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In this episode, we speak with Biz Thompson to apply a step-by-step unit planning protocol to dream up a new book-based unit that will cultivate deep thinking.
Biz currently works as a middle school librarian in Framingham, Massachusetts. Previously a high school English teacher for eight years, Biz brings a teacher-oriented approach to her work and curriculum development. Unit Planning Step 1: Context/Spark In Biz’s experience, book-based curriculum design is best when it’s centered around identity. Both middle schoolers and high schoolers are finding out who they are and identity is where we inevitably end up, no matter what types of texts are chosen. So, selecting books that resonate with students’ identities and backgrounds is an important starting point. Unit Planning Step 2: Pursuits (from Dr. Muhammad’s HILL Model) Identity: The goal is to help students explore and understand their own identities and those of others. Middle and high school students are in a stage of discovering who they are, which makes it crucial to select texts that reflect diverse experiences and perspectives. For example, there are many students from South America where Biz works in Framingham. Though challenging, it’s important to find books that represent their experience but don’t pigeon-hole students or rely on harmful stereotypes. Criticality: Engaging students in discussions about power, equity, and the disruption of oppression involves choosing texts that challenge and expand their understanding of these concepts. Students can also give input on what texts are studied and how they should be studied. For example, Biz recounts a conversation in the classroom over the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. While there are some problematic themes of white saviorism and harmful language, students still wanted to study the book—just using a critical lens to analyze it and draw important insights. Joy: Biz reflects on how it can be difficult to find joyful texts that are seen as carrying literary weight, as many are full of serious and heavy topics. Still, it’s important to integrate joyful elements into the curriculum by balancing identity and critical themes while also providing moments of joy or hope. Unit Planning Step 3: Project Question A central question for framing units is, "How can students' personal identities and background knowledge be integrated into their understanding of complex themes like justice and systemic issues?" Another framing question can be how can we as a school community and class heal together? The goal is not to sit in the oppression, but move through it and repair it with the students’ voices and perspectives leading the way. Unit Planning Step 4: Summative Project (Publishing Opportunity and Possible Formats) Book-based units are most effective when students are empowered and equipped as leaders, participating actively in their communities. Culminating projects and activities can be designed with this in mind, offering opportunities for civic action and community involvement. Biz reflects on the eighth grade curriculum that requires a civics project in Social Studies, so ELA (English Language Arts) teachers can collaborate to align the curricula. Their civics projects can apply what they are learning to a real-life context and integrate literary studies with practical civic action. Unit Planning Step 5: Unit Arc While studying challenging topics such as the Holocaust or the justice system, educators need to be aware of how these difficult themes and ideas impact the students in their class. Before diving into them directly, there needs to be a sense of safety and community to learn, grow, and dive into challenging discussions together. Take time at the start of the unit to do this! Thinking of a unit arc that centers the question of “how do we heal together?” means providing various entry points for students coming from different backgrounds. Language differences, expression, linguistic ability, and personal experiences means students come to the unit from all different ways of approaching a text. So, educators can offer multiple access points to understand and learn what the book is talking about, such as sharing by writing, verbally, or doing a gallery walk. Another perspective in considering your unit arc is to consider how to bring the text to life. One option is to integrate literature with community-based projects, such as inviting guest speakers or organizing discussions with local officials, which really enhances students' engagement and understanding of the text they’re engaging with. Stay Connected You can connect with Biz on the Cameron Library page of the Framingham website. To help you implement today’s takeaways, Biz is sharing the link to Facing History & Ourselves which uses lessons of history to challenge teachers and their students to stand up to bigotry and hate. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 186 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT 0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons biz. Welcome to the time for teachership podcast. Thank you, I am so excited to have you here. I am curious to know if there is um anything like right when we're jumping into the conversation, that you want to share with folks who might be listening or reading the blog post version of this conversation. That's like maybe the either impetus for our conversation or context for maybe some of the ideas you'll share books you'll share about today. Sure. 0:00:32 - Biz Thomspon So I'm a school librarian in Framingham, massachusetts. I was a high school English teacher for eight years before I transitioned into my role as a middle school librarian transitioned into my role as a middle school librarian. So I come from like maybe more of the teacher lens than other librarians do and I learned about you from our fabulous Framingham team librarian, john Garrigan Amazing. 0:00:58 - Lindsay Lyons I'm so excited as a fellow like high school literacy and social studies teacher, I'm very excited. 0:01:02 - Biz Thomspon Yes. 0:01:05 - Lindsay Lyons Oh, so cool. Okay, so if we are going to take the approach of kind of brainstorming a unit or like something that maybe a high school or middle school or whoever ELA teacher might be able to actually do in their class, I would love to start with, maybe, what you would like in this, what you envision students to be like learning or pursuing through reading, through texts, through books and I often ground us in things like the three parts of Goldie Muhammad's framework. So she talks about, like identity how will my instruction help students learn something about themselves or others? She talks about criticality, so disrupting power and oppression, and like kind of navigating conversations with that. And or joy, just like how do we find joy in right? Like those are three very different things, so we can focus on anywhere. 0:01:56 - Biz Thomspon your brain takes you Sure yeah, I feel like it's really hard to find joy in the texts that we choose for middle schoolers and high schoolers. There's not a lot of joy out there. Is there In things that are considered to have literary merit. There isn't. It's usually dark themes. It's actually kind of hard to find texts that are truly joyful. Kind of hard to find texts that are truly joyful. What's been interesting in my time in Framingham is so I was working at the high school it was basically like we had a book room and there were books and then you would build the unit around the book, and so much of that is shifting and in the last curriculum redesign we did, our focus was on building background knowledge and not necessarily in the literacy or in the you know all those things that you just mentioned. But I find that I look to identity a lot when I'm thinking about books, because for middle schoolers and high schoolers they're finding out who they are and that's where we always inevitably end up, no matter what types of texts we're choosing, and so that kind of becomes hard in a place like Framingham where a lot of the students at my school not necessarily in every school are from South America. They're from Brazil and there really aren't a lot of texts that center around even South American children, families, so it's really hard to match identity perfectly with that. And I think we've also talked a lot about in our learning spaces that some of the even if we're looking at them like a Latin American text, if we can't get to South America that we're looking for texts that don't pigeonhole or focus on harmful stereotypes, which can be difficult to do. So there are some instructors who will look at a book about, you know, students crossing the border and say this is relevant and it is. But we're at a point where we also have students who just like go to school and have families and do the regular things that teenagers do without all of that too, and there's not as much representation in that space. I think. Um, I've also worked sometimes with my avid 10 year old who's in fifth grade and she goes to a Montessori school, and we'll run ideas back and forth too, so like they've been working on topics of like, inclusion and thinking about cognitive differences, physical differences and how to learn and create empathy there, and so we'll bounce titles back, which is kind of fun, but then it's always like the teachers in our area are like reading all the books and I think there also has to be good writing right. We can have joyful books, we can have, you know, we can have books that sort of capture identity, but if they're not well-written they're not coming from a soulful place. The kids know that and they don't. They don't care for it very much. 0:05:13 - Lindsay Lyons I love that idea of becoming from a soulful place, being like the thing that's yeah accurate, like yes, amazing yes, we learned about holding Caulfields. 0:05:21 - Biz Thomspon We know who the ponies are, so that's so good, oh my gosh. 0:05:27 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah, and I also just love who. So I also live in Framingham and just like the very like high Brazilian population, like wanting to name, but like you want to be able to like see yourself where and put yourself in that position of like I can identify with those main characters. And then, if you don't have texts that are translated to English, that are either written by Brazilian authors or, you know, centered in Brazil, or like having a Brazilian American identity, like it's like okay, right, how do we find something that's general, not oppressive and so connected, right? 0:06:01 - Biz Thomspon This is like such a multifaceted kind of thinking about identity that's so important, so I just appreciate you naming it, yeah, yeah and it's, and I think like, um, in some ways, publishing is so far ahead of where it was when I was a student, when so many of my colleagues were students, but sometimes, um, like educators will presume that there's something there that isn't there yet, right, even in non-fiction, like we need non-fiction books that don't have a lexile of, like high school for middle schoolers. Um, we need to look beyond. Well, I love, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there are other people that they're important, um to us, right, uh, that we need to be writing about, and I feel like publishers look to the same people and they just publish like book after book about those people or those experiences, and we're not like branching out so much. 0:07:00 - Lindsay Lyons So true, so true. I'm curious to know is there a particular like question that you find interesting for students to grapple with around either identity or just like reading books in general, or like to your point about building background knowledge? Is there kind of a framing question that comes to mind? If we were to like brainstorm this out, yeah, I think like oh, there's a student. 0:07:25 - Biz Thomspon I think usually when we're designing units in particular, we do have sort of a central question. So I keep thinking of when we were redesigning the eighth grade curriculum so our eighth graders read the Memoir Night by. Elie Wiesel and they had also traditionally read To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and we revisit To Kill a Mockingbird frequently because it's, you know, we have the white savior story there and there's some, you know, harmful language that sometimes students of color have not been so comfortable with and I think our teachers do a great job of acknowledging that and sort of working through it and talking about that. And it was interesting. We were thinking of pulling it one year and I teach like a flexible class and the students in there. I asked them like should we keep this book? Should we not? Like this is what the conversations are and most of them actually said it's great, we should read adults um version, uh, to sort of tell lots of sides of that story of like justice, right, um, and all of that's very heavy and um. So we were looking for a book to start the year that um captured identity and we landed on Don't Ask Me when I'm From by Jen DeLeon and she's from Framingham and when I read her book it really resonated as like honest to me, right, this was an amalgamation of her experiences as a Guatemalan American growing up in Framingham, of her experiences teaching students in Boston, and the book deals with, you know, metco and what that looks like and microaggressions and things like that, and so I think when the teachers are working through that unit they're looking for students to make those personal connections and build their background knowledge and learn a little bit about Netco. You know they talk about sort of like microaggression, about code switching, things like that, and it also, I think, maybe gives vocabulary that they might not have for those experiences that they're probably having all the time in the world and I think it's a way for the kids to get to know each other and to understand what their spaces are. And there are some activities that students do. So in the book, the characters there's sort of like a mean girls moment where they have this like full school like assembly to deal with some of the racial incidents that have been happening. And there's been all this documentation about, like, building the wall on the border right, so the students decide to subvert it by creating a wall, but then everyone puts sort of like their own kind of experience in school what they want people to know. And some of our teachers have started doing that sometimes when they read the book and it's really eyeopening to see that, like it tends to be the moment when students say the quiet part out loud, they share the thing that like people might presume about them but isn't true. It's a sort of defy those stereotypes and I think there's a lot of power in that. And then, and when we first decided, kids were like oh, this is great. And now, because it's in school, they're kind of like oh, this is like, just okay, I'm like it's not, like I don't know. This is as close to you as we're getting. I forget what your original question was, but but that's sort of mind when we're thinking about how do we frame units and how do we add, weave identity, and then all that good stuff. 0:11:31 - Lindsay Lyons Oh my gosh, I love all of the pieces of that, all of the books that cover different aspects of identity and like to embed that kind of like disruption and building the background knowledge, like you're kind of like taking us through all the nuances of all the pieces which I love, yeah, the initial question was just kind of like is there a question that frames all of it like an essential question? 0:11:48 - Biz Thomspon yeah, I think from the educator standpoint, not necessarily from the student standpoint. The question we were asking ourselves is we are, when we are going into material like the holocaust, like the justice system, and students are also learning civics now at the same time so they're learning about the legal system, about how our government works how can we get them there from a place that is closer to where they are right? Because I think teachers were finding that when they just had to jump into the holoca, reading like Telltale Heart or whatever there wasn still feel very strongly about the content of the book and it's awful Like it's really hard to read and you need to have a community in place and you need to have some safety with each other in order to do that. In order to do that, and so I think we were trying to center it in their own identity and, kind of like, build towards. Okay, then we're going to move on to these really tough, hard topics together. 0:13:06 - Lindsay Lyons Two things I want to lift up from that. One is kind of right, there's kind of this base building of the foundational trust and community that has to happen as part of the unit or prior to the unit, because otherwise you're not going to get what you need out of it, right, students will have a harmful experience or something right. And then the other one I'm thinking I know you shared the teacher lens, right as like get them together as close as they are as possible. I was thinking the student lens of that or like the essential question of that that student facing might be. Like how do we like heal together? Because, oh yeah, right, it's almost like you're showing, I'm just thinking like right, like with the Holocaust, with like there's harm in there, just mercy, it's all about like the harm of the structures and the systems, the school assembly, or like the wall piece that you were saying from don't ask me where I'm from Like there's, there's all these confrontations of harm. And then it's like, how do these communities we're learning about? But also, how do we as a school community, as a class, like heal together? Because ultimately we don't want to sit in the oppression, we want to like move through it and repair, yeah, with our voice, with our own voices, not somebody else's. 0:14:09 - Biz Thomspon Yeah, yes. 0:14:10 - Lindsay Lyons I love the element of student leadership and youth leadership in that, so I love that. I'm almost wondering is there something that either you did when you did the curriculum revamp or that you're thinking now as we're talking through? That would be like a kind of culminating project or activity, that students are kind of putting all these pieces together into some sort of like civic action or like community piece. 0:14:34 - Biz Thomspon Yeah, well there is something kind of naturally embedded, not in their English language arts class but in their social studies class. So every eighth grader is tasked with completing a civics project. I think what would be great actually was if there was space for the ELA teachers and the social studies teachers to align and kind of look at what they've studied so far in ELA to try and focus there. And I think the civics project was rolled out in the 2020 school year, so they're still figuring out how to do it. So I don't want to fall. I had to teach civics then too, so I get it. But I think if, like down the the road, if there were collaboration time, that would be a great way to um, put those two things together. There have been been in what I've taught in eighth grade enrichment class, so students who are sort of like above grade level, where we've worked on some community advocacy, like I've asked them, like, when you look around, what do you think needs to be better? And then we try to find the points of contact or find and students have had like meetings with the superintendent and things like that, and it's not always related to like exactly what they're reading, but it is related to building that voice and, and it's funny like, sometimes they'll be like well, we need to change the time of school and then we'll go down and they're like, actually that's kind of impossible, but that's learning Right, you know, like, and it's in their hands. It's probably hard for me, but sometimes I try to take a step back. It's very hard for me to. Sometimes I try to take a step back and I haven't had a chance to do that in a while, but I look forward to doing it again. 0:16:19 - Lindsay Lyons I love all the whole process of that right Like so to be able to identify the issues and draw those parallels to what they might be reading. I love the interdisciplinary nature of social studies. The piece being like that project is such a nice organic way of like you're already doing this. What can you learn from? Or, yeah, um, the texts. And then, yeah, I, I love the goal of building voice that you named, and also just that that it is hard, that it's not easy, and that to really develop youth leadership, we have to just confront those challenges and and get familiar with them, and we also have to have it sounds like you do at Framingham have the audience that's authentic from the adult perspective, like we're willing to meet with you. Share the restrictions, talk through and kind of problem solve together. So I do think that's like I'm just thinking of foundational. If you're teaching something like this, right, these are that kind of foundational community wide things to just make sure, because you don't want the students to go into the superintendent and the superintendent's like I don't have time for this or anything yeah, and I think too. 0:17:16 - Biz Thomspon I think, as you know, when I have the occasion to sit in with teachers and they're developing assessments and things, I tried to and as a high school teacher I wasn't very good at doing this but just I find when students are each other's audiences, the quality of the work is better than when they think they're just submitting something to a teacher. If it's public, if it's an audience of your peers, I think that automatically sort of brings a level of persistence that might not be there. If you're like, oh, the same adult is going to read this again and I'll just admit it and they'll tell me how I did, and that's the end yeah, the authentic audience and project so incredible. 0:18:03 - Lindsay Lyons Yes, like to have um an assignment, feel like there's some real weight behind it and, yeah, yeah, change can happen. 0:18:11 - Biz Thomspon Yeah, that's really good so you remember to like put a period at the end of your sentence or whatever. 0:18:16 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah, yes, oh my gosh, I, I like, I'm loving all of these pieces. I'm curious to know if there's any like ELA teacher activities that you particularly enjoy to have students almost like on a smaller level, like when engaging with text, be each other's audience or be each other's like partners, and like I don't know if it was like literature circles or Socratic seminars. I'm trying to think of some of the protocols of like. How do we get students to engage and kind of learn from each other versus like the teacher directed? Yeah, that. 0:18:45 - Biz Thomspon I I used to more often sometimes when classes, so the seventh graders used to do like dystopian literature circles and I would get to facilitate some of them. And some teachers have like amazing, and they do it at my daughter's school to, where you know role assignments, you know, so someone's the historian and you know, and it's so great when you have kids who are really like well prepared to sit back and just watch them. There we had he's not here anymore, but we had a great teacher, andrew ahern, who his lit circles were something to behold, like sometimes I'd just be sitting there and like be like these kids are they really? They just got that on their own like this is amazing. They were reading ghost by jason reynolds, which I love, and I was like well, I actually never thought about that, you know like 11 year old, um, but I think there's for our students, there's a lot of skill that is required to get to that place and I think, um, just situations and framing have have made it so that we're really focusing on building those skills back. So I think we've sort of like we did these things and now we kind of have to build those skills back, whether it's language skills or self-monitoring or whatever. Um, some kids are ready for that and others need some more help, um, but when they get there it's like so amazing to watch. And, um, my daughter's school does a lit circle at the end of the year where they invite parents in to participate with them and again, it's so great because, like, the kids are smarter than us for sure, you know. And it's interesting, like at my daughter's school, what was the book we read? Interesting, like, uh, at my daughter's school, oh, what was the book we read? Um, we read a book I can't think of the name but I'll email you but about a student who was sort of non-verbal but very, very white and, um, she struggles to sort of get what she needs in school. And my husband and I were explaining that when we were in school we never would have seen a student like that. They would have been like closed off in a separate part of the school and the younger kids were like, well, why didn't you make friends? We were like that's a great, we should have, but there wasn't any infrastructure where we would cross paths. And isn't it great that now you understand that that's the right thing to do, right, and it's so hard to get. Like you know, as kids get older it's harder to get parents to come in. But I would love to do that and in fact I'm going to start back up again, after the pandemic, our staff book club. So sometimes we read YA. I have to send out a Google form to get it sent out. But sometimes we historically read middle grade and YA and then my integrate adult books, because then they get you know, we, we have those conversations with each other and then can extend them to the kids if they see the book on our desk or whatever. I went in a lot of directions. 0:21:44 - Lindsay Lyons Oh my God, no, not like. Let's talk about the staff book. There goes, oh yeah, like, so many, so many cool things about this. I just love the idea of like. I mean I'm just thinking of like a unit arc, that right where we're talking about like, how do we, if we're guided by the question of like, how do we heal together? Right, I'm sure there are so many entry points for students to your point of like people are coming in in different ways and I'm sure they're linguistically, there's like different, like streets of expression and in terms of English and like. I just think there's so many opportunities to either, you know, verbalize and translate, because there are other peers that maybe have the Portuguese background and like a higher English proficiency. At the time I taught in a high school with students with like 30 different languages and they were all using English. So it's like having the having people who are in the same class, who speak the same home language as you or first language, is really helpful and so you know, I'm thinking being able to access that or like, if you're written or verbal, literacy is like one of those is higher. Just giving multiple access points for whether you're sharing verbally or in writing, like a gallery walk or something. I think there's probably so much opportunity for people to grapple with that question even before getting to the text. Oh yeah, and then being able to see like how do the people, how do the characters, how do the people in the, the stories, novels and the non-fiction like, how are they grappling with this question, be such a nice like motivating launching point, as like a hook right, and then having maybe the, the base be some sort of central text about like I don't know, I'm envisioning like UN declaration of rights or like something right, that's like central to justice yeah, um, one of the eighth grade ELA teachers looks at that with her students when they're reading um, to kill a mockingbird yeah for sure that's beautiful. 0:23:29 - Biz Thomspon I actually know with For sure, actually, no, with night, I think they look at that. I mean, we've done, we've really tried, especially, I think, because I helped with the curriculum planning for that group and the teachers have stayed the same. We've been able to do some some pretty neat things with trying to bring that text to life, text to life. So, um, one of our eighth grade teachers, miss latine, has a, a relative who works for um, it was like a the aclu or something, and she had him come and talk to the class. Um, after uh, this was a few years or maybe two years ago um, after the students read To Kill a Mockingbird and Just Mercy, we invited the Framingham police to come in and do round circle discussions with the students, which was actually like wonderful, we were very scared about how that was going to go and students asked really pointed questions. Like one student came in and the chief of police is wonderful, he's really the best and he said you know, like, where do you stand on Black Lives Matter? Like first question, right off the bat and the chief was like I am in absolute solidarity. I almost quit my job after I saw the George Floyd which, and hearing that from the students, was just like so eye opening, I think, because you know, especially in the public, like you know, kids have these and it's fair. They have these perceptions of the police and just mercy, you know, paints a lot of injustice in the justice system. Mercy, you know, paints a lot of injustice in the justice system and some of the teachers were like well, this is one you know, like we have to, we have to round out the discussion. And so we just had these classroom based discussions and the kids would ask, you know, even just like questions like how fun is it to ride in a patrol car? But it was good, like relationship building and community building, like relationship building and community building. And fortunately the Framingham PD, especially the people at the top who come here, have like one, the Lieutenant, I think, is like a trained social worker, and there are a bunch of people who like went through Framingham public school to like, no, all our staff when they come in, who it's sort of like you're looking at yourself Like I was this kid too. We've had. We have a Holocaust survivor come and speak to the students after their reading night. So you know, we we've really been trying to do these things and of course, that's not always so student centered Right, but trying to round out the experience. But I I think that's what we need to get back to more often is like more deep thinking, more critical thinking, more connection building between disciplines and ideas and within, like the arc of your ELA year. Um, because I think sometimes we get lost in the like multiple choice questions and it's always more engaging if you're using your brain with other students, with the outside world, and making those connections oh my gosh, yeah, and I I'm hearing so much community building and like community tapping into community expertise and like the guest speakers and things. 0:26:43 - Lindsay Lyons That is so cool. I'm I'm kind of wondering one of the things that I usually ask at the end of these like kind of wondering. One of the things that I usually ask at the end of these like kind of like you didn't dreaming episodes is like what is, what is the thing that you think will help? Like a teacher who went and like teaches this right, this unit, like this, like how did, how do you see that being, or how was it for you being? You know the, the best kind of teacher version of yourself in that moment, right, like, or like thinking about the kind of fulfillment it brings you to be able to kind of facilitate those connections. And I'm just thinking of that kind of. I guess the question is maybe about the value of this, not to just students but to educators as well who are engaging in this work. 0:27:24 - Biz Thomspon Yeah, so our two eighth grade ELA teachers are just like really exemplars. So one of them works for Facing History. He's been on the board and he just does such a brilliant job of like scaffolding and building and pulling out like pieces of nonfiction and you know, and really walking along with students as they're sort of learning about the Holocaust, building background knowledge. My roommate here, and with like a very like sensitive lens, if that makes sense, he's really an expert in that regard and um, we also collaborate. All three of us collaborate very well together and, um, his counterpart, emily latine, is like she could rip up the greatest lesson in like 15 minutes. It would be greater than anything I had ever taught. Like she gets the, gets the, all the accommodations, all the, you know adjustments for language capacity, visuals, like the most beautiful slides, like perfectly organized and sensical like worksheets to accompany you know'll do um like round tables where students are walking around and looking at images and right, you know silent conversations just between the two of them. They are able to capture like all the humanity that's necessary, all the background knowledge building and the sort of like making everything as accessible as possible, and I think they're really the magic. Then they come to me and I just step in and say like, well, we could add this. You know, I'm like the car salesman. They really do the groundwork and like a super beautiful way, and they will also be the first to acknowledge when something is isn't working and see how, what they can do to make it work better. And I think that's always the key. I mean, this is nothing nobody knows, but there's nothing wrong with saying like this isn't working anymore. We need to take a new approach, or I found this thing that now is better than what we did before, and I think openness to that is also super important. 0:29:44 - Lindsay Lyons I love that. I love that you get to collaborate with awesome colleagues, and I also. The PSA embedded in that message is like talk to your librarian for those ideas of like right, where do we go with this? This text is getting old. 0:29:56 - Biz Thomspon Give me some ideas, yeah yeah, yeah, and that's the thing is that you know everyone's so busy. I understand that as a classroom teacher, but I often advertise them. Like I didn't have time to read books when I was an ELA teacher I didn't. I could read like a few. I was grading papers, I was doing all this crazy stuff like I didn't have time to read. And so I look at school library journals. So even if I haven't read it, like I know what's out there. I know what's good and not good for our students too. Right, like, because sometimes what critics think is good is like not at all what the kids here care about. Right. So I often advertise like you need nonfiction to support that lesson? I'll let me do it. You don't have to spend your time doing it. You need someone in the community to come. I'll do that. I'll definitely. If you have a good library, use them because I love it. Like I'm such a nerd. People are like I don't want to bother you. I'm like, no, this is my favorite thing to do. 0:30:59 - Lindsay Lyons You're not bothering me at all. I love this. I so love it and actually, yeah, if people want to like get in touch with you, connect with you if they don't have relationships with their library librarian if they ask you. 0:31:10 - Biz Thomspon I don't want to. 0:31:10 - Lindsay Lyons I don't want to be the job if people are curious to know, like some of, uh, the things you're working on. Is there a place that they could reach out to you or just see the work that the middle school is doing? 0:31:19 - Biz Thomspon so what's hard is that the school district decided to change our whole, the whole district's web presence this weekend, so but we can link later to the yeah so um, there is a link to my library page but it's sort of like the corporate school district stuff, but my email is there. Um, and you know also, I think, other credit too. To go back to John, john Garrigan and I started at the same time and a lot of people, like my roommate there, was just saying like, how does how does he? Because he comes in to our schools like once a month or whatever, and sets up a table and the kids know him. And she was like how does he get that to happen? But it's so natural, like it's just so we work together so nicely that even he I'll go to him and be like, okay, what's like? What manga do I need? What do you think about this? So you know also, your public librarians can be very, very helpful. If you don't have school librarians in your school, you know, get to know your public librarians, because they can be super helpful too, and especially as a community resource, because they also know everybody. 0:32:27 - Lindsay Lyons I love that because I actually didn't even know until I was on the Framingham library page. I was like a patron of Framingham yeah. 0:32:33 - Biz Thomspon I did not know that there was a teen, like person, like a specialist who specializes in teen and there's a children's specialist right so the children's specialist will go to the elementary schools and help them, like with summer reading, or they'll do activities or like they're really wonderful yeah. 0:32:52 - Lindsay Lyons That is so cool. You are a wealth of information and knowledge. Thank you so much for talking with us today, and I'm so excited for listeners to learn all of this from you when the episode airs. So, thank you, I'm just, I'm trying. 0:33:09 - Biz Thomspon I'm by no means a model. I'm just showing up. Transcribed by https://podium.page
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In this episode, we speak with Laura Brenner, Chief Program Officer at Discovering Justice, a non profit in Boston, MA. She discusses her journey from an elementary school educator to a civic education leader, elaborating on the "Children Discovering Justice" curriculum, a collaborative initiative aimed at fostering classroom democracy and empowering young minds to actively engage in their communities.
