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In this episode, host Lindsay talks about discourse as change leadership. She dives into the research-backed best practices and theoretical frameworks that help drive meaningful change, especially when facing staff resistance.
Drawing on the work of John Morgan and adaptive leadership scholars like Heifetz, Lindsay emphasizes the importance of constructive disorientation and staff-led discourse to address resistance and foster sustainable change. Why? Adaptive challenges, as defined by Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsy, are “ typically grounded in the complexity of beliefs, values, and loyalties rather than the technical complexity and stir up intense emotions rather than dispassionate analysis." To then address these multi-faceted challenges, educators and teams must bring empathy and strategic discourse to their problem-solving efforts, rather than technical methods alone. Ignoring the intense emotions that come up only does a disservice to your team in finding meaningful solutions. What? When faced with adaptive challenges — or “messy” challenges, as Lindsay calls them — comes down to having a plan that enables leaders to lead with confidence, honor staff humanity, and stay true to the pursuit of educational justice in the face of resistance. Here are some tips that will help you begin this process:
Lindsay dives into all of these tips, using scholarly research to back up best practices for leaders and teams. And, remember, investing in this work not only helps address the current adaptive challenge at hand, but also builds capacity to address new ones in the future. Final Tip Align assessments with the organizational values of growth and risk-taking so that teachers and educators are not penalized for prioritizing change and new ideas. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Reframing Discussion Prompts with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 267 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: To another episode of the Time for Teachership podcast. This is episode 267, and today we're talking about discourse as change leadership. So how do you respond when your staff resists change? We've done some blog posts and podcast episodes before on this topic, but really wanna bring it back to a blog post, um, and kinda synthesize some other things as well. But mainly, this episode is thinking more deeply about a blog post written in 2020, which is based on the work of John Morgan, who was one of my professors at Antioch University in the leadership and change program, who talks about constructive disorientation. And so constructive disorientation and staff-led discourse can help address resistance in a humanizing way and craft a better path towards sustainable change. Let's think together about how to do this. Here we go Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky say, quote, "Adaptive challenges are typically grounded in the complexity of beliefs, values, and loyalties rather than the technical complexity and stir up intense emotions rather than dispassionate analysis." End quote. I have said that quote so many times, but it's still so good. So whether you're leading a school turnaround effort, pursuing equity and belonging amidst harmful political discourse, or maybe implementing a new high-quality instructional material, change is hard. And if you're dealing with a long-standing challenge, it's likely adaptive, and adaptive challenges are gonna require an adaptive approach. We talked a few episodes ago how discourse is really critical to addressing a lot of, uh, change leadership and adaptive challenges. And having that clear approach, like, "What am I gonna do?" Having that plan when you are faced with a messy challenge is going to enable you as a leader to lead with confidence, honor staff humanity, and stay true to the pursuit of educational justice in the face of resistance. When faced with a disorienting dilemma, which is when our experience doesn't fit with our expectations or beliefs. So for example, we encounter evidence that our way of teaching has not improved student learning, right? We're like, "Oh, like I think I'm a good teacher. That is in my head. I think this is the way to teach." However, I'm noticing that none of my students, uh, improved, you know, whatever it is, their critical thinking or their reading scores or whatever that thing is. When we encounter that disorienting dilemma, research tells us that we actually learn best in the presence of others, when we can try on others' perspectives. So facilitating emotional conversations about change is gonna require intentional structure. So if it's like, "Oh, we gotta talk to people about this to be able to do this well. Okay, well, that's hard. How do we structure it?" When we have purpose-specific discourse protocols and a lot of the foundation and context built up around this, um, we can build capacity to both plan the structure to respond in the case of, uh, maybe a deficit-based comment or a conversational detour, um, we're gonna feel ready for leading change. So my goals for the episode, this is a little ambitious, but we are gonna try to, um, first, I guess, recognize that adaptive challenges require human-centric responses, and the diverse ideas of staff are actually what enable effective change. Also want you to hopefully have a spark of an idea for how to actually create that constructive disorientation for your staff, like how to facilitate it. Um, W-Worgan defines, just so you know his definition, he defines constructive disorientation as, quote, "An experience that unsettles us and sparks our curiosity both at once, and does so in a way that we perceive an opportunity to change how we see the world and for the better." I think there's a lot of, like, inviting stakeholder stories and values and imagination here. I also would invite you to consider how you might plan for a structured generative discourse opportunities, and maybe get an idea for how you wanna respond if a, like, a harmful comment or, like, a deficit thinking comment comes up in staff conversations. Okay, so let's think about what we do. Number one, I think we have to identify that we're working with an adaptive challenge, right? You likely already know this, but be open to what the problem is, really digging deeper than only looking at the technical issues. This is where we're gonna find our disorienting dilemma, as Mezuro puts it, which is, like, the starting point for our change. So Heifetz, who is an adaptive leadership scholar, encourages leaders to ask socially relevant questions that force members to clarify their values and deeply consider outcomes of oppressive actions. So we have to kind of juxtapose, like, the reality, which is often, like, this isn't working or this is marginalizing a group of students or a student, right? With, like, what are the values? We gotta surface both of those. The factual reality, here's what's happening, it's not good, and what are the values that you hold as an educator, right? And then s- then often just surfacing those, um, may create kind of that disorienting dilemma. Um, Heifetz, Grashow, and Linsky, I just saw the name, they liken the adaptive leadership model to evolutionary biology's concept of thriving, where they're saying, you know, the essential components are preserved. The unnecessary ones are discarded. A new arrangement facilitate resi- resilience to future changes. So investing in this work, I think this is important to name. Investing in this work is a, a really sustainable approach to not just dealing with the one issue in front of you, but creating a culture that is adaptive. Like, building capacity for everyone to lead and enact positive adaptive change. That's gonna serve you in the next adaptive challenge that comes up. Okay, so you've identified there's an adaptive challenge. You're starting to think about, you know, the disorienting dilemma. Step two, we gotta build the foundation, and specifically thinking here the social capital. So John Morgan says there is a direct correlation between the amount of social capital in an organization and the degree to which meaningful conversations can be had. So we have to. If we wanna have that discourse, which is critical, we need to up the amount of social capital. So regular community building, story sharing opportunities, sharing appreciations of one another. Like, I like that you did this. Uh, I saw you doing this. Great work. These can be little notes. They can be verbal. They can be at the end of the story sharing discussion. Um, but utilizing staff time for this is not a waste of time. It enables you to have the adaptive conversations when necessary as you pursue change. Um, I can link to the discussion resource bank I have around some pr- particular ideas, um, prompts, formats, things like that. But a simple one I often say to start with is just like what's the story of your name, right? This can be a great get to know you activity if you have new staff members, but it also is something that maybe other people have not shared yet. Another one, who's a person you value? Could be a superhero, could be a fictional person, could be a family member, could be a student, right? Like th- there are some quick prompts that you could do a circle discussion format for and just start to build that community All right, step kind of 2A perhaps. This is like another part of building the foundation. We gotta build the discourse foundation. So to enable stakeholders to reflect on their disorientation and listen to others' points of view with empathy, there needs to be a discourse foundation. So one, that has to be like, you know, we have to have some sort of shared goal. Literally, it could just be John Morgan says, like reminding everyone we're all here for kids, right? Like, we have to have like some lofty shared goal, and it doesn't need to be super specific, um, but shared goals are, are really a prerequisite. Ideological diversity and an openness to hear contributions from all members is a second necessity. So really, we need to identify, like deep listening or seeking to understand is a core discourse agreement. So if we're coming up with how we interact with one another, like we have to seek to understand, right? And, uh, we need to focus on, um, identifying those shared goals and underlying values, of course, before we debate how we're gonna move forward, what the policy is gonna be, right? We need to make those happen if we haven't already in, in the earlier step that we mentioned it. And the third thing we need is a collective responsibility for success, says Morgan. So that literally could just mean posing a question like, "What can I personally do to help us move forward as a school?" Sometimes in strategic planning, we have those locus of control tools or activities. Like this is basically that. You could ask a question, you could use that tool with like the, the bullseye framework or whatever, but we have to have this collective responsibility where no one is opting out. Like, okay, if the problem feels too big, yeah, what can you do though? Like, what is the thing that I can take on and, and commit to? Okay, step three, spark constructive disorientation. So this is John Worgan's term. We defined it earlier. There's a blog post I will link to in this blog post, um, the one from 2020. His tip is, like, make it clear, clear disorientation, but manageable. We gotta manage it. It can't be so overwhelming that people just opt out and shut down, right? Uh, Worgan says, quote, "We don't necessarily have to wait for a disorienting dilemma to hit us over the head and force us to pay attention," end quote. He suggests the practice of mindfulness or critical reflection can surface smaller kinds of disorientation. You know, a third source he says is, like, an aesthetic experience, so, like, a piece of art. Um, it could be student created. It could be, uh, created somewhere else. It doesn't have to be in your local community. He talks about, um, how this is a way for someone to try on the perspective of an artist at low risk to oneself, in his words. And so this could be, like, a Banksy painting or something, right? Like, some sort of, like, social, um, justice-oriented image. Uh, the example he gives is Kehinde Wiley's Rumors of War statue, which was installed down the road from Richard- Virginia's Monument Ave. So something that, like, just kind of is like, "Oh, right, these two things are in juxtaposition," that is, like, making me have this little constructive disorientation moment. Um, a, a tip I would have is, yeah, bringing in student ideas, whether that's student art, videos about their experience, quotes. If you bring students onto, like, a Kiva panel and have a live panel with them sharing to staff about their experiences or family members, this could cause some constructive disorientation as well. Um, also some traditional data, like assessment data, bringing that into the space, um, as I said at the top of the episode, that can also kind of jar. Like, "Oh, I thought I was doing right by students. Hmm." Scores are not going up, right? Like, oh, that could also create the disorientation as well. Okay, step four. Now we're ready to have a group dialogue. We have had the constructive disorientation moment. Now we need to, like, process it. And this, this disorienting dilemma is uncomfortable, and it has to be, because that's what moves us to action. So having a multi-stakeholder group dialogue about the adaptive challenge lets each person be open to new ideas and perspectives to solve it. Remember, that's what the research says. We have to be able to hear other people's ideas and perspectives to try them on in a, quote, "low-risk environment." So what do we do? We set the stage. Worgan says it's necessary to have a setting conducive to deep work so that teachers can deeply concentrate and not be distracted by logistical tasks like checking email, right? So if at all possible, we take all tasks off teachers' plates, and they need to be able to be supported to be present fully in the conversation. This might mean that we are doing this, you know, in the summertime perhaps. I, I don't know. This could be, uh, like we say, "Okay, well, grading is due this week, so we're not gonna do it this week. We're gonna postpone it to next week once grades have been submitted." Right? Like, whatever way that you can take some things off the plates and make sure that we have as much focus as possible given all the things, like, that's the goal here Then as the leader or the facilitator, you need to choose a purpose-aligned prompt and protocol. I find that dialogue works best at first, because the goal there is just seeking to understand and getting a lot of initial ideas out there. We're not analyzing, we're not making decisions. So prompts could be as simple as, "What's coming up for you? How are you feeling? What does this make you think of?" So we just, like, have sparked the disorientation, and now we're just like, "All right. How are you feeling? What's coming up? What do, what are you thinking about?" Right? Very informal, like, initial thoughts. Now, if we're more ... If we're further down, if we've already maybe done that, w- we might go to discussion, where we're a little more topic specific at this point. And you could do more of, like, a dialogue. We're still just kind of, like, listening and seeking to understand, um, and we're just starting to process maybe, uh, a little bit more analytically. You might use some of the reframing discussion prompts, um, that are in the resource linked for this episode's, uh, blog post. Those encourage you to shift out of the binary, this or this, because that supports kind of this attack and defend position, into other spaces. So one might be critical analysis. So we ask about potential impacts or root causes of an issue, right? So e- let's use an example. If we are initially inclined to say, "Okay, we're gonna have a discussion. The question is, should we adopt this new policy?" Instead, if we're thinking about critical analysis, we might say, "What might the impacts of this policy be?" So we roll this policy out, like what could happen, right? Critical analysis. We also could ask about, like, the root cause, right? Like, why, why is this factual reality, this par- this issue coming up? Like, what is the root? Policy could be another framing. So narrow the scope about how to address the factual reality. Some questions are already about policy. Like our sample one, how should we... Like, should we adopt this new policy? Instead could be turned into, how would we like our community to respond to this factual reality? So for example, if you have students who are, like, very into, like, I don't know, all of, like, the misogynistic, like, stuff. Like, h- how would we like our community to respond to hate speech, for example? Like, if this is a given in our community, we are grappling with this issue, how do we want our community to respond when this happens? Because it has, right? Whatever the ha- whatever the thing is. Like, insert factual reality there. How would we like our community to respond? It gives you a sense of, like, we're talking about policy, but we are way more expansive at this point than deciding, like, decision-making, right? That's a later stage. Deciding yes or no on a particular policy. We're still generating and thinking about ideas. You could also identify values. So invite participants to name their values and the community values that you all hold that should inform a policy or could inform a policy. So for example, should we adopt this new policy could get translated into What values would you want to inform our policy? Right? So again, we're speaking more from the "I." We're, we're being able to listen deeply to other people's ideas. A final pivot could be civic imagination, which is always a favorite of mine. So this is where we're inviting a brainstorm of alternative policies affirming dignity. So maybe we had this initial policy, and your thought was, "Okay, should we adopt this or not?" But instead you say, "Okay, how could we move forward in a way that advances our key values?" Right? And you could name the key values. So for example, if you're coming up with, um, like let's say you have kids who are, I don't know, wearing-- Let's just... This is not a good example, but, like, wearing headphones, and some people are saying, "Well, it's a safety issue. They need to be able to hear, you know, whatever in the hallway." And other people are saying, "Well, it's a freedom issue. Like, let kids just be expressive, and, like, what's the big deal? Like, you need them to have a little bit of autonomy in school where they have none." Right? If you have safety and freedom as two identified values that are in tension with one another around a particular policy or issue, your question could be, "How could we move forward in a way that advances both safety and freedom?" Right? And then insert whatever the key values that are in tension are at the end of that question. All right. Once you have figured out the prompt y- and the protocol, like are we doing a circle or are we doing small groups, and then are we journaling and then we're coming, right? Like whatever it is, you need to make sure that you are facilitating intentionally. So make sure we're gonna tell us to be aware of anxiety levels. We wanna keep people at the edge, but not let people fall over it, so they're just like completely overwhelmed, then shut down or, like, completely overwhelmed and, like, yelling, right? We want to maximize autonomy of participants as well, and everyone has different entry points and comfort zones around style of participation, and so we might provide different ways that teachers can participate in conversation. Examples, writing. Maybe we do a journaling activity, so it's completely private at first just to get ideas, right? Some think time. We might do a write around or a collected display where actually it will eventually be public, but it might be anonymous, and they're writing quietly and the verbalizing is not the, the method of communication. Then or/and addition, um, in addition to the writing, we could do a mix of maybe it's small group at first and then it goes whole group, or maybe it's just small group for a little while, or maybe it just goes straight to whole group. But you know your group, and you wanna make sure that you have a... Over the course, I always like to think, like, discourse is not one day. I think a lot about Matt Kay, who wrote Not Light But Fire, and he talks about threading a conversation. We can't just like have one conversation, uh, about a thing for the rest of, of eternity, right? We have to thread the conversation. So we're gonna come back to this discussion. Maybe one day it is writing in a small group conversation. The next day it is a whole group conversation and a small group conversation to debrief it or something. Um, a, a tip that working chairs is to Um, or was this my tip? Now I can't even read my notes. Embrace a human first approach that values the stories and emotions of students and their families. And so we wanna move beyond the off-the-shelf solutions to craft responsive initiatives. I think that's a blend of a lot of people. So, uh, Heifetz, again back to adaptive leadership, urges leaders to connect to members' hearts, not their heads, in order to elicit adaptive change. We cannot ignore the heart work and the feeling of this. We cannot just, like, intellectualize our way to a better solution to a highly emotional adaptive challenge. All right, and finally, step five. We wanna affirm learning and change behavior. So we are asking people to take big risks, right? We are asking them to change longstanding beliefs and loyalties and habits. That's hard. So we acknowledge the hard, we attend to the whole human, we think about the emotions, we respect and honor those, we give space for those, and we want to prompt participants to note how their thinking is shifting, right? I'm thinking a lot about Maria Nichols, um, and her work on, like, building ideas. And so she talks about students need to value different perspectives, and then the facilitator or the teacher in that case can nudge to be like, "How has your thinking changed?" And then students can have their own little disorienting dilemma like, "Oh my gosh, my thinking has not changed at all. I must need to seek out a new perspective," because their thinking should change and evolve. That's the point of talking to other people, right? So that is something that you can do, just nudge, "How has your thinking changed?" Right? Subtly encourage that valuing of different perspectives and have people seek them out. Highlight and validate when a participant evolves their thinking publicly. So if they verbally shifted, right, and they're like, "Oh, you know what? That made me think, actually, I do believe in this initiative," or whatever. Gr- oh my God, like, validate that. Be like, "Wow, that's incredible that you just took in new information and, like, shifted how you thought, and you, like, held it up against how your past thinking was and then you evolved your thinking. That's really cool." They might not do that publicly, but they might do it in other subtler ways that are not, like, verbal or they're not in that meeting. We also wanna highlight and validate that, right? We also wanna narrate when that's happening for us. So modeling is huge for discourse. That is very present in the research on discourse. Okay, encourage teachers to share their successes. So again, this is that positive deviance idea. Um, where is it working? If it's not working, it feels like it's not working anywhere, but it actually is working in one class. So, ugh, all ELA scores are down, or ELA scores are down for all of our multilingual learners except this one class. Actually, they are doing awesome. Okay, great. Like, what can we learn from that, right? It's not like I- I'm gonna discount right away if they're, like, different kids. I do not ever like that argument. Like, something is working here. What is working, right? Let's learn from it and try it out in other spaces. It might not work perfectly in other spaces. There might need to be some adaptation. But let's seek out the positive deviance. Where is it working? Or it might be even bigger, so our district scores are down. However, this school or this grade within the school is doing something right. Let's go visit them and figure out what it might be, or let's have them come to us and share some of their strategies, right? We wanna encourage that positive deviance, and we also want to encourage the people who are learning from that positive deviance to try things. Say, "Hey, this didn't work for me. I'm gonna try that, and I'm gonna report back the learning." That is huge, and so we wanna celebrate teachers for doing that and being committed to growth. We also wanna ensure that any teacher evaluations are aligned to that goal. So our evaluation rubric should be celebrating and commending informed risk-taking, not promoting the opposite, right? Not promoting compliance and rigidity. So we wanna measure what we actually value. If we say, "Hey, we value informed risk-taking. We want you to try this thing. We're gonna pursue change," we have to make sure that we're not penalizing that during evaluations. Okay. This was a very dense episode. Would love to hear your thoughts on how this is relevant for you, what your takeaways are, any tips to add. Would love to hear them. Feel free to comment on the blog post. Again, that is lindseybethlyons.com/blog/267. And again, the free resource for this episode that you can find there is the reframing discussion prompts resource. I am a firm believer that how we language the question up for discussion is critically important for how effective that discussion and discourse opportunity is. So that is a new resource. Please give me all the feedback on whether that feels helpful for you as a leader. Your staff can use it with students. Would love to get some feedback on that, 'cause that is, um, my new passion project, all things discourse. All right, until next time.
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In this episode, we chat with Dr. Annalies Corbin about the nature of “wicked problems,” which are complex and multifaceted challenges without singular solutions. She emphasizes the importance of fostering agency among students and educators to promote engaged learning environments.
Additionally, Dr. Corbin highlights the significance of understanding and incorporating students’ cultural backgrounds and passions into teaching practices to create a lasting impact. The Big Dream Dr. Corbin envisions an educational system where students and educators discover their passions and find freedom in learning. Honoring our passions and our collective humanity will bring solutions that we’re often looking for. She believes that embracing individual interests and encouraging deep engagement can transform both the learning experience and the education system as a whole. Dr. Corbin is passionate about bridging research and practice to solve pressing educational challenges collaboratively. Mindset Shifts Required Dr. Corbin defines “wicked problems” as big, bold, complex, global problems that have many small pieces that are so intertwined and, because of that, there are numerous solutions. There are no singular solutions. They’re great for learning and teaching because they serve a societal need as we solve them. With this in mind, Dr. Corbin recognizes the necessity of shifting the mindset from traditional siloed education to an integrated, transdisciplinary approach. This requires educators to focus on the intertwining of systems and human aspects, considering broader socio-political dimensions when tackling educational problems. Action Steps When embracing your “wicked problems” and finding solutions that work in your context, Dr. Corbin recommends educators take these steps: Step 1: Invite your students to start thinking about something bigger than themselves. You start with something about the student — what matters and is relevant to them — and then expand it beyond themselves to bring the learning deeper. Step 2: Foster agency by inviting students to co-design learning experiences and engage them in collaborative problem-solving. When addressing something so big and broad, start with what you and your students are passionate about, engaging in it together. Step 3: Scaffold the collective set of experiences in your classroom by understanding your learners and their cultural contexts and incorporating those insights into the curriculum to make learning relevant. Step 4: Prioritize what Dr. Corbin calls the “five threads” of effective education practices: agency, cultural responsiveness, mastery, transdisciplinary teaching and learning (to stop teaching in siloes), and problem-based. The things that stick have those five elements. Challenges? One key challenge Dr. Corbin discusses the difficulty in transitioning from a disciplined school structure to a cohesive, transdisciplinary model. Often, educators are hesitant to leave the safety of subject silos due to systemic constraints, but when done, it leads to a more authentic learning environment that reflects real-world complexities. One Step to Get Started Begin by integrating agency in your classroom by giving students the opportunity to voice their ideas and choose how they wish to demonstrate their understanding. This approach not only empowers students but also begins to shift the educational culture towards one that values both learner autonomy and diverse paths to mastery. Stay Connected You can learn more about Dr. Corbin and her work on The Past Foundation website, or grab a copy of her book, Hacking School: 5 Strategies to Link Learning to Life. Stay connected by email at [email protected] or follow her on Instagram, X and LinkedIn. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing their page on The Past Foundation website with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 266 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Dr. Corbin, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Dr. Annalies Corbin: I am so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, I am, I'm really excited to dive in. So I certainly have on my mind some of the things that we corresponded, uh, about prior to this show. So thinking about, you know, wicked problems is on my mind. Mm-hmm. And thinking about the airing of this episode being right at the start of, of school for many places- Yes ... across the United States, and thinking about, you know, all the things that we talk about on the show, like a kind of a collaborative approach to learning and, and leading, and just our capacity for resiliency, I think has been of great interest to the podcast recently. So those are the things on my mind as we enter this conversation. Is there anything that you have on your mind that you wanna share to frame the conversation today? Dr. Annalies Corbin: No, but I think that that's perfect timing. Actually, just before our conversation here, I've been editing three years' worth of research that we're getting ready to, to let go of, and we talk about these very things as so impactful and how we can actually see them be the things that move the needle. So I'm really excited to talk about it. I think the timing's perfect, so yeah. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, that's perfect. And I am such a research nerd, so I'm very excited. Yeah. Like, the fusion of research and practice will be a great thing. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Exactly, exactly. Lindsay Lyons: So I guess big dream-wise- Mm-hmm ... so thinking of the idea of freedom dreaming, Dr. Bettina Love talks about it as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. Mm-hmm. And I'm curious to know what that big dream is that you hold for education. Dr. Annalies Corbin: So for me, it's all about, you know, students and educators finding their passion, finding the freedom in learning, right? Just the act of engaging very deeply and spending time, energy, and effort in the things that I'm curious about, that I'm interested in, and that I can then translate whatever that happens to be that I have the opportunity to dig deeply into, into who I am and why it's meaningful to me. And we have to do that both for our learners and for our teachers, right? We have to allow that freedom of expression, and it's not just one or the other. And oftentimes the conversations are about, "Oh, well this is broken," or, "It's so-and-so's fault," or, "This is about, you know, this issue." And the reality is it's, there's systems issues that we're working on collectively and collaboratively, but sometimes when we roll up our sleeves and we do that deep and meaningful work, I think that we forget, we forget about the humans in the middle of all of this. And that if we just honor those passions, that humanity upfront, it would actually solve many of the things that we're working on. Which is why I like wicked problems to come full circle to how we started this conversation, so. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh, maybe now would be a good time to define wicked problems. Do you mind going into that for us? Dr. Annalies Corbin: Sure, sure. And I, and again, I love, love, love the idea of wicked problems, and I do feel like the, the global education system is a, is a, is a big old giant, hairy, audacious, wicked problem, right? Um, so wicked problems are problems that are big, they're complex, they're bold, they're incredibly meaningful, um, because they stretch literally across a collective set of ethos, or I like to say they're planet wide, they're global. And they have numerous solutions because they're so complex. They've got all these small pieces and parts that are all intertwined, and I can solve for one of those. If I'm super lucky, I can solve for one of those. And the other thing is, a wicked problem doesn't have a singular solution. That does not exist, and that's the beauty of them, right? Because solutions have to be tailored to the place in which the problem you're trying to solve is going to be applied. And if we don't do that, then it's not gonna work. It might work for me, but it's not gonna work for you clear on the other side of the world or in another neighborhood even. I mean, they can be close proximity and still not work because we haven't collectively, um, internalized the culture, the community, the environment, the constraints, the joys in which that solution is going to sit. So wicked problems are fabulous. They're great learning, they're great teaching, and honestly, they, they, they serve a societal need. We solve a thing that needs to be solved. Lindsay Lyons: Thank you for that definition. I often think of adaptive challenges, and I've heard these- Mm-hmm ... used interchangeably. Is there a distinction there, or can those be used interchangeably? Dr. Annalies Corbin: They can be used interchangeably, but I do think that you have to be mindful, because whatever somebody has in their head, you just need to understand that as the outset, right, of the way you're going to approach it. But, but the reality is, the wicked problem also, I think, and this is my opinion, has one sort of step back, right? And that step back for me is that it's really comprehensive of recognizing that there's often this massive sort of policy, geopolitical, sort of s- systems-driven thing. It's so, it's, it's not just about the human, right? It's about all of the interplay of the bigger, broader systems piece. So that's the other reason why I sometimes will, will think of the wicked problem as just being one step removed. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, I love that. Okay, now I'm gonna be all about wicked problems. 'Cause we can't disintegr- or dis- aggregate the system- Correct ... from the human, right? Yeah. Dr. Annalies Corbin: You... And, and every time we try, that's when we bump up against these really giant roadblocks. And those are real roadblocks, right? But if we would step back from them and re-sort or evaluate the way that we're thinking about or even seeing it as a roadblock, and again, we connect the system and the humans with the environment, with the geopolitical, with, you know... If we, if we design or try to problem solve with all of those elements in mind from the get-go, we will see a very different picture, and the narrative, the narrative and the journey that goes with that narrative will be very different Lindsay Lyons: Okay, this is really cool. So now I'm thinking about, I usually ask about mindset. So you kind of touched on, you know, you have to approach it in this particular way. Is there- Mm-hmm ... some advice you could offer us or, like, a, a question or prompt- Mm-hmm ... that kind of cues people to think about things in this way that would lead them to be successful with a wicked problem? Dr. Annalies Corbin: Yeah, so I would tell, I, and I tell teachers this all the time. So as you're getting ready to, to go down one of these roads, and let's just, um, use one that's simple that everybody talks about, either sustainability or the environment, right? Whatever, right? You know, that favorite salamander in the pond down the street is suddenly disappearing, right? So your conversation with those kiddos needs to start with somebody else, right? Because this is that big sort of global skill. We're always constantly trying to relate the content, what it is that we're doing to our kids, and at the end of the day, that is absolutely necessary, and it needs to be foundational. But if we really want our kids to work on something that's much, much, much deeper, we have to get them to think beyond themselves really quickly. The easiest way to do that is to say, "Hey, you know, we're about to lose the salamander in our pond on the edge of our elementary campus here. How do you think that that's gonna make the kid in the next state over feel? What do you think somebody else would think about that?" And that cues that sort of, I'm going to really think about something that's a little bit bigger than just me. And, you know, as a great educator, we're gonna bring it right back to the kids in our classroom as quickly as we can because that's gonna then give them the reason why they care about it, right? You start with the thing that's about the kid, but you immediately take it someplace else, and you bring it right back to do the work Lindsay Lyons: Oh, that's really cool. I like that it's, it's a both/and, right? That you Dr. Annalies Corbin: were- Exactly, yes. Yeah, yeah. Lindsay Lyons: Okay. This is super helpful, and super tangible- Mm-hmm ... 'cause anyone can apply that as- Dr. Annalies Corbin: Right ... Lindsay Lyons: to whatever lesson. Okay. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Yeah. Lindsay Lyons: Great. So I love how tangible that was, and I'm wondering if there are other tangible kind of actions that teachers or even leaders- Mm-hmm um, can take as we encounter wicked problems in education systems or in, in lessons delivered to children. Like- Dr. Annalies Corbin: Sure ... Lindsay Lyons: yeah. Dr. Annalies Corbin: So one of the things that I will often talk with educators about, especially educators that are... Like, they're frustrated or they're tired. I mean, our incredible teachers are exhausted, absolutely exhausted right now. And so one of the things I hear from them frequently is, like, you know, "I really wanna change what's happening. Perhaps, you know, I don't really like this lesson," or, "My district has chosen this particular curriculum, and there's nothing wrong with it, but it doesn't... I'm not excited about it. My kids aren't excited about it." And I will often tell folks, and this is, this relates to the wicked problem because when we're gonna tackle something that's so big, so broad, so overly meaningful, it's really, really important that we, we, we tag it to something that matters to us. And so I will use the phrase teach your passion or help your kids find the things they love. What's their passion? So whatever that thing happens to be, tie it back to something that you care about because as soon as you care about it, your kids will care about it, right? And so I always want people to start there. Yes, I have to teach this unit about X, and I'm, you know, I'm interested in it. It's in my topic area. I trained for this. But do I love it? Maybe not. So how could I translate that into something that I love so that I can lead with the enthusiasm and the wonder that I wanna model for my students? They will pick up on that Lindsay Lyons: That makes so much sense. And I, I'm thinking about topics that if I were to teach them and be like, "Hmm, I don't..." I- if I could- Yeah ... connect it to my passion for like criticality and like- Yeah ... collective justice, right? Like, it would always make every single thing better and more interesting to me, and like- Dr. Annalies Corbin: Exactly. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, love Dr. Annalies Corbin: it. Exactly. And then the other thing that you're doing when we're doing that is you are fostering agency. And we know that classrooms that lead with agency, the, the level of engagement in those environments is, is exponential, right? There's so much incredible research that shows that, and yet we are often back to that wicked problem. The system that we're functioning in often does not let us either incorporate or honor or celebrate agency in ways that, as a practitioner on the ground, we know is just gonna make it all better. So by sort of s- shifting that narrative again, it's that journey we talked about earlier, let's shift the narrative a little bit so that you can in fact pull those things in even under the constraints that you have. What might it look like? It could be small. Doesn't have to be huge. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, that makes me think of, you know, the intertwined nature of all this stuff, too. Right. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Mm-hmm. Y- Lindsay Lyons: you started at the top of the episode really talking about how wicked problems have no like one clear solution, and we have to have- Mm-hmm. Right? I think about adaptive challenges all the time. We're talking about the community members in that community working to offer the solution. Correct. And so how are we not leveraging the brilliance of the students and the teachers in these educational systems to adjust the system? Dr. Annalies Corbin: Right. Lindsay Lyons: Mm-hmm. And how do we design that system to be more, you know, offer more agency, provide more opportunities for agency? Is there any insight you have around how we do o- offer opportunities to kind of co-construct or, or collaborate to find those solutions and ways forward? Dr. Annalies Corbin: Yeah. Well, I get to ask this question a lot as well, and what I could tell you is that every opportunity that you get as an educator to sit down and co-design with your students, take it, right? I mean, it can be as simple as, "Hey, you know, we need..." I'm just gonna choose a very generic, we study the solar system K through 20, right? Um, it comes up over and over again, right? So whatever, whatever area I have to touch, where- wherever we are in that progression of my students, high school students, middle school students, elementary students, we're looking at that. You know, sit down and start with a simple question to your students, right, that is related to that lesson or that unit that I have to teach, and ask them what they know. And if it's crickets that you get, which sometimes it is, and it's not really because they don't know. We all know that. It's because they don't want to say, right, oftentimes, especially as our kiddos get a little bit older. Um, and so, you know, as we think about some of those things, you know, if we just step back and ask what we know, and when we don't know, just grab one of the things we have to touch on and say, "Okay, we have to learn about this. How would you propose we get there?" That's agency, right? And it doesn't t- you know, have to stray you too far. Other educators who are really, really comfortable with that co-design, man, it's as simple as here's the standard I have to hit, here's the topic we're trying to explore, here's how, you know, it's going to play a role in our bigger universal sort of queries that we're engaged in with it, whatever the topic or subject area happens to be. How are we gonna get there? What do you wanna demonstrate? What are you gonna show me? What do you wanna learn? And then, you know, those, those students are y- they're really learner-centered, right? They're student-directed in their entirety, and that's really, really freeing. But we have to scaffold not just our students, but we have to scaffold ourselves, and we have to scaffold our community to be willing to take and embrace that type of instruction Lindsay Lyons: For sure, right? 'Cause it's, it's totally a different way of teaching than many educators themselves were taught, right? So there's a shift. Correct. Correct. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Mm-hmm. Lindsay Lyons: Right. And I'm also thinking about all the work, uh, that I've been doing with history teachers in an inquiry pedagogy around- Yep ... like, how do you, when you launch a question or an inquiry cycle, and you say, "Okay, what questions do you have?" And then there's crickets, right? To your point- Right. Mm-hmm ... sometimes it is just, "I've never been asked, so I'm, I'm nervous to even say, 'cause that's not a typical question I get." Right. Right. But also, how are we scaffolding, to your point, right, of can we connect to background information? Can we leverage the experience that's already in the room, and can we expand- Dr. Annalies Corbin: Right. Right ... Lindsay Lyons: our connection, our connections. Yeah. So I think there's so much pedagogical, like, scaffolding that we can do as teachers to present that to students, but it's the possibility that you're painting is very exciting, that it happens. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Sure. Lindsay Lyons: People are doing it. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Yeah. And, you know, there's all kinds of strategies, right, which is a completely different conversation. But there's all kinds of strategies to get students to engage in conversation, right? So if you've got a room of crickets, right, there's lots of things that you can do to sort of change that dynamic. And if you use those tools on a regular basis, your students will just get used to this is how this is gonna work, and we're going to engage, right? Because the individual teacher is not gonna let up until suddenly there's, there's a room filled with, you know, amazing conversation. So again, those are those little scaffolded opportunities, but they grow agency. Yeah. Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely. And I think another related thing, I think, is the kind of culture of appropriate levels of challenge, and what we do- Mm-hmm to coach resiliency in classes. Yeah. Right? Because if I'm a leader that says, "Okay, I want all of my teachers to make sure there's student-led conversations- Right ... and, you know, the students have all this agency," and then there's this challenge they're confronted with. The go-to for my classroom was always like, "Miss, Miss," you know? And I would have to run over and support. Right. And then I realized that's not helpful. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. We can coach resiliency. So can you tell us a little bit about, about that, about how that works or what we can do to, to grow resilience or how that's connected to what we've been talking about? Dr. Annalies Corbin: You know, again, I think the, the, the scaffolding is really important, right? And I also think that the other, the other thing is making sure that we know who our learners are. That's part of agency, but it's also part of that cultural responsiveness, um, that as an educator we also wanna roll in. Um, you know, and so- Some of that is we have to scaffold the collective set of experiences. It's not so-- You know, it's not scaffolding one thing or another. It's not, you know, transitioning my classroom to be entirely problem-based pedagogy, for example, right? That's big. That's a huge, huge lift, right? Especially if all I do all the time is nothing but wicked problems. That's, that's a lot. It can be overwhelming for everybody involved. So I think that the, the, the, the really key is to say, "We're gonna take this in bite size." Is we're gonna start by knowing who am I learned... Who's in this class? Who's, who's sitting in front of me? Who am I trying, um, to be that facilitator of learning for? Um, and if I understand who's, who's in here with me, right, then we can start to build the small building blocks that will lead to resilience. But if we just l- l- leap in, you know, o- one big thing, too many, it, it'll crash and burn really hard. I, I always tell people, you know, I-- Folks who, who hear me speak frequently, they, they know the different pieces and parts even that I'm connecting here because I, I feel so strongly about them. I call them the five Kevlar threads. Um, you know, and these, these pieces and parts. And I tell folks, "If you're not doing these things automatically in your classroom, it's just not innate for you, don't try to do them all at once. You'll drown. Your kids will drown." Um, and so, you know, if you wanna build resilience, start with the small pieces that you can just do right out of the gate. And practice. Just do it often Lindsay Lyons: Can you tell us more about those, those threads that you just referenced? Dr. Annalies Corbin: Yeah. So the five Kevlar threads. Uh, that's t- that's tied to, um, I have a book called, um, Hacking School: uh, Five Strategies to Link Learning to Life. And, and all that that really is is, like, about 25 years of going and working with really, really incredible schools or teachers or programs around the world, and just trying to understand the ones that are really, really phenomenal. Something happens. Either they sustain, they're around 10 years or so later, and they just keep going, and they get better and better. But most really amazing innovations tend to die pretty quickly, and that happens for a variety of real and tangible reasons, but I was really curious about the ones that, that really, really stick. Are there some commonalities? Are there some common threads? And what I found is that the ones that really last a long time, they have, they all have these five things. They have other things because they're all locally derived, right? They're, they're, they are about the community in which they're, they're functioning, but they have these five. So the first one is agency, right? That it is, uh, agency led. The second is that they are culturally relevant or responsive, whichever term you prefer to use. But basically, it's, I know, I know who my community is. I know who my kids are. My kids know who I am, right? We have this mutual respect about the humans in the middle, right? So I'm gonna give you autonomy, agency. I'm gonna help you build resilience and grit and all of those pieces and parts, but I'm also have a deep understanding of who you are, and you understand me, right? Um, and the things that we're gonna teach, we're gonna find a way collectively to make them relevant to you And then the third one is mastery. That idea of competency. We're gonna let go of that, that old school traditional seat time and say, "Hey, you know, if, if Annalise needs, you know, uh, extra time to understand this concept, then I'm gonna honor her need to dig a little bit deeper to understand." So mastery, which is defined lots of different ways too, most of these terms are. Um, the fourth one then for us is transdisciplinary. Uh, transdisciplinary teaching and learning, and that's just the idea of stop teaching in silos, right? That's not how the world works. It is one of the things that students today are pushing against the most, even if it's not articulated. We're not having it in traditional education conversation necessarily. But it is the thing when you actually sit down and do a lot of research with the students, with the learners, you hear them. They don't use that term, of course, but what they'll tell you is, "I don't understand what this has to do with me. The world doesn't look like this." And that's exactly what they mean, right? We don't go to math class and then to learn math, right? Solely for... I mean, that's not what the world looks like, and then somebody rings a bell, and I move on to something else. That's not authentic in any way, shape, or form. And then the fifth one for us is problem-based, and that gets to that wicked problem sort of structure. And it's that idea that if we could take all of that and we can roll it into a very applied, hands-on, deep opportunity to spend time with something, that it's gonna be meaningful because it will address all those other four things we just talked about, and it will. Um, and so there is a progression if folks don't have those elements in that we recommend, but that's just what I've seen over many years. And it was just really that realization that the things that stick, they have all five, and they're doing them. It's part of their DNA. It's not, "Oh, I forgot about mastery today." Lindsay Lyons: Wow, okay. Those are so good and comprehensive and connected to so many things that we talk about on the podcast. Yeah, yeah. I'm curious, is there, like, a particular one that is most challenging for folks? Or is there a challenge in general that as people are trying to do this work that you're- Mm-hmm ... noticing, "Oh, this one's, this one's big"? And then what do you tell them when- Yeah ... you notice that? Dr. Annalies Corbin: It, that's an interesting question because what, what educators will tell you who are like, "I really wanna do this, but I don't know where to start," it's fascinating. They'll tell you, "Oh, I can't do mastery. W- uh, you know, we're not allowed to do that. It's not acceptable here. You know, we still issue grades in the traditional sense." And so the, the internal perception is that mastery is the hardest because it requires a policy change, but that's not actually true. Yes, comprehensive mastery will more than likely in most places require some type of policy shift. But in your individual classroom, you could do mastery, you can be mastery-based in your classroom and still give a grade, right? So, so that's one of those disconnects that I see a lot. The one that's truly probably the hardest at implementation is transdisciplinary, and that's a systems problem. Um, educators will often be more than happy to embrace that. I find that it gets more difficult as you move up in the curriculum, so the closer you get to high school, because we love our silos in high school. We love them. I cherish it. You know, I'm the science teacher. I'm the English teacher. Don't you dare touch my content. And that's a huge, um... it's a mistake, and it's a disconnect, right? But that's a structural thing, right? We've built that. We've created that haves have the nots, wills will not sort of ecosystem, and we're, we're, um, we're continuing it to our own detriment, honestly, because that's not saying that there's not value in all of those individual topics or content at all. That's not the case. What we're saying is do them together, right? You know, why don't you have an integrated, you know, science and social studies or science and ELA? Teach them together. The minute you do that, it changes everything, and it, it saves a ton of money at a systems level, right, when you do that. It's super, super more cost-effective too. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh, there's so, there's so much possibility here. Yeah. And I know that schools are, some schools are doing this too- Yes, Dr. Annalies Corbin: yeah ... Lindsay Lyons: that it is viable, and it's just- Yes, Dr. Annalies Corbin: yes ... Lindsay Lyons: we are stuck so much in how we've always done things, it's hard to break out. Mm-hmm. And, and you mentioned that if, if people didn't have, uh, these five elements, that you said that you recommend things to, to do- Mm-hmm like a progression. I'm not sure if that's, uh, at, at the start, or that's to kind of counter not having any one of those. Is that, like, what they would do immediately to get started? Dr. Annalies Corbin: Yeah. I mean, basically, you know, I have educators ask me all the time, "Okay, I wanna make this shift, but I don't even know where to start." And I'll, I will tell them, "We're gonna start with agency." Mm-hmm. You know, I wrote them in a particular order in the book for a reason. You know, if you don't do these things, just start, start at the beginning, and just work your way through, because they truly do build on each other, right? Agency says, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you cho- you know, voice and choice. We often talk about it that way. It's, it's more than that, obviously, but that's, that's the phrasing that lots of folks are familiar with. Just start right there, because suddenly now I've empowered an individual. And then the next thing is I'm gonna understand who that individual is and why that's powerful to them, right? And so that gets you into that sort of cultural relevancy, if you will. And so there is a progression to it, so if you're not doing it, just start, start working your way down, right? Lindsay Lyons: I love that, and I love just the tangible nature of, you know, get to know the pe- your people, right? Mm-hmm. So if you're a teacher, get to know your students. I also love the, um, I used to work for a network that talked about one learning model for all, so the same things teachers do with students, leaders can do with teachers- Mm-hmm ... and teachers can do with one another. Right, Dr. Annalies Corbin: right. Lindsay Lyons: So this idea of, like, leaders get to know your teachers, right? And it's the whole- Dr. Annalies Corbin: Exactly, exactly. Well, you know, for years I, I used to, and I, I do it every once in a while, I still get asked to do it, but y- I don't, I don't see it on the same scale anymore. But I used to do this program, I called it Cultural Baggage. I'm an anthropologist and an educator, right? So it's my background. And so I used to do, do this program, and we would do it with kids, we would do it in the summer, or we would do it during the academic year. And several times over the years, I had, uh, either a building or a whole district say, "Hey, would you come and run Cultural Baggage program with us? We wanna do it at the beginning of the year. We wanna do it as just part of our onb- you know, our, our launching of the new year with, with our teachers." And I would go into these places, and the first thing that I quickly discovered is teachers didn't know each other's names. Right? So if I only know you, right, as Ms. Lyons or Ms. Corbin or Mr. Smith or whatever, and that's what the expectation is that the kids call their teacher, fine, whatever works, right? But I have no idea who you are, then how can I possibly know who my learners are? I just have never bothered, and you've been teaching across the hall from me. But it was remarkable how many teachers didn't know the first names of the other teachers in their own buildings, much less across a district. And I said, "This is a systemic problem It's things like that, right? It's things like that. Lindsay Lyons: Wow. That blows my mind a little bit, but that, I could see how that could happen with- Yeah the mind that you do. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Mm-hmm. Lindsay Lyons: Wow. Okay. So we have talked about so many things. Thank you so much for all of the, the wisdom that you- Sure ... brought, like big picture as well as tangible, like, what can I do today? Love that. Yeah. Um, I am curious, especially because you're a researcher, I bet you are actively just learning lots of things. Mm-hmm. So what is something that you have been learning about lately? So I know you said you published your book. You're just starting to- Mm-hmm ... like bring all this- Yeah ... research together. It could be related to this. It could also be not related to work at all, it's just something you're learning about. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Yeah, so I mean, some of the things that... So I love technology, love technology, right? I- it's one of those things. I love the tools. I love the application. I love trying to understand, A, how does it work? How could I use it for something it wasn't designed for? Um, and so of course, you know, there's so many conversations right now around AI, especially in schools. And so one of the things, so I am trying them all, like everything, and not just like tangible, I'm gonna try it, but I'm gonna use it deeply and understand what I can do with it and what I can't do with it. Um, because I think that's really, really important, you know, in a space where, you know, educators and, a- and administrators are saying, "We don't even know what to do with this thing. We, we believe that it's about to cause this sort of rampant dysfunction somehow." And I think about it, you know, in, again, that researcher brain, I think back to when the internet showed up. Well, we had the exact same conversation then that we're having now. It was, "Oh my gosh, you know, students aren't gonna go to the library anymore. They can look anything up online. It's gonna be rampant cheating. It's gonna be," you know, so on and so forth. And we have to approach all of these things with great caution, absolutely, but we also have to approach these things with an understanding of what it actually is, right? And the world is changing, and our kids are deeply enmeshed, deeply enmeshed. So we need to understand that from their perspective. So for me, like, that's one of the things that I'm, that, uh, you know, I'm spending a lot of time just trying to understand and learn, and I love to learn, so. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah. Thank you so much for that. I think there are a lot of people grappling with that as of the time. Oh, Dr. Annalies Corbin: yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah. Okay, so people are gonna want to maybe get your book, connect with you- Mm-hmm ... learn more about you. Where can people go to do that? Dr. Annalies Corbin: So the easiest way to get information is gonna be at pastfoundation.org, P-A-S-T foundation.org. Um, and you can go there, and you can get information about me. You can get information about the things that we do, um, uh, about, about the book Hacking School: 5 Strategies to Link Learning to Life. You can also get that at, you know, Barnes & Noble or Amazon, wherever you, you wanna buy books. Um, but we also have a whole, um, asynchronous, um, as well as, um, some, some non-online options around. Like, if you wanna do a deep dive into some of those, those pieces and parts as an individual educator, you can do that. You can we- you can join our research community, um, our community of practice that we- We have around all the Hacking School ecosystem. Um, you can, we can come, you know, to your school or your district. Um, we engage very deeply in lots of different ways, um, across the educational spectrum. So just reach out. Um, you can find me anywhere @AnaliseCorbin on pretty much all the different social channels if you're so inclined, so . Awesome. Lindsay Lyons: Dr. Corbin, thank you so much for today. Really appreciate your time in this conversation. Dr. Annalies Corbin: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed it. 
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this solo episode, host Lindsay explores change leadership theories and their implications for educational settings, including staff discourse around change initiatives. She focuses on how these strategies support transformative growth towards educational equity and justice.
Lindsay draws on her work experience with the Department of Education in Massachusetts to support turnaround schools that are designated for support, as well as her scholarship background through her PhD research in leadership and change. Why? Change leadership is critical in any strategic planning conversation, especially for schools with turnaround status. Understanding change leadership theories and practices can enable schools to navigate complex challenges while fostering equity and justice. What? Lindsay draws on her 2018 PhD dissertation to compile this curated list of education-related change theories that can support educators in your unique context. You can access her entire published thesis here, in which these four frameworks are expanded on in pages 36-41. Noting that adaptive leadership is an important framework embedded into the following — and expanded on in podcast episode 267 — these are four frameworks that help educators navigate change leadership.
Drawing on these theories — each of which are expanded on in the episode — Lindsay concludes that there are three critical components that any leader needs for effective change leadership:
Key Takeaway Discourse is the tool we use to move from dialogue and discussion to decision-making. To facilitate this type of discourse and live out leadership theories, we should build out the culture and grow relationships, dive into hard conversation, seek out different viewpoints, and stay focused on shared values. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Discourse Analysis Framework with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 265 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Welcome back to another episode of the Time for Teachership podcast. This is episode 265, and today we're talking about change leadership theories and the implications for staff discourse around change initiatives. For context, my work with the Department of Education in Massachusetts, called DESE, with Turnaround Schools, uh, which are designated for support, um, and just my background in strategic planning, my scholarship background in leadership and change. My doctorate comes out of Antioch University, which focuses on leadership and change across many disciplines. Obviously, mine was education. Um, really wanna kind of think about how a theory of change has been important for schools and strategic planning, particularly those in Turnaround status. And what I'm hoping to do is bring you a curated list of education-relevant change leadership theories to support that transformational growth that you're pursuing in your context, um, towards equ- educational equity and justice. So here we go. Let's take a look at some frameworks I'll name that what I'm doing is actually reading a lot of times, which sounds silly, but I, I think is hopefully better than reinventing the wheel here. From my published dissertation, so that's a 2018 publication that you can find online. I will link to it in the blog post for this episode, located at lindsaybethlyons.com/blog/265. And really, I'm reading from that literature review chapter, pages 36 through 41. If you're at all interested in finding those resources, there's of course, uh, citations at the end that you can go dig deeper into it. We are going to talk about the following frameworks today: social justice leadership, inclusive leadership, which is also connected to relational leadership, positive leadership, and shared leadership. I also talk a lot about adaptive leadership. There's actually another episode coming about adaptive leadership, kind of change leadership connected and discourse connected as well. That's gonna be Episode 267. So we won't touch on adaptive leadership quite as much here, but know that it is integral and, and kind of embedded in a lot of these, and very, um, complementary. There we go. Okay. So first, social justice leadership. The theory of social justice leadership posits leaders strive to deepen their awareness of societal injustice and act to eliminate it. So Preskill and Brookfield are two scholars here in this, uh, leadership theory. They have published a couple different books that are helpful, one, Learning as a Way of Leading, and I cannot remember the other one, but it's about discussion and teaching. And so they named supporting the growth of others as one of the tenets of social justice leadership. And so while leaders are expected to grow, so too are the members. This is relevant for, uh, students as well as staff. They point out social justice leaders are often, um, open to the contributions of others. They reflect critically on their own practice, as well as ideas of collective leadership, learning democracy, and creating community. The, quote, "Care and concern for vulnerable, marginalized, disenfranchised, and disadvantaged populations," end quote, is a priority for social justice leaders. This comes from Noble, published in 2015. And Noble insists that leaders in their communities have to examine the underlying issues of social problems. So think root cause analysis here, very popular in strategic planning initiatives. And she says to do this effectively, social justice leaders need to understand really important terms, so things like privilege, oppression, cultural salience, intersectionality, critical consciousness, and social equity. So there needs to be kind of a building of that knowledge. She also says, um, I'm sorry, Preskill and Brookfield say that social justice leadership involves analyzing institutions, so we're not just at the individual level. We have to understand those institutions and analyze those. But to do this, leaders have to examine the dynamics of power and privilege and ask what stories are not being told in order to obtain a deeper understanding of the situation. They posit social justice leadership is like Gramsci's notion of an organic intellectual, in that leaders are members of an oppressed group that work to empower their community. So thinking a lot about this dissertation was written for student leadership, but also thinking about teacher leadership, family leadership. So having that shared leadership connection where everyone has the potential work of a leader. And so Gramsci's work stems from Marx, so that work is in direct response to the unequal distribution of resources and power within a capitalist society. And so the most important component of social justice leadership really is the redistribution of power. Uh, George Theo Harris actually talks about how leadership is-- that's not focused on and successful at creating more just and equitable schools for marginalized students is indeed not good leadership. So this is really, um, the, the moral compass here. Uh, Brookfield and Preskill I wanted to also name. They say that the essence of dialogue, which we're gonna connect to at the end here, is entering a conversation in which ideas will be questioned and explored with a willingness to change one's mind. They claim, quote, "Discussion and democracy are inseparable because both have the same root purpose: to nurture and promote human growth." End quote. I absolutely love this. Um, this is, you know, I think at the heart of all that we do here on the podcast, but I think a lot of your central missions are social justice oriented. So I really wanted to name that those big higher level kind of like critiquing systems of power, that is part of a leadership theory. Embed that in your theory of change if that feels helpful to you. I imagine it does to anyone who's engaging with this podcast. All right, next piece. So we have, uh, inclusive leadership. There's several theorists around here. I draw a lot on Lisa Boysen, who is the, uh, one of my prof- was one of my professors at Antioch University, and so she defines inclusive leadership as an ongoing cycle of learning through collaborative and respectful relational practice that enables individuals and collectives to be fully part of the whole, such that they are directed, aligned, and committed towards shared outcomes for the common good of all, while retaining a sense of authenticity and uniqueness. And that's that direct quote and definition. Um, Pless and Mack are two other scholars in this space, and they say, you know, inclusive leadership is built on a foundation of recognizing difference and requires reciprocal understanding, standpoint plurality, which is really like we value diverse perspectives, knowledge, and experiences. These are actually critical for understanding society and what's going on, and the particularly folks at the margins are the ones to offer those unique insights that are going to help us understand collectively what is going on and what is the path forward. So again, hearkening to that shared leadership, like we can figure out this thing together, which is what adaptive leadership says, right? It says these big, sticky, complex problems, you can't solve those with one leader saying, "This is what we're doing." It has to be a group effort. Um, back to Pless and Mack's, uh, things that are required for inclusive leadership. They say also, uh, it has to be mutually enabling, the, the foundation. Um, there has to be trust, integrity, and an overarching inter- intercultural moral point of view that is centered on democracy, empathy, and moral awareness. So again, audience members, I believe that this is you, right? You center democracy, empathy, and kind of this moral compass that is really critical for this type of leadership. Um, Boysen notes that inclusive leadership involves collaboratively co-constructing an organizational value frame. Do we have shared values? Many of us do. And leveraging diversity so everyone can be comfortably him or her, or I would add them, theirselves. In schools, um, Ryan, another publication and author, um, asserts policies should promote inclusion, and the process to make school policies should be inclusive, again, hearkening to shared leadership. This concept of inclusive leadership is highly relational in nature, and so therefore, relational leadership theories come into play as well. Relational leadership posits that growth happens in connection with others. This is a concept from Jean Baker Miller. A lot of these names, just noting, I have only ever read them and I've not heard them spoken, so I'm hoping I'm pronouncing everyone's name correctly, um, which posits this idea of growth and connection, posits growth occurs through relationships with others. Like, that's actually how we grow. So she underscores growth is rooted in mutuality and empowerment, and if it's successful, actually, members are gonna reap these five benefits, which I love: zest, empowered action, increased self-esteem, new knowledge, and a desire for more connection. So it is, like, fulfilling itself, which is super, super cool. Fletcher, who writes about this a lot, um, talks about dialogue, uh, where... Excuse me. Cunliffe and Erickson talk about dialogue whereby participants recognize and work through difference. Fletcher talks about how we have to have kind of this willingness to learn, or in relational leadership, we demonstrate a rel- a willingness to learn from others, and that is actually gonna en- enhance, as a leader, our relational capital. So yeah, this is really similar to adaptive leadership, where it's, it's really about the process more than the final destination. Like, how do we engage with everyone? Um, relational leadership, again, adopts that concept of shared leadership, where we have power with rather than power over. We'll talk about that a little bit, um, later on in the episode. So basically, this idea of inclusive and relational leadership are kind of ways of being in the world with relational integrity, relational mindfulness, and relational agility, and that comes from Cunliffe and Erickson. Additionally, Beck, another author in the space, contends remaining in caring relationships is actually one of the three activities of care after hearing others' perspectives and responding to the new insights gained. So we wanna deeply listen, we wanna respond to what we learn, and we need to maintain those caring relationships. Really critical, particularly during change leadership. Okay, let's go to positive leadership. Cameron is one of the leaders in this field. So they describe positive leadership as having three orientations: positively deviant performance, so we look for what is good. Where is the positive deviant? Not working in most places, well where is it working and how is that happening, right? And let's learn from that. Affirmative bias, which is a focus on strengths rather than deficits, and facilitating the best of the human condition. So he wrote about four strategies to promote positive leadership. First, a positive climate is full of compassion, forgiveness, and gratitude. So we have to kind of build that up. Positive relationships, uh, according to Dutton and Regan, are a source of, quote, "enrichment, vitality, and learning." End quote. Cameron noted studies of successful organizations indicate high-performing organizations employ positive communication. And this harkens back to some marriage research , I believe, of making five positive statements for every one negative statement, and balancing the ratio of inquiry and advocacy statements. So think about how many times we say, "This is my point of view," right? We actually have to make sure that to be, um, in this positive organization or high-performing organization, we have to balance the number of times we ask a question and take an inquiry stance with the amount of times we say, "Hey, I think this is what we should do," or, "Here's my thought," right? I'm advocating for something. Um, also needs to be in balance other-focused and self-focused statements. So if we're always saying me, me, me or I, I, I, we need to balance that out with more other-focused language. Additionally, um, they found that members were more engaged and exchanged more information when communication was positive. So this is, just to clarify, this is not that Pollyanna, everything is good, we always have to be having fun. This is that true balance, um, of, of the, you know, inquiry and the advocacy. It is thinking about compassion, forgiveness, gratitude. That means sometimes things are hard, but we are holding onto this. We are holding onto what is working. We are strengths-based more than we are deficit-based. That does not mean that we don't confront challenges or name the challenges. We have to, right? But I just wanna clarify that this is not just like rah-rah all the time. That is not what this theory is about. Um, strategies for delivering feedback include, and I love this, this comes from Laura Morgan Roberts, who was also one of my professors, um, the reflected best self. So this is where a person asks 20 people to share stories of when they remember them at their best. So cool. I mean, just that activity of thinking about asking 20 people, w- h- when, "Remember me when I was at my best and tell me that story." So cool. Very strengths-based, right? And you could do that for your staff. You could do that with students. You could do that with a lot of people. Um, and supportive communication is another strategy for delivering feedback in which the critical feedback is given in a way that describes behavior and suggests solutions without judgment. That comes from Rogers. Finally, positive meaning is integral to organizational success. So Cameron insisted the purpose of the organization should actually be to build a supportive community and improve the wellbeing of as many people as possible. The related field of positive change contributes additional strategies for organizational and personal growth, like appreciative inquiry. So again, trying to find that positive deviance, wondering what's going well. Um, this is from, uh, Cooperrider and Sri- Srivastava, Srivastava, excuse me. And the awesome, like, reframe of SWOT analysis, so where we have strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, becomes SOAR, uh, strengths, opportunities, aspirations, results. Love that. Love that shift. So if you are doing a SWOT analysis in your strategic planning, try a SOAR analysis instead and see what happens. Appreciative inquiry. Um, so basically building on the strengths of the organizations to further develop. Okay, that brings us to our final leadership theory, which is shared leadership. So the concept of shared leadership first appeared in the writings of Mary Parker Follett. Follett? I'm not sure. Anyways, it's quite interesting to me that she is only cited one time in Jackson and Perry's seemingly comprehensive leadership book published in 2011. Aside from a quick mention of ancient Rome, Jackson and Perry referenced James MacGregor Burns as the oldest citation relating to a shared process of leadership. In 1978, Burns wrote, "The leadership approach tends often unconsciously to be elitist. It projects heroic figures against the shadowy background of drab, powerless masses." End quote. While his critique of the stark imbalance of power inherent in traditional leadership certainly contributed to the growth of collective leadership and shared leadership, Follett was writing about the value of sharing power with followers over half a century earlier. So this misattribution may be a sign of the perpetual mental model that men are leadership experts, or perhaps it's a disdain for, quote, "women's work", seeing as Follett's largest contributions were geared toward community organizations rather than the management of large corporations. It's probably a combination of the two. In Follett's book in 1924 called Creative Experience, she addressed conceptions of power and the process of leadership and decision-making. She started by asserting, quote, "Genuine power is not coercive control, but co-active control. Coercive power is the curse of the universe. Co-active power, the enrichment and advancement of every human soul." End quote. Falla insisted the best way to address conflict is through what she called creative integration she said, quote, "The object is not to do away with differences, but to do away with muddle." So let's get clear, right? She argued that conflict is necessary to identifying various stakeholders' desires. Throughout the book, she reiterated, quote, "The experience of all is necessary to democracy." End quote. She insisted on the benefits of integration rather than compromise, noting integration has the ability to reduce loss and increase gain for everybody, as no one is giving up what they desire. And this is huge when we're gonna note adaptive leadership's role here, too. They talk a lot about resistance as loss. If you're facing a lot of resistance from some sort of initiative or new policy, there may be loss there, and we have to name that and address it and confront that as full human beings, right? And she's saying that actually, if we wanna just reduce the feelings of loss, we want integration rather than compromise. I think this is why I've been so interested in discourse lately and ways to get away from the binary, like it has to be this or this, right? No, what can ... What is a new path forward? And that's kind of what she's talking about here. Creative integration requires imagination, right? She says that creative integration begins with the organization's vision, and the process is of the utmost importance, so again, process over product. In what she deems to be the most important sentence of the book, she insisted opportunities, quote, "Should be provided for integration to take place normally." End quote. So this should not just be for strategic planning. It should be in how we live out school and how we do leadership. Follett warned, quote, "The suggestion box is not a democratic device, although often so-called. Democracy does not register various opinions. It is an attempt to create unity." End quote. She insisted diverse stakeholders come together to cooperatively gather and analyze information, relate the information to each person's life, and create new ideas that meet all stakeholders' desires. Love it. All individuals must contribute to the process, so then, quote, "We cannot stand outside and judge the purpose of the state. We ourselves become part of that purpose." End quote. Right? If you embed stakeholders in the creation of the policy or the way forward, we are a team now. We can't stand outside and criticize it. I love that point she makes. She adds, "Stakeholders have a duty to constantly develop and grow." She believed a great leader is a true representative and emphasized, quote, "We should send our representatives not to win a victory but to come to some agreement on the basis of an enlarged understanding on both sides." End quote. If you've been listening to me talk about discourse lately, this is exactly what all the discourse scholars say. The purpose of discourse is that we come together to enlarge our understanding, to deepen our thinking, to think something new that we could not have thought about alone. So herein lies the power of her term power with, which she used to refer to the democratic power generated through freeing each other of static beliefs to work collaboratively to integrate individual desires and create benefiting all parties She stated the concept of power with, quote, "Takes time, and education, and training to develop. It involves a process, and a slow process. It is concerned with neither granting power nor grabbing power, but with evolving power. Opportunity must be given for this process." End quote. She once again refuted the notion of zero-sum power when she stated, quote, "First, by pooling power, we are not giving it up. And secondly, the power produced by relationship is a qualitative, not a quantitative thing." End quote. Gosh, she's brilliant. While she admitted integration is more difficult than simply choosing a side, she wrote in her conclusion that confronting and integrating desires, quote, "Means a freeing for both sides, an increased total power or increased capacity in the world." End quote. Shared leadership by nature promotes flat organizations as better than hierarchical ones. Jackson and Perry discussed shared leadership within their chapter on critical leadership perspectives, identifying the model as one whose purpose is to disrupt traditional power structures. Reister et al. and Theo Harris argue that principals need the skills to empower staff through setting up collaborative and shared decision-making structures that allow sta- staff time and space to craft their practice. A shared leadership model, quote, "Rejects the distinction between leaders and followers." That's from Jackson and Perry. Jackson and Perry noted there is a continuum of shared leadership that extends on the, quote, "Radical end" to Jeffrey Neilson's idealized model of, quote, "Peer-based communities", and Carson, Tesluk, and Morone determine three attributes of teams that facilitate the development of shared leadership. One, members share a commitment to a common goal. Two, they receive emotional support from one another. And three, they feel their individual voices are valued. So important in a class as well as a staff. Their review noted shared leadership can lead to positive results. They, quote, "Found that teams relying on multiple members for leadership performed better than those in which internal leadership was relatively scarce." End quote. And additionally, they wrote, quote, "When team members feel recognized and supported within their team," like social support, "they are more willing to share responsibility, cooperate, and commit to the team's collective goals." End quote. Right? So that recognition, that support from their team, that social support is so critical. If we have it, people are more willing to share the responsibility of pursuing the goal, cooperate with others, and commit to the goal itself. That is so huge So in synthesis, what I did in my dissertation was say, "Hey, these are three competencies that after reading through all of that stuff, I think student leaders should have." And I would also argue teachers and family leaders and administrative leaders, all leaders should have. And these are, three things are critical awareness, inclusivity, and positivity. So critical awareness I defined as reflecting on, understanding, and questioning positive and negative attributes of oneself and society in order to foster equity and growth. Inclusivity closely mirrors Boyton's definition, which is enabling all members to fully participate and learn from each other. And positivity, which is applying a strengths-based lens to facilitate growth and enable flourishing. Absolutely love that word, flourishing. Now, how is this all connected to discourse? Well, discourse really is the place where we grapple with all of this stuff and do the shared leadership. Like, shared leadership was my entry into this, and now discourse is kind of like the how. Okay, we're all together at the table, now how do we actually talk about this stuff and move from dialogue to discussion to decision-making together? 