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In preparation for the upcoming school year, I’m discussing my favorite strategies for building and sustaining a culture of belonging and community within classrooms. To do this, I’m turning a blog post I wrote 5 years ago into a podcast episode! Enjoy the original blog post below, and check out the podcast episode for an additional leader lens as well as ideas I’ve learned from brilliant teachers, coaches, and leaders in the field over the past half a decade.
One of the most common struggles I’ve heard talked about by and for new teachers is “classroom management.” I struggle with the phrase “classroom management,” and prefer to see my role as a teacher as cultivating a positive classroom culture. To me, this simple switch in language interrogates the idea that I am there to “keep students in line” or punish them when they break a rule. I don’t think that should be a central part of my job description. I do think ensuring a positive classroom culture is an extremely important part of my job description, if not the most important part. For more on this idea, check out Afrika Afeni Mills’s article “Classroom Management Reconsidered” and Teaching Tolerance’s “Reframing Classroom Management: A Toolkit for Educators”. If you’re still with me, I’ll share some ideas about my approach to cultivating a positive classroom culture. Here are my top 5:
Let’s break it down. Co-create class norms. This works best at the start of the school year, but it can be done at any time of the year—better late than never! It will help with student investment in maintaining a positive classroom culture. How do I do this?
Foster relationships. I love this because it is proactive instead of reactive, and it works! How do I do this?
Allow for student choice and autonomy and explicitly teach self-regulation. This one is a balance. Choice and autonomy are motivating and promote ownership of learning, but we need to help students learn how to self-regulate and problem solve on their own without constant teacher intervention. How do I do this?
Restorative practices in place of discipline. Traditional discipline policies disproportionately negatively affect students of color and students with IEPs. Being suspended decreases the likelihood of graduation, and contributes to the school-to-prison-pipeline. Restorative practices have been shown to reduce disruptive and violent behavior in schools, increase attendance, and improve school culture and problem-solving skills (WestEd, 2016). How do I do this?
Shared leadership, specifically involving students in the creation of norms and learning activities. Students and teachers will buy in to norms and engage in class activities more if they helped co-create them. How do I do this?
If this is new for you, I admit, this is hard work, but I will also share that it has the power to transform the culture of your classroom. If you’re already doing this, invite other teachers to see your class in action! Share your brilliance and show other teachers that it is possible. To help you build and sustain a culture of belonging, challenge, and discussion in your community, I’m sharing my Culture Playlist with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 178 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 0:00:02 - Lindsay Lyons Welcome to another episode of the Time for Teachership podcast. I am so excited today to actually turn an old blog post written five years ago hard to imagine into a podcast episode today, bringing it new life, giving some thoughtful reflections on what I've learned since I wrote this and really all about cultivating a positive class culture. So something everyone's trying to do leaders are trying to support teachers in doing students are directly benefiting from. This is a foundational component of particularly the start of the new year, which is why I think it's such a great opportunity to dive in today. Let's get to it Cultivating a positive class culture. I'm going to talk about five specific ways that you can do this or, if you're a leader, that you can support teachers to do this. Or also really lead and support the positive class quote, unquote class or staff culture right In your staff and in your broader school community, whatever degree of community you are responsible for in your role. So, in preparation for starting the year, I think everyone kind of has those go-to strategies for building and sustaining that culture. I really want to center this on a culture of belonging and community, a culture of appropriate degrees of challenge. A culture of appropriate degrees of challenge, one that affirms all students' identities and staff identities, one that enables discussion of critical issues. Right again, this is also critically foundational, and so I will be kind of riffing on the original blog post, and you can check out the original blog post at our show notes lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 175. I can't believe it's episode 175 already. Okay, so as you kind of think about this episode and the ideas are percolating, I want you to also think about your specific role, as I just kind of spoke to the idea of being a leader. How might you put this into practice? Coaching teachers or with your staff, thinking of your staff as a quote unquote class, all right. So one of the things that I have heard a lot I heard a lot five years ago, I still hear a lot now, although it is shifting a little bit in its language is this idea of classroom management quote unquote. And classroom management is a phrase I don't really like. I think that we lead and lead through example. We don't necessarily manage. Although there are management aspects to a class, I think it's more about the culture that you create, where, if you create a beautiful culture that is positive and affirming and one in which everyone feels that they belong and are also responsible and a contributor to that positive culture. There are less management issues, and so I think, kind of, the goal of classroom management is ultimately to create the culture where there are less management issues. So I'm cutting right to the chase and we're going to use a positive class culture as the phrase we're using throughout. Right to the chase and we're going to use a positive class culture as the phrase we're using throughout. So I like this, this shift in language, for the reason I just described. But I think it's also important to reflect on our practice and have teachers reflect on their practice and, you know, also in conversation with family members, to reflect on what we think of in terms of classroom management and what we maybe remember from our classroom experiences K-12s, right about what class was like. And just because that was our experience doesn't necessarily mean that it is something we want to perpetuate, right? So I want to interrogate that idea that the role of the teacher is to keep students in line, or even you know that the role of the principal is to keep students in line, or even you know that the role of the principal is to keep teachers in line, right, um, or punish them when they they break a rule right. I don't think that's a central part of a leader as a job description. I think it's we're cultivating this culture that we're all contributing to positively, and we're going to lean on each other and kind of call each other in when we need to to be able to right that ship, so to speak, but it's not like the most important thing that we do to call people in or, you know, hold people accountable if we've done the important work of building that foundation. Well, there are a ton of other resources that I think do a great job of interrogating this idea that I think do a great job of interrogating this idea Africa, fad Mills. I linked to a blog post of hers in the blog post Classroom Management Reconsidered, which she posted, I believe, on Better Lesson website. Yeah, the Better Lesson blog and Teaching Tolerance at the time was their name when I first published this article. But now Learning for Justice has a reframing classroom management, a toolkit for educators blog post. That's pretty good, okay. So if you're still with me, here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at the top five strategies, right, so I'm going to run through them super fast now and then I'm going to elaborate a little bit more. So here we go. Number one co-create class norms with students Super important. Do this also with adults in your adult communities. Do this with your staff. When we have agreements that we have co-created, we are more willing to be held accountable to them and we are more responsible and kind of accept more responsibility for the whole class abiding by those. Number two foster relationships. I think this is the number one thing that teachers can identify that they're really good at. Like I don't think we actually need a ton of support for teachers in fostering relationships. Because we came to this profession, because we love kids, we're good at fostering relationships for the most part. Maybe a strategy here or there is helpful. We know that this is foundational right. Number three allow student choice, voice autonomy, ownership, all the things. And to do that well, I think a kind of corollary to this is explicitly teaching self-regulation. So if students are struggling with self-regulation and I think of you know, just like my toddler who has a lot of big emotions and struggles to manage those emotions because, of course, right developmentally that my toddler who has a lot of big emotions and struggles to manage those emotions because, of course, right Developmentally. That makes sense and a lot of our students may have, may still be at that developmental milestone or they may be at a point that is later age, wise, um, and they should have kind of moved through that or learn those strategies. But they haven't. And so they need that support, um later in life that maybe they didn't get early on to learn that self-regulation, to then be able to take advantage of things like choice, voice, ownership, number four, restorative practices in place of punitive discipline. So this is also I think a lot of these also are a nod to larger structural supports that can be in place and then really enhance the teacher experience in the classroom when we have the larger pieces to support our work with individual students or small groups of students. If you don't have that, it is also possible in your class and I'll speak to that a bit. But just the idea that we want to repair the harm and we don't want to punish because students didn't do what we said right away. Right, we're not looking for compliance Again. We're building that culture of responsibility, accountability and and affirming that you know, you are all good people. We are all good people Right, we are inherently good. I think of Dr Becky Kennedy's good inside right. I am good inside and my actions are not helping the community at the moment and they need to change and I need to repair the harm that I've caused and I need to take accountability for that right. It's all the things. Number five shared leadership. Specifically, when I talk about shared leadership, I use shared leadership instead of distributive leadership because in education, distributive leadership often refers to teachers taking on leadership roles in the school, which I love, but it excludes students. And shared leadership is generally a more broad kind of all-encompassing of all stakeholders, lens on leadership and strategy for leadership. So that's specifically what I'm thinking of in not just co-creating norms right for the class but co-creating learning experiences, co-creating school policies, that kind of level of authentic voice that really makes a difference. So let's get into some of these co-creating class norms. You can do this in a variety of ways. I've talked about this before. I think you can really get students ideas on a poster, on index cards, whatever, in a variety of ways, right. You can't have them do this digitally on a Google doc or a jam board, although that's sunsetting. Whatever tech tool you want, you can have a gallery walk of posters. Lots of different ways. You could do a circle protocol, but you want to make sure you reach consensus. However, you get all the ideas. We got to streamline them down. We don't want like 45 ideas. How do we decide on the final five or whatever number is memorable for you? So we had to collapse them together, condense them, and we have to agree. So I would use a protocol. I like fifth to five, anything. Three and above is consensus. Great For younger kids. You could use thumbs up, thumbs down. We need everybody to have thumbs up and then talk about it if we don't right, if we don't have consensus. I also think it's really important and something that I've learned since the publication of this initial blog post is that we have one specific norm or agreement, that is, an accountability agreement. So how will we hold each other accountable? And then I also have learned in this past year a really helpful concept of accountability, like what are the baseline assumptions and I can't remember who to give credit for this too, but baseline assumptions, this is an important concept that we are saying. For example, I think the example that this person had used was like we believe all people deserve food, water and shelter, right, or something like that, like what are the basic assumptions about humanity and conversation and whatever, and so like mine is usually dignity, like every human deserves dignity. So we're going to craft our conversation agreements and our class agreements based on these baseline assumptions that either I, as the teacher, can come in with or you can kind of build with students prior to doing the norm generation. So I like this idea as kind of an additional piece to what I initially thought of. I also think you know these are not static, they're ever-changing. Return to them again and again, anytime you have an important class discussion. Return to them. They are not like a one and done at the start of the year. Okay, number two, let's go to relationships. Here are the ways I like to do relationships. I had class circles regularly. One 60 minute circle a week was. I was very fortunate to have 60 minute class periods. But you know, having that regular time and attention where we all look at each other. We all look at each other in the eye, we all pause and listen to what one another are saying or sharing, and I think you know designing those circles specifically to foster relationships. Share something of yourself. Story of my name is my favorite right. Everyone can usually say something about their name, their nicknames, do they like it? You can do appreciation circles. I use the values in action website to their 24 character strengths kind of give us a vocab bank of appreciation things we could appreciate about each other. Basically, any topic you're doing, you can invite students to share a story about that concept or theme. You know. Whatever it is a question that they have, how are they doing on the project, what's a challenge they have? There's a lot of things where students can kind of be invited to storytell. I also think it's really important kind of to know and I forgot I had gone into this in this blog post but this idea that relationships and content knowledge are mutually exclusive is just a false dichotomy. Right, you can do both. As I said, talk about the theme, invite students to share a story about the topic you know, draw connections to current events, life experiences, other classes, like have them do what is actually a harder, like a higher DOK level, higher Bloom's taxonomy level, work right Activity is like building those connections and solidifying those pathways. That's going to be great. I also think you can do like specific non-content related stuff like social, emotional skills, work habits building. You know ways to resolve conflict and repair harm, building empathy or something right? I think there are definitely spaces for that as well, but don't think that they're mutually exclusive content and building relationships or building social emotional skills. Next, allowing for student choice and autonomy, ownership all the things. I think it's really a balance right. So we need to help students learn how to self-regulate and problem solve on their own and, honestly, we benefit from that. So, as educators, we have to do less when the students can take on more, and they're not going to be able to take on more until they have that self-regulation piece. So it's kind of like a we don't want to support too much, right. That's the whole idea of scaffolding is we support until they don't need it anymore, and then we have to remember to take it away, and so I think it's really just constantly being aware of what your students need and that some students are going to need this scaffolds longer, and that's the whole concept of personalized learning and just to kind of be thoughtful about that. Independent work time is a really good opportunity for students to be able to work on what they need. Here's a reflection that I've had since writing this blog post. A lot of schools have identified this as an important thing and they have created time in their schedules to do it. Awesome, and in talking to a lot of the teachers that are responsible for that time, it doesn't always feel meaningful. Sometimes it does. Many