Even before taking on her role with Discovering Justice, Laura has extensive experience in this space. She has spent the last 15 years working towards equity through public education—teaching students, coaching teachers, and developing curriculum. Laura began her career teaching elementary school in Boston, and has gone on to pursue both a Masters in Teaching and Masters in School Leadership as she pursues work outside the classroom. The Big Dream Laura’s big dream for education is to see all schools as places that equip students with the knowledge and skills to be engaged in their communities. She envisions a world where students, through inquiry and engaging practices, feel connected to their classroom community, school, and broader society. Laura believes this is possible by empowering young people to dismantle systems of oppression, embrace classroom democracy, and foster a joy of learning. Mindset Shifts Required A significant mindset shift that Laura highlights is recognizing that all educators are civics educators. She emphasizes that civics is not confined to a single subject but is embedded in everyday teaching practices. Whether it's teaching graphing using voting data or resolving playground disagreements, these activities all contribute to civic education. We need to start thinking of ourselves as civics teachers, especially early elementary educators, so it becomes something we all have a stake in. Action Steps To teach civics in our day-to-day classroom activities and begin a discussion around justice with students, educators must take brave actions. Here are three steps to put it into practice: Step 1: Prioritize time for civics education. It’s important that administrators and educators intentionally include instructional minutes for civics and social studies, the most marginalized subject. Studies have shown a correlation between social studies learning with student engagement, social-emotional learning, and literacy achievement! Step 2: Integrate civic skills throughout the day. In addition to intentional curriculum and teaching time, educators can also use daily practices to instill civic skills and language throughout the day. For example, you can create a classroom culture where you talk about taking different perspectives or practicing empathy. Step 3: Start a civics-based curriculum in your classroom. Educators can begin with Module Zero of the "Children Discovering Justice" curriculum, which focuses on foundational skills like identity, community, perspective-taking, and respectful listening. Challenges? One challenge Laura addresses is the misconception that discussing politics or civics in the classroom is inappropriate. There’s a fear from many educators and administrators around the topics, but avoiding them can only increase that fear. Instead, it’s important to foster inquiry-based learning, teaching students how to think critically and form their own ideas and opinions. Another challenge is the overloaded plates of educators. Laura asserts that civics education is not an additional burden but rather the foundation of all teaching, crucial for preparing students to be engaged community members. One Step to Get Started One practical step for educators to take is to equip themselves with tools and resources to incorporate civics language, concepts, and vocabulary into their classroom. Educators can start with incorporating just one lesson from Module Zero of the "Children Discovering Justice.” This initial step can help educators see the value and practicality of integrating civics education into their classrooms, setting the stage for a more comprehensive implementation. Instead of adding more to their plate, this is their “plate”—the foundation of everything we do as educators. Stay Connected You can connect with Laura by email, and learn more about her work with Discovering Justice by following them on Linkedin, Instagram, or their website. To help you implement today’s takeaways, Laura is sharing the Children Discovering Justice K-3 civics curriculum with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 185 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT Okay, laura Brenner, welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 0:00:07 - Laura Brenner Thank you, thanks for having me. 0:00:09 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah, I am really excited about our conversation because your job and what you do is like just makes my heart sing. So I'm really really excited to get into it and I think one of the big initial questions that I asked just kind of off the bat is a nice framing question. We will have folks who have just heard kind of your bio at the front end of the episode and so just wondering now, like is there anything else that's important for listeners to know about you, your work, anything you want them to keep in mind as we jump into our conversation? 0:00:40 - Laura Brenner Yeah, I think you know I have a really exciting job now being able to be at the intersection of civic education and nonprofits and schools and districts, and so you know the role I have now is chief program officer at Discovering Justice. But certainly at my core I'm an elementary educator and I think my lens for the work has just shifted a bit once I left the classroom. So now I get to work with educators and instructional leaders in schools and districts all across Massachusetts and it's allowed for our curriculum that we've developed to be what it is because it has so many different perspectives integrated into it, making sure we can meet the needs of students and teachers across the state. And I would just add that, like I'll be talking about this curriculum today called Children Discovering Justice, and I have the privilege of being able to talk about it a lot at professional development and, you know, at different meetings. But the collaboration that has gone into this curriculum, I think, is just a. It's a huge testament to the expertise and the passion of educators and administrators who've had a hand in it. So there's so, so many people from our staff at Discovering Justice. We have a curriculum developer, victoria Suri, who's really taken this curriculum to the next level, to consultants. We've worked with One in California, katie Henry's Meisners. These are all educators and district leaders who've really helped to conceptualize the units, teachers who've helped to give feedback. So it's such a collaborative joint effort and I think that's helpful to just consider as we start the conversation. 0:02:23 - Lindsay Lyons That is a beautiful framing. Thank you for that, and I and I think you spoke a little bit to this the idea of with all of that collaboration comes the ability to then make sure that all of students' needs and interests and passions and identities are all kind of reflected and appreciated. And so I'm I'm wondering this may or may not connect with what you had been thinking you were speaking to for the freedom dreaming question, but I love asking this question of right, like Dr Bettina Love talking about freedom dreaming as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, and certainly that's so critical to what you do. So wondering if you can share what is that big dream that you hold for education with that in mind, yeah, I mean absolutely. 0:03:03 - Laura Brenner I love that idea as well and often try to put that to teachers and some of the PLCs that I run is getting them to think about. What does a classroom look like, feel like, sound like, when students are empowered to do all of those things to speak freely, to be leaders, to analyze oppression, dismantle systems of oppression? I think for me it looks like kind of on a simpler, broader level, all schools being places that equip all students with the knowledge, skills and dispositions to be engaged in their communities, and I think that speaks to what you mentioned in terms be engaged in their communities. And I think that speaks to what you mentioned in terms of bringing in their identities and making sure that they are reflected in the units that they're seeing and the conversations that they're having, that it connects to their lives and interests. And then I think you know on a deeper level that every day in schools, students are, through inquiry, through engaging practices, through culturally responsive pedagogy, through the joy of learning, are just feeling connected, feeling connected to each other in that classroom community, or a classroom democracy, as I often call it, to their school, broader school community and democracy, and that they're taking those feelings and skills and enthusiasm and joy beyond the walls of the classroom and school as well, and applying that to you know, help heal some of our communities and leaders of generations who didn't have access to that type of learning and be able to bring that to their lives and ultimately affect a more just democracy at large. 0:05:03 - Lindsay Lyons Wow, there is so much that I love in the response. I mean from just the phrase classroom democracy, which I've never heard I love that To just that idea of helping heal communities right, that actually young people can and do often, you know, go out into the world and go into their communities, like today, and heal and heal things that are have not been healed, and I just think that's a huge framing around. I mean, one of the next questions they usually ask is around mindset shifts, and I think for me that has been a huge one in the last few years is thinking about do we, how do we both kind of study oppression and injustice and disrupt it and heal it and and not just kind of linger in the oppression but to enable students to be healers and kind of co-create that healing in spaces and community? And so I think for me that's been a mindset shift, certainly with this work, and I'm wondering if there are any that you've either noticed or coached folks on when doing kind of this curricular work and building those class democracies and teaching about justice. 0:06:06 - Laura Brenner If there's anything that you think listeners should know, yeah, yeah, I mean it's so interesting the idea of healing democracy and healing communities and whose responsibility is that. And I remember struggling as a new educator with this idea of it's on the youth to do do that or that. You know there's so much pressure today on students to really fix a broken world on so many levels. But you know, through my experiences working with students and in communities again through the lens of being a classroom teacher myself and then an instructional leader and a nonprofit leader and just being in classrooms every week now across the state, like I do see that it is whether we want it to be that way or not. It is where we're at. We need everyone to have a stake and everyone, to you know, be involved and have a voice. And I think that's part of the Children Discovering Justice curriculum is helping to facilitate the conversations around how can I use my voice to advocate for justice. But I think you know the other part of that is teachers' responsibility, and one of the mindset shifts that I will often highlight in my professional development to teachers and administrators is that all educators are civics educators and I know certainly when I was an elementary school teacher I didn't think of myself as a civics teacher. If people asked you know what subjects do you teach? I would definitely say math and reading. Maybe, depending on the semester, I would say science, potentially social studies, but I would never say civics teacher. But you know, thinking back now the lens that I have now, thinking back to my time in the classroom when my second graders were learning about sequential writing or details in their writing and they were showcasing that by teaching skills to their peers. So I would have a student write step-by-step instructions on how to shoot a basket or make a paper crane, like whatever skill they thought that they had to teach their classmates, that was civics. When my fourth graders were learning about graphing and math and they were graphing recent voting data in their community, that was civics. When my fifth graders were solving disagreements and coming to a compromise or hearing each other's perspectives after a blow up on the playground, that was civics. And I think as educators, we need to start thinking of ourselves as civics teachers, especially early elementary educators, because it's so much of what we do in every part of the day, no matter what subject we're in, we're teaching these skills and dispositions of civics. So I think that's a huge mindset shift for myself to just name it as that and I think, to lift up the expertise that naturally exists in elementary spaces, that elementary teachers have been doing forever but maybe haven't been calling it that. And then just that we all have a stake in this work, kind of circling back to what you know, what I originally said about, kind of our responsibility to to heal, and that in order for our democracy to be more fair, more just, for our policymakers to to be more representative of our community like we, we have to start with with civics and in and again seeing ourselves as educators of that work. 0:09:58 - Lindsay Lyons I love that idea that all teachers are civics teachers. This is so beautiful and you're right, like so much of it is just the way we do things, the way we do teaching, the way we do school, like it is built in, and just to name it is so powerful. I really, really like that, and I think so many people may be thinking you know, okay. So what does it look like to teach civics? Well, what does it look like to discuss justice with students, especially young students, right, and so I'm wondering about, like, the literal, brave actions that are required for this work, and either I don't know if you want to take this from kind of a broad lens or from like, what does the curriculum enable teachers to do with students? However you want to take it, I'd love to hear, like, what does it look like in practice? 0:10:41 - Laura Brenner Yeah. So, you know, I think the first brave action that comes to mind that has to be taken, that I see a lot more district leaders now doing, is prioritizing time. And that's a scary and sensitive and hard topic, like instructional minutes and scheduling and time, and you know it's. I think it's gotten even harder through the years. But I think that is a brave and necessary action. To make that you know dream a reality is prioritizing instructional minutes for social studies and civics. Social studies is the most marginalized subject. It's not tested until at least in Massachusetts, the eighth grade MCAS, a civics MCAS which was piloted last spring, and of course the communities that tend to focus mostly on tested subjects reading and math tend to be lower income communities that serve black and brown students and families, and those are the students that are often getting the least amount of civics and social studies. So I think prioritizing time and minutes in the schedule for it and then, you know, a brave action by educators is, even if time isn't given to you like to make the time to teach social studies and civics, knowing that not only is it important but it is so correlated to all these areas of success for our students. It's correlated, it's positively correlated to attendance, to engagement, to, you know, social emotional learning, to literacy achievement. They're the you know I always reference, especially the district leaders, the Fordham study a few years ago that shows more time, more instructional time in ELA does not enhance reading scores but social studies does enhance reading scores and that's primarily true for lower income students, multilingual learners and girls. Those are the three subgroups who it has the most dramatic effect on. So I think just prioritizing it, naming it as a priority, investing in, you know, quality curriculum, quality professional development for teachers to be able to further dig into civics as a pedagogy, and whether it's using, you know, our Children Discovering Justice curriculum or just integrating and embedding civic skills and language throughout the day. So you know naming the skills that you're practicing and deepening for students as an elementary educator, like perspective taking or empathy or debate. I think both of those things. It's the concrete you know time and minutes and it's the ongoing classroom culture and routines that you know time and minutes. And it's the ongoing classroom culture and routines that you know you're teaching and practicing and calling out to students on a day-to-day level. 0:13:43 - Lindsay Lyons I was just in a professional development workshop where a teacher named I said something about the election is a great opportunity to discuss, like what's happening in the world and current events and how do we frame that, and the response was we can't teach politics in school. And I was like, oh, we absolutely can like talk about politics and civic engagement and like there's a difference between political and partisan, and I think there's just a very big kind of narrative fear, avoidance, whatever around things now that are even more expansive than like who you're voting for right, and so I am imagining that that's a piece of a challenge. Like maybe teacher's face or admin face or communication with families comes up, whatever it is. I'm wondering, is that a challenge? How do you kind of coach folks through that? Or are there other challenges that maybe I'm not thinking of that might come to mind that we want to like prepare leaders or teachers for? 0:14:45 - Laura Brenner Yeah, I mean it's certainly a fear that I hear a lot from educators or from school administrators, from families even, and I think, like a lot of fears the more we away from you know a day post-election or pre-election, like we were. It's coming down to that idea of inquiry-based learning. We're teaching students how to think and not what to think, with the skills to be able to articulate their points with evidence, that we want them to have media literacy and to be able to critique the sources that they're getting inundated with, whether it's through social media or online or their family. We want them to be able to debate respectfully, agree to disagree, you know, hear and respect other perspectives. Like those things are the most important part of our work in the classroom and those are, I mean, we can see them lacking in our broader world. We can see them those skills lacking in adults that I'm sure we can all you know name in our lives. Where else will students learn that Like they? It has to happen in the classroom and we have to give space and time for that. Now, it doesn't happen in every grade level with a conversation about what reproductive right should look like. It might happen in our first grade lesson on voting. Students are voting for what pet they would want as a class pet or a favorite ice cream flavor, like they're just starting to understand the idea that they have choices and a voice and opinions that can be different than those in their classroom space then, can be different than those that they eat lunch with or play with at recess. That that's okay and actually valued, to have different perspectives, that we have reasons for our perspectives that can be shared with evidence that we can change our ideas. You know we'll do. You know we'll have the conversation of students might go to one side of the room or the other to vote with their bodies on something and then see if anyone can be convinced to move to another side and just again name that and lift up that skill of being able to change your mind when you learn more information. So those are the conversations and the activities that we have to have and be doing in the classroom and yeah, it just looks different in every grade level. 0:17:28 - Lindsay Lyons Do you mind speaking to us? I love all of these activities and just kind of that approach of it's going to look different at each grade level, content wise and the skills just kind of keep building. Do you mind taking us through, like what are some, either questions that kind of frame, some of these units throughout the grades or any sort of like particular lessons or activities that you personally love? That's part of the curriculum. 0:17:53 - Laura Brenner Yeah. So I would say our module zero in all the grades is probably my now favorite module and it's something that we didn't create originally. We started with module one, which was about justice justice in our lives and students thinking about what we call little J justice, so justice on the playground in their classrooms, and then eventually, through the modules, they end up in module four, which is the civic action module, where they start to explore that big J justice, so some type of systems level change. We push them to be thinking even as young as kindergarten about root cause by asking you know, why might this challenge exist, why might this problem exist? Module zero was something that we added through teacher feedback, which, again, I'll name as another kind of brave action required for this work is listening to teachers. I mean, much of my time is spent in classrooms, in PLCs, in, you know, collaborative work sessions and professional development, where teachers are sharing their feedback, whether it's on large scale or, you know, a small critique on an activity in a lesson and we're applying that the next day or week because it's a living curriculum. It's on Google Drive, you know we're constantly updating and revising. So you know, I think, just listening to teachers in that. But that's how module zero came to be, with teacher feedback on like we'd love something more foundational that we can use at the beginning of the year in September and October to just build those skills. So we have six lessons in that module on identity, community perspective taking, agreeing, disagreeing, listening and asking questions. So I think probably the perspective taking is my favorite one, just because I've seen, again as early as kindergarten, students really grabbing onto that vocabulary and applying it and integrating it into their daily life. I remember I was doing my principal internship actually at a school that a teacher was piloting our original CDJ curriculum a few years ago and she was having a student who was having a challenging time at recess, got into an argument with a peer. I took him into my office to kind of deescalate and he was just so mad and frustrated and he looked at me and said, through his like tears and bunched up face, he's like I just have a different perspective. And again, this is like a JK student. So you know that's the language is something that students are thinking like. They're thinking in that way anyways and I think giving them that language helps to empower them to then go the next step of you know understanding and applying what perspective taking means and how. You know having different perspectives can be challenging but helps our community or democracy actually be a better place. And again, some activities around agreeing, disagreeing. You know going to one side of the room or the other ways to just visually show students that we all have different perspectives is, I think, a great way to highlight that in early education. 0:21:24 - Lindsay Lyons I love all of this. I love that story. I just yes, this is so good and the power of, I think, particularly if so, I taught high school and so particularly for teachers or administrators who maybe taught higher grades like not knowing what is possible for the younger grades, it's so powerful to hear that story of, yes, this totally works with kindergartners. It looks different but it is. It's the same kind of values and practices and it's highly possible and valuable, and so I just really appreciate you naming that for even maybe even a principal of a high school who's like okay, let me advocate for the elementary schools in my district to have this so that when they get to high school you know like we are equipped with all of these skills and we don't have to kind of teach or patch things that haven't been used or practiced prior to coming into that space. 0:22:14 - Laura Brenner So I think this is kind of everybody's business that young children are getting this kind of education Absolutely, and my hope is that the more students that are doing this in an early age we're going to see the result and the effect of that when they're in middle school and when they're in high school They'll come in with this vocabulary, with the dispositions to really value their voice in their community, to believe that they have a say, to know some pathways to get their voice heard and that it won't be there won't be so many gaps when students do maybe have more formal access to that as they're older. 0:22:53 - Lindsay Lyons I hope there's a research study in progress at some point, because that would be super cool. I would love that. That sounds amazing. So one thing that I think sometimes we get these big conversations on this podcast and we're like, okay, here's this big goal of implementing this whole curriculum. For example, I'm wondering what is one thing that a leader or teacher could do as soon as they end the episode to just kind of get them started with either looking into the curriculum or doing a particular practice in their classroom, to kind of build the foundation. What do you suggest is like a good starting step here? 0:23:31 - Laura Brenner suggest is like a good starting step here. Yeah, I think you know we see implementation on a really wide spectrum and encourage that. I think you know part of being educators ourselves everyone who's had a hand in developing this curriculum has come from the classroom and I think that's very evident when you look at the curriculum and unfortunately a rare thing when we see curriculums. So you know there are many teachers out there who don't necessarily teach the lessons of children discovering justice but they're just grabbing resources or materials. You know a lot of pull out educators who might take the civil discourse sentence stems and use that in some of their group discussions. Or use our virtual read aloud library and just put a book on during snack time. Or, you know, might take our vocabulary word wall and and teach some of the words during their phonics block, even as a way to just integrate some of those civics vocabulary and concepts without having a specific social studies or civics block. So I think, looking at those additional materials, you can find them at the bottom of the teacher guide or if you click into individual lessons, you can find them at the bottom in additional materials. So I think that's a good starting place and then I would encourage folks to give one lesson a try in that module zero, especially in the fall, you know, september, october, even November, just reminding students what it means to be a community, to listen respectfully, to value all of our perspectives. Even trying one lesson, I think, will break some of that maybe fear or barriers that this is too either challenging to teach or that it's too much on our plate to teach. I think that, you know, can be some pushback we get sometimes of like, of course, our plates are so beyond full. As educators, as elementary educators, you know we're teaching every subject. But what I'll often say to that is like this is the plate, it's not something added to it really tried to make the resources as flexible as possible to integrate it smoothly into what you're already doing. But the work that this is like that is why I think most of us are educators is not that we necessarily like want our students to become mathematicians or to become, you know, the best authors, like that's great if they will do those things. Like we want them to follow their passions. But before all of that like at the foundation is that they're prepared, just prepared to be engaged people in their community, to be connected to where they live and who they live with. You know, we're in a growing interconnected world on every level, and just that we're preparing students to be successful in that, whatever they, you know, choose to do. So it is the plate, it is the work, it is why we're here. 0:26:43 - Lindsay Lyons I love that that it is the plate. Yes, that is such a common thought and, like you said rightly so, we have so much going on. It is the plate. Yes, that is such a common thought and, like you said rightly so, we have so much going on. It is the plate, though. That is great. I'm going to use that. If that's okay with you, I'll credit you. I think one of the things, too, that listeners might be thinking is, or readers of the blog might be thinking is, where do I access that curriculum? So we will link that. Thank you so much for sharing that with folks, and so we'll link that access to the curriculum in the blog post for this episode. So anyone driving and feeling like I need to remember to come back to this you can doing in their own lives and their either work lives, personal lives. I think we always, as educators, are kind of lifelong learners, and so this question can be work related or it can be completely separate just for fun. But what have you been learning about lately as a human? 0:27:40 - Laura Brenner Yeah, such a good question. And yes, I think the educators are ones that are constantly craving education themselves. That's, educators are ones that are, you know, constantly craving education themselves. And so, as tempted as I am to answer it in a work-related way with, like, here's all the books I've been reading and the research I've been diving into on civic action and elementary level, you know, I think a lot of us are at a point in our careers and in our worlds and lives where we're trying harder to focus on balance and how, you know, we can do that, we can sustainably do this work. And so something I've been learning about lately on that on that note is really just grounding, trying to do something every day that grounds myself. It's so easy, you know, even when you leave the classroom, it's so easy to get caught up in this work, feeling so so urgent that you know every second, every five minutes matters in it. But even taking 30 seconds, I'm trying to do 30 seconds every day where I just put my bare feet on the ground outside in the grass and just do three deep breaths in and out. So that is something I've been learning lately and trying really hard to implement in practice. 0:28:59 - Lindsay Lyons That is really, really good. Thank you for adjusting that in such a thoughtful way. That is going to like honor, where everyone is as they're engaging with this conversation, so thank you. And then I think folks are going to want to where everyone is as they're engaging with this conversation, so thank you. And then I think folks are gonna wanna follow up with you and get the curriculum, all of the things. But I know you're constantly doing really innovative work, so how can folks either learn more about you, connect with you, follow the work of Discovering Justice Generally? Where are the places? 0:29:26 - Laura Brenner Yeah, so I love that you're sharing the curriculum. Again, it's a free resource, totally open source on Google Drive. We're constantly adding to it, updating it. We're going to be creating some election focused modules to come out this October, so to be more focused specifically on the 2024 presidential election, so you'll be able to access those resources. On our website, discoveringjusticeorg, you can sign up either for our organization's newsletter or, if you go to programs, children Discovering Justice, you can sign up for the Children Discovering Justice specific newsletter and that will really focus on any updates to the curriculum. You know we're translating it now, so we're going to have it in Portuguese and Spanish as well as English and, like I said, those election modules will come out. So follow us on that. And then you know, certainly we have social media at Discovering Justice and folks are welcome to send me an email lbrenner at discoveringjusticeorg or connect with me on LinkedIn to learn more and just to collaborate. Again, this circling back to the beginning the product that is Children Discovering Justice is just. It is a shared child of so many amazing, amazing educators, administrators, staff who have just poured so much of their expertise and their time and their passion and joy for learning into this work, and so the more people that have their hands, their eyes on the curriculum, whose voice goes into it, I think, the better it is for that. So we welcome all the connections and all the eyes and ears and conversations. 0:31:11 - Lindsay Lyons Amazing, laura. Thank you so much. It has been an absolute pleasure, thank you. Thank you for having me, lindsay. Transcribed by https://podium.page
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We’re already over a month into this school year and season of the podcast—half a decade of episodes, here we come!—and want to share some of the updates for this season. Better late than never!
Mid-way through last season, I started experimenting with monthly mini series related to key topics I coach on and honestly just love learning about. I’ve tried to align the publication of these episodes with the time frame educators have typically expressed interest in discussing these areas. I’d also love feedback if you have topics for mini series I should add or suggestions for shifting when topics appear on the pod. With that, let’s explore the lineup for this season! Updated Topical “Mini Series”
For a personalized professional learning experience on one of the topics discussed in this episode, I’m sharing 4 playlists with you for free:
And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 184 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02 - Lindsay Lyons Welcome to season five. A little late we actually started a month ago but welcome to season five of Time for Teachership. I am so excited for episode 184. And although we're a bit late on the season premiere episode, as we've already premiered, we're back to school. We're in already a month, at least in the Northeast, but more in different parts of the country, least in the Northeast, but more in different parts of the country, and I just really want to name in this fifth season of the podcast half a decade of episodes. Here we go. I'm so excited I want to share some of the updates for this particular season. Better late than never. So midway through last season I started experimenting with monthly mini series. I started experimenting with monthly mini series and each mini series is related to key topic areas that I coach on and, honestly, I just personally love learning about and have lots of thoughts that I want to share and lots of things that I want to learn from guests on the show. So you might have noticed that that's been going on. I've tried to align the publication of these episodes with the time frame. Educators have typically expressed interest in discussing these areas. So, of course, at different time points throughout the year you're thinking about different things and different topics feel salient in different parts of the year more so than others. Now, I know that's not a perfect science and different folks are in different parts of their school year and different topics resonate with different people kind of across the board. So I'd actually love some feedback if you have topics for miniseries that I should add or suggestions for shifting when those topics appear on the podcast. With that, let's explore the lineup and the hopes and dreams for this particular season or the remainder of this particular season. Here we go. Updated topical miniseries will include one on systems transformation. Now in this series we'll learn about developing professional learning structures, developing equitable systems of competency-based assessment as one potential structure to build out, and advancing racial justice with an intersectional lens. So thinking about all three of these these are kind of all niche topics that kind of intersect around, as always, equity, and thinking about the system-wide transformation of maybe an entire school or an entire district, an overhaul of and co-creation of, an entire policy in a particular area, right. So there's a lot going on here, including a lot of adaptive leadership around justice, around change and leading change. Right, there's a lot of moving pieces in this part and so really excited to kind of keep bringing in specific topics within the umbrella of how to lead change and transform systems. In the last month you heard our mini series on systems transformation or you read the blog post on systems transformation. So you've gotten some insight too into kind of how broad and almost cerebral and like theoretical and also kind of the intimate like ways of being with one another, being in one another's community and how to engage with folks. So it's kind of big and it's kind of narrow and it's kind of atopical and it could be topical. So there's a wide range here that I'm really excited to explore with folks. The second mini series topic is curriculum design, and so we've had this one from the get-go. In this series we'll really learn about situating curricular thinking and planning within justice-based frameworks. So there is some theory. But it's also like how do we do this thing right? How do we make it really hyper-practical, how do we co-create units using a step-by-step process, for example, and thinking about how we explore those curriculum design possibilities. I'd love to, as educators are willing to share, share kind of success stories of what folks have created in terms of units that they have implemented in their class and want to share with others and or thinking about like a development on the show, as we've done before in our unit, dreaming series of ideas that we kind of co-construct and we can witness the process in the podcast episode of that creation. Also in this section, really excited about kind of leaders stories of facilitating teacher co-developed curricula. So if you are a school or district leader or a department chair thinking about how do we approach fueling, fostering, dreaming up this beautiful curriculum when you're leading a team or when you're leading folks who may create the same curriculum that you end up with and everyone ends up teaching the same thing, or you're leading a staff or a team that is going to actually develop a bunch of different curricula and what are kind of the key components or process steps of developing that so excited to hear both from educators and leaders in this space. Miniseries topic number three leadership. There are so many theories of leadership and so many aspects of leadership that I think honestly all of these pieces tie to leadership. But this mini-series specifically is thinking about shared leadership approaches. So in school sometimes we call this distributive leadership. I think shared is nice because it typically encompasses students and communities more than our distributive, which is typically teachers. So all of the things, all of the stakeholders involved in shared leadership and that kind of co-creation of change as opposed to top-down change that we ask everyone to quote, buy into and so kind of mindset shifts around this practical pieces, around this theory, around this, as well as adaptive leadership. And again, these pieces really touch all of the other topics. But adaptive leadership, really thinking about how we apply that theory of adaptive leadership and leading change and leading longstanding change where there's no clear solution and we actually need shared leadership approaches to co-develop the solution. So these really go hand in hand, which is why they're categorized together in this mini episode. So, when we're leading justice-oriented change in our educational communities, how do we kind of take the theory into practice in the effort of leading change in any aspect? Right, we talked about leading change in the systems, transformation, which is really transforming maybe one particular area, and leadership. It's kind of like how do I build these skills globally, build these structures globally in my educational community? So I'm ready for anything. So I've kind of built the system so that it is nimble and agile and whatever. The word adaptive, I suppose right, and we are ready for anything that comes our way because the system is already in place. I see that kind of as like a preemptive we don't know exactly what we're focused on yet. We're focused on building the structure, so we're ready, All right. Number four this mini series, is a culture of discussion, and I think about this one as really the foundational layer of a lot of things that you would do either in your class or your staff community. So in this series we're learning about creating a positive and not toxic positivity, positive but truly positive, values driven and appropriately challenging culture. This could again relate to class culture, which is typically how I conceive of it from my teacher brain first, but also, of course, relevant to that staff level culture or even again, if you're a department lead or chair your team level culture. So, creating that values aligned, appropriately challenging, right, Everyone's kind of in their zone of proximal development environments, where tasks are building my skills, Right, really feeling like I'm in that flow from chicks in the highs theory. I'm in that flow state. We've talked on the podcast before with Angela Watson about this idea of flow state. That was a great episode, Check it out. We want everyone to be there, staff and students alike. So that requires that positive foundation of values, alignment, and that all the tasks are appropriately challenging, not too much, but also not overly scaffolded, because then they're going to be easy and boring and we're just going to tune out right. So what this does ultimately is, when we lay this foundation of belonging and values and appropriate challenge, we are laying the foundation for things like generative discussions, which could include discussions of hard things that are often kind of high emotion topics. I've been calling them Things like political conversations, particularly in the midst of an election year excuse me, presidential election year which only happens every four years, right? So this is big, this is in the news, this is kind of in everyone's conversation. Kids are going to pick up on this. Staff are certainly going to be aware of this, so we want to be able to invite conversation. One of the things that I was recently talking to a social studies group about is you know, I've heard folks talk before about the distinction between politics or political classrooms and partisan classrooms. So someone shared that you know we shouldn't be talking politics in class and I said well, actually, especially in social studies, we should be. We can be a political classroom. Part of our standards are to talk about politics and political structure and have political discourse and be civically engaged, Like this is part of our standards, particularly in Massachusetts, very embedded in those standards now, and that's certainly one of the things in the framework Partisan, I believe, is what this teacher was talking about. Where it's. We're not telling students what to think, we're not saying you need to vote for this candidate because da, da, da, da, da right. And so I think we often avoid right thinking about adaptive and justice-based things. Right, we often avoid conversations that may bring up high emotions or we're not so sure or we're uncomfortable. What we really want to do is create foundations for generative discussions where our hearts and our heads are kind of full right, Our minds are, like, appropriately challenged, we're using evidence-based conversation, we are fueling change, opening up possibilities for justice, and we're not kind of entrenched in our positions, we are open to understanding and seeking to understand one another. Right, and we are creating and deepening those relations in our community, whether it's staff to staff, staff to student or student to student. So, again, this culture of discussion miniseries is all about laying that foundation that's going to enable us to get to those generative discussions of things like politics, current events, figuring out how we live together with one another in this shared community, all while navigating things that come up like high emotions, like that kind of fear of saying the wrong thing, like the fear of being harmed, like the navigating high emotions. All the pieces right. So we want to make sure that foundation is in place before we go there, and we do want to be able to go there. So this mini series is really taking you on the journey. Sometimes we'll start with the foundation pieces belonging, values driven stuff and then sometimes we'll talk about appropriate challenge and appropriate scaffolds and not hyper scaffolding, and sometimes we'll get to that kind of top tier, where we ultimately want to go, which is like what are those discussions looking like? What are the protocols for them? How do we literally engage and how do we support that engagement? How do we structure it so that it is something that we value and deepens our community and our capacity and not restrict it or harm it? Okay, and now our fifth one. This is a new one this year. This is our fifth mini series. Topic I love social studies curriculum. I'm always talking about social studies curriculum, but I also always want to speak expansively or share expansively about various topics, kind of the how to create curriculum, regardless of the grade or subject you teach, and I also really love social studies. So we have in Massachusetts the Department of Education, called DESE, here has partnered with organizations to create a Massachusetts aligned curriculum for social studies in elementary and middle school and that continues to be built out and I am very grateful to be part of the coaching work to prepare teachers to implement this and work with teachers to figure out like what this looks like and feels like and is implemented like with the students in the classroom. So really grateful to all the brilliant folks I get to work with on this project. And this curriculum is called Investigating History, so let's talk about what this might look like. In this series we'll dig into the Massachusetts created open source so anyone can access it social studies curriculum. It currently spans grades five through seven for the public. It is being piloted in grades three through four and we'll explore things that are relevant beyond folks in Massachusetts and beyond folks who are using this specific curriculum, because, again, I want it to be relevant for anyone who is listening and so, even if you don't teach social studies, I do feel like, again, the pedagogy behind it is really important. So I'm hoping in this series to partner up and have guests on the show who have implemented the curriculum with students. So these would be the teachers who are piloting and, for grade three and four, piloting and teaching the full curriculum for grades five through seven, maybe some students. If we're excited to get those students on and talk about what it's like to experience this curriculum. We could talk with folks from the state, from Massachusetts, from DUSY, and think about what they are thinking and observing. We could bring on folks from Tufts that they have a really cool research project over there around democracy in classrooms and they're doing a huge research study on this curriculum and its impact on students. I think that would be so fun to explore. We could also bring on curriculum writers. I mean, my hopes are high, so very excited. But again, I think relevant for social studies and wherever you teach, with whatever curriculum you teach. And again, just back to the pedagogy roots, what I'm really excited to do, because this is an inquiry-based curriculum, we can explore the inquiry routines, of which there are three, and core principles, or what they call key instructional principles, of which there are four that really form the foundation of the curriculum and are good for any curriculum and I hope to talk to all those folks and we'll keep you posted on that. We'll look for that in probably the spring. So that is the preview for season five for the remainder of the year. Get excited, I'm going to link in terms of freebies for this episode. I'm gonna link all the things that might be relevant to you related to each of particularly the first four miniseries I discussed. So in the blog post for this episode, which you can get at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 184, I'm going to give you a personalized professional learning experience based on whichever topic you are most interested in learning about. So I'll be sharing four playlists with you for free on that blog post. Those include my systems transformation playlist, curriculum playlist, leadership playlist and culture of challenge and discussion playlist. So again, grab those at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 184. And I'm looking forward to connecting with you in the next episode. Transcribed by https://podium.page
