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11/21/2022 How to Facilitate District-Wide, Teacher-Led Curriculum Development with Dr. Steven WeberRead Now
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Curriculum is part of every classroom, every grade level, and every subject matter. It’s key importance to the field of teaching and education demands we’re always checking in and asking: how is our curriculum serving and supporting students? In his role as the Associate Superintendent of Teaching and Learning with Fayetteville Public Schools, Dr. Steven Weber is continually asking just this. Through an extensive curriculum development project, he’s asking: is our curriculum relevant for students today? We chatted about this and other topics on episode 95 of the Time for Teachership podcast. Here’s some of the key takeaways from our conversation. Knowledge Transfer, not Compliance Dr. Weber’s big dream for education is that we could return to the joy of learning, and that it would be marked by knowledge transfer and not mere compliance. Knowledge transfer is when students learn curriculum that’s relevant and can apply it to other areas of life, both presently and in the future. This differs from compliance-style education—finish an assignment, check a box, and move to the next grade. There are two key values that support this concept:
Teacher-Led Curriculum Development Dr. Weber believes, and has seen in practice, a high level of engagement by creating curriculum task forces. His district is currently completing a multi-year project to produce relevant, teacher-led curriculum for all grade levels. Their project is designed on a few principles:
How to Teach Current Events Current events are more relevant in the classroom than ever before because students are more connected to the broader world than ever before. And while they’re important and necessary to talk about, it can be tough to do. With that in mind, Dr. Weber had a few ideas on how to make current events part of your curriculum:
TRANSCRIPT get ready for a wonderful conversation with Dr steven weber. Dr steven weber serves as the associate superintendent for teaching and learning with Fayetteville public schools during his career in public education. He has served as a teacher assistant principal principal director of secondary instruction and executive director of curriculum and instruction. He is the president of the Arkansas Association of curriculum and instruction administrators. He also serves as a board member with Arkansas A. S. C. D. And on the A. S. C. D. Legislative committee. Throughout his career, he has been elected to serve on multiple state and national boards. Dr Weber is a podcast Panelist and education blogger. His articles have been published with A S. C D N A E S P p D. K International and teach better. He post professional articles and tools for curriculum leaders on twitter at curriculum blog in 2019 he was named the A. C. I. A. Arkansas Association of curriculum instruction administrators, administrator of the year. 00:01:02 This award recognizes outstanding leadership in the field of education and curriculum and instruction and based on our conversation, I can tell you exactly why he received this award. There is some phenomenal conversation about to go down get excited for the episode. Here we go. I'm educational justice coach, lindsey Lyons and here on the time for teacher ship podcast we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings, if you're a principal Assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nursing out about co creating curriculum with students, I made this show for you. Here we go, dr steven weaver, Welcome to the time for Teacher ship podcast. Thank you, I'm so excited you're here and I'd love to know, you know, is there anything that listeners should know about you? 00:02:11 Um I just read your, your bio at the start of the episode, but is there anything they should know or keep in mind as we jump into the conversation today in my current role. I'm an instructional leader, but I think we're all instructional leaders. Teachers are instructional leaders, Assistant principals, english language Arts director, Assistant superintendent. So I think we're all instructional leaders at different levels and the students and families who we serve are counting on us to be leaders. So I really like to focus on instructional leadership and leadership in general. Multiplying other leaders and giving support back to the field. Um at some point in my career, I would go from one job to the next and a teacher or an assistant principal or a colleague would support me or help me get to the next level or would help me present at a conference. So that's what I get the most out of is just giving back to our profession. I love that. I love the emphasis on really making more leaders, right? Like if we can exponentially increase the number of leaders. That's that's that's amazing. And I can't remember. There's actually quote on my website about that to mary parker Filet maybe. 00:03:14 Um but yeah, it's like really, really powerful when we can do that. I'm all about student voice and student leadership. So you know, can we even have the students be some of those leaders? Amazing, awesome. So thinking about like what we can do and that that big thinking, um what do you say is your big dream for curriculum and instruction? And I'm often informed when I asked this big dream question by dr Bettina loves quote about freedom dreaming where she describes dreams as grounded in the critique of injustice. I'm certainly informed by understanding by design. It's now over 25 years old of Wiggins and Mukti, but I'm informed by that and the the concept of transfer. So what I want to see students do is transfer their knowledge in the same class in the next year. And in adult life, I want to see them be able to transfer those skills and those concepts and I don't want to see um compliance. I don't want to see students just going through the motions to earn a grade, but I want to see students and we can call that personalized learning or we can call that whatever we like. 00:04:16 But I want to see students transfer. And so, so sometimes during covid that was difficult. Sometimes we had so many barriers that we went back to compliance. If you turn this in, even if it's 10 days late, you'll get the grade. And so I think some students have been trained in 7th, 8th, 9th grade. If I just do it, I'll get the grade and I can go to the next class. I want to return to that joy of learning that we had pre covid, But I also want to return to where student voice student choice and I can contribute. Some people would call it universal design for learning, but I want to return to transfer. And to me, it's like, show me the beef or where's the beef? I misquoted it. Where's the beef? The Wendy's commercial? And if there's no evidence, then did the students really learn it? But I'm all about the transfer. Yeah. That makes so much sense. And there's so much in the world that's happening that, you know, things are always happening that are relevant to what we're teaching. And so it's like, you know, can we have that, I don't know, we always talk about like we want to get them to college and career and that that's really important that they're successful there. 00:05:19 But there's also so much in the world happening at the moment and students can use so many skills that we teach in school in the moment right before they graduate. So I think that's a wonderful idea of like how does this transfer into life right into spaces in other classes or outside of classes. Yeah, When you say in the moment, I think of the term relevance and to a lot of our students, today's education is not relevant. It's the way we learned it, but it's no longer relevant. So can we use social media or can we use Tiktok videos or can we use Youtube? Can we use the skills that they use in their own personal time on their phones or in their own time on a friday night when they're hanging out with their friends, what can we use? And then they can show transfer in their own way rather than on a worksheet or rather than some of our google classroom has turned into just google worksheets. So I know that green Covid a lot of things shut down and we were just trying to make it through day to day some weeks. But how can we help students use their skills and make it relevant. 00:06:19 And I really think that's a key. It's not innovative. We've always tried to be relevant, but what's relevant today wasn't relevant when I was a teacher when I started my career in education. Yeah. Such an important point. And even from year to year, right? Like once Covid had a lot of things became irrelevant that were relevant the year before and vice versa. So yeah, such an important key term and key concept there that we need to be thinking about is designed curriculum. You mentioned year to year is such a great conversation already, but you mentioned year to year and I think student to student class to class. So just because it's relevant to third period doesn't mean that fourth period well think it's relevant. We have different students, different backgrounds, different cultures, different interests and hobbies and we have to make it relevant and that's where we need to provide a little bit more choice in our assignments, Not not saying the kids don't all have to do the exact same skill or, you know, if courage is the theme in the L. A class, we can give them choice in the novel that they read rather than making every student read the exact same novel, wow, what a good point. 00:07:24 Yeah, like I and I think this is why I land on, you know, my advice is always for teachers to create their own curriculum for their students in that year in that moment and just, you know, obviously finding a sustainable way to do that, but you're right that fourth period and third period are going to be, you know, different different kids and like different interests and different all sorts of things. And so I think when we bring the different backgrounds and experience and interests into the class as as as teachers, but also seeing that in our students, like how do we respond to that and how do we, you know, that's, that's the big key. And I think this brings me to my next question of, that's a big lift for teachers, right? To design their own curriculum. I know you've, you've experienced leading this right in your own district, is designing curriculum that's very teacher led. And I'm wondering like is there a mindset uh struggle or was there a shift in people's minds that needed to be made to be able to take that on? Because that, that is a big lift to design curriculum from the ground up versus you know, pull something off the shelf or, or whatever and use something that's already been created. 00:08:32 We do two activities in our school district and I didn't create the activities. The first activity is from Stephen Covey, a very old dated YouTube video that we use with the big rocks and the little pebbles. And we identify the big rocks in the math curriculum. What are the big rocks? The key skills and the key concepts that must be learned in third grade must be learned in Algebra two. And we use flip chart posters and we go around the room in order from K through 12 and we identify the big Rocks and then we do a gallery walk. I notice I wonder to see what other teachers and other grade levels think could be missing or oh, why do we teach that in fourth grade, But we don't teach you again until sixth grade. And so the Big Rocks activity can be done in any district. Very simple activity. We watched the video and after the video, we identify our Big rocks quite often. Your state standards have big rocks. And if you unpack those or if you used to ask a veteran teacher that's been teaching for three or more years, they will quickly tell you what the Big Rocks are because they've taught the class so many times. 00:09:34 A second activity that we do is a swot analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. And I know some people roll their eyes because some districts overuse that, that tool, but that tool has been very effective for us in, in curriculum design. So our teachers come from all of our schools. We have 16 schools and we have representatives from every school for every time. We do a different program or curriculum area. So if we were doing science, we'd have our teachers in the room and we have done science two years ago and with the teachers in the room, they would identify the strengths of the program. Maybe we have good materials or maybe a weakness is we don't have good materials. They're outdated or maybe an opportunity is we need to bring in more guest speakers because we're right by the University of Arkansas and we're not currently utilizing scientists and grad students from the University of Arkansas. So that's an opportunity and a threat could be, um, during Covid we couldn't go on field trips. So that, that was a threat. But you know, this year we're hoping to return to more science field trips. 00:10:37 So hopefully the threat can be removed. So through identifying the things that are going well and the things that are opportunities or threats were able to just identify our own solutions and no one's really dumping the problems on me or no one's dumping the problems on the high school or the elementary school teachers saying they didn't teach it. We're starting with the Big Rocks and then eventually we get to learning targets essential questions. We move towards transfer sky skills and a lot of this is understanding by design, but you can use whatever template you like and eventually identify what the Big Rocks are for your school district and then you just have to have collective commitments from the teachers saying we agree or we commit that we are going to teach these. Um, you're not telling anybody a script. You're just saying these are the Big rocks. These are the essentials and how you teach your science lab or which guest speaker you bring to your class could vary from one school to the next. I mean, you may have a parent at your school that's really good that just wants to speak at your school and that's okay because every student is going to get the guaranteed Big Rocks. 