teachers have reported to me that it just feels like a bit of a waste of time. They might be working on, you know, a computer program which may or may not be helpful and may be helpful to some students and not others. Program which may or may not be helpful and may be helpful to some students and not others, but standardizing. You know, all students are going to work on IXL for this 30-minute block. That might not actually be what that student needs. Yes, everyone needs literacy support, but many students might be getting the literacy support that they need in their class to be sufficient, to be on grade level, to be whatever, and they actually really need something else. They actually really need an opportunity for social connection. Their mental health is suffering. They need an opportunity to have a group counselor, facilitated session or something right. So I think being able to truly give students what they need is at the heart of this and not okay, we're going to standardize the time for it and we're going to standardize what is being done in that time, because the whole idea is not standardization, it's personalization. Not to say that IXL or any other tech-based stuff is not going to help students. That is a great way to differentiate and personalize within a topic or area as best as you can for all of those students. So not at all to say if you're doing that, that that's bad, but just give some thought behind it. There are other ways to insert. You know, choice support, different learning styles. I love choice boards, the idea of inviting students to say, hey, you can learn about this topic in these three ways a video, a article, you know some other way. You can do a little mini lesson with me in a small group, right? So the process of how they learn, but also the content. Can they be content specialists? Can they subspecialize within a broader umbrella topic and be the experts in this subtopic that they're super interested in? Their peers might not be. You might not have, you know, all the time in the world to go into all these subtopics and this is where students really get to shine. Also thinking about, like standardized tests. I've done a lot with investigating history as a curriculum recently. You know there are these assignments that exist in the curriculum. As part of the curriculum, they they could be adapted and they could be, for example, a you know five sentence paragraph or something Great. You could also verbally share that with me and I would still get that. You could do a claim, evidence and reasoning. Right. If that's what I'm grading, I don't necessarily need or assessing I shouldn't even say grading but assessing I don't need you to necessarily write it out, right, you can tell me how would you like to demonstrate mastery of the things I am assessing? And if you can do it in a creative way, great, right. So give that option of product in addition to process or content. So I think also, you know, having some sort of wall chart, anchor chart, standard reminder of students as they're engaging in these really student-led activities, that what I need time, that choice that's given to them. Students are in 10 different topics across the room. There is not maybe a person they can go to to get help. Maybe you can't be running all over the place trying to help them. I think it's really helpful to have like a three before me list or I had like one that was 10 before me but, right. For example, don't know what you're doing, like, look at the rest of the class and ask the class, me and Google answer your question, google it right. So, whatever the system is, whatever the things you want students to do before they raise their hand to ask you for help, just remind them of that in a really gentle way. If they're shouting your name every two seconds, just point to the anchor chart, the poster on the wall, you know whatever it is. Have a little hand signal that reminds them. I think that could be really helpful. It's just like this gentle reminder, and not just reminder of what they can literally do, but in in, you know doing some like sleep training and stuff with my toddler. I've been thinking a lot lately of you know this. The importance of and Dr Becky Kennedy talks about this too is like we believe you can do it Right. So if I'm lingering around a student, I might be demonstrating to that student. I don't think you can do it on your own. I'm just waiting for you to ask me for help, right? But if I move away and I say, hey, three before me, you got this. I have faith in you. I'll be back soon to check. I'm here if you really need me, but I know you can do this. That conveys a very different message and we have an opportunity for students to decrease their dependence on teachers for that, like minute level support, like the day-to-day, like small stuff. They can do that on their own and then, when they really need us, we can step in. I also think again, as you think about your role in your school, think about the educators, the adults who also would benefit from things like this. I believe you can do it. I trust you. Here are the supports Go do the thing. I'll be here. If you mess up, it's okay. Like we're going to, I'm going to be here, we're going to get through this, but you can do it. I believe in you. I want to give you autonomy. It's one of the reasons that teachers leave the field so much I've seen some really interesting research on this right is that there is a lack of autonomy and trust, and so giving that, whenever we can, to students and adults is really critical. All right, restorative practices in place of discipline. We know that traditional discipline policies disproportionately affect students who are Black, brown, indigenous, students with IEPs. We know that Black girls have been suspended for the same behaviors that white girls have gotten any punishment for. There's so much inequity in this and I honestly think that we as a society are moving in a good direction here. So I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this, because I actually do see this shift, or at least this recognition of this, as being important. Is it done well? I mean, that's another complication, but restorative practices have been shown to reduce disruptive and violent behavior, increase attendance, improve school culture, problem-solving skills. It's good, right, we know this, and so to do this, I think it's good to have a culture of circles, where you do circles already. Then you can have a restorative circle with the whole class when necessary. You can also have a restorative conference, one-on-one or in small groups of students, where you're basically inviting students to speak from the eye. I've had episodes on this in the past. You can go check those out, but in the end the participants are really wrapping up by saying how they can act to repair the harm. So really good stuff there. Having again a system-wide place in your school is great, but you can do basic things like that in your classroom if you are an individual classroom teacher or if you're a teacher leader excuse me supporting an individual classroom teacher who wants to do this when you don't have the whole staff behind it yet. Finally, shared leadership, specifically thinking about, you know, students in this, in your class. Again, we can co-create norms, co-create learning opportunities, giving voice to the process, product and content of how they're learning. We also can really leverage street data, or what I've been calling student experience data. So again, that's from Jamila Dugan and Shane Safir, thinking about how we learn from students what their experiences are and invite them to share those with us and, if they'd like, invite us to share the actions that would make their experience better, better and then implement it. I think a lot about Lundy's kind of four areas of student voice and thinking about how we don't just need the space that's like part one of four. We need the space created for students to share their voice. We need the voice, but we need to help facilitate it. We need to give students appropriate information, skill based training to effectively share what they're thinking or even come to the idea of what it is that they're thinking or that they need. Many adults, I know, don't necessarily know what they need in a moment of challenge. They just know that it's challenging, right, and so there's, there's more there as well, as you know, being that audience that's really authentically listening and trying to, to commit, being that audience that's really authentically listening and trying to, to commit. And then I can't remember what the fourth word is that she uses, but really that we're coming back and telling students, yes, we can implement the thing, or no, we can't, but here's why. So we're giving that information. So those are kind of four things that I'm thinking of as I as I think about this shared leadership as well. Anytime we conclude, you know either a segment of learning, it could be a week, it could be a PD for your staff, it could be a unit, right. Anytime you can give some surveys or some, you know, exit tickets, something quick. That's just like what do we think? Please be open to all sorts of feedback here, but that feedback is probably going to be way more valuable than you know, not asking the question or just independently thinking about how you, as the teacher, thought it went. Students are going to be honest if we cultivate that honesty in our classes and they know that you're not going to punish them for their honesty, right? So I think the final thing here for me is this idea of shared leadership comes with this giving. I don't actually hold on wait. So this idea of power over versus power with is actually kind of a people have called it cascading vitality, right? This idea that when you open up the sharing gates, right, we are actually amplifying the amount of power. And a student who sees their peer as successful, they're now going to think that they can do it, and all of these things. So we're not necessarily giving up power when we are sharing. We are in the distributive language distributing, yes, but also we are just 10x-ing the amount of power in the space, right, because everyone holds onto their own power and it becomes this generative force for creating and creating and creating this kind of life of the community. And your answers? Right, we talk a lot about adaptive leadership on this podcast. Your answers to these big, longstanding challenges are crowdsourced from the people closest to the pain, in the words of Ayanna Pressley, right? And so, if they're closest to the problem, we need their input and their feedback. Again, I'm thinking adults from a staff lens, students from a class lens. This is where your answers are going to come from. So we need to just cultivate that willingness on our own part to hear it all, to sift through it and again return to students or staff and tell them this is why we can't implement this if we can't, and this is how we're going to move forward with your idea if we can. So this is potentially hard, challenging work, particularly if you're a new teacher and you're like what I have to do all these things. You don't. These are ideas. Take one nugget, run with it, come back for more when you're ready. If you are a leader supporting a new teacher who might be overwhelmed, share that sentiment. Right. You can identify as well the places where this is going well, the places in your school community where a teacher or a leader is fabulous at creating a thriving, positive class culture, one where students are willing to make mistakes, eager to learn from each other, sharing openly and honestly, and people are receiving it well and non-defensively. There's tons of empathy all around. Everyone's identities are affirmed. Right. Find those places and invite teachers to go see that in action, or set up a success. Share where teachers get to share what they tried and how it worked. And what was that? Student impact data, right. What does students say about this? What was their student experience of this lesson or this thing that you've been doing and once we foster all of that, we are going to be thriving all around. So, to help you build and sustain a culture of that, we are going to be thriving all around. So to help you build and sustain a culture of belonging, challenge and discussion in your community, I'm going to go ahead and share my culture playlist with you for free. I created it earlier in 2024, and realized I don't think I've ever shared it on the podcast, so it's in the blog post for this episode at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog slash 175. It is going to give you all of the things that you need to build and sustain this culture. There are so many resources I'm guessing around 60. There's so many podcast episodes, youtube tutorials, templates for you in there and it is completely free. Go grab it. Let me know how it goes and reach back out if you have questions. Until next time,
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In this episode, authors Beth Pandolpho and Katie Cubano chat with me about the transformative potential of education through emotional intelligence and civil conversations. They share their vision for an equitable education system where every student can thrive and every educator enjoys intellectual freedom and resources that equip them as professionals.
Beth Pandolpho is an educator, instructional coach, writer, and consultant with over 20 years of experience. Beth is passionate about engaging in work that promotes equity and access for both teachers and students. Katie Cubano is an educator and instructional coach with over 15 years of experience. Katie’s focuses on supporting teachers and schools as they design and implement curriculum and instruction that effectively and equitably meet students’ needs. Katie and Beth co-authored Choose Your Own Master Class: Urgent Ideas to Invigorate Your Professional Learning, which we discuss more in this episode. The Big Dream Beth and Katie's big dream for education is twofold. First, for students to have full access to education—their right as citizens—that enables them to grow into who and what they want to be, while also becoming the engine of social mobility. Then, the dream is for educators to work under conditions that enable them with intellectual freedom, material resources, and professional learning opportunities that help them do the job they love to the benefit of all their students. Mindset Shifts Required To achieve equitable outcomes for teachers and students, you need to focus on the teachers and offer best practices. Beth and Katie explain how the whole book is a mindset shift because it offers research-backed information for any teacher to apply. Some of the biggest mindset shifts required revolve around the structure and delivery of professional development. Teachers deserve the same responsive, choice-based learning experiences they provide their students. Additionally, educators can embrace that being wrong is the way we learn, and mutual understanding should be a high priority in the classroom. Action Steps Step 1: Listen to and serve the students who have been most underrepresented and marginalized. It’s not about trying to give them a voice—they have one already. We need to listen and implement what they need. Step 2: Embrace being wrong and know it’s a path to learning and growth as an educator, and offer opportunities for mutual understanding in the classroom. Step 3: Access and utilize resources that help teachers explore urgent educational issues and respond to their students' needs in both curriculum and classroom culture. Challenges? One of the biggest challenges Beth and Katie foresee is overcoming set mindsets many educators have about what’s right and wrong, or what’s good for themselves and students. This makes it harder to partner with people you disagree with, a challenge to achieving equitable outcomes. One Step to Get Started Beth and Katie suggest that listeners start by making one small change, such as rethinking a debate or choosing one chapter or issue to focus on. This small change can have a big impact on your students. Stay Connected Connect with Beth by email at [email protected], and with Katie by email at [email protected] or on X at @katiecubano. To help you implement the lessons from today, Beth and Katie are sharing their Reproducible Chart with you for free. You can also purchase a copy of their book, Choose Your Own Master Class: Urgent Ideas to Invigorate Your Professional Learning to learn more about this important work for educators. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 177 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 0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons Beth and Katie. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 0:00:07 - Katie Cubano Thanks for having us. 0:00:08 - Lindsay Lyons Thank you. I'm so excited to have you. I mean, I have told you this before we hit record, but I absolutely love this book. Every teacher and leader in school needs it. I'm thrilled to be having a conversation with you about it. I am curious to know. There are so many things in the world that we all like encompass. There are so many things that we can talk about in this book. What is important for listeners to know? Either about you or just that you want them to have in mind as we jump into our conversation today? 