatever it is that you want to do that is like aligned to your skill set and desires. So that is super cool. Thank you. I'm gonna be sharing that with everyone. I know. So that is awesome. 00:32:39 And I'm thinking too, I know we're, we're getting um about half an hour into the episode. So I wanna kind of be mindful of, of, of your time thinking about this transition, maybe for people who I know you were saying that there are some people who still, for example, techology. And I'm, I'm wondering if maybe some people are um you know, doing less of the, the, the weaving or the um kind of centralization of stories that historically are untold, you know, and maybe it is more of like an ad diversity and stir kind of situation. Like what are the kind of like uh mindset shifts that are, have, have been successful with people who are initially reticent or um any like challenges that people have kind of overcome in, in that work that have kind of done more of the work that you're doing. Yeah, I it's interesting during, during zoom times, during pandemic um teaching where, you know, we were in school and they weren't and sometimes they were in school and it was the whole thing. Um my department totally, you know, volunteer decided to start a book club and, and I actually really, you know, everybody in the world was starting a book club, right? 00:33:42 But I really credit uh several people who are in the book club with taking the messages from the books that we read, which were, we're not primarily social justice based, but we're largely, especially in that year, social justice based and saying I'm going to apply some of this. I don't know what I'm gonna apply, but I'm gonna apply some of it, you know, people's history type stuff. Um just really trying to bring more of the authentic lessons and, and so I have, I have one colleague who I use the, the book one drop to talk about race right at, right at the jump. Like we're using the introduction to this beautiful photo book on what it means to be a person of color in the United States. Really what it means to be black. And um it's a little bit international at times too, but I really love the introduction because it's a beautiful succinct history of the creation of race in the United States. And I do it early. My colleague was doing it now. She's chronological. I think she's doing it within the context of um really sort of like Jim Crow in the early 19 hundreds and kind of ramping it into um that, that leader part of what I would consider my first unit, but she's doing it more now and she was really stressed about it and she was talking to me, she was talking to another colleague who'd both done it and I was like, just, just make it your own, just like you don't have to do what I do. 00:35:05 I do it as teaching kids how to do close reading. Like it's, it's, it's very, it's a very prescribed where I have it because that's where I need it. I'm talking about race in my first unit based on the topic, right? And so that's the identity category we're really focusing on. You're, you're doing it now. OK. So, so use what you, what you want. If you don't want to use the entire in, it's a long give them an excerpt. I divide it. So my kids are in groups and looking at different sections, do what you want to do and make it work for you. And I think that's like the number one thing for people is make it authentic to your style in your classroom. You know, this is a teacher who's always been really, really good about doing women and stuff. And so it's good that she's really trying to, to bring in in an authentic way to her deeper conversations about race and the construction of race throughout us. One because she's again an expert teacher in us. One, she's been doing it. Hey, everyone. It's Lindsey Lyons hopping in here to talk about Dr Warren and her colleagues creation, which is our episode, Freebie. It's the identity wheel that she's referencing in the episode. We're gonna go ahead and drop the link to that in the blog post, Lindsay by lions dot com slash one oh nine. 00:36:09 Back to the show 15 years longer than I have. And she's still willing to try to innovate, innovate. She's still willing to um get ideas and get feedback and I can tell when she's nervous about something because she's like in my face in the lunch, you know, in the lecture. And she's like, how did you like? Ok, let's talk through this and also like, like, I know you're afraid of messing up but like, just try it and like, the more you do it, the easier it is. Um, you know, I do some tough lessons. I do a lesson on the N word in that first unit. Not right away. I want to have a little bit of comfort, but I, you know, a colleague and, and I, and I have several others think that it's just one of the most essential things we can do for our ninth graders, particularly with the content they're gonna to see not only in our class but in English classes and in uh later history classes and just helping them understand that words mean things. And that language is powerful. And that in this case, uh for a predominantly white school, this is a, a problem word in the hallways and it is a, a word that we need to just have more truth about truly, especially in our community and I sweat every time I do it and I've done it like several times now and I flat out tell the kids I'm like, I am uncomfortable talking to you about this. 00:37:21 No one talked to me about this when I was your age. I wish they had, I would have been less ignorant. And it's just this thing where we can't allow our discomfort to get in the way of what they, I can be sweaty. It's fine. It's what they need. Right. I may not be happy in the moment as I'm anxious and sweaty, but I will survive. I am a fully formed adult, you know, I'm taking care of myself and I have like, you know, good social supports and, and whatever else they need this, they need to be seen, they need these difficult lessons that no one has had kind of the, the guts to go over with them or tell them. And then in many cases for our white kids and their families are not touching. Uh And so it's a situation of if, if you're chronological, if you're like, I don't know how to do this where I'm, how do I put something else in? It's more of how can you blend it into what you're already doing? How can you make it authentic to you and how can you help more kids feel seen even if it makes you uncomfortable, like it's gonna take that personal work maybe beforehand, probably, definitely beforehand. 