Time for Teachership Blog

10/27/2025

234. Students Are Not Their Behaviors with Dr. Claudia M. Bertolone-Smith and Marlene Moyer

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In this episode, we chat with Dr. Claudia Bertolone-Smith and Marlene Moyer, co-authors of the transformative new book, Tools Not Rules. With years of teaching experience, they discuss their approach to classroom management, emphasizing honesty and self-regulation as core principles.

The duo shares insights into fostering a culture of honesty within classrooms, using frameworks like color-coded energy zones and star charts to encourage positive behavior and accountability among students. Their method focuses on bringing a simple, direct approach that operationalizes the dreams and theories educators want to implement, but find hard to do.

The Big Dream

Marlene and Claudia envision an educational environment where every child feels like they belong—a place where every child sees themselves increasing in ability and feel loved and empowered throughout their education. Their dream is for classrooms to become spaces of belonging and empowerment, where students are motivated by genuine care and constructive consequences rather than control and shame.

Mindset Shifts Required

To achieve this dream, educators must shift away from fear-based, control-oriented methods—what many teachers know, even if it’s not their heart intention. Instead, they should embrace frameworks that encourage exploration, curiosity, and empathy. Without an effective framework, educators go back to the “least common denominator,” or what they grew up with themselves.

Action Steps

Educators can begin implementing a new framework of honesty, exploration, and wonder in their classrooms by following the principles and action steps laid out in Tools Not Rules:

Step 1: Prioritize honesty. It’s one of the core principles—“honesty goes first.” Approach your students with curiosity and a genuine desire to understand their experiences. Allow open space that students can speak into without fear of being judged.

Step 2: Introduce self-assessment and self-regulation. After establishing a culture of openness and honesty, you can encourage students to self-assess, or identify what’s really going on. From there, they can self-regulate by choosing a different word. For example, students may be “shirking” or avoiding their work, so the question becomes, “what can we do to start working?” The answers may surprise you and lead to practical steps to identify and change behaviors.

Step 3: Understand the three zones of regulation. Students can be either shirking (avoiding work), working, or showboating (showing off). The first is a negative energy, working is the most stable energy, and showboating is the most full-on energetically. These match a color scale from blues to reds. Understanding where you, as an educator, and your students more naturally go can be helpful in self-assessing and regulating.

Step 4: Focus on empathy-building with a “why chart.” As a class, call out different behaviors and try to understand the why behind it. For example, solicit honest reasons as to “Why we avoid doing the assignment,” or “Why don’t we come to class prepared” and dig into those behaviors. The collective “we” is important so students aren’t called out but, rather, build empathy with each other. This helps break negative cycles and rebuilds trust within the classroom.

Step 5: Implement star charts to shift perspectives. This is when the teacher makes a commitment to the student to look for positive behaviors and reinforce them. It’s important for the teacher to see beyond the daily grind of difficult classrooms, but shift toward seeing the positive things students have to bring.

Challenges?

One of the challenges educators might face is letting go of traditional methods and embracing a new framework that relies on empathy and understanding. It requires teachers to be self-reflective and open to receiving honest feedback from students, which can be challenging, but ultimately rewarding.

One Step to Get Started

Start by incorporating a simple exercise of asking students to self-assess their current behavior and choose an actionable step towards improvement. Encourage open discussions and acknowledge honest feedback to cultivate a culture of trust and mutual respect in the classroom.

Stay Connected

You stay connected with Dr. Claudia M. Bertolone-Smith and Marlene Moyer on their website, Tools Not Rules. You can pick up a copy of the book or grab online resources, tools, and content to implement in your classroom. Feel free to reach out to the authors via their website if you’d like to talk more.

To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guests are sharing Student Roll out of TNR language with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 234 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:

2:10 “It was born of struggle—and it was born of a little bit of desperation and also some tenacity—that we just continue to say we need to shift this. We need to shift it in a way that feels principled and helps kids.”
5:26 “If we don’t go in with a framework, we just go back to the least common denominator—the one that is most comfortable to us.”
11:06 “Trust your students. They have stories, too. They have lives and things happen—be open to the truth and honesty of that.”
13:05 “We don’t save some special treatment for the hardest kids. We don’t save some special treatment for the honors kids who maybe sometimes cheat on their test. They all get the exact same treatment.”
29:45 “Let’s bring joy back to teaching. When you’re having that conversation with a student, that’s positive. When you give them a star and you say, ‘Good job!’ you see them shift. It’s a joyful, regeneration of energy in the classroom.”

If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

TRANSCRIPT

00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Marlene and Claudia, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Thanks for having us. We're so excited to be here, Absolutely so. I think I have your book in my hands Tools, not Rules. I've been very excited I was saying to you before we record as a parent and as a teacher, really excited to engage with this. So I'm curious to know, like, what is important for listeners to know about either the book or kind of your thoughts in this moment, as we're about to head into a conversation about the book and maybe, marlene, you can start for us.

00:36 - Marlene Moyer (Guest)
Sure, you know, I think you know working with Claudia was a real gift because she has a pretty brilliant mind for seeing creative solutions to hard problems.

00:46
And what I realized from this work is, with Claudia and this kind of genius breakthrough moment where she was like, right, all the kids in the classroom, let's talk about behaviors, but not that they are their behaviors. That was this moment where she uses this word operationalized she was able to operationalize something that has been nebulous and hard for us all to figure out. We read these books about theory, we read these big books about mindset shifts, but when you're in the meat of it, the moment where it's hard and hot and you feel like you're filled, you know, surrounded by monsters, it allows you to operationalize these big dreams and hopes we have for ourselves as educators by following this really simple, direct approach. So to me, that is the breakthrough, that's the difference that Tools, not Rules, brings. That's kind of the niche in the market that I think is special. So I just want to say that being able to operationalize something that I think all educators feel in their heart was the real shift and the gift and allowed us to write this book.

01:57 - Dr. Claudia M. Bertolone-Smith (Guest)
And I would add, I would add this is born of struggle, right? So this is not born of some high minded, you know situational thing where we had the perfect class doing the perfect things. It was born of struggle and it was born a little bit of desperation and also some tenacity that we just continue to say we need to shift this, but we need to shift it in a way that feels principled, that helps kids and I know in the book we talked about my son being in the class, you know so I had some definite buy-in for that. That helps kids feel, you know, that they are heard and that we see them making progress. And so I just want to say, born of struggle. Working with a co-teacher like Marlene is incredible because we kept trying different things, like did this work? Okay, it didn't work, but this piece did, so let's try this, let's try this. So that's why we feel like this book is addressing what teachers need and it's not us like a pie in the sky situation. It is. We were in there with you.

03:00 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Yeah, it definitely reads that way too. So thank you for that. And I think actually this idea of born of struggle kind of connects to this next question I was interested in so thinking about freedom dreaming. Dr Bettina Love describes this as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So what is that dream that you all hold for education?

03:18 - Dr. Claudia M. Bertolone-Smith (Guest)
maybe, claudia, you can kind of continue in thinking about this with us yeah, sure, so, um, I talked a little bit about that, but the dream for us was that every child felt like they belonged, every child saw themselves increasing in ability and every child felt a full measure a full measure of our love, our care and, a lot of times, consequence and came through that feeling more empowered, right. So when I think of a dream and I also work with pre-service teachers, they're learning to be teachers they really struggle. They want that so bad for their students. They come in and that's what they want, but they're not sure how to get it. You know, they're not sure what to do in the classroom, how to deal with these hard behaviors, and so that was our dream. You know we want this to happen, and in the years we worked together, we really saw it come to fruition and it was an absolute amazing time, yeah.

04:23 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
And so thinking about kind of the shift away from I think a lot of teachers who may be listening at this moment are kind of like, oh, that is not how my class operates. Or you know, I read the book and like I need to get there, but I'm here right now. What are kind of those mindset shifts that could prepare a teacher or, you know, an instructional coach or anyone to kind of support this, this shift? Marlene, do you want to take this one?

04:44 - Marlene Moyer (Guest)
Sure, you know, um, I think some, I think some. When we go into a classroom, we have our hope in our hearts and there I don't believe there's any teacher who doesn't. But if we don't come in with a framework and there's some other frameworks out there if we don't come in with a framework, when it gets hard, we just go back to what we know, and what we know is control and we go to shame-based kind of operating, and we don't mean to. But you know, I've been in special education meetings where people will try to inspire kids by saying things like you know, do you want to live in your parents' basement for the rest of your life? And you know things like that. Now, I know those teachers. They have love in their hearts for kids. But if we don't go in with a framework, we just go back to the least common denominator, the one that is most comfortable to us, the one that is the one that we're used to operating from. And it's not anyone's fault, it is just how we were raised, it's the school system we were raised in, it's how adults engaged with us. So I would say that a mind shift set, thank you that we need to focus on is really coming in with a framework that's going to help you in the hot moments. That's a big one.

06:00
We kind of just, like you know, hold on when something is hard and difficult and we come at it with fear and control. And I think when you have a framework, like tools, not rules, you actually don't come at things with fear and control. You come out with, you come at it with a sense of exploration, a sense of wonder, because I know it works. I've got a whole framework here that's simple to follow, that allows people to go. Okay, I know the next step and I know the next step, and I'm not going to engage in that power struggle and I'm not going to shame the kids and I think I think that's so hard to get to because really, um, we get so frustrated and and we are such human beings and you know I come at things hot and so I can come at things really hot and hard.

06:49
Claudia often will talk about that. She comes at it at maybe more oh my gosh and she retracts, and so this kind of helps us neutralize both of those behaviors. That allows us to stay assertive, allows us to stay in. So I think that's what I'd say, Mindset shift away from shame, away from control and fear, because we trust in this framework. We know how it operates, we know when we need to call in extra help, we know when we need to call in extra help for the kids and we feel supported by it and then the system can also support us. You know the larger system. So those are some of the mindset shifts I'm thinking about.

07:34 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Those are awesome. Yeah, absolutely, and I think that actually leads us really nicely into the principles. If you all want to kind of take an attempt at saying those succinctly, I know you list them succinctly, but there's just so much depth that I'm like, oh, we could go so many directions. I love this idea that eliminating shame is kind of built into that, and I know that you, as you were talking, marlene, I was kind of imagining someone in this situation and going through kind of the process that you laid out, like here's what I do next. So feel free to take this in any direction, but I'm curious about kind of the framework, the principles, and maybe, claudia, you can start us off on this one.

08:11 - Dr. Claudia M. Bertolone-Smith (Guest)
Sure, sure, let's start with honesty. And when we put the posters up, the honesty goes first. And if you can get a class to understand that you really want to know, you know I do really want to know. And that's that curiosity piece Marlene was talking about. We approach it with curiosity. So what is going on for you? And we have been surprised so many times when they know that they can tell us the truth and we're not going to have this big shameful reaction and shake our hand at them and like predict their future. They open up in really beautiful ways and and there have been so many times that we've said, we've assumed as teachers, this is what's going on. And then we say, so, what's going on for you? And we we approach it with an empty, like this. I call it an empty space, but an open space that doesn't feel filled with you know all this pointing, you know getting where you're going to be had in big trouble. It just feels open for them. I'm ready to hear you and they share what's really going on, and then we really get to work. Then that's the honesty piece and then the next piece comes, the self-assessment. So tell us where you're working right now and you can see that in the posters, and we really want them to identify what's going on. That's that self-assessment. That is all over SEL, but we actually make it happen right there. And then they also self-regulate by choosing a different word, one of the green words, you know.

09:38
So we have a serious assertive and working. So if you're shirking, for example, avoiding your work and working, so if you're shirking, for example, avoiding your work, doing all the things to not want to do the work or not get started, what's something you can do to get working? And even that's a curious question it's not like what are you going to do to get working? Because I'm really tired of you, you know, because that's where we lay the shame in. It's just like so, what can you do? And we're always surprised by that too, because sometimes they say just like so, what can you do? And we're always surprised by that too, because sometimes they say I don't have my worksheet, I forgot it at home. That's a simple fix, right? You know, here's your worksheet. Or sometimes they say I don't like the person I'm sitting with, they're bothering me, and like that's assertive and I'm like okay, we can fix that too. So, so kind of that lays out those pieces of where we start and why those posters were so important and having them do the self-assessment, self-regulation. We're constantly asking them to reflect on how it's going and so that has been something that we go to all the time.

10:37
When Marlene was talking about it's a system, oh, this is happening, this is what we do. It's a system Predictable. Students know what to expect. And back to that honesty piece If you can't make them feel safe in being honest with you, then the whole thing kind of doesn't stand on a really strong foundation. It kind of feels weak. They don't trust it, they're not sure making big shifts, mindset shifts I would say that is one of the key ones. Trust your students. You know they have stories too. They have lives and things happen, and be open to the truth of that and the honesty of that, and that's really important.

11:16 - Marlene Moyer (Guest)
Yeah, I mean I would just say Claudia's point around honesty. We can't kind of overemphasize that enough. Like, if you can't create a classroom where kids feel safe in that way, where you can admit you have flaws, where you can empathize because you've been there, kids aren't going to move in this way. And so you know there's probably other frameworks that would work for people, but that isn't this framework. This framework you have to be really willing to kind of be a self-reflective person, be an empathetic person, be willing to hear the truth from kids, even if it involves you. You know I've heard some really hard truths that are really painful and hard to hear. However, it is liberating because you know like the truth will set you free, right, there is such truth to that in terms of I can admit, oh yeah, I actually think I did use that tone with you in front of people and I did say that mean thing because I was frustrated and I need to apologize. So some of that, really, you got to be willing to be that kind of teacher and I think you know Claudia and I have done a lot of trainings, we've presented to a lot of different people and that's the people it resonates with, the people who are like, oh yeah, like I'm willing to do all those things. I just don't know how to do them. I haven't put it together in a way that kind of to that point of operationalizing it. I have those dreams in my heart, I have those feelings and wishes for kids. So I would say that around kind of the principles of it, that that honesty piece, that ability to hear truth, the truth telling, and then help kids in the ways they need, it doesn't take long and then when they see it and they believe it, they're willing to do it. So we don't save some special treatment for the hardest kids. We don't save some special treatment for the kids who are honors kids, who maybe sometimes cheat on their test. We don't save a special treatment for them. They all get the exact same treatment and that's what we know. It helps every single kid. It helps those kids that are high performing, that feel the need to keep that fixed mindset in place. I have to be the smart kid and in order to be the smart kid, I'm going to copy this paper because I need to prove I can't lose that standing. So we're super excited by Tools, not Rules, because we think it doesn't just help certain kids. We think it liberates all kids and then it liberates teachers.

