Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, we talk with Jillayne Flanders and Dr. Orinthia Harris—Jill and Dr. OH—about the critical and necessary shift from compliance to compassion in education, particularly early childhood education. They introduce themes from their two books, Little Learners, Big Hearts, and Advancing Empathy and Equity in Early Childhood Education, both of which are centered on the heart—compassion as the root of all equity practices.
Advocating for embedding empathy and equity into teaching practices, Jill and Dr. OH offer practical tools to educators to move from compliance to compassion in their classrooms, centering everything they do on values of compassion, empathy, and equity. The Big Dream Jill articulates a powerful vision for education: "That every child sees themselves reflected, somehow, in wherever they are in the world.” This involves zooming out to look around the classroom to see if there are posters, pictures, books, or other things that represent each child, their families, and cultures. Dr. OH continues, dreaming of an educational space where all teachers are mindful of their interactions with students, basing them on compassion. This takes emotional intelligence on the part of the educator to self-regulate and interact with a child in a way that encodes in each student’s mind that they are worthy, belong, and matter. Mindset Shifts Required Shifting from compliance to compassion requires one big mindset shift: seeing teaching, simply, as a series of interactions. So, how are you interacting with students? Is it rooted in compassion and empathy? By shifting to this perspective, educators can focus on each interaction with a student as an opportunity to be compassionate, meeting students where they are. Action Steps Shifting from a mindset of compliance to one of compassion starts with the heart. Dr. OH and Jill developed the acronym HEART+ to show educators what this practically looks like. Here are the six steps to embody an anti-racist and pro-human educational practice: H—Hope: Start with hope. It’s what drives action and makes change. While everything can feel overwhelming, you can focus on what’s possible in your context. No, racism isn’t going to end in your lifetime, but it can end in your classroom—that’s hope. H—Education: This step is about self-education, where teachers learn about both themselves and their students. Educate yourself about what students are dealing with and suffering with. It’s not their responsibility to educate you, but yours to learn. A—Acknowledge: After you’ve learned about what your students and their families are experiencing, you must acknowledge the suffering they’re going through. We cannot abolish what we cannot acknowledge! R—Resolution: You’ve learned, you’ve acknowledged—now, what to do? Resolve to take action. Dr. O and Jill lay out many practical action steps educators can do to implement in their classrooms, meetings, or professional development settings. T—Teaching: Teaching is nothing more than a set of interactions—are they based on compassion? How are you teaching and interacting? Keep this mindset in place and focus on that individual student interaction level. PLUS: The + in the HEART+ acronym accounts for individuality and specificity to each educator, classroom, or community situation. You need to adapt and change to your specific context, not just following protocols or using resources robotically. Challenges? One of the significant challenges in this work is navigating the discomfort and resistance that may arise when discussing equity and diversity. Leaders must be prepared to support faculty and staff through these difficult conversations, encouraging self-reflection and examination of unconscious biases, while using tools and resources to support their work. One Step to Get Started One simple step for educators to get started is a mindset shift: have an internal conversation and ask, “Where am I coming from? What are my internal biases?” It’s a hard thing to do, but an important place to start. Educators can also consider a simple action step to take, such as integrating children's literature into your classroom or faculty meetings—it opens conversations and is a non-threatening entry point for meaningful discussions on identity and diversity. Stay Connected You can find this Dr. OH online under the names @STEMearly on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube and @OrinthiaHarrisPhD on Instagram as well. Both Dr. OH and Jill are associated with the Center for Educational Improvement, which you can learn more about on their website. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guests are sharing their video series How to Choose PD that Honors Early Childhood Teachers with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 228 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Jill and Dr O. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Hey, thank you for having us. Hi so excited you're here I'm really excited to talk about. I have both books on my table here, so we have Little Learners, big Hearts, which is kind of the teacher version, if I've got that right, and then the Advancing Empathy and Equity in Early Childhood Education, the leader kind of companion book. I've read them both. I'm excited to dig in. Is there anything that you both kind of want to frame before we jump into the questions today around the book, or kind of what's on your mind? 00:34 - Jill Flanders (Guest) Oh, please do, Orinthia, you are really good at setting the stage. 00:39 - Dr. OH (Guest) Well, first of all, thank you for having us. We're excited. I'm glad you read both books and enjoyed both books. You know everything we do is centered around the heart and what compassion and empathy and equity really look like. So just want to center this conversation on. We're really interested in moving from compliance to compassion and that's what these both of these books are really all about. Especially in an age where words like equity and inclusion are being demonized, we really want to set the conversation that the basis of all equity work is compassion, which is a work of the heart. So hopefully in this conversation you'll hear our passion for that come through, versus anything that might be considered divisive and like. I don't understand why these terms are being demonized, but I want to acknowledge that they are and just say from the get this is really about compassion, it's not about compliance. It's not about checking a box. It's about what does advancing empathy and equity really look like when it comes to our teaching practices. 01:48 - Jill Flanders (Guest) That's so well said, erinthea. And by really focusing on early childhood education, we're clear that three-year-olds don't come to us alone. They come to us with their families, and the conversation then is extended not from what just happens in your classroom or your program, but to what we can encourage around compassion and empathy for families and how they interact in the world. And I think the other theme that you're going to hear from us today is that it's not okay to do nothing. We're really going to suggest some easy things that can happen by the end of the program and then some more challenging things that educators and parents might want to choose to do to elevate compassion. 02:37 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Love that and, as I was saying to Jill right before having a doctorate, that I, as a parent of a three-year-old, right now really connected on the parent level as well as the educator level, so really excited about that piece, feels really valuable. We're already like using some of the strategies and just like thinking about the approaches, so it has been very helpful. Thank you, um and and I think one of the big questions I want to start with, so we'll get really big and then we'll come back to the book. But but I really love Dr Bettina loves like words and the way she says things, and so she talks about freedom, dreaming by saying their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, which I love, and I think it's really connected to your book. So I'm just I'm curious from each of you what is your kind of big dream that you hold for education? 03:21 - Jill Flanders (Guest) Oh, absolutely that every child sees themselves reflected, somehow reflect who you are in your family, what's your culture. We'll talk about that a little bit in personal terms for us, but it's one of the easiest first steps is just take that big scan of what's going on around you. So, absolutely connecting to Bettina Love in terms of are you reflected in your daily world? 04:08 - Dr. OH (Guest) That's good. I think my big dream is that teachers would be mindful in all of their interactions with students and that their interactions would be based on compassion, which would take emotional intelligence on the part of every educator and them being able to regulate their own emotions because kids can take us there. We say, oh, it's just a three-year-old, it's just a four-year-old, but they can take us there. And so my big dream is that teachers everywhere would be mindful in their interactions with students, knowing that when they interact with students, they're actually encoding something in their brain. And I would love for teachers to consistently encode in the brains of students, especially young students birth to five, that they're worthy and that they belong and that, even if they're getting on my nerves and I'm at my short fuse, I have enough emotional intelligence to know and self-regulation to know when I interact with this child, I am encoding something in their brain and I would love it for it always to be to encode you're worthy, you belong, you matter, even if you're getting on my nerves. 05:23 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That resonates deeply. Thank you for that. That is really good, and I think so. I think this might be a good time to introduce the hard or hard plus framework that you all talk about, because I think that really grounds and connects to what you're talking about. Does one of you want to maybe start and the other can jump in? 05:43 - Dr. OH (Guest) I'll jump in. And so this came about as we were doing this work and teachers were saying what can I practically do to be anti-racist, pro-human in my practice? Like we learned about it, we're learning about, but what can I do? What does that process look like? And so I came up with this acronym HEART, because it really is. Equity is a work of heart, right? Anti-racism, it's all a work of heart. And so the acronym is the H is for hope. 06:09 You have to start with hope. We're not going to end racism in our lifetime, but you can end it in your classroom. And if you don't start from a point of I can do something in my classroom in my lifetime, in my generation, then it's just going to seem too big and you'll get frustrated. And again we talk about how hope wishful thinking is not hopeful living right, when you have hope, hope has feet, which means I'm going to do something about it. And so you have to come in, not with the mindset of the savior complex, and also not with the mindset of being oh my gosh, this is too big, but with the mindset of in my classroom, in my time, in my lifetime, even if it's just this one family, this one student, I can make a difference. So you have to start with hope and then you have to go to the education piece. You have to educate yourself and we say self-education about your families, your students and what they're dealing with. What is the suffering that they're dealing with? It is not their responsibility to, it's not their responsibility to educate you. You have to educate yourself because they're the ones going through the trauma and the you know all the things. And so a lot of times when the Black Lives Matter movement happened and Black people as a culture were experiencing a lot of trauma Like I didn't watch the George Floyd tape, I didn't watch any of it, and my kids didn't watch the news or any of it People were coming to me saying, well, what can we do? What can we do? It's almost like if you lose a loved one and you're grieving and people are asking you what should we do? What should we do? No, just pick up a mop, bring a casserole, don't ask me Right. And so if you're dealing with students and families that are dealing with suffering, you have to educate. What is their history? What are they dealing with? What are some of the things that I can do? 08:03 And once you educate yourself, then that comes to the A, which is the acknowledgement. You have to acknowledge the suffering that people are going through, because oftentimes we see it, we educate ourselves with it, but then we want to turn the blind's eye. You cannot abolish what you will not acknowledge right and so now that? And you cannot acknowledge what you do not acknowledge right and so now that? And you cannot acknowledge but you do not know. So now that we know right, cause we've done the self-education, let us acknowledge that this is an issue. And then let's go to the R, let's make a resolution. What am I gonna do? I resolve to blank and we have a ton of resources in both books of practical things that you can do. I resolve to blank and we have a ton of resources in both books of practical things that you can do your resolutions. These are things you can do with your staff, with your students, with your families, with your own children. We give you a ton of resources so you can say you know what for this school year, I resolve to do this at the first staff meeting of every month, or I resolve to do that and then the last T. The T is for teaching. 09:12 We subscribe to the definition that teaching is nothing more than a set of interactions. Right, and so are our interactions based in compassion. How are you teaching? How are you interacting? I did a session yesterday and we talked about moving from compliance to compassion. If a student says I need water, and you throw the water at them or you give them water in a dirty glass, did you really give them what they needed? Yes, you resolved, I'm going to give water, but did you give water in a way that is receptive, that the student could, you know, literally drink the water? You know so that T is so important, because we have to remind people that teaching is nothing more than a series of interactions. So, with that resolution, yeah, we're going to do this staff meeting once a month and we're going to dig into the activity at the end of chapter five, because it's on bullying and we really like that. How are you presenting that activity to your staff? Are you just throwing them a worksheet? All right, guys, let's do this work Like no. 10:23 And then we added a plus. We said heart plus. The reason why we added the plus is because we understand that every school, every family, every community is unique, and so the plus means what are you going to do to make this cater to your school, right? So maybe we have one through 10 and you may need number 11, or maybe we have one through 10 and five doesn't resonate with your building. Okay, then, don't do number five. 10:54 A lot of times we get these resources and we want to use them as like robotic, and we cannot do that, and so that's why we added the plus for schools to be mindful that this has to be catered to your population, because it's so important that we honor those whom we serve and we don't throw stuff at them that may not fit into their culture, their tribal culture. You know their, whatever their culture, their religious culture, whatever it is in the building. So when you're looking at the heart again, you start with hope. Then you self-educate, you acknowledge the education that you've gained, you make a resolution what are you going to do? And then, when it comes to my teaching, my interaction, how am I going to do that? And I'm going to go to plus. I'm going to make sure this works for my people. That was a lot. 11:54 - Jill Flanders (Guest) There you go All of the training in 10 minutes. We're also really cognizant that it's not always in any kind of sequential order. Yes, you can spell the word heart, but you may need to jump ahead, you may need to go back and revisit, you need to read the room. In other words, and from my perspective as a former principal, that's probably the number one building block. It's starting with, as Dr Rose said, the relationships you're building, the communication you're having, getting to know your program, your community, your faculty and your families, and what are the things that will resonate with them and your families and what are the things that will resonate with them. 12:45 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love it. There's so much in there that is just like so connected. I just I love, even just foundationally, that teaching is a series of interactions, right, and this idea that it is dynamic, it is not I'm going to throw this stuff at you Like literally. I'm not going to just literally throw it at you. Yeah, okay, this is resonating deeply. Thank you all. So I think I want to make sure we get to the leader pieces, so I'm trying to pace us on time too. I'm curious, while we can like be in the teacher space for a minute, if there is a particular strategy or kind of aha moment or like thing you want to lift up from the book and I can share a couple of mine. If you want to like kick it off with that, oh yeah, I'd love to. So I really liked. 13:18 I liked the children's literature. Having a three-year-old, I immediately got Strictly no Elephants, which has become an immediate favorite. So thank you for that recommendation. But also, you know, all of the analysis of made total sense to me. So, like the sweet words, jar loves, like the calmness elevator, just like the rainbow breathing. There are so many things we're already doing in my home now because of this book. So thank you. Are there favorite pieces for you all from that? 13:53 - Jill Flanders (Guest) classroom lens, the teacher lens for you all from that classroom lens, the teacher lens. The children's literature, I think, is probably the least controversial method to begin in many, many different layers. So when we talk a little bit more about the leadership part of this, I would also begin there with children's literature In my heart. I would love to see any principal starting off faculty meetings with one good children's book that opens the conversation. I would love to see this in middle school and high school because the conversations so often have not happened there. But what a way to just open the door. We also, the book, talk about taking different paths with children's literature. You can go to Ibram Kendi and start off with Anti-Racist Baby if you really want to jump right in, but you don't have to. 14:48 There are lots of other choices and I think one of my favorite things to look at you mentioned it about the percentages of children's books that are based with animal characters. It takes a little while. You might want to spend some time up and down the aisles, but I've been looking more, you know, more focused on books that have actual photographs of real kids, real families, and this was one that just melted my heart my youngest daughter's married to a Puerto Rican, a handsome Puerto Rican man, and their two daughters have very different shades of skin. Alina the oldest, at one point when she was three or four, announced to me out of the blue, as three-year-olds do Grimmie, my skin matches daddy's, but Elise, the younger sister, Elise's skin matches mommy's, and you know what? I think that's really cool and we're both Puerto Rican, but you know what? Grimmy, Mommy's never going to be Puerto Rican. 15:53 So it's like, okay, there's a whole bunch of stuff that I knew in my educator brain. I should jump on this as a teachable moment. Of course, I just sat there with my mouth open and said, yep, you're right. But I found some awesome books that you know. One in particular is the Color of Us, and when I did bring it home and showed Alina, her first reaction at age three was to match her arm to the photos in the book. Now, we should be doing that. We have to have the opportunities for kids to be able to do that. 16:24 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely, Dr O. Do you have a favorite strategy or piece from the book? 16:29 - Dr. OH (Guest) I would also say the chart that allows leaders to know what books are where on the continuum of the conversation. So leaders are equipped by saying okay, if I start with Born on Water, here's some of the things that I can do. Here's some of the conversations that I have, and I think the book recommendation and the chart also will help leaders disarm their staff. Because when you hear Born on Water, you immediately like if you have never read the book and you only subscribe to the news media that is divisive, you automatically are like no we can't do it. 17:10 But if you actually pick up the book and read it and read through it, it's like, oh, this book is really about her being proud to actually be an American, proud of where she comes from, proud of where she is, and the book ends with her drawing an American flag. So not sure how that's anti-patriotic, but with this chart and this guide, it allows our leaders to give them. Okay, if you take this book, here's the routes in which you can go. And I think that for me, that was my favorite resource, because it wasn't simply a book list right, because anybody can give a book list but it's a book list that shows you if you're ready to dive right in turn some heads. 17:56 Here's some books. And also here's why we chose to put these books in this category, because here is some of the pushback you might get by bringing this book up. But here is the conversations that you can have. So we don't leave you hanging with just a book list and say, here you go, that you can have. So we don't leave you hanging with just a book list and say, here you go. And I thought that that resource is super, super helpful for leaders and people who really want to get their staff involved and have staff that are reluctant to do the work because they are buying into the divisive language that is being surrounded in these topics. 18:39 - Jill Flanders (Guest) You know Dr O really touches on an important part there. This can be incredibly uncomfortable and we want to acknowledge that. These are uncomfortable conversations, no matter where you start and where you lead with it. We've tried to come up with you know, be sensitive about it and come up with non-threatening, you know openers, but buried in it is taking the time to do some examination of unconscious bias, to do some reflection with you know, again as a school leader or program leader with your faculty and staff and man, that's going to be hard and we're we're honest about that. 19:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, that's reminding me of, like the tiered system of equity supports image that you have and so connected to the heart plus model, right, I'm thinking about like the education piece, like the info building as tier one, and then you have the tier two we're reducing bias. I love all. I mean I guess we'll go, we'll shift over to leader pieces. I love the kind of decision-making conversations that you have about that and I think I think the most interesting piece for me, I think paired with the this tiered system visual, was this idea of strategic planning with a healing focus, and I thought that that was really profound because, right, we think about like the divisiveness, right, dr O, that you were mentioning, and so I think the healing seems to me to be the path forward. Just the folks in education spaces who are talking about that. It's like it's deeply resonating, at least with me. I don't know about everyone else, but I think that that speaks to something that is so counter to what we see in popular media and news programming and all the things that, right, are divisive, and so I'm curious and I mean I'll again, I'll just, I'm just like repeating back to you things in the book because I just loved it, but I love that you. 20:28 You know you had the Desmond Tutu quote, who I just absolutely love about like we don't heal in isolation. You had the research on like when you add feelings to decision making, it actually improves decisions. I think of conversations I've been in and strategic planning conversations where it is so kind of traditional and like authoritarian and this is the way we do this right and we leave feelings at the door and we don't incorporate those into decisions. And I kind of want to like meld all this stuff into one question, which is can you say a bit about this idea of healing focused strategic planning? Particularly I'm curious about, like how you've had success with folks coming to that, or has there been resistance to folks coming to that or a challenge from folks approaching it in this way, and what have you kind of done to coach them through it? Sorry, that was a really big one. 21:26 - Jill Flanders (Guest) The reality is the lack of time to really spend on this and again, I'm speaking from the perspective of a principal of, you know, of a public school. 21:37 It's important to make the time because it, you know, a yes, it's going to be uncomfortable. B it's probably a conversation that has not happened with faculty and staff and the commitment to, you know, opening the conversation and then supporting the hard stuff as it erupts, because I can actually say that I have had faculty members that have had to leave the conversation, that it's just, they just can't manage it, but being, you know, acknowledging that, being open to taking care of yourself and what you need to do, but not giving up. And you know we can also tell you this, you know our proposals here. What we've written about is still, you know, fairly new. We're still working in some pilot programs in some schools with you know, how did this go? What would you change? What would you do next? And so that's one of the things we're really eager to hear from schools and school leaders and programs about what did and didn't you know go well and how can we add to our conversation. 22:46 - Dr. OH (Guest) I was going to also add that you have to make the time because if you don't, you'll be moving forward with broken pieces. So if I break my ankle and I don't allow time for it to heal, it's going to reset but it'll always be broken. Like I have a finger that you can't tell right now but I can't straighten it out because I took too long to get the cast. So by the time I went back to do the proper healing, yeah, it's fine, I can move it, but I don't have full use of it. And so I think that's what's happening is we are acknowledging the hurt and the trauma that has happened in our environments, and that's great right. That goes back to that acknowledgement piece. I think we're doing a better job as a whole in education of acknowledging Maybe not necessarily acknowledging some of the historical past, but I think collectively acknowledging that there is a collective trauma that happened from COVID. I think we're united on that right. And so there's this united acknowledgement that there is some healing that needs to happen because of trauma, but there's not the space to make it happen. And so students are self-correcting and healing without the proper, I guess, support and when that happens you're moving forward on broken pieces and there's always that trauma trigger that's in the back somewhere and when that make mistakes and to be themselves. 24:24 I had an incident with a student and actually he and for whatever reason, blew up and wrote some really nasty things about the teacher, curse words, on his paper. The teacher saw the paper and said, took the paper and said okay, bud, when you're ready to come back, you come back. If you need more paper to write, I'll give you more. The teacher never, and I mean he called the teacher some things on this paper. And when we were talking about the incident with the teacher, I just was wondering like hey, did that not upset you? Did it not make you mad? Like this is an incident that is principle worthy, ok, especially some of the things that he said, that they were a little bit racial also, and from you know, because it was two different races of kids student, I mean student teacher and he said Dr O, that's not who that kid is. He was frustrated we all get frustrated, I'm not going to take it personally and he just let it go because he was like that's, that student didn't need a trip to the principal's office. That student needed someone to say I get angry too. And you know what he said, dr O. 25:47 At the end of the day, that student came back up to me and said you know, mr So-and-so, I really apologize, I shouldn't have written that stuff about you. And he said buddy, don't even worry about it, I know I get that way. And then he said I say some things to my wife sometimes that I shouldn't say, and so I sympathize. You know what I mean. So I think, given that time and that space for students to really feel safe and feel seen which means we cannot let the rules speak louder than compassion we can't, we can't. 26:18 And so that requires us for teachers to let go of perfection and really practice self-compassion. 26:26 And also, how do I connect with my students? 26:30 And in order for that to happen, like Jill says, you have to give the space. 26:35 And when I say the space, I mean the space in staff meetings where leadership says hey guys, I know this, this and this is the policy, but if you have a student that you know this is not their nature and they're on 100, and you're able to get them from 100 back down to one and move on with your day, please don't write an incident report. 27:09 I'm giving you permission to not report that because some teachers feel like, oh my God, I have to report it. That's what they say and I'm going to. That's what I mean when I say giving teachers the permission to be compassionate, giving them the permission to say please, don't let these rules speak louder than compassion, because what is the goal of education at the end of the day? Right? So what is our ultimate goal for these students at the end of the day? And if we don't put healing back into the conversation, we're going to continue to keep moving forward and not really fully heal to the point where we're able to use all of our you know resources to the best of our ability, because we're going to be turning out students that still have trauma that they haven't dealt with and, subsequently, adults that still have trauma. 28:03 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) And subsequently adults that still have trauma. Yeah, oh my gosh. Yes, I'm just like head-sapping all over the place. My parenting brain is very into the Good Inside podcast with Dr Becky Kennedy, and so the thing that's always in my head is most generous interpretation, our MGI, and so I've like tried to practice that. I mean we could do that out loud with kids, like we'll we'll get cut off by a driver or something and we'll just be like, hmm, that person must've been in a hurry, I hope everyone's okay, right, like what is the way that we can reconceive like a perceived hurt and like you can practice in tiny ways? I just that would be such a beautiful educational experience if everyone interacted in that way. 28:40 - Dr. OH (Guest) A hundred percent, and I think it was Thoreau that said it's not, it's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. 28:49 - Jill Flanders (Guest) I was just going to say that We've been reading the same things on Facebook today, dr Rowe, but Dr Rowe just did an absolute masterclass in modeling what we're talking about as well, and this is also close to our hearts that the leaders that are trying to open up the space and the time for this work are also modeling at the same time with the other adults that they work with. Yeah, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. 29:24 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, oh, that's totally true. Yeah, right, because the kids replicate the things that they see us do, right, all the time. 29:33 - Jill Flanders (Guest) Right and yes, and yet we're not perfect. I think that's just as important. I mean, we're going to blow up, we're going to say those things to whoever cut us off in traffic, but acknowledging it doesn't. And here's another Dr O thing Acknowledgement does not mean acceptance, so applied in a variety of ways. 29:53 - Dr. OH (Guest) A hundred percent, because they mirror that children mirror. That's what they do. And what I say is could things be the way they are? Because you're the way you are, and what one thing could you change? That can change everything. You can change the way you see your students, your staff and your coworkers. If you see them differently, you will treat them differently. 30:16 And acceptance does not mean agreement. Right Acknowledgement doesn't mean I agree with this behavior. You know away with this notion that being compassionate to a child somehow means that I'm okay with the fact that they just threw a chair across the room. No, I'm not okay with the fact that they threw the chair across the room, but is me going to a hundred going to get them to where I need them to be? Is me actually the opposite? They might pick up a second chair, you know. But it definitely takes that the way. Our lenses have to change for how we see our students and also how we see ourselves, because the reason why a lot of us can't be compassionate with our students is because we're not compassionate with ourselves. 31:15 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Just going to let that one sit for a minute. Yes, yeah, that's absolutely true. All right, we wow, we have gone a lot of places. This has been a wonderful conversation. I'm looking at time Um, we'll do maybe like a little lightning rounds here with a few final questions. Um, what is kind of one practice or strategy or even mindset, like just way of thinking about others, um, or about things, uh, that you would say someone could start right now, like so they order the book, it's in the mail, but right now they want to start and do something while it's on its way. What would be that one thing? 31:55 - Jill Flanders (Guest) Jill, you go first. Yeah, I've got about six in my head. You know I'm going to sort through this and start with yourself, I think. Have an internal conversation. Where are you coming from? What might be some of your internal bias, which is a hard thing to do. It's not the easiest place to start. So then, part two is the easy place to start is what is the do? Something that you can do right away, and I will revert back to my children's literature. Find one book. Find one book that speaks to you. 32:30 - Dr. OH (Guest) That's good. That's good. I would say the one thing you can do is try to see it from the other person's perspective. So every time you feel offended or upset or frustration, or your children are getting on your nerves, you don't like your administrator, whatever those feelings that come up that are getting you to a negative state, a negative state, how might that other person be feeling Like? What is their perspective? Because, at the end of the day, everything we experience is ultimately just our perception of it and it's not the whole picture. 33:13 So can I put myself in your shoes and say how might you see this? Say how might you see this? And just simply doing that can bring us back to a state of where we are, a state of calm, a state of where we're not just reacting right, we're actually processing what is really happening in this situation. Why did my administrator say this? Why did this student go off in this way? How what could be happening from their perspective? And start centering others, which is really hard, especially when your amygdala is hijacked and you're in your feelings. But I would say, practice perspective taking of others. 34:06 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Beautiful suggestions. This question is for fun what have each of you been learning about lately? It could relate to our conversation or just be totally random. 34:15 - Jill Flanders (Guest) Oh, I'm dying to talk about this. Our focus was on anti-racism and, just because of everything, we were focused on Black children, black families. I have wandered off into. I need to know more about Indigenous families, indigenous cultures, and you know, I'm in Massachusetts. I have connected with educators in the Wampanoag tribe and there are children's books. Oh my gosh, I have a whole new pile and just I mean just the history that I was not aware of is crushing in many ways, but I'm doing something about it. 35:00 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I am learning in many ways, but I'm doing something about it. I am learning. I have to say Keep On A Muck is one of our favorite books. We jumped right to that, as we did Born On the Water and Keep On A Muck, and we should have probably started with like the Colors Of Us Right in. 35:13 - Dr. OH (Guest) Right in For me. I've been learning about a lot about biomarkers and genetic testing. I recently took a position, a contractual position, as the program director for the Color of Wellness, which is a program that's under the Touch for Life nonprofit organization and essentially what they do is kind of similar to what we do in education is they go around to conferences and they educate. You know the people in the conference on different types of cancers, breast cancers you know we talk about in education are also disparities in healthcare and the whole idea of patient care bedside manner. How are we giving the BIPOC community access? What are these barriers to access? 36:17 And, as someone who has no background in the medical field, to come into this space and be like, it sounds like we all might be dealing with something similar. It sounds like we all need lessons in compassion and perspective taking because people are not getting life-saving treatment because the barriers of who they are and similar in education, where we talk about you know, there's not a lot of representation in gifted and talented classes or the over-representation of BIPOC students in special education. Those disparities are also happening in healthcare, so it sounds like that this is not an education conversation. I feel like this book can be on the shelves of doctors as well, and nurses, because if teaching is nothing more than a series of interactions, then I would dare to say that when I'm at the doctor's office, them practicing as a doctor with their patients is also a set of interactions. 37:23 - Jill Flanders (Guest) So this tiered system of equity supports in education could easily be a tiered system of supports in healthcare, and you know, Lindsay, over time we have really found that we get it right in early education and early childhood, but we're not really good at talking about it. We know that you have to work with the whole child. There aren't separate times that you do reading and math and all those things. They're learning everything at once, all integrated and all tied together. So, focusing on early childhood because we get it right there, hopefully we'll carry on through the rest of education and, as Arinthia said, and in other fields as well. 38:14 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Amazing. Well, thank you both for this conversation. Where can people reach out to you or connect with you if they want? And we'll, of course, link to the books as well in the show notes. 38:25 - Jill Flanders (Guest) Well, we are both. Actually we're both on all of those social media platforms. Arinthia is much better at it than I am. I take that as generational and I'm okay with it. If, if you really want good connections, probably talk to the eight-year-old that's downstairs I mean mine's. By my name, by Jill Flanders. We through, I think, through the connections through Amazon and through the Solution Tree I think our emails are there as well. 38:57 - Dr. OH (Guest) Yep, and you can follow me on all platforms, at STEM Early one word S-T-E-M-E-A-R-L-Y. Or you can find me at Avinthia Harris, on all platforms as well. I might be Dr O on TikTok. I meant to go change that. So you might have to go to TikTok and you look for Arinthea Harris. You're like I don't see her. It's Dr O, but LinkedIn, facebook, instagram, Twitter, it's all Arinthea Harris and also STEM Early. So you'll see, you'll find our content on both pages. 39:33 - Jill Flanders (Guest) Arinthea and I are both associated with the Center for Educational Improvement as well, which has its own website at edimprovementorg. 39:43 - Dr. OH (Guest) Yeah, we're everywhere you want to be. 39:46 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's so good. All right, thank you so much, Dr Owen-Jill. It has been an absolute pleasure. 39:51 - Jill Flanders (Guest) Yay, thank you so much, lindsay.