'Cause that is a process, right? You can't just put everybody in a room and then say go, which is what I probably thought like eight years ago when I started this journey. So connecting to discourse, again, Brookfield and Preskill from Social Justice Leadership say that discourse helps learners explore the diversity of perspectives, increases awareness of and tolerance for ambiguity or complexity, right? How intolerant are we as a society of ambiguity and complexity? I would say very intolerant right now. We wanna increase our tolerance for that. It also shows respect for learner voices and experiences, affirms learners as co-creators of knowledge, leads to transformation, and requires humility. You'll see a lot of or hear a lot of learning language in there, um, that learner language used to be students, and I tried to shift that language to think about, like, learners in general So that's staff, that could also be students. The goal of discourse, uh, makes me think of this Bella et al 1991 publication, where they say democracy means paying attention. I love that. Uh, they also talk about how really it's being aware of the whole conversation. So I just love this idea of democracy means paying attention. Whoa. Um, the context, uh, I think that I have in my head too, right, is one of equity and social justice, where Bell Hooks talks about, in her 1994 publication, she talks about how, you know, the privileged students in a class know that their opinions count, right? They might be the frequent talkers, right? They believe that they have a right to say whatever. Working class students are told not to speak, right? And she's saying you need to be aware of that dynamic because we need to disrupt it. And she says, you know, we really need to treat students as whole human beings. That's her quote, "whole human beings." Right? So I think the same goes for staff. We treat them as whole human beings, right? We treat people in general as whole human beings, and we recognize the power dynamics at play. Um, Cornel West has talked about, uh, the barrier of t- to dialogue, which is that he says, "Dialogue is lost due to obsession with power." Right? So if we are obsessed with power, and I mean even in a smaller sense, thinking about, not smaller sense, but different sense, thinking about the teacher who doesn't wanna let c- c- control go, right? I don't wanna let go of control 'cause then my class is gonna get out of whack and, like, n- I'll never be able to regain order or calm, right? I mean, one, that's like a very compliance-centered philosophy, but also, um, like that fear, right, is going to actually inhibit true dialogue, which is an interesting thing to think about. Similarly, at the leadership level. Okay. So now what do you do? Let's wrap this up. Let's think about what are the go-to steps. So action steps to facilitate this type of discourse and live out these leadership theories: One, we gotta build the culture. So build and continue to grow relationships. This connects to our relational leadership concept, specifically that idea, uh, from Jean Baker Miller, the growth in connection. We have to have those foundational relationships. We can't just dive into a hard conversation. Two, we need to prompt the seeking out and sharing of different viewpoints. I think of James Nottingham's work, and we had a podcast episode with him earlier. Um, but thinking about that idea of inclusive leadership as well, is that we need those different viewpoints, right? Folks at the margins are gonna have a unique experience that's valuable for everyone to understand the whole thing, the what's going on, what's the way forward, right? We need that thinking, and so we need to prompt people. I'm thinking also of Maria Nichols' idea around discourse, um, where she talks about how we need to value and cultivate the valuing of diverse perspectives. We need to think about how our thinking has shifted, and if it-- we've realized that it hasn't, then we need to make sure that we are going out and finding new perspectives to, to deepen it. A positive communication ratio of five to one, that comes from the positive leadership theories. Appreciative inquiry, also coming from positive leadership theory. So we need to make sure that our, uh, questioning stance, right, our seeking out of the positive deviance is present when we're doing all of these analyses of, of what's happening currently and where we go next. We need to make sure that we lay the discourse foundation. I've talked before about baseline understandings, um, which brilliant guests on the pod have shared, and shared team values. If you don't have them, we should have them, right? So baseline understandings being like, "Here's what we agree to, and here's what is not up for debate because we believe X," you know, whatever X is. Um, this aligns to inclusive leadership's moral grounding, I think. Remember, that was democracy, empathy, and moral awareness were key components of inclusive leadership. So if that's true for you, I think that's the move, is to make sure that you agree on your shared team values and come up with some baseline understandings, right? We need the shared goal. That was present in many of these leadership theories, and we can't just, like, have a goal that a couple people contribute to. We have to truly all believe in the goal and co-create the way that we get to the goal, right? The baseline understandings, the shared values, the team agreements for discussion. We need to build critical consciousness and knowledge of systems, power, oppression, to be able to analyze them, right? Thinking about that social justice leadership framework. We can either co-create or select together a framework that exists or maybe, like, a lenses chart of, you know, what are these different lenses or ways of thinking? What are these constructs that we need to learn and build awareness of, um, and use when making decisions and having discourse and dialogue We need purposeful prompts and protocols. So there's so much. If you, if you go back to last, I think last July, 2025, I think July, there were so many leaders on talking about how to facilitate staff meetings and different protocols for different purposes that align with, you know, the various types of discourse. So dialogue, discussion, decision-making. They are brilliant. I would check them out, return there. Um, but we have to know, are we in dialogue where we're seeking to understand? Are we in discussion mode where we're defining success criteria or analyzing potential impacts of, you know, action steps or plans moving forward? Or are we in decision-making where we just need to come to consensus and, and do the thing, right? We need to figure out where we're going. I think that typically it's an arc, but it doesn't always go linearly, dialogue, discussion, decision-making. Sometimes you kind of hop around, but in general it feels like an arc to me. Um, and I, I would say don't underestimate the power of dialogue, right? Relational positive leadership, both of these theories say that this is critical. We need to just truly, deeply listen to each other. I would also think about the prompt for discussion. A free resource is coming soon, uh, maybe in a couple episodes, for you to consider how you would reframe away from, like, a, "Do we like this policy, yes or no?" to more of, like, e- embracing different avenues for conversation that are gonna deepen our understanding and help us come to a better consensus, um, rather than pit one group against another, which is not usually helpful. I would also say that, I mean, regularly, in addition to at the end of any discourse opportunity, appreciate one another. What did you appreciate about your peers as you engaged in conversation? Like, name it. That's part of positive leadership, and it is also gonna contribute to your five-to-one positive to challenging ratio. Um, and, you know, if you have time, how cool, do a reflected best self activity. So again, stories. To ask 20 people, it doesn't even need to be 20, but ask people, different people in your life, it could be colleagues, it could be friends, family. Encourage people to put together their stories of when they were at their best and, like, share that with people. What a cool share that would be. Okay, I have talked a lot in this episode. Way more, uh, scholarly and read-y than usual, but would love to hear your thoughts. Let me know if this was interesting to you. Let me know if this was not helpful for you. Uh, I will link to the various things that I cited and referenced verbally in the blog post for this episode, which once again is located at... Where are we located? Lindseybethlyons.com/blog/265. And I also just wanna name that you can access the free resource for this episode at the blog post, which is gonna be our leadership playlist, which has a ton of leadership support. 
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, Dr. Aditya Nagrath discusses the profound impact of redefining mathematics as a practical problem-solving tool rather than just a series of calculations. Drawing on his background as a scientist and researcher, he shares insights into how his platform, Elephant Learning, aims to bridge learning gaps by focusing on the foundational concepts from counting through algebra.
Dr. Nagrath also emphasizes the role of reducing math anxiety by treating mathematics as a language to empower students to engage confidently with math both inside and outside of the classroom. The Big Dream Dr. Nagrath envisions a future where mathematics is viewed not as an abstract collection of calculations to solve but as a language used to navigate the world and address real-life problems. Mindset Shifts Required Central to Dr. Nagrath’s philosophy is the need for a shift in how math is conceptualized — from a focus on rote learning and calculations to viewing it as a tool for solving real-world problems. This requires educators and families alike to stop perpetuating math anxiety by incorporating open dialogue about math challenges and demystifying concepts through everyday interactions. The emphasis should be on understanding math as a way of thinking and communicating rather than merely a subject to be feared or mastered. Action Steps To begin shifting to this new way of thinking about and teaching math, Dr. Nagrath recommends these action steps: Step 1: Begin labeling mathematical concepts encountered in daily life to make math relatable and reduce anxiety. Families can request, or educators can provide, lists of key concepts to observe in practical scenarios. Step 2: Encourage open discussions about how math is used in real-world contexts. This can involve talking through calculations and problem-solving processes out loud rather than doing them silently. Step 3: Implement platforms like Elephant Learning that are designed to reinforce foundational concepts and adapt to individual student needs, bridging gaps in understanding effectively. It helps them use math as a language and tool to solve problems. Challenges? The main challenge to implementing this new vision for teaching math is that the teacher still needs to accomplish the goals of the classroom and meet specific standards across regions. Aligning supplemental education tools with diverse classroom goals requires careful planning and adaptation. One Step to Get Started To take a step towards this innovative approach, both educators and families can create or request a simple list of mathematical concepts that relate to everyday experiences. By focusing on recognizing and naming these concepts as they arise, students can begin to see the relevance of math in their lives, reducing anxiety and increasing engagement. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on LinkedIn. Parents can check out Elephant Learning through the parent side of the website, and educators through the school side. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing a free trial of their program with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 264 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: All right. Dr. Aditya Nagrath, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Dr. Aditya Nagrath: Hi. Thank you for having me. Lindsay Lyons: Excited for you to be here. I'm really excited about this conversation today. I know I certainly was a person in school who did not do great in math and yet went on to do a lot of statistics in my PhD. So it's, like, really interesting, right, when we ... For me, I'm coming in with the kind of thought of, like, when we connect to things that kids care about, like, and create this culture of learning, there's learning that can happen and joy that can come out of it. And so really excited to dive in today. A- as we kind of open it up, is there anything, before we dive into my typical questions, that you want people to keep in mind throughout the episode or know going in? Dr. Aditya Nagrath: Well, yeah. I mean, as you're talking there, um, I'm thinking about what the definition of math is. And, like, a lot of people, like, think about math as I have to execute the calculations. It's addition, it's subtraction, it's multiplication, it's division. But really, mathematics seems to be, uh, the tool we use to solve, uh, practical problems. And I think that, like, if we start to look at it that way, and as a language, right, the, the, the tools, uh, the, the language of the tools, the name, addition, subtraction, that's, that's the label of the tool which you're then going to use to solve the problem. Lindsay Lyons: I love that because that's exactly why I got excited about math, was because I wanted to learn about student voice in education, and then I was like, "Okay, well, I need some statistics to figure out how to, like, make this survey valid," right? And so that was the entry point. I love this idea of tools to solve practical problems. Okay. So taking a step of a- back, thinking about, like, kind of why you got into this, like, what your big dream is. I like to ground the episode, um, in thinking about Dr. Bettina Love talking about freedom dreaming, and she says they're dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so with that in mind, like, what, what is that dream that you hold for education, for math, however you wanna interpret that? Dr. Aditya Nagrath: Well, uh, our, our big vision, like they, they say when you take leadership courses, you need to have a BHAG, a big hairy a goal, right? And, um, and that is to change the way the world teaches mathematics. And, um, and the way that we do that is we established a mission. We're going to empower children with mathematics, and if we can empower enough children with mathematics, we're hoping that people turn and look and say, "Hey, we gotta figure out what's going on here." And so, like, uh, the whole business idea of R&D was a part of the goal. And I don't know where we are with that, honestly. Lindsay Lyons: It's fascinating to think about, like, just that transformational element of, like, we're gonna completely change how we teach math. And I imagine, I'm thinking about the families as well as the educators here who, I know a lot of educators who have kind of changed the way they teach math is different from maybe how they learned to teach math in school, and certainly from how they learned math as students, which is certainly different from families who experienced, uh, math in school and haven't been to teacher school, haven't been part of a pedagogical shift. And there's that communication at parent conference night or family night or whatever that's like, "Oh, and this is how we're approaching it now, and this is how we can coach students at home, and this is how we're gonna work together to build these skills," that is very different because families often come in with that idea that math is calculations and math is getting the number right, and, like, that is, that is all math is. So I'm curious, is there a particular, like, mindset shift or, like, some kind of aha, like, "Oh, we used to think this way, now we think this way," that you've seen educators, family members, even kids kind of go through to be able to be successful with this? Dr. Aditya Nagrath: So, like, I think what you're saying there contains maybe the heart of, uh, of the larger challenge. So, like, my understanding of it is the standards did shift with the Common Core. In order to evaluate a student's level based on the understanding of the language, and so very specifically for the teacher and parent audience, we're talking about are they using the tool to solve a problem? So, like, I see a problem in the real world, I understand that I have to multiply these two numbers together to get the solution, and that actually does, uh, provide a solution. And so that, that is different than can I execute the multiplication, first of all, but second of all, motivates the idea of I should be able to perform the calculation because I have to stop to go find the answer. You know what I mean? Like, I gotta go look it up in the dictionary. Now I know the word. You know what I mean? And so, like, uh, but contained within what you said is this idea of how do I teach it, right? Which is the same idea as how do I multiply or how do I add? And so, like, there's a separation then even there between, like, well, I have a process to do something versus I have, uh, that idea as a tool to solve an issue. And so, like, while we could change the standards, the harder thing from a leadership perspective is the application of that throughout the 15 million educators across the country. You see what I mean? And so, like, I think that, like, right now if you look at it from a, a, like, I'm gonna zoom out historical perspective, um- I- I mean, it comes down to, like, we've just made this shift a decade ago. We've been teaching math for several millennia . And so, like, this is a very small amount of time in the larger picture of things. And at the same time, i- there's a lot of confusion because of that. And so, like, now is a very particularly interesting or dangerous time as far as math is concerned because as AI is coming in, and a- as AI looks as if it's going to solve problems, um, I mean, I mean, honestly, it's not It's not actually, I mean, quote-unquote, intelligence, per se, but it is more of like a human being where we're trying to replicate the pattern, or there was a process, or... And so, like, that's good, but then it also means that the level of the human being has to get to where the standards are saying so that we can take the solution from the AI and say, "No, that's not the right solution." And I mean, it just happened to me just right over here a minute ago. Like, I had something and it was set up a certain way and I found a, a bug, and now I had to go back and I had to, like, somehow fix the data in order to fix the bug. And, you know, the, the solution that the AI suggested, it was just misguided, but at the same time, what it said to me provided an idea, was like, "Oh, you know what? Actually, we have... You're right. We have this other data here that allows us to fix this problem this other way, and now I can tell it the solution." And the part where it takes the idea and goes and implements it to code, it's pretty good at that. That's the nice thing about it. But it also ch- changes the, the field of computer science back into pure math. Lindsay Lyons: Fascinating, 'cause I'm thinking about what you're saying as what we, we hear in the humanities as well, like particularly social studies is, is I'm always thinking about, like, social studies is about thinking, and then I extend it to math. Math is about thinking. And then science, science is about thinking. And yes, there are all of these things you could do, right? You can compute things. You could, like, know about events on a timeline, sure. However, we really want to cultivate the skills of thinking and thinking critically, which is cool. Dr. Aditya Nagrath: And understanding and, and to connect it back to the statistics, like what, like what you do, right? Which statistics are we going to calculate in this particular scenario in order to get an answer to the question? Or what, like, right, I mean, typically it's a, a research study and this is the question we're posing and this, this is the data we're getting to prove that, right? And, and like, if you don't have a good understanding of that, then you choose the wrong numbers, and did you really prove anything? And Lindsay Lyons: I hope this helps, too, with educators who might be listening who are thinking- Well, I have a high school student who is struggling with, like, multiplication, and so therefore I can't teach them concepts. I mean, I would love just kind of your thinking on how you guys, I'm sure you guys address that a lot, where we have kind of a older age student who is in this higher grade level, however, has not shown proficiency in some basic numeracy or computational skills that i- is, like, inhibiting progress or, or does it inhibit progress? Can you take, you know, teach both at the same time? I don't have a intense mac- math background, so I'm curious what you think. Dr. Aditya Nagrath: Yeah. So that's actually what we designed Elephant Learning to do. And what we do... A- and I mean, we, we only cover through algebra, but that's typically enough to get them to be able to con- converse with a, maybe a high school teacher or a, a, a middle school teacher. And, and the idea was, was could we just fill in the language between where the student is from a piece of, uh, from a, a, a standview, uh, a standpoint of understanding, and, um, and then fill in those gaps to where they are now with just the essential language, right? So it's not like we're teaching, here's how you add a multiple digit, uh, numbers and you're gonna carry the one. We're not doing that. We're focusing on, do you understand the idea of addition? Now, do you understand the idea of subtraction and multiplication and... Right? And so, like, and so that actually appears to be working because the, the testimonials that we get back that we're most proud of are, "My kid hates Elephant Learning." Well, I mean, w- uh, they say, "I love Elephant Learning. It's better obviously, but they love math now. And the reason why is because they go into class and they can understand the teacher, and it makes sense what they're learning about, and that, that is actually better. That's what we want. We want the outcome. And so, um, and so that's how I look at it. And, and so our system can help. Or if you're a teacher, you just have to understand, there's just not a lot of ideas between where the student is and where you are now. So while it feels like an impossible goal, also remember that this student has had that many years of experience in the world. And so it's, so it's not like they haven't encountered it. It's just a matter of we gotta label it, and we gotta get them back into the mindset of, well, let's use this as a language. Let's use this as a tool. Let's use this to solve problems. And, and we can get that student back on track Lindsay Lyons: I love that. I'm just, I'm tying this to a couple in- instructional concepts here. So one is this idea of, like, conceptual understanding, I think is huge and overlooked, 'cause we focus a lot on discrete pieces of information, like what is two times two, or i- i- you know, in other, what is the definition of this vocabulary term, right? And so this conceptual understanding is, what I'm hearing from you, really important, um, in, in math, and I would argue other topics as well. And that I love this idea of background knowledge. One of the common things teachers will say in all subject areas that I coach is, "The kids don't have the background knowledge. The kids don't have the background knowledge." But what you're saying is what I often believe, which is they, there is background knowledge. There are these mathematical interactions and experiences they've had in the world, and we just have to maybe connect them. Does that feel right? And if so, how do families maybe do that at home? Any advice for how to, like, capitalize on something that might be, like, a math conversation or could have math language applied to it? Dr. Aditya Nagrath: Well, I mean, so, like, the first problem is, is, is understanding the level of the student. And typically, if there is a lack of understanding, there's going to be some anxiety involved, because any time I don't understand something, I start to get anxious, especially the more we talk about it. You know what I mean? And so, like, uh, the, the real challenge is, is, like, um, sometimes if you're working top-down, here's what we're talking about. Well, did you get this idea? Did you get that idea? You might get too many ideas down, and they start flipping out. You know what I mean? And so, like, um, uh, I mean, that's the first problem, right? Like, can, can we stick with it enough to get down to their level of understanding? And sometimes it takes a couple of days. But, um, once they've committed to understanding and once you've found their level, right, like, you just build them back up is, is sort of the idea. And, um, I, I'm not sure if I'm answering your question anymore is the problem. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, I think what I'm wondering is, like, how do we... We recognize their level, right? We recognize the concepts we wanna teach. We recognize that they're doing a lot of stuff that i, is math related. How do we support both, both teachers or, or I'm thinking families as well, like, how do we cultivate that outside of school? Um, I, I know that, like, programs like yours are certainly helpful. Yeah. Is there any- I'll Dr. Aditya Nagrath: add that to, to tell you that, like, what we gotta do is then just focus on when, when it comes up a- and lab- labeling the ideas, right? And so, like, the real challenge is, is that, like- We were told, "Hey, you should do the math silently." But, like, that's the math anxiety perpetuating itself, right? 'Cause if we did it out loud, no one would be scared of it. And it's like, why aren't I doing the math out loud? Like, we, so, like, um... And it, and the funny part is, like, uh, if it came to emotions, you wouldn't ever tell me, "It's too late to label shame. It's too late to label..." Like, it would never happen. But with mathematics, it's like Jedi training. He's too, he's too old, too old to begin the training, and I don't know why. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, I love that. Okay, so I, I love this idea of just you l- you label the thing, right? And then you also consider the... I, I think that's interesting, the thinking about math anxiety and all of the emotions that come w- with math, right? I, I wrote down, "Math anxiety is perpetuated by silence." That's such a fascinating idea. So are there ways that you would suggest, um, either educators or, like, what you guys do in your program l- like, kind of illuminate the, the behind-the-scenes or, like, the inner thinking so that it's not a silent activity? Dr. Aditya Nagrath: Yeah, and I mean, we're talking about the elementary concepts, so we're talking about addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, uh, fractions, decimals, and percentages. So this, these are things that human beings actually interact with on a, on a daily basis. And so, like, m- I mean, they just have to look and they'll see it. I mean, I mean, dollars and cents are decimal points. And so, like, um, uh, I think that, like, once you start looking and you start to say, "Well, wait a minute, I'm doing so much of this math," right? 'Cause, like, that's the, "When am I ever gonna use this?" Well, oh, okay, but, like, if I was doing all the math that I was encountering in a day out loud, and someone was around me, they'd be like, "Man, you're using math all the time." Lindsay Lyons: I'm almost envisioning, I, like... Families, you can request this from teachers, but teachers, maybe you can give this to families. I'm envisioning something like just taking the list you just said, right? And so, I mean, I'm su- each grade is gonna focus on different components of that. But, like, say you have a list of, you know, t- three, even, concepts. This is what we're learning for the year. You know, fractions, decimals. H- here are examples of that to look for in your daily lives at home, and to just name it as such. Like, that would be so helpful, I think, for parents who also have math anxiety and are like, "Oh, I know it's around, but I forgot what it's called," or, "I don't know..." You know? I think that would be so cool to have that communication of, like, let's just name the thing and have just a one-pager or something that they could, like, hang on the fridge. That could be so helpful to just, uh, kind of illuminate some of the math concepts, like you're saying, that are very elementary. We see them all the time. Dr. Aditya Nagrath: Yeah. Lindsay Lyons: But maybe if our brains aren't trained to it, we w- we're not, like, labeling it out loud. Dr. Aditya Nagrath: So what Elephant Learning does is we do, we do the opposite mapping. At the level of the student, we're giving you- things and you might see outside of the system or, or activities that you could be doing outside of the system to reinforce those ideas. So they're interacting with you on those ideas, and it's at the level, right at the level of the student. So, like, you're, you're keeping pace with them. And that, I mean, accelerates it obviously, because then as you keep building up on top of it, they still have some of the former ideas coming along with them. Lindsay Lyons: Nice. I, I imagine also there's a lot of, uh, like class-wise I would always say class culture or school culture, but also just, like, I almost wanna expand it to, like, a culture of math wherever you are and whoever you're interacting with. But I'm thinking about anxiety reduction, and enough anxiety reduction or creating kind of the culture of, of using math or talking about math to reduce the anxiety as much as possible to be able to learn. Any tips or things that you've found that really help reduce that anxiety that, that teachers or families could use? Dr. Aditya Nagrath: Yeah. I mean, the main, the main thing right, is understanding. If the student suddenly understands, now they don't feel the anxiety. And to be honest with you, as you're saying that, that, that thing that I said at the beginning of the show about shifting your, your thought pattern about what is math and, like, the... I mean, there's also a lot around, like, I'm answering wrong and there's, like, some wrong around that, some shame or some emotions around that. And so, like, so there, so there's that idea. But then but there's also this idea that if it's a language and I just have to, I just have to pick up a couple more words, a couple more ideas, it, it, it's not... it doesn't seem insurmountable, right? It doesn't look like there's a learning curve anymore. And that, that's really the thing, is that, like, uh, just the way we built the system almost, it's like here's an entire year for addition. It's because, okay, well, we wanna get you enough practice with it. You know what I mean? Like we wanna put it in some different contexts so you can see it, see it working out. But, like, uh, but, but it's like, what now you, you don't understand addition. You're two years behind. Right? It's, it's like this is insurmountable. But, like, if you just start to think of it as like, well, it wouldn't take me that long if I just, right, like, just focused on the ideas, then not only would the student, the teacher, everyone's anxiety starts to go away because it's like, well, I just, I just gotta get this kid a couple of ideas. Lindsay Lyons: I love that concept of just, like, less is more concept over, like, memorizing this entire table or, you know, whatever. I love that you said teacher anxiety goes down too, because that's usually what I see at, in an instructional coach role, is that the math teacher's anxiety is so high that I imagine, even not being in the classroom with them, I imagine that comes through in conversations and interactions with students. So those students, even if they weren't anxious before, n- now have all of that anxiety coming in from the teacher that, wow, they're really upset I'm so far behind, so I must really, really be behind. And now I'm even more stressed. Fascinating. Wow. Okay, that was a good, that was a good learning for me. And so I think w- this is such a good... I mean, it's such a good goal to have, that we just completely transform our thinking about how we teach math. And I am curious if there's anything we haven't covered that's been, like, a challenge you've seen either students, families, or educators experience in making that shift. Dr. Aditya Nagrath: Well, I mean, the, the challenge is, is they have to also, uh, accomplish the goals of the classroom. I mean, they're... The teacher's in a job. I mean, the parent maybe, maybe, i- is, is, is involved, maybe is less involved. You know what I mean? So it's really hard from the parent's side. Typically, if they're coming to us and they're giving us dollars, they're involved, uh, to some degree, right? Like, may- at least they gave them the application. You see what I mean? And so, like, um, I think that, like, it... I, I mean, it's, it's a very challenging problem, the one you just posed to me because, because the standards are different in every state, because, uh, the testing is different in every school, because... You know what I mean? So, like, uh, I don't know immediately, right? Like, and then I, I was talking to a teacher and they say, "Well, each student in, in IEP has very specific goals, and I'm not supposed to grade two other goals," which, I mean, that doesn't even make sense, 'cause it's like the ball has to go in the hoop. It has to look like it went in the hoop. Lindsay Lyons: Y- yeah, there are so, there are certainly so many, I'm sure from your, you know, perspective of creating, uh, the app and, and all of the, you know, lessons and all the things, it must be challenging to, to fit that into all of the various things that teachers, and across states in the nation, have to, to, uh, factor into assessment and teaching and everything. Well, Dr. Aditya Nagrath: so we focus on the essential topics, and that's the, the difference. So for a teacher, we're supplemental, which means we're not covering every single standard, um, at least in Elephant Learning, right? And so, um, that... Z- so that's where things get a little bit more confusing, because, like, you could have this goal, you could have this mindset that I'm teaching- the language, but at the same time, it, it doesn't help me achieve this sub-goal of they have to pass this particular exam. And that's why it's like, yeah, I, I don't I don't know how to advise on this because there is no single answer anymore after that. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah. I will say what's heartening is that all the research on, like, project-based learning or, like, applying concepts to solve problems does show that, like, the test results end up being better if they learn that way than if we're teaching to the test anyways. Yeah. So I think that's a good step and push to do that. The project stuff Dr. Aditya Nagrath: is always very good, because instead of teaching the mathematics in abstract, you're giving them, like, some sort of concrete goal where the mathematics, uh, is relevant in order to achieve that goal. So that, I mean, that al- al- almost always works, I think, is, is what they find out. Lindsay Lyons: I, I usually at this point in the episode say, you know, what, what would you encourage the audience to do when they end the episode, like one quick thing. I have in my mind something that I am thinking about in this conversation, but I wanna see if what you, what you think it would be. Dr. Aditya Nagrath: I'm blanking. Now that you said the question. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, can I say mine then? And we'll see if you agree. Okay. I was thinking what I might do if I listen to this was actually just make a list of those terms or concepts that I teach if I'm a teacher. And if I'm the family member, I might ask for that list. Does that feel right? Dr. Aditya Nagrath: Yeah. Why not? Lindsay Lyons: Nice. All right. I'm excited. Wanna go teach math now. Dr. Aditya Nagrath: Yeah. H- that works. Why not? Lindsay Lyons: Yeah. Um, and then as in closing, kind of, I ask two, two final questions. And I wanna give you space to talk about Elephant Learning 'cause I think it's such a fantastic idea for, for students to, to, um, particularly older students, my background is in high school teaching, to, like, help high schoolers particularly, but, but of all ages, of course. Um, the first question though is just for fun. What is something that you have been learning about lately? And it could relate to this conversation or be totally different. Dr. Aditya Nagrath: Hmm. What have I been learning about lately? I've been telling this AI to do a lot of things, I'll be honest. I Lindsay Lyons: think a lot of us are learning about AI. That is fair. Um, and then finally, like, can you tell us a bit about Elephant Learning, like how it works, where people can learn more about it or get in touch with you? Dr. Aditya Nagrath: Sure. So Elephant Learning is, uh, i- is an online platform for learning mathematics. Uh, on average, children in our system learn about a year and a half of math over the course of 10 weeks. They use it just 30 minutes per week. We cover from counting through algebra, which, um, i- is roughly K through eight, but pre-K through eight. And, um, and, like, for if you're a high school student and you're struggling with mathematics, typically that's because you, you ... there was a misunderstanding that occurred in algebra or earlier. And so our system- Finds that gap or mediates that gap. It does it fairly quickly. Uh, the older you are, like the longer you could use it at a time because, like, we've seen older kids use it, like, 30, 45 minutes in a session, which is like an entire week for a five-year-old. And, um, and so, like, uh, basically it, it's gonna help you catch up to understand the teacher, uh, hopefully right there in the classroom, but at least at a level where if you're missing one or two ideas, the teacher doesn't feel like, um, they have to go back five years to help catch you up. So they're not gonna, they're not gonna freak out. And so that's, that's very helpful for most students. Lindsay Lyons: And I've seen videos where people are using iPads. Is this a app specifically for iPad, for, or, or tablet, or is it like a computer thing as well? I'm thinking about teachers who may or may not have certain devices. Dr. Aditya Nagrath: That makes perfect sense. We designed it to work just about everywhere. It runs in your browser. iPad app opens up the browser and is... We make it native because there's some hooks. But, um, yeah, I mean, uh, like, uh, Chrome, Safari, uh, iOS, Android, Kindle Fire. And, uh, I mean, for the f- most part it feels like a game. When you get to algebra, we shift the game a little bit and now it's a game of identifying what's true or what's false. And, um, and w- and what it really is is the activities that the researchers already found most effective at teaching math as a math conceptually or as a language. And so, like, what we did was we combined that with advanced algorithms that, uh, are, are able to quickly adapt to the student. So it's an adaptive supplemental tier one, two, three system. Lindsay Lyons: That is super cool. Okay. Thank you for explaining that. I understand it better now already. And then finally, where can people connect with you? Do you have, like, a website people should go to or platforms or anything? Dr. Aditya Nagrath: The best way to get ahold of us is if you're a parent, go to elephantlearning.com. And if you're a teacher, go to schools.elephantlearning.com. And if you end up at elephantlearning.com, there's this classrooms or schools on the top, so you just click that and it'll take you over there. But, um, yeah, there's a different, dif- two different initiatives, talking to parents and talking to schools. Lindsay Lyons: Dr. Nugent, thank you so, so much for being on the show today. Dr. Aditya Nagrath: Thank you for having me. It was a lot of fun. Thank you. 
