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In this episode, Dr. Barbara Cirigliano discusses how PLCs are critical for early childhood educators and shares ideas on how to do them well. We talk about appropriate assessment methods for young children, the critical role of collaboratively developed standards and the transformative power of vertical alignment in curriculum planning.
Dr. Barbara Cirigliano has been in Early Childhood Education for her whole career, as a teacher, coach, and principal. She authored the book, Success for Our Youngest Learners, and she loves to work with schools and their youngest learners. The Big Dream Early childhood education is fully integrated into the professional learning community process. Educators assess young learners in developmentally appropriate ways, setting them up for high achievement from the start. All early educators learn the PLC process and use that process to develop teacher practice and to help kids learn at the highest levels. Mindset Shifts Required Leaders and educators of older children should recognize early childhood education as an integral part of the educational continuum. A big “aha” for teachers in this work is the importance of consistency and equity in standards across classrooms. Action Steps to Take in PLCs to Determine Essential Standards Step 1: Review state standards and essential standards with a team. Step 2: Individual teachers pick out the ones they really want students to learn. Step 3: Come together to reach consensus on what you will all teach. Step 4: Create job-alike, vertical curriculum teams and align curricula vertically from Pre-K to Kindergarten and up. (Early childhood educators should be part of these district-wide PLCs!) Challenges?
One Step to Get Started Arrange meetings where teachers can begin discussing essential educational matters, paving the way for trust and collaboration. "Just start teachers getting used to coming together at a certain time, being on time for that meeting and talking about important things," she advises. This initial step is crucial for setting the foundation for more detailed work on standards and assessments. Stay Connected You can connect with Dr. Cirigliano via email at [email protected] To help you implement these ideas in your context, Dr. Cirigliano is sharing several of the reproducibles from her book with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 173 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 Barbara Sirigliano, so nice to have you on the Time for Teachership podcast. Thank you for inviting me. I am so excited for our conversation today because I think the little ones don't get talked about enough, and so, thinking about the PLC process, particularly with educators of young children, and particularly as a parent right now of a two-year-old, I'm really, really in that space and so really interested in you know what does that look like for young learners? So before we even like dive into that conversation, I'm really curious to know is there anything beyond the traditional bio or anything that people should know about you that you want to kind of anchor our conversation in? 0:00:43 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Not really. I do. Now have three grandchildren five, three and one and so I really focus in on I'm really able to focus in on early childhood and in watching them develop. It just hits home to me and makes what I do seem more important than ever. 0:01:03 - Lindsay Lyons What a beautiful connection. I love when it goes beyond the professional bio to like we are full human beings with many people in our lives. 0:01:10 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Right, yeah, so just watching, you know. And my daughter-in-law says should he be doing this right now? He's only 18 months. How many words should he have? And you know, my daughter with her three-year-old should she go to preschool right now or should you know what should we do? Why is she doing this? Is this okay? So it's really fun to be able to see them grow and develop, because I love that age. That's my favorite age. 0:01:34 - Lindsay Lyons That's incredible and they have such a good resource to be able to ask you Right, I know. Oh, awesome. Well, one of the first big questions I usually like asking guests is this idea of freedom, dreaming. So Dr Bettina loves talks about it as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, which I think is a beautiful phrase. And so, considering that, what is that big dream that you hold for the field of education, either broadly or specific to the younger ages? 0:02:04 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano I think that it I would focus more in on early childhood. I think that early childhood has been forgotten, and especially in the. When you talk about the PLC process, because the in a professional learning community, you know we assess children and so many early child teachers says we don't assess that's developmentally inappropriate. We don't test kids, we don't do this. So you know, and I would have said that 20 years ago, before I started and before my school became a professional learning community and now I think you really need to assess and there's a right way to assess young children, and so my hope and dream is that all early educators learn that process and use that process to develop and to make kids learn to high expectations, to the highest levels, and it starts at early childhood. You know their brain is developing so fast and so much is going on that that's where we need to really really start. My middle school principal, whenever we had big team meetings or whatever, would always say tell your teachers, thank you, barb, for giving them all these kids such a great head start. So she understood that and she was appreciative of the work that the early childhood educators in my district did. 0:03:32 - Lindsay Lyons I love that you really that you shared that story, but also that you center so much of the early childhood in the continuum of the district right Like we're incorporating early childhood educators in conversations in PLCs that are district-wide or otherwise, and I think that's a huge, maybe mindset shift for leaders. I'm curious if you know what are the mindset shifts associated with this work. What's kind of the aha moment that you've seen, even in a district leader or someone who's maybe more of a building leader in this work? 0:04:06 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano I think that for so long, special ed and early childhood has been oh, they're down there, they're down the hall, they do this, they do their own thing. And I think what really comes to mind is I worked with a school in Atlanta and I had all the four-year-old teachers together and I said to them so what does it look like? Or I had the kindergarten teachers together too what does it look like when your students write their name, what is proficient? And one teacher said well, if I can read it, it's fine. And another teacher said no, no, no, no, no, it has to be capital letters, finger space, blah, blah, blah. And I said do you see what's happening here? This isn't equitable. And they're like oh yeah, when you tell a child to spell cat and you say spell cat. Or you say spell cat, it's not equitable. And so when you assess kids, we really need to work on that with young children, and we never did before because we never talked about assessing kids as a team. So I think it's the equity that the light turns on for some kindergarten teachers. And I had the principal at the school tell me well, when my child had this teacher, they said they knew the ABCs. And then the next year they didn't know the letters of the alphabet because they were assessing them differently. And parents notice that. Parents wonder and the principal's like oh well, let me check this out. 0:05:41 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah, oh, my gosh, I love, I love that you went there, because one of my favorite chapters of your book was chapter four, where you talk about, like, literally breaking down that question of PLCs, of like what is it that we want students to know and be able to do, right, right. And I think that that really is a struggle for a lot of teams and a lot of you know schools and communities to just know how to even approach that conversation. Do you mind kind of walking us through, like what are the steps that a team could take to determine those essential standards? 0:06:15 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Well, what we did is. The first thing we did is we looked at the state standards for kindergarten and at that time there were no early childhood standards 20 years ago so we had to crank them down. So you need to look at your state standards for early childhood. Or you need to look at some people use creative curriculum and they have a ton of standards and you need to go through the process of individually teachers go through and mark what is most important Because I talk about. You can't teach all of the standards, they can't learn them all, so you need to pick out the ones you really, really want them to learn, and so the teachers individually go through that. They're on their own. And then they come together and say how about this one? Who said this 4.1 was most important? Nobody, okay, not one we're going to worry about. Or everyone agreed on this one. So this is one we're going to worry about Because you need to have about a third of the total number of standards as your essential standards. That doesn't mean you're not going to teach the other ones, but it means these are the ones you are assuring that students will learn, and that's important for going on to the next grade. My first year I had 15 kindergarten classrooms and I looked at the report cards and saw so much variance and these kids went to all different first grade teachers and they go. Some of them know this and some of them know that and some of them know this. So these are the things that you're going to tell the four year old preschool teacher, you're going to tell the kindergarten teacher. You can tell the first grade teacher. They know these, they know these. So you don't have to start over at the beginning. You don't have to obsess them to find out. I'm telling you they know these. So when you go through that process, you decide which ones are most important and you really have real. You have to do it as a team. You can't take mine from my old schools and use mine because you have to talk about them. My early childhood teachers talked about shapes for about 25 minutes. What are the most important shapes? A triangle, square, circle, you know? No, a triangle. They don't need to know a triangle when they're three. They need to know a triangle when they're four. There's no right or wrong. They just have to agree on what's most important and what. If it's a triangle, then it's a triangle and everyone has to agree to agree. It's not. It's more consensus than 100%, so I think that's important. 0:08:51 - Lindsay Lyons I love that and just the specific example about the shapes and I think in the book you talked about colors. Right Like these are tangible things we can talk about. 0:08:58 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Right, right, right. You don't think well, you know, I mean all those things. I have the background experience to know this works. I've, we've, done it. I know how the conversations go. Sometimes they're not pretty, but I've seen it in action and I've seen how kids do better. 0:09:22 - Lindsay Lyons So yeah, I wanted to touch on that because you brought it up about the assessments, right, and I think you shared in the story, just a story in the book, thinking about. I think it was your child who was really upset about the bubble filling out. Yeah, do you want to share that story? We're not doing that. 0:09:41 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano We're not doing the bubble choices. I mean, the teacher was shocked. How am I going to know what he knows? I go lots of other ways, surprise, surprise. So you know, assessment is important, but it needs to be done appropriately and everyone has to agree on how it's done, because it has to be done in a pretty similar fashion and at the same time similar fashion and at the same time. 0:10:09 - Lindsay Lyons So yeah, do you mind talking through a couple of those examples? Because actually, as I was a former high school teacher and I was thinking, wow, those assessment options are assessment options I could use in high school as well, like they're not exclusive to the younger grades. 0:10:18 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Right. So ways to assess children you're talking about. Lots of times we do observation assessments and children might be playing and you might say today I'm gonna have everyone go through this center where it's a math center and it's counting, and I'm just gonna sit and watch or give a prompt same prompt everybody's giving count this, these blocks for me, how many can you count? How many you see? And the prompt has got to be similar. It can't be one teacher says count the blocks for me. The other teacher can't say count one, two, three, four, five. It has to be similar. But while they're playing you do that and I used to just record things on a sticky note and pile them on my desk and by the end of the day I had a million. So you all kind of decide how you're going to do that. You can also do more, a more formal way of assessing young children in small groups and have them all sit at your table, like in a reading table in kindergarten. You can have them all sit there and you can, one by one, have them point to words or point to letters or anything like that. So you can do a small group, you can do observation and you can do an activity that's totally geared at assessing, but it's not a paper and pencil assessment, it's not a filling in the bubbles. So I think it's sometimes a lot harder for teachers of young children to assess, because some days a young child will know all the letters of the alphabet and the next day they won't. So I talked to teachers about part of it is your teacher education, your gut feeling too. They didn't get it today because you know they got off the bus crying and they were hungry and whatever you know. But I know in my heart they know them. The other piece is that when I talked to kindergarten teachers they did a letter recognition assessment and they wanted like 95% of the kids to know all the letters and when they did the assessment one teacher had four students that were on the cusp. They only missed one letter and they knew what that letter was and they were able to really focus on it for the next week to get them to that point. Instead of going over all the letters, you really get a specific item to really make sure that students learn. So you know. 0:12:44 - Lindsay Lyons I love those examples, I love how concrete they are. 0:12:47 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Just like this is doable right, we can, it is doable, it is doable. And that's me. I'm the example queen. I don't tend to know it all, but I, you know, and I think I'm more believable to teachers because I have that experience. I've been sitting there, you know. I sent 200 report cards off to first grade and it said your child does not know all the letters of the alphabet. Well, which ones? Which ones don't they know? You know? Right, yeah. So that became really important and that's why assessment is so great, it's so wonderful, it's so useful. It's so useful. It guides your instruction, it's telling you how we're going to continue on instructing these children. 0:13:34 - Lindsay Lyons So yes, I love that that's such an integral part of the PLC process and thinking about like coming together to look at the data to identify the things we need to do next right, like a little action research process, and that I think that's so important because a lot of teachers, I think, get in the weeds of this is particularly in the older grades. I'm not sure about this in the younger grades, but you know we have this curriculum to cover, so we must proceed right, as opposed to the pause. Let's understand what's going on. What does the data say? How do we respond? 0:14:10 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Right, when those kindergarten teachers got together about the letters of the alphabet, there were four classrooms and each classroom had two or three students that didn't know, like B and D, you know, because of the reversals and all that. So they took those four, two, four, six kids into a group and did interventions with those students, just those, and one teacher worked on those letters with those kids. So the other kids didn't have to suffer through that, you know, and that's how they learned them. 0:14:38 - Lindsay Lyons So that makes total sense. 0:14:40 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Yeah, and all kids all of them are all our kids. 0:14:45 - Lindsay Lyons Yes, Right Back to those equity roots. Right, that's so good. And I think the other big thing that I was an aha for me when I was reading your book was thinking about the organization of PLCs and thinking about the inclusion of early childhood educators in vertical curriculum teams, I think is what you were calling them. They're like the job alike teachers, right? You know, we all teach social studies, pre-K through five. We're in a team and if there's, you know, four pre-K teachers that you can have one go to each subject area if possible, and we did yeah. Right, can you talk through a little bit about that Cause I think that's a huge mindset shift for some district leaders. 0:15:29 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Well, I think it's important you can take the three-year-old essential standards, four-year-olds and five-year-olds and first grade ones, and you can line them all up on a wall, say in math, and see that there is a continuum. When we did that in our district we did it district-wide all the way up to eighth grade we found out that they were teaching the Civil War in third grade and fourth grade. It's like why are you doing this? Why you know? Oh, we didn't know you were doing that. So I think it's important to be able to share and talk about those types of things, and especially for preschool teachers and early childhood teachers, because so much is developmental. So I think the bottom line is not what do we want these three-year-olds to know and be able to do, but what do we want them to know and be able to do after kindergarten? To go to first grade, because that's where it becomes so much more concrete. And so for first grade, second grade teachers to know maybe they didn't know this at three but and maybe not at four, but they will know it before you get them. So I think looking at that continuum is really helpful and seeing how early childhood teachers teach it, you know. I think that because it's different and some of those strategies first and second grade teachers can use right High school teachers can you? I was going to say high school, probably. So I think for continuity of programming and curriculum it's important and for everyone to see what's coming and what's going, you know where are we going with. This is really important for that vertical alignment. 0:17:06 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah, I love that example of right, like we're teaching the same social studies content into next door grades and we didn't even realize we didn't even know it. 0:17:14 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Yeah, Nobody's teaching this. You know, nobody's teaching this important piece. I thought you were. No, we thought you were so yeah, yeah, what. 0:17:23 - Lindsay Lyons what powerful work to be able to bring people together with that focus and then illuminate some of these things that otherwise, without the structure, you would never identify. Right, like that's right, you wouldn't you wouldn't. 0:17:34 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Yeah, I didn't. 0:17:35 - Lindsay Lyons I got that big scope and sequence when I started teaching and teach it and be on page 17 on October 30th or you're in trouble okay, right, right, I I'm curious to know I'm thinking about the listener who is interested in this, wants to do some of this work but feels like you know it's new, it might be scary, it's a different way of doing things. I'm wondering if you could talk us through, like maybe, a common challenge that you know you've seen educators or leaders face with this work and then like how did they overcome it or what was a strategy they used to kind of work through that or find the good in? 0:18:13 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano I think there's. I think there's a couple challenges. One is for leaders to give the teachers time. So many teachers are used to having their planning time and doing what they want and what they need to do and for some teachers that might be taken away and they're not happy with that because they have to do all these things, because we are overloaded as teachers. So it's up to the educate, the leader, the principal, whatever to find time for teachers to do this, and sometimes it takes throwing away the whole master schedule and starting over, and that's really hard for some teachers, really hard. I could not do the master schedule in my school, I didn't have the brain for it, but I had a team who did it of teachers and they did it and it worked out great. So, however, you need to do that, finding them the time. The other piece is that sometimes leaders have to monitor the work of the team because teachers aren't used to collaborating and talking to each other and new teachers might have the teacher who's been there for 27 years and they're not going to say anything because she's there and she overloads the conversation. So there might need some strategies to be put in place to facilitate those kinds of dialogues within a team meeting and sometimes the leader has to do that. You know if it's the talking stick or the, I don't know. Whatever you know, I want to get everybody's opinion on this and you can't say I agree with her. You have to say something else. So I think that can be really hard the time and talking openly. I had one teacher in a team meeting used to say okay, you guys, you're all going to be really mad at me for saying this, but you know she opened up with that because she was going against what they were talking about. But she was a speaker mind person and I really emphasize when I talk to teams is you cannot go in the school parking lot and talk about this. That's not being a true team member. If you're going to talk in the parking lot, you got to talk about it here and we're not going to go talk about you in the parking lot either. So that whole trust thing takes a while and there's sometimes where leaders of schools have to reshuffle the teams move teachers. You might have fourth grade that's got four bosses and two sitters or whatever, and sometimes you have to reshuffle that and that's hard for teachers to change is really hard for teachers. It's really hard, I'm you know, like we always did know, like we always did it this way. We always did it this way. Well, was that make it right? 0:20:57 - Lindsay Lyons Right, that's the question, right yeah. 0:21:00 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano And to be open. You know, I was like we did some bus thing one time and we did it for two days a bus lineup. It was a disaster. And so as a leader, you need to be able to say oh, this is a mess, I'm sorry, let's try something else. So to be able to teachers know that if it's not working, they need to tell you and they need to fix it. A schedule we didn't do at Arkansas. They started in January, hard for teachers, middle of the year, and they had teachers come for three weeks straight in a row talking about the schedule and what the problems were and what. Three weeks straight in a row talking about the schedule and what the problems were and what wasn't working and what they didn't like about it. Every single teacher and the leadership team fixed it, hallelujah. 0:21:44 - Lindsay Lyons That's such a good example. Yeah, I love that. I think the same with teachers and students, or you got to be able to hear the feedback and change course. 0:21:53 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Right, right, going in a different direction. So absolutely. 0:21:58 - Lindsay Lyons So there are so many I just want listeners to know too in your book. So the book is called Success for Our Youngest Learners and I think there's so many tangible things in there where it's like, oh, you don't have an agenda for your PLCs, like here's this data form right, like use this, or you're not sure what a schedule could look like to have people collaborate and meet. Here's an example of schedules that you have Like. You have like the Fist of Five protocol. You have how to create your missions and values. It's so good. I just want listeners to know, like, this is a microcosm of the book in this conversation. This is a microcosm of the book in this conversation. But people need to go get the book and I am wondering, you know for the leader who is, you know, ready to do this, got to go get the book, but wants to do one thing tomorrow before the book comes, that they would really start kind of the foundation building. 0:22:59 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano What would the one thing, as soon as they're done with this episode like they can do it tomorrow what would that one action be? To get started, I think if they could get their teachers at a grade level together to talk about just what they're doing, get them to learn how to come to a team meeting and have some kind of agenda and talking about specific things. Now, you know, so many times teachers go oh, we have a team meeting, what are we going to do there? I don't know. You know, because they have no agenda, even if it's not about PLC things in the beginning, come together, we're going to talk about these four things and then, you know and some teachers have to put the first five minutes as the bitch and moan section we're going to vent now, we're going to all complain and crab and then we're done and then we'll move on. So I think, just to start teachers getting used to coming together at a certain time, being on time for that meeting and talking about important things, so that they have, you know, kind of learned beginning of trusting each other and understanding each other's point of views, then to be able to dive into determining essential standards. So I guess it's finding the time for them to get together is the first thing principals need to do. 0:24:05 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah, I love that. And maybe looking at different I know you link to different things in the book of examples of schedules and stuff maybe doing a little bit of research what could this look like? Or handing it over to your teacher teams, like you said, right? 0:24:16 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Yeah, yeah, you know, and maybe another important piece is forming a leadership team. You know, getting together grade level teachers and having a leadership team who can, who are behind it, who understand professional learning communities are, you know, gung ho about it, and so they can start, you know, working too. So it's not just a leader edict, it's coming from your peers as well, and I think that's that's helpful. 0:24:47 - Lindsay Lyons Definitely. Yes, I totally agree, and I and I just remember the phrase that I think you'd use in the book for one of the kind of come together to talk things that folks did was like shop and share, Like here's how I taught this thing, and then they all shared different ways. They taught something which I find such a cool thing that you could totally do tomorrow right, yeah, you can do that tomorrow. 0:25:07 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano And I always used to start meetings with what I called a whip, without hesitation, invite participation, and I'd throw out a question not school related, not anything just so teachers could learn more about their colleagues. You know, like, what's your favorite sandwich? Go around the table, oh, you like salami. You're kidding me. You know just those kinds of things. Just a crazy question. Your favorite movie, Favorite all-time movie? You know just those kinds of things. Just a crazy question. Your favorite movie, favorite all time movie? Just so we learn a little bit more personal, personal things about the people we work with. We're with them, all you know, in the same building all day, every day. 0:25:44 - Lindsay Lyons So I love that idea. I think about that with students and, you know, culture building at the start of a school year or something Same with teachers, right? Because when we see the humanity in our fellow teachers, if we get into a disagreement about a pedagogical move or this standard should be essential or not, you know we still see the humanity in the person. 0:26:04 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Right right, which I think is really important. You know we're all in this together and you're a human being and you have you had a crabby husband this morning, or a crabby two-year-old, and sorry to hear it. 0:26:14 - Lindsay Lyons So Exactly, exactly, yeah, so I guess this is my next question is a little bit more of the the humanity piece too, getting to know you. So one of the things I love asking every guest this could be related to work and the things we've been talking about, or it could totally be different. What is something that you have been learning about lately? 0:26:35 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Oh, I've really started to a couple things gardening, because I'm retired and so I'm doing gardening at home and I'm going to run out in the yard and do that, learning that. But I'm also doing a lot of learning and thinking about how young children's brains develop, like that cognitive development and how maybe because I've been watching a lot of Dateline too, you know murders and stuff is that at the age of 15, your brain's still not totally developed, your frontal lobe isn't totally developed. So I think that helps people and it helps teachers and helps me understand why young children do some of the things they do, why teenagers do some of the things they do, why young adults do some of the things they do. It's just become really fascinating to me that, just how that develops and what parts develop. 0:27:35 - Lindsay Lyons That is fascinating. Also very excited for your gardening life because I know nothing about that, but I am fascinated by the people who could do it well. 0:27:42 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano I'm working on it. You know it's time consuming but keeps me busy and I can share that experience with my grandchildren. We go out and pick, you know, tomatoes in the summer and things like that, and they really like it. It's down to earth, too, where they are low, low to the ground. 0:27:59 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah, oh my gosh. Yes, I, my car was hit recently and we had it's in the shop, so we had got a rental and my, my kid is just like I like this new car because it's low to the ground. 0:28:10 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Oh, yeah you can get into it yeah. 0:28:14 - Lindsay Lyons We don't think about those things, I know. So the last question I have for you is just people are going to want to get in touch, learn more about you, get the book, that kind of thing. Where would you suggest that they go to learn more about you, connect with you, anything related to that? 0:28:31 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Well, probably through Solution Tree. I'm not, you know, I'm retired, I'm old. I don't have my own web page and my own podcast and my own all my boyfriend's like you need a Twitter account. You need a Twitter account, you know. I just don't have any of those things they can. So they can certainly email me and they can certainly get in touch with Solution Tree. 0:28:56 - Lindsay Lyons Perfect, and we can link to those things in the blog post for this episode. 0:29:00 - Dr. Barbara Cirigliano Yeah, I'm happy to. Why don't I turn my phone off? So I'm happy to. You know, I'm happy to talk to anybody and help anybody out, because I'm really passionate about this and have been for my whole educational career. So I'm I just think this is where it starts, this is where it begins, and if we don't get it right when they're little and give them this joy of learning and give little children the success of oh, I learned this, oh, I can say my ABCs, oh, I can read a book, we don't give them that spark and that joy when they're little, then I don't think they're going to get it for a long time. So I think it's really important. 0:29:42 - Lindsay Lyons Absolutely. Oh my gosh, this has been a wonderful conversation. Dr Strickland, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I enjoyed it. It was great. Thank you so much.
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7/15/2024 172. Action Steps for Effective PLCs with Bob Sonju, Maren Powers, and Sheline MillerRead Now
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In this episode, Bob, Sheline, and Maren share how we can effectively use Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) to elevate teaching through reflective practice. In our discussion of their book, Simplifying the Journey: Six Steps to Schoolwide Collaboration, Consistency, and Clarity in a PLC at Work®, they emphasize the importance of student ownership and co-creation in their academic journeys, and effective strategies for coaches and leaders (they list tons of great coaching questions in their book).