00:11:45 I love that. Yes. I always, I think I always call them priority standards, but I think Big Rocks priority standards standards, a little more professional. I love it. And so I love also that personalized touch as well that I, I imagine teachers can buy into this or I don't know if I like the concept of buying, but like, you know, they're on board with this, They're excited, They're committed to this because like, oh, I can still bring in that, that parent, I can still do it this way. I can, I can still have my own personalized version of this for each period of different students as we discussed, but you're still making sure that everyone gets the essentials like the essential core and what they need. I'm wondering is that, is that key to having that commitment or I know you mentioned the collective commitment being very important. Was there any, are there any tips for anyone who's kind of doing this right now in terms of getting everyone to that point of collective commitment And and was there any struggle in that as you as you kind of lead this? I Think there are three different ways. 00:12:50 You can create a district curriculum. I think you can purchase it and there's several quality books or online materials that you can purchase. I think you can have a director of maths in an office all day and write it. But I don't think one person is as good as 40 or 50 teachers. We used over 50 teachers on our math task force and then finally you could have a task force or a team of teachers write it. So I think those are three ways and you may be able to think of four or five ways, but those are three general ways that districts use. And you ask me about feedback or buy in. I think you get more buy in from that third category where teachers have voice and choice, just like we want students to have voice and choice and teachers identify the barriers and they identify common student misconceptions. I'm a curriculum designer, but I don't know K 12 math and I don't know K 12, any subject, most of us taught two or three grade levels or we stayed in elementary or we stayed in junior high our whole career and then we became a director or an assistant superintendent. So I think it's, I think it's just better to ask the people who do the work and that's where I think you get the buy in from just like in a business if it's top down, they used to call it the ivory tower, if it's top down and it's handed to the people on the work floor, there's gonna be complaining and frustration. 00:14:07 So I'm not saying we don't have complaining, But we do our complaining when we're, when we're identifying the strengths and the weaknesses and the threats to our program and people take pride in the program that they helped build? So yes, I think you should let the teacher leaders build the program and then you have to have an implementation plan and the absence of an implementation plan. It's like the old fashioned standards. When they first came out in the 80s, they were shrink wrapped and people would hand them to teachers and teachers would take their standards and put them on a shelf and sometimes you'd see that the shrink wrap was still on it three years later. So you you can't give people a google doc and say, here's, here's everything here, the big rocks and hope that it happens. You have to have an implementation plan. And I think teachers can be helpful in the implementation plan to, but I'm not a big fan of a script where on day one, every teacher is teaching the exact same way. And I think that disrespects teacher autonomy, but I realize some districts are a little more formal and they have their own policies. 00:15:09 That's the way they want to do it. But I think teachers are professionals and we should treat them like professionals. Yes. Excellent sentiment. I totally agree. And and you've kind of walked us through this whole process of how, how you've gone through and and everyone, I think you said 50 teachers and just in, in just for math, wow, that's that's bananas. So, okay, so is there any other kind of process step, if someone's listening to this, I'm just thinking, you know, they're they're wanting to do something similar. Is there anything else that you would say in terms of either, how, how you got everyone to come in, was it like sign ups, was it like recommendations for for who's going to be part of this and kind of, what's that like start to finish process of what they went through? Like kind of like, I'm also wondering the time frame of, you know, when was this work done? And how long did it take them to do all this? There are some pros and cons are process. We don't do it during the summertime because most of our teachers don't want to do it during the summertime, but in some districts, teachers may prefer to do summer work. 00:16:13 And and so that would be preferred because the the con is that you're taking teacher, your some of your best teachers out of the classroom seven or eight times a year. And at the high school level on a block schedule that can be challenging for high school teachers and all the sub plans they have to create, but we don't do it in the same month, we stretch it from september until april and then we take it before the school board in late spring and we ask them to review our curriculum and they have a first review in a second review. And if it's approved, then it becomes the board approved curriculum. And so then we do expect our teachers to teach it because our board has approved that this is what will be taught. But unlike in the early days of my career where curriculum was five or six years before anybody could touch it, it was hard copy, it was published, it was it was finished. Now we have a living document. So our eighth grade teachers before the first week of school got together and they were working on their math curriculum and making some tweaks and some changes to the first quarter. 00:17:16 So we don't give everyone editing rights, but a few people have editing rights. And then the will of the group is to continue to make the curriculum better for the for this program and for the students we serve and and to be able to be in the room when it's happening, you're saying they come together seven or eight times a year. Or is that like one representative from each school? It sounds like there's a lot more than that for each department. And do they exist in departments? They do this work as a K 12 band. We have multiple representatives per school. And you want to have at least four people per grade level, ideally five or six people, but minimum four people per grade level because it's a lot for somebody, right? It's been the most difficult for our counselors and our pe teachers or librarians who have to write an entire elementary curriculum when we get first grade, the first grade teacher can just focus on first grade math. But our our electives teachers have to write every single grade level and that's a little bit harder. 00:18:18 They don't have as much help. But it's been very effective. We've done it with world languages, we've done it with multiple subject areas and there is teacher buy in because they're having a professional conversation. They're reflecting on what works and doesn't work and they're bringing their best resources. You hear teachers pay teachers and other places where people sell their resources or sell something they've created and we have some teachers who do that as well, but In our process they're able to share. We had a teacher that was a 30-year veteran and he was retiring from science. He's able to put his best hyperlinks and his best videos and teacher created resources in a document in his final year of his career. And now the next teacher that takes his class is gonna have all this expertise. And before we had this process in place, We would just said, thank you appreciate your 30 years of service and we would have lost all of that expertise. So I think some of the veteran teachers see this as a passing of the torch to the next generation or possibly the teacher who takes their class. 00:19:19 And I think it's very rewarding for them to be a part of the task force, but we also encourage younger teachers, so we try to have diverse perspectives and we don't get all of our veteran teachers only. I love that, that the diversity of perspectives and and the passing all of those materials on super valuable. It's it makes me like almost cringe when I think about like not having a space for that to be passed on and you just retire and then that's it. That's all all that expertise goes away. Like wow, I never thought about that. Um so I'm curious to know, did you do several like in doing this, did you do several subjects at the same time in the same year? Do you do like one or two subjects each year? Like what's the timeline for for doing this? Because this is major work. The school board approved a timeline about six years ago and the timelines posted on our, on our website for our teachers. So they know in two years my subjects coming up, we reached a point where so many teachers said I need new materials or I need new textbooks that we couldn't afford to do it every year. 00:20:24 So this allowed us to spread it out. So we also review materials after we create a curriculum or sometimes some RP teachers last year purchased the spark curriculum for high school, that's a national curriculum, they purchased it. And so sometimes we purchase a curriculum rather than writing it. But but even with the purchase curriculum, they still identified their big rocks. Yes, that's so smart to do. So there's still that alignment that happens. I have heard you say before that paying teachers is really critical to this, this work as well. Right? And so I'm wondering if you have any advice for leaders who are thinking, yeah, I would love to to pay teachers to do this work. But I also, I'm not sure, you know where to where to find it in the budget or even you're saying during the school year, you know, you're taking them out of classes 78 times a week. I imagine you're hiring subs for for that time and and any tips for the logistics of how to do this. I Think it can be cost prohibitive for school districts and that's why I think a lot of school districts don't take the time to do it because even a substitute could be $100-$200 a day depending on which state you're in. 00:21:32 And so you take that times 50 teachers every time you meet that's cost prohibitive. So our teachers don't have money coming into their pocket because they're already under contract when they're working. But I do say that if you're going to have teachers do it after hours or in the summer too. It would be unethical to ask them to just come in and write curriculum without, without being paid, so our teachers are paid by their contract, but the money for us comes from a very large fee that we pay to substitute teachers. And that once again is a downside. Um You've got a child that's struggling in math class and you've got a great teacher and they're out seven or eight times during the year. They're out right before a big test and a review that that's hard on somebody else's child. So we've heard some concerns from time to time from parents saying I wish my child's teacher wasn't out of the class so often. So seven or eight times is not that much, but it does add up over the course of a school year and it is hard on the teachers who are constantly making sub plans, but we're very proud of our teachers and very proud of the products that they've produced, None of our groups ever finished uh and say, oh it's perfect. 00:22:43 It's exactly the way we wanted. They're very critical of their work. And I have to remind them that we need to go ahead and take this forward to the board because this is a lot more and a lot better quality than we had when we started the process 12 months ago. But people say, oh but unit four, I'm embarrassed and that's where unit four can be improved when you come back to school in the fall, a team of teachers can make unit for better. But some people say we don't have rubrics, we wanted to add rubrics for some of our C. F. A. S. And you can make rubrics but you have to start somewhere. And so we're looking forward to the second time we go through the curriculum review process because we feel like we won't have to do some of these things. We we can go deeper with projects or with assessments and go deeper and we're really proud of the work of our teachers in Fayetteville public schools. That's amazing. Oh wow, you should be absolutely proud. That is like incredible work. That's that's happening. And I love your humility to and just saying, you know, there's this isn't a perfect system, but but I I imagine that you came to the conclusion that even 78 times, you know? 00:23:49 Yes, it is a lot of times to be absent from the school year as a teacher, but it's worth it in the amazing curriculum that was created right? That that as we go forward, we have this brilliant curriculum that's going to positively impact students every single day, that they get that new curriculum as well. Right? Yes, I'm glad you said it that way Lindsay the process versus the product, I think very early in your career uh Central office staff member Assistant Superintendent could really focus on, we're gonna have three days and in the end we're gonna have a pacing guide or we're gonna have a product, we're gonna have a curriculum map. And I think early in my career I focused on the product, I just drove people to get to the product and I did a lot of those three day summer crash courses or you know, two hours back to school. Let's get everybody in job like groups and let's identify the big skills, big rocks in two hours. Well there's not really a curriculum, you may have a product but it's not a curriculum and it's not very high quality. 00:24:49 So you have to give people time, you have to give people time to reflect and then you have to give people time to revise and edit. And I feel like we've done that in our district, but I also feel like um so many districts just focus on the finished product and really the value is when they go out to lunch. Um They get to go out to lunch for an hour, which they never get to do as teachers and they get to go to a restaurant and be an adult. And the first time they go out all the high school teachers go out in the same car and a couple of cars together and then next time I see him the next month it's a high school teacher and a junior high teacher in an elementary teacher and you start to see the program grow because now they're just bonding over lunch and then when they come back, they're not in isolated groups. They're actually sharing strategies about K. 12. And so the process really does help us as a school system grow, grow teacher leaders, but also grow our program to where we're not looking at, why didn't elementary teachers teach that? So it can start off in the beginning with a blame game. 00:25:51 But over time I think the process is much more valuable than any final product we've produced. Wow in that process seems to contribute really positively to just like the school culture and the district culture and the band. You know, the grade bands like you were saying, going to lunch together, that's something that you don't get in other spaces. And this is such a unique opportunity for, for that to grow like you said that, Oh, that's so cool. Uh so one of the other things I want to ask you before we're out of time here is your district's curriculum includes discussions of current events and and making things relevant as you said to students and you know, what's going on right now. And so I'd love if you could just speak to any challenges you, I either you as a leader or your teachers have faced, talking about issues of justice or injustice and maybe how you've helped teachers navigate those challenges. Thank you for asking that I think every school district needs to approach current events through what's best for their local policy in their community, but I also think that some school districts have been running the other way and dodging current events and I don't think that's a good way to educate our youth because they're going to end up making critical choices and decisions, they'll become voters and they need to know how to make decisions based on current events. 