Creating A Culture Of Coaching with Romain Bertrand

I am so excited to kick off our inaugural Time for Teachership podcast episode, with my amazing guest, Romain Bertrand. He works at BetterLesson and full transparency, I contract with them as well. And so I'm so excited to call him a colleague. Romain is known for his work as an innovative, personalized learning leader, blogger (see his posts on blended learning and coaching), consultant, coach, and practitioner. He has done it all during his 20 years in education. He's led numerous educational innovations, including coding and robotics courses and blended and personalized learning programs. He is sharing so much wonderful insight with us today. I can't wait for you to hear it. 

​

​Lindsay Lyons:
Hello, Romain, and welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. I am super excited for our listeners to hear from you today and talk about the culture of coaching. Romain is the Senior Manager of Solution Design at BetterLesson, and he works with instructional coaches and leaders has a ton of expertise on blended and personalized learning.
And I think will be a great start to our podcast and just talking through what it looks like to support teachers in this day of COVID and uncertainty in everything. So welcome, Romain.

Romain Bertrand:
Thank you. Hello Lindsay. How are you?

Lindsay Lyons:
Good. Thank you. I would love to kind of frame the episode by thinking about three big components. One being, you know, our listeners are folks who think big in education. They have big transformative dreams. They want really the best of education to come to light in their school systems. We'll kind of move into what that looks like in terms of what they're needing to do to take action or what steps they can take to make those dreams a reality. And then we'll kind of finish up with how listeners can really live out their values and what's something that they can do in the next week or so to really feel that momentum and act on those dreams. So in terms of starting out, I'd love to think about. Recently, I've been inspired by Bettina Love. I read her book, We Want to Do More Than Survive, and it was amazing. This idea of freedom dreaming and thinking about "dreams grounded in the critique of injustice." I would love to know, like, what's your vision for schools for the system of education? What is the dream that you hold when you think about what education could be?
Romain Bertrand:
Great question to get started in such a great book. So I love the reference. I think that for me, when I read a book, what resonated with me is realizing how even when you think that you were working toward freedom and liberation of students that have been oppressed in doing so, you can perpetuate a system of oppression and intent doesn't matter. The impact is there, right? And one of the simplest ways for me to ground my vision is to talk about this evolution in my career, from this focus on closing the achievement gap, which for a while I thought was the right thing to do. I was either teaching in a school who had a diverse student population, but would be somehow segregated by courses, honors AP. And so within that same school, you would clearly see this achievement gap playing out, right? You would see a majority of white students in advanced placement courses and a majority of students of color in other courses.
Romain Bertrand:
And so my, my first reaction is to say, well, we've got to work really hard at closing this gap and this difference. And we've got to give the students more and, we have to figure out how we can support them, "they're behind blah, blah, blah," all of that thing. Right? But then slowly being able to have people help me open the eyes to really the fact that when we focus on the achievement gap, we actually focus on the product of a systemic racist system. And so the solutions we employ them, are not solutions that are really trying to dismantle this system. And if anything, they actually using measures of success that are by themselves. Oh, is he already racist? They're using that in trying to prove them wrong. Are they trying to increase standardized test results by 40% in a year? When we know that this is not really possible and it's, or if it's possible, it's not going to be done in a way that is going to be transformative for the learning path and the learning experience of students in my look good on the resume of a principal on a report card of a school, but it's not really gonna dramatically change the trajectory and experience of a student, right?
Romain Bertrand:
So I think the biggest reframing from me has been going to, from focusing on closing the achievement gap, to trying to talk and think about what is the opportunity gap in our school right now, because it's really a gap in opportunities. And when you reframe the achievement gap to a gap in opportunities, instead of looking at deficiencies, possibly in students and gaps to be closed or learning losses, you start looking at the opportunities that you are not offering your students and in particular, your students of color, how does that manifest itself, how your biases manifest themselves in the school. And...when you start really tackling this question, I feel like you can start really thinking about reframing the debate and dream about a different education system with very different foundations from the one we have now, as opposed to trying to close the gap within the very narrow frame of the current system we have in place.
