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How are we effectively educating students through a lens of equity and inclusion? And how are we preparing students for a future filled with unpredictability? These are two of the questions that framed our recent conversation with Dr. Erik Youngman on episode 99 of The Time for Teachership podcast. As an educator, a father, and an author, Dr. Youngman draws from years of diverse experience to pinpoint some of the important goals and directions for educators today. We covered a lot in this interview, so make sure you have a listen. Here are some of Dr. Youngman’s key insights that educators should take note of. Preparing Students for an Unknown Future Dr. Youngman’s big dream for education is to see all students develop important life skills. He names a few of them: kindness, curiosity, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and continuous learning. Why these skills? Two reasons:
By focusing on skill development like critical thinking and problem-solving—through disciplines of social studies, math, science, and everything in between—students are better equipped for their futures. Bringing Equity to the Classroom There are two equity lenses that are important in the classroom. Dr. Youngman discussed equity of learning opportunity and justice and equity-focused curriculum. The first, equity of learning opportunities, is related to strategic decision-making, grading practices, and curriculum delivery. The key question here is: Are all students equally able to learn, contribute, and have a voice? Consider the difference between a talkative student who always speaks up in front of class and one who doesn’t—do they both have equal voice? Centering student voice is essential to effective education, so think through how you are providing equal opportunities for all. The second discussion on equity relates to championing justice and equity in the classroom. Dr. Youngman emphasized the importance of defining and using terms correctly and not simply throwing “equity” around as a buzzword. Instead, it revolves around the concept of empathetic understanding to create belonging. It’s about ensuring all voices are heard. And it’s about asking the question: who’s story is being told through the content that’s being taught. Effective Planning and Grading To grade or not to grade—the much-debated question in any educator’s circle. Grading, in Dr. Youngman’s perspective, is essential to track progress and provide objective standards. But grading is not about the grades. It’s about the learning. So, how do you set up your grading system, rubric, or method that promotes learning, encourages, growth through “failure,” and doesn’t penalize students as they grow. One example Dr. Youngman provided was giving students “zero” on an assignment—what’s the purpose? It skews their grade so dramatically and effectively penalizes them in the trial and learning phase. Instead, think of ways you can give students another chance to promote their learning and engagement with the material, rather than demoralizing them and halting progress. --- As you can see, we covered a lot on the podcast with Dr. Youngman! Make sure you listen to his full interview to capture all the nuggets of wisdom he provided. You can also follow him on Twitter at @Erik_Youngman, where he’s very active, or check out his website. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, I'd highly recommend you take a look at this video on getting teacher buy-in.
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1/16/2023 PRACTICE: An Assessment Tool to Measure Curriculum Implementation Success via Student VoiceRead Now
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Have you ever wondered whether your new unit or curriculum was successful? Or, more basic--how can you even measure success? Educators often design and implement new units without a clear idea on how they’ll measure its success. But without knowing that, there’s no room to improve. And there’s no affirmation that it’s met the learning goals you want to meet. That’s why I’ve developed an assessment tool that measures curriculum implementation success. It’s framed by listening to student voices and soliciting feedback from your class about the unit. Why Student Voice Matters for Assessment Some units will “land” with students and others won’t. Or, within the same unit, you might have some who loved it and others who couldn’t keep up. But how will you know this information? You’ve got to ask. It’s simple: asking students for feedback on a unit will give teachers insight and understanding into the success of that unit. Teachers can then take their feedback and incorporate it into the next time they teach the unit or their next unit plan. Student voice is the essential piece to this. So often we ignore student voice or don’t consider it important for the assessment of teachers. But their opinions and feedback on the units are some of the most important data points we can ever collect about how we’re doing. Assessment Tool to Measure Curriculum Implementation Success To effectively assess curriculum implementation success, you need to first facilitate a youth-adult partnership mentality among staff. I love how Michael Fielding calls it “radical collegiality,” or the idea that students and staff are partners in learning. Once that is established, you can move on to implementing this tool with your staff: 1. Coach teachers to create their next unit plan Start by coaching your teachers to develop their next unit plan. If you don’t personally coach them, provide support by way of mentorship or a course. This unit should meet three criteria:
2. Create a feedback culture After implementing the unit, teachers should invite students to reflect and provide feedback on the unit. This should be more than a one-time thing but become a culture of reflection that always happens on the last day of the unit. This is where my assessment tool comes in. It’s a simple questionnaire that can be tweaked or adjusted to what you need and is designed to elicit honest, open, and useful feedback from students. The questionnaire is designed to reflect on pre- and post-unit feelings or outcomes. It’s helpful to know how students felt about their learning before this unit and how they feel after it. Here are some of the questions:
3. Synthesize and share class themes After collecting feedback, you want to synthesize the class themes and share it back with students. Get curious about what they’re saying by seeking clarification on certain points. Then, assign yourself (and teachers) homework by taking up the action points the students provided. If you can’t act on a suggestion, be transparent about why that is. This process is integral to showing your students that their voice matters and will impact how teachers move forward teaching them. --- This entire process has to do with curiosity. Curiosity about how unit implementation is going and how students are receiving it. With this feedback, teachers can move forward with confidence knowing what works and doesn’t work and how to adjust things for the future. To access this assessment tool, simply click here. You can download the tool and adjust it based on your context. And, if you’re looking for more information and some examples on how to use it, listen to episode 98 of the Time for Teachership podcast, where I cover it in-depth. Quotes:
Want to continue learning more about curriculum development and implementation? Watch this video on how to develop district curriculum that challenges, affirms, and inspires:
1/9/2023 Developing a Short List of High-Yield Instructional Strategies with Dr. Edward SmallRead Now
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In this episode, we get to learn from Dr. Ed Small who has held multiple teaching and leadership positions and has been recognized for his work at the national level. He’s now an Assistant Superintendent in Delaware, and I love how he says that being a husband and father drives his work with schools and students!
The Big Dream Schools should be about helping kids get what they want. Educational landscape, the community, and family/home are 3 points of a triangle. We want students to yearn for school and their relationships with teachers. We want kids to think about school like Six Flags! Alignment to the 4 Stages: Mindset, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Content The school systems and instructional framework should stay the same in all classes so students don't need to learn to code switch. For example, the warm up in one class is called a warm up in every class. Students should only need to be grappling with the content, not the culture or expectations. Currently, the district has 16 common instructional strategies as a district, and they’re working on getting down to 8 or 9 so everyone knows what they are. Doing less is doing more! Some of our current instructional strategies include: clear learning intentions and success criteria, collaborative structure (e.g., Socratic Seminar), and chunking. Dr. Small recommends schools or districts have 4 collaborative structures everyone uses, and then once those are really going well, adding a few more. Action Steps He cites advice he received: “When you go into a classroom, you should be looking to paint on a canvas, but you need a canvas to paint on before you can start painting.” The canvas includes the high-yield instructional strategies. An instructional leader can identify where a protocol can leverage the energy present in a class. Behavior is communication. A coach can suggest a movement-based activity to focus a high-energy class. We use praise statements and growth action statements to frame coaching conversations. Praise might be: “I noticed you did X well because it’s good for Y. Keep doing this!” Growth action statements might look like: “I noticed you were doing Z. Maybe try ___ instead. I look forward to coming back in a month to see how it’s going. Let’s talk about it to make sure kids are benefitting from this idea.” Challenges? Nobody likes to be critiqued. It requires trust, relationship-building, and the chance to talk about it. Teachers need to know that leaders and coaches want them to win. When teachers win, we all win. The cost of leadership is time. Leaders have to invest time in conversations with teachers to gain that level of trust. One Step to Get Started Leaders, take an inventory of your relationship with your teachers. (Teachers, you can take inventory of your relationship with your leader.) Have there been opportunities for you to grow together? And if the relationships need to be improved, spend time building relationships. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on Twitter @DoctorEsmall or via email at Edward.small@capital.k12.de.us. To help you start building your list of common instructional strategies, I’m sharing a recording of my Circle protocol workshop with you for free. (This is my favorite protocol of all time.) And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 97 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript here. Quotes:
If this episode grabbed your interest, take a look at this video below where I share a strategy for reducing cognitive load and teacher planning time:
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: We know how important personalized learning is for students, and many of us are working to implement it in the classroom. But it’s important for educators, too. Each educator is a unique individual with a different learning style. If we want to see educators step up into their best, most engaged and effective self in the classroom, personalized learning plans are a must. On episode 96 of the Time for Teachership podcast, I dove into how you can start personalized learning plans with your staff. Check out the full episode or read on here for the key takeaways. Why is Personalized Learning for Staff Important? I always want to start with the “why.” Why is personalized learning for staff so important? There are a few key reasons:
How to Create Personalized Learning Plans for Educators As a pre-cursor to creating personalized learning plans for educators, your school or district needs to identify 1-2 focus areas for the year and be clear on them. When your team is familiar with those big 1-2 focus areas, you can start creating personalized learning plans. Here are 6 steps to follow:
Listen to episode 96 of the Time for Teachership podcast to hear more about this topic. And, make sure you check out Dallas ISD’s Coaching and Development Rubric. It’s an awesome resource to help you on this personalized learning journey! Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, take a look at this related content on rubric design for assessments:
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:
Quotes:
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. 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. Quotes:
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Each educator has their own personal values. And every class, school, or district has them too. Some of these values are deeply integrated into classroom curriculum while others are placeholders on the website. No matter where you are on this spectrum, we can all agree that there needs to be alignment between values—what we say we care about—and what we actually do. For this reason, educators can take some time to complete a values-action alignment activity to take stock of where they are and how they can improve. I covered this practice in-depth on episode 92 of the Time for Teachership podcast, so you can listen to it as well! Step 1: Decide your values The first step to align values with action is to actually know what your values are. Think through these questions:
Step 2: Values-action curriculum alignment Once you have identified the values that are important in your setting, it’s time to align them directly with curriculum content and activities. Take an inventory of everything that’s going on in your setting—activities, curriculum, projects, etc. You can do this by engaging various stakeholders including students, other teachers and colleagues, and the curriculum plan. Once you have a scope of the content and curriculum, assign one of the values to each item. You can do this by creating a document or log of each item and it’s assigned value. Step 3: What is success? After aligning your values and actions, zoom out and ask: what does success look like? What makes the curriculum successful can be divided into a few different parts:
Step 4: Design with values in mind After going through this exercise, you can continue the process by asking one simple question for every decision: what values are prioritized here? Make it an ongoing process by writing the question on the top of every agenda or curriculum plan so that your values are visible and obviously aligned with each task and item. And, in all of this, consider the process. It’s not just about the end product, but how we got there. So, who’s involved? Does everyone get a voice? Are we asking the right questions? Commit to the process and don’t try to rush through this practice. --- If you want to go even deeper into this practice, listen to episode 92 of the Time for Teachership podcast. This simple activity will take some time, but it will help you better align your values and actions, which positively impacts your class and your ability to support students. Quotes:
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As educators, we wear a lot of hats. Every day is full of diverse, varied tasks and responsibilities that keep our days full. Dr. TJ Vari, guest on episode 91 of The Time for Teachership podcast, also wears many hats—he’s a superintendent in a fast-growing school district, professor, coach for principals, father, and social justice advocate. And the variety of this experience, that we all have, is what makes us better educators. Because with each new role, we learn something new that can be used to create positive change and impact in our schools. We touched on a lot of topics together, but most of it centered on this question: how do we evolve our current system so that it doesn’t just prepare students for the real world, but is the real world? For Dr. Vari, two big shifts are achieving guaranteed and viable curriculum, and understanding the art and science of education. Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum One of the biggest problems with our current education system in America today is the variance. Dr. Vari pointed out just how diverse students’ experiences are—education differs between teachers, schools, districts, and states. So even two students in the same school will have wildly different experiences learning, say, grade six math. And think about the differences across states, too! The first step for any change to the school system, then, is to achieve guaranteed and viable curriculum:
As you scale up, guaranteed and viable curriculum should be a priority across school districts and states, too. This is the way we can fight injustice and discrimination and ensure that all students have equal access. Art and Science of Education Talking about a guaranteed and viable curriculum might seem rigid to some educators—shouldn’t education be personalized? Isn’t there room for flexibility? Dr. Vari offered a few thoughts on this dichotomy of flexible vs. rigid curriculum. From his perspective, it comes down to understanding the art and science of education. There are some things that are a science—studied, proven, and should be standard. Other things are an art—open to flexibility and creativity. The four sciences of education are:
So instead of seeing a rigid curriculum in front of you, consider what’s an art and what’s a science. We can all study and grow in knowledge of the science of education while maintaining our unique and creative identities as educators. --- This is just the tip of the iceberg from our conversation with Dr. TJ Vari on episode 91 of The Time for Teachership podcast. You can listen to the full episode or connect directly with him and his work at www.theschoolhouse302.com. Quotes
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Not too long ago, most of us were glued to our phones and social media to hear the outcome of the Dobbs v. Jackson decision. This landmark Supreme case brought up so many cultural conversations around bodily autonomy, consent, sexual assault and more. And it’s a conversation that needs to be brought into the classroom. Our students need a place to unpack and understand important cultural events. Through careful and intentional curriculum planning, we can provide that space for them. Recently I’ve started doing mini curriculum bootcamps, where educators can learn how to design a unit around a specific topic. A recent one centered on the Dobbs v. Jackson decision, which was also discussed on episode 90 of the Time for Teachership podcast. Here are the steps educators can take to design a unit that opens the conversation of this important current event. Principles for Justice-Centered Curriculum Before diving into the how-to, it’s important to clarify some principles for justice-centered curriculum. Here are the core principles to remember when designing a unit:
How to Design a Justice-Centered Unit With those core principles of justice-centered curriculum in mind, educators can structure a lesson plan. I go into this in more detail during Curriculum Boot Camps, but here are the main steps an educator can take when designing a unit: 1. Start with a mind map. Get out your computer, a pen and paper, or a whiteboard and start brainstorming everything that comes to mind in the context of the Dobbs v. Jackson case. This could be related to the content of what to teach, questions that come up, or texts and resources you want to use.
This is to get at your driving question for the unit. Some examples related to this topic are:
Start with your own ideas, but also invite students to come alongside you and co-create some ideas. Since one of the goals of justice-centered curriculum is for it to go beyond the classroom, consider ideas like a multimedia project (podcast or movie) or a presentation to the school board. 4. Determine protocols and how you’re going to teach the unit. Establishing regular protocols and rhythms is essential to teaching a successful unit. Consider having check-ins each week on Monday, as it’s a heavy topic and important to see how everyone is doing. Then set up the rest of the weekly teaching plans to align with your guiding question and project. 5. Determine a strategy for resource gathering Don’t leave this to the last minute! Make sure you’re constantly curating and collecting resources—podcasts, TV clips, books, news stories, art, etc. There are so many directions to go with content, so start collecting it early and store somewhere easily accessible. --- Creating a justice-centered curriculum and unit plan needs to be intentional and thoughtful. The ultimate goal is to help students interact with current events in an inclusive space that upholds everyone’s dignity. To dive in deeper to this topic, go listen to episode 90 of the Time for Teachership podcast. You can also check out my resource list for support in creating a unit around the Dobbs v. Jackson decision. Interested in Curriculum Boot Camp for your staff? Book a call with me. 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
January 2023
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