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7/14/2025 219. Implementation is a Process with a Moral Imperative with Jenice Pizzuto & Steven CarneyRead Now
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In this episode, we chat with Jenice Pizzuto and Steven Carney, educators, researchers, and co-authors of Implement with IMPACT. They dive deep into the transformative power of implementation science in education, emphasizing the moral imperative to bridge the gap between knowing what works in education and doing it effectively.
Jenice and Steven recognize that while we often know what works through research and evidence, there’s not enough emphasis on how to implement best practices to bring effective, equitable, and just education. Their work addresses that gap and empowers educators to apply evidence-based education practices in their classrooms. The Big Dream Steven and Jenice envision a future of education where every child has access to high-quality, evidence-informed teaching, irrespective of their background. This dream involves dismantling normalized barriers such as resource gaps and opportunity divides, creating schools where students feel valued and capable. The ultimate goal is to radically reimagine how educators support teachers and leaders in implementing evidence-based practices, ensuring that every student receives the education they deserve. Mindset Shifts Required Empowering educators to implement evidence-based practices in their classrooms requires a major culture and mindset shift. Jenice and Steven highlight the need to avoid shaming and blaming, but embrace learning and growth. One big shift is for educators to embrace the idea that learning is not something done to us, but is part of who we are. So, implementation doesn’t happen by accident—it happens by design. Educators can co-create change and foster an environment where meaningful educational change is possible. Action Steps To begin implementing evidence-based practices in their classrooms, educators can start with these action steps: Step 1: Build your implementation team. Research shows that implementation is much more successful with a team committed to the process. Build your team of champions for change, including diverse voices in leadership, educators, students, and other stakeholders. Step 2: Adopt a change theory. Change is difficult for all humans, no matter what the situation is. That’s why it’s important to understand human behavior and psychology and have a framework for change that helps guide your implementation process. Step 3: Create an implementation plan. Choose one initiative your school is currently working on and assess whether the implementation is being treated as carefully as the selection process. Invest time in building a plan, using your team and change theory to guide you. Step 4: Understand barriers. Use qualitative data, such as surveys, observations, and learning walks, to understand barriers to change and implementation. Step 3: Celebrate and reflect. Because change is challenging and implementation takes time, it’s easier for educators and leaders to feel frustrated, tired, or overwhelmed. Combat this by celebrating wins and reflecting throughout the entire process. Challenges? One significant challenge in implementing evidence-based practices is initiative fatigue, where schools are overwhelmed by the constant adoption of new programs. Sustaining momentum is also difficult, especially when results take time to manifest. To combat these, it’s important for implementation teams to focus, break down silos, recognize it takes time, and stay aligned to your mission and vision. One Step to Get Started Leaders can start by looking in the mirror—examine your current system and identify areas where it may not be serving your team effectively. By acknowledging these gaps, you can begin to build an implementation team and utilize the tools necessary to create a successful and sustainable change. Consider the initiatives in your school: are you treating this implementation as carefully as you chose this initiative? Stay Connected You can find Jenice on her website, IMPACT Lead Succeed, or on Instagram. You can connect with Steven on LinkedIn or his website, IMPACT Learn and Lead. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Implementation Planning Worksheet with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 219 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
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Steven and Jenice, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. I'm so excited that you're both here in the same space virtually, and so we want to kind of start with you know what should listeners or readers of the transcript later know about you or keep in mind for our conversation today, just before we get into like the first big question, anything you want to share Go ahead, Jenice, I'll jump in after you. 00:31 - Steven Carney (Guest) We always like we're like who's going first Great. 00:35 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Well, I'm Jenice Pizzuto and I think what you should know about me is I'm not done yet. I'm still learning and growing and I just can't get enough of this learning and improvement. And the more I know, the more I find out that I need to know and that I am always at the heart of a teacher. I started out in primary education and then I've been a literacy coach and academic success person, scaled MTSS across 44 schools, then went nationwide and then kind of went into this whole implementation science dive which you know I was looking back just yesterday. It started in 2012. And since then it's been quite a wild ride and I am on the board of the Global Implementation Society, so that takes me into some global world which I really love. 01:25 And then Steven and I, you know, just found out that there was something really missing in education and it was implementation science, but not just purely implementation science as it's been presented to the medical field and the health services. We needed that education flair, and so we are. Both come from learning forward background and focus on adult learning andragogy. So we didn't start out to write a book, but we saw this giant gap and said you know what we can do better, and we have to help people do better. So I think what you need to know is that this is born out of a moral imperative, so that we can help people stop the madness of adopt and abandon, and let's not, you know, shame and blame people, but let's help people to and through getting evidence-based practices to kids that need them, and that means we have to help adults. 02:21 - Steven Carney (Guest) Yeah, and I think I think it's also really important for listeners to know that, both Jenice and I, we approach this work with a really a deep sense of humility and curiosity as well. It is an evolving field. We've both spent years working in schools and districts, and one thing that we've learned is that there is no magic bullet, no single solution that will really fix education, but we do believe wholeheartedly in the power of intentional, well-planned change, and so you know, we don't see implementation as just about introducing new ideas. It's about making sure that they take root, that they grow and that they thrive. And, as Jenice said, I think our goal is to help educators navigate that change in ways that feel doable and sustainable, and I think that was the whole point behind this is that implementation can seem really daunting, and is it doable? And then, while always keeping equity and student success at the center, while always keeping equity and student success at the center. 03:25 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's a perfect segue to the big first question that I typically ask, which is Dr Bettina Love talks about the idea of freedom, dreaming, and the specific quote that I love about that is she says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so I'm curious, with that in mind you know what is that big dream that you all hold? I know you both touched on it briefly, but do you mind kind of speaking to that dream for education and how we use implementation science perhaps? 03:57 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) That is at the heart of the moral imperative information seeking around the failure that we have done institutionally to get students what we know works to them. Then you understand that our moral imperative is in that big dream of the critique of injustice is that we know what works. We have all the research. That's why we didn't need to write a book about PLCs or MTSS or PBIS or SEL, all the al. That's why we didn't need to write a book about plc's or mtss or pbis or sel, all the all the alphabets. We know what to do, but we have a huge gap between knowing and doing and we feel that was a social injustice and we wanted to make sure that we could. I love Steven said it's teachable, learnable, doable, fixing and blase we'll borrow those terms but things that are teachable, learnable and doable, so that busy administrators, busy teachers can actually get something done right and well, to get these evidence-based practices to the students that need and deserve them. We can do better. 05:04 - Steven Carney (Guest) This is quite the quote freedom of dreaming and it really touches the other work that I do on top of this. 05:09 I currently run a school about generating upper mobility in our most marginalized communities. 05:16 I love this concept, really, of freedom dreaming. 05:19 For me, the dream is an education system where every child has access to the same level of high quality evidence, informed teaching and I think that that's why this book came about as well is really thinking about how do we implement these evidence and we know what works in education and how do we implement them right and well, and that students get that access regardless of their zip code, their family income or their background. I mean, I ultimately dream of schools where the barriers you know are normalized and things like you know resource gaps, or where the barriers we've normalized, things like resource gaps or opportunities, divides that divide us are completely dismantled, that divide us are completely dismantled. I want students to walk into my classrooms where they've really seen value or are seen and they're valued and they know that they're capable. So I think we need, you know, really to radically reimagine not just what we teach but how we support teachers and leaders to bring evidence-based practices to life. And again, that just speaks to the heart of the book which, to Jenice's point, the moral imperative there. 06:32 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) What a beautiful segue to this next piece. I was just thinking that I imagine there's a lot of re-imagining happening when we're needing to happen, I guess, to implement, like in the way that you all describe in the book, versus what's happening now and what leaders are doing now in terms of trying to here's this new curriculum, go do the thing right, or whatever it looks like in its current form, needs to drastically shift. So I'm curious to know are there key mindset shifts for leaders that you either touch on in the book or have just seen in practice that you're like these are the ways that we want to just be thinking differently about implementation 100%. 07:11 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) And that takes me to. We talked offline about a section of the book, pages two to five, If you want to just talk about that shift, and it's called. There's two sections and it's called Shifting the Culture and then Growing the Implementers. And we start out with that concept because we have to shift the culture and grow, improve and build their what we call KSAs knowledge, skills and attitudes. Not just knowledge and skills, but attitudes in an iterative improvement cycle format. There's no blame, it's a learning and improvement. And if you read at least those two sections, then also dive into what we call deliberately developmental implementation. You're going to see that that's that shift. That's going to it. 08:14 - Steven Carney (Guest) It reimagines how we approach pd yeah, I'm just going to add to that by um. 08:24 I think the other big shift, and I think the first shift and Jenice and I used to be familiar with the term that when we were doing work for Learning Forward that you know, we as educators have to embrace learning as something that's not done to us, it's something that we, you know, it's part of who we are, it's our brace. 08:44 I think the same thing is with implementation is that implementation doesn't happen by accident, it happens by design, and so we have to move away from this idea that change is something done to us and start thinking of it as something that we co-create and you know, something that we co-create and you know, and that another big shift is really embracing the idea that implementation is a process and not an event, and I think we've said that multiple times throughout the book that it really is a process and too often initiatives fail because we expect results overnight, like we're in a result, we we're in that fast, we want to see results so stinking fast, and then we just we throw it out. 09:28 So, but sustainable change, we know, takes time, it takes reflection, it takes adjustment, um, and then I think lastly, I would just add that I think that it also we need to cultivate a mindset of shared leadership. It's it's the topic that we've thrown around for many years in education, but I think it's beyond just the shared role leadership. It's the belief that everyone in the school community, from students to parents to teachers, play a role in implementation and moving the system forward. 10:03 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Absolutely, and I want to add to that in that that's why we have implementation teams as the backbone of this work and when you look at our impact implementation framework, we have what we call the outer circle, which talks about human learning center design elements, and one of them is meaningful leadership structures, and that's horizontally and vertically. 10:25 So once that implementation team is formed, it's not the person with the title that makes it. It really is a dialogue and discussion and consensus format for decision making, for moving forward, to identify what are the facilitators of getting our new thing in place, what are the barriers and we need our teacher's voice on that. That's a co-creation, co-design, co-learning, because they know the barriers better than the principal, frankly, or especially the superintendent. But we also want to have that hierarchy of support, because that's what we need to do to be brave and collaborative. A lot of leaders have a hard time letting go, but we have a lot of examples of once you have, if you set your team up right, we come to these decisions collaboratively, collectively, and then you check it again in a few weeks to see if you need to make adjustments. 11:20 - Steven Carney (Guest) Can I just throw an example on that really quick. So in the school I'm running right now, we're about to implement a new practice around cell phone use and there's a lot of incredible research around, emerging research on the negative impact of cell phone use in the classroom or in schools or what have you and how we? You know, matter of fact, there's lots of states that are looking at banning cell phone use and da da, da. So, aside from that, we're looking at redesigning and doing some practice review, but it's to implement the practices we're putting in place. It's not just enough to get good implementation by just getting our leadership involved and our teachers involved. It also involves our students. 12:12 This is a change that they're part of. It involves our parents this is a change that they're part of. And to do it right and well and to get a successful implementation, it's going to take all of those voices to inform on how's it going, what's working, what's not working, what do we need to tweak, what do we need to adjust so that we get there a lot quicker than simply just going off of the assumptions of the people who said we need to implement. 12:43 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I absolutely love that you guys name in the book and here on just now, the shared leadership part, because I think that often in education we use terms like distributive's, like that's what my research was in the context of leadership. Yeah, so it's really exciting to hear this being put together in like this leader book. It was like actually this is what leadership looks like. Let's expand the team concept. And I also think the other thing that I'm connecting with is this idea of kind of adaptive leadership and adaptive challenges versus technical challenges. 13:26 Right, I think a lot of times we just look at the technical things, like we're going to do the PD, we're going to implement the thing, and it's all kind of divorced from, you know, the hearts and souls of the people involved, and it sounds like you guys are really intentional about saying, actually those hearts and souls are really important and they're going to help us implement well, and so that's really heartening to me. I know in the book, several times you kind of I thought touched on this where we have like the implementation science formula for success for one, or even like the behavior change models that you had mentioned. So I don't know if you want to speak to any of those pieces, those formulas and things and the models that you brought in, but I just I felt like they were really responsive to what's actually necessary in schools. 14:12 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Thanks so much for asking. I want to go to the change piece. The formula for success is great and we can touch on that, but what you were hitting at is here's the thing change is personal, change is emotional and change is hard. We did some research. There's a fantastic book it's very thick called the Immunity to Change, by Keegan and Leahy. I don't know if you know it. It's very dense, but that's what our job was Like. We synthesized so much research. It's just crazy. But in that book they say only one in seven people think about this. One in seven people will change when their life depends on it, and they have the tools and the resources and the incentives. 14:56 asking educators to change their behaviors, their attitudes, their actual actions. I think about when I go golfing, you know, and I try to change my swing. It was hard and I'd always go back to the lousy swing and get in the woods even though I wanted to change. And so I think about when we're teaching and we're trying these new strategies. It's like that golf swing Even if we want to, it's really hard. 15:27 So if we don't have a change theory or change model or adopt a method of thinking of it as an iterative improvement process and involving the people that are doing the work and designing the work, we end up with adopt and abandon. 15:44 So if you look at Chapter 2, talks about change theory and adopting there's two change theories that we present to teams to choose from One's the COM-B and one's the Nostra change process. It doesn't matter which one you pick, but if you're going to be asking people to change, there's going to be predictable turmoil and by adopting a change theory, you can treat them with humanity and forethought as to what's getting in the way, what are the capabilities, what are the opportunities, what is the motivation? That's the COM, com, those. Whichever change theory you pick, there's a lot of resources and activities to help you address the reactions you're getting from staff. They're frustrated, oh they didn't get resources, or there's anxiety they didn't have a vision. That's from the Nostra change process. So we really encourage people to treat your staff as humans and help them learn and adapt to the changes that are necessary to get the new processes in place. 16:52 - Steven Carney (Guest) Yeah, I mean, Jenice, you said that so well. I think the only thing I would add to that wonderful explanation is you know, these models also just help explain. You know why we get what we get, and so it's just helpful to be able to have a model to look at and go. Well, the reason why I'm not getting the behavior I'm wanting maybe it's dialed into motivation or capability or opportunity, right, and so it helps us go back and go. Where do we tweak and modify so that and it keeps it, it keeps the blame away from the people? And, more onto, how do we fix the implementation itself or the system itself in order to get the change that we're looking for, instead of saying, well, we trained them, we taught them and they're not doing it. Well, there's some reasons why they're not, and it's not necessarily reasons that they're choosing, it's just, it's just part of human behavior. 17:47 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Yeah, and we encourage you to use I'm working with a district right now surveys, interviews, observations, there's a section on learning walks so that we understand what the barriers are, because sometimes people want to do it, but there's a barrier in place, and so then we can dismantle those barriers so we can actually get to change behavior. It's pretty rare that people don't want to be about something that's going to help their kids. 18:10 - Steven Carney (Guest) Right. 18:11 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) And I also love that expansive view of data. I don't know if you guys cited street data or not, but it makes me. When I was reading, I was thinking about street data and I'm like, right, it's all of the qualitative like just talk to people things when we often very much gravitate to numbers and like what is the quantifiable thing? 