Bob Sonju is an award-winning educational leader, author, and speaker who is nationally recognized for his energetic commitment to coaching teacher teams and educational leaders in research-based processes and systems that create the conditions for lasting success. Bob has led two separate schools to national Model PLC at Work® status; one of his schools also received the prestigious National Breakthrough School Award from the National Association of Secondary School Principals. As a district leader, Bob led the implementation of the professional learning communities (PLC) process in a district composed of over 50 schools. He is committed to making the work of collaborative teams and school leaders both simple and doable. Maren Powers is a national award-winning teacher, instructional coach, associate and author in St. George, Utah. Throughout her time in the Washington County School District, she has worked at two Model PLC Schools. In 2020, Maren received the Rebecca Dufour Scholarship that celebrates ten women educators across the country who demonstrate exceptional leadership in their school community. Maren earned a bachelor’s degree in English education and a master’s degree in educational leadership with an endorsement in school leadership. Maren is passionate about helping other educators implement, coach and lead through the PLC process. Sheline Miller is currently an Assistant Principal for the Washington County School District. She has also been a Learning Coach and Social Studies teacher for the same district. She has worked successfully with teachers and teams to help establish two Model PLC Schools - Fossil Ridge Intermediate School (FRIS) and Washington Fields Intermediate School (WFIS). In her capacity as Learning Coach, she has had the opportunity to act as the lead Intermediate Coach to help bring clarity and consistency to schools in the district. Her presentations include Meaningful Goal Setting and Gaining Clarity. She is also the lead instructor for one of the classes offered for the district leadership certification titled, Leading in a PLC. The Big Dream The guests articulate a unified vision for education where every student, irrespective of their background, can achieve at high levels. They dream of a future where students are empowered to take an active role in their education, understanding the relevance and direction of their learning. The collective goal is to view all students as partners in learning, utilizing collective expertise to ensure every child's growth. Mindset Shifts Required
Action Steps There are six actions in the book. In this episode, we talked about the following actions: Step 1: Identify essential standards and skills, distinguishing between the critical standards and those that are less essential, and establish a common understanding within the team. Step 2: Gain shared clarity on what proficiency looks like, facilitating discussions that bridge differing opinions among educators and align on expectations. Step 3: Employ effective questioning and coaching strategies to support teacher development and reflection on data, ensuring that teams can articulate their learning targets, strategies, and what the data reflects. Step 4: Ensure time and support for PLC work. Leaders, validate and celebrate the work and student learning successes! Challenges? Teams need time and support to do this work. Identifying time for PLCs could be: creating common prep periods, finding flexible funding in budgets to purchase substitute teachers so teachers have the time to collaborate, utilizing instructional aids to cover. The authors remind me that we also need to be clear on what teams collaborate about (these are the 6 actions steps in the book), and there are several protocols and worksheets the authors made to help you navigate these challenges, ensuring that collaboration is effective and focused on student learning. (See the link to the free reproducibles below!) One Step to Get Started Gain shared clarity among educators regarding what proficiency looks like for essential standards, as this is “most often missed step”. Stay Connected Here’s where you can find this week’s guests: Bob: Instagram: @bob_sonju Maren: Instagram and X: @learningpowers and email at [email protected] Sheline: [email protected] To help you implement today’s takeaways, the group is sharing their free reproducibles from their book, Simplifying the Journey with you. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 172 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 Hello everyone. We got Bob Shaleen and Maren today. How are you all Good? 0:00:10 - Bob Sonju Doing great. 0:00:12 - Lindsay Lyons So good to have you on the podcast today. Really excited about this. I think we'll just dive into the first meaty question of you know I talk about Dr Bettina Love writing about freedom, dreaming with her quote, dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, so really centering that justice and equity piece in our work. So, with that in mind, I'd love for each of you to just share what's that big dream that you hold for the field of education. 0:00:39 - Bob Sonju Erin, you want to take a? Take a shot at this uh, sure, okay. 0:00:43 - Maren Powers Um, I will say my dream, I think, for education especially, is just to be able to ensure that all students, no matter their backgrounds, are able to achieve at high levels. So I think, as especially from a teacher's perspective because I'm still a teacher and so especially from my perspective, being able to really support all of my students and in whatever needs that they may have, um, and keep um kind of just those expectations at really high levels for them, um, I think if we were able to do that in education across the board, I mean how life-changing that would be for all of our, all of our people. 0:01:23 - Bob Sonju So that's fine well, chalene, what do you think? 0:01:30 - Sheline Miller go ahead, um, I'll go ahead, um. So I think my big dream would be to have students be empowered um to be a part of their own education, so that they can understand and see why and where they're going, so that it's not just coming in and sitting in a class and trying to memorize dates or memorize something and spit it back out for the teacher, but to really understand how this might be applicable to our, to my future, how it might help me communicate with others. I don't know just any of that kind of stuff where students are empowered. 0:02:11 - Bob Sonju Love it so great and I kind of echo what my colleagues have said just this idea of just students being partners in learning that we see students, all students, as our students, not yours and mine, and we're gonna use our collective expertise, talents and experiences to ensure that all of our kids learn. That's my dream. 0:02:38 - Lindsay Lyons Oh my gosh, I love it and it's so aligned with all the things we talk about on this podcast, so what a beautiful episode this will be. I am particularly interested in reading through your book. I loved your book and I think I love the concept too of like we're simplifying the journey. Here are the things, here are the things you can do. There's reproducibles that listeners can grab online right and use immediately, which is so cool and tangible, and I think there's also, before we get to like those specific action steps, there's also kind of this first thing that needs to happen, where we're kind of shifting our mindset around some practices, or we're shifting our mindset around like what is PLC work really? Or there's a bunch of kind of mindset things I think that have to happen for this work to go well, and I'd love to know what your thoughts are on. Is that accurate? And if there are mindset shifts, you know what are those. 0:03:32 - Maren Powers Yeah, I think Shalene kind of touched on it but a big piece that we and it's one of the steps within our book but believing that kids can take ownership of their own learning and so being able to have themselves reflect and reflect on their learning and understanding that, you know, a grade isn't necessarily you know, this is my grade the end all be all, but it's more just feedback for us teachers to be able to say, okay, you're close, you don't quite understand it. Here is some feedback that I'm taking and then let me see what I can do to help you so you can learn at a higher level. So I think just that mindset shift of you know, students taking ownership and being comfortable to tell the teacher hey, I don't understand this, can you help me? Because inevitably that's our job. So I think that is one big kind of just shift that I don't think is necessarily a huge broad thing, because I think most teachers would also agree that that is super important and we see the most growth out of kids when they can do that. So Beautiful. 0:04:40 - Bob Sonju Yeah. 0:04:40 - Lindsay Lyons Yeah. 0:04:42 - Bob Sonju Kind of going along with that. I just think we need to. We advocate for just rethinking a traditional mindset regarding school. Just kind of that giving my kids, giving my class and leave me alone, I'm going to try to cover. There's an urgency to cover all of the standards. It's my job to teach, it's their job to learn, using assessment for a score in the book. Just rethinking all of those traditional, maybe antiquated, mindsets regarding school and see students as partners in learning. I love this idea and we write about this just students taking ownership in their learning. But that starts with the professional teachers and that team getting clear on what students have to learn. 0:05:32 - Sheline Miller So yeah, and, just kind of to add to that, the focus on learning. So we talk a little bit about learning progressions. That part of that mindset needs to change, with students as well as teachers. That it's okay not to know everything, as long as we know the path that's going to get us where we want. 0:05:58 - Bob Sonju Yeah, and I love that, Shaleen, it's not right or wrong, it's learning is a journey, right, and we take steps on our pathway to mastery of these absolutely critical things that all kids need to know and be able to do, grade level by grade level. And so less is right or wrong and more as learning is a journey. 0:06:21 - Lindsay Lyons I think this is a really good transition point to this next question of like what is the journey for educators then to like learn how to like what are you know what are those stages of kind of activities they're doing in PLCs? And also like what are kind of like any? I guess it's two questions kind of in one. Like as you identify places where challenges may come up, what you do in the book I love how the book is laid out, by the way like you know, coaching ideas and like leader questions and places where it lives. Also thinking about, like be wary of or be mindful of these things that could be challenges, super awesome. If there are things like that that stick out to you as we kind of go through these action steps, feel free. I'm wondering for the listeners. They might be familiar with the general PLC work framework, but I like how you all break it down into. I think you had like six steps. You conclude with this as well, like, which I think is really succinct. On that left one of the last pages of just like here are the six kind of bullet points of this work. Do you mind walking us through that, maybe to start? 0:07:29 - Bob Sonju Bob, I'll start the conversation, but these two really are experts in this. We felt like that just in our travels and our experience as practitioners in schools, that we know that the professional learning community process is best practice in the field. It's research-based, it's the science of our profession. But, that being said, there's four critical questions that drive the work of a collaborative team in a professional learning community. What is it we want them to know? How are we going to know if they learned it? How are we going to respond collectively if they didn't, and how are we going to extend the learning for those who already know it? I think most schools and educators know these questions, but what we've discovered is answering these questions. What does that look like? That's where we tended to struggle a little bit, in schools that we've worked in, as well as schools that we've seen around the country, and so the idea behind this book was based on this PLC framework how to answer these four questions in six action steps. Six clear and concise action steps, providing clarity for each action step, as well as examples and templates, and so on. So, maren Shaleen. 0:08:48 - Maren Powers Yeah, I want to add to kind of to that kind of and we talk about this a lot, just as like colleagues. But the L in PLC stands for learning and so we always ask you know, is that for student learning, adult learning, both learning, what is that for? And it's actually for teacher learning, and so kind of the idea of the PLC is for teachers to be able to learn what to do in order to get our students to grow at these high levels. So, for this book in particular, focusing on these six action steps, when we were setting them up, the biggest piece of it was we wanted to make sure that teachers and leaders and anyone in a school can take from our book and be able to implement it and have these actionable steps with the reproducibles and be able to implement it into any grade level, any subject, really anywhere, and so and be able to show that you know you can do this step-by-step in this process. 0:09:51 - Sheline Miller So yeah, yeah, and then, kind of just to add to that, if you think about a PLC, quite often as schools start to dabble in PLCs or even say that they're actually working as a PLC, it's usually a broad umbrella that we put a whole bunch of stuff underneath and say, oh, we're PLCing, this is what we're doing. And our book has kind of focused that in or focused down into, like we've said, like I think each of us have said, actionable steps. It's not some broad overarching idea. It's actual steps that teachers can do that will help them answer those questions very specifically. That can be drilled down to specific skills, specific students and specific strategies that teachers are using in their classrooms. 0:10:47 - Bob Sonju Lindsay along with that. I'm super motivated by quotes. I have just lists of quotes right from all of my reading, but one quote that's always resonated with me. That kind of you'll see it in our work. But Rick Dufour said that it's not the fact that you collaborate that will improve student learning, it's what you collaborate about. And I think far too often in schools we say, okay, I've given you a collaborative time, now go forth and collaborate, but it's what you collaborate about that will influence student learning and increase teacher efficacy. And so that was really one of the drivers. Let's get clear on when we collaborate, what do we collaborate about? So, Awesome. 0:11:32 - Lindsay Lyons I love this framing and so thinking about this for the listener who's thinking about the four questions. Thinking about what does it really look like? What are the actions rooted in teacher learning? Of course, great point, maren, about like that L is for teacher learning. Thinking about what happens in a PLC. Could you walk us through what some of those activities might be that you discuss in the book? Sure? 0:11:58 - Maren Powers I can start. So kind of my background is with as a teacher and so and a teacher leader and a team leader and so for me working with my teams and what that looks like. For each step we break down very specifically. So, for example, step one, identifying essential standards and skills, we have a way where you can break it down into what you think is essential. You know the like do or die essential standards versus you know maybe the standards that aren't as essential and we have a very specific way of doing it. And throughout the book I want to point out that we also acknowledge that there are inevitably going to be people that maybe disagree on teams. You know different levels of understanding. We have veteran teachers and first-year teachers and so being able to talk through and figure out how to get through each of these steps with a variety of individuals. We do try and kind of pinpoint in throughout the book but different activities. So, for example, like step two, for gaining shared clarity, me and Chalene figured that this like works really well with teams who maybe disagree on what proficiency looks like for a standard. Talking about how you know as a group, maybe you write down what proficiency looks like without talking at all and being able to then come together and you can have an instructional coach come in and support you and put everyone's up on the board and you might realize we actually are saying basically the same thing, maybe just a little bit different, and so coming together and being able to tighten that vocabulary and what the expectations are. So we go through each step and have very specific here's exactly how you would work each step as a team lead or a principal or someone who's leading it out. 0:13:57 - Lindsay Lyons That's one of the things I loved is there are very specific protocols and that specific challenge of team dynamics whether it's veteran, new teacher or just like we have a lot of different opinions. Those protocols directly address that challenge that I think a lot of folks are on perhaps a team, whether it's really a PLC or in that broader umbrella that, shalini, you're talking about. I think there are those challenges. So I love that your protocols really address that directly and inherent to the activity. Yeah, yeah. 0:14:30 - Bob Sonju Our first. Our first action step, obviously, is we got to get real clear on what kids have to know in this course, in this grade level, and so we're going to shift our focus away from trying to just cover everything and just ensure that students learn some high leverage things grade level to grade level. That's not saying we're eliminating standards, but we're just kind of reallocating our time. So our first action step is just simply let's get clear on identifying what those essential standards and skills are. But that's only a first step and what we've seen is that's where a lot of schools will stop. We've identified them and then we lit up the lamination machine and we'd laminate them, put them all over the walls of the school and then nothing happens. That's because we haven't our action step. Number two we haven't gained shared clarity and clearly defined what does mastery look like for that? So we know it when we see it. That's a critical step in this process. Once we're clear on that, that moves us right to action step three. Students can become owners of their own learning because they can self-assess their work as compared to mastery work, and so it just kind of works. It just connects together. So, Chalene, Ditto. 0:15:50 - Sheline Miller I was going to say you guys have just said everything, so I was going to say something about student empowerment by knowing that. But it's very important and it's I both people have covered this that we have to know what mastery looks like, like. There has to be something specific there. We have to know what that target is and it needs to stay like right there. It needs to be where teachers know what it looks like. Students know what it looks like. Something that hasn't been mentioned is maybe we've got some of those high-low examples we're giving. We're letting them know this is what success looks like. This is what it looks like if you make some of these common mistakes that we have seen, and so we can fix those mistakes before they ever occur or happen, and so I just think that that's part of what's really important, and then, again. That allows us to be very specific about what our kids are missing and what they are not understanding. It doesn't become this general well, you just didn't do well on your project. It becomes you didn't do well on this, this and this, you did well on this, this, this and this. We just need to work on this. It's a much more positive outlook. Students feel success regardless where they are, even if they still have to work on something, they're still feeling that success and feel like they can continue to work on something and do it because they know what it looks like. 0:17:23 - Lindsay Lyons That reminds me that I think one of the things that was really cool two things actually, bob related to what you were saying, I think the lamination, like problematizing the lamination and just leaving it it made. It pushed my thinking when I read that you all talked about like rethinking, like revisiting, re-plotifying each year at the end of each unit even and that was kind of mind-blowing to me because I had never thought about doing that I was like, oh, this is just kind of what it is and maybe if there's something wrong then you can go back and revise. So that is a really cool idea, I think, to keep it fresh, to keep it relevant, and also speaks to the idea of student ownership and co-creation. If every time you get new sets of students, you get more and more feedback from the students about does this make sense, is this clear? We'll get more examples of the high low, shall we to your point? And I love also that in the categories you have the categories of proficiency as, like one was supported. I had a teacher ask me that literally last week like what if they can do all the things? But it takes so much support? I'm like, right, that's just a level of proficiency. And then now you all have given me the language and the frameworks, be like right, that's level one on the proficiency. That is exactly what that is. 0:18:28 - Maren Powers So thank you, and I, and I want to add, kind of when you were talking about you know, we always have new students coming in every year. I also want to point out we also have new teachers that come in every year, and so when you get new teachers on a team and maybe you get another new teacher next year who hasn't gone through this work you want to go back through it every single year and kind of revisit it and see, kind of like you know, what do we need to fix, what do we need to tweak? Let's look at our data I think the biggest piece of it too, and we talk about this a lot. But if you have a team that has been a team for a while, you do still need to revisit it every year. But maybe the process is going to go quicker because you all already know what's going on. So just the idea of revisiting it every single year, no matter how well the team knows this, I think, is really vital to the success of the teachers and our students. 0:19:30 - Sheline Miller Absolutely, and then to piggyback off of that, the last part of each chapter is reflect to elicit change, and so every time we do something, we need to reflect on it. There's always going to be something that we through our learning, and it might be as simple as oh my gosh, I found an article that you to look at that and tweak it and see what the issues were with kids, with teachers, with understanding, with CFAs, with alignment, and it just helps us, as teachers, become better at our profession and that translates into higher student learning. 0:20:23 - Lindsay Lyons Bob, are you going to say something too? 0:20:25 - Bob Sonju Nope, I think that's great Okay. 0:20:28 - Lindsay Lyons One of the things I also Shalene your comment earlier about, like you know, student ownership and self-assessment made me think about the checklist rubric. I don't know what you all called it and I don't think it's maybe a reproducible, maybe just an example, but there was basically a rubric that you had turned into a checklist where at each kind of proficiency level, students could kind of check off where they were and what I really loved, and that part was cool. But what I really loved was then there was the question so it would be like what's my next step? So if I self-assessed at like a three out of four, like I'm not at a four, so what's my next step? And even at the level four you had like okay, so how would you apply this to the real world? So there's always that next step built into the self-assessment and I have never seen that and it's so simple and so great and thank you for that. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or any thoughts on your favorite, either examples from the book or reproducible templates from the book. I'd love to just hear what you think like. 0:21:42 - Bob Sonju We needed just a simple and doable framework for teachers and students to see learning as a continuum, not as right or wrong. And then we had conversations about what should it look like at each step? And so when we're clear on what mastery looks like, and then we can, as a team, sit down and say, okay, what's a student going to look like at each step of this learning journey? We can communicate that to students, and they can. They're amazing at self-assessing when we're crystal clear on on the steps you know, on their steps that they're going to be taking toward mastery. So, yeah, thoughts Maren Well. 0:22:18 - Maren Powers I, and I'll just add to it, because that rubric you're talking about specifically is for actually writing and as an English teacher, I mean us English teachers are notorious for bringing work home and grading and it takes forever outside of work, which is wild. Um, but what we found is because the mindset shifts from, instead of us grading students, it's now students self-assessing and taking ownership of their own learning. Um, our grading for writing has, I mean, cut down drastically because it's the students who are literally just self-assessing where they're at. And then I'm able to look at the rubric and I can kind of compare it to their writing and say, oh my gosh, you're absolutely right, here is the one piece, the one thing that you're missing in your writing. Just go back and fix that. You know exactly how to get there, because it's so clear, as Bob said, where mastery is and then above or beyond, and so being able to have that clarity for our students, it just it adds to student ownership. So I would say that, and the team reflection pieces at the end are my personal favorites. The coaching inventory is really useful as a coach to trying to get teachers to reflect. 0:23:38 - Bob Sonju So and Lindsay, just a plug for you, I was listening to your grading for equity, your competency-based learning episode, and I was like oh, she's speaking our language right? Yes, so well done. 0:23:54 - Lindsay Lyons I absolutely wanted to have you all on, especially as I was reading the book and like, oh my gosh, yes, there's such alignment here. So, thank you, this is amazing. So I, yeah, there's, there's so much that I love. I'm trying to be succinct in my questions here. I think another big question that I have is think of maybe a challenge it could be like a chapter of of the book, Cause I think you, as I said, a challenge, it could be like a chapter of of the book, Cause I think you, as I said, broke down what could challenges be in each section and like can you walk us through some of the leader coaching questions that you had for that specific challenge? Cause I thought those were brilliant. It really just for for listeners who have not yet read the book. They basically break down right, Like here's a potential thing that could happen and with a particular scenario, which also great scenarios, very real, See, I've seen most versions of them. And then it was like here's the leader you could ask these three questions to follow up or something right, Like so good, I don't know if you all have a particular favorite set of those, but I'd love us just to get a taste of one maybe. 0:25:01 - Sheline Miller I was going to say that's all. That's kind of learning coach stuff and it's what I was dealing with. So most of those are questions that I was just like okay, what are, what are we doing? So we have a question bank and I'm I'm thinking that's kind of maybe a little bit about what you're talking about is we have these question banks that you just can go through and ask, ask yourself these, and then our goals are what's something I can start, stop and continue. So those are things that I think were really good for me to be able to go into a team and look at them and say, ok, you say you have all this. Show me, can you articulate what those learning targets are? Do you articulate them as a team? Do you articulate them to your students? And just asking those questions can either tell me if a team is doing something or the team is going to be saying no, I can't, and that will lead us to where they need to be. So have you done this, have you done this? Oh, so you do actually have those, and sometimes they do actually have them, but they just don't know that they have them. And so these questions at the end um, and then the questions um, with the scenarios, just help us learn where teams are, because our teams within our buildings are going to be in all like all over the place. We're going to have some people that are hitting it out of the ballpark, we're going to have some that are still just learning, and so and that's fine, because just like our students are going through a learning progression, so are our teachers. So none of our teams are failing. They're just all in different places and different levels, and that offers us the opportunity to let other teachers come in and part of their celebration could be hey, this is what we've done. It's worked really well. It might work for you. Maybe we can have learning walks where our teachers actually go and observe other teachers who have moved into that mastery format. So it just opens up a lot of avenues for us to help our teachers learn by using those questions and looking at these scenarios and seeing ourselves in those scenarios and going oh, maybe I did that. Maybe some of those scenarios were me. 0:27:32 - Bob Sonju And we collectively believe that good coaching is just asking very quality, targeted questioning questions of teams, and so we've included a lot of just great coaching questions that elicit the work that you're looking for there From a leadership perspective. Oftentimes leaders don't quite know what to do in regards to these six action steps, how to lead it and questions to ask, and so we outlined just four steps that leaders need to take. They need to think about this pattern as they're leading. Number one we have to clarify what the work is. We can't just say, go and collaborate or go identify essential standards. We have to clarify what that work looks like or go identify essential standards. We have to clarify what that work looks like. And then step two is we have to support teachers and teams as they learn, together with time, with resources, with coaching, with all of these things. And then next we need to monitor, and that's not to say micromanage, but just like we constantly formatively assess in a classroom, so we can provide feedback, targeted feedback, for a student regarding their strengths and next steps. We need to do this as well with our, with our colleagues. We monitor by asking targeted questions, and that helps us identify strengths as well as next steps for teachers and teams, as well as next steps for teachers and teams. And then, finally, the fourth step I think is crucial for all leaders is to validate the work when you see it and celebrate that with teams. And I think sometimes we forget this in the busy of schools. We forget to take time to validate the hard work teachers are doing and celebrate. And so, yeah, those four things, maren. 0:29:25 - Maren Powers You know, spot on for both leaders and coaches. 0:29:32 - Lindsay Lyons I wanted to follow up too on that validate and celebrate. I love how you get very specific and you offer some language and concrete examples in the book of if you're a leader, who who is now to Jalene's point. A lot of times we look at scenarios and we're like, oh, that's me right. If you're a leader thinking, oh, that's me, I totally don't validate and celebrate enough. I'm maybe not familiar with how to even do that. Well, there's a ton of examples in the book, so, never fear. One of the things I also was thinking about as a challenge I've heard a lot with you know organizations that I coach like you know networks, district school level or just folks in general who are listening to the podcast, like, well, I'm not sure about where this lives a lot of times right, like we don't have the time built in currently to our schedules. Or you know how do we get PLCs like together at the same time? You all offer some different ideas in the book about this. Do you mind running down like a couple of things? Identifying where it can happen or when during the day it can happen is a really helpful kind of starting point for leaders to get over that initial challenge and get into the work. 0:30:38 - Bob Sonju Yeah, yeah, I can take a crack at it here and just share a couple of things that we've discovered, I think, as well as what we've seen in other schools. But just creating common prep periods, finding flexible funding in budgets to purchase substitute teachers so teachers have the time to collaborate, just utilizing instructional aids to cover just different ways, that you create time for teachers to collaborate I think is absolutely critical. But that's only the first step. Then we have to get crystal clear on when you have this collaboration time, what do you collaborate about? In chapter seven we just get real clear here's what you collaborate about and essentially it's our six action steps. But there's questions. There's questions that teams can ask as they plan their units of instruction, as they're in the middle of their unit and then at the end and they're reflecting on their unit, as well as questions that evidence based questions that leaders can ask of teams to monitor how they're doing. And so it's more than just creating the time. It's getting real clear on what happens during that time and then supporting teachers as they learn together. 0:32:13 - Maren Powers And I'll add to that too, what's nice about the reproducibles, because there's so many of them within the book and there's very specific kind of like goals or targets that we want to get to for each action step. Obviously it makes it really clear for learning leaders or principals to be able to say here's exactly what I want to see happen today. Are you getting through steps one and two? Just step one, what is it you're working on? And then for teachers to be able to say here's exactly what we worked on and here's all the evidence to show, kind of, where we got to. It then creates a way to have dialogue between teachers and principals and to talk about okay, what are our next steps, where do we need to go from here? For principals it's how else can I support you, do you need more time? Or it looks like you guys are really on the right track. You know so different ways. That kind of creates that dialogue back and forth between teachers, coaches and principals and knowing exactly where the support is needed within that collaboration time. 0:33:35 - Sheline Miller Well said, yeah. And within that framework it also allows for those critical conversations to occur without the judgment or the I'm the process in their learning, so that we can offer them specific help. 0:33:53 - Maren Powers that's not judgmental, but it is student learning focused what Shaleen's saying too, because we are practitioners and we literally did this at our school from my perspective as a teacher, when Bob, who was our principal, would come in and be like, where are you guys at, what are you doing? It made it so much easier to communicate to my boss here's exactly what I'm doing, here's what we're doing as a team, here's where we're going. And so it made it to where it was just really easy to be able to talk to my boss, rather than feeling like he's coming down hard on us, like you know, you have to do this and this. Instead, it was more of a conversation, and he held us accountable, but we were also able to reach those goals because we knew where they were. We could see the target. 0:34:47 - Bob Sonju So Boss sounds so harsh. How about colleague on a learning journey? 0:34:54 - Maren Powers You technically were our boss. 0:34:57 - Sheline Miller He's our friend boss, though. 0:34:59 - Bob Sonju He is. 0:34:59 - Sheline Miller He's our colleague boss. 0:35:03 - Lindsay Lyons I really I appreciate so much kind of that teacher perspective, one on, like this, accountability and the way that accountability happens actually is helpful to us as teachers, like versus threatening or imposing or whatever Like that is. I think a really helpful perspective saves teachers or ELA teachers in your example time when students right, there are like not just benefits for students, there are benefits for teachers in all of this work as well. And, shalene, to your point about really decreasing that judgment, I saw that show up a lot in your book when you were talking about how, when we look at the data, it's about the data and a leader. I really thought about this. One like a leader or a coach is helping teachers look through the data. Ask about what you are learning from the data, versus giving the kudos like your team is doing or your students are doing great Rah rah, you right, it's like what are we learning? It's not about the individual teacher's success or failure. It is about the student learning at the heart of everything, which really, I imagine takes a lot of pressure off of teachers as well, right, and so there's so many benefits to teachers in all of this, which is awesome, I think. In closing, I'm curious to know if you all will have one shared answer to this or if you have different perspectives. Would love to get this too. But what is like that one first thing? When the administrator or teacher person listening is done with the episode they're driving to work, they're like I'm going to start today. What is that thing? What is that first thing that they can do right away after listening to this episode to get started with some of the things that you lay out here? 0:36:51 - Sheline Miller with some of the things that you lay out here. I'll jump in. I think and I think we bring it up in the book the most often missed step is step number two, which is gaining shared clarity. So if I were to start with somebody, that's where I would go. I would look at and I and like, I think we're assuming that they, they, have these essential standards and skills and they, they, they're like I'm on my way, I'm on my way, but do you agree? As a class, is it going to look the same in teacher A, teacher B and teacher C? Because quite often we hear T. You know, and this is something that I heard friends would call me up and they're like hey, what language arts teacher should I put my kid in? And I, at our school, would literally say, well, yes, I would say Marin, but I would literally say you know what? You put your kid in any of my language arts classes, they're going to leave our school with the same knowledge base because our teachers are aligned and they understand what mastery looks like and so you're going to get the same education regardless of teacher. So that is the one skill, and I think Maren is going to agree with me I don't know if she can jump in here and I think, bob, because they they just don't, aren't aligned together with what mastery looks like, so it looks different, even though they've talked about what's essential and they've even talked about it. But then they go to their classes and all of a sudden, this person emphasizes this and this person emphasizes something else, and then we all take our cfa and they're all different because we've never come to what shared clarity is, what mastery looks like and what it means, and we're not on the same page and I think, and I agree and kind of adding on to Shalene too just even just the word clarity, whether it's clarity on mastery, clarity on expectations, clarity on collaboration. 0:39:19 - Maren Powers I think that clarity piece from principals, from instructional coaches, from team leaders, is vital in this process and just in PLC in general. So, starting off with getting really clear as a leader, especially if I'm a principal or a team lead, that's driving home, you know, after listening to this, getting really clear on what I want to do with my teams, where we want to go and then how I'm going to get there, which I think, at least in our book, through these steps, that's how you are going to get there. But that clarity is just so important. 0:40:04 - Bob Sonju Yeah, and I would say, gosh, as educators, you're doing good work, but we're bombarded Just the sheer number of initiatives and shiny things that we have thrown at us every year, that sometimes we build up this defense to what Doug Reeves calls initiative fatigue. We just are like, oh, what's the latest flavor of the month? And so if I could share anything, it would be just this. There's a lot of great things in education, a lot of things that are wonderful, but let's simplify and focus on some things, some research-based, high leverage strategies that we know make a difference in student learning and in teacher efficacy. And then let's just get really good at those things, and that's really at the heart of our book. These six action steps are just they're simple, they're and doable. They're not, they're not easy, but but simple and doable to move you forward in your learning, but simple and doable to move you forward in your learning. 0:41:07 - Lindsay Lyons Amazing answers, I love all of those. And, shalina, I will hold on to the example you used to indicate yours. Like whose class should my kid be in, right? Like whoa, that's a deep question. Like, thank you for that example. So this is going to be a little bit of a lightning round, I think, for each of you. So this question is just for fun. So this is going to be a little bit of a lightning round, I think, for each of you. So this question is just for fun. It could totally be unrelated to your job, to the book, to education in general, or it could be totally up to you. What is something that you have been learning about lately? We've been talking about learning a lot today. What have you been learning? 0:41:43 - Bob Sonju I can't wait, maren, let's hear yours. 0:41:47 - Maren Powers Well, I have a newborn and a two-year-old. I'm on maternity leave, so I am learning how to manage two small humans at the same time. So that is what I am learning at the current moment. That's a lot of learning. 0:42:05 - Bob Sonju I actually called Maren and I said hey, what are you reading right now? And she's like I'm reading about dinosaurs and sharks and cars and cars construction sites, yep, all of those fun things. 0:42:21 - Sheline Miller Shalene, I'm almost learning kind of the same things. I have a grand, a brand new little three week old grandbaby, but um, really what I'm learning is I just moved into from an intermediate school sixth, seventh grade into high school. So I'm an administrator now in high school and um, dealing with, uh, student behaviors and all sorts of stuff that has never, been like my wheelhouse. So I think I'm having to learn how to still think I'm an effective person when lots of parents and students hate me. So I'm still trying to learn how to navigate all of that. So that's kind of just that opening being real that as an administrator we have to wear a lot of hats and sometimes kids and parents are going to react well and love you and respond, and then at other times they're not going to agree with anything that you do, regardless of what you say or do. And I still have to believe I'm being effective. So I'm learning how to do that. 0:43:31 - Bob Sonju And Lindsay for me. I was introduced to this term a few months ago and it's really fascinated me, and so I've been doing a lot of reading and studying. But this idea of intellectual humility and it's a term, it's, it's really kind of cool if you check it out, but it's, I think it's something that we're losing in the fabric of our society, right, but it's a term, it's really kind of cool if you check it out, but I think it's something that we're losing in the fabric of our society, right, but it's recognizing and owning that our own intellectual limitations, right, that our opinions, beliefs, viewpoints, they may be flawed, but there's research saying that we all believe that 90 of the decisions we make are the right decisions, right? Um, and? And this intellectual humility idea is just being a just being able to recognize that your opinions and your thoughts may be flawed, your beliefs may be flawed, and we need to continue to learn, listen to opposing opinions and continually pursue understanding and truth and be more compassionate with one another. So there's intellectual humility. 0:44:40 - Lindsay Lyons Wow, those are all so deep. Very good answers. Wow, impressive, all of you All right. Final question Very good answers Wow, impressive, all of you, all right. Final question when can folks either connect with your book, engage with your book, get your book or follow any or all of you collectively or individually? Feel free to answer that in whatever way you'd like. 0:45:00 - Bob Sonju Yeah, you can find. We can find our book on on solutiontreecom and also for sale on Amazon, and, and I can be reached. I've got an Instagram. I know it's a miracle, you too. Wow, I'll finally create it, but Instagram at Bob Sanju. 0:45:17 - Maren Powers So and my Instagram learning powers and yeah. 0:45:25 - Sheline Miller I'm. I'm just in good old email, so if you'd like to reach out, it's mill M-I-L-L. Shaleen, s-h-e-l-i-n-e at Gmail. 0:45:36 - Lindsay Lyons Amazing. Thank you all so so much. This has been a beautiful conversation. Thank you all for being here today. Thank you so much for having us.
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7/8/2024 171. These Structures & Leadership Actions Will Improve Student Learning with Dr. Anthony MuhammadRead Now
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In this episode, Dr. Anthony Muhammad discusses his latest book, The Way Forward: PLC at Work® and the Bright Future of Education. We talk about how the PLC at Work® framework is a vital tool for educators to sustainably improve equity and his Time for Change framework, which he developed with Dr. Luis Cruz. It leverages behavioral science and leadership theory to help leaders effectively lead meaningful change in schools.
