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Tre’ Gammage is a Social Emotional Learning Specialist focused on building social-emotional competence in school communities through program adoption, implementation, professional development, and team building. In this episode, we build out a “unit” for adult PD using a step-by-step unit planning protocol!
Unit Planning Step 1: Context/Spark Wanting to curricular-ize adult SEL professional learning experiences. Currently, Tre’ is mostly focused on working with schools and leaders on relationship and communication. Let’s build a unit around this! Unit Planning Step 2: Pursuits (from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model) Identity: How will our unit help students to learn something about themselves and/or about others? Current offerings focus on general communication preferences as part of adults’ identities. Criticality: How will our unit engage students’ thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? Let’s elaborate on this. SEL skills are the foundation to be able to have equity conversations and changes. Group size may impact the adaptive, critical work that can be done in a generative way. We want adults to be able to stay in important situations and conversations when experiencing discomfort. Unit Planning Step 3: Driving Question Are you showing up as your best self in your community? (A lesson/activity can be defining as a group what “your best self” in community means.) Unit Planning Step 4: Summative Project (Publishing Opportunity and Possible Formats) Communication summary report for each team that includes information such as: individuals’ strengths, tendencies, whether they are people- or task-oriented and whether they have fast or slow communication styles. Application: Review these reports before and after meetings. Use the collaboration strategy list to support self and others. Final “assessment” is to address an existing tension in the school/team. Unit Planning Step 5: Unit Arc Hook: Miscommunication and high stress in the workplace as a hook. Then, take the assessment. Build the Base: Reflect on individual assessment results. Watch videos specific to your communication style. Explore high and low emotional intelligence examples. Case Studies: Case 1: Individuals think about relationships; Case 2: Strategies to support communication in your team; Case 3: Routines to help each person and the team be at their best. Project Work Time: Lower-stakes practice of team communication through “decision by consensus” options like lost at sea or lost on the moon. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on www.seleducators.com and on social media @tregammage and @seleducators. To help you learn more about adult SEL, Tre’ is sharing a bunch of informational video content with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 121 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 Welcome to another episode of The Time for Teacher Ship podcast on this one. We're doing another unit dreaming special. This is a little bit different. We have Trey on here who's talking about sel and designing an SCL curriculum for adults. Super cool. So let me tell you a little bit about Trey. Trey Gamage is a social emotional learning specialist focused on building social emotional competence in school communities through program adoption implementation, professional development and team building. After initially working in student affairs at a residential high school, she began consulting with K 12 schools supporting SCL and program implementation. In addition to becoming an international speaking champion via Toastmasters in 2016 and city council member in his local community dedicated to service, Trey is excited to continue his advocacy for student and adult well-being through his consultancy, sel educators forever learner. Trey has continued his education. After earning his bachelor's degree in psychology from Miami University, he continued to earn certifications as a global career development, facilitator dis practitioner, emotional intelligence practitioner, and certificate in school leadership, social emotional learning and character developing. 00:01:03 Lastly, Trey lives and serves by the phrase facilitating purpose, facilitate means to make it easier. And purpose means your reason for doing Rey's purpose is to make it easier to do what you love. Let's get to the episode. I'm 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 nerd out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Welcome to the Time for Teacher shift podcast. How, how are you? I'm good. I'm so excited because this is gonna be really cool. Not only is it one of the new unit dreaming episodes? But it's going to be centered around adults curriculum, which is something that we, we were just talking about. Like, what is that? 00:02:09 What does that look like? Is it just a linguistic thing? So I'm really excited. Yeah, me too. Me too. This is a, a dream come true. I've, I've been working with adults for a long time and um just thinking about how to curricular, the, the things that I'm doing, which probably already is a curriculum. But thinking about how can we really measure this to, to show an impact to the school communities. Excellent. So do you mind, I'll have read your bio at the front of the episode. But do you mind just telling people a little bit about, like, what's the context or kind of the spark for thinking about the unit we're about to design today in terms of what to do and Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm a professional learning consultant. I spent seven years in more traditional or actually non-traditional education settings. I worked at a residential high school as a resident life coordinator for a couple of years living and working with 45 students on my floor. And then I worked as a dean of students at A K 12 charter school. Every year, we built a new grade. So when I started, we were K seven, when I finished, we were K 12 and all the while in between that time, I've been providing professional learning for adults focused on emotional intelligence, A K A adult sel. 00:03:18 So we've been doing this for about seven years now. This is year seven um have done work with over 500 adults, 18 different school communities and got some great results that I'm actually finishing up a poster presentation for a workshop. We're gonna be presenting this research on April 27th in Atlanta at the Black School Psychology Summit. So definitely excited to, I just get some publishing stuff, put, put the research out in the world. That's amazing. And, and so much like, goodness, I think can come from the research because there's so much focus on the youth, right? Youth SCL we need so badly, we need adult sel and I'm so glad that you're doing this. So really excited to dig into this. Would you kind of like say that there's a spark in terms of either what you're already doing and you want to kind of think through a little bit more in terms of curricular or is there something that you're like, I kind of want to do something new and here's kind of the spark or where I'm kind of thinking about going and then we gave it out from there. 00:04:22 Yeah, I, I mean, I think, um let's go ahead and just work with what we've already got with what I've already got because there's, there's three components I, I've really focused on one component of my training thus far and that's just it because that's how much time schools have. So really focus on the relationship and communication aspect of our curriculum or of our trainings and there's multiple sessions that go into that. Um Then there's an emotional intelligence component where we're reviewing and assessing your actual emotional competence. And the third piece of the work that we have as far as like assessment and curriculum is workplace motivation. How do we assess your, your motivation in the workplace and making sure that we're putting you in a position to thrive? Hm. OK. Super cool. Is there one of those pieces that are, do you see these as kind of like separate using K 12 language like units so to speak? Yeah, I would, I would see those as different units. So I would say the relationships and communication would be the first unit. 00:05:25 I think that's where you, you come in really under, that's where we start to speak the same language. This would be the equivalent of your setting expectations. At the beginning of the school year, the emotional intelligence would be the the second unit where yeah, now you understand yourself, you understand the environment, you understand communication styles and preferences. Now let's dig a little bit more into you. And so with emotional intelligence to sel there's two loops and the first one is understanding yourself, which we really tackle in the relationship and communication piece. The other loop is understanding others. So your social awareness, your social management and it gets really reflected in that piece where we can pinpoint, hey, these are specific strategies for developing goal setting strategies or, or for understanding the the impact of your decisions, tho those types of things. Is there one that feels like you want to focus on it today as the kind of dream out a unit like one that's maybe like I could do a little bit more with this or I want to like that a little bit more uh let's, let's do the relationships and communication one because that's one that I was, again that most of the time schools will just do the first session. 00:06:37 But I've had time over this year to really do four and five sessions. So I love to think about how that could be pieced together in a, a semester or even an annual PD framework for adults. I like to think about like either monthly PL CS where we just include 15 to 20 minutes in your monthly PLC for SCL or if it was quarterly professional development, I think that those would be two ways that would be great to implement an adult sel curriculum. I love thinking about it too as like kind of this like year long package or unit too because then it is a, a commitment, right? We're not just doing this for 10 minutes one time. Yeah. So I love bringing in at this point of kind of the early brainstorm and I know you already have a lot too so you can kind of do a blend of like what we already do and, and what do you thinking? But Dr Goldie Mohammed's Hill model, I think is really good and she talks about the five pursuits um two of which are like skills and intellects, which is really content. We do those I think as PD providers, teachers even like we do those like just kind of naturally. 00:07:43 But the three that I think are less used uh or leveraged or touched on whatever is identity, criticality and joy. So are there, are there pieces that you think we either you already do and you want to like amp up a bit or just highlight or that you want to kind of add in to any or all of those pieces that's uh can you give me a little definitions of this? I mean, I think I know what most of those words are. But yeah, so I think for identity, I think of intersectional identity. So like we all carry so many like a multitude of identities. So I'm often just personally a friend of mine for me is usually race, gender, uh linguistic identity. Um Maybe national identity, immigration kind of status identity. And what that means, maybe a um it could be sexual orientation or membership in the LGBT qi a community. It could be even like I'm even thinking for like, I often think of for students, but actually for adults too is like your family dynamics, like for students, I often think, are you part of like a, you know, a single um parent household or are your parents divorced, that kind of thing? 00:08:49 But also like as an adult, are you a member of that community or were you raised in that like that kind of his identity too? Um So basically her question that she asked in her model is like, how will this help participants to learn something about themselves and for others. So we're digging into the self, like you said, and we're also digging into the other. I think that's very aligned to what you're saying. So that's identity, the criticality piece. Um She talks about how does it, how does it engage people thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? So we're kind of analyzing power and equity, which from a se to me is like there's kind of a lot of emphasis on the personal development, which is important, but there's also all these structures that make it, you know, hard and we can investigate those. Um And then joy, how does it enable amplify and spread joy like of the participants and of people more broadly? Yes, thank you for breaking that down. So I would, I would say criticality would be the the component to explore and to elaborate there. I think for the identity piece a little more generically, I I typically look at your natural communication style versus adapted communication style or your your workplace preferences versus your personal preferences. 00:09:56 So those obviously have cultural impacts and, and experiential relevance. But for generality and in this case, is, is important to be able to be general and say, hey, this is how I operate at home. Here's how I operate and work and you know, you may call that code switching if you want a more relevant term, I guess. But the criticality piece you know, something that I sometimes struggle with and sometimes it's super easy. I walk into some school buildings and, and folks are gung ho about SCL and there's no explanation needed. Whereas other communities, they don't really get it. They don't, they, they have a hard time connecting the dots. Whereas you and I understand, hey, sel our foundational skills from there, we can do equity, diversity, inclusion, restorative practices, character development. We can build anything on top of these foundational skills, but we've got to build those skills first. And so I think an area where I think that can help folks understand the impact more is to really look at the criticality and how understanding yourself and your communication styles can impact power and equity in your classroom and the school community. 00:11:10 I love that. That is so good. And it makes me think a lot about um adaptive leadership being at the core of, right, like what we're doing here because often we confront an issue in education or something. And we say, ok, well, here's the path forward. We're gonna kind of pd our way out of this and we're just gonna have a bunch of trainings and it's gonna be good, but we don't dig into like the core because it's a comfortable and so we don't have the emotional intelligence to be able to have the conversation as adults. And so we just don't touch it and then the same problems repeat. So there's some really interesting things that can be blurred there. Yes. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And, and it's so, you know, it gets so nuanced with it again. I've, I've typically, I'm working with teams of 30 to 50 school school leaders or, or educators, I should say, departmental folks. And this is hard to get that much depth even if it is 2 to 4 hours. But when I'm, and this might be even something to shape you set adaptive leadership, maybe it's more important to focus on a senior leadership team or a small team of, of 5 to 10 in the school community on this curriculum. 00:12:13 So it can have a deeper trickle down effect because the reality is in schools, I mean that, that you just don't have the time to, to truly dedicate and implement um some of these components right now, but from a leadership standpoint, 4 to 10 lines that need to get on the same page in regards to adaptive leadership that can impact the entire building. Yeah. And I think about that's such a good point. And II, I also think about what we can do it, you know, size wise in a conversation, like having a smaller group, you enable better dialogue and more people get a place to truly like listen and speak. And I just think so much of that adaptive skill set is very much dialog and the SCL skill set can be very much practiced in dialogue and if we're already doing dialogue all the time, we're already having conversations and meetings. It's not really like an add on. It's just you're already doing this. So let's just do it better. Let's just be aware of our emotions in the moment or self regulating or you know, whatever. 00:13:16 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I so super interesting in terms of that criticality piece. Are you thinking? So in the next kind of thing I want to think about is like as a driving question of your unit, what is the ultimate kind of goal or question that you want people grappling with so that they are able to do these things, build this foundation and also have a sense of that criticality throughout. Yeah, man. Uh This is an interesting question. I'm I um I can be a little philosophical in my head so, so make it more concrete if I need to. But my main question is, is really, and, and this is a variety but are, are you showing up as your best self for your community? Hey, everybody. It's Lindsay just popping in to tell you what your episode. Freebie is going to be. Trey is sharing his youtube channel, which has tons of great stuff. Not only does it have full podcast episodes with the video, but he expertly clips segments of conversation where you could just pop in and grab 30 seconds of brilliance from his guests on over 200 episodes. It is amazing. Go to Lindsay Betances dot com slash blog slash 121 to grab that. 00:14:23 What when I'm, when I'm saying, are you showing up in your best self? Is there a bi bias and baggage you're unaware of? Is there the people that are getting on your nerves? And I use this example for myself. I, I, I've worked with administrators. I didn't like, you know, not that just that they get on my, I don't like you. Um But am I aware enough to recognize that? Am I professional enough not to let that get in the way of our working relationship? And am I yeah, still professional enough to work with you collaboratively to, to meet the end result? So I had to show up as myself. I had to check my stress, my frustration and say, hey, how can I communicate with this person who I don't like? And they're making my life hard, how do I communicate with you effectively so we can get the outcome for these kids. If I did not have a sense of confidence or emotional intelligence, I would have quit like that administrator ended up doing later down the year, but I would have quit but because I am showing up as myself because I am practicing these skills and abilities, I'm, I'm able to stand in that fire and in that heat or in that, that situation where there is confrontation and conflict, I'm able to stay in it, maintain my self, maintain my boundaries and get the outcomes from my kids. 00:15:46 At the end of the day, we slash I was able to follow through that person was able to get to the end of the road as well. They literally quit right after the year. And um but, but uh that's the question. Are you showing up as your best self for your community? I, I think, yeah. And I love the layers that are part of that, that you were just kind of unpacking because I think the stay in it while it's uncomfortable is the core of so much of our work, right? And, and also like, what does it mean to be my best self? So sometimes my best self as personally, I'll just think about this for myself. I hold the value of justice very close, but sometimes because of discomfort, I might not speak when I should speak or I, you know, these different things. So it's like, what does it mean to be your best self? Seems like it would be kind of an activity within this unit. And then also being like, what are the skills that I need or what are the checks that I need to have in my head in a moment? All that. Yeah, like for me and I tell folks for me it's routine. I mentioned to you before, I'm I feel off today. Um But I understand why I, I had a flight that was delayed for five hours. 00:16:51 I've been overstimulated with my family the last 24 hours I have, I have my time to do my morning routine to say my little prayers to, to, to write in my journal. I haven't had time to do that for about four days. And so it's got me a little discombobulated. But because I know that once I had the time this morning, even though I like to get started with my day after I drop off my son, about eight o'clock, I spent two hours making sure I plan the day, making sure I took the time for myself. So that when we jump on this call, I can be at my best self II, I can be operating where I need to be. And so that's yeah, that we gotta find out how to operate at that place at all times. And if we're not, you gotta be aware enough to, to know that. So going back to this example and, and again, I'm this my anecdotes make it real for me. In that same scenario. When I was a dean of students, I was having to do things like create schedules and, and check course codes and, and all kinds of I dotting T crossing rule following items that I am not good at. 00:17:54 However, again, I recognize that I recognize the stress that came with it, recognize that I was over adapting to something that was not a strength, but I also recognized it was necessary because that's what my role called for at the time. And so again, I, maybe I wanted to quit or I wanted to say I'm not doing this. However, I recognized that that was an imperative skill or something for me to go through to be a better version of myself. I love that and I love all of these anecdotes that I think they do make it so tangible to be like, oh, that's exact, I've had that same situation or something similar, right? And so I think listeners can connect to that. Thank you for sharing those. II, I think also, I'm wondering um you mentioned something earlier about when you're reflecting on your best self to be doing that so that we are not, I don't know the wording you use, but I was thinking the application being a teacher comes in or a leader comes in not at their best. And then they are creating a power dynamic, enhancing, maybe a power dynamic that already exists, right? 00:18:57 And, and they are um kind of exploiting it or making it more intense or making, you know, a student or a staff member who's a subordinate kind of just have a harder time being their own best self if that makes sense. So there's kind of the reflection in self, but then there's also the criticality lens I think enables us to reflect on our best self in community as Well, um and so I think that's what I think what I think I'm getting at is the driving question to me, makes so much sense and there's that kind of opportunity to unpack. What does that mean? Yeah. Yeah. It's II, I don't know if I read this somewhere but there was something about ambiguous leadership or sometimes am leadership can be ambiguous because there, there's just so much nuance in it and I personally have a hard time pinpointing exactly what the question may be or exactly what needs to happen because it is rather relatively general. And then the the specificity is is up to the individual if you will. Yeah, absolutely. 00:20:01 And actually thinking about that specificity, I'm wondering so typically we think about in a unit, you know, that student facing, what is that final Summit of assessment or project? And usually I, I like to make this really actionable relevant, like, you know, and, and so my brain immediately is kind of going to, what is that project? That thing where each participant in your session or in your kind of unit sessions are thinking about this question and they're able to go through and answer that question for the semester of the year, the whatever I think on a daily level, people can answer that. But also like, what does that look like as a, as a sum? What are you thinking for that? Um Great question. So I think in, in this and I can see a couple of iterations. But through the assessments that we're using, there's a communication style summary. And in that summer you're essentially going through your and I'll see if I can pull up a uh a PDF of it. But there's, there's a, a summary of your style. So it'll be, here's what your strengths are, um what you need to be motivated or what you bring to the job, some of your tendencies? 