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This episode features Dr. Darla Bishop, who joins our conversation to discuss the importance of family-school partnerships and financial literacy for children.
With a background in education and public health, Dr. Bishop is passionate about helping people build healthier relationships with money. She believes in the importance of teaching financial literacy from a young age and partnering with parents and educators to do so. Dr. Bishop discusses the mindset changes necessary and provides many practical tips and strategies in this episode to talk to children of all ages about money. The Big Dream Dr. Bishop dreams of an educational system where schools are seen as safe havens and key learning environments. Even more than that, she envisions a world where children are taught about money in developmentally appropriate ways, which empowers them to break generational cycles of financial mismanagement and become financially literate individuals. Mindset Shifts Required Parents and educators are encouraged to move away from seeing money as a taboo topic. Instead, they should consider the lifelong impact of teaching financial literacy, and that kids can be the carriers of social change and make lasting impacts in their lives and the lives of those around them. Action Steps The reality is that we’re already teaching our kids about money, whether explicit or not. Kids are picking up money lessons. So what does it look like to be more intentional with what we’re teaching them? Here are some key action steps Dr. Bishop recommends: Step 1: Pay attention to what money messages you’re giving your children. Does it sound like, “We don’t have money for that,” or “We can’t afford that”? Or, what are the conversations you have at the store? That helps you know what kind of messages you’re sending your children and focus on what you might want to change. Step 2: Begin having open discussions about money with children, even when they’re young. It can start by reading the prices at the store or identifying the coins and understanding their use in everyday transactions. You can also encourage kids to take part in small financial decisions, like handling money during grocery trips, to illustrate financial concepts in real life. Step 3: Set targets for children not just to spend but to save and donate money, thus nurturing a balanced financial mindset. Step 4: Form partnerships between schools and families to educate children on money. Dr. Bishop’s curriculum outlines tasks for teachers, students, and parents so each person is involved in building financial literacy. For example, if students are learning about counting multiples in math class, the teacher can ask a parent to help at home by pulling out specific coins and teaching the children to use them in real life. This reinforces what they learn in school and gives real-world money applications. Challenges? One of the significant challenges highlighted by Dr. Bishop is adults' varying relationships with money, which can often impact teaching it. Families may hold onto outdated financial beliefs, and teachers may feel unprepared to venture into financial education due to their complex financial relationships. One Step to Get Started Because one of the key challenges is our own varying relationships to money, Dr. Bishop recommends adults take stock of their own financial beliefs. Ask yourself: “What are the rules I have about money?” Write them down and then ask if they make sense for you today. You may find that they’re based on outdated ideas or other people’s ideas and values. This self-reflection aids in creating a healthier narrative around money that can be passed on to the next generation. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on her personal website, the Piggy Bank Pathways website and Instagram. You can also check out her book for children, Madeline’s Money Adventure, or older teens, How to Afford Everything. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing Piggy Bank Pathways Activity Hub with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 263 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Dr. Darla Bishop, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Dr. Darla Bishop: Thank you so much for having me. Lindsay Lyons: I am really excited to dive in. So I have a few things on my mind since I've, like, learned about all of your stuff and, and you've sent me materials and everything. That's so exciting. Um, I also imagine you have things that you want listeners to know or keep in mind as we kind of go through, uh, the general questions. But things on my mind, and I'm gonna throw it to you, and let, let us know what's on your mind. Family school partnerships, like how schools and families can work together to help kids. Huge. I think I'm really excited to know your ideas there. Um, also just healthy ways to talk about money with kids as well as, like, what exactly do we talk about with the kiddos? I'm so excited we got a guest. Dr. Darla Bishop: Yeah, and so what's so awesome about schools and parents is they already work together already, right? And the idea that I approach this as a parent who's also been a teacher, um, for little kids and grown-ups, is if we put a bit of attention behind it, a bit of intention about how we see our role, how we see the other side's role, and whether or not those things match, and we're to make sure we're kind of talking in the same way so that it's easier for us to meet in that middle, where we're all concerned about the same thing anyway, right? We care about raising and having great citizens, and them displaying those behaviors now while they're in the school environment, while they're home with their siblings and family, while they're in the community doing, you know, their sports or just out and about living normal life, right? And so since we all have that same goal, that if we just put a bit of intention from all sides, that it will all go smoother and the kids will benefit even more. Lindsay Lyons: I love that. I think, I mean, part of what you're saying actually leads into my next question, so I'm just gonna ask it. Um, but Dr. Bettina Love talks about the idea of freedom dreaming with a quote that I admire. She says, "They're dreams grounded in the critique of injustice." And so with that in mind, like, what is that dream that you hold for education broadly or, or, you know, um, y- youth and, and finances and financial literacy? Like, however you wanna interpret that. Dr. Darla Bishop: Well, there's a couple pieces of that, right? Like, part of it is in the school environment, right? Like, how do we help kids from all types of situations feel that school is their safe place, and that they love it, and that the adults there are there to love them in whatever way that feels right and appropriate, and teach them and guide them and support them? Because not everybody has a great home, and so maybe that they're getting some of that from school, which I know is heavy for teachers, but like, hey, it, it is what it is because that's how we've built our society, right? For better or worse. The other part on the money side is the reason I'm so passionate about helping kids learn about money is layered. One, my background in education and public health, we know that whenever we need to change something in the public's health large scale, writ large, that when we teach kids the behaviors that we want to see in society, they go enforce it with their grownups. Perfect example, seat belts, right? When seat belt law started to change, state police and other safety organizations went into schools, did safety presentations. Fire safety went into schools, did safety presentations, taught the kids, "Here's how... Here, here's what you need to do every time you get into the car. If someone in the car isn't using their seat belt, remind them, because maybe they don't know." And so that means that the children end up being the carrier of this social change. And so when we teach the babies about money in very simple age and developmentally appropriate ways, a few things happen. One, in case their parents never got these lessons, we're starting at the ground, and so it's okay because now the parent learns the lesson too, right? The other thing that happens is when the child notices how the grownups and/or older kids in their life are using money, they start asking questions based on what they learned in the school environment The next thing that happens is just in case there are forces that don't allow the parent, the grown-ups, to get it together, right? They can't ever figure out how to save. They can't ever figure out to, to work consistently. They can't ever figure out how to just move out of whatever space they're in. Those lessons that those kids get in the classroom end up being protective. Because once that child grows into a young adult who's then working and earning a little bit of money, even if the parent or the grown-up has said, "Well, now you're working, you need to contribute to the house," they might say, "Mm, but I remember I'm supposed to save $5," even if it's just $5 from my check for some reason. And then all of a sudden we have a 16, 17 or 18-year-old who maybe has been working an after-school job, a weekend job, and they've got a few hundred or even a few thousand, um, dollars saved up because they remember this lesson from when they were a kid, even if the grown-ups in their life were unable to take the action, they were. So then they're starting off their life as an adult, perhaps independent, perhaps not, but with these behaviors that they learned as a kid. And so they can be the grown-up who teaches the next generation or the one above them. When I learned about money, when I taught everybody in my life about money, it changed three generations of my family. My s- me and my siblings, because I, of course, put them on a budget as soon as I could. And then the grown-ups because they say, "Hey, we notice you're doing okay. Well, how do you do this?" And they kind of ask in their own way for how they could do things differently in a way that still worked for them. And then my kids are super money smart, just because they swim in this water where we're talking about money all the time. And so that, that's where it comes from. And I know that was a long answer, so I'll be quiet because let's talk. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. My brain is exploding right now. I'm taking furious notes. Um, wow, where to even go next? I mean, so I just wanna kind of like echo back some of the things that are really resonating with me. So this idea of kids being the carriers of social change, like, mm, I just want people to sit with that. That's really good. I also am really excited about the idea of asking questions. Like inquiry pedagogy from the teacher lens, also the family lens, like how do we continue conversations over time? I love that you're-- It's making me think of your curriculum, you know, K-5 being like, okay, and we grow this over time. We don't start in pre-K with like, here's how to budget for this, like, thing that you, you want necessarily, but we're doing like a foundational piece to eventually do that. Um, I just, I think there's, wow, so much that you just said that's literally blowing my mind. Um, but also I, I'm curious to know, like- I have heard so many families who are families of preschoolers, families of, uh, maybe elementary kids particularly say, I literally have a family say to u- say to us, um, we were doing, uh, how to talk to kids about social issues. It was h- how do I, do I literally say the word money? Like, they were like, "I have grown up never having been told to talk about money." That was, like, a taboo subject. Um, I also have, have been thinking about, um, folks that I know that are, like, very stressed when it comes to money because families have shared the dynamics of money, but not necessarily in a healthy way. And so I'm curious, I think there's some probably shifting or, like, a, a term I often hear is, like, the re-parenting, right? Like, you're, like, re-parenting yourself. You're shifting how you grew up thinking about money and now we gotta do it different. Like, for the family members listening to this or engaging with this episode, like, w- what has to happen for that shift or what's, like, a mindset that you can help coach us through that needs Dr. Darla Bishop: to happen? Yeah. Uh, and I'm s- thank you so much for hitting on that. I think part of it is we don't always realize as parents that our voice ends up being that inner monologue for a long time, right? Especially if you're in the stage where you have some older kids, like they're 12 and up, and so they're not listening to you. They're listening to their, their friends and their, their peers. But really, your voice ends up be that, is that, um, inner monologue really probably until early to mid-20s. And so what you say and what you do matters, not to put pressure, but it matters more than you're probably giving yourself credit for. And so one of the things I often th- say is, like, if you're wondering how you're already teaching your kids money lessons, because you are. We're constantly teaching our kids lessons about relationships, about money, about values, about how we treat one another, right? Whether we are explicitly doing it or just living our lives, 'cause they are watching, right? That if you are wondering how you t- how your kids are picking up the money lessons is for 30 days, s- start at, say, like, and put it in your calendar even. Just make a note in your phone or if you're a journaling or diary type person, every time you hear your kid say something about money, ask for something that has a cost, a, a financial cost, or react, just so that you can kind of create a list of the things that you hear your kids say, or even better, that you say to the family, right? And then after a couple weeks, three or four Look at your list, and we are not looking at this with any judgment of ourselves, of anything. We're just simply-- This is we're, we're being anthropologists. We are being NCIS. We are being curious. We are investigating, not making any judgments yet about, hmm, so what are the things that we've said out loud to one another about money? And if you look at that list and you're like, "Cool, that's what I want their inner voice to say," stay exactly there. Keep using those messages. But if you see the list and you're seeing things like, "We ain't got money for that. Stop asking for stuff. We can't afford it," and if you don't want those to be the main messages rolling around in your child's head, then you gotta figure out what to say differently. And I'd like to give this example of being in the store with my child, right? Like every once in a while we've gotta go to a big box store because we need trash bags and light bulbs. So the way that I set us up for success is I specifically say, "This is the purpose for this trip. We are going to this store because we need trash bags and light bulbs." And I recruit the kid to help me remember, quote-unquote, that we're here for trash bags and light bulbs. "Oh my gosh, what are we here for again? Oh, trash bags and light bulbs. Okay." 'Cause they're helping me stay on track, and which is great. You give a kid a job, and they're gonna do that job most of the time, right? The second thing I do is when they notice something that catches their attention, a toy, a dress, a candy, something colorful, I don't, if, especially if we're not in a hurry, we don't have somewhere to go, I don't rush them past it. I say, "Oh, well, let's stop and look at it. Well, what do you like about this dress? Oh, you like the color. Oh, okay." Okay, so I g- engage them in a thirty-second conversation, a one-minute conversation, and then usually that actually satisfies it because I didn't rush them past the thing, and they got to tell me why they liked it, and we got to spend a little time with the thing, or they got to pick it up, or they got to touch it. That's like eighty percent of the time enough, and we can move on. Now, for that other twenty percent of the time where they actually make the ask, "Mom, can I have?" I say, "Hmm, well, do you remember what we came to the store for?" And they say, "Trash bags and light bulbs." Perfect. "Did we get our trash bags and light bulbs?" "No, not yet." Okay. Well, let's get that first. So I can either move them to the main purpose we came to the store, or I can say, "Well, because we didn't come for the dress or the toy or the candy today, we're not gonna get it today. But can you look, tell me what numbers it says on the price tag?" And then it makes them look so that they can recognize prices, because that's an important life skill. That's an important skill to have when you send them to the store to pick something up when they're old enough to do that on their own, right? They need to be able to look and identify prices and compare, "Well, this one costs $2 and this one costs $2, but this one's bigger, so maybe that's the one I want," right? And so, "Oh, what's that price?" "Okay, it's $7." "Do you think you have $7 in your piggy bank?" "I don't know." "Okay. Well, we know that you like it. We know that it costs $7. Now that we have our trash bags and light bulbs, we're gonna leave the store. But as soon as we get home, let's check your piggy bank, and if you have the $7, well, the next time I come to this store, or I might even make a special trip, and I'll come get that thing for you." Right? And then if they don't have the $7, "Well, darn, you, you only got $5. Well, what could we do to help earn the extra two that you need? Is there some special jobs you could do around the house? Do our neighbors need anything? Do you have any birthdays or special occasions coming up where Granny or this other person in our life usually gives you a small gift?" My son, when he goes to the barber shop, the barber is so nice and usually will tell him, "If you sweep the floor, you can have $2." So my son will say, "Can we go to the barber shop?" Because he knows he can, he can get the $2 he needs there, right? And I know I explained this in a long way, but that little interaction of, "Well, how much does it cost? Okay, let's check your piggy bank," only took a little bit longer than, "No. Put it back. Stop asking for stuff," and develops a much richer, friendlier in, in relationship with money. Lindsay Lyons: Wow. That was... I'm, like, taking notes 'cause I'm like, "I'm gonna do that thing next," 'cause I've totally found myself being like, "No. We can't. We're not doing that. Stop asking." So this is so good. Oh, wow. And I also just love how much, like, there is so much you're teaching in that conversation. I mean, I imagine, I'm already thinking, like, two conversations ahead too to, like, okay, maybe we buy the thing for $7, and then the next time we're at the store and we identify this other thing, and now we don't have any money in the piggy bank, right? Like, what a wonderful opportunity to now engage, like, well, because you made a choice, right? Like, and we... Oh my gosh, there's so much potential, and for a continuing conversation about- Dr. Darla Bishop: For a continuing conversation, right? Because we're teaching our kids about money every single day. Every single day. And so if we can put a bit of intention about it, then it just l- opens up a world of possibilities for the kids. And when you don't, and I'm not telling anyone, parents or teachers, that you have to have the answers, but have a few questions ready. Because when you have questions ready, the kid will carry the conversation. Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely Absolutely. A- and, and what I love, thank you for sending, uh, me a little glimpse of, like, what the, your curriculum looks like. It's beautiful, and what I really wanted to just say I love is in each lesson you have, like, here's what the task is for the teacher, here's what the task is for the student, here's what the task is for the family member. And I, I just love that those three, wi- within the lesson it is assumed and encouraged and invited that everyone is an equal participant in this. So you have student agency, you have that home family connection or home-school connection immediately, and I think, I, I, I just love, one, that as a mindset of just when we're doing this, here's a prompt I'm gonna send home for families, or here's a prompt I might tell families ahead of time. Um, I- do you mind sharing some of the ways that might come up in the curriculum or that you've seen be successful with, like, I'm doing something as the teacher at school, here's, like, a move a teacher can make or an ask a teacher can make of the family to, to bridge that partnership or to form that? Dr. Darla Bishop: Yeah, absolutely. And so one of the things that I've heard from, like, my credit union and banking partners is they're realizing that kids are not spending much time handling real money. And so when they're doing the math lesson, you know, if you've been a elementary school teacher, you have the math book and it's pictures of the coins. The kids are having a much harder time getting that concept of which coin is which value because they literally haven't handled them, right? And so one of the things I might do, whether I'm the math teacher, the social studies teacher, or the teacher who's been tasked with doing this money workshop, is I'm going to ask the parents, "Hey, can you specifically find some coins and talk with your child about counting the coins, sorting the coins, identifying the coins, and telling you how much the coins make?" Because this is something we're doing in math to teach them multiples, and if you do it in real life where they get to touch it and smell it, 'cause pennies smell funny, and see which is bigger and which is smaller and which are the same color and which is a different color, then it'll make my work in this math lesson where we're teaching multiples way easier. Lindsay Lyons: I love that. I mean, even just there was an article I was reading the other day, and I said something to my three-year-old and I was like, "Oh my gosh, they're not gonna make pennies anymore." And he's like, "What does that even... Like, what does, how is that even a thing?" I was like, "Oh, right, 'cause you don't handle pennies. Like, you don't handle coins 'cause everything is on our credit card." So that is so good 'cause I, I feel like there's so many other things, like current event articles like that, that could now make meaning because you have handled the physical thing. Dr. Darla Bishop: Right Lindsay Lyons: Go ahead. Um, I am curious about, also I'm sure, uh, like, the audience is, is curious about, like, what is a potential trajectory from, like, a pre-K conversation to, like, a fifth grade conversation about money? Like, can you give us a couple examples of, like, what does it look like in fifth grade, and then what does it look like m- several years later to kind of like illustrate how we build over time, whether I'm a teacher or honestly a family member as well? Dr. Darla Bishop: Yeah. So let's stick with the physical money conversation, right? So in the lower elementary, we're gonna be actually handling physical money and showing that the numbers on the paper, the symbols on the coins matter, and that's how you can tell what the value is. And that we use these things, this paper and these coins, to trade them for other things we need or want. So it's really basic, right? And then we also talk about all the different ways we can use these papers and co- pieces of metal. We can use them to save, s- because we know we want something and we need to take little bits of money over time. We can use it to spend because we are ready to now trade it for something we need or want. We can use it to share or give to others because that's one of the thing that's really important to do, is when you have, is to make a plan to share. And it might be that you share the money or it might be that you share the toy or the food that you bought with the money. But we're also getting in that sharing is caring language, right? Now, the fifth grader, we're gonna talk about, okay, so you know that all the grown-ups either tap their phone or use this plastic card to use money. So how do you know how much it's used when it's not the physical paper? So we're gonna be really trying to get them to think about how to keep track when it's not the physical thing that if they had a stack of dollars, they could see it get smaller, but instead they're just tapping or swiping. So what are all the different ways they're gonna know how much is in the bank, right? So that they can think about what their limit is, what they can spend, what they can't spend, how to get more, what happens when it's too low, right? So we're gonna have them problem solve so that they have that reminder from when they were little that there is a physical thing behind the plastic card or the tap. Now, when they are teenagers, and maybe they are more- Um, they are more consistently doing things to trade their time or skills for money, like babysitting or mowing lawns or, you know, working at the ice cream shop or the car wash, right? So, like, having them think about, okay, so you know that every time you spend an hour of your life at the car wash, you- you're getting $10. And if you want to go buy those shoes, it's gonna cost you $100. So that means you had to trade 10 hours or a full day plus some extra hours working in order to buy those shoes. Is that still worth it? How long will the shoes last? How are you going to use the shoes? How are you going to take care of them? Because if something breaks, if they, if they get damaged, that means when you go to replace them, because it's really hard to get shoes fixed, at least that kind of shoe, when you go to replace them, you gotta do that whole thing all over again, and it might be $110 now instead because they don't have that one. They have a- the newer model, and it just cost a little bit more, right? So then we're still connecting that physical paper and coin from when we caught them in first grade to now trading their time for money and what that really looks like, because it's, they had to put their effort or their work or their sweat in order to get the money, in order to trade it for the thing. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. Okay, two things I'm absolutely loving. One, this idea of, like, is it worth it. Th- that to me is, is, coming back to that initial example in the grocery store, right? Like, is it worth it? Yeah, we do have $7 at home in your piggy bank. You've saved for a whole year. You've got it. Is it worth it to, to give all that there? Or do you want that thing for $10 that you've been talking about for the last year and you wanna, like, save up for that, right? Like, I love that framing to just as a parent have in the back of my head to be like, "Oh, right." Maybe it's not the literal question I ask my three-year-old, but, like, it's, it's, it's there in my mind to guide our conversation. But I also just really wanna name that sharing piece. That is so good. I constantly, like, try to, to think about how to par- parent well in all the dimensions, and I keep them separate sometimes. I'm like, "Oh, it's a money conversation. Oh, this is a, a community conversation, how to be a good community member." But actually, they can totally be the same conversation, and I just love that you named that, so thank you. Dr. Darla Bishop: Yeah, no, for sure. And part of it too is one of the things that I've recently realized as a parent is I was doing the business of our lives without my kids, because it's just faster, right? It's faster to go to the grocery store without the kids. It's faster to run this errand without putting everybody's shoes and socks on. It's like, okay, hey, the other parent's here. You're good. Okay, I'm gonna run to the store. I'll be back in 25 minutes. You need anything, right? But then I was like, wait, but that's how I learned how to do this stuff with my own parents, by being drug around to the post office, and the, the clerk where we had to drop things off, or to the grocery store, right? Like, and so if I, for my own convenience, leave the kids out, how will they learn how to do these things in real life? And so I'm gonna have to just leave more time to go grocery shopping so they can come along. I'm gonna have to leave more time or pick which day we're gonna go to the hardware store so they know how to say, "Excuse me," and, "How can I find this?" Or, "This is what I'm looking for." Because those are all interactions we need to know how to do, and if I don't model it for them, if I don't give them a chance to practice this while I'm here to guide the interaction, then how will they know what to do when they are on their own? How will they know what to do when I'm ready to send them to the store instead of me going? Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely. I'm already trying to scaffold toward independence for little things. Like, that's a huge one, right? You go, get those groceries. I can remember doing that as a kid, we just, I had to go a million times with my dad first. Dr. Darla Bishop: Yep, exactly. Lindsay Lyons: I am curious. I, I named a few challenges that were in my brain that I had heard people share. Um, is there any challenge that you've noticed with families or teachers talking about money that they've kind of come up against? Um, whether it's, like, resistance to talking about it at all, or, like, you know, I talk about it in this way, but, like, really I should, like, talk about it in this healthier way, or yeah, I'm curious to know what your, like, big ahas are for us so we don't have to, like, muddle through that ourselves. Dr. Darla Bishop: Yeah, I mean, it's because we all, each of us has our own relationship with money. Each of us. And even in a married couple, because we came into that marriage with all types of experiences before we became a married couple, that each individual's relationship with money Could be totally different than what that couple as a unit's relationship will be with money. And that's why, not to bring everybody down, you know, 40% of marriages that end often say it was because of, of financial disagreements, right? And so in the school-family-child dynamic, the thing that comes up is that we often, often, I don't wanna say all, but we often have not fully examined our relationship with money. So here I am trying to teach it, but I don't even know how I feel about these things. Um, and the other piece too is teachers, you know, while in our society we say teachers, you know, are underpaid and underfunded and have to do so much work. I don't know if you know that statistically speaking, a teacher has a much better chance at retiring as a millionaire than a physician, right? Yeah, statistically speaking, you have much better odds to retire as a millionaire as a teacher than you do as a physician. And think about it, right? Because if you're a teacher, you probably started your career, unless you had to take a different path, m- r-right out of college at 22. You only, if you had loans at all, you only had the loans from that four-year degree, because if you go for more schooling, you usually do that while you're already teaching, and the district will help to subsidize that expense, um, so that you can continue to, you know, develop as an educator. Um, and then depending on when you became a teacher, you might have access to a retirement plan where the school district is putting a portion or a percentage of your salary in, again, right at age 22. Um, or you might even still have a pension. There are a few school districts that still offer pensions, and so you're starting your retirement, um, financial situation right at 22. That's great. That's great. And then because you went to a teaching university or, and only spent four years in school, your loan balance is probably much lower than someone who went to medical school. 'Cause if you go to medical school, that means you're probably not actually working and earning a big, a big salary, yes, but you're not earning that salary until 28 at the earliest, 32 if you did something special. And so that's a full 10 years that person has not been participating in retirement savings. So you've got that time power of money on your side. And as a teacher, no one expects you to drive a luxury car. No one expects you to have a huge house. No one expects you to have three kids in private school. In fact, if you do, they'd be like, "Wait Why do you drive a fancy car, have a big house, and have three kids in private school, right? But if you are a physician, those lifestyle expectations are there, so you start it with a lot more debt. You have to have ... You have high expenses because you have to pay your liability insurance, your, um, malpractice insurance, and then there's all those lifestyle pressures. And as a teacher, if you go thrift shopping every weekend, no one bats an eye. If you drive a used car for 20 years, no one bats an eye. So it is statistically speaking way easier to be a millionaire as a teacher than it is as a physician in this country. And so what if we leaned into that? That hey, I c- I'm, I'm potentially a million dollar teacher just because I've been putting in retirement since I was 22. Lindsay Lyons: I love that. I've never heard that statistic or thought about that. That is brilliant. I also just love the, like your encouragement for introspection around like the how do we, how have we come to money in a partnership, and like, and now I'm teaching about it. Like, there are so many things that we hold onto that like, you know, not everybody's excavating in therapy or something, you know. Like we have to actually- Right ... dig in and like think about it. Oh my gosh. Wow, you have given me so much to think about. I'm realizing we are almost out of time, so I'll move- Dr. Darla Bishop: Oh my gosh ... Lindsay Lyons: last few questions. But I- I'm curious, what is like one thing that an audience member can do when they end the episode, and it's like I wanna just put some little nugget of this conversation into practice today or tomorrow? Dr. Darla Bishop: The very first thing I would suggest is get a piece of paper, and I love blank pieces of paper for this. Colorful if you have it. So if you're a teacher listening, go grab a yellow or a bright orange from the copy room. I won't tell on you. Because th- that something about the bright color actually sparks some creativity. And I want you to write one question: What are the rules I have about money? And then write down all the rules you have about money. I cannot spend this. I'm supposed to save this. And rules can be good, bad, or neutral. J- but just write down all the rules that you have in your brain about money, whether you follow them or not. We're just writing all the rules that someone has ever told you about money. And then I want you to go through and ask, "Does this rule make sense for my life today?" Because one of the things that happens with how we learn about money is we learn from the grown-ups around us when we're growing up or coming of age, right? And their context may have been completely different, so the rules they gave us made total sense for their life, for their situation, for their generation, for their income, for their whatever, right? But might not make sense for us in our life right now. And so- Just see if there is a rule that you've been carrying around, and maybe even feeling bad that you haven't been able to follow, but doesn't make any sense for you. Like, if my rent is $1,500 a month, and if I wanted to go live the American dream and buy a house, but my mortgage would be $2,200 a month, then it actually does not make sense for me to be a homeowner. And so every time my parents ask me why I haven't bought a house yet, I should tell them, "Well, Mom, Dad, it's because my rent is 1,500 and my mortgage would be 2,200. It doesn't make math sense, and I can do math." And that'll shut down the conversation, at least that time. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, that's really good. Okay, thank you for that. Next question: What have you been learning about lately? It could relate to our conversation or it could be totally not related. Dr. Darla Bishop: So I've been learning about how to be an online influencer or content creator or, depending on who the teacher is, they use different words, because I'm realizing that that's where a lot of people are getting information. And so if I've got good information, I need to be there to kinda, like, soften up all the not-so-great information that's out there. 'Cause maybe people will pick up my book, but they're probably more likely to find me on TikTok, so let me make sure I'm over there. Lindsay Lyons: Yes. Okay. So now, that's a great segue, I want to just give space to talk about your book, and also, like, where people can find it and you online. Dr. Darla Bishop: Oh, thank you so much. So we have a few books. So we have How to Afford Everything, and that's the book for grown-ups. So this one is best for someone who's e- earning money, so, like, 16 and up. Now, a 16-year-old's probably not gonna write it. Most of my readers are, like, 25 and up. And then I've got How to Afford College, because many of us, depending on how we grew up, education can be absolutely a pathway to a different life trajectory, right? A different type of career, a different type of environment, a different city and state. And so if I don't understand the financials of getting to and through college, I might end that college with more debt than I needed to have, just because I didn't know any better. I didn't know any different. So that's what How to Afford College about. And then the book that I shared with you is the children's book, which is part of a bigger series that will be coming out in 2026. It's called Madeline's Money Adventure, and this is our storybook version with that lesson for that early elementary, so the, like, f- four to 10-year-olds, right? Like, the 10-year-old can read it to their little sibling but will be bored by it kind of thing. And this is, introduces the basics of money and some of the language and how we can relate to it. And it's bilingual English/Spanish because that was important to my family and my community, so we put the, both languages right on the same page. The easiest way to find me is go to darlabishop.com, and all the links are there Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh, I'm actually gonna go buy that children's book right now 'cause I have not yet. And thank you for this conversation, Dr. Bishop. This was so fun. Dr. Darla Bishop: Yeah, thank you for having me. I know we chatted a long time, so sorry listeners, this was a long one. Lindsay Lyons: No, it was an excellent long one. 