Lindsay Lyons:
I love that answer. Cause I think it takes us back to, you know, why are we even doing education? Like what is the goal here in all of this? And so opening that up for dreaming about what those goals are, and that could be different, you know, for each school, for each teacher. But collectively determining as a community, you know, with all stakeholders, what does that look like? I love that. Thank you. In terms of what you've been talking to leaders about lately, I'm sure the question of how do we support teachers during COVID, you know, "What do we do? What's the right way forward?" How have you been really thinking about this struggle for leaders to support teachers in this time that is just very uncertain and everyone's kind of tense and anxious all around? What has been kind of your thinking about that? Or what do you say to leaders who ask you those kinds of questions?
Romain Bertrand:
I think it's, first of all, it's important to acknowledge how difficult a time it's been for school leaders This spring and summer, it has been incredibly stressful. It has been for them feeling like there was absolutely no break this year, right? Like school leaders always work hard. But when you know what the first day of school is going to look like in terms of schedule and terms of buses in terms of meals, all the things that you take for granted, usually right there, like water coming out of a faucet this year, they weren't, we didn't know where they were going to be. We didn't know in which modality we were going to be. We didn't know if we were going to start from a distance. So with the hybrid schedule, which hybrid schedule, if we start in a building, what are the guidelines that we really have to apply?
Romain Bertrand:
So that constantly moving target for them has created an enormous amount of stress. And when I meet them to support them where their design of professional development for their staff or design of, their distance learning plan or hybrid learning plan for students, I see the weight that this has on them and how difficult it is for them to continue to approach this also as in opportunity. And I'm not trying to find a silver lining to the situation because it's a very difficult situation, but it's also a moment sometime to pause and say, okay, well we have to do things a bit differently. We don't have a choice. Our schedule is going to look very different. So could it be a moment to actually really think about what we would like to do? What's our vision for quality learning and how does that vision look like in a moment like that?
Romain Bertrand:
And if we do that, you're going to find some challenges. You're going to be like, Oh, in our vision for student learning quality conversation between students and authentic collaboration is key. That's, that's what we value when we're in the building. And then if all of a sudden you have to start from a distance, or even if you have to start with a hybrid schedule in small groups in the classroom, in students being apart, physically, all of these create barriers initially toward what is one of your core idea. And so it's easy to just say, you know what, we're going to put it aside for now. And we're just going to try to do the best we can, but that cannot be one of our priorities, right? So when you help people rethink about their vision, they can see certain things emerging as challenges to achieve this, this vision.
Romain Bertrand:
But the irony, I think of this moment too, is that there are new opportunities because of certain things that we have finally decided to give a try to, in terms of using technology or using different types of schedules or in all of a sudden, we're discovering that our students can do a lot more than we thought they could do with a medium teachers as well. And we also unlocking possibilities, right? And so I think that to go back to your initial question, I think that my main focus right now is to try to help people continue to work toward what is their core vision for quality learning, trying to help them realize that the school they had created the identity they had created does not have to disappear due to this moment. And if anything, we should continue to travel with it in any of the realities we're in.
Romain Bertrand:
And that actually doing this can make things a lot easier, ultimately, because we're going to be creating systems that are focused on the same big ideas. And we're going to figure out a way to have them translate from reality to another, right. So I'm trying to help them do that. But I also am trying to help them not fall for the replication of, in the building systems that do not need to be replicated in the online space, but that we sometimes naturally do, just because that's the only thing we know. Well, because it hides some major issues we have around a lack of trust in students, and I'm trying to help them also avoid that. So it's like continuing to work toward your vision, not replicating the systems of oppression for the most part that you had in your buildings, using that as an opportunity and a moment to say, you know what, maybe we can do something different with that. Right. And so in a nutshell, that's how I would summarize like what almost every single meeting with school leaders is right now.