13:46
And so when Claudia was talking about her exchange with a student, you know like, okay, tell me what's happening. I want honesty first, and then the kid can say, hey, I'm shirking right now. Okay, amazing. So you immediately shift as a teacher because you're hearing the truth. You're not trying to dig the truth out of like stone, because the kid is already offering you the truth. And we love the truth. We love it. We can feel it in our bodies. Everything about me as a teacher melts open when a kid says yeah, I did say that swear word right to her face because she deserved it, because of this, tell me why. Okay, thank you for your honesty.

14:26
Now there's going to be some accountability. I get why you said it, but the first thing they hear back from us is thank you for your honesty. It doesn't matter what it is, how painful or shocking it is to us. It is God. It took courage. It took courage to say the truth and own it. Now there might be further things we have to do, and we are really.

14:50
We love accountability because we think accountability sets us free. In some ways, too, it allows us to right a wrong we did, but then, because we never follow it up, with shame those kids, we start fresh the next moment that that accountability happens, and so isn't that what we all want? Isn't that? What we all want in life is to be able to say I did this wrong thing, I don't want to do it again. I'd like to change the way I do this, but I don't know how. So, anyhow, we think it's good as adults, we think it's great for kids to model this, and we get feedback from kids later on or in the moment how powerful it can be, and so, yeah, we feel really grateful to be able to talk about this work. So, thank you, lindsay.

15:35 - Dr. Claudia M. Bertolone-Smith (Guest)
I just want to add one more thing. If you get us talking about this, we can't stop. So there's a lot of things out there that say connection with students is so important Connection. You need to connect with your students, okay. So, like Marlene said, when they're honest with you, everything flips. It's like oh, I love you, now we're good, we are so good, we are so square, because I know how to help you and I know that you can trust me, and so there's nothing that replaces that. You know I can do fun activities all day, or let's do this or let's do that.

16:13
But that piece it solidifies something about you and the student and what they trust you'll do, about you and the student and what they trust you'll do. And I also have to say, when the rest of the class sees that happen, no shame, honesty, accountability. There's even celebration and accountability. You did the thing. It was hard, you had to be in detention, but you did it, great job. And so that piece the rest of the students see that and and and. It does something magical to them too, like we're in this situation here and it's different. And maybe it's me too. I can learn too. I can change some of my behaviors. I can. I can excel, possibly, you know. So it opens up something for kids that they might not have sensed or felt before.

16:58 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Absolutely. And I just want to say for for listeners, people reading the blog posts and transcript, you know, whoever's engaging with this episode that the book has so many great kind of like a play by play lesson activities of how to roll this out, to create that culture of. We like I, as the teacher, have been there. You raise your hand if you've done this, Like I really appreciated the culture building and the intentionality of those activities, because I could envision someone saying like, oh, I want to do this, but how are, how are they just all of a sudden supposed to be honest, right, but there's like an intentional building of that culture which I really appreciate and feels very practical to me.

17:32
I'm also curious I know, Claudia, you started talking about this, so maybe I don't know if, Marlene, you want to take point on this the first Sabbath, but the three zones you talked about and the and the idea of like color coding and self assessing, which is a huge part of like SEL conversation. So can you talk us through a little bit about what is that? How does that work?

17:51 - Marlene Moyer (Guest)
Yeah, you know, I think when we first started, claudia said, oh, we have shirkers, workers and showboaters. That was her first kind of, one of her strokes of genius on the larger program, and we changed it instead of being nouns to verbs, right, and so shirking, working and showboating and those three things, there's three different types of energy between each of those right, and there's been a lot of work prior to this on the zones of regulation. And so we, you know, once we started developing this, we got the three triads of words. You know, someone said, oh, this works really perfectly with the zones of regulation. You know, this behavior is kind of a hotter, energized, kind of coming, moving forward behavior. So we kind of we got that in the orange and the red. And then, you know, and that would have been the showboating, right, like hey, look at me, I need you to pay attention to me. And then with the shirking, that's kind of a pulling inward, it's kind of a moving away energy, and so that's a cooling off energy, right, so that's kind of the blue coloring. And then the working is that green place, that place where, you know, it feels natural, it feels maybe you're working, you're having to put energy forward. But it's not that negative energy, it's like a curious wonder or I can do this. It's finding your grit, it's all of those great words that I think people have talked about.

19:13
And so I think the color coding has been really helpful because you know, and so, lindsay, when Claudia and I talk in general, when we present, we say you know who in the audience tends to go towards those orange hot words, and for sure I raise my hand, I go towards showboating, I go towards aggression, whereas Claudia will often tell the group hey, I go towards the blue words, she pulls back, she goes into passive, she goes into shirking. And so you know, it's a marvel for kids who have been passive in school since kindergarten. That's a question we'll often ask. We'll say when did this start? And that's really helpful for us because we don't take it personally, we depersonalize it that way, and they'll say kindergarten oh, that's a long time. That sounds really painful that you have been in that kind of passive place, and it's liberating for them to talk about.

20:23
So I would just say the colors help us identify kind of the energy that we bring. But we can go to all of those and definitely we all could be in the green. So and that's you know, when we're having conversations with the kids, we'll say, let's say they get stuck. We say, look at the posters, where's your behavior, I don't know. Okay, I want you to just look at the blue words right now, because I have a sense that they're more in those passive behaviors. So I say look at those blue words. What blue word might fit for you right now? So they're great for discussion. They're great for self-awareness. Self-awareness this is work people have done before us. You know, you stand on the shoulders of giants and that's a piece that we've brought into it. So those are my thoughts right now on kind of those zones and the regulation that those bring in.

21:10 - Dr. Claudia M. Bertolone-Smith (Guest)
Yeah, and can I add to you Thanks, marlene, for saying all that. Like Lindsay said, we have all these activities that you do with the students, because one thing we realized is when we shave, a lot of times we can use words like you're being lazy, you're not doing the work. You know, you. And for a lot of students, especially ones that have been a little bit passive since kindergarten, they don't know what we mean when we say you need to start working, you know. So we do activities with the students Like what does it look like when you're shirking? They love to talk about shirking behaviors. What does it look like when you're showboating? They know exactly what it looks like.

21:46
It's hysterical when sixth graders and seventh graders start listing what they do oh, I do this, oh, I do you know. We say we do this, we do this, it's our whole class, we do this because we all can do it to get out of stuff. Or to you know what we're doing. And then we say what does it look like to work? What does that working look like? What do you see happening? And it's sometimes as simple as I have my pencil ready, I um, I, I'm sitting down, I'm looking at the teacher, and it's all generated by them. We don't tell them, we ask them what does it look like, what is it, what's going on for you?

22:25
And so it's not a case where there's a gotcha, where I bring a student over who's been passive since kindergarten and say you need to start working, what can you do? And, and because they have all these choices, like they have processed it as a class, they know what we're talking about. And it can be just this simple change. I think I'll get my pencil out. That's fabulous. Let me help you, right? So it's these tiny steps, and then one step leads to oh, I think I'll get my paper out. Oh, and I can't even tell you how many times now they're starting on the first question. Oh, now they've got two done. Oh, now they're almost done. I've never finished my paper before, you know. So it's it's kind of that whole piece that really helps them feel supported in what they can do. And we, we did a study at Marlene's school and we interviewed students and this cracked me up. One of them said I would just sit and look at the words and think how can I be more assertive?

23:17 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
You know, because we were wondering do the posters matter?

23:20 - Dr. Claudia M. Bertolone-Smith (Guest)
And it's just like they would be like how can I be more assertive? What would that look like, you know? And I was like you're kidding. And they're like, no, I do. No, it means a lot to me that I do those hard things, that I'm serious, I'm assertive and I'm working, and I was like, oh, so that was a great finding. Totally surprised us.

23:40 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That is so great and I love it. You have a. You made me think of a table in your book where the students are describing each of the zones, but they're also describing the why you might be in each of these zones, which I just love student voice and student words, but they just do a wonderful job of explaining that. So that was a beautiful part of the book. Thank you for including it.

23:59 - Marlene Moyer (Guest)
And I, just I I I'm sorry, lindsay, sorry we get talking and oh my gosh, I really apologize for talking over you we get excited. So I just want to say to you about that, that's like the essential piece, the most essential piece, because it's empathy building. So we use the word we why do we get up and go to the nurse? Why do we kick someone out of the table? And so we use we, like Claudia said, because we all put even if we haven't done it, we could potentially do it, we all know we could potentially do it, so that that second chart what does it look like is essential. So then we can like identify oh, I'm doing that thing. And then the why is empathy building.

24:38
Because once you hear kids say things like we do it because we're nervous, we do it because I was told I was stupid, we do it because someone was super mean to me at recess, we do it because I have hated school my whole life, you know, and at first you might not get that kind of honesty, but you as the teacher, your role is to kind of probe a little bit deeper and someone's going to say it and then everyone's going to relax and breathe deeply and say, yes, that is the truth. Because you know, I teach middle school and they love to say it's because your class is so boring. If your class wasn't so boring, and I always go oh, that's passive, aggressive, but it is true, you know, like um, but you've got to dig deeper. Why is it boring? What's happening? And you and you kind of finesse the conversation to get that level of honesty.

25:27
Cause the truth is, a lot of kids are afraid, a lot of kids are hurt, a lot of kids are confused. It goes too fast. They don't know but they don't feel they can say those whys. So when we say those whys and we get some of those whys out tremendous empathy building Because kids then you say who's ever felt confused? Raise your hand, who has ever felt they don't understand what the teacher's doing? Who has ever felt embarrassed because they have no idea what's happening? Okay, so everyone's then just outed themselves and now we have something to work on, you know. So, anyhow, I would add that Thanks for pointing out that Y chart, because that is so essential. That gets us to the honesty right. So that Y chart connects us back to the honesty which creates the only kind of classroom that can support this type of framework.

26:19 - Dr. Claudia M. Bertolone-Smith (Guest)
And, in fact, when we make those lists, it's just reminding me, as they're giving us their ideas. We say thank you for being honest and type it in Thank you for your honesty. That's very honest, thank you so much, thank you so much. And that also creates a sense of oh, that's where we're heading here. It's that space of being honest.

26:40 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
All right, this is so good. I love all the connections to all the pieces. I have one more kind of big, meaty question and then we'll do a kind of a lightning round, because I know we're a few minutes out from the end. So, star charts Can you talk to us about star charts? I can't remember who started, sorry, claudia, maybe you could start this one for us. Star charts for the kids who, like you, know they just need a little extra. We've been, you know, telling that kid to pick up their pen or do the thing like 100 times or like. Something different needs to happen.

27:16 - Dr. Claudia M. Bertolone-Smith (Guest)
Star charts are the best thing ever, and Marlene and I always say it's not for the kid, it's for us. So just remember, if you put a child on a star chart, you're really putting yourself on a track of positive interaction. Because teachers are tired sometimes. A lot of times they're frustrated, they feel like it's the same behaviors and we kind of can get into this mindset where the child is purposely picking behaviors to annoy us in every moment of every day, and you know it's rough being in there all day. So when we start feeling that way it the star chart what it's for. We're going to say only positive things to you, we're going to notice positive things, and every time I see a positive thing, I'm going to put a signature on these 10 stars. So it takes them 10 stars to earn it and um, so what it activates in you is you've made this little arrangement with the student and sometimes they're like, no, I don't want to do it. And we say, well, we're going to do it, we're going to do it, it's important. And so we um, it's on a clipboard and as soon as the kid walks in, um, you're, you're on time today. Great job, I'm signing to start, you know.

28:37
So it's this kind of moment where we can acknowledge we can see them, we can make a quick connection and we let them know. We see you, we see that you're not all of your behavior. You are different things too, but those things were clouding my perception of you. I couldn't really see you. And it forces you 10 times to see something different about that child. And about the fifth time you're like oh, I can see, I can start to see you and I can start to see you. And then they start saying do I have 10 stars yet Do I get 10 stars? How many stars do I have? And then other you know. So it's really this beautiful way that it trains you to see the good, notice the small things. And then suddenly you see shifts to like oh, they turn their homework in. Well, I'm giving you a start with that and I can't even believe you turned your homework in. And I'm calling your parents too to let them know how excited I am.

29:19
But it's just those small, subtle shifts. You have to like take them, you know, a bit at a time, and that's building that trust, especially in kids who have had awful experiences in classrooms. And so the star chart is so great it works wonders in the classroom and it brings a levity and a happiness to you as you're teaching. That's one thing we talk about in the book Because, you know, feeling happiness, feeling joy while you're teaching that's also something people talk about.

29:48
Let's bring joy back to teaching. When you're having that conversation with a student, that's positive. They are like what? And you give them the star and you're like great job, and you see them shift. That is joyful, that is regeneration of energy in the classroom. That is kind of what we're after and it makes learning happen, you know, and it's great. So star charts and in our book we show you the star chart and also at our website you can see, you can download a star chart for yourself. If you're not going to do anything, do the star chart, because it is key to making those shifts in your classroom, especially with your hardest pants, especially.

30:29 - Marlene Moyer (Guest)
Yeah, and I would add, claudia and Lindsay, that it's not that it makes you perfect. What it does is it makes you remember oh that's right, this kid. I need to pay attention in the spin that happens with this kid, because they hear often just negative things. And that's how we introduce the star chart. Hey, I think you hear just a bunch of negative things from me, is that true? Yeah, and they'll tell you and you're like thanks for the honesty.

30:59
Okay, I'm going to do it differently. I'm just going to notice good things about you and they can't believe it because it's always been quid pro quo. These kids often are the same kids or it's a new kid, because they get into a power struggle with you and your personality. But it is not. If you do this, I will do this. It is not, it has nothing to do with that, it just has me.

31:20
Just like Claudia said, she said it perfectly. I'm just going to notice amazing things about you as a human being Because they're there and I'm trying to accomplish something and we're in a power struggle or in some weird dynamic on the things I'm trying to accomplish. But that is not who you are, and so I would just say that that's. It's just so powerful in that regard to actually so I'll find myself on the kid again, I'll find myself self-frustrated again, and then what I remember is oh, they're on a star chart and I'm going to say something positive, and they light up, their souls, feel happier, they can forgive you for getting on them because they know there are things to get on. But when you then can say, hey, you already have six you know, and.