18:28 - Steven Carney (Guest) yeah, it's one of my most marked up books in education. So good old street data good old street data. 18:35 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Yeah, it's so good. You're not going to get outcome data until we know are we doing what we said we're going to do? And so that's co-creation. So an implementation team co-creates the monitoring tools. They know it like. Here's what it's supposed to look like, here's what we're going to monitor and observe, and that implementation team is part of the observation. It's not a principal coming and evaluating you. It's like are we doing what we said we're going to do? And that means the team is a part of that work. And then they they designed the learning that needs to happen as a result of what they find. 19:03 It's not that hard, but we just don't. That's the mind shift right, so it's thinking about things differently. 19:11 - Steven Carney (Guest) But yet it is hard because it is so intentional. 19:14 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Yeah, it doesn't needs a plan, it needs to be intentional about it. It's not random. 19:19 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Right. 19:20 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Or reactive. 19:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, I think that's I. You mentioned the implementation teams and I I really wanted to get at that, cause that was my one of my bigger like aha moments. I'm like, oh okay, so I, just as an instructional coach and you know a person who does like facilities learning walks sometimes I'm always in like coaching or PLC mode and implementation teams are doing something distinctly different, and so I wanted to get a better understanding for myself and for people who are listening or reading the blog post later. But I wanted to kind of ask you guys about you know the distinction and why it's really important to distinguish implementation team versus like a PLC or more of like a learning focus team. Do you want to go first, Steven? Well, I want to think about this for a second. Like a learning focus team, do? 20:07 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) you want to go first, Steven? Well, I want to think about this for a second, Well, and I'm trying to think, find the page where the we have a really great. 20:16 - Steven Carney (Guest) Oh, here it's page 85. 20:17 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Yeah, page 85 gives you a great description of the difference between a PLC and an implementation team, and before we get into that, I just want to say that there is solid research that was done by Fixin, blase, noom one other person or two, I'm forgetting around with an implementation team and without an implementation team. And with an implementation team, you can get to 80% implementation in three years. Now that may sound daunting. People don't want to take three years, we want the shiny object, but if we actually want to get the thing in place, we need that's what it takes. Otherwise it takes up to 14 year 14 years to get some, uh, 14% implementation in the years, and that is not acceptable, right? So you've spent and I actually we did an audit of a school district and they'd been doing PLC for 10 years and they were right at 13% implementation. So they'd wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars, I mean over time and on the initial training, on some of the follow-up trains, but they never actually got it in place. They were right where the data says so without an implementation team. That specifically the difference is. 21:29 This team is specifically charged with championing the new thing the PLC, sor, mtss, to and through to sustainability and it's not their job to be the PLC lead. It's not coaching, because the team decides together what the learning is. It's not a coach. But within that, using an implementation planning template, you are going to say we need coaching. You'll identify what are the strategies to get to that and coaching and how we use staff and what kind of learning is going to happen to that. And coaching and how we use staff and what kind of learning is going to happen, what observations, monitoring tools are all a part of that and that's a team decision. That's related specifically to scaling the evidence-based practice. 22:18 - Steven Carney (Guest) Yeah, lindsay, I would break it down into probably like four or five key areas. One is purpose and focus, the other one would be like scope of work. Well, let's start with purpose and focus. So, like a PLC is primarily focuses on improving structural practices and student learning and they engage in, like these cycles of reflection, analysis and collaboration where an implementation on the other really, on the other hand, is guiding and managing the adoption and scaling of those evidence-based initiatives. So the implementation team looks at the big picture, ensuring that the system, the processes, the supports are all in place to drive a sustainable change. So then you kind of then bring that down to to like what's the scope of work? Like the PLC, scope of work is really within the classroom level they're analyzing the data, they're sharing instructional strategies, they're adjusting teaching to meet, you know, the student needs. Where the implementation team really looks at the operation at the system level, they're coordinating across departments, identifying barriers, they're ensuring the infrastructure and the initiatives like professional development and leadership and resources are all robust and aligned. 23:39 I think PLCs another way to look at this is think about time. Plcs often focus kind of like on the short-term, immediate instructional cycles, where an implementation team really looks at the long-term phased approach. If you think about, like in the book, the framework we have to side, plan, implement, so on and so forth, like those are the phased approaches. So the implementation is thinking through those phased approaches, which is over a longer period of time than those short term cycles. And then PLCs if you think about stakeholders, decision making, accountability. Plcs are typically teacher driven, where an implementation team is made up of a diverse mix of stakeholders and they're accountable for managing the overall success of the initiative itself. And let me think, if there's anything else, the only other thing I would say is that monitoring and adjusting. So PLCs monitor, you know, student outcomes and they make those frequent adjustments. We're implementation teams monitoring the fidelity of the progress of the initiative itself. 24:57 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That makes total sense. Thank you both for breaking that down, because I think I have a much better understanding now than I did at first standing now than I did at first. I appreciate it and I think what I love about it too is that the PLC elements, or like the professional learning elements, are still very much present, like that's still very much part right and it's not like these are exclusive. 25:16 - Steven Carney (Guest) Yeah, go ahead. Well, there is an overlap like collaboration. Reflection is an overlap where there's collaborative work and ongoing reflection. Data-driven is an overlap where the data guides the decisions. Student-centered is the overlap where you know both. The goal is to improve student outcomes. So there is definitely an overlap and I think that they work really well together. 25:38 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, for sure, and I think one of the things that I had written down as one of my huge takeaways from the book is just the collective teacher efficacy impact on implementation was like very high, like that was a key piece of doing all this well. So you definitely need all of the pieces, so that makes sense. I'm curious to know if there's like a major challenge that you have identified. I'm sure there's so many challenges that people go through when they're trying to implement something, but I am curious to know what's like a big one that you have either like experienced yourself, coached others through, seen in the research, and how would you coach someone kind of through that or talk them through that particular challenge? 26:19 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) That's a great question. It's staying focused. 26:23 - Steven Carney (Guest) Honestly it's? 26:24 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) for me it's pretty simple. It's being willing to break down silos, to fund the, an implementation team, to stay aligned, align your work to your mission vision. So that's why, horizontally and vertically, it needs to be school board, any of the stakeholders that are part of that, because otherwise people are going to go aside, they're going to go to a different shiny object. But when you have this systemic look and generally really it's hard to do this at a school level, to be honest, because you're going to do what the superintendent and your boss wants and if we're not all focused on scaling and that's why scaling a framework like MTSS or PLC works really well because the school district is going to do it but and that is why we built the tool actually to the coaching piece this is why we came to having all these tools, because it was like, oh, why don't we stay focused? Well, you don't have an implementation plan, so we have an implementation planning template, there's a communication map, there's learning walks, so there's all these tools to help you stay focused and to build and develop your team, so that we see that there's interconnectedness and alignment throughout the district and you can report that to the school boards and to the superintendent. 27:43 I have a school district that I work with. 27:44 Once a month, different schools report their progress on their implementation plan to the school board because they're all involved, it's all synced up and it's all tied with their PLC, their SOR and MTSS. 27:57 They've tied it all together in their implementation plan because it fits. This is the work they're doing. But because they knew that as their vision and vision, they're able to maintain focus, and because they meet monthly as a team, and because the district level team meets in trimesters, they maintain the focus and they're always looking at their SMART goal and they're looking at what progress they've made and coming back to it. So it's tied to their school improvement plan, it's tied to the district improvement plan, it's tied to the district improvement plan, it's tied to their funding and grants. It all comes together. So those things help you stay focused. If you don't have a plan and a framework and tools to guide you and the learning opportunities for the staff, that's when we shift and we just say, oh, we did it and we check the box and 10 years later we're at 14% implementation and we spent, you know, three, four, $500,000, or a million even. 28:59 - Steven Carney (Guest) Yes to everything you said and I think as I think about this question honestly, and I think as I think about this question honestly, I think one of the biggest challenges is initiative fatigue. You know, schools are asked to adopt new programs and it can feel really overwhelming and the danger that you know, as Jenice was alluding to, that nothing sticks because there's not enough time to see things through, and I think that's a big piece. Another challenge is really sustaining that momentum as well. So, like that you get it. You know people get excited at the launch of something and but how do you keep that energy alive, especially when results are taking time, because we want to see those immediate results and they're taking time. 29:48 I think that's that's hard. And then but I mean, I have found and Jenice will say the same thing is that celebrating those small wins and creating the structures for reflection can help with that. But it's an ongoing process and I anticipate it will continue to be a challenge as long as schools are stretched really thin. So I think that if we can narrow down the focuses what is their book called focus, you know if we can narrow down the focus and not have smokers oh, that's right. Wait, that was a long time ago too, that came out, but, um, we're aging ourselves a little bit there, uh, so, yeah, so, initiative fatigue and then sustaining the momentum, um, you know, and so it's often that we may go into a system and help with their implementation, and that is the barriers that they have. 30:45 So many other things going on as well, and like where, how do they pull the resources, the right level of resources? Um, we have a good friend of ours that has done some good research around professional development, implementation and, um, she had mentioned that for every, every dollar you spend a new innovation, you should be spending four times the amount on the implementation itself. And so you know, like that's impressive. And you know, really, focusing on the support structures that support the implementation efforts, all the professional development, the coaching, the constant, you know, opportunities to celebrate in the structures for reflection and so forth. 31:32 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That certainly speaks to my soul as like a PD provider and coach, because I often get requests to do like one-off workshops and I'm like I don't even like this, Like there's no, what are we doing? 31:43 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) No, because it's actually harmful. Yeah, because it erodes trust and it erodes the cognitive ability and we know that it's not going to stick. There's, there's oodles of research. Linda Darling Hammond has new research, joyce and showers has previous research. It takes up to 50 hours, or up to 20 times, to be, to be, to get initial mastery, to build the, to build mastery on a new strategy 20 times. So that's why the learning walks and the team helps to build those opportunities together, and coaches are such an important part of that. And how, how, then the team decides how we're going to use coaches, what are they going to do and what are the strategies. It's, it's just so important. 32:25 - Steven Carney (Guest) I just have to say it takes me a lot longer I've been trying to get. 32:28 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) I know, and that's for your most smart like I've been, I've been trying to get this golf stroke down for 30 years and I'm still not there. 32:35 - Steven Carney (Guest) So, uh, for some of us we're a lot slower than the 20 times, but I guess there's something to walk away with. 32:45 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Walk away with that and then be kind to people about having helped them through to and through change. Build deliberately developmental implementation, develop people, shift the culture. You know growth mindset you can have a growth mindset, but we need learning and improvement to shore up and build our skills so we can skill up to scale up. And our staff deserve those opportunities. 33:16 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Jenice. I'll just follow up on that because I think that speaks to kind of our call to action. So we're going to do kind of a lightning round and the last few questions here. But I love to invite people to share just kind of one thing. If someone's listening to this episode on the drive to work, for example, and they're like, okay, I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna like do my day, what can I do today? I'm ordering the book, I'm going to get all of the tools and I'll put those in action, you know, this year. 33:41 - Steven Carney (Guest) However, in this moment today, what's one thing that I might do to start the momentum? I would choose one initiative your school is working on and ask are we? 33:58 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) treating this implementation as carefully as we chose this initiative? 34:00 - Steven Carney (Guest) And if the answer is no, take a step back and invest time in building the implementation plan. Think about the peoples, the behaviors and the systems that we need to be put in place to make it really successful. So implementation isn't glamorous work whatsoever. It's detailed, it's deliberate and often behind the scenes, but if you do it right, the impact lasts beyond the initial rollout. So choose one initiative. 34:27 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) And I'm going to say get a mirror. And what I mean by that is if you're implementation, if something's failing in your school, we need to look at the system, because teachers come, show up each and every day to do the very best. We may not have provided them with the resources. We may have provided opportunities to build the capacity to build their knowledge, skills and attitudes. They might not have the appropriate time. And so the other piece is if you see in that mirror that it's not working, don't fret. You can build an implementation team and start to use the tools to plan. It's never too late, even if you're like here. We started with somebody who's already 10 years into PLCs. Now they're up to you know 80% of people use it. It doesn't. So don't, don't. Don't be shy and you can come in and re. You can reshape something. But look in a mirror to see is your system serving your staff? 35:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's so good. It makes me think of like kind of the um doing root cause analysis. I'm always like look for the gut punch, like you'll know when you get to the root. When you're like, ooh, that hurts me, to like face that hard reality about myself and my beliefs, like Hmm, that's like something that resonates. I know you are both working on your golf swings and so you could use golf as the answer to the next question, but I'm always curious what guests are learning about lately, and this could be related to your work, but it also could be totally different. 35:48 - Steven Carney (Guest) So what do? 35:49 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) you think I am hooked on Adam Grant who, if you don't know Adam Grant, look him up. He is a social psychologist. He has two books. One called Think Again was my first dive into Adam Grant. I went to Little Dents and then Hidden Potential. I've got so many notes in that and he's about the hidden potential of teams and hidden potential in ourselves. And I am all about Adam Grant now and he has a podcast. So some of my learning is trying to infuse more Adam Grant-esque things into my life and work more Adam Grant-esque things into my life and work. 36:31 - Steven Carney (Guest) Gosh, you know I wish I would read things that are more like fun and not related to like my life, work and kids and what have you. But I'm currently in the process of reading the Anxious Generation, which I'll butcher his name Jonathan Hatt, or H-A-I-D-T. How do you pronounce that last name? Anyway, wow, really, if you want to understand why our kids are really struggling right now with so much anxiety and and, uh, mental health and what have you, uh, he, he makes this distinction between what we used to have, um, uh, basically, when we grew up, uh, that we had, uh, you know, lives where we played versus, you know, right now, their, their lives were consumed by cell phones and they could start scrolling when they're three. But tons of research that's in this book, so it's not just an opinion piece Really good. So it marks the case for some changes that we need to make in society to kind of help our kids with their, to address the level of anxiousness that they have. 37:40 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I just requested that from the library this week, so I'm very excited. Thank you for previewing that for me, and then the final question I have for both of you, and we'll link to all this stuff too in the blog post for the episode. But where can listeners learn more about you, connect with you? We'll link to the book and the free resources in the book. So thank you for providing those, but what's the best place to get in touch with each of you? 38:01 - Steven Carney (Guest) Go ahead, Jenice, you got yours, I got mine. 38:04 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Hey, great, I am available at Impact Lead Succeed, which, if you just Google that impactleadsucceedcom and Jenice at impactleadsucceedcom by email and I'm on Instagram with Impact Lead Succeed. But just email me if you want to get together, if you want to just talk about learning and improvement. I love to geek out with other people who are learning and if you want some support, then we can also help you there. 38:37 - Steven Carney (Guest) And don't get confused by this, but we have very similar names. But it's impactlearnandleadcom and it's Stevencarneyatlearningandleadcom and it's Steven Carney at learning leadcom. 38:48 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Amazing. Denise and Steven, thank you so, so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. 38:52 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Lindsay, it's a pleasure.
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2/10/2025 197. Liberatory, Equitable Pedagogy through Place-Based Learning with Micki Evans, Charity Marcella Moran, and Erin SanchezRead Now
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In this episode, I speak with educators and authors Micki Evans, Charity Marcella Moran, and Erin Sanchez. Together, they wrote the book, Place-Based Learning: Connecting Inquiry, Community, and Culture, which explores how we can transform classrooms into equitable and inclusive spaces through place-based learning.
