The 21st Century Classroom: Recent Episodes
The 21st Century Classroom
The Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education's 21st Century Classroom podcast showcases student-centered tech-rich stories from Vermont schools.
Lovely listeners, welcome back. I'm Jeanie Phillips, and on this episode, I get to talk about "The Last Cuentista", a book by Donna Barba Higuera.
It's a fantastic middle grades book that touches on the tension between technology and organic life, duty and desire, along with what we know about identity -- and how we know it.
It's also a book that asks us questions, like: how are you keeping the young people in your life plugged in and growing? And: Do you know the stories they tell about themselves? And most importantly, do you know how to help them tell those stories?
My guest today is Ornella Matta Figueroa, who works to support storytellers out of trauma, with Safeart, out of Chelsea, Vermont. She's also part of the Vermont Education Coalition.
This is Vermont Ed Reads, a show about books, by, for and with Vermont educators. Let's chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · TheLastCuentista Jeanie: I'm Jeanie Philips and welcome to #vted Reads, we're here to talk books, for educators, by educators and with educators. Today I'm with Ornella Matta-Figueroa. And we'll be talking about The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. Thank you so much for joining me Ornella. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Ornella: Thank you so much for having me. My name is Ornella Matta, and I'm coming to you from the Vermont Education Coalition, also co-director of Safeart, which is a nonprofit based out of Chelsea. We address trauma and communities to creative expression and storytelling.
Jeanie: I can't think of anybody more perfect than to talk about this book, The Last Cuentista. But before we get to this one, what are you reading? Right now, Ornella?
Ornella: Right now, I'm revisiting bell hooks Teaching to Transgress, and seeing it with these eyes that have gone through the pandemic and have lived the last few years is a totally different experience. And trying to figure out how do we create liberatory classroom? So that's my work of the moment.
Jeanie: We can always learn more from bell hooks I find every time I read her, I have a new full body learning experience.
Ornella: Same. Absolutely.
Jeanie: Well, let's it's tempting as it would be to talk about bell hooks right now let's, let's come back to The Last Cuentista, which is a book that starts the very beginning of this book, we know that the world as we know it is ending, a comet is going to strike Planet Earth in the year is like 2060 something and I wondered if you wanted to just give our listeners a little snapshot of who our main character is and what's happening in her life.
Ornella: So, how old is Petra?
Jeanie: I think she is like 13.
Ornella: She 13 or 14 years old?
Jeanie: I think she's on the cusp. She's like 13?
Ornella: Yes. So, we have Petra, and the book opens up with storytelling and this very moving goodbye between Petra and her grandmother. And there is a lot of you know, anticipation of what is going to happen next? What is it that we have to do? We start and see the relationship between Petra and her family, and we start to understand the earth. It is a little bit, you know, prophetic almost in a sense of, ooh, “A lot of this introduction sounds a lot like the worsening of the earth today.” And yeah, so the main character is Petra. And we meet family. In the beginning of the story, I would, I would say that.
Jeanie: And Lita, her grandmother is a storyteller. And, and Petra aspires to be like her when she grows up.
Ornella: A lot of inner conflicts we're seeing between the family, what the who Petra wants to be versus who her family wants her to be? While all of this chaos is happening, and they're trying, you know, they've been selected. And there's also this new one, so who gets to live and who gets to die?
Jeanie: More about the selected - what are they selected to do? Petra and her family.
Ornella: Selected to be leaving Earth and one of these shuttles, that's supposed to be,
Welcome, listeners, to another episode of vted Reads: talking about books by, for, and with Vermont educators. In this episode... we own an oversight.
On this show, we are dedicated to breaking down systems of inequity in education. We administer flying kicks to the forehead of intersectional oppression! But we haven't yet talked about disability.
So in this episode, we fix that, as we chat with Dr. Winnie Looby, who coordinates the graduate certificate in disability studies at the University of Vermont. Dr. Looby also identifies as a person with a disability, which is important, listeners, because the rallying cry of disability advocacy has long been "Nothing about us, without us."
So we're here, we're clear, and we're talking about "Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice," by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Let's limber up those kicking legs, folks, and talk about how disability too, is an equity issue.
I'm Jeanie Phillips, and this is Vermont Ed Reads. Let's chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads: Care Work with Dr. Winnie Looby Jeanie: Hi, I'm Jeanie Phillips, and welcome to #vted Reads. We're here to talk books for educators by educators and with educators. Today I'm with Dr. Winnie Looby. And we'll be talking about Care Work, Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Thanks for joining me Winnie, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Winnie: Yes, so my primary function, I guess is I work at UVM as a lecturer in disability studies, and also in foundations. And then I'm a coordinator for a program under the Center on Disability and Community Inclusion. And I've been working there for about four or five years.
Jeanie: And so excited to have you with us to talk about this subject. One of the things I've become aware of recently, is these two schools of thought about how we talk about people with disabilities or disabled people, do we use identity first language, like, disabled person? Or do we use people first language like people with disabilities? And I wondered if you had any thoughts about that?
Winnie: Yeah I think, from what I've absorbed, I think it's kind of context specific. Say, if you're talking to an individual who chooses to identify as an autistic person, that's the language you use when you're talking with them. But say, if you're talking to a government official, or somebody else like that, the politically correct thing to say now is person with a disability. So that's the language that you would use. But then say, if you're within an activist circle, you might say disabled people disabled person. So it really kind of requires us to be deep listeners um to figure out what exactly might be the appropriate thing to say in that moment.
Jeanie: I really appreciate something I've heard from other people I've had on the podcast as well. This like ask people ask people how they want to be referred to. And I think we had Judy Dow who's in an Abenaki scholar on and she said, you know, we talked about do people who want to be referred to as indigenous or Native American or Indian or, and she said, ask them, and think about tribal affiliations and things like that, as well. And so it's really helpful for you to frame that, again, ask people how they want to be referred to. Thank you for that. So this book, and so our author frames, access, disability access, in this way, "access as service begrudgingly offered to disabled people by non disabled people who feel grumpy about it." And she wants us to shift to a different definition of of access to "access as a collective joy and offering we can give to each other." And I was just really inspired by the move from one to the other, and what it might take for us as educators as schools, higher ed and K to 12 and pre K as well, to embrace this shift as a challenge to move from begrudgingly giving people access and being grumpy about it to creating opportunities for collective joy.
Winnie: Yeah,
Jeanie: In this episode, I sit down with educational phenoms Christie Nold and Jess Lifshitz. And we’re joined by Brendan Kiely, Author of The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege.
Now, you might be wondering what The Other Talk actually is. As many of you know, black people and other people of the global majority frequently have to have “The Talk” with their children about how to survive when they’re stopped by police in America. That’s right, when they’re stopped by police. It’s the talk about how to survive that experience. Parents often draw the meat of it from their own experiences of brutality and loss. But what talk do white people have with their children? Lovely listeners, this episode goes out to everyone who believes in young people, as Jess Lifshitz puts it, more than they believe in adults. Don’t get us wrong, adults, you are salvageable. But boy, there is work to be done. I’m Jeanie Phillips, and this is #vted Reads; a podcast about books by, for and with Vermont educators. Let’s talk.
The 21st Century Classroom · TheOtherTalk Thank you so much for joining me, Brendan, Christie, and Jess. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Brendan: Well, I’m honored to have been chosen to go first. So well, it’s great to be here. Thank you. I’m Brendan Kiely, the Author of The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege and other novels, including Co-Authoring, All American Boys with Jason Reynolds. It’s really great to have an opportunity to talk about issues and ideas and heartfelt feelings that I care deeply about. I hope to ground this conversation as often as possible in the notion of lived experience as opposed to an intellectual exercise about the damage that racism causes in our country. And I say that, because I’ve been thinking a lot about how often I didn’t think about my own lived experience when I was thinking about conversations about race and racism in America. So that’s why I’m sharing that.
I also just have to share, since we’re also talking about books that I’m currently reading is The 1619 Project and I’m just taking it in chunks at a time and I’m not trying to read it all at once. I’m going in between other reading, as well. But it feels like maybe the single most important book to read right now as a grounding point and as a as an effort to say, we all should be reading this. This should be canon in our educational experience. And when I’m taking a break from that, I’m reading Love and Other Poems by Alex Dimitrov which is just beautiful.
Jeanie: Well, thank you so much for that. How about you, Christie?
Christie: Everyone, it is so great to be here and be here with all of you. My name is Christie Nold. I use she/her pronouns and I am zooming in today from Abenaki Land here in Vermont. I am a white educator in a predominantly white school that is less than five miles from my childhood home, which is by intention and design. And so, I’m excited to be part of this conversation and talk about one of the things that I read in the wonderful book, The Other Talk about what it means to have my whiteness show up with me every day at school.
And what I’m reading right now is from the wonderful Mr. Tom Rad from Twitter, Raising Ollie: How My Nonbinary Art-Nerd Kid Changed Nearly Everything I Know. And one of the things that I love so much about this book is that on the face of it, it is the story of this one incredible kid, but in the depth of it really is truly a story about education and who it serves and who it doesn’t and why. I’m really challenged to think differently and deeply by Tom in this text. And it’s pulling at some of my heartstrings around public education, which I so deeply believe in, but what happens when that public education isn’t serving every kid. So, it’s a great book to challenge my thinking and I certainly recommend it.
Jeanie: Thank you so much, Christie. Jess?
Jess: Hi. I’m Jess Lifshitz.
In this episode, we welcome author, educator, and Vermont transplant Kathleen Kesson who talks about Community Schools Blueprint: Transforming Our School Community Partnership. Kathleen and I talk about the possibilities we see for widening the cracks in traditional schooling by building opportunities for students and communities to support one another in authentic, real-world ways.
Listeners, I’m going to ask you to bear with me on this one. This is one of my favorite episodes we’ve ever recorded because, in it, you’ll hear students at U-32 school in Montpelier, Vermont, get to bring their questions about the book “Dig”, by A.S. King, directly to the author.
If you haven’t read it, “Dig” is a powerful young adult novel talking about white experiences of white supremacy in the United States. And from the questions these students brought author A.S. King, it resonates deeply with students as they work to dismantle racism in this country.
So why am I asking you to bear with me?
We recorded this conversation over Zoom, and all the students in this episode, along with fabulous librarian Meg Allison, were in their school, so all were masked. Let me draw you a picture, listeners: A.S. King in her attic bower, me in my lovely home recording space, and Meg and her students gathered around a library table in the school library in Montpelier. As the students all come up to the laptop to talk with King, you may hear chairs scraping or shoes scuffing, the laptop being jostled — the whole deal.
That’s why we’ve also made this episode available as a full captioned video on our YouTube channel, so if that’s more your speed, you have that option available.
Thanks for bearing with us and remembering how much educators and students have to bear right now.
I’m Jeanie Phillips, and this is Vermont Ed Reads, talking about what educators and students in Vermont are reading.
Let’s chat.
https://soundcloud.com/innovativeed/dig?si=672b0036b26547f2b99837fbffbd90e8&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Meg: To be able to talk to the author of Dig! We have spent the last month talking and reading about it, and it has sparked so many conversations. Students are invited to come up and ask a question. Really, thank you so much, Amy, I want the kids to take this away.
Amy (AS King): I have a question, though, for you. What made you decide to do this? What made you like it, what started this whole thing?
Meg: After I had read this book, I found it like it's an essential book. It's an essential book for young people to read. And so, we are hosting book groups here as well. It's just, I think it actually should be like a part of our curriculum. And I know some of our students are going to talk to you about that. But especially in Vermont, we are a school that flies a Black Lives Matter flag out on our flagpole.
Amy: That’s why I want to move there Meg, that's why I want to move there.
Meg: We’re a school that successfully raised a student-led campaign to ban the Confederate flag on our campus, not just the parking lot, but on campus. And it sparked conversations in our school. And as we evolve in these conversations towards equity and racial justice, really thinking about like, what is our role as white students, white people, white humans? And in your book, just like Jeanie, and I were speaking before you get on the call, we can't think of another book that unpacks the roots of white supremacy and the way that you do. So, this is a conversation sparker that we hope continues throughout our building.
Amy: Awesome. All right, let's give it to the students. And thank you for that explanation, because I didn't know where exactly this started. So good morning, guys. How's it going? How's Vermont today?
Students: Cold.
Amy: Awesome. Throw questions at me. Ask me whatever you want. I'm an open book, no pun intended.
Elijah: Yeah. So I'm Elijah. And so my question basically comes down to this. So I'm currently talking with English teachers here about putting this book as part of our curriculum because it's far better than some of the other books we're reading. But I want to know about your decision to write it as a young adult book?
Amy: Ah, brilliant question. Excellent.
Lovely listeners: today is a work day.Now, we all know that talking about anti-bias work is a vital component of the kind of school change that makes our classrooms safer and more engaging for students of color. Doubly so when we are white educators, and when we teach in predominantly white spaces, in predominantly white communities. But sometimes, it feels like all we do is talk, and then assure ourselves that the work is done. It’s not. It's really, really not.Real change in dismantling bias in our classrooms can only come about when talk turns to walk. When we are serious about change, we share our own journeys, with all their missteps, rocks in the shoes, and joy-filled leaps and bounds. We share, and we listen, and only when we see what the work takes can we make the change we want to see in the world. On this episode, we welcome Emma Vastola and Emily Gilmore to the show, as they share their own journeys and all the work they take on, that they do each day to dismantle bias — and before we go any further I ask that you take a moment and hold these two Vermont educators in gratitude with me. Now, we’re going to be using Liz Kleinrock’s “Start Here, Start Now: A Guide to Antiracist and AntiBias Work in Your Community” to guide our conversation, and as you listen, I want you to consider — reeeeeeeally consider — these two questions: one, how can YOU share your own work in this way? and two, what’s stopping you?I’m Jeanie Phillips. Welcome to another episode of vted Reads: a podcast about books by, for, and with Vermont educators. Let’s chat.
https://soundcloud.com/innovativeed/start-here-start-now-with-emily-gilmore-and-emma-vastola?si=237070727d1c401eb7d164d96613dce7&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Jeanie: I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads. We're here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today I'm with two fabulous educators, Emma Vastola and Emily Gilmore, and we'll be talking about Liz Kleinrock’s Start Here Start Now: A Guide to Antibias and Antiracist Work in Your School Community. Thank you so much for joining me, Emily and Emma. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Emily: I'll start off. This is Emily Gilmore. I use she/her pronouns. I am a cis, white, former social studies teacher, now working for Great Schools Partnership, as of this year. I was in the classroom for nine years. I live in Winooski, Vermont, land of Abenaki and I’m really excited to be continuing conversations with Jeanie and Emma.
Emma: Thank you, Emily. So my name is Emma Vastola. I am a cis white female. I am currently teaching a multi-age fifth and sixth-grade classroom at a preK - six school in Mount Holly, Vermont. I am really excited to be here to talk with Jeanie and Emily today.
Jeanie: Thank you both so much for joining me. As you know I love to read and I love to expand my to-be-read pile even though it's practically toppling over now. What's on your bedside table? What are you both reading right now? Emma, why don't you go first?
Emma: Okay, so let's see. I, like you Jeanie, have a topple-like bedside table with lots of books on it. And so I'd have to say the one at the top is Dr. Wayne Dyer's Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life. That is one I go back to repeatedly that's always there. Another one that I have been reading is Adam Grant’s Think Again. And I usually have a book of poetry at my bedside table, and I am not going to remember the name of it.
Jeanie: What are you reading Emily?
Emily: Well, I have been driving a lot more for work. So I have been shifting to audiobooks, I normally mostly listen to podcasts. So I'm super excited and started listening to Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley and it is unbelievable as an audiobook. Oh, my goodness, highly recommend. Especially since I spent time in Sault Ste. Marie two or three years ago,
Lovely listeners: we're baaaaaaack! And we missed each and every one of you.
To celebrate our return, in this episode we brought back guests from Vermont Reads, a statewide program that encourages everyone across Vermont to read one book each year, and then turn and, you know, talk to one another. We are HUGE fans.
And yes, the names are confusing. They're Vermont Reads -- reading across Vermont -- and we're Vermont Ed Reads, reading across Vermont, but make it education. (Please imagine my jazz hands as I say that).
Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup returns to the show this time with Lizzie Lyons, the Children's Advocacy Coordinator at the Vermont Network, an organization focused on addressing domestic and sexual violence across the state. Together, we'll be talking about We Contain Multitudes, by Sarah Henstra, a book about boys, poetry, queerness, and how the artist formerly known as Prince refuses to stop changing lives, wherever he appears. (Hint: stay tuned for dance party details.)
Now, as you might've guessed from Lizzie's presence, We Contain Multitudes contains some mention of domestic violence, which we touch on briefly in this episode. It's an important topic, and part of the work this year with Vermont Reads is providing educators and other adults with tools and resources for supporting students (and more specifically LGBTQIA students) who are dealing with this issue. There are minor spoilers for the book at the 39-minute mark, but we feel like we did a great job yelling SPOILER ALERT! at the top of our loving lungs. Jog ahead two minutes and you're fine.
But don't jog too far ahead, because we really did miss you, and we missed this, and we are so happy to be back having these important conversations.
So! Without further ado: I'm Jeanie Phillips and this is #vted Reads: talking about books by, for, and with Vermont educators.
https://soundcloud.com/innovativeed/wecontainmultitudes?si=68bfb0bdeb724a1a9237c2e0e6128c6b
Jeanie: I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads. We're here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today I'm with Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup and Lizzy Lyons and we'll be talking about We Contain Multitudes by Sarah Henstra. Thank you so much for joining me, Christopher and Lizzy. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Christopher: Hi, Jeanie and hi, Lizzy. It's great to see you both. I'm really excited to be here to talk about We Contain Multitudes. I'm the director at Vermont Humanities. I've been around now for about 4 years. So, this is the fourth Vermont Reads book that I've worked on, and might be my favorite. One of the things that really speaks to me about it, that I feel like I should tell people about right up front, is that this is the first LGBTQ youth choice in Vermont Reads 19 year history. And maybe coincidentally, I am a queer-identified person. And so, this book speaks to me pretty specifically and reminds me a lot of some of the experiences that I had as a young person.
Lizzy: And my name is Lizzy Lyons. I'm really excited to be here. I was approached by Christopher at Vermont Humanities when they chose this book. As part of the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence because of some of the themes in this book. And we have been invited to be a partner in some of the programming that's happening for this book, and we're really excited about that. The Vermont Network is working alongside 15 different statewide organizations in Vermont and we work around themes of domestic and sexual violence and working toward a violence free Vermont.
There’s a lot of different programs of support that are happening statewide that I am excited to talk about in relation to this book. Also to let all of your listeners know that there's supports out there, whether that's just for you or her family members and shelter and other sorts of programming available stuff exciting.
Christopher: Yes. Lizzy,
Back on the show: it's Bill Rich! But first: Lovely listeners, a few episodes ago, we turned fifty. Fifty! Can you imagine? It took us a hot minute (and um, more math than we'd care to discuss) to figure that out but this is the season that took us to FIFTY EPISODES. And we are so grateful to all of you for making that journey with us. It has been so powerful to hear from all of you that you are listening, you are pondering, and you're enjoying this podcast as much as we're enjoying making it. Heart. Felt. Thanks. And to that end, in this episode, we welcome back the very FIRST guest we ever had on the show: Bill Rich. Along with the redoubtable Susan Hennessey, Bill runs the Tarrant Institute Learning Lab, now accepting applications for its fifth year, and a whole riot in its own right. Bill and I talked about The Culture Code in the very first episode of vted Reads, back when it was still part of the late great 21st Century Classroom. Bill is back. And this time, we're talking about Giving Students a Say: Smarter Assessment Practices to Empower and Engage, by Myron Dueck. We firmly believe this book can help educators unlock a more powerful arena for respecting student voice, even if the title itself... just might be a misnomer. I'm Jeanie Phillips and this is the end of the third season(!) of vted Reads: a show by, for, and with Vermont educators. Let's chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads with Bill Rich Jeanie: I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads. We're here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today, I'm with Bill Rich, and we'll be talking about Giving Students a Say: Smarter Assessment Practices to Empower and Engage by Myron Dueck. Thanks so much for joining me, Bill. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Bill: Well, my claim to fame is I was your first guest for episode number one. So I appreciate being invited back, congratulations. And I taught in Vermont schools for 16 years as Language Arts and Social Studies teacher in middle and high school. And then decided I was going to take a different path and work from outside schools to try to make them better inside. So I founded Red House Learning committed to using what we know about the brain to improve what we do in our schools.
In addition to working with schools long-term and conducting workshops and writing about that topic, I am the Co-Director of the Learning Lab with Susan Hennessey, your colleague. And I'll probably say a little bit more about that program. But it really embodies a lot what this book is about, but for adults. I also co-direct with Tim O'Leary, What's the Story, which tries to put all these brain-based design principles into action in a way that can be great for students and helpful to teachers looking for a better way.
Jeanie: You wear many hats, and yes, you were my first ever guest. My first pilot of Vermont Ed Reads where we talked about The Culture Code.
What a fabulous book. I've actually given that book to many people as a gift. I liked it so much. And now we're at the -- this is the last episode of season three, you're our 52nd guest!
Bill: Season three. Wow, I can't wait for that door prize.
Jeanie: So this is our 52nd episode. And we almost -- we hadn't counted and suddenly I was like, oh my gosh, we've reached 50, who knew, I had done this 50 times. And so thanks for coming back and for choosing this book.
Before we launch into it, I want to ask what you're reading right now.
Bill: Oh, I'm on the tail end of a tear of reading nonfiction books about breathing and breath. That started with a book by Wim Hof, called The Wim Hof Method. And then James Nestor’s book Breath. And then a guy named Patrick McKeown in the Oxygen Advantage. I was a mediocre athlete throughout my schooling years. And I have learned, I was a horrible breather. I was never taught accurately,
Listeners! Today I'm joined by Jaida and Emma, two marvelous students from Southern Vermont, and the three of us share our love of picture books. The art, the messages, the emotions, the relatability... the art. So we're going to be asking you to listen to this episode with both your ears and your eyes -- in some capacity.
(Also there are PIES. I should mention the PIES)
I had such a lovely time talking with both Jaida and Emma, and hope this conversation makes you too, think of your favorite picture book, what you got from it, and how it helped shape you as a learner.
One content note: one of the picture books and our discussion around it, deals with animal death. We understand if that's not a topic everyone's comfortable with. This is #vted Reads, a podcast by, for, and with Vermont educators.
I'm Jeanie Phillips! Let's chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads: picture books! Jeanie: Thank you so much for joining me Jaida and Emma. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Jaida: Hi Jeanie and listeners, I'm Jaida Greeley. And I love picture books and reading.
Emma: Hi! My name is Emma and I love writing and reading. I like to read fantasy, fiction, and romance books.
Jeanie: Three readers talking about books. Nothing could make me happier folks, the three of us having this conversation. Thank you so much. Do you have some books you'd recommend for our listeners of any kind?
Emma: Yes. I would recommend these picture books and then I'll get into like chapter books. But Journey is a wordless book with pictures, but it has such deep meaning. Part in the Bottle? The Undefeated? I just read American Royals, which is a romance book and Harry Potter.
Jeanie: How about you Jaida, what would you recommend?
Jaida: I think for picture books all Patricia Polacco books are really, really good books for all ages. And a poem book, Woke, is a really strong book about social justice and other books than picture books. I don’t know. I read a lot of different kinds of books? But lately I really like A Good Kind of Trouble, which is not a children's book. And I read a lot of Percy Jackson. That's a fantasy Book.
Jeanie: Those are fabulous recommendations.
Jaida: And A Girl at Heart.
Jeanie: A Girl at Heart. Thank you for adding to my summer reads list. I appreciate that.
Well, the three of us chose four picture books that you have been using in your classroom and that you loved. And we're going to talk about them one by one. This is our first time doing four books in one episode. And it's our first time talking about picture books. I love picture books, so I'm really excited about this episode.
The first one we're going to discuss is called Something Happened in Our Town, (A Child's Story About Racial Injustice).
It's written by Marianne Celano, Marietta Collins and Ann Hazzard, with illustration by Jennifer Zivoin. Could you tell me a little bit about what this book is about, Emma?
Emma: This book is about the aftermath of a Black American who was shot by a white police officer. This story shows harsh reality to two kids' questions and their fight to be inclusive and aware of their community and their actions.
Jeanie: Thank you for that. I was really intrigued by this book because somebody gets shot, a Black man gets shot by a police officer but that doesn't happen within the pages of the book. The book happens after the media has covered that. It's been on TV and radio and the internet. And these kids who -- I don’t know, what grade would you think they were, Emma?
Emma: Third.
