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Dr. Chris Jones is the Principal of Whitman-Hanson Regional High School in Massachusetts. He is the author of SEEingtoLead and host of the podcast SEEingtoLead. His overarching goal is to positively model continuous improvement in all facets of life by being purposeful, acting with integrity, and building character. In this episode, we go totally off-script to dig into what it looks like to talk about and take action towards a racial justice.
The Big Dream We are taking action on a daily basis born from a broader, greater, deeper understanding of everybody’s journey and how they got to where they are now. We need to act in a way that honors the history each individual has gone through including intergenerational trauma. Alignment to the 4 Stages: Mindset, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Content Following building closures for COVID, the district has become more racially and linguistically diverse. This prompted a realization that change is needed. Most students were in homogeneous communities in their homes during lockdown. Coming back to school and being in a racially diverse school has caused discomfort. Mindset Shifts Required As leaders, we have to stop being defensive. Leaders need to help students and caretakers be in an emotional state where they feel safe and be part of a community. From Dr. Ibram Kendi: Racism is a continuum and action-based. Action Steps Several things Dr. Jones has tried include: Support Teachers and Students to Create Belonging for All Students This involves curriculum and practice being culturally responsive and sustaining. Create a Parent Advisory Group to the Principal BIPOC parents and caretakers were invited to be in this group. Ensure Opportunities for Students to Join Clubs and Affinity Groups No Place for Hate. Get training on how to start affinity groups. Invite Black, Brown, Indigenous, Arab and Asian Students into Conversations about Policies Ask “Why is this important to you?” Leaders, do your own research. Don’t be afraid to change the policy next week. Thank Students Who Share Critical Feedback It’s as simple as, “Thank you for bringing this up to me.” Talk to White Students Who are Engaging in Cultural Appropriation After doing this, Dr. Jones saw white students stop wearing durags. Sometimes, students will just not do something around you because they know you’ll do something about it, but other times, they will reflect, engage in conversation, and stop doing it. One Step to Get Started Think about others’ experiences as a set of transparencies. Start with the first layer of what you believe in (your values) and the fact that we’re all human beings. Then, consider others’ experiences are not the same as yours and recognize you don’t understand their lived experiences. Seek to learn. Then, look at institutions and policies you can impact and recognize the effects of those policies on others. Stay Connected You can find Dr. Jones on @DrCSJones on almost all social media sites and on his website. You can email him at [email protected]. To help you in your leadership journey, Dr. Jones is sharing resources each week in his newsletter. You can sign up to get it here for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 126 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. Resource: In this episode, Lindsay mentioned the book, On Apology by Aaron Lazare, M.D. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT This episode goes in a different direction than guest episodes typically go, I so appreciated Doctor Jones for taking us in that direction. And since we recorded, I have realized there were so many questions, I wish I asked that I didn't or opportunities for follow up that I didn't take us on. It's important to me to say that like Doctor Jones models we myself included are still learning. I'm definitely still learning. This was very apparent to me as I listened to the recording. And even in the moment I was like, oh, what question do I ask? One of the best ways I have found to commit to the learning is to continue to have these conversations deeply reflect on them and improve my skills for the next conversation with that. Let me tell you about today's guest, Doctor Jones. And then we'll get on to the episode. Doctor Chris Jones has been an educator in Massachusetts for 22 years. His experience in the classroom ranged from eighth to 11th grade, working in an urban setting. A portion of this was spent opening a high school division for an expanding charter school. He has just finished his 14th year as a building administrator. Chris is also the Vice president of the Massachusetts State Administrators Association. 00:01:05 MS A, a true to his way of improving the educational experience for as many people as possible. He is currently the principal of Whitman Hanson Regional High School in Women Massachusetts. He's the author of Seeing to lead a book that provides strategies for how modern leaders can and must support, engage and empower their teachers to elevate student success. Chris Blogs weekly about continuous improvement and is also the host of the podcast scene to lead which I love by the way, as a way to amplify a teacher's voices in an effort to improve education as a whole. His overarching goal is to positively model continuous improvement in all facets of life by being purposeful, acting with integrity and building character. Let's hear from Dr Chris Jones. I'm educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerdy out about co creating curriculum with students. 00:02:15 I made this show for you here, we go, Dr Chris Jones. Welcome to the Time for Teacher Show podcast. Thank you so much for being here. Oh, Lindsay, I'm excited about this. You know, we, we spoke, we've spoken before a couple of times and I'm just really excited to, to get into what you want to talk about today. Oh, my gosh. Yes. I, if people, if listeners have not listened to your podcast, they need to and specifically, I just loved being interviewed by you. So I think people need to listen to that one. Fair enough. Fair enough. I'll always take a free plug. Thanks. Absolutely. We'll plug it again at the end. Don't worry. So I would love to just in terms of like before we jump into the core questions would love to just frame for listeners. You know, what is something that either you're thinking of is top of mind for you as we kind of enter the conversation or that they should kind of be keeping in mind either about you or about what we're gonna talk about um throughout the time that they're listening, um Sure they can keep in mind that uh at the top of my mind, I'm a struggling work in progress uh when it comes to topics of diversity and equity, um and inclusion, I always, I always work to make sure that those are things that are occurring. 00:03:28 But um as I find out on a daily, there's, there's always room for improvement as is with everything, but somehow it just seems more upfront now in these areas because while I'm, I'm, I'm a huge believer in continuous improvement. Um I want a state award by the Counselors Association. So I must be doing something right there. But um, the people you affect and the populations you affect when you're talking about diversity, equity and inclusion, not to overuse those phrases, but um are, are traditionally underserved populations. And so the idea that you can continually improve yourself. Yeah, great. But you've been improving yourself when you're talking about this, you're talking about populations, many of which may have not had that opportunity to continuously improve themselves or they've, uh they've had AAA much more of a struggle than other people that have enjoyed privilege have had. 00:04:29 I, I once had it explained to me through a book that I was reading, um, headwinds and tailwinds and using the idea of flying across country, which is something I related to because I've flown across country a few times and the idea that when you are flying into the wind, it adds time onto your flight when you're flying back, obviously, you get quicker. I know everybody's going. Yeah. Ok, Chris. Right. Everybody knows that. Um But what they don't realize is it's not like something just completely pushing you backwards. It's that constant pressure, those little steps that I always talk about that before, you know, it is built up into something too large to handle or much larger than anybody should have to handle by themselves. Oh, my gosh, this is reminding me. So as of the time of this recording was somewhat recent, but, but I had gone to this conference that was like just this epic panel, epic panel. And Doctor Bettina Love was who I usually ask a question in regards to their quote at the top of this, each of these episodes. 00:05:32 But she was talking about like the impact of like all of that, right? All of the things you're just describing and talking about how like she had an illness and she's like, it is literally like white supremacy living in my body. Like, how crazy is that? Like I that I have to like weather, I think it's the term is called weathering. Like there's this kind of like ongoing headwind that you're facing and like all of the oppression and the barriers and the extra just stuff it literally manifest as like health complications and it like, so it could literally be like life or death and it was just, I mean, she's brilliant, but I was just like I to your point about constantly learning and evolving, like I am constantly just learning all the things that I don't know. And I'm like, that is like just this extra level of like to just go off of what you're saying like truth. Wow. Well, it's, it's crazy too if you think about it like one of the. Ok. Ok. So I, I am I was gonna say a closet dork but not so much in the closet. Um But you look at pictures of presidents and you look at the before and after pictures of presidents and how they look, they look young, they look vibrant. 00:06:38 Hey, I just won the presidency. Awesome. I'm on top of the world. Four years later. They're like, man, show me the door and they look like 20 years older because of that, the, the effect that the stress of the job is put on them. Well, take that effect in every aspect of your life and how could it not have a physical outcome? And you know, even more so than that. And I mean, without going too much into my current reality, but even more so than that, um you know, when you talk about trauma and the effects of trauma through generations, well, there was a ton of trauma experienced by a lot of these groups. And so it's not as easy to say that didn't happen to you or you know, you didn't experience that, but they have that connection to it and that trauma has, has become generational trauma and passed down to where we don't want people to become victims. Um And think with a victim's mentality, but oftentimes that's embedded due to past trauma that's been passed down through their families, how many of us look at our ancestors and say Well, I am that way because of so and so, and you know, and oftentimes white individuals, white males say it in kind of a, a um, loving is the wrong word but kind of a, a loving or reverence type of feeling saying. 00:08:02 Well, yeah, I'm either built that way because of this. I think that way because my grandfather thought that way and that's the way to be. Um without us even really coming to realize that until we're already steeped in that situation. So I don't understand how the same or people can't see that the same is true for traditionally underserved um populations of individuals. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, there's so much i, there's so much there. This could be a whole different direction from my accent. I think res my grandmother's hands is like one of the best books that I've read about thinking about that, like embodiment of trauma. And also like he talks about, right, like, even like white history, like white folks history and like the people who have come to what is now called the United States, but like who, who kind of came over? We're often like fleeing oppression of a different kind. And like, so there's just like all this oppression, like across the board in all racialized populations that it's just like we carry so much, like we carry so much of the things that we interact with daily and then also of our ancestors in various ways. 00:09:08 Like to your point, like, definitely depends on how you're racialized and like, in what categories that, you know, we've, we've put people into boxes and I just think there's so much there that, like, in order I'm gonna make a rough segway here, but in order to, like, we're gonna do a whole new series. Yes. Um, in order to like, contextualize, you know, kind of the, the conversation we're gonna be talking about, kind of like starting with that big dream, like to sit with that context, right? Of all the heaviness, right that our students and our teachers and our leaders are experiencing as just human beings and then to pull everybody together and be like, we're gonna do this thing called education. Like I think, you know, that is a big lift and I'm, I'm wondering like the dream of what it could potentially look like in, in this beautiful world that we could create and, and Doctor Betina loves quote that I said I would reference, you know, is in regard to freedom dreaming. She says there are dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so recognizing that injustice and taking a stance on critiquing it, given the context we started this episode with and all of that complexity. 00:10:16 What's the big dream that you hold for? Specifically kind of like curriculum instruction? What, what does that look like in, in the perfect school that you could envision? Wow. And we've got one show you said, um, all right. So I'm gonna say, I'm gonna go with a broad, a broad statement and then we can unpack it from there. Um, my dream when it comes to curriculum, obviously it'd be easy to say, um, the curriculum materials and curriculum taught in a way that is, um, culturally authentic or relevant, but everybody knows we should be doing that right. Curriculums are, well, I, I would hope, let's put it that way. Curriculums are changing over, especially in literature, you see the changes so that we have windows and mirrors and we follow the idea of windows and mirrors for, for these different populations and all the students we see in front of us. Um And that is um that's part of a larger dream that I have for education that we are taking action on a daily basis, born from a broader and greater and deeper understanding of everybody's journey and how they got to where they are now. 00:11:24 Um You know, there's a lot of, if you look at at Native American culture, there's um a lot of, and I just referenced Native American culture. I'm sure there's others but um that reference a lot of the spirits and the, and the spirit realm and their spirit ancestors that are still with them and travel with them today. Um Given that we, we lend truth to that because we're understanding, we're open minded. Well, if we're lending truth to that, how can we not believe that we need to act in a way that honors the history that that individual has gone through. That they may not have experienced physically, but they have definitely experienced spiritually and passed on to their family. Wow, that is so much, there's so much there kind of the relevance piece, the authenticity piece, the acknowledgment of ancestors. I I think about um Dr Goldie Muhammad's work when she talks about just studying black historical literary societies and, and like defining so many things as you know, the ancestors define joy as this and the ancestors have pursued these things and just like honoring that I think is such a huge thing that we often skip over into center that in your dream, I think it's really powerful. 00:12:39 So as, as we kind of think about like where either your individual school is or, you know, practice specific practices, you want to think about like, where do you think like there is kind of AAA dream that you have that's not quite fulfilled yet a direction, maybe you're wanting to head a practice you want to implement. Um where do you think there's kind of a solid foundation for, for this work? Um And, and I often think about these kind of buckets or stages of like, there's like the culture piece, the culture of partnership, partnership with students families. There's like the pedagogical piece, like, how are we actually literally teaching and interacting? There's like, how do we assess it? And also like to your point about um the el a classroom and, and the authors and the stories we bring in like, what is the content and the text that we explore and the histories we value and, and talk about, you know, considering all of those pieces, you know, what, what are your thoughts around that in terms of practices that, that you've seen be really successful and practices that you want to grow is, is that it, that's all you've got for the question that for like 400 questions for one. Um So, OK, so where we are, we're my school and, and moreover, even the district is in a, in a stage of transition. 00:13:50 Um We didn't have a lot of diversity and so where we find ourselves now is we say a lot of diversity. Um No, I I've taught in other places, you know, starting my educational career, even where I went to school. Um much more diverse than where we are now. However, for this school, which is part of the overall thing for everybody is that we have to see where people are and take them from there. We're still not that diverse, but for us, we are very diverse and it's growing um rapidly and we're talking racial diversity, religious diversity, linguistic diversity, all the above. Thank you. Uh No, racial and linguistic. Um Not so much religious, but um that's not growing that much. But racial and linguistic. Definitely. So, we, we leave for COVID. Right. We're out of school for COVID and we come back and I'm standing out in front of the school. I greet buses and students as they come in every day and I'm watching the buses unload and I'm like, whoa, and I'm like, whoa, like a good thing. 00:14:56 I'm like, ok, awesome. And then the students are coming in everything and most of the teachers are like, ok, awesome. Some of the teachers are like, hm, I'm not ok. So how do I deal with this? And don't get me wrong. There's a sense of that everywhere. Not in a, not in a negative way, but the good thing about that or the positive aspect of that is that there's a real relation, a realization that something has to change, right? This can't be like, it's always been because these students won't plug in and engage and it's not as easy as saying, hey, just get on board. Um because, well, there, there's two factors, right? There's one, a growth in population two. There's the idea that they haven't been in school for a year and a half. So they've been in a less diverse area now, I'm talking about our white students, I'm talking about our black students, our brown students, they've all been in pretty, a pretty homogenous atmosphere while they were at home for a year and a half. And now they come back to school and I don't, I, I'm not gonna take credit for this. 00:16:00 Um, Henry Turner said this to me why he was um talking to me on my podcast that if we think about it, high school is the last place where we force everybody to be together, who's different without their input as to who they want to be with. And so that's where the rubber meets the road as far as making diversity work or making people feel um like they're like, it's an equitable situation. And so when they came in, um all these different students, we're trying to figure out how to teach in person again, with all these different things, we have all the diversity in front of us. And so we struggle and now that diversity has continued to grow linguistically, especially as, as well as racial and it's caused issues. It's caused an uncomfortableness. And I now I mentioned Henry Turner because the beginning of this year, we focused on this difference. We saw this difference happen the year before and we said, look, this is a good thing if we can make it a good thing or continue to be a good thing because there are people, there are components in our communities, there are components in the school that are not pleased and some are not pleased. 00:17:12 Uh I don't like to throw around the word racist. Um But mostly there, there's the people are not pleased. Most of them are not pleased because there's an uncomfortableness with it and it, it's change and nobody likes change anyways. But now this is a special kind of personal change where it's different, culturally all around, whether it's a linguistic or racial difference, it's culturally different and that's very difficult to overcome. So we started our year off and I, I do a soft start to my school year anyways each year so that people can kind of come in. And I focus on the, the idea of building community and belonging. And what we did is we brought in some training for our teachers, we brought in some training for our students. And as a teacher group, we got together, we did some work, um came up with things we can do in our classrooms as far as um culturally appropriate instruction. And then the students were talked to about what's this look like and how do we all get along in this? 00:18:16 And so we did that at the beginning of this year and this year has gone along and we've continued to struggle uh a little bit but with some other reasons and I guess that's where I struggle most. So we're changing the curriculum, we're bringing in people to work with people because this does not happen overnight. And um it's gotta be, it's gotta be stepped in. I've reached out for um parents of minority groups to serve on their own special advisory board. To me, we started a no place for Hate Club. Um That's gonna, looks like it's more gonna turn into affinity groups because now I just finished some um de I training that Northeastern offers and doing that. Uh speaking to the presenter, I'm gonna see if I can get her to come and present to our school. Um And then from that saying, she was talking to me how an effective way to start affinity groups is. But so we're doing all these things and still struggling and what it's turned into. 00:19:21 And this is where I struggle. I know I just talked in a long circle. I didn't mean to do that. But um there's a difference between behavior that is inappropriate, um racial inequity and behavior that's born from racial inequity. And right now those three categories, we're dealing with some behaviors. But now every behavior um that is corrected is instantly um is met with a cry of racism or that it's because of our inequitable system. Um And so that in and of itself has slowed some of the progress down because now people are saying, wait a anything I do. Um I'm now called a racist. And so then you start to get to us, them conversations going back and forth out in the community as well as within the school. 00:20:25 But most importantly, and probably the most difficult aspect to deal with is with the students because the students follow the parents and the students follow the adults And so if the adults and the the community members can't get this right. There's no way the kids are gonna get this right. Well, they will eventually hopefully with enough guidance but man, it becomes a lot harder and an uphill battle to do that. Oh my gosh, there's so much to unpack with what you share. Thank you so much for sharing honestly. So like transparently, I really appreciate that because I, I love the stance that you come from of just like we're learning and we're figuring this out and we're continuing to invest in training and support. And you know, I, I think that many, many times if we in this work, right? Like if we don't come from that orientation of like, hey, I'm still learning and then we're still growing, like we close ourselves off to growth. And so I just think, I think that's a huge takeaway for listeners to just be like, yeah, like this is kind of 0.1. 00:21:28 It's like, you know, like you have to build that foundation of like learning and growth and being willing to try something that even if it doesn't go perfectly, like you tried something and you're learning from it. And I just, I just, I just want to honor that like, you have shared all of that with that orientation and I really appreciate it. And I, I'm so curious to like dig into like some of these things. So first of all, parent advisory board. Brilliant idea. I love that. So you have some student groups going on, you're starting the affinity group. So just to kind of like recap for people who are listening some practices that they could potentially put in place. I love the idea of focusing on belonging and doing staff and student kind of focusing in terms of like what are the skills that staff need to build and then what are the skills that students need to build? It's really interesting kind of the the negotiating the uh racist labeling that you're talking about, right? Of like kind of being uh kind of a bump in the in the road or kind of like a um an adaptive challenge perhaps that, that people have to kind of negotiate. So I'm curious to know. So if you're willing to share like more about that, I kind of see this as like a a need to adapt a challenge, but like, I often talk about mindset shifts. 00:22:33 So like, you know, what is that mindset shift that needs to happen to be able to kind of unlock the growth and the kind of culture of partnership. OK. Whether it's across free show lines, whether it's across staff, student parents, administrator, like role like stakeholder roles, sometimes that is like the barrier is the role itself. Um I'm curious if you'll, you'll share a bit more about like, I don't know if there's a specific instance, I don't want to like, call anyone out. But you know, that you're thinking like, oh, well, in this scenario, you know, this is the labeling, this is where the labeling came in and this is where we could have gone, but we're held back by it. Well, I mean, like I, I had mentioned discipline things and, um, often when discipline comes up to me and, and, um, it's appealed to me and I uphold it or, or anything like that. One of the first things I hear in an instant like that, if it's, if it's a student of color, um, I've been, I've been mislabeled, so to speak so many times this year. But where I sit and, um, it, it's, it's interesting because other people tell, they say to me, I, I don't know how you do it but, um, I just keep going. 00:23:45 I know this is gonna be messy. I don't, I don't have the answers, but I am willing to have any conversation and to dig in and open things up and I've had success that way with students moving, moving through. Um, I'd love to say I have success with all those students moving through, but I don't, but we have enough success stories to make me keep going. And I look at it as I care so much that we all just take a step back and stop being so defensive and pay attention to the messages we're sending to impressionable students that I don't care anymore. I don't care what you call me. I don't care what you say to me. Um, I've had some really touching meetings with, uh, some parents where they give me a hard time and they laugh. We had a really difficult parent who then came back to sing our praises for all we've done for her student. I, I had a meeting, um, where I'm, I'm trying to think all the different ones where I had a meeting with a parent. She said, you know, Doctor Jones, I have to tell you, um, my kid and all his friends were sitting around the other day and, um, she's a woman of color and her and her kid and all his friends are, um, of color. 00:24:59 And she said, um, you know, they were all trash and all of you. And, uh, I heard my son stick up for you and say no, he's all right. And she said everybody was kind of surprised. She said I was surprised because, I mean, you know, you're white, we don't trust you because you're white. And I took that second to say, I said to her, I said, well, you know, I can't tell you how happy that makes me feel to hear that your son's, you know, starting to trust me a little bit. I said, what's, what, what's really disheartening to me is that they're getting the message from somewhere that they can't trust me because of my skin color, I'm willing to trust them no matter their skin color with the idea that I understand there's baggage with that. And that's all right if they don't trust me, but they gotta at least give me a chance. I said, I, I understand why they want it. Um, but how, how do we make this? Right. How do we untangle this awful knot where I can pay attention to the idea that there's baggage, I can pay attention to the idea that, um, they maybe even you approach education differently, but we can't do that unless we actually take a step back. 00:26:13 Stop being so defensive and realize that not everybody is the same as the other person because then she told me, well, you know, we came here and they came here because of the school, which is the, the frustrating part. They, they came here because they want the better education. They move from the town they're in, we're school choice. They move from the town that they're in because they didn't like where they were and they didn't like what was occurring where they were. And I get that you run into societal issues because then, I mean, she went on to tell me that she never thought she'd experience the racism that she does outside, like, but from her neighbors and, and things like that, which is, which is awful, um, that you, because in the end and I have to believe this, this is what keeps me going. Um, we all want better for our kids, right? Isn't that the idea that no matter what experience we have, if we experience and I, and, and look, I'm, I'm a middle, I like to say middle age, but I'm a middle aged white guy. Um, that hasn't experienced racism or anything like that has, has seen privilege. I, I've seen the other end of it, um but not experienced it personally. 00:27:18 So I get that there's that baggage and but I get that, don't you want better for your kid? Like doesn't everybody want their kid not to have to go through that? I mean, being white and having privilege? I want my kids to have better than I had and not to experience some of the things that I did. So I can only imagine that they would but we, we can only get there. And this is, this is my, my dream. You're talking about dreams is that we can all just kind of sit back, put the defenses down a little bit and trust just long enough to plant that seed and grow it from there. Let me plant the seed, I'll feed it, water it, nurture it, put a cage on it and help it grow. But you gotta let me put the seed in the ground. Mhm Yeah, I just, I, again, I want to just highlight some of the things that I think you, you said that are really kind of takeaways of one just kind of I I mean, this is my own phrasing didn't take on what you said, but like that, that the decreasing, the need to the the defensiveness, right? Decreasing that defensive huge. I I would argue that like everyone is steeped in as Beverly Daniel Tatum has that smog of racism. 