Our three guests are passionate educators with many years of experience. We chat in this episode about their work that explores the necessity of decolonizing curricula and implementing liberatory assessment practices to empower students. Additionally, they delve into the practicalities of place-based learning, emphasizing community asset mapping and leveraging student expertise to create dynamic, student-led educational experiences. The Big Dream The big dream, as articulated by our guests, revolves around empowering students to consume, critique, and contribute to their world. Further, they seek to create an educational experience where students maximize their innate talents and challenge oppressive systems. This dream extends to envisioning the community as a classroom through place-based learning, encouraging students to engage deeply with their surroundings and to learn from diverse perspectives. Mindset Shifts Required To realize this vision, educators must embrace several key mindset shifts. First, educators can embrace an open mind, as place-based learning asks us to reframe and decolonize our curriculums, starting to look at it from multiple perspectives. This involves shifting from a binary view of learning to a dynamic one, where students have more control over their learning journeys. Additionally, educators can trust their students to lead, support them with appropriate scaffolding, and view assessment as a tool for empowerment and social justice, rather than mere ranking or evaluation. Action Steps Because adopting a place-based learning practice can be a major shift for educators, here are some actions steps you may wish to adopt to get started: Step 1: Examine your own place story. Educators can start by examining personal connections to your environment, and develop your place story which can help form identity and values. You may reflect on themes of, “Where did I grow up? Where am I living now? How do I connect with this place and space?” Step 2: Implement community asset mapping Start with your classroom and find out what your students are experts in. What assets do they bring into the classroom? How are you using that to build your curriculum? This can be a great starting point to find place-based learning journeys. Step 3: Start small and keep growing You don’t have to jump all the way in and try everything. Instead, pick one or two design principles of place-based learning and see how it evolves in your classroom before moving on to the next steps. You can learn more about place-based design principles in our guest’s book, Place-Based Learning. Challenges? Common challenges are often around partnering with the community, like the school structures and red tape that make it difficult to get students off campus or community partners on campus. Another barrier teachers face is the pacing—educators often feel they don’t have time for place-based learning—and the political landscape we’re in. Overcoming these requires a focus on educational aspirations and the big dream for students, as well as strategic planning and support from school leaders. One Step to Get Started Begin by adopting a flexible mindset and choosing a small, manageable place-based learning project. Reflect on your current practices, involve students in the planning process, and use available resources to connect with community partners. By starting small, you can gradually build confidence and skills to expand place-based learning in your educational setting. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guests on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and their website, PBL Path. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing the guests' free resources: a blog page, Blank Place Based Project Planning Tool, and free reproducibles. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 197 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:
TRANSCRIPT 0:00:20 - Lindsay Lyons Thank you, you, as we have this conversation today, do we want to go? Mickey, charity, erin, does that work? Okay, sure. 0:00:28 - Micki Evans I'm Mickey Evans and I'm just so excited to be here with you, lindsay, and with my colleagues and good friends. I'm a passionate educator, have been for many, many years and a proud grandmother of four granddaughters who are all under the same roof this holiday. 0:00:50 - Charity Moran I'm Charity Moran and I almost forgot it's my turn to go, but I was like, yes, four grandchildren. But yes, I'm from Shreveport, louisiana. Most of my work and my education career had started in Louisiana. So, in addition to all the things in the bio, I think right now, today, just where we are historically, louisiana is in the center of my heart, right now. 0:01:21 - Erin Sanchez Yeah, erin Sanchez. Originally from a small farming community in Minnesota but now in Tacoma, washington, the ancestral homeland of the Puyallup Nation. And I have been an educator for 24 years, lucky enough to work with Mickey almost all of those years and Charity for the last decade or so and just love partnering and collaborating with these two and excited to talk about our work. 0:01:50 - Lindsay Lyons Thank you all. So much. Beautiful introductions, and so I think your book is so wonderful and so will align to, I think, this first framing question I usually ask guests. Dr Bettina Love talks about the idea of freedom dreaming in this way. She says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice and I just really love that to kind of anchor the work we do as educators in the space of education. And I'm curious, either each of you can answer or kind of whoever feels called to answer, but I'm wondering what the big dream that you hold for education is in the context of that thinking about freedom dreaming. 0:02:30 - Charity Moran I'll go. I kind of this is Charity. I very much so. Love Dr Love first of all. And so this quote of you know, thinking about freedom, dreaming and the idea of critique. I think that for me, the biggest idea which is kind of crazy to have to say out loud for education is that whatever we do in this process of education, students and learners of all ages actually are able to, you know, consume, critique and contribute to their world. Like with those three things are happening and if we're doing what it takes to do that, I think that's kind of the big idea for me. 0:03:18 - Micki Evans I definitely have to agree with you on that. When I first came to education, it was really about how do we maximize the innate gifts and talents that all students have and it's evolved over time, especially with PBL because it's really getting into how do we break down those systems of oppression so that all children and students and learners can achieve their fullest potential. 0:03:48 - Erin Sanchez Definitely yes, that community as classroom being the big dream for me, I think, and to facilitate that really reckoning with the racist structures that we sometimes feel helpless and we end up perpetuating. But how do we? How is there just an indigenizing of our current system? In a life before this, I was a spoken word poet and when I thought about indigenizing education, it was like educating our children in the kitchen, you know, disinfecting canning jars and adding pectin to berry mash, and in the garage, tearing the transistor radio, limb from limb, you know. Or in the woods, you know, with showing asufficiency, in the hospital, on the building site, in the movie studio, you know, in places adults haven't even imagined children being or doing schooling kind of introduction to kind of the mindset shift that I'm thinking about when I pick up the book. 0:05:11 - Lindsay Lyons I am a person who, like, really connected immediately with everything you're saying and kind of had that head-on moment that you get with books, that you're like, yes, like these people are like connected to my brain and you've put words to the things that I've thought but haven't put words to, and you extend my understanding of this stuff because you're giving me concrete practices and examples of just wow, wow, it can be even more than I imagined, which is so cool. And then I'm also imagining there's some teachers who could pick up the book and be like, whoa, this is so very different from anything I've thought of, like I didn't even that I'm just teaching social studies from a book right now, you know, or whatever. And so I'm curious, particularly for those folks but even for someone like me who had a lot of kind of aha moments as I read the book and maybe have done similar things in the past, but not to the extent you've laid it out what are those kind of like aha moments or mindset shifts where people who are just encountering the book and just kind of sifting through all this stuff and making sense of everything you've laid out there what's really required of them to get the most out of this? 0:06:12 - Micki Evans to make some of those freedom dreams that you named come true. I think, for one is to have a really open mind, because place-based learning really asks us to reframe our curriculum and decolonize our curriculum. So we're looking at it from multiple perspectives, not just a single story or a single narrative. So that's a huge mind shift and turning over more of that control to the students to really give them a voice to make an impact on their community themselves. 0:06:50 - Erin Sanchez And I hope that the book is empowering for teachers and sends the message loud and clear that place-based learning isn't binary. You know where you're either doing it all or not at all right, but it's a spectrum and a teacher can start anywhere and grow their practice based on their students and their context and their own self-reflection and their journey, so that it doesn't feel so daunting or scary. 0:07:22 - Charity Moran And there's also this shift around the idea of assessment and we emphasize the liberatory assessment practices, and so it's just a shift in thinking about how are we assessing? What does it mean to assess? How are we leveraging assessments to empower students and community? You know thinking about even promoting equity and social justice. So really, you know thinking about all of the things that assessment could be, as opposed to really what it is now in terms of how it's used and even abused. But how can it become more of what, like Zaretta Hammond refers to, as you know, a tool towards this partnership, this learning alliance between teacher and student? 0:08:30 - Lindsay Lyons teacher and student, I definitely got that sense that this is. This is a shift very much away from assessment in that kind of hegemonic dominance that we often see assessment as like a tool for like you fail or you're better, or write this ranking or any sort right. I very much read your work as like it's the process, right, it's the process with engaging community, it's the reflection. I love so many of the reflection protocols that you all named and and that reflection process, that idea of expanding what a project is to include collecting data in community and with community, and inviting community in and truly being a partner, not just in name but in an actual process. And so I love to the intentionality between not just naming the word decolonize but to also cite, like Eve Tuck's work I think Tuck and Yang's work around decolonization, to name that like I always get this wrong, but like that it's not a metaphor, right, it's about repatriating indigenous land and life, right, they write about, and so I can see that idea present in all of your work as well, which I really appreciate. So there's so much in the book that I was like we don't have time to do all of this in 30 minutes, but I would love to invite you all to share kind of like what are your either favorite pieces of the book? We can talk about any of the kind of I think the original pieces being very much like the framework. We can talk about specific practices or projects, because I also love that you all share projects that you have done and kind of really flesh all of those out for us to understand. So, yeah, what are kind of your favorite actions and things that you want to highlight for listeners? 0:10:02 - Charity Moran Yeah, I know one of my favorite parts of the book is how we leverage the troubled waters project. We leverage a specific project, kind of connect in part one to each of the you know design principles that we present and so being able to see, you know, you read the theory about it, you get into the research, but then you have an actual project that's been implemented, that connects back to and gives you know a direct kind of line to say the thing we just read about this is how it looks in the real world. So that's one of my favorite pieces, for sure. 0:10:51 - Micki Evans I agree. And how Dr Delpit, who wrote our foreword, tied that in so well I mean the story that she shares in the foreword just speaks to Troubled Waters, the project that we highlight. 0:11:07 - Lindsay Lyons Do you guys mind giving an overview, just a little bit, for listeners who haven't read the book yet, of the troubled water? I know that it's very in-depth in the book, but maybe we could just give a little preview. 0:11:18 - Charity Moran Yeah, so it's a project anchored in the place of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where there was a protest around all of the swimming pools were being closed in the majority Black sides of town. And so, you know, leveraging that movement during the protests but connecting the place and the history to connecting the students to that event to then now, in current times, work to. You know, leverage that history and knowledge of place to propose new pool plans in new locations, you know, with this in mind, and so, along the way, students debunk myths about you know Black people as swimmers and explore, you know historical examples of that, and so it's really a lot that just ties into this one place, this one historical event along the way. 0:12:17 - Lindsay Lyons Thank you so much. That was perfect, erin, anything you wanted to contribute around your favorite pieces. 0:12:23 - Erin Sanchez Oh, my favorite pieces. Well, I mean, since this book's imaginings, when we were just thinking about what we wanted, we wanted it to. Well, I mean, since this book's imaginings, when we were just thinking about what we wanted, we wanted it to be a workbook, right, we wanted, like teachers in there using it, doing the reflections, planning a project, and we've always said, like, if you read it from beginning to end, you'll walk away with a complete, you know, project plan, which I think is really unique. But what I've grown to love about it, now that it's in my hand, is that there is a place for leaders in the book, for school leaders, for instructional coaches. The whole part three is using the practitioners round, which is a really beautiful, just like coaching cycle, but unique to place-based learning, for how to support teachers on this journey and how leaders can leverage their positional power to create this space for place-based learning, this space for teachers to be able to take risks and try this out and see the impact on their students. And so that's what I've, like, grown to love is also empowering leaders Like you have a role in this, and it forces them also to examine the existing systems too. 0:13:47 - Micki Evans Yeah, and the other thing I want to add to that is the power of storytelling throughout, in terms of being a leader, using stories to create that change and to leverage members of the community students, teachers and just sharing and uncovering the stories of the community as well. We just collaborated with a group in India, PBL Propel, and designed a conference that was for leaders from all over India and Nepal, and they walked away with a design, a vision and a design for implementing and sustaining place-based learning at their sites, using our practitioners round and storytelling. 0:14:33 - Lindsay Lyons It's so incredible because when I was reading through the leader pieces, immediately I thought it connected very well. I think chapter 13, maybe as your chapter on the barriers. And I I just feel like as a coach, there's a lot of teachers I've worked with that have said, you know, yeah, but the barrier is this or the barrier is this right. And I just feel like as a coach, there's a lot of teachers I've worked with that have said, you know, yeah, but the barrier is this or the barrier is this Right. And I mean we can, I can invite open the conversation here to talk about particular barriers and how you'd overcome them. But I think much of what you share in the leader piece addresses directly many of the barriers that I've heard personally teachers say, yes, but I don't have like the logistical support here, I don't have the family communication piece here, or you know I just there's a lot of moving pieces. I need time in the day for planning and whatever. There's so many pieces that I think are addressed by that leader point. So if there's anyone listening who's like, yeah, this feels like a lot like the things are addressed at towards the end of the book in that part three, which I really appreciate. So thank you for putting that in there, because I really really appreciate that as a coach. Are there specific barriers or kind of challenges that you have, I don't know, heard the most in your work, anything that has been something that's come up for either teachers, leaders or communities, and then maybe how did you kind of help people through that or what came out of that challenge, if that question makes sense. 0:15:57 - Erin Sanchez Oh yeah, we definitely hear. There's a pattern to the challenges we hear and one of them is, like the, just those school structures, like you know, sometimes it's really difficult to get students off campus Right, and there's a lot of just red tape and just paperwork involved in that or getting community partners on the campus, you know. So helping leaders really look at what is their realm of control and what is their realm of influence and how to make that process more simplified, you know. And also just things that they don't teach us in teacher school, like how to write a letter to a potential community partner, you know. So we include a template for that, just to you know, quickly dispel any notion that there's some sort of barrier between teachers and a potential community partner, that we can be reaching out to anyone or that we can turn that over to an instructional coach that might be able to help teachers create a community partner database and identify those potential partners. So just those small things that can be done. 0:17:12 - Micki Evans And students can be a great asset for connecting with community partners as well, sometimes more effective than the adults in the school. 0:17:23 - Erin Sanchez Yes, very true. And then I know another barrier that I'm going to let Mickey or Charity talk about is the pacing. We hear that a lot. You know like we don't have time for place based learning. How do we build that into our existing scope and sequence? To either of you want to speak to that? 0:17:43 - Charity Moran Yeah, so that's definitely sometimes one of those, you know, barriers or challenges that make themselves known. And so then you know, like you said in part three, there's a lot of designing the you know the amount of content that's being put in there and things of that sort, so that we can at least try to keep it aligned and make sure that we start with the standards in mind, so that the things that we are creating as we start spelling out those ways of knowing that we know we're anchoring in, you know, content as well as justice, you know, and as well as other ways of knowing that we want to make sure we attend to. And then you know, of course there's also the political landscape, because a lot of people hear things like, you know words like liberatory and decolonize and culturally responsive, and that opens up a can of worry that as long as we re-anchor in ideas, like your very first question what are our biggest dreams for education? And as long as we think about those big dreams and use that as our measure, then the things that we're asking folks to do, and, you know, supporting the work in this book, it's not a big leap, you know, if we really just re-anchor in that dream in our vision for education because, at the core, you know, we can put politics aside and focus on what do we want students to walk away with? Who do we want them to be as a result of this education? 0:19:34 - Lindsay Lyons And I feel like many times, especially the worrying that we are doing, we are thinking of usually not even our students. We're thinking of family members of students and we're usually thinking about a very specific group of families of students, right, Like the, usually like the white family members who are going to get like really stressed about whatever, and it's like, okay, first of all, we're only thinking our worries are contained usually to this small group. That's not, that's messed up. Right, it's not even the students. And, second of all, right Like we, the students, get so engaged when we do this work, Like they are so excited. Students are excited and I just I think about, like when I was a social studies teacher the first year I taught, I had no idea what I was doing and I was like all right, we're gonna do the textbook and we're gonna like kind of race through all the content, we're gonna cover it all and you're gonna do good on this final state test. No one liked my class. It was so boring, it was horrible. And then I have the same students in an elective where we did. One of the things that you guys talk about a lot is that students are collecting the data, they're interviewing. There's storytelling involved. I'm just wondering about the dynamics of that shift because I think that's probably hard for someone like me who went from. You know this, I'm going to teach the textbook to OK, this is way more expansive. I have to let go of control. My students are kind of taking ownership of this. Any kind of tips or thoughts to lift up from the book from that perspective of like students are really leading this journey. 0:21:25 - Micki Evans I think it really. We have to trust our students right, even if they're littles, right. We need to trust them that they can lead the way, and so you may have designed this amazing place-based journey and the kids may take it in a different direction. So being flexible because, you know, most teachers are control freaks I was, am, but by letting go and seeing what the kids can do just gives me great hope for the future. Truly, because they're taking action and they're engaged in things that mean it means something to them. 0:22:06 - Erin Sanchez Mm-hmm. And letting go doesn't in any way mean that the support isn't there, that there aren't scaffolds in place to teach them the skills like feedback and revision and reflection and knowing that that takes time. Context of the place-based journey. So they know why they're learning what they're learning and in many cases we encourage them to create the why, to set that why for themselves and for their peers, and so hopefully they feel supported at every step. And just like I said before about place-based learning not being an all or nothing, you know the process of students learning the skills that are going to set them up for success in their place-based journeys is also not all or nothing. It's going to take a little bit of time and teachers can say, oh, I really want to work in this place-based journey on students giving, receiving and incorporating feedback based journey on students giving, receiving and incorporating feedback, and that's going to be my priority, and so it feels more manageable and tangible. And then students do walk away with those skills that they then apply to the next project until they have much more autonomy than they did six months or nine months ago. 0:23:29 - Charity Moran Yeah, it's very much so. A journey and this kind of ongoing journey, which is why I think one of the features I really love around the reflection questions and that there are more questions than definitions in a lot of the things that we do, because that encourages this kind of ongoingness notion of the work. Like, okay, I did it for this project, now maybe I want to, like Erin said zero in now on building some of the reflection skills, so now I'm going to reflect, on reflecting to make sure that I'm building and baking that into the lesson with the students, so keeping those questions in mind as well. 0:24:08 - Micki Evans And I think the same is true for collaboration, because most place-based learning journeys ask students to collaborate and work together and that does take some intentional scaffolding with students. We can't just throw them into a group and expect that they're going to be working seamlessly. So that's part of that journey. So the first project you may be spending a lot of time on building those collaboration skills. 