32:07
I'm whispering a lot and we're communicating, so other kids aren't really aware. Kids are kind of aware but they're not, and we go over that in the book why it really works. And kids are happy when other kids are getting help, the ones that struggle. And so I'll just be like you've got six stars and all of a sudden I've shifted again because I've went from kind of hammering them on something because it's hard not to because you're trying to accomplish things, to like, okay, I'm going to feed them back something positive and like, okay, I'm going to feed them back something positive and they, they are in it with you, they are in that positive.

32:36
And, like Claudia said, they say the hardest kids, the ones that feel the most jaded, will come up. You know seventh graders, which are a tough lot. They'll come up and say how many stars do I have? You just can't believe it. When it happens, you think, oh, my God, they remembered and we had a kind of a harder day. But they'll be like it's almost like hey, remember, I'm on this, Remember we're doing this together and it, it's really marvelous. And they get a prize and you can come up with your own prizes. We give you ideas on that and, to Claudia's point, everything we've talked about is on our website, and so you know the supporting materials for the supports for the books, the way to roll it out, a few of these other things that we mentioned, and I know you'll probably point that out for us, Lindsay, but I just wanted to say that again, that these things are on there, these tools.

33:25 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Yeah, that's a great segue. So we will link in the show notes to the website, to the book, so folks can get it. Is there anywhere else that folks can connect with you each online?

33:34 - Marlene Moyer (Guest)
can get it? Is there anywhere else that folks can connect with you each online? You know, I I will say for myself we have all the things, we have the Instagram and we post nothing. So I want you to know, we're those people Like we like did all the things, and then we're like who's going to do this for us? And Claudia's like I can't and I'm like I don't think I can either, and so who's going to do this for us?

33:55 - Dr. Claudia M. Bertolone-Smith (Guest)
And Claudia's like I can't, and I'm like I don't think I can either, and so so, really, it exists, it exists, and that's a step forward. We're challenging ourselves, we're on a star chart for trying to do better.

34:04 - Marlene Moyer (Guest)
But you know we're really responsive through the website. So you just send us an email and we will get back to you. We will call you, we can set something up a meeting, whatever. So if you don't mind going to you, we will call you, we can set something up a meeting, whatever. So if you don't mind going to wwwtoolsnotrulescom and getting the conversation started, that would be great for us. Our skill sets isn't developed in that area yet.

34:27 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Awesome, Claudia Marlene. Thank you guys so much for this conversation. It was great. Thank you, Lindsay.

34:33 - Marlene Moyer (Guest)
Thank you, lindsay, we enjoyed it.

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10/20/2025

233. Engagement is Thinking with James Nottingham

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Read Now

Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

In this episode, we talk with acclaimed author and educator, James Nottingham. His recent book, Teach Brilliantly, explores what will make a dramatic difference to students’ learning with small tweaks all educators can put into practice.

Drawing on years of both classroom experience and hands-on research and writing resources for educators, James brings our focus onto what’s most impactful for students. He emphasizes a shift from traditional questioning to fostering exploration to enhance student engagement. James highlights the importance of embracing challenges through concepts like the Learning Pit model, which encourages students to step out of their comfort zones and develop growth mindsets.

The Big Dream

James envisions an educational landscape that works for all students. Drawing from his personal—albeit mostly negative—experiences as a student, James envisions a system where all students can thrive, not just the select few. In this, his core focus is how do we make those small tweaks that make a significant difference to reach students who aren’t typically served by the current system.

Mindset Shifts Required

To create an education system that works for all students, educators can embrace the mindset shift away from managing student behavior to nurturing genuine curiosity and deep thinking. A key part of this is engagement—how do we engage a student body that is more distracted than any other generation? In James’ perspective, the answer is not “engaging” by controlling behaviors, but about engagement as thinking, embracing questions, and encouraging curiosity.

Action Steps

To engage students in thinking and create open, curious classrooms, here are a few practical steps that James suggests educators implement in their classrooms:

Step 1: Swap exploration for evaluation. James shares the typical questioning process as initiation by the teacher > response by the students > evaluation by the teacher. That last piece of evaluation is usually limited to “good” and “bad,” which dis-engages students.

Instead, by using a tool like a mini whiteboard, educators can ask students to explore by writing down their ideas and showing them. The teacher can then evaluate those responses privately, allowing them to come up with the appropriate follow-up questions.

Step 2: Embrace exploration in dialogue. Similar to questioning, exploration is important in dialogue and conversation in the classroom. Encourage students to not rush through tasks, but use phrases like, “Yes, but what about…” or “Could you give me an example of that?” Remind students that they’re not responsible for agreeing with each other, there’s room for conversation and exploratory talk.

Step 3: Introduce the Learning Pit model to help students understand and embrace the challenges of learning. James created this model in the mid-90s, and it has been influential since then. When introducing it to new students, he would explain that success is not straightforward, but takes time, effort, determination, etc., and we must go through challenges and get outside our comfort zones to get to success.

The learning pit, then, is the place you are in when you take “two steps forward, one step back.” For a time, you may be “worse,” but that is the progress of learning. When you’re in the learning pit, it gets worse before it gets better and you have a choice to either quit or figure out how to get out—which always brings a sense of accomplishment and growth. This concept guides students through the discomfort of growth and towards self-efficacy.

One Step to Get Started

Begin by exploring James’ different practical tips and tweaks for your classroom and choose one to try out. You don’t have to do everything to start, but can begin with what resonates and what may make the biggest difference to your teaching practice now.

Stay Connected

You can find this week’s guest on his website, Learning Pit, or grab a copy of James’ book, Teach Brilliantly.

To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing graphics to make your own learning pit with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 233 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:

12:59 “Now, I also have strategies for helping kids behave, but if we’re talking engagement—engagement is thinking.”
17:23 “I’m doing lots of evaluation, but it’s not public. I’m not saying ‘Yes, very good, those of you who got it right, well done.’ I’m using the information to think about what to explore here.”
31:12 “My job as a teacher is to create those sensations in the classroom. I don’t want you to feel socially uncomfortable or emotionally uncomfortable, but intellectually, I want you to be uncomfortable.”
33:45 “We quit with so many things because you just can’t do everything! … And you will find yourself in that learning pit where it looks like it gets worse before it gets better … There are two main solutions: number one is quit, it’s just not worth it. Number two is work out how to get through it.”

If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

TRANSCRIPT

00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
James, welcome to the time for teachership podcast it's an absolute delight to join you.

00:08 - James Nottingham (Guest)
Thank you for the invitation.

00:09 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I'm really, really thrilled about your book, so I have it here teach brilliantly. It's so good. Um, I think, knowing that that's kind of the context for our conversation today, is there anything you want listeners to kind of know about the book in general or about your work yourself, as we jump into our conversation today?

00:27 - James Nottingham (Guest)
It's my 12th book. My first book was called Challenging Learning and I published that in 2010. And back then it was a collection of the key ideas that I'd come across as a teacher that helped me to get the most learning out of my students, the best progress for my students, and so I shared those ideas back then. After that, I took one topic per book and went deeply into it. So, for example, feedback or growth mindset or the learning pit, which is a model that I created. I took one theme and go and went deeply. Then this 12th book is, in effect, full circle and back to okay, if I had an elevator moment now, it's a very, very, very long elevator If you're going to cover everything that I've covered in the book, but it's if you want to know what will make a dramatic difference to students' learning, with little tweaks, not wholesale change, not huge great big projects, but just small, little tweaks that I can put into practice, that you can put into practice the very next time we're in the classroom with our students. Then that's what it's all about, and I've spent 30-something years in teaching.

01:59
I still teach to this day. I work with researchers such as Carol Dweck, such as John Hattie I and spent a lot of time with both of those on tour for many years. So I look at research, I look at practice. I'm always focused on okay, yes, but how does this translate into our teaching practice, into our classrooms? And one of the things I do a lot is demonstration lessons. Give me any students, any class of kids, so long as they're happy to speak English with me, then I'll work with them and I'll demonstrate any of these techniques working with your students, and then we can talk about it afterwards. So that's my focus really is how do we tweak things a little bit such that it has a big impact on our student learning?

02:48 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That blend of researcher and practitioner is so present in the book, the distillation of all of the meta-analyses, all of the research it is so beautifully written about. And also you don't ever feel like as a reader, I never felt that you weren't in it. You know that you weren't in front of classrooms all the time thinking about the practicalities and it just comes through so beautifully. So I really appreciate that, because sometimes we lean really far into one or the other, and it was, it was a beautiful blend. So thank you.

03:18 - James Nottingham (Guest)
No, thank you for saying that. Actually, when one of my books was the first one to be translated into Norwegian I do a lot of work in Scandinavia and they really struggled to place it because they said we have the academic research books and we have the practical, nice little planning books, but we don't have this thing in the middle. And they struggled to find the voice with it and they went for the third person in the end and I said no, no, I'm sorry, that just doesn't work for me. This is me talking to my colleagues. Um, and albeit I might not have met these colleagues, we're all colleagues in the teaching profession and that's what I want it to be. And this is what I've learned by hanging out with researchers and this is what I've learned by hanging out in the classroom for that long. And here you go, dear colleague, this is what I've learned by hanging out in the classroom for that long.

04:11 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
And here you go, dear colleague, this is what I found out. Yeah, I absolutely loved that tone. I felt like I was, you know, I was in there with you, I think, taking kind of a big step back from the book and just thinking broadly across your years of experience. I like to ask about freedom, dreaming. So Dr Bettina Love talks about this as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, and so I'm curious what is that big dream that you hold for the field of education?

04:38 - James Nottingham (Guest)
Let's start with a small question, shall we Goodness me Right in in there? What's the meaning of life? Well, here we go. Yeah, okay, so can I just have another sip of coffee? Absolutely, yeah, well, I think, um, I do feel as if I'm on a bit of a mission.

05:00
Um, I hated school myself as a student. You probably tell from my accent. I'm from the UK and we have a system primary and secondary or primary and high school and we switch at the age of 11. And so I went from a small little primary school with a couple of hundred students to to me, it was a big high school with a couple of thousand students to, to me, it was a big high school with a couple of thousand students. I know, if you're listening from Texas, you just think that's tiny little thing. But 2,000 to me was a lot.

05:33
And two months after I started high school, my mother died and I, and then my, my father, was sent off to the Falklands War, which was a bit of a skirmish between the UK and Argentina at the time, and so my sister was farmed off to some neighbors and I was home alone and, funnily enough, I acted up at school. I suppose pop psychology would be. I was looking for a bit of attention, you know. I suppose pop psychology would be. I was looking for a bit of attention, you know. And as so often happens, my peer group labelled me the class clown and my teachers labelled me as naughty. And I kind of lived to both of those labels and played up to them. And I got expelled from one of the high schools actually, and I went to another one. And high schools actually that I and I went to another one, and so it got worse and worse and worse. And the very best day of my childhood was the day I left school, you know. So I didn't think for a moment that I would ever want to go back, um, but um, I didn't have any qualifications, so I ended up going into pig farming, turns out. That's quite a hard job and I'm not cut out for that. And then I went into a chemical factory. That was even worse.

06:53
And then a friend of mine said he was going to Cape Town to do some work in some of the squatter camps outside of Cape Town, and this was the very, very end of apartheid. This was 1989. And in fact we were outside Victor Vestaire prison in February 1990 when Nelson Mandela was released. So it was quite a time of it, and when we were there we did lots and lots of different voluntary jobs, and one was in a school and I found my place. I thought this is amazing, I want to be there, I want to work with kids.

07:34
And when I got back to the UK, I got a job as a teaching assistant in a school for deaf children and loved it and thought that's what I'd be doing forevermore. But then it was every head of faculty was a Catholic nun. I think they probably saw the 666 on the back of my head and they said look, james, you should really leave. Oh, thanks very much. I thought I was doing a good job and they said well, you are, but we think you should be a teacher.

08:01
And so I went into teaching with that sense that teaching education does work for many. Problem is it doesn't work for all. When I think about my friends, a lot of them did well at school and they had the same teachers and they're in the same school. So why did it work for them and it didn't work for me? And so I I realised that if we started with a clean slate, we would build something very different these days for education than exists today, but I'm not so pessimistic as to think that this is entirely broken. And therefore, what can we do? And what's the point? It's like trying to put up a tent in in a hurricane. You know why bother? Well, actually, it does work very well for a lot of students.

08:55
Problem is, it doesn't work for all, and so my focus is how do we, as I tweak things a little bit to make a significant difference to all of our students?

09:08
And we were talking before we started recording about that idea of equity and one of the things that I found when going through the meta-analyses again and again and again, I see this message that this works for all students, and particularly for vulnerable students or bilingual students or at risk students or those who come from poverty, and so so these are the things that there are things we can do. Now, of course, there's a lot of things outside of our power that we can't do, but as a teacher, we have got a tremendous influence on young people and we ought to use that for good, and I believe that there are things we can do that will make a difference, and that's what I've been pursuing. That's, that's, that's really. Let's make it a better educational experience than the one I mean. I don't want to put it on a website, make it better than it was for James Nottingham. No, it's just let's make it better for as many students as we possibly can sharing your life story and your goal.

10:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I'm really really grateful to you for your vulnerability, both in the book and on here, in sharing your story, because I think, as you said in the book, you know, stories are what we remember and we connect to, and so when we're teaching, you know, remember that. But this is also kind of an illumination of that principle. It's just like people, listeners and folks who are engaging with episode will engage. So thank you for that and let's dive into some pieces of that book. So I love that you start with engagement as one of the first kind of meaty chapters and you think about kind of this idea of exploratory talk was really, really interesting to me. So I'm curious if you could talk to us a little bit about, you know, engagement, but specifically even the exploratory talk what is it, what is it different from? And then maybe we can get into some of the strategies for thinking in that chapter which I really got excited about.

11:11 - James Nottingham (Guest)
So engagement? I think often we we talk about engagement that students aren't engaged. They're not as engaged as they used to be, and I think that is probably correct. Albeit, every generation, I think, complains about the next generation, and we've all done it, and our parents complained about it, and our grandparents, and so on, so on, so on. I'm sure everybody's always complained about the youth of today. But I do think it's right that we are facing a student body who have so many more distractions than they ever had before. And how on earth do we engage them? I worry that engagement is often sort of morphed into behavior. How do we get them to behave? And of course we need them to behave.

12:02
But I think that's a different category altogether, because engagement is whatever you are thinking about. So, those of you listening to this podcast, if your mind is drifted, then you're no longer engaged. If you're thinking, where am I driving, or what am I having for tea tonight, or you know you, all of a sudden, you're not engaged tonight. Or you know you, all of a sudden, you're not engaged. You, um lindsay, you mentioned that you, you're a voracious reader. Let's say you sit in a cafe and you're reading. Everybody around you if they glanced over at you, they would assume that you were engaged in that book.

