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3/18/2024 155. The #1 Structure for Sustainable Family Partnerships with Ari Gerzon-KesslerRead Now
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In this episode, Ari shares tons of insights on building Family-Educator Together (FET) teams. These teams aim to deepen the connections between schools and families, creating a dynamic and inclusive space where voices from historically marginalized backgrounds can share insights and drive transformative change. Ari shares practical ideas, specific examples from actual FET teams, and gives us a link to several of the ready-to-use resources in his book.
Ari Gerzon-Kessler leads the Family Partnerships department for the Boulder Valley School District (Colorado) and is an educational consultant working with schools and districts committed to forging stronger school-family partnerships. He has been an educator since 2000, having served as a principal and bilingual teacher. Ari is the author of the new book, On The Same Team: Bringing Educators and Underrepresented Families Together. The Big Dream To embrace an innovative spirit that honors the whole child, incorporates families more into the educational process, and reduces the overwhelm for educators. He envisions more connected school communities that are inclusive, equitable, and where trust is a key lever for change. Ari references Dr. Bettina Love’s words, "We have to actually trust the people we say we want to empower to make structural changes, not just tinker at the edges of injustice." Mindset Shift Required Move from a one-sided family involvement approach to one that truly values parent voices as experts on their children and partners in change. As Ari notes, "We shift the traditional paradigm of family engagement to a more collaborative and empowering model," where trust and psychological safety are paramount. Action Steps While many of the practices in Ari’s book are useful in many family partnership scenarios, he specifically shares ideas for creating and leveraging an FET team. Once you understand what FET teams are and the goals behind them (i.e., strengthen relationships, build trust, and co-create meaningful change) and you as the leader are ready to invest in one… Step 1: Build Your Team There are 5 educators (including the principal) and 5 family members. More are welcome, but the ratio should be even. Educators should not outnumber family members. Step 2: Prepare Ari suggests taking an hour to plan for each 90-minute FET meeting. Logistics to tackle include funding, organizing the meal, securing interpretation (typically meetings are held in the most common home language of families), determining dates/times/location of meetings, and securing child care. Step 3: Facilitate Your Meeting(s) Following a meal and team-building activity, invite families to share their experiences and ideas. There are many specific prompts in the book. It could be: What do you want us to know? After initial trust building, the team will decide on an action project and work towards that goal. Challenges? A significant challenge is the initial trust-building with families who have never experienced such a collaborative space in schools. Creating a comfortable atmosphere where families feel safe to share honest feedback is crucial. Additionally, educators must navigate how to bring family-driven changes back to the staff in a way that encourages co-creation and buy-in from all parties involved. One Step to Get Started For educators looking to make immediate improvements in family engagement, Ari suggests starting with simple yet impactful actions like making positive phone calls to parents to share good news about their children or asking families: How do you prefer we communicate with you? These examples are both energizing and practical, laying the groundwork for deeper connections and future collaborative efforts. Stay Connected You can connect or follow Ari easily on LinkedIn at or reach him at [email protected]. To help you implement FET teams in your school(s), Ari is sharing several reproducibles from his book with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 155 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:
Today on the podcast, we're talking about what I would call like the handbook for Family Partnership. We are talking with Ari Giron Kessler who leads the family Partnerships department for the Boulder Valley School District in Colorado and is an educational consultant working with schools and districts committed to forging stronger school family partnerships. He has been an educator since 2000. Having served as a principal and bilingual teacher. Ari is the author of the new book on the same team, bringing educators and underrepresented families together. This is amazing. Let's get to it. 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 nering out about co-creator curriculum of students. 00:01:08 I made this show for you. Here we go. Ari, thank you for coming on to the time for a teacher podcast. Welcome. Thanks. It's great to be here, Lindsay. Thanks for having me. I am thrilled to talk about your book today. Like I cannot wait. So I will just say you have a new book and I'm sure there are other things you want to share about what listeners should know as we enter the conversation today. Sometimes people like sharing about themselves. Sometimes it's like this is the thing I've been working on and thinking about lately, feel free to share any, any sort of launching point you would like for today's conversation. Great. Yeah, I'm just eager to talk about how schools and districts can deepen their partnerships with families, um and really create a true space to listen to families and have that kind of be a spark for innovation and deeper relationships. Um So that's on my mind. Um I, you know, I, my first job was at a bookstore. That's the point in my mind when I was 11. So I've always had this deep love of books and, and, um you know, I started teaching a little more than 20 years ago and wrote some articles, but this dream of a book has been, you know, full of ups and downs. 00:02:18 And I just am so thrilled to be at this point where I can share um an offering that I think can be truly meaningful both for teachers at an individual level, but also for a school community because I know there's many books I've loved in education and they inform my thinking, but I don't often get to then go and create something. And so I'm excited about the, the on the same team book because it really gives people a chance to create a new structure for transformative change. Um So, yeah, it's just, it's great to be able to, to share more about it. I'm so excited to dig in and I, and I think my first question is, is kind of big not necessarily directly tied to the book, but I think you, you may have even just answered it a little bit. I like to talk about freedom dreaming and Doctor Patino love talks about it as the dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, which I just love that quote. And so with that, what is your big dream for education in general? Yeah, I love the question. I mean, I my hope is that we can embrace them innovative spirit that really honors the whole child incorporates families more um and reduces the overwhelm for educators while finding ways to regularly kind of renew the fire and passion we have um for the work and that we can create more connected school communities that are both more inclusive and equitable and also where trust um is this key lever for change? 00:03:46 And I know you're, you're a big fan of Bettina, lot of the quote that I often share from her that really speaks to the heart of these families and educator together teams is she says for equity work to work, it must be handed to the community. We have to actually trust the people, we say we want to power to make structural changes, not just tinker at the edges of injustice. Um And that those words and, and, and just some of the kind of experts in the field of family partnerships really inspired me to think about how do we create an ongoing vehicle uh for, for change? Yeah. Some of the people, the research that you ground the work in are just like, yeah, just phenomenal leaders and in the field and it, it is just so the way you set it up like the intro chapter itself, I'm like, did I highlight and underline every word? Like it is just so good and like dense with all of that, like meaty stuff, like quotes like that research like that. That's like, yes, this is the work and it does such a great job of I think making an argument for the, the do you call it fet or fet teams. 00:04:56 OK. So the teams, I think that is just so beautiful that you're like eager to get into chapter one and like just give me the how right? Because you've set it up so beautifully. I especially when you're talking, I was thinking about how you named like this is valuable for many stakeholders. It's not just for families, it's not just for students, it's also valuable for educators. And I love the three column table that you have in there where it's like here's all the benefits for each of these stakeholder groups. It is not just one that benefits. So I love that. Thanks. Yeah, I feel like it's really important. I know time is this major barrier as well as some other ones. I mean, I know um teachers feel passionate often about connecting with families. But what was interesting when I dived into the research, Lindsay to discover that the area that teachers feel least confident is actually engaging with families. And that was really revealing. And so so um to me, one of the powers of this work is especially in that it's bringing together underrepresented, often, often immigrant families with mostly white teachers, school leaders, this space for learning across cultural and linguistic differences. 