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![]() Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below: In this episode, Soraya Ramos discusses the dream—and the challenges—of creating equitable learning environments. For more than a decade Soraya has worked to promote and support anti-racist teaching and learning practices through her roles as a teacher and as an assessment designer. Soraya served as a Senior Associate at the Center for Collaborative Education (CCE). There she worked in partnership with schools and districts in New England and nationally to design high quality performance assessments systems that promote equity and engagement and co-led a consortium of districts in Massachusetts in their pursuit of designing an alternative assessment and accountability system. Soraya is currently an Assessment Design Partner at Envision Learning Partners where she partners with districts across the nation to design and implement high quality systems of assessment ranging from student-led conferences to portfolio defenses. Soraya believes that lasting assessment systems need to be in alignment with a community’s vision and coherent to a district and school’s priorities. Soraya holds an Ed.M. in Education Policy and Management from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a B.A. in Chicana/o Studies and Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles. Our conversation covered the importance of human-centered design in education and fostering relational trust and empathetic listening. Soraya shares her dreams for education alongside practical examples and success stories to create a more equitable future for our young learners. The Big Dream Soraya’s big dream for education is that all children—all young learners—get to access high-quality learning experiences that help them feel like they can shine and tap into their innate brilliance and genius. She underscores the importance of allowing kids to just be kids—to learn, to fumble, and get back up without pressure and high stakes. How can we allow all kids to feel like they can play and have fun? Mindset Shifts Required To achieve Soraya’s dream of allowing kids to be kids and experience an equitable learning environment, some important mindset shifts need to take place. Soraya’s still experiencing her own shifts and is particularly inspired by the work at the National Equity Project around liberatory design. The arc of this work is that it’s all human-centered—keeping people at the center of everything we do as educators. With this in mind, a crucial mindset shift is to build relational trust and invest in relationships with intention and empathetic listening. Instead of seeing yourself as the knowledge holder, try to listen and respect where someone is coming from. Other key mindset shifts include understanding that self-awareness is an ongoing practice, and embracing complexity—the messiness of adaptive leadership—is key to creating better systems. Action Steps In a more practical sense, there are a few key action steps for educators seeking to create equitable education systems. Soraya believes that it all comes down to creating a school culture—an energy—that is positive, inclusive, and equitable. This can be done through a few key action steps: Step 1: Build reciprocity with your colleagues and education partners. It’s not about having transactional, tit-for-tat relationships, but being reciprocal in the way you interact with and help each other. This cultivates strong, meaningful relationships that prioritize support and accountability. Step 2: Recognize oppression by always being aware of the ways power comes in. If you’re going to partner with other people, recognize and call out power dynamics that are present. This can be a very uncomfortable conversation to have, but is so important for building more equitable systems. Step 3: Embrace an abundance mindset. We’re often convinced or conditioned to think there aren’t enough resources. And while we may not have access to them right now, there are resources available to us. It may not always be financial, but there is an abundance of other resources that come from our unique communities—we need to work together to access them, not compete with others to divide scarce resources. Challenges? Soraya sees one of the biggest challenges as navigating the political landscape in education. Unfortunately, understanding these dynamics and agendas can introduce a not-so-flattering side of humans, our motivations and behaviors. So, understanding how to operate in these spaces can be challenging. Educators need to navigate tricky dynamics where power is involved, sometimes honesty isn’t rewarded, and you have to know when to observe and when to speak up. One Step to Get Started Big changes often start with an internal shift. Soraya recommends starting by asking yourself, "What kind of world do I want to live in, and how can I contribute to creating that world?" Then, reflect on your energy, motivations, and the values you wish to embody. Use this guiding question to align your actions and interactions in your next meeting or collaboration, aiming to foster a positive and inclusive atmosphere. Stay Connected You can connect with Soraya on LinkedIn. To help you implement today’s takeaways, Soraya is sharing a High-Quality Performance Assessment Overview with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 183 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:
0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons Soraya Ramos. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. I'm so excited you're here. 0:00:08 - Soraya Ramos Hi Lindsay, Thanks so much for having me. It's a pleasure. 0:00:11 - Lindsay Lyons I'm really excited for we were talking about, before we hit record like all of the ways that our paths have like almost intersected and I think our work aligns very closely as well. So really excited for our listeners to hear from you today, and I just want to know if there's anything that folks should keep in mind as they are engaging with this podcast episode today. 0:00:31 - Soraya Ramos I thought about this one and I think one of the main things for me that I try to remember is that I'm always a learner and that I'm always learning and that I don't always have it or need to know everything or need to have the answer. So I think that, being really forgiving to myself and gracious, I like I'm always learning, we're always learning and it's just part of like life. We're always evolving, making mistakes and then learning from them and coming back from it. So I want to, like you know, hold whatever I say now at this point in time might, might evolve in the next years or decades of my life. So I'm really excited to capture where I'm at right now with you. 0:01:09 - Lindsay Lyons I absolutely love that framing because just this morning I was looking back from like four years ago. I wrote a blog post and I'm like hmm, wouldn't, have done it the same way Would have changed that Like that's so true. I love the snapshot in time idea. 0:01:20 - Soraya Ramos It's true, it's true. I think it's what we want to do with kids too, right, we're always. They're always evolving and physically growing and like we, see the difference. 0:01:32 - Lindsay Lyons So, um, I'm glad that that you, that it resonates with you as well, deeply, yes, thank you for that framing, and I think it'll also be, um, really nice for listeners to hear it, just because I think in our days we can often be unforgiving of ourselves, and so it's a, it's a nice reminder. We're in it together, we're all learning. I love it, and so I guess kind of to think about the continuation of this, like the place we're all trying to go as we learn. I like to ground this or all episodes really and Dr Bettina loves the words around freedom dreaming, where she says you know their dreams, rounded in the critique of injustice, and so I'm curious to know what is that big dream that? 0:02:09 - Soraya Ramos you hold for education. I love her work. I will say that this question got me thinking of like what my freedom dreaming was. Maybe 10 years ago is slightly different, but still similar to the core. But one thing that came to mind around what is that dream that I have for kids, for my younger self, for the kids that come after me, is that all children, all young learners, get to access high quality learning experiences that help them feel like they can shine and that they can tap into their brilliance and their their genius that's so good. 0:02:49 - Lindsay Lyons I love that and it really I love that there's like aspects of you know, goldie Muhammad's work in there and just like that the genius is part of all kids, right, this is not something that we as educators give to them, but like this is there and we're just like helping to cultivate and helping to shine and like I love that framing absolutely, and I think you're right. 0:03:08 - Soraya Ramos Like it's like where did I get all this from? I'm like I've learned from people who have, who have taught me right, or that I've learned in my roles in the past, and, um, I think one of the things that that would add to that is like how do we allow kids to just be kids, to learn to fumble and then get back up without them feeling like there's some kids have higher stakes than others and I'm just curious of like how do we just have them all feel like they can play and have fun? 0:03:39 - Lindsay Lyons I love that. That's, that's so, so good. Thank you for that. And and I think so, sometimes we maybe lose sight of the things, the reasons that we kind of get into education and that knowing that kids have this genius, they have this light, they have they, they should be able to be kids all this stuff and we get into like the nitty gritty and all the things on our plate right. And so I'm wondering if there are specific mindset shifts that folks kind of go through to be able to do the work that you do, for instance, around kind of equitable assessment and all of those pieces. Are there things that we may be no going in lose sight of along the way and need to really kind of reframe our thinking around that you've noticed either people be successful with or that you would just advise folks just entering the work to think about? 0:04:31 - Soraya Ramos My own mindsets have. I've had to go through my own and I'm still going through those shifts now and like really believing in those. I will say some of those mindset shifts that have inspired me in the last few years have come from the work at the National Equity Project around liberatory design, and I think they were able to provide a language to what I already felt to be true and some of those mindsets it's all about. I think the arc of it all is that it's human centered, that we're centering anything, any experience the design of a summer school program, the design of an assessment system on the state level or even a local level is that we're really truly centering humans and putting them at the center. So I would say one of the things that the Libertarian Design Framework says is one of the mindsets is building relational trust is how do we invest in relationships with intention and especially across difference, and we have to honor people's stories and practice empathetic listening. So if I'm going into your home, into your community, what is my role is to to be there as humble as I can, to listen to your expertise, because that is your lived experience. So I think that that's a really powerful piece that I always try to hold is that we're not the I am not the knowledge holder. I am here to listen and I am in your home, your home, and that is in my culture. There's something really important about I respect where, when I'm, when I'm here and you're in your space. So that's one build a relational trust. I think a second one for me is practicing self-awareness, is understanding like what mirror is in front of me, who am I and how do these experiences that I grew up with influence the way I see things, the way I'm understanding an issue, and our perspectives impact our practice. So I think that practice of awareness is constant and so necessary for me, because sometimes I feel like, oh, i'm'm the hero in this story and I'm gonna, and I'm gonna save, and I'm gonna save these kids, or like when I was, you know, entering teaching um, but it wasn't. It wasn't that no one needs saving um. So self-practicing self-awareness. And then I would say I have a lot that I could share, but I'm going to keep it short. But the one I really feel like that I haven't mentioned is embracing complexity, that the equity challenges are really complex and they're messy and they stay open for possibility. And one thing that I have the cards in front me and one thing that it says here in the card is that powerful design emerges from the mess, not from avoiding it, and so I think that's where sometimes we put pressure on our leaders to have the answer, that one right way. We actually respect people who speak with a lot of confidence in that one solution when it's actually a lot more complex. And how do we do this together to figure it out with the humans that we're trying to serve at the center? So those are, I think, some of the top, but I could keep going, but I'll stop there. So I would say building relational trust, practicing self-awareness and embracing complexity. 0:08:07 - Lindsay Lyons Wow, all of those are so good. And also just tying it to that liberatory design piece, I think is really important and food for thought for folks who are listening now and are like, oh, I haven't heard of that or I want to dig deeper into that. Like there's richness there to dig into. And I love the idea of the last piece really reminds me of both the complexity piece around, like adaptive leadership and recognizing that it is really messy, and also I think you're speaking to the like a shared leadership element as well of right like the leaders are not necessarily the people who have admin titles right, they're the people in the community and the students, right, and the people at the center who who, as you said, have a lived experience and are really informing the change. And to uh, think through how to navigate so many voices when we're talking about all the students and all the families is messy but so worth it, and so I appreciate that framing and that grounding in those, in those three specifically. 0:09:03 - Soraya Ramos Yeah, thank you, thanks for summarizing that in in such a in those three specifically. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for summarizing that in such a nice way. 0:09:09 - Lindsay Lyons I just love connecting it to like. Sometimes I'll use these like leadership reasons. My background is in leadership education and so I think through like things I've said in the podcast before. 0:09:17 - Soraya Ramos I'm like, right, here's the through line, right it's true, there's like these mindsets yeah, it could keep going on, because I'm also a leadership nerd and I'm like learning all these things. And how do we create a culture? Right, how does our leadership impact the culture that we're trying to build here? And I think these elements, these mindset shifts, have to be in there. Um, because we have to live it so that it can. It's almost contagious, it's part of the space that you come into. Yeah. 0:09:45 - Lindsay Lyons I like the idea of contagious. That's good, that's really good. So I guess, thinking about that right, like what does that maybe look like? Feel like what's you know the actions that we, we take to kind of cultivate that and and and live that out and make that contagious and I mean I think about the work that you've done with equitable assessment and like systems of assessment, I mean that's, that's really big work. So thinking about maybe a leader or a community who is like oh, this is such a cool idea and it feels big, it feels messy, it feels like like how, how, really, how do I get started and what does that potentially look like? Could you describe for us a little bit about those like brave actions required to get there? 0:10:29 - Soraya Ramos That's a really good question and I think that it's. I'm always in pursuit of figuring that out. This is a tangent which we can include or not in the podcast. But recently I started working the second, the second job with my mom and it's called. It's a delivery service and we're shoppers at a store and we're shoppers at the same store every single time. And so I started doing it as like a side gig on the weekends and just trying it out with my mom. And what I realized is like every single time that I went into the store and you let me know if I could, if I could tell you, but it's one, it's one of my favorite. So I go in there and I'm like I know people have such a good experience at Target and it's like a very much like a good experience, and so, but going in there as a shopper, I noticed that there was a pattern. I'm like why are the workers so disgruntled and unhappy? Is it just that one location? Is it just that one person? That one day, and I started noticing a pattern in the ones in my area where it's like no, I think there's something going on in the culture of this company. What is going on that? Are we treating our, how are people being treated while they work here? And it's almost and again it was very contagious and like my experience as a consumer versus a like kind of a shopper right beside these employees was a lot different and not as joyful either. So I think that also communicates into schools. Right, like, culture is everywhere. When we go into a place of business, when we go into a place of education and I know that this is something that you know many educators in the field have already said like the first, the first signal of what a culture is at a school is when you step in the front door and you and you experience what it feels like to be in that space. It's, it's like an energy thing. I don't know much about energy, but I could feel it. And right, it's like um. When you, for example, and no one really greets you, um, or when they do, it's it's kind of like what do you need? Um versus good morning, how are you Welcome to our school? You know, here's our protocol, sign in. And it's a different um experience when you go into these spaces. So I would just say, like, what is the culture in this, in this space? And so I would say how do you make the? I think your question was how do we start? What are the brave actions that we need to make sure is we really need to be the, the creators of that, of creators of that energy, right, like, if a school is off that morning, like how can I go in there and try to? I'm not gonna change it, but I can say just remind them like hey, I'm new to this space, what do you wanna show for your school and your community? But one of the things that the brave actions that needs to happen is the way that I work with other people, whether it's building an assessment system at a state level or building an assessment task with a teacher is what kind of, what kind of relationship are we building around my responsibilities, your like and our accountability to each other? I think the reciprocity is a word that I've used a lot in the work I've done with in the past few years is it's not transactional but it's reciprocal. Is, you know, if we do these for these things for each other, without keeping tab on what it is right, like tip for tat? And so one of the brave actions is really holding that reciprocity part. The other part is recognizing oppression, like always being aware that power can always come in, and being able to like balance that out and calling it out. I think there's something really important about calling it out. If we're gonna partner with each other, let's talk about what the power dynamic is or isn't. So I would say that's super brave action to mention it, because it's an uncomfortable and fearful conversation, especially if you're working with teachers all the way up to superintendents or state commissioners. So that's the brave action. So I'm thinking about another one. I think one is knowing the culture and like reading that Working from a place of reciprocity the one that's really challenging and it goes against maybe the way that our country works is and our system works is we need to come from a place of abundance rather than scarcity. I think when we're trying to build systems or create solutions for education, we think that there aren't enough, like we're actually in some way conditioned or convinced in some ways, like some of us may be able to note why, but that there's always enough resources. This is really hard for me to actually understand it right, because in my own life it's like well, I grew up with very scarce resources, financial resources. So I think like understanding, like there are resources out there. We may not have access to them right now, but we know that they're out there. That's the thing. They just may not be right in front of us, and so I think, knowing that no one's here to steal my job, we're not trying to do the work of another organization in competition with them. It's we're all playing in the same sandbox and in service of the same communities, people, learners, etc. So those are just a few that come to mind, and I'm sure there's more profound other actions, but those are actually super hard. It's like the power, the power piece. How do I work with others in ways that are loving and actually honest and authentic, without my secret agenda, and while also knowing that, like, the resources are real, there's some. There's a perceived notion that there's scarcity out there, but there really is an abundance, and maybe the abundance comes from a different type of resource, not not the financial one. Maybe it, the abundance, is the community that we work in and that's our superpower. So that is where I'll leave it, cause I think that was a lot, but and I'm sure I'm sorry that it's a little bit scattered, but it was my best attempt to try to put them into words- it was perfect. 0:17:02 - Lindsay Lyons Oh my gosh, I love so much of this, and I think I mean even just the abundance versus scarcity. I love what you said at the very end of you know, maybe the resource is just something that's not financial Absolutely. Source is just something that's not financial Absolutely. I mean we even from. So the last few years I taught, I worked at a school with 100% students who were learning English at the high school level, and so a lot of times in like multilingual learner education spaces, people like, oh, you know that the scarcity mindset of we need to build English language proficiencies right, and it's like, look at the abundance of linguistic knowledge and proficiency in other languages. I mean some of these kids are trilingual. Like what on earth? This is nuts. Like that is incredible. And we just don't think of the abundance frame, we think only in scarcity. And so I love that you mentioned like it can be financial but it can be otherwise, that we think about these things and what a huge mindset shift to be able to to get to that side of abundance. 0:18:03 - Soraya Ramos And I love that example that you're mentioning, because that's where we miss it. We're conditioned to believe that these other metrics are actually more important than the richness in the culture, in the, in the multilingualness, in like the community, that that they come from, their worlds or realities is. It's like that's where that, that there's richness, there, that we I think the last part I'll say is like I don't know where this fits in the questions you asked me, but there's a, an element of critical consciousness that it's like almost seeing behind the like someone's pulling the curtain, that like these assessments are important but I could see through them that they are problematic, that they can cause harm, that they're imperfect, that they're a measure, but not the measure of our kids and our and our young people. So I think that's where I'm, my role is like how do we get people to see, recognize oppression? Right, but like within? That is like how does this assessment work within that Like it's not the ultimate truth? And, like you said, let's not ignore these beautiful like humans that we get to work with every day, and then their multilingualness and get them to shine. 0:19:15 - Lindsay Lyons I just want to double down on that phrase. Like a measure, not the measure, right, yes, and not the ultimate truth. Yeah, we put so much stock into things that we can measure and put numbers or letters on and it's like no, I'm a human child, like this is a person, totally yes, I mean, I'm curious, you've done such powerful work with so many communities. I'm wondering if there's maybe a success story or kind of quote unquote case study that we can use to just illuminate the possible, like what are the great things happening out there and what can we celebrate? 0:19:50 - Soraya Ramos I appreciate that question and it's the success stories. I feel like you don't see it in the moment. I feel like when you work in schools or in education, sometimes it takes years for you to see your impact as a teacher, for example, and then the kids come back, you know, and they let you know like this is the impact you had, or it could take more than five, ten years to see it. But I think in in I've been really fortunate to have this position as like third party kind of uh roles in my in education now. Uh, where I get to support school districts and I have this different viewpoint, a lay of the land where I can, I can kind of see who the players are and what the strategy is and the vision and et cetera. One of the things that I have not done this alone and I think I've been put into really wonderful teams where I've been able to co-construct these different ways of how to assess kids, how to think about assessment in a more human centered way. Um, you might have I believe that some of the previous speakers on this podcast um Ms Rita Harvey and Charlie Brown, they were. They're some of my uh, they're. We started our journey together as assessment design partners. Uh, in new England, and we had, I believe, a lot of really wonderful case studies that we got to see from the teacher level. So we got to travel to different districts across New England and design assessments, performance assessments, with teachers at an individual school, while also working with their superintendents to build a arc of learning around their pd. So that year, for example, what I I think this is um, we're getting to that that success story is what makes it successful is that you had buy-in from the, from the, from the teacher role all the way up to a superintendent role, and the board as well is how do we get everyone on board about around this one thing and that one thing for one district in particular was how do we get everyone on board around performance assessments? And so year one was what is performance assessments? What are we doing? Why don't we bring in students that have worked with our coaches hence me and my other colleagues to come in and share their experiences with a standardized test versus a performance assessment? And so they got. We have this all happened in one particular district in Attleboro Public Schools, and so that was one of the things is we have support from all folks we get to coach in individual schools and they all have design teams. So the admin at the school had already pre-selected some people that they felt were going to be champions of this work. So that was a huge element, while at the same time, we are facilitating meetings with a consortium of superintendents who are all trying to work towards the same goal, which is how do we build an alternative assessment system that we can apply for a waiver for in the state of Massachusetts? So we have superintendents engaged through the consortium. So we have superintendents engaged through the consortium. We have assistant superintendents supporting us with designing an arc of learning for all teachers in the district around performance assessments year one, and we also have board meetings where that could be like our performance assessment per se, where teachers and students can come in and demonstrate their work. So I would just say like those are some of the levers that this district was able to pull and were super successful because after year two, performance assessments didn't go away. Performance assessments, we went deeper. We said rubrics 101. So part of a performance assessment is a rubric right, like how do we know that you've met? How do you know that you've met the target? So rubrics was like. We noticed that there was. Maybe we needed more literacy around that. How do we build everyone's capacity? So, yeah, every year the learning arc. So everyone was doing the same thing. During those teacher learning days we had multiple opportunities for them to come and present to the consortium and to their boards. So I would just say like those are some of like a really effective leadership moves and decisions that were created in this particular district in Attleboro that we were really proud of. They were so committed and people were not confused around initiatives. It felt like they all knew what we were doing and we were able to reach all teachers within three years around performance assessment. Unfortunately, things were paused because of the pandemic, but the fact that we have such good momentum and people were just like champions and it was like this groundswell of support I remember that's a word that Charlie would mention a lot. We need to get the groundswell of support and I think that was a really powerful thing, instead of it coming down as a requirement. 0:25:01 - Lindsay Lyons Yes, another kind of tied to that shared leadership piece. Right, it doesn't come from the top, it has to be that ground salt. That's so good. There is so much here that I appreciate you have just kind of laid out. I'm thinking of a leader listening who's like how long does it take and what happens each year? You've just laid out what is possible and I just really appreciate that clarity for someone who's kind of new to it. I also want to speak to if someone's unfamiliar with that consortium in Massachusetts, like New York has one as well. But just the idea of schools coming together to say like we can do better than standardized assessment, is this really great way to not do it alone? And so I'm wondering if there is. I don't know if this is speaking to the next question I was going to ask or not, but just thinking about the challenges of the work Sometimes I wonder if it's like oh, we're on our own and kind of this island of we think it would be a great idea to do this, but we don't have a consortium to tap into or something like that. Is there any kind of school model that you've worked with there where it's like they're not part of a larger organization, but they're just choosing to do it because they know it's what's fast and they're going to move forward. 0:26:07 - Soraya Ramos Absolutely. I think there's folks that are connected to a wider net and others are doing it within their own district. I think that it's really helpful when you are part of a group, a consortium, or whether it's a learning group or anything else. I know that there's some here in California as well, where you just get to learn around practice with each other. It's like what are you all doing? Oh, this is how we're choosing to implement graduate profiles right now is a really is a really big thing, and it actually is very trendy to have a graduate profile, or you know these learner outcomes of what we want kids to learn and competencies we want them to have by the time they graduate. But how do you know? And how do you know that? How do if you're doing it right, right, like? A lot of people are like, okay, great, we have really cool posters, now what? So that's where people turn to these communities, where they're like this is how we're learning how to bring this poster to life and it's super beneficial. I'm part of this. I'm really glad that I'm part of this group called Scaling Student Success, and then we get to learn from each other around best practices of how to bring graduate profiles to life and everyone's at a different stage, so there's different groupings of districts. So it is a really cool opt-in opportunity that I've seen on the West Coast. But what about folks that aren't connected outside right Like? We know that this is best practice period and I think that's why they bring some of these districts, bring in third party technical providers, and that's where people like myself come in third party technical providers and that's where people like myself come in and envision learning partners who we may not be creating the space for everyone to come in as a consortium or a learning space, but we are the communicators of oh, you have also shortages with subs. This is actually a trend that's happening across the country and people are actually some of the people are actually very surprised when we tell them that they're like really, I thought we were the only district, oh no, I'm like this is going on across the country. Um, you are not the only one. And how do we get creative so um around like pds, right, if you can't have everyone out on the same time? Like, how do we, how do we create this more flexible uh plan? So I don't know if I kind of lost track of your question, lindsay, but that was perfect. 0:28:31 - Lindsay Lyons I guess are there any other like either challenges that folks have faced and you wanted to talk through, or is there just anything else that you wanted to share before we move to wrap up? 0:28:42 - Soraya Ramos Yeah, okay, so I don't. I'm like I was like thinking, I'm like how honest can I be? And and I think I've realized how naive I've been in most of my career as an, as an educator, and in the best way, like my, my naivete is more of like I don't think people would be capable of doing this or, you know, like we're all in it for the kids and and and it's a very naive way of thinking and and um, one of the things that I realized at a different level of is through, uh, bowman and deal, the, these folks have these, these four frameworks of what it means to be a leader, and one of the frameworks that they say that leaders have to learn how to navigate is the political, is the, and that's like they call it, the jungle, where it's like people have different agendas and people have different ideas of what they want from a project or from a collaboration or whatever it is. And I think that for me has been this language, this world, where I have to think about understanding humans in a different way that the political realm introduces a not so flattering side of of humans and our motivations and and our behaviors, and also attached to people's wellness, right, like if, like they are reflections of who they are internally is kind of what they project at work. So one of the things for me is like how do I read situations, what is being said that isn't being said out loud, and how do I move accordingly? Because sometimes being honest is not the way for me Speaking. Sometimes spaces aren't ready to hear that, sometimes spaces aren't ready to hear that, especially when you have power involved. And so that, for me, is something I'm still learning is how do we navigate the political realm and understand humans and not letting it get too personal, like taking it personally is understanding, like what people are and aren't capable of, and knowing who to trust. I think that for me right now is how do I learn to build trust and who to trust in, especially when we're doing this kind of work in education? 0:30:55 - Lindsay Lyons Oh, that's such an important challenge to name because I think a lot of folks I've certainly been there felt that and I love that you trace the arc of similarly me but going and being like everyone's awesome and for the right reasons. And there is no political agenda, there is, and so I think it reminds me of Heifetz, Graschau and Linsky talk about in their adaptive leadership. Stuff is like naming the stuff, like having an activity as a leader where you kind of sit in the meeting and like, okay, observe what's not being said, like observe where the avoidance is happening, where a joke's being made to deflect, like that kind of thing, Right. And and so it's like that's a cool tool for for folks listening to this episode, like just try it, like try that out and just kind of notice, or invite folks to notice like what is not being said, right, what is being avoided. And I think that's a nice opportunity to kind of, like you said, it might not be that in the moment we shout it out, but it's a nice like jot it on a post-it note, hand it in at the end of the meeting, right, We'll like we'll get there because we should, Absolutely, I agree, yeah, and so I think just to close this out, this is a wonderful conversation. I don't want it to end but I recognize everyone has things to do and I'm sure you have a busy schedule. So what is one thing as we kind of wrap up that listeners have been listening tons of ideas shared but they want to kind of take one next step as they end the episode, kind of going into their day or getting ready for next week or whatever that they can kind of world do. 0:32:33 - Soraya Ramos I want to live in, how do I want it to feel, how do I want it to sound for for myself, for kids, for young people, etc. And how can I be the creator of that? How can I contribute to a world like that? So I think that self-awareness piece goes back to that is, if I'm walking into this meeting, how do I want to walk in, what do I want to contribute in terms of my own energy, my motivations? How is this contributing to the world that I do or don't want? And I think being that is a start and something that can feel like it's a forced, but like how can I be that light, or how can I be that positivity or that understanding mind in the workplace where I don't have to get to the point where I'm disrespecting people and I'm still living by my values? So I think it really begins with the self and the world that you want. So then, how are you going to start being that in that next meeting, in that next, in whatever collaboration you're in? So it's really difficult because we have difficult days, but like, how do I, how do I still stay with, with dignity, right, like dignity and respect is for me really important. So knowing what people's values are and making sure that they're actually living aligned to those values, and catching yourself when you don't, because we're also imperfect, so the misalignment will happen. But just knowing that, like what am I contributing to this world and how can I, you know, be self aware. 0:34:09 - Lindsay Lyons I love that for multiple reasons. One just for the leader lens, but also, like this could be a guiding question for schools, like how do teachers engage with that question? How do students live out that question Right? Like how can we just be in community with one another in alignment with our responses to that question? So good. And so I think the final two questions I have for you one is super fun just could relate to education, but could totally not. So, whatever direction you want to take it, you mentioned, like we're all kind of learning. We're on a lifelong path of learning all the things about life. What is something that you have been learning about lately? 0:34:44 - Soraya Ramos Oh, have been learning about lately. Oh, I have not been learning any hobbies recently, but I think what I'm learning is just my role. As I get, as I'm getting older, my roles are changing in my life and who I take care of, and and and being a caretaker this past month. And for me it's just understanding that, like life will always be lifing, it's always going to be doing what it wants to do. But at the end of the day is, how am I centering myself to and my needs first, so that we're all, not we're all, so that I'm strong enough to care for others when I, when I can and I need to? So I think that's one thing that I'm really learning how to practice, whether it's an acupuncture appointment, whether it's that massage that I've been like thinking about months ago, a walk has been huge. I think learning how to slow down is the biggest lesson for me, because I used to be a runner and it felt like if I didn't do 10 miles, I didn't do anything like it, like it had to feel hard for it to feel like it mattered. And now I'm like a walk and being patient and being in silence, like that's actually hard for me too. So maybe those are some of the lessons that are coming Like. Life is always evolving, my role and my responsibilities are with that too, so how do I always remember myself though? And it could be, and a walk is enough, sufficiency, yeah. 0:36:14 - Lindsay Lyons Everything you said deeply resonates. Thank you for that, and I think, finally, folks are going to just want to get in touch with you or follow your work, so what's the best place to get in touch or see what you're doing? 0:36:25 - Soraya Ramos I am on LinkedIn, so that would be one way. I'm trying to be better at staying on it every single day, but that could be that is one way to reach me as well on LinkedIn, and I would say that's the best way. Like is more reliable way to reach me, so I'm happy to connect with anyone who's out there who'd like to just kind of be thought partners or like if folks are going through similar things that that I shared some of the things on this podcast. I would love to just even having like a mirror or a window into like what are? you experiencing OK, how did you resolve it? Or et cetera. So I would love to get in touch with folks if they're they're willing to. 0:37:02 - Lindsay Lyons Amazing. Sorry. I thank you so much. This was such a wonderful conversation. I appreciate your time thank you, lindsay. 0:37:08 - Soraya Ramos I appreciate you having us and me and my other colleagues that have also come up in the episode, but thank you so much for inviting me into this conversation. I really appreciate you absolutely.