12:38
But let's say, as you are reading, your mind drifts someone, someone says something else. You give the impression of engaging, but actually you engage in something entirely different, and so my premise is engagement is thinking. Now I also have strategies for helping kids to behave. But if we're talking engagement, engagement is thinking, then that leads to the next bit how are we better able to engage students thinking? And that's through. The number one strategy, of course, is questioning, and, as you'll have seen, I went into questioning quite a lot because we use questioning all the time, and early estimates had it at between 300 and 400 questions per day. More recent ones are between 100 and 350 per day.

13:29
But it's still a lot of questions we're asking every single day. I mean, no wonder we go home and say don't talk to me. And the problem is the questioning style that we tend to use is initiate, respond, evaluate. That is, I ask a question, that's initiate. I give a nod, I give a gesture, I ask a question. That's initiate. Response is students give something back and that's fine.

13:57
But the last bit, evaluate. That's where it goes wrong, because we typically say very good, well done or no, that's not right. Goes wrong because we typically say very good, well done or no, that's not right. And since students work out very quickly, okay, there's going to be public evaluation here. It tends to reduce engagement to one third because students start to think only say something if you know, you've got the right answer. Now, of course, if you're talking kindergarten, they're all just shouting out anyway, you know. But I'm talking about the older kids. The older they get, the more judicious they are in their decision-making and the more likely they are to think now, have I absolutely got it right? Even if I have got it right, is it the right thing to say, because people might make fun of me this culture in this classroom is not conducive to being willing, and so on and so on. There's all that sort of stuff going on in their head, and so the evaluative approach, even as simple as yes, very good, well done leads us to lose engagement of students. It actually reduces it to one third.

15:09
If and here's one of those an example of a tweak if we change it from evaluation to exploration, then the evidence is that lifts it to two thirds. Now it's still not perfect, but I have yet to come across a perfect pedagogical strategy, but two-thirds, of course you think all right, all right, there's a good starting point for me. And exploration means I don't evaluate publicly. Now, privately, I'm still thinking where in the hell did you get that idea from? But I'm not giving any of that away, I'm just oh, that's interesting, can you tell me more? And I piece that together with mini whiteboards. I mean that's a a strategy that you'll have seen come very strongly through the book, that I honestly truly haven't come across a piece of equipment in a classroom that makes as big a difference as a mini whiteboard. Because if I go for hands up, I might get, let's say, one third of the kids volunteering, maybe, maybe half, if I'm really really, really lucky, if I go for cold calling, okay, you at at the back, you at the front okay, then I get different kids.

16:30
But if I go for mini whiteboards and use the language to go with it and it needs to be exploratory what do you think it might be? Put down, some of your one or two of your ideas? Stare with your neighbor and then, together, put down a thought, work this out on your whiteboards and, when you're ready, show me. And that tends to get way, way, way more responses. And now what I can do?

16:58
I can look around and I'm privately evaluating because I'm thinking, okay, yeah, most of them have got this, a few haven't. I wonder why those few haven't. Is it that they are rabbits in the headlights? Is it because they weren't listening? Is it because they were just all over? Or is it that they actually really don't know? So I need to maybe ask another question to check it out.

17:20
So I'm doing lots of evaluation, but it's not public, no-transcript. I need to ask questions that will find out their reasoning for that, because it might be they just got lucky, it might be that they saw it on the wall, it might be that they've just been told it by a different teacher. I want to know is it that or is it that they knew it because they thought about it, because they'd reasoned and so and so the exploratory approach is very, very, um, much more productive. It leads to much better gains and I saw this in the research and I thought, well, let me try it in practice. And honestly, I just think it's transformed my teaching practice. It really, really has. I mean, to start with, the kids were like well, why isn't he telling us? Well, what's wrong with him? Why is he grumpy? Today I had to say listen, when I don't respond, it's not because I'm not interested, it's because I'm thinking about it and wondering and seeing what else we can ask to find out more. So that's exploratory in terms of questioning. And then there's exploratory in terms of dialogue.

18:52
And one of the things that I like to do with a new group of students is when you get them into groups, and we typically do get them into groups at different times. Problem is, most kids haven't learned how to collaborate very effectively, and so I will give them a task to do, and partway through the task, most often they've kind of rushed to get it done, and I'll pause them and I say now if you have finished or pretty much finished? If you have finished or pretty much finished, I'm sorry to say you've probably been using cumulative talk. And what I mean by cumulative talk is somebody says something and somebody else says, oh yes, very good, that's nice. And then somebody adds to it and it's all very lovely and it's all very friendly, but it doesn't lead to much critical thinking. And I want you to engage in critical thinking.

19:46
Now, of course, if I'm working with younger students, I adapt the language a bit. I might say something like it's not your job to agree with each other. Now, that's not to say I want you to have a fight or an argument, but it is your job to help each other to think more. And by that I mean I want you to use phrases such as ah, yes, but what about? Or could it be? Or could you give me an example of that? Or I was wondering about. So it's not dismissing their ideas, and you're certainly going to continue to be respectful and a good listener, certainly going to continue to be respectful and a good listener, but your response ought to be exploring their ideas rather than simply agreeing with their ideas.

20:33
It's a little bit like Goldilocks porridge. There's porridge that's just a little bit too warm and that's cumulative. It's just very, very nice, but there's not a lot of thinking, it's just about being nice and getting the job done. Then there's porridge that's just a little bit too cold, that's disputational and that's ego-driven and it's point scoring and who can be the wittiest or the cleverest? And then there's porridge that's just right and that's exploratory talk. And again, the research bears this out. And so I thought okay, let me try it. And I've been developing it more and more and more with my students, and goodness me what a difference it makes in terms of the depth of their thinking.

21:16
Now we have to also be willing for some groups not to finish quote-unquote, because all too often in lessons, as we well know, it's about industry, it's about getting the job done, and if I might bounce for my final response to that question is a bounce to the difference between setting high expectations and setting low expectations. Between setting high expectations and setting low expectations, a classic symptom of low expectations is make sure you finish your work, whereas a classic symptom of high expectations is make sure you understand this. That's a big difference, isn't it? Now, of course, in the high expectations. They're still going to be doing things, but the emphasis is on am I remembering it, am I understanding it, am I connecting it? What questions do I have? Whereas with low expectations is have I finished?

22:21 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Yeah, I love the almost like permission that you're granting to students when you're like yeah, no, agreeing is actually not super helpful to anyone. Your job is to ask questions and to push your thinking and to think more. I just, I think as a student, I am definitely like a people pleaser, I think, and it would have been so nice for a teacher to be like no, actually that's not your job. I am a rule follower, so I would have listened to that. Right, ok, I'm going to ask questions, I'm going to push back. I think a lot of students, particularly the students who succeed in traditional school, like just try to like okay, check done. You're right, like you said, low expectations actually to just finish the work, and it's such a push to be like no, I want you to explore that more and so many people are unfamiliar with it, but I mean, I was a former high school teacher that you've done school this particular way for so long.

23:08
To kind of unlearn takes some time, but how worth it would it be to do that?

23:13 - James Nottingham (Guest)
It's incredible. Yeah, yeah, I did a demonstration lesson south side of Chicago. It would be less than two years after Covid began, because we're all still wearing masks and you probably have no problem understanding the accent. But I'm thinking, what on earth are these kids saying? And they had masks on as well and I'm like blinking, eh.

23:36
And it was in grade nine class and I was getting them doing some collaborative work and I'm thinking, do I just let them get on with it and then pretend that I understand what they're saying when I don't? But anyway, there was that classic thing of a few groups just kind of got it done. And even more classic was that it was typically one kid did it and the other two, three, four kids just kind of went along with it. And so I introduced what I've just shared with you and I use those three terms as cumulative there's disputation and there's exploratory, and I linked it to Goldilocks Porridge and so on. And they were nodding. Well, I think they were nodding Maybe they're nodding off, but they seem like they're interested and I said, right, have another go and this time be more exploratory.

24:30
And it's funny because one of the guys who is obviously a very dominant character in the class generally, and he was definitely leading his group. He says, well, I think we've all been very cumulative, haven't we? Of course, they all agreed with him in a cumulative way. And he says let's be more exploratory. But and I thought, isn't he just like being sarcastic here? But actually he was being genuine in it and it really did lead to because he says, right, I'm going to stop now. What do you think? You know? Come back at me, right, what questions do we have for her? What questions could we ask of him? And that I I thought isn't that fascinating in, and it was just a 40 minute lesson and that pivot that was so noticeable. Yeah, it was lovely that's brilliant.

25:17 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I I love that story. Thank you for sharing that because I could envision that in many of the classes that I taught, if I had just had the language they'd be like oh yeah, and I love the strategies.

25:24 - James Nottingham (Guest)
I'm looking at my notes here. You have so many and folks should get the of the classes that I taught.

25:26 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
If I had just had the language, they'd be like oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love the strategies. I'm looking at my notes here. You have so many and folks should get the book and truly explore them. But kind of like the sense of ranking, like the inner researcher in me is like thinking of like a QSort or something no-transcript, and I love the question section. But beyond even just asking the verbal question is like here's some stuff, here's some concepts, here's some terms Like play with that, explore that. It's really cool and totally would rework, I think, how a lot of teachers plan their lessons in a positive way.

26:15 - James Nottingham (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, there's lots and lots of strategies that I've come across. There's one or two in the book that I've invented, so to speak, but most of them are just brilliant practical strategies that I've come across, so to speak. But most of them are just brilliant practical strategies that have come across in teaching in different countries. And you mentioned ranking. I mean it's just a lovely, lovely, lovely strategy, you know. So a good example I was working with a district in Wyoming a few months ago and I mean I work a lot in Australia and I thought Australia had some remote areas. This place in Wyoming, it took four hours to drive in a straight line from Salt Lake City and for the last three hours there was no mobile phone reception at all and I passed like three cards in three hours, you know, and there was just cows everywhere. I was just like where on earth am I? Anyway, I got there and I did this ranking thing. I said, right, okay, in groups, could you get a piece of paper, rip it up into nine little slips. On each slip of paper will you write a job or a profession. And they did that and I said now rank them. And the classic thing that students do kind of well, you can't rank them. But many groups said, yeah, fine, let's get on with it. And they ranked them. You know, and of course, being in Wyoming, it was like the life or death. You know, who do you rely on for life? And, of course, who do you rely on for life? And of course, guess what? Cowboy was at number one, you know, and teacher was at the bottom. But anyway, there was this and I said, okay, if you've, and I only gave them a few minutes and then I paused them and I did what I mentioned a few moments ago, that okay, if you have managed to rank them, I would gently suggest you've been involved in cumulative talk, which means da-da-da-da-da. Now I want you to get into exploratory talk. The energy in the room changed so much and they started questioning and challenging each other, and so then you do that with children.

28:20
So let's say, in an elementary classroom you get them to think of some characters in a book that they've been reading. I mean, if we stick with a Goldilocks porridge for a minute, you have the three bears and Goldilocks, there's four. And how do you rank them? But you don't tell them how to Say I want you to rank them and they're like, well, how? And I say, well, that's a good question. And they're like, yeah, but can you answer it then? No, I want you to think about it, have a think. What are some of the ways in which you could rank them? Older students might be could still stick with literature for a minute and take Shakespearean characters and rank them, but you don't tell them the criteria for ranking them, because you want them to think about that as well, you know. So it's this permission to think. I think that's what, what the purpose is totally.

29:14 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I, yeah, that's. It's awesome. I love how these illuminate to your. Their last story just really illuminates how multiple strategies and approaches can be kind of combined. They they're like very cumulative right. You create this class culture. Now you could do this thing. Now we introduce the idea of exploratory. It's so, so great. I think I'm looking at time like wow, the time has gone by very fast. But I would love to get into this concept of challenge. I mean, you've done so much. The learning pit is classic right in education. So I wonder if you can kind of talk us through kind of that culture of challenge and the learning pit model, if you don't mind, just so we can kind of think about how that plays into the culture that these discussions are happening in.

29:52 - James Nottingham (Guest)
Ideally, Sure, yeah. So I created the learning pit in the mid-90s and it's probably worth me sharing with you how I introduced it to a new group of students, and these are the sorts of messages that I give them. I'm sorry to say that success is not straightforward. I wish it was, but it's not. If it were straightforward, every single one of us would be as successful as we want to be. I would be multilingual, for example, I'd be able to play the guitar like Jimi Hendrix. I can't do any of those.

30:22
Reason is because to become really, really successful, it takes time, it takes effort, determination, it takes good strategy or strategies, it takes some brilliant teaching, it takes a bit of luck. There's all sorts of things that contribute towards becoming more successful. What we do know is the first step, always, always, always. The first step in becoming more successful is to step out of your comfort zone. There's no choice about it, because if you stay in your comfort zone, well, it's nice, it's a nice place to be. It's a bit of a giveaway in the name comfort zone, you know, I like it. But to become more successful, I necessarily have to go beyond where I am right now, and so then, when I step out of my comfort zone, I'm going to encounter a performance dip. That's what psychologists for decades have called it a performance dip. And then I do this with students and it's a good way to illustrate it with students and that is could you all pick up a pen and will you write out your full name? Now will you put your pen in your other hand and write out your full name again and of course there's always a bit of laughter about that and so on. And now show the person next to you your two attempts and hope that they don't laugh at them too much. Did you notice your second attempt looks worse than your first and that's a performance dip, because you've gone from what was comfortable writing with your dominant hand to what was uncomfortable writing with your weaker hand. Did you also notice how much more effort it took, how awkward it felt?

32:08
Those are the sensations associated with learning, and my job as a teacher is actually to create those sensations in the classroom. I don't want you to feel socially uncomfortable, emotionally uncomfortable. I don't want that, but intellectually I want you to be uncomfortable. I want you to feel awkward. I want you to feel like you're putting in loads of effort and it's looking worse at the moment, and that's the key. It's not. It's looking worse full stop. It's looking worse at the moment.

