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👋Hi, it’s Matt. This week, I spoke with Jen Schwanke, former principal, current deputy superintendent, and author of Trusted. (Full subscribers can watch the video of our conversation below.) Enjoy! Also, my feedback survey closes soon. If you have a few minutes to spare, I’d love to know more about your experience here. Take care, -Matt

Jen Schwanke has spent her career inside schools as a teacher, a building leader, and now a deputy superintendent in Ohio. She is the author of five ASCD books, including her most recent, Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools. She also writes the newsletter “Principal Problems with Dr. Jen” and co-hosts the Principal Matters Podcast, which has surpassed 1.5 million downloads.

In this conversation, Jen and Matt discuss what it takes to lead with trust: riding the inevitable ups and downs of the principalship, delegating without losing accountability, building the self-awareness to recognize when you are undermining relational trust, and staying connected to students when compliance and logistics pull you in every other direction.

What We Discussed

• The connection between trust to student outcomes

• The difference between being trustworthy and being trust-willing

• How to recognize when you are unintentionally harming trust with your staff

• What it means to lead through teachers, from the inside out

• The area where teachers are most willing to take feedback from their principal

• The two things that keep Jen grounded as a leader when the job gets enormous

About Jen Schwanke

Jen Schwanke, Ed.D., is a longtime educator who has served as a teacher and leader at all levels. She is the author of five ASCD books, including Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools. She writes the newsletter “Principal Problems with Dr. Jen” and co-hosts the Principal Matters Podcast. She is an instructor in educational administration at The Ohio State University and currently serves as a Deputy Superintendent in Ohio.

Find Jen at jenschwanke.com, on X at @JenSchwanke, and on Instagram at @DrJenSchwanke.

Resources Mentioned

• Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools by Jen Schwanke (ASCD, 2025)

• Principal Matters Podcast

• Principal Problems with Dr. Jen

• Choice Literacy

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Full Transcript

Matt Renwick

Hi, my name is Matt Renwick. I am a coach, former principal, classroom teacher, and I am joined today by a colleague, also a former principal, former classroom teacher, current deputy superintendent, Jen Schwanke. Welcome, Jen.

Jen Schwanke

Hi, Matt, so good to be here, thank you.

Matt Renwick

Good to be connected with you again. I want to read your bio. You’re a long-time educator, teacher, and leader at all levels. You’re the author of 5 books. The last one is the one we’re going to talk about today, Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools, published through ASCD. In my review that I wrote for it, for Middle Web, I wrote it was a book that I wish I would have had when I was a principal — it was just really well done. We’re going to talk more about that, but Jen has published 5 books, all focused on leadership at the school level. She’s a frequent contributor to multiple educational publishers, including Choice Literacy, which we’ve both been contributors to and proud writers for. She also consults with districts and school leaders in the areas of school climate, personnel, and instructional leadership. She’s a frequent presenter at national organizations, including ASCD, ISTE, NASSP, and NAESP, and also an instructor in educational administration at The Ohio State University. She currently serves as Deputy Superintendent in Ohio. You can find her at JenSchwanke.com, on X at Jen Schwanke, and on Instagram at Dr. Jen Schwanke. Welcome.

Matt Renwick

What made you decide that you wanted to write a book about trust?

Jen Schwanke

Well, let me tell you a story related to that. I’ve been lucky to have a great relationship with my editor at ASCD, and this book came to life because I had just published one on conflict management for school leaders. The ink was still warm on the press, and I reached out to my editor and said, I want to write one about trust. And she said, Jen, my goodness, be quiet for a minute. And I said, no, no, these things do go hand in hand. Managing conflict in a school, and how you talk to people, and how you try to anticipate and analyze and act on conflict is so tied to trust. So here’s what she said to me: we really need you to come up with something that has a true effect on student outcomes. So anything you write about trust has to be tied to student outcomes. And I thought, I don’t know how to do that. I know how to write about how trust feels and how to not be a jerk, but I don’t know if I can tie it to student outcomes. Then I started doing some research, and I was shocked — I should not have been — I was shocked to find how much of a correlation there is between principal and staff trust and student outcomes. Students achieve more when teachers trust their principal. After that, the book was easy to write, because I was able to really focus on the why, my intentionality with building trust, and what happens with students.

Matt Renwick

I’m glad you wrote it. I’m glad you convinced the editors, because you do get at the student level, and that’s one thing I appreciate about the book and your writing. I’ve read your writing with Choice Literacy, and I’ve been on peer review groups with you. I always appreciate your stories — small anecdotes from your own experience, the ups and downs of the principalship. It’s an interesting polarity: conflict management and trust, those two tensions.

Jen Schwanke

That’s exactly right, because you can’t do one without the other. You and I met, probably 10 years ago. You were doing some writing for ASCD, I was too, and we went to an authors’ retreat together, and where we geeked out together was with the literacy piece — the reading, and the writing, and student engagement. To me, it was a little bit of an aha moment to think about how it really all is tied together, including student achievement and progress.

Matt Renwick

You note in the book that the only way to be successful as a school leader is to learn to ride the inevitable ups and downs. That conflict, and engagement with it, and trust — that’s something I both miss and don’t miss as a former principal. What strategies did you use in your 17 years as a building leader to ride those waves?

Jen Schwanke

I had a little bit of an aha moment. I was probably in my 10th year as a school leader, and I was complaining to my dad about it — about a teacher, or a parent, or a curricular resource, or a data point. He happened to be standing on his skid steer with a chainsaw at the time, cutting down some branches after a recent summer storm. And he said, you know what your problem is? You always think there’s going to be a point where there’s no more problems. You’re always dissatisfied, because there’s always another problem. And he looked up to the tree and said, a storm blows in, you gotta cut a few branches down. It’s just the day’s work. I thought about that for quite some time, and I thought, that has been my weakness as a leader. I’m looking for this moment when there’s no more conflict, everybody’s getting along, everybody understands what we’re trying to do, everybody’s engaged in the learning — and that’s never going to happen. Because we’re humans, and we have feelings and responses. So rather than feel like I’m chasing an impossibility, I found a great deal of peace in thinking, problems are going to come and go. That is literally what I am paid to do. The strategies were, first of all, recognition of that. I have to embrace these problems that come. And I will even say — my team will tell you it’s very annoying — they’ll come in and say, we have this problem, and I’ll say, okay, let’s pause and think about this together. That takes self-discipline. It also takes team. Because if you are alone, and you feel like you’re the only one who’s going to ride this up and this down, it gets pretty hopeless — like going in the ocean and taking another wave, and then another wave, and then another wave. And then perspective. It is so easy as school leaders, as teachers, as coaches, to feel like the things in our bubble are the most important to anyone. We have to make sure that we don’t wrap too much of our identity into the work — meaning letting go of the sense that we have to have everything perfect.

Matt Renwick

That very much resonates with me. Of those things you listed, the one I struggle with most is letting go of control to get things done. As you said, you need others to help lead. It’s the only way to manage it all. What have you found effective to make it clear what’s expected, and how to do things well, so that you’re not trying to do it all? How do we let go of control?

Jen Schwanke

This is something I did not do well at the beginning of my career. I thought that when I got the master key to the school, I needed to put on a Superman cape and be everything to everyone. I needed to know everything, be involved in every conversation, make every decision. And if I didn’t, the whole place would fall apart. I’ve come to know — and part of this was through the research I did in my doctoral program — there’s so much out there about collective efficacy. If, as leaders, we don’t empower our staff, if we don’t say, hey, you got this, or, I need help with this certain thing, and invite those other voices, then the trust and the ability of a staff to let their gifts shine is really diminished. We work with people who have bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees, and many times we overstep in our assumptions of our own expertise versus saying, hey, you have the expertise. I’ll be honest, to this day, I still have to enact self-discipline and say, Jen, you would not do it that way at all — but the outcome is going to be the same or better if you just step aside. Really, all of this is a synonym for trust. In the book, I make a distinction between trustworthy — which most of us know how to be: be honest, do the right thing, follow through — and trustwilling, where we have to be willing to let other people do their thing, do what they were hired to do, get out of their way, and help and guide them instead of criticize or micromanage.

Matt Renwick

You bring up a good point about the differentiation between being trustworthy and being trustwilling. A step of that is humility — and also self-awareness. You talk in the book about how trust killing can sometimes be unintentional. Principals aren’t always aware of how their words and actions are damaging, both what they do and what they don’t do. How did you create that self-awareness, or how have you seen leaders create it, so they’re becoming more adaptive and not making the same mistakes over and over?

Jen Schwanke

I’m a listener, I’m a watcher, and I watch myself with the most critical eye — but I watch other leaders too, and I watch teachers and coaches and see how they respond to different leadership styles. Self-awareness of when you are undermining relational trust — you can’t measure how important that is. Trust killing is generally unintentional. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says, I really want to ruin some trusting relationships today. But many of us miss the cues that we are undermining that relational trust. Two things I’d like to say about this. The first is a bit of an offshoot of the ‘let them’ theory, which many listeners probably know. Let people feel how they need to feel. That comes with a little bit of tension as a school leader, because we can’t just let people do whatever they want — we have to lead, and provide guidance and standards and expectations. But if we are doing things with sound mind, with thought, with input, with an eye to how it’s going to affect students, then we really have to be able to let some things go. However, we’ve got to have our eyes and ears open for the feedback, because it comes in various ways. If I walk into a staff meeting and no one will meet my eye, or if I’m explaining a new initiative and people are just coming at me with all the reasons it won’t work — rather than thinking, okay, this is a staff that is resistant or toxic or negative, what they might be is scared, or uncertain, or nervous about change. We have to listen for feedback and learn from it. I always look for my truth-tellers, the people who will tell me when we’re getting off track. I also tell people: look for patterns and look for mirrors. If every time you roll out a new initiative or program you’re finding significant resistance, that’s when you look in the mirror and say, I may not be communicating well enough, or I may be leading a group of people so scared of change that they can’t see the potential outcomes. Then I have to backtrack and see how I can fill the holes in the sieve so that my leadership intentions are not seen as barriers, but as potential for the future.

Matt Renwick

The need for feedback and having your truth-tellers around you is crucial. I was married to one of my truth-tellers. She was a special education teacher in the same building where I was the principal, so if I screwed up, I learned about it very quickly — which I appreciated. And she knew how to approach me in the way I needed to hear it, so that I actually would.

Jen Schwanke

Let’s talk about that for a minute. Your wife was a truth-teller, and she probably saw things you didn’t see — and there you were, trust-willing. Willing to listen to her, willing to say, where am I going sideways? I’m certainly not saying we all should be married to our truth-tellers, but we need to trust that they don’t want us to fail, they don’t want to bring us down. There’s no ill intent when people try to give us feedback. We can choose to say, thank you, that’s very helpful, let me think about that — or we can choose to say, we’re moving forward. The first one is the only way that you build trust.

Matt Renwick

How do you get to that level of intimacy — in a relational sense — so that no matter what happens, you’re still going to be on good terms with each other? I think that’s a barrier in people’s minds, though it may not always be correct. They think this is going to destroy the relationship if I have this conversation, and it really is not, unless something truly egregious has occurred. I didn’t love the story, but I really connected with the story in the book about when you walked into the lounge and heard some teachers talking about you. If I remember right, you didn’t respond in the moment. You kind of walked away and found a custodian’s closet and...

Jen Schwanke

Cried.

Matt Renwick

I think we’ve all been there. If you’ve been in the principalship long enough, you’re going to catch that at some point. That’s just the nature of the job. It made me think about the principal as an outsider — how we have to lead through teachers, from the inside out. You pushed back on that a little, and I appreciate that, because you don’t think of principals as outsiders, although oftentimes principals do think of themselves that way. Especially teachers who become principals in the same building — they see the shift in relationships right away, just from that positionality. So I guess the question is: how do you balance being somewhat of an outsider with needing to lead the building and maintain those relationships?

Jen Schwanke

In the past, many years ago, the principal was very far removed from the day-to-day intentionality of a school. The principal was there to handle discipline, the facilities, maybe suspend kids when the teacher couldn’t or was exhausted. Now, principals are in the muck with instruction, classroom management, and professional development — things that were never the original job of a principal. I understand why it’s still in the DNA of some teachers and principals to think of the work as separate. And of course it is, because the principal is the boss at the end of the day. But the most ideal version of the model is if the principal is the one in charge, but with a team mindset. This goes back to that collective efficacy piece. If a principal thinks of him or herself as an outsider, there’s something wrong there. Outsider is different from leader. Leaders should not be outsiders. Leaders should be in the work. In schools, everybody is talking about everybody else — that’s just human nature. We spend an exorbitant amount of time with the people we work with in our schools. It’s okay if people have complaints or feelings or want to talk about the principal. But we want people to know what we’re trying to do. And by the way, sometimes the negative talk is exactly what you want. There was a teacher I once called to task for the tone she used when talking with children. It was really upsetting. She had been doing it for a decade. I finally heard an interaction with a very young child that shook up the child and even me. I went to her and said, we’re done. We’re not going to talk to kids like this anymore. She marched right to the lounge and said something along the lines of, can you believe she’s insisting I be nice. Well, her colleagues may have nodded along, but deep down, they were applauding me. Many of them came to me and said, thank you for taking on this long-running problem. The things people say — we’re never going to eliminate that. We want them to say things like, I trust her, she’s fair, she follows through. I sure don’t like this PD she’s rolling out, but I see what good it’s going to do for kids. Those are the kinds of lounge conversations we want had about us.

Matt Renwick

I love that example. If you’re going to have a candid conversation with someone and you’re going to upset someone, upset the right people — the people who need to be nudged to improve — and you’re right, the other teachers are going to quietly applaud. They may not come to you and say thank you, but yes.

Jen Schwanke

Respect and loyalty deserve a place in this conversation. Sometimes somebody might say something disparaging about the principal that makes the principal feel like an outsider, but that might be one of your most loyal teachers, saying something to a colleague because they don’t like a decision. And that’s okay. We want that collegiality among teachers, where they can talk things through. And then if something’s a real problem, you’re probably going to have a truth-teller who comes and says, hey, do you have a few minutes? Can we talk about this initiative you’re rolling out? Respect and loyalty on both sides make for a very strong school culture.

Matt Renwick

Everyone’s responsible. I remember coming into my last school, and there had been 6 principals over the past 10 years. I knew trust was going to be an issue. I learned from Anthony Muhammad — the Solution Tree PLC approach — a concern form. Teachers would fill it out: rate the concern 1 to 5, describe what the concern was, what they’d tried to do so far, and what they would like me to do. They’d give that sheet to my assistant, who would enter it into a form anonymously. My assistant would still know who submitted it, so it wasn’t character assassination, but it gave teachers an initial avenue to communicate with me. And eventually, similar to what you’re saying, they just eventually said, I trust them, I’m just going to come and talk to them. That’s a great sign — they trust that you’re going to be respectful and loyal.

Matt Renwick

This is always a challenging one: trusting teachers professionally, their professional knowledge. You note in the book that they are the experts, and trusting them means not questioning their knowledge. I wanted to push back a little. I’m strong in literacy — not an expert, but I know it well enough — and there were times when I did know more than some teachers. How do we approach that, especially if we haven’t taught at the grade level they’re teaching, but we know we’re right and there may be some errors in thinking?

Jen Schwanke

I just talked about this this morning with the Ohio Association of Secondary School Administrators, leading a talk on instructional leadership. I appreciate your pushback, because you’re right: there are times a principal might know more in terms of content knowledge, but that’s generally only going to happen if it’s in your area of expertise. As teachers, we are masters of one subject. Many times, leaders — and I would say this is true for instructional coaches at the beginning — we go in, and I remember when I first went into a science classroom, I thought, I’m going to have to evaluate science? I don’t know math? World language? Over time you begin to understand what to look for, but most of us will never truly understand the depths of content that someone with, say, a master’s degree in that content will have. What we do tend to know as leaders is instruction — what good instruction looks like. And we know what engagement looks like. What leaders need to tease out is this: if I see something inaccurate and damage will be done to a student, I need to step in and correct it, of course. But many times, especially in today’s classrooms, learning is about discovery. Unless a teacher is presenting inaccurate facts and then testing kids on them, it may be part of a journey a student is taking instructionally. We might be able to ask questions about the intent of the content, the intent of the instructional model. The other thing — and I do talk about this in the book — there’s been research on what impact principals actually have when they evaluate instruction. There’s only one area where teachers are really willing to change, and that is not content knowledge, not facts so to speak, but classroom environment. They will listen to their principal about that: where we seat kids, how we manage behaviors, how we set the routine for the class. That is the only thing that moves the needle. So as leaders, that’s what we should focus on. What does it feel like to be in the classroom? How do you manage how do you assess kids? If you went out and lined up 100 students pulled off the street and asked what they remembered about school last year, none of them is going to say, I really liked the day we broke down the Pythagorean Theorem. What they’re going to say is: I liked it when my teacher was kind to me. I liked the day we got to bring Gatorades to school. I had fun when we did that lab. They’re going to talk about experiences that were feeling experiences, not fact experiences. As an instructional leader, I try to look for ways to approach not necessarily the teacher’s knowledge, but how they’re teaching, not necessarily what they’re teaching.

Matt Renwick

You could go in almost as a student yourself during non-evaluative visits — learning walks, instructional walks, whatever you want to call it. I recall teachers saying, can you pay attention to so-and-so? I want to see how they respond to instruction. These were teachers I had a good degree of trust with, and you’re right — they wanted to know the response to their instruction. They were open to that feedback.

Jen Schwanke

I have a new idea I’m teasing out and working on with some groups — a rise theory. My belief is that all of us as educators have four needs. We want relationships: people we connect with, whether students or colleagues. We want an identity: to be known as something, to have a thing — maybe the fun teacher, maybe the tough teacher. We want success: to feel good at what we do. And that ties to the last one, which is efficacy: we want to feel like we’re making a difference. When I work with teachers, I don’t get hung up on factual knowledge or accuracy so much as whether they’re feeling that rise. How can I, as a principal, help them feel it?

Matt Renwick

I don’t want to go too far here, but it sounds like a potential book down the road.

Jen Schwanke

I do want to write that as a book. I have to trademark it, because I believe it’s a human need.

Matt Renwick

I love it. I have one more question, and you’ve already touched on this: students care about being challenged, being seen, and fitting in. I’ve heard that from parents too, and from kids themselves, so it really does check out. When we get buried in logistics and compliance — and you do a great job in the first chapter of listing all the ways the job has become quite enormous — how do you stay grounded in those values, those principles of challenging kids, seeing kids, helping them belong? What grounds you as a school leader?

Jen Schwanke

There’s a balance. Imagine a scale, and there are two things that help me stay grounded. One of them is consistency — being the same leader every day. Having expectations and accountability that are what they are, but every day being student-centered, being visible, being available. And then the other is being immersed in the work. I have never, ever regretted putting down my pen, closing my laptop, and going to get immersed in a student activity in a classroom, on a field trip, at lunch, at recess. I have never regretted that. There have been times I didn’t want to. But when I make myself do it, I always think, why don’t I do that more? Consistency and immersion are the two things that keep my scale balanced.

Matt Renwick

Those are huge trust builders. Thank you, Jen, for talking with us. The book is Trusted: Trust Pillars, Trust Killers, and the Secret to Successful Schools. If you’re a new principal, if you’re looking for renewal, I would recommend it to anyone in leadership — and beyond the principalship. These are good lessons for coaches, superintendents, anyone in those kinds of positions. Thank you, Jen. This was great.

Jen Schwanke

Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Matt. We always have great conversations.

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The science of reading has made real progress in how schools think about decoding and language comprehension. But for a significant number of struggling readers, those two buckets don’t explain what’s getting in the way.

Dr. Kelly Cartwright, Spangler Distinguished Professor of Early Child Literacy at UNC Charlotte, has spent her career mapping the territory other reading models leave out — specifically, the role executive functions play in coordinating what skilled readers do.

In this conversation, Dr. Cartwright explains what executive functions (EF) actually are, why they matter for every reader and not just students with ADHD, and what her research reveals about the kind of EF interventions that actually move the needle on reading outcomes. She also makes the case that the field’s tendency toward dichotomous thinking — decoding over here, comprehension over there — may be leaving a large group of students without the support they need.

Check out the video recording of this conversation below, available to full subscribers. Join the community today!

Show Notes

Research and Articles

(links embedded in title)

• Duke, N. K., & Cartwright, K. B. (2021). The Science of Reading Progresses: Communicating Advances Beyond the Simple View of Reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 56(S1), S25–S44.

• Cartwright, K. B., & Palian, S. R. (2024). Considering Roles of Executive Functions in the Science of Reading: A Meta-Analysis Highlighting Promises and Challenges of Reading-Specific Executive Functions. Educational Psychologist, 59(4), 263–290.

• Wagner, R. K., et al. (2021). A Model-Based Meta-Analytic Examination of Specific Reading Comprehension Deficit. Annals of Dyslexia, 71(2), 260–281.

• Austin, C. R., Vaughn, S., Clemens, N. H., Pustejovsky, J. E., & Boucher, A. N. (2022). The relative effects of instruction linking word reading and word meaning compared to word reading instruction alone on the accuracy, fluency, and word meaning knowledge of 4th-5th grade students with dyslexia. Scientific Studies of Reading, 26(3), 204-222.

• Chi, M. T. H. (1978). Knowledge structures and memory development. In R. S. Siegler (Ed.), Children’s thinking: What develops? (pp. 73–96). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Assessments Mentioned

• Graphophonological Semantic Flexibility (GSF) Assessment — freely accessible; measures cognitive flexibility in managing letter-sound and meaning features of words simultaneously (from Chapter 4 of Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension - see below)

Books Mentioned

(embedded Bookshop links are an affiliate account)

• Cartwright, K. B. (2023). Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension: A Guide for Educators (2nd ed.). Guilford Press. (Bookshop) (Guilford Press - download flyer for 25% discount)

• Adams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print. MIT Press. (Bookshop)

• Page, L. This Book Made Me Think of You (Bookshop) — recommended by Kelly Cartwright

• Weir, A. Project Hail Mary (Bookshop) — recommended by Matt Renwick

• Richtel, M. How We Grow Up (Bookshop) — recommended by Debra Crouch

Model Referenced

• The Active View of Reading (Duke & Cartwright, 2021) — diagram available via the Reading Research Quarterly article linked above (and below).

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick

Hi, I’m Matt. Welcome to Read by Example, where teachers are leaders, and leaders know literacy. I am excited to have someone that I’ve been reading about in a pretty specific, but I think important subject area. I’m joined by Kelly Cartwright. Dr. Cartwright is the Spangler Distinguished Professor of Early Child Literacy at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. She is the author of Executive Skills, Reading and Reading Comprehension, second edition through Guilford. Welcome, Kelly.

Kelly Cartwright

Thank you. I’m so excited to be here with you today.

Matt Renwick

And Debra Crouch, author and co-author of Made for Learning with Brian Camborne, is also here. Excited to see Debra again. Are you in the classroom still, Debra?

Debra Crouch

No, not right now. I’m actually supervising a couple of student teachers right now. That’s what I’m up to.

Matt Renwick

Alright, but you were teaching second grade, right?

Debra Crouch

Yes, second and third grade. Both grades.

Kelly Cartwright

And technically, you’re in classrooms, so…

Debra Crouch

Yes, always in classrooms.

Matt Renwick

Same here. Whenever I can get in, it’s a treat. So, Kelly, I want to start with curiosity. Executive functions have not been a prominent part of the conversation around reading instruction. What made you think they should be? What about this field captured your interest and focus for your research?

Kelly Cartwright

That’s a great question. I started out in psychology, but I was interested in how reading works — how reading works in the brain, how our cognitive processes support our ability to read. I was learning about executive functions, learning about the fact that kids, when they are young, are learning to be flexible in thinking about things. It occurred to me that reading is super complex, and it requires that we think about words in lots of ways. I was reading Marilyn Adams’ book, Beginning to Read, while in graduate school, and learning about all of these wonderful executive functions, and realizing that kids have to manage a ton. Grown-ups have to manage a ton of things in their heads, and I wondered about this connection. So, I started off my work in the area of looking at cognitive flexibility specific to reading — flexibility in thinking about words, sounds, and meanings — because kids have to think about words in a lot of ways to learn to be good readers, and we do it without thinking about it. Lots of people are looking at it now and realizing that being able to manage your thinking and manage your reading processes is a really important part of being a good reader.

Matt Renwick

Are you seeing more interest in this due to the world we currently live in, with constant connection and distraction? Do you see that contributing to this interest?

Kelly Cartwright

Maybe. I think that people are aware of executive functions in the context of special education, or when a child has ADHD in your classroom and the school psychologist has done assessments and says, “This child has a working memory problem,” or, “This child has an inhibition problem.” We’ve seen more and more diagnoses of executive skill difficulties, like ADHD, over the past few years. Is it connected to technology? I don’t have data on that. But I think the piece that we don’t always think about is that for a child who has executive skill difficulties, we see evidence that there’s a problem — but when everything’s going well, and your working memory and flexibility are supporting your reading processes, it’s invisible. We don’t see them. We see evidence for difficulty, not evidence for success. But being a successful reader means that you have those things in place.

Matt Renwick

ADHD has been referred to as an invisible disability — or difference, however you want to term it — and that resonates with me, because kids don’t always demonstrate it. It’s often an internal kind of thing.

Kelly Cartwright

Exactly.

Matt Renwick

You mentioned executive functions, and I think when people hear that, they sometimes just resort to ADHD as a rule of thumb. But they’re different. How would you describe executive functions in a way that’s separate from a diagnosis like ADHD, and connects it to what every reader is trying to do?

Kelly Cartwright

Executive functions, when you have difficulties with them, people see evidence of those things when you have a child who can’t focus, or can’t inhibit attention to all the things that are so interesting. But we recruit executive functions in all of our daily activities. Think about going to the supermarket. You need to keep your list of needed items in mind — you don’t want to get home without the noodles for the spaghetti — and that’s working memory, having to hold all that stuff in your head. You might make a list, but that kind of offloads the thinking onto a piece of paper. And you’re still going to have to use it in a flexible way: you’re looking at the shelf, you’re looking at the list, maybe they don’t have the brand you usually buy, or they’re out of the fruit you were going to buy, and you have to flex the week’s menu. You’re also having to use that list to inhibit your attention to the shiny Oreos on the end cap, and not buy the things that are not on the list. That working memory, that cognitive flexibility, that inhibition — they play out in everything we do.

In reading, we’re building a mental model of text meaning in our head. As I make my way through a text and learn about a new event, or a character does something unexpected, I’m updating my mental model of the text’s meaning as I go, while still hanging on to the things I’ve learned before. That’s working memory. While we’re doing that, we’re also decoding — shifting between word reading and meaning-making constantly. Even as adults, we process all the letters and sounds. If we come upon a multisyllabic word we haven’t seen, we’re totally using our decoding processes, but we’re doing those things under the level of conscious awareness and switching between them, and that takes flexibility. Or coming upon a word like “wind” — W-I-N-D — if you’re reading about a mechanical toy, it becomes “wind,” but if you’re reading about weather patterns, it’s “wind,” and knowing how to flex that vowel pronunciation is another instance of cognitive flexibility specific to reading.

Inhibition plays out in reading when you encounter words with multiple meanings, like “jam” and “traffic jam.” You can’t think about the sticky stuff you put on toast — you have to only think about the congested traffic. All of those things are happening for skilled readers automatically. We don’t notice them. But when children don’t have the working memory capacity, they’re not able to hold in mind the text pieces they need and supply their prior knowledge in order to make an inference. We can support that kind of thinking — put it on paper, use a graphic organizer like an inference map — but as skilled readers, we often expect kids to have the ability to do the things that we can do. Making inferences is so obvious to us, but it’s not obvious when you don’t have the ability to hold all the relevant pieces in your mind.

Matt Renwick

If I’m reading a novel and trying to keep track of all these characters, I’m not going to pull out a character map — maybe I might, if it’s a complex novel. But you’re right, we don’t reverse ourselves back to when we were learning to read when we teach. That’s where these external tools can be really helpful to support that cognition.

I personally have a hard time remembering all these different systems — it’s hard to visualize. When you teach this, do you use some kind of mental model, metaphor, or imagery to help teachers hold that idea in mind?

Kelly Cartwright

You’ve identified something the field probably needs. Models of reading are starting to incorporate executive functions. Nell Duke and I proposed the Active View of Reading — for those of you listening, maybe we can link this in the show notes. There’s a green bubble off to the left that has your executive function and self-regulation abilities, and they are helping drive your ability to recognize words, that word recognition piece, and that language comprehension piece, and your ability to put it all together in service of reading comprehension. That visual heuristic helps teachers to think about the fact that these invisible things actually undergird and support the processes we know readers need. But if I continue to try to teach inference-making in all the typical ways to a child who has working memory difficulties, without thinking about how working memory shows up within reading or how I can support and strengthen those reading-specific working memory skills, then the child may not make the progress I need them to.

For kids with ADHD, or adults with ADHD, all of these executive functions show up as difficulties in organization and planning. The child who comes with a backpack that isn’t as organized as we’d like — with an executive function difficulty, the organization isn’t there, and they may not be able to make that mental model of a text’s meaning without concrete support, or a story map, or explicit text structure instruction, so that they can use that heuristic — putting that thinking on the table — to support the working memory where they can’t do it all in their head.

Matt Renwick

I’ve used the Active View in presentations for school leaders on what they need to know about the science of reading. I’ll start with the Simple View, and then go to your Active View, just to show how complex reading really is. And I like where you positioned executive function — before word recognition and language comprehension. I assume that’s intentional. If you need executive functioning, you need strategic use of strategies. You can’t just teach phonics.

Kelly Cartwright

You have to know what to do with the phonics. The Simple View is amazing. It’s elegant. It’s 40 years old now, which is remarkable, and it has longevity in the field because it provides an amazing heuristic to help teachers understand that reading is more than just loving books. It came out at the height of the whole language movement, when phonics was not favored, and the Simple View does an excellent job of demonstrating that if our phonics knowledge — our ability to recognize words using that phonics knowledge systematically — if it’s not there, we are not going to understand what we read. You can’t understand what you read if you don’t pull the words off the page. But likewise, if you can’t understand what people say to you, you’re not going to understand what you read.

The Simple View does an excellent job with that. It’s a great place for teachers to begin to see how that complexity works. But what I’ve seen in practice is phonics instruction happening over here in this part of the day, and instruction in language comprehension happening over there in that other part of the day, and never the twain shall meet. But when I’m a skilled reader, I’m doing these at the same time, and I’m having to put it all together. The Simple View — and the rope model is similar — shows these two buckets of skills. The rope goes further to say we do weave them together, but it doesn’t say how. I think that’s where executive functions come in. Executive functions and self-regulation help you to strategically deploy that word recognition knowledge and that language comprehension knowledge and weave them together in service of comprehension — which is a piece that’s over and above each of those alone.

I like to use the analogy of that old pat-your-head, rub-your-tummy thing we used to do as kids. I can pat my head by itself, just like I can decode — when assessed independently I do well. I can rub my tummy, and I can do well when assessed on language comprehension independently. But if I have to put them together, it requires some third coordination ability that’s over and above the individual skills. That bridging or integration is represented in the Active View but isn’t represented in the Simple View. The Simple View initially alluded to this idea that kids decode and then comprehend — like a sequential thing — but it’s not. It’s very much an all-at-the-same-time kind of thing.

Matt Renwick

You’re multitasking in some ways. It’s why reading is so difficult for some kids.

Kelly Cartwright

And for grown-ups when we are tired.

Matt Renwick

Right — I’ve hit many mental roadblocks, and I’m like, I need a break, I need to go walk the dog. Movement helps me reset my thinking.

We see new resources that are still referring to the Simple View, still framing things as decoding over here, language comprehension over there. Why has this binary been so sticky? Why has the field not progressed to what you’re describing?

Kelly Cartwright

This is what happens in fields all over the place — it’s not just education. We like to group things. Cognitively, we like to sort things into groups. There’s the old nature-nurture debate from human development: is a particular trait caused by nature, or is it caused by nurture? People tend to think about that in a really dichotomous way, when the truth is very much intertwined. Even reading disabilities are a great example. Reading disabilities have a heritable component, but environment plays a role too. If you get explicit, systematic phonics instruction, that’s going to move the needle in a way that an environmental factor — not getting that instruction — won’t.

Another example: kids with lower socioeconomic resources tend to have more difficulty with reading, and with executive functions. Experience plays a role; heredity plays a role. It’s not a simple either-or. But when we’re thinking about doing something super complicated — Louisa Moats characterized teaching reading as rocket science — not only are we having to do all of those things at once as readers, but as an educator, you are having to help little people who have never understood how letters make words. You’ve got to help them decode, know what the words mean, know how to weave them into phrases and sentences and paragraphs, make mental pictures, make the inferences, deal with syntax and morphology. That’s a lot. And so, to be able to group the things that I need to do as an educator into two buckets simplifies things and helps us organize our day. But it may not always be beneficial for students, because we know that multi-component interventions help students learn to do that integration.

Matt Renwick

I wish we would pay teachers like rocket scientists.

Kelly Cartwright

Hear, hear. I agree.

Matt Renwick

In your meta-analysis, you were looking at executive function interventions isolated from reading instruction and then asking: what’s the effect? And you found that for EF interventions to be effective, they need to be embedded in reading instruction. You can’t do executive functioning interventions in isolation and then expect them to generalize into reading. Why is that, and why does that matter for educators?

Kelly Cartwright

There’s a super basic study in cognitive psychology called the chess study. What they did was compare children who were chess experts with adults who were chess novices on two tasks: memory for chessboard arrangements, and memory for strings of numbers. Both are memory tasks, but one is specific to an area the kids have experience with and the adults do not. What they found — and this was a big deal at the time — is that the children outperformed the adults on chessboard arrangements. Children are not supposed to have better memory than adults, but they did on chess-specific memory. And on memory for letter strings, the adults outperformed the kids, as we would expect. That illustrates this idea of domain-specific or task-specific cognition: the thinking within that task gets better. Over time, playing chess helped those kids get better and better at remembering chessboard arrangements. That doesn’t really relate to reading — I’m not saying go out and have people play chess — but within reading, it’s requiring you to do a lot of mental work, a lot of mental gymnastics. Being flexible about pronunciations of words — there’s something called “set for variability” — or being able to shift between thinking about words’ sounds and words’ meanings, or being able to hold aspects of text in mind and update them as you continue to make your way through. That’s reading-specific working memory.

So, if I’m doing an intervention that helps to strengthen the kinds of reading-specific executive skills, or the way executive skills show up within reading, that’s going to help the child’s reading — and also their executive skills within reading. But if I put a child over here on a working memory task that looks kind of like that Simon game we used to play as kids, where you’re pushing buttons to remember sequences of tones — that’s not going to help reading. It might help them remember sequences of colored buttons, but it’s not going to transfer. The field went for a while, when executive functions and reading were shown to be related, toward: let’s do executive function interventions, have them do computerized tasks, and it will transfer to reading. But we’re not seeing that happen, because the work was being done in separate areas. When educators can identify the ways that working memory shows up within reading — like inference-making, or the flexibility we’ve talked about, or inhibiting inappropriate word meanings for context — and then intervene in those things to strengthen both the executive skills and the reading skills, then both improve.

Matt Renwick

When you talk about that, what comes up for me is “neurons that fire together wire together.” Is that why we see that?

Kelly Cartwright

I don’t have all the data we need yet, but we know that reading interventions strengthen connectivity in the reading network. And we know that executive function networks help to connect up the hubs in the reading network in the brain. In a sense, yes, you’re having them fire together — just like an intervention for a child with dyslexia. They need more explicit, systematic phonics instruction to get that letter-word form area in the visual cortex — that part of the brain we repurposed to become reading brain — to build up. When we give them more practice, it improves the connections and the processing. Interventions change brains, yes. But we do need more work to really say definitively, here’s study after study. We don’t have all of that yet.

Matt Renwick

I’m thinking about kids who have gone through a very isolated phonics intervention and come out as good word callers, but their comprehension hasn’t kept up. It seems like a similar issue — we want the bridging processes, we want to bridge these activities so that kids are fully growing as readers.