00:38:32 But it's a situation where look at your, look at your students, whether it's a AAA 100% white student body that you're looking at or it is a, you know, like my school increasingly diverse student body that I'm looking at. Um and think about what they really need. What do they really need when they leave us when they leave our classroom? Particularly from a social science classroom, a history classroom? Are they going to need to memorize dates when I first started teaching, we were given multiple choice tests and it had dates on it. And I came from a school district where I had to take tests and they had things like dates on them and presidents in whatever order they were in. And it was pretty quick into my teaching that I started, I actually asked kids, how do you learn best? What, what types of assessments am I giving that are resonating with you? And overwhelmingly they told me it was discussions and projects and I went cool, like that's gonna inform my practice and as sort of the discipline started to change as we had some, some folks retire and other folks um come in in leadership and just in the department overall, we got to this place where skills matter a lot more, the overall takeaway to their sort of life beyond our classrooms matter a lot more. 00:39:53 And, you know, as we keep kind of interrogating that thinking about what, what does that mean? Um It's things like media literacy, it's things like being socially aware, it's things like understanding different identities and intersections of those identities. It's ensuring the kids feel seen. It's, it's all of that as much as it's understanding primary sources, right? We can start with the primary sources and anchor ourselves in that because that's, that's the truth. Um I mean, we the rest of it in as it is authentic as it is possible as it is, um, something that will push you a little bit but not make you shut down. Yes. Oh, my gosh. I love the idea that our, um, our discomfort can't get in the way of what they need. And like to ask, what do our students need? I think this is such a lovely way to kind of, I typically ask the end. Like, what's one thing you would encourage listeners to do? I, I feel like that's like an answer to that, right? Like ask what students need and then don't let your discomfort get in them. But I also don't want to answer that question for you. So if there is anything different, you would say or if there's anything else we didn't get to talk about, I do wanna leave space for that. I, I would, I would trust them with difficult things. 00:40:58 Like that's, that's one of my biggest things is like you might be uncomfortable because you think it's gonna make everybody in the uncomfortable and it might, but if you give them the space to have the opportunity to reflect in, in written response and to give them space to, to talk, it's it's helpful. Um I, I do the N word lesson. We have a, a document that they can fill out. It's basically blank. It just says, what are your thoughts as we go through this? And um I encourage them at various points throughout that lesson to kind of turn to that document where, where, uh chromebook school and I'm like, all right, just, you know, on your chromebook, just write if you don't want to write anything, just sit there and think. And then at the end I give them space to talk and some classes wanna talk, other classes do not want to talk, but they've written me like pages and some kids wanna talk, some kids will write me pages. Right. And so I think it's more about just giving them that, that space and that really comes with trusting them. They are, they are not fully fledged humans. Right. Yes, we know their prefrontal cortexes are not fully developed. 00:42:01 They have impulse control, they have hormones, they have the bevy but, but they are human beings. They are not um something that literally by using a good lib phrase or something that could dehumanize them. They are truly human beings. And I think just a significant number of adults in schools don't treat kids like human beings. And so, you know, trusting them to handle difficult things, trusting that you have enough sort of control over the culture of that classroom and that environment that hopefully you have put a lot of effort into establishing that you can ensure that they're not gonna be glib about it that they're either they are, you handle it right? Or that if they know you're not going to tolerate it, they're not gonna try it, they're gonna keep their mouth shut. And so it's a situation where I would say like, yes, do the things that you said, like, like definitely ask kids, talk to kids, but also like trust kids and, and trust them to be able to think about big issues, think about things that are currently going on. 00:43:11 I know that one of my sort of areas of focus that I need to do better at is responding in the moment when bad things happen. I have a colleague who is excellent at it. He just like stops and is like, we're talking about this and I'm like, oh my anxious brain wants to just get through this curriculum because I have limited time. And so I'm trying to, to kind of calm myself down with that and say no, you'll get through it. You've done this for years, you know, where you can cut things, you can find new things to cut. It's fine. And um you know, talk about it. I uh in our pre uh recorded conversation, I was mentioning how I was doing a, a lesson on anti Asian discrimination and violence throughout American history as part of our immigration section of this unit. And with the shooting over the weekend, this past weekend in California, I needed, I knew I needed to create space to talk about it. If only one kid knew about it and none of the rest of them did. It was, it was inappropriate if I just jumped into it and didn't create that space. And my issue is gonna be tomorrow also creating that space for my other classes because there's a different group who had my lesson on Friday. 