32:43
And then this is when I draw out the learning pit. I say to them typically people talk about success, as you just need to keep taking steps towards where you want to get to, towards your goal, and so that sounds lovely. But more often than not, you take one or two steps and then you get worse before you get better. And I say this to the students I'm going to let you into a secret. When I ask teachers to do exactly what you've just done write with your dominant hand, and then you write with your weaker hand. Their handwriting looks terrible. And then I ask them how many of you are ambidextrous? How many of you can write equally well with both hands? And I promise you this there's normally about one or two teachers in the room, that's it. All the others can't, and everyone who can't is a quitter. They quit. Now, that's not me making fun of them, it's me talking about what is human. We quit with so many things because you just can't do everything, and so what we do is we prioritize. And since we prioritize, what it means is we quit with lots of things and you will find yourself in what I call the learning pit, because I draw it out and it looks like it gets worse before it gets better.

34:03
And when you find yourself in that learning pit, there are two main solutions. Number one is quit, just think it's not worth it. Number two is work out how to get through it. Is it the strategy? Is it the approach? Is it the way you're collaborating? Is it a different question you need to ask Is it a resource that you're missing? Is it some bit of information that you need? Is it that you need some advice from someone? But there are lots and lots and lots of ways to help you through the pit, and my job is to help you to get into the pit, but also to give you advice about things you can do to get out of the pit.

34:44
And now let's get to the good news. The good news is, if you are willing to work through the pit and out the other side, I promise you you will feel so much more accomplished than if you'd given up. We all do that, all of us. We quit, it's quick, but if we persevere and go through and out the other side, we know that sensation of feeling so good about ourselves because we think I figured it out, I did it, I persevered and I got here. And that's what makes it worthwhile. And then, when you get out of the pit, you think to yourself I figured it out. And since I figured it out this time, I bet you I can figure it out again and again, and again and again. And, incidentally, that notion of I can figure it out is self-efficacy, that belief that I can influence things. And so the idea of challenge is we have to create this sense in our classroom, that challenge is a good thing in a learning situation. Now, challenge crossing the road is not a good thing, but challenge in the classroom is a good thing and it's what helps us to grow. And we have to learn how to get through this pit and out the other side. And it's about I think the final thing worth mentioning is it's about the purpose. It's the purpose is to improve.

36:21
You see, the next time you get on a flight, what would you think if the pilot says well, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, this is my maiden voyage, but listen, we all have to learn sometimes. So if you wouldn't mind, please buckle up. It's going to be somewhat of a bumpy ride. I suppose all of us would be like, can we get off, please? Because what we want is that pilot to have done so many, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of training hours that she or he could land the plane upside down on the hudson river. You know, we want them to be that expert such that they find flying the plane easy. So when I'm on the plane with them, when they have got passengers, don't take risks, just perform brilliantly. But please, please, please. At pilot school and in your professional learning, please, please, please, go on those simulators, try lots of things, work it out. What, if? What about? Could we? And that's what schooling ought to be like.

37:24
It's not performing, it's the learning phase, and so that we're ready to perform in exams or on the sports field, or in the on the stage, or playing in the band or something you know, it's rehearsals, ready for performance, and it's we really, really, really need our students to be much, much more willing to go for challenge in the learning situation. Not the crossing the road situation, but the learning situation. That's the key to it. And what I worry about is there is a meta-analysis that I share in the book covering 42 studies that show when we give kids choice, they learn less. They learn less when given choice, not because choice is a bad thing, but because most kids, when given choice, pick the easier option.

38:15
Not because they're lazy, but because they think that's what we want them to do, because they have noticed that when they get things right, we praise them and we say very good, well done, and when they don't get things right, we say try harder. Well, what we want them to think is we encourage them to be out of their comfort zone, or what I call in the learning pit, and I need to adjust my praise for that. So if they find something straightforward and easy, I need to say well, you find it really easy, let's make it more interesting. If they are struggling, that's when I need to give them loads of praise. You do brilliantly. I'm so impressed that you're keeping going with this, that look of determination, how about? And then you offer them a strategy or an idea. I've got to make challenge much, much, much more a common feature of the classroom, much, much more a common feature of the classroom.

39:06 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Yeah, oh my gosh, I'm glad you brought up the choice piece around challenge, cause I'm all about my, my background is in student voice and I'm like, yeah, let's co-create as much as possible, and that's exactly it. It's like it's not inherently bad. It is the choice that they're making is because of this culture of schooling that we've we've done, so I love the praise adjustment as the kind of a response to that, and I'm also looking at time, so I'll wrap up here, but I want to just name the 80-20 split, which I think was a really good one too, that you named right, it's like they can't be in challenge mode 100% of the time.

39:39
Right, it's about 20%, that is ideal for 80% successful, so that was a new learning for me that I really appreciate Okay good, good, good, good.

39:48 - James Nottingham (Guest)
And it's the purpose. Where are we now? I don't want them to feel challenged in an exam hall or on the stage or in an interview. I want them to think this is my time to shine, to show what I'm capable of, to show what I've learned. But in the classroom I want them to be out of their comfort zone. I want them to be exploring and wondering and making mistakes and then learning from those mistakes, because that's the learning part.

40:18
Ready for the performance, let the pilots make all the mistakes in the world on the simulators and then perform brilliantly. You know, that's what we're trying to do with our kids. And if the pilots are like, oh no, I just want to show you how brilliant I am at landing the plane on the simulator, well, what are they learning from that? And yet when we see kids do things like that, so often we praise them and we say very good, well done. I'm thinking, for goodness sake, if it's the learning situation, they need to be out of their comfort zone. If they're in the performance situation, then let's see what they're capable of absolutely.

40:58 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love your, um, your adjustment to, uh, putting up work as like, don't put up the final product, put up like the butterfly. Example of like. Here is the stages of the drawing. Here is the progress that I made. It's such a bigger thing to celebrate that than like. What did the final work look like?

41:13 - James Nottingham (Guest)
Absolutely. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, don't just put that final pieces of work on the wall. Also put the earlier iterations. Yeah.

41:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Love that. All right, a final question from question from you. Well, final two mini, kind of really fast ones, lightning round what's one thing you would encourage listeners to do when they end the episode. So we've talked about a ton of strategies, what might be like a good starter or like the most impactful thing to like do tomorrow um, goodness me, you start and finish with a list of questions.

41:46 - James Nottingham (Guest)
Oh yeah, I mean anything that you've heard that you, that interests you, that tickles your fancy really, because we're all at different places in our career and all got different interests and we're all teaching different age groups and different subjects.

41:59
So it's it's really uh, what makes, what do you suppose will make the biggest difference, a to your teaching and therefore B to the students' learning outcomes? Which is why this book Teach Brilliantly is quite an eclectic mix, although I think it hangs together very well, if I might say so. I mean, you know there's a very strong thread going through, but there's lots and lots and lots of things and I don't anticipate that people will read it cover to cover. You're self-excluded from that. I can't believe it that you read it cover to cover. But most of the time it's about dip in and find, ooh, ooh, I'm interested in feedback, or that's interesting about challenge, or that exploratory talk or that questioning, you know, and just pick something that you think, yeah, I can imagine having a go at that, and then say play with it. You know ready, play refine.

42:56 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love it. And then, finally, people are going to get the book, so I'm going to drop a link in the show notes and the blog post for this episode. But also, where do people connect with you? Where's a good place to follow your future work?

43:06 - James Nottingham (Guest)
um, so um. Best one is my website, learningpitorg just as it sounds um learningpitorg. Yep, and I'm there um, but teach brilliantly through solution tree, and they've got information about me on the solution tree website as well excellent.

43:25 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
james James, thank you so much for this conversation. I really appreciate it.

43:28 - James Nottingham (Guest)
It's been a delight, and thanks for those huge questions. I mean, typically I only answer those questions when I've got beer in my hand. But you know, there we are, thank you.

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10/13/2025

232. Guest Tips for Preparing for and Facilitating Student-Led Conversations

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Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

In this solo episode of the "Time for Teachership" podcast, we explore strategies and protocols for student-led discussions, especially those that are controversial or high-emotion topics. We draw on insights from experts who have appeared on previous episodes of the podcast, including Dr. Chad Dumas, Dr. Laura Lipton, and Carolyn McKanders.

The goal here is to equip educators with practical strategies to prepare and facilitate student-led discussions that are productive and engaging.

Tip #1: Set up the foundational culture

Drawing from Dr. Dumas’ research (guest on episode 231), it’s key to understand that there is no trust without dialogue. In both student-teacher relationships and student-to-student relationships, healthy dialogue and trust are built on the concept of psychological safety.

Teachers may consider doing a climate survey to understand whether there is psychological safety present and how to adjust if not. Here are some guiding questions:

If I make a mistake in this class, it’s not held against me.
Members of the class can bring up problems and tough issues.
This class accepts others for being different.
It’s safe to take a risk here.
It’s not difficult to ask other members for help.
No one would deliberately act in a way that undermines my effort.
When working with others, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized.

Dr. Dumas also emphasizes accountability for upholding co-created norms and agreements. While we often identify those things, the accountability piece is harder. One of Dr. Dumas’ ideas is to randomly assign different students to break the agreement to see if the class will hold them accountable. Set up the process at the beginning and emphasise how important it is to maintain accountability in the classroom.

Tip #2: Design conversations with purpose

Drawing from Dr. Laura Lipton’s episode (#220), educators can embrace the concept of being purposeful with conversations and designing them with intention. This is important for any conversation, but even more so for class discussions around challenging topics.

One key way to design conversations with purpose is to understand the different types of discourse. Dr. Lipton identifies three that allow educators to move through to create intentional conversations in their classrooms:

Dialogue: This is a non-consensus model where you want to generate ideas, welcoming all perspectives and hearing from everyone. It’s not about agreeing with others, but trying to understand what they’re saying.
Discussion: The next type of discourse moves from dialogue to discussion, which is a little more discerning. It’s about breaking ideas into smaller components, analyzing them, and defining success criteria. The goal of this type of conversation is to choose an idea and move forward to action.
Decision-making: The third type of discourse is having the group make a choice. They’ve thrown out all the ideas (dialogue), discerned and analyzed some (discussion), and now they’re taking action steps toward agreed-upon criteria of success.

While these can all be whole-group discourses, you can also break students into smaller groups to have in-depth conversations that everyone gets to engage in.

Tip #3: Facilitate the conversation in your class

Drawing from our conversation with Carolyn McKanders in episode 221, there are some tips on how to facilitate the actual conversation in real time. Educators can:

Record indicators of engagement: Evaluate how students are participating beyond those who just spoke up. Also, think about things like showing curiosity, asking questions, advocating for a position, and demonstrating understanding.
“Paraphrase your butt off!” Paraphrasing is a key tool to indicate you are listening and understanding. Teachers can model it to students and also directly teach this technique in group conversations.
Acknowledge emotions: It’s a basic, but highly important thing to do. Acknowledge where people are coming from and what they may be thinking or feeling.
Find common ground: Reach in and “grab” onto common values, beliefs, identities, and goals as a way to bridge divides. It’s a great starting point for conversations.
Don’t let conflict go to waste: Educators can have an “assumptions wall” where individuals list assumptions and post them on the wall. The facilitator can model inquiry by bringing these assumptions into the conversation, asking questions like “why is this so important to you,” or “what data underlie this?”

Make sure to go check out the episodes featuring Dr. Dumas, Dr. Lipton, and Carolyn McKanders to dive deeper into these tips and strategies to prepare for and facilitate student-led conversations.

To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Co-Creating Class Agreements slide deck with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 232 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below.

If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

TRANSCRIPT

00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Time for Teachership podcast. I am delighted to tell you that this episode is going to be implications for student-led discussions, based on the brilliant experts we had on the podcast for our July series and I think one actually aired last week in October on facilitation of teachers and teacher groups, and so I'm really excited to think about how these adult-level strategies and protocols are going to work with our students, particularly around discussing controversial or high-emotion topics. Here we go. The first idea is from Dr Chad Dumas, whose book we talked about in last week's episode and was all about kind of supporting teacher teams. Now, what I want to pull from that book that is relevant for students, I think, is to set up the foundational culture. So if you want more on the things he says, check out episode 231. He talks about a Paulo Freire quote. That's basically, like you know, we can't have trust without dialogue, and that is so critical. This idea of trust and student-teacher relationships is so common, but also student-to-student relationships is so common in what we talk about. But how do we do it right To be able to have dialogue? We often say we need trust, but that's a wonderful kind of flipping the idea on its head to say we actually need dialogue in order to have trust. So let's do it. Let's show the kids, let's show ourselves right that we can do this thing and we can do it right. I love that.

01:32
He defines Dr Dunas defines Edmondson's psychological safety term right Psychological safety being the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns. One will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes and the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. He has a bunch of items that I think you could kind of use for a climate survey, just to kind of note whether or not you know you have the presence of psychological safety, and so you can kind of itemize this for your students to determine you know, do I have these or not? Is this present in our environment? So I'll read some of those to you now, if I make a mistake on this team, it's not held against me, right, I would say, of this class. Right, members of the class are able to bring up problems and tough issues. We're able to accept others for being different. It's safe to take risk here. It's not difficult to ask other members for help. No one would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts and when working with others, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized. So I mean, think about that for students. Are those things present? Also, thinking about a particular action that Dr Davis talks about, I loved this tip and we talked about it in episode 231, but I just really love it. For students.

02:49
We often talk about, you know, norm or agreement generation and co-creating those with students. But how do we maintain accountability for things like this? It is so hard to have even adults remain accountable to the things that they co-created, that they agreed to live out in discussion, remain accountable to the things that they co-created, that they agreed to live out in discussion. So his suggestion is that you randomly assign agreements to break to different students throughout the year. Right, and that's a way to test if students are going to hold them accountable. And I think you could even say to students you know I'm going to randomly assign students to break these so we never know if it's like someone's actually breaking the agreement or if it's just they were told to break the agreement, which also, I think, lessens the I don't know tension or people pleasing attitudes of like, oh, I don't want to correct a student or this feels uncomfortable, like, well, it's part of assessing our ability to hold each other accountable. So love those ideas from Dr Chad Dumas and again, this is episode 231 if you want more on his ideas for facilitating teacher teams.

03:48
Dr Laura Lipton we talked to in episode 220. And for this I want to pull some ideas around designing the conversation with purpose. So the biggest thing I think that we really parsed apart in that conversation and is really really important, both for adult planning of meetings and PD, but also for students, what we would often call, like you know, like a class discussion, but students' conversations in the classroom. We need to know what the purpose is and then we're going to design accordingly, right? So I think let's parse apart her definitions and I think we can figure out how best to move forward once we know what our goal for the conversation is.