Lindsay Lyons:
I love so much of what you said there, I'm connecting a lot to that, kind of barrier that we have where we don't fully trust students. I hear that a lot in some of the questions that I don't necessarily think, teachers, as they ask them are realizing kind of that, that it's there. And sometimes by just calling attention to it, there's this really powerful rethinking that can occur, where we realize, Oh, when we center student’s voice and we just make that shift, the possibilities are endless. Cause now we're, co-creating now we have the engagement because students are buying in because they help to create, you know, how we're learning, what we're learning, how they're demonstrating learning. So I think that piece is, is huge that you hit on that, that unearthing kind of what we're, what our relationships with students are like. Do we see them as, you know, kiddos who have to take in what we say and be quiet and compliant, or do we see them as kind of co-constructors of the learning and we put that trust in them?
Lindsay Lyons:
So, absolutely. And the other thing I was thinking about was how you said defining their core vision. So you as kind of a coach of leaders are helping the leaders to say, what is it that I want to work on? What is my vision for the year? And I also think that translates to, you know, leaders, instructional leaders of the building, supporting teachers to do the work in pedagogically or designing curriculum, whatever that is in the classroom and kind of the importance of visioning to ground, the coaching work. Do you have any tips for leaders who are really taking on that instructional leader role this year and want to really hone in on what that looks like to be an instructional leader for their teachers?
Romain Bertrand:
So to me, it starts with liberating yourself from the obsession with numbers when it comes to standardized testing. I think that it's an even around the country, we have different cultures obviously, from district to district, from state to state, but there, is a really huge amount of pressure placed on school years around standardized testing. And if we want to identify ways, our system is racist. That pressure, that amount of pressure is not the same. If you are the school leader of a school with a majority of students of color or of your school leader of a school with a majority of white students. And let's say in an affluent suburb, that pressure does not look the same. The consequences of not meeting your numbers are not the same. The stress level put on your teachers is not the same, the turnaround, the turnover, the burnout, all of this, right.
Romain Bertrand:
We can name them. And I think, I think it's really important to not have empty talks about racism and equity in our school right now. It's really important to help people materialize. How does that exist? Because otherwise, people will start to say, well, these are just like big ideas. People are just trying to wake, et cetera, et cetera. So we have to really spell it out in our schools right now if you work in a school where the majority of students are students of color, you experience a much more stressful job than you experience it in another school. And not really because of the students, mostly because of the incredible amount of pressure put on you. And so, unfortunately for a while, I was seeing school leaders visioning too much with a number in mind, and that translates into "This year, we'll see X percent of students proficient and we'll see, Y percent of students growing, we'll see an improvement of Z percent over this."
Romain Bertrand:
And I'm not against that. I think it's important that we keep in mind that we have to have a high expectation for students and that they should be growing in relation to different measures, which we'll go back to this. But right now we, we're focusing only on one and that's a problem, but what we need to really spell out if we're visioning is how do we want our students to learn? What kind of experience do we value? What skills do we value growing on our students? What soft skills do we value going in our students? What culture do we want to build in each of our classrooms, in our hallway? Because I think that it is your way of actually achieving results. You don't do it just for the results you do it because that's what you want to lead a school. You want to create a space that has a personality that has a history that is a community.
Romain Bertrand:
And if you do this well, results will follow. But the first thing to do is to think about redefining, who we are, what we believe in. So my first tip would be to say, put the number aside for a second, a little bit. What is the quality learning experience you want to see your students have in every classroom and why? And we can't answer this question for you. We can help you answer this question as a team or individual, but it's really a personal journey. And it's really personnel we give to, to a school. The second advice I would give that is kind of relevant to this school year is that once you have extracted these big ideas, start thinking about what they can mean concretely in the different forms of learning that our students could be experiencing this year, as we might be shifting from distance learning to hybrid schedule, to being back in the building while having a group of students possibly still attending remotely, try to do the work of figuring out how does that look like in each of these realities?