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9/23/2024 182. Let Go of Fear: Whiteness, Emotionality, and Education with Dr. Cheryl E. MatiasRead Now![]()
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This transformative episode is with Dr. Cheryl E. Matias, a passionate professor, motherscholar, race consultant, and academic coach. In this interview, she emphasizes the importance of overcoming fear and shifting mindsets to truly address white supremacy in educational practices.
Dr. Matias advocates for educators to engage deeply with systemic issues beyond superficial checklists, integrating their professional efforts with personal life, and ensuring open, humane discussions about racial issues. A committed educator, activist, and researcher, Dr. Matias is deeply motivated by both her passion for racial justice and, more significantly, being a motherscholar of three and giving her own children the education they deserve. The Big Dream Dr. Cheryl Matias's big dream for education is to let go of our fears—fearing what we do not know, fearing conversations, and fearing being labeled. In letting go of these things that hold us back, Dr. Matias envisions an educational system where we’re no longer guided by fear. Instead, we can reclaim education by fostering courageous conversations that challenge white supremacy and cultivate a deeper understanding of racial justice. Mindset Shifts Required In Dr. Matias’ view, changing our mindsets is the key way to overcome fears. To move beyond our fears, it’s important to shift the mindset and rethink how we talk about race in the education system by addressing embedded white supremacy. As part of this mindset shift, Dr. Matias calls for a move away from viewing racism as merely intentional malicious acts and discourse to recognizing the "unintended consequences" and the collective force of white supremacy in our education system and society. Action Steps Step 1: Stop relying on checklists and thinking there is one right path to “getting it.” Instead, it's important to rely on educating yourself by diving deeper into the issue at hand. If you haven’t studied whiteness or the emotionalities of whiteness in education, that’s a place for educators to start. Educate yourself—don’t just wait to check the boxes someone else offers you. Step 2: Advocate for scholarly experts to come into the schools and share their research. It’s important to be judicious about who you bring in, as there are many experts doing diversity work now. Dr. Matias advises advocating for those who have some practical in-school experience so they know the dynamics and wrestle of ideological liberation, but working within the constraints of school mandates. Step 3: Teach others what you’ve learned. If educators truly believe education is transformational, then we should be ready to teach the most racist of all students. That means beginning the conversation in your own home and having those hard conversations, with boundaries and humanizing it—if you’re not ready to do that, you’re not ready to teach others. Challenges? One of the main challenges in this work is the fact that there isn’t a checklist on how to approach these things. There’s no set path with your students, your partner, your family—you have to have trust and boundaries, learning healthy communication practices. There’s an emotional journey here, and we all have some barriers, fears, and discomfort associated with addressing racial issues. Dr. Matias encourages us to stop looking for a utopia that does not exist but embrace the full range of human emotions that will come up in doing this work. One Step to Get Started To jumpstart your journey in racial justice advocacy, Dr. Matias recommends a simple yet powerful action: Read a book! If you need a place to start, she suggests her own book, Feeling White, to understand how racialized emotions impact racial justice work. And don’t do it on your own—engage in communal learning by reading together with a colleague or friend, fostering deeper conversations and shared growth. Stay Connected You can stay connected with Dr. Matias on her website, on Facebook, or by email To help you implement today’s takeaways, Dr. Matias shared her video presentation on critical whiteness studies with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 182 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT 0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons Dr Cheryl E Matias, how are you? Welcome to the podcast. 0:00:08 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Thank you so much for having me. I'm doing great. I hope you're doing well as well. 0:00:13 - Lindsay Lyons Yes, thank you. I am so thrilled to talk to you today. There is just so much of your work that is brilliant and amazing and listeners, if you don't know it, go get it immediately. 0:00:22 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias But you're going to learn today. 0:00:24 - Lindsay Lyons I'm going to learn today. Thank you for being with us. I think the first question is really you know what is important for folks to know about you, or just to keep in mind in general as we have this conversation today. 0:00:35 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Oh, thanks, you know what. It's funny. I was kind of confused about the question at the beginning. But you know, I think people know me as a racial justice scholar doing work as a professor in education. But I think people forget some of the important things that I was a classroom teacher both in LA Unified in South Central Los Angeles and in the New York Department of Education in Bed-Stuy, brooklyn. So I've taught in both of the biggest counties or the biggest school districts in the nation. That's important. But I think the more important thing about me is people ask like, why would you do this? Of course I'm passionate. I grew up in LA and I, you know, I was a teacher and I saw so many black and brown students not giving their props. And so I, you know, I think the biggest thing that motivates me is I'm a mother scholar of three. I have twins who are now going into their senior year in high school and I have a little one I call my post-tenure baby. So as much as I am so committed as an activist, as an educator, as a researcher, my deepest motivations have always been to give my own children the education they so deserve. 0:01:47 - Lindsay Lyons That is such a beautiful grounding for our conversation and just for our work in the space. I think it's so deeply personal and I thank you for sharing that with folks. I'm curious to know what the kind of big dream you alluded to it, but what kind of the big dream for the grand scheme of education is. I always love grounding this in Dr Bettina Love's work how she discusses freedom. Dreaming, I think, is really inspiring and also grounds us in that justice work right Dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So what is that big dream that you hold for the field? 0:02:22 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Thank you for asking. First, I'm very pleased to hear that you're grounding the work and how Bettina frames everything. I think she is such an inspiration in how we conceptualize the work and I like to even draw further from her with her ideas of like Black joy and Black love. So I think one of the biggest dreams I have for education is to reclaim that by particularly letting go of fear Fearing that which we do not know, fearing conversations, fearing being labeled something fearing. We need to let go of fear because fear shouldn't be deciding the type of avenues that we have in our lives personally, nor should it be what we are guiding our decision-making and policies for education. 0:03:16 - Lindsay Lyons That is so good. I, literally an hour ago, I was just with facilitators who are talking about, we're talking about and planning events for thinking about history, education, and one of the values that we landed on was courage, and we need to have courage to do this well and just to be human beings in community with one another, and so I love this idea of letting go of fear. So many times I think there are things that come out of that fear that are so disruptive and we don't identify fear as the root. So I really appreciate you naming this, thank you. I think a lot of this work around racial justice is really sometimes the biggest shift for me has been a shift in mindset that gets me to the point of like, okay, now I see things differently, this is a new lens, this is a whatever. I'm just in a different headspace and now I can proceed. I can like be better in this space, I can be a better community member, I can be a more courageous. You know that it just comes easier when we have that like mindset shift, and I'm curious if you know of folks who a mindset shift, where you've seen folks really kind of move forward with more thoughtfulness, purpose, whatever it is after having made it, if that question makes sense. 0:04:32 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Yeah, it does. I mean, I think that's the most important aspect moving beyond fear right Is changing your mind shift. Let's take, for example, something that you're fearful in personal life. For me, at one point I was super afraid of dogs and I couldn't be around them. But I had to shift my mind, my mind frame, and say and put myself amidst dogs my sister's dogs, actually dogs got a whole weekend before my kids and just really said no, I am going, I'm not afraid, I am going to enjoy this, I'm going to embrace this as a part of my journey of becoming a better person. In the same vein, we really need to think about mind shifts as a way of rethinking how we think about race. Now, we know we all grew up whether you're a person of color, whether you're white, we all grew up with the same Kumbaya story of Dr Martin Luther King, that we all bleed the same blood. It doesn't matter about race. And then you know, post Michael Brown and Breonna Taylor, of course the world saw what they like to coin a global racial awakening, right. But you know, the truth is we're not post-racial, we're not seeing race. We need to rethink how we see race and racism Because if we really think about it. Racism is not the problem in education. Racial bias is not the problem tripped out. What the biggest problem is is how white supremacy gets instituted in the fabric and the everyday of our practices, and it does so by the ideologies of whiteness. We need to tackle the actual disease and not the symptom, and that's what I've always said. In patriarchy, right, we talk. It's absolutely important that we understand how glass ceilings, rape culture and sexism impact women In this. At the same token, we also need to understand how male privilege, toxic masculinity and all of that, you know, impacts how women are, how women engage and navigate this society. So, in the same vein, we need to also think about how white supremacy held up by individual acts of whiteness, your ideas of whiteness, emotions even of whiteness, which I've written extensively about. We need to understand how those individual acts become a collective force to uphold white supremacist ideology. And so I think that shift needs to happen and we need to move away from American history X, you know, and Edward Norton's great display of a neo-Nazi. We need to shift what we understand about being culpable of racist acts and racist discourse and racist behavior. It's not a person who's obviously always trying to be malicious, but it could be. These quote-unquote unintended consequences right. So remove intention and let's move ourselves through our fear and start to understand a new way of understanding race, white supremacy and whiteness in society. 0:07:49 - Lindsay Lyons Oh my gosh, that's just so well said, thank you. Thank you so much for that. I really appreciated how, in the introduction to the other elephant in the classroom, you and Paul Gorski talk about how it's both the systemic structure pieces and the individual acts, right, and that sometimes talking about the structural pieces removes the individual like. That was just a really big moment for me to be like right, that's exactly what is happening in discourse now, particularly amongst white liberals, right, and that idea of white liberalism coming into discourse. And so I just am so amazed by all of your work and I think it is truly helpful for the mindset shifts just in the way that you talk and write about it. 0:08:34 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias So thank you for that grounding, really thankful that you pointed that out, because that's what we're seeing a lot, and I remember writing that because I am so thankful that there's more people interested in racial justice. Whether you are a black indigenous person of color or white racially identified, you know, the thing is we need to always keep in mind that when we talk about these larger isms, we still have to honor that we are still part and parcel of different systems and so you don't want the situation that Eduardo Bonilla Silva wrote, where it's like there's racism without racist. We have to be culpable of certain actions that we hold. So when we talk about larger system things and I know we've been pushing that with the critical race theory, to understand race in a larger systemic, and that's wonderful, I'm glad people are grasping but then they moved away from taking their own onus and agency like, well, I'm not, or they start to put these factions on white people themselves and I'm like, hey, hold up now. So in the same token, with any other ism for men, for heteroaggressivism, we need to still take onus of that privilege that might unintentionally harm others. So thank you for pointing that out, lindsay. 0:09:49 - Lindsay Lyons Absolutely, and I think, for maybe a school leader who is listening to this conversation and thinking about their own thoughts, mindsets and those of their staff, I'm curious to know what your thoughts are in terms of the brave know the brave actions required, as folks are in these instructional spaces, in these school communities and responsible for both themselves and leading and working in community with you know staff. I don't know if you want to speak to either the teacher lens of that or the leader lens or both, but I'm curious to know what those actions look like as we engage in this meaningful work or labor for justice. 0:10:28 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Absolutely, and everyone plays a role, whether they're in the academia, you know, doing the scholarship and the research, whether they're the K-12 teachers on the ground doing, you know, working with our babes, or they're the, or they're administrators, you know, trying to, you know, balance this fine line of wanting to do justice work but still having to, you know, you know, cater to the needs of the district. So I think some of the greatest advice I would take is it's so important one to stop looking for checklists, because when we rely too, too surface-like, on checklists, then we think, oh, I got it, I'm done, you know. But I think the More important thing is we really need to investigate more deeply the real issue here. If we're talking about racism, that's one aspect, but I told you that that was the symptom of white supremacist thought. So if they have not studied whiteness or even the emotionalities of whiteness in education, they need to delve deeper, because once we have a thorough understanding of the problem can we engage in different types of policies, actions that will change and pedagogies that will really change the context. So stop relying on checklists, start relying on hey, we're educators, rely on educating yourself, you know. So that would be a number one action. Number two is advocate as you're starting to read and learn yourself as a student, because we're lifelong learners. We always say that, so believe in it. I think it's important that we think of, we advocate for these people who are doing the research to come into the schools, and we should be judicious, because I know there's a lot of people doing diversity work, but maybe, if we're talking about K-12 teachers or administrators, we might want to actually have people who've been in that role. You get wonderful scholars who do this work and their work is amazing. Don't get me wrong, I honor it. At the same time, if you want advocacy about getting some stuff done and getting some like you were saying, book clubs earlier, or getting scholars to come, you want to make sure that they too have been k-12 teachers or they too have been school principals, so they understand the dynamics and having to wrestle with the dynamics of ideological liberation to the, the constraining. I mean I taught during open court, you know. So you know having to balance that with school mandated stuff. So that's another thing. And I think the third thing that is so important so you did the individual, you did the advocacy for your community is, you know, to start teaching others. Right. We're great, we're educators. Guess what we truly believe? Education is transformational. Then we should be ready to teach the most racist of all students. And it starts at home. I always ask my students why is it that you don't talk about race and whiteness at the dinner table when Uncle Joe comes over? And I said if you can't have that conversation with Uncle Joe and make boundaries and still make it humanizing, then you're not ready to teach that to others. And so I think those three let me stop at that because if it gets overwhelming, because we have so much to do as teachers but I think those are three one, educate yourself. Two, it's a matter of advocating now for the knowledge that needs to be brought in. And three, doing what we do best teach others those are so good. 0:14:16 - Lindsay Lyons and I also love how you really brought it to the personal family dinner example, because I think sometimes we block off. This is my work at school and this is who I am at home, and this is about being a full human in all of the spaces and doing the work in all of the spaces. And I think it's very easy for white liberalism to like come to the table, come to the dinner table, right, and be be part of that there in that silence and avoidance. So I just appreciate that specificity because I think that probably hits home for a lot of folks. So thank you. 0:14:49 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Absolutely. I actually had a student once. Oh no, she was a professor and she wanted to learn. She had asked me to help her, coach her, in becoming a better professor on racial justice. But it turned out for the whole year she was doing a lot more work on cultivating a more humanizing relationship with her father and her family members in the Midwest. And I said that is the most important thing, because it's not about us versus them, because if you literally start to think like that, you're adopting ism, ism type of men, binary thinking, and that's what racism, that's what white supremacy, that's what heterosexism, that's what I know. Uh, all of that does it creates us in binaries. So it's about how you can continue to have humanizing relationships with people with boundaries and with love. So it's not a matter of shutting Uncle Joe's out, it's a matter of saying no. I hear you when I study this and I need you to honor my perspective in this. 0:15:53 - Lindsay Lyons And what a great space if there's already love present, right? As opposed to creating love from scratch in a brand new group of students every year, right? What a great place to practice that. 0:16:02 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Exactly exactly, and education goes not only to our K-12 students or our college students. You're an educator. You educate the people around you. Absolutely, I am imagining folks who are listening, might be thinking about. You know, oh, this moment that I tried this thing, or I, you know, I invited Uncle Joe in and it didn't go well. Or you know, whatever, what are the challenges that you see come up for folks. And then how do like in any relationship with K-12 students? No checklist, right? You don't have a checklist to deal with your spouse or partner. You don't have a checklist to deal with your parents. You don't have a checklist to deal with your cousins, your aunties and uncles, and so you have to trust on human behavior and boundaries and healthy communicate. That's it right. So you can expect and I always tell this, I do this, but you'd like a little pedagogical tool on K-12 teachers or school leaders who want to do this exercise. I would say okay, and I tell them to write it out because I don't want them taking a picture after I write it on the board. I say okay, tell me why you don't talk to Uncle Joe at the dinner table about race. Tell me why and have him list all the reasons. They'll tell you everything like oh, he's going to say that was yesteryear. He'll get angry. He'll start screaming at me. Everything. He'll dismiss everything I said. He'll make me start crying, he'll make me, you know. Just write it all down. And I think it's really important to say okay, now when I'm learning anew and I'm discomforted and I feel fearful and I feel I'm being attacked or whatever, say, don't act like Uncle Joe and just know that those are the actual emotional mechanisms and hence why I study white emotionalities in my book, feeling White. But these are the actual things and emotional journey you will go through and it's not to say it's bad. You know people always think they just want sunshine and rainbows and unicorns, but you know, part of human life is feeling the yin and the yang of it all. So when you actually stick at the table and you, you may not come out perfect on the first time, but it's a matter like. Any parent would know this, any teacher would know this, any person who has always been a good friend, daughter, spouse. It's about the longevity. You know. It's about the ride, not the end goal. And so at this point, as you engage in this type of work, stop looking for utopia that does not exist. In fact, critical race theory. I know I'm going to bust your bubble. Derrick Bell straight up said there's gonna be a permanence of racism. It will mutate in the most awfully grotesque way, right, but it's an amazing awfully and grow like how did it turn to that now? But, um, at the same time, it's about the longevity. It's about how we continue to fight as humanity, how we continue to advocate for a more humane society, because that's what this is. It's not partisan politics, it is literally a human rights issue. So when we engage in these conversations, be ready to feel the full range of human emotions and how beautiful welcome that. Embrace it and say, yeah, this still makes me passionate that I get really anxious or mad and then pull yourself back and say, but I'm not giving up. 0:19:35 - Lindsay Lyons That's so beautiful and I I think about the folks who are even working with you know, like preschoolers my kid is two and a half at this moment but, like you know, thinking about how we nurture emotions and allow kids. You know, I've heard many people say at all age levels oh, kids aren't ready for this conversation. Okay, kids are ready for the conversation. Number one I think we could agree. And then two, like the nurturing of being able to have conversations and feel emotions can be normalized at any age and that's so much of just our daily work as humans and as educators that I love that you brought it there, because I think that's part of it. Right, we need to be emotionally healthy people and like that is a like building that will constantly happen in conjunction with our anti-racist advocacy and humanity and all the things. Is that? Am I on the point there? 0:20:29 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Yes, absolutely. People think this is about hatred and cancellation. It's not. No, don't get it twisted. We started most racial justice. People have done this because they wanted a greater understanding of love. And those of you that are really interested in doing like critical race parenting, which is another work that I do I actually published a popular press. Anyone can act to say it, um, but it's called um and you can google my name, cheryl matias, and mommy is being brown bad and it's on my own children and, um, it's an article that you can download and just kind of understand how to you do these conversations with children, because by 18 months they've already internalized dominant messages about race, gender. I mean, I have boy, girl, twins and at 18 months everyone gave me pink and blue and I would put the sippy cups on the table and my son would take the blue and give the pink one to his sister and vice versa. So if we're acting as if, oh, our kids are too young to study race, they already know, just like we have to talk about sex drugs to our kids. What messages do you want your child to have about a certain topic? So talk to them about race. 0:21:48 - Lindsay Lyons Thank you. I think there's kind of a lifelong work to this, to all of this right. This is lifelong, as you said, and so I'm curious to know what's a good, like momentum builder, what's a good one next step that someone could take if they're listening to this on the drive into work, for example, and they're about to start the school day, or they're listening to it on the way home and about to like go be with family, like what's that one first step that you would encourage someone to do to kind of keep it going or kind of jumpstart some action? 0:22:21 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Well, you know what? Read a book. Read a book, right, we're a bunch of nerds. So how about that? How about you read a book with someone? Pick up, pick up my book feeling white. How's that? You know, if you want to understand how racialized emotions really impact, how we do racial justice work, because you're feeling so anxious, let's find out where that comes from, feeling white. If you want to know how whiteness impacts people of color in the education, from k all the way to 20 to college, you know, like, like, oh, I'm a good person. You can pick up my book Surviving Beckys and that's just all stories. There's no citations on that book and there's even discussion questions. You've got all genres, from horror, sci-fi it's all just stories. And then you can see the messages behind each story. It's all just stories, and then you can see the messages behind each story. So pick up a book. Come on, guys, we're educators. Start there and don't do this journey on your own. Say you know what cousin, you know what? Uncle Joe, you know what? Maybe a former student who has become your mentor? 0:23:28 - Lindsay Lyons Let's read this together. That is a great call to action. Yes, let's do this together. I love it, and so I will link to. For anyone listening, driving, doing dishes, whatever, I will link to those books in the blog post, so no need to pause what you're doing and write them down. I'll link them. As a close, I think I love that we've been talking about lifelong learning, and so I'm curious. This question is purely for fun. It can relate to what we talked about or something different. What is something that you personally have been learning about lately? 0:23:57 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Oh, gosh One. I think I constantly learn. Those of you that don't know me I'm a salsa and bachata dancer. I am constantly learning. I have been to Cuba, puerto Rico, I've been to the Dominican Republic to perfect my bachata, my moves, my salsa. That's one thing I'm always perfecting too. On being a mother, for goodness sakes, I think I got it down and then I'm like my kids just school me and call me sus, you know. So you know, no cap right. So I'm literally trying all the time to be a better mother, because, as the work that I've done mother, scholar work, to be a better mother it makes you a better scholar, and make a scholar makes you a better mother. So that's another aspect I'm always trying to learn. And the third is I'm actually coming back to my faith, which I've had, I think, a lot of justice workers. We pushed away from our faith, thinking, oh, it's too rigid. But if we push away from our faith, we're never in the spaces to make change. We're never in the spaces to make change. And so I'm just learning how to come back into my faith, be a service to God and, you know, just not make it seem like those people who are these type of Catholic Christians or whatever the case may be. They're the enemy, but showing them nope. You know what Jesus was, the first social justice worker. So I think it's a lifelong learning. I can list thousands. And does it make me overwhelmed and anxious at times? Absolutely. But I'm going to do an epistemological shift that I just told you, a mindset reframe. How exciting that I don't know it all and I'm still ready to learn. 0:25:56 - Lindsay Lyons That is so good. Okay, we're gonna quote that. That's great. That is so good. I think people are gonna want to grab your book, get in touch with you, follow you wherever you exist, in the online spaces or in-person spaces. Where should folks connect with you, if that's okay? 0:26:12 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias I do have a website at CherylMatiascom, but I don't check that email as much. I'm sorry, guys, it's just too much, it's too many hats. But you can always connect with me on Facebook. I have a professional Facebook. I know people try to connect with me on Insta, but that's personal family, so don't take it personally. But Facebook I'm old, I'll do Facebook. You can Google me and I'm at the University of San Diego now. I'm no longer at University of Colorado, no longer at University of Kentucky for those 15 years, but I'm back home in California University of San Diego. But I'm back home in California University of San Diego. You can email me anytime and I definitely appreciate the calls. I think I just met with someone who read my book just about a couple months ago and we just, you know, sat and drank tea and talk shop for a little bit, you know. So I really appreciate the feedback. I even had someone who reached out from South Africa saying it feels like, after reading Feeling White, I had coffee with you, like you're my girlfriend and I'm like, well, I am now. So I think it's important, just like, google me, email me at my university, email at San Diego and follow me on Facebook. Amazing, dr Martinez. Thank you so, so much for being on Facebook Amazing, Dr Martinez. 0:27:31 - Lindsay Lyons Thank you so, so much for being on the podcast today. I appreciate your time. 0:27:35 - Dr. Cheryl E. Matias Oh, absolutely. Thank you for having me here and hopefully it reaches the ears that needs to be heard or be encouraged or supported.
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In this episode, we’re exploring the list of 10 elements of white liberalism developed by Dr. Cheryl Matias and Dr. Paul Gorski, which I read in their call for proposals for the book, The Other Elephant in the (Class)room.
Why? In the Introduction to their book, Matias and Gorski write “we often have the hardest time finding traction in schools with large numbers of liberal-ish white educators: the ones who are enthusiastic about celebrating diversity and learning about cultures, but squeamish when it comes to more significant efforts to redistribute access and opportunity,” (p. 1). They explain “liberal” is, in alignment with McLaren’s (1997) use of the term, as in contrast to “critical,” writing “critical approaches go right to the heart of the matter, uncovering systems of advantage and disadvantage, privilege and oppression…In that absence [of critical approaches], the liberal stuff creates the illusion of antiracist movement, the optics of racial inclusion, but not actual racial justice. We can’t Multicultural Arts Fair our way to racial justice,” White liberalism, they write, “individualizes racism and obscures systemic oppression…undermines antiracism efforts, and…poses no serious threat to racial injustice.” (pp. 1-2). What are the 10 elements of white liberalism?