04:28
So three types of kind of discourse she says One is dialogue. So this is the non-consensus model. You just want a lot of ideas. Every idea is kind of welcome, right, we're just brainstorm mode and we're cultivating a spirit of inquiry by sharing everybody's voice, everybody's perspective. It's not about agreeing with each other. But we're really in seeking to understand mode. So we might really have some questions to just make sure that we get what all of the ideas are. We're not saying I like that or I don't like that, but we're just kind of okay, here's all the things that are possible. If we are, for example, generating ideas for a civic action project, if we are trying to grapple with a really sticky, interesting, compelling question or essential question for an inquiry circle, for example, like let's get it all out, what are our initial ideas? Okay, then and again this can progress one to the other, like you could design kind of a sequence of class conversations or I think you know, you could go out of order, as Dr Lipton told us in that episode where we talked together.

05:34
So the second piece or type of discourse is discussion, and so this is moving from the dialogue where we have many, many ideas. Now a discussion is a little more discerning. She says, right, they're breaking the ideas into smaller components, many ideas. Now a discussion is a little more discerning. She says, right, they're breaking the ideas into smaller components. And so the purpose of discussion specifically is to generate and analyze ideas and also to define the success criteria. So your goal here in this type of conversation is actually to choose one, or maybe more than one idea and move towards action.

06:02
So again, you could see, for a civic action project, this is like what will we do for a project or what is our next step for gathering data or whatever. But also for a conversation about a concept, if you're discussing an essential question or the discussion question for the day right, we want to figure out where we're landing. We don't all need to land necessarily in the same place, but it would be pretty cool if we kind of have this synthesis of ideas of where we are collectively landing and to kind of have broken apart the pieces of our understanding and analyze all that stuff, right? So I imagine this working really nicely. With a question stem like you know, what would an equitable world look like? So I envision someone saying like okay, well, here are the success criteria, and so we have to discuss that, we have to agree on the success criteria of an equitable world, right? And then we're going to throw out some of those ideas or pull those ideas from the dialogue part, analyze them and figure out which of them most align to our success criteria, and then we can go forth and kind of propose as a group, you know what our idea is.

07:11
I could also envision this happening in smaller groups. So a discussion could happen, not class-wide necessarily, but this could be, you know, a group of five, a group of 10, and having multiple groups within the class. And this is kind of the approach that they're taking to get their poster or success list or whatever ready for you to present to the wider class. So I think there's a lot of different formats. This could take the discussion, the purpose really being we're choosing something at the end that we're gonna move forward with. We're either gonna implement it or we're gonna share it widely with the whole class, with external audience members, whatever. That is Okay.

07:46
And then the third type of discourse that Dr Lifton talks about is decision making. So this is after we generate ideas, we parse them out, the group can move to that choice making right, and there might be predetermined criteria. You might have decided that you might kind of parse that out a little bit more here, but the goal on this is that you're agreeing on the most viable outcome based on that criteria and building on the previous discourse steps. So when you have kind of dialogue you're very broad, right, discussion. We've kind of figured out this is kind of narrowed, a narrowed version of what we're going to implement. We're going to move toward action. We're going to define our success criteria. Whatever Decision-making is like, we're really going to take that. Or you could also skip that step right and have predetermined criteria. That's provided by the teacher, right? What's an equitable world? Look like that has X, y, z, for example, but that here you're saying, okay, so, based on the criteria that we agreed on, based on like all these components that we really got to in discussion mode, now we're going to build on that and we're going to come to kind of our final decision and that there might be some protocols specifically in here to make sure that we have consensus. So I am imagining this happening. Right, we have the question like what would an equitable world look like? Right, we have dialogue where we're just kind of all over the place. Maybe that's whole class. Here's all the ideas.

09:14
Now we break into groups for discussion. Now each of these groups are coming up with a success criteria. What does it mean to have equity in the world? Here are some of our ideas. We're going to pitch these to the whole class and now as a whole class. Potentially this does not have to go this way, but as a whole class. We're learning everyone's pitches. We're kind of seeing what the outcome of those discussions in smaller groups are. We're kind of evaluating all those success criteria and we are kind of coming to consensus, not necessarily 100% agreement.

09:42
I like to think of the fist to five as a consensus protocol. To say three and above is agreement. I can live with it. Right, five out of five would be like yeah, I really like it. And we're kind of coming to consensus. Maybe that means we're going to take pieces of this group's ideas of equity and pieces of this group so we're going to put them into something new. But we're making a final decision. We're coming to consensus as a whole class. Again, just one way I'm conceptualizing this. I'm sure there are many, many others.

10:12
Okay, now McCanders, carolyn McCanders, episode 221, if you want to learn more about her, she has a lot of stuff. I think that is relevant during a class discussion. So, okay, we're having a class conversation. We've kind of planned it out. We've talked about kind of setting the foundational culture with Dr Dumas, with Dr Lipton. We talked about designing the conversation with purpose. We got to figure out if it's dialogue, discussion or decision-making that's going to happen. And then we plan the prom. We plan the setup, format, everything's ready to go. Now we're in the discussion.

10:39
What do you do as the teacher or as the facilitator? Again, this comes from facilitating adults. That's where the original book came from, so you can imagine its applications, I think really nicely as a teacher, facilitating a student conversation. So here we go. We could record indicators of engagement. I love that she talks about the nature of participation. I think there are so many of us who have, you know, sat with a list of student names and kind of checked oh, they talked right Later on in my teaching, after I initially did something like this, I wanted to really think about were they asking a question? Were they sharing a claim? Were they sharing evidence? Were they inviting another student to talk? So what she names as like kind of the elements or different types of participation is the use of inquiry right. So I can imagine that could be a question or showing curiosity in some way, advocacy, so kind of a statement or kind of claim, aligned and paraphrasing, so kind of evidence that you are listening and you're trying to move the group towards synthesis or identifying the various pieces present in the conversation, so really being an effective group member here.

11:45
And I think you want to teach paraphrasing so McCandless you can tell from the title of that episode on our show. You know, paraphrase your butt off is a common phrase that she uses quite effectively and she talks about you know three types of kind of paraphrasing in here and she talks about, I mean, acknowledge, organize and abstract paraphrasing are the ones she writes about in the book, but in the podcast she actually gave us some examples and some new names for some that I really found compelling both for adults and for students. So here's one. One is just kind of acknowledge emotions right, I think this is basic but so important. She says you know, people want to have their emotions acknowledged and she says I always say you've got to be able to paraphrase emotions and content while keeping the resourcefulness of the person or the group. So she uses this phrase your paraphrase should light a pathway.

12:36
And she talks about how you know if we're in a group with adults and we're talking about frustration with family members not coming to a particular thing, right, we can root that and like, oh, I hear your frustration because I know that you are excited to. You know, build something together with family members to better, have a better experience for your students in school, right, like your commitment, the desire that you have is why you're frustrated, because you're committed to this thing and it leads them down the pathway to positive action and not just ruminating on you know the feelings and getting kind of stuck in kind of a negative state. So there's this idea of acknowledging emotions. We acknowledge it, we paraphrase what we're noticing and this becomes an opportunity to kind of anchor in or understand the why or move toward action. Then we have common ground. I love this. So this really listens across diverse perspectives.

13:37
She says, reaches in and grabs out a common value, common belief, common identity, a common goal and offers it to the group so they can kind of move forward together. I love this idea of you know we're kind of all over the place. I think about a lot of conversations that we hear in media, with adults, with students, I mean everywhere right where we're kind of entrenched in positions and we're kind of speaking across a divide. But how cool would it be to reach in and grab a common goal or value? Right, we're all working towards this thing, we all care about this thing, we all value this, right? I mean, I'm just going to grab something, but, like we all value freedom or the ability to make our own choices, right, okay, great, so we can ground in that. Now, where do we move from here? Knowing that that's important to us all, right?

14:23
The next piece is kind of, I think, where you could absolutely get some great nuance. I love this is kind of polarity paraphrasing, so it normalizes the tensions within a group and it says you know what you're right and you're right, your underlying values, your polarities. And again, you want to use this when we are having I always think of Dr Diana Hesse's term here, a phrase that she shared on the podcast a while back, a year or so ago on the podcast competing good values right, so competing good values, not like offensive hate speech, right. But when we are talking about good values, right, so competing good values, not like offensive hate speech, right. But when we are talking about good values, freedom versus safety right, both of you are right, right, and we actually need each other because polarities are interdependent. You can't put one down. She says if you expect a positive outcome, both the answers are needed for positive outcomes. I love how she explains this. Right, both are needed, needed. Freedom and safety are needed in kind of tension with each other. We can't have all of one to the exclusion of another. So I love this idea of just again, think of a student.

15:30
I think it would be great to do as a teacher, but even better if you can teach students to do this. Think of a student listening to people and being like, okay, I acknowledge these emotions, like I see that you're feeling really upset by this or I'm feeling you're very frustrated by what's happening in the world today. Right, acknowledge emotions, paraphrase. I noticed that we're all talking about these different ideas. It seems like we're all interested in this idea of freedom, common ground paraphrase. Oh, that's so fascinating. I'm hearing a lot of people talk about gun control from the perspective of freedom and also people talking about the perspective of safety. That's so interesting that we have this polarity happening. Right, freedom and safety, polarity paraphrase. Now, I imagine you're thinking, okay, my students are not going to speak like that, lindsay, sure, but how cool would it be if they could start to identify some of these things? And, again, we have to teach it. But I think they're definitely capable of doing it and how cool once we can sit back and just observe and listen to them be awesome, as opposed to like us constantly having to do it. I think we do it to model at first, but I think this would be super cool if we're talking about a true student-led conversation.

16:33
She also McCanders also talks about never letting a conflict go to waste. It's a whole segment of her book and one of the protocols that she suggests is an assumptions wall. So really just bringing that cognitive conflict to light. That preserves kind of that psychological safety we talked about at the top. So here's where we would have each individual list assumptions about a topic. So we're having a discussion about a topic or a conversation about a topic, let's list the assumptions, choose one that most informs their behavior and then write it kind of like a short phrase. She says eight to 12 words like a short sentence. Write it on a sentence, drop or post it, put it on the wall and then the facilitator you as the teacher, is going to model inquiry, right. So we she talked a lot about how to do this, but we basically want to invite conversation about, for example I'm curious about this. Can you help me understand what it is that you value about this or what's the belief underlying this or what data informs this. You know, why is this so important to you? That kind of thing, right. So we're modeling those inquiry questions and then the students kind of take over the inquiry, kind of a round-robin fashion. She's saying this will take about 15 to 25 minutes and you could really do this in smaller groups of like four to six. So this could be a protocol where if you have a conversation that is either just beginning and we feel like we want to get some assumptions out there, or we kind of have the conversation, we have this point of stickiness. We're like, ooh, we're stuck here, let's try to move through it by unearthing some of those assumptions. I think that could be used there as well.

18:18
I do want to note too in the book she talks about how teaching groups ways of addressing conflict generates high interest. So that is super fascinating to me on a meta level, right of students just learning how to address conflict in a healthy way. But actually we do want to nurture conflict as long as it is perceived as psychologically safe. But students are actually interested in that and adults are interested in learning how to navigate conflict because it's relevant in their own lives, in learning how to navigate conflict because it's relevant in their own lives. So, when we're thinking about increasing motivation and engagement, I know we may feel a tendency to avoid conflict, but actually if we can get through it positively, right, and we can teach how to nurture it and parse things apart and paraphrase in these ways, that actually it's gonna be beneficial to student motivation. Fascinating, okay. Final tips and inspiration from our three brilliant authors and podcast guests. So from Dr Jamis basically, kids can do it. So he cites Ferrari and Rizzolotti. I hope that's correct In 2014,.

19:15
They talked about we're hardwired to quote, understand the intentions of others and they say this is because, quote or sorry, we have the quote, quote capacity to infer others' internal mental states and ascribe to them a causal role in generating the observed behavior. End quote. So basically, we are hardwired as human beings to know kind of what's going on with people and say, oh, that behavior, that's a result of that feeling. Right, that's a result of that. I think about that a lot with kids that kid being tired, like I know that I can sense that kid being tired, right, that's where that's coming from, right? Or that kid is really sad about something that happened in their life and maybe that's connected to this topic. That's where that behavior is coming from. They just snapped at me. I understand that's coming from an emotion, an emotion of sadness, right, or anger.

20:05
From Dr Lipton she says, quote I think we really confuse purpose with tasks. We're not here to rewrite math curriculum for the teacher example. We're here to ensure there's equitable and effective approaches to math for all our kids. That's the purpose. To do that. We're going to take a look at the curriculum end quote. I think about this a lot with student conversations as well. The purpose is not to answer the essential question necessarily. I mean, yes, it is. But more importantly, lifespan wise, I want students to be able to have conversations. I want them to be able to exist in conversations about high emotion topics, about politics, about current events, whatever it is, and do well like, feel psychologically safe, help spread the psychological safety to others, nurture conflict and have disagreements, while paraphrasing effectively and being an effective participant. Right, I think that is far more critical than them being able to answer an essential question with three pieces of evidence. You know, in a claim From Carolyn McCanders. Basically there are several questions.

21:09
She says you can ask yourself as a facilitator to make sure that you are thinking in the mindset that you need to be to effectively facilitate conflict-rich conversations. Here they are. Realize the quote nice thing to do is speak up. So if you notice someone inflicting pain, saying something oppressive, like you need to speak up. Right, and I would also say this is true for students as well.

21:37
As a facilitator, ask how valuable is my personal comfort compared to the effort I would have to make to result in long-term gains for others. Right, think about the learning opportunity that is missed if you don't hop in and say something or nurture a conflict. That is happening. Right, when you are silent when someone says something. If someone says something oppressive in a conversation, ask yourself who am I or we protecting by not speaking, and how might this be affecting student learning? So so many positive, rich things to do.

22:10
And if you are thinking the what if? What if? I'm afraid that students are going to say something problematic or that will harm others, I think you follow all of these pieces early on the whole setup and then Carolyn McAndrew's final tips for us are kind of the if this happens, you jump in and here are some questions right and some mindsets to coach yourself on to make sure that you do hop in and hop in effectively. Okay, you got this. I am so excited to hear and learn and just be in space with you as you share about all of the brilliant student-led conversations that are happening in your schools and districts. Feel free to grab my freebie for this episode, which is the Culture of Discussion playlist. I should probably rename that Now. Discussion, I know, is different from dialogue, which is different from decision-making conversations. Thank you, dr Laura Lipton, but it is available for you at the blog post for this episode lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 232.

