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Dr. Park and Liz co-authored a book on teaching Sijo, which sparked this unit dreaming conversation. In this episode, we apply a step-by-step unit planning protocol to dream up a new unit on Sijo!
Unit Planning Step 1: Context/Spark Dr. Park and Liz started working together when Liz’s students kept winning the Sejong Cultural Society’s Sijo competitions. Sijo as a poetry form requires a condensation of ideas. It’s a 3-line poem with 15 syllables in each line. It requires an economy of words. Since poems can be about anything, it’s great for relevance and the ability to share with an authentic audience of peers, community members, and to the wider nation/world through the annual competitions. Unit Planning Step 2: Pursuits (from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model) Identity: How will our unit help students to learn something about themselves and/or about others? Students are able to write about anything they want. It’s also a great opportunity to explore Korean culture both historically and in the present through the form. Criticality: How will our unit engage students’ thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? The theme of condensation relevant to the form can lead to conversations about what histories, stories, or even forms of poetry are included or excluded in the curricular condensing process. 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 have experienced joy in writing Sijo because its short length seems more accessible to writers who may struggle with essays. We want students to fall in love with writing as expression or writing as connection. Unit Planning Step 3: Project Question What are the most important 3 lines you could share with the world about identity, criticality or joy in this moment? Supporting questions or other ideas to build a PQ around include:
Unit Planning Step 4: Summative Project (Publishing Opportunity and Possible Formats) There many options, including: Students submit to a Sijo competition. (There are several, and many are linked below.) Publish poems in a class publication or school literary magazine. This could be a multimedia publication with recordings of students performing their poems and illustrations to accompany them. Hold a performance or video recording of singing Sijo. (Dr. Park shared there are examples of Sijo set to classical music and hip hop, which you can see on their YouTube channel.) Music teachers can publish students’ Sijo poems in a concert program. Art teachers can have students write poems and draw a picture to go with it. Unit Planning Step 5: Unit Arc Hook: What’s the thing they can't stop thinking about? What’s weighing on students’ hearts? Talk about how poems capture and transfer emotion to the reader. Ask students: How would you do that? What emotions do you want to work with? Build the Base: Teach the form (e.g., 3 lines, syllable groupings). Use existing samples on the Sejong Cultural Society’s website to explore samples. Case Studies: Invite students to explore the Sejong Cultural Society’s website and develop a collection that have commonalities (e.g., in theme or structure). Create gallery walks of these “case” groupings. Work Time/Peer Feedback: Once students have several Sijo poems drafted, invite students to put up on the board all of their poems and invite class feedback as to which one they should submit to the competition. This is a great point to invite students to make revisions afterwards. All the Links! There were so many excellent resources shared during this episode. Here’s a list: Competitions: Sejong Cultural Society
Online sijo course for teachers The electronic book of sijo referenced: Elementary and High School Students Unite through Sijo More articles on teaching sijo:
To help you implement a unit like this, Liz and Dr. Park are sharing free copies of their book, Sijo: Korea's Poetry Form! You can submit a request here. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 130 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript here. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I connect science and justice in this deep dive:
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I was listening to "The Philosopher & the Neuroscientist - A Conversation with Zak Stein and Mary Helen Immordino-Yang" on the Future Learning Design Podcast, and Dr. Stein was talking about assessment and measurement. He said, “The goal of the assessments are to not obfuscate what’s going on. To precisely say, like, you understand these things, and there’s a set of things you can come to learn that are slightly more abstract that integrate these lower level things…the introduction of…what we call learning sequences as opposed to levels or stages…” (starting at minute 43:12).