00:28:23 So in, in effect, like we all are racist in given moments, right? I think racism describes an action, not necessarily an identity that is permanent. I think Ibraham Kendy talks about this a little bit if it's like, right, like a name tag versus a tattoo. And so like, I think to be able to just be like, oh yeah, that policy is racist or my approach to the student versus this student like, yeah, there was some racism in that action like just to be even able to say and be comfortable with like, thank you for pointing that out to me. Like I get to learn now with you. Like I think that is what enables like what you're saying is like the partnership with the parent that the student defending you is like that is the perception and and it is like as a white person like, you know, I I totally would understand why there is the skepticism of white folks because Doctor Betina Love in that same kind of conference was talking about like, like white folks have brought so much pain and policy and depression and like all of these things that have made it so much harder to survive and and it has, you know, those health impacts that she talked about are a result of that um of white folks in power. 00:29:26 So like as a white person who want, who is committed to anti-racism is committed to partnership and, and successful students, right? It, it's like doing what you're doing, right? It's like let me lower my defenses, let me engage with you, let me plant the seed and nurture it. And like I got you, you just have to give me that, that one little window to like, open that door or whatever the metaphor is and we're gonna sit down and we are going to act in partnership. And I think if you have that, if you have that commitment to partnership and growing the seed together, like so much as possible. And so when I think about that, that culture of belonging that you're talking about building a staff and student wide, like, that's what you're saying is at the core, like if, if so many schools can do the things and do the P DS, but they can't do the things that you just described doing, like we're not going anywhere. Right. Right. Yeah, I just, you know, it's, I don't know, it, it's to be able to sit there and realize or, you know, it's even walk a mile in my shoes. 00:30:30 And why is it easier for a white individual to look at another white individual and understand that they might have had it tough where it's not that easy for them to look at a black individual or a brown individual and say, oh, well, you know, they could only have had it this tough because that's what I know as a white person and not take a second to realize that that's a whole different, that's, that's a whole different world that, that we can't understand. The reason I want a parent advisory group is because that's lived reality. Their kids go home and talk to their parents now, they might not talk to their parents the way our kids talk to their parents and, you know, your kids might talk to their parents, but they talk to their parents about their lived reality. So whatever they're saying, it might not be accurate, whatever what kid is, you know, what do you do in school today? Nothing. Um It might not be accurate but boy, that's their experience. And so that's valid and until we deal with that, we can't get to accurate because they're not available to participate in that. 00:31:37 So if we're not putting someone in an emotional state, right? I mean, it's mail's hierarchy. If, if we're not putting someone in a state where they feel safe or an emotional state where they can then open their minds enough to typically they talk about learn. But how about just understand and be part of a larger group so that we can fix these problems because alone and separate, we're not going to, you know, I think about, um, I think about when all the continents were together, right? Um, dawn a time stuff when all the continents are together, stay with me. I'm gonna make a point that they floated apart. Well, now try and put those back together now and see how hard that is the problem is in today's society. We have floated so far apart because people have driven wedges purposely between different races, different ethnicities, genders, religions, that it, it is incredibly hard to at least even envision coming back together before somebody throws out a slur. 00:32:48 Somebody says, well, you know, this um it's, it's just gonna be difficult, it's a long road, but we need people that are willing to do that. I'm, I'm so glad you mentioned to you from Kendy because um I, so I, I was reading um white fragility. Um And that was that, that was OK. I, I got the premise, I didn't necessarily agree with some of the premise and then I read Iram Kendy and I was like, man that just, that just hit home for me. Um And the idea of racism being a continuum and being act based to where on a Monday you could be racist because you're practicing racist acts on a Tuesday, maybe not so much, but just that was such a good way to show how it's embedded in our society that I thought it was accessible. Yeah. And it, and it lowers the defenses when you can think of it that way, right? It's like, oh that's an action like I have familiarity with apologizing for actions or interrogating actions like versus this is the core of who I am and you're somehow like attacking the core of my humanity, right? 00:33:51 Like total different conversation and total lower defenses to be able to critique an action, right? Oh Yeah, so good. So, oh yeah, go ahead. Sorry. You're just gonna say, and there's so much, you know, there's so much to it. Um And there's so much that's built into society and the way we were raised, I I just heard somebody share a story how they were giving a presentation and the students in the in the auditorium were getting restless. And so this individual always heard their father say a certain phrase. And so this individual said that phrase to kind of wrap up the, the uh the assembly, they turned to the person next to them and they said, oh, well, the natives are getting restless. Well, the, the the problem is, right. First of all, you shouldn't say that anyways and they realized it, the problem is they actually have native tribes as part of their district. And there was a kid looking right at this person when they said it and they instantly, and they apologized. Now, the person was very upset that they said it and the kid that was looking said, don't worry about it. 00:34:58 And the, and the rest of the group was like, oh no, no, no, don't worry about it. But that's I, I give credit to the fact that this person said I'm gonna take it on the chin. I said something I shouldn't have said. Let me be honest about why I said that and, and how that came to be and apologize and, and authentically apologize. Yes. Yes, absolutely. I, I think the act of apology as an educator, as an adult in a situation where you're constantly working with Children super underrated. I mean, the act of being able to apologize is a game changer. Like it is a game changer. And I, I just think in addition to that, I think I have a whole book on apologies. Actually, maybe I'll link that in the show notes. It is so good. But I think, I think that idea of just thinking about the speaker, right? Who said, who said that? Because that is like some of the things that we say like regularly, I was, it was just sharing like a um a moment from uh my childhood with um there was, there was this recently in the news or something, there was someone had said, um like I'm going to kill your family or something as like a, like, like something in a, in the heat of a moment, something like that that came out and the kid was, like, completely expelled from school and, like, it was like, this big and it was like, yeah, the kid never should have said that. 00:36:10 And also I think about myself as like a third grader on the kickball field and I like, oh, you caught the ball that I kicked, like, oh, I'm gonna kill you. Like, totally something that, like was part of what I heard growing up never meant it felt immediately embarrassed at anyone. Like, when someone was like, that's so amazing. And I'm like, oh my God, you're right. Like, why can I say that? Right. But like, it's when I think about like, intergenerational and structural racism and like, the fog of that we all breathe kind of thing, it's like the more that we as adults do to help our Children, whether it's our biological Children, the Children were parenting or co parenting or the kids in our schools, like, the better we do now for those kids, the easier you're, they're going to have it, like in, in dominant groups, in like white groups, in uh cisgender groups and, you know, whatever the like dominant power access groups are, if you are more familiar with people from other backgrounds that are not yours or are the non dominant groups in the structures, like you're not gonna say that thing and let it slip because you never heard it growing up because your parents and the teachers in your community did such a good intentional job of not using language like that or not framing something in this way or intentionally taking an anti racist stance and eradicating racist policy. 00:37:22 You know, like I just think about that often from the standpoint of like our white Children, like we are helping our white Children so much too when we do this work and model it so that they don't have to unlearn all the things that we as adults are currently unlearning. Right. Right. Right. Unlearning is difficult work. Oh, yeah. And, and you know, unfortunately it's, it's become to be expected. So, um, I had some students that were sent down, I think this is last year because they were wearing do rags and um, some students were wearing bonnets and so they got sent down. We don't, we don't allow wear hats, you can't wear hats or hoods as part of the dress code. And so I brought them in to the office and now not only is it with the assistant principal and the dean of students photos with me because I told him, I said no, no, no, bring him in. I want to talk to him. And so now they come in and hindsight's always 2020. I, I, if I was 16 years old and I walked in with the principal and the two assistant principals because they want to talk to me and be like, oh, it's over, you know. 00:38:25 But, um, I asked him, I said, so talk to me about why you wear your do rack. And they kind of looked at me and neither would I want to say anything. And I said no, seriously. So talk to me why I'm not, you're not in trouble or, and I had to convince them that they weren't in trouble and then I just had an honest conversation with them about why they were wearing their do rag. Um And so they talked to me about it and then the dean of students and myself, we did a bunch of research on do rags and bonnets and the cultural significance and where they originate from. And so that week, the next week, um students were allowed to wear do rags and bonnets because it was, it, it was something we were doing that was racist that we didn't even realize really it was racist because we were treating them the same. And that's where you run into these, these hidden. And I'm using air quotes for the listeners, these hidden racist policies where you're doing it in the name of equality. Well, equality is not the same as equity. And until people understand that especially when it comes to race or gender or religion, this isn't gonna get fixed. 00:39:32 And I know I'm saying this isn't gonna get fixed a lot, but it's, it's a, it's a lot of work and So then, you know, the next thing was, well, if they can wear Durex, why can't we still wear hats? So, you know what, just get rid of the whole thing? Like, really? Who, why are we even talking about this? Um, so it, it's, it's interesting when you take those little steps that those are some of the, like I said, planting the seed, they fully expected to get in trouble, especially now the principal wants to talk to us. Um They fully expect to get in trouble then they weren't. And so they went out and talked to their friends and then some um white students probably I, so I lifted the hats much later than the do rags and the bonnets. But um, and I much later I say like two months after that because I had to get it through and I mean, the handbook. But um I had two students, two white students each wearing a do rag at a lunchroom table and a student went over and said something to them and then came over, came up to me, asked for a meeting with me, came and sat down with me, student of color and said, you know, Doctor Jones, that's cultural appropriation. 00:40:42 And uh I, I was really upset that they were wearing do rags and when I went and asked them why they said they were look, they were wearing them to look more intimidating. And so I said, ok, so now that's a discussion with the two students that are doing that. I thank the student for bringing it up to me. But so then after that, we didn't see any more white kids wearing do rags. So it's, it's just those little things that we have to make sure we address like you were talking earlier and I still want, you were saying something so good. I didn't want to jump in on it. I was saying the idea of you have to not just watch your language, but you have to speak up when you hear the language that isn't appropriate and you have to not in a mean way, in a very polite respectable way. You just have to call it out because that person will. Right. Well, there's two things that person might not realize it and might be using something that they've heard before or that person might realize it and that's a whole different story and then you take it from there. 00:41:47 But quite often that person when it's called out like that is not gonna double down with another inappropriate comment. But if anything they're gonna think to themselves that you're someone that is gonna call it out. So now they either they stay away from you and the circle that you're around which, ok, you've made a little splash in the pond or they're gonna have a conversation with you about it and they're gonna reflect on it and not do it anymore. Oh my gosh. So much of what I loved in this conversation is that you give so many concrete examples that I think people can connect with or that exemplify like how you lead, which is just amazing. Like I think about how many students and people are watching, not maybe like in the actual room with you, but like watching the conversation that you're having with each of these like individuals around just the the policy around headwear, right? Like, so you had the initial conversation with the people who might be getting in trouble and like, oh OK, now we're gonna change the policy. OK? Now you're, now you're having the conversation with the kid who's like, hey, these white kids are wearing do like this is not cool and then you're having a conversation with the white kids. Like people see that you're having the conversations and just a testament to that I think is the student of color who came to you and said like I, hey, there's a problem here like just that level of comfort to be able to say I can go to him and I can talk to him and I'm gonna tell him like and I'm going to be received, I'm gonna be heard like so powerful and then all of the white kids and the white staff members, either members of your leadership team, teachers or whatever who are seeing you like con confront us, right? 00:43:14 To then have the conversation with the white students, right? And like, so it's not even kind of like a we don't want these white kids to do it. But like, it's also a, here's how you lead in this situation, right? It's like, here's what we do, we confront it and whether or not that conversation went like, in 100% perfectly or I would have said this differently, whatever, it's like we are willing to have the conversation. And the impact is that people see that conversation is happening. Like I just, I, I feel like throughout these, you're offering these beautiful jams and I just want to highlight for the listeners like the practices that are happening, you know, and, and it's, it's progress, not perfection if people are like, oh, well, I couldn't, I don't know what he said in that conversation. So therefore, I can't have that conversation because it wouldn't go well. Like, no, it's the point is that you have the conversation. Right. Right. And, and you know what, those conversations aren't gonna go well. And one of the things and this, this takes a little aside, but um it is relevant to it, the idea that I don't know what he said in that conversation. So I'm not gonna have that conversation. The slow death by avoidance is you, you will never make progress because so the N word, right. Um It's, we talk about when we're, when we're educating students and we ran into this a lot with masks. 00:44:22 So it was an easy transition because first he had to have the mask and you couldn't have the mask and he had to be 3 ft and he had to be 6 ft and then the mask couldn't be done. It, it was a mess. And then you didn't have to wear a mask outside. And then the only place you had to wear a mask were schools, medical facilities. Yeah. Ok. I'm 15. I'm gonna keep track of this. And then teachers are frustrated because they know they're supposed to be doing the right thing. Then they're reprimanding kids, the relationships fractured all that. It was inconsistent and that was the problem when you boil it down, it was inconsistent. Consistency wins every single time. Whether you're trying to make, whether you're trying to get large goals, you don't do it by massive jumps, leaps bounds, you do it by consistent small steps moving in the right direction. So with the N word, same thing, it's, it's inconsistent because music has the N word all over the place. Um, there, the N word is used outside of school and then you get into the argument of who can use the N word and who can't use the N word. So, what we did is we, we had a conversation with the staff because the staff is very uncomfortable with, with trying to approach that in the hallway. 00:45:32 But that's where you have to approach it when it's used, you can't say I'll talk to you after because then it doesn't have anything to do with it. So, what we did is we just said that word in and of itself is inappropriate in school. We're not saying what you are doing outside. That's, that's up to you. But in this setting much like when you're in different settings, whether it's a career, whether it's a job wherever it is, there are certain things that are inappropriate and, and using the N word is one of them. We're not even gonna get into the argument of hard r soft R A, all that stuff. Um, just know it's not appropriate. So we, we instructed our staff that whenever they hear it, that's all they say. Hey, you know, and I'm just gonna use your name because you're here. Hey, Lindsay. Uh, you know, that's, that's an inappropriate word to use here. We're, we're not gonna use that here. So what that does is it lets everybody else know if that's inappropriate because they call it out when it happens, it happens in the moment and it's not a discussion. We're not opening up for a debate or anything like that. Now, if we know when it's being used in a derogatory way, and so if it's being used in a derogatory way, that's a different, that's a whole different ball of wax. 00:46:39 That's, yeah, Doctor Jones is talking to you in the office, you know, the assistant principals are talking to the office and we're gonna handle that from there. But other than that, we've noticed a drop in the use of that word. Um, so, you know, it's just, it, it's giving teachers and anybody in these situations smaller concrete tools that they can use that are low effort that are low risk because otherwise that word is said and the teacher looks and did I, did, I hear it? Maybe I didn't hear it. Maybe if I was looking the other way, even though they heard it. But that then, and, and everybody does this, you justify it to yourself not to say anything and you let it go by and you know what you do have that kind of that dirty feeling afterwards because you know it was wrong and you didn't act and that runs contrary to human nature. Um But then it goes away and you're onto the next thing and you forget about it and then the next time it happens. Well, what happens now is uh people can say it, you just say it, nobody's really gonna say anything to you and then it increases and it intensifies and then the first thing you get is your actual Racists using the excuse that, well, they use that word. 00:47:49 Why can't wait. So, yes. Oh my gosh. Yes. And, and I think too if I could add one like kind of additional layer of that is, is for me personally as a white woman who taught primarily students who are not, who is racialized as black or brown or something that a race that is not white. It was really important for me to be able to have like a rationale of sorts, to be able to come in and be the authority or the rule person in my classroom, which to me what felt most aligned to my values and like who I wanted to be in the class that I wanted to have like the sense of belonging, going, going back to that it was um in case there is every student who would personally feel like offended by hearing someone say that like I am going to be the keeper of this space where that is, we are free from using any language that would harm someone else's dignity. So like, I'm not the arbiter of if that's you or not like or who that will be, but just in case like, why would I ever want someone to feel like I'm attacking their dignity or someone else is attacking their dignity? 00:48:53 We just don't want that. So like that's why, you know, like, and it's like a 32nd, like if someone is like, hey, who are you? You know, like Right. Right. We are the keeper of the space. Uh I love, I, that's the one I was gonna highlight keeper of the space. And I like that you said we wouldn't want to do that because I was thinking as we were talking before, you said we wouldn't want to do that. That's on, that's on who wants to hurt somebody else's dignity for no reason. You don't even know these people and maybe you do know the, these people. But really have you known them long enough or if you've been so wrong that you need to hurt their dignity? Uh, it just doesn't make sense. Yeah, that's the line. It's like we don't violate someone else's dignity. I think that that could go for anything too, right? Academic conversations about pence issues like with the line is dignity, we don't violate other people's rights or dignity like that's, that's it, right? Um I've realized that we went so off script that we have had a beautiful conversation. Thank you for going there with me. Do you have how many questions, by the way? I am so curious to see if there is something that you would either add or synthesize for us if we're kind of envisioning the leader listening, who is like, OK, you guys just gave tons of examples kind of analyze several situations. 00:50:04 I want to be an anti racist leader. I want to support my staff, I want to support my student culture like these things. Like what are the things that I prioritize doing or where do I start? Kind of thing is what I'm thinking? We could kind of synthesize and wrap up or if, or if there's anything you wanna add, feel free. I was, well, at first before you said, um, any where to start and different steps they could take, I was gonna see if I get Nike to sponsor your podcast and say, just do it. But no, the, um, you know, it, it starts really with your values. Um, you know, often we talk about values and we talk about what we believe in and then we don't follow through and we let things happen around us and get ourselves involved in things where we don't speak up for our values and our beliefs. If you truly believe that you, that it is up to you to be the leader, the anti racist leader or the person that works on anti-racism, then you have to do it and you do it first by looking at your values and realizing that no matter what your values are, whenever they enact, interact with making people better, organization better or anything like that, that, that all depends on human beings. 00:51:18 And if we look at everyone as a human being, that's a start because then you need to add the different layers. I think of those old transparency books, the science books, I told you I was a dork. But those old books with the, with the, with the body systems in biology that you put one transparency over. It used to be mesmerized by those things, then you put another one and you put another one and, and it gets thicker and crowded and more complex. Start at the first transparency about what you believe in and the fact that it's tied to, we're all human being, take the next transparency and lay it over that base pitcher and complicate it a little bit. Who can you communicate with, with the understanding that their understanding, their experience as that human being is not the same as yours. And so it complicates things from what you're experiencing and then flip the next transparency and look at the institution that you're in charge of the institution that you're part of. 00:52:22 We look at what policies are in place and how that complicates things based on people's race, people's ethnicity, people's gender, how they identify um and just keep flipping the transparencies because all that communication has to be based on the understanding that you don't have an understanding of what they've lived and the past traumas that they've experienced, that's how you start. And you have to, you have to have those conversations by pulling people in and you can't do it by pulling in. Somebody's looking like yourself and saying, so how do we fix this? No, you gotta pull in the people that you're trying to reach out to and make it a better existence for them. Oh my gosh. Yes. And I think we can actually tie this back to curriculum, which was the initial thread we could do this in a class where you were analyzing a primary source document, right? Like do the transparency, like what values are at play here? Like let's layer on the identities like hm, we got it, we came back. 00:53:27 That's so that's so important in history or in or in anything where you're reading but like you think of primary resource documents. OK. Well, that document was written by somebody hence primary resource. Who was it written by? What were the times like, why did they write it? Can we just be honest, you know, what lens were they writing it from where they, you know, you, you talk about different documents. Um I don't think you had non-white people in a lot of the documents that we, we analyze living that experience writing these documents because if we did II, I dare say some of those documents might have been different. I don't know, maybe going on, on a limb. But I just the, the idea that if we could, if we could all come together be less defensive and start that practice by trying to understand rather than thinking we already do understand because we don't. Um And when you have those conversations, some of those conversations will shock you. Some of those conversations will be rude. Some of those con you, you won't have those conversations because you won't like some of the conversations that you have and it is uncomfortable and you don't have the answer. 00:54:36 But that's when you know, you're getting the real stuff. If you sit down, you have a conversation with a person, um who is part of a minority group based on color, gender identity. Um Anything like that, if you're comfortable, you're not getting the truth. If you're uncomfortable, that's a good thing. And you just need to learn to lean into it because as much as you might not, might not like it, you're getting the true pitcher and then you can go back and I like to do this anyways as a leader with everything in general. Um When somebody disagrees with me, I like it when people disagree with me and I kind of like it a little when they're negative, which is weird. But um I kind of like it when they disagree with me and they're negative because I sit back and I think to myself. OK, what if they're right? That's gotta come from somewhere and then that's when I can search in, I can turn negative people positive. I can turn um programs initiatives into better things. I can make it a more equitable system and structure for everyone, regardless of race, gender, religion, anything. 00:55:50 Oh What a beautiful way to end. I am going to ask you one more question. I know we've been talking for like an hour, but I want people to be able to check out your podcast and connect with you. So can you just share for people where they can connect with you where they can follow you on social, what your podcast is all about. You know, I could ask these things that I always draw blank. The first thing I would say is my podcast is seen to lead, you can find it on any um any podcast platform that you listen to. I really subscribe and give me feedback. I, I love it. And most importantly, as soon as you listen and subscribe, make sure you catch Lindsay's episode because you were absolutely fantastic on my podcast. So, um the podcast is seen to lead anywhere you listen to podcasts and it actually publishes to my youtube channel as well, which is Doctor CS Jones. Um Twitter is at Doctor CS Jones, Instagram, Doctor Ce S Jones. It's, it's all Doctor CS Jones if you want. I, I also um I respond to emails, reach out and email me that's at uh doctor, which is I say, I keep saying doctors Dr um but the gmail address is Doctor Chris SJ uh at gmail dot com. 00:57:00 But hey, reach out. Um I'd, I'd be happy to talk to anybody, especially in this journey. And uh like I said, make sure you listen to Lindsay's episode first on scene to lead. And uh, oh, I also have a book out too that's uh by the same name scene to lead. Almost forgot the book. Amazing. And we'll drop links to all that in the show notes. Oh, my gosh, Doctor Jones. This was so nice to have you on. Thank you for this beautiful conversation. No, thank you Lindsey. I really appreciate it. If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my life coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We weave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at www dot Lindsay beth lions dot com slash contact. 00:58:06 Until next time leaders continue to think Big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network. Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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To wrap up the Unit Dreaming series, I want to reflect on the wisdom of the guests we’ve heard from in the past six episodes. Their reflections on how they felt during and after the unit planning process we used has helped me think about what to keep, what to emphasize, what to build in more support for, and what to change as I continue to refine my unit planning protocol that I use to coach teachers and teacher teams.