00:06:02 Um And this space where we shift the traditional paradigm of, you know, typically family engagement is one way and we say, oh, they came to conferences or they didn't or they came to back to school night. And, and I have a lot of regrets for my principal years because even PT A meetings and other things like that, I mostly gave updates and talked a lot and then said, do you have any questions at the end? Whereas what, you know, I've learned through the Fed teams over hundreds if not thousands of meetings is that when we truly center parent voices and treat them as the experts on their Children, as well as experts on. How can we as educators get better at collaborating with them? Um Some pretty powerful shifts happen. And as you were saying, um in some ways, the fed teams are just as meaningful for the educators uh because of what comes out of the relationships they build and just all the insights they get um from listening to family, share their perspectives, ideas. Um So it's, it's really been this unique structure that in the fifth year of doing it finally refined it enough to realize, OK, these are the ingredients, a great gathering. 00:07:05 Here's how we create psychological safety and trust across um all these differences we're bringing together in one room this one night a month. So yeah, it's been a really dynamic experience that I felt almost obligated to capture in writing so that it could be a benefit in other school communities. Yes. Oh my gosh. And there's like 400 directions I want to take it because there's so much good stuff here. I mean, just when you're talking about the research, my my mind went to some of the things I wrote down of just things that I literally wrote like, wow, in the margins because I just didn't know that like, for example, 73% of teachers believed families were not interested in supporting their students education or their child's education. It was just like, wow, that's a very uncomfortably high number. Um And that families actually have higher trust in teachers and educators than educators have in families. It was just like, whoa, like just really shifting that narrative. A lot of times where we and I think you use that word blame at at sometimes is that we have this narrative sometimes of like the blame, the Externalizing like, oh if only the families, you know, cared more, right? 00:08:08 And there's so much underneath that, that we dance around or we yeah, externalize the responsibility for we don't directly confront. And then it's like this is what you're talking about with the Fed teams is like this is how we confront it. Like we literally confront it. But we also do a lot of the foundation work to create the space where we can confront it versus just like naming things without doing all of that groundwork. So I just think there's so much right? And like in what you bring to the table of like here's what's happening and now and now here, here's where we go next. Yeah. Well, and I know some of your other podcasts, you talk about a culture of partnership and I think that's at the heart of this work is shifting from the old family involvement approach. Pretty one sided. The other day, I was reading another book in the field and it talked about you know, we're the host as educators and they're the guests. Uh And there's kind of this critique then of how are they, how are they showing up? And I'll say, I mean, I wanna acknowledge as educators were utterly overwhelmed by such an array of responsibilities um that I believe we should have like two of us in every classroom to make it sustainable. 00:09:17 And, and that said, like it does feel like it is about a mindset shift that when we actually, you know, move from guessing what families want to listen to them and then moving to act like co created action. It's really incredibly rewarding. And I remember one of the other pieces of research was when educators build stronger connections with families, they stay in the profession longer. Um But a lot of those pieces often aren't scared. So families, I know when I was a teacher principal at times, it was like, oh, it'd be nice to do that. Um But I don't have time for it. Whereas actually now knowing what I know my perspective is more like if you carve out efficiently but meaningfully some time to engage in some of these best practices that we learn from families. Um It's, it makes it, you know, a huge difference. And I think about you were talking about how we, we can be quick to judge. I think about one minor shift which for every teacher in August I would recommend is ask families how would you like to be communicated with? 00:10:20 Because one theme we're hearing consistently in set team gatherings is we're overwhelmed by emails, we're not reading them, they're not coming in the language we prefer, please text us. And, and that's been a pretty simple change at a handful of schools that's just been incredibly powerful um as well as just this shift in, let's forge a two way relationship. I mean, I'm thinking about this example of a, a, you know, a teacher who told me a couple of years ago, they were upset when they reached out to a family that they easily could have judged as not caring because they didn't return her call. And when she reached out twice because the, the, the young student was absent. Well, she came to find, after doing a little judgment, the family had traveled across from Colorado to Texas to go to a family member's funeral. And that was the reason she didn't get a call back. So just this piece of like, can we, can we come from a place of uh of trust and curiosity and, and a kind of a spirit of inquiry um and, and make the investment at that time because it just pays off. 00:11:24 Yeah. What a great example. I, I love all the examples in your book too and I love that they are often like, here's what we learned when this happened. Like we learned a huge takeaway from this and then you have like really great lists of like, pure is kind of like all the things we learned in a bullet point list duties. This will be great. Um And I, and I think one of the, one of the things that I wanna do first because there's so much in here and I'm just thinking about the person listening, who's like, talk more about these f teams, like first before we get there. I'd love to just have you give an overview. I know you talk in the book about like who's on the team? What are the goals of the team and that those are really important. Do you mind just like starting there for us? But like, what is this? What does it look like? Absolutely. Yeah. So that teams gather once a month um beginning with dinner. It's usually the aim is at least 500 represented family members and five educators including the school leader at some of our schools. It's more like 30 parents and nine staff members in the principal. Um In some of those gatherings, many of them are held in Spanish, which is of course, incredibly with 20% of our students um in, in our school district being Latino, it's been really valuable for families to have a meeting held in their language just that in itself has shifted a lot. 00:12:39 Um Some other teams and schools hold gatherings in English and we have like three or four or five different interpreters in the room. Um So we're still really letting everyone engage in the language they feel comfortable in. And over the years, we've really refined the structure for the ideal meeting. Um A lot of it's informed by what I learned around social, emotional learning in, in, in the classroom and as a principal. Um and there's time for families to engage in learning because I think one of the big things we've discovered is there's so many gaps we've unintentionally created as schools, especially for families more on the margins, not just the achievement and opportunity gaps, but communication gap, trust gap, access gap. I mean, there's seven or eight of them that, that we kind of explore on the teams. And so we create time for breaking bread together. Um some learning about what's happening at school um making it easier for families to navigate our school system so they can access more opportunities. But then the heart of the Fed meeting is listening to their perspectives and ideas and experiences. 00:13:43 So usually half an hour of the 90 minutes is in small groups or back in whole group really uh posing a couple questions that will give us tremendous insight on how do we create a more collaborative equitable school. Um And so it's really, really structured in a way that um we're fostering relationship building throughout the hour and a half together. Um So that's kind of the essence of it. It's usually led by a few teacher leaders, parent leaders, um who, you know, put a lot of planning. I think just like great teaching. We've learned that about an hour of mapping out an agenda and getting all the logistics ready has really led to success across many school communities um regardless of who's leading it. Just that, that, that fosters a gathering that's truly grounded in, in purpose and, and uh meaning for everybody. Hi everyone. It's Lindsay just popping in here quickly to tell you about today's episode. Freebie. This is from Ari. So we talk a ton about how his book has a ton of reproducible and lists of things, appendices, all the things that you can just grab and use immediately. 