Dr. Anthony Muhammad is a best-selling author and international thought leader. He currently serves as the CEO of New Frontier 21 Consulting, providing cutting-edge professional development to schools all over the world. He served as a practitioner for nearly 20 years—as a teacher, assistant principal, and principal. He was named the Michigan Middle School Principal of the Year in 2005. Dr. Muhammad has been honored by the Global Gurus organization as one of the 30 Most Influential Educators in the world the last 4 years in a row. He is recognized as one of the field’s leading experts in the areas of school culture and Professional Learning Communities at Work® and serves as an Associate Professor of School Leadership and Culture at Academica University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The Big Dream Dr. Muhammad's grand vision for education is one where the unique beauty of each student is acknowledged and celebrated. He wants schools to tailor their systems to highlight and nurture each student's talents, rather than merely comparing and ranking them. “PLC Right”: 6 Titans
Impact of COVID on students and educators Teachers’ mental health is suffering. “We are in one of the greatest teacher shortages in American history…The teachers we have are, by and large, dissatisfied and depressed. We're not attracting new people to the profession and people are quitting wholesale, but yet we haven't shifted our approach…just last week there was a report in the New York Times that chronic absenteeism has more than doubled since COVID.” In 2022, teacher job satisfaction was at an all-time low at 12%. Students have been reporting increased anxiety and depression. Girls and LGBTQ+ youth seem more impacted, possibly due to their increased time spent on social media influence. About 80% of students with anxiety or depression said they could not find help at school! African American boys’ placement in Special Education increased by 20% during COVID. Action Steps Step 1: Embrace the PLC at Work® framework to align teams with a focus on student mastery of essential learning targets. Step 2: Integrate the Time for Change framework to implement leadership strategies effectively, prioritizing observation and shared learning. Step 3: Strengthen communication and trust-building to reduce resistance and enhance the adoption of common formative assessments within the PLC framework. Challenges? Resistance to change can stem from poor communication, lack of trust, and insufficient skill development. When leaders communicate effectively and build trust, defiance and capacity issues diminish. One Step to Get Started For those looking to embark on this transformative journey, Dr. Muhammad recommends ensuring a strong, democratically represented leadership team. This foundational step can set the stage for sustained growth and improvement in educational practices. Stay Connected You can find Dr. Muhammad on his website. To help you implement these lessons, Dr. Muhammad is sharing his reproducibles and study guide with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 171 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 00:00:00 Hi, everyone. I'm here to introduce today's guest, Doctor Anthony Muhammad, who is an author and international thought leader. He currently serves as the CEO of New Frontier 21 consulting a company dedicated to providing cutting edge professional development to schools all over the world. He served as a practitioner for nearly 20 years as a teacher. Assistant principal and principal. Doctor Mohammed is recognized as one of the field's leading experts in the areas of school culture and professional learning communities at work. Let's get to the episode, educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. 00:01:07 I made this show for you. Here we go. Doctor Anthony Mohammed. Welcome to the time for Teachers podcast. Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm really honored to be here and I, I appreciate you provide this platform you to share some of my thoughts with your listeners. Yeah, I'm really excited particularly because I just read the way Forward, which is a recent book that you wrote. And it is wonderful. I have so many questions about it, but I wanna start off the show with the first question I asked all the guests which is in line with freedom dreaming. Doctor Bettina Love describes it beautifully as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, which I love. Um What is your big dream for the field of education is that we could truly appreciate the beauty of each individual human being and schools, public schools are rather rather recent experience. Um There's always been schools but one of the uh uh old adages is that you never educate the poor. So people have been restricted from getting their gifts and talents, talents cultivated based upon income or gender or race or language or ethnicity. 00:02:19 And public schooling was a very progressive step in breaking down those barriers. But yet as we know, just because you break down barriers legally, doesn't mean it breaks down people's hearts. And by law, every child in America has a right to attend school. But as we know, their experiences tend to differ based upon who they are, where they lived, uh how much money their parents have in the bank or the color of their skin. My dream is is that we would really see the beauty of each individual and make our institutions uh calibrate them around bringing that out with comparing them and ranking them and uh being vitriolic because a student doesn't do we expect them to do. We got one life and school can help make that life more pleasant if we if if we change our para diet, I love that response. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. I what a beautiful opening to this conversation. 00:03:24Edit I think one of the things um that I really love about your book is that you several things I love. One is that you use this idea of like the PLTO work framework to ground what's happening currently and what has been happening since the pandemic to highlight exactly what you just said and how it's just not been happening, not just historically, but like the pandemic was this beautiful opportunity to do things different and you know, how have we actually done things differently? Right? So, I mean, I think one thing that I want, I, I think maybe to start with is for folks who maybe are unfamiliar with the PLC at work process. Do you mind just giving us a brief overview, maybe like the the critical tenants or something of just what's that framework? And then we can dive into kind of the the specifics of your book? Absolutely. I wanna give you a view. It's kind of a little um history lesson because my mentors Rick Defoe and Robert Acre, while the architects of the PLC at work process did not invent the concept of PLC. Uh the concept actually had its birth with the research of Peter Singe and the book, The Fifth Discipline in the concept of learning organizations. 00:04:36Edit And then Thomas Ser Giovanni, who uh was an education professor was not enamored with the concept of organization. He said that that's too corporate. It's a little bit too cold and its schools are, are much more moral. And he coined the phrase learning community and Shirley H and Milby mclaughlin who are both education professors uh felt that it's nice to have a group of professionals learn together, but the whole focus is to improve professional practice. They, they coined the phrase professional learning communities. Rick Dafoe and Robert Acre took that foundation to the next level in 1998 when they wrote a book called professional learning communities at work. When they asked if you have a group of professionals who are learning and working and growing together, what would their work look like if they were doing it at an optimal level? And that's where the PLC at work process came in and they framed the work of the collaborative organization around six, what we call our six types, we call them, we call A PLC, right? 00:05:45Edit They would make a decision that learning would be the focus of the organization. We focus on the development of every child and we do it together as opposed to separate tight or tenant. Number two would be in order to do that, every member of the system will need to be a part of a strong collaborative team, whether it's an administrative team or a team of teachers or counselors who focus on their component of student learning. All those teams do type number three is that they would clarify down to a granular level, what every student would need to learn. So if we're on an algebra team, Lindsay and we're trying to improve our student position in al in algebra, what would that proficiency looked like in unit one for every job Marzano would call it a guaranteed and viable curriculum. The fourth tenant would be once that's been determined, then that team would frequently develop formative assessments, common formative assessments to gather evidence on students progress, to inform individual and collective practice and to move to the fifth tenant use that evidence to figure out who needs extra time and assistance to meet those guaranteed targets, who would be ready for enrichment or extension. 00:07:05Edit And then finally, we would agree that we would trust the evidence from this process to improve individual and collective practice. And that's PLC at work in a nutshell. It's not just meeting and talking about random pro professional topics. It would be a very specific set of work the teams would engage in and an institution would engage in that's focused on mastery and uh uh uh uh uh essential learning targets for every student that's determined by the collaborative team. Does PLC work in a few minutes? I love, wow, that was really distilled. It was beautiful and I loved you in the book, how you distinguish PLC right from PLC Light. And I specifically love that you name like if PLC Light is implementing only what doesn't make them uncomfortable, right? So this idea of discomfort as necessary for like true equity and truly centering and seeing like what are we doing and what can we do differently? And what does that impact on Children is so amazing? 00:08:09Edit Like I just, I really like how you frame that. And I love how the PL C at work process really gets down to like what is it actually that we are doing and how do we keep student learning in mind? Like the curriculum is very tied to the PLC. We're, we're unpacking the data of the student learning. We are unpacking all this stuff and it's not some like, yeah, Fluffy, let's all like get together and talk about a topic. Yes. Yes. And and that will be more what we consider a critical friends group, which isn't bad. It just doesn't have the same evidence from research and the impact of student learning. There's nothing wrong with teachers getting together and discussing topics of practice. But if you're really interested in improving student learning, it wouldn't be random, it would be intentional. I love that. And, and so I'm gonna shift now because I'm wondering uh about the research that you did in terms of the impact on students and educators that COVID had. There were so many things in here that I found fascinating and I mean, you even took, you know, like how these effect sizes when schools are closed. 00:09:15Edit Research, you talked about teacher satisfaction, you talked about the impact on students mental health. I mean, all sorts of things. What was most interesting to you most surprising to you as you were doing that research, that chapter was the most emotional work for me because you could sense it just from observation that things were different to dive into the evidence and the research on how basically pausing society for two years with uncertainty with fear with um even the battle of ideologies that emerge politically. Um and then telling people to leave the cave after two years of hibernation and saying ready set go and then wondering why people aren't as enthusiastic or as engaged. But one of the things that really intrigued me, um there's several things on educators was our history of not acknowledging our own mental health and how COVID made us uh in a way start to acknowledge it. 00:10:25Edit But there was a recent uh education week uh poll done on uh buzzwords in education that, that educators find unpleasant. Unfortunately, in that list of the top 10 self care was one of them that I don't want us to become so altruistic that we forget that we matter. Um If the teacher is stressed out, if the teacher is anxious or depressed, then what impact do you expect that person to have on Children or also anxious and depressed and stressed out? And what really bothered me is a lack of our top leadership at the state, the federal, at the district levels, their willingness to acknowledge that there's nothing wrong with taking a step back and thinking about how our institution, what it's doing to the mental health of our educators and to our Children. It's ok to pause for a minute and recalibrate for a better future. As opposed to we gotta catch up learning loss. 00:11:29Edit We need more time we need after school and you're just taking depression and anxiety and you're just enhancing it as opposed to addressing sometimes Lindsay, I feel sometimes lonely because I feel like I'm screaming in the wilderness to people. Things that seem like common sense. It, it is just not registered. I see teachers being pushed over the edge and we are in one of the greatest teacher shortages in American history. The data screaming at us, the teachers we have are by and large dissatisfied and depressed. We're not attracting new people to the profession and people are quitting wholesale. But yet we haven't shifted our approach. I was also taken by, um, the impact that it has had on Children, uh particularly insists it in long term virtual. And the, and the, the real gaps that have developed, uh just last week, there was a report on the New York Times that uh chronic absenteeism has more than doubled since COVID. 00:12:39Edit So kids are becoming more school phobic for two years. They were on a computer and sometimes they logged in and sometimes they did, sometimes they found the lessons engaging, sometimes they didn't and to see that that impact was greater in, in a negative sense for kids of poverty who we didn't think about. If there are five Children, are there five laptops now, are there five quiet places for them to engage? Is the bandwidth adequate for them to stay engaged? What are the distractions that are happening at home? Are they facing homelessness? And then you add that on top of that? Something that really hurt my heart was that for kids of poverty, the the the gaps were larger and their anxiety and depression. And for LGBT Q students who had to witness on the, the news, these adult debates about whether they even exist or deserve to be acknowledged. 00:13:42Edit So that chapter was it, it was emotionally, it took an emotional toll on me um to write it, synthesize it and then publish it. I'm sure it was emotional even just to read. I mean, yeah, that, that I had written down that exact thing as well. Just the increase anxiety and depression around girls in LGBT Q plus youth were impacted possibly with a social media like mediator influence. I, I thought that was fascinating. Right? Because it is, it's the news, it's also the, the um conversation that are happening with their peers that we like, usually don't touch in education. Right? Um That, that black boys were placed in special education at an increased rate of 20%. I mean, just like mind blowing things where we're just doing things worse, like things are happening worse. Like we were not pausing, like you said, and recalibrating and it's so necessary. I think that, I think the 12% was the teacher job satisfaction rate. That, that was reported. I mean, that's a single digits. 00:14:46Edit Like, but there's a problem now it did go up to 20%. Ok. Oh, not only 80% of teachers hate their job. So. Oh, that's rough. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. And so as we think about, you know, the all of the pieces, there's, there's so many things right that I think we, we can do, we can look at, we can, you know, almost be so immersed in, in all of this negative data stuff that it can feel maybe overwhelming at times of like, how do we address everything? Um, how do you see the appeal the at work framework? Really being an anchor for addressing a lot of the things that, that the research uncovered here. Hi, this is Leah popping in to share this episode's Freebie, a set of reproducible and a study guide at the solution tree. You can find it at the blog post for this episode, www dot Lindsay, Beth lions.com/one 71. Now, back to the word here. It, it puts the main thing as the main thing and we can avoid the external distractions and the self inflicted wounds, the external distractions. 00:15:57Edit I like to appeal to uh lawmakers and decision makers. I mean, how much research do you need to see that test based student accountability and comparison of schools and districts has been a miserable failure. Stop for two years. We didn't do it and nobody died. Nobody, you know, it, it schools didn't like explode because they didn't take all these standardized tests and there's nothing wrong with test based feedback. The government does have a right to gather evidence on how the citizens are doing. But would it make sense if they did that with fire departments or, or, or, or police departments and gave them letter grades? Wouldn't you want every fire department to be great when you want every police department to be great? Um The evidence is really clear. It's just a new form of Jim Crow. It's taking these ideas and covering them under the idea of school quality and it's debilitating certain systems and it's making cer some systems think that they're performing better than they really are. 00:17:03Edit So it helped her schools on all parts of the spectrum, student learning and the actual acquisition of knowledge and skills is what I'm asking the Federal state and local governments to focus. I'm asking us to get back to a foundation of, of how do we improve teacher quality future performance through collaborative teams that were not competing with each other. There's these really serious skills and, and, and, and knowledge that kids have to have to have to have to ascertain or again, how do we work together to get there? And I can learn from you, you can learn from me and we'll say talking about field day or hat policy or after school program for another team, but give teachers time and space to work on student learning, make the main thing the main thing and allow them to work as a real team and utilize one another, especially since we have so many alternatively certified folks going into the profession, we have to accelerate their growth because they're coming in at a deficit. 00:18:15Edit Wouldn't it be smart for them to be on a strong collaborative team as opposed to trying to figure it out by themselves and an administrator walking in with a walkthrough protocol and telling them how bad they are, they don't have any direction on how to get better. The evidence is just so crystal clear that it, it gets frustrating. Um When people can't see the writing on the wall, student by student skill, by skill, collaborative teams, time resources and support to get the job done. Yes. Oh my gosh. I, I love all of this and I think a lot of leaders listen to this podcast. And so I think that that structural piece of just where do we have that time built into teacher school day? How do we get teachers in each other's rooms to see how things are happening? And oh, I have that student in my class too. Wow, they're really engaging in your class. How is that happening? What are you doing? I think there's, there's so much that um we can do structurally that really enables teachers to thrive trust teachers that they, they have the motivation to thrive and and really increases that job satisfaction which you know, is going to make them want to keep going. 00:19:22Edit And even if we are struggling, give them support to help them grow to meet it, it doesn't have to be punitive or uh negative that if you give an assessment and most of the kids struggle, what can, what can, what can I do to help you to help them get there? So the trust is mutual between the leadership and the teachers, but their focus collectively is on students. I love that. I love that specific example of, you know, every kid fails the assessment, right? There's so many that's such a learning opportunity there's so many things that we can dig into. Maybe the assessment was flawed, right? Maybe, maybe we, we give them different ways to demonstrate they're learning. Maybe we go back and have it be more student centered and try this pedagogy, right? Like I, I love seeing that as a learning opportunity and not a failure of this teacher shouldn't be teaching or something. Right? Because I asked leaders of those are listing, who are you gonna replace her with? Nobody's going into teaching you, you're better off cultivating the ones you have. Instead of trying to separate capable from, from, from incapable, help, help them develop and grow and they'll stay, they'll be satisfied, they'll get the intrinsic satisfaction of seeing students develop and just create a much more pleasant system in a much more pleasant environment. 00:20:42Edit Absolutely. And I, and I think now that we're thinking structurally as well, I wanted you to share if you could a little bit about the time for change framework that you developed with Louis Cruz. And I, I just, there's so much I love about this. It really speaks to my heart. There's a ton of like surveys and rubrics and a bunch of stuff in the appendix that is so usable, like user friendly, ready to go. People can pick up this book and just use something tomorrow which I really love. And I also love, I think at the very beginning of, of you introducing it in this book you talked about how, um, reason Ager I think, found that change can happen in 100 days. We don't need to wait for like the 3 to 5 years that we often say. Right, let's go now. And I love that so much. It's really a nice call to action. Like we don't need to, um, uh Paul Gorski calls it something like pacing for something like comfort or something. And it's right. we don't need to slow this down because we're uncomfortable with like getting things moving, we can get things moving. Well, the last chapter of the book really is a call to action. 00:21:45Edit And the first thing that I recommend that people do and we've been saying this for years is to put together a leadership team. Some called it an instructional leadership team. We called it a guiding coalition. I don't care what you call it, but to have a team whose focus is to support teacher teams in the full implementation of the PLC at work process. And I I add in the book rubrics, each one of the six essential PLC elements for the leadership team to do an analysis of where they are as an institution as it pertains from as it, as it as we go from novice to exemplar ever. You find that you need to greatly improve, let's say it's formative assessment. They have good teams, they do a pretty good job on guaranteed and viable. But as you analyze the rubric, you find that your teachers are really reluctant about collectively developing assessments to use the evidence formative as a fear of comparison or whatever. 00:22:48Edit So there's a survey that's so you can gather that information from it and I include as a decision making framework. Uh something that Doctor Louise Cruz and I developed from a book called Time For Change, which is really rooted in behavioral science. And the premise is all human beings love improvement. We don't necessarily love change. This change is inconvenient. It's uncomfortable. So, but people tend to engage if they're given the right equipment and some of the things that make people reluctant to engage, we break them down from more of a anthropological perspective. We start with a meeting of the minds. So teachers are not engaged in common point of assessments. Maybe they don't understand why it's so important. Maybe there wasn't an intellectual discourse that they might think is just an imposition of power or authority. Maybe they don't understand the research around the power of common assessments. Maybe they don't understand um what the the the benefit instruction that the communist essence can bring. 00:23:57Edit So maybe it's poor communication. So maybe we need to show it up there. Others it could be emotion, they get it but there's fear. But will the results be weaponized? Will I get a bad evaluation of Lindsay's kids do better than mine? So it could be trust. It couldn't be it might not be intellectual at all. Maybe they don't trust how we're going to use this evidence and there's a sense of fear. So the second thing that, that we, we place is that if, if you've already communicated properly and there's not a misunderstanding, maybe there's an emotion gap, we call it a meeting of the heart and that's building trust. If they get it, they trust, maybe their apprehension is they don't know how to do that. It could be a real skill deficit. Maybe they don't know how to write a good assessment. Maybe they don't know what to do with the data uh in our framework. That's the easiest or the most straightforward of the breaches. It's just a, I just don't know how to do it. And the premise is that people know better than they'll do better. So maybe the t the leadership team looks at it and says, maybe these teachers just need more training on how to develop a common assessment, how to use the data, how to, how to help the students reflect on their own mistakes. 00:25:18Edit If you do those three things, our evidence is shown you've covered the vast majority of the reasons people resist change. But then there's this last level which is just defiance, they understand they trust, they know how to do it, but they've drawn a line in the sand and they've said you can't make me. So the last tool in our framework is accountability. Now, the best part, accountability is peer pressure if you develop strong teams and I'm the outlier and we're on a team, Lindsay and the other three team members saying come on, Anthony, we really need you on board. So creating a, a culture of peer pressure can be improved at the team level. But there's that last level of accountability if the team has tried everything they know. But Anthony's just being a jerk for lack of a better term. Somebody on that team, primarily an administrator, if you've tried the all the other stages has to go to Anthony because he's holding up the team's progress. 00:26:26Edit And they have to say at this point, Anthony, you know why it's necessary trust is not an issue, you know how to do it, the rest of your team is doing what's wrong with this picture at this point. I'm not asking you, I'm demanding and I'm gonna use my authority to push you into better practice. Not because I hate you. I'm trying to be malicious that your kids can't wait another day for you to somehow intrinsically uh you know, have this epiphany and to join and you're gonna get my full attention until you do. So we produce in the book um a framework that leadership teams can use as they're looking at the continuum of implementing fully all six of those PLC types and using the time for change framework that where there's a breach we can act with better communication or is it a trust gap is a capacity or people just being stubborn and you're gonna catch everybody with one or more of those four? 00:27:37Edit I love that. It almost makes my next question obsolete. I wonder if there's, it's worth that thing. But I, I was wondering about the biggest challenge that you see, I don't know if they fall maybe into one of those categories, but the biggest challenge you see in terms of implementing this authentically, like fully, you know, the PLC at work framework and, and just really thinking about the time for change framework as well from a leader lens. Well, doctor Cruise line in time for change, we found that about 90% this comes from the transforming school culture, book and study. Um but 90% is wrapped up in poor communication and lack of trust, uh lack of capacity and just stubborn resistance happen a lot less frequently, but they do happen. So a leadership team should focus a lot of their change uh energy around really, really strong communication and building trust with their family. And if those two are solid, those other two breaches because they're less frequent. 00:28:45Edit That is huge. I think, I, I mean, I that's really big. Number 90% is shocking to me. And I think that's going to be really heartening for a lot of leaders to think. Well, that's a lot fewer battles that I have to like, prepare for, I just need to communicate better. And that's something that I can have a little bit of control over. Right? Like I can prepare to do this and that must be freeing for people listening. So that's exciting. And if you do, if you communicate, you build trust. And we've seen situations where uh defiance just was non-existent our capacity. That is more concrete. I either I know how to unpack a standard or I don't in that situation. Um But we found that that happens a lot less frequently than people who develop bad attitudes and dispositions because of misunderstanding or mistrust. That's incredible. I think. So we've talked about a lot of things and your book covers a lot of things. One of the things that I, I like to offer our listeners at the end is just the question of, you know, if there's one thing that someone could do tomorrow. 00:29:54Edit So there these ideas are kind of swimming around in their heads and they're thinking this, this is a lot of stuff that maybe I need to take in digest, think about implement what's like the one thing I can do to get started tomorrow, that'll put me on the the right path to do all this stuff. Make sure you have a strong democratically uh represent democratic representation on your leadership. Make sure you have representative democracy at every grade level. The department has a representative leadership and start to collaborate model for your teachers. What good collaboration looks like around student work. I would recommend you get uh the book the way forward and read it as a book study and do some self analysis. So you can get very specific on the work that your school needs to get done because your school's needs may be different than the school. Around the corner school around the corner may be different in a school in another district. But the PLC at work framework is concrete enough. If you do that self analysis, you can tighten it up and make sure that you have evidence in all six of those critical areas. 00:31:06Edit So that would be my recommendation. Um We've rarely found the school improve at scale that, that, that they don't have strong leadership teams. Now, when you have a charismatic leader who um is kind of that superhero, you'll get results for a while until that person leaves. You want sustained leadership, you want sustained growth. It needs to be a collective effort. So district office quit looking for the miracle principles. The uh lean on me, the stand and deliver uh the freedom writers just go work together as a team. You don't need a superhero in leadership. You just need a leader that's humble enough to know that he or she can't do it by themselves. I love that a lot of my research and work is in shared leadership inclusive of students as well. So I'm just thinking about the representation on the leadership team too, of people who aren't even educators but, but the Children that we were there for. Right. So I think that's, that's a wonderful idea to be able to, to start there and that's something that you could reflect on tomorrow and, and get, get to work on tomorrow. 00:32:20Edit Beautiful. Um I, I'm wondering one of the questions I asked for fun at the end usually is just, you know, what's something that you've been either learning about or working on lately? Is there anything new in the works for you or something you're curious about? I'm learning how to relax. Um I'm, I'm a Taipei personality. I have two books that are already done. Another two more than I'm doing at its home. And I'm gonna take some time to just sit back and enjoy my life's labor and enjoy family. And really, it, it's one thing to advocate for the benefit of other people, but it's seems harder to advocate for my own leisure and benefit and I'm learning to be more balanced. So uh I've never read for pleasure. I've always read for information. Uh uh informational text is my thing, but I'm learning to get more into narrative text and fictional and just kind of lose myself and take walks on the beach. 00:33:28Edit And so that's, that's my new thing. II, I want a more balanced life. Hm. That's incredible. And I think a lot of leaders need to hear that because they're probably in similar positions to you and, and need that reminder. So I love that you're offering that. Thank you. And, and the last thing is people are gonna, I, if they're already probably following you, but people are gonna want to follow the work that you're doing. Connect with you. Um see what conferences you're speaking at all, the things, what's the best place online to follow the work you're doing for social media. Uh Facebook, I have a page under Doctor Anthony Mohammed and I have a Twitter or X whatever they call them these days. I don't use it as often, but that's at New Frontier 21. And I'm pretty active on linkedin if you want resources, books, conferences, Solutions read.com is the best place you just put in my name. I'll show you all of the PLC institutes. I'm speaking at. It has links to all of my books and resources and streaming videos and DVD s and uh so that's the best place for resources. 00:34:33Edit Get access to me. Social media is the best and my website is being revamped. Um That's New Frontier 20 one.com. It won't be up for again for another month, but check on that in another month and that'll be a clearing house for all of those. Awesome. I think by the time this airs that should be up and running and so we'll link to all that stuff in the show notes. And the blog post for the episode. Doctor Mohammad. Thank you so much for your time today. This is an absolute joy. Thank you. I appreciate you having me and you were, you were a great interview. So thank you. Thank you. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, Sair 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 yourself as you listen to 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. 00:35:43Edit Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach better podcast network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at, teach better.com/podcasts. And we'll see you at the next episode.
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7/1/2024 170. Partnering with Culturally & Linguistically Diverse Families in Special Education with Dr. Kristin Vogel-CampbellRead Now
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In this episode, Dr. Kristin Vogel-Campbell shares how we can make IEP meetings with families better. She emphasizes the importance of an assets-based mindset, the critical need for accurate language interpretation, and the value of direct communication with families.