Unit Planning Tip #1: Spend time clarifying the Driving Question and let it focus you. In episode 119, Debbie Tannenbaum said planning with the DQ was new for her, and it was helpful to have as a guide. In episode 121, Tre' Gammage talked about the value of framing adult Professional Development (PD) as a curriculum as a way of committing to a sustained focus throughout the year. Whether you use the DQ for students or for educators, this is what focuses all of the work. One of the biggest lessons I have learned in this series is the importance of spending enough time on it that it resonates with the teacher. Then, everything else seemingly falls into place. Unit Planning Tip #2: Invest in a reusable unit arc. By the end of episode 122, Phil Januszewski said he felt like he had a solid “skeleton” to be able to reuse in different units as a way to incorporate the justice-based and human elements he wanted in his curriculum. Debbie liked the simplicity of the unit arc outline we used. In the template, the three columns for each lesson are listed as: Focus, Protocol, Resource. I’ve been using the acronym “GPS” (Green Light, Protocol, Source) for the Investigating History curriculum through DESE, leveraging their term “green light” to indicate the focus content (and when students will have enough to move onto the next thing) and the term “Source” as a nod to its emphasis on source analysis. Unit Planning Tip #3: Dr. Gholdy Muhammad’s HILL Model unlocks deep learning. In episode 124, Jason Reagin built upon a Design project he’s done in the past with students. He credited Dr. Muhammad’s framework as the reason he took the project to a deeper level. (He even used 3 of the pursuits as a core component of the unit’s summative project!) I cannot overstate how much I love Dr. Muhammad’s framework, based on the genius of historical Black Literary Societies, which includes the 5 pursuits of Identity, Criticality, Joy, Skills, and Intellect. I focus on the first three as I listed them here because I see these as underutilized. If you haven’t read them already, check out her books, Cultivating Genius and Unearthing Joy. Unit Planning Tip #4: Learn about societal problems. Phil Januszewski (episode 122) reflected on how helpful it would be to learn more about the problems in the world that are connected to the content areas we teach. From there, we can teach content knowledge and skills so that students can put it to use in addressing those problems. Having an ongoing stream of problems, injustices, and current events will help with this. I find it helpful to identify one source (teachers can consider their preferred medium—I enjoy podcasts—and their content area or focus) and engage with it once a week or so. It might be a great activity to include in each team meeting: Share one event or situation in the world that connects to your content and you might be able to build a unit around. Unit Planning Tip #5: Weave in other models and structures. On episode 120, Dr. Bakshi McLean talked about using the Science-based 5 Es approach to a unit arc. She also shared her SHS steps (Standard, Hook, Society) which help teachers think about the same kinds of things I want to get teachers talking about! If there’s a strategy or framework out there that can complement the approach I coach with, I want teachers and leaders to use it! Unit Planning Tip #6: Talk it through with someone. Gwen and Nancy Jorgensen talked about this in episode 123, and several guests also mentioned it. Simply being able to talk through ideas with another person was energizing, clarifying, and all-around helpful. It would be great if everyone had a coach for this work, but it could be your team, a colleague, another teacher in a different district—it’s helpful to have someone to brainstorm with. Final Tip Whatever process you share with your team, ask teachers to reflect as they use it. This reflection piece has helped me listen to the people engaging with the unit planning protocol I use to coach people to create curriculum. They are the experts in what’s helpful about it and what isn’t. Leaders, remember to make space for these reflections just as we encourage teachers to do with students at the end of a unit! To help you implement some unit dreaming with your staff, I’m sharing a 5-minute tutorial video I made on YouTube! (There’s also a link to a free resource in the YouTube description if you want it.) And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 125 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. TRANSCRIPT I'm educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for Teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerdy out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go in this episode of the time for teacher to podcast. I am actually reflecting on the unit dreaming series that we just had. So if you haven't listened to any of the episodes, go back and listen to one, you can definitely listen to this one first. That's fine. But I think this is going to be really helpful in if you haven't listened to them thinking about uncovering as you listen, what are the patterns that you see across guests? What are the aha moments as they dream up a unit? 00:01:04 What are the implications for my unit design protocol that I share with my team or my staff. If you listened to them previously, I want you to listen this episode thinking about the importance of reflection. And I'm kind of curating the responses from the last couple of minutes of each of the six episodes. And what the guests are really telling me was helpful for them so that I can refine my unit planning protocol. So let's get into it. In this episode. I am sharing six big kind of learnings from the guests of the unit dreaming series this summer. So we had six guests, we dreamed up six units together. And now I want to go back into the final minutes of those episodes and really think about what they offered me as a reflection in terms of how it felt to engage in the process. So thinking about this unit planning protocol, what worked, what didn't, what did we change? What do we emphasize more of and and kind of what are the big aha as we're going through it? Where do we spend more time in terms of actually implementing this protocol coaching using this protocol? So let's get right to it. The first tip is to really spend time clarifying the driving question and let it focus you if you do not get this right. 00:02:14 And I had a feeling going into this series that this was helpful just for my own work, but it it was just really solidified in not one not to like several guests really having this moment of aha and even even guests, I, I'm thinking of um one episode two where we didn't quite land on it. We, we were kind of like still brainstorming almost driving question or unit ideas as we were leaving the episode. But I think the conversation was really valuable because it really emphasized like we, we missed kind of like this key step at the, at the beginning. That's a different tip, but we missed this key step and therefore didn't lean on a driving question and therefore everything else was a struggle. Whereas in some like episode 1 18, Debbie Tanen mom talks about the driving question. She had this moment of like, I really thought I had a paraphrasing here, but she was kind of like, I really thought we were doing absolutely nothing. And I was like, why did I get on your tube and my day off? And now we've landed on it and it feels like really good, like, wow, we got there and that is the moment that you want where it clicks with the teacher. And they're like, yes, this is why I'm doing this, right? 00:03:17 So you might spin your wheels for a while. But as long as you're spinning in a productive direction, we're asking, we're finding questions. But OK, that doesn't feel right or you're not kind of like lighting up at that driving question. What more like, what is it about the question that's really not clicking with you? Like what would get it to that? Aha. Yes, I can't wait to do this unit with my students, right? To, to ask them to, to grapple with this question day one. So I think that is really helpful and then the other piece of this, right? The, the let it focus you piece in episode 1 21 Trey Gamage actually talked about the value of framing adult professional development as a curriculum. And talking about how often we think about PD. And I would argue that sometimes we think about lessons with K 12 students or even college students as well as one off lessons. So we don't curricular to use the term he used in the episode, curricular them. And so as a result, we don't have a depth of focus. We don't have a sustained focus throughout the year, throughout a semester, whatever duration it lasts or even if we do think of a unit, it's so short sometimes that we don't get the depth that we need to really have the deep learning experience. 00:04:24 We don't ask students to take what they learn and apply it to solve a problem or something, right? We don't have that depth. And so thinking about that from the lens of a PD provider, talking to leaders implementing PD with their staff, he was saying, you know, this idea of focus as a stay focused throughout the year thinking about PD as curricula. Right. That's really helpful because once we establish that driving question, the unit focus, right. We get all the things down. Now we are committed. So we're looking at our PD calendar for the rest of the year or as a teacher, we're looking at, you know, the schedule for the next three months or something. And we're saying this is where we're going, we're going deep, we're going to make sure there's a lot of student voice or teacher voice in the case of staff PD. And it will focus every other decision we make about what we're doing, not only from a planning lens but in the moment. Ok. Well, what is the best choice that enables us to answer that DQ? Right. So this is one of the biggest lessons that I have learned in all of my coaching work, including the series. We need to spend enough time to get to the aha moment for the DQ. Everything else will fall into place. Much faster, much easier, much smoother when we get there. 00:05:29 If we get it wrong, it's going to be a lot more work doing all the other pieces. Ok. Let's move to unit planning tip number two, invest in a reusable unit arc. I've said this before, but I I think this also was another piece of it. It deepening. So by the end of episode 1 22 Phil Gezi who talked about his um thermal chem unit said he felt like he had a solid skeleton is the term he used to be able to reuse in different units so that he could incorporate the justice base and, and really human. He was talking about like the human connection elements, the sense of belonging, um positive psychology, all the things that were not necessarily content related, they weren't teaching the standards, they weren't gonna be on the state test or whatever, you know, but they were like the human pieces that he really wanted to always see in his curriculum and just didn't know how that could even fit in. And so when he thought about the unit arc in a way of we are identifying a problem and we'll talk about this in a, in an upcoming tip too. This is a great insight from him. But if we're thinking about it as we identify a problem and then we're using the rest of the unit to learn about the content to then use the content and skills that are all testable and all the things that traditional teaching is focused on, then we can return to that driving question so that students use it to apply to a problem to solve or address a problem that felt much more aligned, connected important to him. 00:06:50 Um And, and I think that emphasis on him saying, you know, that, that skeleton that I can reuse in different units is exactly what we want because this is a huge lift to develop a new curriculum. And so anything we could do to streamline the process to make it a little bit easier to make it more familiar to students, like, OK, we're gonna be presented with a problem at the start of a unit. I'm going to learn with that motivator in mind that I wanna learn enough to solve that problem or address that problem in a meaningful way to impact my community. OK? Now we're gonna come back to, I'm going to have a chance to use my voice to use um to really step into my leadership role, right? I think that's, that's really cool. And, and actually Debbie too, um like the simplicity of the unit a outline, I had been using the template that I've shared before with you all on the podcast uh of focus protocol resource. It's kind of like three columns and you answer one kind of note in each column for each lesson. So it's really streamlined and she really liked the streamlined piece. I think I'll keep that. But one of the things I've been using, I talked about this on one episode where I talked about Desi's um investigating history curriculum in the state of Massachusetts. 00:07:54 I've been using for them very specifically uh GPS as the acronym and I think acronyms can be great. So we just remember them a little bit easier and our GPS system navigates us. So I think it works for instead of focus protocol resource, green light protocol source. So the investigating history curriculum desi and um there are folks there had had really thought about and talked to the pilot teachers for this curriculum using the term green light to indicate the focus content. So again, I used to use focus. Now I use green light because that's the content or kind of when the light goes on that you're kind of saying, OK, the students have enough now they are ready to move on to the next thing. The next lesson, the next content, understanding whatever it is the application phase like the green light is is go they're ready. And so until we get to the green light, we're kind of sticking with that piece that focus. Um And so this focus, you know, could extend to multiple uh lessons, but I would kind of dive down and find my niche like this is a sub focus of this larger focus area, for example, during the build the base phase of unit Ark. So green light, that's your content focus protocol that stays the same, right? 00:08:58 That's that's the activity you're doing that is often centering student voices, students are talking or grappling for 75% of the time. And then the source which I adapted from resource just because the invest in history curriculum is a not, you know, it's really a nod to the emphasis on source analysis that they do there um but some sort of text, right? It could be a written document, it could be a video of resource, right? A source that we're using. So GPS screen light protocol source, feel free to use that in your your planning, streamlines everything. And it's memorable. Next unit planning tip. This is tip number three, Dr Goldie Mohammed's Hill model on lock deep learning. I mean, I have known this, I love this. Uh But in episode 1 24 Jason Reagan, he actually thought through a unit that he had done before, kind of, he had built upon a design project that he's done with students. But he really credited Doctor Mohammed's framework as the reason that it was able to be taken to a deeper level. So he actually even used three of the pursuits, criticality, identity and joy from her framework to um kind of make them into almost like a rubric or like a core component of the unit's summit of project and like assessment of design and uh packaging for various products. 00:10:06 So I think that's super cool. And I I highly thesis doing either a, a staff reading book study, uh buying your staff this book, reading it yourself as a leader. If you haven't. Doctor Golden Star Mohammed's cultivating genius and unearthing joy if you're interested and you love this podcast, you can listen to her episode of this podcast, which was on a few months ago, I believe in March super good she is brilliant. I think asking the questions that she asked specifically around identity criticality and joy, like those are the specifically that got Jason and I to think about deepening this project a little bit. So I typically have been using in this series and in my coaching, using that at the front end in time in terms of like the brainstorm. So almost right before the driving question, because we want those elements to be present in the driving question and thinking about how students will answer them. I think this kind of deepened for me. If this is the thing that makes the shift, then we definitely do want to front load it, adding minimum. We want to use it as a check. If we've done this brainstorming in some other way for the DQ to incorporate these things, then we want to use it as a check for the DQ. 00:11:14 So we write the DQ seems good. Got the aha moment from the teacher. Now, let's look, does it have an opportunity to explore on a deep level identity criticality and enjoy it? And if it doesn't, we need to rework it? Right. So again, I think you could see why I would want to front load it so that we're not redoing when we've already reached the. Aha. Let's go to unit planning, tip number four, learn about societal problems. So this is kind of the thing I've hinted out a little bit from, from Phil in episode 1 22 where he kind of reflected at the end and we were kind of still playing around with different ideas at the end, honestly, of his, his episode and, and maybe hadn't really leaned on the, aha yet. And I think that's ok because one of the things that he came away with and I just thought this was brilliant and so insightful and, and reflective was he was saying it, it would be really helpful if he knew more about the problems in the world that are connected to the content areas we teach. And I don't think that that is typical of like PD that were offered. If that makes sense. I think often as leaders, we think about the technical, we think about the standards. But do we ever introduce or even give opportunities for kind of personalized PD and then sharing out of problems, current events, injustices in the world that are related or even potentially related? 00:12:29 Maybe we even do an interdisciplinary brainstorm. I think there's a lot of ideas here that we could do. But thinking about each of these things, I think that would be really, really cool to have as part of a personalized PD plan as part of a staff conversation around unit development or unit dreaming. And then I think Phil's point was really like, if I have that, then we can from there develop curriculum because I have those ideas of the real world authentic connections that are related to justices or injustices in the world. Now, I don't have to kind of like force it in, right? As like this add on, I don't have to add justice and stir as I've said before, but it's central to everything and it's because I have this kind of, I would suggest an ongoing stream of information, identify one source, for example, I love podcasts um and engage with it once a week, get some kind of set steady stream of new justice related information and maybe it doesn't always connect perfectly to your content. Maybe there's a podcast or a uh news show or something that is perfectly aligned you could use. For example, rethinking schools is great. 00:13:32 You could kind of search for your content area in their search bar. They might have something that, that strikes something in you. But I think it would be really cool to have kind of this ongoing opportunity to take in information and then share it with your team. I wanna pause here. We're, we're done with four tips and I wanna just note that I have done a youtube video tutorial. There are always five minutes or less you can watch that. Maybe we'll use that as today's episode, Freebie. Um and, and watch that if you're interested in running a staff meeting or a team meeting on unit dreaming. So it gives you the whole agenda. There are links in the agenda to some of these things that I've mentioned. And then it also gives you a slide deck and like prompt by prompt kind of questions or, or ways to structure the conversation about unit dreaming, you're basically just going from like spark to thinking about this. So, so Tip four actually is a perfect segue into that because if you have a spark and that's kind of how you open the conversation or the meeting, sharing about this thing that we just learned or this is a current event that's related to our content, share those sparks and then take the spark and build it into a unit outline or a project idea and just do that little quick brainstorming. 00:14:38 You don't have to build a unit in, you know, a 45 minute meeting or something. But get familiar with the practice of um what Doctor Mohammed on the show before has called curricular fluency. She writes about this in unearthing joy. I think it's brilliant. And so that was really the inspiration for um that resource that I'm doing a walkthrough of in that five minute youtube video. So check that out back to our regularly scheduled program here. OK. Unit planning at number five, we other models and structures. So Doctor Bay mclean talked about the science based five S approach on episode 1 20. Uh We talked about it. I always call it a unit A right? She uses the very science E five E approach. I've used it before in non science classes. And she made that point as well. We can, we can do that, right? We don't have to uh silo things into like this is a science framework or this is, you know, if it works, use it, right. She also shared her own steps. So she does uh the podcast and the organization Stem for real, which is amazing. So it's STEM four, the number four real check it out. 00:15:42 But she talks about her approach is SHS and she has all these great acronyms and, and things, but this one is Standard Hook Society and this is often the same kinds of things that we're trying to get at. And maybe hers is just less clunky and really resonates with people, right? I often take people in like a million different directions and sometimes that's necessary and sometimes people just want like, OK, give me three letters to remember and then I'm diving in, right? So what's the theater I'm trying to teach, what is the Hook? What's the thing that's gonna get people interested? What's, you know, often for her, it's like a um like a science observation or, or something where really they're digging into the science and they're looking at maybe an experiment or something and then society. So like, what's that kind of injustice, connection or justice connection, love it. If there is any strategy or framework out there that complements this approach that I often talk about please use it, I use it to, to override the approach that I am suggesting if, if you want. But I think we don't need just like one approach. We want to like take a little bit and learn a little bit about everything because each teacher is different and each teacher is gonna need a different approach. So final unit planning tip number six, talk it through with someone. 00:16:46 So in their episode 1 23 Gwen and Nancy Joan did talk about this and, and you know, almost every guest had had mentioned it in some way as well in their reflection, being able to talk through ideas with another person. Wasn't that it was me, right. It was just, it was anyone being able to have the space the time the connection was, I've heard things like energizing, clarifying just all around helpful. It would be great if everyone had a coach to do this work, it could be um that you have a career coach. It could be that you have your team right? In your team meeting, it could be a colleague down the hall. It could be a teacher in a different district or someone that you met in a educator group online on Facebook or something, right? Someone to brainstorm with someone to talk this through with. Ideally someone that's also in the field in general, at least in education, but it could be someone who isn't right? Just to have your ideas kind of out there out loud in the world. Um You could even, I've done this before, even record on like your, your voice notes app or something on your phone and then just listen to it later. 00:17:49 So stream of consciousness kind of record some ideas, listen to it later with kind of like a coach lens, right? OK. So where would I do this or how would this work or? Ok. Did I consider this go back through with the framework, do that as a checklist? Right? But I think, I think that's what I would suggest, thinking about find or identify for each teacher, someone that they can talk to. If it's not your staff space or your team space, have them have someone. If it's not an instructional coach, literally just identify someone and then make space, give teachers space time to do this space and time. There we go. All right, final tip. Let's wrap up this episode, whatever process you share with your team, ask teachers to reflect. I said this at the top of the episode, this reflection piece was huge for me. I really appreciated hearing just the two minutes it took for people at the end of the episode, they've created something beautiful, what was helpful, what was not helpful in this process, right? They're the experts about what is helpful or not, right? And so I think it's really important just like we would tell teachers remember to do their reflection with students at the end of the unit. That's often the most important part, do this with our teachers and ask them and truly listen. 00:18:57 All right. That is our episode for today. Don't forget to check out the freebie. If you want all of the show notes and all of the things. It's Lindsay beth lions dot com slash blog slash 1 25. If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my life, coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist, anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We weave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at www dot Lindsay beth lions dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think. Big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better podcast network. Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain how to run a staff meeting on unit dreaming:
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Jason Reagin is the Middle Years Program Coordinator at the Western Academy of Beijing. His teaching background is in 'Design' education. In this episode, we apply a step-by-step unit planning protocol to dream up a new Design unit!