0 Comments
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, we chat with SL, an equity-centered designer and researcher from Optimistic Design. She shares her journey from the tech industry to focusing on systems and services to reshape educational systems with a focus on empowering historically underserved students.
We dive into the critical importance of co-creating educational environments that honor students' cultural and experiential knowledge, moving away from hierarchical teaching structures to foster collaboration. SL highlights the need for a healing-centered approach in education, shifting from deficit-based perspectives to recognizing students' strengths and agency. This helps transform empathy into actionable change. The Big Dream SL envisions education as a powerful tool for increasing critical consciousness among young people, enabling them to become more than consumers, but "critical designers of the futures they want to see." She dreams of an educational system that not only imparts knowledge but also equips students with the tools to understand the world and take meaningful action within it. SL believes we can empower students to co-create their educational journeys and envision a future that transcends current limitations. Mindset Shifts Required Educators are often excited about student voice, but when it comes to true co-creation with students, they may be hesitant or unsure how to get started. But to truly empower students, educators must embrace a shift from being mere authority figures to becoming co-creators of knowledge with their students. This mindset shift involves acknowledging and addressing inherent power dynamics in the classroom, moving beyond token support for student voice to genuine collaboration. Ultimately, it’s about challenging the idea that the person standing at the front of the class knows best. Instead, we all learn and grow together. Action Steps To begin co-creating with students in your classrooms, educators can follow these key steps: Step 1: Acknowledge and Map Power Dynamics Educators can begin by mapping out areas where power is traditionally held in the classroom, such as curriculum choices and disciplinary actions, and identify opportunities to share decision-making with students. This involves looking at yourself as an educator, analyzing your age, mindsets, experience, etc. to see what you bring to the classroom. It can also be a collaborative process, working with other educators to map these power dynamics out. Educators can also zoom out to bigger systems in our society—the justice system or financial system, for example—and analyze how those things feed into our educational system. SL talks about the "iceberg diagram” that helps you analyze what’s under the surface, digging down into the underlying societal structure. Step 2: Create Opportunities for Student Choice After understanding where power dynamics exist, you can continue mapping out places where power can be shared and transferred. Educators can introduce small changes by allowing students to have a say in curriculum topics and classroom discussions, promoting both peer-to-peer learning and individual work preferences. Start by asking: is there choice here? How can students inform curriculum or activities in the classroom? Small steps to share power build up to shared decision-making. Step 3: Provide Tools and Transparency Equip students with the necessary tools and knowledge to navigate educational systems, and be transparent about any constraints that limit decision-making power. One key shift is creating something visual that transforms the process from simply talking about it to making it tangible and real. Step 4: Get Continuous Feedback Educators can always look out for what’s working and what’s not working—it’s how we learn. Seek continuous feedback from students as an opportunity to grow. Asking students for feedback is a way of showing them you’re really listening. Challenges? One of the main challenges in implementing equity-centered design in education is overcoming entrenched hierarchical structures and mindsets. A lot of young people experiencing marginalization are led through the educational system from a very deficit-based lens. Instead of focusing on what’s wrong, we can shift to an asset-based perspective. Young people and students have so much to offer, and it needs to be acknowledged. This shift can be key to breaking down traditional teaching methods and embracing co-creation with students. One Step to Get Started This transition can feel really big for educators—action can seem like a huge step. But to start co-creating with students, educators only need to take small steps forward. One place to begin is by starting to map out those opportunities to share power. They can be small and seemingly-insignificant things, but they build into a bigger classroom culture of co-creation between students and educators. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on LinkedIn or on the company website, Optimistic Design. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing the Modernizing math toolkit and report with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 227 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Hi SL, Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 00:05 - SL Rao (Guest) Thank you so much for having me here. 00:07 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I'm really excited to have this conversation with you. Same and let's just dive right in. I'm really excited to learn more about you and invite you to just share. You know, what should the folks who are listening to the podcast or reading the blog version of the podcast kind of keep in mind as we jump into our conversation today? 00:26 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, definitely so. I want to set context that I am a equity-centered designer and researcher, currently at an organization called Optimistic Design. We are a qualitative research and product design firm. We have deep expertise in education, all the way from early learning to higher ed. At the intersection of product design. We do services and strategies as well. But that's our deep expertise because a lot of us also come from the product space. So another aspect of our work is we take a systems lens and focus on learning from and with students who have been historically underserved by the existing systems. So part of taking a systems lens is also understanding all of the other variables that impact student learning and teacher practice and those kinds of things. 01:15 And then a little bit of very quick background about you know, what brought me to Equity Center Design, research and co-creating, co-designing with students is um. 01:25 I started my work in technology, actually um, but I have navigated over to systems and services, having worked in global health, in government um, designing public policy. So I've I've kind of expanded outside of just like product to thinking about services and systems and policy and how all of these things impact our experiences within the world, our behaviors and the historical contacts that are driving some of the decisions that happen today. So that's kind of the lens that I bring. Overall, throughout my career, a major focus has been kind of working with and focusing on communities, young people, students who are not served by the larger system, really recognizing that you know, it's not to be nice, but it's really recognizing that a lot of innovation, ideas, perspectives exist that we're not harnessing, and so by really focusing on communities and people who have the least access to power, we're able to design better services and systems for everybody. So that's kind of the perspective that I come from. 02:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh my gosh, that's a fantastic perspective. I love all the lenses that you bring in, all of that experience that you have that's even outside of education but so clearly relevant for education, so so excited to keep going with this conversation. I think you spoke a lot to things that I imagine are part of kind of your freedom dream, if we were to go to that question, and so I just love the language that Dr Bettina Love uses where she describes them as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So I guess, with that framing, what is, you know, that big dream that you hold for education? 03:01 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, I think it's exactly that right that you hold for education. Yeah, I think it's. It's exactly that right, like education as a tool to increase critical consciousness for young people. A lot of the times, the way I was educated, I grew up in India, studying in India. I was not necessarily, I didn't necessarily see the things I was. So I have an engineering degree, for example. 03:22 So engineering, what I should have abstracted, which I had to do myself, but it wasn't necessarily something that I received as part of my education was all of the science system, classes and engineering. There wasn't a clear connection to say like here are the critical pieces or here are the mindsets that this is showing you to review and look at the world around me. So I had to do that myself. And so ways in which like education can very clearly, from the beginning, give students the tools to understand the world, take action, see their part of the system. 03:55 Because right now, the way technology is evolving, it's evolving at such a fast pace and to a level of abstraction that it's really hard to like disentangle how it actually works. And I bring up technology because we are all consumers of technology and it is continuing to revolutionize how we communicate with one another how we learn, but we don't want young people to just be consumers. We want them to be critical designers of the futures that they want to see right. So we don't want futures to just happen, and so I think education has so much to do with that and is a critical component of shifting that perspective and the mindset, and I would yeah, there's obviously already a lot of like advocacy and action and kind of demystifying happening with young people Would love that to be a critical component of our educational process and system. 04:48 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Wow, I love so much of that. And then, specifically, I just wrote down the critical designers of the futures. They want to see part, because I think that's so powerful and I think about that. It's so clear in kind of the STEM and STEAM realms. It's also clear, I think, to me when I think about being a former literacy teacher or social studies teacher. Right, we study the past to figure out what the future is going to look like and how we can co-create that. 05:12 Right, like literacy, like thinking about, like Afrofuturism and like sci-fi and fantasy and like imagining that idea of what the world could be in those spaces. Like there's so much that connects to all subject areas. This is so cool. Okay, let's keep going. I think, you know, sometimes teachers are, I think about teacher school right, the like don't smile until Christmas and like authority figure, you know ridiculousness. That is part of, like, traditional teaching methods. And I think that sometimes when we talk about student voice, teachers are like yeah, yeah, great, but then when we're like no, it's a true co-creation, there's some hesitancy and I'm just curious to know what mindset shifts that you would kind of coach people on to truly get to that place that you're describing, versus kind of the nominal like yay, student voice, but not really co-creating, co-creating. 06:01 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, that's a that's a great question. In we coach a lot of product teams, organizations around like co-design and a lot of people just want to learn the methods. They're like show me that participatory design, research method right. And so we actually step back and say like we want to understand how your organization is set up. What are the mindsets that exist within the organization? What is the culture for true co-design? 06:27 Are you actually able to shift power in ways that is meaningful and not just you know a namesake? You're just saying, yeah, you know students have power, because I've been in spaces where you know government agencies are trying to do their best. They're like we're going to bring young people in. You know the most marginalized young people experiencing housing insecurity or maybe the foster care system. We're going to bring them in to give us feedback. And when they do create that space to give that feedback, they are they're like they didn't. They didn't say the right thing, or they didn't say the thing that we wanted, right, or it's like it didn't apply to what we are doing. It's like did we spend the time educating young people? 07:05 So I think a big part for me in the mindset shift is you just mentioned is like you know, traditional teaching has a lot of like one way knowledge dumping, right, like the expert, the teacher, the, the person standing in the front. There's like a persona for that person, which is interesting even in our research, especially with younger kids, even like middle school students. When we ask about variations of like classrooms, a lot of them actually default to they want the one where the teacher knows and they tell them the thing because that's what they're used to. Right? And so really thinking about this old school belief that one person standing on the podium knows best, and a good, you know teacher has the mindset of learning together and making knowledge with students. So creating those opportunities to shift those mindsets with students, teachers and themselves, where actually knowledge making is happening together, like what are we learning? What is happening? What are we seeing? 08:02 Because students come with their own bodies of knowledge, their own cultural knowledge, and you know, we want, we want to create that space. We're doing that together. So co-creation starts there. Those like small pieces of shifting away from here's everything that we learned in history or here's everything that's happening right now. It's like the future is going to look different than the knowledge that we have. We're going to bring together and create something new that's more applicable than these, like you know, thick sets of knowledge. So, yeah, I think that would be my really big one and even for leaders, like creating that space where that's possible and I know there's a lot of other incentives that are against this where you know it's like tests and you know really thinking about these bigger incentives that de-incentivize this kind of knowledge making, but I still have hope. 08:54 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, such a good point about the de-incentivization of like, because stuff like this takes time, right, it takes time to like build the relationships with students and like get students to kind of come out of that space, because as a former high school teacher that tried to do that, I can tell you so many times where students was like just tell me what to do or what to do. 09:11 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, you're making too much work. 09:14 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) It's so wild and I'm like, don't you want this? And it's like, yeah, I think you probably do, and like you have just been told year after year that this is how school goes, and so it's so hard to break out of that. And so I'm really curious about the how. Like how does this work? Like, how do you share power with students in this way? How do you have, like, a steps or a framework for this? 09:38 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, I think this is, you know, it's small steps, right, like it's all the small things that we do. You know, even if we have shared lived experiences with students, you know we might have like age affinity or you know we might have like other like indicators that are like, oh, we have like similarities. So this is going to be very easy for us to shift that power. But really, I think a big part of it is really recognizing, as educators, as leaders in the education space, what our positionality is right, the way our society favors, like age, for example. So at any given point, a teacher is going to have more power in the system, just in society as a whole. So I think, you know, really thinking about stepping back and really recognizing, like, how are we showing up, what are we bringing into the space and how we teach, what mindsets we bring? Are there other mindsets that relate to student assets or student deficiencies or and these are things like we've, I think, over the last few years, a lot more conversation and discussion, willingness to talk about these things and be able to confront our own biases and, you know, our own, the preconceived notions that we're bringing in, to understand the underlying layers, in which ways in which, like our positionality, um, can cause these like power differentials, right. And then part of it is like being able to acknowledge that, you know, power in a space isn't bad. It is when it is, when we are pretending it doesn't exist, right, um. 11:19 And then the second piece is really uh, what are ways, small places where, as educators, we hold power? What are the ways? Like mapping those out within the classroom? So, is it in like being the knowledge share, setting the curriculum, disciplinary action, action, you know what are all of the ways, and I think that's part of like doing it with other educators as well, because they might bring up other perspectives. You also are the conduit to the parent, like the parents are going to, a lot of times, listen more to the educator than they will their own child, right? So there are these pieces of like. What are we saying? How are we saying that? And are we thinking in a deficit lens? Are we thinking an asset-based lens? Are we able to really, you know, think through those pieces? And then we start thinking about okay, where are the places along that continuum of like where power is held? Are there places where we can start creating space where power is shared, right, like there might be small things like and really we need to acknowledge that there's always a spectrum and we might not get to the final end of full collaborative. You know power sharing within the space, but there are steps that you can take where you're like really mapping that out and I think, as long as we're aware and we're not overselling it, it's okay. So you know you're, you're coming in and you're saying okay, is there choice? 12:46 We start with choice over what is learned, like what we can focus on. We go into like are there ways in which students can inform the curriculum? Are there ways in which students can inform how the class discussions happen? Again, like you know, there might be things within literature where it's like okay, peer-to-peer learning is great and we want to implement that. Can we give students choice over it? Because not all students are going to want that. Some students just want to work independently. 13:12 So the more spaces we create in, those are small, those feel very small, right, but they are ways in which we are sharing that power to get to a point where there is shared decision making happening. There's a lot more power. Are there ways in which then you know it escalates outside of the classroom Is there. You don't want to create a space where students have a lot more power in your classroom but they go outside and they're, you know, hitting up against like larger structures. Are there choices? A lot of times, school leadership will do like surveys or like listening sessions that I've heard of, but a lot of those are not necessarily implemented. 13:49 Again, with this perspective that, oh, students are telling us things that we don't want to work on or we can't work on. Sometimes you can't, you know you're, you have budgets and these other things, but can we be clear about those limitations so that students are smart, you know, we don't have to hide things from them and we don't have to give them free reign. When there isn't free reign, we can talk to them about what are these constraints and then give them the opportunity to design within that and create space, give them the tools. And a lot of times I think we don't empower young people with the tools we say we should. We're shifting power and we're like we shifted power, you're not doing anything with it. It's like do they have the tools, do they have the knowledge to navigate these spaces? And we as educators and, you know, adults who've been in the system where we have had like, uh, post-secondary education and master's degrees and maybe even PhDs. We just take some of these things for granted, even if we have a lot of affinity with young people is like really recognizing like we've had the opportunity to learn and grow in these ways and we need to create those spaces for young people. 14:53 And really I think for me, shifting away from just like talking about things and sitting there with other teachers and mapping things out make something visual and takes it out of just this language and makes it more clear. So it is a really great tool and it doesn't need to look pretty right Like it's just lines, dots, numbers. You might also something's what I do when I'm mapping out, and I think of this also as a version of a systems map, mapping out and saying like, okay, what are incentives potentially? Is there like a money incentive? Are there other structural policy related things that might impact this and how do we work within this? Or it gives us information about what are other pieces of knowledge that we need to share with students to help them, and we can start those at an early grade as well. 15:42 Right, like start giving choice variation and then extend that to get to a point when students are able to have a lot more free reign. Some structure is good, especially when they're younger, and giving choice within that, and we know that over time, like even with parenting, and really recognizing, like having them see their choices have a reaction, an impact, and what that feedback looks, because we also need to learn those pieces of it I think is really helpful. And then the last thing I want to say is like continuous feedback, right. I think as educators, leaders, we need to keep getting feedback on what worked and what didn't work, and we need to be open to that because we might put our heart and soul and a student might come back and be like I just wanted to go back to how it was and that's okay, right, like really understanding that there's feedback isn't bad, it's an opportunity to grow. 16:36 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Wow, you said so much. This is so cool. I love all the things. The things that are resonating with me specifically are like the Lundy Laura Lundy has this model of student voice that like connects very deeply to what you're saying. So the way that I'm sure that's probably what connected to what you, you guys, have put together. 16:51 So the idea of influence is really, I think, a big one, like the audience and influence piece where, like, yes, you have to listen, but then you have to come back and be like, okay, you gave us this feedback in the survey, right, here's why we didn't go forward with it, because we have these parameters, right, or whatever. 17:05 And like that means so much to kids because otherwise it's yeah, I wasn't really listened to, I'm not going to tell you and take the time to tell you the next time. 17:13 Right, it's such a critical step that's so frequently missed that it's like, yeah, I just. I love, also, from a systems lens, this idea of mapping with a team, because so many times we look at school schedules and we're, you know, doing the where everyone is and all that, and it's overwhelming, and so, for either simplicity or because we don't have better models, sometimes we're like, okay, well, we just don't have PLC or team time and you just have to figure it out and like, try to touch base in the hallway and it's like, no, this is so critical because it affects every moment of the day and it affects things like this like the true co-creation, like we're going to do just things so much better if you have that team time. So I love that you named that. I also, you know. Another piece I was thinking is strategic planning conversations from like a leader lens, but also I mean, I've had students do like root cause analysis for not a strategic planning conversation because they like found an issue they're interested in and wanted to make change. 18:10 But I've led some of these and they can be great and they can also just fall really flat. They can be great and they can also just fall really flat. And so I'm curious if you have either suggestions or like a particular experience that went well or didn't go well, and kind of an analysis of that, of just like, how do we do those better? How do we actually find a root cause and be able to move forward and like make authentic, co-created change, versus just like check the box, which I've seen a lot at, like the state level, for example, just being like we did it, we wrote something in the box. 18:40 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, that's a great question. You know, I think the big thing with root cause analysis is we have to one understand the systems at play, and when we are experiencing the systems, it's really hard to see it. It's like you know your fish don't see the water. 18:55 I mean, it might not actually be true, but you know, we don't we don't, we don't see the air that we're actually going in, and so so systems can be like very specific and organized right, like like the education system. You can be like, ok, there is like the federal and you know there's like district level, state, district level. You can kind of identify, you're like, okay, this is kind of clear where the money flows, where the policies come in, and you know X, y, z, and then you can see some of the players. But it can also be kind of more complex systems that intersect, like, let's say, the, uh, the justice system or the financial system, where the financial system, yes, you can map it out from like a structural level, but there's so many influences where there's like, oh, there's the larger market, and I'm just sharing that it might not necessarily it does actually impact the education system, right Like it impacts like parent choice and interest, because they're like OK, now we want school choice for these very specific reasons, these financial incentives that then drive like variation and change and I'm talking really big systems. Right, like we want to be able to understand everything that could potentially impact this thing at a classroom level or a societal level. 20:07 Some people go, you know, go into like the seven whys process. I don't know if that's what you use. It's like, okay, this is happening, why? And then you answer you're trying to get to some of the deeper pieces, the deeper pieces in that structure, because it doesn't have necessarily like an expectation of hitting something, like you can just get to, like why? Because parents don't want to, but we don't necessarily understand, like is it the mindset, is it a financial incentive? Is it X, y, Z? The teacher doesn't want to? It's like they just don't want to. And it's like OK, we need to get to the bottom. So a couple of things. That which I think, as educators and you know, other people within the system, I feel like everyone is, uh, you know, has that you're constantly designing. 21:03 So, um, she talks about the iceberg diagram, where you're looking at what is about, like what is actually visible within the system and you might see the visible pieces might be the more obvious things. It's like you know, uh, maybe their behaviors, or they might be the more obvious things. It's like you know, maybe their behaviors or they might be like actual, something like more tangible. And then you start digging under the system and she has, like these very specific things that you get to. So you know, by the end of it you're trying to get to the underlying, like societal structure, those mindsets, so it's forcing you to go beyond the obvious. So that's one way to think about it. So then you're getting to some of those bigger pieces. The other one is what I've done is, after doing kind of a systems map, is using a fishbone diagram, which can also be difficult if you've done that, right, because but you have to find all of the right, you know limbs off of the fishbone. So it's like it for the viewers who can't see me randomly gesturing uh, or listeners, um, you know, there's the middle, which is the spine of the fish, which is you're getting to like your from your problems, your solution, and there are different kind of lines at a diagonal which look at different um pieces that can be influencing the problem. And within that piece, what I usually do is I write out all of the possible. 22:24 So if we say, let me give you an example, if we think about I'm going to go to youth homelessness, because that's kind of top of mind for me right now, so if we think about young people experiencing homelessness and we are like, ok, what is the underlying, what is what, why Right? And so there's the poverty is one. The other is could be racism, there could be lack of housing, and so you think about, like the socioeconomic, so could be lack of housing, and so you think about the socioeconomic. So there's that financial factor. Within the financial factor, you have workforce development, you have lack of I don't know federal funding or cuts to federal funding, so pushing families deeper into the poverty line. So you think of all of the factors that come from financial. So you have the entire map as a way to pull from and finalize like what, what we want to pull. 23:27 This is the other thing with the fishbone diagram, is it? It prevents us from getting stuck on like a single source for the root cause? I think really recognizing that there's probably multiple root causes right For, like for young people experiencing housing insecurity, it's a combination of like. Actually it's happening at the level of their parents too. So it's like there's a lack of opportunity, there's, you know, that causes poverty and systems involvement. 23:56 There might be other things that all intersect and just create this environment where the young person can no longer stay at home, and so we want to be able to be open to that and we won't find a single answer. It can feel overwhelming, especially, you know, for people who are not used to doing something and then feeling like, oh, we can't do anything with it, is really getting to this piece of what are the things that we want to act on within this, what are the things that we can influence? Right from our earlier question is like what can we influence and what can we take action on? What can we change? With the expectation that it could potentially cascade to some of the other pieces. 24:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Thank you for just going there, it was a deviation from from what you're talking about, but I think there's so much in here. I mean, I love the idea of the iceberg model, thinking about the societal structure or mindset underlying it. I've thought about mindsets before. I've never thought about like let's name the societal structure. That is brilliant and I think gets to kind of the root of pieces. But I even love even more just the idea that there can be multiple and that's what the fishbone like emphasizes. 24:59 I was even thinking about right like youth homelessness could be like familial, like homophobia or transphobia. It could be like homophobia or transphobia from potential employers, and then those are actually connected even though they're different systems on the fishbone. But you could like do an annotation about highlighting how actually other mindsets come up there, like there's so much that you can kind of like blend those two things. So I love that you're giving multiple models because I see such a nice synergy there and I do wonder if that's something that even students could engage with, right in that co-creation where, like you have this either lived experience or interest, or just like you want to take on this lens of either the system or like this identity or like whatever it is that like is interesting to you and then you're going to go in this way and then, like it just so clearly, would illuminate the value of having multiple people at the table to do the thing. I it's just, it's really exciting. Now I want to go do one. 26:03 - SL Rao (Guest) I want to say um, I did this work with um, with young people experiencing housing insecurity a few years ago when I was at the state. We didn't do a fishbone diagram, we just like brainstormed together and I think what was helpful for for the young people in that process is like I was also learning, we were all learning together, right, but a lot of times they were involved in systems that they didn't even realize that the system officially existed. It was a formalized system that they intersected with because our lived experiences don't necessarily show us that those pieces right. And so they realized they were intersecting with all of these systems and they also saw that there's other young people around them, either because of their friends or, you know, the friends had involvement or they had involvement. Just noticing that that they are not alone, because a lot of times we're going through this alone. So like doing this root cause with young people is like you're giving them a lens to see the larger system. But you're also a lot of times what we do is we, we do that and we leave them there, right, and that's kind of, you know, taking someone up the mountain and just being like OK, you're done, you want the closure, so you want to move it into action. 27:11 And that's a lot of times, I think, as as adults in the system, we are like OK, we saw the system, yay, but it's actually you're leaving them in a space of like trauma, of being like what do I do now? Like you're in that like fight or flight space, of like trauma, of being like what do I do now? Like you're in that like fight or flight, you want to close it out and say like okay, how are we actually moving towards action? Like what are the action steps we can actually take? Because then you're creating a space where you're closing that out. And so I know it sounds very floofy, but really just like when we think about our own like body experiences and how we want to see things closed out, and I think it's not necessarily just to like thumbs up it, but it gives people an opportunity to act or the action and those kinds of things Right. So we want to keep them in a place of like empowerment and action and not in a place of like feeling like you're stuck in headlights. 27:53 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely, and one of the things I've been playing with lately that's going to lead us into this next question I hope this transition works is action can feel really big for both teachers and students and like, okay, we got to go act. 28:05 And people have this idea, I think, in their head sometimes that action means you need to change a federal policy or you need to go amass a thousand person protest or whatever the thing is, test or you know whatever the thing is, and that thinking again about like that bodily experience and just like the idea of healing when we're all like I just think societally, politically, like there's such an intense divide that is is actively like harming kids and and right, that like we, we need to like have conversations across difference without like harming kids, or like identities right and like making sure dignity is upheld. So I'm very interested in like these kind of like micro ways of action and like just being in community and learning a new way that has, like I've just read that you have, you know, a healing orientation to your work in education and I'm curious if you could say more about that because I'd love to learn. 28:58 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, definitely. 28:59 So this is built on the work from Sean Ginwright, who talks about like, healing, centered engagement, and a lot of our work is in like how, when we it's from. A lot of it is from the perspective of research, which I think can still apply here, where a lot of research, if you read online, like, even just like looking at you know behaviors of um, young people who are experiencing marginalization. It's a lot of like people who don't have that shared lived experience going in and studying um, let's say, like indigenous students in colleges and putting a very deficit-based lens on it, right. So saying things like oh, the community is holding Indigenous students back from succeeding in college because we have such a individualistic perspective of like, if you need to succeed in college, if you need to succeed in this mainstream American culture, you have to be individualistic, kind of selfish, and you're building, you're approaching it differently and we don't really look at the assets that young people come with, which is a lot. Sometimes it can be their entire community, their culture, cultural backgrounds, their resiliency and, you know, creativity and all of those pieces, right? 30:16 So when we a lot of research focuses on like, what is wrong with you? Why are you doing this. I saw this a lot when I worked in across housing, insecurity, foster care, juvenile legal systems. You know, social workers are trained in those systems to understand, like, what happened to the young person. Young person has to repeat the same story over and over and over again. So you're always asking, like, what is wrong with you? Um, what has happened to you? And you're keeping it in that space, um, and so young people are leaving those spaces still, you know, holding their trauma, and so I think even in education we don't talk about trauma as much. I'm seeing a little bit more of that. Um, also, I think there's this piece of like, when you have only a trauma oriented focus, again you're, you're, you're like empathizing, but a lot of times the empathy is in that space of like. It makes the trauma bonding, makes us feel better, but it's not actually helping the other person move forward, right, and so we feel great about having heard the story. Oh, my gosh, this young person went through so much. This young person who's in our classroom is going through so much at this moment, um, and and we, you know, ask for information and we move forward. Um, a big part of thinking about it from a more. Healing center perspective is like shifting our research practices and methods. 31:37 So it's also shifting how we engage with young people is and and focusing, um, focusing more on you know, instead of saying what is wrong with you, is recognizing all of the assets that young people are bringing into the classroom and the school, right, um, how can we challenge ourselves about how we think about the students and the young people? We have these like social norms and expectations that we kind of push on young people. That then recreates a larger expectation of, like these deficits versus really really acknowledging the ways in which they are continuing to thrive and do all of these things despite everything that's happening. Like there's an assault on their identities, there's, you know, they're on their freedom and even like preventing them from having access to information, right, and so they are learning how to work within that system where the adults are actively suppressing their educational experience and you know, not every single adult but many adults which are which can cause a sweeping like change in their experience. So so that's kind of like a healing centered orientation and again, this piece of moving to action. We don't want to stay in this piece of like let's learn about what's, what's happening, how scared you are, how tired you are. 33:02 So we had this, um, we did this project, uh, called modernizing math, and, um, part of that work was like understanding what the future of math education can look like, and it was exactly what you mentioned earlier. We understood the history to then, uh, bring young people, caregivers and teachers together to design what the future of math can look like. But we wanted it to not be without constraints. We recognize there's a lot of changes happening in the world, like climate is changing, there's technological advances, there's political changes, economic changes. What would, what would, what are potential worlds that could exist because of these changes, right? And so we worked with another organization called Knowledge Works, who does more of like futures foresight work, and so they develop these like five different models. 33:49 We immersed young people in these like worlds and had them think about what could education and learning math look like. We did see that in the beginning, you know, there was a lot of like yeah, it's going to take our jobs, there's no point, right, like there was this just like a very dark conversation that we went into and really recognizing, yes, that that could be true, yes, and what can we do about it? Given that what would we like to see, and moving that into like action. Acknowledging and then moving into action is not in any way diminishing what people are feeling, but really recognizing like our power is in. Like what does it mean to take action in these places and have agency and control? 34:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) You're reminding me so much of early, like right after I had graduated and done my dissertation on student voice, I was doing some presentations with a person who has a trauma background in youth and our kind of thesis was that this like voice and agency were the way that you interact with trauma is like this is the pathway. So like when we can co-create, when we can imagine this future, right, like that's, that's an action step. So I just total full circle, a little bit of like that's so awesome, and I recognize we're almost at time, so maybe we'll do a quick like lightning round for a few more questions. Does that sound? Okay, awesome, all right. So one thing usually you know there's so many ideas that people get when they listen or they read over. They're like okay, I need to like narrow it down to what am I doing in the next 24 hours or something. So is there one thing from this conversation or in addition to this conversation that you would say here's a good starting point. You can do this today or the next week or so. 35:33 - SL Rao (Guest) Yeah, I think could be. What we talked about earlier is like, if you know, people are thinking about sharing power, co-creating, mapping out where opportunities, even just starting there, just seeing it, and it feels less daunting. 35:46 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that so much. I also know everyone on this podcast. This next question is just everyone kind of identifies as a lifelong learner, so I'm just curious, either personally or professionally. 35:57 - SL Rao (Guest) What's something you've been learning about? 35:59 I also do improv, um, I'm on the ensemble ensemble of a improv group in Seattle and, um, I think one thing that comes up to me is like ways in which like movement can really help change the ways in which we think and bring out other parts of our brain and creativity, because that's why you're doing an improv right, like people a lot of times say oh, it's so hard, I would never be able to do that. 36:24 I'm like, no, you wouldn't be able to do that right. Because it is the ways in which we intellectualize, we sit, we, we close off our bodies a majority of the day, and that's how our education system is also set up ways in which we can move to help create that space to bring up creativity, use voice, use our like imaginations in different ways. We can't go from zero to 100, but we can create that pathway through our body, our voice, our memories, our imagination and start that process. So that's something that I'm always learning and I feel like there's so such a vast space for me to learn and grow, to be a better improviser. 37:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) You are such a cool person. One and two, that is such a brilliant idea, so thank you for sharing that. And finally, just where can listeners learn more about with you or connect with you? 37:11 - SL Rao (Guest) Yes, so our website, optimisticdesign, is a great place to pop in. I'm also on LinkedIn, so people are welcome to find me with my name. And, yeah, let me know how they heard about me in the notes, so I can make sure to add. 37:28 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Amazing Essel. Thank you so much for this conversation, yeah. 37:32 - SL Rao (Guest) Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me here. 
