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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.
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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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In this episode, Kim Strobel shares her personal transformation and her mission to instill hope in educators. She emphasizes the importance of self-compassion over perfection, highlighting the need to silence our inner critic, and practice self-love. She also unpacks the science of happiness, debunking common myths, and advocating for a happiness-driven life, where intentional actions and thoughts can increase our well-being by up to 40%.
Kim Strobel is a renowned motivational speaker and author of Teach Happy: Small Steps to Big Joy, sought after by schools, businesses, and organizations worldwide. With her powerful message about the impact of happiness on well-being and the pursuit of fulfillment, she traverses the globe, sharing her insights. Kim specializes in empowering educators and professionals, equipping them with the necessary tools and strategies to shift their mindsets, reclaim their happiness, reignite their passion, and lead with purpose. The Big Dream Kim's dream for education is two-fold: empowering every teacher to instill unwavering belief in their students and teaching educators to reclaim their happiness and power. Mindset Shifts Required Educators need to transition from pursuing perfection to embracing vulnerability and imperfection. Know that personal growth and the cultivation of happiness are as crucial as academic achievements. Kim’s personal journey to overcome panic disorder exemplifies the vital mindset shift from fear to empowerment. We can acknowledge our struggles and use them as a means to connect and inspire others. Action Steps Kim explains 50% of our happiness is genetic and 10% comes from our external circumstances, which leaves 40% that’s up to us. We can increase that 40% of our happiness. So, how can we do that? Step 1: Recognize your internal critic and practice self-compassion. Acknowledge your achievements and extend kindness to yourself. Step 2: Develop daily happiness habits, such as gratitude and building social connections, to positively rewire your brain towards a more optimistic outlook. Step 3: Reflect on and actively work to update your subconscious belief systems, thereby shaping a mindset conducive to personal success and well-being. Challenges? A significant challenge is overcoming entrenched thought and behavior patterns that result in anxiety and feelings of inadequacy. Kim’s story exemplifies that change is achievable but requires consistent effort and a willingness to confront deep-rooted fears and beliefs. One Step to Get Started Jot down 3 things you're grateful for every day. This straightforward practice can be your first step towards rewiring your brain for positivity! Leaders, find ways to invite staff, students, and families to make this a school-wide practice. Stay Connected You can find this week’s guest on their website, Instagram, Facebook, and Linkedin To help you implement a gratitude practice, Kim is sharing her gratitude habit tracker with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 163 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 Hello, I'm Leah. I'm part of the team that produces this podcast and today, I'm happy to introduce our guest, Kim Strobel, who's a renowned motivational speaker and author of Teach Happy Small Steps to Big Joy Sought after by schools, businesses and organizations worldwide. With her powerful messages about the impact of happiness on well being and the pursuit of fulfillment. She traverses the globe sharing her insights, kin specializes in empowering educators and professionals equipping them with the necessary tools and strategies to shift their mindsets, reclaim their happiness, reignite their passion and lead with purpose. I hope you enjoy 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 co-creator curriculum of students. 00:01:17Edit I made this show for you. Here we go. Kim Stel. Welcome to the Time For Teachers Podcast. Thank you, Lindsay. I'm so excited to talk about this topic. Oh, my gosh. And what a topic? I, I think that many folks are going to be really, I don't know if excited is the right word because I feel like sometimes it's like, oh, I'm working through something hard is like, excitement isn't the first thing, but you'll be excited by the end of the conversation. It was like, take you through like the challenges for sure. And then just really be like, yeah, that was necessary. And for leaders listening as well, like in addition to, I think the topic for individual leaders also thinking about your teachers. Oh my gosh. Yes. So much, so much to learn from you. I'm really excited and so to frame the episode today, is there anything that you would like to share? Either topic wise, like preparing folks for the topic we're about to get into or sometimes with a, a formal bio? People feel like there's more to me than just what's on the written word on the page. And they want to kind of share a little bit about themselves, anything in either direction that you'd like to share to ground us in the conversation today? Yeah. 00:02:20Edit Well, I appreciate that sometimes I feel like bios are so boring and you know, when I'm giving a keynote speech, it's like, I feel like there's so much better if the person just kind of picks little pieces from the bio and then tells about the person. But, um, I, I taught, uh, mostly at the elementary level in fourth grade was where I spent a tremendous amount of time. Um And then from there, I became like a literacy coordinator for grades K through 12, which was a great opportunity to really look at classroom instruction across the board. Um, and then from there, I jumped into a curriculum director. So I feel like that's helpful in my perspective of understanding how this applies to school leadership. Um But then I just kind of kept building this urge to um start my own business. And I actually did work for another company for a year consulting and felt like that was my jam. But um my value system didn't really match up to theirs. And so I remember at the time I was 39 and, and I'm almost 50 now and I was like, you know, I just decided after a year to quit and I was like, oh, my gosh, I've, I've had a job since I was in the fifth grade, Lindsay. 00:03:23Edit Like, literally I babysat I've never not had a job and it was super scary. Um But that's when I went to work as a curriculum director for um a few years and then, like started to massage my own idea of how can I really bring what is like, so near and dear to my heart. How do I bring it to the world? And so I launched struggle education in 2016. Um And my husband who always supports me and like gets behind me. It literally sent him all the way off the cliff because he was like, what do you mean you're gonna give up like a steady paycheck and, and insurance and like, I wanna back you. But I'm super scared and I just kept saying like, there's this like, I just, it was almost like I could not, not do it, Lindsay. And um so we got my husband and some counseling for a few months so that he could get behind me and he got behind me. And um yeah, now it's evolved to like, you know, like you, I have a team of girls who go into the field and do a ton of on site trainings on anything from the science of reading to um standards based grading all of these topics. 00:04:26Edit And then I kind of stepped into the lane of motivational speaking because that's my jam now. Um And so, you know, I'm gonna share like what a hard road this has been because sometimes we can take the pain of our lives and turn it into purpose and I'm happy to back that story out when you're ready so that people understand that just because I'm a motivational speaker and a happiness coach now does not mean I'm like, sunshine and rainbows and sprinkles and rah rah rah because I can't stand that. Lindsay, that's like toxic positivity. I was gonna say toxic positivity. Yes. Oh my gosh. Thank you for grounding us in that. And, and I think I, I am really excited to hear that story. I think one of the first questions they typically ask is like, what's the dream? And so specifically, I think about Doctor Bettina Love talking about freedom dreaming. And so a lot of the work that we do is around justice and and just making the world and our schools and our is better, right? For, for everyone. And, and so when she talks about it, she says their dreams grounded in the critique of injustice, which I just, I love the words there. 00:05:29Edit And so given that, what's what is the big dream that you hold for the field of education for, for people generally, I mean, your, your work touches everybody. Thank you. I think, well, I mean, one of my whys behind why I started this, this business is when I was 1/4 grade teacher, I taught a student who just completely derailed every single thing that I was doing in the classroom. He was like the Tasmanian devil. He would come in each day. He had no interest in learning. He couldn't sit still, he poked and prodded and you know, other kids. And I thought I was taught early on that. It really starts with relationships. And so I just kept pouring into the relationship. And about halfway through the year we discovered that he cut, came from this very traumatic home life where dad wasn't in the picture. Mom was an alcoholic. She was completely unavailable in the bedroom all day and all night she wasn't working, the electricity had been turned off. And I always say that Corey, like I was his fourth grade teacher. 00:06:32Edit Honestly, he ended up being my teacher because when we heard his story as a class, it completely shifted everything and how we operated with him. And I'm happy to say that three years ago created the impossible. He graduated from college. He has a job. He got married. I got to attend the wedding. I mean, I'm still in contact with him. But one of the things he said to me, Lindsay was not a lot of people believed in me back then and, and you were one person who did. And so it kind of left me with this feeling of just great compassion for the kids who walk in our doors. I can never tell this story without tearing up because he's so near and dear to my heart. But you know, I guess my thing is is that, that, that students come to us with all different talents and capabilities and academic intelligence. And sometimes we have too much of a focus on academic intelligence. And I actually think that the reason Corey has been able to persevere is because he's had to do it his whole life. And um but I was just kind of like, you know what I wanna empower every single teacher to believe in their students to 100% let them know so that there is no another Corey who walks out of the classroom and doesn't know he is believed in that his success is possible and to teach him to believe in himself. 00:07:52Edit So I think that my dream is definitely for kids to know that they have value and for teachers to sometimes make that front and center. But it's really hard to do because of all the expectations that are placed on teachers. And, and so then my other why of course, and it's the premise for the book that I have coming out. My first ever book that took me 10 years because Kim's trouble didn't believe in herself to write the book. Um But my book, teach happy small steps to Big Joy. The big why behind that is as I started to work with teachers, my heart went out to them because they, they want to serve in this noble sacred profession. They, some of them have known from early on this is what they're supposed to do. But in all honesty that they've shared their stories of just complete um anxiety and, and depression and, and truly not even knowing how to get off of this hamster wheel. That is sinking them because I call an ace and ace. And this profession is, it's absolutely drowning people. 00:08:56Edit And so they, the reason for the book was, you know, what I'm gonna teach them how to take their power back. That's what I wanna do. I wanna teach the teachers how to take their power back so that they can show up in this profession as the best version of themselves for themselves first and also have and be able to reclaim their happiness outside of this profession, you know. And so I feel like my big dream kind of has like those two things at the forefront that like drive me day in and day out. Oh, I love that, right? Because it is because we are here for the students. So I love the idea of like belief in students and we cannot do it well if we don't show up for ourselves wonderfully, like, I love that dichotomy there and how they really just feed into one another. Oh, wow, that's good. Thank you. And, and so I, I wanted to get back now to what you were saying about how you know, you, you, you have your own path and your own story of, of things you wanted to share. And so I, I'd love to just give space for you to be able to share as much of that as you feel comfortable with and, and thank you for your willingness to share your story. 00:10:01Edit Yeah. Well, first of all, I love that you talk as fast as me, Lindsay. We, we aren't messing around like we're like, it's on that. Um, yeah. Well, I think that, you know, sometimes when I step on a stage and, and it could be, you know, 100 people and it could be 6000 people and it's just really easy to see this girl in this stellar dress, walk up on stage and I'm introduced as a happiness coach and I fly across the country and I always think like those people sitting there, they're thinking, wow, you know, she has it all together, like what an amazing life she has. And I am so far from that. And so I do have an amazing life, but it really has come out of my own, very deep, very uh traumatic pain. I, I've had several of those experiences in my life, but, but one in particular was that I suffered from, um, an anxiety disorder called panic disorder for many, many years back when we didn't even know what anxiety disorders were. So I never got properly diagnosed until in my twenties. 00:11:04Edit Um And so, you know, my life, Lindsay got very small. I struggled to be at home by myself as a 22 year old married woman. I couldn't stay at home by myself hardly. I couldn't drive. I mean, I would drive my car five minutes to my secretary's job because of course I had quit college because I, I couldn't be there. I was having these episodes day in and day out. I thought I was crazy and I, I was just like, I couldn't even function normally. Um, going to Walmart stepping in Walmart, like all of those things were just crazy, crazy, difficult. And I know for people who have never had a panic disorder, it's like they logically cannot wrap their head around it. But what I tell people is, I want to put you in the space of what it felt like for me for just a moment. Um If I were to place you on a train track, Lindsay and I told you like, you're, you're chained to the train track, you cannot get off and a train was coming at you at like 200 MPH. And I said, you know what Lindsay, you're safe, like the train is gonna stop, it's gonna stop one inch before it hits your nose, but it, you're not there. 00:12:10Edit I promise you you're not in any danger. And I want you to think about obviously being on that train track and seeing that train barreling towards you. You would feel like you literally, it would be the biggest like feelings of terror of your life for me. I was feeling that day in and day out like feelings of like this, this episode would come over me and I would feel disoriented and nervous and terrified and scared. And think I was losing consciousness and shaking all over. But the problem was is there was never a train, there was never anything that could logically tie my brain to that, which means you get even more scared because you can't tie any reason to why this is happening. And so this was happening multiple times a day for many years. And I really did get to the point, Lindsay where um like I didn't wanna die, but my suffering was so intense that I really just lay down, you know, on my bath mat, rav one time. 00:13:16Edit And I really did plead with God. And I just said, you know, I don't, I don't know how you need to do this. I don't know if you should kill me in a car accident. Like I just need you to take my life. I don't want to go this way, but I can't keep doing this. And um you know, I am a spiritual person and I heard the message that was something like Kim get up off that back mat. And then I heard a version of these words which was you are made for more. And in fact, Lindsay, that's what helped me really step into what I call my divine destiny. I ended up going to a doctor getting a diagnosis, being put on Zoloft, being sent to a psychologist to do cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure therapy. And at that time, Lindsay was the self help field it just started to come to fruition and I read everything I could get my hands on and I've been lit up with it since then. And so there's always like this thing, like, how do you really take the girl who struggled to walk to her mailbox and say, oh, you're gonna be on a stage with 5000 people. 00:14:24Edit And in fact, you're gonna do the thing that every single person almost is afraid of. Um But for me, this is important to my story because Lindsay, you might not have panic disorder. The 500 people in my crowd might not have panic disorder. But what I do know is that almost all of us have had something that was really hard to get through in our lives. Most of us have had some type of injustice or trauma or adversity or challenge or we might be in it right now and we feel alone because we do not talk about the heart of our lives. So when you said at the beginning, basically, what you said reminded me of like, we can't get to the good stuff unless we talk about the hard stuff too, you know. And so I feel like now when I step on the stage, I take like this super fierce energetic woman with me. But what I've also learned to do is take the Kim that was really, really scared and sometimes is even scared still at times in her life. 00:15:29Edit And she's allowed to come with me because she deserves some space too. She deserves some compassion because I used to push her away. Right. Um And so for me, I think that while I'm in the education space, it's really honoring that there is, there's these valleys that we have to get through and these mountains to climb, but we don't have to do it alone. And in fact, there's a pathway of hope for each and every one of us. Wow. Thank you so much for, for sharing your story. And I do think there's a lot of folks who probably can connect even, even to the very specific diagnosis that you and I know a lot of teachers face uh maybe generalized anxiety and in some degree of thought. So I do, I think that that resonates regardless of, you know, whatever diagnosis each individual listener has. And they also think about, you know, for leaders, teachers that have diagnoses like this or experiences like this, your students, right? I think there's, there's so much um so much in the world right now as you spoke to that is challenging. 00:16:34Edit And so I'm curious to know, I, I love, I wanna say first, I think that I love the idea of bringing the Kim Verdon who is scared or um feeling the panic with you onto the stage. And I am wondering if there, if, if that was, you know, that seems like a mindset shift. I think a lot of the work that we do is often mindset shifty in some way. And so I'm wondering if, if there was a mindset shift there that you want to talk us through or if there's another mindset shift that you usually talk people through to be able to get on that, that track of, of help and action and kind of confronting the challenge to be able to get to a space like you are today. Yeah. And honestly, that work probably just took place in the last two years. Lindsay, I've spent my whole life trying to overachieve in every single area of my life, whether it's my business. Um You know, I'm a runner. I don't just, I never, I don't do anything halfway. And then my husband says, you know, why are you always like such an extremist? Like it, it's, it's just like you, you, you know, you're just like, oh, I'm gonna do it like I'm running a marathon this year and he's like, my husband is like, oh my God, you're just so old, you know. 00:17:43Edit But what I've begun to recognize Lindsay is that, that has been my mind's way for years of pushing away what I have considered this very weak and very feeble and, and, and, and I'm embarrassed of the Kim that felt so inadequate and so deeply flawed. And I know, and I haven't quite broke the achievement cycle for sure. I mean, part of it is, I think I'm just wired that way. But I also know that I hustle a lot for my worthiness and I feel like I've done that to kind of put that little Kim in place and gone. Like, you know what, you sit back and you watch me and because you don't even deserve any space, like I'm keeping you in your place. And so I listened to this podcast where Doctor Russell Kennedy was on the Mel Robbins podcast and he wrote a book called Anxiety Rx. And it's really this whole new way of looking at how do we kind of begin to heal the, the anxiousness inside of us or the depression or whatever it might be. And one of the things he said is you can't heal it until you extend compassion towards it. 00:18:49Edit And so we're our own inner critics. I always say, like we would never talk to our friend or our child the way that we talk to ourselves. And um my inner critic has a name. Does, do you have an inner critic, Lindsay? I do, but I haven't named her. I don't even know. Yeah, I've named her and I've even drawn her out and her name is Ethel and Ethel is like relentless. And I don't know if you remember Monsters Inc but there was this character on there with these snakes as her hair. Like that's what I envisioned. She's got like a red fiery lips and she's always trying to like keep me in check. And um what I have found is, is that why would I not extend compassion for the little girl, the teenage girl, the girl in her twenties, the girl, why would I not say? Gosh, that must have been really, really hard for you. I feel for you. And in fact, I'm going to acknowledge you and I'm going to love you because you, you deserve to be loved. 00:19:59Edit There is nothing wrong with you. What you went through was so hard and so difficult and I'm gonna learn to embrace you. And so for me, I had to help hold a vision of what that looks like. And that vision was, you know what, let me grab your little six year old hand because even then you were super anxious and let me let you walk on that stage with me because you're such a part of who I am and the work that I'm doing and you know, for, for teachers and educators, Lindsay, I walked out the glass doors every day after teaching with like my shoulder slumped and my head down and maybe I had done 98 things right that day. And I screwed up too like I engaged in a power struggle with a student that I shouldn't have and sent him even more over the edge. And I would kind of get the good old ball and chain out and I would whip myself across the back and now I'm like, don't you dare do that teacher? You be better than Kim's trouble. You walk out that door every day with your head held high and your shoulders back and you give yourself some darn grace. 