0:24:37 - Lindsay Lyons This makes me think of two questions, so feel free to answer either one. Whatever is most interesting to you. One question I was wondering is what is the most exciting skill that you've seen students build within a place-based learning project? And then the other question is I just love the reflection protocols you have, and I was wondering if you had a favorite reflection protocol from that list. There were many I had never heard of, and so I would love to lift those up for our listeners as well. Feel free to go either direction. 0:25:11 - Erin Sanchez Feel free to go either direction. As soon as you said a skill that students learned, I immediately went to empathy, like developing that habit of empathy over time, like with my high school students, and seeing it very acutely in one particular project where they were collecting oral histories from people who had experienced genocide in Africa, asia or Latin America. So it required this high level of empathy and thank goodness we did practice interviews first, like we spent a lot of time developing those interview questions and follow up questions and creating like question maps and fishbowling the questions, because I realized pretty quickly like wow, their questions are super inappropriate because, yeah, that skill had not been developed yet and so it was over the course of the project culminating in those interviews. In those interviews and just being able to see how students had both kind of evolved and internalized the stories of the folks that they were hearing from was a really beautiful thing, yeah. 0:26:38 - Charity Moran I think kind of aligning with, I think, aaron's answer earlier around this notion of self-sufficiency and this one of the skills in students that I love see happen, and even some of the student testimonials that we have in the book. They've said, they say things like you know, I feel I feel more empowered or I feel like I'm in control of what I'm learning, or you know, it's just that type of energy from the students has been one of the favorite, one of my most favorite pieces around almost all of these projects. We hear something to that effect. 0:27:20 - Micki Evans Yeah, really empowering kids to make a difference in their community and taking those skills beyond the classroom. So the protocols that we use some were created by us, and what I love about the practitioners round is teachers have an opportunity to get feedback on their project design. But we also involve students in the process as well as community members, so it's not just teachers doing the protocols. We're engaging all the different stakeholders in those protocols as a way to critique and revise and refine as we move forward in the journey. 0:28:06 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah, I think the student experience triad was my favorite. I had marked that as my favorite. They actually. How often do you get to sit down with students and be like all right, like tell me about it, like what are your thoughts? 0:28:20 - Erin Sanchez And you just get to listen. That's so cool, I love. I also love the community partner review. That happens at the very end of a project, where you know both the community partner and the students, either asynchronously or in person, sitting down in the same room together, are like creating this artistic expression of their experience of the project and that's like so cool just to see what they come up with and how they communicate with each other and just the stories that they're sharing. Yeah, those interactions are really pretty awesome. 0:28:58 - Micki Evans And that really helps to sustain that partnership. So we're not just using the partners once and then bye, bye. It's really sustaining that and seeing how the work might evolve over time. 0:29:10 - Lindsay Lyons I also love that you named specific examples too about sustainability of projects. Like it's, the partners, but also the projects themselves kind of, could live on and in the next year students add to it. That's a super cool concept. I think Anything else that you all would like to add before we go to kind of our closing questions round? All right, if anything comes up, feel free to jump in. So the first question and we could just kind of go. Everyone can kind of share their thoughts here. What's one thing you would encourage listeners to do once they end the episode? I will vote that people should get the book and read that, but maybe, as the book is in the mail being delivered to them, what's kind of a thing they can do to jumpstart this type of pedagogy? 0:30:02 - Micki Evans I think one of the things is having individuals look at their own play story to be to begin to see how they are connected to place and how place help create their own identity, who they are today, what their values are, um, so kind of beginning with what's my place story, where did I grow up or where am I living now and how do I connect with this place and this space? 0:30:45 - Erin Sanchez And I think a next step that we outline in the book too, is that community asset mapping, starting with your classroom, like finding out what your students are experts in, um, what assets they bring into the classroom every day, um, and then using that as a basis to look at your, your curriculum, your content, um, and and figure out how those can be like little, little nuggets of place-based learning journeys. 0:31:20 - Charity Moran And then you've already got your book. So once you've done that, and considering what my colleagues have said as well, you don't have to jump all the way in. Try picking one or two of the design principles and seeing how does it feel, you know, for yourself as a practitioner, for your students, and again thinking about how are they responding to what's happening. And then from there, just fold in more, fold in more, until you get ready for that project that you design as you read the book. 0:31:51 - Lindsay Lyons These are great examples. Thank you all for sharing those. My next question is because everyone who comes on is like a lifelong learner, constantly learning things. I'm just curious. It could relate to education or not, could be totally different. What is something that you personally have been learning about lately? 0:32:16 - Erin Sanchez about lately. It was the holidays. I had two weeks off. I actually read a mystery novel so I'm like, oh, what was before that? No, but like, my favorite interactions in the past year, both through professional development and just through online conversations and reading, have been Caroline Hill's EquityX Design. She was the founder of 228 Accelerator. We quote her several times in the book and she just talks about equity as a verb and really like process as product and how we design at the margins, whether that design be, you know, making changes within our own community, whether it be designing a place based learning experience, but how we're designing at the margins and I just absolutely love her. And after the recent election, she's having these online spaces to just have dialogue with one another and care for ourselves and care for our communities, which I've really appreciated too. 0:33:33 - Charity Moran That's what I'm thinking about. I've kind of been knee deep in the thinking about the uses of AR and VR, so augmented reality and virtual reality and this connections to place-based learning so, yeah, just really enjoying that. Some of it's kind of scary and I'm walking through that to think about what my teachers think along the way, because a lot of people are this technology thing and are we going to go completely iRobot? Are robots going to control the world? And things of that sort. So really digging into AR and VR with a lot of that in mind, connecting it to place-based learning and helping educators get into it themselves to overcome some of those fears and give the power back to the students, basically. 0:34:29 - Erin Sanchez You're going to have to teach her Mickey, and I as well. I'm so intrigued, but no so little. 0:34:38 - Micki Evans Oh, I think for me really in getting ready for this conference in India was really understanding the Indian context and what's going on within their educational system. And I worked with the group to create the first book on project-based learning in India that aligns the teachings of place-based learning to the ancient teachings of India and how colonized their educational system became and now kind of moving back and making those connections between the ancient teachings and now, and in India at a federal level they are really shifting what the focus is and it's really looking at the strategies and place-based learning you know making not just that, testing and testing and testing. So for me I spent a lot of time having learning and thinking about that. 0:35:33 - Lindsay Lyons Oh, my goodness, we're going to have to have another like connection, just about all those pieces. That's fantastic, I think. My final question is and we will link in the blog post for this episode to the book specifically so people can get it but is there anywhere that you individually would want people to connect with you in the online space? 0:35:54 - Micki Evans So we do have an Instagram and a Facebook LinkedIn, we have our personal LinkedIn and then we also have a PBL Path LinkedIn and we have a website. So, yeah, any way, they would love to connect with us. We'd love to chat about place-based learning. 0:36:13 - Charity Moran And we're at PBL Path on all the things. So it's really easy PBL Path on Instagram, Facebook. You look us up as PBL Path and then the website is pblpathcom. 0:36:27 - Lindsay Lyons And I'll link to all that in the blog post as well. Mickey, charity and Erin, thank you so, so much for this conversation today and for putting your brilliant book out into the world. 0:36:36 - Erin Sanchez Thank you, Lindsay, Thank you. 0:36:37 - Micki Evans Lindsay. Thank you, lindsay, it was a pleasure.
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An educator with over twenty years of experience, Debbie Tannenbaum works each and every day to “transform” learning using technology. She’s also an educational technology consultant, ISTE Certified Educator, author, blogger and speaker. In this episode, we apply our step-by-step unit planning protocol to dream up a new unit!
Unit Planning Step 1: Context/Spark Debbie teaches a 14-week technology course as an enrichment activity for fifth and sixth grade students. She’s taught the course once before, but wants to elevate the student ownership of the learning and enable students to create something they’re really proud of. She wants students to become tech leaders. Unit Planning Step 2: Pursuits (from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model) Identity: How will our unit help students to learn something about themselves and/or about others? Identity as tech leader in justice realms: “creative communicators” and “global collaborators” in ISTE standard language Criticality: How will our unit engage students’ thinking about power and equity and the disruption of oppression? Critically discuss how people can use tech to harm (and how to use it to elevate justice). Joy*: How will my unit enable, amplify, and spread joy? [Joy is: beauty, aesthetics, truth, ease, wonder, wellness, solutions to the problems of the world, personal fulfillment, art, music.] Creation and creativity! Unit Planning Step 3: Driving Question What is the formula for becoming digital leaders? Unit Planning Step 4: Summative Project (Publishing Opportunity and Possible Formats) Publishing Opportunity: Space on the public website or an option to share live PD Possible Formats: Students can create virtual tech PD for students, teachers, and/or family members. They may use iMovie trailers to create videos to get people interested in specific student training. Unit Planning Step 5: Unit Arc Lesson 1: Introduce DQ. Circle Protocol: discuss and come to consensus on community agreements (Who do we want to be?) Mind map protocol: Use keywords to develop name and logo as an exit ticket. Tech tool: Canva Lesson 2: Build a Base Phase (build foundation). Look at the district’s vision of how to use tech (e.g., transformational, equitable access) and unpack ISTE standards. Lesson 3: What does equitable access mean? Trust of students with responsibility Lesson 4: Case Study- 3 presentations: visual appeal, creative commons, digital responsibility Lesson 5: Case Study- YouTube for good. Come up with 3 interview questions Lesson 6: Case Study- Interview stakeholder (e.g., family member, teacher) about their PoV on the DQ. Share out response. Use DQ as exit ticket. Lesson 7: Case Study- Becoming a Creator Lesson 8: Case Study- Situation where you got feedback- was it helpful or not? Which protocol do you like? Lesson 9: Return to driving question. What is the best answer? (What is your lens) Exit Ticket: What is your draft? Lesson 10: Protocol: What I Need Lesson 11: Protocol: What I Need Lesson 12: Protocol: What I Need Lesson 13: Presentation Lesson 14: Reflection Stay Connected You can find Debbie on www.tannenbaumtech.com and on Facebook and Twitter @TannenbaumTech. To help you help your students with tech, Debbie shares free teacher tech tips to educators on her email list. You can join here. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 119 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. TRANSCRIPT Our guest today on our first unit Dreaming series is Debbie Tannebaum, an educator with over 20 years of experience. Debbie Tannenbaum works each and every day to transform learning using technology during her time in education, she has served both as a classroom teacher in various grades and as an elementary technology coach outside of the classroom. Debbie promotes using technology tools to amplify student learning in her work as an educational technology consultant is D certified educator author, blogger and speaker. You can connect with Debbie at Tannebaum tech dot com. Let's get to this Unit Dreaming episode, I'm educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerdy out about co creating curriculum with students. 00:01:08 I made this show for you here We go, Debbie. Welcome to the time for Teacher shift podcast. I am so excited to be here today. It's gonna be so much fun. Oh, yes, it is because we are doing a super fun type of episode, but we're actually designing a unit. I am pumped. Me too. I'm like, I been looking forward to this since we first talked about it. Oh my gosh. OK. Um So for listeners, do you want to just kind of frame like what is the context that you teach in? Like what kind of unit like? Who are we developing this unit for? What kind of class, that kind of thing? Anything else you wanna share for context before we get started? So I'm an elementary school tech coach in Northern Virginia. And as part of my job, I support educators where I help them to integrate technology into their classrooms. I also work with students as part of the master schedule. And in my role this year, I've been tasked with coming up with an enrichment type activity and after going to a lot of different things um in my district, there's really a need to have some sort of tech crew or I'm, I'm not sure if that's the right word for it, but student tech group to support the needs of the school. 00:02:21 And so uh to be perfectly transparent, I tried it at the beginning of the school year. My first attempt definitely was not what I wanted it to be. So I thought that this would be a great way for me to reflect on that first experience and build something that really will meet the needs of my students. Really give them that feeling that they're doing something to help their school and activate things and, you know, really take it to the next level. So I'm really looking forward to this because I really feel like a lot of my students don't necessarily see themselves as leaders. They're used to just kind of having to do the same thing over and over again in the school setting. And so I really want them to and when I tried to do this the last time, they were kind of waiting for me to give them the answer. So I want to create a learning experience that's really gonna help them to build that agency and really see themselves taking this work to a higher level and not just doing something where it doesn't have an authentic audience. 00:03:22 I really want to be able to build something that at the end of this, there's something they can be proud of and that they've really done something to enhance the needs to support the needs of our school. Oh, my gosh. I love that framing so much. So in terms of grade level we're talking about, did you say 2nd, 4th elementary age? Right. Right. The group, this group is 5th and 6th graders who um have elected not to be in chorus. Um And so they get to choose an activity. And so they are the group that I have now is with me until the middle of February. This group will be with me from the end of February till the end of the school year. So they're with, this group will be with me about 14 weeks. So 14 hours. Ok. 14 weeks for 1 60 minute sessions, one hour each session. Absolutely. OK. Awesome. Oh, that's so good to know in terms of like framing out the pacing the protocols. This is gonna be perfect. Yeah, awesome. So you already started answering this a little bit, but I want to kind of dig in a little bit deeper. What are the things that you want students to kind of learn pursue? 00:04:25 I often think about like priority standards. I imagine there's some like tech pieces, there's also some agency pieces I'm hearing and, and as an anchor, I often use like Goldie Mohammed's work of like thinking about identity, what are they learning about themselves or others? Criticality? So thinking about power, equity, disruption of injustice, that kind of thing, but also like joy, like how do we make it fun and make students like have have a good time with this. So any of those things that are like kind of shouting out to you like, yeah, I want to include this or this is kind of what I want. Well, I definitely want it to be something that's engaging and fun to them. Um But I also want them to, them to see themselves as leaders in general. A lot of times when you have kids who have elected not to be in chorus, they've elected not to be in chorus because they don't wanna really, they, they're not, they're, they're not interested in taking a more traditional leadership role, being a performer, but yet they have a lot of really great characteristics and personality traits that make them great um candidates for this type of thing. 00:05:27 So I really want to build their, you know, their agency, their confidence in themselves. But I also want them, we're in, I'm in a school right now where we have, I think like 580 kids and we have a tech support person who's there 2.5 days a week and then I'm there five days a week, but I'm the integration person. So there's many times where there isn't a tech person in the building with air quotes, but yet the, but this will still need support. And so I wanna empower them to be able to be leaders in that capacity. And I want them to develop customer service skills. I want them to be able to understand how to work with people in that sense. I want them to understand some basic troubleshooting built on some of those um international society for technology, for educator standards where they can do some basic troubleshooting and I teach them how to help with that. Um I really, and I also want them to really go with, go with this with a design thinking lens where they're really empathizing with the user. 00:06:31 Because a lot of times I feel like our students don't have that empathy piece. They, they, they, they have a tunnel that they can have tunnel vision because that's their world. And I really want to, to build that. They talk a lot. I'm right now reading this great book called Five Gen Leadership. I don't know if you've it and it talks about how our alpha generation is like the last generation and that they've spent a lot of time on the screen. So they know a lot about it. And the group that I have right now, there's a, I have one kid who has a youtube account is very active yet. He doesn't really understand how to, we need to help our kids translate from being digital natives to being digital leaders and really help them to use their knowledge for essentially for good to help our school to really be ambassadors of how to use technology. So, you know, they're not the kids who are breaking computers, they're the kids who are promoting, taking care of the computers. Um and really build that. I, I, I, I wanna say like that puffed up chest feeling where like I'm, I'm, I help take care of our school and its technology. 00:07:34 Does that help? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I'm wondering what, like in terms of ways that, because I love this idea of building up leadership and I love this idea of having the impact that's like authentic, it's an audience beyond the class. It's, you know, a purpose beyond the grade. And I'm wondering if there is something. So I think customer service and troubleshooting in and of itself makes sense for just like a practical standpoint, if there's no tech person and that like it's a huge role that they can step into and, and really serve people. I'm wondering about now, I'm not familiar with the standards that you were talking about the tech standards. Is there one there that's kind of like enabling a little bit of like either creation or connection to any of those pieces of Goldie Mohammed where it's like identity or criticality where we could think about like a justice issue in the school that like tech becomes a vehicle to serve them or like, yeah, I just, I just pulled them up and I think there's 21 is talking about being an empowered learner and it talks about students to understand the fundamental concepts of technology operations and develop the ability to choose use and troubleshoot current technologies and are able to transfer their knowledge to emerging technologies. 