What do we do? This school year, actively notice where these elements show up in your school community, in your own individual actions. Nurture a community that celebrates such identification, and pivot to the critical end of spectrum. In the authors’ words, “Although some may argue that it is out of line to critique the well-intentioned actions of others, we see it, instead, as an act of love and justice,” (p. 15). To help you consider ways to sustainably advance racial justice in your school or district, I’m sharing my Systems Transformation Playlist with you for free. (You’ll want to check out page 3!) And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 181 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02 - Lindsay Lyons I'm educational justice coach, lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for teachership podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting, because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant, superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nerding out about co-creating curriculum with students, I made this show for you. Here we go. Welcome to another episode of the Time for Teachership podcast. I am very excited today to talk about the 10 elements of white liberalism, so we'll really dive into what is white liberalism. How do you know it is happening and be able to identify it yourself in your educational community? Now I'm exploring this with you because this is actually a list of 10 elements that was developed by Dr Shira Matias and Dr Paul Gorski, which I read in their call for proposals for the book the Other Elephant in the Classroom, and Dr Cherie Bridges-Patrick and I contributed toa chapter to that book, which is super cool. Definitely grab the book, but here we go, we're going to get into it. Let's do this. So this episode is really going to be kind of a microcosm of, or maybe even just an intro intro to the book, the other elephant in the classroom and I'm very excited to kind of share some quotes, share the elements that are really the framework for the book, that I first saw in the call for proposals for chapters for this book. So let's get into the why. I'm going to use the author's own words, because they're just awesome. And so in the introduction to their book, dr Cheryl Matias and Dr Paul Gorski write, quote we have we often have the hardest time finding traction in schools with large numbers of liberal-ish white educators, the ones who are enthusiastic about celebrating diversity and learning about cultures, but squeamish when it comes to more significant efforts to redistribute access and opportunity end quote. And they contrast this directly with, like, the openly racist folks in spaces, right. So actually those folks are very transparent about what is happening and they are very honest about their stance on racial justice, and so it's actually really hard to get traction because we're not even speaking aloud, we're not even to use a less ableist term like acknowledging, right, the racism that is part of, really truly embedded in and formed from the structures of white supremacy, right. If we're not acknowledging it, then we can't really do anything, and if folks are just openly acknowledging where they stand, well, we could like address it directly. So I think this is a really big mindset shift. We often talk about mindset shifts on this podcast and I think this is a big one. So we have to redefine what anti-racism activity looks like, what racial justice activity looks like, and we have to be open to acknowledging white liberalism, which is not racial justice, which does not advance racial justice and often, to the author's point and the contributors to this book's point, collectively it actually inhibits racial progress, racial justice and racial transformation. And so, I think, racial justice transformation. There we go. I think what I really want to do is continue with the author's words here in their introduction to the text and I keep saying authors, they are the editors of this volume, they authored the introduction and then they did a beautiful job curating all of these chapters together. So let's dive into their words from the introduction a bit more. So they explain that liberal in the term white liberalism is actually in alignment with McLaren's 1997 use of the term liberal, in contrast to, maybe, the term critical. And so they write, quote critical approaches go right to the heart of the matter, uncovering systems of advantage and disadvantage, privilege and oppression. In that absence of critical approaches, the liberal stuff creates the illusion of anti-racist movement, the optics of racial inclusion, but not actual racial justice. We can't multicultural arts fare our way to racial justice. I love that quote. So it really gives a framework right for why white liberalism is simply not enough right. And white liberalism specifically, they write quote individualizes racism and obscures systemic oppression, undermines anti-racism efforts and poses no serious thought to racial injustice Excuse me, serious threat to racial injustice. So I think this is a really good point that if we are truly to be dismantling racial injustice, if we are truly to be anti-racist activists in the context of educational spaces, then we truly need to acknowledge that white liberalism activity is just not enough. And so the question now is what is white liberalism activity? How do I know that it's not actually racial justice? What do these things look like? What are the things that I personally might be doing, or that I might see fellow colleagues, teachers, staff members participating in, that they might not even know is actually white liberalism and not contributing to racial justice? So we're going to walk through those and, again, these are from that list that the editors developed in their call for proposals, so I will link to that document as well. But I'm just reading straight off this list and then I can go into a little bit of depth as well for each one. These are also listed on the blog post for this podcast episode, which is located at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 181. So if you're driving and interested in catching them all, you do not need to take notes. Know that that is written for you in a safe location and you can access it later when you need it, perhaps to share it with your staff and have everyone do a kind of introspective, reflective activity where it's like where have we seen these things or where have we actually participated in? Not just observed, but what have we participated in, because it's really hard to acknowledge our own stuff. However, that's a huge part of this and I really love the author's sentiments of really this is an act of love to be able to critique and highlight when we're just not doing enough. And we know that if we are pursuing this, pursuing racial justice, and we call ourselves anti-racist educators or whatever the phrase may be that you name yourself truly to do it well. We want to do it well. Right, if we name ourselves that and truly to do it well. We need a community of folks who are contributing to highlighting when we're not doing well enough, and we need that for ourselves. So with that in mind, here we go. What are the 10 elements of white liberalism? Number one mistaking celebrations of diversity for racial justice progress. So, again, in the words of the editors right, we can't multicultural arts fare our way to racial justice, like that's what it is, when we have these culture days, when we have these moments of like, learning about different cultures or celebrating different foods or music or clothing. Right, that's not that it's bad, it's just not enough, right, we can't have an absence of the deeper stuff. So if that's where your kind of quote unquote, dei initiatives end, that's just not going to contribute to racial justice. Number two equating peace, the absence of tension, as Dr Martin Luther King Jr described it in his letter from Birmingham jail with justice. So the idea of equating peace with justice, right, that's not racial justice. Right, racial justice is not. Oh, we don't talk about it. So there's no tension we're avoiding, we're all good. Right, that is not justice we have to be able to have the constructive conflict, the disorienting dilemmas, all that stuff that we've talked about before on this podcast many times, one of the quadrants of discourse that is not contributing to racial justice. Right, this is avoidance, this is peace as the absence of tension. And we've been folks have been saying this, right, people have been saying this as the collective we for a very long time, right, dr Martin Luther King Jr's letter was decades ago and he was calling it out then, and he was calling it out then. Peace is not justice. No-transcript. There are so many times in my life that I have had good intentions and the impact did not match the intent and I felt defensive. I think we've all been there, right, I continue to do that, just in daily, day-to-day things. Right, maybe not racial justice related specifically, but oh, I didn't mean to say it that way, oh, I didn't mean right. And so that defensive response is natural and normal, but we have to interrogate it, we have to critique it, we have to reflect on okay, what was the impact? What were my actions? What was the impact in terms of the felt experience of whoever experienced my actions? Right, and it doesn't really matter what my intentions were if my impact was bad. So we have to have actions that promote racial justice, not saying, oh, we tried but it failed. But, well, create space for accept and transform our actions based on any sort of feedback that someone wants to give us that the impact was bad, right, that's a huge growth moment for us. That's a very big risk that someone is taking to highlight, even internally, right To reflect on your own stuff, to say, ooh, actually my impact was not good. That's good on you for reflecting, right. So that idea of being open to critique, I think, is a kind of corollary here that I'm personally just adding All right. Number four slowing racial justice progress by insisting on quote baby steps and quote developmental processes that protect white people from having to grapple seriously with racism. So this idea of I will share an example that I think often of in this case and I think it's related. So it's the idea of setting in a strategic goal conversation, setting goals where the percentage of students who achieve the goal is not 100%. This bothers me so much. Now I understand things happen and it is hard. It is very challenging to reach 100% and there are many factors to consider. However, if our goal is to educate all students. Our goal is to educate all students, and all that other stuff is on us to figure out. And if we don't quite get there, like, okay, we figure it out some more, we go a little bit further, we reflect, we learn more right, all of the things that we do as educators and really as learners. But we don't say that the goal is only 80% of our students are going to achieve, only 80% of our students are going to achieve, only 80% of our students are going to be able to read by the end of this year. Right, like 100%. We can't say, oh, these are our baby steps on the way to 100%, that we will get to eventually someday, maybe in the future, but in the meantime, all of the students who are here are just not going to achieve and suffer, right? So this idea of, like, demanding action now, this sense of urgency, this sense of the students in front of us deserve 100% to be our goal, I think is really important here. That's what that number makes me think of. Okay, number five adhering to a savior mentality or some other ideology that positions white people as the fixers or saviors of students and families of color. So this idea that I am helping, I am giving back to community. This is like a sacrifice for for me to like, go in and like do this thing gross right, like, no, like. Why are you doing this work? Dr Cherie Bridges-Patrick has said to me you know, as a white person like Lindsay, you need to do this work for yourself. You can't do this work for me because in the long run you are not going to stay committed because you're doing this for someone else. You have to believe that you, as a community member in this, in this space on this earth, as a member of the human community, are harmed by the racial injustice that impacts fellow about right. That happens to white people when we are complicit or participating in or even just observing silently or just like living in right this racial injustice, right A society that perpetuates racial injustice, right? So this idea that like the savior mentality, or like we are the folks with the answers, as white folks, like no. I think also this speaks to the shared leadership component that we often talk about on this podcast, where it's like Ayanna Pressley says this best Her mom has the quote of like the people closest to the pain should be closest to the power, or something I might be paraphrasing a bit, but the folks who are experiencing the negative impacts need to be part of the conversation of how to dismantle white supremacy. So I think that's another piece that, like the knowledge, the wisdom, the experience, the ideas for moving forward, the felt experiences are in the space. Like those folks should be leading the way and we as white folks I'm speaking as a white woman should be allies right, should be co-conspirators, should be whatever name you give it, all right. Number six misconstruing equity as equal numbers or representation, rather than the elimination of inequity and oppression. I see a lot of folks who are in the leadership space who are saying things like we are going to increase our numbers of BIPOC teachers by this percentage this year, great, awesome, you should. And if you are saying that is enough, it's not enough. Folks are not going to come to your space and stay in your space, or perhaps they will out of necessity or whatever, but they're not going to enjoy it and be thriving if we don't eliminate the inequity and oppression that prevented people from applying in the first place right or prevented people from being hired in the first place, and this is a huge piece. Number seven superficially expressing a desire for diversity, but rarely engaging in meaningful practices that substantially incorporate the voices and desires of racially marginalized communities. So, again, I think the same point that I was just talking about right when we actually engage in shared leadership, in decentering our white selves right. Again, I'm speaking as a white person here because I'm just being reflective of my own experience and things that I've learned and I'm still learning. But if white folks, white liberals right in this white liberal space, are not decentering ourselves, white liberals right in this white liberal space, are not decentering ourselves, then we are just engaging in white liberalism. We are expressing the desire for diversity but not engaging in the meaningful practices. Number eight refusing to acknowledge the expertise or authority of people of color, even on matters of racial equity. Do not tell people what their experience is and what the answer should be. Right, this is I've I've repeated this multiple times in the last few points, but I think I think this is a big one. Number nine white educators manipulating the narratives of people of color in order to position themselves as quote well-intentioned or quote innocent. Again, this is related to some previous numbers on this list and some conversation and ad-libbing that I've done around this, but the idea of thinking you can use someone else's words to make yourself seem well-intentioned, a good person, whatever the narrative is, even when you have messed up, even when you have ignored racial injustice, when you have contributed to white liberalism and not engaged more fully in thoughtful conversation, pushing the boundaries, being critical of the structures of white supremacy. You can't just take someone else's words who happens to be Black or Indigenous or Latinx or Asian American or whatever right Native. You can't just take those words like oh, this person likes me, so like I'm cool. No, number 10, engaging in toxic positivity, insisting that conversations about racism are too quote negative and we should focus on the quote positive. So again, I think this one is similar to that idea of avoidance and the confusion of peace and justice. Right, conflating the two. Really important that, even if it's uncomfortable, we lean into that discomfort. We will not have growth without the discomfort and that's something we really want to and should be normalizing in our spaces. We have to be able to grapple with discomfort. I mean, even on a, on a super basic academic level, students need to be uncomfortable with being wrong. Right? Students make mistakes all the time. That's how we learn. We learn from the mistakes with formative feedback. Right, that's how learning works, and we are institutions of education. We need to tolerate, engage with, lean into the discomfort and view it as a learning opportunity, experience it as a growth moment. That might not be comfortable, but boy am I going to be better after, right. So what do we do with all this? This is a lot and, honestly, as I was reading this, I'm like, yes, I can identify an instance, at least an instance of every single one of these numbers on this list, right, that I have personally engaged with. That does not feel good. So what do we do with this? I think the school year as a very first step. I often end podcast episodes with, like what's the one next step to gain the momentum. So there's a lot of steps, right. There's a lot of structures we could look into. I will link to my systems transformation playlist on the blog post. You can check out page three, which is all about racial justice. Lots of resources and guests on the podcast who are way smarter than me and have a lot more expertise and wisdom to share on this, but you can check that out. If you're looking for bigger things, you can certainly buy the book, and so we'll link to that as well in the blog post. The other elephant in the classroom again is the name of that. But again, I think the first step to get the ball rolling here is actively notice where these elements show up in your school community this year. Reflect on your own individual actions. Where are you engaging in these, even in this moment? Reflect, even listen to this podcast episode again, or open up the blog post and read through and identify for each one. Where have you most recently done this? Right, it's okay, no shame. Done this? Right, it's okay, no shame. Just like acknowledge it and then do better, right? Also, nurture a community that celebrates that identification of when it's showing up, that kind of calls each other in, so to speak, to the conversation and says, hey, I noticed this. Right. And, of course, being able to pivot to the critical end of the liberal critical spectrum, that community piece, tolerating the discomfort, engaging with it, seeing it as growth, being able to truly celebrate as growth opportunities and celebrate the vulnerability of whoever is pointing it out as well. Right, that is huge. If you can create a culture like that, you are on the path to sustainable success. That is a winning culture of true justice. Right, you have to have that community built to be able to do this work. In the author's words I'm just going to conclude with those because they are brilliant and again, author's editor's words. In the introduction which they authored they write although some may argue that it is out of line to critique the well-intentioned actions of others, we see it instead as an act of love and justice. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazzed as I am about my coaching program for increasing student-led discussions in your school. Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm how I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan, witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy, no strings attached brainstorm call at lindsaybethlyonscom slash contact. Until next time, leaders think big, act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network Better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at teachbettercom slash podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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In this episode, we talk with Dr. Rita Harvey, Partner of Systems and Transformation with the Center for Innovation in Education. With 10+ years of experience in urban education, she is passionate about developing and implementing inclusive programs that engage a range of students.
In our interview, Dr. Harvey shares her profound insights on the transformative power of inclusive and empathetic educational systems, underscoring the need for educational environments that foster a sense of belonging for all children. She also discusses the importance of community engagement and the necessity of listening deeply and setting boundaries to ensure all voices are respected and feel safe to engage in important conversations and change. The Big Dream Dr. Harvey’s big dream for education is to develop and implement systems that are expansive enough to hold all children—particularly those on the margins. Inspired by her dreams for her own young daughter, Dr. Harvey dreams of systems that ensure every child feels safe, welcomed, and included. Further, she emphasizes the importance of developing systems grounded in inclusivity, empathy, co-creation, and reciprocity, which collectively contribute to a sense of belonging and ownership for both students and parents. Mindset Shifts Required To achieve Dr. Harvey’s big dream of expansive education systems, we need to embrace a few mindset shifts. Her work with the Center of Innovation in Education centers on four key habits that tie-in here: inclusivity, empathy, co-creation, and reciprocity. In particular, Dr. Harvey believes that building mindsets around inclusion and empathy is important to create a system that holds as many children as possible. Dr. Harvey encourages us to think about developing inclusive and empathetic mindsets by first asking how we can make the education system a safe space for all children. Then, there’s a mindset piece around empathy that needs to be cultivated—we have to understand the humanity in each other to really begin to transform systems. Action Steps Dr. Harvey’s work with the assessment for learning community requires getting to the center of the spaces that need change and bringing in people from the margins. Annual convenings with education stakeholders actively work to build a space and foundation so everyone feels a sense of belonging, community, and belonging. Stepping into spaces that aren’t always kind to concepts of anti-racism or anti-patriarchy is challenging, but necessary. In this space, conversations are held with empathy and curiosity so honest dialogue can take place. This work can be done by taking these action steps in your specific context: Step 1: Start by getting to know the students and their families, particularly those who seem uninterested or challenging. Build genuine relationships based on understanding and empathy. Step 2: Engage deeply with the community by holding regular meetings and listening to their stories to build trust. This ensures that all voices are heard and respected. Step 3: Create safe and welcoming spaces for dialogue. Prioritize the protection and respect of participants, and set boundaries to ensure that the needs of marginalized groups are met. Challenges? Educators are facing significant burnout, exacerbated by the lack of respect for the profession and the increasing demands placed on them. The challenge lies in creating healing spaces within educational systems that can support and hold taxed educators facing burnout and overwhelm. The other challenge is building spaces of hope and connection, especially when educators are tired and drained. How do we create those healing spaces for folks to continue to do this good work? One Step to Get Started Begin by focusing on a single student or their family who may seem checked out or disinterested. Make a genuine effort to understand their background, needs, and motivations. This small step can lead to a deeper connection and serve as a foundation for building more inclusive and empathetic educational practices. Stay Connected You can check out Dr. Harvey’s work on the Center for Innovation in Education website, and connect with her directly by email at [email protected]. To help you implement today’s takeaways, Dr. Harvey is sharing her principles of practice from the Assessment 4 Learning community with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 180 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT 0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons Rita Harvey. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 0:00:06 - Rita Harvey Hello, thank you for having me, Lindsay. 0:00:09 - Lindsay Lyons I am so excited. I'm excited to learn more about you, I'm excited to be connected with you and your beautiful work. I am particularly just from before we hit record just excited about all of your ways of thinking that extend my own thinking and ways of grappling with some of these questions. So really excited. And I think for the first question, it's just you know, what do we want to keep in mind? What do you want us, what do you want the listeners to keep in mind today as we jump in? 0:00:38 - Rita Harvey This was an interesting question for me and thinking about what do we want to keep in mind? And so, in thinking about myself, I think there are two really important things that I've been grappling with lately as a Black woman, black mother, and thinking about sort of my history, and I think it's the idea that in this particular moment, I think it's part of my academic intellectual history, but I think Black women are a bomb in this world, and so I think about even the exact moment when we're doing this recording and the things that have been happening and the importance of Black women in particular and my history with Black women and being what it means to heal as a Black woman and as a Black mother. And then the second thing that I've been thinking a lot about is in summer of 2023, I was diagnosed with autism, and so I think about a lot and I approach a lot with an understanding of myself as a neurodivergent person, and I think it comes up sometimes in sort of my even sort of the linear idea of my thinking, and so if I get too divergent, just bring me back. 0:01:52 - Lindsay Lyons Thank you so much. That is such a helpful framing, just from like neurodivergence framing and also in like the beauty of that right and like where that takes us in ways that we need to go to be able to break out of like the way things have always been done, because those don't work, in addition to the healing, and also to contextualize your point, just for listeners to know. So this episode will be published a few months from now and so we are recording this on July 23. And this is just after the weekend where presumably we'll see what life brings us, but Kamala Harris will be the presumptive presidential person on the Democratic ticket. So very exciting things happening and lots of conversations to happen. So thank you for contextualizing us in the time we're in. I think one of the big questions that I love starting with is Dr Bettina Love talks about this so eloquently, about freedom, dreaming. She names them as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. So I like to contextualize kind of our big dreams for education, for the world, even if you want to go that big. But thinking about that with that quote in mind, what are the big dreams you hold? 0:03:03 - Rita Harvey I think on the sort of most macro which I think is also very micro is that we eventually develop and implement systems that are expansive enough to hold all of the children that exist. When I entered teaching I was very young. I was 22 and fresh out of college, having majored in African-American studies, and so it was a very sort of Teaching became the application of a lot of things that I believed in In terms of cultural responsiveness, in terms of I was a special education teacher making sure that I met the needs of those children, but it was still very sort of philosophically grounded. I was faced with these children, and now I am 39 and I have my own daughter, who is just turned four, and so when I think about education and the systems that I want to create, I want to create systems that can hold my child and be expansive enough for all that she is, but also all of the other children that exist and enter these systems, or especially those that exist on them and on the margins, because I think that would also hold those who are currently centered in many ways in the systems. 0:04:19 - Lindsay Lyons Absolutely. I love this notion of expansiveness too, because I think it speaks to like. The problems that we have currently had with our systems is that they are the exact opposite. Right, there is this one way to do school. There is this it is narrow, it is defined. I just love the possibility in the word expansive as well. There's so much possibility there. It's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that as the kind of grounding for the next few questions. One of the things I think, and even that in and of itself could answer this question as well. But I think there's a lot of mindset shifting that has to happen before we do transformative work or transform systems to be more expansive, and I think that can be such a challenge for folks who are trying to live that out. What are some that like? What's a mindset shift that you've either seen coached people through, benefited from? What are those like that come to mind when you think about that question? Absolutely. 0:05:20 - Rita Harvey So I think, in the work that I do at the Center for Innovation in Education, so I think in the work that I do at the Center for Innovation and Education, we, as a small organization, we think about how to develop systems that have four habits, which, in many ways, habits are the beginning of those practicing those mindset shifts. And the four habits that we focus on are how to build systems that are inclusive, empathetic, filled with co-creation and reciprocity. And all four of those habits are, I think, very, very important. But for me, I think I'm really drawn into the idea of how do we make and build inclusive mindsets and empathetic ones. And so when I say inclusion, it's how do we make sure that people feel safe coming into the system of education? How do we make sure that children feel safe coming to school? How do we make sure that parents feel safe being in their school systems and not only feel safe coming into them but feel a sense of belonging and ownership in those spaces and ownership in those spaces. And then, for the second part, it's the idea of empathy as a mindset that needs to develop, because I think we have to understand the humanity in each other in order to really want to begin to transform systems, and I think empathy and the idea of belonging they play into so many other things that are important for me, such as a culturally responsive mindset or a culturally relevant mindset, and if we get into anti-racism, you have to be able to empathize and understand where people are coming from. And I think I start with the idea of inclusion leading to empathy, because you have to believe that your own needs are going to be met by a system before you can begin to empathize with others in many ways, and so I think, for me, building mindsets around inclusion and empathy are really, really important as we think about building systems that can hold as many children as possible, as many of their dreams as possible. 0:07:20 - Lindsay Lyons Wow, that's really great. I'm just thinking about your words around, just the idea of you have to believe that your own needs will be met and before you can start to empathize with others, I think there's so much that I want to like sit with. That's really good and, I think, probably a huge mindset shift, a huge pivotal piece to some of the transformative work that that you do and you help others do so. I'm curious now, with those kind of four habits in mind, or focusing on those, the inclusivity and the empathetic habits thinking about the brave actions required, what is it that either you've done, coached folks to do, seen folks do that really leads that kind of transformative work, or has led to transformative work? 0:08:09 - Rita Harvey So I think I'll focus specifically on sort of the assessment for learning community and I think, well, brave actions. That's such a challenging concept for me because I feel like frequently I don't think of myself as particularly brave. I think not necessarily the opposite of that. But as a deeply introverted person who would rather stay in my little cocoon, I think even facilitating learning communities that are grounded in the idea of inclusion and empathy, and making sure we do an annual convening and we really, as a design team when we have a design team that's for the assessment for learning community that's comprised of largely women of color, queer women, and we come together and it's how do we build a space or build a foundation so that people can come and be, feel, experience that sense of belonging, that sense of community um, a sense of empathy. And we frequently do the work in spaces that are not necessarily kind to concepts of like anti-racism and the things that I believe, and so stepping into those spaces and creating spaces that are filled with love, I don't think that's brave. I think it's necessary um creating spaces where people can speak the truth um about institutional racism and, you know, patriarchy, all of those things, colonialism and the impact they have on all of us. So how do you create a space like that where you can hold many people? And so I think we do that in many ways. I do that a lot of ways by understanding myself but decentering myself. So how do I create an inviting space that allows people to do that? And so I mean maybe it would be braver if I like shared a little bit more about myself. Maybe that's the next step and because I do like to decenter myself in a lot of the work that I do, um, create space for the voices that I think are really vital. 0:10:22 - Lindsay Lyons Yes, oh, wow, there's so much, there's so much. I love the introspection and the authentic like thought process as you're speaking, to think about what you're saying as well. This is just. I'm just so appreciate you, thank you, and I I'm curious to know too, before we hit record you were saying you know that sometimes those those brave moments are really at those that that personal level it's, it's kind of those micro moments as opposed to like the big things, and I think your answer speaks to that. I'm wondering if there is kind of a moment in mind or a scenario in mind or just kind of like a general approach to kind of key moments that you've seen really unlock a transformation in someone or build that space and deepen that sense and experience of belonging for folks. Absolutely. 0:11:09 - Rita Harvey And I'll start by, I think, the idea that the brave action. I think a lot of times we're in this moment where people do say that they're inviting folks in and so part of it is actually doing that. So let's see our latest convening. I guess this is not a space that is not unfriendly to. I'll actually talk about our convening in Tucson, in Arizona, and Arizona has a really complex history with culturally responsive, culturally relevant practices and but they have a really in the city of Tucson they have a really robust culturally responsive program. So when we were planning our assessment for learning convening in Tucson, we wanted to make sure that they felt safe and so we built these bridges and so it really required, I think, even stepping outside of my comfort zone, in the sense that we went to Tucson, we would meet weekly with members of the Tucson community and began to understand what their story was, truly, listened to the things that they were saying and I'm just thinking. I'm thinking about the idea of invitation, not just inviting in, but the, the slow process that's required to even endure, just like the awkward moments when people don't necessarily be, the awkward and uncomfortable moments when you want to fill a space with noise or you want to fill a space and I think this can happen with students as well in the classroom the need to be the expert, but really step back. So my colleague, soraya Ramos and I were planning this meeting in Tucson with two members of the culturally responsive department, and I remember the first meeting. We were online and they just couldn't believe that. You know one meeting after the other, with both allowing ourselves to be human, but also learning their story, learning about the traumas that they faced as a community After their state superintendent had basically gotten a ton of them fired and the ways that they endured to make sure that they could have this culturally responsive department of education and the same commissioner that had done state superintendent that had done that. He was in the year that we were doing the convening. He was re-elected as their state superintendent, and so they were. We had to create a space where they felt safe and we honored the work that they were doing. So I think that was one where I don't know. I don't know if it was brave on our part, but it was brave on their part to be able to do this, and so it meant that we took steps that we wouldn't necessarily have wanted. We wanted to be able to record some things, but we didn't want to put any of them at risk. We wanted to share their story in a way that felt safe for them. So and that's what I'm saying, I don't know if that's brave, but it was. It required immense listening and just stepping back, and, to this day, roshanda and Lorenzo are people that I respect so much because they are brave all of the time, but they have to do it in a way that also ensures that the teachers that work for them are safe, and so it's both. It's stepping forward, but also knowing when to create boundaries to protect folks. 0:15:11 - Lindsay Lyons Yes, I, I was thinking that, as you were saying, that sounds a little bit of a prioritization of you know, like, yeah, I want to go do this thing, we need to do this thing, and I have this other thing that's really important in the protection of people and and I think about that a lot I think you and I have academic backgrounds in addition to, like, practitioner backgrounds. I think about that a lot in terms of, you know, research and and, um, like you know, you need to record things or you need to do this, and it's like what, what's the balance between the human piece and the piece of, like, check the box? We need the thing for some file or whatever, right? So I think that that speaks deeply to me. 0:15:50 - Rita Harvey And I think there's like two sides to I think what I'm. I think there's that there's the actual connecting. But I think, like right now I'm working on a small research project in Kentucky and we're trying to figure out how to get to the margins of the community. And it is not a racially diverse community to get to the margins of the community and it is not a racially diverse community. So what the margins look like is like different than sort of how I've conceptualized the margins at other times. But we find that even as we're working with the district, even they don't know how to get to the margins, and so I think that's brave, but I think I think it's a thing from from the classroom, when you have those students whose parents you know you need to talk to but you're afraid to like, call their parents, um, the same thing it it sort of happens time and time again, and so the brave action is saying, you know what, like, let me put aside my assumptions about a community, about a person, and um, really begin to invite them in and listen to what they need so that they feel safe coming in and not just like, okay, they don't want to be here. 0:17:15 - Lindsay Lyons Right, oh, yes, that for sure. I am also wondering how, with some of these this is a bit more of a technical question, I guess, but thinking about creating these spaces in communities where you're inviting in folks at the margins, what are the? What kind of stakeholder groups are those? Are those educators or those families or those community members who are not maybe formally linked to the education system at the time? Are they young people? 0:17:36 - Rita Harvey Are you talking specifically about the one in Kentucky? 0:17:38 - Lindsay Lyons About any of them really. 0:17:39 - Rita Harvey But yeah, I think it can be. It can be all of those folks I think in the work that we've done. It can be those educators who do their job and then want to go home, which is a position that's. It can be those who aren't necessarily tapped for all of the like, insider, like let's build up this system. It can be the teachers of those students that you, you know. It can be your teacher of your special education students. It can be those who are doing technical, the sort of the technical and career education it can. It's also a lot of the time, I think, when folks tap students, like in the work that we're doing in Kentucky right now, we've noticed that a lot of the students are those who are already centered and they are actually pushing us. They're saying we know that there are some folks who are excluded. Um, how do we make sure that, not just the, the research work, but like, how are they included in this broader initiative around assessment that's happening there? Um, and also the families, and I think that's been. I think that's some of the hardest, um, hardest in getting, because there are sometimes time constraints, there are sometimes language barriers, there are people who have had their own trauma with schools and don't necessarily want to reenter those spaces. So how do we, simultaneously, while we're trying to rebuild a system, make it minimally viable for folks to come in so that we can actually build something that's transformative, and understanding that it's not? It can't happen all at once, so you can't be dishonest and say like we have already transformed when you're in the process of transforming. So what are those first steps? And that's something there's no singular answer for what that first step is, because the things that make people can remember, even in grad school, going to communities that my mother probably would have been very upset that I was visiting, because it would have. She would have viewed it as unsafe, but those were the folks who needed to be at the center of the work. So I think it can. It can look like a range of folks, but I think it can. It can look like a range of folks, um, but I think for me, my brain often lives in those spaces that can be conceived of as untouchable and that other they get those labels of unsafe, um, in some ways right, because I mean, if those folks aren't at the center of making decisions, right? 0:20:26 - Lindsay Lyons isn't it Ayanna Pressley who said the people closest to the pain are close should be close to the power, or some version of that? Right, yeah, I, I think that this probably is really um, it's very important for folks who are listening to hear it, who may live in the technical spaces of. Okay, so give me like a five point. Like what do I do? And I think it's really important when we often kind of rush to action and like do the thing, and we haven't built the foundation, as you said, you don't get to a place of transformative change. It's why we keep doing the same old things right again and again, and so I hope folks are taking away that this, this building it takes a while and like it is absolutely essential to do, to do the thing you're trying to do right in in a just way. 0:21:15 - Rita Harvey Yeah, and I think sometimes I like it almost. It's almost like a snowballing, like we I think about. You know, many schools have a family resource person who's supposed to be a connection to that community and in this research we've been trying to think about, like how do we get to that? But even they only have their layer. So then it's like, okay, if you can put me in touch with those folks, can they put me in touch with someone else? And can they like, put me in touch with someone else? And that does. That takes time. It takes courage to do all of those things, to go into those spaces. 0:21:50 - Lindsay Lyons Absolutely. And I wonder I'm sure there are an enormous, like a number of enormous lists, there we go, of challenges that folks could name in this work because it is so big and so important and so complex in some ways. Are there challenges that you know, folks have repeatedly surfaced for you or you've repeatedly seen in action? And and how might a person listening who's like I'm anticipating this challenge, perhaps work through that? 0:22:18 - Rita Harvey That's so interesting when I saw that. So I saw these questions ahead, obviously, and I was thinking about it in a in way, and I can still address that. But I think right now, in this moment which I'm not even thinking in terms of what it is micro in the grand scheme of things but educators are being asked to do so many things and I think before COVID there was already burnout and then, like you know, a new initiative comes along and you're like, okay, let me just like play along with this until until it fades out, right. But I think the biggest challenge right now is educator burnout because there has been such a lack of respect for educators and I think COVID just exacerbated all of that. So I think building if you're talking about systems level leaders, building spaces that can hold the educators who are taxed is, I think, a massive challenge, because if you're asking someone who's already sort of like doing so many things and facing so many barriers and challenges, and to ask them to do one more thing is just like so much, and so I think that is the thing that comes up the most. 0:23:44 - Lindsay Lyons That was not what I was thinking of, um, but I mean, maybe it's connected and I'm curious to know how you did interpret it or what direction you wanted to take it. 0:23:53 - Rita Harvey Well, I guess it was going to be very, it was going to be very hard and it was just the idea, and so this is why I say maybe it's connected, but returning to hope and like building spaces of hope and connection. It's really easy to get tired and want to give up when you're the idea of the challenge is how do we create healing spaces so that folks can continue to do this work when it's really tiring and draining? 0:24:32 - Lindsay Lyons That is excellent. Yeah, absolutely Right, absolutely Okay, that's. I think that's really connected to what you initially said, connected to all the events which, right we, we sometimes pretend in school systems like we're gonna ignore the outside of the school building and it's like what? No, that impacts how we live lives, like every day. It can't be ignored day. 0:25:02 - Rita Harvey It can't be ignored. It cannot be ignored and it I mean we can put it in packages like culturally responsive teaching. But I think even there are spaces um in. In Aurora, uh, colorado, we did a convening with um at a school that was for parenting teens and others in the community who needed the space, and it was a very small school, but you could see the commitment because the principal was trying to hold the space for the teachers, to hold the students, to hold their children, and so it's just like you can't, you cannot escape from any of the components. It all comes into the school. So even if I say that I just want to teach English or I just want to teach math, it's not possible, and I don't I'm not saying that from like a moral, or it's just like. Even if I like, even if it is a moral imperative to me, that's not what it is. Just you can't, you cannot get children to do what you want them to do without taking care of their basic needs in these ways. But to put that burden on the teacher, you can't just put it on the teacher. So the whole system has to hold the educators, the child, their family, and so I just think about interconnection and interdependence in that way. 0:26:13 - Lindsay Lyons That was so well said that I'm going to leave it at that. That's going to resonate with me for a while. Thank you, I think just to close us out if someone is and I think you spoke to this a little bit earlier, so you feel free to double down on that response but I think when we do this, sometimes it feels like such a big thing. Cultivating the space where people feel a sense of you know, belonging, a sense of perceived safety, you know, all of that is big, big. What's like the first kind of get the ball rolling momentum builder that you would suggest folks do if they're listening to this and going ahead and like entering the day with hope on their brains and in their hearts um, if you're a teacher, I mean there's that student that you're convinced, like as you go into your school year, that is not interested in being. 0:27:01 - Rita Harvey You get to know them. Um, if you're a systems leader, in that way, you get to know the family of that that student. Um start very, very small um and understand and not in a condescending way. Um, like I genuinely want to know who you are. It can be the student who is not interested, but it can also be that student who just drives you crazy. We know you have that student who annoys you. We know that there is someone who you're like you talk too much. Why are they doing that? What is the need behind that? Begin, if you have the capacity to employ a little bit of empathy to understand what's happening in whatever part of the system you're in. 0:27:48 - Lindsay Lyons Awesome suggestions. And then, just to close with that, I love this question for absolute fun. Does not have to relate to what you're doing in your work, but again, what is something that you've personally been learning about lately? 0:28:05 - Rita Harvey This is really. It's very silly, it's not silly, it's not silly. My family, we moved from Massachusetts to Texas in 2022. And we bought our first house in 2023. And I have a garden for the first time and I really want to be successful at gardening and I have killed a number of plants. I am a succulent. I've killed succulents Like it doesn't matter. I killed. So I'm both gardening and learning about gardening from books, from the people in the community, from my dad. So I've been learning and thinking about gardening and ecosystems, which very much so could relate to education, but I'm doing it in the sense that I just I'm learning about what it means for me to get my hands in the soil and get dirty. So that's one thing that I've been thinking about and learning about. 0:28:59 - Lindsay Lyons That is beautiful One I resonate. I kill every plant about and learning about. That is beautiful One I resonate. I kill every plant ever given to me. So I just wish that that wouldn't be my experience. I want to live vicariously through you and it reminds me a lot of Adrienne Marie Brown's writings with like fractals and like just all of the nature-y things. So super cool, I'm so excited. Lastly, people are going to be really excited about your work and interested in connecting with you. So if you're comfortable with it, where can folks learn more about you, connect with you or your organization, if that feels like a better place to direct folks? 0:29:30 - Rita Harvey Sure, I was going to say I think my email address is on there. I can say my email address. It's Rita at leadingwithlearningorg and I believe our website is leadingwithlearningorg. I believe it's not Center for Innovation and Education and if you look, if you search for Center for Innovation and Education, you will find me there. But it will also say that our organization is closed. It is not closed. It's just that we're no longer housed in the space where it was before. 0:30:04 - Lindsay Lyons Amazing Rita. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and brilliance. It was really a pleasure. 0:30:09 - Rita Harvey Thank you.