00:27:05 Some of the current events have maybe not been age appropriate over the last five years. I remember when I was a child, the teachers rolled in the tv cart and they said we just got back from p and they said we want to show you something, this is history and the space shuttle was about to go up and christa mcauliffe and the astronauts, the space shuttle exploded and I'm thinking this is traumatic, why in the world would they show this to us? But they didn't know that that was gonna happen when they showed it to us. We kind of watched it live and so that was my childhood. But now kids see things on their phones and passing periods and they think see things related to politics or videos pop up and they may walk into class and say I want to talk about this, this just happened, this was a protest or this was a major world event and this just happened. What do you think about it? Mr jones and mr jones, there is not prepared to talk about it. He he wasn't prepared, but things happen in real time now on people's phones and kids have enquiring minds and they're carrying the phones around. 00:28:06 So rather than waiting for the news to come to them, it comes straight to their phones through alerts and just through videos. So I think that what we have to do is approach this from an age appropriate stance. We have to ask ourselves what's age appropriate. There's certainly things that are good for Ap US history class, they're not good for fourth grade U. S. History class. I think besides age appropriate, we have to take a neutral stance. Sometimes teachers across the United States get in trouble with families and school boards because they have let their bias or they have let their religious views or their political views come into the classroom and in a public school our job is not to teach students um exactly what to think about an issue. Our job is to teach kids how to think so they can think on their own and come up with their own student voice and student choice. And I think that there are plenty of guidelines out there. Whether you go to National Council for Social Studies, you go to facing history and ourselves teaching tolerance learning forward. 00:29:08 There are resources and I civics, their their national resources out there with videos right now for free that say here's a here's an age appropriate neutral way to approach current events. The new york times for years has produced current events for free online for teachers they'll have a current event and then they'll have different grade spans. I think we have to understand our community, understand what's going on in our community. So for example if I'm if I'm near a military base things are gonna be a little bit more sensitive if parents have just been sent off to war and I may be able to have a conversation that's different in five states away than I can near a military base. So I have to know my students know their families know what they do for a living. I know how this experience could possibly impact students and students have been through a lot of trauma the last two years whether it's covid or things they've seen on tv or experiences that their families have had. So I think we have to be careful about bringing trauma into the classroom. 00:30:12 So trauma is not so much what we're trying to do. But we're trying to educate the whole child A. S. C. D. Has great resources on the on the whole child. So if you look at the A. S. C. D. Whole child indicators then you would ask myself, am I approaching this from a whole child perspective and the final advice I'd give to anyone who's listening is that sometimes we need to pause we need to push pause as educators because if we're too emotionally charged and current events can, can have us very um angry or sad or depressed. We may not be in a frame of mind to facilitate a conversation with a group of eighth graders. They may say something that gets us very angry or we may become very emotional or we may say something to where our own personal or political opinion comes out in a classroom. And so I think we don't have to teach it today just because the kids are excited about or just because it's all over the news, We don't have to teach it today. We can teach it next week and we've had more time to talk with our colleagues about how are we can approach this, We can talk with our counselors and social workers about. 00:31:19 Is this age appropriate? The way I'm trying to roll this out. There are other professionals in the building who can help us through the lesson because we typically have lesson plans and unit plans with key skills, key concepts, essential questions and during understandings. But with current events, Sometimes we try to jump in the deep end and that's when we get in trouble and then kids go home and tell their parents are now, kids will take the phone out and video you while you're teaching and they'll say they'll put it out there for the whole world to see. My teacher said this. So we do need to be very intentional with current events, but I don't think we need to stop teaching current events. I think current events are great for class. I think sometimes teachers get in trouble when they're in math class and they're teaching a history lesson, then the parent says, why are you talking about that during algebra one? So you have to be cautious. Also about is this class lend itself to this current event. But um, understand the students in your class, understand their age, understand the community kind of values and norms and definitely push kids to think and push kids to think critically because that's the beauty of public schools, but don't push kids to where a student in the class feels unsafe to answer the question because you're, you're pushing something so strong or you're pushing an angle so strong that 24 kids feel this way and the teacher feels this way and the one student who wants to debate it or wants to oppose, it feels psychologically unsafe to speak their voice because you framed the lesson or the conversation in a way that now it's the whole class versus this student and when they go out in the hallway or to the next class, they could be picked on by other kids because the adult in the room didn't facilitate that from a neutral stance, wow so many things you said, just resonates so much that that last piece, I think really makes me think of like absolutely, like we want everyone to be able to share whatever whatever it is, as long as they're coming from a place of you know, maintaining the dignity of everyone else right? 00:33:19 We're not like violating someone else's rights or or or dignity is like worth as a human being, right? And and and as long as we have that so many other things are possible, right? Like we can take a neutral stance as long as we uphold dignity. And like I always come back to that because I think if if people are listening and are like, well how do you do this? For me? It's it's oversimplified probably as an answer, but if we co create agreements for discussion or for the class at the start of the year and we return to them and one of those where they all really stem from like upholding the dignity or upholding the value of of being human of everyone in the group, then we can do all of these other things right? We can have these tough conversations because that's our line right of like we're not going to violate someone else's dignity. We can disagree about how to how to go about this, right? Like, oh you think this problem should be solved this, but you think this way, but we're not saying anyone is invalid as a human, we can we can then have the conversation right. And I think another thing I was just thinking as you're talking about the importance of relevant and current events, right, is the phrase you said, kids are saying, I want to talk about it. 00:34:26 Like how exciting is that when a student comes into like I want to talk right? Like let's let's jump on that and let's use that for good, right? For joe generating that excitement, enthusiasm. You want the kids talking in your class and so this is a great opportunity to be able to do that. Um And finally you mentioned age appropriate, which I think is such a good point as well. I love that you named it as making sure what we're doing is age appropriate? Not necessarily like avoiding current events because I think that for me, I was thinking about the Dobbs B Jackson decision at the Supreme Court level. Like you said, the ap history teacher, like they can go into that like what is Supreme Court precedent and you know, all the logistics of that. But a kindergarten teacher could still approach like bodily autonomy. Like if a kid comes in and says, my mom was talking about my body my choice. What does that even mean? Like, like when johnny you know, doesn't want to be hugged, we don't hug johnny. Like okay, that's all the lesson needed to be like, we still maintain the theme and we can still address the question um oh the last thing I want to comment on was you, I love what you said about, we don't have to teach it today, right? 00:35:30 Like unless harm is immediately being done in the moment. Um then I might, you know, talk about it like the trauma that's so traumatic that you you will watch the child to explode like live and in television. Like I might like address that with the class, right? And have a have a process of that um to just like debrief but if harm isn't done immediately and it's more of an intellectual like, oh we're gonna debate this or we're gonna talk about this thing that happened. Yeah, definitely take the time to just think about what resource do I wanna pull in here and how are we going to frame the question so that we're not putting someone's dignity up for debate. Like, I think that would be a really powerful recommendation for teachers who are nervous about the work, but who know it's important to do. Um so just so much brilliance that you shared. Thank you so much. It's really sad that our politicians and our our adults and some of our community leaders around the United States are arguing in such a way that they've lost the political discourse. So growing up, I could see political discourse and I think, wow, that was really an educated debate. 00:36:31 Now, a lot of politicians when they have debates for local or state elections, it's not a debate, it's just mudslinging and there's never really a conversation that takes place. So I think our students are growing up in a world where they think it's like a talk show where you just scream at people to get your point across. So the beauty of current events in a classroom and a K. 12 classroom if it's age appropriate is that they can learn how to have those conversations in a respectful manner. And then if there ever on a city council there, if there ever apparent at a P. T. O. Meeting, they can come in and they can explain their opinion and maybe a counter opinion in a professional manner in an adult manner. But um teaching kids as you said, having that contractor, having that norms of this is how we treat our classmates and it's okay to agree to disagree or teaching them phrases because a lot of times they've never seen it modeled in their generation on how you agree to disagree and you don't just scream at the person or hang up the phone or turn off the video on zoom. 00:37:33 How do you end the conversation respectfully and and walk away from the table where you can come back the next time and share your point and and still be respected because you didn't disrespect the other person. So I think there's so much that can come out of teaching current events and I think it's a great thing for our teachers to do. But I think it is becoming more and more complicated because school shootings. I mean kids want to talk about something like that. But once again, that's a very delicate subject dealing with death of of Children that are the same ages of Children in my class. And so it's very delicate subjects that we're dealing with. And unfortunately our world seems to have current event weekly. So I don't think you need to avoid current events, but I think you certainly need to have some sort of district guidelines and some sort of agreements on how you will approach them in a way that is educational and it is not political. Yeah, that's such a good example of, of school shootings and students wanting to talk about those. I was just in a workshop the other day where someone was saying um that that's as an elementary school teacher that students are coming in asking those questions, Am I safe here? 00:38:40 Right? What is this going to happen here? What a terrifying question to have to address. And and we we kind of thought about it for a little bit and I think having a framing of something, if that is I'm imagining a lot of listeners are having that experience where students are asking questions like this. And so we we came to, you know what if we framed the discussion around like what does safety look like at school or what would it mean to be safe and and thriving and like if we start in that orientation where it's less traumatic to think of, what's the terrible thing that could happen instead? How do we build up this community of, of safety and um connection and belonging and all the things that are going to, you know, um ideally prevent something like this from happening. Like then we're kind of addressing the question, but in a, in a way that's not as traumatic as talking about about death again, thinking about the age appropriate response and conversation. Um yeah, wow! Oh my gosh! So so many things I realized we've been chatting for so long, I'll move to kind of some of my final questions here, but so much brilliance you shared today? 00:39:43 I'm wondering if there's one thing that as a leader is like, okay, I want to do like these 100 things that that Stephen talked about, is there something you would say would be like a good first step or like a momentum builder that people could get started with, related to any topic or related to current events? Any, anything we've talked about really? Hi everyone dr weaver and I are talking a lot about curriculum development in the various stages of that. So a quick reminder that you have a free resource available to you, which is a which stage of curriculum development am I in quiz, grab it at lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash blog slash 95. Now, let's get back to our conversation with dr Webber, entire year, your grade level team or your high school department sit down and look at the first quarter. What are the big rocks in the first quarter that you will guarantee every learner gets exposed to? They may not understand it, but you're going to teach it well and you're going to teach it deeply. What are the key questions or essential questions? What are the enduring understandings and what does it look like in our class or our grade level during the first quarter for this subject? 