00:14:50 He is sharing several of those free reproducible from his book and you can grab those at the blog post for this episode at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 55. Back to the episode. Yeah. It, it's fascinating to look at the 90 minute breakdown too of like how you structure the agenda and how intentional all the pieces are. I mean, even to the point of I looked at one of your sample agendas where it was literally like who's taking on the meals, who's taking on this, the note taking task, who's like it was. So it was so thought out like clearly from the result of like doing this so many times and figuring out what works with, doesn't it? I mean, one of the things and you started with like, there are meals that, which is beautiful. You also have child care for people to be able to, like, bring their kids if that's a barrier. Now it is no longer. And I'm just thinking now as a parent of a toddler, like how lovely it would be to like, just be like, ok, park the kid, get the dinner. All right. Like we're gonna talk now I'm here and it's funny, I'm also a parent of a, a toddler and um and I joked with a couple of f leaders just last week before our break. 00:15:56 I I said, oh, you know, fat could almost, we could almost like portray it as Date Night for, for some families because they're, they're getting a free delicious dinner. Child care is there and they're getting to be together. And also, of course, build community which I think in the wake of the pandemic and the isolation and loneliness. So many of us in this country feel that's yet another benefit of uh of creative space. But yeah, it uh we joked about it actually being date night on top of many other uh other benefits and outcomes. Well, I think that's a really interesting mindset chef, right? Like we often talk about like how to reduce barriers, but like it's also not even just reducing the barrier. It is like a draw, right? Like here is the free food, here is the setup where like not only do you get to go in and talk about, you know, your experiences and like your kids education and everything, but like, you're truly, you're finding friends, you're finding community, you are fed. You don't have to worry about your toddler for 90 minutes. Like that just sounds beautiful. 00:16:59 So cool that you create like this. And you're reminding me of like two, I think powerful examples. One is on the family front that one of the six main purpose of F is to build a network between families to kind of harness their collective agency and build connections. And I was at an elementary school a few weeks back and a mom had just arrived three weeks earlier from crossing the border with a couple of her youngest kids to reunite with her husband. And everything about the school was overwhelming her first time in a US school. And we were in a small group and a, a mom who'd been at that school for four years. Also a Spanish speaking parent um said, basically, hey, call me if you have any questions, well, that reduces the load on the educators and builds this, this wonderful, you know, sense of comadres networking uh and support. Um And then on the, on the, you know, parent educator front, I'm remembering and I think I, I share this father's story in the book where he says, you know, and it hit me hard. 00:18:02 He said as a Latino parent knowing the principal didn't speak Spanish, I often felt like I kind of needed to hide or be invisible when I came in. And now after, you know, a year and a half of seeing the principal every single time we gather once a month in the set meetings, having her listen to us, hearing her try to, you know, speak Spanish as best she can. Um She says, now she says, now I feel comfortable to just go up and have a conversation with her and that opens the door for all kinds of mutual learning support connections. Um So just creating that space and that's where I feel so passionate about the fe teams because many events in our schools today are once or twice a year. And there's rarely this ongoing structure that's focused on the more humanizing part of education, not, not on fundraising, not on other pieces, but really on fostering relationships and mutual learning. Oh, there's so many pieces I wanna, I don't wanna touch on here. So one I know you mentioned this, that Spanish is the language that typically that in your experience, that has been the, the language of the gathering. 00:19:09 And then there is English interpretation. And I love how you, you even get really granular to be like, and we've learned, you know, like to wear headsets so that it's synchronous so that we're, you know, being efficient in time and also being able to like watch and get accuracy for the interpreters to be able to like, just do this. This is how we do it just so many things where a leader might be like, hesitant to do something. And it's like, well, it's valuable and we've worked out like all of the potential challenges and here is like, what we've learned that's just kind of handed to you. I, I just think that's super cool all the way down to like where the budget comes from. So like, you know, it could be at the school level but your district has taken on all interpretation. So like that's there. And then like, from like, you know, here's, here's how much we factor in for like the cost of meals. And like, I think you said $2000 for the whole year has been what you found to be doable logistically. I mean, just some of the things that I think listening to this, you know, a leader might say great. These all are, these are all great like stories and like research based, like we should do it, but it feels so daunting, but you really break down in the book, like all sorts of tips, like ideas literally down to the dollar amounts of like what things cost. 00:20:16 You have a whole appendix of like, here you want to do team building, here's like 30 team building activities and like all sorts of things from like a planning checklist for people who are who are doing this work. So I just want to say like really cool stuff in the book. If, if this sounds overwhelming to any leader, just get the book and you'll be totally fine. And I also, I appreciate you bringing up leadership because I do think often as a former principal, I know there's this feeling or expectation of the principal has to hold a lot of that partnering with families role. Um And I think what principles at the, you know, 24 schools that currently have fet teams have said is not only do I now connect with all of my communities more fully, but I'm distributing the leadership and, and really, as many principals say, I love just getting to show up. And my only real job is just to sit back and listen. Um And yet they also are pivotal in helping us once the the team leaders learn in the meetings from families and from their colleagues, what changes are truly needed. 00:21:21 The principal jump in, you know, for 15 minutes a year, often of a quick check in. Oh, let's let's bring this back and launch this with the staff. Um So it really is, as you're saying, um an easy load on the principal yet it drives not only a lot of great learning for them and, and their colleagues um but they're distributing leadership and cultivating parent leadership that can make such a huge difference in that school community. Yes, yes to the cultivating parent leadership. Also, I love that point. And like, I think you, you may have said this, but I just wanna emphasize for listeners that the the principal, you, you paint a really clear picture that the principal needs to be present at each of the meetings. You, I think you shared a case study where like that wasn't the case and the team just kind of fell apart, right? Yeah, I'm, I'm grateful you mentioned that. And also I'm just thinking back what you said about like how granular and specific I've been in the book. I mean, part of what I should say is that we held hundreds of fe meetings over the first four years at more than 10 schools. And I learned not only from the successes but the the meetings that fell short or the couple teams early on that struggled. 00:22:26 And so it was really in year five, realizing a host of ingredients that were key for an effective team, which I really laid out in the book. Um And one of those pieces really was the school leaders consistent presence because that shows to the teachers who, you know, they're coming at night after a full day, usually in the classroom at school. So it shows, ok, my principal truly cares about this effort enough to be there themselves. Um Not to mention when we want to enact change if they haven't sat there in that space and been moved by the stories and insights of families, they're less likely to feel invested in helping us core that change. So, yeah, that was one of the, the biggest and most profound learnings in the first few years because a couple teams really didn't flourish because the school leader um wasn't deeply invested in it. And to your point about change, I think that's, that's one of the big learnings for me in terms of a fat team versus PT A or something like this. 00:23:28 Like, actually, I saw so many parallels to the arguments that I make around student leadership. Like often I'll be like, oh student council, it's just like planning prom and planning the senior class trip. It's so frustrating, like you're just doing these events, but you're not brought into academic conversations about like, how should be great, what should our policy of A P enrollment be like real things that matter? And that's kind of what it to me sounded like between like PT A is often very like event planning and this is truly you're building relationships and it's culminating in or, or kind of like paired with like action planning, like we are creating change and that's the goal, right? Yeah. Well, and I could share a couple of brief examples because 11 of the things that was really important path of these seven years with fet teams was in year four or five, I realized, wow, we're really building this dynamic community families are loving the space educators are appreciating it, but we're not consistently at every school creating systemic change. We're not able to say in May. 00:24:29 Wow, the staff is doing this differently as a result of fe so these last three years, I've been really intentional and persistent. And luckily, I've built solid relationships with our fe leaders where I actually now in January or February are prompting them with. OK, what questions are you gonna ask at this next meeting so that you can devise concrete action plans for January to March so that the changes are in place. And you know that at one school, for instance, parents told us, hey, conferences aren't very meaningful for us with the teacher. Um And by listening, then it was two really subtle easy changes. One was we added 10 more minutes. So it was half an hour because all the families were using an interpreter and it wasn't equitable for them to have essentially half the time other families had. And then I did a 20 minute PD for staff on how do we create a more relationship centered and culturally uh sustaining approach to um to conferences? And those two pieces alone led families to come back in March and share having a radically different experience. 