Unit Planning Step 1: Context/Spark The school and Jason wants to do more with curricula that connects with environmental and organizational sustainability and advances Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Social Justice. Unit Planning Step 2: Pursuits (from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model) Identity: How will our unit help students to learn something about themselves and/or about others? Jason wants students to explore different innovation approaches beyond the innovators who are typically studied (i.e., White guys from western contexts from the Industrial Revolution to today). One way he’s historically done this in class is to trace where a candy bar came from. Students learn 90% of the contributions to get the candy bar in their hands were not from western nations. Criticality: How will our unit engage students’ thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? Jason wants students to explore multiple entry points in design conversations. He shared an example of the colors red and green used on a Chinese website being used as having opposite meanings from what Americans typically associate with those colors. Joy*: How will my unit enable, amplify, and spread joy? *Joy is: beauty, aesthetics, truth, ease, wonder, wellness, solutions to the problems of the world, personal fulfillment, art, music Students should experience fulfillment in everything we do. It can be hands-on learning, doing something that’s currently relevant to students. Unit Planning Step 3: Driving Question How can I design this package so it meets our triple bottom line rubric? (Students can co-create the name of their triple bottom line that encompasses identity, criticality, and joy!) Unit Planning Step 4: Summative Project (Publishing Opportunity and Possible Formats) Students co-create a “triple bottom line” rubric and name it. Then, design packaging for a product. Ask the target audience to evaluate the design. Format Options:
Unit Planning Step 5: Unit Arc Hook: Disassemble and explore packaging of different products. Invite students to bring in a package of their own. Build the Base: Traditional triple bottom line concept, then design their own class rubric Case Studies:
Project Work Time/Feedback:
Stay Connected You can find Jason on Twitter. (Also, listen to his podcast, Design Cast!) To help you create your own justice-centered unit, I’m sharing my Curriculum Planner with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 124 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT Welcome to another episode of the Time for Teacher podcast. I have Jason Reagan on with me today doing a unit dreaming episode. So Jason is the middle years program coordinator at the Western Academy of Beijing. His teaching background is in design education. Jason has been in education for 25 years, 19 of which in IB schools, the majority of his career has been overseas in international schools. It is this international experience that has sparked his excitement in curriculum implementation and leadership with a passion for curriculum. It is no surprise that his ultimate goal is to further his experience in curriculum and instructional development within international schools. Since 2008. Jason has been a trainer of IB educators and has participated in IB educator network sponsored events worldwide. He conducts IB workshops, consults for Canada IB schools and serves as a visiting team member and leader for IB school visits to today. He has participated in nearly 100 IB related events in more than 15 countries. I am so excited for today's unit dreaming episode with Jason Reagan. Let's get to it. Educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast. We learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. 00:01:10 I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerdy out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Jason, welcome to the Time for Teacher podcast. Hi. Thank you, Lindsay. I'm so excited to be here. Oh my gosh. I'm so excited to have you and I, I I'm very excited about the style of episode, which is kind of still in its early stages. So thanks for being game to, to work on this. Hey, I am always game. So anyone out there listening, let me know I'm game. Awesome. So I would love to share you have, aside from our typical guest, you have a very unique context that you work in. And so do you mind just kind of providing that context to people? So we can think about that unit in that context and then any other sort of like, you know, spark or anything you're thinking about before we kind of start that we can house the unit and kind of absolutely. 00:02:15 Thank you again, Lindsey. I am so honored to be here and humbled to be here that you thought of me as a guest. It's exciting. And um so my name's Jason Regan and um I work in an, an uh what's called a Full Continuum IB school. So that means that it's a, it's a three year old to 12th grade school. Um It's based in Beijing China. So I live overseas, I've been living overseas for nearly 20 years um of my teaching career. And um the school I'm currently in is an an, an, an international Baccalaureate school. So that means that from the time students enter school to the time they graduate, they're following this international philosophy, this international kind of game plan. And so my context is quite different from, I did teach in public schools in the States, but my context is very different. Um It's a private uh fee paying school and there are certain rules about who can attend the school and who cannot. Um and so only certain passport holders are allowed due to local law. 00:03:19 Um And so most of the students in my school um are either um teachers, kids, so teachers who are in the school and their kids because it's a pretty big school. Um Also, you've got, we're in the same district where a lot of the um the embassies uh that are in Beijing are based. And so we have lots of embassy families. Additionally, we have a lot of other um un related families or um high, we, there's the universal student is based in Beijing and there's a whole bunch of those families. And so it's, it's, it's a real mixture of, of, of kids and, and families that are in the school. Um We have over 50 nations um represented a across uh the school and so you can hear all kinds of languages walking down the hall. Now, I know that's not necessarily different from some people's school context. But in this situation, um we really do embrace mother tongue and we really do embrace the idea that everyone can have different opinions and different ideas and they can all be tolerated and they can all be right according to the context. 00:04:28 And so um also a lot of our students, the families do pay tuition. So uh it's not a, I know I've worked in a title one school, it's not that kind of situation. Um However, you know what middle schoolers are, middle schoolers, right? No matter where you go. And so my context is quite different in that, that I do uh work in that kind of environment. Awesome. Thank you for just sharing that. I think that's really helpful to think about as we like brainstorm, right? Like having Multilingual um you know, an ex Multilingual experience and being able to draw on that skill set and 50 nations are presented. That's so cool. And I imagine that will really um be part of, you know, the, you know, we create. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It's, it's a really nice environment and, um, I, I don't know, it's just, I, I have two Children in the school and I couldn't think of any other way to raise them. Um, but to be in a situation where they're exposed to lots of different, um, experiences and people. Uh, so, yeah. II, I love, I love being where I'm at. 00:05:30 That's awesome. It's, uh, it sounds so cool. So as we get started into this unit, is there any sort of thing that you in terms of the subject or the kind of like spark of inspiration of like, I kind of want to do something around this. Is there anything that initially comes to mind for you? Thank you for asking. I totally just whiffed and didn't say what my background is. And so I teach a subject called design um and design education. Um in the States, we would call it preen engineering or we might call it robotics. So it, it kind of encompasses all those things. So the main thing to remember is we follow a design cycle which is going to very sim looks very similar to like design thinking or design sprint kind of situation. Uh So my background is in teaching that I was trained as an industrial arts teacher. Um And so that should tell you how long ago I was trained that ages me a bit. But um so I've been using rubrics and I've been using um you know, proficiency levels in students since I started teaching over 25 years ago. 00:06:32 And so for me, that's actually how we teach where I'm at now. So what's really been um on my mind and kind of on my heart lately is um my school being so diverse. Our, our next phase of development in the school, the next chapter has to do. And we've talked about this before Lindsay is to do with sustainability and not only just environmental sustainability, but organizational sustainability, recruitment, sustainability all the way across that. And then additionally, we're really pushing, I say, pushing, trying to develop our um what we call ideas. So um in, I knew I was gonna whiff it's diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice. Um And so that's, that's really something that I think as we're emerging in wanting to make that more prevalent in the things that we do. I, I think looking at some kind of unit where we address those things or at least bring about awareness of those things is kind of what I'd like to do. 00:07:37 So that's, that's my background. That's, and that's where I kind of want to go. I don't know if that's on board with what you're keen to do, but that's what I would love to do. Yeah, that sounds amazing. So I love these ideas and, and one of the things that I think it, it maps really nice to many of the things you've talked about is Dr Goldie Mohammed's five for Suits. And so usually, I think about three that I think are typically not seen so much. So that's identity. So how do students identities, right? Thinking about that national identity, linguistic identity, all those pieces in addition to many others criticality. So thinking about social justice, like what is the injustice we're seeing or how do we see like a lack of sustainability in, in the world or our communities? And then also joy. So how does like doing all these things? Thinking about the design and the artistic background that you have? I think there's so much joy just inherent in that, right? And so I'm wondering if hearing those words, identity, criticality and joy, what comes to mind for you around? Like, what could students kind of pursue or look into or explore as they're going through a unit? Um That, that would be something that, that you'd be interested in creating. 00:08:39 I, you know, and I was thinking about this all day uh leading up to our chat and I think something I would love to see the joy I love. I mean, I absolutely think everything should have a, an element of fulfillment in it. Um And so I, I think that I have found in my experience of however many years of design teaching that students really love it because of the hands on nature, because of it's relevant it, it's very, it's able to pivot quite quickly to the current situation. So, um there, therefore, I find that joy comes pretty naturally through it. What I would love to see more is is thinking about things from alternate perspectives. And when I say alternate perspectives, I mean, multiple entry points into what we're gonna talk about. So, um I'll give you an example of why I feel this is important. I hope this is OK. Um Something I didn't mention uh my wife is Chinese. And so we have constant discussions about the difference in the way we grew up. 00:09:40 And we were ordering something online one time and we were on a Chinese website and I kept seeing this green arrow next to the seller of these items. And I kept saying that's a green arrow that it's pointing up, that's good. And she says, no, no, no green is bad and red is good. And I was like one small thing completely changed. I just assumed that green was good, but in Chinese culture, red is a lucky color. Um And so, you know, there's some differences in the way the symbolism works. And so for them, the green arrow up means they're getting more and more bad reviews or they're not ca call following through where the red going down means that it's actually really good. So when I think about design and I think about my students designing apps or prototyping different things, I actually tell them that same example and some of them who may have a Chinese background are like, yeah, of course, green is bad. Right. So it's, I, I think I want to bring in an element of looking at, uh, something that might seem mundane or, or basic but to see how it's perceived from a different lens and I, that's what I would like to see. 00:10:50 I hope that kind of is in line with what you're talking about. But I, I just think about that. Yeah, absolutely. I love that and, and it's so simple but the underlying skill like the skill that you're using in something like that is so transferrable to so many like life situations that it seems like it would be really cool to just get, get that just perspective taking, you know, with a critical lens down to then be able to, to extend that in different spaces. Oh, so cool. Um So I have for joy, we got the fulfillment, the hands on the relevant, the current super joyful criticality. We're doing like the alternate perspectives, multiple entry points, anything for identity. I think they kind of overlap some of the things you talk about a little bit. Um The identity I actually have thought a lot about and I've tried to incorporate this in the past. But um if you'll, if you'll look back to when people talk about innovators, they're usually white guys, right? And, and I, I just say that what it is, it's, if people think they start to name people who they quote unquote are innovators. 00:11:54 And it's often people from the industrial revolution, from western countries or uh or, or current, you know, innovators and they're usually white fellas, right? And so my, I would love, I always try to bring in um at various various perspectives that are not represented um in that. So we talk about innovation or we talk about a product or a system or whatever that's been um developed. And we, I want to look at it from, wait a minute, didn't you know that the Chinese developed a wheelbarrow, right? Like the wheelbarrow that you, you use. So I'm using Chinese there, but you know, it could be any number of things. And so we often will do that. We'll also often trace. Um for example, there's a poster I used to use called the world in a candy bar. And it was where that we traced where every bit of the Hershey's candy bar came from. That's the wrapper, that's the ink that's in the paper, like everything and very often 90% of it was not in a westernized um developed country. 00:12:59 It was often coming from a country that was somewhat exploited and taken advantage of. So um and I don't want to just get into geopolitical stuff, but I that's where we, that's, that's little hanging fruit, right? Like that's where we can, that's where we can have an entry point and then start to look at the next level down. And so, um, that's, that's kind of what I'm looking at figures and looking at, um, groups and how they innovate has often been a way for me to bring in the identity part. So, yeah, that's what I've been thinking. Oh, I love that. That makes me think of so many things. Great. Bring it on. I mean, I I think of like the the geopolitics as just being super interesting, right? And I think of, I mean, even like a design of like how is the rapper designed to bring awareness to the idea of 90% of these coming from non Western Spaces or you know, just like that kind of thing. But also like you were talking about like the design, like early on, you're talking about the kind of the um like design approach and, and often in like Western Spaces, we have this kind of like design cycle and I actually, I'm not sure if that like innovation cycle and the design process are super westernized. 00:14:03 I don't know enough about it to know what it was like. Yeah, so like, i it's really interesting right? To think about like what are these other design processes and innovation methods and approaches um that are coming from other spaces that are not Western and, and I think that in and of itself is really fascinating, like what's even the process that you go through to create the design and how is that, you know, like either prioritized or held back or marginalized, right? Like, oh super interesting. So I'm curious to know now, like, if you were to think of like an ideal like project that students were working through and I think we could go either direction here, either a driving question that frames the project and the whole unit like something students are grappling with or sometimes it seems to be easier to kind of jump to the project itself and be like, what's the publishing opportunity or what audience will engage with, you know, like what the students are doing? Um What comes to mind first in terms of like backwards planning here. Yeah. Um So yeah, that always is gonna depend on the age group and kind of what their maturity level is. 00:15:05 Um I'm kind of shooting for like an upper middle school, early high school kind of age because there's a certain level of maturity where we can have um discussions about things that are not always really positive um about where the cocoa plants come from for the chocolate or whatever. Um And so there's that I also um for older students, I've worked with um 11th and 12th graders, we get into manufacturing and we talk about um the Japanese style of manufacturing, which is what a lot of current a practice in manufacturing is based on. Um There's some great movies out there. One with Michael Keaton, uh, that was about the car where he went and worked in Japan anyway. So, um, but they, they developed just in time manufacturing which saves tons and tons and tons of money, which was something that was not developed in a western country. Um, but yeah, so there's different things like that. So I actually have found one really great way to do. This is to have students design um a package for a, a some sort of product. 00:16:09 And they're very intentional. Number one in the way in which we design the package, the um the the pattern or the net that they use to cut out the package. Maybe it's like the, the Lindor Chocolate deal where it's like a, looks like a bag, but it's actually a box kind of thing, you know, and the idea is not only to do with the design but the actual information that goes on it uh that about being fair trade, about how much of it comes from recycled materials is the ink sustainable those kinds of things. So we look into where these things come from and in many cases, um like the ink comes from India. Um and we start to talk about work, work conditions and we start talking about how does it get from one place and how is that, you know, bleeding over into the, into the water, you know, source and into the water table. So, there's a lot of very easy things to sort of tie into. But with um older students, I would, I would do like a package type project um with the intention of, yeah, it's a package but it's more about I'm tying in all these other trans disciplinary themes from these other subjects, right? 00:17:19 Of, of social justice, of sustainability, of, of identity. Um getting into how do these colors play together? What does this texture mean? Um Is this coming across as being masculine? Um Is this coming across as being too feminine? You know, like what, what are the messages that you're not sharing, that you're really sharing through your design? So that's, that's sort of what I would, I would look into is, and that allows them to get into the idea of how we use market marketing, how we use different psychology, you know, the psychology behind the buyer. Um And so that's, that's kind of, and then sometimes I'll make it where they have to then design a website where it's sold from and how are they going to um how, how are, how are they going to appeal to, what particular audience that they've identified? Right. And one thing I do do is I make sure they have to have a real audience member who will they have to ask questions of. So they have, they can't just say teenagers, right? 00:18:23 They have to be really specific about who because if you don't have a real target audience then it's, it's useless. It's, it's just you making things for you and you're never gonna have someone you can actually ask real questions to. And so, um, that be, that's kind of what comes to mind and it's pretty easy. It doesn't have to be a design project. This could be a social studies project. It could be an art. There's so many different places where this could kind of be tied into. Um So that would be kind of what I'm I'm thinking. Oh my gosh, I love it. And, and you're right, it could be, it could be a really cool as like either an interdisciplinary, it's very trans discs in like in the content, right? In the connections. And I think anyone listening who teaches like any of those things you just listed could totally use something like this. I'm thinking too like the real audience member piece is brilliant. I I almost am wondering if students could like pitch if they're doing this for a real, a real product that exists, right? Do they pitch that company? And like, hey, like, let's book a meeting, like with someone on your marketing team, even if it's an intern, you know what I mean? Like and just like, let me share with you some of these things such a cool, like real world application, like if they were to actually use an element of that or take that into, you know, their marketing approach. 00:19:31 I'm wondering too for like a driving question so that the project itself so cool. What is the driving question that the project answers? Do you know what I mean? Like, what is the thing they're grappling with? It's like, I mean, you might have some idea. So I don't need to go. No, no, that's OK. I, I love this. I actually, as you were talking was also thinking about, I used to teach a lot with cradle to cradle design. This idea of things having 2nd and 3rd life cycles. Um And I was thinking maybe that the actual driving question would be, how can I design this package that can then be reused for something totally different after it's been opened up and used, like maybe it turns inside out and becomes a sun aisle or whatever, you know, like there's so many a kite, you know, I don't know, it could be all kinds of things. Um, or you flip it inside out and it becomes like a, I don't know, a pencil holder on your desk or, you know, this idea that, um we wanna make regenerative regenerate designs. Um And so maybe that's kind of where it is, is that, um, or how can I design for um, an authentic audience? 00:20:38 We do often do like a, a shark tank dragons den type thing where we pull in people from around the school community. Um And then students will have to pitch the idea, um, of what it is they're wanting to do. So we do, we do things like that. So sometimes, but that, you know, that's a lot of organization obviously to make that happen. But it's very authentic. Um, and it is really good to get students, um, aware of, of how these, how these things work. So, yeah, I don't know. Does that work for a driving kind of question? An overarching type thing? Yeah. Oh my gosh. So I have so many thoughts. So what I will go to is like the idea of the shark tank first. I love that. And I almost wonder if this, I mean, it, it is a little bit more uh like narrow versus like expansive, you could choose any product versus like this thing I'm thinking is, is way more like if you had, yeah, if you had something like uh uh hey, everyone, it's Lindsey. I just wanted to tell you about today's episode, Freebie Jason and I talk a lot about Doctor Mohammed's Hill model and the pursuits of identity, criticality and joy. 00:21:41 Our curriculum boot camp planner has that as a component where you can take a little bit deeper of a dive into that template around some of the questions that Doctor Mohammed asks in her literature and in her framework so you can grab that at Lindsay Beth lions dot com slash blog slash 124. Let's get back to the episode. A school product it might be like a T shirt that's designed for like, that year or something, right. Like, could students do that? And then the pitch actually goes to the people making the decisions of the design and everyone in the school gets this t-shirt or something, you know, like, so there's like even more of an immediacy and even more of voice that the students have in terms of influencing the decision. Um, totally, just kind of like a side note that I want, that's OK that it's messy, like you said, it goes all over the place, but we're moving in the right direction, which is, is, is great, right? I mean, I was, I was listening to you and I was thinking we, we actually do a project where um we have clubs in the school, so the club supervisors become the target audience. And so students pick one of the clubs that they want to um make a product for. 00:22:44 So they have to go and talk to them and it's much more open ended. It's not like this project I'm describing where we actually have a product in mind, like this packaging type, whatever. Um And it may not be that, but I like the idea of having it might be that, you know, how do you package the coffee mugs, you know, the tumblers that the school has, has bought for whoever and then there's an event coming and how would you and then how would that package be used again for something else kind of thing or whatever? So, I think there's some really, really cool places we could go with this. I want to go where you wanna go. Oh, so that is so cool. It sounds like you're already doing so much of this. There's already kind of like the foundation in place to do something like this. I'm wondering if the driving question kind of brings it all together in a slightly different way than it has been done. And maybe that's the value add and, and I'm wondering so I do not know a ton about this. But in my leadership studies, there was um an exploration of the triple bottom line which I believe is, is like, so, so it's like a suggestion and, and some, some people do it, I can't remember the company is, but some, some organizations do it. 00:23:49 Um And it's like the, the money obviously is like always the bottom line people typically look at. But then there's also, I think environmental sustainability and like human like humanness, like human impact of like the employees and the exactly and the community. So I'm wondering if the driving question is something that's like, how does the design of this package enable uh the highest triple bottom line or something? And then the students could decide like that could be a, a class, a lesson of like what is the triple bottom line we're talking about like, is it human environment and profit or is it three different things? Um, you know, and, and so what are those? And then also, like, what's the metric for good? You know what I mean? Like, what if, like, what if we have like a huge profit for this company, this product? But there's like a ok environmental impact, you know, like, is that good enough and like, what's, what's good, almost like kind of co creating the rubric for the product or something? Um I don't know, what are your thoughts on that? I'm not sure two things. Uh I love the idea of a co-creator rubric. I've done it with students and it's awesome. 00:24:50 They're often a lot more difficult on them, a lot harder on themselves than I would be. Um So that's good. The second thing is um you're talking about the triple bottom line. Absolutely love it. Why don't we replace the triple bottom line aspects though, with things like um identity, sustainability and you know, these three things, these three pillars that you were talking about and therefore it creates the discussion, the dialogue, the discourse to happen prior to it. And therefore it drives our driving question of OK, this package, how, how does this help um you know, whoever or whatever, you know. So, I mean, I think there's all kinds of ways maybe there has to be one aspect of it, which um you know, accommodates a neuro diverse person or something of those, you know what I mean? Like, maybe something along those lines. Um, so, or maybe it can't have adhesives, um, in it. So, like, um, yeah, yeah. So I, I know some students who have tactile things and they can't have stickers or anything like tape or glue around them because of the sound, but also the tactile ness of it. 00:25:59 And so maybe how, how would I serve them, um, with this package so that it doesn't send them into orbit, right? When they go to touch this thing, right? So I don't know, I'm just, I'm thinking because the triple bottom line, yeah, we, we teach that actually, which I think is awesome that you brought that up. No, it's for older students but it's a, it's when we talk about just in time manufacturing and stuff, but I love it. I think it's awesome but why not teach that in younger grades? So when they get to those higher high school classes, they're already thinking about this, right? Like how are we serving our community? How are we helping the school be more sustainable by doing this? Do we need a package? What if a student asked me that? Right? Like do we need a package? Right? No package. You know, maybe that's their idea. So I love this so much and, and I'm thinking that's so brilliant. Identity criticality. Joy is a triple bottom line and I love that it connects back to your idea of like the core idea that you were kind of sharing the alternate perspective, the multiple entry points, like you could have a whole week about each identity and then another week about criticality and like, so identity could be like each day we're exploring 1 to 2 different identities, how would they interact with this package? 