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
Welcome to the premiere of season six of Time for Teachership! There are a lot of exciting things in store for the 2025-2025 school year and this season of the podcast. We are going to be adding a social studies education focus as well as talking about the “one learning model for all,” which looks at strategies for both youth and adult learners.
If you want to provide feedback or ideas on what you’d like to hear on the podcast, fill out this Google form or email me at [email protected]. What’s new for season 6? There are a few exciting areas of focus for the 2025-2026 school year:
And that’s the start… There’s so much coming! Thanks for being with me as we launch season six of the Time for Teachership podcast! I’d love your feedback, so today I’m sharing my Audience Idea Form, where you can drop your feedback and ideas on the podcast.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Hello everyone and welcome to the season six premiere of Time for Teachership. This is episode 226. I cannot believe that we are at episode 226. Very exciting stuff in the last year. Really excited to add that social studies education focus. Excited to have so many wonderful guests on and in fact, the guests that we had who were talking about facilitation strategies and thinking about all of that kind of July leadership series we are going to have in October, kind of an episode that brings all of it together and thinks about, if you're a classroom teacher, how do you apply that in a classroom setting? So how do we do things that we've done with adults and bring that into a classroom space with? So how do we do things that we've done with adults and bring that into a classroom space with students, because often the same strategies work for both audiences. So so excited about that. Excited to continue the focus on social studies education and kind of that. One learning model for all, which is a phrase that comes from INPS or the International Network for Public Schools that I used to teach at a school that was part of. And some new exciting things as well, including an opportunity for you to share what you would like to see on the podcast or hear or engage with, rather on the podcast, and so we'll link to a very short Google form. You can also email me at hello at lindsaybethlyonscom. Feel free to share whatever comes to mind around things that would support you and your particular role. Feel free to share what your role is, because I know we have a lot of teachers, we have a lot of leaders, we have a lot of instructional coaches who listen and engage with episodes in multiple ways. So let me know again through that form or an email. 01:38 But here's my thoughts on what is coming in the future season. So we have a lot of stuff actually, through. 2025 is already mostly scheduled and slotted out. But then we have, you know, the next six months of 2026, we're off in December as per usual, for family time, for rest, for rejuvenation, and then we'll be back in January. But we want to think about a couple focus areas. So one is I really want to have more Indigenous education experts on the pod. So Indigenous authors I have several that reading their work and inviting them on the podcast although people are busy, so fingers crossed that folks can say yes but also really want to highlight and engage with and talk to and learn with the Indigenous educators, who are Indigenous Educators of the Year across the country. If anyone has recommendations also for podcast guests specifically, please let me know. Very excited to engage with that and that'll be throughout all of our topic areas. 02:35 Another lens that I'm excited to bring throughout any of those series, any of those topic areas, is the family lens. So, as a parent myself, that's very top of mind currently, but also just doing some family coaching and exploring what that looks like as coaches to be working with families who are supporting students at home as well as in school around perhaps new social studies content right, that's been a big focus for investigating history being a curriculum that I'm very familiar with and have been engaging with in the past year in Massachusetts. How do we support at home these content and pedagogical shifts in school? Right, like inquiry pedagogy. Like learning that Thanksgiving isn't maybe what we learned Thanksgiving was when we were in school. Right, there's both adaptive and technical changes, but primarily the adaptive changes for new curricula like that, learning how to do math in innovative ways and thinking there's more than one way to solve a problem. Right, like, there are things we can do at home that celebrate and foster the skills that students are going to need in classrooms. That may look differently and be experienced differently than when we were in school, and I'd love to coach families to learn how to do that, as I'm on my learning journey for learning how to parent in that way as well. 03:44 Two topics that we're excited about One is instructional coaching. A lot of instructional coaches listen, really opening up my coaching to think about. I've always worked with instructional coaches, but I want to be more intentional about supporting their needs, and so we want to have a topic where there's a month you know as our typical month long series. We want to add one in that is on instructional coaching. So, really excited about that. Also, can recommend different podcasts that already focus on that that are excellent, so I'll be learning from and with them as well, as there's a lot of teachers who are interested in the edupreneur space. 04:16 So doing either a kind of a side hustle, kind of having their own business on the side of full-time teaching or instructional coaching or principalship or whatever that is their current school-based role, excuse me or district-based role, and having something on the side, or kind of transitioning into an educational coach role where they have their own business and are departing the classroom or a school-based or district-based role, and I've kind of tried away from that because I just want to not, you know, I want to give folks what they need and I keep thinking that's not what people need. But so many people are curious about this aspect. So maybe we'll devote kind of one month you know, one of those series around entrepreneurship how to build businesses interviewing maybe entrepreneurs who have been former guests on the podcast and seeing, like, how did you do it? Maybe we'll do some behind the scenes episodes with my team, like what, who are the folks and what are the roles and what are the tasks involved in making this happen. I'm happy to answer any questions. We could do kind of an ask me anything or a Q and A episode where folks send in questions. So feel free to again use that form or send me an email with questions you have about any of these topics but entrepreneurship, for example. Questions you have about any of these topics but entrepreneurship, for example, and I can answer those as a podcast episode. So those are kind of all the thoughts around season six. 05:32 What we're hoping to have in the future are requests for responses from you. So again. Please share your ideas. We'll send that out in our monthly newsletter as well. So if you get the monthly newsletter and are subscribed to that, that should have come out yesterday to you, or maybe today, because yesterday was Labor Day, I think. If I'm thinking into the future correctly, I'm recording this at the end of July. So I think that's about right and we will catch you in the next episode. Our next episode is going to be with SL Rao Mapping Systems of Power and Co-Creating with students Super excited about that. We also have upcoming in the next few weeks. Jillian Flanders and company is on the podcast around early childhood book series. There's kind of a leadership version and a teacher version. That's gonna be really exciting. 06:16 Dr Jacoby Bell and Dr Reshma Ramkelewan were on the podcast around building an equitable classroom and that was an amazing conversation. Dr Claudine Kisar is talking about two biases. I we focused on one of the podcasts, but decision fatigue and herd mentality in her book are just real things that I experienced and I know teachers experience. We also have some other folks who have already recorded and will be on the podcast soon Dr Chad Dumas talking about leading teacher teams, which is such a unique skill set that we don't often talk about, so really excited about that we have. 06:47 Engagement is thinking with James Nottingham. I'm so excited that he was on the podcast this is great. You may know him of the Learning Pit kind of model and framework. We also have Dr Claudia Bersone-Smith and Marlene Moyer talking about students not being their behaviors, which is just a fascinating take on quote unquote classroom management or like behaviors in the classroom, and it's relational and it's rooted in honesty and self-awareness and just so good. What an important shift. It was such a good conversation. Anyways, get excited about all those, as well as many solo episodes coming up soon. 
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, we chat with John Rudloph Mueller, the Head of Curriculum and Instruction at Local Civics. He is passionate about nurturing the next generation of changemakers and helping students see they do have power to make a change in their communities.
John discusses the importance of integrating design projects into educational settings and the role of educators as consultants, fostering authentic community connections and expanding students' horizons through partnerships with organizations like Local Civics. The Big Dream John's big dream for education is to create a space where students not only use their unique voice, but are able to step up and take action to see the change they want in their communities. He wants to see classrooms that empower students and inspire them to put in motion the things that they’re excited about. Mindset Shifts Required To successfully implement civics education and community engagement projects, educators need to embrace a mindset shift from traditional teaching roles to more of a consultation role. This involves guiding students through design cycles, encouraging them to embrace complexity, and fostering authentic connections with the community. It can be a major shift for educators who are used to teaching and testing the standards. Action Steps Local Civics’ curriculum starts with an important concept called “civic lenses,” which all educators can implement in their classrooms. The goal is to develop the skill of zooming in on different areas of the community to analyze what already exists and what gaps or opportunities there are to fill. You can begin to implement it with these steps: Step 1: Have students examine their personal stories and connections to their community. This could be in connection to teams or clubs, a religious or identity community, and other things that are important to them. Step 2: Get students to then map out different parts of the community and inventory its needs. For example, you may zoom in on transportation and notice a lack of bike lanes, or zoom in on healthcare and see there are very few senior centers. Step 3: Encourage students to keep zooming in on different areas until they’re activated around a particular focus area. They will naturally connect with different parts of the community, so you can see what areas they are passionate about. Step 4: Develop project opportunities that allow students to create solutions in their focus area. Connect them to community members, workplaces, institutions, or people who can help bring their ideas to life. Step 5: Allow students to drive their projects forward, acting as a consultant to guide them rather than someone to hand out answers or tell them what to do. John shares the example of a high school class that noticed how senior citizens struggled during COVID-19 to leverage technology to stay in touch with their loved ones. So, they developed—and delivered—a kind of “technology 101” course at a local senior’s center to help bridge that gap. Challenges? One of the main challenges in implementing civics education projects is overcoming the traditional mindset of teaching to the standards and testing. Educators may also face logistical challenges in connecting students with authentic audiences and stakeholders. Additionally, addressing complex societal issues can feel overwhelming, but focusing on achievable, localized solutions can help overcome this barrier. One Step to Get Started Start by conducting a community mapping exercise with your students. Encourage them to explore their surroundings, identify existing resources, and pinpoint areas for improvement. This initial step will lay the foundation for more in-depth projects and foster a sense of empowerment and connection within the community. Stay Connected You can stay connected with John through his website, Local Civics, or email him directly at [email protected]. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing their Civic Impact Project Curriculum Overview, Civic & Community Leadership Curriculum Overview, DESE Topics 3-4 Curriculum Materials, NY Pathways Overview, MA Partnerships Overview, and NJ Partnerships Overview with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 225 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) John, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 00:05 - John Mueller (Guest) Thank you for having me. How are you, Lindsay? 00:07 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Good, I'm good, I'm really excited to talk today. I know our connection has been through the investigating history curriculum at the state level of Massachusetts here, but you do that and so much more. So really excited to learn about all the civics work that your organization has and diving into all that today. So I guess what is important for listeners to know right off the bat, or to just kind of keep in mind as we jump into that conversation today. 00:32 - John Mueller (Guest) Well, I'll tell you right now we're local civics, so it's in the name, right. It says it does what it says on the package, and we are really excited about nurturing the next generation of changemakers and helping students see that they do have power and helping them leverage their voice and their viewpoint to make change in their communities. 00:55 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that and I think you're leading us perfectly into this next question. I like to ask about freedom dreaming and Dr Bettina Love speaks so expertly about this as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So I guess, with that additional concept of dreams freedom dreams being grounded in the critique of injustice and your attention to youth as changemakers, what is that kind of big dream that you hold for education, if you want to expand on that a bit for us? 01:19 - John Mueller (Guest) Yeah, it's really what I just said about the voice of students. I think there's a great Alice Walker quote about people not knowing the power of their voice and I don't have the exact words in front of me so I won't try to butcher it for you all but just that students really, when they're given the opportunity to actually put in motion something that they are interested in and they are passionate about, they come up with some of the most amazing ideas and they're inspired to actually take action on them in ways that I don't think we see often in the regular day-to-day curriculum. 01:55 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) So, so true, I love thinking about I mean, I don't love thinking about all of the turmoil nationally and internationally, but when? I think about it. I think about you. Know how students in a classroom have often been the closest that I've ever witnessed to coming to some sort of like different path forward. That is better because they're so creative, because they're not like bogged down and like this is the way we've always done things and it's like, yeah, let them, let them talk, let them think about these ideas. 02:22 - John Mueller (Guest) There's so much opportunity in that regard. I think there's a lot of things happening structurally, also in education, that have been enabling this. So I think about the seal of civic readiness in New York state. We do a lot of work helping schools navigate that process. There's also the DESE department of elementary and secondary ed projects in Massachusetts for both eighth grade and high school, and so students are not just getting like one chance at this. Even In some cases they get multiple at-bats and they're building that muscle. And I always tell students when they use our curriculum it's like you could use this for anything. You know, if you want to make a lot of money someday, you could probably use the same skills that we're teaching you here. You know how do you put an idea forward in a way that acknowledges the different people in power and gets people on your side, and you know I hope you'll use it for good. But it's really whatever you want to make it and I think when students hear that, it really resonates with them. 03:20 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely right. It's like important life skills for wherever you're going. That's a great framing, and I love the idea of like having multiple at-bats throughout their educational journeys in these various states. That's so cool. And so you mentioned curriculum. Let's go there. So what is you know what's the curriculum about? Can you tell us kind of a story, maybe, of how you successfully implemented that somewhere? Or kind of what should we know about that civics curriculum successfully? 03:45 - John Mueller (Guest) implemented that somewhere, or kind of. What should we know about that civics curriculum? Yeah, so we have our own call it proprietary civics curriculum, we call it a civic impact project curriculum. It's five units long, it goes for about 40 or so lessons and starts with a concept we call civic lenses, and so think of a camera. You know from my intro I'm a photography guy, so I love this, this analogy. 04:09 It's getting students the muscle of zooming in on different areas of community and starting to identify, well, what already exists, where are maybe some gaps or opportunities and and where do I fit into all of that and where do I fit into all of that? So we get students examining their personal story, their personal connection to the community and sort of uncovering even communities they didn't know they were a part of or didn't consider to be communities. So everything from just within your school building, within teams or clubs that you're a part of. Maybe you have a religious community or an identity community of some kind that is important to you, and then we get them mapping like, look at the places around you and actually inventory what do you see. So maybe they zoom in on transportation and they're noticing there's bus stops all around their neighborhood but there's no bike lanes. Maybe they're zooming in on health care and they're realizing there's lots of urgent care but there's not a lot of senior centers or things like that. That just to try and get the lay of the land. As students go further, they start to sort of activate around a particular focus area. So I'll give you a great example. 05:23 One of my favorite projects from a partner in the Bronx is a high school level project. They started to realize that, you know, coming out of the COVID era, that there are seniors who are in nursing homes, who have great access to technology but don't really have the skills to utilize it and to actually stay connected with their families and, you know, use all the splendor of the internet to enrich their lives. And so from that point they, after identifying that as a focus area, they started doing a lot of interviews. They started to try and talk to seniors, talk to the people at the nursing home, people who have the power to say, hey, you can come in or you can't come in. Talking to school leaders to give them an opportunity to get out of the building. All of these little steps and all the different factors that come together to help actually initiate action on something. 06:21 So this group I'm really proud of them. They ultimately designed a six-week course that helped on avoiding scams and phishing, on how to set up your phone, how do you take screenshots and photos of things and send them to people, how do you use FaceTime, how do you do all these different, all the amazing things our supercomputers in our pockets can do. You know and they actually delivered that at a local nursing home. So they took it beyond just planning and, you know, outlining the issue and trying to come up with a solution. They actually went out and did it, and that's when this work gets really special in my mind. 07:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely. It's so frustrating when we just contain things to a classroom and there's no authentic audience. When the ideas are so cool, it's like no, give them the authentic audience that's so cool. Wow, I love that story. Thank you for sharing it. 07:16 I'm I'm curious too. I'm just like backing up a bit, thinking about you know this clearly was an example of a teacher and probably structures that supported all of this work in this important curriculum and they were, you know, excited about it and supported it and it got done and it was great. I'm curious about you know we work with folks who are kind of given, for example, an investigating history curriculum and it's like, okay, but I don't have the structure to teach all the lessons. Or I am new to kind of this like inquiry-based thing, or I'm new to like student leadership, or I've never connected students with their idea with an authentic audience. Like I'm imagining there are some hurdles that you've kind of had to coach people through. Could you kind of maybe talk us through maybe a common hurdle you've seen and maybe what was a mindset shift? 08:08 - John Mueller (Guest) That's a great question. We definitely see lots of different entry points to this work. There are folks who want to dedicate an entire senior year capstone course to doing this type of work and, believe it or not, for a 40 something lesson curriculum especially when you consider that this is basically a design project it certainly can fit into a whole year course. So we do a lot of coaching on just you know what is the outcome you're actually looking for at various stages of this project. Right, do you want students to just produce like a policy memo? Do you want them to just have a trifold or something like that? Or are you trying to expand this into an iterative design process? And a lot of teachers are not familiar or comfortable with that. Right, it's like I'm teaching the standards, I'm testing the standards, I'm responding to what I see and maybe going back and remediating some things. But we try to get across the point that this is a cycle and you can really do it as many times as you have time for. So start with this. You know, investigating the community, identifying a focus area, take it around to get feedback from folks with your prototype and you go back to the drawing board again in your class, who are all in different places, and how do you sort of move to more of a consultation role in your classroom, where you are getting a sense of where everyone is at and just advising them in ways that push them forward, you know, rather than wanting to hand them the answers or, you know, tell them they got it right or they got it wrong. So that's a big shift. 09:50 We also have done a lot to try and figure out ways to create that you said like authentic connections to the outside community. One thing we've done we have a sixth grade class doing projects in Georgia right now and working with them. In the past year we actually got them expert feedback on their projects. So we had all those sixth graders write. You know, here's our focus area, here's our proposal, here's what we want to do, and we put that out because we have a great network. 10:18 You know we're all. We all went to great schools. We have great friends who are professionals in all different fields now. So, you know, leveraging our team's personal network to reach out to lawyers, to doctors, to people who work in nonprofits or who have affected change in all these areas students are interested in. It's been great to make those connections even asynchronously. Those were all given as text-based feedback. Of course, we have all sorts of career speakers and we bring people into schools as well. We've done like town hall sessions with local representatives and various career leaders. So it's really cool to try and help schools who are excited about doing this work but don't necessarily have the capacity or the vision for it. We try and give them as many different opportunities as possible to get students some really enriching feedback and great connections to see that people are listening, people do want to engage in the work that you're proposing with you, even though you're 11, 12, 16 years old. 11:27 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh, that's so cool and I mean I think we've had guests on the podcast before that have talked about this type of work and that if you're one teacher doing this kind of thing from scratch on your own, like, yes, leverage your personal network, leverage the network of the school. But I'm just envisioning that it's so cool when you partner with someone like local civics, right. And then it's like now you are connected to all of the networks that you all have as an organization, in addition to the networks that people have in an individual classroom or school, that you are just connected to so many people and so much brilliance that, of course, we can kind of find, you know, an audience for whatever you're looking for, whether that's asynchronous feedback or a live guest speaker. I think that's just really neat, how there's such a relational basis for a lot of this work, and I think that's so real right. That's what like civics often is. 12:14 - John Mueller (Guest) Yeah, and I'll just add I think I think there's a big push right now in corporate America as well to connect more with real students and and and really be a part of the communities where they are located. 12:28 I'll give you another example that we helped facilitate with a life sciences consulting company who had that exact mission. 12:37 They said you know, we have a giving arm or a philanthropy arm and we want to actually, you know, leverage all of the professional knowledge here to help bring more students into this field or at least make them aware you don't have to go into healthcare and be a doctor or a nurse, right, you can get into this consulting space. 12:55 That's really, really amazing. It's just one example, but we partnered with them to lead a whole healthcare exposure series, so a number of we had students from all five boroughs in New York, students from ninth all the way through 12th grade, at various stages of, you know, college preparedness and knowledge about their future career plans. But they were able to hear from career speakers from all across the company, people who work in marketing, people who you know were cancer research doctors before they moved into consulting to sort of show students. It's not a linear path to whatever career you're looking at. You know there's lots of different ways to enter various fields, and we actually brought them all into the office too, so the students got the full experience to share about their, their experiences and and how they got from from point A to point B, and and really enrich students' lives with that experience as well. 14:06 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I this is so cool. 14:06 I love all of the connection points and I just wish I had that kind of experience as a student, but I imagine there's you know there's so much work that goes into this right. You've obviously created this beautiful curriculum. You've helped make all these connections. I'm really interested too in that like pedagogical coaching kind of that you were talking about, where you're really helping teachers, you know, think of themselves more in that consultation role. Um. So I mean I'm curious about that. I'm also curious about at the curriculum level, you know, if there is a particular lesson or something that is kind of like a really successful lesson where you've had teachers kind of comment like, oh, this really cracked it open for students or this was where you know students lit up engagement wise. Or if even, as you know as coaches, if there's some particular teacher or success moment where you've seen that teacher kind of shift into consultation mode and had a big win, anything that resonates story-wise from your experiences here. 14:59 - John Mueller (Guest) Sure, yeah, a couple of things come to mind I think about. We put together a document a while back. It's like a 60 slide show that takes teachers through multiple design cycles with one project and I think, seeing it in terms of you know, here's something that students proposed In this case it was a group of students. They identified a focus area of we want parents to be more involved in their students' learning at home. You know they hypothesized that if we get parents better connected to teachers somehow, then students who are struggling will not struggle quite as much, and so their original proposal was to have a teacher parent club that parents could come to school on certain nights, they could learn about what's happening in the curriculum, maybe get some tips on tutoring their students at home. And they took that all the way through one design cycle where they put a proposal out there, shared it with lots of folks, got lots of feedback and they learned a lot. First of all, they validated their original idea, which is, in fact, parents do struggle with helping their kids at home. That's overwhelmingly what they heard when they surveyed parents. They also found out that parents don't have the time or the wherewithal to come to school multiple nights a month and meet in person, especially in this particular location. It's, you know, we're talking about parents coming from all across New York City over an hour on the bus, sometimes, just to get somewhere. So they said, okay, great. So we know that this is an area we should remain focused on, but we're going to go back to the drawing board, into that design cycle again, and this time we're going to make it a digital offering. 16:46 So they took it through a whole nother design loop and this time they put together a prototype where for every lesson in the syllabus, they matched it up with some Khan Academy or some YouTube video that helped emphasize that topic for someone who maybe was just not familiar with it, and they shared that in a parent newsletter. And that was their next prototype, prototype that was massively successful and very popular and exciting for parents to say, ok, well, I don't know this topic, but let me sit down with my student and we'll pull up this lesson together and go through it. So that's just the design thinking guide for teachers. Seeing that go from one phase back to the drawing board. Do it again. Yes, it's the same lessons in some regard, but you're coming at it from with a whole different perspective and seeing how the sort of prompts for students can change in throughout that cycle. You know how do you push them to go deeper. We script out all sorts of questions for all these phases of the project that they can use to push students, and that sort of conferencing guide we put together helps a lot as well. You also asked about a particular lesson where it really kind of resonates with students and I think our we call it power mapping policy. 18:03 Power mapping we have one sort of general lesson and one that specifically zooms in on food insecurity. This is where students, I think, realize that there are lots of different people who touch any given issue that you want to look at. So for the food insecurity one, they dive into a group called FarmLink. They were founded out of Loyola High School in Los Angeles, who we've worked with for many years. We can't take credit for their activities. They got it together and we've used them as a model. They came before we started working with the school, actually. 18:38 But FarmLink is an amazing organization that brings food that is no longer ready for grocery stores because they demand very long shelf life of anything that they're putting out in a grocery store in a grocery store so they connect with those farmers who would otherwise be throwing food away and they bring trucks over and they bring food directly to food banks, where it can be rolled out to people much faster. 19:00 And you know students use that lesson to dive into, okay, so there's all the food regulation, health inspections. There's the grocery store owners, there's the farmers, there's the volunteers, there's people who work at food banks. There's the grocery store owners, there's the farmers, there's the volunteers, there's people who work at food banks, there's the individuals receiving food from food banks and it's like oh, wow. There's all these different people who touch this area and I think some of the most successful projects are where they find just one piece of the puzzle that is not working as best as it should or could and get really specific. That's really where the magic happens, in my opinion, and and that I think that process of going through the policy power mapping you know who touches this, how much influence do they have? What would they want to hear or need to see, to get on our side that's a really valuable skill for students. 19:54 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh, I love that example because I think often I mean I personally feel this just right in the current national landscape in the US. I've been recording this in April, so when this airs, what will be happening? But I just think like it often can feel overwhelming when you're like I want to take action and you know I have this niche set of skills and interests Like what can I do within that? Like what are what's the big picture of what's happening? And kind of like where's the piece where I can best fit to support, to leverage my ideas, my network of resources, whatever it is? And so I just love that that students can get into that complexity. I think sometimes in education we kind of simplify to the point where we take out all of that complexity and then we lose the perfect kind of niche fit that a student might find in a particular area and in their ability to make change. 20:46 - John Mueller (Guest) Oh yeah. 20:47 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that you kind of framed it in that way and you give such a beautiful example. I love that farm link program. That's super cool. 20:54 - John Mueller (Guest) You just brought to mind another example. You know there are lots of topics that students are drawn towards because it's what they see every day in their community, and unfortunately, a lot of these issues that students think of are intractable issues that adults you know the big kids have had a really hard time trying to sort out. And so, you know, one that comes to mind is homelessness, of course, and in many areas where we have partnerships, you know, students see homelessness every day. They maybe have experienced homelessness themselves, and so it's really common. I talk to a teacher Okay, kids really want to focus on homelessness. 21:34 They want to propose a new multimillion-dollar. You know shelter in this area and shelters do amazing work, but we just know that you know a bunch of sixth graders coming out and saying, hey, we need a $10 million. Shelter is not really going to fly, and so what we try to do is again find those areas where maybe there's a reason why the great shelters that already exist in our town are not being utilized. So by actually doing the stakeholder analysis, by actually talking to people and getting real people's opinions and thoughts on things, you start to uncover, for example, in many homeless shelters, people who are experiencing homelessness. They don't want to go because they don't think their belongings will be safe. 22:21 So, oh, maybe we don't need a $10 million new shelter. Maybe we need, you know, a couple thousand dollars spent on a locker system. Or, you know, you talk to people hey I'm, you know I want to be working, but I'm struggling with finding a place to just have a shower and, you know, get myself cleaned up. Or I need clothes that are professional. That can you know. Connecting people to services that already exist often can make some magic as well. So, yeah, just's in the name. When you get really local, when you really boil it down to the people and what they really need in any given focus area, you can find something that is achievable for young people to have an impact. 23:11 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Amazing, thank you. I feel like there's so many really great kind of tips and advice sprinkled throughout this episode already, but I'm curious is there anything else you would say to someone before we move to close here, like if they're just starting with kind of civics work, or or maybe they're in New York and they just are like oh, civil civic readiness, like what does this look like? Now in my class I'm the social studies teacher for seniors, like you know, and they're just kind of in their early years of figuring this stuff out. Maybe it's even not a social studies, maybe it's an ELA teacher who's like actually I don't have to do this, but I want to. I'm just interested, like someone at the beginning of that work. What would you say to them? Any advice that you would give in embarking upon this? 23:52 - John Mueller (Guest) Oh yeah, well, we didn't even touch on this, but one of our main principles for this work is asset-based community development, this idea that we're speaking from strengths. I hope that I didn't even use the word problem once this whole time, because there are not really problems right. There really are just opportunities. There are areas we can focus on and improve on. But part of that philosophy of being an asset, developing the community with an asset-based mindset, is there are lots and lots of resources around you already that are unrealized. 24:26 So in your school community, you know, talk to all the teachers around you. Maybe there's someone who worked at an environmental nonprofit who can advise students on that area. Maybe there's someone who has experienced homelessness that can give you that, you know, unvarnished feedback on a project that some somebody else in the school might not be able to give you. You know, maybe you have resources in the school that are being underutilized. Maybe there's stuff in the community that that, that that's there but just not really being harnessed to its greatest use. And so for that reason, I think it's just you got to put students in that mindset, get teachers in that mindset of we have everything we need right here, we don't need anybody else. We don't really need anything else. We can make some I keep saying magic. We can make some magic happen with the resources right here in this community, maybe right inside these four walls of the school. 25:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Love that. Yes, because I think often what we do as educators I'm very guilty of this too, as a former teacher right, it's like, well, we don't have enough time, or we don't have enough money? 25:32 - John Mueller (Guest) Oh, totally we don't right. 25:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) It's like all the things we don't have when, if it's asset based and you're just like you know, we have all these things with these brilliant students, we have passion, we have all all these relational connections. I love that. I love that frame of asset based. So thank you for that. Okay, so if you are kind of talking to people who are on their way into work, starting the new school year, for example, they're excited to end the episode and take like one action step to get like a little bit more civics in their life, in their curriculum maybe this year. What's one thing they could do to kind of start? 26:07 - John Mueller (Guest) Well, we have seen teachers, especially in history and I know a lot of your listeners are probably history teachers that there's lots of opportunities for baking in some of these civic skills, no matter what grade level or what topic. I mean we had folks using the power mapping process to talk about Japanese internment camps, like it totally seems totally separate. You know we're talking 70 plus 80 years in the past. In the past you can use the same framework for understanding how people react and how they choose sides and all of this sort of. That's one skill that really is transferable. Same goes for just this notion of community mapping. And you know, you probably have even historical sites in your town that you don't even realize. So just knowing that you have more at your fingertips than maybe you realize and really digging into that, I think can be a great start to uncovering new opportunities. 27:06 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh my gosh, that's so cool. I'm just like interjecting quickly because I was reading this book about it's an ELA book but it's thinking about like narrative, personal narrative and narrative change narrative, all this stuff. And so I actually, if I were to go back in the classroom, it would be super cool to do a community mapping slash like photo essay narrative of your community as like a get to know you at the beginning of the year. 27:26 - John Mueller (Guest) Love that there could be a lot there. 27:29 Yeah, absolutely All of this stuff, even just the thinking about a project as more of a design cycle and where you, you know you're, you're not just getting it to the finish line and calling it quits, right, how do you come back to the drawing board and improve on that? All those skills, I think, are super transferable. You know, whether you're an English teacher, science teacher, especially science teachers, have civic projects opportunities. So, yeah, just harness that energy that's in your classroom. Students want to have their voices heard, they want to share their ideas and you know even some of the students who might be checked out. When you start giving them something like this, they check in. 28:10 So, lots of opportunity. 28:12 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, so this last second to last question is just kind of for fun. So everyone on this podcast is always just like growing and learning. They're like doing awesome things all the time. So, whether it is professional or personal, I'm curious, john, what is something that you've been learning about lately? 28:28 - John Mueller (Guest) Yeah, so I'll share. I think something that I've been knocking at the door of is. There's a book it's, I think it's called the art of gathering. I'll admit I haven't read that yet, but it's been recommended to me about a hundred times. 28:44 Um, I've been talking with a friend from college. You know how do you actually do do some of this community building in your own life, your own personal life, in your immediate area. Um, so, you know, you read, heard in my bio. One of the things I've been really passionate about is getting a photography community together in washington dc, here and uh, and it's just been so rewarding it's. It's truly an. If you build it, they will come, sort of thing. Um, I mean in the bio you heard it it has grown to over 300 people. 29:11 But it really started with me just wanting to get out on a regular basis and take photos and, and I started just telling everybody I met, going up to people who had cameras, who didn't look like tourists up on the street, and I did not have one negative interaction throughout all of that. You know, just going up to people hey, are you a photographer? Hey, do you post your photos anywhere? Well, I'm organizing these walks once a month. Would you be interested? People are effusive, like, wow, I'm so glad that that's an opportunity. I've been looking for that sort of thing, right? So what you're looking for, chances are there's other people looking for it. So I'm trying to lean into that whole. You know how do you organize your community in ways that are enriching to you and feel authentic, and so that book again I haven't read it myself, it's really on my list, but I'm definitely leaning into that sort of work here, just in my personal life. 30:09 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that and I love that story of photography and growing that just by organic conversation. Wow, that's so cool. Finally, I think people are going to want to connect with you, your organization. Where can people do that? 30:22 - John Mueller (Guest) Sure, yeah, so we're LocalCivics. It's localcivicsio. You can find lots of information about what we do there. I'm always open to email and connecting outside of that. So if you want to just email john at localcivicsio, I'll get right back to you. 