0:00:38 - Katie Cubano Okay. So, um hi, I'm Katie Cubano and I've been in education for over 15 years now. Um, I taught English in the secondary grades for over a decade before becoming an instructional coach, Worked on the same team as Beth until last June when I resigned to be home with my one-year-old so my now one-year-old. So I'm working in the paid workforce right now in a part-time role. So I'm doing student teacher supervision for the College of New Jersey and taking care of my little one and Beth, and I also published Choose your Own Masterclass in 2023. 0:01:16 - Beth Pandolpho Hi, I'm Beth Pandolfo and I've taught English for over 20 years at the high school and college level. I'm presently an instructional coach for grades six through 12. And I think one thing at this point in my career that's important to me is just working toward equity and access for teachers and students. 0:01:37 - Lindsay Lyons I love that. I think that is a shared belief and goal for all of us and I think that's actually a really good segue into the big first question that I usually ask people. So this idea of freedom dreaming comes up on every episode of this podcast, and Dr Bettina Love describes it as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. Considering that, what is the big dream that you hold for education? 0:02:01 - Katie Cubano So I think that we'd love to talk about this in two parts, the first part being our dream for students and then the other piece being our dream for teachers. So I think you'd love to talk about this in two parts, the first part being our dream for students and then the other piece being our dream for teachers. So I think you know our dream for students is to make sure that every student has full access to their right, to their civil right, to an education which enables them to not only succeed academically and follow their passions, but also to grow into citizens who are able to create a more just and humane world, to sort of and this is my frere Ruth speaking to humanize and be humanized in turn by their relationship to learning and to community. 0:02:35 - Beth Pandolpho And just to continue that I think a lot about students having the ability to become who and what they want to be, and education as the engine of social mobility. And then our dream for teachers. Katie, do you want to start on our dream for teachers? 0:02:55 - Katie Cubano Sure. So we feel so passionate about the work we do, about the students we love and about the colleagues who we love and we work alongside. And we want to make sure that teachers work under conditions which enable them with the intellectual freedom, material resources and professional learning opportunities that help them to do the job that they love and benefit, to the benefit of all of our students. 0:03:20 - Beth Pandolpho And I think part of you know why we wrote the book is that we feel really strongly about teachers being treated like the educated and creative professionals that they are. 0:03:32 - Lindsay Lyons Oh my gosh, I love both of these streams. Excellent, thank you. That was really also very succinct. I'm very impressed by you all. So, as you think about kind of the path to the dream, I'm curious to know being instructional coaches, being in that space, thinking about you know, working together on the book. I'm just envisioning this, this path. What feels like? You know, the blocks along the path, where, where along the path, do you see yourself having accomplished great things? And then kind of like what snacks? I usually think about some buckets. Like you know, there's a lot of mindset work. There's a lot of like you guys call them, I think, like introspective reflection sections of your book, right, there's the pedagogy pieces and instructional pieces, like what does this look like with students? There's like the assessment, the content, right, there's all sorts of different things that I think good quality teaching and the structures that enable these teachers to thrive in the ways you described. There's just so much. So where do you see kind of yourselves along this path? 0:04:37 - Beth Pandolpho Yeah, and I think for Katie and I, we both were thinking about students and teachers, because a lot of times we work toward equity for students and then we're seeing things happen systemically that feel really not fair. So, in terms of students, I feel like right now in my career, my focus is listening to and working to serve our most underrepresented and vulnerable student populations and creating opportunities where there weren't any before. And then, in terms of my work with teachers, I'm very interested in how we can provide scaffolds and supports in the classroom, because often what works for our most vulnerable students works for everyone. 0:05:17 - Katie Cubano Yeah, I love that, beth, that's so true and I shockingly, I agree with you completely. I think that when I think about the path to the dream for me and sort of where I've been and where I'm going next, a lot's really been rooted in my approach to the teaching of ELA, both in pedagogy and thinking about content, working with a lot of students whose needs have not been fully met by both education and society at large and, as a result, they're working to improve their skills and I'm sure that you have plenty of other guests and plenty of other listeners who have talked about the problem with thinking just about remediation as our lens, right. So really I've focused my energies both as an educator and an instructional coach and I think also in the way that Beth and I think about and talk about teaching and learning and students and teachers in the book, really focusing on providing students with engaging and relevant curriculum and instruction that meets them where they are and helps them be lifelong readers and writers, not just people who are assigned reading and writing. I think so often in the ELA classroom we're like teaching as though this is like a college English course and our students have chosen to major in, you know English literature or something, when what we really need to be doing is focusing on what they need to grow into people who have reading and writing at the core of their identity as they move forward, or at least as like a part of their identity that they can appreciate and see as something that matters to them in real ways. So for me, this has always included like a very robust, independent reading program, with all the attendant efforts that go into making that happen. And so as an educator in my own classroom, as an instructional coach, supporting my colleagues to do that kind of work and advocating for the funding necessary to get the texts they need, to help them find great texts, to listen to what texts they want, and try and get other people to pay for that. Beth and I did a lot of work like that with our other teammate as well. And then in the book, beth and I also talk about the importance of an independent, robust and independent reading program. We think about our values for our students. We have a chapter on um lining up. It's on a decreasing um um decision fatigue, and we talk about lining up our values with our practices and how so often they can get trampled when we're not very intentional. Um, those values we can just get swept up. So robust independent reading, strong writing workshop approach, that really honors the fact that even our high school learners need writing instruction, maybe even more so than our younger learners, or at least as much as our younger learners do. And then I think the other piece, both as an educator and an instructional coach, really thinking about comprehensive article and vocabulary study, which maybe seems small and unimportant but was really important in my classroom and foundational to helping students build background knowledge about how systems and levers of power work and helping them become sort of aware and justice-minded citizens who can use that knowledge to advocate for change. A lot of times that knowledge is withheld, intentionally or unintentionally. We can get into a whole discussion about that, but they've missed it and they need it. So a lot of that work too. So that's sort of the content and pedagogy piece. And then in terms of dreaming, our dreaming for teachers both of us, we're interested in really supporting them to explore the issues we talk about in the book, which, you know, urgent is in the subtitle. It's a nice long subtitle which I'm very happy about. So it's choose your own masterclass urgent ideas to invigorate your professional learning, and we want to support teachers to explore these issues so that they can draw inspiration directly from the thought leaders that we've, um, we've we've explored, who are all from outside of the field of education, and use those insights to reflect on ways that they can immediately and creatively respond to their needs, the the needs of their students, in both curriculum and instruction, also in climate and culture in their classrooms and schools. Because we feel really strongly that teachers really deserve a responsive and choice-based professional development, professional learning experiences. That's what they give their students Beth is always saying so beautifully and that's what we want in our work and throughout, you know, through the book, to give back to them. 0:10:06 - Beth Pandolpho Yeah, I just want to add onto that, Katie. That is something that I say a lot. Like why don't we give teachers what they give their students? Like, why are we not giving teachers what they give their students? And there's a Starbucks quote and it's like the one who sweeps the floor should choose the broom. And I mean, you know not that teachers want to be, you know, analogous to like. You know not that teachers want to be, you know, analogous to like. You know that teaching is like using a broom. But also, why are they being told what to do exactly what to do? Why are they not just being given the stimulus of what to think about and then figure it out in response to their students? So I feel like those are mantras that Katie and I are always thinking about. And so for us, like writing this book was really an act of love for our colleagues and our teachers, Like we wanted this to be like a gift. If we could do anything to make professional development better, we felt like this was what we'd want our colleagues to have. And for the administrators, when we got the peek behind the curtain, we thought, wow, these people need some support. So it was with both of those things in mind. 0:11:14 - Lindsay Lyons Amazing, and I'm sure in some of these questions we will talk about the format of the book itself and kind of that idea. I feel like that for me, was a huge mindset shift that I have seen in leaders as they are thinking about designing PD for teachers and what that could possibly look like. I think your book is a beautiful answer to that. I'm curious to know if that's a mindset shift that you want to unpack here or if you have other mindset shifts that you were thoughtful about in terms of like, what is it that teachers leaders like? What mindset journeys do they really need to go on, or how should they shift to be able to get to that place where we can achieve the dream that you described? 0:11:56 - Beth Pandolpho Yeah, I do think we wanted to talk about it in terms of the book. When we were thinking about our mind shift, I said you know, katie, what's our mind shift? And she's like, our mind shift is the book, that's our book. So I said you're right, because we think in order to achieve more equitable outcomes for teachers you know and outcomes for teachers you know and students, you have to also focus on the teachers. So for teachers, this is a way. It's a book of six chapters. They're standalone, they're like long research articles. So you can begin with chapter four and if you only read chapter four, you have a full experience. If your colleague reads chapter two, there are jigsaw questions to have cross-curricular conversations. All of the thought leaders are from outside of education because, you know, we've decided that social and emotional learning is really important, but also, like psychology knew this was important for decades to say teachers are really busy. Here's some urgent ideas from outside the field of education. You don't need to wait 20 years to find them out. Like, here they are, and then it's not what Beth and Katie think about them. Like, what do you think about them? These are people that are doing the work you know in other fields. So the way we identified the topics for the chapters is we made a gigantic chart, but then we also just took people from our school and said like okay, here's our PE teacher, here's our very resistant, whatever teacher. And we were like we need to if we want to make equitable professional development. We need to think about all of these people. And so there were things. It could have looked very different if it was the Beth and Katie book, because we would have just done what we liked. But we did it what? Which would have been fun. 0:13:37 - Katie Cubano That would have been a lot of fun, no, but only we would have only our family. 0:13:40 - Beth Pandolpho It would be for us. Yeah, it would be for us, so yeah, so we had to challenge ourselves because there were times like there were teachers that would not want to read the Beth and Katie book. So the things that we decided were urgent in education. The first one is emotional intelligence, and people talk a lot about you know that's not what we're here to do in school. And oh, kids are so much more sensitive, you know, than they were previously. So like we don't want to feed into that. But really emotional intelligence and academics, like they're intertwined, you can't do one without the other. So one chapter is on chapter one is on emotional intelligence. 0:14:17 - Katie Cubano Katie, and I just want to add to that One of the things Mark Brackett talks about, who we bring into that first chapter he talks about. Sure, kids today are more sensitive, and that's great. Sensitivity is a superpower that can be harnessed, you know, to make everything in a person's life better, to help them become so much more self-aware, to help them understand their reactions to you know conversations both with in the home, out, you know, in in school as educators, right Too, or so we're talking about both student self-awareness and teacher self-awareness in that piece. But we love what Mark Brackett, how he frames that like, yes, they are more sensitive and that is okay and that is something that we can use to help them move forward, not something that holds them back. 0:15:02 - Beth Pandolpho And you can't separate your emotions from academics, like if you come in and you had something happened at home or something with a friend that is going to impact you. We can't separate it. If you feel nervous or unsafe and there's an exam you're not going to do as well, I mean, these are not things we could just say, this does not belong in school, like we bring our whole humanity to every space. So, katie, do you want to talk about chapter two and balancing technology? 0:15:29 - Katie Cubano Oh, you know I do so major mind shift here. This chapter is called balancing technology use in the classroom, and you know we were seeing a lot, and we still are seeing a lot. We're very happy to see this conversation about the importance of schools helping students not be so attached to their phones, right? So what can schools do? Some schools are banning them entirely. They're putting them in lockers. I actually advocate for that approach, but there's lots of approaches, you know, all along the continuum, and what we weren't seeing, though, was a reckoning with the degree to which we're tethering students to their devices in the classroom and when they go home for the day, and we felt like there needs to be a major mind shift here, because you know it is our responsibility to give, to help students receive an education which respects, you know, their need for healthy lives and health, healthy balance, including time away from their screens, and not only in the classroom, again, but at home, time for play in nature, time for family and time for community, and we are not striking this balance right now with the degree to which we ask students to access their education on the computer, and, you know, when we think about the original goal of that we talked about of students having a full access to their to their civil right to an education. You know we got these one to one devices with so much enthusiasm and now we need to pause and say is the current state of affairs providing students with a full access to their civil rights to an education? And we would argue that it's tipping into such an unhealthy territory with the amount that we're having them on the screens. The great news is we're very well positioned to help stem this tide of tech overuse and help our students understand the problems with surveillance, capitalism, big tech's role in both their education and their lives outside of school. And we have some really practical strategies and exercises that educators can use to start to think about how they, if their pattern tipped into sort of digitizing as the default, which many of us went that way, especially with the pandemic that's totally understandable how we can start to walk that back. So just one quick example and all of these are free, free printable reproducibles if people want to check them out and adapt them in ways that work for them. But on our website for the book. But one quick example would be just simply auditing your tech tool usage. So thinking about. You know how many are you using and what is the defense for the use of each, and is there any duplication happening? You know, are you using? I'm not gonna be able to think of the name of it now. I know Pear Deck, but what's the other one that my friend wanted, the one that's just like Pear Deck? Anybody, anybody, pear Deck. But what's the other one that my friend wanted, the one that's just like Pear Deck, anybody, anybody has such a silly name too. 0:18:18 - Beth Pandolpho I'm not going to be able to oh, I know I know which one you mean, but yeah, but so I mean where Katie's going with this is. People say, like I heard about this tool and it's like right, it's exactly Pear Deck and we have a premium subscription to Pear Deck. So let's like so I mean also in there with the best intentions teachers want to do, like the newest, the best, the most engaging, interesting, and it's just like right, it's Pear Deck, it just it's the same exact thing. So, save your energy and your goodwill, and so you know, we're really just to be like link it to your instructional outcome, and if you're already have something that that fits that bill, then then that's sufficient and maybe what you have that fits that bill is not using the screen, Maybe it's doing it in paper and that was working great. 