Jeanie: Yeah, you would say like second, third, or fourth. They're on the younger side and clearly heard it either on the radio or on TV. Or they heard people talking about it. And they have so many questions. Who do they ask their questions to?
Emma: They ask their parents. We actually read another book and I'm going to -- it's off script -- but we read another book ...
On this episode… we have Ann Braden!!!! Ann is one of my favorite authors, and she’s also a former Vermont educator with a new book out, The Flight of the Puffin. Flight of the Puffin truly feels like a middle grades book for our time: it’s the story of four completely different middle school students, in completely different circumstances, and completely different areas of the country, and how random acts of kindness wind up tying them together.
The book is based on Ann’s own experiences in responding to the 2016 election (and all that came afterwards) by putting massive amounts of love out into the universe, and quite possibly in your mailbox.
Listeners, we are DELIGHTED by this. All of it.
I’m Jeanie Phillips. Let’s chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · Ann Braden Flight Of The Puffin Jeanie: Thank you so much of joining me Ann. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Ann: I’m so excited to be here, any time I get to spend with you is a great time.
Jeanie: Same for me.
Ann: I used to be a middle-school social studies teacher and then I turned to writing. The Flight of the Puffin is my second book. My first was The Benefits of Being an Octopus. I’m so excited to have books.
Jeanie: Congratulations on your newest book! We should also say, because the primary audience for this podcast is Vermont, that you’re located in Brattleboro, Vermont. But before I get to anything else, how is Zoey doing?
Ann: She’s having a rough year. I think about kids like Zoey who are trapped in their little four-walled spaces with a not-awesome family relationship. And I’ve been thinking about them all this year. It’s one of those things where if we didn’t get it before, we’d better get it now.
Jeanie: Zoey, listeners, is the main character of The Benefits of Being an Octopus. I’ve been thinking about Zoey too, because she was already suffering under economic hardship, in difficult family circumstances. The stress and pressures of COVID have to have made that harder, for Zoey and kids like Zoey. I’ve been holding her in my heart. Thank you for that book. That book has been such a gift to me and to Vermont educators. I know it’s been used and is being used all over the place. Kids are loving it, so thank you for that.
Ann: My pleasure.
Jeanie: I also know you’re a great reader. As many writers are, as most writers are. What are you reading now?
Ann: I am in the middle of the Burnout book about the stress cycle, because as we all know there’s little bit to be stressed about these days. I am someone that often internally processes my stress. Like, I will seem all happy and feel all happy on the outside. And then I develop all these chronic stress-related medical issues. I’m like, “Okay, I’ve got to figure this out.” It’s very good about releasing the stress and creating opportunities for your body to recognize that you are okay. I’ve been working through that one.
Jeanie: I just listened to a podcast about that book! Just an hour-long podcast that was just so helpful about hugs and exercise. All of the ways you can let your body know that it’s okay again.
Ann: I’m not an exerciser. I’ve never been like, “Oh yes, exercise makes me feel good.” Now I’m like, doing slow Qigong is telling my body that I’m okay. It’s just as good as other exercises.
Jeanie: That’s so interesting. For me, one of the ways I manage stress is reading. Like reading, to me, and being engaged in a book? That's deep relaxation. I like living through stories.
Ann: I love that.
Jeanie: Thank you for your books, because they relax me. Let’s jump into The Flight of the Puffin which is such a delight. Would you introduce us to the four characters in the book? Libby, Jack, Vincent and T?
Ann: Sure, do you want me to just read or just tell you about them?
Jeanie: Both, whatever works for you.
Ann: I think I will read first.
Chicago-based educator and twitter wunderkind Jess Lifshitz joins Jeanie on the podcast to talk about Dr. Gholdy Muhammad's seminal text on equity and criticality: Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads: Cultivating Genius
Jeanie: Thank you so much for joining me, Jess. Just tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Jess: Thank you for having me. My name is Jess Lifshitz. And I teach fifth grade in a public school in the suburbs of Chicago. I teach ELA, so I get to teach two groups of fifth graders; I teach literacy to them both. And I am mom to an eight year old who's in second grade. So that keeps me busy when I'm not in the classroom.
Jeanie: I see all around you, Jess, on our Zoom call, books, books, and books, and more books. It's like a room after my own heart. I recognize things I've read even! What are you reading right now?
Jess: Right now I am in the middle of a book that I know my fifth graders will love. It's called The Jumbies at least that's how I say it in my own head by Tracy Baptiste. And it is a creepy, super creepy fantasy, and I am loving it, but I've been reading it before bed and it, it creeps me out -- which means my fifth graders will love it. Then teacher-wise, the most recent thing I read that is The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop and that's by Felicia Rose Chavez. And I finished that probably a month or two ago. And it was one of those transformative books. So that has stuck with me as well.
Jeanie: Thank you for those suggestions. I'm totally adding those to my, to be read list. Yeah,
Jess: I sure that I will bring up the anti-racist writing workshop again, at some point in this conversation because there's so many connections to cultivating genius with the book.
Jeanie: Excellent. Well, this book, Cultivating Genius, came my way via a tweet. You put out saying you were revisiting it. And I, I just want to start by saying we haven't met in person, but I'm a huge fan of yours and the Twittersphere.
And one of the things I love so much is the way you publicly share your work on Twitter. You're often sharing plans. You share examples of student work and most especially you share charts that you're using with your students. And like, it's such a deep and thoughtful practice. And I'm so grateful that you put it out there. I wonder: I think that's really scary for a lot of teachers. What was your journey to making your practice public like that? How did you come to have the courage to do that? And what does it mean to you?
Jess: It's so funny because it doesn't at all feel courageous. It feels like it has enhanced my teaching in so many ways. I can't even remember when I first got on Twitter. Maybe six years ago? Maybe it was longer than that? I don't know time is weird now.
But when I first got on, I was at a point in my career where I had sort of plateaued in terms of my own development. I think I, you know, had sort of gone as far as I could in terms of what my district was offering. I just sort of felt stuck. And I remember we had some PD where someone had mentioned twitter and I was like, Oh, well I'll try that. And when I first got on there, I just thought the world it opened up in terms of the voices that I was hearing? Was really powerful.
For a long time, I didn't necessarily share my own practice, but just learned from the practice of others.
And the more that I, I think I learned from others, the more I wanted to grow my own practice.
And the more thinking that it led me to, the more I wanted to, I don't know, cultivate my, my own teaching in a way that I could share it with others in the way I was gaining from teachers I was reading about.
So I guess I just started sharing and it led me to connect with people who thought similarly and also thought in a different way, but that enhanced my own thinking?
Today on the podcast, Alex Shevrin Venet joins us to talk about her new book, Equity-Centered, Trauma-Informed Education. How does it work in classrooms? How can you, as an educator, use your own coping strategies to dismantle inequity at your school? Will action research help? And what does convincing your landlord to let you have a pug have to do with it?
Alex Shevrin Venet explains.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads: Equity-Centered, Trauma-Informed Education
Jeanie: Thank you so much for joining me, Alex, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Alex: Thanks for having me, Jeanie. I am an educator based in Vermont. For those of you in Vermont, I'm in Winooski and I've lived in Winooski for a few years and been in Vermont for, I guess, 12, 12 or 13 years at this point. It flies by when you live here. I say educator because that's easier than explaining what I do on a day-to-day basis, which is I wear very many different hats all under the umbrella of education.
So one of the things I do is I teach at CCV -- the Community College of Vermont. I teach sort of interdisciplinary humanities courses there. I also teach teachers through Castleton's Center for Schools and through Antioch University. And those are kind of professional development courses for teachers. I do workshops and professional learning for educators, which lately has meant being on zoom a lot.
But pre COVID , I got to drive all around New England (and sometimes beyond) working with teachers in schools. And of course, I'm often writing for my own blog and for a few other websites. All connected to trauma informed education. So it's easier to just say educator than to give the whole list. And I'm sure I left a few things out.
Oh! And my background, I should say, is in teaching middle and high school. I worked at an alternative therapeutic school, which I talked a lot about in the book. And that really sparked my passion for trauma-informed education. Cause that's what we were doing day in, day out.
Jeanie: Thank you so much for sharing all of that. I sort of know you in lots of those different places, but not all of them. And you're certainly the first person that comes to mind when I think trauma-informed education. When I want to look at an expert I think of you. I'm delighted to have you on the podcast.
So you have told us a little bit about yourself, but you really begin this book, Equity-Centered, Trauma-Informed Education by positioning yourself in relation to the work. And I wondered if you wanted to share a little bit about your positionality and what brought you to both trauma informed work and equity work.
Alex: Okay! So where I come to this work from is as a teacher.
And I try to say clearly in the book that I'm not a mental health clinician or therapist or psychologist.
I do sort of inhabit an interesting space, which is that I went to college to become a teacher. I got my teaching license in secondary education with an English endorsement.
And then I ended up working straight out of college at this therapeutic school.
At this therapeutic school, we cross-trained in educational professional development and also professional development from the clinical director in counseling techniques. And our role was called "counseling teacher". So over the eight years -- including summers -- that I worked there, I tried to add it up once, but it's really hundreds of hours of counseling-focused professional development. In addition to also hundreds of hours of education-focused professional development.
I kind of wished that all teachers had that because there are so many tools from counseling that are so helpful in teaching.
But even with all those hours, I still do not hold any type of clinical license. And I think that's important to say because I wanted to write a book that was about being trauma-informed, but not trauma specific.
Oh lovely listeners, we are all still here, and we are all noticing the change of the seasons. This year the melting of the snow and the return of the sun are coinciding with a COVID-19 vaccine becoming available. We know, lovely listeners, that you are all feeling that complicated mix of joy, sorrow and wonder, as you get your vaccines, and we are right there with you.
Speaking of a complicated mix of feelings, in this episode we talk about the new YA book, The Shape of Thunder, with the book's author, Jasmine Warga. It's a tale of love, loss, theoretical physics, and how we interpret our students' behavior. Specifically, how those interpretations shape the way we structure learning challenges for our students. Listeners, we get emotional.
That said, let us give you a quick content note: listeners, this book and our discussion touches on school shootings, and sibling death. If those topics won't work for you right now, we still love you and want you to take the best care of yourself you can. (Hint: see our earlier talk about vaccines!)
I'm Jeanie Phillips and this is #vted Reads, a podcast about books, by, with and for, Vermont educators.
Let's chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads: The Shape of Thunder
Jasmine: So, thanks so much for having me, Jeanie. I'm so thrilled to be here. So, I'm Jasmine Warga and I am an author of books for young people. My first two books were for more like teens, and my next couple books have been for middle graders, but I'm interested in writing like complicated and messy and challenging books for young people that really speak to the world that they're living in and help them to build an emotional vocabulary to discuss those things.
Jeanie: I'm trying so hard. That's a fan girl, but I love your book so much. The first book I read of yours was My Heart and Other Black Holes, and I just felt like you understood and got on the page depression so beautifully and so honestly, and I just so appreciated that. When I was a high school librarian, I shared that book with so many kids and it meant a lot. And then I got a copy of Here We Are Now and I just felt like you were in my soul, the way you wrote about music and about this girl and her relationship with her estranged father and her mother. That book just got so under my skin. And then Other Words for Home was like one of my very favorite middle grades when it came out. It was like my book of the year. And now we have this beautiful book. So, I'm going to try hard not to gush all over you.
Jasmine: Thank you. Thank you so much for your support of my work. And I just, I really, really appreciate that. And I especially appreciate you loving Here We Are Now because I feel like of my books it's like my niece known or loved books. So, it's always special to me when people also understood kind of the soul and heart of that book.
Jeanie: I love them all. And I'm so excited about this book The Shape of Thunder. I read it so quickly because I couldn't stop and I'm eager to talk about it. But before we do, what are you reading right now?
Jasmine: Okay. So, I'm actually reading something really exciting right now. I have an early copy of Mariama Lockington. So, she is the author of For Black Girls Like Me which was her debut in 2018. She's a new book coming out in 2022 called In The Key of Us and it is a really warm poetic. I mean, Mariama, I think she has a background in poetry and you see that show up in her prose and it's this really gentle, but also complicated queer first love story. And I feel like I haven't seen that a lot in middle grade. It's starting to black girls who both have agency and are very different from one another, but are finding their way to one another, and I'm just loving it. I can't stop reading it. So, it's definitely something to look out for in 2022.
Jeanie: Oh, I can't wait. That sounds perfect. Fabulous. So, could you, let's dig into this one.
Are you wear-your-mask-in-a-pandemic brave, listeners? Or get-vaccinated-when-needles-scare-you brave? On this episode of the podcast, we're joined by Vermont author and educator Lindsey Stoddard, who's here to talk about her new middle grades book, Brave Like That. We'll talk about the many different kinds of brave you can be, along with how students know that tiny acts -- of kindness, of effort, and of honesty -- make all the difference in the world.
I'm Jeanie Phillips, and this is #vted Reads, a podcast of books by, for, and with Vermont educators.
Let's chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads: Brave Like That Jeanie: Thank you so much for joining me, Lindsey. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Lindsey: Hi. Well, thank you so much for having me. I’m so honored to be here to chat with you about Brave Like That. I’m Lindsey Stoddard. Now, I was born and raised in Vermont and then spent 12 years living and teaching in Washington Heights, New York City and have since returned with my young family back to Vermont which feels it feels really wonderful to be here. And I have a three year old and a four year old son. So I’m very much a full time mom. But I’m also a middle grade author. Brave Like That was my third middle grade novel. The fourth one comes out in May. So, that’s exciting too.
Jeanie: Congratulations! Can you just name for us your other two books and your forthcoming book?
Lindsey: Sure! Yeah, my first book was called Just Like Jackie and the second one is Right as Rain and the next one that’s coming out in May is called B Is For Blended.
Jeanie: Beautiful. So, were both of your previous books on the Vermont Middle Grades Book Award list?
Lindsey: Just Like Jackie was. Yes.
Jeanie: I thought it was excellent. Thank you so much for joining us to talk about this book which I loved. But before we get to that, what are you reading right now? What’s on your nightstand table or maybe what are you reading?
Lindsey: You know I just finished last night the amazing All Thirteen by Christina Soontornvat. It’s the true account of the Thai Boys soccer team rescue from a flooded cave in Thailand. It is riveting. She does a wonderful job storytelling. Even though I like, I knew the ending because I had followed the story in the news, it was just like edge of your seat reading. She did a great job. That was wonderful.
Jeanie: Oh, my goodness, thank you for adding that to my to be read list. It was really good.
So, I just loved that this book just captured so much about middle school. But before we start talking about the way in which it just rang so true, could you introduce us to Cyrus? Our main character in the book?
Lindsey: Of course. Yes, Cyrus is the main character in Brave Like That. The book opens on his 11th birthday. We know that he, as a baby, was dropped off the on the front step of a firehouse in Northfield, Minnesota. He was adopted by one of the firefighters inside, Brooks Olson. And Brooks Olson is not just a legend in this town for being a brave firefighter but he’s also a legend for being an amazing football player. He holds records in the middle school and in the high school in town where Cyrus will be attending.
Everyone just sort of assumes that Cyrus will be the next best wide receiver in the league. And no one knows that Cyrus doesn’t have any interest in being a wide receiver at all. He just doesn’t feel like he’s brave like his dad.
Like, he’s not brave like run-into-burning-buildings brave or brave like full-tackle-football brave. So, this is a story about him figuring out what is really deep down in him. What kind of brave he really is.
Jeanie: That’s just so middle school, right? Like, this is really a story about Cyrus finding who he is apart from his family. Apart from his father. And also feeling good about that as opposed to feeling like, "What if it’s not okay if this is who I am?
We're here to talk books for educators, by educators and with educators. Today I'm with Dr. Penny Bishop and we'll be talking about The Successful Middle School: This We Believe, by Penny and her co-author Dr. Lisa Harrison. Thanks so much for joining me, Penny. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads: The Successful Middle School Penny: Well, thanks for having me, Jeanie. I'm delighted to be back.
I'm Penny Bishop, as you mentioned. And I'm a professor of middle grades education at the University of Vermont where I teach teachers -- especially those who want to become middle grades teachers. And I conduct research on responsive learning opportunities and learning environments for young adolescents.
Jeanie: Last time you were here was over a year ago and we talked about Personalized Learning in the Middle Grades. And we're so glad to have you back. So, I also know that you're an avid reader and you and I have swapped books suggestions before. What are you reading now?
Penny: Yeah, I love that question, thank you for asking. I just finished last night, The Vanishing Half. It's by Brit Bennett, and it's a really interesting take on racial identity and gender identity and follows the lives of a set of twins from the 1950s to the 1990s and how their paths diverged in pretty significant ways. I was up late finishing it. Couldn't put it down.
Jeanie: Oh, that was such a good read! I loved that one. That book really helped me sort of understand colorism a little bit more. The way that colorism plays out in people's lives and their experience.
Penny: Yes, yes, the whole idea of passing was quite a, quite a new one for me as a white woman here, so.
Jeanie: There is a book that sort of touches on similar themes by Brandy Colbert. And it's called The Only Black Girls in Town. And so, The Vanishing Half is obviously an adult book, but if you wanted to talk about issues of colorism in passing in the classroom, this book would be an excellent one to share with young readers.
Penny: Great, thank you, I'll have to check that out.
Jeanie: But this book ,which is all about identity, sort of intertwined with identity in all sorts of ways, is the position paper for the Association for Middle Level Educators (AMLE). Is that correct?
Penny: It is! And it's the fifth edition of that position paper, actually. The first one I think came out in 1982, so a long time ago.
Jeanie: The one before this came out in 2010, is that correct?
Penny: That is correct, yes.
Jeanie: So, it needed some updating.
Penny: It needed quite a bit of updating. The association recognized that. They were eager to have that happen. Absolutely. It has been updated, as I mentioned, five times now. And each update reflected important societal shifts. Important changes in what we know, based on research, about what is effective teaching and learning for young adolescents.
And I think there was a general consensus [at AMLE] that it was overdue, in fact.
Now, you've had Kathleen Brinegar on previously, and she has talked about her terrific book, also with Lisa Harrison, and with Alice Hart: Equity and Cultural Responsiveness in the Middle Grades.
In some ways the themes are related. Plus, there's been a pretty strong critique of the middle grades movement as one that was very much rooted in white, cisgender, middle class, Christian perspectives. And male perspectives to some extent as well.
The first four iterations of the text represented the best of what developmentalism can offer. That's really encouraging teachers to take into account developmental perspectives of this particular time in one's life. But unfortunately that came perhaps at the cost of thinking about more diverse populations. So I would say that the most significant shift in this text was to ensure that there was greater attention to diversity. And equity in particular.
In January 2020, the Vermont state legislature proposed a resolution formally apologizing for the legislature's role in passing a 1931 law making eugenics perfectly legal and encouraged in the Green Mountain State. Meanwhile, on the Standing Rock Reservation, in South Dakota, the future of the Dakota Access Pipeline is in doubt, but only at the cost of continued vigilance and advocacy on the part of concerned citizens.
How do these two events tie together?
In this episode, middle school equity scholar Kathleen Brinegar joins us to talk about her new book, Equity and Cultural Responsiveness in the Middle Grades. We step through two chapters in particular that provide roadmaps for educators to move into being 'co-investigators' with students. Co-investigators f work that is powerful, authentic, and above all, personally relevant and meaningful.
We also talk about how we'd really like to do our first year of teaching over.
Like, entirely.
Fortunately, as educators, we get unlimited do-overs. Today, for instance, is another opportunity to be better, both to one another... and to ourselves.
I'm Jeanie Phillips, and this is Vermont Ed Reads: a podcast about books by, for, and with, Vermont educators. Let's chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads: Equity & Cultural Responsiveness in the Middle Grades Kathleen: Thanks Jeanie. I’m happy to be here. So, I’m an Associate Professor of Education at Northern Vermont University. I coordinate our middle and secondary teacher education programs. I also serve as the co-editor of the Middle School Journal, along with my coeditors of this book Lisa Harrison and Ellis Hurd. And I serve as the program chair for the middle level special interest group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
But I’m also a mother, a partner, an avid reader and a runner.
Jeanie: I am so excited to have you on for the second time. We got to be in person the last time we recorded and we talked about Cornelius Minor, We Got This: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us To Be. It’s one of my favorite episodes.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads: We Got This, with Kathleen Brinegar And so, I’m really excited to have your experience showcased on the podcast again this time.
Thank you so much for agreeing to come and talk to me about this book, which I love and which I think is really important right now. But before we begin that: you’re an avid reader. What are you reading right now?
Kathleen: Yeah. So, I tend to always have two books going at once, a young adult novel and you know, a “grown up” book because I think young adult is for grownups as well. But in terms of young adults, I just finished Chlorine Sky by Mahogany Browne, which was just beautiful. Such a gorgeous debut novel by such a talented poet. I love her middle grades picture book of poetry called Woke: A Young Poet's Call to Justice as well. I highly recommend that one.
And then I’m also reading Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by Isabel Wilkerson. Which I find beautiful but in an entirely different way.
Jeanie: Yeah. I love Wilkerson’s writing. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration was such an education for me. And I’m definitely going to have to add Chlorine Sky to my "to be read" pile. Thank you for that recommendation.
Kathleen: Yeah.
Jeanie: I love talking with you about books, but we’re going to get to this particular book. Could you give us a little background on this book? Why this book? And why did you organize it the way you did? Talk a little bit about how it’s organized for our listeners.
Kathleen: Yeah, absolutely. So, this book came about through a long-standing desire to create a book for a mainstream middle grade audience that centers equity and cultural responsiveness in the middle grades. Because it’s something that I and my coeditors felt like,
Are you there, #vted? It's me, Jeanie.
On this episode of the podcast, we're re-joined by one of the very first guests on our show, Jory Hearst. She returns to talk about All-American Muslim Girl, by Nadine Jolie Courtney. Jory shares her own journey through and relationship with Judaism, and the ways she found her own feelings and questions reflected in this text. But in addition to talking deeply and reflectively about religion, All-American Muslim Girl presents us with some powerful ideas about flexible pathways for learning, identity, and consent.
This. Is. A good one.
I'm Jeanie Phillips, and this is #vted Reads: a podcast by, for, and with Vermont educators. Let's chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · Jory Hearst All American Muslim Girl Jeanie: Thanks for joining me, Jory. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Jory: Hi, Jeanie, it’s so nice to be with you. I’m excited to be back on the podcast because I got to do this once in the early phases of your podcast! It’s cool to see now you’ve interviewed all these like amazing famous people around Vermont and beyond, so I’m excited to be back.
I am a teacher at Burlington High School (in Burlington VT) currently. Although I have to admit that my first teaching job was with Jeanie at Green Mountain Union High School, where she was the librarian and I was in ninth grade English teacher. But I am an educator, I teach reading and journalism and I do other things that at the high school. I always come back to books and I really love engaging with teens about young adult literature and also reading them myself.
Jeanie: I think you were my second guest on the podcast.
Jory: That might be right! I used to be on Green Mountain Book Awards I think when I first got interviewed by you. I’m no longer on the committee so, I do read more adult books now, but that was my connection to you back then.
Jeanie: Okay, thank you for all that. So, before we start talking about All-American Muslim Girl, I just want us to be really honest that neither of us is Muslim. That we both love this book and we both want to talk about it and we want to do that well and gracefully, but we’re not Muslim.
Jory: Yes, Jeanie when you asked me to talk about it with you, I was like I loved All-American Muslim Girl! And I was also like: I don’t think I’m the person you want to talk about it. And you said, well no, we can both love it and talk about it.
So yes! Part of what was really fun for me about reading this is I lived in Jordan for a little while: Amman, the capital, and also other places in the Middle East. Lebanon, for a little bit. Morocco. And there’s lots of references to things in here that were really fun. I studied Arabic for a while so there’s connections.
Also I am a Jewish American white human and not a Muslim American. So thanks for letting me put that out there up front. I am not the authority on those characters' lives, just an appreciator of her life.
Jeanie: Yes. Well, same. I actually have way less experience than you do. I am also white and of a Protestant background although definitely not practicing now. So we’re going to talk with deep appreciation about this book and listeners if we missed up we hope you’ll let us know because we can learn from that.
Jory: Yes, thanks for saying that.
Jeanie: Could you introduce us to Allie Abraham, the main character of All American Muslim Girl, Jory?
Jory: Yes! So: Allie Abraham is a high school student. She lives in Georgia, in a sort of Atlanta suburb with her parents. Mo Abraham, her dad, is a professor and her mom -- I think her name’s Elizabeth -- she’s a cop. Allie converted to Islam when her parents got married. Her mom was not raised in the Middle East or with the Middle Eastern culture. And Allie, her real name is actually Aaliyah. And I love it.