00:08:41 So that kind of hits on that troubleshooting piece and then the other one, we're talking about really being um creative, there's a creative communicator one and it really talks about being able to publish or present content that customizes the message and meaning medium for their audiences. And also, you know, choosing the appropriate platforms and tools to meet their desired outcomes of creation or communication. So I think those two ID indicators are really a good fit. Um In addition, they, it talks about becoming a global collaborator and you know, using technology, you know, to work with others and examine issues and problems from multiple standpoints. So I think this fits in well with the social justice and the S D standards because they have so many commonalities. Oh my gosh, I love it. And it also makes me think of media to end end goal. And I mean, you can feel free to push back on this, but I'm just imagining like maybe the end goal isn't even just that the standards are accomplished or, or, or like proficiency in the standards isn't just gained by the students in your tech group. 00:09:46 But actually they are responsible to lead the charge for all students in the school to be able to accomplish those standards. That would be amazing. And I mean, I know this group of students wanted to make videos, but I, when I looked at it long term and it hasn't quite happened, I kind of envisioned them almost creating like a site, but I don't want to direct it too much. I really want them to direct it. And so it's that balance between letting them go, but also making sure they're creating something that has, you know, long term, you know, stamina. But I also don't want to limit them. What I my idea might be if their ideas could be totally different and maybe even better than mine. I love that idea. I love that balance is so tricky, right? Like the student voice open endedness. And then also, like, I'm going to guide it so that it makes sense so that students aren't completely like left to their own devices and like, just confused and kind of flailing and, and, and just being like, I don't know what to do, which is totally, what happens when education for so long is like, this is what you do. And then like you said, they look to you and the last time you tried it, like, what do we do? 00:10:48 I mean, they were all like, what do you mean? And I was like, well, and I had to, I kept giving leading questions and eventually I was like, well, I almost felt like I had given them too much, you know, I went from saying, ok, brainstorm, here's a jam board, write the things our school needs and them all looking at me like you're in headlights to me saying, OK, you guys, let's pull it back. I'm gonna put the jam board up on the Promethean board and we'll brainstorm together and then I felt like I had kind of taken it too far back. Yeah. So I'm wondering, I'm thinking our plan can be to come up with a cool driving question that is like the guide and the students can choose or we can come up with like either some brainstorm ideas for the final project or like the project that they're working on throughout and, or like the parameters for that or like sometimes I think about it as like a publishing opportunity. So like, where does the project go once they create it to make it the impact? So I think if we think of those two and then if we have time, we can think about like what are the actual protocols in those 14 sessions that are the guy, like they provide enough structure that students still have the voice and choice to, to do what they want. 00:11:52 And like in this round, I actually had them come up with a logo and I had them um come up with a name and I'm trying to determine whether in the second round I should still do that. So they have that connection. Um And I, I did it around session two or three and I'm almost wondering if that needed to happen first this time. Um But they, you know, they created the name. They, we went on can they all designed different um logos and then once they had done that, we voted as a group to determine which one we were picking, which I loved. But I feel like I did it at the wrong time. Uh That makes sense. Yeah, almost like as a intro opportunity, like class circle, for example, as a protocol, like we wouldn't have to do that, but like some sort of or some sort of like tech platform protocol that enables that sharing where we're doing community agreements. But as, as a community, we're also deciding like who we are, what imagery or what words define who we are. And like, and that's what we were missing. I feel like, like, and that's something I think is really important. Like I want, I didn't want them to come and feel like, oh, this is something we have to do. 00:12:55 I wanted them to come and be like, yes, it's our time to work as a tech group and it didn't quite go exactly how I wanted it to. And, you know, I don't want them to come and say we have 13 sessions, 12 sessions left. They'll be, oh, we only have 12 sessions left. There's a difference in that. Yeah, I'm also thinking maybe that first, like, I know this is packing a lot into that first one and, and we're kind of like jumping ahead to like, what is the, the day by day or week by week. But I think that like kind of big dream or vision that students can kind of core as well. Like if we can come up with a driving question that they could start to answer or just give like initial reactions to day one, like, you know, and, and then we kind of evolve and learn more and kind of start creating along those 14 sessions to like have a really great answer or response to the driving question at the end. I think that would be really cool. So I'm I'm almost wondering like, if there's some sort of question that you're thinking of, that's like an initial thought or it doesn't even have to be a question, but like words that come to mind goals that come to mind for like what you want students to kind of grapple with around those ideas of like, I'm just kind of looking at my notes again, being empowered learners and empowering students around the school to be empowered learners, creative communicators and global collaborators. 00:14:06 Yeah, because I'm looking at the question I have last time and it was how my, how might we best support my school's need, technology needs. And that's really was not what I what I needed. That was, that was not specific enough. Yeah, I'm almost thinking like um you know, like from a student engagement perspective, like what would be a really fun question that they're like, I am jumping out of my seat to answer this question day one before I even learn any content from the tech group, like something, something like and, and this doesn't have to be, it probably, isn't it? But just something that has the same energy as what, how could technology make school so fun to be at or something like, you know what I mean? Like how does, um, like, what is like, what's our vision for how technology is used? But that's huge, like, kind of drive something that's like capturing that, you know, big energy joy. Yeah, but I wanna, I, I'm not sure if that, I'm, I'm like, I, I'm, I was like kind of typing as you were talking to kind of get it down, but I'm not sure if that captures exactly where I wanna go. 00:15:09 I like the idea of making it fun, but I also wanted to, I, I wanna make sure that it's not just about playing games and joking around. Yes, I wonder if so one of the questions, the driving question frames that I love is like, what's the formula for blank? So maybe it was, it would be like, what's the formula for like the best year of school ever or something like that? And then they have to grapple with like, well, it's a balance of like fun and you know, tech use but also human use. There's like the tech human balance and then there's like the fun learning balance or like, I don't know if it's a balance but like integration you know what I mean? They could come up with what the elements were and that's something they could do. Some, a question like that is something they could answer without any prior knowledge or anything you want to teach them day one. But then they could also answer it so much better at the end of the year when they're like, oh, well, there's this piece and then there's this piece and then like we learned about digital responsibility. So there's also this piece like, you know, like some question like that, that enables them to answer day one but way better day 14. And you could say that question one more time. 00:16:12 I just want to hear it one more time. Yeah. What's the, the frame would be like, what's the formula for? And then you could put whatever at the end. But like, what's the formula for the best year of school ever or something like that? Too big? Hm. Like, I mean, what do you think? What's the formula for? Um what's the formula for? Um using that? I don't like the word used for amplifying student learning using technology. I don't think that's gonna buy them in, right? Because that's the thing, right? You want to like teacher talk. Yeah. So typically the thing, uh the things I think about when I have a, a compelling driving question is like, students are compelled to respond like they want, they're jumping out of their seat to answer it's relevant to students right now. So maybe tapping into either a current event or a struggle that they have or like um yeah, like social media, like things that they use tech with beyond the school walls or something like, you know, something like that. And then like, it invites creation, like it invites like some sort of like taking action or like solution generation or something like that. 00:17:20 So those are typically the things that I think about. I'm just trying to think about like, what would be like? I feel like for the best year ever is too broad. So I'm just trying to think or yeah, what is the thing? I guess I'm trying to get at like, what is the thing that we want the school to be like? So we we talked about and then I think there was more beyond this. But like we talked about student agency and like kind of being a power learner, we talked about being creative in the communication, like the creative communicator, we talked about collaboration and like global collaboration. And so thinking about kind of those ideas of like agency creation, collaboration. Is there something that like captures the use of all of those pieces in like what school is and like, what school can be? That's kind of like dreamy, what's the formula for empowering um students in our school to use technology to create, does that work? 00:18:25 So I think like, what, what we're doing now is we're thinking about like, yeah, like what is the, we're almost like thinking about the answer before, like we're thinking about how we want them to answer. So I imagine being an powered learner, a creative communicator and a global collaborator is part of the answer that we want students to give. Do you know what I mean? And so the question has to be big enough that they could go like 14 different directions with it. So for example, we could say like, what's the formula for something super vague? Like an engaging learning community? Yeah, like for school to be fun for an engaging learning community for like student leadership and you know, yeah, like something that we want to have like, what's the end to end results? Like the big thing we're going to be just go like what is the formula to become a student tech leader? No, I'm wondering if, because if the goal it, it totally can be, I'm wondering if the goal is extending beyond the student group, if it's like actually impacting the entire school. Um and it could even be beyond the school, right? It could also be like as a human being in the world using technology like, right? What is the thing that we want? 00:19:29 What about, what about what's the formula for being um digital leaders? Oh I like it. Yeah. Yeah, because then you have the leadership piece which was one of the core pieces you were after at the start, you have the integration of technology just within that phrase. And then, then that also connects to all the Issy standards that you're talking about because that's kind of Izzy's answer to the question. It's like it's all these things. Yeah, I don't know. What do you think? How are, how you mean for becoming digital leaders for our school community or that? Yeah, I almost wonder if you keep it at digital leaders then when we backwards plan, we could think about like, OK, well, we're gonna do like case studies. So what does it look like to be a digital leader in the school community? What does it look like to be a digital leader in this tech group? What does it look like to be a digital leader like that with your family or and social media like in, you know, I love that. That's awesome. I really like this. This is like this is this, this is good. Yeah. Yeah. It's funny because as we were talking, I'm like, we're not going to come up with it and we've already been talking but like now that we've come up with it, I'm like it frames everything right? 00:20:35 And it's compelling enough like it's not so narrow that students couldn't just like give their thoughts and be excited to give their thoughts day one. Is that why I like it? Yeah. OK, cool. This is gonna be so fun. And I wrote it on the where I was kind of just starting to plan things out. So. Oh yeah. Ok, cool. So then in terms of a final project or like what students are creating, we could do a couple things we could think about like completely open ended students are gonna in defining what it looks like to be a digital leader. They come up with projects that kind of like enable them to do that thing. Um And or we could come up with a couple of examples to get them started with the brainstorming or we could do like here's the publishing opportunity. So what that might look like is like at the end of like in June, um we're going to bring all the teachers in and you're gonna run P D for the teachers and you're gonna teach them how to do this thing with their students next year or something. You know, there's like a platform and then the students just have kind of like whatever they created, that's their time to share it. Oh my God, they would love that. Yeah, I think they would even if they couldn't do it live and let's say they created some virtual models. 00:21:41 Yeah. Yeah. Even cooler. I, I mean some virtual models for students and some virtual models for teachers, maybe even virtual models for families. I love that. Oh my gosh, this is so cool. Yeah, I know. Yeah, this is awesome. So then there's going to be so the publishing opportunity then would be like the housing location, whatever that is, if it's like, you have it for them as like a P D portal that people can like, log into based on, you know, whether they're a family member or a teacher or a student or if it's like a page on the website that's open access to everyone. Right. Well, I'm, I'm the web master. So I do have opportunities that I can add things like that. Oh, that's amazing. How do you envision this? Like where do you envision this living or how do you envision? I mean, I think I can envision this living in a couple different ways. I could almost think about back in the day when we, I don't know if you ever did Baldridge? No. OK. So just talks about all the different stakeholders and like parents are one of your stakeholders and teachers are one of the stakeholders and what it looks like and sounds like and students and I almost can see like for teachers and for students, maybe an in we're facing Google site, but for the families, maybe creating a part of the website where they're sharing some of their stuff on the public web since I have access to that. 00:22:56 Amazing. Um because families can't log on or other option is having it on school. We have school, there's a parent all course in school. So there's, I see a lot of different ways to move this. I love that idea. And I also think that honestly, like, I know you're kind of like out and about, like, you do so much as an individual, like speaking at conferences and all this stuff. Like this is something that you could, like, talk about. And then another district could go to your school website that's publicly available. I'll be like, oh, sweet, like, we're gonna bring these videos. That's why I like the idea of putting it on the website more than necessarily putting it on school because um and to be honest, even if we wanted to, we could probably put all of the resources on the public web because then it's accessible to all. Like, even if I'm necessary, even if they're putting it on a Google Doc and that I'm putting it on the web and copying and pasting. Um because I'm not allowed uh to let them, you know, I'm the webmaster. But even if I give them those opportunities to start and then I just copy and paste in for them, they would be, they would be creating all of the content. 00:24:00 I would just be copying and pasting. I love that. And then you could also do, I mean, you could live on the website, but you could also have like a live presentation opportunity, you know, or something if students were even just giving like a 10 minute, hey, this exists and we're doing, like, I know one year I did, um, we had, like, a social justice expo but, like, everyone who visited didn't have time to get to, like, spend 30 minutes at every student station. So we actually did like a, I think it was maybe 10, 15 minutes at the front end of the hour where students had created like a 45 2nd I movie trailer or something. And it was like a, right, like here's the general gist of what you will get when you go to this tutorial or something. I love that. Yeah. Ok. Oh my gosh. This is gonna be so fun. I'm like, so excited about this. Like, I'm like, this is so much. This is great. I'm so glad we're doing this. Yay. Oh my God. I'm so glad you agreed to come on the podcast to do this. So other people can hear it. This is fun. Awesome. You want to be the only ones I know on a day, on a day off who are like peeking out about all this. Totally. Totally. And if any listeners are currently gigging out, you can totally let us know that you also are gigging out on your day off or you're commuting. 00:25:06 Um So, yeah, I think this looks like a really awesome frame. I'm wondering if there are any um final things that we could help frame the 14 days where we're actually thinking about like, what are the protocols or activities that we're doing on a day by day or maybe like which day is which case study discussion or, you know, like, what are you thinking for, for that piece? Do you want to kind of game that out a little bit? Yeah, I'd love to do that. Ok. Awesome. So, it sounds like we already kind of planned the first day, right? That was gonna be the community kind of, we're developing our community agreements, our kind of like dream or whatever, what, what we want to be as a class, our logo, our name, all those kind of pieces. Is that right? Yeah. OK. And then I sometimes I like to, so would you introduce the driving question at that point? I would before you like, would you start with the driving question or would you go to the and then go to the community agreements? Yep. I, I think that's a beautiful way to do it. It's like this is a driving question for our course for our time together for 14 weeks throughout the day. Today, we're gonna be thinking with that question in mind. 00:26:13 How do we like? Who do we want to be? How do we want to show up to accomplish or address this question to like, what's our dream or vision around the driving question? How would we initially answer it in this moment? Um You could do an anchor chart, you kind of like revisit with their initial thoughts and kind of compare contrast as they learn more throughout the year. Um, but yeah, I would do something like that and, and that, to me would probably look like some sort of discussion protocol that's framing the 60 minutes. And I think that could be anything. Do you have like a favorite discussion protocol? Um, I like to use, um, thinking routines a lot. But, yeah, I'm not sure if you would consider those, um, discussion protocols. Yeah, definitely. I think that that could definitely frame the conversation. Yeah, I'm just trying to think of what would be, I mean, if you were thinking about it, what would you suggest? Yeah, I my my go to always is circle. Um because I just love like when people are sitting in a circle, I think there's like a really nice like connection, particularly for like the the founding of the class community agreements and everything. Um It also kind of democratizes voice. So you don't have one kid talking over another one like 10 times. 00:27:18 Um because everyone gets one chance to speak and then you can kind of popcorn from there but to answer each question, everyone gets one chance initially. But I also think in a tech space you could do something like circle. Um You know, like you, you were, I don't know if we were recording it or not, but you're talking about like a jam board. Um You know, option that could also be like a protocol could use Jambo as a tech tool to enhance the discussion. So that's another option. I kind of like the idea if we're gonna start starting without the tech tool and doing something very good hands on organic because if I'm gonna have them come up with logos and innate a logo, I would probably at that point have them get on the computers and, you know, go on to verse some sort of publishing software to brainstorm that and then maybe just leave it at the end where I have all their logos. So maybe then the next time we can vote because last time I had them trying to vote the same period and it was too hard for me to get everything together. Got you. Ok. So they're actually each individual student is designing a logo or what I did last time is I had them doing it in a group. They could choose to work as a pair or individual or a group of three and then they submitted it and then I put it in a Google form and we voted. 00:28:24 Got you. Ok. Yeah. So that'll take some time too. Yeah. So that might be a good thing to kind of end with, you know, getting those ideas down and, and then maybe create a Google form with the names that they, the names that have been suggested. I guess you almost need the name before the logo. Yeah, it's interesting. I wonder like, uh you can also pose that question to students, right? Like, what do we want to tackle first and just see what they think and maybe like, go through the names and then, like, you know, the logo becomes like the, the, the like kind of almost like exit ticket in a way. Yeah, I, because I imagine like, so I'm just thinking of people's like giftedness. Some people are very linguistically gifted and they have like a knack for language and creating that team name. Other students might really gravitate to the artistic like literacy. And so really, if you had, if you had them answer the driving question, like off the bat or like come up with like the community agreements or like kind of their dream for the course. And then you just had like almost like a mind map, word wall kind of brainstorm thing, then you could say, OK, use these key words that we've identified as really important. 00:29:28 Maybe you even annotate them. So you kind of get them all out and then you have like stars next to the ones that people really love or whatever. It's like, OK, so we're gonna have one team who is like very into the linguistic half of this, create the team name, one half, create the logo or, or a couple groups do each or something. And then you just have less, there's less time required because people are kind of gravitating to the thing they want to do most. Yeah. And we, that's what we kind of did last time is that we had, I had one group that focused on the name and then they were also into wanting to use him, but they all wanted to do the logo. So it was like they, you know, so once they had a name, it was easier for them to, you know, to really figure out what they wanted it to look like. Awesome. OK, cool. Yeah, this sounds really nice. So we have the framing. I typically like to think of like a focus a protocol and possibly like a texture resource. So it seems like we have the focus is community building, the protocol is circle and then the resource would be something like can where you're using that to create the exit ticket or the the mini assessment almost. 