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In this episode, we talk with Christina Hideck about the transformative potential of parent involvement in schools. Christina is a former attorney, now working as a professional organizer who is passionate about parent-teacher relationships. She’s the author of The Principal’s Parent Group Playbook, which offers practical tips and strategies for any PTO to implement.
Christina discusses the importance of recognizing parents as an under-leveraged pillar in school communities, the need for collaborative strategic planning between parent groups and school stakeholders, and the significance of institutional knowledge sharing to support effective school-parent (guardian) partnerships. The Big Dream Christina envisions a world where every school boasts a healthy and functional parent group. She believes that when parent groups operate effectively, the potential for creating a positive impact on the school environment is limitless. Mindset Shifts Required The conversation debunks two big myths around parent (guardian) involvement in the school. First, involvement doesn't equate to a never-ending commitment, and there isn’t an expectation to know anything before getting started. On the teacher-administrator side, it’s important to recognize that parents are coming in with very little experience in running a healthy and efficient school parent group, so they need support. Both parents and school stakeholders need to overcome misconceptions and stereotypes about parent-teacher organizations (PTOs) and recognize each other's roles and potential to work collaboratively. Action Steps To begin cultivating a thriving partnership between school stakeholders and family members, Christina emphasizes these high-leverage action steps to take: Step 1: Start with common or shared goal setting. What does the school really want to do? What parents are already excited about making that happen? What are parents hoping to accomplish? Getting on the same page about the shared goals can help set everyone up for success. Step 2: For school employees, identify areas where parental support could significantly enhance school goals and open these opportunities to families. Then, be open to how family members want to be involved, let them take action on what’s important, and communicate transparently with families about school goals, values, and opportunities. Step 3: Access resources through your PTA (a parent-teacher association, which, unlike PTOs, a PTA has more resources through the credentialing body) or Christina’s PTO Answers. Step 4: Cultivate empathy and understanding. Teachers and educators need to understand that family members don’t know how schools operate today; they are only able to reference what they did in school decades ago. Teachers can come alongside family members to help them understand how things operate now. Challenges? A significant challenge is to dismantle outdated perceptions of PTOs as merely event planners. School leaders and parents must work together to ensure that parent groups are seen as vital partners in the educational process. One Step to Get Started For parents, reflect on how you can actively participate in your child’s school, whether that’s volunteering in class, bringing in theatre projects, or something else you’re passionate about. Getting involved exists on a wide spectrum of time, effort, and energy, and you can consider what’s best for your situation. For educators and school leaders, reach out to a parent during open house events and start a conversation about how they can assist with specific school initiatives. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on their website, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing the PTO Family Engagement Opportunity Assessment with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 262 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Christina Hydock, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Christina Hidek: Oh, Lindsay, I am so excited for our conversation today. Lindsay Lyons: Me too, and I, I have been thinking a lot. I know you said before we hit record, you know, I'm really interested in, like, the expansion of my understanding of shared leadership to encompass families as well as, like, the typical students that I'm talking about. So really excited about that family school partnership dynamic. That's what's on my mind today. But wondering anything that's on your mind that you want people to kind of keep in mind throughout the episode. Christina Hidek: I think that including parents is just really important, and it is often an overlooked, under-leveraged kind of third pillar of, like, the adult, adults in the room for schools, right? You have the school leaders, you have the teachers. And when I say teachers, I mean staff and, like, e- e- everyone, right? So that's just, like, shorthand for everyone who's not an administrator, I guess. And, um, so yeah, just the ... It's just they're under-leveraged, and I would love to ... Under-leveraged, under-recognized, overlooked, and under-celebrated. Lindsay Lyons: A lot of potential there. Yes, Christina Hidek: there is so much po- so, like, that was a lot of negativity, but I guess I would also love for people who maybe have not had the best experience with a parent group in the past, maybe this is your chance to, like, reset and reframe and think about that was that. Because the, the biggest thing is that parent groups, they change from year to year, which is awesome, but very frustrating. And so you have really a new opportunity. Just like when you have a new set of kids in your classroom, you have the opportunity to kind of reset things. It's the same with the parents. Lindsay Lyons: It segues nicely into this first question I usually ask around freedom dreaming. So Dr. Bettina Love describes dream, uh, freedom dreaming as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so I am hearing a lot of injustice in, like, what you were describing, right? Is there's, there's this potential for family partnerships with school stakeholders, and we're not, we're not doing it. We're actually excluding a lot of families in our current system. So can you actually, like, reformulate that into, like, your dream? Like, what, what is the dream there? Christina Hidek: I would love for every school to have a healthy and functional parent group. In my own kids' schools and have seen what the parent groups who are f- not always been 100% healthy or productive or functional. Like, there are still, there's amazing things that can get done even there. So imagine if, one, everyone had a parent group, a, and then if they were, like, functional and healthy. Like, my mind just can't even handle the awesomeness of the potential Lindsay Lyons: What are some of the mindset shifts that either family members or school stakeholders, leaders, teachers, sh- should kind of go through to be able to make that dream a reality? I think there's a lot of probably misconceptions or kind of old ways of thinking of how traditionally we've done things. Like, what's the shift there mindset-wise? Christina Hidek: All right. So for parents and guardians, right? So parents is shorthand for anybody who is responsible for a child in school. That's... I try to be really inclusive, but I use- It's important shorthand. So for parents, just know that you're being involved doesn't mean jumping through and into a black hole of never-ending commitments. So that's one, because I think so many people have the perception of school parent groups and being involved in school has been shaped by what they see. What do we see in, like, popular culture? Parent groups really are never positively represented. Normally, you see very dysfunctional groups where there's a power struggle over, by the parents, either internally or with the school about something that is of zero consequence. For example, the theme for the carnival. It's so reductive that that's what we care about, that, that, at p- as parents, we really are really willing to fight tooth and nail over a jungle theme or a Paris theme for a party, you know? Like, so one is parents know that you're not necessarily gonna get sucked into the black hole, that your involvement does matter in ways that you don't even realize how much it's gonna matter in, kinda, till after the fact. And that is one of the reasons why I've been involved for so long and in such kind of high-profile ways, that it was really, even though it was a lot of work, the payoff was there for me personally and also for my children. Um, so it wasn't completely altruistic in me giving back. I totally am getting something back. And the other thing is that parents, you don't need to know anything in order to get involved. No one is expecting you to have all the answers, and you can say, "I don't know." And so on the flip side, for everybody who is employed by the school, uh, know that parents are coming in with probably very little experience for running a healthy and efficient school parent group. Like, there is no PTO school. It's kind of the same with, like, the principals, school leaders, and teachers. There's no PTO school for them either. So they don't really know- The possibilities, if you have a really good experience, then great. Then, then that's kind of like your framework. But if you have a negative experience, then I think that's really gonna stunt the possibilities of what could be for you because that's your reality, and you don't know maybe how it should be. Lindsay Lyons: In terms of how we actually cultivate a thriving partnership between school stakeholders or people employed by the school, I like that phrasing, um, and, you know, family members, so parents, guardians, caretakers. Yeah. And I imagine there's a lot of pieces, and I've seen your website, there are a lot of pieces 'cause you have a lot of pieces in your blog posts- No, that's okay and things, which is great. I'm wondering about kind of some high-leverage practices or actions that PTO members or even families in general trying to get involved in PTOs could take. Like, what's the action on the family side, and then are there any actions that school administrators or teachers or staff could take to partner better with an existing PTO? Christina Hidek: Sure. I, I think it really comes down to common or shared goal setting because there are definitely some things that the school wants to make happen that's on their big wish list, but maybe they don't have time to make it happen. Well, then you maybe have some really motivated parents who are like, "We're here. Just point us in the right direction. We don't wanna s- step on your toes." 'Cause not every parent who wants to get involved has an agenda beyond wanting to improve the school parent group. Lindsay Lyons: I'm thinking about the, when you talked about the w- what I would think of as, like, the strategic plan or, like, um, kind of those big goals that, that stake- stakeholders in the schools have to set as part of just what they do as a leader, right? It's usually every five years, for example, districts have a, a strategic plan or schools have a strategic plan. And there's all these things that are tied to academic outcomes, to social-emotional outcomes of students, like, all these important things. And to contrast to your earlier example of, like, the carnival theme there's meat to some of this work already being done that I see as really powerful to kind of t- tap the PTO or partner with the PTO on existing structures and plans as opposed to having them completely separate. Christina Hidek: In my own groups, because I have been a leader, it's very much been shared when the school leaders have been open to it because not every school leader understands, like, the kind of deal. And I always, I have this little joke and I always say, "Oh, I gotta break in a new principal, kind of show them the ways of how we do things here." I'm very open to being collaborative. I want to support the school leader and the teachers. My mom is a retired teacher, so that's my background. I, I know the challenges. Not all of them, but a good, good amount. I, uh, have a very large, um, Facebook group, and th- one member recently posted, she's like, "Our- we're not working at all with our school. Like, th- we- I don't even know what we should be doing because it, they're taking care of everything." And I was like, "Well, reach out to that principal and get on their calendar and figure out where you can support them." There is space for you. You don't have to do identical things, but there's so much overlap, and so to have things separated is making things so much harder on both groups. There are some really fantastic synergistic benefits of coming together. So like you talk about the strategic plan, I, my district has done it I think three times now, and I was involved with two out of the three this last time. My kids are almost done, and I was like, it is time for other people to step up and have their opinions kind of come in because I've had my time. But I found the process to be so beneficial and helped me understand more of what the school's plans were and how they were approaching issues. And then I'm like, oh, uh, we need to change things. 'Cause in my district there was, the first strategic plan, there was a big emphasis, and this was just me because the person in the room was the loudest, talking about the need for discipline and that things were running amok. And I'm like, I, I don't ... That's not my experience of, uh, seeing what's going on in our buildings. But that she really wanted that stressed in that strategic plan. But it was kind of old school thinking of- Lindsay Lyons: Been there as a coach in those conversations. You're like, "Let's pivot. We're unearthing-" "... root causes here that we might need to get into." Yeah. But I, I love that you were part of the strategic plan for two out of those three, and I'm curious, were you in the room with the strategic planning committee? Were there multiple, uh, family representatives- Yeah ... and then you kind of came back to the PTO? Was it actually a topic on a PTO agenda somewhere? Like how, how does it li- where does it live? Christina Hidek: For me, the first two times we were actually in the room where the decisions were happening, and the first time, uh, I think we were led by outside consultants. There were multiple PTO leaders who were there. And then the second time, they didn't approach the strategic plan in the same way, and so we immediately broke into committees. I think they may have given us a choice about what committee we could go to. Um, but we were there crafting the individual objectives and laying it out, and then able to give feedback, 'cause there were some things that we were like, "Oh, this is something the PTO can, like, totally help with." Like, "Did you know?" And they were like, "Really?" And I'm like, "Y- yeah." My recollection is that it was only the, on the PTO agenda as far as an opportunity to get involved, but not something we were separately tracking, 'cause the people who were volunteering were very much in the thick of things. So they were ... Like, I think the second time that I was on the, the participate in the strategic planning process, I was a leader in multiple buildings, so multiple PTA units. So Lindsay Lyons: that makes sense that your representative kind of brought things back, brought opportunities back, and then it could become an agenda item. It sounds like that's, that's awesome. Um, I'm also thinking back to when you o- originally started answering this question, thinking about the skills and also resources and kind of institutional knowledge that people employed by the school have that easily could support the PTO, but often the PTO doesn't have access to or the training on. Have you been part of any sort of, like, skill building or resource allocation or resource building, institutional knowledge sharing that was helpful? And how might leaders in schools learn from that? Christina Hidek: Well, yes, that's why I started my company. So I've totally built out resources because I saw that. Do you know the difference between a PTA and a PTO? Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, but I only learned that from listening to you on another podcast. So can you share- Okay. ... with our audience? Christina Hidek: So it's like, okay, good. I wanna go over this just 'cause there's so many misconceptions. In the US, there are over 60,000 different PTOs. So PTOs are parent teacher organizations, but they don't That maybe that's not their name. They could maybe be a parent council, a homeschool association, a parent and teacher club, a parent c- council. Like, there's a gajillion different names. Mostly independent organizations. They are not part of a larger umbrella organization, unless they happen to be a PTA. So a PTA is a parent teacher association, which is affiliated with the state and national PTA. So those parent groups all funnel up into the national PTA. So they have some training, some guidance, some, um ... There are standards of affiliation that they have to meet every year, so kind of, like, they have to pay membership dues. They have to be, have in- insurance. They have to be up to date with filing their 990, you know, all the tax forms to stay compliant. Because by virtue of being a PTA, they, they kind of inherit their 501[3] nonprofit status from the parent organization of the state PTA. PTOs are independent. So all PTAs are PTOs, but not all PTOs are PTAs. So many people think that because you're a PTO, that you have access to resources, and that is false unless you are a PTA. And even if you are a PTA, you might not have everything you need. Because these are volunteer organizations, there is a shocking lack of infrastructure to ensure that the incoming leader or volunteer g- has the same access to the resources as the person before. There is not a mechanism for capturing all of the knowledge from the volunteer to, like, kind of download what's in their brain and put it in a format that someone new to the group can take on, which is super frustrating. And so that's kind of why, why I started PTO Answers, quite honestly, 'cause I thought, "It shouldn't be this hard." I personally was frustrated. I wrote a book last year, which is bananas pants, 'cause I never thought I would write a book. So it's the, um, Principal's Parent Group Playbook, and it tells you everything that, uh It's basically PTO school in a book for school leaders on what to kind of expect from a PTO or PTA, what their role is, how the PTO or PTA should kind of be set up, what they should be looking for in order to make sure that everything's on the right track, and then gives, like, a breakdown of, like, specifically what to do, uh, for an ent- entire calendar year so that you, you kind of know what, what to expect. Can you guess the last time a book about PTOs or PTAs was written? Exclusively about PTO or PTAs. Like, not, like, a one-line sentence reference in a family engagement book. 1920. There was a republishing in, uh, like, I think maybe six years ago, but it was from that 1920 or 1926 book. Lindsay Lyons: So in all of your writing and research and building all of this stuff, are there particular skills or institutional knowledge pieces that you have found to be critical, but, but often families don't have that coming in? Like, they haven't had the access, they haven't had the institutional knowledge, experience, or exposure. Like, w- can you share, like, one or two of those things just so leaders and teachers can be aware that this is something that they're gonna need to support? Christina Hidek: Parents don't understand how schools work. The last time they were probably in a school was when they were a student. Things have changed. Expectations have changed. Ways of teaching have changed. And that once you have kind of, not empathy, but just, like, a baseline understanding of that and going, "Oh, yeah, their perspective is from 20, 30 years ago. Now I get..." Like, you gotta have just a little- I guess it is empathy. Saying, you know, "This is where they're coming from," and, "Oh, I might need to have a little patience with them to kind of bring them up to speed of how we, how we do things here." Lindsay Lyons: There's a lot of communication required. So I'm thinking about, you know- Yeah ... leader communication, teacher communication. Whether it is through students, sending things home through students, but also just directly to families to say things like, "These are our goals. These are our school values. This is our bell schedule." That like, uh, all of the, the logistics, but also to invite family members into the school perhaps. Christina Hidek: Yes, yes. And it's, it's beyond, I think, the logistics, 'cause that's easy enough, I think, to communicate. But to, it's more of the way that we do things here, and the, the culture pieces. There was one school and a new principal came in, and she happens to be a micromanager. That school leader was not willing to trust or empower the parents to kind of do their own thing. And it's a shame because par- parent participation really has struggled at that school since she's been there. The high school PTA had a principal who didn't really care for the PTA, and he acted like we were just wasting his time, and he was just very difficult to work with. They brought in a new principal, and it was a totally different experience, and that was my first year of being the president at that PTA unit. And it was probably one of my most favorite years because the principal just said, "Let's, yeah." Like said yes to everything. Was like, "Let's do it." I was like, "Can seniors wanna have a lock-in for after prom?" He's like, "Sure." I was like, "W- wait, I'm sorry. You think that this is gonna be cool to have 250 kids overnight?" He goes, "You know what? We, we already did it earlier with the football team, so like, what's more kids?" And I was like, "Oh my God, I love you." So, and it wasn't just 'cause he said yes. It was because we would meet and talk about what was going on, but also we got to know each other personally. And, um, I would bring him treats. He was a really funny guy. I'm talking about him in the past tense 'cause unfortunately he did pass away, which was so traumatic for our school community. But I've had the experience of working with three different principals in that building, and boy, there are such differences. What's really important to know is that the, the parents are coming in. Maybe they don't have resources, and maybe you need to be the catalyst to get that because it can help with your own sanity. So even though the PTO, maybe they could find it, maybe you can like solve some of your own problems by going, "Here." Here, go, go to PTO Answer. She has got like, all these different blog posts so that it can help guide them so that they are in a position to then help you with your building goals or professional goals. Lindsay Lyons: I'm hearing a lot of feeling like you're not in it together is really frustrating when the ... you get that kind of vibe from the administrator. But it can be transformative maybe when the leader is actually in, in true partnership, willing to not just listen to what you're trying to say and, like, truly value your perspective, but also being willing to try something that might initially seem uncomfortable. Are there things you would add? Christina Hidek: Oh my gosh, but yeah, you don't have time for that, 'cause we'd be here for like, weeks. 'Cause I have a lot to say about that. 'Cause it's so ... It's more ... PTOs are more complex than it ... they appear on their face. Like, on the face it, it, of things, it looks like they're just party planners or event planners or fundraisers, but really their purpose goes far beyond that. And that's ... I- if you're just stopping there, if that's all you're getting to, where you're not truly including them as partners, then that's a missed opportunity for you. Lindsay Lyons: Really appreciate that perspective. Thank you for sharing that. As we move to close, we've talked about a lot of things. What is one thing that you would encourage perhaps a, a family member to do once they end the episode and/or, like, a, a leader or teacher, someone from the school employee side? Christina Hidek: As a parent, look at your school. Look at your child. What do you w- how do you wanna make their next school year more awesome? And w- what role can you play in that? Is it that you wanna volunteer in the classroom? Is it that you would like to bring theater in to, uh, to better support... I don't know. I have a friend who, her child is in, oh geez, fifth grade, and she helps work on the high school, like, set design and do- and does that, in addition to the other work she does for the PTA. Um, and then as the school employee side, what do you want that you need help with that you would be open to having help from the PTO with, or a parent? Doesn't even have to be the PTO. Let's, let's broaden it out. But there are ... And if you think there's no one to help, then, uh, we need to have some conversations with parents. W- make open house, that your goal, to find one parent to help you. You know, when I was writing my book, one of the things I, I discovered that what is now the STEM program at the high school was initially funded by the PTA, that a teacher asked for some money, the PTA was there to fund that. And, like, how awesome is that? Lindsay Lyons: That's super cool. I love that story. Thank you for sharing that. One of the questions I like to ask at the very end, just for fun, could be about what we're talking about, could be totally something else. What is something that you personally have been learning about lately? We love learning on this show. Christina Hidek: Ooh, I do love learning. I'm trying to think. I am an- I am, uh, I love to learn about things and nerd out about things. Um, I've read an entire book about olive oil. Okay, I can talk at length about olive oil because of this book. It, it was so knowledgeable. And you might think, "How does that impact you?" Well, I know how to buy a really good olive oil now and not spend a fortune. I will give you the, um, too long, didn't read version. Uh, Costco, their house brand, Kirkland Signature, actually is a very high quality olive oil that is not cut with fillers, because that is something we do. Apparently chocolate is more regulated in the United States than olive oil. I- Lindsay, it's, it's a whole thing. I highly recommend that book. I think it's called Extra Virginity. Every once in a while I make a list of things that I would like to learn, and then I'll, like, go look for it. For example, I want to get on stages to talk to principals and teachers at conferences, and I was like, "Well, I need to up my public speaking game, and I need to quit saying 'um' so much." So I Googled that, went onto YouTube, and this, the one video, his suggestion was just to close your mouth at the end of a sentence. I tried it. It works. Lindsay Lyons: I'm gonna borrow that now. Thank Christina Hidek: you. You can't say "um" if your mouth is closed, and I'm like, that is so, like, functionally simple. Lindsay Lyons: Thank you for sharing both your process and the things you're learning. I learned a lot from you. Finally, where can listeners and the audience members learn more about you? I know you mentioned ... We both mentioned you have a website. You mentioned you have a book. What are the places people can go to check that out? Christina Hidek: Yeah. So I- the primary resource where all the awesomeness can be found in, for my world is at PTOanswers.com. I have freebies, like, uh, for principals, I have a PTO family opportunity, family engagement opportunity assessment that helps you maybe re-approach your PTO to look at maybe where you're overlooking, uh, opportu- for potentials, I think, for to get more families engaged. For teachers, I have a freebie that covers five no- no-brainer ways to improve the teacher-parent group relationship. I've really framed it as a parent relationship, but it's how to get, like, it's everything the PTO or PTA wishes that teachers would understand. And then for parent volunteers, pick a role and there is some guidance for you. Like, if you were a room parent, president, treasurer, uh, because- Everyone is capable of serving in a PTO, no matter their background, no matter their experience or education level. Everyone should consider becoming involved just because of the benefits to you personally and your family and your community too. Lindsay Lyons: Awesome. Christina, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Christina Hidek: Oh, it was such a fabulous time, and I loved our discussion, Lindsay 
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In this episode, we talk with Molly Arbuthnott, an educator-turned-writer who is now the author of 18 picture books for children. Her stories all have animal characters and often dive into real-life themes that champion the underdog and help build up self-confidence and self-belief.