0:19:06 - Katie Cubano You know, Beth shared this really great example the other day. She was saying like she was saying, like you know, great example, digitized for the pandemic. I'm going to let students choose from these four articles, and I always do this. I have these four articles curated. I love them. Oh, I found a new one in the Times this week and I'm going to add that. So now I've got five beautiful articles, I'm going to put them all up on Google Classroom. Right, the students even to get to that post, sometimes the exercise in willpower and attention resources just to get to that post on Google Classroom. 0:19:42 - Beth Pandolpho And then five to choose from five, and then some open them all up. So now they have six tabs open in addition to whatever else they had open. And how do you pick these articles that? Your teacher, you know, was just waxing poetic about all of them. So I said to Katie I mean, at some point you want to just say here's a pink article and it's about this, and here's the yellow article, which is about this. The pink one's longer, you'll find the yellow one a little bit shorter and a little more user-friendly. What are you feeling today? 0:20:13 - Katie Cubano I mean, for me it's going to be three. Let's be honest, it's going to be at least three in my classroom. But yes, point being, print out the articles, put them on the desk and bring it back to your desk. 0:20:23 - Beth Pandolpho And now you can attend. And again, we're not talking about wasting paper. Save them. I mean, I started saving things from year to year, but they don't. If they're not writing on them, like, I'll have those back, or if you want to annotate them, I don't need them back, but we're doing something wrong. And now we've spent all this time and we're only on to our second chapter, but we just feel, we feel so strongly that we've gone too far in one direction in a way that's detrimental to kids. 0:20:52 - Katie Cubano Yeah, and I think that and this is the last thing I'll say about it it's so much more than just curriculum and instruction too. So in the chapter we highlight three thinkers there Jenny O'Dell, who wrote how to do nothing, resisting the attention economy. Cal Newport, who wrote digital minimalism excuse me. And Johan Hari, who wrote stolen focus, why you can't pay attention, and how to Think Deeply Again. And I just really I really encourage folks to look at the resources, because the free resources, because we dive into so much more than what I just mentioned about auditing, auditing the tech tools you're using we dive into deeper concerns about, again, surveillance, capitalism, the attention economy, helping students come to understand those things, and thinking really intentionally about ways that you can opt to do something different, to operate in a third space Jenny O'Dell would call it while still serving your students and being a part of the community of teachers where you work, yeah, and so we don't have to continue answering this question. 0:21:53 - Beth Pandolpho if you want to move on, or we can, you know, kind of just like highlight some of the other few chapters. 0:22:00 - Katie Cubano We were going to talk about civil conversations next. 0:22:04 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah, let's maybe just like a quick view of the rest of the chapters, just kind of topical level, and then maybe for the next question we can focus on the civil conversations, because I'd love to talk about that. 0:22:16 - Beth Pandolpho Okay, so the chapter three is on fostering civil classrooms for a more civil society. Chapter four is supporting student growth and mastery through teacher leadership teachers in the classroom as leaders. And the next chapter is really an introspective chapter for teachers, reducing decision fatigue, because teachers are tasked with so many micro decisions in a day, and we called it reducing decision fatigue to increase equity, because we think it increases equity for teachers if they can manage the amount of decisions, and also for students, so we're not giving students different answers because we've managed these decisions. And then the last chapter is called telling stories that lead to liberation, which is really about the way we think about and talk about students, that we have a more positive framing because it actually matters, because when we put negative labels on people, we actually put an artificial ceiling on what they can achieve. 0:23:14 - Lindsay Lyons Oh my gosh. Yeah, I wish we had like four hours for this conversation, cause I'd love to get into all of these. They're so good. But I'm I'm wondering about you know like maybe we take the chapter three, for example, or we can take like the broader idea of personalized PD and kind of like what your book gives leaders. But however, whichever direction you want to go, but I'm thinking about like the action step, so like if you're talking to leaders about you know what, what will make this possible in their spaces? What are the actions that this looks like to implement or for teachers, what are the actions that this looks like? I know you have so many tangible things at the end of each chapter. I'd love to, I'd love to get into those a little bit. There's there's so many follow-up questions I'll probably insert here, but I'd love for you to just give me your initial thoughts and then we can take it from there. 0:23:59 - Beth Pandolpho Katie, can I just I'm gonna start on this one because I feel like I can anchor it to a chapter, because I hadn't thought about it in this way, but this is something that I'm doing at work that I feel like answers. What are the brave actions we need to take? And that made me think. If I said Katie, if I said that our mindset is represented in this book, this really is about telling stories that lead to liberation. And one thing that we're doing at our school is we took all of the student affinity groups, like the Black Student Union and we have a Muslim Student Association, and I'm not going to list them all, but we actually just decided we need an affinity group like these groups. They don't have paid advisors and we've actually just we sat with every single group. The assistant principal did and I did, and we just said what are your goals and objectives? How can we support you? And now they're presenting at a faculty meeting. They're going to have. They have. If you had the question is, if you had eight to 10 minutes with teachers, what do you want them to know and how can they support you in the classroom and beyond? The Muslim Student Association went to one of our elementary schools and did a lesson about their culture and how students, and they came with all the students' first names in the class written in Arabic and they helped the kids write their names and they visited, I'm going to say, 20 classes, pairs of students. The Hindu Culture Club is doing a Bollywood movie night. These are things that they can't accomplish without adults in the building and you know the assistant principal can't be their advisor and I'm not in a position there's no advisory position but what we can do is listen to them and get it on the school calendar and make sure they have chaperones. So I feel like what's the path to the dream? It's listening to students who have been historically, you know, marginalized, underrepresented and not heard, and you know we don't have to give them a voice. They actually have a voice. We just have to create the opportunity and the space for them. And right now and my job is very busy and multifaceted, that is the most joyful part of my job sitting around a conference table with students and they are so grateful and when I want to say, all I'm doing is just saying, yeah, you could do that. Sure, I know who to email, you can email me, and they're so. They feel so liberated, and now we're working to connect them with the middle school because also their club enrollment drops off when they graduate, and so now we're working to connect them with the middle school because also their club enrollment drops off when they graduate, and so now we're working to recruit the eighth graders. So that's something that I can do and our DEI coordinator can do. We partner with the middle school. How can we now get them to interface with the eighth grade? So that's, I feel like that's my path, and it doesn't I mean, I know it says brave action, it actually doesn't feel very brave. It feels. It feels just like what we should be doing. 0:26:38 - Katie Cubano Beth talked about her immediate context, so I guess I'll do the same. I'm not working in a K-12 building right now, which is so weird. Worked in a K-12 building not only for the over 15 years of my 16th year this year, but then throughout my college preparatory program, so it's just so weird to not be in the rhythms of the building. But because I'm not, it feels kind of futile for me to list things I did when I was those feel like past actions. 0:27:09 - Beth Pandolpho Oh, I'm sorry. I was just going to say one thing that I think sort of encompasses. You know and again, it would never be a waste of time to listen to all of the things that Katie did, because it's kind of amazing but I also think that one of the challenges that we all go through is that we need to. We have a broken system and we need to fix it while it's still operating, and so it's this moving target. So, but sorry, katie, I didn't mean to. 0:27:32 - Katie Cubano No, that's okay. No, so like the piece of the of the puzzle I'm working with now is in my student teaching supervision role, um, and what I'm finding is that's a little shift for me is that I'm learning to serve students and work alongside students who may already have privilege and power in ways that maybe the communities, um, that I worked alongside before did not, and that is its own challenge worked alongside before, did not, and that is its own challenge. So I've been reading and rereading this Carla Shalaby essay. You must accept them and you must accept them with love. You must accept them and accept them with love, which is a James Baldwin quote, and she talks exactly about this specific thing and it's it's been such, it's been very supportive to me in thinking about how do I help pre-service teachers enter the profession ready to cultivate excellence in their work, provide culturally and developmentally responsive and equitable classrooms for their students, do so in a way which honors, like, what they desire for themselves and the vision that they have for themselves, not just the vision I have for them, right, so it's a lot. It's sort of supporting them in their pre-service work to anticipate where do they need more support, what resources do they need. How can I model teaching that's sort of rooted in a love of all students and again, while helping them be the teacher they want to be and not the teacher I want them to be? Because now, like we're back in a in a power relationship, I don't want if that's what I'm doing is trying to get them to become me. Essentially and Beth and I have talked about this a lot with you know, in our experiences in general in education, to be a leader is not to. You can't be a leader by just wanting people to follow the same path that you took and wanting them to do it the same way you did it. That's not leading, that's not responsive at all. So this is a new challenge for me and the brave action is sort of I'm not sure what part of it it feels admitting that it's hard for me to work in a situation where I'm serving students who have privilege and power and to do that in a way that's rooted in love and not sort of get resentful or get annoyed at things that they may privileges they may have, that even as myself, as a pre-service teacher and as a young teacher I didn't have and just to serve them genuinely. 0:30:00 - Lindsay Lyons I love that. I also wanted to share, if it's okay with you, all things that I was reflecting on from what you shared that just were the brave actions that I think would be super cool or like action steps perhaps you could say to consider. So things that I talk about but were just novel to me in the thought process. So these are kind of my ahas for the book, particularly around that chapter on civil discussion. So one I love that you distinguish between norms and baseline assumptions Mind blowing. I was just like this is incredible and I'll mute myself actually after that one, just because I want to know do you guys want to just kind of explain that a little bit? 0:30:37 - Katie Cubano Sure. So I want to shout out my friend and Beth's friend and both of our colleagues One of my best friends, justin Dolce-Moscolo Garrett, and we's friend and both of our colleagues one of my best friends, justin Dolce-Moscolo-Garrett and we worked together to sort of develop this concept of baseline assumptions. We didn't develop it in a vacuum and we have lots of resources in the book for folks to look at to start to understand that. But it came from I guess what it came from was this realization that lots of people were norming with their classes but there was still something missing. Like the norms were dictating what was happening in the class. Like we're trying to dictate the actions in the classroom, but there was never like a baseline discussion of. Here are the things, here are the assumptions that are going to guide the discussions. Here's how we'll have the conversation is great, but there needs to be some guardrails around what we're talking about and whether what we're agreeing to are the conditions of our understanding of society before we can actually get into the how we're going to have the conversation and respecting other people. Through the way I show up in my conversation, you know and I'm careful of my conversational quirks and things like that and we really did feel like that piece was missing. And I think that a lot of times folks are worried and scared to say to their students you know, in this classroom we are going to operate on the assumption that, but it's our belief that we have the intellectual freedom to do so. So, you know, for me, one of the ways this manifested as a teacher of English is, I would say to my students in this, in this classroom, we're not going to debate whether people who are gay should be able to get married. They should and and and. You don't have to agree with that personally, but in this classroom you have to respect that view personally. But in this classroom you have to respect that view and you know that's teaching is not apolitical, we know this. So it is. I'm glad that you brought it up as a brave action, because it is. You know, does it mean that some people might disagree with you? Sure, but it, and that doesn't mean that every baseline assumption has to be what I just said. They're both things that you as the, as the teacher, bring to the conversation and they're called professional learning with teachers because they did like lunch and learns. 