00:25:33 They also said there's a huge language gap and we literally put in place this wonderful app talking points and that prompted thousands of texts to go back and forth the following year, um, in, in place of that void of communication, relationship building previously. So sometimes it's, it's pretty easy changes because we know teachers can't take on too many more big things. We've got to make them, you know, easy meaningful. But, um, but efficient efforts. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, there's, there's so much that I could, like, talk to you for days about this book. Uh, but one of the things I'm wondering is if a leader is listening and they're like, again, yes, I'm interested and, and I will get the book, but I have like these fears of like it not working or, or something like what's a challenge that you could speak to? That's like, you know what? Yeah, we've seen this as a common challenge to the work and here's like how we've helped people address it. Yeah. Yeah. Great question. And you mentioned the team builders in the appendix and that, that's one of the resources I'm most proud of because I've for a couple decades, been a trainer in SCL and, and those are some of my favorite team builders for students and also for adults. 00:26:43 And, and it's reminding me of one of the challenges. So one of our high schools launching a team and this was before we learned a powerful lesson which I, I should have known already from some of my training that we didn't gather in circles and, and so families came in and teachers had already arrived, they were sitting in a row basically facing the parents and the challenge was, wow, everything is kind of awkward and tense here. There's language barrier here as well. And we did a 2.5 minute team builder um that brought us into, you know, a, a whole group and led to immediate laughter and immediately broke the ice. And, and so that, that is a challenge that for families who've not had this space ever at a school, initially, they might not trust that we're truly there to do most of the listening. They might need to know. Ok, can I truly be honest? I mean, we've had to really be thoughtful about building the space month to month that first year. 00:27:46 Um So I do feel like the book lays out all of kind of the map to do that effectively because it is uh it is difficult to train a lot of us as educators haven't been trained in how to do this deeper work with families across so many differences. So, um that, that's a challenge as well as um I think bringing change ideas back to back to staff and really having a wonderful birth with them that they can go back to the team. Um because it's not just family saying, you know, you gotta make A B and C changes and it's just happening and they truly are co created. Hm Thank you so much for sharing that. I think I'm hopeful that, that like, kind of dispels any sort of like, I'm not sure what this is gonna go like. And I, and I think that that is so comforting to be like you've done this so many times, I think you had like 400 meetings or something. I mean, just like so many times and that you have seen the challenges you've worked through them and therefore, like, you know, consult the book and, and you'll, you'll even see some of those case study challenges like laid out and like, here's, here's what we did. 00:28:50 So I love that, that is a resource for listeners. I'm thinking for the, for the listener listening who maybe feel kind of overwhelmed with like this is a big project and I'm not quite sure where to start what is like step one like they end the podcast and they're like, I just want one tiny step to get started. What would you recommend that be? Yeah. Um I think creating spaces really listen more, take off that kind of teacher expert hat. Um And that could be, you know, a welcome phone call to start a new school year. It can be engaging in, you know, a relationship centered home, visit with a couple of your, your students families. And I think, you know, diving into the book where even if you don't spark the creation of a team right away at your school, I've really infused the book with a ton of everyday practices and ideas um that are really, really straightforward, easy to do. Um, you know, positive phone calls is, is an example. 00:29:53 One of my favorites were literally carving out 10 minutes once a week to call three families and share some sort of good news academically or about character of a student, something kind they did to for another student. Um So I would say there will be morsels in the book right away that um I think are both energizing and very practical. Excellent. Thank you so much. And I think to, to close, I have two questions that I like to ask people. The first one is just for fun. It does not have to relate to your job at all. Although it can, what is something that you personally have been learning about lately? Hm. Um Yeah, I love that question. Um One of the books I'm reading right now um is about Zen and I've been studying Zen now for eight years. My um my wife is uh a monk, uh you know, a, a secular monk. Um And um so I'm reading a wonderful book by this author Charlotte Joko Beck um about Zen. So that's, that's an area of learning. 00:30:57 And I've realized this, this month, having this time off, this last week when I have more time down the road, I wanna learn how to be a better cook, learn how to be a better dancer. Um Those are like 22 areas that I've, I felt recently inspired around deeper. Oh, my gosh, I love those. Thank you for sharing those. I love when people share things that are not related to their job, it just rounds them out as like a full human, which we all are beyond our job. But also, I mean, as, as a, as a father of a 15 month old, like I, you know, grew up volunteering as a middle schooler at a head start. I have a lot of background with like 3 to 5 year olds and then I, I taught and was a principal in elementary schools for 15 years. But I, I'm definitely not an expert on a 15 month old. So been reading a lot about parenting and been excited to see like some of the parallels of what we, you know, what we learn as educators. But also it's been consistently humbling too. Tell me about it. Oh my gosh. Mine is 22 months and it is like, I learn every day. 00:32:02 I know nothing. Exactly. Yeah. Awesome. I, I am so glad that we had this conversation. This has been so wonderful. I think a lot of people are going to be like, let me reach out in addition to grabbing the book. Can they reach out to you at a certain location or are you on social media? Like, where can they maybe follow what you're doing? Yeah. Um The best way would be to connect with me or follow me on linkedin. That's where I'm regularly posting new articles. I'm writing quick practical ideas. Um So that's the best space. And folks are also welcome to just email me directly at A E giron at gmail.com and can also find more about the book at solution tree.com/a. E Amazing Ari Thank you so much for joining the podcast. This is such a pleasure, Lindsay. Thanks for your energy, enthusiasm and just great conversation. Really appreciate it. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, Sapir and Jamila Dugan, talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. 00:33:09 They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders 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.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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In this podcast episode, Crystal Frommert shares the importance of partnering with families in students' education.Crystal emphasizes the power of a simple phone call to build bridges and promote understanding. She also explores the complexities of navigating effective communication in these partnerships and discusses restorative practices for relationship-building with families.