00:44:15 And so I need to kind of keep challenging myself to come back into the moment and, and trust them to, to want to know about these, these topics and to want to maybe um think more deeply reflect, share and not every kid is gonna share, but for the one or two that do it, it it's important to just give them that space. Yeah, such an important point about trusting students. And I think honestly, a lot of times adults bring that discomfort into the space about certain issues and it's like students don't necessarily, I mean, I maybe by high school but like particularly when we talk about like elementary students or something, it's like we bring that to them, like we introduce them to that discomfort and, and to an extent also probably high school students as well. So I think if we can get through that ourselves, so we can open up students and trust that one of the hard things. So in closing, I love to ask just like, and I think you had actually even mentioned things like this already. But I think everyone who comes on the podcast just loves learning and, and learning about a lot of things. And so this could be literally anything like you learned how to play a new instrument or you, you know, learned about a new book or topic, like, what is something that you're learning about lately lately? 00:45:20 Ok. Um, I am always learning, I am always reading like too many different book groups and reading for many books, I think three or four right now at one time. Um, I'm reading a great book called American Detox right now and it's, it's not anything, you know, for me, it's not revolutionary in the sense that like these ideas are being pulled together. But it is a lot of texts I have read over the last several years, maybe 5 to 10 years, but they're being brought together by um a white woman who was in yoga spaces and is someone who is a certified yoga instructor too. It's, it's a perspective that we, we really need more of, we need more people of color and indigenous folks speaking in uh wellness and health spaces. But that's sort of her point. That's sort of her argument and her, her crux, her name is Carrie Kelly and she gave a TED talk several years ago and it's kind of a quick hit at what this overall book's message is. But it's just really, we have a wellness industry that is um making billions of dollars on our dysfunctional broken system and systems and we cannot be actually well as individuals or as communities, if we don't put our energy to fixing and breaking and dismantling these systems. 00:46:40 And it is great to be reading it with the yoga community because there's just a lot of folks who are at various points in their journey, at various points of their, of their thoughts about this. And um we have the discussion in a couple of days and so I'm very excited to sort of see how, how it's resonating with everybody. I'm going through and I'm just doing a lot of head knotting. And I'm like, yes, yes, this is pulling these interesting threads together. It's, it's again, it's not super revolutionary, but it, it's just very neat to sort of see the, the work that was done to sort of weave um critique of colonialism, critique of uh racism, critique of patriarchy, critique of um entrepreneurs, basically taking advantage of, of mental illness and mental health issues and you know, fat phobia, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, woven into one uh relatively hefty text and the resources in it are, are exceptional. Like I'm like, yes, I, oh I, that's a new one. OK. So I love books like that where I can sort of see the threads come together but also get additional resources to sort of challenge me and continue to extend me. 00:47:46 That is fantastic. I is now on my reading list. Thank you for that. Fantastic. You're welcome. And the last question I have is just if people want to get in touch with you after the podcast episode? Where can they connect with you if you're open to that? Sure. Absolutely. I, I was an avid Twitter user and I have not been back in a while. Um, but I, I tried to create a little bit of a um community or space on linkedin. So linkedin is probably the best professional spot um to grab me and then if we, if we want to go email or anything else from there, it's, it's easy enough to do. Awesome. That sounds great. And I will link to your linkedin in the show notes too. Perfect. Awesome, Dr Warren. Thank you so much for being on the show. Happy to be here. It was super fun to talk. If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my life coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We weave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. 00:48:51 Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at W W w dot Lindsay, Beth lions dot com slash contact. Until next time. Leaders continue to think. Big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better podcast network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
November 2024
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