Kristin Vogel-Campbell began her career as a Special Education aide at the Chinatown Head Start in New York City and was a classroom teacher for thirteen years in California. She has served as a district-level Program Specialist and Director of Special Education and is currently a Coordinator of Special Education for the San Mateo Foster City School District. Dr. Vogel-Campbell recently earned her Doctorate of Education from California State University, East Bay. She’s the author of Partnering with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Families in Special Education, which we talk about in this episode! The Big Dream Dr. Vogel-Campbell’s big dream for education, deeply influenced by Dr. Bettina Love's concept of 'freedom dreaming,' is that all education is Special Education (i.e., differentiated). Mindset Shifts Required Transformational change begins with the mind, enabling relational change and eventually influencing policy and practice. Dr. Vogel-Campbell shares many mindset shifts including: presuming competence of students and families, approaching family communication with positivity, refraining from assumptions about family involvement, honoring familial knowledge, and recognizing we (educators) need to earn families’ trust. She urges educators to engage directly with families, centering their voices in the educational conversation, and ensuring that the interpretation is accurate and culturally sustaining. Action Steps Step 1: Create concise, clear, and accessible summaries of complex educational documents, like procedural safeguards, and offer them alongside comprehensive versions. Also offer translations of the summaries. Step 2: Invest in effective language interpretation, ensuring interpreters have specialized vocabulary and share the same dialect as families. Step 3: Center the student’s humanity and strengths. One family brought a binder each year with the child’s smiling face on it (and updated the picture each year) to remind everyone why they were there. Challenges? A big one is precise interpretation and space for families to ask questions. Dr. Vogel-Campbell shared a heartbreaking anecdote about a misinterpretation that led a father to believe his child needed leg amputation instead of ankle-foot orthoses. Had the interpreter been trained in specific terminology and the father had space to ask questions within the meeting, this confusion would have been eliminated or remedied quickly. One Step to Get Started Engage in personal reflection to understand biases and past missteps. Commit to relationship-building with students and families, and take the time to ensure all families feel like valued, co-creators of IEPs. Stay Connected You can connect with or follow Kristin on LinkedIn and Instagram @drvogelcampbell To help you implement equitable practices, Dr. Kristin Vogel-Campbell is sharing her PK-12 school meeting accessibility protocol with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 170 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 00:00:00 Hi, everyone. Today's guest is Doctor Kristen Vogel Campbell who began her career as a special education aide at the Chinatown head start in New York City and was a classroom teacher for 13 years in California. She has served as a district level program specialist and director of Special Education and is currently a coordinator of special education for the San Mateo Foster City school district. Doctor Vogel Campbell recently earned her doctorate of education from California State University, East Bay. She's the author of partnering with culturally and linguistically diverse families in Special education, which we talk about in this episode. Now, let's get to the episode, educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum, director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about co-creator curriculum of students I made this show for you. 00:01:15Edit Here we go. Doctor Kristen Vogel K. Well, welcome to the Time for Teacher Podcast, Lindsay. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. Um It's a huge honor. I am so excited. You have an incredible book, done some incredible research. And I'm really excited. I think that'll kind of house our conversation today. But I'm excited to know if there's anything else that you think is important for listeners to know either about you. I know sometimes the form mobiles can feel very formal and there's like, you know, we're whole people. So if you want to add anything to that or just have people kind of keep anything in mind as we jump into our conversation, say, feel free to share that. Yeah. Um One of the things that I like to always bring up when I'm in conversation about like the work that I do and my experience is that, you know, I've worn a lot of hats that people think of when they imagine a special educator. Um I've been a teacher's assistant, a student teacher, um special ed teacher in a variety of settings. Um, a program specialist, a director, a special ed and a coordinator. 00:02:18Edit But the two hats that I have not worn are a student with an IEP or a parent of a student with an IEP. And I'm very, very clear about my personality in this regard. So I let the voices of parents speak for themselves. Um I try not to uh presume or assume anything about parent experience. And I think that's a really critical piece kind of moving forward into this conversation. That's such a great point. Thank you for situating that. And I, I love how much you do that within the book too is just a real um situated this of like I am a researcher and in this work and working closely with a lot of these families and it just, it really comes through how thoughtful that you are in all of this. And so I, I appreciate that grounding because I think it is like an intro into just who you are and how you do things, which is phenomenal. Thank you. Yeah. And, and I think one of the things that comes really clear in the book as, as you kind of read it, but I wanted to ask on the podcast is, you know, I, I love Doctor Patina loves thoughts around freedom dreaming. 00:03:25Edit And so when she talks about dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, I think what a beautiful way to anchor the dreams that we hold for education. I'm curious, how would you describe that outside of the book or reading from your book however you want to do that? But like, what is that dream for you? Yeah. Um I, I was so excited. I'm, I'm so excited that you also sent her um this question in the work of Doctor Love. Um She's been a huge source of knowledge for me. Um I cannot comprehend doing my job without. Um So, you know, just really brutally honest, special education is one of the only legally sanctioned forms of segregation outside of our carceral system. Um And when we think about abolition, like Doctor Love talks about, um when we think about intersectionality and justice, disability always needs to be considered and included. Um you know, just thinking about that school to prison pipeline. So many of our incarcerated folks, persons of color are student uh are are folks either with, you know, a history of disability in school or with undiagnosed disabilities and kind of the dream that I hold for education. 00:04:38Edit I think about when I was a middle school resource specialist and I would share with my students that my ultimate goal was for them to exit my classroom. And I would always frame it and saying I adored them. I enjoyed working with them, but I wanted them to develop the skills and the agency to learn and thrive in a general ed setting. But at the same time, I also let them know that this was not something that was their sole responsibility that the adults in education need to shift their attitudes as well as learning new skills in order to make this happen. So my dream is that, you know, all education is special education. When we think about special education, it's, it's differentiated and all of our students learn in different ways. So why can't that happen in a setting where everyone is getting that at the same time? That that's equity and that's justice for me. Oh, that's so beautiful. Yes. And I, I love that you anchor your work in disability studies frameworks, um and disabilities studies in education framework. 00:05:44Edit And like, I think that's absolutely it, the, the ties to the carceral state that connections, you need the idea of the goal being to exit the classroom. I mean, how many, how many educators but also like lead and system wide leaders really articulate that goal or even honestly have it in their heads. Like I, I can say, I as an educator, like hadn't had when I was in it, you know, I had not had that kind of um thought process, right? And we're just kind of like, ok, this is your students are here and they are here forever, right? And we don't think about that, that dream, that extension. Mhm. And I mean, yeah, that, that's, it's a journey that I've been on and my, you know, 20 ish years in special education, that's not the mindset that I held at the beginning or even in the middle of my journey. But I think my, my doctoral program doing a lot of very like in depth research into, like you said, disability studies, but also, you know, uh abolition studies, uh critical race theory. Black feminist thought. 00:06:46Edit Um you know, abolition looking like our students being able to, you know, thrive in setting that the majority of our other students are, are in. It just, it just comes down to that. Um So, yeah, that, that's, that's kind of how I, you know, ground myself in, in, in the work that I do. Beautiful. Oh my gosh. I, I love it so much today. It really speaks to the idea that like our our system is set up to fail students versus that there is an individual, right? Like issue with students. It's just like our system has made it. So that differentiation isn't like just like go to thing for all students, right? Which it should be. And so I think there's a lot of structural things that you point out in the book which I, I think are so eye opening. I mean, even for me as a special educator who was like in it realizing for example, that 94% of the procedural safeguards documents from the 2012 research anyways were written in a post secondary reading level. 00:07:50Edit I mean, and you talked about how like the special education teachers sometimes were even like, I don't even know, right? Like what? And then so I remember being a first year special educator and just being like, whoa what on earth is this massive document we're sending home? Oh, we have to do it. Well, I guess I'll just send it home, but I don't really know what's going on here. Right. That's not, it's, it really, it doesn't make a lot of sense and, you know, procedurally, one of the things that, you know, we're obligated to do is to either send that home for parents to review beforehand or to present it to parents at the beginning of the meeting. And it always looks like here's this 19 page document. Do you have any questions? OK. That, that, that doesn't really set us up for a level playing field. Um So what we, what we've done in the past is, you know, taking that 19 page document first off providing our educators and our site leaders with um kind of an in depth like training on what, what that document looks like, what those rights uh look like what parents and students are entitled to um under I DEA and then creating kind of like a one or two page bullet point that we can share with families. 00:09:09Edit In addition to that 19 page document, it's a little bit easier for them to digest. Um And then, you know, the challenge is our procedural safeguards, I believe right now, we have procedural safeguards translated into 30 something languages um in our district and in the state of California, um the, the, the resources and, and the time and, and the, the skill to translate that. So we're making sure that all of our families regardless of language differences have that uh Chi or cliff notes, how I like to, I always like to preface it by saying that. But yeah, it's, it, it's not setting us up for a successful meeting if we're just growing a really important document appearance and expecting them to participate without having a lot of uh front loading. Yeah. And so yeah, I love that idea of the bullet point bullet pointed list. Brilliant and, and just thinking about, right, it is very resource intensive. But what are the ways that we can support, like the, the way that it's set up? 00:10:15Edit Like, I know you talked about how like in the book, there's, you know, really special education services in general are like it's a legal compliance model. So it's not, let's get creative, let's figure out what's best for students. It is like we are checking the box, we are doing this thing and that's kind of what the structure uh lends itself to. And so that's kind of what happens and there's all sorts of barriers. I mean, you talk about language translation being actually one of I I think Gonzalez and Gable uh said it was one of the most significant barriers to family engagement in the IEP process. There's, you know, the idea of gender, which came up, which was really fascinating to me that most of the research in this is actually done with moms, not dads. And there was like a dad in there who was saying, you know, there's a separation between me and the female teachers who talk to my wife, look at her and, and use mister when they talk to me. It's like a a removal like it, it's not, it was interesting to me reading that. I was like, oh I see that as a sign of respect but also problematic in a gendered way. But it's actually to him like you don't respect me in the same way or you don't connect with me, I should say in the same way. Um There's like, you know, lost wages that you cited from people taking work off just to be able to make it to the meetings. 00:11:19Edit Um All of these structural problems, like I I'm just thinking about maybe a leader listening who's not intimately involved with the IEP process who may not be aware of all of these pieces, but like that's just to paint the picture, that's what we're working in. And then given that, I mean, feel free to expound about any of that. But I I'm thinking, given all those challenges, you know, what is the path forward? What kind of brought you to this research? What advice would you give someone who is listening? Thinking like, well, well, we don't want to do that in our school or district. So like, where do we go now? Yeah. Um So when we think about systems and structures, we always think of that triangle that pyramid. Um And you know, information flows from the bottom to the top. And we usually think about it in, you know, resources and, and, and policy are the first things that need to happen when it's actually the opposite. Um And one of the, the visuals that I share with my teams and I I use in some of my research is that inverted triangle. Um Peter Senge and a couple of his colleagues developed it. 00:12:24Edit Um Transformational change needs to start with minds. Um that allows us to shift to the relational change with relationships and connections, policy practices and resources like A K A money that comes last. That's where we, we, we come into the problem of, well, we're just throwing money at a problem and nothing is really happening. If you're not, if you're not focused on mindset before you invest money in a, in a, in a problem, you're not really gonna see results. Um So my passion is really getting into the weeds with the mindset and the relationship building and repairing those relationships. Um And you spoke about it uh a little bit when you mentioned some of the dialogues that I engaged in with families. Um But the repairing of the relationships also goes into work with teachers and students. And, you know, I, you know, continue my work with dialoguing with families, even outside of the examples in the book, the most recent kind of conversation and vision planning that I had with uh a parent was a translation issue um where the parent only spoke Spanish. 00:13:39Edit Um And we brought in a Spanish language interpreter. Um A physical therapist was reviewing their report and was talking about how the student needs um braces um or A F OS in order to walk effectively, the interpreter didn't have the language and the knowledge of that very specific vocabulary and interpreted to the parent that the school team was recommending that he go to the doctor and that the doctor should fit the student with prosthetic legs. And we had uh yeah, like, and, and so this interpreter told the dad, well, you know, we think that his leg should be amputated because they're no good and he needs a prosthetic leg. We needed to pause the meeting because of time because IP meetings are stacked one right after the other. 00:14:46Edit We had a, we had a second part of this meeting two weeks later where we had a different translator come in and the dad was like, well, wait a minute, like I went to the doctor and the doctor had no idea what I was talking about. And we found out that this dad had been, you know, kind of starting over the fact that he thought that the school team was recommending that, you know, his son have his legs amputated and it was just, it was, it was horrible. Um And, you know, I found this out through talking with the dad. Um, and then touched base with the school team to kind of get their thoughts about. Well, you know, how did that sit with you when, when you found out that we had this interpretation different or, or, you know, just like the worst case scenario and, you know, several of our school team members, you know, broke down in tears. And so I think it, it comes to effective interpretation. First of all, making sure that, you know, our interpreters speak the same dialect as, as our families. 00:15:51Edit Um You know, I think about um all of the different languages um in India. So, you know, some of our educators might say, well, the parent that the family speaks Indian, OK, Indians and not a language, there are dozens of Indian languages. So making sure it's the right dialect and then making sure that that interpreter has the specific vocabulary to be able to convey like educational, like scientific based terms and then having the team stop and give the families an opportunity to ask questions. So yeah, that every time I come up to a situation where I hear something like that, it, I realized that, you know, the work isn't done that even if a successful day happens the day before. And I'm working on repairing and restoring a co uh a relationship with a family that we have so much more work to do. And the the, the week that that dad spent wondering what disconnect was, was happening. 00:16:59Edit Like, why does his son need this medical procedure? Like, we're never gonna be able to give that back to him. We're never gonna be able to give back the, the, the, the peace and serenity that the reduced stress. Um, that could have, it could have been easily preventable. Wow. That is bananas. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's, that's a really great descriptor of it. It's just, you know, we always say special education, you know, that there's always something new but, um, I would never imagine that it would be that, um, that horrible and I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it and talking about it again. Yeah, I mean, and thank you so much for sharing it. I think it really illuminates. I mean, that's a, that's a, like you said, worst case scenario version of a lack of the technical term in interpretation. But I, I do think that there are so many, probably smaller versions of or examples like that that are maybe not as extreme, but they happen all the time because that is such a, I mean, even just monolingual like English to English speakers talking about the technicalities of diagnosis, uh you know, an apparatus or something or a tech support piece to a student with an IP that it's very specific like a nuance, we might not even have that language in the same language. 00:18:25Edit Right. So, I think you're absolutely right there are nuances to this that we don't always think about. We're like, oh, there's a translator. We're, we're good. Yeah. And you know, even, even with monolingual English speaking families, you know, you're a former special educator, we have all of our acronyms and, you know, special educator sitting at a table, we can talk about IEPSSTAT A AC and if we're using those acronyms with, with parents and families and even general education teachers, their eyes are gonna glaze over because they don't know what the heck we're talking about. So we need to break down those terms. Um One of the things that I intentionally did at the end of my book was um a glossary of all the acronyms. So, you know, the first time that I use an acronym in the book, I, you know, spell out what the acronym is and, you know, just for the sake of space, acronyms are used throughout the book. But, you know, you can always go back and kind of see what, what that, what that is. Um And I think we need to be very, very specific about doing that. 00:19:31Edit We weren't just talking about accessibility in general. Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And even even, and you mentioned a story about this actually in the book as a family who was like east coast to west coast, moving back and forth. Um or, or I made the move at least once and the differences between like the structures of the school and the policies of the state. And just even as a special educator myself, talking to people who are in different systems, like there might be a different acronym or a different platform to house the IP documents or whatever. And it's like this is so exclusionary to educators, even just within an educational space, it's not ab absolutely. Um You know, I started um I did my, my uh grad undergraduate and master's degree in uh New York, which is where I'm from. Hi, this is Leah from the podcast team. In this episode, Doctor Kristen Vogel Campbell is sharing the free resource of PK through 12 school meeting accessibility protocol. You can get it at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 70. 00:20:33Edit Now back to the episode, you know, special education spaces, we, we talk about special education as a service, not a place, but, you know, in reality, there are designated spaces that and I'm air quoting, of course, you can't see that. Um But there are spaces that are designated as special education spaces. Um You know, on the east coast, they're kind of uh called like self contained classrooms in California and in some of the West Coast, they're referred to as ST CS or special day class. Um So without being really uh specific and explaining all of these things, you know, parents are not able to effectively participate, which is one of the things that districts and schools are obligated to ensure um and it is more than just checking that box at the end of the IUP meeting, it's, you know, going back like, hey, do you have any questions? Hey, you know, just being very clear at the beginning of the meeting, if something doesn't resonate with you, if, if, if anyone on the team is saying something that does not sound like your child like, you know, feel free to, to, to ask or to probe or to question. 00:21:49Edit And when we're talking about families from, you know, other cultures who, you know, position educators, you know, kind of as like the, the, the, the sage and the end all be all they, they have part of their, their culture is to not question educators. And so in working with um like culture and linguistically diverse families helping them shift their mindset to it's OK and it's acceptable to ask a question or to say, hey, you know, that doesn't really sound like something my kid would say or do. Um so that those are some of the, the shifts that are really difficult. Um And I think, you know, I, I would put more of the onus on, on teachers and educators to, to shift their mindset, but in, in empowering families and making sure that their voice is centered. Uh Sometimes it does require them to go out of their comfort zone and to um shift away from some of their uh cultural beliefs and norms as Well, yes. 00:22:59Edit Oh my gosh, I love it. And I, I wanted to name that you distinguish too in, in the book involvement versus engagement of families. And so to be able to say, you know, involvement, I think you said is really just including them in these procedures, we have to kind of go through. But the school owns those procedures. It's not truly like engagement or partner chef. Whereas engagement is like the parents are actually leading that conversation. And I love how you are kind of started us down the track of thinking about this specific actions that educators could take or that we can do together with families. Um And, and you, you what I loved about this is you had all these dialogues with these family members and, and many of them actually suggested like either this is what we do and we, it has worked for us. So like learn from that or like educators, if you're listening, you know, here's XYZ ideas that I have as a family member and like, you know, we should try to implement them, which I love that those voices were really central to the possibilities. And I love that language that you use to possibilities versus recommendations. Uh The possibilities that you painted in in the book. 00:24:02Edit Do you mind talking us through some of them? Yeah, absolutely. Um Yeah. And, and, and possibilities is it's, it's open minded. Um I think recommendations, it's very prescriptive and you know, thinking about looking at more of a social model versus the medical model, like I'm not prescribing that you do this because your school community looks a lot different than the ones that I work with. Um So I think some of the mindset shifts that, you know, parents have recommended in, in the book, um assuming competence, you know, just in presuming competence in our students, presuming competence in our families and frame things through an assets based mindset. Um I think our families here about especially students in, in special education. Well, they, they can't do this, they're not able to do this. They struggle with this. Semantics are really powerful and, and framing things and they are working on or they thrive when provided with this support or even just starting it out with, they're able to do this, this and this and they are, you know, um developing their knowledge and being able to do this. 00:25:15Edit Um That's a really amazing way to capture uh parents uh and engage them in the, in the conversations being proactive. Um And just very simple as don't always touch base with parents when something bad happens, you know, when something amazing happens or if a student has a great day or they, you know, a fair, you know, speech and language session, send a parent a quick email or a phone call and just let them know that so that they're getting a balance of communication from school and also, you know, asking not assuming. And I think that's, that gets us into a lot of, um, a lot of trouble sometimes where we assume, for example. Oh, well, you know, parents not able to make parent teacher conferences or they, they really have a difficult time coming to the IP S that we scheduled according to our, you know, our niche schedule. 00:26:21Edit They, they don't care or they're not involved. Parents work two or three jobs, they have nontraditional work hours. Uh Sometimes, you know, expanding the definition of who family is um intergenerational families, having, you know, aunties or uncles or grandparents, older siblings. And, you know, parents can, you know, send those folks in as a proxy if they're not able to participate in meetings. And that kind of leads into just honoring familial knowledge and recognizing the wealth and the skills, especially those like second language skills that, you know, I think uh in English based schools that we are in America, you know, bilingualism needs to be honored more than it is. Um And then finally just, you know, speaking with families, not at families and then going back to the interpreter piece, one of my major pet peeves is when we have an interpreter in the room during a meeting and the parent and the, the staff are making eye contact with the interpreter when they're talking. 00:27:35Edit And I think it's a natural instinct because we're speaking to the interpreter. So that they're able to uh interpret to the parent in their home language. But that is really uh disinviting and disengaging to families. So making eye contact with parents or like making gestures and making sure that even if you don't speak the same language that you are connecting with them in, in your messaging, so that the interpreter is then able to use your words and pass that along to uh to families and trust is earned not given, especially when we are working with families who have been burned in the past or, you know, have encountered harm within education systems. A lot of our families, you know, maybe didn't have the best experience in, in schools themselves. Some of them may have received special education services and, you know, we've made a lot of progress in special education. 00:28:39Edit But if families were part of special education in the eighties or the nineties or the two thousands, we've come a long way. But their perception is that things are just the same as they were back then. Yeah. Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Yeah, you went through so much there. And I, I was thinking too about like the trust fees when you had said is not given. I was thinking, yeah, like for educators, right? Should have to earn the, the trust and, and I'm hoping that like educators can give the trust instead of making families earn their trust because I was thinking about that example. Um when a couple was speaking, the parents were speaking in Japanese to each other to translate a word. And the principal actually stopped the meeting and requested the translator, the family didn't even want, right? It's just like this display of I don't trust you, like you're speaking language. I don't, I don't speak and therefore there there's like a breakdown of trust. It was like what? Yeah. Yeah, that, that, that was, that was a pretty, that was a pretty difficult um dialogue to engage with. Also the father in that dialogue was a school site administrator and his wife was a parent educator. 00:29:48Edit So they were part of the school system in the in the district that their child went to school and there was still that lack of distrust. And the father went on to say like what a waste of resources, you know, bringing an interpreter in when it's not necessary like interpreters, you know, their, their services cost money and that money could have been allocated elsewhere. So that, that was, was definitely the school team not being trustful of families, which is really unfortunate. Absolutely. Yeah. So, so well said and, and I think there's, there's so many things I just could talk to you all day about this book. A couple of things that I I know that family members in the stories and the dialogue that, that you shared had just these incredible like things that they were doing that I just wanted to highlight like um there was a couple, oh, there might have been actually the same couple who were taking the IP S home. They would add things, request more things, they would add a parent statements. Like this is what we're talking about. 00:30:51Edit Like this is our stance and just like that, that eventually happened so often that the IEP team was just like, OK. Right. You do this and you know another family member going in with like a kind of a bidding war kind of thing where it was like, OK, I'm going in at 90 minutes of speech and like, I can go down to 75 like, yeah, really taking the advocacy stance. This is beautiful. Another one I loved was that um a student uh sorry, a family member who took a binder out of their bag and places it on the table with a photo of their child on it who was like smiling and like, right, just like this is a child we're talking about like this is brilliant and educators can do that. We don't have to wait for family members to do that one. Right. Like we could just do it and they updated the photo every year. I love it. Yeah. Yeah. The and and, and that little guy is in high school now and um he's, he's thriving and he had a really um successful like upper elementary and middle school team that was supportive of the families listened to the families and, you know, took families input in when and kind of developing goals and they struggled, you know, in the first couple of years, um, first with kind of like a medical diagnosis and then having the school team see that the student required some pretty intensive services at first. 00:32:15Edit But once that student, you know, received those services, they had, they had to go out and, and hire an advocate for them. Um because that, that was another one of the families that um uh they were Filipino and the, the dad has a very salient quote that I always highlight. He's like we trust the system, but we don't understand it. We're immigrants. So they're relying on the system to do what's right. And at some point like that trust broke, they realized they needed to get an advocate, things were set in place, the kid is thriving and those intensive services were able to, you know, decrease as the kid was making uh success. Uh So I think it's just, you know, again reminding parents that they have the agency to push back if something doesn't resonate with them and you not having to sign the documents at the meeting. I encourage families to go back and to review everything. Um And I think special education used to be very much. 00:33:18Edit Well, we have to get parents to sign right now. We have to get parents to sign right now that never sat well with me, um, because they can add a parent statement, they can, you know, look through what, what, what teachers have said, um, they can, you know, ask clarifying questions and, you know, yes, eventually we want parents to, to be in agreement so that we can move forward with services, but it doesn't have to be right away and, and that, and that's where, you know, school staff, uh really need to be supportive of parents to a answer those follow up questions and to be respectful of, you know, the time it takes to digest information that, you know, they may not have gone to school about, but at the end of the day, they are their child's number one advocate and they know their child best. Absolutely. Oh, so well fed. I want to, to move to start closing because this is such a good conversation. But I, I do want to do one more thing that I absolutely love. I think this is a family member recommending us but to do a post IEP survey about the satisfaction and understanding of the IP meeting. 00:34:24Edit I love that. It's, yeah, it's so good. Um, it, it's, it's not something that we have put into place yet in, in a formal survey, but even a call, a phone call and email, you know, asking like, hey, did anything come up, you know, that night at dinner or in, in the shower the next morning? Um, you know, sometimes my best thoughts come up in the shower. So, you know, just like that, that is, that, that's a qualitative survey, but as easy as a Google form or, you know, something through another data collection system. So that, that's, that's valuable data for districts to look at and to see overall um parent satisfaction. Absolutely. Oh, my gosh. Oh, that would be so cool if you create one, I'd love to share with folks if you're willing. Yeah. Absolutely. I would be more than happy to share that with you. Awesome. Um, before I ask kind of the, the typical closing questions, is there anything else that we didn't get a chance to talk about that you wanted to highlight today? Um Yeah, I think, I think we've kind of gone all over the place and, and, you know, we've, we've, we can talk for hours about this. 00:35:39Edit Um, but, you know, I, I would just, you know, if, if folks are, um, interested in learning more, you know, the, the book is, is absolutely available. Um, and, you know, I would encourage you to, you know, read that and either get it from your library or if you have the means to do so, like ordering it through like your local independent bookstore. Um, do some research, talk to, talk to families, like, ask them like, hey, like, what do you vision for your child? Like, where do you see your child? Um What, what are you hoping get out of this school year. Just, just start answering those asking those questions and start the reflection process of, you know, what, what are some things that I may have made a misstep in the past? And how can I rectify that? How can I stop the cycle of harm? Beautiful. Oh my gosh, you answered the questions that I was going to ask. This is so great. OK, this is so good. And then, yeah, I, I love that you, you named the book. So the, the book is called and I will link this and type out the full name and everything in the blog post for this episode. 00:36:44Edit But it's called partnering with culturally and linguistically diverse families and special education. It is so good everybody. So listeners just know it is excellent. And I also love, like you said, there's a ton of resources in the back, including an appendix with all of the, the glossary of terms there that is like so necessary even if you're in the field of special education. And I would love to know too. Um So 11 thing that I just asked for fun is something that you have been learning about lately. Now, this can totally relate to our conversation or not. It can be anything you wanna share. Yeah. Um Well, two things so not related to our conversation. Um I have been um learning how to uh play pinball. Um More uh just just better. Um I am um ranked in, in California and the world granted not very high, but that's been one of that. That's been one of my passions recently, but um connected to this conversation, um I just completed like my like year streak on um Duolingo Duolingo to begin to be more comfortable speaking to, to families in Spanish. 00:37:56Edit Um by no means, am I proficient but um you know, growing with confidence and I think that is something that really speaks strongly to, to families is when we make attempts and we learn to speak their same language. Um I apologize to uh to a parent last week that, you know, I was struggling with conjugating like future tense verbs. And, you know, in our conversation, he, you know, in Spanish said, you know, um your Spanish is better than my English and thank you for connecting with my language. Um So, you know, I'll call that a win, but, you know, it's still a growing journey. So I would absolutely recommend, you know, learning a second language, be it Spanish via a language in the community that you work with so that you can, you know, connect with families and students, even if it's just vocabulary words or if it's just like, hello, goodbye. It's great to, great to, great to see you. Um just teeny tiny things like that. But um yeah, I can, I can read uh early readers in Spanish. 00:38:58Edit So that's, that's what I've been uh really stoked about that is super, super cool. Oh my gosh. And, and so finally, people I think will want to get in touch with you, they'll want to follow your work at the book. All the things. Where can they find you online. Yeah. Um And I can Lindsay, I can also send you the um the links for this. So um I my website is still a work in progress. So it's not, it's not published yet. Um I'm pretty active on linkedin under my name and I'm on Instagram and my Instagram handle is Doctor Vogel Campbell. So, education related book related uh pinball related now and then just like kind of general life in San Francisco and I have a youtube channel um under Doctor KBC. Brilliant. I will link to all those in the blog post as well. And I think you're also sharing with listeners, a meeting accessibility protocol. So it was like a little checklist of like reflection questions which I think people will absolutely love. So, thank you for sharing that. 00:40:02Edit Yeah, absolutely. Um You know, there are a lot of things that, that, that site leaders can do to make meetings more accessible that don't cost any money. So, you know, if you have uh you know, money and resources that you can allocate through like your site plans or advocating um in, in the state of California through like your district like LCP, your local control accountability uh plan. You know, there are, there are baby steps that, that you can take, but absolutely, like, feel free to use the protocol with your teams and your sites. Amazing Dr Vogel Campbell. Thank you so much for this wonderful conversation and thanks for coming on the podcast. Thank you, Lindsay. It was a pleasure if you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane Sapir and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. 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. 00:41:07Edit If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network. Better today. Better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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In this episode, I’m sharing the K-12 book list from one of my favorite podcasts, Pod Save the People. Each year, they share their book recommendations for their Blackest Book Club on the podcast. This list is fantastic and they also have a dedicated section to books written for K-12 audiences. I’m talking about those today, but I highly recommend getting the full list here (and of course, subscribing to their amazing podcast).
Why? Here’s an image from the Cooperative Children's Book Center summarizing statistics about the racial diversity of the authors, characters, and contents of childrens’ books in 2022. (Note that there are fewer books with BIPOC main characters than with main characters who are animals.) 
Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop explains, “When children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read, or when the images they see are distorted, negative, or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part.” A lack of racial representation in books also harms white children as it distorts their understanding of the world and impairs their ability to learn from and be in community with racially diverse people.
What are the books? Books for Grades K-2:
Books for Grades 3-5:
Books for Grades 6-8:
Books for Grades 9-12:
Final Tip Once you fall in love with one (or more!) of these books, brainstorm ways to put it into your curriculum. If you need help structuring your ideas into a unit, check out the resource linked below. To help you jump start your thinking on how to design a unit around one of these books, I’m sharing my Unit Dreaming Outline Template with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 169 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 00:00:00 Educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for Teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Hello, everyone and welcome to another episode of the Time for Teachers podcast. This is episode 169 and we are talking about book recommendations from the host of my favorite podcast or one of my favorites. I have a few, but this is definitely a weekly lesson pod. Save the people. Look at that. You got a podcast recommendation and you're gonna get a bunch of book recommendations. Here we go. In this episode, I am sharing the K 12 book list. So it's a section of a larger book list from the podcast pod. 00:01:05Edit Save the people each year they share book recommendations for their Blackest Book club on the podcast. I'm gonna link to this in the show notes as well because you're gonna want to subscribe to the podcast. You're gonna want to get the full blackest book club list. The list is absolutely fantastic. And they have a dedicated section to books written for K 12 audiences, which I'll talk about today. I also may weave in some others because it was really good. But I highly recommend doing all the things to get directly to those resources. So why are we talking about this specifically? Why are we bringing in the Black As Blackest Book Club list? It is because you may already be aware. But if you're not, let me tell you the lack of racial diversity and representation in particularly children's books is abysmal. Um It has gotten slightly better over the years. The co-operative Children's Book Center summarizes their statistics of books they publish each year. Their most recent one is based on 2022. That's what's accessible online. I will share one of their visual representations and their graphics on the pod, the podcast episode blog post. 00:02:08Edit That's gonna be at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 69. If you're interested in following along or accessing that later. One of the things that we want to be aware of um the things that they track when we're looking at books and thinking about the publishing industry and whose books and whose voices are represented. There are all sorts of data points on here. One of which being the racial diversity and ethnic diversity of the authors, also the characters, the main characters, particularly as well as the content areas that relate to race and ethnicity. So one of the big things that has been highlighted as stuff like this has been published in wider media spaces and shared online is that for example, there are fewer books with bi apo main characters than with main characters who are animals. The representation racially and ethnically is abysmal and it needs to be better. And so the voices and the stories that exist have been published should be more centralized in our curricula. 00:03:13Edit And I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. So we are censoring these recommendations and I'm really excited to help you build units and lessons and instruction around these recommendations. So feel free to peruse all of that data online. Another piece of this, like the kind of the why of why we're doing this, Doctor Rine Sims Bishop, who I've referenced before on the podcast talks a lot about windows, mirrors and sliding glass doors. And she says, quote, when Children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read or when the images they see are distorted, negative or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part end quote. And so we need diverse books censors this quote from Doctor Sims in their website because that's, that's all of what they do. I'd love to get those books on the podcast as well working on it. Uh But they also talk about how, you know, a lack of racial representation in books, really does harm white Children as well. It distorts their understanding of the world. It impairs their ability to learn from and be in community with racially diverse people. 00:04:18Edit Um Doctor Shree Bridges Patrick often talks about like the racial injustice and white supremacy being like a, a kind of a, a soul harm. And I think we, we initially, I think of doctor um Patrick like as, as thinking about this work because that's what we collaborate on together. But I believe initially that comes from res meum. So when we think about, you know, the value and the fact that a lot of the books in our traditional curricula probably follow the publishing industry data, they underrepresent um by authors, characters, content areas. And so we're looking at these books today, these are referenced by grade band. So initially, uh we're gonna start with K two and then we're gonna move on up from there. So books for K 280 twist Scientist, I just recently read this upon this recommendation. It is by Andrew Beatty. It is also a Netflix series I learned in my research for this episode. Incredible. It is short. It is sweet. I liked it, even for my two year old, I think it's really good. 00:05:23Edit It is perfect for Children. Right. It's about curiosity and asking questions and investigating and just like all sorts of beautiful kid energy. Right? Um Such a good one. The next one in this great band of K two I have not read. I'm gonna assume that it's more for like maybe your 1st, 2nd grade, like slightly older. Um, I, but I don't know because I haven't read it. So this is called sit in how four friends stood up by sitting down by Andrea Davis Pinkney. And mhm. I can imagine so many instructional units, um particularly on social studies, but also anything related to sel related to um the act of supporting community and being a community member, which is really popular. KP two. I think this would be huge books for grades three through five. I am smart. I am blessed. I can do anything by Alyssa Holder and Zika Holder Young who I learned in my research are sisters, which is super cool. 00:06:30Edit Um This is about Ian and Ian has woken up on the wrong side of the bed where nothing quite feels right. Um What if he doesn't know an answer at school? We messed this up. But it just takes a few reminders from his mom and some friends that day to remind him that a new day is a good day because he's smart. He's lost and he can do anything. So a really nice positive message can situate itself in sel context. It can I think be, be something that integrates into any content area could also be used for like an el a course um or classroom. The next one is the 1619 project born on the water. So we have this book, uh this is by Nicole Hannah Jones and Renee Watson. You may already know as well as a podcast series and a hulu mini documentary series. So I think there's a lot of content there for the like educator. So you can do a lot of learning. And then this is like the student accessible book, I will say for Massachusetts, for example, fifth grade is a US history content focus. 00:07:35Edit Um I believe that's the same for New York State as well. Those are the states that I'm most familiar with. So I do think that it fits nicely in fifth grade. It also is hard content. So I do think you wanna prepare our students for it and it's important to talk with students about it. I think it's, it's um a wonderful companion to either a social studies unit or an el a unit that is happening simultaneously. If you are not the teacher of both that happened simultaneously and in conjunction with uh a unit on um enslavement on the founding of the United States of kind of that time period um that genre of, of conversations. So really the 1619 project just in case anyone's unfamiliar with it. Um It chronicles the consequences of slavery in the history of Black resistance in the United States. So I think that span again of thinking of investigating history, which is uh Massachusetts state recommended curriculum now for fifth grade, uh social studies. 00:08:39Edit And there is a unit that is about slavery and resistance. And then there's also uh like that's like unit two, I think of the year. So like quarter two and then quarter four is civil rights movement and resistance in that lens. So it would be a nice uh thread of resistance throughout. Um to kind of like if you, if your curriculum is following the arc of um oppression resistance. Now, I I also want to just like just add a thought in here. Um that a lot of the work I've been doing in the work with social studies. Teachers in particular has been to kind of problem size, the oppression resistance dynamic. Um And really thinking about those things certainly because we need to talk about them, right? We need to learn a factual history, but also thinking about centering healing and the healing piece being the piece that even as adults, we haven't found yet. And so thinking about this is an important component of perhaps designing a unit around. 00:09:43Edit This is like, where do we go from here? With this information? It is challenging to sit with, I think for all audiences nuanced, of course, for different audiences of students based on their racial identities and experiences. But I think that it also is from an instructional lens helpful to think about what do we do in the last and after or in the discussion following reading this book. So just kind of some consideration there. Uh I don't have time to go into an entire piece in one episode. Maybe that will be a separate episode. But I think that is something I would be aware of as I'm planning unit. Hello, this is Leah coming in to talk about today's freebie. And if you listen to the show, you know, a lot about unit dreaming, so be sure to get the unit dreaming outline template at www dot Lindsay, Beth lines.com/one 69, enjoy. Ok. The next grade band is grades six through eight. So we have the Harlem Hell Fighters by Max Brooks. I have not read this book. Um But this is a term that the Germans called um uh US Army unit, um that was fighting to make America what was safe for democracy in the description. 00:10:58Edit So thinking, I think I'm I'm assuming here that this book goes into a lot of this idea of fighting for democracy and freedom across the water right across the Atlantic in Europe and the treatment of black soldiers as they come back to the United States following service. And that kind of like, um disparity of like, hey, we're supposed to be fighting for this thing and we're supposed to be fighting for freedom and like, look at it not represented here. Like I literally put my leg up on the line for this country and this country is treating me in this way. So I think there's uh a lot of interesting racial justice components to explore here. Um But again, I haven't read the full book, so I'm thinking that this could live in again, a social studies unit, an el A unit, um an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary space. For sure. The next one I read upon recommendation of, of getting this book list. So it's called My Life As An Ice Cream Sandwich by the boy. I actually listen to this audio book which is read by the author. It was absolutely fantastic. 00:12:03Edit I just want to experience all the things that s boy has to offer. It was so good. Um So this is a 12 year old black girl, Ebony Grace Norfleet, that's her name. And so she actually grew up with her grandfather and her mom in Huntsville, Alabama. But then she moved for a summer to spend time with her dad because something was going on with her grandfather. And so her grandfather is actually one of the first black engineers to integrate NASA. So her and her grandfather have had this dynamic of kind of like thinking about space and kind of pretending or at least the grandfather, you know, thinks that pretending, um, he calls it her imagination location, uh, which is kind of this pretend space of imagining that she is, um, you know, I, I person who is in space and, uh, cadet starkly I believe is what she calls herself. 00:13:10Edit Um, and so she, she brings that into a lot of spaces. This is kind of used as a, um, a, a mechanism for coping when things get really hard she's picked on in Harlem. Um She's, the book does not say this or address this pointedly, but it's kind of, I think it, there's kind of an inference being made that socially, she is probably not um on interacting socially in the same way that her peers are. And so one could imagine she is like on the autism spectrum or exhibiting behavior that someone on the spectrum maybe exhibit. So there's kind of like that dimension as well and it's, it's, it's such a good book like it is, it's really good, it is longer. So I, I definitely see why it's in the middle grades um and not, you know, an earlier elementary um grade which the content might be OK for. But I think the uh length is definitely, you know, this might be like an el a book that you, that you would explore. 00:14:13Edit Um I do think that there are opportunities for an interdisciplinary thing here with science. There is a lot of space exploration and they kind of talk a little bit about that there. But I, I actually envision this as like a transdisciplinary thing um where maybe they're reading the book in EL A but there are definitely components and extensions that you could use as different points in the books, could jump off into science lessons and then different points in the book, jump off into social studies lessons. I think that could be really, really cool. Um Maybe even math, there were a couple like potentially math adjacent things or things that you could certainly pull in if you wanted to do a full transdisciplinary thing um as well as like some design or engineering things, for sure, for sure. Ok, let's get to the grades nine through 12 books. So in these books, I have read both of them, I read Just Mercy. I've read the adult version. This is an adapted for young adults version. They're recommending phenomenal book by Bryan Stevenson. It's also a movie I think currently as of this recording, it's only accessible on Amazon Prime or other like paid options, but I have not seen the movie. 00:15:16Edit Um It is really good. It is a glimpse into the justice system. So Bryan Stevenson is an acclaimed lawyer and social justice advocate and really talks about, you know, folks who have been wrongfully imprisoned, um what his efforts have been to kind of get justice and fight for the release. Um Just I think a really good commentary on our our justice system or injustice system. And I think the fact that it, there's a movie with that as well, I think could be a really nice pairing and el a social studies potentially. Uh But I also think there's a lot of opportunity here for digging into like the mathematical statistics of justice and uh things that maybe wouldn't be immediately recognizable, the subjects you'd want to bring in, but definitely potential for with, of course, a lot of thought and planning um an opportunity to dig into that. And then finally, uh 12th, ninth through 12th grade book, which I know my, our 12th graders when I was teaching in the last school, I taught that they read this in 12th grade as part of their 12th grade portfolio project in their el A class. 00:16:22Edit But as a social studies teacher I was invited to or a person with social studies background and literacy background was invited to um give feedback on. It is Kindred by Octavia E Butler. It is also currently or was I think last year um A Hulu series. So this I think also works like I said, I've seen it done in El A in Multiple El A Spaces. I think it could also be a nice transdisciplinary opportunity um particularly with social studies being uh an opportunity to work in. Um so a little bit of time travel, I do love Octavia Butler so much. There's so much you could do a whole Octavia butler units on um you know, like Black Futures and Space and sci fi and like all the things, right. So there's some time travel, if you're not familiar with the story. Um in this book, sorry, I'm getting, I'm getting all Octavia butler enough. So in this book, there is time travel. It follows Dina who lives in 1976 as a black woman who is through some sort of magic or something. 00:17:26Edit I can't remember exactly how she gets there, but she is transported to the Anti South. Uh Rufus is the white son of a plantation owner who is drowning, Dana, save him. And so it is like processing a lot about race, about um time, about a lot of these like very intense themes. Um And there is, there are, there is trauma in there as there I think are in a lot of these books. So just to be really reflective of that and intentionally design instructional experiences and discussions around that to be mindful of, of your students. OK. Those are all of the books they recommended for K 12. They also recommended some amazing other books that I think were geared for adults but are great as well. So I'm just gonna like drop a couple of these in. So like sister outsider by a Lord. Oh my goodness, what a beautiful transdisciplinary thing, but also Audrey Lord's writing for sure uh can house itself in an el a class I think. 00:18:29Edit Um but exploring so many social justice issues in there that I think could also fit really nicely in a social studies unit. Uh There's a book by Stacy Abram. They talk about our time is now really thinking about like voter suppression, economic inequality education. And I think a lot of these things fit nicely in a social studies classroom legacy. A black physician reckons with racism and medicine by Chip Blackstock. Doctor Blackstock was on the podcast, they interviewed about the book and this is the fascinating conversation. So if you listen to that podcast episode, it'll give you a little bit more. But I'm thinking there um you know, deep dive into science um particularly also a nice transitionary with perhaps um a health class with perhaps a math class would be super cool. I absolutely adore the Children of Virtue and Vengeance book and the series, Children of Blood and Bone was the first one. This is the second one. This is one of Jm Cason's picks and it is so good to ami is brilliant as described by the in the in the podcast. 00:19:31Edit She intentionally designs this black universe, right? Like this intentionally black universe and it is just one of the coolest books I've ever read. The third book comes out soon. I wanna say like this year or next year or something, I'm very excited about it. Miles recommended Trisha Hersey's Resistance, which I think on the podcast they were having a conversation relating it to like the Nap Ministry. And I just think, oh, there would be so many cool things there. I uh Henderson recommended a bunch of them including cultivating genius by Goldie Muhammad, which I absolutely love um pleasure activism by Adrian Mary Brown, which is recommended to me uh Hunger by Roxanne Gay, which is on my list. Oh Miles also recommends Bell Hooks all the time. I absolutely love about Hooks as well. This one that Miles recommended was the will to change, which I have not read, which I definitely want to. Those are the ones that I really wanted to shout out as just being awesome. Oh, Dr Allinger was the one who recommended Sister Outsider and the Stacy E rooms book. Our time is now. 00:20:33Edit So I wanted to shout out to Darra, my final call to you is that once you fall in love with one or more of these amazing books, feel free to reach out if you wanna help brainstorm some ways to put it into your curriculum, to really structure these ideas into a concrete unit. I'm going to link in the blog post for this episode. My unit dreaming outline template. This is when I did that unit dreaming series with guest. This is the outline tablet that we would use to core units in like 30 minutes live on the podcast, quote unquote live. So if you were interested, grab that for free in the blog post for this episode. That's at Lindsay, Beth lion.com/blog/one 69 and I'll catch you next time if you like this episode. I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane Sapper 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. 00:21:37Edit If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar. It's a brainstorm how I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. 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In this episode, Adrian Gordon shares how music education serves as a vital tool for community building and personal connection. He talks about fostering strong bonds through shared interests, the power of vulnerability and humor in creating a welcoming classroom environment, and organically supporting students to compose their own music. We also discuss the underrepresentation of Black composers within the music industry and the urgent need for content that reflects our diverse society and enables Black students to see themselves as composers.