Kelly Cartwright

That brings up something for me, just thinking about reading difficulties. Dyslexia is one — those kids have word-reading difficulties. But the kids we typically call “word callers,” where they sound like great readers and fly under the radar because they sound awesome — the teacher hears them and thinks everything’s going well, and then the end-of-grade assessment comes and they can’t comprehend, and you’re like, what’s going on? Those children are children where executive skills show up as a difficulty. Kids with dyslexia also have executive skill difficulties, in different ways.

A recent meta-analysis by Rick Wagner and colleagues at the Florida Center for Reading Research looked at kids with great word-reading ability but surprisingly poor comprehension. Using the Simple View framework, they examined how much word recognition and language comprehension contribute to reading comprehension for these kids. Those two buckets of skills explain about half of the variance in reading comprehension, and what they concluded was: there’s got to be something else. We know that these students have executive skill difficulties — study after study shows it. This work matters for educators because, historically, we haven’t known what to do with those children. You know what to do when they can’t read the words. But when they can read the words and comprehension just isn’t happening — executive skill-infused instruction helps these kids in ways that typical instruction sometimes does not.

Matt Renwick

And this is an equity issue. You mentioned that low socioeconomic status has an influence on executive functioning as well. I mean, I’m thinking about schools and their intervention banks — they’re almost 100% either language comprehension or word recognition interventions. We are really potentially missing a lot of kids if we’re not thinking about executive functioning.

Kelly Cartwright

And you said “either-or,” and that points to some new work that’s coming out. I’ll point to one particular study — Austin and colleagues out of University of Texas at Austin. They did an intervention study with 4th and 5th graders with dyslexia. One condition had 45-minute intensive phonics lessons — a series of lessons with multisyllabic words — and students learned to decode those words to fluency. The other group, randomly assigned, had 25 minutes of explicit phonics instruction for the same series of lessons, but also 20 minutes of meaning-focused instruction — so they learned what the words meant and were working with the meanings as well as the decoding. And as you might expect, the students with the multi-component intervention — dealing with both the sounds and the meanings of the words — actually outperformed their peers who received phonics alone. It’s important to give kids the opportunities to deal with both at the same time.

Matt Renwick

What steps could an interventionist, or a classroom teacher, take to start redesigning core instruction and interventions with executive functions in mind? What might be a first good step or two?

Kelly Cartwright

One way that we approach instruction is to put an anchor chart on the board or have an organizational tool for the child on the desk. There are certain graphic organizers that can help take cognitive load for students, and using them in that way — helping kids put the thinking on the table — really supports kids with working memory difficulties.

You can also assess cognitive flexibility. I have an assessment — a Graphophonological Semantic Flexibility Assessment — that measures flexibility in thinking about letter sounds and meanings. It shows how well someone can shift back and forth between the word recognition piece and the meaning-focused piece. Kids and adults who are more flexible in considering both sounds and meanings of words are better comprehenders. Word-calling types of kids, kids with dyslexia, are not good at managing both. It’s freely accessible, so that’s another thing to think about.

Fluency is another area. The way we operationalize and measure fluency — we’re looking at rate. Rate just means they can decode automatically. Rate doesn’t tell us whether they’re also managing meaning at the same time. But prosody, or expressiveness, is harder to measure. We don’t always measure it, but that’s an indicator that they’re weaving meaning together with their decoding. The old school thinking is: you get more automatic with word recognition, and it makes mental space for comprehension. But that doesn’t mean you fill that space with comprehension if you don’t know how.

Matt Renwick

So oral reading fluency by itself may not be enough. It’s a screener, but we want to investigate further — especially for our right-to-read states where reading fluency is the primary measure.

Kelly Cartwright

There are options for examining prosody and expressiveness, but we don’t always do that because it’s just harder to assess. When I’m talking to students, I’ll talk about it as expressiveness, or using your “movie star voices” and putting the feeling in — but you have to know what the text means to put the feeling in the right way.

Matt Renwick

Let’s talk about a harder part of this conversation. You’ve expressed your position on the popular science of reading discourse. You note in the Active View of Reading article that popular SoR discourse, as currently practiced, may actually be masking complexity in ways that can hurt kids — particularly kids whose reading difficulties don’t fit the decoding-or-comprehension frame. The walls come up, egos get hurt, resistance arises. How do you communicate these critiques effectively, so that people are actually hearing them and are willing to be responsive?

Kelly Cartwright

It’s difficult, because educators have put so, so much time and effort into retooling and learning and understanding. But the science — just like any science — is ever-evolving, and we continue to learn more so we can meet the needs of all learners. If we all share that goal, then we just have to keep working toward figuring out why all learners aren’t growing the way we expect them to.

If we’re teaching word recognition over here and language comprehension over there in different parts of the school day, and not giving students the opportunity to put them together — to bridge them, as we know skilled readers need to do — then that doesn’t help them do what they need to do as skilled readers. We’re not equipping them in the same way. Like the Austin intervention study with 4th and 5th grade students with dyslexia: the ones who had the opportunity to deal with explicit, systematic phonics instruction and meaning did better on all of the outcome measures than the students who got the explicit systematic phonics instruction alone. If we look at word recognition and language comprehension, we’d say, “Oh, those kids need word recognition!” But the word recognition alone didn’t lift them up as much as helping them learn to do that alongside other things. We have to look at the data on the kids and what they need, and try to avoid compartmentalized thinking. We need more work on multi-component interventions.

Matt Renwick

Sharing the research and being a learner yourself. I’ve found similar results where I’ve shared a study, and the response is usually not defensive — it’s more like, “Okay, I’ll think about it,” and then they circle back around and I do see change in their practice. They may not admit that what they did in the past was not as effective, but I would agree: just share the research and be a learner. So, fun question to close things out. What are you reading right now?

Kelly Cartwright

I always have a fiction book on my bedside table — that’s my break at the end of the day. I may only read two sentences and fall asleep, as we do sometimes. A literacy professor friend recommended a book titled This Book Made Me Think of You by Libby Page. It’s great — I highly recommend it. I haven’t finished it yet, but it’s a great book.

Matt Renwick

I’m writing that down. I am reading Project Hail Mary. It just came out as a movie — science fiction. It’s one of those “we gotta save the planet” kind of books. I always try to read the book before I see the movie, because once I see the movie, I picture that person as the character.

Kelly Cartwright

You want to develop your own visual imagery — yes.

Matt Renwick

Yes. Debra, what are you reading?

Debra Crouch

I am reading a book called How We Grow Up by Matt Richtel. It’s all about adolescence and all the science and research coming out now about the brain. He’s got some really interesting things to say, and he’s just a fabulous writer — it doesn’t matter what his topic is, I will always read him.

Matt Renwick

I’ll put them in the notes. Well, thank you, Kelly, for being here. This was really informative. You read what someone writes and studies, but to hear them explain it is super helpful. I’m imagining your students really appreciate your instruction. Thank you for being here.

Kelly Cartwright

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit readbyexample.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

In this 45-minute presentation, I walk through five beliefs about the science of reading. The intent is to spark curiosity and encourage conversation.

Watch this presentation in tandem with my free eBook What School Leaders Need to Know About the Science of Reading. Use these resources as a starting point for holding much-needed discussions in your school around effective literacy instruction. If you would like support with facilitating this type of conversation, don't hesitate to get in touch with me here.

Take care,

Matt

P.S. Join me for the next professional learning event: a conversation with Dr. Kelly Cartwright, author of Executive Skills and Reading Comprehension: A Guide for Educators.

Full Transcript

What School Leaders Need to Know About the Science of Reading

Transcript of a presentation based on the free ebook resource available to download.

About Me

Hi, I’m Matt Renwick. I’m sharing this presentation: What School Leaders Need to Know About the Science of Reading, based on the free ebook resource available to download.

A little bit about myself. I’m a father of two teens and a husband to Jodi, who is also a teacher. My son is currently in college — whenever I visit, I try to find something fun for us to do together. My daughter is a junior in high school. I’m also a very part-time bookseller at an independent bookstore in my hometown. This is our dog, Millie. She works Sundays with me and is excellent at her job. And one of the things I most enjoy is visiting national parks. My most recent trip was to the Rocky Mountains for a mountain biking trip — though I’ll admit I’m not a big fan of heights, so I drove the rest of the party up to the trailhead and cheered them on from there.

Starting With a Book

I want to begin by referencing a book — not reading it aloud, but using it as a frame. It’s called Duck! Rabbit! by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld. You may have seen it. It uses an optical illusion — is it a duck or a rabbit? One person sees a duck; another sees a rabbit.

I’ve found this book especially useful for lowering the emotional temperature when we start talking about the science of reading. After reading it aloud, I typically invite a group to pause and reflect on these three questions:

• When we debate reading instruction, are we arguing about what’s best for kids — or about who’s right?

• Where in your work do you notice people looking at the same data and seeing completely different things?

• What would it take for you to genuinely consider a perspective on reading instruction that you’ve resisted?

If you’re watching this with a group, I’d encourage you to pause here and have a conversation.

How This Resource Got Started

The impetus for this presentation came from a colleague who was supporting a new administrator. This new administrator was already getting inundated with requests for evidence-based workbooks and heavily phonics-focused resources. She reached out and asked me to share my take on the science of reading with this administrator.

Here’s what I shared in an email:

First, reading instruction is complex. It’s not a simple equation you can plug resources into and expect to produce readers.

Second, science requires inquiry, not dogma. If a field is a true science, it will continue to conduct research, look at what’s working and what’s not, and reevaluate its philosophies in light of new evidence.

Third, multiple sciences of reading matter. We can’t just look at cognitive science. We also have to look at the science of engagement, the science of motivation, the science of efficacy, and the science of goal setting. These all matter.

Fourth, authentic texts should support skill development. A lot of resources strip away rich, relevant text in service of isolated skill practice — and we know that doesn’t work.

Fifth, programs do not equal responsive instruction. I’ve heard this called “solutionitis” — the idea that buying a program will automatically raise reading scores. We know that’s not the case.

I sent that email and waited a few weeks without hearing back. I eventually reached out to my colleague and learned the administrator had left the position. My first assumption was that the complexity of the topic had scared them off — but actually, they’d landed a dream job. Still, the experience got me thinking about all the new administrators coming into these roles without much background in this area. That’s what I want to address through both this presentation and the ebook.

My Beliefs — A Disclaimer

What follows is based on my current beliefs, grounded not just in my own experience but also in research and in conversations with colleagues who know more than I do in certain areas. These beliefs are evolving. I hold them with humility.

Belief 1: Teaching Reading Is Not Simple

There’s been a lot of conversation lately about the “simple view of reading.” I’d argue that teaching reading is anything but simple. It takes a long time to become highly skilled at teaching readers.

I recently came across a New York Times article titled “Kids Rarely Read Whole Books Anymore — Even in English Class.” I found it striking because when I taught fifth and sixth graders 25 years ago, we were reading multiple novels a year as a class. Then we moved away from that — toward anthology series, excerpts, comprehension questions, skill packets. I’m not saying whole-class novel study is a best practice across the board. But it’s worth asking: we introduced all these programs, and the result is that kids aren’t reading books anymore. How do we find the balance — where resources support instruction without becoming the curriculum? As Peter Afflerbach likes to say: How do we teach readers, not just reading?

The Simple View of Reading — from Gough and Tunmer — reads like an equation: decoding + language comprehension = reading. There’s research that supports this. The problem is that it’s incomplete. It doesn’t account for all the other ways kids become readers.

One of the biggest promoters of this simplified narrative has been Emily Hanford’s Sold a Story podcast. I counted the transcripts of the first eight episodes: phonics is mentioned 48 times, comprehension 10 times, and engagement 0 times. You can see how media shapes the public’s understanding of reading instruction — and how that narrative flows into legislation. Wisconsin’s Act 20, for example, is heavily phonics-focused. Some of the assessments it prioritizes, like oral reading fluency, can be useful indicators — but they don’t even measure comprehension.

An Active View of Reading — introduced by Duke and Cartwright — is what I promote instead. It still values word recognition and language comprehension, but adds important components: bridging processes (print concepts, fluency, vocabulary knowledge), and active self-regulation (motivation, engagement, executive functioning, strategy use). These aren’t extras — they’re prerequisites for students to become highly effective, engaged readers. Notably, this is a reader model, not a reading model. It recognizes that reading is also shaped by the texts we choose, the tasks we design, and sociocultural context — including diverse authorship, representation, and the absence of bias.

A practical implication: expand your assessments. As a principal and teacher, I learned that what we measure is what matters. Right-to-read legislation may mandate oral reading fluency screening, and that’s fine — but we can also look at attendance and behavior as root causes, consider whether language barriers rather than reading skill are the real challenge for some students, and include teacher observations and student voice. Think about what it means to take a fuller picture of a reader.

Belief 2: The Science Is Anything But Settled

I once posted this on Twitter:

“I don’t know who needs to hear this. Teaching a literacy curriculum program like a script, lesson by lesson, to all kids without considering their current interests, abilities, and needs is not scientific, drains the joy out of learning, and leads to inequities.”

It got significant engagement — many positive responses, but also real pushback. Someone at the higher ed level responded that teachers actually love the script because it gives them structure. I understand that perspective. But the insistence that the science is settled — and that it’s simply a matter of implementing the right program — is not only factually wrong; it’s intellectually closed.

Notice even the language: the science of reading. That definite article is essentialist, exclusive — like “the Olympic Games” or “The Ohio State University.” If you’re for the science of reading, you believe X. If you don’t, you’re outside the movement. People have been pushed to the margins of these communities simply for raising questions. That doesn’t feel very scientific.

Any professional field that considers itself a science goes through paradigm shifts — a concept introduced by Thomas Kuhn. Normal science gives way to anomalies, then to a model crisis, then to revolution, then to a new paradigm. Copernicus gave us one example. I believe reading instruction is stuck in the model crisis — cycling through the same debates without genuine revolution. We can’t change the whole profession, but we can make progress locally.

One approach I’ve found effective: use professional journal articles to facilitate conversation — not to prove a point, but to create space for educators to engage with ideas. Rachel Gabriel’s article “The Sciences of Reading Instruction” is a good one. It’s balanced, uses helpful metaphors, and raises productive questions.

Pair it with shared agreements (I use: stay engaged, experience discomfort, speak your truth, expect and accept non-closure) and a dialogue protocol — like the 4As — to make sure all voices get space, not just the loudest ones.

Belief 3: Good Intentions Can Lead to Inequitable Outcomes

Wisconsin’s Act 20 — our right-to-read law — was written in July 2023. Like many state laws of its kind, its language has been heavily influenced by certain think tanks, commercial providers, and media figures. It requires science-based early reading instruction, mandates universal screening and intervention systems, restricts certain curriculum approaches (no three-cueing in core reading curriculum starting in 2024–25), and requires professional development around structured literacy for K–3 teachers, principals, and reading specialists.

There are also third-grade promotion policies. In some states — Ohio, Florida, Mississippi — students who are not deemed proficient can be retained. Up to a third of an entire third-grade cohort in some cases. The long-term effects of that are deeply concerning.

I share this because I do believe most people involved in this legislation want kids to perform better. But good intentions can produce inequitable outcomes when:

• Single scores become students’ identities

• A student who scored at the 24th percentile versus the 25th percentile on an ORF assessment receives a personal reading plan and a letter home — without anyone asking whether they had a rough night, or whether they still see themselves as a strong reader

• We do things to students rather than with them, stripping away agency and voice

What I’ve observed as this movement plays out in schools: more scripted curricula, limits on responsive instruction, isolated skill practice, decontextualized text, and assessments that measure only what’s easy to measure. The downstream effects include the removal of voice and choice, classroom and school libraries collecting dust, independent reading squeezed out, teacher professionalism diminished, and authentic tasks like project-based learning deprioritized.

One counter-move: empower students to curate and organize their classroom or school library. This can be an ongoing project — lay the books out, let students decide the organization, identify gaps, and bring in culturally relevant titles. Use book order points and let kids choose. You’ll see more engagement, more reading, and you’ll free up some of your own time in the process.

Belief 4: One Science Is Dependent on Another

I was recently working with a team discussing teacher beliefs and their role in effective reading instruction. I posed this question: Imagine your principal removed all the core ELA resources from every classroom. Could your teachers still teach their students?

After a pause, the group said — yeah, we could.

So what would that look like?

And that’s when the real conversation started.

I raise this because critics of the science of reading movement have pointed out that proponents often can’t articulate a coherent theory. “Sequential and explicit direct instruction” is a process, not a theory. What’s the actual theory of action for teaching readers? That question matters.

One answer is an instructional model that allows teachers to be responsive. I’ve used Regie Routman’s Optimal Learning Model from Literacy Essentials in two schools as a principal. What I like about it is the arrows going both directions — we move between whole-class demonstration, shared practice, guided reading, and independent reading based on real-time, informal assessment. If kids aren’t ready, we go back. This takes significant professional development to build capacity, but it also inoculates schools against scripted program dependency.

The larger point is this: teaching readers well requires holding multiple sciences in tension simultaneously. Cognitive science — comprehension, decoding, fluency. Affective science — motivation, engagement, identity. Metacognitive science — goal setting, self-efficacy, agency. These don’t operate in isolation. When you weave them together — for example, using a classroom library project that builds both reading identity and cognitive engagement — you see real growth.

How to build this knowledge in your staff: As a principal, I had to build my own curriculum. I subscribed to several journals — I didn’t read every article, but I’d browse the table of contents, pull one article, read it with margin notes, and then summarize it in my Friday staff newsletter, linking to the original. I became an information distiller. That made it possible to walk into a classroom and have a research-grounded conversation with a teacher who held strong views — not as an expert telling them what’s right, but as a colleague asking questions. What did you think about that article on Orton-Gillingham? It becomes a much more objective, productive exchange.

Belief 5: You Can’t Buy the Science of Reading

This became real to me as a principal when a reading recovery interventionist was trying to get a first-grade student to come to his sessions. Reading Recovery is a highly evidence-based intervention — but she couldn’t get him to come. We suspected executive functioning challenges and a history of reading struggle that made being singled out feel threatening.

So she brought in a Venus flytrap. She told the student: if you come to my room, you get to feed it one fly.

Eventually, I walked in, and there was a pile of dead flies next to the plant. This student had started bringing his own food supply. The teacher had to explain that they couldn’t overfeed it. What started as external motivation — a Venus flytrap — gradually shifted toward internal, identity-forming reinforcement. She had the student, after reaching a benchmark, choose a few books he actually wanted to read. That was the celebration.

You can’t legislate this. You can’t buy it. It’s built over time through teachers developing deep knowledge — not just of reading, but of kids, of pedagogy, of motivation and engagement, of executive function, of the ways all these strands weave together into a reader’s identity. It takes sustained investment in self-study and collective growth.

This shakes out in school-level data as well. As a principal, I used to look at statewide scores and identify schools similar to mine demographically — Title I schools — that were doing better. Then I’d cold-call their principals and reading specialists and ask: what are you doing?

Four themes emerged:

• High expectations for every student. Inclusion was the default. Intervention was carefully integrated with Tier 1, not siloed.

• Sustained investment in teachers. Not cutting PD days. Not just buying a program and saying good luck. Actually coaching and developing teachers over time.

• Different programs, shared beliefs. Every school used something different — some used Units of Study, some used anthologies, one had developed their own materials. What they shared was a deep commitment to common beliefs and practices. One principal described respectfully but clearly inviting a teacher who wouldn’t get on board to find a better fit elsewhere.

• No superheroes. No one teacher stood out as exceptional. What they had was a willingness to have hard conversations and an evolving, collective commitment to what they knew to be effective.

One practical strategy: develop shared beliefs as a staff. I used Regie Routman’s Read, Write, Lead, which includes over 20 belief statements. Each year I’d put them in a Google form — agree or disagree. The first year, we had two shared beliefs. We celebrated. The next year, we focused our professional development on the areas of disagreement. The year after that, we had five. And we kept growing.

As a principal, I could then walk into classrooms and reference those shared commitments — affirming what I saw that was aligned, and asking honest questions when something was missing. The expectations were clear. The conversations were respectful.

You can also do this as a whole-group activity: post belief statements on chart paper, give staff colored dots, and ask them to place their dots on a spectrum from agree to disagree. Then have them talk about why. This builds not just shared beliefs but perspective-taking — recognizing that most people sit somewhere in the middle, and that the goal is to move together toward greater alignment over time.

Closing

I want to close with a student I remember from third grade — a kid who by second grade saw reading as something you do in school, not something you love. A capable reader, but not a joyful one.

In third grade, his teacher read aloud Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume. He related to Peter Hatcher — oldest of three boys, with a younger sibling who was like Fudge. He read and re-read that book until the pages were falling out of his copy. He loved it so much that he wrote some not-so-great fan fiction trying to emulate Judy Blume.

If you look closely at the bottom left of the fan fiction — you can see my name there.

That’s how I became a reader. Not through a script. I’m sure I learned some skills in kindergarten and first grade. But what unlocked reading for me — what helped me see myself as a reader and to love it — was one read-aloud by one teacher who knew her students and knew what would turn them on to reading.

Closing question: How do you choose to see your readers? Take a moment to think about how you’re seeing them now — and how you might choose to see them a little differently tomorrow.

Thank you for watching What School Leaders Need to Know About the Science of Reading. Please reach out if you have any questions. And thank you for your work, your leadership, and your readership.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit readbyexample.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Listen to my conversation with Penny Kittle, author of Micro Mentor Texts: Using Short Passages From Great Books to Teach Writer’s Craft (Scholastic, 2022). This will be our book club selection for January - March 2026. Join the chat below.

Full subscribers can also access the video recording of our conversation here. See a preview below.

Brief Bio

• Penny is a long time teacher at every level of education. She writes about her practice at https://substack.com/@pennykittle.

• She is the author of several books, including Write Beside Them and 180 Days (with Kelly Gallagher, with whom she also co-hosts digital discussions).

• Penny is also the chairman of the board for the Book Love Foundation, dedicated to providing “classroom libraries comprised of hundreds of books carefully chosen by the teachers to meet students where they are and lead them to the deep rewards of reading”. Check out the Book Love Foundation Podcast to learn more.

• When not in the classroom, Penny enjoys spending time with her grandchildren in New Hampshire.

Summary

In this conversation, Penny talk about a variety of topics, including:

• the importance of teachers being knowledgeable and able to problem solve,

• how to build students’ confidence as writers by showing them the process of writing that you as a teacher use, and

• simple strategies, such as prompt writing, that can lead to students engaged in deep conversations during book clubs.

Educators will walk away with a renewed sense of hope and agency in their own work with readers and writers.

What part of this conversation resonated the most with you? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Enjoyed this conversation? Restack and share this post to let others know!

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick: Hi, this is Matt Renwick, and welcome to Read by Example, where teachers are leaders and leaders know literacy. And I'm joined today by someone I've met, I think a year ago in Wisconsin, when she was here doing a training around micro-mentor texts, Penny Kittle, long-time teacher, professor, all things education, literacy. So welcome, Penny.Penny Kittle: Thanks, Matt. It's good to be on your podcast. I enjoyed meeting you that day, that was a lovely day.Matt Renwick: Yeah, it was fun. I don't think it was on my schedule, but I'm like, I'm gonna make this on my schedule, like, I wanna hear Penny talk. Just all the good things I've heard from Reggie Routman, and just what I read about you, so I was not disappointed. It was a great experience, and I know the teachers walked away that I was working with, like, this is good, like, we want... and I'm still working with those teachers, actually.Penny Kittle: Oh, that's cool.Matt Renwick: Yeah, we still talk about the micro-mentor text, and just giving them that foundation, that knowledge that I think they were craving. They were looking for just a resource, and you really give them some nice ideas to build their practice, so...Penny Kittle: That's good.Matt Renwick: So I have been reading, as this year before, Micro Mentor Text through Heinemann, Using Short Passages from Great Books to Teach Writer's Craft.Penny Kittle: From Scholastic, just so they would want to know that.Matt Renwick: Oh, I'm sorry. I told you I'd mess something up, Penny.Penny Kittle: We all do.Matt Renwick: Yeah, I'm not gonna edit it out, though, so... Thank you for correcting me. Yeah, Scholastic. And, yeah, terrific book, very practical, very wise. I'm like, I think I'm highlighting the footnotes as much as the content.Penny Kittle: Oh, that's so funny. I had so much fun writing that with footnotes.Matt Renwick: Just the asides were just really cool, some of the cool stories from, like, Don Graves and Don Murray. But your subtitle says it pretty well, but what is your definition of a mentor text? Because I hear that tossed around a lot. What makes a mentor text micro?Penny Kittle: Yeah, I mean, I think that I always talk to students about, we're mentors to the authors and their craft, right? The text is just that particular vehicle, and we're using it to say, what kind of decisions do writers make? Are they things that I want to try? Are things that I want to imitate, or are these things that will make my writing stronger? So anytime we're studying anything, we're looking at pieces of work in that genre. You know, it's the idea of authenticity in a writing classroom. We're making things that exist in the world, and here are some people who make those things, and then what do our essays or poems or whatever we're writing look like next to them. And so, micro-mentor texts came about because I do quick writing with kids day after day, and I realized how much of the time, if I used a passage from a book, and said, what do you think of this? What do you... and used it instead of the whole, that I could get them interested in reading a book, but I could also, in a few minutes, look at craft. It was almost... I think we put a magnifying glass on the cover of the book, because I said it's like, a micro-mentor text is small enough that you can just look at it carefully. And you can't do that with a whole book. So, that is the idea, is that we look at a passage, we think about how does it work, and we imitate it.Matt Renwick: I used to teach 5th and 6th grade, and I would do, like, book blurbs, and I would read a small passage from it to promote it, to recommend it, but what you're saying here is you almost got, like, a two-for-one, like you're sharing great literature, but you're also honing in on those specific craft moves that writers do.Penny Kittle: It is definitely the way to combine a book talk with a little bit of writing. And I, you know, I honestly feel like I've taught more grammar through Micro Mentor texts than anything else. Because I'm often, when I ask them, what do you notice? Talk to each other, and I wander the room, they'll bring things up. You know, what is that? Is that the colon or the semicolon? What's it, you know, if it doesn't come up naturally, I often don't have to say anything, but I like that oftentimes this organic... Okay, do you see how this sentence is structured? Why is this such a long sentence, kind of thing. A really natural way to make grammar a decision, not a right or wrong.Matt Renwick: Yeah, you're pulling the lines away from the craft of it, you know, you're giving kids access to a writer, to the author's intentions.Penny Kittle: Right. And their choices.Matt Renwick: Yeah. So, let me frame it this way. I think with the science of reading, a lot of folks are concerned with decoding, and how kids learn to read, and I see less about actually helping kids comprehend text. I mean, it's there, but it's not as prevalent. And there's like this double-edged sword where I think literacy leaders, teachers want to get away from the 3-cueing system, we want to support kids with being good decoders. But I think what happens is we're not teaching kids to like read text for real, like once kids know to decode a word, what's the purpose of actually reading the text? And so what I like about your book is, you're using real text, you know, kids are reading it for real reasons, and so I'm wondering what are the connections between micro-mentor texts and the science of reading that you've been thinking about.Penny Kittle: I mean, I think for me, in the idea of what I do with a micro-mentor text, I'm not decoding it, right? Unless they're stopping and asking me. But I usually read it to them. And so I'm a fluent model, or another student in the room is a fluent model. And then we're diving into this idea of the pattern, the rhythm, what makes it interesting? And so to me, when you're looking at written text and thinking about writing text, you need fluency. And fluency is one of the pieces of the science of reading. So sometimes I'll have kids with me that are reading two and three years below grade level. And fluency was something that we never worked on. They're still word callers in high school. And so getting them to read with more automaticity and faster is gonna help comprehension because they're gonna have more energy and, you know, more focus to spend that effort on it, rather than in word by word. So my, you know, in the idea of the science of reading, I think that we have to first realize in secondary there are a lot of skills and strategies that I teach on a daily basis and a lot of kids lack. And so we have to keep teaching them and letting kids know it's okay to ask. You know, what does that word say? What is it? What does it mean? And when they hear us talk about it, then they learn, right? So I just think that there's a great emphasis on that 20 to 30 minutes of core instruction that, of course, is gonna support skills and strategies. But that then have a whole child, right? We can't just do 20 minutes of skills and strategies and think we've taught the whole learner. We need to get to comprehension, which is the whole point. And we also need to write, because when we're composing and creating text, we're adding to that power. The science of reading includes writing. It's not just about decoding. And I think sometimes that's where people come to rest. But of course, as you know, Scarborough's Reading Rope has both sides. And word recognition isn't any good without language comprehension. We need both of those things.Matt Renwick: So you do have like a routine in your book that you talk about. So you read text to kids. I've seen that example of you reading The Outsiders for example. But then what do you do after reading that text? What's the typical steps that you recommend?Penny Kittle: Well, I mean, the steps that I do are pretty simple. And I think that almost at any level, from elementary through college, you can do these steps. So I read a passage, or a student reads a passage. Then I say, turn and talk. What do you notice? And I give them time. And I try not to be the one that tells them. I want them to point out things. So they're gonna point out things. And then I might say, so what do you notice about this sentence? Or what do you notice about this? So I might do a little nudging in that conversation. And then we imitate it. So after they've talked about it and noticed it, I say, so take that idea. Let me show you an example of how I did it. Here's how I imitated it. Now you do your own. So they do a quick write. Sometimes that's five minutes or ten minutes. Sometimes they write for the rest of the class. And then many of those quick writes could stay in their journal forever. But often what I'll say to kids is, this might be the kind of craft technique that you want to save and try in your next piece, or that you might wanna use in your revision of your piece. So I'm teaching them to think about these tools as transferable to other times we write. Or I might, in that week or the next week, say, so I want you to take one from this list and put it in the piece you're working on. And then come talk to me, and I'll tell you whether I think it's working. So that's the steps. Read it, talk about it, imitate it, try it out.Matt Renwick: Yeah, I think you have Reggie Routman's steps there. And you also have that conversation in there around, like, self-assessment for kids. How did that work? What made that successful? What are you gonna do going forward? That agency piece, which I think is crucial for kids to take it on themselves, that responsibility for learning and being better.Penny Kittle: Yeah, I think for secondary especially. You know, what I like about Reggie is that shared demonstration step is so essential, and I think it's what's missed most of the time. So in secondary education, my professors would give me an assignment, like, you're gonna write a 15-page paper on this, and they wouldn't tell me how. They would just tell me to go do it. And that is completely lacking in what I think is good instruction. So when I'm writing with kids, I show them what I'm doing. I think aloud, I share my rough drafts. I show them, I think this is where I'm stuck, and I'm gonna try this. And that modeling and talking about our thinking is essential. And then we get kids writing, but we gotta talk about what we're doing. We've gotta show. That's the idea of a mentor text. We're gonna show you how someone else did it.Matt Renwick: Yeah, I can't think back to any instance in high school or college where I had a professor or teacher actually write with me or in front of me, and I had papers. So, yeah, it's a blind spot.Penny Kittle: Huge. And it is one that, you know, you and I have probably spent hundreds of hours doing this. Right? Because you write, and you know the challenges, and you think about kids, and you go, I need to help with this.Matt Renwick: Right. So those examples in the book, are those your writing or student writing, or both?Penny Kittle: They're both.Matt Renwick: Okay. So I think that's a good way to kind of mix it up. You give kids that authentic example from someone who's actually learning, and then yours. Did kids ever give you a hard time? Like, you're a published author, like, of course you're gonna write well. Like, this is easy for you. Or did you share your struggles as a writer?Penny Kittle: I shared my struggles all the time. And, you know, my quickwrites are way messier than the kids'. You know, I often would have scratch-outs and things where they would have done it on a computer and deleted. But I would just start with paper so that I could show them, and so, no. I mean, the kids, you know, it was funny. When I started writing Write Beside Them, I didn't have a publisher yet. I'd been working on it for a couple of years. And I, one day in class, I had a girl who said, do you even write? I said, I've been writing a book for two years. She said, well, when's it coming out? I said, I don't have a publisher. And she said, so you're just like us. And I said, yeah, I'm just like you. I'm trying to figure out how to get my work published just like you are. And I was in NCTE, and I went to Heinemann and pitched them the idea. And I came back and said, I have a publisher. And so it was, you know, it's not like I was sitting on this huge legacy of, like, I'm a published author. I was just somebody trying to figure it out, you know? And I think kids respond to that. They respond to our humanity.Matt Renwick: Yeah, and just the vulnerability of sharing, like, I don't have this down either, like, I'm still trying to figure this out.Penny Kittle: Yeah.Matt Renwick: So, you talked about teaching 180. Are you still teaching? 'Cause I know in the book you mentioned...Penny Kittle: No, I'm not.Matt Renwick: Okay, so what, about seven years ago or so?Penny Kittle: I retired in 2018, and then I taught another couple of years, so probably six years ago. Yeah.Matt Renwick: Okay. So I remember you telling, like, a story, I think it was your first year teaching, where, like, you handed out a paper, and kids were, like, upset about the directions, or something like that. Do you remember that story?Penny Kittle: I probably told that story, but I don't remember exactly. Tell me more.Matt Renwick: I think it was just like, you had made some assumptions about, like, what kids would understand, and they didn't understand it, and they got frustrated, and you're like, okay, I need to be more clear about what I'm asking kids to do.Penny Kittle: Yeah, I mean, I think that's, you know, that happens all the time, right? We make assumptions about what kids know, and they don't. And so we have to be really clear. And I think that's one of the things that I learned early on was, I need to show them what I want. I can't just tell them. I have to show them. And that's, again, that idea of shared demonstration.Matt Renwick: So, circling back to your book, I know you have a chapter on nonfiction, which I appreciated because I think a lot of times when we talk about writing, we're talking about narrative or fiction. But you have a whole chapter on that. What are some key things you want teachers to know about teaching nonfiction writing?Penny Kittle: Well, I think that, you know, we read so much nonfiction now. We read articles, we read blogs, we read all kinds of things online. And so kids need to be able to write that way. And I think that one of the things that I tried to do in that chapter was to say, here are some patterns that nonfiction writers use. Here are some ways to organize your thinking. And I think that's really helpful for kids. Because sometimes they sit down to write an essay, and they don't know where to start. And if we can give them some structures, some patterns, then they have something to lean on. And that's what mentor texts do. They give us something to lean on. So, you know, I think that nonfiction is really important. And I think that we need to teach it more explicitly. Because it's not as intuitive as narrative for a lot of kids.Matt Renwick: Yeah, and I think, too, like, the connection to content areas. Like, if you're a science teacher or social studies teacher, like, you're writing nonfiction all the time. So having those examples, those mentor texts, I think is really helpful.Penny Kittle: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's where, you know, in secondary, we have this huge advantage. We have kids for different content areas. And if we could coordinate and say, okay, in science, you're gonna write a lab report. Let me show you some mentor texts for lab reports. In social studies, you're gonna write an argument. Let me show you some mentor texts for arguments. Like, if we could do that, we would be so much more effective. But we don't often do that. We don't often coordinate across content areas.Matt Renwick: Right. So, I have a question about, like, the role of technology in writing. Because I know, you know, we have AI now, and we have all these tools. And I'm curious, like, what's your take on that? Like, how do we teach kids to write in a world where AI can write for them?Penny Kittle: Yeah, I think that's a huge question. And I think that, you know, we have to be honest with kids about the fact that AI exists. And we have to be honest with them about the fact that it can write. But we also have to help them understand that AI can't think for them. AI can't have their ideas. AI can't have their experiences. And so, you know, I think that what we need to do is we need to help kids understand that their voice matters. Their ideas matter. And that's what we're trying to develop. We're trying to develop their voice. We're trying to develop their thinking. And AI can't do that. AI can generate text, but it can't generate their ideas. And so I think that's where we need to focus. We need to focus on helping kids find their voice, find their ideas, and then we can use AI as a tool. But it shouldn't be a replacement for thinking.Matt Renwick: Yeah, I like that distinction. Like, AI can help with the mechanics, but it can't help with the meaning-making.Penny Kittle: Right. Exactly. And I think that's where we need to be. We need to help kids understand that. And we need to help them understand that, you know, the best writing comes from thinking. And AI doesn't think. It generates. And there's a big difference.Matt Renwick: So, thinking about your work, you know, you've been doing this for a long time. You've written several books. You have the Book Love Foundation. What's next for you? Like, what are you working on now?Penny Kittle: Well, I'm working on a few different things. I'm working on a book about leadership with a colleague. And I'm also working on some online courses for teachers. And I'm doing a lot of speaking. So I'm traveling a lot and talking to teachers. And I'm also working on my Substack. So I'm writing there. And I'm just trying to stay connected to teachers and stay connected to the work. Because I think that's really important. I don't want to lose touch with what's happening in classrooms. And so I'm trying to stay as connected as I can.Matt Renwick: That's great. And I think, you know, your Substack has been really helpful. I've been reading it. And I think it's a great way to stay connected to teachers and to share ideas. So, I appreciate that.Penny Kittle: Thanks. Yeah, I think it's been fun. I think it's a good way to just keep the conversation going.Matt Renwick: So, one more question about mentor texts. How do you find them? Like, where do you look for good mentor texts? Because I think sometimes teachers are like, I don't know where to start. Like, how do I find good examples?Penny Kittle: Well, I mean, I think that the first place you look is in what you're reading. So if you're reading, and you come across something that you think is really well-written, you save it. And I have, you know, I have a Google Doc that I've been adding to for years. And it's just a collection of passages that I think are really interesting. And I don't even know if I'll ever use all of them. But I save them. And then when I'm teaching, I go back and I look at that document. And I say, okay, what fits what I'm trying to teach right now? And so I think that's the first place. Just read a lot. And when you come across something that you think is really well-written, save it. And then the other place is just to look at books that are popular with kids. So, you know, what are kids reading? What are they excited about? And then you can pull passages from those books. And that's a great way to get kids interested in reading more. Because you're using books that they're already interested in.Matt Renwick: Yeah, I think that's a great strategy. And I think, too, like, you can also look at, like, articles and essays and things like that. Like, it doesn't have to just be fiction. It can be nonfiction, too.Penny Kittle: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's where, you know, I use a lot of articles. I use a lot of essays. I use a lot of different kinds of texts. Because I want kids to see that there are lots of different ways to write. And there are lots of different purposes for writing. And so, yeah, I think that's really important.Matt Renwick: So, in your Google Doc, do you organize it in any particular way? Or is it just kind of a running list?Penny Kittle: It's just a running list. I mean, I should probably organize it better. But it's just a running list. And I copied a bunch of those, because they're very interesting. They're often patterns of language and interesting phrasing that I'm looking for, and I don't even know how many of those I would use if I were teaching right now, but that's where I collect them.Matt Renwick: Yeah, I'm sure they get in your brain, and then they show up somewhere else when you're writing and thinking.Penny Kittle: Right.Matt Renwick: I noticed your awesome library in the background. I was supposed to ask you about your wavy bookshelf, but I don't see it. That must be somewhere else.Penny Kittle: Oh yeah, that's in a different room, and honestly, it's because it was on this wall. My desk was turned this way, and I kept banging it with the back of my head, because it sticks out from the wall like a foot. I was like, I can't do this anymore. So it's gone.Matt Renwick: Oh, darn it.Penny Kittle: Yeah.Matt Renwick: But you had an interesting metaphor, I think in that same post I mentioned before, or just a visual, a library without books. So, to the point you're making was, we don't have writers, we don't have readers, and so making that connection for kids, and stressing the importance of building writers. So, just to kind of close things out, what classroom conditions are essential to help kids write for real, you know, write without rules, Matt De La Pena said in the forward to your book, and then writing for life. What are some essential classroom conditions? So you mentioned before, shared demonstration, that's a Heli-Dion.Penny Kittle: Yeah, yeah, and I think so much about teachers that are in classrooms right now, where they have a scripted curriculum, and I'm really connected to that idea that it demonstrates a lack of trust of teachers, and the idea that I was thinking today, because I was gonna be late to a doctor's appointment, and I was super annoyed with my husband that we were gonna be late, and I was watching every minute to be sure I could get there, and then I thought about the crowd that would be at the front door to the school that was always late. And I thought, what are the conditions that would make kids be like, I can't be late, I gotta get to first period? So, I think that it goes back to those pillars of engagement, right? We talk about this. So there's a science to engagement. We talked about the science of reading, but the science of engagement says that kids will use the skills and strategies we teach with greater persistence and effort when they're engaged. And then they learn more, right? Greater persistence and effort. So for me, it has to be that. So they need to write for real purposes and real audiences, and they need the conditions that say what they have to say matter, right? They need to be in writing groups so that they get more feedback than just mine. They're writing for, you know, and they'll, in a group of 3 or 4 other kids, often they may not want to at the start, but they become kids who share their writing. And when you have to read your writing to someone, or a part of your writing, and ask for help, you hear it differently. Those are essential conditions. We need lots of books, because the more you read, the better you write. That's just a simple formula. Wait, I wrote them down, what else did I put up here? Oh, relationships. So, it's not just the teacher, but the teacher has to have a relationship with reading and writing that is positive, and that knows its power, as well as its challenges, because I think when I first got my secondary credential, what was demonstrated in all my coursework was that I need to become an expert on texts. And that isn't what we need to be expert in. We need to be expert in kids and motivation, and learning how to talk to a kid that doesn't want to talk to you about what they're working on in a way that you can help them. We need to be really superb listeners, and so the conditions are, we have to be able to set up a flow within a class period so that I have time to meet with as many kids as I can, both as readers and as writers, and I need to have us write every day. I'm really into volume, right? We read every day, we write every day, we work on revision almost every day. So that the conditions are a kind of a mutual agreement that we're here to work. They have a playlist for every class, they choose it. Like, the cowboy one was always killing me off, but the boys in this one class, Outdoor Writing, all wanted this, you know, very cowboy-centered playlist, but that stuff helps them feel like it's their space, too. And I think that the teachers who, you know, there are teachers that I worked with every year who volunteered for everything, who were at every dance, and you know, they're just giving 110% to the school and the culture of the school. I love that, but they also have to be that in their classroom, so that their content comes alive and feels meaningful.Matt Renwick: Yeah. Trust the kids, trust themselves, yeah.Penny Kittle: It's so much about trust.Matt Renwick: Yeah. Well, this has been great, Penny. You've got your substack. What is the URL again? Is it...Penny Kittle: You mean my on Substack, I'm just Penny Kittle.Matt Renwick: Penny Kittle, okay.Penny Kittle: Yeah.Matt Renwick: And then you have the Book Love Foundation. Yep. Several resources, which I'll link in the notes.Penny Kittle: I have a YouTube channel that has all my interviews with Kelly Gallagher, and the different authors, and we're putting up... we just released a podcast today called The Moves Leaders Make. It's all about leaders we're interviewing, and those are on Apple, and we actually have about 4 or 5 seasons of Book Love podcasts on there, and there's a lot of places that you can find out more.Matt Renwick: Cool. Well, thanks, Penny, for being here, and good luck with your time, and your time to yourself. So, thank you for being here.Penny Kittle: Thanks so much, Matt.

