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Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:  In today's conversation, Joyce Akridge is going to talk to us about how we annihilate inequities. For context, this episode was recorded on October 13th, 2021. So let me tell you about Joyce. She has a reputation of being "a highly motivated, transformational instructional leader with a proven record of student achievement." During her 44-year tenure in the Indianapolis public schools, she demonstrated personal and professional excellence in leadership for the success of all students. She served as a lead principal and principal mentor in the Indianapolis public schools in 2015 through 2019. She was awarded the Educational Excellence Award by the Indianapolis Urban League in 2016. She was recognized by the Department of Education for her work. The school where she was a principal was given a state rating of an A for five consecutive years. Additionally, her leadership was recognized by the state of Indiana as the school received the title: One Distinguished School Award in 2014. She was also a recipient: The Governor's Award for Achievement and Civic Leadership Education in July of 2015. Joyce was also recognized as one of three schools in the district with the largest growth in mathematics in 2013 and was highlighted in the Indianapolis Star as one of the five schools in the district that succeeded despite high levels of economic poverty in 2012. She has been featured in several publications, including the Indianapolis Star, Chalkbeat, IPS newsletters, Who's who in America and the Indianapolis women's magazine. In 2017 she received the Hubbard Life Changing Leadership Award for her dedicated service to the youth of the Indianapolis public schools. 00:01:29 She retired from the Indianapolis Public Schools in 2019. However, her passion for student success continued and served as a catalyst for the origin of her own coaching and consulting company that she developed with her daughter who was also an educator. The goal of their company, Urban Education Solutions, is to solve problems in education that are " uniquely urban ". She currently serves as a mentor and coach for principals, assistant principals, and instructional coaches in the Indianapolis area. Let's hear from Joyce Akridge. Hi, I'm Lindsay Lyons and I love helping school communities envision bold possibilities, take brave action to make those dreams a reality, and sustain an inclusive, anti-racist culture where all students thrive. I'm a former teacher-leader turned instructional coach, educational consultant and leadership scholar. If you're a leader in the education world, whether you're a principal, superintendent, instructional coach or a classroom teacher excited about school-wide change like I was, you are a leader. And if you enjoy nerding out about the latest educational books and podcasts, if you're committed to a lifelong journey of learning and growth and being the best version of yourself, you're going to love the Time for Teachership podcast. Let's dive in. 00:02:53 Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Thank you, I'm glad to be here. I'm very excited that you're here. I just read your professional bio at the very start of the episode and if there's anything you want to add by way of introduction to? A lot of times bios feel very professional and there's kind of like more to us as 3-D people beyond our profession. Feel free to go ahead and share anything else that you want the listeners to know. Well I would like the listeners to know that I just have a passion for the field of education and wanting so much for the students to be successful. I am a results-oriented person. And so I want good results for the children and as John Maxwell person, I've been to his trainings and whatnot. My goal, as it has always been, is to add value to people, whether they're young people or whether they're my colleagues or other educators, 00:04:01 that's just continued with me. Even though I am officially retired, I want to do that because I know that's so very important and especially in times like these. That is beautiful. I love that I add value to people. That's so great. And speaking about all the great things that you have been doing and adding value to in terms of the educational systems that you've been part of, I think it's really important that we have these kind of big dreams around what school can be. And I love Dr. Bettina Love's work on freedom dreaming and she talks about it as "dreams grounded in the critique of injustice", which I just think it's a fabulous quote. And so keeping that quote in mind, what is the dream that you hold for the field of education? Well, the big dream I hold is that, first of all, we do the work that we need to make things right for children. And that equity is not just something that we talk about, but it's a reality for us. And that instead of allowing others to come in and so to speak, fix us, that we have enough that we know already with the collective brains and intelligence of all of the educators that we do that ourselves. 00:05:19 So my big dream is that we annihilate inequities and that we embrace equity for every child in every school, both the academic equity and that social potential of every child. That's my big dream. That is a beautiful dream. And I love that you specifically are naming social as well as academic because I think a lot of times that gets left behind in our rush to cover content or you know, get the good test scores or whatever it is that we think we're supposed to be doing in education and you know, students as we are ourselves, our whole human beings. And so I think that's so important that you emphasize that, thank you. I think again sometimes, you know, people have that tendency to really think just about the academic piece and the academic side of things and the way we've always done things. And so I think that the dream of annihilating inequity, right, is requiring us to do things differently than they have historically been done. And so, what are the mindset shifts or different ways of doing things or thinking about things that that either you've seen people really hold that are successful with this work or that you would tell listeners who haven't really quite started the work that mindset shift that needs to happen to be able to be successful in annihilating inequities and supporting the social development of students along with that academic piece? 00:06:44 Well, I would first say that, Lindsey, it's more than just a mindset shift, although that's important. But to be true workers of equity, we need to have our belief system shift because beliefs impact your actions and your behaviors. And so in order for us to annihilate an equity, we need to examine our beliefs because they influence our actions and our practices in the classroom and we need to be sure that we believe that each child is worthy of all of ourselves, all of our talent, all of our practices. They are worthy of everything that we can offer to help them to be fully educated. So that's one of the things, that's the main thing. And to me it's the whole notion of not just shifting, but transforming. And even though I've never seen the movie Transformers, I know just from having had children, although there are grown ups now, that those transformer cars, they switch into something else, it's completely different. 00:08:06 So what we need in order to have an equity-based education for every child is transformation. So we need to start viewing children as assets. We need to be aware of who we are so that we can then help who they are. We need to focus on equity versus equality. Those are mindsets that need to shift. We need to look at them as I said as assets versus you know, their deficit in my room and oh no, I got this child and no, here comes another one that doesn't speak english and so that's a deficit to my class and what I want to do with my class. So I want us to be very mindful of viewing children as valuable and valued and so it's a complete transformation that needs to happen. I think you said it well that we've done things historically a certain way, but that's given us the same results 00:09:09 we've always had. It's predictable : who's going to be successful, who's not going to be successful, which group of students are gonna meet benchmark, which groups are not. And so we need to do some things that are transformative, so that all children can meet and exceed their potential. I love that call to not just meet but exceed the potential. That is wonderful. And I really appreciate you naming beliefs as a key piece of this. It reminds me of one of my favorite, like scholarship theories around this adaptive leadership. Scholars will say, you know, it's usually a longstanding problem. Usually at the heart of it is this underlying belief or value or loyalty and we just haven't identified it and we just haven't switched it and we're gonna keep having the problem. We could throw all the p.d. at it we want, but if we haven't identified that, believe that needs to shift that believes like you are saying that students and children and people right are valuable and worthy, then we're never gonna get anywhere with just another p.d. workshops. 00:10:15 You're exactly right. And that's why so many programs fail because we focus more on, I suppose the outward action that we see, but the hearts of people haven't changed. And so for a small amount of time we can see some change, but it's not gonna be lasting and sustainable because the hearts haven't changed. So in this equity work you have to come with your mind, your hands and your heart and you've got to be willing to examine your beliefs. So for any educator who started out who say, yeah, it's wrong that it's predictable that black boys and black girls and brown boys and brown girls aren't doing well in school. We see it every year. So for anyone starting with that equity work, I would say the first major piece is to examine yourself and your beliefs and then to see how that impacts your actions as you work with these children who are from historically marginalized groups. 00:11:25 Yeah, excellent advice. And as we move to thinking more about like what are the things that educators can do to really advance equity and justice in in the educational space? What other things would you suggest that people do? So really starting with examining themselves, and making sure that we hold those positive beliefs, right? Whereas children are bringing value, what else would would you say? Either you've seen be successful or you would encourage listeners to do as they're continuing this work Well, beyond self examination and becoming more equity conscious, I would say that I would suggest that educators, number two, because examining yourself would be number one. Number two would be to look at the curriculum and see where we can disrupt the cannon because a lot of our great works are all by historically based white male authors and those kinds of things, especially when you think about high school and just simply decide : I'm gonna disrupt the cannon by including some black authors. 00:12:41 I'm gonna look at literacy. I'm gonna leverage literacy to let children see themselves and know that we care about them, seeing good models of themselves and they are out there in literature. I would also say that educators could leverage the opportunity for student participation. I don't think we are aware of it, but one of the things we do is we call on fast hands or people we know who will have the answer. And so simple things like having equity sticks where you put the names of children on popsicle sticks and you call on everybody and everybody has a turn that holds thing of opportunities to respond. We have found that black children and brown children a lot of times just don't have those opportunities to respond and maybe have the right answer, or some divergent thinking that would add to the discussion and make it a richer discussion. 00:13:43 So that's something very practical that they can do. There are some wonderful websites like Sankofa Reads and Black Lives Matter Library that will read stories to children about brown and black children. They read them in Spanish and English and helping children to see themselves in literature. That is so very important. Again, this whole notion of having the children to all know that you're going to call on them to respond and you can't take time off because I'm just calling them one kid or whatever, but getting them involved. One of the things we know about educating black and brown children is that they need relationships with people. That's very important when you look at literature. So another thing is take the time to develop relationships with the children. There's a whole philosophy called ten and two and I don't know if you know that, but I tried that and it works. 00:14:47 You take ten days and just for two minutes a day, you get to know maybe that child who's got behavior challenges are, who sits and seems so disconnected to the learning environment and you get to know them and you ask them a pointed question or speak to them or give them a smile and you'd be surprised how the relationships can add to the learning environment. So there are simple things you can do to begin this equity work. Look at a video, read a book. I'm looking at one right now that, it has been very good for me. It's called Start Where You Are, But Don't Stay There. And I don't know if you've heard of Richard Milner, but he is out of Tennessee and he is a great resource as you begin this equity work. And he talks about that 00:15:49 it's not just equity practices, but for a lot of the children, it's an opportunity gap that they don't have the opportunity for, to be educated by the good teachers. The best teachers are given to the gifted and talented students. And so we get a lot of children who have teachers who are first year teachers who don't understand about the importance of relationship building rituals, routines and rhythm of black and brown children and all those things. They don't have the opportunity for on-grade level work. There are so many things that some of our brown and black children don't have the opportunity for, which exasperates the achievement gap. And so his goal is to help you understand that if we improve opportunities, we can improve what the children are learning and sustain what they are learning so that everyone rises to the top, not just some groups of children, but all groups of children rise to the top. Wow! 00:16:56 So many great ideas in there and I had never heard of ten and two. So that makes so much sense. And I think also is probably really comforting for a teacher who is, I'm sure constantly like barraged with all the things they need to do in a day. And so they're like, oh I don't have time, but two minutes a day, like you have two minutes a day, we can do that. So I love that suggestion. I would also suggest that the educators out there or anyone out there, take a course, one of the courses that I took and there are a lot of free equity courses. Out there was a course from M. I. T. On their open learning library and it's a course called Becoming a More Equitable Educator Mindsets and Practices, and it's a self paced course that is excellent. They give you articles to read, resources to explore. There are self checks that you can do checklists, audits, you can apply to your classroom to your school, to your district. Those kinds of things which help you to examine your practices to see where you can improve what you're doing on behalf of all children because equity practices are good for all children. 00:18:21 So taking a course, reading a book, watching a video, all of those things, in the comfort of your own home can create more awareness and more opportunity to advocate for children who are not equipped necessarily to advocate for themselves. I love that you're emphasizing all of these great tools and resources and approaches for learning because I think sometimes we go into this thinking : I'm just gonna start doing this action or start building a relationship or something, but we have no new input and so it's our old ways of doing things, our old beliefs and we have nothing new coming in. We're not learning anything new. And so we just try to move forward with the way we've done things and just adapt slightly versus doing this in community or doing this with like you were saying, kind of these self assessment checks. There are all of these things that are helpful for us to make sure as we move forward, we're moving forward in a positive way in a way that's actually going to be more equitable. 00:19:24 And so I will link to as much of these resources as you've shared in the blog post in the show notes because I think it will be helpful for people to be able to click in and access all the great stuff you've been talking about. One of the things I wanted to ask you about is and I think this is so cool. You have been, since you mentioned you were retired, you have been you know, working in this your own consulting and coaching company with your daughter, which I think is such a cool thing. Do you mind sharing a bit about what you do in case people are interested in and you know, talking to you about that or what coaching you provide? Well, what we do is our company is called Urban Education Solutions and our tag is that we help solve problems in education that are uniquely urban and that's where a lot of our our historically marginalized students reside in the urban setting. So I've been working with educators mainly coaches and principals and helping them with examining their practices and how we can make education more equitable for children. 00:20:35 Just recently I took on a client : the Indiana Council on Educating Students of Color. And so I'm working with them on their after school program and I'm the program director so that we can get more social emotional learning in the program, that we're practicing equity with the children that are there. And that we are also using those things that we know work as far as a framework for guiding the learning. And so you might have heard me mention that there are five things that guide that learning when you work with black and brown children. You need to have relationships. You need to have rituals and routines. You need to also understand that their rhythmic and that they're pounding on the desk not to ignore you, but it's a part of their spirit that they're rhythmically inclined. And so we wanna understand that they like routines and the rituals and the routines and those five Rs that I mentioned and that those things impact how you see them, you work with them and what you need to do to keep them engaged in the learning. 00:21:53 So we're big on engagement. And so even the simple thing of teaching the alphabet or nouns or verbs, if we can clap it, if we can pat our hands or whatever. That's very important to our historically marginalized students because that's a part of their culture. There's no way anyone can know about all the cultures and subcultures, but there are some basic things that we can learn to do that can help us as we work with the children such as Gamify or Storify telling stories. That's a big part of our oral history as minority groups and so those are some things that can be done as well in the classroom. One of my best books ever that gives you the whole idea of being a culturally responsive educated, which is important to this equity work is Zaretta Hammond's work on the culturally being culturally responsive, culturally responsive teaching in the brain. 