Crystal Frommert, M.Ed, has over 20 years’ experience as an teacher, instructional coach, school board member, adjunct college instructor, technology coordinator, and school administrator. She is the author of "When Calling Parents Isn't Your Calling, a teacher's guide to communicating with parents." She currently teaches middle school math in Houston, where she lives with her husband, daughter, and dog. The Big Dream Crystal dreams of an educational system where teachers partner with parents and families. Alignment to the 4 Stages: Mindset, Pedagogy, Assessment, and Content She focuses on maintaining a mindset of empathy and understanding towards the families she works with. In terms of pedagogy and content, she stresses the importance of communication and respect for the diversity of families. Phone calls are specifically helpful to communicate with families about any of this because you can both listen to each other’s tone. Mindset Shifts Required We can work to overcome any apprehensions about communicating with families. It’s incredibly beneficial to take a moment to challenge any assumptions we have about family backgrounds. Action Steps Make the first contact positive and personalized. Show respect for family titles. (Look at the title on file and/or ask the child if they’re old enough. If you can’t find it beforehand, ask the caretaker once you meet them.) Utilize phone calls more often for better connection and understanding. Alternatively, you may prefer or need to use voice recordings or video.) Use sentence starters. (Crystal has several in her book!) Challenges? Not asking for help when emotions are high. Loop in an administrator if this happens. Set boundaries so families aren’t texting you at 11:00 PM. One Step to Get Started Administrators, invite your teachers to reflect on something dumb you did when you were a teenager (or whatever age group of students you have.) Teachers, be more mindful about when the communication should be an email and when it should be a phone call. Also, send a happy note home when you can! Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on her website, Twitter, and LinkedIn. To help you implement these practices in your school, Crystal is offering Time for Teachership listeners a complimentary author Q&A for schools who are doing a book study of her book! (Reach out at any of the above links.) And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 142 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 Today on the podcast, we have Crystal from art. She has a master's in education over 20 years experience as an educator and beyond teaching. She has served as an instructional coach, school board member, adjunct college instructor, technology coordinator, and school administrator. She writes for Edutopia independent school management, NAISS independent school magazine and is the author of When Calling Parents? Isn't your calling a teacher's guide to communicating with parents. We'll talk about that book a lot in the episode. Crystal has presented at local national and international conferences on topics ranging from social and emotional learning to technology integration. She currently teaches middle school math in Houston where she lives with her husband, daughter and dog. Let's get to the 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 nering out about co-creator curriculum of students. 00:01:15 I made this show for you. Here we go, Crystal. From, welcome to the Time for Teachers podcast. Thank you. I'm so glad to be here, Lindsay. I'm so glad that you're here. I, we were just talking before we hit record. I have heard you on other podcasts and I'm so excited that you're on this one and I just would love to know if there's anything on your mind or anything that you want listeners to know about you prior to kind of digging into the conversation today. Sure. Well, um I heard about you through podcasts as well. And when I heard you speaking, I was like, everything Lindsay says is already in my brain and we agree on so much already. And um your interview that you gave, it was the first time I've ever heard the word teacher. And I have heard, you know, I work in an independent school and I've heard of headship. Um but teacher, I love it. I love the whole idea around this is, this is a profession, this is what we do. Um We're passionate about this, but there's also learning involved in this and growing. And so I just love the entire term. 00:02:17 So thank you so much for putting it out there. Yes, absolutely. I totally created it for my brain and then I actually realized it was in the academic literature, like the year before I thought of it. And so I was like, oh, this is like an actual defined term. It was very cool. That's great. It's a good word. I'm gonna use it more. I love it because it's like the intersection of like teachers are leaders. Right. But then also that leaders can't be effective leaders if they're not in the classrooms and connected to what's happening. Instruction. I just love the back and forth. It's right. Right. And it gives me, it, it gives me a feeling of it's not just a job that you go to, right. It's something that you invest your, you're learning into your growth into. Um It's, it's a longevity. It's, it's, there's so much more to it than I work at the school as a teacher. Right? There's, it's a, it's a bigger piece than that. That is so well said, oh, I love it. So I am excited to hear more about kind of what, how that plays out in the work that you do. And specifically, I love this idea of freedom dreaming as a concept. Doctor Bettina love talks about it beautifully when she says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. 00:03:25 And so I'm curious to know what is that big dream for you? How does that show up in your work? And what are you striving for? Thank you for asking that. Um I am a, I have a unique position and that I'm a teacher and I'm also an administrator. Um I'm the deputy head of secondary at my school. It is an international school here in Houston. And um, but I have always wanted 1 ft in the classroom always. Um because that's what brings me joy, is, is being an administrator brings me joy. Yes, but not as much as it does when I'm working with my middle schoolers on math and um over the years, um as a teacher, this is, I think I'm starting my 23rd year or something like that. Um I've noticed that I've grown so much in the area of partnering with families and parents and caregivers. Um I have a book out called when calling Parents isn't your calling? But I want to be clear that um that's the title, but I don't mean just parents, right. I know that our kids come from very diverse types of families and families come in all shapes and sizes. So not just parents but caregivers, guardians, aunts, uncles, grandparents. 00:04:31 So, um and you know, when I was a beginning teacher, I was so afraid, frankly, just terrified to talk to parents. Um I thought that they would think I was too young or I didn't know what I was doing or anything. They said I would just go. Yes. Yes. Yes, I'll do it. And it took a lot of time, a lot of years and a lot of great mentors in my life to shape how I am today as a teacher and how I, I see partnering with families. Um again, I'm not perfect at it. I don't think I ever will be and I don't think anyone really is perfect at it because there's so many conversations you can have with families. But um back to your question about injustice and inequity and, you know, I think about every single child in my class um deserves that. I'm going to partner with his or her home family life in some way. Um And, and in the book, I talk about how families come from all ranges of di of, of, of engagement. 00:05:32 Um There's a range of engagement from, I want to volunteer every day in your classroom to, you will never get a reply from me ever. Right. So there's, there's a whole range and no matter what the situation is, it's my job to communicate and be um like a, like the boxing analogy to be in their corner for their kid and I can't be in their corner without them and we need to have their back. Um And that takes me reaching out whether that's phone calls, conferences. Email is great. I know some teachers are texting. I'm, I'm too old for that. I don't, I haven't gotten into the texting, texting parents. Um But, you know, I need to listen to some of my younger colleagues who are more into that. So that, that I hope that answers the question that, that's the, the passion I have for building equity, um, around parent partnerships. I love that. And I love specifically the word of partnership because I think so much we think of communication and that often translates to like a one way communication and partnership to me truly feels like more of the goal. Right. Right. Right. Yeah, because we're, we're a team, we're working together. 00:06:35 Absolutely. And I love the boxing analogy as well. I think that's really good. So as you think about kind of where all of the pieces that make up that kind of process of getting to the goal fits, I often think about a lot of different things that make up education, right. So I think about like the mindset of, of teachers and, and educators more broadly, I think of like how we interact with, with students and then ultimately communicate that with families. I think of how we assess and how we communicate about that and partner around that, how we partner around the content. So a lot of times I think families are experts, right? In, in some of the content that we're teaching and we don't invite that in. And then other times, um you know, families are learning alongside of, of students and even alongside teachers sometimes. And so I think there's so much rich potential to have this conversation around. What is it looked like to partner with families and caretakers because often when I do my work. That's the biggest question. It's like I want to do all this justice centered curriculum. I want to have these discussions that are student led and talking about current events. 