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10/6/2025

231. Leading Teacher Teams with Dr. Chad Dumas

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Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:

In this episode, we chat with Dr. Chad Dumas, an educational consultant and author of the recent book, The Teacher Team Leader Handbook: Simple Habits to Transform Collaboration in a PLC at Work. Dr. Dumas discusses key strategies to enhance collaboration within an educational setting, drawing on insights from educators and researchers.

Dr. Dumas emphasizes the importance of psychological safety, which he describes as the cornerstone for effective teacher team dynamics, and introduces the concept of paraphrasing as a crucial communication tool that ensures mutual understanding. Additionally, Dr. Dumas highlights the significance of specificity and accountability in overcoming generalizations, encouraging teams to engage in practices that maintain focus and progress.

The Big Dream

Dr. Dumas envisions a future where educational collaboration is done through simple, powerful habits. His dream is to cultivate educational environments where psychological safety and effective communication become the norm, allowing teachers to work collaboratively in a way that significantly enhances student learning and development.

Mindset Shifts Required

To achieve effective collaboration between educators, an important mindset shift is to embrace the concept of community. A community is when we’re caring for each other as the whole, and as individuals—exactly what teachers must do to successfully collaborate together. Part of building this community is creating a psychologically safe space where open expression and cognitive conflict are encouraged. Safe spaces do not always equal comfort or “being nice,” but are a place where each person comes as an equal and contributes to the shared values and goals of that community.

Action Steps

To build effective collaboration between teacher teams, here are some key action steps to prioritize:

Step 1: Know your responsibility. Dr. Dumas’ vision for creating collaborative teacher teams revolves around understanding the three key responsibilities:

Make it safe: Create psychological safety—without this, you can’t do anything meaningful as a team. Psychological safety is built on social sensitivity (perceiving and recognizing nonverbal communication and responding appropriately) and equitable turn-taking.
Build capacity: Along with creating psychological safety, the team leader is also responsible for building the team's capacity, which means helping each other learn both what they’re doing and why.
Do the work: From here, it’s time for each team member to do the work; everyone needs to pitch in and work toward the same goals.

Step 2: Master paraphrasing. In Dr. Dumas’ words, “paraphrase is like magic.” It’s a powerful tool because, while it doesn’t indicate agreement, it helps the speaker feel understood and the listener understand. Adopting this habit in your teacher teams, educators can move forward with productive conflict and growth.

Adopt the habit of paraphrasing in your communications to ensure that all parties feel understood, which will aid in productive conflict resolution and enhance psychological safety.

Step 3: Embrace specificity and accountability. Work towards specificity in discussions to avoid generalizations that impede improvement. Develop strategies to hold team members accountable in a supportive and engaging manner.

Challenges?

One big challenge educators and teacher teams face is getting specific rather than relying on generalizations. In Dr. Dumas’ words, “generalizations are the enemy of improvement,” because they don’t give you real steps to improve. For example, a generalization like “students aren’t understanding this concept” doesn’t tell you anything about what specific students, what part of the concept, etc. Specificity helps teacher teams make real improvements.

Another challenge for teacher teams is holding each other accountable to the pre-established norms. Dr. Dumas suggests several ways to set up systems of accountability, which are elaborated on further in his book.

One Step to Get Started

To begin implementing these transformative ideas, educators can access the free reproducibles available on Dr. Dumas's website and the Solution Tree site. These resources offer practical tools to help educators take first steps toward transforming teacher team dynamics.

Stay Connected

You can find this week’s guest on his website, Next Learning Solutions, or on social media: X @ChadDumas, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

To help you implement today’s takeaways, Dr. Dumas is sharing The Teacher Team Leader Handbook with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 231 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:

3:27 “If the team does not have psychological safety, everything else will become compliance—it could be toxic, etc. So that’s the number one responsibility of the teacher team leader.”
8:05 “The absence of dysfunction is a pretty low bar … A higher bar that we want to strive for is that of community.”
13:36 “A paraphrase … helps them to feel understood, and it helps me understand. That’s it. With that clarity of them feeling understood and me understanding, now we can move forward with productive conflict.”
27:10 “It’s not worth the paper it’s written on if we’re not going to hold each other accountable to them.”

If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:

TRANSCRIPT

00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Dr Dumas, welcome back to the Time for Teachership podcast.

00:06 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
Thank you, excited to be with you.

00:08 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I'm so excited. I'm excited about this book and I'm also really excited I don't think I mentioned this to you but we're going to release this episode in concert with, like, several others that I think make a lot of sense, both for teacher leaders as well as kind of facilitating in classrooms as well. I think that's relevant for, like, wherever you kind of enter into the facilitation or construction of, like navigating a group and getting a group to be productive and to do all the things that you mentioned in the book. So I kind of want to set the stage there that this is being released on the heels of, like, all a bunch of other books that kind of talk with one another, and I think we'll see that today. Is there anything that you want people to know as we enter the conversation today?

00:52 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
Well, I love that. You know, this book builds on the greatness of lots of people who have come before us. Right, like you maybe heard, I think I think it's in the Bible it says there's not a new idea under the sun. You maybe have heard, I think it's in the Bible it says there's not a new idea under the sun. Right, like there are a lot of great, great greatness that we come from, and then we come and we build on it. We say, ah, here's a way to organize that, or here's a way to structure that, or here's a tool to help with that, and so the intent of this book wasn't really to create like there's not a lot new in it.

01:24
It's organized in such a way that I think that the greatness of the work of people like Michael Grinder and Kendall Zoller and Bob Gardison and Carolyn McGanders and Bruce Wellman like the list goes on and on and on and I haven't even gotten into the PLC at Work people of Rick DeFore and Becky DeFore and Bob Aker and Anthony Muhammad and Mike Madden the whole list goes on and on and on. And what I have tried to do is take all of that and put it into a usable, simple format right Like the subheading for the book. The heading is the Teacher Team Leader Handbook, but the subheading is simple habits, simple habits to transform collaboration. So, out of all of the greatness of all of those people before us, how can we take that and put it together in such a way that it's simple, usable and it can do what the sub-title intends transform collaboration?

02:17 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love that framing and it kind of grounds me to this first question I was thinking about, where you know, I usually ask about mindset. But you have very clearly laid out kind of the three responsibilities of that facilitator and so, yeah, I think you call them teacher team leader responsibilities, right, and so I'm curious if you can kind of ground us in those, because I think a lot of times I mean me as a teacher leader it's like, oh, the job is to like go through the agenda or read off these points. It's like that's very low bar.

02:48 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what I did was pulled together all again a lot of research from other greats and, in this case, around the responsibilities, really gets to a lot of the work of Amy Edmondson and Charles Duhigg and others and the idea. So there's three responsibilities that I identify. The first responsibility is the most important and that's to create psychological safety. If we don't have psychological safety, we're not going anywhere, like that's. That's the, to use the Latin term, the one Latin phrase that I remember from high school sine qua non. Sine qua non, without which there is nothing. If the team does not have psychological safety, everything else will become compliance, it could be toxic, et cetera. So that's the number one responsibility of the teacher team leader is to make sure that there's psychological safety. Make it safe. The second responsibility of the teacher team leader is to build capacity. The second responsibility of the teacher team leader is to build capacity. So that means that we're helping each other learn why we're doing what we're doing and how to do it. Like you said, you know, sometimes teacher team leaders think that their job is to do the work. Well, that's the third responsibility. As the team, we're going to do the work, but I propose that that responsibility is actually the least important of the three responsibilities.

04:05
The most important the two that are never talked about are make it safe and build capacity. When you are doing that, then the doing the work will become more manageable. We're sharing the load, we understand why we're doing it. We're able to do it in a space that is safe for us. And let me just say a word about safety too, if you don't mind that sometimes people confuse safety with comfort or safety with nice. I was born and raised in Nebraska and the tourism slogan in Nebraska for many years was Nebraska, nice. That's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about just like we show up and we're polite to each other and then the real meeting happens out in the parking lot with our car keys in hand. What we're talking about is a psychologically safe space where everyone is able to express their views, and they do express their views. We're able to have conflict that's cognitive as opposed to relational or affective, right. So these are the three responsibilities Make it safe, build capacity, do the work.

05:16 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love too that you just define that for us, and in the book you do that as well. You even list out Edmondson's I think it's like seven indicators or something that she like. I really appreciate the depth of that, because I do think people often say things now as like kind of a term that gets thrown around, like, oh, it's a safe space. It's like what, like? What are you even talking about, right, and you can't just declare it safe. It's something that the group what I got from your writing as well is that the group needs to. Each individual of the group needs to perceive it as safe, to actually have psychological safety. It's not something you could be like I'm the team leader and I say it's safe here right, yeah, yeah.

05:53 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
And Duhigg actually identifies two elements to psychological safety. The first element is social sensitivity, that is, the degree to which we perceive and recognize the nonverbal communication behaviors that others display and respond appropriately. The second element of psychological safety is equity of turn-taking. So there's not one person dominating, there's not one person sitting around not doing, you know, contributing at all. So that's what comprises psychological safety, those two things, social sensitivity that my book addresses through the moves and techniques that the individual teacher team leader can use and leverage to develop that social sensitivity. And then the second part is the equity of turn-taking, which is all about the strategies and protocols to be able to get everybody's voices in the room.

06:48 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Oh, I love that so much, just in the way you frame it and the way that is so parallel to exactly how your book is structured.

06:53
so intentionally yeah yeah, I love that and I think so. The other thing I was thinking is and we can quickly touch on this but I think you have so much research, as you said, you kind of build on everyone's. I mean I saw Freire in there a few times that I was like, oh yes, this totally connects and one of the things that's like kind of the reasons for dysfunction that Lencioni brings up. I think a lot of people could see that in their meetings and be like, oh yep, I've seen that come up. I know exactly the meeting that comes to mind when I think about this. So I'm curious to know if you could kind of touch on that for a minute for us.

07:24 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
Yeah. So Patrick Lencioni came out with I think the name of the book is the five dysfunctions of a team or something like that, and so he identifies these five dysfunctions and then the parallel what does that look like on the opposite end when you have function? And so I just raise those five signs of dysfunction that you can see in teams. I don't dig into it a ton in the book, rather just kind of raise it as like a be aware of absence of trust, absence of accountability, absence of follow through. These types of things are indicators of dysfunction. And then what I also say is now, an absence of dysfunction is a pretty low bar, right, like I don't know if I've met anybody who says, yeah, I want to go to this meeting. That's not dysfunctional.

08:18
What a higher bar that we want to strive for is that of community, and block has a great definition of community, where it's a caring for the whole, where each of us are part of the whole, caring for the whole, and the whole is caring for us. And so I think that's really important to keep in mind that this book is part of the subtitle is in a professional learning community and community is there professional learning community and community is there? Professional learning, community those words were not chosen at random, they were chosen right. It grew out of the 60s, in the work of Shirley Hoard and the Southeast Educational Regional Laboratory and others, and so we have a long line of this phrase. And community is very intentional. And so, as a leader, as a teacher, team leader, what are we doing to build that community? And again, it goes beyond just feeling good, being nice, having good treats, although those are helpful, that's not the end. All be all a community where we are caring for each other as the whole and as the individuals.

09:25 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
You know, that makes so much sense to me, especially because I have my head on. I'm thinking about what will come out after this episode is released is that I think I'm going to do a solo show, thinking about how all of these kind of like leader, facilitator books are actually also similar, as I said, to like teaching and a class and things like that. And I'm already thinking about, right, we use the word community in terms of a class community as well, a school community, like inclusive of young people as well, and it is also so important that it's not just nice but it is truly all of that learning, you know, as part of it as well. I mean Zaretta Hammond's work kind of connects to that right and all of it. So I just I love the parallels that you're making me think about. So this is really exciting stuff.

10:04 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
Oh yeah, you're absolutely correct. So I've had the opportunity as part of this book launch. Schools have reached out and said, hey, we want you to come do some training. So I've done some some one day overviews, but also some multi day. I refer to it as a teacher team leader academy and as part of those.

10:24
It's wonderful to be working with these teacher team leaders who then raise these exact point that you're talking about, this idea of psychological safety. Like you could take those three responsibilities and apply them to the classroom. Number one responsibility of the teacher in the classroom make it psychologically safe. Number two responsibility build the capacity of students to be able to understand why they're doing it and what they're doing. Number three responsibility do the work Right. Like that that translates to the classroom, and so it's really wonderful seeing teachers make those connections, that it's not just the teacher team leader in a team, but these same assumptions, mindset, habits right, that's in the title of the book. They're habits. These same habits apply in a classroom, they apply with your partner or spouse, they apply with your children, they apply with other family members, your neighbors. These really are simple habits that can transform lives is maybe a big word, but that's probably fairly accurate when people start to use and leverage these, these habits.

11:29 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I agree and I mean, what better way to like get people interested in making potentially hard changes in habits? It's like actually this is not just for work, right? This is for your whole, everyone you interact with. This is being a human, so I love that Absolutely.

11:44
Yeah, yeah, and I and I think one of the things I was thinking about too, as everyone you interact with this is being a human, so that I love that absolutely, yeah, yeah, and I, and I think one of the things I was thinking about too as well, I mean I just read um, I always forget the name of this book hands down, speak up or speak out, I can't remember, but it's like k through five conversations that are student-led and how do we, like you know, put on the students? It's a bunch of like mini moves. One of them is kind of a synthesis paraphrase, which I know Carolyn McCanders and I were just talking in the podcast about this you have named in your book and I'm curious about some actions that you might take. Your whole book is full of these habits that we might take, some strategies, some kind of mindsets, and I am curious to know about some of them.

12:21
The paraphrase what I'd love to get to, but any other ones that you want to pull in, feel free. Curious to know about some of them. The paraphrase what I'd love to get to, but any other ones that you want to pull in, feel free, like what does what does that mean when you're in kind of the moment and you're responding to lots of voices or particular types of voices, that maybe there is a little discomfort or whatever happens in a meeting Like how do I enact some of this stuff?

12:41 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
Oh yeah, yeah, paraphrase. Paraphrase is like magic. So the paraphrase, actually. I learned this phrase from Carolyn McDaniels and I would use it when I would go into difficult meetings. And if there was a meeting I was going into and I knew it was going to be a challenge, I would write it on a sticky note and I'd put it on my computer in front of me so nobody else could see it, but I could. And it said this it said paraphrase your butt off. So like it is that powerful of a tool and paraphrase those two things.

13:19
When you paraphrase someone, it's, first of all, it's not. Before I tell you the two things that it does, it does not indicate agreement. I can paraphrase someone without agreeing with them. What a paraphrase does is it does two things. At first, it helps them to feel understood and two, it helps me to understand. And that's it. With that clarity of them feeling understood and me understanding, now we can move forward with productive conflict. Without them feeling understood and without me understanding, we're not able to move forward.