00:40:52 Say it's say it's english language arts. What are we really going to be intentional about? Because a lot of things were disrupted during covid, including instruction, traditional units, hands on learning, uh, maybe students being close in proximity to each other in some states. So if things were disrupted, the way to get more clarity and more focused on what our priorities are, is to have a quarter at a glance and I'm not saying any day district leadership needs to come in and do that. Um, you know, teachers can do that at your level or at your school building level and once you have that clarity of your quarter at a glance, maybe identify some finish lines. So rather than saying we're gonna start school in september and we're gonna finish in the spring, a finish line is in three weeks, mid september, we're gonna have a celebration. So every three weeks, three weeks, six weeks, nine weeks have a celebration. And I think more teachers need to have shorter finish lines because we get excited when we get close to winter break, we get excited when we get close to spring break, so create more finish lines in your curriculum. 00:41:57 So if you have quarter to glance, you're gonna have three finish lines or three times to stop and check your pulse and then you're gonna celebrate with a sonic drink or whatever it is that makes your group happy and your team's gonna say we did it, we made it to the finish line, so create more finish lines within each quarter, but start by having a quarter at a glance, wow, that is brilliant. I've never thought about that. That is so good. Okay, so final or or next to final question, what is something you have been learning about lately or if I know you do a lot of like blogging and things like that, something that you've been helping others to learn about either or. The biggest thing I've learned during covid is the importance of teacher leadership at every level. I mean there were teachers who were good at technology, helping people who didn't know how to teach via technology. There were teachers who were great at teaching math that were helping other teachers who were first year math teachers. There were teachers who were given the principles ideas on how they could do things when we came back from um teaching online and we're saying, hey the kids just aren't, they're not getting it, think they're not getting back in the routine. 00:43:04 Let's try this. We couldn't have assemblies. So let's do it, let's do a zoom assembly, a school wide assembly virtually and give out awards that way. So teacher leaders were really, if you don't have teacher leaders, you gotta start right now finding the leader in your school and give them a leadership platform. And I think when you believe in somebody and you say, I think you're a leader, I think I'm gonna get get you in charge of this committee or I think that you could help lead this professional development because you're so talented at this, whatever it is, coding or steam. And next thing you know, they're leading a faculty meeting or they're leading a district wide meeting or representing your team on a district math curriculum task force and that person starts to seeing themselves and I'm not saying they're all going to become assistant principals because not everybody wants to be an assistant principal. But quite often we build a leadership pipeline of future administrators and we forget to build into the teacher leaders because the teacher leaders are really the foundation of really K-12 public schools, so build more leaders and find the current teacher leaders in your building and ask them who are two or three other people that you could invest in this year. 00:44:12 So they could become the next teacher leader in our school. Oh, I love that. That's so good. Um so lastly after all of the great stuff you've shared, I'm sure people are gonna want to continue following you, reading your blogs, all of that. So where do people connect with you online? I write articles for teach better and that's where my articles are posted on teach better blog and I post articles and resources and tools for educators at on twitter at curriculum blog. Amazing! Thank you. Dr steven weber. You have been an amazing guest. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. If you're leaving this episode, wanting more, you're going to love my live coaching intensive curriculum boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We leave current events into course content and amplify students which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burned out and it's just two days plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. 00:45:18 If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me, grab a spot on my calendar at www dot lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash contact until next time leaders continue to think Big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network, Better Today, Better Tomorrow and the podcast. To get you there, explore more podcasts at teach Better dot com slash podcasts, and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
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Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: No matter how long you’ve been teaching, curriculum design requires ongoing growth and development. Creating relevant and impactful curriculum that hits learning targets is no easy task! But if we want to truly set up our students for success in this world, it’s a necessary one. To help make this process a bit simpler, I’ve pulled together seven resources to support justice-based curriculum design. Some are pre-determined projects while others are resource banks to pull from. Either way, they’re designed to help you build curriculum that gets students to think, engage, and learn through a justice-focused lens. I elaborate on all of these resources on episode 94 of the Time for Teachership podcast, so if you want the full run-down, have a listen! 7 Resources for Justice-Based Curriculum Design There are two categories within this list of resources. The first three are specific project-based curriculum ideas that are designed to bring learning outside of the classroom. The last four are text libraries for you to access justice-centered and justice-focused resources for your classroom. 1. KQED Call for Change Youth Media Challenge What is it? This project is designed to amplify student voices around relevant current events. Students are invited to create a 1-3-minute video or audio project about a prompt of their choosing. There are clear standards, rubrics, and resources for teachers to use as well. All student submissions are published online, and some submissions are shared on KQED or NPR—a huge potential audience to amplify student voices! More details: www.learn.kqed.org/challenges 2. CSPAN StudentCam What is it? This is a similar project-based curriculum idea to the first one. Students from grades 6-12 are invited to submit a 5–6-minute video documentary on a topic that relates to this theme: If you were a newly elected member of Congress, which issue would be your first priority and why? This competition offers cash prizes to the top 150 documentaries, totaling $100,000. It’s a great way to get engaged in current events with real-life impact and some cash incentive. More details: www.studentcam.org 3. Learning for Justice: Do Something What is it? Learning for Justice has compiled 34 different performance tasks that are designed to have students demonstrate their anti-bias awareness and civic competency in a real-world context. Tasks range from artistic showcases to a community newsletter to a film festival. Students can pick the medium to demonstrate their knowledge and learning about relevant current events and issues. More details: www.learningforjustice.org/classroom-resources/student-tasks/do-something 4. Learning for Justice What is it? This resource database has over 628 different texts and resources, including social justice standards for all educators to use in their classrooms. The database can be filtered by social justice domain (i.e., race and ethnicity, ability, or religion), grade level, subject, medium, and topic. More details: www.learningforjustice.org 5. Facing History and Ourselves What is it? With nearly 5,000 resources in its collection, the Facing History and Ourselves website is an excellent resource for justice-centered curriculum design. Their content is divided into topics such as democracy and civic engagement, justice and human rights, global immigration, bullying and ostracism, etc. There is also a wide variety of resource types and mediums, including blogs or webinars as well as more common types like books, podcasts, or videos. More information: www.facinghistory.org/resource-library 6. Zinn Education Project What is it? This is an excellent resource to access teaching materials. They’re divided into three options—time period (i.e., colonization, civil war era, cold war, present day), theme (climate justice, African American art and music, food, labor, Latinx, LGBTQ, math, sports), or resource type (books, film clips, photos). More information: www.zinnedproject.org 7. Newsela What is it? This learning platform is a great place to access material on current events and news stories at various reading levels. While not all of it is specifically justice-focused, it provides key texts and materials on relevant, timely issues that you want to discuss in the classroom. More information: www.newsela.org --- Creating justice-focused curriculum can take time and energy, especially for new educators or those who are new to this space. Luckily, there are so many resources out there to help us out! Take a look through each of these in the list and spend some time exploring what they have to offer. Then, consider: what will this look like in my class? For more discussion about these resources, check out episode 94 of the Time for Teachership podcast. TRANSCRIPT educational justice coach lindsey Lyons and here on the time for teacher ship podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nursing out about co creating curriculum students, I made this show for you. Here we go. Today's solo show is going to be a resource dive. So in line with the five different kind of themes of the solo show is moving forward. We're diving into a resource specifically actually seven resources for justice based curriculum designs that we're going to give you three resources that give you authentic project opportunities and submissions for students that have an authentic audience beyond the teacher purpose beyond the grade and also for kind of text libraries. 00:01:08 I'm calling them sources for actually using and finding texts when you're teaching justice based curriculum, let's dive in. Okay, so today's episode is going to be a resource dive and we're diving into actually seven resources for justice based curriculum design. So as I said at the top of the episode, we're looking at three project opportunity sources. So this is avenues for, you know, I'm designing a project and I want students to submit and they're gonna have an audience beyond just me as the teacher, right? They want to um like actually impact something. They want to either be part of a competition or have these messages heard by the general public that they create. So their work is going to be consumed um and also uh kind of evaluated to an extent in these other kind of spaces I'm also going to share for what I've been calling text libraries. These are basically great places to always go to find resources on a variety of topics that always link back to justice. 00:02:18 So sometimes we have these great ideas and then we're like, okay, I want to teach this thing, but I've never taught it before and I also don't really know where to get a great source on that. These are kind of what I would recommend as the starting points if you don't have an existing starting point when you come up with the idea. Okay, so let's dive in. First Source I want to share is K Q E D s Call for Change Youth Media challenge. So KQED has a ton of great resources and their youth media challenges. Excellent. It is super cool. I'm going to just kind of share a little bit about what it is and it's basically a project where students are sharing submissions with KQED around a prompt that basically provides them again with an authentic audience because the projects that students submit are going to be published on the public online Youth media showcase. 00:03:21 So this is going to have an impact far beyond the classroom. And then some submissions even get shared on either KQED or local NPR or PBS channel. So it's going to be really cool to have students voices and students work and creations really expanded beyond just the classroom. There is a clear standards which I really appreciate. Its its kind of has a rubric and there's all this alignment in detail about what is required for submission. So for example, this is a video or audio that is 123 minutes in length. It must be free of hate speech. It is inclusive of a script that's 300-500 words. We have kind of this writing component. This verbally spoken component or all the stuff. There's a bunch of um kind of teacher resources and a project roadmap where you get to look at examples and different things like this. But the call for change basically is framed as you know, youth are actually leading the way as advocates for change on a local, national and global level, they say. 00:04:30 And so this is great for these are the recommended subject areas, English history, social studies, government, economics, all the kind of social studies there any other communities, science health, any class interested in really reflecting on real world issues, which I would argue is basically should be anything submissions are accepted through June 2023 and the prompt is as follows climate change, civil rights, health care, college access book banning the economy. The list goes on what issue inspires you to advocate for change or if you're not sure think about it this way, what would make your community or city a better place? What change do you want to see in the nation in the world, whether you pick a local issue or global concern, record a podcast, a selfie, video narrated slideshow or create an original animation. Your commentary can speak to the community or world in general or you can direct it to your school board, the mayor or another public official organization or institution. We can't wait to hear your voice. So I love that there is a range of kind of what students can do in terms of the actual platform or kind of format, I should say for how they're submitting. 