00:21:05Edit You focus on the 99 darn things that you did right in your life. And don't you dare let that inner critic come out and chastise you for the one thing that you messed up that day. Oh my gosh, so many things they are saying that I just want to like draw connections to and connect to. So I'm bringing my own therapy here. So I think that resonates a lot with me, the the idea of extending compassion to a either a younger version of ourselves, a former version, even if it was like earlier that day, right? That has been a huge key and unlocking a lot of forgiveness and compassion for myself. And so I, I think that is huge and I wanna just like double down on that recommendation. And I think in the just this world as well, there is this kind of striving for perfection. There is this avoiding things because I don't want to make a mistake and I have to do it just right. And if I make a mistake, that means I should never try again, right? And, and so this perfection actually inhibits our, our progress. And so as a as a person who is committed to justice. I think for me, I, I talk a big game of like, oh, you know, mistakes are how we learn. 00:22:08Edit And it's like if I make a mistake, I hold myself to that super high standard just like teachers do with students. And so I think it's really interesting that when we can extend the compassion and say, like I have compassion for myself and like, I know that, that I screwed up with that student and the the power struggle, I'm going to make it better tomorrow, right? Like both can be true. And I think that both can be true with something that's really hard to hold for people and it's revolutionary. I also was just reminded of um I don't remember Gotman. I think it's the marriage therapist who does the 5 to 1 ratio I got. Yeah. Yeah. And explain that Lindsay because that's a great example. Yeah, just that I you could probably explain it better than I can. But just the idea of there's five positive to every one negative sustains a healthy relationship. And so I think about that with our own inner relationships, right? Like, remember the five positives, like there's only one negative allowed for every five positives if you want to focus on two negative, like let's rally up the 10 positive. Absolutely. And you know, I think that you're right. I think that most school teachers and school leaders are sort of type a anyway. 00:23:15Edit Um they're very driven, they're very ambitious, they want everything to be perfect. And I actually think now that one of the reasons I've been able to be successful in this space is because I started to allow myself to do it and do it imperfectly. So for example, Lindsay, I, I had never been a motivational speaker. I had never stepped on a stage. I just decided one time, I'm gonna slap that on my website and I'm gonna start calling myself one and, and I was skiing in Colorado with our son and I got halfway down the mountain and clicked on my email and um, a school of 900 wanted to hire me. And I was like, oh my gosh. So, like, I'm sitting there that August in the front row and I'm like, Kim, struggle. What again, your husband is, right? Why do you have to push yourself into such uncomfortableness? Like I, these people, they don't know that I've never in my life done this and it's, it's probably not gonna be stellar. It's probably not gonna be the best thing they ever heard. But Lindsay had I not done that because today I'm good. 00:24:19Edit Right. Like I'm really good at what I do. I got a lot more to learn, but I'm good. And if I had never taken that chance, if I had never said, you know what Kim, all you gotta do is, is do it and let it be a little less than so that eventually you can grow it and get better. Then I wouldn't be having this business. I wouldn't be speaking across the country. And so I have this new phrase that I try to live by that I came up with, I'm super proud of myself and here's what it is. Are you ready? Hi. This is Leah popping in to talk about this episode's Freebie, the Gratitude habit Tracker by Kim Strobel. You can find it at the blog post for this episode www dot Lindsey Beth lines.com/one 63. Check it out. Now, back to the show. It is perfectionism is the lowest standard you can hold yourself to. I like that a lot. Good. Yeah. But let me just say Lindsay, I can preach this stuff all day long and I'm still learning like this is that does not mean that Kim's trouble. Has it all figured out? 00:25:25Edit In fact, when you teach others, you do get better at it. But this is not to say that, you know, I know what I need to do, but I'm still struggling with some of those areas in my life. And I, I love you. You brought up basically self love too. You know, we don't know how to love ourselves. Um And when we figure out how to do that, it opens up everything for us. Yes, absolutely. And, and I think you're so we're kind of getting into too like what are those actions you can take so the person listening, right? Who's like, OK, I'm resonating. I'm like, I'm hearing myself a lot and what we're talking about, what are the things that I do? And I, I think both ways, however, the listener kind of wants to take this, I think is probably how they can but individually but also like, as a leader in an educational space. Like, what does that mean for the school or the class culture that I, that I lead and I'm responsible for like, what are those things to be on the lookout for? Because I imagine there's some internal work we can do. And then there's also maybe some like structural things or culture things that we can shift as well. Am I am I right in that? Yeah, you are and I could speak on this like all day long because I felt like there's so many pieces to it and, and you know, each chapter of the book is really dedicated towards like here's all the different things, but I always tell teachers this is not about doing them all. 00:26:40Edit Like you're gonna pick one, you're gonna pick one and we're gonna move the needle by 1% or you're gonna move the needle as a school leader by 1% because that 1% starts to act as combined interest, you know, but sometimes I think it's like, oh my gosh, I'm adding one more thing to my plate and look Kim struggle. I can't even breathe right now. And now you're telling me to do this, you know. So yeah, let me talk you through that. So what we know about the happiness research and why happiness needs to come to the forefront is that we used to think that if we jumped through all these hoops and we achieved all of these things and we got our college degrees and we got good jobs and we made decent money and we got the nice house that once we do all of those things, we've arrived at happiness. But the last, you know, 30 years or 40 years of research has actually proved that it's completely opposite that if you wanna be successful in your life, whether that's in your marriage or you wanna be successful with your physical health, or you wanna be successful in feeling good in your parenting role. If you wanna feel good in your finances, if you want to feel good in your career, that when we teach you how to put your happiness at the forefront of your life, that is when we change every other ll lever. 00:27:53Edit And so what we know is that everybody has what's called a set baseline happiness level. So maybe my baseline level is here, Lindsay and maybe yours is 10 points higher than mine. And so what this means is that good things can happen in you and I's life like maybe we're gonna go shopping today or maybe um we're gonna do something fun or uh maybe we, we got a bonus check in the mail and we're like, oh my God, they gave us an extra $100 you know, and our happiness level goes up and it might go up for two hours or two days or two months. But it's always gonna come back to whatever your baseline is and the same is true, believe it or not. For when we endure hard things, the research proves over and over again that you can go through trauma, injustice, loss, disease. Uh You can go through these challenging times and that for most human beings you do reset back. And so then people go. But where does our baseline come from? And why is Lindsay's different than mine? And so I want you to envision a pie chart. 00:28:55Edit And what we know is that 50% of your long term happiness, Lindsay is genetic comes from your mom or your dad or a mixture of both. And it's so funny, Lindsay, when I tell this to the crowd, I see 80% of the heads drop and they literally whisper, I'm so screwed. But there's just this genetic piece that, that is how our brain works. OK? But I don't want you to lose hope. The shocking piece for people is that if I took every single external circumstance that you've ever had in your life, Lindsay, what kind of home did you grow up in? Did you grow up in, you know, poverty or not? Did you have parents who were divorced or together? You know, were you bullied, weren't you? Uh what experiences have you had in your adult life? You know, like did, are you divorced? What kind of money do you make? What kind of job do you have? We can take everything and throw it into the pie. And what we know is that only about 10% of your long term happiness comes from those external circumstances. 00:30:03Edit But if you're like Kim Strobel, you let it, you let circumstances and people still way more than 10% of the pie. Are you guilty of that? Lindsay? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And so the part that really fires me up is if there's 50% genetic and 10% comes from our external circumstances that leaves 40% of the pie. And what we know is that every human being can increase their happiness levels by up to 40%. And it has to do with these three things, the actions you're taking daily, the behaviors you exhibit. Oh Lindsay. Look at the balloons. My computer's been doing this for folks listening on the podcast. There was just balloons on our Zoom call. It was amazing. Cheering us on Yeah. So actions, thoughts and behaviors, actions, thoughts and behaviors. And so in the book, I focus a lot on what are those and what is it as people who serve in this super demanding profession. 00:31:09Edit How, how do I really create more ease in my life? How do I create some space to breathe? How do I not let this job suck everything out of me to where I'm going home and I can't even show up for my kids because I'm so exhausted and I certainly don't even know how to show up for myself. And so, so there's a lot of habits, but when it comes to school, culturally, one of the top five happiness habits is the social connections. And that is what are the relationships in the school with my staff? How are we operating? What is that vision? What is that belief system? How do we treat one another? How do we, uh, you know, honor differences of opinions, how do we invest in each other? And so, and this is, of course, outside of the school too. This is our friendships and our marriage and, and these things are critical to our well being. Um, but the other one I want to talk about and I actually want to leave your listeners with, with a, a tip that's gonna make a difference in this 40% right out of the gate. 00:32:14Edit So the second happiness habit that falls in the top five. And of course, everybody is like, what's the top five, Kim? Well, you're gonna have to read the book because Lindsay said we got 30 minutes and I'm scared, I'm down to four. But, um, truly, it's the practice of gratitude. We've all heard this. Oprah preached this to me for years. I still didn't do it, but I wanna tell you what the research says and then I'm gonna tell you why it works because when you understand the why behind it, you're now motivated to do it until the research says that if I can get you to write down three different things that you're thankful for each and every day, per say 21 to 30 days. That after that time, Lindsay, I actually rewire your brain and I rewire your brain to be a little bit more towards positive versus negative, neutral or stressed. And what that means is is that you begin to go through your day and you start to notice more good than bad. 00:33:21Edit And when you notice more good than bad and when you do get your brain too positive, here's what we know changes. A positive brain is 31% more productive at their job. Then when their brains at negative neutral or stressed, a positive brain is 10 times more engaged in their job, which means they're actually able to get through their workday quicker and more efficiently. A positive brain is three times more creative, which means it can come up with solutions to problems that the brain didn't see before it can see opportunities that were there the whole time. But because our brain wasn't stressed and pieces of our brain are actually shut down and inaccessible, we cannot see them. And so I wanna tell you why it works. Lindsay, if you're an average human being, you have about 70,000 thoughts a day, 70,000, we're halfway through the day. Lindsay, you've already had 35,000 thoughts and those thoughts are firing mostly from our subconscious brain. 00:34:30Edit We're not even aware of them because they're just on automatic all day long. And if you're an average human being, what we know is that 80% of your thoughts in a day's time are negative. So when you put your head on the pillow at night, you've probably had 56,000 negative thoughts. And some of you were like, oh Kim's trouble. I do not believe that. Well, let me just tell you, let me take you back to the 1st 30 seconds of your day when your alarm went off because some of you literally the alarm went off and you went uh and then you go, I didn't get enough sleep and then you got off and you start thinking like your knees hurt and then you get in the bathroom, you're like, I don't wanna do this day and then you're like, oh there's a fever blister that broke out. Oh, these pants are too tight. Like some of you had 72 negative thoughts within the 1st 30 seconds of your day. And, and this is because we're wired this way. We actually have this thing in our brain called an Amygdala. And the Amygdala was part of our brain all the way back from caveman cave woman times. And then the Amygdala S number one job is to scan 24 7 for danger to pick up any negativity in order to protect you. 00:35:44Edit But the issue is it's 2024 and there's not a saber toothed tiger Lindsay when you walk out of your office and go down the hall to the bathroom, but yet our Amygdalas are still wired this way. And that's why we have these kind of constant streams of negativity in our brain. And here's what's even crazier of the 80% of thoughts that are negative Lindsay, 95% of the 80 are the exact same thoughts you had the day before. Interesting. Wow. I know. I know. And so when I can get you to write down three different things, what we do is we create a new neural feedback loop in your brain and the more you do that, the stronger that loop gets. And it means that you're gonna start to take this other roadway more and more and more. And I always tell people like I did this with my students. We started every day with like 90 seconds of gratitude. All 27 students would say I'm thankful for this. I'm thankful for this. I'm thankful for this. So I exposed him to 27 gratitudes within the 1st 90 seconds And then at the end of the day, we got our gratitude journals out and we jotted three things down because you know what Lindsay, you know, we're in this profession to teach kids how to read and write and understand science and math. 00:36:57Edit But honestly, we want them to go out into the world and walk out our doors and be good human beings. And like you said, know how to contribute to the world in a positive way, know how to make a difference, know how to fight for those injustices. And so um and I have a gratitude tracker that I'll give you the link to if you want and you can download it and it gives you five props or it gives students if you want to use it for students, five areas to begin looking for gratitude in their life. And then there's a 21 day tracker, but I just use a notebook and I just write the date. I just write, you know, whatever the date is and then I write the words, I am thankful and then I jot them down. But, but I do want to give you a piece of advice too. Actually, one I want you to be specific. I don't want you to write the word health down. I want you to say even though I've been sick, as you told me, you had been, I'm actually feeling myself getting better and I'm thankful for that. I'm not some people like, oh, I'm thankful for my family. Be specific. I'm thankful that my son who's 23 years old has decided he's not gonna be a college punk anymore now that he's out in the real world world and he actually calls and texts his mom almost daily, you know. 00:38:09Edit And so um just be specific and then this is gonna go back to compassion and love Lindsay. But I always encourage people to make one of their gratitudes, something that they appreciate about themselves. And let me tell you what. When I do this in a workshop, people are stunned, they sit there, they're like, I don't even know what to write about myself because it feels so uncomfortable to give ourselves a compliment. And isn't, isn't that sad that we've been trained to think? Because I always say no one does more for you in a day's time, Lindsay than you. Nobody has shown up and nobody has done more for Lindsay in a day's time than Lindsay. And doesn't she deserve a little recognition? Doesn't she deserve a little pat on the back? You know. And so that's one of the top five happiness habits. And I'm just gonna tell you, it will change your life, it will change your life if you implement that. Oh, I love it. And so yes, I think that's something you could do like right now, right? Listeners who are ending up there just go grab that tracker. We'll link it into the blog post for this episode. 00:39:14Edit Grab that, download it, use it. And for leaders, I'm thinking of all the spaces that exist in school systems where you could just integrate that. Like we're starting a team, meeting a grade team or a department team, everyone shares a gratitude, right? Like that's the do now for the class with my students, right? Everyone shares the gratitude. We are doing a um like post observation debrief with a teacher, right? What did you think? Went well? Like gratitude for yourself in that lesson, right? I think there's so many great spaces and you gave us so many concrete examples that I absolutely love. Oh my gosh, thank you. And I think just to, I could honestly talk about this all day. And I'm like, oh wow, look at the time just to kind of wrap this up a bit. One of the things that I love asking at the end of every episode and this can totally relate to our conversation or totally not relate. What is something that you personally, Kim Strobel have been learning about lately? Oh my gosh. Well, you know, I'm just like, I'm always reading some type of self help book. Um So, oh gosh, there's just so many, well, what I've been learning a lot lately is that 5% of how we show up in life comes from our conscious mind and the conscious mind is like, you know, it's the present day mind of like thinking and having thoughts in the mind that says, oh, I need to do this and I need to do that. 00:40:36Edit And I need only 5% of how we uh go about our day um comes from our conscious mind and 95% Lindsay, 95% of how we show up for life and how we succeed in life. It comes from our subconscious mind. It's like an iceberg. You only see the tip but there's this giant thing. And so one of the things that makes up the subconscious mind is beliefs. And did you know Lindsay that most of us had all of our beliefs formed by the time we were six years old? Wow. As the parent of a toddler, I'm really thinking about that one. I know it came from your parents and how you saw them, navigate relationships, how you see them, navigate the world, the interactions comes from your teachers. And so my work recently has been to pull out these old belief systems that I've held on to and to extract them and download a new internal blueprint, right? A new belief system because that belief system is guiding in, in, in and showing me day in and day out what I'm capable of. 00:41:48Edit Oh, I love that. And so your book, by the time this airs will be published available for purchase, where can listeners get it? Where can they contact you or just follow what you're doing, where are all the places and we'll link to everything you share too in the blog post. Yeah. Yeah. So they can go to Amazon. Um And then one of the really fun things I'm doing this year is I'm booking uh keynotes and conferences and school keynotes is I'm doing a book signing. And so, I mean, I think the book's gonna be like 2425 bucks or something. But if we do bulk orders for schools, then they're 15 bucks. And so I love it because like now I get to connect with teachers up to the keynote. Like I can do, I can sign their book, I can chat with them, I can hug them. Um And so I'm so excited to put this out into the world because I believe that it offers a blueprint for how to get out of the chaos and how to reclaim the happiness and the goodness that wants to come to them so that they can start to breathe again and that they know that they are worthy of that, right? A lot of it is like being worthy and understanding. 00:42:51Edit You don't have to do it all. In fact, what I wanna do with this book is extract those old belief systems that you've been carrying and start to create a new one that's gonna help make you really, I mean, it's all about feeling good, Lindsay. We wanna feel good in our life, not all the time. I mean, I was crying on the floor two weeks ago, you know, but I have a set of strategies that pick me up and get me out of the gutter quicker now. Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much for your vulnerability for your very research based actions that you shared with us. And just for your uh like the energy that you carry is palpable through the screen and through people's earbuds or however they're listening. And I just love that you seem to really walk the talk and like do the things and you're committed to the work that you're asking other folks to do, which I just absolutely admire and love. Thank you. Oh, you're so welcome. I appreciate that Lindsay. I do feel like there's a lot of people showing up in this space right now and they, that's kind of a pet peeve of mine. It's like, don't be promoting all this stuff on social media or sending your newsletter out, but then you got different actions going on behind the scenes, you know. 00:43:58Edit So I really do appreciate that. You see the realness of who I am and um in my website, by the way, I, I forgot to mention that. But if people want to connect with me, it's just struggle. Education.com Beautiful. Thank you. I'll put that in the show notes. 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 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. 00:45:06Edit 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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5/6/2024 162. How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations across K-12 with Matthew R. Kay and Jennifer OrrRead Now![]()
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In this episode Matt and Jen talk about their book, We’re Gonna Keep On Talking: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Elementary Classroom. We discuss the need for ongoing conversations about race, and the role of effective classroom management strategies, and specific things to consider when setting up a class discussion about race. I’ve been excited for this conversation since their book was published. For my initial response to the book, check out this blog post.
