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In this episode, we’re considering processes and supports for addressing interpersonal conflict, repairing harm, and restoring connection. We’ll discuss what restorative conferences are, the research on their impacts, and what steps and tools you can use to implement them well.
What are restorative conferences? After building community, restorative conferences are opportunities to repair the harm done to a member(s) of the community, unpack each individual’s understanding of what happened, how they felt, and their suggestions for repairing the harm. Similar to circle practice, the origins of restorative conversations come from Indigenous nations in what is currently known as the “Americas” and the South Pacific. Why?
You can read more research on restorative practices here. What can I do? Step 1: Understand the components The facilitator—likely you—invites participants including the person(s) who caused harm and the person(s) harmed. Each person can invite an adult or peer for moral support. The facilitator asks questions, one at a time. Each person responds, uninterrupted, speaking from the “I”. A talking piece can be used. Step 2: Prepare the questions you will ask I like these questions:
Step 3: Share or co-create agreements for the conference Here are some example agreements you can use, adapt, or use as a starting point to generate your own:
Step 4: Familiarize yourself and your community with relevant language I like the language of unmet needs, and I use an adaptation of Glasser’s 5 basic needs, which I call BASE: Belonging, Autonomy, Survival, Enjoyment. (You can get a free poster of this acronym for your class/space here.) Step 5: Practice Use the language of unmet needs with students and adults in as many situations as possible (e.g., when conflict arises in school, when discussing conflict in the news or in a book). Invite others to role play restorative conferences based on fictional scenarios. This works well in a restorative practices training environment such as staff Professional Development or a student training for restorative conferencing facilitation or something similar like peer mediation. Final Tip To practice the last two steps above, try this: As many times as you can this week, ask: “What does this person need?” To help you implement restorative conferences in your school or district, I’m sharing my Restorative Conference Companion with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 165 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 00:00:01 Educational justice coach, Lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. One more thing. I almost forgot to say, make sure you grab my restorative conference companion, which is a two pager, Google doc that you can use, adapt whatever for free at the blog post for this episode. That's Lindsay Beth lions.com/blog/one 65. Welcome to episode 165 of the time for teacher podcast. I am so excited today to talk about repairing harm with restorative conferences. 00:01:05Edit So I often talk about Circle Practice being my favorite practice of all the instructional practices and community practices more broadly, you can do them with staff with students. But what happens when we have harm that happens in those communities, we need to rebuild and repair that harm that connection. And so a lot of people are into this idea, but they're not sure how to do it. That's what this episode is gonna do. It's gonna walk us through how to do it. All right. So in this episode, we're talking about restorative conferences and really using them to repair harm. So, thinking about what are those processes or supports that we currently have for addressing interpersonal conflict? What processes or language do we have around repairing harm, restoring connection. How do we leverage other existing strategies like circle to maybe repair harm at the class level or the staff level? Uh We'll talk also about what restorative conferences are in this episode, but also research on their impact. So like why would you use this approach specifically when conflict occurs and also what steps and what tools you can use to implement them well in your space, whether that's the classroom space, uh school space, a team space within staff, a district wide space. 00:02:19Edit If you're implementing restorative practices across the board, what does that experience feel like to folks? And what structures are we making common and what principles perhaps are we relying on to serve as kind of the the foundation for whatever personalization can happen in school to school spaces or class to class spaces. So I want you to kind of keep those things in mind as we go through this episode. So the first thing, if anyone is unfamiliar or just needs a clear coherent definition, we wanna make sure everyone's understanding what restorative conferences are and I've heard them called restorative conversations, restorative conferences. I'm sure someone knows better than me, what the differentiator is there. I kind of use them interchangeably, but please feel free to correct me if anyone knows the difference. Um So after building community, I have been trained by the morning site sensor in New York City, that restorative conferences are really the opportunities to repair the harm done to either a member or members, plural of your community. 00:03:25Edit This is an opportunity for all of the individuals involved. And again, I say all of the individuals because this might be something between, you know, one student and another student. So only two folks are involved, but it could also be a student is, I don't know, making a comment or exhibiting behavior that actually disrupts the entire class. And so we need to resolve that conflict and repair that harm, restore that connection class wide. So it might be actually that you have 30 students who are involved in this unpacking of each individual understanding of what happened in that class space and how it impacted their learning. Um So each individual impacted will talk about how they felt or share how they felt and their suggestions for how the harm can be repaired. So this is an important part. I think in the conversation, you're not just saying here's my experience of this and here's how I felt it was bad, right? But where do we go from here? How can the harm be repaired? And I love that it centers often these are students but resort of conferences just to be clear, can happen, adult to adult within a school system. 00:04:28Edit It can also happen student to adults. So there are many stakeholders that could be involved at, at all levels here and those individuals can come up with and can suggest they're really at the forefront of suggesting what happens next. And so they are the ones who decide how the harm can be repaired, which I I absolutely love now similar to circle practice. I want to acknowledge that the origins of restorative conversations and conferencing come from indigenous nations and what is currently known as the Americas and the South Pacific. So specifically the training that I have had draws on these Indigenous Nations practices. And so that's, that's what I'm going to be sharing with you today is my understanding of these practices and just want to acknowledge where that comes from. So let's talk about the why, why restorative conversations conferences? Well, when we have this focus on repairing the harm addressing underlying means that are going unmet and we truly try to restore connection and sensitive belonging. 00:05:33Edit We see improved attendance in students versus more punitive disciplinary measures. We also see an increase in perception of safety and conducting this by those students in the communities that use restorative practices versus punitive disciplinary practices. And for the rest of this list, just know this is kind of a comparison of spaces that do use restorative practices versus those traditional punitive disciplinary practices. When we use restorative practices and specifically conferencing, we reduce exclusionary discipline rates. Specifically, we see that black low income female and students with disabilities. Um these populations are suspended less often than punitive disciplinary environments. It also when we have restorative conferences, democratizes power. So anyone can actually call a restorative conference, you can have a student, call a teacher to justice or to a conference. Um It, it doesn't have a typical top down. It's not that the teacher forces students into this environment. It's an invitation to have a conversation and I have had students call a teacher to justice. I have had students call one another to justice and in conversation. 00:06:37Edit And so I do love that democratization of power that it is now in the hands of the person who is harmed most typically. Um but also a person who has harmed and wants to repair that harm can also call that conference. Um But typically the individual who has been harmed or individuals who have been harmed, they have that power to call the person to justice and have the conversation and say, you know, I, I want to be acknowledged and valued. And I want an opportunity to share my experience of the situation and co create the solution that I need from whoever has harmed me. So I do love that democratization of, of the power dynamic there. I also love this practice because it is universally usable, right? You can use this in any class. Of course, the language is going to be different and maybe you structure the steps a little bit differently. Uh It might be a shorter conversation and it might be that you use different language. I'm gonna talk about unmet needs and things and that might be a little um bar for students who are in maybe like preschool. But I do think you can have the same kind of conversation. It's just that maybe you use different language um and different scaffolds. 00:07:40Edit So you might use something like emojis or facial expressions or something to determine, you know, what is the feeling that I'm having versus a word wall of choose from these words, what feeling you have, right? Things like that. So it is universally usable. And while I have had training and I support training for anyone who wants to do this, I actually think you can um with intention with a little bit of foundational knowledge which you'll have by the end of this episode, to some degree, you could start tomorrow, right? You can, you can make the effort and you can always improve as we always can, but you can make the effort to actually start this practice tomorrow. It is not something that requires, you know, like maybe curriculum development. Um mm months of of practice of honing of all these different moving pieces. It's like a few questions and a few principles and you just get better as you go. And that's again, my understanding of it and my, my experience with that has been this is very user friendly and, and ready to go as long as you understand, the basic underpinnings of it. I also love this because it offers structure. 00:08:44Edit So sometimes we're really eager to have conversations about harm and healing and we're just not sure how to do it well. And I love that this provides a concrete structure for anyone who is interested but really apprehensive because they're just not sure what it actually looks like in practice or, or what the steps should be in practice. I also love this because it decreases the future frequency and this is anecdotal. I, this is just how I've seen this operate. Um But I've witnessed kind of a a decrease in in future frequency of conflict between students when we resolve it in this way versus when one is disciplined. And then we have the tension that escalates and continues. Um I've seen a decrease in the intensity of future conflicts. It's much easier to, for example, bring folks together in a conversation when they've already had one, they're familiar with the process, they understand that it's not, you know, putting them on trial or anything. And, and so that intensity um of of the initial harm is reduced because there's more connection built, more trust and more compassion built within the conferences. But also that the um the duration of kind of the negative impact of the conflict are reduced because there is a clear structure in place that you can just have this restorative conversation. 00:09:57Edit So you don't have to fester and let all of this tension bubble up and really negatively impact the classroom environment or the interpersonal relationships. But instead say, hey, let's move this to this next phase and I'll link to more even more research than that um in the blog post for this episode. That's gonna be Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 65. So feel free to head there and get some more. OK. Now what are the steps? Let's go through those. So I think step number one is understanding the component. So you wanna make sure that you understand what exactly a short of conferencing is and how it, how it kind of moves. So the facilitator likely this is going to be you whoever is listening and it doesn't matter what your role is, it could be. You're a classroom teacher, you're a para professional, you are a cafeteria worker and and witnessing conflict in the the lunch line. It could be that you are a district administrator um resolving something in your staff, uh whatever it is, anyone can be a facilitator and that includes students and that's a whole other percent probably is is training students for taking on roles like this and facilitating experience like this. 00:11:05Edit But the facilitator is going to invite participants which will include the person or persons who caused harm and the person or people that were harmed. Each of those individuals can also invite an adults or peer if they would like to just for moral support. So this is optional. Many students are just like that feels complicated and I actually just want to resolve this quickly. Um Others are like, yes, absolutely. This feels very stressful for me and I would like to be able to call my mom and see when she can come in, right? So whatever works for you and, and by you, I mean, the individual students or individuals who are in the conference, the facilitator, once you get everyone together is going to ask questions, you're gonna ask them one at a time so that each person can respond uninterrupted. I encourage you to share with them some agreements which we're, we're gonna talk to you in a, in a bit. But one of the big ones is just to speak from the eye. What is my experience, my feeling? Um Not like I think you did X, right? 00:12:08Edit But I experienced frustration, anger, sadness, you know, when, when this happens, um I witnessed uh this happening, right? Like so these are kind of the things that we wanna think about as we're inviting students to converse. It's like, how do we set that stage? Now, one of the supports that you could use as a talking piece. So if students are familiar with circles, what a great way to extend that to this smaller conversation and say just a reminder when you are holding the talking piece, you can speak or share. But when you don't have it, you really wanna make sure that, you know, you're, you're listening actively. Um you are paying attention to whoever is sharing at the time. Now, step two, after you really understand the kind of components of how this works, prepare the questions you're gonna ask. So I'm gonna share some now feel free to use these to adapt them to generate your own. How I was trained was basically uh an arc similar to this one. What happened? So you kind of get the gist from every member involved. Again, they share what their experience of the situation was. 00:13:12Edit So we gotta get clear on what exactly happened. Then how did you each feel? Right? Or if you want to go a little bit deeper and talk about a met knees, like what need did you have in that moment that you weren't able to get? So for the person who did harm, right? Like what was going on for you as well as the person who was harmed? Like why was this so frustrating to you or so harmful to you? Like what was the need that didn't get met for you as this all was happening? Who was affected? Right? So who was affected in terms of you individually? Like how, how you shared how you felt but who else might have been affected? What did you witness? Right. Again, speaking from the eye, um you know, did students come up to you later and share something and then finally, how can the harm be repaired? So really identifying what happened, how did you individually feel who was affected? Like what was the impact of whatever happened? And then how do we move forward, repairing the harm and for the person who caused the harm specifically for that question, you know, what can you do to repair the harm? So really taking on that accountability piece step three after you've prepped the questions in the general structure, I would share with participants or I would core with them either or, you know, feel out the situation and think about the willingness that students have to engage or participants have to engage in the co creation of agreements, but I would have them ready to go. 00:14:33Edit So for the conference, what are the agreements we're going to use? So here's some sample ones that again, feel free to use, adapt, generate your own, only speak if you have the talking piece use I statements, focus on your own experience, your feelings, your unmet needs, listen, deeply, exercise compassion as much as possible and take responsibility for repairing any harm you may have caused. So, thinking again about this idea of we're speaking from the eye, we're listening deeply. It's not just about us. We are sharing our point of view, our, our experience, feelings and needs. We are also really working hard to listen and exercise compassion, right? As well as that accountability piece of course, of of repairing the harm and what can we do to move it forward before I would familiar familiarize yourself with your language that you want to use. So again, that's gonna vary by age. I really like the idea of unmet needs because we all have these core needs and typically a conflict is going to be connected to one of them um in my experience. 00:15:39Edit So I use an adaptation of glasses, five basic needs and I call it base. I've talked about it before on the podcast. I will link in the blog post uh poster that you can get that has these on it in case you're interested in hanging it up in your classroom or space, the base acronym stands for belonging, autonomy, survival and enjoyment. So not only you as an individual want to familiarize yourself with this as a potential facilitator, but you also want people in your community, adults students to be familiar with this as well. So if you ask them in a restorative conference. It's not the first time they've heard what Unmet needs do you have? Right? Like you have something ready to go, you have the poster, perhaps ready to go or some other sort of um visual or support mechanism for providing some language if they're really unsure how to answer. And again, it might not be unmet needs that you decide is the thing that you want to use to anger this conversations. But think of something whatever that is where you go with that. And then honestly, I think step five is just a practice. So use the language for example of unmet needs if that's the thing you're going with, with students with adults in as many situations as possible. 00:16:48Edit So a conflict arises in school. OK, let's talk about this. Let's debrief what was unmet need even if it wasn't in your space in your class and your OK. So there was this other conflict that happened in this other space. OK. Well, what was going on with that? Right. That's actually kind of helpful to separate yourself and the people practicing this from what's actually going on. It's not your own thing. The emotion is a bit lower. We can think in our heads a little bit more and it feels more emotionally safe. And so when you're discussing conflict, for example, in the news or a book, like a character is going through conflict that becomes a nice stepping stone to eventually getting to the point where you can share your own emotional experiences and your advent needs. So practice with that, but also invite others to role play restorative conferences. So come up with some fictional scenarios, there's some online and learning for justice has some on their website. I think this works really well in a formal kind of training environment when everyone's learning restorative practices. So this might be a staff professional development student training if you're training students for something like peer mediation. Ideally, it's it's specifically for restorative conferencing facilitation, but students can do this too. 00:17:51Edit And I want to emphasize that and they're really good at practicing. Even if it is not for a formal training, I have done just pure, I think this is becoming more common here but social emotional learning circles or activities that are separate from like just integrating social emotional stuff and all that we do, which is I think the best idea. But when we do um separate curriculum for fel like this is a great one, right in our lives, we will come into conflict with so many individuals, we need to just be able to do this well. So it's a wonderful skill to be able to equip students with, you can definitely take class time to practice or if you're a leader, encourage your teachers to take class time to practice this. It will benefit the school community, but it will also benefit these students individually, many of us need breakfast with us. Finally, as a last tip before you go, I would practice those last two steps to familiarize yourself with relevant language and practice the actual conferences by trying this simple practice for the next week as many times as you can for one week after you're done with this episode. 00:18:59Edit Ask the question, what does this person need? Anytime you see conflict arise, anytime you interact with a person try to identify their unmet need, feel free to substitute any language or um foundational thing you want here. So if it's not I that need like what is this person expressing in their nonverbal language as they communicate with me, whatever it is, but get practice with one of the components of restorative conferencing and just practice for a full week that will make it so that it becomes kind of second nature as you facilitate these conferences as you participate, potentially in these conferences, as an individual participants, it will make everything just better. Your community will be strengthened. You will have these skills to rely on when you need to repair harm in the moment. You can do this. You are amazing. Let me know how it goes and I will be with you again next week. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, Sapir and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. 00:20:04Edit Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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5/20/2024 164. "How Should We Live Together?" Designing Deliberations with Dr. Diana Hess & Dr. Paula McAvoyRead Now
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In this episode, Dean Hess and Dr. McAvoy discuss the importance of political classrooms that engage students in critical discussions about societal issues. They emphasize the necessity for educational spaces to be inclusive, allowing for diverse ideological perspectives and the cultivation of political literacy. They also share strategies for how you can prepare for and facilitate these conversations in your educational context.