00:21:06 What kind of environments are you the most effective in? What are you motivated by um under stress? How are you perceived? What did, what, how did you respond in conflict behaviors? How can you increase harmony in conflict behaviors? What are your preferences for communication? Dos and don't. So I, that's a lot. But those questions can be compiled after we've had time to sift the, the data after we've had time to analyze our results, we can really determine, hey, this is the kind of environment I need to succeed. This is how I would like people to respond to me under stress. This is how I want people to do, communicate with me this way. Please do not communicate with me that way. And at the end, you've got a summary of your communication preferences for yourself. So when you get stressed or, or you, you take on an assignment that's not in your forte, you can recognize where that stress is coming from. At the same time, we can share this summary with the rest of our team and they can review those preferences before they meet with us as well, or they have AAA an item that they can utilize that will give them some tips on how to be an effective communicator with me. 00:22:18 When they can tell I'm not on my a game, but I like that having this kind of almost sounds like quantitative measurement of like here's what it is. It's kind of an inventory for me. But in practice, it's useful to review before or after for myself and for others, I'm in community with o of what that is. So there's an actual like impact in the community it sounds like. Mhm Yeah. There, there's that and I've also used a um and I'm gonna share this with you. There's a tension style summary. So this is probably one of the most fun activities that I have and, and work with, with groups. But they'll will look at OK. There's two questions. Are you fast paced or slow paced? Are you open or guarded or, or regular people oriented or task oriented? Based on those two questions, you're one of four communication styles. And based on that communication style, here's how I should communicate with you. And so there's a attention style exercise where we can say, hey, Lindsay, you're fast paced Trey, I'm slow paced. 00:23:22 That's what we're gonna butt heads when we go into meetings or partnerships together that might be where we have conflict where somebody else say, hey, I'm people oriented, you're task oriented. So we jump into a meeting. I wanna catch up with everybody and figure out what's going on and you want to stick to the agenda. So now we're frustrated with each other doing an activity like this. I can understand my preferences, understand your preferences and then we'll explore different strategies to adapt like slow down, speed up, send an agenda in advance, add a line item to the agenda to make sure that we have time to discuss the simple tips like that. Um Some people that are more slower paced, they're not gonna be ready to make a decision at the end of the meeting. So plan to give three days before you need folks to respond super simple strategies that you can use to truly impact your community. So think about a think about a principal who has some of these strategies in mind when they meet with a stressed out teacher, their instinct might be to solve it in the moment, but that teacher might just need some time and some perspective to go back and think about it. 00:24:33 And y'all need to follow up in a couple days and see what the solution is. That is fascinating because it's also making me think of a as kind of a summit of assessment like if it was a student group, for example, I might say if this is the question and we're focused on communication, um you know, between as a group and between individuals and, and adapting based on a strategy list that we've co created of how to help ourselves and others. Maybe the final assessment is also like we have a really challenging conversation and we see how we do and it's, you know, that's the assessment. I'm wondering if there is some sort of, yeah, like thing that people do as a final activity and it could be with you, it could be on their own, but then their reflection is with you, right? And it's like, what is this challenging thing? It could be a strategic planning around a contentious issue where it could be. Uh Let's, let's literally talk about this current event that's like super interesting in our community. But like, let's just see how our like we're solely focused, not on the words that we're saying, but on like the communication and the, you know, I, I don't know, maybe both words that's great. Like doing your own case that I haven't considered that piece. But yeah, role play and where um some strategies to adapt, maybe you're, you're looking at either addressing the conflict that you, that you have or not even a conflict, but a attention have that conversation with somebody figure out some strategies to adapt in your next meeting, like actually applying the strategies that we learned I think would be great. 00:25:54 And then, and then following up with a discussion or a summary of OK. Yeah, I think that would be so cool because I'm just thinking about like how I see all of this work as so relevant for the work that I do when we're talking about discussions of, of current events, of race, of gender, of injustices in the world, right? Like we need these as baseline to do this. So like how cool would it be to, to do it? But after having built the base, knowing that we're still not gonna be perfect, we're still gonna have these struggles. So like how do we reflect in a way that's generative and adding to that strategy bank or reflecting one on one or whatever follow up is needed. Do you, do you envision that that would be something that people would do without you and then you would reflect or would you want to do that like with people? That's a good question. I um I'd be open and, and I think it would depend on the actual implementation. So if we're, if I, if I would be around, even if it would just be to facilitate the conversation. And again, I, I like, I gotta make stuff real some time. So there's a, a client I'm working with now and we're doing, we did a uh initial session where we debriefed their assessments, understood their style. 00:26:59 We did a follow up where we explored the tendencies of the team and now, we're actually, so this is I'm going off a little bit, but this is just helping me bring it together. I can actually pull a collaboration report. So this is a small team of four. So I can pull your report, my report and your report, Lindsay, put them together. And let's walk through our, our preferences, our strengths, our weaknesses, our limitations, and then we come up with a collaboration strategy. So um based on some of those strengths and limitations. So that's, that's more of AAA one on one or a partner rather than a small group. But I think if there was a way, yeah, I guess that could be done with a small group, you know, and, and so I think so, yeah, and in my head, we would be able to, I would be able to provide, you could do it independently, but I would want to provide folks and what I've done here, each team member. So there's four team members. I gave each of them a collaboration report. So you can see how you collaborate directly with everybody on your team and then independently they can, you know, take those reports and come up with a collaborative, collaborative report for each individual and then together as your team. 00:28:11 And that could be done in PL CS in senior leadership teams, um grade level unit, whatever, however, your school breaks down its professional learning communities, we could do it that way. Oh I love that. It's actually making me think of the driving question frame that I sometimes use. It's like, what's the formula for? So it's like, what's the formula for acting as your best self or showing up as your best self in the community? And like, it might be that like, it's a combination of all these different strategies and these different elements that everyone's kind of, but it, it turns out as like formula or recipe or, you know, like whatever that it could be. Um But that's super cool. I think this is going to be highly relevant for people that even if they're just listening to this, I mean, one, if you're listening to this as a leader, you should kind of and, and do this with him. Um but even someone who just wants to test out this process on their own, like try it out at your next staff meeting, like try out like thinking about some of these pieces because I think they're so valuable and, and I'm wondering as you think about this now as like a unit, right? As opposed to like just kind of a standalone session or sessions, what would kind of like your and, and this could be built on what you already do. 00:29:15 I'm thinking usually I plan out three kind of main phases and then there's kind of 1/4. So one is like, what's the first session or what's like the hook activity that's like we're gonna explore this through some sort of highly relevant thing, then we're building the base, which sounds to me like it's the foundational pieces of identifying and digging into the self and like, what are your communication styles and all that? And then I usually try to do case studies. So like, what's the application of that base we built in certain scenarios or do we uncover certain scenarios or maybe we're looking at different strategies. So like a case study could be using um theater of the oppressed as a strategy to re enact a conflict that happened and then redo it or, you know, like whatever it is. Um I'm curious to know what you're thinking for anyone or multiple of these phases. You said case study. What were the first two, case studies? Yep. Hook is like the first session or the first activity. So how do you hook them in? Um Usually I use something typically I'll try to use like a current event or maybe a conflict or some sort of something that's interesting, but it could literally be anything. Then there's like the build the base, which is the foundation. 00:30:18 So that's phase two. And that seems to me like it's a lot of the inventory that you do of like identifying communication styles and case studies. Three. And then the fourth one is like, I usually do like project time or project work time, which to me is probably just the practice for teams and for individuals of like having the conversations digging into and like actually applying the strategies and seeing if they're working. Yeah. So I'm, I'm um open to your feedback. I would love your feedback here based on what I'm currently doing. The hook would be um I'm just thinking of individual session, but the hook would technically be the assessment. So there's when II I send a welcome letter to the participants, they read, what is this all about this assessment? And then you watch some generic videos that, that show you how not generic but specific to the style that kind of talk about. Hey, here's what this is, here's what you need to know about it. Here's how it impacts the workplace. And so something I've even been doing recently is showing what is high emotional intelligence look like versus low. 00:31:24 Um How does, how does miscommunication show up in the workplace? What does high stress look like at the workplace? Those are kind of my introductory topics to the session and then our foundation building that's like. So there's three sections of the report that you get. The first one is understanding this, which would be that hook if you will and really tying it into to stressors and workplace development. The foundation is gonna be the debrief. That's when you've already taken your assessment. Let's talk about your results and, and I mentioned that summary. So we're actually exploring your, your tendencies, your strengths your styles that it's very reflective for the folks and they're able to go and see that information. That's why I take a lot of time in a four hour session. That's like that is the crux. That is the meat of it where we're really digging and learning. Um The case study is where, that's where the style for me, that's where the style of tension comes in place. 00:32:26 And so like this past weekend, what I did, I, I used myself as if I said, OK, am I, how long have y'all known me? 20 minutes? All right. Am I fast paced or slow paced? Boom, you're fast paced. Tell me what, let you know that the way you're talking this, this, that all right. Am I open or am I guarded? You're open? Cool real time case study. Y'all understand my communication preferences now, based on those, what would be our difference in communication style and how do you close that gap? So the case study, but they would do it with, amongst themselves. I can tell you to think about a personal relationship, complete and then go and mingle with the people around and do the same. Um My final project, I kind of like what we talked about before though for the final project with the collaborative strategies. But um another kind of game, this is more fun, probably less curriculum is a decision by consensus team building game. There's a couple games called Lost on the moon and lost at sea where you, you're stranded on the moon and you've got to work with your team to organize the, the final materials that you have left in order to survive. 00:33:41 And it's not a place where it will. Since you said it, we'll just go with that. The, the idea is how can we make decisions by consensus using some of these styles or strategies to accommodate the rest of our team? I actually love that as seeing it as project work time. So one of the things that I think is, is unique to this specific example is we're practicing skills and we want there to be like that authentic final assessment which very well could be, we're talking about a conflict or whatever, but that working on the project, you know, it, we're not writing an essay, we're not doing like one paragraph today, we're practicing the skills. And so how cool would that be to have the decision by consensus be the project work time where we're practicing the skills with a little bit lower stakes? And then, and then the final assessment is a little bit of an elevated stakes because we're talking about a real thing. Um I think that would be super cool. I like it. And then I, I think to me the, the hook as the assessment, I'm wondering if assessment could be part of the hook. I wonder if the almost like a kind of an inversion necessarily. But I'm really interested in when you were talking about miscommunication and high stress in the workplace. 00:34:47 I just feel like some people could really be engaged with highlighting those upfronts of like, it could literally be like, you know, get people up and moving, like see to the side of the room if you've ever had an incident where saw this miscommunication style or something, you know, like whatever it is, I think just people having an identification with like, yep, I know that I'm kind of like in that head nodding zone, like I've kind of committed to like learning more about how do we overcome that or how do we, and then it's kind of like, ok, we're gonna, in order to do that, we need to know our individual styles and now we're gonna go ahead and assess or something. So it's like assessment is part of the hook, maybe it's like the wrap up of the hook and then we're reflecting as kind of the building the base and then doing kind of the rest of the piece, the pieces, but like bringing some of that up front. Yeah, I think that makes sense to me. Yeah, I think that would be super cool because so many people just want to talk about the struggles, right? And, and to see themselves as like I am seen, you know, like my struggles are seen with what's going on. 00:35:48 Um And then the final thing I want to say is the case studies. I love the idea of, I almost wonder if it could be like a couple, couple options here that I was thinking one is you think about various relationships and each relationship is a case. So you almost have like a uh like an internal gallery walk almost of like this is how I interact with my partner and this is how I interact with my child or, you know, whatever. Um But then I also wonder if that's like one case, like one session is kind of this gallery walk of interpersonal relationships. And then the next session is um you know, we're, now we're exploring some of the strategies or we're exploring some of like I love what you said early on, you talked about routines. So here are some routines that would support this particular thing. So now I'm kind of doing a case study of this routine or these type of routines in action. I, I wonder what, what you think about that? I think that's, that's golden because I think um yeah, right now, even with what you're saying, I think some things that might keep uh people that they might not necessarily know about SCL or the importance of emotional intelligence. 00:36:53 Some of that, some things like for me, I, I understand the application but it's hard to explain in laid terms. So I think that's a great way to say a Godly walk up in a personal relationships that puts a light bulb on for me to explore your specific scenarios. And that's what I get a lot of times is, hey, can we dig deeper into this section right here? Can we dig deeper into these tendencies? But we don't necessarily always have time to practice it. And I, I typically think about practicing what amongst the people. But I think that'd be a great idea to, to really think about how in your life, your interaction and your relationship show up with them would, would provide more depth. I also love this idea in terms of, I mean, we're both PD providers and so we communicate with leaders about like what we're choosing to do and what the plan of PD is for, for educators and teachers. And, and I'm actually thinking about this almost too as like a helpful tool of communication with that point of contact at the school or district to say like time is required to dig in deeply. 00:37:56 And here's the feedback I've been getting for participants, they wanna dig deeply into this thing. So why don't we make these full day or full session however long the session is case studies and then you can choose or we can say we're gonna do two cases or three case cases and the team like the, the whole group is going to choose what they are, but we're gonna build in space for like two deep dives or something and, and just kind of like that framework sometimes can be helpful to acknowledge how much deep work is required to do it. Well, good, good. I'm listen, I'm thinking about who I can go talk about this to next. Um I think this is, this is super, super well because, and you hear, even with some of my conversations, I try to keep things a little more generic or general because it can be so specific based on what you want and what you need. But I think even from my standpoint, when I'm going to talk to a school community, being able to use some of these terms and talk about it in the curriculum format would be very helpful as well because that's the language that, that folks understand PD is obviously a language too, but PD is more so seen as extra where curriculum is required. 00:39:06 So that, that might be AAA nice mindset shift that would, would help folks recognize the value in this curriculum as well. That's such a great point. I never thought about it that way. But yeah, you wouldn't like teach a unit as like just a one off. Like, like you wouldn't call like two lessons, a unit, right? Like you have to, you can't skip this stuff and so to frame it that way. Yeah. Oh, cool. So I'm wondering how like this is a super selfish question. So how in terms of the process and, and the kind of what we went through, what feels most relevant or most of like a, a helpful kind of tool in planning out some of this stuff because I'm just trying to, you know, constantly refine this process for other people. So I'd love to hear what you're thinking. Yeah. So I think what's helpful in this process, I like the phases that you talked about, of curriculum. You mentioned the hook, the foundation, the case study and the project. I think that's wonderful and not necessarily terms that I always think in, I I understand that and I'm more of a visionary if, if I were so I can see the end result and I can see where we're going. 00:40:09 But telling you those steps and giving them to you in detail, that's just not my cup of tea. So I need stuff that's more concrete and you talked about those phases that was super helpful. And I think even the idea part of what's helpful about this process too is, is just talking about it with you out loud. So I i it's helpful for me because I already have a structure, but it's helpful to have you because you've already built these curriculums and design these units. So I think I picked up language on what would be more attractive to school leaders. I think that the work that I'm doing an adult seo is attractive to school leaders. But if it can be structured in this way, I think that would be even more effective and more attractive. And even as I'm going to recruit and call schools instead of me being generic or general. And, you know, more of lame and take Eqsel, here's what we do. You know, we've got a curriculum focused on developing educated well-being and this is the process that we go through. 00:41:16 So instead of it being a PD day, it's a gallery walk, it's a, you know, I think that just is more specific PD in my head and I'm, I, I provide fashion development but the PD can be, it's a filler. So if I want, hey, we got PD this Friday, what are we gonna do for PD? Let's make the agenda, you know, and it's just on the back burner. Oh, yeah. OK. We need a speaker for PD. We need somebody for PD. It may or may not be aligned to what we have going on, but this is coming up in three weeks and we need a solution. Whereas curriculum I can say at the beginning of the year when you do your PD, this is what is gonna be done. And so it's a scope and there's a sequence to it and we can really map it out more specifically. Wow, you just did a lot there. Yeah, that is absolutely true. Um So in that vein of people are thinking now about curriculum knowing that you have a great one where can listeners find you connect with you. Have those calls with you. Yes, at SD educators dot com. We've just updated the website to include a lot of the stuff that we've talked about today from consultant to, to professional development. 00:42:24 I need to change it to curriculum and also school engagement for parents and families as well. So SCL educators dot com on youtube at Sel Educators is where you can find our 240 podcast episodes and on social media. I'm me Trey Gamon on linkedin Instagram and that's really Facebook too. That's really the ones I use. Amazing Trey. Thank you so much for coming on and doing this today. My pleasure. It was a great time. Lindsay. If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my life, coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We weave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at www dot Lindsay beth lions dot com slash contact. 00:43:32 Until next time leaders continue to think, big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better podcast network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain how to talk about a strategic plan for increasing student voice in the next few years:
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6/19/2023 120. Unit Dreaming: Sustainable Farming + Photosynthesis with Dr. Leena Bakshi McLeanRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
Dr. Leena Bakshi is the founder of STEM4Real, a nonprofit professional learning organization committed to combining STEM and NGSS standards-based content learning and leadership with principles of equity and social justice. It was super fun to brainstorm a justice-centered Science unit using both of our unit planning protocols!