As a champion of children’s literacy, she shares her insights into the transformational power of picture books for children and adults alike. Molly advocates for a shift in perspective regarding how these books are perceived and utilized in education and at home. The Big Dream Molly's big dream is that of self-belief, in line with the theme of the “underdog” in many of her own books. She also wants to redefine picture books as a resource not just for children, but as literature that holds value for all ages. She aims to transform picture books from entry-level reading material into versatile and profound stories that resonate universally. Mindset Shifts Required To fully appreciate the value of picture books, Molly suggests breaking away from the idea that they’re only a starting point for young readers. Instead, picture books have rich narratives that offer opportunities for all readers to explore complex themes. It's about understanding the depth possible in art and story, encouraging all participants to view picture books as tools for lifelong learning and conversation. Action Steps Picture books can be a powerful tool for learning and growth in both the home and school settings. Molly recommends these steps to start using picture books to their full potential. Step 1: Don’t “dumb it down.” Molly’s own books feature deep themes like death, and she believes it’s a disservice to our children to gloss over things they will have to experience at some stage in life. Instead, the picture book format makes it possible to engage in these important topics in an age-appropriate way. Don’t shut down questions, but engage in those conversations. Step 2: Introduce picture books in varied settings beyond primary education, such as in literature circles in higher grades or within family reading time. Increased exposure to picture books helps people of all ages engage in and learn from them. Step 2: Encourage children to interpret picture books independently and express their unique perspectives through discussions. It’s also important to allow children to pick their own books and make choices around what they want to read and learn. Step 3: Allow picture books to lead to broader conversations about real-world concepts, current events, and personal growth, exploring topics that matter to children and their communities. This can be particularly helpful when engaging in high-emotion topics around identity. Picture books, like those that use animals as main characters, can help us engage in topics without attributing identity markers Step 4: Keep it fun! Picture books are full of joy, and stories bring the imagination alive. Lean into this. Challenges? A significant challenge lies in balancing adult-driven book markets with fostering children's preferences and choices in reading materials. Ensuring that children are actively involved in selecting what they read and discussing it can counteract this imbalance and empower young minds. One Step to Get Started Begin by selecting a picture book that resonates with a current topic or theme your children are encountering. Use this book as a springboard to facilitate discussions and relate the narrative to personal experiences or broader societal issues, thereby making reading a more interactive endeavor. Stay Connected You can find out more from Molly and her books over on her website and Instagram. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing their course Animal Story Kit with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 261 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Molly, welcome to the Time for Teacher Shift podcast. Hi, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, I'm excited you're here. I am really excited, particularly as this is airing in a kind of miniseries directed towards both teachers and families, thinking about families supporting kids as they read, whether they're reading picture books, whether they're, um, you know, chapter books. Whatever they're reading, I'm really excited about your background as an educator and involvement with books specifically. Um, that's kind of what is on my mind as we enter this conversation. Is there anything on your mind as we enter the conversation that you want people to be aware of, kind of as we continue? Um, not off the top of my head. I'm just really happy to be here chatting about the joy of picture books. Awesome. All right. Well, so I think my first question is the first question I have for every guest, which is really in line with freedom dreaming, which Dr. Bettina Love describes as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. What is that dream that you hold, whether it be for education, for kids' reading lives, for picture books broadly? Like, what's that dream for you? Um, the dream, I guess, well, all of my books are kind Molly Arbuthnott: of about the underdog who kind of comes out on top, so I guess it's the dream of, of self-belief, the American dream. And also, um, that a, the dream of, of a picture book being not just a children's book, but a book for, that anyone, um, reading it can get something out of. I think it's really important for adults to start embracing more picture books. Lindsay Lyons: I love that, and I can say actually just yesterday, colleagues of mine, all educators, are, were in this group chat around picture books, and like we're reading it for ourselves, not even for the kids. Molly Arbuthnott: Oh, amazing. Well, it's great. I mean, it's not... I, I think it's really the fault of the way we... This is going off piece a bit, but it's the fault of, well, not the fault, but it's the way that we teach reading, where the picture book's kind of the bottom rung of the ladder. And, and you then, you start with the picture book, and then you progress onto the chapter book or the bigger book. But really, the picture book should be top of the ladder because it is the one that most people can get something out of Lindsay Lyons: I, I love that. And as a former high school teacher who used picture books in our class- Yeah ... I can say the kids are really into it, too. Molly Arbuthnott: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. They, well, it, it uses a particular part of the brain, and it's a really easy way for particularly with parents having less time in, in modern life to read with their kids or having other priorities, it's a really easy way to engage with a child, um, just by looking at, uh, because it's kind of, it gives the kid kind of, it's a two-way interreaction rather than it just being from one person. So it's a really fun bonding experience beyond just being a story. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, I love that. Okay, so you've already kind of shared a bunch of mindsets or mindset shifts for- ... people. I think that's brilliant. Are there any other things that people should be aware of or have a sp- particular mindset around as they, particularly families I'm thinking of, that are reading with their kids as they encounter this situation where, where they're opening a picture book together. Is there a particular thing they should have in mind as they read? Molly Arbuthnott: To not dumb it down. So I very much have, uh, death, uh, in my books. I've got all sorts of concepts that are quite, uh, deep. Um, and I think that it's a great disservice to a kid if we kind of gloss over things that they potentially or definitely will experience at some stage in life. I mean, it's, it's in an animal form, all my books, so it's kind of a degree of separation. It's not as in your face as it would be otherwise. But I think they're still really important topics, and to not, if the kid raises it, to not just brush it, brush over it, but to actually take the time to answer their questions and, and sort of give them a sense of understanding, because then they'll be much more confident in it as a subject if they kind of know. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, I love that. And so is there a particular either scene or storyline from one of your books that you wanna give us an example of? Like, here's something that happens in the book, here's how a child might respond, here's how you as a family member m- might respond or engage in that conversation. Molly Arbuthnott: Sure. Well, I mean, there are two quite deep stories off the top of my head, I'd say. I, I've written, for anyone, uh, sort of zoning into my books for the first time, there are 18 different picture books, um, about different animals. They all deal with different concepts, different stories, different locations, different adventures. But, um, the one that springs to mind, Angus the Robin, is about a, um, there's a house and there's an accident essentially that happens. And suddenly, I don't, I don't, uh- Expressly say what's there, but I say that there are blue flashing lights, and then it's up to the reader to interpret that as they choose. Um, but then so that kind of leaves it fairly open to chat and discussion about what the blue flashing lights could be, where they could be going, why, what they could be taking, and that kind of thing. And then in, um, in Athena the Cheetah, there is actually a physical death. The- or two brothers, one of them, um... I, I lived in Kenya for a while, so that's what inspired that story. One of them, um, one of the boys gets his foot, um, uh, there's a, there's a crocodile in the river, and the crocodile gets one of the brothers. So again, obviously chances are most readers will not be beside crocodile-infested lakes when they're reading the story. So it's not a literal kind of discussion, but it's a discussion about importance of, of staying together and what happens if someone you really care about has an accident. And accidents do happen all the time, um, and so you can maybe sort of switch it into being an accident that they might relate to or understand and how you can deal with it and, and understand. In the story, I'm not gonna give the story away completely, but the boy who's left, he goes, uh, mute. And so then as well that could lead to the discussion with parents as to why he doesn't talk because, I mean, the kids might come acro- there are, uh, pe- kids who you find don't talk for whatever reason, and so then that can lead into discussion about that and why they might not be talking and what you can do to help and what they might be feeling inside and all that kind of thing. Lindsay Lyons: Thank you for sharing those examples. And just I, I love the broadening of how, yes, we read this thing, but then what does that mean f- for these other maybe related concepts or related- Mm ... applications in your life. I think that's a really nice takeaway for families and teachers to be able to facilitate conversation and sense-making. I, I know also that you are really interested, I think you use the phrase children as gatekeepers. And, and so can you talk about, a little bit about how, like, we as adults can support children in, in making choices around books or, or what that kind of means for you in, in that phrase you use? Molly Arbuthnott: Yeah, well, I, I... it's a really important, um, concept for me because very often as a writer of, I mean, inevitably as a writer of children's books you are kind of having to appeal to two markets because it's the kids who will be reading it, but it's the parents who will be buying it. So it's quite a tricky kind of balance. But it really essentially is you have to be gearing it at what the kids- need, and, and, and they're the ones kind of driving the, um, driving the decisions. It was really because I've started applying for competitions for my books a bit more, uh, constructively this year. It's something that I've never done before, and I kind of was figuring that, well, great, but again, it's the adults kind of driving the demand and driving the books that you see on the shelves, and driving what comes out on top, and driving what wins. And all of these algorithms and things are generated by the people who work rather than by the kids themselves, and how you can shift that. I'm going off to Bologna Book Fair next week, and again, that's a fair for kids books, but it's, it's very much the adults who are there. And so as a kid, I, I mean, you have very, they have very little power inevitably of what they pick and choose to do with their lives. But how to address that kind of power and balance, and to give the kids a bit more say over what it is that they want to read and they want to find out and they want to learn. Because even in a curriculum in school, I mean, you're very much told what to do and think. I mean, up until about six or seven, and then it kind of, there's that shift of when you're supposed to be educated. And I think in some ways it kind of de-educates, because you kind of lose your independence of thought in some ways. Anyway, sorry, I feel I'm segueing a bit. But- I mean, Lindsay Lyons: that's very connected to all the things we talk about on this podcast, so you're in good company. Molly Arbuthnott: Um, but I think it's, I, I, I don't know what the answer is personally, but I feel that there needs to be a way that kids can articulate what it is they want to know. But then in some ways as well, they're figuring out the world, and so they maybe don't know. I mean, it's, in some ways it's a responsibility as a adult who kind of knows a bit more to, um, to articulate what it is you think they want to hear. I mean, an example at the moment from, for me, from my perspective, is I'm having to write, well, I'm, I've been asked to write a story about two guinea pigs, Mocha and Latte, who are in this school, Greenside Primary School, and I'm having to sort of direct it from the guinea pigs' perspective. Um, and try and kind of articulate how, I mean through a guinea pig, how a child would kind of see the world- And I mean, y- uh, you're much more... I think children are very much better at kind of living in the present than an adult, because as an adult, you kind of, not intentionally and not always, but you kind of put all these different layers on top of who you are, just in the nature of how your life kind of, how s- well, not always, but how sometimes your life pans out, that you have layers of parents getting older, layers of properties, layers of travel, layers of work, layers of relationships, layers of... You get all these, um, many, many more layers, and that kind of can, um, it can just cover up kind of your, uh... And, uh, a way to sort of be more in the present and actively appreciating what's around you, because you're covered up with all these layers all the time. So to kind of get into the child's mindset, you have to be very, you have to sort of take all those layers away and be very much aware of your surroundings, aware of what you hear, aware of what you see, and aware of how you interpret it. Because, um, that's the nice thing about books as well, that no one can say what you're seeing or thinking or feeling is right or wrong, because it's just your interpretation, and your interpretation could be the same as the person next to you or it could be completely different. That's kind of the joy of being a independent human being. And so, and so I guess, y- as a writer, you can never satisfy everybody, because everybody's views and opinions are different. But you can make it try to have resonance with as many different people as you can Lindsay Lyons: I love that too from the perspective of e- either a teacher or a family member who is working with kids and, and reading and having that experience of engaging in a picture book with kids, that there is no wrong answer. I think a lot of times in schools, right, it's right or wrong. It's like it's- Mm-hmm ... two and two is four. That is ... Anything else is incorrect. Like, there is a little bit of shyness or fear from students sometimes in speaking up and sharing what their thoughts are because they are fearful that they will be wrong, right? And so I love this idea of art, m- even more broadly beyond picture books, but picture books as a specific representation of art being one of interpretation and one of connection. And I, I also am very much thinking about, like, civics and, and civic conversations, uh, are- Mm-hmm ... I think particularly challenging in the States right now and thinking about how this is a beautiful, um, less emotionally charged perhaps example of how we can talk across different interpretations of a situation i- around picture books and, like, what a great practice opportunity to have different kids read the same book and have a different experience with it and be able to share that. Molly Arbuthnott: Exactly. Yeah, it's kind of a safe space for, um, articulating and, and learning actually to have your own opinion, which is really important and, and that it's all right to think something different from the person Lindsay Lyons: next to you. I'm also envisioning, you know, in high school we do a lot of, like, literature circles around a theme, but it sounds like maybe teachers could also use because you have such a wide range of books, right, that are maybe on particular topics, it might be, okay, we're gonna think about this topic of accidents, for example as you mentioned earlier, and invite students to choose maybe one book that speaks to them and, like, read and engage in, in that book and then be able to have conversations with kids who read different books. Do you think that w- would- Molly Arbuthnott: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, uh, that's as well the joy of, um, of, of ... Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, you can take a broad subject generally in schools I would say anyway, that's kind of how the curriculum's sort of centered around a broad subject, and then you find books that kind of relate to that in different ways. Um, and even ... I mean, it doesn't i- for, for, um, discussions like that it doesn't necessarily need to be just picture books. I mean, there are wonderful picture books that relate to all sorts of different subjects, but you can get a bit out of, out of a chapter book too. I mean, I feel like the whole, I mean, the whole thing is really to encourage- Uh, creativity and, uh, encourage imagination. And so any way that, that can do that is really good. I mean, my books, I tend to ... They're not super woke. They're kind of sticking to traditional values, which ... Just because that's kind of how I am. And, and for me, I kind of had to write about things I know rather than trying to make it something you don't know, 'cause I feel like you fall short in, in that respect. Lindsay Lyons: Certainly there are a lot of school districts who have, like in the United States anyways, like very much, like legal pressures for different things they can and can't talk about. So I think that will be appreciated there. And I think there's also so much connection to, like you said, in, in the broadening span, like people can have an entry point into whatever current event might be happening or whatever is happening identity-wise with them or their, their friends, um, to be able to enter into conversations and expand them beyond the book as well. Molly Arbuthnott: Yeah. Well, I mean, the nice thing as well, though, about an animal is that it's not irrespective of, of your, your stance on, on, on sort of who you are as a person. It, again, is a space where you can be anything because it's why I choose animals, because they're not high-bound by the rules and regulations that you are as an adult or as, as a person of having to sort of go to get up, go to work, go to school, come have lunch, go home. It gives you a lot more creative freedom, and with that it means that then you can have the freedom of interpretation. But going back to the themes you were saying, one of them is, um, I deal with climate change with David the Pizzly Bear, and that's about this bear who gets lost or goes out on an adventure and gets lost in, um, a, an ice field. And then, and then the ice melts and then he, they have to swim back home in order to get home. So that can open up about ... It's based on David Attenborough. Um, so again, that can lead to interpretation of him. And then also that, um, uh, ice fields, why they're melting and, and what we can do to help and to, to sort of stop the, um, climate crisis. But again, it has a happy ending, so it's kind of not all ... It's showing that even though things might be going wrong in the world, you, you kind of work around it and you just make it a new concept of it. And then actually also Conrad the Spider, that's a guitar-playing spider, and that, um, he loses his legs. He uses his legs as his guitar strings, then he loses his guitar and so he loses his legs. And it's about how you can go from great fame and fortune to being very poor and how people- the community around you kind of react and interpret that because, um, inevitably you, I mean, you're in- you're always kind of influenced a little bit by what people think and feel, and how you can And so then you can build resilience kind of up against that. And also they end up in a crisp packet, um, with a ladybird because obviously a spider's much smaller than a human, so that becomes their home. And then that can lead into concepts that, well, you can, um, just have an adventure kind of with a crisp packet or in your wall, in your garden behind your house. You don't need to, um, that especially when you're a kid or even when you're an adult as well, you can still have adventures without needing to travel to the other side of the world. I mean, it's all kind of in your mindset. So every day can be an adventure if you want it to be. It doesn't sort of have to be this great going on holiday that's the release. You can just make that be part of your day-to-day life. It's just a kind of different interpretation. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, like the expansiveness of how differently you could interpret that. Like, my brain immediately was going to, you know, uh, the crazing of, crisis of people being unhoused and like you know, like, well, you, you know, you could look up all of that research as well. So I think, you know, whatever your kid or kids, if you're in a class, right, are interested in, I think there's a lot of, like, follow-up research you could do to your point about the climate change and, like, who is this particular person that it's based off of? But also what are the, what's the information right now, and, like, how do we look at graphs over time? Like, there's so many jumping o- it's like a jumping off point into so many different areas, which is really cool. Oh, thanks. Well, Molly Arbuthnott: yeah, I hope so. I mean, I can't say I'm a massive environmental ... Well, I, I don't, in that respect, I don't preach what I teach, in that I do still travel. I have to travel quite a lot for work. Um, and so I do take planes, I do take, I do drive, I do do things that probably aren't so good for the environment. But then I balance it out in other ways. I mean, no one, we do still have to, have to live. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, great points. Um- Any- anything else you would like to tell, uh, families, educators? Any, um, advice that you have for engaging students and letting students lead the picture book conversations before we move to our final closing questions? Molly Arbuthnott: Um, just to keep it fun. Um, I find particularly with my work, I've always promised myself that if I ever stop enjoying what I'm doing, I'll change something. Um, for me, I spend- Most of my time, uh, doing my books, doing my work. And so it's really important for me that I really enjoy what I do, and I feel very lucky that I've been able to find that because a lot of people, um, a lot of people don't. And, uh, so I try and put joy into the books, so I'm hoping that the joy radiates out of the books. And then make it fun when you're sharing it. So I've got loads of costumes, I've got loads of resources that if anyone wants, I can very happily share, that bring each of the stories alive. And I love coming and reading the books and, and to kind of just let your imagination go. So, um, anything, anything can really happen because they're pretend animals, pretend places. Try and as well kind of think what the... When you're reading it, think from, try and kind of transform yourself into the animal that you're supposed to be being, and then it will give a lot more authentic, um, interpretation. That's Lindsay Lyons: great. Thank you for that advice. I'm, I'm imagining that, you know, someone is, is preparing to read perhaps for bedtime a story after listening and engaging with this episode, uh, and they're, they're ready for that now. Oh, good. Is there, uh- Thanks. Something that you have been... This is a fun question we like to ask all of our guests 'cause they're all lifelong learners. Something you have been learning about lately, either related to your work or just completely different. Ah, gosh, that's quite a good question. Um, well, this Molly Arbuthnott: school that I'm doing the guinea pig story about was designed by Goldfinger, like, you know, James Bond Goldfinger. So I've been researching, um, Goldfinger a fair bit recently. Um, and also I'm teaching, I'm learning the ukulele so that I can, um, play it when I'm doing, uh, story events. So I've been, uh, learning a bit of music as well. Lindsay Lyons: Wow, that is so- ... fun. I love it. And so you mentioned you have things, resources in addition to your books. You have all of your books. Where can people go to get that information, to connect with you online? Is there a place they Molly Arbuthnott: can- Well, I've got my website Um, and you can send a message through that. I have all the books available through my website. I don't think I have the resources. I could... I need to, I need to, um, work on that. Travelers is... Or the more books you do, I thought it would get way easier, but it gets so much harder. There's just so many things to suddenly think about. Um, and so it kind of eats into, uh, um, um, time a bit. But yeah, so I would, um, look on my website. They're available on Amazon as well and all good wholesalers. And I, uh, I'm coming actually to New York, because you're in Boston, so not too far away. Um, my publisher's in New Jersey. Uh, I do an annual book launch, and so I'm coming to New Jersey and I'm going to launch in September, and we hire a paddle boat and paddle around the Hudson River, and it's always very fun. So, so reach out to me for that if you'd be interested, and the more the merrier. Um, and it's always just really nice to hear from people. Um, and so do, uh, do send me a message. Maybe you could send... If, uh, whenever I go and do events, I always ask the kids what their favorite animals are, and it kind of can help inspire. Um, uh, if they have a favorite animal, it might end up in a, in a future subsequent book perhaps. That Lindsay Lyons: is awesome. Molly, thank you so much for your time and conversation today. Oh, well, thank you. Gosh, it's gone in a flash, but it's been lots of fun. 
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In this episode, we’re talking with Doug Bolton, PhD, who is a clinical psychologist, educator, and author of the book Untethered: Creating Connected Families, Schools, and Communities to Raise A Resilient Generation. Against a backdrop of current all-time high stress levels for both students and teachers, Doug emphasizes the importance of focusing on relationships over achievements and how the pressure to excel in academic settings can undermine mental health.
He also introduces the "Circle of Courage" model, highlights current research in the field, and shares meaningful mindset shifts from focusing on data and test scores to nurturing relational and personal growth. The Big Dream Doug’s big dream is to redefine what it means to be successful. He wants to see our system go beyond traditional metrics such as test scores and school selectivity and help students grow with robust intrinsic motivation, grounded in community, and encouraged by healthy emotional and social connections. Mindset Shifts Required There are some significant mindset shifts to move the focus away from data-driven success towards personal development and wellness. This includes reducing the emphasis on test scores, allowing children to experience and manage stress constructively, and recognizing the vital role of relationships in achieving holistic well-being. Action Steps While many people might say that they want kids to be holistically well, there is still a lot of pressure in the academic setting. This causes high stress for students, but also teachers and parents in the system, too. To start redefining our metrics of success for children or students, Doug encourages educators or leaders to start here with some of these action steps. Step 1: Understand the research. Achievement testing has been found to undermine mental health and cause higher levels of stress and anxiety… without producing higher test scores. The system is broken, and understanding that is the first step to change. Step 2: Engage in community-building activities within educational environments. Research shows that a sense of belonging through strong relationships is essential to all the metrics we care about: mental health, academic performance, attendance, etc. Step 3: Implement schedules that include “pause and ponder” times (a concept borrowed from Mary Jo Barrett) for children and adults alike to rest their nervous systems. To really engage with the world, we need to give our nervous system a rest through good sleep, quiet time, and less pressure, so that we can then go forward and learn, engage, and grow. This can be implemented in a school or home setting. Step 4: Use the Circle of Courage model, which is born of Native American tradition, and emphasizes the four main needs we get from community: belonging, mastery, independence, and generosity. When a child is struggling, we ask, where is the circle broken? What do we need to focus on? Doug unpacks this model in further detail in his book Challenges? One of the main challenges highlighted is overcoming societal norms that prioritize academic achievement as a sole indicator of future success. There's also the challenge of reshaping institutional policies that place undue stress on students and educators, potentially leading to burnout and disengagement. One Step to Get Started Doug’s biggest action step to start putting this all into motion is the pause and ponder. He recommends using family dinners as one way to do this in the home, or for educators to purposefully build it into their classroom schedules. These moments to pause should be protected and prioritized before scheduling other additional activities. Stay Connected You can stay connected with Doug Bolton on his website, and grab a copy of his book to dive deeper into everything we discussed today: Untethered. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Co-Creating Class Agreements slide deck with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 260 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Doug Bolton, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Doug Bolton: Lindsay, it's so nice to be here. Thanks for having me. Lindsay Lyons: I am so glad that y- we're both here at the same time talking about this. This is so important, and I, I just ... I, I am really excited f- because you talk about, like, you know, building resilience and, and, and building resilience in kids. Um, I also think about, like, how stressed out a lot of w- l- like, children now are. I mean- Speaker 3: Yeah ... Lindsay Lyons: you know, across the years certainly, but you read about the anxious generation, and that's, like, very- Yeah ... top of mind for me as well. So I'm wondering, as we jump into the conversation today, is there something on your mind that you wanna bring to the forefront or that people should just know as they engage with the episode? Doug Bolton: Well, thank you. You know, I think that the thing that strikes me the most as I think about this work and the crisis of resilience is it's not just kids who are struggling right now. Um, you know, the teachers, there's never been a time when teachers have been so stressed. The teachers, Gallup found that K12 teachers are the most stressed profession in America right now. And the, and the surgeon general recently released a, uh, advisory for parents, that just being a parent puts you at risk for mental health problems. So I guess I, I wanna say the whole system. I think kids are the down- are kind of downstream of a system that we've created that's stressing everyone out. And I, I guess that would be my hope, is to take a look at that whole system as we talk about this today. Lindsay Lyons: That's a really good segue into my next question. Hmm. So I think, uh, you know, Dr. Bettina Love talks about dreams grounded in the critique of injustice in, in terms of- Yeah ... dreaming. And I am wondering, like, what is that dream you hold for young people, whether it's families, whether it's through the education system? Like, yeah, what's that dream for you? Doug Bolton: Yeah, no, I love, I love that quote. Um, I'd never heard that before. It's beautiful. You know, I think my, my dream is that we can redefine what it means to be successful, um, and, and in doing so, recognize that, um, our metrics for success, which has typically been, um, achievement test scores, um, um, enrollment at a high-achieving school, um, whatever that looks like, um, are things that have, um, really, I think, um, been damaging to everybody in the system. The, the people who find that hard, find it hard for them to reach those goals, um, because their, their brain isn't suited to, to how we do education and they're ... Um, or the people who are really good at it who then begin to define themselves by their achievement and not by who they are, and parents who begin to define themselves by how successful their kids are, um, educators who define themselves by how many of their students go on to high-achieving schools, high, I mean, highly selective schools. And so, so I guess what I would like to do, uh, um, a lot of the research and reading I've been doing now has been, um, really focused on- How when we set a goal for something, when we say, "This is what we want," oftentimes, um, uh, uh, in order to, um, um, uh, I think they call it obliquity, which is this, this, um, when you're seeking profit as an organization, you end up oftentimes tanking the organization. When you seek high-quality products, the, um, y- you know, the, um, the money comes, the money follows. But when we focus, it... So we've gotta be careful what we focus on. And what the research has said all along is that when we invest in relationships and our relational lives, um, we're happier, we're healthier, we're more successful, um, achievement comes easier. Um, when we focus on achievement, um, all of a sudden those are the things that are the first things to go, and, and it's ended up with, I think, a, a whole system that is overly stressed. So did I answer the question with my dream? So my dream is we redefine what it means to be successful as a child. I think that that would be, that would be what I would say. Lindsay Lyons: I love that, and I love how you painted a nice holistic picture of how that touches everyone, right? Yeah. And that touches everyone, but all children, but all people involved in children's lives as well, and I- Yeah ... I love that dream. I know you mentioned a lot about the research, and I know you've been steeped in the research for writing your book, for just all that you do. And, and I'm curious, can you share, uh, you know, a, a little bit more about any of the research you've learned on, you know, mental health? And like, oh, y- you talked about, you know, all spectrums in terms of achievement from a school perspective- Speaker 3: Yeah ... Lindsay Lyons: um, of kids. Like, you know, why, why is it so important that we take this seriously? Because a lot of times I think even though people have that dream in the back of their mind maybe, that they're like, "Yeah, I want my kid to be really, like, mentally well and, and, and holistically well." However, I feel also this stress around schools, and, like, I want them to be successful there, and there's this- Yeah tug. So why is it important that we do focus on, on redefining that success? Doug Bolton: Well, well, so it's, it's an interesting thing. The, um, the research, um, on attending a high- highly selective school is not, uh, is not the, does not, um, um, suggest that people who attend highly achieving, uh, high, uh, highly, um, highly selective schools are gonna be any more successful in life. There, there's a... And so if we take a look at that research, for instance, um, you know, kids don't learn more at a, um, highly selective s- college. Um, I'm from Illinois. It, um, you don't learn more if you go to a Northwestern versus a Northern Illinois. Um, and there is one thing that determines how much someone learns in college, and it's not how selective or how, um, high, uh, um, highly achieving the sc- the college is. Do you know what that is? Lindsay Lyons: No. Doug Bolton: How much you study Lindsay Lyons: Oh, nice. Doug Bolton: Right? So, so- Yeah ... uh, uh, wherever you go, if you study and invest, you're gonna learn, right? Uh, in, in a lot of these high, um, highly selective schools, y- you are learning from, um, teaching assistants and research assistants as much as you're doing anything. So, so, so that's one thing. D- do you make more money? No, you don't make more money. They did some interesting research where they had, um, uh... I don't know how they find this research, but they, uh, they took a look at people who got into high, uh, highly selective schools but couldn't go for one reason or another, and ended up going to a less selective school, like near, uh, uh, near home or whatever because they couldn't leave, versus people who did end up going to highly selective schools. And, uh, um, 10 years later, they, they were making, uh, uh, there was no difference in the money. The, the interesting thing was that the people who went to the highly selective schools often felt underpaid because, uh, you know... So, uh, so these are... So the, the things that, um, that we think are the drivers of success are not the drivers of success, and but they are the drivers of stress, and, and our desire to get kids into these highly, um, high, highly selective schools, to get them into AP classes, to get them to believe that they've gotta be in the top 10% of their class, the, um, worrying about homework, worrying about, uh, about these grades as if this is a, that they're, uh, they're either gonna get or lose a ticket to success in life. None of that holds, and, and yet this is what drives so much of, um, parent, teacher, and student stress and anxiety. Lindsay Lyons: Wow, that was a really good synthesis of, like- ... why you shouldn't focus on this, and why you should focus on this instead. Thank you. Um, I love that you talked about investing in relationships a little while ago. Mm-hmm. And I would love if you could expand on that. Like, what, what is the kind of mental health value or the, you know, value in general of doing that, i- investing in relationships and community? Doug Bolton: Yeah. You know, it's a, it's an interesting thing. Um, there's a, uh, um, a, a metaphor. It's a public health parable actually that I think is a metaphor for our, um, for our mental health crisis today. And, uh, these two people are sitting by a river having a picnic, and, uh, and they look up and there's a child in the river drowning. And they dive in, and they get this child to safety, and they're exhausted. And they look up, and there are two more kids in the water. They go back in, and they get those kids to safety, and then they turn around and the river is filled with these kids who need their help. And, uh, and one of them just dives in and starts pulling kids out of the river, and the other one goes up on shore. And the one in the water says, "What are you doing? I can't save these kids on my own." And the one on shore says, "I'm going upstream. We've gotta figure out why these kids are falling in." And- And, you know, when we take a look at what's upstream of mental health, what's upstream in resilience is our interpersonal connections and relationships. So, um, a couple, a couple of things is they, is, that are r- related and connected to this. First of all, when you're embedded in a belonging community, um, you're more motiv- motivated to learn, you perform better academically, you have better attendance, you're healthier, you have better mental health, right? All of the things that we worry most about. Um, so... And, um, for the kids who are s- most stressed, the kids-- it buffers, um, the impact of stress and trauma. And so, so when I-- if I was to look for a school now, it wouldn't be based on test scores, it would be based on where are the communities that are going to be healthiest, where my child can ex- fully experience belonging. So that's, so that's one bit of research. And then, um, the other is the Grant Study. Um, and the Grant Study was done in Boston starting in 1938, and they took sophomores from Ca- from Harvard, um, and then they, uh, and then they wanted to expand it. So they had two hundred sophomores from Harvard, but then they, um, expanded it to people in Boston more generally, men in Boston more generally. So it was a, it was a male cohort of about seven hundred or eight hundred people. And what they wanted to do is they wanted to see what makes people happy and healthy in their lives. So this is a longitudinal study, one of the most famous longitudinal studies they have. They're still studying the people who are still alive. And John F. Kennedy was one of the people who was, uh, um, was in, originally in the study. So, um, so they've had, they've got eighty, ninety years of research now and, uh, and, and what they say is that, um, if we take a look at what leads to, to health and happiness and, and success, it is not, um, money. It's, it, it is, um, relationships. And, uh, the, one of the, um, people who ran the study for a while, um, um, George Vaillant says, um, you know, uh, twenty million dollars, eighty years of the Grant Study comes down to one five-word conclusion. Um, it is, uh, happiness is love, full stop. And so, so if we want our kids to be happy, if we want our kids to be well-adjusted, we invest in relationships because it, uh, because it's a false promise when we think that, uh, achievement or s- selection to a highly selective school is what's gonna get us there. Lindsay Lyons: I love that. I, it makes me think of just, like, the m- micro moves that I've been making as a parent lately to kind of make sense of current events or things like that. Sure. It can be really hard, particularly with young... I mean, my kid's almost four at this point. Yeah. So it's, like, hard to translate that, and I've been trying to be like, "Well, we believe that people are more important than money, and some people are making choices because they think money are more important than people." Speaker 3: Yeah. And Lindsay Lyons: that's, like, one of the ways to grapple with this, this reality and this hard reality. But I love that it's backed up by, by science, is actually, yes, people are more important than money to your happiness and wellbeing. Doug Bolton: Exa- exactly. And, and, you know, I think that one of the things that's really hard about, um, about what's happened in our school systems, um, is it, it's, it's everybody's drinking from the same water at some level. So at, at four years old, it's, it's one challenge. But at 14 years old, it's another challenge, and at, at 24 years old, it's another challenge. Because in so many ways, and I think, um, as a society, as a culture, things, uh, uh, you know, K12 education really began to change, I think, from, um, in 2002 with the passage of No Child Left Behind. And, and, uh, and really what No Child Left Behind, and I think it was well-meaning. It, it's saying we want people to achieve, right? And, uh, um, we, we want everybody to learn, and we want... And the, the goal, the way we decided to measure that was through, um, test scores of, of high-pressure tests. And so, um, teachers began to believe that this is how we define success and growth and learning. Um, kids started to believe that this is how we do it. Um, parents started to believe that this is how we do it. And so now we seek out those schools with, that are the highest achieving schools. And, and if you take a look at, um, the research on high-achieving schools, what you'll find, and this i- this really came out in 2019. The Robert Wood Johnson Na- Foundation named the top environmental conditions harming adolescent wellness, and we knew the first three: trauma, discrimination, poverty. But the fourth is this excessive pressure to excel. And so all of a sudden, people are mortgaging their homes to get their kids into these high-achieving schools, and yet just being enrolled in a high-achieving school puts you at risk three to seven times, um, higher for anxiety, depression, and substance use. And so, and we've got 25 years of research now on, okay, so did it move the dial, all this focus on test scores? All this anxiety we put on people, we must be learning more, right? And the fact is that, that, that the, the, our test scores have stayed flat. And so, and so this idea that, um, that this focus on achievement testing, it, it re- It undermines our mental health, and it doesn't work. And I just wonder, when is it that we're gonna realize, and, and why would we develop a system and stay with a system where every stakeholder is experiencing significant stress, parents, teachers, and students? And, and yet we continue to, to grab onto this and say, "No, we just need to come up with a new secret for how we get these test scores up," instead of saying, "Let's not look at test scores anymore." Um, one last thing. I'm sorry, but I'll, I'll, uh... But, you know, it, it's fascinating to me because, um, you take a look, and 15 years ago, the head of HR at Google said, "We are no longer looking at, at, um, grades in our work." They say-- 'Cause what he said was, um, it's a, when we look at grades, there's no correlation between success. So, so, uh, you know, it's not showing up in business, 'cause what, what happens is what we do is we get people who are highly compliant, and the people who are highly compliant do well in our schools, but that's not what businesses are looking for, especially in this age of, of, uh, of business and, and work, is we want people to come in with new ideas and, and new solutions to problems instead of just saying, "Tell me what to do, and I'll do it." Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh, that was a great synthesis of like why it is so important that we do things differently. And so now my questions are gonna change to kind of how do we- Yeah ... do it, like how do we... Do you have suggestions for teachers or families or both to kind of... I, I think you had talked about like, um, positive stress in some of your work, I think I was reading. And it- Yeah ... to increase that positive stress but decrease the toxic stress, to build that resilience up for kids. Doug Bolton: Yeah. Yeah. So there's a, a couple different things that show up for me. The first, um, is a model that I talk about in my book. It's called the Circle of Courage, and it's, um, it's a, um... It's actually born of Native American tradition. Um, um, the research and the work of, uh, they had a, um, a group of three researchers, psychologists, and one of them wa- grew up in the Lakota tradition. And he was able to say, "Oh, the research we're coming up with about what, what is, um, what are the qualities of a community that support resilience are the same things that were part of my tradition." So they call it the Circle of Courage, and what they talk about is that there are four main things that we need to experience from our community in order to be successful. And the first is a sense of belonging, um, that we, we matter. We feel cared for. We feel- Safe within this community. The second is mastery, and, and this is where kind of positive stress can come in, that, that we want kids to experience stress. That the only way for us to learn how to manage stress is to experience stress, and so we wanna be able to have kids experience stress, that that's essential. And I think that's what I, uh, uh, that's one of the things I really like about the anxious generation, is it speaks to how we, uh, w- and our protectiveness, um, um, w- kids don't learn how to cope with stress 'cause we don't let them experience it. Adults swoop in too fast, right? And so, so, but mastery is getting better at something that's meaningful to me, and, and it allows me to then suffer setbacks and stay engaged, right? Um, um, it's a, you know, Csikszentmihalyi's kind of, uh, idea of flow, right? That that's, to me, that's kind of our mastery piece. The next is independence, this idea that I can set a goal and I've got the skills I need to be able to achieve it, and, and people aren't gonna undermine my independence, right? They're gonna support me in, in growing and, and making decisions, and making mistakes that way, and learning from those. And then the last is generosity, and I think about generosity in a couple ways. One is that, um, that I've got gifts to give to the world, right? To recognize what those are, and to then have the opportunity to share those gifts. And so when I think about the circle of courage, what I think about is when a child is struggling, I think, you know, where's the circle broken? And then how can I, you know, if it's, uh, if, if people are saying, "I'm, uh, I'm lonely," um, or if there's bullying or I'm being bullied, that's a belonging issue, and then let's, let's, let's get at belonging. If somebody's saying, "I'm bored," or, "I'm overwhelmed, I can't do it," that's, that's probably a mastery issue. Um, you know, if people are becoming defiant or too, or too deferential, that's probably an, an independence issue. Um, if people are feeling very, uh, uh, they don't have anything to give to the world, there's a, um, that I'm a, um, you know, there's a, I'm, I'm useless or I'm worthless, then that's a, that's a generosity issue. And so, so that's one of the ways, that's one of the frames that I use to, uh, um, to think about things. And then the other frame that I use is, um, this idea that Ross Greene talks about, and Ross... uh, not Ross Greene, um, Bruce Perry, I'm sorry. Um, Bruce Perry in his work, um, you know, he's a, he's an expert in trauma, in childhood neuroscience, and, and what he says is that w- he calls it the three Rs. We need to be emotionally regulated and we need to be connected in relationship to access our full brains. And, and w- and when we struggle to access our best brains, our best selves, it's generally because we're dysregulated and/or we're feeling disconnected. And so, so the work in schools, I think, is to make sure that every class period we're giving time for kids to be emotionally, to emotionally regulate, to quiet that nervous system so that we can learn. And then the other is learning has always been social. And so how can I make sure that, um, that, um, that we're learning together, that it's not sitting down and doing, um, desk work or... That may be part of it, but making sure that a- in every classroom we're investing some time to emotionally regulate and to be connected in relationship. Lindsay Lyons: I love these frameworks, and I can envision many situations where I've had a child in one of my classes or my own child, like, having difficulties with any of these things. And so I imagine- Yeah ... you know, people who are engaging with this episode right now are also having those kids come to mind. Um, any advice you would have, if you wanna, like, take one of them, for instance, and say, like, "Okay, you know, someone is struggling with belonging," or, "Someone is struggling with dysregulation." Like, what's a, what's a move that a family member or a teacher could make once they hear, like, the diagnosis is kind of stage one, figure out where is this coming from, what's the issue, and then what do I do in response to it? Any advice? Doug Bolton: Yeah. You know, the, um, a couple things. The, there's a, a guy named Stuart Shanker, psychologist, um, in Canada, who I just love his work, and what he says is misbehavior is stress behavior. This is a, he wrote a book called Self-Reg that is a great book, and this has been really helpful for me as I, I, when I think about this, is that when... And this is true for me, too. When, um, there are times when, um, I handle a really stressful situation beautifully, right? And then the same situation could happen tomorrow, and I totally lose my cool. And it's not about the situation. It's about the stress that I'm bringing into the situation. And so the same is true for kids. And so the, the first step is not figuring out what can I do to change the behavior. It's I wonder what the stress is. I wonder why this is stressful now. So that's, that's one piece. The other piece that, that comes to mind is, um, the idea of, uh, that Mary Jo Barrett, she's a social worker, um, and a, an amazing thinker and practitioner in the world of, of supporting families who've experienced trauma. And, and she talks about the, the concept of pause and ponder. And so the, you know, the, what she's able to talk about is that, that our lives have a rhythm, that our nervous systems have a rhythm, that we're constantly expanding and contracting. And, and, but in order to expand, in order to fully engage with the world, we need to quiet that nervous system first and give it a, and give it a rest. And that there's, that when we're healthiest is there's this rhythm between, you know, we get a good night's sleep. That's the contraction, and then we expand. We, uh, if we're a student, we do our, uh, our work day. You know, we, we go to school. We, um, do what we need to do, and then we rest at night so that we can then be our best selves. Same thing for us. You know, we'd never say, "You've got an important meeting coming up. You should stay up all night working on the agenda," right? We'd say, "No, you need..." Because we know the idea is... And so, and we wanna make it predictable so that our nervous system knows that this is coming, you know? The, we play hard for a first half, but then we know this, uh, that there's gonna be halftime. We're gonna be able to rest, and then we engage again. And so this idea of, um, she calls these down times pausing and pondering. And what, what happens, I think what's happening, um, people who experience stress, their nervous system never gets a break, right? Because, because their nervous system is constantly activated, um, being hypervigilant about, um, what, what's happened and what could happen in the future. And when we push our kids, when we teach bell to bell, when we, um, when we push our kids and then they, they come home from school, they've gotta do homework, and then they've gotta go to their r- um, their travel team practice, and then they've gotta go to their tutoring, and then, uh, um, boom, boom, boom. And the, they're not getting those breaks. And as parents and as educators, when we're teaching bell to bell, and then we've gotta get our three kids to their three travel teams. And of course, then we gotta get 'em all to therapy 'cause everybody's, uh, nobody's doing well. Um, what I would say is what we need to do in our classrooms, what we need to do in our homes is to build in these predictable times when our nervous systems can quiet, and that will mean that we can then engage better later on. Lindsay Lyons: I love that, and I love that you're connecting that both to, to students or, um, like the school setting, like with teachers planning bell to bell and not planning for that pause and ponder, as well as for families. And I, I just am reminded of, like this week I think I was saying to my kid, like, "Oh yeah, when I was in high school, you know, I would have after school, like I would have practice or away games where I had to ride a bus for an hour and then play a game- Right and then watch the other team play the game and then go home, and then I would go to sleep." And he's like, "When did you have time to play, like to just relax and play?" Yeah. And I was like, "Wow, that's exactly what you're talking Speaker 3: about." Exactly. Exactly. Lindsay Lyons: The wisdom of small children. Love Speaker 3: it. Yes, exactly. Lindsay Lyons: And so I guess I, I, I think there's so much stuff, and I know people can read your book for, for more details on all of this. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So there's so much that you talk about, and honestly, I've been taking so many notes. I have, like, a laundry list of to read next now books and research. That's great. Doug Bolton: Yes. Lindsay Lyons: But where would you encourage people to start? Like, the first thing they do, they've engaged with the episode, they're really jazzed about some of this stuff. Like, what's the first thing that they could put into action right away? Doug Bolton: Yeah. I think that, um, if we can, I would do the, the pausing, the pausing and pondering. You know, the, the thing that, that I think is most important, you know, that's the, that's the regulate part of the R, right? Regulate and relate. Um, and, and, you know, the... I think that things like family dinners have become endangered species because we're so busy, and people will say, "Well, my kid wants to be a part of three travel teams, so I'm just doing what they wanna do. But in the meantime, um, I'm stressed trying to take care of all these things, figure out, you know, who needs helmets and who needs shin pads and who needs the, um, who forgot the bow for their violin," right? "And, and do I have all the, the work to get to the, from school to get to the tutor?" All of these pieces, nobody's getting the breaks that they need. And so if I was to do anything, uh, you know, what... So, so what I would say to parents, they'd say, "Well, they want to be part of all these three teams." And I'd say, "Well, they probably also want three ice cream sundaes before dinner," right? And would we... A- but we, it's easy to say no to that, right? Um, and yet I think that there, just because, um, kids want it doesn't mean that it's healthy for them or for us. And I think I would say, how do we build in these pauses in our lives, in our family's life, in our kids' lives, before we build anything else in? And then figure out what we can add, but, but make sure that those are sacred. That that would probably be the first thing that I would do, because I think that our nervous systems are, um, are under attack. And what we need to do is we need to protect those so that we can then show up as best we can as, as, um, as parents so that we can, so the kids can show up in a classroom on a good night's rest and not feeling so stressed. I wouldn't worry about things like homework. If it's, if they've got too much homework, you know, kids in Finland, they have, uh, um, 2.7 ni- hours, 2.9 hours of homework a week, and in America, it's 2.7 hours a night. And, and Finland, and, and the kids in Finland are doing a whole lot better on these standardized tests than we are. They, we, we should learn something from this, right? That, that, uh, that this homework assignment isn't the end of the world. This, this, uh, C minus is not the end of the world, um, that we're gonna be okay. What we wanna do is make sure the relationships are solid and that we're getting, that we're getting breaks. And when we do that, we're gonna have healthier kids. Lindsay Lyons: I love that. I was just reminded of, uh, when I was a high school teacher, we would do this, like, plan out, a little executive functioning, like plan out your day. Like, when you get home, like, what do you do? And you know, a lot of kids- Yeah ... would work after school, and then they'd have to fit in homework. And I, if I could go back and redo that assignment, I'd be like, "Okay, and plan your pauses. Like, plan your..." Exact- Doug Bolton: yes. Right? That'd Lindsay Lyons: be cool. Let's, Doug Bolton: let's put those in first, Lindsay Lyons: right? Yes, exactly. Exactly. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Well, I'm very inspired by all this. I'm sure, you seem like a person who is constantly learning. You're constantly referencing, like, research or s- Doug Bolton: I, I, yeah, I, I... That's the thing, is I love, I love the learning part of this, yeah. Lindsay Lyons: I was gonna ask, what are you learning about lately? Like, what's new and exciting on your mind? Doug Bolton: You know, the thing that I, I, I, I mentioned it earlier, is this idea that, um, that w- that when we hit a target, when we shoot for a target, um, uh, the, like, uh, like sales, like this idea of, of, uh, um, high achievement. What happens is we do, uh, when we focus on that, we undermine all the things that can lead to that. And so what I would say is, how can we focus on helping kids be engaged in school instead of helping them get good grades? I would think about, how can we help, um... You know, I think that we've gotten very good. Our focus, um, you know, it used to be, let's focus on how do we develop kids, and now we're focused on how do we develop data. And as a result, we're not getting as good data, and our kids are not developing in the way they need to. And so I would say, how can we shift that? And I'm, I'm, uh, I'm fascinated by all of the examples, um, you know, in, uh, um, in Boeing, they, uh, at Boeing, they used to be, "Let's just make really cool airplanes." And, and as a, and as a result, they got all these profits. And then they had a CEO come in and say, "We're gonna be profit-focused." And all of a sudden, we've been seeing more and more problems with, um, the safety and the design and everything else of these planes, because when we build a plane, um, to make profit, um, it's very different than we build a plane so that it's gonna be the coolest plane we can build and, and answer a certain, uh, uh, a certain problem in the world, right? And so, so I, and so that's the research I've been doing, is just trying to better understand that, 'cause I think that that's happening in our parenting and happening in our, uh, with our kids, uh, in, in our parenting and in our schools. Lindsay Lyons: I love that example. Thank you for making that- Mm-hmm ... that come to life for us. And finally, where can people connect with you or learn more about you? Doug Bolton: Yeah, so, um, I've got a website, um, drdougboulton.com. D-R dougboulton.com, B-O-U-L-T-O-N. And, uh, um, and you can get my book, and my book tells a lot of stories about my work as a therapeutic school principal and psychologist, and, uh- The thing I love about the books is that I feel like the students are telling the stories. And, uh, um, and I tell stories about my own family and my, uh, my, mostly my struggles as a, as a parent, and what I've learned from those as well. So, so I think that my, uh, um, my book would be one way, and I think my website's another way to kinda get a picture of, of, uh, the work that, that, um, that I'm doing, so. Lindsay Lyons: Thank you so much, Dr. Bolton. This was such a humbling, amazing conversation. Thank you for being on the podcast. Doug Bolton: Lindsay, thanks so much. I, I've loved it. I, I feel like I, we could have talked for ages. So, uh, so thank you so much for, um, what a great interview and what a, a, um, I'm just so, um, grateful for your time and your energy and, and what you're bringing to the world. So thank you for letting me be a part of it. Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely 5/25/2026 259. A Collaborative Team Meeting Structure that Elevates Instruction with Kurtis HewsonRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, Kurtis Hewson joins host Lindsay to discuss his book, Collaborative Response, and the innovative concept of Collaborative Team Meetings (CTMs). Kurtis emphasizes the importance of these meetings as the missing linchpin in multi-tiered systems of support in schools.
By implementing CTMs, schools can reduce the number of overall meetings by focusing on proactive and collaborative strategies, allowing educators to better support students. This episode is full of practical advice and strategies to implement in your school context. The Big Dream Kurtis’ big dream is captured by the idea that every child deserves a team—an educational environment where no teacher works in isolation and no student's success (or lack of success) is solely the responsibility of one person. He aims to transform schools from isolated islands of excellence into collaborative communities that leverage the collective expertise of educators to support every student's needs effectively. Mindset Shifts Required Kurtis sees three key mindset shifts for educators who want to work better as a team of support to their students:
Action Steps Implementing CTMs begins with the understanding that there are four layers of team, as Kurtis lays them out from the least to most intensive:
Building these layers of support help schools decrease the number of meetings they have, but increase the quality and impact of them. By using the collaborative team meeting as a linchpin in the process, more will be resolved there without having to bring in so many support team and case consult meetings. With those layers in mind, teams can establish a new meeting rhythm with these action steps: Step 1: Start by establishing CTMs every three to five weeks, integrating them into existing PLC structures if necessary. Step 2: Assign roles, set norms, and prepare for meetings with specific data-driven objectives, focusing on yellow students and key issues without sharing students' names. Step 3: Utilize structured reflection and feedback processes to continuously improve the effectiveness of CTMs and ensure they are solutions-oriented and impactful. Step 4: Get really granular about the issues you are facing, focusing on the strategies and solutions, not the specific students and their stories that can distract from how you will move forward. We go into further detail about the CTM in this episode, and Kurtis outlines it all in his new book, Collaborative Response. Challenges? The primary challenge in adopting CTMs is remaining true to the structured processes and timing of the meetings. Many educators may initially resist the level of structure required, preferring more organic discussions. However, the structure is crucial to maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of these meetings and must be adhered to for long-term success. Another challenge is overcoming the desire to discuss students by name and story, which can derail the focus from solution-building to storytelling. One Step to Get Started Download the CTM starter kit from Jigsaw Learning, which provides necessary resources such as meeting templates, role cards, pre-meeting organizers, and facilitator guides. This kit acts as a launching pad for schools to begin their journey towards transformative collaborative practices. Stay Connected You can find more from Kurtis Hewson on the Jigsaw Learning website, where you can also get a copy of Kurtis’ book, Collaborative Response. You can also tune into the Building a Culture of Collaboration podcast, or connect with Kurtis on Instagram and LinkedIn. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing an Overview of Collaborative Response article and a CTM Starter Kit with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 259 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
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TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Curtis Hugin, welcome to the time for teachership podcast. Kurtis Hewson: Oh, thank you so much, Lindsay. It's an absolute pleasure to be able to join you for this conversation. I've been looking forward to it. Lindsay Lyons: Me too. Okay. I am so excited. And what's on my mind as we go in is your book Collaborative Response, so I have it here with me, particularly the chapter on collaborative team meetings or CTM as you call them. And so just wanting to like preview for people that this is an exciting thing we're gonna get into in this episode and that it is. From what I've seen markedly different from anyone else doing stuff in this space. And so it's really exciting. What is on your mind as you kind of enter the conversation? Anything people should kind of keep in mind as they engage Kurtis Hewson: with that? Yeah. I, uh, in the book we talk about four layers of team and Lindsay, I've been at this for almost 20 years now from when we first started, some early iterations of this within my own school, and then how this has evolved. Past, we've actually discovered that every school, regardless of size, configuration, location, they need to think about four layers of collaboration with the collaborative team meeting being one of them. And so I really do want to dig into that, but if we could even take a moment here in the conversation to discuss what are those four layers? Because when we talk about a collaborative response, we talk about having our collaborative structures and processes, these four layers. Data and evidence that feeds into those conversations in time. And then developing continuums of support that really clearly articulate how will we respond. These three pieces are important, but in the, the visual, the framework, visual, the collaborative structures and processes is twice as large of a piece visually than the others. And that's intentional because it's really important. And within that, I would say the collaborative team meeting is the engine that. Drives it all. Lindsay Lyons: Well said and I, now that I am bringing up that visual in my brain, in my memory, you're right, it is bigger and that makes so much sense that it's intentional because that was the part that particularly jumped out to me as people aren't doing this and it's super important. Kurtis Hewson: Absolutely. So when we talk about the four layers, the great news is, is most schools can identify for sure to. Probably three. And we often say, we're gonna reduce the number of meetings in your school by adding one more, which is the collaborative team meeting. And again, mathematically it makes no sense that we're gonna reduce by adding, but we do. What we find is if we can get this collaborative team meeting, um, operationalized within the school and having impact, we see less meetings or less students needing the higher levels. Or more intensive meetings. So if you can give me just a few mo moments, I'll describe these four layers really quickly, and then we'll dig into that collaborative team meeting if that works. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, totally. Kurtis Hewson: Okay, so four layers, and I'm gonna start from the least intensive to the most intensive in time. These align with the tiers within our continuum of supports, but the first layer we call collaborative planning, it's when teachers are coming together to work on things that will impact all students. So all students across a grade level, across a division, across a subject area, maybe across the entire school. Um, they're usually at this layer. Looking at data, determining what is our response, what do we need to do? And in these conversations, we're not typically looking at individual kids, we're looking at trends. So any school that's engaged in professional learning communities or PLCs, we'll go, okay, this layer, we got it. This makes sense. Um, and the reason we didn't call it PLCs, uh, even though we were doing a variation of that, but then we had some other structures that still fit in this layer is we've seen schools that are not necessarily following the PLC model, um, with Fidelity, but they have other ways that they're collaboratively planning that are. As effective for them as well. So again, think of these layers as like categories. So that first layer again, any school that has PLCs goes, check, we got it. The second layer is the collaborative team meeting, and we'll skip it for a second. Third is what we call the school support team. So this is intended to be the, the team that's meeting on a regular basis, usually biweekly or weekly. Uh, it involves administrators, um, learning, support coordinators, maybe instructional coaches, those that have more specialized roles. And essentially this conversation is about. Who are the students that need support beyond the classroom or in addition to the classroom? When a teacher puts in a referral for support, this is the team that. Handles, handles this and determines, alright, what do we need to do for the student? Or sometimes it's, what do we need to do to help the teacher? We often say, teachers are not necessarily in involved in this conversation because the conversation might be about the teacher, and I mean that with all due respect. It might be how do we support, how do we coach, who could we connect this person to, to help them in this particular situation? But sometimes it might be about escalating the student. Um, for some higher levels of support. And our fourth, um, layer is what we call a case consult. Um, but really it's the broadest category of all because it's, anytime we meet with one kid on the agenda, this falls into that layer. So I worked with a large high school, uh, once here, Lindsay, where they named all their different meetings that they were having. They put it up against these layers and went, oh my goodness. Virtually the, all the things we're doing, and it was a school of about 1200 students. All the things we're doing are falling in that case, consult that one student at a time and they went, oh, this makes perfect sense why we're drowning right now. We we're, the, the term they used was, it feels like we're playing whack-a-mole, just putting out fires everywhere, but we're trying to do it one kid at a time and what we're trying to do. Is if we can build these layers with fidelity, with the collaborative team meeting, almost being the bridge between the collaborative planning IE PLCs. And the school support. We're going to see less and less students reach this school support in case consult layer, and the ones that do absolutely need to, but the collaborative team meeting becomes essential. This is why any school that's engaged in multi-tiered systems of support work, MTSS work, they see this and go, oh, there's our missing piece that we have all these other pieces in place, but that collaborative team meeting is the linchpin that's that's missing. Lindsay Lyons: Hm. That makes so much sense. So much sense. I've seen that in so many schools as well. And so, okay, this, this totally is, is a great framing for the conversation. I wanna zoom out a little bit first before we get into CTM and think about like, what is your kind of, why, what's your big dream? I like to ground this in, Dr. Patina loves, uh, talk about freedom dreaming. She says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So kind of what's that driver for you in this work? Kurtis Hewson: For me, the driver is what you see if anyone's watching the video. Uh, right on this shirt is the idea that every child deserves a team. And what I mean by that is I think our children deserve the best of what we have to offer collectively. And what I mean by that is. No one should be feeling isolated on an island in a silo and that no child success should ever be the responsibility, or, or, sorry, lack of success maybe is ever the responsibility of one person. My dream is that we can shift this profession from one that is, I, I used to refer to it in my own school as isolated islands of excellence. Great people doing great things in their room, but collectively. We had centuries of teaching experience available to us. How could we leverage that in a really intentional way that's gonna help each and every kid? Lindsay Lyons: Oh, I love that. I wrote down isolated Islands of excellence. I think that's totally what happens in most places. And you know, it's actually inspiring me. I've been thinking about families a lot and family school partnership and, and teammates together. Also families, right? There's so much. If we could just do like this kind of wraparound, like hug in support of, of kids, it's like we're gonna build skills together everywhere we are, whether it's in or out of school. It's pretty cool. Kurtis Hewson: Uh, Lindsay, I can tell you too that I hear it over and over and over again of schools that I'll come in and work with or districts where the schools will say, we thought we were collaborative until we started this work. And then we've taken it to a whole nother level. And I usually have schools that when they say. You know, we, we collaborate a fair bit. We have good team structures. I go, oh my goodness, then you're gonna love this because it's going to pour gasoline on a fire that's already lit it. It's just gonna take it to a different level that, um, I think our kids deserve. Lindsay Lyons: Oh, I, I love too that you've covered, I, in all the things you've said so far, you've already kind of covered some, some mindset shifts. Yeah. And I, I wonder, I usually ask that question at this point. Is there anyone you wanna like, double down on or say that we haven't said yet in terms of the leaders and educators who are wanting to do really meaningful collaborative work, but maybe they even thought they were Right? And then what's the shift in terms of like, what's different with this approach? Is there some sort of thinking that needs to change? Kurtis Hewson: Yeah, there's, there's. There's three that I think are pretty critical. The first, and it's when we put all those three pieces together of collaborative structures and processes, data and evidence and continuum of supports, when we put them all together, it's about shifting our mindset so that we stop tiering kids and we tier the supports. To me, that's a critical mindset, and it might sound like a simple shift in language, but it's massive when we tear the kids. It's too easy to say, well, that's a tier three kid, not my responsibility. When we tier the supports, it places all the attention back on us. What are we as the adults doing to support and, and, um, it becomes a much more reflective exercise. One that's more hopeful, I think, and one that really is about, okay, well let's keep examining what could we do? And it builds high, high levels of collective efficacy in organizations. When it's, alright, that didn't work. What else could we try? What's our next step? Uh, so that's one. The second, and this is becomes critical with the use of data and evidence, I, uh, work with schools to start color coding their data. And then we emphasize that, especially in the collaborative team meeting, we focus on the yellow. And what I mean by that is if we used a simple. Um, color coding where red means who are the students, not yet meeting expectations based on whatever data set we were utilizing. Yellow is the students who are approaching expectations. They're close. They're not quite there yet, but they're closer than the reds. And then the green are those that are meeting expectations. And then I also have a fourth color we use of blue of exceeding expectations because in time we want a conversation about those, um, students as well. But in the collaborative team meeting, we make sure that we are not focusing on our reds. And what I mean by that is, and we're not saying that those children don't deserve a conversation, they absolutely do. But this is why the layers of team become important because we trust that their needs are being met in our more intensive layers of team. In the collaborative team meeting, let's focus on the kids who are close and what could we do that would lift them to that next level so that we often say we're providing support for your most at risk students by not focusing on them. In the collaborative team meeting, which again, huge mindset shift. If I was to come into a room and say, Lindsay, who would you like to talk about today? Your mind instantly goes to the kid that's furthest away from where you'd like them to be. Probably the one that's consuming 95% of your attention and energy. And what we're trying to do is let's shift the focus off of that student because there's already conversations happening in our other layers of team. Let's focus on the ones that are, we sometimes hear schools call these our bubble kids or the, I saw a high school where they said, these are our fifties, the kids who are just passing, but by the skin of our teeth. And what could we do, um, to help them? And the mindset shift here is the, uh, by being proactive, the kid who is yellow based on our data right now, we save them before they potentially hit that red, um, months or years in advance. And then I think the third mindset shift is being comfortable. With being uncomfortable. And what I mean by that is when we're in really powerful collaborative conversations like the CTM, the collaborative team meeting that we'll discuss here in a bit, we want to get to a place where people are okay being slightly uncomfortable. And what I mean by that is we set up mechanisms to build high, high levels of trust and vulnerability that. I'm always gonna have a small sense of discomfort in the conversations because people are gonna push me on my thinking, they're gonna ask me questions about my practice. And, um, what we find is, um, it takes time to be able to get there, but it is a powerful conversation. And I believe true collaboration is when we get pushed. Further than we could have on our own. And that push is done in a respectful, professional, but challenging way for us. So it, it takes time. But I, I love going into collaborative team meetings knowing that everyone's gonna walk away just a little bit stronger than when they went in. Lindsay Lyons: Oh my gosh. This has me thinking about so many things. I also think about, you know, student led discourse in, in classrooms just from the teacher hat. Yeah. And it's like, it's the same, it's the same thing with adults and with students, right? Like we enter a conversation kind of knowing that our ideas are gonna get better as we engage with others and get feedback on our ideas like. It's that trust building, but it's also the structures that you have in place that enable it to come forth. Yes. Which is why I'm really excited to talk about the CTM structures you have. Um, there's so much, so I mean, I, I just wanna like read through what I got outta the chapter and maybe you could like elaborate or say more. Kurtis Hewson: You got it, Lindsay. Lindsay Lyons: Okay. So first I, I love that there's some pre-meeting work, like there's some, something you have to do first. I love that you grounded norms or agreements. I love that there's some positive like success share kind of stuff and I love that there's a reflection after on the process, which I think too often is skipped in both classes and adult meetings. And then I like starred multiple times that page that has your key issues flow chart because there's so much in that one graphic. I mean that we, there's so much so any or all of those things. Do you wanna like expand upon those words? Kurtis Hewson: Let's break this down. Okay, so the collaborative team meeting, we want it essentially every three to five weeks within the school. And where we found the most power is if you have PLCs already established. Awesome. Let's say they're meeting every week. Uh, they were in my school. What we would do is every fourth week, we'd transfer that into a collaborative team meeting. Now I see the greatest power start to happen in schools where you collaboratively plan, again, think PLC. With those, you share a common teaching experience with either at the same grade level, same subject area. Maybe it's multi graded depending on the size of your school, but we, collaborative team meet. With people we don't share. So what this does in a school is creates two layers of collaboration where I, my, for instance, my department team, if I'm at a high school, uh, I'm working consistently with my science department colleagues, but then when I get into a collaborative team meeting, there's a good chance that I'm going to have myself a mathematics. Um, teacher, a, uh, English language learner teacher, a immersion teacher, potentially someone that's teaching phys ed. The, the possibilities become endless, uh, for us. So what we do then is the collaborative team meeting is coming up, and we know that it is, let's say, focused on literacy. Let's say the school has, we were really trying to impact literacy achievement within our school. So the pre-work that you talked about means that every teacher comes ready. For this conversation. And we usually say, when you start, start simple, come ready with a celebration and come ready with a student. And a key issue, and I'll describe that key issue here in a little bit, and it's the game changer, uh, for us now in time, we start to say, come ready with a student to celebrate based on your data. And a student to discuss that is yellow based on our data and a key issue that you noted. But we don't have that right away, uh, unless, uh, again, I've worked with some schools who have really strong data analysis processes where this makes total sense to them. Okay. So we come in and like you said, we start with norms. Here's our norms that we set out. And I often now don't read every norm. We pick one that we're gonna practice. So let's say today we're gonna focus on our norm of being solutions oriented. And Lindsay, I'd love for you to just, um. Put down a, a tally of every time you hear the words what if, because at the end we're gonna talk about how many times did that happen? When we're using the phrase, what if we're activating some solutions oriented thinking? We find a way to practice that norm. And then, like you said. At the end, just have a quick, how did we do? What did that look like? And this may seem minuscule. In fact, I was a person who did not believe norms were critical for teams. I thought in our school, people get along great. We don't need norms. And we didn't, until we got into challenging conversations. And then we had to say out loud, we agree, everyone's opinion matters. We agree, we'll arrive on time and prepared. And then we had conversations about what does on time and prepared look like? Do we all have a common understanding? So we, we do that norm thing and in time it just becomes. Totally natural for us. And then we start with celebrations. And here's the key, Lindsay. When I say, Lindsay, who would you like to celebrate? And you say, I've got, uh, I don't want to celebrate all the students in my class. They've done such, uh, incredible work. Adjusting to our new flex block that we've established years ago, I would've said, that's awesome. Let's write it down. Yay. Great celebration. Anyone else have one? But now we go deeper. I would say Lindsay. Who's a student that really stands out for you? One, that's that you're surprising with the success in the flex block, what this is doing is activating a deeper level of reflection that is gonna help the next question. So when you say, you know, I guess Sharif, Sharif is really surprised me. I thought the kid would not know how to utilize that time effectively for himself, but he's really utilizing it now to, uh. To impact what, what it is that he needs to do. Now the next question is the critical one where someone in the room is going to say, that's great. What do you think you did that led to that success? So this is activating some, some deeper reflection for us. It's identifying that these things are, and when you say, I don't know, it must be a miracle, I'm going to jump in and say, okay, what do you think you did that led to that miracle? Um, and, and, and this is helping us to understand that what we're doing is having impact. And when you say, uh, it's nothing big, I've got a little a checklist that he completes to help him figure out where to go during flex block. Someone in the room is going to go Genius. Can I see a copy of that checklist? Um, we're sharing strategies right in that celebrations part. So that part's really, really important. Make sense? And then, and then we're gonna get to the key issue here in a moment. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah, this is, I just wanna say like, this is so critical, that question of what did you do and how it leads to just natural sharing as opposed to, I'm gonna force people to share. I'm like, it's so beautiful. And I love the the focus on one student, because I think about the emotional connection too. Yes. You're now bringing in addition to that specificity of the context, like which leads into the key issue, I'm sure. So I'll stop talking and let you talk about it. Kurtis Hewson: I'm just, well, and really. You're going to see, and you're the people listening or viewing this podcast are going to understand that we're actualizing universal design for learning in these conversations because when you were reflecting on Sharif and your uses checklist, that actually might be something you're using with everyone. It's really helped him, the idea of intended for one, good for all. And then this really impacts in the, in the, um, key issue process. Okay, so let's go here. I'm going to say, Lindsay. Okay, let's get started. I know you've brought a student. Please don't say their name. What is the key issue? 30 seconds or less. And when people first start, it's hard to get. Succinct on the key issue that they're experiencing. Sometimes we're used to telling stories, and I think there's a place for stories, but not in the collaborative team meeting, potentially in that school support or that case consult, where the story of the student really, really matters. But in the collaborative team meeting, it actually is counterintuitive for the process because we want you to get succinct on what's. Add challenge that you're seeing for this student. So the key issue, and let's say that we're having a literacy focused conversation and you say, I've got a student in mind and my key issue is inferencing. Okay. Now we might ask a few questions of what do you mean when you say inferencing so that everybody understands around the table what it is you're talking about. And then you say, well, the student just, they can read all the words, fine, but they can't. Envision the the meaning that's happening. They can't make the mental picture of what that is creating. So we'd say, all right, so inferencing, uh, creating mental pictures. Have we got it? And you say, yeah. Then we go, okay, great. Everyone else identify, ask student where you're also seeing that. Write down their name. Don't say 'em out loud. And then we're going to start having a conversation on what could we do to impact students who cannot, who can read, but can't make the mental pictures, uh, for it. And we just start throwing out ideas. Now, why it's so critical that we have everybody else think of a student put in mind is because we don't want this to be a conversation where everyone turns to Lindsay and says, Hey, Lindsay, you could, you could, you could as a facilitator, I'm gonna go, whoa, these are we. These are just possibilities that we could do. And do you notice what happens when we don't say the name? It helps us focus on the solutions oriented instead of a second. You say the name Curtis. People in the room are gonna go, oh, I know Curtis. Yeah. Yeah. I've, I taught his sister, I taught his mother ev. It goes off on these tangents and we're just trying to leverage the student to have a conversation about practice. Okay, so now we start sharing out ideas and in time we start. Referring to our continuum of supports for ideas and suggestions that we've co-created over time. We won't get into that here today, but it becomes a solid resource and we just generate ideas. Now, the beauty of this is, um, no idea is a bad idea at this point, but people start riffing off each other's things so that when you say, I try this in my room, I go, I do something similar, but what if. We did this and what if we tried this? And then what we want to come back is after we've generated that possibility. And I have to tell you, I'm almost in my 30th year in education, I've been in hundreds of these collaborative team meetings, either as an observer or as a facilitator to model. I have yet to walk out of one where I didn't hear something I've never heard before, which is crazy. Crazy. But it, I think it just, um, reinforces how incredible educators are. Um, every time there's a new website, a resource, an idea, a strategy, a modification, I had never considered that come out. And then what we do is, um, from that we say, alright, Lindsay, who's the student? Just the name. What's one thing that you're willing to try and you say, I really like Angela's idea. I think I'm gonna try that. And we say, okay, by what date will you put that down? And then I go to the next person and say, alright, did you have a student in mind? Just the name and what's one thing you want to try? So what we're doing is building everybody's capacity over and over and over again. And I often say the collaborative team meeting looks like you're talking about kids. But you're not, the conversation about the student is really just a name. The conversation about practice and solutions is the main focus. And so we go through that. Um, if there were five teachers in the room, we go to each of the five and say, did you have a student in mind? And what's one thing to try? And again, when a teacher said, well, all of my kids struggle with that, we still say, just pick one that you wanna focus on for this strategy. Then we go and say, alright, let's start our next key issue conversation. Who do you have? Don't say the name. What's a key issue you're experiencing? What this does is when we see schools first start, people reach for low hanging fruit. We hear things like, well, I was planning to try this anyway, so just put me down for that. But when we start to build up that trust and vulnerability, we start to hear things like, I love Lindsay's idea, but I'm not quite sure how to do that. And that's where me, uh, myself as a leader are in there to say, oh, could I cover your class for 20 minutes tomorrow so that you can go and connect with Lindsey around this? Or do you need to see what this looks like? We, we refer to this as distributive coaching, and what it means is that everyone in the room is an expert. Everybody's also a learner, and you do not have to hold the title of instructional coach to teach somebody else something that you know how to do. That idea of distributive coaching is we could all learn something from other people, and this is where the real power happens outside of these meetings, we start to build up that capacity building that. Idea generation, that sharing, and then all of a sudden when I struggle with someone with a student, I don't wait for a meeting. I run down the hall to talk to Lindsay because I know you have a toolbox that's equipped for this type of thing. We, I, I'm, I'm always fascinated that sometimes we can teach across the hallway. Decades with another person and not necessarily know their instructional strategies, processes, practices. This is a way to access it, and what we see through this is everyone's capacity just keeps growing and growing and growing. Everyone's leaves these collaborative team meetings with two or three things they hadn't considered before, or we often see people start to stretch. Um, their own practice to start to challenge their own thinking. And this is where that power starts to happen, where all of a sudden, a year, two years, three years from now, I get that student, um, that I would've been referring to the special ed or school support team or whatever language you're using in your school. But now I have the toolbox to help support, and this again, is how we reduce the number of meetings by adding one more long term. It's the, the collaborative team meeting is powerful, really powerful. Lindsay Lyons: And I love that you are accomplishing all the things that I think instructional coaches, that team meeting facilitators want, but it's just the intentionality of the structure and the culture you build through those conversations and that structure. Kurtis Hewson: Oh, Lindsay instructional coaches love this because when somebody says, I'm gonna try this, they now have an instant access to say, would you like some help? Could I help you with that? Would you like me to model that for you? We saw that where with teachers who were. Uh, hesitant and I would even say a little bit fearful to have another person come into their room to watch or to help whatnot. Where now it's not that they're coming in because you're lacking in some area as a teacher, they're coming in because you said you're gonna try something for this kid, and can I help you? For that, that student, it, it, it just diverts the attention ever so slightly. And for me as a leader, I would be listening for that. Where it might be the, how could, you know, knowing what I know about Marcel and you said you're gonna try this. I also think Lindsay's idea would be really impactful that for that student, can we help you do that? And it was a way where I could start pushing people's. Instructional practices, but in a really supportive and, um, non-judgmental, uh, way. Lindsay Lyons: That is so cool. I mean, there's just, there's so much potential here. I mean, there, there's actualized things that'll come out of this in the work you've done, which is so cool. I, I'm wondering, is there a particular challenge that you've noticed when people are trying to shift to this kind of way of collaborating and, and being in these types of meetings? What's like the biggest challenge you've seen, or one challenge you've seen, and how did, how have you helped people overcome it? Kurtis Hewson: Yeah, so the, uh, the biggest challenge is remaining true to the structures and processes of it. So a school where they go, well, we just collaborate really well naturally. We, we just let, let it flow, we let our meetings flow. Um, I will say that's wonderful. I promise. If you put in these structures that are going to feel a little mechanical, a little awkward when you first begin. I promise they will take you to another level. So when I say structures or processes, it's things like we have norms established and we're going to review them at the start. We have roles in this meeting where I'm the facilitator, Lindsay is the recorder, Douglas is the timekeeper. And we might even have, I've seen lots of schools that introduce the role of the interrupter, and it's that person's job too. Knock on the table. If anyone goes off into story and they're not doing it to be a jerk, it's just we've agreed that's how we stay focused. Um, and so being able to say, alright, we're going to move to celebrations. Uh, Douglas, can you set a, uh, eight minute timer for this and let us know when we're down to one minute. Lindsay, let's start with you. What's a celebration that you've seen? 30 seconds or less, and then we're gonna dig into what we did. Sometimes people are a little bit afraid of that type of structure of having things timed of all of the, the things I, I often have people, when they watch a video of me facilitating one, I get the, you're kind of like a drill sergeant within that, and Yes, I am, because. We only have 40 minutes. We want to maximize that 40 minutes, and I hear it repeatedly of people that were hesitant to put the structures in that. Once they do and then people get comfortable. They love it and they often start translating it into other meeting places. All of a sudden, staff meetings have timers and clear agendas and note documents. Um, we go to meet with a parent and we start off with norms of, we all agree we're here for the best interest of your child, and that we'll do whatever it takes for their success. Saying some of those things out loud become really powerful. That, that's what I see as the biggest challenge is people feeling a bit uncomfortable with structure, but the structure is critical for the success. Lindsay Lyons: I That makes so much sense. I could totally imagine that that to be a challenge and that the structure just like kind of believe it and, and it'll happen. It seems like a good approach there. Kurtis Hewson: Yeah. Well, and the other challenge I see too is we're so accustomed, and this is the huge mindset shift that comes. We're so accustomed to coming into a meeting and if someone says, who's a student you like, and this is why we often say, don't say the name. Out loud. We're so used to saying, here's everything I know about this student. Everything I've tried, all the things that have worked. And when people start to say, maybe we could do this, maybe we could do this, then me as a teacher go, oh, I've tried that already. No, that wouldn't work. Let me tell you more about what, what's happened. Um, this shifts that on its ear and it's really hard sometimes to focus on the key issue because I've got Daniel in my head and I. I want to talk about Daniel, but this is where we say, okay, if you need to have a conversation with Daniel, awesome. It doesn't happen here. That sounds like a case consult layer meeting. Who do we need around the table? I love that, and that's gonna get scheduled somewhere else. This is what, again, why the layers are so, so important for us. Lindsay Lyons: I love that. Oh my gosh. So there's so much richness in here. People should obviously grab the book and read all the details, but what is maybe one thing you would encourage listeners or audience members to do once they've just ended the episode? They're walking into school or like walking into their office, preparing for the upcoming school year? Like what's one thing that could get them on the path? Kurtis Hewson: We have what we call our CTM starter kit, and I'm going to give, uh, the link to it for you. So go check the show notes out, um, or go to jigsaw learning.ca/free and you'll find it, it's one of the free resources in it. It has a adapted story of a collaborative team meeting so that you can see it, it has links to video of it, it has, here's your meeting template, um, uh, notes document. Here's your roll cards. Here's your pre-meeting organizer, all the things that you might need. There's even a facilitator's one pager that says, here's the process, here's questions you could be asking. Um, all of that, it's all built together. And if anyone's walking away from this episode going, I'm really excited about this. My piece of advice is just start, just start the, the meetings will feel awkward. Your first one will not go. Um, as well as you would imagine it, it will. Um, I think we often hear schools say it turned out better than we thought it was going to, but it takes time, it takes practice, but it is well worth the investment because it transforms the way we, we think about the work we do and the way that we support, the way that we collaboratively respond to the needs of our students. And we also, uh, Lindsay, we have, uh, at this point in the recording, I know that this will get released later, so hopefully the book will already be out. But we are just finishing a book all about the collaborative team meeting. Just that one structure, it's coming out mid May is what we're aiming for. So, um, check that out. Go to jigsaw learning.ca. It'll be on the website. Love to, uh, be able to share. We've seen schools that have. 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 years, um, in, uh, from engaging in this work that their collaborative team meeting is just so rich and so layered. Uh, when you look at it, you go, this is insanely complex how this is set up. And it never looked like that to start, but it got there over time. Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. You beat me to that question. That's awesome. And, and finally, I know you mentioned your website anywhere else that people can connect with, with you as a, as a human or, um, other places to go in terms of your work. Kurtis Hewson: I would say the easiest is that website, jigsaw learning.ca. Um, I'm Canadian. I live in, uh, Alberta, Canada, so that's the.ca part of this. Um, if you want to check out on any of the socials, uh, search for Jigsaw Learning, or, I'm in most socials as Houston K two seven. To, uh, connect with me on Instagram or Facebook, LinkedIn. Um, yeah, would love to have a conversation and, um, to help any of the schools that are trying to implement this, this work that we see have such incredible impact, not just for kids, but for the adult supporting the kids. Lindsay Lyons: Great point to end on. Chris, thank you so much. This has been such a rich conversation. Kurtis Hewson: Uh, thank you Lindsay. I really appreciate the opportunity. Lindsay Lyons: Absolutely. 