Diana E. Hess is the dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and holds the Karen A. Falk Distinguished Chair of Education. Dr. Hess’s research focuses on civic and democratic education. Formerly, Dr. Hess was the senior vice president of the Spencer Foundation, a high school social studies teacher, a teachers’ union president, and the associate executive director of the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago. Paula McAvoy earned her PhD in philosophy of education in 2010 at UW-Madison’s Department of Educational Policy Studies. Since then, she has worked as an assistant professor at Illinois State, an associate program officer at the Spencer Foundation and as the Director of the Center for Ethics and Education at UW-Madison. She is currently an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Learning Sciences at North Carolina State. Prior to this, she taught high school social studies for 10 years at the Foothill Middle College Program in Los Altos, California. The Big Dream Both Dean Hess and Dr. McAvoy share a big dream for education centered on equity and justice. Dr. McAvoy envisions accessible strategies for all students to engage in meaningful classroom discussions, while Dean Hess dreams of leveraging the diversity present in educational settings to foster conversations across differing views. As Dr. McAvoy puts it, the aim is for students to have real discussions that model democratic political equality, tolerance, and the consideration of the common good. Mindset Shifts Required Discussions are not time-fillers but intentional academic exercises with democratic aims. As Dr. McAvoy explains, students should be seen as political equals whose voices are all deserving of respect and consideration in the conversation.
Dean Hess explains you might ask: “How has the idea about paying for college tuition either affected someone that you know or is potentially going to affect you in the future? And so that you can share out, ‘This is where I am on this position personally,’ and that helps the discussion, because now I know that your parents are paying for college and I know that mine are not, and so everyone benefits from knowing that information and that you treat each other differently when you feel, when you first know where everyone stands personally, and so then you can move from that towards more information about college tuition.” Administrative Support: Ask: “Do we want to be a place where there is good discussion? What does that discussion look like?” Then, provide access to professional development focused on facilitating those discussions. Also consider creating school or district-based (non-classroom-based) “purple spaces” for conversation. Dean Hess is doing this now with Deliberation Dinners. She says participants can take the Pew Ideology Quiz. They will be placed in one of nine groups across the ideological spectrum. Then build 12 tables of 10 students to ensure ideological diversity and also other differences (e.g., grade, stakeholder groups, demographic identities). This can help people with different points of view learn how to talk to each other about really important issues! One Step to Get Started Identify topics that reflect diversity in student perspectives. Create “purple spaces”! Tip: You can survey your students to see where their ideas lie on particular issues to see if there is a diversity of viewpoints and competing good values around an issue. You may want to use the above Pew Ideology Quiz as well. Stay Connected You can connect with this week’s guest Dean Diana Hess via email at [email protected] and Dr. Paula McAvoy via email at [email protected]. To help you think more deeply about this topic, we’re linking the Social Education journal’s special issue on “Teaching Social Studies in Polarized Times”, some of which is open source, so you can read them for free without a scholarly account. And, if you’re looking for more details on the– ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 164 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript here. Quotes:
00:00:00Edit Hello, my name is Leah and I'm part of the team that produces this podcast. In today's episode, we are talking with Doctor Diana Hess and Doctor Paula mcavoy. Doctor Diana Hess is the Dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin Madison and holds the care and Falk distinguished chair of education. Doctor Hess's research focuses on civic and democratic education. Her first book Controversy in the Classroom won the exemplary research award from the National Council for Social Studies. Formerly Doctor Hess was the senior Vice president of the Spencer Foundation, a high school study. So social studies teacher, a teachers union president and the Associate Executive Director of the Constitutional Rights Foundation. Chicago Hess is finishing her ninth and final year as dean this May and will be writing a book with her colleague Lynn Gleick about the importance of deliberation of political issues in higher education. Next year, Paula mcavoy earned her phd in philosophy of Education in 2010 at UW Medicine's Department of Educational Policy Studies. TRANSCRIPT 00:01:12 Since then, she has worked as an assistant professor at Illinois State, an Associate program officer at the Spencer Foundation and as the director of the Center for Ethics and Education at UW Medicine. Prior to this, she taught high school social studies for 10 years at the foothill middle College program in Los Altos, California. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Doctor Diana Hat. Doctor Paul mcelvoy. Welcome to the Time for Teacher podcast. 00:02:18Edit It's great to be here. I'm so excited to have you both here today. I want to start with an opening question that I ask everyone and feels really big, feel free to answer it. I'd love to hear from each of you in whatever way you want to respond. So I love this idea of freedom dreaming, which many folks talk about. Dr Bettina loves specifically talk about it as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice which I love. And so with that in mind, what is the big dream that each of you holds for education? Paula, would you like to start? I'll start, this is Paula. Um So I gave this some thought before. And um one thing that I've done since the book is Command Diana has done also is uh professional development with teachers around how to engage students in discussions of controversial political issues. And one thing that I've noticed is that at the end of, you know, I teach a variety of strategies and then teachers will often say this is so great. I'm gonna teach it to my A P students and it just breaks my heart because I want, um you know, the strategies that we talk about we're gonna talk about today are accessible to everybody. 00:03:31Edit And so, and it's just so important to give all students the opportunities to have real discussion in the classroom. And so I think that that would be my opener. Yeah. Well, ditto to that. Um you know, I've had that experience to Paul and I always find it, uh you know, really disappointing. And I also feel like it means that all the things that I had done in the PD, no one apparently was paying attention to because, you know, the, the content of the PD is the antithesis of that. Um But relatedly, um my, my dream is that we can use high quality discussion in both uh K 12. And in higher ed, increasingly, I've been doing a lot of work in Higher Ed to uh take advantage of the diversity that we have in so many settings that I think right now we are at best not taking advantage of and at worst, we're kind of actively putting barriers up that would allow students to be able to engage in meaningful conversation with people who have both similar views and very dissimilar views. 00:04:48Edit So, um that is my dream. I love both of those, those are so good and, and I love that equity and justice are really at the core of each of those responses. So I, I wanna just get right into it. I have just recently read the Political Classroom, which is published a while back, I think 2018. And I just want all the listeners and leaders and educators who listen to this to know about it as well because I think a lot of people are wondering, you know, what does it look like in practice to do this well. And so the first thing I'd love to know it and I think Paula, maybe we could start with you with this one. I think with the six possible aims of a political classroom that you list in the book. I think this is fascinating and something that I had never thought of as like a particular aim that you would have as you know, entering a classroom conversation. Do you wanna take us through those? Sure, thank you. I think I'll start before going through that list with the idea of the political classroom, which is sort of a, a complicated idea or not complicated, but it, it sounds um like maybe what you shouldn't be doing in the classroom, which is making the classroom political. 00:05:55Edit And so we intentionally use the term in the title of political classroom and we defined it as a classroom in which young people are um having opportunities to discuss questions about how we should live together. And so how should we live together is the essential question of a democratic society. Um And so, how should we live together? Questions can be everything from public policy questions to rules of the classroom, questions to, you know, et cetera. And so, um so when we talk about the political classroom, we're talking about moments in which young people are getting to have authentic and real discussion about issues about how we should live together. Um And we were primarily in the book looking at public policy questions. Um But so why do that in the first place is that's an idea that's kind of grounded in deliberative theory, which is a democratic theory. And so, and the idea that discussion and engagement across our differences is good for democracy. 00:06:58Edit And so, um we said that so a lot of people see, I think teachers can often think of treat discussion in the classroom as a little bit of a time filler rather than um this is something we're intentionally doing um for academic purposes. And so, um so we've identified six aims. So what you might sort of think about is the, why should we do this in the first place? An the answer to the question, why should we do this? So one is that when we discuss with others, we necessarily, or we should be treating them as political equals. And so it models a type of democratic political equality in the classroom that says everybody has a right to their an opinion and has should have the opportunity to discuss and contribute. Uh The second aim is that it um it promotes tolerance and tolerance. Here often means just being respectful to people who are different but political tolerance. Um And in the form of deliberation and discussion is that we should learn to have the idea that I shouldn't use the state to just get my way. 00:08:01Edit Um So I need to be taller. I need to be, I need to check myself a little bit um in the democratic process that I'm not trying to, as Danielle Allen says, um uh uh to use a winner, take all approach to democracy. Um And then we're helping young people through discussion to develop autonomy, meaning. So their develop their own ideas about how they want to live that demo um deliberation models a type of political fairness and that we model for students or encourage students to think about solutions that promote the common good. So the a deliberation is different than a debate. So you're not trying to win, but you're trying to come up with a good solution. Um then deliberation and discussion, um hopefully motivate students to become more engaged in public decision making because you've and do modeling and that you're modeling that with them in the classroom. And then last we set an aim is um helping young people develop the political literacy of understanding. 00:09:06Edit Um not just what you think about tax policy or something like that, but why tax policy has an underlying the tax policy you choose has an underlying ideological value to it. And so to help young people, I see, we see we saw in the book and continue to see a lot of teachers willing to engage issues, but they're not really wanting to touch like what is it, what is the, what, why would that position be conservative or liberal or what? So when that gets at the bigger purpose of what sort of democracy or society do you want in the first place? And so helping young people kind of engage those bigger values? Thank you so much. That's brilliant. Yeah, and, and so you can choose any combination of aims, right? You don't have to do all six or you don't have to do just one. Is that right? I mean, discussions in general a political, I mean, democratic education, I would say in general is aiming towards all of those. It doesn't mean that in every moment you get, those are all getting equal weight and attention. But you could, uh you know, a particular discussion strategy might really emphasize fairness by encouraging students to find um a point of consensus, for example. 00:10:18Edit Um But in a different strategy might not promote that as much. Hm, excellent. Thank you for, for sharing that. And then I think the next piece for me is how do you decide, right? What issue you're gonna put up for deliberation? I appreciate that you distinguish between a debate, right? And a deliberation. They are not the theme. How do we uh really select those? And so Diana, did you want to share a little bit about the framework that you have for determining how to select those issues? Sure. So I think the most important thing is to determine whether an issue is actually an issue, meaning that are there multiple and competing points of view that you want students to learn about and to literally deliberate, you know, deliberate means to weigh or to balance. And so one of the things that we explored in the book was the challenges that people often have, determining what's actually an issue. And one of the issues is about what's an issue, you know, whether something is an open issue or a more settled issue is a matter of, of great debate. 00:11:28Edit But we really took this on in the book by looking at a variety of different um criteria that teachers could use when they're trying to determine if something is uh an issue or not. And, uh, one of the things that Paul and I have done both uh together and separately in professional development is to really help, uh, teachers wrestle with that. One thing that I've came, come away with is to say the, the question about whether something is an issue or not is a question that itself is best deliberated professionally with other teachers. I think, you know, if possible, making solo decisions on that, uh oftentimes those decisions aren't, aren't quite as good. But as we know from uh what we've done in the book, we've distinguished between empirical issues and policy issues uh by empirical issues, we simply mean, this is a question that either has been or could be answered imper empirically. 00:12:35Edit So uh does uh human behavior cause climate change? You know, that that's an empirical question we argued in the book when it was when we were first writing it, which was, you know, quite some time ago that the answer to that question was yes and therefore to deliberate that question as an open question wouldn't make a lot of sense. You know, later the next generation science standards said the same thing and we both felt very good about that uh to be validated uh that way, um Policy questions are questions by definition, uh where you would have, you know, multiple and, and competing views and there's a relationship between empirical questions and policy questions. You know, and we listen to, to people deliberate, for example, whether we should have a flat tax, you know, they're often talking about, well, what effect might that have on this or on that? And it's not like we don't know anything about those. Um I think the most important thing that we talk about in the book is the need to make sure that the issues that you select are are issues that have a content win. 00:13:42Edit You know, Paula was talking before about the aims that we've laid out in the book and one of the aims is political literacy. And so we, I think generally believe that it's important for students to learn uh very important content through the discussion of political issues. And I always use that as uh something that I rely on when I'm trying to select. But I also think that the more important thing is to make sure that you've got a tension between competing good values. So, you know, good issue questions are not clearly. Well, there's a good and a bad. It's there may be two goods you're trying to achieve. So you may be trying to achieve equal opportunity and inclusion and free speech. Those are both goods. And there's a whole bunch of policy questions that bring those two goods into 10. And my favorite issues are those that help students explore tension between competing uh good values because I think those good value tensions are perennial and even if there is a resolution to a particular issue, doesn't mean that you're not gonna have issues that come up in the future that involve those same tensions. 00:14:58Edit Yeah. Oh my gosh, I am so interested in this. So I think that one of the things that you had named was like the professional judgment framework that and integrates a bunch of the things that you each have already said to make that decision for your class. Do either of you want to kind of talk a little bit about, about that piece. And I don't know if you have an example, friends of mine that's like here's how this would work or that you've seen a teacher in practice kind of work through to make a decision like that just to illuminate for folks how that might work. I can talk that one. The so part of the, the book does three things. It presents this, the findings from this very large study of high school teachers who are engaging students in discussion. Um And it also presents cases of teachers practicing in very different contexts. So we have a teacher who's in a very blue bubble, a red bubble and then kind of a suburban purple school context. And then there we found that there are these questions that teachers often struggle with one being. Should I share my views in the classroom? 00:16:00Edit For example, or which issues as we just discussed. Should I treat as controversial? And there's not really a clear cut answer to these questions. And what we found and argue in the book is that you really um that, that teachers need to be weighing what is, what, what is my school context here? What am I trying to do in the first place? And what evidence can help me um answer the uh answer this question. So for example, on a, should I share my views with the classroom? Uh We have lots that we could say about this. But the, the one way to think about it is if you in the context of my class, if I'm a liberal teacher in a conservative area, and I'm having students discuss something and they turn to me and ask, well, what do you think about this issue? So that context matters, what is, what is my identity to them? Um How are they gonna hear me if I tell my views? And then also, what am I trying to do? Am I trying to actually have them do the discussion? 00:17:03Edit Then maybe I don't need to share my views in that moment because I'm trying to nurture the discussion in that moment. And maybe I think that my views will derail it in some way. And so thinking about not just in principle, should teachers ever share their views, but what is the, that you should share your views if you think it furthers your furthers, your aims. And so um rather than thinking, you know, with the professional judgment, we're trying to not make rules for teachers or the set, the this is the answer. But to really say so, what are the things that you should be thinking about when you face difficult choices in the classroom? Yeah, I love that in, in the book that you had really focused on that as like a key thing or is it advancing discussion? Is it in the best interest of the students not? Do I want to share or not? Does it make me feel good as, as the educator? I really appreciated that very much because I think it can be so challenging to, to make that that particular choice. So the other thing, it might at times be good. Oh, sorry to interrupt. It might at times to be the right thing to do for the discussion, you know, so it's um that it might be that they really trust and like you and if you share your view, they say, oh wow, I didn't realize that that was a, I never thought of it that way before and that can be really valuable. 