00:07:41 And I'm curious to know like, how these different pieces might play a role in what that partnership could look like. Yeah. So, like I said, I work at an international school so I work with students who come from many different countries. I think we have 65 different countries represented at our school. Um And I never ever assume anybody's situation. I, you know, I used to, I'm, I'm getting better at it. I don't assume anymore um about someone's background based off, you know, if their parents were born in a different country or, you know, any of that anymore, because I have worked with such a diverse group of kiddos. Um And I do say kiddos, I know it's a little old fashioned but I do say that um they are my kids. So um in working with families, I, when I, one of the things too is um I work with a lot of caregivers or parents who English is not their first language. And um I've noticed that when I would get emails sometimes from families, um especially when I'm, I, I speak a little bit of Spanish and when I type in Spanish, I'm sure it comes across very harsh and when or very, you know, rudimentary and because I'm not that great at it but when someone's writing me and I get a tone that does not seem friendly or, um, soft, um, I used to go, oh, gosh, like they're mad at me. 00:08:58 And, um, then I would all these assumptions just start pouring into my head, um, which is not going to lead you toward that partner partnership. You're not gonna be able to, to team up with that family if you already think, oh, they're mad at me for whatever reason. Um And so I think that, that it has been a gift for me because I now I just pick up the phone. If I sense any sense of tone in their email, I pick up the phone and sometimes I can hear that they have an accent that's different than mine. And maybe it's because they're typing in a language that's not their, their heritage language. That could be, I'm not gonna assume. But when you hear their voice, no matter what language is their first language or what heritage there, their accent comes from when you hear their voice and they hear my voice there is a connection, even if it's over the phone, there is a connection there. Um And so I truly believe in picking up the phone more often than you want to. I know that making phone calls is not all that fun, but it really can be five minutes and that listening to the tone and being able to answer questions back and forth rather than emailing back and forth. 00:10:04 Really is a, just a tiny step towards a huge, um, growth into, into partnering with for that child. Um, and then after you've established that you can start to, you know, email and, and things if you have a short question or things like that. But I truly believe that first conversation. Let's just, let's get rid of all assumptions. Um, Let's get, let's try to look past any of our implicit biases that we have and let's have that phone conversation. I love a lot of these because I, I also my last four years as a teacher was actually in an international school as well. So same kind of um dynamics and like that tone of like trying on either side to communicate in the language that is not, not our heritage language is really tricky to like, that's like one of the final things I think once you're like learning a language that you kind of are able to do, right? I love that like graciousness and kind of inquiry mindedness to say like, I want to know more and I'm gonna connect with the tone verbally. I, I just love that even if language is, you know, um is a barrier, you need a translator. 00:11:10 I think just being able to hear the tone of someone's voice, even if you don't understand the words is so incredible. And I never thought about that until you just said that. So, thank you. Yeah, it speaks volumes. It really does. Absolutely. Yeah. And so I'm wondering, are there other, you know, mindset shifts or challenges that people I know you were saying, like not wanting to pick up the phone in the first place, but are there other things that sometimes you um find yourself coaching around or helping teachers kind of overcome if there's like an initial kind of hesitation to, to picking up that phone or communicating or partnering? Um My, my best advice that I have for teachers, um whether you've been teaching for one year or 50 years is you're very, and I learned this from someone else. I can't take credit for this. I worked for a really great principal who was very strong in his opinion on this, that your very first communication with a family needs to be positive. Um And I think, and I try to do that every single year. Um uh The first week of school is crazy chaotic madness. But I take the time and sometimes I have to work, you know, a little bit extra hours, but that's ok. 00:12:16 I, I take the time to reach out to all of my middle schoolers, uh parents or families um to welcome them to my class and I don't do a general uh boilerplate email. Um I, I individually write it to each family now, of course, some of it's copy pasted because it's very short and very welcoming and, but I will say something unique about their child in every email. Um Also part of that task is I'm very careful about honorifics. We have a, a student information system si s where we can look up. Are you Mr and Mr, are you doctor and Mrs? You know, that's very important. Um And maybe I'm maybe I lean toward the formal side. Um but I think that's important in the beginning until a family tells me, please call me James. I'm going to call them Doctor Smith or whatever it is. Um because I just, I lean toward that professionality of, of the the formality of that. Um So there's a lot of tasks that I'm doing in that very first communication. One, I'm sending a positive message first thing um within the first few days of school. 00:13:21 Um Secondly, I'm learning about a little bit about their family. Um Do the parents have the same last name? Do they have one parent, things like that? Um And using this information system to get that information. And then I'm also telling that family, I see your child um in two days, I can see a lot about a child. I mean, I know they're only in my class for 45 minutes a day because I teach middle school. But I can say Lindsay is really artistic. She is such a creative mind. I'm, I'm looking forward to working with her in algebra. Um, and how would I know that about Lindsay? Well, I see her doodling or I see her, you know, making her notes. Very beautiful, something like that. Or, you know, Keith is hilarious. I love his jokes and his great sense of humor that he brings to the class. Really. It's one sentence and, um, it really does go so far with that first step of building that partnership with, with the families. Hey, it's Lindsay, just popping in here to tell you what today's episode. Freebie is. Crystal is generously offering a complimentary author, Q and A with a school who does a book study with her book. When calling parents, isn't your calling? 00:14:25 If you're interested, grab her contact information at our blog post, Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 42. Be sure to let her know that we sent you back to the episode. So much of what you're saying is resonating with me because I actually have a 17 month old at the time of this recording. And so I, when I was in the classroom, it was always as a teacher without being a parent as well. And now being a parent, I just see so much of the daycare interaction. Like we got a journal home the other day because it's his first month in the toddler class. And it was like a little thing, like, as you know, you know, he always points to things and asks this and like wants someone to name it for him. And it's like that one sentence, like everything else was pretty generic and not super generic. But, you know, like enough that I was like, I understand this is probably a copy paste from some sort of list. But I was like that one thing was like, you see him like you, you get it and it makes me think also of this first week of school. I think a lot of times we feel as teachers in, in, you know, trying to cover curriculum or something that we have to just cram in curriculum versus truly using that week to get to know students. 00:15:34 And I'm almost envisioning to like to be able to merge those things. Like I, I'm envisioning like even doing like a a video for so you can get the tone with a student when you're like one on one conferencing or something. And like the student and you were like talking to the family member together on your laptop or something. I mean, there's so many possibilities of how you do it even within the school day in a way that's like this authentic kind of we're building relationship and you can see me interact with your kid kind of thing. I mean, just the potential for what you're saying is astronomical. It's so cool and it doesn't have to be email. Um I've, I've worked with some teachers who will use voice recordings um literally a 32nd, you know, on their phone, they record, you know, hey, Miss Smith, I, I love working with Joey. I'm so glad he's in my class. Um, and that might even be better for some people to send something like that. Um, maybe, maybe I'll try that one year but I or a video or something like that. So it doesn't have to be just an email and email is very quick and very fast. Um, but that's another and I think we got a lot of experience with using multimedia during the pandemic. 00:16:39 Um I, one of the things that I would do is is grab a ipad and the students had to submit all of their work electronically, right? While we were remote learning and I would grade their quizzes or tests or whatever it was with my Apple pencil. Um But I would hit record so they could hear me talking as I'm grading, I would say, oh right here, make sure you watch for a negative. Oh, it looks like you forgot to divide by four here or whatever it was. I don't do that anymore, but I got so much more used to using multimedia during that whole time that now I feel less intimidated by voice recording or email or by video. Yeah. Such such a good point. I, I think that that ability to recognize what we did when we were in like adaptation mode, there's so much that we could still carry over or carry over maybe in like a slightly different way. That would be really cool. Um Also what you just have reminded me of the honorifics. I love that you're really careful about that because I think so many times we especially so my background is in gender women studies. And so like thinking about gender as well for, I mean, even like people with students, but especially with, I think family members as well, like we don't always want to assume gender. 