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In this episode, we talk with a returning guest to the podcast, Dr. Samuel Nix. Our conversation emphasizes the necessity for educators to embrace change and develop adaptive leadership skills in response to our rapidly changing educational contexts. Dr. Nix highlights the importance of setting aside intentional time to think and analyze as an educator to ensure your activities are achieving their intended impacts.
Dr. Nix is an educator with over 20 years of experience as a teacher and principal, and is the author of Six Steps to a Strong School Culture: A Leadership Cycle for Educational Success. The Big Dream Dr. Nix firmly believes that we already have everything we need to make the difference that needs to be made—and it matters. Education matters. So, educators need to keep learning and growing so that we can support students' learning and growth. Within this context. Dr. Nix’s big dream for education is that we keep up the pace of change. He believes we are at the precipice of amazing things, but we need to prepare students to excel and achieve in the face of change, particularly when it comes to technology. His big dream is to prepare students not just for current trends, but for a future where critical thinking and analysis are paramount. Mindset Shifts Required To achieve this vision—preparing students to analyze, grow, and thrive in change—a few mindset shifts are helpful. Dr. Nix identifies ego as the primary barrier to growth and development among adults. Ego is holding onto your agenda, comfort, and perspective instead of learning from others. So, a necessary mindset shift for all educators is to take the position of a humble and adaptive learner. Dr. Nix also believes students can embrace a mindset shift towards more appreciation for learning, even when it’s a struggle. Action Steps Educators who want to embrace adaptive learning in their classrooms can use these six steps for leadership development, as outlined in Dr. Nix’s book, Six Steps to a Strong School Culture.
These six steps are part of the leadership cycle; they’re how leaders (educators) can embrace adaptive learning in their classrooms. In our discussion, Dr. Nix elaborated on a few key action steps educators can take:
Challenges? One of the primary challenges educators face is overcoming ego and complacency—the internal dialogue of “I already know this,” or “It’s going to take too much time.” But if educators can overcome this reluctance to change and be willing to adapt to new methods, we can grow and develop, ultimately helping students do the same. One Step to Get Started To begin embracing adaptive leadership and fostering growth in education, Dr. Nix suggests starting with clarifying your mission. This involves ensuring that your communication is understood as intended by your audience, whether it be staff or students, and providing clear, actionable feedback that promotes understanding and growth. Stay Connected You can find out more about Dr. Samuel Nix and his work on his website and X (Twitter) at @_SamuelNix. To help you implement today’s takeaways, Dr. Nix is sharing a link to their book, Six Steps to A Strong School Culture. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 217 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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Transcript
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Dr Sam Nix, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast again. 00:07 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) Lindsay, thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to connect with you, to connect with your audience. I just am honored. 00:12 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Thank you so important for how we lead in educational spaces, so excited to dig into that. Is there anything you want listeners or people reading the transcript? I want to make sure I'm not using ableist language. You know anyone to know, as we kind of jump in today before we get into like the meaty questions. 00:39 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) If I had to articulate what I would want someone to know before we jump into everything, it's this we have everything that we need to make the difference that needs to be made, and it matters. The work of educating children matters. The work of understanding that this is important matters. The work of understanding that our children, where they are, what they have, who they're going to be tomorrow, matters. So our ability to get it right, our ability to learn, to grow, to develop in order to best meet the needs of all students matters. So, whether it's my book, whether it's someone else's book, whether it's whatever it is, as educators we have to continue to grow and to develop, to learn how to support our students as they continue to learn and grow, because it matters and that's all I want people to know is that it matters. So our ability to continue to just get better matters. 01:48 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That resonates so much and I know, before we hit record, we were talking about like our parenting journeys as well, and I have felt that as well as an individual, like in a family sense, too right. It's like, oh, I should read this book or I should learn this thing, but I'll do it later. I don't have time for that right now. It's like, no, it totally matters. Like to our children's development. And it also is is the case for like an educational setting. 02:10 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) Yes, absolutely. 02:11 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh my gosh, I love that framing. Okay, so you've answered this next question before on the podcast maybe. Like you know, we always change and evolve and grow to your point, and so I'm wondering what your, your thoughts are today. You could also answer this in the context of your new book, but in line with Freedom Dreaming Dr Bettina Love describing it as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. What is your current big dream for education? 02:33 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) Well, my current big dream for education is that we keep up with the pace of change. I think and I don't know, but I think we are at a precipice of absolute amazing things, with the integration of artificial intelligence into every aspect of everything that we're doing, to so many of our teachers and teaching staff coming into the profession not as prepared as in the past. The changing demographic of our technology is just things. So you know, my goal, my hope, my dream is that we keep up with the pace of change, not that we're trending with change, but we're preparing students for thinking, analyzing, because that's a skill that I think we're losing, and so my dream is that we continue to prepare students for what's coming in a way that they will excel and achieve tomorrow. 03:46 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's so good on many, many levels. So one part of my brain is going to the fact that you always integrate, which is why I just so appreciate your work, this idea of adaptive leadership and like that change is just inevitable and we have to kind of like prepare thoughtfully for that. And then, on a student level, thinking about what students skills I have always valued most because we bring our own, like teacher biases and preferences is the skill of analysis, and it is often the skill that we struggle the most with, and so I just think the merging of those points that you're making and that you make in the book are just so profound and relevant to exactly what's happening. 04:21 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) Wow, yes. 04:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, and so I'm curious. The next question really I think I want to ask is about the mindset shifts that are required for this type of leadership, for this preparation of students to analyze. Certainly, one of my takeaways is always that adaptive lens from what you bring in this book, and so I'm curious to know what your thoughts are around like. Is there something that is kind of like this aha moment where you have seen teachers or leaders, or even from the student lens kind of unlock, this new way of thinking or being that has really enabled that growth and that achievement of, like, better analysis or leading through change, or analysis or leading through change? 05:03 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) Well, let me start with the adults, and this may not be popular, okay, but the number one, I believe, inhibitor of adult growth and adult development is ego. Ego in terms of I know, ego in terms of I'm good, ego in terms of my agenda, my comfort, ego in terms of how dare someone tell me what and how to do what I know works, how to do it better? And so, for me, the mindset shift that has to occur is one of an humble and adaptive approach to learning and growth, and I think that's the fundamental aspect of adaptive leadership. It's positioning yourself to understand you don't know it all and positioning ourselves to understand that there's a lot to learn and we can learn it from anyone, whether that's from students or from a new teacher coming in, or from new courses or from new ways of thinking, and not that the new is always better, but the new positions you to adapt and when adapting, sometimes you can relate better. Your perspective shifts and it allows you to connect with whatever it is that you're trying to impact in a different way. 06:30 So, with the adults, to me the thing that has to shift the mindset, it's dropping the ego, and that is one of the most difficult things for any person to do, let alone a leader do, let alone a leader. And for students. You know, I find that there is so much of a and I really hate to say this, but I find that there is so much of a lack of appreciation for learning and I hate to say it because we are so instant, everything is getting so quick and so much so that we don't have to engage in the critical thought and analysis that you just talked about that it takes a very patient mind, it takes a very intentional mind, it takes a very determined mind and intentional mind to struggle, and learning is about struggle. And so if we're not willing to struggle, if we're not willing to be uncomfortable, if we're not willing to go through the grind of the process, then it's going to be very difficult to develop the mindset that's necessary to be successful tomorrow or in the future. 07:50 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Wow, okay, yeah, I totally agree and I. What this is making me think about is I have a teacher who have been coaching or just like learning from really, and he's trying to increase student-led discussion. He's like you know what. 08:05 I find it really interesting that in like the honors class, they have like a tracked system there the honors students are less successful because there's more fear of failure they are less kind of resilient in that struggle for learning that you're describing, whereas the students who have like been familiar with, with, like, like academic struggle at least, they're like, yeah, I'm willing to try that thing, like I'm willing to do that, I'm willing to grow and like see what happens when I say this or I ask a question in this way, and they're like really leaning into it. And so I I am really curious lately about that idea of the learning struggle and how do we kind of create this context for all people, for leaders, to your point, and adults in the space, as well as the students? That is one where we can embrace the struggle and be like this is a gift, right, that's the learning. 08:54 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) Yeah, but if you look at how we structure the system though, lindsay, so how do we? You know, in the book I talk about this In order for learning to be something that's celebrated. It can't be punitive. And what do we do in education, right? I mean, the moment that you fail, there's a punitive measure there. Or even as an adult, the moment that you fail, there's a punitive measure, there's a write-up waiting for you, there's a critical conversation waiting for you. There's because there's so many metrics of success that we are under sometimes the burden to meet. So feedback is extremely important, but feedback that helps people grow. You know if, when we take a test, lindsay, I work with school districts all over like all over right, and I work with schools and leaders all over them critical, meaningful feedback for the student to learn from and practice again for improvement. Usually there's a minus five. Here's your score. Boom, that's feedback. 10:17 Or in an adult situation, the moment somebody fails at something they've attempted to do, oftentimes there's so little grace in an organization, so little flexibility and support for that failure, which then causes people to not want to fail more. So, to your point, when we can make failure a part of the process that people can learn from, grow, from, try again to do better with. Then we start to develop a system in an organization where critical thinking, analysis, risk-taking just becomes a part of what we do. That's a part of the mindset that has to shift, that's a part of the organizational structure that has to shift, because without that, you know, we're creating a system of fear, absolutely Spot on. 11:19 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, and it's making me think about your in chapter three. 11:21 You have like this coaching feedback, like quadrants maybe yeah, and so there was like technical and adaptive, which totally resonates. And then there's teaching learning, which was a really interesting mindset shift for me as I was reading, because I usually have the first two, didn't have the other two, and it was really. It unlocked something for me and like, oh, this is feedback for learning versus teaching, or I don't know if you want to like talk through for folks who haven't read the book yet, like what that is. I think that'd be helpful. 11:48 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) Absolutely so. I did an analysis of multiple school districts school districts ranging from large districts ranging from over 60,000 students, to school districts that were smaller in size, under 10,000 students. I looked at multiple administrators, multiple teacher feedback, multiple student achievement, and main thing that I was interested in is the walkthroughs from the administrators when they're in the classrooms and the feedback that they're providing to teachers and how they're coaching teachers to get better. And so I mean hundreds and hundreds and hundreds right of analysis of how we're coaching teachers after a classroom observation or things of that nature. And what we found was there were basically four quadrants of feedback that was provided, one quadrant being administrators were providing adaptive feedback, which adaptive are things that are challenging, not easy to identify, they're more emotional, they're not as easy to fix right. Technical being simple, easy things to identify, quick fixes. Technical being simple, easy things to identify quick fixes. And then, of course, there's the teaching aspect. So there is a feedback quadrant that focuses on technical teaching, meaning I'm in there and I'm talking about things that are easy to identify, easy to fix, and I'm focused on the teacher right. 80% of the 85% of the feedback was technical teaching. So what that means is we are coaching, developing mindsets that focus on the technical aspect of school and teacher activity and less on the adaptive aspects of school and student outcomes. 13:48 And so what we do in the book is really go through and unpack the difference between these types of feedback and how to be more focused on adaptive learning so that we can start to develop this type of mindset, so that teachers understand what it means to support adaptive and what it means to focus on student learning. And so we unpack that in the book. We unpack ways to do that, strategies to do that and the benefits of that, and the hilarious part about this is in the study. And the hilarious part about this is in the study. Those administrators that focused more on adaptive learning, the teachers that they worked with and the students that they impacted had much greater scores. And it's not I mean, it's not rocket science, right? I mean even the teacher evaluation systems and all of the research shows us here. Let me ask you a question. So the question is let's take students learning math. Why don't kids want to learn math? 14:56 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Divorced from their reality, don't see the authentic applications of it. Feels like there's often a right or wrong and they're on the side of wrong, so they're maybe afraid to get it wrong. 15:07 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) All of those are adaptive. That has nothing to do with lesson yeah, that has nothing to do with lesson plans. That has nothing to do with the structure of the board configuration. It has nothing to do with transition time, although those things are important. Kids don't learn, want to learn math or reading, whatever the case may be. Because why is it relevant to me? Why I'm not inspired to learn it? I'm not motivated to learn it, right, like? Why, like, this doesn't make me feel I would rather play video games, right, why? 15:36 And so the adaptive piece of how do we motivate kids to learn? How do we inspire them to want to learn? How do we make this so relevant to them and how do I connect with them in such a way that they can't wait to get to math class? Those are all adaptive things, but we're not coaching on that, we're not spending time developing that type of mindset. Why? Because we're so busy with the technical. We're so busy thinking that as long as my lesson plans are good, as long as my board configuration is good, as long as my classroom management is good, kids are going to learn and they're going to be fine. And that's not always the case. And so we have to help and walk people through. Number one what does the research say? And number two, what are the strategies to get there? And that's what the book Six Steps to a Strong School Culture helps to be able to do. 16:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yes, oh my gosh, this is great, and actually I think I'm realizing I probably jumped too far in immediately. Do you want to overview for us what those six steps are, because I'm realizing that not everyone has read the book at the time of listening to this. So do you want to give us kind of that overview and then we can dive into the next thing I want to ask. 16:38 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) Yeah, there's no problem. So part of what we talk about in the book and unpacked is the leadership cycle, and that is basically just a framework for leaders to think through as they are going through any type of process or any type of organizational outcome that they're looking for, and it's based in research from pilots, right, and it's based on the ADM factor, and the ADM is audit, audit, audit. How do you audit, audit? Help me, lindsay, what the ADM stands for? Audinarical, what is it? What is it when you, when you fly? 17:12 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Aviation, aviation. I'm not sure. 17:17 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) Thank you, I'll get it in a second Right, but it's AD. The cut all that out. So that's not in the bunk, but it's the ADM process, autonomical, it'll come to me. Aeronautical, thank you. Yes, aeronautical, you're a genius, thank you. 17:32 Aeronautical decision making this is an actual study, right. And so what they found was they can drastically reduce the deaths, the wrecks, the incidents of pilots by preparing how pilots think and prepare before a flight. But wait a minute, what about weather? What about lightning? You can't control lightning. You can't control wind. You can't control turbulence. You can't control birds, yes, but what you can control is how a pilot prepares for, thinks through, analyzes and executes when those situations occur. So that's what the leadership cycle is based on and proven results. 