00:18:15Edit Hi, this is Leah Popping in to share this episode's Freebie an article by Paula mcavoy title discussing politics in polarized times. You can find it at the blog post for this episode, www dot Lindsay, Beth lions.com/one 64. Check it out now back to the show. Absolutely. I think that vulnerability, when you're asking students to be vulnerable, it can be a big trust builder and foundation builder with you as the educator are also willing to go there with them. I Yeah, totally. I, I think there's so, so much I could honestly talk to you guys forever about this. But one of the pieces that I'm really interested in your thoughts on and I after reading the book is that you mentioned several critiques of cele of theory and, and Sanders, I think talks about like it really advantages and privileges like the white middle class way of talking in the book. I mean, you bring in Daniel Allen's work and talking about like that emotion can't really be disentangled from the political deliberation, which I really appreciated. And, and she talks about like the, the uh revelation of what fellow citizens are worth to them in these spaces, like it really opens up that. 00:19:20Edit And so I, I was thinking about this idea of like there the value of being able to have individual stories shared, to put like a face behind an issue. But that also, so that's beautiful and right, it also sometimes positions individual students in the classroom to take on that responsibility that might have some emotional weights. And so I'm just wondering like, is that something that happens in more of like I'm thinking of like indigenous circles and community circles of like, I'm just sharing experiences versus like an actual deliberation of a policy issue and, and kind of like how do we balance that tension of the students who are potentially taking on the load of? Like this has a lot of weight for me when we talk about a particular issue and me being vulnerable enough to share my story might have a bigger emotional weight on me as the sharer than like the people around me that are benefiting from that sharing. Does that make sense, Paul? You want to start? And now China? So, so a few things. 00:20:22Edit So first, let's so Sanders, who's who you say there? Uh just to make one distinction is that she's talking about adults in deliberative spaces like juries. And so one peop one pro one issue, I, I don't know what we're to describe. One critique that gets raised about classroom deliberation is this one and we raise it in the book as a concern that some students aren't heard the same way as other students. And that makes a lot of teachers worried. Um And I think that when I, so I've been doing a couple of studies in the last year and I, and this is one thing that I've been kind of paying attention to. And one thing that you see is that classroom deliberations are deliberations among novices, first of all, and they are deliberations that are in many way, they are fabricated or they're, they're sort of attempts at deliberations. So they're not actually deciding a jury case, they're not actually deciding public policy, but it's got an educational value to it. Um And so in this way, they don't, they don't. 00:21:26Edit So when we might say in sort of, in theory, deliberation should play by these particular rules of rational exchange of ideas in practice with young people, they're naturally bringing up stories about the connecting stories to their lives. They are naturally, you know, engage, you know, they look at the materials that you provide them, but they're also, they're just bouncing it off of the their worlds, right? And that's just the way it is. Um And so what I've been playing with in the last few years is really trying to blend this idea of like, don't think of things as strictly deliberation, but you scaffold the deliberation in such a way that the first thing what I have to what I have groups do, especially if the groups don't know themselves very well is share, if we're gonna say we're gonna talk about uh should college tuition be free, for example, um Share out well, this is what among adults, but you could share it with high school students. How does the idea about paying for, you know, how does college, how is paying for college tuition, either affected someone that, you know, or potentially going to affect you in the future? 00:22:36Edit And so that you can share out this is where I am on this position personally. And that helps the discussion because now I know um I know that your parents are paying for college and I know that mine are not. And so everyone benefits from knowing that information and you, you treat each other differently when you feel when you first know where everyone stands personally. And so then you can move from that towards more information about college tuition, deepening our learning, thinking about the public policy, thinking about the values and 10 and then move towards the liberation. So I think thinking of um you know that that classroom deliberation is a particular type of um you know, educational experience first and foremost, and that what we're trying to do is provide students with the skills to do that. And one of those skills is caring how other people feel about are are affected. Yeah, one of the things that I'm really interested in is the distinction between what Paula is describing, which I really like and asking students their views on the issue. 00:23:44Edit So Paula's question was how might this affect you? So you can imagine saying I am really going to be affected by free college tuition because it means I won't have to take out so much student loan. And I still might think that free college tuition is a bad policy choice, right? So, you know, I think one of the things we've that I've experienced is asking students at the beginning of a deliberation. What are your views on the policy? I don't like to do because I don't want people to take a public stand on. Here's what I think about X because my experience has been, once people do that, they don't wanna, they actually prematurely come to a position or they're not open to uh possibly changing their mind. But what Paul is talking about is helping people understand the connection between, you know, people's lives and specific issues. And quite frankly, it's not illegitimate or anti deliberative to have personal stories as part of a deliberation. 00:24:52Edit You know, one of my um most interesting deliberations that I've ever listened to was when the Senate was deliberating the Americans with Disabilities Act. And Bob Dole told the story of his wartime injury that according to at least some research had a huge effect on getting folks to support that landmark legislation who otherwise wouldn't. So, you know, every time I listen to a good deliberation, I hear someone talk about how something affects them. We just had a deliberation as part of our new program here at UW Madison called Deliberation Dinners on abortion a week ago. And one of the um students was talking about from her perspective. Now, this was not uh she was not generalizing it to everybody, but from her perspective, getting birth control was really easy now and much, much easier than it had been uh reported to be in the past. 00:25:55Edit So that was for her a reason that influenced what she thinks about abortion policy. And, you know, she told that story very authentically and it was absolutely appropriate for her to do it. So when people say, well, we don't want students telling personal stories when talking about policy issues. I'm like, well, how could you possibly have a good deliberation without hearing about how real people are affected by policy questions? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you both for sharing those specific examples as well. I think of um Doctor Shri Ridges Patrick and I had come up with uh it's a Juan Eels work we adapted to think about racial discourse. And one of the things that we talk about for generative dialogue is actually the connection of kind of the head and the heart and like the emotion and the intellectual pieces. And that often we're like overly intellectualizing when we divorce those emotional pieces from the stories from the discussions. And so I love that, that this can be that too that, that this deliberation can be that as well. You know, it also goes back to the aims that Paula was talking about at the beginning of the podcast. 00:27:03Edit You know, one of the things that we need to think about is both how do we advance our own self interest? There's nothing wrong with doing that. Um And how do we make decisions based on what might be good for a broader set of people and I've always thought of non novice or more expert decision making is when we can look outside of our own interest. And, you know, for that reason, I am always intrigued when I hear students say, well, my personal position on this is X, but I don't think the state should do why? Because I don't think the state should be telling other people what to do about X. You know, so I don't want people to think that what democratic decision making means is what is my interest and how do I best advance my own interest? I love that. You said that I just think about so many of I taught like a feminist course in high school and so many of my students would talk about abortion in that way. 00:28:07Edit Like, you know, like maybe I personally would choose acts. I think policy should be why. Like I thought it was a really interesting distinction that was, that came up a lot in that particular topic. But thank you for eliminating that for us because I think that's important to keep in mind for educators. Um One of the things that I think a as you know, leaders are supporting teachers to do this well, and teachers are kind of creating these spaces in their classrooms. I'm wondering if they're specific practices or action steps that you would suggest for either the teachers as well as the leaders who are kind of supporting teachers to create those spaces. Um and, and dealing with all of the things that are happening in the world that may um kind of impact that any, any thoughts for either group, teachers or leaders, one that I have is that I think in the diana kind of alluded to this point earlier is that it's, it would be valuable if teachers and administrators would sit down and talk about the question. What does a good discussion look like? And how should we get it? Um And I think discussion is a word that's used in, it's often misused or it's, you know, a, a person might actually be lecturing when they use the word discussion, like I'm discussing World War One. 00:29:19Edit And so we need to, I think in the public discourse, there's a lot of confusion about uh teacher talk right now versus student talk. And so what um I think if schools could sit down and think about, do we want to be a place where there is a good discussion? What kind of, what does that discussion look like? And I would say one answer is that the teach, the students should talk to each other? And um and then how do you, how do you cultivate that? And that's, that's a learned skill. People think, oh, everyone can talk, everyone can discuss. That's not, that's not the case that people need, they actually need scaffolded practice um on how to, on how to learn to have this sort of discussion. And so I think um having schools, school leaders and teachers stop and think about what is it that we actually want to do and, and how do, what and what supports do we as teachers on a school need to get that into place? Yeah, I totally agree with that. You know, we often say in the discussion project that we want um students to learn how to discuss in the same way. 00:30:27Edit We want students to learn how to write and we want students to learn how to do mathematical uh thinking. We want students to learn how to discuss. And we know from, I think pretty solid research now that it's not like you are, are an innate uh discuss uh discussion is something that is can be learned and, and needs to be. But we also want people to discuss to learn. So the question to go back to how we started this, which is, well, why do this to begin with? Well, one reason to do this to begin with is because there's all sorts of things you can learn from having discussions that you're not gonna learn and you're not gonna learn as well absent them. That discussion is uh itself a really powerful pedagogical tool. And so if we care in schools about students learning, and I'm, I, I would vote for that. I always say yes to that, then we should see um discussion and deliberation as both powerful uh pedagogical tools, but back to the aims that Paula started this with, with uh really important democratic outcomes in their own. 00:31:41Edit Right? Yeah. One of the things that I had had written down too that I loved as a suggestion and just in addition to the ideas that you all just shared is that you could survey students to identify where there's diversity in the topics like perspectives on the topics that kind of a call to what you were all sharing before was making sure that you have that diversity of viewpoints. You decided as an issue, right? In context, I never would have thought of that. And I just really wanted to name that for listeners, but that's a really cool idea. And also just that you call out for leaders to make sure that teachers have that good PD so that we can build those discussion skills and students and and you need like a good facilitator to be able to help build those discussion skills and students. So making sure that teachers also have access to all of all of that PD um so that this can happen, right? So thank you for that. I think just to, to move to kind of close here, I don't want to take too much of your time. But I'm, I'm curious to know for folks who want to learn more about what you're doing now because I know you, this was an older book, this was published. 00:32:43Edit Years and years ago, I'm curious to know, you know, what are you currently working on or where can people kind of learn from you in this moment or connect with you online spaces or, or any of that? Um For me, I, um I've been working on a couple of studies that are looking at different discussion strategies. And so, um and how students differently experience them, how that affects how their views change as a result of the discussion. And so looking at um really the structure of discussion, so a lot of people imagine that the best discussion is this like beautiful seminar style with people in a circle and everyone's participating, that's, it's so hard to get that discussion in a high school in a typical high school classroom. I mean, you can build towards it for sure. Um But there's a lot of different strategies that people that and structures that people can use and those structures model how to discuss, they actually teach the how of discussion and they, they help teachers maintain norms, they make sure that students are operating from a common uh sort of starting point of a base of knowledge, you know, there's materials involved. 00:33:53Edit And so I think, um and so what I've been looking at is how do the, how do different strategies affect either what students experience in the discussion and how their views um change as a result of this, you know, different strategies that is super interesting. Oh, my gosh. I can't wait to read some of that. Yeah, Paul has got a really great article in the most recent issue of social education. I'm gonna hold it up and this is an, a special issue on teaching social studies in polarized times. Um, that was, uh, guest edited by Jeremy Stoddard who's a professor here at UW Madison and I worked with him as well and I would, I think there are a number of articles in this special issue that are really great. I would call out Paula's in particular. Um I've been working on two projects. One that Paula started uh here when she was at UW Madison, the discussion project that what we actually we started together. And then another one that we just started this year called Deliberation Dinners. 00:34:57Edit Um And that was based on a project that Paula had started at North Carolina State that was called I think Democracy Dinners. Um And both of those projects uh people can find online. The Deliberation Dinners is really new. We created ideologically diverse groups of students by having them take the pew ideology quiz, which for your listeners, I would, I would encourage them to go to the pew ideology quiz and they will answer uh a bunch of questions and then they will be placed in one of nine different groups. So it's not just left or right, but it's across the ideological spectrum. And then we built 12 tables of 10 students to ensure that we had ideological diversity and also different majors, different years in schools, et cetera. And we've been doing a lot of experimentation uh and piloting of, you know, how you help students who typically don't talk with people with different points of view, learn how to do that in the context of highly authentic and uh really important uh state based issues, legalizing marijuana, increasing nuclear capacity, abortion, et cetera. 00:36:16Edit And so, uh a lot of what Paul and I learned from the political classroom that we saw naturally occurring in these purple classrooms that you read about. Um what we're trying to figure out is how is there a way to d to create purple spaces, especially purple spaces when everyone believes that everybody has the same views. And, you know, one of the things we've learned is that there's always more diversity than you think. But so we've been having a lot of fun uh on that project. Um It's, you know, and, and I also think it probably has a lot of utility for high school uh teachers and students as well. I was, I gave a keynote to the Wisconsin Council for the Social Studies Conference this past Saturday and talked about it briefly and a whole bunch of teachers came up to me and said, you know, we really want the materials, which I thought was great because, you know, that's the other thing that we've learned is that, you know, if you think you have to stay up, you know, midnight every night, writing your own materials to have good discussions, you're not gonna be uh in it for the long haul. 00:37:25Edit What a fantastic last point that you just made. Yes, like sustainability I think is really an important thing to think about. And then also just thinking about the idea of creating purple spaces and the applicability in high schools. Yeah, I love that idea even even at like a multi stakeholder group, right? Like thinking about community events where you have teachers, family members of students, students like, oh how cool would it be to like mix them all up and get that ideological diversity going? Oh, wow. Oh my gosh. Thank you both so so much. I have so appreciated both your book and this conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show today. Thank you so much for the invitation. Yeah. Thank you. It was really fun. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane sapper and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book street data. They say students should be talking for 70 5% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. 00:38:29Edit If you're smiling to yourself as you listen to right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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In this episode, Kim Strobel shares her personal transformation and her mission to instill hope in educators. She emphasizes the importance of self-compassion over perfection, highlighting the need to silence our inner critic, and practice self-love. She also unpacks the science of happiness, debunking common myths, and advocating for a happiness-driven life, where intentional actions and thoughts can increase our well-being by up to 40%.