00:17:50 And then so sometimes to not assume gender, we don't use the honorific. And so then we use first names and then it's impersonal or then it's like overly personal. So it's like this really complex thing. And so I love the idea of just using student information system one to kind of research ahead of time. But then also just to be able to ask, you know, if you, if someone's not in the system or, you know, another family member tags along to a conference or something like to just always be careful with those honorifics. I just love that you've named that and I wanna make sure listeners heard it because I think it's brilliant. Yeah. And there's some research that I heard from N pr um reported by N pr that um people of color are less likely to be called by their honorifics, um which we need to be careful about, you know, we need to be careful that we're, we're being equitable in our communication. Um And I use them because I, I lean towards the formal and they, that may not be your school culture. Every school culture is different. Um But just being careful with what matches the school culture. Um I know that uh one of my colleagues will say, you know, good afternoon Garcia family, something like that. 00:18:51 Um Or if there's a hyphenated name, you know, um the Garcia Iverson family, something like that. And that is another way that if you don't know the information and you don't want to make assumptions, then you're addressing just the family by using their last name or their two last names. So there are so many variations of that. That's just a personal preference of mine and it fits the culture of our school. But then again, you gotta really read, read the room and read what your school does. Yeah, I, I think that's such an important point too is like reading the room and the culture of the school. But as you said too, there is like a racial component, there's a, a national or immigration component, there's like a language component, there's all sorts of things that would affect uh individual person's preference to be called an honorific or not. And it's so important to, yeah, read all of that context and then when in doubt, ask, right, like just default to this and you can ask the child if they're old enough, you know, you ask an older child. Um Can you tell me how, how does your, how does your caregiver or your grown up? I like to use the word grown up. How does your grown up like to be addressed? 00:19:53 Um And some will say my mom is very insistent on Doctor Smith, you know, like, ok, got it. Um So if you're not sure you can always follow up with the kid and it, and you learn a little bit more about the kids family when you're asking those questions too. Oh, brilliant. Awesome. So you've shared so many specific actions already. I'm wondering if there are additional things that you have either coached teachers on, written about in your book, done yourself found effective in terms of like specific things that we can do as educators to partner with families. Um I can tell you one, I was an instructional coach and um I can tell you this if you are asking a colleague to read your email because you don't wanna hit send because you think it sounds too harsh. That's your clue right there. It's too harsh. If you automatically want to ask somebody for advice, you know, you already know. Um I had a, a great colleague of mine. He was piping mad um because the parent was sending him some not nice emails too, which first of all that should stop. Let's just get on the phone or let's meet face to face with an administrator if you feel more comfortable with that. 00:21:00 Um And he sent me an email and said before I hit send, could you tell me what you think? I'm like, well, first of all, if you're asking me, you already know, and two, he had like all caps somewhere, some places in his email. I'm like, whoa, ok. No. Um, you're letting your emotions get in the way of a professional email here. Um And so I recommended that he make a phone call or make an appointment with the family. He was not open to that um Because he was so angry, which I completely get his emotions were there and they're very real. Um But I said it's time to loop in an administrator. Um So I would say that if you are feeling threatened in any way, you are feeling like this is a toxic situation that um emailing back and forth is not gonna be productive which most of the time it's not. Um get an administrator. Um I really hope that you work at a school that you have that support um And explain to your administrator. Um I have done this and this and this. I've done XYZ. I really need you to be in the room with me when I'm talking with this family. 00:22:03 Um And I really hope that they, they would support you in that. Um And also, you know, teachers who I would say this is generally advice for teachers who are relatively new to the field that you have the right to leave a situation that is getting aggressive or threatening. Um If it's not being productive, you can say very professionally, you know, um, if you're going to continue to talk to me in that way or if you're going to continue to raise your voice, I'm going to leave the room and that's very professional, but you're also respecting your boundaries. Boundaries are extremely important. Um because partnering with parents doesn't mean that you take verbal abuse. It doesn't mean that you take texts at 11 pm. I've actually gotten texts at 1 a.m. before. Um And I don't respond because I have boundaries and um hopefully the families will respect the fact that I didn't reply as a a clue as to that's not OK. Um And you know, I know some, some teachers give out their cell phones but also have boundaries around that um as well. So that's my advice for, for all teachers actually. 00:23:07 Yeah, that's a really good advice. And I, I imagine like that, that just right, there is another challenge, right? That, that, that we need to overcome is like being able to set those boundaries adhere to those boundaries, right? Like even if you're up at 1 a.m. replying indicates that this is an OK thing to continue, right? So I, I know we've kind of discussed several challenges. Is there any other challenge or what would you say? Might be maybe the biggest challenge in getting to that place of partnership with families. Yeah. Um, you know, in, in the book I offer, um, Senate starters because sometimes when we're calling, um, and, and, you know, I'm, I'm one of those people too. I don't necessarily love phone calls. Right. I, I prefer to text because it's faster and it's simpler and, you know, the phone calls are important and I do sometimes still after this many years of teaching, get a little bit nervous when I have to call when something's not great news. And sometimes that's why we're calling and, and we're not gonna necessarily call. Um you know, you should though, you should call when it's good news, but we're most likely calling when it's not great news. 00:24:11 Um But I offer sent starters um and they are ways to start the conversation to get the conversation flowing to have that back and forth with the parents. Um One of one of them that I can offer right now is sometimes when I was an administrator, not everything was really clear as to what actually happened between two students. So, like, let's say there's a disagreement at lunch. Um No one really witnessed it. And um there's a lot of ambiguity and I think every administrator listening to this and even teacher listening to this has experienced ambiguity in student situations. So I will call and say uh you know, you know, hello, Doctor Smith I wanted to ask you if Amelia told you about what happened at lunch yesterday. Did she share with you what happened? And then you stop talking because I think it's really important as the teacher or administrator sometimes just shut up and listen. Um I know it sounds really direct but just be quiet and maybe, maybe the parent will say, yeah, Amelia came home and told me that her friend poured milk into her pinto beans or you know, yes, this has actually happened to me. 00:25:18 That's um I'm like, really, can you tell me more about that? And I get that, that phrase of, tell me more about that from uh Michael Bungay Stanier. He writes a book called the Coaching Habit. I highly recommend the coaching habit book. It's short, it's sweet. It's great for every profession, not just for teachers, everybody, but tell me more about that. Tell me more. And when you do that with a kid, when you do that with a colleague, you do that with structural coaching, you do that with a parent, then it opens up that communication. So I highly recommend the phrase. Tell me more about that. And then I can say, hm, you know, you've given me a lot of good information. I'm gonna make some other phone calls about what happened with the milk and the pinto beans. And um I will get back to you. I'll follow up with you because you're not committing yourself to anything, right? Um So I would say just keeping that, like you said earlier in the episode of that curiosity mindset of, you know, I really don't know what went on. And even if you do know what went on, you know, that this kid hit another kid, something like that, ask the kid, tell me what happened, tell me what's going on. 00:26:23 Um, ask the parent, you know, is something going on at home? Anything, anything you want to share to help us partner together? Um And it's just keeping that tone. Um and the center starters help if you're nervous with getting, getting going with those. I love the sentence starters. I think those will be really helpful because sometimes it's just the blank email template or the blank just mind as you pick up the phone and you're, I don't know where this is gonna go. Please let voicemail pick up, please let me pick up. Yes. And, and it's interesting, some of the things you're saying too, I think about restorative practices and restorative conferences. Like we would often think about using them with students. But I think there's also this idea when I was trained in restorative conversations. It was you also invite the student to bring an advocate whether that's a peer or an adult. And it, it almost just feels like not even like maybe pre previewing that conversation or preliminarily just reaching out, but it almost feels like the same kind of vibe of like we are engaging with families as an advocate of their child knowing they're going to be an advocate for their child, of course, and we have that sense of curiosity that's going to kind of have almost like an asynchronous restorative conversation with different groups of people. 