Adrian Gordon is an internationally performed composer and seasoned music educator. As a composer with Alfred Music and founder of Leap Year Music Publishing, he specializes in publishing string music for diverse school ensembles. His compositions appear on Orchestra Association Music Performance Reading Lists across multiple states, including California, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, and Texas. Adrian is a sought-after clinician and conductor, sharing his expertise with diverse audiences. He also authored the insightful book Note to Self: A Music Director’s Guide for Transitioning to a New School and Building a Thriving Music Program. Born and raised in Miami, Florida, he currently resides in Charlotte, North Carolina, with his wife and two sons, serving as the Director of Orchestras at Providence Day School. The Big Dream The profession of education is valued and funded as much as professional sports in our society. Adrian references the excellent Key and Peele sketch, “If We Treated Teachers Like Pro Athletes” to make this point. He highlights the lifelong impact of music and the transformative role of music in community and personal development. Action Steps Idea 1: Engage in regular community events, such as communal pizza nights, to foster a sense of belonging and investment among students. Idea 2: Incorporate personal touches in teaching, like sharing 'dad jokes', personal interests, or personal compositions to humanize educators and establish rapport with students to encourage student engagement and retention. Idea 3: Intentionally include the work of underrepresented composers in curricula to accurately reflect the diverse society in which we live and provide relatable role models for all students. Idea 3: Nurture students' interest in composition, and literally “hand the baton” to students so they can conduct their original compositions for public performances. Challenges? Black composers are severely underrepresented in traditional orchestral curricula, especially at the beginner level, which impacts the ability of students to see themselves reflected in the music they learn and play. Adrian has done research to find Black composers and intentionally include their compositions at beginner levels. He is also actively involved in mentorship programs to address this racial inequity and foster a new generation of racially and culturally diverse composers. One Step to Get Started Engage in personal and professional development activities such as attending conferences, networking, seeking mentorship, and learning from experienced educators. Stay Connected You can find Adrian Gordon on his website, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also check out his book and publishing company at Leap Year Music Publishing. To help you implement the ideas from this episode, Adrian is sharing his Composition Mind Map resource with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 168 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 00:00:00 Everyone. Today's episode is with Adrian Gordon who is an internationally performed composer and seasoned music editor as a composer with Alfred music and founder of Leap Year music publishing. He specializes in publishing string music for diverse school ensembles. His compositions appear on orchestra, association, music, performance, reading lists across multiple states including California, Florida, Georgia Maryland, North Carolina and Texas. Adrian is a sought after clinician and conductor, sharing his expertise with diverse audiences. He also authored the insightful book Note to Self, a music director's guide for transitioning to a new school and building a thriving music program. Born and raised in Miami Florida. He currently resides in Charlotte, North Carolina with his wife and two sons, serving as the Director of Orchestras at Providence Day School, educational justice coach, Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. 00:01:04Edit I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Adrian Gordon. Welcome to the time for teacher podcasts. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the time. Yeah, I appreciate your time and I'm excited today to talk about all, all things that you do, which is a lot in your new book, which is super exciting. Is there anything you want listeners to either know about you think about just to kind of situate the conversation before we dive in? Well, um I guess I have my tentacles and uh just about everything, education, publishing, uh composing um conducting, performing. You know, I do quite a bit because I love it. And um yeah, that's, that's basically I have a, a portfolio career is what I, I like to say. 00:02:11Edit So I do quite a bit and, and I really am passionate about music and music education. And uh yeah, I'm just happy to share that with you guys today. Excellent. I'm so excited. OK. So I like to ground the episodes in kind of a, a freedom dream. So Doctor Bettina Love talks about the concept of freedom dreaming as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, which I just love. And so what is that big dream that you hold as you think about music education, as you think about the spaces that you're in, what is that dream for you? Um You know, this, it comes across as kind of goofy, but there's this comedy skit on. Um I think it's a key and peele and they have this teacher draft and the way they do it, it's very similar to like a sports uh trading, you know, players. But you think about it, you're like, man, these are teachers who are shaping the future, shaping our Children. Why don't they get that kind of respect and gratitude? Um So I guess my big wish was to have that kind of seriousness um in, in relationship to the way we treat our educators, literature, our teachers. 00:03:25Edit Um and also the way music education is treated again up against the backdrop of sports and athletics. There's a ton of money. I know there's not money that goes into the arts, but it's nowhere near um what you see in, in sports and on all athletics. So a and you know, I think with athletics, you can do that and it's a great discipline for several years. But once your body hits a certain, you know, stopping point, you, it's like you can't continue to do those kinds of things, but you can always play, you can always make music and you can always be in community with others and uh contribute beautiful sounds to the people around you. So I, I think it's so important and I just wish sometimes that it had that same um gravitas that UC athletic programs having. Wow, love the cane reference. Also love situating music against sports to think about that like difference in funding in hype and just like our general culture and society. 00:04:30Edit And I love that you just named like music, you can literally do forever. I'm thinking about my um my grandma who was like, who had dementia and music was the thing that like grounded her and the thing that brought her back, right? And like that music therapy is, is so popular with the elderly. And I just think about all of the uses and, and also it with my toddler, right? Like music is just this joyous space, like birth to death. Like this is it, right? This is beautiful and an opportunity to engage in whatever way you can like. Oh, so cool. Thank you for that. I know that you've done so much and I know that you also talk about like the role of community in music, which I, I just find a fascinating concept and idea. And so I'm curious to know about what you have done in, in the context or category of like community and music that you wanna share with us, like a kind of a success share if you will. Well, I think first for me, it kind of started with a mindset shift. I, I had to, you know, in my book, uh Not off, I talk about how you kind of have to remember your why versus your what? 00:05:39Edit So what are we doing? Yeah, we are teaching, we are educating. Um But why are we doing it? You know, we do develop those relationships with these kids and influence them in a positive way, help them guide them. Um And then we understand that music happens to be the vehicle in order to do that. Um So I had to kind of wrap my head around that and think to myself that, you know, yes, I am teaching, but I do first and foremost, need to develop those relationships with the kids. And the by-product of that is a really cohesive program, a really strong program that there's more investment for the kids. They feel accountable to each other, they feel connected to each other. Um And you know, so for me, what did that look like? For me, it looked like sharing the appropriate parts of my life with them. So for example, I'm, I'm very big into composing. So I talk a lot about composing with my students and trying to include them and it's kind of related to what we do in the field of music. Um You know, I'll bring pieces in that they can play and see like the sketches and, and actually play through them. 00:06:49Edit Um I've been able to help uh students with compositions of their own, which is really special to me. Um Yeah, we do and then other things where we can really get everybody together. So I'll do like, um, pizza nights, uh, with my students. We, we're not focused on anything pedagogical. It's just, hey, let's come in, let's have some pizzas and watch a movie together and we do it after school. So we're not, you know, interrupting any, um, instruction time and what we'll do, like some of the fun things that it's been really successful is we will do pizzas from all over the place and the kids love this and it's so it doesn't cost a ton, especially if you have one person bringing one another person, a person bringing another. Um, so you just get all these pizzas in the room and we do these taste tests and the, the kids feel so invested in it. It's just a cool thing to watch and, you know, it's just part of that community building and, and that's what I think every program needs to have if you really want to make some great music together. Um, because they really, it's hard for them to play well together as an ensemble if they don't really get along. 00:07:56Edit So, first and foremost, I, like I said, I'd have that mindset shift and then think about ways I could do that. And that's one of the big successes I've had scheduling these really, um, regular community events throughout the school year. I love the grounding in the sense of belonging and community and just like, not even necessarily music. But I also love the pieces that you're bringing in. Like, I'm just thinking like curricular that are music. Like, so they, you're sharing your parts of your life that connects deeply with me. When I was teaching in my second year, I participated in like a slam poetry competition. And so I would like view my pieces, like, test them out with the students who were like, yeah, but then it's like, but now there's space for you. Like, i it's a nice vulnerable piece as the educator when you can say, hey, I'm doing this thing. But that vulnerability really is in service of like the connection and to open you up to do the original composition yourself, which is so cool that you them do that like that is awesome. I'm, I'm, I'm curious to know actually like, how is there a particular way you sequence those? 00:08:59Edit I'm thinking about, you know, a person who's listening to this like, oh, that actually sounds really cool and I kind of want to do that, but I just don't even know where to start. Like, how, how do you bring that in? Like, what does that look like in your class with helping students compose? You're talking about? Yeah, like a a any of the sequence of things like, do you spend a certain time with like community building first? And then you share and then then you help them in a particular way, share theirs or What's the process? Yeah. Yeah. So when I do stuff like that, the one that I just finished, which I'm really proud of, uh, this, the student, he approached me probably early, early on in the school year. And he said I have been working on this piece. I'd love to show it to you and I, I didn't think he thought anything of it. He showed it to me and I was like, hey, this is really good. Why don't you continue to work on it? I'll kind of coach you through it, some of the aspects of, of composing at the end of the semester at our winter concert. Why don't you perform? Why we perform this, the entire orchestra, the high school orchestra will perform this. 00:10:03Edit And then on top of that, I think you should conduct it and I should play your instrument. So I'll be in the ensemble and you're conducting and we're literally, I'm passing the baton. So I thought that was really cool. So it was a really cool educational moment where I got to coach him uh through the composition process, coach him through the conducting process and have the students watch uh were observing that learning what goes into uh conducting. It was just like a, a multifaceted uh lesson for everybody. And for me, me too, how to kind of communicate those ideas about composition and then why I'm doing the things up on the podium that I'm doing because I do them, but I don't necessarily think about them because it's, it's just so ingrained in me and to be able to communicate that and pass that along. Um and watch a student develop, you know, compositionally and conducting. It was just, it's fascinating. So there's that element and then I get to bring in my own piece too and really show them, hey, I, I work through things, the things that I'm doing are perfect at first. 00:11:06Edit But I'm, these are my sketches. I do revisions and edits and, and then I get to bring in the final product. Um So I, uh for example, like last year I showed my students a project that I, I worked on as a composition project with this um youth orchestra out in um New York. And the theme had been Stop Violence, Show Kindness. And I had brought the sketches in and I showed my students. Um and we finally performed it out in New York. But this year I wanted to bring it in and have my, my uh current students play it. And the cool thing about that is I'm able to talk about some of the music theory elements like, you know, some points, I'll just say, hey, all my music theory, kids, what do you see here between, you know, the violin line and the cello line? And they'll say, oh, for music theory, I see contrary motion, you know, and those are really cool connections that they're making. Um So, you know, any way I can connect the dots for them. I, I try and do it. I love that grounding in like the personal like this, this was yours. And they also love like the student leadership element that you're building a lot. 00:12:15Edit Like there's so many different, like, just very personal things in, in, in this but also just that were, I, I think sometimes in, in any course, in any educational space, sometimes we too divorced that the skills are too divorced from the thing we're trying to do and like the final product and to be able to say, hey, I wrote this thing, we composed this thing we, or, or we played this thing like let's use this for a music theory, like let's just let's use this thing that's super cool. We're already invested in to dive deeper and explore as opposed to, you know, we have to use this thing that's typically used or is this traditional thing or, you know, whatever it's like, no, this is the thing we care about. Let's just use this. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's a really cool feeling. Um And then I've done other things, like just talk about um personal life. Like I had this one student in my last school and he was a very tough kid, um great kid, but he had, you know, school wasn't his forte. 00:13:16Edit Um But he was in the orchestra, he stuck with it. I thought he'd quit. I thought he'd give up on orchestra. But I think one of the things that got him hooked was, um, I just would ask him about fishing because he would wear fishing shirts and, and I love fishing too. So I would talk to him about fishing and he would bring me pictures of his weekend fishing and, oh, yeah. Yeah, I caught the same kind of fish, you know, I lived in Florida. That's a peacock bass or that's a slid and he's like, you know, about fishing. I'm like, yeah, I fish all the time. So we would trade our fishing pictures um, and talk about great spots where we go fishing. And I think that really, it, it kind of humanized me and made him see me as, hey, this is an ally, this is somebody who's here to care about me and, and not just be this figurehead, this teacher who's, uh, you know, wagging a finger in your face. Um And this, this kid he stuck with it and which I was very surprised this happened to be, I think one of his favorite classes and I don't think it had anything to do with the music. I just think it had to do with the connection that he made. 00:14:21Edit So that human element I think goes a long way. And we, we don't even realize how much, um those small, small details can touch a student and really change. And alter their path. Um, like I said, I thought this kid would definitely be long done with music but I think that's that little connection hooked him. Uh, oh, I love that story and it makes me think too about, you know, just like new teacher overwhelmed, for example. So a new teacher is in the same role that you were in and it's just like, how do I even possibly make connections? But I have, you know, so many students or so little time, you know, all the things that often are barriers to doing exactly what you did. Is there some either structure or approach or mindset that you use and have valued in being able to do that kind of stuff because I think some people see it as like an ideal but not like something they can put into practice. No, it's practical. Um And I think the first part is vulnerability, vulnerability. I think you have to have that, um that mindset. 00:15:25Edit So one of the things that I do that's free, absolutely free. Every class I walk into the class and I say, ok, guys, it's joke of the day and I give him the worst dad joke I can think of or that I can find and the kids, I mean, they roll their eyes. They're like, oh my gosh, you just, you just pierced my heart with how bad that was. But you know what? It's, it's a, it's a way to break the ice. It's a way to let them know. Hey, we're here to have fun. Um, and there's time and place. We can have fun, but we can also do the learning part too. Uh, and I'm here to talk to you like a human being. Not just your teacher again, wagging that finger at you. So that's a real practical thing that I do every single day. Joke of the day. And, um, it works and the kids, you know, at first they're like, no, no joke, joke of the day. But as we progress throughout the school, you know, like, where, where's the joke of the day? You forgot? Hm. I love it. Oh, that's so good. So, as, as I'm thinking about like, you know, being a, a member of the orchestra, for example, or, or just like a per a person in your class, I'm thinking about, ok, so we have like this belonging that is built and, and it seems like it's ongoing, right? 00:16:40Edit It's the same joke as day, every day. Um, you know, and, and this pizza party like it happens often, right? And so we have this kind of belonging. I hear um your musical compositions, right? I have the space to make my own musical compositions, participate in, in, in playing with the team that I belong to. I'm wondering also from your own. I don't know if it's like, how much of your own or, or, you know, I don't know exactly how to phrase my question. I imagine in, as a musical composer yourself composing something has a process to it. Right. So there's like, I imagine like a spark and then there's like the, the literal steps that you go through to compose the, the music before it is final. And I'm wondering, does that inform how you coach others to like students to compose theirs or does it, um does that process that you have used personally kind of translate to how you coach students to even play the composition? I'm wondering just from a curricular lens, how that personal connection that you have with the content that that you're teaching um connects to your instructional decisions. 00:17:45Edit Does that question make sense? Yeah, I, well, I think they all inform one another and I've talked about this before where I think I'm a better conductor because I am a better because I compose and I'm a better composer because I teach, I'm better teacher because I conduct and it's just kind of circular and each one informs the other. Um So for example, if I'm writing something and this can be very hard for someone who's not in the classroom. And I think that's what kind of gives me an advantage. I understand the exact developmental um pedagogy for each ensemble at each stage. And I know for example, hey, if I'm writing a grade one piece, I can't throw, for example, like for the violins I can't throw a C# in there, high three G string that's not gonna work. They're not there yet. I gotta give it another year or so. And I understand that because I'm in the classroom and, and I'm intimately aware of what they're capable of doing at each developmental stage. So that all, they all kind of inform one another and make me a better musician, make me a better composer and make me a better conductor. 00:18:51Edit I'm more sensitive to those things. I, you know, if I see something like that, um let's say it's for the next level up, I understand that OK, this is something that's new to them. It's not something that they've been doing yet. So as a conductor now, I need to slow down and figure out ways that we can reinforce this uh and make sure that they're, they're grasping this concert because they haven't had this for that long. So, you know, it, it's all connected to me. Wow, I just love that so much even as like the, the musical metaphor for any content area that you're teaching, right? It's like the idea of there is this developmental progression. I need to know that I need to know where my students are in the developmental progression. And I need to make sure that as I kind of create my original compositions, whether that's musical compositions or like even thinking of the metaphor of musical compositions for like unit development, right? Or something like I am scaffolding it in that way that students are able to move forward and if they're not at the level that they need to be at that, they're not ready for that next step. I need to slow it down so that they are able to get it. 00:19:55Edit Like, wow, what a cool, what a cool metaphor for even like non musical educators and super Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, I imagine that you have faced many uh a challenge in the classroom space or even in the compositional space. I'm curious to know like, what is one of those challenges that you faced? And how did you deal with that? How did you overcome it? I'm thinking of particularly the listeners who are maybe in a similar position and trying to do big things like you are and just wondering what we, what you can teach them and, and kind of inspire them with is like challenge, but also here's how I worked through it. Hi, this is Leah from the podcast team. In this episode, Adrian Gordon is sharing their free resource, a composition mind map to help you develop your own music ideas. You can get it at Lindsay, Beth laws.com/blog/one 68. Now, back to the episode. Wow, that's a, that's a deep question. Well, no, it's OK. I mean for someone like me, um you know, you know, I'm a black man, so it's been hard, I think particularly in the instrumental world. 00:21:03Edit Um, and it's mainly classical music to find my footing. You know, I remember, uh, when I first started teaching, I never forget I had, I started teaching as just general music and I remember I had a parent who came up to me and I was like, what's, who's your favorite composer? And it wasn't in a way of interest in getting to know me. It was a almost like AAA litmus test, like uh you know, who, who are you bringing into the classroom to teach to my kid? And I just, you know, from that point, I've always felt like there's always gonna be that little bit of a barrier. Um So I have never felt fully accepted in this realm and, you know, just being instrumental music, classical music, string music, there's not that many um black players, black composers. Um Right now I'm, I'm about to present a session on diversity in the orchestra and underrepresented composers. And one of the things that I'm learning right now is how, how few um composers of color there are particularly at the beginning stages. 00:22:16Edit So you think about, for example, football, you have students who are so engrossed in football because they can see their reflection in those players. You know, it's something that they can connect with. You don't really have that in, particularly in my discipline with strings beginners really can't see themselves, young black students, young Latino students, they can't really see themselves in, in, in the composers that they're playing, they make that similar connection and sorry to bring it back to athletics again, but they can't see their reflection there and latch on the same way you would, you would envision a kid latching on in, you know, football or basketball or whatever. So I'm learning right now that there's just AAA real big need to have um more, more unrepresented composers, particularly the beginning stages. So these kids can latch on and you can really have a complete kind of tapestry of what the country looks like. 00:23:20Edit Um So that's been really difficult and, you know, off of just a, a unofficial count that I'm doing right now. I've found about, you know, when you think about graded music. So the way we play music and the way you see it in curriculum is at a beginner stage, you'll see it at a grade zero, which is something straight out of their method book and then they kind of move up to a grade half, then a grade one, maybe grade 1.5 grade two, grade three, grade, grade four. By the time they get to high school, they're hitting about a grade four, grade five. for the most part, not everybody, but that's what progressively happens. So at the grade zero, grade half and grade one and grade 1.5 from the little bit of research I've done, I found about maybe five composers in the country that are doing what I'm doing and um creating content, creating music for these beginning stages, which that's been really hard to hard pill to swallow and see that there's a, there's a big need uh for more music from unrepresented composers out there. 00:24:30Edit Um So that's, that's something that I'm hoping to see change and, and something that I'm passionate about. And I'm happy to be working with um the New Canon project where they are actually putting their money where their mouth is. And uh having people like me, other composers who are out there mentor younger composers of color and get those people. She is in the hands of students and, you know, I, I'm walking through the process with the, with my uh my mentee, I guess and uh helping her understand what's appropriate at this level, how to, how to phrase things in, you know, a cello section or in a base section. Why we can't do this, why we can't do that. So I'm happy to see those things happening. Um And I'm just hoping to see more of that in the next um couple of years, I would say incredible, thank you for sharing that. And I think there's, there's so many pieces in there that we can have like so like four separate podcast on it. 00:25:32Edit And I, I think one of the things that I'm hearing is like the structural change needs to happen, right? The systems of how we get folks in positions of like being composers and being um you know, I don't know all the musical terms but in positions where that, that work is used and valued. Um And then also being able to, to say, as the, as the educator, I can be individually like a composer that, that my students can look at and see a mirror for and I can in the classroom, as you said before, like really uh support and whether it's a formal mentorship role or it's like a kind of informal, this student just created their original composition that we now happen to be doing and performing, right? For everyone, there's like these multiple levels all the way from like classroom instructional practice to structural inequities that need to be righted, right? That, that there are so many opportunities for change and calls for change and even if you're listening and you're a person who's like, well, the structure needs to change. Like, but there are still things that you can do in the classroom level to make that a priority. 00:26:36Edit And like you're saying, you've done all of the, the research to figure out like how many, how many folks are in those spaces that are doing the agreed I think I wrote this down, right? 0.511 0.5. Right? Yeah. So like, so to be able to say like, well, then I'm, that's who I'm using, right? Like that, that's like I'm centering that and de centering the stuff that, that parent or whoever was asking about. Right. Like, no, like we get enough of that. Like, no, no, no. Like this is what is becoming central and not that we don't perform music. Some of the master works and, and, um, teach about, about those things because I do, I do owe a lot of my own training to those. But I think, um, you know, there's room for everything, there's, there's room on the table for everything and I just, I would hope to see more uh diversity in there. Um And again, I don't think that means that you completely throw out the baby with the bathwater. It's just including everything um, to make a complete tapestry if that makes sense. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. 00:27:39Edit Thank you for, for clarifying that and for, for sharing the, all of the stuff today. I think one of the things that I think is so interesting about podcast episodes in general and like our conversation today is there's, there's so much in the conversation and there's so many directions to take a, a nugget of something that you shared and the listener is like, I'm gonna go in this direction or this direction. I'm wondering if you had some advice to give to a listener right now as they stop the episode and they go try to like, implement something or take action on something that you shared. What would you say is the place to start. Like, what's the one thing that they could do next and see a big return on? Hm, I would say, you know, invest in yourself and you can do that pretty, I mean, not easily, but there's resources out there. I'd say professional development is a good place to start. I'm a big fan, big proponent of heading to um conferences. If you can, um, you know, state conferences, sometimes they have district or regional conferences where you can get a lot of professional development. 00:28:45Edit And also when you're there, you tend to network with people and just pick up things that other people are doing, learning about their practices in the classroom. Just the uh just the conversations that happen uh at random, they're so valuable and they are great, great tools to bring back to your own teaching. So I think if, you know, if you're really serious about improving yourself, see if you can go out and be a part of a professional development. Um and just start networking with people talking with more experienced educators. Um And see if you can find a mentor. You know, I, I, that was a big blessing for me when I first started, I would say the biggest influences that I had were not necessarily music teachers, they were classroom teachers. I, I mean, I was with a uh a group of kindergarten teachers who I tell you they were so spot on like I learned. So much from these ladies there, four of them and they were so good. 00:29:46Edit And I, I just remember every week I would soak in something new about classroom management, the way to interact with kids, the the standard that we hold them to the professionalism. So look around do observations in your own school if you know there's master teachers or in your county, um reach out to them. So, yeah, those are some of the things I would say to someone who's starting out um just really invest that time into yourself so that you can bring that back to your students. I love that. And so one of the, the next questions that I usually ask is, is fun, can relate to all the things we've been talking about can be something totally different. Like fishing is an example of someone, something said, someone said once. And so I think about uh you know, as educators and, and people in education, we're always passionate about learning, we're always learning stuff. So question typically is like, what have you been learning about lately? Feel free to answer that. But I also know you've been working on a lot of stuff. So you have your publishing company, you have your compositions, you have all sorts of your book. Like if there is something that you want to share that folks can learn from, that's another way to answer this question if you'd like. 00:30:55Edit Oh wow. So uh yeah, I've been Well, like I said, I've been learning a lot about, um, I guess the, the stats for composers underrepresented composers, which is just kind of, you know, I knew it was kind of bleak and I knew, but to see the number put a number of value to it, you're like, oh, man, so, you know, there's just a lot of work to be, to be done in that, in that regard. Um, so that's one of the things that I'm learning about right now. Um I guess I'm also, I'm stretching myself with composition, you know, I'm, I'm doing um this really cool project for a school out in, um Seattle and I'm doing something kinda different than I'm used to. I'm, I'm composing something for strings but it's strings and drum set. So, uh you know, it's uh not a typical combination that you would see a string orchestra and a drum set, but the sound works and I think the kids that I'm uh writing this for are really, really gonna enjoy it. 00:31:56Edit So I'm looking forward to putting it in front of them and seeing their faces hopefully light up when they get to play it. Hear it all come together. But then on, on the, yeah, on the other side, like, what am I doing? Maybe outside of music? Um, you know, I'm a big nerd, like I love, I love uh cooking shows. I'm learning a lot about cooking. I, I, you know, I could watch, like, uh, Gordon Ramsay. I could, I could watch, like, top chef, like all those shows. I could watch all that stuff, you know, and just soak it all in. I'm a big foodie so I love good food and I love trying to cook when I have time. Um, so I'm learning a lot about that. Like, I, the other day I just experimented with how to cook, like a really nice piece of salmon, how you go about doing that. And I was watching and, um, you know, that's just something kind of nerdy about me that I love to do and it's outside of music. So I love it. Oh my gosh. I love the things that are both related to the topic and then also not so good. 00:33:02Edit It just pains. I think it paints all of us as like full human beings, right? Like we have, we're multifaceted. Yeah, that's so good. Also, if you have like a audio recording at some point, once those students play that composition you're working on with the strings and the drums, we can link it to the blog post for this episode because I would love to hear that. Yeah. Well, uh I'm supposed to hand it to them and put it in their hands on. Well, probably like April 1st or so, April 2nd. So we're on there and they need to work, they need time to work on it and then we're gonna do the premiere. I'm flying out there to uh be with them for a couple days in June for the premiere. So once I get that I can shoot it your way. Absolutely amazing episode is probably going to air in June. So that'll be perfect. Yeah. Awesome. So good. All right. So finally, where are people going to find stuff like this? Connect with you, learn from, you continue to like, you know, get all the stuff, read your book. Where online are you and how do people get in touch? 00:34:07Edit Well, you can find me online on my website which is Adrian Gordon Music, music.com. So all my stuff there, my schedule, my calendar, which is crazy right now. I'm kind of traveling all over the place and um my book which is also up there and it's also available on Amazon. It's called Note to Self uh music Director's Guide for transitioning to a new school and building a thriving music program. So that's it. Oh my gosh. I love it. Do you want to give us like a preview of like, what is the most exciting part of your book so that people could just get like a tiny taste of what's in there? Yes, I will. That's a big question to you. So feel free to be like, no Lindsay, I will not. So in the book, I talk about um kind of building those boundaries and what you should prioritize and part of that is your personal health, you know, your mental health, your emotional health, but your family time is a part of that too. So, you know, I'm about to present and I'm gonna be reading this little excerpt from my book and it, it goes like this because you have a unique role in your family that can only be filled by you. 00:35:17Edit Whether it's your smile, your jokes, your stories, your affection, your singing, your dancing, you're laughing, you're playing your attention, your hugs, your encouragement or whatever it is that makes you special to your family. But your family members get the best parts of you, no matter what your family looks like. Remember that you need your family and your family needs you. That's so good. Thank you for sharing that. What an important reminder. Yeah. Yeah. It's really important, especially as new teachers and transitioning teachers. We gotta remember. Our family comes first and busy teachers like yourself. Yeah, busy teachers too. Yeah, family comes first. Absolutely amazing. What a wonderful way to add Adrian. Thank you so so much for your time today. This has been a pleasure. Yeah. Thank you. It's been a real, real pleasure to be with you and, and chat about all things music related. If you like this episode. I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, Sapir and Jamila Dugan. Talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. 00:36:25Edit Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast network, better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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In this episode, I’m brainstorming how my latest favorite books could become engaging units. You’ll learn 7 of my favorite books that I’ve read in the last year as well as a subject area, theme to explore, and possible activities for a unit based on each book.