Kim Strobel is a renowned motivational speaker and author of Teach Happy: Small Steps to Big Joy, sought after by schools, businesses, and organizations worldwide. With her powerful message about the impact of happiness on well-being and the pursuit of fulfillment, she traverses the globe, sharing her insights. Kim specializes in empowering educators and professionals, equipping them with the necessary tools and strategies to shift their mindsets, reclaim their happiness, reignite their passion, and lead with purpose. The Big Dream Kim's dream for education is two-fold: empowering every teacher to instill unwavering belief in their students and teaching educators to reclaim their happiness and power. Mindset Shifts Required Educators need to transition from pursuing perfection to embracing vulnerability and imperfection. Know that personal growth and the cultivation of happiness are as crucial as academic achievements. Kim’s personal journey to overcome panic disorder exemplifies the vital mindset shift from fear to empowerment. We can acknowledge our struggles and use them as a means to connect and inspire others. Action Steps Kim explains 50% of our happiness is genetic and 10% comes from our external circumstances, which leaves 40% that’s up to us. We can increase that 40% of our happiness. So, how can we do that? Step 1: Recognize your internal critic and practice self-compassion. Acknowledge your achievements and extend kindness to yourself. Step 2: Develop daily happiness habits, such as gratitude and building social connections, to positively rewire your brain towards a more optimistic outlook. Step 3: Reflect on and actively work to update your subconscious belief systems, thereby shaping a mindset conducive to personal success and well-being. Challenges? A significant challenge is overcoming entrenched thought and behavior patterns that result in anxiety and feelings of inadequacy. Kim’s story exemplifies that change is achievable but requires consistent effort and a willingness to confront deep-rooted fears and beliefs. One Step to Get Started Jot down 3 things you're grateful for every day. This straightforward practice can be your first step towards rewiring your brain for positivity! Leaders, find ways to invite staff, students, and families to make this a school-wide practice. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on their website, Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin To help you implement a gratitude practice, Kim is sharing her gratitude habit tracker with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 163 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Hello, I'm Leah. I'm part of the team that produces this podcast and today, I'm happy to introduce our guest, Kim Strobel, who's a renowned motivational speaker and author of Teach Happy Small Steps to Big Joy Sought after by schools, businesses and organizations worldwide. With her powerful messages about the impact of happiness on well being and the pursuit of fulfillment. She traverses the globe sharing her insights, kin specializes in empowering educators and professionals equipping them with the necessary tools and strategies to shift their mindsets, reclaim their happiness, reignite their passion and lead with purpose. I hope you enjoy this episode, educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about co-creator curriculum of students. 00:01:17Edit I made this show for you. Here we go. Kim Stel. Welcome to the Time For Teachers Podcast. Thank you, Lindsay. I'm so excited to talk about this topic. Oh, my gosh. And what a topic? I, I think that many folks are going to be really, I don't know if excited is the right word because I feel like sometimes it's like, oh, I'm working through something hard is like, excitement isn't the first thing, but you'll be excited by the end of the conversation. It was like, take you through like the challenges for sure. And then just really be like, yeah, that was necessary. And for leaders listening as well, like in addition to, I think the topic for individual leaders also thinking about your teachers. Oh my gosh. Yes. So much, so much to learn from you. I'm really excited and so to frame the episode today, is there anything that you would like to share? Either topic wise, like preparing folks for the topic we're about to get into or sometimes with a, a formal bio? People feel like there's more to me than just what's on the written word on the page. And they want to kind of share a little bit about themselves, anything in either direction that you'd like to share to ground us in the conversation today? Yeah. 00:02:20Edit Well, I appreciate that sometimes I feel like bios are so boring and you know, when I'm giving a keynote speech, it's like, I feel like there's so much better if the person just kind of picks little pieces from the bio and then tells about the person. But, um, I, I taught, uh, mostly at the elementary level in fourth grade was where I spent a tremendous amount of time. Um And then from there, I became like a literacy coordinator for grades K through 12, which was a great opportunity to really look at classroom instruction across the board. Um, and then from there, I jumped into a curriculum director. So I feel like that's helpful in my perspective of understanding how this applies to school leadership. Um But then I just kind of kept building this urge to um start my own business. And I actually did work for another company for a year consulting and felt like that was my jam. But um my value system didn't really match up to theirs. And so I remember at the time I was 39 and, and I'm almost 50 now and I was like, you know, I just decided after a year to quit and I was like, oh, my gosh, I've, I've had a job since I was in the fifth grade, Lindsay. 00:03:23Edit Like, literally I babysat I've never not had a job and it was super scary. Um But that's when I went to work as a curriculum director for um a few years and then, like started to massage my own idea of how can I really bring what is like, so near and dear to my heart. How do I bring it to the world? And so I launched struggle education in 2016. Um And my husband who always supports me and like gets behind me. It literally sent him all the way off the cliff because he was like, what do you mean you're gonna give up like a steady paycheck and, and insurance and like, I wanna back you. But I'm super scared and I just kept saying like, there's this like, I just, it was almost like I could not, not do it, Lindsay. And um so we got my husband and some counseling for a few months so that he could get behind me and he got behind me. And um yeah, now it's evolved to like, you know, like you, I have a team of girls who go into the field and do a ton of on site trainings on anything from the science of reading to um standards based grading all of these topics. 00:04:26Edit And then I kind of stepped into the lane of motivational speaking because that's my jam now. Um And so, you know, I'm gonna share like what a hard road this has been because sometimes we can take the pain of our lives and turn it into purpose and I'm happy to back that story out when you're ready so that people understand that just because I'm a motivational speaker and a happiness coach now does not mean I'm like, sunshine and rainbows and sprinkles and rah rah rah because I can't stand that. Lindsay, that's like toxic positivity. I was gonna say toxic positivity. Yes. Oh my gosh. Thank you for grounding us in that. And, and I think I, I am really excited to hear that story. I think one of the first questions they typically ask is like, what's the dream? And so specifically, I think about Doctor Bettina Love talking about freedom dreaming. And so a lot of the work that we do is around justice and and just making the world and our schools and our is better, right? For, for everyone. And, and so when she talks about it, she says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, which I just, I love the words there. 00:05:29Edit And so given that, what's what is the big dream that you hold for the field of education for, for people generally, I mean, your, your work touches everybody. Thank you. I think, well, I mean, one of my whys behind why I started this, this business is when I was 1/4 grade teacher, I taught a student who just completely derailed every single thing that I was doing in the classroom. He was like the Tasmanian devil. He would come in each day. He had no interest in learning. He couldn't sit still, he poked and prodded and you know, other kids. And I thought I was taught early on that. It really starts with relationships. And so I just kept pouring into the relationship. And about halfway through the year we discovered that he cut, came from this very traumatic home life where dad wasn't in the picture. Mom was an alcoholic. She was completely unavailable in the bedroom all day and all night she wasn't working, the electricity had been turned off. And I always say that Corey, like I was his fourth grade teacher. 00:06:32Edit Honestly, he ended up being my teacher because when we heard his story as a class, it completely shifted everything and how we operated with him. And I'm happy to say that three years ago created the impossible. He graduated from college. He has a job. He got married. I got to attend the wedding. I mean, I'm still in contact with him. But one of the things he said to me, Lindsay was not a lot of people believed in me back then and, and you were one person who did. And so it kind of left me with this feeling of just great compassion for the kids who walk in our doors. I can never tell this story without tearing up because he's so near and dear to my heart. But you know, I guess my thing is is that, that, that students come to us with all different talents and capabilities and academic intelligence. And sometimes we have too much of a focus on academic intelligence. And I actually think that the reason Corey has been able to persevere is because he's had to do it his whole life. And um but I was just kind of like, you know what I wanna empower every single teacher to believe in their students to 100% let them know so that there is no another Corey who walks out of the classroom and doesn't know he is believed in that his success is possible and to teach him to believe in himself. 00:07:52Edit So I think that my dream is definitely for kids to know that they have value and for teachers to sometimes make that front and center. But it's really hard to do because of all the expectations that are placed on teachers. And, and so then my other why of course, and it's the premise for the book that I have coming out. My first ever book that took me 10 years because Kim's trouble didn't believe in herself to write the book. Um But my book, teach happy small steps to Big Joy. The big why behind that is as I started to work with teachers, my heart went out to them because they, they want to serve in this noble sacred profession. They, some of them have known from early on this is what they're supposed to do. But in all honesty that they've shared their stories of just complete um anxiety and, and depression and, and truly not even knowing how to get off of this hamster wheel. That is sinking them because I call an ace and ace. And this profession is, it's absolutely drowning people. 00:08:56Edit And so they, the reason for the book was, you know, what I'm gonna teach them how to take their power back. That's what I wanna do. I wanna teach the teachers how to take their power back so that they can show up in this profession as the best version of themselves for themselves first and also have and be able to reclaim their happiness outside of this profession, you know. And so I feel like my big dream kind of has like those two things at the forefront that like drive me day in and day out. Oh, I love that, right? Because it is because we are here for the students. So I love the idea of like belief in students and we cannot do it well if we don't show up for ourselves wonderfully, like, I love that dichotomy there and how they really just feed into one another. Oh, wow, that's good. Thank you. And, and so I, I wanted to get back now to what you were saying about how you know, you, you, you have your own path and your own story of, of things you wanted to share. And so I, I'd love to just give space for you to be able to share as much of that as you feel comfortable with and, and thank you for your willingness to share your story. 00:10:01Edit Yeah. Well, first of all, I love that you talk as fast as me, Lindsay. We, we aren't messing around like we're like, it's on that. Um, yeah. Well, I think that, you know, sometimes when I step on a stage and, and it could be, you know, 100 people and it could be 6000 people and it's just really easy to see this girl in this stellar dress, walk up on stage and I'm introduced as a happiness coach and I fly across the country and I always think like those people sitting there, they're thinking, wow, you know, she has it all together, like what an amazing life she has. And I am so far from that. And so I do have an amazing life, but it really has come out of my own, very deep, very uh traumatic pain. I, I've had several of those experiences in my life, but, but one in particular was that I suffered from, um, an anxiety disorder called panic disorder for many, many years back when we didn't even know what anxiety disorders were. So I never got properly diagnosed until in my twenties. 00:11:04Edit Um And so, you know, my life, Lindsay got very small. I struggled to be at home by myself as a 22 year old married woman. I couldn't stay at home by myself hardly. I couldn't drive. I mean, I would drive my car five minutes to my secretary's job because of course I had quit college because I, I couldn't be there. I was having these episodes day in and day out. I thought I was crazy and I, I was just like, I couldn't even function normally. Um, going to Walmart stepping in Walmart, like all of those things were just crazy, crazy, difficult. And I know for people who have never had a panic disorder, it's like they logically cannot wrap their head around it. But what I tell people is, I want to put you in the space of what it felt like for me for just a moment. Um If I were to place you on a train track, Lindsay and I told you like, you're, you're chained to the train track, you cannot get off and a train was coming at you at like 200 MPH. And I said, you know what Lindsay, you're safe, like the train is gonna stop, it's gonna stop one inch before it hits your nose, but it, you're not there. 