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, we talk with Adam Fletcher about student voice. Adam is an author, speaker, and consultant specializing in the area of meaningful student engagement and, in our conversation, he shares how we’re at a key, transformational time in education where students can become the main drivers of change.
Adam advocates for the democratization of learning and highlights the need for student-adult partnerships, facing adultism, and fostering personal engagement in schools to enable students to become empowered learners and community members. The Big Dream Adam’s big dream is a future where education is grounded in the meaningful involvement of students, defining it as a framework to implement justice in a fair and transformative way for the benefit of all. This vision includes students being active participants in decision-making processes, such as curriculum development and budgeting, transforming their roles from passive learners to engaged leaders who shape their educational experiences. Mindset Shifts Required To achieve meaningful student involvement, Adam identifies three key mindset shifts needed. First, the focus must move beyond mere student voice to fostering equitable student-adult partnerships. Next, it involves recognizing and addressing adultism, which is the bias towards adults that limits student empowerment. Finally, Adam stresses that educators should embrace personal engagement, encouraging students to consciously choose to engage with their education in ways that matter to them. Action Steps For educators who want to be guided by student voice, Adam recommends the following action steps that address the mindset shifts he’s identified as necessary: Step 1: Foster Student-Adult Partnerships. Encourage collaboration between students and adults where power and abilities are shared equitably. To make this possible, educators need to use the structures available to them. Adam explains the “three-legged stool” that allows students to be meaningfully involved:
These three domains allow educators to begin thinking about where they need to prioritize student voice and create those adult-student partnerships. Step 2: Recognize and Face Adultism. Educators must acknowledge the impact of adultism in educational settings and work towards dismantling it. While adultism—the bias towards adults—is appropriate in some scenarios, like an emergency situation, there are other times where students are capable of making decisions, but they’re simply not brought in by adults; they’re not given a voice. Recognizing adultism lets you then fight against it and empower students in the decision making process. Step 3: Promote Personal Engagement. Create learning environments where students are motivated to engage personally, driven by genuine interest and personal relevance. For a long time, student engagement is almost a proxy for compliance—when the student does what an educator wants, they’re engaged. But personal engagement moves beyond this and allows the student to be part of it again and again. Challenges? One of the significant challenges in implementing meaningful student involvement is overcoming the competitive mindset prevalent in educational systems. Competition, rather than collaboration, often dominates the priorities of educational institutions, and can hinder progress towards democratizing learning environments. One Step to Get Started The journey toward meaningful student involvement begins with educating yourself. Adam acknowledges that this is not innate or natural—we all have to learn about this, whether you’re a teacher, leader, parent, or student. The first step is to learn about meaningful student involvement, which can then lead to practical applications, gradually integrating the concepts into everyday educational practices for meaningful change. Stay Connected You can learn more about Adam Fletcher’s work on his website, which has a huge number of free resources for educators to check out. You can also connect with him on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing a framework for meaningful student involvement with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 258 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
Lindsay Lyons: Leah Ellis, welcome to the time for Teachership podcast. Leah Ellis: Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Lindsay Lyons: Thanks for being here. I am just really excited. We are airing this episode as part of a series on youth voice and leadership, and so this fits perfectly in there. Um, one of the questions I've been playing with to start is just kind of like what people want, uh, what you want people to keep in mind as we jump into our conversation. And so I'll just share like what's on my mind is that you reached out and were like, Hey, we do this cool thing where. Like kids actually start real businesses and take real action in the community. And I was hooked. So te tell us more. What else should we keep in mind? Leah Ellis: Okay. So I'll tell you my biggest, most scandalous controversial topic, subject, one sentence ever. Uh, children are not the future. So the thing I wa I, yeah, I know it, it gets every teacher right in the heart. 'cause we're like, wait a second, they're our babies. Yes, yes they are. They're our babies. But they're not the future because they are students of leadership right now and they're amazing human beings right now. And the more we say children are the future, the more we defer into not allowing them to leave now. And the more we program them. To believe that they can't yet, but then we never tell them when yet is. Lindsay Lyons: Love that. I love that so much. As a secondary school teacher, I always was frustrated when we were like, what do you want to be? It's like, what are you, what can you do today? Like. Leah Ellis: Yeah, exactly. That's, um, I have this challenge and I tell people all the time, 'cause you know, I do the podcasts and people are like, what is the one thing you wanna leave us with? And I'm like, okay, well the one thing I wanna leave you with is go find a child and ask them what thing happens in their daily life that they're annoyed with and how they would fix it. Because they probably have already thought about it and they just didn't feel comfortable telling you. So when you open the door, they will tell you what's wrong and how to fix it. Lindsay Lyons: I love it. We got it right at the start of the episode, so great ideas Leah Ellis: jump in. Lindsay Lyons: So one of the things that I like to ask everyone on the show is kind of stepping way back in kind of the big dream that you hold for education, learning, youth voice. Feel free to answer in whatever way. Um, but really inspired by Dr. Patina love talking about freedom dreaming, and she says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So what is with that in mind, what is that big dream you hold? Leah Ellis: Okay. So again, I don't believe children are the future because I think they're leaders now, but they are also the leaders of the future. And so for me, I think my big audacious, hairy dream is that we have a generation of children who become adults, secure in themselves, their ability to lead their communities and their ability to solve problems throughout society. So we have now. A generation of mostly apathetic, frustrated, angry people who feel like we have no power, and if we can teach all these kids what their power is when they're young, then when they reach adulthood, they are advocates for other people. They're advocates for their communities. They're advocates for solving problems, and they don't feel like they need to stay quiet. Lindsay Lyons: Love that. And I think one of the mindset shifts you've been consistently talking about since we we started recording is that idea that it's like not the future, it's now. So I think that's a big one that people should take away from this episode. Are there any other mindset shifts around like, you know, I think about youth adult partnership a lot and youth voice a lot. And there is something that has to happen in the brain of an adult, I think, to unlearn some things before we can truly get into this. So what would you, what advice would you give us? Leah Ellis: So I'm actually, instead of just giving you blatant advice, um, I'm a teacher, which means I teach through story. So I'm going to tell you the story and then let you kind of pick through some of the things that I had to unlearn, and then we can discuss what that felt like and what it was like. So I had an in-home daycare and I taught engineering curriculum to 3-year-old girls. It was fabulous. But then we discovered. A in a house that I had owned for 18 months, we discovered 10 years of black mold in the walls. So we had to move into a hotel, we had to tear apart. Most of the ground floor of our house was awful and that meant I had to shut down my daycare. 'cause you can't run an in daycare, um, in a hotel. That's just not feasible. And when we went back, we were set to reopen our daycare on March 17th, 2020. Which unfortunately was the exact day that our county issued the stay at home order for COVID, and we did not get to reopen, and my husband and I decided to pivot and launch a financial coaching company, but he was deployed. So I was home alone with an 18 month old and a 4-year-old, and that meant I had to figure out how to do my training while also watching my kids. So I put a lot of business training videos on our living room tv. I watched them while the kids played and I'd watched them while I was washing dishes and whatever I was doing, they were just the background noise of our house at that time. So my 4-year-old looked at me and said, I wanna start a business too. And of course, being a mother, I said, no way. You're four. You can't start a business. And being a 4-year-old child, the number one word in her vocabulary at the time was why. I didn't like have a good answer. Like I tried to come up with a logical, justifiable reason for why she couldn't start a business, but there wasn't one outside of year four, and nobody's done it before, but especially at that time, we were all doing things that nobody had ever done before. So what was one more new thing? So I made her tell me what she was gonna sell. We used a Facebook group to vote on her name. She did her launch and she created her business in May of 2020 at four and a half years old. And that then became her doing an art show as a featured artist, her doing her first children's business fair as a child entrepreneur at six years old, and me realizing. Like the only thing that was holding our children back is the adults. And then when we started the Society of Child Entrepreneurs and seeing that, it wasn't just in my household, but it is a societal thing where we expect 18 year olds to act like adults, but we expect 17 year olds to behave like children. And if we really want our 18 year olds to act like adults, we have to start letting our seven and eight year olds know what an adult does. Lindsay Lyons: Wow. Love that. So sorry, continue if Leah Ellis: you want. No, no. So it was, it's a long story, but that's kind of where we came from was what do we want the future to look like and how early do we need to start to get it there? And the answer is, elementary school, we need to start an elementary school teaching them these problem solving these life skills so that they're second nature when they reach 25 years old. Lindsay Lyons: For sure. And I love, I mean, as the parent of an almost 4-year-old, I'm like loving this story of like, yeah, why, why not? Like why? Tell me why. Love it. Um, also just love your. Adaptability in that moment. Right. I think a lot of adults, sometimes it's like we are kind of hit with this like moment of wait. Yeah, why not? Or wait, wow, this is possible. And you went there. And I think that's such an inspiration to people who also are going to confront those moments where it's like, oh, I can shift and, and then we all shift together. Leah Ellis: Right? Well, and it's so easy to just be like, because I said so, but then we're like, well, but. I mean, nothing in that, nothing at life was normal at that point. So it was, well, what's one more abnormal thing to throw into the ring? And now she's the junior executive director of our organization at 10 years old. Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. That is so awesome. I am thoughtful of a couple things here. Two groups of audiences and, and sometimes over overlapping. So we have mostly our audience of people who are in education, right? They have a formal role in education, their teachers, um, maybe leaders. Instructional coaches, but we also have people who, and maybe are also in education, but are family members and thinking about like youth voice at home. And so I'm, I'm seeing and, and, and noticing in your story that really, this can be both, right? This can be what we do at home and it's also likely in partnership with what we're doing at school. So any advice you have for either or both. Kind of hats the family hat or the teacher educator hat. Leah Ellis: So both one. Um, for teachers and educators, I've made this super easy for you. At the Society of Child Entrepreneurs, we've actually developed a 36 weeks school curriculum that's two hours a week, so you can literally buy our curriculum and stick it in an afterschool program and teach this in your building. Plug and play. The worksheets are already there and everything, so you just make your copies and read from the lesson plans, so it makes life super easy for you. But for families, because we all know the best way for anything to stick is to do it at home and in school we created an organization called the Sochi Circle, and it's an online platform. And every week I post a family challenge and it's like, here's a short story. Here's why it matters. Here's the challenge for your family to stabilize financial literacy, leadership, or problem solving for your kiddo at home. And when you can take that program at school and these challenges at home, then it becomes a part of the culture and not just like this one hobby. Lindsay Lyons: That's super cool. I think that's exactly right because I, I don't think that anything that is true student voice or youth voice can just be this one siloed activity. It has to be part of the culture and the way we do things and the way we treat kids and interact with them. Right. So I love that. Um, are there moments or kind of wins or projects or businesses started that you want to highlight? And I mean, specifically I just looked on your website. Today and I was like, oh, there's this update since I've been on there and it's talking about like a 10-year-old trying to get a crosswalk in their community, like standing in front, right? Like so there's just. So many wins, I'm sure. Do you wanna share some with us? Leah Ellis: So the 10-year-old on the blog post, that's my oldest daughter. Uh, so she's the one who started all of this and yeah, she walked into my office and she was like, we need a crosswalk. I'm going to city council. And she stood on a chair, told the mayor, paint a si, a crosswalk right here. Then sent an email to the city administrators that was like, okay, now that we've discussed it, what are your next steps and what do I need to do to make sure it continues on? So she has a meeting on Monday with the Main Street Planning Committee to work on getting her crosswalk put in. She is amazing, and I could tell like 500 stories just about melody because she inspires me daily, but she's not the only kid in the Society of Child entrepreneurs and she's not the only one doing amazing things. So we have another kiddo. You mentioned that you're in secondary education, so you know very well that reading for pleasure drops off statistically at a massive level after fourth grade. So by the time they get to middle and high school, nobody's reading for fun anymore, and the ones who are labeled nerds and all that stuff. I have a, one of our members, he's a 14-year-old super avid reader. He loves books. He loves talking about books, but none of his friends were talking to him about books anymore. Once they got to middle school, they had all stopped reading and he hated it. So he created a company called Troy's Top 10. And you tell him one book you enjoyed, just tell me one book that you liked and he will find he has created bookmarks and on the back of each bookmark is the genre and 10 recommendations for that genre. So if you tell him I loved Divergent, then he's like, oh, cool. Here's my top 10 dystopian future novels. These are what you should read next. And then he's encouraging kids his age to read again because he's telling them exactly what to read and exactly what they'll like. But then he takes it a step further because he puts that list on a bookmark so you don't lose it. And then he goes to one of our local book Bulk Sales Places and he buys dozens of books at a time for a dollar a piece. And then he bundles them the books with his bookmark. So it's also super sustainable 'cause he is taking all of these books that would've ended up in the trash. And he's reselling them with recommendations on what else to read. At 14. This is the business he's running. Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. Leah Ellis: Oh, he's fabulous. Lindsay Lyons: I am like, I, I am a book nerd. Like, let's talk Troy, gimme your top 10, Leah Ellis: right? I, I have some of his bookmarks. They're so cute. Um, and then we have another kiddo. Um, she's one of my, it's, this is one of my favorite stories to tell right now. So we're piloting our full 36 week curriculum and week one she sits down and she's like, I am a child. I cannot be an entrepreneur. My mom forced me into this class and it's done. And I was like, you are gonna be my star student. And she was like, no. And she was like, I wanna be a paramedic. There's nothing that a paramedic can do, starting at 12. And I'm like, well, you know, I teach first Aid to Girl Scout daisies and we teach them check call care, and like, they can't do much with care, but they could do like a, an ice pack or a bandaid while they were waiting for an adult. So. Couldn't you make like a a child or teenager friendly first aid kit that doesn't have all the extra stuff that kids don't need? And she was like, yes, but first aid kits are always clear. And I'm an adolescent girl and I really hate clear bags because I need privacy for my stuff. And I was like, that's completely valid. And so I thought that her business was going to be creating these really cool first aid kits. And then she comes to me in week three and she's like, I have a different idea. And I'm like, okay, what is it? And she was like, I've been thinking about phone cases and how sometimes I wish I could do more with my phone case, but I can't. So I was thinking about like if we made something that would slip on and off of your phone case to change what its function is. And so I showed her pair glasses and how pair glasses work where you have a frame and then you can pop different designs on top of that, like a cap to personalize your glasses for your day or your outfit. And I was like, so do you mean like pair glasses for a phone? And she was like, I've never heard of pair glasses, but yes. This is exactly what I was thinking because I could have it where like it's a wallet for when I wanna go out and I don't wanna carry a whole purse. Or I could have it where it's a dry erase board for me to doodle with my friends when we're bored. I could dress it in a tutu, so it's just cute when I'm stuffing it in my bag. And I was like, yeah, you can do all of those things. And so now she's going to the dollar store and buying super cheap phone cases just to practice cutting them apart and building prototypes. When she started literally a month ago with child entrepreneurship is stupid. Lindsay Lyons: That is incredible. And I'm, so, I'm thinking, okay, there's two trains of thought I have I'm having right now. One is like, what is that in the moment response to like as an adult, you notice this kid who you are like, I'm eager to cultivate the leadership of this child. I see a spark of an idea here, right? Like. What is that move that you make with that kid to kind of foster that trajectory? And then I also am interested, so you can take either one at a time, uh, is thinking about like the curriculum that you built, so like in a class setting or an after school setting with multiple kids. Like what is, what are the things that, what are the activities that you're doing in terms of maybe skill building? Maybe it's like ideation, like what's the kind of framework there? So any or both. Leah Ellis: So I'll do both first. How do, when you see the kid who, like, I, I know this is gonna get to you, but you've gotta get over your own preconceived notions first. Um, ask a question and then when they answer, ask another question and get really curious. Like, get 4-year-old level curious. Ask them questions until they're annoyed, because they will start realizing that you might be the first adult. Waiting for their opinion instead of telling them what to think. Um, because even when I was like, well, here's an idea, how would that work? And then she was like, well, I have a better idea. And then it's, okay. Well, but the how is that work? How do you make it, how do you create it? I know that. So I'm one of her elective classes. I know that her following elective is a sewing class. I'm like, okay, well with these two projects, how would you make it work? And watching them. Build on their own ideas while you are simply questioning and encouraging and keeping your mind open and not like, like it's like improv. Always say Yes. Yes. And what else? Yes. And how, um, so that they can keep going. And then for the curriculum, we have it set up into five units. So the very first unit we start with what is an entrepreneur? And the kids start out by discussing like, what are the traits that an entrepreneur has to have and. Then they write a mantra for themselves. Um, and they have to write not who they are, but who they are becoming. Lindsay Lyons: So we make the, oh, I don't have one right here. I thought I might, Leah Ellis: we make them write like, I am becoming the kind of person who looks for solutions when I'm frustrated because nobody's gonna write down. I am a problem solver 100% of the time. And I want them to understand that. Like, it, it doesn't have to be black or white, like we're allowed to live in that gray area. And then after they've established what an entrepreneur is, we discuss how entrepreneurship works. Then we start market research, product development. We do mission and vision statements. We do brand voice and personality and core values, and then we talk about social entrepreneurship, and then we talk elevator pitches. Then at the end of the curriculum, at the end of 36 weeks, they actually do a children's business fair where they have their product in their booth and they sell to their community. Lindsay Lyons: That's incredible. That's so, so cool. So I am now thinking about challenges that may arise either for the students or for the adults who are involved in something like this. Anything that you can think of that's like a big challenge in this work and how you have. Yourself or seeing others kind of get through that challenge. Leah Ellis: So for the adults, the biggest challenge is that your job with this is to be a guide and a sounding board. You are not in this moment, the teacher or the manager. You can't tell them how it works. You have to just guide them for finding their own solutions. And that can be really hard as a parent because you want to do, you want your kid to just get it right. And it can be really hard as a teacher because you're like, let me spell it out for you. And sometimes you have to step back and you have to let them fail. You have to let them build the resilience, build the confidence of recovering from that failure, because I will tell you, I'll shout it from the rooftops, the best way to build confidence is to recover from failure. And that means letting them fail. Even though as a teacher and as a parent, that's the last thing we want to do is let them fail. And then for kids, it's kind of twofold. Um, the biggest like. Just hang up that gets kids stuck is lack of resources. I mean, when we work with underserved communities, we have to have grants that will give 'em startups costs so that the kids have materials to start their businesses. Because simply having the resources is something that a lot of us take for granted. And so making sure that we have systems in place so that every child has access to the resources, whether that means a 3D printer in a library or a cricket for school-wide use. Um, creating, you know, this is our community craft space and anybody can take anything out of the space and making sure that they have those resources. And then the second one is the mind shift change for the kids of the fact that they might be in a place where they are developing skills their parents haven't developed yet. Having to live with that middle of knowing that their parents could do it, but their parents don't know how, and trying not to let it pull them back down and trying to maintain that open-mindedness while they're developing themselves and teaching upward mobility and societal pressure and all of that stuff, and telling them like, it's okay for you to have a better future for your parents and it's okay to drag them along. Lindsay Lyons: I think about so much of that, like our kids do things better than us, as as adults. Right, Leah Ellis: right. Lindsay Lyons: Yeah. I love that. Right. You can bring them along with you. Um, okay, great. Wow. There's just so much here. I love that we've kind of gone from like. Well, a kind of back and forth between both big picture, what is possible, like painting a picture for us, like what is possible. Because I think that's sometimes a big hurdle to overcome for adults is like what even is possible, right? But then you also gave us the concrete, like, what do you do one-on-one with a kid? How can you coach Traject trajectory? That's not a word. Uh, like what's the trajectory? Of kind of that curriculum. And so I'd love to kind of move to close here with a few closing questions. One being, if there's one thing that folks can leave the episode and do immediately, what do you suggest that is? Leah Ellis: Always, always, every single time ask questions. Like I want every adult to get in touch with their inner 4-year-old and ask questions and allow the child in your life to be the subject matter expert in their life. Pretend that they know more about themselves than you do, because it's actually the truth and it's just hard for us as adults to come to terms with Lindsay Lyons: Love that. Great advice. And then this is for fun, could be related to our topic of conversation today. Could be something totally random, but what is something that you personally have been learning about lately? Leah Ellis: Oh gosh. So I am in an all women's networking group for, um, it's mostly neurodivergent business owner women. So it's a really unique kind of place to hang out. And our conversation this week was on. Um, but becoming like, who are you becoming and the stories that you tell yourself in every situation, and how those stories can shape who you are. And one piece of advice that they gave that I had never heard before, which was brilliant, is whenever you have a situation in which your initial gut reaction is some kind of like constricting response, like, oh. They didn't answer my email because they hate me. Um, then every time you come into that like gut wrenching response, then force yourself in the moments that matter to come up with two alternative stories, one that's positive and one that's neutral. So then you might also say like, they didn't answer my email because their computer. Broke, and that's very neutral. Like that's just nothing against, or for me, their computer broke. And then the third one might be like they didn't answer my email because they're waiting to reply until after they secure a $500,000 grant for me. And so then you're like, okay, so any of these stories are equally likely to be true, so why should I not believe. The positive one, instead of believing all the time, the self-deprecating versions of all of those stories. Also, if you have a $500,000 grant for me, email me. I will take it. Lindsay Lyons: That is incredible. I love that. And so immediately actionable. So I'm gonna start using that. Thank you. Uh, Leah Ellis: yeah. I loved it when she taught it, and it's one of those things that we can teach the kids. Lindsay Lyons: Uh, oh my God. Great points. And the last question is just people are gonna wanna connect with you and figure out like what you're all about and and your program. So how do people do that? Leah Ellis: So, um, you can go to SO cce i ct.org. That'll take you to our website. It has all the things you can see the blog that Lizzie was talking about with my daughter standing on a chair, um, on Facebook and on Instagram. We're just. Society of child entrepreneurs. And then if you really want to get involved in getting those weekly challenges in the lesson plans that I post online, it's school.com/s O-C-E-C-I-R-C-L-E, so it's, it's S-K-O-O-L school.com/sochi circle, and that'll give you the information and that one, one of the levels to join is free, so you don't have to pay to be a member of that. Lindsay Lyons: Awesome, and we can link, if anyone's driving or running or anything, we'll link those in the the show notes so that you don't have to capture that on audio. So thank you so much, Lee. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on. Thanks for sharing all your wisdom. Leah Ellis: Thank you so much for having me. |
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AuthorLindsay Lyons is an educational justice coach who helps schools and districts co-create feminist, antiracist civics-based curricula, discussion opportunities, and equitable policies that challenge, affirm, and inspire all students. A former NYC public school teacher, she holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Lindsay believes all students deserve literacy, criticality, and leadership skills. Archives
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