Matthew R. Kay is a proud product of Philadelphia’s public schools and a founding teacher at Science Leadership Academy (SLA). He believes that any teacher who is willing to put in the hard work of reflection can, through the practice of discrete skills, lead meaningful race conversations. Driven by this conviction, he is passionate about designing professional development that teachers find valuable. He’s also the author of Not Light, But Fire, a book I loved and also wrote a blog post about in 2020. Jennifer Orr has been an elementary school classroom teacher for more than two and a half decades, teaching kindergartners through fifth graders. She is the author of Demystifying Discussion: How to Teach and Assess Academic Conversation Skills, K-5 and the coauthor of We’re Gonna Keep on Talking: How to Lead Meaningful Race Conversations in the Elementary Classroom. She is a National Board Certified Teacher and a frequent mentor to new and pre-service teachers. The Big Dream(s) Jen wants teachers to be treated as professionals and be trusted as professionals. Matt adds his dream for kids to be treated as thinking beings again—as people who can make up their own minds about things. Trust We have to trust ourselves as professionals to handle the moments that arise and trust our students to engage in these moments. And…a big part of that comes out of us knowing pedagogical moves and being prepared for whatever those moments might hold. Focusing on pedagogy: What do we do to prepare? Threading: Take the pressure off teachers to solve the world’s probl;ems in one conversation or for students to understand antiracism in one conversation. Thread conversations about race through multiple texts and units throughout the year. Formats: Give kids options at different times to engage in conversations in different group sizes (turn and talk with one partner, talk in a small group, whole class discussion). This way, different kids get the chance to speak where they’re most ready, as some feel more comfortable speaking up in different settings. Administrative Support Be encouraging, visit regularly, set up peer structures of common planning time and peer observation for all teachers (not just the teachers who are struggling, also the ones who are doing well.) Also have teachers’ backs. And teachers…make sure you tell your administrators what’s happening in your classes so they’re not surprised. Biggest Challenge? Educators may face challenges such as student misbehavior during discussions. Kids may start acting goofy when they’re uncomfortable. You can proactively support this by co-creating class agreements and having a plan for helping students deal with feeling uncomfortable—celebrate this as an opportunity for learning! One Step to Get Started Matt says start a consistent community-building activity that becomes a dependable part of the classroom routine (e.g., Good News Mondays or Journal Tuesdays). This sets the stage for trust and open dialogue, laying the groundwork for deeper, more meaningful conversations. Jen seconds this, explaining , “[do] whatever it takes to ensure that you have a really strong, solid classroom community, because conversation about anything doesn't work without it.” Stay Connected You can find this week’s guests online. Jen is on her website, and Matt is on his website and on Twitter. To help you learn more about this pedagogy, Matt has a curated list of great videos on his site, which we’re sharing with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 162 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, my name is Leon. I'm part of the team that produces this podcast. Our two guests today are Matthew Kay and Jennifer or in this episode, Matthew Kay is a proud part of Philadelphia's public schools and a founding teacher at Science Leadership Academy. He's a graduate of West Chester University and holds a master's in educational leadership with a principal certificate from the University of Pennsylvania. Jennifer. Orr has been an elementary school classroom teacher for more than 2.5 decades, teaching kindergartners through fifth graders. She's the author of demystifying Discussion, how to teach and assess academic conversation skills K through five. And the, the author of we're going to keep on talking how to lead meaningful race conversations in the elementary classroom. She's a National Board certified teacher and a frequent mentor to new and Preser teachers. I hope you enjoyed this episode back to the show, 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. 00:01:11Edit 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. Here we go, Jennifer or, and Matthew K. Welcome to the Time for Teachers Podcast. Hello. So excited to have you both. I absolutely loved both of your books, Matt and, and Jen your your book with Matt. It has been incredible to think about and use as a resource in instructional coaching conversations for folks who are having discussion, particularly about like meaningful discussion, racial justice discussion, things happening in the world, discussions, books, discussions, social studies discussions, all the discussions. So I think one of the big things that I want to know from you and from all the guests we usually start with is this idea of freedom dreaming, really anchoring our conversation. 00:02:15Edit And so Doctor Bettina Love talks about this beautifully, as she says, dreams grounded in the critique of injustice. And so with that in mind, I'm wondering what are the dreams that you each hold for education, for teachers, the fields? That's a really big question. Um Having just had the chance to listen to Doctor Love recently um which was such a gift. Um I feel so inspired, so motivated um so called to action by her. And I, I think having been in this profession for so long now, this is my 26th year of classroom teaching. Um I, it feels small to dream that teachers be treated as professionals and be trusted as professionals. Um But I, I think that's where I am, sadly, just that idea that we can respect and know that teachers know what they're doing and trust that that's happening on a regular basis. Oh, that's a good one. I second that um I think uh I, my dream would be that kids are treated as thinking beings again. 00:03:28Edit Um And like as people who can make up their own minds about things. It's funny how um paradoxically all of the like anti indoctrination conversation is actually doing the, the, the indoctrinating. Like those are the folks who are kind of cutting off kids access to ideas because we feel like they can't make up their own minds. Um So we feel like we have to, you know, over guide and I think just kind of respecting kids as humans who can make up their mind, I think would be my dream. I love that so much. I was looking back at my initial reflections in 2020 when I read your first book that and I had written down the quote, there is no more effective form of intrinsic motivation than the opportunity to say something new. And I absolutely love that. And I love that this book, you all are gifting teachers with the tools and the ideas to be able to invite students to say something new and to think for themselves and create something new, which I think is, is absolutely part of my dream as well. 00:04:36Edit So I, I really appreciate that as like an anchor to this conversation and Jen to your point that treating teachers like professionals, right? We have to believe that we are, we are capable of making these decisions that are in the best interests of students. I recently had um on the podcast. It may air after this but um Diana and uh Diana hat and Paul mcavoy who talk about the political classroom and they talk about this idea of discussion. Um and, and just along those same lines of when we make decisions as educators about when to step in and when to step back from conversations, which you all talk about in the book quite a bit, they were talking about, it's fine to do whatever you need to do given all the context, but you have to have the student's best interests at heart, right? It's not about what makes me comfortable or uncomfortable or I wanna share my thoughts or not. It's like what is in the best interest of furthering students thinking for the themselves. And I, I think there's a lot of trust for teachers in that and there's a lot of both of your dreams in that. Um There's, there's so many different pieces to this work that I kind of want to name a few and then just see what grabs your attention and we could go down any of those paths. 00:05:41Edit But there's the mindset piece that I hear you all talking about a little bit um in, in your book, right? Like what's that kind of culture of student learning? And what's that um thing that we need to think about as teachers to be able to maybe shift to or, or kind of set the stage for doing this. There's also the pedagogical moves. So there's kind of the uh how do we literally format it? What are, what are the prompts we're offering students to discuss? Um how do we step in, step out? And then there's also like the the content kind of like the prompts that you so beautifully kind of create and, and very intentionally. So I like how you walk through that a lot in the book. And so in all of that kind of the mindset, the pedagogy ps the content, what do you feel like as your heart or the teacher should know about as they're kind of thinking through this stuff? What's important for you? Um I'm always gonna focus on the pedagogical move part. Um because I think um that respectfully, there's a lot of smart people tackling a lot of the other stuff. 00:06:46Edit Um She's trying to help teachers get their minds, right? Trying to help kids. She's trying to help teachers you know, get, you know, the to, to, to be in the right place. Um, uh, and my focus is always going to be like, all right. So you're in the room with 30 kids? What do you do? Like, that's always gonna be my move. Like that's always gonna be my focus because a lot of times those peop those people get ignored. Um, once teachers are at that stage, it's like now go discuss and it's like, well, I don't know, I don't know what that means. Um, and I think, you know, we're very good at being told that we need to discuss something, but sometimes the conversation ends once we're at the point of discussing. And so I'm always gonna be like, how do you make the best prompts? How do you recover from mistakes? How do you, um, those kind of things? So that's always gonna be, you know, with, with deep respect for everyone who's working on other aspects of this work. Um I kind of find it refreshing for myself to stay in my lane about like, what do you do in the classroom? 00:07:50Edit And that's, that's kind of like my thing. J are you in the same thing? I mean, all of those things are things, Matt and I have talked a lot about and spend a lot of time thinking about. Um, but I do think the part that makes, that makes the biggest difference in, in that trust piece whether it's trusting ourselves as professionals to handle these moments, whether it's trusting our students to engage in these moments. Um A big part of that comes out of us, knowing those pedagogical moves and being prepared um for, for whatever those moments might hold. Yeah, that's a, that's a beautiful way to put it, right? So we can't, we can't like trust that everything's gonna work out fine if we don't have the preparation behind it and to know literally, yeah, what does it look like in the moment? So a student says this go like, what, how do you respond? Right. That's it like, and I think the fear of not having that, you know, coaching, idea preparation, whatever is what often times in my coaching relationships with teachers scares teachers away from ever engaging in it in the first place. 00:08:54Edit It's like, well, what if that happens? Right? And so I'm curious to know how, I mean, you talk about a lot of stuff in the book, what are the big pieces that you would name for teachers in terms of um having like the, the strategies, the approach that are really core to every, you know, every discussion that you kind of go in with like, OK, I have this in my head. I've set it up this way, you know, these are the keys. Um If you were talking for example to a, a teacher who's like, I wanna do this and I'm nervous um that was one of the first things that, that I learned from that in working on this was that, that is who we're talking to. Um, and that's a really important thing for, for me to hang on to like I'm not trying to convince you to do this. If you are not sold on, on engaging in these conversations, I don't want you to do it. Um It, it's too, it can be too easily fraught to push someone into it. Um I, I think a big piece of it for me and maybe it's because I work with young Children, maybe it's a general thing is that I don't want to jump into anything too quickly. 00:10:02Edit Um I want to know that I have spent the time thinking about it whether that's because it's a picture book we're gonna read or a novel we're reading together, whether that's because it's a piece of history that we're discussing. Um the deeper my thought process is and the deeper my background knowledge is the better prepared I'm gonna be for the kinds of questions and ideas that will come out from my kids. A great nothing real to add. I think that, yeah, that makes absolute sense. Iii I think also it's really important to distinguish, generate like you, you're talking about like young kids, right? And, and that, and, and myself as well, like high school is our RJ M and so it's a really different space uh in some ways and there are also these kind of core concepts that I think thread through. So Jen, one of the things that I think you were talking about in the book maybe from a space of elementary was this idea of like layering and threading. I, I can't remember if that's what you call a threading. Right. Yeah. Matt actually is probably a better person to speak to that. Oh, ok. Awesome. Because I was thinking, but this resonates so much for high schoolers. 00:11:09Edit Ok. Yeah. Can you talk us through the idea and the concept of writing? And like, I think one of the things that you say is like, if every conversation can't be the conversation that you have about race in the classroom. Yeah. It's kind of like, um, with an, you want to take the pressure off the teachers to have the massive conversation that it changes the world or their community or the school or whatever, right? You wanna make sure that they're just trying to lead a good conversation that intrigues kids and challenges them and makes them think and respects them as thinkers and that's it, like, as far as the goal is concerned. Um, and I think what helps with that is if over a series of conversations, kids see a clear connection. Um and um that's, I think just good pedagogy regardless, but also when it comes to race conversations, I think it takes on another layer of, of importance. Um So it's like, I don't have to like, they don't have to un understand all that comes with privilege from one conversation. 00:12:15Edit They can see uh sequentially developed, understanding begin to emerge. Um And over the course of a unit and then between the units, like even connecting the units to um each other, I think that um that threading just literally tying the conversations together um is an important way to take the pressure off of ourselves to do it all in one go. Like, what if a kid's absent that day? Right. Do they get to do? Did they miss all of the anti racism for the whole year? Like what if they had a, you know, they left for a basketball game. So now, you know, they don't get to talk about race anymore. II I think taking the pressure off of any one moment or they don't like that book, it's like sometimes they don't like that book. And so if all of the conversations are couched in to kill a Mockingbird and they didn't like to kill a Mockingbird, then, you know, we're missing opportunities and I think, but making sure that we take the pressure off of any one conversation to do all the work is good. 00:13:16Edit Hi, this is Leah Popping and to share this episode's Freebie. It's a collection of videos based on Matt's concept, not light but fire. You can find it at the blog post for this episode www dot Lindsay, Beth lines.com/one 62. Check it out. Now, back to the show. I love that perspective too because it's about taking the pressure off. It's about what's helpful for teachers. I entered that conversation or that that point initially thinking well, threading is a way to also communicate to students, you know, that, that this is important and we're gonna kind of, but I love the layer of like this is, this is also really helpful for teachers to be able to not have that pressure or for the students to not have that pressure because I chose to like, you know, be with my basketball team that day. Like I think it does help, you know, I think um in addition uh to making it easier on the teachers, um it helps students if they are, let's say a kid a little bit quieter. Um and um sometimes the kids are quiet just because they're quiet and that's awesome. 00:14:22Edit They can be quiet. I have no problem with that, but sometimes the kids quiet because they're a little bit nervous about participating. Um which means if a conversation is again a one shot deal, then they miss their shot, right? But if you are having the conversation or different versions of it the next day and then the next day as you work your way through a book or as you read multiple um young adult books or children's books or as you like, if they, if there is a connected tissue, then they might have been nervous on Monday, but they might be less nervous on Wednesday and, and by next Monday they might be ready to put their hand up, you know, and I think that's another advantage to it. I love that. You said that because it, it makes me want to ask about the, the formats that a discussion can take, right? So for the quiet kid, I love that you're also saying the threading is kind of the support the scaffold for that student to enter the conversation and feel comfort and for the kid who is just quiet or who communicates best verbally or I mean, non verbally, right? I'm wondering, you, you all talked about this a little bit in the book um of those different formats that it could take um and the different supports that we could offer students particularly like I was thinking of the one example too of like the nuances of young kids because I, I didn't teach young kids. 00:15:37Edit So I was fascinated by your point about um listening patiently and like having the strategies to hold on to a thought for a young kid. And I also was like, I as an adult could use that, right? I think our high schoolers can also use a version of that, right? Because there's those kids who are talking so much because they don't want to forget what they have to say. So they're interrupting someone because they're so excited. So considering all the different styles and learning styles and um engagement styles of students in a room, what are those considerations? Like? What's the consideration for the kid who talks a lot? What's the consideration for the kid who's, you know, more a small group kid or, or a kid who is just a little hesitant to, to share verbally any cops on that? Oh, so many thoughts Lindsay. But I think one of the things that you just got at that is so huge is that while there are differences between having, engaging in these conversations with young kids and with high school kids, so much of it carries through. I mean, when Matt's first book came out in 2018 but not light a fire was out. I read it and it was such a support for me, even though in 2018 I was teaching third graders, maybe, um, maybe for kindergartners. 00:16:45Edit I mean, definitely not older kids. Um, but the kinds of strategies that Matt talked about were things that I could kind of take on too because it, we as teachers are teachers across the ages and kids are kids. And so while there are certain things we have to think carefully about, there's a lot that carries through, um, when it comes to kind of the different kinds of kids in a group, I, I think there's some really easy things to keep in mind. One of which is giving kids options at different times to engage in conversations in different group sizes. So having kids turn and talk with one partner, having kids turned in a small group, having kids talk in the whole class. There's benefits and drawbacks to each kind of group size. But one of the benefits is that different kids get their voices heard or get the chance to speak up or feel more comfortable speaking up um in, in different groups. I'm also curious, I, I'm envisioning, you know, a a leader coming in to see your classes and thinking about all the dynamics of leader observation, leader, support or lack of support. 00:17:49Edit Um I'm curious to know, I think there's a lot of leaders who listen to this podcast, not just teachers. And so for leaders, how can leaders best support teachers who are doing this work? Like what's the, what, what's kind of your dream, whether whether you're experiencing it now or not? Like I, I think it would be really cool to uh tell leaders how they can either advocate support or um observe in a way that's actually really helpful and um supportive when we're doing this work. I mean, I have an excellent administrator who is very supportive. Um And so I think being encouraging is something that is sounds super simple and some people find ways to make that really complicated, like, like saying, thank you. That's another thing that admin like some people like the teacher did something and they didn't have to. So say thank you, like, you would think that that's a, like a, a some people make that way harder than, than it should be. 00:18:51Edit Um But I think beyond the encouraging, there's also um having consistent observation and clear structures. Um um And what I mean by that is like, and I know, look, admins have way too much on their plate. And so I'm not like there's a reason that most admin who's worth any salt would definitely want be love to spend all of their time in classrooms, observing teachers and doing other. So and the reason they're not is not because they're choosing not to. So this actually might even go a level above admins to be honest. Um A lot of this conversation is if you want to support admins, supporting teachers, you have to free up admins so that they can support teachers. Um um because, you know, if you're only being seen twice a year, um you know, or, you know, it's hard for a teacher to feel as supported. Um But also I understand why they can only be seen once or twice a year from someone from the administration team because they're busy, they're doing all sorts of other things. 00:20:01Edit Um But absent that I think setting up peer structures, um common planning time and those kind of things so that if the admin can't, you know, you know, it's not just the admin is doing the observations, the colleagues are doing observations and folks, you know, and they're given time to unpack what they see. Um um But I think just having consistency around that somehow we've got to find a way for teachers to have consistent observations with clear structures. I think that's the part that looks like so many di different things, but there has to be a consistency there. Um um That is often not the case. It makes me think of your threading idea, right? Of just like it can't be the one time that you come in. Like the whole idea is like we're learning and growing. So an admin who comes in in October and then comes back in November is like, oh wow, I can see the, I see that you've gotten better with this thing. Well, here's the thing that also this, this might be a little awkward to say, but like like average developing and good teachers need love too. 00:21:09Edit Like if that makes sense, like a lot of times the folks, the the the teachers who get as much uh to get consistent eyes on their practice are the teachers who are in a moment where they're struggling big time. Like those are the people who get teacher coaches, those are the people who have admins constantly. Those are the people who have all these structures set up to support them. But folks who are like their classroom is not burning down like they're like, cool, keep with the not burning down and it, it's, it's great and your test score, you know what I mean? Your test scores are fine. You're not always sending kiss at office, you know, like you're, um, and I feel like sometimes, you know, the average developing teacher of which we are all that person, like where we're like, we're just trying to get better. Um, they need, you know, they, they also need consistency and the teachers who are like nailing it like the Jens and Mats of the world also need, you know what I mean? Like we have a certain level of confidence and we're veterans at this and stuff like that, but I benefit, you know, I was just at dinner with Jen and I was picking ideas around just say, oh, I could do this like it's cool for us. 00:22:20Edit We benefit from having conversations about what we do and that happens. So rare, structurally with veteran teachers, they're like, you're, you know, you're not just not burning down, you're doing well. So godspeed like, like, and we are kind of left out of the conversation about, you know, how to get better. So, yeah, I think we, we find our own ways to do it because it is, we find our own way. It's not a systemic structural thing happening for us. I think that's a really good point. I would also add in thinking about how leaders can support in this work. I'm gonna totally support everything. Matt just said and add on the idea that in some places, at least doing this work can be risky. And so the more the leaders know what's happening in those classrooms and understand why it's happening and can have those teachers backs. That's gonna be huge. Matt and I are both lucky to be in places where that's not really a problem. Um, but that is not true for many, many teachers and to add off of what Jen said, um um, also not putting our admins in places where having our, where we're having our back is, is, is, is, is it isn't a fair thing to ask. 00:23:36Edit Like, like we, the communication has to go both ways. Hey, Edmund, I'm doing this, you know, this is what's going on, this is what might happen is, do I have any spots that I'm missing things? Do I have anything? I'm gonna need your, like, we have to stop surprising Edmunds too. Um I, that I've had that uncomfortable conversation with my boss a couple of times when I was younger and did that kind of stuff. It was kind of like, and he's like, oh, so I got your back but don't ever do that again. Like, don't ever like you need to, I'm getting parent like you knew parents was about to email me because you're reading that book, like you trying to read like if, if you're trying to read fun home with ninth graders. I need to know about it. Like you're trying to read, like, like you knew better than that. Like, you need to, like, we need to talk this through so we can figure out. And I think, and I, that landed with me, it said don't put me in a position where I have to cover for you and I'll know what I'm talking about because I don't help either one of us. So, um, yeah, that's a really good point. 00:24:40Edit I had, I have never heard someone actually articulate that end of it. That is beautiful. I'm so glad you said that I got fussed at. So I it got clear. He said, don't, don't do that to me again. Well, if we're going to ask our admin to have our backs, then the slightest thing we can do is make sure that they are not blindsided by it. They are ready, they are prepared. I think there, there are, I think this is really a point that you bring about in terms of like, um, I think j you use the word risk and, and just this idea of like parent phone calls or, and like all the things right that are happening in people's heads. I have a lot of thoughts about that, right? Like who's, whose family voices occupy our heads in the first is number one. So that's problematic, right? Who we're planning for on that. But I also think, you know, this idea of challenges is a big one, particularly for leaders who might want to kind of nurture and foster this in their teachers or teachers who are like, really excited about this. Um or the teachers who are like, you know, I'm, I'm um I'm ready and I kind of on the fence. I haven't started yet, but I'm, I'm ready to, to kind of get that, which is your target audience. I think, you know, what, what is the biggest challenge that you've had as educators or you've heard other educators share with you maybe as a result of the book and, and how have you helped like, work through it or help them work through it? 00:25:56Edit I haven't encountered, oh, no, go, go, go. I think just owning my privileged teaching where I teach, like I haven't faced as many, you know, issues from like, you know, racist parents and stuff like that. That's, that's not necessarily the demographic that I'm working with. Um um you know, I had the, the occasional blip but that's not a consistent, you know, thing. So I was gonna own that like, I have, you know, I, I have my ideas but that's not my lived experience. But um I think we don't talk as much as we probably should about student misbehavior. Like I think sometimes during conversations because a lot of times kids are coming from classrooms that are not that dialogic. And so it feels to them, like, free time. Like, they don't have an idea, they don't have the conceptual, like we are still working, we're just working through talking. They're like, we're just talking so I can do whatever I want. And I think that's part of what scares a lot of teachers away from having conversations because when, when you're doing other, you know, other activities, um, e everyone must be writing, everyone's filling out this sheet. 00:27:00Edit Everyone is re, you know what I mean? But when you're having a discussion sometimes, um, frankly, a lot of the biggest things and I don't, we didn't even write about this to be honest, but it's kids acting up. Um, and I think that in, in, in, in high school it's something I've seen, um, how well being dialogic has to connect with someone's basic classroom management, toolkit. Um, it's, it's, it's a, it's actually a really big issue and a lot of times, um, it's one thing that I'm constantly reminded of every year when I'm a student teacher because I have control of my classroom. Like I'm the alpha of my classroom. I do my, like I'm old school with many aspects of my, like, it's mine, y'all are just passing through. That's how I operate. Um, which means I can have all these open loose conversations because with the snap, I feel like I can, like, bring them back and bring like there's no, you know, I don't feel like I'm wrestling because I'm the alpha in the classroom. 00:28:04Edit But sometimes, um, student teachers come into the room and they're on some, like, I get student teachers from Penn and some other place and they're getting like this super progressive, like, like student voice centered, you know, and so they come in and they're like having trouble saying, like, stop talking, like, they have trouble with that. They're like, guys, this guy, they make a lot of, and they're, and I think conversations about leading class discussions have to also include discipline and structures of discipline and like, and having the confidence to assert yourself in the space. Um, and I think that's, most of my problems have been, like, internal, like, around that. Um, and, and I don't, it's not as much of a problem for me anymore. Uh, but seeing young teachers, I see, um, or not young, uh, uh, new, new teachers. It's, it's like that is a big and I think it's probably one of the biggest reasons why teachers don't. 00:29:04Edit They're like, once I start having conversations they, they start acting up and so I don't wanna do that anymore. Yeah, I think that's true at all levels too. Um, although if we did a better job of it earlier, it probably wouldn't be as big a problem by the time they get to you Matt. But I don't know, kids are gonna do it ma, to participate in class conversations more frequently. Um, I think another piece of that same problem. And this, I see more by upper elementary is that when conversations get difficult or uncomfortable, um, kids start to get goofy as a way of dealing with their discomfort. And so similarly, you, as the teacher have to be prepared both to address that in the moment, but also to support those kids in their discomfort because they're not doing it to be difficult, they're doing it because they don't know how to function in that in that moment. Um And so how do you help them while also making sure that that doesn't completely throw the conversation off the rails? I love that. You both just named that I am fascinated by that. So I think, yeah, one just thought for listeners who are like, you know, what if I do have those challenges? 