00:23:00 And so she talks about having tools in your toolkit that you can use so that you can keep the children engaged in learning and that you're teaching with them in mind. You've always got to keep the child in mind. And so when you're culturally responsive when your equity minded, the child is always in the forefront, not the lesson plan, not even necessarily the test scores, we want to be student centered. So that's the kind of work we've been doing. I've been coaching instructional coaches season, so that we can be equity minded. So I think that's the kind of work we've been involved in, also been involved in speaking at conferences. She and I have done conference work speaking via Zoom. Zoom has become our best friend. So we've put on local conferences, we've participated in local conferences and even national conferences that we've had an opportunity to participate in and just getting the word out there, that we all need to stay concerned and not just because Covid has shown us that there's all these disproportionality ease, they were always there. 00:24:26 They just had the spotlight shined on them since Covid, you know, that digital divide and all of that is real. But to keep the work going, that's what's important to me, keep the work going beyond Covid that we need to give every child, but he or she needs so they can be successful. Amazing. Oh my gosh, thank you so much for sharing a bit about what you're doing and it is phenomenal. I love all the five Rs and the focus on engagement and the idea of continuing to go. I think we have, you know, these moments in time where we shine spotlights and then we focus for a finite period of time and then we go back to the way things always were. And so I love that you're focused on not doing that and just, you know, continuing the work so incredibly important. So as folks kind of hear all of these resources, you've shared so many really precise action steps as well as resources that they can go check out and as I said, I'll try to link to all those as they listen to the episode. 00:25:28 They might feel like, okay, there's a lot that I should go do and is there anything that you would recommend as the best place to start. So as they're trying to really live in alignment with these values of equity and justice that we've talked about, like what is a good kind of step one as they go forward, end the episode and start to do this work. Well, I want our readers to understand that Equity is important work and it might be work that you're doing alone because everyone won't see it your way. And so you've got to be courageous enough to say, even if my colleagues don't join me, it's important enough work that I am going to keep at it and I'm going to pace myself through the journey even if I have to do it alone. And so I would suggest looking at one of the Equity websites, there are lots of websites out there and there are some as you know, with everything that are better than others. 00:26:35 I started with the Association of California School Administrators and they have an excellent website and definition of equity. I would just start there just looking at that definition, unpacking it, finding out what it means to me and what I can do in light of what that definition says. That's one of the things that I would do. The other thing is I would go to one of the Equity websites. There's one that is very good. I'm trying to look through my notes to see if I can find the name of it. It's the National Equity Alliance, that's another good website to go to. Just to see what our website saying about equity and just looking from there, taking an overview of what's happening and what people are saying and what happens is what you and I talked about. 00:27:40 You find your little niche, you find your little niche however you pronounce it of where you want to go. For me, the big thing was leveraging literacy and how I could get more stories about other children of color or childrens of color into everyday curriculum. Then it was opportunities to respond. How am I making my classroom richer or my school richer by having everyone ready to respond. Everyone participating and not just calling on the same children all the time and allowing the ratio of children to be called on to be more inclusive. So there are simple things like that. If I had to say, oh well I'm not one to look at websites and I'm not one to listen to definitions, I would say start with Zaretta Hammond's book on Culturally Responsive Teaching in the Brain. Out of those three things that I've mentioned, the website, the California Association of Administrators, and Zarretta's book, you ought to find some way that you can jump in. 00:29:03 The whole notion is jump in, don't stay where you are just being a curious bystander. Jump in and be as with November... October, I'm sorry, it's national bullying month, be an up stander, that's what we teach children: don't be a bystander, be an up stander. So that's where I would suggest you start just saying: I'm committed to being an up stander. If someone makes a rude racial joke in the teacher's lounge, I'm gonna walk out. If I don't have the courage to say : hey guys, that's not nice, or I'm going to have the courage to say: that's not nice, or take an equity, walk around your building, your classroom. Do you have pictures of different racist creeds, ethnicities? Then commit to. I'm going to get a committee in and let's just get some other pictures up of other kids around the school. 00:30:07 If you have permission, take pictures of your own classroom. You know, you can get those frame for a little of nothing and the kids who just love seeing themselves around the school. But whatever you do, start where you are and don't stay there. I love that: start where you are and don't stay there. So one of the things that I like to ask at the close of the episode that's really just kind of for fun. I think all the guests that I have on are always talking about, you know, really growing like I like you have been today and and being lifelong learners and committed to this journey and so I'm just curious to know what is something that you have been recently learning about yourself? Well that's a good question. One of the things I have learned about myself and partly it is my personality and partly is because of the work that I've always done, I've been an administrator and a lead teacher and all of those kinds of things. I always show up to be in charge and you know what, that's not collaborative and that's what needs to happen in the equity work and the work for justice, you can't show up to be in control and in charge, you have to show up firstly to be cooperative and then that leads to collaborative. 00:31:30 So that's the one thing I am learning about myself. I am learning to be more collaborative and I think that has happened because as I had been involved in my business and I have began the work of coaching, coaches should be collaborative beings. And so I have been doing a lot of work on myself to be a more collaborative educator, so that's where I am working on collaboration. And then I also have a little angel on my shoulder, my daughter. She'll tell me when I'm showing up in charge and she'll say, you know, we need to work together. And it's probably that old mindset that principles have to know everything and they have to be a resource and a broker of resources and you have the answers. But no, no one person has all the answers, not in the equity work, not in any work associated with schooling. You know, you've got to be a collaborative player and so that's the work that I'm working on now, to grow and learn as a senior citizen. That is beautiful. 00:32:52 Thank you so much for sharing that with our listeners. That's really great. And I think people who are, you know, have been listening to this whole episode are really going to want to connect with you and I'm sure everyone's gonna be inspired by what you're doing. So where can people go online to find more out about what it is you do or connect with you in some way? Thank you. I appreciate that. I'm still in the process of building my website. So I am open to anyone who would like to connect with me to just come to my personal website. My email address is... I've said website, I meant my email address is joyce, lower case letters, the number 4, jesus @ sbc global dot net and I will be prompt to respond. It's my pleasure to still be involved in this work and it's energizing work. You know Lindsey, when we are stressed stress takes air out of our balloon as a metaphor. 00:34:03 You know, it deflates us. And for me, teaching puts air in my balloon. So any work, any teaching that I can do to help people to encourage equity practices to help children who can't advocate for themselves have a fair chance in life, that puts air in my balloon. And if you begin the equity work in earnest, I'm sure it will put air in your balloon as well. That is such a wonderful idea to end on Joyce. Thank you so much for being part of the podcast. Thank you Lindsey for having me. Thanks for listening, amazing educators. If you loved this episode, you can share it on social media and tag me at Lindsey Beth Lyons or leave a review of the show. So leaders like you will be more likely to find it. To continue the conversation, You can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders continue to think big, act brave and be your best self.
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1/10/2022 School that is fun and interesting with choices and freedom with Guille, Eden, and Nico from the LearnLife Nature Hub for Primary YearsRead Now Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: I am so excited for you all to hear from our guests today. Today we are joined by several folks from the LearnLife Nature Hub for Primary Years all the way in Barcelona Spain. We have Guille Villena who is the learning guide and Primary Years lead and he's brought along two Primary Years students, Eden and Nico. I can't wait for you to hear from these insightful voices around educational innovation and in their own words describing a school that is fun and interesting with choices and freedom. This conversation for context was recorded on October 4th 2021. Let's get right to it. Hi, I'm Lindsey Lyons and I love helping school communities envision bold possibilities. Take brave action to make those dreams a reality and sustain an inclusive, anti-racist culture where all students thrive. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach, educational consultant and leadership scholar. 00:01:05 If you are a leader in the education world, whether you're a principal, superintendent, instructional coach or a classroom teacher excited about school wide change like I was, you are a leader. And if you enjoy nerding out about the latest educational books and podcasts. If you're committed to a lifelong journey of learning and growth and being the best version of yourself, you're going to love the time for teacher ship podcast. Let's dive in. Today I am welcomed by three folks from the LearnLife Nature Hub for Primary Years in Gabba Spain in the Barcelona area and I am so excited to turn it over to them to introduce themselves and talk a little bit about their school. Welcome everybody. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you. I can start introducing myself. I'm Guille Villena, I'm currently the primary years lead of the nature Hub programs. I have been involved with LearnLife for almost three years. I started in the urban hub with the secondary years programs and we started the primary years project a year ago midst of the pandemic and the lockdown. 00:02:15 So it was a very interesting point to start the project but here we are with the second year growing in numbers. Iterating the programs and we're very, very excited for all of the new adventures to come. And here with me, I have two learners who will introduce themselves with their name, their age and their favorite animal. Yeah, My name is Eden, I'm 10 years old and my favorite animal are canines. My name is Nico, I'm 10 years old and my favorite animal is the cheetah. That is brilliant, thank you so much. That's really fun to learn about your favorite animals and also very interesting animal choices. I feel like those are really spot on. So one of the first things I'd love to dive into is there is an educator and a scholar, her name is Doctor Bettina Love and she talks about this idea called freedom dreaming and she says what we're doing right when we think about education as we want it to be. 00:03:23 Just like we're really thinking about dreams grounded in the critique or the criticism of injustice. And so I'm curious to know for you all, what is the big dream that you hold for the field of education? Like what do you wish school would be if it could be everything that you wanted it to be? So our big, big, big dream as an organization is to help achieve 21st century learning model that empowers self directed learners, into their personal learning. And I would like to extend this question to Eden and Nico and what would be what, what would a perfect school look like for you? To me it would be fun, interesting, lots of choices, not just like give you a paper and you have to do it. Like now you're allowed to work with people and you don't have to sit desks in a row. 00:04:26 The best school for me would be uh fun, the school will be fun and you know that you're learning something and using technology too. That's a brilliant answer. Thank you. Thank you both. That sounds like a really cool school that you're all painting collectively. I would like to attend that school. That sounds great. The next question I want to ask you is, you know, there are some teachers and some leaders who are just amazing, right there. They bring that to life. They make school fun and interesting and they use technology and they do all those things you're talking about and so I want to know what are like the ways that those teachers or leaders really help facilitate the learning. So what mindsets or ways of thinking about students do they have or what do they do as teachers that are really helpful for you? I can start and then extend the question. 00:05:27 I would say the first thing that these leaders or teachers or as we call them, learning guides need to have is a very strong awareness of what positive relationships are. Because that's in our core of of what we do. Positive relationships for the learners between ourselves um as colleagues and with the the outside community I think that's a key, a key mindset. Also being agile and being able to navigate through uncertainty, having a growth mindset, divergent thinking and especially being able to collaborate. We have shifted from a solo mindset, and most teachers in traditional systems work by themselves and we have shifted that mindset into collaboration and working in collaboration with other learning guides and in the wider company, you know, so that for me, those would be the main mindset. 00:06:33 I don't know how Eden and Nico value? what is the thing that you most value about the learning guides here? That they're kind and, I don't know how to say it, um creative and that they can join you and help you if you have problems. I think it's nice that the teachers are nice and that they motivate you and accept your ideas. I love those answers. Absolutely. I love the idea of accepting your ideas and and being creative, right? And partnering with people outside of both collegiately like both, you know, as colleagues and also outside of the school, the super cool ideas. 00:07:35 So I'd love to think about the people who are listening now there are a lot of people who are going to be, educators, they're learning guides in their own school. They are maybe leaders or heads of school, even family members as well, but people who are really helping to educate and help children learn. And I'm wondering what advice you would give them. So what advice would you give them in terms of what they can do to make that dream come to life and what action or thing can they, can they do to really be the type of educators and learning guides that you were just describing? I would say so if you're a parent, I would challenge you to think how am I helping my kid to be ready for her or his future. If your school leader, I would challenge you to think how am I empowering my community to enable change. And if you're a teacher, I would challenge you to think how can I be the driver of change in my own community. And for everyone, I would suggest that we think or we remind ourselves to think more as a learner, so putting ourselves in the learners shoes and thinking about every single decision that we take or that we make, if we're doing it from the learner's perspective. Because sometimes we get caught into the routines and the status quo and we we keep forgetting the learner and at least for us what everything that we do is for the learner. 00:09:16 So I would invite everyone to, to think as if they were a learner. Beautiful, Eden and Nico, did you have anything you wanted to say advice for teachers or learning guides? That's totally okay, thank you. so this question is for for all of you, what is the school experience that you've had? It could be this year, it could be you know, previous years that helped you or influenced you the most. What was a cool experience that you've had that makes you feel like "oh I love this" or that inspired you? It was a lot different at my other school, you could choose what to do, like you could choose what to learn what you want to learn and you were more like a bit free because from the other school we needed to sit all the time and write on your paper and that was, and you learn a lot of English. Like when I came here I know not a lot of english and now I think I can speak english. 00:10:44 Yeah, I mean you've, you've you've grown so much in English and you got it in a year, so you should be very proud of yourself, I totally agree. And what about you, Eden, what is an experienced here and LearnLife that has inspired you or that was different from your previous school? My other school, like they'd give you something to do and if you did not understand it, you'd have to stay through snack break and you'd have to work and then when there was like one minute left you could go out and have a breather but then you'd have to come straight back up. But here it's different, you get to stop, you get to have a snack and then another day you get to finish it. And for me school experience that I had um I guess that I would pick um when I was a teenager I suffered from bullying and I think that has helped me in my professional growth as an educator. Because I keep reminding myself how learners feel socially in the classroom or at school and there are sometimes they are invisible and if there's not a safe space for them, they will never share how they feel and they will be trapped in this nightmare that they're experiencing. 00:12:13 So for me that was eye opening and one of my goals is to ensure that we have a safe space and that we empower them to emotional education and and that the culture for learning here is very positive and that's why I was stressing so much the idea of positive relationships. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think that's so important. Sometimes we only think, and I think Eden's answer speaks to that as well too, right? That you have to do this work at the expense of everything else. You can't have snack time, you can't focus on the social well being of children and that clearly isn't what people want, right? Like Eden was saying it's way better to have snack time and then be able to to finish your work later or just pay attention to, you know, how kids are doing in the larger like, you know, whole self that they bring to school, not just in academics. And you know, Nico to your point, I think it's really powerful, you said that we are choosing right? Where I love your quote, you you're kind of you're a bit free, right? 