00:12:10Edit I promise you you're not in any danger. And I want you to think about obviously being on that train track and seeing that train barreling towards you. You would feel like you literally, it would be the biggest like feelings of terror of your life for me. I was feeling that day in and day out like feelings of like this, this episode would come over me and I would feel disoriented and nervous and terrified and scared. And think I was losing consciousness and shaking all over. But the problem was is there was never a train, there was never anything that could logically tie my brain to that, which means you get even more scared because you can't tie any reason to why this is happening. And so this was happening multiple times a day for many years. And I really did get to the point, Lindsay where um like I didn't wanna die, but my suffering was so intense that I really just lay down, you know, on my bath mat, rav one time. 00:13:16Edit And I really did plead with God. And I just said, you know, I don't, I don't know how you need to do this. I don't know if you should kill me in a car accident. Like I just need you to take my life. I don't want to go this way, but I can't keep doing this. And um you know, I am a spiritual person and I heard the message that was something like Kim get up off that back mat. And then I heard a version of these words which was you are made for more. And in fact, Lindsay, that's what helped me really step into what I call my divine destiny. I ended up going to a doctor getting a diagnosis, being put on Zoloft, being sent to a psychologist to do cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure therapy. And at that time, Lindsay was the self help field it just started to come to fruition and I read everything I could get my hands on and I've been lit up with it since then. And so there's always like this thing, like, how do you really take the girl who struggled to walk to her mailbox and say, oh, you're gonna be on a stage with 5000 people. 00:14:24Edit And in fact, you're gonna do the thing that every single person almost is afraid of. Um But for me, this is important to my story because Lindsay, you might not have panic disorder. The 500 people in my crowd might not have panic disorder. But what I do know is that almost all of us have had something that was really hard to get through in our lives. Most of us have had some type of injustice or trauma or adversity or challenge or we might be in it right now and we feel alone because we do not talk about the heart of our lives. So when you said at the beginning, basically, what you said reminded me of like, we can't get to the good stuff unless we talk about the hard stuff too, you know. And so I feel like now when I step on the stage, I take like this super fierce energetic woman with me. But what I've also learned to do is take the Kim that was really, really scared and sometimes is even scared still at times in her life. 00:15:29Edit And she's allowed to come with me because she deserves some space too. She deserves some compassion because I used to push her away. Right. Um And so for me, I think that while I'm in the education space, it's really honoring that there is, there's these valleys that we have to get through and these mountains to climb, but we don't have to do it alone. And in fact, there's a pathway of hope for each and every one of us. Wow. Thank you so much for, for sharing your story. And I do think there's a lot of folks who probably can connect even, even to the very specific diagnosis that you and I know a lot of teachers face uh maybe generalized anxiety and in some degree of thought. So I do, I think that that resonates regardless of, you know, whatever diagnosis each individual listener has. And they also think about, you know, for leaders, teachers that have diagnoses like this or experiences like this, your students, right? I think there's, there's so much um so much in the world right now as you spoke to that is challenging. 00:16:34Edit And so I'm curious to know, I, I love, I wanna say first, I think that I love the idea of bringing the Kim Verdon who is scared or um feeling the panic with you onto the stage. And I am wondering if there, if, if that was, you know, that seems like a mindset shift. I think a lot of the work that we do is often mindset shifty in some way. And so I'm wondering if, if there was a mindset shift there that you want to talk us through or if there's another mindset shift that you usually talk people through to be able to get on that, that track of, of help and action and kind of confronting the challenge to be able to get to a space like you are today. Yeah. And honestly, that work probably just took place in the last two years. Lindsay, I've spent my whole life trying to overachieve in every single area of my life, whether it's my business. Um You know, I'm a runner. I don't just, I never, I don't do anything halfway. And then my husband says, you know, why are you always like such an extremist? Like it, it's, it's just like you, you, you know, you're just like, oh, I'm gonna do it like I'm running a marathon this year and he's like, my husband is like, oh my God, you're just so old, you know. 00:17:43Edit But what I've begun to recognize Lindsay is that, that has been my mind's way for years of pushing away what I have considered this very weak and very feeble and, and, and, and I'm embarrassed of the Kim that felt so inadequate and so deeply flawed. And I know, and I haven't quite broke the achievement cycle for sure. I mean, part of it is, I think I'm just wired that way. But I also know that I hustle a lot for my worthiness and I feel like I've done that to kind of put that little Kim in place and gone. Like, you know what, you sit back and you watch me and because you don't even deserve any space, like I'm keeping you in your place. And so I listened to this podcast where Doctor Russell Kennedy was on the Mel Robbins podcast and he wrote a book called Anxiety Rx. And it's really this whole new way of looking at how do we kind of begin to heal the, the anxiousness inside of us or the depression or whatever it might be. And one of the things he said is you can't heal it until you extend compassion towards it. 00:18:49Edit And so we're our own inner critics. I always say, like we would never talk to our friend or our child the way that we talk to ourselves. And um my inner critic has a name. Does, do you have an inner critic, Lindsay? I do, but I haven't named her. I don't even know. Yeah, I've named her and I've even drawn her out and her name is Ethel and Ethel is like relentless. And I don't know if you remember Monsters Inc but there was this character on there with these snakes as her hair. Like that's what I envisioned. She's got like a red fiery lips and she's always trying to like keep me in check. And um what I have found is, is that why would I not extend compassion for the little girl, the teenage girl, the girl in her twenties, the girl, why would I not say? Gosh, that must have been really, really hard for you. I feel for you. And in fact, I'm going to acknowledge you and I'm going to love you because you, you deserve to be loved. 00:19:59Edit There is nothing wrong with you. What you went through was so hard and so difficult and I'm gonna learn to embrace you. And so for me, I had to help hold a vision of what that looks like. And that vision was, you know what, let me grab your little six year old hand because even then you were super anxious and let me let you walk on that stage with me because you're such a part of who I am and the work that I'm doing and you know, for, for teachers and educators, Lindsay, I walked out the glass doors every day after teaching with like my shoulder slumped and my head down and maybe I had done 98 things right that day. And I screwed up too like I engaged in a power struggle with a student that I shouldn't have and sent him even more over the edge. And I would kind of get the good old ball and chain out and I would whip myself across the back and now I'm like, don't you dare do that teacher? You be better than Kim's trouble. You walk out that door every day with your head held high and your shoulders back and you give yourself some darn grace. 00:21:05Edit You focus on the 99 darn things that you did right in your life. And don't you dare let that inner critic come out and chastise you for the one thing that you messed up that day. Oh my gosh, so many things they are saying that I just want to like draw connections to and connect to. So I'm bringing my own therapy here. So I think that resonates a lot with me, the the idea of extending compassion to a either a younger version of ourselves, a former version, even if it was like earlier that day, right? That has been a huge key and unlocking a lot of forgiveness and compassion for myself. And so I, I think that is huge and I wanna just like double down on that recommendation. And I think in the just this world as well, there is this kind of striving for perfection. There is this avoiding things because I don't want to make a mistake and I have to do it just right. And if I make a mistake, that means I should never try again, right? And, and so this perfection actually inhibits our, our progress. And so as a as a person who is committed to justice. I think for me, I, I talk a big game of like, oh, you know, mistakes are how we learn. 00:22:08Edit And it's like if I make a mistake, I hold myself to that super high standard just like teachers do with students. And so I think it's really interesting that when we can extend the compassion and say, like I have compassion for myself and like, I know that, that I screwed up with that student and the the power struggle, I'm going to make it better tomorrow, right? Like both can be true. And I think that both can be true with something that's really hard to hold for people and it's revolutionary. I also was just reminded of um I don't remember Gotman. I think it's the marriage therapist who does the 5 to 1 ratio I got. Yeah. Yeah. And explain that Lindsay because that's a great example. Yeah, just that I you could probably explain it better than I can. But just the idea of there's five positive to every one negative sustains a healthy relationship. And so I think about that with our own inner relationships, right? Like, remember the five positives, like there's only one negative allowed for every five positives if you want to focus on two negative, like let's rally up the 10 positive. Absolutely. And you know, I think that you're right. I think that most school teachers and school leaders are sort of type a anyway. 00:23:15Edit Um they're very driven, they're very ambitious, they want everything to be perfect. And I actually think now that one of the reasons I've been able to be successful in this space is because I started to allow myself to do it and do it imperfectly. So for example, Lindsay, I, I had never been a motivational speaker. I had never stepped on a stage. I just decided one time, I'm gonna slap that on my website and I'm gonna start calling myself one and, and I was skiing in Colorado with our son and I got halfway down the mountain and clicked on my email and um, a school of 900 wanted to hire me. And I was like, oh my gosh. So, like, I'm sitting there that August in the front row and I'm like, Kim, struggle. What again, your husband is, right? Why do you have to push yourself into such uncomfortableness? Like I, these people, they don't know that I've never in my life done this and it's, it's probably not gonna be stellar. It's probably not gonna be the best thing they ever heard. But Lindsay had I not done that because today I'm good. 00:24:19Edit Right. Like I'm really good at what I do. I got a lot more to learn, but I'm good. And if I had never taken that chance, if I had never said, you know what Kim, all you gotta do is, is do it and let it be a little less than so that eventually you can grow it and get better. Then I wouldn't be having this business. I wouldn't be speaking across the country. And so I have this new phrase that I try to live by that I came up with, I'm super proud of myself and here's what it is. Are you ready? Hi. This is Leah popping in to talk about this episode's Freebie, the Gratitude habit Tracker by Kim Strobel. You can find it at the blog post for this episode www dot Lindsey Beth lines.com/one 63. Check it out. Now, back to the show. It is perfectionism is the lowest standard you can hold yourself to. I like that a lot. Good. Yeah. But let me just say Lindsay, I can preach this stuff all day long and I'm still learning like this is that does not mean that Kim's trouble. Has it all figured out? 00:25:25Edit In fact, when you teach others, you do get better at it. But this is not to say that, you know, I know what I need to do, but I'm still struggling with some of those areas in my life. And I, I love you. You brought up basically self love too. You know, we don't know how to love ourselves. Um And when we figure out how to do that, it opens up everything for us. Yes, absolutely. And, and I think you're so we're kind of getting into too like what are those actions you can take so the person listening, right? Who's like, OK, I'm resonating. I'm like, I'm hearing myself a lot and what we're talking about, what are the things that I do? And I, I think both ways, however, the listener kind of wants to take this, I think is probably how they can but individually but also like, as a leader in an educational space. Like, what does that mean for the school or the class culture that I, that I lead and I'm responsible for like, what are those things to be on the lookout for? Because I imagine there's some internal work we can do. And then there's also maybe some like structural things or culture things that we can shift as well. Am I am I right in that? Yeah, you are and I could speak on this like all day long because I felt like there's so many pieces to it and, and you know, each chapter of the book is really dedicated towards like here's all the different things, but I always tell teachers this is not about doing them all. 00:26:40Edit Like you're gonna pick one, you're gonna pick one and we're gonna move the needle by 1% or you're gonna move the needle as a school leader by 1% because that 1% starts to act as combined interest, you know, but sometimes I think it's like, oh my gosh, I'm adding one more thing to my plate and look Kim struggle. I can't even breathe right now. And now you're telling me to do this, you know. So yeah, let me talk you through that. So what we know about the happiness research and why happiness needs to come to the forefront is that we used to think that if we jumped through all these hoops and we achieved all of these things and we got our college degrees and we got good jobs and we made decent money and we got the nice house that once we do all of those things, we've arrived at happiness. But the last, you know, 30 years or 40 years of research has actually proved that it's completely opposite that if you wanna be successful in your life, whether that's in your marriage or you wanna be successful with your physical health, or you wanna be successful in feeling good in your parenting role. If you wanna feel good in your finances, if you want to feel good in your career, that when we teach you how to put your happiness at the forefront of your life, that is when we change every other ll lever. 00:27:53Edit And so what we know is that everybody has what's called a set baseline happiness level. So maybe my baseline level is here, Lindsay and maybe yours is 10 points higher than mine. And so what this means is that good things can happen in you and I's life like maybe we're gonna go shopping today or maybe um we're gonna do something fun or uh maybe we, we got a bonus check in the mail and we're like, oh my God, they gave us an extra $100 you know, and our happiness level goes up and it might go up for two hours or two days or two months. But it's always gonna come back to whatever your baseline is and the same is true, believe it or not. For when we endure hard things, the research proves over and over again that you can go through trauma, injustice, loss, disease. Uh You can go through these challenging times and that for most human beings you do reset back. And so then people go. But where does our baseline come from? And why is Lindsay's different than mine? And so I want you to envision a pie chart. 