00:05:40 They can also choose what their audience is, what their topic is. There's so much student voice involved in this project and it's so expensive and it's also relevant. It's relevant to their lives right now. What is important to them, what's going on in the world. There's these current events connections and it's really great in terms of its setup, right? That's going to give you a public audience just naturally as part of the process, it already has all of the rubrics and the teaching resources and project maps, all the stuff. There's examples embedded in these resources. You can see what other students have done. I absolutely love it. Also K Q E D. Kind of as a bonus resource here. I'll just name that they have above the noise practice civil discourse around timely topics. And so that's Above the Noise is a video series specifically for teens. So if you're in the secondary space, it looks at the research behind the issues that affect our daily lives and so it's looking at book banning social media algorithms, inflation, right, whatever is happening in the current time. That might be interesting to students. 00:06:42 And so what it's trying to do is help viewers or or students draw their own conclusions and practice crafting arguments that are evidence based in safe online space. So it provides that space for them. And there's a range of topics that you can expose students to. What's really cool about this is that every episode is actually, it comes with a free modifiable student viewing guide, a glossary sentence frames and transcripts in both english and spanish. So you can use them to kind of facilitate conversations with students and really get started with this. So it's very teacher friendly. Okay, so that is K Q E D s resource kind of left. So we have the youth media challenge and we also have the bonus above the noise as just an opportunity for a bunch of topics to kind of dive right in and get students exposed to those that I think they work really nicely in conjunction actually. So I'm gonna do a bunch above the Noise videos for students, kind of expose them or give them a choice board and see, you know, pick a couple, see what you're interested in and then when they choose, then they go into the youth media challenge and actually created as an actual project above the noise is kind of a quote unquote text that I would use in the course of a unit or several texts from it in the course of a unit where the summit of assessment for that unit is the call for Change Youth Media challenge and that's what they submit, I'll say also that as a teacher, I had my students do something very similar and they submitted to C span's student camp. 00:08:11 So similarly, c span student camp invites students to do some evidence based research and compilation, create some sort of video or submission That they share around competition theme. So there there's is secondary six through 12 are the grades that they invite to submit. Students are invited to create a short 5-6 minute video documentary. So it does name the specific Like format that students can use. And then what's cool, is there cash prizes because they actually have cash prizes, just mind look um they total $100,000 each year, and the C span awards prizes to the top 150 student documentary. So there's a real chance right that students can absolutely do that. And also teachers who are advisor on one of the top 50 winning films also receive a cash reward. So that is pretty cool. This year's student competition theme is if you were a newly elected member of Congress, which issue would be your first priority and why each year they're very similar. 00:09:22 Their issue based what's relevant to students, what's going on in the news. Very much connected. So that's this year's and just so, you know, the submission deadline for this year is january 20th, 2023. So coming up kind of soon, they also have a bank of resources of prior winner videos. And so I think it's really helpful as KQED does in terms of the library of student examples to review that with students to just kind of talk about, you know, what works and what doesn't and what makes a good submission and that kind of thing. Okay, so that's student cam from c span another authentic audience, right? They are publishing that. They have an authentic review process where you're getting people beyond the teacher to see it. And they also have the added bonus of a cash prize if they win. So, really nice incentive. Next, I would say, And this is our third resource for kind of authentic tasks, audience beyond the classroom, kind of resources. This is learning for justices do something student tasks. 00:10:25 So they have a list learning for justice formerly called teaching tolerance, they have a list of student tasks under the category of do something and they call them do something performance tasks, basically the kind of tagline for this is that these tasks ask students to demonstrate their anti bias awareness and civic competency by applying their literacy and social justice knowledge in an authentic real world context. So basically everything that we've been talking about, They have a list of 34 student tasks from things like an artistic expression showcase where they produce original art that conveys a social justice message and then plan a public display of their work to things like be the change where students are identifying and investigating a community problem and then they propose plan and implement an action or solution directed to kind of improve the problem. So many things in here. Community murals, consuming and creating political arts, film festival, identity portraits, A. 00:11:28 P. S. A. S. Musical movement, oral history project, photo essay exhibits, um poetry and storytelling cafe still iterating campaign, um, tweeting for change if you want a social media element um and voting and looking at voter registration and turnout rates in their local communities And then exploring potential roadblocks the voting process and working to overturn those. So, I think there's so many great options in here. Again, there's 34 in misleading for justice research. That's pretty awesome. Okay, so those are the three resources that will give you an authentic kind of project space where the audience automatically extends beyond the class. Now, I want to give you four more and these are resources for texts. So while those first three, I named them first because I typically like backwards design, figure out what the final project is first and then work backwards to say, okay, what are the individual lessons and resources and what I call texts within those lessons that I'm gonna use to introduce content to students so that they're learning and then putting it all together in their final project. 00:12:41 I wanna name here and I've named before, but I just want to be very clear that when I say texts that could be written text, it could be uh, you know, an article or song lyrics. It could be also a video picture, had oral history recording from the Library of Congress could be um, some other piece, a poem or something. Right. It doesn't always have to be the written word, but I just want to name that. It could be any sort of kind of video, audio textual thing that I kind of put under the band of text. And that purpose is to introduce students to a concept to an idea, share some research with them. And that is going to be useful for their final project. So when we're designing around Justice, it feels for me very helpful to have kind of a go to text library or what I've been calling. Text library, which is like a resource bank for justice centered or justice topic related resources. 00:13:44 This could be primary or secondary sources. It could be again a range of things from written text to video or audio. And I have found four that I really like. Three that are very concretely aligned I would say to being about justice and then one that helps with kind of differentiation and personalizing to your kind of student age and reading level. And is, I would say a good source for more current events. So let's start with our three very justice specific ones. So learning for justice, I mentioned them already. They have a list of student texts or a bank of student texts and they have a search feature. They have an ability to filter text by the type. So you can do literature, multimedia, visual or informational, the social justice domain, identity, diversity, justice or action, the grade level. So they have bands of like three grades, 3 to 4 grades. 00:14:46 The subjects specifically. They name social studies, civics, history, economics, geography, very social studies. E and then also the topic. So for example, their topics are civil rights movement, slavery, race and ethnicity, religion, ability, class, immigration, gender and sexual identity, bullying and bias rights and activism. So that's a really good one. and again, they also have a search feature which I really like because then you can actually go in and type a particular thing you're looking for. So they have 628 texts in this library. So there's a lot going on there. And I also like again the filters have a great way to kind of um filter down what you're looking for if you're just doing a broader exploration. I really like them especially if you are using learning for justice is social justice standards in your class because they align to those four categories of the standards as well. The second kind of text library I want to share is facing history and ourselves. So when you look at the website for facing history and ourselves, they have a page that they call topics and I think this is kind of the best option for kind of browsing. 00:16:01 And so I'll tell you what those are. They also have on that page. A link to current events, their current events collections. You can actually just click on current events if you're looking specifically at a current event or trying to browse what are the current events that I could talk about at the moment. So the topics that they are organized under on the topics pages Democracy and civic engagement, Race in U. S. History, justice and human rights, anti Semitism and religious intolerance, bullying and ostracism. Global immigration, genocide and mass violence holocaust. And then they also have an option to click search our collection and that's where you can actually type in particular thing you're looking for. They also have as I think several other resources have as well events in training and P. D. For Teachers who kind of want to learn more about how to use this. So they have 4,908 results. Um in in all when you look specifically at classroom materials they have 3,302. 00:17:02 They also have filters on here that you can filter by subject. So they have um civics and citizenship L. A. And they have a bunch of arts that kind of correspond to different things um different time periods. So different areas of history or regions of history. Music, art, culture, psychology, religion. They also have a resource type that is very extensive. So things like a blog. Uh Handout a webinar that people could look at a teaching idea, a teaching strategy, a unit outline a visual essay, a video, right? There's like all the stuff that you can filter by. So that's another great opportunity to engage specifically around history or kind of like um I like the arts component because I think it also gets after kind of joy and in many ways we talk about oppression when we're talking about justice. We forget the joy elements right? Which dr Goldie Mohammed talks about a lot as the fifth pursuit in her H. R. L. Framework. I think that's really important in a great way to be able to kind of dive into art and music and visual art and literature and all the fun things. 00:18:11 Okay, the third resource I want to share with you is the zen education project. They have teaching materials archive that you're able to kind of peruse. And I think this is also a wonderful opportunity to be able to just check out what's going on. Um when you click into just kind of a logistics note here, when you click into teaching materials, that's kind of one of their um categories at the top of the menu bar, at the top teaching materials, I would suggest kind of hovering over and you can then see three options because when you click on teaching materials, they don't give you a lot of filter options. And so it might seem frustrating initially to check it out. But if you do explore by time period, explore by theme or explore by resource type, then it gives you the filter option. So for example, if you go explore by time period, it gives you um and it gives the dates for these as well. But colonization, revolution, constitution, early 19th century, Civil war era, Reconstruction, Industrial revolution, turn of the century, World War One, Prosperity Depression in World War Two, Cold War people's movement, post civil rights era and present or 2001 to present. 00:19:27 Excuse me. So it gives you a little bit more to dive into. Um and then also the themes we have as well, things like african american art and music asian, american, civil rights movement, climate justice, criminal justice and incarceration, Democracy and citizenship, disability, economics, education, environment, food, housing, immigration, imperialism. Labor language arts latin. Next Law and citizen rights. L. G. B. T. Q. Math media. Native american. I just want to name that math is an actual uh category. So that really helpful for our math teachers who may find that it is more challenging for them to kind of break free of the typical math teaching and talk about integrating justice, organizing, pacific islander racism and racial identity, Reconstruction science, slavery and resistance. Social class sports. I think this is a really huge one for getting any student involved who's interested in sports but also the pe teacher right? 00:20:30 Like so good that they have their own category. U. S. Foreign policy, voting rights wars and anti war movements. I like that those are linked together. Um And so you can kind of look at at at multiple perspectives here and women's history, World history and global studies. So those are your themes if you want to go by theme and then also they have a bunch of resource types. So things like books, film clips, posters, songs, teaching guides. There is a category for spanish bilingual articles, lots of stuff going on there. So that is an opportunity for folks to explore this in education. Project for against justice based resources. Finally I'll share news Ella while not specifically justice based often talks about current events and then also has and I'm sure many educators are already familiar with news L. A. But I just want to name it because it does talk about current events a lot and I think it's really helpful to be able to personalize the reading level of a particular current events article. 