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9/2/2024 179. Systems Change Comes from People Closest to the Learning with Julianna Charles BrownRead Now![]()
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This episode features Julianna Charles Brown, who goes by Charlie, a champion for student-centered learning. The conversation highlights the transformative potential of education through a focus on collaborative change, equitable grading, and systemic reform.
With over 10 years of experience working with a variety of educators and a background in history, philosophy, facilitation, and anti-oppressive education, Charlie supports the development of dynamic change efforts to drive equity. Charlie is passionate about connecting the worlds of policy and practice with a critical lens to create more meaningful, responsive, equitable and lasting systems for every learner. Charlie’s career began at the New York City Department of Education in policy, working with schools on programming and providing guidance on working within state regulations. Charlie also worked on the Quality Performance Assessment Team at the Center for Collaborative Education, helping teachers and schools implement equitable performance assessment systems. Additionally, Charlie co-founded the NYC Mastery Collaborative, supporting schools in their implementation of competency-based education practices and advocating for the work to grow across NYC. The Big Dream Charlie’s dream for education is rooted in centering those closest to the learning process, including students, educators, and their communities. This differs from the current top-down approach and imagines an education system where decision-making is turned on its head and done by those closest to the learning. With this approach, Charlie believes the system can be meaningful for students and teachers alike. Mindset Shifts Required To move away from traditional, top-down systems and towards a student-centered approach, educators can use the power of dialogue and conversation to change mindsets. To break free from the current mold, teachers can have open, honest discussions about the changes they want and why they want them. This is the starting point to shift mindsets towards student-centered education and shared decision-making that energizes teachers and students. Action Steps To shift from top-down decision-making to collaborative, student-centered decision-making, educators can: Step 1: Initiate deep conversations between educators, students, and leaders to unpack beliefs about learning and co-create shared values and goals. Honest and open discussion is the first step to dig a bit deeper and create a new system. Step 2: Exercise autonomy within the classroom to implement equitable grading practices that prioritize feedback and growth over arbitrary marks. Students often internalize grades as identity markers, affecting their self-worth, so it’s important for educators to move away from this system. Step 3: Engage in cross-pollination of ideas between educators, policy-makers, schools, and school districts. This fosters important interdisciplinary dialogue that helps everyone learn from various educational models and strategies to develop a culture of continuous innovation. Challenges? Ultimately, this type of change to the education system involves disrupting systems of oppression, as the traditional academic models are inherently oppressive to students by sorting and stratifying them. To become more equitable and help learners thrive, the major challenge is overcoming the entrenched nature of these systems and the resistance to change. It’s important to be very clear on the why behind these changes to get educators to really pursue new ways forward. One Step to Get Started For educators seeking a new path forward, the first step is to figure out who you’ll have your first conversation with. Open dialogue is key to change, so determine who you want to talk to and explore ideas around the type of pedagogical experiences you want to see in your classroom. It all starts with a conversation! Stay Connected You can connect with Charlie on LinkedIn. To help you implement today’s takeaways, Charlie is also sharing a free PDF with our listeners: Beyond The Horizon: Blazing a Trail Toward Learner-Centered School Quality Systems. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 179 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT 0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons Charlie, welcome to the time for a teachership podcast. I'm so happy to have you on today. This is going to be such a fun conversation. I'm so looking forward to it. I think first just like what is important for our listeners to know, either about you you have the coolest bio in the world or what do you want people to think about as as we jump into the conversation, like what should be in people's minds yeah, yeah, so what would it be helpful to say a little bit about me and where kind of how I come to this work? absolutely. We'll put the bio at the front of the episode so people will have just heard it. But feel free to share additions to that highlights from it yeah, sure, sure. 0:00:42 - Charlie So sort of just contextualizing some of the stuff that I've done. I've had the great fortune to be involved with education and educators now for a little bit over a decade, to work with just like some of the most caring, innovative educators who are just like the people who raise their hands and want to try to do what's best for kids and want to think really creatively and differently about that. And over the course of my time doing various pieces of the work, I've just learned so much from people who are really taking this work on in the classroom, taking this work on in the classroom. So I think a lot of my view of this work is informed by those educators that I've learned from. So anything that I share today know that, as I stand on the shoulders of giants and I just, you know, would express up front my gratitude to all the great colleagues and collaborators that I've had. So let's get into it and talk about some systems change. 0:01:47 - Lindsay Lyons Yes, oh my gosh, that's a beautiful introduction. I absolutely love that you're honoring, like all of the work that happens collaboratively, because sometimes it very much feels like when we're asked questions or in the space of like leadership and education, it very much can feel like here's this idea that I just came up with out of nowhere. 0:02:08 - Charlie It's like no, no, this is all very collaborative, Right, right, you know, and I would never want to come on a podcast and be like this is all my brilliant thinking. It's like very, very much just having learned from some of the most brilliant educators in the business. So so cool, Thank you, Thank you for sharing that. 0:02:21 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah for sure, for sure. The first question I really want to get into is the dream. So thinking about freedom dreaming Dr Bettina Love writes so beautifully about this. This dream's grounded in the critique of injustice. What is that big freedom dream for you? 0:02:38 - Charlie Yeah, 100%, and I love this question and I am just so inspired every time I have the opportunity to read or hear from Dr Love. So I love that we're starting here. See what I did there. And I think for me, the dream is really kind of connected to this concept that I've been trying on lately, which is really centering people closest to the classroom, right, so I come from and within the student-centered learning world, which I think that's a fabulous and beautiful dream, and I also think that including a slightly larger table of people that are closest to the learning is really what comes to mind for me lately, which is to say that you have two well, you have lots of people in the classroom, but you have learners and you have educators, and then you have the families, communities, guardians that surround those learners. Right, and so for me, when I think about those closest to the learner, closest to the learning, that would be my vision or hope for what we would have as a future of our education systems. Right, because right now our systems very much do center levels of the system. So, for example, we have a very top-down system of education right now. Right, decisions get made at the federal level. Additional decisions get made at the state level, that gets pushed down to districts, that gets pushed down to schools, that gets pushed down to classroom, that get pushed down to learners. And I think, for me, having a system of education that really authentically sort of turns that concept on its head and puts those that are closest to the learning at the center of all decision making around education, it would just be a completely different way to operate and I think that we would get to learning experiences that were authentically meaningful for learners and learning, an experience of the profession for teachers that would just be a lot more fulfilling, grounded and closer to what most of us got into this business to do, Because I think, you know, none of us really got into this game to be millionaires right, we all got into it because, you know, we generally care about young people and their learning, and what would it look like to have a world and a system that allowed us to live that dream every day in the classroom. 0:05:10 - Lindsay Lyons I love that there is this honoring of student-centeredness and this honoring of teacher well-being and just like fulfillment in your words, so good, so good that we can have both. It's very much like a both and not like an either, or, which I really appreciate. 0:05:29 - Charlie Yeah, and you know what? I think that this is like kind of unpacking that concept a little bit more is that when we think about how our systems are constructed right now, often what they do is they're constructed in such a way that it forces us to do things to learners that we don't actually agree with right. So I think a really good example of this is grading policy right, or the standards that we're required to teach right which is not to say that I'm anti-standards and I'm anti-assessment right, like I'm very much for those things. But because of the way we've constructed those systems in that very top down way, what ends up happening in the classroom is you're living out a bunch of decisions that were not made with those people in mind, and so, as an educator, you're in the classroom and you're doing grading to a student in a way that, if you really think about it and unpack what is happening with grading, I think most educators wouldn't actually agree with that practice, right? It's like this horrible feeling that you get when you have to put a number or a letter at the top of a kid's piece of work and you don't actually have time to provide them the meaningful feedback and you actually are reporting that feedback in a way that doesn't help them get any better. But you have to do it, and you have to do it 50 times, and you have to put that in a grade book, and it's like all of these things that we, as educators, are forced to do because of the way we've set the system up, and if we thought about designing the system from the center out as opposed to from the top down, we would end up with a very different set of we would end up with a very different set of sort of operating procedures. 0:07:13 - Lindsay Lyons There is so much going through my mind right now. I'm not sure what question to go with next, so I'm going to share some thoughts and then you can tell me where you want to go. Yeah, I can roll. One thought I'm thinking is the way in practice that educators try to get around that, but not from kind of a systematic lens or like a structural, like we're changing the system from the ground up. It's more of like in practice, what I see is okay, well, we're just going to grade this for effort or something Right. And so then you like to your point. You don't get the feedback on the standard that we're trying to improve. So we're just going to kind of manipulate the system we have to work in, but not in like a cohesive way that gives students feedback on the thing they need Right. And? And then there's also this idea of like. I think what that path looks like is probably listeners are probably thinking what does that look like, right? That feels so different from how things are done, like. What are the possibilities for doing something like that in my school or my educational community? So feel free to go either direction. 0:08:15 - Charlie Yeah, 100%, 100%. I mean I think that there are some really powerful techniques that, as an individual educator, are within your locus of control, right so, and there are some really good, just like evidence-based practices that you can build into your classroom level grading policy. So I would encourage everybody to read Grading for Equity and with the acknowledgement that, depending on the context where you're teaching, you may or may not actually have the authority to make that decision, and that's like we're the real crux of centering students and educators and their communities in the design for learning systems. That's. There's a big piece of work there, because I think if you are not empowered as an educator to be involved in that type of decision making and by that I mean setting of a school or a district level grading policy then it can be hard to navigate the change. And so I think that, while change efforts or systems change efforts, should be grounded and led by educators, students, in ways that feel appropriate for them to be involved. I also think that for any leaders that may be listening right like, it also requires leaders to think and move in a very different way, with full acknowledgement that, like, principals and district leaders, are being compressed from the top as well. So it's not necessarily. You know, we're all kind of in this top-down workflow. So I would say, for whatever level of the system you operate in, there are things that are coming down that you may have to do, and then what are the ways that you can interrupt them so that students can lead or whoever you know? Whatever level of the sandwich that you're at, you know the people that you're responsible for facilitating and supporting. They have maximum amount of autonomy and the maximum amount of support and guidance, as opposed to sort of like just leading with authority and that's like all sort of very amorphous. I think that until you use an example like grading Right. So it's like as I, for example, as a school or district leader, there may be some systems with which you have to comply as a result to reporting grades, crediting policies, things of that nature. But what does it look like to support your staff in having a conversation about how can we make what we have to do most meaningful? So, and then this thing can be true for an educator or a group of educators, perhaps at a department or at a grade level. You can say you know, we understand that we have to report grades. Maybe we have to are required to report them in a particular format, and what logic can we put behind how those grades are generated to maximize the amount of feedback that we're giving to students, so that those grades aren't just your? You know you're getting a b or an 80 and you just have to sort of like internalize that with no understanding of where that comes from or what to do next and so, and then I would encourage people to work together to say you know, once you've started to work within what is in your locus of control and identify the barriers. If you have a few people having that conversation with whoever is sort of the next up the authority chain, that's a very sort of interesting way to start to make changes. So if you hear from a whole department or a whole grade band team that, like we've tried some stuff out, we found this particular grading practice to be really impactful, here's the barrier that we're experiencing, right, like that's a very different conversation than, like you know, one person kind of going in alone, or what often happens is you just kind of like close the classroom door and do what you think is right, but maybe I'm not sure it's right, and so I would encourage people to like see how you can do what you're required to do in the way that is, like, most aligned with your values, and do it with others who share your values. And then for system leaders, I think it's like look for that type of leader. You know you have people in your schools and in your buildings who are interested but maybe not activated, and you know part of what your job is as a leader is to activate people and support them and provide them cover. 0:12:52 - Lindsay Lyons Quite frankly, and I notice you know this person is maybe the chair of a department really eager and interested in, like you said, maybe not activated yet. What is the thing that you have found? Or maybe a couple of things. Sometimes I see this like aha moment. When we rethink grading, we like, for example, it's about feedback, not the final number that goes in the grade right, or some sort of like mindset shift that's like whoa. This unlocks possibilities for me. Do you think there are those things that, as a leader, I could tell that chair of a department to kind of like nurture these mindset shifts in the team to be able to then try the thing? Does that question make sense? 0:13:42 - Charlie Oh, it totally, totally does, it totally does. And I would say that I think that again, kind of going back to that spirit of collaboration, co-construction, right, like I think that the power of dialogue and conversation amongst so say, like you and I are that teacher and leader, right, like we should get together and have really deep conversations and unpack what we believe to be true about learning, because that'll do a couple of things right, and this can be true, right, so this can be a principal teacher, this can be a teacher, student, you know. This can be a, you know, district leader, principal. It could be a district leader, student, it could be you know what I mean, right. But these conversations, when we actually start to get into what do we believe to be true about teaching and learning? And I would venture to say, unless people have gotten very jaded, which also happens but like, most people believe that young people can learn, most people believe that, you know, young people have great capacity and if somebody doesn't believe that right now, that's a whole other conversation to have, right, I think that's one thing, but I think we're talking about you see somebody in your building or you see a student who you perceive to be a possible leader, I think, engaging in a dialogue, coming to some shared understanding about what are the key, either changes we want to see key understandings about. Again, maybe using the example of grading policy, like what are the key shifts that we might want to see and why? Because I think human beings crave, why, and I think also when you provide somebody a really good why, it's very, very difficult to go back from that. So again, I'll use grading as an example because that's, like you know, kind of my thing, but also it's just a good through line for that conversation. But if you take people through the thought experiment about, like one that I find to be particularly powerful, for grading is like when you talk to a student about their grades, especially if you're in a very traditional academic setting, right, what do they say about their grades? Do they say I have a B student? Right, and because young people internalize their grades as an identity marker, they carry that identity marker through the way that they experience the rest of their learning. Right, and so that's. And for that B student it gives them very little information about. Maybe I'm the kind of B student that puts a lot of effort in, but like is a little bit, needs a little bit more support to master content. Maybe I'm the type of B student who, like, tries very little but just the content or the you know transferable skills or whatever. They come very easily to me, but I don't know that I'm just a B student. That's like a lack of information for the, for the B student, but they have internalized that identity. It's devastating if you're a C student or a D student or an F student, because that is very, very difficult to unlearn and it doesn't just impact your academic identity Like, it impacts your self-worth as a person. And I don't think teachers want to do that to kids. I really don't. You know, 99.999% of teachers don't want to be harming young people and so if they understand that the pedagogical practice has an impact and we need to change it, and that's why and we have that conversation now you've got an ally and we need to change it. And that's why and we have that conversation Now you've got an ally and we are on a team and we are going to make this change. How do we have the next set of conversations and bring in additional allies? Right, because, like, change can't be mandated, it just cannot. Right, like, change is Change is very, very like ecological, I think. In its nature right, it spreads slowly but it does make sense, you know, like if you think about the way like seeds move or forests grow, it just like it's slow but it's continuous, given the right set of conditions Anyway. So I'm going a lot of different directions there, but I hope I answered your question. 0:18:10 - Lindsay Lyons Wonderfully. Oh my gosh, I just think about. I was taking furious notes. One of the things I wrote down is the idea that students internalize grades as as identity markers and that it affects their self-worth. I mean, if there's no other takeaway from the conversation, like that is huge, right. Like that's huge to recognize, and my brain went to like I started numbering some of the things you were saying. It's like is this the process, right? So like one to unpack beliefs about learning and how powerful to do that with students not just teachers, but with students, right. And then to try something as a team, like, okay, we're gonna try. We're just gonna try some things out. We're gonna notify our leaders when we have a. We're just going to try some things out. We're going to notify our leaders when we have a barrier. We're going to look for that ongoing support and space to tinker, kind of. Is that kind of correct? What would you add to that? What would you? 0:18:58 - Charlie change. I think that's it. I mean, and I think it's about establishing the type of culture within your learning community where that's the workflow right. I think that we are so, and again, I'm talking about our more traditional learning environments. But, like, our more traditional learning environments are very sort of like perfunctory in their collaboration and iteration, right. It's just sort of like well, here's our strategic plan. I'm going to present on it at a few staff meetings. We're going to get some PD in this. You know what I mean. It's like it just kind of happens in this way that doesn't really like engage or inspire. And again, I'm not saying every school is like this. I think there are a million billion fabulous schools that are doing like really cool stuff with PD. But I'm saying, like, in a traditional learning community it just sort of feels perfunctory, whereas if you can establish ways of working together that center young people and their feedback and their thoughts and then provide educators the space to like process, what that means for pedagogy and then has sort of like a leader that understands their role is to make all that happen, not actually make a whole lot of the decisions right, but provide the conditions for the people who are closest to the learning to make those decisions and what that looks like. It's not hard. I think you've really sort of nailed it. It's like give people space to have the conversation, to try things out, to iterate, and if you have those workflows built into the way that collaboration works in your building or in your district or even in your state, that can be really transformational, because things will you know, if people have the space to have those conversations, things will start to move, especially if you are able to bring in new and exciting ideas at strategic moments. So I think that's another piece of it is like who are we who and how are we partnering to bring in new ideas and how are we doing that in a strategic way? So it doesn't. It doesn't feel like every couple of months there's a new thing we're doing, right. So I think that's like getting that sort of workflow down and then understanding how new things are going to be tested and tried and supported in a strategic way. That doesn't feel like. It's like that Goldilocks principle, right. It's like it's enough change in momentum, but not so much that people feel overwhelmed with all the stuff we're trying to get done. 0:21:36 - Lindsay Lyons And what that makes me think about is that underlying why. So if you've had the conversations and you recognize, wow, students are internalizing their grades as it affects their self-worth, then you are like, okay, I'm willing to receive and engage with all of this new PD because it's strategically supporting the fact that I don't want my students to internalize a C identity, right, and I want them to grow their skills. So I will now engage with a possibility of switching to competency-based feedback or, you know, rating on a one to four scale instead of zero to 100 or whatever the thing is Right, right, I think that's really cool, that there's like that anchor there. 0:22:15 - Charlie Right, because if I understand, like what are the principles or the values or the commitments, or whatever you want to call them behind it, the decisions make sense and they become very clear, right. So again, right To the point of standing on the shoulders of giants, my a good friend of mine and close collaborator, meg Stentz. What's up, meg? New York City Competency Collaborative says teachers are responsible for making more decisions a minute than almost any other profession, with the exception of air traffic controllers. That's a direct quote from Meg and that can be very overwhelming unless we understand what is the reason between taking one decision direction versus another right. And when you have those core beliefs about what you believe to be true, about students, their capacity to learn, how you want to support them, those decisions become much more clear as opposed to just feeling like an onslaught. 0:23:09 - Lindsay Lyons Absolutely yes, when you have those core values you're like. Well, this is the clear next step. 0:23:14 - Charlie That's it. 0:23:15 - Lindsay Lyons We hope it's usually that easy, but I think when you mentioned competency, collaborative I actually was thinking about could there be, is there either a school or a pattern amongst the schools that you worked with, either then or in any other capacity where you've been since, that you've seen kind of? This is kind of phase one of a transition from maybe a traditional grading system to really having that like ground up systems, change for grading for equity kind of thing. 0:23:44 - Charlie Yeah, I think I think the competency collaborative is a great example in New York City. Yeah, I think the Competency Collaborative is a great example in New York City. So those that don't know about it, it's a well, in New York it's considered a small program I think they have like 50 to 75 schools a year, depending on how many but also just a lot of cross-pollination around grading practices, competency-based education. So from a district level that's been really interesting because you have schools from all across the district with very different learning models, still able to learn from each other and there's like that meaningful sharing across schools. And then I would also just say sort of like the context of New York in general. The district is set up in such a way that teachers have a lot of time. They just have a lot of time like individual work time, collaborative time, and schools in New York have really set up you know, of course, not every school, but schools that are really thinking and leading in this learner, human-centered way really use that time in a very impactful way. So you've got sort of like in the building time and then you also have this cross-pollination effect where we're learning from, yes, some folks who are experts in coaching roles and also coaches in that model really understand the value of sharing people who are working on life problems, right. So it's that that tends to be the most impactful, which is to say, like I can speak to somebody who maybe is currently trying or recently tried the thing that I'm about to do and see how it went for them, consider the implications that they learned about, and then I think that space of collaboration can be really helpful. I think that in general, right so that cross-pollination model we my current organization, knowledgeworks we do that in learning communities from South Carolina, North Dakota, nevada, and it's core for us because we feel like if you are kind of on an island, it's very difficult, so you can actually see this kind of as a structural model at each level, right. So in the building you need to get outside of the walls of your individual classroom and I actually think some of the most powerful conversations can be cross-curricular, right. Like I think people think like, oh well, like I'm a humanities person, I have nothing to learn from a math person or vice versa, and actually when you really start to talk about pedagogy, like those can be some of the most powerful conversations because there are meaningful, just like discipline, specific differences in the way we construct knowledge and the way we understand the world, and there are meaningful alignments. So, like having opportunity to learn from people in your building and then, anytime right, you can get people out of the building, even if it's in a virtual way or in like a you know Zoom type coaching thing. It just that that really helps people just get inspired and, and you know, energized, I would think. I would say I love this. 0:27:09 - Lindsay Lyons This is amazing. I love the structural nature and so, like when we were at Manhattan International High School, they used to the international network would say one learning model for all. So there was like, as educators, you do this right and invite the students to do the same things. And so I really love that and I see that in the structural pieces that you're saying on this level, on this level, we're doing it repeatedly, Right, right. 0:27:33 - Charlie And often the okay again, not a knock on anybody, right, like the system is this way, but like the people who are at those higher levels of the system are the least accustomed to working and moving in that way. Because, I mean, I think it's the nature of the beast in some of these, like district leader roles, these state leader roles, it's very, very difficult to a there's just like a huge crush and demand on time. There's a lot of different things that people are considering, right, like those people are thinking about facilities and funding formulas and like there's a lot going on there. And I think also it's just difficult in that at that space, to have the time and the space to be a learner. And I have a lot of admiration for a lot of the visionary leaders who do make that space, even though it's very sort of antithetical to the way a system would typically be set up. But I think it's also very freeing, right, because at any level of leadership, if you are actually distributing leadership, then that's like one less thing. I mean, you all are ultimately responsible for the decisions and their execution, right, but it's like you're sharing the load in a way that really you can have more confidence in the decisions that are coming forward because it's like, well, we made this decision together, it didn't go the way we planned, now we can pivot, or we made this decision together and it went fabulously and now we can all share and own it. So but I do think that it's it's it's harder for for, you know, once you get at those higher levels and then I think, at the federal level, it's it's, you know, not to get like way, way out there, but I think it's it's just harder because our, our federal leaders have very little connection to the world of the classroom and understanding of what the implications are of big decisions that they make and how they show up in the classroom. So we can talk about that if that's an area of interest. And actually one of the resources that I did share was a fabulous conversation that we had the opportunity to support that brought together people from every level of the system so students, educators, building leaders, state leaders, federal leaders to talk about what it might look like to build student-centered assessment and accountability systems. Right, and that was the most like. It was one of the only opportunities I've had in my career in this space to see all those people kind of together and understanding and learning from each other. Like this is what this actually looks like and feels like for you. It's a very cool opportunity. So it's the Beyond the Horizon Report, so I've definitely encouraged people to check it out in the show notes. 0:30:26 - Lindsay Lyons Absolutely. Yes, we'll definitely link it in there. I, that sounds beautiful. That sounds so, so cool. I'm wondering for the listener who is thinking like I'm I'm not there yet, or like I don't have access to that system or whatever yet. What is like I'm imagining something is going through their head, Like, oh, there's going to be bumps along the road, right, we're going to hit these barriers, like what's the challenge that you've seen people kind of frequently come up against? And then how have you like seen them overcome it, coach them to overcome it? That kind of thing, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. 0:30:57 - Charlie That's a great question I would say. I think that, right like at the core of what we're talking about, we're talking about systems change and we're talking about I mean, I think my orientation, a lot of the orientation of the listener, will be like we're actually talking about disrupting systems of oppression, right like. So our current like not our like, but current traditional academic policies are inherently oppressive. They are designed to sort and stratify students and when we start to talk about the whys and why we would make some of these changes, it's because we believe we want a more equitable system and we want all learners to actually be able to grow and thrive. And systems of oppression are very sticky, very difficult to undo. It takes a lot of effort and then there are going to be times where the work maybe doesn't go well. And then what a system like that? So like any oppressive system, it will say like well, that didn't work, we should go back to what we were doing. And that is, I think, the most dangerous conversation, or that can be like a very dangerous point for any change effort, because just because what we tried didn't work doesn't mean that we shouldn't continue to try to make the change and it doesn't necessarily mean that the why behind what we were doing is wrong. It just means, like that iteration of what we were trying didn't work the way we hoped. And I think it's important to norm up on that at the start, at the middle and every moment all the way through, because your change effort will go through iterations, your first grading policy or your first set of competencies that you ever write like you're going to look back on them in a few years and be like what on earth were we thinking? But progress through that, because the why is still there and that doesn't change, but sticky systems will try to retrench you to where they were. And then there are going to be considerations right, there are people and communities that are benefiting from that sorting and stratification system. Right, like, let's get real. Like they port inside schools ratings into the real estate software now, so you go on Zillow and you've got an inside schools rating on there. And when you start to come up against that type of backlash, it's a whole different conversation. And that's where, right, we also need leaders to step up and provide some covers for people. And again, continuing to return to that why? Because you are doing this for the right reason, so keep it moving, yeah. 0:33:44 - Lindsay Lyons Oh my gosh, brilliantly put and great example with Velo I have. That is a frustration I continue to have. I have thoughts, yeah, agreed, I think, as we kind of wrap up our conversation, I'm curious for that listener who's like I want to get going, I want to get started. What's that next step after they're done with the episode that they could take to kind of build that momentum? 0:34:08 - Charlie 100%, and I think I'll just could take to kind of build that momentum 100%, and I think I'll just go back to kind of like the first conversation is like who do you want to have your first conversation with? Like who is going to be that person? Who you, you know, maybe they they're on your, maybe they're on your team, maybe they, you know, there's somebody that you went to school with and they work at another school or another. You know, maybe you're a school leader, it's another school leader, or you know, just find your person or your group of people who you want to go through this with and start to have those questions about why, why we might want to make this change. Because, again, I think that's just such an important thing and you know that you know, if you're looking about where to start that conversation, it's like what is happening in the pedagogical experience of our classroom and do we believe in it? And if we don't, what would we want to see that we could believe in, that we could be proud of that, we would be excited to get up and go to work every day to do. And then how do we get from where we are right now to here, and that's you know. Once you start to have that conversation, I think it's very hard to go back. 0:35:19 - Lindsay Lyons So yes, oh my gosh, that's so good and a conversation is such a nice starting point because you can do that tomorrow, like you can find the person and go start the conversation tomorrow. 0:35:28 - Charlie You don't have to wait. Yeah, I think that, um, you know, this is hard work, but it's good work, and it only um, you know, we can really only do it together, yeah, yeah. 0:35:40 - Lindsay Lyons Oh, well, said so, I am curious what is something that you have been learning about lately? This is like a fun question that you could answer related to your work, or it could be something totally outside, like Charlie, as a education person. 0:35:55 - Charlie Okay, I'll share a fun example. So so I'm really you know, in our work we do a lot of like relational thinking, deep thinking, right and, and sometimes at the end of the day, I'm really just like I need to do something, that it's like I can do it, I can see the outcome, and so I've been really leaning into learning about home restoration and building techniques and I've actually been taking some classes and it's been so fun because it's just like you have a nail, you have a hammer, you drive it. And it's been so fun because it's just like you know, you have a nail, you have a hammer, you drive it, it's, it's done. And so I think it's really important to find a balance of you know, when you do the type of work that we do, how do you also, um, find things that ground you in the moment and in like impact that you can feel and see and hold? Maybe that's crafting, maybe it's cooking, maybe it's, you know, messing around in the garage, but I think that having that balance to make sure that you have the energy to go back and continue to do the heart work and the brain work all day, every day, is a, it's just a. It's been really, really powerful for me. 0:37:07 - Lindsay Lyons That so deeply resonates. My dad was a PE teacher for elementary school students and he was like you never see the growth. Occasionally kids will come back and tell you the impact they had on you, but what he would do in the summers, on summer break, was paint houses and he was like you can see it is a finished product, it looks good and I did that right. It is so different work, work, and it's so cool to have both. I would. 0:37:31 - Charlie I would encourage anybody to to to get that sort of like immediately gratifying activity or work that they can do, cause it's, it's, it's fantastic. 0:37:42 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah, absolutely Okay. Last question when can people learn more about you? Connect with you online, connect with your organization, all the things? 0:37:50 - Charlie Definitely so. My organization, knowledgeworks, has a fabulous website. The resource that I shared is on the KnowledgeWorks website, so I would definitely encourage people to check out. We have tons of different articles, videos, things on that website. I also have a bio on that site and then I'm also sharing my LinkedIn page things on that website. I also have a bio on that site and then I'm also sharing my LinkedIn page. If anyone wants to reach out and connect, I'd be more than happy to chat on LinkedIn and or, if you want to, you know, use that as a way to have a deeper conversation. I'm I'm here for it, so Charlie, thank you so much. 0:38:20 - Lindsay Lyons This has been wonderful. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. 0:38:23 - Charlie It's been a real pleasure and you know, anytime you you want to talk grades or or you know systems change, please just let me know it's been, it's been an honor.