Why? I get most of my To Be Read list ideas from podcast episodes about books. Eventually, I’d love to crowd source or interview experts like the folx at We Need Diverse Books for book recommendations for K-12 courses. Until then, I’ll start with my ideas! Book-Based Unit Ideas This is by no means an amazing or perfect list. As a starting point, I used the StoryGraph filter for books I rated 5 stars in the year 2023 and the first two months of 2024. As I selected these books and put these ideas into words, I was thinking about interesting topics, application ideas, and racial, gender, national, and geographic diversity with regards to author and character identity and setting. A Deadly Education (Book #1 in The Scholomance series) by Naomi Novik Set in a magical school that is way deadlier and darker than Harry Potter, the characters are racially, linguistically, and geographically diverse. Could be an interdisciplinary History/ELA unit. Theme to explore: Is it ever okay to sacrifice a life if it saves an entire community?. Could pair well with a classic text like The Lottery. Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger Set in a magical, alternative America, the “novel featur[es] an asexual, Apache teen protagonist, Elatsoe combines mystery, horror, noir, ancestral knowledge, haunting illustrations, fantasy elements.” (authorsoutloud.com) Could be an interdisciplinary History/ELA unit. Themes to explore: racial justice, national/political justice, and family/ancestors, comparison between real horrors and fictional/fantasy horrors. Could pair well with a clip from the television show Lovecraft Country. There are many opportunities to conduct research into the real, historical events mentioned and alluded to throughout the story. One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle I liked this one for the interesting (fantastical) concept of going back in time to meet and spend time with a younger version of one of your parents. I like this as a non-academic, SEL unit, but it could work for ELA. Activities could involve writing—or creating in some other way—a “historical fiction” account of an important figure that exists today or in the recent past. I also enjoyed the emotional components of the story—mostly how we cope with grief. This could offer some SEL-based conversation or journal prompts for students to reflect on their own coping strategies and ways of dealing with emotion. The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay Short, beautiful essays the author wrote nearly every day for a year. Themes addressed include: racial justice, environmental justice, grief, and joy. Students could unpack specific essays in depth for content and/or artistic style. They could also write their own Book of Delights. This could be an ELA unit or part of an SEL curriculum/space. Walkable City by Jeff Speck A research- and experience-based handbook for how to make cities thrive. (In short, the answer is to make them walkable.) Great for Environmental Science, but could work for a Design or Social Justice/Youth Leadership course. Themes include environmental and socio-economic justice. Lots of opportunities to research further into many of the scientific phenomena and studies cited throughout the book. Could culminate in an advocacy project in which students use evidence from the book to argue for implementing a specific idea(s) in their community. Firekeeper’s Daughter (#1 in the Firekeeper's Daughter series) by Angeline Boulley The main character of this fictional novel is a biracial, unenrolled tribal member who witnesses a murder and agrees to go undercover in a federal investigation. The audiobook is excellent. The author is an enrolled member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. She writes about her Ojibwe community in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Themes include: identity and belonging; racial and national justice; gender-based violence; generational trauma, grief, and healing; the importance and complexities of family and community; matriarchy and the importance of elders. Could be an interdisciplinary History/ELA unit. Ink and Bone (#1 in The Great Library Series) by Rachel Caine Dystopian future imagining what the world would be like if the Great Library of Alexandria had not been destroyed (which started with Caesar’s troops setting it on fire in 48 CE). Themes: Should access to information be controlled and by whom?; What’s the ideal balance of control and freedom? In an interdisciplinary ELA/History project, students could write their own alternative fictions centered around a major turning point in history. They could use the same structure—artifacts (ephemera) between each chapter—choosing relevant historical documents to include or developing slight adaptations to historical documents based on the fictional alternate reality. For More Ideas Consider the books you and your students have loved reading lately. For new book recommendations, check out the website We Need Diverse Books or listen to an episode of What Should I Read Next or a text-based episode of Brave New Teaching. To help you support students to select their own books to read, I’m sharing my Independent Reading Selection Guide with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 167 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 00:00:01 Educational justice coach, Lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for Teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Welcome to episode 167 of the time for teacher podcast. Today, I am really excited to talk about some book based unit ideas. So in this episode, I'm gonna brainstorm how my latest favorite books is like 2023 or 2024 could become engaging units. So we're actually gonna unpack seven of my recent favorite books that I have read in the last year as well as which subject area or areas this might work with in terms of a course, possible themes to explore and possible activities for a unit that would be based on each of these books. 00:01:14Edit Let's get to it. So, why am I doing this episode? So, you may have noticed I've been doing curriculum mini series and they fall into four buckets. One of those is curriculum. So that's a big piece of the work that I do as an educational justice coach. And I'm really excited about books in my personal life. I read a lot of fiction. I read the nonfiction too, but I generally tend to listen to podcasts and audio books but nonfiction, reading a physical book or an ebook. And I get most of my to be red list ideas from podcast episodes about books. So I love things like what should I read next with Anne Bogle, which is awesome. Um The folks at BNT Brave New Teaching, they do some episodes since that's very education focused. They do some episodes that are very like here's a unit about this text and here's the complimentary text and I love stuff like that. I also love different reading lists that we will see online or curated selections based on theme or identity. I do love the folks that we need diverse books and all of the resources that they put out and create. 00:02:20Edit I would love to have them on the podcast. I'd love to have any of those folks on the podcast, any of the folks affiliated with any of those shows. So if you are listening or you know, someone who is at those places. Please connect me. I would love to do a theory all with recommendations from other folks. So until I'm the old two ground sources or interview experts, uh like I just listed for recommendations for K through 12 horses or units around books like that. I'm gonna start with my own idea. So that's why we're diving in today and really just kind of testing the waters with this type of episode. I would love to get your feedback on if it feels helpful to you in either as a curriculum planner yourself, a a teacher or um a director of curriculum instruction, an instructional coach, someone who's like co creating the curriculum or from the perspective of a leader who is not directly tied to the creation of curriculum, but is more abstractly or more kind of at a distance coaching, the process of curriculum development and really searching for some ideas for how to spark that innovation and curriculum design from something that actually may be of personal interest or maybe of a student's interest. 00:03:29Edit Like, what could that pathway look like? I think so much of coaching is about painting the possible and brainstorming what it could be. And so what I, I think would be really cool for this is to just think through, you know, listen as, as we kind of go and, and take it in as you are thinking about the realities of that curriculum design dynamic, whether that's you yourself or coaching someone else and think through what are the questions I might ask, what are the prompts? I might offer to get to the place where you know, I'm I'm listing what is possible and you might come up with a ton that I have missed. So please feel free to share with me any of those additional prompts. Questions. Thoughts about this. All right, here we go. So here are some book based unit ideas. This is by no means an amazing or perfect list. There are many imperfections, as I said, this is a test episode. And so as a starting point, here's where I went, I went to the Story Graph app which I am now using as of 2024 100% of the time. And I did the filter for books that I rated five stars. 00:04:34Edit I all good reads has that. But I do love the story graph has that. And I specifically looked at the year 2023 because it was a little overwhelming to look at all of the books that I've rated five stars in the history of me rating books. So for the first two months of 2024 as a recording on March 6th, 2024 I just looked at uh January and February's books as well and included those as I selected the books and I started putting kind of these ideas that I'm gonna share with you into words, I was thinking about interesting topics. So what were the kind of topics of the book that really piqued my interest, unique application ideas? Like what are the actual activities students could do with this? How might this relate to traditional curriculum or not traditional curriculum? But um subject specific curriculum and standards I think is what I wanted to say and also racial, gender, national and geographic diversity. Ideally with regards to author and character, identity and setting, as I look through these books, specifically, not so much author there is, it's, it's very white, mostly female authorship here. Uh but character identity and setting was a factor. 00:05:37Edit And so I think again as a test episode for this, I think this is why I want to look into um additional books go beyond just like what I read in 2023 that I liked. I have so many ideas uh for young adult fiction, particularly over the years, that would, would be a better list and maybe I'll make that podcast episode next. Um I also want to, for that reason, crowdsource authors and crowdsource recommendations from folks like Winnie diverse books to make sure that it is. Uh we have lists and suggestions that do have more racial gender, national linguistic geographic diversity with regards to authorship. OK. With those notes, let's head into the first book I read A Deadly Education, which is book number one in the Sulman series by Naomi Novik, who it has a video game development past which I found fascinating. Um And this is, I heard it described, I want to say on the, what should I read next podcast by a team as they were recommending books to buy for the December holiday season for younger kiddos. 00:06:45Edit And I think it was described as kind of like Harry Potter but darker, like a deadly or darker version of the Harry Potter. So it is set in a magical school but definitely deadlier. And the characters are definitely more diverse, racially, linguistically geographically, particularly it is a and they get into this a little bit in the book but is a uh not perfect representation of the world's community. And for reasons, as I said, they'll, they'll go into, I don't want to use these spoilers here but far more uh diverse and representative of the world than a lot of books. And so that's an intentional um decision and it, it factors actually really closely into the plot of the book. So I think this could be an interdisciplinary history, el A unit. You'll see that that is my default because those are the things that I taught. I'm super excited to hear uh book recommendations and another idea for other curricular units, but I think the patterns still apply. So keep that in mind as you listen a theme to explore for this particular book. 00:07:49Edit But also honestly, all three books in the series are amazing. I don't think you're probably going to do all of them. But if you have those kiddos who want to continue on their own really good series to get them into. Um, but a theme to explore in this one and throughout the rest of the series is I question, is it ever OK to sacrifice a life if it saves an entire community? And actually just on my run this morning, I was listening to a pot save the People episode and they were talking about rugged individualism as this principle that the United States particularly holds up as this, you know, perfect thing. And, and they quoted Fannie Lou Hamer and I believe in 1971 speech where she is talking about how no one is free until everyone is free, right? And so this idea of, oh, that's what they were talking about. They were talking about uh current events again, this is being recorded March 6th, 2024 where Ghana had just passed legislation that was going to criminalize being gay. And you could spend like up to five years in jail for like particular things related to that. 00:08:54Edit And I, I was just thinking about that their conversation, the hosts of the podcast who were talking about, you know, can we um the host of the podcast being black? Can we as black individuals support and be excited for trips to Ghana, the support of Ghana if it's not for everyone, right? If it's not for queer black folks, right? And I think that that is a really interesting current event connection that you could use. But if you're reading this in or listening to this in, you know, a year from now, I do think that you can find another current event that relates to this. And as in, you could also pair it with, you know, the classic text such as like the lottery or other things that kind of think about that notion of rugged individualism. You could pair it with a lot of history events. Um That kind of think through the decisions maybe a government has made about few versus many so lots to unpack in there. It's also magical. I think I said so. Really fun. OK. The next one is I Lazzo by Darcy Little Badger. 00:09:58Edit And this is that in a magical alternative America, you'll see a lot of my uh fantasy preference for these books coming through. Um Alternative America. It's magical and I love this quote from authors Out loud.com that features the author Darcy Little Badgers. I'm just gonna read this. It. The novel features an asexuals Apache teen protagonist, Ela combines mystery, horror, noir, ancestral knowledge, haunting illustrations. Super cool that the illustrated illustration part of that is, is, is a piece um and to con to continue back to the quote fantasy elements. So I think this could be an interdisciplinary history el A unit. There's a lot of the uh artistic side of things that bring the el a component to life. It is, it is lyrical, it is just beautifully written. Uh The illustrations can make it a really fun art, interdisciplinary project as well. I think the themes to explore include racial justice, national and political justice because it is about indigenous nations and family ancestors. 00:11:00Edit Also the idea of a comparison between real horrors that exist in the world and also fictional and fantasy horrors. I'm thinking it could pair well with a clip from the TV. Show Lovecraft Country. And I know Lovecraft Country was a book. But I think the TV element is going to be a bit more of a pop culture reference for students and also a bit more engaging. But you could also pair it with the text. I think there are many opportunities with this book to conduct research into the real historical events that are mentioned and really alluded to, they're not mentioned in a ton of depth throughout the story. So having that inquiry based mind reading something and saying, hey, I want to know more about that. This is a wonderful opportunity to have students take on that initiative. And in el a class, maybe they're reading it and in history class, they are taking a deep dive into like, well, what was that actually about? What was the law actually passed and what you know, all that kind of thing? It is a beautiful kind of organic inquiry based frame and starting point for a ton of research into specifically the United States political decisions with regard to indigenous communities and the settler colonialism and the settler colonial past and present um that exists in the United States. 00:12:14Edit The next one seems even more uh frivolous I think than maybe some of my uh other choices here that I questioned. But this one, I do have a purpose for. So it's one Italian Summer by Rebecca. So, and actually I listened to Lauren Graham read it on audio book and I just, I was a Gilmore Girls fan. So Lauren Graham reading, it was just amazing. I liked it for in addition to the Lauren Graham reading. To me, the interesting and fantastical concept of going back in time to meet and spend time with be in space with a younger version of one of your parents. So I don't wanna give too much away, but that's already like a big piece. But this book is a fictional book. It does have that fantastical element and I, I like it as kind of a even a non-academic. Like if you have sel block or sel curriculum, this could be a super cool sel unit that is complementary to it or if you don't have a set curriculum, which I kind of love design your own everything. But if you're designing your own SDL block or you're a counselor who pushes in, this could be a super cool you know, you even give them just like a piece of this text or, or present to them the concept or let them listen to an author interview or something about the writing of it. 00:13:29Edit And um you could do it there. You could also work for eli to be more formal and structured. Now, activities that students could do, could involve writing or creating in some way, it could be like a video creation or whatever historical fiction account of an important figure that exists today or the recent past. So picking a person that, you know, close to you. Awesome. If you were doing this in a more historical lens, you could definitely say like, you know, I imagine this person, you know, that is in the spotlight, it's a celebrity, it's a person that has is big in politics, whatever and, and we're gonna go back and like see a formative experience that they had and what would that formative experience be like you can bring some fiction around that. But also there are many emotional components of the story mostly. I think that the idea of coping with one's grief that could be really helpful for students to talk about to compare their own coping strategies or, or grief moments with those of the character in the book, it could offer up some opportunities for sel conversations or journal proms where they are thinking through and learning about ways to deal with emotion that are healthy Hello, this is Leah coming in to talk about today's Freebie, the independent reading selection guide. 00:14:51Edit You can find it now at the blog post for this episode, www dot Lindsay, Beth lions.com/one 67. Now back to the show. All right. The next book is the Book of Delights Essays by Ross Guy. Oh, my gosh, beautiful book. These essays are gorgeous. They are short, they are filled with emotion. The author wrote almost one essay per day for a year, just kind of as a I think or like what would this experience be like themes addressed in this text are so many, I can't even list them, but predominantly what comes to mind a few months after reading it and what I most remember strong themes of racial justice, environmental justice, grief and joy. There is a wide variety of the human experience packed into these pages. In addition to just having a beautiful style, the author writes so beautifully, the author writes in big ways and small ways. So sometimes it'll be like this tiny little thing in their life that they are just noticing and they just want to write about it, right? 00:15:54Edit And then it might lead them to this really big discussion of this really heavy thing. And it all started with this just small noticing of, you know, what, whatever it is like a plant and and side of the road. So there's so much potential there again, I think really could be part of the L A unit because it is so lyrical and they are essays, but they are really poetic and just the writing style and the authorship. Oh, it's so good. You could unpack pieces um for, for the artistic style, you could also unpack p pieces for the, the depth of content and actually bring it into more of the history or the science space with the racial justice, environmental justice pieces. You could make it again part of an sel or curriculum space where you're really dedicated to the emotional development of your students. And that's the f the lens you use to focus on it. I think there's so much you could do there. Um written by a black man. Ross Gay has been interviewed on many podcasts, I'm sure, but I listened to his interview on, we can do hard things and I fell in love with a book before I even read the book. 00:17:06Edit So that's actually a really good listen. If you want to hear how it impacted um the folks, the hosts of we can do hard things and how they've been putting this concept of the light into practice in their everyday lives. It was super cool. OK. Next book Walkable City by Jeff Spec. Now this book, I don't know if I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but I have been talking about this. People in my personal life are just like, would you like stop talking about Walkable City, please. It is probably my most referenced book of any, any book I've ever read. It is something that I think I think about often because it relates so closely in such detail with how I experience daily life living in a small city. It is. Let me tell you about the book. Here we go. So it is a research and experience this really like a handbook almost for how to make cities thrive. So the author Jeff Stack is I don't remember the name of this, but like a a city planner person. 00:18:14Edit And in short, he has found in his research and all of the things that he has advised and the projects that have been completed by the cities he's worked with. But the answer is to make cities star if you make them more walkable. And so environmental science would an absolutely great fit subject wise, but it could honestly work for like a design class or a social justice youth leadership or advocacy course. There's so much potential in here for not just learning about the things he's referencing, but for taking action. And I think really they listen to an author interview and what should I read next with spec and it was really good because I think it also illuminated his desire for the book to really be uh a template for folks to actually put it into action. It's not just information for information's sake, themes that are included in here. Of course, environmental justice, also socio-economic justice. I think his second revision of the books, if you're looking at multiple editions, go for the second one or the most recent one because those dive into more socio-economic factors as well as the environmental pieces. 00:19:16Edit I think the first version he notes in in the book, in the revised version that there was kind of an absence of that or it didn't go into as much depth. In the first version, there are lots of opportunities here to research further into the scientific phenomena and the studies that he cites throughout the book. So that's a great opportunity there. But it could also culminate as I said in an advocacy project. This is where the students would literally use evidence from the book to argue for implementing something. So one of the many ideas in the book that he references as ways to get the cities to be more walkable to be thriving, literally choose a location, a part of their community, find the appropriate, you know, whatever it is the town council, whatever to go advocate for that change in their community and using kind of like a claim evidence, reasoning skill block where they're saying this is what we need to change. And here is why because this book cites this research, whatever lots of potential there for some really cool stuff. OK. Next we have fire keeper's daughter. Now this is actually at least a du technology. 00:20:17Edit I'm not sure how long this series is projected to go. But the second one either just came out, it's recently coming out, um, or soon to come out. Number one. Anyways in the Fire Keepers Daughter series by Angeline Bully. The main character of this fictional novel is biracial. She's an un enrolled tribal member and she witnesses a murder and agrees to go undercover in a federal investigation. So, again, fictional, um, oh, the audio book is excellent, really good. And the author herself is an enrolled member of the Susa Marie tribe of chips. And she writes about her Ojibwe community in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, which calls the up themes include identity and belonging. There's also racial and national justice. So a lot of living adjacent to the reservation, a lot of being in and out of the community as a biracial indigenous girl, as well as well as a white girl like her biracial miss um is both indigenous and white. And so what does that mean? Right. And what are the family dynamics of that? 00:21:21Edit So shocks a lot about the importance and complexities of family and community. She talks about gender based violence that's experienced in the in the story, generational trauma, grief and healing that's related to that generational trauma and grief. Uh matriarchy. The importance of elders is really critical here which I distinguished um in my brain as is maybe not just included in the community, but yes, a piece of the community and something else that could be specifically examined by students. I think again, this could be a great interdisciplinary history el A unit to really need to contextualize all of the things that are happening in the story. Even though it's a fictional story with what has happened historically, with indigenous communities, particularly in the what is currently known as the United States. The last one I will share is Ink and Bone. This is number one in the Great Library series by Rachel Keane. I like, I like this book a lot because of the world that it painted and I love the world creation aspects of fantasy. I've read, I think four or five of these series while they continue to be good. 00:22:29Edit My preference is just the, the first one is good because of the concept that it raises and there's, there's kind of a lengthening of the series that I, I couldn't quite feel myself continuing to get into. So I do think yes, there's a lot for students to read. If you're having them read for reading's sake, they may fall up after a while if they're like pursuing this independent reading after you introduce it in the class. But INGE super interesting kind of dystopian future novel and it imagines what the world would be like if the Great Library of Alexandria had not been destroyed. And that started, I needed to have this information because I did not know it it started with Caesar's troops setting it on fire in 48 ce or common era. So the themes that are happening within this, I think a big theme is should access to information, be controlled and by whom like who gets to control information. So really interesting question to pose to students also, what's the ideal balance of control and freedom? So there's a lot of control, there's a lot of people thinking freedom and like what are the values that underpin that? 00:23:31Edit So discussions of, you know, safety and belonging and freedom and access? I I think this would be also really cool as an fel unit that gets at the underlying human needs, right? And so I think of the base needs acronym that I always think about. So belonging, autonomy, survival, enjoyment, right? Which are present in which groups and which are not and where do we land as a society, right? Like what do we need as a society? So again, interdisciplinary el A has your projects always were exciting with many of these but also that students could write their own alternative fictions centered around a major turning point in history would be a very cool project based on this book. So the el a component of course, with the writing of the fiction and then the history being like, I have to choose the major turning point. So you need to know about big turning points in history and know enough about the historical context to make that decision. But then they could also use the same structure. So again, both El A and history, which is that the author inserts artifacts, she calls them Samara between each chapter. And so they are fictional because it's a fictional world, but they are quote unquote historical documents, fictionalized historical documents. 00:24:38Edit That kind of set the stage for that transition from chapter to chapter, which I think is just a very cool setup like writing wise. So again, that el a lens but then also they could choose relevant historical documents, which means they would have to research historical documents related to the topic or turning point they chose or if they are doing like slight adaptations to those documents, that could also be cool because it's, you know, a fictional alternate reality. So like how would this important historical document have changed if this specific other thing has changed? Right? The turning point didn't happen in the way that we thought it would. Ok. So this has been a super long episode. I just wanted to uh share these ideas, get your feedback. What did you think about this? Uh For more ideas? I will probably if you, you're, you're into this idea of doing book based unit ideas as episodes on this podcast, continue this, hopefully bringing in some guests. And in the meantime, if you want to consider the books you and your students have loved reading lately, you can kind of follow the same format where you just surface the book and name what, what's going on in the book. 00:25:45Edit What are the themes? What are the subject or subjects that this would be cool to attach to like a course or develop a unit round for a specific course. And then also think about the possible activities that students could do for new book recommendations. Check out the website, we need diverse books. I'll link to that in the blog post for this episode or listen to a podcast episode of what should I read next or uh an episode of Brave New Teaching. Specifically one where they're focused on texts, usually they will be in the title and you can just kind of skim through the titles to find one of those. Now just help you support students to select their own books to read because I'm all about student choice. I am sharing my independent reading selection guide with you for free. That's gonna be linked as well on the blog post for this episode. So you can get all of those links at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 67. Until next time. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane Sapir and Jamila Dugan, talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. 00:26:49Edit 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 now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar. It's a brainstorm how I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better podcast network, better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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In this episode, I talk through an authentic “publishing opportunity” for student documentaries on socio-political issues. I break down the steps my students took in this project and share the Google Drive folder of resources I used to teach this unit in my high school Social Studies/Literacy class.