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
This episode is part of our curriculum series, and we’re looking at how to think creatively about the books that bring you joy to excite students and offer impactful teaching opportunities. Literature has the power to engage students in meaningful discussions, linking literature to real-world issues and promoting effective activism and resilience. We are looking specifically at the novel “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” by TJ Klune to draw out some ideas to connect with activism and civics education, offering practical examples of what your ELA or other curricula may look like. Why? The big dream is to transform classrooms into vibrant hubs of creativity and civic engagement by leveraging the power of literature. And, it doesn’t have to be non-fiction or academic literature—joyful, fun reading also has the power to positively impact educational settings. For example, TJ Klune dedicates “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” to the trans community around the world in the book’s foreword, writing, “For the trans community the world over: I see you, I hear you, I love you. This story is for you.” Given the current political environment and attacks on trans people, this book becomes a timely and important way to lean into what’s happening in the world through current events. Educators can connect literature with real-world issues, fostering a deeper understanding of activism and shared identity spaces. What? Using “Somewhere Beyond the Sea” as an example, here are some ways to use literature to connect with important real-world issues in your classroom. Step 1: Pull out themes in books that make sense in the personal and cultural context your students are in. In "Somewhere Beyond the Sea," there are important themes around found family, voice and human stories, allyship, and queer representation. Step 2: Develop curriculum components around the themes in your book to explore relevant issues. You can utilize literature circles, writer's notebooks, and student journals to facilitate discussions that connect literature to real-world issues. You may also choose to center your curriculum around current event connections, like using Pride Month to explore LGBTQ+ or queer studies, history, and current events. Step 3: Design projects that allow students to apply their learning in creative ways, such as writing their own fantasy or literary pieces inspired by radical imagining and activism. There are lots of options here—you could have a current event day for the book, host a gallery walk, or have a Socratic seminar. Step 4: Use guiding questions to participate in radical imagining. Some examples include:
As you work to integrate creative literature and civic engagement, educators should be open to exploring the intersection of literature, current events, and personal stories, encouraging students to see themselves as active participants in shaping their communities. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Curriculum Playlist with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 224 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
00:01 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Hello and welcome to an episode of the Time for Teachership podcast. This is episode 224. And today we're in the midst of a curriculum series and I want to encourage people to think creatively about what books kind of have brought you joy or what books out there are exciting or interesting to your kids, that connect to current events, that are kind of a blend of all of those things. And so some of the time I'm kind of giving ideas for how you might bring all of those things together or, step-by-step, how you might go ahead and do those things. And sometimes I think, as we do as educators, we want to model what the possibilities could be. And so today's episode is kind of a modeling of what was happening in my brain as I was engaging in some fun reading for myself. It's a good thing to engage in fun reading when we're always learning and growing professionally Fun to just get out of that and sometimes do things for fun. So I was reading book two in the House on the Cerulean Sea series, so this is called Somewhere Beyond the Sea. I really enjoyed the first one. I listened to the audiobook version as I was marathon training a year and a half ago or so, and really really liked it. Particularly the narration of the audiobook I thought was excellent and I just think TJ Klune's writing in this series, particularly this, was all that I had read at this particular moment in time. And then, since I've read some other of his stuff, it's just it's so well done and it really really just hooked me in the forward, and so let's just kind of dive in. I'm going to read the forward to you. I'll give you the gist without spoilers, and then I'm going to talk about what is happening in my brain as I'm thinking about constructing a unit around this, like where my brain goes. And then I also want to help us think whether you are a teacher or an instructional leader who might be supporting teachers to design curriculum and bring out the joy and the kind of creative activism and possibilities that are present. And like how do we tie? Tie, for example, I I think this is kind of the crux of this episode for me is like how we tie kind of a radical imagining as a phrase I learned from adrian marie brown, and the kind of activism or civics component of all the things that I love and I think many of us love to do we talk a lot about on the podcast, with something like an ELA course, right, like a curriculum, where you should have a book and you have to do these reading comprehension things and you have to do all these reading and writing skills, right. Like how do we kind of merge all of that together? I often talk a lot about social studies and I think civics is just naturally a component of social studies, but it's so possible to do this well in ELA that I wanted to kind of think that through just as another example. So here we go, somewhere beyond the sea. 02:51 Here is the foreword by the author, tj Klune, for the trans community the world over I see you, I hear you, I love you. This story is for you. And the book continues on to be be, as some reviews have called it, very heavy-handed in its connections to. I mean, I'm recording this in 2025, amidst a second trump presidency, where attacks on trans people legislatively, in social society, on social media, right in conversation amongst politicians, is just tragic and harmful and scary and frustrating and anger inducing and all the things. And so I think the original kind of new teacher in me or not even new teacher, but just like when I was a teacher, the way I would design curriculum would be around. Okay, here's this terrible thing that's happening in the world and current events and politics. We're going to kind of learn about it, we're going to get frustrated by it, and then we're going to maybe do an activism project, like in a future unit, or we might talk about you know how it makes us feel, and then we kind of like leave it. And I've just been learning a lot as a human, but also from these professional learning books and things that it's really important to do something with that. 04:12 Research shows this. But also I was just reading a book by Chad Dumas, who I will be interviewing on the podcast, I think at the time this will air you can go back and it will be a July episode, so it'll have already aired. But in it he quotes Paulo Freire, who actually I'm paraphrasing here because I don't have the text in front of me, but something like people who just, you know, have dialogue, like they leave frustrated if there's just dialogue and there's not action as a consequence of the dialogue. And so I want to keep connecting back to that civics idea of like, yes, we're dialoguing and dialogue is great, and I'm talking a lot about student led discussion this year particularly, but really apologies for all the dog noises. I have a puppy and sometimes we hear a lot of collar shaking, so collar is off. Now let's see how this goes. We can right Fuse all of these things. We can do this. Well, here we go. Let's dive in. Totally forgot where I was. 05:11 Here's the gist of this book. The series is about magical kids who live on a remote island. They are awesome and the audiobook version really gives them excellent voices. It's incredible. I highly recommend once more the audiobook version. And the larger community has really fear mongered and oppressed magical beings in this series, this book and the adults that run the orphanage. I don't want to spoiler anything from the previous book either, so I'll just say his treatment as a child and his public statements about himself, his kids and magical beings in general are all kind of part of this particular book, more so even than in the first book, although the first book touches on these things. The first book touches on these things, so I do think that you could teach this as a standalone. It's also nice as a series. 06:01 I think you could get a lot of the elements from the first book without the second book. However, I will say, as I indicated the review's language talks about earlier, there's a very heavy-handed connection to current events and people who are different, particularly queer folks. But I think honestly, like the connections are quite broad and applicable. I mean magical creatures being kind of the focus of this book, I think, would say right, this is not something that we have in our world. However, can be parallel to many things happening. So themes of the book that you could explore in this text and connect through discussion, connect, if you were doing this as kind of literature circles, and this is one of the options and connecting to other books, you know, however, you want to bring themes in. One is found family and so connecting experience for kids who have moved to maybe a new family or they have moved to a new school, right, so kids who maybe have been in foster care, military families who move a lot, just people who have, you know, their parents have changed jobs and they need to, or their caretakers have changed jobs, I should say, and they need to attend a new school now. So found family and kind of those are options for connections to the human piece of who students are and how they're showing up in the class and what they might be able to bring in as personal experience. If you're doing, for example, a circle share to connect to the book. 07:19 Radical imagining again a term I referenced, I learned from Adrienne Marie Brown and here's how she kind of talks about it and she cites I apologize for the pronunciation of these names, but Kasnavish and Haven 2014, who define it as ability to imagine the world, life and social institutions not as they are, but as they might otherwise be. It brings possible futures back to work on the present, to inspire action. So this idea of radical imagining happens in this fantasy book. It happens in any fantasy book really, but really well done here. And then, you know, connecting that to current events, there's a beautiful opportunity through dialogue and through project-based learning. 08:04 Here, I think, also themes of the book power of voice and allyship. So there's a very human focus of this book. Very, very much humanity is central and you know they recognize the importance of stories. They recognize that the main character talks to the media, talks to people, brings people's humanity out in understanding his story and connecting with the pain and the radical imagining of this person. Right, and I think that that humanity that is central is really important for us as humans to recognize, and students as they're learning to have civic dialogue and kind of speak in different ways than they see in popular news coverage of politicians. This is kind of a way to paint that picture and keep humanity at the center. And I say allyship very intentionally as well, because there are people who in this book are not magical and they are rallying around the magical community. Of course there are those who also are not, but there is, I think, a good attention to that aspect of the book as well that you don't need to be part of a community to kind of let them lead and support them in ways they want to be supported. Right, and so there's this true kind of allyship happening there or co-conspiratoriness happening there. 09:20 Also, themes queer representation, as I mentioned earlier, and those current event connections are really clear. So I think again, if you want to do anything really intentionally with LGBTQ plus or queer current events, like I mean to merge both of those or just like as part of you know, like Pride Month or as part of I mean to merge both of those or just like as part of you know, like Pride Month or as part of I mean, I like going beyond the months, but as part of kind of a unit on queer studies, queer history, queer texts and literature, or again as a current events connection where if you're doing this, as you know, a crossover unit with a social studies team or you are a humanities teacher, that kind of teaches both. I think there's very clear connections that you can pull up. Now how I might teach it. I've kind of touched on this a little bit so far, but I might say okay, so the unit topic like I'm teaching a unit on activism and radical imagining becomes an activist strategy option. So I'm reading this book through the lens of it being a piece of activism or a piece of civic engagement, and so I'm actually reading it for the strategy itself of like this author is radically imagining what life could look like through this kind of fantastical parallel world. So that could be an option. 10:28 I also could do a creative writing unit. If I'm an ELA teacher and I am pulling writing instruction ideas from, I would really like I've mentioned this before on podcast and we got to actually interview the authors, which was so cool their stories, their voices, and so pulling ideas from like, how do we use mentor texts to study them, to learn what they do well and then do it in our own writing. I think that would be super, super cool, both from like kind of a fantasy element, but also just from like a good writing element and how to kind of weave in current events and all the things. Now, another option for kind of thinking through how I would pace out the unit and kind of the lesson by lesson level of what I could do. So, unit arc wise, I could have a class circle on personal stories around identity, oppression and or activism or radical imagining, right. 11:14 So I could say, okay, you can bring in kind of your personal connections to the humanity of these characters. So either you've had a similar experience, you have identified with the non-magical beings and their allyship of an oppressed group. You have had this opportunity to share kind of your human story or your lived experience around an issue and we're heard, or we're not heard, and what did that feel like? You have a vision of what the world could look like other than what it currently is? Tell us about it. So I mean you could connect to characters, you could connect to the author and their arts. 11:47 I think there's a lot of things you could do here, but I always love the idea of starting with a classic circle and lived experience and creative ideas and kind of surfacing those and grounding the unit in that you could I mentioned this earlier but read the book whole class or read the book as a small group and kind of do literature circles. So again all those themes I like to do literature circles that come together around certain themes or have common, multiple common themes. I've listed those out. You could certainly run literature circles knowing without reading the book you can know kind of how this might sit among some of the other books you may choose or offer students to choose from. Know kind of how this might sit among some of the other books you may choose or offer students to choose from. You can this is a concept actually from their Stories, their Voices you could tell I absolutely loved that text. Thank you, authors. 12:31 You could read it as a reader and a writer, so you could read the text for the story itself, as you would typically read a fictional story, but you could also read it through the lens of a writer. So either we read the whole book through as a reader, experience the whole thing, and then go back and kind of pick out what we loved, or I love the idea of doing and I think this is Jeff oh, I always forget his name, anderson, I think. Mechanically Inclined is his book and he talks about kind of keeping a writer's notebook and identifying some interesting phrases or interesting things that writers do as you're reading, and then you can kind of talk about that within the literature circle, within the whole class, share out, you could do. I used to do like a Friday, Every Friday the lesson was something like a writer's notebook or kind of pulling out these interesting writing techniques that we would surface from the literature circles as we were reading. This could be part of individual student journals where they submit a journal every week in response to whatever book they're reading. So if they're reading this, they could kind of highlight what it is that the author is doing based on however much they read that week. Okay, those are all examples. 13:34 Literature circle activities. If you are doing this in a literature circle, you could prompt the student discussions by inviting connections. So I always really like this idea to just invite connections and so you might say, like connect to a personal live experience and share that with a group. You might connect to a current event story and you know that changes week to week. So students could bring up something one week and then three weeks later there's a brand new current event that they could connect to. So lots of opportunities. You could connect to another class, you could connect to a lot of different things, another book that you had read earlier in the year or last year. 14:10 You could use a protocol like ThinkTalk Open Exchange from Rhonda Bondi, where you're inviting each individual student to kind of or everyone, I guess has think time, but each individual student has a moment to think before they individually speak. They speak. All people get to do that. So you know, I have five seconds to think, 30 seconds to talk, and then the next person has five seconds to think about their idea in silence, 30 seconds to talk, right all around the circle and then we open exchange. So it's kind of an open dialogue, no kind of boundaries. 14:41 You can use another protocol like color, symbol, image, which comes from Harvard's Project Zero Thinking Routines, where you're inviting metaphorical thinking. I love this in a lot of ways, but I particularly love it when we're thinking about good writing techniques and abstract ways of thinking. And so, yes, you're reading this fiction, fantastical novel and we're abstracting ways that this actually connects to our lived experience in the real world and current events. That requires a level of abstraction that I think sometimes the color symbol, image routine or others like it can make a little bit easier. It's a nice scaffold and it is an additional scaffold for this type of thinking. I like climber cards which we can link to in the show notes and the blog post for this episode, because those are these cool kind of like deck of cards where there's images on them that you don't have to like come up with the images. But you could also Google search for some images or have students bring up images on their computers or devices, if you have that available. Okay, other things within the unit arc. 15:39 I think I would do a current event day for this particular book, and I mean you could all discuss the same one, like you could name it, or have a student name it and bring it in and everyone explores it and connects it to the book. Or students could research their own and then, either in some groups or kind of individually, turn and talk, or however you want to structure it. Students could say, hey, I've been reading this, I've found this current event, I'm bringing it in. I'm going to summarize it for my partner or the group or the class you could do a gallery walk. I mean there's a lot of different ways to share out here, but they're the ones doing that original research and they're bringing it in. So two different options there. 16:17 I think at some point I would do a Socratic seminar specifically on linking the book to current events, because it is so heavy-handed, because it's offering itself up to that and because current events are always changing. It'll be interesting, you know, if you were reading this several years from its publication date. How does the current world at that time connect to the time of publication and what was happening in the world, particularly considering the United States context of the author and that element? But I think it'd be really interesting to do a specific Socratic seminar on that. We can also link to the Socratic seminar template in the blog post that I've used with students A true collaborative effort for many of the students across many teachers, mostly in the social studies department of Manhattan International High School, as well as the different networks that we have been involved in Internationals Network for Public Schools and the New York Performance Standards Consortium. 17:11 So thank you all to those of you who have contributed to that and some discussion prompts that I would use within that Socratic seminar would be something like what's the formula for effective activism or effective civic engagement, or eradicating oppression, whatever. What's the formula for effective activism or effective civic engagement? Or, you know, eradicating oppression, whatever. What's the ideal balance of shared identity spaces and inclusion? So this idea of like affinity spaces and having this preserved space where you know you can be with people who share an identity that is, in really oppressive spaces, unwelcomed right, that is, in really oppressive spaces, unwelcomed right, and like wanting that inclusive, potentially healing space for allies and people who are identifying in these affinity spaces to really come together and heal together. Like what is that ideal balance and who gets to decide that right? That could be really interesting to explore. 18:01 What would it look like if everyone was able to thrive? You could probably. If you're familiar with my podcast and my resources in the past, you could tell I'm using some of these sentence starters that I often share. So feel free to use the beginning of any of these sentences as well and kind of make your own ending or create, of course, something completely different. Here's another one what would it look like if communities interrupted harm every time it happened. So again that radical imagining, like let's imagine that was really awesome. What would that actually look like? And so you can kind of name a really awesome element of society or community and say, hey, what would that look like? Or what would it take to get there? 18:38 And here's, I think, probably my favorite how do you imagine a thriving fantasy or literary community? And so I think that one really sets us up nicely to brainstorm collectively some ideas as a group. Because what I envision being the project for a unit like that would be that students then write their own kind of fantasy or literary piece, short story or something, and they could do it collaboratively. A small group, whole class, could do like an anthology, right, and kind of like do something together. Or it could be just like a purely individual endeavor. I think that's fine. But I love the idea of like we're going to study this kind of radical imagining, activist strategy as fantasy book connected to current events and you going to study this kind of radical imagining, activist strategy as fantasy book connected to current events and you get to do your own after the study and reading of this one. So I think that could be a super cool unit and I also want to name just the writing workshop process being really integral to something like that. So using all of those ideas from their stories, their voices super cool. I think I would totally love to play with that idea. 19:46 If someone does this, please let me know. I'd be really excited to hear how that goes and learn from you and also thinking about, of course it's always on my mind now Dr Asawa Noy's work on dimension-based rubrics and dimension-based assessment To really make sure that we are getting a peer response, not just the teacher's response. Based assessment, to really make sure that we are getting a peer response, not just the teacher's response, so the peers and you as the educator would be sharing. You know what was your reader experience of the student's writing and giving that feedback. So again, there's that interplay, like it's not just this one particular standard we are measuring on and that's what you get feedback on. It's actually the interplay of what I wrote down and how people are reading and experiencing that writing and what they're thinking about, what connections they're drawing is actually kind of the beauty of the piece of writing, specifically when we're talking about current events and oppression and radical imagining and activism and making the world and community a better place that we all are living in. I think this is such a beautiful opportunity to leverage an equitable assessment protocol like that. 20:45 So that is the episode we are going to link to the freebie for this episode in the blog post. That's going to be our curriculum playlist. So a ton of different things there for you. That is going to be located at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 224. Until next time. 8/11/2025 223. Accomodations, Modifications, & Inclusion Anxiety: Supporting Learners with IEPs with Toby J. KartenRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, we talk to Toby J. Karten, author of The ADMIRE Framework for Inclusion, with an extensive background in special education. Toby shares her practical ADMIRE framework for fostering inclusive education environments.