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In preparation for the upcoming school year, I’m discussing my favorite strategies for building and sustaining a culture of belonging and community within classrooms. To do this, I’m turning a blog post I wrote 5 years ago into a podcast episode! Enjoy the original blog post below, and check out the podcast episode for an additional leader lens as well as ideas I’ve learned from brilliant teachers, coaches, and leaders in the field over the past half a decade.
One of the most common struggles I’ve heard talked about by and for new teachers is “classroom management.” I struggle with the phrase “classroom management,” and prefer to see my role as a teacher as cultivating a positive classroom culture. To me, this simple switch in language interrogates the idea that I am there to “keep students in line” or punish them when they break a rule. I don’t think that should be a central part of my job description. I do think ensuring a positive classroom culture is an extremely important part of my job description, if not the most important part. For more on this idea, check out Afrika Afeni Mills’s article “Classroom Management Reconsidered” and Teaching Tolerance’s “Reframing Classroom Management: A Toolkit for Educators”. If you’re still with me, I’ll share some ideas about my approach to cultivating a positive classroom culture. Here are my top 5:
Let’s break it down. Co-create class norms. This works best at the start of the school year, but it can be done at any time of the year—better late than never! It will help with student investment in maintaining a positive classroom culture. How do I do this?
Foster relationships. I love this because it is proactive instead of reactive, and it works! How do I do this?
Allow for student choice and autonomy and explicitly teach self-regulation. This one is a balance. Choice and autonomy are motivating and promote ownership of learning, but we need to help students learn how to self-regulate and problem solve on their own without constant teacher intervention. How do I do this?
Restorative practices in place of discipline. Traditional discipline policies disproportionately negatively affect students of color and students with IEPs. Being suspended decreases the likelihood of graduation, and contributes to the school-to-prison-pipeline. Restorative practices have been shown to reduce disruptive and violent behavior in schools, increase attendance, and improve school culture and problem-solving skills (WestEd, 2016). How do I do this?
Shared leadership, specifically involving students in the creation of norms and learning activities. Students and teachers will buy in to norms and engage in class activities more if they helped co-create them. How do I do this?
If this is new for you, I admit, this is hard work, but I will also share that it has the power to transform the culture of your classroom. If you’re already doing this, invite other teachers to see your class in action! Share your brilliance and show other teachers that it is possible. To help you build and sustain a culture of belonging, challenge, and discussion in your community, I’m sharing my Culture Playlist with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 178 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02 - Lindsay Lyons Welcome to another episode of the Time for Teachership podcast. I am so excited today to actually turn an old blog post written five years ago hard to imagine into a podcast episode today, bringing it new life, giving some thoughtful reflections on what I've learned since I wrote this and really all about cultivating a positive class culture. So something everyone's trying to do leaders are trying to support teachers in doing students are directly benefiting from. This is a foundational component of particularly the start of the new year, which is why I think it's such a great opportunity to dive in today. Let's get to it Cultivating a positive class culture. I'm going to talk about five specific ways that you can do this or, if you're a leader, that you can support teachers to do this. Or also really lead and support the positive class quote, unquote class or staff culture right In your staff and in your broader school community, whatever degree of community you are responsible for in your role. So, in preparation for starting the year, I think everyone kind of has those go-to strategies for building and sustaining that culture. I really want to center this on a culture of belonging and community, a culture of appropriate degrees of challenge. A culture of appropriate degrees of challenge, one that affirms all students' identities and staff identities, one that enables discussion of critical issues. Right again, this is also critically foundational, and so I will be kind of riffing on the original blog post, and you can check out the original blog post at our show notes lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog, slash 175. I can't believe it's episode 175 already. Okay, so as you kind of think about this episode and the ideas are percolating, I want you to also think about your specific role, as I just kind of spoke to the idea of being a leader. How might you put this into practice? Coaching teachers or with your staff, thinking of your staff as a quote unquote class, all right. So one of the things that I have heard a lot I heard a lot five years ago, I still hear a lot now, although it is shifting a little bit in its language is this idea of classroom management quote unquote. And classroom management is a phrase I don't really like. I think that we lead and lead through example. We don't necessarily manage. Although there are management aspects to a class, I think it's more about the culture that you create, where, if you create a beautiful culture that is positive and affirming and one in which everyone feels that they belong and are also responsible and a contributor to that positive culture. There are less management issues, and so I think, kind of, the goal of classroom management is ultimately to create the culture where there are less management issues. So I'm cutting right to the chase and we're going to use a positive class culture as the phrase we're using throughout. Right to the chase and we're going to use a positive class culture as the phrase we're using throughout. So I like this, this shift in language, for the reason I just described. But I think it's also important to reflect on our practice and have teachers reflect on their practice and, you know, also in conversation with family members, to reflect on what we think of in terms of classroom management and what we maybe remember from our classroom experiences K-12s, right about what class was like. And just because that was our experience doesn't necessarily mean that it is something we want to perpetuate, right? So I want to interrogate that idea that the role of the teacher is to keep students in line, or even you know that the role of the principal is to keep students in line, or even you know that the role of the principal is to keep teachers in line, right, um, or punish them when they they break a rule right. I don't think that's a central part of a leader as a job description. I think it's we're cultivating this culture that we're all contributing to positively, and we're going to lean on each other and kind of call each other in when we need to to be able to right that ship, so to speak, but it's not like the most important thing that we do to call people in or, you know, hold people accountable if we've done the important work of building that foundation. Well, there are a ton of other resources that I think do a great job of interrogating this idea that I think do a great job of interrogating this idea Africa, fad Mills. I linked to a blog post of hers in the blog post Classroom Management Reconsidered, which she posted, I believe, on Better Lesson website. Yeah, the Better Lesson blog and Teaching Tolerance at the time was their name when I first published this article. But now Learning for Justice has a reframing classroom management, a toolkit for educators blog post. That's pretty good, okay. So if you're still with me, here's what we're going to do. We're going to look at the top five strategies, right, so I'm going to run through them super fast now and then I'm going to elaborate a little bit more. So here we go. Number one co-create class norms with students Super important. Do this also with adults in your adult communities. Do this with your staff. When we have agreements that we have co-created, we are more willing to be held accountable to them and we are more responsible and kind of accept more responsibility for the whole class abiding by those. Number two foster relationships. I think this is the number one thing that teachers can identify that they're really good at. Like I don't think we actually need a ton of support for teachers in fostering relationships. Because we came to this profession, because we love kids, we're good at fostering relationships for the most part. Maybe a strategy here or there is helpful. We know that this is foundational right. Number three allow student choice, voice autonomy, ownership, all the things. And to do that well, I think a kind of corollary to this is explicitly teaching self-regulation. So if students are struggling with self-regulation and I think of you know, just like my toddler who has a lot of big emotions and struggles to manage those emotions because, of course, right developmentally that my toddler who has a lot of big emotions and struggles to manage those emotions because, of course, right Developmentally. That makes sense and a lot of our students may have, may still be at that developmental milestone or they may be at a point that is later age, wise, um, and they should have kind of moved through that or learn those strategies. But they haven't. And so they need that support, um later in life that maybe they didn't get early on to learn that self-regulation, to then be able to take advantage of things like choice, voice, ownership, number four, restorative practices in place of punitive discipline. So this is also I think a lot of these also are a nod to larger structural supports that can be in place and then really enhance the teacher experience in the classroom when we have the larger pieces to support our work with individual students or small groups of students. If you don't have that, it is also possible in your class and I'll speak to that a bit. But just the idea that we want to repair the harm and we don't want to punish because students didn't do what we said right away. Right, we're not looking for compliance Again. We're building that culture of responsibility, accountability and and affirming that you know, you are all good people. We are all good people Right, we are inherently good. I think of Dr Becky Kennedy's good inside right. I am good inside and my actions are not helping the community at the moment and they need to change and I need to repair the harm that I've caused and I need to take accountability for that right. It's all the things. Number five shared leadership. Specifically, when I talk about shared leadership, I use shared leadership instead of distributive leadership because in education, distributive leadership often refers to teachers taking on leadership roles in the school, which I love, but it excludes students. And shared leadership is generally a more broad kind of all-encompassing of all stakeholders, lens on leadership and strategy for leadership. So that's specifically what I'm thinking of in not just co-creating norms right for the class but co-creating learning experiences, co-creating school policies, that kind of level of authentic voice that really makes a difference. So let's get into some of these co-creating class norms. You can do this in a variety of ways. I've talked about this before. I think you can really get students ideas on a poster, on index cards, whatever, in a variety of ways, right. You can't have them do this digitally on a Google doc or a jam board, although that's sunsetting. Whatever tech tool you want, you can have a gallery walk of posters. Lots of different ways. You could do a circle protocol, but you want to make sure you reach consensus. However, you get all the ideas. We got to streamline them down. We don't want like 45 ideas. How do we decide on the final five or whatever number is memorable for you? So we had to collapse them together, condense them, and we have to agree. So I would use a protocol. I like fifth to five, anything. Three and above is consensus. Great For younger kids. You could use thumbs up, thumbs down. We need everybody to have thumbs up and then talk about it if we don't right, if we don't have consensus. I also think it's really important and something that I've learned since the publication of this initial blog post is that we have one specific norm or agreement, that is, an accountability agreement. So how will we hold each other accountable? And then I also have learned in this past year a really helpful concept of accountability, like what are the baseline assumptions and I can't remember who to give credit for this too, but baseline assumptions, this is an important concept that we are saying. For example, I think the example that this person had used was like we believe all people deserve food, water and shelter, right, or something like that, like what are the basic assumptions about humanity and conversation and whatever, and so like mine is usually dignity, like every human deserves dignity. So we're going to craft our conversation agreements and our class agreements based on these baseline assumptions that either I, as the teacher, can come in with or you can kind of build with students prior to doing the norm generation. So I like this idea as kind of an additional piece to what I initially thought of. I also think you know these are not static, they're ever-changing. Return to them again and again, anytime you have an important class discussion. Return to them. They are not like a one and done at the start of the year. Okay, number two, let's go to relationships. Here are the ways I like to do relationships. I had class circles regularly. One 60 minute circle a week was. I was very fortunate to have 60 minute class periods. But you know, having that regular time and attention where we all look at each other. We all look at each other in the eye, we all pause and listen to what one another are saying or sharing, and I think you know designing those circles specifically to foster relationships. Share something of yourself. Story of my name is my favorite right. Everyone can usually say something about their name, their nicknames, do they like it? You can do appreciation circles. I use the values in action website to their 24 character strengths kind of give us a vocab bank of appreciation things we could appreciate about each other. Basically, any topic you're doing, you can invite students to share a story about that concept or theme. You know. Whatever it is a question that they have, how are they doing on the project, what's a challenge they have? There's a lot of things where students can kind of be invited to storytell. I also think it's really important kind of to know and I forgot I had gone into this in this blog post but this idea that relationships and content knowledge are mutually exclusive is just a false dichotomy. Right, you can do both. As I said, talk about the theme, invite students to share a story about the topic you know, draw connections to current events, life experiences, other classes, like have them do what is actually a harder, like a higher DOK level, higher Bloom's taxonomy level, work right Activity is like building those connections and solidifying those pathways. That's going to be great. I also think you can do like specific non-content related stuff like social, emotional skills, work habits building. You know ways to resolve conflict and repair harm, building empathy or something right? I think there are definitely spaces for that as well, but don't think that they're mutually exclusive content and building relationships or building social emotional skills. Next, allowing for student choice and autonomy, ownership all the things. I think it's really a balance right. So we need to help students learn how to self-regulate and problem solve on their own and, honestly, we benefit from that. So, as educators, we have to do less when the students can take on more, and they're not going to be able to take on more until they have that self-regulation piece. So it's kind of like a we don't want to support too much, right. That's the whole idea of scaffolding is we support until they don't need it anymore, and then we have to remember to take it away, and so I think it's really just constantly being aware of what your students need and that some students are going to need this scaffolds longer, and that's the whole concept of personalized learning and just to kind of be thoughtful about that. Independent work time is a really good opportunity for students to be able to work on what they need. Here's a reflection that I've had since writing this blog post. A lot of schools have identified this as an important thing and they have created time in their schedules to do it. Awesome, and in talking to a lot of the teachers that are responsible for that time, it doesn't always feel meaningful. Sometimes it does. Many teachers have reported to me that it just feels like a bit of a waste of time. They might be working on, you know, a computer program which may or may not be helpful and may be helpful to some students and not others. Program which may or may not be helpful and may be helpful to some students and not others, but standardizing. You know, all students are going to work on IXL for this 30-minute block. That might not actually be what that student needs. Yes, everyone needs literacy support, but many students might be getting the literacy support that they need in their class to be sufficient, to be on grade level, to be whatever, and they actually really need something else. They actually really need an opportunity for social connection. Their mental health is suffering. They need an opportunity to have a group counselor, facilitated session or something right. So I think being able to truly give students what they need is at the heart of this and not okay, we're going to standardize the time for it and we're going to standardize what is being done in that time, because the whole idea is not standardization, it's personalization. Not to say that IXL or any other tech-based stuff is not going to help students. That is a great way to differentiate and personalize within a topic or area as best as you can for all of those students. So not at all to say if you're doing that, that that's bad, but just give some thought behind it. There are other ways to insert. You know, choice support, different learning styles. I love choice boards, the idea of inviting students to say, hey, you can learn about this topic in these three ways a video, a article, you know some other way. You can do a little mini lesson with me in a small group, right? So the process of how they learn, but also the content. Can they be content specialists? Can they subspecialize within a broader umbrella topic and be the experts in this subtopic that they're super interested in? Their peers might not be. You might not have, you know, all the time in the world to go into all these subtopics and this is where students really get to shine. Also thinking about, like standardized tests. I've done a lot with investigating history as a curriculum recently. You know there are these assignments that exist in the curriculum. As part of the curriculum, they they could be adapted and they could be, for example, a you know five sentence paragraph or something Great. You could also verbally share that with me and I would still get that. You could do a claim, evidence and reasoning. Right. If that's what I'm grading, I don't necessarily need or assessing I shouldn't even say grading but assessing I don't need you to necessarily write it out, right, you can tell me how would you like to demonstrate mastery of the things I am assessing? And if you can do it in a creative way, great, right. So give that option of product in addition to process or content. So I think also, you know, having some sort of wall chart, anchor chart, standard reminder of students as they're engaging in these really student-led activities, that what I need time, that choice that's given to them. Students are in 10 different topics across the room. There is not maybe a person they can go to to get help. Maybe you can't be running all over the place trying to help them. I think it's really helpful to have like a three before me list or I had like one that was 10 before me but, right. For example, don't know what you're doing, like, look at the rest of the class and ask the class, me and Google answer your question, google it right. So, whatever the system is, whatever the things you want students to do before they raise their hand to ask you for help, just remind them of that in a really gentle way. If they're shouting your name every two seconds, just point to the anchor chart, the poster on the wall, you know whatever it is. Have a little hand signal that reminds them. I think that could be really helpful. It's just like this gentle reminder, and not just reminder of what they can literally do, but in in, you know doing some like sleep training and stuff with my toddler. I've been thinking a lot lately of you know this. The importance of and Dr Becky Kennedy talks about this too is like we believe you can do it Right. So if I'm lingering around a student, I might be demonstrating to that student. I don't think you can do it on your own. I'm just waiting for you to ask me for help, right? But if I move away and I say, hey, three before me, you got this. I have faith in you. I'll be back soon to check. I'm here if you really need me, but I know you can do this. That conveys a very different message and we have an opportunity for students to decrease their dependence on teachers for that, like minute level support, like the day-to-day, like small stuff. They can do that on their own and then, when they really need us, we can step in. I also think again, as you think about your role in your school, think about the educators, the adults who also would benefit from things like this. I believe you can do it. I trust you. Here are the supports Go do the thing. I'll be here. If you mess up, it's okay. Like we're going to, I'm going to be here, we're going to get through this, but you can do it. I believe in you. I want to give you autonomy. It's one of the reasons that teachers leave the field so much I've seen some really interesting research on this right is that there is a lack of autonomy and trust, and so giving that, whenever we can, to students and adults is really critical. All right, restorative practices in place of discipline. We know that traditional discipline policies disproportionately affect students who are Black, brown, indigenous, students with IEPs. We know that Black girls have been suspended for the same behaviors that white girls have gotten any punishment for. There's so much inequity in this and I honestly think that we as a society are moving in a good direction here. So I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this, because I actually do see this shift, or at least this recognition of this, as being important. Is it done well? I mean, that's another complication, but restorative practices have been shown to reduce disruptive and violent behavior, increase attendance, improve school culture, problem-solving skills. It's good, right, we know this, and so to do this, I think it's good to have a culture of circles, where you do circles already. Then you can have a restorative circle with the whole class when necessary. You can also have a restorative conference, one-on-one or in small groups of students, where you're basically inviting students to speak from the eye. I've had episodes on this in the past. You can go check those out, but in the end the participants are really wrapping up by saying how they can act to repair the harm. So really good stuff there. Having again a system-wide place in your school is great, but you can do basic things like that in your classroom if you are an individual classroom teacher or if you're a teacher leader excuse me supporting an individual classroom teacher who wants to do this when you don't have the whole staff behind it yet. Finally, shared leadership, specifically thinking about, you know, students in this, in your class. Again, we can co-create norms, co-create learning opportunities, giving voice to the process, product and content of how they're learning. We also can really leverage street data, or what I've been calling student experience data. So again, that's from Jamila Dugan and Shane Safir, thinking about how we learn from students what their experiences are and invite them to share those with us and, if they'd like, invite us to share the actions that would make their experience better, better and then implement it. I think a lot about Lundy's kind of four areas of student voice and thinking about how we don't just need the space that's like part one of four. We need the space created for students to share their voice. We need the voice, but we need to help facilitate it. We need to give students appropriate information, skill based training to effectively share what they're thinking or even come to the idea of what it is that they're thinking or that they need. Many adults, I know, don't necessarily know what they need in a moment of challenge. They just know that it's challenging, right, and so there's, there's more there as well, as you know, being that audience that's really authentically listening and trying to, to commit, being that audience that's really authentically listening and trying to, to commit. And then I can't remember what the fourth word is that she uses, but really that we're coming back and telling students, yes, we can implement the thing, or no, we can't, but here's why. So we're giving that information. So those are kind of four things that I'm thinking of as I as I think about this shared leadership as well. Anytime we conclude, you know either a segment of learning, it could be a week, it could be a PD for your staff, it could be a unit, right. Anytime you can give some surveys or some, you know, exit tickets, something quick. That's just like what do we think? Please be open to all sorts of feedback here, but that feedback is probably going to be way more valuable than you know, not asking the question or just independently thinking about how you, as the teacher, thought it went. Students are going to be honest if we cultivate that honesty in our classes and they know that you're not going to punish them for their honesty, right? So I think the final thing here for me is this idea of shared leadership comes with this giving. I don't actually hold on wait. So this idea of power over versus power with is actually kind of a people have called it cascading vitality, right? This idea that when you open up the sharing gates, right, we are actually amplifying the amount of power. And a student who sees their peer as successful, they're now going to think that they can do it, and all of these things. So we're not necessarily giving up power when we are sharing. We are in the distributive language distributing, yes, but also we are just 10x-ing the amount of power in the space, right, because everyone holds onto their own power and it becomes this generative force for creating and creating and creating this kind of life of the community. And your answers? Right, we talk a lot about adaptive leadership on this podcast. Your answers to these big, longstanding challenges are crowdsourced from the people closest to the pain, in the words of Ayanna Pressley, right? And so, if they're closest to the problem, we need their input and their feedback. Again, I'm thinking adults from a staff lens, students from a class lens. This is where your answers are going to come from. So we need to just cultivate that willingness on our own part to hear it all, to sift through it and again return to students or staff and tell them this is why we can't implement this if we can't, and this is how we're going to move forward with your idea if we can. So this is potentially hard, challenging work, particularly if you're a new teacher and you're like what I have to do all these things. You don't. These are ideas. Take one nugget, run with it, come back for more when you're ready. If you are a leader supporting a new teacher who might be overwhelmed, share that sentiment. Right. You can identify as well the places where this is going well, the places in your school community where a teacher or a leader is fabulous at creating a thriving, positive class culture, one where students are willing to make mistakes, eager to learn from each other, sharing openly and honestly, and people are receiving it well and non-defensively. There's tons of empathy all around. Everyone's identities are affirmed. Right. Find those places and invite teachers to go see that in action, or set up a success. Share where teachers get to share what they tried and how it worked. And what was that? Student impact data, right. What does students say about this? What was their student experience of this lesson or this thing that you've been doing and once we foster all of that, we are going to be thriving all around. So, to help you build and sustain a culture of that, we are going to be thriving all around. So to help you build and sustain a culture of belonging, challenge and discussion in your community, I'm going to go ahead and share my culture playlist with you for free. I created it earlier in 2024, and realized I don't think I've ever shared it on the podcast, so it's in the blog post for this episode at lindsaybethlyonscom slash blog slash 175. It is going to give you all of the things that you need to build and sustain this culture. There are so many resources I'm guessing around 60. There's so many podcast episodes, youtube tutorials, templates for you in there and it is completely free. Go grab it. Let me know how it goes and reach back out if you have questions. Until next time,
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In this episode, authors Beth Pandolpho and Katie Cubano chat with me about the transformative potential of education through emotional intelligence and civil conversations. They share their vision for an equitable education system where every student can thrive and every educator enjoys intellectual freedom and resources that equip them as professionals.