00:13:16 Like in this new school that you're in now, right? Compared to your previous school and I'd love to hear, you know what are some of the things, just to give people an idea, I think the way that you all learn in your current school is really different from maybe some of the people who are listening, the schools they've been to as children or the schools they teach at now. And so could you tell me a little bit about, you know, what's a project or what's a thing that you have chosen to learn about recently in one of your classes? So for impassioned projects for example, can you tell them what what that's about? So passion projects, you choose a project which you wanted to do what you want to do and then you get the credit and you have to like um write, how many materials you need, how long do you think it'll take you? And then once you're done on Fridays, there is community meeting where you get to show your project to the whole school. That sounds amazing. So what were some of the passion projects that you both have been working on? 00:14:24 I'm gonna make a lamp and I'm also doing a bakery with two other friends of mine. That's incredible. Nico what about you? I really like super heroes, like Marvel characters. So I decided to build, trying to build like a cardboard Iron Man suit. That is really cool. Oh, that's so awesome, wow, you are impressive learners. I am very excited to to hear more about these projects later on when you're done. That's so great. So as we are kind of coming to the close of the episode, I would love for you to share either something that you wish that listeners would do. I know you were talking about advice earlier or if it's easier, what's the most important thing that we talked about today that you want people to remember as they stop listening to the episode and go about the rest of their day. Any ideas? What is something they would like the viewers to remember, well what you said or the most important thing? To hear other people's opinions and not just do whatever you want, it's Friday tomorrow. 00:15:41 For me it's again not to to recall our ourselves as learners and our past experiences in school and reflect on that and see what is the impact that we can make with with that mindset. Excellent suggestions. as one of the questions I really like to ask as just kind of a fun question at the end and I think I kind of asked this already of Eden and Nico but feel free to add something else. You know what is something that you have been learning about lately and so for Guille, I think one of the things I think about is you know, as adults sometimes and learning guides um that commitment as you were saying earlier to constantly grow is so important and so just to kind of model that we are always learning as well as adults. You know something that you've been learning about lately. I totally agree with you. Here we see ourselves also as learners. So I'm currently being a learner in surfing and I started learning how to surf actually. 00:16:54 I remember Eden last year. Yeah, exactly. You were giving me some tips which I have been using lately. so I always remember you when, when I surf. Yeah, for me it's it's having a growth mindset, surfing. It's challenging but very exciting. What about you guys, what is something that you have been learning lately? I've been learning how to play the piano since last christmas and I think I've improved quite a lot but I still have to learn how to read better. What about you Nico? Learned like in natural systems or Explora or... I don't know. Memory loss? It is hard to be interviewed. So I understand you'll think of something amazing that you want to say later. I'm sure. Awesome. Well thank you all for sharing. And is there anywhere that if someone who's listening really wants to check out more about the work that your school is doing or if your your school has a website or wants to connect, is there somewhere that people can go to? 00:18:06 Just follow the great stuff that that's happening? Yeah, I mean they can log in to LearnLife.com and then follow us in our social media channels. We're on Instagram, Facebook Twitter LinkedIn. Perfect. I will link to those in the show notes too so people can be able to click those easily and I just want to say one more time to, Eden and Nico thank you so much for taking time out of your day to, to speak with us and to speak to the listeners. I really appreciate you all being on the podcast. Thank you. Thank you for for the time and congratulations for your podcast. Thanks for listening amazing educators. If you loved this episode, you can share it on social media and tag me @lindsayblyons or leave a review of the show. So leaders like you will be more likely to find it. To continue the conversation you can head over to our time for teacher ship facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
 Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: I'm excited to welcome you to today's conversation with Dr. Jenny Finn. For reference, this was recorded on August 17th of 2021. Jenny holds a PhD in sustainability education from Prescott College and a master's degree in social work from Colorado State University. She is an RSA fellow and a country lead for the USA for 100 An international collective highlighting educational innovations globally. For the past 25 years, Jenny has been committed to creating healthy culture by starting with an unwavering commitment to her own personal growth and transformation. As a result of her own journey with addiction and cancer, Jenny understands that a healthy relationship with the world begins with a strong connection to ourselves and community in a culture that often fosters separation and disconnection, Jenny's research mentoring and teaching invites people to deepen the relationship they have with themselves in order to serve the world with greater clarity, compassion, creativity and courage. Jenny's work has taken many forms including nonprofit direction, trauma and hospice care, spiritual care and chaplaincy, private practice, community building through the expressive arts and educational design. 00:01:06 She is the founding visionary at Springhouse and sees place based education oriented around the source of life as a primary agent transformed culture. She's honored to work with the outstanding Spring House team and is deeply committed to the Spring House mission of designing vitality centered education and sharing source to design through Source design labs at Spring House, Jenny lives on a farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains with her husband Andy and their two teenage children Andrew and Lizzy. To learn more about her work visit sourceddesign.org and springhouse.org. Here we go. Let's dive into our conversation with Dr. Jenny Finn. Hi, I'm Lindsay Lyons and I love helping school communities envision bold possibilities, take brave action to make those dreams a reality and sustain an inclusive, anti racist culture where all students thrive. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach, educational consultant and leadership scholar. If you're a leader in the education world, whether you're a principal, superintendent, instructional coach or a classroom teacher excited about school wide change like I was, you are a leader. And if you enjoy nerding out about the latest educational books and podcasts, if you're committed to a lifelong journey of learning and growth and being the best version of yourself, you're going to love the time for Teachership podcast, let's dive in. 00:02:27Edit Okay, Jenny Finn, welcome to the Time For Teachership Podcast. Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here Lindsay. I'm so glad you're here. Do you want to add anything to the amazing, very well rounded bio that I just read to further introduce yourself to listeners. You know what, I think the bio says it all and I would just say, as I said to you earlier that this work is deeply, deeply personal to me. So I think when you, when you read the bio, you'll see that. But it really does, my own personal experience informs all of the work that I've been engaged in for almost 30 years now. Amazing, thank you so much and thank you for the great work that you're doing. One of the things I like to start with is just kind of this big dream question around, you know, what is the big dream you hold for the field of education? And I really love Dr Bettina Loves quote about freedom dreaming in this, and I draw a lot of inspiration from her where she says really it's dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. 00:03:34 And so with that in mind, what is the dream that you hold for education? That's a really, really great question. The first thing that comes to me is let me think and hope that I can get this right and I don't know who said this, but it's something that we often say at Spring House, which is the community that we'll talk about today that I co founded eight years ago. But it's it's basically a quote that says "A vision without a task is just a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. A vision with a task is the hope for the world." So, my hope for education, how I see education is not as a noun. It is a verb, to me refers to intergenerational relationships that could foster anything any kind of agenda. So it's intergenerational relations at least at springhouse. 00:04:40 It's intergenerational relationships that foster vitality. So that life is at the center of everything. Taking care of life, no matter how old you are, who you are in the system. That those intergenerational relationships are there to take care of protect and foster life. So to me and Springhouse our vision is regenerative culture. Somebody just asked me yesterday "What the heck does that mean?" That means a culture, I know that we really don't know what that means because many of us have never experienced it in our family system or in our educational system or the culture at large. Regenerative culture to me and to us at Springhouse is the big vision and the big dream. And that means a culture that orients around life and takes care of it. And then our mission is to create and activate vitality centered education. Where life and freedom are at the center of everything. 00:05:45 Not only happiness not only what we want, no that's not it, it's like how do we honor the full experience of life, the cycles of life, that life runs through human beings and beyond human beings, and to the other than human world. How does it lead us into wholeness? How does it lead us into joy? Those are the questions that we hold. So that's really it. And what I love is to experience and see our examples, living examples of people doing the messy work. Like Dr. Bettina Love talks about of at one point, she said, you know, we just kind of we need to fully reimagine and redesign our school system. Agreed and eight years in the making here at Springhouse, that's what we're doing. And I can tell you it is not easy, it is not a path for the faint of heart, but we do need people who are really being midwives, cultural midwives, bringing forth new designs that orient around life. Long answer. 00:06:52 But it's a big question. Absolutely. It's a big question and I love that answer. It makes me think too of all of the work... And so my research is in the student voice field and student leadership field and there's so much in there that I love with the youth adult partnership framing of, you know, it is that intergenerational relationship that you're talking about and we can create anything when we have that foundational relationship. And that's such a key piece that I think often is missing when we think about, you know, traditional mindsets of education and the teacher has all the information and then we dictate that to the students. And so I'm curious to know whether there was a particular mindset that folks who started the school with you have adopted or if you're speaking to listeners who are in traditional schools and maybe have these traditional views of education or have colleagues who have adopted those traditional views, you know, what's that shift away from the traditional view? What's the mindset that will enable people to do the work in that way that that you're dreaming it about. Mm That's a great question. 00:07:54 It's one I literally just came off another call around. I think it's humility. I think the mindset is humility and surrender. That the human will has limits. And I think because of that exactly the model you just discussed around the teacher has it and the young person doesn't, first of all is false. It's just, it's an illusion. It's not true and it causes an adult in that system to rest in a false sense of security, where I have expertise and wisdom in certain areas of my life and then there's a lot, I don't know. And that's great. that makes me human. that makes me hopefully curious and flexible and vital. Because I don't know it all and I shouldn't know it all. 00:08:59 It makes me actually really boring and kind of stiff to other people, especially young people. It also totally dis empowers our youth. It just does, it doesn't allow them to know that they have gifts to offer in their stage of development. So I think it leads to really disempowered and dependent youth that lack an inner compass. And I mostly think that's because as adults we think we have one because we're orienting around our expertise, but that's not an inner compass, that's not, an inner compass is deeper than my expertise. So those are some of the thoughts I have, but I also love talking about some solutions and example. And so one thing I'll say is that at Springhouse, you know, we see, I see as the founding visionary there, I see all of the adults well, I don't see them, they are regenerative culture builders, they're building regenerative culture now starting with themselves. 00:10:06 So they start with themselves. I'll say that again as adults and that's essential with the design that we are practicing at Springhouse. That it starts with the adults. It cannot be, we can't project all our problems onto the youth and try to fix it through them that we have to do our own work. And we do and it doesn't make us perfect and it just makes us more pliable and flexible and hopefully hospitable. And what we then do is we have a student, we have a learner leadership model where young people within Springhouse can apprentice with an adult who's a regenerative culture builder. So they'll they may like one student may I have an apprentice with me who's a 17 year old who's the learner visionary. And so he's really learning about what it means to be a visionary. Where we have another team who's working directly with the, the regenerative culture builder adult who is working with adolescent development. So we have a 17 year old who is working closely with him, we have another person who, another young person who's working closely with our vitality centered education lead. 00:11:17 So it's like they partner and then they have something called the round table where the students meet together and then they bring their learning from their different apprenticeships together in service, not just like as a learning, like a relevant learning situation. It's more like they're actually, they're helping to guide Springhouse and like to make Springhouse stronger. So it's a real life thing that they're doing that actually impacts them as well as our community. So that's just one example of how we know that we need their wisdom from where they are in their stage of development and they know that they need ours and there's mutual respect. And an orientation around the common vision. So those are just some of the thoughts I have around that. Yeah, and I love that you're talking about, you know, I often called the brave actions, like the actions that are really required. The examples, the strategies, the things like this. I love that you're also talking structurally right structurally. 00:12:21 There are structures in place for students to opt into an apprenticeship to have that space at the round table to come together. To be able to have the mindset and the humility that you're talking about, where leaders are open to the ideas that students are bringing from that round table. I think this is all so practical and helpful for people who are like, "Oh, you know, maybe I could do something like this at my school if it's not already." I know you have a lot of really interesting innovative ideas around curriculum and what learning looks like, and I know your website is a wealth of information with a bunch of resources that people can grab. Do you mind speaking to kind of the actions that your teachers take or your students take around how, how they learn and what they learn about in the class. you know, I think it's so important to say that I can't stress this enough. And really, the only way to know this is to immerse yourself at Springhouse it is so different, it's so different that like, we don't refer to ourselves as teachers, not because teacher is a bad word, not at all, it's just not naturally the role, I can't in like classes in terms of like, there are courses and explorations. 00:13:38 So I know that maybe folks who are listening to me who are in a more conventional system may have trouble bringing what I'm saying into their paradigm and that makes sense because they're different. Because they have different orientations. They have different centers, they're after something different at the center of the design. And that's important to say to anyone who's listening, certainly though, and we'll get to the five principles of the design, which are not just Springhouse there as ancient as ancient can be, they're just not well practiced. So when we talk about that, people could certainly let's say take care of the vulnerability in their classroom. So in terms of, and maybe we go there, maybe we go there to those principles. Okay, Because I think that's a way where if you are out there and I know some of you are, because I've worked with people around the world who are either really just trying to bring a different, just something different to their classrooms. But I'm also working with people who are saying I'm ready to really build something new, "How do I start?", "What do I do?" 00:14:47 So at Springhouse, we work with five design principles that were articulated mostly from the experiment of Springhouse. and we're articulated after a yearlong focus group, basically kept asking the question, "What is remarkable and unique about Springhouse?", "What is our identity?", "Who are we?" So we really took that seriously. We had teens community members, adults within the system asking that question and really exploring it for a year. From that we can we have, we named five design principles that are practiced daily and alive at Springhouse, which is great to have a living example of what's possible. We're not out to replicate and scale like other places, use these principles in ways that respect your people in your place. And that's already happening and it's amazing to see how unified we are, but also how diverse we are at the same time. So those principles are the first one is take care of vulnerability. So at all costs, no matter what, we take care of vulnerability, if we're missing that foundational principle, forget about it, just forget about it. 00:15:58 So there's nothing more important than that. That's it. Take care of vulnerability inside yourself, in your community, with the earth, just take care of it. And we'll be living in a different world if we did that. And I know like I'm saying that simply, but I know I know personally the process of what that feels like to shift from living in shame and highlighting to living and taking care of vulnerability. It's a lifelong journey and the second principle is to cultivate personhood. And so we do that in a lot of ways um, at Springhouse, but that basically means tend to your own personal development, no matter how old you are, you tend to that. One of the ways we do that is by radically reclaiming our relationship with our bodies. So in our vitality center educational design there and it's way too much to go into here, but there's three solid pillars in that model body, society and earth. 