Why this topic? I was inspired to create this episode after hearing DeRay Mckesson’s comment on Pod Save the People about the need for two important skills in the documentary filmmaking space: storytelling and criticality. He says we should ask filmmakers, “Do you have the range to tell the story and do you have the range to interrogate the story?...Our best storytellers often don’t know the content…they know how to craft the story…the critical interpretation of the content, rarely do they know super well…we have to figure out how to bridge the gap” Listen to him share this in context here. My brain immediately imagined a course in which two of the priority skills were effective communication (e.g., storytelling) and criticality (in the words of Dr. Gholnecsar Muhammad). Then, I remembered my students had created mini-documentaries on social and political issues for a CSPAN competition when I was in the classroom, and surely I had resources I could share with other teachers interested in doing this kind of project in their classrooms. Why documentaries, specifically, as summative assessment? Multimedia formats, unlike traditional essays, invite students to leverage artistic communication—visual, auditory, and narrative storytelling talents—that otherwise remain hidden. In addition to supporting students’ sense of academic accomplishment, this type of assignment generates a final product that is useful for communicating information to the wider public. Specifically, in the example I’m sharing from my class, there’s an authentic audience and national publication of the video(s) that win the student competition. Also, this type of project lends itself to project-based learning as the “main course” and not just “dessert” at the end. In the unit I describe below, the project is the unit. They are always working on the project throughout the unit. They’re just learning and practicing what they need as they need it, in service of the project. Which, by PBL standards, is gold star status. What can I do to plan a student documentary project? Step 1: Find an authentic audience/publishing opportunity I built this unit around C-SPAN's annual Student Cam competition. Students had to choose a problem the new administration should work to solve in 2017, provide evidence of the issue, use video of politicians' discussing the issue, and interview experts. The publishing opportunity should align with your course’s priority standards or skills. The CSPAN project enabled me to assess students’ research, CER (Claim Evidence Reasoning) organization, technology use, and creativity skills, which aligned with my course-long rubric. Step 2: Hook students with student examples and celebrating strengths My students watched past videos that won the competition. We also brainstormed class responses to the question: What skills do you need to win? Students then wrote their name next to at least one skill they have from the list. Then students had time to interview each other and select team members, knowing their best bet was to have a diverse skill set among the team. Step 3: Support project management and get started I shared a checklist, timeline, and rubric with students to guide their planning. (All of these documents are available in the free folder of resources at the bottom of this blog post.) We also brainstormed a list of urgent issues that could serve as the claim for students’ videos. Step 4: Student work time and just-in-time supports Throughout the couple of weeks students were actively developing their videos, I offered skill-based (content-agnostic) workshops and resources based on what stage of the project groups were in and which challenges they faced. Examples include: characteristics of effective teams research, a storyboard template, tutorials on how to download videos, interviewing tips, and academic citation support. Step 5: Publish (Part 1), Reflect, and Celebrate Students played their videos in class. Peers submitted feedback on all videos via a reflection Google Form. Teams also completed a self-assessment for their projects on a Google Form. (This one asked each student about the work habits of team members and themselves.) Then, each student group decided if they wanted to submit their videos to the CSPAN competition. Final Tip Back to DeRay’s comment that inspired this episode, this project format and its prompt—asking young people to advise the incoming president of the most pressing issue to solve—inherently asks students to practice storytelling and criticality. While this post focuses more on how to support students with this potentially unfamiliar format (e.g., storytelling), criticality skill-building showed up often in workshops and conversations with students as they developed their videos (e.g., selecting an underreported issue; making choices about who to interview—whose expertise matters?— and critiquing existing policies, actions, and proposals). These are great places to leverage and expand students’ “critical interpretation of the content.” And finally, if you want to read more details and immediate reflections about how this unit went, check out this post on the blog I had when I was teaching, which details this unit. To help you plan documentary-based assessments, I’m sharing my folder of Documentary Project resources with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 166 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 00:00:01 Educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Super excited about today's episode that was inspired by a podcast. I was listening to super excited to get into it. So this is about documentary, a summative assessment. We've talked before about podcasts as summative assessment opportunities but wanted to share a little bit about what it could look like to design for your own class or to coach a teacher that you work with to design a documentary as summit of assessment for your class. 00:01:07Edit Here we go. In this episode, I'm talking through an authentic, what I would call publishing opportunity for student documentaries on sociopolitical issues. I'm gonna break down the steps that my students when I was teaching high school in New York City took in this project. And I'm going to share at the end of the episode, I will talk more about this, but I will share in the blog post to this episode, a Google drive folder of the resources that I actually used with students to teach this unit in my social studies slash literacy class. Now, I want to tell you how I was inspired to create this episode. I listen to the podcast pod. Save the people love it. Highly recommend it. If you don't already listen, I'm sure I've talked about it before on the podcast. So I'm on a run listening to this podcast and I hear the Ray mckesson comment on the state of kind of documentary filmmaking. Currently, he talked a little bit about some new examples and kind of the commercialization of it and critically pointed out a kind of need for two important skills in the documentary filmmaking space. 00:02:17Edit And he talked about basically how the there's very infrequently documentary filmmakers who have both of these skills, they either have one or the other. And I thought it was fascinating and I thought how cool would this be to think about this in the context of education? So let me tell you the two skills he was talking about the need for filmmakers to be good storytellers. So you need to have the skill of quality storytelling as well as what Goldie Muhammad would call criticality, right? So storytelling and criticality, both super important and he says, you know, we really should ask filmmakers and this is kind of a um quote uh amalgamation of some of his quotes here. Do you have the range to tell the story? And do you have the range to interrogate the story? He says our best storytellers often don't know the content. You know, they know how to craft the story, the critical interpretation of the content. Rarely do they know that super well. And he says we'll have to figure out how to bridge the gap. 00:03:23Edit I'm gonna link in the blog post for this episode to the podcast that he shares this on. So you can listen to more of a conversation and get situated with that information and those ideas and context. So that's gonna be at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 66. I'll link that in there. Now, here's what my brain did when I am thinking about this immediately. I was like, this is fascinating. I am imagining my brain goes to curriculum building a course in which two of the maybe five priority skills that are course long were effective communication under which I think storytelling fits and criticality, right to again use those words of Doctor Golden Star Mohammed. Then I remembered that my students actually had created many documentaries on social and political issues for ac span competition. When I was in the classroom and surely I had resources that I could share with other teachers interested in doing this kind of project in their classes that jumped me into a search for all of these older resources. 00:04:32Edit And I am excited to say that this podcast is the culminating results before I get into it a little bit more. I do wanna talk about documentaries specifically as a format and why those are good for Summit of Assessment. So two big things come up for me here. One is their multimedia format and a project that it has a multimedia format to it. Unlike maybe a traditional essay really invites students to leverage artistic communication. So things like visual auditory narrative storytelling talents that they have that if you're just doing essays or just doing more traditional assessments, they're gonna stay hidden, they're going to maybe not even recognize that they have these talents. They're certainly not going to make a student feel like this is an important and valuable skill that can help them in an academic space. 00:05:37Edit So in addition to supporting student sense of academic accomplishment, I really think that this type of project or assignment, it generates a final product that's really useful in the current way we communicate with people, right? Communicating information to the wider wider public and like having an authentic audience, particularly around important social and political issues. We're having students think on and ideate on and believe he harm that has been done in our communities, which is so much of what we're working on, what we talk about a lot on this podcast that's really important that how we get that out into the world, how we publish quote unquote students ideas as they're grappling with this stuff um is accessible to the public, can get into the public eye, but also is accessible to the public. And something, you know, the format is something that people really want to consume. I do think short form videos and this isn't quite short form. I think this project was around five minutes or so video lengthwise, but shorter on the shorter side compared to, you know, a full feature length documentary, shorter video content is really engaging for people, I think in the larger community. 00:06:55Edit And so it is something that people may actually consume outside of their teachers, their family, people who are invested in the student who created it. But now it can be appreciated and consumed and engaged with just like people who are interested in the topic or interested in the format and the way that it tells a story. So I think that's super exciting. And in this specific example, I'm sharing from my class, there is an authentic audience built in and I'll talk about that actually, as I think an important step, one of this process of planning for a project or what I'll share soon around like actually being a unit around a documentary assessment, finding that authentic audience and kind of publication opportunity is critical. Mine was C span. So there's actually for the winners, a national publication of the student videos. So there's a chance for an authentic audience just within what I could create for students in my own focus of control. But there's also opportunities there for much larger audiences to engage with their content. 00:08:01Edit So then the other piece of that, in addition to really thinking about the the student experience and and where their work goes is that from a lens of curriculum development and a lens of student centered pedagogy specifically around project based learning. This type of project really is main course learning with the PB L folks refer to as like kind of that main course. So it's project is main course and not project as dessert, which would just be kind of a fluffy project comes at the end, it's not intimately tied to all the things we're learning throughout the entire unit and just becomes something almost separate from all the stuff they've just been working on here. It really has to be the main course. And so I'll describe to you in just a moment, the unit effectively that this project was it was it was a unit, it was a documentary unit and not just a stand alone project. After a bunch of learning, we did several mini units prior just to kind of build up their understanding of what possible issues they could select. 00:09:09Edit But I saw this itself as a whole unit. So they're always working in this unit on the project. You'll see so much of it is really just projects, time, student, time and then they're learning and practicing specific skills and content as they need it in service of the project. So as they get to a particular stage of the project, OK. Now I need this information, I'm gonna, you know, ask Miss Lindsay or whatever. And so PB L standards, you know, that's, that's gold star for a project to be the main course. Now, let's get to literally, how do I plan this out? How do I support a teacher to plan this out? The first step I think is to find that authentic audience or publishing opportunity. So again, I built this around C Span's annual student C competition. They're still going, I just looked it up, they have their 2024 information up. Now, typically, I think it's due in at the start of the year. So I think this 2024 has, has passed, but 2025 should be coming out soon or soonish probably fall of 2024. Um And then students, you know, they, they had to choose the problem for the one we did in 2017, students had to choose a problem that the new administration coming in should work to solve. 00:10:23Edit So that was the prompt for that year, there's always some variation but it's around the general same theme like what should government do. And then in addition to that, they had to provide evidence of the issue, use video of politicians discussing the issue and interview experts. So I think another component of this is really that you want to make sure the publishing opportunity, whatever the requirements are of that project, wherever you're submitting it, that should align with your courses or the teacher's course, if you're coaching a teacher with their priority standards or skills. So the C SPAN project really enabled me to assess students research skills, their kind of argumentation or claim evidence, reasoning skills and organization also their technology use. So we were a 1 to 1 ipad school for during this period. So it was really important that that was like a school goal we needed to achieve and also their creativity skills, which was really important for me. So having that kind of creative communication piece, all of these aligned with my course long rubric. So it felt like a nice fit. 00:11:25Edit You don't want to pick something that's, you know, too far out of the realm of what you're trying to do. OK. Step two. Once we've secured the publishing opportunity and it doesn't have to be something you publish widely. I should say it can be something that you just publish as a local community that's totally fine. You could create that publishing community yourself. It just becomes a little bit easier if you have it easier in some ways than if you have that kind of authentic opportunity where like there was a cash prize for this. So that was another additional incentive. So, ok, after you're done with that, we're gonna start start the unit really kick off by hooking the students in with student examples. So what is possible at the end of this? What can you create, What if students created before you and then rewarded financially and through the publication nationally of their videos, and we really wanna anchor this in students strengths. So really asset based lesson here. So my students ended up watching past videos that won the competition. And so we brainstormed a list of what are the things, what are the qualities or characteristics of a video that could win? 00:12:30Edit Then next we brainstorm class responses to the question, what skills do you need on your team to win? And then students could come up and write their name next to at least one skill that they have from the list we created. Then students had time in class to interview each other. And so really getting to the heart of like what skills do you bring to the team and then selecting team members? I think we aimed for groups of three here. But I mean, that's gonna vary based on the project based on the ages of students and knowing really the their best bet. To win or to have a great video, it's not all about winning, but to produce quality content is to have a diverse skill set. So you're not gonna just pick your friends. If your friends have the same skills as you, you want people skills that maybe you don't have. That was a really important conversation. Step three is really, let's get some project management in place and get started, which included for me, a checklist, a timeline and a rubric that I shared with them as the guide. They're planning all of those documents by the way, are available in this brief folder of the resources that I'm gonna link to this blog post. 00:13:37Edit That's gonna be again, Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 66. If you're listening along, wanna check these out as we go, we also brainstormed a list of urgent issues that could serve as the claim for students video. So really getting them started by like they need a topic that is step one, they cannot go further. Once they formed a team, they can't do anything else until they agree on a topic. So we brainstormed that list. We got people talking. We also like some students couldn't decide. So we needed to support in that way. Um I would use things like fist to five or some other sort of agreement or consensus protocol to help them there. Now, step four, they've got their topic, they're rocking and rolling through the the details of figuring out putting together their video. So there's a ton of student work time here. I think it was about 2 to 3 weeks. And again, because this is the whole unit um offering just in time support. So my quote unquote lessons or mini lessons were really workshops that were sometimes geared to the whole class if that's what everyone needed, but often geared to like one or two groups. 00:14:43Edit And I would just kind of move around and offer that workshop or invite representatives from the team to the workshop, giving them whatever they need at that time, this is usually skill based content agnostic workshop. So if they're doing different topics, totally, OK, because the skill that they need to work on to create the video and pull all the things together and work as a team is gonna be the same regardless of what content specifically, like what topic they chose. And so I would offer resources, advice, you know, guidance coaching based on what stage of the project they're in and what challenges that came up. So some examples included, you know, characteristics of effective teams research at the time I was doing my dissertation and I was like, this is fascinating and relevant to my students. Let me try to distill this or share pieces of this because I'm seeing this dynamic play out in class. I wanna, you know, share what I'm learning with them. Um a storyboard template so they could actually you know, figure out what they, how they want to pace their documentary. 00:15:47Edit What sound am I hearing if I'm seeing this visual? And again, this is all this um language and the kind of formatting of documentaries is um I feel like sometimes ablest in nature because we're, we're using visuals and auditory. So I just wanna, I wanna recognize that um thinking about the other pieces of this, you know, the downloading of politicians talking about an issue that was a requirement for C SPAN, there's some tech stuff there that we had to coach on. And so I would have to walk through, students through or help students think through and offer tutorials on how to download videos from the internet. For example, interviewing tips was a big one. If you're gonna go interview, you know, experts, what does that look like? What kinds of questions do we ask? How do we identify the experts with an exercise in criticality itself? Right? Who is expertise? Do we value and do we want to decent some of the traditionally valued expertise in service of some more critical viewpoints and more, you know, close to the pain and close to the problem kind of voices that really know what's going on in, in their lived experience of, of an issue. 00:16:58Edit Also academic citation support was one I think that was a requirement of the project we were still working on that. And, and that's also was aligned to my rubric and things I wanted to work on for the year. So that was a workshop as well. Ok, once students had completed the project, this is Step five, we kind of had a part one publication like a publishing party almost where we're doing a lot of reflecting and celebrating um self assessment, peer assessment, that kind of thing. So studentss played their videos in class, their peers could submit feedback on the videos through a reflection form that we made in Google forms. So everyone did that for all videos. Each team also completed a self assessment for their group. So they would complete a Google form that asked them about kind of how they work together, what their contributions to the team were and their kind of work habits as well as their team members work habits. And then each student group decided if they wanted to submit their videos to the C scan competition. So I didn't make that a requirement, but it was an option and time was allocated in class for students who wanted to do that. 00:18:05Edit So I think in closing, just you know, back to Dre's comment that inspired the episode, this project and its prompt, you know, the the format of the documentary, the prompt about asking young people to advise the incoming president of the most pressing issue to solve. I think they inherently by just the structure of the project and prompt, ask students to practice both storytelling and criticality. And I think this, this post in a lot of the uh resources in the folder that I'll share with you are focused on the format, the storytelling element, the format of documentary because it was so unfamiliar to students. But we did a lot of criticality skill building in our workshops in our group conversations as they were developing their videos. So they were more of that just in time support, not necessarily something that was scripted as a whole class lesson, but I think you totally could do that. I'm just sharing my personal experience from this, but I think it shows up in, in the following ways. 00:19:11Edit Um Just from, again, my experience, I think there are many places to do this, but one is how you select an issue. Do you wanna select an under reported issue? One that you have, you know, lived experience and like content, evidence based um experience with, right? Or, or that you're connected to people who have a lived experience of that. So again, that kind of connects to what I was talking about with interview choices. You have to make choices about whose expertise matters to you. You are the documentary filmmaking team, right? Inviting students to think critically about that? Do they want to push back on, you know, the credentials phd? And then like, yeah, that's a certain type of expertise. But what about this type of expertise that is more lived experience based and, and often excluded from the conversation, right? Um And also, you know, just critiquing and being comfortable and confident in critiquing existing policies, actions and proposals. So you're submitting this or students are submitting this to C SPAN, right? So there's kind of a um policy wonk like a vibe of a of an audience, right? 00:20:19Edit People who have been working on the policies, the actions proposals that are gonna watch this or at least review this that takes a certain level of confidence uh and kind of speaking truth to power that may require practice or support, especially some of my students who would tell me that their cultural values were to respect, you know, elders or people in authority or that kind of thing. And so um resisting some of those narratives or to critique someone's proposal as not a good idea, um felt kind of like a a big jump that needed some support. So those are some places to consider leveraging and expanding students injurious words, critical interpretation of the content that I think would be awesome. So go forth documentary as summative assessment build those units, help teachers build those units. I'd love to hear how it goes and again to help you plan, I'm gonna share my folder of documentary project resources that I used completely free linked in the show notes, the the blog post, I should say for this episode at Lindy beths.com/blog/one 66. 00:21:31Edit Until next time, if you like this episode I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane Sapir and Jamila Dugan. Talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book street data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar. It's a brainstorm how I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth clients.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach better podcast network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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In this episode, we’re considering processes and supports for addressing interpersonal conflict, repairing harm, and restoring connection. We’ll discuss what restorative conferences are, the research on their impacts, and what steps and tools you can use to implement them well.
What are restorative conferences? After building community, restorative conferences are opportunities to repair the harm done to a member(s) of the community, unpack each individual’s understanding of what happened, how they felt, and their suggestions for repairing the harm. Similar to circle practice, the origins of restorative conversations come from Indigenous nations in what is currently known as the “Americas” and the South Pacific. Why?
You can read more research on restorative practices here. What can I do? Step 1: Understand the components The facilitator—likely you—invites participants including the person(s) who caused harm and the person(s) harmed. Each person can invite an adult or peer for moral support. The facilitator asks questions, one at a time. Each person responds, uninterrupted, speaking from the “I”. A talking piece can be used. Step 2: Prepare the questions you will ask I like these questions:
Step 3: Share or co-create agreements for the conference Here are some example agreements you can use, adapt, or use as a starting point to generate your own:
Step 4: Familiarize yourself and your community with relevant language I like the language of unmet needs, and I use an adaptation of Glasser’s 5 basic needs, which I call BASE: Belonging, Autonomy, Survival, Enjoyment. (You can get a free poster of this acronym for your class/space here.) Step 5: Practice Use the language of unmet needs with students and adults in as many situations as possible (e.g., when conflict arises in school, when discussing conflict in the news or in a book). Invite others to role play restorative conferences based on fictional scenarios. This works well in a restorative practices training environment such as staff Professional Development or a student training for restorative conferencing facilitation or something similar like peer mediation. Final Tip To practice the last two steps above, try this: As many times as you can this week, ask: “What does this person need?” To help you implement restorative conferences in your school or district, I’m sharing my Restorative Conference Companion with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 165 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 00:00:01 Educational justice coach, Lindsay Lyons, and here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings if you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. One more thing. I almost forgot to say, make sure you grab my restorative conference companion, which is a two pager, Google doc that you can use, adapt whatever for free at the blog post for this episode. That's Lindsay Beth lions.com/blog/one 65. Welcome to episode 165 of the time for teacher podcast. I am so excited today to talk about repairing harm with restorative conferences. 00:01:05Edit So I often talk about Circle Practice being my favorite practice of all the instructional practices and community practices more broadly, you can do them with staff with students. But what happens when we have harm that happens in those communities, we need to rebuild and repair that harm that connection. And so a lot of people are into this idea, but they're not sure how to do it. That's what this episode is gonna do. It's gonna walk us through how to do it. All right. So in this episode, we're talking about restorative conferences and really using them to repair harm. So, thinking about what are those processes or supports that we currently have for addressing interpersonal conflict? What processes or language do we have around repairing harm, restoring connection. How do we leverage other existing strategies like circle to maybe repair harm at the class level or the staff level? Uh We'll talk also about what restorative conferences are in this episode, but also research on their impact. So like why would you use this approach specifically when conflict occurs and also what steps and what tools you can use to implement them well in your space, whether that's the classroom space, uh school space, a team space within staff, a district wide space. 00:02:19Edit If you're implementing restorative practices across the board, what does that experience feel like to folks? And what structures are we making common and what principles perhaps are we relying on to serve as kind of the the foundation for whatever personalization can happen in school to school spaces or class to class spaces. So I want you to kind of keep those things in mind as we go through this episode. So the first thing, if anyone is unfamiliar or just needs a clear coherent definition, we wanna make sure everyone's understanding what restorative conferences are and I've heard them called restorative conversations, restorative conferences. I'm sure someone knows better than me, what the differentiator is there. I kind of use them interchangeably, but please feel free to correct me if anyone knows the difference. Um So after building community, I have been trained by the morning site sensor in New York City, that restorative conferences are really the opportunities to repair the harm done to either a member or members, plural of your community. 00:03:25Edit This is an opportunity for all of the individuals involved. And again, I say all of the individuals because this might be something between, you know, one student and another student. So only two folks are involved, but it could also be a student is, I don't know, making a comment or exhibiting behavior that actually disrupts the entire class. And so we need to resolve that conflict and repair that harm, restore that connection class wide. So it might be actually that you have 30 students who are involved in this unpacking of each individual understanding of what happened in that class space and how it impacted their learning. Um So each individual impacted will talk about how they felt or share how they felt and their suggestions for how the harm can be repaired. So this is an important part. I think in the conversation, you're not just saying here's my experience of this and here's how I felt it was bad, right? But where do we go from here? How can the harm be repaired? And I love that it centers often these are students but resort of conferences just to be clear, can happen, adult to adult within a school system. 00:04:28Edit It can also happen student to adults. So there are many stakeholders that could be involved at, at all levels here and those individuals can come up with and can suggest they're really at the forefront of suggesting what happens next. And so they are the ones who decide how the harm can be repaired, which I I absolutely love now similar to circle practice. I want to acknowledge that the origins of restorative conversations and conferencing come from indigenous nations and what is currently known as the Americas and the South Pacific. So specifically the training that I have had draws on these Indigenous Nations practices. And so that's, that's what I'm going to be sharing with you today is my understanding of these practices and just want to acknowledge where that comes from. So let's talk about the why, why restorative conversations conferences? Well, when we have this focus on repairing the harm addressing underlying means that are going unmet and we truly try to restore connection and sensitive belonging. 00:05:33Edit We see improved attendance in students versus more punitive disciplinary measures. We also see an increase in perception of safety and conducting this by those students in the communities that use restorative practices versus punitive disciplinary practices. And for the rest of this list, just know this is kind of a comparison of spaces that do use restorative practices versus those traditional punitive disciplinary practices. When we use restorative practices and specifically conferencing, we reduce exclusionary discipline rates. Specifically, we see that black low income female and students with disabilities. Um these populations are suspended less often than punitive disciplinary environments. It also when we have restorative conferences, democratizes power. So anyone can actually call a restorative conference, you can have a student, call a teacher to justice or to a conference. Um It, it doesn't have a typical top down. It's not that the teacher forces students into this environment. It's an invitation to have a conversation and I have had students call a teacher to justice. I have had students call one another to justice and in conversation. 00:06:37Edit And so I do love that democratization of power that it is now in the hands of the person who is harmed most typically. Um but also a person who has harmed and wants to repair that harm can also call that conference. Um But typically the individual who has been harmed or individuals who have been harmed, they have that power to call the person to justice and have the conversation and say, you know, I, I want to be acknowledged and valued. And I want an opportunity to share my experience of the situation and co create the solution that I need from whoever has harmed me. So I do love that democratization of, of the power dynamic there. I also love this practice because it is universally usable, right? You can use this in any class. Of course, the language is going to be different and maybe you structure the steps a little bit differently. Uh It might be a shorter conversation and it might be that you use different language. I'm gonna talk about unmet needs and things and that might be a little um bar for students who are in maybe like preschool. But I do think you can have the same kind of conversation. It's just that maybe you use different language um and different scaffolds. 00:07:40Edit So you might use something like emojis or facial expressions or something to determine, you know, what is the feeling that I'm having versus a word wall of choose from these words, what feeling you have, right? Things like that. So it is universally usable. And while I have had training and I support training for anyone who wants to do this, I actually think you can um with intention with a little bit of foundational knowledge which you'll have by the end of this episode, to some degree, you could start tomorrow, right? You can, you can make the effort and you can always improve as we always can, but you can make the effort to actually start this practice tomorrow. It is not something that requires, you know, like maybe curriculum development. Um mm months of of practice of honing of all these different moving pieces. It's like a few questions and a few principles and you just get better as you go. And that's again, my understanding of it and my, my experience with that has been this is very user friendly and, and ready to go as long as you understand, the basic underpinnings of it. I also love this because it offers structure. 00:08:44Edit So sometimes we're really eager to have conversations about harm and healing and we're just not sure how to do it well. And I love that this provides a concrete structure for anyone who is interested but really apprehensive because they're just not sure what it actually looks like in practice or, or what the steps should be in practice. I also love this because it decreases the future frequency and this is anecdotal. I, this is just how I've seen this operate. Um But I've witnessed kind of a a decrease in in future frequency of conflict between students when we resolve it in this way versus when one is disciplined. And then we have the tension that escalates and continues. Um I've seen a decrease in the intensity of future conflicts. It's much easier to, for example, bring folks together in a conversation when they've already had one, they're familiar with the process, they understand that it's not, you know, putting them on trial or anything. And, and so that intensity um of of the initial harm is reduced because there's more connection built, more trust and more compassion built within the conferences. But also that the um the duration of kind of the negative impact of the conflict are reduced because there is a clear structure in place that you can just have this restorative conversation. 00:09:57Edit So you don't have to fester and let all of this tension bubble up and really negatively impact the classroom environment or the interpersonal relationships. But instead say, hey, let's move this to this next phase and I'll link to more even more research than that um in the blog post for this episode. That's gonna be Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 65. So feel free to head there and get some more. OK. Now what are the steps? Let's go through those. So I think step number one is understanding the component. So you wanna make sure that you understand what exactly a short of conferencing is and how it, how it kind of moves. So the facilitator likely this is going to be you whoever is listening and it doesn't matter what your role is, it could be. You're a classroom teacher, you're a para professional, you are a cafeteria worker and and witnessing conflict in the the lunch line. It could be that you are a district administrator um resolving something in your staff, uh whatever it is, anyone can be a facilitator and that includes students and that's a whole other percent probably is is training students for taking on roles like this and facilitating experience like this. 00:11:05Edit But the facilitator is going to invite participants which will include the person or persons who caused harm and the person or people that were harmed. Each of those individuals can also invite an adults or peer if they would like to just for moral support. So this is optional. Many students are just like that feels complicated and I actually just want to resolve this quickly. Um Others are like, yes, absolutely. This feels very stressful for me and I would like to be able to call my mom and see when she can come in, right? So whatever works for you and, and by you, I mean, the individual students or individuals who are in the conference, the facilitator, once you get everyone together is going to ask questions, you're gonna ask them one at a time so that each person can respond uninterrupted. I encourage you to share with them some agreements which we're, we're gonna talk to you in a, in a bit. But one of the big ones is just to speak from the eye. What is my experience, my feeling? Um Not like I think you did X, right? 00:12:08Edit But I experienced frustration, anger, sadness, you know, when, when this happens, um I witnessed uh this happening, right? Like so these are kind of the things that we wanna think about as we're inviting students to converse. It's like, how do we set that stage? Now, one of the supports that you could use as a talking piece. So if students are familiar with circles, what a great way to extend that to this smaller conversation and say just a reminder when you are holding the talking piece, you can speak or share. But when you don't have it, you really wanna make sure that, you know, you're, you're listening actively. Um you are paying attention to whoever is sharing at the time. Now, step two, after you really understand the kind of components of how this works, prepare the questions you're gonna ask. So I'm gonna share some now feel free to use these to adapt them to generate your own. How I was trained was basically uh an arc similar to this one. What happened? So you kind of get the gist from every member involved. Again, they share what their experience of the situation was. 00:13:12Edit So we gotta get clear on what exactly happened. Then how did you each feel? Right? Or if you want to go a little bit deeper and talk about a met knees, like what need did you have in that moment that you weren't able to get? So for the person who did harm, right? Like what was going on for you as well as the person who was harmed? Like why was this so frustrating to you or so harmful to you? Like what was the need that didn't get met for you as this all was happening? Who was affected? Right? So who was affected in terms of you individually? Like how, how you shared how you felt but who else might have been affected? What did you witness? Right. Again, speaking from the eye, um you know, did students come up to you later and share something and then finally, how can the harm be repaired? So really identifying what happened, how did you individually feel who was affected? Like what was the impact of whatever happened? And then how do we move forward, repairing the harm and for the person who caused the harm specifically for that question, you know, what can you do to repair the harm? So really taking on that accountability piece step three after you've prepped the questions in the general structure, I would share with participants or I would core with them either or, you know, feel out the situation and think about the willingness that students have to engage or participants have to engage in the co creation of agreements, but I would have them ready to go. 00:14:33Edit So for the conference, what are the agreements we're going to use? So here's some sample ones that again, feel free to use, adapt, generate your own, only speak if you have the talking piece use I statements, focus on your own experience, your feelings, your unmet needs, listen, deeply, exercise compassion as much as possible and take responsibility for repairing any harm you may have caused. So, thinking again about this idea of we're speaking from the eye, we're listening deeply. It's not just about us. We are sharing our point of view, our, our experience, feelings and needs. We are also really working hard to listen and exercise compassion, right? As well as that accountability piece of course, of of repairing the harm and what can we do to move it forward before I would familiar familiarize yourself with your language that you want to use. So again, that's gonna vary by age. I really like the idea of unmet needs because we all have these core needs and typically a conflict is going to be connected to one of them um in my experience. 00:15:39Edit So I use an adaptation of glasses, five basic needs and I call it base. I've talked about it before on the podcast. I will link in the blog post uh poster that you can get that has these on it in case you're interested in hanging it up in your classroom or space, the base acronym stands for belonging, autonomy, survival and enjoyment. So not only you as an individual want to familiarize yourself with this as a potential facilitator, but you also want people in your community, adults students to be familiar with this as well. So if you ask them in a restorative conference. It's not the first time they've heard what Unmet needs do you have? Right? Like you have something ready to go, you have the poster, perhaps ready to go or some other sort of um visual or support mechanism for providing some language if they're really unsure how to answer. And again, it might not be unmet needs that you decide is the thing that you want to use to anger this conversations. But think of something whatever that is where you go with that. And then honestly, I think step five is just a practice. So use the language for example of unmet needs if that's the thing you're going with, with students with adults in as many situations as possible. 00:16:48Edit So a conflict arises in school. OK, let's talk about this. Let's debrief what was unmet need even if it wasn't in your space in your class and your OK. So there was this other conflict that happened in this other space. OK. Well, what was going on with that? Right. That's actually kind of helpful to separate yourself and the people practicing this from what's actually going on. It's not your own thing. The emotion is a bit lower. We can think in our heads a little bit more and it feels more emotionally safe. And so when you're discussing conflict, for example, in the news or a book, like a character is going through conflict that becomes a nice stepping stone to eventually getting to the point where you can share your own emotional experiences and your advent needs. So practice with that, but also invite others to role play restorative conferences. So come up with some fictional scenarios, there's some online and learning for justice has some on their website. I think this works really well in a formal kind of training environment when everyone's learning restorative practices. So this might be a staff professional development student training if you're training students for something like peer mediation. Ideally, it's it's specifically for restorative conferencing facilitation, but students can do this too. 00:17:51Edit And I want to emphasize that and they're really good at practicing. Even if it is not for a formal training, I have done just pure, I think this is becoming more common here but social emotional learning circles or activities that are separate from like just integrating social emotional stuff and all that we do, which is I think the best idea. But when we do um separate curriculum for fel like this is a great one, right in our lives, we will come into conflict with so many individuals, we need to just be able to do this well. So it's a wonderful skill to be able to equip students with, you can definitely take class time to practice or if you're a leader, encourage your teachers to take class time to practice this. It will benefit the school community, but it will also benefit these students individually, many of us need breakfast with us. Finally, as a last tip before you go, I would practice those last two steps to familiarize yourself with relevant language and practice the actual conferences by trying this simple practice for the next week as many times as you can for one week after you're done with this episode. 00:18:59Edit Ask the question, what does this person need? Anytime you see conflict arise, anytime you interact with a person try to identify their unmet need, feel free to substitute any language or um foundational thing you want here. So if it's not I that need like what is this person expressing in their nonverbal language as they communicate with me, whatever it is, but get practice with one of the components of restorative conferencing and just practice for a full week that will make it so that it becomes kind of second nature as you facilitate these conferences as you participate, potentially in these conferences, as an individual participants, it will make everything just better. Your community will be strengthened. You will have these skills to rely on when you need to repair harm in the moment. You can do this. You are amazing. Let me know how it goes and I will be with you again next week. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane, Sapir and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street Data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. 00:20:04Edit Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time, leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better podcast network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
If you enjoyed this episode, check out my YouTube channel where you can learn about topics like competency collaborative's model:
5/20/2024 164. "How Should We Live Together?" Designing Deliberations with Dr. Diana Hess & Dr. Paula McAvoyRead Now
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In this episode, Dean Hess and Dr. McAvoy discuss the importance of political classrooms that engage students in critical discussions about societal issues. They emphasize the necessity for educational spaces to be inclusive, allowing for diverse ideological perspectives and the cultivation of political literacy. They also share strategies for how you can prepare for and facilitate these conversations in your educational context.