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In this episode of “Read by Example,” I sat down with educators and authors Joe Schmidt and Nichelle Pinkney to discuss their influential book, Civil Discourse: Classroom Conversations for Stronger Communities(Corwin, 2022). They explore the urgent need for structured, empathetic dialogue in K-12 classrooms, especially in today’s politically charged environment. Drawing from their extensive backgrounds in social studies education and leadership, Joe and Nichelle provide practical frameworks and strategies for teachers to foster productive conversations, empower student voices, and build stronger, more understanding classroom communities.

Key topics discussed include:

• The four foundational building blocks of civil discourse: Courage, Understanding, Belonging, and Empathy.

• The crucial difference between “contentious” and “controversial” topics.

• Strategies for moving classroom activities from debate to more inclusive discussions and dialogues.

• The importance of grounding student opinions in evidence-based sources and curated text sets.

• Practical advice for teachers on how to prepare for difficult conversations and build a support system within their school.

• How administrators can create a supportive “sandbox” for teachers and the importance of transparent communication with parents and the community.

After listening to this episode, you will walk away with a greater appreciation for supporting student conversations in every classroom.

Take care,

Matt

P.S. Next week Thursday, 5:30pm CST, I speak with Jen Schwanke, author of Trusted (ASCD, 2025). Full subscribers can join us for this professional conversation!

Official Transcript

Matt Renwick: Welcome to Read by Example, where teachers are leaders, and leaders know literacy. I am joined by two colleagues and educators who I have looked forward to speaking with ever since I read their book, Civil Discourse: Classroom Conversations for Stronger Communities. Welcome, Joe Schmidt and Nichelle Pinkney.

Joe Schmidt: Thanks for having us, Matt.

Matt Renwick: You were both formerly high school classroom teachers and are now in leadership roles. Nichelle and Joe, would you share a little bit about your backgrounds?

Nichelle Pinkney: Hi, I’m Nichelle Pinkney. I’m entering my 21st year of education. It’s hard to say out loud. I started teaching elementary for a year or two, then decided I wasn’t ready for that season and went to high school. I went from first graders to 12th graders and started teaching government and economics, then moved into AP Government and Econ. I’ve pretty much taught everything at the high school level.

A few years ago, I wanted to help other teachers learn what I had, so I became an instructional coach at the middle school level. Now, I’m a curriculum director in my district, overseeing social studies and world languages, curriculum, professional learning, and teacher development. I’m involved in my state organizations, and I love social studies and students learning about the world we live in.

Matt Renwick: And you were just elected president of that organization?

Nichelle Pinkney: Yes, I’m president-elect of the Texas Social Studies Leadership Association, starting in February. I’m super excited because my dream has always been to fight for social studies, and I’ll get to do that through work with legislation.

Matt Renwick: Well, congratulations. Joe?

Joe Schmidt: I started as a high school teacher in rural Wisconsin. My first year was 9th grade, my second was 10th, and my third was 11th. I had one student seven times across our block schedule in those three courses. I left the classroom after nine years to become Madison, Wisconsin’s first Social Studies Curriculum Coordinator. I was also the state specialist for Maine, and since then, I’ve worked for a couple of national non-profits.

I’m currently the president-elect of the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) and will become president on July 1st, 2026, three days before America turns 250. I will be the lead host for the Chicago conference in 2026. This December, NCSS will also have a conference in Washington, D.C. (link to conference here). NCSS is the largest professional organization for social studies educators, with more than 8,000 members.

I went from being a classroom teacher where people said, “You have good ideas,” and I felt like I was just making it up, to a district coordinator, to the state level, always feeling that same way. That’s why I say teachers are humble heroes; it’s very rare for them to toot their own horn. I do more than 100 trainings with over 2,000 teachers a year, and almost without fail, someone will share something brilliant they “just made up.” Anytime I can help teachers celebrate and recognize their own expertise is a good day. That’s what has driven me: finding different venues to not only support teachers but celebrate them.

Matt Renwick: We have two knowledgeable individuals in the social studies realm here, and I’m honored. As a former principal, I learned that there’s so much knowledge in every classroom. It’s not about improvement but about surfacing that expertise so everyone can benefit. It’s great you’re in positions to connect colleagues.

I had your book for a couple of years after we did a statewide book study on it. I’ll be honest, I didn’t read it until I went to the Sphere Summit through the Cato Institute. I brought the book, and it connected perfectly with the sessions. I was back in my hotel room reading it while everyone else was out. It just really clicked for me. It feels like your book is so needed right now, especially as I see teachers self-censoring and avoiding certain books because they don’t want to deal with the politics or conflict.

I’ll start with how you frame your book around four building blocks of civil discourse: Courage, Understanding, Belonging, and Empathy. Can you say a little more about how you came to those four guiding principles?

Nichelle Pinkney: I’m an acronym junkie. Joe is very intelligent, and he’ll explain things, and I’ll say, “Okay, it’s got to be simplified.” We were on a call with our author mentor, Julie Stern, and I was just writing down words, trying to make it simpler. We knew all these components had to be there, but it had to click.

It was broken down this way because a lot was going on when we were writing this during COVID. We were at home—I think we were just stir-crazy. But seriously, the ideas of courage and understanding were huge. I think understanding and belongingness are huge because you can’t have the necessary conversations in our world today without them. And the courage part—as you said, you were at the conference, you had the book, and you felt a need for it. That was courageous. Then, instead of going out, you dug deeper into the book. You took the courage to build understanding, and now you’re applying the other pieces—belongingness and empathy—so these things can happen in a bigger venue.

Matt Renwick: So it’s like a simple first step. You don’t have to start by talking about immigration on day one. Maybe the first step is just to get your book or another resource to become more knowledgeable.

Joe Schmidt: Part of the impetus for the book was that as COVID hit, I was doing a lot of virtual sessions. People kept asking for sessions on what is now civil discourse. We were heading into the 2020 election, and people would say, “I told my department not to talk about the election; it’s too contentious.” I thought, “They’re not going to get this in math class.” We can’t just abdicate our responsibility.

But we had to acknowledge that this isn’t easy. It’s important, but it’s not easy. We always start there. We know this is hard, but it is worth it. We don’t want people to think there’s a judgment if you’re not doing it. The point is, let’s just do it. It’s hard, and we’re not going to be perfect at it. We made mistakes. But don’t just jump in on day one with the most controversial topics. That’s how you end up on the news.

That takes you through the progression: Is there understanding? Is everyone on the same page? Does everyone feel like they belong? Otherwise, you can’t have the conversation. My favorite, which is often overlooked, is what we put under empathy: students need to know that we can disagree and still be friends. This is not a zero-sum game. If I could get every kid to understand that their classmates, people online, and people in their communities are all human beings trying to do their best, that would be the greatest gift we could give society.

Matt Renwick: I’m thinking about schools that have banned cell phones. What are you going to do in the classroom in the meantime? How are you changing instruction? The kids want to talk about these topics, but they need structure and support. You mentioned “controversial,” and I liked how you differentiated it from “contentious.” What’s the difference?

Joe Schmidt: I was doing a presentation and realized the words felt different. A woman told me to look at the Latin sub-roots. The root of “controversial” is “quarrelsome,” which to me is fighting. But the root of “contentious” means “to strive,” which I believe is a striving for understanding. We can either be quarrelsome or strive for understanding.

Even if the definitions don’t feel different, I’ve never met someone who wants a controversy in their classroom. We strive to have contentious conversations. I’ve had to get on a soapbox recently to say that social studies is not controversial. Teaching history is not controversial. Is it contentious? Do people disagree? Yes, absolutely. That goes back to courage—this isn’t easy. But teaching this is not controversial, and I don’t ever want a teacher to have to apologize for teaching.

Nichelle Pinkney: I agree. The minute you say, “We’re going to talk about something controversial,” everybody’s bodies shift. Adults do it. Their mannerisms shift. What happens with students? History is contentious across the world; that doesn’t make it bad. We try to correct things throughout the process—not by erasing history, but through our actions. Throughout history, we’ve always strived to do better. We made a decision, realized it wasn’t the best, so we amended it. A Supreme Court decision was wrong, so we changed it. We are always striving to do better, not by erasing the past, but by learning from it.

Matt Renwick: That language was helpful for me, as was differentiating between “versus” and “or.” Those little shifts in language reminded me of the book Choice Words by Peter Johnston.

Joe Schmidt: I remember in the early days, if you had told me I was about to write 600 words on the difference between “versus” and “or,” I would have never believed you. But language does matter, and we need to be reminded of that.

Matt Renwick: It seemed to support a move away from a winner-take-all debate to a non-judgmental discussion of alternatives. Did you notice kids claiming more autonomy in their opinions when you shifted your language?

Joe Schmidt: The big thing is the difference between dialogue, discussion, and debate. I know I defaulted to debate as a teacher, but that’s rarely how the world works. A key part of debate is rebutting the other side. But a discussion is an acknowledgment of different views. If we’re deciding where to go for dinner and Nichelle wants Italian, I don’t lose anything as a human being if we go with her choice. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll get my choice of pizza.

That is freeing for students. It’s okay to have a different opinion—with the disclaimer that we’re still not being racist, sexist, or homophobic. If you like red and I like blue, that’s fine. If you want Italian and I want tacos, that’s also fine. Just because I didn’t get my way doesn’t mean I lost anything. I think that helps them be more authentic.

Nichelle Pinkney: I moved away from debates in my class around the 2012 election. It was getting so heated. If I were honest with myself, I wasn’t preparing students for what a debate should look like. What they see as a debate is completely different from what you would see in The Great Debaters or an actual Lincoln-Douglas debate. This generation sees a lot, but they don’t see what a debate should be.

Matt Renwick: Exactly. From what I remember, debates in the 1800s weren’t about calling each other out. It was more like a discussion where people would concede points. It seems things have changed.

Joe Schmidt: Kids have a perception of what a debate is. If you say you’re having one, they think they know what it looks like. They want the zinger, the viral moment, the mic drop. That’s why we try to move them toward discussion. There is a place for debates, but not for highly contentious, emotional topics where students expect you to pick a winner. I’m not going to debate someone’s identity. I don’t want to put a student in a position where they feel like a part of them “lost.”

If you’re going to ask a question for discussion in class, you need to ask one where you want a split opinion—50-50 or even 30-40-30. Don’t ask a question that puts a kid in the position of defending something you’re uncomfortable with. If the question puts fundamental values at risk, ask a different question.

Matt Renwick: So, how do you help kids separate their identities from their beliefs? The goal isn’t to change minds but to broaden perspectives.

Nichelle Pinkney: In the book, we talk about preparing students. I always start by saying that everyone has a bias, whether we want to agree with it or not. Our biases are preconceived based on where we grew up, the food we eat, the music we listen to, and so on. I used to tell my students to “check those biases at the door,” which means we’re not going to judge people or put them in a box.

From there, everything was rooted in research and sources. When students responded, it was always grounded in resources. Before sites existed that show where news sources fall on the political spectrum, I had to make sure I provided materials showing different sides. I grew up in a small town in Texas and had a very limited view until I went to college in North Carolina, where my roommate was from Connecticut. She had seen a world I had never seen. So, in my classroom, I made sure students could see other sides, because in some environments, you won’t get that. We used a thinking routine: “At first, I think this because I don’t know any better. But now that I see all these different sides, I may still think the same thing, but at least I’m informed.”

Matt Renwick: That sounds like you created awareness for the kids in a natural way about how our environment and culture shape our beliefs.

Joe Schmidt: I would work very hard to curate a text set with multiple perspectives using primary sources or different news articles. The shorthand with students was, “If you can’t point at it, it’s probably not evidence.” I curated the set for you; don’t ignore the ten pages of reading and then tell me what your uncle said on Facebook. You build that habit, and kids will start to reinforce it with each other. In a Socratic seminar, you start by saying, “I’m on page 3, line 17,” and give everyone a second to get there.

Using structures like sentence stems can keep conversations from boiling over. If you want students to speak in a certain way, give them the stems and hold them accountable. Kids are the best body-language readers. If they see you’re not consistent with the rules for everyone, the structure falls apart. If you’re consistent, it may feel rigid, but it provides the structure kids need to be successful.

Matt Renwick: You wrote in the book that a classroom’s strength lies in its ability to handle disagreements without breaking bonds. That speaks to a shared sense of humanity. You also challenge the reader: when you are fearful of teaching a topic, who are you thinking about? For me, it was a former school board where a few people were out to get teachers. How can leaders help teachers reclaim their agency to handle criticism when they bring in contentious topics?

Joe Schmidt: That question is from Dan Krutka. Often, when we say “my kids aren’t ready for that,” it’s really “I don’t want to deal with the outside factors.” I remind teachers they have to stay in the sandbox—the legal rulings are consistent that you can’t indoctrinate students. But then I tell administrators, you build the sandbox. If you want teachers doing this work, you need to support them.

I was working with a district where people wanted a middle school teacher fired for teaching current events. I told the administration they needed to release a statement supporting the teacher. That’s the job. But I know some administrators don’t want to deal with the pressure. So if your principal won’t support you, find someone who will—an assistant principal, a department chair, a guidance counselor. Don’t give up your agency. Think about this ahead of time. Don’t wait until all hell breaks loose to figure out your support system. Practice it like a fire drill, so when a situation arises, you are responding, not reacting.

Matt Renwick: The book is very thorough. You call that prep “Day Zero Planning.”

Nichelle Pinkney: As an administrator, I support my 250 teachers 100%, and they know that from day one. That’s our role; it’s what we signed up for. I can be that voice. I can say, “It’s in the standards,” or “It’s what happened.” Here in Texas, our standards are specific, and I can point directly to them.

Another big thing is that out of fear, we’ve closed our classroom doors. We need to change the narrative. The narrative is that teachers are doing something wrong. I say be transparent. I over-communicated with parents to the point where they’d say, “Oh my god, another email from Ms. Pinkney.” I would tell them, “In this unit, we’re going to talk about the principles of government. Here’s what they are. Please ask your child about them when they get home.” Very few parents visited, but they all knew what was happening. We have a loud group saying one thing, and we get quiet. I say we need to be loud. We need to put it out there and say, “This is what we’re doing. I would love for you to come see it.” Get your administrator involved. Invite everyone. Create an open-door policy so everyone knows what’s happening in your room.

Matt Renwick: So, communicate, use the standards, and find leaders who will back you up. That’s all great advice. I think we’re out of time, but I will just say that this is a social studies book, yes, but it’s also a literacy book. It’s a book for any K-12 classroom. It connects so well to the speaking and listening standards that everyone should be teaching.

Again, the book is Civil Discourse: Classroom Conversations for Stronger Communities. I’m here with Joe Schmidt and Nichelle Pinkney. Thank you so much for joining me. Good luck with your school years.

Joe Schmidt: Thank you, Matt.

Nichelle Pinkney: Thank you, Matt.

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In this video demonstration, I share key journaling tools - simple tracking tools and intentions for success - to start my month. The ultimate goal is improving outcomes for teachers and students. That includes a sense of well-being, not just achievement. When others feel supported and successful, so do I as a coach and a leader. A written explanation is also available below if you prefer to read vs. watch.

Page 1: Monthly Timeline

This idea comes from The Bullet Journal Methodby Ryder Carroll. It is a calendar for the month in a list format. On the first page of the month in a dot journal, I document one thing I did each day that stood out to me. For example, yesterday (Monday, September 1st, or “1M”), I took a tour of a stone cottage with my family with a realtor.

It’s not a calendar; I don’t typically add planned events ahead of time unless they are important. That’s what my digital calendar is for. The function of the timeline comes after you add your activities. It’s a tool for reflection. During weekly and monthly reviews (which I will share more about next month), I examine how I am spending my time and make changes if I am not happy with my actions.

One way to facilitate this reflection is to separate the monthly timeline into two columns: personal and professional. This helps me quickly assess where I am giving more of my attention and time: to work or to personal commitments. If you are limited on space in your journal, you can use a highlighting system to differentiate between the two, such as green for personal.

Finally, I like to track my key habits on the side of the timeline. For me right now, that is writing (W), exercise (E), and budget ($). I put a dot under each column. Again, a simple and visual way to track the positive habits I am trying to build.

Page 2: Monthly Intentions

I use the word “intention” purposefully. In the past, I have titled this page “goals”. The problem with this language, at least for me, is that my goals aren’t always in my zone of control. For example, I would like to hit a certain weight. While that is a great goal, a lot of factors and influences go into making that happen: watching my diet, exercising, and eating healthy foods.

So, intentions are not the same as goals, and they are more than just projects. They cannot be accomplished with one or a couple of steps. They exist somewhere above both goals and projects. More importantly, they are an aspiration for what I want to accomplish this month. It’s easy to fall into the “goal/project” list. For instance, in my current set of intentions (also divided by personal and professional), I initially listed “clean out attic” and “set up yearlong P.D. schedule”. These are projects. I revised them with clearer intentions: “Create the start of a studio space for art, storage, etc.” and “Provide high-quality learning experiences for colleagues”. They are more motivating and open. Projects and goals can exist within them.

Note: I don’t have more than a handful of intentions listed at any one time. I have dozens of projects saved in a task management app (Todoist). What I want to accomplish this month, I migrate over to my intentions page for the month. I aim to have no more than ten (10) intentions, an idea that comes from Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. It’s a good constraint: just the right amount of options to choose from in the moment. We experience decision fatigue and procrastinate when we have too many options, for example, 20 different kinds of ketchup at the grocery store.

From there, my daily log should at least partially reflect these intentions. In the example below, from yesterday, I documented a tour my wife and I took of a stone cottage in our small city. We are exploring the idea of downsizing. This wasn’t part of our plan when I created my intentions list. Seeing that it is important to us, I will add it. Not as something to accomplish to prioritize. That means it will get more of my attention than other, lesser requests for my attention.

Likewise, today (9.2.T), I noted that I wanted to capture insights from my interactions with coaches and leaders during school visits. So I created a custom collection on the next page as a simple tool for this purpose. This became another intention on my monthly list.

When this coaching log is complete, I can review all the insights and determine what the common needs are with clients. I may use A.I. to help me with this analysis (I masked the names). While technology is helpful in this way, I find paper and pen to be most beneficial for seeing everything all at once. Digital tools have a way of hiding my commitments - out of sight, out of mind.

Next month (October), I will share more about daily logs, as well as how to start a brand new notebook! Let me know what questions come up for you from this post in the comments. Paid subscribers can also join me for an “Empower Hour” on Thursday, September 25 at 4:00pm CST to discuss these topics in real time. Register below.

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Matt speaks with Regie Routman, longtime educator and author of many books, including The Heart-Centered Teacher, for the inaugural episode of Literacy Unscripted. This podcast series challenges traditional approaches to literacy teaching and leadership.

In this professional conversation, Regie and Matt explore the meaning of belonging in schools, the impact of a single teacher, and the crucial difference between curriculum as a conversation versus a rigid script. Listeners will walk away with an appreciation for creating joyful and empowering learning environments for every student.

Key Discussion Points:

• The Power of Belonging: Regie and Matt share personal, resonant stories about the first time they felt truly seen and valued by a teacher, highlighting how these moments can alter a person's life trajectory.

Check out Regie’s latest article for MiddleWeb on belonging in schools here.

• Beyond the Script: They advocate for professional knowledge over prescriptive curriculum, likening skilled teaching to a chef who can create a masterpiece with limited ingredients by mastering the basics, rather than simply following a recipe.

• Celebrating All Strengths: The conversation emphasizes the importance of seeing every individual—from students to bus drivers and cafeteria workers—as a valuable contributor with unique gifts to share, fostering a sense of shared ownership and equity within the school community.

• Trust and Autonomy: They discuss the transformative power of giving students genuine agency, citing a real-world example of students managing their school library, which led to increased literacy, empathy, and leadership skills.

Read here for more information about the school library book budget project.

Take care,

Matt

P.S. Join other school leaders and me this October for the first cohort of my new course based on my book Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H. Over four weeks, you will learn key strategies and skills for engaging in coaching conversations that lead to lasting schoolwide literacy excellence. Join the waitlist today to secure your spot for this fall.

Official Transcript

Matt: Welcome to Read by Example. This is a special series called "Literacy Unscripted." So, I'm talking to literacy experts in the field who have pushed back on a prescriptive approach to literacy instruction. And it's very appropriate that my first conversation is with Regie Routman, who I've spoken with multiple times—a colleague, a good friend, just the person I go to whenever I have a question in this regard. So, welcome, Regie.

Regie: Thank you, Matt. It's great to have a conversation with you and not have it be about a technology problem.

Matt: Always happy to help there, too. But you've got an article with MiddleWeb about building a culture of belonging, and I just thought it was very appropriate for this time of year. If I were still a principal, you know, I'm trying to motivate my staff or to help staff kind of take a step back and think about what's really important. I'm looking at one of your articles that you've written in the past. And this one is also so good around belonging in schools. And we were chatting before we hit record about when the first time we felt a sense of belonging in our educational experience. And I thought your story resonated with me. So if you don't mind sharing, Regie.

Regie: You know, I don't. It's a great question, actually, because I think when I think back about when did I feel a sense of belonging, it wasn't until I was an adult and I had attended an International Reading Association conference. I'll tell that story. But when I was went through the grades, I never thought that I was had any kind of special talent. I don't remember forming a close relationship with any teacher K-12 or even in college. Part of that, I think, was that I didn't grow up in an intellectual atmosphere. And my parents were fine with me just going to college and finding a husband. And I did really well in that regard, but they weren't really interested in what I was going to do with my mind. And I hadn't thought that much about it. You and I are very different generations, and you know, my mother didn't work. And so they just thought, well, you know, you'll find a nice husband and you'll be a good cook and a good mother. And I didn't have anybody in... I never had a teacher who said, "You can be more than that," which I think is so important. I never felt even in high school that I belonged with any particular group. I didn't mind. I wasn't a member of the popular club, but I think I didn't know that I was missing that until I went to my first International Reading Association meeting, which was after I was married and had two children. And the only reason I was able to go—I was working as a reading specialist in Shaker Heights, Ohio—was that every seven years they sent the reading specialist, but my term came up because I couldn't have afforded to go.

And I think the thing that was shocking, because I had never been to a national conference or even a local conference, was seeing women intellectually challenged. And I met Marie Clay and seeing what was going on across the world. It was just eye-opening for me. And so I think that was the first time that I felt a sense of belonging. Not initially, because I didn't feel that I was any part of that, but I was so inspired. And I was inspired by leaders. I just have this picture here. This was the person that made me feel that I could belong.

Regie: So he was the father of shared book experience. He at one time was in charge of Scholastic Australia, and he told me that he never should have been in charge of a publishing company because he said he ran them into the ground. I mean, he was great. He was a brilliant literacy professor, and he was just such a kind person. And he saw something in me. He showed up. When I was speaking about belonging, I knew I had to get back to the International Reading Association. I was so stimulated by the people that I met and what was happening all over the world that I didn't have an idea about. I'd been reading about it, but to actually meet the people that were, like Don Holdaway, like Marie Clay, that were making things happen, and that they were so forthcoming and treated me as an equal. And I knew the only way I could get back to the conference, and I was really feeling this sense of, "I want to be part of this," was to get my district to send me. And the only way that that would happen is if I wrote a proposal, which is what I did and got accepted. It took two years. I didn't know how to write a proposal because that's its own genre, right? And so then when I didn't make it, then the next year, and Don Holdaway showed up at my session. I couldn't believe it. He said, "I've come to learn from you." And I'm like, "What are you doing here? I don't know anything yet." And we became close friends, and he became my most important mentor. And I think that was because he wasn't just about literacy. He was all about bringing joy into learning. And nobody was really talking about that then. We're going back many, many years, bringing joy into learning and also the importance of the social-emotional. It was all together. He was teaching in a one-room schoolhouse for kids that were not learning to read well. And he had like K through 8 all in one room together. And he invented the shared book experience where he created a big book and so had the kids gather regardless of their age around. And so they could see the print as he was reading. And it was that whole bedtime experience, very nurturing, very loving, very comforting. And so that was a big deal. And he was at my house, and I brought him into the district, and we really became close friends and colleagues. And I felt that was the first time because I was not... I don't have a PhD. It was the first time I thought, "Well, maybe I could be an influencer. Maybe I could write a book." You know, and then I was encouraged to do that. But not by any of my teachers K-12. It was when I saw, you know, sort of the broader world.

Matt: You had to seek out your own mentors.

Regie: Yeah, I really did. What about you? When was the first time? It's a great question. When did you experience belonging?

Matt: I remember in high school, one of my economics teachers... And I was not like a straight-A student. I wasn't a bad student, but I was, you know, I struggled at times with attention. And I remember my economics teacher said, "Oh, hey, Matt, you're getting an A at the top of the class." And I said, "Oh." And he looked at me, and I was very surprised. And he's like, "Why are you surprised?" And he's like, "That's where you belong." You know, and just that phrase of like, "This is where I expect you to be." And I kind of... It's not the same experience, but a similar experience where I didn't feel like there was a hierarchy between, as much as, you know, as we typically have, between teacher and student. And it sounds like a similar relationship with Don Holdaway. You know, "I had high expectations for you."

Regie: Yeah, I didn't see myself as that smart. Nobody had ever said, and I didn't think about it. But one teacher can do that. My granddaughter, Katie, who graduated college several years ago, had an economics teacher who saw something in her and had her stay after class and say, "You know, Katie, have you considered economics as a field? Don't let those boys in the class that are talking over the girls. Don't let that. You have a good brain. You have a lot to offer." That one teacher caused her... She never thought about economics. She majored in economics, has a degree in economics, and is working in economics. And it was a teacher who saw that, and it was a female teacher encouraging another female. I think women, it's still hard to get the same recognition, unfortunately, that men do, especially if you're a person of color, you know.

Matt: For sure, yeah. It's much harder. It's not an equal playing field.

Regie: I want to say one other thing about belonging. The reason I wrote that article, and Matt, you can put the link up for that because I know that it's made into... It's in PDF... is I was working when my last book came out, The Heart-Centered Teacher, I was working with a school district, Walnut Valley, California Unified School District, and I was so impressed with the way they start each school year with a big theme. And the theme last year was, "You are welcome here." And what surprised me about that, because I'd never seen this before, they did a big welcome day, a couple of days, where everybody was invited, almost like a rally, you know, like we're going to start the year off great and you all belong here. But what was different about it, Matt, was that it wasn't just for teachers. The people that attended were the bus drivers, were the nutrition workers, were the social workers, anybody, the landscape people, anybody that was employed in the district was on equal footing as any teacher or principal or administrator. I'd never seen that before. And it said a lot about equity and what they really believed. And the belief being that each one of us has something to teach a child or see in a child. A bus driver's comment to a child. Somebody in the cafeteria can make that child's day or not, right? But that was very, very powerful to me.

And this year, in fact, I just got an email this morning from the assistant superintendent, and this year their focus is on stories. I forgot what it was now because I just read it one time to you. "Stories always win." The importance of stories in teaching and in learning. And that's what, and I'll just give a plug for my book, my last book, The Heart-Centered Teacher, because they actually bought a copy for all of their staff, which included the bus drivers, the nutrition workers, and whatever, because of the stories. They said, "We like that you were story focused." And it is all about the stories and what kids come to us with and that we can see that. And that... I never felt seen in school, and that's a very big deal. And I think it's not that hard. I don't think it's that hard for a teacher to make every child feel seen.

You know, one of the stories that I tell is the story of Ted, a 54-year-old man that I taught to read during the pandemic. We only had just two phones and no visuals. And I tell that story in The Heart-Centered Teacher. But until I saw who he was, probably he had a label of dyslexia. I don't know what it was. Probably he was in special ed. I never asked him. Probably, well, I know that he couldn't do phonics very well. We didn't start there. Until I could see him and know who he was as a person, I really couldn't teach him. I didn't know how I was going to teach him. So I had to start with recognizing his brilliance, because we all shine in some area, and not seeing him as less than, instead of disabled, "differently abled." He had gifts, and it's really seeing, I think, every child's gifts.

I think the first time my son Peter was seen in elementary school, I can still remember it, going to a teacher's conference, and the teacher saying, "Let's talk about our boy Pete." And it was just like, "Wow." Just like, "I really like this kid." And then he blossomed. That was fifth grade. She saw him. He was very quiet, but a quiet style of leadership that she brought out. And very smart, and she challenged him intellectually. But up until that time, I think he was pretty invisible, you know, because he was quiet, well-behaved, you know.

Matt: I think about the impact just one person can have and how it trickles down to so many other experiences, Don Holdaway empowering you, and that led to so many other districts you worked with, Walnut Valley, and just all the people that you've reached.

Regie: It’s accepting people as they are, not as we wish them to be, which is so hard, right? We know that from being married, from being colleagues, you know, we want people to be the way we want them to be, and that's not our job.

I think one of the things that's really important at this time of the year, at the start of the school year, but true for all year long, is I think one of the ways we create a sense of belonging is that kids feel that this is our school, this is our classroom. That's huge, not just "my classroom." Some of the most beautiful classrooms that I've been in... You can tell right away that this is the teacher's classroom. Every bulletin board is perfect. The commercial charts are up there. Where are the kids? You know, you can tell when it's "our classroom" because the kids' work is everywhere. The charts, the routines, the rules are written with the kids. And kids are different in classrooms like that. They know their voices are valued and that the teacher is not the only teacher in the room, that everybody in this classroom has a lot to teach us.

And, you know, really seeking out what people's strengths are and celebrating them, starting with the first day.

Matt: You just gave so many ways to start day one and beyond in a positive way. You list, you know, in your article, kids need to be safe, cared for, seen, empowered, make their voices heard. And like you said, it happens on day one and then really every day.