Here’s what we came up with: Unit Planning Step 1: Context/Spark Real-world application: What can students do? Food desserts during the pandemic in California. Unit Planning Step 2: Pursuits (from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model) Identity: How will our unit help students to learn something about themselves and/or about others? Students see themselves in the lesson. Counternarratives via situations, types of farming. Criticality: How will our unit engage students’ thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? Different communities’ levels of access to food by race, geography and income. Joy*: How will my unit enable, amplify, and spread joy? If the teachers aren’t having fun teaching, the students won’t be having fun. Phenomenon-based instruction inspires curiosity. Phenomenon-based instruction can happen across the content! Joy is in the possibilities of what can be! Unit Planning Step 3: Driving Question How do we farm so that communities of color and low-income communities have access to food? Unit Planning Step 4: Summative Project (Publishing Opportunity and Possible Formats) The public product can be selected by students. This might be a social media campaign, a letter to the school board, presenting at a city council meeting. Unit Planning Step 5: Unit Arc SHS Planning Approach: Standard: Photosynthesis Hook: Students look at photos of empty grocery store shelves. Society: How are we going to farm? 5 Es Unit Arc: Engage: Experiential, inquiry-based learning (just jump right in without vocabulary!) Show the picture(s), have students generate questions using the Question Formulation Protocol, share via a discussion protocol. Explore: Make observations. Measure plant growth. Explain: It doesn’t have to be teachers explaining to students. Students can explain to each other! Use a text-based protocol (e.g., video, written text, student-created model) Elaborate: Tell counternarratives. Show examples of farmers of color and indigenous farming techniques. Align with Social Justice Standards from Learning for Justice. Look at different contexts like hydroponics. Evaluate: Return to student-created list of questions from the start of the unit. What questions did we answer? Use Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning frame to respond to DQ. Use Circle protocol to discuss. Youth take civic action that feels authentic. Stay Connected You can find Dr. Bakshi McLean on www.stem4real.org and follow her organization at @stem4real on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. To help you design and implement your own amazing unit, Dr. Bakshi McLean is sharing her Lesson Planning Tools with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 120 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 In this episode, I get to unit Dream with Dr Lena Bahi mclean, who is the founder of STEM for real, a nonprofit professional learning organization committed to combining STEM and NGSS standard based content learning and leadership with principles of equity and social justice. She also serves as the board Secretary for the California Association of Science Educators. Lena currently works with pre service teachers at Claremont Graduate University, teaching STEM methods and universal design for learning. She is a former county and state level administrator in mathematics science and health teacher. She is also the author of the children's book. There's something in the Water, a story that highlights the real life of Doctor Tyrone B. Hayes, an endocrinologist from UC Berkeley. She believes that in order for us to increase our representation in STEM, we must create an identity in stem. Her research interests include science, stem education and how we can create access and opportunities for each and every student, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or socioeconomic status. Let's get to our amazing unit brainstorm session with Doctor Bay mclean. I'm 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. 00:01:12 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 nerd out about co creating curriculum with students, I made this show for you. Here we go, Doctor Braxy mclean. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And this is one of my favorite topics. So I am so excited to dive right in. I am so excited to, is there anything, I mean, I've read your bio, but is there anything that you want to share in terms of like the impetus, the context for our conversation today? The, you know, brainstorm, anything that's going through your mind? I think for the purposes of our conversation, I want the takeaway to be about real world implications and looking at our greater society. What can our students do and how can that, how can that inspire our instruction? 00:02:21 I love that idea of real world implications and we'll, we'll go right there. I'm so pumped. So what is it? Let's start with like, what do you want students to learn or pursue in this unit that we're gonna like create on the spot here? Like what would your dream be? So I I often think of like Doctor Goldie Mohammed framework and thinking specifically, I know she has more parts in this but specifically, I think of like identity criticality, joy. Like these are the pieces that are often missing from like your traditional education. So is there anything with that in mind that you're like, yes, I want students to learn this or pursue this? Yeah, definitely, I go straight to joy because if the teachers aren't having fun teaching the lesson, then the students will most definitely not have fun. So I really think that as we prioritize joy, it's um that's a, that's a very important concept and, and I fully stand by that. I also in the the science world, we prioritize phenomenon based instruction. And it's this idea that you have this, this phenomenon, this head scratching, uh observable event that students can look at and get curious. 00:03:31 You know, we think about our students are that, that come out as they and they are so curious, they're, they're looking around, they're asking why, why and then we lose that somewhere. And, and so I think that regardless of discipline, we want to get that curiosity back. So every time I start a unit again, regardless of discipline, I know in the science world, we talk about phenomenon based instruction. I think you could have phenomenon based instruction across the content. I love so much of, I'm like writing. So many notes now. But like this idea of the curiosity being kind of the thing that that is being pursued, the joy coming out of that. I love that. And then I also love that you're also kind of jumping to like kind of the unit arc frame where like you hook through the phenomenon or you uncover it through the phenomenon and like the fact that that's observable that the head scratcher just, I love these terms that just make it feel fun. Like you're going to learn through fun and enjoy. 00:04:33 So it's like all present in what you're sharing already. Yes. Yes. And we have a tendency especially in academia to get very heady about the terms. Like, is this an anchoring phenomenon? Is this an investigative phenomenon? And while those terms are very important, we have to remember that we are teachers, what do we need to do? What do we need to teach? What do our students need to learn? What are the takeaways and anything that can really simplify unit planning? I, I love 100%. Yeah. So it, so if you were to teach like a particular unit or you were to coach someone on a particular unit, like could be any grade level, any content area, anything. So we're gonna, we're gonna make sure that there's joy present, there's curiosity present. We're gonna start with the phenomenon. What would be like the driving question of that dream unit for you? Like what's the thing they're grappling with? Definitely um as, as much as education probably does not need another set of acronyms. We have another one. And so when we think about starting any unit, we start with SHS and that is our formula for creating a phenomenon. 00:05:44 So the first S is the standard. And so that's gonna be um either in science, the next generation science standard, if it's common core, your common core mathematics standard or el a standard, any sort of state standard that you have. Because ultimately, at the end of the day, we have to teach the standards. So we want that to um to drive our, our content, then we have our H and, and I know you mentioned this word already and I didn't even have to, it's our hook. So what's that hook gonna be that's going to hook students into the standard? And I, I'm not gonna lie. There are some standards where the hook is very uh prevalent. It, it's very obvious, let's say we had a um a standard on photosynthesis. We can talk about the giant redwoods cars driving through trees because of its mass. There's a, there's a lot there and then there are standards like, um you know, simplifying rational expressions and you'll have to, you have to wonder like, you know, what's that hook gonna be? 00:06:55 And I, and I always coach teachers in thinking, you know, what can we do? Could we gamify it could we do something to make it so that there is a hook that studentss can, can grab onto and then the third s is society. And that is what I, again, when we first started our conversation, it's all about that real world implication and the connections to our greater society. And again, whether it's across the content, we, we should always be vigilant of what's happening in our world and bring that content into the classroom, especially if it's at the local context and, and connected to our local community. Yeah. So I I'm almost wondering, is there like a local context in your area or in the area of a teacher you're coaching right now? That might make a really fun unit that we could kind of like game out. We could use this approach even like the standard Hook society to like think about like what might this unit look like to create it around this specific thing? Yeah, let's, let's go. Let's um think about uh we had a small little pandemic that happened across the world and, and I know that some people are maybe COVID it out when it comes to unit planning. 00:08:10 Uh But there are a lot of issues that, that came with like regardless of um when you connected to supply chain issues, when you connected to food and food deserts. So we had one group of teachers, look at the food deserts in the inland Empire of California and we saw when you went into the grocery stores, there were completely empty shelves and that's what farming is to a lot of people. They go to the grocery store and pick out their avocados and say, all right, I farmed. This is where food comes from. And then all of a sudden you see these empty shelves. So that served as the hook for, um, for the students to look at that picture and say, wow, where, where does our food come from? And that was connected to the performance expectation for the next generation science standards? I believe Ls 1-7 don't quote me. It's the one about photosynthesis. And so when we take our photosynthesis standards, we're able to start with our s we've got our standard, we've got our hook, we're looking at these empty, empty shelves and then of course, implications for society. 00:09:25 How are, how are we going to farm and how are we going to use the the uh process of photosynthesis to ensure that our communities, especially our communities of color, our lower socioeconomic communities, they're getting access to food. I love that. So I'm just thinking about like the driving question being like, yeah, like how do we farm? Right? So in, in, in a way that like she almost like shifts the power dynamic or the access dynamic, right? So like I like I'm not sure what the language would necessarily be, but I mean, just the language you use, right? How do we farm? So that um you know, communities of color and low socioeconomic communities have, have that access, right? Or, or something like that. I love that as like the driving question because then they need to like figure it out like they have to answer and come up with like a better way to do things that is currently being done, which is super cool. Exactly. Awesome. Oh my gosh. OK. So I love this. I love the standard connection to photosynthesis. 00:10:29 I love the hook by looking at the grocery store pictures. Oh my gosh. Amazing. So now I'm thinking about like, what kind of would the project look like in terms of how students are answering that question? Like how they're expressing the answer to that question? Like, how do they share those ideas? What might that look like? And I feel like it could look 100 ways. But what are you thinking? So, of course, we're, we're gonna have another acronym but this time it's only one letter, uh five of the same letter and we call it the five ES. And the good news is a lot of the curriculum, especially in science. They've already laid out their curriculum in, in the five E format. So the five es are engage, explore, explain, elaborate, evaluate and, and iii I hear this all the time especially in education where we get the, you know, same wine new bottle and there's always a formula. And ultimately, regardless of whatever formula you use, we want to again, start with our hook, which is our engage. 00:11:37 And then we want students to dive right into the learning, get messy, explore, do the activities just jump right into the content so that there is this um experiential spatial learning that's occurring inquiry based and, and it may seem crazy to just go into the lab without talking about the vocabulary without talking about what they should be doing. So there is an age old debate that occurred like, well, no, I have to talk, talk about the content before so that students can understand the activity. However, sometimes students just wanna jump, jump right in and then as they are engaging in the activity, the academic vocabulary comes out within the context. So abc activity before content, we want to plan these learning activities before the formal explanations. 00:12:40 And I urge I urge teachers to try it out um even if they've tried it out before and they haven't seen success, keep trying because I, I do think that this, this type of learning really engages learners that have typically not shown success in the standard learning environment. So thinking about emerging bilingual students, students with disabilities and they just need a different angle at times. And it's very interesting uh where my husband actually very, very far into his academic career. He's uh he's probably in 19th grade. He's starting his phd and he was so frustrated because he got a homework assignment and the teacher didn't explain how to do it. The teacher said, all right, try it out. We've done some readings and we've done some, um, some lectures on this. 00:13:41 So just go ahead and, and Tinker, try the homework, see what happens. And he was, he said, you know, why am I attempting this homework when we haven't specifically gone over the, the content of how to do the homework. And I'm thinking, but it's that productive struggle, you know, like you go through it and you tinker. So all that to say, we, we want to jump right into the activities as much as possible and then we go into the explain. So having uh a a and when we think about explain, it doesn't just have to be the teacher explaining to the student. It can be the student explaining back to the teacher or the students explaining to each other. So those are, those are three for now and engage explore, explain and uh I'll pause there because I know that was a lot. No, that's amazing. OK. So I love that you're kind of jumping to those activities or those I'm almost thinking about like what are the protocols? 00:14:43 Like, what does that literally look like? So for like that engage, right? Like that might look like and this is just me brainstorming here, but that might look like showing the picture and then inviting a class discussion, it could be like a certain discussion. It could be like, just like talking groups and then share out like some sort of like, let's get everybody talking. It could be like a write around. So I'm just thinking like, what are some of the things that you see in each of these stages as like the protocol or like the kind of like where the discussion or learning kind of lives or how that's structured. Exactly. So with the engage you show these photos, these shocking photos of empty shelves and or maybe dead gardens. And then you can have students like you said, have a talking circle, they can brainstorm questions. We like to use the question formulation technique to get those questions going and again, giving the students having, having the students be the driving drivers in, in coming up with all of these questions and then in the explore activities, perhaps they're looking at a seed in a bag. 00:15:49 So they're uh looking at how a seed grows and making observations, looking at their at the plant growth chart, measuring how a plant grows. And my view, these are students that they don't know what chlorophyll is yet. They don't know what the photosynthesis terms. They're just taking a seed, putting in a bag with water and seeing what happens. And so that's what I mean about the whole exploration. And then in the explain this is where you would incorporate that informational text so it could be a book on how plants grow. It could be an informational video on what's happening with the plant as or what's happening with the seed as it's as it's growing. It could also be students creating um a visual model of what the plant looks like and and labeling the terms, perhaps looking at um some vocabulary terms and together creating this consensus model of what they're seeing. 00:16:50 So all of that to say that the explain comes after the messy exploration. Oh my gosh, so much that I love, I also really want to highlight that I think the creation of the visual model as part of the explain phase, like at, you know, at phase three, not all the way at the end is like something that I think is a huge mindset shift for some teachers of like, oh that's the type of assessment that in a traditional classroom might be at the very end. And like you said, it might be explained first and then they're doing this thing. And I, I just love that there's so much of like, let me find out what I'm interested in, let me just kind of see it happen and then I can learn the words to put to it and then I can explain it back and yet that's still only phase three, like there's more to do, there's more creativity to be had in curiosity you. So like this is just so exciting Yes. Yes. And so as we kind of think about those next ones, I wanna make sure I get the ease right here. So elaborate and evaluate what are some of the things that happened there or what protocols could we see there? So, in the elaborate, I always think of elaborate as OK, so you know how to drive. 00:17:58 However, can you drive in downtown L A in rush hour? You know, so you have the the initial skills of driving. Can you drive in a different context? And this is where this is where I see elaborate as the opportunity to diversify your content. This is your opportunity to tell the counter narrative to bring in um examples of indigenous farming practices and um use how how indigenous people have been able to farm and continue to farm to this day and, and be able to utilize those practices. You can also show examples of um farmers of color, you can show examples of scientists of color that are are doing this work. This is our opportunity to be culturally responsive and, and, and really, you know, culturally responsive teaching should be all teaching. 