Key points in our discussion include the necessity of shifting educators' mindsets to focus on students' strengths rather than deficiencies, the implementation of effective co-teaching strategies to create dynamic partnerships, and the critical role of proactive planning in reducing "inclusion anxiety" among students and educators. The Big Dream Toby envisions an education system that prioritizes justice and equity, where all students have access to a learning environment that recognizes their individual strengths. Her big dream for education is one where injustices and inequalities, particularly those related to racial and educational disparities, are actively addressed. Mindset Shifts Required To create inclusive classrooms, educators need to shift their mindset from viewing students through the lens of deficiencies to recognizing and capitalizing on their strengths. Toby emphasizes the importance of thinking of students as individuals, not categories, and understanding that differences are not deficiencies. Action Steps To best support students with IEPs and build inclusive classrooms, educators can begin with these action steps: Step 1: Build a learner profile for each child by assessing prior knowledge, strengths, challenges, etc. Use interest inventories and emotional check-ins to understand students' strengths and learning preferences. This helps tailor instruction to individual needs and promotes engagement. Step 2: Implement proactive planning using the ADMIRE framework. By being proactive rather than reactive, educators can reduce anxiety and create a supportive learning environment. The framework stands for:
Toby’s book has actions and activities that fall into each category to help educators implement the model in their classes. Step 3: Embrace effective co-teaching strategies. Recognize and utilize the diverse skill sets of both general and special education teachers to create a dynamic partnership. Rotate roles and share strategies to prevent stigmatization and enrich the learning experience for all students. Challenges? One of the challenges in implementing inclusive education is the presence of "inclusion anxiety" among students and educators. This discomfort or stress can arise from the fear of being perceived as different or from a lack of preparedness to address diverse learning needs. Overcoming this challenge requires proactive planning, collaboration, and a shift in mindset to focus on strengths and appropriate support. One Step to Get Started This can be a big topic with lots of areas for implementation. So, Toby has some simple advice for educators: Look at the person in the mirror and smile. You are a good person, trying to help students succeed. So take care of yourself so that you can keep doing great work to support students! Stay Connected You can stay connected with Toby by email at [email protected] and on her website, Inclusion Workshops. You can also listen to Toby’s podcast, Karten’s Inclusion Conversations Podcast. To help you implement today’s takeaways, our guest is sharing their page of Inclusion Tools with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 223 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Toby, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 00:06 - Toby Karten (Guest) Thank you for having me, Lindsay. It's a pleasure to be here and to share some knowledge with the listeners. 00:12 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I'm excited to learn, along with listeners, along from you, and I just finished your book, the Admire Frameworks. I'm really excited to talk about that today, so that's definitely on my mind. Is there anything on your mind, anything you want listeners to kind of know about you or kind of the audience to keep in mind as we jump into our conversation today? 00:29 - Toby Karten (Guest) Sure, you said you're going to learn from me, but I learned from the people I work with, and that includes the administrators, the teachers, the students, the families, because even though we might have knowledge, like I have in the Envire framework for inclusion with Solution Tree, I don't have all the answers until we collaborate with others. So I think that's what we're doing here, and some of my background, just quickly, has been in special education since undergraduate, you know, before it was called IDEA. It was quite a few moons ago and it's wonderful to see things progress in a positive way and we want to make sure we stay on that track. That's why we keep having conversations like this one. 01:14 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh, that's a beautiful framing. Thank you for that. And so I would love to just dive in with this idea of freedom dreaming. So Dr Bettina Love talks about it as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So, given that context, what is that big dream that you hold for education? 01:31 - Toby Karten (Guest) Yes, that word justice has a very broad definition. There used to be Southern poverty law. It's now called learning for justice, right, and it talks about a lot of inequalities that exist. And if the inequalities exist in a preschool, they're going to exist in post-secondary choices, and it goes on and it spirals. And as far as injustice, there's all types of things that would go under that umbrella, of things that would go under that umbrella, including students with different color right, who don't fit quote, unquote the norm. 02:16 Why should someone, and the statistics, point out that unfortunately, a lot of students of color are put in that SPED, special ed population, which doesn't mean that they are one of the IDEA classifications? But if you compare some of the behaviors of someone of color, a student of color, to someone not of color, and the same behaviors they exhibit, they might be tracked into special ed sooner than someone else who doesn't have that racial you know characteristic. And it doesn't mean that everyone is going to get the same treatment. We're not all the same. That's not what equity means. 02:57 But injustice means that we have to try to give everyone what they need to learn. Certain cultures learn better in groups, so we'll do more cooperative activities because they like that, whereas other cultures, families, don't question professionals because, la maestro, they're thinking that they have all the answers. But together we have all the answers to try to diminish some of the injustice that exists out there. Because, you know, especially in the Admire book, I have one of the chapters that talks about think individuals, not categories, and that means that, yeah, the kid might have ADHD, but that doesn't define who he, she or they are. You know, we want to capitalize on strengths, to minimize what might be viewed as a difference is not a deficiency, it's just a characteristic that might be different than quote unquote the norm of the class. 04:00 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Love that. I love that you're getting into all of the different things right, kind of the racialization of students and student bodies and behaviors and how that also influences who is in the classrooms, and not even meeting the idea of classification. It's like so fascinating. Thank you for naming that, and I do love so much of the pieces in your book, particularly that piece around individuals not categories, and the idea of strengths, not deficiencies, and so I. For me, that's certainly a mindset shift that I've seen in teachers I coach and even my own special education teacher journey, right is like this is really important to kind of shift that common perspective of like here's all these needs versus like here's actually all these strengths, like my students think brilliantly and maybe like the communication avenue is the struggle, but like let's harness that brilliant thinking, right. So I'm curious is that like the main mindset shift required, would you say, for educators? Are there other mindset shifts that are really helpful when we're talking about inclusion and students with IEPs? 05:07 - Toby Karten (Guest) Yeah, that's a great framework for it as well, and we want to make sure that we capitalize on strengths. That is essential and yours, mine and theirs. You know, and you know families might be overwhelmed. Know and and, and you know families might be overwhelmed but also they might have great strength that maybe they're going to come in and talk to the class or, you know, do something and help their child to learn. Same thing with a paraprofessional who's working with a special ed teacher. They might not know what to do but their strength is listening and following directions. So we need to direct people sometimes to maximize their strengths and set that situation with research-based practices. You know, like universal design for learning. 05:58 Right, the book has a lot of evidence-based practices. It's not just the flavor of the month, it talks a lot about how it looks in the classroom when I'm teaching blank, whether it's fractions, meiosis or the letter C has two sounds. You know we have to try to get learners to realize that maybe their strength is not auditory but maybe it's tactile, that maybe their strength is not auditory but maybe it's tactile. So we do silly stuff like you know salt to write letters, you know fun stuff. Nobody says this has to be difficult or boring for kids or the teachers. It just has to be that word in the legislation which is under broad interpretation and it's called appropriate. So I think it's appropriate, back to your original question, to just capitalize on strengths. Capitalize on the teacher's strengths, you know, whether they're veteran teachers or new to the field, we all have strengths and that's what we need to focus on to move ahead. 07:04 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely. And it makes me think again along this line of, like the strengths, like totally lean on those strengths, and also coupled with that kind of the idea that we still want to appropriately challenge students right, and like, have those high expectations that they can do things. I often see and I have certainly have been the person, the teacher, who has said, like oh, I'm just going to hyper scaffold this and I'm going to put in all these extra supports because, like, I'm not sure that they'll be successful versus more scaffolding in the moment. And like, what does each individual need? Right, like all that stuff. And, and what it makes me think of is this common question that I get from teachers of, like, okay, what's the, what's the difference between accommodations and modifications? And you have some really interesting language around this kind of concept as well. I'd love to hear just kind of your thoughts and talk through that. 07:51 - Toby Karten (Guest) Right, we go back to a fairy tale, goldilocks, or a tale, whatever you know. 07:56 Not too much, not too little, just right. What does that look like? The researcher was Vygotsky the zone of proximal development. You know, you want the work to be a little bit harder, but not so hard that it's frustrating. But you want to challenge critical thinking skills. But what if the kid makes a mistake? Love mistakes, we call that error analysis. 08:21 There's a math thing in a middle school where it's a video. I love this one, it's called my Favorite Mistake. And they collect all the exit cards from, you know, the students at the end of the session and the next lesson begins with my favorite mistake. No names mentioned, no stigmatization, because we're going to learn that way. It's experiential, john Dewey, we learn by doing. We need to step away from the scripted lesson plan because kids don't exist there. 08:56 So, between an accommodation and a modification. So accommodation perhaps, you know, is where I am not diluting the original standard, but I'm helping you to access the standard. So let's say you had closed captioning put on for a child with dyslexia and it wasn't a spelling test where they had to write the words. You know that would be an accommodation, right. Or you would perhaps have a math test that had 20, but the questions in the child didn't have enough stamina to do those questions and they were all similar. So maybe you've narrowed it down to 10 or you put it in two sittings. But a modification might be, if everyone else is working on multi-syllabic words in reading, this student is working on just CVC words, consonant vowel, consonant one syllable, because that is their level and if it was more than that they'd be frustrated. 10:03 The caveat is we don't stop there. We do something called progress monitoring. We do something called assessment informal and formal assessment. You know four to six weeks every week, every other day. Sound drills. You know four to six weeks every week, every other day, sound drills. You know, whatever it takes, math quizzes. You know online tools, handheld tools. We do different things, but a modification would be if the child wasn't able to complete the same task. 10:35 But that doesn't mean if a child is in a chemistry class, he or she or they can't work cooperatively with peers under a scripted thing, if their academic level wasn't there, if they learned term taking, if they had a specific role that they were there. So it has to be. Even if it's a modification. It also has to be age appropriate and interest appropriate. You know there's a lot of caveats. I know I'm being greedy here, but you know you asked the question and you know first thing we want to look at accommodations and then, if not, modifications. And that goes back to the SDI, the specially designed instruction in a student's individual educational program, iep. 11:23 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh my gosh. I just want to lift up two things you said that were just so good. We don't stop there, right, Like we don't just stop and say, oh well, this is just their level, Guess that'll be that forever. Like that, I think, is very commonly what we do and we can't. So I love that you named that and I also love that you're just like. 11:40 You know the age and interest appropriate thing is really really important. And I think the interest piece I was just in a coaching call yesterday with people who were like we have to learn to know our students in our classes so that we can get the interests information so that we can then personalize. Again to your point of like the scripted is not going to work for all the students because everyone has different like motivations and interests and all of those pieces. They're individual humans, right? So I'm just resonating so much with what you're saying. Thank you for that. And, and I know you have a ton of tools you you even started naming some of them, but I'm wondering if you can share maybe like the admire framework or any specific actions that could support teachers, you know, when they're thinking about designing instruction and making it personal and thinking about those accommodations for students to help them be successful, leaning on their strengths, all that stuff. 12:34 - Toby Karten (Guest) Yeah, and one of my favorite I make people do things in the book right, because it's experiential. I said so. It's better than just reading the words, so you could have a piece of paper or a pencil next to it. I'm actually going out with this book in Arizona on Sunday and I'm excited because I know it sounds silly, I'm the author, but I'm excited to see it again in action and that's what we need to do is to put these things in action. So we say connect to students. So the book has something like a learner profile. You know what are the strengths, what are the challenges, what are what? V-a-k-t. Visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile. Some kids are movers and shakers and I'm tired of like. 13:20 I was a teacher for a very long time in a school district in New Jersey and Brooklyn, if you hear any accent there. But one thing that I always did you know that fake errand for the kid who needed to move. Well, there's ways to get movement in the classroom beyond that fake errand and having kids moving around, scanning devices, you know, using their devices to scan QR codes, talking to each other in centers and stations and having a classroom that's set up. So that's what the book invites people to do. And the ADMIRE framework is very basic. The acronym itself stands for assess, inactivate, decide and delineate, model and monitor, instruct and involve, reflect and revise and engage and enrich and you can enrich a child with an IEP as well, not just the gifted students. And the book talks about the inclusion paradigm and the fact that there's going to be mixed abilities in there. So it gives specific examples. Like one of the inclusion principles is step by step. I have you trying to do a step-by-step origami to just to create a level of frustration without enough instructions. But then I have you go to a video online that explains it, because some people like videos and like things repeated. You know, um, are students um working memories, uh, whether they have an IEP or not, and and professionals aren't the same. 14:56 So I came up with the ADMIRE framework to kind of house it and under that are 65 different actions that people could do under there. So, like, one of the things is assess and activate prior knowledge and we could do that. And the book has templates with interest inventories, you know, valuing emotional check ins. How do we do that? Because it's not just about the academics, but sometimes the, and often and anyone in the field of education is nodding their head now, just as you are, lindsay that you know it's more than just knowing the concepts. It's wanting to know the concepts, it's feeling that I can and that self-efficacy. And not having that, you know, inclusion, anxiety, whether you're a student in the class or whether you're a professional or a family member. But having that mindset, we're going to succeed. We are going to succeed and here's how. 16:04 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yes, thank you for that, and you mentioned just now inclusion anxiety. I was really interested in that part of the book and I would love if you could elaborate on that just a little bit for us and tell us what it's about and what the research is. 16:18 - Toby Karten (Guest) Yeah, it could be a feeling of discomfort, stress, worry. You know I work with so many students that were conscious of where I was standing in the room and if other students saw me standing near them because they didn't want to be viewed by their peers as being different. I was recently coaching a fourth grade class and they were reading I believe it was James and the Giant Peach, and they all had their copy of the book. But I found an online copy through the Sherlock Holmes Center in Rhode Island. They have great PDFs of literature and I'll give you that link that, if you want to include with that and a few of the others, are my favorite tips for our listeners because we need to spread the word Humminbird. So, anyway, I had that copy of it, but the specific student who needed that copy refused to take it Because none of the other students had it. You know he or she was feeling anxiety because of difference. 17:26 Inclusion anxiety could be that from the perspective of the student what do my peers think of me? Or I'm going to sit there and nod my head because when the teacher asks questions, I'm not going to ask a question. But what if the teacher flipped that and said everyone has to ask a question on an index card and collected them Right? There's ways to circumvent that. Inclusion anxiety also exists for professionals. You know I've been there myself where someone from the child study team in New Jersey came up to me and said here's the new kid. And I didn't know that new kid before. Should I have been prepped ahead of time? Yeah, did I experience some anxiety? Yeah, because I wanted to do that thing and the book is big on that and I have a ton of planners in there. I wanted to do the mega planning, the pre-planning, and be prepared, be proactive rather than reactive, and that deletes a lot of the anxiety. And you know, the reason that I keep writing these kinds of professional materials for educators, administrators and families is the fact that I want to delete the anxiety and I want to replace that with a way to do this step by step. 18:42 It's okay, I don't know everything I need to know about mitosis, right? So how am I going to teach this and support a student if I'm a special ed support teacher or co-teacher? Well, you know what Sal Khan makes great videos on mitosis, right? I could go to FET, p-h-e-t. They have excellent things, you know. It's sharing our knowledge with each other, whether the special ed teacher needs to know more from the gen ed teacher, gen ed teacher needs to know more from the special ed or the family or related service providers, such as an occupational therapist if the child has autism. And not everyone is the same. Strategies with the same label as we spoke about, because we have to think individuals, but we also have to think appropriate and I keep mentioning that word. And anxiety is inappropriate for anyone. It doesn't help. A degree of anxiety might get your juices flowing with brain research and all that, but too much anxiety, kids professionals are going to shut down and that negates collaboration and sharing awareness and knowledge yeah, absolutely. 20:04 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I think you said it in the book. The research that said, yeah, their, their academics, actually decrease as a result of inclusion. Anxiety and their well-being decreases. I mean like two things that were like we definitely want more of these, like, and they're going down right. Yeah, so in the book. 20:15 - Toby Karten (Guest) There's a framework at the end of each chapter, and that one is it. You know, admire wellness is one of the frameworks. How are are we going to do that right? Beyond gold noodle, you know Just different ways to breathe without your device telling you it's time to breathe. 20:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yes, oh my gosh, I love that reference. So you had mentioned briefly kind of the mega, macro and micro planning just now. Do you mind talking us through kind of those differences and why you might do? I love that. 20:45 - Toby Karten (Guest) I love that, that. That came from a former book of mine that's no longer in print now it is. It's in the admire framework. Right, I recycle that because I love this and I've used it on so many campuses. 20:57 With pre-service teachers, I once had a math program here. I was an adjunct professor at your university here and I made a master of arts in teaching and these were, uh, you know, teachers who graduated with spanish degrees and and history degrees and english degrees and they were going into teaching at the secondary level and I made them map out their whole school year, whether it was chemistry or whether it was world history, american history, english, french. They hated me, but I didn't make them do it totally before they went into the classroom, student teaching. I just made them do the mega, the big picture, each quarter or trimester. If your campus has that, then from there there each month and then from there thinking about maybe the weeks, right. So you, you, you break it down. 21:54 I know we have daily planners as well, but if you work in a school, you know that the evacuation drills and the and the nurse checkups and the assemblies, you know suddenly the day schedule gets changed a bit, right. But if you have a big picture in mind and it also the mega macro and micro planning it has, you have it in each part times. You're going to do repetition, enrichment, practice. So even though you did it in the first quarter, you're going to repeat it in the third quarter because they need those skills to move on and you don't have to do it in a big way but maybe having choice boards, centers. So maybe it was out of your protocol to do something like that. But kids need that, the kids who know the most, the kids who know the least. You know they can't forget about the stuff just because they got 100 on the test right. They need to review and practice because that's how we learn. Neuroscience supports that. 23:01 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely, and I think that's what really I struggle with with the scripted kind of curriculum. It's like there's no room for personalization, there's no room to be like ah, like I need this. I love that you plan out quarter by quarter, month by month, and then week by week because, like once you like before you have your students right and you're planning the year in July and you've never met one of them before, right, like, how do you know what they need? 23:25 - Toby Karten (Guest) Like you, don't Right and things are going to happen in that place called a school that you never anticipated. Teachers are good at adapting, modifying, accommodating and all of that, but when you have a general plan it helps, it alleviates that anxiety because you're proactive. Is it going to change? Probably, but at least you know I am going to do, you know, decomposing of numbers zero through 19. The first quarter, you know, and then move on and maybe it'll have to be repeated. But it is a choice and you are having a proactive attitude rather than reactive. You know that's important. 24:15 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely. I think it strikes that perfect balance that we kind of were talking about earlier, like the high expectations and challenge, and not just like making things super easy. Right, we're accommodating and and and personalization, which kids need, so I really like that framework that you have. I also wanted to ask about I think there's a lot of like challenges educators, probably special educators, and educators in general education classes, and particularly here's one where it blends the two. I have heard a lot of challenges around co-taught classes, so where there's a special education teacher and a general education teacher in the same class. Um, that's certainly one I was curious to ask you about, just like any recommendations or things that you've found to be helpful. Or are there other challenges that you want to kind of name and talk through? 25:01 - Toby Karten (Guest) No, that's, that's a great question. And uh, co-teaching is fabulous. I've been a co-teacher myself. I've supervised co-teachers, I've facilitated professional development sessions just on co-teaching, and no co-teacher is alike with their co-teacher. But if you do get on the same vibes, you know, and great years, you even end up wearing the same colors. You finish each other's sentences. You have so much fun. 25:32 I have a very dear friend who's a co-teacher and I have to share this. She said to me you know, it's my first year teaching and I'm going to make a lot of mistakes, right? And I looked at her and I said it's my umpteenth year of teaching and I'm not perfect either. You know, I might be here and I wrote a couple of books, but I don't have a halo over my head either. So the first thing is an awareness that we bring to the table as co-teachers. Each of us has different skill sets and different things we could do better. She taught me how to organize in world history class. I never made a better outline in my life or understood how to do it until she did it. However, I might have helped her keep her job because I reviewed the comments she was sending to the families, which she never did before and I said, yeah, that's kind of good, but you might want to edit it and soften it a little bit. Right, you know? And it's how we correspond with each other and how we get a vibe and how you're pairing teams together, listening to your staff, and that collaboration exists with families. 26:51 It exists with gen ed and special ed, and there's been situations where co-teaching has a broad definition and maybe the SLP, speech and language pathologist is there for a period of time or the guidance counselor. Think broadly in co-teaching. And co-teaching is not a way to save money. It's not a way for me to sit in the back of the room and mark papers while someone else is doing something. I mentioned centers. What a great thing. Someone could be circulating while they're doing centers. Someone could work with a small group gen ed or special ed for practice enrichment, and that's one thing about co-teaching that you want to always make sure that you do, that you don't create a special ed classroom within the gen ed classroom and stigmatizing students as being lower level because they're in the smaller group. The groups are there for random interest-based could be skill-based, right, but it has to be a situation where you're capitalizing on each of the strengths as co-teachers, and that has nothing to do with age or lack of experience or too much experience. It has to do with using our experiences wisely. 28:08 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, one of the things I love that you mentioned in the book is is that you could rotate right, like the enrichment actually the special education teacher is going to lead the enrichment today Like right, and just that it doesn't always have to be like you're helping the kids that are struggling and you're helping the kids that are doing great, like. I love that idea Super cool yeah. 28:25 - Toby Karten (Guest) Yeah, I love being a co-teacher and I used to have papers, like you know, with WHR, where, when, why, how, that as a graphic organizer, and I put it out there and then other kids go can we take one? And I say no, only if you have an IEP. No, I don't say that, you know I mean, but that's it. It's a strategy. Let's share our strategies with each other. 28:50 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh, brilliant example. That resonates deeply. So I think in the final kind of closing questions, I'll just ask I think there's three questions We'll do kind of like a lightning round to wrap up, okay, one thing you would encourage the audience to do once they end the episode. So we've talked about a lot of different things, what's like a good kind of. They're walking into work tomorrow and they want to do something small, to kind of put something into action. What would you recommend? 29:17 - Toby Karten (Guest) Easy answer Smile. Look at that person in the mirror and smile because you are a good person and you are trying to help students succeed. And I'm not diminishing other professions, but take care of that person in the mirror, because if you don't take care of you, you're not good for everyone else as well. 29:39 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh, that's good. Thank you for that. Now, what is something you have been learning about lately? It could totally relate to education and work, but it could also be totally something not related to your work. 29:50 - Toby Karten (Guest) Yeah, I'm doing a lot of work with. Well, let me think about this. If I want to do personal or professional, give you a quick lightning answer of both. Professional, I'm doing work with leveraging collaboration and I'm researching a lot about listening skills, because people think they're listening but they're not really hearing, and that's something to leverage collaboration. We have to better understand how to listen, and I'm guilty of that too. I've listened to podcasts where people ask me a question and I went off on something. We need to respond to each other appropriately and students need to learn that. 30:30 I acted out with them when they toss a ball and they have to speak when only if they catch it. So you catch what someone else does. And something I'm learning on a personal level is you know I spoke about movement, move more. So I mentioned I had an issue with my computer. So the good thing is that I've learned that if you're not on the computer as much, I average 12,000 steps a day. You know that is a nice thing as opposed to 2000 on the computer. So there's ups and downs of things and I'm learning not to judge yourself. Go back to that person in the mirror and get that yin-yang balance. 31:10 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Oh, that's great. I love that you shared one of each. That's really good. And then, finally, people are going to want to connect with you, get the book, which we'll certainly link to in the show notes, but how do they follow, kind of what you're doing? 31:30 - Toby Karten (Guest) Do you have an online presence or a place where people could reach out to you? Absolutely, my website, inclusionworkshopscom. You will find my contact information. Toby at inclusionworkshopscom is my email. I also have KIC, k-i-c Cartons Inclusion Conversations podcast available on channels that you could listen to, and on my website I have several inclusion tools, especially. You also mentioned about co-teaching. I have several on there, too, so I'd be very happy to give you several of those links to share with everyone. 31:55 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely. We'll drop them right into the blog post and show notes. Toby, thank you so much for this conversation. It was wonderful, lindsay, thank you so much. 8/4/2025 222. Solution Tree author: Their Stories, Their Voices with Kourtney Hake and Paige TimmermanRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, we chat with Kourtney Hake and Paige Timmerman, co-authors of the book Their Stories, Their Voices. They bring real-world experience as English teachers to their book and this conversation, arguing for a shift from test-focused curricula to a more engaging approach that prioritizes students' personal experiences and creativity.
By exploring four distinct types of narratives—informative, analytical, persuasive, and reflective—Paige and Kourtney demonstrate how personal stories can enhance learning for students. The episode also emphasizes the importance of reflection in education, offering practical strategies for teachers to incorporate reflective practices into their classrooms. The Big Dream Paige and Courtney's big dream for education is to create environments where students have the space to tell their stories, preparing them for more than just a test. The dream is to empower them for real-life situations and scenarios, going beyond simply what’s covered on the SAT. In an English class context, they envision classrooms that prioritize authentic writing, allowing students to blend genres and express their identities through narrative. Their dream includes teaching students to write in ways applicable throughout their adult lives, emphasizing the human element in education. Mindset Shifts Required To achieve this vision, educators must shift their mindset from a rigid, test-prep-focused approach to one that values narrative writing and creativity. Paige and Kourtney encourage educators to look beyond traditional genres and embrace the blending of different writing styles, as seen in real-world writing. It’s about pushing against being put in a box of how you can and cannot write, and having a more open mindset. Action Steps To start prioritizing student voice in narrative writing, educators can begin by understanding four different narrative types:
With these in mind, educators can implement the mini-lessons from Paige and Courtney’s book to allow flexibility and creativity, even within a rigid curriculum. These lessons help build relationships and provide students opportunities to express their identities through storytelling. It’s also important to emphasize reflective practices in teaching, making reflection an explicit part of the curriculum to promote growth and understanding among students. Challenges? One challenge educators might face is picking or designing a unit that meets the needs of every student, as they’re all diverse. Educators may also find it challenging to break away from rigid curricula that dictate how you do things, and adapt to what students really need to spend time on to learn, even if it means forgoing the arbitrary deadlines that are set. One Step to Get Started To begin, educators can establish an environment where students know that their voice matters—there’s a place here for their stories. From there, you can begin integrating narrative writing into the classroom with the notebook prompts provided at the end of Paige and Courtney's book. Stay Connected To stay connected, you can find Paige on X at @TimmermanPaige or via email at [email protected]. You can find Kourtney on X, Instagram, and Blue Sky under the handle @whatthehake. To help you implement today’s takeaways, grab your copy of Paige and Kourtney’s book, Their Stories, Their Voices. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 222 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Paige and Courtney, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. Thank you for having us. Absolutely so. I think you know the audience has just listened to your bios. What is important for you to have audience know as we kind of jump into our conversation today, I know for me it is certainly that your book, their Stories, their Voices, is incredible and everyone, all listeners, should grab it and we'll talk more about it today. But what is on your mind, or what do you want people to be thinking about? 00:33 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) I think for me. I just hate this tendency that we have to stop asking students about their own experiences. The older that they get, we're asking them to write about themselves a lot in the elementary level, but whenever they get into the higher grades we focus so much on test prep and getting them ready to take the SAT that we forget that they are humans having an experience and we should be giving them platforms to share those experiences. So I think just making sure that narrative becomes a cornerstone in the secondary classroom as well is sort of the idea that this book was born out of. 01:18 - Kourtney Hake (Guest) Yeah, I think also one of the things that I like to think about is how to engage our students. Middle school is where I'm at, and some days they're awesome, some days they're not. But getting them engaged in the writing and trying to get them excited about writing is really difficult, and so adding their voice back into it is a way to add that engagement, to get them to write about something that they actually care about. 01:50 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Such a good point and, like I cannot tell you times where my students were more engaged than when they were talking about themselves and issues they cared about, right, like that's how you do it, so I love that. And so one of the first kind of questions I usually ask is, in line with the idea of freedom, dreaming, which Dr Bettina Love describes as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice what is that big dream that you hold for education? And I think you both kind of started speaking to this. I don't know if you want to elaborate on it a tiny bit here. 02:18 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) Yeah, I will elaborate. 02:19 I mean to answer that I would reiterate, obviously, the fact that our students deserve to have space to tell their stories. I think that's an important part of education, but also I feel like I'm doing my students a disservice if I do not prepare them for more than just a test. I want to teach them to write in ways that may not be covered by the SAT, but ways that they're going to be exposed to throughout their whole adult life. So whenever I look at what a narrative looks like in the real world whether it be a blog post, a memoir, a social media post even I see all kinds of blending of genres that I don't see in schools. In schools, we tend to teach different genres in different boxes and you cannot blend them at all, but whenever you look at what real writers do, there's all kinds of blending going on and there's all kinds of rule breaking, and so I want to be the type of teacher that looks at what real writers are doing and isn't afraid to say, well, why can my students not do that too? 03:30 - Kourtney Hake (Guest) Yeah, I think whenever we were looking at what does narrative look like, we kind of found a lot of things that you wouldn't traditionally think of as a narrative. They weren't all just memoir, they just incorporated their own voice in some way, and so that's kind of speaking to that blending of genres, that that's what authentic writing is and that's what we can get our students to actually want to achieve. 03:54 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, one of the things I absolutely loved and like this was always my inclination as a teacher, but again, you guys have just like operationalized it. 04:00 You've done such a beautiful job. 04:02 It's like what does it look like in the real world? 04:04 Right, like so, even when I would teach test prep, I'd be like, okay, let me find some like really funny, like comedic, kind of feminist article and then we're gonna like learn how to answer these silly choice questions based on this awesome article, because this is like at least engaging, and so I love that you pull in all of the examples, the social media posts that you have, the professional authors, the student writers and kind of books and collections that you've had, and as well as your own students of early on, is kind of the mindset shift that teachers might have to kind of embark upon when they are thinking about including or really making the space required to do this work well, for writing narratives amidst all of the other pressures and curricula things that you've seen like what is it? 05:04 That either, for each of you was kind of like an aha moment, like yes, we need this because you know whatever your why is, or that you've seen like in people reading the book and kind of grappling with that prior mindset shifting over to like no, there is a need for this work and we need to make space for it. 05:25 - Kourtney Hake (Guest) Yeah, I think for me our curriculum that we currently use doesn't really teach narrative. And then the narrative that it does teach is the last quarter, which normally we don't even get to that because you know of state testing and all that stuff. And I've been looking at other curriculums because we're thinking about switching and a lot of curriculums use narrative at the end of the year and then on the state test they're asked write a narrative and so it's it's. They're not practicing the skills throughout the year and then they're expected to perform that on the state test. And so incorporating those skills throughout the school year has become a little bit more of my priority to make sure that the students are prepared for that test, because if they haven't been asked to do it, then how are they going to be performing that on a pressured state? 06:19 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) For me. I think it kind of just to go back to what I was talking about earlier, this idea of blending genres. I know I've really had to push against that in my own instruction because the way I was taught you don't use I at all in anything other than a narrative. So if you're writing a research paper, there is no space for your voice. However, whenever I read like these really beautifully written op-eds, which I would consider a, you know, a research writing, I don't want to call it assignment, but that's a genre that that requires research as well. 06:52 The most compelling op-eds to me incorporate a personal story. It doesn't have to be at the forefront of it, it doesn't have to be the main focus, but if there's like a small vignette in there of how the author relates to this issue, it makes me care about it more through that human element. So I know just kind of pushing back against this idea of you can't do this in this type of writing, and opening it up and allowing my students to explore different ways to write without putting them in a box, I think is what is probably the biggest challenge of this mindset shift, but also the part that comes with the most rewards. 07:39 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's so well said and it makes me think about our national political landscape and the way that that people talk to one another or don't talk to one another. And and one of the things that I have heard as a critique of like the democratic party is kind of like um ways of sharing information is like it is very statistics, it is very um facts, it's very research paper, as if you were to teach it in that box. Right, it is like here is that there's like the personal stories have been removed. It is not as engaging like that's fascinating, like I imagine like one of your students could actually be like a political consultant or something for someone to be like. When you are trying to get people to listen to, you incorporate personal narrative like that could be fascinating. 08:22 - Kourtney Hake (Guest) I'm teaching about Anne Frank right now. We're reading the play based on her and you know I can tell the kids day in, day out about the events of the Holocaust, but until they hear it from a child their own age and hear what she went through, it does not sink in. 08:39 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, that makes total sense too, right, like I mean, we're human beings, so I just I love that narrative is is in. It is the focus of your book, but it is weaved into like four different pieces too, which I really appreciate. I mean, maybe let's go there. Do you guys want to give us kind of an overview of what are the four types of narrative that you name? And then also just my curriculum writer brain is is on fire reading this book, cause I'm also thinking about you. Know, you guys suggest kind of a planning approach. You have like a kind of a um weekly, a three-week calendar sample of like how would you actually arc out a unit on narrative writing? Um, so I don't know if one of you wants to take each of those or how you want to divide it up. 09:19 - Kourtney Hake (Guest) I will say that those unit plans are all pages, baby, because she uh did so much work making sure that it works in an actual classroom, because I am I'm a little bit more tied to my curriculum of what I can do and she had a little bit more freedom, and so those were unit plans that were tested in an actual classroom and so Paige did a really good job on those. But as we were researching, we kind of found that all these different narratives that we were reading were kind of falling into four different genres, if you call them, or types of narratives, and so we kind of named them based on that. So we have the informative narrative, the analytical narrative, the persuasive narrative and reflective narrative. 10:17 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) So to expand on those, the informative narrative would be. Your main goal of writing is to send a message, is to teach your audience about something, provide them information. But again, don't be afraid to bring in that narrative element. So, for example, if you are trying to do like a cautionary tale and you're trying to warn your audience against the dangers of using social media too young, then bringing in that vignette of okay, well, here's what happened to me whenever I was a kid and I started using social media and here's what I went through and then using that to inform. 10:53 The analytical narrative is really that's where we brought in a lot of podcasting type assignments, because we feel like podcasts themselves are just an exercise in analysis. You're not necessarily trying to answer, you're exploring questions. You're not necessarily trying to come up with one concrete answer, you're just kind of looking at it through different angles and so in that chapter of our book you'll find lots of. I mean, we have different modes of projects in each chapter of the book, but this one especially. We love for podcasts because it's a way to explore something and bring in your own story as you're exploring, but more for the goal of just deepening your knowledge and your thinking and becoming smarter after going through the exploration, rather than just trying to find the answer, the persuasive narrative. That one is what I would formerly think of as my research paper, where I'm making an argument, I'm trying to teach my audience something or to believe something, I'm trying to elicit a change, but I'm doing so through the use of my own story. So if I've gone through an experience that was really meaningful and it's connected to what I'm writing about, I shouldn't be afraid to include that experience. 12:16 And then, finally, our last chapter focuses on the reflective narrative, which is what we think of whenever we traditionally think of narrative as just sharing a story for the sake of reflection and personal growth, because we still do believe in that, even though we're trying to blend genres, we still recognize and value the narrative in what it was traditionally seen as. However, we like to kind of look at well, what does the narrative look like today? Because you know we've all seen those journal prompts that we've given our students in the past what do you, what you do over the summer, or what's your favorite Christmas memory? And we're trying to kind of push back and find new experiences, especially for our older students. So in that chapter we really try to focus on multimedia type projects because narrative looks differently. We're seeing like graphic memoirs come out now. We're seeing people sharing their stories through podcasting and we want to give our students those experiences. They may not be comfortable writing about it, but they might be comfortable sharing in another way. 13:26 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, I absolutely love. I love how you've laid it out and the multimodal kind of pieces are fantastic. I mean I also think about a lot of so I was an ELA teacher and a history teacher and the history kind of coach side that I have I operated. Now a lot of the history teachers I work with are like oh, writing is such a challenge for students and, like you know, they can do the thinking in history, but the writing is the really hard part, and so I imagine that history teachers could also pick up this book and I'm just thinking of like that you know, analytical essays and stuff right, like we're doing stuff like that all the time, like merging the narrative, figuring out the multimodal piece. I mean there's such a level of access that you're providing teachers for their students who may not traditionally be successful in writing. That's really exciting. So thank you all for that. 14:15 I think there's so much else in here, I mean in terms of like the specific actions you guys get really specific in those sample units. Is there anything that was like a really I don't know exciting one to teach Paige? I know that Courtney said you've taught a lot of these, or is there a particular kind of lesson or part of like, kind of a staple part or component of the unit arc. That's kind of agnostic to any of the four categories. That is like exciting to you that you want to name Sure the analytical narrative narrative yeah, in the experimental narrative project we always. 