00:21:35 So you find a current events article. Great. It's talking about this thing that I want students to be learning about and then I can go in and select or have students select what the reading level is that's appropriate for them. So so much good stuff. Everyone popping in here quick just to remind you that you're free resource for this episode is my media critique project which I've used at the high school and college levels. You can grab that and take a look at lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash blog slash 94. Now let's get back to the episode built in beautiful project. You can just kinda take and run with and then backwards planning let's think about the text we want to expose students to so they can be able to have success with that project and embed this research and these great resources into their project. There are four of those. So just to name them one more time cake ups. Youth media challenge. They also have the above the noise is a bonus video series. Learning for justice. Do something student tasks student can from C span those your three project opportunities and then our text libraries are learning for justice, perspective tax facing history and ourselves is an education project and news. 00:22:39 Ella I hope this resource dive episode was helpful for you. I am very excited to hear how you are going to be using some of this in your class. I think it's going to be really powerful when we start identifying more resources that make this feel doable, right and sustainable. What I will add as a free resource for this episode is my media critique project, which gives you a sense of what does it look like to have this final Justice space project? What do all the pieces of that look like? And then also what are all the texts that I used along the way to help support students in accessing the information that that they would embed and use to answer the driving question for the project and put into their final submission. So if that feels helpful for you as just an example of all the things that we've been talking about, feel free to check that out. I'll include that in the bonuses of the blog post of this episode. Thank you so much. I can't wait to see you again next week. If you're leaving this episode, wanting more, you're going to love my live coaching intensive curriculum bootcamp. 00:23:43 I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We leave current events into course content and amplify student voices, which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit, which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me, grab a spot on my calendar at www dot lindsey beth Lyons dot com slash contact Until next time leaders continue to think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach, Better podcast network, Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out this video for more on curriculum design:11/7/2022 Transforming Curriculum in 3 Years Through a Culture of Coaching and Joy with Chris Chappotin and Alisen AdcockRead NowListen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
When you think about education, instruction, or curriculum, what comes to mind? Is fun and joy part of your perception or goals? Is levity, connection, and celebration part of your curriculum and teaching goals? If it’s not, you need to listen to Episode 93 of the Time for Teachership podcast. On it, we hear from Chris Chappotin, Assistant Superintendent for Boyd ISD in Texas, and Alisen Adcock, a middle school principal in the same district. Together we discuss what curriculum design looks like on a three-year plan and how important fun and joy is to the process! We also chatted about developing a culture of coaching for continuous growth and improvement. Three Years of Change In his role as an Assistant Superintendent, Chris has to keep an eye out on the big picture, the big goals. And in his district, that revolves around curriculum instruction and coaching. They’re currently in the third year of a plan that centered on creating engaging learning. Specific focus areas included:
Culture of Coaching Addressing curriculum is a massive undertaking for any district or school because it requires growth and change. For that reason, a culture of coaching is essential to success. Instead of a traditional coaching model where some people are the mentors, some the mentees, a culture of coaching involves everyone. Coaching happens across all levels from teachers up to superintendents—it’s not for a select few. Alisen and Chris spoke to two essential aspects of a culture of coaching:
Bringing Back Joy and Connection Underlying anything related to curriculum, coaching, or other aspects of teaching and education is this simple reminder from Chris: this work is about people. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day tasks and responsibilities, but education is a relational field. Relationships between educators, students, and leaders should be at the forefront of everything we do. Two ways to prioritize people and relationships:
By prioritizing small steps and changes, we can collectively move towards relationship-centered education, built on a culture of coaching, and infused with joy. Check out the full conversation with Chris Chappotin and Alisen Adcock on episode 93 of the Time for Teachership podcast. You can also connect with Chris on Twitter and Instagram at @chris_chappotin and Alisen on Twitter at @TexanMath1. TRANSCRIPT this was such a fun episode to record. I have chris and Alison here. Chris Chatterton has been serving as assistant superintendent for Boyd I. S. D. In Boyd texas since january 2020. He also invited a principal in his district district Allison Adcock to come on with us so it's two guests that I got to interview. So exciting a little bit about chris. He grew up in Farmington Iowa Irving in Keller texas and completed an undergraduate degree in psychology at Abilene christian University. After a 14 year career in student and worship ministry, public speaking and starting churches in 2011, chris began working for Burlington I. S. D. In Burleson texas as 1/4 and fifth grade math and reading special education teacher at jw Norwood elementary School here in the Master of Education degree in Educational leadership and policy studies from the University of texas. At Arlington was promoted into administration in Berlin and I. S. D. Where he served as academic associate principal at centennial high school and academic associate principal and principal at middle school, currently pursuing a doctorate in educational leadership at texas Tech University with an expected graduation date of May 2020. 00:01:04 For chris's passion about leading empowerment organizations designing innovative instructional systems and accomplishing both in the context of meaningful team oriented relationships. He has been featured on the teach better, aspire, lead teachers on fire and many voices of great podcasts. Furthermore, he was the parody writer and voice of Burlington I. S. D. S school year. Launch videos from 2016 to 2019 business like Heidi celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on july 25th 2022. They have five Children. Tori is 21. Ryan is 15 Hudson who's 12 ava. Grace is 10 and sam seven. They live in Boyd texas, their two dogs, two cats, two snakes and one goat. That is a fun family. Thank you chris for that introduction that you've shared with us. That is amazing. Allison, I'm going to share a little bit about Next. Alison is headed into her ninth year in education. Previously serving special populations through special education and student services. Allison is embarking on her second year in leadership as a middle school principal in Boyd America and she strives to bring community and culture to a campus through strategic planning, vision and innovation. 00:02:11 Let's get ready to hear from chris and Alison, This certainly is an amazing guest duo. I'm educational justice coach lindsey Lyons and here on the time for teacher ship podcast we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nursing out about co creating curriculum with students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Alison and chris. Welcome to the time for teacher ship podcast, awesome Lindsay. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you for having us of course. So I'd first like to name that. I read your professional bios, but is there anything else that you just want to share with listeners to kind of kick off the episode, get them to know a little bit about you? 00:03:19 Well, um, I'm just excited to be a part of today. Um, as far as getting to know me. Um, I do have, um, you know, 13 years of marriage under my belt, two kiddos that are in the school system right now and I'm just excited to be here. Thank you Lindsey That is super impressive Allison. Um, you know, I've got 1/7 grade boy and 1/10 grade boy that are doing offseason football workouts, uh, this summer in the heat and for some odd reason I have allowed them to talk me into doing the same. So I have found myself either in the weight room, which has been an adventure because I'm pretty sure I was their age the last time I lifted weights because let's be honest, weights are heavy and I've also, when it gets too hot to find myself on the basketball court and my knees aren't quite what they used to be, but spending time with with my three boys because I've got an eight year old boy as well and then a 21 year old daughter working on a degree at texas tech to become a teacher and a 10 year old daughter as well. And then my wife and I will celebrate wedding anniversary on monday. 00:04:25 Super impressed by your, your family accomplishments here. And as a new parent myself, my kid is turning five months on saturday as of this recording. So I am very much looking forward to being as successful as you all are as parents. That's awesome. My knees and my hamstrings say otherwise. So let's talk a little bit about the amazing work that you're doing in the vision that you have for your district. So I think the, one of my favorite quotes of all educational, anything is dr Bettina love talking about freedom dreaming. She says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so with that context in mind, what is your big dream for your district for curriculum and instruction? Um you know, I'm going to come right back at you with a quote Lindsay um because I think from a district standpoint, um, I could definitely answer that question. However, I'm gonna give you a quote from a book called the superintendent's field book that says, it goes without saying that you must develop your school's principles, you will succeed or fail as a leader based on the quality of the leaders that you put in place in schools. 00:05:37 Good schools require good principles, The role of today's principle may have changed even more than yours and today's principle must be a hands on leader of learning. Uh So in light of that quote and your question I'm going to defer to Alison on that specifically to her campus context because she is uh not just responsible for but excitedly entering into vision development and casting for two schools uh and unifying those two schools under the leadership of herself and her assistant principal. So um Alison, how would you respond to that? Yeah, so thank you chris. Um so like he kind of said we are rolling into next year with two campuses are intermediate middle school campus, obviously we have our district standpoint for what curriculum instruction means but I think as a new principal and setting some foundation work for our campuses here curriculum instruction is going to be a massive under taking, we've done some really good work with Mr chapman and his crew the last couple of years but moving forward really curriculum instruction is going to be um at the fourth of of everything that we're doing. 00:06:48 So it's really taking our instructional coach, utilizing different people in different ways to create this cohesive bond of what we can do do when we have a good understanding of curriculum instruction and how our students can achieve when they understand what they're supposed to be doing. So it's really taking that big that step back, looking at the big picture of how how are we, you know, ensuring that our students are receiving the right curriculum instruction, how do we know that we're teaching at the right trigger and what are we doing to feel that those intervention gaps and and obviously with anything in education, what what are we doing to ensure that all students are learning? I would I would say from the district standpoint, I'm going into year three now in our current district and we've taken a vision approach of creating engaging learning. So creating, has really focused on Takes learning targets, success criteria. Um do we, do we know our learning standards? Do we know the verbs in our learning standards? Do we know the actions in our learning standards? 00:07:51 And and do we know what mastery demonstration looks like? And that was that was primarily the focus across the district of year one. Along with that our curriculum coordinators created uh documents where, you know, they were breaking takes apart, they were showing examples of what the verb might look like, showing examples of what the actions might look like and how to design instruction that aligns to the learning standards as we moved in the year two, then we we began to focus on assessment and so were we were in a context where assessing um at the the level of yes, the state assessment, but but also at the level of the verbs was was a little bit of a new concept and so we threw the curriculum coordinators created unit assessments for math and reading courses and then utilize that to model assessment creation for for teachers. So year two was really the the year of assessment, some of which was some motive, some of which was formative. Now as we enter into year three we're we're kind of I guess focusing on the middle of the sandwich and and zooming in on instruction. 00:08:58 I can't, I feel like I can't um discuss and model instructional best practices too much until I can ensure that we're teaching at the level of the learning standard and we're assessing at the level of the learning standard or beyond um based on student needs. And so uh this has become the the year of the instructional best practice. So for example the elementary school is focused on small group instruction, uh the high school maybe more focused on ensuring the level of the learning standard and reinforcing that from like a four a four level rubric approach. Um But this will be where um we're really looking to continue our support, deepen our support of teachers, facilitating instruction through a best practice focus which also layers on our shift into campus based instructional coaches. So for at least for the first time in the last three years, maybe the first time in a while. Um each campus will have an instructional coach. We're really looking to Jim Knight and a lot of his work on the impact cycle uh in terms of preparing our instructional coaches and again taking a a best practice focus where we're looking for evidence of growth and implementation of those best practices and then finally we have a at the district level of director of instruction who part of her work is the curriculum documents and the reinforcement if you will of the last couple of years of our implementation, but then also coaching the coaches as they do their campus based work as well, wow, there's so much you're doing and I love that you basically just laid out like a three year plan for someone who's just getting into this work, what does that look like? 00:10:40 So I love that you're starting with standards. I feel like we have so many standards typically right that are like C C L. S and N G S s and the state standards and the content of the skills and all the things and it's like, okay, first let's get real clear and like what are the priorities, what are the standards? I love that you move to mastering next. How do we define what this looks like when you're proficient when you're approaching brilliant and I love that. Now you're focused on like the pedagogy of the instruction, how do we do this well and and that the culture of coaching that you're building, having the coaches there and then taking time to coach the coaches and using evidence I think is huge and a lot of schools will say, you know, we don't we don't have an instructional coach or or or you know we have to leverage peer coaching. I think that idea of coach, the coach um can also be really valuable for peer coaching. I think chris you had said you you'd have to experience right with supporting, I'm just thinking of, you know, the challenges that someone listening might say, well I don't have those instructional coaches, you know, can you still do something like that if you don't have that coach role formally? 