While the organization he’s talking about has their own system, I wanted to run with the idea of sequenced skills, specifically, how they could be used when designing a standards-based rubric. Standards-Based Assessment: Mastery-Based Grading and Single-Point Rubrics I’ve read favorable research on mastery-based grading. Haystead and Marzano (2009) found teachers who measured skill growth over time on mastery rubrics noted a 34% gain in student achievement. In mastery-based classes, students showed increased student learning, classroom environments were less stressful with better teacher-student relationships, and decreased grade achievement gaps when compared to classes that used traditional grading practices (Crescendo Ed Group). When I taught, I used a 4-point mastery scale for each standard. Single-point rubrics are still standards-based, yet streamlined. Easier to read for students and adults. Teachers can write in the left and right columns to narratively describe approaching or exceeding standards. I like having priority standards students and teachers can focus on. I like having a rubric you can share with (and ideally co-construct with) students that can be used to assess all summative projects. When coaching departments on selecting priority standards, I say the non-priority standards don’t go away, they become supporting standards. Then, the supporting standards can be used in the definition of lower mastery levels. This seems aligned to the concept of a learning sequence, so let’s consider what it might look like to keep the standards-based, department-wide rubric and design it for sequenced skills versus levels of the priority skill. How to Design a Learning Sequence Rubric I’m just starting to play with this concept and am open to ideas. Here’s what I’m thinking about now: Step 1: Determine your priority standards. Aim for a max of 5-7 skill-based standards. Select the most challenging or complex skills. Step 2: For each priority standard, map out the supporting standards students need to have before getting to the priority standard. For example: Decode → Comprehend → Summarize → Analyze Step 3: Describe each skill in separate columns on the rubric. (You can use the same column headers if they are visuals like the stages of riding a bike. See my rubric templates below.) Final Tip After completing your new rubric, I would look at your instructional activities and scaffolds and align them (and the accompanying language you use) to the learning sequences. To help you design your own learning sequence rubric, I’m sharing my Skill-Based Rubric Templates with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 129 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript here.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I go over a unit planning deep dive:
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Jerad Koepp, Wukchumni, is the Native Student Program Specialist for North Thurston Public Schools, the 2022 Washington State teacher of the year, and the first Native American educator to earn the distinction in the state. He is a leader in Native education, policy, and government to government relationships. As an educator, trainer, presenter, consultant, and advocate, Jerad also created and supports his district’s dual-credited high school Native Studies program.
We met at a conference where there was lots of “unchecked settler privilege…non-Native educators presenting content and viewpoints of Native people while not working with any of them. It was one of those great opportunities to show the shortcomings of how even in progressive or educational spaces, Native erasure or omission is still compatible with the way modern public education works.” The Big Dream Make space for Native knowledge to thrive and contribute to educating all children. Let “Native people do things the way we always have done and creat[e] spaces for that in order to learn together, collaborate together (rather than taking different theories of knowledge and ways of being and trying to fit them into settler structures).” Mindset Shifts Required Native people are racialized and politicized. Tlingit activist Elizabeth Peratrovich said, “Asking you for my civil rights, implies they are yours to give.” The connection to land is the source of all knowledge. Nature is the original classroom. Action Steps When designing curriculum, the content and the curricula are actually towards the end of the list in terms of steps. Step 1: Understand Settler History Educators need to first understand the settler history of public education and its role in assimilating Native students, which is still in place today. Step 2: Do Identity Work Educators should ask: What is my settler identity? How have I benefited from, been complicit in, and continued to be part of settler society, of settler education? How is what I’m teaching contributing to the colonial unknowing of Native people throughout history? Step 3: Give Space to Make Sure it’s Grounded it in Community At the heart of it, is community-based education. Social justice education is grounded in community. Public education doesn’t give us the space to do that. Step 4: Crosswalk Indigenous Academia with K-12 And develop courses. They started with an 11th grade course: U.S. History Through Native Perspectives. Then added Literatures through Native Perspectives (11th grade), and then added a Native Civics (12th grade). Step 5: Guest Speakers Ideas include: fellow students, people from the White House, tribal leaders, tribal council members, tribal historians, plant and medicine teachers, authors, Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons advocates, native roboticists. It’s more than guest speakers. It’s healing—reclaiming knowledge, contemporizing Native people, and diversifying Native representation. (If using Native singers or dancers, we have to explore the impact, the meaning of the songs, the regalia, the importance of language, story of people.) Step 6: Make The Courses Count as College Credit Students shouldn’t have to choose between AP or Native studies. The weight should be equal or greater than a typically offered course. Partnering with universities protects the work and sustains it. It also helps better prepare future teachers. Jerad’s high school students guest taught undergraduate and graduate students! Step 7: Honor the Genealogy of Knowledge A key difference from traditional teaching/teacher training is the importance in Native studies of a genealogy of knowledge: Teachers are facilitators. “I learned how to weave this from these people of this tribe in this place.” This establishes a commitment to relationship—”I am responsible to these people for the way that I share this information.” Be Mindful Of… “We can’t just absorb information because Western society has extracted from Native people for five centuries with devastation. And so, we need to be able to acknowledge that, heal it, and then make sure we don’t do it again…a big part of the work we do needs to be generative to contribute to a brighter indigenous future, a brighter future for the knowledges that we have the privilege to share in our class.” Steps to Get Started Go check out public events. Support Native-owned businesses and artists. Learn directly from Native Education groups, including the National Indian Education Association. Be intentional about who you are talking about and ask: “Who’s not there? and What does it mean?” Go to the index of your social justice books. Are Native people there? Consider language: “Black and Brown” does not include lighter shades of Native people. This only addresses the racialization side and not the political side. Books Jerad Recommends:
Stay Connected You can find Jerad on his website: http://www.jeradkoepp.com. To help you start to identify places where you might “jam a screwdriver into the cog,” I’m sharing my Diagnosing Adaptive Challenges workbook with you 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 here. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I explain how to replace the cannon:
8/7/2023 127. RESOURCE DIVE: A Research-Based Model for Addressing Unplanned Controversial Issues in ClassRead Now
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I listened to Charlot Cassar talk about the model in his co-authored, open access journal article, “Why teachers address unplanned controversial issues in the classroom” on the Visions of Education podcast. Then, I immediately read the paper. Now, I’m sharing the highlights with you!
Why? Locally and globally, there are always things happening that impact our students. Often, in highly emotional ways. This plus our school and larger cultural contexts can make it challenging to determine when to address an unplanned issue that arises in class. Teachers in Cassar, Oosterheert, & Meijer’s (2023) study described three types of “controversies”:
These situations happen all of the time. Some teachers (like the teachers invited to participate in this study) are more likely to choose to address these issues in class. Others are not. Importantly, the study noted that how teachers addressed a situation impacted their self-esteem and self-efficacy as a teacher. For leaders who are wary about telling teachers exactly what to address, this study’s model presents an opportunity to invite teachers to reflect on their reasons for choosing to address a specific issue or not. What’s in the model to understand teachers’ justifications for addressing unplanned controversial issues in the classroom?
Note: You can see the visual model (Figure 1) on p. 13 of the journal article. How can educators use this model in practice? After an event that impacts students in your school or district, invite teachers to use this model to think through each of the elements to explain why they chose to address it in the moment or not. (You could do this as a whole staff following a large event that impacted the whole community or use this in an individual coaching conversation with one teacher for an event that only impacted that class.) Here are some questions that teachers may want to consider in relation to the model:
Once teachers have reflected individually, you may want to pick a specific question to discuss as a whole staff or in teams. For example: Do we (as a staff) believe teachers should go beyond the syllabus or stick to it? I recommend using a discussion protocol for this. Moving forward, encourage teachers to consider this model as a reflective tool after an incident in class or in the moment as a decision-making tool. For the latter, I would recommend selecting ONE element or question from the list above that a teacher wants to ask themselves in the moment. Considering multiple elements in the moment would take too long. To help you create the space for these kinds of conversations with staff, I’m sharing my sequence of Staff Meeting Agendas with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 127 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript here.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I backwards design a staff PD unit plan:
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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
September 2023
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