00:28:55Edit And what we know is that 50% of your long term happiness, Lindsay is genetic comes from your mom or your dad or a mixture of both. And it's so funny, Lindsay, when I tell this to the crowd, I see 80% of the heads drop and they literally whisper, I'm so screwed. But there's just this genetic piece that, that is how our brain works. OK? But I don't want you to lose hope. The shocking piece for people is that if I took every single external circumstance that you've ever had in your life, Lindsay, what kind of home did you grow up in? Did you grow up in, you know, poverty or not? Did you have parents who were divorced or together? You know, were you bullied, weren't you? Uh what experiences have you had in your adult life? You know, like did, are you divorced? What kind of money do you make? What kind of job do you have? We can take everything and throw it into the pie. And what we know is that only about 10% of your long term happiness comes from those external circumstances. 00:30:03Edit But if you're like Kim Strobel, you let it, you let circumstances and people still way more than 10% of the pie. Are you guilty of that? Lindsay? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And so the part that really fires me up is if there's 50% genetic and 10% comes from our external circumstances that leaves 40% of the pie. And what we know is that every human being can increase their happiness levels by up to 40%. And it has to do with these three things, the actions you're taking daily, the behaviors you exhibit. Oh Lindsay. Look at the balloons. My computer's been doing this for folks listening on the podcast. There was just balloons on our Zoom call. It was amazing. Cheering us on Yeah. So actions, thoughts and behaviors, actions, thoughts and behaviors. And so in the book, I focus a lot on what are those and what is it as people who serve in this super demanding profession. 00:31:09Edit How, how do I really create more ease in my life? How do I create some space to breathe? How do I not let this job suck everything out of me to where I'm going home and I can't even show up for my kids because I'm so exhausted and I certainly don't even know how to show up for myself. And so, so there's a lot of habits, but when it comes to school, culturally, one of the top five happiness habits is the social connections. And that is what are the relationships in the school with my staff? How are we operating? What is that vision? What is that belief system? How do we treat one another? How do we, uh, you know, honor differences of opinions, how do we invest in each other? And so, and this is, of course, outside of the school too. This is our friendships and our marriage and, and these things are critical to our well being. Um, but the other one I want to talk about and I actually want to leave your listeners with, with a, a tip that's gonna make a difference in this 40% right out of the gate. 00:32:14Edit So the second happiness habit that falls in the top five. And of course, everybody is like, what's the top five, Kim? Well, you're gonna have to read the book because Lindsay said we got 30 minutes and I'm scared, I'm down to four. But, um, truly, it's the practice of gratitude. We've all heard this. Oprah preached this to me for years. I still didn't do it, but I wanna tell you what the research says and then I'm gonna tell you why it works because when you understand the why behind it, you're now motivated to do it until the research says that if I can get you to write down three different things that you're thankful for each and every day, per say 21 to 30 days. That after that time, Lindsay, I actually rewire your brain and I rewire your brain to be a little bit more towards positive versus negative, neutral or stressed. And what that means is is that you begin to go through your day and you start to notice more good than bad. 00:33:21Edit And when you notice more good than bad and when you do get your brain too positive, here's what we know changes. A positive brain is 31% more productive at their job. Then when their brains at negative neutral or stressed, a positive brain is 10 times more engaged in their job, which means they're actually able to get through their workday quicker and more efficiently. A positive brain is three times more creative, which means it can come up with solutions to problems that the brain didn't see before it can see opportunities that were there the whole time. But because our brain wasn't stressed and pieces of our brain are actually shut down and inaccessible, we cannot see them. And so I wanna tell you why it works. Lindsay, if you're an average human being, you have about 70,000 thoughts a day, 70,000, we're halfway through the day. Lindsay, you've already had 35,000 thoughts and those thoughts are firing mostly from our subconscious brain. 00:34:30Edit We're not even aware of them because they're just on automatic all day long. And if you're an average human being, what we know is that 80% of your thoughts in a day's time are negative. So when you put your head on the pillow at night, you've probably had 56,000 negative thoughts. And some of you were like, oh Kim's trouble. I do not believe that. Well, let me just tell you, let me take you back to the 1st 30 seconds of your day when your alarm went off because some of you literally the alarm went off and you went uh and then you go, I didn't get enough sleep and then you got off and you start thinking like your knees hurt and then you get in the bathroom, you're like, I don't wanna do this day and then you're like, oh there's a fever blister that broke out. Oh, these pants are too tight. Like some of you had 72 negative thoughts within the 1st 30 seconds of your day. And, and this is because we're wired this way. We actually have this thing in our brain called an Amygdala. And the Amygdala was part of our brain all the way back from caveman cave woman times. And then the Amygdala S number one job is to scan 24 7 for danger to pick up any negativity in order to protect you. 00:35:44Edit But the issue is it's 2024 and there's not a saber toothed tiger Lindsay when you walk out of your office and go down the hall to the bathroom, but yet our Amygdalas are still wired this way. And that's why we have these kind of constant streams of negativity in our brain. And here's what's even crazier of the 80% of thoughts that are negative Lindsay, 95% of the 80 are the exact same thoughts you had the day before. Interesting. Wow. I know. I know. And so when I can get you to write down three different things, what we do is we create a new neural feedback loop in your brain and the more you do that, the stronger that loop gets. And it means that you're gonna start to take this other roadway more and more and more. And I always tell people like I did this with my students. We started every day with like 90 seconds of gratitude. All 27 students would say I'm thankful for this. I'm thankful for this. I'm thankful for this. So I exposed him to 27 gratitudes within the 1st 90 seconds And then at the end of the day, we got our gratitude journals out and we jotted three things down because you know what Lindsay, you know, we're in this profession to teach kids how to read and write and understand science and math. 00:36:57Edit But honestly, we want them to go out into the world and walk out our doors and be good human beings. And like you said, know how to contribute to the world in a positive way, know how to make a difference, know how to fight for those injustices. And so um and I have a gratitude tracker that I'll give you the link to if you want and you can download it and it gives you five props or it gives students if you want to use it for students, five areas to begin looking for gratitude in their life. And then there's a 21 day tracker, but I just use a notebook and I just write the date. I just write, you know, whatever the date is and then I write the words, I am thankful and then I jot them down. But, but I do want to give you a piece of advice too. Actually, one I want you to be specific. I don't want you to write the word health down. I want you to say even though I've been sick, as you told me, you had been, I'm actually feeling myself getting better and I'm thankful for that. I'm not some people like, oh, I'm thankful for my family. Be specific. I'm thankful that my son who's 23 years old has decided he's not gonna be a college punk anymore now that he's out in the real world world and he actually calls and texts his mom almost daily, you know. 00:38:09Edit And so um just be specific and then this is gonna go back to compassion and love Lindsay. But I always encourage people to make one of their gratitudes, something that they appreciate about themselves. And let me tell you what. When I do this in a workshop, people are stunned, they sit there, they're like, I don't even know what to write about myself because it feels so uncomfortable to give ourselves a compliment. And isn't, isn't that sad that we've been trained to think? Because I always say no one does more for you in a day's time, Lindsay than you. Nobody has shown up and nobody has done more for Lindsay in a day's time than Lindsay. And doesn't she deserve a little recognition? Doesn't she deserve a little pat on the back? You know. And so that's one of the top five happiness habits. And I'm just gonna tell you, it will change your life, it will change your life if you implement that. Oh, I love it. And so yes, I think that's something you could do like right now, right? Listeners who are ending up there just go grab that tracker. We'll link it into the blog post for this episode. 00:39:14Edit Grab that, download it, use it. And for leaders, I'm thinking of all the spaces that exist in school systems where you could just integrate that. Like we're starting a team, meeting a grade team or a department team, everyone shares a gratitude, right? Like that's the do now for the class with my students, right? Everyone shares the gratitude. We are doing a um like post observation debrief with a teacher, right? What did you think? Went well? Like gratitude for yourself in that lesson, right? I think there's so many great spaces and you gave us so many concrete examples that I absolutely love. Oh my gosh, thank you. And I think just to, I could honestly talk about this all day. And I'm like, oh wow, look at the time just to kind of wrap this up a bit. One of the things that I love asking at the end of every episode and this can totally relate to our conversation or totally not relate. What is something that you personally, Kim Strobel have been learning about lately? Oh my gosh. Well, you know, I'm just like, I'm always reading some type of self help book. Um So, oh gosh, there's just so many, well, what I've been learning a lot lately is that 5% of how we show up in life comes from our conscious mind and the conscious mind is like, you know, it's the present day mind of like thinking and having thoughts in the mind that says, oh, I need to do this and I need to do that. 00:40:36Edit And I need only 5% of how we uh go about our day um comes from our conscious mind and 95% Lindsay, 95% of how we show up for life and how we succeed in life. It comes from our subconscious mind. It's like an iceberg. You only see the tip but there's this giant thing. And so one of the things that makes up the subconscious mind is beliefs. And did you know Lindsay that most of us had all of our beliefs formed by the time we were six years old? Wow. As the parent of a toddler, I'm really thinking about that one. I know it came from your parents and how you saw them, navigate relationships, how you see them, navigate the world, the interactions comes from your teachers. And so my work recently has been to pull out these old belief systems that I've held on to and to extract them and download a new internal blueprint, right? A new belief system because that belief system is guiding in, in, in and showing me day in and day out what I'm capable of. 00:41:48Edit Oh, I love that. And so your book, by the time this airs will be published available for purchase, where can listeners get it? Where can they contact you or just follow what you're doing, where are all the places and we'll link to everything you share too in the blog post. Yeah. Yeah. So they can go to Amazon. Um And then one of the really fun things I'm doing this year is I'm booking uh keynotes and conferences and school keynotes is I'm doing a book signing. And so, I mean, I think the book's gonna be like 2425 bucks or something. But if we do bulk orders for schools, then they're 15 bucks. And so I love it because like now I get to connect with teachers up to the keynote. Like I can do, I can sign their book, I can chat with them, I can hug them. Um And so I'm so excited to put this out into the world because I believe that it offers a blueprint for how to get out of the chaos and how to reclaim the happiness and the goodness that wants to come to them so that they can start to breathe again and that they know that they are worthy of that, right? A lot of it is like being worthy and understanding. 00:42:51Edit You don't have to do it all. In fact, what I wanna do with this book is extract those old belief systems that you've been carrying and start to create a new one that's gonna help make you really, I mean, it's all about feeling good, Lindsay. We wanna feel good in our life, not all the time. I mean, I was crying on the floor two weeks ago, you know, but I have a set of strategies that pick me up and get me out of the gutter quicker now. Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much for your vulnerability for your very research based actions that you shared with us. And just for your uh like the energy that you carry is palpable through the screen and through people's earbuds or however they're listening. And I just love that you seem to really walk the talk and like do the things and you're committed to the work that you're asking other folks to do, which I just absolutely admire and love. Thank you. Oh, you're so welcome. I appreciate that Lindsay. I do feel like there's a lot of people showing up in this space right now and they, that's kind of a pet peeve of mine. It's like, don't be promoting all this stuff on social media or sending your newsletter out, but then you got different actions going on behind the scenes, you know. 00:43:58Edit So I really do appreciate that. You see the realness of who I am and um in my website, by the way, I, I forgot to mention that. But if people want to connect with me, it's just struggle. Education.com Beautiful. Thank you. I'll put that in the show notes. If you like this episode. I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane Sapir and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period. I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network. 00:45:06Edit Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about how to use layered project questions:
5/6/2024 162. How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations across K-12 with Matthew R. Kay and Jennifer OrrRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode Matt and Jen talk about their book, We’re Gonna Keep On Talking: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Elementary Classroom. We discuss the need for ongoing conversations about race, and the role of effective classroom management strategies, and specific things to consider when setting up a class discussion about race. I’ve been excited for this conversation since their book was published. For my initial response to the book, check out this blog post.