00:27:12 Um I love that because you're literally having people each day, like the students are trying on like one or two new kind of like perspectives and they're fully immersed with this like thing that they're actually doing. Like they're actually working on this product and this design which I imagine is most of your classes like design work, but like there's this authentic thing and it really makes sense to kind of put on that hat, so to speak and, and engage with these three components. So cool. How cool is that? Right? I mean, like, I mean, we could call it something else, maybe call it the the Triple Aware Enlightenment or something like we could have some fun name for it, but the idea would be the same principle, but we're using these three, these are our, this is our rubric, right? These are our three points that we're using to, you know, I don't know how we would measure joy unless it's the way we create um our survey for our target audience, right? Like does this project spark joy, right? Like does it, what's joy to you, maybe they have to start by interviewing them first to find out what brings them joy and then they make their product and then they share it again and say, does this, you know, kind of what aspects of this brings you joy. 00:28:24 So I think that it could easily be our rubric along with the technical end of things. Where are they using their skills to do such and such? And so, and so, but I think those three things could be our major driving force uh behind the whole, you know, they're using that as a context to learn these skills, right? And to put these skills into, into action, I love that. And I, and I'm thinking too, like you could even have a whole class or an activity within a class of students co creating the name, like, like you're saying, playing with the name of like, are we calling it a triple bottom line? Is it, you know, like, what is it? And each class kind of have their own kind of thing? That's right. That would be fun. Yeah. And I, and I love, love the idea of having surveys of the target audience to determine joy because it's like, right, joy is so there, it's so expensive, it's subjective. And so like you can't just determine like this class thinks it's joyful but someone else might not. Well, that's right. That's why you need an authentic, you know, authentic person to talk to, right? 00:29:26 Or authentic group of people um to talk to because some things might seem joyous to some people, but absolutely horrifying to others. And so I think that's where the, the, the deeper conversations could then start to occur. Right? And, and happen. So, yeah. Oh my gosh. So cool. So, I think the, the final kind of question around the unit I think is, is there some sort of like hook lesson that you would be interested in? Like having us kind of the lesson zero or, or whatever of, you know, how do we draw students into this question and grapple with this question? Like would you be doing the triple bottom line conversation first? Would you be looking at different packaging and just inviting questions? Like what would that first lesson look like? Um Yeah, I mean, I think either one of any of those things would work. I often um I'm a consumer but I'm also uh uh always learning and so anytime I get a package, I disassemble it a box that I think is interesting because I travel a lot and and a box in Japan and a box in Singapore are very different than a box in uh Wisconsin, right? 00:30:37 Like, I mean, the way that they they're assembled, the way that they're very thoughtfully created. So any time I have a new kind of package or has new ink or it has some really cool information on the back the best packages I've ever found or labels I've ever found have come from Australia where just the stuff that's on them is just so cool. Um, like they even tell where the honey was sourced from the bee and they all these different things. So I've always kept those things and I laminate them or I put them in my classroom as examples. And so often that's what I'll do is I'll pull out this box of this, of all the, this carton of all this stuff. And then we'll just have a discussion. And so I often ask him, where do you think this is from? And blah, blah, blah, and what was in it? And, and then we kind of have that's sort of the engaging, bringing in tuning in type thing. Um And then the next lesson is they're all challenged with bringing in uh interesting package of their own or label of their own, right? That they find and they have to kind of justify why that's an important package to them, right? 00:31:41 So some kids take it seriously and some don't, but it's a, it's free, you know, and everyone buys stuff, right? So it's a great way to bring stuff in. I love this idea because I think of the unit a typically as like a hook lesson then kind of like this, build the base is usually what I call it like a foundational concept that you're gonna explore. So maybe that's the what is the triple bottom line? And like what are the things we're looking at as we do this? But then I'm thinking even the packaging that the students are bringing in could inform like, I usually think of case studies as kind of the part three of the Americans like, OK, now we're looking at either the case studies could be the lens of a particular identity or criticality lens or a joyful lens or whatever. But it could also be like, let's look at these types of materials or this geography or company like let's look at their materials as a whole. That could be super cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's, that's a great idea. And um yeah, and then, and then we can go deeper, right? Like we can talk about this trifecta of the triple bottom line and then OK, I'm gonna introduce now, let's replace um profit with, you know, with this idea of identity, right? 00:32:48 And then let's replay. So then we can start talking about the moving pieces because then it's a great segue into, I like this idea of this, changing the triple bottom line to something else and calling it something else, you know, like the, I don't know, the, the, the Trinity, I love it, the inclusion Trinity. I guess this would be so cool to like, I think it's like you do the project at the end. It could definitely be, you know, like the audience is the community. But it could also be very, I think valuable for many companies to just think differently. Even someone who's already using the traditional triple bottom line to think a little bit differently about what specifically like, have we considered joy at all? Like maybe that isn't something, you know, or maybe we're very focused on specific identities but not other identities because like the the human idea, right could be like we are helping the community that we're locally in, but maybe we're not helping another community that is adjacent or our employees are kind of overlooked. 00:33:50 So I think that would be really interesting. I, I doubt people are thinking about the texture for, for students who, you know, don't like the sticky material or something, right? Like you, you were saying, I, no one, I very few people I think are probably thinking about that. So that's so valuable to bring that perspective. Right. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. And I think, you know, even surveying our own students on what brings them joy and then moving out to, you know, because age and, and place and time change, what people find joy in and fulfillment in. And so I think it would be interesting to hear what an 11 year old thinks versus what a 41 year old to think, right, about what joy brings and things like that. And so I think um that's another aspect, another element of, you know, the generational, you know, all these different ageism, of all the stuff. Um So I, I think there's a whole lot of different ways we can approach that. Um And it's, I mean, really, it's, I don't mean basic, but it's kind of a basic concept of, I've been doing a project similar to this for many, many, many years. 00:34:53 Uh It used to be a toothpaste box and then it was this or then it was that, um, and, and I've opened it up year after year because I, I want to see different things, right? I wanna see what people are um are what the students are coming up and they always surprise me, right? They always come up with some fantastic stuff. So I think they would be open to looking at how does this connect to joy? How does this connect to me being? And I know they think about sustainability from environmental because that's what we always connect it with. But is the workforce that's producing this ink? Is that sustainable? What they're doing? Right? Like is, is, is their work their, their, their work power being sustained. Um Is the delivery guy who's bringing it there on his gas powered scooter, you know, is that, is that sustainable? Right. So, or, or they're running red lights? I mean, he's risking his life to get that there by a certain time, right. So there's so many different elements that we could, we could dig into. Yes. Oh my gosh. 00:35:54 I was thinking the same idea of the delivery at front like Amazon, right is like their workers and employees have been very vocal about like the working conditions and the pressures of delivering on this particular time frame. And so I think that would be so I'm just thinking as a, as a consumer, right? II I have continued to use Amazon because it is helpful to me. But thinking about that if that was a little bit more, um, a parent and like I unbox this, you know, thing and I look at and it's like, oh, like this was delivered through Amazon which, you know, costs this person this, yeah, like it would be very in your face. Right. So even if I, as a person who knows about it, if it was confronted with me every time that I opened a box, right? Or something, then I'm, I'm maybe making some different choices. So I, I, that's really interesting to think about. Wow. And that, that could be part of their second life of their package is on the inside. It gives the real story of this package. You know what I mean? Like, where did this come from? I mean, and I don't want to get into the, you know, some of the political stuff but in, in Asian countries, um, um, when you buy cigarettes, there's pictures of bad lungs on the front, right? 00:37:05 Like it's, it's really disgusting and so it's the idea being that every time you buy that you're going to have to look at that. You know, it's very deliberate that they've done that. And so, um, it's just another, I just thought about that when you said that. I mean, how cool would it be if, when you open the package that said Amazon on the inside, it had the road map of where it all came from, right? Like, I mean, that the journey it took and how much it cost each person and what it cost each person would be really interesting. Um So for older students, particularly they could even get into debates um about using palm oil or doing whatever, you know, depending on the particular situation. So yeah, there's a lot of different ways we could go. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I could talk all day about this. This is, this is great. Um I think as a, as a kind of like a closing just to be mindful of time here. Absolutely. I'm curious to know like the about the process that we just went through, like, what does this feel like in terms of like uh uh or what currently? 00:38:08 How are you feeling kind of after we've gone, gone through this process? Like, did it feel super messy? Are you feeling a particular kind of um this is, this is where this is where I would change or do this differently or could we use in the future, you know? I'm just curious to know what that felt like. Yeah. No, no, I, I think having a, a person to, to just kind of talk things out with is really, really helpful. Um because in the past I would have just stopped at making the package and having a really basic low level um objective with, OK, it has to give this information on it and it has to fit together and it would be very logistical and very technical with that kind of stuff. Um I like the idea of having a, a very different dimension. Um and it might be obviously we're gonna have some students who are able to barely manage to complete it and then others who might have that extension. And I think for them that might be what this is, is this is where we go into more of the extended exercises for some of them where they can because we do, we do, at least in my context, we have a lot of students who are very outwardly thinking, they're honestly thinking about how is this going to affect the people around me and that kind of thing. 00:39:22 So I do think for those particular students who are very empathetic and have a high level of emotional intelligence for a 12 year old, right? Um I think this would be really great as a way to extend it. I do worry about, I do have some quite uh serious neuro diverse students and So for them completing the package and having it put together would be successful for them. But the the others would be a lot, a lot, you know, better to extend that. So that's kind of what my thinking is. Yeah, that's a really good point. And I almost wonder too if like the nerd divert students who may have some challenges there could like we just really leverage that lens of like your expertise is incredibly valuable in just how you exist in the world and how you perceive things. So like, maybe we lean into that, like you're gonna be interviewed a lot and, and maybe you are um communicating to the rest of your class via writing or presentations or whatever skill could be like kind of a helpful skill builder there. Um To just say like this is a strength and sometimes we can just play into strengths as opposed to like constantly growing. 00:40:24 I mean, like we're growing our strengths but constantly growing our deficits, right? Which I think is as an educator is something I'm always thinking about. So that's super interesting. Yeah. And it, it seems to be too like because it's I wanted this to be valuable hopefully for you and a conversation about something that you've already done this project for so many years, you know, like so so often it's, it seems to me just reflecting back because this is a super selfish part of the interview where I'm like, I just want to know what seems helpful so that I can help more people. So it seems like the identity criticality and joy piece really helped kind of take the project to that next place. Is that right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Ok. Yeah, Doctor Mohammed's work is amazing. Uh Yeah, absolutely. I love the idea of maybe putting that into the exchanging portions or the whole thing for that triple bottom line. I think that would be really, really useful for lots of different reasons. Awesome. OK. Awesome. Thank you. So I want people to be able to find your podcast because you have a podcast as well and, and all the, so do you want to share with people how they can get in touch with you or listen to your show? 00:41:27 Yeah, I mean, the, the easiest way is to just connect with me on Twitter. Um and I can hope can give you that information, you can put it in the show notes. Uh But yeah, connecting with me on Twitter. It's got all the connection stuff there on my profile um on my bio page or whatever. And so, yeah, absolutely. That would be the best way to do it. And then I always put um links to my, my shows on my Twitter profile first um on my feed. So that would be the best way to go. Perfect Jason, thank you so much for being game to do this. I think it was a beautiful. It was a great conversation. Thank you. If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my life, coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We weave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. 00:42:31 If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at www dot Lindsay beth lions dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think. Big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better podcast network, better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I create my own unit plan with music:
7/10/2023 123. Unit Dreaming: A Family-Designed Unit (ELA, Music, PE) with Elizabeth and Nancy JorgensenRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
Nancy and Elizabeth Jorgensen are a mother and daughter duo, both teachers and writers. They even worked in the same building for a few years! In this episode, we apply a step-by-step unit planning protocol to dream up a new unit!
Unit Planning Step 1: Context/Spark Nancy and Elizabeth co-wrote a book about their family member, Gwen Jorgensen, who is an Olympic athlete and the winningest woman in the history of the triathlon. Unit Planning Step 2: Pursuits (from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model) Identity: How will our unit help students to learn something about themselves and/or about others? What does it look like to be your best! Tár is a movie about the first female chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Criticality: How will our unit engage students’ thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? Not many middle-grade books and stories about female athletes out there. Title IX. Structures of access. Representation across intersectional identities. Joy*: How will my unit enable, amplify, and spread joy? [Joy is: beauty, aesthetics, truth, ease, wonder, wellness, solutions to the problems of the world, personal fulfillment, art, music .] Stories of joy and success and working through or bouncing back from the ache of not achieving success the first time. Student-curated resources (what brings them joy!) Unit Planning Step 3: Driving Question What environmental indicators enable us to be our best? Supporting Question: Who and what do I need? Unit Planning Step 4: Summative Project (Publishing Opportunity and Possible Formats) Students write letters to be published in a literary journal OR perform a live artistic/musical piece! Students can discuss what necessary components should be included in selections. Letter Examples:
Unit Planning Step 5: Lesson-Level Texts Ideas Rich Roll’s podcast and YouTube series Alexi Pappas’s book Bravey Student-curated resources (e.g., newsletters, music scores) Stay Connected You can find Elizabeth on www.lizjorgensen.weebly.com or email her at [email protected]. You can find Nancy on www.nancyjorgensen.weebly.com or email her at [email protected]. They are both on Twitter @LyzaJo and @NancyJorgensen More Links:
To help you implement a unit like this, Nancy and Elizabeth are sharing their educator guide with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 123 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT Today I have on a mother daughter duo for our unit dreaming episode. So let me tell you about them. Nancy Jorgenson is a Wisconsin teacher, writer and musician. Her most recent book, a middle grade young adult sports biography was released in October 2022. Gwen Jorgenson, U SAS first Olympic gold medal triathlete. Nancy is also an essayist writing about music equality, family, aging and education. Her work appears in Ruminate Prime Number magazine, River Teeth, Wisconsin Public Radio, Cheap Pop and elsewhere. Elizabeth Jorgenson was named one of America's most inspiring educators. The Henry Ford's Innovator Awards. She co-wrote Gwen Jorgensen us A's first Olympic gold medal triathlete with her mom, Nancy Elizabeth, also released two education books in 2022 hacking student learning habits at times 10 publications and Cjo Korea's poetry form. Let's get to this episode. We brainstorm our unit inspired by the book they co-wrote about their daughter and sister respectively. Mhm I'm educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula, grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. 00:01:16 I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerd out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Elizabeth and Nancy. Welcome to the Time for Teacher Ship Podcast. Thank you for having us. Nice to be here. So excited that you're here. Do you want to start us off by sharing? And now this is one of our fun new like unit brainstorm episodes. So there is kind of an impetus or a context for what we're talking about today, right? And then we're gonna develop from there. Can you just share with listeners? You know what that context is, why we're talking about what we're going to be talking about today? Go ahead. Sure. I am a high school English teacher and I've taught basically writing classes for the past 18 years. Um And my mom and I actually had the wonderful fortune of teaching in the same building together. 00:02:20 Um Mom, talk about your role. Sure. I, I've been a choir director for over 25 years. I'm now retired, but I taught um oh, huge program of about 400 kids. And Elizabeth says we were in the same building for a while and shared some of the same students um and shared lunch together many days, especially when I forgot my lunch money. I was always down there trying to get you to buy me lunch. Right. Um And so my sister, she's Gwen Jorgensen and she actually won the gold medal in the Rio Olympics in the Triathlon. And Gwen is really passionate about giving back to young people. She's done some volunteering at different clubs and organizations. Um She also has a scholarship fund for young triathletes. And so Gwen, knowing that mom and I are teachers and knowing that we're writers, she came to us with an idea for a book. Um that would be for middle or young adult readers where they could learn about Gwen's story. 00:03:28 How did she go from average Wisconsin accountant and Wisconsin girl to world and Olympic champion to the winningest woman in the history of the sport. Um And so she came to us and we, we put together this book which is out now. And so that's, that's the impetus I think for our conversation today. That is so, so cool and awesome that this is like a true family like venture. This is very cool. My mom is also a teacher. So now I'm like, oh, what can we do together mom? Yes, it's, it's great. Right? Because I mean, she's gone before me. She's seen so many things happen. Um She has great ideas that then have bled into my classroom and then even into the book like it's, it's so many educators come from families of educators and this is just one of those examples. Super cool. So if we want to just dive into this unit design, if, if we could just start with, I think I love Doctor Goldie Mohammed's Hill framework. And so she talks about five pursuits. I like to focus on three because I think we always focus on like the skills and the content. That's just kind of what we do naturally as educators. 00:04:31 But typically, we don't as much focus on the pieces like I criticality and joy. And I think the more practice that listeners and and educators more broadly can get thinking and hearing people go through the thinking around this. Um it'll be really beneficial for teachers and for students. So thinking about what you want students to learn or pursue in this kind of dream unit, we have grounded in this context. Um What would those pieces be specifically around those areas of identity, criticality and joy? What comes to mind? I think we were talking Elizabeth and I about this. And um you know, one of Gwen's big things is discovering her best. She takes on a project and she wants to know what she's got inside of her, you know, what is, what is her potential and how to discover that. And um you know, there, I'm sure there are many ways to do that, but we want our kids to find out what's inside and, and to explore that and that could be used in any curricular area. I teach juniors and seniors creative writing. 00:05:33 What is, how can they produce the best possible writing that they can produce? It could be in your, your choir class? Right. How can I act to my full potential or tone or whatever those content areas are? What does that look like? How can we perform our, our best? Hm, I love that. And so I think that it connects to the joy sense for sure, because there's kind of this element of joy in accomplishing being striving for even like the journey to becoming our best or kind of testing what our best is. Um, I'm also curious, I was just thinking too from the perspective of like female athletes, like being a female athlete myself, not in, in any regard, like to that at that level, but like a high school player. Um, you know, that was really like a piece of my ident that was like important, but I also didn't see a ton of really powerful role models, right? We don't see women's sports televised often on, on TV, right? Like we see major league baseball, we never see softball. I mean, rarely do we see it like. So I'm just thinking too about the identity piece from the perspective of a unit that maybe looks at some of these models of what does it look like to be your best and who pursues their best. 00:06:38 Um I'm, I'm thinking your sister would be a great, and this book would be a great text to include, right? And this, and it's his sister because I'm looking at Elizabeth's screen, but sister and daughter. Right? And so, um I'm wondering what other people that you've thought about? That could be nice pairings with um your sister's story, your, your daughter's story thinking about um what you would want students to kind of explore as, as perhaps models or examples of this. We, when we were writing this, we looked for comps, like what other middle grade or young adult books are out there about female athletes and there aren't, as you mentioned very many and you know, that that does make us think about equity and who is being shown and what mentor techs are out there and how can we balance and provide both female stories and male stories? Yeah, I was even thinking um so I taught a literacy course at high school uh at the high school level also and it was kind of under the guise of I was I called it a feminism course, but the, the credit was for literacy or el A and so I was even thinking of like, um you know, even beyond sports thinking about uh like comedians, female comedians that are so many really good memoir books from like Mindy Kaling or I'm, I'm just thinking of like all these people who have Ali Wong, who have written about like the journey of motherhood and women in comedy and you know, whatever it is, like, there are so many spaces that uh women are succeeding and just underrepresented in the literature and in the writing. 00:08:08 Um I'm also thinking from a perspective of like um civil rights activists and sports and like how those pieces come together. And so I know you're talking about your sister being really passionate, right about like giving back. And so like, who else gives back? And in what ways could we give back? And what does that look like to use your platform for good and, and, and that kind of thing? Um So I, I think there's so many possibilities there on the identity piece, I'll pause here and see if you have anything else. Well, and the great thing too is we have such access to what those at least current athletes are doing because so many of them post on their social media challenge channels and we can hop on their Instagram or their youtube and see what, how are they giving back? What does their process look like? So many of these people? You know, I'm thinking too, she's this youtube channel where she follows her journey and you can see races where she just implodes and then she talks about how does she come back after that? What team is surrounding her, helping her? What processes does she have in place. I'm also thinking about in the fine arts, the um one of the academy award nominated films tar is about a woman conductor and you know, in that field of professional orchestra conductors, women are rare. 00:09:19 Um We had one in Milwaukee, Joanne Fleta who is actually mentioned in that movie Tar. But you know that that's another um another area to explore and it doesn't always have to be with books, you know, it, it could be with a movie like this. I love what you're both suggesting around text, I always say text and then, I mean, usually like anything you can read in the sense of like you could read the world, you could read like a piece of, of music, right? So I love that the text is broad, it could be social media accounts, it could be videos, it could be documentaries or, or movies. So I love this idea and I think we got a little bit at the criticality piece as well and just our conversation of, right, like thinking about who is underrepresented, is there anything else that you would want students to focus on throughout a unit like this when we think about kind of that power dynamic or that representation dynamic of these stories. Um You know, I've been, I've been thinking about title nine because I graduated from high school in 1972 the year that that that passed. And so much has changed when you when I compare myself to my daughters. Um, and I think that that's still evolving, you know, we think of title nine as well. 00:10:25 That was 1972. But II, I think we're still fighting to make that a reality and, you know, to explore how that happens and, um, and what we can do to make it happen. Yeah, absolutely. I was recently at, um, so I'm in Massachusetts and I went to a um Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. I think it's the acronym. Um and there was a panel of LGBT Q athletes as well who were talking about like being a trans athlete is incredibly challenging when we have athletics and sports teams in high schools being this is the female team and this is the male team and you know, like am I am I going to be accepted for who I am and that kind of thing too. So there's, there's so many pieces that play into how title nine is even applied and who it applies to and how does someone figure out back to that identity? Enjoy peace, right? How do I pursue my best in this context, aligned to who I truly am? And what's the context that it allows me to like do that or not do that and the power dynamics involved. So there's so much with Title nine. Yeah, that you could do there. 