Kind of transitions into empowering each kid and giving them some autonomy. And you talk about curriculum as conversation versus like a predetermined script. As you know, we live in very difficult times right now with all the challenges, all the requirements. How do leaders help teachers make this shift to help kids move from compliance, especially at the secondary level where they've kind of gotten used to a diet of just "tell me what I need to do and I'll do it," to genuine ownership in their learning?

And then on the flip side, you know, if you're not lucky enough to work at a building where a leader's, you know, empowering you and trusting you, how do teachers help leaders see the benefits of autonomy, choice, you know, curriculum as conversation, you know, and pushing back on the micromanaging?

Regie: That's all? Sorry. That's the whole ballgame. One of the things before I get into that, I want to be sure to mention your book because that's, I think you deal with that quite a lot, you know. How do we set up a system? How do we set up a structure that is not a binding in terms of confining us despite all of the standards and the rules that we're supposed to follow? And I'm very honored to hold this up because I wrote the... honored to write the foreword. And you do a lot of that in here in terms of how do we... how do you help leaders become coaches rather than... yeah, it's really the essence of that, where you're providing the foundation so that people can shine. I think the rub is that you have to have professional learning going on. The only way that you can take all the requirements and as a very knowledgeable teacher decide, "Yes, I have to teach the science of reading because it's mandated and I don't have a choice, but I can do that in a way where I will be a positive deviant." That's a term from Atul Gawande, who's a surgeon and a writer. And where you're kind of breaking the rules, but in a good way because we're here for the kids. We're not here to be so structured that there's no leeway in how we teach. I think one of the things we have to do, and this only happens if we have a high degree of professional learning, and all of my work is about that.

The professional learning is something that people don't value enough. Even if you're in a school where there's no professional learning going on, you want to find a colleague, even if it's just one colleague, and read professionally and talk about what the research is saying.

And the only way you can get around some of the requirements that don't make any sense... you'll get the high test scores, but not because you followed any particular curriculum, because you really know what you're doing, so that you can, instead of spending a half hour a day on phonics, you could spend 10 minutes a day, because the goal is we want readers. We don't want just "phonicators." We want readers who love to read, who read across genres. And you have to be so knowledgeable. It's like for me, the analogy would be, I'm a really good cook. My husband just told me that today when I fixed lunch. I probably do my best cooking when I have my least amount of resources. I don't have so many choices because then I can really be creative. But I know the basics. I know how to make a sauce. I don't have to read the recipe every time. That framework of teaching reading is in here from all the study that I've done over the years.

So for that adult student that I was working with, I didn't know how I was going to teach him. I knew I would teach him because I know how to teach reading. I have a degree in learning disabilities, teaching students with learning disabilities. And none of that really mattered. The main thing was I had to get to know this child... this adult. And how can I find a way in? That's our job. That's our responsibility. And we had to be very creative about that.

Matt: It's a hard balance sometimes.

Regie: It's a very hard balance. And if you're not knowledgeable, and I think we don't value professional learning enough, if you're not knowledgeable, you're going to be bound by that script, you know. And you have to make it your own. You have to make it uniquely your own.

Matt: I just delivered some professional development. I delivered some PD around, it was co-teaching with teachers. And that was the one thing they said as a critique was, "We didn't have time to practice those skills," you know, so that knowledge is not just that declarative knowledge, but that experiential knowledge.

Regie: And that's why I think that's why it's so important for the principal to be a coach to have that job embedded. And to ease things so that they do have time. There's only so many hours in the day, but it's what you prioritize. It's what you prioritize.

The phonics issue is a whole other thing. And when I was in college, that's all I learned was phonics. I didn't learn anything about teaching reading comprehension because I was in college way before you. I'm a lot older. So I didn't know anything about teaching reading comprehension. You know, I think you have to be a reader yourself. And if you get that, if you are teaching reading well, and you're really focused on what kids are interested in, and you have a classroom library, and Matt, you've written about, and I've included it extensively in my book about how you and Micki Uppena, how you developed this program where the kids were running the library. And I mean, it's brilliant. So include that. It's, you know, turning over the control of the library to students is major. I still never have read anything like that. And so, but how does that happen? You have to trust kids. You have to lay the foundation. But it's a beautiful thing to see when it actually happens. And the kids see school very differently then. They have choice. They have purpose. They're treated as leaders, people who can actually make decisions. They're trusted.

Matt: That was one of our sayings was, "Kids learn to make decisions by making decisions." And they're going to make mistakes, right? And it was like $5,000 that they got. It wasn't a small amount, you know, and I think that that trust that we had in them was crucial.

Regie: Talk a little bit about that because what you did and what you and Micki did in that program is a model for getting kids to buy into... they didn't see the library as just for them. Their vision expanded, which is what we want. Kids to leave school not just thinking about how they can make a lot of money or what they can do for themselves, but how do we actually care for others and include everyone in the decision-making? And that was pretty amazing.

Matt: Yeah, I think it took a lot of humility to say we don't know what the kids want and then to give them the tools and the...

Regie: And you were telling me, I'm just going to interrupt. You said "what they want." You mean what books they want in the library?

Matt: Right, yeah, what books they wanted. But beyond even that, like what do they want the library to look like, you know, and we took on more of a role of a guide on the side versus a lot of direct instruction. So we had to take a step back, you know, physically and professionally for them to make those decisions. For me as an administrator, a lot of my work was removing obstacles and increasing the supports to make that happen, which there isn't a lot of fanfare, there isn't a lot of spotlight on that, but it's like, I don't want to call it the dirty work, but it was like the grunt work, you know, that finding the money and attending meetings and going to the board and explaining, you know, what we're doing and crunching the data.

Regie: But you didn't keep that hidden. You shared that with the kids.

Matt: Yep, we shared it with the kids. We said, "Here's what the kids are wanting in terms of books, but also here's how you're growing as readers too. Like if you're a part of this group, your achievement scores are going up." And so there was a very virtuous cycle of learning there too.

Regie: And you said, you said they became librarians.

Matt: Yeah. They very much were advocating for certain kinds of books, you know, from their perspective, but also they took... they were doing some perspective taking. Like I remember one girl said, "I really want books on ADHD because I want my friends to understand what it's like for me," you know, so that empathy, that self-compassion, agency, all that shined through. And it's hard to measure, right? But I think through some of those anecdotal quotes and observations, it was just a cool thing.

Regie: And it just comes back around to where I think where we started, which was, you know, "When did adults see you?" You know, when did you have that culture, that sense of belonging? And we both acknowledge it was when adults said something to us, but I think it's also what adults do. You created an opportunity. You created an opportunity that allowed them to belong and to shine. An opportunity that very few kids have. It's like, "No, no, you can't do this because you haven't been trained as a librarian." Right. And you took away that, you know, the usual thinking and made it possible for them to see themselves in a role that even other teachers hadn't seen.

Matt: Yeah. We reduced the positionality, I think someone called it, of "us" and "them." So that gap, that hierarchy kind of went away. That's great. Just that permission that they had to make decisions. Now, I don't remember ever saying anything to any kid, like "you can do this." So I think that's maybe a lesson to take away for listeners here is even if you don't say something like maybe what we heard as students, you know, you with Don Holdaway, me with my economics teacher, what we do can speak very powerfully to just the environments we create.

Regie: And also maybe a good place to end is it's all about celebration. I mean, the classrooms that are joyful, the reason that I loved the work was the joyful moments of seeing a kid do something that they didn't think they could do, that perhaps you or other students or the way the culture is set up where they felt that they belonged as part of the culture made things possible that the child and even we maybe didn't know that they could do.

So I think the celebration, that has always been a huge thing for me is to notice, to become a noticer, to notice what kids can do and then comment on it. I was thinking about that today before we met because it's a beautiful day in Seattle where I live. And I was just taking a short walk around my house and outside and I came across, oh, I would say half a dozen perfect spider webs and they were absolutely gorgeous the way the sun was hitting it. And I actually changed the way I was walking so that I wouldn't disrupt this web. But it was not just... It was magical because I allowed myself to see it. I wasn't rushing somewhere. I was very careful that I didn't destroy it, that I could just kind of be in the moment and say, "Wow." And I think that's one of our biggest jobs actually as teachers and parents is to help learners know... is to, and parents, is to help learners notice things. "What did you notice about what this author did? What did you notice on the way to school today?" Because I think we go about our lives so quickly, and especially today when we're all kind of, I don't know what the word is, I don't know, in a state over the world and what's going on and enough said about that.

So, you know, you have to sort of slow down and celebrate the beauty of the physical world, which is there, and appreciate all the strengths that students are bringing, and teachers as well. And it's difficult to do if you are, you know, constantly reading from a script and you're not giving the room and space and trust for kids to give us those moments that, you know, we're celebrating.

Regie: And if you're reading the script, the script has to be internalized. The framework has to be internalized. If you're reading the script, you're not noticing the kids. Your focus is on, "Well, am I getting the lesson in? Did we cover all the points?" And you're not noticing the kids. "What are they curious about? How can you take what's required by the standards and make it fit the difficulties that we're having with clean water and homelessness and put it together in a way that the kids are engaged and this is something they really want to learn about?"

Matt: Yeah, and your article speaks so well to that. And again, I think it's the perfect article to start at the beginning of the year with your staff as well as your book. Thank you for being an influencer, Regie, and continuing to do this good work and sharing your wisdom.

Regie: And let's have another conversation. It's great talking with you. And it's been nice that we've gotten to know each other first as colleagues. I think I met you at Wisconsin Reading. We might have had lunch together at a table with your teachers. And then we've become friends over the years, and that's been delightful.

And I don't know if people know that you are also now, which I think is fabulous, you work at a bookstore, an independent bookstore.

Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah, one day a week. The dog and I, she brings in the customers, and I try to seal the deal, have them walk out with a book or two. But yeah, it's been fun, and it's just nice to see that side of reading too, and people coming in and just... You get to see all the latest books coming in.

Matt: Yeah, it's barely work, but someone's got to do it.

Regie: Well, thank you for the opportunity to talk with you. Always a pleasure.

Matt: Likewise, Regie. Thank you. Good to see you. Thank you.

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Happy Monday! This week’s focus is on being a noticer vs. a judger during classroom visits.

📚 PROFESSIONAL STRATEGY

When informally observing classroom instruction, shift from judging to noticing. Start by acknowledging what you see and hear without evaluation: "I'm noticing..." rather than "This is good/bad..." Naming our observations keeps them at an objective level; noticing activates the brain’s prefrontal cortex which moderates emotional reactivity. We create mental space between what we observe and any premature conclusions we might draw about a teacher’s practice. We can respond then more thoughtfully with our feedback.

From my Choice Literacy article: "Off the Hook: How to Engage with and Reframe Our Obstacles in Order to Reduce Anxiety and Stress”

🌱 PERSONAL TIP

Start small in your observations if classroom visits are new to you. Begin with one aspect of instruction. Share what you noticed with the teacher, followed by a genuine question. This can lead to noticing/sharing two aspects of instruction, and so on. Build on success.

📢 FOR YOUR TEAM & SCHOOL

Today's Quote:

Joke for Announcements: Which month of the year is the shortest? May. It only has three letters. (Source: Reader’s Digest)

Bonus: Check out the Four-Week Instructional Walks Tracker in the printable version of this memo below!

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Happy Monday! This week’s focus is on promoting reflection through questions.

📚 PROFESSIONAL STRATEGY

Spring is hectic. It is also a time for reflection and renewal. We can encourage teachers to explore the proverbial question "Why am I doing what I'm doing?" with thoughtful questions. During classroom visits, ask "How did you come to make this change in your practice?" or "What do you see as a possible impact on students?" These questions help teachers reflect on their decision-making and potentially explore new approaches.

• From my article: "Using Questioning to Facilitate Reflection and Goal Setting with Teachers"

🌱 PERSONAL TIP

When coaching teachers, replace interrogative "why" questions with more invitational phrasing like "What led you to choose this approach?" or "I'm curious about how you decided on this strategy." Alternatively, ask some questions by making statements, which can be less threatening for some. For example, instead of “What led you to choose this approach?” you could say, “Talk about what led you to choose this approach.” (h/t Regie Routman)

Got additional tips for the community on this topic?

📢 FOR YOUR TEAM & SCHOOL

This Week’s Quote:

Joke for Announcements: Why don't scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything!

Have a great week,

-Matt

P.S. I’d love your feedback on this new project!

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In this video tutorial, I share how I use a notebook to keep myself grounded when things feel chaotic and unpredictable. It’s Election Day - this feels needed!

I address the following aspects of my notebook system:

• Keeping a weekly intentions list to come back to when considering next actions

• Dating the daily log and setting up your productivity dashboard

• Starting your daily log with critical tasks to accomplish that day

• Documenting notes, events, and tasks as the day progresses

• Brainstorming ideas with text and sketches

• Reviewing the day, noting wins, insights, and gratitudes

Take care,

Matt

Transcript

Hi, this is Matt. I'm sharing how I ground myself with a notebook, both as a coach and as an individual. It’s a space for personal and professional reflections, which is especially helpful during unpredictable times, like today—Election Day, 2024. I thought it’d be appropriate to share this process.

This approach is adapted from the Bullet Journal Method by Ryder Carroll, with a few tweaks for my needs. Let’s start with my weekly intentions. I date the week, then list all I want to accomplish. There’s usually more than I can get done, but if something doesn’t get completed, I simply move it to the next week. This becomes my weekly log.

My daily log captures each day’s priorities. Here’s yesterday’s log. First, I date it—November 4th, a Monday. Then I create a dashboard. This idea comes from the Bullet Journal community; I highlight boxes and draw icons representing productive actions. Not productivity in a “getting things done” sense, but actions aligned with the person I want to become.

For example, my dashboard includes icons for writing, meditating, pet care, budgeting, and exercise. Exercise doesn’t have to mean lifting weights; yesterday, I did Tai Chi and went for a walk. There’s also an icon for a fun activity and another for “unhooking” from unproductive thoughts—using self-talk or breathing techniques to steer clear of unhealthy thinking. It’s a valuable habit, especially with the uncertainty around the election.

Each day, I identify two or three critical tasks, such as drafting a newsletter or inviting a friend for an event. Throughout the day, I add tasks as they come up—like reserving rooms for next week or picking up cat food. I use different symbols: a dot for tasks and a circle for events. Yesterday, we had a staff meeting to discuss our strategic plan. I like using paper for brainstorming; it helps me play with ideas creatively. For example, I sketched a diagram that a colleague suggested I share on our Padlet.

At the end of the day, I log any other thoughts or tasks. For instance, I agreed to be secretary for the Lions Club. I also like to reflect on something successful, an insight, and what I’m grateful for. Last night, I noted “saying yes to what I can,” sharing my drafty thinking, and appreciating the chance to contribute.

Today, I’ll start with my productivity dashboard again. I use a Leuchtturm B5 notebook, but any notebook works fine, especially when you’re starting. You don’t need anything fancy. You can also replace icons with initials if you prefer.

I’ve already voted, so I don’t need to worry about that. Throughout the day, when I feel stressed or tempted to check election news, I can return to my notebook. For instance, I need to finalize the writing workshop PD and plan for my kids’ birthdays. Writing these tasks down increases my commitment to them.

Today is open-ended but grounded by this structure. I can even note it’s Election Day as an event. This notebook helps me stay focused on the day-to-day and acts as a place for journaling. My wife will vote before work, and I remind myself that we probably won’t know results right away.

Putting my thoughts and worries on paper keeps me grounded. If I feel restless, I can take the dog for a walk to release energy, then return to my list. I aim to calm myself by being intentional and purposeful with my time.

Best wishes, and stay calm in these unpredictable times. Take care.

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In this recorded webinar, we dove into how coaches and instructional leaders can use a notebook as a powerful tool to stay organized and focused in their practice. Drawing from personal experience and popular methodologies like Bullet Journaling and Getting Things Done, this episode explores the benefits of “notebooking” to boost productivity, reduce stress, and enhance our abilities. We discussed practical strategies for capturing key ideas, clarifying tasks, and facilitating reflection.

Watch as we cover:

• The concept of a coach’s notebook as a second brain

• How to use symbols, lists, and timelines to organize events and tasks

• The role of notebooks in reducing stress and fostering mindfulness

• Real-world examples of how notebooking supports both personal and professional growth

Whether you’re a veteran coach or new to the role, a “Big C” or “Little C” coach, this episode provides actionable tips to help you streamline your work and maintain clarity amidst the many demands of coaching.

Thanks for reading Read by Example! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and grow as a literacy leader.

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In this professional conversation, I speak with educational consultant Vivian Chen.

Vivian is a former classroom teacher and coach, and now supports literacy educators independently.

She organizes her work life using a free tool called Notion (notion.so) for a variety of tasks:

• Building a database to plan her days and projects.

• Organizing her business information.

• Capturing her coaching conversations with clients.

Vivian shares a number of ideas any educator could apply to their own practice.

(To connect with Vivian, go to LearnWithVivian.com for more information.)

Recommended Resources

• Definitely check out the video archive of this conversation, as Vivian offers a peak into her Notion system.

• I am halfway through my declutter! I’m writing a little bit every day about my experience in avoiding social technologies in this thread. I am also posting these daily reflections in this pop-up blog I created for easier readability.

• While I am rereading the source of the digital declutter, Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, I am pairing it with Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture by Jenny Odell (affiliate links). I’ll be sharing the connections I am making between the two texts during the second half of my declutter.

• This episode was recorded in June - no July conversation for full subscribers due to my digital declutter this month. Stay tuned for upcoming professional learning opportunities starting in August. Readers shared a variety of topics ripe for discussion:

• Planning for effective professional development, including finding time to learn with colleagues

• Responding to student behaviors

• Authentic application of curriculum resources

• Balancing external expectations while meeting students where they are

• Navigating different philosophies of literacy instruction

• Being a critical consumer of SoR-related information

What else is on your mind that you would like to discuss? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Take care,

Matt

P.S. Another topic that came up is getting into classrooms and supporting teaching and learning. You can start now on your learning journey with my latest book, the companion playbook, and my new course (playbook included).

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit readbyexample.substack.com

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In this conversation, Matt Glover, former teacher and principal, now a full-time writer and consultant, and I discuss his book, How to Become a Better Writing Teacher, co-authored with Carl Anderson (Heinemann, 2024)

Key Highlights from Conversation

Author’s Background

• Matt Glover's experience as a first-grade teacher, assistant principal, and principal of a large early childhood school.

• Shifted interest towards teaching writing, influenced by colleagues and educational leaders like Carl Anderson and Katie Wood Ray.

Importance of Teaching Writing

• Glover’s interest in how children compose and think.

• Emphasis on the importance of teaching writing from an early age.

• Discussion on the role of equity in teaching writing, ensuring all students can express their thoughts regardless of language and transcription skills.

Engagement and Choice in Writing

• The impact of choice (topic and genre) on student engagement.

• Strategies for supporting meaningful choice in the classroom to enhance engagement.

• The correlation between engagement and achievement in writing.

Building Confidence in Young Writers

• The significance of building students' confidence as writers.

• Techniques such as using children as mentors in writing conferences.

• The positive effects of showcasing less confident writers as mentors.

Effective Writing Instruction Practices

• The role of teacher's own writing in the instructional process.

• The power of peer partnerships and long-term student collaborations.

• Practical strategies for conferring with students and asking empowering questions like "What are you making?" and "What have you done well as a writer?"

Evolving Writing Units

• Incorporating modern forms of writing like podcasts and TED Talks into the curriculum.

• Glover’s perspective on the cautious use of AI in teaching writing.

• The importance of maintaining authenticity in teacher-created writing samples.

Advice for Teachers

• Start with one action or strategy from the book and work on it incrementally.

• Utilize the assessment tools provided in the book to personalize and guide instructional improvements.

• Commit to long-term growth and incremental learning rather than trying to overhaul teaching practices all at once.

Interested in learning more?

• Check out the two-day online institute for the book, co-facilitated by Matt Glover and Carl Anderson in July. Register with Heinemann here.

• Watch our conversation with Carl Anderson to kick of this book study here.

• To integrate more authentic assessment in your writing instruction, I humbly recommend my book on digital portfolios. it is a powerful approach for engaging and empowering students as writers and learners.

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In this engaging conversation with educators Vivian Chen, Debra Crouch, and Jared Kubota, we discuss the second half of How to Become a Better Writing Teacher by Carl Anderson and Matt Glover. The conversation revolves around practical insights, challenges, and strategies from the book that can transform writing instruction in classrooms.

Key Discussion Points

Book Selection and Initial Impressions

• Matt shares why he selected this book for the discussion.

• Guests discuss their initial reactions and the impact of the book on their teaching practices.

Challenges of Implementing the Workshop Model

• Discussion on the complexities and benefits of the workshop model in writing instruction.

• Vivian Chen highlights the importance of organizational skills and tools to manage the workshop's moving parts.

Effective Use of Mentor Texts

• Debra Crouch talks about the importance of selecting relevant and effective mentor texts.

• The value of immersing students in high-quality writing examples to enhance their understanding.

Conferring with Students

• Jared Kubota shares insights on the value of student conferences and the importance of personalized feedback.

• Strategies for balancing conferences in dual-language classrooms.

Building Trust through Partnerships

• The significance of keeping writing partnerships stable over time to build trust and enhance feedback quality.

• Matt and Debra discuss the balance between long-term partnerships and varied feedback sources.

Integrating Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)

• Jared emphasizes the integration of SEL within writing workshops.

• Techniques for teaching students how to give and receive feedback constructively.

Tips for Educators

• Practical tips from the book that can be implemented immediately in the classroom.

• Guests share their favorite strategies and how they plan to use them in their teaching.

Reflections and Closing Thoughts

• Guests reflect on their learning journey and the book's impact on their professional growth.

• Final thoughts and appreciation for the collaborative discussion.

This episode is a must-listen for educators seeking practical strategies to improve their writing instruction and create a more engaging and effective learning environment for their students.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit readbyexample.substack.com

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In this engaging conversation with educators Vivian Chen, Debra Crouch, and Jared Kubota, we discuss the second half of How to Become a Better Writing Teacher by Carl Anderson and Matt Glover. The conversation revolves around practical insights, challenges, and strategies from the book that can transform writing instruction in classrooms.

Key Discussion Points

Book Selection and Initial Impressions

• Matt shares why he selected this book for the discussion.

• Guests discuss their initial reactions and the impact of the book on their teaching practices.

Challenges of Implementing the Workshop Model

• Discussion on the complexities and benefits of the workshop model in writing instruction.

• Vivian Chen highlights the importance of organizational skills and tools to manage the workshop's moving parts.

Effective Use of Mentor Texts

• Debra Crouch talks about the importance of selecting relevant and effective mentor texts.

• The value of immersing students in high-quality writing examples to enhance their understanding.

Conferring with Students

• Jared Kubota shares insights on the value of student conferences and the importance of personalized feedback.

• Strategies for balancing conferences in dual-language classrooms.

Building Trust through Partnerships

• The significance of keeping writing partnerships stable over time to build trust and enhance feedback quality.

• Matt and Debra discuss the balance between long-term partnerships and varied feedback sources.

Integrating Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)

• Jared emphasizes the integration of SEL within writing workshops.

• Techniques for teaching students how to give and receive feedback constructively.

Tips for Educators

• Practical tips from the book that can be implemented immediately in the classroom.

• Guests share their favorite strategies and how they plan to use them in their teaching.

Reflections and Closing Thoughts

• Guests reflect on their learning journey and the book's impact on their professional growth.

• Final thoughts and appreciation for the collaborative discussion.

This episode is a must-listen for educators seeking practical strategies to improve their writing instruction and create a more engaging and effective learning environment for their students.

Thanks for reading Read by Example! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support this space.

For questions or feedback, share your thoughts in the comments.

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As a literacy leader, writing is a critical skill.

• We need to frequently communicate our organization’s beliefs and values.

• We avoid misunderstandings when what we share and post is clear.

• If we expect our students and teachers to be writers…

So where does one start?

Consider employing ChatGPT as your writing assistant.

In this video, you will see how this large language model (LLM) can:

• Give you general writing ideas as a starting point.

• Provide feedback on a first draft you’ve developed.

• Generate templates from favorite articles to use as models for your own writing.

This brief demonstration will show you how to be more intentional with ChatGPT: using frames, following up on initial responses, and asking for options instead of specific answers.

Would a mini-course on how to build and sustain a professional newsletter be of interest to you? Let me know your thoughts in the brief survey linked below.

Subscribe for free to receive new posts and build your capacity as a literacy leader.

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In this podcast, we delve into the world of writing instruction with Carl Anderson, co-author with Matt Glover of How to Become a Better Writing Teacher.

Carl is the author of several acclaimed books including A Teacher's Guide to Writing Conferences and A Teacher's Guide to Mentor Texts K-5. Carl shares insights from his extensive experience working with schools and districts, discussing the importance of writing instruction and providing practical strategies for educators at all levels.

Key takeaways from the conversation include:

• The journey of becoming a better writing teacher: Carl and his co-author Matt Glover emphasize that the work of teaching writing is ongoing and dynamic. Their book provides actionable steps and personalized guidance for teachers at different stages of their careers, from novices to seasoned veterans.

• Collaboration and professional development: Carl and Matt's collaboration, born out of webinars during the pandemic, highlights the power of professional learning communities and ongoing support in refining writing instruction practices.

• Advocating for writing: Amidst standardized testing and shifting curricular priorities, Carl emphasizes the importance of advocating for dedicated time and resources for writing instruction. He encourages educators to engage in conversations with administrators and colleagues to ensure that writing receives the attention it deserves in schools.

With practical insights, personal anecdotes, and a commitment to empowering educators, this conversation and Carl’s and Matt’s book are a valuable resource for anyone passionate about nurturing young writers.

Enjoyed this discussion? Share it with a colleague and continue the conversation.

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Where does literacy leadership intersect with the quest for educational justice? In this thought-provoking conversation, I am joined by Michele Caracappa (Reading to Lead) and Debra Crouch (Made for Learning) as we delve into this vital topic.

Michele, with her extensive background in education and leadership from New York City, shares insights from her journey of supporting literacy and educational justice. The conversation covers a range of subjects:

• The impact of policies on literacy instruction

• The importance of teacher empowerment

• Rethinking literacy through a justice-oriented lens

Whether you're an educator, leader, or simply passionate about educational equity, this episode offers valuable perspectives on creating conditions that foster success for all students. Dive into the discussion and discover actionable strategies to bridge the gap between literacy leadership and educational justice. Don't miss out on enriching your understanding and toolkit for change. Listen now and be part of the conversation towards a more equitable educational landscape.

Subscribe for more episodes on transforming education through leadership and literacy.

Beginning next month, we are reading How to Become a Better Writing Teacher by Carl Anderson and Matt Glover.

Share this episode with your network to spread the word about the importance of literacy leadership.

Continue the conversation here in the comments (full subscribers), or wait until the podcast version is posted.

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As the new year begins, Debra Crouch, Vivian Chen and I avoided the usual focus on resolutions in this professional conversation.

Instead, we emphasized good intentions in our professional practice.

Our discussion begins with a sharing of our current to-read lists, a mix of fiction and non-fiction books relevant to education, personal development, and broader societal issues.

We then delved into the concept of transforming lessons into recipes, exploring the nuances of teaching methods, the importance of adaptability in education, and the potential of professional development.

The conversation concludes with reflections on how these insights can be applied in our immediate professional contexts in ways that support teaching and learning.

Key Insights and Quotes:

Debra Crouch

• Insight: Emphasizes the balance between planning and responsiveness in teaching.

• Quote: "You could never plan some of those moments that were happening based on what kids were saying."

Vivian Chen:

• Insight: Points out the significance of collaborative learning and observing the impact of teaching practices.

• Quote: "I need somebody to be there to look for the kid's twinkle in their eyes, to see what it was (that led to student engagement and learning)."

Matt Renwick:

• Insight: Highlights the critical role of experience and reflection in developing teaching expertise.

• Quote: "When you cook for 20 years, you just develop a ‘with-it-ness’, a ‘I know I can substitute this for that.’"

Listeners will walk away with a greater understanding for the conditions that go into thoughtful and intentional education practices, as well as the importance of adaptability and continuous learning in our field.

Full subscribers can participate in these professional conversations via Zoom, as well as watch the video recordings. Join us!

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On Monday, December 19, Debra Crouch and I spoke with Isobel Stevenson.

Isobel is the author of The Coaching Letter, a newsletter that is about “organizational culture and intelligent failure”. She is also the author of multiple books, including Making Coaching Matter: Leading Continuous Improvement in Schools, with Sarah Woulfin and Kerry Lord (Teachers College Press, 2023).

In our conversation we explored a number of questions around continuous school improvement, including:

• You promote “intelligent failure” as an organizational disposition, where teachers and leaders are intentionally making mistakes. This feels counter to most school cultures. What conditions need to exist for this to be a reality?

• Is a “culture of coaching” the answer to the problem of the status quo? If not, what else?

• If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about schools as they currently are, what would it be?

Listeners will walk away with a better appreciation for the complexities of school improvement, along with clear action steps for engaging in this work.

Take care,

Matt

What we are reading

• Isobel listed several favorite professional titles, including The Right Kind of Wrong by Amy Edmondson, Being Wrongby Kathryn Schultz, The Voltage Effect by John List, and Deep Survival by Laurence Gonzales.

• Debra enjoyed The Covenant of Waterby Abraham Verghese. She shared the following quote from this novel: “Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives.”

• Matt is planning to start The Reformatory by Tananarive Due soon, a Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Best Horror (2023).

• Isobel just posted her December edition of her newsletter, in which she shares more about the instructional design practice of “co-developing recipes—which are NOT the same as checklists or scripts”.

• For more information on continuous school improvement, check out my conversation with Isobel’s co-author Sarah Woulfin along with Rachael Gabriel.

Take care,

Matt

P.S. No post/newsletter next week - 🎁enjoy the holiday break!🎄

P.P.S. In addition to live professional conversations with educational experts like Isobel, full subscribers also have access to the video archive of the Zoom chat plus the discussion guide. See below. You can use these resources to support professional learning in your context.

2023 Holiday Special: Become a paid subscriber today and take advantage of 15% off an annual plan (offer available until January 1, 2024).

You can also refer this space to colleagues and get a complimentary subscription.

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Ever since the advent of the Internet, professional development for educators has become more prominent online.

Teachers and school leaders found a home in Twitter. It’s been a source of knowledge and a facilitator of long-lasting connections, even friendships. How can educators use this platform today for professional learning, especially with its current challenges?

In my conversation with Dr. Mary Howard, author of RtI From All Sides and Good to Great Teaching (affiliate links), we talk about this social media platform, including:

• The upcoming #g2great discussion on Twitter around Regie Routman’s new book The Heart-Centered Teacher (affiliate link),

• How to engage in a Twitter chat, and

• What the future may hold for online professional learning.

Listeners will walk away with a greater appreciation for continuous improvement as literacy leaders.

Related #G2Great Resources

• Our #G2Great Wakelet Collections (Regie’s will be posted after the chat)

• 10-20-22 Blast From the Past: Literacy Essentials (Blog post)

• 1/11/18 Literacy Essentials (Blog post)

Looking for more learning?

Check out the video archive of my conversation with Mary.

You will find a brief guide for how to engage in a Twitter chat. In addition, I provided an original article on how to apply a modern framework for digital learning in classrooms and school for full subscribers. Sign up today!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit readbyexample.substack.com

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In this conversation with Regie Routman, we explore her writing process that led to her new book The Heart-Centered Teacher: Restoring Hope, Joy, and Possibility in Uncertain Times (Routledge, 2023).

I was interested in learning more about her purpose and intentions around this important book. Below are three questions I asked Regie.

• The cracked plate, beautifully depicted on your book cover in a painting by Toby Gordon, is a powerful metaphor for navigating uncertain times. What felt true to you as you connected this item to our lives?

• In the conversation you had with Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle, they shared that your book is unlike any other professional learning resource they read. You appreciated that comment. Was it your intention from the start to make this book at least part memoir?

• Another concept that you speak to often is the power of story. In schools, teachers and leaders are often having their stories told for them only through test scores and media reports, often incorrectly. What are some of your favorite, practical ways for educators and students to better control their narratives?

Listeners will walk away with a greater understanding of the “why” behind this book. The ideas Regie shares with us can help any educator reclaim hope and joy in teaching and leading in uncertain times.

In addition to this audio, full subscribers have access to the video recording archive, along with a downloadable three question reflection protocol Regie and I workshopped to help students “restory” their lives.

This episode is also available on Apple and wherever else you listen to your podcasts. Let people know what you think with a rating and review.

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For this article club, colleagues and I explored the following questions and more as we discussed Paul Emerich France’s article (ASCD Blog).

• How can schools balance instructional transparency with teacher empowerment?

• Is there a reasonable rationale for why principals can expect lesson plans to be submitted to them?

• If teachers are expected to be leaders, what are the conditions in which they can thrive?

The following guests joined me for this enlightening discussion:

• Debra Crouch, Teaching Decisions

• Mary Howard, Literacy Lenses (Twitter)

• Don Marlett, Learning Focused (Twitter)

Listeners will walk away with a more nuanced understanding of effective vs. ineffective lesson planning, the conditions for teacher agency, and how to build a school culture based on trust.

(Go to the end of this post for the full transcript of our conversation.)

Additional Benefits for Full Subscribers

Full subscribers enjoy additional resources:

• The ability to comment on all posts.

• The opportunity to participate in these live conversations via Zoom.

• Access to the video recording archive of professional conversations, as well as a copy of the discussion guide which can be used to support similar continuous improvement efforts in your context.

Become a paid subscriber today to enjoy all of these community benefits.

Coming Up:

October & November Book Club, The Heart-Centered Teacher by Regie Routman

“How do we find hope and possibility in challenging times?”

In her latest book, Regie Routman offers all educators “a refreshing chance to pause, take a breath, and reflect on how you and your students can live more compassionate, generous, and authentic lives.” The Heart-Centered Teacher is about more than literacy; it’s about “developing, nurturing, and sustaining caring relationships - in our teaching lives, our home lives, and in the happy intersection of both.”

You are invited to join us this fall in an eight-week book club around this text. You can purchase Regie’s book at one of the links below.

Full subscribers can participate in two monthly conversations via Zoom around the book on the following dates:

RSVP here.

All subscribers will be able to post comments on discussion threads related to the book on the following dates:

• October 10th: Chapters 1-2

• October 24th: Chapters 3-5

• November 7th: Chapters 5-7

• November 21st: Chapters 8-10

We will be using the study guide and additional chapter resources to help support the discussion, found at the book’s companion site.

All of this is made possible through the generous support of full subscribers - thank you!

Full Transcript

(generated by Rev.com; the AI is to blame for all grammatical errors. :-)

Matt Renwick (00:02):

Welcome to Read by Example, where teachers are leaders and leaders know literacy. And I'm welcoming here again, Mary Howard, Debra Crouch, and Don Marlett. Mary, if you want to start, just share a little bit real quickly about yourself, what you do.

Mary Howard (00:18):

Sure. I'm a literacy consultant, still heavily engaged in education, living in Honolulu, Hawaii, and have been a teacher for 51 going on 52 years now.

Matt Renwick (00:33):

Deborah,

Debra Crouch (00:35):

I'm Debra Crouch. I, I'm also working as a literacy consultant these days and just was with second and fourth grade teachers today talking about the practices in their classrooms, and this was very applicable to some of the work that we were doing. So I'm excited about this conversation.

Matt Renwick (00:55):

Awesome. Yeah.

Don Marlett (00:58):

Hi, I am Don Marlett with Learning Focused. So I thought this would be a fun one to join. Alright. Specifically within an instructional framework is one of our focus areas,

Matt Renwick (01:15):

And I'm familiar with all of your work, either through reading or presenting. So this is a very knowledgeable group. I'm honored to be here. So today's topic, and again, the intention here is to just engage around a topic of interest that people are talking about. And this was something that was getting debated on Twitter, whether or not teachers should have to submit lesson plans and looking at the bigger topics of school-wide expectations, balancing that with teacher empowerment and the articles by Paul Emrich, France for ASCD blog. So the question I had just in mind was, should teachers be required to submit lesson plans or do we need to ask a better question? I get a sense there's more to the issue here at a deeper level than just lesson plans, but we can get into that. And the other purpose we record these conversations is just to demonstrate how to facilitate a professional conversation.