00:30:10Edit One uh I think co creating class agreements is always really helpful for me. So just to be able to have that shared accountability is something I think that you, you guys talk about in the book, just like with this idea of um we are a community, these are community agreements, we are communally agreeing to them. So, you know, me being able to say like we need to stop talking is because we said we would stop talking when one person is talking, right? And so to be able to anchor in that I think is important and it also love this idea of um this idea of like this discomfort and being in discomfort and how do we exist in discomfort as this thing? We need to help students experience to grow. And so I think it's intrinsic to this, to conversations about race. So that what we're talking about today is your book. It's I think also just, you know, this could be extrapolated into many spaces and many growth spaces in education is a place where growth spaces are happening all the time. I think about so many adults who struggle and who make a joke to kind of avoid the conversation, right? Who, who are avoiding in some way where that behavior shows up and you're like this is happening in this second grade class D what is going on like that? 00:31:15Edit We haven't figured it out as adults. So I think that's a huge, huge area of practice and and just kind of like acknowledgment for teachers. But also I'm thinking about leaders who are dealing with staff members who may be feeling the same way about conversations about race or current events or things that are connected to race, right? Like in teacher spaces, like in the the hallway or in the teacher lounge or you know, whatever the space is, I think there's, there's so much um that educators at all levels can do to just address it, bring it up and, and have people feeling like it's good to be in discomfort. It's not, that's where we go my, my husband is a college professor and his, like, go to phrase with his students is I want you to be uncomfortable but not frozen because that's where we learn. Like, if you're too uncomfortable it's over. But if you're too comfortable then you're not growing. I think I wrote down the quote from this latest book. I think Matt, you had written it at your Children are gonna be loved, listened to and developmentally appropriately challenged. It's like, yep, that's, that's it. 00:32:19Edit Right. That's the combo. So in closing, I'm thinking about, you know, the educator who's listening to this, getting ready to maybe enter their school day or prep the lesson for tomorrow. What is like one thing that they could do tomorrow or in the next 24 hours that might be a nice, like starting point or, or refining point to something um, that they could do maybe building on something they already do as typical teacher practice or entering the space fresh if they are in. No, that's fine if they're entering the space fresh. I think the answer is a little bit different. Um My thing would be to find a consistent, um, community building activity that matches their personality and matches the, that meets the kids where they are. Um, and something that they can commit to. Um, like for me, it's like good news, Mondays. We do. We're rocking with that every Monday. It's gotten to the, I'm trying to add journal Tuesdays and I always kind of fall off. 00:33:27Edit I have some classes, I'm, but, but I've decided I'm fighting that fight. Like this is a fight, I'm fighting. I will continue to do that. And, you know, SSR Friday and I mean, and, and, and I'm trying to like, and, um, um, I, I think it's the things that you can when things get crazy and you have all these things to do and it's State Testing Day and it's this, that this, that and there's an assembly and all the things that happen are what, what is the thing that you are going to? I'm even going to sacrifice something else for this. We will do this and I think having one is better than having 10. Um And I think as far as community building, so I think if you're starting off, it would be that and if you're in the middle of a year or something like that, it would be um uh testing something like that while being fair to yourself, knowing that it's the middle of the year, there are systems, the kids are used for something else and not overanalyzing how well it worked because I'm, there's a couple of things like I'm trying out a new way of doing SSR, but I told the kids openly as I'm trying to decide this is about next year for me. 00:34:37Edit You are guinea pigs right now. This is about next year for me. Um but I'm trying to see. I'm testing out some structures um to see if it works. But I think specifically with community building and getting to know your kids or any of that stuff that you see Jen or I wrote about with safe space. Like, hopefully I made it clear that there's nothing special about good news or high grade compliments or, or, or the burning five minutes. Like those are things that, you know, half of them I took from Zach Chase, half of them I took myself and it, it's one of those, those activities aren't special. It's the committing to it every week that's special. And so whatever it is that you do, um, find that thing, um, that would be my biggest. And so the teach, so the kids know you for that thing that in the, like you're known for in this class we gonna do this. Um, and they can depend on it. I think that's the hard part with all of those, like crunchy granola, touchy, feely, emotion stuff is that we don't stick with it. 00:35:39Edit Like, but there's gotta be like something that's kind of like we, we're going to do it every Monday. Yeah, I would definitely second that because I don't care what the conversations you're having are, they don't happen. Well, without that, you could be discussing multiplication strategies and you're not gonna have good classroom conversations unless you have that classroom community. Um, and I think Matt hit on the hardest part of that for many teachers is that you have to carve out the time for it and we all feel crunched on time. And so we feel like, but I don't have time for that yet. You don't have time to not do it. Like not doing it costs you in the long run. But that's a really hard thing to begin to truly understand. Um, but that, yeah, that whatever it takes to ensure that you have a really strong solid classroom community because conversation about anything doesn't work without it. I love those. Those are excellent. I think as a final question, I'm just curious to know where you would want folks to follow up with you if they want to kind of follow you on social media, I'll link to the book in the show notes. Um Other places that you would want to connect with people, all of my socials are some version of Matt RK. 00:36:46Edit So if you look it up, you'll see um and uh uh website, not light.com. Um So check that out. Pick me up. Yeah, Matt and I have both been around long enough to just have our names. So everywhere for me is Gen or um including Gen or.com. Um Yeah, I think it's a sign of how old we are. I'm in the same boat, so we're all, we're all there. Awesome. Thank you both. So, so much. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you today. Thanks Lindsay. Thanks for the invite. 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. 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. 00:37:58Edit 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, we tackle adaptive challenges, which often impede systems transformation and change leadership. Specifically, I’ll explain how you can use a diagnostic tool to identify what exactly is going on and how to get unstuck and finally move towards transformation.
Why are we talking about this? Adaptive leadership scholars, Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky (2009) write, “Adaptive challenges are typically grounded in the complexity of values, beliefs, and loyalties rather than technical complexity and stir up intense emotions rather than dispassionate analysis.” In summary, a typical workshop or other means of sharing information is not going to work. There’s something deeper that’s resisting the change, and we have to unearth that before transformational change can happen. However, it is quite difficult to get everyone on your staff or in a classroom to share where the resistance is really coming from. It’s a struggle—even for the individuals that hold these values, beliefs, and loyalties—to diagnose the challenge. So, how do we do it? For today’s episode, our starting point is a school discussion. Whether it’s a challenge within the staff (start by paying attention to a discussion in a staff meeting) or a classroom (observe students’ talking), you can follow this list of suggested steps. Step 1: Determine which type of discourse is present.
Step 2: Invite imagination and possibilities. Invite teachers/stakeholders to tell you what they wish their classrooms/schools were like. (Often, the change we’re trying to lead is a way to get to that outcome. People just need space to share and be valued) What does it actually look like for you? Paint a clear picture of your dream. Co-create the dream. Make this the focal point. Root it in shared values. Step 3: Create disequilibrium. (Name the avoidance.) Avoidance is a hallmark of adaptive challenges. Often, we’re avoiding conversations about the things that matter. We like to be comfortable! This could look like diverting attention (e.g., making a joke or making it personal to deflect from the real issue) or displacing responsibility (e.g., “That’s the family’s responsibility, not ours.”) Mezirow (1990) says adults need a disorienting dilemma to jumpstart transformative learning—learning that requires a paradigm shift and asks us to critically examine our assumptions rather than just learn a new skill. Present information that makes participants just uncomfortable enough to realize, “the way I’ve been thinking about this isn’t working anymore.” This will help them try on other ways of thinking, which is most effective within group discussions! (The dialogue is both a tool for diagnosis and for change, as. Dr. Cherie Bridges Patrick has told us before.) Step 4: Practice discourse. Engage as a participant. Encourage all school stakeholders to do the same and notice aspects of the experience (what skills are you using, what is avoided, what feels good, what doesn’t feel good). Make space for reflection individually and as a group (e.g., staff, class). You can use these reflections to co-create community discussion agreements or adapt them if you’ve already created these. Step 5: Build your skills.
These come from Dr. Cherie Bridges Patrick’s research, which she talks about in depth in this previous episode of the podcast. Final Tip Pick one meeting or class to observe this week. Take notes using the Diagnosing Adaptive Challenges Workbook linked below. To help you identify adaptive challenges in your school, I’m sharing my Diagnosing Adaptive Challenges Workbook with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 161 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 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 nerding out about core curriculum of students. I made this show for you. Here we go. Welcome to episode 161 of the time for leadership podcast. Today, we're tackling adaptive challenges. So, in this mini series on systems transformation, we're really looking at what impedes that transformation and change leadership. And specifically in this episode, I'll explain how you can use a diagnostic tool to identify what exactly is going on and how to get unstuck and finally move towards that transformation you've been working towards. 00:01:07 All right. So let's dive in, let's talk about diagnosing adaptive challenges in school discussions where to look for those, what tool you can use. And before we get to the step by step process. I wouldn't just situate this conversation in adaptive leadership scholarship. So Heitz Grass and Linskey, who I referenced all the time, write a quote that I share all the time. And here it is quote, adaptive challenges are typically grounded in the complexity of values, beliefs and loyalties rather than technical complexity and stir up intense emotions rather than dispassionate analysis. So in summary, a typical workshop or other means of sharing information is just not going to work. You can't just talk your way out of RPD your way out of an adaptive challenge that's been lasting a very long time. There's something deeper that's resisting that change. We have to unearth that before the transformational change can happen, but it's really quite difficult to get everyone on your staff or in a classroom to just share honestly where that resistance is really coming from. I mean, it's a struggle even for those individuals to even know what that is, right? 00:02:13 What are the values that they hold the beliefs or loyalties that are holding them back from this change? Diagnosing that is something that individuals probably have a hard time doing within themselves, let alone you doing it as a leader for everyone in a space. So it can be challenging. There are multiple ways to go about this for today's episode. We're talking about really focusing on a school discussion. Now, this could be uh if you have a challenge with the staff or an adaptive challenge that you're working through and trying to lead change around with the staff. You might start by paying attention to a discussion in a staff meeting or maybe it's a team within your staff. So a grade team, a department team, you might want to just kind of pop into one of those meetings and observe what's going on there. And that can be your starting point if you are trying to support a teacher who was having a really tough time in with a particular class or a particular grade of students. Um as they come into that class, you might just want to observe those students talking either in a formal class discussion or just as the class is pro out of control. 00:03:16 And we were just kind of talking about nothing related to life and that talking right or talking about the challenge if you can do it, that is a really good opportunity to observe, reflect not what's going on. And then you can really have the diagnostic criteria to move forward and actually help make the change. So think about which option or which group you would want to pay attention to and go ahead and think about an opportunity where you can jump into that meeting, observe what you can and follow these steps. So here we go. Number one, as you listen or as you are engaging, I'm trying not to use a list language. Uh as you're engaging and observing what's happening in this conversation, I'd like you to think about which type of discourse is present. I'm gonna give you four options. Now, this comes originally from one Equis work, Doctor Chie Bs Patrick, and I have made this into a small adaptation for our work and our publication on adaptive leadership specifically talking about leading racial justice initiatives and, and work in communities. 00:04:29 So as we think about these discourse types, I want you to think about whatever team you have seen operate, whether that's a class based team full of students or again like a a whole staff, you can though also think about interpersonal conversations in your family in your friend groups just to kind of internalize these discourse types because I know just hearing this um or reading about it later on the blog post is going to not be quite the same as as fully experiencing it. Now, I will say there's a youtube video that I will link to the bottom of this blog post that you can actually see these four quadrants as a visual and I walk you through them there. So if that's something you're looking for, feel free to grab that link, that's gonna be again at the blog post for this episode, Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one, 61. OK. Here are the four types of discourses. One polarizing. I think we see this a lot. We see this a lot in the political atmosphere of the United States, particularly during presidential election years. 00:05:35 But really all the time. So polarizing discourse, when we're talking about this type of discourse, we are talking about being rooted in our positions, being very defensive. We are probably a little uncomfortable, right? It's it's uncomfortable to like be in that space. We're in a bit of disequilibrium. But what we're doing is we're not looking for change, we're really just reinforcing those past patterns, right? So these ways of being in a group or at a staff culture level or a class culture level, right? Those really are just standing in the way of change. They're just reinforcing. This is the way we do things and we just kind of repeat that we reinforce this way of being. Now, the next piece is silencing and denying. So in this space, we really have a willful avoidance, right? We are not happy to be uncomfortable. We're going to preserve that comfort, we're going to avoid that risk at all costs. We don't want um really to build any capacity because we don't want change, right? 00:06:44 We're perfectly fine with the way things are again reinforcing past patterns and in contrast to polarizing discourse really sitting in that equilibrium. Now, the next piece is intellectualizing this course, I see this a lot in kind of white liberal conversations. So um we might have some insights, some thinking about imagination and possibility. But what we're really seeing here is that it's very didactic. We are in the head, not the heart, so to speak. So we are talking about things, academic resources or research or a podcast I listened to and here's this idea and we're ignoring the root cause we're ignoring the emotion that makes us human and we're not connecting the head to the heart. We're not really getting into the root cause the source of where all of this is coming from. Um Sometimes this particular type of discourse or discourses in this kind of quadrant reveal historic patterns of dominance, right? And, and they, they might um invite that imaginative possibility for change, right? 00:07:50 They might um offer a limited set of capacity building. But at the core, we are divorced from emotion and that whole list that invites us to experience enough of this equilibrium that we move into the fourth quadrant, which is what we really want. And that's generative mobilizing discourse. So this is where we see racial justice, intersectional justice. This is where we see engagement of the head and the heart. This is where we really mobilize folks to grapple with um any sort of discomfort and disequilibrium, we lean into that and it comes with that imagination and possibility. So, in contrast to the polarizing discourse, where we are feeling that disequilibrium, we're not doing what they're doing in the polarizing discourse, which is reinforcing the past patterns we're looking forward in inviting change. So we have these four types of discourse and I'm sure that as you're listening, you're like, oh, yep, I can think of a time where I was a part of or I was a witness to a discourse that resembled, you know, any one of these, right? 00:08:52 So, again, polarizing, silencing and denying, intellectualizing, generative mobilizing. These are the four, ideally, we want to have generative mobilizing, but polarizing, silencing and denying and intellectualizing are all too common. So what we want to do next, I'm going to go ahead and assume based on what I've heard from folks uh in schools, both thinking about students and thinking about staff um at all levels of, of this kind of school districts spectrum ecosystem, polarizing and silencing and denying quadrants are the most common. This is not to say that the other two are not but polarizing and silencing and denying are the ones that often come up when I present at conferences. When I present in P DS, when I'm just asking folks to individually think about this, these are the two. So I'm gonna kind of go in that direction but feel free to use any of these strategies um to support an intellectualizing discourse as well to try to get it degenerative mobilizing. So, polarizing again, when we're thinking about this, we're thinking about um the fact that we are not inviting imagination and possibilities, right? 00:09:59 When we're in polarizing, also silencing and denying is also on the left hand side of this quadrant So if you can imagine kind of a mathematical graph in your head, I believe that uh quadrant one is the top left. So that's you're polarizing. And then we go counterclockwise around where generative mobilizing is kind of our point in quadrant four in the top, right. So, polarizing and silencing and denying are on the left hand side of this, which means that they are on the opposite side from inviting imagination and possibility. So what's the first step we're gonna invite imagination and possibility. So how do we do this? We can invite teachers or stakeholders of any kind, right? If we're talking about students, whoever it is families to tell you what they wish, their classroom or school experience was like often the change that we might be trying to lead or the aha moment we're hoping folks have is a way that ultimately gets them, that outcome that they want that dream, that wish can come true if we can do these things. Um Here's what we're trying to kind of talk about and engage with, right? 00:11:01 And that resistance we're coming up against and we have to work through that to be able to get there, right. So oftentimes people just need that space to share and be valued, right? They just need to tell you their wish and their wish probably if they're working at the same school as either an educator like you, right? They probably have that deep down value set and that deep down wish and hope for the school or class experience is going to be the same right students I imagine are going to want much of the same things if we dig down deep into the core of what we truly want and what the real wish is. Right. It's probably I'm thinking of like Glasser's needs. So it's probably a sense of, you know, belonging or autonomy or enjoyment or survival, right? These, these core pieces of just what every human wants. So again, dig down deep, invite that wish and people can dream up the wish, right? However they want, if they're like, it looks like pizza every day for lunch. Ok. Great. Awesome. And like, what is that? That's joy for you. OK, cool. So you can kind of facilitate a little bit. 00:12:04 Um But what does it actually look like for you? I think if you're trying to lead a specific initiative or you have a thing that you're, you're trying to like get folks to quote unquote, buy into, I do think the best way to address a lack of buying is co creation, right? So it's not actually buying into something that you create, but it's co creating with everyone like core the dream. Um Ultimately, but first, if you have a particular vision, share it and paint a clear picture of what the dream is because a lot of times that resistance um that unwillingness to engage that avoidance, the silencing, denying anything is even happening, right? That can come from just confusion about what we're even talking about. So get real clear on, here's what we're talking about. Here's what I'd like to talk about. Here's the dream, we get to engage with this kind of content, right? And here's the why so co create the dream ultimately make that the focal point root it in our shared values, which I imagine are going to be very similar. Um If you don't have shared values already, you kind of kind of create them from the ground up uh as you have this conversation. 00:13:06 Now, step three is going to be to create that disequilibrium. Remember the silencing and denying the avoidance super common. And so in order to get to generative mobilizing discourse, we don't just create the imagination, a possibility, sense of things, we also have to create the disequilibrium. So avoidance, which is very popular. Hallmark of adaptive challenges is super common. Often we're avoiding conversations about the things that really matter because we like to be comfortable. And so what it could look like in practice is either diverting attention. So this might mean a topic is brought up that we're uncomfortable with, right? And we want to preserve that comfort. So we're just gonna make a joke or we're gonna make it personal so that it's now about, oh, you've attacked me versus deflecting or in order to deflect from the real issue, right? Versus like, actually we're gonna stick with this issue and I'm gonna deal with my discomfort. We also could have it look like displacing responsibility. So there's a lot of times in and I talked about this before on the podcast, there's a lot of times in strategic planning meetings or something where we're getting at the root cause of something. 00:14:16 And we're really trying to dig deep. Often a displacing responsibility phrase will be something like that's the family's responsibility. That's not mine, right? Or that's not ours as the school. So this idea of like we can't do anything about this. We're gonna just like put that responsibility on someone else is a popular category of things that is going to highlight for you as the observer of this discourse that avoidance is happening, that we're moving into that silencing and denying quadrant. So what do we do then when we see this happen? So if folks are like, I'm cool with the comfort, I'm good. I don't want to rock the boat. Uh who is a um leadership scholar says that actually, we need a disorienting dilemma and that's gonna jump start this transformative learning, which is a little bit different from like a technical learning learning, a new skill. For example, in that it requires a paradigm shift. It really asks us to critically examine our assumptions which is going to be a little more uncomfortable than learning. 00:15:23 You know, this this new formula for math or something, right? So presenting information that makes folks just uncomfortable enough to realize. Whoa the way I have been thinking about this, the current paradigm I'm operating under, it's just not working, it's clearly not working. The data does not support this. So consider what sort of data sets or information you might be able to share with a group that's like, hey, heads up, this is not working something new needs to happen. And what enables what this enables them to do is really just trying on other ways of thinking. And the research has shown that this is actually most effective within group discussions. So being in that group space is super cool because not only are we using dialogue as a tool to diagnose what's going on. But Doctor Cherie Bridges, Patrick has talked about this on the podcast before. It's also used as a tool for change and working through some of this stuff, right? So we diagnose it in a in a discourse in a dialogue, right? We diagnose what's going on and then we work on it through dialogue. We try on those different ways of thinking because folks around us will present different ways of thinking than what we have internally in our heads. 00:16:30 We need to get out of our own heads to practice all that stuff. So on an ongoing basis, I don't think there is really an end point to any of this. But I think the four and five are really, how do we continue this work? One is to practice engaging in discourse, engage as the participants facilitate when and where you can but encourage all school stakeholders to do the same and notice aspects of the experience. For example, what skills did you use in that discussion? Are there certain like verbal moves that you need? Um what is avoided? What is someone like really uncomfortable with? And you notice a displacement of responsibility or a joke was made? What feels really good to you when someone you know, acknowledges what you said and repeats it back, like it doesn't feel so good. Uh This person just kind of talked right over you or didn't let you have the space to share or just dismiss what you said without any sort of um explanation, right? Like what are those things? Just kind of notice the experiences that you're having and what all encouraged all the other folks to do the same and then make space for reflection individually, but also as a group. 00:17:35 So as a staff or a class of students, you can use these reflections to then core discussion agreements if you don't have them already or if you've already created these at the start of the year, for example, and you want to adapt them based on what's coming up in terms of our noticing as we engage in, in discussion. Awesome. And I will say I said this before, but I do think discussion of any kind discussion in any group. For example, discussion with friend groups in the cafeteria on the playground, discussion with families at dinner time. Totally relevant. Those are discussions that is discourse, you can practice there, you can encourage students and families to practice there. It doesn't need to be a formally you know, structured facilitated event. Now, step five is similar in that practice and in that noticing and reflecting you're going to be engaging with certain skills and noticing that you might want to grow certain skills some more than where they're currently at. 00:18:39 So the skills, the four skills or four kind of features of high quality generative mobilizing discourse that Doctor Cherie Bridges Patrick found in her research, she talked about them before on the podcast, I'll link in the blog post to a previous episode where she goes in depth here. But these are the things that you want to be practicing and just be aware of. So one is kind of a readiness and willingness to do the thing, right? So in those moments of I can opt out of this conversation, it's happening or I'm going to kind of lean in and and really do my best to be willing to engage even though it's uncomfortable, right? That is is key number one, right? I have to do the the active like stepping forward and um stepping forward might be able to English, sorry, uh being willing to uh engage, right? And and lean into that. Now, the next piece is vulnerability. This is similar, there's a element of vulnerability. I think that goes with your willingness to have a conversation. But I also think vulnerability in what you share in how you show up in how you respond with emotion to other folks who are sharing in a discussion or dialogue that's vulnerable, right? 00:19:56 That's being vulnerable, particularly in the realm of school where you are a leader interacting with staff, right? There is a power dynamic there. If you are an educator interacting with students or families, there are power dynamics there. When we think about teachers in a classroom with students, right? We often talk about not over sharing, right? I do think there's a degree of vulnerability that is appropriate as a human to foster those human connections without being unprofessional, right? The next piece after vulnerability is adaptability, we have to be able to be thrown a curveball and and still swing the bat, right? So we have to be able to adapt and just kind of be on our toes. That is life, right? That is a life skill that we want to constantly practice and get better at. So as we engage in these, there are going to be folks who say things in discussion that are kind of out of left field, so to speak, there are going to be moments where you are feeling an influx of emotion and you have to figure out what the next step is. 00:21:02 Do I take a breath? Do I respond? Do I leave the room because it's overwhelming, right? Like what is going to help me, what is going to be adaptive? Um And what is going to help me stay committed to this journey for the long haul? That is adaptive, right? So readiness, millions vulnerability adaptability. The fourth one is to really work on your skills of developing, contributing to as a participant, but also as a facilitator, a positive encouraging liberating environment for dialogue. So if we don't have those co created agreements, if we don't have the uh physical space set up, so everyone can be literally uh acknowledged, seen, heard, whatever, whatever it is. However, we're acknowledging folks in that space like we're not creating an environment where we can have liberated dialogue. We need to think about all of these things. We need to think about. What's the moment you step in as a facilitator. What's the moment you step back and let folks resolve things for themselves? 00:22:07 Um What are those agreements? How do we hold folks accountable once we've created the agreements, these all take practice and they all take a concerted effort and and real focus on the fact that you're approving these skills specifically. So as a final call to action, I suppose I want you to pick one meeting or one flash to observe the speed, take notes, you can use the diagnosing adaptive challenges workbook links below. Uh When I say links below, I mean in the blog post below. Uh So that's Lindsay, Beth lines.com/blog/one 161, I'll link it in there. There are a bunch of kind of things to observe or check out as you're engaging in these meetings. Eventually, you might be able to or depending on the stakeholders, you might be able to just hand a paper over to folks in the meeting and say, hey, what did we notice? Did we notice any of these things? And you can have them individually reflect? Um You can reflect on your own, but I'd love for you to identify one place where this happens. Do the observation, learn what you can and then move forward by naming what you see, inviting imagination and possibilities, creating this equilibrium, encouraging ongoing practice of discourse and building your own skills. 00:23:26 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 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 student voice tools like this one:
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In this episode, we’re continuing to talk about transforming the systems that uphold inequity in our schools. Specifically in this episode, we’re addressing classroom, school, and district grading policies.