00:19:00 And so when I, when I talk about how to incorporate a lot of the these other things that can, that can build the cultural capital of our students a lot of times it is during the elaborate phase and then you can also uh bring in the social justice standards. So these are a set of standards from learning for justice. And they have, I believe they have about, they have 20 standards and it's divided into identity, diversity, justice and action. And this is where teachers as the driver can decide. Well, how do we build in that connection to the social justice standards? Do I want to think about it in terms of diversity where um we look at how students can respond by building empathy or respect, perhaps for the other, other parts of the world, other parts of the United States or even other parts of their state. 00:20:01 Sometimes when we think about poverty for some reason, everyone goes to Africa and I'm like, no, you can go right to San Francisco, California and look at poverty. Hey, it, Lindsay just popping in to talk about today's freebie for the episode. Doctor Bay mclean is sharing with us her lesson planning tools for free and you can grab those at Lindsay with clients dot com slash blog slash one, 20 back to the show. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yes. All the things. So I love the idea too that embedded in the driving question that you initially came up with is all of that right? Like the the question that you came up with in the project that you kind of envision from the start it centers all of that stuff. Like to know I'm looking back at our question here but to know how you might want to be able to farm in the ways that are all very justice centered. Like you have to know indigenous farming techniques and you have to hear the successes and you have to know about like the different communities that you're naming now and and the impact of the way we do things now. Like it's so justice centered from the very start of this conversation. It has been. 00:21:04 And so I love that this is the way it can kind of like flourish and you can really dive into, I typically call them like case studies like you were using, I think the language of like um different contexts and diff diversifying content and counter narratives which I love as well. And so like this is where it can just kind of like explode like all of the beautiful stuff that like typically feels like an add on like this is this isn't an add-on like this is this is it, you know. Yes. And, and for the purposes of the unit that we're building, I believe our teachers were talking about looking at hydroponic systems and looking at how that has been able to, that concept has been able to uh drive a lot of the farming techniques. So, uh again, this is your opportunity to explore the concepts and the content of photosynthesis and then seeing how it's applied in different areas. I love it so much. And there's also there's just so much in terms of like sustainable futures, like there's so much impact of, of this project and this unit, I'm wondering what the evaluate stage would entail like, what are those activities? 00:22:15 And this is actually, you know, when I hear the word, evaluate an assessment, I as a and as an educator, I cringe as a student, I cringe, I'm like uh test test taking and so much of the evaluate it, it goes so much deeper. It's not just a multiple choice test, it's not just a final, it's a way for students to just show what they know. And I in a way that's so uh non, non judgmental essentially and not evaluative even though it is the evaluate phase. But it is the, it's an evaluate for us as teachers to say, OK, what land is, what do we need to do? So this is where I love to get very creative. And you talked about having a circle talk and, and doing that as an engaged, I would love to do that as an evaluate too and seeing what students are coming up with or maybe even going back to the list of questions that the students um brainstormed in the beginning of the unit uh of the lesson and then coming back to it and saying, OK, well, uh what, what questions did we answer and what more questions do we have? 00:23:30 And you can also look at how um students can craft their own explanations we use the frame, the claim, evidence and reasoning. So perhaps they're making a claim about the driving question and then coming up with all the pieces of evidence and the evidence that they've built out throughout the unit and the lessons. So for example, maybe they have evidence from seed in a bag, maybe they have evidence from um researching hydroponic systems and observations there. So a lot of that evidence can be built into to strengthen their claim. And then you have the the reasoning piece and that can come from your informational text and the lectures and the informational videos that can support that can ultimately support their claim. So evaluate can be oral, it can be the academic discourse that you as the teacher can listen to and hear what students are talking about. 00:24:33 Uh This is also great for students that have a hard time with writing and you can still be able to assess them. This is also good for students that have the opportunity to speak in their home language. So if they're able to express their content and and and you're somehow able to gather that information, that's definitely something to consider uh evaluate can also be through writing of course. So the written process and the written products that students are able to turn in and it can be free response. It could be multiple choice. But I think the most important part is in the evaluate, what can you evaluate like what and, and it's not necessarily an evaluate of your teaching, it's what do they know and where do we need to go back and reteach? I love the opportunities to that can come out of this particular project in terms of like students are almost making recommendations for like a better future and a better way of doing things and, and the people who need to hear that are out there in the world doing unsustainable farming or you know, like there are people who are not practicing these things that would actually be beneficial for the world, for humanity. 00:25:52 Like, and it, it might be interesting too. I always think of like an authentic audience beyond the classroom or be on the teacher on the grade. So like the purpose being like, let's actually impact these practices. I wonder what publishing, I always call them publishing opportunities because like it's a very el a like brain that I have but you know, like, what are those opportunities for them to like share beyond the teacher? And so like, I don't know, you are more familiar with this world than I am. But like I'm wondering like, what are the like are there like science people or is this like a politician thing or do they go right to the farmers? This is a fantastic question. And when I think about evaluate we connect, evaluate to youth and civic action. So this is your opportunity to think about what are the opportunities for civic action, for students. And what can they do that again, that truly feels authentic. So that very first picture that we showed with the empty shelves. And another picture that we showed was um a dead garden that dead garden was from the same school district. 00:26:56 So it was a dead garden in, in one of the schools that, that hadn't been kept up for some odd reason. And so this was again a way for students to write letters to the school board to generate a campaign so that they can revive the garden and bring it back to life and have it be a way to feed the school feed uh the community and just have that. Um There are some other elements that I wanted to talk about when we do think of youth action and that is, I think we talked about authenticity. So having that we don't want to just say, OK, we, we'll pretend to write to our uh council member. No, you write, you write to them, you let them know about themselves and, and, and we have all this evidence to use it. So we have claim evidence, reasoning, what better way to do it than to actually have an audience. Uh There's also having student voice and choice. 00:27:59 So if you can come up with multiple options of an assessment, students can decide how they want to demonstrate they, they're learning. And there's, this is what we call the public product. So I, I think when we talk about the authentic authenticity in the audience, where is this public product going to go? Is it going to be a social media campaign? Is it going to be a letter to the school board? Is it going to be, you know, attending a account council meeting, a city council meeting? So all of this to say is that when we have these components together, we can really think about assessment again, that goes beyond the multiple choice test and actually get students out of their seats and and doing some youth action. However, I do want to go back to our our self uh simplifying rational expression because there are people that are thinking, OK, this is all great for science, for history and all that. 00:29:03 However, I just need to know how do we simplify rational expressions. And so another thing that I talk about is that learning math and and mathematical processes in and of itself is a social justice issue because math is a gatekeeper to so many careers and and uh school pathways and tracking systems. And so sometimes it's good for, for students to understand that so that they see like, you know, this is not just a, I'm not a math person kind of thing. This is a no, we we need to understand this because we need to break down these gates that are keeping students in their, in their labels and in their boxes. So that can also be a a method of civic action, such an important point. And I hadn't heard that before, just like framed in that way, like just learning it in and of itself is a social justice issue. 00:30:07 I also think so many social justice issues can be supported, explained um like per like counter explained like all the things through math. And so math is like this language like you're saying is often like this gatekeeping like mechanism often right or wrong, like people in high positions, whether that's like teachers or government leaders, like they speak the language of numerical data and the quantitative data. And so if we can enable students to do that while also pushing back and saying qualitative data is also important and student experiences are important, right? Like this is what's going to get people to listen to us and like hear what the students have to say. And so I I also think, I think the reason I struggled in math as a high school student was because it wasn't contextualized enough, it was just discrete skills, but math is like connected to everything and we can explain so much and connect those skills. I I almost see and I think we had talked about this maybe before we started recording about like the interdisciplinary nature of so much of this work and that I just see as a great opportunity. 00:31:12 Yes. And especially in the science world. We, we value interdisciplinary instruction. That's our only way to survive in elementary because of the assessments that are so very much focused on mathematics and, and English and language, arts. A lot of the instruction is focused there too. So science is very much oftentimes uh pushed to the side and we're not getting that daily science instruction and what, what's happening there is OK, fine. Maybe you have some nice test scores in math and el A. However, you're keeping an entire discipline, an entire subject, an entire domain away from students. And typically this happens in lower socioeconomic districts where the emphasis on testing is is increased and more so. Yeah, such an important point. And I think the same happens with social studies too to an extent in elementary spaces. It's just like these, these are just extras, these are luxury items and it's, it's so not right like, yeah, OK. 00:32:17 So this has been amazing. I want to be mindful of time and listeners capacity to, to, to listen to like episodes. So I'm gonna kind of merge two questions here. Is there anything else that you would want to add to the unit slash reflecting on the process? How did like what do you want to highlight for people about the process? Because it was kind of fun like merging like my process for unit creation with your process, for unit creation. And I I don't know if there's anything you want to share on, on the process end, I do wanna circle back to Doctor Goldie's work and uh I remember even having a conversation with her about both of our units and, and again, it's there. So when, when we look at Standard Hook in society, we're, and, and then we're, we're incorporating those social justice standards. We're a whole, we're doing that because we want to make sure that our students see themselves in the lesson. That's why we have the connection to society and community because we want their identity to be seen. 00:33:18 That's why in the elaborate we, we have those connections to diversifying your content area, telling the counter narrative, ensuring that multiple authors and multiple situations are, are shown and demonstrated to your students. Same thing with, with criticality. It goes back to civic action society. What are we gonna do when we're thinking about our students and how they're thinking about power and equity going back to the empty food shelves is that only happening in the inland Empire? And the answer is absolutely not because, you know, you're gonna have a very, very full shelf in, let's say, uh Palos, Verdes, California. So you think about the haves and the have nots. And then ultimately, I started with joy. I want to end with joy. I want, you know, of course, the topic is kind of sad like, oh gosh, food insecurity and access. However, being able to teach photosynthesis in a way that ignites student learning, student thinking and, and civic action that brings joy to me as an educator where I'm, I'm not just going over the photosynthesis equation. 00:34:34 I'm actually talking about the implications of what this looks like for our greater good. Yes. Oh Yes. OK. So I also love that like the joy is also in the possibilities because students are like creating new innovative solutions to the problem, right? So there's so much joy to that and I love that you specifically name that teachers can also experience the joy, right? Like we want to design joy for students, but also teachers like teacher retention is so low right now. Like teacher morale, teacher overworked. It's all like such a struggle that it's really important to identify spaces where and like processes of pedagogy where it's like, yes, we are experiencing joy in teaching this way and that's really important. It is so true. I mean, I I'm constantly talking about teacher joy. Yes. Yes, because uh and mostly because of our students, happy, teachers equal happy students. And so every time I'm working with teachers, I'm always looking at, you know, is this PD joyful, are you having fun or are you in the back with sunglasses on grading papers? 00:35:38 Because that's, that would be my worst nightmare. And I wanna make sure that that teachers are always having fun, especially like you said, in a time where we're losing our teachers, we're losing our workforce and I really think it's a call to administrators to step up to step up. Remember that you are the ceo of your school and district and you have to think about teacher retention. So, and, and this means re reevaluating processes like, oh, I'm gonna dock you for half an hour because you were, you were sick, you know, like thinking about the nickel and diming of teachers and to actually take a step back and say, ok, who are my professionals? And how could I really feed into them to ensure that they are getting their needs met? Oh my gosh, that could be an entire other podcast episode. But yes to that, like, how do we innovatively think about supporting teachers and take a step back? Oh my gosh, I love it. So I want to make sure people follow you. So I just for listeners, the reason that I or I guess the way, not the reason, but the way that I found Doctor Bray mclean is that actually she um has her own podcast. 00:36:51 It is amazing. It is so good. And so I was like, oh my gosh, please leave me on my show. That's why she's here. So I just want to give you time and space to be able to say what you do and where people can listen to you, find you all the things. Yes, definitely. Thank you. We would love to have you as a listener as well. And and just uh for your audience, we, we have a podcast called Teaching Stem for Real. And we talk about all things stem and a lot of times like I said, we rely so much on interdisciplinary instruction. So many times the instruction and the, the techniques they apply across the content. And so we have a nonprofit Stem for real STEM. Number four, real. And it's all about using lesson study and professional learning to create communities where teachers are excited about their learning. They want, we want to observe each other, analyze student work and and again, create an uh the next generation of of lessons and instructional materials that ignite us and bring us joy and get us excited to, to teach. 00:37:59 And I'll say to continue to get us excited to teach and I'll say to get us excited to teach again, especially for those that have lost their flight. Oh my gosh, such a powerful way to wrap up this show. And I will link to all of the things in, in the show notes. I think you also were gonna provide a uh a link where you did provide a link to me that I'll link in the show notes as well where people can go get some of the amazing things that you have on your website. So there's specific resources there that you suggest and I, I think people should definitely check those out. Exactly. This was a whirlwind episode of planning So if you wanted a little more time to sit with it, we have example lessons of the exact method that we use um that, that I've sent over and everything is on our website www dot stem for real dot org. Perfect. And you can always learn more about our work and what we do. Perfect. Oh my gosh, Dr Roxie mcclean. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to connect with you and your audience. If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my life coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. 00:39:03 I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all studentss. We weave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at www dot Lindsay beth lions dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think. Big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts. 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An educator with over twenty years of experience, Debbie Tannenbaum works each and every day to “transform” learning using technology. She’s also an educational technology consultant, ISTE Certified Educator, author, blogger and speaker. In this episode, we apply our step-by-step unit planning protocol to dream up a new unit!