Beth Pandolpho is an educator, instructional coach, writer, and consultant with over 20 years of experience. Beth is passionate about engaging in work that promotes equity and access for both teachers and students. Katie Cubano is an educator and instructional coach with over 15 years of experience. Katie’s focuses on supporting teachers and schools as they design and implement curriculum and instruction that effectively and equitably meet students’ needs. Katie and Beth co-authored Choose Your Own Master Class: Urgent Ideas to Invigorate Your Professional Learning, which we discuss more in this episode. The Big Dream Beth and Katie's big dream for education is twofold. First, for students to have full access to education—their right as citizens—that enables them to grow into who and what they want to be, while also becoming the engine of social mobility. Then, the dream is for educators to work under conditions that enable them with intellectual freedom, material resources, and professional learning opportunities that help them do the job they love to the benefit of all their students. Mindset Shifts Required To achieve equitable outcomes for teachers and students, you need to focus on the teachers and offer best practices. Beth and Katie explain how the whole book is a mindset shift because it offers research-backed information for any teacher to apply. Some of the biggest mindset shifts required revolve around the structure and delivery of professional development. Teachers deserve the same responsive, choice-based learning experiences they provide their students. Additionally, educators can embrace that being wrong is the way we learn, and mutual understanding should be a high priority in the classroom. Action Steps Step 1: Listen to and serve the students who have been most underrepresented and marginalized. It’s not about trying to give them a voice—they have one already. We need to listen and implement what they need. Step 2: Embrace being wrong and know it’s a path to learning and growth as an educator, and offer opportunities for mutual understanding in the classroom. Step 3: Access and utilize resources that help teachers explore urgent educational issues and respond to their students' needs in both curriculum and classroom culture. Challenges? One of the biggest challenges Beth and Katie foresee is overcoming set mindsets many educators have about what’s right and wrong, or what’s good for themselves and students. This makes it harder to partner with people you disagree with, a challenge to achieving equitable outcomes. One Step to Get Started Beth and Katie suggest that listeners start by making one small change, such as rethinking a debate or choosing one chapter or issue to focus on. This small change can have a big impact on your students. Stay Connected Connect with Beth by email at [email protected], and with Katie by email at [email protected] or on X at @katiecubano. To help you implement the lessons from today, Beth and Katie are sharing their Reproducible Chart with you for free. You can also purchase a copy of their book, Choose Your Own Master Class: Urgent Ideas to Invigorate Your Professional Learning to learn more about this important work for educators. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 177 of the Time for Teachership podcast. If you’re unable to listen or you prefer to read the full episode, you can find the transcript below. Quotes:
TRANSCRIPT 0:00:03 - Lindsay Lyons Beth and Katie. Welcome to the Time for Teachership podcast. 0:00:07 - Katie Cubano Thanks for having us. 0:00:08 - Lindsay Lyons Thank you. I'm so excited to have you. I mean, I have told you this before we hit record, but I absolutely love this book. Every teacher and leader in school needs it. I'm thrilled to be having a conversation with you about it. I am curious to know. There are so many things in the world that we all like encompass. There are so many things that we can talk about in this book. What is important for listeners to know? Either about you or just that you want them to have in mind as we jump into our conversation today? 0:00:38 - Katie Cubano Okay. So, um hi, I'm Katie Cubano and I've been in education for over 15 years now. Um, I taught English in the secondary grades for over a decade before becoming an instructional coach, Worked on the same team as Beth until last June when I resigned to be home with my one-year-old so my now one-year-old. So I'm working in the paid workforce right now in a part-time role. So I'm doing student teacher supervision for the College of New Jersey and taking care of my little one and Beth, and I also published Choose your Own Masterclass in 2023. 0:01:16 - Beth Pandolpho Hi, I'm Beth Pandolfo and I've taught English for over 20 years at the high school and college level. I'm presently an instructional coach for grades six through 12. And I think one thing at this point in my career that's important to me is just working toward equity and access for teachers and students. 0:01:37 - Lindsay Lyons I love that. I think that is a shared belief and goal for all of us and I think that's actually a really good segue into the big first question that I usually ask people. So this idea of freedom dreaming comes up on every episode of this podcast, and Dr Bettina Love describes it as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. Considering that, what is the big dream that you hold for education? 0:02:01 - Katie Cubano So I think that we'd love to talk about this in two parts, the first part being our dream for students and then the other piece being our dream for teachers. So I think you'd love to talk about this in two parts, the first part being our dream for students and then the other piece being our dream for teachers. So I think you know our dream for students is to make sure that every student has full access to their right, to their civil right, to an education which enables them to not only succeed academically and follow their passions, but also to grow into citizens who are able to create a more just and humane world, to sort of and this is my frere Ruth speaking to humanize and be humanized in turn by their relationship to learning and to community. 0:02:35 - Beth Pandolpho And just to continue that I think a lot about students having the ability to become who and what they want to be, and education as the engine of social mobility. And then our dream for teachers. Katie, do you want to start on our dream for teachers? 0:02:55 - Katie Cubano Sure. So we feel so passionate about the work we do, about the students we love and about the colleagues who we love and we work alongside. And we want to make sure that teachers work under conditions which enable them with the intellectual freedom, material resources and professional learning opportunities that help them to do the job that they love and benefit, to the benefit of all of our students. 0:03:20 - Beth Pandolpho And I think part of you know why we wrote the book is that we feel really strongly about teachers being treated like the educated and creative professionals that they are. 0:03:32 - Lindsay Lyons Oh my gosh, I love both of these streams. Excellent, thank you. That was really also very succinct. I'm very impressed by you all. So, as you think about kind of the path to the dream, I'm curious to know being instructional coaches, being in that space, thinking about you know, working together on the book. I'm just envisioning this, this path. What feels like? You know, the blocks along the path, where, where along the path, do you see yourself having accomplished great things? And then kind of like what snacks? I usually think about some buckets. Like you know, there's a lot of mindset work. There's a lot of like you guys call them, I think, like introspective reflection sections of your book, right, there's the pedagogy pieces and instructional pieces, like what does this look like with students? There's like the assessment, the content, right, there's all sorts of different things that I think good quality teaching and the structures that enable these teachers to thrive in the ways you described. There's just so much. So where do you see kind of yourselves along this path? 0:04:37 - Beth Pandolpho Yeah, and I think for Katie and I, we both were thinking about students and teachers, because a lot of times we work toward equity for students and then we're seeing things happen systemically that feel really not fair. So, in terms of students, I feel like right now in my career, my focus is listening to and working to serve our most underrepresented and vulnerable student populations and creating opportunities where there weren't any before. And then, in terms of my work with teachers, I'm very interested in how we can provide scaffolds and supports in the classroom, because often what works for our most vulnerable students works for everyone. 0:05:17 - Katie Cubano Yeah, I love that, beth, that's so true and I shockingly, I agree with you completely. I think that when I think about the path to the dream for me and sort of where I've been and where I'm going next, a lot's really been rooted in my approach to the teaching of ELA, both in pedagogy and thinking about content, working with a lot of students whose needs have not been fully met by both education and society at large and, as a result, they're working to improve their skills and I'm sure that you have plenty of other guests and plenty of other listeners who have talked about the problem with thinking just about remediation as our lens, right. So really I've focused my energies both as an educator and an instructional coach and I think also in the way that Beth and I think about and talk about teaching and learning and students and teachers in the book, really focusing on providing students with engaging and relevant curriculum and instruction that meets them where they are and helps them be lifelong readers and writers, not just people who are assigned reading and writing. I think so often in the ELA classroom we're like teaching as though this is like a college English course and our students have chosen to major in, you know English literature or something, when what we really need to be doing is focusing on what they need to grow into people who have reading and writing at the core of their identity as they move forward, or at least as like a part of their identity that they can appreciate and see as something that matters to them in real ways. So for me, this has always included like a very robust, independent reading program, with all the attendant efforts that go into making that happen. And so as an educator in my own classroom, as an instructional coach, supporting my colleagues to do that kind of work and advocating for the funding necessary to get the texts they need, to help them find great texts, to listen to what texts they want, and try and get other people to pay for that. Beth and I did a lot of work like that with our other teammate as well. And then in the book, beth and I also talk about the importance of an independent, robust and independent reading program. We think about our values for our students. We have a chapter on um lining up. It's on a decreasing um um decision fatigue, and we talk about lining up our values with our practices and how so often they can get trampled when we're not very intentional. Um, those values we can just get swept up. So robust independent reading, strong writing workshop approach, that really honors the fact that even our high school learners need writing instruction, maybe even more so than our younger learners, or at least as much as our younger learners do. And then I think the other piece, both as an educator and an instructional coach, really thinking about comprehensive article and vocabulary study, which maybe seems small and unimportant but was really important in my classroom and foundational to helping students build background knowledge about how systems and levers of power work and helping them become sort of aware and justice-minded citizens who can use that knowledge to advocate for change. A lot of times that knowledge is withheld, intentionally or unintentionally. We can get into a whole discussion about that, but they've missed it and they need it. So a lot of that work too. So that's sort of the content and pedagogy piece. And then in terms of dreaming, our dreaming for teachers both of us, we're interested in really supporting them to explore the issues we talk about in the book, which, you know, urgent is in the subtitle. It's a nice long subtitle which I'm very happy about. So it's choose your own masterclass urgent ideas to invigorate your professional learning, and we want to support teachers to explore these issues so that they can draw inspiration directly from the thought leaders that we've, um, we've we've explored, who are all from outside of the field of education, and use those insights to reflect on ways that they can immediately and creatively respond to their needs, the the needs of their students, in both curriculum and instruction, also in climate and culture in their classrooms and schools. Because we feel really strongly that teachers really deserve a responsive and choice-based professional development, professional learning experiences. That's what they give their students Beth is always saying so beautifully and that's what we want in our work and throughout, you know, through the book, to give back to them. 0:10:06 - Beth Pandolpho Yeah, I just want to add onto that, Katie. That is something that I say a lot. Like why don't we give teachers what they give their students? Like, why are we not giving teachers what they give their students? And there's a Starbucks quote and it's like the one who sweeps the floor should choose the broom. And I mean, you know not that teachers want to be, you know, analogous to like. You know not that teachers want to be, you know, analogous to like. You know that teaching is like using a broom. But also, why are they being told what to do exactly what to do? Why are they not just being given the stimulus of what to think about and then figure it out in response to their students? So I feel like those are mantras that Katie and I are always thinking about. And so for us, like writing this book was really an act of love for our colleagues and our teachers, Like we wanted this to be like a gift. If we could do anything to make professional development better, we felt like this was what we'd want our colleagues to have. And for the administrators, when we got the peek behind the curtain, we thought, wow, these people need some support. So it was with both of those things in mind. 0:11:14 - Lindsay Lyons Amazing, and I'm sure in some of these questions we will talk about the format of the book itself and kind of that idea. I feel like that for me, was a huge mindset shift that I have seen in leaders as they are thinking about designing PD for teachers and what that could possibly look like. I think your book is a beautiful answer to that. I'm curious to know if that's a mindset shift that you want to unpack here or if you have other mindset shifts that you were thoughtful about in terms of like, what is it that teachers leaders like? What mindset journeys do they really need to go on, or how should they shift to be able to get to that place where we can achieve the dream that you described? 0:11:56 - Beth Pandolpho Yeah, I do think we wanted to talk about it in terms of the book. When we were thinking about our mind shift, I said you know, katie, what's our mind shift? And she's like, our mind shift is the book, that's our book. So I said you're right, because we think in order to achieve more equitable outcomes for teachers you know and outcomes for teachers you know and students, you have to also focus on the teachers. So for teachers, this is a way. It's a book of six chapters. They're standalone, they're like long research articles. So you can begin with chapter four and if you only read chapter four, you have a full experience. If your colleague reads chapter two, there are jigsaw questions to have cross-curricular conversations. All of the thought leaders are from outside of education because, you know, we've decided that social and emotional learning is really important, but also, like psychology knew this was important for decades to say teachers are really busy. Here's some urgent ideas from outside the field of education. You don't need to wait 20 years to find them out. Like, here they are, and then it's not what Beth and Katie think about them. Like, what do you think about them? These are people that are doing the work you know in other fields. So the way we identified the topics for the chapters is we made a gigantic chart, but then we also just took people from our school and said like okay, here's our PE teacher, here's our very resistant, whatever teacher. And we were like we need to if we want to make equitable professional development. We need to think about all of these people. And so there were things. It could have looked very different if it was the Beth and Katie book, because we would have just done what we liked. But we did it what? Which would have been fun. 0:13:37 - Katie Cubano That would have been a lot of fun, no, but only we would have only our family. 0:13:40 - Beth Pandolpho It would be for us. Yeah, it would be for us, so yeah, so we had to challenge ourselves because there were times like there were teachers that would not want to read the Beth and Katie book. So the things that we decided were urgent in education. The first one is emotional intelligence, and people talk a lot about you know that's not what we're here to do in school. And oh, kids are so much more sensitive, you know, than they were previously. So like we don't want to feed into that. But really emotional intelligence and academics, like they're intertwined, you can't do one without the other. So one chapter is on chapter one is on emotional intelligence. 0:14:17 - Katie Cubano Katie, and I just want to add to that One of the things Mark Brackett talks about, who we bring into that first chapter he talks about. Sure, kids today are more sensitive, and that's great. Sensitivity is a superpower that can be harnessed, you know, to make everything in a person's life better, to help them become so much more self-aware, to help them understand their reactions to you know conversations both with in the home, out, you know, in in school as educators, right Too, or so we're talking about both student self-awareness and teacher self-awareness in that piece. But we love what Mark Brackett, how he frames that like, yes, they are more sensitive and that is okay and that is something that we can use to help them move forward, not something that holds them back. 0:15:02 - Beth Pandolpho And you can't separate your emotions from academics, like if you come in and you had something happened at home or something with a friend that is going to impact you. We can't separate it. If you feel nervous or unsafe and there's an exam you're not going to do as well, I mean, these are not things we could just say, this does not belong in school, like we bring our whole humanity to every space. So, katie, do you want to talk about chapter two and balancing technology? 0:15:29 - Katie Cubano Oh, you know I do so major mind shift here. This chapter is called balancing technology use in the classroom, and you know we were seeing a lot, and we still are seeing a lot. We're very happy to see this conversation about the importance of schools helping students not be so attached to their phones, right? So what can schools do? Some schools are banning them entirely. They're putting them in lockers. I actually advocate for that approach, but there's lots of approaches, you know, all along the continuum, and what we weren't seeing, though, was a reckoning with the degree to which we're tethering students to their devices in the classroom and when they go home for the day, and we felt like there needs to be a major mind shift here, because you know it is our responsibility to give, to help students receive an education which respects, you know, their need for healthy lives and health, healthy balance, including time away from their screens, and not only in the classroom, again, but at home, time for play in nature, time for family and time for community, and we are not striking this balance right now with the degree to which we ask students to access their education on the computer, and, you know, when we think about the original goal of that we talked about of students having a full access to their to their civil right to an education. You know we got these one to one devices with so much enthusiasm and now we need to pause and say is the current state of affairs providing students with a full access to their civil rights to an education? And we would argue that it's tipping into such an unhealthy territory with the amount that we're having them on the screens. The great news is we're very well positioned to help stem this tide of tech overuse and help our students understand the problems with surveillance, capitalism, big tech's role in both their education and their lives outside of school. And we have some really practical strategies and exercises that educators can use to start to think about how they, if their pattern tipped into sort of digitizing as the default, which many of us went that way, especially with the pandemic that's totally understandable how we can start to walk that back. So just one quick example and all of these are free, free printable reproducibles if people want to check them out and adapt them in ways that work for them. But on our website for the book. But one quick example would be just simply auditing your tech tool usage. So thinking about. You know how many are you using and what is the defense for the use of each, and is there any duplication happening? You know, are you using? I'm not gonna be able to think of the name of it now. I know Pear Deck, but what's the other one that my friend wanted, the one that's just like Pear Deck? Anybody, anybody, pear Deck. But what's the other one that my friend wanted, the one that's just like Pear Deck, anybody, anybody has such a silly name too. 0:18:18 - Beth Pandolpho I'm not going to be able to oh, I know I know which one you mean, but yeah, but so I mean where Katie's going with this is. People say, like I heard about this tool and it's like right, it's exactly Pear Deck and we have a premium subscription to Pear Deck. So let's like so I mean also in there with the best intentions teachers want to do, like the newest, the best, the most engaging, interesting, and it's just like right, it's Pear Deck, it just it's the same exact thing. So, save your energy and your goodwill, and so you know, we're really just to be like link it to your instructional outcome, and if you're already have something that that fits that bill, then then that's sufficient and maybe what you have that fits that bill is not using the screen, Maybe it's doing it in paper and that was working great. 0:19:06 - Katie Cubano You know, Beth shared this really great example the other day. She was saying like she was saying, like you know, great example, digitized for the pandemic. I'm going to let students choose from these four articles, and I always do this. I have these four articles curated. I love them. Oh, I found a new one in the Times this week and I'm going to add that. So now I've got five beautiful articles, I'm going to put them all up on Google Classroom. Right, the students even to get to that post, sometimes the exercise in willpower and attention resources just to get to that post on Google Classroom. 0:19:42 - Beth Pandolpho And then five to choose from five, and then some open them all up. So now they have six tabs open in addition to whatever else they had open. And how do you pick these articles that? Your teacher, you know, was just waxing poetic about all of them. So I said to Katie I mean, at some point you want to just say here's a pink article and it's about this, and here's the yellow article, which is about this. The pink one's longer, you'll find the yellow one a little bit shorter and a little more user-friendly. What are you feeling today? 0:20:13 - Katie Cubano I mean, for me it's going to be three. Let's be honest, it's going to be at least three in my classroom. But yes, point being, print out the articles, put them on the desk and bring it back to your desk. 0:20:23 - Beth Pandolpho And now you can attend. And again, we're not talking about wasting paper. Save them. I mean, I started saving things from year to year, but they don't. If they're not writing on them, like, I'll have those back, or if you want to annotate them, I don't need them back, but we're doing something wrong. And now we've spent all this time and we're only on to our second chapter, but we just feel, we feel so strongly that we've gone too far in one direction in a way that's detrimental to kids. 0:20:52 - Katie Cubano Yeah, and I think that and this is the last thing I'll say about it it's so much more than just curriculum and instruction too. So in the chapter we highlight three thinkers there Jenny O'Dell, who wrote how to do nothing, resisting the attention economy. Cal Newport, who wrote digital minimalism excuse me. And Johan Hari, who wrote stolen focus, why you can't pay attention, and how to Think Deeply Again. And I just really I really encourage folks to look at the resources, because the free resources, because we dive into so much more than what I just mentioned about auditing, auditing the tech tools you're using we dive into deeper concerns about, again, surveillance, capitalism, the attention economy, helping students come to understand those things, and thinking really intentionally about ways that you can opt to do something different, to operate in a third space Jenny O'Dell would call it while still serving your students and being a part of the community of teachers where you work, yeah, and so we don't have to continue answering this question. 0:21:53 - Beth Pandolpho if you want to move on, or we can, you know, kind of just like highlight some of the other few chapters. 0:22:00 - Katie Cubano We were going to talk about civil conversations next. 0:22:04 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah, let's maybe just like a quick view of the rest of the chapters, just kind of topical level, and then maybe for the next question we can focus on the civil conversations, because I'd love to talk about that. 0:22:16 - Beth Pandolpho Okay, so the chapter three is on fostering civil classrooms for a more civil society. Chapter four is supporting student growth and mastery through teacher leadership teachers in the classroom as leaders. And the next chapter is really an introspective chapter for teachers, reducing decision fatigue, because teachers are tasked with so many micro decisions in a day, and we called it reducing decision fatigue to increase equity, because we think it increases equity for teachers if they can manage the amount of decisions, and also for students, so we're not giving students different answers because we've managed these decisions. And then the last chapter is called telling stories that lead to liberation, which is really about the way we think about and talk about students, that we have a more positive framing because it actually matters, because when we put negative labels on people, we actually put an artificial ceiling on what they can achieve. 0:23:14 - Lindsay Lyons Oh my gosh. Yeah, I wish we had like four hours for this conversation, cause I'd love to get into all of these. They're so good. But I'm I'm wondering about you know like maybe we take the chapter three, for example, or we can take like the broader idea of personalized PD and kind of like what your book gives leaders. But however, whichever direction you want to go, but I'm thinking about like the action step, so like if you're talking to leaders about you know what, what will make this possible in their spaces? What are the actions that this looks like to implement or for teachers, what are the actions that this looks like? I know you have so many tangible things at the end of each chapter. I'd love to, I'd love to get into those a little bit. There's there's so many follow-up questions I'll probably insert here, but I'd love for you to just give me your initial thoughts and then we can take it from there. 0:23:59 - Beth Pandolpho Katie, can I just I'm gonna start on this one because I feel like I can anchor it to a chapter, because I hadn't thought about it in this way, but this is something that I'm doing at work that I feel like answers. What are the brave actions we need to take? And that made me think. If I said Katie, if I said that our mindset is represented in this book, this really is about telling stories that lead to liberation. And one thing that we're doing at our school is we took all of the student affinity groups, like the Black Student Union and we have a Muslim Student Association, and I'm not going to list them all, but we actually just decided we need an affinity group like these groups. They don't have paid advisors and we've actually just we sat with every single group. The assistant principal did and I did, and we just said what are your goals and objectives? How can we support you? And now they're presenting at a faculty meeting. They're going to have. They have. If you had the question is, if you had eight to 10 minutes with teachers, what do you want them to know and how can they support you in the classroom and beyond? The Muslim Student Association went to one of our elementary schools and did a lesson about their culture and how students, and they came with all the students' first names in the class written in Arabic and they helped the kids write their names and they visited, I'm going to say, 20 classes, pairs of students. The Hindu Culture Club is doing a Bollywood movie night. These are things that they can't accomplish without adults in the building and you know the assistant principal can't be their advisor and I'm not in a position there's no advisory position but what we can do is listen to them and get it on the school calendar and make sure they have chaperones. So I feel like what's the path to the dream? It's listening to students who have been historically, you know, marginalized, underrepresented and not heard, and you know we don't have to give them a voice. They actually have a voice. We just have to create the opportunity and the space for them. And right now and my job is very busy and multifaceted, that is the most joyful part of my job sitting around a conference table with students and they are so grateful and when I want to say, all I'm doing is just saying, yeah, you could do that. Sure, I know who to email, you can email me, and they're so. They feel so liberated, and now we're working to connect them with the middle school because also their club enrollment drops off when they graduate, and so now we're working to connect them with the middle school because also their club enrollment drops off when they graduate, and so now we're working to recruit the eighth graders. So that's something that I can do and our DEI coordinator can do. We partner with the middle school. How can we now get them to interface with the eighth grade? So that's, I feel like that's my path, and it doesn't I mean, I know it says brave action, it actually doesn't feel very brave. It feels. It feels just like what we should be doing. 0:26:38 - Katie Cubano Beth talked about her immediate context, so I guess I'll do the same. I'm not working in a K-12 building right now, which is so weird. Worked in a K-12 building not only for the over 15 years of my 16th year this year, but then throughout my college preparatory program, so it's just so weird to not be in the rhythms of the building. But because I'm not, it feels kind of futile for me to list things I did when I was those feel like past actions. 0:27:09 - Beth Pandolpho Oh, I'm sorry. I was just going to say one thing that I think sort of encompasses. You know and again, it would never be a waste of time to listen to all of the things that Katie did, because it's kind of amazing but I also think that one of the challenges that we all go through is that we need to. We have a broken system and we need to fix it while it's still operating, and so it's this moving target. So, but sorry, katie, I didn't mean to. 0:27:32 - Katie Cubano No, that's okay. No, so like the piece of the of the puzzle I'm working with now is in my student teaching supervision role, um, and what I'm finding is that's a little shift for me is that I'm learning to serve students and work alongside students who may already have privilege and power in ways that maybe the communities, um, that I worked alongside before did not, and that is its own challenge worked alongside before, did not, and that is its own challenge. So I've been reading and rereading this Carla Shalaby essay. You must accept them and you must accept them with love. You must accept them and accept them with love, which is a James Baldwin quote, and she talks exactly about this specific thing and it's it's been such, it's been very supportive to me in thinking about how do I help pre-service teachers enter the profession ready to cultivate excellence in their work, provide culturally and developmentally responsive and equitable classrooms for their students, do so in a way which honors, like, what they desire for themselves and the vision that they have for themselves, not just the vision I have for them, right, so it's a lot. It's sort of supporting them in their pre-service work to anticipate where do they need more support, what resources do they need. How can I model teaching that's sort of rooted in a love of all students and again, while helping them be the teacher they want to be and not the teacher I want them to be? Because now, like we're back in a in a power relationship, I don't want if that's what I'm doing is trying to get them to become me. Essentially and Beth and I have talked about this a lot with you know, in our experiences in general in education, to be a leader is not to. You can't be a leader by just wanting people to follow the same path that you took and wanting them to do it the same way you did it. That's not leading, that's not responsive at all. So this is a new challenge for me and the brave action is sort of I'm not sure what part of it it feels admitting that it's hard for me to work in a situation where I'm serving students who have privilege and power and to do that in a way that's rooted in love and not sort of get resentful or get annoyed at things that they may privileges they may have, that even as myself, as a pre-service teacher and as a young teacher I didn't have and just to serve them genuinely. 0:30:00 - Lindsay Lyons I love that. I also wanted to share, if it's okay with you, all things that I was reflecting on from what you shared that just were the brave actions that I think would be super cool or like action steps perhaps you could say to consider. So things that I talk about but were just novel to me in the thought process. So these are kind of my ahas for the book, particularly around that chapter on civil discussion. So one I love that you distinguish between norms and baseline assumptions Mind blowing. I was just like this is incredible and I'll mute myself actually after that one, just because I want to know do you guys want to just kind of explain that a little bit? 0:30:37 - Katie Cubano Sure. So I want to shout out my friend and Beth's friend and both of our colleagues One of my best friends, justin Dolce-Moscolo Garrett, and we's friend and both of our colleagues one of my best friends, justin Dolce-Moscolo-Garrett and we worked together to sort of develop this concept of baseline assumptions. We didn't develop it in a vacuum and we have lots of resources in the book for folks to look at to start to understand that. But it came from I guess what it came from was this realization that lots of people were norming with their classes but there was still something missing. Like the norms were dictating what was happening in the class. Like we're trying to dictate the actions in the classroom, but there was never like a baseline discussion of. Here are the things, here are the assumptions that are going to guide the discussions. Here's how we'll have the conversation is great, but there needs to be some guardrails around what we're talking about and whether what we're agreeing to are the conditions of our understanding of society before we can actually get into the how we're going to have the conversation and respecting other people. Through the way I show up in my conversation, you know and I'm careful of my conversational quirks and things like that and we really did feel like that piece was missing. And I think that a lot of times folks are worried and scared to say to their students you know, in this classroom we are going to operate on the assumption that, but it's our belief that we have the intellectual freedom to do so. So, you know, for me, one of the ways this manifested as a teacher of English is, I would say to my students in this, in this classroom, we're not going to debate whether people who are gay should be able to get married. They should and and and. You don't have to agree with that personally, but in this classroom you have to respect that view personally. But in this classroom you have to respect that view and you know that's teaching is not apolitical, we know this. So it is. I'm glad that you brought it up as a brave action, because it is. You know, does it mean that some people might disagree with you? Sure, but it, and that doesn't mean that every baseline assumption has to be what I just said. They're both things that you as the, as the teacher, bring to the conversation and they're called professional learning with teachers because they did like lunch and learns. 0:33:08 - Beth Pandolpho These baseline assumptions are really important because they did devolve into things that were not really up for debate and they could click back a few slides and say like, oh, you know, that's not part of the conversation, because we sort of established that everyone can have clean water and that's brave to do with colleagues. But I feel like it gave them the language because they thought about it before. So I'm going to say that's a brave action to do it with your colleagues. So it's sort of then it's neutral, it's not judgmental, it's not like you said something wrong, it's like ooh, right. Also, remember, that's not. We're not debating that or discussing that. 0:33:50 - Katie Cubano And what it kind of does is. It gives people an opportunity, and I think that people initially meet this with fear. For many reasons backlash, but another reason is they don't wanna tell a student what to think about something. One of the things we talk about in the civil conversations chapter is sometimes what you're actually doing with. A baseline assumption is giving a child an opportunity to try on an identity that they're not going to get to try on anywhere else in their life, and that can be really. You can say to them you don't have to think this in your own life. You have to respect it in here, though, that this is a guardrail in our conversation in here, and it really does. It gives them the opportunity to see what that would feel like, and then they can let it go as soon as they leave if they want, if that's what their families want, if that's how things go for them, but at least in that moment it gives them that chance which they might not otherwise have, but at least in that moment it gives them that chance which they might not otherwise have. 0:34:44 - Beth Pandolpho Another thing that Katie says about civil conversations that I also really like is that in school, you know it's like let's have a debate. You're going to have, you know, one class period to research this issue and then your job is to just debate the other side. And you know the more we've been thinking and we have enough of that going on in society, so we're just like we need more conversation. So Katie and I have been using the terms like inquiry and conversation. We're going to look at both these issues and we we cite work from Francis Kissling in the chapter like what is good in the position of the other. You know, and I and you know Katie used the example of, you know, gay marriage. Know, katie used the example of you know gay marriage, like I used the example of, like you know, everyone should be able to buy a cake from a bakery for their wedding, like you know. And let's talk. We're not going to debate, you know we're not going to debate it whether you think they should or they shouldn't. And also, like, where are the people coming from who didn't want to sell the gay couple the cake? And we talked about religion and what could you admire about them as being religious and trying to adhere to their faith. So just looking at it as a complex issue instead of like I think they shouldn't get the cake. Well, I think they should get a cake and I think that we have enough polarity that we don't need to nurture that in our classroom at all and that it's okay, yes, oh, oh my gosh. 0:36:05 - Lindsay Lyons There's so many things that I want to jump in on. You guys are brilliant. So one thing I wanted to say is that, yes, the around that, like the Adrienne Marie Brown quote that you used about being wrong oh my gosh, so good, right, and just the idea of being wrong, right, like that, we learn a lot and grow a lot from being wrong. Like the, the goal that you shared about mutual understanding. I was imagining, like if, instead of the rhetoric outcome right, or the make a claim, defend it outcome that we typically I mean I use that as a teacher, I encourage, I literally was coaching people this month to use that as a teacher and now I'm like, huh, what if it was instead mutual understanding? That was the outcome, like, literally as a priority standard on a rubric. How cool would that be right? And you guys have a ton of like. Um, page 96, page 107, I mean there's a bunch of prompts that you guys share about, like here are the question prompts that you could hand to a student when they see an argument or an opinion about something and you could unpack it right. And you could unpack it right and you could to your point, beth, like what is valuable about this argument? Right? Like what is the underlying value? I think there's so much in that we talk about or I talk about using like the positive psychology's values and actions and I think you guys actually cited them as well as kind of a culture builder, but how cool would it be if we actually integrated it into academic conversations as well. Right, where are the values in this? I also loved the, I think, related to what you were just talking about, this idea of asking students to just think about what they think about, as opposed to what's your opinion on this go, and that just made me think about you know what? How do we create? You also write about flow states, but I love Chiksmahai's work and, like thinking about, you know, carving out time free from distractions. That's what enables us to be creative. That's what enables us to like have the time to consider what we think and how. You know all the different things. I think they merge together around. This question for me is like, what does the class look like, or what could it look like when it enables us? I know that's a big question. I just want to know if you have thoughts on that Did you say class, yes, yeah. 0:38:11 - Katie Cubano So I think one very concrete thing is you know, when we think about planning for rhetoric, when we think about planning for you know, thinking through persuasive, being persuasive in our writing. So often those units rush to picking a position to defend and I think that, excuse me, an essential piece that often our units are missing is like a whole lot of time for students to just learn about the issue. Just, they have knee-jerk positions, sure, I mean for many things, not for everything, but for many things. But before even asking them what their position is, what is a topic you're interested in? I don't even want to know what you think about it yet, because I don't even think you fully know what you think about it yet, and that's not your fault, you haven't had the time to figure that out. So, like, let's spend some time just building our knowledge around this issue before you decide what your position's going to be on that, to the degree that that's possible. I know that. You know there would some there. You know there's some argument that our positions are sort of going to create our arguments, that our positions are already set. It's not going, we're not necessarily going to be swayed by information, but I do think that maybe, while that may be true of adults, we have an opportunity with students to take some time to build background knowledge before having them jump into defending you know one position or another and using rhetoric toward that end. 0:39:46 - Beth Pandolpho Yeah, and I just want to add one thing that I'm thinking years ago, before I had the language for it, I did a four corners activity and I had told every student, like go to the corner that you believe in, and if you end up in the corner by yourself, I will come and stand with you. And one student I don't want to say what it was, but he went to a very unpopular corner, something that I could not, you did not agree with, and I went and I stood next to him and I just said tell me why you think that like share with everyone. But just it gave him a chance to like interrogate that knee jerk decision without I didn't criticize him, I stood next to him and I think there's something that now, when I have language for it, I would think it's that cancel culture, but instead I was like calling him in. You know, like here are some reasons. I think it's problematic. Where were you coming from when you stood here? But I mean it changed the whole feeling of the class that I went and stood next to him. And again, when you talk about brave action, it, but it felt pretty brave to go stand there with that opinion that he decided he strongly agreed with. 0:40:55 - Lindsay Lyons Thank you both for those concrete examples. I think I'm looking at the time. I totally lost track of time because I've been so engaged in this conversation. Maybe we could do a lightning round for the next couple of questions. One I'm wondering what the biggest challenge that you faced or that you anticipate facing as you continue this work is, and feel free to both answer. 0:41:15 - Beth Pandolpho I mean, I think the biggest challenge would be that people have really set mindsets about what's right and wrong and what's good for themselves and what's good for themselves and what's good for children. So I think I think that is a big challenge, and how do you partner with people that you don't necessarily agree with? 0:41:34 - Lindsay Lyons Agree, yeah, so good, and everyone should get the book to read more about how to, how to partner with people to do that Um one thing that you would encourage listeners to do when they end the episode. What's kind of that? First, next step. 0:41:50 - Beth Pandolpho I think that everything feels so big. And but if you could do one thing, one small change, if you decide you're going to rethink your debate, right, rethink your debate, you know, just like it's choose one chapter, choose one issue, choose one thing, because small changes have a big impact. 0:42:11 - Lindsay Lyons Something you're learning about lately. This does not have to relate to your profession or this conversation. It can be literally anything. 0:42:18 - Beth Pandolpho Well, I'm going to I like I'm going to say something first, and I feel like Katie's going to have some kind of beautiful wrap up. I think what I'm continuing to learn is that we can't change everything we want to, but what we can always do is we can show up for people, we can show up for what we feel is right, and maybe not always, but sometimes that's enough. 0:42:38 - Katie Cubano I just finished Ta-Nehisi Coates' the Water Dancer, which was published a long time ago now, but I don't always get to books the year that they're published and it was, without a doubt, the best book I've read this year and I'm going to be honest with you guys, besides short form pieces, I'm only reading fiction right now in my life. My brain, with a one-year-old, cannot handle weighty nonfiction. So I'm reading the Water Dancer, or I was reading it. I just finished it and there's this beautiful passage in there about abolitionist. Corinne Quinn is the name of the character. The narrator says about her that she loved the idea of abolition, she loved the idea of of. She loved than them, but she did not love enslaved people. And I just ever since I had I read that it was just so beautifully put I did it. Zero justice, everything. Tanahasi codes touches turns to gold and I hope he writes more fiction soon. But it's really had me reflecting on like what are the times in my life when I was solely operating or not solely, because I don't think I was ever solely, but I was at least in part operating out of ego when I was advocating for, against injustices, and then like, what are the times in my life when it has been only pure and genuine love for students? And then how can I reflect on those times and what I was doing and how I was feeling, to make sure that it only ever falls on the side of doing it, because I love students and I want them to have full access to their civil rights education all the time and never fall on the side of. I'm doing this because it makes me feel better than other people or it makes me feel like a purpose for my life, because it's not about me, it's not about us, it's about the work of of, it's about the, the freedom, dreaming right, that's what it's about. So I love that he's had me, he's had my head there. In this kind of time when I'm um in education, but not sort of in the school building right now, it just feels like the right time. There's no wrong time to be reflecting on that, but this feels like a particularly right time. 0:45:10 - Lindsay Lyons That was so beautiful. Thank you, thank you, guys. So the last question I'm going to ask is just where do people learn more about you, connect with you, get your book, all the things? 0:45:21 - Beth Pandolpho Well, I have a website and it's bethpandolfocom and that's just kind of like a landing page for all of my things, um, and my email is on there and it's connect at bethpandolfocom, and I'm more active on linkedin than I am on what is now x katie yeah, so folks can just reach me via email at. 0:45:43 - Katie Cubano It's just Kate Cubano at gmailcom, kate, and then Cuban with an O at gmailcom, and I'm not super active on X and I don't have a LinkedIn. I just I'm just not doing it right now with our book is on Amazon and on Barnes and Noble. Also, though, I would love to share, we to share. We would love to share with you, lindsay, the link to the book website on Solution Tree, so that folks can access those materials that we mentioned. 0:46:14 - Lindsay Lyons Brilliant. We'll put it in the blog post for this episode in the show notes Awesome. Thank you guys. So much, Katie and Beth. It was an absolute pleasure. Thanks for joining. 0:46:22 - Katie Cubano Thank you.
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Time for Teachership is now a proud member of the...AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
November 2024
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