Romain Bertrand:
So let's take a very concrete example that I think we talked about a little bit before. If you're saying regardless of where we are and how we're learning, we feel like our students should be collaborating every day. And here's why I will believe that this is an incredibly valuable skill that they will take to the workplace. We'll believe that's also how they can create a meaningful relationship with their peers. They're learning how to give feedback all of that, right? Then we should work really hard. I try not to say when we're in distance learning mode and everybody's home and teachers are teaching virtually, how does collaboration look like when we meet students synchronously when students are working asynchronously and how do we support teachers to be able to continue to have these collaborative spaces, even though the distance is there. And we can't use the excuse of distance or technology, because we actually know that there is an alpha there to figure out ways to do this, but we have to support teachers.
Romain Bertrand:
We have to support students who don't have access to the technology or to quality wifi. And then we have to teach the skills and the tools necessary to be able to do it. And that takes work. But what is beautiful this year is if you focus that work on collaboration from a distance, the day you can move half of your kids to the classroom or all of your kids to the classroom, guess what all these skills they are going to carry with them to the classroom. And one of the most interesting things we see right now is that in those schools that are using a hybrid schedule or in the schools that are coming in the building with 80% of their students, five days a week, it is still a, it's still really challenging to organize physical small groups. So when, when people are trying to focus on collaboration in the classroom, they find themselves very often thinking about the lesson plan, almost the same way they would have thought about a very, a collaborative distance learning lesson plan.
Romain Bertrand:
And so if you put in the work to make this happen, when we're in distance learning, odds are that you're going to continue on that path. When you go back in the classroom, you're not going to revert back to something that is way less collaborative because of the investment you made in that initially. And so I think that that is something we have to help people do this year. We have to help them break down their vision and make it concrete in a virtual space, make it concrete in a, in a physical space and try to see the connection between both.
Lindsay Lyons:
I love that you talk specifically about the "look fors" like what it—listing out—what does it actually look like? Right when we go into either a hybrid environment or a distance learning environment. And I'm, I'm just thinking about teachers who are wondering or even leaders who are wondering how am I going to do observation this year? What does that even look like? What do I prioritize? And I think that's something that I know I've been able to, to see some of the stuff that you've put together around student look fors for student voice and choice in the classroom and blended learning in the classroom in previous years that I think is really applicable now. And when we think about, you know, how teachers are evaluated, if we kind of say, culturally responsive teaching is important to us, or collaboration is important to us, but then we don't actually measure that or make that meaningful for an evaluative formal thing.
Lindsay Lyons:
When we're talking about teacher success and teacher quality, that that really doesn't align right with our values with our actions. And so I, I'm curious, if a leader wants to design something like this, like a look for list, what are some of the things that I know you've created lists like this before, and, and kind of working with leaders to help them implement lists like this? What are some things that you would recommend encouraging leaders again, to kind of think beyond that? As you said, the numbers there and what might be things that they should look like in the class—look at in the class.
Romain Bertrand:
Yeah, that's a really good question. I, so I think  the first thing I want to say about this topic of look fors and observation. We have to be extremely careful this year. And I think we can use a classroom analogy. Any good teacher will really not want their students to have a summative assessment while being blindsided all year around. What's going to be on that summative assessment, right? So the, we don't have to worry about evaluations right now. Unfortunately they do have to worry about evaluation for compliance reasons, probably like we have to do them, but the major flaw right now is we have to already think about evaluation, but we haven't really created a tool that helps teachers self-assess in relation to distance learning or the flexible learning to be able to see, see, okay, so these are the expectation or this is what can be, this is what can be done in an environmental quality.
Romain Bertrand:
This is where I'm at. This is how I could get better. And this is how you could help me. And if we're trying to think about evaluation before having thought about the other thing, it's going to be very challenging and unfair for teachers. And last year it was already very difficult. But last year I think we had removed a lot of the accountability measure measures for students. We had paused on, on some of the accountability measures for staff, but we can feel this here, that these are being reintroduced. So, but we have to make sure first and foremost, that we reintroduce systems of self-assessment and support systems of professional development before we think about evaluation, right? So now, how could we, how can we help leaders actually have created a tool that I use with leaders in sessions and workshops or, or an individual strategic planning session where we, we help them a vision.