18:17 But the six steps are number one, clarifying the mission. Number two, planning strategically and making decisions. Number three, empowering yourself and empowering others. Number four, measuring and feedback. Number five, how to and when to make adjustments and what it looks like to make improvement. And then number six, accountability and rewarding. And so those six steps we unpack, we teach leaders how to thoroughly move through each piece of that cycle so that by the end of whatever it is that they're trying to accomplish. Whatever they're trying to embed or install, or whatever the outcome is, there is such a higher degree of success than not, and so those are the six steps to the leadership cycle, and really what the foundation of the book is about. 19:12 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Thank you for running through that, and I think that's so interesting that it comes from the aeronautical space. 19:20 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) Thank you for the word. Yes. 19:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Because I think that that is so interesting. This is a bit of a tangent. We were talking about parenting earlier, but Dr Becky Kennedy talks about like being a sturdy pilot when you're in parenting mode. Like no one wants to hear the like I'm too overwhelmed. Like I, you know, sit down, oh my gosh, sit down in the car, or else we're gonna right. That's like, and no one wants to hear. Like the. What do you think we should do? Like I'm not really sure. Like, I'm not really sure, like, and so I love that. 19:49 Actually, I think there's some clear, clear things in here too, because, to clear ties to that, because I think there is like, I have a plan as a leader, I do have a plan, and the plan involves so much of your feedback that I am going to ask and I am going to learn, but I still have a sense of like the path, like I have these six steps and I am sturdy in my kind of piloting and I do love that there's like so many pilot references in here. 20:15 It makes total sense to me, one of the things that really stuck out to me. 20:20 I love the idea of like we dove into this a little bit already, but like the kind of adaptive underpinnings of some of the things that are maybe ways that we've been doing the things but not really deeply doing the things that are adaptive, that need shifting, and I think some of these pieces that, as I was reading through those steps, feel more like I could see a leader taking that and being like okay, yep, I got this and then other pieces of being like this is so different to me I have not entertained the real adaptive stuff that this feels like a sticking point where, if I'm reading the book by myself, I might be like okay, this is a little, this is a little much. 20:56 I'm curious if you can talk us through a little bit of like your root cause process, which I found fascinating, like when you were assigning weights and then thinking through. I love root cause and I talk about it a lot, but I had never seen anyone do it the way that you did it. So I wonder if that's like a part that we could highlight from the book, if you're okay with it. 21:16 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) I'm fine with that, absolutely, lindsay. If I were to ask you, if I were to say how do you know that you're making an impact in any area? If I were to say, how do you know you're making impact as a mother? How do you know that you're making an impact in any area? If I were to say how do you know you're making impact as a mother? How do you know that you're making an impact as a teacher? How do you know that you're making impact at your church? Or like how do you measure impact in any area? What do you use? 21:45 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Wow, that's a huge, really big question. Okay, I think, and I don't have the answer, but I think what I would do is I would first identify, like, what's the goal? Like, what is, what is the type of impact I want to have. So, like, for my kid, I might be like, okay, I really want my kid to have good questioning skills, I want my kid to be curious. How many questions does my kid ask in a day? Or something like that, right. And then I would, paired with that kind of more objective measure, maybe I would ask for feedback, like am I a good mom, am I a good teacher? Right, and I would just get that qualitative feedback from whoever I'm working with. 22:23 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) So what I hear you saying is there's a certain time that you're going to be focused on activity, but there's also a certain time that you're going to be focused on measurement of impact. And so often what we do, lindsay and I just find this so prevalent is we focus more on activity than on impact, and so we will do a thing and not have any qualitative or quantitative data to determine whether or not what we're doing is having the intended impact. So you asked me about the root cause analysis. There is a process that I teach and help people go through, because it's not just about, well, what do I think the cause is? Well, what do I think the cause is. There is a very strategic way to determine a root cause analysis that you can attach a metric to and a weight to, to see which one of these is having the greatest impact on what I'm experiencing. And so that piece and just learning how to do that, just understanding the strategic nature of how to unpack that, is so critical, because what people tend to do is, when we start talking root cause analysis, they'll start thinking, well, this is what caused that and this is what caused that, and actually that's not what caused that at all, right? Actually, they're all on something that they have no control of, right? So, as we're processing through root cause analysis, we have to stay in the realm of what A do I have control over that has contributed to the outcome, and B then people have to learn how to stay in that vein, to determine whether or not can just follow those examples, outline the root cause, assign the weights and be able to more strategically and intentionally determine okay. This is why this is not happening, this is why that's not occurring, and so I very much, I very much understand the challenge of strategically thinking that way. But the reality is we're not going to grow and we're not going to get better if we're not willing to think, and I don't know any other way to say it. 25:05 Thinking takes time. We don't have time. Thinking takes patience. We oftentimes run out of patience. But if I were to ask the leaders all the time show me on your calendar where you have scheduled time to think. Oh, they've scheduled everything. Show me where you have scheduled time to think, and very often it's not there. We wake up. Things are grabbing our time and attention. We move, we get in the car. Things are grabbing our attention Every time, every minute of the day, something's grabbing our attention or we're giving it attention, or we're spending a lot of time on the electronic income reducer, which I call the television. Right, we not take everything's doing the thinking for us. So when we start talking about root cause analysis, we oftentimes try to focus on the behavior of a thing instead of the cause of a thing, and we treat the behavior, which doesn't change the outcome. 26:07 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I feel like that should be the title of the episode schedule time. To think it's just like, wow, that's a huge aha moment. For me, that's whoa. Okay, that's so good. Thank you for that. That's brilliant and, and I think so that's kind of what I identified as leaders I've worked with. That might be like the biggest challenge for them, you know, in in doing these six steps. I'm curious to know what you have experienced with leaders. What is the biggest challenge for them as they kind of go through this process or as they just in general, I guess, as leaders that you think this book could address, or that maybe you've seen them like go through this challenge and do this thing and this is the aha that unlocks some progress. I don't know if there is something that comes to mind for you. 26:50 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) You know the purpose of this book, lindsay. Your audience is an audience that wants to grow. They want to get better. The purpose of this book is to help give them the strategies to do that. Where I find that people struggle the most is going back to what we said ego. I know I'm not going to try this because it's going to take too much time. I'm not going to adjust because what I'm doing is working and we often fail to consider it may work today, it may not work tomorrow. It may work with the students who and I say this and I've said this in the book Lindsay we do a very good job of teaching the kids who and I say this and I've said this in the book Lindsay we do a very good job of teaching the kids who need us the least. But there are children who require our thought, our creativity, the expansion of our ability to lead and to teach. The biggest challenge that I find is people assuming that where they are and who they are is enough. 27:56 That is not me saying that someone's not enough. What that is me saying is that sometimes it requires we are required to grow. We are alive, we grow, we develop, and we should consistently be growing and develop. So let's take the first step in the leadership cycle, which is clarify the mission. When I talk to leaders all the time they'll say things like, oh, I clarified. And I'll say how do you know? Well, I told them. I talked to leaders. All the time they'll say things like, oh, I clarified. And I'll say how do you know? Well, I told them. I talked to them, I emailed them, I wrote them. How do you know that what you intended to say is what they understood? Just that question. How do you know that what you intended for them to understand is what they understood? And do you know how oftentimes leaders will say well, I told them, I gave them an agenda, I emailed them, I told them five times? 28:47 That is not ensuring that they are clear. Or how often are we providing feedback to people on their progress? Not just to mention what feedback are we getting on our leadership on the thing. How often are we providing feedback to people on the thing that we're wanting them to do, to improve, to implement things of that nature. And then the call, even if leaders do all of that. Where I find the biggest challenge for leaders that I work with, for CEOs that I work with, for organizations that I work with, it's in the measurement, it's in measuring the progress. 29:33 It's in identifying a metric A, communicating the metric B and having a regimented time that they are monitoring and measuring, which are two different things. That's outlined in the book. That is a challenge, because we get so busy, we get so busy we forget. We assume all the things right, but there's very few things in life, if any, that ever improves without feedback and without measuring it. 30:11 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) So well said, I totally agree. And you know it makes me think of I'm reading this other book I was reading this morning about like a teacher feedback to students and it was like just give less assessments, right, like if you don't have time, it's not that you stop measuring and giving feedback, you just do less and make sure it's focused and important. 30:33 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) And I'm like that was true, but do you see even that comment right there? What you're asking people to do is change the way they think about what they do. Well, you can't give less assessments. If I give less assessments then I don't know what the kids know, right? So the priority is on the activity, not the impact. The priority is on the teaching, not the learning. 30:51 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Right, right, yes, oh my gosh. Yes, that's it. It's the teaching versus the learning. Thank you, I will not forget that. That's so good, and I think so. There's there's so much right. There's so much that leaders can, can do. There's there's so much depth and also really practical resources, like even to your point of how do you know that the staff or the other people in the space are actually like understanding and interpreting your message the way that you intended it, like I love the concrete things that you offer in the book to be like here's how you know, here's, here's the indicators, right? I'm curious to know, like if someone's ordering the book, it's in the mail, it's on the way they stop listening to this episode and they're like I want to kind of start this today, like I want to get going. What's kind of the first thing they can do when they end the episode, and they want to just start the momentum towards doing all the things we talked about today. 31:41 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) Well, first is understand. Nothing that we're talking about is difficult. We're not talking about hard. We're not talking about a course in astrophysics, right, slowing down, adjusting our mindset to doing things that help people get better. We're talking about being intentional, about focusing on what it takes for people to learn. 32:18 There's a lot of psychology in the book Sociology, right, sociology right because there's an adaptive approach to how people work, to how people operate, and to understand that there is such a thing as a strategy to help you improve. And what the book is going to do is help you to explore those strategies so that you can be so much more impactful Not that you're not impactful, but that you could be so much more impactful. I don't know. I've never heard of a world-class athlete that didn't have a coach. I've never seen a world-class athlete whether it's Olympics, whether it's anything that the coach is not constantly trying to sharpen their saw. 33:19 So people who order books like this, people who listen to your podcast, these are the people that have a greater degree of impact because they're constantly sharpening their saw. And it's not that this is the answer, it's that anyone that orders this book prepares for it to come. What should they be doing? They should be spending time understanding that they are about to sharpen their saw block out time to think about what they're reading, process through it, and then go execute and watch, as what they're working on, as who they're working with, excels. 34:07 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's so good. Thank you for that. I think one of the last two things that are just fun to ask is one what are something that you have been learning lately? This could totally relate to what we talked about or be something totally different, but we talked about lifelong learning and growth and all this stuff, so I'm curious to know what you're working on. 34:25 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) So what I'm working on right now is and it's a lot don't laugh at me, please don't laugh at me Right, but what I'm learning is YouTube, right, so I started a YouTube channel and it's there's a lot to that, right, and I'm learning about playlists and I'm learning about scheduling and I'm learning about, like, because I don't know, I just right, I'm trying to learn how to navigate through the space. So one of the things that I'm doing is I'm a reader, right, I love to read books. I read about three to four books a month, and for some people, that may be a lot, for some people that may be a lot, for some people that may be a little. But as a learner, and what I'm doing is I'm taking the top 50 leadership books and I'm equating them to education, and so what I'm trying to do is, in about 15 or 20 minutes or so, just all the books I'm reading. 35:19 How do the strategies in this book equate to education? Whether it's Marshall Goldsmith's book, what Got you here Won't Get you there, whether it is From Good to Great, whether it is Atomic Habits, whether it is Upstream, whether it is Chop Wood, carry water, whatever right, I'm taking the strategies from this book these books and then through the podcast. Okay. So how does this apply to teaching? How does this apply to leadership? How does this apply to leading a school? So I'm trying to learn right how to do those things. This is great. It's a wonderful opportunity for me. 35:59 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Whoa, that's so cool. Okay, I need to add that to my subscribe list. That is cool. And the last question is just where can folks learn more about you, connect with you online? We'll link to the stuff in the blog post too, but I just wanted to know if you want to share. 36:11 - Dr. Samuel Nix (Guest) Well, thank you so much. I'm on Twitter at Samuel Nix, I'm on Facebook and, of course, I have a website and my website is SNIX3consultingcom. That's SNIX3consultingcom, and I am on another thing I. Lindsay and your audience. Thank you so much for just what you do to inspire other educators, to help us learn and grow and continue to do the things that we need to do to help students learn. So just really kudos to you. Your channel your energy and just really appreciate you. 36:59 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Thank you so much. That is so kind Right back at you, oh my gosh. Thank you for spending time with us, thank you for writing this amazing book. Keep cranking them out because they're very, very wonderful, and we will link to all of the stuff that you just listed for contacts in the blog post so people can find it, and we'll also drop a link to the book so people can get it right in there. So thank you so much.
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6/23/2025 216. Responding to Emotions & Charged Comments in Schools (Inside Look at a Workshop)Read Now
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In this episode, we follow a different format and respond to clips from a workshop co-hosted by our host, Lindsay Lyons, and Dr. Eric Soto-Shed. The workshop centered on responding to student emotions in conversations about challenging topics or controversial issues.