00:30:30 Does that sound right? I think one more time? Yeah. So like the the focus would be community, the community building the protocol would be circle. So that's the discussion protocol and then the resource would be can as a way to kind of produce the assessment. That makes perfect sense. And that actually really helps me to kind of see how that works, right? Because if you can think about it as like three bullet points of like, oh that's the lesson plan. To me, it feels like way more simplified than like the intense lesson plans that I often see no. And this helps me a lot because I'm like, now, now I'm like, kind of looking at it as what you're saying. And I'm like, oh OK. Now this makes sense. Awesome. Awesome. OK. So then in the second lesson, I'm, I usually call this like the build the base phase. So there's usually like one or two, maybe even three lessons. Um I think in a 14 lesson kind of, of art, maybe just two. Uh But you want to kind of like build the foundation for answering the question. So what's like the core content that you want them to learn? Do you have a sense of like these are the things like these are the topics or these are the things I want them to grapple with when it, when it comes to digital leadership. 00:31:35 Is it like the S D standards? Is it like these core topics? Well, I think that I really want them to, to, you know, I want them to build some troubleshooting skills. I want them to build some digital responsibilities. So understanding that you can't just take a picture from anywhere that you have to, you know, take care of your devices, you know, making sure like things like, you know, you have to restart your computer, like basic troubleshooting care things. Um But also understanding how to be a responsible digital citizen, making sure that they don't, you know, that they, you know, their models don't share your password with people, you know, make sure you're, you're making a safe password. You know, a lot of, I would say a lot, some of that ditch sit skill in there as well. But also building the idea that you can use social media or online, you know, content for good. Yeah, because we see so much where it's being used, not for good. And like I said, a lot of our students, a lot of my students spend a lot of time on youtube. 00:32:40 Yes. And what are they? And you know, so they all want to become youtube. A lot of them want to become youtube stars. Yeah. Well, obviously we have a school youtube channel which obviously I can post content but they, you know, but understanding that, you know, there's certain protocols in the school, like we can create stuff and that's great. But we also need to be responsible and like, you know, this year when we were trying to make tutorials and things like that understanding that you can't just go and make a tutorial, but you actually have to go through a process in order to make something that you're gonna share with others. Like, take back that impulsivity to be intentional. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. So I'm actually thinking, I wonder if we just skip lessons two and three for just a second and put a pause on those because I think what you just came up with was a ton of really good case studies. And so then the next phase after build the base, I usually do a bunch of case studies. So like we're in the BUILD debates, we're thinking about like what are the core foundational things that we need students to know like the core content? And then the case studies are like, where does maybe one of these elements show up? So I heard for example, like consent for picture taking. So you could take like a current event in the news or something where like this picture was taken without a person's consent and spread around or put online or whatever, like what do you think went wrong or how would we actually do this legally or respectfully or responsibly, you know, whatever the language is. 00:33:55 Um There could be like a youtube like case study where it's like, OK, how does like this person use youtube? And it could even be if they're really into youtube, you could even use that as two case studies, one looking a social media um like a youtube star that does uses their platform for good and one that doesn't or something and kind of like critique each of them or like extrapolate from each of them like, well, what do we learn from this case? Um And you could have some like discussion protocols that frame that as well. Um I'm thinking the, I'm sorry, I don't mean to interrupt but, but when I was talking about pictures. I was almost talking about um like creative commons and whether or not I wasn't talking about just taking pictures in general, but I was talking about creative commons and making sure you have permission to use things in proper citation and responsible use of digital resources. Oh my gosh. So I love as a case study. This is just personally my, my like grappling with this idea. If you were to take two presentations, one that effectively, well, maybe three presentations, one that like use creative Commons, but like it wasn't visually appealing. 00:35:01 Like there's so much text or whatever that it's like, oh, like now I just half of the screen is text attributing the whatever, you know, there's a um edit an um E D protocol called, I think it's called like the ugliest slide presentation ever or something. It's something called like that where essentially they look at one and they try to make it as unappealing and as bad as possible. I can't remember exactly what it's called, but I think it's called something like that. It's like the worst slide show ever or something like that. I can almost see using something like that where they essentially, you know, look at one that is essentially the worst possible example, like you're saying, yeah, because I imagine like my issue always with like, because I know like legally and digitally ethically, like I need to attribute, you know what I, what I take from from like UN slash like a vi uh visual from UN. However, uh I also know that it can be very like for my brain which becomes very unfocused when there's clutter on the screen, if there's too much text or the text is too big or, you know, maybe we put the text at or the uh citations at the end versus the, you know, like where we choose to do that, it could be really interesting to have students grapple with the idea of like digital responsibility. 00:36:17 And also at the same time, is it possible to have like visual appeal and like, what does that look like and have that kind of like grapple a bit? It's like when we first started using powerpoint, you're younger than I am, but like everybody would have a different um background for every slide, right? We need to streamline and simplify poor people to be able to process. Yeah. Um OK. Cool. Other case studies that you, I know we kind of like touched on a few things that could become case studies too earlier in the conversation. Anything else that was like, oh, kids would be really into this and it would illustrate what, but can the customer service be considered a case study or is that not really? Absolutely. So I, what I would do is I would think of either a current event or um some sort of customer service experience that the students had engaged with in their life or seen their parents engage with at a store or, or something like, um, maybe, maybe they have some sort of like access to some digital software or something where they've had to interact with the customer experience, like person, like, and have that be the point of the jumping off point for the discussion about the customer service and what makes good customer service? 00:37:21 Is there anything that you think you can think of that students would be able to connect to, you know, the elementary crowd way better than I do. So, I'm not sure what they would have in terms of experience. I mean, I'm sure, I, I mean, even if they're like working on a, like, I know a lot of our kids use roadblocks and things like that. I'm not sure whether they might have, you know, had some experiences there with that maybe. Yeah, but I mean, I'm trying to think you could even have them do something. Like if they personally had never had any experience, you could have them. Um, you could either grab like a youtube clip from like a show that they watch or something that highlights that or you can even have them do like practice interview skills where they interview their parents or their caretakers about like what makes good customer service or like, tell me a time when you had terrible customer service and then you kind of bring in all these terrible horror stories to the class and like talk about how do we not do that? Like, what does it look like to actually build a better customer service situation? So that's kind of bringing in other literacy skills. But yeah, um other things I was thinking because I love that you're kind of getting after like the case studies are aligning to the standards that we want to have the things we want to do. 00:38:30 Um I think we kind of touched on with the slideshow idea, the not only the creative commons attribution and things but, but like being a creator, like a creator, a communicator, that kind of thing. Um I wonder if there's one for a global collaborator, like a, an idea or a case study that would highlight, like, you know, I also think about like, you know, being giving feedback in a, in a good way. Like I know as I'm working on my S D certification journey, that's one of the things that we have to address is how to, you know, post and share information appropriately online. Oh, I like that a lot. Yeah. So maybe what they do is they pull in. I imagine that other classes that they take in the school would have had them have that experience either in the previous year or this year. So maybe not with a protocol though because a lot of things I notice and when I work with students that like, if they do have an opportunity to respond to each other. They don't always necessarily know how to. Um, and so then I have to think about, like, I do a lot of times where I have my kids do two stars and a wish. 00:39:35 What's two things you really liked about it? What's one thing that you wish that they could have considered because they don't know how to do those things? Yeah. So I wonder if the the jumping off point is then like every we do like circle protocol, for example, or Jambo everyone share one time where you had a situation in a class where you or even with your family at home where you got feedback and it, it was it helpful. Was it not helpful? Why? And then that way even if they've not used the protocol before, that's kind of the value add for you is like, OK, well, here's maybe you even present it to them. Like here are three protocols that I like to use as students. Like which one do you like? Why is that one better than that one or something like that? Yeah, I like that. And then I, I was thinking to like um that one, like the idea of feedback, you can also embed as like a practice opportunity with like I was thinking so 9 10, 11, 12, those ones, those classes I think can be independent learner protocols where you have just I, I usually use like win time, like what I need. So like, students are just working independently on their project and like based on whatever feedback you gave them before, you know, they're doing something and then maybe conferencing with you drawing on a resource bank that you created for them to support them, something like that. 00:40:43 So they're working. Yeah. So as they're working on this, so I'm kind of viewing the case studies as kind of like yours. We're building our skills, right? Yes. Yeah. And so at what point do they then decide what they're gonna be doing? Oh, great, great point. Yep, I skipped one. So I think starting at 10 would be what I need as a protocol. Nine. Yeah, that's why I was getting a little confused. Yeah. So nine would be um another maybe group discussion protocol or something where you're all or maybe it could be like a brainstorm, mind mapping activity, something where you're like, OK. So remember that question that we've been grappling with. I return back to the driving question. Yep. We're gonna like, really hunker down now and like figure out what does each one of us believe to be the best answer of that? Like what is that formula? And then you could kind of answer to the question, have whatever protocol you want to kind of get the initial brainstorm and the exit ticket or assessment for that lesson I think is every student has a draft of that formula. By the end of that class and, and even if, whether they're working on it individually or in a group. 00:41:46 Yep. Yeah. Something to go off of. So, can I take a step back for a minute? Yeah. Absolutely. So, because a lot of what I'm seeing with what we're doing here also mimics project based learning. Yes. Oh, yeah. So, like, I know, like in the past when I've done project based learning, uh, we also are kind of talking about what we need to know. So is that kind of falling into that mind map of like, how do we envision the dream? Yeah. So I think the the what's happening is the skill building is paralleling in each of these case studies in each of these lessons, they're building the skills actively, but they're also grappling with the content that they're going to be using to answer the question if that makes sense. So for example, I'm thinking like um the current event based on or actually let me think of a different one that I actually know more about maybe like the situation where you got feedback, right? So for example, like that one in that lesson, I might be thinking as a student like OK, I have all this personal experience I'm sharing and I'm learning from all these other students and in the back of my mind or maybe not in the back of my mind, maybe you actually make it apparent sometimes what I've done is use the driving question as an exit ticket for every single lesson. 00:42:54 And so at the end of that lesson, that day students are answering. So what, what did I learn today that could feed itself into the formula for a driving question? So like, you know, like, so for example, I might say that like um an effective use of uh digital leadership is like being empathetic and thoughtful to whoever's hearing my words on the other end of the screen or something. And that's like they come up with a way to put it in their own words, that's part of the formula. And so they, they're kind of like building the formula as they go using all the content that they've been grappling with if that makes sense. So then once we hit nine and they're coming up with their draft, but essentially at that point, those last couple of sessions are really focused on them creating. Yeah. So what I typically do is I leave the last session as a reflection session. And then the second to last session is the presentation or practice presentation. If you're gonna have them present digitally or just upload, like they would just at least share in the class, possibly to a wider audience if you can, if you can swing it. 00:43:57 And then 14, the very last one is they're actually thinking about it because often we just, I used to do this all the time. Skip over the reflection and then they're not like thinking about what they actually learned. Um And so then I would fill in the remaining two lessons between 10 and 13 of what I need protocol. So they have three solid in class time periods to build whatever it is. They really built those skills through. Well, they're right, they're just basically putting it together into the video tutorial or whatever it is that they're coming up with as a final project like thing, creation thing to be uploaded to that website. For example, do I wanna, so going back to that whole idea, do I want to guide them? Saying that we're gonna create a resource on the public web to share that formula or? Yeah, I would say that like your, your your publishing opportunity is that I'm gonna give you space on the school website, students, parents, teachers, caretakers, all these people are gonna get to use your resource. So that's your opportunity. What that resource looks like is totally up to you. You could do a plato representation of the formula or something and like do like a, you know, stop motion animation, whatever, like it could be anything but your publishing opportunity is shared. 00:45:06 So do we then need if we want to make sure this is parent facing potentially to have some sort of case study where they're really talking about what their parents need to know? I love it. Yeah, I love that. So maybe, maybe that's the interview where their parents, they ask their parents to share. I like it. Struggle points. Yes, I like that a lot because I think you could, what you could do is the customer service one, that idea of what is good customer service could potentially be linked to the feedback one. I think those are kind of, yeah, I like that idea. Let's, let's do something like that where maybe they're coming, you know, where they're, you know, interview parrot need. Yeah, you could also be, or we could split it in half and have half of them do parents and half of them do teachers. Oh, I like that a lot. And even, even doing students from the perspective of like, what do I wish my parents knew about my activity online or what do I wish they didn't know? Or like, what if I were a parent as a student? Now? What if I were a parent? Maybe at that point, you know, have, uh, so my question is, do I do the, do, would I have them do the interviewing? 00:46:13 Yeah, you could help them. What I would do for that one is for the class period. Maybe the class period before. Um, or, yeah, this could be, maybe even, um, the exit ticket for the day before or even, it depends on when you want to share out. What I think would be great for that one is they, they use that class period to share out their response. Or you can make it two class like a two parter where day one, they're coming up with the questions. Day two, they're sharing out their response. But I think it would be a pretty short activity to come up with the questions. So you could do it maybe at the like last 10 minutes of the, the class before or you can come up with a base of questions and give it to them the day before and say ok before next class. So in the next week you have a week to go interview someone with these questions, you can add your own questions, you can make it your own. But here's like the three core questions we need answered or something. Hey, everybody. It's Lindsey just telling you about today's episode Freebie, which is shared from Debbie. If you teach younger Children and you want to teach them tech and how to enable student voice as they're using tech tools, you can get on Debbie's email list where she routinely emails you amazing ideas. 00:47:17 That's Lindsey Beth lions dot com slash 119 to get on her list back to the show. That makes a lot of sense. I think this will be so cool to hear what, what comes out of that. And like, it would be very interesting too. I think for your class nine, when they're returning to the driving question, they're thinking about what the formula is for them to also have them think through the lens of a particular like as a student. What do you think that answer is as a family member or caretaker? What is that answer? As a teacher? What you know, like, what would a teacher need to know? And maybe everyone chooses to just answer through the student lens and that's fine. And then teachers can, parents can extrapolate from there what it means for them. But it would be interesting to at least pose the question and just see what they think because sometimes kids surprise me and like are like, oh, wow, that's brilliant. I never would have thought that. Yeah. Um It makes a lot of sense. Wow. I think the only thing we have left is building a base. Is there a core tax or resource that you would want to build into the beginning here? Like I'm almost wondering if there's something that's like around digital citizenship. Like, I don't know, like um common sense media has like a really great article about like all of like just digital citizenship as a whole or something or even unpacking the ID standards together. 00:48:32 Although that might be almost wondering is that I had two different thoughts on that. One was having them unpack the S D standards. And then the other one was, you know, we have a, a vision for our school as far as this is what technology is supposed to be used for in our school system and kind of seeing that maybe even using those two resources, you know, this is how we envision, you know, using technology. I'm gonna pull it up because I know I should remember it. But, you know, um but like, you know, because it's supposed to be, it's supposed to be a transformation of learning for students and educators and, you know, looking at that and, you know, so there's, it's supposed to provide students equitable access, develop their 21st century skills, prepare them for the workforce. It's supposed to give professional learning to teachers and reinforce digital citizenship. And I know right now we're engaged in a revamp of this, but it's not gonna be in effect before this starts and even having them look at some of those things and then the, you know, some of the resources for that and looking at the S D standards, which is what, you know, they technically should be getting and you know, they might not even be aware that some of these things were things that they needed to do. 00:49:50 Yeah. Oh my gosh. I love that idea. Anchoring it in the the school vision. I wonder because I always try to center everything in justice. I wonder if you could take that equity piece and make that like for example, if lesson to the build a base phase piece phase, one of the would be like looking at that community like school wide vision and they're kind of unpacking that a little bit. Maybe you even like, kind of parallel to the standards. Maybe there's a short video that covers the S U standard in like a really student friendly way or something, but like that kind of core and then three, less than three is like, ok, we're gonna dive back into that community level, school level vision and we're gonna specifically think about equity. Maybe you pull in an article from or something or that's like about equity and technology or something and like, well, what would it mean to be equitable in doing all of these things? Like what does equity mean for digital citizenship or tech, tech like? And so then maybe it's leading a conversation around like, well, what if these three students have never had an ipad at home and they don't know how to use an ipad? Well, then they need the literal step by step tutorial to be able to access this creation app. 00:50:50 Otherwise they're not gonna be able to create this product. And you know, like having those kind of conversations, just the fact that not everybody has internet access at home, all of our students are allowed to bring devices home. Technically, um it's encouraged in the upper grades more than the lower grades, but not everybody has that internet access. Nor do you know that necessarily we know what their families are able to do. Um You know, everybody knows how to use a smartphone, but a smartphone is not normally what we send home with a kid. Right. Right. And so I'm kind of like gaming this out now as like, uh thinking about how a student could answer the driving question. Right. The formula might be something like everyone has access in school, like time in school. Plus the knowledge of all these creation apps that they can use to like represent their knowledge at the end of a project unit. And the teacher has given them the flexibility in the curriculum to take that path and apply those skills using the app that they now have the skills for that. They have the knowledge and awareness of that they have in the timing class to do. Like, you know, that could be like a possible answer. That sounds so much more like layered and nuanced and like justice centered because you did that framing at the start than it would be if we like, didn't have that day, if that makes sense. 