(02:14):

And this is the heart of professional learning. We don't talk about some of these big topics in schools because they could be too contentious. You're afraid it might spiral into an argument debate. And so hopefully through this process, through professionals such as ourselves that we can demonstrate that for our colleagues. So everyone gets this guide who is a full subscriber to the newsletter. So thank you to everyone who is a full subscriber, really important to have norms with some of these conversations. Working norms, agreements, I just use some from the Peloton group. A dialect should be a basic attitude. Create safe spaces, include all relevant parties in a dialogue. You listen, let everyone share their experiences, ask questions, talk about difficult topics and contribute to forgiveness and reconciliation. And one thing I've seen presenters do is to ask the audience each person to like, which one are you going to focus on to add during this time together? Which one do you want to really work on? So that's a strategy you might want to try. So just to kind kick things off, but what are you listening to right now? Just more of an inclusion activity. It doesn't have to be music, it could be a podcast, it could be anything nature.

(03:36):

I'll go first.

Don Marlett (03:38):

Go ahead Matt.

Matt Renwick (03:41):

I'll be the first to go here. I've been listening to a huberman Lab podcast. Andrew Huberman is a neurobiologist in California and he's a podcast and just talking to a psychiatrist in the East Coast, Paul Conti at Harvard Medical School about mental health and talks about the framework for mental health. So I found it very illuminating and I want to share it out at some point for all schools. I think the framework's very helpful in terms of how we can help kids and even adults. So that's what I'm listening to.

Don Marlett (04:18):

I just started listening to writing for Busy readers. I saw it, I follow Angela Duckworth and she posted it. And so it was a good book, but also because whenever we send emails from our company and all that stuff that everybody is busy. So how can we make it so that they can actually read them? Since we all know it's hard to read our own emails. It's very good so far.

Matt Renwick (04:47):

And it was a book or it was a podcast?

Don Marlett (04:50):

It's a book. So I'm just using reading the audible version, listening to the audible version of it. Cool.

Mary Howard (05:01):

Okay. Well, I'll go. I just finished listening to, I'm a big fan of Dr. Andy Johnson's the reading instruction show. What I love about Andy is how clear and strong he is in talking about some of the issues. And so I enjoy listening to that and I enjoy taking notes and just kind of thinking it through. He usually has a podcast maybe once every couple of weeks or so, and it's really very well done.

Matt Renwick (05:37):

Nice.

Debra Crouch (05:38):

Well, I'm going to fess up and be the one who says I am not good with podcasts because the podcasts that are professional, I want to be sitting and taking notes on. People will say, oh, listen to it while you walk. Doesn't work for me. I want to take notes. And I can't do that while I'm walking. So I haven't figured out really how to put podcasts. My life very well. I can listen to the Fluffy. I absolutely loved my brain. Just went absolutely did. On her name, Julia Louis Drive's podcast series. I don't know if you saw that, where she's talking to women older than her and she's like, what can I learn from you? So I listened to that podcast, but I was thinking about what am I listening to? And I was just listening in the car to this brilliant artist called Rianna Giddens. Do you know Rianna in her work?

(06:32):

How do you spell her name? Rianna? I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly. Nan like the Fleetwood Max song, Giddens, G I D D E N S. And saw Americana music. And I learned about her through a book that I was reading on creativity and they profiled her in this book. She's won a number of awards, but she decided that she didn't want to be on that I'm into the popular music and going on the tours and doing that sort of continuing to grow and be popular in that way. She decided to focus inward in her writing and in her songs and in her musical choices. She's one of the most glorious voices, I think. And that's the word I would use. It's a glorious voice. So that's who I've been listening to. But when you say that, I'm like, okay, I listen to music, not a podcast listener, really. So anyway, so that's what I've been listening to right now.

Matt Renwick (07:38):

Nice. I like Fluffy.

Don Marlett (07:42):

And Debra, I feel your pain. I never last very long. When I'm listening to audible books, my mind starts racing, so that's why it takes me. I go back and forth between that and Fluffy, so I'm like you, I can't just sit there and listen for the whole thing, which doesnt work when you're driving. So I can't listen to her for very long.

Mary Howard (08:04):

And sometimes when I'm walking and I'm starting to listen to a podcast, it's bad because I pull out a pen and I end up taking notes all the way down my arm and now sit at the, I try to just put a marker and then like you said, I need to write it down so I listen to the podcast at home and type out the important things. I like it, but yeah, it was bad on my skin.

Matt Renwick (08:30):

I heard that's the best way to do it, is to listen and then go home and then write down what you remember paraphrase. And that actually is the best way to synthesize, which I don't do. Of course I do it. I'll bring up Google keep notes and I will record myself and it will transcribe what I say. But yeah, I think that's the best way is just to listen and then write it later. Alright, so the article, thanks for sharing, I'll put those in the notes. The article again is why teachers shouldn't have to submit lesson plans. And this piqued my interest was posted on Twitter, and another pretty well-known educator, former principal had said, I just disagree with this whole thing. And I like that when there's disagreement, I think that's good. The principals, we can require to have lesson plans submitted to us, and I think that's important, and I think he would probably have some very good reasons.

(09:32):

But the reasons that Paul Emerich France listed were to not submit them is he started his first two weeks teaching and he's like, I wrote them all at length and after two weeks I was exhausted and I was constantly changing them because I was paying attention to my kids. I wasn't able to be responsive because my lesson plans were all planned out literally. So he just noted that first administrators don't have time, so they're not going to read hundreds of lessons every week, creates more paperwork. The second reason is traditional lesson planning is unsustainable. He likes five questions, which I thought were good, which is what should students know and be able to do by the end of the lesson? How will I know if they've learned? So it sounds like PLCs, how will I provoke curiosity and discussion? How will I orchestrate instruction? How will learners reflect on that lesson? So that's his framework he uses for lessons, a much abbreviated version. And the third reason is teachers feel micromanaged. So just thinking about those three reasons that France lists, what are just your initial thoughts on that?

Mary Howard (10:44):

Well, I'll just start by something that he said early on, and I thought it really kind of was a crux of the whole article. He said, plans change, they have to, teaching is unpredictable and uncertain, especially when 20 or more human beings are along or this ride we call learning, steering the ship with their questions, emotions and thoughts. Teaching cannot follow a script. And that's one of the problems that we're seeing right now with scripts and very controlled plans because it's in the moment teaching in my mind, there's nothing more important than that in the moment teaching. So having a plan is really important. I thought it would be very difficult to write plans with all five of those questions, but I was certainly really intrigued by them. But I think that really is the crux of the article for me, that if we don't leave room for that in the moment decision-making, that there's no way we could plan for it, then how are we really being responsive to children as opposed to being responsive to whatever it is that we're turning in.

Debra Crouch (12:05):

It was interesting because when I read this for the first time, I had a lot of different ways of thinking about this because I do a lot of this with teachers in my work where I'm planning with teachers and this work. And so one of the things that I wrote as a note was what does a lesson plan look like for this author? One of the questions that I had, because I've been in situations with teachers where I've gone in thinking, okay, we're going to do some planning, and I'm thinking bigger planning, like unit kind of planning or a series of lessons kind of planning, but the teachers think we're planning a lesson and that we're walking away with it. So we had to do a lot of clarifying of what we mean when we talk about planning. There's that the unit plan, the weekly plan, the daily plan.

(12:59):

And then one of the other layers that started popping in was the prep. What does it mean to prep a lesson, right? You have your lesson plan, but you still have preparation. You have to do kind of in that moment kind of thing. So I think that was a question that I had within this was like, okay, what exactly are you talking about when you talk about lesson plans and turning them in? Because I know when I was a teacher, we did turn in weekly lesson plans, and one of the things that I thought so much about was that as a new teacher, I didn't like doing it. So I could totally relate to his thing about teachers feeling controlled and micromanaged. But in hindsight now I can see that it forced me and pushed me to be prepared in a way that I probably would not have been had I not had to make sure at eight o'clock on Monday morning.

(13:51):

Those were in my box and I knew it was just more of they just wanted to make sure we were planned and they could come in at any moment. I may understood how they were working with it, but once I learned how to, in a way they didn't care how we turned it in, it didn't matter what it looked like, it was just that you had it in there. Everybody looked at different, everybody's looked different. But I felt like once I learned how to put it onto paper, then I felt like I actually knew what I was doing. It was more like a to-do list for myself, just with the notes and excel. Anyways, it was just an interesting, I'm talking too much, but it was an interesting way of looking because my first question was like, okay, what's he talking about when he talks about a lesson plan? What exactly would that look like?

Matt Renwick (14:36):

And Debra, you make a point here that France recommends in the end of the article that for new teachers, but I think any teachers would benefit from having their coach learn the art of planning and prepping and what's the difference in what you're talking about? I would just be really good practice for any teacher PLCs, but working with coaches like you, Deborah or Mary or Don, I think that would be just powerful professional learning for anyone. Don, what are your initial thoughts here?

Don Marlett (15:06):

Yeah, it's funny because that I follow a couple of Facebook principal groups and this always seems to be divided down the line. When a new administrator asked that question, I think I went back to what Mary and Debra were saying is depends on how you define the word plan. If you define it as a script, a hundred percent agree, scripts are not in my mind a plan. So one of the things that we do sometimes is just what do you define a plan? How do you define that? We do that in one of our trainings and the whole point of it is when we get to the end of that with teachers is that nobody ever says it's rigid or it's a script. It's always flexible, but having an outline, like writing an outline for an article or a book or anything like that without having an outline, it makes it harder to be more flexible in our view.

(16:00):

So that was one of my thoughts with that. And also the other half of that was the admin piece of it. And again, it depends on if you define admins, reviewing every single component of every single lesson plan versus pieces. This week I'm just going to look for how I'm going to launch my curiosity and discussion, and then next week or two weeks down the road, what does that look like? And the way that he defined it of every single teacher or every single week is not sustainable. Absolutely. It's not sustainable for admins to be able to do that. And if that's how you define it, then I could see why you would vote against it.

Matt Renwick (16:42):

And just coming out of 16 years as a building principal, I can vouch for there's zero time to viewing everyone's lessons. The only time where I would really find I would find the most valuable when I'm doing unannounced mini observations that were required to do, I would go when I would read the lesson and then observe just to see are their intentions, their actions aligned with their goals and what are the standards? And I always found that helpful to have the context, but oftentimes as many times it's not. I could figure that out just by observing the lesson. I didn't need to look at the lesson plan, especially if it was a very good lesson, it was very explicit. I would never even need to look. So good instruction.

(17:30):

The lesson plan is very visible, right? In the classroom, I guess I think of lessons kind of as a map. It's a set of directions. You don't necessarily have to go the route you necessarily plan for. You might go on a diversion. So I think France's ideas here of provoking curiosity, orchestrating instruction, like the term verb, orchestrate versus mandate or direct, I think you're orchestrating kids is learning, but you're trying to empower them at the same time. So the compass is the kids, right? And the learning that you're trying to accomplish and the lessons are more of the map. So Deborah kind of hinted at this, but the second question I was wondering, and feel free to pose your own questions, but just playing devil's advocate, what were some other reasons why you would require these and lessons?

Debra Crouch (18:26):

So I work in a school where the teacher teams plan certain parts of their days for each other, their dual language school. So someone's the planning, the s l A part, someone's planning the e l a part, someone's planning the science, the social studies, and they do a lot of sharing of that. And so one of the conversations that we're talking about is what would a teacher, how detailed do your plans need to be when you share them out with your team members, team members so that they're able to understand the focus of the work and what you're hoping to accomplish. So one of the things I'm planning to do is to share these five questions with them because I think that would be really a strong part of the conversation when you think about someone else taking your plan, which is always a little awkward for me, just that whole concept of trying to take someone's plan. So when he was talking about can you pull off a lesson plan? I was like, that whole in the moment, pull a lesson plan when you're in a pinch, you need a last minute lesson. And I was like, okay, what's that about?

(19:42):

But if you are sharing those things, that might be a reason why you're putting more information together on a plan. So that's not necessarily for an administrator, although administrators would maybe look at that, but if you're sharing with your colleagues on your grade teams and things, I was thinking about that in terms of when you might need to do more lesson planning in

Matt Renwick (20:05):

That way. We facilitate collaboration and communication, I think too, a grade level teachers, but also classroom and special education teachers, classroom and interventionists technically powerful. Yeah, that's a good point.

Mary Howard (20:21):

Yeah. And, you said at one point when you were talking earlier that teachers were encouraged to come up with lesson plans that work for them. And I think that's what gave me a little bit of pause when I looked at the five questions, which are perfect, but it's so easy to turn something into rigid by saying it has to look like this. The one that I've always used is just three columns, and the first one was what I know, meaning what do I know about these children? What do I know about this child? What do I know about this small group? So just what do I know? And that's the piece I think we often don't do. The second is what I think what I see is the lesson, but the third one for me was the most important at all. What did I change in the moment?

(21:11):

And I use different colors and I say to teachers, we have to understand that a really good lesson plan is going to change based on you can't anticipate what children say or do. And I think sometimes we dishonor that. So I always would have teachers put in a different color, these are the things that changed and that became the professional conversation. Why did I take more time here? Or why did I have children generate their own? What are you thinking about or what are you wondering? And it's really important to me not just to have, here's the plan, even though those are five great things. Here's the plan and here's five things. I want them to create their own structure. But I also want to, even if you don't have a column, say now go back at your lesson plan after the fact and just jot down in color, these are some things that I changed or I added a question, or children generated this question and we spent a little time there.

Matt Renwick (22:21):

Mary, is that resource you mentioned, is that available anywhere? Is it in one of your books or,

Mary Howard (22:28):

I feel like I talked about it in good to great teaching because good to Great teaching was a lot of different forms that teachers would teach and look at. And that probably would be the book where we talked about it the most. And one of the things I actually did in that book is that I would come in and observe a lesson of their whatever they wanted. We'd have a conversation about it. We talked about what might they have done differently, and then either with that group or another group, they redid that lesson with the changes based on our conversation. So it probably would come from good to great teaching.

Matt Renwick (23:08):

I think that'd be, if you find time, I think that'd be a powerful article somewhere with a template LinkedIn, like Paul has in his article, he has that link in the article. But I think that would be really helpful resource.

Debra Crouch (23:22):

I always try and think about that. The purpose of the plan is to help you envision, to me, I always say to teachers, the reason that I even craft this detailed plan is that I'm envisioning what happens or possibly could happen. Because when you think about sitting in front of kids and being responsive to kids and knowing your learners and how you put that into practice is I've got to think about, okay, we might go here, we might go here. I know this kid, I know we're probably going to go here and you're envisioning. And for me, it's thinking about, okay, what might I say in the moment? Because I think sometimes we think responsive means off the cuff, and to me, being responsive means I've anticipated some of the kinds of things that could happen based on the kids and based on the text and what I know.

(24:14):

So his question about facilitation I think is really an important piece, but it's like if you get to the place where you think that planning just means I'm envisioning it happening, and then I can reflect back on it afterwards and say, okay, well this part, ooh, didn't see that one coming. You always have those moments where you think this was going to happen or this is going to be the word that the kids are going to get stuck on. And then there's like, they didn't have that problem, but it was this problem and you didn't see that. I said, children always teach you about teaching. They'll always teach you about what the issues are in the book if you just are a good listener, what they talk about.

Matt Renwick (24:51):

I like that. Don, any thoughts here?

Don Marlett (24:53):

Yeah, I think in our experience, we work with a lot of schools that want to increase the use of specific high yield strategies, maybe collaborative pairs, something like that. And so a lot of times the teachers will be given the professional development. And what we all know now is that professional development doesn't really change necessarily behavior of teachers in a large quantity. So you have to of course monitor that in a couple of different ways. And so in our experience, the more that they've planned them and put them into their lesson plans, the more likely they are to incorporate them into their classrooms. So that would be something if I want a higher percentage of collaborative pairs and specific type of collaborative pairs within my school, and that's what my goal is for increasing student engagement, that would be something that I would monitor inside of a lesson plan that at least they're planning them out to see if when they're going to use them. And our experience is that similar to what you just said, Deborah, which is the higher level of collaboration, requires quite a bit of planning, a simple collaboration of just simply talk to somebody in your group doesn't really require any planning. And so that's why we see, at least in my experience, a large percentage of that version of collaboration, which is not necessarily the biggest impact. It just happens better than of course, no collaboration. But there's different levels that just seem to have require more planning with inside of that.

Matt Renwick (26:28):

Don. That's where my brain was going too, is to use that information in the lesson plans as an administrator or an instructional coach to see how our teacher's doing with, like you said, high yield strategies, or are they just go to page 1 29 and answer these questions, which isn't a lesson plan, it's just a to-do list, or are they more so to where Francis' questions are around is what do they want them to know, be able to learn? I appreciate Mary and Deborah's point of looking at the kids first and then thinking about the content. So think these all make sense. The third question I had is could we be asking a better question, not why teachers should or shouldn't have to submit lesson plans? What is this really about? And I'll just note that I circled the third reason why we shouldn't require lesson plans submitted is micromanaged and to the point of where teachers are feeling disempowered.

(27:30):

And what that leads to is a lack of agency in teachers feeling like they're not trusted, feeling like they can't be trusted to deliver the curriculum. And there might be situations where there's a teacher to where they aren't doing what they should be doing, they're not even writing lessons for not requiring, they're just flipping to the next page. And there's no reflection. There's no using a formative assessments to guide the day-to-day instruction. So I understand why it's much easier just to say everyone, you're doing lesson plans and then you can use that, like Don was saying, and you all were saying is really just looking at teachers thinking their decision making and from a day-to-day perspective. But yeah, what is this really about? Is power or what are your thoughts on that?

Debra Crouch (28:23):

Well, I always think if your teachers are asking or saying things like, am I doing this right? That's when you see you've created that. They're thinking about how do I please or how do I perform in a certain way in that micromanaged kind of way. So I always think those are signals for us as leaders, if we're relying too heavily on maybe templates or here's a lesson plan format we want you to follow things like that. But I hear what you're saying. It's at some point we do need to know as leaders, okay, where are you going with that? What were your intentions? So it's like how do you balance that out? So I don't know. I was thinking, I was jotting down, I think you actually said this a minute ago, how do we support our teachers to be planned and prepared? So it's kind of that question, how can we do that? And does it have to be the same for everybody?

Matt Renwick (29:23):

Yeah, you don't want it to be compliance. And I've fallen into that trap myself as a leader. I've required things just because it's easier for me, but not necessarily responsive for them. So guilty as charged for sure.

Mary Howard (29:37):

And I wonder if we make teachers a part of that discussion more at the end. He said, when kids have teachers who feel heard and valued, those teachers will be more likely to exercise their agency to reach as many kids as possible in creative and innovative ways, whether that's a coach like you all of you are doing, or whether that's coming together and talking about what that might look like, not what that will look like, but what that might look like and bringing yourself to the table. And I think that when teachers feel agency, they pass that agency along to their children and they recognize that none of us want to feel micromanaged. And hopefully that's going to be a trickle down effect to children.

Don Marlett (30:29):

And for me, I think the micromanaged gets into feedback, get our given to principal, I mean by principals on lesson plans with that. If I might give feedback on a specific activity that they've chosen and say, oh, I think here this is a better activity, I think that's where they get lost in the micromanaging pieces versus giving feedback on high strategy or even the standard levels because everyone in that same state has the same expectations. And if I'm not using those to develop my plan, then that might be an area where you have to address inside of feedback. And to me, that's good micromanaging because a fantastic level, that's a fantastic lesson that's not on grade level is great lesson, but it also is not going to get the kids where they need to be. So that's part of it. Again, the micromanage, I think goes into the communication and how lesson planning, turning in lesson plans is communicated to the purpose of what they're doing. If it's never communicated, then I'm just going to fill in my own story and just call it micromanage. Yeah,

Mary Howard (31:39):

That's fair. Good point. Yeah,

Matt Renwick (31:43):

It could be as simple as just a thoughtful question in your lesson, this was your objective. How do you feel like the students met that objective and why do you think that happened? And just be very open-ended and not judgmental or trying to control the situation, but really trying to be more reflective, which can then be an entry point to what you're saying, Don, we're all saying here is having a conversation around is this at a high expectation level or not? And well, this has been a great conversation and I appreciate everyone being here. Any key takeaways? Again, I think in professional conversations it's good too. If I had a, we were in person, I'd have some kind of anchor chart in the back, everyone's key takeaways, but I think we got it recorded here. So anything you wanted to pull, what value was added to your practice after today's conversation?

Mary Howard (32:44):

Well, I think you said it in the beginning, the importance of conversations. And we never seem to have time to do that in schools. I mean, to be able to sit with the three of you to, hard to say the four of you, but I'm one of them to be able to sit with the three of you and just no agenda, but just have a conversation about what we're thinking, a really good, respectful, important conversation. That's what we don't leave room for in school. And that's why coaches and all of the things that you're doing are so incredibly

Matt Renwick (33:19):

Important. Thanks, Mary.

Debra Crouch (33:21):

I think for me, just thinking about how important those conversations are to help us clarify that what we mean by a lot of these terms that we use in education, like what we said, a lesson plan, because I think everybody sitting at the table will have a different vision of what that is. And as I was going into Coach with a Grade team, and it took me a couple times to really come back to that at the beginning of the year with them last year, and that I needed to make sure that we were all talking about the same thing of what we were going to walk away with. Because just as these questions can be used for lesson planning, they can also be used when you think about your professional development, what do I hope if I'm leading in professional development, what do I hope the teachers will leave knowing and being able to do? And how will I know if they're feeling confident and comfortable with that? And those same questions apply when we put that up to the adults that we support as well. So I think that's just a great way of thinking about that. This is not just about the kids, but it's also about our adults as well in the building.

Don Marlett (34:39):

I think my big takeaway is around the definition piece, even in when we're working with teachers of what those expectations are, but primarily because I do most of my individual work with principals and school leaders of making sure that they have clearly communicated what they define as a lesson plan and some of these questions that he's bringing up, and making sure that the leaders have an answer for those one way or the other of why they're not doing it or why they are doing it.

Matt Renwick (35:16):

I'll just say my takeaway is hopefully this is a model, especially for new leaders, whether principals, instructional coaches that are in charge of pd. You don't have to plan a lot. Mary said there wasn't much of an agenda, which is I think, a good thing. You can just come in with a provocative article or around a topic that's relevant to your school and provide a couple questions and just give teachers a safe space to talk and that's what they crave. And then just pulling a few outcomes out of it like we are now and thinking about maybe a few actions if we were a faculty in school, like, okay, we're going to have some intentions around some PD related to lesson planning, and we're not going to dictate one thing. We're going to include you. But that's all there is to this. I don't have to be a lesson plan expert as a new school leader to facilitate professional learning. That's powerful. So hopefully this is a model that can work you for anyone. Well, thanks again everyone for being here, and I enjoyed it. As always,

Mary Howard (36:19):

Thanks for hosting us, Matt. Yeah, thanks

Matt Renwick (36:21):

For hosting Matt. Yeah, my pleasure. Have a great night.

Mary Howard (36:25):

Okay, you too. Thank you. Good to meet you, Don. Nice to meet you too. Bye-bye. Bye.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit readbyexample.substack.com

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What book would you consider to be essential reading for new school leaders?

In this episode, Mary Howard (@DrMaryHoward), Debra Crouch (teachingdecisions.com) and I share some of our favorite books for principals, literacy specialists, and any teacher leader in a position of authority.

Debra’s Recommendations

• Opening Minds by Peter Johnston (also Choice Words by the same author)

• To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink

• The Best Strangers in the World by Ari Shapiro

Mary’s Recommendations

• How Education Policy Shapes Literacy Instruction by Rachael Gabriel

• The Heart-Centered Teacher by Regie Routman (also Literacy Essentials by the same author)

Matt’s Recommendations

• Having Hard Conversations by Jennifer Abrams

• Getting Things Done by David Allen

In the previous discussion thread, Ellie Olson (LinkedIn) recommended Leader Credibility: The Essential Traits of Those Who Engage, Inspire, and Transform by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, Cathy Lassiter, and Dominique Smith.

Know any new school leaders? You now have a short list of recommended resources to give them a head start on their new career!

Take care,

Matt

Full subscribers have access to all resources on this site, include video archives of our exclusive monthly conversations.

Give the gift of becoming a literacy leader!

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In this episode, Gen Arcovio, Debra Crouch and I share what we are reading this summer for pleasure.

• Gen Acorvio is a literacy trainer at the Lesley Reading Recovery & Literacy Collaborative (@Lesley_CRRLC). She is also the co-contributor for

@LiteracyPages at https://literacypages.wordpress.com/.

• Debra Crouch works nationally as an independent literacy consultant, collaborating with districts and schools in designing professional learning opportunities. She can be reached at https://www.teachingdecisions.com/.

Here are the titles that we are reading:

What Debra is reading

• The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

• Stranger Diaries by Elly Griffith

• Jane Goodall: The Woman Who Redefined Man by Dale Peterson, The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times by Jane Goodall

What Gen is reading

• The Cabinet of Dr. Leng by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child

• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

• Front Desk by Kelly Yang

What Matt is reading

• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen

• The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier

• Simon Sort of Says by Erin Bow

We concluded our conversation by sharing what we know about ourselves as readers.

The following questions helped guide our conversation:

• Why are you reading what you are reading?

• What has resonated with you so far?

• What have you learned about yourself as a reader?

These questions can also serve to support engagement, understanding, and identity.

Subscribe today to receive future litercy and leadership resources.

Take care,

Matt

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How long have “the reading wars” been a part of the national education discourse? What are the recurring themes? What can 4K-12 practitioners do to engage in a dialogue that leads to a better understanding of effective literacy instruction?

In this episode, Paul Thomas shares his findings about the science of reading movement and how educators can navigate this conversation.

Paul, a professor at Furman University, is the author of the policy brief The Science of Reading Movement: The never-ending debate and the need for a different approach to reading instruction(NEPC, 2022). He also wrote How to End the Reading War and Serve the Literacy Needs of All Students: A Primer for Parents, Policy Makers, and People Who Care (IAP, 2020). Paul is a frequent writer at his blog, Radical Scholarship and on Twitter at @plthomasEdD.

Special thanks to Mary Howard, Joy La Vay Taylor, Debra Crouch, and Mary Beth Nicklaus for engaging in and elevating this conversation.

Full subscribers can join these conversations in real time. They also have access to the video archive and professional discussion guide here. Sign up today to fully engage in this community.

Know someone who would benefit from Read by Example? Refer them to this space - see button below. Complimentary subscriptions can be earned with sign ups.

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick (00:03):

Welcome to Read by Example, where teachers are leaders and leaders know literacy. We are joined today by Dr. Paul Thomas. Paul is a professor of education at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, and taught high school English in rural South Carolina before moving to teacher education. He is a former column editor for English Journal, National Council Teachers of English, current series editor for Critical Literacy Teaching Series: Challenging Authors and Genres and author of Teaching Writing as a Journey, Not a Destination: Essays Exploring What Teaching Writing Means, and the book, which I believe is in its second edition now, How to End the Reading Wars and Serve the Needs of All Students: A Primer for Parents, Policymakers, and People Who Care. NCTE named Paul the 2013 George Orwell Award winner. He co-edited the award-winning volume, Critical Media Literacy and Fake News in Post-Truth America. You can follow Paul's work at on Twitter at @plthomasedd and at Radical Scholarship at radicalscholarship.wordpress.com. Welcome, Paul.

(01:26):

Thank you very much. Nice to be here.

(01:29):

And we have a few all could join, could share too. Who you are, briefly just what you do. We'll start with Mary.

Mary Howard (01:39):

I am a literacy consultant and now doing Zoom from, because I'm in Honolulu and I'd rather not get on a plane. This is year 51.

Matt Renwick (01:57):

Joy.

Joy La Vay Taylor (01:59):

Hi, I'm Joy Lave Taylor, and I work for James Madison University with student teachers. Before that, I was literacy coach, reading recovery teacher and reading specialist.

Matt Renwick (02:15):

Deborah.

Debra Crouch (02:17):

Hi, I'm Deborah Crouch. I'm a literacy consultant as well and a co-author of Made For Learning with Brian Cambourne.

Mary Beth Nicklaus (02:30):

Hi, I'm Mary Beth Nicklaus, and I am with Eastern Harbor County Schools in Minnesota. And I'm a secondary level reading specialist. This is my 34th year.

Matt Renwick (02:48):

Welcome everyone. And I have a few questions for Paul, but we'll definitely save time for many questions that you might have. The first one for Paul is, you are consistently on point in your policy brief, which we will link in the newsletter, the Science of Reading Movement, which is a condensed version of, I think it seems like your book on the topic. A nice summary as well as with what you post online on Twitter and on your blog. What motivates you to keep coming back to this topic of the science and reading movement?

Paul Thomas (03:27):

Oh, that's a really good question because most of my career, I'm really a composition writing person. And when I discovered Emily Hanford's Hard Words, early 2018, it really struck a chord, but I had no idea that it would get the momentum that it did. So I've always been a holistic literacy person, and I've always been skeptical of over focusing on things like grammar and phonics. And although I taught high school English at Furman, I have taught master's literacy program. So I've been working with early literacy teachers who are getting graduate degrees. And a former colleague of mine, Nita Schmidt, who moved from Furman to Iowa and now she's retired, she's brilliant, she was an early literacy people, and she, she brought me in at N C T E.

(04:33):

And so I had had this kind of transition to being, what I would say, a literacy generalist where I understand kind of K-16 literacy, or birth to grave literacy. My focus I feel like is public work. Like, how do I talk to the public? How do I help people understand education? And this movement just kind of intersected with that public work. And throughout 2018, 2019, I found myself blogging maybe too much, but I had quite a number of blogs on this, and I said, "I've got enough for a book. I did see how it was developing in a direction that regretfully has come true. That early kind of messaging has now become policy. So in the last, I guess that's what, five years now, I have shifted very much into being a policy person, which I think was the rightful place for me to go.

(05:44):

I do think trying to work on public narratives, how we talk about critical discourse analysis is a big thing for me. It's a central part of my upper level reading and writing course. At Furman, that's a requirement at Furman, they have to have an upper level writing and research course. So I think it was just kind of a perfect storm for me because I do feel like it's really important for scholarly work to have a real world place. And this felt way more engaging. It felt way more productive than my composition work. Although my book before this was on writing. I'm still, I teach first year writing. I care very much about writing. But reading is very central to sort of how we think about education in the United States. So it seemed like kind of a natural development for me.

Matt Renwick (06:47):

Yeah, your policy brief is very practical, very useful. It was easy to read, but you covered the, the essential topics of it and really gave, for me anyway, it gave me some nice talking points. Right now in Wisconsin, we're dealing with it, right this very week, up for discussion, so to speak. How might educators and parents best use this resource to effectively advocate for more reasonable policies? What can we do with this to, to make some kind of a difference, or at least try to influence policymakers?

Paul Thomas (07:29):

So first I would like to say I really am very proud of the policy brief. And I think a huge part of that was the N E P C staff itself. They did not make this easy . I had to a 6,000 word policy brief. I probably wrote 15 to 20,000 words and three or four drafts, and I was kind of taken to task three or four or five times before it even went to peer review. And I think they should be commended for that. The editorial group at N E P C weren't literacy people, so they were constantly going, "What do you mean by this? Uh, is this real?" And the the fun part was being challenged on using the simple view of reading.

(08:22):

One person said to me, "Paul, nobody uses that. That's silly. That's a silly term." And I had to say, "No, it's a technical term. It's a real term." So I do appreciate that opportunity, and I will say any PC believes in practical. So it had to build to what do people do. I do feel really good about the policy implications at the end. I've been working indirectly with Diane Stevens, who is Professor Emeritus from the University of South Carolina. She taught several other places. Diane has really perfected taking actual legislation and copy editing it, . It's amazing, "Here is where you're off base, but here is how to reform that." So I think what we have to do is, it kind of parallels the book banning and the anti C R T movement.

(09:23):

It seems almost silly to have to argue for access to books. It seems silly to have to say you shouldn't ban books. So I think it seems kind of pointless for a lot of reasonable people to argue for teacher autonomy and serving the needs of all students. And very simply put, that's kind of what the policy brief boiled down to. We really targeted, "there's no such thing as one size fits all instructional practices." So there should not be any one size fits all mandates in policy and legislation. We really kind of honed in on, "it's not the place of legislators to ban or mandate anything that goes against what is a reasonable approach to day-to-day classroom practices." So I think what can people do is I think is, kind of target these simple messages.

(10:37):

I've been trying to work better about clarifying that I'm advocating for teacher autonomy. I'm advocating for meeting the needs of every individual child. I am not an advocate for reading recovery. I'm not an advocate for balanced literacy. I'm not an advocate for National Council Teachers of English. I'm not an advocate for International Literacy Association. I'm not being trivial here. I don't advocate for labels and organizations, even though I love N C T E, for example. It's been my home for a long time, and I respect N C T E, but I think what we have to advocate for are key principles. And I've called this challenge out many times, you know, on social media. If someone says they don't agree with me or that I'm wrong, I say, so you're saying that there should not be teacher autonomy, so you're saying we shouldn't serve the individual needs of every student, and I really think we have to call people on the carpet about that.

(11:47):

I also think it's really important, and it might be too much for most people, I just don't believe in misinformation. I get called out that I'm advocating for X when I simply say Y isn't true . This is a really good example to me, is the attack on Lucy Caulkins, I think is just unfair. It's not accurate. Lucy Caulkins Units of Study and Fountas and Pinnell work are in one in four schools in the country. It's 25% of the reading programs, I just tweeted out today. You know, their programs are not the dominant programs in New Mexico. And New Mexico has the lowest NAEP fourth grade reading scores and the highest percentage of children below basic. So creating a bad guy is a trick of storytelling.

(13:00):

And regretfully the science of reading movement, I mean, Sold a Story. I mean, it's about storytelling, and they're manufacturing the crisis. They're manufacturing the bad guy. I really just don't like misinformation. And again, I don't like the way balance literacy is defined. It doesn't mean that I endorse balanced literacy, even though I don't have any actual problem with the concept of balanced literacy. I'm really a critical literacy person. Do I like whole language people and their philosophies? Yes, there are a lot of my friends. Do I find balanced literacy ideas compelling? Yes, of course I do. I am a holistic person. So I think we have to, I have to keep sort of simple messaging on the key concepts that we support.

(13:55):

But we also have to say, actually what you're saying isn't true. Your definition isn't true. Your cause of the problem isn't true. Your solution isn't true. Over and over the national reading panel is just misrepresented. I use Diane Stephen's work. The National Reading Panel found that systematic phonics was no more effective than balanced literacy or whole language. Almost every single credible study says the exact same thing. The major study out of England said systematic phonics no more effective than balanced literacy. We need balance in England, over and over. That's the truth. And then you've got the science of rooting people saying, it's the Emily Hanford mantra, that it's simple and it's settled, and neither one of those are true.

Matt Renwick (14:48):

That leads into my next question, Paul, is this towards, especially phonics instructions, kind of this reason why kids are failing to read because they don't have enough of it, or we need more of it to ensure that they can read. And then picking on some of these targets, whether it's a person or it's a program or approach, are these strawmen for maybe avoiding bigger issues that we do need to address, such as poverty or teaching and learning conditions? Or is there some reasonableness to what some people might be advocating for in the sor movement? Where do you see that falling?

Paul Thomas (15:33):

Really nice job there. I appreciate that. Because that's two other kind of key points that we need to hit on. So, the part of my book and the policy brief that I'm most proud of is the historical perspective. In the 1940s, draftees performed very poorly on literacy tests, and Eleanor Roosevelt and the government shouted reading crisis. And John Dewey in progressivism was blamed. The woman I did my dissertation on, Lula Brandt ,did an analysis and found out that most draftees went to traditional schools and had traditional instruction, like phonics instruction, had skills instruction. And there's Elementary English, which became Language Arts, had a special issue on it, very similar to Reading Research Quarterly, having two special issues on it in the 2020s.

(16:33):

There was one article, , and they literally say this false attack on progressivism is to avoid the truth. The problem with literacy in the United States is poverty. You know, that was the 1940s. Then it recurs, the Johnny Can't Read in the fifties and sixties, same thing. It's phonics, it's lack of phonics. And people are like, "no, the people who are doing poorly are impoverished." And then it recycles into the sixties, into the 1990s, and then around No Child Left Behind is this same thing. So I think two other messages that we really have to make sure we make clear is, and I refer to Martin Luther King toward the end of his life in 1967, he said, "We would find that instead of reforming education to erase poverty, that if we erase poverty, education would improve."