00:17:02 We tend to all of those things as a regenerative culture builder, our relationship to those aspects both of human culture, of earth culture and to ourselves, primarily our bodies. Because we're so disembodied. That's the result of a lot of that. That a lot of our issues are a result of that problem. So we're saying at Springhouse, we're taking the body back, we're taking it back and we're exploring it in all different kinds of ways, sexuality, race, gender identity, I mean all kinds of, all kinds of ways. So there's that and one of the primary ways we do that is dance, we spend an enormous time with the earth and mentoring every single team has a mentor at Springhouse and every adult has a mentor. So that's that's mentoring is a cultural way for us. and that doesn't mean professional therapy, that's not what it means, it means, I'm walking with someone on the path, I'm maybe a little further down on that spiral. 00:18:07 I'm holding a lantern and I'm saying you can do it, that's what mentoring is to us. The third principle is build beloved community, one really specific way we do that is we sing a lot and we share power. We orient around life and we share power. And we take care of our power. We have a responsibility to ourselves and to each other to do that. The 4th principle is respect the wisdom of the earth. So we do that in a lot of ways just by paying attention and learning and better relating with the earth, and our land, but we're also this fall really exploring, I can't remember what it's called, but like learning from the land and looking at, the indigenous people who were on our land first and and exploring the history of that by walking the land, not just sitting and listening, but by actually walking and and walking with people from our community. Another way we respect the wisdom of the earth is how we structure our financial model, our investment model. 00:19:16 We do not situate education as a commodity, it is not a transaction. It is a relationship. So our financial, our investment models based on trust, transparency and relationship. So that's a huge experiment and I can report after four months of experimenting, it's going pretty well. Lots of tears, lots of relationship building and lots of freedom happening. Finally love and serve others. We foster vitality to better love and live in the world. What else are we? What else are we doing here? What else should education be for? What else should it be for? I mean, what to perpetuate an individualistic, unsustainable culture. I don't think so, not for me. So I know how hard it is. I know that we're not doing it perfectly, but I know that the good news is I'm not doing it alone and that our community continues to grow globally and that's because what we're doing is needed and it's ancient, it's ancient. 00:20:23 We're really just taking care of some wisdom that is ancient and we're just bringing it forward. So whether you're starting something new or you're thinking about your own family system or your own life, like maybe start by asking do you take care of your own vulnerability? I asked that in every... and now we share our design globally through source design labs., so we have a global network work. If people are interested wherever you're listening, you can learn from the living example of Springhouse through this network. Um, and I can give that website later, but there's all kinds of people who do it. People who just want to foster vitality in their own life to start with or their own family or it could be someone who likes someone in Belgium who's wanting to start a school. You know, it really is to start with the principles with yourself and then any of these could be worked out and applied in your, in your communities and I would say just the one who has done this for many years personally and in my calling. 00:21:28 We need support, we need each other, we need to remember that we're not in this alone, that's what Springhouse is really. It's like you're not alone, go for it, go for it. We're here to support you and we know we'll learn from you. So if you are out there doing design that's oriented around vitality, like has that at the center, I would love to hear from you because we can support each other and learn from each other. That's amazing. Thank you so much for going through each of those. And I, there's so many things that I'm connecting with personally. I'm really interested in the sharing of power and how that happens and you know, what are the practices by which that happens. I also just love that you're going beyond like a land acknowledgment of like who you know, who are the indigenous people who have, who have lived on this land and started this land and to actually walk the land and to walk in community on the land. I just, I feel like these are things that even if you are in a traditional schooling system, you can still do those things, you can go out and walk the land right? And so I think these are so valuable as practices that are concrete and transferrable to a lot of different systems as well. 00:22:35 I know you're saying you're doing something completely different, which is so true. And I hope that people will also take the inspiration from that to try to create these new systems that aren't so traditional in the way that we've been doing that aren't so siloed and more community based, more vitality based. Yes and you know, it's so beautiful how you just said that because well I'll tell you in full transparency with the land acknowledgement thing. We had a land acknowledgement written and one of the staff members came to me at the end of the year and said, okay, we're going to move forward. Like we're gonna, will you read this, will you read this when we go into our graduation? And I looked at it and I said, it's not that I am not like heart committed to everything written here. I don't, but I don't even barely know how to pronounce the names of these people. I don't, this doesn't, this feels like it's not coming from the inside out. I want this, but I want our community to know who these people are, where we are. 00:23:44 Like we we have to do the work first. We can't just say this even though we really want to. I mean we could maybe, but I can't, I can't, I have to do, I have to do the work to know what I'm talking about that, this is rooted in my body and in this place in our communities body. And so what's happening now in the staff member. I mean we were both in tears and we were both like "exactly let's hold on this, let's make it top priority" that we walked the land with this community and we get to know it in that way that leads to a community written land acknowledgment that that is very rooted not only in Springhouse but in our place and in our hearts. And that's an example of really truly like a design that's oriented around vitality. It's like around that it's real and we didn't I didn't want to like just slap something on to relieve my guilt or to relieve my I just I just wanted a deeper transformative experience to inform my actions and that is a norm that really is enormous Springhouse. 00:24:57 And then the other thing I'll say is for those who are listening to more conventional system. Whatever that means, is it really means basically if your design is oriented around anything other than that like that freedom in that life, it's really hard. Like I want to just empathize, people might want to go out and and walk the land and like do a community mural or but because the system is oriented around standardization, individualism, consumerism. Because it's oriented around things that are disembodied not oriented around justice for all like those things, it's so hard because you're having to commit to this agenda, right? That doesn't have space to like take care of your body or get to know the land or even get to know the body who's in the next classroom. You might not even be able to chat or cry or play with your neighbor in your school system, let alone step outside of your school building. 00:26:09 So I think not only our young people suffering in the way we've structured education, I just want to speak on behalf of the adults who are in that system that are really fighting for creativity and and their own autonomy and all kinds of things in the system that just isn't oriented around that. So not that it's not possible, It is, but it may even start with like maybe go out of your classroom and do something radical like have a cup of tea with your partner next door. You know, or just talk to a student for five minutes longer, ask them some questions about who they are or what they love or what they're scared of. Yeah, that's such a good idea, such concrete good ideas and also I just love that, you know, it reminds me of this idea of like it was from the nineties I think 'add women and stir' was like the thing that people were like criticizing that we're just adding women to these corporate environments and we're just stirring and it's still at the root, very oppressive, not just a space. 00:27:16 And I feel like a lot of the movement lately in education to incorporate things like justice, like well being of adults and young people is very much like we're going to try to add it into the system that is not enabling us to do it well. And then we're frustrated because we're trying to add when we don't have time to add and we're trying to, you know, do all these ways and all these shortcuts that aren't going to work. And so I really appreciate that you named that in that way. Yes, yes. Because we ended up symptoms., I just told this story to someone on my 8:00 meeting in Finland actually. And, it's really this, you know, there's a, there's an Appalachian tradition called, well that's basket weaving and it's pretty intense. I mean, it's a rite of passage to, to weave a basket and I've gone through it and there's a certain design where you put the loops together. And then you start with what's called the God's Eye and it's where the two loops are linked. 00:28:17 And then the whole basket weaves from the eye. If you don't get the God's eye, not perfect, but pretty close to center. The basket really unfolds in a way that doesn't make it a usable basket. I at first did not get the God's eye, not even close to the center, It's kind of like when you're a potter too and you're making a pot, it's like the centering is key. So like the centering and I had to unravel. My instructor said if you want this to be a usable basket, you need to unravel and start over. And I was like, oh god, part of me just wanted to move the basket and just be done with it, right? I mean, what, what am I doing? But I unraveled and now I have a really usable basket that I get are chicken eggs and then I can use it. and it's beautiful actually, my point with that nice basket story is that when we don't have the eye of the design is centered as it can be around and if it is centered on something that's not life giving or it's trying to be, but it doesn't know what it is. 00:29:20 The basket, the design has some problems and to say it lightly. And then what we end up doing is symptom management, we end up over here trying to manage the symptom when the thing actually is the problem with the center. And I just think it takes a lot to go to the center and that's not just with a system that's enormous, right? But even as a person, like think about ourselves where it's like "Gosh, I really wish my life was taking a different design, what's going on?" And then we end up symptom management over here rather than just like sitting down and really being with ourselves and being with like, what's at the center of me? What's at the center of me? Am I living a life that's unfolding out of fear or out of reaction to something or what's true for me? And unfortunately education, at least to me and my experience, it never really asked those questions that helped me get to the center to the God's eye. And my hope at Springhouse is that we are doing that, but that means we're shifting the whole agenda. 00:30:28 That's the thing. And so many would call it like the last questions like, is this legitimate? Uh is this education? Is this an after school program? Is this social emotional learning? Is this what, what is this? What is this if it's not after? Does everyone go to college? And do they go to the best college so they can get the best job and make the best money. It's like or get the most fame or it's like, we're just not even orienting around that. And so it makes sense that as a culture, it would be like, well, is this legitimate or is this like just a play school or after daycare or whatever the thing is, and it's like, no, it's just just reorienting the God's eye on the basket. And we're just doing it one day at a time together, but it's definitely not easy. It's not easy. I love that analogy. Thank you so much. Now, I want to take a basket weaving class, very curious about a lot of work. But it is, it is I threw my basket on the floor many times. So as we kind of start to wrap up the episode, I think we've talked about so many different practices, strategies, values, things that people could be thinking about. 00:31:41 And so I'm curious for the listener who is taking it all in and thinking about, you know, I just want one step to start with, what would you recommend that someone do as they end the episode and and start to implement some of the stuff. What may be a first step for people to kind of live in alignment with what we've been talking about today? Yeah, that's a good question. one that's really important to me. I would well, I would first ask myself, am I taking care of vulnerability in my life? And if the answer is, I don't know, then I would explore that. If the answer is no. Then I would say I would explore that and then if the answer is yes, then I would say, how do I get to know more of that? Because with each one of us, our personhood is the greatest gift we can offer. And if people don't know what I'm talking about, a great person to read is Parker Palmer. on that where it's like you're... and and he's just one person, I mean there's many, many ancient teachings and many people out there now who are speaking to this, but it's like you're very present is a gift, so take care of it. 00:32:56 And it matters a lot. It matters a lot and it matters a lot and how you relate with youth because if you know your presence is a gift and you're taking care of it, then you're truly doing what education is at its root, which means to draw out, it means to draw out. And if you don't know what's in you, how could you possibly, I mean, how could you possibly be, your very presence could draw out what's true and authentic in someone else, but it has to be true and authentic in new. So I would start by doing that and if you are like, I don't know exactly what that means, then I would offer, if you are resonating with anything I'm saying, then I would go to SourcedDesign.org. That and that's spelled Source S O U R C E D design dot org. and there's a lot there about what I'm saying. All the way from taking, there's a whole section and it's all open sourced. So if you go to the curriculum part of it, you'll find so many resources that are there to support you and then if you're "Like oh God I'm really interested in this." Then we have sourced design labs and those are, we keep them very small and intimate. 00:34:14 We have 12 people from around the globe who really are just committed to working these principles together through their own individual projects in their place and that's another option, the fall is full but the winter is open so people could, you know, I think it's that on the ground, community mentorship and a personal practice. Those are the three pillars for me that build a new way of life, whether that's a person or a community practice and mentoring learning from someone who inspires you. So I would say those are, those are three things that I would focus on. That's amazing and I know this next question I like to ask just for fun. I know you've talked about so many things that you have learned or are learning, so I'm just curious we're all lifelong learners, every guest seems to be really excited about that development and that growth. Um So I'm curious to know what something you have been learning about lately. It could be related to education or it could be anything. Yeah, I well I'm getting ready to facilitate co facilitate of course with an artist friend of mine that is called reimagining work in zombie culture. 00:35:31 So we're doing that. Isn't that amazing with teens could be offensive, I understand, but welcome. so what I'm reading right now is the myth of Icarus and I'm also reading the Icarus deception by Seth Godin. So if you're looking for a little bit of strength and like chutzpah to really step into your life, I would suggest the Icarus deception by Seth Godin and then maybe read the myth after or before. But but it really speaks to how it's our birthright to live the life that we came here to live and and it's just really yeah, really inspiring and I don't know when this will air, but if anyone's interested in that reimagining work in zombie culture, I've put out a call on linkedin to adults who are not offended by that, but who are really interested in who are either leading the life they want to live because I'm looking to bring in examples of people who are really engaged in like really meaningful, risky work in the world. And also an opportunity for adults to learn like if they don't know what I'm talking about, there's also room for adults to learn more about that through this course, So that's another option. 00:36:54 Yeah, but I'm loving it. That is super cool. How fun and what a creative name, I love creative names and I think you shared some websites already where people can go to learn more information. Is there any other places that people should be able to go to connect with you or to connect with your school or anything we've talked about today. Sure. So people can go um, to springhouse.org. That's well you, you'll learn all about Springhouse there and then to learn about the design. Like I said sourceddesign.org. Springhouse is on facebook. Springhouse is on LinkedIn. I think we're Twitter and Instagram too. We are definitely on those things. And you can find me on LinkedIn too, I'm there. Awesome. Thank you so much Jenny for being on the podcast. Thank you so much Lindsay. This has been such a pleasure. Thank you for doing the work in the world that you're doing. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for listening amazing educators. If you loved this episode, you can share it on social media and tag me @lindsayblyons or leave a review of the show. 00:37:59 So leaders like you will be more likely to find it to continue the conversation. You can head over to our time for teachership facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries. Until next time leaders continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