Dr. Soto-Shed is a lecturer in education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His research centers on curriculum development and teacher training, with his work aiming to promote inquiry and equity in education. He also consults on school district initiatives and conducts professional development workshops for educators of all levels. Responding to Student Emotions: 5 Action Steps Dr. Soto-Shed addressed the challenges of managing diverse student emotions, especially when some are very strong (i.e., hurt, threatened, confused). He suggests following these five approaches:
These strategies can be part of your proactive planning, knowing emotions are likely to come up in certain situations. The more you think ahead about how things may be, you’ll be better prepared to manage student emotions in the classroom. Lindsay’s Debrief One additional point here is that naming emotions can be challenging for students. You may need to spend significant time building language around emotions, like a vocabulary word bank they can draw from. Another follow-up to Dr. Soto-Shed’s strategy is to have responses in place for when students do share. You may want to use “scripts” in the back of your mind to help assure students they are in a safe place. For example, you can say, “I’m not going to tell you your emotions are wrong,” or “Your feelings are real. I believe you.” Action Steps to Respond to Charged Comments Dr. Soto-Shed discussed responding to charged comments. For example, the election or other current topics may elicit strong emotional responses or comments. They could be disrespectful or inflammatory, potentially hurting other students by drawing on misconceptions or stereotypes. To address these charged comments, it’s important to do the self-work of knowing where you stand with certain issues, what biases you have, and what emotional responses may come up internally. From there, educators can always implement a pause to process or give a student time to process. You can then lead with curiosity, such as “Can you tell me a bit more? Why did you think that?” Other times, you may need to correct what’s being said and address it later on. Lindsay’s Debrief Recognizing that some charged comments need to be shut down and others can be explored, it’s important to pre-establish a classroom set of non-negotiables. For example, you may create baseline assumptions for your classroom discussions, like “everyone has the right to food, water, and shelter.” These set the standards for how you discuss charged topics and allow you as an educator to hold appropriate boundaries. If harm is done during a charged conversation, consider implementing a restorative circle that allows students to be clear on what happened and process the impact of charged words. Stay Connected You can learn more about Dr. Eric Soto-Shed’s work on his Harvard Faculty Page. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Circle Planning Template & Restorative Conference Companion with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 216 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
Transcript
Lindsay LyonsHost In this episode we're going to do something a little bit different. So we are pulling clips from a workshop that Dr Eric Soto-Shedd and myself did with San Francisco Unified School District on responding to student emotions in conversations about challenging topics or controversial issues. So we're going to play little clips, I'm going to respond to them and that will be our episode today. So let me tell you a little bit about whose voice you are going to hear today. 00:32 Eric Soto-Shad is a lecturer in education in the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His professional and research pursuits center on curriculum development and teacher training, and his work aims to promote inquiry and equity in education, particularly within K-12 history, civics and social studies classrooms. He co-leads a civics thinking project, a research initiative focused on creating innovative research-based civics assessments and curriculum. Dr Soto-Shed co chairs HGSE's foundations course, how People Learn, and instructs courses in curriculum design as well as instructional methods for history and civic education. Outside Harvard, dr Soto-Shed consults on school districts initiatives to develop and implement social studies curriculum. He conducts PD workshops for educators at all levels, including this. 01:12 One focuses on historical inquiry, teaching controversial issues and making learning accessible. He's received several grants from the Library of Congress to train educators to teach with primary sources. He also serves on the Board of Self-Evident Education, a nonprofit that uses multimedia curriculum to educate about the history of race and racism. With a 25-year career in education, dr Soto-Shud has consistently advocated for teachers and students. His roles have included founding director of Harvard's Teacher Residency Program, director of Secondary History social studies education at Brown University and teacher educator at Stanford and NYU. His work is deeply influenced by his eight-year tenure as a social studies teacher in New York City and his enduring commitment to supporting youth from underserved communities. So let's take a listen. Eric Soto-Shed 02:00 One of the things that I might be imagining that's going on for you all is you're naming the motions like different students are feeling different things, and then the same student might be feeling different things on any given day or any given moment, depending on what's happening in the world, what's happening in the class, what's happening in their own personal lives, right. And so one of the challenges of this work is that there's a range of emotions, right, and the other challenge that I think you are lifting up is some of these are really strong, like hurt, threatened, confused, right, and so how do we work with that? Okay? So, similar to how we were thinking about with us, it's important to surface. We want to kind of lay out sort of five general approaches and then dig into some opportunity to think about specific things we can do. Okay, dig into some opportunity to think about specific things we can do. Okay, so I like to think about our responding to student emotions. The five things I like to think about is first is naming the emotion. So we just had an emotional wheel, an SEL check-in. I know a lot of teachers do this kind of like normal warmup, but to give students like language, right, there's a difference between you know hurt and angry, right, and so for students to see a lot of language to name what's going on really helps, can help them articulate. Number two would be surfacing emotions, right, so we can do those with our check-ins, we can do those with other sorts of processing opportunities, and so it's an opportunity to say you know I might be sitting with something, but let me get an opportunity to say it. Oftentimes kids might be like I'm fine, I'm good. Other times it's a real opportunity for them to lift up some things that are going. That's largely for themselves, but also for you as an educator to think about okay, what am I seeing and how might I respond? 03:35 Number three in terms of that responding, in particular heavier moments, processing emotions can be really, really powerful and important, and so those can look like journals or circles. The thing that I love about journals is those can be kind of really quick to do. It's a great, it's a private way, so students might feel more comfortable sharing, and then it gives you an opportunity to teach or to follow up. One thing we'd like to say is that if you are going to ask students to journal about how they're feeling, it is important to check those journals and respond, particularly if something heavy does come up. Circles can be powerful community work and I imagine many of you do this. Some of us may not, but that's a really great opportunity to do some collective processing as well. 04:14 The fourth thing that's really important is to validate emotions right. I think that's one of the big under themes that's going to undercut our work today is that emotions aren't something we try to avoid. They kind of feel icky and creepy sometimes. Unless we're a class, we have objectives and learning goals and big questions we're trying to answer. But we're humans and we have feelings, right, and sometimes when those feelings come up, they can be like a side thing or a problem to address. And no, that's part of being human, that's something to care for. So one of the things we can do with our students is to validate like totally it makes sense that you feel that way, thank you for sharing, and let's begin to sort of think about, like, how we can engage in that, and so the um. 04:53 Fifth thing, finally is um connected to learning right part of what you're doing, particularly in your social studies class, your ethnic studies classes, your ELA classes, or as you're dealing with humans and people right and there's hurt and feeling and all of that right. And so when things come up for our students and related to the world or related to what we're learning, really it's an opportunity to say like, wow, we have some anger going on. I mean, what we're seeing in this past event or what we're seeing in this current event could really cause some anger because and so connect that feeling to the cognitive, to the intellectual, to the academic work as well um, so those are five broad approaches. Some of these, can you, uh, are used in combination and almost in not almost always but in many cases some individual follow-up is warranted. But this is something you can do with the whole class. So that's broad strokes, okay. What we want to do is now get into some specific. You can do with your planning, okay. So the biggest thing we can do not the biggest thing, an important thing we can do is that we don't need to wait for it to happen in the moment and be the sort of magician that sort of figures out what to do. 05:56 Oftentimes, again, particularly because of the content you're teaching or what's going on locally, nationally and globally, we can anticipate a range of emotions you all have done such a beautiful job of naming what you're seeing from your kids already, so we can anticipate those and plan ways to support those as they come up. Okay, and that's going to be the crux of our work today. So at the end of this session, I will share a framework where I've identified some strong negative emotions, what they might look like and some potential responses, right, but what we want you to really focus on today is your capacity to do that and give you three simple things to think about and try this out, right. So when you're thinking about your lesson or a topic that's coming up in your classroom or work that you're doing, can we anticipate the emotion, can we consider how those emotions may appear so we can see them and be aware of them, and then can we plan potential responses. And so the idea is how can we be proactive? And so, if you see this next bit we have, I want to do acknowledge that learning for justice and if you could hit the next advance, learning for Justice has a great resource that's linked here on the slide for you that you'll have access to, where they have a whole set of strategies of how to have difficult conversations, and they have a great thing that they do around anticipating emotions, and so that's a great resource, and what I think is that we can take that framework and apply it to our own work, and so that's what we're going to do right now. 07:30 So, if we can turn to the next slide, I want to give a broad example of how emotions may appear and what responses might look like, and then work through an example together, and then you can work through one on your own. So how may emotions appear? Let's take the example of anger, right? What might anger look like? It's like strong language and tone, right? Cursing, shouting, insulting. It might look like express anger at a group, right? So it's the generalization of an individual with a group. So somebody pisses me off and I hate everybody right. 08:02 Number three is it could look a lot like the non-verbals right, and so it could look like rigid posture, some facial expressions, maybe some rapid breathing, right. So that's what it could look like In terms of ways we might respond. There's a few things we could do. We could think about reflect back and validate right. So if we hear someone's using some language that sounds like angry, it sounds like you might be really angry, we can check in with the rest of the group via a live poll. If it's a response to something that's happened again, locally in your school, nationally, globally, like, ooh, I see a couple of students look angry, Let me just check in and see how everybody's doing. So you could do a quick poll with hands or sort of, if you have the technology to use the phones, but a quick poll to do a check-in. Then, once you get a sense of where folks are at all, right, you can think about, like, let's give some processing time, okay, Is this going to be? Journal with some guided reflections. What do we feel in our body? What do we need to see? Like, give some specific prompts to get kids really thinking about that. And then, finally, we can think about following up with the students Express the anger, okay. So that's a broad example of how we can do it respond to anger. And again, I want you to think about some of the strategies not only that are here that you may choose. So let's go to the next slide and I want to walk through an example of what we're going to ask you to do. So we're going to ask you to think about a moment where emotions can come up for students. The example I'm going to use is like the post-election right. So this is November 7th, right, Coming into class, I want to anticipate a range of emotions. 09:33 So I anticipate the election results might be upsetting for some of my students. Many will likely be indifferent and some will be happy, right? And so this is me thinking about, like a student group that you know I've worked with in the past, right? So if I think about that, or the likely emotions, I might see a range of emotions through facial expressions. I might see smiling and frowns. So I'm really going to be thinking about those first five minutes of class. 09:59 What am I looking for when I come into that class? And then what might my response be, right? Well, I definitely want to surface. I don't want to sort of assume and I want to give them some time to process. So I just want to say hey, how are you feeling? 10:11 If you have a lot of emotion, give me a five. If you're feeling like a very little emotion, give me like a one or a zero. If you're feeling somewhere in between, give me a two, three or four right. And then, based on that, I might have a journal or an opt-in circle of several students or three or higher right. So if I see a lot of emotion from several students, great. If not, I have a pivot plan. So it's not just one scripted plan. If it's just a couple of students, I'll say, all right, let me just do an individual check in like 10 minutes into class and see how those students are doing right. And so, again, what we're hoping that you can walk away with here and do a little bit of practice around is when you think about a topic that's coming down the pike and you've seen some emotions you can anticipate. How could you proactively plan some steps in your lesson to address them? Lindsay Lyons 10:54 Really good stuff in there and I want to kind of touch on a few points. One the naming of emotions can be really challenging, particularly for younger students but even high schoolers. I'm reminded of a time when I was running a PLC and a high school teacher was like I'm just going to invite students to kind of name whatever emotions come up from them each day or every couple of days and we're just going to chart them, we're going to put them in an index card and we're going to kind of hold on to them and see if we can just see what happens, kind of build the vocab word bank of emotions. And actually a student came up to the teacher after a couple of weeks and said you know what? I've noticed that every time you invite me to share my feeling, it is sad or depressed or some version of that, and I don't want to feel that way. So I'm actually going to take action based on this aha moment I've had, because you invited me just to name the feeling with no additional instruction. So that was really powerful. The second thing is circles are a really good place to surface emotion and stories behind emotion, and if you're unfamiliar with circles, we have a free lesson plan template that I will link in the show notes in the blog post for this episode, so you can go ahead and grab that at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 216. So feel free to grab that and start planning a circle that kind of invites students to share stories and emotions. And the third thing I'll say is that Dr Becky Kennedy she is the creator of Good Inside, which is a community and an amazing podcast and parent resource space. I've learned a lot as a parent, but I also actually think that her resources are brilliant for students as well. So, whether you're in a class setting or you're just kind of in a school and you're a leader or you're a non-classroom teacher, I think this is a really cool place to be able to respond to student emotions. And so she has these scripts, three of which I want to share here and really premised on. 12:38 I'm not going to tell you that your emotions are wrong. I'm not going to tell you you're overreacting or that I don't understand where you're coming from. And here are the three I like and you can use them in conjunction with one another, one right after the other. One your feelings are real. Two I believe you. Three I'm here, whether you want me to fix it or you want me to just listen or just be literally silent next to you. I am here. I'm here for you. Your feelings are real. I believe you. I'm here for you. 13:02 Think about something. Maybe one of these resonates. Maybe it's a different something, but think about something that you can just have in your back pocket, write it on a sticky note, just have ready to go in those moments when you're like I don't really know what to say and students are kind of having an outpouring of emotion. So that was kind of our first chunk of the workshop, where we're talking about responding to student emotions. The second chunk, we're really talking about responding to charged comments, kind of harmful comments during discussion or maybe just kind of said out loud in the hallway or in some other space in a school setting, and how do we respond to those. So let's listen in to Dr Soto Shedd. Eric Soto-Shed 13:34 So now we do want to shift to responding to charged comments. So what happens when things come up? So when we say charged comments, right, you can think about the election, but we can also think about this broadly and you know, I'd say in this moment, really in our careers as teachers, like what happens when a charged comment comes up and what do we do? So when we think about charged comments, these could look like disrespectful or inflammatory comments, potentially hurtful to other students, a misconception, a stereotype, a strong position on a very controversial issues. Right, these are all potentially have some charge where they bring some intensity to the room, and potentially emotional responses. I also want to name that. You know, I always assume kids are coming from a good place, that you know the thousands of kids that I've worked with are. Most of them are total sweethearts, but they can say some really charged things at times in their lives, right, and so what do we do with that comment once it's out in the air in our classroom? So I'd like you to take a moment and think about again the past few months this year of teaching what is a charged comment that a student has made or might make in your classroom? Okay, so let's just take a moment. We don't need to put that in the chat, we don't need to lift these up and name them publicly, but I want you to center that in your head so you can think through potentially how we might respond to that. Center that in your head so you can think through potentially how we might respond to that. Give folks about 15 seconds. If you want to give us a digital or physical thumbs up once you got your comment that you thought about, you can or like a little one in the chat. If not, we'll just give folks a brief moment to do so. I think I saw a thumbs up, a couple. Let's think about 15 more. All right, with that sort of in your mind, what we want to do is we want to maybe spend about 10 minutes or so talking through some ways to think about responding to charged comments, give some sort of different approaches and then have you take about 10 minutes again to work individually in a group to think about how you respond, and the theme here is proactively planning. 15:38 So let's think about responding to our charge comments. I kind of want to begin by naming that. There's really sort of three buckets of things that I like to think about that are really important. The first two that we put up here self-work and classroom culture are unbelievably important. I think we've already heard from some of our colleagues. I know, sarita, you've really talked about your classroom culture and how students can really know each other and can really kind of be a support but also insightful about each other. The self-work that we've done a little bit about is really important, like how comfortable are you with certain issues, what's sort of the emotional response that you might have with certain issues, how aware are our biases and the perspectives that we bring in things that we might be missing. So that is unbelievably important and maybe falls outside the scope of our little 75-minute session today. So what we want to focus on is the sort of middle part, which is really facilitation. 16:27 Moves right, recognizing self-work and classroom cultures are the foundation. What can we do that's going to push for learning, address and mitigate harm and also address some of those motions right. And so we kind of want to talk through some moves right now. So on the next slide, my colleagues Aliyah El-Amin and her colleague Kimberly Osaji really came up with these sort of different sets of moves that you can do when they call hot moments in your class I like to think about those are really charged. I'm going to highlight just a couple for today's session but you'll have a link to all of the moves for you to look at. 17:03 But when things are really charged, when something comes up in your classroom, a couple of moves you might want to do is sort of clarify misconceptions. So if somebody says you know something, that's just like you know a misconception, a stereotype, you can really just kind of directly correct that misconception. Right and related to that is sometimes, if it's really kind of inflammatory, you can pause and what you're doing is you're giving students some time to process, but you're also giving yourself as a teacher the time to process. I feel like there's, you know, silence is always like kind of a little scary, but sometimes you might need to collect yourself and so when things are really really charged, one approach is to directly correct it but also pause for a second. So if you need to collect yourself, it gives students a time to collect themselves you can do that and you're also going to interrupt the student from going further with this sort of misconception. So that's one set, the other sort of extreme, the other response that I like to lift up from this framework that my colleagues put out with when things are a little less charged, and that you might really lean into that right Like use curiosity. 18:04 Can you tell me a little bit more? What did you mean by that? Why did you think that? And here's an example, and I'm thinking about you know, sarita, you're coming around, you know leveraging the group where you could also bring in folks and Lindsay, if you can go to that next bullet to leverage the groups, to ask other students, do you want to sort of jump in here? What do you think about this? And so when I look at this and we'll come back to this it's like how much do I want to kind of stop the comment and address it to really lean towards more mitigating the harm, versus how much do we want to like probe and dig deeper to really maximize the teaching? Right, and you don't have to do one or the other, but it's just a way of thinking about some of the tension that you can kind of work with. 18:45 What I want to kind of lift up and the thing that you might want to be wrestling with when you're thinking about how to respond to the charge comment is when do you really want to lean into it as a teachable moment, use curiosity, probe and push versus when is it like wow, this is just really inflammatory and I feel like the students in the class that might be really hurt and harmed by this and I think it might be a little bit more appropriate for my initial thing to pause directly, correct, we'll talk a little bit about the end around ways you can kind of follow up the next day, but I think that's the real tension to sort of wrestle with, or an interesting tension to do that a lot of good stuff there. Lindsay LyonsHost 19:19 So, thinking about responding to charge comments, I just want to name that. A lot of it is proactive as well and we talk about this in part one of this kind of two-part series that Dr Soto shed and I did with San Francisco Unified, and we can identify things whether we're a classroom teacher or not, but easier, I think, if a classroom teacher that are kind of our baseline understandings. This comes from the baseline assumptions idea I've talked about before, which comes from Justin Dolson-Masacolo Garrett and Katie Cubano I'm sorry, justin, if I mispronounced your name and that's basically like an agreed on kind of set of non-negotiables. Example all humans have a right to food, water and shelter. Another example all humans have a right to belong right and so thinking about this idea of what is in place beforehand just as part of the school culture or class culture is really powerful. I'll also name that in addition to some of the examples that Dr Soto Shedd talked about in terms of, like, how one might respond. He talked about clarifying misconceptions. 20:15 I've also done kind of a fact checkers lesson after a class discussion. If something is not super important to correct in the moment, less harm is done. Maybe we could assign statements to groups like I overheard this in the class conversation yesterday or in another class's conversation. I need you to go ahead and find reliable sources to evaluate Is this true or false and why so, using some evidence checking. But I also think if there's harm done, you can do a restorative circle. We've talked about on the podcast before how to do these. We have resources for those and so I think I can maybe drop that in as well and give it an extra bonus here for this podcast episode. 20:50 But three key questions if you're doing a restorative circle, I would do it with the whole class. If it's at a no class discussion, everyone is impacted in some way and everyone needs to kind of collectively repair the harm. So question number one for everyone, kind of what happened? Let's get clear on the facts. Two everyone responds to this one. You're like how did you feel? I mean you can have everyone respond to all of them, but how did you feel is really important or what did you need? You'd use BASE as an acronym that I like to use for kind of basic human needs. So belonging, autonomy, survival, enjoyment, right, these are all things that people need and so you can just kind of frame, that for students, if they're having difficulty saying what they need, but how you feel, I think is an easier one to respond to. And then, how can harm be repaired? Right, how do we restore our sense of belonging in the community for everyone? Right, how do we move forward from this? 21:36 And so, as I kind of like wrap up this episode, I just want to say thank you to Dr Eric Sotoshed for putting together so much brilliance and sharing it in our workshop and then again on this podcast. I also want to name that Dr Sotoshed and I are going to continue doing work with San Francisco Unified School District where, as of the time of this recording next week we're still in May. As we record here we are going to go and work with leaders and listen to stakeholders and really gather some information about what it is that all stakeholders students, teachers, leaders are experiencing when it comes to conversations about what I call high emotion topics and think about what they would like as well, right, so we're going to learn from their experience a lot of kind of street data collection happening here, or student experience data, stakeholder experience data and, as we listen, kind of putting together these themes and ideas for action steps. We will co-plan with those stakeholders and think about the ongoing work, and I just want to name that. I think this is really critical. It is not a one and done, it is not a one workshop, and then you get the info or the framework and then you go do it and you're like good for the rest of forever. 22:41 So much of that, so many of my moments in teaching that I continuously like 15 years no, not 15 years I haven't been out of the classroom that long. Like seven years later I'm like, wow, that moment, that moment and usually it's a class idea. Here's how I would do that differently those key moments that stick with us. We're going to have those, and you're going to want to talk to somebody. So find a colleague, find an instructional coach, find a leader, find someone who you can talk through, who can kind of like coach you through the challenges that you face, and have ongoing conversations about this stuff, get ongoing feedback, have a thought partner, because I think the implementation aspect of many things that we do in PD is really critically important. 23:28 This one especially, though, because current events are always changing. Student populations are always changing. Everything about like these relational conversations is very nuanced and we need that kind of reflection, individual and collective, to be able to do right by students. We need that kind of reflection, individual and collective, to be able to do right by students, do right by kind of the class culture and school culture we're trying to build and to do all of this well. So again, freebies for this episode. You can find them at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 216. Thanks for checking in Until next time. 