(17:30):

And there is nothing truer. If children had universal healthcare, if they had no food deserts, if they had steady homes, if their parents had steady well-paying jobs, if there were books in their homes, the NAEP scores would go up. And that's doing nothing in the schools. Now, I'm not saying don't do anything in schools. I actually think this is the other thing that drives me crazy. I've been accused of being a protector of the status quo. And people who know me would laugh, they should talk to some of the people I've worked for. I think I entered education in 1984. I start year 40 in the fall. And when I started education, I was a reformer.

(18:23):

That's why I want, I wanted to do school better than it had been done to me. And then when I was in my doctoral program in the 1990s, I found out there were the reconstructionist. There was a whole movement in the early 20th century to reform schools. And so I want things to be different. I want school to be different. And you said it just a second ago. So we've got to address the lives, the homes, and the communities of children. I mean, we have to do that. And this constantly pointing at teachers and saying they don't know what they're doing and that schools are failing is a distraction. But simultaneous to that teaching and learning conditions, I just cannot say that often enough. There's been research for decades that marginalized students are more likely to have beginning and uncertified teachers.

(19:25):

That's a simple thing to address. We should guarantee that no child who is performing below what we believe they should be, instead of using third grade test scores to retain students, why don't we use third grade test scores to ensure children to have experienced certified teachers and low student-teacher ratios in fourth grade? That's a much better policy. And I would 100% endorse the use of standardized testing for that. But we are not going to do those things. I mean that's what's kind of criminal about this. Special needs children...we're overly concerned about dyslexic students. I am not saying that we should not be, absolutely, we should be concerned with dyslexic students. But special needs students are really highly likely to have beginning and new teachers, special needs students are really highly likely to have uncertified teachers.

(20:31):

Those are things that could be addressed. Now I think that would solve a lot of problems, systemic forces outside of the school. And then, I agree, this is a national education policy center thing. Instead of accountability reform, we need equity reform. So inside schools, I would say no grade retention. We should not be stratifying students. We should not be gatekeeping students into courses. But the biggest thing to me in school is a teacher assignment. The dirty little secret about education, nobody wants to talk about...if you teach long enough when someone retires, you get the good kids. And I think that's one of those little dirty secrets that we don't talk about. Beginning teachers too often... administration sits down, the remaining teachers get to pick their courses for next year, and the leftovers go to the new person. That is a terrible policy. It's a terrible way to treat children. And these are things we could address. We never talk about them, and we don't do them. So I think as you were implying, I think a lot of this is about ways to avoid doing the hard stuff.

Matt Renwick (21:53):

Yeah, for sure. You hit on a lot of topics there with that. There were couple of questions and, and I won't bring it up here just because it could, who knows where it would to go. But the money aspect too. You noted on Twitter, that a lot of these arguments and blaming are actually creating a space, a void, in which then certain individuals, publishers, organizations can sell their programs, trainings to solve the problem that they created in the first place. But that's a whole nother topic almost, I think.

Paul Thomas (22:38):

I could interject there real quick. Sure. I think people don't understand. I just had a conversation with a producer of a major news series yesterday morning. Instead of chasing the right reading program, we should reevaluate that. We use reading programs. It's much simpler than that. At W S R A, I think it was 2019, it was right before covid, teachers taught me a lesson. The problem that they had with units of study was not units of study, it was how it was implemented. And we too often hold teachers accountable for implementing a program instead of serving the needs of students. And I think that's a really important distinction. And it would also, I think it would address the money issue. We do, I think we do spend too much money on educational materials, and then we feel obligated to holding teachers accountable because of that investment.

Matt Renwick (23:41):

Yeah. Too much money and resources is not enough. And the ultimate research, which is teachers and students as well is, how can we structure students to be resources for each other? I'd like to open it up to other people who have questions here, or Paul, if you have anything you'd like to share that to come to mind. I'll open the floor up.

Mary Howard (24:06):

Okay. I was just gonna come back to, and I appreciate this so much because it led me back to what you wrote. One of the best things about this is that it's so specific to suggestions for decision makers and policy makers. And so one of the, and I loved every one of them, but one of the things that I kept coming back to is at the very end, two that really keep, are really in my head. One is be wary of overstatements and oversimplifications within media and public advocacy. Acknowledging concerns raised but remaining skeptical of simplistic claims about causes and solutions. And one of the challenges is that there are so many, the policy makers, the people who are making these decisions, they want oversimplification. They want to know, all I have to do is write a check and there's nothing else I have to do.

(25:11):

And if, because they don't have a background in education, that sounds really, really compelling. And then the other one is just a couple down from that, which is so important. Recognize student-centered as an important, research supported guiding principle, but also acknowledge the reality that translating research-based principles into classroom practices is challenging. So not only do they want those over simplifications, but they want to be able to take the research and say, here's what the research says, which is complicated research. And so we're gonna do this. You know, it brings me back to RtI where the solution was the walk-to-intervention model. So they know the importance of supporting children, but they're going to find the easiest possible, not just the one that they can write a check for, but the one that's going to be the easiest possible to implement.

(26:09):

So, you know, those just loom really large in my mind, and I don't know how we undo. Let me just say one more thing. I remember so many times walking out of a session where someone, usually someone with a really big name, said something really absurdly ridiculous. Like, time for reading, independent reading doesn't matter. And does it in such a compelling way that people I really admire walk out of that session and say, "Oh my God, I never thought about that before." And that's been happening with the science of reading too. "Oh my God, I never knew that." And so it's really smart, lovely, wonderful people. But for some reason, , it's coming across not as what is being said. I don't know. It's a really weird thing to me.

Paul Thomas (27:11):

Yeah. One advantage of my career being pretty eclectic is I've taught some graduate level leadership courses, and I used to use Howard Gardner's book Leading Minds. He's known for multiple intelligences, but I don't think that's his best work actually. In Leading Minds, he directly says all the research shows that leadership functions on black and white statements. And there's very little you can do about that. So there's an ethical obligation if you're going to compel the public, you're going to have to be relatively simple. So to me, I think the line is between simple and simplistic. And the challenge we have, and again, the conversation I had yesterday morning, really, really drove this home to me, is we're in a bind because our message is not simple. And the sor people are, it's become a cult of personality because they're doing the simple and settled.

(28:12):

And it is very compelling. I, like you Mary, know some very lovely people who have bought it. I knew some, and I still know, I know some lovely people, bright, who bought Teach for America. I know some lovely and bright people who bought charter schools. And those have now passed, and we know they didn't work. Teach for America has really dramatically fallen off. And some of the best people I know in education went through Teach for America. So it's not the people. The simplistic message, that you just had to demand more of students, it's that soft bigotry of low expectations. And if you just demand more, and if you just work harder, these kids will succeed. And then those poor people who did that, and those children didn't succeed. They were devastated.

(29:07):

So we do have a problem. Our message is not simple. But that's the only message that works. And also I think, another point of yours Mary, is the idea of evidence. I think I said this the other day, but the most important evidence is the child in front of you. The first five or 10 years of my teaching, the best thing that happened to me was humility. I had missionary zeal. I came in thinking I knew what I was doing. I kind of had my butt kicked at the National Writing Project. I'll shout out to Brenda Davenport. She almost literally kicked my butt. She saw something in me. She did respect me, but she took me in a room and she let me have it. And it was an awakening for me.

(30:00):

I softened, I backed up off of my certainty, and I learned to work from the ground up. Research and theory... I love theory. I love philosophy. These things are important, but they're for you back here. I mean, they sit somewhere back here. But it's the actual child in front of you. So I've learned, Furman has really taught me a lesson too. I mean, for the last 21 years, my college first year writing students are a different type of human than what I taught in rural South Carolina in high school. So I try to work from the student and instead of imposing Paul's beliefs about writing, Paul's beliefs about learning. You know, one simple thing is we we're always told that, that you have to give students credit for class participation.

(31:04):

I know a lot of professors still put that on their syllabus, and there's a percentage for it. Well, Furman has taught me that students can participate by being completely quiet in the room. And I had to listen to that, which is kind of ironic. And , I don't say that anymore. I don't say, "You have to speak in class, you have to participate this specific way." So I think one of our messages, I think has to be that, evidence is not simplistic. And the most important piece of evidence is the child in front of you.

Matt Renwick (31:41):

Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Mary.

Debra Crouch (31:45):

Can I ask a question, Paul? How do you simplify in a way, I guess, how do you talk to student-centered in a way that keeps it understandable for people who don't come at this from "Look at the child and recognize what children are bringing" and that sort of thing. How do we talk to that? Because I agree with you. I think that piece is huge.

Paul Thomas (32:12):

Yeah. And teacher education, that's one thing I do is I talk about artifacts of learning. I talk about things like, I really think music teachers, art teachers, coaches, that I think the average person understands that. So, there was a piece in Phi Delta Kappan many, many years ago, somewhere in the 1990s. And the guy said, what if we had two football teams line up every Friday night and take a multiple choice test to decide the football game? Parents would revolt, my hometown, the entire town would revolt. So, you know, in art class, we have a child actually draw an artifact of learning, and then we work from there. Until the child does a drawing or a clay sculpture, we don't have any way to teach them. We have children play instruments, we have children sing, we have children play the sport.

(33:13):

So I think putting it in terms of behaviors, having students do the thing, and I think that's where my holistic urge is. I was a soccer coach, I coached for quite a few years. And I love scrimmage. I was a big fan of scrimmaging. So you could end the moment, you could teach, of course we did some skills, but to be perfectly honest, that's not that effective. If people practice the same thing over and over incorrectly, they're not actually learning. They're getting worse. They're building the wrong tools. So, the joke of my teaching high school was I graded about 4,000 essays a year for 18 years. Wow. And I graded about 6,000 journals on top of that. So my joke was, it was volume, volume, volume.

(34:07):

Until a kid wrote a paper, I did not know what they needed, Until a player lined up as a centerback and played and played a soccer match, I did not know what he needed. So I do think we have to talk in terms of sort of holistic behaviors that we're trying to teach children to do. And then our job to me is mentoring. It is coaching. I love the word coach. I think the right kind of coaching, not the stereotypical United States coach that screams and cusses, but the kind of coach that goes, "Look, you did it this way, now do it this way." Like, here is why. One thing I loved about soccer is it's conceptual. You don't run plays and it's not very structured, the type the clock runs, and it's these concepts. So it's these holistic behaviors at the conceptual level, what should you be doing? But the key element is why are you doing this? I hope that answered your question, I feel like I did.

Matt Renwick (35:12):

Yeah. Thanks Deborah. Thanks, Paul. Joy, did you want to throw that question out of how did we engage in this? I think Paul spoke to that previously. Was there anything else that you wanted to follow up on though, Joy regarding how to engage in conversation around this time?

Joy La Vay Taylor (35:35):

The article that you put out, Paul, was really helpful, Mary and I will follow it a little bit better.

Paul Thomas (35:51):

A lot of this movement is public, so I think a lot of it is on social media. And there is a problem. I do think Twitter is not a good place for discussion. I haven't had good luck with it. I've had a few people try to. I had one person a couple times lately, very kindly say, would you mind, you know, let's have a discussion about this blog post. I don't. There's just not enough room. There is no chance for nuance. I joke and say the best way to deal with social media discussions is don't do it. But a more practical one is, are you dealing with a serious person? So probably six months ago, a woman who is an s o r person engaged with me.

(36:42):

She was patient, she was kind, she was clear. I did two or three tweets with her. I realized she was a serious person. We had a very long Twitter discussion. She didn't change her mind. I did not mute her. I did not block her. Everything was fine. The key was not that we agreed with each other. The key was that she was a serious person. And that's the hard part. I often check the Twitter bios. If there's four followers, probably not serious. If they've got the little hashtag, #amplify, probably not serious. Way too much of the science of reading movement is driven by the exact thing that Hanford is attacking. If it is in fact a problem that Lucy Caulkins has made money, which is an odd thing to accuse somebody of in the United States, then the science of reading, people who are driven by market intentions are just as guilty.

(37:56):

My home state and the most recent budget, 15 million for LETRS training, were a very small state. Can you imagine how much state money, tax money is being earmarked for LETRS training? I don't trust advocates of LETRS anymore than I trust anyone. I mean, we learned that the tobacco industry said cigarettes were okay. They had a market interest. So I do think we have to navigate public discussions with serious people. I do not mute people instantly. I generally give everybody one or two tweets. I give you a chance. Then it's it, and it's just little things, right? Are they selling something? Do they have almost no followers? I've got people out there. I know I muted them, so I didn't block them, but they can still do it. They say, don't listen to Paul Thomas. He works for reading recovery. That's just a blatant lie. There was an organization that blogged and said, don't listen to me because I'm not a teacher. I start year 40 in the fall. I've been a literacy teacher for 40 years, over five decades since the eighties. It's just a blatant lie. So lying means you're not a serious person. If if you're trying to sell something, you're probably not a serious person. So I just think navigating that space, we're looking for serious people and then we can engage.

Matt Renwick (39:34):

I had the pleasure of watching Paul have a panel discussion with other serious people. It was a research panel at the Wisconsin State Reading Association Conference. He was talking with a researcher at UW-Madison, a principal out of California, and they did not all agree. I think we talked about this later, Paul. You did not all agree on the same issues, but you all were respectful the way you talked. "I hear what you're saying. Here's where I'm coming from." It was very, it was just a good conversation. And I learned a lot. And I think, I thought it was a really good model for, for what this could be, but unfortunately, often is not.

Paul Thomas (40:16):

Right. And I really don't think we have to all agree. Like, there are people I love that I don't agree with everything about them. And that's not what we're looking for.

Mary Howard (40:29):

Yeah. And in a conversation like that, you have the opportunity to have a fluid coming back and forth. That's impossible. But one of the things that I looked for on Twitter, and I've only been recently really trying to dig into it, there are just certain catchphrases that people use over and over. And that to me is a dead giveaway because it's almost like they came out with a s o r attack list of these are the things you want to say. It really is problematic that you can't. There's a big difference to being able to look at someone in the face, for example, and listen to what they're saying and then come back and respond to that than it is. It's almost like the Twitter social media is a ping pong ball, and it's really easy to get caught up in it, you know, especially when emotions are involved.

Paul Thomas (41:32):

That's why I say the, the s o r movement is too similar to the anti CRT movement. They're both too often ideological. So when you're ideological it's very simplistic and narrow. So you do have recurring things to say that are just, they're just imposed onto the situation. They're not drawn from the situation. Someone I blocked, I mean, I muted. I didn't see them, but I saw the response. And apparently somebody on Twitter just in the last couple of days, said that they listened to Emily Hanford. Cause she's an expert. I'm not. And the interesting thing there is not only have I taught literacy for 40 years, I taught journalism for 13 years, and I've published journalism for the last 20. I have a level of expertise in both journalism and education. That's where you can tell somebody's not serious. This is not a serious comment. That is just a blanket imposed statement. And so I think that is the ideological problem. It's not everybody who's in the science of reading movement by any stretch. But there is a faction that is just, it's just an ideologue. And it's the same thing. You know, woke , woke by DeSantis, woke by too many Republicans, uh, c r t, these have just been catchphrases. They're not, again, they're not serious people. They're not credible people.

Matt Renwick (43:00):

This conversation's been great as always. Any closing thoughts or takeaways from anyone in the group that you'd wanna share out before we close things out?

Joy La Vay Taylor (43:15):

I'm such a novice, I feel like, at Twitter for sure. I was so focused on being in the classroom, working with teachers that I was so shocked when this whole s o r thing just seemed to slam in. And I hadn't, I didn't have time to be on Twitter. I shouldn't say I have time now, but I thank you so much all for all this information that you put out. And Mary, I love Mary and Matt is great. I don't know you too, but I'm sure you two are great too. .

(44:15):

Because I thought that all the information that you gave about politics and the movement of reading was so helpful for me. It just gave me a background. I kind of came in with balanced literacy when it was just kind of called balanced literacy. So all of that was helpful. But is is then, if we think about the purpose of being on Twitter to share information like you do, so is that the best way to think about it as a vehicle for getting truth out there?

Paul Thomas (45:00):

Yeah. I would say, I would say two things. One historically we have told teachers not to be political, which is a political demand, by the way. And we also keep classroom teachers way too busy. If you keep people with their head down, they don't see what's happening to them. So I do not expect teachers to sacrifice themselves. I don't expect K-12 teachers to speak out. Absolutely, that is not an expectation. If you do find the opportunity, I think you said it perfectly. Most of my work that I do on social media is to teach, it's an extension of my teaching. I cite, my blogs are heavily cited. I cite, I link to peer review journal articles on Twitter. So I think you have to perform on social media, not to change people's minds that you're speaking to, but to leave a trail for other people to learn.

(46:03):

I am rarely actually speaking to the individual I'm responding to. I am leaving a trail for other people to learn from. Nobody's asking K-12 teachers to sacrifice themselves. Nobody's asking K-12 teachers to lose their jobs. As a matter of fact, I don't want you to lose your job. I'm relatively safe. I'm even at a private university. If I were in Florida and I was at a public university, I would be toast. But my university is incredibly supportive. I'm a white guy, I'm tenured, I'm old. Let us do it, you know, let us take the brunt of the damage. But if you do engage, it's not to change people's minds, it's to teach.

Matt Renwick (46:54):

Well said Paul. And your policy brief, half the brief is citations. I mean, it's just so well resourced. And I remember Peter Aach speaking about your work too, and just said you were meticulous. I think that's one of the first people he brought up about how to be become more knowledgeable about this topic and stay engaged. So thank you Paul Thomas. Thank you everyone for being here. This has been great. We wish you all a good rest of the year if you're still going. Otherwise, we hope you are enjoying your summer break. Thank you.

Paul Thomas (47:27):

Thank you. A pleasure.

Matt Renwick (47:28):

Thank you.

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“What is the goal of independent reading, and why does this goal so often get lost in instruction?”

We asked this and other questions of Hannah Schneewind. She is the author along with Jennifer Scoggin of Trusting Readers: Powerful Practices for Independent Reading (Heinemann, 2021).

We explored how to best use our limited classroom time, as well as how leaders can support this critical element of the literacy block.

You can purchase Hannah’s book here. For a full transcript of this conversation, see below or click here.

Full subscribers also have access to the video recording of this conversation, as well as the professional discussion guide for this conversation.

Read by Example is a reader-supported publication. Thank you to our full subscribers for making transcripts and other benefits available to everyone.

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick (00:03):

Welcome to Read by Example, where teachers are leaders and leaders know literacy. That tagline is from Regie Routman's book, Read, Write, Lead, and I find that line especially appropriate for our conversation today. Our special guest is Hannah Schneewind, and she is the co-author, along with Jennifer Scoggin, of Trusting Readers: Powerful Practices for Independent Reading through Heinemann. Reading the bio in the back of the book, which is right here: Hannah Schneewind has been a teacher, staff developer, curriculum writer, keynote speaker, and national literacy consultant. Hannah's interest in student and teacher agency, and her belief in the power of books informs her work with schools. Together, Jen and Hannah are the co-creators of Trusting Readers, a group dedicated to collaborating with teachers to design literacy opportunities that invite all students to be engaged and thrive as readers and writers. Welcome, Hannah.

Hannah Schneewind (01:07):

Great. Thank you so much for having me. And I know that Jen is sorry that she's not here. She's traveling at the moment, so you'll have just me, I'm afraid.

Matt Renwick (01:17):

We are delighted to have you. And we have another guest with us, Mary Beth Nicholas, a Wisconsinite now living in Minnesota, working at an alternative school secondary level. She had been working with intervention students at the secondary level and brings a neat perspective as well to trusting readers, especially after that elementary experience. So, with that I have three questions I was going to pose to Hannah, but take the direction wherever you want it to go. And again, our intentions for this conversation are just to build knowledge and awareness around this topic, and to practice coaching skills while engaging in conversation around professional topics. So, really trying to serve as a model for any leader of any position, how you might, co-create knowledge together instead of living in sometimes these echo chambers we see in education. My first question is for Hannah: what is the goal of independent reading and why does this goal so often get lost in instruction?

Hannah Schneewind (02:26):

So the first thing I would say is that the goal of independent reading is for students to become really skilled and proficient readers. And being proficient includes being skillful with decoding, fluency, and comprehension. So the reason I think it's really important to start with that is that too often independent reading is seen as this kind of fluffy thing, or it's an add-on, or it's a thing that you do for 10 minutes at the end of the day if you have time. And so I just want to start by saying, no, this is a serious teaching and learning time. So I would say that's the big goal. And then within that goal, of course, we have lots of other things, right? We want kids to find joy in reading. We want them to have books that they connect with. We want them to find books where they can make meaning and then really are motivated to take some kind of action after they're reading.

(03:28):

I'll tell you though, I won't say that the goal of independent reading is to make students love reading, because I think when we say that, number one, we do ourselves a disservice as professionals because that seems kind of fluffy. And number two, I actually can't do that. That is to say, I can set up the condition, you know, I can give you lots of choice and I can give you the right feedback at the right time, and I can give you lots of time to read. I can set up the conditions for you to love reading, but I can't actually make you love reading. So I think, that's something I have thought a lot about. So I no longer say, the goal is for all them to love reading. They might or they might not. So, then in terms of why does it get lost?

(04:16):

I think it gets lost for a few reasons. I think it gets lost, number one, when it is not in fact the focus of reading instruction. When it becomes something to do at the end of the day or it sometimes gets lost because the teacher is trying to also work with small groups, let's say, and independent reading is something that the students can in fact do independently that she knows it's going to be really impactful. And so she ends up doing small group instruction during that time and does not confer with kids. And independent reading without conferring is not actually independent reading, such as giving kids books and letting them read. So I think those are two very different things.

Matt Renwick (05:03):

That's very helpful for me. Especially the comment about you cannot make kids love reading. It almost seems kind of refreshing that I can kind of take that part off of my responsibility, and not that I'm not responsible for the conditions, but puts more of the onus on that part of a reading right on the kids. And I think kids would rise to that trust, which comes back to your book title, Trusting Readers.

Hannah Schneewind (05:38):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for example, in high school, I became skillful at biology, right? I had a very good teacher. I did all my homework. I never loved biology. I did not decide to become a scientist. You know, so much as we hope that kids will love reading, I do think that we can separate, being skilled at reading from necessarily the love of it. With one important caveat, which is, and Mary Beth, maybe you've seen this with older students, I have talked to older readers who are very proficient readers and actively hate reading. You know, there are kids who think reading is boring, I have to do it, my teacher makes me write a certain number of post-its, or I have to write in this reading log. So when I say we can't make kids love it, that's true. However, , we don't want to be setting them up to hate it either, which sometimes people inadvertently do.

Matt Renwick (06:46):

Well, that comes into the next question I had. You noted on page one, Hannah, that the number one obstacle for teachers trying to increase independent reading time to be able to confer with students to support them in being independent is the demands of the literacy curriculum. But then at the same time, you do share ways to prioritize independent reading that can exist alongside a curriculum resource. So, I guess the connection here is I've heard teachers say, I just don't have time to meet with all my kids, you know? And because of the resource, because of this, or because I can't meet with small groups, there's just too many things to do. What have you found that teachers have done to make better use of their time to increase independent reading? Because I do think there are opportunities that teachers don't always see, to be able to support kids at that level of independence.

Hannah Schneewind (07:50):

Absolutely. So I think there are two different scenarios. So I think one scenario is that I have a program that I have to follow and I'm not sure how to follow this program and still make time for independent reading. And then there's a second scenario, which is I have independent reading up and going, I have devoted time for it. My administrator's completely behind it. I have the books, I'm just not sure how to make it incredibly impactful. So I think those are two different scenarios. So I am actually currently working with some schools in Connecticut who, because of state legislation, will be using a reading program next year. And the district actually asked me to come in specifically to make sure that they can hold on to independent reading. It will be interesting, so I'll be able to tell you more about it in a few months.

(08:50):

We're just at the beginning of it. But one thing that we have thought is, even if you're within a reading program, right? Kids are reading, and once they are done doing whatever that kind of whole class basal type text is for the day, you're always going to have kids who are finishing at different times, and what better time for them to then go do that independent reading, and then you segue from that kind of whatever the whole class activity is into independent reading, and then you do your conferring. So that's one way that we're thinking about it is just kind of tucking it in to that. Another thing you can do, if you have to do this program for "x" number of minutes a day, I also go back to what Kelly Gallagher says in high school.

(09:45):

He teaches high school, he has kids for 50 minutes, and so the first 10 minutes of every single day is independent reading, and he can do two conferences in 10 minutes. So that means as an elementary teacher, my kids have gotten 50 minutes of independent reading over the week, and I've conferred over the course of two weeks, I've conferred with almost everyone in my class. So I think it's that when you talk about finding time, when you talk about finding time, the time is there. It's tricky. So as I said, that's kind of one scenario. The other scenario though is that I have independent reading up and running, but I don't feel as if it's going really well and I'm not sure what to do. So that's the work that Jen and I do a lot.

(10:38):

I will say the question that I get asked the most is, what do I confer about? Like, how's the conference supposed to go? You know? So I think that number one, just don't be afraid to confer, because people will often say, "Well, I walk around, I kind of check in with the kids." and I'll say, "You're already conferring, right?" And now what you have to do is take that kind of checking in and make it really intentional, because if you're already checking in, you could take that five minutes of a check-in and make it five really, really impactful minutes if you kind of follow this structure. And then that's life changing. You know, when teachers realize the importance of being really intentional in that how they spend their time during independent reading.

Matt Renwick (11:31):

So it sounds like just look for pockets and opportunities within your current schedule. Try not to fight it too much, but start really small, make it easy, make it really hard to not do it. Like the example of Kelly Gallagher and just, "Guys, we get 10 minutes to read when you come in." What a neat way to start the class. Just a nice soft landing to whatever chaos is happen in the hallways. You always know you have a quiet, safe spot, coming into Kelly's class.

Hannah Schneewind (12:03):

Yeah, absolutely. So I work with some teachers who also as a way of increasing the number of minute students are reading, we'll do that for like 10 minutes in the morning and then 10 minutes after lunch, because we all know, the beginning of kindergarten, first grade, five minutes is really all you might get, but if you do five minutes in the morning and five minutes in the afternoon and that turns to 10 and 10, then you have 20 minutes. So I also have learned myself to be really flexible in thinking about time. That is to say, ideally, yes, we have this beautiful hour block where we are all sitting there and kids are hunched over their books and working with partners. I mean, that's what I had the liberty to do in my own classroom. And that's the vision. However, you know, as I said, 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the afternoon adds up to 20 minutes every day. So yeah, whatever ways you can work it in, I think it's really important.

Matt Renwick (13:06):

And I have a third question. This kind of transitions to more of a leadership perspective, and you did say in there in one example, you had leaders have you come in to preserve independent reading as they transition to a more commercialized resource. So that's one way as leaders is to make decisions about how resources are spent. But you make the point that teachers need to be trusted as well.

Hannah Schneewind (13:37):

Mm-hmm.

Matt Renwick (13:39):

What specific actions can leaders take to convey their trust, as well as to ensure every kid, every student's being trusted as readers in every classroom? Because not every teacher believes independent reading is important, even though that's the ultimate goal is we want them to transfer, we want them to pick up those identities as readers. So as leaders like myself - we're all leaders here- what can we do to trust teachers so they can trust students and ensure full school accountability?

Hannah Schneewind (14:10):

Absolutely. So I am not a principal and I've never been a principal, so, I would never say, "Well, let me give you some advice." But what I can tell you is what I have noticed or what has worked in the buildings where I work. So I think the first thing is that leaders do need to trust teachers to make their own schedules. And I know that might sound small, but that's actually pretty huge, because if teachers feel as if I must be doing reading from 10:02 to 10:31, and then I'm somehow going to be reprimanded if I'm not doing reading at 10:31, you know. That is not really setting up really great conditions for the teacher. Now, I understand that there have to be parameters, right? Everyone in first grade pretty much has to be doing reading at essentially the same time because we have pullout and we have all these other things.

(15:07):

So I totally get that. It doesn't need to be down to, you know, the minute. So I think that where you can, giving teachers some wiggle room in their schedules is really important. The other thing I would say that goes along with that is giving them flexibility to switch things around. That is to say, sometimes people will have a schedule where they always do reading in the morning and they always do writing in the afternoon, right? And what happens in the afternoon, we all know, right? Especially with the young kids. Afternoon, may not be so great at time. And then I'll have teachers say, "Oh, but I can't switch it. You know, the schedule is that way. I have to follow that." "Well, why?" you know, "why can't you switch it? You're getting to everything." So why not have writing in the morning some days and reading in the afternoon some days?

(16:01):

So I think that if leaders give teachers that kind of flexibility, I think that goes a long way. Then the other thing that I think is very difficult about being a principal, and even in my role, is that I think it's very tricky to balance curricular consistency with teacher autonomy. That is to say, yes, we need to have a consistent curriculum, right? We, our school has to have consistent values. We all think that kids need a long time to read. That has to be consistent. And at the same time, you can recognize that some teachers are going to do it differently, and it's not going to look exactly the same. So this is a silly example, but I love to sing. And so in first grade, independent reading was always preceded by shared singing of songs that were shared reading. That was me. My colleague next door is like, "I am not singing." She did lots of shared reading of big books, but we were both doing the same thing. We were both getting to all those skills and strategies. So I think that balance as yes, we need to be consistent and yes, where are places where we can give teachers autonomy.

Matt Renwick (17:22):

Yeah. I think you nailed it, Hannah, that's one of the biggest challenges of leadership, is balancing the curriculum coherence and teacher autonomy. And I'm glad you brought that up. I would hand the mic over, so to speak, to Mary Beth or Debra, if you have any thoughts on what Hannah shared here. I've been taking notes. This has been great.

Mary Beth Nicklaus (18:01):

I was thinking about what you were saying about teacher autonomy and letting teachers create their own schedules. Because when you're dealing, like with middle school, high school, and you have that 50 minute or 40 minute block or regular class period, skinny class period, depending on the chemistry of your class, this whole working with reading is not linear. You have your routine and you have your stations where I work on this, then I work on this, then I work on this. But when you're dealing with a certain chemistry of those older kids, especially if you're dealing with students who are maybe not your regular mainstream students, nothing is linear.

(19:07):

You plug them into those routines, but then you might suddenly break off into somebody has an idea that they want to write, like say a story based on...I had a student who really got into Gary Paulson and he was actually a foster student and he said, "You know, Gary Paulson writes about his life, and I have interesting life stories, so I would like to..." (He had already completed two or three books.) "I would like to write about some of my life stories." So he'd read some of the time, then he'd go off and start writing a story, and then other students started joining. Well, I have something I can write too. And you know what's really interesting? That year I got a grant through Encourage Foundation, and we put all our stories together in a book that's towards the end of the year.

(20:04):

And that really meant something to these kids, to the point that years later, I had gone into Lulu Publishing, and they each got a spiral bound last story book. I had a student come up to me and I didn't even recognize him at first because he was grown up now. And I think he was a senior in high school, and he said, "I still have my book on my dresser, and I look at it every day." So you find things, you know, the stuff that you're doing in elementary creates a foundation, especially if it's as strong as the kind of ideas that you have and what I'm seeing so far in your book. And then I get them, someone like me gets them, and you just keep that going. If there's anything I can stress, and you're talking about teacher autonomy is, realize that they're a professional, they know what to do with the chemistry of their students. And then within that framework you can usually end up getting something pretty interesting, I think.

Matt Renwick (21:16):

Thanks Mary Beth, I think that's a cool story. I know if I was walking through your classroom, I would think, "Hey, that's awesome. Keep doing that." I am wondering why some leaders don't do that. And I suspect it comes back to the initial line from Regie's Rotman's book: teachers need to be leaders and leaders need to know literacy. And I suspect that some leaders just don't know literacy. And that's why teacher autonomy falls apart. They don't know how to see different pathways to the same outcome. I would open up to Debra or Hannah because you work with different schools. Any words of wisdom, experiences here, where how a leader might build their literacy knowledge or practice, especially if they don't have a literacy background?

Debra Crouch (22:11):

Well, hopefully they're joining in any professional learning opportunities. I know that's made a huge difference in the schools I've worked with is, if principals believe enough in what the conversations are that you're having with teachers when you come in that they make the time to come in and be part of that conversation. I think a really just a critical piece, so that they're asking the questions and they're hearing the kinds of conversations that their teachers are engaged in. Within all of this, I was just thinking about as you were talking about teachers and principals, if they value and make sure that this is part of their day, that it's not the add-on, independent reading is not the extra thing that you're doing.

(23:20):

It's the thing that you're doing, right? It builds around it, sort of the same thing with writing. I'm in that same conversation with writing. It's like, this isn't an extra, you know, independent reading, independent writing is not the extra stuff. It's the reason you're doing what you do. I think that was just such a powerful message. As principals you don't want to require, but at the same time, how do you balance that conversation out of just making sure that that it is something that we recognize it has to be part of our day. So in the autonomy, part of me goes, as long as they understand it's so important that you have to have independent reading and writing every day. But that again, expectations and consistency and the ongoing conversations.

Hannah Schneewind (24:17):

Yeah, I agree with everything you said, and specifically having principals be part of the work with teachers, I think is key. When they do that, I treat the principal just the way I would treat another teacher. So if everyone is gonna go off and trying a conference, the principal's going to go off and try a conference. And if everyone is conferring with a partner and the partner's going to practice coaching in, then the principal is part of that. Because if they're not really doing it, how on earth are they actually going to be able to evaluate it? So another thing that I encourage principals to do is, if you are doing an evaluation - and again, I'm not a principal, I know nothing about evaluations - but when you are evaluating, please do not just watch the mini lesson and leave because then you only looking at 10 minutes of whole class instruction, and that actually is not the most impactful part.

(25:23):

Please sit down next to the teacher as she's doing a small group. Sit down next to her as she's doing a one-on-one conference. That's the time. Write down everything she says. That's actually what I think you could then evaluate and give really helpful feedback about. But so often, and I don't know if this happens to you, but often when I do come into a school for the first time, they just want to talk about mini lessons. And I actually have learned to say, "Actually, no, let's start with matching kids and books. Let's start with getting your classroom library together. Let's start with how do you say to a child, 'Hey, how's it going with your reading today?'" And then we can think about the mini lesson, because too often we just focus on, as I said, that whole class part. But really that's not where the magic happens. And so if you can get principals to confer and then to do their evaluations or observations while the teacher is doing that, I think those can be really helpful for leadership.

Matt Renwick (26:30):

That reminds me of beginning with the end in mind: we'll start with where we want to be, at the end. I know you're not a principal, Hannah, but I think you ideas are spot on. I've been guilty of that too, of just watching teaching, and I forget that teaching happens all day long, and it doesn't mean the teachers, you know, verbally giving instructions or are writing on the board. So much of good teaching happens in those quiet spaces. One thing I've tried to do to is to confer with readers myself, when I do visits in classrooms. I just did this with fifth grade group talking with a student about what he was reading: a baseball book. He had just tons of knowledge.

(27:17):

Peter Afflerback calls it "epistemic beliefs" or "epistemiology", right? Just a wide range of knowledge about baseball, about legends. He was able to say, "Aaron Judge wouldn't be in this book because he's a current player. In this book, it talks just about legends from like 1990 or previous." You know, just things I wouldn't know. But later on, I said to his teacher, "I don't know if the student would do so well on a typical assessment." She's like, "I know." I've had kind of a shared frustration there was not a solution, right? But at least we could talk about that at a very collegial level. And it did not feel like an evaluation. And I think that's what teachers really crave, is just conversation and not always solutions. But I appreciate this advice. We're already at 30 minutes and this has so far been a great conversation. I think what we could do is just kind of go around and, especially with Debra and Mary Beth, if you have any closing thoughts or questions for Hannah, I'll start with you, Mary Beth, if you have anything you'd like to close with.

Mary Beth Nicklaus (28:51):

As a teacher, I've seen it because I've been teaching long enough where I've had very supportive principals who I just feel they were kind of almost the backbone of what was going on in my classroom. Because as a teacher, you feel like the principal is good with what you're doing, it like gives you this exhilaration and this feeling like you can take chances and be happy taking chances and look at it as a challenge instead of a fear that you're going to get slapped down. So I agree with you that the principal is a very important part of that.

Matt Renwick (29:43):

Debra, any closing thoughts for you?