0:33:08 - Beth Pandolpho These baseline assumptions are really important because they did devolve into things that were not really up for debate and they could click back a few slides and say like, oh, you know, that's not part of the conversation, because we sort of established that everyone can have clean water and that's brave to do with colleagues. But I feel like it gave them the language because they thought about it before. So I'm going to say that's a brave action to do it with your colleagues. So it's sort of then it's neutral, it's not judgmental, it's not like you said something wrong, it's like ooh, right. Also, remember, that's not. We're not debating that or discussing that. 0:33:50 - Katie Cubano And what it kind of does is. It gives people an opportunity, and I think that people initially meet this with fear. For many reasons backlash, but another reason is they don't wanna tell a student what to think about something. One of the things we talk about in the civil conversations chapter is sometimes what you're actually doing with. A baseline assumption is giving a child an opportunity to try on an identity that they're not going to get to try on anywhere else in their life, and that can be really. You can say to them you don't have to think this in your own life. You have to respect it in here, though, that this is a guardrail in our conversation in here, and it really does. It gives them the opportunity to see what that would feel like, and then they can let it go as soon as they leave if they want, if that's what their families want, if that's how things go for them, but at least in that moment it gives them that chance which they might not otherwise have, but at least in that moment it gives them that chance which they might not otherwise have. 0:34:44 - Beth Pandolpho Another thing that Katie says about civil conversations that I also really like is that in school, you know it's like let's have a debate. You're going to have, you know, one class period to research this issue and then your job is to just debate the other side. And you know the more we've been thinking and we have enough of that going on in society, so we're just like we need more conversation. So Katie and I have been using the terms like inquiry and conversation. We're going to look at both these issues and we we cite work from Francis Kissling in the chapter like what is good in the position of the other. You know, and I and you know Katie used the example of, you know, gay marriage. Know, katie used the example of you know gay marriage, like I used the example of, like you know, everyone should be able to buy a cake from a bakery for their wedding, like you know. And let's talk. We're not going to debate, you know we're not going to debate it whether you think they should or they shouldn't. And also, like, where are the people coming from who didn't want to sell the gay couple the cake? And we talked about religion and what could you admire about them as being religious and trying to adhere to their faith. So just looking at it as a complex issue instead of like I think they shouldn't get the cake. Well, I think they should get a cake and I think that we have enough polarity that we don't need to nurture that in our classroom at all and that it's okay, yes, oh, oh my gosh. 0:36:05 - Lindsay Lyons There's so many things that I want to jump in on. You guys are brilliant. So one thing I wanted to say is that, yes, the around that, like the Adrienne Marie Brown quote that you used about being wrong oh my gosh, so good, right, and just the idea of being wrong, right, like that, we learn a lot and grow a lot from being wrong. Like the, the goal that you shared about mutual understanding. I was imagining, like if, instead of the rhetoric outcome right, or the make a claim, defend it outcome that we typically I mean I use that as a teacher, I encourage, I literally was coaching people this month to use that as a teacher and now I'm like, huh, what if it was instead mutual understanding? That was the outcome, like, literally as a priority standard on a rubric. How cool would that be right? And you guys have a ton of like. Um, page 96, page 107, I mean there's a bunch of prompts that you guys share about, like here are the question prompts that you could hand to a student when they see an argument or an opinion about something and you could unpack it right. And you could unpack it right and you could to your point, beth, like what is valuable about this argument? Right? Like what is the underlying value? I think there's so much in that we talk about or I talk about using like the positive psychology's values and actions and I think you guys actually cited them as well as kind of a culture builder, but how cool would it be if we actually integrated it into academic conversations as well. Right, where are the values in this? I also loved the, I think, related to what you were just talking about, this idea of asking students to just think about what they think about, as opposed to what's your opinion on this go, and that just made me think about you know what? How do we create? You also write about flow states, but I love Chiksmahai's work and, like thinking about, you know, carving out time free from distractions. That's what enables us to be creative. That's what enables us to like have the time to consider what we think and how. You know all the different things. I think they merge together around. This question for me is like, what does the class look like, or what could it look like when it enables us? I know that's a big question. I just want to know if you have thoughts on that Did you say class, yes, yeah. 0:38:11 - Katie Cubano So I think one very concrete thing is you know, when we think about planning for rhetoric, when we think about planning for you know, thinking through persuasive, being persuasive in our writing. So often those units rush to picking a position to defend and I think that, excuse me, an essential piece that often our units are missing is like a whole lot of time for students to just learn about the issue. Just, they have knee-jerk positions, sure, I mean for many things, not for everything, but for many things. But before even asking them what their position is, what is a topic you're interested in? I don't even want to know what you think about it yet, because I don't even think you fully know what you think about it yet, and that's not your fault, you haven't had the time to figure that out. So, like, let's spend some time just building our knowledge around this issue before you decide what your position's going to be on that, to the degree that that's possible. I know that. You know there would some there. You know there's some argument that our positions are sort of going to create our arguments, that our positions are already set. It's not going, we're not necessarily going to be swayed by information, but I do think that maybe, while that may be true of adults, we have an opportunity with students to take some time to build background knowledge before having them jump into defending you know one position or another and using rhetoric toward that end. 0:39:46 - Beth Pandolpho Yeah, and I just want to add one thing that I'm thinking years ago, before I had the language for it, I did a four corners activity and I had told every student, like go to the corner that you believe in, and if you end up in the corner by yourself, I will come and stand with you. And one student I don't want to say what it was, but he went to a very unpopular corner, something that I could not, you did not agree with, and I went and I stood next to him and I just said tell me why you think that like share with everyone. But just it gave him a chance to like interrogate that knee jerk decision without I didn't criticize him, I stood next to him and I think there's something that now, when I have language for it, I would think it's that cancel culture, but instead I was like calling him in. You know, like here are some reasons. I think it's problematic. Where were you coming from when you stood here? But I mean it changed the whole feeling of the class that I went and stood next to him. And again, when you talk about brave action, it, but it felt pretty brave to go stand there with that opinion that he decided he strongly agreed with. 0:40:55 - Lindsay Lyons Thank you both for those concrete examples. I think I'm looking at the time. I totally lost track of time because I've been so engaged in this conversation. Maybe we could do a lightning round for the next couple of questions. One I'm wondering what the biggest challenge that you faced or that you anticipate facing as you continue this work is, and feel free to both answer. 0:41:15 - Beth Pandolpho I mean, I think the biggest challenge would be that people have really set mindsets about what's right and wrong and what's good for themselves and what's good for themselves and what's good for children. So I think I think that is a big challenge, and how do you partner with people that you don't necessarily agree with? 0:41:34 - Lindsay Lyons Agree, yeah, so good, and everyone should get the book to read more about how to, how to partner with people to do that Um one thing that you would encourage listeners to do when they end the episode. What's kind of that? First, next step. 0:41:50 - Beth Pandolpho I think that everything feels so big. And but if you could do one thing, one small change, if you decide you're going to rethink your debate, right, rethink your debate, you know, just like it's choose one chapter, choose one issue, choose one thing, because small changes have a big impact. 0:42:11 - Lindsay Lyons Something you're learning about lately. This does not have to relate to your profession or this conversation. It can be literally anything. 0:42:18 - Beth Pandolpho Well, I'm going to I like I'm going to say something first, and I feel like Katie's going to have some kind of beautiful wrap up. I think what I'm continuing to learn is that we can't change everything we want to, but what we can always do is we can show up for people, we can show up for what we feel is right, and maybe not always, but sometimes that's enough. 0:42:38 - Katie Cubano I just finished Ta-Nehisi Coates' the Water Dancer, which was published a long time ago now, but I don't always get to books the year that they're published and it was, without a doubt, the best book I've read this year and I'm going to be honest with you guys, besides short form pieces, I'm only reading fiction right now in my life. My brain, with a one-year-old, cannot handle weighty nonfiction. So I'm reading the Water Dancer, or I was reading it. I just finished it and there's this beautiful passage in there about abolitionist. Corinne Quinn is the name of the character. The narrator says about her that she loved the idea of abolition, she loved the idea of of. She loved than them, but she did not love enslaved people. And I just ever since I had I read that it was just so beautifully put I did it. Zero justice, everything. Tanahasi codes touches turns to gold and I hope he writes more fiction soon. But it's really had me reflecting on like what are the times in my life when I was solely operating or not solely, because I don't think I was ever solely, but I was at least in part operating out of ego when I was advocating for, against injustices, and then like, what are the times in my life when it has been only pure and genuine love for students? And then how can I reflect on those times and what I was doing and how I was feeling, to make sure that it only ever falls on the side of doing it, because I love students and I want them to have full access to their civil rights education all the time and never fall on the side of. I'm doing this because it makes me feel better than other people or it makes me feel like a purpose for my life, because it's not about me, it's not about us, it's about the work of of, it's about the, the freedom, dreaming right, that's what it's about. So I love that he's had me, he's had my head there. In this kind of time when I'm um in education, but not sort of in the school building right now, it just feels like the right time. There's no wrong time to be reflecting on that, but this feels like a particularly right time. 0:45:10 - Lindsay Lyons That was so beautiful. Thank you, thank you, guys. So the last question I'm going to ask is just where do people learn more about you, connect with you, get your book, all the things? 0:45:21 - Beth Pandolpho Well, I have a website and it's bethpandolfocom and that's just kind of like a landing page for all of my things, um, and my email is on there and it's connect at bethpandolfocom, and I'm more active on linkedin than I am on what is now x katie yeah, so folks can just reach me via email at. 0:45:43 - Katie Cubano It's just Kate Cubano at gmailcom, kate, and then Cuban with an O at gmailcom, and I'm not super active on X and I don't have a LinkedIn. I just I'm just not doing it right now with our book is on Amazon and on Barnes and Noble. Also, though, I would love to share, we to share. We would love to share with you, lindsay, the link to the book website on Solution Tree, so that folks can access those materials that we mentioned. 0:46:14 - Lindsay Lyons Brilliant. We'll put it in the blog post for this episode in the show notes Awesome. Thank you guys. So much, Katie and Beth. It was an absolute pleasure. Thanks for joining. 0:46:22 - Katie Cubano Thank you.
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In this episode, I’m borrowing research and strategies from the fields of counseling and psychology to help educators apply healthy relationship concepts in school communities. Specifically, we’ll explore how Gottman’s State of the Union meeting is relevant for educational spaces like classrooms and staff meetings.
Why? From Dr. John Gottman and Robert Levenson’s research on thousands of married couples, they were able to predict which couples would remain married vs. get divorced with 90% accuracy. Why? During a conflict, happy couples had a ratio of 5 positive interactions to 1 negative interaction. To help couples reach and maintain this 5:1 ratio amidst conflict, Dr. Gottman developed a “State of the Union” weekly meeting structure. We’ll unpack that below with applications for educational settings. As you review the following steps, consider your role in education and which type of setting you are most likely to use this structure.
What are the steps to the State of the Union? Step 1: Start with 5 appreciations Identify a specific value, characteristic, and/or action that a student or staff member demonstrated in the past week. Share this with them, and repeat it 4 times. (If you’re facilitating a group, you may point out 5 individual actions or highlight 5 things the group has done. You could also have participants turn and talk to a partner so each person received 5 appreciations specific to them.) I like to use VIA’s character strengths for a vocabulary bank. Step 2: Praise what’s going well If student-led discussions are a priority this year, share positive feedback from students or your observations of what is going well. If you’ve been struggling to improve everyone’s capacity to listen deeply, share how you’ve specifically witnessed it get better. You could also generally point out who’s doing amazing things. (Example: Kaya’s class is doing fantastic with asking inquiry questions this year. If you have time, stop by a launch lesson!) Step 3: Process a challenging incident or issue Partners may alternate sharing. In a group setting, you can also invite participants to each share an incident. Throughout, Gottman encourages non-defensive listening and empathy. The goal is to seek to understand. As the sharer, share your emotion, the specific thing that happened, and your need. You may use the sentence stems: I feel…about _______. I need… For example, in a situation where a teacher is talking 1:1 to a student about an incident, the teacher may say: I feel worried about you when you are not in class. I need you to tell me why you missed my class so I can help you succeed. Step 4: What can I do next week to make you feel more loved? Invite ideas from one another (or all participants in a group setting). Each person asking what they, individually, can do to help one another feel loved demonstrates a commitment to their own responsibilities for and clarity on the goal—all people should experience love. Final Tip Make this a routine! Schedule it into your lesson plans, your PD calendar, your team meeting agendas. If weekly doesn’t work, try monthly. You don’t have to wait for the SOTU meeting to share appreciations with one another. Embed appreciations into your regular practice too! To help you build a sustain a culture of belonging with your students or staff, I’m sharing my Staff Meeting Agenda Series with you for free. (You can use the same activities for students—one learning model for all!) And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 176 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 0:00:01 - Lindsay Lyons I'm educational justice coach, lindsay Lyons, and here on the Time for Teachership 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 nerding out about co-creating curriculum with students, I made this show for you. Here we go. 0:00:39 - Lindsay Lyons Welcome to episode 176 of the Time for Teachership podcast. In this episode we are bringing in some research and strategies from the fields of counseling and psychology to help educators apply healthy relationship concepts in their school communities. Specifically, we're going to look at Gottman's State of the Union meeting, which he counsels married couples to engage with, and we're going to talk about how it's actually relevant for educational spaces like classrooms and staff meetings. Here we go. So let's get into why you might want to have a State of the Union meeting for your class or, if you're a leader, for your staff. Let's first look at the research. So, from Dr John Gottman and Robert Levinson's research on thousands of married couples, they were able to predict which couples would remain married and which couples would get divorced with about 90% accuracy Mind-blowing. During a conflict, they watched people basically work out a conflict for about 15 minutes. I think they would observe how many positive interactions that a couple engaged with in that time and how many negative and happy couples had a ratio of five positive interactions while negotiating conflict to one negative interaction. And