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In this episode, we chat with Tom Hierck and Dr. Chris Weber about building positive mindsets to address behavioral challenges in educational settings. Chris, an elementary school principal, and Tom, a seasoned educator, recognize how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the education system, creating new challenges for educators.
They recently co-authored the book Positive Behaviours Start With Positive Mindsets, which offers practical lessons for educators to understand what’s in their control and how they can positively impact classroom dynamics, student behaviors, and more. The Big Dream Tom and Chris believe that education is the great equalizer and a tool for creating opportunities and achieving a just society. Their big dream is seeing an education system that sets everyone up for success, regardless of their starting point. They want to harness the power of education to address social skills, perseverance, and equity, ultimately building a pathway to a fair and equitable society. Mindset Shifts Required Tom and Chris have identified four key mindset shifts that educators can instill in their students to help address behavior and help students thrive. They are:
Action Steps To start building these positive mindsets in your educational practice, Tom and Chris highlight two key action steps to take: Step 1: Use classroom meetings to empower students. Call them what you like (i.e., restorative circles or carpet time), but intentionally take time to connect with students each day. It fosters a sense of belonging, an important mindset to address behaviors. Step 2: Implement learning target trackers. This gives agency and ownership to the students to track their understanding and proficiency. Self-assessment helps students take responsibility for their learning, which increases self-efficacy. Challenges? One of the main challenges highlighted in the episode is time. Educators are always pressed for time in their day, so Chris and Tom advocate for a “less is more” approach. This means paring back academic content to allow students to go deeper into it, while also leaving time to nurture mindsets and teach important behavioral skills. One Step to Get Started A first step for educators to take is an internal mindset shift: give yourself the grace and permission to connect with students first. Focus on building relationships by engaging with students individually, even if it’s challenging. Educators get caught up in so many different things, so it’s important to re-center and prioritize building relationships with these students and meet them where they are. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest, Tom, on X, Facebook, and Instagram under @thierck and at www.tomhierck.com, and Dr. Chris Weber by email at [email protected]. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guests invite you to check out solutiontree.com. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 215 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Chris and Tom, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. So happy to have you here today. 00:08 - Tom Hierck (Guest) What a thrill for us to be here with you as well and to be able to share some thoughts with your audience. 00:12 - Chris Weber (Guest) Yeah, thanks for having us. 00:14 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely, I think. First, I just want to set the stage with. You know what it's important for our listeners to know about you. Sometimes we read these formal bios and people have you know personal things they want to add, or they have something on their mind in the day that we're recording or we want to you know front load that we're sharing about a book or you know whatever the things are that you think is important, before we dive into our kind of meatier questions, what would you, what would you like to share with folks today? 00:42 - Chris Weber (Guest) I'll start, Tom, Thanks. I'm an elementary school principal about 1,000 kids pretty typical California school. A third of our students are eligible for free lunch, A third are learning English and are multilingual and amazing. And I think, as is also the case across the country, across the continent, student behaviors are probably more of a concern than they even were before, and the kids are precious and amazing and I think many of us wish we had better tools to serve and support them. So this book and the work I try to do every day, all day, is around mindsets more specifically and more broadly, pro-social and academic behaviors that we all need to be successful in life. 01:40 - Tom Hierck (Guest) Yeah, and for me, you know, it's a career that doesn't seem to ever have an end in sight, right? This is year 41 that I've been involved in education, pretty much in any role. My major drivers now are I have six grandbabies that are in the school, right, and so I want them to have the same fabulous system that I got to be a part of. I have a daughter who's teaching in the system system, you know, and to Chris's point, we know things have changed, right? We know we're in a different time. Right now it's a bit unsettled as we continue to sort of move beyond the most challenging moment I think schools experienced at the time of the pandemic and continue to move forward. It has shaped behaviors, it has shaped approaches, and so when we crafted this book you know the positive behaviors start with positive mindsets it really was around. What do we have in our control? And you know, as we've come to realize, the only thing we really do have in our control is us several points you both made, and then we'll dive into our first question. 02:45 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I just want to lift up the one, just the idea of I was talking to Tom before we hit record that I am a parent of a three-year-old currently, and you know I have that parent hat on as well as that educator hat on as I'm reading the book right and I'm I'm definitely thinking about how are we able to foster mindsets in all of the young people around us and also the adults around us. 03:01 And so I was just on a coaching call yesterday where you know we're supposed to be talking about this particular thing, but actually it was all mindset. It was all about coaching mindset and the struggles of teaching and what we can control, and so I think all of this is very much on my heart and mind as well. So thank you for naming all of that. This will be very relevant in helping me in my coaching. So we'll dive in, I think. The first thing I usually like to ask I want to center Dr Bettina Love's words around freedom dreaming, and she says you know their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, and I think that your book has such potential to be kind of a freedom dream, and so I'm curious to know, like what is that big dream that each of you hold within that context for the field of education? 03:48 - Chris Weber (Guest) Please, Tom. 03:50 - Tom Hierck (Guest) Yeah. So you know, when we think about you, know this notion, that look, the research is clear and unequivocal. Our own sense is clear and unequivocal that, educators, education is the great equalizer, education is the great opportunity. Educators, education is the great equalizer, education is the great opportunity, Education is the way forward. You know that the current circumstances a student, a family's experiencing does not dictate the end point. It just dictates the starting point. And we know we have the capacity. 04:19 Every school is populated with the most skilled set of adults. A student will encounter in their entire lives the diversity, the practical approaches, the opportunities in this 13-year experience we call school should set everybody up to be successful. Now we've got to talk about the realities of what's going on. That's why, in the book, we talk about social skills, we talk about perseverance, we talk about learning strategies, we talk about academic behaviors, we talk about equity. You know we have to be willing to talk about the elephants in the room, right, it's not just one. There are a lot of things that we believe education, in essence, is the salvation, the solution towards this just and equitable and fair society. 05:10 - Chris Weber (Guest) Yeah, tommy, you say 13 years of education. I think we all need to here in California anyway, where now pre-K is the law and we're we'll have three year olds for at least three for a few months at the beginning of next school year will be with us. So it's really a 14-year journey, and what an opportunity, what a responsibility, what a privilege. I guess the only thing I would add, tom, that was as usual. That's why you're inspiring to me. I agree with all those things and I would add our work is relational first and foremost and always. And we're good at teaching stuff, quite skilled. We can always be better, but it's the relational pieces, the senses of belonging, senses of community identity that we were privileged enough and responsible for nourishing and nurturing. 06:07 And that starts with mindsets too, and and you know, this book is designed to be a set of resources that that helps us promote more positive student mindsets. But, as I think you said earlier, amen, it does start with our mindsets. And there's no more important job in the world, but there's probably no more exhausting job in the world, so it can be challenging. The things like perseverance apply to the students and they apply to us, so we're all in it together. But what we know and we may dive into this, the research is pretty clear that we can teach, reinforce behaviors. That's great news, and the research is clear is that it starts with these four mindset elements that we described in the book. 06:55 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) You can definitely. If you want to go there, let's go there. Do you want to talk through some of the four mindsets that you introduce in the book? 07:06 - Chris Weber (Guest) introduce in the book. Sure, maybe I'll start Tom with two and you can take two. Yeah, the first. Let me talk about the research. I guess a bit. It's not ours. We're practitioners, we love what we do, but we're not the social scientists and educational psychologists who came together. It's been inspiration for me. I'm sure I'm a dork, I'm proudly so, but I know I'm not the expert of experts. But I think it might help ground some of us. It certainly helped ground me by realizing where this came from and I analogize it to the National Reading Panel which you know, the year 2000 here in the States. 07:40 It was a big moment because, while there's still debates about reading, many of them were resolved when all of these different practitioners and experts and researchers in the area of reading came together and said hey, there are five domains of reading phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension and they, when put together, when taught systematically, explicitly, et cetera, all students will be able to learn to read Great. The same thing happened in behavior and we want to share that with the world. So a similar group of disparate but equally accomplished educational researchers and psychologists came together and said what are the behaviors that all students need to possess to be successful in school, life and career. And lo and behold, there are also five domains. It's mindsets and social skills and perseverance, and learning strategies and academic behaviors. Mindsets is first, and they created a bit of a schematic and a structure and a framework and they certainly intertwine with one another. But mindsets are the foundation, and so the way I think of it and describe it and talk to others about it is you can look at it both directions. When mindsets are solidly in place, these other subsequent skills, behavioral skills like social skills and perseverance, et cetera they're going to be much more likely to be in place. But we can look at it the other way as well. If a student isn't persevering, isn't displaying appropriate pro-social skills, I wonder what's happening with mindsets. 09:08 So, with that in mind, the first is not new to us. It's a sense of belonging, the way the researchers describe it is. I feel like I belong in this academic community, in this thing we call school, so gosh. Everything from identity to relationships with other students, to relationships with trusted adults, to seeing and feeling and hearing themselves, and the content in the curriculum, in the lessons themselves. So sense of belonging is that first one. And man, what would we do. What do we do in classrooms? Well, let's be even more intentional about that and let's recognize that when we're doing those things to help manage a classroom, we're also nurturing students' souls. You know, we're helping them feel like they belong. One of our goals this year, before I move to the second one, is to extend that to our families. We want them to feel like they belong too. Of course that's going to help their students, but it's going to help the entire community. I won't go into the details, but it's been exciting community. And I won't go into the details, but it's been exciting. 10:08 The second is another new concept, excuse me, another not new concept to us. It's self-efficacy. So here we have these first two. Tom will talk about the next two, but we knew about these. Perhaps we did in I'm not going to say isolation, but we were aware of them. Were we aware that they make up the four elements of mindsets that are foundational to all the other behaviors? This is exciting. So the second is self-efficacy that when students believe they can do it, they're much more likely to do it. So what do we do to that? Sure, we differentiate and scaffold and find their zones of proximal development so we can meet them where they are and all the things right Did we know? That's not just an academic strategy, that's a behavior strategy, it's a mindset strategy and there are other things that we can do to promote those senses of self-efficacy with kiddos. So those are the first two, tom. 11:00 - Tom Hierck (Guest) Yeah, and you know, just to backtrack a little bit, I think you know fair to say that when we talk about mindsets, everybody knows growth mindset right. You know Carol Dweck's done outstanding work, has really helped to popularize that and it's an essential. But it's the other three that build towards you having a growth mindset right. Self-efficacy builds towards you having you know this notion right. And so the third mindset is about the value the work has. You know it's the age-old question will I ever use this stuff right? And so how do we connect what's going on? Not as a series of esoteric, different facts, but that there is a connection between where you are today and where you will be at the end of this 14-year experience. We call school that it'll leverage that for you and be able to transition. You know I do an activity where I ask people what do you think? What attributes should every young woman and man have upon completion of this 14-year experience? And I'll hear things like, you know, empathy. I'll hear things like communication skills, you know I'll hear things like dedication, perseverance, a work ethic. Nobody ever says knows the quadratic formula, can conjugate verbs rapidly, has mastered the left-hand layup right. Now, I'm not down on our skills, but are they relative too? In other words, how do I build confidence in a kid in grade four who already comes to Mr Weber and says hey, mr Weber, I don't do math. You know, my parents don't do math, my grandparents don't do math. I come from a long line of defective math people, right, how do we use confidence, then, to eradicate that seemingly deficit in that kid's mind? So the work has value? I see a connection to where I am and where I want to be starts to be a challenge for all educators. How do you make this relative to right? 12:58 We've got to get away from, I believe and I think we're doing a better job in schools today the univision that says the only view of success is going off to college. Right, we got all kinds of other fascinating careers. You know, as I travel, there's more of a need for skilled trades people than there is for skilled lawyers. Right, I'm not down on being a lawyer, but you know why do we set up that? The only view of success is how do we make this work have value? Of course, that then leads to that fourth mindset, the growth mindset, that my ability, my competence will grow as I, but again, in order for me to increase my effort, the work has to have some connection. I have to feel like I belong in this place called school. I have to believe that you know self-efficacy, that there is a notion that I can succeed, that these are all possible. 13:56 And so we've tried to structure the four mindsets, building towards what we think every kid is capable of high school graduation, plus the plus defined by your interest. I want to go to my coffee shop and have somebody there who is jazzed up about being in a coffee shop, because they know they love interacting with people, they know they love remembering what Lindsay was telling about her three-year-old last time, and next time she comes in, the first thing you can say is so I'm going to go right, I don't want somebody working in a coffee shop saying man, I am such a loser. The only job I could get is slinging coffee. I go to work every day disappointed, right? No-transcript, right. So let's make this connection to where they are and where they can be. 14:43 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Wow, that was amazing. 14:44 Thank you both for summarizing all of that and I think the power behind that is is so massive. 14:49 One of the questions that I like asking about on the show and this is kind of meta because we're talking about mindset I'm going to ask about mindset in a slightly different way, but I wonder about you know, we know the importance, we know the research is there and in practice I think there's so many. You know external pressures and things to like cover content or the test scores, whatever the thing is, and I'm curious to know what is kind of the aha moment or mindset shift that you've seen with adults, with teachers, to be able to kind of set those other pieces aside temporarily to recognize the importance of, for example, building relationships during class time or getting curious and trying to spend some real time figuring out what is going on behind the behaviors, like what are the mindsets we need to build? I just know that teachers are constantly looking for more time, right, so that's like one barrier that I sometimes think about. That could happen in your work. I've certainly seen it in mine. Any kind of tips for either leaders coaching teachers or teachers themselves? 15:53 - Chris Weber (Guest) Wow, well, you had mentioned finding the time. I don't think that's one of the challenges. It is. It's the biggest challenge and we, just as a not irrelevant aside, we have 130 students at our school and they come every week. A new couple of them who are brand brand new to English, often from parts of the world that are experiencing tragedy, and we need to find time to provide them explicit and systematic language development. More time, better time. Oh, by the way, we're not getting a longer school day or longer school year. 16:34 It's a leap of faith to answer your question, and I don't mean to disappoint, but there isn't any magic formula. 