At one point she says, "Our real name wasn’t Abraham, it was Ibrahimi."
So her real name is Aaliyah Ibrahimi,
On this episode, it’s the return of Aimee Arandia Østensen! She’s here to talk with me about The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games, by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas. We reflect on what we read growing up, and have deeply spicy thoughts about fan fiction, Island of the Blue Dolphin and what, specifically is the correct pronunciation of G I F. (It’s G-if.) Oh yeah, we go there. Plus: who gets to opt out of reading certain books in the classroom? And who, specifically, can opt in? I’m Jeanie Phillips, this is #vted Reads, the podcast by, for and with Vermont educators. Let’s chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads: The Dark Fantastic Jeanie: Thank you so much for joining me, Aimee. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Aimee: Hi! My name is Aimee Arandia Østensen. I am a Filipina-American educator. And I currently am working at Shelburne Farms as a Professional Learning Facilitator in Educating for Sustainability. In general, that means we work with teachers and schools to support their process and practice and to integrate concepts of sustainability and equity into their work.
Jeanie: Aimee, you were on the podcast not long ago, in the fall, talking about one of our mutually favorite books: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. And I remember that conversation so fondly, so I’m super excited to have you back on.
https://youtu.be/RlctiWRtrIQ
Full disclosure: Aimee and I have been working together on a webinar called Who’s Outside? Building an Anti-Racist Bookshelf (video).
And this book, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas’s The Dark Fantastic has been crucial, as we’ve been thinking through how to go even deeper thinking about what books are we getting into the hands of students. That’s been super fun. So, I’m really excited for this conversation. And I’m a little bit daunted and nervous about it, too, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
So, I’ve been really overwhelmed by how to ask intelligent questions about this book.
Because it is so smart and brimming full of insights and provocations, and has me thinking so much that I was almost not even sure where to begin. But I’m going to start at Ebony Elizabeth Thomas’s starting point, which is that she begins the book by talking about herself as a young reader. It's on page one.
"Even," she writes, "magic was inaccessible to me." There was a lack of Black characters in general and Black girls in particular in books about the magic and the fantastical, she writes.
And she begins with this premise that even though that wasn’t available to her in characters that look like her, she needed magic. That all children really deserve magic. Yet, it’s been disproportionately distributed, if you will. So, I’m wondering, Aimee, if we might start with stories of ourselves as young readers. If we might step back and imagine just the way Ebony Elizabeth Thomas does, ourselves as little people looking for magic.
Aimee: It’s such an interesting thought. And I did have a childhood that was written books and storytelling.
It was just one of those things that my family did together. Every night we got into bed and read books together before we went to sleep. Every single night. And I distinctly remember my dad reading to my brothers and I. We read the entire Hobbit series. We read the entire Wizard of Oz series. And so, there was a lot of that magical fantasy land.
Interestingly enough, I remember a moment in school when our teacher was reciting, or starting to recite certain, what do you call them? Nursery rhymes. And I grew up in a largely white suburb of Syracuse, New York. There were literally four families of color that I was aware of in the entire school. Ours being one of them. And out of those families, three of them were first generation or second generation Black Americans.
So our teacher was starting to recite nursery rhymes, and she invited us to, like,
On this episode of #vted Reads, we welcome Erika Saunders back to the show! Erika agreed to guest-host an episode, talking about Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi. She's joined by Philadelphia-based educator Monique Carter, as they talk about:
the emotional resonance of your own language, especially if it's lost and you ache to find it; what it feels like to finally (!) see yourself represented (right there!) on a cover of a book; and why everyone -- especially in Vermont and Vermont schools -- should read this book and others that bring us closer to understanding multiple perspectives, histories and stories.
As 2021 has not shown its best face to the world in this first half of January, this is a good and powerful listen, most especially about Monique's dad's advice to "never yuck someone's yum..." Enjoy!
The 21st Century Classroom · vted Reads: Children of Blood and Bone
Erika: Hi everyone, I am so excited to be here. For those of you who don't know, I am guest-hosting this time on #vted Reads. My name is Erika Saunders. I am a recent addition to the Vermont area. I moved here about just almost seven months ago now in the June from Philadelphia and I'm now a proud member of the Burlington School District. And I'm going a little crazy because I am here with my sister friend.
For those of you don't know what that term is, sister friend, she is more than a colleague, she is more than a friend, she is practically family at this point. And I am so happy that she agreed to be a guest here for us to discuss today's book. Without further ado I am honored, thrilled and beyond excited to introduce to you all my sister friend and fellow educator Monique Carter. Monique, please introduce yourself to everybody here.
Monique: Hi, my name is Monique Carter. I am a mom, first of two lovely girls. Hopefully you will not hear them in the background. I am a school teacher. And I teach students math in this school district of Philadelphia. I've taught in a friend's school before, taught in a charter school in one of the most challenging school districts in Delaware County in Pennsylvania. Now I teach in Philadelphia. This is my fourth year with the school district of Philadelphia and I teach fifth graders and sixth graders math.
Erika: Thank you. Monique is being extremely humble, everyone. She is a beyond-phenomenal educator and teacher; she is extraordinary. We met when we were both working at Science Leadership Academy Middle School in Philadelphia, a project-based, inquiry-driven school. That's how we met. And like I said, we have become sister friends at this point.
Thank you so much, Monique, for joining us.
So, let me get started so that everybody understands what we're going to be talking about today. I have to give just a little bit of background.
So, I would often go to Barnes everybody or a bookstore. The only one around in Philadelphia was that one. And my son and I both love to go to bookstore. We would just spend hours in the bookstore, right? And even before I was a teacher I tended to go towards the young adult fiction because, you know, there was a certain point in time where the quality and the interest level of it just ratcheted up. You know, before our day. I don't know about you but I remember the Judy Blume days, which again was phenomenal but nothing like what we have now.
Once I started teaching, I was always looking for books that kids would be interested in. And I remember walking into the store seeing this cover and honestly feeling like... drawn to it. As if the book was reaching out to me to say: come and pick me up.
Do you see this gorgeous, gorgeous representation? Never before had I seen a cover that represented us in such exquisite ways.
I mean: from the gorgeous white hair, reaching up to the sun the way our hair, you know, will go up. To the exquisite skin color and everything. And when I purchased this book,
Lovely listeners, we have such a treat for you today. Joining us on this episode of the show is Vermont State Librarian Jason Broughton. Now, when I asked him to be on the show, I also invited him to choose the book we'd be discussing, and he chose the wonderful graphic novel 'Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me', by Ellen Forney. And I learned so much, both from the novel, and from Jason Broughton.
A content note for this episode: as the title of Ellen Forney's book suggests, we're going to talk about mental illness. If you're not in a space for that right now, we still love you but want you to take care of yourself, and understand completely.
That said, we had a wonderful conversation, about art, about teaching, creativity, Led Zeppelin, getting to know your parents as an adult, and what, specifically, the Vermont State Librarian gets up to.
And on that note: I'm Jeanie Phillips, and this is VT ed Reads, a podcast by, for and with Vermont educators.
Let's chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads with Jason Broughton, VT State Librarian Jeanie: Thanks so much for joining me, Jason, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Jason: Hello, my name is Jason Broughton. I am so thrilled to be with you today to talk about a book. And this case is a very interesting book. But about me, per se, I am your State Librarian for Vermont, and Commissioner of the Department of Libraries. And within that, my role is to assist our department, assist the libraries of the State and we act as a State library for State government. We like to call ourselves "the library for libraries".
Jeanie: Well, as a librarian I’m super excited to have you on! I feel like I’m having a celebrity on, so thanks so much for joining us. Do you want to talk a little bit before we jump into this book? Do you want to talk a little bit about what you’re reading right now? What’s on your nightstand?
Jason: Oh my goodness. Well, right now, there’s a couple of things. And one of them I’ll probably bring back up.
One of them is a book, can’t think of the author right now [EDITORIAL NOTE: Jenny Lawson] but it’s called Let’s Pretend This Never Happened. And it really is a conversation about a woman talking about the experiences of her father. I haven’t finished it completely because it’s quite amusing.
She brings out her history in which her father was a taxidermist. You have to imagine him, she says, basically, in the middle of the night going out or something hit an animal like roadkill he’s dragging it home. He’s reconstructing it. Once she talked about an example of she was reaching in the refrigerator, and he had put a snake in there so it could die and she was trying to find a sandwich. So, she pulls out this half alive, half frozen snake. It’s a weird thing.
But it’s really a conversation about when people think they know their parents, and they tend to want to say, "Well, you don’t understand: my parents are much worse than yours."
Jeanie: That sounds like a lot of fun, actually!
Jason: It’s a really comical book, yes. It’s really light-hearted and funny. And it just makes you get a sense of: if you think your parents -- which we all do at a certain point in our lives -- don’t understand you as an adolescent. As you age, you’re like, "Wait a minute, my parents had to be teens as well. What am I talking about? They too had these situations!" So, she kind of helps people recalibrate their understanding of their parents a bit when they want to complain. I know my parents were very different, but my father never took on taxidermy to explain things to me, so…
Jeanie: This sounds like a great gift for my son, actually.
Jason: Correct.
Jeanie: You said you were reading something else?
Jason: Yes, I have a book that was recommended because of the visualing images of it; it’s much more sobering. It talks about the transatlantic slave trade,
Listener, how do you feel about positive interventions, behaviors and supports? I don't mean in general -- in general those all sound fine and dandy -- but when they come within 100 yards of a school, they turn into PBIS. And that's another ball of wax entirely.
Today author Thomas Knestrict joins me on the show. We're going to talk about his book Controlling Our Children: Hegemony and Deconstructing the Positive Behavior Intervention Support Model. If that sounds like a hot n' flossy title, then listeners you are in for a treat. And even if it doesn't, you're in for a treat anyway, especially if you, like me and like Dr. Knestrict, are deeply suspicious of the PBIS model.
(Spoiler: we're deeply suspicious of the PBIS model.)
That said, we do try to be fair in examining what PBIS can and can't do for Vermont students.
(Okay, we're mostly fair.)
But I'm still Jeanie Phillips, and this is still Vermont ed Reads: books by, for and with Vermont educators. Let's chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads about PBIS, with Thomas Knestrict I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads We're here to talk books for educators by educators and with educators. Today I'm with Thomas Knestrict and we'll be talking about his book Controlling Our Children: Hegemony and Deconstructing the Positive Behavioral Intervention Support Model. Thanks so much for joining me, Thomas. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Thomas: So I am a professor of education at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio and I've been here for 15 years. Previously, I was at a couple other universities you may have heard of: Miami University and then a very small liberal arts college called Mount St Joe's. I taught for 15 years before that in public schools. Mostly Special Ed. That's kind of where my interest in Positive Behavior Intervention Supports (PBIS) really came from, because of the work I did in Special Education. And I had two areas of research. One with PBIS, and the other with studying families who are raising kids with special needs, and something called family resiliency. Both are related to Special Ed, but they're a little bit different. I am a professor of early childhood education though they hired me years ago as a kind of ah to infuse the program with inclusive practices and ideas of equity, those types of things. So I found a home I'm here to stay so married got three kids adult kids all graduated from Xavier, all doing well and now my wife and I we sit around and we hike and we drink wine and have great time, so it's wonderful. Jeanie: Sounds like a fun life in Ohio. Thomas: It is. Jeanie: Thanks so much for joining us to talk about your book and its relationship to what's going on in Vermont. I guess my first question is: why write a book about PBIS? Thomas: I've done a lot of teaching. And so coming from a teacher perspective, I always saw behaviorism is kind of "the poor man's management system". I saw a lot of problems with it. In my early teaching career, I taught special education. I taught kids with emotional disturbances. And it was a completely behaviorist model that we used in the classroom: it was all rewards and punishment. And what I found was that rather than teaching new behaviors? We were very good at controlling behaviors. But when we were there or when students moved on to another environment? They failed. They hadn't internalized anything. I likened it to -- and I think I do in the book as well -- to kind of a drug addiction. You get addicted to rewards (and even to punishment) and when that's withdrawn, you have withdrawals. You have difficulty dealing with things. So that's kind of where a lot of my initial thoughts came from. And as I became a practitioner of PBIS, I thought it was ironic that we called it positive behavioral intervention supports because it wasn't very positive at all. It was just a method I saw through practice.
In this episode, we get real about what educators can do in their classrooms to make a more equitable playing field, how to walk that fine line between supporting student activism and co-opting it, and how to juggle the competing demands of educational and intersectional change. Also, we talk local soccer. It's a full workout in this episode, listeners! I'm joined today by educator, parent and activist Life LeGeros -- who is also my co-worker -- for So You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo.
Because we do want to talk about race, even if we might not get it right 100 percent of the time. Neither will you, but it's vital that we keep on trying, and use books like this to nudge us forward.
I'm Jeanie Phillips, and this is #vted Reads: books for, by and with Vermont educators. Let's chat!
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads: So You Want to Talk About Race Jeanie: Thank you for joining me, Life. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Life: So, my name is Life. I live in South Duxbury VT, right near Harwood High School up in the foothills of the Green Mountains. Lived in Vermont for about five years. I work with middle schools around the state. Mostly in the Northeast Kingdom right now, supporting them doing student-centered learning. And I have the great pleasure of working with you here at the UVM Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education. That has been one of the honors of my professional career and my personal life. I’ve loved getting to know you and becoming friends. And yeah. We help schools and then do a little blogging and researching. It’s basically my dream job.
Jeanie: Thank you very much for those kind words. I have to say, same. It’s been such a pleasure getting to know you and your family. But also, I just love how you push me to think more deeply about lots of issues, but especially issues of equity. Thanks for that. And this book is part of that. But before we get into this book, what are you reading right now? I know your whole family are great readers but what are you reading right now?
Life: I completed a book this morning, yeah. Not just a book but a grown-up book. A fully grown-up book. Because most of the fiction I read these days is like, YA. But I read a grown-up book: The Overstory.
Jeanie: Oh, I loved that book.
Life: It was just one of those deals where friend was like part way through it and they were just like you got to read this. You got to read this. I’m reading it. It took me a while to get into it because it’s like, many different stories separate ...that flow into one. And I’m not sure where I sit with it honestly. Overall, it gave an artistic kind of perspective on many things that I’ve been thinking and feeling. And I’m definitely very interested in like following up in getting a field guide and reading more about trees and their interconnectedness.
But just in terms of being overwhelmed and feeling like climate change is just a horrible thing that we'll never get out of? I think it was a nice different perspective on that. I’ll be processing it or a while, so it was very affecting.
Jeanie: You and I both spend a lot of time out in the woods of Vermont. And I have to say that book changed the way I see trees. It changed the way I sort of have a quiet dialogue with trees on my hikes.
Life: Totally. I always feel like trees are, you know, a reminder. And then for this to say, well, they might be literally trying to like communicate something that you could tap into? Is a really cool idea. It’s true.
Jeanie: I see, yeah, I love that. So, let’s talk about this book. So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo. I guess my first questions for you about this book are: who is this book for? And why might Vermont educators and students want to consider reading it?
Life: I think broadly it’s for Americans. Part of her point is that there’s a systemic limitation/dismantling of our ability to even talk about race....
In this episode, we sit down with the executive director of the Vermont Humanities Council, Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup. The Vermont Humanities Council runs Vermont Reads (not to be confused with Vermont ed Reads), in which they choose a book for our whole state to read, ponder and talk about. This year, that book is Angie Thomas' powerful The Hate U Give.
and that is the book Christopher and I mull over on this episode of the show. What can this popular YA novel about police violence against Black bodies teach a largely white state?
I'm Jeanie Phillips, and this is #vted Reads: books by, for, and with Vermont educators. Let's chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads: The Hate U Give Jeanie: Thanks for joining me Christopher. Christopher: Thank you so much for having me Jeanie. It's really great to be here. Jeanie: Do you want to tell us before you read a little excerpt, a little bit about who you are and what you do? Christopher: Sure. I'm the Executive Director of Vermont Humanities. We’re the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities and we've been around since 1974. And our mission is to really make sure that all Vermonters have the opportunity to read and learn throughout life. We do a lot of different programs, but one of the programs that many Vermonters are very, very fond of is Vermont Reads, where we pick one novel each year and work with that novel in communities throughout the state for the entire year. Jeanie: Excellent! I love Vermont Reads and I've been reading your selections for many years and I'm so excited to have you on the show. You indicated that you'd love to start with a little bit of a reading from The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. So I'm just going to turn it over to you. Christopher: Yeah. So this is an interesting book for these times because it addresses police brutality against African-Americans. And so I'm going to start with a short excerpt from the book. It starts with the main character, Starr, who's a 17-year-old girl, talking to members of her family the day after she has witnessed the shooting of one of her childhood friends by a policeman. https://youtu.be/NOXFofOZhis "I borrowed your hoody, Seven," I mumble. It's random, but it's better than nothing. "The blue one. Momma had to throw it away. Khalil's blood..." I swallow. "His blood got on it."
"Oh..."
That's all anybody says for a minute.
Mama turns around to the skillet. "Don't make any sense. That baby--" she says thickly. "He was just a baby."
Daddy shakes his head. "That boy never heard anybody. He didn't deserve that shit."
"Why did they shoot him?" Seven asks. "Was he a threat or something?"
"No," I say quietly
I stare at the table, I can feel all of them watching me again.
"He didn't do anything," I say. "We didn't do anything. Khalil didn't even have a gun."
Daddy releases a slow breath. "Folks around here gon' lose their minds when they find that out."
"People from the neighborhood are already talking about it on Twitter," Seven says. "I saw it last night."
"Did they mention your sister?" Momma asks.
"No. Just RIP Khalil messages, fuck the police, stuff like that. I don't think they know details."
"What's going to happen to me when the details do come out?" I ask.
"What do you mean, baby?" my mom asks.
"Besides the cop, I'm the only person who was there. And you've seen stuff like this. It ends up on national news. People get death threats, cops target them, all kinds of stuff."
"I won't let anything happen to you," Daddy says. "None of us will." He looks at Momma and Seven. "We're not telling anybody that Starr was there." Jeanie: That's really powerful. Oof, there's a lot going on there and I wonder if we might use it as a segue to ask: why did the Vermont Humanities Council choose The Hate U Give for Vermont Reads? Christopher: It's a tough book and it's very relevant at this moment, of course.
Yeah. Me too.
Everything is a lot. Everything... keeps getting to be even more of a lot, and somehow we expect to throw a smile on our faces and, whenever someone asks us if we're fine, to pretend we are, instead of saying:
'I'm sad. I'm struggling. I'm overwhelmed. Please just let me lie here facedown in a carton of chocolate ice cream until next spring.'
Listeners, in all these things you are not remotely alone. I am frequently not okay. I am exhausted. And I just watched my audio engineer projectile-vomit feelings of overwhelm at our colleagues. And I realized we are all in it together; we are all feeling the over-the-topness of this moment .
And it's not even swimsuit season. And we're no longer 13! (Thank goodness.)
Today on the show, I'm joined by one of the kindest people I know: young adult author Jo Knowles, to talk about her book Where The Heart Is. It's a book about love, loss, one-piece swimsuits, and trying to reconcile those feelings of what we think we're supposed to be for other people, with who and how we really are.
Thanks for joining me again, listeners. I'm Jeanie Phillips, this is #vted Reads, a podcast about books by, for, and with Vermont educators. Let's chat.
(Unless you don't feel like it, in which case that's okay too...)
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads: with Jo Knowles Jeanie: Thank you so much for joining me Jo. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do? Jo: Hi, thanks so much for having me. It’s really an honor to be here and just talk with you today. So! My name is Jo Knowles, I write young adult and middle-grade fiction — or what we often call Tween fiction, these days. And I also have a picture book and picture book coming out next fall, my first one called Ear Worm and it’s about a little worm who gets a song stuck in his head. And he needs to try to figure out who put it there. I also teach writing for Southern New Hampshire University and their MFA program. It’s called Mountainview MFA and it’s a Low-Residency program. And so, teaching and writing those were my two things. Jeanie: So a) I can’t wait to get a copy of Ear Worm. That sounds like a great book, congratulations on that. It sounds like a great book to read aloud to our Tween readers even though we think of picture books for younger folks. Jo: I am so excited. The whole idea is such a silly story, but I had a dream that I had this great idea for a picture book. And then I, you know I got up in the middle of the night and I wrote it all down because I was so excited because I thought it was such a great concept. And I woke up in the morning and I went to find my notes and I said to my husband, “What happened to the notes I took about the picture book idea I had in the middle of the night?” And he said, what are you talking about? …I said: “Didn’t I get up in the middle of the night and write down the story?” And he said no. Then I thought: oh my gosh. Did I dream that I had this idea? I was all upset. Anyway, I took the dog for a walk later that day. I was walking in the woods and it all came back to me. So I came home and I wrote it. Jeanie: I’ve met you several times because you’ve come to my former school library and done amazing work with students around writing and talking to them about your books. And I wonder what it’s like to be a Teen and Tween author -- and now picture book author -- in a COVID world, where you don’t have some sort of ready access to readers? Jo: Yeah, it’s very heartbreaking. I’m not going to sugarcoat it. One of the biggest joys about writing for kids is meeting kids and just being able to share, not just my stories but my own personal story. Because I think when I’m doing school visits, when I talk about my own journey to becoming a published author and getting over my own shyness and things about public speaking. That’s when I really feel that connection to kids. And, you know, sometimes afterwards there’s always at least one kid who comes ...
Listeners, I'm angry.
I'm angry about the failure of our political leadership, the unmitigated disaster of climate change, and the risks we're asking our educators and students to take right now. I'm angry, and I'm hurt, and frustrated, and I'm not the only one. I know you're angry, and I know our students are angry.
Our schools have long been held to the idea of being zones that are or should be, entirely free of politics.
But how does that work in the real world?
Are our students free of politics when they walk through the classroom door? Do they take their anger off when they put on a backpack, or turn on their cameras?
On this episode of vted Reads, we're re-joined by Vermont principal Elijah Hawkes. Hawkes has written a book called, School for the Age of Upheaval: Classrooms That Get Personal, Get Political, and Get to Work.
It's a powerful, powerful read, by which I mean that you can read it as a talisman against the notion that as educators we should stand by and pretend our students don't see, hear and feel about politics as it unfolds around them. You can read it in order to figure out how to address your students' anger -- and maybe your own.
I'm Jeanie Phillips, and this is Vermont Ed Reads. Let's chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads with Elijah Hawkes Jeanie: Thank you for joining me, Elijah. You were very recently on the podcast at the end of last season, but I’m going to ask you to introduce yourself again, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Elijah: Hi, Jeanie. My name is Elijah. I’m currently principal at Randolph Union. I’ve been here nine or ten years now and delighted to come back for another year with this fabulous faculty, staff and community. I grew up in Vermont myself, in Moretown, and then left for college and found my way to New York City where I was a teacher and then a school principal in New York City. I also lived abroad and worked in schools and school settings in West Africa for a couple of years. well, all of that experience just affirms for me the importance of small, community-minded democratic schools and so it’s a pleasure to be here at Randolph Union and to be talking with like-minded educators. Like you. Jeanie: I’m super excited to talk about your book. But before we get to that, I like to know what people are reading! What are you reading now? Last time, I think it was The Water Dancer. Elijah: Oh, yes, it was The Water Dancer. I’m reading a book of essays, long form essays I’d never read before by James Baldwin called No Name in the Street, and it’s written much later than a lot of his other essays, so I’m enjoying reading it. It just feels like a different kind of Baldwin’s voice to a certain degree, a little bit more meandering, and free flowing but it always comes back to where it wants to go. So, No Name in the Street, by James Baldwin is what I’m reading. Jeanie: Thank you for that. I haven’t read that so I’m going to have to add that to my list. But I’m also reading essays right now. I’m reading Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights. They’re little small essays and they’re so delicious. I highly recommend it. Okay! Let’s talk about your book. There’s a lot to talk about in this book. But I’m going to start just with the introduction, because you start by talking about anger. And I think this might be a time when kids could really feel angry. I think if my own son is any indication, this is a time where you can feel really angry with society, given COVID, given the conditions of right now, given the political situation. And so, you say "We need their anger, and we need it to find its voice." I’m going to read that again, Audrey, you say we need their anger and we need it to find its voice. And I don’t think of anger as being particularly welcome in schools. So I wanted to know more about what you meant by this, and maybe even a description of what it looks like.
This show is a little different. Listeners, I want you to think of this show... as a pre-show.
Let me explain.
Today I'm joined on the podcast by Aimee Arandia Østensen and we start discussing the book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I say 'we start' because once we were underway it quickly became clear that everything Aimee and I wanted to say and feel and share about this amazing book could never fit in one single episode. So I'm going to say this is a beginning of a conversation about outdoor and place-based education, the concept of becoming indigenous to a place, the magic of Superfund sites, and how we are going to encourage ourselves to hold each other capable, rather than accountable.