14:01
You've probably been in situations where you've, and your listeners have been in situations where you said something with someone and then they went a totally different direction and five minutes later you're like, forget about it, it's not even worth it. There's that cycle, right? You're like you just went down a whole path that I have no clue what you're talking about. Well, you can save all that breath, save all that energy by just a simple paraphrase, and paraphrases don't have to be long. They actually shouldn't be long. If your paraphrase is longer what somebody else is saying then work on it to get better at it. A paraphrase really needs to encapsulate the nuggets of what they're saying, and Carolyn McAnders I look forward to listening to that episode, by the way, because she is a master oh, she is absolutely incredible, can listen to her for days on end Her ability to take the nuggets of what somebody is saying and synthesize it into a few small things.

15:02
And so in the book I draw on Garmston and Wellman's work around the paraphrase, and they different folks talk about different types of paraphrase. I think their three types are the easiest to understand. The first type is to acknowledge. It's simply to acknowledge whether you're frustrated at or you're angry at, or one of the things that you've been thinking about is all I'm doing is acknowledging back what that person said. The second type of paraphrase is an organizing paraphrase.

15:37
People especially if you're in a leadership position, right, like a teacher, team leader or a principal people come at you and I sometimes use the phrase they verbally vomit on, like they just all the things. They haven't had a chance to really think through what they're saying. They're just like getting things off their chest. So an organizing paraphrase might be helpful for them. What does that look like? Okay, so it sounds like there's three things that you're talking about here, or there's two things or four important right? So I'm, I'm organized, and then I'm saying and the first one is blah, blah blah, the second one is blah, blah, blah, and the third one is blah, blah, blah. That's an organizing paraphrase. And many times when, when I engage in organizing paraphrase, people will say oh yeah.

16:22
I never thought of it that way Thank you, and off they go and then they start to solve it themselves, right. Other times they say, well, maybe it's really two or maybe there's another thing there. The point is is they're starting to feel understood and now you're understanding. So the acknowledging paraphrase, the organizing paraphrase, and the third one is the abstracting paraphrase, which I find particularly challenging myself. It's taking things from a concrete level to an abstract level, or the other way around, from an abstract level to a concrete, very challenging. I think.

16:58
It takes a lot of practice, and in my book what I do is I have a graphic that kind of lays out those three with some potential, like what they are. Some potential sentence stems how it might apply in a group setting when you're working with others, because it's one thing to paraphrase an individual, it's another thing to paraphrase when I'm in a group of two, three, four, five other people Equally, maybe even more so powerful to be able to say so. It sounds like as a team, we're saying these three things, or it sounds like maybe this might be the next appropriate step. Paraphrasing for the group is very powerful.

17:36 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Yeah, and I I mean I that's so exciting and I also think that's the hardest. And what I'm heartened by is, in this book, the K-5 student led discussion one. One of the moves was literally the abstract paraphrase. I didn't call it that, but it was like take what the group has said and and be a student who says it sounds like there's two groups of thought here, this and this, right, or it sounds like we could go in this direction, cause this is kind of where a bunch of people's thoughts are and I love that, even though it is so hard. Like if we lean into that for kids as well as adults, like everyone can be doing it and we can help people like be good at it before they get to that adult moment where they're like oh, this is really hard if we're practicing it. K-12.

18:18 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, if we're practicing and teaching and practicing with kids so that it becomes part of, in the adoptive schools, garmston, wellman, mccander's work. They talk about it becoming part of identity. Right, so it becomes who you are, not just what you do.

18:37 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love that and I've been playing a lot with this idea of like values. I think fit in that abstraction piece Like can you identify the values someone is bringing to a conversation about like a political issue or something? Right, like that feels and correct me if I'm wrong but that feels like you're taking from the concrete? I believe in this policy or I disagree with this policy because this is a value I'm holding on to that's deeply important. Is that right? Okay?

18:59 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
Yep, yep, yeah, and so in a paraphrase world, it'd be paraphrase Mac. So it sounds like this because of this, this is the value that you hold.

19:06 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That's helpful. Thank you, okay, so there are so many challenges. I usually ask Trevor that challenge at the end, but I feel like people are just filled with the people who have had this experience of doing teacher team leadership. They're filled with.

19:18
There's this moment where there was this challenge or even people who are just a team member and haven't been in the leader role, like, yeah, like this was the reason I don't want to go to that meeting, like as you alluded to before. So there are several you mentioned. I'm sure there are several more that we can talk about. People can get the book for the full rundown, but I am particularly interested in a few of them.

19:39
One of them, I think, as a coach and a facilitator, is like we say sometimes as educators, these really big statements that feel like they're usually like the gut check moments for me that I'm like, ooh, something feels off here, like it feels like we're not saying the thing and instead what we are saying feels maybe problematic, even potentially. And you have this beautiful I don't remember if it was a table, I wrote down a page number, but like it was kind of thinking through what are the prompts that you can offer in that moment of someone saying something that is general and not helpful to get it to the specific. I'm not talking about that. Well, can you talk us through that more? Yeah.

20:18 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, so I can remember. Actually, I was the day that I thought of this phrase that really encapsulates this idea, and I was in California, southern California, paris, california not spelled France, it doesn't look like Paris France either and had been working with some teams in that area and that morning, like I was in the shower and the flash came to me generalizations are the enemy of improvement, like. That's a pretty broad statement and I think it's accurate. Generalizations are the enemy of improvement. I'm too fat, I'm too skinny, I'm too skinny, I'm too whatever. Okay, so that's not going to help me get better. What I need to do is get specific. What are the foods that I'm eating, what are my exercise routines, what's my sleep regimen like? What is my social life like? We need to get into the specific nitty gritty, and if we just say I'm too whatever, that's not going to get improvement. Generalizations are the enemy of improvement, and so that's where this. So I said that this work builds on a lot of people's work.

21:43
There are a few things that are unique to me that I created, which is I don't know, it's kind of cool, I guess, but this is one of them where I've not seen anybody talk about this being an actual strategy that a teacher team leader uses in a team, and that is specificity, because generalizations are the enemy of improvement. We got to get specific. So when comments are made about students, staff, whatever the culture, the climate, we got to get specific. One that says here are some examples of generalizations that you might hear in a team so, at a generalization, like students, students just aren't getting this concept. Okay, so then I lay out well, why is that a generalization? And then here's a prompt that you can use to help prompt the team to move forward. So if somebody says, you know, kids just aren't getting the concept, well, that's a generalization, because which students, which parts of the concept is it? Just like, are we specific enough in that? And so then what might be a prompt? So a prompt might be something along the lines of well, so it sounds like we're frustrated because certain kids are struggling with this part, which part? And which kids? Now, let's get specific.

23:16
I was actually just working with a team recently where they said well, you know, the reason why kids aren't being successful is because they're not here. Like, if they were here then we would do better. And I said so let's look at the kids. So are there kids who aren't getting it, who are here? Well, yeah, okay. So what are we going to do about those kids? Like the kids not here? Teacher classroom you can do some things to like engage them while they're there, but that's a systems issue. We got to help get the kids in the classroom assistance issue. We got to help get the kids in the classroom while they're in the classroom. If they're there and not getting it, that's the issue we got to address. So we're getting. We got to get. Specific generalizations are the enemy of improvement.

23:58 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That's such a good example. I mean that that resonates, yeah, that people have said that, and that's like Ooh, what do you do?

24:06
with that. Thank you for that. Now I know I mean you have so so many other ones. I mean I don't think we'll have time to get to all of them. You have one I really like about groupthink, right, like bringing in external voices to combat kind of groupthink where everyone thinks the same thing. Oh, not following norms, I think was a good one, because I mean I also think about those classroom parallels. Right, we all set norms, meeting or class, you know, and then we don't follow them. So I mean, one of the ones that I really liked was that you had had you said someone like assigned people to break a particular norm on a schedule and just saw if there was accountability. Oh my God, that's brilliant, isn't?

24:46 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
that hilarious? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there was a team I was with. Isn't that hilarious? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, there was a team I was with, and I shared this with other folks too, where? So?

24:53
So the idea is, we set our norms, let's acknowledge up front that every single one of us is a human being. Let's just like, let's just lay it out there, like this is a fact we're a human being and as human beings, we're going to screw up. Every single one of us is going to screw up, and we're going to screw up. Every single one of us is going to screw up and we're going to break a norm. So let's see if we're going to hold ourselves accountable to it. So this is a strategy where, early on in the year, right after we set the norms, I saw a team do this and now some other teams have shared it with and have been doing it. Let's take those norms, put them on little strips of paper, cut them up and put them in a basket. And then let's take the first several meetings and dates and put them on a piece of paper on little strips, cut them up and put them in a different basket. Each person draw out a norm and a date and that's the date that, without anybody else knowing, you are assigned to break that norm and see if anybody holds you accountable.

25:49
And holding accountable doesn't have to look like yelling at people. Holding accountable should be like a light and easy thing because we know we're going to break norms. So like have a fun way, create a system, how are you going to hold each other accountable? I was with a team that they had a thing on their agenda. It said throw something not sharp but gently at at them. Other teams will have like little plush toys. I was in a team they had little nerf guns and anybody just like to start to reach for one of those. And everybody was like, oh yeah, you're right, exactly some fun way of being able to hold each other accountable. And so then when you, when it's your date assigned, are you actually you actually held accountable? Because if you're not, then that says something about the psychological safety of the team. What do we need to do then so that we can feel comfortable holding each other accountable to our norms?

26:40 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
I love that, in addition to the amazing specificity of your ideas there, I also just love that accountability is an element of this. I have seen many great teachers who are fantastic at setting the norms of getting you know everyone, all the kids, to participate, and we agree with them right in a class level as well as a teacher level, and the accountability piece is the piece that's missing, and so it didn't really even matter that we set the norms.

27:03 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
Exactly. It's not worth the paper it's written on If we're not going to hold each other accountable to them. It's just a waste of time if we don't Totally, totally. And it has to be a mutual accountability. That's a key piece too. It's not the teacher team leader's responsibility to hold everybody else accountable, it's not the administration, it's the team. We set these norms. I love Bill Ferreter. He uses this phrase. He says norms are an expression of our needs. So we as a team, as a third grade team, have set our norms. Those are an expression of our needs. If our needs are not being met, then we're not going to be effective. So make sure that our norms, our norms, we hold each other accountable so that we can have our needs met.

27:50 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That is such a good phrase. That is such a good I'm like using that.

27:53 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
Oh yeah, oh, bill Ferreter is incredible, yeah.

27:56 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That's so good Cause, I think one. One thing you may even mention in the book is like sometimes people struggle to come up with norms and so like figure out in your brain, like what's a meeting that didn't go well or that you didn't feel great about, and like what was an unmet need, and like how do you create a norm based on that missing thing, and so that makes total sense now that you've connected the dots for me, thank you awesome yeah yeah, yeah, and so I guess it too.

28:18
Moving to close up, it's incredible, we're almost out of time here. Uh, lots of ideas shared. What is one thing, in addition to going to get the book which I encourage people to do and we'll drop a link in the show notes that people can do, like today, tomorrow, like as they end the episode here, to get kind of started with some of this stuff.

28:36 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
Yeah, yeah. So even if you don't have the book, I encourage you to get the book. Solution Tree has free reproducibles for all their books, and so those are available on the Solution Tree website. For the book you have to create an account. They don't spam you, so it's okay to get an account and I also have all of those reproducibles on my website as Google Docs. On Solution Tree's site they're PDFs, On mine they are Google Docs, so you can just make a copy and then off you go to use them, and there's about 50 downloadable reproducibles for this book and that website. I did a tiny URL for that, so it's a tinyurlcom, and then slash TTLHChad as in teacher team leader handbook Chad TTLHChad. Folks can go there, access whatever they like and start digging into the reproducibles and then get the book if you'd like.

29:31 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Amazing, and we'll link to that as well in the show notes, in case anyone's driving or doing things not writing that down.

29:36 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
We'll get you Perfect yeah.

29:38 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
And then I think I asked this last time, but I'm just always so curious for guests. What is something, dr Jamis, that you have been learning about lately? It could be professionally or it could be something else, and actually I think the last one you said was about this book in the last podcast yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because I was in the throes of it.

29:58 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
So, yeah, things that I'm learning about. I love this work because I get to learn every day about how to help a team move forward. So I've got a number of books right on my desk that I'm looking at digging into here over the next couple of weeks. We're recording this in June, so I've got some work here in June, but I've also got a week actually a whole week that's just open. So I just finished reading Brig Lane's PLC dashboard, where the dashboard component, I think, is particularly powerful. For how do we know the teams are? How do we know, first of all, who we need to support and then, second of all, who and what we need to celebrate, and without a dashboard, you're not able to know that. So that's been really cool.

30:49
Also been reading about celebrations. Sean Cresswell and Katie Sue Treykoff, I think, is her last name have some incredible work around celebrate to motivate and the power of celebrations even simple celebrations and there's actually there's a Facebook group called Celebrate to Motivate that anybody can join that. It's incredible Like people go on there and post different ideas of what they're doing for celebrations. In their school I learned so much with those things popping up Celebrate to Motivate a really cool page, and I haven't read the book yet, but I'm sure it's amazing because I know those two.

31:24 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
That's incredible. I mean, that's something we didn't even get into with your book, but there's a ton of stuff about joy and celebrations and there's like page numbers I noted to be like, oh, this is how you celebrate. So yeah, that's something we didn't even scratch, but that's in the book.

31:36 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
Yeah, yeah.

31:37 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
And finally, people are going to want to connect with you. I know we'll drop the links that we mentioned, of course, in the blog post, in the show notes, but where can people like, connect or follow you?

31:45 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
Yep, Yep, I'm well. I am on Twitter or X or whatever you call it these days, and it's a simple hashtag, just at Chad Dumas. No numbers lines, underscores anything like that, Just C-H-A-D-D-U-M-A-S. And then I also have I'm on LinkedIn and Facebook and I have tiny URLs for those as well. Tinyurlcom slash learning Chad is the LinkedIn one learning Chad and the Facebook one is FB learning Chad. So either way of those people can reach out.

32:15 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Amazing, dr Dimas. Thank you so so much for this conversation.

32:19 - Dr. Chad Dumas (Guest)
Oh, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

32:20 - Lindsay Lyons (Host)
Of course.

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