Romain Bertrand:
And then we break down learning into four pillars, synchronous and asynchronous, of course, right now are important. But we also try to focus on culture of coaching and relationship building and, the use of data for feedback and culture and relationship building and use of data for feedback exists in both the synchronous and asynchronous reality. So we help them break down, instruction into these four pillars, and then the tool and our support help them identify what are things you look for in a classroom when you walk in and you're observing a class where students seem to be working independently at their own pace on possibly different objectives that happened in our class. And we should be encouraging that that might be students working on a project-based unit. And we see different students working on a different topic at a different pace. And so they had a different phase of the project.
Romain Bertrand:
If you're walking in a classroom, you're observing a classroom working this way, what do you look for in the students? What'd you? What do you want to see? What, what do you want to see in educators? How what's the role that they should be playing? What does quality look like? They're right. Let's define that right in the building. And then, yeah, we can start thinking about defining what asynchronous learning looks like in distance learning. And part of it is thinking about how some of what we saw in the classroom happening during these asynchronous learning time can translate into a student's working on a project, evidence of progress, and teachers providing feedback asynchronously. We see things that we can try to translate to the other reality. We see things that have to be completely invented and created because it's a new medium. So we try to help them do this work so that they can start figuring out, how they can support their stuff.
Romain Bertrand:
And honestly, when you do this exercise, the first thing that comes to their mind is not really evaluation. You can feel that they're saying something like, Oh gosh, if really this is what's possible. And what teachers could be doing in that medium have better prepare them for that. Because, because last year we didn't set the bar there, right. So if we're going to set the bar there this year, then we ahead of evaluation. We have to think about how we support teachers to be able to do this. Right. And I don't know if with a podcast we can share resources, but if you want, I can give you this template that we talked about and we can add it. Because I know you'd like to geek out on it.
Lindsay Lyons:
I'm such a teacher nerd. That is awesome. Thank you so much for being willing to share that. I appreciate that. And it's, it's, I mean, just  the things that you create are really wonderful. So I just want to say, like, it is totally, totally useful to take a look at that. And I just want to highlight a couple of things that you said that I think are really important. One of which, like, things are transferable, I think in some of the workshops that I've been doing lately, you know, asking teachers to start with, what, what did this look like in the classroom? One of the most common things I hear is, well, we would do a think pair share, and I can't do that at a distance. And then it's like, okay, well, do you have access to breakout rooms? What if we did it in this way? How about we do Google Doc commenting? Okay. A student doesn't want to write in there, they're struggling with written language. What if we use Vocaroo as a tech tool to add that audio link in the google.com? It's like just, just, I think starting with, what did this look like in the physical classroom can really help people brainstorm? What could this look like?
Romain Bertrand:
I think you're right. I read a lot of people were just like, always warning us from like this idea of trying to replicate what we're doing in the classroom. But there is, there is a difference between replicating exactly what was happening in the classroom, especially if it wasn't a good idea in the first place. And we're replicating it because we think that's what we needed to do. And thinking about good teaching simply and what they look like in the classroom to try to get us to be inspired and create something similar from a distance. There's a big difference between these two things, right? But we see both of these things happening right now. My son was telling me this morning that there's a new trend among his teachers this week. And I don't know why, but it is. And I'm sure going to try to say that in the nicest way it is to put students in individual breakout rooms in zoom while they do their independent work.
Romain Bertrand:
And also according to him, not necessarily swinging by his room to have a one on one conversation with them or to check on him. He's just being put in an individual breakout room. And then at the end of the lesson, he's brought back, and you're like, is it, is it an effort to replicate a class where single desk rows, independent, silent work for 30 minutes, but you can't leave the room unless you have a pass or...? If that's the case, actually it doesn't work because if you don't swing by the room, the computer could be on and they could just be doing something else. Right. But it's really interesting, right? It's really trying to replicate something that is already not necessarily practice that we want to be encouraged for independent work, but also with what we're living right now, our kids more than ever collaborative breakout spaces, they miss their peers that never get to see them.