14:57 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) We love to talk about this one I'm glad you asked yeah, uh, because it's also, even though it was my student that did it. 15:05 It's also courtney's favorite, so I did so it's also my favorite part of the book because I'm so proud of my students. 15:13 So one of the narratives that we that I had my students do we call, we ended up calling it the experimental narrative, and the idea was I wanted my students to learn something new or try something new that they had never done before and kind of document their progress of that journey. And we see that in several texts so the mentor texts we use for that little and often about a man who builds a boat to try to understand his dad better, so he builds a canoe by hand, dragon hoops. About a teacher that wants to learn more about basketball. He doesn't know anything about basketball, wants to learn more, so it's about his journey. And then the last one was what I'll have, what she's having, which is a narrative about a journalist who tries all these celebrity fad diets to see if they really work, and so we read excerpts from all of those. I have to mention we did not encourage the students to also try the fad diets. Courtney was very clear about that that. We need to make sure we make that clear. 16:17 - Kourtney Hake (Guest) The part about her book that was really good for the students I thought is like the first introduction or first chapter, where it lays out her ground rules of this is how I'm going to do it and if this happens then I'm not going to continue and that kind of thing, and that. That was the part that was really good in that one, because the diets were insane. 16:39 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) Yeah, really funny too. 16:42 Funny stuff going on there. So, anyway, we looked at a piece from each of those texts and I challenged my my own students. Okay, piece from each of those texts and I challenged my own students. Okay, I want you to make something new or learn something new or try something new. You have a few weeks to do it. Write down some notes as you're doing that and then we'll come together in a month or so and we'll hash out your notes and make it more of a narrative writing project, and it was just fun to see what the students came up with. Like, I still have a bench at the front of my room that was built as a result of this unit. It's really helpful because I put papers on it. 17:20 I had students do things in the kitchen that they'd never done, like connecting with family members, and I emphasize, like you don't have to spend money to do this. Like I had one girl that was really good at hair and she wanted to do this hairstyle, so she practiced it, watched tutorials and did the hairstyle on her sister. One of the projects that really stood out to us is one of my students is very skilled artist and she wanted to learn how to draw a more realistic face, and so she practiced, over the course of the time that I gave her, drawing different like. She zoomed in on different body parts the eye, the nose, the mouth and she really worked on it. And you can see the progression in the book of like what her face looked like at the beginning of the process and what it looked like at the end, and then she wrote about that experience. I don't know if, courtney, if you had anything else to say. 18:18 - Kourtney Hake (Guest) Yeah, my favorite part of it was she was really struggling, I want to say with the eyes and you know, instead of getting discouraged and quitting or just moving on, she went and watched YouTube videos. She asked her art teacher for help. She thought about different things that she could do to continue learning on that process, and that's a skill that a lot of our students struggle with. Whenever they're not doing well or they're not getting the results they want to, they want to quit it. But she had that kind of resilience to continue on and I loved her writing about that. 18:56 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I think in the spirit of that I'll ask my next question. So, thinking about challenges that we encounter in learning new things and trying new things, are there challenges that you all have faced in teaching or having students engage with narrative units, or for people who have kind of picked up the book, read it and tried to implement, like colleagues you've coached, or teachers you've talked to any challenges that they've faced and like how have you worked through it or coached someone through that challenge? 19:25 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) I would say for me, I know whenever I have students write with narrative and I think any ELA teacher can relate is sometimes it's a beautiful mix of like finding the right prompt at the right time for that student, and we're not always able to achieve that 100% of the time. I mean, we're not perfect, but that is why we structure our book the way that we did. I think you had asked about structure earlier and we didn't quite get to it, so I did want to come back around to that. Each one of our chapters is laid out kind of like a menu. We have like a menu at the beginning of each of our chapters with content, because we want to offer our authors or, I'm sorry, our readers lots of choices whenever they're planning a unit. 20:07 It's kind of almost like a build your own style book, and so we give lots of ideas for mini lessons at the beginning, like what skills at the sentence level of their writing do your students need to work on? Choose a few of these from here. Now, what are some different prompts that you can give to help them start thinking about topics in their life where they can utilize these skills? So then we have like different starter projects and then we have bigger unit projects. So I and I don't remember off the top of my head how many we give of each, but we wanted to make sure there was a plethora of choices. And so again, kind of going back to your question, I would think the biggest challenge is picking a unit and designing and building your own units so that it meets the needs of your students. It's hard to meet everybody's needs all in one unit, but we hope that through the choices that we offer, that we can reach everybody at some point. 21:13 - Kourtney Hake (Guest) I think one of my challenges is I get in my head about I have to follow the curriculum and I'm real bad about OK, the curriculum says Monday, I'm doing this, tuesday, I'm doing this, wednesday, I'm doing this and I lose track of. Ok, what are my students struggling with? And it's when I get into the weeds of that that I have to remind myself to stop and think OK, what are these students struggling on and what do they need help with? And that's where I pull in those mini lessons and those craft move skills, and so it's trying to kind of see the bigger picture rather than focusing on. I got to get through this because my arbitrary deadline says that I need to, and so my challenge in my own head is just getting out of my head and focusing on my students. 22:02 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) I love that and what I love about how our book is laid out sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off is that that challenge that you're talking about, courtney, is that you can go into our book really easily and find a small mini lesson that you could use to work on that skill. So somebody that is tied to a curriculum that may not be able to adopt a huge unit like we talk about, we feel like there's still something in there for them to help students, maybe in a smaller way. 22:34 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely for sure. I love the structures and just, yeah, the plethora of examples that you have that you could easily go in and pull. I highly agree and I think there's there's so much that you know, corny, what you were talking about in terms of seeing the bigger picture. I loved kind of in your I think it was in your epilogue that you were talking about the relationships just being so important and that we would always make time for relationships with students and learning about students. And they do that through narrative writing. Right, they tell you who they are and I just love that. That is often the bigger picture. 23:05 Often the thing that you know gets caught when we are trying to cram a lot of curriculum in. That is like missing, right, it's like a human element, and so I just love that this is curriculum and it gets at the human element. So it's really cool that you can do both. I also just love that I wrote the sentence down so I'm paraphrasing slightly, but that typically when we have students read that students are trained to look for an answer, not marvel at the craft, and you're like you're so right. Right, it's like we rarely invite students to just open up and marvel at the craft at the sentence level. What did you like? And that you have them actually create their own craft move chart. That's like student driven from the mentor text that you provide. I just a lot of what we talk about in this podcast is like student agency and student voice and how do we just like let the students drive the learning? 23:52 And I was recently in a PD where someone was talking about grammar and how it was so frustrating and I was like, oh, mechanically inclined, um, by jeff anderson. Thank you, anderson, yeah, and it's like, oh, my gosh, I saw that referenced in your book and I was like, okay, so they know what's up like. This is so fun to just kind of extract and read, to marvel at the craft and be able to let that interest kind of drive their own narrative pieces where they're writing about what's interesting to them in a way. That's interesting to them because you've structured it in a way that they can find something really interesting and then go for it. So I just I love all of the pieces of this. I don't know if that sparked any thoughts for you all. I just wanted to name all the things I loved. 24:32 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) Thank you, and you know it's funny. I think the the more high level our students are and I say that ironically because I don't like putting students in a box of honors and not honors but I think our students that are most motivated struggle the most with just marveling, because they are, they're looking for the answer, they're trying to do school. What do you want me to do? I'll do it. I'll jump through the hoops so I can move on and just stopping and pausing and admiring that beauty. I think that's just a powerful experience that we can provide to them. 25:12 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely, and so one of the things that I'm excited about is this episode is going to drop, actually, at almost kind of like the start of next school year. So as people are finishing up listening to this episode, they're like driving into work and like their first week or whatever. What do you think is something that they could do like right away, either from a planning lens or even like a teaching implementation quick activity lens, for them to kind of lean into more narrative writing this year? 25:40 - Kourtney Hake (Guest) I think a good place to start is the notebook prompts that we have at the back of the book. There's a. We just have resources to find different notebook prompts to get them jump started on thinking about writing about themselves and writing about their interests writing about themselves and writing about their interests. 25:58 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) Yeah, and I would echo that too. I think for me it's just a matter of establishing an environment where students know that their voice matters here, making sure we're having those conversations with them, making sure we're giving them an opportunity to share their own stories, even if it's not through a big, huge narrative unit, even if it's smaller ways, like if it's not through a big, huge narrative unit, even if it's smaller ways, like Courtney was talking about, through a notebook, just establishing that environment and showing them that you are important in here. And, yes, tests are important, but your story is more important. 26:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that. So this question just came into my head a little behind the scenes how do you all you have so many amazing resources in here for a mentor, talks and different ideas. How do you all kind of like organize yourself to do just kind of read for fun in whatever you will capacity you want, and then just like have a notes app or something where you jot all these ideas down? Like how do you come up with all these great resources? 26:57 - Kourtney Hake (Guest) A lot of the texts we were already reading and it was hey, this is this would work, this would work. And so most of the texts I had already read or page had already read, because we're just big readers to begin with, and so that that was a major part of it. 27:17 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) Courtney's a bigger reader than I am. I'm just going to. She gave me my flowers earlier, so I'm going to give her hers. She had all kinds of text ideas. So yeah, I mean and I think that's true of most teachers I mean we're naturally inquisitive, we want to learn, so we're all readers to begin with, and so you just never know when you read something like when it's going to take shape in your work later. 27:43 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, I always had like a notes app or a Google Doc or something going or it's like just bookmark that for later. 27:47 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) Yeah, I just finished Dashka Slater's Accountable, like earlier today. I don't know if anybody's read that one yet, but I don't know what I want to do with it yet, but I know that it's. It has a space in my classroom in some way. I just think that it was really powerful, so that's one that I'm kind of marinating with right now. 28:07 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) All right, you're adding to my TBR list. These episodes always add to my TBR list. 28:22 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) It's about a sorry. It's about, like, a social media account that was posted in 2017 and some racist things were posted about some students at the school, and so then it follows the fallout that happened, how the teens that not only it was posted about were affected, the teens that posted, the teens that followed the accounts. 28:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) So I like how she's looking at it in all these angles counts, so I like how she's looking at it in all these angles, fascinating. Okay, I'm opening myself up here to add more to my TBR list, but what is something that you each have been learning about lately? So, paige, you can choose another one or you could be, like I've said, mine, but what is something, either professionally or personally, or in your reading life? 28:55 - Kourtney Hake (Guest) I've been diving into different instructional methods, books of trying to figure out, okay, how do we learn and how does that affect how we teach different things, and so I've been looking at Natalie Wexler's newest book, which I can't remember the title of, but something about the science of learning that is really fascinating, about focusing on not just the science of reading, but how do we learn in general. 29:27 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) And we're kind of working together on that a little bit. Courtney's looking sort of at the scientific aspect of that and I'm looking more, I would say, at the practical application of it. And how do we invite students to reflect a little bit more about what they're learning so that it's more meaningful, and what do those invitations to reflect look like in the classroom? So we're kind of looking at that together in different ways and sharing our ideas together in different ways and sharing our ideas. 30:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) One thing that I love about what you all do in this book is building that reflection so often that I often think is missing because we are trying to just get through things and then that critical piece of learning is just like vanished because we don't make time for it. So I do love that in your unit outlines you have those. 30:15 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) It's such an important part of instruction, Like being a teacher. We're just reflective individuals and I know I would be nowhere without reflection. That is what has taught me all the lessons. But when you look at your students, I mean reflection's a skill that needs to be built and a lot of them don't have that yet and they may not have an avenue to learn how to do that outside of school, and so it's interesting to us that it's not provided more explicitly in instruction. 30:45 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) So true, and I think people are going to want to get this book, so we will certainly link to it in the show notes and the blog post for this episode. But where else can people learn more about the two of you or connect with you online? 30:55 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) learn more about the two of you or connect with you online. 31:02 - Kourtney Hake (Guest) I am on Twitter at Timmerman Page or X, I guess, and through email at TimmermanP at SalemHighcom. 31:16 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I am on Twitter, instagram and Blue Sky at what the Hake Amazing. Paige and Courtney, thank you both so so much. This has been a wonderful conversation and thank you for a brilliant book. 31:26 - Paige Timmerman (Guest) Thank you so much for having us. 7/28/2025 221. Facilitating Contentious Conversations? Paraphrase Your Butt Off with Carolyn McKandersRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, we chat with Carolyn McKanders, an educator with over 28 years of experience in Detroit public schools. As the co-author of “It's Your Turn: Teachers as Facilitators,” Carolyn interviewed over 400 teachers and their supervisors in diverse schools to understand mindsets and principles that guide behavioral choices.
Carolyn shares insights from those interviews and her book to emphasize the importance of shifting from technical to adaptive mindsets, highlighting the power of positive intent, and listening to build trust and understanding. Carolyn provides practical techniques that can be contextualized for classrooms, adult meetings, student-to-student meetings, and more. The Big Dream Carolyn deeply believes that, given the context of our world, who we are as educators really matters. She dreams that we continue to honor the diverse ways people show up in the world, because we can’t teach without that. She envisions educators embracing each student's unique presence and to engage with them moment-to-moment, fostering environments of love and respect. Mindset Shifts Required To unlock educators’ role as facilitators, it’s key to shift from a technical mindset to an adaptive one. People often focus on planning a meeting and the steps to get there. Instead, meetings are really more about a complex system based on relationships, so it’s important to be adaptive to the energy and interpersonal connections present. Another key mindset shift is to presume positive intent. Start with the idea that people’s behaviors are their best attempts to take care of themselves, not that they have it out for you. Action Steps To embark on your journey as an educator-facilitator, embrace these action steps: Step 1: Embrace the mindset of presuming positive intent, understanding that behaviors are individuals' best attempts at self-care. This helps educators stay resourceful and empathetic. Educators can also begin with a growth-oriented mindset, accepting where the group is and understanding that they can grow in time. Step 2: Create a psychologically safe environment by implementing visible working agreements and inclusion strategies that honor diverse voices and perspectives. Research backs up the fact that diverse groups make better decisions, so harness this power in your group. Step 3: “When in doubt, paraphrase your butt off!” Carolyn encourages educators to develop the skill of effective paraphrasing, going beyond mere repetition to engage with others cognitively, socially, emotionally, and spiritually. This fosters trust and helps develop the ability to listen to understand. Challenges? One challenge educators may face is overcoming ingrained technical mindsets and adopting more adaptive, relationship-focused approaches. Additionally, educators may encounter resistance when implementing new strategies in environments accustomed to traditional methods. One Step to Get Started Carolyn has five simple steps for facilitators to start with: Greet your audience and thank people, have a clear purpose (write it out!), have an inclusion strategy that brings people together, and have a visible working agreement in place. Finally, have the presumption of positive intent and keep a light, joyful tone as you do the work. Stay Connected You can find more from Carolyn on their website, Instagram, and LinkedIn. You can also grab a copy of her book, It's Your Turn: Teachers as Facilitators, to go further in-depth into the content we discussed together. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Staying Engaged in Difficult Conversations scripts with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 221 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Carolyn McCanders. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 00:06 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest) Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm excited. 00:09 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Me too. I am so excited because I just read your book. It's your Turn, teachers, as Facilitators, and I absolutely loved it. And so really excited to dive in to the concepts, to just a few chapters, maybe as a deep dive and I'd love to know you know what's important for listeners to know, either about the book or you. To kind of frame the conversation today First me. 00:32 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest) I'm a teacher at heart, I was born a teacher and I'll always be a teacher, and so I spent 28 years in Detroit public schools as a teacher counselor, staff development person, still teaching, and now I'm an international presenter and working with my favorite mentor, Robert Garmston. And this book came about because we listen to teachers. Teachers are put into leadership positions and often are not given what they need to interact with their peers. They do this tension. They have this dance where they have to be peers or stay connected to their peers. They do this tension. They have this dance where they have to be peers or stay connected to their peers while at the same time taking on leadership positions. 01:33 And we interviewed over 400 teacher leaders and their supervisors in diverse US schools and international schools and they told us what they needed. And so we answered that call and responded to that data by putting together the teachers as facilitators. But most books around facilitation are filled with mostly tools and strategies. Our take on this was to start with internally, with people's mindsets and principles, because principles guide behavioral Principles Guide Behavioral Choices, and so we even have quotations from teachers in the book, and what we found is that everybody needs this. We started with teachers, and yet anyone who facilitates meetings and support collaboration from diverse voices can use the book. 02:50 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that. I'm going to jump on top of that to add one more layer too. I was reading it too as a former teacher to be like oh, this actually could work if you're facilitating kind of a class discussion of students as well. 03:04 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest) Absolutely positively. In our workshop we always say listen, because the students are my heart really. That's why I'm still doing this Listen for ways to use this in your classroom with students. In fact, we actually unpack that classroom with students. In fact we actually unpack that because this book is highly relational and teaching students is highly relational and the quality of the relationship between the teacher and students directly mediates learning, and so we actually lift that too. So, yes, the book, because it's about mindsets and principles. The application of these can be contextualized for classrooms, for adult meetings, for student-to-student meetings, for it could be principal meetings too, principal staff meetings. So the work is highly adaptable. 04:17 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Amazing. I love that so much because, yeah, anyone can pick it up and use it and put it to work immediately. And so I think now like taking a little bit of a step back. One of the first things I like to ask guests is kind of in line with this idea of freedom, dreaming which Dr Bettina Love describes as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. Just such great language. What is the big dream that you hold for education, either through the lens of the book or just in general? 04:46 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest) Boy, when you say that, it kind of grabs me and honestly I feel a little emotional about that, because I do have big dreams for education right now. Given the context of our world, context of our world, who we are as educators to these kids really really matters right now. My dream is that we continue to honor the diverse ways people show up in this world. It's because you can't teach without that. So my hope is that we actually love each other and love the students. I actually teach self-love too, teach self-love too, and I just hope that we pay attention to who each individual is and honor that moment to moment to moment in teaching and in learning and engaging with each other as educators. 06:04 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Thank you for that, and I think specifically the chapters that I was really interested in are specifically about kind of that. I think like being able to think about polarities and differences of opinion and right. So I'm really excited to get into all of this. I am curious. I also like to start kind of soon in the thread of conversations on the podcast with mindset, because I think sometimes there's like a mindset shift that can just unlock a lot of the practical strategy pieces, and so I'm curious are there any kind of mindset shifts that you have seen unlock kind of the way teachers facilitate or that you would coach teachers to embrace as they become facilitators that have been helpful that you would coach teachers to embrace as they become facilitators. 06:47 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest) That have been helpful. A mindset shift from technical to adaptive is a huge mindset shift in terms of working with people that we've seen People focus on planning the meeting, and here are the steps that we will matriculate in this meeting. Here are the topics that we will matriculate in this meeting. When meetings are really more about the complex adaptive system that you're immersed in, that's based on quality relationships, and that's been a huge shift, mindset shift. It's like, oh, we're not telling you not to plan and not to be ready. 07:31 What we're saying is that the most important thing in the room is energy and the most important way to create that updraft of energy is through relationships, quality relationships in the meeting. So that's a huge shift that we're seeing in the work. Also, the presumption that people's behaviors are their best attempts to take care of themselves. They don't have it in or out for you, they're trying to take care of themselves. And another shift is that people can be understood somatically, that is, through their body language and reading, not just words but taking them in holistically to interact with them, and the presumption of positive intent. So those are big shifts. 08:44 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely. I remember highlighting, like multiple times in the book, this idea that behaviors are our best attempts to take care of ourselves. I love that I never heard someone put it in that language. That rings so true, and I also think I mean from a parenting and teaching lens too. Like I mean, you could see this so often in children. It's just like, oh yes, that's exactly what that behavior was. 09:07 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest) Yes, and understanding that uh keeps the teacher's resourcefulness, keeps the facilitator's resourcefulness and gives grace to students and it gives grace to adults also, in structuring that lesson, structuring that interaction, structuring that meeting in ways that support people in choosing productive behaviors to take care of themselves, since what we're seeing is always that dance of I need to make sure I'm safe, I need to make sure I'm connected, I need to make sure I'm loved, I need to make sure my interests are being handled well. And so how the teacher structures the interactions, how a facilitator structures the interactions, can support productive choices and taking care of oneself. 10:19 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That makes total sense, because I've seen people kind of reel at the idea of like a discussion norm, similar kind of to this but not quite hitting at the same thing. That is, you know, assume best intentions. I think you had you had said language similar to that earlier and and kind of with the context of you know, as a person with particular identities in a society that is very oppressive. You know it's hard to come into that space, and so what I'm hearing from you is kind of like we kind of honor that, we, we, we give people grace and we don't let like negative behaviors or harmful behaviors like fester and continue. We actually structure it in a way that is productive while giving everyone grace. Is that right? 11:04 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest) absolutely, and the presumption of positive intent is one of the most misunderstood principles on earth right right now. 11:13 Um, especially if you, if your, your lived experience has been one of oppression, we come there suspicious and so, because of our lived experiences, the presumption of positive intent doesn't mean that people are right. 11:34 It means that people walk in as much light as they have in the moment, and it's our job to bring light and not throw shade. So the presumption of positive intent says that people are doing the best that they can in that moment and that they have the capacity, when mediated in productive ways, to even do better than they are now. And the presumption of positive intent is really for the person who is doing that act. It keeps you curious and not furious, is what I say. You know, and that curiosity sparks inquiry. It sparks you to say to stay away from heavy judgment and to start to say I'm wondering how that person got to that position, what took them to that particular opinion or action. And so you become more of an inquirer and, using empathic language and empathic response patterns, so it makes you more productive, grounded and able to navigate these natural tensions that are just there in human systems. 13:13 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Absolutely Okay. There's so much I'm writing down right now. This is really good. It reminds me a lot of chapters four and five of your book. So I'm just reading the chapter titles here. But diversity and riches, inclusion makes groups smarter. And then chapter five never let a conflict go to waste, liberate opportunities. I was just really excited about this and I think they kind of speak to some of the tensions you were mentioning and kind of the facilitator moves and skills and kind of mindsets that you need to have to be effective in those situations. Is there anything from those chapters specifically that you want to lift up for us? 13:49 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest) Sure, first I want to say that the book builds to those chapters, and the first chapter or mindset is see a group as it could be and to have a growth-oriented attitude, perspective mindset for a group that means you can take them from where they are. You accept where they are, you accept where they are, knowing that through grace and through skills, mental dispositions, and they can be taught, they can learn, they can develop over time, which is needed for the last two chapters. And then groups grant consent is another mindset. Your role or position does not grant you consent to lead. You have to get that consent through credibility and relationships, and that is needed for those last two chapters. And plan don't attach is a third mindset which says you have to be ready to be flexible and use improvisation with groups. So you want to take those and then go to diversity enriches what we found over and over in the research that groups that think alike, that have homogeneous backgrounds and so on and so forth, they make very bland decisions and groups often resort to apathy in those groups because there's just too much agreement. And so what we found is that when facilitators, leaders, can harvest the diverse voices and create a psychologically safe container for those group members actually enjoy meetings better. The depth of the conversation and the meaningfulness of the conversation increases exponentially, decisions that are made are more innovative and more people actually implement those decisions. 16:38 And now the thing is, how do you harness all the power of the diverse voices within a group? One is to know that diversity is period. It just is period. It just is period. And so you're not. You're either honoring it or you're not, because it's always there. So, starting from that, like you're not doing a special favor by noticing it, it's just there. And what are you going to do with it? And so, and then all of chapters one, two, three and four are necessary for using conflict as a resource. Definitely because there are natural tensions in all social systems. Either we ignore them and be vulnerable to them, or we find ways, tools, mental dispositions, agreements, talking structures to honor them and navigate them, so that, in this case, that we're doing our best for students. 18:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Thank you so much for that overview and the reminder that right it's building. You don't just jump right to the forefront, you don't just dive into conflict. Right, you've built all of these things first. I think that was really important. Thank you for naming that, and then I really liked two particular tools that you specifically named in the book that could support these paraphrasing and polarity mapping. Do you want to talk about either one or both of those to give people a sense of you know? What does that even look like or feel like? 18:32 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest) That's so funny that you pick those. People who know me would say that I would pick those. In fact, I'm known for saying, when in doubt, paraphrase your butt off. I'm known for saying that all over the world because there are polarities. And so let's take a look at why does Carolyn always saying paraphrase your butt off all the time? One it takes care. 19:03 Well, when I say paraphrasing, I don't mean paraphrasing, I mean really taking in someone holistically. See first, it's not just repeating back what somebody says, it's taking in them cognitively, socially, emotionally, spiritually. Taking in and asking yourself who is this person and what is it that they are really meaning, what are their values, what are their beliefs that they're expressing, what are their mental models, what are they bringing right now to the table? And then honoring that by seeking to understand. So it's setting aside yourself for the moment that to me, in my opinion, this is truly servant leadership is honored also by seeking to understand values, beliefs, the identity that they're bringing, their lived experiences that are poured into this one sentence that they've said to you, or that's poured into this rant that they've just done, and it actually is the number one relationship building tool, professionally and personally. When you provide. 20:45 That service reflects back to a person their emotions, if they're highly emotional, and the content around which they are emotional. It also creates clarity of communication between people. It also what I, what I just love. We call it an Aikido move. It goes with the energy instead of pushing against a force. It actually helps the brain to settle down, the personality self to settle down when it feels that it's being heard. And it's hard to push against understanding. 21:48 When people feel understood what we found, it actually changes their brain chemistry so that they the serotonin level goes up and they actually start to just relax. And it's the number one trusting behavior that you can do with another person not talking but listening. And so we found that three kinds of paraphrases are really important, especially when working with all groups. I don't even want to say diverse groups, because there's just as much diversity present if everybody looks like you or sounds like you or whatever. But the common ground paraphrase is so useful for navigating diverse perspectives when navigating conflict or tensions in groups. The common ground paraphrase listens across diverse perspectives, reaches in, grabs out a common value, a common belief, a common identity, a common goal, a common goal and offers it to the group so that they can coalesce, be coherent and move forward together. 23:40 And then there is the polarity paraphrase, which is one of my most favorite paraphrases. 23:42 It normalizes tensions that are within a group and it says you're right, and you're right too, guess what? And we need each other because polarities are two or more right answers that are interdependent, which means you can't put one down if you expect a positive outcome. So both the answers are needed for positive outcomes Now, and there are tensions between them, like paying attention to work and paying attention to home. You have to pay attention to both to have a good outcome, which is a balanced life. You can't put one down without the whole thing collapsing, and so offering groups lifting a polarity paraphrase normalizes the tensions. Also, it honors diverse voices because it says, for example, some people feel that students should be toe the line and follow all the rules, whereas some people feel that students need to be given the opportunity to make decisions and to practice choice making and to be given grace in those areas inside, and you can lift polarities and say so. There's a natural tension occurring here between having students follow guidelines while at the same time honoring their need for freedom and flexibility, and so it scoops that up and then you name a higher purpose so that our students are successful in life, so that our students are able to navigate schooling better, and so effective facilitators. Especially these days when we're highly polarized, it's a non-negotiable paraphrase to be able to listen for that and grab a couple of polarities and present them to the group. 26:30 The other paraphrase is the acknowledging paraphrase. Everybody wants to be acknowledged. They want their emotions to be acknowledged. Now here's the skill with this kind of paraphrase you must know how to paraphrase without taking people to hell. I always say you've got to be able to paraphrase emotions and content while keeping the resourcefulness of the person or the group. So your paraphrase should light a pathway when you're honoring feelings and I'll give an example I might say to a group you know it's really frustrating when the parents that we expect to come to our meetings are not there, and where that frustration comes from wanting to build a team with parents and then to get the group to say yes, because there's a pathway within that you're honoring and acknowledging and creating a pathway for positive action. Those are the best paraphrases, not just yeah, all the parents just get on our nerves because I don't know what they're doing. They're not showing up, which I call the hell paraphrase. 28:07 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That is so helpful. I could easily see how just that one phrase just directs to a very different conversation to be able to bring them into that lighting up pathway, as you said. Brilliant, I really appreciate just naming all of those types of polarities and I am actively thinking about how again back to the beginning, we were talking about how anyone could use this. So a teacher facilitating a group of teachers I could easily think of a bunch of examples of like teacher team meetings where these moves could be used. I'm also envisioning, in a class conversation right, if there's a student who's actually quite good at listening but is often undervalued because they're not maybe speaking a hundred times like maybe a couple other kids, to be able to jump in as a student and be like here's what I'm hearing. You know there's this tension happening that would be just like a next level move that most teachers would just like fall over with excitement about. 29:03 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest) That is so, so true, to teach students that listening is often more valuable than talking. And then when you talk based on listening, the talk is going to be a higher quality talk and can be a paraphrase which liberates resourcefulness within your colleagues or your students or your friends to say you all are talking about the same thing. You're really valuing where we take our trips at the end of the school year, even though we've been all over the place. But there's this big value of the. The location seems to be the biggest value that we have, that if, when a student does that, they've liberated the whole group from just being all over the place. And so, yes, and we know places and spaces many in the country and internationally where teachers have introduced paraphrasing or listening to understand, and it's often in conflict resolution, and I invite teachers to use it more than in conflict resolution but to teach this skill as a teaching, learning skill, also for students. Boy, they can really help teach a lesson if they paraphrase the concepts and the ideas that are in that lesson and the ideas that are in that lesson, and so you can be and what you can paraphrase, you have learned it more deeply. And so we know spaces where there's lots of paraphrasing or listening to understand, going on in classrooms and also going on in adult meetings. It has to be taught, though it has to be in. Teaching involves giving foundational information and then modeling and practice. It's not only a commitment and it's a skill that needs to be taught and practiced. We know elementary school students to listen to understand. 32:13 Also another. I'm also a counselor and I teach people to paraphrase themselves Listening to yourself, to understand yourself. So to say to yourself I used to counsel in middle school, which you know is so needed because sometimes they don't know what they mean but helping them to paraphrase themselves. To say, if you were going to talk to yourself now about the most important thing for you, what would you say to yourself? You know, or you just said da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Reach down in there and pull out a goal for yourself. And really it's about teaching them to say well, I just said this and a goal for me is da-da-da-da-da-da. They just paraphrase themselves. They sought to understand which is really cool. They sought to understand which is really cool. So I want to encourage counselors, school counselors, to to bring that into their practices and never let a kid leave a counseling session without paraphrasing. You paraphrase them and have the student paraphrase themselves. What are you leaving with? Which is the organizing paraphrase that can be used? 33:35 Paraphrasing is at the top of a facilitator's toolkit, especially for chapter mindsets four and five, which is crafting a container of psychological safety so that people know that their voice is valued and there won't be any put downs, and also making seeking to understand a working agreement within a group. 34:12 And so I was in a group in Detroit where there were 12 precocious consultants and we all thought we had the right answer, and we probably did with polarities, but we didn't know better at that time. 34:27 And yet we decided that we would make listening to understand as one of our working agreements, and we used to call it malpractice to throw out an idea before seeking to understand, and so to when someone speaks, to understand them before throwing out an idea. So the paraphrase gives you permission to do three things in a meeting we teach Once the person gives you sign off, I paraphrase and say so a value that you hold is student self-management. And then you wait and the person gives you sign off, they'll go like, yeah, that's what I'm trying to say. Then they might go on another run and you paraphrase that too, and then you have permission to one add your idea at that time, or pose an invitational question, one that's non-threatening but an invitational question or invite the engagement of others within the group. And so paraphrasing within the group is a foundational point for collaborative dialogue. You cannot have collaborative dialogue without the foundational skill and willingness to listen, to understand. 36:03 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) This is incredible. I'm looking at time and realizing we don't have much more. I'm going to move to kind of close out. I could talk to you all day about this. This is incredible. I'm looking at time and realizing we don't have much more. I'm going to move to kind of close out. I could talk to you all day about this. This is fascinating. This is kind of. The next three questions are kind of a quick lightning round, if you will. One of them is just kind of recognizing that we talked about a lot of big things like big ideas and also a lot of practical things people could do in a meeting. Lot of practical things people could do in a meeting. Right, what's one thing that people can do once they kind of end the episode to put into practice right away? That might be one of those kind of foundational pieces to work up to. You know, the fourth and fifth mindset. 36:41 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest) Yeah, talking to people who facilitate their peers. Here are five things you can do. I call them the elemental. Like little kids say elemental. If you want to improve your meetings, do elemental One is an audience connect to greet people and to thank people. 37:05 Two have a clear purpose and have it visual. Write it out. Adults are visual um. Three, have um a public agenda. That means an agenda that everybody can see, not just a flat agenda, but one you can point away from yourself and point to have a public agenda. 37:32 Have an inclusion strategy. We used to call those icebreakers, but if you want to make adults mad right away, tell them they're going to do an icebreaker, so just throw that out. But have an inclusion strategy of some kind that brings people's voices in the room, and it could be 60-second inclusion strategy. Name one thing you're celebrating or looking at today's purpose, what's one hope that you have, and then share that out. Having an inclusion strategy. Have visible working agreements strategy. Have visible working agreements. You know your meeting is not psychologically safe and people can't be brave without visible working agreements. So I want to throw that out as your element. Make sure you have those in place. Also, the presumption of positive intent, because it keeps you resourceful. Also, paraphrase, your butt off. Those would be the things that I would leave for a facilitator, and another one is lighten up and have fun. Lighten up, you want meetings where people are laughing and people are full of joy as they do the work. And so relationship first, rigor secondly. 39:03 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that. The next question is for fun. It could be work-related or it could be not work-related, but what is something you personally have been learning about lately? 39:32 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest) until I'm doing a retreat on that for leaders, because you cannot lead well if you think you're broken. And so how do you know that you are whole? It doesn't mean that you don't have things to learn, and yet you come at it from a space of I'm not broken, I'm whole, and what's there not to love about me? And so, and which means that I won't get depleted because I live from the overflow I fill up with love for myself and I spill over into the world with love for myself and I spill over into the world. And so I've been learning a lot about grace, self-love and wholeness. 40:18 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That is beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Lastly, I think people are going to want to get your book, so we're going to link to that in the show notes and the blog post. Also, people are probably going to want to either follow you or connect with you, learn more about you. Where can they do that online? 40:33 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest) Yeah, we are on LinkedIn. Tell them just to look for teachers as facilitators at LinkedIn, and I have a very, very astute group who just keeps that going for us and look for us and follow us that way too. Also, if they read the book, to give us a book review, also on Solution Tree, and on Amazon to give us a book review. Also. Our website is teachersasfacilitatorscom it's the name of the book TeachersAsFacilitatorscom and you can follow what we're doing on there too, and there are links to our social media on our website. 41:26 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Amazing Carolyn, thank you so much for your time today. 41:30 - Carolyn McKanders (Guest) Thank you so much. It's my pleasure and I send out lots of love to all the educators all over the world. I have a friend who says anybody who's not us too bad for them. We are the world, we really are as educators and I want to leave people with you are enough. You really are enough. Thank you, Lindsay, Thank you. 7/21/2025 220. Processes for Group Dialogue, Discussion, and Decision-Making with Dr. Laura LiptonRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, we talk to Dr. Laura Lipton, an international consultant, author, and director of MiraVia Education. Dr. Lipton reveals transformative strategies for educational leaders aiming to foster meaningful dialogue and collaboration. She highlights the power of process agendas in cultivating relational skills and emphasizes the importance of differentiating between purpose and task in meetings.