Diana E. Hess is the dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and holds the Karen A. Falk Distinguished Chair of Education. Dr. Hess’s research focuses on civic and democratic education. Formerly, Dr. Hess was the senior vice president of the Spencer Foundation, a high school social studies teacher, a teachers’ union president, and the associate executive director of the Constitutional Rights Foundation Chicago. Paula McAvoy earned her PhD in philosophy of education in 2010 at UW-Madison’s Department of Educational Policy Studies. Since then, she has worked as an assistant professor at Illinois State, an associate program officer at the Spencer Foundation and as the Director of the Center for Ethics and Education at UW-Madison. She is currently an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education and Learning Sciences at North Carolina State. Prior to this, she taught high school social studies for 10 years at the Foothill Middle College Program in Los Altos, California. The Big Dream Both Dean Hess and Dr. McAvoy share a big dream for education centered on equity and justice. Dr. McAvoy envisions accessible strategies for all students to engage in meaningful classroom discussions, while Dean Hess dreams of leveraging the diversity present in educational settings to foster conversations across differing views. As Dr. McAvoy puts it, the aim is for students to have real discussions that model democratic political equality, tolerance, and the consideration of the common good. Mindset Shifts Required Discussions are not time-fillers but intentional academic exercises with democratic aims. As Dr. McAvoy explains, students should be seen as political equals whose voices are all deserving of respect and consideration in the conversation.
Dean Hess explains you might ask: “How has the idea about paying for college tuition either affected someone that you know or is potentially going to affect you in the future? And so that you can share out, ‘This is where I am on this position personally,’ and that helps the discussion, because now I know that your parents are paying for college and I know that mine are not, and so everyone benefits from knowing that information and that you treat each other differently when you feel, when you first know where everyone stands personally, and so then you can move from that towards more information about college tuition.” Administrative Support: Ask: “Do we want to be a place where there is good discussion? What does that discussion look like?” Then, provide access to professional development focused on facilitating those discussions. Also consider creating school or district-based (non-classroom-based) “purple spaces” for conversation. Dean Hess is doing this now with Deliberation Dinners. She says participants can take the Pew Ideology Quiz. They will be placed in one of nine groups across the ideological spectrum. Then build 12 tables of 10 students to ensure ideological diversity and also other differences (e.g., grade, stakeholder groups, demographic identities). This can help people with different points of view learn how to talk to each other about really important issues! One Step to Get Started Identify topics that reflect diversity in student perspectives. Create “purple spaces”! Tip: You can survey your students to see where their ideas lie on particular issues to see if there is a diversity of viewpoints and competing good values around an issue. You may want to use the above Pew Ideology Quiz as well. Stay Connected You can connect with this week’s guest Dean Diana Hess via email at [email protected] and Dr. Paula McAvoy via email at [email protected]. To help you think more deeply about this topic, we’re linking the Social Education journal’s special issue on “Teaching Social Studies in Polarized Times”, some of which is open source, so you can read them for free without a scholarly account. And, if you’re looking for more details on the– ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 164 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 here. Quotes:
00:00:00Edit Hello, my name is Leah and I'm part of the team that produces this podcast. In today's episode, we are talking with Doctor Diana Hess and Doctor Paula mcavoy. Doctor Diana Hess is the Dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin Madison and holds the care and Falk distinguished chair of education. Doctor Hess's research focuses on civic and democratic education. Her first book Controversy in the Classroom won the exemplary research award from the National Council for Social Studies. Formerly Doctor Hess was the senior Vice president of the Spencer Foundation, a high school study. So social studies teacher, a teachers union president and the Associate Executive Director of the Constitutional Rights Foundation. Chicago Hess is finishing her ninth and final year as dean this May and will be writing a book with her colleague Lynn Gleick about the importance of deliberation of political issues in higher education. Next year, Paula mcavoy earned her phd in philosophy of Education in 2010 at UW Medicine's Department of Educational Policy Studies. TRANSCRIPT 00:01:12 Since then, she has worked as an assistant professor at Illinois State, an Associate program officer at the Spencer Foundation and as the director of the Center for Ethics and Education at UW Medicine. Prior to this, she taught high school social studies for 10 years at the foothill middle College program in Los Altos, California. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Educational justice coach Lindsay Lyons. And here on the time for teacher podcast, we learn how to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice design curricula grounded in student voice and build capacity for shared leadership. I'm a former teacher leader turned instructional coach. I'm striving to live a life full of learning, running, baking, traveling, and parenting because we can be rockstar educators and be full human beings. If you're a principal assistant superintendent, curriculum director, instructional coach or teacher who enjoys nering out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Doctor Diana Hat. Doctor Paul mcelvoy. Welcome to the Time for Teacher podcast. 00:02:18Edit It's great to be here. I'm so excited to have you both here today. I want to start with an opening question that I ask everyone and feels really big, feel free to answer it. I'd love to hear from each of you in whatever way you want to respond. So I love this idea of freedom dreaming, which many folks talk about. Dr Bettina loves specifically talk about it as dreams grounded in the critique of injustice which I love. And so with that in mind, what is the big dream that each of you holds for education? Paula, would you like to start? I'll start, this is Paula. Um So I gave this some thought before. And um one thing that I've done since the book is Command Diana has done also is uh professional development with teachers around how to engage students in discussions of controversial political issues. And one thing that I've noticed is that at the end of, you know, I teach a variety of strategies and then teachers will often say this is so great. I'm gonna teach it to my A P students and it just breaks my heart because I want, um you know, the strategies that we talk about we're gonna talk about today are accessible to everybody. 00:03:31Edit And so, and it's just so important to give all students the opportunities to have real discussion in the classroom. And so I think that that would be my opener. Yeah. Well, ditto to that. Um you know, I've had that experience to Paul and I always find it, uh you know, really disappointing. And I also feel like it means that all the things that I had done in the PD, no one apparently was paying attention to because, you know, the, the content of the PD is the antithesis of that. Um But relatedly, um my, my dream is that we can use high quality discussion in both uh K 12. And in higher ed, increasingly, I've been doing a lot of work in Higher Ed to uh take advantage of the diversity that we have in so many settings that I think right now we are at best not taking advantage of and at worst, we're kind of actively putting barriers up that would allow students to be able to engage in meaningful conversation with people who have both similar views and very dissimilar views. 00:04:48Edit So, um that is my dream. I love both of those, those are so good and, and I love that equity and justice are really at the core of each of those responses. So I, I wanna just get right into it. I have just recently read the Political Classroom, which is published a while back, I think 2018. And I just want all the listeners and leaders and educators who listen to this to know about it as well because I think a lot of people are wondering, you know, what does it look like in practice to do this well. And so the first thing I'd love to know it and I think Paula, maybe we could start with you with this one. I think with the six possible aims of a political classroom that you list in the book. I think this is fascinating and something that I had never thought of as like a particular aim that you would have as you know, entering a classroom conversation. Do you wanna take us through those? Sure, thank you. I think I'll start before going through that list with the idea of the political classroom, which is sort of a, a complicated idea or not complicated, but it, it sounds um like maybe what you shouldn't be doing in the classroom, which is making the classroom political. 00:05:55Edit And so we intentionally use the term in the title of political classroom and we defined it as a classroom in which young people are um having opportunities to discuss questions about how we should live together. And so how should we live together is the essential question of a democratic society. Um And so, how should we live together? Questions can be everything from public policy questions to rules of the classroom, questions to, you know, et cetera. And so, um so when we talk about the political classroom, we're talking about moments in which young people are getting to have authentic and real discussion about issues about how we should live together. Um And we were primarily in the book looking at public policy questions. Um But so why do that in the first place is that's an idea that's kind of grounded in deliberative theory, which is a democratic theory. And so, and the idea that discussion and engagement across our differences is good for democracy. 00:06:58Edit And so, um we said that so a lot of people see, I think teachers can often think of treat discussion in the classroom as a little bit of a time filler rather than um this is something we're intentionally doing um for academic purposes. And so, um so we've identified six aims. So what you might sort of think about is the, why should we do this in the first place? An the answer to the question, why should we do this? So one is that when we discuss with others, we necessarily, or we should be treating them as political equals. And so it models a type of democratic political equality in the classroom that says everybody has a right to their an opinion and has should have the opportunity to discuss and contribute. Uh The second aim is that it um it promotes tolerance and tolerance. Here often means just being respectful to people who are different but political tolerance. Um And in the form of deliberation and discussion is that we should learn to have the idea that I shouldn't use the state to just get my way. 00:08:01Edit Um So I need to be taller. I need to be, I need to check myself a little bit um in the democratic process that I'm not trying to, as Danielle Allen says, um uh uh to use a winner, take all approach to democracy. Um And then we're helping young people through discussion to develop autonomy, meaning. So their develop their own ideas about how they want to live that demo um deliberation models a type of political fairness and that we model for students or encourage students to think about solutions that promote the common good. So the a deliberation is different than a debate. So you're not trying to win, but you're trying to come up with a good solution. Um then deliberation and discussion, um hopefully motivate students to become more engaged in public decision making because you've and do modeling and that you're modeling that with them in the classroom. And then last we set an aim is um helping young people develop the political literacy of understanding. 00:09:06Edit Um not just what you think about tax policy or something like that, but why tax policy has an underlying the tax policy you choose has an underlying ideological value to it. And so to help young people, I see, we see we saw in the book and continue to see a lot of teachers willing to engage issues, but they're not really wanting to touch like what is it, what is the, what, why would that position be conservative or liberal or what? So when that gets at the bigger purpose of what sort of democracy or society do you want in the first place? And so helping young people kind of engage those bigger values? Thank you so much. That's brilliant. Yeah, and, and so you can choose any combination of aims, right? You don't have to do all six or you don't have to do just one. Is that right? I mean, discussions in general a political, I mean, democratic education, I would say in general is aiming towards all of those. It doesn't mean that in every moment you get, those are all getting equal weight and attention. But you could, uh you know, a particular discussion strategy might really emphasize fairness by encouraging students to find um a point of consensus, for example. 00:10:18Edit Um But in a different strategy might not promote that as much. Hm, excellent. Thank you for, for sharing that. And then I think the next piece for me is how do you decide, right? What issue you're gonna put up for deliberation? I appreciate that you distinguish between a debate, right? And a deliberation. They are not the theme. How do we uh really select those? And so Diana, did you want to share a little bit about the framework that you have for determining how to select those issues? Sure. So I think the most important thing is to determine whether an issue is actually an issue, meaning that are there multiple and competing points of view that you want students to learn about and to literally deliberate, you know, deliberate means to weigh or to balance. And so one of the things that we explored in the book was the challenges that people often have, determining what's actually an issue. And one of the issues is about what's an issue, you know, whether something is an open issue or a more settled issue is a matter of, of great debate. 00:11:28Edit But we really took this on in the book by looking at a variety of different um criteria that teachers could use when they're trying to determine if something is uh an issue or not. And, uh, one of the things that Paul and I have done both uh together and separately in professional development is to really help, uh, teachers wrestle with that. One thing that I've came, come away with is to say the, the question about whether something is an issue or not is a question that itself is best deliberated professionally with other teachers. I think, you know, if possible, making solo decisions on that, uh oftentimes those decisions aren't, aren't quite as good. But as we know from uh what we've done in the book, we've distinguished between empirical issues and policy issues uh by empirical issues, we simply mean, this is a question that either has been or could be answered imper empirically. 00:12:35Edit So uh does uh human behavior cause climate change? You know, that that's an empirical question we argued in the book when it was when we were first writing it, which was, you know, quite some time ago that the answer to that question was yes and therefore to deliberate that question as an open question wouldn't make a lot of sense. You know, later the next generation science standards said the same thing and we both felt very good about that uh to be validated uh that way, um Policy questions are questions by definition, uh where you would have, you know, multiple and, and competing views and there's a relationship between empirical questions and policy questions. You know, and we listen to, to people deliberate, for example, whether we should have a flat tax, you know, they're often talking about, well, what effect might that have on this or on that? And it's not like we don't know anything about those. Um I think the most important thing that we talk about in the book is the need to make sure that the issues that you select are are issues that have a content win. 00:13:42Edit You know, Paula was talking before about the aims that we've laid out in the book and one of the aims is political literacy. And so we, I think generally believe that it's important for students to learn uh very important content through the discussion of political issues. And I always use that as uh something that I rely on when I'm trying to select. But I also think that the more important thing is to make sure that you've got a tension between competing good values. So, you know, good issue questions are not clearly. Well, there's a good and a bad. It's there may be two goods you're trying to achieve. So you may be trying to achieve equal opportunity and inclusion and free speech. Those are both goods. And there's a whole bunch of policy questions that bring those two goods into 10. And my favorite issues are those that help students explore tension between competing uh good values because I think those good value tensions are perennial and even if there is a resolution to a particular issue, doesn't mean that you're not gonna have issues that come up in the future that involve those same tensions. 00:14:58Edit Yeah. Oh my gosh, I am so interested in this. So I think that one of the things that you had named was like the professional judgment framework that and integrates a bunch of the things that you each have already said to make that decision for your class. Do either of you want to kind of talk a little bit about, about that piece. And I don't know if you have an example, friends of mine that's like here's how this would work or that you've seen a teacher in practice kind of work through to make a decision like that just to illuminate for folks how that might work. I can talk that one. The so part of the, the book does three things. It presents this, the findings from this very large study of high school teachers who are engaging students in discussion. Um And it also presents cases of teachers practicing in very different contexts. So we have a teacher who's in a very blue bubble, a red bubble and then kind of a suburban purple school context. And then there we found that there are these questions that teachers often struggle with one being. Should I share my views in the classroom? 00:16:00Edit For example, or which issues as we just discussed. Should I treat as controversial? And there's not really a clear cut answer to these questions. And what we found and argue in the book is that you really um that, that teachers need to be weighing what is, what, what is my school context here? What am I trying to do in the first place? And what evidence can help me um answer the uh answer this question. So for example, on a, should I share my views with the classroom? Uh We have lots that we could say about this. But the, the one way to think about it is if you in the context of my class, if I'm a liberal teacher in a conservative area, and I'm having students discuss something and they turn to me and ask, well, what do you think about this issue? So that context matters, what is, what is my identity to them? Um How are they gonna hear me if I tell my views? And then also, what am I trying to do? Am I trying to actually have them do the discussion? 00:17:03Edit Then maybe I don't need to share my views in that moment because I'm trying to nurture the discussion in that moment. And maybe I think that my views will derail it in some way. And so thinking about not just in principle, should teachers ever share their views, but what is the, that you should share your views if you think it furthers your furthers, your aims. And so um rather than thinking, you know, with the professional judgment, we're trying to not make rules for teachers or the set, the this is the answer. But to really say so, what are the things that you should be thinking about when you face difficult choices in the classroom? Yeah, I love that in, in the book that you had really focused on that as like a key thing or is it advancing discussion? Is it in the best interest of the students not? Do I want to share or not? Does it make me feel good as, as the educator? I really appreciated that very much because I think it can be so challenging to, to make that that particular choice. So the other thing, it might at times be good. Oh, sorry to interrupt. It might at times to be the right thing to do for the discussion, you know, so it's um that it might be that they really trust and like you and if you share your view, they say, oh wow, I didn't realize that that was a, I never thought of it that way before and that can be really valuable. 00:18:15Edit Hi, this is Leah Popping in to share this episode's Freebie an article by Paula mcavoy title discussing politics in polarized times. You can find it at the blog post for this episode, www dot Lindsay, Beth lions.com/one 64. Check it out now back to the show. Absolutely. I think that vulnerability, when you're asking students to be vulnerable, it can be a big trust builder and foundation builder with you as the educator are also willing to go there with them. I Yeah, totally. I, I think there's so, so much I could honestly talk to you guys forever about this. But one of the pieces that I'm really interested in your thoughts on and I after reading the book is that you mentioned several critiques of cele of theory and, and Sanders, I think talks about like it really advantages and privileges like the white middle class way of talking in the book. I mean, you bring in Daniel Allen's work and talking about like that emotion can't really be disentangled from the political deliberation, which I really appreciated. And, and she talks about like the, the uh revelation of what fellow citizens are worth to them in these spaces, like it really opens up that. 00:19:20Edit And so I, I was thinking about this idea of like there the value of being able to have individual stories shared, to put like a face behind an issue. But that also, so that's beautiful and right, it also sometimes positions individual students in the classroom to take on that responsibility that might have some emotional weights. And so I'm just wondering like, is that something that happens in more of like I'm thinking of like indigenous circles and community circles of like, I'm just sharing experiences versus like an actual deliberation of a policy issue and, and kind of like how do we balance that tension of the students who are potentially taking on the load of? Like this has a lot of weight for me when we talk about a particular issue and me being vulnerable enough to share my story might have a bigger emotional weight on me as the sharer than like the people around me that are benefiting from that sharing. Does that make sense, Paul? You want to start? And now China? So, so a few things. 00:20:22Edit So first, let's so Sanders, who's who you say there? Uh just to make one distinction is that she's talking about adults in deliberative spaces like juries. And so one peop one pro one issue, I, I don't know what we're to describe. One critique that gets raised about classroom deliberation is this one and we raise it in the book as a concern that some students aren't heard the same way as other students. And that makes a lot of teachers worried. Um And I think that when I, so I've been doing a couple of studies in the last year and I, and this is one thing that I've been kind of paying attention to. And one thing that you see is that classroom deliberations are deliberations among novices, first of all, and they are deliberations that are in many way, they are fabricated or they're, they're sort of attempts at deliberations. So they're not actually deciding a jury case, they're not actually deciding public policy, but it's got an educational value to it. Um And so in this way, they don't, they don't. 00:21:26Edit So when we might say in sort of, in theory, deliberation should play by these particular rules of rational exchange of ideas in practice with young people, they're naturally bringing up stories about the connecting stories to their lives. They are naturally, you know, engage, you know, they look at the materials that you provide them, but they're also, they're just bouncing it off of the their worlds, right? And that's just the way it is. Um And so what I've been playing with in the last few years is really trying to blend this idea of like, don't think of things as strictly deliberation, but you scaffold the deliberation in such a way that the first thing what I have to what I have groups do, especially if the groups don't know themselves very well is share, if we're gonna say we're gonna talk about uh should college tuition be free, for example, um Share out well, this is what among adults, but you could share it with high school students. How does the idea about paying for, you know, how does college, how is paying for college tuition, either affected someone that, you know, or potentially going to affect you in the future? 00:22:36Edit And so that you can share out this is where I am on this position personally. And that helps the discussion because now I know um I know that your parents are paying for college and I know that mine are not. And so everyone benefits from knowing that information and you, you treat each other differently when you feel when you first know where everyone stands personally. And so then you can move from that towards more information about college tuition, deepening our learning, thinking about the public policy, thinking about the values and 10 and then move towards the liberation. So I think thinking of um you know that that classroom deliberation is a particular type of um you know, educational experience first and foremost, and that what we're trying to do is provide students with the skills to do that. And one of those skills is caring how other people feel about are are affected. Yeah, one of the things that I'm really interested in is the distinction between what Paula is describing, which I really like and asking students their views on the issue. 00:23:44Edit So Paula's question was how might this affect you? So you can imagine saying I am really going to be affected by free college tuition because it means I won't have to take out so much student loan. And I still might think that free college tuition is a bad policy choice, right? So, you know, I think one of the things we've that I've experienced is asking students at the beginning of a deliberation. What are your views on the policy? I don't like to do because I don't want people to take a public stand on. Here's what I think about X because my experience has been, once people do that, they don't wanna, they actually prematurely come to a position or they're not open to uh possibly changing their mind. But what Paul is talking about is helping people understand the connection between, you know, people's lives and specific issues. And quite frankly, it's not illegitimate or anti deliberative to have personal stories as part of a deliberation. 00:24:52Edit You know, one of my um most interesting deliberations that I've ever listened to was when the Senate was deliberating the Americans with Disabilities Act. And Bob Dole told the story of his wartime injury that according to at least some research had a huge effect on getting folks to support that landmark legislation who otherwise wouldn't. So, you know, every time I listen to a good deliberation, I hear someone talk about how something affects them. We just had a deliberation as part of our new program here at UW Madison called Deliberation Dinners on abortion a week ago. And one of the um students was talking about from her perspective. Now, this was not uh she was not generalizing it to everybody, but from her perspective, getting birth control was really easy now and much, much easier than it had been uh reported to be in the past. 00:25:55Edit So that was for her a reason that influenced what she thinks about abortion policy. And, you know, she told that story very authentically and it was absolutely appropriate for her to do it. So when people say, well, we don't want students telling personal stories when talking about policy issues. I'm like, well, how could you possibly have a good deliberation without hearing about how real people are affected by policy questions? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thank you both for sharing those specific examples as well. I think of um Doctor Shri Ridges Patrick and I had come up with uh it's a Juan Eels work we adapted to think about racial discourse. And one of the things that we talk about for generative dialogue is actually the connection of kind of the head and the heart and like the emotion and the intellectual pieces. And that often we're like overly intellectualizing when we divorce those emotional pieces from the stories from the discussions. And so I love that, that this can be that too that, that this deliberation can be that as well. You know, it also goes back to the aims that Paula was talking about at the beginning of the podcast. 00:27:03Edit You know, one of the things that we need to think about is both how do we advance our own self interest? There's nothing wrong with doing that. Um And how do we make decisions based on what might be good for a broader set of people and I've always thought of non novice or more expert decision making is when we can look outside of our own interest. And, you know, for that reason, I am always intrigued when I hear students say, well, my personal position on this is X, but I don't think the state should do why? Because I don't think the state should be telling other people what to do about X. You know, so I don't want people to think that what democratic decision making means is what is my interest and how do I best advance my own interest? I love that. You said that I just think about so many of I taught like a feminist course in high school and so many of my students would talk about abortion in that way. 00:28:07Edit Like, you know, like maybe I personally would choose acts. I think policy should be why. Like I thought it was a really interesting distinction that was, that came up a lot in that particular topic. But thank you for eliminating that for us because I think that's important to keep in mind for educators. Um One of the things that I think a as you know, leaders are supporting teachers to do this well, and teachers are kind of creating these spaces in their classrooms. I'm wondering if they're specific practices or action steps that you would suggest for either the teachers as well as the leaders who are kind of supporting teachers to create those spaces. Um and, and dealing with all of the things that are happening in the world that may um kind of impact that any, any thoughts for either group, teachers or leaders, one that I have is that I think in the diana kind of alluded to this point earlier is that it's, it would be valuable if teachers and administrators would sit down and talk about the question. What does a good discussion look like? And how should we get it? Um And I think discussion is a word that's used in, it's often misused or it's, you know, a, a person might actually be lecturing when they use the word discussion, like I'm discussing World War One. 00:29:19Edit And so we need to, I think in the public discourse, there's a lot of confusion about uh teacher talk right now versus student talk. And so what um I think if schools could sit down and think about, do we want to be a place where there is a good discussion? What kind of, what does that discussion look like? And I would say one answer is that the teach, the students should talk to each other? And um and then how do you, how do you cultivate that? And that's, that's a learned skill. People think, oh, everyone can talk, everyone can discuss. That's not, that's not the case that people need, they actually need scaffolded practice um on how to, on how to learn to have this sort of discussion. And so I think um having schools, school leaders and teachers stop and think about what is it that we actually want to do and, and how do, what and what supports do we as teachers on a school need to get that into place? Yeah, I totally agree with that. You know, we often say in the discussion project that we want um students to learn how to discuss in the same way. 00:30:27Edit We want students to learn how to write and we want students to learn how to do mathematical uh thinking. We want students to learn how to discuss. And we know from, I think pretty solid research now that it's not like you are, are an innate uh discuss uh discussion is something that is can be learned and, and needs to be. But we also want people to discuss to learn. So the question to go back to how we started this, which is, well, why do this to begin with? Well, one reason to do this to begin with is because there's all sorts of things you can learn from having discussions that you're not gonna learn and you're not gonna learn as well absent them. That discussion is uh itself a really powerful pedagogical tool. And so if we care in schools about students learning, and I'm, I, I would vote for that. I always say yes to that, then we should see um discussion and deliberation as both powerful uh pedagogical tools, but back to the aims that Paula started this with, with uh really important democratic outcomes in their own. 00:31:41Edit Right? Yeah. One of the things that I had had written down too that I loved as a suggestion and just in addition to the ideas that you all just shared is that you could survey students to identify where there's diversity in the topics like perspectives on the topics that kind of a call to what you were all sharing before was making sure that you have that diversity of viewpoints. You decided as an issue, right? In context, I never would have thought of that. And I just really wanted to name that for listeners, but that's a really cool idea. And also just that you call out for leaders to make sure that teachers have that good PD so that we can build those discussion skills and students and and you need like a good facilitator to be able to help build those discussion skills and students. So making sure that teachers also have access to all of all of that PD um so that this can happen, right? So thank you for that. I think just to, to move to kind of close here, I don't want to take too much of your time. But I'm, I'm curious to know for folks who want to learn more about what you're doing now because I know you, this was an older book, this was published. 00:32:43Edit Years and years ago, I'm curious to know, you know, what are you currently working on or where can people kind of learn from you in this moment or connect with you online spaces or, or any of that? Um For me, I, um I've been working on a couple of studies that are looking at different discussion strategies. And so, um and how students differently experience them, how that affects how their views change as a result of the discussion. And so looking at um really the structure of discussion, so a lot of people imagine that the best discussion is this like beautiful seminar style with people in a circle and everyone's participating, that's, it's so hard to get that discussion in a high school in a typical high school classroom. I mean, you can build towards it for sure. Um But there's a lot of different strategies that people that and structures that people can use and those structures model how to discuss, they actually teach the how of discussion and they, they help teachers maintain norms, they make sure that students are operating from a common uh sort of starting point of a base of knowledge, you know, there's materials involved. 00:33:53Edit And so I think, um and so what I've been looking at is how do the, how do different strategies affect either what students experience in the discussion and how their views um change as a result of this, you know, different strategies that is super interesting. Oh, my gosh. I can't wait to read some of that. Yeah, Paul has got a really great article in the most recent issue of social education. I'm gonna hold it up and this is an, a special issue on teaching social studies in polarized times. Um, that was, uh, guest edited by Jeremy Stoddard who's a professor here at UW Madison and I worked with him as well and I would, I think there are a number of articles in this special issue that are really great. I would call out Paula's in particular. Um I've been working on two projects. One that Paula started uh here when she was at UW Madison, the discussion project that what we actually we started together. And then another one that we just started this year called Deliberation Dinners. 00:34:57Edit Um And that was based on a project that Paula had started at North Carolina State that was called I think Democracy Dinners. Um And both of those projects uh people can find online. The Deliberation Dinners is really new. We created ideologically diverse groups of students by having them take the pew ideology quiz, which for your listeners, I would, I would encourage them to go to the pew ideology quiz and they will answer uh a bunch of questions and then they will be placed in one of nine different groups. So it's not just left or right, but it's across the ideological spectrum. And then we built 12 tables of 10 students to ensure that we had ideological diversity and also different majors, different years in schools, et cetera. And we've been doing a lot of experimentation uh and piloting of, you know, how you help students who typically don't talk with people with different points of view, learn how to do that in the context of highly authentic and uh really important uh state based issues, legalizing marijuana, increasing nuclear capacity, abortion, et cetera. 00:36:16Edit And so, uh a lot of what Paul and I learned from the political classroom that we saw naturally occurring in these purple classrooms that you read about. Um what we're trying to figure out is how is there a way to d to create purple spaces, especially purple spaces when everyone believes that everybody has the same views. And, you know, one of the things we've learned is that there's always more diversity than you think. But so we've been having a lot of fun uh on that project. Um It's, you know, and, and I also think it probably has a lot of utility for high school uh teachers and students as well. I was, I gave a keynote to the Wisconsin Council for the Social Studies Conference this past Saturday and talked about it briefly and a whole bunch of teachers came up to me and said, you know, we really want the materials, which I thought was great because, you know, that's the other thing that we've learned is that, you know, if you think you have to stay up, you know, midnight every night, writing your own materials to have good discussions, you're not gonna be uh in it for the long haul. 00:37:25Edit What a fantastic last point that you just made. Yes, like sustainability I think is really an important thing to think about. And then also just thinking about the idea of creating purple spaces and the applicability in high schools. Yeah, I love that idea even even at like a multi stakeholder group, right? Like thinking about community events where you have teachers, family members of students, students like, oh how cool would it be to like mix them all up and get that ideological diversity going? Oh, wow. Oh my gosh. Thank you both so so much. I have so appreciated both your book and this conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show today. Thank you so much for the invitation. Yeah. Thank you. It was really fun. If you like this episode, I bet you'll be just as jazz as I am about my coaching program for increasing student led discussions in your school, Shane sapper and Jamila Dugan talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book street data. They say students should be talking for 70 5% 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. 00:38:29Edit If you're smiling to yourself as you listen to right now, grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached to brainstorm. Call at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/contact. Until next time leaders think big act brave and be your best self. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network better today, better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there, explore more podcasts at teach better.com/podcasts and we'll see you at the next episode.
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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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