when I think about the number of times I interact one-to-one or even large group with students, like as a teacher, how many times do I interact with every student right, and how many times was that interaction positive? How many times was that interaction negative? I think about the number of touch points that families have with educational institutions and their children's teachers, how many of those phone calls home where those outreaches are positive and how many are negative. When I was being trained as a teacher, a lot of it was, you know, the positive sandwich, for example. So here's a positive, here's the challenge, here's like where I think we're going and how you know this kid is going to do. Well, that's still only a two to one ratio of positive to negative. It's not enough, which is mind blowing to me. So there's a lot there. That's kind of the foundational level of this research. But then to help couples reach and maintain the five to one ratio amidst conflict, which is of course inevitable in partnerships, in romantic relationships, in family dynamics that are non-romantic, in classes, in staffs, right, like yes, this happens, conflict, yes, we know this. So to help everyone maintain the five-to-one ratio, dr Gottman developed a state of the union, what he called state of the union weekly meeting structure, and so we're going to unpack that today with applications for educational settings and I want you to think about your role in education. As you listen and think about this, which type of setting you're maybe most likely to use a structure like this. So if you're a leader, for example, you might use something like this with a whole group in a staff meeting. You might use it in one-to-one meetings with teachers, so this might be something you call supervisory meetings, mentorship meetings, coaching meetings. If you're an instructional coach, or even if you're the principal, but you have a coaching relationship Facilitating a leadership or department team meeting, have a coaching relationship facilitating a leadership or department team meeting. It might be in resolving conflict with a colleague or a student, either colleague-student conflict or your conflict with a colleague or your conflict with a student. Similarly, for teachers, this could be that you're facilitating like a lesson with your class, so a class circle, maybe an advisory period, you know whatever it is. It could be one-to-one or small group conferences with students inside or outside of the school, like class lesson. It could be during a department or team or PLC meeting time with your colleagues. It could be you facilitating a student-to-student conversation about a conflict, like a restorative conversation, for example. It could be you again resolving conflict yourself with a colleague or yourself with a student. So a lot of different opportunities I think for this here and it fits most naturally, given that partnerships or romantic relationships that Dr Gottman designed this for a one-to-one, when you have scenarios that are you and another person right, or you're facilitating a conflict resolution process with two people one-to-one right. But I do think there are still applications and general principles that we can use for those larger kind of class-wide or staff-wide opportunities. So keep whatever lens or opportunity for this to be used in your role that you would like in your mind as we go. So what are the steps of the state of the union? Here we go. Number one you start with five appreciations. The very first thing that you do when you're doing your weekly check-in is you say here are five things I appreciate about you. Now I typically with my partner, we usually do this we go like one-to-one, like I'll share one, he'll share one, one, one right. So you can do that. You can also share. Here's my five, here's your five. Doesn't really matter, but what you want to do is identify a very specific value, characteristic or action that a student or a staff member demonstrated in the past week so it's got to be recently, particularly if you're doing this every week. If you're doing this a little bit more spaced out, like once a month, okay, in the last month, that's fine, but it has to be specific. So I usually like to say, like here's the action that I saw you do and I really appreciate it because it was emblematic of this character trait you have, right, or this value that you exemplify, right. So really getting into, like the thing that you really appreciate and I want you to share it with that person and then repeat it again, like four times. So you have five times total that you will be sharing this. Now, if you're facilitating the group, there's some different options here, so you might point out five individual actions. So if you have a group of 20 people, you're not going to share five individual actions for all 20 people. You just don't have the time. You may point out like five individuals from the group. You can highlight five things the group has done. As a group, you also could have participants turn and talk to a partner so that each partner does receive the five appreciations that are specific to them, because that receipt of appreciation is, you know, likened to deposits in a bank, like these are good, we can draw on these later if we have conflict, like we always want to build up the positive, and so if you want to be really strategic in partnering people with maybe colleagues or fellow students that do not typically talk to one another, that could be good. You're building that, will there. So I really like a vocab bank for this. I think students and generally people of all ages benefit from a vocabulary bank, because we're not used to appreciating one another using specific language. We're just not. So I like to use values and actions, character strengths. They have a list of 24. I'll link that in the blog post for today's episode if you want to check it out, if you haven't already. Again, that blog post is at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 176. All right, so we do the appreciations. Everybody shares five appreciations. Ideally, everybody gets five appreciations. Praise what's going well is the next step. So if student-led discussions, for example, are your priority for this year, instructionally, you would share positive feedback from students or your observations of what is going well. So again, this works at a class level. Hey, students, I've noticed that you know we did these five things really well and again, it doesn't have to be five, but here we're just praising, like we. I noticed that in the last conversation you all did really good with equity of voice and you invited students who were quiet to share and just made sure they had an opportunity. Right Again, as a leader going in, you know this person's class. I saw this great discussion on this. Here's what went well. I also got to see this person's class. You get the idea If you have been struggling to improve something, maybe like as a staff and as a whole school community, we're really working on listening deeply. That's something that's really important to us. This year we weren't very good at it. We got some survey data that said we were pretty terrible at it and I've witnessed it get better. Here are some examples. Like, I'm noticing this is going well, it's improving. You could also just do a general point out of like so-and-so is doing amazing things right. This is just what's going well in general. Kaya's class is doing fantastic with asking inquiry questions this year. So if you have time, stop by a launch lesson if that's okay with Kaya, right? So whatever is going well, we wanna have space for it there. So again, we've just done the first half of the meeting, where we just say five things we appreciate and we get some appreciation back and we praise what is going well. So it's all positive, right. And now we get to the second half of the meeting and we have step three as processing a challenging incident or issue. So here's the moment where you, as the facilitator of a group, perhaps could share out what your thoughts are. You could also invite participants to each share an incident that's important to them that they'd like to navigate, talk through. If you are in a partner dynamic, you can alternate sharing, right. So if it's a one-to-one, I share a challenging incident, we talk through you. If you are in a partner dynamic, you can alternate sharing, right. So if it's a one-to-one, I share a challenging incident, we talk through it, and then you have an opportunity to share a challenging incident, right. But the important thing here is that throughout, gottman really encourages non-defensive listening and empathy. In fact, he has a whole acronym, I think it's ATTUNE A-T-T-U-N-E. I'm not going to get into all those, but the most important thing that I think is not kind of a given or the thing that's hardest to do, are those non-defensive listening and empathy which I believe are the N-E of the acronym, a tune. So the goal is really seeking to understand I feel like that's become a theme of a lot of my work lately is seeking to understand is the goal versus being heard, right, of course, as the sharer, you want to be valued, you want to be heard, you want to be like you know, given the space that you see someone is receiving your words and deeply committed to you know receiving them. So, as the shar share I think sentence starters might help but kind of parameters to share with whoever is sharing at the moment is that you want to share the emotion that you're experiencing, or experienced, if it was like a challenging incident that occurred in the past, again the past week, we're not bringing up like old, old stuff, right? Whatever it is that this week, if we're having weekly meetings, is that we want to talk about. Share the emotion, share the specific thing that happened. So not attacking like this is something you failed to do, like you didn't do this, right, but here's the thing that happened. And then your need, right, so the sentence done, for example, I feel about blank, I need whatever it is. So here's an example If a teacher is talking one-on-one to a student about an incident, skip class, for example. Right, the teacher might say to the student I feel worried about when you are not in class. I need you to tell me why you missed my class so I can help you succeed. Right, I feel about, about, I need. So we're processing that challenging incident and we can have an open conversation. It doesn't have to be that the person shares the challenging incident and we just leave it right. We actually do want to process, and we've built up all of that positivity early on in the conversation, that we should be equipped enough, drawing from the bank, all of those deposits we should have enough in there that we can navigate the challenging end of it. And then, step four, we wrap it up with what can I do next week to make you feel more loved? Now, some people may problematize the word love in classroom spaces. I personally have had students. I would tell students that I love them and I have personally had students tell me like no other teacher, no other person today told me that they love me, like this really was important, like I know that you love me, that you care about me. Right, so it could be. What can I do next week to make you feel like you matter, that you belong, cared for? Whatever word you want to use, fine, I'm just going to use Gottman's words, because I do think that love is at the heart of what we do, and I'm not afraid to say that. So identify whatever phrasing works for you and go with it. But what you want to do here, what can I do next week to make you feel more loved, is to invite ideas from everybody. So all participants in a group setting or, if you're again a one-to-one, like you, would ask the question, your partner would respond, and then your partner would ask the question and you would get to respond. So what this does is that each person asking what they individually can do to help one another feel loved. I think it really demonstrates a commitment to their own. Like, each of you have your own responsibilities. Yeah for and clarity on the goal, which is that in this case, all period, all people excuse me should experience love. So that experience of love should be given to everyone. You are committed as an individual to giving that experience of love to everyone and you're open to receiving the ideas from the other person. So you're not just you know I'm thinking about love languages here You're not just like loving and gift form, like I got you all these gifts and someone else's love language is actually, you know, like words of affirmation, like they just needed you to say thank you when you did this thing. Right, like cool. Like we're not communicating in the same way. It's very important that we know how people want to be loved so that we can love them in that way, and I think this is really relevant for staff and classrooms. Like we don't always communicate in the same ways that other people need to receive communication, and we think we're helping and we're putting so much effort in and we're trying so hard for this student or this colleague and they just don't get it Right Totally. I've been there. I have been there, and by inviting the question, by asking the question, inviting the responses, we are now engaging with that dynamic and to say I'm committed to doing this thing for you. You just got to tell me, right, I'm inviting you to tell me and I'm going to listen to your answer and I'm going to act on it, that is powerful stuff what a way it flows out to save the union. So that's the last piece, I think. The final tip I want to share with you, though, is that this should be a routine schedule it into, if you're a teacher, your lesson plans, if you're a leader or coach, your PD calendar, your team meeting agendas, whatever it is. And you know what, if weekly doesn't work, don't say, oh, I'm just not going to do this. I can't do it weekly, Totally fine, it can happen monthly, it can happen every unit, like as often as you can do it, right, but don't completely write it off because you can't do it weekly. Also, just want to name this is probably self-evident but very important to make sure we we leave this conversation with this understanding. You do not have to wait for the state of the union meeting to share appreciations with one another, right? You can embed appreciations into your regular practice. You can write every single day. You can write a student or a colleague an appreciation note. Here's just how I start my day. I arrive at school, I take 30 seconds to rip off a post-it, write someone's you know action or value, whatever that they exemplified, and put it on their desk or in their mailbox in the office or whatever. Send an email. That simple 60 seconds. I start my day this week at one person a day. That's a lot of appreciation you're sending out into the world, right? And imagine a class full of students who are growing up with this being just how we do things. This is how we exist in community with one another. How beautiful. So to help you build and sustain a culture of belonging with your students or your staff, I'm going to share with you in today's blog post my staff meeting agenda series. It's completely free. There's an agenda and a slide deck for 60 minute increments. I think there's four total. You can use these activities for students. It is designed for staff, but it is only designed for staff because I believe in that one learning model for all idea of we do this with staff so that they can do it with students right. So, regardless of your role, that will be relevant. You can grab that at the blog post for today's episode, which is lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 176. Until next time, if you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazzed as I am about my coaching program for increasing student-led discussions in your school Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice. In their book Street Data, they say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm how I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan, from full-day trainings and discussion protocols like Circle and Socratic Seminar to follow-up classroom visits where I can plan, witness and debrief discussion-based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy, no-strings-attached brainstorm. Call at lindsaybethlyonscom slash contact. Until next time leaders, think big, act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at teachbettercom slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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8/5/2024 175. Behind the Scenes: Planning a Discussion-Based Professional Learning Experience with Kara PranikoffRead Now
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In this episode, you’ll experience a behind the scenes planning conversation between Kara Pranikoff and I as we develop an agenda for the first day of professional learning for 3rd and 4th grade teachers across the state of Massachusetts to engage with and prepare to implement a pilot of these two new grade levels in the state’s Investigatory History curriculum. Specifically, this segment of our conversation is focused on designing a 45-minute discussion-based activity that involves the core pedagogical principles that underlie this curriculum and will take place on Day 1 of the professional learning series.