And that means you, listener. I am holding you capable.
I'm Jeanie Phillips, this is Vermont Reads: books for, with and by Vermont educators.
Let's chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads: with Aimee Arandia Østensen Jeanie: Thank you so much for joining me, Aimee, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Aimee: Hello, I’m so glad to be here with you, Jeanie. Thanks for inviting me. So I am a first generation Filipina-American educator. I grew up in upstate New York, taught for about 20 years in New York City, as well as in the Catskill regions of New York State. And now I work for Shelburne Farms as a facilitator in professional learning and education for sustainability.
Jeanie: Oh, that’s a great introduction. You are so much more than that! To me, you are like one of those wise humans that I look to as a beacon. Thank you so much Aimee, for joining me.
And I have to admit, I’m really nervous about this episode.
Because Braiding Sweetgrass is one of my very favorite books ever, says the person who really loves books. So I’m worried that I won’t be able to do it justice. And the only thing that is setting my mind at ease is that I’m having this conversation with one of my favorite educators ever: you. And so I feel like, since you’re here, we can do this justice.
Aimee: I feel the same way, Jeanie. And the only way that I can approach this work and honoring Robin Wall Kimmerer's work is to, as a learner to sit in the seat of a learner, but know that I’m always eternally in the process, and digging more into what it means to be in this world.
Jeanie: Yes. For our listeners who may not have encountered the wonder that is Robin Wall Kimmerer and Braiding Sweetgrass, let’s give a little summary or a snapshot of this book. The tagline is: "Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teaching of plants." How would you describe this book for folks who are new to it?
Aimee: I love how Robin Wall Kimmerer does those three things that she put out there and she gives voice to simply being? As well as the value of Indigenous knowledge. And weaving a contemporary perspective into all of that. So that it has meaning for everyone.
The thing that I love about this book is so much of what she writes in this book is simply about how to be human. And how to learn from the world about what it means to be human in its most exemplary form. And so, it’s relevant to everyone, despite your background and your perspective.
Jeanie: You said that beautifully. I think what I would add is that Robin Wall Kimmerer grew up in New York State. She is an Indigenous person herself. So, she grows up with this wealth of tradition and knowledge from her family. From her tribe, from her people. And she always knew she wanted to be a botanist.
And so she goes to college, and she has to really fight to get the degree that she wants. She’s not immediately like, welcomed into the scientific community, but she becomes a botanist and a lecturer. And so she has these two really deep fonts of wisdom: this scientific knowledge that she gets as a college student, and this embodied wisdom and knowledge that comes from her ...
I'm Jeanie Phillips and we're back for a third season of vted Reads! Books by, for and with Vermont educators. Kicking off this season we're joined on the show by author and former teacher Kate Messner. Kate's here to talk about how we can use books about some dark topics as conduits to reach students who may not even know they can or should talk about those topics.
I did just make it sound a lot bleaker of an episode than it is.
Trust me, it's a good one. And Kate's a delightful guest! We'll talk about her books Chirp, Breakout, and The Seventh Wish, along with sending you away with a whole mess of new titles for your To Read pile.
Plus, Kate will reveal what her favorite flavor of cricket is.
Yes, you will be amazed to learn how many different ways there are to snack on crickets.
Now, one content note for today's show: Kate's book, Chirp, deals with issues of grooming, which is when adults behave in inappropriate ways with children, usually as a prelude to much worse behavior. We'll talk today a little bit about that, but if you're not in a space to join us right now, that's okay. Be kind, safe, and gentle with yourselves.
Welcome back to vted Reads, season three! Let's chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · #vted Reads with Kate Messner Jeanie: Today, I'm with Kate Messner and we'll be talking about her book, Chirp. Thanks so much for joining me, Kate.Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Kate Messner: Thank you so much! Well, I am a children's author. I've written -- as of 2020 -- it will be 50 books for kids. They range from picture books like Over and Under the Snow and How to Read a Story, How to Write a Story, The Next President, to Easy Readers like the Fergus and Zeke series with Candlewick Press, to chapter books like The Ranger in Time Series with Scholastic. And novels, and nonfiction. Books like Breakout and The Seventh Wish and Chirp. And then some nonfiction as well! Like Tracking Pythons, which is about invasive Burmese pythons in Florida, and a new series called History Smashers, which is aimed at undoing the lies and myths we teach young kids about history. Starting with: the first Thanksgiving. The first book is History Smashers: The Mayflower.
Jeanie: And that book just came out, is that correct?
Kate: Yeah! New this summer History Smashers: The Mayflower and History Smashers: Women's Right to Vote. Then in the fall, book three comes out: Pearl Harbor. And we'll have book four in the spring of 2021, that is History Smashers: Titanic.
Jeanie: Those sound so relevant to our current moment in time. Perfect timing.
Kate: I really hope so. I know so many teachers right now are looking at the work that that we can all do to dismantle white supremacy and to promote equality. And part of that work is taking a hard look at the way we've taught history. Our textbooks have long looked at things from a very white, very colonialist perspective. And these books aim to to start a broader conversation about that. The biggest thing is I think kids are gonna read them and have an amazing time at the dinner table saying, "Mom! Dad! Did you know this about Elizabeth Cady Stanton?" So I think it's gonna prompt some really great conversations. Not just in the classroom but at home around the dinner table, too. That's my hope anyway.
Jeanie: This is super exciting! Before we get started on Chirp though, I always like to ask my guests what's on their bedside table what they're reading right now. Do you have any summer reading going on, Kate?
Kate: I do, I actually just finished an amazing young adult novel called A Song Below Water by Bethany Morrow. It's about mermaids and Black voices, and it's just a spectacular story. I think sometimes fantasy and speculative fiction is the very best way to get at the issues that we're facing in our modern world. And this is a book that just does that brilliantly.
Jeanie: Excellent! I have that on my Libro FM right now,
A couple of weeks ago, we had the chance to take part in a collaboration between the Vermont Agency of Education and Vermont Public Radio (VPR), celebrating the strange and wonderful ways this year's graduation differs from those in years past. The hourlong program featured students and educators from around the state, performing music, giving speeches and simply musing on the ways in which the class of 2020 made. It. Work.
So as an excerpt, and leading us towards the end of the podcast's fourth season, here's the piece we produced for the show. We spoke with students, educators and families from two schools who approached graduation very differently: The Warren School, in Warren VT, and Poultney Elementary School, down in Poultney VT.
This is a tale of two sixth grades.
Listeners: our hearts are breaking. Our hearts are breaking for all of Vermont’s Black students, Black educators, and Black families.
But frankly, our broken hearts are not nearly enough.
Right now, we need to talk about what this all means for Vermont. What it means to interrogate in schools, and in classrooms, and in ourselves.
On this episode of the podcast, we grapple with a challenging short story by Hemingway (yes, that Hemingway), called "Indian Camp". Now, a content note: this story contains language and attitudes that we as a society no longer find acceptable, and in fact, one of the terms that Hemingway's characters bandy about, a derogatory term for Native and Indigenous women, we just won't be saying on this show.
But.
Given that this is a story that's primarily about the experiences of a young white boy, and how the death and injury of Native people reaffirms his view of himself as entitled, why does Vermont principal Elijah Hawkes use it every year in welcoming new educators to his school?
Because that young white boy, and the people he injures with his entitlement? They're in your classrooms, your communities, and your homes.
This remains #vted Reads. Black Lives Matter. Now let's chat.
The 21st Century Classroom · Elijah Hawkes Indian Camp Jeanie: Thanks for joining me, Elijah. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Elijah: Hi Jeanie! Thanks for having me, for this conversation. I’m currently principal at Randolph Union, a 7-12 school in Central Vermont. It serves three towns and a bunch of others in the surrounding county: Randolph, Brookfield and Braintree. About 400 students at the school. We're adjacent to the Randolph Technical Career Center and all the benefits that come with that neighborhood.
I live in Middlesex Vermont; I grew in Moretown Vermont, about 20 minutes away. Began my career as an educator though in New York City and was an English teacher and then founding principal of The James Baldwin School, a small alternative public school.
And then moved to Vermont about 9 or 10 years ago and I’ve been here and in this role in this place ever since.
Jeanie: Thank you for that. You are also a writer.
Elijah: Yes, I’m also a writer. Like conversations like these, writing is a conversation with myself and with other people and with ideas. And it’s one of the ways that I digest the work of being an educator. The work of being an educator in public schools, the work of being a public school educator in a democracy, the work of being an educator with adolescents. The work of being an educator as a father who has children. I pour that into my writing and try to make sense of the world that I’m in. And then when I can try to share that with others and have further dialogue about it.
I just got a book out actually this past month. The book launch parties have been few since social distancing, but I’m excited to share that with people as well. It’s called Schools for The Age of Upheaval and the subtitle is Classrooms That Get Personal, Get Political, and Get to Work. And perhaps there’ll be some intersections with those ideas in our conversation today.
Jeanie: I’m ready to get to work! Let’s see, well, one of the things I always like to ask books because I’m a librarian and an avid reader and I’m always interested in what other people are reading, do you have something on your nightstand right now, that you’re working on?
Elijah: I do yes. I’m just 20 or 30 pages away from the end of The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates. My brother's reading it at the same time; we’ve been having some correspondence about it. So we’ve been enjoying that novel by Coates, whose essays, of course, I’ve read in other publications. But this is his first long work of fiction.
Jeanie: I loved that book, so much. Yeah. It’d be interesting to pair that with -- I don’t know if you saw the announcement yesterday but Coates Whitehead won the Pulitzer for fict...
I'm Jeanie Phillips, and welcome to Vermont Ed Reads: books by, for and with Vermont educators. Today on the show, we welcome Mike McRaith, who's here to talk about Nora Samaran's Turn This World Inside Out: The Emergence of Nurturance Culture.
How do you hold harm, and harmony together in the same space in a way that protects and honors the needs of all students to feel safe, and loved?
How do you talk about the needs of those students who feel marginalized, even if we'd identify them as coming from wide intersections of privilege?
And how do you talk about the needs of straight, white, male, cis-gendered students without centering their needs, in a culture that marginalizes the needs of, well, absolutely everybody else?
Nora Samaran has some answers. As does Mike McRaith! We here on the show love talking with smart, compassionate people, and if you do too (and we hope you do), this is the episode for you.
Now, let's chat.
Jeanie: Thank you for joining me, Mike. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Mike: It's my pleasure to be here. My name is Mike McRaith. I'm the assistant executive director at the Vermont Principals Association. And my job includes all different kinds of things, mostly supporting principals in many different ways: the professional learning side of things, the mentorship and a host of other things at the VPA. And I'm a former high school principal at Montpelier High School. I did the previous four years there. And then I spent six years in Franklin Northeast, in that supervisory union, as a school counselor and a middle school principal. Jeanie: You bring a ton of expertise and really relevant expertise to this book, Turn This World Inside Out. Which you suggested to me and I was really excited to read. But before we jump into that, I wonder if you might share what you're reading right now. What's on your bedside table? I suspect there might be some books for little ones, on that stack. Mike: Yeah, thanks. This book was recommended to me by my dear friend, confidant and soul leader, Sylvia Fagin, who is a teacher in the Montpelier School District, among many other things. And when she recommends something to me, I pay close attention. So, I want to thank Sylvia for this recommendation and her continued support through some really hard things, working together and just being a great person for me to turn to and to bounce things off of. And to learn with. So, thank you, Sylvia. The books that I've been reading aside from this are connected to four-year-olds and six-year-olds. I have a four-year-old and a six-year-old, and being at home so much we started reading chapter books. And so the books that I've read most recently are Gary Paulsen books. My boys were super, super interested in reading Hatchet and then Brian's Winter. And we also read Dogsong which is a very interesting and sort of, poetic book. And they hung in there. Gary Paulsen does a great job of engaging kids -- even four-year-olds (soon to be five) -- and they have tons of questions, and it comes up all the time in their language. Just last night they were talking about the size of a moose and whether or not the moose would charge them and all different kinds of things. Those books have been great for shaping their connection to nature. Jeanie: This brings me so much joy! You have no idea what I would give to have a four-year-old sit on my lap and let me read to them, like I'd give a lot. Yeah. Mike: It's real good. And we try not to take it for granted. We do a lot of it: every single day and every single night. We read and we soak that up. And you know, my wife has been great about bringing books, and our South Burlington Public Library does a fantastic job. Jeanie: Okay, you know, I'm not going to be able to resist and I'm going to send you some titles to be read to four- and six-year-olds later. Mike: Please do. laughs Jeanie: So, let's get to this book.
"It feels really weird, because in some ways it's kind of cool to see how you can be homeschooled. But then in other ways you're like, "Ohhhhh, it’s kind of scary." Because we are staying home because of the virus that’s going around and for our safety and other people's safety and everything. So it’s mixed feelings I guess."
Today on The 21st Century Classroom we're going to explore quarantine homeschooling in the age of COVID-19: What are we learning during it? And what are we learning from it?
A full transcript is available at https://wp.me/p4r2oE-6sm
In Vermont, fishing and hunting license sales have taken off since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Turkey hunting license sales increased by 26% for the recent start of the spring turkey season. Combination hunting & fishing licenses are up 24%. It seems like since the Stay At Home order, where our work, school and social spheres got smaller, Vermonters have been heading outdoors to hunt. Not just adults but whole families.
Which bring us to two questions: 1) What does it take for a young adult in Vermont to get a hunting license? And 2) what do young Vermonters find so engaging about hunting? Especially as it’s an activity they do with their families?
A full transcript is available at https://wp.me/p4r2oE-6GW
I'm Jeanie Phillips, and this is Vermont Ed Reads: books by, for and with Vermont educators. Today we're joined by Philadelphia-based educator and "Learning Maximizer" Erika Saunders, to talk about the book Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism, and You, by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. Jeanie: Thank you so much for joining me, Erika. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do? Erika: Hi! Well, first of all thank you so much for asking me to join you. My name's Erika Sanders. I’m an educator here in Philadelphia. I've been working in urban environment, educating for about 17 years. I’m a special education teacher and I call myself The Learning Maximizer. Because what I do is teach children how to maximize their learning. So, I’m thrilled to talk education. And clearly, this book hold very dear place in my heart. laughs So, I’m excited to chat with you about it.
Jeanie: I am so excited that you’re joining me. And I also just want to say you are also on the Middle Grades Institute faculty. And we’re delighted to have you as a faculty member. Erika: Thank you. Yes, I am. That’s a new one for me. Thank you for reminding me. Jeanie: So, I always ask this question at the beginning because I’m a librarian at heart and I’m curious about it. But: what else are you reading? Or what other books might you recommend? Erika: Wow, that’s an excellent question. So, sort of in general? I started We Got This: Equity, Access, and The Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us To Be, by Cornelius Minor. Which I’m looking at sitting right over there. I highly recommend that book. It’s accessible. And digestible. And yet has some pretty powerful pieces to it. For leisure, I am a huge young adult fiction fan -- not to mention I worked with middle school students often -- so a lot of what I read is sort of the middle school literature. So, if you want to relax and enjoy and just sit back, I highly recommend grabbing some of that really good juicy middle years literature that’s out there. Because it’s really gotten pretty exciting over the years. Jeanie: I couldn’t agree more. Some of my favorite books are middle grades and young adult books, absolutely. Erika: Absolutely. Jeanie: And I love Cornelius Minor's We Got This. I think it’s so practical. Erika: Yeah. When I picked it up I found that it was something that was also accessible. With my focus being Special Ed, sometimes when I’m looking at a book, I look at it through that lens. And whether or not even the formatting of it and how it’s presented is something that feels accessible to a lot of people? And there was something about this that had that feel. Where, especially around race where it can be very emotional and dense and sometimes academic in a way that’s unaccessible? When I looked at this I thought, wow, this is something that has lots of access points. Visually, how it’s laid out, how you can sort of digest pieces of it, and not feel overwhelmed. So, I’m very, very excited about that one too. Jeanie: That’s a great lead in to this book: Stamped: Racism, Anti-Racism and You. Because Ibram X. Kendi, the co-author of this book, wrote a really dense -- really, really, really dense -- book called Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. And I read about, I would say a third of it before finally I was like I can’t do this and be in a doctoral program too. That book's been rewritten, or remixed as Jason Reynolds says, for young people in such a way that it’s really accessible, is what I found. Did you also find this to be very accessible? Erika: I did. And accessible to young people too. And I love the way you mentioned it remixed. You know you’re really tapping into that young adult audience, and inviting them in, in a way that feels connected a bit to them. And I loved that about this book. Because these are important topics. And these are topics that often hit very deeply, in ways that we might not even realize?
I’m Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads, we are here to talk books for educators, by educators and with educators. Today I’m with Meg Falby and we’ll be talking about two books by Laurie Halse Anderson: Speak, and Speak: The Graphic Novel. We’ll also be mentioning Shout, Laurie Halse Anderson’s memoir in verse.
Lovely listeners of #vted Reads, welcome to another episode.
It is currently the first half of April, 2020, a challenging and re-defining moment for all of us. One that's unsettling us in ways good and bad -- okay mostly bad -- but. But.
As we all wrestle with the pandemic and how it's moving around and through our lives, I'm struck by how much we are all turning to art. We are turning to books and painting and crafting and making and books and music and cooking (did I mention books?),and it's really reaffirming for a lot of us the vital role art plays in our lives. The ways in which it carries us through dark times and helps pull us toward the light.
Which brings me to this episode.
On today's episode, I'm joined by Vermont health educator Meg Falby, and we talk about Laurie Halse Anderson's incomparable books, Speak and Shout. For those of you who are wondering, we talk in the episode about sexual assault and its aftermath. We're not graphic, but we will talk about emotional impact as it's portrayed in the books.
While we're using these books as a platform to examine how educators can talk about consent -- living breathing free and thriving consent -- this topic might be challenging for some folks, especially the survivors.
We want you, as always, to put your own health first and make an informed decision about listening to the episode. Whatever you decide, we're proud of you for making it this far, and we hold a space for you to listen, or read, or paint or craft, or sing or ...speak.
I'm Jeanie Phillips. I'm awfully glad you're back for another episode of Vermont Ed Reads, the podcast by with and for Vermont educators.
Let's chat.
Jeanie: Thank you so much for joining me Meg, tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Meg: Thank you for having me, this is really exciting! I have been a teacher, this is my 18th year of teaching, a bit of a combination of what we call "family and consumer sciences". It’s kind of a new age home ec, and my real focus has been on health education.
I started right out of UVM. I got my undergrad in family and consumer sciences education -- believe it or not it exists -- and I taught in both Barre Town School and Barre City School. Twelve years in and then a job at U-32 High School opened up, which was really exciting for me because I hold this school in really high regard. And I’ve been here now for six years.
I teach 7th and 8th grade health. I also teach high school health, and that typically is grades 10 to 12. And I teach 8th grade living arts class: sewing, cooking, all that good stuff.
Jeanie: Oh that sounds like so much fun.
Meg: It’s such a fun class! Such a fun class.
Jeanie: I'm really excited to have you on the podcast! I follow you on twitter and I am a fan, but also I just think you’re going to bring a lot to this conversation about these books, so welcome. One of the things I like to ask us right away is: what are you reading? What’s on your bedside table? Because I’m always looking for the next best book to read?
Meg: Well, the number that I came up with was 17? But I think I'm now over 17. I’m one of those people -- at least in the last year -- I’ve become "The Collector". You know how there’s different types of readers? I’m The Collector and I am also a reader that has multiple books going on at one time.
Right now I’m reading this wonderful book called Beyond Birds and Bees: Bringing Home a New Message to Our Kids About Sex, Love, and Equality. It’s by Bonnie Rough and she is an incredible writer. You know, to me it’s an adventure story. She and her husband head over to the Netherlands and ...
For this episode, we're in the Two Rivers Supervisory Union, in southern Vermont. Ace podcaster and #vted Reads host Jeanie Phillips visited the Mount Holly School, in Mount Holly, Vermont. We'll hear from Aubrey, Alyssa and M., three sixth graders entering their final semester at this K-6 school. Next year, all three move up to one of the nearby middle schools. So what have these three students learned from their time at Mount Holly? Let's find out.
A full transcript is available at https://wp.me/p4r2oE-6kg
I'm Jeanie Phillips, and welcome back to #vted Reads, the podcast for, by and with Vermont educators.
And I? Am still here. As are you.
Now, we recorded this episode with our lovely friend Lindsey Halman back in February 2020, a time that at this point feels almost like a long-ago Camelot, or perhaps as the late great Hunter S. Thompson put it, "that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back.” It's the end of March -- same year! -- and so much about what we do, and how, and where, has changed.
But not the why.
In this episode, we talk about a book called Guts by Raina Telgemeier, and a lot of what we discuss centers around what the main character learns about herself and her body's reactions to anxiety.
So first and foremost: if you're not in a space for that right now, I completely understand. Put it down. Go meditate. Bake cookies. Take a walk with a child in nature. Listen to 99% Invisible instead.
But for everyone who's sticking around (and those of you who eventually make it back from the nature walk), thank you. Thank you for being around, and thank you for staying around. It's okay to feel whatever you're feeling right now. It's okay to be overwhelmed, it's okay to be anxious. But if nothing else, this period in our history has shown us that when the going gets tough, #vted gets tougher. (Y'all commandeered the buses for delivering food! The buses!)
Anyway, the work has always been hard, and now it's just hard in new ways. Ways we'll find our way around together.
Now: let's chat.
Jeanie Phillips: I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads. We're here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today, I’m with Lindsey Halman and we’ll be talking about Guts by Raina Telgemeier. Thanks for joining me, Lindsey. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Lindsey Halman: Sure. Thanks, Jeanie, for having me. I was a middle level educator for 15 years and my heart is always with young adolescents Those were my people. And I currently am the executive director of Unleashing the Power of Partnership for Learning --also known as Up for Learning. So I have the privilege of working with schools across Vermont.
Jeanie: Excellent. Well, I’m so excited to have you on the podcast. And you brought this book to my attention: Guts. Although, as school librarian who’s worked K-6 and 7-12, I have to say Raina Telgemeier has been a big hit with my previous students for many years. And her books were always hard to keep on the shelves. Always books I had to have multiple copies of. But I’m really excited to talk about this one. Like Smile and some of her other books it’s a memoir, told in comic or graphic form. And I wondered if you introduce us to the Raina in this specific book.
Lindsey: Sure. So, I should also I mention that I’m a parent. That’s probably the most important piece! Parent of a nine year old. o, this book really resonated with me and my daughter as we read it together. So, I just wanted put that piece in there. And so Raina, the author and Raina, the character, we see her between 4th and 5th grade in the story. So, she is nine. And she describes herself as nervous, self-conscious, shy and quiet. Except when she’s with her close friends, Jane and Nicole. And I would say that that’s maybe what people when she’s in school are those qualities of just maybe being shy and quiet. But she has so much more to her. She’s a Girl Scout. She’s an artist. She loves to draw, create comics.
She’s an older sibling; she has two younger siblings. She lives in an apartment with a family of five. And her family feels very well connected and supportive of one another, both in the sense of they live in a tight space and so they’re sharing and in close quarters. But also they are sharing and in close quarters as in their relationships. So, they have very supportive relationships with one another.
Jeanie: Yeah.
I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome back to #vted Reads: books by, for and with Vermont educators. Today is a little of all three, as we welcome instructional coaches Emily Rinkema and Stan Williams to the show. They're the authors of The Standards-Based Classroom: Make Learning the Goal, and have been working on implementing and assessing proficiencies at Champlain Valley Union High School, in Hinesburg Vermont.
Proficiency-based education is something of a hot topic in Vermont.
In 2013, the Vermont legislature passed Act 77, which required schools around Vermont to implement personal learning plans, flexible pathways and proficiency-based learning for students in grades 7 through 12 by 2020. That. Is. Now. (Or at least it was at the time of recording.)
Anyway, Stan and Emily are old hats at the proficiency game, and their book is a valuable resource for working with educators who are new to proficiencies, especially as they relate to assessment.
This is #vted Reads: let's chat.
Jeanie: Thanks for joining me, Emily and Stan. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Emily Rinkema: We are proficiency-based learning coordinators. That's our current title, in the Champlain Valley School District. We have been in this role but with many different names for approximately 10 years, I think, now. We also teach.
So, we've been teaming together as humanities teachers for 22 years, a long time and we still teach a course together now at the high school. We each spend half of our jobs at the high school supporting the continued implementation of standards-based learning, and the other half of our jobs are now at the middle school, supporting the implementation there.