16:41 What we've known, and this is what we're leveraging, what we've known for a few decades, I think now, Tom is that less is more. 16:49 In fact, singapore, which we borrowed some of their foundational thinking, their motto in their educational system was teach less, learn more, and that sounds weird, but the point is, and we prioritize standards, and for many reasons. One is because there's actually too many standards for every single student to master at a depth that is reasonable, and that's not the point. We say this interestingly and we're trying to break down these walls of I have to cover it all, I have to cover it all, but students don't learn more because I teach more content, do we agree? Okay, so they learn more because they get their hands into the content, they get their minds into in the content. Which content? So the knowledge that I think we've known for a while is that the need to, and the importance of prioritizing academic content serves many purposes. Here's another purpose that it serves is that it's going to allow us to dedicate time to teaching and practicing and nurturing mindsets and other critically important behavioral skills. What do you think, tom? 17:58 - Tom Hierck (Guest) Yeah, right, again. As usual, Chris is so succinct at getting right to the meat of it. As we look at what we are doing. It's all part because people think every time a book comes out it's an attempt to criticize what's going on. It isn't. It's meant to augment, it's meant to grow. 18:15 So what do you know about? And in this time we have, what are we doing now to change, to alter those experiences? I mean, you know the stories that Chris can share about the kids that come to school in an elementary school already, right, like, there are things happening in elementary schools that, my goodness, when I went to school you never would have contemplated, right, you know, as an aging human being, I love it when people say 60 is the new 50. I'm not sure I believe it yet, but as an educator, I'm worried that 10 is the new 20. Right, there are things happening, experiences that kids are wrestling with in elementary school that will buckle us to our knees as adults right now. How do we help them in this time? It seems like a long time 14 years but my goodness, it goes by in a heartbeat. 19:06 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That is such an important contextual piece, I think, to this conversation, right Is there's so much. There's inundation of social media of like events in the world, like they're so, it's so front and center in their lives. And I think this is like what jazzed me about teaching and coaching is like the real right, the real stuff in the world. And how do we to your earlier points about education being the space where it's like everyone goes through it. Everyone goes through this 14 year journey. We're here, we have skilled adults ready. Let's talk about these important things and let's do it in a way that's cultivating these mindsets right and is supporting kids to be successful now and in the future. I'm curious about like you guys list so many amazing strategies in the book. I'm curious to know if there's like one particular one that's a favorite or that you've used in those particular like connected to a story, like, oh, this happened and it was really effective. When we use this strategy, or teachers I coached use this strategy, anything come to mind. 20:09 - Tom Hierck (Guest) The beauty of this, you know, and it's all subtitled right 28 Actions to Motivate Students and Lead to Improvement. The beauty of this is and the beauty of Chris being the outstanding educator that he is and leading a school right now is we've got a living laboratory right. So all these things have been, in fact, tried and true in chris's school, in schools that his colleagues are running. So, chris, any any ones? That, uh, probably, maybe a recent memory, because I'm sure you could probably walk us through every one of your activities, in fact, about a practical application of them yeah, it's not easy and it's the number that we have has grown double. 20:48 - Chris Weber (Guest) Maybe I don't know, just because it is a laboratory. The two I would choose one is classroom meetings and and the other are learning target trackers, classroom meetings, and do what you want, call them what you want, the restorative circles you and do connect to the social justice and and restorative practices piece. Connect to all of it, because when it is overwhelming the number of things that we're trying to do and it doesn't make it easier for me to say it's all connected, but there are those connections. So feel good about the fact that. Oh, we have, we went to that training for restorative circles. Cool, that's going to foster a sense of belonging in your classroom, which is an important mindset. So if it's carpet and calendar time in the early grades, pre-kk1, there is no possibility that 35, and I do mean that sixth graders, 12-year-olds there's no space for a carpet, so you stand or sit in the perimeter of the room. But you're talking about mindsets, you're talking about behaviors. In my school we select themes and this morning Dr Hulley, my assistant principal, we do morning announcements. But every single day in morning announcements there's a brief paragraph that I write. It's three or four sentences about this month. It's compassion. So we're talking about different elements of compassion and, wow, are there a lot of them. But then that's a launch point for the classroom meetings, restorative meetings that are happening within the class. 22:11 The other I mentioned is learning target trackers. This is not a new concept. It's you know. It's even in kindergarten up through high school school. It's hey, let's empower and give agency and ownership to the students to track their emerging understandings and proficiencies with specific important skills, including behavioral and mindset skills and academic skills. What is this doing? 22:35 Well, as they're seeing their progress based on feedback that they're getting and self-assessment they're performing, they're increasingly believing hey, I can do this. Look what is happening here. I have more self-assessment they're performing. They're increasingly believing hey, I can do this. Look what is happening here. I have more self-efficacy. This thing is relevant to me. Why is it relevant? Because I have a stake in it. I'm doing something, I have a responsibility in my learning, because my teacher is making me, or allowing me to monitor and graph and chart my progress. 23:04 And then, lastly, growth mindset, of course. Hey, I'm putting in this effort and look what's happening. My ability, my competence is growing. It's true what Mr Herrick was saying. I'm seeing it right here on the paper. So there are lots. But I guess I would say too, when you try to present your passion to your colleagues, you organize it into chapters, let's say and I just mentioned something like learning target tracker, which we identify and place within a chapter. But as I say, tom, when I'm talking to folks about this, there's no right place or right mindset element that this singular strategy might fit in. That's okay, don't think of it like that. Some of them are more targeted or specifically aligned to one versus another, but something like a target tracker, which I just I think is a total necessity at this point, as a not again irrelevant aside. So many of us, thank goodness, are moving towards standards-based grading long, long, long overdue and a learning target tracker is front and center, central to the standards-based grading work. 24:16 - Tom Hierck (Guest) So imagine, you know, being a kid in that school and being able to formulate Now, you know Chris is using big guys language, but you know kids in their own way, to be able to feel like that this thing at school is really relevant, is really, and to be able to recognize hey, when I do this, this happens. And you know that I'm in this journey and that I've got all these adults who are supporting me and there isn't anything wrong with what I'm trying to do here right, that all of these pursuits are worth having. I mean just the power behind that right and when we can get the adults recognizing. You know, I'm fond of saying when kids come to school, they're coming to our house. It's the only house over which we have control. So now imagine we're building this environment, fostering these mindsets, fostering this potential for every kid, not just the easy to reach, easy to teach kids, but every kid absolutely. 25:16 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I mean, I'm just thinking about the coaching calls and yesterday, um, where some of the language, the mindset we wanted to coach on, was around like this is an a student, or this is a d student, and it's just like, oh, like right, when we can look at a tracker and we can say this is a student who excels in these skills and is you know, this skill is an area for growth. It's a very different way we talk about and think about kids. 25:39 - Tom Hierck (Guest) It's it's wild how effective it is and and imagine we can take that conversation to adults too. We're all really good at our strengths and then we sort of dismiss the opportunities we have to grow. We call them weaknesses and we say, ah, you know what it's my weakness, but Chris is really good at that. So therefore, no, no, I want you to identify your growth areas, things you can get better. It doesn't have to become a strength, but imagine you've recognized that your colleague chris has this strength. 26:09 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) How about you guys pair up and you start to grow and model that for our kids? Absolutely, I think there's there's so much richness in the book and I I really love the kind of succinctness where you're just like here's the research, here are the mindsets, and like let's get to some real concrete strategies. I also love that you have those action plans at the end of each chapter, which I just highly recommend people pick up the book and check those out too, because those are really cool and so centered in student voice and agency, which I really appreciated as well as a student voice researcher. That's very cool to read about. I am curious, like for the people who are wrapping up the episode they're about to head into school today as they're listening what is one step before they get the book that they could implement today? What's one thing that they could either shift their thinking around or a practice they could implement immediately? 27:02 - Chris Weber (Guest) that's a big question, the one thing. This may not be where you were going, lindsay, I apologize, but I think what a first step, and it's not something I can implement today. That's where I I feel I'm. I fear I'm failing you, but it's. It's going in and giving yourself the grace and giving yourself permission to connect with kids first, and and we're good at that we love kids. 27:29 There's no better human beings on the planet with connecting with people, particularly children, than teachers. But we get caught up and worried about the other stuff. I guess one thing that never fails man to strike me as powerful is how do you say it getting past the wall that human beings little human beings, in traumas, for example put up. So there's a little one from. He's most recently from Turkey, but that was a way station from Ukraine, and his family is here. He has an older brother, but this little one's in second grade Language, of course, is I'm not fluent in Turkish and some languages we have more supports around. 28:18 Turkish is one that we actually have discovered. 28:22 One of our parent engagement and sense of belonging goals is to get our bilingual parents and languages into the classroom to help us connect with the kids, and the parents love it, the kids light up because here's a trusted adult in the school may not be my teacher, but who's talking to me, and it doesn't matter what they're talking about, it's just they're talking to me. So recently with the second grader, you know, we had a connection moment, and now I'm. You know all leaders should be in their teachers classrooms every day as much as they possibly can. I am, and so when I'm in his classroom now, he smiles at me, I wave, he actually waves back, and that connection. That's the first step and it's a massive first step and we're good now. We're not done, but we're going to be successful. So that would be my one thing is give yourself that grace and give yourself that permission to connect with a student, even if it was one, a little bit more and have some courage. It's not easy. Pick, you know, that one, pick that one, and and, and and. 29:28 - Tom Hierck (Guest) Don't give up, but get started yeah, and you know it really is. You know we talked about mindset. It really is a mindset approach, right? Um, look, you know, chris knows this, every educator knows this. We have evidence on every kid in every school today. So the question really that we have to ask ourselves is what are we doing with that evidence, right? Are we using it to make plans? Or are we using it to make excuses, because it could be really easy for Chris to say, well, we got nobody who'll speak Turkish. Yeah, I get it, this kid's rough around the edges. Let's just hold on to our hats and hope we survive this kid, or this kid survives us, or maybe, in hushed whispers, maybe this kid will find a better place to go, because we really can't. No, no, start with something. Start with something right? 30:15 Recognize all the opportunities we have in a school every day, seeing the kids get off the bus, that's an opportunity. That's not a duty. That's an opportunity. That's not a duty, that's an opportunity, right? So how are we going to start to build? Because you do have evidence. Here we are in February. There is no unknown kid in a school today, unless somebody just gets off a plane today and shows up at Chris's building right. So what are we doing to make sure we start somewhere right? With all the talent that we have in schools today, we've got to find a way, and so we've got to start somewhere. 30:51 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love both of those. Give yourself the permission and find the opportunities to start somewhere, so good. So the last two kind of quick closing questions are first, what have you been learning about lately? So you guys talk a little bit about like learning being this kind of lifelong thing and cultivating the mindsets for this. So I'm curious to know it could be related to education in our conversation day it could also be something totally off the conversation trail. 31:18 - Chris Weber (Guest) Yeah, mine's education. It's first related in some respects to mindsets, but it's more structural. Tom and I, I think, started our collaborations together. We're talking about RTI and MTSS, in behavioral areas, but of course in academic areas too, and we're getting creative and successful in in using our time even more efficiently. This seems dorky, but if we you know, but when I talk to colleagues at other schools, I'd really like to provide this tier two win time, whatever. I need time support and it sounds really good. 31:57 We can't figure out our schedule, we can't get our grade levels or our content areas, our subject areas in the secondary schools aligned, and so we've had some breakthroughs. Talk about skill sets. My assistant principal is the best assistant principal in the world and we each have, let's say, our relative areas of strength, and boy is she good at that one. So we're excited. It's hard to change things mid-year, so we have made some modest shifts that are powerful. But even here in February, we're thinking about next school year. So it's, and it's again, it's, if you're a teacher leader or a site leader, a district leader. It's not quite as romantic as some of the other topics that we, that we discussed, but I know in my school district. It's we're popular right now because they want to know how, how we're doing it. 32:52 - Tom Hierck (Guest) Yeah, you know, and and and. For me it's, I think, trying to model the expectations that we share every time, and Chris and I have written a half a dozen books together now and and for me, I got to tell you, it's always an invigorating experience. Chris just knows so darn much about so many different things and, you know, is such an outstanding educator that what I want to do is say to folks look, this is year 41 for me, but I haven't got it all figured out yet. Right, I can go sit in my daughter's grade six, seven class and learn stuff. She's doing things I never would have. 33:22 So education isn't a, isn't a destination. Right, it's a journey and we ought to be open to. You know, yeah, there are times I long for the bubble that I went to school in, right, where where you didn't know anything and you didn't have social media. You didn't have. But you know, those are all realities today. So now, if I look at my grandkids, and you know they know stuff that I never would have even contemplated. And how do we model that? You know, this is a journey, this is about growth, this it's. It's okay for you to exercise grace for self as you continue on on this journey. You don't have to know all the stuff, but you have to be committed to wanting to learn more than where you currently are excellent. 34:05 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Thank you both. Both for sharing that. And I think the final question is just you know we'll link to the book and I love that you guys have free resources affiliated with the book. We'll share that link in the blog post, but where can people find you individually out there in the social media world or the website world? 34:23 - Tom Hierck (Guest) So my website's just tomhirccom, any of the social media platforms just Tom Hirk, or at T Hirk on X. I try to get stuff out there. You know, chris, and I really do believe in supporting colleagues, so anytime anybody asks us for stuff, we try to make it available to them as quickly as possible. 34:43 - Chris Weber (Guest) Yeah, I'm not quite as prolific, particularly in the last couple of years, as my family has grown and I. I was not a principal for a few years and it's the best job in the world in my opinion, but it's also all consuming. But I'm easily reached by email, believe it or not, is the best way to probably reach me, and that's just Chris at ChrisWeberEducationcom. 35:11 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Beautiful. Thank you both. So much, Tom and Chris. It has been an absolute pleasure. 35:17 - Tom Hierck (Guest) Thank you, Lindsay. 
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In this episode, we talk with educators and authors Kassia Wedekind and Christy Thompson about insights from their recent book, "Hands Down, Speak Out." They offer a transformative vision for education that centers on student voices. The pair has spent time teaching and coaching together, and share big ideas on how to reimagine education while also working in the realities of the current system.