00:51:57 Yeah, I totally understand. I might need some help building that together. But yeah, I could definitely look up some articles or something too. I'm sure there's something in Zilla. Yeah, but I even think about, you know, you know, looking at, you know, I know that, you know, in my school community, um you know, we've also had issues with kids not taking care of devices when they go home. And so then some teachers are afraid and then figuring out those ramifications as well. Right. So like, yeah, and so the students may have some really interesting insight too. Like that could be a whole conversation or less than like around like, well, what does that look like where we balance like the trust of students with like the student responsibility piece and like we have agencies that we have to have that responsibility and also we need to trust like, how do we do both of those things? And what is our role as tech leaders to or digital leaders, right? To be able to do that? Oh That could be part of the formula. And I like the fact that we, we're using the word digital leaders and not just tech leaders because I think that that is more powerful. Agree, agree. Oh my gosh. So we, I just realized that time was, wow, we are almost at the end of the hour. 00:52:58 I know it's like flown by. I know. Oh my gosh. So I wanna like ask you a kind of closing reflection question. It's like, how are you feeling about the process? How are you feeling in terms of like what this is gonna go like anything that you wanna share? This is so different from what I was doing, but it makes so much more sense. Um But I definitely feel like I'm gonna really need to think about how to approach it, but I actually really, like, I feel like I was, I like how this is really focusing on building their skills and having them, you know, at the end, bring it to and every time bringing it back to, you know, that driving question because I think for them, when I was doing the other question, how can we best support the needs? That was too abstract for them because you're still doing that, right? Like the project is still going to support the needs. It's just grappling with the big juicy question first and then you kind of get there in the project. Yeah, I agree. And I really, so I like that. Um I, I really like how we're looking at that and, you know, and how we're really gonna focus on specific skills and then, you know, let's be honest, once we get to May 8th, it's testing time. 00:54:10 So giving them what I need time to work on a project that they've self identified and it is going to be a good way for them to really use that time meaningfully. And then when we, when we hit June, whether they're presenting or reflecting, that's a really good way to wrap it up. I think it just, it, it flows really well. Hey, oh my gosh, I'm so excited and we should have you on the podcast again to say like how it went and like a little. Absolutely. So as I kind of go forward, I kind of want to think about that focus protocol and resource for each day of that. I'm like, yeah, I love that frame. It just makes it feel like easier and more simplified and focused versus like we're gonna do 30 things in this lesson. Yeah. Yeah. And I, yeah, I really like that idea a lot. And you know, I'm even thinking about, I don't know if you've read um Jennifer Caso Todd's book. She has a book all about raising digital leaders. And so she actually shares um examples of how kids have used it for good. So maybe I could even look up some of those people and bring them in for that case study for youtube. Um Plus I know she posts examples of stuff like that on um Instagram. 00:55:16 Amazing. Um So, you know, trying to bring some of that out in there as well, I think will be really, you know, good for them because I think a lot of times they don't view themselves as having that, you know, if they're gonna create a video, they're creating a video of themselves playing a video game. Right. Right. But you know, yes, that helps people. But is that helping you to help others and help your general community and help all those around you? Right. Could you instead do a video screen share of you creating a project for another class and then actually use it for this class and then, you know, like there's so many opportunities. Absolutely. And I just, I just like how, you know, that gives them that opportunity to really, you know, take these skills and, you know, maybe even beyond just, you know, how would you, how does does this help you through this exit ticket? But maybe even giving them a place or some sort of catch, like, no catcher or something like that where they can, like, here's three things I want to hold on to from today's class. Love it. Yes. And that feeds into that final whatever it is that they create. 00:56:18 Yeah. So, yeah, I really like this. I think this is gonna be really good. I'm so glad we did this. I mean, I'm so overwhelmed about this whole idea, but I love this whole idea. I feel like you can have both, but I feel like at least now I'm like doing something that it like it has continuity and right now I don't feel like we have continuity like we finished what we were doing because I didn't have the whole thing planned out. Right. Right. Um And it was my first attempt and that's ok. Like I tell the kids all the time, like I try something for the first time. It doesn't always work. That's OK. You know, that's the way the work things work. Right? That's a perfect model for like some of those things like the troubleshooting, right? Like that this is troubleshooting. I mean, like this week I taught my kids how to use, flip on the ipads and the first time it did not go so hot. And I said to them that thanks for being flexible guys. I realized that I had forgotten to do something because it was, I've done this on computers, not on ipads. And by the third or fourth time it went great. But the first two times were a little dicey. Well, speaking of like all the tech things that you do, I feel like listeners are gonna want to get in touch with you, whether it's to follow up with how the unit went or just to like, learn more about what you do because that's the thing. 00:57:23 You're kind of everywhere you have a book, like you have all the things. So where, where can people find you and connect with you? Um So my website is tante dot com. Um And that's pretty much um where all of my stuff is sourced. But I'm pretty, I'm on social media mostly on Twitter for now, I guess. Um It seems like it's getting better. Um I'm mostly on Twitter and Facebook a little on Instagram um at Tannenbaum Tech, I'm consistent throughout all the platforms I use. Um But yeah, I, I'm really lucky I get a chance to share what I love. I'm really passionate about empowering student agency and nurturing it with our youngest learners. I really want to help our youngest learners to become creators I even work with three K kids having them create amazing. Um and really trying to, you know, make sure that we're really using technology to provide students with opportunities they wouldn't have without the technology. Um, there's so much going on right now where kids are consuming that we really have to take them and activate that learning and, you know, not all technology used is equal and we really need to build that knowledge because, you know, so many times I hear, well, our kids spend so much time on computers, we need to get them off computers. 00:58:31 But what are they doing on the computers is super important. So I'm really trying to build that knowledge based to help educators find meaningful ways to use it that aren't overwhelming. My goal is never for them to feel like, oh my God, there's so much to do. I want them to see how, you know, technology can build with universal design for learning and how it can really give them those creation opportunities. Um and the accessibility. So, you know, I've really been working on a lot with that and um in May of 2021 which is almost two years ago. That's crazy. Um My book transformed Techie Notes to make learning sticky came out from road to Awesome. And that just talks about my journey and how I found ways to use technology to help things stick whether it's for me as a learner or for my students as learners. Um And I'm really proud of that. And then in June, of this past year, I contributed to a book called Amplifying Instructional Design where I wrote a whole chapter on engagement. Um So I'm really trying to find ways to, you know, help students take those next steps to build that agency, but also to help teachers. 00:59:38 And so, you know, sometimes when you're in the thick of it, can't see it. So having this, this conversation today really helped me to kind of take a step back and look at it from a different angle. Um But that's where you can find me. And definitely I have a newsletter, I have website um I post blogs about every two weeks, so definitely check it out and um let me know if you want me to come work with you. Awesome. Yeah. And we're gonna link to all that stuff in the show notes. So if you are driving right now, don't worry, like just go grab that link later. Um Thank you, Debbie so much. This is so fun. I just so appreciate your time and your willingness to come to this and share this. This is great. This was everything I like that. I hoped for. I just didn't know exactly where we were gonna go, but this is like exactly what I needed that I didn't know I needed. Amazing. Oh My gosh. Thank you so much. If you're leaving this episode. Wanting more. You're going to love my life, coaching intensive curriculum, boot camp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We weave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. 01:00:45 It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. Grab a spot on my calendar at w w w dot Lindsay beth lions dot com slash contact. Until next time leaders continue to think. Big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network, better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
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Dr. Gholnecsar Muhammad has held many roles in education from teacher to curriculum director to school board president to associate professor. She studies Black historical excellence in education, intending to reframe curriculum and instruction today. Dr. Muhammad’s books Cultivating Genius: An Equity Model for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy and Unearthing Joy are two of my favorite educational books of all time. In this episode, we talk about her latest book, Unearthing Joy! The Big Dream Our children, teachers, and communities deserve genius, justice, and joy. Defining Joy It’s more than happiness and parties. In studying what joy was for the ancestors: Happiness is more immediate. Joy is long-term, it’s sustainable. Joy is what you have when adversity continues to strike and you retain your happiness. The ancestors define joy as wellness, as healing, as abolition, as working toward a better humanity for all. Joy is the beauty, the aesthetics we recognize within ourselves and within humanity. It’s centering love and music and art in our learning experiences and our childrens’ voices. Joy is doing things as a collective. It is wide. There’s a beautiful relationship between justice and joy. Joy offers solutions and hope. We don’t get to joy if there’s no justice. Creating a culture of joy is anywhere from the way we greet students and what’s on the walls and the room’s colors, but it’s also how we make it a prominent goal, almost like a learning standard, in our curriculum and instruction. Teacher as Artist We are artists! We create from the world around us just like any other artist. We read the word, the world, and we create. Our art is our curriculum. I worked with Bisa Butler and saw how she creates. I watch my husband create music. I do the same things when I write curriculum! I get inspiration from everything. Even silly Netflix shows! I ask myself: What issues are most urgent to be taught right now? Out of all of the things, what must I teach? Sometimes I start with a text I read. Sometimes a learning standard. Sometimes a theme or concept. I try to create and design around our social times and what our children need today. A metaphor for cultivating teachers’ curricular fluency: fashion designer! We have to believe in the genius of our teachers. They’re not often given the time to do the work. Sometimes I’ll just share the model and give teachers 20 minutes to go into groups and create. The work that comes out of that is exhilarating! What I learned from that is teachers need time and space and each other to do this work. There’s joy, energy, and transformation when we collaborate. These spaces create possibilities and we hold one another accountable for teaching criticality, multiple identities, and justice. We need to give teachers more time. We still do education like we did in 1638 in this country. The way we schedule, train, prepare, and teach. It’s time for an overhaul. On Resistance We want to be excellent, we don’t want to be okay or basic. In response to resistance, I always respond with love. For the most part, people are against this work because they don’t know or they’re afraid. This is not new work. Black Americans have been doing this work since the 1800s. We have to build our capacity. Get uncomfortable. Lose our egos. Stop being so mean. Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz says this requires an archeological dig of the self. It starts with critical love and critical humility. Step back and listen, learn, and heal. We shouldn’t hire educators who don’t have a record of anti-racism. Hire people who are ready and prepared or at least willing to do this work. Then we don’t have to keep fighting folx who don’t want humanizing practices. One Step to Get Started Don’t just wait for something to pop up on the news. Do your work. Read. Be a scholar of education. Engage with multimodal texts (like podcasts!) and don’t rely on just one person for information. Also, use multimodal texts with students. For a joyful experience, dig into Unearthing Joy. There are songs, artwork, poetry, and coloring book pages. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on @GholdyM on Twitter and Instagram. To help you start building your curriculum designing capacity, I’m sharing my Curriculum Boot Camp Planner with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 105 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. TRANSCRIPT Today's guest is so exciting. One of my educational and curriculum writing heroes, Dr Gholnecsar Muhammad. She is an associate professor of literacy, language and culture at the University of Illinois and Chicago. She has previously served as a classroom teacher literacy specialist school district administrator, curriculum director and school board president. She has done it all. She studies black historical excellence in education intending to reframe curriculum and instruction. Today, Dr Muhammad scholarship has appeared in leading academic journals and books. She's also received numerous national awards and the author of the bestselling book, Cultivating Genius and Equity Model for culturally and historically, responsive literacy. If you have not read this yet, you have to. It is one of my favorite educational books of all time. She also co authored Black girls literacy is an edited volume. Her cultural and historically responsive education model has been adopted across thousands of U S schools and districts across Canada. In 2022 she was named among the top 1% edgy scholar, public influencers due to her impact on policy and practice. She has also received new international organizations and universities. 00:01:02 She was named the American Educational Research Association division K early career award and the 2021 N C T E outstanding elementary educator in the English language Arts. She has led a federal grant with the U S Department of Education to city culturally and historically responsive literacy in stem classrooms. Amazing her forthcoming book which is out now as of the release of this episode. It is again, amazing unearthing joy. It's the sequel to Cultivating Genius. It provides a practical guide for putting culturally and historically responsive education into curricular practice and that is what we are diving in today. Get excited for an amazing conversation. I'm educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for Teacher Ship podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal, assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nursing out about co creating curriculum with students. 00:02:16 I made this show for you. Here we go, Dr Gholnecsar Muhammad. Welcome to the Time for a Teacher Ship podcast. Thank you, Lindsay. I'm so happy to be here. Oh, my gosh. I am so happy to have you and I would love to just hear. Is there anything you want to share with us at the very front of the conversation to kind of frame what we're going to talk about today. We're gonna talk a lot about your book. And I think Joy, anything you want people to keep in mind as we have that conversation. Well, I just think that like, these ideals of like genius and joy are like crime topics, um, and justice. So, you know, we have been in like, dire need of these things across time and education. Um genius justice and joy. And so I know those words are gonna come up a lot as we talk and just know that like our Children, our communities deserve all three. Um And so, so does our teachers, right, our teachers deserve for their joy to be centered, for their genius to be recognized and acknowledged and for justice centered classrooms. 00:03:28 So that's what I'll say as we get started. I love that so much and, and actually I wanted to, I just finished everything during this morning. So I'm really excited to dive in and I wanted to just say this has been such a joy to experience as a book. So everyone who has not already purchased this book needs to go get it because there are so many multimodal texts as you talk about that. It's just like a display of what is possible just within the book. And I've colored, I've listened to music. It's beauty. So you had the full experience of the book that means so much to me. So, thank you. I mean, that's such great feedback. You know, when you love something and then you, you love it so much and you want to offer it to the world and you just like, hope they love it and an ounce of what you do. So thank you. Absolutely. And I think part of that is kind of what I want to talk about today is the first thing I wanted to find for people is like, what is joy? Because I, I think it seems like there sometimes when I talk to educators in my own work, there's kind of this misconception. 00:04:30 When I talk about this concept of joy, of what joy really is versus kind of what we think about or is kind of like the surface level version of it. Like your depth of definition is just far surpassing what I think a lot of people think it is. So I want to know if you would speak to some of that language you use. Yeah. So in my work, I define joy. It's more than just like having fun happiness, celebration parties, you know, that is joy that can be considered as related to joy. But I wanted to know what was joy for the ancestors. And so when I asked that question, I found that they had more expanded notions of what is joy. Joy was also wasn't just happiness, but it was like, a sustained happiness. If you think of happiness as like more immediate and think of joy as more like long term joy is what you have when adversity continues to strike and you retain your happiness, right? 