Romain Bertrand:
They never will get to work with them. Right? And so that's an example of like, we're trying to replicate and we see people testing this way. Right now we see people, we see people having to give a summative assessment or, or at least a quarterly assessment, as the map test and choosing to have a closet zoom in for two hours, or being asked to have a class zoom in for two hours. So that we want to try to avoid because it's really, really counterproductive. And it really kind of kills students' joy for this is learning. But then we see other things like the other day, I was seeing somebody who had just created this simple slide to open our class every day that had a timer with a countdown that had some music playing in it that has some nice encouraging messages for students.
Romain Bertrand:
It adds some prompts for their chitchat. In the beginning, a question, they could ask each other and it was encouraging them to come into the room and chat with each other. And it starts like five or seven minutes before the class actually really starts. And the teacher was just saying, you know since I started doing this, I see more and more people showing up on time or even early because they want to catch up with their friends. Right. So in that particular example, you're trying to recreate something maybe that will be from the classroom, like on arrival early in my class, I get to chit chat when my teacher, when I'm walking out the door and maybe if she's nice when I come in and I get to catch up with my friends who a little bit, we're talking, maybe she plays a little music in there and that makes me feel like we're part of a community, right? And so it's like trying to replicate what students need from the old model while not trying to replicate what actually they didn't need is a great time to part from, and I think that that's, that's, that's that work that we have to support teachers doing. And a lot of them are doing it by themselves. They'd be very creative and then try to figure that out, but we got to support them better and more.
Lindsay Lyons:
Awesome. I was just noting, there are so many great, like key ideas here is just kind of working backward from all of the great ideas that you had shared today. And so I'm going to try to recap some, but please feel free to jump in. If I miss anything I heard really the big idea is starting with a vision starting to clarify, like, where are we going? And then embedding in kind of, I think leader coaching as well as teacher coaching, that self-assessment piece. So that critical awareness of like, what do, where do I want to go as an individual as well, who is a member of the school community and supporting the school vision, but where am I right now? And then enabling teachers to ask for help around that specific place that they want to get to. I know that the way that your coach is very vision-oriented.
Lindsay Lyons:
And so saying, you know, I want to support a leader to achieve that dream that they have, or, or a teacher to support a dream that they have. It starts really with that self-assessment of, of self, right? How do I teach her? How do I lead currently? Where do I want to go? Can you help me with this? And I think when we're talking about instructional leadership this year, that's critical. And then I also heard the look fors, not with the intention necessarily to evaluate, but the look fors and writing those specifically down, what do I want to see in the class as a way to think about the support you want to offer to your teachers this year and the workforce perhaps connected even to that self assessment and the teacher vision, right? Like where do my teachers want to go, let's connect what we're trying to do as a school, to those individual visions and how do I then work backward to support them? Yeah, absolutely.
Romain Bertrand:
Even if it's the year to really do away with random walkthroughs in a classroom it's this year. And if we could replace this by, "Hey, I'd like to come to see you tomorrow, teach one of your live class to support, to give some feedback after do some coaching. What is a good moment to come tomorrow? And during that moment, what are you interested in me paying attention to what, what feels challenging right now? What are you working on? What are you trying to improve during your live meetings with students?" Right. So trying to, so when you do that, work of talking to a teacher briefly before going to see them and asking them what they want to get better at most of the time, they'll tell you, and then you can create these look for us for what we're observing. Right. And you can also realize through that exercise when they're not even imagining that something can be possible in the medium and that you can help them see, what's not possible right before that you have to have that conversation before. So yeah, definitely. It's very important to try to determine this look fors with the teacher, collaboratively.
Lindsay Lyons:
Awesome. And then as, as thinking about the leaders who are trying to decrease the anxiety of teachers who are shifting to the distance space, I'm also hearing kind of, we're not looking for replication for replication sake, but we're looking for purpose-driven replication. So if we are, you know, trying to replicate the community that students have been missing, because they can't go over to their friend's house anymore, you know? Yes, that purpose is valuable to student learning. We're going to replicate that into distance space versus replication because this is "how the school has always been done."