00:11:28 Wow, this, this would be such a cool unit. I hope someone actually like takes this and implements this. Um So now thinking about the driving question for this unit, I love a good question that kind of frames everything that a student is doing. It's like, I often coach, uh coaches or administrators who come in and are like doing the observations and you know, we often ask things like what is a student, um what asking a student, like, why, why are you learning this? Right? And asking a student to be able to come up with that answer? And so my thought is if you have a good enough question, then answering that question is the answer, right? The question is embedded in the daily reality. If you can answer that question, it radically improves your life or your community or something like that's kind of embedded. And every single lesson is to that question. So there's never like, oh how does this lesson today make sense? It's like, oh, it makes sense because we're answering the question, the question is relevant because the question is totally about life, right? And so I think this is a really big lift to create a question that does all of those things. But I think it's really exciting to kind of play with and and think about um any thoughts on what that question might be, that kind of does all the things and we can kind of brainstorm together, we can kind of throw out several ideas. 00:12:39 What are your thoughts on this. Hey, everybody. It's Lindsey popping in to tell you about today's freebie Nancy and Elizabeth are sharing their educator guide to the book they co-wrote about Gwen and you can grab it at Lindsey Beth lions dot com slash blog slash 123. Let's get back to the episode. I think we were, we were kind of talking about this a little bit yesterday. I think it's something along the line of what is my best. How can I discover it and how can I bring it to fruition or something along that line? Right? How will I know or what are indicators or what process can I outline that will allow me to perform at my best? Something like that if you want, wanna lead the, the question discussion that way? Yeah. Oh my gosh. OK. So I love it and I love specifically I, you have probably seen like my um driving question like frames that I, that I list sometimes for like, what I, what I think it could look like a question and I love like the, what's the formula questions? So I always talk about, there's um someone talks about, I can't remember from PB L works. 00:13:44 Maybe John Larmer talks about like, what is a good driving question? And he gives the example of like, um you know, who's the best basketball player of all time as like this really engaging question, right? Or who's the best athlete of all time? And so I kind of wanted to add that layer in the formula piece of like, yeah, what is that formula? And so that's a good example for me is like you could talk about, I mean, I'm more of like a basketball person. I I am a distance runner but I am not really good in the triathletes space. So forgive me for not having a lot of the language there. But I think um you know, basketball wise, you could talk about points, rebounds, assists, right? All these stats that we typically refer to when we're talking about like the best. But like, what about if that person is just not a great person, like not a great human being in their communities and is like harmful to their communities, right? Like, are they still like the best athlete of all time? Right? Like does that matter? And it's such an interesting discussion to have, right, with students who are just as people, right? To be like, what does it mean to be the best? Um So I love this idea of indicators, like, what's that indicator of the best? 00:14:47 Is it something that you define for yourself? Is it something externally defined? If? So what is that list? Can we co create that? And I'm I'm always thinking how the driving question leads into, you know, a project, like what students actually produce at the end? Is that something that students could, you know, like produce that checklist? Or indicator list. But I also love the idea of a process, like maybe the indicators are shared that something we core as the class by the end of the unit. But also like the process might be really unique and different. So again, is that like indicators of the process, you have to go through certain phases, but it could look different. I mean, I'm just kind of like brainstorming here, not on versions of the question, but I just like what happens in the class with that question? I want to kind of throw it back to you guys to think about like what that sounds like. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm thinking in order to perform my best, what do I need? I need to be hydrated. I need to be well rested. I need to be in a clear mind space, you know, like all of those kinds of things you could discuss. What environment do we need or which environments help us perform at our best. 00:15:54 I also think along with what do I need? Who do I need? Um, because Gwen just did not do this alone. And the first thing that she will credit are the people on her team, you know, the coaches, the nutritionists, um, the massage therapists, her husband, um, us, her family, her fans, you know, nobody does anything alone. And so who are those people that you can add to your team to make you better? I absolutely love that. I, there is a quote out there from some, um, uh, I think he was like a, a movie star or a TV star or something and he got into really good shape and everyone was commenting, like, wow, you got into really good shape really fast and he was like, oh, anyone can do this if you have and then it was like a list of all the things which he included as well, like lots of money and resources and you know, like to be able to take the time to do this full time or something, you know, like there were so many layers to what he was speaking to, to what you guys are saying with not just like the who but also the environmental context of, you know, whatever this is. So I, I love this balance of like the individual stuff that you're doing your community space in terms of the people around you and what they offer you and how you work within that. 00:17:05 And then also those structural pieces I'm thinking of bringing in that layer of criticality and you know, women, for example, we've talked a lot about women, but like from a gender perspective, right? Like, aren't often given access to those structural pieces as often. And so how do we do that better? We talked about title nine. So I think there's so many pieces that would just make this conversation really rich. Um If we were having this discussion. So I love that idea. Um So language wise, I think we threw out a couple of examples. I think you had an initial one. That still sounds good to me. But what do, what do we want to land on for the, the language of that driving question? If you had one you liked? Let's do it. I think. What, what was the one that you shared at first? I really liked that initial, I don't know what to do. Rewind. Can we do? Can we like drop in a replay on reality TV? You know, they like flash back five minutes ago. I was just said, I think it was what are the indicators? But I also, so um I like the indicators. I also like you talked about indicators and processes at first that I had written down. But I also like, what are, what is the environment that I need to be my best? 00:18:08 And who do I need to be my best? I don't know if the who is embedded in the environment and, and we just talk about that and break that down as a class in terms of deconstructing the question or it's like what environment? But II I love this idea of the environment because then um this next question, it leads to like, what is the project like? What are, what are students doing with that? So they're looking at these different um stories, they're looking at you know, um Tar, right, that film, they're looking at Gwen's story in the book that you wrote, like, they're looking at all of these pieces they're thinking about their own lives and they're thinking about this environment question. But then they also have, I typically think about a final project that like does something for the community. Like I i it's like a uh taking action kind of to pursue justice in your community or something. So I'm almost envisioning something that also connects back to like the class community or the school community or the athletic community in your district directors, you know, like what ways we could have students kind of take action to better support like everyone to be their best in those spaces. 00:19:11 Um I'm rambling a bit. What do you all think? What were you thinking for the project? A huge part of the book is Letters Gwen writes letters to her former self, um things she would have wished she would have heard as a little girl or, you know, an adolescent. Um And then she also writes letters to the reader and she encourages the reader to write back to her. And we also have a educator guide to accompany the book with all of these lesson plan ideas that are tied to the standards. Um And so there's, I think a lot of possibilities within letter writing alone. Um I'm thinking kids could write a letter to themselves and I've done this so I teach high school seniors primarily and most of them are college bound. And so I tell them you're going to write a letter to yourself and I'm gonna hold on to it for four years. So it's theoretically your high school. See yourself right into your college. See yourself. And then I mail them in four years and then the kids get them and I just, I just mailed out the, the first semester one from four years ago. 00:20:13 Um And so now I'm seeing on like Facebook, all of these kids commenting on how cool it was to receive this letter and to see what they had hoped they would achieve in the next four years, I think that that's, you know, there's a possibility there. And then I'm also thinking of another assignment that I've done on advocacy letters where kids find a problem in our community and then they write a letter to a person who has some control over that and then they ask for the change that they want. Um, one simple example at school, kids were complaining about parking. We have this thing called FSL Flexible Schedule option where some seniors can come late. And so the seniors who were coming late were find that there were no parking spots by the time that they got here or if there were parking spots, they were way at the back. And so kids wrote advocacy letters saying, can you make special spots just for the FSO kids and the school did it like they worked. And so, you know, just this idea of our voice matters and if we can present our best selves in, in these letters, the change is possible um within our community. 00:21:18 Now I'm rambling a bit. I'm also, I'm also thinking Elizabeth of your project to put together a literary journal where you give a, you know, you give an assignment and then everybody writes and then I think what you've done is included all of them in the journal which puts some pressure on, on each writer to give their very best. But, you know, I it, it could also be, um, modeled more after a professional literary magazine where people submit and not everything is accepted. And then you'd have to go through the thinking process of who do we accept and why do we accept it and you know, what are the guidelines and make sure that it's not heavy on, you know, just the men or just the women or, um, there's just lots of considerations when you have to put together a professional type publication like that. I love that. And then having the kids decide which ones are best, which ones are worthy of publication and why? Which ones make your heart ache? Which ones do you wanna like that? That could be a really rich discussion. Oh, my gosh. Yes. 00:22:20 And thinking about the identity and criticality and joy pieces again. There, right? Like do we have all aspects? Right. So that could be part of the checklist for the students to be able to say like, well, we don't have representation from this particular identity group or something or, or we we want to include a little bit more of this identity group because we historically have not heard a lot or this brings me joy, right? We have the ache in the heart, but then we also have the joy in the heart and then we want to balance that and like, oh, this would be so cool. I love this idea. And the, the journals that I've done in the past, I've been able to find some funding or get some donations and the the kids, they just treasure them. Um You know, that they hold on to them and it's almost like their yearbook of creativity or I remember when I was in that class, look at this artifact that we have from that time together. So cool. And then you could do it at, if you had year to year, right? You could look at the previous years and then like have those as mentor attacks. I'm sorry, Nancy, I cut you off. Oh, that's OK. I was just gonna say I, I was thinking when I was teaching, I did something sort of similar. Um I was, I had a, a music theater troupe kind of the, an elite group and we did a project it was called Music Theater nights where the kids became, they did the whole thing. 00:23:30 They were the directors, they were the choreographers. And it was again that submission process where a wannabe director had to submit their idea for a song and who their cast would be and what the, what the message of the song would be and um their, just their vision and then a committee would screen it and kind of the same things that we were talking about in the literary magazine they would do for this musical production. And it's just, you know, I think it's, it's applicable to a lot of different content areas and the authentic purposes there, right? The, the magazine, it's this artifact and then the performance, the parents came, they bought tickets like you have to be ready on this day to share your joy, to share your best self with the community. Oh my gosh, I love it. And because they always been thinking about what is the authentic audience or like the the publishing opportunity, sometimes they call it even though it's not like publishing as in a literary journal per se, but that's a great example. And then also there's the publishing that's like live. So I'm just imagining there are some students who thrive in like the writing space and they do want to submit and then they want to be done. 00:24:35 They don't want to read it out loud or they just want it to exist and people read it on their own time. And then there are people who are like, I don't, I don't like writing, right? I am like I am a performer, I am an artist. I want my art to be seen live. Um And, and, and then both people have spaces or both, both kind of types of artists I should say have spaces to perform in their own space. Um So I love that there is kind of choice in that as well. So if you don't make it into the literary journal, you have this other space or maybe you don't even submit to the literary journal because you do have this other space or something. I'm trying to think of like including all of the students that's beautiful to have those different types and you would have kids too who would work on the lighting or who would work on the costume design. Like there's these backstage pieces for kids who like you're saying they don't want that spotlight, but everyone has a role even if those roles look vastly different, right? And none, none of those more important than the other. Really, the people out on stage could not live without someone running the lights and the sound. 00:25:38 So all equally important. Yeah, that's such an important point. I think sometimes when we think about, oh, we're just creating rules to create the roles, you know. So everyone has one, then there is kind of this hierarchy in our minds of like what is more important. But you're absolutely right. If you don't have the lights, like no one's gonna see the show. So it is again that conversation about how do we enable everyone to be our best? It really transcends through the content, but also how these projects are being lived out and what it looks like as a class community to talk about all of those pieces. I in, in that as an as an example of just like the roles that we all take on for the performance. Oh My gosh, so cool. I think I'm realizing we're close to the 30 minute mark. So I'll move us to the next question. So we're thinking about like what this actually looks like in terms of the activities, we talked a little about the end pieces. What does this look like in terms of like, how would you start this unit? What are some maybe activities or I call them protocols? But like, I often think about like circle or a gallery walk of text or you know, those like teacher kind of activities that we do. 00:26:42 Um What are some of those that you think have been really successful or would be really successful in a unit like this? You know, when I did this kind of a unit um tradition played a huge part in, in the present year production and um the kids knew the history of what had gone before them and they were extremely motivated to live up to the quality of the kids who had preceded them and in whatever projects had gone on before them. Um, and because they, the, the group I had were juniors and seniors primarily. And so they had spent, I inquire, they spent four years in the, you know, in my program. And so they knew the history and they had looked forward to it. And um, I, I really think to make the, to make the quality, uh a primary part of it and to insist that, you know, it's, it really is a professional quality, um, project is motivating for kids and stirs up ideas. 00:27:46 I'm also thinking when I do these publishing opportunities with my students, the first thing that I do is I check, we have a list at our school of all the parents who don't want their students likeness or name out of our school walls. And so I start there and if I do see a student whose parents says, no, I reach out to them and I say, here's what we're doing. I just want to make sure that you don't want your student to participate. And when I do that every single time the parent says, yes, we want our kids to participate. And so, you know, just making sure that you have all your I's dotted and t crossed, you know, just checking all of those things and then having conversations with the students about why, why is it cool to share our words with the world? Why will this publication or presentation or performance make a difference? Oh my gosh. Yes. I I'm thinking for the first the quality Nancy that you mentioned, I think, you know, having a um you co created rubric or something, not rubric sounds very stifling but you know, like a co created like list of quality indicators or something, right? Um Having I used to do like peer, I used to call it peer review, like as if you were submitting for a journal and people were peer reviewing um where you would do your performance or you would do like submit your piece or something. 00:28:57 And then literally, you would have a team of people right in front of you. We're like, we're going to review this and then they would like give you live feedback on the rubric or on the indicator list um as like a specific protocol that people could do, like you could do that weekly for each draft of the project or, you know, whatever. Um And I and I Elizabeth to your point, I am one of those parents in my child's day care right now. That's like, I I'd rather not like have his face used for promotional reasons, but if he was doing an activism project or something like this, like you're making your community better, like, yes, please do that, go write that letter, such a good point. Yeah. And you know, you just, you don't want to get yourself in trouble and you don't wanna do something against the parents' wishes. And so just that little bit of leg work at the beginning can save you a whole lot of stress later on. Uh and not like in um unintentionally exclude someone, right? Like, like you were saying for it just a kind of an alignment. And so that that family as partner piece, I think that you're mentioning is huge. And also sometimes parents will tell us or our family members or caretakers will tell us these publishing opportunities that may exist in different spaces. So they may bring in like, well, actually there's this community event that like we're going to choose a few students to perform here, like let's let's extend this and expand this project, which is something that, you know, as an individual teacher, you, you only know so much and so many resources that you're connected to as one person when you involve 3400 students, you know, however many it is like and their families, then you have that network that really expands outward and the possibilities just grow, which is super cool. 00:30:22 And they do, I've had the same thing happen and I've reached out to parents and then that snowballed into their, that parents idea, which is snowballed into another project. It's really cool. And then you feel like you're part of a team, you know, teaching can be so isolating and then to have all these people who are supporting you and giving you ideas even what we're doing today. Right. I'm like, my mind is just blowing up. Oh, my gosh, I can do this and I can do this and I can do this. Yeah. Absolutely. I think this kind of like co creation process. Unfortunately, as teachers, we often aren't given the time and space to do this. And if it is, if we are given that it's like summer break and it's unpaid, you know, or something, so I think being able to create those spaces that could be a whole other podcast but is so critical. Um And I think the last question I was going to ask in terms of the unit design process, we kind of, I've already touched on, but I wanna just surface it again in case you had additional things you wanted to say, we talked briefly about like the texts or the resources that we would be able to highlight. So we talked a little bit about the um you know, the book, the book you wrote about Gwen, we talked about Tar as a film, we talked about some, some different examples. Anything else that you would share if someone was to go teach this unit about a resource that they could use or a text they could write. 00:31:28 I don't know if you know Rich Ro No uh he's got a great podcast. Um and he actually wrote the foreword to the book and it aligns really nicely with what we're talking about today. Rich Ro's message does. Um And so he would be a person that I would recommend people talk about, you know, there's um his podcast also has video and so you can see him engaging with the conversations and I'm thinking of one conversation in particular he had with Alexi Papa. Do you know her? She's got a great book out called Bray. That would be really appropriate for high school readers. Um And so that might also be, you know, Ritual Lexi Papa coming together, you know, that, that's another option. I'm also thinking when I was teaching choir, um my kids were my greatest resource because they were just really into Broadway and they knew all the latest shows that were about to be mounted and the ones that had just closed and the ones that won awards and they knew all the resources, they knew where to follow these things, you know, what were the newsletters and the podcasts and the um just the websites where they would, where they would go for information. 00:32:39 Um One kid, I, one time he gave me this whole library of music scores on a disc. In the days we had discs, but hundreds of musicals and I had the piano conductor score for all of them. Um I don't think it was legal but, but I'm just saying when your kids are into something, they know where to go to find some of these resources that is brilliant and they're gonna have heroes and, and, and um mentors and these stories that, that like we have never heard of. It's such a good point. I'm just thinking about my, my teaching experience the last four years I taught was to students who were new to the country. So they span like their countries of origin were about 50 different countries. And so it was like, I don't know all of the people that you would be connected to and the the the the, you know, um mentors and you know, people who are in all of these different fields we've talked about today in 50 different countries. So you are the experts, you're gonna have to bring those in um and share with us and we can, we can center that. So I'm almost imagining um one of the protocols I use is usually like a gallery walk or, or jigsaw around like a case study. 00:33:45 And so sometimes I tell the students the case study, for example, it might be Gwen's story, it might be uh the story of the they conduct their right. These are like cases of someone at their best. It could also be that the students co create the case study list or they find a case of their own in their original research. So I think this would be super cool to be able to just throw it back to students and say like you, you can choose one, right? Like you, you bring in the next one and you get to see their joy then you know, then they bring in the things that they really truly are passionate about and love. Absolutely. Right. Oh my gosh. OK, cool. So we're, we're wrapping up the 30 minutes here a little over, sorry about that. Um But as we think about, you know, the, the I, I like to just do a quick reflection, like the process, the conversation that we just had, like, what, what we kind of went through? How does it feel? How do you hope that the, the topic and the process of, of, of all of the things we just did will enable educators to feel that joy, feel um that fulfillment um to be able to put this into action. Um So how are you feeling in this moment about all of those pieces? I'm just feeling like I want to take all of this and like, do something with it. 00:34:50 I'm even, I'm my, my brain like literally cannot stop brainstorming ideas, thinking of um one time the band director did a Korean piece of music and my students were learning Korean poetry. And so then he had me come in and teach his band students this Korean form of form of poetry and then they put the poems into the program. So that, then as the parents were listening to the Korean song, then they could read this Korean poetry and I was just like it authentic purpose. The kids got to, you know, just publication all of that. I just, that's my reflection is my brain will not shut off. I just keep thinking of all of these ideas. And then didn't, didn't one of the students who wrote one of those poems win a contest with it. They did, they won a national shi competition with the poem. Oh My God. That's so impressive. Wow. Yeah, I, you know, I think any time you can sit down with a colleague like this and just say, here's an idea I have, let's walk through it together. The time is so well spent. It's just you, you learn so much. And I think, you know, this whole idea of collaboration, which you mentioned a little bit before is just so important. 00:35:59 And when um in my career, I always had a team teacher just because our groups were so huge. You know, we had choirs of 100 and 25 all in the room at the same time. And, and so I always worked with someone and in writing this book, you know, it was Elizabeth and Gwen and me all writing together and this session right now, you know, the three of us collaborating, I just think um so many times we're in our little lane with with very, very little opportunity to collaborate and it, it feels good to do it. Absolutely. Oh my gosh, I love that as kind of like an ending piece for people to reflect on. I do know that people are going to want to read the book that you wrote to follow you to learn more about one story and the work that you all do. So where can people find you or connect with you, Elizabeth? You do this? Great. OK. In the show notes, you'll see links to copies of the book. We also have signed copies available at one of our local bookstores, books and company in Ocon Wisconsin, but they ship, you know, nationwide. And so we always encourage people to buy local or check it out at your local library. 00:37:04 Um We're on social media. We each have websites which will also be in the show notes, but my website is Liz Jorgenson dot weebly dot com and on Twitter, I'm at Liza Joe LYZ AJ O, I'm very active on there. And so if anyone has questions, um just shoot us messages either via social media or our websites. And then the same with, we were mentioning those letters in the book, Gwen writes letters to the reader and she encourages them to write back. And so if you have kids who want to write to her, all they need to do is find her on Instagram and put their letter into her DM. And she's going to do her best to get back to those kids. Uh mom say your website and your social media. Oh, yeah, Nancy Jorgenson dot weebly dot com. And I'm at Nancy Jorgenson on Twitter and Nance Joe on Instagram. And I don't know if like you said it so fast. Elizabeth, I can't remember if you mentioned, but our teacher guide is free and that will also be included in the show notes and it's got, you know, content standards, all aligned with the activities and anybody who wants it is welcome to have it beautiful. 00:38:08 Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for sharing all those beautiful resources and I'm sure listeners are gonna be very excited to connect with you and get all that free stuff. Thank you both so, so much for being on today. It was really inspirational to brainstorm with you. It was a joy. Thank you. Thank you so much. If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my life coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We weave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff. I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at www dot Lindsay beth lions dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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Phil Januszewski is a tattoo-covered, Netflix baking-show flopping, motivational speaking high school chemistry and physics teacher with a master's degree in teaching leadership. His mission is to bring happiness to others through education, motivation, and entertainment.