Kassia and Christy address the real challenges educators face in balancing prescribed curricula with authentic student engagement, advocating for small, actionable steps to create dynamic and inclusive classroom environments. The Big Dream Kassia and Christy’s big dream is that they want children’s voices and experiences to be the center of education—the place from which education grows and develops. They believe that teachers are the people who are positioned to listen to, understand, and capture those voices. Mindset Shifts Required Kassia and Christy recognize that fear often stops us from trying something new. Losing control or thinking of what things “should” be like can hold educators back from making big changes. So, a key mindset shift to embrace is that you can start small. Shifting toward a student-centered approach simply means looking through a lens of curiosity rather than critique or deficit. Action Steps Here are some key action steps for educators who want to shift to a more student-centered approach: Step 1: Reflect on current classroom practices and identify areas where student voices can be more prominently featured. This might involve rethinking traditional conversation structures to allow for more student interaction. Step 2: Start small by integrating open-ended questions into classroom discussions. These questions should encourage students to think critically and express their ideas freely. Teach students the skill of conversation, and how there are different types of “talkers” in each context. This helps students learn to share the conversational space and speak directly with each other. Step 3: Create opportunities for students to engage in collaborative projects that spark curiosity. Kassia and Christy emphasize that curricular materials need to be interesting for students. There has to be something engaging to discuss so that students can really engage and speak up with their thoughts and opinions. Step 4: Embrace ambiguity in your conversations and curricular materials. Things are not so black-and-white, so educators can become more comfortable with ambiguity, allowing conversations to flow based on various interests, viewpoints, and curiosities. Challenges? One of the significant challenges educators face is that people in power are not in classrooms but are still making decisions on behalf of educators. This means teachers often grapple with the constraints of curriculum requirements while trying to create space for student voices and interests. Another challenge is time constraints and making appropriate decisions in the moment that foster engagement. Educators must always be thinking about the actions that will lead to an outcome of engagement and learning. One Step to Get Started One small step for educators to embrace is to reflect on your school day and identify a moment where you can listen more to your students. For example, you might have a time when you are normally organizing paperwork, but could actually go over and engage with some students and their conversations instead. Another action step is to ask a question that you don’t know how the students will respond. It’s interesting for both the students and educators. Stay Connected You can find Kassia on X, Instagram, and Bluesky, and Christy on Instagram. You can also connect with them on their website, Hands Down, Speak Out. To help you implement today’s takeaways, Kassia and Christy are sharing several turn and talk micro lessons and The Why Chart from their book with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 214 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Katia and Christy, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Thanks for having us. Absolutely, I am so excited about your book Hands Down, Speak Out, and I'm really excited to dive into it. But first, before we get to it, I'm curious to know is there anything you want listeners to know about you, you know, beyond the typical bio or anything that is kind of on your heart, on your mind in this moment? To kind of on your heart on your mind in this moment, to kind of ground our conversation today. 00:29 - Kassia (Guest) Um, I think that, um, well to know about us, um, Chrissy and I spent a lot of time teaching together, um, in elementary schools and also coaching together. Um, I'm a math coach and Christy was a literacy coach, so I think a lot of the things that we think about are, yes, sometimes we're thinking about big ideas and big ways to reimagine things, but also, as people that live in the realities of schools, we also like to think about the small details of change and how to work within systems that are not perfect, but are what we have and what children are going to and teachers are going to every day. And how do we make those spaces as as as good as we can, in the kind of everyday ways, in addition to the to the big picture ways, too in addition to the big picture ways too, Christy anything you want to start us off with. 01:32 - Christy (Guest) Oh, I think Kassia covered that very beautifully. I mean, I also think that it's important to know that, although Kassia and I agree on a lot of things, we do disagree on important things, like she and I like our opinions on mayonnaise and other big things like that. So you know, we spend a lot of time figuring out what things we can push back and forth on each other with, and I think having a partner that pushes you to try new things like I believe it's okay to eat on an airplane, and Kasia really does not so we um try to spend a lot of time, I think, like pushing each other's boundaries and um, as well as finding our common ground. I absolutely love that. 02:18 - Kassia (Guest) And I think in outside of our you know mayonnaise and airplane eating conversations, I think that um, like, uh, having the different lenses of, like, christy spent more time immersed in literacy and I've spent more time immersed in math and thinking about, like, where is there overlap? And we think there's lots of overlap in, um, good practices in elementary school and then where, sometimes things like oh, I would approach this a little bit differently in math or this is how I would approach it in literacy. So, yeah, it's nice to have a thinking partner and you know, we hope that we do that a little bit through the book be the thinking partners of readers, and we also hope that readers get a chance to have thinking partners of their own in schools. 03:04 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I have to say, as a major fan of the book, I think you guys do that really well. Like there are ways that it's like right, this is like the same type of micro lesson that I would use in both scenarios, but here is like a transcript for math and a transcript for like. It was really well done in the ways that it was different because it really pushed my thinking as, like a literacy history person. It pushed my thinking as like a literacy history person. It pushed my thinking around math and I'm actually coaching someone in math now and I'm like, oh, like, even though you're teaching high school math, like these moves are totally relevant and it was really cool to see that come alive. 03:33 So thank you for all of the that work you did in the book and I and I think the book itself and just what you, what you jumped into, already kind of speaks to. I think this next question I usually ask but I'm curious to know, if you want to expand on it kind of what your idea of, kind of a freedom dream you hold for education is. So Dr Bettina Love has a beautiful quote around this dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So, with that in mind, what are those dreams that you each hold? 04:01 - Christy (Guest) I think our big common dream, amongst many smaller ones, is that we want children's voices and experiences to be the center of education and like the place where education grows and develops from, and I think that teachers are the people that are positioned to listen and understand and capture those voices no-transcript and that we you know that's not always easy and there are there are definitely roadblocks and reasons why that's very challenging and and so you know, as a classroom teacher right now, I'm often reflecting like how well did I do that today? And I'm often dissatisfied with my. You know I often have higher expectations for myself than I'm meeting, but it is like the thing that we keep coming back to together. 05:21 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's beautiful Kasia. Anything to add, or did that sum it up for you? 05:26 - Kassia (Guest) I think that's that. That sums it up for me well said. 05:31 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's beautiful. I think one of the things that I think a lot of educators that I hear from are, you know, saying is this is really interesting, I really want to do more of this, and I I have, you know, whatever feelings of pressure, whether it's time or covering curriculum or what's going to happen if I hand a conversation over to students. Right, there's just like fear or worry, and so I'm curious to know if you've seen any like kind of aha moments or like strategies you've used as coaches to kind of shift teacher mindsets around, like the possibilities for this work. 06:10 - Kassia (Guest) Yeah, I think. 06:11 I mean I think that is is often what stops us from trying something new is fear and fear of losing control or what we think we should be, how we think something should look or be, and so I guess like a strategy perhaps is just to particularly around conversation is just to start small. 06:42 Our book focuses a lot on hands-on conversations, which are whole class or larger group conversations, but we also do a lot of work in smaller turn and talks or small group conversations, and sometimes those can be safer places to try some of this work, where you're letting students or making space for students' voices to kind of lead the conversations and try some new things out. And then usually in those situations like I'm just so amazed by what students can do, even when it's imperfect and weird, things happen, like they just have so many skills that sometimes we underestimate have so many skills that sometimes we underestimate that, like when I have time to like reflect on what students do in those spaces, I'm always impressed and it always inspires me to like to keep going and keep trying to center students' voices in conversations because you know, we have to trust that students can do it and I think when we can replace some of that fear with trust in students' abilities. That helps us to continue on and helps us get over some of our own hangups as adults. 08:01 - Christy (Guest) I think, yeah, when you're in the middle of it and you're kind of in the trenches, it's very easy to look at all the imperfections from a deficit lens and to think this kid never, or this class always, blah, blah, blah. 08:22 And even you know in my case, sometimes to then put that on myself what's wrong with, what am I doing wrong? And that kind of thing. And I think whenever I am able to get a little snippet of a recording of what is actually happening or when I have the luxury of another person coming into the room who write down a little bit of what they see and give that to me, and then I can step back and get curious and think, oh, I wonder why that child is doing. That mindset shift from the critical eye to the curious eye really helps me then approach like what might be some next steps here, what are all the things that they are already doing and they already can do? And I think that it's very hard when you're on your own and you're in the middle of it, but it really helps to have, you know, either just your phone to take a little step back and watch or another person to come in and kind of give you that little bit of that observational perspective to shift your mindset. 09:44 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love those ideas. They're so concrete and actionable, which I think speaks to the larger kind of why I love your book as well. It's like there's the dream and here are the practical ways that we get to that dream, and so I mean one of the things that I think is really powerful. And you guys close the book beautifully too. I think I'm going to be paraphrasing wildly here, but I think it was something around, like you know, letting the students lead, as opposed to like having our plans in place and we're going to do this but we're going to let the students like kind of dictate where we're going. 10:13 And one of the things I really love is that you're cultivating and helping teachers kind of build capacity for listening to what's happening, taking those transcripts or listening to an audio clip or inviting observers to tell you what's going on, and then making a clear decision about where we go, based on what the students can currently do, which I think is what every educator wants to do. But it's just like it's really hard amidst all the things. So I love kind of the setup. You have ideas for how to, you know, start conversations and everything, but then you have these micro lessons that are, if you see this and you're ready for this move, I just I wonder if you all could either speak to how you came up with that, the creation of that, or even just like ones that you really love or have worked well in conversation. 10:58 - Christy (Guest) I think, a lesson now I'm not going to have the number off the top of my head, but a lesson that, depending on the conversation, you're a different, you're different kinds of talkers, and so it's important to have the skill of knowing how to step back and how to step up Because, depending on the circumstances and the topic, we all are one. You know, sometimes we're monopolizing a little and sometimes we're maybe letting others. You know, voices overrun us and we're having hard time getting our voice in. So that's definitely an actionable step that we've taken. I think, in every talk environment that we've been in, if I I don't know what you think, kasia, but in most of the cases that I can remember, that's definitely one that we start with pretty early on. 12:08 - Kassia (Guest) Yeah, I think if you're shifting from kind of a traditional classroom conversation where, like, every comment feeds through the teacher and you're moving towards the kids, like talking more to each other, whether it's one-on-one or in a whole group, you probably want to do some teaching around how to share the conversational space. And especially as you get to larger and larger groups, that's just harder by nature of having more people, more perspectives. You probably have fewer experiences talking in larger groups of people. Talking in larger groups of people and it's just being cognizant of your own voice in a conversation. 12:50 I feel like something that we're like working on for a lifetime. I know that it's something that I think about sometimes when I'm talking with adults, like have I done too much talking? Have I asked anyone else what they thought about this? Or have I just like steamrolled in with my goal? And I'm sure we could also think of like people in our lives that we wish would do a little bit more listening and conversation. So it's something that we're like kind of chipping away at for a lifetime. 13:17 And so to have like to get to like interact with children around learning to do that is challenging, but it's also like really rewarding to see. You know, maybe some, maybe a student who like, really like is dominating the conversation. For many, many conversations learn to like, ask someone, or just to notice that someone's trying to get their voice in and say, like so-and-so is trying to say something here, let's let them go. That can be a really rewarding part of the work too. So we often do like multiple lessons around sharing of the space, you know, at the beginning of working with a group of students, but also like throughout the time working with them. 14:09 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I mean to your point, I think so many of us would probably say just like our like, just the media, the social media, the news, political coverage, like all the things it's like. Could we do a better job about like being in conversations, like these literal kindergartners are doing in your classes, like I mean, yeah, it's like. These are kind of the lifelong skills that I hope that everyone in my community would have. So it's so cool that you can cultivate them at such a young age and and continue to grow them, you know, over over a lifetime. I think about, like, the importance of like priority standards or skills or something like these. These are it right. These are such a through line. 14:44 And one of the things that I loved is that in the back, you have kind of the nurturing debates and planning to disagree sections which are, I think, to the point that I'm thinking about right is. This is when communication often breaks down. Like. Often we can do the thing where we come in and we say our position and then the other person comes in and says their position and then we like, remain like, just that's it, that's the end, and I love this idea that we can cultivate and manufacture some disagreement around like which box is bigger, for example, right, and then go have a conversation where students are learning these skills in a really fun, interesting, like tied to ELA or math standards way. So I'm curious to know, like, what are your favorite parts of those chapters? Or if you want to kind of speak to any of those chapters for folks, because I think people are really curious of how to cultivate that. 15:37 - Kassia (Guest) I think one of the most important things about cultivating, you know, a conversation where people are going to have different opinions, disagreement or just cultivating any engaging conversation is there has to be something worth talking about and interesting to talk about, something where you actually care to listen to what the other person is saying and unfortunately so often we're given curricular materials or questions in our pacing guides that just aren't very interesting for kids to discuss and there's no motivation to really listen to what someone else thinks because it's about performing of knowledge rather than constructing knowledge together. 16:28 So the best thing I think I've learned from having those conversations is how to craft a question that people are really interested in talking about and has some ambiguity and doesn't have a right answer and is going to get at those things that we want to learn about. Like, of course we're interested in working towards the standards, but in a way that nurtures curiosity and kids' questions and like gets at the spaces of ambiguity, because you know, so much of the interesting stuff in life is kind of like ambiguous and could be. There's many aspects of it to think about and we want schools to be places where kids get to engage with those questions and not just the kind of knowledge regurgitation that unfortunately happens a lot in schools. 17:18 - Christy (Guest) Yeah, and I'm thinking about how a lot of the curriculum that we're asked to teach would like to pretend that there isn't ambiguity because it's it's cleaner and it's more efficient to just say you know so and so in history did this because of that and was you know that was the right thing to do, because this was the cause and this was the effect, you know, and just tie it up in a right, nice, neat bow, whereas a lot of you know social studies and science and like these fields out in the wild, like outside of the elementary school classroom, are really quite messy and like thrive on um the ambiguity and that's what like quote unquote, real people who are in these fields are focused on right, so like, even though the children that we're talking with are quite small, I think that they also are very curious and interested in that ambiguity and and it it's sort of insulting to them to just say like oh no, it was this way and we're moving on. 18:28 We've studied that person in history and we, you know we needed about 20 minutes to understand him or her and we're ready to go on or whatever the the topic at hand is like digging in on our own in the background and like finding out more about the topic until we uncover the ambiguity, is, like, both interesting to us as teachers, mentally, and it engages them right. It wakes the kids up and gets them into the conversation rather than just being the receivers of this neatly packaged knowledge. 19:09 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely. I mean, I was just thinking about you. You guys had the section on, like critical numeracy and critical literacy and like just so much of what you do is centered in justice, which I really appreciate as well, because I think any time that you're like, let's talk about this thing, and I think I think one of the call out boxes that you guys had was like, yeah, we're not going to like take on the perspective of a Nazi or something that you just you don't need to entertain, that both sides are not valid. Like I really appreciate the grounding that you had in both the engagement and also like there there are bumpers on this conversation and we are in the spirit of justice. So just wanted to name that before I forgot to go there. But I also think that idea of curiosity is so present and I can't remember where I read this. 19:53 Eric Francis maybe was citing some research around three to five-year-olds ask like 300 questions a day or something, and I have a three-year-old right now. So I'm like, yes, that is, we're there, 300 questions a day or something, and I have a three-year-old right now. So I'm like, yes, that is, we're there. And by high school, like when I had my students in high school. The curiosity has just I'm sure it's still there, but it is not coming out in the space of a class conversation. So I love that this is a place for them to grapple, because it is present and it actually is probably more present than in older grades where we might actually be willing to have those conversations around nuance more. 20:25 And I think, relatedly, one of the things I loved is I think it might've been in the math section you were talking about like a lovely entry point is often just what do you notice and what do you wonder. Like let's get kids talking about something. As well as all of the real projects Like I loved the target one where you got to print off all of the shoes and say like what, what do we notice about these shoes and gender and color and all the things around branding. So I just I think there are so many amazing things you guys are doing. I just want to like shout them all out for people who haven't bought the book. You need to. But I also wonder you know what is the biggest, maybe challenge that you've either faced as educators yourselves or in coaching teachers? What's like the biggest challenges? They enter the work and they're kind of doing the work that they grapple with and kind of what's that path through or has been the path through for you? 21:17 - Christy (Guest) I mean, I think one of the big challenges, especially right now, is that we're competing as teachers. We're competing with a lot of people in power who are not in schools and who don't know the children in our classes, making decisions for us, and if we're working to center the children that are in our classrooms, like we are the experts or we can work to be the experts on them, and so, you know, trying to find those spaces in our curriculum and in our policies and that is a really big challenge right now and trying to find, okay, like, where can I bend this part of the curriculum to represent the children's interests that I am observing? Where can I get my children's voices heard? And finding physical time in the day to do that as well, as sort of finding the space in all that we're being asked to quote, unquote cover, I think, is the really big challenge, right now kind of way to either mentally like be like okay, we're still doing it and this is why, or like practically kind of how do you, how do you find time? 22:52 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Cause you're, you guys, are clearly finding the time somehow, right. So what? What's a good tip for a teacher who is struggling with that exact thing? Cause I think that is probably many of our listeners and readers. 