Dr. Lipton introduces three distinct types of discourse—dialogue, discussion, and decision-making—each with unique roles and protocols that enhance group effectiveness. The Big Dream Dr. Lipton's vision is where education serves as a platform for equity, critical thinking, and self-expression. Education is about creating citizens who can think critically, and it starts by giving students a place to be confident in their own voice, so they can also listen to other people and engage meaningfully with others. In Dr. Lipton’s view, embracing the three different types of discourse—dialogue, discussion, and decision-making—is crucial. Mindset Shifts Required A key mindset shift is recognizing how important clarity of purpose is to the work. As educators operate as the leaders and designers of a group, having purpose-driven clarity is essential, as is distinguishing that purpose from the tasks you do to reach it. Action Steps Educators can embrace their role as group developers and facilitate meaningful, collaborative discourse in their classrooms with these action steps: Step 1: Clearly define the purpose of your meetings, sessions, or classes. Make sure everyone is aware and aligned with this purpose from the beginning. Step 2: Know and integrate the three types of discourse:
These sequential steps ensure that you are not jumping prematurely into decision-making and judgement before understanding where people are coming from and ensuring each person has a voice. Step 3: Design your process that fits the context. Choose the right protocols that both activate and engage the group in the process, ensuring that everyone is aligned with the purpose. One way to do this is to implement the “what, why, how” approach, clearly communicating the purpose of each activity (the "why"), what will be done (the "what"), and the process to be followed (the "how"). This approach helps participants understand the rationale behind activities, fostering buy-in and engagement. Challenges? One of the primary challenges is overcoming the ingrained habits of jumping straight into discussion or decision-making without engaging in dialogue. Many people are accustomed to a debate-oriented culture and may resist or misunderstand the value of dialogue, perceiving it as less productive. One Step to Get Started Educators can start shifting towards this way of leading by developing an attitudinal preparedness, saying, “I’m willing to be vulnerable and try something new. I’m going to experiment and be really clear about what I want to happen.” This internal mindset is key to trying a new way of engaging in meaningful discourse. Stay Connected You can find more from Dr. Lipton on her website, MiraVia, or by email. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Discussion Resource Bank with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 220 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Dr Laura Lifton. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 00:05 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Thank you. Thank you, happy to be here. 00:08 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I'm excited today because we're going to talk about a book that, honestly, I love the structure, I love the way that it is laid out. It is so practical and the intro framing is so I don't know if pithy is the word, but it's like to the point. It is exactly what you need. It is not super long and like saying things that don't need to be said. It is so great, and so I'm wondering if you want to just kind of general intro like what should people know about you, about the book Particularly? I think the way that it's structured is so unique and the topics it covers are really unique, so I don't know if you want to take us there to start. 00:45 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Sure, sure, I would love to do that and I'm rarely asked that, so that's great. What I'm very happy about is that you picked up on something that was always our intention. We there's a lot of books out there with theory and lots of theory, and so we really wanted to take that theory and put it into practice, give practitioners access to the theory in a way that they could actually apply it and that it would be simple. And you know, people who are in education are busy anyone's busy, but particularly educators, teachers, educational leaders really busy. So we wanted to create something that would not cause them to have a lot of fuss and a lot of prep, but still be able to be group developers. 01:29 One of the premises of this book is that leaders and teacher leaders, classroom leaders, building leaders they're group developers. The leader is a group developer, so that anytime you're with your group that you have in mind their continued growth, not just to complete a task in the moment, but to use the opportunity of that task to build relational skills, so that the relational skills is the kind of resource capacity to get the work done well, to get it done more efficiently and effectively and to get it done more collaboratively. So being a collaborative culture was critically important to school success. So the book is designed to help leaders design process agendas toward that end, because very often we were finding that the notion of a process agenda was a foreign thing. You know that the meeting was a pile of content, topic, topic, topic, topic without the opportunity to think about, engage with those topics and each other. You know so we call it the gum-chew ratio that if you keep shoving gum in someone's mouth and no time to chew, it's not that functional. So a lot of the strategies in this book are the chew time. 02:49 And what we also recognize is that typically groups are called together to do certain kinds of things. So you asked about structure. The group is structured around six specific things that groups tend to do better than anyone can do on their own, and I can name them that they need to do assessments and goal setting. They come together to do that because it has to be a mutual commitment towards any movement forward, dialogue and discussion, which we'll foreshadow and talk about later a little bit more. 03:25 Groups are way better at generating ideas than individuals are on their own. Groups need to come together and synthesize this. Everything is so disparate and so it's not just to connect the dots but it's creating a bigger idea from those dots. So to be able to do that and hold on to that, and just groups come together to process information, you know, if meetings, if your meeting is an oral memo you know I'm just going to tell you stuff then you're really not taking advantage of the professional power that's in that room. So strategies for processing information, processing text, so that's the way the group is organized and our notion is that you think about, as a leader, what's your goal or result or outcome for this meeting and then choose strategies accordingly. 04:19 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Thank you so much for that frame. I can say for myself and I'm sure a lot of people have also been in meetings that are exactly the thing you said not to do, right, where it's just I'm going to talk at you, right. I'm glad that this is not that right. It's like how to go beyond that and do actual things the group is supposed to do. I really love that frame. 04:39 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Exactly. And how do you support, how do you use process to get a group better at doing those things with each other? 04:46 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, absolutely, and I mean you kind of I think you kind of spoke to the next question. I had a little bit, but if you want to expand on it or say more, the idea of like the dream for either the book or education, I often ground this in Dr Bettina Love's language around freedom dreaming. So dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. You know what is kind of that dream that you hold? 05:09 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) That's a really good ask, a small and significant fact create equity, to create citizens, people who can think critically, and I'm afraid that we've lost a lot of that. I think, with a lot of these attacks on curriculum and drill and skill kinds of things, that we've lost some of that. But I think that education is about being able to think critically and to be confident in your own voice. So because if you're confident, if we can give kids access to their voice, have them recognize that that is so critically important and confident in that, then you can listen to other people, see if you're okay with yourself. That's when you can listen and that's when you don't really need to argue or fight and it expands our way of thinking. So I think those two things that we teach kids to exercise their voice and to listen to others, so that you have real discourse around important things in school and then you're ready to do that out in the, out in the world, and that you can think critically about your own ideas and assumptions and about those of others. 06:40 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that framing and I've never heard anyone put it in that way, particularly the second piece around, like, once you have confidence in your voice, you can listen to others. Wow, I mean, I'm thinking about staff meetings, I'm thinking about class discussions. How many students are those frequent talkers and how many students are like not giving space for others, and maybe it's just right. You need to have confidence in your voice, you have the space to be like actually heard and like valued for your idea, and then you can listen. Wow, so many people need to hear that, thank you for naming. 07:15 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) I'm glad you think so. We call those people the air hogs, by the way. You know, they just suck all the air. They just take, take it over, you know, and their persuasive skills are repetition and volume. You know, like this is how I'm going to make you agree with me. I will keep saying what I said and I'll say it louder. 07:33 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) There we are, you know, I love that the academic lens you bring up, just like we're going to name that thing. 07:39 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Right right. 07:41 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Repetition and volume. Oh my gosh, that's great. So I think you kind of started talking about this, this idea of dialogue and what you know. What is kind of the difference between dialogue versus discussion? I had also never heard someone kind of distinguish those things. So I would love if you can kind of give us, give us those, that difference, and then maybe how that helps leaders and facilitators kind of wrap their minds around. What are we doing here and thus, what kind of approach am I taking to this meeting? 08:11 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Yeah, yeah, I think that's a really good question, especially that that final piece, because just to roll it back a little bit as an overview or prelude to my answering the direct question the notion that all of our work is purpose-driven and that clarity of purpose is critical. So clarity of purpose for me as the designer and leader of a group and a meeting, and clarity of purpose for those people who are in the meeting. I mean, I think we really confuse purpose with task. We're not here to let's just say, we're not here to rewrite the math curriculum. We're here to ensure there's equitable and effective approaches to math for all of our kids. That's the purpose. To do that, we're going to take a look at the curriculum. So separating task from purpose is critical and clarifying that and even starting the meeting with making sure everybody gets that is important. 09:10 And so now to connect that to the notion of discourse, we really talk about three kinds of discourse, so dialogue, discussion and decision making, and they're all different and they all have different purposes. And they're all different and they all have different purposes and they all have different protocols, you know. And so if we mush it up, we're going to be less effective at each one of those. So, and dialogue is extremely underused, at least the way that we define it. Extremely underused People think about we're going to get together and talk and it's a discussion, we're going to discuss this, and maybe that's good and maybe there's other ways to engage around a topic and with each other. So just to give you actually have some thoughts about that, because I might as well so, and then I wrote, you know, so might as well share some things I've written. So dialogue is it's kind of like the, the non consensus model. You don't perspectives again to share their voice, to listen to others, to encourage connection making between ideas and between people. But you're not looking for agreement, you're looking for understanding so that, as a result of dialogue, whether I agree with you or disagree with you vehemently, I can represent your idea. I understand where you're coming from, so there's really no need to influence or agree. And that's a hard one, because we're so used to consensus models and coming to consensus and that was such a, I'm going to say, trendy thing Not that it's not important at some point but you need other skills as well. So that's dialogue, lots of flowing ideas, and then, once you've done that, then you become more discriminating. Then you say, okay, which of these ideas make sense in terms of where we want to go? And ideally your discussion is informed by criteria too. 11:18 But discussion breaks the ideas into components, so it's an analysis kind of a phase, and the purpose is to generate and analyze ideas, to clarify the distinctions between those ideas and then define the success criteria so that you're moving towards the potential for choosing one or some of those ideas, towards action, right? So in discussion, the group members, the intention is to critique and to advocate. But as much as you advocate, you also want to inquire. So I, in a discussion, a skilled discussion, I advocate for my idea but I also inquire into yours Because I want to, really, we really want to parse it out and make sure we understand similarities and differences in the various ideas and the various possibilities. So generating the possibilities and then organizing them, sorting them, prioritizing them, potentially. So that's skill discussion and both of those are necessary. You know we jump sometimes into discussion without having a dialogue, so I confuse your advocacy with you. I don't understand where that idea came from or how it fits for you, so I'm going to argue with it and I'm going to connect it. It becomes personal actually often. 12:34 So dialogue, discussion, and then, once you've had rich discussion, you want to make a choice. 12:42 So you've generated ideas, you've parsed them out, you understand them pros, cons, whatever. Then you want to move to choice making. So you're weighing those options against some criteria. That's agreed upon, ideally, or sometimes for some groups, the criteria is delivered here's your budget, or here's the time schedule, or here's the number of personnel, here are the resources you need to make your decision align with the resources available. And so they select the most viable outcome, the viable idea to meet the purpose, and that becomes the decision. But the decision, see, the difference is that anybody in the group understands the genesis of that decision. It's not just delivered, it's actually an outgrowth of a lot of engagement. And so then, with decision making, the team can commit to one course of action that there aren't some really skilled decision-making is a workshop and a book all on its own. You know how you can make that happen. But those are the three types of discourse that we talk about, and some of the strategies in groups at work align with those. Some are for dialogue, some are for discussion, some are for decision-making. 14:00 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) This is incredible. I've been taking furious notes no-transcript. 14:41 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) So that would not surprise me. You know, or you're in discussion and you say none of these ideas really seem that viable. Let's kind of toss it around, let's go back into more of a dialogue mode and, you know, think about generate more ideas. So brainstorming, for example, is a classic dialogue tool because it's meant to be lots of ideas with no judgment. Classic dialogue tool because it's meant to be lots of ideas with no judgment. 15:12 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) So if you want to think about that, and in big capital letters. It's like that Amazing. This is super helpful and I can like pinpoint, you know, experiences that I've had in each one of those as you describe them, so that's really helpful. I also see so many parallels to both like adult work and also student work and ways students talk. So there's it's just so relevant for everyone that it's really exciting to me. 15:33 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Absolutely, and you know there are, especially with kids, because it's not a natural mode of discourse for most people? We don't. Because it's not a natural mode of discourse for most people, we don't. We, Western culture is a debate society. I mean you look at any of these shows where it's like you know the pro and the con and the, you know this position and then the counter position. We set that up, we are a debate society and this is anything but that. This is in fact so opposite to that. So I think that we are re-culturing people to engage them in dialogue, and so sometimes you actually need scaffolds, like I mean, you've probably been in groups where there's sort of the talking stick. You know you need something that helps someone to take a breath and listen, and ideally listen not to counter but to understand. It's a very different kind of listening. Listening is not waiting for your turn to talk right, and so dialogue is contingent on quality listening. 16:39 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that. Yes, I love that so much I'm also I'm like making sense of all of this in conjunction with the work I've been trying to grapple with on seeking to understand and how that happens, and I've been trying to attach kind of values language. So we seek to understand what is the value that underlies someone's decision, someone's decision, and I imagine that being a really big part of this kind of process, from hearing the perspective in the dialogue mode of being like, okay, I can connect to that idea that you want safety for your kid in the school or you want the freedom of choice to do this thing right, that is just like value to us. 17:15 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Exactly so. We're not fighting with, we're fighting for. 17:18 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yes, oh. 17:19 I like that. Okay, I'm taking so many notes. Okay, so, as we are doing all of this work, I'm thinking about the person listening or reading the blog post version of this, even, and saying you know, I am about to facilitate this group, we have to do some of this work. I mean, I'm sure you could probably speak to your favorites. I'll say that my favorite protocols are kind of like processes you were talking about, where artifact hunts and in and out of the frame I don't know if you want to speak to one or both of those or a different one of your choice to illuminate for people what is that. 17:55 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Well, I want to say that one of the things that really is important in a process design is not just putting people cold into a room and throwing you know, picking a strategy and getting started with that. It's important to do what we call activating and engaging, meaning that you want to give group members a chance to get in the room. You know people. The first five minutes of the meeting people are still where they were. I mean, you know their butts are in the chair, but their brains are not there yet. You know, and so something. So I just want to say that you wouldn't probably not say we're going to do an artifact hunt, let's start. You would do something that would get people talking in a pair or making or jotting down some kind of a stem completion. The good thing about that is people can do that outside of the meeting and then begin with it. So, for example, let's say your meeting is going to be about well, if we talk about Artifact Hunt, artifact Hunt is about understanding an organizational culture or a group's culture very much and whether, in fact, it's value-driven to where you want it to be. So we have our spouse. Yeah, this is what we say, but this is actually what we do. Okay, so it's a way to kind of examine that, so you might let a group know we're going to talk about some of our values and how we manifest them at next meeting. And please be ready, you know, complete this stem. One value that's critically important to me is dot dot, dot. Okay, so people come in so you're not taking the beginning of the meeting time. Even people, ideally and over time groups, get used to. If you're asked to do that, you're going to start with it, you're going to need it, but it's not so oppressive that if you didn't do it you can't do it. Right, then you don't want to punish people, right? So you come in and then you say, like, meet with two other people and kind of talk about those and maybe agree on one that you prioritize them, or agree on one that you think is important, just to get the conversation going, the brains involved, the whole notion that we're going to follow directions, you know that kind of a thing. So, with that said, let's say that you want to do an artifact hunt and I happen to have it open here in the book. It's my well, my BA was in anthropology, my undergraduate work in cultural anthropology, and so I'm very you know the whole idea of anthropology, sociology, and so I'm very you know the whole idea of anthropology, sociology, group culture is near and dear to me. 20:26 I think that we look at, we measure, we assess and we reward the things we value. And so you can look at a group's reward system and their measurement, their assessment system, their hiring and recruitment processes, and it should be reflective of it, should be congruent with the things that they say that they value. You know, not just lip service. So this is like a digging down and saying okay, what you do, you're actually you bring, you ask people to bring things that they feel are representative. You know of that, so they can bring artifacts that. 21:04 Let's say that if you were coming to visit our school, these are the things we think would reflect. You know what's important to us Awards, schedules, photographs, memos, you know objects, things like that. And then in a task group they categorize those objects. So let's say that each person you have four people working and they've each brought six things. You've got a bunch of stuff you know to do, and then they take the categories and they put the categories up on the wall and then they accept they take one artifact that really exemplifies that, and then they so they've got that done and now they're turning to, and so we're about to determine a project that we're going to do. We're going to get instructional materials, we're going to do a school-wide event, you know, and invite the public to it, or whatever, and that they need to think about within. 22:02 So there's the existing culture. The core values of the existing culture are reflected. What would they do? What choices will they make for this new project that are going to reflect those core values or not? So that's kind of the idea of it. 22:15 It's about congruency and alignment with what we say is important and then what actually is happening in our school, you know. 22:24 So if we say that health and nutrition are important, and then we have, you know, a candy counter I mean, you know, although you're not going to argue with a candy counter, really you know or if we say that equity is important, and then we have I worked with a school that was putting a yearbook together, an elementary school that wanted to do a yearbook. 22:44 Yearbooks are huge in terms of culture and they were going to charge kids, and so if you couldn't afford the yearbook, you weren't going to have one, and so that sort of a behavior is so inconsistent with the school saying that equity and accessibility really mattered to them. So being able to call that out in a way that's relatively safe that's the other thing about process and this book is you want to always be mindful to disagree, have a different the whole voice piece, have a different way of thinking and have that honored and explored rather than stifled and judged, and so you know to be able to call out are we really congruent with our values? And then have a good conversation about that is really important really important. 23:40 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, I love that you named that in the book and just here too. I mean, I've been in strategic planning conversations or things where where people are doing a root cause analysis, for example, and they get to this point where you know they're starting to blame parents or like doing whatever Right and it's like wait, is that? Is that what we truly believe, or this feels? You know, I can sense, just as an outsider like this, there's something at odds here, but it seems like you can't sense it and it does not go well. When I named the thing versus having this like co-created activity, where we as a group are kind of pulling things in and coming to that conclusion feels so much not only more psychologically safe, but just like the awareness and the understanding is deeper too. 24:26 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Right and there's a sort of a fun quality to it. You know it's one step away, so the artifact becomes what we call a third point. So it's not your favorite thing or my favorite thing. It's like we have this bunch of stuff that we've put together and these things do they reflect what we want them to or not? You know how disparate are they, how connected are they? So you get to examine yourself. It's a self-reflection, you know, tool really, and then becomes part of a planning tool. 24:59 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love it, I imagine with a lot of these protocols. I mean I love it, I imagine with a lot of these protocols I mean you can choose from any topic, but I mean discourse and discussion or any of the others. But I imagine there are some challenges that you've navigated, as you've seen people kind of try to do this work and have some struggles or something that maybe you've coached someone through or witnessed yourself. What's kind of one of the bigger challenges that you can recall and how would someone navigate that if they experienced that challenge? 25:28 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) I will give you my first and foremost favorite tip here at this moment, and it's called sharing the what, why, how. So I think what gets in the way is I might say to you oh, you know, say to my group, hey, we're going to do this artifact hunt, you're going to be getting in groups of four, here's how you do it. But we've left out the why. We haven't brought the group with us, we've sort of pushed the group or pulled the group. So the what is we're going to examine the degree to which our values are aligned with the things that we're doing, our actions, really reflecting what we want, what we say that we value. So that's the what, because we're going to be planning this new project and we want to make sure that. Okay, da-da-da-da-da. So here's how it's going to go, and then I give directions for the artifact time. 26:26 In any group you've got people who are like well, I don't want to. You know I don't do fluff, you know it's games. Process equals games and sometimes it does. If you don't understand the purpose of process, you know there's no such thing as we feel, there's no such thing as an icebreaker or, you know, a warmup. The beginning of a meeting needs to be task oriented. You can get the affect that you want that a warmup would give you with something that also prepares you to do the work. So in any group you've got your high task people who are like the meeting's at 830. I'll come at 835 because maybe we'll be actually starting and doing real stuff, you know. And then you have your high relationship people who are if we don't hold hands and sing Kumbaya, the meeting is a failure. 27:12 You know so and you have those poles and everywhere in between, and so when you share your why, you're actually sharing, you're speaking to both audiences. 27:21 So you're saying, for example, we're going to be looking at our science curriculum for the next several meetings and we're going to be working in cross grade level groups of three, so that, because we need articulation, we need to understand you know what kids are doing in the grade before and the grade after, and to do that and it will make we have this much work. We have so much work and with so little time so that by getting by breaking into smaller groups, we're going to be get the work done in a time, efficient way and all the voices will be heard. Everyone will have a chance to share and speak their mind. So your relationship people are going, yay, everybody's going to have a chance to speak their mind and we're going to be in groups and your task. People are saying, okay, we're going to efficiently get the work done. 28:12 So your why is extremely pivotal and it's often left out and it really needs to be planned. One of the things about the book back to the book is there's an intention statement for every strategy and your intention statement is your why. 28:29 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) So it's baked right in I love that, because then people don't have to manufacture their own. And, yeah, I love that it's there. 28:37 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Yeah. The other thing, too, is you're not randomly picking a strategy because it looks like fun. You're saying, okay, what do I really want to have happen, what's my intention, what's my purpose with applying, using the strategy at this time? And it's, and so I can double check myself and say, okay, this is meant to do this, is that what I want? You know, is that what's going to be important? So, yeah, oh. 28:57 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love it and and, oh my gosh, I could talk to you about this book all day. I'm just looking at the time. So, as we kind of like move to wrap up a bit, I think I mean step one people should just get this book and it's a wonderful guide. They should use all you know, all the pieces. I'm wondering, as it's like ordered and coming to them in the 24 to 48 hours before they get it, what is like a first step? Is there something that people can do immediately after engaging with this episode that they can kind of put into practice right away? 29:29 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Ooh, that's a really good question. I think that, first of all, I think there's more of an attitudinal preparedness, maybe, than anything else. It's saying as a leader, I'm willing to be vulnerable, I'm willing to try something new, and so just getting ready to say I'm going to experiment and I want to be really clear about what I want to have happen. I see myself as not the smartest person in the room. Necessarily, I want to take advantage of the resource of my group, and so anything that I do is going to be aimed at that. 30:20 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's yeah, that makes total sense because it's a, like you said, an attitudinal perspective for designing and facilitating, I think, the meeting. 30:28 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Yeah, I think from a practical perspective they may want to think about, okay, what meetings do I have coming up and what is my purpose, and maybe even write down clarity of purpose. So say, okay, what's the purpose of this meeting, and then let me look at this book and see if I can match some specific strategies. The other thing that might be useful to point out of course this is before they have the book, but at the beginning, in the front matter, there are several examples. We call process agenda a strategy stack, and there's several examples of stacking strategies for a 45-minute meeting, a 90-minute meeting and like a two to three-hour session, I think, and you can even stretch that into two-day session if you've got a big conference. So, thinking about the strategies as sort of a stack, so you're changing it up, you're energizing, you're making sure the foundation is laid, and there's some really good examples of that. I think in're making sure the foundation is laid and there's some really good examples of that, I think, in the front of the book. 31:29 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I agree. I'm thinking, you know, if someone's getting this episode in the summer as they're preparing for the school year you know having that. I know a lot of schools like to have a template for an agenda or a meeting. Yes, use one of those for that. 31:43 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) It's very much a template. It really is, and I would say that, combined with the what, why, how, what, why, how? And when things go south, it's often because you say what was your, why Did I share a, why Did I make it clear? Or, you know, because we assume the group gets that, oh, I'm doing this for the good of the group and for the completion of the task. But that is absolutely not always true. You know, there's that authority, power and authority dynamic, you know, and you always have that person who prides himself on. I don't do something because somebody you asked me to do it. I'm actually going to not, I'm going to do the opposite, right, you know. So we want to recruit. When you share what, why, how, especially at the beginning of a meeting, we call that the frame. What you're really trying to do is just increase receptivity to working in maybe a slightly different way than has been happening before. 32:41 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I love that and I think a lot of leaders are going to be very appreciative of that, because I think resistance is the thing that's common. As we close, I am curious to know this is just kind of a fun question that I ask everyone what is something you've been learning about lately, and this could be professional or it could be totally unrelated to your work. 33:01 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Oh, my current thing that I'm doing. It's so funny that you asked that I'm working with a group of people on the idea of collective efficacy. So collective efficacy is essentially the group believing that pulling together that group can get anything done, and so it's different than individual self-efficacy. It really is about the power in the group, and so we've created I'm just experimenting, I'm getting I'm actually working after this on my presentation to a group in June, trying out a new assessment tool for the group to self-assess individuals, to self-assess what they do in terms of four variables related to efficacy, and then thinking about where they're high, where they're low and then helping to launch, kind of some professional growth based on that. So yeah, that's my. So efficacy I think it's. We toss that word around, but I don't think it's really looked at seriously as a critical component to success for education. 34:04 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) So yeah, thanks for asking. Yeah, that's fascinating. I'm sure people are going to want to follow up. I'm going to want to follow up and like see how that's going. So how can like people learn more about you or just connect with you and continue to follow your work? 34:17 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) They are welcome to my. We have a website, wwwmiravillaeducation, written fully out and there's lots of information about the kinds of things that we do. There's contact information for me. I'm happy to talk with people, you know. I love to know where the work's going, who, what, what things really stand out. I even said to you at the beginning you know earlier, before we started, what you chose and what was a highlight for you is very informative to me. So always good, I'm here. 34:50 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's incredible and we'll link to your website in the show notes in the blog post that people create. Okay, thank you, dr Lipton, so much I've loved this conversation. 34:58 - Dr. Laura Lipton (Guest) Thank you, lindsay, it's been my pleasure. 7/14/2025 219. Implementation is a Process with a Moral Imperative with Jenice Pizzuto & Steven CarneyRead Now
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, we chat with Jenice Pizzuto and Steven Carney, educators, researchers, and co-authors of Implement with IMPACT. They dive deep into the transformative power of implementation science in education, emphasizing the moral imperative to bridge the gap between knowing what works in education and doing it effectively.