Matthew R. Kay is a proud product of Philadelphia’s public schools and a founding teacher at Science Leadership Academy (SLA). He believes that any teacher who is willing to put in the hard work of reflection can, through the practice of discrete skills, lead meaningful race conversations. Driven by this conviction, he is passionate about designing professional development that teachers find valuable. He’s also the author of Not Light, But Fire, a book I loved and also wrote a blog post about in 2020. Jennifer Orr has been an elementary school classroom teacher for more than two and a half decades, teaching kindergartners through fifth graders. She is the author of Demystifying Discussion: How to Teach and Assess Academic Conversation Skills, K-5 and the coauthor of We’re Gonna Keep on Talking: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Elementary Classroom. She is a National Board Certified Teacher and a frequent mentor to new and pre-service teachers. The Big Dream(s) Jen wants teachers to be treated as professionals and be trusted as professionals. Matt adds his dream for kids to be treated as thinking beings again—as people who can make up their own minds about things. Trust We have to trust ourselves as professionals to handle the moments that arise and trust our students to engage in these moments. And…a big part of that comes out of us knowing pedagogical moves and being prepared for whatever those moments might hold. Focusing on pedagogy: What do we do to prepare? Threading: Take the pressure off teachers to solve the world’s probl;ems in one conversation or for students to understand antiracism in one conversation. Thread conversations about race through multiple texts and units throughout the year. Formats: Give kids options at different times to engage in conversations in different group sizes (turn and talk with one partner, talk in a small group, whole class discussion). This way, different kids get the chance to speak where they’re most ready, as some feel more comfortable speaking up in different settings. Administrative Support Be encouraging, visit regularly, set up peer structures of common planning time and peer observation for all teachers (not just the teachers who are struggling, also the ones who are doing well.) Also have teachers’ backs. And teachers…make sure you tell your administrators what’s happening in your classes so they’re not surprised. Biggest Challenge? Educators may face challenges such as student misbehavior during discussions. Kids may start acting goofy when they’re uncomfortable. You can proactively support this by co-creating class agreements and having a plan for helping students deal with feeling uncomfortable—celebrate this as an opportunity for learning! One Step to Get Started Matt says start a consistent community-building activity that becomes a dependable part of the classroom routine (e.g., Good News Mondays or Journal Tuesdays). This sets the stage for trust and open dialogue, laying the groundwork for deeper, more meaningful conversations. Jen seconds this, explaining , “[do] whatever it takes to ensure that you have a really strong, solid classroom community, because conversation about anything doesn't work without it.” Stay Connected You can find this week’s guests online. Jen is on her website, and Matt is on his website and on Twitter. To help you learn more about this pedagogy, Matt has a curated list of great videos on his site, which we’re sharing with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 162 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT 00:00:00 Hi, my name is Leon. I'm part of the team that produces this podcast. Our two guests today are Matthew Kay and Jennifer or in this episode, Matthew Kay is a proud part of Philadelphia's public schools and a founding teacher at Science Leadership Academy. He's a graduate of West Chester University and holds a master's in educational leadership with a principal certificate from the University of Pennsylvania. Jennifer. Orr has been an elementary school classroom teacher for more than 2.5 decades, teaching kindergartners through fifth graders. She's the author of demystifying Discussion, how to teach and assess academic conversation skills K through five. And the, the author of we're going to keep on talking how to lead meaningful race conversations in the elementary classroom. She's a National Board certified teacher and a frequent mentor to new and Preser teachers. I hope you enjoyed this episode back to the show, 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. 00:01:11Edit I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about co-creator curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go, Jennifer or, and Matthew K. Welcome to the Time for Teachers Podcast. Hello. So excited to have you both. I absolutely loved both of your books, Matt and, and Jen your your book with Matt. It has been incredible to think about and use as a resource in instructional coaching conversations for folks who are having discussion, particularly about like meaningful discussion, racial justice discussion, things happening in the world, discussions, books, discussions, social studies discussions, all the discussions. So I think one of the big things that I want to know from you and from all the guests we usually start with is this idea of freedom dreaming, really anchoring our conversation. 00:02:15Edit And so Doctor Bettina Love talks about this beautifully, as she says, dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so with that in mind, I'm wondering what are the dreams that you each hold for education, for teachers, the fields? That's a really big question. Um Having just had the chance to listen to Doctor Love recently um which was such a gift. Um I feel so inspired, so motivated um so called to action by her. And I, I think having been in this profession for so long now, this is my 26th year of classroom teaching. Um I, it feels small to dream that teachers be treated as professionals and be trusted as professionals. Um But I, I think that's where I am, sadly, just that idea that we can respect and know that teachers know what they're doing and trust that that's happening on a regular basis. Oh, that's a good one. I second that um I think uh I, my dream would be that kids are treated as thinking beings again. 00:03:28Edit Um And like as people who can make up their own minds about things. It's funny how um paradoxically all of the like anti indoctrination conversation is actually doing the, the, the indoctrinating. Like those are the folks who are kind of cutting off kids access to ideas because we feel like they can't make up their own minds. Um So we feel like we have to, you know, over guide and I think just kind of respecting kids as humans who can make up their mind, I think would be my dream. I love that so much. I was looking back at my initial reflections in 2020 when I read your first book that and I had written down the quote, there is no more effective form of intrinsic motivation than the opportunity to say something new. And I absolutely love that. And I love that this book, you all are gifting teachers with the tools and the ideas to be able to invite students to say something new and to think for themselves and create something new, which I think is, is absolutely part of my dream as well. 00:04:36Edit So I, I really appreciate that as like an anchor to this conversation and Jen to your point that treating teachers like professionals, right? We have to believe that we are, we are capable of making these decisions that are in the best interests of students. I recently had um on the podcast. It may air after this but um Diana and uh Diana hat and Paul mcavoy who talk about the political classroom and they talk about this idea of discussion. Um and, and just along those same lines of when we make decisions as educators about when to step in and when to step back from conversations, which you all talk about in the book quite a bit, they were talking about, it's fine to do whatever you need to do given all the context, but you have to have the student's best interests at heart, right? It's not about what makes me comfortable or uncomfortable or I wanna share my thoughts or not. It's like what is in the best interest of furthering students thinking for the themselves. And I, I think there's a lot of trust for teachers in that and there's a lot of both of your dreams in that. Um There's, there's so many different pieces to this work that I kind of want to name a few and then just see what grabs your attention and we could go down any of those paths. 00:05:41Edit But there's the mindset piece that I hear you all talking about a little bit um in, in your book, right? Like what's that kind of culture of student learning? And what's that um thing that we need to think about as teachers to be able to maybe shift to or, or kind of set the stage for doing this. There's also the pedagogical moves. So there's kind of the uh how do we literally format it? What are, what are the prompts we're offering students to discuss? Um how do we step in, step out? And then there's also like the the content kind of like the prompts that you so beautifully kind of create and, and very intentionally. So I like how you walk through that a lot in the book. And so in all of that kind of the mindset, the pedagogy ps the content, what do you feel like as your heart or the teacher should know about as they're kind of thinking through this stuff? What's important for you? Um I'm always gonna focus on the pedagogical move part. Um because I think um that respectfully, there's a lot of smart people tackling a lot of the other stuff. 00:06:46Edit Um She's trying to help teachers get their minds, right? Trying to help kids. She's trying to help teachers you know, get, you know, the to, to, to be in the right place. Um, uh, and my focus is always going to be like, all right. So you're in the room with 30 kids? What do you do? Like, that's always gonna be my move. Like that's always gonna be my focus because a lot of times those peop those people get ignored. Um, once teachers are at that stage, it's like now go discuss and it's like, well, I don't know, I don't know what that means. Um, and I think, you know, we're very good at being told that we need to discuss something, but sometimes the conversation ends once we're at the point of discussing. And so I'm always gonna be like, how do you make the best prompts? How do you recover from mistakes? How do you, um, those kind of things? So that's always gonna be, you know, with, with deep respect for everyone who's working on other aspects of this work. Um I kind of find it refreshing for myself to stay in my lane about like, what do you do in the classroom? 00:07:50Edit And that's, that's kind of like my thing. J are you in the same thing? I mean, all of those things are things, Matt and I have talked a lot about and spend a lot of time thinking about. Um, but I do think the part that makes, that makes the biggest difference in, in that trust piece whether it's trusting ourselves as professionals to handle these moments, whether it's trusting our students to engage in these moments. Um A big part of that comes out of us, knowing those pedagogical moves and being prepared um for, for whatever those moments might hold. Yeah, that's a, that's a beautiful way to put it, right? So we can't, we can't like trust that everything's gonna work out fine if we don't have the preparation behind it and to know literally, yeah, what does it look like in the moment? So a student says this go like, what, how do you respond? Right. That's it like, and I think the fear of not having that, you know, coaching, idea preparation, whatever is what often times in my coaching relationships with teachers scares teachers away from ever engaging in it in the first place. 00:08:54Edit It's like, well, what if that happens? Right? And so I'm curious to know how, I mean, you talk about a lot of stuff in the book, what are the big pieces that you would name for teachers in terms of um having like the, the strategies, the approach that are really core to every, you know, every discussion that you kind of go in with like, OK, I have this in my head. I've set it up this way, you know, these are the keys. Um If you were talking for example to a, a teacher who's like, I wanna do this and I'm nervous um that was one of the first things that, that I learned from that in working on this was that, that is who we're talking to. Um, and that's a really important thing for, for me to hang on to like I'm not trying to convince you to do this. If you are not sold on, on engaging in these conversations, I don't want you to do it. Um It, it's too, it can be too easily fraught to push someone into it. Um I, I think a big piece of it for me and maybe it's because I work with young Children, maybe it's a general thing is that I don't want to jump into anything too quickly. 00:10:02Edit Um I want to know that I have spent the time thinking about it whether that's because it's a picture book we're gonna read or a novel we're reading together, whether that's because it's a piece of history that we're discussing. Um the deeper my thought process is and the deeper my background knowledge is the better prepared I'm gonna be for the kinds of questions and ideas that will come out from my kids. A great nothing real to add. I think that, yeah, that makes absolute sense. Iii I think also it's really important to distinguish, generate like you, you're talking about like young kids, right? And, and that, and, and myself as well, like high school is our RJ M and so it's a really different space uh in some ways and there are also these kind of core concepts that I think thread through. So Jen, one of the things that I think you were talking about in the book maybe from a space of elementary was this idea of like layering and threading. I, I can't remember if that's what you call a threading. Right. Yeah. Matt actually is probably a better person to speak to that. Oh, ok. Awesome. Because I was thinking, but this resonates so much for high schoolers. 00:11:09Edit Ok. Yeah. Can you talk us through the idea and the concept of writing? And like, I think one of the things that you say is like, if every conversation can't be the conversation that you have about race in the classroom. Yeah. It's kind of like, um, with an, you want to take the pressure off the teachers to have the massive conversation that it changes the world or their community or the school or whatever, right? You wanna make sure that they're just trying to lead a good conversation that intrigues kids and challenges them and makes them think and respects them as thinkers and that's it, like, as far as the goal is concerned. Um, and I think what helps with that is if over a series of conversations, kids see a clear connection. Um and um that's, I think just good pedagogy regardless, but also when it comes to race conversations, I think it takes on another layer of, of importance. Um So it's like, I don't have to like, they don't have to un understand all that comes with privilege from one conversation. 00:12:15Edit They can see uh sequentially developed, understanding begin to emerge. Um And over the course of a unit and then between the units, like even connecting the units to um each other, I think that um that threading just literally tying the conversations together um is an important way to take the pressure off of ourselves to do it all in one go. Like, what if a kid's absent that day? Right. Do they get to do? Did they miss all of the anti racism for the whole year? Like what if they had a, you know, they left for a basketball game. So now, you know, they don't get to talk about race anymore. II I think taking the pressure off of any one moment or they don't like that book, it's like sometimes they don't like that book. And so if all of the conversations are couched in to kill a Mockingbird and they didn't like to kill a Mockingbird, then, you know, we're missing opportunities and I think, but making sure that we take the pressure off of any one conversation to do all the work is good. 00:13:16Edit Hi, this is Leah Popping and to share this episode's Freebie. It's a collection of videos based on Matt's concept, not light but fire. You can find it at the blog post for this episode www dot Lindsay, Beth lines.com/one 62. Check it out. Now, back to the show. I love that perspective too because it's about taking the pressure off. It's about what's helpful for teachers. I entered that conversation or that that point initially thinking well, threading is a way to also communicate to students, you know, that, that this is important and we're gonna kind of, but I love the layer of like this is, this is also really helpful for teachers to be able to not have that pressure or for the students to not have that pressure because I chose to like, you know, be with my basketball team that day. Like I think it does help, you know, I think um in addition uh to making it easier on the teachers, um it helps students if they are, let's say a kid a little bit quieter. Um and um sometimes the kids are quiet just because they're quiet and that's awesome. 00:14:22Edit They can be quiet. I have no problem with that, but sometimes the kids quiet because they're a little bit nervous about participating. Um which means if a conversation is again a one shot deal, then they miss their shot, right? But if you are having the conversation or different versions of it the next day and then the next day as you work your way through a book or as you read multiple um young adult books or children's books or as you like, if they, if there is a connected tissue, then they might have been nervous on Monday, but they might be less nervous on Wednesday and, and by next Monday they might be ready to put their hand up, you know, and I think that's another advantage to it. I love that. You said that because it, it makes me want to ask about the, the formats that a discussion can take, right? So for the quiet kid, I love that you're also saying the threading is kind of the support the scaffold for that student to enter the conversation and feel comfort and for the kid who is just quiet or who communicates best verbally or I mean, non verbally, right? I'm wondering, you, you all talked about this a little bit in the book um of those different formats that it could take um and the different supports that we could offer students particularly like I was thinking of the one example too of like the nuances of young kids because I, I didn't teach young kids. 00:15:37Edit So I was fascinated by your point about um listening patiently and like having the strategies to hold on to a thought for a young kid. And I also was like, I as an adult could use that, right? I think our high schoolers can also use a version of that, right? Because there's those kids who are talking so much because they don't want to forget what they have to say. So they're interrupting someone because they're so excited. So considering all the different styles and learning styles and um engagement styles of students in a room, what are those considerations? Like? What's the consideration for the kid who talks a lot? What's the consideration for the kid who's, you know, more a small group kid or, or a kid who is just a little hesitant to, to share verbally any cops on that? Oh, so many thoughts Lindsay. But I think one of the things that you just got at that is so huge is that while there are differences between having, engaging in these conversations with young kids and with high school kids, so much of it carries through. I mean, when Matt's first book came out in 2018 but not light a fire was out. I read it and it was such a support for me, even though in 2018 I was teaching third graders, maybe, um, maybe for kindergartners. 