23:00 - Christy (Guest) So many of our listeners and readers. Well, one is that I know I'm going to have more engagement if I do that right, so I can make the argument that I don't have time for that. But then will my outcome justify speeding through and making sure that I've, you know, read every word of my script and I've made no time to hear anything that anybody said, like what actually went on in the child, children's brains, and what evidence do I have that there was actual learning? And so I think, when I'm like you know, I'm outcomes driven right, we are, as a profession, supposed to be outcomes driven. So I think, if we want to justify making time and making space, we need to look at, like, what is our evidence of engagement and of learning? And if we have more evidence that there was engagement and learning when students were actively involved, their voices were heard, their interests were reflected. You know, for example, I was just saying to Kasia yesterday that we are teaching, we have been reading a selection of different texts about robots and what, how they improve our lives, and one of the students kept interjecting by saying things about how robots are going to take over and robots aren't actually good and they're making people lazy and she was sort of detracting, you know, like it was not. 24:45 I had not asked for her opinion on the matter and we weren't having a debate per se, and so I sort of had to like kind of make this decision. Do I honor that? Do I, you know, chastise her for calling it out? You know, like that decision in the moment there when a kid is presenting like she was trying to come up with a debate and she has a valid point too, right? So, like, not every technological advance in the world of robotics has been unequivocally an improvement on our lives, or or it has at least the potential to go awry. So, um, you know, so I I'm making the choice then to say, okay, as we continue to like read these things, that's an interesting debate to be thinking about. 25:37 Like, here's a robot, is this an improvement? Is this making people's lives better in your opinion or not? Like, this child often is erring on the side of no, and so, like, giving her time to err her thoughts is increasing her engagement. And I know from knowing this child that if I was to just chastise her for that interjection, she would have shut down, like she literally would put her head on the carpet and stop engaging. So yeah, I think it's those like in the moment decisions where you're trying to decide, like what is the outcome that I'm going for? Okay, so then like, what is the action that will get me to that outcome of engagement and learning? 26:22 - Kassia (Guest) then, like, what is the action that will get me to that outcome of engagement and learning? I think, yeah, I guess one of like the challenges and ways through that that I've been thinking about, like working with, um, a group of teachers who are working with like a really restrictive text that's not designed for student centered conversation at all and all the texts that students are going to read are chosen for them and um, and and this particular group of teachers doesn't have a lot of choice there, so they're not like feeling a lot of agency or an autonomy, but they, they value students thinking and talking together and like and I guess something that inspires me is that even when teachers are served um crap better word like they're like brilliant and innovative at like finding ways through, even when, like what I want to do is like just like throw it out the window and be like you can't work with this, but like they're in charge of showing up the next day and figuring out like what am I going to do with what I have here? And so, like I've been very inspired by that group's like efforts to both bring like a lens of criticality to it and thinking about the text that they do have. Like thinking about like this is a text about ancient Rome. Like like whose lives in ancient Rome is this text representing? Is there anyone who's not here? I wonder what you know. I wonder if this is true about their lives. 27:59 And also, just from a more pedagogy perspective, like thinking about like often curriculums will like say, like you should ask your kids like these 15 questions, right, so if you were to just like go through that, you'd just be like peppering them with these questions and they'd just be like little robots like feeding answers back to you or at least like that's what the curriculum thinks kids are going to do. And and they've been working to like okay, how could I take like one of those questions, revise it to be a little bit more open and give chance kids to talk? And yeah, maybe it's not the text I would have chosen, ideally but how do we like swim through the time that we're in, in the systems that we're in, and like bring some light to it? 28:45 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that. I'm curious to know. I feel like we as teachers have these moments or people I guess people in general have these moments in our lives that are like oh, that was like a very memorable experience, whether in the classroom or not. And I'm curious to know if you have a memorable experience of like either a favorite conversation topic, a favorite thing that a kid said, a favorite, like proud teacher moment, or even just like noticing the body language of engaged kids, like, is there some moment in hands down conversations that has been in your brains? 29:20 - Christy (Guest) I have a couple from last year. I mean, I think each year I'm like watching the trajectory of a class. So this year I'm still in the thick of it, but last year of it. But last year, um, one that I was very proud of is a student who I'd been working with for all year to try to hear others and to notice when he was monopolizing. 29:46 And, um, in one of our later in the year kind of May I conversations, he noticed a kid who had tried five different times to speak and the kid kept talking at the same time as others and letting the others go first. And this was a very, a very empathetic child who always would let others go first. You know, finally, this other child who had been monopolizing noticed that and made space for the more empathetic child to get his voice in and I, like I almost jumped up and down in the middle of the conversation like you did it, you did it. Um, like Kasia said, those are extremely rewarding moments where you think maybe if they forget a lot of the things I taught, they might just take that into their lives somewhere else at some other future moment and make, like humanity, a slightly more empathetic place where people hear each other where people hear each other. 30:54 - Kassia (Guest) I think I'm putting on my math teacher hat for a moment. One of the things that I try to make space for as a math teacher is for kids to get a chance to do more than just computation and math. Like a lot of school, math is about computing in elementary school how do you add and subtract and multiply, divide and how do you follow processes and rules and like. That's such a little tiny corner of what math can be and is outside of school that I want to make sure that kids get a chance to talk about like what is true in math, and is that always true? When is it true? When does it work? When does it not work? Why does it work? Some of those bigger questions. 31:41 So I think, like in my math class we would have a conjecture wall. So conjecture is like something you think may be true in math. It's like a hypothesis kind of, and so when we had like done enough of that that, a kid would say like I have a conjecture and like want to put an idea up there that felt like very rewarding, that they had like come up with like a generalization. They had like discovered something and figured something out that is like brand new knowledge for them, whether it's like you know, it might be something you know, very common knowledge to adults, but like the discovery of something and getting to have that experience felt like that was like opening up good space for children's thinking. 32:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That is so cool. Thank you both for sharing. Those are beautiful stories. I think, knowing that we're almost out of time, I'm going to do kind of a three question speed round here. We'll wrap us up. I could talk to you guys all day, so we'll get to it. The one thing that teachers should or could not should could do once they're ending the episode what would you recommend? Like, if they're like I'm interested in this, I haven't bought the book yet or it's in the mail on the way. I'm going to try something small to start. 33:14 - Christy (Guest) What could that? One thing that we had thought of was to just kind of reflect back on your school day and find a place where you could do a little more listening to your students. So even if you didn't start off with like I'm gonna have a full hands-down conversation with my whole class, you know, just saying to yourself um, you know, at this time of day I'm usually kind have a full hands down conversation with my whole class, you know just saying to yourself you know, at this time of day I'm usually kind of shuffling paperwork or organizing, you know, which is obviously a big part of the teacher's job. But I could probably put that to the side for the moment and go over and listen to what you know these students are talking about as they're unpacking their backpacks or ask some questions. You know, even if it's just a kind of transition moment like that to find a time to position yourself as a listener, it's just one kind of small action where you start to like shift from the teller to the listener. 34:10 - Kassia (Guest) I think maybe try asking a question that you, that you don't know what kids will say too, and that there's many things to say, because that is like both so interesting as a teacher and interesting for students too. 34:23 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Love those ideas. What is something you have been learning about lately? Could be school related, could be different. 34:31 - Christy (Guest) Okay, so I've been digging into Donovan James's book Beyond February and I've been trying to learn and educate myself a lot more about teaching Black history all year, not just in February, and I've been learning a lot and a lot about very interesting people and history, and it's been exciting sharing that with my students. 34:59 - Kassia (Guest) Adding on a different book. I've gotten a chance to read a book that is not yet out yet but is wonderful, called Lessons in Community by Mari Dean, and it is about reframing behaviors in the classroom. That challenges us, but through an asset-based lens, but also through like, a very practical lens of like. How am I going to respond to this in the moment? And it's a wonderful book and I have so much to learn about that topic and I'm really enjoying it. 35:34 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Amazing. Now I have added to my to be read list, so thank you. I am curious to know where listeners can follow you. Connect with you will, of course, link to the book and the blog post and the show notes and everything will also link to an amazing resource that you guys are going to share with us for free. So thank you so much for that. If anyone you want to speak to that in addition, feel free for free. 35:53 - Christy (Guest) So thank you so much for that. If anyone you want to speak to that in addition, feel free. I think we're planning on sharing a little comparative table of just some of the things that are kind of going back to that what we imagine, you know, a conversation I mean sorry, a classroom that's rooted in conversation might be like. So we'll kind of share a little table comparing what traditional classroom discourse is like compared to one where this kind of conversation takes the stage, and then we're also hoping to share a lesson just for people to try out and get started. 36:34 - Kassia (Guest) And you can find us on our website blog hands down, speakoutwordpresscom, and then also at Cassia Wedekind on Instagram and Blue Sky. 36:59 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Instagram and blue sky and and um. You can find me on Instagram at ch thompson188. Thank you so so much, both of you. This has been an absolute pleasure. I really appreciate you taking the time today. Thank you for having us. 
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In this episode, we sit down to talk with Dr. Dana Mitra, a leadership coach and author of The Empowered Professor. She discusses the transformative power of student voice in education, emphasizing the framework of agency, belonging, and competence.
Using timely research, Dr. Mitra highlights practical strategies for educators to counteract tactics that suppress student voices so they can foster a collaborative environment that truly empowers students. The Big Dream Dr. Mitra envisions an educational landscape where student voices are central to decision-making processes. She wants educators to embody an equity mindset, making sure that the most disadvantaged folks facing the greatest struggles are at the center of change efforts. Mindset Shifts Required One important mindset shift for educators to embrace is that all social issues—and any kind of change we want—start with education. You can’t disengage from political issues or what’s going on in culture, and it’s important to be in touch with those things because they all start in the classroom. Dr. Mitra also highlights the mindset shift of viewing students as partners, not merely participants, in the educational process. Students and educators bring unique skills and assets to the partnership. Action Steps Here are some action steps educators can take to build capacity in their school environment to prioritize and support student voice: Step 1: Commit to establishing youth-adult partnerships. Both educators and students need training and education in this so they can collaboratively work together. Step 2: Get resources and support by partnering with others. Educators don’t have to do this alone, but can seek support from nonprofits or organizations that can help sustain student voice initiatives and provide necessary training for both students and educators. Step 3: Educate students on practical matters like how schools work, policy processes, and how they can use language that speaks to adult audiences. Step 4: Implement practical strategies to create inclusive spaces and challenge traditional authority dynamics. This includes things as simple as reconsidering seating arrangements (i.e., students sitting in prominent positions, showing their perspectives are valued at a meeting), or going deeper and holding intentional conversations with students about their challenges. Step 5: Focus on building trust. Students, especially those who have been traumatized and negatively impacted by educational systems, may initially “test” educators by acting out. But as educators respond with compassion, kindness, and care, trust is established. True educator-student partnerships can only operate on a basis of trust. Challenges? One challenge is the impact of external factors on the classroom or school space. So, even caring educational spaces may be impacted by things like immigration policies and other current events. This causes friction, so educators are challenged to create more layers that reinforce a supporting, caring space; they operate as buffers and protectors of the space. One Step to Get Started Educators seeking to prioritize and support student voices can start by asking big questions and involving students who are directly affected by the issues at hand. Dr. Mitra encourages us to engage students as fellow travelers in the problem-solving process, ensuring initiatives are meaningful and impactful for all involved. Another simple action step is to connect with other educators who naturally collaborate with students and dream together with them. Stay Connected You can connect with Dr. Mitra on her website or by email. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing The Student Voice Toolkit with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 213 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Dr Dena Meacham. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited for this conversation. Listeners know I've cited you many times in my written work and my verbal stuff on the podcast, but I think, aside from your kind of professional bio, is there anything you want people to know about or keep in mind as we jump into our conversation, whether it's like you as a whole human or something you've been working on recently. What should we know? 00:30 - Dr. Dana Mitra (Guest) I think one of the things I've really tried to do in recent years is to think about ways that this work can apply in clinical and related settings. 00:39 So about 12, 15 years ago I became a certified coach and in some ways it feels like it's a very different thing, but for me, the philosophy coaching is helping people find their voice, find what their purpose is in the agency. 00:57 They have to be able to navigate their world better, so it's really thinking of a very similar framework their world better, so it's really thinking of a very similar framework. And I recently wrote a book called the Empowered Professor, which finds that agency and belonging and competence actually is a developmental framework that works for any age and anyone of really trying to think through how they want to feel more authentic, how they want to feel more connected, what skills they need to move forward, whatever stuck place that they're in. And you know working with a lot of mid-career people with it as well as grad students who are stuck on their dissertations, and so, as much as I've done most of this work in K-12 settings, it's been really fun to see the way that the framework can be used in broader ways, especially when thinking about career development things like that. 01:50 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That is a fascinating evolution. That's such a good point that those components are so necessary for all humans, regardless of age. So that's super cool, I think, with regard to either the K-12 space or, just like larger life spaces, coaching spaces, you know, I think about Dr Bettina Love's words around freedom dreaming, and so she talks about her dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so, considering that, considering, like just all of the pieces of the world that are unjust, what is kind of that dream you hold? Again, either for the education space, what's a freedom dream you have there? Or in your work now more broadly, oh, gosh. 02:30 - Dr. Dana Mitra (Guest) I mean recording this just at the beginning of the Trump administration, when there's so much uncertainty about so many things that it I feel so ungrounded right now about what reality is and what's possible. So, you know, a few months ago it would have been really thinking about ways that voice and could really have strong ties to an equity mindset of making sure that the most disadvantaged and the folks who are facing the greatest struggles are at the center of change efforts, and that I still believe that. But while the context surrounding that of what is possible are really changing right now and I don't think any of us really know how to make sense of it. 03:20 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, it's such an important like contextualization for our conversation, given that that, like the world, often right, in K-12 education particularly, I think often there is this pull towards like this mythical neutrality or like staying out of politics, or at least in my experience in teaching high school was so central to just making those connections and inviting students to, you know, have that agency to share, to think about action steps, to think about collective action, at a school level even, or a classroom level, you know whatever feels possible and doable. 04:05 A classroom, you know whatever feels possible and doable. I also know that there's a lot of teachers who, whenever we talk about a pedagogy or an invitation for more student voice, have a hesitation, right, and there's just kind of this oh, that's not how I was taught, or that's like a you know a thing that feels wildly different and almost impossible to like hand over control to students. Like this is in my coaching a lot of times, what comes up as like a hesitancy and I'm curious, what's kind of the either advice you give to teachers who might be in that space, or kind of a mindset shift that you've seen be really effective for teachers to kind of unlock that student voice pedagogy. 04:41 - Dr. Dana Mitra (Guest) Yeah, I teach teachers or pre-service teachers at Penn State. Yeah, I teach teachers or pre-service teachers at Penn State, and even before that, they're required to take a course in politics and policy with me, and less so than even 10 years ago and certainly since the pandemic. But you know, I would get questions of like why do I need to learn this? I want to be in my classroom, I don't want to work in politics and just trying to show them the ways that any political question or any social change that we want to have, we often start first at schools, including ice raids and removing students right now, so showing them that any social issue is going to show up in terms of things they're expected to do or engaged in. But things are so immediate in the past few years I have to make that argument less around, whether it be masking or and now with immigration. I think one of the most important things that I tried in the second level is to help understand that teacher voice and student voice build upon one another. It's very rare for there to be ability for students to have agency and belonging if teachers don't feel that first and 95% of the time, the concerns that students have if you get under the hood. Under the questions are shared concerns that can be worked on together because both groups have the same interests and well-being at heart of equity and resources and power. 06:25 It's not a zero-sum game of teachers ever handing over power. 06:28 It's finding the unique contributions and the perspectives that students can give to a situation to allow a more ready conversation and ways alliances can be formed. 