00:05:37 It's like something that is very sustainable. They define joy as like wellness, as healing, as abolition, as working toward a better humanity. For all joy was the beauty, the aesthetics that we were able to learn and recognize within ourselves and, and within humanity. Um It was when we sent her love and music and art in our learning experiences and our children's voice enjoy is when we brought each other together and did things in a collective as opposed to individualism and competition and things like that. So joy was like all these things, it was like recognizing benefits and how we can make the world a better place and, and all the things that are good, beneficial and beautiful in the world. So it is, it is wide, I break that down in a shorter way in the book where I offer, you know, these ancestral joys um to readers so that they can go beyond just, you know, these more simplistic ways of looking at joy. 00:06:49 Yeah. And that, that definition is so expensive and I love that you cite all of these different passages and things from the ancestors. And, and I think one of the things that that was really helpful for me was you said you know, in the book, a balance of criticality enjoy is essential. So that kind of pairing of joy and justice and, and I think you also had passed ability is joy. And I think about that from the lens of a, you know, curriculum design and instructional coaching and, and thinking about what that looks like when we ask students to not just learn about oppression um and have this kind of criticality, but that, that we are enabling students as well. We're providing those opportunities for them to step into that leadership role, that activist role um that like creating a better possibility, role in their own communities. And I know you work with so many teachers where you get to see that in their lesson plans and in their unit plans. Um Is there anything you wanted to, to speak to you on that piece of what it looks like for students to engage in the side? Well, you're absolutely right. You know, there is a beautiful relationship between criticality and joy and it felt like from writing, cultivating genius, I needed to balance out the model because if criticality is this pursuit of helping Children to name understand disrupt oppression, how then can we balance it out with what is good in the world, with the solutions with the hope? 00:08:11 That's what joy offers. And we don't get to joy if there's no justice, right? If there is constant pain in the world, and people don't feel safe, don't feel empowered, don't feel happy. You know, how can we, how can we have complete and full joy? So there is that relationship and what I'm advising for educators is creating joy and a culture, a classroom of joy is anywhere from how we greet students, how we talk to them, what's on the walls, how they feel when they walk in is their color. I mean, it's like those aesthetic and simplistic things, but then it's also how we make it a more um prominent goal, like, like almost like a learning standard within our curriculum and instruction. I love that the idea of that as a learning standard, right? And, and I love that your frame of the five pursuits as a way to you share so many of these in both books really of, of how educators have taken it and, and mapped out an entire unit or a lesson with that framework with the five pursuits kind of housing it all in kind of like just half a pager, you know, and, and it's beautiful to think about that as the starting point, like we're going to design with criticality in mind. 00:09:30 Um And I think what I really love about this is the idea of teachers, artists, right? In the artistry that is required for doing that. And so I'm just curious about your process. I know you spoke to the joy that it brings you when you think about curriculum design and engage in that work. Where do you start when you think about designing units for joy? Like, what's your process in coming to think about the joy in, in any topic? Is it kind of natural? Do you kind of think about art first? I'm just wondering if we can help people who are unfamiliar with this way of planning. Think through how they might go about it. Well, in my heart and mind and who I am. And so many of the teachers I work with, we are artists we create from the world around us. Just like any other visual creative artists would do musical artists, we read the word, we read the world and we create. Our art is our curriculum is our lesson plans is our unit plans. And I do understand that some so many schools, they just follow more prescriptive lessons and units, they don't create their own. 00:10:38 And for the most part, teachers are either they're adapting those, right? And that still takes some artistry to adapt. So teacher, I, I started to see myself as a as an artist because my curriculum felt like artwork, the ways in which I would piece together lesson plans to tell these beautiful and rich stories that I felt my students needed to learn. And then um over the years, I had the opportunity to work with artists. Um One particular artist is Visa butler and I got to see her process and learn about her process um of how she creates. And I said that's what I feel like when I create curriculum or, you know, my husband's and artists and I watch his process of creation and writing lyrics and producing and all these things. And I'm like, that's what I do when I write lesson plans is different, but it's the same. And so my process of design is first like studying the world around me and reading again, books and articles and watching film. 00:11:42 And I get inspiration from everything. Even some of the Silliest Netflix shows that I just watch to take my mind off of things. But I'm like, oh, that's an idea for a lesson plan. And then um I asked myself what issues are most urgent to be told right now and, and out of all the things in the world, what must I teach? I really start with that question and sometimes I start when I am teaching Children, sometimes I start with a really great text that I've read. Um like I taught, I, I wrote a lesson recently on your name as a song and I love that book. And I'm like, I gotta teach a lesson around this. Sometimes I start with the learning standard of what Children need. And sometimes I just start with like a theme or a concept that I feel like Children really need to understand. But I try to make my curriculum not only responsive to the identities uh and the needs of students, but also to the social times we're living in. So I try to say like what words define our social times and it can be divisive, it can be pain, it can be words related to like oppression, but it's also words related to like hope, togetherness and so whatever it is, I try to create and design around our social times and what our Children need today. 00:13:09 I love that you talk about that here. And then also in the book, I think that idea of connecting artistry to that response to social times and then the legacy that we leave and the impact that that as is such a profound way of thinking about what we do as, as educators. And also just the the long term longstanding importance of our work. And I think we talked about that sometimes and you know, like, oh, we remember that teacher and how they made us feel or, but it's so much deeper than that, right? It's so much of like, what are you, what are you learning in? What ways are? I think you used the phrase in, in a lot of the questions you have for teachers to ask themselves or even to ask students. Oh my gosh, you guys listeners that are so much good stuff in this book. But like, yeah, of course, the list of questions that families can ask students or teachers can ask students post unit. Like how did this help you write, this idea of this should always be in service of students, everything we do should be helping them and, and see the immediate relevance of how does it help you today? 00:14:11 Not in some distant future. And I just think that that is just so beautiful. So thank you for putting that in there. Thank you for saying all of those things. Absolutely. It is, it is a profound piece of piece of art that you've created. And, and I think one of the things that I so connected with, just like I was like, oh my gosh, she is like speaking to my heart right now is when you were talking about how you have to have a personal goal of kind of cultivating teachers fluency in developing curriculum. Yeah. And I just love that you named several examples of how you would do that with teachers, find an object in front of you, create a unit or lesson around it. And so I love this. I wonder if you can speak a little bit more to that or any of the other strategies that you found effective in doing that work of like cultivating that curricular fluency. I'm about ready to go on a book tour with you. I would love to. Yes. So, you know, I was trained um like to as a reading specialist to teach Children how to read. 00:15:13 And you know, we are trained to like teach about you know, phonics, pandemic awareness, decoding, vocabulary, comprehension and fluency. And I learned in my program as an undergrad to, like, fluency is helping Children to read, um, like quickly, but at a nice pace with automaticity and they can look at a word and read it quickly. They don't pause. Right. And I, I started to say, well, what happens if we apply that same definition to writing a lesson plan, you know? Certainly. Um, And in the book, I talk about the artists as like fashion designers who so things and the more you become skilled at sewing, you can sew quicker, you know, like on project runway where they would have those challenges, like you have one hour for this is three days, you know, those who had the mindset and we're stronger in sewing, they sold faster. 00:16:15 And so we know that it is a gift of curricular fluency that will be developed just like with children's fluency, just like with an artist fluency. And so this is where I'm, I'm working with teachers to see anything, any object, like you said, an object in front of you and say, what curriculum could you see? What history do you see? What intellectualism do you see? What criticality, what joy, what identity do you see? And it doesn't mean everything in front of us. We have to teach, we wouldn't have enough time, but it does mean that we are ready and prepared to build, to create for our students. I love that. And I'm thinking of all the opportunities that an educator, educational leader, like a instructional coach could be a team lead principal that they would have been like a staff meeting or, or a P D to do some of these activities that might only take 10 minutes right to pick an object in front of you and think about a unit. Um I'm wondering if there are examples of leaders who have done this kind of thing? 00:17:16 Well, I guess this kind of thing is, is big but like, you know, made the space um given space and, and dedicated time and also funding to teachers to be able to kind of do this work. Well, is there anything that you would, I know you suggest a lot in the book? Is there anything that you would either emphasize from what you wrote or expand upon here? Yeah, I mean, there are lots of teachers first, we gotta believe in are the genius of our teachers. Our teachers are special, they know stuff and it's not like they can't do certain things. They just don't have the time to do it. And so, you know, I, I get to work with a lot of teachers and I like, give them a nice snapshot. Sometimes it's 90 minutes an hour or two hours. Sometimes I'll just like explain the model, show them examples and then immediately after that, They'll go together like in small groups and I'll say now create, you have 20 minutes because that's all the time we have left or something. 00:18:19 And the work that comes out of that is like exhilarating. It is phenomenal. They are, they beautifully create things that I could have never done by myself that maybe they could have never done by themselves. So what I learned from that is that they need time and space and each other to create because we can't always create. And there's some joy and some energy when I'm creating something with colleagues, as opposed to by myself, there's there's transformation when we have collaboration, transformation does not happen a lot by oneself. Um And you're talking about a model, you know, teaching across these five pursuits of identity, skills, intellect, criticality and joy. That's a bit of a departure from what we have been currently. Um like policy has currently been pushing the schools. We have largely been pushing skills only instruction. And so for, for teachers to be so brilliant to show up to do that work in such a short amount of time after they've been conditioned and been practicing typically skills only instruction. 00:19:30 I mean, that is just mind blowing the work that they can do. So those things I have found to be really strong for leaders to just give teachers time and this is not a new concept, right, Lindsay, we've been calling for more time, But maybe just maybe it's time to restructure education in the United States, we still do education like we did in 1638 in this country. The way we schedule the way we train and prepare in the way we teach. I think it's time for a bit of an overhaul. Oh my gosh, could not agree more. Yes. Yes. To all the things. And in that time piece and I often forget that collaboration piece that is huge because even when I would create as a teacher, I would create this really cool unit. And I have this beautiful driving question and then I would just be sitting in a room by myself just eking out about it and be like this is so cool and just wishing that I had someone else that also thought it was so cool and it might be the teacher next door, but the teacher next door is teaching because you're planning during the school day or you're at home on your couch. 00:20:36 You know, there's so much of that space that has, that holds so much potential when we can bring everyone in and just say the only thing you have to do right now is to create beautiful things and be an artist, right? You don't have to do all this other stuff. Yeah. And maybe it will, you know what else it does. It those people who did not want criticality or very were very uncomfortable with like teaching about different people's cultures, like black people, L G B T Q culture, gender cultures and or people who just did not want to teach about justice or thought it, it's impossible. Those those spaces create possibilities and hope we hold each other accountable in those spaces. So for somebody who is can be very hateful or can be very like neglectful of certain people and cultures, like we hold each other accountable for thinking very differently. Hopefully shifting what's in our hearts. That is such an excellent point. 00:21:39 And it, and it brings me to kind of this, this next part of the book that I wanted to talk about, which is you have this whole section on addressing resistance. Um And thinking about you have beautiful questions that just are, I think an amaze Using resource for educators to look through. How would you respond? What are the questions that you ask um with truth and love? I think you say, you know, asking these questions and engaging in this conversation, but really to get at the root of the resistance and then try to educate is, is what you would refer to. And, and I think there's, there's so much that you have already said that speaks to this, right? The 5% are more advanced than the skills only education like this is better for all Children. Um and I'm I'm very aware of the teachers and the departments who for whatever reason, overwhelmed fear, not knowing a lot. There is a tendency to do what I used to add diversity and stir. Um but I think it's called an additive type of curriculum from James Banks or like the contribution type of curriculum that you mentioned. 00:22:41 So do you mind talking to kind of like why those are actually not helpful for people who are listening and like, oh yeah, I kind of do that and why they could even be harmful to students. Well, we want to be excellent. We don't want to be okay or basic, right? So the first part of what you said, I put this, I tried to put in parts of the book that teachers kept asking me about. Um like they kept asking me like, what are the steps? What do you do when you have resistance? Every single meeting I would have with teachers, they asked me that question and so we have to build capacity, right? I I can't, I may not be in a place where I can answer all the questions. But if these questions keep coming up, let me put it in the book. So we all have access, right? In case people didn't make it to those meetings. And I wanted to include why people in my experience, why people have been resistant for culturally responsive work, black laboratory work or you know, work that includes black indigenous Children of color. 00:23:42 And I wanted to also include in the book, how do you respond? And in this response, I always start with love because even as people have been hateful towards me saying mean and threatening things to my life just for me talking about like joy and criticality and justice. Like I still do not engage. I still say, you know, like to myself, you know, I'm sorry, you don't love me but I won't, I won't go there with you and call you out your name because there's like people who just simply hate. But for the most part, people are against this work because they don't know, it's a, it's a high amount of ignorance and then they also have a lot of fear And I can say this work is new, but we have people Americans in this country, Black Americans who have been doing this work since the 1800s. And so, you know, we have to build our capacity. We have to be a bit uncomfortable if it means that we are growing and learning in ways that would be best for our Children. 00:24:48 You know, we have to lose our egos and stop being so mean. I mean, it sounds so simple but like people have been mean in some ways to me as I, as I talk about joy and it's like what's inside of you to be so mean to such a happy, beautiful person itself because I show up with joy and I show with love. So, you know, Dr Yolanda Sealey Ruiz, she says that this work calls for us to do an archaeological dig of the self. And she says it starts with two things, critical love where you love our Children and love each other in ways that you are fighting against oppression or hurt, pain and harm. And the second thing she says is critical humility, like, like, you know, like step back a little bit and listen and learn and heal. And so, you know, I, I really am pushing for those things and the work and then I'm also pushing that we don't hire folks that have, um that don't have a record of anti racism. 00:25:55 We want, we want to hire people who, who knows who's ready and prepared or at least willing to do this work. So we don't have to keep fighting folks who don't want humanity, you know, humanizing practices. Absolutely. And I think it was Dr Celia Ruiz who said on Dr Sheldon Akins podcast. Like you have to be able to put your job on the line for this work, right? Like in your book, you write about like we're accountable to students more than our bosses, right? Like this is why we do what we do, right? And this is, this is the call, this is, this is the action so beautiful. Oh my gosh, there's so much I can honestly talk to you for hours, but I know I talk to you too. I can feel your love and your spirit for this work. And I can also feel that you do your work, you listen, you don't just wait for something to pop up on the news you read. You know, that's what it means to be a scholar of education. We're not just listening to media. 00:26:58 Um, but we're also reading, we're going to uh multimedia, text and multimodal texts and primary source documents to do the work. We're not relying on one scholar or one person to tell us what something is or isn't. Yes, absolutely. Oh my gosh. I love that kind of like a call to action to you for, for listeners. Like I have just recently been playing around with and very much inspired by your work, Doctor Muhammad of this idea of like starting a unit spark at the end at the beginning of each week, just on social media or something. Like here's this really cool like podcast episode or a screenshot from a book or something that like inspired me to think about like all these unit ideas. So like, what does it inspire you to do? How would you create a unit around this really cool spark or inspiration? I think there's so much cool stuff that we could do with that. Yes. Listen, we'll probably be talking after this, of thinking ideas because once I get a co creator, a genius artist with me, I just want to create because what I've been doing now is like taking podcast like yours and having student teachers and scholars, like in my class, like, you know, like my phd students, like, read it, I mean, listen to the podcast instead of like, always just assigning books or articles. 00:28:15 But these are intellectual pieces. And how can you listen to a podcast and how does this shape, practice policy and research too? So, it's all kind of levels to it. Absolutely. Oh, my gosh, I love this. So, I think, is there anything else I want to give space to? Because I asked all the questions here. Is there anything else that we didn't talk about today that, that you would like to share? Well, you know, you, you kind of hit this early on. But you know, it was my hope that the book felt like a joyful experience. So there's, each chapter is layered with a playlist of songs and music that connects to the content of that chapter. So the meanings of the songs connect to the meanings of that chapter and they were, they're intended to be played softly in the background, hopefully choosing any like there are some songs that have like different versions, right? Like blowing in the wind. It's like one. And I'm like, oh, do I choose the Stevie Wonder Sam Cooke version? 00:29:19 So I just encourage readers to pick the versions and listen to it and see how that can add two layers of meaning. But each chapter also has artwork. Each chapter has poetry like you said, they have coloring book pages. And um you know, I start with, I start the book with inviting um extraordinary lee talented artist for real Williams to write the foreword, which was a cool experience to like see how he thinks about different forms of art from what he does and how my different forms of art from what I do, how these two combined towards this bigger idea of joy. I love that and I love that music is so central. I mean, an art is so central to all of the conversations about joy, the fat that you can literally read the book and experience those sparks, like just thinking about some of the text, the songs, the visuals that you shared, or even the activity of coloring, right? I think there's so much there that will spark a unit idea, right? 00:30:22 Or, or get us in that practice of what's right in front of you develop around it. I think that does it right? That's a practice in and of itself just reading the book. So it was a beautiful experience. Everyone should go buy that book. Absolutely. So I think everyone in addition to buying the book is going to want to, you know, follow your brilliance. I know you post so many really powerful things on like Twitter and I'm sure you're on other social media spaces around like here's what these great educators are doing. Let me highlight this, here's this unit idea, all sorts of things that, where can people find you or follow that stuff? Well, like at Goldie, M at G H O L D Y M um is my Twitter and Instagram. And yes, I'm always sharing, I mean, the things that teachers do with my model is so phenomenal like they'll take whole films like, you know, Black Panther or something, they'll create like a whole unit plan another. Um And I put a little excerpt of this in the book, another teacher did a whole play curriculum for, for early childhood. 00:31:28 Um, and um, three year olds. Uh So, yeah, I'm always sharing those things and um I also have a cultivating genius page on Facebook where we share a lot of this work too and it's just been really exciting and I think teachers have appreciated, like having their work spotlighted, like it's made them feel good. I'm like, is it okay if I share this? And they're like, oh my gosh, I would be honored, you know, like, because it's almost like they're doing a gallery of there are and like people get to engage and they've been enjoying it and then other teachers get to learn from them. Thank You so much. Oh, my gosh. I can't believe it's been 30 minutes, Dr. Muhammad. This has been an absolute joy for me. Thank you so much for being on the show today. Thank you for having me. Wow. That conversation with Dr Muhammad was amazing. I am so excited and inspired to go ahead and develop some units. So first up, if you haven't go ahead and buy and consume and interact with her new book, unearthing Joy, it is phenomenal. 00:32:29 She is a true artist. It is an experience. You don't want to miss it. Next, once you're ready to develop your curricular practice and design units around those things in front of you Daily life, those podcasts that you listen to all that cool inspiring stuff. Go ahead and grab this episode's freebie. That's my curriculum. Bootcamp planner which is totally tied and connected to and brings in pieces from Dr Muhammad's HILL model. You can find that at www.lindsaybethlyons.com/blog/105. If you're leaving this episode wanting more, you're going to love my live coaching intensive curriculum. Bootcamp. I help one department or grade team create feminist anti racist curricula that challenges affirms and inspires all students. We leave current events into course content and amplify student voices which skyrockets engagement and academic achievement. It energizes educators feeling burns out and it's just two days. Plus you can reuse the same process any time you create a new unit which saves time and money. If you can't wait to bring this to your staff, I'm inviting you to sign up for a 20 minute call with me. 00:33:33 Grab a spot on my calendar at www.lindsaybethlyons.com/contact until next time. Leaders continue to think. Big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better podcast network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better dot com slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where I do things like walk you through how I approach student-centered, culturally sustaining unit design.
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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
January 2026
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