Stan Williams: Yeah, we’ve taught from the ninth grade core program to this job and are now teaching a course called Think Tank. So, that's been our fun new challenge.
Emily: We also about two years ago, wrote the book for Corwin, and since then we've had the opportunity to work with a lot of schools and districts not only in our state but around the country. And then most recently even internationally working with a few schools. So, that's been really amazing to see how different school districts interpret the same principles of learning.
Jeanie: Yeah, I went to a workshop with some of the teachers I work with that you two had, on proficiency-based learning or standards-based learning. And one of the questions I know you must hear and that I hear all the time is: How long will it take before we get there? And what I'm hearing from you in your role as coaches in this work is that it's not a one and done but it's an ongoing process to getting there.
Stan: Yeah, I think that any time if you actually ever think you're there, there's probably a misunderstanding, because I'm not sure there's ever going to be a "there". But yeah, that's one of the big things that we've had to grapple with and that especially adults, as educators, have to grapple with. The fact that it is not "here's the box, open it up, take it out, and now you are a standards-based teacher!" And I think that's often what the thought is" give me the program, give me the answer, and I'll do it. Or: give me the sheets and I'll do it. Which is not the case.
I think that also is one of the things that leads to some difficulties. People will look to change the grading and the reporting, but then not get to the fact that it's the instruction, it's the assessment -- it's all the work in the classroom that needs to change as well.
So yeah, I think that's the biggest part of our job, probably, dealing with that other part.
Emily: Yeah, it's really changing the fundamental beliefs about teaching and learning. I think we often hear teachers will say, “Oh, it's another initiative coming along,” and thinking that we can have some professional development around it and we'll just add it to our bucket of other initiatives.
I'm Jeanie Phillips: welcome to #vted Reads, the podcast by for and with Vermont educators. And today, with Vermont students as well! We recorded this episode at last year's Teen Lit Mob. What's Teen Lit Mob, you ask?
Teen Lit Mob is Vermont's only book-related conference specifically for young adult readers. Students from all around the state converge in a big joyful mass and squee about what they're reading. They meet authors and get free books and did we mention the squeeing? So. Much. Squeeing.
And Teen Lit Mob is super important. Here's why.
Close your eyes. Close them! (Unless you're listening to this while driving; safety first.) Now think back: what was your favorite book when you were in, say, 8th grade?
Did you have folks you could tell about it? Folks who'd grasp your hands and just bounce wildly up and down sharing the absolute JOY of finding and loving, that one perfect book?
So that's Teen Lit Mob: squee! bouncing! friendship! books! a bedazzled megaphone! books and squee.
deep breath
So we showed up at Teen Lit Mob last year, and asked some of the attendees one simple, VITAL question: What book do you wish was being taught in your school?
Warning: #vted Reads assumes no responsibility for how badly this episode messes up your To Be Read list.
whisper Let's chat! My name is Sloan and I go to CVU.
Jeanie: Sloan, thank you for talking to me. What book do you wish your teachers were teaching?
Sloan: Probably American Street by Ibi Zoboi.
Jeanie: Yeah.
Sloan: I think it's such a beautiful like, story, about somebody who goes to, like America. Somebody who's really open-minded and really kind and really sweet. Everything is set up for her not to succeed and it shows how many people in this country, like, even if you come in with the best intentions, how the system is kind of setup against you. Like there's more than one perspective of how you experience. I'm Celia and I go to CVU.
I wish that my teachers would teach the book Black is the Body by Emily Bernard. She's a professor at UVM of English. And her book has a lot to do about Black identity, especially in Vermont. I can imagine those essays fitting in in a class that has anything to do with diversity and race -- like a social studies class -- but also, in English class. Because not only does Emily talk about her experiences in her books, she talks about teaching English classes and the relation to race. How her students learn about it and become uncomfortable intentionally. And I think that's a really unique perspective we don't hear a lot in Vermont. So, I think any student in Vermont would benefit from reading the book but I think especially in English or social studies class. My name is Christine. I go to school at Peoples Academy.
I wish that my teachers would teach Stalking Jack the Ripper, which is a new book that came out. It's kind of like a fantasy while also historical. So I think it's really interesting. At our school, we have a sci-fi and dystopia class? So, it would probably fit in there. But also, my English teacher does a lot of creative things. So, it's not just the classics, like Great Gatsby, which we're starting right now but it's also some of the more interesting things. Hi. My name is Isabel and I go to school at Peoples Academy High School.
I think it would be What If It's Us. I just really like the book, and because it's by two different authors who write two different like, styles? And then it goes back and forth and it's really good. My name is Steven and I go to Peoples Academy in Morristown, Vermont.
I really wish we were teaching The Count of Monte Cristo, one of my favorite books by Alexander Dumas.
I just love how the whole entire aspect of the book is created and like all the different characters, the main character gets to play as. It's super exciting and I really think that a lot of people could learn from the book. It's so good.
Welcome back to #vted Reads! The podcast for, with and by Vermont educators. I'm Jeanie Phillips and in this episode, we're joined by Dolan, in talking about Juliet Takes a Breath, by Gabby Rivera. Along the way, we talk white fragility, preferred pronouns (and how your students can let you know what's safe and appropriate for them in different settings), we learn about Gloria E Anzaldúa's Borderlands, and answer the question: 'What can adults do to support students in their activisim?'
Plus, I confess my shortcomings as a meditator.
It's #vted Reads. Let's chat!
Jeanie: Thank you for joining me, Dolan. Tell us a little bit about who you are, and what you do.
Dolan: My name is Dolan and I go by they/them pronouns. I currently live in Vermont, and I'm in a doctoral program with Jeanie, which is really lovely, in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. Before that, I worked for six years coordinating and directing LGBTQ resources and services on college campuses. On different campuses across the country.
And most I recently moved here from California. Before that was Missouri, before that I was here in Vermont, doing my master's program in the Higher Ed Student Affairs HESA program, just a really transformative experience for me.
I love reading, especially queer-trans, people of color or QTPOC Fiction. It's really fun to get lost in a book, especially a book that pushes me, or resonates with me, or one maybe I feel seen in.
I am biracial. I'm white and Latinx. My mom was born in Cuba. And I definitely feel that I have a lot of white privilege and white-passing privilege. I am queer. I'm bisexual and I'm non-binary. Which is why I go by they/them pronouns, although some non-binary people go by different pronouns as well. And I'm excited to be on this podcast today.
Jeanie: Oh, I'm so excited to talk to you about this book. We talk about books all the time. One of the questions I asked my guest is what book are they reading now. And you are always reading a ton of books! As you walked in, you are like, I just now finished The Water Dancer -- a book I adored. So, I wondered if you wanted to share any other highlights from your reading list?
Dolan: Yeah, I literally, as you said just finished The Water Dancer moments before this podcast recording. It was a beautiful read. Really beautiful POC fiction that I recommend to everyone. Also right now I'm finishing up Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower. And also finishing Ibram X. Kendi's, How to be an Antiracist?
And I have a few more that I'm about to read but I can't remember the names of. I use the Libby app and love downloading audiobooks and listening that way. I'm supporting my local library.
This past winter break since I'm a student, I read a lot of really fun books and one that sticks out to me is Darius the Great Is Not Okay. I loved that young adult novel. So. Definitely recommend that one too.
Jeanie: That's a great one. And yay, public libraries! Yay libraries. I also just want, for listeners who may not be familiar, could you talk to me a little bit about the shorthand you use? You just used "POC" and that stands for People of Color. Is there other shorthand you might use that we could spell out for listeners as they listen?
Dolan: Yeah! So like I said I sometimes say "QTPOC" for Queer and Trans People of Color. I found living on the East Coast people pronounce it "P.O.C." for People of Color and living on the West Coast, I found people pronounce it "POC" [pawk] for People of Color. So...I don't know. I've bounced back and forth because I've lived in both places. And I'm still readjusting to the East Coast lingo.
But when I say POC or P.O.C., I'm referring to People of Color. So, what I mean by that personally is non-white people. That can be people mixed with white like myself, or others who are not mixed with white, people who are mixed or not mixed in general.
So,
Welcome to another episode of #vted Reads! We're so glad you could make it. In this episode, we talk with librarian Margi Putney, from the Burr & Burton Academy, down in Manchester Vermont. She and I read Dive Into Inquiry: Amplify Learning & Empower Student Voice, by Trevor MacKenzie.
Don't those two things sound amazing? Who doesn't want to amplify learning and empower student voice, I ask you.
MacKenzie presents strategies for scaffolding inquiry with your students that you can put into practice tomorrow. Heck, why wait for tomorrow, why not put them into practice after you finish listening to this podcast?
For instance, when was the last time you polled your students, as to what they think makes a great teacher?
Aha, see? All kinds of nuggets of goodness in this one. Plus we talk moving the sage on the stage to a guide on the side and why most classrooms need -- really need -- some kind of librarian bat-signal. When in doubt...
I'm Jeanie Phillips, this is #vted Reads. Let's chat!
Jeanie: Thanks for joining me, Margi. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Margi: Thanks Jeanie. I’m Margi and I'm the librarian at Burr & Burton Academy in Manchester, Vermont. This is my fifth year at Burr & Burton! I grew up in Philadelphia. And I've been in Vermont for about 20 plus years.
Jeanie: Excellent. You and I are librarian compatriots. We've been to conferences together and we've done some work together and it's just such a pleasure to have you on the podcast.And for once having a librarian and talking about a non-fiction book, a teacher book and not fiction book, so I'm excited about that!
One thing I like to ask my guest right away is what are you reading?
Margi: I'm reading a good book. It's called Know My Name by Chanel Miller. Are you familiar with it?
Jeanie: Is she the student at Stanford?
Margi: She is. She is the student who was sexually assaulted at Stanford while she was unconscious behind a dumpster; there were two graduate students that found her, and stopped her attacker. The book is beautifully written. It's so powerful to hear her voice and to know her name, because she was "Emily Doe". She also was the one who had that viral victim statement.
Jeanie: I've read that viral statement and it was such a powerful piece. So I'm looking forward to adding this to my To Be Read pile.
Margi: I highly recommend it.
Jeanie: Thank you. Let's diiiive into inquiry! (Pardon me, folks.) Let's jump in. Let's start with a definition of inquiry if we could. Trevor MacKenzie, the author of this book starts with a couple of definitions at the beginning and then defines it himself. Do you want to go ahead and share one of those definitions?
Margi: I do. I love the very first definition, it's before the introduction. And it's from the book, Focus on Inquiry. And it says, "Inquiry is the dynamic process of being open to wonder and puzzlements, and coming to know and understand the world." So, I had a very specific memory, I think especially as I read that quote.
When I was in eighth grade, I went to a small school. We had a very cozy classroom with multiple bulletin boards that were always decorated. And at one point, I noticed one of the bulletin boards was completely blank. I think maybe it had wrapping paper on it and a tiny little box in the centre of it, which made me curious.
And I went and I opened the tiny little box and there was a quote in the middle of the box, and I don't remember the exact words. But what I got from it was something like "curiosity is the beginning of knowledge". And it was a little quest. You had to go to a different place in the school, and you got a special pin that you got to put on.
So, the teacher knew by seeing you wear that pin, that you had been curious and you had followed through. And so for me, inquiry is curiosity. And my hope is that we get students super excited and curious about things.
Jeanie: Yeah.
On this episode of the 21st Century Classroom, we hear from three students from Champlain Valley Union High School, in Hinesburg Vermont -- a sophomore, a junior, and a high school senior. They tell us about what makes school meaningful, along with the way they see the roles of students and teachers changing as schools evolve. We also talk about equity in schools, as well as spending some serious time discussing what proficiency-based learning has looked like. Does it work? Is it an improvement over the traditional grading system, and how does it affect how these students apply to college?
Full transcript at https://wp.me/p4r2oE-5Oe
On this episode of #vted Reads, we're joined by noted Native scholar Judy Dow, to talk about Hidden Roots, by Joseph Bruchac.
This book and the issues it raises are incredibly important for us to address as both educators and Vermonters, given Vermont's appalling history with eugenics. So as a quick content note: we're going to be discussing family- and race-based trauma. Because we have to, so that you can talk about it with your students, and find new and better ways to incorporate the vibrant history of Indigenous and Native people -- as well as including their voices and perspectives through the current day.
We got up early for this one, folks.
This is #vted Reads. Let's chat.
Jeanie: I'm Jeanie Philips and welcome to #vted Reads. We are here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today, I'm with Judy Dow and we’ll be talking about Hidden Roots by Joseph Bruchac.
Thank you for joining me Judy. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Judy: Thank you, it's nice to be here. Well, I'm currently working for Gedakina, a native organization that is throughout New England. And we have an educational component where we want to educate our students about culturally appropriate and historically accurate books. We want to educate other students that are not native about the same thing. Our hopes are this education will prevent bullying, or limit bullying, and a little bit more understanding between both cultural groups.
Through Gedakina, I'm working in the Windham Southeast Supervisory Union. It's a district in the southeast corner of the state. We’re trying to develop a curriculum program that will match with H.3, the new bill that addresses ethnic studies being taught in core curriculum.
So the book I'm currently reading is one I read many, many times. It's Hidden Roots by Joe Bruchac.
Jeanie: Excellent. I cannot tell you how excited I am to have you on the podcast. We’ve been friends since we took a trip together and you’re just a wealth of knowledge. I'm just so excited for this conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today. I always like to ask my guests, because I like to build my “to-be-read pile,” what they’re reading. Do you want to talk a little bit about, besides Hidden Roots, what you’ve been reading lately?
Judy: Sure. I’ve been trying to read a lot of old favorites so I could recommend them to teachers. And one of the children’s books that I’ve been reading (or re-reading) is March Toward the Thunder by Joe Bruchac. It is a civil war story about Abenaki boy who lies about his age and joins the Civil War to help his family find a place to live in Vermont.
Also Thanks to the Animals by Allen J. Sockabasin, which is a younger picture book about Zoo Sap, a little baby that falls off a sled and the animals care for him.
Muskrat Will Be Swimming by Cheryl Savageau is about bullying, name-calling, and it's another very pertinent book for today.
And one of Joe’s new ones, Two Roads? Is about a young man who finds out he’s Choctaw from his father who is trying to hide it from him. They separate in life for Two Roads. The young boy has to go to a boarding school. The father goes to Washington to protest against the bonus checks from World War One. They want them earlier because it’s The Depression, and they’re losing their home.
I'm also reading Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Conversations on Race, by Derald Wing Sue. Very good, lots of vignettes that are based on classroom experiences. It's very helpful.
The other one is White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo. And that is also a very good book.
Jeanie: Those are excellent suggestions. I'm really excited to dig in.
I have some questions already, that aren’t even on our list of questions. The first one is I I wondered if you would talk about your identity.
with Kendra LaRoche Here at #vted Reads, we are big fans of finding yourself in a book.
Whether you're a stinky, nervous wreck of a middle grades student or a winsome and confident Vermont educator who can still empathize with the... stinky, nervous wreck of a middle grades student, we love the kind of books where you can find someone to identify with, no matter what.
On the show today I'm joined by Kendra LaRoche, a humanities teacher at Burr and Burton Academy, down in Manchester Vermont. Both she and I found a ton of characters we loved in Look Both Ways, by Jason Reynolds. Whether you're a Low Cut or a class cut-up, a checklister or a skater chick, we're sure you'll find some way of wanting to talk about this amazing book with your students.
So pull up a seat, open to the title page, and let's---
Whoa whoa whoa, wait a minute: before we go any further, I should note that Kendra and I found it pretty much impossible to avoid spoilers for Look Both Ways during this conversation. So: spoilers. Tons of them. For the book.
Okay. Now... let's chat.
Kendra: Hi Jeanie, thank you for having me. I'm a humanities teacher at Burr and Burton Academy, in Manchester VT. And I'm also a 2011 Roland Fellow. The passion that I have is working with students who are reading below their grade level and I want to improve their reading skills mainly through instilling a love of reading. Jeanie: That just gives me chills. It's exciting work. Thank you for doing the hard work. You do. The first question I always like to ask, cause I'm always growing my to be read pile is what are you reading right now? Kendra: I'm reading Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani. I'm reading that because I'm really committed to introducing more current global novels into our humanities curriculum. We shouldn't really be reading the same dead white men that we were reading when I was in high school. Jeanie: Tell me a little bit more about Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree. Kendra: It takes place in Nigeria and it takes place during when Boko Haram had kidnapped a bunch of girls from a school. And it really takes place as a fictionalized story first, from the point of view of one of the girls who was taken. Then the second half of the book is actually a non-fiction journalistic viewpoint of interviewing all those girls and what actually happened. The idea being that not many people actually talked about that incident. And they wanted to get the word out. Jeanie: What a fantastic choice for a humanities classroom. Kendra: Yeah. I haven't decided whether or not we're going to use it. But I'm committed to really reading a bunch of books to see which ones I want to use. And this one, it talks about some great ideas? It's also really hard. How do you introduce ideas of rape, for instance, into a high school classroom in a way that both honors the people who are in the classroom and also honors the people who awful things happen to? Jeanie: Yeah. Wow. That is a big question. Kendra: It is! And it's not one we're going to be able to answer today. Jeanie: Yes. I am going to be talking about Speak and Shout by Laurie Halse Anderson in an upcoming episode, and I'm thinking how we teach consent. So tune in listeners, for a future episode to talk more about this! Well Kendra, you and I are both big Jason Reynolds fans I know, from a conversation a couple months ago. Let's dig into talking about this book. His -- well I don't even want to say newest because he's always got new ones coming out, but one of his recent books: Look Both Ways. I wondered if you'd set the stage a little bit for this book. Kendra: Sure! It's essentially a tale told in ten city blocks. It's interesting because each chapter name, is actually the street name that a particular character lives on. It all takes place in a middle school; when the bell rings, everyone leaves and goes their separate ways, down their own streets, into their own chapters.
This past fall, educator and parent Emily Hoyler, took part in the Youth Climate Strike, along with her three children. They visited various protests in Vermont, and Emily interviewed some of the students she met at the protests. She asked them why they were there, what they hoped to achieve, and how this day of action related to their in-school lives. "I'm here because every morning I wake up afraid. And so knowing that so many other people feel the same thing? It makes me hopeful, for the first time in a long time."
A full transcript is available at https://wp.me/p4r2oE-5Bc
Hoo boy, we have a CORKER of an episode for you today, with On The Come Up, by Angie Thomas. We're going to be talking about some of the continual and heartbreaking trauma students of color face in our schools, as well as the incredible resilience of mothers.
I'm joined today by Marley Evans, a Vermont educator originally from the same Mississippi town as author Angie Thomas, and someone who originally appeared on our 21st Century Classroom podcast as a brand new educator. She'll be talking a little about her experience of school in Mississippi and Vermont, and how some experiences are universal.
A quick content note: we're going to be mentioning a couple of episodes of physical, emotional and familial trauma that occur in On The Come Up, so we want you to be forewarned if that would be helpful.
Now, pull up a seat. This is VTed Reads! Books for, with and by Vermont educators. Let's chat.
Jeanie: Thanks for joining me. Marley, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Marley: I'm a seventh and eighth-grade humanities teacher at Charlotte Central School. But I am originally from Jackson, Mississippi, which is where Angie Thomas is from! I like to imagine in my head that we're best friends, even though we have never met, and I only stalk her on Instagram. I love to read! And I've always been a reader. I used to get my books confiscated before I went to lunch, because I would just read the whole time. I would read under my desk at school. Plus I'm also a member of Green Mountain Book Award Committee. So I read a ton of YA every year. I usually read over 100 books. And I think this year is going to be about 120. I love to read.
Jeanie: What are you reading right now?
Marley: I read the new Louise Penny, which was amazing. I always get her books. I'm reading Echo North. I finished Patron Saints of Nothing a couple of weeks ago, that was amazing. I'm rereading Emily Starr: Emily of New Moon, the Ellen Montgomery series.
Jeanie: Wow. You read a lot!
Marley: I read a lot.
Jeanie: You read more than me.
Marley: I do read a lot.
Jeanie: What's your favorite YA of the year so far?
Marley: That is such a tough question! I really loved On the Come Up. I really loved With the Fire on High.
Jeanie: Me too! Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X, is one of my favorite books of all time, and With the Fire on High is a great follow up.
Marley: I'm going to say I liked it more than Poet X! And I loved Poet X. That's not a judgment on Poet X, but I loved With the Fire on High.
Jeanie: I'm going to read everything Acevedo ever writes! Just like Angie Thomas. But let's move on to On the Come Up. Angie Thomas was the author of The Hate U Give , which everyone is reading and talking about, but On the Come Up is an amazing novel on its own right. Could you introduce us to the main character Bri?
Marley: Yeah. So: Bri. I have trouble sometimes in my mind, separating Bri from Starr; Starr’s the main character in The Hate U Give, and in my mind it's almost like they're sisters and I'm constantly comparing them.
Bri's in high school, and she's from the same neighborhood as Starr, Garden Heights. Which is a made-up neighborhood, a fictionalized neighborhood. She's feisty. She doesn't fit in this perfect box. It seems like she's always getting in like little bits of trouble, little scrapes. She's still trying to figure out who she is. I think what's very apparent throughout the whole book, is she has all these different ways she could go, these sort of paths she could go and she's trying to figure out which path to take and who to be, throughout the whole book.
Jeanie: That sounds like your average high school kid.
Marley: Yeah.
Jeanie: Her childhood, unlike Starr’s, it’s been really challenging. I wondered if you could read a section from page 43 of the book just to give our listeners an idea of the challenges of Bri's young years?
Marley: Yes, definitely.
Today on the show, we're going to talk about The End of Average: How to Succeed in a World That Values Sameness, by Todd Rose. We'll be joined by Emily Gilmore, who teaches world history at South Burlington High School, in South Burlington Vermont.
But first, a few words of background for today's show.
In case you haven't spent quality time with the spectacular wrongness of Industrial Revolution philosophers, it will help to know the following:
Frederick Winslow Taylor was a 19th century industrial engineer who spent a lot of time during thinking about how to improve the efficiency of factories. He wanted to get more product out of workers, faster. And when psychologist Edward Thorndike came along and read Taylor's ideas? His own thoughts naturally turned to -- where else? -- school. When not avidly playing tennis, Thorndike spent his time trying to figure out how to make schools work more like factories.
Frankly, both of them needed flinging in a pond.
But that brings us to Todd Rose, a high school dropout who now runs one of Harvard's most prestigious thinking departments. Rose has some ideas that would have made Taylor and Thorndike's hair curl, but that just might explain why proficiency-based learning is so important to keep pursuing in Vermont schools.
This is Vermont Ed Reads, books with educators, for educators and by educators.
Let's chat.
Jeanie: I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome to Vermont Ed Reads. We’re here to talk books for educators by educators and with educators. Today, I'm with Emily Gilmore, and we'll be talking about The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness, by Todd Rose. Thanks for joining me, Emily. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Emily: I'm so excited to be here! My name is Emily Gilmore and I am a social studies teacher at South Burlington High School, and a Rowland Fellow. I spent two specific years really diving into proficiency and personalized learning. So I'm really excited to talk more about the End of Average because it's just the most validating book I think I've ever read in my whole life. Jeanie: Excellent. I'm so looking forward to this conversation! I have so many post-it notes in this book. Tell me, what are you reading now? Emily: Yes. So I am reading There There by Tommy Orange. And I picked it up when I was in Michigan, and sitting on the beach reading about the peoples who inhabited the land originally? Their stories now in modern day are just heartbreaking and so powerful. I just can't stop reading it and I'm like slowing down, so I can really sit in it. And really feel all of the feelings that come from it. Jeanie: Yeah, that's a really powerful book. I love that book. Tommy Orange is indigenous himself, Native American himself. And then he's writing about urban Indians. Urban Native Americans in Oakland, California. That book was really powerful. Emily: Even the prologue is so incredible. Every educator should read at the very least those first 10-15 pages, going into the history and why the book is so important for everyone to read. Jeanie: Yeah. I found those pages hard. Emily: Yes, very.... Like, that was so engaging for me to then really get into the characters too. Jeanie: Yeah, it's a great book, great recommendation. So this one, I saw that you tweeted about one day on Twitter and reached out to you right away and said, "Let's talk about it on the podcast!" And you gave an enthusiastic yay. I found this book to be so enlightening! My number one takeaway I think was right away at the beginning of the book. The book is divided into three sections. And it illuminated one that we all hold without really thinking about it, or why we hold it. That is what Rose calls "averagarianism". Is that what he calls it? I found it so fascinating. And it's that everything in our contemporary lives is ruled by averages. How we look at testing in schools, how we place kids in schools,
Today we're going to listen in on a conversation between three students from Orleans Elementary School in Barton, Vermont. These students talk about about the importance of community, the empowerment of student voice and choice, and offer some brilliant insights about how and why schools can adapt to serve the needs of so-called “troublemaker” students.