06:43 It's in the world of human development and agriculture, actually studying like nonprofit organizations for age, things like that. They use the term youth adult partnership and I think that's really a helpful concept to think about that there is a partnership and both, and it does involve power sharing, but it's all about the unique skills and assets that each group can bring and thinking about those unique funds of knowledge resources that are there and how they can be a synergy to move towards excellence. Even at like, the state level of Oregon and Kentucky are some wonderful examples of ways that legislators have partnered with students, because students are just so much more articulate and the media appreciate them more that issues that students are really excited about if they can help students to be a part of hearings, a part of press conferences in a way that students are not co-opted but very much partners. It can be a really powerful way to move change in places where change is really not happening right now. 07:54 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Thank you for those concrete examples and I am interested in that. The students are not co-opted, but they're true partners concept. I think that's a very common misstep sometimes when we're like, oh, student voice, and then it becomes this very different, like not actual partnership, not actually grounded in students ideas and leadership. So I'm curious, do you mind talking a little bit about that or giving us maybe an example of like what, what, how do we know where we are in that kind of continuum? How do we know where we are in that kind of continuum? 08:25 - Dr. Dana Mitra (Guest) Indeed, and I think again, the leadership from Kentucky has done some really wonderful thinking about both what are ways that change can be impacted, but also in thinking about what are ways that adults and people in power try to suppress student voice. And so Andrew Brennan and Zachariah Sippy worked with Jerusha Connor recently in a publication that talks about five tactics to suppress student voice that they've experienced from the Kentucky legislature from trivialization, which is minimizing concerns. Dismissal, which is not recognizing. Tokenization, which is allowing students in but not really, and then there's derailment and exclusion. 09:24 So I really appreciate the work collectively that Kentucky Student Voice has done over the years and has been able to have the churn of students, which is natural because students grow up with but still very student-centered and wise perspective. They've been able to make real great gains. But because they're increasingly powerful or like known that they can do these things, they're also viewed as a threat by folks who would not want to see that happen. So at the same time that they're learning and becoming more sophisticated as to ways to build partnerships with legislature, there are legislators who are not wanting students' voices to be heard, who view them as a threat to traditional ways of thinking. So they've gotten more on both sides of that successes but also real blowback. 10:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Thank you for sharing that. I didn't know of that recent research, so that's really exciting about naming the five tactics, not exciting in practice of what is happening. I do see that sometimes, even in the microcosm of the school, the just administrators fearing change or, you know, kind of suppressing student voice in that way, even when we're trying to make a change at how we we organize classes or you know something that's affecting student learning directly in the school community. And so I think this is valuable for policy level and class level, for teachers who are listening and leaders who are listening I'm curious about. So one of the places that my research went was like what are the mechanisms to help support student voice? 11:02 And thinking about your student voice pyramid, like really how to support kind of the top tiers your student voice pyramid, like really how to, how to support kind of the top tiers of of student voice, so we're not just like listening to students but we're truly partnering with and inviting students to lead. And so I know you talked about youth adult partnerships. You've written about like youth participatory action research. There's like a bunch of different, I think, things that might feel Similar, yeah, yeah, similar and big, and I'm curious to know for, maybe like a newer teacher or a teacher who's new to this work what would be your recommendation of like where do you kind of get started or what are some actions you can take to think about how you might kind of build that capacity in your school environment? 11:43 - Dr. Dana Mitra (Guest) Yeah, I think I can also have you link to the podcast and infographic that I've created on ways to support student voice. That might be useful to teachers. I think first and foremost, what we've learned is the importance of not doing it trying to go alone, but finding a nonprofit, an organization that can help support them. I did some work on some student voice initiatives in different schools once and went back a few years later to see which ones sustained and they were all organizations. They had some partnership outside of the school, because so much happens in a school and there's so many different pressures that are not student forward that having a non-profit or or some sort of organization on rarely and sometimes it's a district or or an intermediary unit that really believes in this, but usually it's in the United States. It's a non, a nonprofit who has this as their mission so they can keep steadfast while teachers are struggling with that and there's a lot of wonderful organizations out there to work with. So I think having that partner and not having to figure it all out themselves and get resources and support, resources and support and relatedly it's teachers and all adults and all students need some sort of support and training. Teachers need to learn how to be more of that guide from the side, how to enable and really scaffold but have students go forward. A lot of it's around valuing process over product, because how it's happening is as important as any campaign that's occurring. On the student side, they need a lot of learning about how schools work, how policy processes work and getting training on how to use certain words when speaking in front of adults that adults prefer to hear code switching, those kind of things. So there's training needed on both sides. 13:56 There's also a lot of interesting attention that can be paid to, especially in the very beginning. Just the physical setup of like where are you as an adult sitting? Where are students sitting? Is the space in a circle? I even went to a hearing in India where the students were standing and the politicians were sitting on the ground, which is more common in India. I don't think that would happen in the United States, but I could see like a lecture platform with people in chairs, very intentional to try to disrupt some of the assumptions as to who has the authority in a space and just not just that students are being listened to, but who are you talking to? So if you're really concerned about failing ninth graders, then that's who you're working with. So if you're really concerned about failing ninth graders, then that's who you're working with. Oftentimes the leaders in the school, the student council, kids, whoever and I was one of them. But school worked for me. I thought more like an adult. I'm not then as helpful in understanding what students are thinking about, who are struggling. So that's the workspace and the faith that those students also and especially have a contribution to make in thinking through change efforts. 15:13 And you know, an example is a fishbowl done by a high school trying to figure out what was going on with the increased absenteeism in this ninth grade dropout situation. So they brought in the ninth graders on verge of dropping out and the student teacher sat outside in like a second circle and they asked the students to share their experiences. And what they were finding is the students would not be able to come to school for various reasons, including having to take care of younger children if they were sick, or having to work a night shift and not being able to wake up in the morning. But then, when they would come to school, feeling shame and a lot of anger expressed towards them for not coming and not really a curiosity as to what was going on, which reinforced their reluctance to come further. So it became a spiral. So instead of looking at like what are the broader structures that are making it difficult for this student to get there, and wow, like the research post-pandemic is that these issues of absenteeism have really increased and stayed at a higher level and not declined, that becomes even a bigger issue. So root causes getting underneath and assuming the best intentions of both sides and coming to some sort of understanding and that really gets to the point. 16:49 And some recent research that I've done, particularly looking at students who have been traumatized by school in some way before, or their parents have been or something. Really they had a teacher or an experience that was really awful, a teacher or an experience that was really awful. Once that happens and usually that has happened to students from students by the time they get to middle or high school then there's this trust has to happen first, like the rebuilding has to be at the first point of any effort. And research around trust rebuilding says that there's kind of this dance that people do, including students, including students, traumatized students of can I trust you? 17:37 And there's often been a testing of a small, acting out, or something to see like how are they going to behave if something happens? 17:49 Are they going to be curious? Are they going to be compassionate? Are they going to treat me like I'm not a human being? So that testing is is like part of like a ritual and a culture of trying to figure out what that's going to look like, and only once that is moved through is partnership actually possible. So that building of trust needs to be very forefront in minds of both a caring also a willingness of adults to be vulnerable, to share themselves as more than just a particular role, themselves as more than just a particular role, and see students as more than just the student role that they have, all these other responsibilities and roles that they play. So that holistic viewing is really at the center of how trust is built and without that, that student voice is very hard, either in classrooms or schools and it's going to take longer in places where students have experienced greater alienation and their families have experienced greater alienation from previous school experiences. 18:58 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Wow, I'm so glad that you took us there because I think that is what a lot of people I mean a lot of people have experienced. And also I think about your naming, like you know, marginalized populations and thinking about students with interrupted formal education or students with, like, bad school experiences, students who are multilingual, who have just immigrated, who are in the larger context of, you know, the United States right now. Even if your teacher is lovely, you know like there's so many factors that are like we need to make sure and, of course, individuals need to make sure that they're like testing the space and making sure it's like, psychologically safe. I think that makes total sense to be able to like focus there. I'm curious, you just kind of named a bunch of challenges that like people kind of have to overcome. Are there any other challenges that you have seen in the student voice space that you want to kind of name and like make sure people know about and maybe know how to like address that if it comes up? 19:55 - Dr. Dana Mitra (Guest) Well, just that. Even when schools create beautiful containers of caring, when we have policies like immigration, that agents able to come in, that is impact. So it's like there's, you know, the layers of there's the classroom and the school, the district and then these outside community forces, and the more that these layers reinforce a supporting caring space, the better, and the more that there's friction between them. You need adults who are big buffers and protectors of space. So, and again, even in caring spaces, the ways in which administration can protect and allow for some grace to, for the messiness that may need to occur as things are being built or experiments are happening, and without that safety of knowing that an administrator has your back, it's a lot harder to take risks, and this work takes risks. So the administrative protection is also really important. 21:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Thank you for naming that. I was just recently at a professional development and leading with history curriculum in Massachusetts and it was so cool to see the Massachusetts representatives of the Department of Education get up in front of all these teachers and be like we have your back, we want you to teach this, we are committed to justice. It means talking about all these things X, y, z. You could just see the energy in the room. Just be like okay, like I know I'm protected. I just heard this from a state representative Like we're good, it is wildly unsettling everything that's happening, and so to be able, now more than ever maybe, to just have that person be that buffer, I think is huge. Thanks for naming that. 21:46 I think this is such a big like there's so many challenges and yet it's so important, right, I think about student leadership and student voice in these ways like super important. Most people can agree that it is super important and there's some kind of gap sometimes between the yes, we think it's important and like the implementation of getting started. So I love that you've kind of named all of the things to consider I'm wondering about like a first step for someone who's just like ending the episode, wants to try out something today, wants to kind of move in that direction. What is something that a listener could do today when they end the episode and kind of get moving in that direction? 22:23 - Dr. Dana Mitra (Guest) Well, we've done a lot of work lately, thinking with Jerisha Connor and Sammy Holquist, thinking about classroom level student voice as well as school level student voice. And if we're thinking of teachers, usually they have more agency. Thinking about classroom and we're trying to distinguish between what voices and what choice are, as well as other really great pedagogical ideas like cultural awareness, building trust, but trying to show how voice is distinctly different. And so voice in a classroom setting is more about either students giving feedback after teachers are teaching or giving insight into the design of things going forward. But it, you know, it's not just like you can do a PowerPoint presentation or a book report. It's more of like how was that experience for you? How could we do it different? What are you wanting more of? What are you wanting less? Helping students develop metacognitively around how they work as a learner and how they can best articulate that to their teachers. So, from a classroom perspective, I would say you know thinking of, and we have a student voice toolkit that's available online through the Search Institute, that's available to all teachers and administrators, with a bunch of different data collection and tools that could be used to try to elicit feedback and collaboration processes. And at the school level. It's getting brave to ask some of the big questions and bring students in who are struggling with them as fellow travelers, and starting small is fine, I think, as long as you're picking the kids who are really engaged in the issue and that takes a strong leader who's willing to put that as part of it. I think it's very compatible with a lot of restorative justice, disciplinary policies that a lot of schools are really looking into around that, building that peace and that understanding. So thinking of ways that voice could help to amplify and improve even further efforts around shifts in discipline policies is something at the at the school level that might be really helpful. 24:47 Um, and, and that's kind of like really getting into the meat of things, I think a lot of times folks try to start by like asking students what they want and not having a guide to be able to ever have shown them they can do something meaningful. 25:02 They'll say like we want extra pizza at lunch, which fair, fine, but like, but really like, if. Even if you're going to start one thing, have it. Have it be something that's meaningful to everyone and useful of your time and and that way adults will be more willing to invest. It also may require a little bit more of whoever is running a space to scaffold some rules around, like you have a student at your table anding new assessment ideas or whatever, and training students, as you're going to go in here and you're going to see what this is what you're going to see and this is the role but that person running that is really then like creating guardrails and helping for that to occur. So try it out, but make it real. Start with a few students, but if you know, and really also as a leader, like there are, there are teachers who naturally do this. 26:08 I call them wizards, as did my former advisor Millbrae McLaughlin, but like, so you know, as if you're trying to initiate something like who the teachers are, who just kind of naturally behave this way, like start with them. Who the teachers are, who just kind of naturally behave this way, Like start with them. You know, don't start with the hard parts and ask them like what have they been dreaming and wanting to do? And I bet they have a few ideas in their mind that are pretty fantastic. So really building on the skill sets of natural born collaborators, with young people as a starting place. 26:42 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love all those ideas. Thank you for sharing those. I think you kind of went in the direction I was going to go, just to kind of start closing us out. You've shared a lot of things that you have been learning about lately and like new research that you're working on that has come out, anything you want to add to what you've already shared in terms of things you're learning about. It also could be totally separate from education. It could be like I'm learning how to play the piano or something. 27:07 - Dr. Dana Mitra (Guest) In that toolkit. 27:08 We really worked hard to create a quantitative measure that is available to be used, but also, if schools wanted assistance, they can look at the search Institute to see if that's helpful to them. 27:24 But we really initially engaged in this project and learned a whole bunch of other things, but realizing that there isn't a good way to measure what is the range of what student voice looks like at the classroom and school level and how is it linked to outcomes, and so there's a bunch of things being published right now that again I can link to your show notes and things around ways that we've been able to find that at both the classroom and school level that increased voice is connected to improved academic outcomes, higher GPA, lower absenteeism, greater student engagement, and it's one of the first US studies that's really been able to show that, not just at the qualitative level, but to have enough data and have enough financial support thanks to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to look at this at a scale in which we can measure and, have you know, look at this at a scale in which we can measure and, have you know, we were able to get down to the granular student level of access to their records as well as their surveys, to be able to pair performance with outcomes, and so we're really excited that our hypotheses were true that Student Voice does link to academic improved academic outcomes and behavioral outcomes. 28:45 It's been a lot easier to show the social and emotional side of things because that's easier to show qualitatively. So excited to have that data as evidence that practitioners can use to show the value of potential impact, and also happy to have some tools that other people can use and further develop and hone if they want to collect information in their school districts or for their researchers, who are looking for a validated survey instrument to use for their studies as well. 29:18 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Wow, okay, I am really excited and nerding out right now because that my dissertation was looking at like what is? I did kind of a mixed methods, developing a survey around student voice, cause I was like, yeah, there's such a like there's such a need for this here, and so that's so cool that you guys were doing such a massive scale study, cause you know it's hard to it's hard to do that work, so, so hard. 29:39 - Dr. Dana Mitra (Guest) I was trying to do it for 20 years and I had given up, because foundations and and government have their own visions for what they're looking for when they're funding, and student voice is always kind of to them like this quirky, interesting thing, but never at the center of any call for submissions. 29:57 So it often get to like the final round and then lose out to someone who had more traditional types of ways of data collecting and going about their work. And then, luckily, during the pandemic just was one of those situations where I was just looking for people who I could talk to online to my classes when we were fully remote and was like, oh, I have a. I know somebody who I think she works in charter schools and turned out that she was working at the Gates Foundation, learned about what we were doing, and then there was a group of colleagues that were, you know, ramping up some funding on that. So it was very synergistic and all of a sudden we had the you know almost a million dollars to do this work, and that's how much it takes to do something like this, unfortunately, whereas you know we had kind of thought like it was never going to happen. So don't ever give up and just keep saying what you're wanting to do and you never know who you talk to. Might know somebody who really wants to support you. 31:04 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's incredible. Oh, what a story. I love that. 31:08 - Dr. Dana Mitra (Guest) Yeah, it's a wild story. 31:10 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, oh, wow. I love when all the things connections are so important, because something always comes back together. That's right, that's right, and I think just people will probably want to continue learning. I certainly am going to continue following what you're doing. Where can people kind of connect with you and and kind of follow your work? 31:29 - Dr. Dana Mitra (Guest) sure, um you can find my research as well as my coaching work at danamitranet and there's a link to uh under the research tab. There's a link to all of my research there as well, as well as the student voice toolkit. If you Google that with Search Institute, our resources are there as well, and there's a link to all of our current papers through the Search Institute from this study, so that's a way to find that as well. 31:56 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Incredible Dr Mejia. Thank you so much for your time today. This was a real pleasure. 32:01 - Dr. Dana Mitra (Guest) Thank you Thanks for having me. |
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AuthorLindsay Lyons is an educational justice coach who helps schools and districts co-create feminist, antiracist civics-based curricula, discussion opportunities, and equitable policies that challenge, affirm, and inspire all students. A former NYC public school teacher, she holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Lindsay believes all students deserve literacy, criticality, and leadership skills. Archives
November 2025
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