In this episode, we go in a totally unexpected direction weaving two content areas together as we apply our step-by-step unit planning protocol. It’s a wonderful example of the messiness of the unit design process! Unit Planning Step 1: Context/Spark NGSS Standards. Have to prepare students for the exam. Wants to build in more SEL touches to the Science standards. Can we weave in positive psychology and gratitude into an upcoming thermochem unit? Let’s further students’ development as humans, not just scientists. Unit Planning Step 2: Pursuits (from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model) Intellect/Content: Shifting energy. Endothermic, exothermic. Phases of water. Lots of algebra. Skills: Data collection/observation (review); Explanatory models/metaphors (next level) Identity: How will our unit help students to learn something about themselves and/or about others? Gratitude. Fostering connection to teacher, students, school community. Embracing the good. Criticality: How will our unit engage students’ thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? Lack of belonging inhibits learning. Joy*: How will my unit enable, amplify, and spread joy? [Joy is: beauty, aesthetics, truth, ease, wonder, wellness, solutions to the problems of the world, personal fulfillment, art, music.] Experience joy during learning. Unit Planning Step 3: Driving Question Is our community more exothermic or endothermic? Note: We didn’t come up with this exact version during the show, but I think it takes one more step to bring together the student examples to analyze the community sense of belonging Phil talked about. Unit Planning Step 4: Summative Project (Publishing Opportunity and Possible Formats) Phase One: Traditional project/assessment on Science knowledge Phase Two: Students choose a situation that’s important to them and pose it to the class to discuss the question: Is [this example from life] more exothermic or endothermic? Phase Three: Suggest a practice or policy change to fix an exothermic situation. Stay Connected You can find Phil on his website at www.philjanuszewski.com He’s on Instagram and Twitter @PhilJanuszewski His Linktree is: https://linktr.ee/PhilJanuszewski You can email Phil at: [email protected] To help you inspire flourishing and positive psychology in your school, Phil is sharing his 3-Step Classroom Happiness Practice worksheet with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 122 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT Welcome to our episode. Today, I get to talk to Phil Jezewski. He is a tattoo covered Netflix speaking show, Flapping, motivational speaking, high school, chemistry and physics teacher with a master's degree in teaching leadership. His mission is to bring happiness to others through education, motivation and entertainment. And let me tell you today's episode does not disappoint throughout. We kind of get into the messiness of everything and we are still feeling the positive psychology. So let's get to this episode with Phil. I'm educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerd out about co creating curriculum with students. 00:01:05 I made this show for you. Here we go. So welcome to the time of our teacher podcast. I'm so excited. You're here today. Thank you. I am absolutely open and up for everything and anything to learn from, you always admire and appreciate what you do for the world Lindsay. Oh my gosh, right back at you and I am so excited to hear about like all the thoughts that you have and just if you want for listeners to just kind of paint a picture of, you know, what's the context that we're designing this unit? Dreaming kind of episode? We're, we're doing, we're really dreaming up a unit. And so what's the context that that is being created in, you know, kind of what's your current process of pleading and what are your hopes for today or any sparks of ideas you have? Yeah. Thank you for that. I would say that. So I've been a chemistry and physics teacher for 18 years. So developing content or units has really revolved around a certain amount of content we have, I'm in Illinois. So we have what's called the NGSS science standards that we are expected to meet. And from there we meet as a PLC with my uh like minded subject area teachers. 00:02:14 And we figure out all right, what are the units and orders that are going to naturally make sense so that we can not only fit all this in, in the school year, uh but also honor the standards that are expected of us, but also do it in a way that makes sense. So that kids can achieve, they have the opportunity to build and grow on other concepts. So now for a while, as you could imagine, after 18 years, we have a really good recipe for an order that works or seems to be the most successful for students. So once we dive into that, then we go into specific units which are again, content specific and driven. So for example, me in chemistry, we just finished up a unit right before spring break on gas laws. So just how gasses are working, how they interact with their everyday life, but also the math and quantitative data behind it that can back up what we're seeing. So as you know, uh spring break approaches and all of a sudden you want to get in everything you can so that you don't have to test right after a spring break. 00:03:19 I mean, this is reality. So we really get into focusing on what do we need to teach? 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, in order for the students to be successful, have the opportunity to learn, make mistakes grow so that by the end of the unit, they're strong and feeling confident. So Lindsay, as I've said to you before, I am absolutely nothing pretty on paper as far as wow, Phil is a master unit builder. I would say that I am a mas uh a master unit survivor. I am just trying to fit in everything in the allotted time so that my students can get what they need. And then as I would say, transparently and honestly, I am far from being happy with building in those uh sel touches those extra things that can really allow students to extra connect with the material. And I think sometimes due to rushing to make sure we honor and fit in everything we're expected to do. I do feel that I'm, I'm not happy with my craft yet in reaching, reaching those standards or those pillars yet, but I'm certainly trying to make my way towards those. 00:04:28 I think that is going to be highly relatable for everyone listening in, in just terms of like what their current planning process is and the things that they're trying to do and aspire to do as well. And I just really appreciate you sharing that like this is, this is how it is and this is where I wanna go and I think that's like it's gonna be beautiful what we create today so well, thank you. I'm excited for the opportunity. Anything that is better for the kids is better for me too. So I love it. Yeah, it makes it easier to teach when they're really enthused. Yes. So I am curious. Do you have any sparks of ideas or kind of directions you might want to go even if they're just tiny little sparks at this point? Yeah. So for me as far as like units, I mean, I'm good with order and allowing my students to be successful for the exams so that hey, you can demonstrate these chemistry. But something that I think a lot of students could use and I am very passionate about is the world of positive psychology. And I'm really interested in finding unique, creative or all the overlapping ways to introduce different ideas that allow for students to feel more joy, to feel like they're flourishing more and to feel like more, I don't know, gratitude or just a, a moment to reflect and feel appreciation and connected with this, this thing we call school when students come in. 00:05:48 I like to, you know, like I call them my chemistry family. Like, all right. So I do want them to think of us and we joke, we're a dysfunctional family. But I think in the end we're, we're all here for each other. And I think that that might be weird at the beginning of the year. But by the end they know like I'm, I'm here for you and I'm here for you as whoever you come as I'm not trying to turn you into something else. And I think they finally figured that out. At least I'm lucky to have him a full year. So after a full semester, I think they get it like, yeah, I'm your chemistry dad, not the dad you ever wanted or asked for. But here I, I am, I'm not going away. I'm consistently showing up. So I think by the second semester, most of them trust me. And so I want to find ways to help them further themselves as humans, not just scientists. Did that make sense? Absolutely makes sense. Yes. So I love these as goals for kind of the, the things that they're doing. And, and I think about this in connection to Dr Goldie Mohammed's work around the Hill model and like identity criticality, joy. 00:06:50 Like I heard a lot of stuff around joy in here. Um The identity piece too. I don't know if you want to speak a little bit more to kind of the thought you're, you're thinking in terms of their pursuit as humans. Like what, what does that mean to you to be humans or like what pieces of identity might you want to tap into? Because I mean, so many students, right? As people, we hold so many identities. Is there something that you're like, oh, I'd, I'd like to dive into that piece a little bit more. Yeah. Great. Great point is, yeah. II I blanketed that big time. There's so many areas we could go into. I feel like something that I'm purposely and intentionally drawn to is like gratitude, appreciation for what we have in the moment. The fact that we come to a school that's safe. We're full of teachers that want to teach you and full of most students that are OK with being there. And I feel like once we have that sense of gratitude, we feel more comfortable and can get into the learning maybe in a more comfortable way. So for me, I, I'm really drawn to gratitude and appreciation and I feel like that might lead them to better connecting with not only me and my classroom but the school as well. 00:07:55 So that's something that naturally calls to me. I don't know. Again, I don't know. You, hopefully you can work your magic. You're the the magician here. I don't know how to fit in gratitude when I'm forcing them next. They're gonna be doing thermo chem. So they're gonna be doing equation ass on its shifting energy from ice to water. So again, any way that I can somehow relate this, this thing that a lot of people think is, you know, hippie dippy or touchy feely is something that I think is almost more important than them. Learning. The science is like learning to be joyful in the moment and that opens you up to the learning. Yes. Oh my gosh. Ok. So I'm really excited about this. I was terrible at chemistry. It is one of the lowest grades I've ever in my life. So we're gonna really leverage our strengths here. I think what I think would be great sometimes. I actually think it's best to almost have like a novice mindset coming into to do a new project because you're like, oh, I see this in a very different way. So hopefully it will be helpful as we, as we think about like that thermo chem piece. 00:09:00 Can you tell me a little bit about? I love the um a specific example you gave about shifting energy. Can you tell me some of the other principles that you talk about within that unit or like high leverage, 23 concepts that they're learning about and then we can kind of go from there. Yeah, absolutely. I think the main idea of that whole unit is going to be, as you already said, the the shifting of energy. So when you put energy into something it's in and that energy goes in, we call that endothermic and then sometimes energy is lost or given off and we call that exothermic. And that's the main point and idea when we shift between phases of matter, for example, why would something as simple as ice melt into liquid and then eventually turn into water vapor or gas by having that simple example that they've seen all three phases in their everyday life. That's when we can really dig into the math, the actual reason and science behind why and how that's happening. So water is a really great specific focus for that unit because there's not really any other things in their life that they see every day in all three phases. 00:10:08 So this is something that's relatable to them. So yeah, we're gonna be doing calculations. I don't know how deep you want me to go Lindsay. I hope you don't have PTSD from these terms from your horrible chemistry experiences. Uh But we'll get into like specific heat and then things like heat of fusion, like the melting process, but everything related to energy. And that's a lot of numbers in algebra which isn't for my, mostly my sophomores or who take it in my chemistry class right now. Uh Not all of them are super confident with their algebra that is super helpful. So I think what I'm wondering and you can tell me if this is too out there, but I'm wondering if there is a metaphor to be seen here that parallels the idea of energy and energy out phases of matter and the self and the psychology and what gives us energy and what gives us energy loss? Um What are the different kind of like phases that we move through? 00:11:13 Um One of the questions that I'm kind of bouncing around here my normal process. But one of the questions stems that I love for a driving question that frames the whole unit is what's the formula for? So I almost wonder if it's like, what's the formula for? And they are creating some kind of formula that is related and you'll have to help me with the science math connections here. But this idea of the formula for like a to use positive psychology, like the formula for flourishing in life or something like what's my best state and what's the formula for getting there or, or something like that? I'm not sure what the exact question would be, but if there was kind of the concepts that they were playing with and they're using the concrete math and science, but then they're extrapolating out to be like, oh, these same principles are underlying concepts of energy and energy out. Um Like, what does it look like when I melt? Like when I have, you know, like, have I melt down or something? You know, like all of these different pieces, I wonder if there's kind of a, a positive psychology connection to that? Does that seem too out there or should we bring it back in? 00:12:15 I mean, I'm certainly not opposed to it. I mean, I think we're definitely getting in that hippy dippy area and I'm totally, totally cool with dancing in that area in line. Uh I'm not sure how it'll look, but I'm open to journeying there. OK, cool. So I, I'm wondering, as you think about like the connections, knowing all the math and science behind it, when you think about like the, the positive psychology piece and wanting students to have like these um kind of just like experiences of flourishing and gratitude. What, what are the examples of how those might play out within a unit like this? Like, is there a specific um kind of lesson or activity or idea or concept that will bring students joy or do you want to see it as kind of the metaphor lens? Do you want to think about it as? Um well, I'll stop rambling. How, how are those connections seem like what's going through your head as you think about this? Yeah, I suppose. Um I'm trying to think of positive psychology in this idea of like an upward spiral that when we think of gratitude and we think of things we appreciate and again, not ignoring the negatives, but embracing the good things that are already happening. 00:13:29 It like broadens our perspective. We're more open to learning, we're more open to more positive action. Uh So I suppose like if you're open, you're open to receiving or absorbing. So that I guess I guess we could kind of go with, that could be like endothermic like you taking in positive energy. And when you take in positive energy on a a heating curve, we call it. But as you take in more energy, your energy on the graph increases. So you get to a higher energy level. That's why again ice would turn to liquid, it absorbed energy was endothermic. You had to put heat into it to, to, to turn it to the next energy level, man. Are we man? We're getting like philosophy mixed with heat signs and I'm gonna start wearing a tie dye shirt. I love this. But I suppose there's a relationship here that when you absorb energy, you go to a higher state a higher energy level. And I would say that's kind of similar to that upward spiral phenomenon in positive psychology that the more you take in, uh, the more you're willing to take in and see, I don't know, is that too big of a jump? 00:14:42 Yeah. I don't know. I think, I love this idea though and the, and the bringing in, like, the broaden and bills model of like, the, the positive psychologists and stuff. I, I think that there's something here. I'm wondering if we take a step to the next kind of step and we kind of like come back to this idea or maybe, ok, I know what we're gonna do. I'm wondering from a criticality standpoint, let's, let's try to bring that lens in and then maybe that'll connect all the dots for us. So I'm thinking if this is a justice centered unit that thinks about positive psychology and flourishing for all people, so we're kind of bringing that piece in. Um, is there something that would be relevant or connected or kind of like just maybe even where does your brain go when you think about that criticality element where we think about power, equity, disrupting oppression as it relates to just kind of this very broad positive psychology. Thermal Cabin connection. Hm. That's a great question. Well, I feel like if people don't uh feel like socially a part of an institution, right? 00:15:49 If they don't feel like they fit or that they're welcome as they are. Like, it's hard to be open to learning if, if they're not feeling like, oh, me the way I come to school, I, I don't, I don't know, I don't, I don't, I don't know how to say it, like, fit the, the expectation and therefore, if I don't belong, therefore I'm not as willing to learn, I'm more guarded. But I, so when I think of like criticality and then equity and that, I imagine that, but that's where my mind goes. But as far as making that connection to the energy piece, could that be like me giving them energy, allowing them to know that they, they do belong? They are welcome here. Uh I mean, I feel, I feel like I'm stretching on a limb here, but I'm definitely brainstorming. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yes. No, this is wonderful. So I do think like, yeah, we may, we may be hanging on to the metaphor. Maybe I may, I'm pushing it too much. I think one of the things now that my brain is going to is kind of like skipping to what is the final project. 00:16:55 So I'm wondering if that's something piece too. So sometimes I bring in criticality as like, where do students go with this? And I know earlier you mentioned, you know, we're, we're really thinking about how can students be successful on maybe a test or a sum of assessment or something like this? If there was some sort of application project where you were having students create even in a traditional sense of like a science experiment or something that they're doing, what would that typically look like for a project around thermal cam and shifting energy? Like a, a kind of a high school level thing that they would do. Yeah. On, on the outside, a typical lab we do that would be like a main assessment for them would be, it would look simple. But the math behind it is a little more complex form. That would be we would start with ice water and, and monitor the temperature and then you would slowly heat up that ice water and take note when all the ice melts and it's fully liquid and then you know, every 20 seconds you would take the temperature as you continue to heat up this until it boils. 00:17:57 The reason we do this is when water boils, most students assume that the water temperature will continue to get hotter and hotter. But what they find is that when water is boiling, it never gets hotter than the boiling temperature. And the reason for that is um is once the water gets a high enough energy level, those water molecules escape as gas. So you lose the energy that it was putting in. So when a phase change is happening, the temperature stays the same. Now, I just put everybody listening to sleep on that. But that mathematically that's, that's important. They're, they're actually measuring the energy which is the temperature and they find that the energy all of a sudden stays constant it at the end. And then we can get into the math, the algebra behind it. And if they understand all of this and then they put the math in, they fully master the concept like OK, this was endothermic. We put energy in, we went through two phase changes. The final phase change got stuck at the one energy and we can then kind of explain everything from the unit that way. 00:19:01 Hm OK, I love this idea of being able to explain. OK, this is great. OK. The things changes I love and being able to explain things. I think this concept of being able to explain with an underlying concept is what maybe is the linking piece. So like that's the kind of the connection to and it might be a very different phrase and maybe that's a compare contrast or something in terms of that positive psychology energy and all of those pieces like is it that you, you know when you're kind of um two things here, one is the process of the energy and the phase changes as like a human being. And you know, how does that look? Does, do you go through multiple face changes? How many? And is there a point that goes above boiling quote unquote? And like what does that mean? But then there's also I think this like skill, which is really it it translates to in some ways this broader kind of like participatory action research skill almost where you're in community and you're collecting data from the community. So you have kind of this data collection observation, tracking measurement graphing skill that sounds like it's happening at the same time. 00:20:08 Does that feel like the position of this unit? Is that like a new skill for them? Is that a review? Is that like they're ready to take this to the next level? Yeah, great point. Since it is later in the year, I think they are expected to be comfortable with taking data and recording it even graphing it the hardest part definitely at this level and this course is making meaning of that data. Like here it is, you've got it, they're very good at doing that. It's the next level that they struggle with and definitely need bridges to get there. You know, hey, what with the shape of this graph? What does that really mean? And now think back to what we've already learned, how does what we've learned? How is it supported by this data? And I think they do, you need a lot of hand holding for that. It's a tough thing for a lot of students to do. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I just think it's a tough skill to master. So I think that's where I come in and you know, not to sound belittling, right? But I do the hand holding for that, you know, this is where we're at. 00:21:09 What did you see? And it really is a struggle. So, yeah, I think that the main goal besides understanding the content is to start making those connections between the data and what, what theory we've learned to support it. So I'm wondering if this idea of data collection connection to theory? I like, I don't know if it does modeling and like creating a model sound related to this or is that like a different or like if they were to construct a model or um I'm almost thinking of like so much theory is often like a metaphor, right? For, for something else, does that feel like if they were to construct metaphors and think about how to make meaning of the data in a way that's like explain this in a brand new way that no one has ever explained or like that, not their traditional, just regurgitate the the textbook back to be kind of thing. Does that feel like that would be actually harder for them than, than just making meaning of the data straight up? Or does it sound like that would be a bridge to making meaning of the data? Does that make sense? Yes. Yeah, I'm following you and I I it's a really good question. 00:22:12 I'm trying to, I think if it's about something related to them in their personal life, I do feel like they are more natural at making a metaphor if it relates to them, if it relates to outside their shoes, you know, I think the extra empathetic piece of that might be a little extra hard for them to do. But if they relate it to them in their own joy, gratitude, wherever we might be headed with this, to help explain in a slightly different way what they're seeing. I think that unique and strange way might actually in some weird way, help them remember it better because what I where my brain is going here is I am wondering if a final project because I wanna keep the science here. I don't wanna, I don't wanna get too much into the the piece that we're trying to like add in a and I wanna make sure that that is also central in the sense of that criticality, piece of everyone feeling a sense of belonging, right? And that back to identity and like feeling that sense of safety, gratitude, appreciation, like all of those pieces, I'm wondering if part of that is being in community in school community. 