Transcript available here: https://wp.me/p4r2oE-5pc
Listeners: how do you talk to your students about the special love that exists between a woman and a Sasquatch? Or between an insect and a robot-powered building? And where and how do you determine which texts are appropriate to give to students?
On this episode of the podcast, I'm joined by Sarah Birgé, a lifelong Vermonter and English lit teacher in the Montpelier-Roxbury district. We're talking about Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories, by author Kelly Barnhill.
We'll share our favorite moments from Barnhill's collection as well as other collections of stories we've used with students, and our love of low floors and high ceilings. Come for the mysterious love affairs, stay for the power of short stories and how they can help students find entry points for talking complex concepts and issues!
I'm Jeanie Phillips, and this is #vted Reads. Let's chat.
Jeanie: Thanks for joining me, Sarah. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Sarah: Thanks, Jeanie. Glad to be here. My name is Sarah Birgé, and I'm a Vermont native. I was an English teacher for about a decade. I've also worked at the Agency of Education as our State English Specialist, and I'm currently an instructional coach at Montpelier-Roxbury Public Schools, and a lifelong reader. So happy to be here.
Jeanie: I love talking to readers, and this is my favorite question to ask. What are you reading right now?
Sarah: I thought about this on the way in, and it's a slightly longer answer because yesterday I just finished a book called The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates. I was lucky to get advance copy. It's not coming out till the end of the month, which made me feel very special. It's a crazy book that combines historical fiction and sci-fi. Strongly recommend! A very powerful book.
Then yesterday, I started a new book which is part of the Rivers of London series, which is another wonderful, fantastical detective fiction by a guy called Ben Aaronovitch, who used to write for Doctor Who. Very much having like a fantasy, sci-fi moment of my reading.
Jeanie: Thank you. Let's talk about this book! I don't know that I would call it fantasy, but it's on the ghosty side.
Sarah: I mean some of the stories are a little sci-fi here and there. It's definitely a genre mishmash.
Jeanie: It's a collection of short stories with one novella at the end, full of really unconventional female characters, even the title, Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories clues you into that. This was a title you selected, and I'd like to know why. What do you love about this collection?
Sarah: Well, the thing that attracted me to the book was the title. I was like, "Dreadful Young Ladies, that sounds like Victorian." I'm like, "What's happening?" It's going to be interesting, and about female characters. I had actually never heard of Kelly Barnhill, who is pretty famous YA author. And I love the cover! I know you shouldn't judge a book by it. But as soon as I started reading, I was hooked because like you said it's unconventional female characters.
I love things that play with genre, and this is really like a lot of the stories you think you know where you're going, and then it takes a sharp left turn. I think I read it if not in one sitting then very quickly. It's a really engaging book.
Jeanie: Let's talk about some of the really unconventional characters in this book. It's hard with short stories because you don't want to give too much away.
Sarah: I know.
Jeanie: I feel like we can give a little away, though. I'm going to start with one of the stories I fell for was called "Open the Door and the Light Pours Through". It begins as letters between two characters, Angela and John. I think John is off "at war". Angela has left the city to go to his mother or something. It's not entirely in letters, right? Because there is a letter and then there's what's going for real, which is so intriguing because they are love letter...
This episode is all. About. QUESTIONS.
Why are we here? Who was here before us? What kinds of stories do we tell about the world around us? And: how can we change from seeing the world as something to be studied, to something that can be acted upon ...and changed.
First-year educator Thierry Uwilingiyamana -- now in his second year at Winooski Middle-High School -- joins me on the show to talk about Place-Based Curriculum Design: Exceeding Standards Through Local Investigations. The author, Amy Demarest, is herself a longtime Vermont educator who has touched both my guest and I deeply.
(We're big fans!)
Plus: why you absolutely need to spin Google Earth with your students. Just once. Their reactions may surprise and delight you.
I'm Jeanie Phillips, this is #vted Reads: books for educators, by educators and with educators.
Let's chat.
Jeanie: Today I’m with Thierry Mugabo Uwilingiyimana, and we’ll be talking about Place-based Curriculum Design: Exceeding Standards through Local Investigations by Amy Demarest. Thanks for joining me, Thierry. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Thierry: Well, let me start by saying thank you for having me. Myself, where do I start? I feel like it’s appropriate to start by maybe giving a visual to people who are listening. I am a Black man from Rwanda, a tiny little country central East Africa. It’s sandwiched between the Congo and Tanzania, and I have four siblings; three brothers and one sister. Born in Rwanda, and I left when I was six because of the war that happened there. I left with my family. I was lucky enough to leave with my family. And we became refugees in Congo and Zambia for a total of six years before we came to the U.S., where we began our lives in Buffalo, New York. So I did my high school there, at the college preparatory high school. It’s a private Jesuit school, where I was one of the very few Black kids in a majority white school. Ninety-eight percent white. And I think they were trying to reach out to kids from Buffalo, because most of the other students were coming from the suburbs or were driving in an hour, or two hours. This is an old school, a school that’s been around since the late 1800s. Its an all-boys school. It’s a multigenerational school. Kids go there, their dads went there, the grandfathers went there. So, that was interesting experience. Then I left Buffalo for Stanford University where I studied electrical engineering. And I also had the passion for – or at least I thought a lot about someday going back to my home country, or at least Zambia. Which was the last African country I lived in before leaving the continent. I thought about how I might go back. How I might give back. Maybe it’s a survivor’s -- not remorse, but a mindset of, “I survived for a reason. What’s my responsibility?” After Stanford, long story short, I found myself in D.C., doing engineering work. Software engineering work. After the recession I finally decided to dive into what I thought was going to be my life’s work, and this was trying to revolutionize education. Given the background that I acquired through my undergrad and through my studying, I really felt that technology would play a big role in democratizing education, bring education to more people, and quality education. So this took me down the path of entrepreneurship. And that was five years, and somehow led me to Vermont, where I came here for a startup. When that didn’t work out after I’d been here for two months, I scrambled around for a few months, and then luckily came across a STEM position that was open at Winooski Middle High School. That’s where I’m at. I just finished my first year, teaching engineering. Jeanie: Congratulations! Thierry: Thank you very much. I like to say "engineering" instead of STEM, because I think for students it makes them stand up a little bit, sit straighter, and think, “Oh, we’re doing engineering?
This one goes deep, folks. On this episode educator Corey Smith joins me to talk about The Benefits of Being an Octopus, by Ann Braden. We talk glitter and posterboard, coffee and peanut-butter smoothies, and using the Equity Literacy Framework to dismantle inequality in our systems of learning with both students AND adults. What might we -- and you -- miss about students' complicated home lives? And what can we learn from gun control debates about community conversations?
Told ya. Strap in. It's #vted Reads.
Let's chat. Jeanie: I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads, we're here to talk books for educators by educators and with educators. Today I'm with Corey Smith and we'll be talking about The Benefits of Being an Octopus by Ann Braden. Thank you for joining me, Corey. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Corey: Sure. Thanks for having me. So, my name is Corey Smith and I work at the Greater Rutland County Supervisory Union. Up until last year, I was a classroom teacher. I had taught first grade, second grade, third grade and fourth grade with third grade being my most recent and at the end of the year I was given the opportunity to become a PBL coach. So now I get to have the opportunity to go into the schools within our district and work with the teachers to implement project-based learning, proficiency-based education, place-based learning, technology and student-centered learning. So that's what I do now. Jeanie: Excellent. We are recording in the school in which Corey was a first, second, third and fourth grade teacher, Proctor Elementary School, in Proctor VT. And I’ve got to tell you, there's more flexible seating in this school than I've seen anywhere. It's really a lovely, lovely building. Thanks for inviting me in. https://youtu.be/dGi6CtYW97o
Corey: Thanks for coming here. Jeanie: So I'm going to start us off with my favorite question.
What are you reading now? Corey: So, I am reading Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson right now. I have an 11 year old, sixth grader at home who has been an incredibly reluctant reader his entire life and this year's DCF lists came out and it excited him and he has been reading nonstop, so we decided to pick out a book from the DCF list to read together. So that's what we're reading. We're not too far into it yet, but I'm really excited about it so far. Jeanie: I really love all of Jacqueline Woodson’s books, but Harbor Me was a really special one. I think it's a great empathy builder. So good choice for both of you. So let's get to this book which we both adored and which Vermont educators are really loving and educators all over the country, The Benefits of Being an Octopus by Ann Braden. I wondered if you could introduce us to Zoey by reading the first few paragraphs of the book.
Jeanie: Perfect. So here we've got Zoey, she's a seventh grader. She's got a lot of responsibilities. Corey: Zoey has two younger brothers and a younger sister. We just met Bryce and Aurora, three and four, and then she has an even younger sibling, Hector, who is around toddler age.
And Zoey is responsible for caring for these kids because her mom works. In the afternoon, Zoey will get off the bus and she'll meet the kids at their bus stop to pick them up to take them home. She'll go to the pizza shop where her mom works to pick up the baby and she cares for these kids. As you get to know her, you find that a lot of what caring for the kids means is keeping them quiet. Making sure that they're not interrupting others adults in the house. Jeanie: Yeah. She gets them ready for school every morning. I mean, it's hard enough to get myself ready for work! But she's a seventh grader who gets herself ready for school and she gets two of these three kids ready to get onto the Head Start bus every single school day. Corey: It's amazing. Jeanie: It's a tremendous amount of responsibility and yet we could also hear the way Zoey’s teachers must see her: sh...
Welcome back to The 21st Century Classroom! Educator Lindsey Halman muses over a decade spent on The Edge, an experimental academy at Essex Middle School. She interviews former students and their families to try to figure out what made The Edge work for learners. (Hint: it involves building strong relationships, empowering learners and involving your whole community).
Transcript: https://wp.me/p4r2oE-5p4
HELLO! I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome back to vted Reads! We're kicking off our second season of the podcast with none other than author, professor, associate dean and Vermont education LEGEND, Dr. Penny Bishop.
We'll talk VT PLPs, the power of a compelling school example in changing classrooms practices, and how to steal all the examples from Personalized Learning in the Middle Grades, with Penny Bishop.
But before we get to the episode I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who's listened to us so far, everyone who's sent messages and tweets of support and love. We love you all right back, and are so excited that you want to talk books by Vermont educator, for Vermont educators...
You know the rest. It's vted Reads time. Welcome back. Let's chat.
Jeanie: I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #VTed Reads. We're here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today I'm with Penny Bishop, and we'll be talking about Personalized Learning in the Middle Grades: A Guide for Classroom Teachers and School Leaders by Penny Bishop, John Downs, and Katy Farber. Thank you for joining me, Penny.
Penny: My pleasure.
Jeanie: Tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Penny: Well I am a professor and an associate dean at the University of Vermont, and in the College of Education and Social Services. I'm also founding director of the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education.
Jeanie: Thank you. I'm so delighted to talk to you about this book. I'm going to start with a softball. What book is on your bedside table right now?
Penny: Well, there are probably 12 actually, and there's a bit of toppling action going on at the moment.The one I'm reading is by Annie Proulx and it's Barkskins. I don't know if you've read it or not, but it's an amazing tale of over 300 years. How immigrants came to New France and the landscape, and how landscape and people change over time. I'm really enjoying it.
Jeanie: Oh, I'm so glad. I'll look forward to talking to you about it when you're done.
So, let's talk about this book, Personalized Learning in the Middle Grades. You really start the book, you and John and Katy, by defining personalized learning. I wondered if you could put your definition in a nutshell for us. Defining "personalized learning" Penny: Happy to! So, I think the foundation, for me anyway and the foundation for the book, is: believing in the capacity of youth to do great things.
In order to do those great things, we need to enable them, invite them to have more say, more ownership, more agency in what they do and how they learn. The way that we have conceived of personalization in the book is to think about it in terms of three pillars. The first pillar is knowing students well. We use a personalized learning plan as a way, as one mechanism, one way to do that, to get to know students well, and then using what we know about students. That first pillar leads to the second, which is flexible pathways or creating authentic opportunities for learning. The third would be a proficiency-based assessments, so valuing what students learn. Using those three things in conjunction is essentially what we talk about in the book.
Jeanie: What I noticed when I was reading through, especially that first portion where you're defining it so well, is that you take Vermont's Act 77 and put it in context and into practice in a way that makes it visible for people. You take this abstract concept and really make it visible.
Penny: I feel really fortunate to be working in a state where we have Act 77 because I think it's given educators license to do a lot of developmentally and culturally responsive work, the kinds of work that teachers know is right, and now we have permission to do it.
So it's a very exciting time.
Jeanie: One of the tools you use in the book to really take this framework, the three pillars framework and the legislative framework, and make it visible,
with 6th grader Abby Bunting
As we close out the first season of #vted Reads, we celebrate another first: our first student guest on the podcast. In this episode, I'm joined by South Burlington sixth-grader Abby Bunting, as we discuss the book Watch Us Rise, by Renée Watson and Ellen Hagan. We'll meet the book's artivists (Google it) and talk about how unpacking stereotypes that might not apply to you still makes the world a better place for your own activism. I'm not a minority, and I'm very... definitely just privileged. I feel like these books are a way for me to... like when we're talking about stepping in the others' shoes. Let's chat.
Jeanie: I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads. We are here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today I'm with Abby Bunting, and we'll be talking about Watch Us Rise by Renée Watson and Ellen Hagan. Thanks for joining me, Abby. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Abby: Hi, I'm Abby and I am a sixth-grade student at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School in South Burlington. I love to do sports, read, pretty much a lot of out of school activities.
Jeanie: Excellent! I'm so delighted to have you here, Abby, and thank you for selecting this lovely book, Watch Us Rise, which is written in two voices. Could you introduce us to Jasmine and Chelsea? Introducing Jasmine & Chelsea Abby: Jasmine is a young, black woman and Chelsea is a young, white woman. Jasmine is a lot more quiet. Chelsea is more of a firecracker and is outspoken and loud and likes to stand up to things, whereas Jasmine normally takes a little bit of a backseat to think about more ways to do it in a polite manner or softer way.
Jeanie: They've been friends for a long time, haven't they?
Abby: Yes, they've been friends for a long time. When a white girl on the playground told Jasmine that if she took a bath hard enough, the brown would come out of her skin and Chelsea slapped her. Eventually, they learned about the non-violent movement, but that was a really good moment for Jasmine to feel that she had a friend in Chelsea.
Jeanie: Yes. I had forgotten that part. Thank you for bringing that forward. They have a couple of other friends who play a role in the story, too, even though they're not primary figures. Do you want to introduce their two other friends?
Abby: Yes. Isaac and Nadine. Isaac has been a part of their group for a long time and there's a little bit of romance going on between Isaac and Jasmine. Nadine is one of their friends, a fashion diva. She's amazing and really a centerpoint for the group.
Jeanie: Did you, like me, feel like, "This just makes me want to be in their friend circle?" Abby: Yes, I do. They have a really good relationship and all communicate very well.
Jeanie: Right. They spend a lot of time at Jasmine's house. Jasmine's father, Mr. Gray, is sort of an inspiration for them. He works at a local cultural center and museum. He sends Jasmine, and Isaac, and Nadine, and Chelsea off on these "challenges", he calls them. And the book begins when he sends them on the "Brown Art Challenge". Do you want to talk about what the "Brown Art Challenge" is?
Abby: Yes. It's pretty much going around New York and finding exhibits that aren't really well-known and taking a look and being inspired. I know Chelsea writes a poem. Isaac, who's a really good drawer, does a lot of pictures about them.
Jeanie: Right, and so he's really asking them to find art that represents brown and Black people, people of color, right?
Abby: Yes. That isn’t very much represented around New York, popularly.
Jeanie: Yes, and so he sends them to Harlem, to explore the Harlem Renaissance at one point, right? Do you remember any of the other things he sends them towards?
Abby: I don't remember any of the other things he sends them to, but he sends them, at the end -- even though at the beginning he says that they're not allowed...
In this episode of #vted Reads, I return to my old stomping grounds at Green Mountain Union High School. I'm talking with school counselor Ally Oswald, about the realities of reaching and teaching students in poverty. Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty is also the title of a 2013 book by educator and reformer Paul Gorski. And we're going to use Gorski's text to identify some concrete strategies to help us, as educators, move from wishful thinking to direct action. Our students need us, and we all know they're worth it.
So let's roll up our sleeves and figure it out.
Let's chat.
Jeanie: I am Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads. We are here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today, I’m with Ally Oswald. We’ll be talking about Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the Opportunity Gap by Paul Gorski. Thanks for joining me, Ally. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Ally: Thanks, Jeanie. It’s great to be here. I’m a school counselor here at Green Mountain in Southern Vermont. I’ve been here for about 10 or 12 years now. My husband is an educator in the building. My two sons come to school here so, this is really a family affair.
We’ve been reading this book as part of a group of teachers from our district, as a study group. We meet once a month and discuss a chapter. It’s really helped me learn about the wealth gap. To learn about how we think about students in poverty. The stereotypes that get associated with families and really question my own practices. It’s been really great to be a part of that group. How poverty shows up in Vermont schools Jeanie: You are the perfect guest then for us to dig into this book and think about what action it calls to us in our Vermont schools. Thank you so much for joining me.
So, Paul Gorski begins this book by dispelling the myth that public education is a great equalizer. He says, that’s what we want it to be, but that’s not how it works out. And sighting just countless research, he begins with this, Students from poor families continue to be subject, on average, to what Jonathan Kozol has called the savage inequalities of schooling. The examples of these inequalities are numerous. Poor students are assigned disproportionately to the most inadequately funded schools with the largest class sizes and lowest paid teachers. They are more likely than their wealthiest peers to be bullied and to attend school in poorly maintained buildings. They are denied access to the sorts of school resources and opportunities other children take for granted, such as dedicated school nurses, well-stocked school libraries, and engaging pedagogies. In fact, by these and almost every other possible measure, students from poor families, the ones most desperate to find truth in the "great equalizer" promise, appear to pay a great price for their poverty, even at school. Of course, these conditions are not the fault of teachers, who are often are blamed unjustly for their effects. In fact, teachers who teach at high-poverty schools, as well as an increasing number of their colleagues at all public schools, too often are themselves denied access to adequate resources. I wondered Ally, as a school counselor in Vermont School, do you see this playing out in your experience? That schools are being blamed for the effects of poverty over which they have no control.
Ally: Yes. I mean, I think it’s really interesting here in rural Vermont, because there’s not a whole lot of coordination of services between towns and so, schools become the community centers. They become the hub where people come to expect services. Expect food and clothing. The schools are the one place where we can provide those services, because we have access to families. We have access to students and we do have the funding to do that. I worry about our students in poverty here in Vermont. Especially because housing is so hard to find.
Reader, today we're going to talk toilets. Now, not in a weird way or a gross way, but because they're a central theme in Susin Neilson's No Fixed Address. They're big white porcelain symbols of the main character's resourcefulness as he navigates housing insecurity, and they're really important to think about in terms of access for your own students.
Really.
Have a seat, and let's chat.
Jeanie: I'm Jeanie Phillips. Welcome to #vted Reads. We're here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today I'm with Annie Brabazon, and we'll be talking about No Fixed Address by Susin Neilsen. Thanks for joining me, Annie. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Annie: Hi Jeanie, thanks for having me. I am a school librarian at Grand Isle School. We’re currently a K-8 school. At the end of this year, we will be becoming a K through six school. I'll be starting my ninth year in the fall. Prior to that, I was a public librarian for a while and then prior to that I worked in Higher Ed and student affairs. I'm on the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award Committee. This is my third year. I'll be stepping off at the end of this spring. It's been a really great pleasure to be able to dive into a bunch of books and work with a committee of readers to figure out the best books that we want to present to kids in our community.
Meet Felix Jeanie: You guys do an amazing job at that. I always love the list and we're going to talk more about that list at the end. But let's start by introducing this fabulous book, No Fixed Address. I loved it so much. I read it in a day and I wondered if you might start by introducing us to our charming narrator, Felix.
Annie: Yes, I'd agree he's really charming! Felix Knuttson, he's 12 and I think he turns 13 in the course of the story. He lives with his mom who prefers that he call her Astrid, because she thinks "Mom" and "Dad" might create a little bit of a hierarchy, and she's not really into that. And he's a smart kid. He's a really funny kid and he's a really, really sweet kid that has to do a lot of adult things and kind of be the adult in his relationship with his mom. More than a kid should have to be. ...and his quirky family Jeanie: Yeah. He has kind of an out of the box, non-heteronormative family. Do we want to talk a little bit about his family circumstances?
Annie: Sure. So, his mom, Astrid is not in a relationship with anybody. She goes in and out of different relationships. But that's not really the main focus of the book. His dad is someone who he hears from once in a while, but is a gay man who donated his sperm to Astrid so that she could have Felix. Again, I think with both his parents, Felix kind of has to be the adult in those situations. His dad is a struggling artist who is, I think caught up a little bit in finding romance in his life a little more than he is in consistently being a part of Felix's life. Felix is forgiving and understanding about that. More than I think, if that were me in that situation, I think I might be.
Astrid is a mom who has a hard time holding down a job. She can't always hold back what she's thinking and feeling. And it doesn't always work well in jobs that in particular involve customer service component to them. So she might lose jobs pretty frequently throughout the story. She struggles with depression. Felix calls it her slumps. And when those happen, he again has to step up and really be the parent and the adult in that situation. Dealing with mental illness Jeanie: Yeah. He really describes the slumps really interestingly. Let's think about that for a minute. I love where he talks about what it's like when his mom is in a slump. I'm on page 87. I'll just read a portion of it. She likes to say that the day I was born was the happiest day of her life. And she named me after her brother, to keep his memory alive. I think that's why she likes me to call her Astrid instead of "Mom,
Cornelius Minor likes to ask himself three key questions. One: what are his students trying to tell him? Two: What are they really trying to tell him, through their actions, and their silences? And three, what do these students -- who he worries he might not be reaching -- all have in common?
I'm Jeanie Phillips, and welcome to another episode of #vted Reads, talking about books by, for, and with educators. Today I'm with middle school equity scholar Kathleen Brinegar, and we'll be talking about We Got This: Equity, Access, and The Quest To Be Who Our Students Need Us To Be, by Cornelius Minor. We'll unpack some of our own biases and ask you to think about yours, as well as look at the shiny shiny power of disruption.
And remember: watch your language! Let's chat.
Jeanie: I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads, we are here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today, I'm with Kathleen Brinegar and we'll be talking about We Got This: Equity, Access, And The Quest To Be Who Our Students Need Us To Be, by Cornelius Minor. Thanks for joining me, Kathleen. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Kathleen: Sure! Thanks for having me, Jeanie. I am currently a professor in the education department at Northern Vermont University, Johnson. I've been a member of the department for about nine years now, and I coordinate the middle and secondary teacher education programs. I've also recently stepped into the role of Associate Academic Dean, where I do a lot of work around helping students persist, through to graduation at the University. I'm also the co-editor of AMLE'S Middle School Journal, and I am a vice chair of the Middle Grades Special Interest Group. It's a group of international researchers focused on middle grades education. Jeanie: Excellent. Let's turn to Cornelius Minor’s book, We Got This. The subtitle is, “Equity, Access, And The Quest To Be Who Our Students Need Us To Be.” And Minor begins the book with this powerful notion -- and I'm going to quote him --
“If we are not doing equity then we are not doing education."
Can you start by just telling us what this means to you? Kathleen: Absolutely. To me, that is the mantra that I live by with my work, and it wasn't always the mantra that guided my work, but over the past decade, my work has really become about equity. I truly feel that if the systems that we have in place to educate, particularly young adolescents since that's my focus, if they're not doing their job of supporting every single adolescent, then I don't think we're doing our job to support any adolescent. So, I think, the equity lens is -- to me -- the most important lens through which we can look at and measure success in education. Jeanie: That's really our mandate as public educators. Right? Kathleen: Absolutely. Jeanie: It's not just to teach the kids who are easy to teach. Kathleen: That's right. Jeanie: It’s to teach all the kids. Kathleen: Absolutely. Jeanie: I love that Minor gives us some really strategic tools to do that. He says this other thing that really touched me. He says, “Labels can't cover our full humanity.” And on page 10, he says,
“We need tools to build a bridge between the discourse of our profession and the children that populate the communities that we serve.”
And it seems to me that he gives us some of those tools to build that bridge between our profession and the specific kids that show up in our schools.