Unit Planning Step 1: Context/Spark Debbie teaches a 14-week technology course as an enrichment activity for fifth and sixth grade students. She’s taught the course once before, but wants to elevate the student ownership of the learning and enable students to create something they’re really proud of. She wants students to become tech leaders. Unit Planning Step 2: Pursuits (from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model) Identity: How will our unit help students to learn something about themselves and/or about others? Identity as tech leader in justice realms: “creative communicators” and “global collaborators” in ISTE standard language Criticality: How will our unit engage students’ thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? Critically discuss how people can use tech to harm (and how to use it to elevate justice). Joy*: How will my unit enable, amplify, and spread joy? [Joy is: beauty, aesthetics, truth, ease, wonder, wellness, solutions to the problems of the world, personal fulfillment, art, music.] Creation and creativity! Unit Planning Step 3: Driving Question What is the formula for becoming digital leaders? Unit Planning Step 4: Summative Project (Publishing Opportunity and Possible Formats) Publishing Opportunity: Space on the public website or an option to share live PD Possible Formats: Students can create virtual tech PD for students, teachers, and/or family members. They may use iMovie trailers to create videos to get people interested in specific student training. Unit Planning Step 5: Unit Arc Lesson 1: Introduce DQ. Circle Protocol: discuss and come to consensus on community agreements (Who do we want to be?) Mind map protocol: Use keywords to develop name and logo as an exit ticket. Tech tool: Canva Lesson 2: Build a Base Phase (build foundation). Look at the district’s vision of how to use tech (e.g., transformational, equitable access) and unpack ISTE standards. Lesson 3: What does equitable access mean? Trust of students with responsibility Lesson 4: Case Study- 3 presentations: visual appeal, creative commons, digital responsibility Lesson 5: Case Study- YouTube for good. Come up with 3 interview questions Lesson 6: Case Study- Interview stakeholder (e.g., family member, teacher) about their PoV on the DQ. Share out response. Use DQ as exit ticket. Lesson 7: Case Study- Becoming a Creator Lesson 8: Case Study- Situation where you got feedback- was it helpful or not? Which protocol do you like? Lesson 9: Return to driving question. What is the best answer? (What is your lens) Exit Ticket: What is your draft? Lesson 10: Protocol: What I Need Lesson 11: Protocol: What I Need Lesson 12: Protocol: What I Need Lesson 13: Presentation Lesson 14: Reflection Stay Connected You can find Debbie on www.tannenbaumtech.com and on Facebook and Twitter @TannenbaumTech. To help you help your students with tech, Debbie shares free teacher tech tips to educators on her email list. You can join here. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 119 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 Our guest today on our first unit Dreaming series is Debbie Tannebaum, an educator with over 20 years of experience. Debbie Tannenbaum works each and every day to transform learning using technology during her time in education, she has served both as a classroom teacher in various grades and as an elementary technology coach outside of the classroom. Debbie promotes using technology tools to amplify student learning in her work as an educational technology consultant is D certified educator author, blogger and speaker. You can connect with Debbie at Tannebaum tech dot com. Let's get to this Unit Dreaming episode, I'm educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerdy out about co creating curriculum with students. 00:01:08 I made this show for you here We go, Debbie. Welcome to the time for Teacher shift podcast. I am so excited to be here today. It's gonna be so much fun. Oh, yes, it is because we are doing a super fun type of episode, but we're actually designing a unit. I am pumped. Me too. I'm like, I been looking forward to this since we first talked about it. Oh my gosh. OK. Um So for listeners, do you want to just kind of frame like what is the context that you teach in? Like what kind of unit like? Who are we developing this unit for? What kind of class, that kind of thing? Anything else you wanna share for context before we get started? So I'm an elementary school tech coach in Northern Virginia. And as part of my job, I support educators where I help them to integrate technology into their classrooms. I also work with students as part of the master schedule. And in my role this year, I've been tasked with coming up with an enrichment type activity and after going to a lot of different things um in my district, there's really a need to have some sort of tech crew or I'm, I'm not sure if that's the right word for it, but student tech group to support the needs of the school. 00:02:21 And so uh to be perfectly transparent, I tried it at the beginning of the school year. My first attempt definitely was not what I wanted it to be. So I thought that this would be a great way for me to reflect on that first experience and build something that really will meet the needs of my students. Really give them that feeling that they're doing something to help their school and activate things and, you know, really take it to the next level. So I'm really looking forward to this because I really feel like a lot of my students don't necessarily see themselves as leaders. They're used to just kind of having to do the same thing over and over again in the school setting. And so I really want them to and when I tried to do this the last time, they were kind of waiting for me to give them the answer. So I want to create a learning experience that's really gonna help them to build that agency and really see themselves taking this work to a higher level and not just doing something where it doesn't have an authentic audience. 00:03:22 I really want to be able to build something that at the end of this, there's something they can be proud of and that they've really done something to enhance the needs to support the needs of our school. Oh, my gosh. I love that framing so much. So in terms of grade level we're talking about, did you say 2nd, 4th elementary age? Right. Right. The group, this group is 5th and 6th graders who um have elected not to be in chorus. Um And so they get to choose an activity. And so they are the group that I have now is with me until the middle of February. This group will be with me from the end of February till the end of the school year. So they're with, this group will be with me about 14 weeks. So 14 hours. Ok. 14 weeks for 1 60 minute sessions, one hour each session. Absolutely. OK. Awesome. Oh, that's so good to know in terms of like framing out the pacing the protocols. This is gonna be perfect. Yeah, awesome. So you already started answering this a little bit, but I want to kind of dig in a little bit deeper. What are the things that you want students to kind of learn pursue? 00:04:25 I often think about like priority standards. I imagine there's some like tech pieces, there's also some agency pieces I'm hearing and, and as an anchor, I often use like Goldie Mohammed's work of like thinking about identity, what are they learning about themselves or others? Criticality? So thinking about power, equity, disruption of injustice, that kind of thing, but also like joy, like how do we make it fun and make students like have have a good time with this. So any of those things that are like kind of shouting out to you like, yeah, I want to include this or this is kind of what I want. Well, I definitely want it to be something that's engaging and fun to them. Um But I also want them to, them to see themselves as leaders in general. A lot of times when you have kids who have elected not to be in chorus, they've elected not to be in chorus because they don't wanna really, they, they're not, they're, they're not interested in taking a more traditional leadership role, being a performer, but yet they have a lot of really great characteristics and personality traits that make them great um candidates for this type of thing. 00:05:27 So I really want to build their, you know, their agency, their confidence in themselves. But I also want them, we're in, I'm in a school right now where we have, I think like 580 kids and we have a tech support person who's there 2.5 days a week and then I'm there five days a week, but I'm the integration person. So there's many times where there isn't a tech person in the building with air quotes, but yet the, but this will still need support. And so I wanna empower them to be able to be leaders in that capacity. And I want them to develop customer service skills. I want them to be able to understand how to work with people in that sense. I want them to understand some basic troubleshooting built on some of those um international society for technology, for educator standards where they can do some basic troubleshooting and I teach them how to help with that. Um I really, and I also want them to really go with, go with this with a design thinking lens where they're really empathizing with the user. 00:06:31 Because a lot of times I feel like our students don't have that empathy piece. They, they, they, they have a tunnel that they can have tunnel vision because that's their world. And I really want to, to build that. They talk a lot. I'm right now reading this great book called Five Gen Leadership. I don't know if you've it and it talks about how our alpha generation is like the last generation and that they've spent a lot of time on the screen. So they know a lot about it. And the group that I have right now, there's a, I have one kid who has a youtube account is very active yet. He doesn't really understand how to, we need to help our kids translate from being digital natives to being digital leaders and really help them to use their knowledge for essentially for good to help our school to really be ambassadors of how to use technology. So, you know, they're not the kids who are breaking computers, they're the kids who are promoting, taking care of the computers. Um and really build that. I, I, I, I wanna say like that puffed up chest feeling where like I'm, I'm, I help take care of our school and its technology. 00:07:34 Does that help? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I'm wondering what, like in terms of ways that, because I love this idea of building up leadership and I love this idea of having the impact that's like authentic, it's an audience beyond the class. It's, you know, a purpose beyond the grade. And I'm wondering if there is something. So I think customer service and troubleshooting in and of itself makes sense for just like a practical standpoint, if there's no tech person and that like it's a huge role that they can step into and, and really serve people. I'm wondering about now, I'm not familiar with the standards that you were talking about the tech standards. Is there one there that's kind of like enabling a little bit of like either creation or connection to any of those pieces of Goldie Mohammed where it's like identity or criticality where we could think about like a justice issue in the school that like tech becomes a vehicle to serve them or like, yeah, I just, I just pulled them up and I think there's 21 is talking about being an empowered learner and it talks about students to understand the fundamental concepts of technology operations and develop the ability to choose use and troubleshoot current technologies and are able to transfer their knowledge to emerging technologies. 00:08:41 So that kind of hits on that troubleshooting piece and then the other one, we're talking about really being um creative, there's a creative communicator one and it really talks about being able to publish or present content that customizes the message and meaning medium for their audiences. And also, you know, choosing the appropriate platforms and tools to meet their desired outcomes of creation or communication. So I think those two ID indicators are really a good fit. Um In addition, they, it talks about becoming a global collaborator and you know, using technology, you know, to work with others and examine issues and problems from multiple standpoints. So I think this fits in well with the social justice and the S D standards because they have so many commonalities. Oh my gosh, I love it. And it also makes me think of media to end end goal. And I mean, you can feel free to push back on this, but I'm just imagining like maybe the end goal isn't even just that the standards are accomplished or, or, or like proficiency in the standards isn't just gained by the students in your tech group. 00:09:46 But actually they are responsible to lead the charge for all students in the school to be able to accomplish those standards. That would be amazing. And I mean, I know this group of students wanted to make videos, but I, when I looked at it long term and it hasn't quite happened, I kind of envisioned them almost creating like a site, but I don't want to direct it too much. I really want them to direct it. And so it's that balance between letting them go, but also making sure they're creating something that has, you know, long term, you know, stamina. But I also don't want to limit them. What I my idea might be if their ideas could be totally different and maybe even better than mine. I love that idea. I love that balance is so tricky, right? Like the student voice open endedness. And then also, like, I'm going to guide it so that it makes sense so that students aren't completely like left to their own devices and like, just confused and kind of flailing and, and, and just being like, I don't know what to do, which is totally, what happens when education for so long is like, this is what you do. And then like you said, they look to you and the last time you tried it, like, what do we do? 00:10:48 I mean, they were all like, what do you mean? And I was like, well, and I had to, I kept giving leading questions and eventually I was like, well, I almost felt like I had given them too much, you know, I went from saying, ok, brainstorm, here's a jam board, write the things our school needs and them all looking at me like you're in headlights to me saying, OK, you guys, let's pull it back. I'm gonna put the jam board up on the Promethean board and we'll brainstorm together and then I felt like I had kind of taken it too far back. Yeah. So I'm wondering, I'm thinking our plan can be to come up with a cool driving question that is like the guide and the students can choose or we can come up with like either some brainstorm ideas for the final project or like the project that they're working on throughout and, or like the parameters for that or like sometimes I think about it as like a publishing opportunity. So like, where does the project go once they create it to make it the impact? So I think if we think of those two and then if we have time, we can think about like what are the actual protocols in those 14 sessions that are the guy, like they provide enough structure that students still have the voice and choice to, to do what they want. 00:11:52 And like in this round, I actually had them come up with a logo and I had them um come up with a name and I'm trying to determine whether in the second round I should still do that. So they have that connection. Um And I, I did it around session two or three and I'm almost wondering if that needed to happen first this time. Um But they, you know, they created the name. They, we went on can they all designed different um logos and then once they had done that, we voted as a group to determine which one we were picking, which I loved. But I feel like I did it at the wrong time. Uh That makes sense. Yeah, almost like as a intro opportunity, like class circle, for example, as a protocol, like we wouldn't have to do that, but like some sort of or some sort of like tech platform protocol that enables that sharing where we're doing community agreements. But as, as a community, we're also deciding like who we are, what imagery or what words define who we are. And like, and that's what we were missing. I feel like, like, and that's something I think is really important. Like I want, I didn't want them to come and feel like, oh, this is something we have to do. 00:12:55 I wanted them to come and be like, yes, it's our time to work as a tech group and it didn't quite go exactly how I wanted it to. And, you know, I don't want them to come and say we have 13 sessions, 12 sessions left. They'll be, oh, we only have 12 sessions left. There's a difference in that. Yeah, I'm also thinking maybe that first, like, I know this is packing a lot into that first one and, and we're kind of like jumping ahead to like, what is the, the day by day or week by week. But I think that like kind of big dream or vision that students can kind of core as well. Like if we can come up with a driving question that they could start to answer or just give like initial reactions to day one, like, you know, and, and then we kind of evolve and learn more and kind of start creating along those 14 sessions to like have a really great answer or response to the driving question at the end. I think that would be really cool. So I'm I'm almost wondering like, if there's some sort of question that you're thinking of, that's like an initial thought or it doesn't even have to be a question, but like words that come to mind goals that come to mind for like what you want students to kind of grapple with around those ideas of like, I'm just kind of looking at my notes again, being empowered learners and empowering students around the school to be empowered learners, creative communicators and global collaborators. 00:14:06 Yeah, because I'm looking at the question I have last time and it was how my, how might we best support my school's need, technology needs. And that's really was not what I what I needed. That was, that was not specific enough. Yeah, I'm almost thinking like um you know, like from a student engagement perspective, like what would be a really fun question that they're like, I am jumping out of my seat to answer this question day one before I even learn any content from the tech group, like something, something like and, and this doesn't have to be, it probably, isn't it? But just something that has the same energy as what, how could technology make school so fun to be at or something like, you know what I mean? Like how does, um, like, what is like, what's our vision for how technology is used? But that's huge, like, kind of drive something that's like capturing that, you know, big energy joy. Yeah, but I wanna, I, I'm not sure if that, I'm, I'm like, I, I'm, I was like kind of typing as you were talking to kind of get it down, but I'm not sure if that captures exactly where I wanna go. 00:15:09 I like the idea of making it fun, but I also wanted to, I, I wanna make sure that it's not just about playing games and joking around. Yes, I wonder if so one of the questions, the driving question frames that I love is like, what's the formula for blank? So maybe it was, it would be like, what's the formula for like the best year of school ever or something like that? And then they have to grapple with like, well, it's a balance of like fun and you know, tech use but also human use. There's like the tech human balance and then there's like the fun learning balance or like, I don't know if it's a balance but like integration you know what I mean? They could come up with what the elements were and that's something they could do. Some, a question like that is something they could answer without any prior knowledge or anything you want to teach them day one. But then they could also answer it so much better at the end of the year when they're like, oh, well, there's this piece and then there's this piece and then like we learned about digital responsibility. So there's also this piece like, you know, like some question like that, that enables them to answer day one but way better day 14. And you could say that question one more time. 00:16:12 I just want to hear it one more time. Yeah. What's the, the frame would be like, what's the formula for? And then you could put whatever at the end. But like, what's the formula for the best year of school ever or something like that? Too big? Hm. Like, I mean, what do you think? What's the formula for? Um what's the formula for? Um using that? I don't like the word used for amplifying student learning using technology. I don't think that's gonna buy them in, right? Because that's the thing, right? You want to like teacher talk. Yeah. So typically the thing, uh the things I think about when I have a, a compelling driving question is like, students are compelled to respond like they want, they're jumping out of their seat to answer it's relevant to students right now. So maybe tapping into either a current event or a struggle that they have or like um yeah, like social media, like things that they use tech with beyond the school walls or something like, you know, something like that. And then like, it invites creation, like it invites like some sort of like taking action or like solution generation or something like that. 00:17:20 So those are typically the things that I think about. I'm just trying to think about like, what would be like? I feel like for the best year ever is too broad. So I'm just trying to think or yeah, what is the thing? I guess I'm trying to get at like, what is the thing that we want the school to be like? So we we talked about and then I think there was more beyond this. But like we talked about student agency and like kind of being a power learner, we talked about being creative in the communication, like the creative communicator, we talked about collaboration and like global collaboration. And so thinking about kind of those ideas of like agency creation, collaboration. Is there something that like captures the use of all of those pieces in like what school is and like, what school can be? That's kind of like dreamy, what's the formula for empowering um students in our school to use technology to create, does that work? 00:18:25 So I think like, what, what we're doing now is we're thinking about like, yeah, like what is the, we're almost like thinking about the answer before, like we're thinking about how we want them to answer. So I imagine being an powered learner, a creative communicator and a global collaborator is part of the answer that we want students to give. Do you know what I mean? And so the question has to be big enough that they could go like 14 different directions with it. So for example, we could say like, what's the formula for something super vague? Like an engaging learning community? Yeah, like for school to be fun for an engaging learning community for like student leadership and you know, yeah, like something that we want to have like, what's the end to end results? Like the big thing we're going to be just go like what is the formula to become a student tech leader? No, I'm wondering if, because if the goal it, it totally can be, I'm wondering if the goal is extending beyond the student group, if it's like actually impacting the entire school. Um and it could even be beyond the school, right? It could also be like as a human being in the world using technology like, right? What is the thing that we want? 00:19:29 What about, what about what's the formula for being um digital leaders? Oh I like it. Yeah. Yeah, because then you have the leadership piece which was one of the core pieces you were after at the start, you have the integration of technology just within that phrase. And then, then that also connects to all the Issy standards that you're talking about because that's kind of Izzy's answer to the question. It's like it's all these things. Yeah, I don't know. What do you think? How are, how you mean for becoming digital leaders for our school community or that? Yeah, I almost wonder if you keep it at digital leaders then when we backwards plan, we could think about like, OK, well, we're gonna do like case studies. So what does it look like to be a digital leader in the school community? What does it look like to be a digital leader in this tech group? What does it look like to be a digital leader like that with your family or and social media like in, you know, I love that. That's awesome. I really like this. This is like this is this, this is good. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because as we were talking, I'm like, we're not going to come up with it and we've already been talking but like now that we've come up with it, I'm like it frames everything right? 00:20:35 And it's compelling enough like it's not so narrow that students couldn't just like give their thoughts and be excited to give their thoughts day one. Is that why I like it? Yeah. OK, cool. This is gonna be so fun. And I wrote it on the where I was kind of just starting to plan things out. So. Oh yeah. Ok, cool. So then in terms of a final project or like what students are creating, we could do a couple things we could think about like completely open ended students are gonna in defining what it looks like to be a digital leader. They come up with projects that kind of like enable them to do that thing. Um And or we could come up with a couple of examples to get them started with the brainstorming or we could do like here's the publishing opportunity. So what that might look like is like at the end of like in June, um we're going to bring all the teachers in and you're gonna run P D for the teachers and you're gonna teach them how to do this thing with their students next year or something. You know, there's like a platform and then the students just have kind of like whatever they created, that's their time to share it. Oh my God, they would love that. Yeah, I think they would even if they couldn't do it live and let's say they created some virtual models. 00:21:41 Yeah. Yeah. Even cooler. I, I mean some virtual models for students and some virtual models for teachers, maybe even virtual models for families. I love that. Oh my gosh, this is so cool. Yeah, I know. Yeah, this is awesome. So then there's going to be so the publishing opportunity then would be like the housing location, whatever that is, if it's like, you have it for them as like a P D portal that people can like, log into based on, you know, whether they're a family member or a teacher or a student or if it's like a page on the website that's open access to everyone. Right. Well, I'm, I'm the web master. So I do have opportunities that I can add things like that. Oh, that's amazing. How do you envision this? Like where do you envision this living or how do you envision? I mean, I think I can envision this living in a couple different ways. I could almost think about back in the day when we, I don't know if you ever did Baldridge? No. OK. So just talks about all the different stakeholders and like parents are one of your stakeholders and teachers are one of the stakeholders and what it looks like and sounds like and students and I almost can see like for teachers and for students, maybe an in we're facing Google site, but for the families, maybe creating a part of the website where they're sharing some of their stuff on the public web since I have access to that. 00:22:56 Amazing. Um because families can't log on or other option is having it on school. We have school, there's a parent all course in school. So there's, I see a lot of different ways to move this. I love that idea. And I also think that honestly, like, I know you're kind of like out and about, like, you do so much as an individual, like speaking at conferences and all this stuff. Like this is something that you could, like, talk about. And then another district could go to your school website that's publicly available. I'll be like, oh, sweet, like, we're gonna bring these videos. That's why I like the idea of putting it on the website more than necessarily putting it on school because um and to be honest, even if we wanted to, we could probably put all of the resources on the public web because then it's accessible to all. Like, even if I'm necessary, even if they're putting it on a Google Doc and that I'm putting it on the web and copying and pasting. Um because I'm not allowed uh to let them, you know, I'm the webmaster. But even if I give them those opportunities to start and then I just copy and paste in for them, they would be, they would be creating all of the content. 00:24:00 I would just be copying and pasting. I love that. And then you could also do, I mean, you could live on the website, but you could also have like a live presentation opportunity, you know, or something if students were even just giving like a 10 minute, hey, this exists and we're doing, like, I know one year I did, um, we had, like, a social justice expo but, like, everyone who visited didn't have time to get to, like, spend 30 minutes at every student station. So we actually did like a, I think it was maybe 10, 15 minutes at the front end of the hour where students had created like a 45 2nd I movie trailer or something. And it was like a, right, like here's the general gist of what you will get when you go to this tutorial or something. I love that. Yeah. Ok. Oh my gosh. This is gonna be so fun. I'm like, so excited about this. Like, I'm like, this is so much. This is great. I'm so glad we're doing this. Yay. Oh my God. I'm so glad you agreed to come on the podcast to do this. So other people can hear it. This is fun. Awesome. You want to be the only ones I know on a day, on a day off who are like peeking out about all this. Totally. Totally. And if any listeners are currently gigging out, you can totally let us know that you also are gigging out on your day off or you're commuting. 00:25:06 Um So, yeah, I think this looks like a really awesome frame. I'm wondering if there are any um final things that we could help frame the 14 days where we're actually thinking about like, what are the protocols or activities that we're doing on a day by day or maybe like which day is which case study discussion or, you know, like, what are you thinking for, for that piece? Do you want to kind of game that out a little bit? Yeah, I'd love to do that. Ok. Awesome. So, it sounds like we already kind of planned the first day, right? That was gonna be the community kind of, we're developing our community agreements, our kind of like dream or whatever, what, what we want to be as a class, our logo, our name, all those kind of pieces. Is that right? Yeah. OK. And then I sometimes I like to, so would you introduce the driving question at that point? I would before you like, would you start with the driving question or would you go to the and then go to the community agreements? Yep. I, I think that's a beautiful way to do it. It's like this is a driving question for our course for our time together for 14 weeks throughout the day. Today, we're gonna be thinking with that question in mind. 00:26:13 How do we like? Who do we want to be? How do we want to show up to accomplish or address this question to like, what's our dream or vision around the driving question? How would we initially answer it in this moment? Um You could do an anchor chart, you kind of like revisit with their initial thoughts and kind of compare contrast as they learn more throughout the year. Um, but yeah, I would do something like that and, and that, to me would probably look like some sort of discussion protocol that's framing the 60 minutes. And I think that could be anything. Do you have like a favorite discussion protocol? Um, I like to use, um, thinking routines a lot. But, yeah, I'm not sure if you would consider those, um, discussion protocols. Yeah, definitely. I think that that could definitely frame the conversation. Yeah, I'm just trying to think of what would be, I mean, if you were thinking about it, what would you suggest? Yeah, I my my go to always is circle. Um because I just love like when people are sitting in a circle, I think there's like a really nice like connection, particularly for like the the founding of the class community agreements and everything. Um It also kind of democratizes voice. So you don't have one kid talking over another one like 10 times. 00:27:18 Um because everyone gets one chance to speak and then you can kind of popcorn from there but to answer each question, everyone gets one chance initially. But I also think in a tech space you could do something like circle. Um You know, like you, you were, I don't know if we were recording it or not, but you're talking about like a jam board. Um You know, option that could also be like a protocol could use Jambo as a tech tool to enhance the discussion. So that's another option. I kind of like the idea if we're gonna start starting without the tech tool and doing something very good hands on organic because if I'm gonna have them come up with logos and innate a logo, I would probably at that point have them get on the computers and, you know, go on to verse some sort of publishing software to brainstorm that and then maybe just leave it at the end where I have all their logos. So maybe then the next time we can vote because last time I had them trying to vote the same period and it was too hard for me to get everything together. Got you. Ok. So they're actually each individual student is designing a logo or what I did last time is I had them doing it in a group. They could choose to work as a pair or individual or a group of three and then they submitted it and then I put it in a Google form and we voted. 00:28:24 Got you. Ok. Yeah. So that'll take some time too. Yeah. So that might be a good thing to kind of end with, you know, getting those ideas down and, and then maybe create a Google form with the names that they, the names that have been suggested. I guess you almost need the name before the logo. Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder like, uh you can also pose that question to students, right? Like, what do we want to tackle first and just see what they think and maybe like, go through the names and then, like, you know, the logo becomes like the, the, the like kind of almost like exit ticket in a way. Yeah, I, because I imagine like, so I'm just thinking of people's like giftedness. Some people are very linguistically gifted and they have like a knack for language and creating that team name. Other students might really gravitate to the artistic like literacy. And so really, if you had, if you had them answer the driving question, like off the bat or like come up with like the community agreements or like kind of their dream for the course. And then you just had like almost like a mind map, word wall kind of brainstorm thing, then you could say, OK, use these key words that we've identified as really important. 00:29:28 Maybe you even annotate them. So you kind of get them all out and then you have like stars next to the ones that people really love or whatever. It's like, OK, so we're gonna have one team who is like very into the linguistic half of this, create the team name, one half, create the logo or, or a couple groups do each or something. And then you just have less, there's less time required because people are kind of gravitating to the thing they want to do most. Yeah. And we, that's what we kind of did last time is that we had, I had one group that focused on the name and then they were also into wanting to use him, but they all wanted to do the logo. So it was like they, you know, so once they had a name, it was easier for them to, you know, to really figure out what they wanted it to look like. Awesome. OK, cool. Yeah, this sounds really nice. So we have the framing. I typically like to think of like a focus a protocol and possibly like a texture resource. So it seems like we have the focus is community building, the protocol is circle and then the resource would be something like can where you're using that to create the exit ticket or the the mini assessment almost. 00:30:30 Does that sound right? I think one more time? Yeah. So like the the focus would be community, the community building the protocol would be circle. So that's the discussion protocol and then the resource would be can as a way to kind of produce the assessment. That makes perfect sense. And that actually really helps me to kind of see how that works, right? Because if you can think about it as like three bullet points of like, oh that's the lesson plan. To me, it feels like way more simplified than like the intense lesson plans that I often see no. And this helps me a lot because I'm like, now, now I'm like, kind of looking at it as what you're saying. And I'm like, oh OK. Now this makes sense. Awesome. Awesome. OK. So then in the second lesson, I'm, I usually call this like the build the base phase. So there's usually like one or two, maybe even three lessons. Um I think in a 14 lesson kind of, of art, maybe just two. Uh But you want to kind of like build the foundation for answering the question. So what's like the core content that you want them to learn? Do you have a sense of like these are the things like these are the topics or these are the things I want them to grapple with when it, when it comes to digital leadership. 00:31:35 Is it like the S D standards? Is it like these core topics? Well, I think that I really want them to, to, you know, I want them to build some troubleshooting skills. I want them to build some digital responsibilities. So understanding that you can't just take a picture from anywhere that you have to, you know, take care of your devices, you know, making sure like things like, you know, you have to restart your computer, like basic troubleshooting care things. Um But also understanding how to be a responsible digital citizen, making sure that they don't, you know, that they, you know, their models don't share your password with people, you know, make sure you're, you're making a safe password. You know, a lot of, I would say a lot, some of that ditch sit skill in there as well. But also building the idea that you can use social media or online, you know, content for good. Yeah, because we see so much where it's being used, not for good. And like I said, a lot of our students, a lot of my students spend a lot of time on youtube. 00:32:40 Yes. And what are they? And you know, so they all want to become youtube. A lot of them want to become youtube stars. Yeah. Well, obviously we have a school youtube channel which obviously I can post content but they, you know, but understanding that, you know, there's certain protocols in the school, like we can create stuff and that's great. But we also need to be responsible and like, you know, this year when we were trying to make tutorials and things like that understanding that you can't just go and make a tutorial, but you actually have to go through a process in order to make something that you're gonna share with others. Like, take back that impulsivity to be intentional. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So I'm actually thinking, I wonder if we just skip lessons two and three for just a second and put a pause on those because I think what you just came up with was a ton of really good case studies. And so then the next phase after build the base, I usually do a bunch of case studies. So like we're in the BUILD debates, we're thinking about like what are the core foundational things that we need students to know like the core content? And then the case studies are like, where does maybe one of these elements show up? So I heard for example, like consent for picture taking. So you could take like a current event in the news or something where like this picture was taken without a person's consent and spread around or put online or whatever, like what do you think went wrong or how would we actually do this legally or respectfully or responsibly, you know, whatever the language is. 00:33:55 Um There could be like a youtube like case study where it's like, OK, how does like this person use youtube? And it could even be if they're really into youtube, you could even use that as two case studies, one looking a social media um like a youtube star that does uses their platform for good and one that doesn't or something and kind of like critique each of them or like extrapolate from each of them like, well, what do we learn from this case? Um And you could have some like discussion protocols that frame that as well. Um I'm thinking the, I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt but, but when I was talking about pictures. I was almost talking about um like creative commons and whether or not I wasn't talking about just taking pictures in general, but I was talking about creative commons and making sure you have permission to use things in proper citation and responsible use of digital resources. Oh my gosh. So I love as a case study. This is just personally my, my like grappling with this idea. If you were to take two presentations, one that effectively, well, maybe three presentations, one that like use creative Commons, but like it wasn't visually appealing. 00:35:01 Like there's so much text or whatever that it's like, oh, like now I just half of the screen is text attributing the whatever, you know, there's a um edit an um E D protocol called, I think it's called like the ugliest slide presentation ever or something. It's something called like that where essentially they look at one and they try to make it as unappealing and as bad as possible. I can't remember exactly what it's called, but I think it's called something like that. It's like the worst slide show ever or something like that. I can almost see using something like that where they essentially, you know, look at one that is essentially the worst possible example, like you're saying, yeah, because I imagine like my issue always with like, because I know like legally and digitally ethically, like I need to attribute, you know what I, what I take from from like UN slash like a vi uh visual from UN. However, uh I also know that it can be very like for my brain which becomes very unfocused when there's clutter on the screen, if there's too much text or the text is too big or, you know, maybe we put the text at or the uh citations at the end versus the, you know, like where we choose to do that, it could be really interesting to have students grapple with the idea of like digital responsibility. 00:36:17 And also at the same time, is it possible to have like visual appeal and like, what does that look like and have that kind of like grapple a bit? It's like when we first started using powerpoint, you're younger than I am, but like everybody would have a different um background for every slide, right? We need to streamline and simplify poor people to be able to process. Yeah. Um OK. Cool. Other case studies that you, I know we kind of like touched on a few things that could become case studies too earlier in the conversation. Anything else that was like, oh, kids would be really into this and it would illustrate what, but can the customer service be considered a case study or is that not really? Absolutely. So I, what I would do is I would think of either a current event or um some sort of customer service experience that the students had engaged with in their life or seen their parents engage with at a store or, or something like, um, maybe, maybe they have some sort of like access to some digital software or something where they've had to interact with the customer experience, like person, like, and have that be the point of the jumping off point for the discussion about the customer service and what makes good customer service? 00:37:21 Is there anything that you think you can think of that students would be able to connect to, you know, the elementary crowd way better than I do. So, I'm not sure what they would have in terms of experience. I mean, I'm sure, I, I mean, even if they're like working on a, like, I know a lot of our kids use roadblocks and things like that. I'm not sure whether they might have, you know, had some experiences there with that maybe. Yeah, but I mean, I'm trying to think you could even have them do something. Like if they personally had never had any experience, you could have them. Um, you could either grab like a youtube clip from like a show that they watch or something that highlights that or you can even have them do like practice interview skills where they interview their parents or their caretakers about like what makes good customer service or like, tell me a time when you had terrible customer service and then you kind of bring in all these terrible horror stories to the class and like talk about how do we not do that? Like, what does it look like to actually build a better customer service situation? So that's kind of bringing in other literacy skills. But yeah, um other things I was thinking because I love that you're kind of getting after like the case studies are aligning to the standards that we want to have the things we want to do. 00:38:30 Um I think we kind of touched on with the slideshow idea, the not only the creative commons attribution and things but, but like being a creator, like a creator, a communicator, that kind of thing. Um I wonder if there's one for a global collaborator, like a, an idea or a case study that would highlight, like, you know, I also think about like, you know, being giving feedback in a, in a good way. Like I know as I'm working on my S D certification journey, that's one of the things that we have to address is how to, you know, post and share information appropriately online. Oh, I like that a lot. Yeah. So maybe what they do is they pull in. I imagine that other classes that they take in the school would have had them have that experience either in the previous year or this year. So maybe not with a protocol though because a lot of things I notice and when I work with students that like, if they do have an opportunity to respond to each other. They don't always necessarily know how to. Um, and so then I have to think about, like, I do a lot of times where I have my kids do two stars and a wish. 00:39:35 What's two things you really liked about it? What's one thing that you wish that they could have considered because they don't know how to do those things? Yeah. So I wonder if the the jumping off point is then like every we do like circle protocol, for example, or Jambo everyone share one time where you had a situation in a class where you or even with your family at home where you got feedback and it, it was it helpful. Was it not helpful? Why? And then that way even if they've not used the protocol before, that's kind of the value add for you is like, OK, well, here's maybe you even present it to them. Like here are three protocols that I like to use as students. Like which one do you like? Why is that one better than that one or something like that? Yeah, I like that. And then I, I was thinking to like um that one, like the idea of feedback, you can also embed as like a practice opportunity with like I was thinking so 9 10, 11, 12, those ones, those classes I think can be independent learner protocols where you have just I, I usually use like win time, like what I need. So like, students are just working independently on their project and like based on whatever feedback you gave them before, you know, they're doing something and then maybe conferencing with you drawing on a resource bank that you created for them to support them, something like that. 00:40:43 So they're working. Yeah. So as they're working on this, so I'm kind of viewing the case studies as kind of like yours. We're building our skills, right? Yes. Yeah. And so at what point do they then decide what they're gonna be doing? Oh, great, great point. Yep, I skipped one. So I think starting at 10 would be what I need as a protocol. Nine. Yeah, that's why I was getting a little confused. Yeah. So nine would be um another maybe group discussion protocol or something where you're all or maybe it could be like a brainstorm, mind mapping activity, something where you're like, OK. So remember that question that we've been grappling with. I return back to the driving question. Yep. We're gonna like, really hunker down now and like figure out what does each one of us believe to be the best answer of that? Like what is that formula? And then you could kind of answer to the question, have whatever protocol you want to kind of get the initial brainstorm and the exit ticket or assessment for that lesson I think is every student has a draft of that formula. By the end of that class and, and even if, whether they're working on it individually or in a group. 