00:11:42 Yeah, so what I was able to do in a previous life was I received executive coaching as the principal of the campus and yes, that was at the time, a paid for service and I experienced a year of that, but going forward, um I began to become a part of a uh an executive coaching, if you will, that I'll share at the end of my answer to your actual question, um but that that executive coaching coached me in terms of how to coach teachers and develop teacher leaders, that would in turn um coach their peers. And so when the, when the emphasis was on evidence and on best practices as measured by a four level performance indicator rubric, it was not, oh my know it all teacher friend is coaching me how great it was, we're all in this together, this is a culture of coaching as as your teacher leader coach, I am being coached as well as your principal who is coaching teacher leader coaches, I am being coached as well. 00:12:45 So so this is seeking to develop a culture of coaching and so the way along with what what Allison and I both mentioned in in response to your first question um last year and part of the year before um I also implemented a call it an executive coaching model where I coached each campus principal, the and the athletic director um through uh taken franklin, Covey's work with the four disciplines of execution. And so it's a um you know, 20 well I get to talking as you can tell, so typically the sessions might go a little longer as Allison is like, heck yeah, they do. Uh but the the concept would be 15, 20 minutes, it's focused on a wildly important goal uh a from X to y by win style goal and then we're talking through weekly commitments that the principal is making, just one is fine too, if you if you want to get zealous, but just one is fine. 00:13:47 Um and we're making those weekly commitments to each other, then uh we're we're celebrating when, when we check them off. Um and and measuring milestone progress toward the goal and so what we've been able to see is that executive coaching has occurred. Now we're starting to reach layers where um the director of instruction coached a couple of teachers using that model. One of our principles, coached a couple of their folks using that model. Uh, and so the point being trying to create a culture of, of coaching where we're all growing and we're all in this together, serving each other for the benefit of our students. Hey everybody, just a quick reminder that you're a free resource for this episode with chris and Alison is a relationship centered learning website. There's a bunch of good stuff there. You can grab that link at lindsey Beth Lyons dot com slash blog slash 93. Let's get back to chris and Alison. Excellent. And Allison, as you kind of see what's happening at the school level, I want to kind of like jump back just a second to, to think, we dove right into like, you know, what can people do? 00:14:54 I'm thinking, you know, like if we were doing all this stuff, we're making all these changes district wide, you know, as, as an individual teacher in a school, um, you know, are there, are there challenges with that, are their struggles that come up, are their mindset chefs that need to be made that you kind of saw play out as those pretty large changes were taking effect? Yeah, absolutely. And um, I think specific to our, our district and our campuses, it looked, it may look a little bit different than what you may see in other areas just due to our circumstances. However, um, I jumped, you know, right into our wig sessions and even as a recipient of a wig session from central admin down to campus level level leadership. And it took a lot of purposeful planning, a lot of, a lot of intent with that, to stay on track, to maintain those weekly meetings, to maintain my goals and, and you know, really dive into if, if my goal is going to change an outcome or not, um we can sit here and talk about, you know, x and y by win, but if we're not going to formulate a change with that, then it's kind of pointless. 00:16:00 Right? So moving that mindset down to my teachers as an interim principal was definitely something that, and chris can kind of, you know, support me on this, it was it was challenging because we haven't had instructional coaching here, we've had instructional leaders, our principles are obviously our instructional leaders, but we haven't had a mentorship model. And so it's something where teachers really had to, you know, take a step back and say, okay, you're not in my room as a punitive measure. It is more of here, I'm supporting you, we are one in and how are we going to ensure that we're getting better. So our students can get better. Yeah, that's such a great point about the punitive because I think a lot of times when we are in classrooms, like as leaders, when you're in a classroom, it becomes this punitive piece. I recently heard someone say like, numerically speaking, the more that you're in, the the less that it feels punitive? Absolutely. Do you find that to be true? 100%. They, by the end of the year I'm sitting on the ground watching their their lecture and they think nothing of it. 00:17:03 So the more I'm in there, the more our leadership isn't there? It's absolutely a very true statement. Okay, so that's that's a that's a big piece, like just make it kind of normalize that make it common. And then is there also, I imagine there's a lot of foundation trust building, like there's a foundation that has to be built before. You can just kind of go in all of a sudden you're in the classroom all the time. Can you speak a little bit to that and what that looks like and how you saw teachers adjust to that. Yeah, so for me, it was making sure that I was in every single PLC. Um So it started at that level of hate, I'm part of your group. Um and then it turned into, hey, I'm part of your classroom and then how can we plan to build that relationship? And so it was very intentional, we are creating more frequent PLC's, we're creating more deliberate P. L. C. S. And how are we turning that work into our vision in our classroom, and so really my teachers just really caught on with that and they were accepting of that and and that's kind of where we took off. Excellent Christy. Do you want to jump in? And also I directed those questions and I would just say two things. 00:18:06 One of the one thing I appreciate about Allison is she is high expectation and she is high support. So when you talk about significant changes and and this is all happening during worldwide pandemics and um the adjustments you know that that even um rural schools are having to make in those regards. Um you know she is and last year being in an interim role herself um setting the bar high and giving the y to that but then also walking alongside teachers and students to say and here's how we're gonna accomplish these things together modeling and reinforcing that as a leader. I think one of the one of the ways that I try to um I guess lesson, I'm not quite sure how to phrase it lessen concern or oh my gosh it's the assistant superintendent on campus like that kind of stuff is uh singing and dancing and being allowed um That is my my three pronged framework to uh to uh enjoying my visits to campus. 00:19:15 So um the the first day even uh this is I joined the district uh I think about a year before Allison did my first day on what is now when I heard campuses. I actually got in trouble by a teacher because I was loud in the hallway? And there was, there was a test going on and I didn't know it. Um and so the, the teacher comes to get onto me and then it's like, oh, this is an adult and it's like, oh who, well who is this? Which is awesome. But you know, whether it's um singing songs or rapping in the hallway or high fiving kids or uh, just just being, being loud and jovial on purpose uh, to, you know, infuse fun and excitement into the school experience. I hope that that also helps folks understand that, that when, when we are about the business part, uh that you can know that my, my heart is in the right place and my heart is that, you know, that we're unified and that we're about continuous improvement and that we're about the kids. 00:20:24 Uh, so that's that and a guitar sometimes is how, how I approach evidence based classroom walk throughs. That's excellent. I love it. And I think Joy is such a huge piece that's often missing from these conversations, right? Like when we think about designing even just curriculum, um, dr Goldie Mohammed her framework, her historically responsive literacy framework. You know, she has like the four pieces that are in her book cultivating genius, but then she added like I've been watching her on twitter and she added 1/5 which is joy and she's like, this is often missing, right? We have to also talk about joy and we have to talk about joy from an equity lens, right? We can't always be talking about like this deficit, you know, of students and whoever we're talking about that have been historically marginalized, whether that's race, ability, language, identity, nationality, right? Like it has to be about joy. It has to be about celebration. That has to be like this balance of like critical inquiry and also like we're here to have fun and enjoy the experience of learning, right? Like that's so critical for kids to come back. 00:21:27 I know at the high school level, you know, your parents don't drop you off, you come to school or you don't. And and a lot of times like my students, I remember this is embarrassing to say out loud, but I remember one class, I taught ninth grade class global one as my like third year of teaching. It was not engaging and I had one student show up one day. It was just like once you're out of a class of roster of 38 and I was like, what is happening? It was just a wake up call like this class is not fun, change some things. So I guess as I think about that challenge specifically as a teacher but also so many other, you know, challenges of this work. I feel like you, you all have done so much. Is there any anything else that you would in terms of like giving advice to someone who's facing a challenge in doing this work or some wisdom that you could share from your experiences over the last three years of this massive transformation that you would, you would share with folks listening. Mhm. That's a good question, I'm looking, I'm looking down at Allison to see if she's gonna buy it first. 00:22:36 Yeah, I think I know for me I can get very focused on the the work um in terms of like goals, I want to accomplish our tasks that need to be done and there is this constant, this constant struggle between wanting to check all the boxes to get whatever it is, you know, the goal or the initiative done and remembering that our work is about people and when, when I feel stressed or squeezed or low in confidence or low incompetence as a leader, I tend to retreat into the tasks because that at least as it pertains to what I'm responsible for, I can mostly control that, whereas when I'm, when I'm in a better place, in terms of my own identity and my own uh confidence and competence of the work, but also, perception of myself, I find it easier to remember that the work um is is with and through, you know, people that that I enjoy working with and that I enjoy being around and that I I want to grow to accomplish more in the field uh than than I have and so um I think that you know, I got to visit with shout out to um vernon right the right leader, the right speaker, um I got to visit with him and I would definitely recommend his stuff, check him out on twitter, but um we had a conversation one time where we talked about um we talked about identity kind of being the foundation of the work and sometimes I know I get lost in thinking that the work is how I'm going to achieve identity when identity is already something that I have or that I contain and I can be free to work from it rather than to work for it. 00:24:45 And so as a as a leader who's a three on the India Graham who loves him some mountains to climb and some things to accomplish and you know um those kinds of things, I also have to remember that even if even if we're not as high up the mountain as I want to be or I'm not as high up the mountain as I want to be, I still have to schedule time um to be with people to encourage people to support people because that whether it's adults or kids that is the focus of our work. Yeah, and I'll jump onto what chris said um I obviously am very early in my career as leader and um and and chris can kind of back this up as well, I am very results driven, I need to see that progress and so we all know this and it's a simple concept, you know, just ensure that we are, we are driven by, by data, by progress in regards to what small steps are we doing, we don't have to take the whole mountain at once, we can, there are small steps up there. 00:25:50 So um you know I am working on a campus that we have very high achieving um teachers who who have 88 90% passing on star, but we also have some teachers that are not performing that hi and how are we bridging that gap and how are we making sure that we have progress is not all going to be 90% at the end of the year, but what what steps are we ensuring to make sure that there's progress, How are we celebrating the small steps. And so for me it really goes back to um data driven instruction, data driven, um just pieces of leadership. And so um for me really, whenever we look at actions to take is what can we celebrate along the way. Um it's difficult for me to do sometimes. However, I know that there's there's meaningfulness in that process and so for me it's really just stepping back and taking a quick look at the small progress in celebrating that as we continue. I love that both of your answers speak to again like the joy and the energy and like the positivity of like, you know either being a community, taking care of self celebrating those wins and I'm wondering is there any kind of like joy or um success in terms of curriculum instruction that you'd like to shout out that you've seen recently in your district or your schools that you're working in, you know, for me, um there there's the typical responses uh to that question, you know, like increased test scores um and and there are those things to celebrate which is phenomenal. 