Romain Bertrand:
I love that term that you coined, we're looking for a "purpose-driven replication" and purpose drove innovation too, right? At the same time. It's a good moment to realize when, when there is something that actually has to be reinvented for space, Oh. That we have to do very differently because of this space. And if you allow me, cause I know we're almost at time, I'd like to share an example for that one right now, something that I think we're going to have to realize has to happen. That is actually good news, which is that one thing that we cannot replicate well right now, especially if we're doing distance learning is assessing via long multiple-choice tests. The good news is it was already not a good thing in a classroom before, but we were doing it because it was the easiest laziest way that we had found to hold people accountable and to measure growth and impact.
Romain Bertrand:
Well in the medium, we're all learning that this is incredibly impossible. We're starting to see people will try to do it despite that, and in doing so, trying to police student's environment and home and their parents in a way that is so inappropriate. People need assessments though. And they need to give feedback. They need to be able to give feedback to students. Students need assessments too. So you didn't see in the motivation of doing a task and getting some feedback on it, getting a sense that they succeeded in getting a sense of what they can do better essential. Right? And so I think that we're discovering that this medium, for us to think about different ways to assess that we definitely should be focusing on assessing in a more authentic, shorter way, in a way that is more embedded in a task. And with distance running a very simple idea, we have to add the student's voice to the assessment.
Romain Bertrand:
We have to add a dimension where the student is able to explain an idea that a video of your podcast, as opposed to just having them picking some solutions, right. And that is one of the best ways a teacher can actually either live or recorded, really hear their student thinking and be able to, um, to catch them in action. And that is actually beautiful because that's something that in our assessments for a while, while we were in prioritizing anymore, we were in prioritizing student presentation of projects and in standardized assessment, but maybe this is going to help us reprioritize this piece.
Lindsay Lyons:
I love that. And there's so much there that is central to curriculum design, to pedagogy, to student voice and student-centeredness that I think if there's anywhere to start, at least for me, it would be there. And so thinking about, you know, if we're talking about redefining curriculum and pedagogy, let's start with, how are we assessing students? And I love that you specifically use the language of feedback with an assessment. It's not about the grade as a static thing. Like this is the label we're putting on this child's expertise, but it is a constant evolutionary process. We're on the path towards mastery and you know, where are we? And we need that feedback to help us get there. So I love that and I would encourage leaders to use language like that to be intentional. Yeah. So the final thing I think I'm, I'm interested in is if you could just pick, we talked about a lot of things, but if you could just say one thing that a leader could start with tomorrow, that they could do to really support teachers to really live in alignment with this, this value of, um, racial justice in schools and culturally responsive teaching be like the best leader they can be. What would that one thing be to start?
Romain Bertrand:
Ideally, it would be scrap all the old assessments and change the way we're assessing students and change the way you're assessing yourself too. Because if, if we did that for administrators and for students, we would see a completely different school. We're going to live under the assumption that we can not necessarily do that right this year at the moment. So I think we have to create a culture of coaching, of comfort awareness and comfort around critical conversations about race and racism. We have to model that work ourselves as leader, without staff. And then we have to create the spaces where we can have these experiences, and, and teachers can start having conversations around how is our system racist right now, inequitable. And what does it mean to extract that without you feeling all right away, that you're like, you're a horrible person and you're just like tensing up and closing up because of that?
Romain Bertrand:
So, definitely one of the keys for a school leader would be to start engaging, have staff engage in those experiences. And this is not an easy thing to do yourself if you've never done it. And so, there are many organizations out there, including mine who are offering workshops that can really help teachers go from awareness to then eventually action too, and to follow that continuum. It's...one of my dreams for the education system is to say school leaders will have the money and will believe that investing their money in training like that is going to be creating a dramatic transformation for their staff and students.