Here’s Some Context DESE’s Investigating History curriculum is designed around 4 core pedagogical principles: Historical Inquiry and Investigation; Historical Empathy and Human Connections; Civic Engagement and Current World Relevance; and Culturally Affirming Pedagogies. The conversation in this episode is designing a discussion-based activity to highlight the latter 3 of the 4 principles. Our team of coaches—Kara, Eric Soto-Shed, and I—support the development of Westheimer & Kahne’s (2004) justice-oriented citizens. This type of citizen “know[s] how to examine social, political, and economic structures and explore strategies for change that address root causes of the problem.” There’s a critique of systems of oppression and action to fix them vs. “participatory citizenship” which is more volunteerism (Martell and Stevens, authors of Teaching History for Justice, say It’s the difference between holding a food drive and asking “Why are people hungry?”) We try to keep this in mind as we design the question and the experience of this activity. What did we design? Here’s what we came up with… Step 1: Set agreements and a baseline assumption. We’d like to co-construct the baseline assumption with the group. Given the time constraint, we’ll suggest using discussion agreements from Glenn Singleton’s Courageous Conversations about Race and Cobb & Krownapple’s Belonging Through a Culture of Dignity. We’ll ask if anyone has anything to add, ensure we also have an agreement about how to hold each other accountable, and link additional resources for how to co-create agreements with students in the agenda. Step 2: Share a compelling Discussion Question and the relevant texts. Our draft is: How can we heal from the impact of white settler colonialism on indigenous peoples and the enslavement of African and African-descended peoples in the United States? Texts: Excerpts from Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You (this is the version of Ibram X. Kendi’s book written for young people) and An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States for Young People by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. *Note: We ultimately decided we won’t bring the texts in until the next conversation about this question on Day 2 in order to make this first conversation (on the first day we meet participants) less high-stakes and more about sharing initial ideas in community. Step 3: Introduce the format or protocol. Educators will participate in a human barometer activity with a scaffolded version of the Discussion Question: Is it possible to heal from the impact of white settler colonialism on indigenous peoples and the enslavement of African and African-descended peoples in the United States? (Participants who think “Yes” will move to one side of the room. Participants who think “No” will move to the other side.) We expect lots of complexity in participant answers when we ask “Why did you choose Yes or No?” We’ll give participants a chance to converse with a partner about their reasons, and we’ll have facilitators note some big ideas. Note: For the next discussion (on Day 2), we’ll have the large group (approximately 150 people!) break into 6 smaller groups with 25 participants and 1 facilitator per group. They will engage in a Socratic Seminar protocol on the full question: How can we heal from the impact of white settler colonialism on indigenous peoples and the enslavement of African and African-descended peoples in the United States? using the texts listed above as evidence to utilize in conversation. Step 4: Reflect. As a whole group or in a smaller—25-person—pod, we can share trends in our conversations and identify similarities and differences across the large group based on the Singleton’s Courageous Conversations compass. (i.e., Where were/are you on the compass?) We can introduce a post-discussion reflection prompt teachers can use with students:
We’ll also invite participants to reflect on our facilitation and design of the discussion:
Final Tip I’m still growing in terms of making adult professional learning truly aligned to the experiences I coach teachers to facilitate for their students. This conversation stretched me, and I highly encourage you to find a thought partner who will stretch you as well! We plan learning experiences SO much better when we have someone that we can bounce ideas off of. To help you get some thought partnership, Kara and I are inviting you to one week on our Slack-based coaching platform, EduBoost, for free! Interested? Sign up here. It starts on Monday, August 12, 2024. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 175 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. Wondering who Kara is? Kara Pranikoff is an educator in New York City. She has worked as a classroom teacher; reading interventionist; Instructional Coach; curriculum designer; and an adjunct instructor at Bank Street College of Education. As a consultant Kara partners with school to nurture independent thinking, voice and a sense of belonging for all members of the community. She supports educators in deepening their practice of inquiry-based teaching of social studies and writing. Kara’s book, Teaching Talk: A Practical Guide to Fostering Student Thinking and Conversation (Heinemann, 2017) shares ways to foster productive and independent student discussions in elementary and middle school classrooms. You can contact Kara at www.eyesopeneducation.com, LinkedIn, or Instagram. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:00 - Lindsay Lyons We are going to do something a little bit different for this Time, for Teachership episode. So in this episode you're going to hear a behind the scenes of my fellow coach, cara Pernikoff and I co-creating and really thinking through an agenda for a PD series we are doing in conjunction with Eric Soto-Shedd and our amazing administrative assistant, gianna Martin shout out to the team for investigating history as a pilot of the grade three and four curriculum written by Educurious. So we are very excited for this opportunity to work statewide with amazing, phenomenal teachers. And we are in this clip that you're going to hear discussing our day one agenda where we really give folks an orientation to the curriculum and primarily the pedagogy is behind great teaching and how it is embedded in this curriculum. So what you're going to hear is really just us diving into this section on the core principles that underlie the investigating history curriculum historical inquiry and investigation, historical empathy and human connections, civic engagement and current world relevance and culturally affirming pedagogies. As you jump in, we're really thinking about a discussion-based activity that's going to last about 45 minutes where we're focusing on primarily the last three principles, so historical empathy, human connection, civic engagement, current world relevance and culturally affirming pedagogies. So you'll really hear us think through what exactly is happening in those 45 minutes and we have, as we're starting, really a general question in mind, which is how can we heal and we are thinking about texts that are not actually from the curriculum but maybe for adult learners, using Stanford in the beginning for young people. So, yes, adult learners, but also we like to use the young people text so people could use it in their classroom if they wanted, as well as an indigenous people's history of the United States for young people. So that's kind of where we're at and you're going to hear the rest. I'm excited for this. Here we go. I'm educational justice coach, lindsay Lyons, and here on the Time for Teachership 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 nerding out about co-created curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go, all right, so we have the discussion in general idea, but then to start with setting agreements, how do you want to do? You want to? 0:02:52 - Kara Pranikoff give them a baseline assumption. Do you want them to co-create a baseline? 0:02:55 - Lindsay Lyons assumption we have an hour. Yeah, I do think we could probably borrow from other times, but we have. I was thinking if the reflection on the core principles is like 15 minutes, then we'd have 45 left for the actual discussion activity. 0:03:09 - Kara Pranikoff So I think the best case scenario is for us to co-construct a baseline assumption because ultimately, we want them to be able to do that in their classroom, right? We want a model that you want your kids involved in the co-creation of those agreements. So I feel like we want to do that here. 0:03:27 - Lindsay Lyons And I think maybe have one in mind, just in case they're like, I don't even know what that means. Maybe we share a couple. Yeah, okay, great. I like the authors of the book that I learned that from. They said everyone deserves food, water and shelter, or something like. That was like a sample one. Yeah, so if we believe this, then how do we proceed? Yeah, yeah, okay, great. And then are we co-creating? Are we taking the time from the 45 minutes to co-create agreements, which would probably take 25, 30 minutes out of that that, or do we want to? 0:04:05 - Kara Pranikoff I think we offer those four. I also like the ones from um what is belonging with dignity. So I sometimes share both of those and say is there anything that you have to add Right? 0:04:19 - Lindsay Lyons But I don't think, I'm not familiar with belonging with dignity. What are those? Hold on? 0:04:25 - Kara Pranikoff I'm going to pull, pull it off because I can't do it off the top of my head. 0:04:28 - Lindsay Lyons I do love the title. It infers like a lot of the things that we regularly talk about belonging through a culture of dignity. Wow, I need to read it okay you know what you've seen. 0:04:37 - Kara Pranikoff One of the um, you know the, the visualization, or the visual representation of integration, where it's like colored dots and then like full integration is everybody's got another. So that comes from this book. 0:04:59 - Lindsay Lyons Got it Okay. Oh, that's fun. Yeah Right, there's a little I wish I didn't read. 0:05:05 - Kara Pranikoff I wrote it until I read like I'd seen that and actually used that before, and then I was like oh, that's where it comes from. I'm not going to find them here, but I've used them in the past. I'll link them. I've got them perfect. 0:05:17 - Lindsay Lyons Who is the author of that book? I'm going to make sure I look it up Lloyd Cobb and John John John Crown, apple. Okay, amazing, it's a good one. Okay, perfect, so okay, awesome. And I think, too, we can link, um like a couple I think I have a resource for how to co-create norms that we could just link it Like. If you're interested in doing this, yeah yeah, explore this in your choice activity later or something you know we could. 0:05:43 - Kara Pranikoff Yeah, great, great this in your choice activity later or something you know we could. Yeah, great, great, I mean. And then, because we've got this out, when we gather again at our whenever our next one is October I think we can have a conversation about how are you using the agreements? Have you had to add agreements? Is there a time you've called them into discussion, like, how are those? How is it a living, breathing document in your classroom? So yeah, I think we should do that Amazing. 0:06:14 - Lindsay Lyons I love that idea. Okay, because I do think there's a tendency, even for people who do this well, to just like I'm done and it's static, and we're never returning to it, we're never losing it. Yeah. 0:06:26 - Kara Pranikoff I'm done and it's static and we're never returning to it. We're never using it. Yeah, and I think when discussions go awry, it's so powerful to pull them out and talk to your kids about you know where, what. What happened here, and is there another agreement that we need so that X, y and Z doesn't happen again? Like, how are we going to caretake our community? Is there something that needs to be added? 0:06:44 - Lindsay Lyons I love that. I also was just thinking I don't know if the belonging through a culture of dignity has an accountability agreement, but I do think that was another thing I learned from this other book. That was like make sure, one of the agreements is how do we hold each other accountable? So I mean, I like the one that's just like if you number the agreements you hold up the number of fingers that's being violated. So it's like two point to the poster, whatever, something simple we can offer that if we're stuck. Yeah, I think that's great. Um, okay, so the question I don't know if we want to like wordsmith the question a little bit, or if it's just like how can we heal from harm in general? But I'm wondering about the how we can heal and maybe it's like a little bit more history, specific, because it is a history thing, like how do we heal from like white settler colonialist influence on indigenous people and like the enslavement of Africans, like I just I wonder if we just like put it all out there in the question or how much is general, and then we kind of facilitate through the primary sources, like let those speak for themselves, kind of, and then have teachers bring it up what's your? Where do you lean on that? 0:07:59 - Kara Pranikoff So my instinct is to be really specific, because I feel like one of the growth edges of teachers in general is just like say the thing and say the thing a lot, and we're not used to saying the thing right, we're not used to talking about, you know, the harm of, of white colonists, so necessarily, so I I kind of feel like we front load it okay. 0:08:27 - Lindsay Lyons So how do we want to word it? I just kind of riffed there. But how can we heal from like the impact of white settler colonialism on? Is that? So let's maybe pause there. What's the language we want to use around? Is it white settler colonialism? Is it like from the impact of colonization, imperialism, trying? 0:08:55 - Kara Pranikoff to think of the language colonization, because I think that that's the language that investigating history uses, more than imperialism. The thing that I'm playing around with is do we want to say so? If we're saying impact, do we want to say ongoing impact? Is it implied that the impact is ongoing? Do we want to say historical impact, or do we want that to come up in discussion? You know what I mean. 0:09:22 - Lindsay Lyons Yep, that one that's such a good question, that one one, my, my leaning and I can be swayed is to leave it as impact and then encourage people to bring it up and, if they don't, to actually highlight that inner reflection portion of like. You actually avoided any connections to the present. Interesting, why were you avoiding Like kind of digging into, maybe using those four quadrants of like? We didn't actively avoid the question from a historical perspective maybe, but we totally avoided the modern connections, I wonder. I don't know. 0:09:59 - Kara Pranikoff Great, I'm all for it. I'm all for it, I just want to have our radar. It also dawns on me that in a conversation, I think one of the pieces of debrief has to be what did we as facilitators do to nudge the conversation but not take it over, introduce other ideas? And so I could imagine somebody making a comment about you know that impact being long ago, or whatever the language is, and asking the question of was the impact only in that thing, or was it, you know, is that the only moment of impact? Or whatever it might be Like. I think we could play around with nudging. 0:10:38 - Lindsay Lyons Yep, I do love that idea because I also my brain is also starting to go to where, how, how do we, what protocol do we use? Like how do we enable the discussion to flourish? And so sometimes, if we choose, for example, Socratic seminar, I am very much like a sit back and let it happen, Like encourage the students to ask each other questions and in this case, adults to ask each other questions, and like there is a moment where, if the discussion is totally not fruitful or bringing in misinformation or something like there could be a moment that we do interject. So that'll be really interesting to think about how all of this fits within the protocol itself too that we just choose to use For sure For sure. 0:11:20 - Kara Pranikoff I also, just logistically I am curious about so we've got a lot of people in one room, or are we going to break up even into thirds? Like maybe a fellow doesn't necessarily lead this, but maybe we break up into thirds, and I think it would be interesting to record the conversation, even just with notes, and then see the similarities and differences in the three charts. Like could we, could we envision something like that? 0:11:57 - Lindsay Lyons oh, I love that right and just if we have three. So I'm just thinking that's about what 20, 22, per good, that's a. That's a good chunk of people, but not overwhelming in terms of numbers. Maybe 25 max. I think that's comfortable. I mean, it's not everyone's probably going to speak in this time, but that's real. 0:12:21 - Kara Pranikoff Except, like everybody, isn't it more than that, isn't it a hundred? And oh, it's? 0:12:27 - Lindsay Lyons yes, it is, it's like 125 you're right, okay, so I'm wondering if we do six, we do the pods with six groups, pods of about 25 each to simulate the classroom size. Yep, but that we do still. Do you think that's feasible to still do similarities and differences across, like if we use a protocol that's going to be, for example, collect and display where the facilitator or we could do more, but, thinking for time's sake, the facilitator highlights some trends, puts it on a sticky note, brings it to the front of the room, and then we can kind of collect the sticky notes and organize them into larger trends quickly, yep yeah, I think we would have to do some front loading of organization and then the trends. 0:13:13 - Kara Pranikoff I think we would have to. I think I guess we just have to make sure that the fellows are cool with that. 0:13:21 - Lindsay Lyons Yep I also think if we do have a framework. So, for example, maybe we reflect as a group before we do the reflection section, individually or with partners, whatever it's like, okay, we're reflecting as a group with whatever framework we're using. We're using the compass, the courageous conversation compass, great, like what were the trends in our group, based on the framework. Or if we're using the discussion quadrants, where did we fall? So maybe that's helpful to just pick the framework. Or, if it's two frameworks, to be really clear about how we're condensing the information shared in that reflection. 