Why? A-F, 0-100 grades work for a small number of students. Meta studies show that kids who get high grades are the ones that know how to do school, and these are often students who have inequitable access to that information. (Joy Nolan in a Competency Collaborative presentation). Averages penalize students who enter the class without already knowing the content and skills. A student who is struggling with a skill in the first month of school has a grade from when they were first practicing the skill count equally with a grade they received in the last month of the school year? That’s nuts when you think about it. 0-100 scales seem to me to be based on the percentage of recall-based questions a student gets right or wrong on a test. We know from the research that tests are inequitable and not super effective at measuring transferable skills. Project-based assessments are much better, as students in PBL classrooms understand the content on a deeper level, retain content longer, and still perform as well or better on high-stakes tests than students in traditional settings (BIE research summary). What? Step 1: Discuss the why with staff Share the research. Invite questions and concerns. Interrogate deficit language or harmful beliefs that arise in the discussion. Bring it back to equity, and ground it in your shared community values. Step 2: Discuss the why with families and students This is new for students and families too! Have conversations with families and students about the new practice, what it is and is not, and why you are making the shift. Use the same key ideas as listed in Step 1 above. Step 3: Learn from those who’ve done it Competency Collaborative is an organization in NYC. They are an excellent resource for relevant research, examples, and stories of equitable grading shifts across many schools. Check them out! The Crescendo Ed Group developed guidelines that emerged from their research, which includes:
Ashley, a teacher who worked with Competency Collaborative, discusses her shift to competency-based teaching and assessment in this video (from 34:41 to 37:00). Step 4: Co-create an equitable grading policy Create a policy that works for your community in partnership with students, families, and educators. Consider the why when making decisions, and be sure to leave with the structures that will need to be put in place to support implementation of the new policy. Step 5: Implement with solid systems for feedback and revision Specific Skill-Based Rubrics: Embed specificity and feedback into the rubric with which you assess all of your students’ work. For more details, check out the previous episode) Resource Banks: When students receive feedback that they have not yet met the standard, give them a next step. Share with students: instructional videos or texts as well as activities or mini projects so they can improve specific skills. Workshop or “Upgrade” Days: Revision or feedback cycles are important and take the place of typical “grade inflation” practices such as homework or completion grades. Get Metacognitive: As you implement or after a specific amount of time, gather feedback from stakeholders on your new system of feedback and grading. Adapt as needed. Final Tip If this is absolutely a no-go for you this year, try this as a stepping stone: All feedback, grading, and rubrics use competency-based categories, but the grades are translated at the end to correspond to a 0-100 scale. For one example of this, check out the “JumpRope to Transcript Grade Conversion” table on this webpage. To help you facilitate the adaptive conversations mentioned in steps 2 and 3 above, I’m sharing my Root Cause Analysis Worksheet with you for free. Use this strategy when you are digging into the beliefs around grading and the inequitable distribution of grades among your students. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 160 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 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 160 of the time for teacher podcast. Today, we're continuing the conversation in our series about transforming the systems that uphold inequity in our schools and districts. And specifically in this episode, we're continuing a conversation from the previous episode, episode 159 on grading for equity. Today, we're talking about rethinking averages and 0 to 100 scales specifically. 00:01:03 So let's take a look at our grading policies together. Here we go. Before we jump into our conversation on grading for equity, rethinking averages and 0 to 100 scales I do want to go through the why as I usually do, I like to cite the research and think about like, why are we even doing this because it's going to be a hard shift. This is certainly as I talk about often an adaptive leadership challenge. So a through F 0 100 grades, they only work for a very small number of students. And these are the students that do well in school already. So we don't need in a conversation about equity and transforming systems to prioritize and center those students wellness, they are going to be just fine. I promise you. I was one of those students who did really well and meta studies back this up, they show that kids who get high grades are the ones that know how to do school. And these are often the students who have inequitable access to that information. I had access to that information because my parents were both teachers, right? I knew how to do school. Well, I was also just like I think skilled at specific things that made me do school. Well, I uh maybe surprisingly just I'm listening to the podcast. 00:02:07 I'm a rule follower in many aspects of my life. Of course, not all I push for justice and resist rules that, that contribute to injustice, but I just did school well because I was trained to do school. Well, I had access to that information. I had access to the cultural capital of having an educator in my school district. That was my mom and another educator, my dad in, in a, in a neighboring district. So that is first and foremost, right? Like we're privileging the students who already do well, if we use that as an excuse that like it's working for some kids, it's working for the kids who are already advantaged. The next thing is when we talk specifically about averages, averages penalize students who enter the class without already knowing the content and skills. Now, that's just silly. Right? If we think about a class, it is designed to teach something. So on the first day or the first month of that class, you do not expect the students to know all the things right? 00:03:10 When we think about and we talk about this in the previous episode, but this idea of competency based grading and grading for skills that are transferable and have a long duration. They last the whole year. We are consistently working on a handful of skills building those up the first time I tried that in September in United States schools anyways or the northeastern of the United States schools are usually in September. I am probably not going to be that good at it. That's an expectation that I should have as a teacher and as a student that should not be a surprise as a family member of that child, I should not be surprised. Right. This is the first time they're trying it. But a student who's struggling with that skill, of course, in the first month of school, they have a grade under an averaging system from that first practice, that assessment from quarter one month one that counts equally with the grade that they received an assessment in the last month of school. That is bananas like that is absolutely just confusing to my brain when I really break it down and think about it. 00:04:16 And I think most folks would agree. It's just that this is one of those systems and structures that we haven't questioned or maybe some folks have been questioning it, but we're fearful of maybe what other folks might think and we're fearful of disrupting the status quo. So I think this is a perfect topic for this podcast, which is why we're spending two episodes on it and probably will do more in the future. All right, one more piece on the research that I wanna share before we move on to. How do you actually address this? 0 to 100 scales seem to me to be based on the percentage of recall based questions that a student gets right or wrong on a multiple choice test. Like that's what 0 to 100 is right? It's like a percentage. I literally was just doing a coaching call with folks who were working on skill based rubrics and this is a new skill for these educators. So of course, there's going to be some questions, some confusion. And one of the things was kind of a default to that traditional mindset of like I am assessing not the skill but the content memorization. 00:05:19 And so this teacher was basically trying to put a 0 to 100 scale of like what's the percentage that I got correct? Or that a student got correct on a content based factual recall test and just kind of putting it into the competency category. So like three or four categories. So like the range of like 0 to 50 is here and the R 50 to 75 is here whatever. And so it it just, I think is very emblematic of like this traditional way of how we think of things and how it's easy for us to create percentages out of. OK. There is 10 questions on this test. You got eight, right? You got an 80. But what does that mean? Right. And what are we actually assessing? So tests are inequitable. We found this in the research, they're not super effective at measuring transferable skills, which is what we know we should be prioritizing. And we look at the research that specifically targets project based assessments and PB L classrooms versus traditional high stakes testing environments. Those students in the PV L classrooms, they understand the content on a deeper level, they actually retain the content longer. 00:06:24 And this is a great like punch line to this for people who are high stakes test advocates, which I don't honestly think there are many in terms of the educational world, but they still those students in PB L classrooms, they still perform as well or even better on the high stakes tests than students who have been educated in a traditional setting where they're like practicing a lot of multiple choice and things. So I think there is a lot to say for rethinking averages and 0 to 100 scales just based alone on the research. But now let's get to like, what do we do about this? So I think the first step is really to discuss the why with your staff. So share the research, share this podcast episode if that's helpful, but invite questions and concerns interrogate any sort of deficit language or harmful beliefs that arise in the discussion. So there might be a lot of, well, if I don't grade it this way, then students aren't going to do it or the student is highly motivated by being valedictorian. And what if this ruins their average? And I think these are all valid questions, right? I think we should, we should dig into them a little bit but interrogate kind of what underlies that so who are the folks that we're concerned about that are taking up space in our brain in these conversations that are making us hesitant to move forward? 00:07:38 Typically, in many conversations, not just conversations about rating anything that has to do with inequity, the resistance to change. And the folks in our heads as we're thinking about them and thinking about making the change. They are the folks who are currently benefiting from the system. And if we are bringing the conversation back to equity, if we're grounding in inequity, we are thinking about who is not benefiting from the system. And typically it's a much higher number of students than the students who are excelling under the current system, right? So even just in a numbers game, it's like, OK, this is like across the board, we need to have this conversation and we need to flip the script here. And I I do think it's really important here to ground this in your shared community values. If you do not have shared community values, go back and listen to an episode on that. It is really important to establish those in order to have these really critical conversations about adaptive challenges. Like that's at the heart of this and that's why today's free resource actually is going to be about adaptive challenges. I'm gonna link to you in the blog post version of this episode, you can grab it, but I'm gonna link my root cause analysis worksheet go through like the five wise, has a little bit of like data analysis, questions, different things that you can do. 00:08:48 I love it for strategic planning. And I do think this evolves into kind of a mini strategic planning session. When you talk with the staff, we're identifying a challenge, right? Our current grading system is inequitable. These are the students who are disservice, what's going on? How do we fix it? How do we make it better? Right. That's an adaptive challenge. We need to make sure that our values are central in that, right? If we value equity, well, then that that's going to inform our decision if we value humanity, right, that's going to impact our decision. I think there's all of those values that you have laid out and it's like now we really test them out. Now we see how they come to life. I think after you discuss with the staff or even parallel to or you know, you could flip the order of these. But I think you also want to discuss the why with families and students, this is going to be a shift for students and families too. There may be some students and families who are really interested in this idea of this shift. There are probably gonna be honestly most that are not interested because they probably don't know like the full extent of what you mean. So you need to communicate really clearly like what is this? 00:09:50 What is the research on this? And once they hear all of the information, we'll probably be excited. But initially, it's like, ok, this is something very different or maybe I heard things about this in the news and I am fearful for my child getting into college because like you grade on a different system or whatever, right? Like there's so many fears and they are grounded in like, I'm not quite sure about this, but my gut is to protect my child. And so I'm just gonna like share my initial gut reaction. So bring folks into a conversation again. Same thing you want to do with the staff. Invite questions, invite concerns, interrogate any of the beliefs that arise center it in your shared community values and by community, I mean, yes, you probably created staff values and school community values, like extend those and expand those to include the values of family and students as you discuss this. So you can discuss the students in like a a larger platform, you can discuss this with students in classroom size groups where they've already probably built shared community and community values. 00:10:53 You definitely want to um think about what clearly do we want? Why is it currently not working? What is the thing that we want and what is it not? So like, let's get clear about like it's not gonna be this, it is going to be this and why you're making that shift. And I think knowing and this is kind of step forward, I'll get to this in a minute but knowing that you have the opportunity to core what the new grading policy actually looks like with families, with educators with students like in partnership, there's going to be more ownership of the final product and also reduced hesitancy at the first kind of, hey, this is what we're thinking about doing because we want to pose it in a way that's like we're thinking about doing this together, not to you, right with you in community. I think also we wanna make sure that we learn from folks who have done this. There are many, many schools and districts who have done this work already. So let's learn from them so that, you know, they've already made the mistakes, they've already gone through the hard things. 00:11:57 Like let's learn from them. One huge resource that is really my go to helped me with this work when I was a teacher, helped the school I was in, we did really well with their guidance. But I also even as a coach, just go to them all the time. That is competency collaborative. I'll link to them in the blog post. They're an organization based in New York City. They're an excellent resource for all sorts of relevant research for leading to graded, for equity. They have a beautiful model. They have tons of examples of what is this rubric look like. What's a grading policy this school has. And also they have tons of stories of equitable grading shifts that schools or individual teachers have kind of gone on. And so they'll actually share stories of like here's where I started in year one. And this is the shift that we made first and then we got to the second year and then this is what we decided as a school community, right? It's it's super cool, especially if you're kind of hesitant or your stakeholders are kind of hesitant about this big shift, just look at what other folks have done and the journey they've gone on. And I believe competency collaborative will say this as well, but there is no one right, concrete path. 00:13:03 It is like let's have these underlying shared principles of grading for equity and assessing and feedback being prioritized over grading. And let's move forward with our community members to figure out what works best for us. There are guidelines from a crescendo ed group. I believe that basically are taken from this big study they did where they figured out that there are a couple different things to consider and I just want to name them here again, learning from those who have done it before. So in their research, they said use a 0 to 4 scale instead of a 0 to 100 point scale and avoid giving students any scores of zero, right? So a zero is like, I there is no effort made. Um And I think really important here too is like there were many, many opportunities to get it done. It wasn't like you miss the deadline, it's over, right? So we really decrease um the idea of giving a zero if any were is completed and we give multiple opportunities for that work to be completed, right? That's not to say that if a student is just not ever showing work that like you need to give a zero, this is for a student who is is trying um is putting in work. 00:14:13 And when I say trying, I mean, like at all ever after multiple opportunities not like, oh they didn't turn on the deadline, they're not trying, right? So I think, I think there's these are really important points to consider it. You wanna weigh recent performance more heavily. This is super important. What I was saying before month one very different from month nine in your school year. We want to we the month nine way heavier. Like if you still want to count the month one fine and there are actually models that are like we don't even count month one, right? We don't, we certainly don't count a practice time. Maybe we count the summit of assessment from quarter one. But we actually there are some extremes where it's like you don't even count anything aside from like what is done at the end the last summative project, right? I'm not necessarily advocating for that. I'm just saying like give it as a thought experiment, give it some thought, right? It makes sense theoretically. So wait the recent performance more heavily. I think this also gives students a chance if they're like sitting in December, like, wow, I'm still, like, not doing well in my grades. And certainly my students early on were thinking this like, ok, well, this is nuts. 00:15:17 I am sitting here at like a, a two out of four. This, like, I am a student who really typically does well and like our first year of doing this and I was like, ok, you need to know that the next few months are actually gonna count more. So I need you to keep on like you are doing great. You are on the path and I've seen the growth, you're only gonna grow more. You are gonna be pleased with the end of the year's final grade, the way that we average and wait more recent stuff and, and they were, but it was a conversation to certainly have in, you know, December, January and where there's usually at that low. Um there's that reset, right? Um Another, another thing to get back to their list is to grade content, not subjective effort, like attendance or homework, grading for completion is far more. Um kind of like fluffy grade inflation, uh grading for like efforts. Um Attendance is super inequitable, right? Because you can't like determine who had the success to be able to attend today. You don't know what's going on in their home, right? All these things, your grade should be emblematic of what they can do with the content and skills, right? 00:16:23 That's what the grade should be not like button seat time allow retakes. We talked about that replace previous scores with current scores, right. So if they did poorly in the first draft, second draft do better. Great that just completely replaces it, create effective grade based on standard aligned rubrics. So the grades are are based on standards aligned rubrics, excuse me. So that's what we talked about in the previous episode. 159 that you are sharing with students. So right up front, here's the assessment, here's how I'm going to grade you. And again, when you create a year long rubric, they already know what it is, especially when you're in uh like a grade team that really collaborates. Well, you might have an assessment and and the um competency collaborative has shared this before in a video which I can link to this episode. But they share an example of, I think it's the young Women's Leadership Academy of Astoria in New York that has like school wide standards, nine through 12th grade, regardless of subject area. And they are all content agnostic. 00:17:24 So they know, like argue as the standard is gonna look different in a math class than a social studies class. But like it's still the same like sentence that we recognize as like here's the standard. So I think there's a ton of cool stuff there um that you can do with that. I also think another thing they were saying, I think this is a really interesting one is using self reflection, peer feedback and supporting uh self regulation to support independent learning skills. So you don't want to necessarily in their, in their research, they found you don't necessarily want to grade the independent learning skills. I know competency collaborative does um say that's OK and they put it under like work habits, like a can't be more than 20% I think is typically um the advice but I could be wrong. But that is I think really important. And when we have that leverage of self reflection and pure feedback, we open up opportunities for teachers to then conference with students one on one and do a lot more of uh what I believe, competency collaborative calls the cognitive coaching, which I love um for students, step four is to co create an equitable grading policy. 00:18:29 So you have discussed with staff families and students you learn from who's already done it. Now you're co creating the policy, something that works for you. You're in partnership with all your stakeholders, you're considering the why of equity when making all of your decisions again, considering shared values, you're sure to leave the meeting or leave the whatever with the structures you need to put in place to make sure you're successful in implementation. There's a lot of structures. So actually, that's step five, I think you should implement with some solid systems and structures specifically around feedback and revision. So give departments and teams the time to create department wide or team wide skill based rubrics that could take an entire year but like just give them the time, right? And that way you have embedded specificity and effectively feedback into the rubrics with which your teachers are assessing all of your students work, right? These are year long rubrics. Awesome, less work for them, more consistency for the students, more reliability for tracking skill progression over time. Again, check out the previous episode for that. 00:19:31 If you're interested in some more information there, next, I would create resource banks. So each teacher should have or department or team again, you can kind of crowdsource these as a group if you'd like resource banks. So when students receive feedback, they have not yet met the standard, don't just leave them with that, right? Like what can they do to progress? Give them a next step. So you are going to want to share something with students, an instructional video list. You can even link those right into the rubrics themselves, which I love texts as well as activities or many projects. So they can improve their skills. But you wanna make sure that they have what they need to continue to progress. Not just leave them up now, you're not there yet that's going in the grade book, right? You can have like weekly or biweekly, whatever it would be for you, workshop or upgrade days that your teachers have put into place on their calendars, on their pacing calendars. And they say these are days for revision or, you know, taking that feedback I gave you on the last assessment and working on one of those many activities that's in the resource bank. 00:20:35 So this idea of giving revision opportunities, giving feedback and then giving something for the students to do and having time in class to do that work super important. And that's really making sure that you are not doing your typical grade inflation practices like the homework or completion grades, attendance effort grades because it's like you don't have to p you, you no longer see grades as penalizing students, right? It's just you will have as many chances as you can get every week, you will have a new chance to upgrade something to uh revise something based on feedback, right? So you no longer need the inflation practices like grading for effort for a kid who is putting in the effort, right? They're gonna get there because you've helped them build a scale. And finally, I would really get me meta cognitive years. So as you implement, you're asking for feedback on your feedback systems, right? Adapt as you need, but make sure maybe after a set amount of time, you're collecting the experiential data from students, families, educators, how is it going? 00:21:40 What can we shift if we need to shift something? And then my very final tip is that this is definitely like the dream we're creating here. I want you to have that dream grading policy that's rooted in equity if it is absolutely like a no, go for some reason this year, here's what I suggest. You try, whether you are leading a school where there's just a lot of resistance in some dimension, um resistance from above, like whatever what you can do, even as an individual classroom teacher who's like, ah, the school's not going with this. But I wanna try this. Maybe even as a leader, you can maybe have this piloted with a few teachers. I think that would be super cool and really by, have some quote unquote by and, or like a true ownership over the policy in, in that core group of teachers and like the belief really spreads itself out. Ok. So here's what you do. All feedback, grading and rubrics use the competency based categories. But at the end, if you have to convert it into a 0 to 100 scale, convert it, there are examples of this. And I actually, in the, the first couple of years we did this in one of the schools I worked at, that's what we had to do because the New York City rating system at that time, I think as of the school year 2324. 00:22:52 So this school year currently, as we're reporting, the doe in New York City has shifted to include the four point grading scale for competency categories as an option to put on report cards. But until then there had to be a conversion. So I'm gonna link on the blog post. Uh an example of what one school, not New York City, but one school um just as a web page up with that convergence, you can check out what it might look like, but that's a way to still kind of check the box. Yeah, we did 0 to 100 but really on the ground, super feedback driven super competency based um and all of the language that students and teachers and families are using is that language. So again, all the things, all the links to all the research that table I just talked about my root cause analysis worksheet all there for free for you on the blog post for this episode, which is located at Lindsay Bath, lions.com/blog/one 60. Thanks for tuning in. 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. 00:23:55 Talk about a pedagogy of student voice in their book Street data. They say students should be talking for 75% of class time. Do students in your school talk for 75% of each class period? I would love for you to walk into any classroom in your community and see this in action. If you're smiling to yourself as you listen right now. Grab 20 minutes on my calendar to brainstorm. How I can help you make this big dream a reality. I'll help you build a comprehensive plan from full day trainings and discussion protocols like circle and Socratic seminar to follow up classroom visits where I can plan witness and debrief discussion based lessons with your teachers. Sign up for a nerdy no strings attached 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 my student experience data strategy here:
Listen to the episode by clicking the link to your preferred podcast platform below:
In this episode, we continue our mini series of episodes focused on transforming the systems that uphold inequity in our schools. Specifically in this episode, we’re addressing competency-based learning and using competency-based rubrics as a tool for increasing equity in feedback and assessment.
Why? Typical grading policies lead to grades that are often inconsistent, inequitable, and don’t relate closely to students’ competency in a subject. They also cause many students high levels of stress (Ed. Magazine). Haystead and Marzano (2009) found teachers who measured skill growth over time on competency-based rubrics noted a 34% gain in student achievement. In competency-based classes, students showed increased student learning, less stressful classrooms with better teacher-student relationships, and decreased grade achievement gaps (Crescendo Ed Group). And if you’re not grading for students’ competencies in subject-specific skills, what are you grading for? Likely, a student’s ability to memorize, fill out a worksheet, or have their butt in their seat. (A little tongue in cheek, but I’ve seen it—I’ve even done it as an early-career teacher!) Why rubrics, specifically? What’s helpful to learning is actually feedback, not necessarily grades. Feedback that provides actionable next steps to improve a competency is what rubrics can give us! How do we do this? Step 1: Ask teachers to reflect. Here are some sample questions from Competency Collaborative:
Step 2: Share the above research and the hallmarks of competency-based learning. Teachers have transparent learning outcomes that inform their lessons and assessments, and the criteria and expectations for meeting these outcomes are shared with students. This helps teachers plan more efficiently and effectively. It also helps students know what’s coming and reduces anxiety. When giving feedback around a specific competency, the teacher gives specific next steps for students to improve. The feedback is useful and timely. (So, don’t give all the feedback at once. Instead focus on the first next step.) Again, helpful for students and teachers! Assessments are opportunities to demonstrate competency over time. Mindset shift: Think of assessment as an ongoing dialogue, not a “one-and-done” act. If students will be revising their first try on an assessment or doing a lot of similar assessments, this again helps students and teachers (fewer assessments and rubrics to create!) Step 3: Consider categories of competency. A typical scale is four points or categories. One example Competency Collaborative has shared can be remembered with the acronym NAME: Not yet, Approaching, Meeting, and Exceeding. I think you can also use the first three or use a visual, non-linguistic category name like the example on the first page of my Skills-Based Rubric Templates. Step 4: Use team time to have departments create subject-specific rubrics. Ask each department or team to select 4-8 discipline-specific skills that are taught across units and grade levels. Define what each category of competency looks like at the highest grade level, and then backwards map competency for each grade level or grade band. Step 5: Have teachers use these shared rubrics for every assignment. For summative assessments, use the whole rubric (all skills). This also helps teachers design assessments align with the complete rubric. For formative assessments, teachers can use one row of the shared rubric (just the specific skill the student is demonstrating in the formative assignment). Final Tips and Implications for Teaching To ensure students have time to revise and improve their skills based on feedback on a previous assessment, embed regular “Competency Upgrade Days” into the course. During this time, students can determine which activities will be best for them based on the feedback provided. They can also ask their peers for feedback because all students will be familiar with the rubric language. This frees teachers up to be what Competency Collaborative folx have called a “cognitive coach.” In terms of pacing, a big shift for teachers will be moving from a “coverage mindset” of speed and breadth to prioritizing deep learning and skill transfer across contexts and content areas. This is likely a desired shift, and the development of competency-based rubrics will help get you there! To help you create your first department-wide rubrics, I’m sharing my (recently updated!) Skills-Based Rubric Templates with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 159 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 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 episode 159 of the time for teacher podcasts. Today, we're talking about grading for equity, specifically focused on competency based rubrics. And we're also kicking off a mini series of episodes that are going to be focused on transforming the systems that uphold inequity in our schools. So again, today, we're talking about competency based learning and rubric specifically as a tool for increasing equity and feedback and assessment in your school or district. 00:01:07 Let's get to it. All right. So we're talking about grading for equity and specifically competency based rubrics in this episode. So I first want to start as usual with the why typical grading policies lead to grades that are often inconsistent inequitable and don't actually relate to the students competency in a subject area which is bananas. They also incidentally cause many students very high levels of stress. I have heard this, I have seen this firsthand in my students. It is not a fun thing. Grading itself. I would love to throw out the window. But if we have to do grades, let's talk about how we do grades. Well. So Hay said and Marzano, two researchers in their study found teachers who measured skill growth over time using competency based rubrics noted a 34% gain in student achievement versus traditional classrooms that do not use competency based rubrics, 34% gain in student achievement. Yes, I will take that also in competency based classes, students showed increased student learning, less stress in the class along with better teacher, student relationships. 00:02:14 Always what we're going for. I have heard so many teachers and leaders say that their teachers really want better relationships with students and also a decreased grade achievement gap. So again, if we're focused on equity as the goal, there is a decreased grade achievement gap in the use of competency based rubrics and competency based learning and teaching. So super good and a couple more things just off the top of my head here. But if you're not grading for students competencies in subject specific skills. Like what are you actually grading for? Very likely it's a student's ability to memorize, fill out a worksheet or have their butt in a seat. It's a little tongue in cheek, but I have seen it happen and I've even done it shamefully as an early career teacher where I knew better so to speak. Right. Where I really saw it in action and saw the possibilities for how to do it. So that's my error. I have made the mistake, learn from me and learn from this episode and the blog post that's gonna come alongside it. And as we move into rubric specifically, I just want to say what's helpful to learning is actually feedback, not necessarily grades. 00:03:21 Again, we could do away with grades completely and I think we would be better off but feedback is critical. And what rubrics do is provide the language on the rubric itself that gives us the specificity of feedback where students can identify. Oh, this is why I'm not completely meeting the standard right now. This is the difference between my work and that exemplar our work, right? It also kind of intrinsically, but you could also make it extrinsic or um I guess, I mean, implicit and explicit, implicitly. Uh but you can make it explicit, it provides actionable next steps for how to improve. So how to make it explicit. I think I have done this in the past where I have taken a youtube tutorial on if, for example, the skill was something like grammar. Um I would use like a three minute youtube video that already exists or I could create one on my own and I would link it into uh the rubric to say like, hey, if you weren't quite there yet, um This is a common challenge that a lot of you face. Here's what I want you to do. 00:04:23 I want you to watch this three minute video. And if I find that I've been seeing the same challenge over and over again, just to embed it right into the rubric. Um is I think a lot, a lot more effective both for students to immediately get that feedback and to have a next step. But also for the teacher to be like, I don't have to share this with individual students. I can just say if you got this on the rubric, it's going to save me time from one on one telling each student like, oh, this is the issue and now you can go ahead and watch the video, right? It's just embedded in the ongoing rubric I use for every assessment. OK. So how do we do this step? One? I would ask teachers to reflect, this is so powerful because often we don't even have a moment to just pause and reflect on our grading practices. So here are some sample questions that I totally pulled from competency, collaborative and I love competency collaboratives work. I will link it to them and I, I do think that, you know, using their resources is awesome and a lot of the language that I use in this episode probably pulls from them because I just use their resources so often. 00:05:29 And they are who trained me and helped train me in a competency based education and rubric practices. So here are some sample questions that you can use with your staff. One, how do you know whether and how much each student is learning based on what evidence? Two, how clear are your students about the criteria for success? Three, how do learners get actionable feedback in your class or school? Four? How do grades connect you and support learning at your school? Five? What are grades based on in your class or school in an ideal world? What would grades be based on? Now? I also love inviting students and families to think about these questions. And so you might need to slightly adapt the literal text of each question. But I think you could have a really generative conversation and really identify similarities, differences, uh directions for moving forward based on how everybody's answering the same types of questions. Now, step two, after you've had everyone reflect now, we're ready to kind of move into what do we do next with these reflections? Because likely there will be kind of many, I think aha moments of, oh, this feels wrong, but I'm just not sure what to do with this. 00:06:43 And I've literally heard teacher say this to me, remember reflecting in grading policies, like I don't love this, but I also just don't have a better way. So what do you want me to do? Right. And and there, right. Like, so let's talk about what is step two, step two would be to share the above research, right? All the stuff that you just talked about and I say above because literally on the blog post, it's going to say above and then scroll up and you will see all of the research of the links and all the things and the hallmarks of competency based learning. So you wanna give them all the info, the research that's like, yep, this is a good idea. We also to tell them like what is competency based learning, what is this direction we might be moving in? So three key points I think really define it. And again, these are pulled from competency collaborative. They have a lot more. I I like these um just because I think they really illuminate the the stark differences and the things that people uh struggle the most with and also benefit the most from when they switch over. So first teachers have transparent learning outcomes, right? They inform their lessons and assessments these outcomes do and the outcomes become built out into a rubric inclusive of the criteria and expectations for how to meet them and those rubrics, that language, the criteria expectations, all the things that's shared with students, right? 00:08:03 This not only helps students to know what's coming, reduce anxiety, have clear expectations, all the things, but it also helps teachers, right? It helps teachers to plan more efficiently and effectively everything is backwards planned from those outcomes and the rubric itself. Now, secondly, when giving feedback around a specific competency under competency based learning and teaching, the teacher is giving also a specific next step for how to improve. So this feedback is supposed to be useful and timely, this is really helpful for me as a teacher in in my teacher hat, right? Like I'm thinking, OK. So this means I don't have to give all the feedback at once. So if there's like four things happening right now that I want to tell you to do this different, do this different, this that's gonna be overwhelming to the student. And it's also gonna take me a ton of time to communicate, to teach, to find a resource for if I'm not actively teaching that student one on one, but need them to watch a youtube video or something. Instead I can focus on the first next step. And again, this is also super helpful for your students to just focus on one thing at a time. It's going to move them along the learning progression faster to focus on one thing at a time. 00:09:08 Now, the third key hallmark I would say is that assessments are opportunities to demonstrate competency over time. This is a huge mindset shift. So we have to think of assessment as an ongoing dialogue and this is language again from competency, collaborative, ongoing dialogue and not a one and done act. So this is gonna shift how we plan how we assess students, how we think about assessing students if students will be revising their first try on an assessment or doing a lot of similar assessments. This is also super helpful for educators, right? Not only does it help the students, it helps the teachers because now they have to create fewer assessments, right? And they have to create fewer rubrics because we're just working on the same ones. And if we're not working on the exact same ones, they're still very similar in their construction in what they're assessing in the kind of um fabric of the assessment itself, right? And we're just pulling in different content, but the fabric, the skill, the types of questions, the rubric itself, they all say the same, so much less work. 00:10:17 All right. So in these steps, we have reflected, we've asked teachers to reflect stakeholders to reflect. We've shared the research, we've talked about what competency based learning is. I think you're gonna start to generate a lot of excitement about this. And the next thing that you wanna do, step three is to consider what categories of competency you want to have in your rubrics, in your language, in how you grade, if you're shifting the actual grading structure as well as a school or a department or even if you're an individual teacher, right? Or you're a leader who's kind of helping an individual teacher or a set of small set of teachers to pilot something like you still want to think about these and have kind of a shared discussion about them. I don't think there is a right answer to this. Like how many categories of competency? I have seen four as the most typical, I have seen five, I have seen three. I think those are probably the range of 3 to 5 is probably what you want to go for. But one example, competency collaborative has shared can be remembered with the acronym name N AM E and that is all around this idea of competencies, right? 00:11:22 So not yet approaching meeting and exceeding the competency, right? So I have not yet got there. I am approaching. So I'm almost there and meeting it and I am above and beyond. I'm exceeding it. So that is something that you can use, you can switch it up in the language, you can, I mean, I've even, you know, like I said, I had people use just the first three because they feel uncomfortable saying that like the A if you're again, I think this is very still traditional minded. But like if you're thinking about the A as exceeding like, do you need to go above and beyond what I am asking of a grade level performance to get an a or should an a be just like, yeah, you met the standard, right? So there's a ton of discussion embedded in this and also a ton of traditional mindset that kind of comes through for better or for worse. Um And I, I think that that's like a really cool discussion that you can have and a really powerful one that kind of un a lot of the deep seated beliefs that are gonna inform what you're going to decide on. Now, another is that you can use a visual, non linguistic category name. 00:12:27 So I use bicycles and so I'll link to that in the blog post. The freebie for this episode is my skills based rubric templates. And if you've gotten this before, I've recently some recently updated this. So you can see the first page is actually a learning progression version where you're not actually saying this skill is uh you know, not yet approaching or meeting the standard, but it's actually like here is the stepping stone skill or the supporting skill that you need to learn before you get to the next one before you get finally to the skill itself. So for example, before I can analyze, I need to first decode the text. What is the text telling me? Then I need to be able to understand or comprehend the tax and make sense of it, then I can analyze and add my own spin and interpretation, right? So play with those, there's a bunch of different templates. That's why that's plural. Um But this is going to be located on the blog post version of this podcast episode, which will be located at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 59. So in that, I I said that the bicycle, it's like the first category is like just a bicycle, that's it, standing still, took it out of the garage, so to speak. 00:13:31 The next one is looking like a kind of a a family member like a parent, maybe uh pushing a child on a bike, right? So you have kind of the quote unquote training wheels or I can do this with support category. And then the final one is like a bike going on like a mountain bike ride or something, right? So I can do this on my own. I'm doing tricks with it. This is great. So just an option. I've seen many and you can Google like Pinterest has a ton of cool visuals of people using like competency based uh scales that are actually like in visual metaphor format. Um So, OK, once you've decided the categories of competency step four is to use team time, super important that you have ongoing team, time, department wide or grade, team wide. However, you do teams to create subject specific rubrics. So I would ask each department or subject team to create. I think first you want to select like 4 to 8 is usually the range I suggest discipline specific or subject specific skills that are like we teach the these regardless of the unit we're in, regardless of the grade level, these transcend contexts and grades and once you choose them, have them select um uh the sorry. 00:14:46 So like the 4 to 8 and then have them define, excuse me, which category they're gonna start with? I like starting with the definition of like the highest. So whether that's exceeding or meeting standards, the bike on the mountain, whatever, this is what it looks like when it's great and then kind of work backwards from there and then define each category of competency. I would start because you're across grades here. I would start with the highest grade level. So if you're doing like K five, start with 1/5 grade and then work backwards to K. Um If you're, you know, K 12, same, same thing, I would start with 12, work backwards, but you might wanna band it as well. So you might say that actually, um K five, this is what competency looks like across like across levels. Um Maybe we're not getting super specific if you're doing K 12 and then within K five teams, you can get even more specific later. But to have a banded, here's elementary school, middle school, high school, what each of these looks like would also be a great resource to have and definitely a good place to start without getting too granular in the K 12 space step five is to have teachers use these shared rubrics for every single assignment. 00:15:54 So for summit of assessments, they're using the whole rubric, which is all of the skills 48, whatever they came up with. This also is going to help teachers once again to design assessments that align with the complete rubric, right? So if they're like, I designed this assessment, but actually, it doesn't have the ability to assess these three skills. Well, we're gonna redesign the assessment or we're gonna rethink like, is this actually a skill that gets assessed all the time? Does it need to be on the core rubric that's shared across the department? Now, for formative assessments, teachers can use one row of the shared rubric. So they're just taking the row of the rubric that has the specific skill the student is demonstrating competency in within that formative assignment. So again, you can use it for all assignments. You just not might might not be using all of the rubric for every assignment, you're taking a piece here and there. But summative again, I think I would do the full thing. OK, final tips before I leave you and really implications for teaching is what this section should be. So to ensure students have time to revise and improve their skills based on feedback that they got from the, their last assessment, I would make sure teachers embed regular sessions, they can call them workshop days. 00:17:10 I believe competency collaborative has somebody call them upgrade days um into the course. So I used to do workshop days every Friday. Um I've also called them what I need or win days. Like every Friday win day, you get to work on whatever you need to work on. Check your last assessment for, you know, whatever feedback that you got, where is a skill you didn't get meets standards or meets the competency on your rubric, work on it. Given the resource bank of things that I have either linked in your rubric or I have given you and revise that assessment or work on something else. This is great because students having the feedback and then determine which activities will be best for them based on the feedback. You don't have to go around and say, ok, you're here and you're here, right? They know or should be able to internalize that as you work through this, maybe not the first week, but by the 1st, 2nd month, right? End of the first month, end of the second month, they're gonna be cruising, right? Because they know this is how we do things. I'm used to this rubric. I've seen it many times. Another beautiful thing about this is that students can ask their friends, their peers for feedback because all the students are familiar with the rubric language they learn and get familiar with this as a class. 00:18:22 And what this does is it frees up the teachers to be a competency, collaborative folks have called a cognitive coach. So I as the teacher can meet, I can talk one on one in small conferences uh with groups of students, I can help coach, students versus teach or talk at students, right? Like OK, here's our struggle. You have the instructional video, you had the instruction from the lesson the day before I can coach you on any sort of confusion, same as I do with instructional coaching, right? Any time I have shared an idea or a practice or a resource and teachers have tried it out have come back to me said this didn't work. Ok, let's figure out why and where do we go to next? So we're truly in coach mode, which is far more effective. It's a far more valuable use of our time, especially when we have things like youtube videos and things that are already out there, especially when we have already delivered, so to speak the initial new content lesson in a lecture in a video. 00:19:23 However, we did it the first time students had that opportunity now they need something different, right? And that's what it frees us up to do in terms of pacing. Also a big shift for teachers is going to be moving from that coverage mindset of speed and breadth like more is better, right to prioritizing less is better. We're doing deep learning, we're doing a hard focus on skills that transfer across contexts and content areas. This is likely something both of these, the cognitive coach idea and the pacing for depth of overbreadth, likely something that you as a leader have wanted that maybe many of your teachers have wanted to shift to. But the development of the competency based rubrics is going to be the tool that really helps you get there. All right, try it out and I'll meet you back here 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. 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. 00:20:27 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 my student experience data strategy here:
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In this episode, I’m inviting you to dream big to support student achievement, teacher retention and educator well-being. Teachers are overwhelmed, stressed, and exhausted. The educational system is not set up to support teachers’ mental and emotional wellness. Since we are focused on systems transformation, we’re thinking about the systems we can revise to stop putting the burden on individual educators to to self-care their way out of burnout. Why focus on teacher schedules? From Hattie’s research, we know the thing that has the largest impact on student learning is collective teacher efficacy. How do teachers’ build efficacy? Professional learning. This includes opportunities to collaborate, learn from and with peers, and have enough time to thoughtfully and effectively plan instruction. In many schools, this is not possible during the school day, given the schools’ schedule. This excerpt from “Reimagining the School Day” highlights some interesting data. “Teachers in the United States reported spending 27 hours teaching out of 45 hours of work per week compared to teachers in Singapore, who teach for only 17 hours per week and teachers in Finland, who teach for a total of 21 hours per week. Schools in these countries prioritize time for planning and collaboration, recognizing that developing and executing lessons take time and preparation…In another analysis of more than 120 school districts, the most common length of time allotted for planning was 45 minutes per day,” (American Progress). Not much time at all, and certainly not for collaboration. What can we do? There are many innovative scheduling models out there. Check them out! Visit those schools or hop on a call with educators who teach in or lead those schools. Seeing what’s possible is a great start. You can find links to several examples at the end of my Make Time Quick Guide freebie. Here are some specific ideas to consider that can increase teacher planning time: Step 1: Early Dismissal/Late Start Half-Day PD days or early dismissal Thursdays are becoming more popular (e.g., MA) Step 2: Reallocate Tasks Hire community members to do recess, lunch duty, or other circular 6 tasks. Administrators, teach one class! Step 3: Intervention, Enrichment, or Club Time Blocks Staff an enrichment/intervention block with paraprofessionals/aides, social workers, media specialists, instructional coaches, or community partners. You can also use this time for clubs, projects intensives, internships, or community service. Example: Urban Academy’s Community Service Block on Wednesday afternoons
Step 4: Project-Based Intensives Example: Generation Schools’ secondary schedule gives teams 2 weeks of professional collaborative time staggered throughout the year when students are in intensives with the college and career intensives team.
Example: Urban Academy’s twice per year intensives.
Step 5: Leverage Existing PD Time for Collaboration & Peer Learning Peer Visitation Time Vertically Align Rubrics & “Norm” Expectations Invite Teachers to Share a Promising Practice as the Staff Meeting Final Tip Invite teachers, students, families, non-instructional staff to creatively brainstorm scheduling ideas. Give them the legal parameters, and let them dream. To help you implement one new PD structure within teachers’ schedules, I’m sharing my Peer Visitation Starter Kit with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 158 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 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 158 of the time for teacher podcast. Today, we're talking about teacher schedules that leverage team time and enable class visits. So in this episode, I'm really inviting you to dream big. There are some big asks around scheduling that may be unfamiliar to you. New to you feeling a little daring. And I'm excited to share a lot of key studies and tips and strategies that will support you in this endeavor. If you are ready to create that space for teachers within the work day to work in teams, collaborative planning, do some awesome innovative td things like visiting each other's classes during their prep period. 00:01:15 All right, let's get to how. So in this episode, I, as I said, I'm inviting you to Dream Bank to support student achievement, ultimately to improve teacher retention, to improve educator well being all the things teachers right now and really always have been overwhelmed, stressed, exhausted all the things that are hard, the educational system of course is not set up to support teachers mental and emotional wellness, let alone pay them well. I understand that. And since we are focused on systems transformation in this mini series here on the podcast, this month, we are going to think about the systems that we can revise to stop putting the burden on individual educators to really self care their way out of their burnout and figure out how to teach well on their own time. Um When they are not afforded the opportunities within the school day, taking a lot of planning home, taking a lot of grading home, doing all these things. So this is a huge topic to tackle. We're gonna focus on teacher schedules today. So why are we focusing specifically on teacher schedules? Well, again, these are the structures. Um but also that from Hattie's research, we know the thing that has the largest impact on student learning is collective teacher efficacy. 00:02:20 And so when we think about how teachers build that efficacy, it's through professional learning, this is going to include opportunities to collaborate, learn from and with peers, have enough time to really thoughtfully and effectively plan instruction. It's hard to do that in 10 minutes, but right before the lesson. So in many schools, this is just really not possible at this moment, the way their school schedules are set up during the school day. This is expected of teachers outside of the school day, which contributes to 80 hour work weeks and teacher burnout, right? So this excerpt from a article reimagining the school day, which I have found very insightful and I will link in the blog post for this episode. There's gonna be several things I'm gonna share that are gonna be linked in here. So it may be a good blog post to check out after you're done listening or alongside listening, depending on how you're listening. And that's gonna be at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 58. So here's the quote from this article, teachers in the United States reported spending 27 hours of teaching out of 45 hours of work per week compared to teachers in Singapore who teach for only 17 hours per week, that's 10 hours less per week. 00:03:27 And teachers in Finland who teach for a total of 21 hours per week. Schools in these countries prioritize time for planning collaboration, recognizing that developing and executing, executing, excuse me lessons, take time in preparation. Later in the article, they say quote in another analysis of more than 100 and 20 school districts, the most common length of time allotted for planning was 45 minutes per day. End quote. So we're really giving teachers a ton of time in front of students, which theoretically is not a bad thing, but when we only give them 45 minutes per day to plan, whoa, that is not much time at all. What is that for less than four hours a week? Three hours, 45 minutes a week. Yep. That's right. Three hours and 45 minutes to teach 27 hours. And honestly, like that's, that's the average, right? Or on average. This is how much they spend. I can remember a school where I was working far more than that in front of students. So lots of time in front of students and not a lot of time to plan. And where is the collaborative teacher team time? 00:04:32 Right. Grade team department team. Where is the embedded PD where I get to go see someone else's class? It doesn't really exist in a lot of spaces in the current way that our school schedules are set up. Now. This is not to say that folks don't do this. There are so many examples. I'm gonna share a lot of them in the episode today where they do it better and we're going to learn from them. So innovative scheduling models, let's check them out. Let's visit schools that do this. Well, if we can, if you know, of some check them out, go see it in action, interview, their leaders, their teachers um hop on a call with them if you can get on Zoom. That's great. Even email them and ask them a question like how did you come to this? How is it working for you? Where did you reallocate this time? How are you funding this? Does it cost more? Maybe we're making some assumptions that it's not possible when it is. We're just not sure the logistics behind the scenes. So seeing what's possible, great start, you can find a ton of those links to examples either within this blog post or also within the blog post. 00:05:38 I'm gonna, I'm gonna link to uh make time quick guide freebie that you can check out as well. That has even more examples in there. Now, here are some specific ideas to consider that can increase teacher planning time. So let's start with the strategies and then I'll share a case study when relevant step one or idea one is really early dismissal or late start. So there are a lot of folks but it's becoming, I think a lot more popular, particularly in Massachusetts, Framingham, which is where I live in Massachusetts. Their school district has like early release, Thursdays and they just do like every Thursday is early release as far as I know and they do the kind of early dismissal that's, you know, maybe an hour or so earlier and that's just like students go home. Teachers are doing this. Other schools in Massachusetts have seen do like four half day P DS on, for example, Thursdays every couple of months, you have like a half day PD. So they're kind of just reallocating some time so that it is chunked more thoughtfully. 00:06:40 Um and they can do it in that way. Another idea is to reallocate tasks. So, so many teachers miss out on planning time or collaboration time more specifically because they're doing things like recess duty, lunch, duty, other um circular six tasks or whatever you call them in your school or district. I have seen and I have worked in schools where community members are hired as staff members to do these duties. So not requiring the teacher degree to do this, right. We're, we're really just building community. We're hiring a member of the community that might need a job. We are enabling teachers to take their lunch and use the time the kids are at lunch to actually plan as a separate thing from taking their own lunch. Um We are inviting recess to be a time where yes, they can go out and play and you get to plan. So if you have, you know, whoever the teachers you see at recess time are out and about and you're kind of chatting with them on the the outdoor space that you have. 00:07:50 Um think about having that opportunity to chat with them in a structured space that was like a o team meeting, right? Another option for reallocating tests or taking some tasks away from teachers is administrators can teach one class reallocate like an E A intervention period or a math intervention period. Or um I know a lot of administrators who want to kind of stay connected to the classroom. I think if I were ever to, that got to be part of the classroom, I would be interested in a formal leadership role. I just never wanted to be completely divorced from like the actual teaching component, the instructional component. I think there's a lot of leaders who crave that and so try to find that balance, right? And that also might mean taking some things off administrators plate. So there's a, there's a kind of a ladder of shifting here but help teachers out, take a class even if it's, you know, um an sel block or an intervention block or an elective um that you're qualified to teach for another option. You can use intervention enrichment or club time blocks. 00:08:54 I kind of was getting into this a little bit in the last one where we staff those intervention blocks exclusively with paraprofessionals, aides, social workers, counselors, uh instructional coaches, media, specialist, community partners. So like someone like uh a nonprofit organization, I know someone does this with girl scouts, um or the scouts, you could do this with uh a local. I I know in the student voice research. They have done this with um local universities and students come in and they support the high schoolers or middle schoolers, elementary schoolers, whatever grade band you're teaching to learn research skills, to be effective leaders in their school communities. So you could also use this time of course for clubs, project intensives, internships, community service. There's a lot of different things that you could do where folks are, students are taken care of by other folks, right? They are being educated and supported through these other mediums and in community service and internships, right? They're actually out in the community connected with these organizations take some time up front to set all of that up and get those connections in place. 00:10:00 But they're really effective once they're done. So for example, um at a Hamilton Elementary school, this is a sample third grade schedule and and Fridays 10 minutes before dismissal, they have a 40 minute club time block. So they have that time where the students do their club routines and the teachers have that time to do cross team vertical planning. So like a department team. Another example is urban academies community service block every Wednesday afternoon, all of their students leave and the teachers do like a full like, I think it's like a three hour planning block where they have like their staff meeting during that time, they do PD, they do like team planning, but they're just like hyper focused students are out of the building. Um And this is, this is actually what their website vin Hows website says about this time. He said every student must participate in community service on Wednesday afternoons. This participation permits students to learn about careers and college opportunities through real life experiences at their placement. Students learn how to work with adults productively assume responsibility for tasks, both menial and challenging and report back to the school community about their placement and its focus. So there's also kind of this hub for uh a space to kind of come back and reflect within the school as well. 00:11:06 1/4 option project based intensive. I mentioned this briefly in the last one. But here's an example, generation schools in New York City, their secondary school schedule gives teams two weeks of professional collaborative time that it is staggered throughout the year. This is super innovative. I love this idea. So students are actually in intensive with the college and career intensive team. So in this model, in the school, the teachers are organized into grade level teams and then there's also a college and career intensive team that college and career intensive team rotates from grade to grade over the course of the year and they end up spending a month with students exploring college and career pathways. So teachers in that team where the the grade that the college and career type of team is is working with that month, they're not responsible for students that month at all. And so they can use that time for their school breaks. They do a little bit of a longer school year and for their team collaboration time. Now by staggering the teacher break, the really, you know, the instruction is much bigger. You don't necessarily have to do that that way. But think about a college and career intensive team coming in for two weeks where if you don't have students, right? 00:12:10 And you just get to plan out the next, you know, several months of school. Oh, it would be so, so cool. Um Urban Academy also does something similar where twice per year they have schoolwide intensives. I think you could do this with like different classes, like an arts class or a really in depth like lab portion of a science class or like, you know, anyone could do this project where it's like, oh, I'm taking this, think of it as like a super large field trip or something, right? Where we're doing that where we could go out in the community, but we could also do it in a classroom. I think it would be super cool to reallocate time in that way. OK. 1/5 and final idea, leverage existing PD time for collaboration and peer learning. So if you already have time, right, like once you have kind of the space and this is the ultimate goal, you've created the space within the schedule for teachers to be able to learn and collaborate, create the structures that enable them to use it well and in innovative ways that might be different from a team meeting. Although I do love the idea of team meetings, but structure those team meetings. So if you have a team meeting vertically align a rubric that lasts throughout the grade band, um bring student work and quote unquote norm expectations of this grade level acclaim looks like this. 00:13:18 So this grade level, well, it looks like this, right? And really get clear on how we assess students and the expectations of students across grade levels on the same priority standards. That would be a huge help for many school districts that I know if, if we were able to use time purposefully in that way. And that just really takes some thought, some agenda planning a commitment to doing that work and of course, that ongoing time to meet with that team, you can also invite teachers in like a typical staff meeting time to lead PD and it might not need to be like, you know, full slides and everything, but just share a promising practice. Here's something I tried in my class. Here's how it went. Here's some samples of the student work, take some questions, uh run teachers through an example, share whatever resources or worksheets or tech tools, whatever that you use in those lessons or types of lessons. So really just centering like the the job embedded PD stuff, right. That's like you did this this week. Just share it with the larger staff. That's all we need for a PD. It doesn't necessarily need to be, we're hiring someone to come in or we're having the principal create something, right? 00:14:19 It needs to be meaningful. So let's just focus on what's already working and just try to do it more in more spaces around the school. Another amazing thing that I love and I'm gonna give you a kit for this. Um So you can pick up this freebie again at the blog post, Lindsay, Beth lines.com/blog/one 58. This is a pure visitation starter kit for pure visitation time. And what that's gonna do is it's gonna give you some structure to create a schedule to have folks say, hey, I'd love to have people come in and see this thing in action. Here's what I'm working on. Here's the time of my class, the location of my class, you can do this interdistrict. So it doesn't even have to be someone at your school. But if you have like back to back planning periods or something, you can create space for that and then you're, you there's like a sheet in there of like, what do I do when I'm in there? What are the things I'm looking for? What's the question I have that I wanna follow up with the teacher on or something that I'm going to plan to use in my class once I go back to my classroom. So I really think that this is, talk about job embedded PD. Right. Like I have a prep period, I'm gonna go down the hall, I'm gonna see something in action where this teacher is teaching the same students and it's going well for them. 00:15:24 Even though I'm struggling, I'm gonna learn what's out there or I'm planning to do more discussions. I'm not really sure we're getting stuck. This teacher does really good discussions. So I'm just gonna check it out. They work in the same school or they work in the same district. Like, let's just see what's working for them and learn from them. Um It would be so cool and it doesn't cost you anything else because you're not bringing anyone in, right? You're just leveraging the brilliance that's already in the space. So as a final tip, I would invite teachers and I speak from experience here. I was a teacher in a school where I got to do the like quote unquote master schedule for everyone and play with these, right? I was, I had like a committee that was giving me ideas and stuff and then I got to like, run with it and like, share out these ideas and then we voted as a staff on which one we wanted to do. So invite teachers, students, families, non instructional staff, invite as many folks that are interested that are innovative as you can to creatively brainstorm scheduling ideas, give them the legal parameters, of course. So whatever schedules you come up with, you have to make sure there's X amount of, you know, minutes or hours of instructional time in this subject and, you know, school days can't be shorter than this amount of time, whatever all the parameters are. 00:16:32 But then just let them dream, let them dream it up because those big ideas, like you may not get to do all of them. But if you can find one of them where it's like, yep, that meets the parameters. Yep, this is all right. It's gonna take a little reallocation. Let's find someone who's done something similar. Let's interview them like let's ask them how they did it. It is possible and sometimes you just need the dream to get you started on that path to making it happen. So once you do that, I'd love to hear back from you. Come on the show, tell us how you did it. But go ahead, start dreaming 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. 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. 00:17:36 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 my student experience data strategy here:
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We’re kicking off a mini series of episodes focused on transforming the systems that uphold inequity in our schools. In this episode, we are specifically exploring the structures that enable us to meaningfully partner with students and families on a regular basis. We’re grounding the conversation in a powerful theoretical model which directly addresses the common barriers to success in our student voice endeavors. Why are structures needed? In The Art of Gathering, Priya Parker writes of how adaptive leadership professor Ron Heifetz starts his class without speaking for 5 minutes. She points out that when we step back and don’t facilitate at all, we are not democratizing the space, but instead handing control to someone else in the space—perhaps the loudest, confident, or extroverted person. (We can democratize the space with skilled facilitation.) When we step back from our intentional facilitator role, we also are likely to create confusion and anxiety for the participants of our gathering. Many students will respond to an open invitation to share their ideas and experiences with understandable skepticism, confusion, and perhaps anxiety. Consequently, you may get zero student responses after extending the invitation. Certainly, we need to develop trust in relationships with students (and families) before real sharing will happen. However, we also need effective structures for how and when we can listen to folx share their experiences. Student voice scholar, Laura Lundy (2007) developed the Lundy Model of Participation, which includes four features that are required to enable students to authentically share their ideas: SPACE: Children must be given safe, inclusive opportunities to form and express their view VOICE: Children must be facilitated to express their view AUDIENCE: The view must be listened to INFLUENCE: The view must be acted upon, as appropriate How do we provide students with each of these features at a school level? Create Spaces: In addition to creating the relationships necessary to make this happen, we want to design our school schedules to provide students with as many opportunities as possible to share their ideas. From co-constructing curricula to co-creating school policy and all the things in between. Possible ideas to explore include:
Facilitate Voices: Use discussion and listening protocols such as Circle in all levels of school/district life (e.g., classrooms, school committees, after school clubs, advisory, family nights, staff meetings). Co-create community discussion agreements. Use them regularly. Normalize this way of being in community and listening deeply. Gather an Attentive Audience: If anyone (particularly adults) struggle to do this, do some adaptive work. Invite them to share challenges and interrogate deeply held beliefs that may be holding them back from partnering with students. Sometimes, inviting the adults to share their experiences is enough to build trust that listening is a community experience that is not unidirectional. They feel valued and cared for, and this may give them the capacity to do the same for others. (This has certainly been true for me in relationships! Everyone wants to be valued and listened to.) Partner for Influence: Invite students to attend relevant meetings or discussions about their proposals so you can work collaboratively to make the idea happen. Commit to respond to each suggestion or concern by a specific date. If it’s not possible to implement the proposal, clearly explain why to the students and invite students to brainstorm additional ideas to address the underlying issue. Final Tip You don’t need to implement a ton of structures tomorrow. Keep Lundy’s 4 principles in mind as you engage with students and ask them to share their ideas and experiences with you. Commit to building up structures and practices as you continue this work. To help you implement one structure for amplifying authentic student voices in your community, I’m sharing my Setting Up Structures of Shared Leadership worksheet with you for free. And, if you’re looking for more details on the ideas in this blog post, listen to episode 157 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 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, everyone. Welcome to Time for Teacher podcast. This is episode 157 and I'm super excited because today we're kicking off a mini series of episodes that are focused on transforming the systems that uphold inequity in our schools. In this episode, specifically, we're going to explore the structures that enable us to meaningfully partner with students and families and educators, right, a multi stakeholder partnership on a regular basis. 00:01:06 We're grounding the conversation in a powerful theoretical model which directly addresses the common barriers to success specifically in our student voice endeavors. I love it. I'm excited for it. Let's get into it. All right. So how are we doing this thing where we're prioritizing student voice, family voice, we're prioritizing gathering experiential data or street data as Jamila Dugan and Shane Sappier call it, I specifically am focusing on students today, but I do want us to keep in mind, family voice, educator, voice, all the stakeholder voices that are important because I think a lot of this applies. But the model we're specifically using it focused on Children and youth voice. So what are the structures? Right? And before we actually even get into that, let's talk about why the structures are needed in the art of a gathering. Pria Parker's book, she writes of how adaptive leadership, Professor Ron Heet, who have quote a lot of the B and podcast start this class without speaking for five minutes. And her point here is that when we step back from leadership roles and we don't facilitate at all, we're actually not democratizing the space. 00:02:11 We may think that we're giving up leadership and the leadership disappears. Everything is democratic. But instead, what we're doing is we're handing control role without that facilitation, we're handing control to someone else in the space. Perhaps that's the loudest person, the most confident person or the most extroverted person. She gives a bunch of other examples in her book of like parties where the host is not facilitating and you get stuck with a drunk uncle or something that's like someone you're really not thrilled to be talking to for two hours. So there are things that we think like we're stepping back, we're democratizing. Awesome. And there are things that happen in that space of un facilitation or lack of structure, right? What she actually says is we can democratize the space with the skilled facilitation when we take ownership of that facilitator role. And we skillfully facilitate the conversation and the opportunities for voice and sharing, right? When we step back from our intentional facilitator role, we're actually also likely to create confusion and anxiety for in her words, the participants of our gathering, right? With our students, we often create confusion and anxiety. 00:03:16 When we say, OK, we want to hear from you. Go no boundaries. We I've done this so many times with projects, I'm like, let's co create the project. What kind of project do you wanna do? Nothing's off the table? Go tell me what you want. And there's just like crickets and confusion and stress of like not coming up with the right answer all the things right that we learn as students is like we do school this particular way. And now after years of that training, we ask students to open up and share with us and there's a lot necessary to create a foundation where students are actually able to do that well, right. So many students will respond to an open invitation to share their ideas and experiences with us, with understandable skepticism, a lack of trust, perhaps a lack of, are you even going to take me or an idea of, are you even going to take me seriously? They might be confused and anxious as I said, and consequently, you might just get zero student responses after you're like, hey, everyone, tell me what you think, just crickets, right? 00:04:19 And so we need to develop trust, of course, in relationships with students and families and all stakeholders before real authentic sharing, that is honest and vulnerable will actually happen. But then we also need the structures, right? The facilitation for how and when we can listen to folks to have students, for example, share their experiences. So the theoretical framework that this episode is situated in comes from Laura Lundy, who is a student voice scholar, she developed what is known as the Lundy model of participation. So there is uh the convention on the rights of the child which has been upheld by almost every country in the world. The United States has not ratified this which is bonkers. But this idea of youth voice and participation in things that affect them is widely recognized as a way for Children and schools are a wonderful place for us to be able to facilitate this and bring it to life. She recognizes that there are many barriers, two students authentically sharing and participating in the way that we dream up in the way that we think of when we think of authentic meaningful student voice, right? 00:05:32 And so she says this model of participation actually includes four features that are required to overcome these barriers and enable students to authentically share their ideas. And so here they are first, space, Children must be given safe, perceived safety, right? They have to perceive the space as safe. It's not something that we dictate, right? But they perceive the space as safe, inclusive opportunities to form and express their view. So we need many opportunities, right? Plural, it's not one opportunity, plural, many opportunities. They need to have the students experience safety in those spaces and they perceive that they are safe to share psychologically physically that they are inclusive of all voices, particularly students who have historically been marginalized or excluded from these types of conversations. And that it's not just space to express their view, but also a space to form it. When you ask students who haven't been asked before, what do you think? There's often a long lull, a long silence, there's a lot of questions they have to work through. 00:06:39 I know just as an adult, there's a lot of times where someone asks me what I think about something, even if it's what do you want for dinner. And I literally have to stop and think for multiple minutes because I'm I'm not sure I have to have the space to think about it to form my ideas. And if I'm being asked about something or a student is being asked about something that they haven't had real connections with or experiences with or haven't even thought about certain topics, right? We need to allow them to have more experiences with that topic, to grapple with it, right? To form their view and, and express their view. So that's one that's space. The second piece is voice. Children must be facilitated to express their views. Again, we have this facilitation idea. This is an active thing. We enable the the voice through thoughtful participation in the creation of these opportunities for students to express their view. Again, I would say multiple opportunities. She uses a plural here. The third component is very adult centered. I think maybe also youth centered in terms of like youth also need to provide an audience. 00:07:46 But it's it's audience is the third one. And the idea here is that the view the child is sharing must be listened to. So students must be listened to and perceive that they are being listened to authentically meaningfully like we care what you say. We are not on our phones, we are not rolling our eyes, we are not um not taking you seriously because you're a child and we're adults or whatever it is, right? But the view must actually be listened to. So we create the space, the opportunity, we facilitate the voice, the sharing, we have the audience, we're actually listening. And the fourth one is influence, the Children have to have real influence. So here is described as the view must be acted upon as appropriate, right? So if it makes sense to act on it, if there's no real reason, we shouldn't, we should act, we should act, they should have real influence. I love this model. So let's actually use this model to go into the structures that would provide these students with each of these features at a school level. 00:08:52 Because of course, I think you can do this in classrooms. It might even be easier sometimes in classrooms. Um diff different, I should say maybe not easier across the board but different. Um and perhaps easier in the sense of you have a smaller community. So you have more opportunities to build trust in one on one relationships, teacher to student and student to student um in a larger school with a lot more um stakeholders, stakeholder types, right? We have families, we have educators, we have students, we have just a higher number of everybody. It might be harder to build that kind of trusting relationship. But here we're thinking about a school level and of course, let your mind wander to how this applies to the school as well. I'm sorry, the classroom as well. All right. So first, let's dive into spaces. So the first thing we want to do is create spaces. So in addition to creating the relationships, of course, that are necessary to make sharing happen. We want to design our school schedules to provide students with as many opportunities as possible to share their ideas. So from cot constructing curricula, again, that's a classroom example to co creating school policy and everything in between. 00:10:01 Here are some examples of ideas that you can use to create these spaces. And of course, this is not exhaustive, this is just like what's in my brain, you could do regular learning walks to get a pulse of what's happening in the school. And of course, that leads to deciding on your next action steps. Now, the kicker here is that we do these with students, right? So we're scheduling them, we're scheduling them in alignment with when students can do them with us. We are inviting students to share their experiences as we're going into the different classrooms, student voices centered, we could level up our student government. So it frustrates me to no end particularly as a high school and college student who was um in student government myself, that student government is seen as an often limited to in terms of influence planning social events. It is so much more than prom and the class trip. And what kind of like fun things are we doing? Encourage the student government and and of course, I think train and support and help them build the skills for advocating for and co creating policy change in their schools and also in the larger community, right? 00:11:10 Truly level up their leadership and give them those opportunities change the narrative of what student government can be and is in your community. Another idea include students on all school and district committees that includes things like curriculum assessment discipline committees. These are not just limited to some kind of fluffy student experience committee that is, you know, just after school clubs or sports or whatever. Another idea create in class and after school opportunities for participatory action research and civic projects. So again, you'll see some of these do transcend into the classroom as well. But I think if you have this larger system where you as the leader are connecting classroom teachers and after school teachers providers, whatever with folks who can help facilitate this work with students versus a toy action research, they're training students and how to do this. They're creating the space for students to go do this research and kind of report to or present to an authentic audience at the end for meaningful change. Um Local college students, I think are a great source of partnership in this work. 00:12:15 They're often really into it, right? They're, they're learning about participatory action research in their courses and they're excited to help others learn as well. It's great for them and internalizing the material, but it's also great for students to see other youth, although slightly older youth of course, um doing this um right. Uh another option is to make advisory period if you have advisory period or something similar like a concrete space for students to share their experiences, which it often is, but also to from those experiences when appropriate, when you know, acknowledged by students as something that they want action taken on that these experiential share outs are being used to recommend policy and practice changes, right? We're turning them into advocacy. So we're not just, oh this was a really tough part of my day because of this school structure. But like what does that school structure have to exist? And what can we say to have this changed? Another option is to develop family and educator together teams or fet teams that meet regularly in alignment with Ari Giron Kessler's advice, which was actually shared in a few episodes, two episodes back episode 155. 00:13:22 So you can get that at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 55. So these are just some ideas, but these are all kind of structured spaces that have a regular time and place and opportunity. There's a structure there that makes it sustainable. There are multiple opportunities on a regular basis in all of these different types of spaces and structures of spaces for students to share their experience and advocate for themselves, having meaningful influence in those spaces. Now, the next piece, when we think about that with space, her number one principle and then the number two is voice. So we need to facilitate voices. We can use discussion and listening protocols. My favorite, of course, as I always say is Circle protocol and use them in all levels of school and district life. So of course, you can use them in classrooms, but you can also use them in school committees in after school clubs. You can have students running after school clubs, you can train students how to do these circles and and facilitate themselves. Um do it in advisory. I think advisory is a great place for Circle Family nights. 00:14:27 You know, the the fet teams that you're creating potentially with families and educators together staff meetings, right? Model that one learning model for all model, how we do this as a staff, this is how we interact and now go do this with your students, right? This is just how we are in our community, of course, as part of Circle or any sort of discussion protocol core, your community discussion agreements, use them regularly, refer to them regularly, hold everyone accountable to them regularly and really normalize this as this is how we are in community and deeply listening to one another. The third piece is audience. So we need to gather an attentive audience. So if anyone particularly adults struggle to do this, this is where I think the adaptive work is critical. So as a leader, what I'm thinking is OK, I think a lot of folks, a lot of educators and and leaders in our space are gonna be like, yeah, I wanna listen to students. So I'm just gonna be attentive. You just need the reminder that like this is part of student voice and meaningful voice is there is an attentive audience. It's part of this framework. I'm gonna listen, I'm gonna put my phone away. 00:15:29 Cool. If there are some who are like, I am feeling the eye rolling, I am not taking this seriously. That's where the adaptive work has to be done. And as a leader, you want to step up and do it there, right? So we wanna invite those folks to share what are the challenges coming up for you? Let's deeply interrogate those beliefs that may be holding you back from partnering with students sometimes just literally inviting the adults to share their thoughts, experiences, fears, that's enough to build trust that listening is what we do in this community, right? You will be listened, it's not unidirectional. You don't just have to listen to students, right? Students are listening to you all the time. We may not feel like that. Um But the leaders and your peers are also listening like that's what we want to stand for. That's what we want to do here, right? And so in feeling valued and cared for by being listened to this may give those folks the opportunity and the capacity really, right? You're feeling like your cup is filled up. I now have the capacity to do the same for others. I was in a group once that uh uh participant names a beautiful metaphor of having like a rope or a string day, right? 00:16:37 Where a string day is like, I'm hanging out by a thread like you cannot put more on my plate. And a rope day is like, yes, lay it on me. I am here for you. I can deeply listen and empathize and do all the things, right? So we want to equip our teacher and any adults in the space that might be inattentive in the audience of student voice. We want to equip them with the capacity to do these things for students. So let's give it to them first and let's get them to have a bunch of rope days, right? I think this has certainly been true even for myself, I talk a lot about student voice but in in relationships for sure, like everyone wants to be valued and listened to and sometimes if the other person can be the person to value and listen and hear me, then I'm like, oh yeah, I got you like I can do this back, right? I just, I am feeling like my cup is not filled up yet. I need it filled up and then I can do it right. Ideally, we can just be ready all the time. In reality, we're real people. And I, I think this may just be something that helps us um to do this work. OK. Fourth thing influence. So we partner for influence here. 00:17:42 So we in in line with data Mitra student voice pyramid, which I've talked about before on the podcast and in the blog, we wanna make sure that we are partnering, right? And then ultimately, students are leading but through the support and structures of the school, right, we've done the the kind of middle of the pyramid work where we have come together and use adult partnership teams. And I genuinely think like this is where the transformation happens um and enable students to kind of take on their own projects because we've done the work, we've built the community, we have built the sense of partnership. So what does that look like? Invite students to attend relevant meetings or discussions about their proposal? So if they're like, hey, there's this cool idea. I have you invite them in and say, OK, that actually works well with this committee. So come on over, we're gonna talk more about it there. You can work collaboratively with us to make it actually happen. And if they can't or they decide, I don't want to do that, that's fine. Make sure that you are the person or someone is the person who's bringing it to the appropriate committees and you commit to that student to respond to their suggestion. 00:18:49 So each suggestion that you get from each student, right, I'm going to respond to you by a specific date and even if they don't even come up with a proposal, right? They're not saying this should be changed in this way, but they're just voicing a concern like we hear your concern, we're gonna talk about it at this meeting and therefore I can share out the next steps or things that questions that maybe came up for you so that you can kind of help us and and think through it and think about next steps, right? Whatever by this specific date. So just commit to that specific response date. So you can kind of circle back so they know where it's going. And you know, if it's not possible to implement the proposal, sometimes it's just not literally explain why to the students. So you'll remember maybe in Lundy's uh model that she says under influence rate, it's it's not that we always take action, we take action as appropriate. And so sometimes it's not appropriate, it's not possible, but we need to explain the why we need to circle back and say like, hey, we looked at this from these different lenses, like unless we're missing something, it's just not either relevant right now. It's not in alignment with our values. 00:19:50 Perhaps we don't have the financial resources and you can invite students to brainstorm additional ideas. So you're not just saying end of discussion, we're not doing this unless it violates your values in some way. And then we're, we're talking about that, of course, but invite students to brainstorm additional ideas of how we might address the underlying issue, right? Ok. So really surface level example, I, I don't think this is like a big thing. I think this is used usually as like, what is actually what is actually like a really fluffy example to your voice, but I'm using it now just because I can't think of anything else off the top of my head. If students are like, hey, the, we should have pizza every day at the, in the cafeteria, right? Ok. Well, pizza every day might not actually be nutritious and in alignment with our values we want what's best for the health of the whole child. Right. So we can't do pizza every day. However, if you're feeling like there are not a lot of good food options in the cafeteria, like I will walk you through. Um and the committee that, that designs that menu every week, we can walk you through. So some of like the budgetary constrictions or whatever we can brainstorm other options together. Um Perhaps you can find like a different supplier for us. 00:20:53 We can look at what schools have really great lunches and we can kind of do some of the digging in the research to try to think about how do we make lunch better because maybe it's not actually pizza that you want every day. Maybe it's just like you want delicious food. And so far like pizza is all that we've really done well. Right. And so I think bringing students in identifying the underlying cause and partnering with them to figure out, OK, what are the options to move forward? Um And, and showing them the work that goes on behind it, we have to research all this stuff like pitch in and help if you'd like, if that's really a passion for you, like we're welcoming the ideas. Um But we're just kind of stuck here and so maybe you can bring a new lens or bring a new idea, maybe you're connected to students at other schools who know how to do it differently and you can kind of bring that to us. OK. So those are our four kind of components of her framework. As a final tip, you don't need to implement a ton of structures tomorrow. And you know, this feels like this big thing. It's great to have all the things, all the structures. What I really am hoping that you take away from this episode is that Lundy's four principles are in your mind as you engage with students and families really and ask them to share their ideas and experiences with you. 00:22:07 So when you make that ask, keep the barriers in mind, keep the principles in mind and just commit to recognizing them, considering them, committing to building up the structures and practices that are gonna enable those four components and to help you implement at least one structure for ample amplifying authentic student voice in your community. You can grab by setting up structures of shared leadership resource for free at Lindsay, Beth lions.com/blog/one 57. 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 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. 00:23:18 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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Time for Teachership is now a proud member of the...AuthorLindsay Lyons (she/her) is an educational justice coach who works with teachers and school leaders to inspire educational innovation for racial and gender justice, design curricula grounded in student voice, and build capacity for shared leadership. Lindsay taught in NYC public schools, holds a PhD in Leadership and Change, and is the founder of the educational blog and podcast, Time for Teachership. Archives
November 2024
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