00:27:20 Um we've got we've got one of our schools that we're we're really hopeful and and predictive that could possibly um basically achieve a milestone that it it hasn't in a few years and that's a super great accomplishment um at the same time, I think what what I, what I most celebrate right now is times like, so we had this meeting yesterday that Allison and I were in with a couple other colleagues and it was, it was a very serious meeting about very serious things and when it was time to be serious, we were, but there was a like a contagious excitement and laughter and storytelling um that was vibrant and that was authentic and that was encouraging even in the midst of a of a difficult meeting and it seems like those, those things are happening more and more and I think that that is exciting me most right now Um, a very trusted mentor of mine when I was first in ap, he had me read a book by the old san Francisco 40 niners coach Bill Walsh and the book was called the score Will Take Care of itself and basically in the nutshell, the book was, was like build a culture focused on honoring people and focusing on best practices and the score of whatever game you're playing will take care of itself. 00:28:44 And um, we, we do have, uh, you know, uh, standardized test scores to celebrate, but um, you know, from a, from a, creating the kind of school that adults want to work at and kids want to come to, you know, there's much more work to be done for us in those areas, but we're accomplishing more and more in that regard every day and I would say that that excites me the most right now I have, I have an idea Alison, so are you familiar with dude? Perfect at all? Okay, Okay, cool. So, so dude, perfect, right? I'm sitting at home on my week off whenever that was, it feels like a few months ago, but I think it was like a week and a half ago. Um, and I'm sitting at home watching dude Perfect in the afternoon with my kids and I mean hilarious, right? And they have this segment called the wheel the wheel unfortunate and it's this complete spinoff of wheel of fortune and the, I don't know one of the guys dresses up with the seventies haircut and suit and glasses and the whole bit, but the, but like the real dude, I'm assuming it's real cause it's on youtube, it's gotta be real, right? 00:29:56 The real uh the real dude, perfect guy talks to the character right? And he spins the wheel and it lands on, you have to own a cat. And so then the next scene is like they go to the shelter and this guy is literally picking out a cat and he comes home and his daughter is so excited and his wife is like you got a cat, what's up? And yeah, the guys told me I had to get a cat and she's like, yeah, we could have talked about that first. Anyway, hilarious. So my idea is instead of the wheel unfortunate, my idea is the wheel so fortunate and I dress up in seventies garb uh might, I might have my, my trusty uh director of instruction as a trusty assistant and we show up unannounced on campus and character and in costume and whether it's an adult or a kid, they, we completely interrupt class because I can and that's the fun part of my job and you know, somebody at random gets to spin the wheel so fortunate um what do you think we'll be guinea pigs, super cool. 00:31:05 So you know, I mean Lindsay just trying to think, trying to think about things like that that in in our context have not been as prevalent and you know, those are the those are the things that you remember and those are the things that make you want to come to school whether you're an adult or a kid and so we want to do more of that. I love that, that idea just came to life on this podcast. So I'm really excited to follow up with you and see how this goes. I just want to be like the extra dude perfect person and I think I'm a little bit past that opportunity, so I'm just trying to find ways to connect with kids. Yeah, that's a, I love it. Alison, did you have something to add to? I want to make sure you got a chance to. Excellent. What about your, what about your green circle stuff? Yeah, yeah. You know, I've dabbled in restorative practices for a couple of years just through my previous position, but you know, we recently went to a relationship learning conference, my apologies and um you know, I definitely look forward to implementing some something like that. 00:32:16 Moving into this year. I know this is curriculum instruct however we know instructional needs can't be met until our students relationship needs are met and so we're really excited to kind of lead that this coming up year, we have a special plan for our sixth grade class and they're really going to be our our our leaders of of the implementation of relationship centered learning and so um you know, making sure that we take care of those needs prior to our curriculum instruction needs, I think will be exciting as we navigate this year. That's super exciting to hear and I have a background in in bringing resorted practices to schools as well and so it's just so critical. I think recently I've been kind of playing around with this framework of curriculum development, like thinking about the stages and it like it has to be every time I come back to the stage that comes first has to be that foundation, that relationship building, that resort of peace, like we have to have that space before we talk about the pedagogue or you know, the standards and the rubrics and like all of it is so important, but you just can't get to that final place or even to level 23, you know, anywhere until you have it. 00:33:21 So I really appreciate you naming that, I think for anyone and maybe this kind of goes into this question I was about to ask. So as a listener of the podcast, if if people are listening, thinking what do I do with all of this great stuff that we've just talked about, what's the next step that I take to kind of build that momentum, I think people could be at different stages of this and so feel free to speak to any stage that you think, you know, someone might be in or if, you know, maybe the first step is identifying the stage and you know, how would they do that? Um, feel free to, to kind of give some advice here for any listeners about what to do as they kind of hang up the, the airpods and go about their day and try to make some change. I think for me this coming year as a district leader, the practical first step is to schedule time to do some of the things that we've been talking about. So if you, if you really do want to do a wheel, so fortunate like when are you gonna do it? Put it on the calendar, get it done. Um, you know, there will always be, uh, data to crunch, There will always be compliance reports to put together. 00:34:28 Uh, there will always be that next email, uh, to, to open and take action on and those things are important in, in, in and of, you know, in the right place at the right time or whatever. But if you don't put it on the calendar to do the things that, that bring people joy like you were saying, and then also bring yourself joy, It's not gonna happen. Um, one of the things that we tried last weekend and we'll try it again this weekend is as a family taking roughly 24 hours and putting putting phones and ipads and google homes and xboxes to the side and doing things together that bring us joy. Uh just just you can, you can make it without youtube for 24 hours, I promise or me, you know, I can make it without that instagram hit for 24 hours. Um and so focusing on what, what brings us joy as a family and I think in our work the same as the case, you know, setting aside some of those other things that are, they might be important, but they're not as urgent as we think they are and focusing on how can we bring joy to our people and to ourselves um whether it's um we also fortunate or or just just taking time to notice people and to talk to people and to call them by name and to learn about their families, et cetera. 00:35:52 That's so critical and I think I would argue too that when you do that for yourself and your family, that energy comes into your workspace too. And it just enables you to be better at your job. Absolutely. And then, and then going on that, just kind of making sure that our community is, is built, you know, prior to us receiving our kiddos back at school, um really figuring out how our community is going to reflect our vision and our goals for this year and so making sure that we have those shared and um I want to say that team feeling as as a unique opportunity for me this year, you know, the two campuses under one leadership and so just making sure that we have that that aspect and that trust there that, you know, our shared experiences are better than our individual experiences. That's brilliant. I love that for for anyone at regardless of what stage you are at, right as a leader in this curriculum development journey. Just thinking about how do we create those joyful shared experiences right, for ourselves and for our kind of culture building that we're doing because you can always use a tune up right? You're not just like, oh we did the culture thing now onto curriculum and instruction right? 00:36:59 Like I think it's so important at all stages, so that's brilliant. Um and something that I I think we've been kind of going back and forth between like kind of the personal professional this episode which I absolutely love and so I'm curious to know personally or professionally what's something you've been learning about lately? Oh man. Uh personally, I think we've been learning my wife and I together and by proxy our kids on how to live lives of less hurry um how to be and I say learning on purpose is hard, but um learning to be less defined by how busy we think we are or how many things are on our to do list, uh like I mentioned, you know, last weekend and um what was funny was at the beginning of that 24 hours, the kids were not happy with us. Uh And um my wife has been reading a book and and by proxy I started reading it etcetera about how to do some of this and why to do some of this. And you know, one of my kids was like, so how about we we make a commitment to read less so that you guys won't read about crazy ideas like this, which is pretty funny. 00:38:13 Um but by the by the end of that day long process, the when we gave them their their devices back, they didn't immediately go to them, like they check them whatever, but within 15, 20 minutes, uh they were playing games um you know, which was, they weren't doing things that involved the devices and it wasn't just about the devices, but uh trying to, trying to live a life that's less hurried. And then I would say professionally, like it comes down to scheduling the times two to bring joy to others or joy to yourself. Like those two things are connected I think. And so you know professionally, how can I be less hurried? Um even though the reality is we all have a lot going on that reminds me of a, I don't know where I heard this, but some sort of advice that I've put into practice that's like at the end of the day instead of inventorying the things on your to do list and what you accomplish what you didn't inventory how you're feeling, like how do you feel at the end of the day? 00:39:16 And what I've learned personally is that I often feel like rushed and hurried and all the verbs you were saying you're trying to let go of, right, and it's like okay when I take a step back, like if my goal at the end of the day isn't accomplish all the things, it's too feel good to feel joy to feel healthy. My day looks very different and I still feel productive, but I just feel better too. So I love what you said and I think that just reminded me of that practice. So Allison author read to you, what is something you've been learning about? Yeah. So personally I vividly remember a question that Mr chapman asked me at the end of the year, at my interview evaluation, he said what are you doing for yourself? And I said well I have to think about that and I couldn't give him an answer. I was Nothing for myself this summer. And so um ironically this summer it was get my shoulder surgery taken care of and so I've kind of been out of pocket for a while, but it's allowed me the time to slow down to read my 20 books that I've wanted to read. And um so personally what I've been learning is that, you know, it's ok to slow down sometimes in our lives don't have to function um in a state of hurry kind of like what you both said and so for me that that's what I've kind of been challenging myself with. 00:40:23 Beautiful, oh my gosh, this is gonna be so good for leaders to hear. And the last thing I'll ask is just where can people learn more about either your district, you individually connect with you? Um just kind of follow the great things that you're doing. For me. It's twitter and instagram uh C. H. R. I. S underscore C H A P P O T I N. Uh in both places I'm not as and posted as much as I have in the past but um some of that is just trying to be less tethered but in terms of connection, those are great places. Yeah and then for me I just go on twitter and text in math one um and that's that's where I communicate and collaborate with others awesome and we can add those links to, to the show notes that people can grab those and follow you guys. Thank you so so much both of you chris and Alison for being on the podcast. This was inspirational and I feel more joy just being in community with you both. Thank you, Thank you so much for that was a blast and definitely something that was fun to share with Allison. Yeah, absolutely thank you so much Lindsay If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my live coaching intensive curriculum bootcamp. 00:41:34 I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We leave current events into course content and amplify student voices, which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burned out and it's just two days plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit, which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me, grab a spot on my calendar at www dot lindsey beth Lyons dot com slash contact until next time leaders continue to think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach, Better podcast network, better today, Better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode Quotes:
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AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
March 2025
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