00:41:46 Yep. Yeah. Something to go off of. So, can I take a step back for a minute? Yeah. Absolutely. So, because a lot of what I'm seeing with what we're doing here also mimics project based learning. Yes. Oh, yeah. So, like, I know, like in the past when I've done project based learning, uh, we also are kind of talking about what we need to know. So is that kind of falling into that mind map of like, how do we envision the dream? Yeah. So I think the the what's happening is the skill building is paralleling in each of these case studies in each of these lessons, they're building the skills actively, but they're also grappling with the content that they're going to be using to answer the question if that makes sense. So for example, I'm thinking like um the current event based on or actually let me think of a different one that I actually know more about maybe like the situation where you got feedback, right? So for example, like that one in that lesson, I might be thinking as a student like OK, I have all this personal experience I'm sharing and I'm learning from all these other students and in the back of my mind or maybe not in the back of my mind, maybe you actually make it apparent sometimes what I've done is use the driving question as an exit ticket for every single lesson. 00:42:54 And so at the end of that lesson, that day students are answering. So what, what did I learn today that could feed itself into the formula for a driving question? So like, you know, like, so for example, I might say that like um an effective use of uh digital leadership is like being empathetic and thoughtful to whoever's hearing my words on the other end of the screen or something. And that's like they come up with a way to put it in their own words, that's part of the formula. And so they, they're kind of like building the formula as they go using all the content that they've been grappling with if that makes sense. So then once we hit nine and they're coming up with their draft, but essentially at that point, those last couple of sessions are really focused on them creating. Yeah. So what I typically do is I leave the last session as a reflection session. And then the second to last session is the presentation or practice presentation. If you're gonna have them present digitally or just upload, like they would just at least share in the class, possibly to a wider audience if you can, if you can swing it. 00:43:57 And then 14, the very last one is they're actually thinking about it because often we just, I used to do this all the time. Skip over the reflection and then they're not like thinking about what they actually learned. Um And so then I would fill in the remaining two lessons between 10 and 13 of what I need protocol. So they have three solid in class time periods to build whatever it is. They really built those skills through. Well, they're right, they're just basically putting it together into the video tutorial or whatever it is that they're coming up with as a final project like thing, creation thing to be uploaded to that website. For example, do I wanna, so going back to that whole idea, do I want to guide them? Saying that we're gonna create a resource on the public web to share that formula or? Yeah, I would say that like your, your your publishing opportunity is that I'm gonna give you space on the school website, students, parents, teachers, caretakers, all these people are gonna get to use your resource. So that's your opportunity. What that resource looks like is totally up to you. You could do a plato representation of the formula or something and like do like a, you know, stop motion animation, whatever, like it could be anything but your publishing opportunity is shared. 00:45:06 So do we then need if we want to make sure this is parent facing potentially to have some sort of case study where they're really talking about what their parents need to know? I love it. Yeah, I love that. So maybe, maybe that's the interview where their parents, they ask their parents to share. I like it. Struggle points. Yes, I like that a lot because I think you could, what you could do is the customer service one, that idea of what is good customer service could potentially be linked to the feedback one. I think those are kind of, yeah, I like that idea. Let's, let's do something like that where maybe they're coming, you know, where they're, you know, interview parrot need. Yeah, you could also be, or we could split it in half and have half of them do parents and half of them do teachers. Oh, I like that a lot. And even, even doing students from the perspective of like, what do I wish my parents knew about my activity online or what do I wish they didn't know? Or like, what if I were a parent as a student? Now? What if I were a parent? Maybe at that point, you know, have, uh, so my question is, do I do the, do, would I have them do the interviewing? 00:46:13 Yeah, you could help them. What I would do for that one is for the class period. Maybe the class period before. Um, or, yeah, this could be, maybe even, um, the exit ticket for the day before or even, it depends on when you want to share out. What I think would be great for that one is they, they use that class period to share out their response. Or you can make it two class like a two parter where day one, they're coming up with the questions. Day two, they're sharing out their response. But I think it would be a pretty short activity to come up with the questions. So you could do it maybe at the like last 10 minutes of the, the class before or you can come up with a base of questions and give it to them the day before and say ok before next class. So in the next week you have a week to go interview someone with these questions, you can add your own questions, you can make it your own. But here's like the three core questions we need answered or something. Hey, everybody. It's Lindsey just telling you about today's episode Freebie, which is shared from Debbie. If you teach younger Children and you want to teach them tech and how to enable student voice as they're using tech tools, you can get on Debbie's email list where she routinely emails you amazing ideas. 00:47:17 That's Lindsey Beth lions dot com slash 119 to get on her list back to the show. That makes a lot of sense. I think this will be so cool to hear what, what comes out of that. And like, it would be very interesting too. I think for your class nine, when they're returning to the driving question, they're thinking about what the formula is for them to also have them think through the lens of a particular like as a student. What do you think that answer is as a family member or caretaker? What is that answer? As a teacher? What you know, like, what would a teacher need to know? And maybe everyone chooses to just answer through the student lens and that's fine. And then teachers can, parents can extrapolate from there what it means for them. But it would be interesting to at least pose the question and just see what they think because sometimes kids surprise me and like are like, oh, wow, that's brilliant. I never would have thought that. Yeah. Um It makes a lot of sense. Wow. I think the only thing we have left is building a base. Is there a core tax or resource that you would want to build into the beginning here? Like I'm almost wondering if there's something that's like around digital citizenship. Like, I don't know, like um common sense media has like a really great article about like all of like just digital citizenship as a whole or something or even unpacking the ID standards together. 00:48:32 Although that might be almost wondering is that I had two different thoughts on that. One was having them unpack the S D standards. And then the other one was, you know, we have a, a vision for our school as far as this is what technology is supposed to be used for in our school system and kind of seeing that maybe even using those two resources, you know, this is how we envision, you know, using technology. I'm gonna pull it up because I know I should remember it. But, you know, um but like, you know, because it's supposed to be, it's supposed to be a transformation of learning for students and educators and, you know, looking at that and, you know, so there's, it's supposed to provide students equitable access, develop their 21st century skills, prepare them for the workforce. It's supposed to give professional learning to teachers and reinforce digital citizenship. And I know right now we're engaged in a revamp of this, but it's not gonna be in effect before this starts and even having them look at some of those things and then the, you know, some of the resources for that and looking at the S D standards, which is what, you know, they technically should be getting and you know, they might not even be aware that some of these things were things that they needed to do. 00:49:50 Yeah. Oh my gosh. I love that idea. Anchoring it in the the school vision. I wonder because I always try to center everything in justice. I wonder if you could take that equity piece and make that like for example, if lesson to the build a base phase piece phase, one of the would be like looking at that community like school wide vision and they're kind of unpacking that a little bit. Maybe you even like, kind of parallel to the standards. Maybe there's a short video that covers the S U standard in like a really student friendly way or something, but like that kind of core and then three, less than three is like, ok, we're gonna dive back into that community level, school level vision and we're gonna specifically think about equity. Maybe you pull in an article from or something or that's like about equity and technology or something and like, well, what would it mean to be equitable in doing all of these things? Like what does equity mean for digital citizenship or tech, tech like? And so then maybe it's leading a conversation around like, well, what if these three students have never had an ipad at home and they don't know how to use an ipad? Well, then they need the literal step by step tutorial to be able to access this creation app. 00:50:50 Otherwise they're not gonna be able to create this product. And you know, like having those kind of conversations, just the fact that not everybody has internet access at home, all of our students are allowed to bring devices home. Technically, um it's encouraged in the upper grades more than the lower grades, but not everybody has that internet access. Nor do you know that necessarily we know what their families are able to do. Um You know, everybody knows how to use a smartphone, but a smartphone is not normally what we send home with a kid. Right. Right. And so I'm kind of like gaming this out now as like, uh thinking about how a student could answer the driving question. Right. The formula might be something like everyone has access in school, like time in school. Plus the knowledge of all these creation apps that they can use to like represent their knowledge at the end of a project unit. And the teacher has given them the flexibility in the curriculum to take that path and apply those skills using the app that they now have the skills for that. They have the knowledge and awareness of that they have in the timing class to do. Like, you know, that could be like a possible answer. That sounds so much more like layered and nuanced and like justice centered because you did that framing at the start than it would be if we like, didn't have that day, if that makes sense. 00:51:57 Yeah, I totally understand. I might need some help building that together. But yeah, I could definitely look up some articles or something too. I'm sure there's something in Zilla. Yeah, but I even think about, you know, you know, looking at, you know, I know that, you know, in my school community, um you know, we've also had issues with kids not taking care of devices when they go home. And so then some teachers are afraid and then figuring out those ramifications as well. Right. So like, yeah, and so the students may have some really interesting insight too. Like that could be a whole conversation or less than like around like, well, what does that look like where we balance like the trust of students with like the student responsibility piece and like we have agencies that we have to have that responsibility and also we need to trust like, how do we do both of those things? And what is our role as tech leaders to or digital leaders, right? To be able to do that? Oh That could be part of the formula. And I like the fact that we, we're using the word digital leaders and not just tech leaders because I think that that is more powerful. Agree, agree. Oh my gosh. So we, I just realized that time was, wow, we are almost at the end of the hour. 00:52:58 I know it's like flown by. I know. Oh my gosh. So I wanna like ask you a kind of closing reflection question. It's like, how are you feeling about the process? How are you feeling in terms of like what this is gonna go like anything that you wanna share? This is so different from what I was doing, but it makes so much more sense. Um But I definitely feel like I'm gonna really need to think about how to approach it, but I actually really, like, I feel like I was, I like how this is really focusing on building their skills and having them, you know, at the end, bring it to and every time bringing it back to, you know, that driving question because I think for them, when I was doing the other question, how can we best support the needs? That was too abstract for them because you're still doing that, right? Like the project is still going to support the needs. It's just grappling with the big juicy question first and then you kind of get there in the project. Yeah, I agree. And I really, so I like that. Um I, I really like how we're looking at that and, you know, and how we're really gonna focus on specific skills and then, you know, let's be honest, once we get to May 8th, it's testing time. 00:54:10 So giving them what I need time to work on a project that they've self identified and it is going to be a good way for them to really use that time meaningfully. And then when we, when we hit June, whether they're presenting or reflecting, that's a really good way to wrap it up. I think it just, it, it flows really well. Hey, oh my gosh, I'm so excited and we should have you on the podcast again to say like how it went and like a little. Absolutely. So as I kind of go forward, I kind of want to think about that focus protocol and resource for each day of that. I'm like, yeah, I love that frame. It just makes it feel like easier and more simplified and focused versus like we're gonna do 30 things in this lesson. Yeah. Yeah. And I, yeah, I really like that idea a lot. And you know, I'm even thinking about, I don't know if you've read um Jennifer Caso Todd's book. She has a book all about raising digital leaders. And so she actually shares um examples of how kids have used it for good. So maybe I could even look up some of those people and bring them in for that case study for youtube. Um Plus I know she posts examples of stuff like that on um Instagram. 00:55:16 Amazing. Um So, you know, trying to bring some of that out in there as well, I think will be really, you know, good for them because I think a lot of times they don't view themselves as having that, you know, if they're gonna create a video, they're creating a video of themselves playing a video game. Right. Right. But you know, yes, that helps people. But is that helping you to help others and help your general community and help all those around you? Right. Could you instead do a video screen share of you creating a project for another class and then actually use it for this class and then, you know, like there's so many opportunities. Absolutely. And I just, I just like how, you know, that gives them that opportunity to really, you know, take these skills and, you know, maybe even beyond just, you know, how would you, how does does this help you through this exit ticket? But maybe even giving them a place or some sort of catch, like, no catcher or something like that where they can, like, here's three things I want to hold on to from today's class. Love it. Yes. And that feeds into that final whatever it is that they create. 00:56:18 Yeah. So, yeah, I really like this. I think this is gonna be really good. I'm so glad we did this. I mean, I'm so overwhelmed about this whole idea, but I love this whole idea. I feel like you can have both, but I feel like at least now I'm like doing something that it like it has continuity and right now I don't feel like we have continuity like we finished what we were doing because I didn't have the whole thing planned out. Right. Right. Um And it was my first attempt and that's ok. Like I tell the kids all the time, like I try something for the first time. It doesn't always work. That's OK. You know, that's the way the work things work. Right? That's a perfect model for like some of those things like the troubleshooting, right? Like that this is troubleshooting. I mean, like this week I taught my kids how to use, flip on the ipads and the first time it did not go so hot. And I said to them that thanks for being flexible guys. I realized that I had forgotten to do something because it was, I've done this on computers, not on ipads. And by the third or fourth time it went great. But the first two times were a little dicey. Well, speaking of like all the tech things that you do, I feel like listeners are gonna want to get in touch with you, whether it's to follow up with how the unit went or just to like, learn more about what you do because that's the thing. 00:57:23 You're kind of everywhere you have a book, like you have all the things. So where, where can people find you and connect with you? Um So my website is tante dot com. Um And that's pretty much um where all of my stuff is sourced. But I'm pretty, I'm on social media mostly on Twitter for now, I guess. Um It seems like it's getting better. Um I'm mostly on Twitter and Facebook a little on Instagram um at Tannenbaum Tech, I'm consistent throughout all the platforms I use. Um But yeah, I, I'm really lucky I get a chance to share what I love. I'm really passionate about empowering student agency and nurturing it with our youngest learners. I really want to help our youngest learners to become creators I even work with three K kids having them create amazing. Um and really trying to, you know, make sure that we're really using technology to provide students with opportunities they wouldn't have without the technology. Um, there's so much going on right now where kids are consuming that we really have to take them and activate that learning and, you know, not all technology used is equal and we really need to build that knowledge because, you know, so many times I hear, well, our kids spend so much time on computers, we need to get them off computers. 00:58:31 But what are they doing on the computers is super important. So I'm really trying to build that knowledge based to help educators find meaningful ways to use it that aren't overwhelming. My goal is never for them to feel like, oh my God, there's so much to do. I want them to see how, you know, technology can build with universal design for learning and how it can really give them those creation opportunities. Um and the accessibility. So, you know, I've really been working on a lot with that and um in May of 2021 which is almost two years ago. That's crazy. Um My book transformed Techie Notes to make learning sticky came out from road to Awesome. And that just talks about my journey and how I found ways to use technology to help things stick whether it's for me as a learner or for my students as learners. Um And I'm really proud of that. And then in June, of this past year, I contributed to a book called Amplifying Instructional Design where I wrote a whole chapter on engagement. Um So I'm really trying to find ways to, you know, help students take those next steps to build that agency, but also to help teachers. 00:59:38 And so, you know, sometimes when you're in the thick of it, can't see it. So having this, this conversation today really helped me to kind of take a step back and look at it from a different angle. Um But that's where you can find me. And definitely I have a newsletter, I have website um I post blogs about every two weeks, so definitely check it out and um let me know if you want me to come work with you. Awesome. Yeah. And we're gonna link to all that stuff in the show notes. So if you are driving right now, don't worry, like just go grab that link later. Um Thank you, Debbie so much. This is so fun. I just so appreciate your time and your willingness to come to this and share this. This is great. This was everything I like that. I hoped for. I just didn't know exactly where we were gonna go, but this is like exactly what I needed that I didn't know I needed. Amazing. Oh My gosh. Thank you so much. If you're leaving this episode. Wanting more. You're going to love my life, coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We weave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. 01:00:45 It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at w w w dot Lindsay beth lions dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think. Big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network, better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
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I love co-creating new units. In this series, I brainstorm with guests to dream up units across a variety of content areas. In this episode, I’m inviting you into the unit planning protocol we’ll use to create our justice-centered units.