Debra Crouch (29:46):

Yeah, I was just so enjoying reading this, and I had actually pulled it out earlier. I was doing some work with some teachers on their classroom libraries, now thinking with a little bit of a future in mind and for the fall. So in Chapter 2, the thing that I thought was so just beautiful about the parts that we read for this notion of trust, I think is just so powerful. It speaks to the way that we view kids and the way that we view teachers, as capable and of course they can do this, this kind of thinking work.

(30:45):

It's just such a critical part of relationships, as a condition of learning, and that principle of engagement that you have to have that trusting relationship. Without that nothing else goes. Mary Beth, the way you said that, if your principal's with you, you don't fear trying things out. You don't fear, you know, trying something and it's not going to work the way that we want it this time. And I think that's just such a critical piece that's sometimes missing in classrooms today. If teachers come to us and say, "How do you want it? What's the district want? What's the principal want?" How's it supposed to be that that's really a base of fear. Doesn't matter how good you are as a teacher, it's a base of fear that you're coming from. It doesn't have that sense of trust that you need to be the learner that you can be. So I'm just absolutely loving your book.

Hannah Schneewind (31:49):

Thank you. I'm glad it's really useful. I'd love to know what the teachers do with their classroom libraries.

Debra Crouch (31:56):

Oh my goodness, kindergarten, they were so adorable. So we were trying to put the books into understanding the notion that their books are categorized, right. You know, putting the books together. And I took your question. They're about, "Are the books together, you know, putting the books that are together, right. And this one little five year old who's next to me, he goes, "Wait, it's like garbage." And I'm thinking, "Huh?". And he goes, "You put the plastic together, and you put the paper together, and you put the..."

Hannah Schneewind (32:28):

Right?

Matt Renwick (32:32):

Yeah.

Hannah Schneewind (32:33):

Yeah. That's a perfect way of understanding it. Right? And that's such a great example of, it makes sense to kids and then however you set up that library will make sense to them.

Matt Renwick (32:45):

It's a classic student example too.

Hannah Schneewind (32:50):

Yeah. I might have to use that one.

Matt Renwick (32:59):

Hannah, any closing thoughts for you? I'll just say, I've used and read Chapter 2. I've read that chapter twice and even have recommended it to teachers in my building, especially if they've not been part of the culture very long. I'll say, "Read this chapter and this really gets to the heart of what we're trying to get to in our school." But terrific book. I agree with everyone. Any closing thoughts, Hannah?

Hannah Schneewind (33:27):

First of all, thank you for having me. And it just makes me so happy to hear that people are using it because really what more could you ask, right? It's like what, when we say to kids, you know, what action do you want to take after reading this book? The action might be, I wanna go find another book by this author. Or the action might be, I need to write a letter to my senator about greenhouse gases. But I'm so happy that our book can actually help people take some actions. I guess my closing thought would be about reading identity, which we did not have a chance to discuss. So one of the things that I find frustrating about some of the current narrative around the teaching of reading is that the role of engagement and motivation and the research on engagement and motivation is being completely ignored.

(34:20):

Students are at the center of this. That is as much a science of reading as is the science of decoding and what we need to know about phonics and phonemic awareness and phonological awareness. If you want to talk more about just that piece at some point, it's just so important. And if teachers don't yet feel comfortable conferring, everyone can sit down and do what we call a discovery conference, which is basically saying to the child, "Hey, tell me about yourself as a reader." That one question just gives you so much insight and also really shows that you are trusting the student. I really want to get to know you. So that's just something that I feel very passionately about is that student kind of being at the center of it and that reading identity and engagement motivation are a huge part of that. Thanks so much for hosting.

Matt Renwick (35:30):

Thank you, Hannah. Thank you Mary Beth. Thank you, Debra. Thank you. Great conversation. Please read Trusting Readers: Powerful Practices for Independent Reading by Jennifer Scoggin and Hannah Schneewind through Heinemann. Terrific book and terrific conversation. Thank you.

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In this episode, Mary Howard, Debra Crouch and I speak with professors Michiko Hikida and Leah Durán, authors of the article “Making sense of reading’s forever wars” (Phi Delta Kappan, 2022).

Leah Durán is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Sociocultural Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Michiko Hikida is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University, Columbus. They wrote this article to make the information “accessible to a lot of readers in a way that most academic journals aren't.”

Our conversation was guided around three primary questions:

• Have we learned anything from our past debates, or are we just going in circles?

• What are your thought on the idea that these “wars” may be part of a thesis - antithesis - synthesis that we need to go through in order to move forward as a profession?

• Students need institutional changes, not just individual instructional change. What can K-12 practitioners do to support institutional change?

I hope you find this discussion as helpful as we did for better understanding the context and the conversation around the science of reading.

Full subscribers also have access to the following:

• Video recording of our conversation via Zoom

• Professional discussion guide (linked within the video recording post)

• Access to future disussion threads, ability to comment on posts, and join virtual conversations with esteemed literacy leaders (click here for upcoming schedule).

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick:

Hi. Want to welcome Michiko and Leah to our conversation. They wrote a wonderful article for Kappan Magazine of Phi Delta Kappan titled Making Sense of Reading’s Forever Wars. Subtitle is, “Adopting a new science-based methodology is not enough to address students' difficulties with reading.” And we were chatting prior just how much we appreciate how well you were succinct in your article, but yet covered so much ground. I'm going to share my screen here so we can all see it. And yeah, and I'm just going to scroll down here to your bylines and your well sourced cited article. So Leah is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural studies at the University of Arizona Tucson.

And Michiko is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. So welcome again. And yeah, I guess I'll start with the first question here. And it's actually your question, is have we learned anything from our past debates or are you just going in circles? And I'll open it up to Leah or Michiko first, but everyone else here feel free to chime in and offer your thoughts. And when you do, if you can introduce yourself when you speak. Michiko and Leah, we've already introduced you before. For our other guests here, just make sure you state your name.

Michiko Hikida:

Leah, do you want to take this or do you want me to give it a shot?

Leah Durán:

Yeah, yeah. I think that we have not learned as much as we should have from past debates, and I think that was part of the reason why Michiko and I really wanted to write this, is that it seemed like No Child Left Behind is very recent history. And at least the way that people are legislating science of reading, it is pretty much identical to scientifically based reading research, the term from the Bush era. It's still the big five from the report of the National Reading Panel.

So in some ways it seems like there's this real energy to do exactly what has already been done without really grappling with why that didn't lead to the transformative changes that people hoped it would. And I think it's very important that we do that, if we don't acknowledge the way that No Child Left Behind and Reading First really fell short of I think the big dreams that people had for it. And think about why. Then there's no chance of not doing that again. So I really hope that the article gives people a chance to think about what we've already tried and what that means about what we haven't tried, and should try, and do differently, in order to not just do the same old thing over and over again every 10 to 15 years.

Michiko Hikida:

I do want to add to that a little bit and say that from a research perspective, I do think that there has been some consensus. And that consensus is that phonics instruction is helpful as a part of a more robust literacy curriculum. I think a person would be hard pressed to find a researcher that is anti-phonics. But I reiterate what Leah's saying is that at a policy level that doesn't feel like how it's being taken up.

Matt Renwick:

Yeah, I won't put anyone on the spot here, but I think the “be reading by third grade” retention policies might be one where we're not really learning from the past and repeating some mistakes. Yeah. But yeah, to me it sounds like this article's intent was just to create a pause for us and just to take stock of where we've come from, where we're at, and how might we proceed forward. So yeah, that's how I read it too. And I'd just open it up to our guests here. We have Debra, Mary and Sonya. So any thoughts on this too? What have you've learned, if anything from past debates?

Mary Howard:

Well, one of the things, and I'm Mary, I'm been an educator 51 years and now living in Honolulu, and I'm connecting back to something that you said in your piece that I keeps capturing my a attention. Some have argued that a permanent sense of crisis in K-12 education has been manufactured by those who aim to undermine the institution of public schools and scapegoat educators as a way of diverting attention from America's deepening social problems. And I think for me, a lot of that is wanting a thing. And that's always been what I've seen in all of these years in education, but never so much as now when social media makes it so easy.

But wanting to blame all of these, we don't have enough programs, we don't have enough phonics, we don't have enough this, we don't have enough this and this is the way to fix it. And for anyone who's been in education longer than a day, the one thing that we know is that nothing is going to work all the time for every child. And it's certainly not going to work when we're fixated on that. So I just always keep coming back to that quote because the one thing we don't want to talk about is those deepening social problems. And so the article really meant a lot to me because you did that so beautifully.

Matt Renwick:

And Mary, if I can just then transition what you just said to maybe a question to Michiko and Leah is you mentioned that not one thing's going to work for everyone. And I appreciate you surfacing that because in the article too, you mentioned that students, they don't need individual instructional change, they need institutional change. And I think that's what Mary's pointing to here too is that's a big, big thing to take on. As practitioners, what are some ideas you might have for us to move on, a next step? That would probably might be helpful.

Michiko Hikida:

I have a couple of thoughts, and they are maybe outside of the classroom more than inside of the classroom because we are talking about institutional change. So I think a lot about teachers as public intellectuals. So when you've been teaching for 51 years like Mary has, you have a wealth of knowledge that you can stand on in a public context. So I think speaking publicly, posting on social media, having podcasts, those kinds of things, as well as organizing and doing things like voting.

Leah Durán:

Yeah, and I would say my answer is pretty similar in that I think maybe part of what we can do is redefine what counts as reading policy. Things that are about housing are also reading policy. Things that are about poverty are also reading policy. And I think that we sometimes compartmentalize them and think that those belong in a different arena or somebody else's expertise. But I think that they should be part of a conversation and part of our efforts around improving reading have to do with improving everything, even though that's a lot and hard to do, but it definitely won't happen if we don't try as part of it.

And the other piece that related to that I think is that one thing that has been hard for me about watching this current round of the reading wars is that there really is a tremendous amount of money being spent, but to my eyes, it's being spent on things that I wouldn't reasonably expect to cause huge changes based on the research. But there are other things that we're not spending money on because I think we don't categorize them as being about reading. So I think that's part of it too. People are willing to spend money. Millions of dollars of money, but maybe I think they, legislators need some push around what counts as doing something about reading.

Michiko Hikida:

And I would say that that comes back to this question of what have we learned? And I think there is some consensus in the field about the impact of poverty and trauma and housing insecurity on reading scores.

Matt Renwick:

Yeah, that's one of the few correlations I've seen is poverty and trauma and some of these challenges as a principal and as a former teacher, and that correlation with reading achievements. So I'm glad you pointed that out. We mentioned this latest round of the reading wars, we use these metaphors to try to describe it. But I also noted in there too, instead of the pendulum swinging, you talk about incremental progress as a better way to gauge growth as a profession with reading instruction. And what things have you seen now that you've studied this in terms of specifically around reading instruction, you mentioned that we know phonics does work as a instructional strategy, and other resources or practices that are promising and that you'd like to see. You mentioned we have all this money, what buckets would you want to put the money in? Certainly outside of education, poverty and those issues are super important. Within the school, where would you want to put some of those resources?

Leah Durán:

Well, one of the things that I think about in terms of what all schools need to do a good job is based on an experience I had when we were both doctoral students at UTS. And one of the pieces of our training there was to supervise student teachers. And so we did that in schools all across the Austin area, so in the urban core and the suburbs. And one of the things that has really stayed with me was how different, even within the same district, classrooms were and schools were in terms of resources, depending who was enrolled there. And so I think about one particular school where I sometimes supervise student teachers, that was just really lovely and I would want everyone to have that experience. The teachers there were terrific, really talented teachers. They had huge classroom libraries. And just a lot of care and expertise went into mediating kids', access to books, kids' instruction, and were very inclusive.

I remember seeing the whole classroom labeled in braille when there's a child who would benefit from them. So there's all these things. I think if you look at some of these schools that are already serving more affluent communities. I feel like everyone deserves that. And part of that is making it an attractive working condition. So one of the reasons I think that teachers like to work there and experience teachers that gravitated towards it was that they had money to pay for extra specialist teachers so that they got more planning periods. And I think that was part of what went into really thoughtful lessons. And they had tons and tons and tons of children's books. And I think that's an important piece that we should also take from the whole language side or the meaning focused side of these different pendulum swings, is that there's value in thinking about meaning and there's value in children's literature as a resource.

And that doesn't have to be opposed to teaching about phonics, teaching about the code. So I guess that's my answer is I think if you look at a really wonderful school in an affluent neighborhood and think about what are all the resources that they have right there, even just in the school, that's even leaving outside all of the different things that kids have access to. But I would want all children to get to go to a school that looks and feels like that one in terms of a good place to learn, a good place to work.

Matt Renwick:

Any thoughts from the rest of the group on what was shared there?

Debra Crouch:

So, hi, I'm Debra Crouch. I'm a literacy consultant, so I go in and support schools. I live in San Diego. And you're echoing a conversation I had with the principal this morning as we walked around and we were looking at classroom libraries specifically. And just thinking about what it looks like. And at one point I asked, so I said it's that getting that picture, what would an affluent school look like? Why can't we create spaces that feel like that? Because one of the things that we were noticing were some of the jumbles in classrooms storage. It's the classrooms got the classroom, but then it's also got storage stuff all over. And we were starting to brainstorm ways that we could even take some of that out. And is there a space in the building that we could use as a storage because another principal had shared that idea.

I think that envisioning, what are some of the possibilities that we could create around this, because I'm not absolutely positive that it is, like you were saying, it's like we have the money. So it's not like we don't have the money, it's the way that we're using it and the way that we're thinking about what happens at these schools. I go into classrooms sometimes and they've made black and white photocopies for the kids as opposed to giving them these really gorgeous books that they have access to. And for some reason they decide that a printed off black and white, and I keep saying to them, don't children deserve color in their books? Come on, this is not an acceptable way of treating the children. So maybe it is some of that conversation that we have around how we're using what we have and what those spaces could look like for kids. Yeah. So I so appreciated your article. Oh my goodness. This was brilliantly done. Yeah.

Michiko Hikida:

Thank you.

Debra Crouch:

You're welcome.

Matt Renwick:

You've already answered my last question, which was a colleague of mine, we were talking about science of reading, the reading wars, and he mentioned these things go on cycles. There's a thesis and then there's an antithesis, and then there's synthesis. And it goes back, goes around and around. And do you see that? I guess the question we had was, are these hard conversations of these issues necessary to go through in order to get to a better understanding of good reading instruction? I don't enjoy arguing about the science of reading, but is it also the obstacle is the way of thinking too?

Michiko Hikida:

My initial thought of that about that is it depends on who's having the conversation. So I think about the field of literacy research and how this conversation started in the 1960s. And in the field of literacy research, there has been a synthesis. And part of that synthesis is that, yes, phonics is an effective instructional tool, but it is not the entirety of a literacy curriculum. So within that field, I feel like there has been that thesis, antithesis and synthesis of this conversation. I think within the public sphere, the motivations for it are different. It's complicated, there's a lot of money involved, there's a lot of a lot of things involved. But I don't think that that conversation, the more public discourse on it is coming to it necessarily earnestly. And willing to engage with all of the research and evidence that we do have. So I think it depends on who's having the conversation and for what purpose.

Matt Renwick:

And then the context, it sounds like too, if you're debating stuff on Twitter, it's going to be a different conversation. [inaudible 00:19:08].

Michiko Hikida:

Or you know what? Policy makers like things that are very measurable and concrete and that I can legislate, and learning isn't really that clean. But gosh, that would be so much more convenient. [inaudible 00:19:25] with people and we're messy.

Matt Renwick:

Yeah, we can measure engagement, you can measure those more messier kinds of things, but not in the way you can measure some of the things that seem to get more of the attention. That's a great point.

Mary Howard:

And one thing that worries me in this day and age, and in my mind more so than ever it's been in history, is the level of mandating and the laws that are coming out from schools that are saying here are things that are not research based, like choice reading is not research based. We just shake our heads and go, "What?" So I think too, it's really important for us to be very cognizant that teachers are in schools where these horrifying mandates are being put in place. And so at the same time that we're thinking about all of the important things, I love the discussion of let's envision what is possible, and I know that teachers do that every day, but how do we help teachers to understand how to maneuver a school where there is a ball and chain attached to their arms and legs and persona, so to speak.

Debra Crouch:

See, a lot of it comes to leadership. It's the leadership in the schools. Because you can have that legislation piece, but it's interpreted so much by the school leadership. So that piece is so powerful and important in school leadership.

Matt Renwick:

Yeah. Leah or Michiko, did you see when you were visiting these schools during your dissertation, your studies, did you see a correlation with leadership? And you mentioned affluence, did you see a leadership factor there with supporting teachers?

Michiko Hikida:

I'll actually talk out of my teaching experience. So I taught third, fourth, and fifth in Texas. So they were all testing grades. And we had a remarkable principal and she protected us from the district. So when the district would say every elementary school in the city has to do this professional development, she would appeal to them and say, "Hey, I would love to do this with professional development with my teachers instead." So absolutely, and this was a title one school. I think 97% of our kids were on free and reduced price lunch. More than half of our kids were bi or multilingual.

This was a school that I think people would think of as low performing, and it wasn't. And it was a joyful place to work as a teacher. I felt like I had a lot of autonomy. I felt like I had a ton of administrative support. And because of that, our students performed very well on high stakes testing and enjoyed reading. So I think that in my own experience, having a supportive administrator willing to go to bat for us made all the difference in the world.

Matt Renwick:

Well, that's great. We're running close to our time here together and I want to be respectful of that. Any closing thoughts that you might have, Leah or Michiko? If not, you can also share what you're reading right now. That's an option. But yeah, just any closing thoughts as we close our time together?

Leah Durán:

Yeah, I mean, one thing that I've been thinking about, and it was part of the reason why we wanted to write specifically in Phi Delta Kappan, is a place that's accessible to a lot of readers in a way that most academic journals aren't. I think that the state of the field is a very difficult thing to know. It requires a lot of time devoted to reading, to get a sense of what's going on in the field, what does the research say, what are points of contention? And I do feel like as people who have institutional access to all of these scholarly journals and that time is part of our jobs is to be current, that that's an important thing that I want to do is try and translate that or make more accessible the complexity or the synthesis that the field has arrived at in ways that I think are not always very easy to see if you can't get access to a lot of scholarly journals or go to AERA or any of these other conferences.

Michiko Hikida:

I'll just add a couple of things. So first thank you for having us. It's fun for Leah and me to talk about this. This was an important piece for us. But second, there is a piece that was just published in one of those journals that of course is behind the paywall that I would be happy to share with you about this that was written by David Reinking, and just came out in January, called Legislating Phonics. And he and a couple of others go through the history of this and challenge some of the arguments that phonics only people are making, which I thought was really helpful. The second thing I thought about is a book called Rocking the Boat, How Tempered Radicals affect Change.

So when thinking about what teachers can do in their classrooms, when we know that there are some institutional constraints and some other challenges that they face, that's what comes to mind to me. So if I can share my screen for a quick second, I can just show you the cover.

Matt Renwick:

Yeah, I don't mind.

Michiko Hikida:

And as a classroom teacher, this is how I felt. I felt like I was a tempered radical. I, of course, had to operate within the constraints of the school and what I was expected to do. And I really worked to try to find those spaces where I could do something else. So that I would just share.

Leah Durán:

Oops. I wasn't fast enough.

Michiko Hikida:

Oh, sorry.

Leah Durán:

It's all right.

Michiko Hikida:

There you go.

Leah Durán:

Thank you. Let me do a quick screen-

Matt Renwick:

Rocking the Boat. How tempered Radicals Affect Change Without Making Trouble. Okay.

Leah Durán:

Oh, I love that title.

Matt Renwick:

[inaudible 00:26:27].

Michiko Hikida:

It really resonated for me as a teacher where we do operate with systems and how we might be able to make change from the inside without just burning it all apart.

Leah Durán:

Wow.

Matt Renwick:

And still be able to teach and lead and study and do research. And this has been great. We really appreciate you all being here, and we look forward to reading more from you. So thank you.

Mary Howard:

Thank you so much for the invitation. It was really great to get to talk.

Leah Durán:

Thank you.

Debra Crouch:

Thank you.

Mary Howard:

That was wonderful.

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In this month’s podcast, I spoke with Terry Underwood about portfolio assessment in the context of literacy instruction.

Terry is a former classroom teacher and a university professor. He is the author of Portfolio Practices: Lessons from Schools, District, and States with Sandra Murphy, and The Portfolio Project: A Study of Assessment, Instruction, and Middle School Reform. Terry writes frequently at Learning to Read, Reading to Learn, an online journal where he shares his current thinking on literacy instruction today.

The full transcript of our conversation below is made possible due to the generosity of our full subscribers. Consider becoming one today. Full subscribers have access to additional community benefits, including live conversations with literacy experts, leadership guides, and discussion threads.

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick (00:03):

This is Matt, and I'm joined by Terry Underwood, a literacy professor and author on a couple of books on portfolio assessment. And I asked Terry to come on. He's got a great newsletter, Learning to Read, Reading to Learn. Did I say that right?

Terry Underwood (00:23):

That's exactly right.

Matt Renwick (00:25):

He's got a great newsletter. I think everyone should subscribe to it. He had an interesting comment about failure and how the culture very much can drive that, either way for better or worse. And I just said, we got to talk about this if you get some time. And also talk about your work with portfolios, which I think I get a sense are starting to come back a little bit. I wrote a book on portfolios in 2017, and it didn't sell that well, but it seems I'm getting more questions about it now than I did in 2017. I'm curious as to maybe why. Terry, do you want to share just about your books some of that context?

Terry Underwood (01:09):

Yeah, absolutely. Matt. Hey, thanks for asking me to talk about this. This is really up my alley, more or less. The whole notion of fear, of sharing and fear of disclosing, I think is not just a problem for professional development of teachers. It's a problem for shining a light on pedagogy generally. And the fear is real. I mean, there there's a lot of teacher bashing out in the wild, you know, in the communities. And then when you add to that the fact that we have a model of schooling that is really grounded in a factory model where you have managers and workers, it's pretty ugly. I think that that's the bottom line.

(02:09):

And in the worst case, you get a kind of a surveillance of teachers, which will tend to make people fearful and drive them in into the shadows a little bit. I want to pivot a little bit and go back to where I started, my interest in portfolios. I didn't know that this was happening, but I've thought about this a lot of times. The last day of school when I was in high school. You know, everybody would leave the school building. It was a big school. We had about 2200 students all together. It was a township school in Illinois, and we had a lot of kids from rural areas that were bused in together into this high school. It sat right across from the Fox River in Illinois, and there was a bridge across the river.

(03:08):

And we had to, when we left school, almost everybody would walk across that bridge and go down Main Street to the west side of Chicago, Ottawa, where a lot of people lived. And what would happen, people would line up on the bridge and they would open their notebooks, and they would throw all of their papers into the river. And the river looked like it was just absolutely white with paper totally covered from shore to shore. And I always had a little bit of a problem every year with throwing my stuff away. A lot of it I didn't really care. But ever since I was in fourth grade, I started saving. I started writing stories in fourth grade, and I started saving some of my stories. And it just became kind of a habit.

(04:01):

And even to this day, I have rubber tubs full of papers from way back. I don't even know what's back there. My garage is just stuffed with this. But really, over the years I started to appreciate the value of collecting things that were of interest to me, and that I thought might show up. I found that I could never really predict when something would be useful to me. And so if I didn't have it, I didn't have it. I couldn't go back to it, which is part of the problem, you have a tendency to hoard there.

Matt Renwick (04:43):

You're collecting your knowledge. You had a value on what you created and sounds like you valued it more than some of your peers.

Terry Underwood (04:56):

Yeah, I never really advertised it or thought much about it until a lot later when I started looking back at this stuff. And I'm really glad I kept stuff from fourth grade. I still have some of my really early writings. Maybe 10, 12 years ago, I came upon, found out that the state of Minnesota...do you know anything about eFolio Minnesota?

Matt Renwick (05:26):

No.

Terry Underwood (05:27):

The state of Minnesota decided that every child born in the state would be given a portfolio site. And they developed this, they call it eFolio, Minnesota. I think that's the name of it. But anyway, if you were born in Minnesota, when you were born, you'd get a portfolio and they would give you a place to collect your stuff, and it's free, and any anybody else could buy a site from them, I think $19.99 a year. I started using that site in my teaching at Sacramento State. And prior to that, years before that, probably the early eighties, I was teaching composition at community colleges in California.

(06:23):

And I started to get wind of this portfolio movement that had been catching fire at least since the 1960s. And it essentially was rooted in this idea that if we don't attend to what we've done, regardless - you could call it a failure, you could call it a success, whatever it is - but we have done it. And if we don't look at it and examine it in relation to where we are now and where we would like to be, then we're sort of adrift. And it becomes very difficult to kind of make adjustments that may not be comfortable, but you can see you're convinced to take action. And I think there's a cognitive value that you have this intention that as you move forward, you're going to do things and you're going to pay attention to what you're doing because you know there's going to come a time when you're going to look back at it.

(07:32):

And so that got me really interested in portfolios. And when I taught fourth grade for three years in the late 1980s, I used portfolios pretty much exclusively. I mean, those kids were saving everything, and I actually would give them prompts and have them write in response to reflective prompts. When I entered a doctoral program in 1991, I knew that I wanted to do something along these lines. I was able to get positioned to study a formal portfolio system in English language arts in a middle school where I was teaching at the time. And that became the basis for my dissertation. I think the bottom line, Matt, is for me, portfolios are a way of thinking, of connecting the surface of our behavior with the deep structures that we are building in long-term memory.

(08:50):

And just as writing on paper as a mnemonic, when we're reading or writing, it allows us to manipulate furniture and long-term memory and build expertise through that manipulation. Portfolios are a sort of an extension of writing. And the one difference, when you write a text and you're going to send it out into the world, there's a kind of a boundary around it, and you hope that it will hold up all by itself with portfolios. You often don't know what you don't know, what the reader is going to make of what you put in. And so there isn't that kind of unity and coherence and organization that you find in a text, but it is a form of a text, especially when it's aimed at an audience.

(09:45):

At some point somebody's going to look at it. I think there's a lot of sort of romanticism around portfolios where it's all like joy and celebration and that is absolutely a part of it. I've thought about the idea of portfolio carnivals and portfolio reviews, portfolio showcases where we really are celebrating, and we're looking at accomplishments and taking stock of what we've done, that’s what it's about. We want, we have to have those as human beings. But there's also portfolio ethnography. I think of portfolio ethnography as opposed to portfolio assessment, where the purpose of the ethnography is to uncover values and patterns of behavior and understand, to be able to explain what the cultural factors are that are creating the motivating sort of behavior.

(10:55):

So the word portfolio is nothing more than a collection of artifacts. And it takes on meaning and significance when you have that other word portfolio: carnival portfolio, review portfolio. When you add the term assessment, you really throw a monkey wrench into the whole process because at at bottom there's an antagonism between assessment and portfolio. If I'm just curating my artifacts and presenting them, what's in it for me to present them to you? So you can assess them? And a lot of times what happens when assessment gets tacked on, you really sort of disenfranchise the person who's creating the portfolio. And so that's the part that really has to be sorted out even before you begin to think about designing a portfolio.

(12:07):

It's one thing to do it in your own classroom because you, as the teacher, you have pretty much control over how you're going to design it, and you can really lessen the impact of assessment and use it more as a celebratory kind of a tool. But when you begin to talk about assessment, which is serious business, you teach without assessment. There's no way that you can organize a school without assessment. It's absolutely necessary. And so it has to be dealt with, and I have a couple of stories about the beginnings of large portfolio systems that I want to talk about.

Matt Renwick (12:59):

Yeah I just wanted to note this it's more than a collection of artifacts. It can be more than an assessment. You talk about ethnography; it certainly communicates what a child values. But you're starting to talk about school-wide or district-wide. I have to think it starts as you look at portfolios across different, several kids. It's going to start to convey the values of a school or a district as well.

Terry Underwood (13:36):

Yes, it absolutely does. In 1989 in the state of Kentucky, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that the entire state school system was unconstitutional and had to be redone. And they didn't specify a remedy, but turned it back to the legislature, and the legislature came up with a law. The legislation decided that they were going to use a portfolio as a reform tool. By the way, the reason it was unconstitutional: there were 66 rural counties in Kentucky that filed a suit. Those schools were just so seriously under-resourced that, I mean, there were stories that were sort of legendary.

(14:46):

But the school finance cases had been coming up since the sixties. There was a 30 year backlog of cases where they were decided. Usually it was just a matter of the state legislature coming up with some kind of law about how we're going to finance the schools so that we don't have such unequal funding. But in this case in Kentucky, they decided that they were going to use a portfolio assessment as a reform tool. And this was in the legislation. So they came up with an advisory committee for developing the portfolio system. And essentially it, you know the requirement in the Common Core that LEAs have formative assessments where you pool the data and you're able to look at trends and that sort of thing?

(15:45):

It was on steroids in Kentucky. The teachers had to make assignments pretty much across the state that were at least commendable in intent. And so the long arm of the state was reaching into the classroom, and teachers were giving assignments to kids based on specifications from afar, and kids were writing and putting those papers in their portfolios, and they were going out for moderation to make sure that they were being reliably scored and all that. And they had to be reliably scored because school funding was dependent on this index. It was sort of like in California: we have the A.P.I: the average performance index or something per school. Well, in Kentucky, 14 of their score on that index was determined by portfolios.

Matt Renwick (16:49):

A standardized assessment, essentially.

Terry Underwood (16:52):

Extremely standard. The difference is it didn't have any standardized tests. Just imagine if every day when you went in to teach, you had to give a standardized, multiple choice test. It would be equivalent to that, except it wasn't multiple choice. I think there was flexibility in the prompts, but essentially the kids hated it. The teachers were in many cases resentful. It's interesting that there's evidence that it actually improved.

Matt Renwick (17:33):

I was gonna say, yeah. I mean, just having the kids write every day. There's got to be some growth there.

Terry Underwood (17:40):

Yeah. They did. When I was preparing for this, I remembered that the Kentucky Writing Advisory Committee created a writing portfolio assessment system. And that system had to embrace writing with a purpose, which means that it's more than spelling, it's more than generating paragraphs. There has to be a purpose to the writing. Writing is a process that we don't just think about and create a text, that there are stages that you go through to create a text writing for an audience: who you're writing for (and) who you can conceive of as the reader impacts both your purpose and your process. And then use that writing for a direct assessment to figure out what is going on in the classroom.

Matt Renwick (18:52):

Well, when you first mentioned this project, it sounded pretty good. I mean, there was good purpose and audience. That's great stuff. But you were mentioning that the teachers and the students were not appreciative of it, because it was kind of top down mandate.

Terry Underwood (19:16):

Well, it took all agency from them. I think part of the problem is in the rural schools, it may have been seen as a blessing compared to what they were getting before. But in the more affluent areas where kids were probably getting fairly good instruction anyway, it was an add-on. It was a chore, it was an intrusion. And so when you stop to think about, "How do you create a portfolio assessment system?", the first thing you have to ask is, "Why do I want a portfolio system?" And who is going to be involved in it? And if you forget that the primary participants are the students...

Matt Renwick (20:04):

Mm-hmm.

Terry Underwood (20:05):

and their teachers, then you're gonna fail. There's no sense even beginning. And that's what happened, I think, in Kentucky. They forgot that they're dealing with teachers and learners. David Pearson makes a case for what he calls "teacher prerogative". Professionals in other areas like medicine and law have what's called prerogative. And what that means is that research is research, but it is the practitioner's prerogative to use that research as they see it useful in their own practice. And it is an individual prerogative. Unless you're an MD and I get you from malpractice or whatever, I'm not going to be able to put you on remote control and tell you what to do.

(21:05):

Now, in an ideal world, we would have that in teacher practice. Now that might generate fear, but it's going to be a different kind of fear. Rather than fear, that I'm gonna be found out that I'm not really as good as I appear or whatever. It's fear that I might be wrong, that my kids aren't going to do very well. Even though there might be an activity that I'm thinking about doing in a classroom, even though I don't like it, I don't think it's going be very much fun, I'm going to have to work at it myself. I'm going to do it because I have a fear that if I don't do it, things aren't going to work as well. An, I'd be definitely willing to talk about that with other teachers in public.

(22:02):

The contrasting case here in 1990, 1991, the state of Vermont, I think it may have been the first state to voluntarily decide to do a portfolio assessment system. And how they went about it - I also wrote a chapter on Vermont in that book - was trying to get ahead of the fear that schools would get destroyed in the coming onslaught of standardized tests. So who is creating the portfolio system? The state of Vermont. And why are they doing it? In Kentucky, they were doing it to reform. So it had a political purpose in Vermont. They were actually acting out of fear that what was going on in the schools was going to be hyper standardized and pretty much controlled.

(23:00):

And they wanted to get ahead of that. This book, by the way, is designed for anybody who wants to create a portfolio system. You need this book, because what we do is we examine nine different portfolio systems from the level of the classroom to the school, to the district, to the state, to the nation. And we talk about their strategies for collection. How do they collect? What do they recommend people do to collect material in the portfolio, their strategies for selection? At some point in the portfolio process, learners have to select. The whole question of who selects the material, does the teacher, or does the kid? Well, that has to be negotiated as part of the design process. And then, reflection...some will argue me, among them, that you can't call it a portfolio if there is not a structured way.

(24:09):

Kids are gonna reflect on their work periodically in a formal public thoughtful way with their teachers and with their peers. So you have the collection part of it, the selection part of it, the reflection part of it, how are they going to do that? And then the publication part of it. At that point, you really begin to get it. You have to be very careful about who owns this work? What work is going to be made public and why is it gonna be made public? And that's where really I think if the public purpose is for an assessment, that it has to be really carefully controlled because you run the risk of disclosing all kinds of stuff. People will destroy the portfolio system.

(25:05):

If that's not the purpose, then it probably should be celebratory or showcase, or some sort of a portfolio review. Then it provides the same incentive that kids need to write, that somebody's going to read this stuff, and we're going to look at it for positive purposes. In this book, after each chapter we have a section called Opportunities for Discussion. Inquiry #1: the Kentucky system asks students to write for real world audiences during their classroom instruction, while simultaneously asking students to write for an examiner audience. That is for the individuals who review and score portfolios. What influence might this complex relationship have on students' writing processes? One time I was working with a local school, an elementary school, and they were interested in school-wide writing assessment.

(26:07):

And we designed some assessments. A couple years later, I went back to the school and I talked to a teacher that I had talked to before. I found out that some of the 3rd grade teachers were beginning to score higher on the writing assessment then the teachers who had been sort of writing gurus After I checked into it, I found out that the formula was if you wanted to score higher in third grade, for every noun, get your kids to write three adjectives so that you get this kind of sparkly, popping kind of writing. Now a good writing teacher will say, pay more attention to your nouns because the nouns carry the substance. And sure enough, when I looked at these papers, these kids were three adjectives per noun. I remember this one paper, "My best friend Kyle has short, dark, light hair."

Matt Renwick (27:23):

Terry Underwood (27:24):

You know, the attention is on the adjectives. So what's going to happen if you have the kids writing for real purposes at the same time, we're going to take that for an examiner audience. And it kind of creates a schizoid writing environment. "Kentucky's system was developed under the assumption that instruction would not change unless teachers were given financial incentives. Do you believe that this assumption is true?" So this portfolio system...you can see there's a lot of kind of strings attached to it that will distort what you really want. You want to get kids who, when they crossed that bridge after graduating from high school, they're not going to throw their stuff in a river. In my case, it was just accidental. I mean, I happen to have a fourth grade teacher who's like, my stories.

Matt Renwick (28:27):

There you go.

Terry Underwood (28:29):

Yeah. And how do we get that in some sort of systematic way?

Matt Renwick (28:39):

I'm thinking about today, why any district or school or even teacher would want to start portfolios. One thing that's starting to come up, I'm seeing more of is related to the test or to assessment like you're talking about here, Terry, not to circumvent them or to avoid over-standardization or to reform, but to compliment. So for example, English learners, some of these students are not doing well on ACCESS tests when I've worked with another district or two. And so they see the portfolio as another way to kind of create a richer picture of this kid. And maybe they're not doing well on the standardized test, but this portfolio can serve as assessment and, you know, it can also be gamed as you were saying with the three adjectives. It sounds like kind of a theme though, is they have very good intentions, and then when we put into practice, things get complex and complicated and messy.