0:13:59 - Kara Pranikoff Yeah, yeah my instinct is to use one framework as a way in, because even in that we'll start to get a sense of trends, and then it there's a clear line of thinking for that reflection. Yep, right, I do think it's hard to have a big conversation and then be metacognitive about it. So like I always suggest to teachers if you're doing it in the classroom, like be metacognitive about it. So like I always suggest to teachers if you're doing it in the classroom, like be metacognitive to the next day. You know what I mean. Like have a quick thumbs up, thumbs down. How do we do? But like really unpack the conversation the next day, cause I think it's hard, I think it's hard for adults also, so do you think that actually that reflection using the framework like, for example, we use the compass that actually that does live in the reflection section. 0:14:45 - Lindsay Lyons After they have gotten out of the circle or whatever like space that they're in for conversation, and now they're back at their desk, they took two minutes to walk around and think. Then we ask the question there. 0:14:58 - Kara Pranikoff And then share out. Yeah, I think we need a break. I think we need I mean, I think we could stay in the circle, but I do think we need to have a discussion and then have the circle close. I'm imagining a circle but like have the circle close, take five minutes. You could come back to the circle and do the compass, or we could do it individually, like back in our regular place, but I think we do need a minute. 0:15:23 - Lindsay Lyons Perfect, okay, and that way we could have like kind of fellow. We can identify what we're actually sharing out whole group, whether it's like fellows analysis of how the conversation went or like trends of ideas. Conceptually maybe they're. They focus on like one thing, like each of us who's facilitating focuses on maybe content and then the courageous conversations. Compass is an individual reflection that's focused on how I experience it. Right, because that's what that is. 0:15:47 - Kara Pranikoff Yes, great, I love that. And then that's really clear because also, if we're modeling for teachers, teachers need to have clarity that students may or may not are going to have a emotional reaction, whatever that emotional reaction is, and we've got to have some kind of way as an educator to tune into that or or provide space for that Right. Like one thing that comes to mind is you know, in a classroom you're in an intense conversation and about history or current events or whatever it is, and at some point in the conversation like seven kids are done, yep, but seven still need to talk Like how do you handle that? Because both things are both. You have to acknowledge both things. You know what I mean. 0:16:36 - Lindsay Lyons Yep. So I'm just writing like how can we as facilitators and this is like a reflection question, I think, for everyone, not just us in the space, but we as the collective educators provide space for learners to get support based on their how they're experiencing the discussion? Yep, great, okay, I just want to make sure that aligns with what you're thinking. What do you think? Maybe we go to protocol now, so we have the six groups. What is the format for the discussion in terms of like, is it Socratic, seminar style? Is it circle style? I also have in the back of my head that this lingering question of this is like a long-term, like arc. I want to like get to all these things long-term, but I just want to kind of slot them depending on where they fit best. Okay, so, yeah, so my thought is there are several discussion protocols I have in my head. Some of them are great, for I'm opening the question we're going to do human barometer and you're going to just take a side of the room and then you're going to talk in small groups and share out a couple like way lower touch, way lower intensity. The experience is a little bit easier. We're not citing sources. Yeah, circle is very like right, like everyone is listened to, everyone has the talking to use their hands. I often feel like that's like the personal connections come out best there, like here's my personal story or whatever I don't. Sometimes I center text in those, sometimes they don't, and then Socratic feels very much like a cumulative end of the unit. We have several texts to pull from and because we're pulling from two texts, I'm wondering like I'm leaning a bit towards that. But I also value the other pieces and I'm wondering if, because we're going to have them like this day, this is day one and the next day is day two and we're opening a unit, and so I'm wondering if one of those others like, for example, if we did Socratic today does circle or human barometer work as kind of a beginning of a unit, like that's a more common protocol for the beginning of the unit. And since we're unit centered in that way, I'm just yeah, those are my thoughts. What do you think? 0:18:48 - Kara Pranikoff those are my thoughts. What do you think? Oh so, my pedagogical instinct is always to do socratic like it's. It's there and I also really think that you know. So, at the beginning of third grade or beginning of fourth grade you might not be fully socratic, but certainly in week two the teacher doesn't need to be calling on anyone. I can, somebody can put their thumbs up and I can call somebody up, like there's immediate ways to center students from the second week of school. You know what I mean, even if it's not fully Socratic. My concern is we've just met everybody. It's 11 o'clock in the morning and this is heavy. Are we? Is this too much? Do we like? We just like, dump them in this? Yep. All of it's heavy and hard, yep. So if I hold on to that and we know they're coming back, is there a way we maybe we look at the documents, whatever they are right? I'm imagining some kind of visual document and two pieces of text. Do you want to say something? 0:19:54 - Lindsay Lyons No, I'm with you, keep going. 0:19:56 - Kara Pranikoff Is there a way that we like look at the text I have my own experience I gather some ideas or some things that I might want to say in discussion. I turn and talk to the person next to me. There's like a very low level, like I'm in the work but I'm not publicly in the work, really big, and then we can go back the next day maybe and have a conversation. Or like when people like we go back and have the larger discussion the next day. 0:20:31 - Lindsay Lyons Okay, I love this, I love this, love this. Yes, let's keep the same question for today. And I so, yes, so I'm with you and I'm wondering what the? I just wrote a bunch of things on our collective doc, so, like one iteration of that could be just, yeah, simple, turn and talk. One could be like what did you call it? A museum walk? Earlier? I liked that Same thing. Yeah, um, the. The human barometer I would envision is like we do a entry, entry level instead of it's how do we heal, it's is it possible to heal? And so that's like the agree, disagree and we start surfacing those ideas, or it could be a circle, and we, we model, like what we would do with students, where it's like is it possible to heal from harm, and it's, it's general, um, and it's like, okay, I'm thinking maybe about my relationship with my parents or my siblings, or like a personal thing, and it's like how does healing happen? And so we take it from the personal to the content and model how that I think there's a lot of options. Yes, I love that. Do you feel like you're gravitating towards one form at over? 0:21:41 - Kara Pranikoff another, so my the top two. If I like, contextualize this first day and all of that I kind of want to do, turn and talk, and human barometer, I think we could probably do. Yeah, and we can have a more public ideas conversation discussion the next day. 0:22:03 - Lindsay Lyons Yep, I wonder oh, go ahead, no, no, go ahead. What if we did human barometer and then sit down and turn and talk? Or even in your groups, turn and talk, Great, great. I love this because it's so excited. It's yeah, it's so exciting Cause it's like really modeling. Right, we did just meet you. You will meet your children and immediately dive into all of this content. That is hard. And what is the way? Like sure we set agreements, sure we, you know, validate and comfort and do all the things that we do as teachers to build relationship with people. And like we cannot expect, I don't like when people are like this is a safe space, I have declared it, it is so. And it's like you can't do like that kid's perception of the safety is like not there yet, and so I get that we're basically doing that because we're like, okay, we've spent like seven hours with you and then tomorrow we're going there, but like you're also adults and we're trying to model quickly. So I think that's. 0:23:04 - Kara Pranikoff I also want to make sure that we don't tell them we're coming back, because I also think there's a real strength in modeling the power of returning to documents after you've had a conversation and some separation. I'm a different person, right? Even if I've just talked to one person, I return to those documents in a different space. Also, we will have been thinking about those four core values for the rest of the day, so I'm entering those documents in a different place than I did the day before at 11. So I think the kids do that also. I think sometimes one of the challenges for educators is to look at a primary source and get it quickly and forget that there's layers and you're talking to eight-year-olds and they haven't seen as many things, and I need to process what my classmate said and it's great to come back to it, right, or even the pedagogical practice of like, if there's a source that's really important, leave it up at your board and have it there for two weeks, whether or not you're talking about it, like kids are returning to it, and I think that we can model that also. That was a lot. 0:24:24 - Lindsay Lyons No, that was awesome and I just want to clarify. So you were saying we would tell them that we're coming back to a day two. I wouldn't tell them, you would not tell them. Okay, I think I'm missing that part. Why would? 0:24:35 - Kara Pranikoff because why wouldn't I tell them? 0:24:41 - Lindsay Lyons Cause I agree with everything you said in terms of like we're in a different space when we need the time and reflection. 0:24:48 - Kara Pranikoff So I think I wouldn't tell them because I want them to be fully engaged in that experience. And I think the debrief the next day of, like we're coming back here. How is it different this time? Why would it be different? I don't want to know that I'm coming back. I don't know why am I having this sense? There's some kind of sense of I want to be my fullest self on day one and not wonder about why we're coming back or know that I'm coming back. I want to say the things that I need to say. And then I want a bit of the disequilibrium the next day when we say, okay, we're going to have a Socratic seminar, these things probably look familiar. Why might we talk about these things? Like I'm wanting the disequilibrium so that we can kind of construct why we would come back. But I can be veered Like what's the benefit of letting them know? Let me ask you that. 0:25:47 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah, I think that's so interesting to hear that, and so I am acknowledging that. That is totally how a lot of people probably feel. It's like I and I do want them to be their their full self. So a couple of one possibility that's like maybe, uh, together, maybe, I'm not sure One idea was okay, I let them have the conversation. Then, after the conversation, say like we'll be returning tomorrow because this is why because I usually will do this opener with the same question. That happens for a month or two months, however long the unit is yeah, yeah, to say like I think it takes the pressure off from I'm thinking of Matthew Kay, who talked about like you can't just have one conversation on race, like and that's it, like that's that puts too much pressure on the students and the teacher to have the conversation, and so I wonder if some students might be like, well, if I don't have any other opportunity, I want to say all these things and I have to get it right and I have to be perfect and I there's so much pressure on, this is the one time because maybe we've never talked about it in any other grade before, and this is like I have things to say and you know, I, whatever, yeah, and so I wonder if it is like this is not the conversation, we will be back and we want you to be fully present in today, so we have no expectation of you pulling from Any sort of documents at this moment. Yes, and then just kind of lower the pressure that way. I don't know if you feel like that checks the box, though, or if that somehow takes away from the presence that you were describing. 0:27:20 - Kara Pranikoff No, I mean, I think, at the end of the day, we're agreeing that anything that's in the classroom, you want to, you want it to have its fullest life, right? You want and we want teachers to know that it's important to go back to things that kids have seen right, especially if we're thinking about the inquiry cycle. We want students, ultimately, we want students to say in the middle of a conversation remember the map we talked about last week? Or like, I'm going to grab that map we talked about last week because it's relevant to this conversation, right? So, but I agree with you and I remember that bit from Matthew K. I think you're right, it's not just, it's not everything in this conversation. So let's, let's let them know we're coming back, okay. 0:28:04 - Lindsay Lyons And we can do that. Do you think the best place for that is after they have the conversations, day one like not prior or prior, I think no, I think. 0:28:15 - Kara Pranikoff I think after they have the conversation right, I think. 0:28:18 - Lindsay Lyons I think that will be like. So we had the conversation. I think I'm like going back a little bit on what some of the reasons that I said, but I I do think it still works because it's like someone may be sitting and like but I had more to say, or I said that wrong, or like actually I would may be sitting and like but I had more to say, or I said that wrong, or like actually I would change my answer and like that can be eliminated. When we say hey, we're coming back tomorrow. Like more time, wait a second, wait a second. 0:28:38 - Kara Pranikoff Here's an idea, okay. So something that I often do in the classroom when discussion is established and I think you and I've talked about this is in preparation for a conversation, we'll like decide on what the question is, whatever, and then I'll have kids write like what are my first ideas about this question, and then at the end of the conversation, like draw a line Now I'm thinking, whatever it is that I'm thinking, or now I'm wondering, or tomorrow when we come back, here's what I want to talk about. So I wonder if we introduce some kind of in the reflection, some kind of like where are you now, you know, like what's something that you're wondering after this conversation, or where's, like, the place that your head is? Or is there something that a colleague said Like you know some kind of reflection on the conversation and how the conversation, even the turn and talk and barometer, push their own um, their own thinking about the documents. Could we? 0:29:42 - Lindsay Lyons do something like that. I love that and I actually so the socratic seminar template that I usually share, which credit to all of the people who like co-created this. They have a section. Page three is to be to be completed in the last five minutes of a class, or like a discussion, like we've ended the discussion formally and yeah, it's like there's three questions. It's like what? I think it's something like what ideas are remaining with you, or kind of sticking with you, what have you changed your mind? Or how has your, how's your thinking evolved, and also a process question of how did we do with our community agreements? Like would you add a new one? Did you know? Yeah, so we can use something like that, but like maybe tailor it down to third grade as opposed to like this was a high school created thing right, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, and I think that that is like now, I'm thinking like what you know? 0:30:37 - Kara Pranikoff or, or, uh, sometimes I use the language of did your idea like grow or change? Oh, I like it. Yeah, it's the same. 0:30:48 - Lindsay Lyons It's just third grade language yep, great, great, awesome, I think. I think that's good for the discussion part. Okay, cool, okay. I hope you truly enjoyed that conversation between Cara and myself. I am so excited to learn and collaborate with folks. I am totally still growing in terms of making, for example, adult professional learning truly aligned to the experiences that I coach teachers to facilitate for their students. Sometimes, when we're facilitating PD or when we're designing learning experiences in general, it's just really hard to take yourself out of the content you want to deliver and think really thoughtfully about the pedagogy, and so this conversation really stretched me. I highly encourage you to find a thought partner who's going to stretch you as well. So we plan learning experiences a ton like way, way, way, way, way better when we have someone that we can bounce ideas off of. So to help you get some thought partnership, cara and I are inviting you to one week on our Slack-based coaching platform, eduboost, for free. It starts, if you're listening to this, as soon as it airs next week, on Monday, august 12th 2024. You can sign up at the blog post for this episode at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 175. And if you're listening later on, don't worry, you can still head there. Click on the form on the blog post and you'll be entered into our wait list. We will do these again in the future. We are dedicated to this coaching model and we are so excited to work with you. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazzed as I am about my coaching program for increasing student-led discussions in your school. Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling at yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm how I can help you make this big dream a reality. To brainstorm how I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan, from full-day trainings and discussion protocols like Circle and Socratic Seminar to follow-up classroom visits where I can plan, witness and debrief discussion-based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy, no-strings-attached brainstorm call at lindsaybethlyonscom contact. Until next time, leaders, think big, act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network. 0:33:14 - Kara Pranikoff Better today, better tomorrow, and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at teachbettercom slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
August 2024
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