00:27:34 I think it's really cool. I, I love that whole idea of bringing an advocate in and, and restorative consequences and all of that. Um And it's so important that we convey that message that we are on your child's side. Yes, your child has consequences because we are on their side, right? And that the the parents most likely 90% of the time will be on board with that. Um I can tell you an example. I was talking to a, a dad, his daughter cheated on a test and um she is not the 1st 7th grader I've ever known in my life to cheat, you know, news splash and the dad was, it was his oldest child and he was just worried beyond belief about. Is, is this a red flag? Should we be worried about her? Is she a bad kid? I mean, all these things that the a parent rightly so will go through the emotions. And part of my job as an administrator is to say through my experience, no, this is not a red flag. She did something that she knew it wasn't right. She's going to have consequences. We're going to help her learn from this. But please don't worry as a parent. Right. Um, and that is our job, like we're gonna work together and we're gonna get her through this and, you know, seventh graders do odd things sometimes and it's, it's normal, developmentally normal. 00:28:44 So I love the reassurance in that. I just think as, you know, as a parent, that's exactly how I would want someone to respond to something that my child did. Right. And so I think having previously taught without that parent hat on, I, I think sometimes that's hard to get to. But if you could just kind of train your mind to be like, if I were a parent, if I'm not, you know, like, what would you want or even just you personally doing something we've all messed up, right? And I mess up regularly in front of students. So it's like, you know, how do we want people to treat us and give us the benefit of the doubt? Um That's, oh, beautiful. So I think we've talked about a ton of different things that people can do. I'm wondering especially if there's either someone new to either teaching or maybe new to an administrator role, like helping to facilitate those conversations and partnerships with families. What is the starting point? Like, what would you encourage listeners to do once they end the episode as like kind of a first go at this and building that foundation? Well, I I have two answers to that. Uh One I worked with the administrator who he led a PD. 00:29:45 This was years ago, he led a PD session where he had us write down on a piece of paper, something that we did that was really dumb in seventh grade or eighth grade. And of course he was not going to collect these, these were all confidential. But man, I had a list of things that I had done and it really reset all of it, whether we're parents or not, it reset our mind shift of like, yeah, we are gonna do some really dumb stuff and their prefrontal cortex is not developed. So of course, they're gonna make odd choices. Um And so it gives us an empathy, not that we're excusing the behavior or not giving consequences, but we have an empathy toward, you know, why when we ask 1/7 grader, I, I pick on seventh graders but it's mostly middle schoolers. But why did you throw that across the room? And they say, I don't know if they truly don't know, they truly don't. So it it that exercise, I would say administrators do that don't collect the data, let them throw it away, but just have them just reflect on something dumb you did when you were a teenager or a Tween. Um And then the, the other part for, for taking away for, for teachers is, you know, be more mindful about when is this an email? 00:30:54 And when is this a phone call and try your best to make a little bit more phone calls this school year, not every single one has to be because that's, that's overwhelming. But try your best to just lean into that a little bit more this school year. Um, and then also, um, do your best to try to send a happy note, um, to every single child in your, to the family of every single child in your classroom. Um I have, you know, have a roster and I make a little tick mark. Every time I send a happy note, it will make your day better. It makes the family stay better and encourages the child. Um because we tend to call or email about problems or superstar Children. But remember the Children who are in the middle of all of that, um who their families may not hear from you very much. So, really make an effort towards that. Those are my two pieces of advice. Oh, that's so good. And it, it makes me think about one thing that I used to use, not quite sentence starters but just kind of a vocabulary bank. Almost. Um positive psychologist came up with the values in action website. 00:31:55 And so there's like, I don't know, 27 character traits or values or whatever. And so I would just put those up in posters and then I would literally look and be like, OK, I have to think of something for the student like, oh definitely that character strength they demonstrated this week and this is how it like helps you fill in the gaps again. If you have that mind is blanking moment as you're trying to write. Um So yeah, having that list. Yes, I will. I can link it in the show notes that I was, I would, that would be so helpful. Yes. Awesome. So this next question is something that I have been asking and it has been a joy to hear people's answer. So totally for fun can be related to what you do for work but also can be very not related. So what is something that you have been learning about lately? Something I've been learning about lately is probably what a lot of educators are learning about is chat GP T and um I always say it wrong. That's why I say it slow. I have a teenage daughter who corrects me every time I say it wrong. Um So I, I'm trying to learn about that because it's a tool that we have to accept us here. Um And I use the word tool because it is very helpful. 00:32:59 Um I think we all have used it to help just craft some kind of writing of some kind but helping students see how it's a tool and not a replacement for your actual intellectual work. Um So I've been trying to read a lot about A I and what we can do to assess students true intellectual work rather than what they're generating with a prompt. I maybe I'm scratching the surface on what I know about it. Um But I'm trying to wrap my head around it the best I can. That's really cool. And I have been thinking about this too from the standpoint of assessment. It's just like, how do we assess? Right? Like maybe we change how we assess. So instead of responding to a prompt with an answer, I want you to create something like I want you to create a model of something, some concept or whatever, right? And so I think the possibilities are endless. And I think interestingly, I've never thought about this until our conversation. But maybe families also play a role in helping one to understand the context of like, what do I look for when I'm home and my student is completing their homework or doing this essay or whatever? But also like, what creative ways could we assess your child? 00:34:05 Because I think that would be really neat for them to weigh in on the skill set that child has or how they make sense of things at home, right? And then bring that into class. So, oh, that just makes me think of a million ideas. That would be a great like parent survey question. Yeah. To, to ask like, what do you want me to know about your child? And do you have ideas for how, how they can shine and, and show me what they know? Yeah. Oh, that's good. I hope listeners write that one down. That was good. And then finally, because so where can listeners learn more about you connect with you online? Get your book. Yeah. Yeah, thanks. Um So I have a website. It's uh Crystal frommer.com and my last name is Fromme RT. I'm also on Twitter at Mrs Frommer. Uh It's Mrs underscore Frommer and then you can also find me on linkedin. Um Those are the, the pages that I'm most frequently on. Um So yeah, reach out and look at the book, look at some of my portfolio I've written for Edutopia, things like that. So I'd love to have a conversation. Amazing. Thank you so much for joining us today. This is a fun episode. Super fun. Thank you. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, Sapir and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. 00:35:20 They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar. It's a brainstorm how I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth clients.com/contact. Until next time, leaders 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.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where we dive in to how to embark on a policy change:
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AuthorLindsay Lyons is an educational justice coach who helps schools and districts co-create feminist, antiracist civics-based curricula, discussion opportunities, and equitable policies that challenge, affirm, and inspire all students. A former NYC public school teacher, she holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Lindsay believes all students deserve literacy, criticality, and leadership skills. Archives
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