11/22/2021 LfJ Series: Normalizing Critical Reflection: An Adaptive Leadership Approach to Data AnalysisRead NowListen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: We’ve talked about the benefits of shared leadership, how to measure stakeholder perceptions, and how to set up a sustainable multi-stakeholder governance structure. Now, let’s talk about the inner workings of structures once you’ve set them up. Shared leadership is best suited for tackling adaptive challenges. Adaptive leadership scholars contrast adaptive challenges with technical challenges. Whereas a technical challenge can be addressed by a straightforward solution (e.g., providing training on a tech tool or new curriculum), adaptive challenges require much deeper work. The essence of adaptive challenges can be captured in this sentence of Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky’s book: “Adaptive challenges are typically grounded in the complexity of values, beliefs, and loyalties rather than technical complexity and stir up intense emotions rather than dispassionate analysis,” (Loc. 1283). Adaptive challenges can take one or more of the following 4 types: our actions do not line up with what we say we value; we hold competing commitments; some things are deemed “unspeakable;” and we divert attention from the problem or displace responsibility onto someone else. At its best, shared leadership practices identify and dig into these adaptive challenges. How to tackle adaptive challenges in policy and practice. In stakeholder group or leadership team meetings or via data collection methods like surveys, interviews, or focus groups, we can ask each stakeholder the following questions:
Once you have gathered all of this information, you may want to identify common points of connection across stakeholder groups. Heifetz and colleagues call these “hidden alliances” as groups who may initially seem in opposition to one another’s proposed solutions may have a shared value or desired outcome that when illuminated can help them work together. How to tackle adaptive challenges in data analysis. When we analyze data, we often jump to conclusions. The ladder of inference, first proposed by Chris Argyris, details how data is interpreted, assumptions are formed, and actions are taken based on those assumptions. (This site explains the ladder in more depth using a visual and several guiding questions to support thoughtful interpretation of data.) At the bottom of this post, you can also grab my newest free resource, a worksheet that provides guiding questions and sample responses to support thoughtful data analysis. Strategic planning conversations are a fantastic opportunity to name and confront long-standing adaptive challenges. However, we usually miss those opportunities. Too often, strategic planning committees shy away from challenging our long-held beliefs and loyalties, which prolongs the problem and keeps us from getting 100% of students to succeed. As a result, we complacently suggest success looks like 80 or 85% of students succeeding. That’s unacceptable. On an earlier episode of the podcast, I spoke about how to effectively conduct a root cause analysis with the aim of surfacing hidden adaptive challenges. (You’ll find another free resource linked at the bottom of that post.) The key takeaway from that show is using Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky’s call to identify the habits, beliefs, and loyalties we are holding on to as a check for a true root cause. If we can identify and address those underlying habits, beliefs, and loyalties that need to shift, then the technical fixes we love to put in our strategic plans will actually have a chance to work their magic. Structures that Facilitate these Practices Engaging in critically reflective data analysis requires a clear and sustainable multi-directional flow of information as well as a mutual sense of trust and partnership. Facilitators who lead team meetings should be supported to create the space for generative conversation. (For more on this topic, check out Dr. Cherie Bridges Patrick’s ideas on creating the space for discourse and the related notion of safety in this episode.) Another structure that can remind stakeholder groups and leadership teams to routinely examine data and identify adaptive challenges is having a shared agenda template for all team meetings. This can be a loose outline of activities including prompts for data collection, analysis, and decision-making. The key is to have all stakeholders routinely practicing and honing these skills, which will ultimately help individuals and the larger community flourish. A Call to Leaders In Season One, Dr. Lejla Bilal spoke about adaptive leadership by saying: “It's engaging in a collective process of identifying value that others bring...Once we can lay down our egos, our experience, our authority, anything that creates power, and this distance of expertise, then we can have a real conversation about what truly are the challenges we're facing here and what sort of learning is required to even tackle these challenges.” Leaders, this work is essential. The processes through which we reach important decisions are just as important as the final decisions we make. In fact, research tells us a change in process will influence the decisions made for the better (Kusy & McBain, 2000). It requires humility and a dedication to growth, but if you can develop and nurture shared leadership structures at your school, the results can deliver a future we can’t even imagine on our own. Thanks for reading! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
11/15/2021 LfJ Series: A Justice-Centered Process for Justice-Centered Policies: How to Create Shared Governance StructuresRead NowListen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: A Justice-Centered Process for Justice-Centered Policies: How to Create Shared Governance Structures This month, we have been talking about the value of sharing leadership with stakeholders, particularly students. We have also talked about how to measure student perceptions of things like leadership opportunities and feelings of belonging at school. Today, let’s take a look at what shared governance could look like in practice. Specifically, we’ll talk about structures to put in place to systematize shared leadership and school decision-making. Structures support sustainability. Shared leadership will not work as a one-off initiative. If each time a policy is created or changed, parents, students and teachers are part of the process, the school will make better decisions and simultaneously reinforce that stakeholder voices are truly valued. The Principles Research has highlighted a number of practices to bear in mind when setting up structures of shared leadership. Here they are: Embrace radical collegiality. Fielding (2001) defined this term in relation to students, but it’s useful for our work with families and caretakers as well. It refers to the idea that educators learn and become more effective when they see students (and families) as partners and they share responsibility for student success. Educators have to see students and families as partners, fully capable of making thoughtful decisions about student learning. If we can’t do that, shared leadership will never work. Build a representative leadership team. Research has found groups larger than about 15 members can become unwieldy and ineffective (Calvert, 2004; Pautsch, 2010). As much as possible, stakeholders should be represented equally, with a slightly higher percentage of students to reduce the ratio of adults to students, which has been known to overwhelm and thus silence students (Osberg, Pope, & Galloway, 2006). Clarify the governance structure. Be very clear about how and to what extent power is shared. Identify which types of decisions will be made solely by the school’s administrator(s), and which types of decisions will be shared. Clarify what is needed to move forward with a decision (e.g., majority vote, consensus using a fist to five protocol). Also, determine leadership team members’ responsibility to communicate with the stakeholders they represent (e.g., weekly, only to get feedback on major policies). For example, the leadership team may draft a new policy and want to get feedback within one week from all stakeholder groups so they can vote to approve the policy the following week. Use stakeholder research to inform decisions. Decisions made by the shared leadership team should be based on data. There are all kinds of data streams. Perception data (collected via surveys, interviews, or focus groups) is often overlooked, but it’s incredibly valuable! It’s this type of data that tells us about stakeholders’ experience of the school (e.g., their sense of belonging or the extent to which they feel their voice is valued). Pedagogy. Scaffolding learning experiences such as learning research and leadership skills so that all stakeholders can practice and improve their leadership competencies is important both in a classroom and beyond. Members of the leadership team should receive the support needed to enable them to communicate regularly with the stakeholders they represent. This could take the form of tech tool training so all members are able to create and send out a survey using Google Forms or to communicate asynchronously using an app like Voxer or an LMS like Google Classroom. Meet consistently. Meetings should be held consistently, at the same time and in the same place (whether that’s the same physical location or the same virtual room) if possible, to avoid confusion that may exclude members from participation in the meeting. Many shared leadership initiatives have failed to thoughtfully involve students or families because meetings were held during school hours when classes were being held and family members were at work. Case Studies These principles can be developed and sustained in a variety of ways. I’d love to highlight a few examples of how schools and districts are putting these principles into action. Superintendent Darcy Fernandes of Massachusetts’s Althol-Royalston district called for all stakeholders (including family members, students, teachers, and community members) to join sub-committees for the district’s upcoming 5-year strategic planning process. You can hear directly from Superintendent Fernandes on this episode of the podcast. A high school in Pennsylvania offers constitutional courses in ninth grade. (Often, government courses are offered as a twelfth grade Social Studies course.) They do this so that students are able to fully engage in school governance. The school’s system of governance is modeled after the three branches of the United States government, with an executive branch composed of school staff and the legislative and judicial branches composed of a mix of students and staff. You can read more about this school’s structure here. As a principal, Taryn Givan used the Leader in Me framework which involved stakeholder-specific “lighthouse teams.” The student lighthouse team was made up of 3-5 representatives from each grade team (selected by the students), staff had their own lighthouse team, and families had a lighthouse team of their own as well. The program emphasized building individuals’ leadership skills as they navigated their roles in the lighthouse teams and the larger school experience. You can hear directly from Taryn Givan on this episode of the podcast. On an even broader scale, Boston Student Advisory Council (BSAC) is a student body that advises the Boston School Committee and works with school leaders on 3 priority issues: environmental justice; student rights and student voice; and school climate & culture improvement. Every BPS High School has at least 2 students on BSAC. Page 3 of this document highlights Boston Public Schools students’ roles in governance at the school, district, and state levels. Facilitating Partnerships It is a daunting task to bring hundreds if not thousands of voices together to make important school decisions. A 2016 Center on Education Policy study found that nearly 50% of teachers said their input is not considered in school-wide decisions and that they feel frustrated and excluded. Students who have historically experienced exclusion from school systems and their family members who may have been excluded from their children’s school and/or as students themselves, may be understandably skeptical of the idea of seeing school leaders and teachers as partners. Establishing trust and a sense of multi-stakeholder partnership will take time and effort to build, and it is well worth it. According to researchers Carson, Tesluk, and Marrone, shared leadership thrives when members share a commitment to a common goal, receive emotional support from one another, and feel their individual voices are valued. Furthermore, they found “When team members feel recognized and supported within their team (social support) they are more willing to share responsibility, cooperate, and commit to the team’s collective goals” (2007, pp. 1222-1223). To help you get started, check out my free worksheet: Setting Up Structures for Shared Leadership. Thanks for reading! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: This is the second episode in our 4-part Leading for Justice series. In the last episode, we talked about the impacts of shared leadership and the research on why we should invest in this approach to leadership. In this episode, we're talking about how students experience school and how we measure student perceptions and experiences. We have to ask our students how they experience school instead of assuming we know what the students are thinking or experiencing. What do you want to measure? First, it’s important to consider the constructs you want to measure as you select a survey or design your own. For example, how do you take the construct of belonging and actually turn it into a scale (i.e., a series of survey questions) that accurately measures a student’s sense of belonging? It's far more accurate to have 3-5 questions that ask about different aspects of belonging because asking just one question like, “Do you feel like you belong at school?” could lead to students interpreting “belonging” in different ways and just responding based on one aspect of belonging. Let’s look at an example. Panorama has a great student survey (it’s available on their site for free). Within this survey, they have several scales (topics), one of which is belonging. Their belonging scale consists of 5 questions that they asked that all measure belonging. Here they are, in order:
The survey builds a more complete understanding of what belonging is through this series of questions. It also enables us to look at the results and see differences in specific aspects of belonging. For example, I’ve worked with a number of school districts whose students reported feeling connected to adults, but not feeling respected by students. So, define the construct(s) you want to measure. If you’re creating your own survey, I find it helpful to do some research. What does the research say? What are the pieces of each of these constructs? How do researchers define it? Scholars have already gone through the process of curating all of the theory and research that's out there in their literature reviews. This makes them good sources of thoughtfully detailed, yet succinct definitions. Curate Scales from Existing Surveys If you are thinking about creating your own survey, you can borrow from existing surveys. I would pull complete scales (all items that measure a topic), rather than picking individual questions you like. To start, you can see if you want to borrow one or more of my scales (the personal, interpersonal, or organizational student leadership capacity building scales which you can get for free at the bottom of this post) or use one or more of Panorama’s scales. I definitely encourage you to add a few open ended questions too. While they are time intensive to sort through and analyze, open-ended questions are a great way to ask students for more detail about their item/scale responses or to invite them to share what actions the school could take to improve in a particular area (or what the school is doing well!) These are great questions to create on your own as you can personalize them for your context and the things you specifically want to learn about. Principles of Survey Design Now, let’s briefly talk about how to choose a quality survey or design your own quality survey. I’m going to walk us through some principles of survey design. Of course, you can use research reports which should include statistics that reflect how reliable and valid the survey is. However, reviewing some general principles feels more immediately practical than advising you to dive into the research data for each survey that’s out there. Panorama Education’s research team, under the leadership of Dr. Hunter Gehlbach, has created a wonderful survey design checklist. I’ve highlighted a few of their recommendations and added some thoughts of my own below. Survey Items (i.e., Questions) The survey should use scales, not single items to measure a construct. This means students respond to multiple items on the same topic instead of responding to one question on a topic. Avoid negative wording. A negatively worded question is one in which a response that “disagrees” is a positive thing. For an item like, “I rarely feel like I belong” we would say it’s a good thing for students to “strongly disagree.” However, it’s cognitively challenging for respondents to switch gears like this, and it’s harder to compute a score for the scale or survey because you will need to “reverse code” responses to these types of questions. Response Options Students should be asked to respond using a continuum of answers. This is ideal because you can then measure a more precise degree of favorability, agreement, or frequency (whatever it is you’re asking about). All response options should be labeled with words. Asking students to respond on a scale from 1 to 5 without saying what each number means is going to result in imprecise data. Survey Length and Question Order Keep it short. I aim for the survey to take no more than 10 minutes to complete. Ask the most important questions early in the survey. Survey fatigue is real. Make sure the most important questions are asked up front. Do not put demographic questions at the front of the survey; they should come at the very end. It’s important to ask about the survey topic (i.e., belonging, leadership opportunities) immediately, but you also want the survey to flow like an engaging conversation. Implementing the Survey Communicate the importance of the survey (i.e., it will help us improve your experience at school—and back it up by taking action on the results!). I suggest using the introductory/consent page of the survey to highlight why this is important and how you plan to analyze and take action based on the resulting data. Dedicate time within the school day to take the survey. If you’re surveying family members, dedicate time or space during an open house night to invite families to complete the survey. Finally, remind stakeholders to take the survey a few times during the “survey open” window. Many schools wonder how often to give out a survey (especially as they seek to measure growth over time). Survey stakeholders as often as you are able to take action on the results. That might look like once in the fall and once in the spring. We don’t want to survey students every month if we're not thoughtfully analyzing and taking action on that data every month. Asking students to fill out a survey and then never acting on the responses is just as bad as never giving a survey in the first place. Those are the basics of survey creation/evaluation and implementation. I'm so excited to see the survey you select or create and the data that you get from it! Please feel free to share in the comments below. Next week we're continuing with the series with an episode on how to create shared governance structures. The following week, we’ll be talking about data analysis through an adaptive leadership lens! If you’re not already subscribed to the podcast, now’s the time to do it, so you don’t miss the rest of the episodes in the series. Thanks for reading! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: I am so excited to welcome you to the Leading for Justice mini series! This is going to be a 4-part series where we explore the research on why shared leadership should be an area of focus and how to set up structures for shared leadership in our educational contexts. This episode provides an overview of the impacts of shared leadership, reviewing the existing research with a specific focus on the benefits of providing opportunities for meaningful student leadership. As a quick preview of the mini series: the next episode will focus on how to measure the constructs we will discuss today; in the third episode, we will look at specific structures that amplify and sustain student leadership (as well as what this actually looks like in schools and districts); and the last episode will focus on how to analyze the data you’ve collected through an adaptive lens to finally tackle long-standing challenges. Let’s dive into the research on how shared leadership practices impact a school and its stakeholders! Advances Equity To me, the first step to addressing the question, “How can we improve educational equity at our school?” is to implement shared leadership practices. A quick note on how I define shared leadership as different from the term “distributed leadership”: shared leadership is inclusive of all stakeholders (students, families, staff, teachers, administrators, community members) whereas distributed leadership has historically been about administrators sharing power with teachers. To address the needs of your specific community, you want to ask the various stakeholders in your community: What needs to change? Especially when we’re trying to address entrenched equity challenges, we can no longer look to the same group of people who have always been making decisions to come up with a solution that will work. It has to be a community effort. Shared leadership asks us to listen more than we talk, to collect data—including perception data (we’ll talk about this more in the next episode)—before rushing to take immediate action. Not A One-Time Initiative Shared leadership practices are also inherently sustainable. We can’t have a one-time conversation about policy and call it a day. Sharing leadership enables us to have ongoing conversations about policy and practice. Problematic dress codes, punitive discipline policies, how students are graded, all of this can be regularly reviewed and discussed within a shared leadership governance structure. Improved School Outcomes Research has found that organizations actually make better decisions for the organization when multiple stakeholders are involved in the decision making process (Kusy & McBain). If we want better outcomes for our schools, it's in our best interest to include student and family voices—who historically have not been part of the conversation—to make better policies. For example, working with students, families, and teachers to create a feminist, antiracist dress code will likely decrease the amount of lost learning time due to dress code violations. Improves Student Belonging Equity is closely tied to belonging. “School belonging is associated with a range of positive educational and developmental outcomes, including psychosocial health and wellbeing, prosocial behaviour and academic achievement, and transition into adulthood. However, an increasing number of students worldwide report not feeling a sense of belonging to their school. There is growing research evidence that strong student–teacher relationships can promote school belonging...Students who lack a sense of belonging are more likely to engage in problematic behaviour, suffer from mental illness, and experience low achievement. The most at-risk students are the ones who are already vulnerable, and these effects can continue into adult life.” (Allen et al., 2021) In short, belonging is positively correlated with good outcomes and negatively correlated with bad outcomes. Yet, there is a worldwide trend that perceptions of belonging are decreasing for students. That is concerning. The 2021 paper used data from before the COVID-19 pandemic, and I imagine this trend has only intensified since that data was collected. Additionally, this research found student belonging was linked to increased academic performance and motivation and a decreased likelihood of risky and antisocial behavior, school drop out, substance abuse, truancy, and depression. Belonging is critically important! Improving Belonging is Especially Critical for Students Who Have Been Marginalized On average across all 67 countries whose students completed the survey, researchers found socio-economically disadvantaged students were 7.7% less likely to report belonging. This difference was substantial in the United States and 11 other countries. First generation immigrant students were 4.6% less likely on average to report belonging. Girls were less likely to report belonging than boys. (Note: No data was reported for non-binary or gender non conforming students. I'm not sure if that was because they didn't ask for it, or they didn't report that data in the summary.) This difference of girls being less likely to report belonging than boys was particularly large in seven countries, of which the United States is one of them. Again, these are concerning trends. Certainly, there are a lot of different things that we can do. On an interpersonal or classroom level, we can nurture positive student-student and teacher-student relationships. At the school level, we can amplify student voices in a meaningful way to show students’ their experiences and ideas are valued and they are full, decision-making members of the school community. Youth Development and Academic Benefits Individual students who engage in meaningful leadership activities demonstrate improved peer and adult relationships (Yonezawa & Jones, 2007); positive self-regard, feelings of competence, engagement (Deci & Ryan, 2008) and academic performance (Mitra, 2004). When students act as representatives of various student groups, that also energizes other students that may not have a formal role or aren't engaging in that leadership opportunity, but they identify with the students who are. Feldman and Khademian (2003) called this “cascading vitality.” Essentially, student leaders who have historically experienced structural, political, and/or social marginalization inspire other students with similar identities and experiences to see the possibilities for themselves to lead as well. Preparing Students to Be Civically Engaged...Now and Later Baumann, Millard, and Hamdorf (2014) tell us “preparation for active citizenship was a foundational principle of public education in America from its beginning.” This is a really powerful reminder that the goal of education is to prepare our students for active citizenship, and active citizenship is partnering with others and leading change in our communities. At least, that’s what I think of when I think about civic engagement. We often try to prepare students to be future leaders after graduation. It's also really important both for the time students are in school as well as later in their lives that they have authentic opportunities to be civically engaged while they're still in school. What’s Next? The next question is: How can I create these opportunities for my students? What does this look like in practice? That’s what the next several episodes in the mini series are going to be about! But the first step is helping adults (and families students) see the benefits of shared leadership. All stakeholders need to see each other as partners, capable of making thoughtful decisions about student learning. As you prepare to implement the ideas and practices we'll talk about in the next 3 weeks, ask: Why are we doing this? What are the possibilities? This episode was created to give you the language and research to be able to share with stakeholders who may be hesitant to jump into a shared leadership approach. Feel free to share the episode directly with colleagues and families. The free resource for this episode is a research one-pager highlighting the key ideas from this episode. So, if it's easier to share a short fact sheet with stakeholders, grab that resource below! There’s a lot of different ways that we can make shared leadership possible and we’ll explore several case studies in the upcoming episodes. For example, student leadership skills can be built during academic courses or by training students to serve as members of youth court or be peer mediators. It could look like passing a student Bill of Rights like this one that was published by students across the United States. Don’t miss the next 3 episodes in the Leading for Justice mini series! If you are not currently subscribed to the podcast, subscribe today so you don't miss an episode. Thanks for reading! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
 Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Dr. Stephanie Ryan is a chemist with a Ph.D. in Learning Sciences and M.S. and B.S. in Chemistry. She enjoys creating superior educational products and content using her background in science. Although an academic at heart, Dr. Stephanie is passionate about learning through play. She is the owner of Ryan Education Consulting LLC as well as a mother and active “Instagrammer”. When it comes to learning all about science, Dr. Ryan has a great method for getting free resources. The first is her new blog she created where parents and teachers can pick from a wide range of topics to learn about. She also finds free worksheets and lessons on Teachers Pay Teachers and shares those links with her community. Everyone Uses Science Dr. Ryan truly believes that anyone can be a scientist if they are not kept from it. Because we have a school system where prejudice and bias exist, often, only certain students get encouraged to study in the STEM field. Science should be a right for everyone because it has such an important role in our everyday life. Science connects people to the world around them. When we learn about biology, we understand the different life forms that make up habitats and ecosystems. In botany or ecology we figure out what plants need and what impacts the earth. Not to mention, we have come so far as a society because of chemistry. Playing with energy and experimenting has given us many of our modern luxuries. To summarize, everyday we rely on science in some type of way. Science can also help us understand problems and solutions. Our species has carried a reputation for negatively changing the climate. The temperature of Earth is rising, more animals than ever before are hunted to extinction, our rivers are polluted, fires burn out of control, the list goes on...These are big problems, but thanks to researchers and scientists, we don’t have to give up yet. There are many ways we can avoid contributing to the roots of these issues. The mindset shifts that are needed to make science accessible to everyone is to stop overthinking how you’re going to teach science. Let it be easy. All students need to do is look around them. “I needed to take a step back and not be so academic about it—not like create bullet points for the things [my son] needs to know, but more like let’s let him explore his world and learn.” Tackling Mindset Shifts to Teaching Science Dr. Ryan explains that the pandemic basically necessitated a simple approach to science projects. Doing class from home meant that teachers had to really think about what materials everyone had access to in their home. None of it was complex, and that’s a trend she hopes will continue. Another thing that can help students not be intimidated by science is to spend more time talking about the “how” and “why” behind the “what”. Explaining things through a bunch of definitions and formulas is not the easiest way for students to be able to grasp those concepts. So a shift in curriculum and in teaching this subject can be great for overcoming mental barriers. Failure Is Part of the Process If we want to see these dreams become possible for everyone, we have to be willing to let our kids fail. This is certainly related to science and the natural tendency children have to experiment. When they don’t know the way to do something, they may not get it right at first. But eventually, through trial and error, through questioning, reasoning, and paying attention, they will get it. This is a much more rewarding experience than just handing them answers to the unknown. This is something we can model for students too because often, there are things we don’t have the answer to. And even though it is so easy to just look it up in a matter of seconds, it’s going to do much more for your own growth if you use your own brain and science skills to figure it out. This just goes to show that no matter what age you are, you never stop learning! Thanks for reading! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
I’m thrilled to announce that today my guests are two of my former students—Eliel and Rachel. In this discussion, they talk about their high school experiences as well as how things shifted in college. Imagining What School Could Be When I asked each of them what their dream for school is, Eliel responded by saying he wishes school would be a space where students could gain skills that would be useful for them in the real world. Although Math, Science, and English are important, there are so many more subjects that students never have the chance to explore such as learning about cryptocurrency, investing, and culinary skills. It makes him wonder, why can’t we expand student choice in that way? In Rachel’s opinion, a great school experience is one where there is a student-centered curriculum and enough materials in each class to make learning fun and rewarding. Having an advisor or counselor that can assist students with questions or issues is also something she’d like to see. It’s a great point because having systems in place to support students will mean all students, families, and members of the school would rally together to find solutions that work. In terms of creating a more personalized learning experience, Eliel imagines that teachers can make this happen by inviting more guest speakers who are experts in niche areas that interest students. For instance, if some students want to hear about what is needed to become a nutritionist, there could be a nutritionist coming to speak to students and answer their questions. Many schools have after-school programs. Creating special after-school programs where kids can learn to play an instrument or language or anything else is a big possibility as well. Pay Attention to Students' Interests & Partner With Them The idea of partnering with students still gets judged as radical but there is a growing number of schools that see the value in trying it. Students are far more likely to participate in the projects, lessons, and discussions when they have a say in how the rules and systems are constructed. Eliel can personally speak to this as someone who used to be in student government. In the past, when he and his group would have meetings with school staff, adult efforts to collaborate and not dismiss student ideas stood out to him. Rachel shared that teachers don’t have to worry about trying to pick the perfect lessons for students, just ask students what they’re interested in. Take the guess work out. In high school, she said it was easier to talk directly with the instructor but in college, there was less direct communication. For this reason, it’s a good idea to have assistants and tutors that can help students 1 on 1 if teachers have limited availability. “I would like for people to remember that when students go to school, they face so many difficulties and changes they have to go through. Some students may not have the same privileges as other students...So for me, I believe that schools have to create the systems that will benefit all students so that nobody will be left out.” Moving forward, the first step school leaders should take is really getting to know their students by listening more. Let students take the stage and see how much you can learn from them. From there, work with students to increase equity and introduce new policies that bring a wonderful educational experience to all. Thanks for reading! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
 Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Dr. Megan Sweet is a single mom who has been in education for more than 25 years as a teacher, school administrator, and school district leader. She co-hosts The Mindful Schools Podcast and The Awakening Educator Podcast, and recently authored “An Educator’s Guide For Using Your 3 Eyes”. According to Dr. Megan Sweet, the big dream in the field of education is to have schools that are more inclusive and empowering to students. Currently in the U.S. there’s a lot of systemic racism and low access to opportunities for students. This is a direct reflection of what’s happening in the rest of the world. In addition, white supremacy convinces teachers and school leaders that they must be constantly in work mode. But if educators and students share their stories with others, then there can be a movement of bringing awareness to these issues and inspiring change. Teachers Deserve Much More What Dr. Sweet sees in this country is that educators are not of high importance or not a priority to the authorities in society. She says this is evident from the lack of respect, the low pay, not giving them a voice at the table, and other factors. Teachers are the backbone of a well functioning community. So when they suffer, you will see the ripple effects. But when all teachers are heard, respected, and given enough resources to shine, the whole system of education will blossom. So how do we make this happen? Dr. Sweet believes in the idea of doing inner work as well as making changes on a school-level. First, we have to be able to uproot our own ingrained beliefs, biases, and privileges and ensure that we are not passing those on to our students. Taking better care of our needs and wellbeing is the next step since we can’t pour from an empty cup. As humans, we are wired to pick up moods, body language, and other cues. If you are teaching from a state of being stressed out, everyone in class will feel that. The environment no longer feels safe and it’s much harder for their minds to focus on learning. Another thing that can trigger this effect is when a student feels excluded or “othered”. When it’s all laid out, it’s quite clear that focusing on what you can work on within yourself actually does affect those around you. Once we are successful in that phase, we can work with others to take on those larger scale issues. This is not to say that teachers aren’t doing enough already. There is so much great work that goes into our day to day roles. Following these tips aren’t meant to add more to our plates. In fact, it’s shown that these things can set us up for more rest and more time. Get Back to Self Care Dr. Sweet recommends filling this extra time with something that does not feel like work to you. Get back to doing activities you love without the guilt. When we do things that bring us joy, we don’t resent our work because it’s no longer “preventing” us from these activities. In addition, it’s simple to connect back to your breathing in the busiest times of the day. Tapping into that mindfulness is so helpful for self-regulation. When you’ve reached the end of the work day, remind yourself to step away. Leave the work at work and come back to it at another time. These are all centered around self care and why it’s so important. Self care is a habit many of us have fallen out of and it’s time we jump back in with eagerness. “We need to actually be unapologetic about leaving work at work. There’s always going to be work to do. It never stops. So learning to step away and learning to unplug, disconnect, and have our own lives...it’s fundamental.” Unlearning What We've Been Told Dr. Sweet recalls how a few years ago, a school district was having their welcome event for the start of school. At the event, two principals shared their strategies on how they create highly effective school teams. One of the principals stated that they would intentionally not consider hiring any teachers who prioritized taking care of themselves and having boundaries in place. Indeed, this is an outrageous remark. But the reaction was just as surprising. All the other school leaders broke out in applause after hearing this. Unfortunately, this is further evidence that we are taught that our own wants, needs, feelings come last if we want to be a teacher. But this should not have to be the norm. It’s heartbreaking to see teachers and faculty overworking themselves to exhaustion just to prove their worth. Therefore, it’s important that we talk about what school leaders can do for teachers and faculty so that they don’t get pushed into this unhealthy zone. It’s critical you as a principal or leader unlearn that belief that was ingrained so that you can stop the cycle. Then model that behavior for teachers and encourage them to take those breaks and streamline processes. Over time, you’ll find that teachers become even more efficient and productive once they are more satisfied and taken care of. Thanks for reading! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Do You Tell Kids the Whole Truth? We all tend to use a different “filter” when speaking to kids versus adults. When you were young, you probably remember adults sugarcoating topics for you too. In a way, it makes sense because children and young teens are still developing their emotional regulation capacity. Many people want to keep children protected from having to deal with the kind of fear, worry, and loss of innocence that they deal with. The problem is, it can be hard to reach consensus on how much information we should share. Why We Shouldn't Keep Students in the Dark I believe that avoiding hard topics at all costs is not the way to go. Refusing to acknowledge traumatic events and topics does not give your student a chance to understand why and how such things could occur. It’s important to emphasize the fact that students can easily pick up on cues when something is wrong. Research shows that by age 2-4, children are already aware of social constructs and internalizing bias around identities like race and gender. “If we avoid it, there is this inherent thing that students will pick up, which is saying that something is wrong with people who deviate from the mythical norm—this idea of a white cisgendered male who is heterosexual, who is Christian, who is middle-upper class, etc.” Knowing that, you can be the one to help students navigate conversations that bring up all these emotions like fear or anger or sadness. Does that make you nervous? Even as an adult, you may still experience all the same emotions and uncertainty. I know I do. Many issues today do not have clear answers and there is still so much progress to be made. Despite this, we will march forward because justice requires us to commit and show up as best we can. In order to do the work well, I suggest you create some space in your class time that you use to foster better relationships with students. Making eye contact, asking questions, being willing to learn about another culture—these are all things within your power. We Won't Let Discomfort Get in the Way Secondly, I’ve seen discomfort hold back white teachers and principals from engaging in these talks. Bringing up these topics as a white person can feel very uncomfortable because we either don’t want to be labeled as “racist” or “biased” or we don’t want to face the guilt that comes up from facing our own privileges and roles in these systems of oppression. If I’m being completely honest, it’s inevitable that you will get it wrong. You may not correct a "microaggression," you may say something that causes harm, you may forget to give students a voice in something. And it will be okay as long as you are willing to own up to them and continue to learn from these mistakes. You don’t need perfection in this work, you want progress. “We want to be mindful when we invite students to talk about things, that can be traumatic for them or that are based in historical trauma, that that can be harmful. It can be if not done well...But what we want to talk about today is: How do we move forward with this work, enabling us to have these conversations in a way that is generative, perhaps even healing, and not increasing trauma for students?” When Sharif El-Mekki read an article written by a white educator that posed the question “Are white teachers still welcome in non-white charter schools?” He decided to respond with his own article which said “Yes, anti-racist ones and those striving to be anti-racist. The only prerequisites: they must understand, contrary to what some insist, that we do not live in a post-racial society, they must be able to handle candid feedback, even about their colorblindness and racism.” El-Mekki also brilliantly pointed out the false dichotomy in the article that claimed you can either be an effective teacher or an anti-racist one. In reality, you need to be practicing anti-racism to be an effective teacher (and leader). Traumatic topics need to be addressed using an approach that supports students. When opening up these topics for discussion, allow emotions to come up without censoring them. Allow personal experiences to be shared. Validate students’ identities. Students who may not directly relate to that topic can talk about what they can do to support students who have experienced this trauma. If all of this feels like a lot, don’t worry, you will improve over time. By committing to anti-racist practice and taking informed risks (e.g., starting these important conversations), you’re going to see so many benefits in your students, their achievements, and your own personal development. Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
 Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Daniel Bauer has mentored thousands of school leaders through his Better Leaders Better Schools blog, books, podcast, and powerful coaching experiences. His newest book “Mastermind: Unlocking Talent Within Every School Leader” is one we’re talking about today. Past & Present Daniel Bauer’s freedom dream is one where everyone gets a free, high-quality experience in education. He recalls the school he used to attend as a kid had hidden inequity that not every student noticed. But Daniel did. He wondered why students that didn’t look like him were missing in his classes. Now as an adult, he realizes that there are actions we can take to get more diversity and more equity in the classroom. We can dismantle those systems that are prioritizing some students over others. One step we can take towards a better quality education is to be more aware of our own bias. None of us are free of bias and that’s an important thing to recognize. We can choose to be responsible for changing our ways and work on eliminating old biases while we look out for new ones. Another thing Daniel recommends doing is to pick up some new books to read. Reading for professional development is fun and a valid way to grow the mind. Try out “Unconscious Bias” by Tiffany Jana for practical advice and activities. Speaking of book recommendations, let's talk about Daniel’s new book. Why a Mastermind Will Change Your Life It is called “Mastermind: Unlocking Talent Within Every School Leader”. His book reimagines what professional development for school administrators looks like in order to meet the needs of all school leaders. After reading this, you may be thinking “How did I ever go this long without jumping in a mastermind group?”. Usually, as teachers, we put many others before ourselves because we want to make a positive impact. But did you know that your impact could be exponentially bigger by working with a coach who specializes in what you do and what you’re trying to master? Just to be clear, a mastermind refers to a group of people, usually in the same field, who meet regularly to help each other succeed. Having mentorship through a mastermind is highly beneficial for a number of reasons. The first is that there are members who will relate to your own goals or troubles. They’ll understand what your work environment is like. Secondly, the coach in the group can help you identify areas for growth and what could bring more success for you and your students. Finally, anyone can give you tools and help you implement it. You’ll get the support you need while learning new skills. The value of that is completely worth the price of coaches and masterminds. “I have a motto that I live by: Everybody wins when you get better. You owe it to your community to do that too.” Powerful Strategies + Diverse Thinking In Daniel’s mastermind program, he focuses on what he calls the ABCs of powerful professional development: Authenticity, Belonging, and Challenge. Frequently, leaders in the mastermind will have to take turns facilitating and leading the group. It presents a good challenge while also amplifying more voices. The group will also read books together and discuss the strategies presented. The great thing about masterminds is that you get to present your questions and problems to your group and you receive feedback that—speaking from my own mastermind experience—is game-changing. Imagine getting a solution to something after weeks or months of struggling with it on your own. Everyone brings something new to the group because of their personal experiences and knowledge. Curious on whether it’s all worth it? Well, Daniel shared that one of his mastermind students had incredible success after executing what he learned in the mastermind. Scott, who was in the mastermind, heard all about “sticky core values”. He decided to apply that method with his own school and said “It changed everything.” His school, already performing well, soared to excellence because of those ideas from the mastermind coming to life. “The sticky core values is just one thing he’s taken action on, regarding what I teach in the mastermind; But he does that time and time again. And you can see just from a career trajectory, right, that it’s working for him. So that’s exciting.” To close, masterminds are not a new concept. They’ve been around for centuries. Some of the most successful people in history have been a part of a mastermind. Whether or not that term was used, the concept remains the same. Something you could do at this moment to get the ball rolling is to set an intention on how you want to develop yourself this upcoming year. I hope this episode has inspired you to come together with others and make some amazing strides in your life and work. Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
 Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Dr. Lorea Martinez is the founder of Heart in Mind Consulting—a company dedicated to helping schools and organizations integrate Social-Emotional Learning in their practices, products, and learning communities. She has worked with schools, districts, and organizations to guide SEL implementation efforts, including training teachers and leadership teams. An educator who has worked with children and adults internationally, Dr. Martinez is currently a faculty member at Columbia University Teachers College educating principals in SEL. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and two daughters. SEL Considers the Whole Human Isn’t it a bit odd that traditionally in school, children and young adults are thought of only in relation to their performance or their productivity? If you feel like students deserve spaces in school to feel seen, heard, and supported, it’s time to bring in more social emotional learning. SEL gets teachers, admin, and leaders to practice seeing students as well as themselves as a whole human with needs. As a result, students who have their emotional and mental wellbeing taken care of show more progress and achievements in their academic goals. Aligning Our Teaching with Students' Emotions Social emotional learning is becoming more widely used in schools nowadays because the research really shows that learning and emotional development have a strong connection. Dr. Martinez’s book goes through all aspects of SEL including the misconceptions people have. One of those misconceptions is that it only applies to students. But students learn from teachers and teachers set the best example when it comes to talking about their emotions and what tools they are using to process. So it’s critical that we model those lessons so that our students can employ these skills as well. One challenge for educators is to bring out students' curiosity. Curiosity is a complementary emotion for the classroom because it means the mind is open and ready to receive information. Boredom however, is combative to receiving information. So when conducting lessons, you really have to ask yourself whether you’re aligning the emotions you want your students to have with your pedagogy and the type of content you’re sharing. “The brain doesn’t pay attention to things we don’t care about. And that is not students “being difficult”. That is just neuroscience, right?..So a way to counteract that, as a teacher, is really connecting what you are teaching with students' interests, with students’ passions, and then providing a choice.” You can engage in more equity using SEL because you’re more likely to be aware of social and emotional dynamics and structures that are disproportionately affecting certain students. SEL is naturally going to get us closer to social justice and equity. More educators would advocate for more opportunities for disadvantaged students. More students would be able to show up as their best selves every day. When it comes to classroom policies and school-wide changes, ask yourself whether these things are really supporting student success. If it’s not or if it’s making it harder for students to succeed, it doesn’t belong there. “SEL is not a destination...SEL is the vehicle to get us somewhere...And I believe that that place should be infused with equity and social justice.” If we can get more schools to recognize the holistic needs of students, they’ll naturally be able to turn their attention to excelling in their projects and classes. Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
 Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: On the show this week, I am talking with Dr. Sara Frost, optimist, scholar, and program operations manager for a non-profit. We are discussing what being an optimist means, the mindset shift needed to remain optimistic when faced with challenges, and why play-makers are so important for children. Playmakers Make Learning Special A “Playmaker” is a teacher who builds life changing relationships with kids and who helps them shine. Dr. Frost says that her big dream grounded in the critique of injustice is getting to a place where every single child has access to a high quality education. This includes providing them with the right tools and a Playmaker to help them accomplish their dreams. In addition, organizational leaders have a responsibility to promote optimism whenever possible because optimism is a magic ingredient that drives positive results. “If we have an environment where people feel like they can be optimistic, both the organization and the employees can benefit.” If you’re wondering where to find these people called “playmakers”, you won’t have to go far. Any coach, childhood education professional, teacher, or anyone else that works with kids can be a playmaker. We all have the potential to give children an environment that helps them feel empowered and ready to learn valuable skills. Don’t forget that optimism is what distinguishes these individuals as a true playmaker. To be a more optimistic person, there’s a certain reframing that needs to happen within. We need to start looking at the glass as half full even when things aren’t perfect. “Creating a world where optimists and optimism can exist is practicing that reframe. We should question, get curious, and think about how we can turn “I can’t” into “I can”.” Toxic Positivity vs Optimism Toxic positivity is something that can get mixed up in the thoughts around what it means to be more optimistic. Toxic positivity is the belief that no matter how dire or difficult a situation is, people should maintain a positive mindset. This approach will invalid the full spectrum of human emotions and experience. But optimism itself is the ability to see, feel, and focus on the good in yourself, in others, and in the world around you regardless of the circumstances. Optimism doesn’t want you to overlook the hard things. You need to acknowledge that they’re there in order to think about how to overcome them. So recognize the obstacles, allow yourself to feel whatever emotions come through, and then find the good. Focus on what you can change or control. One of the ways in which everyone was challenged mentally and emotionally recently was the start of COVID last year. 2020 was a difficult year for so many of us. There was a lot of fear, anxiety, trauma, and grief as this virus impacted families and took lives. Not to mention, indoor quarantining was a drastic change in our routines. The fear is still there as we attempt to open things up. Just remember that taking care of your body, mind, and spirit will make all the difference when wanting to stay optimistic. Be sure to make optimism a practice not just an idea or a wish. Practice putting a new lens on the situations or thoughts coming up. It gets easier the more you do it. In addition to the free "Get to Good" worksheet shared below, Life is Good Playmakers is offering a discount for listeners to get $10 off the Playmaker 101 course. Use the code: TEACHERSHIP21. Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Welcome to season 2 of the “Time for Teachership” podcast! Our first season has been a blast to produce and record. There are so many great moments from the show to look back on. Our first episode ever is still the one with the most downloads. If you haven’t heard it, it’s called “Creating a Culture of Coaching with Romain Bertrand” and I highly recommend you give it a listen. If you’re curious about Season 2’s upcoming content, you can expect to hear about efficient planning practices, shared leadership, and how to take better care of ourselves as leaders. I’m planning on decreasing the amount of solo shows to make even more space for new voices. We’re going to be bringing on more leaders, students, and families alongside the coaches and teachers to better represent the diverse roles of our audience. Students and families are at the core of what makes a school unique and it’s about time we include them in big discussions regarding education, equity, and curriculum. I’m so excited to see what you all think of Season 2. Thank you so much for supporting this show. Please leave a review so I can keep delivering episodes you love. See you next week!
 Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: For those of you who haven’t heard any previous episodes with Dr. Cherie Bridges Patrick, she is the founder of Paradox Cross-Cultural Consulting, Training and Empowerment, LLC. She is a racial justice consultant, leadership coach and psychotherapist. She works with social workers, counseling professionals, educators, and organizational leaders. And she uses a trauma focused lens in her work to build leadership capacity for racial justice. Cherie holds a PhD in leadership and change, and her research is in racism, denial, discourse, racial justice, social work and the helping professions like education. Healing Brings Us Closer to Justice Dr. Cherie Bridges Patrick is so inspiring for her continuous work in healing as a means of social justice. She knows that getting to justice comes from multiple avenues. She was particularly drawn to what healing could do for people dealing with intense feelings and trauma after experiencing racism, violence, discrimination, and more. She said healing is a necessary step in order to get to liberation because you can’t truly enjoy liberation for yourself if you aren’t healing from all the systems of oppression that seek to control you. Trauma & Polyvagal Theory One fascinating topic that Dr. Patrick has studied lately is polyvagal theory. Polyvagal theory, developed by Stephen Porges, is a theory that the vagus nerve serves an important role in emotional regulation, social behavior, and fear response. Trauma has a connection to this nerve, and our nervous system overall, because of the way that trauma shapes us and our communication with others. When someone has trauma, they feel a loss of safety which can prevent them from being able to open up to others. The challenge for teachers, parents, and community members is helping create the conditions for those individuals to feel safe not just in the environment, but in their presence. “When we can understand our own sense of safety, when I can feel safe in my body, in my skin, my nervous system is regulated...that is what I can do to contribute to safety. Stephen Porges talks about how safety is not just the absence of threat, it is the presence of cues of safety. Right, and so that means we have to understand the cues of safety—the cues that can contribute to people feeling safe and then be able to embody those.” How to Be Someone That Signals Safety It’s time to rethink that notion that we can create a “safe space” for others. It’s not for us to decide if an environment/group feels safe, right? What we can work on is our own discourse and body language. This requires us to get in touch with our own nervous systems. Paying attention to your breathing, intonation, and more is a great practice that will help you and your fellow school community. Bringing awareness into your body as you navigate through the day could help you figure out what things get you from one state to another. Drinking some more water, doing deep breathing, massaging your muscles, getting out of limiting beliefs—these are all potential ways you could enter into a different state with more calm and ease. Teachers and leaders have the opportunity to co-regulate with students and display cues of safety that students will need to perceive if they want to talk about trauma and injustices. If you want to start striving for this today, learn more about your autonomic nervous system. Get a good idea of how it functions. Then you can read about the body’s three main responses that are dependent upon the input that the brain receives from the situation/environment around a person. To dive deeper into learning how to engage students, I have great news! You can register for my free 1 hour masterclass HERE or below. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now so you can create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Why We Constantly Forget Our Goal to Not Do Too Much This year there is one thing we can all do to improve our mental health and performance—take back more time and energy for ourselves. Who here can’t help but be an overachiever? Who finds themselves doing it all no matter how many times you’ve said “okay one thing at a time”? I bet almost all of us would be raising our hand right now. And it makes sense. Doing too much is almost...too easy. I admit, I have a history of overextending myself. As a motivated teacher, business owner, coach, partner, etc, there are a lot of opportunities to join new initiatives, committees, and projects. When a friend or school tells me about the work this one organization is doing, the excitement interrupts the voice of reason. Excitement is a big motivator for us. We get excited when we get the chance to learn something new because we are life-long learners. It’s the excitement to get loud and disrupt oppression that gets us on board. It’s the excitement of imagining our students coming to life when they enter our class that gets us to experiment with new strategies over and over until we get it right. While it’s great to see how passionate teachers and leaders are, it’s not so great to see how overcommitting is affecting our minds and bodies over time. Every time I have overextended myself, I’ve noticed a sharp decline in my energy and a limitation in the capacity I have for the people I serve. There’s a set of phrases a friend once shared with me: "I'm having a rope day” or "I'm having a string day”. On “rope days”, there is room for doing more and feeling like tasks are attainable. Other people can hang on the rope with me. But on “string days”, all of that is gone. There’s nothing more we can give because we’re exhausted and the string will break if anyone else grabs on. It’s my hope that all of us will be able to have many more rope days than string days from now on. We have to learn how to stop letting it get to that point of burnout. We have to take some preventative measures. This year, it’s a big year of transition coming back from the pandemic and figuring out how to stay innovative with your teaching. There is more pressure to support your students as they navigate these times. Colleagues may also turn to us for feedback or to step in when something comes up. So as you can see, the entire school stands to benefit from you showing up as your best self. My #1 Tip For Staying Your Best Self Here’s how I suggest planning: Rather than thinking about what needs to be taken off your plate, start with an empty plate and go from there. You have a limited capacity which you can visualize as a small plate with only enough room for a few options. What you decide to put on that plate is very important; It could be something that checks off multiple boxes (like a food that has carbs, fats, and protein) if it’s going to take up valuable room on your plate. The things that I found most important to check off in my day were: supplying my students with information through a resource, making space for them to process that information, and then giving them an opportunity to apply that knowledge to some sort of project/assessment. As leaders, we need to have flexibility and be responsive to students and colleagues. For you, this could look different. It doesn’t matter why you choose to put this one thing on your plate instead of that other one because you see the value in focusing on that and that’s what will drive good results. “Making sure we have the ability to be flexible when challenges arise and that we're able to take time to listen to students, to colleagues, to families, is critical not just for individuals, but also for community and collective well being. That's what the school year calls for; and to do this well, we need to have only the essentials on our tiny little buffet plates.” Don't Be Afraid to Communicate with Your Leaders Now you may be wondering how you can have this freedom to choose when leaders in the school are telling you to work on A, B, and C. I believe that there are ways to compromise if we’re all willing to be flexible. The things we usually expect teachers to do like grading, emailing, and planning could be automated in some ways. Leaders, make sure you are making time to get feedback from teachers about what they want to change or take off their plate. See how you can support them whether that’s hiring to fill in gaps, outsourcing to another role or eliminating unnecessary processes. My last tip is to have a counselor available for educators to go to during the work day. This is an amazing way to promote their wellbeing. Make sure you sound off below how you are planning to have more rope days this year! To dive deeper into learning how to engage students, I have great news! You can register for my free 1 hour masterclass HERE or below. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now so you can create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Darcy Fernandes has been working in K-12 education for 25 years. She started her career as a social studies teacher. Ms. Fernandes then moved to become principal of Roosevelt Middle School in New Bedford where she stayed for 5 years. Her major accomplishment in this position was establishing the Amigo Center for parent support with particular emphasis in interpretation and care for ELL families. In addition, Ms. Fernandes began a program called Bridges with the President of Bridgewater State University, 150 students each year received college readiness training and academic support in math, science and ELA. Students recruited for the program were identified as at-risk students. The program is still in existence today. Ms. Fernandes is now the Superintendent of the Athol Royalston Regional School District where she is working to turnaround two schools within the district. Ms. Fernandes has spent her career working in districts with high numbers of low-income families and many of the districts she has worked in have had a high number of minority and ELL students. Ms. Fernandes has come from a background of family members who have advocated for civil rights. It is her honor and privilege to continue this legacy. She is not afraid to speak up for the rights of individuals even when it may not be popular. Treat the Root of the Problem One of the biggest misconceptions Darcy hears about helping low income students or students of color is to keep providing resources and funding without trying to fix the root of the problem. She sees this as inefficient because racism and inequity are continuing to harm multiple schools, teachers and students for every ONE that is supplied with resources. In her mind, it’s a matter of dismantling these structures of oppression if we want things to change for the future. Although Darcy attended an integrated elementary school, the systems were not set up to support the needs of all students. She remembers feeling ‘othered’ along with other students of color. There was a lack of care that went into teaching BIPOC students compared to white students. It wasn’t until college that she had a teacher who wasn’t white. There was no one that she could relate to in a sense. “So for me, I went into education with the understanding of ‘what were these structures about and how could I work to change them?’ so that more kids feel inclusive in school.” We Can Fix This Together Darcy has found through her work that time and time again, there’s a disparity in the funding that schools receive. The schools with white students that come from middle to high class backgrounds typically receive more money than the schools with lower income students. Not to mention, there are AP classes and college level classes being offered only to certain students without any opportunity to help other students master the skills needed to take those courses. Another issue that’s been identified is the lack of inclusivity in textbooks and the lack of diverse thinking. There is always more than one way to approach a subject or event, so why only teach one way of thinking? Being a teacher or school leader who wants to help their students of color shouldn’t stop at the school level. We need to embrace an activist role in order to really take down the structures that hold back many of our students. This means advocating for better policy on a district level or a community/city level. So if we want to bridge the gaps and create better schools for everyone, these are some of the issues we need to focus on. Sharing leadership and involving the community to become part of the solution was a no-brainer for Darcy. She started with having instructional leadership teams go to various schools to observe what was working and what wasn’t. These teams would then meet to talk about what needed to be changed. Recently, she has invited any teacher, student, family member, or community member to join the district's strategic planning process. She believes that giving everyone a seat at the table makes it much easier to figure out why things are happening the way they are. It is also good to have multiple perspectives on a matter so that the plans made in the future minimize the bias. Deciding how to teach during COVID building closures was one example of how the community has collectively decided how to move forward. “We found a really good solution that worked for everyone. And we kept the majority of our kids engaged the whole school year because of that.” What is the Data Telling You? When you pay attention to the data, it tells you a story. It shows you who’s benefiting, who isn’t and so on. Each person in a community will interpret it differently and that’s why we need multiple perspectives at the decision-making table. It’s possible to use those different ideas to form a plan that will work for everyone; a plan that incorporates multiple pieces and voices is just what a school needs to help it’s students thrive! To dive deeper into learning how to engage students, I have great news! You can register for my free 1 hour masterclass HERE or below. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now so you can create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
This is the sixth and final installment of the Curriculum Series. We are talking with Laura Cruz who is an avid reader who has been immersed in stories her whole life. Laura’s motivation comes from setting the stage for authentic human connection and learning. She is the senior manager of Learning and Development at BetterLesson where she designs onboarding, training and feedback systems for over 100 coaches who deliver workshops to teachers on topics ranging from blended learning to anti-racist practices.
Why Students Need A Way to Tell Their Story Laura’s experience with helping students write their story comes from a required autobiography class she started teaching. The course's mastery-based projects asked each student to write their own three-chapter autobiography/memoir, a literary analysis paper of a memoir published by an author, and one art component. The completed projects were then presented to a panel of teachers that were outside of the class. Those teachers would then use mastery based grading to determine if the student had mastered the skills. Laura said “My dream for this course was really about allowing my students to figure out their identity or reflect on their identity and really dig into what does that mean and who am I?” It is a special thing to be able to hear or read another person’s story whether it comes from a well-known author or a student. Student’s need the opportunity to tell their story. Creating a memoir is one way to achieve that. When a student tells their story, they get the power to decide what they want to talk about. Keep in mind there are so many identities to young adults other than “student”. They have to grapple with all of their identities and which ones have the biggest impact on their life. They have to determine what belongs in the story as something that’s shaped their journey. Another benefit of dedicating class time to this is it fosters compassionate relationships between students. Classmates are usually very supportive of each other’s work and they can relate to the physical and mental work it takes to produce a piece like this. They can relate to the walls that they come up against at certain points in the project. Looking For Something Better Something that was very important to Laura in teaching was to give better opportunities to her students who were from low income families and marginalized. As a white woman, she felt a responsibility to acknowledge the privileges she had compared to her students and find a way to bring a high quality learning experience to the class. She said being a part of a consortium school is great because these types of leaders look for the best way to help a student learn not just the traditional way. For example, they’ve recognized how unfair standardized testing is to students and pivoted to a better method of assessment. Creating the autobiography course took some backwards planning in order to set it up for success. She had to start with visualizing what that final literary paper would look like and what students would need to demonstrate at the end. Then it was a matter of naming chapter requirements and adding in things students could read to get inspiration. The middle would be all about working on things to build sentence writing skills, topics, etc. Then there would need to be teaching on different writing styles with examples so that students could decide which kind they wanted. Laura used an activity throughout the course called memory moments. “We really dig into the writing style and then they would write in response with their own story so that they had all these drafts that we could then figure out okay what are the three stories you really want to tell in this final autobiography piece.” As students finished off this course, the feedback that they shared was a sign that overall, the course was serving them well. Students acknowledged how it was more of a challenge than expected. But getting through the challenges pushed them to grow. Other students shared how they enjoyed using their creativity in writing these stories. They enjoyed putting whatever spin they wanted on it whether it was funny, adventurous, touching, or something else. Human connection is an element that isn’t found in just any class, that’s what makes this one particularly special. To dive deeper into learning how to engage students, I have great news! You can register for my free 1 hour masterclass HERE or below. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now so you can create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
Listen to the episode using the above player or by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: Make it simple with a unit arc During my third year of teaching, I remember first hearing about unit arcs while sitting with my curriculum coach at the time. I was amazed at the possibility of using a handful of protocols again and again to save me so much time and energy as a teacher. As you’ll see, making your own unit arc doesn’t have to be scary. But it is a critical part of creating your own curriculum plans for your class. If you’re wondering what a unit arc is, it’s the pattern of purposeful learning experiences in which students engage throughout a unit. Establishing a pattern makes it predictable and simple for you to do each year. For a successful learning experience, make sure it is student-centered. The teacher should minimize their involvement while giving students the reins in solving challenges. Purposeful Protocols So what are the protocols that make up a unit arc? Behind each protocol should be a purpose. The four protocol purposes that I thought of after reading El Education’s protocols are as follows:
You definitely don’t have to come up with a hundred protocols. I recommend that you choose between 3 to 5 protocols using these 4 purposes. “Once I developed my own unit arc for my courses, I no longer spent hours determining which activity to prepare for each lesson.” Unit arc examples Unit arcs will vary from subject to subject, grade to grade, and teacher to teacher. Here’s one example of a unit arc used for a social studies class: First lesson—hook, Second lesson—establishing prior knowledge of students, Third lesson—broad overview, Fourth lesson—primary sources, Fifth—discussion, case studies, and so on. The type of unit arcs I create and help others make, focus on creating interest and engagement from students. These types of unit arcs provide students the chance to create meaningful work that tackles current issues in the present. I also believe that part of connecting students with these projects comes from allowing students to talk about these projects with an authentic audience. A great way to finish off a unit arc is with time for reflection. Students have the opportunity to consider what went well and get some helpful feedback on their work. Rarely do I find a bored student when using these unit arcs. The reason is that engaging content combats boredom. When students are engaged, they are building relationships with other students, staff, and faculty. They also take more ownership and improve communication skills and confidence. Battling boredom with engaging content is particularly if your classes are still being taught virtually. Trying to keep a student engaged while they’re watching you through a screen is challenging, and these unit arcs will make a world of difference. My suggestion for you now is to take the protocols that your students have already been loving and start building out that arc. To dive deeper into learning how to engage students, I have great news! You can register for my free 1 hour masterclass HERE or below. For more, check out my Curriculum Boot Camp course or the “Just the Protocols” module now so you can create your own project-based units grounded in justice in no time at all! Continue the conversation below in the comment section and join our community of educational visionaries on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.
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AuthorLindsay is a educator and leadership coach who helps teachers develop engaging project-based curricula, fosters student and teacher voice, and works to advance racial and gender equity and culturally responsive practice. Archives
January 2022
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