00:23:19 And so like, what, how do we kind of facilitate that in whatever project we do or activities we do and then also having a better sense of the concepts. So like actually learning the material and feeling good and efficacious about that and also seeing themselves as like an expert in a new way often makes like that really helps with like the positive psychology. And I think the feeling of flourishing and like I am crushing this, I just explained this in a way my teacher didn't even ever think of or something, you know. Um So I'm wondering if kind of this act of creation itself is kind of the positive psychology being brought in where they're still really focused on explaining the concept. But we're expanding the possibilities for how they explain into maybe a variety of formats. This could be teaching a younger grade like the basic premise. Like you were saying, the um idea of like ice water to heating it up to liquid, to boiling like that may be something that you are exposed to in a younger grade perhaps, but you don't understand fully the big math behind it. 00:24:20 And so I'm wondering if that feels like an accessible option, not for maybe everyone, but maybe for some students who are like, I want to actually teach this to a younger grade set or something as like a project format. I'm wondering if this concept is something that if they were to teach that, for example, they go into an elementary school and they're like, here's this concept and then they use it, you know, those posters that they have like a lot of them in elementary schools where they're like, here's this stoplight chart or something or like things like this. And I wonder if they actually can kind of go to the next level once they've created the explanation or metaphor to help Children or high school peers use it as a way to identify what's going on for them in a given moment around like SCL and safety and gratitude and flourishing. Like they take the the explanatory model or whatever of what's happening with the science experiments and then they like use the same model or visual or whatever it is that they create as a means to describe and assess and identify what's going on for them in a given moment, emotionally or psychologically or whatever. 00:25:33 Hey, everyone, it Lindsay just popping in to tell you about today's Freebie Phil is sharing with us his three step happiness practice worksheet which you can grab at Lindsey bets dot com slash blog slash 122 back to the episode. How, how does that sound? I get, I first of all, I like that, I get what you're saying, they're gonna master the science of it. And then on top of it, I could give them the challenge of you're going to go into hypothetically a room full of third graders. I want want you to use this idea of the heating curve and endo an exothermic, the transfer of energy. But I want you to use that in a way that can help help describe them to be happier. Is that, is that like the twist we're going with like, like, so take what you've learned and then turn that science thing was so backwards of what we originally thought, turn the science rules into a metaphor for happiness or something like that. Is it? Did I understand that? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Like, and, and I think for me it was less about like happiness and more like um where, like, how to identify your emotions or like where you are. 00:26:43 So what I'm, I'm actually thinking of are some of the charts around like um poly vagal theory or something, you know, where, where you're like um in like a a dorsal state or you're in like a fight or flight state or you're in like a, a very like venture like calm and cool state like I and at a varied child like level, there's like that movie with like the all the different like characters are different colors and then different emotions. I can't remember inside out, I think. Yes. Yes. Yes. I know what you're talking about. Yeah. So like something like that where you're just able to be like, oh, I am, I am feeling this, we may be way far away. I like this. Jesus is out there. I like it. So I am wondering like just in terms of if we could like get concrete about what a driving question might be for this project, given all of the variety of places that we've gone and it could centralize like often I try to think about like what the actual project is gonna be and having the driving question be around that. 00:27:48 And then each lesson is like we're learning the skill or we're learning the concept and it's all lead up to this final project that we're doing. So the project could be very science and it could be that way or it could be that we ultimately are thinking about the flourishing and the positive psychology piece and then a supporting question underneath that or kind of like a stepping stone into that as you need to understand the science of this. So I don't know what your preference is for the frame framing question. Well, I'm, I'm kind of thinking, I'm kind of reminds me of like life is like a box of chocolates, blank, blank blank. So instead of life is like a box of chocolates, maybe it's your emotions are like a heating curve, blank, blank blank. And then they can think of a way to use their knowledge of the heating curve to explain the way they look at their emotions. And by doing so, maybe they're self reflecting on where they're at, but also trying to creatively and cleverly apply the knowledge that they do understand. 00:28:53 I mean, this is, this is definitely out there and I think I have some really, really in, I have a lot of really intelligent kids that'll be like they'll give me the look like, what are you doing? Here, like, you know, that this is an estate standard. What are you pushing here? You know? Uh So, uh it's super interesting but I don't know, that's when you were talking and I was thinking, is that kind of what we're like? It could be just a final question of their lab, their assessment to, here's the scenario, complete this, I don't know. Yeah, I, I like it and I, I think often of like, when the project is all done, like, where does it go, kind of thing? So it might go to the third grade class or it might go somewhere else. And I, I almost wonder if it's like, um, we are gonna have all the, the, you know, students, teachers in the high school, like, actually walk by our home away with all of your one sentence, things like all of your, your emotions are like, and they are going to vote and they are going to pick the best ones, you know, just like trying to think of like, what would get students like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna be creative or something. 00:29:58 Um, so I think that is really cool and I'm wondering, um, you know, I, I am also, I have in my mind like many things at once. One of the things I, I want to not lose sight of as well is that idea of criticality. So, like enabling everyone to belong, but also like to, to recognize like the pieces when, when you were talking about the heating curve. To me being a non thermal chem expert, I was thinking about the ways in which we have structural oppression and emotional labor taken on by some people more than others in society. And like, I'm wondering how much, because I know you're saying it's hard to fit everything in. So I'm wondering how much feels like we could draw parallels to each of those key concepts along the way in a way that also centered. Um kind of like the I, I don't know, like the structures in our society that are, are, are oppressive or not equity centered and like almost kind of think about the language of the and, and concepts as like a way to ultimately um correct or interrupt some of that oppression in our maybe just in our class community or in our school. 00:31:12 And so designing the project or maybe the, you know, if the driving question or the driving like sentence is kind of like fill in the blank here at the end of this metaphor, like being mindful of like, how does whatever they do better their community in a way that enables some student, for example, who never could quite identify how they were feeling in the moment. They kept getting into conflicts with peers and teachers and like, they're just not flourishing. Like how does whatever we come up with, whether it's a sentence, whether it's an explanatory lesson of this concept or whatever that like that is kind of the key that unlocks that like inequity or something. Does that, do you, does that make sense? Yeah, I'm following you. I'm Yeah, it's, it's uh you, you could go down such a rabbit hole, right? That and, and it's all super important. Uh I think that's too an overwhelming part of educators, right? Is that we are passionate and we want to do all of that and somehow make it all make sense. 00:32:13 But I love the criticality piece. I almost feel like uh like a quick like discussion on a board, you know, instead of like choosing one side or another this or that it's like, is this example from life more exothermic or endothermic? Meaning would that person lose energy? Is it depleting or is it more filling them with energy? For example, uh a student that is the only person from her original country uh and surrounded by people all from similar origin. Would that be exothermic or endothermic? Would that person probably would it be exhausting and losing energy? And she'd have to work harder to be energized. So, I mean, it could be as simple as just trying to make mental connections to what endo and exo is losing or gaining but do it in a way that maybe uh brings up some really important seeds to plant about, hey, by the way, you look just like everybody else. So it's probably not a big deal to be here. But if you didn't and you raising your hand, it might actually take more energy than for you to do it because you don't feel as similar to everybody. 00:33:22 I don't know. Is that too out there? That is it that I think that is literally with the last 30 minutes have been like striving to reach. I think, personally, I think that is brilliant. That's the driving question. I think so. And I'll tell you what I'm thinking about for like a project or what, what I'm thinking about in terms of drive question. I once saw a media critique unit where students brought the texts, all of the texts were the students other than like the foundational pieces where I was trying to get the concepts down. But then all of so what I typically call them and II, I have this typically set up as a unit arc where first we would like hook the students in maybe that's with the the initial experiment or something with like the melting and just kind of getting the inquiry questions or whatever. Then we're building the base of foundational scientific concepts. Then we do case studies of here's how that plays out in this scenario or in this scenario. And so that might be actually pulling in some, some of those specific scenarios might be like a case study or maybe just one day where you have a gallery walk of case studies or like you're saying, kind of move to this side of the room or that. And then ultimately, you're getting to the point where you're like, OK, so you know, this, this uh final project can be you taking a text of your choice or a current event of your choice or something of your choice. 00:34:34 So the students are in informing the direction and then they have to make the rationalization. So they're pitching it, however, they're pitching it, whether they're making a movie about it, whether they're doing a class presentation, whether they're teaching third graders. But I'm wondering if they, I mean, I, I guess I'm asking from a scientific standpoint if they were to take something a current event, for example, a, a news article and they were to answer that question. Is it more exo or endothermic? And here's how I know and they were to do a really good job of like fleshing out the, the rationale there. Would that meet the standards of the unit or is there a piece missing there? Yeah, I think that would not reach the standard of the unit. The standard would be very specific of, can they explain what and why endo and exo exist and how that impacts where I think what you were just describing would be more metaphorical. Yeah. So in terms of the OK, that makes sense in terms of like why it exists like the, the exothermic and the endothermic. 00:35:42 Can you run can you run through that again for me to, to understand? No, no worries, of course. So uh man, the conservation of energy, right? Energy has existed since the beginning of the universe, scientifically speaking, therefore, any energy that exists has to be transferred from one thing to another. So if it's exothermic, something is giving off that energy and pushing it somewhere else, which means something else is taking it in endothermic. So there's just tons of transfer constantly, it never disappears. It just simply goes from one thing to the next and you're either taking it in or losing it. Gotcha. So if students were to take that entire concepts of the transfer of energy and you're never losing energy and they were to develop out the metaphor, would it still hit the standard because they would be required within that metaphor to explain in, in the thermo chemistry stuff like in water. For example, this is how this works and this is why it works. So therefore, and then the next step would be them explaining the metaphor and the rationale for why energy transfer still applies in that situation. 00:36:46 Or you know what I, you know what I mean? I would say that in order to make the metaphor, you would have to fully understand the scientific concept of it. So therefore, yeah, I I could say as an educator, I think I would feel confident with that being some form of an assessment. Yes. So Yeah, like I'm almost seeing it as like um phase one of the assessment is like, you have to demonstrate that you understand the thermo chemistry behind it. And then like once you kind of check the box, you now enter into phase two, which is the rationale that requires as part of the rubric or whatever, like it requires that connection back to the scientific principle. So your metaphor can't just be surface level one sentence. It has to be like the depth of understanding of like and I don't know if you create like an example for them or something, but like the depth of the science behind the metaphor has to be there. Or else this is just like, you know, a fluff project, you know what I mean? Right. No, I agreed 100%. Yeah, I'm not quite sure how I would unveil that to them, but I think it could be something that would not only be creative and fun and you would see students who don't always shine in certain areas, I think really thrive in this sort of uh environment. 00:37:54 Cool. OK. Awesome. So I'm I'm wondering if that feels like for a driving question is this example from life? And then we would like this example would literally be something that students bring in. Do you feel comfortable with that? Or would you want them to choose from here? Are some things that I am presenting you with as examples and you create the metaphors from there. Well, I think if they chose and then we discussed and they, again, kind of debated back and forth. They could also see how complex social reality is versus science tends to be more this way or that way. But socially, things are more complex depending on perspective, which again, as long as they're arguing as to why or why not, it's endo or exo, I think would deepen their understanding because the metaphor they use would force them to understand what Endo and exo would be. Yeah, I like that. How, how are you feeling? Because I'm thinking, I, I think we don't probably need to go into like the different protocols of the unit. Are I am imagining this as very much like still a very science unit rolling out kind of kind of the same way, maybe a hook the same way, build the base the same way and maybe throwing in some case study examples of what the final project will be. 00:39:06 So students have some familiarity class wide of what does it mean to engage with this question and like what might a metaphor be in kind of class construct? And then they kind of do it on their own as the project. The phase two of the project, phase one could be what it initially would be. Maybe a test or something. No, I think that this is a great like skeleton that I could use in all my units to like Sprinkle in these little criticality pieces that will become part of the routine. Almost that yes, we learn the science, but we also make some metaphors for reality to help us better understand the topics. And then, you know, take it to like you said that phase two, that next level level would it be? I, I don't know, life is like are my emotions are like a heating curve dot dot dot Finish it, debate it and then let's get creative with it. Make it a quick 32nd video with your lab partners if you want or a quick sign or something like that. I I think that could be fun. It could be different and also impactful. 00:40:10 Yeah. And on the impact I'm thinking if you were to have a student, for example, the the thing you gave about, you know, a student is the only person of their identity in a room or something, right? It is taking so much more energy to do the thing, whatever the thing is like. So they're engaging with that. Is this more exo or endothermic question? They are explaining it. And then from there, I love the concept of like taking it to an action level, like an action civics project or something where it's like it doesn't have to be huge, but it could literally be, oh, we just talked about this example that's literally happening to one of my peers in my class. What can we do to make that different? And then the project like phase three or part two A or whatever is like, OK, here's a suggested either practice or policy change that either my class or my school at large could implement to better support uh this group of students who's currently being underserved or something. Does that feel like a doable kind of thing to just kind of present to students and invite students to grapple with? 00:41:12 For even just a day of class, I'd say that for a day of class. Absolutely. For more than that, I think I would get a lot, you know, in all transparency. I think I get a lot of pushback from students because they would start to see this getting further away from science and then they'd start to question, you know, its validity to the specific subject. So, yeah, that makes sense in a perfect world. I'd love to tell you, I think a lot of students would jump on this. But I think in the end, if I pushed it too far, I think a lot would shut down and say you're just giving me extra work that's not related to what I'm here to do. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Totally fair to say. And it makes me think of like, I mean, we went in one direction here. I feel like there are different directions that we, we could have gone. But it, it almost makes me think too about other potential directions for thermal chemistry and shifting energy around. When do we like, when would we use or when would this concept feel valuable to us in life? And in what ways are those um factors like present in larger systems of injustice or do you know what I mean? 00:42:22 Like, I I I'm not sure because of my limited knowledge here in this topic, but I'm just thinking of like pollution, for example, is like some sort of transfer of energy or something, right? And, and pollution happens predominantly in black and Brown communities more than in white communities. So like there is kind of this like scientific process happening and then who feels the impacts of those processes more or what? Why would it be beneficial for us to change how that energy shifts or can it, you know what I mean? I'm not sure what the the side science would be, but I almost wonder if that's like another direction for a different unit or for a um you know, another day to kind of think about rooted in the science, especially within that context of I have students who would kind of push back on something that wasn't super science related. Like what is the science itself that by using the science, we do this thing or suggest this policy proposal or something that advances justice. Does that feel relevant for like maybe another, another unit? If you, I think you're stirring up a lot of great ideas for side projects, segways, things that can support what they're learning. 00:43:27 And honestly, I think just this conversation in general has really made me realize like you, you could fit these in as if you were intentional uh in a way that you can still meet all the science requirements. But also take it a step further while we're trying to better humans. I do think though, talking to you, you're always inspiring to bring up ideas that I'm incredibly ignorant on. You know, as it's my privilege that I don't have to worry about a lot of things due to where I was born and who I was born to. So I'm probably pretty unaware of a lot of inequities that if I was more aware I could bring up and fit in. So that's definitely something from this conversation that I've taken away. Like maybe I need to broaden my horizons too on to even be aware of these inequities so that I could highlight them in a way so there can be social change. That's super, that's super insightful to be able to share because I, I think that for so many people like that probably is a really good kind of next step. 00:44:29 If I, I'm just thinking about, for example, math teachers who are like, I don't know how math relates to social justice. Like that's it, it might take a lot of kind of like research and kind of connecting even just having a conversation, right? With people who are in that space um of justice and environmental justice or something and, and just being like, OK, brainstorm here are the things just kind of like what we did today, right? Um And, and rooting it more in the science than our, than our metaphor maybe. But I think that would really inspire and spark some ideas where that expert in the content area is like, oh, I just needed that spark of knowing the thing that is happening in the world to then bring it in and then design all around this thing. And it wasn't that big of a leap. I just needed to know the thing, right? Like, like you're like, and I think that could be just a really quick conversation sometimes um with people who, who are willing to have the conversation and, and are in those spaces. So I, I think that's so valuable for listeners to hear. Thank you. I appreciate it. I think, you know, you probably, you may even take it for granted that you know, so much about social justice. 00:45:31 It's common knowledge to you, right? But then when you bring up these very matter of fact, I think, oh, sheesh. Yeah, the pollution thing. I never even thought about that. Right? I would, I, I didn't even think about it to know or to even look into it. So, yeah, I mean, that is a huge eye opener for me something, I definitely should do more work in. And like you said, I think now that we've gone through this and see like, oh, we could Sprinkle it in, build it in to then eventually lead it to some type of action or at the end of metaphor even, or to put the science behind solving a problem. If I know that problem, I, I think it would be even more natural for me to fit in. So maybe I need to start searching out more of the problems so that I can connect them to my actual science. I love that idea, I think and, and just, I want to say overall, thank you for engaging in this because we went like way in a non scientific direction. It was super fun. It was, oh my gosh, it was such a fun conversation. And I think there's obviously so much more that like we could kind of think through and, and for the sake of the podcast, we will wind down here. 00:46:39 But I, I really just enjoy so much of kind of those moments of, I'm not sure if this is making sense and, you know, are we going do we gotta read it back again? And like, you know, I think so much of that is messy and so much of the curriculum design process is messy. And unfortunately, for many of us, for me, at least I was not taught how to do this. Well, in school like grad school did not prepare me for. Right. So I think it's helpful to just kind of, you know, pull back the curtain and see like what does this process look like for people? And I'm just so willing or so so grateful for your willingness to be able to, to do that. So I super grateful for you in the in light of all the gratitude conversation that we've been having today. And I think people are going to want to just follow not only how does this unit go in your class, but follow all the things you do and you do so many great things. Do you mind just sharing for folks like a little bit of how they could follow the work that you do even beyond the classroom? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity. And uh likewise, I think you just modeling this with me is something I've never done before. 00:47:40 And I think this would be a great model for me with my PLC group to just tackle, we've got this unit coming up. How can we put something more meaningful into it or? You know? So thank you for that. I think this is a really cool first step for me as far is uh connecting with me in that I'm obnoxiously all over social media, but uh my name is Phil Janaki. So I'm on linkedin and then also um my teacher slash human social media account. Is just at Phil Janis. I'm on Witter and Instagram. And then I'm also a, a professional public speaker with my best bud. We're called M and P presentations and we go across the nation just helping people develop further their self confidence to open up new doors of opportunity for them. So we're at MP presentations on all social media handles as well. But I would love to connect. I love driven people that are positive looking to grow. That's what I feed off of, which is why Lindsay uh the first time you ever did a professional development for my school, I was like, I need to connect with this human. 00:48:41 This is a person that I want to uh be around to learn from. So, thank you. Thank you and listeners. Oh my gosh, reach out to Phil for speaking engagements because I don't know if you could tell on this episode and I know you're just listening and not watching, but there is so much energy that he exudes and it is just like contagious. I am feeling it. Would that be fair to say that I'm giving exothermic energy off them. Yes, you just lost three podcast followers because of that joke. Sorry. Oh, I love it. Well, Phil, thank you so so much for being on the show today and listeners. Absolutely. Please reach out to Phil. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my life coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We, we current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. 00:49:52 If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at www dot Lindsay beth lions dot com slash contact. Until next time. Leaders continue to think. Big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network, better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain turbulence theory and the student voice pyramid:
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
November 2024
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