- The graphic organizer concept Kathleen: What I love about Minor’s book, in general, is his focus is on listening to students, and really what that means. How it's more of a true authentic listening? And a listening to not just what students are saying, but what their actions are telling us, what their silences are telling us. It's really paying attention to who they are as whole human beings. And not just as, even, learners or students in our classrooms. His tool on page 22,
What does Jane Austen have to do with a Drake mixtape? For this episode, I was joined by Vermont rockstar librarian Meg Alison, in discussing Ibi Zoboi's Pride, a Pride and Prejudice Remix. We talk about gentrification, agency, and the amazing power of spoken word poetry, we give a shout out to DisruptTexts and ask teachers to think critically about the books they teach. Who is represented in their pages? And who isn't? And how did Zoboi's novel make one of our librarians think more deeply about a hotly contested road project in tiny Brandon, Vermont? Grab your six-dollar maple lattes, listeners, and find out.
Jeanie: I’m Jeanie Philips, and welcome to Vermont Ed Reads. We’re here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today, I’m with Meg Alison. We’ll be talking about Pride by Ibi Zoboi. Thanks for joining me Meg. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Meg: Well, thank you for inviting me, Jeanie. I love listening to your podcast. I think it adds a lot to the conversation around literacy and being a literate community statewide in Vermont, so thank you. I’ve been a librarian since 2001 when I found myself as the first children’s librarian at the Joslin Public Library, Waitsfield, Vermont. Then moved to the Kellogg-Hubbard Library in Montpelier, then the Moretown School Library for eight years. Now, I’m at U-32 Middle & High School in East Montpellier, Vermont. It’s my fourth year there.
I’ve served on the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award committee. I’m a lifelong bookworm. I love to read. I couldn’t be happier to be sitting here with you today in Waterbury, Vermont, talking about books, and one of my favorite books of the year.
Jeanie: We have talked about books a lot as friends and librarians. Thank you for your nice words about the podcast.
Meg: You’re welcome.
Jeanie: I’m so excited to have to you on. Let’s talk about Pride, this book that we both love so much, we’ve read twice. Tell me… just introduce us to the main characters and the setting, if you would?
Meg: I’d be happy to. Pride by Ibi Zoboi is actually a remix. Not so much a retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. There’s a lot that Zoboi pays homage to with Jane Austin’s work, but there is a lot of new themes that Ibi Zoboi also raises in Pride.
We have five sisters. Instead of the Bennet sisters, they have the Benitez sisters living in Bushwick, New York, a burrow in Brooklyn. The main character being Zuri Benitez. She’s a senior in high school, her sister Janae, who’d be Jane’s equivalent in Pride and Prejudice, is back home for the summer from Syracuse and there are three younger sisters. They live with their parents in a two bedroom apartment in Bushwick.
https://twitter.com/ibizoboi/status/1047892435664347137
Across the street, there is a mini-mansion being built where formally there had been a boarded up broken down building. Their very curious, the sisters. about who’s going to be moving into this mini-mansion in their hood. They take all sorts of guesses. Could they be rappers? Could they be basketball players? And could they be white? Gentrification is a theme we’re going to talk about in the story.
And lo and behold it’s Darius Darcy and his brother, Ainsley and they’re Black. It throws the sisters off their game. Zoboi has written a beautiful love story that is contemporary, authentic, and relevant. It follows the same theme as Pride and Prejudice. We have a happy ending, but not without a lot of grit, and resiliency, and great storytelling.
Ibi wrote that after she wrote her National Book Award-winning finalist debut novel, American Street -- that takes place in Detroit, which deals with a lot of heavy hard hitting topics about urban life, drug use, addiction, violence, and loneliness -- that she was looking to write something lighter. In light of the political climate of today, she needed a story that was going to bring light.
Thank you for joining us for another episode of #vted Reads. This time we will be discussing The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact. We'll look for ways to make classroom moments more powerful, explore opportunities to raise the stakes for your students, and visit the popsicle hotline.
Oh, and we'll talk about the "soul-sucking force of reasonableness."
On to the conversation!
Jeanie: I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads. We're here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today. I'm with Rachel Mark, and we'll be talking about The Power of Moments by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. Thanks for joining me, Rachel. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Rachel: I'm Rachel Mark. I live in the southern part of Vermont, and I am in my fourth year of working as a professional development coordinator for the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education. Prior to that, I was a middle school teacher for 16 years in Manchester at Manchester Elementary Middle School, and I'm also a mom. I've got three kids, an 8-year old, a 12-year old and a 15-year old, and we all live in sometimes happiness with our dog and my husband in southern Vermont.
Jeanie: Excellent. Thanks for joining me.
I know you and I are very excited about this book, The Power of Moments by the Heath Brothers. Jeanie: Let's just talk a little bit about what it's about. The Heath brothers talk about defining moments and they described them as meaningful experiences that stand out in memory. Why do you think they took the time to write about them? Rachel: That's a great question. I think one of the things thats so lovely about this book is that it's psychology, but it's also culture and sociology, and I love that the Heath brothers think about these parts of our behavior and our lives that are kind of overlooked and tried to look at them really carefully and examine what's unique about them. This interested me when it first came out, because I have noticed some of the same sort of observations that they have about why or something is so special.
Why are some moments more impactful and meaningful than others? So, part of me was darn it! They beat me to writing this book, but they're far more accomplished writers, and I'm glad that they beat me to it. Jeanie: Yeah. So, let's give some examples. I'm going to give a non-education example of a defining moment that just delighted me early in this book, in the introduction. So, I'm going to turn to page 10. This defining moment takes place at a hotel. Actually, it's called Magic Castle and it's in Los Angeles, outside of Disneyland. So, here's the description.
Let's start with the cherry-red phone mounted to a wall near the pool. You pick it up and someone answers, "Hello, Popsicle hotline." You place an order, and minutes later, a staffer wearing white gloves delivers your cherry, orange, or grape popsicle to you at poolside. On a silver tray. For free.
https://twitter.com/jesslyness/status/885591359381307392 I love this idea that if I went to a hotel and there was a cherry red phone, and I got to pick it up in order my popsicle, and it came out like almost livery service. I would be so delighted and I would never forget that. Rachel: It is unforgettable. At the same time, there was a piece of this that troubled me about this leading the book, because it does develop this idea about moments and memory, but it was also such a kind of trivial example, silly example that I wanted more from the book which comes. Jeanie: So, this book is organized in such a way that it has two goals. One is to examine defining moments, and what makes them memorable, or meaningful, what helps them stick with us. Then the second goal is to help us create more defining moments so that we can improve our lives and the lives of other people around us. So, it's not an education book, right? It's a popular press book.
Welcome back to #vted Reads! In this episode, we're talking about the comic memoir Hey, Kiddo. As we discuss Jarrett Krosoczka's real-life story, we find empathy for young people living with the impacts of addiction and mental illness. And we explore other themes: how to really see kids, the importance of representation in books, and the power of flexible pathways.
Thanks for joining us. Let's chat. Jeanie: I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads. We are here to talk about for educators, by educators, and with educators.
Today, I'm with Mike Hill and we'll be talking about Hey, Kiddo by Jarrett Krosoczka.
Thanks for joining me, Mike. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Mike: Hi, Jeanie. My name is Mike Hill and I am the Student Assistance Program Counselor at Burlington High School. I'm honored to be such. My role definitely doesn’t describe what I do. As the Student Assistance Program Counselor, I provide intervention, prevention, and education support to faculty, staff, as well as the students and young adults at Burlington High School.
The supports I provide are around substance use issues and emotional mental health supports, and some academic supports. Academic supports are usually around post-secondary navigation because I have some skills sets around that. Jeanie: Excellent. You’ve got your hands full here. Mike Hill: Yes. I'm a support staff person so I like to work very collaboratively with the school counselor department, the guidance counselor department, as well as the admin team, the student support staff team, anybody who needs support in the realm of substance use issues or education, emotional mental health supports. I'm also a referral stream for the multiple mental health counselors and therapists that we have on campus internally. So we partner with special needs and family services, Riverstone Counseling, Centerpoint, Counseling Connections, and Howard Center School Clinicians. Yeah, I am just a collaborative support staff. Jeanie: Just. Well, I'm really delighted to have you to help me talk about this book.
Hey, Kiddo has a subtitle that I think gives us a lot of clues about what it's about: How I Lost My Mother, Found My Father, And Dealt With Family Addiction. I wondered if you would introduce us to Jarrett because our writer and illustrator of this graphic novel, I'm going to backtrack on that. https://twitter.com/sljournal/status/1090336292855005184 My friend, Peter Langella at Champlain Valley Union High School, says we shouldn’t be calling them graphic novels, and it's true for this one. It's really a comic memoir. This is Jarrett talking about his own life.
Would you introduce us to Jarrett and tell us a little bit about how this book begins? Mike: Sure. And I really like that actually comic memoir. It really is a comic memoir because Jarrett is a kid who turns into a youth and turns into a young adult. You get to see Jarrett grow up all the way through those stages of life. And like Jeanie speaks to, really that subtitle under Hey, Kiddo is illustrated beautifully through those stages of his development and his life.
So Jarrett is the kid who is taken from his mom because his mother deals with addiction via heroin, one of the most addicting substances that we come across as a society. He is adopted by his grandparents, specifically by his grandfather. With that love, with that adoption, he's raised by his grandparents. His father has never been in his life. Long down in his life, he actually gets to meet his father but it's not until his teenage years. Also in his life, he grows up with his grandparents and this is a different structured family unit. So, a lot of people we see on TV, we see mother/father, and that’s is a very heteronormative family unit. In reality in our society, we're transitioning.
We need to start opening our minds a lot wider because that heteronormative family unit is not the "norm" anymore.
Welcome back to #vted Reads! Now, I recorded this episode back in September out in San Antonio, at the School Reform Initiative's Fall 2018 meeting. Author Terra Lynch was kind enough to chat with me about her book for the podcast between sessions. Recording spaces were kind of hard to come by at the conference, so we did our best to find a place without ceilings that were too high, or too echoey, or filled with other participants. We did our best, and hope you enjoy this powerful conversation about protocols, and how you can use them with students in creating democratic classroom situations. Sidenote: Emily Hoyler has written an amazing introduction to protocols, if you'd like a refresher.
Now, on with the show.
Jeanie: I’m Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads! We’re here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today, I’m in San Antonio for the School Reform Initiative's Fall Meeting. This annual conference is focused on creating brave spaces to surface inequity and examine our biases and assumptions so that we can ensure our teaching practices help all students learn. I’m here with Terra Lynch. We’ll be talking about her book, Protocols in the Classroom. She’s written this book with co-authors; David Allen, Tina Blythe and Alan Dichter. Terra is not just an author, she's also an educator who has a wealth of experience in using protocols with students.
Thanks for joining me, Terra. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Terra: Hi. Thanks for having me. My name is Terra Lynch. I am a learning specialist. I’m a teacher and I’m a dyslexic advocate. And I'm also an author now.
Jeanie: Congratulations on your book. It just came out a month or so ago?
Terra: It came out at the end of the summer, yes.
Jeanie: Excellent. It was perfect timing for me because I teach Collaborative Practices. I teach people how to use protocols. We often encourage people to use protocols with students. This book is really a roadmap for that. https://twitter.com/seanhirtenVT/status/1050153859652481025
Terra: That’s good to hear. Another hat that I wear is working with teachers and coaching, so often what comes up when I’m working with adults is "that sounds like I can use in the classroom." Over time, during the debrief, I add a step and do uses. What are some uses with adults? What are some uses with children? That led to, why don’t we have a book about using protocols in the classroom?
Jeanie: Excellent. I’m really glad that it exists. I’ve pointed a lot of people to it. I want to start the conversation by just asking why? Why bother with protocols with students? Terra: Okay, great question. I was thinking: is it the same answer as using protocols with adults? And to a certain extent it is. It’s a way to focus the conversation. It’s a way to frame ideas to be using time efficiently. To help children with expressive of language. I find that having the ordered steps and the clarity of the formatting even, can help students who might otherwise struggle to know what the expectations are for time, for their role. What’s coming next? How long might this take? I find it sort of provides a scaffold for kids in the classroom. It also builds a lot of habits that they can use in other areas of life. That’s a nice part about using protocols with kids.
Jeanie: Let’s just back up for a minute. For people who aren’t familiar with protocols, when we say protocol, what do you mean, specifically?
Terra: Not a straitjacket. laughs I think there’s a real misunderstanding that a protocol is a series of steps that you must do for the sake of the protocol. For me, it’s really not so much about the steps as much as the group that you’re working with. How might this particular protocol -- or way of talking about an idea, or discussing an idea, or delving into different ideas -- how might this series of steps provide supp...
In this episode of #vted Reads, we talk about the 57 Bus by Dashka Slater. Based on a real-life incident, this book chronicles the experiences of two young people before and after an act of violence. We explore both perspectives of a specific crime: the victims and the perpetrators. Along the way, we learn more about gender non-conformity, the challenging reality of living with neighborhood violence, the problems with the juvenile justice system, and how to construct an amazing non-fiction story.
So glad you are joining us for this episode of #vted Reads. Let's get to the conversation. Jeanie: I'm Jeanie Phillips and welcome to Vermont Ed Reads. We're here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators.
Today, I'm with Caitlin Classen, and we'll be talking about The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater. Thanks for joining me, Caitlin. Caitlin: I'm thrilled to be joining you.
Jeanie: Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Caitlin: My name is Caitlin Classen. I am the librarian here at Albert D. Lawton Intermediate School in Essex Junction, meaning I work with about 365 sixth, seventh, and eighth-graders on a daily basis. Jeanie: I just want to say we're in a back room in Caitlin's library, and it is one of the most charming middle-school libraries, or libraries in general, that I've ever been in. It's really lovely here. Caitlin: Thank you so much. It's all kid artwork and kid-driven. Jeanie: Yeah, it feels fantastic. Caitlin: Thank you. Jeanie: So The 57 Bus; we were just talking before we got started about how much we both adored this book. Usually, when I am doing a book, especially one written for young adolescents, I start with a summary. But this book is a little bit different, and so I'm going to ask you to just introduce us to the characters.
Would you start by introducing us to Sasha? https://twitter.com/lincolnabesread/status/1090655907061555201 Caitlin: Yes. Both characters are super interesting and super compelling just as individual people. Sasha is very interesting to me as an educator because I learned a lot from this character.
Sasha is agender. Basically, what that means is that Sasha does not identify as either male or female. They had originally started by identifying as genderqueer because they weren't sure how they wanted to live their life. Sasha prefers the pronouns they or them. It was a really interesting read because this kid is super smart and clever, and goes to these interesting schools for kids who are independent thinkers, and has these really supportive parents. I believe the dad's a kindergarten teacher and the mom also works in education. It said as a bookkeeper at a private school. An only child.
What's so cool about Sasha is that they dress in an interesting manner even for a big city like Oakland. While Sasha wears a lot of bow ties and top hats and newsboy caps, they said at first it was a lot of steampunk influence. Sasha then adds the layer of putting on a skirt. The parents mentioned that they saw their child go from pretty reserved. They could blend in, pretty good at being invisible, and then made this decision, I want to say at like 15 or 16, to start dressing differently. The parents start worrying like, "What's going to happen to our kid?" It's a pretty progressive city, but there's still that worry about how are people going to receive my child. I think that's a big catalyst obviously of how we learn about the 57 Bus and the incident that occurred that afternoon. Jeanie: You bring up so many interesting things for me, and I want to make sure our readers or our listeners know that this book is nonfiction which means even though I said the word "character," Sasha is a real person. Caitlin: Correct. Jeanie: And Sasha's parents are real people.
The introduction to Sasha in this book is such an empathy-building experience because you get to see Sasha's journey as they figure out that they're agender. As they explore like,
In this episode of #vted Reads, we talk about Troublemakers, a book by Carla Shalaby. We touch on what we're really doing when we ask our students to code-switch, Black Lives Matter, and the trouble with classroom norms, and we pose the question: 'How do school systems bestow unearned privilege on some, and un-earned hardship, on others?' Oh, and we talk about Harry Potter. Naturally.
Anyway. Welcome back to #vted Reads!
Let's chat.
Jeanie: Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Mike: Sure. My name is Michael Martin. I work as a Senior Associate for the Rowland Foundation which is a Vermont based non-profit. I'm also the Director of Learning for South Burlington School District.
Jeanie: Excellent. Well we go way back and so I've been really looking forward to having this conversation about this book because I know we both loved it. Introduce us to the structure of Shalaby’s book. How she uses student stories to frame her thinking.
Mike: Well the thing that I love about this book is the thick description as they say that’s provided through the methodology of portraiture that Shalaby is using. It obviously just immediately draws the reader in. There are just so many passages where you're incredibly moved. There are a few that I remember that were really painful, where there is sort of peer exclusion of some of the students in the story.
I had flashbacks to playgrounds, some of the playgrounds of my youth. Thinking of specific students who were kind of the black sheep and were ostracized by their peers. Feeling like a visceral reaction and blushing and just thinking back and wondering why was it okay for this person to be treated so poorly.
It’s a really powerful book. Everyone that I know has been really moved by it. At the same time, it’s really touching, it’s definitely an appeal to empathy. It really brings out compassion, I think.
When we’re thinking of these individual students as people again instead of as numbers. There's this incredible human dimension and at the same time, there's a systems lens that’s applied to the book. The challenge that Shalaby poses to us is to think of troublemakers as our greatest assets in schools and that’s not how we treat them. https://twitter.com/msmBTV/status/1086654686487343104
Jeanie: To be clear for those of you who haven’t read the book, Carla Shalaby takes four troublemakers, kids who are identified as troublemakers by their teachers, in really high performing schools with really high-quality teachers and she follows them for I think a year. She's in their classrooms observing and taking notes, sort of like an anthropologist. And she gets to know their families. She talks to their parents, she goes and visits their homes and she gets to know them in their full lives.
Mike: I love that you drew attention to that because one thing that jumped out at me is how we don’t tend to think of students as having public and private personae. But that comes through here. Anybody who’s ever coached a sport or been a co-curricular advisor knows that students, that the way students act in the classroom is obviously very different. And it just makes you realize what a thin slice of human potential of individuals we’re actually encountering on a daily basis in the strict structures of school. So that really comes through. I really appreciated that her talent as a qualitative researcher to go deep and to actually find out this family dimension that shed so much light on these individual students.
Jeanie: I think the other interesting thing is that they’re all in first or second grade. They're really young, and yet this book is entirely relevant to middle and high school situations. Having been a K to Six librarian for a number of years, you talked a little bit about how this book made you – reading these accounts made you uncomfortable thinking of yourself on the playground or in school. And I definitely felt that.
First, what is #vted Reads?
Big news, listeners! #vted Reads has spun off from The 21st Century Classroom and is now available as a podcast in its own right! To recap: in each episode, I sit down with a Vermont educator or author and we discuss one book we think is relevant to Vermont learners. Sometimes they're education books, sometimes they're from the popular press, and sometimes they're books written for young adolescents. We hope you'll find something to learn from in each episode.
Subscribe via iTunes! Or through this fine blog right here.
And if you're interested in being a guest or want to recommend a book, email me at vtedreads@tarrantinstitute.org. Plus, don't forget to follow us on Twitter @vtedreads! And now onto our episode.
Jeanie: I’m Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads. We’re here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. In this episode, I'm with Stacy Raphael, and we're talking about the book Orbiting Jupiter by Gary D. Schmidt. This is one of my very favorite YA books of all time, and my students loved it too. Some of the themes we touch upon include students impacted by trauma, unintended bias by teachers in schools, books for reluctant readers, and cows. (Yes, cows!) Thanks for joining me, Stacy. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do? Stacy: Hi, Jeanie. I'm a teacher at Champlain Valley Academy. It’s a small therapeutic school in Addison County, Vermont. And it’s my first year here. It’s my first year as a teacher. Prior to this, I actually was director of school programs at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts. So my background, prior to becoming a middle and high school English teacher, was in arts education, arts integration. That’s a big part of what I bring to my teaching everyday: theater and creative approaches to literacy. I worked with teachers for years beforehand doing professional development in arts literacy. Now, I’m working with six students in my high school and they come from a variety of different high schools. And I love teaching stories like this to my students.
Jeanie: Let’s talk a little bit about Orbiting Jupiter. Could you give us a brief summary? Who the main characters are, where it’s set?
Stacy: It’s a story about a family who brings in a foster child. His name is Joseph. The point of view of the story is told from the son of that family, and his name is Jack. They’re middle schoolers. I think Jack is younger than Joseph. It’s the story of integrating Joseph into their lives, into their town. Joseph comes from, as you can imagine, a complicated background.
What is learned pretty early on in the book is that Joseph, even as a middle schooler has already fathered a child. The child’s name is Jupiter, and that’s where the title of the book comes from. It’s about Joseph trying to figure out where he fits in the world and Jack coming of age trying to understand what these differences between these two boys mean for him. Jeanie: Right. It’s really powerful, I think, for the reader, you find out early on that Joseph has a daughter. He’s never met this daughter. He’s never had that the opportunity. He doesn’t know what’s happened to the mother, the young women that he’s had this relationship with. Jack has so much empathy and compassion for him even as he can’t imagine his life at all.
Stacy: Yes. It’s modeled really nicely, between Jack’s parents and Jack, this open, courageous, bold, honest way of grappling with all the complexities that Joseph brings to their lives. You see through Jack a very mature narrator for his age certainly, as he observes Joseph unfurling throughout the story in a positive way. Unfurling, kind of opening, to becoming a member of this family. You see that so much as a ripple and I see a lot of ripples throughout this book in language and in themes, but you see this ripple of how he comes by that honestly, through the kind of relationship that his parents model.
Usually we ask students to talk about a specific project or experience that we are featuring. But what if we left it open ended? We wanted to find out what students would talk about in a free-flowing conversation about what is meaningful for them about school. We learned a lot, and we hope you do too.
A full transcript of this episode is available at https://wp.me/p4r2oE-4yN
The art of listening We are big believers in including student voice in our storytelling. Usually we ask students to talk about a specific project or experience that we are featuring. But what if we left it open ended? We wanted to find out what students would talk about in a free-flowing conversation about what is meaningful for them about school. We learned a lot, and we hope you do too.
A full transcript appears below.
Rowan: School shootings: like that happened and it was just yesterday. I’ll come to school knowing that just happened, I’m not okay right now. If we talk about it in class, then when I go to sleep at night I’m not worrying about it anymore because I know that I can change that or that I can be part of the change.
Narrator: Today, on the 21st Century Classroom, we are going into listening mode. We want to feature student voice in a new way by asking students to talk about school. Our questions are open-ended and our agenda non-existent. We bet that educators will be able to learn a lot by tuning in to a free-form of conversation among adolescents. Our students today hail from Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, VT. 250 grade 5-8 students from Duxbury and the larger town of Waterbury attend the school. These two towns form a rural community that sits on the east slope of the Green Mountains right under the majestic Camel’s Hump, Vermont’s second tallest and most recognizable peak. Looking at the school from the scenic Route 100 highway, you see a modern looking structure surrounded by soccer fields with a forested hillside as a backdrop. A long driveway lined with maple trees leads to the school. You might also notice the chicken coop of the school’s signature sustainability program, colorfully decorated by a student-created mural.
Although the school sits geographically on its own - most everybody needs to drive or take a bus to get there - Our students today talk mostly about how much they want their schoolwork to connect to the community and the real world. Let’s meet them. Shyannah: My name is Shyannah. I am an eighth grade.
Damien: My name is Damien and I’m in seventh grade.
Jordan: I am Jordan and I’m in eighth grade.
Rowan: I’m Rowan and I’m in seventh grade.
Narrator: So these four wonderful students were somewhat randomly selected by social studies teacher, Lori Morse, who is on Team Prodigy, one of two 7-8 grade teams in the school. As the discussion ensues, don’t worry about trying to track who is saying what, just roll with it as a group conversation. Try to tune in to what these students express when given an open opportunity to share. The first question was simply: what is meaningful to you in school? Jordan: Any opportunity to grow and learn in the area of kind of just outside world like sustainability and Ms. Morse does a really nice job with, you know, she actually changed the world as an opportunity to donate money to humane societies or maybe just make our community better.
Shyannah: Yes. I think sustainability helps us to notice what’s going on around the world that we’re not really aware of. I definitely think that it’s good that we have something like that and Ms. Morse just teaches a lot about like how it’s good to be a good person and to help in the little things that could change a person’s life.
Rowan: This Civil War project that was due recently, that whole thing, just even the little bits of the video, things that may have liked researched at home, all those little things. Even though they were like in the past you can still kind of-- I don’t really know what the right word is but like, kind of like apply it to what’s kind of happening now and kind of like some things, not all things--
Damien: Yes, if we don’t know what happened in the past we don’t know what we’re going to do in the future like we’ll never learn from our mistakes. She kind of tells us-- In the beginning she told us like this happened to get r...