Why Unit Dream? In her book, Unearthing Joy, Dr. Gholnecsar Muhammad urges us to develop curricular fluency. For one, it’s joyful, and when we are more readily able to create on the fly, we are better equipped to co-create curriculum with students, which for me, is the ultimate goal. How do we do this? Unit Planning Step 1: Find inspiration! I’ve started to post potential sparks of inspiration on Twitter and LinkedIn using the hashtag: #UnitDreaming to make these sparks searchable. Your inspiration may come from your daily commute, listening to podcasts, reading or watching the news, listening to music, experiencing nature, grappling with a big question about life or the human experience. Unit Planning Step 2: Brainstorm the pursuits! Specifically, I like to focus on 3 of Dr. Muhammad’s 5 pursuits in her HILL model: Identity, Criticality, and Joy. In my experience, these are the ones I see the least in curricula and also have massive potential for positively impacting students’ sense of belonging and meaningful engagement at school. Unit Planning Step 3: Start Playing with Your Driving Question This is hard. It doesn’t need to be a perfect first draft. This might take months to finesse. When I get stuck or need a headstart, I’ll use a DQ frame like: What’s the formula for ____? or What would it look like if…? Unit Planning Step 4: Civic Action as Summative Assessment Now, think about what students will do to apply what they learned in this unit to better their community? If this isn’t relatively easy to answer, it may be helpful to return to your DQ with the end project in mind. For the civic action project, consider a publishing opportunity(s) in which students will be able to share their work with an audience beyond the teacher. Also consider the variety of formats this project could take so you can share options with students and then completely open it up for more student ideas. Unit Planning Step 5: Unit Arc What are the protocols you’ll use to engage students throughout the unit? Consider which protocols elevate student talk and grappling. My goal is 75% of student talk/work time in each lesson. Unit Planning Step 6: Content/Texts When you’re ready to start thinking about content, I like to outline broad content ideas and maybe a “text” for a Hook lesson, a few Build the Base lessons, and a couple of Case Study lessons. The rest can be co-constructed with students. You may want to consider a “text library” or website where you can direct students to find texts if they will be selecting case study materials or doing their own research and need a bit of guidance. Finally… Once you’ve created something with this unit planning protocol, share it with me! Tag me on social media, reply with a comment to this blog post, or if you’re not ready for public eyes on your idea, you can email me at [email protected]. I can’t wait to see what you create! To help you dream up your own unit, I’m sharing the one-page template I use with guests on Unit Dreaming episodes with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 118 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. TRANSCRIPT I'm educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerdy out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go. In this episode. We're starting a really exciting series. It's called Unit Dreaming and this is in line with the hashtag unit dreaming that I've been using on Twitter and linkedin and trying to spark some conversations around curriculum fluency and what Dr Goldie Mohammed calls curriculum fluency. Really excited to share the process here and then really excited for the coming weeks to be able to hear what folks are saying and what they're creating in these amazing episodes. 00:01:07 So in this episode, I'll be walking you through the process. I'll be giving you a template as the episode freebie and then you can share your creations the best. Here we go. Welcome to episode 1, 18 of the time for teacher shift podcast. I am so excited for this, this series all summer. Well, for two months, basically, June and July, we are going to talk about unit dreaming with our guests. So I will have no solo shows after this one. We're just bringing on the guests and brainstorming a ton of different units. I absolutely love co creating units. This has always been something that I have enjoyed as a teacher. I could nerd out all day about curriculum. I have absolutely loved the conversations and the direction that this podcast has been going in terms of unit creation. And I realized I do this for PD. So wouldn't it be great if we were able to actually broadcast that live for free on the podcast? So people could kind of see the messiness and also that moment of like, aha excitement when people land on a driving question, that's really exciting. Or they have this idea that kind of seemed to come out of nowhere after 30 minutes of grappling. 00:02:11 And, you know, after having recorded a as of the time of this recording, we've already recorded several of these unit dreaming episodes with guests. And I have noticed that and I have heard those one liners. It's like, oh, I really thought we were going nowhere, you know, like, oh, this is miraculous or whatever it is really, really fun and it's messy and we get there eventually. And even if it's not perfect by the end of the episode, there are certainly some where we're like, hm. But we're still working on that. But the conversations and how we get to that point and what we talk about and consider along the way. I think those are goals. I love hearing the process, even if it's messy and even if it doesn't get where you ultimately want to go in the time frame that you thought, I think we're so secretive, sometimes not intentionally, but as educators and, and just as people, sometimes we're not super transparent about what goes on behind the scenes because we just want to share that finished product. We want to say this is what I came up with or this is what I created. It's beautiful, it's perfect, it's good to go. And I think a lot of times we create curriculum like that or we create, you know, our lesson plans like that or we deliver lessons or we don't invite people in to see the messy things on the first draft or the first try of this tech tool or, you know, whatever it is because we have this horrible system of accountability and kind of like punishing and perfectness. 00:03:29 So certainly those systems are in place and those need to change. That's another episode. Uh But I think one of the things I want to do here is really open, pull open the curtain, whatever the metaphor is and think about what does this process look like. So today, I'm sharing with you the process and then each coming week for the next eight weeks, I think we are going to hear from different guests and actually hear that process in action across a variety of content areas. It's actually really cool the diversity of content areas that we're gonna have and also the grades that these will span. So here we go. What do we do? First? We are going to first find inspiration. So we need something that's going to spark us to have an innovative unit idea. I would encourage you to look beyond what you already do or have been doing, think about something that just happens in your daily life. A question that comes to mind, it might be you're listening to music and you're like, whoa, this song would be really interesting to grapple with or this song gets at the heart of like a life or existential question. That could be a really cool question to frame an entire unit where we dig into these different case studies or these different applications or texts or whatever. 00:04:33 Often I find current events are a great grounding for discussions and kind of unpacking what's going on in a modern case so that we can better understand the world that we're currently living in. Often as an adult I'm trying to make sense of and grapple with things that are happening in the world. So I think that is something that our students also grapple with and it'd be really cool to kind of use a current event, watching the news, listening to a podcast about the news, whatever it is being on social media and seeing a tweet about something. I think that would be a really cool opportunity to take that and think about how do I use that in my class? I have, as I said at the front of this episode, posted a bunch under the hashtag unit dreaming on Twitter and linkedin. I'll link to those in the blog post for this episode as well. But I think if you're stuck, you can at least start there. There are, I think at this point maybe close to a dozen um or so unit dreaming sparks that I call them where I have thought about this and I've been trying to do this once a week just for practice for myself and then shared them there. So I think that's a really cool way to or an initial start, I guess of a way to do this unit dreaming. 00:05:39 I would encourage you to add to those either engage with those post or kind of add your own, feel free to use the hashtag if you're a leader of a staff, like have a staff, a meeting. I had an episode about that earlier. Where you could actually do this and I shared my agenda for a staff meeting or a team meeting. If you're a department chair and actually start just identifying what are the unit? Sparks? Could be something in front of you could be something that you share. Maybe that's the opening of each meeting, right? Each team meeting you get together with your department and for 30 seconds you go around and you just say like here's a spark that could be a unit and not all of them have to evolve into a full unit, right? They could just kind of exist as sparks, but maybe there's a repository or a Google doc that's shared among the team and you just kind of add them there and you could always go back if you're looking for inspiration or you're in a curriculum creation PD day or something and you can go there and kind of see what's going on or if there's themes across many anyways, once you have found inspiration, here's what we do to start outlining the unit. We next go or this is what I encourage guests to do to brainstorm the pursuits I will caveat this. 00:06:40 I'm going to say several steps. We don't always go in order. We usually approach the order, but then sometimes it'll just take us in a different direction, the order, it does not need to be the specific order. It's just generally how my brain works. Feel free to mix it up for you and your staff. But the next thing I go to is Dr Goldie Mohammed's five pursuits in her Hill model. I specifically focus on three because I think in my experience, these are the ones that I see the least in the curricula. So that's identity criticality and joy. There's so much potential here. Often we think about, you know, the content or, or what you refer to as, as intellect and that kind of PURs of knowledge. And then also um the skills, right, skills based instruction, uh common core, right? We, we have a lot of this already in what we're doing. So I like to center my focus on identity criticality and joy, the others will come. That's just part of, you know, creating curriculum and, and it's like second nature for teachers, I'm not worried about those pieces. Um And you can just kind of add them in as you as you brainstorm, but we're really thinking about increasing students sense of belonging, sense of justice, meaningful engagement, um action, taking like it makes sense to center identity c criticality and joy. 00:07:48 Here at this point, you're just brainstorming. And again, I'll link to the freebie is literally for this episode, the template that I use when guests are brainstorming. And it's just kind of the one pager that I use to throw in all the ideas and kind of organize them. So you can grab that at the blog that's Lindsey Beth science dot com slash blog slash 1 18. So if you want to kind of follow along with the episode, feel free to grab it. Now, after brainstorming the pursuits, right? You're kind of kind of getting it all out there next. Start playing with your driving question. And I specifically say play with your driving question because it doesn't need to be done right now. You're just starting to think about it. I often take, you know, like months to come up with what I feel like is a good driving question or I will teach a unit, have the driving question. And at the end of you be like, ah this was the driving question I should have used or something. And often it comes from students or student feedback or something a student says within the course of a unit. I'm like, oh that is the question. That's the better question. Um And so it doesn't need to be perfect and you can get student feedback. I think that's a great idea. But at this point in the brainstorm in this unit, outlining unit dreaming process, you just want to get a couple of ideas on paper and if you were stuck, I would use a driving question frame. 00:08:57 So page two, I said it was a one pager. But page two of this template. Freebie is actually just kind of like a a resource guide for some of the questions around Dr Goldie Mohammed's Hill model and those three pursuits and some of the questions she asks in her books and then there's also one in driving questions. So what is a good driving question? And also what are the driving question frames? I've done some stuff on that in previous episodes. So feel free to go back and listen to those, but also feel free to just grab the, the freebie and look at those there. I usually gravitate toward the two driving question frames that are as follows. One. What's the formula for blink? Because it enables students to kind of grapple with this idea of a formula that is complex and it doesn't need to be a mathematical formula, right? It could be like, what's the sense? What's the formula for everyone having a sense of belonging at school? And it's like, ok, well, there's like teacher relationships and you could quantify that, right? You have five strong teacher relationships. Um You have at least one friend who you're excited to see every day, you know what it could be numeric, but it doesn't have to be right? 00:09:58 Um equitable policies, uh student voice and representation in um the curriculum or whatever, you know, it it doesn't have to be quantitative, but the formula is like, what are the pieces involved? You could use a different language, like what's the recipe for or whatever. Um And then another one which I think center is kind of the possible is what would it look like if so often when we're thinking about criticality and we're engaging in conversations about justice or injustice in current events, identity, all these pieces we're often talking about a problem in society, right? Our Civic Action Summit of Assessment, which is what we're gonna get to in step four. That's the next step often requires us to identify what is wrong. And then what can we do if or what would be possible if uh what would it look like if this problem did not exist? Right? And so it gets us dreaming and get students dreaming in kind of that creative, innovative space that we want them to be in. That is a an amazing skill in and of itself, but to apply it to a social injustice, that's really what we want students to be grappling with, right? 00:11:01 So, so let's go to step four. So step four is Civic Action as Summit of Assessment. You'll see in some of these episodes, we have some teachers who are very much, I have to teach to the test. This is what my students and my families and my school expects from me. And I also want to do this thing um that is better, right? And so sometimes that summit of assessment ends up being a layered summit of assessment or we have part one, let's make sure we do the content and kind of the check the box thing we have to do or maybe it's a test, maybe it's a um or a lab report or whatever it is. And then like the next layer is applying that in a more meaningful way, which I would argue is actually a better summit of assessment. It is more uh rigorous or challenging or whatever word you want to use there. But it, it requires um to use language of Goldie Mohamed more genius, right? So thinking about what students are going to do to apply what they learned specifically to better their community is this stage of the process here. If it's not easy to answer, like if it not easy to answer in the sense of it's very clear, this is the one right answer. I don't ever think there is a one right answer here. I think there's student voice that has to be involved. 00:12:03 These are student led projects that's a really important caveat to this. Students are kind of co creating the format that it looks like. But you might come up with maybe a what I call a publishing opportunity. Here's where we have a set up. Maybe it is kind of almost like a science fair expo. Maybe it is um you know, there's a school board meeting on the specific date we could go present to, to them or whatever it is. There's kind of a space that you have at least one where they can publish their work. They either pitch a proposal or share information, they've gathered or whatever it is, but there is an opportunity to expand the audience beyond the teacher, beyond the classroom. So that might be what you think about, what are the publishing opportunities that you can provide to students and then they can core what the format specifically looks like here. And again, if it's not relatively easy to answer, like, you can't come up with any possible ideas of what it potentially could look like as a format or a publishing opportunity, you might want to return to the driving question and think about the end project while you are grappling and playing with that DQ. So the DQ itself should lend itself to be answered by the Summit of Assessment. 00:13:09 And if it doesn't, we might just need to go back and kind of rework it and you could totally rework like totally rework the driving question. It doesn't need to maintain kind of the initial thought you had uh in some of these episodes, you're gonna see that we completely rework where we were going and what direction we were going in and others were kind of tinkering the language. It can look however you need it to look. All right. Step five is the unit arc. So think about the protocols, these are the lesson level activities, this is how students are literally engaging. Um I have typically discussion based protocols, text based protocols. Um These are often the the big ones that we're talking about in the initial unit brainstorm. But thinking about what are the things students are doing and I would consider which protocols elevate student talk and grappling the most. My goal when I think about Shane Seier and Jimmy La Dugan's street data book, they talk about of student voice that numerically they apply 75% as a kind of a goal of student talk or work time in each lesson. 00:14:11 So I think that's uh something to shoot for. I don't necessarily think and I think they have even said as authors that this isn't kind of the end all be all goal like it could even be higher or maybe it should be higher. Uh But I think this is something to consider. So identify the protocols you'll use and what's the pattern you'll kind of put them in so that the unit arc flows really nicely. And finally think about the content or text often you'll see in these episodes, we don't quite get to that point. Some of them, we do some of them, we game out like this is each lesson's content broadly. Uh what the goal is, some were like, OK, we just got to the driving question and some sort of assessment and that's totally fine. You can take some time to think about the content or text that you'll be using. So I like to at least think about when I do get to this point, broad content, ideas and media, texts for a hook lesson, a few what I call build the base lessons. So this is kind of the foundational concept you're learning about what are those 234 lessons where we might be going back again and again to the same text or at least the same kind of like core content that we need to understand and then a couple of case study lessons. So these are applications where you're taking that core concept. 00:15:15 And you're saying, well, how does it play out in this scenario? And this is a very different scenario. So how does it play out here? Uh You might be looking at from a social perspective, how does it play out in these different demographic groups, this particular concept or something? Um What do these different authors of different backgrounds say about this? Something like that? Now, I think again, the rest can be cot constructed with students, which is why I wouldn't put too much time into the content or text at the front end. You do want to plan some things, but you will probably find that students are going to create. And I mean, this could even be a protocol early on in your hook lesson. Perhaps it's like a question formulation protocol. How do students tell you what they're interested in and what they're wondering in the hook and the initial kind of presentation of what we're gonna be learning about in the unit and then kind of use that to inform your case studies and your different lesson level content and texts and all of that stuff. Um students may even do their own research, right? You might even have them come up with, depending on their age. Um you know, and with a degree of guidance that is also age dependent or grade dependent, find the resources for us, bring a resource and, and you might as a teacher or as the person who's coaching teachers to create these, you might want to consider a text library. 00:16:29 Uh Usually these are websites that I like, something like facing history, PBS media, um Z in education project, something like this where you'll have a bunch of different resources that you can kind of filter by media type or by topic. I've done an episode on this in the past too. So feel free to check that out. But that might provide just enough guidance that students can kind of take it and run with it if they're at an age where they can do that independent research and selecting the text for you. Finally, I'm gonna say that if you've created something I'd love for you to share it with me. Feel free to tag me on social media, you can also reply to a comment on the blog post version of this episode or if you're just not ready for the public eyes on your radio, feel free to email me. My email is hello at Lindsay Beth lions dot com. I cannot wait to see what you create and remember. Feel free to go ahead and download that episode, Freebie Lindsay, Beth lions dot com slash blog slash 1 18. That's 118. All right. I will see you next week for our first installment of the unit streaming series. We're gonna have Debbie on and Debbie is going to talk to us about an elementary tech course. 00:17:34 I am so excited. You know what? Let's do a little preview actually. So after that, we also have uh doctor Lena Lena Bakshi mclean who is talking about sustainable farming and photosynthesis. So science people get excited. We are also gonna have a ton of other folks. I won't go too into depth here, but we have one on chemistry, one on sel um that one actually might be for leaders. I haven't recorded that yet. It's gonna be very cool. Uh We have a family design unit where we have a mom and a daughter who are on and they talk about all sorts of intersections el a music pe applications. Um We also have a design teacher who talks about literally like the process of design, not only that, but we have such an interest in guests doing this kind of episode, but we are going to continue the unit dreaming as a regular type of episode moving forward after this series in the summer as like every fourth episode or something. We're gonna we're gonna have one of those in there. So get excited. Please share with me. I'm so excited for this journey of unit creation and let me know if you have any content that you want me to share widely or give feedback on, I'm happy to respond to that. 00:18:36 And if you haven't already, I usually don't remember to ask this but feel free to leave a review of this podcast or share it with a friend so that we get more people on board with this idea of curriculum fluency and brainstorming justice centered unit ideas. I am so excited to move this area of schooling forward and just be part of this real exciting stuff going on. If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my life coaching intensive curriculum boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We, we current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at www dot Lindsay beth lions dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think big act brave and be your best self. 00:19:46 This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network. Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain how to talk about how to run a staff meeting on unit dreaming.
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
March 2025
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