Jenice and Steven recognize that while we often know what works through research and evidence, there’s not enough emphasis on how to implement best practices to bring effective, equitable, and just education. Their work addresses that gap and empowers educators to apply evidence-based education practices in their classrooms. The Big Dream Steven and Jenice envision a future of education where every child has access to high-quality, evidence-informed teaching, irrespective of their background. This dream involves dismantling normalized barriers such as resource gaps and opportunity divides, creating schools where students feel valued and capable. The ultimate goal is to radically reimagine how educators support teachers and leaders in implementing evidence-based practices, ensuring that every student receives the education they deserve. Mindset Shifts Required Empowering educators to implement evidence-based practices in their classrooms requires a major culture and mindset shift. Jenice and Steven highlight the need to avoid shaming and blaming, but embrace learning and growth. One big shift is for educators to embrace the idea that learning is not something done to us, but is part of who we are. So, implementation doesn’t happen by accident—it happens by design. Educators can co-create change and foster an environment where meaningful educational change is possible. Action Steps To begin implementing evidence-based practices in their classrooms, educators can start with these action steps: Step 1: Build your implementation team. Research shows that implementation is much more successful with a team committed to the process. Build your team of champions for change, including diverse voices in leadership, educators, students, and other stakeholders. Step 2: Adopt a change theory. Change is difficult for all humans, no matter what the situation is. That’s why it’s important to understand human behavior and psychology and have a framework for change that helps guide your implementation process. Step 3: Create an implementation plan. Choose one initiative your school is currently working on and assess whether the implementation is being treated as carefully as the selection process. Invest time in building a plan, using your team and change theory to guide you. Step 4: Understand barriers. Use qualitative data, such as surveys, observations, and learning walks, to understand barriers to change and implementation. Step 3: Celebrate and reflect. Because change is challenging and implementation takes time, it’s easier for educators and leaders to feel frustrated, tired, or overwhelmed. Combat this by celebrating wins and reflecting throughout the entire process. Challenges? One significant challenge in implementing evidence-based practices is initiative fatigue, where schools are overwhelmed by the constant adoption of new programs. Sustaining momentum is also difficult, especially when results take time to manifest. To combat these, it’s important for implementation teams to focus, break down silos, recognize it takes time, and stay aligned to your mission and vision. One Step to Get Started Leaders can start by looking in the mirror—examine your current system and identify areas where it may not be serving your team effectively. By acknowledging these gaps, you can begin to build an implementation team and utilize the tools necessary to create a successful and sustainable change. Consider the initiatives in your school: are you treating this implementation as carefully as you chose this initiative? Stay Connected You can find Jenice on her website, IMPACT Lead Succeed, or on Instagram. You can connect with Steven on LinkedIn or his website, IMPACT Learn and Lead. To help you implement today’s takeaways, I’m sharing my Implementation Planning Worksheet with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 219 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about more tips and resources like this one below:
TRANSCRIPT
00:02 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Steven and Jenice, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. I'm so excited that you're both here in the same space virtually, and so we want to kind of start with you know what should listeners or readers of the transcript later know about you or keep in mind for our conversation today, just before we get into like the first big question, anything you want to share Go ahead, Jenice, I'll jump in after you. 00:31 - Steven Carney (Guest) We always like we're like who's going first Great. 00:35 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Well, I'm Jenice Pizzuto and I think what you should know about me is I'm not done yet. I'm still learning and growing and I just can't get enough of this learning and improvement. And the more I know, the more I find out that I need to know and that I am always at the heart of a teacher. I started out in primary education and then I've been a literacy coach and academic success person, scaled MTSS across 44 schools, then went nationwide and then kind of went into this whole implementation science dive which you know I was looking back just yesterday. It started in 2012. And since then it's been quite a wild ride and I am on the board of the Global Implementation Society, so that takes me into some global world which I really love. 01:25 And then Steven and I, you know, just found out that there was something really missing in education and it was implementation science, but not just purely implementation science as it's been presented to the medical field and the health services. We needed that education flair, and so we are. Both come from learning forward background and focus on adult learning andragogy. So we didn't start out to write a book, but we saw this giant gap and said you know what we can do better, and we have to help people do better. So I think what you need to know is that this is born out of a moral imperative, so that we can help people stop the madness of adopt and abandon, and let's not, you know, shame and blame people, but let's help people to and through getting evidence-based practices to kids that need them, and that means we have to help adults. 02:21 - Steven Carney (Guest) Yeah, and I think I think it's also really important for listeners to know that, both Jenice and I, we approach this work with a really a deep sense of humility and curiosity as well. It is an evolving field. We've both spent years working in schools and districts, and one thing that we've learned is that there is no magic bullet, no single solution that will really fix education, but we do believe wholeheartedly in the power of intentional, well-planned change, and so you know, we don't see implementation as just about introducing new ideas. It's about making sure that they take root, that they grow and that they thrive. And, as Jenice said, I think our goal is to help educators navigate that change in ways that feel doable and sustainable, and I think that was the whole point behind this is that implementation can seem really daunting, and is it doable? And then, while always keeping equity and student success at the center, while always keeping equity and student success at the center. 03:25 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's a perfect segue to the big first question that I typically ask, which is Dr Bettina Love talks about the idea of freedom, dreaming, and the specific quote that I love about that is she says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so I'm curious, with that in mind you know what is that big dream that you all hold? I know you both touched on it briefly, but do you mind kind of speaking to that dream for education and how we use implementation science perhaps? 03:57 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) That is at the heart of the moral imperative information seeking around the failure that we have done institutionally to get students what we know works to them. Then you understand that our moral imperative is in that big dream of the critique of injustice is that we know what works. We have all the research. That's why we didn't need to write a book about PLCs or MTSS or PBIS or SEL, all the al. That's why we didn't need to write a book about plc's or mtss or pbis or sel, all the all the alphabets. We know what to do, but we have a huge gap between knowing and doing and we feel that was a social injustice and we wanted to make sure that we could. I love Steven said it's teachable, learnable, doable, fixing and blase we'll borrow those terms but things that are teachable, learnable and doable, so that busy administrators, busy teachers can actually get something done right and well, to get these evidence-based practices to the students that need and deserve them. We can do better. 05:04 - Steven Carney (Guest) This is quite the quote freedom of dreaming and it really touches the other work that I do on top of this. 05:09 I currently run a school about generating upper mobility in our most marginalized communities. 05:16 I love this concept, really, of freedom dreaming. 05:19 For me, the dream is an education system where every child has access to the same level of high quality evidence, informed teaching and I think that that's why this book came about as well is really thinking about how do we implement these evidence and we know what works in education and how do we implement them right and well, and that students get that access regardless of their zip code, their family income or their background. I mean, I ultimately dream of schools where the barriers you know are normalized and things like you know resource gaps, or where the barriers we've normalized, things like resource gaps or opportunities, divides that divide us are completely dismantled, that divide us are completely dismantled. I want students to walk into my classrooms where they've really seen value or are seen and they're valued and they know that they're capable. So I think we need, you know, really to radically reimagine not just what we teach but how we support teachers and leaders to bring evidence-based practices to life. And again, that just speaks to the heart of the book which, to Jenice's point, the moral imperative there. 06:32 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) What a beautiful segue to this next piece. I was just thinking that I imagine there's a lot of re-imagining happening when we're needing to happen, I guess, to implement, like in the way that you all describe in the book, versus what's happening now and what leaders are doing now in terms of trying to here's this new curriculum, go do the thing right, or whatever it looks like in its current form, needs to drastically shift. So I'm curious to know are there key mindset shifts for leaders that you either touch on in the book or have just seen in practice that you're like these are the ways that we want to just be thinking differently about implementation 100%. 07:11 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) And that takes me to. We talked offline about a section of the book, pages two to five, If you want to just talk about that shift, and it's called. There's two sections and it's called Shifting the Culture and then Growing the Implementers. And we start out with that concept because we have to shift the culture and grow, improve and build their what we call KSAs knowledge, skills and attitudes. Not just knowledge and skills, but attitudes in an iterative improvement cycle format. There's no blame, it's a learning and improvement. And if you read at least those two sections, then also dive into what we call deliberately developmental implementation. You're going to see that that's that shift. That's going to it. 08:14 - Steven Carney (Guest) It reimagines how we approach pd yeah, I'm just going to add to that by um. 08:24 I think the other big shift, and I think the first shift and Jenice and I used to be familiar with the term that when we were doing work for Learning Forward that you know, we as educators have to embrace learning as something that's not done to us, it's something that we, you know, it's part of who we are, it's our brace. 08:44 I think the same thing is with implementation is that implementation doesn't happen by accident, it happens by design, and so we have to move away from this idea that change is something done to us and start thinking of it as something that we co-create and you know, something that we co-create and you know, and that another big shift is really embracing the idea that implementation is a process and not an event, and I think we've said that multiple times throughout the book that it really is a process and too often initiatives fail because we expect results overnight, like we're in a result, we we're in that fast, we want to see results so stinking fast, and then we just we throw it out. 09:28 So, but sustainable change, we know, takes time, it takes reflection, it takes adjustment, um, and then I think lastly, I would just add that I think that it also we need to cultivate a mindset of shared leadership. It's it's the topic that we've thrown around for many years in education, but I think it's beyond just the shared role leadership. It's the belief that everyone in the school community, from students to parents to teachers, play a role in implementation and moving the system forward. 10:03 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Absolutely, and I want to add to that in that that's why we have implementation teams as the backbone of this work and when you look at our impact implementation framework, we have what we call the outer circle, which talks about human learning center design elements, and one of them is meaningful leadership structures, and that's horizontally and vertically. 10:25 So once that implementation team is formed, it's not the person with the title that makes it. It really is a dialogue and discussion and consensus format for decision making, for moving forward, to identify what are the facilitators of getting our new thing in place, what are the barriers and we need our teacher's voice on that. That's a co-creation, co-design, co-learning, because they know the barriers better than the principal, frankly, or especially the superintendent. But we also want to have that hierarchy of support, because that's what we need to do to be brave and collaborative. A lot of leaders have a hard time letting go, but we have a lot of examples of once you have, if you set your team up right, we come to these decisions collaboratively, collectively, and then you check it again in a few weeks to see if you need to make adjustments. 11:20 - Steven Carney (Guest) Can I just throw an example on that really quick. So in the school I'm running right now, we're about to implement a new practice around cell phone use and there's a lot of incredible research around, emerging research on the negative impact of cell phone use in the classroom or in schools or what have you and how we? You know, matter of fact, there's lots of states that are looking at banning cell phone use and da da, da. So, aside from that, we're looking at redesigning and doing some practice review, but it's to implement the practices we're putting in place. It's not just enough to get good implementation by just getting our leadership involved and our teachers involved. It also involves our students. 12:12 This is a change that they're part of. It involves our parents this is a change that they're part of. And to do it right and well and to get a successful implementation, it's going to take all of those voices to inform on how's it going, what's working, what's not working, what do we need to tweak, what do we need to adjust so that we get there a lot quicker than simply just going off of the assumptions of the people who said we need to implement. 12:43 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I absolutely love that you guys name in the book and here on just now, the shared leadership part, because I think that often in education we use terms like distributive's, like that's what my research was in the context of leadership. Yeah, so it's really exciting to hear this being put together in like this leader book. It was like actually this is what leadership looks like. Let's expand the team concept. And I also think the other thing that I'm connecting with is this idea of kind of adaptive leadership and adaptive challenges versus technical challenges. 13:26 Right, I think a lot of times we just look at the technical things, like we're going to do the PD, we're going to implement the thing, and it's all kind of divorced from, you know, the hearts and souls of the people involved, and it sounds like you guys are really intentional about saying, actually those hearts and souls are really important and they're going to help us implement well, and so that's really heartening to me. I know in the book, several times you kind of I thought touched on this where we have like the implementation science formula for success for one, or even like the behavior change models that you had mentioned. So I don't know if you want to speak to any of those pieces, those formulas and things and the models that you brought in, but I just I felt like they were really responsive to what's actually necessary in schools. 14:12 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Thanks so much for asking. I want to go to the change piece. The formula for success is great and we can touch on that, but what you were hitting at is here's the thing change is personal, change is emotional and change is hard. We did some research. There's a fantastic book it's very thick called the Immunity to Change, by Keegan and Leahy. I don't know if you know it. It's very dense, but that's what our job was Like. We synthesized so much research. It's just crazy. But in that book they say only one in seven people think about this. One in seven people will change when their life depends on it, and they have the tools and the resources and the incentives. 14:56 asking educators to change their behaviors, their attitudes, their actual actions. I think about when I go golfing, you know, and I try to change my swing. It was hard and I'd always go back to the lousy swing and get in the woods even though I wanted to change. And so I think about when we're teaching and we're trying these new strategies. It's like that golf swing Even if we want to, it's really hard. 15:27 So if we don't have a change theory or change model or adopt a method of thinking of it as an iterative improvement process and involving the people that are doing the work and designing the work, we end up with adopt and abandon. 15:44 So if you look at Chapter 2, talks about change theory and adopting there's two change theories that we present to teams to choose from One's the COM-B and one's the Nostra change process. It doesn't matter which one you pick, but if you're going to be asking people to change, there's going to be predictable turmoil and by adopting a change theory, you can treat them with humanity and forethought as to what's getting in the way, what are the capabilities, what are the opportunities, what is the motivation? That's the COM, com, those. Whichever change theory you pick, there's a lot of resources and activities to help you address the reactions you're getting from staff. They're frustrated, oh they didn't get resources, or there's anxiety they didn't have a vision. That's from the Nostra change process. So we really encourage people to treat your staff as humans and help them learn and adapt to the changes that are necessary to get the new processes in place. 16:52 - Steven Carney (Guest) Yeah, I mean, Jenice, you said that so well. I think the only thing I would add to that wonderful explanation is you know, these models also just help explain. You know why we get what we get, and so it's just helpful to be able to have a model to look at and go. Well, the reason why I'm not getting the behavior I'm wanting maybe it's dialed into motivation or capability or opportunity, right, and so it helps us go back and go. Where do we tweak and modify so that and it keeps it, it keeps the blame away from the people? And, more onto, how do we fix the implementation itself or the system itself in order to get the change that we're looking for, instead of saying, well, we trained them, we taught them and they're not doing it. Well, there's some reasons why they're not, and it's not necessarily reasons that they're choosing, it's just, it's just part of human behavior. 17:47 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Yeah, and we encourage you to use I'm working with a district right now surveys, interviews, observations, there's a section on learning walks so that we understand what the barriers are, because sometimes people want to do it, but there's a barrier in place, and so then we can dismantle those barriers so we can actually get to change behavior. It's pretty rare that people don't want to be about something that's going to help their kids. 18:10 - Steven Carney (Guest) Right. 18:11 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) And I also love that expansive view of data. I don't know if you guys cited street data or not, but it makes me. When I was reading, I was thinking about street data and I'm like, right, it's all of the qualitative like just talk to people things when we often very much gravitate to numbers and like what is the quantifiable thing? 18:28 - Steven Carney (Guest) yeah, it's one of my most marked up books in education. So good old street data good old street data. 18:35 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Yeah, it's so good. You're not going to get outcome data until we know are we doing what we said we're going to do? And so that's co-creation. So an implementation team co-creates the monitoring tools. They know it like. Here's what it's supposed to look like, here's what we're going to monitor and observe, and that implementation team is part of the observation. It's not a principal coming and evaluating you. It's like are we doing what we said we're going to do? And that means the team is a part of that work. And then they they designed the learning that needs to happen as a result of what they find. 19:03 It's not that hard, but we just don't. That's the mind shift right, so it's thinking about things differently. 19:11 - Steven Carney (Guest) But yet it is hard because it is so intentional. 19:14 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Yeah, it doesn't needs a plan, it needs to be intentional about it. It's not random. 19:19 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Right. 19:20 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Or reactive. 19:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, I think that's I. You mentioned the implementation teams and I I really wanted to get at that, cause that was my one of my bigger like aha moments. I'm like, oh okay, so I, just as an instructional coach and you know a person who does like facilities learning walks sometimes I'm always in like coaching or PLC mode and implementation teams are doing something distinctly different, and so I wanted to get a better understanding for myself and for people who are listening or reading the blog post later. But I wanted to kind of ask you guys about you know the distinction and why it's really important to distinguish implementation team versus like a PLC or more of like a learning focus team. Do you want to go first, Steven? Well, I want to think about this for a second. Like a learning focus team, do? 20:07 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) you want to go first, Steven? Well, I want to think about this for a second, Well, and I'm trying to think, find the page where the we have a really great. 20:16 - Steven Carney (Guest) Oh, here it's page 85. 20:17 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Yeah, page 85 gives you a great description of the difference between a PLC and an implementation team, and before we get into that, I just want to say that there is solid research that was done by Fixin, blase, noom one other person or two, I'm forgetting around with an implementation team and without an implementation team. And with an implementation team, you can get to 80% implementation in three years. Now that may sound daunting. People don't want to take three years, we want the shiny object, but if we actually want to get the thing in place, we need that's what it takes. Otherwise it takes up to 14 year 14 years to get some, uh, 14% implementation in the years, and that is not acceptable, right? So you've spent and I actually we did an audit of a school district and they'd been doing PLC for 10 years and they were right at 13% implementation. So they'd wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars, I mean over time and on the initial training, on some of the follow-up trains, but they never actually got it in place. They were right where the data says so without an implementation team. That specifically the difference is. 21:29 This team is specifically charged with championing the new thing the PLC, sor, mtss, to and through to sustainability and it's not their job to be the PLC lead. It's not coaching, because the team decides together what the learning is. It's not a coach. But within that, using an implementation planning template, you are going to say we need coaching. You'll identify what are the strategies to get to that and coaching and how we use staff and what kind of learning is going to happen to that. And coaching and how we use staff and what kind of learning is going to happen, what observations, monitoring tools are all a part of that and that's a team decision. That's related specifically to scaling the evidence-based practice. 22:18 - Steven Carney (Guest) Yeah, lindsay, I would break it down into probably like four or five key areas. One is purpose and focus, the other one would be like scope of work. Well, let's start with purpose and focus. So, like a PLC is primarily focuses on improving structural practices and student learning and they engage in, like these cycles of reflection, analysis and collaboration where an implementation on the other really, on the other hand, is guiding and managing the adoption and scaling of those evidence-based initiatives. So the implementation team looks at the big picture, ensuring that the system, the processes, the supports are all in place to drive a sustainable change. So then you kind of then bring that down to to like what's the scope of work? Like the PLC, scope of work is really within the classroom level they're analyzing the data, they're sharing instructional strategies, they're adjusting teaching to meet, you know, the student needs. Where the implementation team really looks at the operation at the system level, they're coordinating across departments, identifying barriers, they're ensuring the infrastructure and the initiatives like professional development and leadership and resources are all robust and aligned. 23:39 I think PLCs another way to look at this is think about time. Plcs often focus kind of like on the short-term, immediate instructional cycles, where an implementation team really looks at the long-term phased approach. If you think about, like in the book, the framework we have to side, plan, implement, so on and so forth, like those are the phased approaches. So the implementation is thinking through those phased approaches, which is over a longer period of time than those short term cycles. And then PLCs if you think about stakeholders, decision making, accountability. Plcs are typically teacher driven, where an implementation team is made up of a diverse mix of stakeholders and they're accountable for managing the overall success of the initiative itself. And let me think, if there's anything else, the only other thing I would say is that monitoring and adjusting. So PLCs monitor, you know, student outcomes and they make those frequent adjustments. We're implementation teams monitoring the fidelity of the progress of the initiative itself. 24:57 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That makes total sense. Thank you both for breaking that down, because I think I have a much better understanding now than I did at first standing now than I did at first. I appreciate it and I think what I love about it too is that the PLC elements, or like the professional learning elements, are still very much present, like that's still very much part right and it's not like these are exclusive. 25:16 - Steven Carney (Guest) Yeah, go ahead. Well, there is an overlap like collaboration. Reflection is an overlap where there's collaborative work and ongoing reflection. Data-driven is an overlap where the data guides the decisions. Student-centered is the overlap where you know both. The goal is to improve student outcomes. So there is definitely an overlap and I think that they work really well together. 25:38 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Yeah, for sure, and I think one of the things that I had written down as one of my huge takeaways from the book is just the collective teacher efficacy impact on implementation was like very high, like that was a key piece of doing all this well. So you definitely need all of the pieces, so that makes sense. I'm curious to know if there's like a major challenge that you have identified. I'm sure there's so many challenges that people go through when they're trying to implement something, but I am curious to know what's like a big one that you have either like experienced yourself, coached others through, seen in the research, and how would you coach someone kind of through that or talk them through that particular challenge? 26:19 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) That's a great question. It's staying focused. 26:23 - Steven Carney (Guest) Honestly it's? 26:24 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) for me it's pretty simple. It's being willing to break down silos, to fund the, an implementation team, to stay aligned, align your work to your mission vision. So that's why, horizontally and vertically, it needs to be school board, any of the stakeholders that are part of that, because otherwise people are going to go aside, they're going to go to a different shiny object. But when you have this systemic look and generally really it's hard to do this at a school level, to be honest, because you're going to do what the superintendent and your boss wants and if we're not all focused on scaling and that's why scaling a framework like MTSS or PLC works really well because the school district is going to do it but and that is why we built the tool actually to the coaching piece this is why we came to having all these tools, because it was like, oh, why don't we stay focused? Well, you don't have an implementation plan, so we have an implementation planning template, there's a communication map, there's learning walks, so there's all these tools to help you stay focused and to build and develop your team, so that we see that there's interconnectedness and alignment throughout the district and you can report that to the school boards and to the superintendent. 27:43 I have a school district that I work with. 27:44 Once a month, different schools report their progress on their implementation plan to the school board because they're all involved, it's all synced up and it's all tied with their PLC, their SOR and MTSS. 27:57 They've tied it all together in their implementation plan because it fits. This is the work they're doing. But because they knew that as their vision and vision, they're able to maintain focus, and because they meet monthly as a team, and because the district level team meets in trimesters, they maintain the focus and they're always looking at their SMART goal and they're looking at what progress they've made and coming back to it. So it's tied to their school improvement plan, it's tied to the district improvement plan, it's tied to the district improvement plan, it's tied to their funding and grants. It all comes together. So those things help you stay focused. If you don't have a plan and a framework and tools to guide you and the learning opportunities for the staff, that's when we shift and we just say, oh, we did it and we check the box and 10 years later we're at 14% implementation and we spent, you know, three, four, $500,000, or a million even. 28:59 - Steven Carney (Guest) Yes to everything you said and I think as I think about this question honestly, and I think as I think about this question honestly, I think one of the biggest challenges is initiative fatigue. You know, schools are asked to adopt new programs and it can feel really overwhelming and the danger that you know, as Jenice was alluding to, that nothing sticks because there's not enough time to see things through, and I think that's a big piece. Another challenge is really sustaining that momentum as well. So, like that you get it. You know people get excited at the launch of something and but how do you keep that energy alive, especially when results are taking time, because we want to see those immediate results and they're taking time. 29:48 I think that's that's hard. And then but I mean, I have found and Jenice will say the same thing is that celebrating those small wins and creating the structures for reflection can help with that. But it's an ongoing process and I anticipate it will continue to be a challenge as long as schools are stretched really thin. So I think that if we can narrow down the focuses what is their book called focus, you know if we can narrow down the focus and not have smokers oh, that's right. Wait, that was a long time ago too, that came out, but, um, we're aging ourselves a little bit there, uh, so, yeah, so, initiative fatigue and then sustaining the momentum, um, you know, and so it's often that we may go into a system and help with their implementation, and that is the barriers that they have. 30:45 So many other things going on as well, and like where, how do they pull the resources, the right level of resources? Um, we have a good friend of ours that has done some good research around professional development, implementation and, um, she had mentioned that for every, every dollar you spend a new innovation, you should be spending four times the amount on the implementation itself. And so you know, like that's impressive. And you know, really, focusing on the support structures that support the implementation efforts, all the professional development, the coaching, the constant, you know, opportunities to celebrate in the structures for reflection and so forth. 31:32 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That certainly speaks to my soul as like a PD provider and coach, because I often get requests to do like one-off workshops and I'm like I don't even like this, Like there's no, what are we doing? 31:43 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) No, because it's actually harmful. Yeah, because it erodes trust and it erodes the cognitive ability and we know that it's not going to stick. There's, there's oodles of research. Linda Darling Hammond has new research, joyce and showers has previous research. It takes up to 50 hours, or up to 20 times, to be, to be, to get initial mastery, to build the, to build mastery on a new strategy 20 times. So that's why the learning walks and the team helps to build those opportunities together, and coaches are such an important part of that. And how, how, then the team decides how we're going to use coaches, what are they going to do and what are the strategies. It's, it's just so important. 32:25 - Steven Carney (Guest) I just have to say it takes me a lot longer I've been trying to get. 32:28 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) I know, and that's for your most smart like I've been, I've been trying to get this golf stroke down for 30 years and I'm still not there. 32:35 - Steven Carney (Guest) So, uh, for some of us we're a lot slower than the 20 times, but I guess there's something to walk away with. 32:45 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Walk away with that and then be kind to people about having helped them through to and through change. Build deliberately developmental implementation, develop people, shift the culture. You know growth mindset you can have a growth mindset, but we need learning and improvement to shore up and build our skills so we can skill up to scale up. And our staff deserve those opportunities. 33:16 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Jenice. I'll just follow up on that because I think that speaks to kind of our call to action. So we're going to do kind of a lightning round and the last few questions here. But I love to invite people to share just kind of one thing. If someone's listening to this episode on the drive to work, for example, and they're like, okay, I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna like do my day, what can I do today? I'm ordering the book, I'm going to get all of the tools and I'll put those in action, you know, this year. 33:41 - Steven Carney (Guest) However, in this moment today, what's one thing that I might do to start the momentum? I would choose one initiative your school is working on and ask are we? 33:58 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) treating this implementation as carefully as we chose this initiative? 34:00 - Steven Carney (Guest) And if the answer is no, take a step back and invest time in building the implementation plan. Think about the peoples, the behaviors and the systems that we need to be put in place to make it really successful. So implementation isn't glamorous work whatsoever. It's detailed, it's deliberate and often behind the scenes, but if you do it right, the impact lasts beyond the initial rollout. So choose one initiative. 34:27 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) And I'm going to say get a mirror. And what I mean by that is if you're implementation, if something's failing in your school, we need to look at the system, because teachers come, show up each and every day to do the very best. We may not have provided them with the resources. We may have provided opportunities to build the capacity to build their knowledge, skills and attitudes. They might not have the appropriate time. And so the other piece is if you see in that mirror that it's not working, don't fret. You can build an implementation team and start to use the tools to plan. It's never too late, even if you're like here. We started with somebody who's already 10 years into PLCs. Now they're up to you know 80% of people use it. It doesn't. So don't, don't. Don't be shy and you can come in and re. You can reshape something. But look in a mirror to see is your system serving your staff? 35:22 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) That's so good. It makes me think of like kind of the um doing root cause analysis. I'm always like look for the gut punch, like you'll know when you get to the root. When you're like, ooh, that hurts me, to like face that hard reality about myself and my beliefs, like Hmm, that's like something that resonates. I know you are both working on your golf swings and so you could use golf as the answer to the next question, but I'm always curious what guests are learning about lately, and this could be related to your work, but it also could be totally different. 35:48 - Steven Carney (Guest) So what do? 35:49 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) you think I am hooked on Adam Grant who, if you don't know Adam Grant, look him up. He is a social psychologist. He has two books. One called Think Again was my first dive into Adam Grant. I went to Little Dents and then Hidden Potential. I've got so many notes in that and he's about the hidden potential of teams and hidden potential in ourselves. And I am all about Adam Grant now and he has a podcast. So some of my learning is trying to infuse more Adam Grant-esque things into my life and work more Adam Grant-esque things into my life and work. 36:31 - Steven Carney (Guest) Gosh, you know I wish I would read things that are more like fun and not related to like my life, work and kids and what have you. But I'm currently in the process of reading the Anxious Generation, which I'll butcher his name Jonathan Hatt, or H-A-I-D-T. How do you pronounce that last name? Anyway, wow, really, if you want to understand why our kids are really struggling right now with so much anxiety and and, uh, mental health and what have you, uh, he, he makes this distinction between what we used to have, um, uh, basically, when we grew up, uh, that we had, uh, you know, lives where we played versus, you know, right now, their, their lives were consumed by cell phones and they could start scrolling when they're three. But tons of research that's in this book, so it's not just an opinion piece Really good. So it marks the case for some changes that we need to make in society to kind of help our kids with their, to address the level of anxiousness that they have. 37:40 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) I just requested that from the library this week, so I'm very excited. Thank you for previewing that for me, and then the final question I have for both of you, and we'll link to all this stuff too in the blog post for the episode. But where can listeners learn more about you, connect with you? We'll link to the book and the free resources in the book. So thank you for providing those, but what's the best place to get in touch with each of you? 38:01 - Steven Carney (Guest) Go ahead, Jenice, you got yours, I got mine. 38:04 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Hey, great, I am available at Impact Lead Succeed, which, if you just Google that impactleadsucceedcom and Jenice at impactleadsucceedcom by email and I'm on Instagram with Impact Lead Succeed. But just email me if you want to get together, if you want to just talk about learning and improvement. I love to geek out with other people who are learning and if you want some support, then we can also help you there. 38:37 - Steven Carney (Guest) And don't get confused by this, but we have very similar names. But it's impactlearnandleadcom and it's Stevencarneyatlearningandleadcom and it's Steven Carney at learning leadcom. 38:48 - Lindsay Lyons (Host) Amazing. Denise and Steven, thank you so, so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. 38:52 - Jenice Pizzuto (Guest) Lindsay, it's a pleasure. |
Time for Teachership is now a proud member of the...
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
November 2025
Categories
All
|
RSS Feed