00:16:45Edit I mean, definitely not older kids. Um, but the kinds of strategies that Matt talked about were things that I could kind of take on too because it, we as teachers are teachers across the ages and kids are kids. And so while there are certain things we have to think carefully about, there's a lot that carries through, um, when it comes to kind of the different kinds of kids in a group, I, I think there's some really easy things to keep in mind. One of which is giving kids options at different times to engage in conversations in different group sizes. So having kids turn and talk with one partner, having kids turned in a small group, having kids talk in the whole class. There's benefits and drawbacks to each kind of group size. But one of the benefits is that different kids get their voices heard or get the chance to speak up or feel more comfortable speaking up um in, in different groups. I'm also curious, I, I'm envisioning, you know, a a leader coming in to see your classes and thinking about all the dynamics of leader observation, leader, support or lack of support. 00:17:49Edit Um I'm curious to know, I think there's a lot of leaders who listen to this podcast, not just teachers. And so for leaders, how can leaders best support teachers who are doing this work? Like what's the, what, what's kind of your dream, whether whether you're experiencing it now or not? Like I, I think it would be really cool to uh tell leaders how they can either advocate support or um observe in a way that's actually really helpful and um supportive when we're doing this work. I mean, I have an excellent administrator who is very supportive. Um And so I think being encouraging is something that is sounds super simple and some people find ways to make that really complicated, like, like saying, thank you. That's another thing that admin like some people like the teacher did something and they didn't have to. So say thank you, like, you would think that that's a, like a, a some people make that way harder than, than it should be. 00:18:51Edit Um But I think beyond the encouraging, there's also um having consistent observation and clear structures. Um um And what I mean by that is like, and I know, look, admins have way too much on their plate. And so I'm not like there's a reason that most admin who's worth any salt would definitely want be love to spend all of their time in classrooms, observing teachers and doing other. So and the reason they're not is not because they're choosing not to. So this actually might even go a level above admins to be honest. Um A lot of this conversation is if you want to support admins, supporting teachers, you have to free up admins so that they can support teachers. Um um because, you know, if you're only being seen twice a year, um you know, or, you know, it's hard for a teacher to feel as supported. Um But also I understand why they can only be seen once or twice a year from someone from the administration team because they're busy, they're doing all sorts of other things. 00:20:01Edit Um But absent that I think setting up peer structures, um common planning time and those kind of things so that if the admin can't, you know, you know, it's not just the admin is doing the observations, the colleagues are doing observations and folks, you know, and they're given time to unpack what they see. Um um But I think just having consistency around that somehow we've got to find a way for teachers to have consistent observations with clear structures. I think that's the part that looks like so many di different things, but there has to be a consistency there. Um um That is often not the case. It makes me think of your threading idea, right? Of just like it can't be the one time that you come in. Like the whole idea is like we're learning and growing. So an admin who comes in in October and then comes back in November is like, oh wow, I can see the, I see that you've gotten better with this thing. Well, here's the thing that also this, this might be a little awkward to say, but like like average developing and good teachers need love too. 00:21:09Edit Like if that makes sense, like a lot of times the folks, the the the teachers who get as much uh to get consistent eyes on their practice are the teachers who are in a moment where they're struggling big time. Like those are the people who get teacher coaches, those are the people who have admins constantly. Those are the people who have all these structures set up to support them. But folks who are like their classroom is not burning down like they're like, cool, keep with the not burning down and it, it's, it's great and your test score, you know what I mean? Your test scores are fine. You're not always sending kiss at office, you know, like you're, um, and I feel like sometimes, you know, the average developing teacher of which we are all that person, like where we're like, we're just trying to get better. Um, they need, you know, they, they also need consistency and the teachers who are like nailing it like the Jens and Mats of the world also need, you know what I mean? Like we have a certain level of confidence and we're veterans at this and stuff like that, but I benefit, you know, I was just at dinner with Jen and I was picking ideas around just say, oh, I could do this like it's cool for us. 00:22:20Edit We benefit from having conversations about what we do and that happens. So rare, structurally with veteran teachers, they're like, you're, you know, you're not just not burning down, you're doing well. So godspeed like, like, and we are kind of left out of the conversation about, you know, how to get better. So, yeah, I think we, we find our own ways to do it because it is, we find our own way. It's not a systemic structural thing happening for us. I think that's a really good point. I would also add in thinking about how leaders can support in this work. I'm gonna totally support everything. Matt just said and add on the idea that in some places, at least doing this work can be risky. And so the more the leaders know what's happening in those classrooms and understand why it's happening and can have those teachers backs. That's gonna be huge. Matt and I are both lucky to be in places where that's not really a problem. Um, but that is not true for many, many teachers and to add off of what Jen said, um um, also not putting our admins in places where having our, where we're having our back is, is, is, is, is it isn't a fair thing to ask. 00:23:36Edit Like, like we, the communication has to go both ways. Hey, Edmund, I'm doing this, you know, this is what's going on, this is what might happen is, do I have any spots that I'm missing things? Do I have anything? I'm gonna need your, like, we have to stop surprising Edmunds too. Um I, that I've had that uncomfortable conversation with my boss a couple of times when I was younger and did that kind of stuff. It was kind of like, and he's like, oh, so I got your back but don't ever do that again. Like, don't ever like you need to, I'm getting parent like you knew parents was about to email me because you're reading that book, like you trying to read like if, if you're trying to read fun home with ninth graders. I need to know about it. Like you're trying to read, like, like you knew better than that. Like, you need to, like, we need to talk this through so we can figure out. And I think, and I, that landed with me, it said don't put me in a position where I have to cover for you and I'll know what I'm talking about because I don't help either one of us. So, um, yeah, that's a really good point. 00:24:40Edit I had, I have never heard someone actually articulate that end of it. That is beautiful. I'm so glad you said that I got fussed at. So I it got clear. He said, don't, don't do that to me again. Well, if we're going to ask our admin to have our backs, then the slightest thing we can do is make sure that they are not blindsided by it. They are ready, they are prepared. I think there, there are, I think this is really a point that you bring about in terms of like, um, I think j you use the word risk and, and just this idea of like parent phone calls or, and like all the things right that are happening in people's heads. I have a lot of thoughts about that, right? Like who's, whose family voices occupy our heads in the first is number one. So that's problematic, right? Who we're planning for on that. But I also think, you know, this idea of challenges is a big one, particularly for leaders who might want to kind of nurture and foster this in their teachers or teachers who are like, really excited about this. Um or the teachers who are like, you know, I'm, I'm um I'm ready and I kind of on the fence. I haven't started yet, but I'm, I'm ready to, to kind of get that, which is your target audience. I think, you know, what, what is the biggest challenge that you've had as educators or you've heard other educators share with you maybe as a result of the book and, and how have you helped like, work through it or help them work through it? 00:25:56Edit I haven't encountered, oh, no, go, go, go. I think just owning my privileged teaching where I teach, like I haven't faced as many, you know, issues from like, you know, racist parents and stuff like that. That's, that's not necessarily the demographic that I'm working with. Um um you know, I had the, the occasional blip but that's not a consistent, you know, thing. So I was gonna own that like, I have, you know, I, I have my ideas but that's not my lived experience. But um I think we don't talk as much as we probably should about student misbehavior. Like I think sometimes during conversations because a lot of times kids are coming from classrooms that are not that dialogic. And so it feels to them, like, free time. Like, they don't have an idea, they don't have the conceptual, like we are still working, we're just working through talking. They're like, we're just talking so I can do whatever I want. And I think that's part of what scares a lot of teachers away from having conversations because when, when you're doing other, you know, other activities, um, e everyone must be writing, everyone's filling out this sheet. 00:27:00Edit Everyone is re, you know what I mean? But when you're having a discussion sometimes, um, frankly, a lot of the biggest things and I don't, we didn't even write about this to be honest, but it's kids acting up. Um, and I think that in, in, in, in high school it's something I've seen, um, how well being dialogic has to connect with someone's basic classroom management, toolkit. Um, it's, it's, it's a, it's actually a really big issue and a lot of times, um, it's one thing that I'm constantly reminded of every year when I'm a student teacher because I have control of my classroom. Like I'm the alpha of my classroom. I do my, like I'm old school with many aspects of my, like, it's mine, y'all are just passing through. That's how I operate. Um, which means I can have all these open loose conversations because with the snap, I feel like I can, like, bring them back and bring like there's no, you know, I don't feel like I'm wrestling because I'm the alpha in the classroom. 00:28:04Edit But sometimes, um, student teachers come into the room and they're on some, like, I get student teachers from Penn and some other place and they're getting like this super progressive, like, like student voice centered, you know, and so they come in and they're like having trouble saying, like, stop talking, like, they have trouble with that. They're like, guys, this guy, they make a lot of, and they're, and I think conversations about leading class discussions have to also include discipline and structures of discipline and like, and having the confidence to assert yourself in the space. Um, and I think that's, most of my problems have been, like, internal, like, around that. Um, and, and I don't, it's not as much of a problem for me anymore. Uh, but seeing young teachers, I see, um, or not young, uh, uh, new, new teachers. It's, it's like that is a big and I think it's probably one of the biggest reasons why teachers don't. 00:29:04Edit They're like, once I start having conversations they, they start acting up and so I don't wanna do that anymore. Yeah, I think that's true at all levels too. Um, although if we did a better job of it earlier, it probably wouldn't be as big a problem by the time they get to you Matt. But I don't know, kids are gonna do it ma, to participate in class conversations more frequently. Um, I think another piece of that same problem. And this, I see more by upper elementary is that when conversations get difficult or uncomfortable, um, kids start to get goofy as a way of dealing with their discomfort. And so similarly, you, as the teacher have to be prepared both to address that in the moment, but also to support those kids in their discomfort because they're not doing it to be difficult, they're doing it because they don't know how to function in that in that moment. Um And so how do you help them while also making sure that that doesn't completely throw the conversation off the rails? I love that. You both just named that I am fascinated by that. So I think, yeah, one just thought for listeners who are like, you know, what if I do have those challenges? 00:30:10Edit One uh I think co creating class agreements is always really helpful for me. So just to be able to have that shared accountability is something I think that you, you guys talk about in the book, just like with this idea of um we are a community, these are community agreements, we are communally agreeing to them. So, you know, me being able to say like we need to stop talking is because we said we would stop talking when one person is talking, right? And so to be able to anchor in that I think is important and it also love this idea of um this idea of like this discomfort and being in discomfort and how do we exist in discomfort as this thing? We need to help students experience to grow. And so I think it's intrinsic to this, to conversations about race. So that what we're talking about today is your book. It's I think also just, you know, this could be extrapolated into many spaces and many growth spaces in education is a place where growth spaces are happening all the time. I think about so many adults who struggle and who make a joke to kind of avoid the conversation, right? Who, who are avoiding in some way where that behavior shows up and you're like this is happening in this second grade class D what is going on like that? 00:31:15Edit We haven't figured it out as adults. So I think that's a huge, huge area of practice and and just kind of like acknowledgment for teachers. But also I'm thinking about leaders who are dealing with staff members who may be feeling the same way about conversations about race or current events or things that are connected to race, right? Like in teacher spaces, like in the the hallway or in the teacher lounge or you know, whatever the space is, I think there's, there's so much um that educators at all levels can do to just address it, bring it up and, and have people feeling like it's good to be in discomfort. It's not, that's where we go my, my husband is a college professor and his, like, go to phrase with his students is I want you to be uncomfortable but not frozen because that's where we learn. Like, if you're too uncomfortable it's over. But if you're too comfortable then you're not growing. I think I wrote down the quote from this latest book. I think Matt, you had written it at your Children are gonna be loved, listened to and developmentally appropriately challenged. It's like, yep, that's, that's it. 00:32:19Edit Right. That's the combo. So in closing, I'm thinking about, you know, the educator who's listening to this, getting ready to maybe enter their school day or prep the lesson for tomorrow. What is like one thing that they could do tomorrow or in the next 24 hours that might be a nice, like starting point or, or refining point to something um, that they could do maybe building on something they already do as typical teacher practice or entering the space fresh if they are in. No, that's fine if they're entering the space fresh. I think the answer is a little bit different. Um My thing would be to find a consistent, um, community building activity that matches their personality and matches the, that meets the kids where they are. Um, and something that they can commit to. Um, like for me, it's like good news, Mondays. We do. We're rocking with that every Monday. It's gotten to the, I'm trying to add journal Tuesdays and I always kind of fall off. 00:33:27Edit I have some classes, I'm, but, but I've decided I'm fighting that fight. Like this is a fight, I'm fighting. I will continue to do that. And, you know, SSR Friday and I mean, and, and, and I'm trying to like, and, um, um, I, I think it's the things that you can when things get crazy and you have all these things to do and it's State Testing Day and it's this, that this, that and there's an assembly and all the things that happen are what, what is the thing that you are going to? I'm even going to sacrifice something else for this. We will do this and I think having one is better than having 10. Um And I think as far as community building, so I think if you're starting off, it would be that and if you're in the middle of a year or something like that, it would be um uh testing something like that while being fair to yourself, knowing that it's the middle of the year, there are systems, the kids are used for something else and not overanalyzing how well it worked because I'm, there's a couple of things like I'm trying out a new way of doing SSR, but I told the kids openly as I'm trying to decide this is about next year for me. 00:34:37Edit You are guinea pigs right now. This is about next year for me. Um but I'm trying to see. I'm testing out some structures um to see if it works. But I think specifically with community building and getting to know your kids or any of that stuff that you see Jen or I wrote about with safe space. Like, hopefully I made it clear that there's nothing special about good news or high grade compliments or, or, or the burning five minutes. Like those are things that, you know, half of them I took from Zach Chase, half of them I took myself and it, it's one of those, those activities aren't special. It's the committing to it every week that's special. And so whatever it is that you do, um, find that thing, um, that would be my biggest. And so the teach, so the kids know you for that thing that in the, like you're known for in this class we gonna do this. Um, and they can depend on it. I think that's the hard part with all of those, like crunchy granola, touchy, feely, emotion stuff is that we don't stick with it. 00:35:39Edit Like, but there's gotta be like something that's kind of like we, we're going to do it every Monday. Yeah, I would definitely second that because I don't care what the conversations you're having are, they don't happen. Well, without that, you could be discussing multiplication strategies and you're not gonna have good classroom conversations unless you have that classroom community. Um, and I think Matt hit on the hardest part of that for many teachers is that you have to carve out the time for it and we all feel crunched on time. And so we feel like, but I don't have time for that yet. You don't have time to not do it. Like not doing it costs you in the long run. But that's a really hard thing to begin to truly understand. Um, but that, yeah, that whatever it takes to ensure that you have a really strong solid classroom community because conversation about anything doesn't work without it. I love those. Those are excellent. I think as a final question, I'm just curious to know where you would want folks to follow up with you if they want to kind of follow you on social media, I'll link to the book in the show notes. Um Other places that you would want to connect with people, all of my socials are some version of Matt RK. 00:36:46Edit So if you look it up, you'll see um and uh uh website, not light.com. Um So check that out. Pick me up. Yeah, Matt and I have both been around long enough to just have our names. So everywhere for me is Gen or um including Gen or.com. Um Yeah, I think it's a sign of how old we are. I'm in the same boat, so we're all, we're all there. Awesome. Thank you both. So, so much. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. Thanks Lindsay. Thanks for the invite. If you like this episode. I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane Sapper and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period. I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. 00:37:58Edit Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network. Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
August 2024
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