Legendary librarian Jeanie Phillips is back on the podcast talking about what else but books! Not just any books, but graphic novels. Joining her this time around is Peter Langella, Vermont librarian, educator and former minor league hockey player and coach! They’re discussing Ngozi Ukazu's Check, Please! Book 1: #Hockey. Plus the larger genre of comics and how to use them in the classroom.
From real and relevant to what to do in the event of a mountain bike accident, the last predators in Middlesex, and the all-important question of who is responsible for the pizza at your exhibition of learning. That's right: librarian Jeanie Phillips talks all about service learning with author and educator Katy Farber.
A full transcript is available here: https://wp.me/p4r2oE-4eq
Music is "Sunrise (Argofox Release)" by Meizong & Yeeflex, used with permission.
with Katy Farber From real and relevant to what to do in the event of a mountain bike accident, the last predators in Middlesex, and the all-important question of who is responsible for the pizza at your exhibition of learning. That's right: librarian Jeanie Phillips talks all about service learning with author and educator Katy Farber.
A full transcript appears below.
Jeanie Phillips: I’m Jeanie Philips, and welcome to the 21st Century Classroom. We're here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today, I’m here with Katy Farber. We’ll be talking about the book Real and Relevant: A Guide for Service and Project-Based Learning. Thanks for joining me Katy. Will you tell me a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Katy Farber: Hi, I’m excited to be here. I’m Katy Farber, I was a sixth-grade teacher for the past 17 years or so. Three years ago, I joined the Tarrant Institute as a professional development coordinator where I’ve had great opportunities to research, to write, to think, and to collaborate about how to make school engaging.
Jeanie: Great. I’m so glad you’re here to talk about this book. I really enjoyed it. I wish I had read it last year before I helped a team of teachers co-plan a service learning unit.
https://twitter.com/JPhillipsVT/status/1009389131846254592
I’m just going to start with your definition of service learning. You laid it out really clearly in the book and I wondered if you could just tell us what you think service learning is.
Katy: Absolutely. I really liked the KIDS Consortium definition of service learning which has students discovering the assets first, I would add. But the needs of their own community and then doing research about those needs. Then coming up with an action plan of how they can improve a condition and make a real difference in their communities. Reflecting along the way and then sharing their process out at the end. Jeanie: Could you talk more about what you mean by asset planning? Katy: Yes. In fact, when I first started the service learning work many, many years ago, I used this resource and it guided me to discover the needs and problems in the community. But then a couple of years ago I started to think about -- and learn about -- an assets-based approach. How can we go into communities as students or as teachers without really first looking at and learning from, the strengths in that community? And diving in, and getting to know people that live there? What makes the place they live special? Only then I feel, can teachers and students really explore what are the needs and the problems. Jeanie: That just makes me think about how you’re asking students and teachers to go into the community with the same lens we as educators use with students. That we’re not fixing them. We’re not saving them. That we’re really seeing where their strengths are? And helping them build skills where they have challenges.
Katy: Yes. I just went to AMLE in Florida and took teachers through an asset mapping process. It was very short, but you could replicate it in the classroom in a much more deliberate and intentional fashion. It seemed to set us up nicely to brainstorm about the assets of the community. Then brainstorm about the potential need.
Then look at the UN Global Goals. Try to prioritize needs based on those Goals, and then think of projects from there. Because then you’re grounding students in what is special and important in their communities and what they want to improve on.
Not solve but improve on.
Jeanie: Do you have an example of a school that’s done this kind of asset mapping that you could just briefly describe the process?
Katy: Yes. Thinking about Burke Town School, they have these amazing "Kingdom Trails", these mountain bike trails -- that’s the asset. This amazing outdoor opportunity that they have for residents and people that travel to this site to go mountain bikin...
We had a chance to hear from student digital audio producers at Randolph Union High School, in Randolph VT. They, along with innovative educator Raymond Coles, shared what makes this project-based learning class such a hit.
A full transcript is available at https://wp.me/p4r2oE-3Ps
Music in this episode is "Skipping Dragons" by The Galloping Circus (soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/tgcruhs) and "Sunrise [Argofox Release]" by Meizong & Yeeflex (soundcloud: bit.ly/2Hzwz6H).
Flexible pathways in digital music We had a chance to hear from student digital audio producers at Randolph Union High School, in Randolph VT.
They, along with innovative educator Raymond Cole, shared what makes this project-based learning class such a hit.
A full transcript follows below.
In this episode of The 21st Century Classroom, in tiny Randolph VT, students are turning digital audio producers, complete with a CD release party and plays on local radio. And they’re doing it in school. Bailey: Right now, I'm currently working on a more trance piece. If you know DeadMau5, he's a trance deejay and he makes kind of trance-y song. It makes you, like, get upbeat but it's kind of like you're lost in the world. That's what I'm working on right now. And it's very… It has live synths and pads, which is all very airy. Randolph Union High School has begun offering a digital music class that uses a technique known as project-based learning to support students in learning about music, technology. And more importantly, how they best learn in a classroom setting. https://www.instagram.com/p/BebYHq0H8pE/
Emma: Well, usually, we come together in the beginning of class and do something together. Maybe we'll analyze a piece of music, share some of our music, talk about tempo, chord progressions. Then, we branch off a d either work in collaboration with each other or alone. And that's the time when you really start to need to be… Like your mind goes into its creative space.
I think something I really struggle with sometimes is that writer's block sort of thing. I think if anybody, or any other student's experience that while writing music, it's a really real thing. And it's hard to overcome and it can feel really frustrating. But if you have somebody to collaborate with and say, "Hey, come on, will you listen to my piece?" It can be really helpful to gather other people's input and really help move along the creative process. Raymond Cole is teaching Randolph’s digital music course as part of the school’s focus on project-based learning. Project-based learning is a type of personalized learning that fuses student passions with concrete actions in the world. Students begin each project-based learning cycle by focusing on an idea they want to bring to life in the world, creating meaningful change. Raymond Cole: My name is Raymond Cole. I am the music teacher here at RUHS, Randolph Union High school. I teach grade seven through 12. I teach jazz band, concert band, choir, digital music, and then a seventh grade general music class here at the school. I have done music technology in the past at other schools that I have taught at, and it’s been a really big part of my musical growth since I started doing music. I thought it was really really cool being able to teach a project based learning class at PBL. I usually teach most of my classes through projects anyways, so it kind of really fit really, really well.
At the beginning of this year I went to a weeklong professional development session on PBLs and project-based learning classes, and learned how to teach a project based learning class, and ended up coming up with this idea, then working backwards from it. And it ended up working out really well. Cole has found that project-based learning’s focus on creating, making and doing has changed how he approaches his role in the classroom. But not the content. Raymond Cole: I’m really more of a facilitator in this class than a teacher. Very rarely do I spend a lot of time in front of the students lecturing or giving out information that way. I usually build projects that allow them to figure out the information for themselves. I ended up having our big end-of-the-year exhibition project planned out, where we were going to create a CD and then broadcast it on a radio station and worked backwards from there.
We started out the year basically saying, “Okay, this is where we need to be.
Also featuring: The Green Mountain Book Awards! Legendary Librarian Jeanie Phillips is back on the podcast talking about what else but books! Not just any books, but how books can help educators unpack some of their privileges and connect with students. Joining her this time around is Jory Hearst, Vermont educator and six-time Green Mountain Book Awards committee member. They're discussing Renée Watson's Piecing Me Together, and what they learned from it about identity, racial microaggressions and teaching around deficit theory.
A full transcript follows.
Jeanie Phillips: Today I’m here with Jory Hearst and we’ll be talking about Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson. Thanks for joining me, Jory. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Librarian Jeanie Phillips, left, hosts Jory Hearst (r) as they discuss Rene Watson's book "Piecing Me Together".
Jory Hearst: Well, thanks so much for having me, Jeanie. I’m thrilled to be here. I love talking about books, especially young-adult books. I am an educator and an avid reader. I’m not sure which should come first in order. I have taught middle and high school, both in Southern Vermont and up here in Burlington. In English and History. I’ve also been a bookseller for many years of my life. I also currently serve on the Vermont Green Mountain Book Award (GMBA) Committee, which is our teen pleasure reading award list that the state comes out with every year. This is my sixth year serving on that committee. So I spend a lot of my time reading young-adult fiction.
Jeanie: Let’s start with Piecing Me Together. Could you give me just a brief summary? No spoilers, a little bit about our main character, our setting and the big themes of this book? Jory: Yeah, I would love to. Piecing Me Together was on our GMBA list last year, and it’s a book I loved and I’m so glad to see on this list. This is about from 2017, and the main character is a high school girl name Jade Butler. She lives in North Portland. She has a full scholarship to a private, sort of hoity-toity private school called Saint Francis, that she has a very long bus ride from North Portland to her school. Every day. It’s a school where not having much money is less likely than being a person of color. And for Jade, she is both of those things. Her mom is desperate for her to make close friends at the school but for her, she is just want to kind of keep her head down and plough through. And she talks a lot about sort of knowing she has to take advantage of the “opportunities” that this school has to offer. Jade is a lovely, lovely character for many reasons. She is an artist and she makes these beautiful collages from scraps of other people’s trash, and we’ll talk about that hopefully little more today. As this book begins, a main point in the story is that Jade’s guidance counselor, Mrs. Parker, sets her up with a mentor. In this woman-to-woman -- sort of Black woman to Black woman mentoring program. Jade, when she gets called in to the guidance office, thinks she’s about to get the scholarship for the study abroad program and she’s thrilled. But she finds out instead that she’s been chosen to be a mentee. She just feels like another thing where somebody is coming to help me. Like, “Do I really need all this help?” That’s sort of where the book begins, and it’s sort of follows her trying to figure out who she is and how to feel more whole in her life as she is sort of collaging her own life together. Jeanie: That's a great summary. Thank you for consolidating that so nicely. I think one of the reasons I loved this book so much is that, as a white woman in the world, a book like this gives me the opportunity to step into the shoes of somebody having a very different experience from my own. From the beginning of the second chapter -- if you turn to page two -- Jade is learning Spanish. Really loves language. I love that she uses these Spanish words at the start.
Legendary Librarian Jeanie Phillips is back on the podcast talking about what else but books! Not just any books, but how books can help educators unpack some of their privileges and connect with students. Joining her this time around is Jory Hearst, Vermont educator and six-time Green Mountain Book Awards committee member. They're discussing Renée Watson's Piecing Me Together, and what they learned from it about identity, racial microaggressions and teaching around deficit theory.
A full transcript is available at https://wp.me/p4r2oE-4eo
Why do certain groups add up to be greater than the sum of their parts? In this episode of our podcast, we kick off our fourth season with legendary librarian Jeanie Phillips. She'll be sitting down with a series of guests from around the #vted ecosphere and ...reviewing books. Not just any books, but books that can help educators make meaning from the wonderful, complicated and challenging jobs they have of saving the world.
First up, Jeanie talks with noted Vermont educator and consultant Bill Rich (twitter: @rhlearning). Bill is a longtime-classroom teacher who now works with schools, providing guidance on brain-based learning. He's also the co-director of What's the Story VT? and LearningLabVT.
Jeanie and Bill sat down to talk about Daniel Coyle's book, The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups. The book was recently chosen for a Vermont-wide twitter-based book chat as well.
Over to Jeanie and Bill.
A full transcript appears below.
Jeanie Phillips: Last spring I was at a workshop with you, and you recommended this book: The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups, by Daniel Coyle. I ordered it right away because you give great book suggestions. And... almost gobbled it whole. I read it almost in a day because it was that engrossing. And the book starts with this question: Why do certain groups add up to be greater than the sum of their parts? While others add up to be less and that's the focus of the group. Could you give us, in a nutshell, sort of the arc of the book and what it tries to do?
photo credit: Emily Hoyler
Bill Rich: Sure! I'll begin by saying part of the transition from being a classroom teacher to working into somebody who's a coach within schools, is you begin to notice over time, wow: every school is the same. And every school is very different. What's going on here? They look the same, maybe some differences, but what really it comes down to is every school has its culture. For me this book is so compelling. One, because it's written by a writer who does a great job making it readable, and quick and research-based.
The other is that it's such a helpful way to diagnose and figure out what to do with the fact that since cultures are different, if you're not working within the culture or working to have the culture embrace an idea, it's going to be rejected. So much depends on how the culture works and acts. And so over time I've realized I need to have that on the front end of the work, before we get to whatever the initiative or the work happens to be.
Jeanie: That's really interesting to me because this book is not about education.
It's not focused on education. In fact, it explores research and anecdotes from all sorts of fields and then each section also ends with some ideas for action. But I found it completely relevant to everything I do as an educator, both in schools, in classrooms with students, but also with teacher teams, with administrators, with groups of collaborators. We're going to explore how this non-education book has implications for our work in education. The book is divided into three parts. The first, "skill" as Coyle calls it, is Build Safety. The second skill is Share Vulnerability, and the third skill that he mentions is Establish Purpose. I think these all three have huge implications for our work in education and let's just start with building safety. Bill, could you give us an overview of what Daniel Coyle means when he says Build Safety? Skill #1: Build Safety Bill: As I so that I'll say, all three of these are working at once. He's divided the month in this order Build Safety, Share Vulnerability and Establish Purpose, but part of building safety is having a clear purpose. They're all entwined at once even though he lines them up. And to begin with safety, what I love about what Daniel Coyle does is he begins and talks about the brain and the amygdala.
We kick off our fourth season with legendary librarian Jeanie Phillips! She'll be sitting down with a series of guests from around the #vted ecosphere and ...reviewing books. Not just any books, but books that can help educators as they make meaning from the wonderful, complicated and challenging jobs they have of saving the world.
First up, Jeanie talks with Vermont educator and consultant Bill Rich. Bill is a longtime-classroom teacher who now works with schools, providing guidance on brain-based learning. Jeanie and Bill sat down to talk about Daniel Coyle's book, The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups.
A full transcript of this episode is available here: http://go.uvm.edu/a-92n
Music for this episode is "Meizong & Yeeflex - Sunrise", by Argofox. youtu.be/-GurRvqxg3I
To launch a school-wide identity project, behavior interventionist Connor Umsted shared his own "identity poem" with fellow staff members at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School, in South Burlington VT.
Full transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aAoZ99IEGYMQpj8bIYdwpJWHPFXz4L59xsckaVMWmcA/edit
Integrating food studies into schools leads to thinking about interconnectedness in other ares of study. But don't take my word for it: meet some amazing students from The Cornwall School, in Cornwall VT, who definitely won't be surviving on Pop Tarts, ramen or mac and cheese when they grow up.
Our theme music is, as always, by dirtwire. Additional music in this episode appears courtesy Diana Gruber, Kabbalistic Village, and Nicolai Heidlas. Thank you, as always, for listening.
The three Essex Middle School students who delivered the keynote address at the 2nd annual Cultivating Pathways to Sustainability conference spoke from the heart. They also spoke from experience, having spent the previous year using the #GlobalGoals to address hunger in their communities.
A full transcript of this episode is available at this link: https://wp.me/p4r2oE-3H3
Londonderry, VT-based non-profit The Collaborative is in its 14th year of "Refuse to Use", a substance abuse-prevention program that creates community conversations about alcohol, tobacco and drugs. They base their curriculum off hyper-regional data and depend on community members -- parents, educators and students -- telling them what to talk about next.
Full transcript: http://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/refuse-to-use/
Photo by Famartin - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62467207
At the Queer-Straight Alliance (QSA) at Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, Vermont, young adolescents have carved out a space where they can be their authentic selves. While that's critical during middle school, it's especially crucial for LGBTQ students.
As we kick off the third season of our podcast, let's hear more about Crossett Brook's QSA by listening to one of the students instrumental in its formation, as well as some of the educators who support them.
We meet six of the graduating class of 2017 educators, and hear about their hopes, their dreams, and what their middle school selves have to tell them about teaching.
Full transcript available here: http://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/pre-service-educators-podcast/#.WSQ3KjOZOHo
We talk with legendary awesome stats guy Mark Olofson -- Dr. Legendary Awesome Stats Guy Mark Olofson -- about his doctoral research into adverse childhood events and school performance. It's some pretty important stuff, about how the intersecting traumas that affect students have some long-reaching consequences.
Full transcript: http://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/do-adverse-childhood-events-affect-student-performance/#
Remember those interactive sound sculptures we profiled in Episode 26? Meet the teacher who made it happen, and hear how art is an inextricable part of physics, how Brian Eno can help teach circuitry, and how to keep play alive in science.
Full transcript: http://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/steam-pbl-unit/
How to design a student exhibition that empowers students and provides a compelling, informative experience for the community? Cabot High School, in rural Cabot VT, did it with TED talks, sound sculptures and a funk band.
Resident stats guy and all-around smart person Mark Olofson talks with two researchers from Michigan State University. Their research focuses on the state-level twitter conversations among educators: who is doing it, and what they're getting out of it.
And, spoiler alert, when they looked around the country, Vermont emerged as a pretty special place.
What would you tell your neighbors about your school? What do you think they'd say in return? The Washington West Supervisory Union in the Mad River Valley of Vermont aims to find out by hosting a series of community conversations.
Life LeGeros, a longtime educator and WWSU community member, is taking part in those conversations, and sharing out what he learns.
This past August, the University of Vermont played host to an international conference focused on ways to amplify student voice and increase student partnership in the classroom. Vermont Secretary of Education Dr. Rebecca Holcombe, spoke powerfully on the need for intersectional equity in Vermont, in supporting students.
Full transcript: http://wp.me/p4r2oE-2Ei
At The Compass School in Westminster, Vermont, students advance through grades by producing evidence of their accomplishments from the year, using the previous year's reflection to inform the current one. We had the chance to sit down with a student just finishing 11th grade at Compass, and hear not just about his Y.E.A.R. (year-end academic reflection) but how it's going to prepare him for the all-important graduating Roundtable.
Brattleboro, Vermont was incorporated back in 1753, a former military fort that embraced trading, commerce and the power of nearby Whetstone Falls to spur mill production. It’s been home to countless tiny, fascinating episodes of Vermont history -- episodes that current residents can now listen to each week on the radio, being described and re-enacted by students from Brattleboro Area Middle School.
This is a story of how community organizations can partner with students to make history new again, and connect students more strongly to their hometown.
Full transcript here: http://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/making-history-on-the-radio-with-community-partners/
We visit the Vermont Middle Grades Institute and learn how attendees are working to better implement their state's 2013 "Flexible Learning Pathways" initiative.
It's like summer camp. But for middle school teachers.
Full transcript available here: http://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/2016-middle-grades-institute-podcast/#.VwfH_T9lC7A
Tarrant Institute reporter Rachel Mark talks with educator Mandy Thomas and students at The Dorset School, where the move to student-led conferences started with screencasting.
Middle school students at Shelburne Community School have been collecting pencils to send to Ghana this fall. One of the school educators explains why.
Music is "Golden Ocean" by Nicholas Heidlas, used with permission.
A conversation with entrants to the 2015 ChampBot Challenge at the Champlain Mini-Maker Faire. Produced by Tiffany Lee for the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education and WRUV FM Burlington, and aired on that station as episode #6 of the "VTED Talks" series.
Original air date: 11/10/15, WRUV FM Burlington.
The image at left is "Sharkmobile at Maker Faire 2009" by Dawn Endico. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
In order to find out more about Generation Z, we asked middle school students about theirs and their families' relationship with technology. And found no easy generalizations.
The episode's music is by dirtwire (dirtwire.net) and the image is by Wes Fryer, CC 3.0. The sound clip explaining different generations is part of a public service announcement by the US Department of Transportation, licensed under educational fair use.
Sometimes school change begins with just one person, and just one podcast. Principal Mike Berry of the RESVT podcast, tells us how he's using podcasting to help students find their digital voices, prepare for the challenges of middle school and open his school to the community.
Music, as always, is courtesy dirtwire, an Oakland CA-based electronic duo. Hear more of their music at dirtwire.net.
A 2014 report from the Foundation for Excellence in Education on the quality of digital learning, state by state, raises questions about how edtech should be assessed. You can find a copy of the report here: http://digitallearningnow.com/report-card/
The music for this episode is, as always, by dirtwire; go listen to more of their work at dirtwire.net.
"Bio," says one 9th grader. "We were in Bio. And there were some machines sitting there and one was a centrifuge. And I knew what it was because of Minecraft." We talk to middle school students and server admins about why Minecraft works for them.
The music in this episode is by dirtwire; check them out on http://dirtwire.net
5th grade educator Hannah Lindsey on the difference between edmodo and Schoology, digital badging and how to teach great commenting on the internet.
The music for this episode is "Searching for Jupiter", by Nicolai Heidlai, whose other work can be found here on Soundcloud.
Ian, a high school senior, talks about his journey from being a STEM learner to teaching the arduino track of his high school's STEM Academy. "In middle school I was not sure AT ALL what I was gonna be when I was older. So that's the interesting thing, with the transition to high school that changed so much."
Full transcript here: http://tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/from-stem-learner-to-teacher/
In this episode, we talk with math educator Lea Ann Smith about Essex High School’s STEM Academy a personalized STEM learning program that lets students work toward digital portfolios, project-based learning and community internships.
The music you hear in the background of the episode is a song called "Bed Spring", by the Oakland-based band Dirtwire, used with permission. You can find more music by Dirtwire at dirtwire.net.
Three 8th graders at Essex Middle School sat down and shared with us the progress they're making on their project-based research into making and releasing music and doing algebra online. And as you'll see, for these three, it's all part of the same thing.
Tony, Anika and Isabel are all 8th graders who agreed to talk with us about where they are with their year-long projects. Tony, the novelist, covers the story arc behind his ongoing scifi fantasy series, Anika talks about the many administrative overhead involved in staging a play and Isabel explains why, in her film, you really can't ask teachers what they do after school.
(Especially Mrs. Gumbleberry.)
Check out how these three students have interpreted project-based learning and creative writing in three very different ways.
We talk with a trio of 7th graders in Essex Junction, Vermont, about their year-long research project to build an eco-machine like the one on the University of Vermont campus. Just.... smaller.
In this episode of the podcast, I talk with local digital artist and educator Rachel Hooper about how she got started learning and teaching how to make stuff with arduinos. Hooper discussed her background in teaching both students and adults how to construct projects using the tiny microcontrollers, her journey from arduino-learner to educator, then schooled me on gender essentialism* in tech-based learning.
And did I mention we were locked in a bathroom at the Generator?
(Never let your travel microphones out of your sight, people. Never. Do it.)
When your students sign up for that cool new edtech tool, where does their data go? Who's looking at it and what are they doing with it? The Tarrant Institute's Susan Hennessey and Mark Olofson debate how educators can navigate the pitfalls of corporate data-mining in the classroom.
Episode image by Kencf0618, licensed under Creative Commons 3.0: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_visualization#mediaviewer/File:Kencf0618FacebookNetwork.jpg
2nd half of the extended PLP session at VermontFest 2014, featuring Elizabeth McCarthy, Maggie Eaton, Lauren Parren, Matt Allen and Tim Alderman.
Check out Lauren Parren's sample 7th grade PLP here: https://sites.google.com/a/anesu.org/middle-school-sample/
Audio from the first half of the extended PLP session at Vermont Fest 2014, featuring Maggie Eaton, Elizabeth McCarthy, Lauren Parren, Matt Allen and Tom Alderman.
Google doc of the presentation can be found at http://goog.gl/jlpzvU
Dan French presented on "Transforming Schooling: A Systems Approach to Personalized Learning" at VTFest 2014. Check out Dan's presentation slides at https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rq5Y3y2mHBZCRzaXjOzAf2QQWaO6W7K0lOm8q7XYqRg/edit#slide=id.p
With Dan's permission, I experimented with capturing an audio file of his presentation online with SoundCloud.
Tarrant Institute graduate research fellow Mark Olofson and I take a look at one of the premises of this article on the ill-fated city-wide rollout of iPads in Los Angeles classrooms, “Los Angeles schools need to think outside the iPad”. The article’s author, Nathan Schneider raises an interesting point about how who makes the tech students use on a daily basis can shape their world-view.
In this episode of our podcast, we're going to be hearing from math educator Jared Bailey, who spent his summer vacation building a web app for his students, so they could have their homework assignments, practice drills, schedule and his contact info all in one place. As could their parents.
Bailey's ethos was simple: he wanted it to be as simple as possible for students and their families to install the app on their mobile devices, and he didn't want to deal with licensing issues or necessarily learn a ton of code. He just wanted his app to be convenient for students.
NPR recently highlighted a study claiming that students today don't read nearly as much as they used to, so we had Graduate Research Fellow and big-time data/methodology guy Mark Olofson take a closer look at the study in question. The results? Students these days probably read more than you'd think.