Lindsay Lyons:
There's so much in what you said that I would love to like do the conversation for another hour to think about, about unpacking that. But I love the priority there on learning, modeling, learning, modeling, discomfort in the learning journey as a leader and really making space for, for adults to learn as a staff, because that's what we're asking students to do every day, come in, be uncomfortable grow. And I think prioritizing racial justice is so critical to our work. This is also a great example of how leaders and teachers can model for students. I'm willing to put in this work. You know, I am willing to do this tough stuff and I'm willing to go on that learning journey, just like I asked you to go on that learning journey every day. So I love that.
Romain Bertrand:
Yeah. And so I think that's the start. And then if I were to, if you give me a chance to add a second thing, which has, I know I wasn't in the plan, try to a culture of coaching, try to create a culture for, people feeling comfortable receiving feedback from leaders and peers, people feeling comfortable helping others grow at something that, they're not yet an expert at trying to create avenues for people to open the doors of their classroom and invite the peers or go see their peers and, and grow and invest in each other. I feel like a school leader that can invest in creating a culture of coaching can really transform a school. I had a principal 10 years ago, Allison Welcher who was so focused on creating a culture of coaching in our school in a real culture of coaching with, with school leaders who could be evaluator, but for, for a certain group of teachers in the building would not be the evaluator and we'll put the coaching hat on and we just help people weekly or biweekly getting better at what they do.
Romain Bertrand:
And when you create a culture like that, people, people crave that people want that type of support. And so workshops are great, but if we really want to go from awareness to action, we have to personalize the support we give to people. Because some of this work is really hard. And, and so it's not going to happen just after a workshop like this. Well, after listening to a podcast.
Lindsay Lyons:
Excellent point, this is not just a one-time event, right? This is a, I've been talking about adaptive challenges and adaptive leadership lately. And it is, it is an adaptive challenge, right? We have to truly adapt our underlying mindsets and beliefs and all this stuff to make that change happen. So I know you briefly mentioned a better lesson. It has workshops on racial justice, on coaching, on all sorts of stuff. Um, where can either connect with you directly connect with your organization, learn more about all that stuff that they could do to continue their learning journey?
Romain Bertrand:
Yeah. So you can go to BetterLesson.com and you will find already all the free resources, lesson plans from our master teachers, we just launched  a brand new master teacher program with 21 educators in the Kansas city area who are implementing culture, responsive strategies in a classroom. And, and we've been able to capture them in action and you can go there and see what they do and get inspired and try to do this with kids. And it's really not just a site. When you go get a worksheet, it's like you go and you see videos of the class and you see the whole unit, right. So you can really get that. You can also there see what we offer for professional development and all the workshops. And we have created a lot of workshops to support people with distance and flexible learning right now.
Romain Bertrand:
And so definitely go to BetterLesson.com. You can also follow us on social media and Facebook and Twitter at better lesson for me on Twitter, you can find me on Instagram @HTDcompletely, which a lot of people think means after they meet me, how to differentiate completely because they think, you know, he's an education geek and all that, but it's actually inspired by a Radiohead song called How to Disappear Completely. And if there's one thing you do after this podcast is going to listen to this song by Tom York, then I'll be really happy.
Lindsay Lyons:
I never knew that. That is so amazing. I'm going to have to go listen to that song. Well, thank you so, so much for being on this podcast. I'm so excited that I got to kick it off with you. And I think there's so much in here for leaders, I'm excited for them to listen. And if leaders who are listening, want to share what your biggest takeaways were. Absolutely, please share that on social media, share this episode with folks. I think there's, there's so much in there that I think it can't just remain in our individual earbuds. We gotta spread the word. Yeah.
Romain Bertrand:
Awesome. Thank you so much for the chance to talk with you. Of course. Thank you.

Template to Create a Vision and Aligned Look For for Distance and in Person Learning 

​Lindsay Lyons:
Thanks for listening. Amazing educators. If you loved this episode, you can share it on social media and tag me @LindsayBethLyons, or leave a review of the show. So leaders like you will be more likely to find it, to continue the conversation you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries until next time leaders continue to think big act brave and be your best self.