Terry Underwood (29:58):

Yeah. And I really think that's the heart of it: the degree to which the student is legitimately involved and seen as a real active participant in it. And not just someone that we're trying to help or we're trying to make sure that that this person can grow up and function in this society, but actually an agent who we hope at some point is going to be self-actualized and would be able to self-assess. In an ideal world, what I would like to see is when we assess kids, let's see how well they self-assess, how well they know what they're up to and how clearly do they have a sense of where they're going.

(30:59):

I don't know if you are familiar with John Downing? John Downing was a researcher from the seventies, and he died young, but he had this theory of cognitive confusion that the problem with kids learning, especially in in literacy, is that they don't understand why they're doing this. They don't understand what the point is. I wrote a story where Mr. Bubbles goes out to talk to a first grade kid who's been this second grade kid. His teacher thinks he has dyslexia, and Bubbles talks to him and asks him, 'Well, what do you think is going on in people's minds when they're reading? Have you ever ever watched anybody read?"

(31:51):

"Yeah, watched my dad. My dad sits there. "Well, what's your dad doing?" "Well, he's pretty much just like real quiet, and he has the newspaper in front of his face and he's doing something, and I know he's doing something, but I know that he gets really mad if I bug him. But, you know, he wants to, he wants to read this paper." But he doesn't know what's going on. And then he goes to school and the first thing he finds out is, when you sit down at your desk, you see a letter and the letter goes B, but the kid knows that's not what my dad is doing, you know, and for four or five months, this is what he gets. And so eventually he just says, "You know, I'm confused and I'm never...this is not, this is not for me."

(32:41):

"I don't understand what's going on here, and I'm just going to tell me what to do because I have to." And so that early on, if we get comfortable with confusion and we start to think that we have to look elsewhere, or we have to capitulate and stop looking and just do what we're supposed to do. My own daughter, she's in a doctoral program, and she was telling me just a couple weeks ago that she had no idea how deeply she had internalized that. And it's only now that she's thinking about, "What am I going to do my dissertation on?" And she has to come up with it. It's got to be something she really deeply cares about.

(33:32):

All of that external guidance is by the wayside. Could you imagine if we start that in kindergarten? Yeah. And portfolios will allow you to do that. If you think about a writing prompt...if I give you the writing prompt, if you are supposed to write every day, and I'm telling you what to write about, right at that point, you are walled off from the activity. When I taught fourth grade, I taught my kids to write prompts. And what goes into a prompt? And when we did writing workshop, they had to tell me who you're writing this, what is the content, what's the substance going to be? How do you think that starting this with a narrative is gonna be a good idea? What makes you think that? That became their job. Then I had something when I conference with them. I would be able to go back and reference that.

Matt Renwick (34:50):

Whenever you hear, "Teach the reader and the reading," you know, or "Teach the writer and the writing," I think this is what you're talking about. You're teaching readers and writers while you're teaching reading and writing. And it's so much about shifting the responsibility and feeling the trust and the confidence in kids to not just teach them writing today, but to be a writer and a reader tomorrow. This has been great. I wanna keep talking with you, Terry, but I'm gonna pause the recording here and just want to say thanks for joining me.

Terry Underwood (35:25):

Alright, Matt. Hey, take care of yourself.

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Several esteemed colleagues and I engaged in a question-and-answer session with Maren Aukerman around her three articles for the Literacy Research Association:

• Part 1: The Science of Reading and the Media: Is Reporting Biased?

• Part 2: The Science of Reading and the Media: Does the Media Draw on High-Quality Reading Research?

• Part 3: The Science of Reading and the Media: How Do Current Reporting Patterns Cause Damage?

Featured Guest Bio

Dr. Maren Aukerman is a Werklund Research Professor at the University of Calgary who focuses on literacy education and democratic citizenship. She studies educational ethics, how youth engage with information in the media, and the preparation of students for responsible citizenship and democratic dialogue, particularly in the context of literacy education. Previously, Maren taught in an elementary classroom and has a background in bilingual education.

Esteemed Colleagues Who Joined Us

• Debra Crouch

• Mary Howard

• Kim Marshall

• Hannah Schneewind

• Danny Stone

Key Questions + Time Stamps

• Are you receiving pushback on your articles? If so, what's been a main critique or two? (6:59)

• What other ways can we be open-minded about this topic and to help others be the same? (13:16)

• How do we stop that (SoR) movement, from an idea into our schools changing overnight? (21:03)

• Where is the role of engagement, and motivation, and attribution theory, all these other things that we know? (29:58)

• We want to promote all voices and appreciate the nuances, and a truly research-based view of learning to read, and teaching reading. Where can we find that? (41:45)

You are receiving the free version of this post. Full subscribers receive additional resources, including:

• Video recording of this conversation

• Full transcript of this conversation

• Professional learning toolkit & template used to organize this month’s study (which leaders can apply to their context)

• Ability to comment on discussion threads and in Chat

Become a full subscriber today to build your capacity as a literacy leader and engage more deeply in this community.

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When it comes to the science of reading, asking who is right or who is wrong seems...wrong.

A better question: "What do I believe, and how might I be wrong?"

This is a response four educators and I considered as we discussed Maren Aukerman's article, "The Science of Reading and the Media: Is Reporting Biased?" (Literacy Research Association, 2022). Journalists who offer "simple stories" about how kids become readers can evoke strong feelings about the issue. Emotions such as anger or frustration can help us focus our efforts on what we believe to be true. But they can also cloud our judgment and decrease our ability to think logically and reasonably.

Listen to our conversation. Take action and begin to engage in dialogue with others.

Special thanks to the following guests:

• Debra Crouch, co-author of Made for Learning (with Brian Cambourne)

• Jane Delcore, Director of Teaching and Learning, Howard Suamico School District (Wisconsin)

• Don Marlett, COO of Learning-Focused

• Hannah Schneewind, co-author of Trusting Readers (with Jen Scoggin)

Resources Referenced

• Discussion thread (including link to article)

• Video: Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps: The Mindtrap of Simple Stories by Jennifer Garvey Berger

• Podcast: What Kids Offer to Use: A Conversation with Debra Crouch and Brian Cambourne, authors of Made for Learning

Thanks for listening! Future articles studies, including asynchronous chats and live conversations (Zoom), will be available for full subscribers. See upcoming texts below.

Join today to engage in these professional discussions and build your capacity as a literacy leader!

Take care,

Matt

P.S. If you cannot make a future Zoom discussion, the video will be recorded and posted for full subscribers. See below for this study’s video archive.

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This podcast episode is an audio recording from a recent conversation with Peter Afflerbach, author of Teaching Readers (Not Reading): Moving Beyond Skills and Strategies to Reader-Focused Instruction (Guilford, 2022).

Several community members were able to join us and ask questions of Peter. We discussed a variety of topics related to his book, including:

• Peter’s influences as a reader, teacher, and researcher

• Paying attention to and appreciating the different factors for teaching readers

• Beginning with the affective and conative resources when teaching readers

• The importance of administrative support for teachers to have time to collaborate

• What writers such as Emily Hanford and Natalie Wexler get wrong in their reporting

A closing post to this study will be shared soon; subscribe today to receive it and future posts.

Time stamps for prepared questions

• 0:30 - Peter’s bio

• 2:15 - Q1: “Which individuals influenced you as a researcher and as a teacher?”

• 7:00 - Q2: “From your book, what do you regard as the most important professional contribution of yours or colleagues to the field of literacy instruction?”

• 10:00 - Q3: “Have you always prioritized teaching readers over teaching reading? Or has this been a change for you over the years - an evolution?”

• 12:00 - Q4: “Any factors that a teacher might consider focusing on first when shifting toward teaching readers?”

• 16:20 - Q5: “What are some important trends occurring in education that we should be paying attention to?”

• 18:00 - Open Q & A with attendees begins.

Key quotes

“The best classrooms are the ones where we pay attention to individual differences.”

“Literacy is important but it is not the end point; it’s the tool that kids use.”

“Science revolves around demonstrable findings and replicating them.”

Recommended people and resources

• Paul Thomas (@plthomasEdD)

• Maren Aukerman, Literacy Research Association (https://literacyresearchassociation.org)

• Peter’s Recommendations for Revision of The Reading Framework for the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)

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In this special podcast for the Teaching Readers (Not Reading) book study, I discussed the first five chapters with literacy educators Belinda Whyte and Sally Rowlands.

• Belinda is a resource teacher of literacy in Aotearoa, New Zealand. (twitter)

• Sally is a retired teacher and works at the Department of Education in Tasmania.

Three questions that guided our discussion:

• How have you successfully integrated the different sciences when teaching readers?

• ​What is it about the science of reading movement that has captured people's attention? What's "true" within SoR and its narrow definition?

• ​What have you found effective for discussing these topics with colleagues that leads to productive conversations?

Subscribe today to receive future posts for this study and other literacy leadership topics.

Memorable quotes:

“It would be a rare child that didn’t become a better reader without engagement or building identity.”

• Belinda

“It depends on what you think reading is.”

• Sally

“Be open about what you used to know, how you changed your mind, and what you believe now.”

• Matt

After reading the first five chapters of Teaching Readers (Not Reading), as well as thinking about our questions plus the recorded conversation, what has resonated with you so far?

From November 7 through December 16, we are reading Teaching Readers (Not Reading) by Peter Afflerbach (Guilford, 2022).

In this book study, you will develop a deeper understanding of the science(s) of reading and build greater confidence in conversing about literacy instruction with teachers and other colleagues.

You can purchase the book on the publisher's website, Amazon, or wherever it is sold.

To participate, watch this space for future responses to the book. Read along, leave a comment on a future thread, and respond to others’ comments when something resonates.

Here is the suggested schedule for reading together:

• November 7 - 11: Introduction, Chapters 1-3

• November 14 - 18: Chapters 4-5

• November 21 - 25: Chapter 6

• November 28 - December 2: Chapters 7-8

• December 5 - 9: Chapters 9-10

• December 12 - 16: Chapter 11, Conclusion

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In this special episode/post, I was joined by Sandy Brumbaum, Reading Recovery teacher leader and consultant, and Denise Johnson, a literacy professor at William & Mary, to kick off the book study for Teaching Readers (Not Reading): Moving Beyond Skills and Strategies to Reader-Focused Instruction by Peter Afflerbach (Guilford, 2022).

In our conversation, we responded to and discussed three questions:

• What are your greatest concerns about current trends and programs with teaching readers and literacy instruction in general?

• Consider examples of effective reading instruction you've observed or participated in. What are the essential components of such instruction?

• We agree with Afflerbach that schools need to teach readers more than skills and strategies. But what about reading?

A key takeaway from our conversation is, just as we cannot separate the reader from reading instruction, one science of reading is dependent on its integration with another.

Ryanne Deschane, also a teacher of readers and was not able to join us virtually, shared the following written response:

Key components of effective literacy instruction include knowledgeable teachers who have a multitude of literacy resources, instructional strategies, and tools in their professional toolkit. These teachers can sit with a child, listen and engage immediately in responsive practices that address the specific learning needs of each child in their care. They honor each child in their unique learning needs and seek out resources and tools to support those needs.

“In the most successful classrooms, teachers have long understood that effective reading instruction must be partnered with student awareness, enthusiasm, and a belief in self.”

- Peter Afflerbach

From November 7 through December 16, I will be responding to Teaching Readers (Not Reading) by Peter Afflerbach (Guilford, 2022) and inviting readers to join me.

In this book study, you will develop a deeper understanding of the science(s) of reading and build greater confidence in conversing about literacy instruction with teachers and other colleagues.

To participate:

• Purchase the book on the publisher's website, Amazon, or wherever it is sold.

• Subscribe to this space (if you haven’t already) for future responses to the book.

• Become a regular and active reader, such as posting your thinking around the text or linking to a response you wrote elsewhere in the comments.

Here is the suggested schedule for (re)reading together:

• November 7 - 11: Introduction, Chapters 1-3

• November 14 - 18: Chapters 4-5

• November 21 - 25: Chapter 6

• November 28 - December 2: Chapters 7-8

• December 5 - 9: Chapters 9-10

• December 12 - 16: Chapter 11, Conclusion

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In this recorded conversation with Regie Routman and esteemed colleagues, we discussed:

Why trust is so important for schoolwide improvement

Why it is critical that leaders know literacy

How leaders can communicate feedback that is kind and useful

This also closes out the four-week email course on instructional walks.

Being a literacy leader has always been challenging. That’s why it’s important to come together as colleagues, to share, listen, and connect. We hope you find this discussion helpful in supporting your important work.

Recommended resources

Invitations(book)

Read, Write, Lead (book)

Literacy Essentials (book)

“Good is Good Enough” (podcast)

Transforming Your Teaching (professional learning)

Nurturing Writers through Poetry (video series)

Key insights from the conversation

“Start with wins.”

• Jamie Cicconetti, Lessons Learned

“The principal is the first teacher.”

• Jason Drysdale, @jason_drysdale

“To be an effective leader or teacher, live an interesting life.”

• Debbie Stewart, @DebbieAStewart

“It’s important to have a vision.”

• Helen Proulx, @HelenProulx2

“Progress moves at the speed of trust.”

• Regie Routman, @regieroutman

“Great to see this professional collaboration.”

• Gail Boushey, Teach Daily

New community for engaged readers

For engaged readers/subscribers of this newsletter, look for an email from me in the near future on a new community.

For example, in October I’ll be sharing more ideas and resources in this space for:

structuring coaching and reflection in online and in-person spaces,

applying key coaching strategies that support teachers’ thinking, and

additional ways to be more productive and efficient within our limited time.

It’s a free, invitation-only space for leaders at every level who want to continue trying and applying literacy leadership practices with me to build a thriving school culture.

Take care,

Matt

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A couple of months ago, I was diagnosed with ADHD.

Having some time to reflect on this change, I wanted to share a little bit from my experience, including:

How I was initially prompted to get an assessment,

Why I waited until I was 45 to do this, and

What I’ve learned so far.

This is not a literacy or leadership post. But I do see ADHD impacting many kids and adults, which has an impact downstream on both areas.

You can read what I shared in this audio on my website.

Unrelated, you’ll start seeing some emails this week to help get you ready for the upcoming email course on getting into classrooms. It begins September 4th.

Take care,

Matt

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Below are five insights after I read ten thoughtful posts from contributors around my book, Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H.

1. Leaders need to know literacy.

“Through a lifetime of working in schools, one of my most powerful insights and core beliefs is that teachers must be leaders, and principals must know literacy.” (pg. 1)

• Regie Routman, Read, Write, Lead: Breakthrough Strategies for Schoolwide Literacy Success (ASCD, 2014)

School leaders knowing literacy should go without saying. But a question I have here is, why don’t more leaders - especially principals - know literacy?

My initial thinking was, literacy continues to lack consensus on what makes instruction effective. You can see it in confrontational conversations online around the science of reading. I can understand why few leaders want to join these discussions when the apparent goal of too many is to be right vs. to listen and learn.

But I think there’s more to it, a deeper reason for this challenge of consensus.

Taking a more holistic perspective, a) literacy is a complex discipline and b) we are not embracing it for its complexity. Instead, we resort to simple stories about best practices for teaching readers and writers because they are easier to understand and share, especially when writing hot takes on Twitter. How do we hold these tensions in our minds and help our faculty and colleagues do the same?

I don’t have immediate answers to this issue, but it is something I am working on professionally (see the end of this post for an opportunity to join me).

In the meantime, I continue to appreciate the questions that surface from not knowing, such as Jamie Cicconetti’s wondering, “What point am I even trying to make in exposing my messy process of a professional writing post?”, as she reflects on trying to create clarity from her learning in the post below.

1. Leaders will always need to attend to trust.

The sheer number of book study posts around trust says so much about its importance.

Rhonda Precourt, Paige Bergin, Carrie Thomas, Genevieve Arcovio, and Ryanne Deschane each wrote eloquent and personal accounts of the importance of this element for a successful school literacy culture. Without trust, the school system stops operating like it should. It is the “lubricant of organizational functioning” (Tschannen-Moran, 2014)

As a leader I have learned that to keep trust high, I have to attend to things beyond just a strong literacy initiative, such as:

How well are teams working together?

Do staff and faculty feel appreciated?

Am I following through on my commitments?

This takes effort, intention, and an awareness of the level of trust in the school.

That said, literacy can also be a vehicle for building and sustaining trust, such as by committing funds to purchasing books for classroom libraries.

1. Leaders who are clear on the school’s priorities make better decisions.

When the collective attention is on a clear priority, it becomes easier to lead.

A big part of prioritization is not just in having a focus, but in being able to ignore other options.

And in education, there are always options. I would lose track of word count in this post if I waded into the alphabet soup of acronyms and initiatives.

By committing to one thing, we naturally decline many other things, at least as a primary focus. I have found it reduces stress in the school culture while helping faculty commit to the priority.

I thought Heather McKay summed this idea up well in her post.

1. Any type of feedback is better than no feedback.

In my research for the book, I discovered surprising findings about feedback.

For example, one study found that the most effective feedback was noticing and naming teachers' practices they were already doing well. This was followed in effectiveness by more traditional feedback that focused on areas of improvement. As expected, no feedback had the least amount of influence.

What this led me to believe, affirmed by Tyler Keener's and Jen McDonough’s posts below, is teachers benefit from any type of feedback, even if we are wrong.

In other words, leaders need to prioritize time in classrooms.

1. Leaders need a systems approach to focus on what matters.

As Annie Palmer points out in the above post, teachers need to see the “why” for the work.

A challenge here is how to connect these chess pieces - trust, prioritization, support, feedback, etc. - so that the vision is clear and feels doable.

What I have learned is that so much that goes into effective leadership, especially decision-making, is largely based on how well we manage our days. For example, what is our process when a teacher makes a request to purchase a literacy curriculum resource? How is the process aligned with our school’s shared beliefs? Who should be involved in the decision-making? What is the best way to communicate a response?

This is just one example. There are many more leadership tasks that would benefit from a systems approach, such as:

How can I carve out time to get into classrooms on a daily basis?

How do I develop my identity as a coach and expand beyond the traditional leadership role?

What steps can I fall back on when looking to engage teachers in coaching conversations?

How might I rethink my environment to better support this work?

What routines can I use to affirm what teachers are doing well, plus communicate feedback on potential areas for growth?

These are questions I may be exploring more here and in a new community space.

Sign up below and stayed tuned for a follow up post about how this space can support your efforts to lead literacy in your school, from wherever you are.

Matt Renwick has served in public education for over 20 years. He started as a 5th and 6th-grade teacher in a country school outside of Wisconsin Rapids, WI. Matt now serves as an elementary principal for the Mineral Point Unified School District.

Matt is the author of three books: 5 Myths About Classroom Technology: How Do I Integrate Technology to Truly Enhance Learning? (ASCD, 2016), Digital Portfolios in the Classroom: Showcasing and Assessing Student Work (ASCD, 2017), and Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H.: Five Strategies for Supporting Teaching and Learning (Corwin, 2022).

He also writes publicly on Twitter (@ReadByExample) and on this newsletter.

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The following is an adapted excerpt from my new book, Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H.: Five Strategies for Supporting Teaching and Learning (Corwin, 2022). Colleagues and I will be writing original posts to the book next month. Subscribe and join us!

Think about the last business you went to for groceries, home supplies, or to purchase a gift for someone.

Why did you shop there?

We rarely think about these choices. But the likely reason is you trust the business to provide a quality product or service at a fair price. Your trust is supported by your confidence in their capacity to meet your needs.

This is competence.

Competence is being perceived as able to produce regular results. Competence can be augmented with compassion, such as offering to take your groceries to the car. Communication through advertising and messaging can remind us about a business’s ability to deliver on the goods or services promised. But these elements of trust ring hollow if promises and responsibilities are not fulfilled.

In the context of supporting teaching and learning, competence becomes more complex in both how leaders achieve results and in how they are perceived by others through this lens. For example:

In any school, you may find a teacher or two wanting to be directed on what to teach readers and writers, how to teach them, and when.

A few others prefer complete autonomy, to be able to shut their door and do their work.

The majority want both direction for a schoolwide goal and some authority to make decisions on behalf of their students.

These varied agendas can complicate our capacity to lead and decrease our own sense of competence and confidence.

Idea: Using routines to support and learn about the school culture

As leaders, we want to create a safe space to surface people’s concerns, questions, and suggestions.

One way is through routines, such as the protocols found at the School Reform Initiative (www.schoolreforminitiative.org). They provide structure to glean insights into how the faculty feel about and view the current school climate. The leader, in response, can use this information to systematically address issues either on their own or with teams.

We build trust by doing what we will say we will do, as well as working together to accomplish these tasks. As Megan Tschannen-Moran, author of Trust Matters, notes:

“Pursuing small, early wins on some key tasks can help build trust in both the principal’s and the school’s competence” (2014, pg. 257).

One example is when I first came to my current school, in Mineral Point, Wisconsin.

My superintendent at the time, Luke Francois, recommended that I start my tenure by listening to the staff and offering support for addressing issues. He suggested the idea of an open suitcase at a staff meeting.

Staff could write down their anonymous concerns on slips of paper, fold them up, and put them in the suitcase.

Once ready, I closed the suitcase in front of them.

Then I announced, “Thank you for sharing these with me. I plan to read each one, as well as to organize these concerns and suggestions around central issues I can address now and in the future. Also, please note that now that you have shared these with me, you no longer need to worry about them so much.”

The concerns were specific and helpful in understanding the current school situation. Next are a few of their comments under different themes I discovered from my review.

For the rest of that first school year and beyond, I created a list around these concerns. I would work toward addressing one issue, find a way to make the results visible, and then share these results publicly as a schoolwide celebration such as in my newsletter.

Instructional walks also develop a perception of competence. Teachers participate in dialogue around their practice and feel like the professionals they are. We learn from each other, see past our singular roles of teacher or leader, and engage in continuous learning which leads to an increase in trust in others and confidence in ourselves.

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Hello colleague,

I wrote this post at my city’s local laundry mat. Our dryer decided to stop working on Memorial Day weekend. Perfect timing with our two teenagers navigating between friends’ houses, end-of-year school events, soccer games, and trail biking. The dirty clothes pile up quickly.

Anyway, this is a good time to a) review what this space is about for new subscribers, and b) talk about the upcoming summer book study.

This Space

In 2012, I started a blog on Wordpress titled “Reading by Example”. It can still be found at readingbyexample.com. The goal was to chronicle my journey as a new elementary principal and emerging literacy leader. Previously I taught in the classroom for seven years and served as an assistant principal/athletic director for four years at a secondary school. I quickly learned as an administrator how complex this work was, and that writing about it helped me make sense of the complexity.

In 2018, I started using Substack as a newsletter tool in addition to the blog. I found it to be a better writing platform, so I started writing posts here and retired the original blog. For a while, I offered a paid version of this space but ended up pausing it. I didn’t feel like I could offer enough value for what was being charged. Maybe someday I will restart it, but the circumstances would need to be just right.

In 2020, I migrated all of the content from the original blog to this space. The former still serves as an archive for all of the past articles, including curated lists of posts written by contributors for previous book studies. Other teachers’ and leaders’ writings around a common professional resource have always been the most popular posts. It’s an honor to host their reflections; they provide a sorely needed perspective within today’s dialogue around teaching readers and writers in ways that affirm students for who they are and who they might become.

This Year’s Book Study

With that, I am happy to announce that this year’s book study selection is…Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H.: Five Strategies for Supporting Teaching and Learning.

Yes…my book. It came out this past March through Corwin. I admit that it felt a bit odd to position it as the subject for our study this summer. Yet after talking with a few colleagues and contributors, they were very supportive of putting it front and center for people to read and respond to in July.

The core of the book is: formal leaders do not need to accept their current roles as they are presently constructed. More specifically, principals, district administrators, department heads, and educators in any leadership role can expand their positions to include a coaching stance within it when working with teachers.

I am not the first person to recommend a more mindful approach to school leadership. Regie Routman wrote about it in 2014 within the context of literacy in her book Read, Write, Lead: Breakthrough Strategies for Schoolwide Literacy Success. (By the way, Regie’s book is a key influence in Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H., and it’s not a coincidence that she wrote the foreword for my book.) What I offer is a theory of practice for integrating coaching skills within our more formal positions. If I have learned anything in my fifteen years as an educational administrator, it is that there is a direct correlation between student success and teacher empowerment. They need supportive and present leadership that goes beyond traditional supervision and evaluation, including the development of their capacity to lead in the school.

To help clarify these ideas, I created a framework with the word “coach” to help leaders remember the key strategies for success and to provide a clear pathway for engaging in this work:

Create Confidence through Trust

Organize Around a Priority

Affirm Promising Practices

Communicate Feedback

Help Teachers Become Leaders and Learners

It is these ideas in which practicing educators – teachers, leaders, coaches, and consultants – will write about this summer here. I’ve asked them to center their reflections around their own work first, and then use the ideas from the book to help validate their thinking they so generously offer to us.

As readers of this site, you can also participate in a variety of ways:

Read contributors’ posts and support their efforts with a like.

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Take care,

Matt

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I spoke with Steve Barkley, educational consultant and coach, for his podcast Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud (found here).

We discussed:

The importance of instructional leadership,

Balancing evaluation with professional learning, and

The five strategies from my book Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H. (Corwin, 2022).

Thank you for listening!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Steve [Intro]: 00:00 Hello, and welcome to the teacher edition of the Steve Barkley Ponders Out loud podcast. The complexity of teaching is both challenging and rewarding. And my curiosity is peaked whenever I explore with teachers the multiple pathways for facilitating student engagement in the exciting world of learning. This podcast looks to serve teachers as they motivate coaches and support their learners.

Steve: 00:28 Leading like a coach. Joining our podcast today is Matt Renwick, an elementary school principal from Wisconsin and the author of a new book titled, “Leading Like a Coach.” A description of Matt’s book has this statement in it: “Matt reframes the approach to school-wide change from a leader acting alone, to a leader working with a community, a community in which each member contributes their strengths and ideas to improving instruction.” When I read that statement, it sure aligns with the mantra that I’ve been on for years that teaching is a team sport. So I
dropped Matt a note and he agreed and was happy to say he is with us here today. So welcome Matt.

Matt: 01:17 Thank you, Steve. I’m glad to be here.

Steve: 01:20 So Matt, would you start off by giving us a little introduction to your background and the role that you’re in at the school today and I’m kind of wondering how that led to you taking on the task of writing this book?

Matt: 01:34 Yeah. I found it interesting you shared your experience as a fifth and sixth-grade teacher in an open concept experience. That was actually a similar experience I had in a multi-age classroom. We did natural looping, and we designed thematic units integrated units together and it was very project-oriented and it was just a lot of fun.

Steve: 01:57 Was that in Wisconsin?

Matt: 01:58 It was in Wisconsin. Yep. Rudolph, Wisconsin – central Wisconsin. And I noticed, as I progressed through my teaching career, standards became more prominent, testing evaluations all became much more a part of the school and experience and I felt kind of, maybe some of the joy leaving it too. And that kind of prompted me to think, how could I maybe influence at a school-wide level, have more impact in protecting that joy and that learning experience in a way that teachers and kids can be a part of. And so that’s why it got me into the principalship. And once I was there, I don’t know if it was a rude awakening, but it was definitely a realization that you can’t just put out some kind of a goal and offer some professional development and monitor progress and then expect outcomes. It’s just school change and improvement is not linear in that sense as we might put it on paper. And so that led me to learn more about coaching, instructional coaching in particular, and really trying to embed it into my practice, working with teachers, working with staff, even working with colleagues. How do I talk, how do I present myself? And really, as you said in the description of working together to get collective goals.

Steve: 03:18 Yeah. I’m real big on the concept of team and I describe that very frequently, what a lot of schools call teams are really what I would call franchises. So I got a group of teachers that come to a franchise meeting, they exchange tips and strategies, but they still go back and run their own classroom versus people coming together as a team, which is that they really got a combined responsibility for student success.

Matt: 03:54 Yeah. Seeing, I can’t do this job without you.

Steve: 03:59 Yeah.

Matt: 03:59 And that’s what I realized as a principal. I couldn’t do this job without the teacher’s input and understanding their decision making and trying to stop coming in and judging. And not that there’s not a place for that as a part of a supervisor, but it really has become a fraction of how I spend my days now. I’m now coming in daily, just learning, just coming in with kind of getting rid of my biases as much as I can and trying not to make assumptions and just coming in and noticing what’s going on, trying to notice what’s going well, communicating that with the teachers and eventually leading into conversations around their instruction, which is where, as I’m sure you see as well in your work, is that’s where the impact happens, is learning together. And it’s so much more effective than like I said, that very technical way of trying to get people to improve. And that just doesn’t get you very far.

Steve: 05:03 At best minimum competencies.

Matt: 05:06 Yeah.

Steve: 05:07 We can evaluate whether minimum competencies are in place or not, but we can’t grow out of that evaluation process.

Matt: 05:13 That’s 100% correct. And that’s where evaluations can be effective. You get people to a minimum area, minimum level, like you said, but where go from there? And that’s kind of what I felt a decade ago, which is where kind of the idea for this book came about is, what is my role beyond getting teachers to a standard level of instruction? And I even wrote a blog post about it a decade ago, “can a principal also be a coach?” So the seed was planted there. 10 years later, we’ve got the book and I’m hoping to get it into the hands of leaders, not just principals, but coaches and superintendents and anyone who’s a leader, teacher leaders, I think can find this book helpful.

Steve: 05:55 I can tell you that a whole lot of years ago – so it was in the 80’s that I began to work in the area of coaching and way back then people would raise the question, can the administrator be an evaluator and a coach? And we responded to the fact that not only can they, but they really need to. Because at a minimum, they needed to model the behavior you wanted teachers to take on in the classroom. So most of the time the teacher’s a coach. There comes that day that the teacher puts on the evaluator hat and does the assessment. And then the next day, the teacher’s back in the coaching role using the outcome of the evaluation or the assessment to assist in jumping back in and working with growth. So I’ve always had the thought that it’s critical that an administrator, in effect, takes on both roles. And then a whole lot of years ago, they introduced that term of instructional leadership and I responded that if you really thought that the principal was an instructional leader, then part of the administrator’s evaluation would be looking at the growth that the teachers made as they worked with that principal.

Matt: 07:19 Yeah, I wish I would’ve gone back even farther and explored your work, just learning more about it here. And I’ve even had teachers when you mentioned, how can a principal also be a coach? I’ve even had a teacher say, I don’t think you can because you’re an evaluator. How can you also coach? There seems to be some rigidity where they just need these things to be siloed. What I try to do with this work is really kind of embrace that complexity and really be kind of fluid and shift from one of the other, just kinda like you said, with the teachers of one day, it’s evaluating other days, it’s really coaching. And I appreciate you noting too that this has a kind of bootstrapping effect too when you’re talking with teachers and you’re using coaching strategies like paraphrasing and posing questions and pausing.

Matt: 08:08 I remember a teacher last year coaching one of her first graders. He was writing all of these topics on camping, but he didn’t have a title. And she just said, “take a look at all of what you’ve written, all your topics, your table of contents, and what do you think would be a good title?” And he’s like, “fun and camping.” And she’s like, “yes,” and he totally owned it and there was a lot of pride with that process. And later on, I just said, I couldn’t help but notice you using paraphrasing and some of the things we’ve talked about in our staff meetings and coaching. I hear you doing it. And likewise, I’ve tried it myself, so it absolutely can work.

Steve: 08:52 Critical modeling.

Matt: 08:53 Yeah. And there’s even research too. My background is in cognitive coaching. I’m not a cognitive coach, but I’ve had coursework on it. And there was one research study where they looked at three different people working with teachers – an administrator, a coach, and a peer, and they were all trained in coaching and the result was, it didn’t matter who coached you, improvement occurred. And so that’s one of the studies I listed in the book to just really kind of break that myth that as an evaluator, I can’t also support learning.

Steve: 09:32 Would you say that the support comes from – the two words that come out to my mind are conversation and reflection and they kind of go back together. So in effect, what that teacher did, was she used a question to cause the first-grade student to do some reflection and that led to the student’s thinking. And so it doesn’t matter which of those hats I have on, as long as I can cause reflection and conversation to occur. And historically, what was wrong with the evaluation is that those two things didn’t occur. The administrator came in, did all the thinking, and issued a report. And so the teacher didn’t grow because the teacher wasn’t engaged in conversation or reflection.

Matt: 10:16 Yeah, I was there. I was coming in and checking all the boxes in my initial part of my principalship. And I was thinking back, I’m astonished at how often I was wrong because I didn’t ask and I wasn’t curious. I was trying to get certainty. I wanted to get it right. I can’t tell you how many calibration activities I’ve gone through with rubrics.

Matt: 10:44 And they really train you to not deviate from, are you curious because you want it to be accurate and I agree with that, but without having conversations and reflections with the teacher, you’re only getting a limited perspective.

Steve: 10:56 And that’s where the growth comes. So even if you get a perfect, accurate evaluation, you didn’t cause any growth to happen.

Matt: 11:04 Right.

Steve: 11:04 If you weren’t able to move it into a coaching environment.

Matt: 11:09 Yeah. What’s driving this process.

Steve: 11:13 Well Matt, I see that you laid your book out in five key practices and I thought it would be valuable if we just kind of bounced through each of those as an outline for folks. So the first one that you laid out was to create confidence through trust. Could you take a moment or two and talk about that?

Matt: 11:37 We’ve heard a lot about trust and how it’s important, and even writing this book, I was writing this chapter and being able to count on someone and be able to know they’re not going to immediately jump to conclusions or only looked at the negative pieces, felt like that was kind of already said. And so what’s different about this? And that’s where the confidence piece comes in. When I trust that teacher I was just mentioning and instead of quickly naming it, or, I asked a question, right? And so I trusted them that they could articulate the practices they were doing. And I wasn’t, like you said, I wasn’t giving advice. I wasn’t telling them what I necessarily thought or didn’t think. And I think through those repeated experiences, then we’re creating confidence. They’re confident in themselves, I’m confident coming in the classroom and we can really start to have pretty authentic conversations. I don’t want to say honest because sometimes people right away conflate that with –

Steve: 12:41 Good word.

Matt: 12:42 Overly critical, right? But really naming and noticing those practices that they’re doing. So yeah, I wanted to start with trust though, and to make sure that that was in place before we start getting into the coaching side of things.

Steve: 12:57 So when I talk about trust, I usually connect it to the word vulnerability. Do you see a way that plays into that – in effect, you as the coaching administrator are vulnerable as well as the teachers are vulnerable?

Matt: 13:14 That’s huge. And in my initial work as a principal, I was reluctant to be open and honest about my own challenges and mistakes. And the pandemic certainly forced me even more so to be vulnerable. I remember we were preparing for the last school year and I had a few teachers just saying, I’m not feeling supported. And I could have come back and said, oh, remember all these trainings we did and all the technology we bought. And instead, I just said, I’m sorry you were feeling unsupported. My apologies for that. Please let me know what I can do to better support you. Here’s my phone number at home, give me a call over the weekend. And this was before the first day of the 2021 school year. No one called me, but I think just having that out there, I mean, they appreciated that. And it didn’t decrease my – I don’t think, their perception of my credibility or capacity. And I think they felt like we were in it together.

Steve: 14:24 That’s the key. Great. The second element that you laid out is organize around a priority.

Matt: 14:33 Yeah. And not to date this podcast, I’m gonna tell another pandemic experience. The past couple of years it’s been tough to operate like more like a coach, primarily because we’ve been in survival mode. And how do you support that other than getting rid of obstacles and increasing resources, but with the priority it’s, what are you aiming for as a school and where do you need to grow? And I always start with what we’re doing well. I think that’s important, but then what’s that next step? So in my school, for example, it’s literacy, it’s particularly reading. And so that gives me a lens in which I can come into classrooms now, and hopefully we’ve got professional learning happening so that they’ve seen good practice, and now they’re trying to apply it.

Matt: 15:26 And then I can come in and really have a, not a laserlike focus, but have a framework in which to operate around common language. For example, what level of discussion are kids at with their book clubs, and what kind of questions are being posed? Is it open-ended or closed-ended? And within that framework for literacy instruction, whatever that may be, whatever the school chooses, it really helps me as a principal or whatever kind of leader you are, to then engage in that conversation. So, yeah, frameworks can be – I mean I don’t know what a favorite one of yours is, but we use the gradual release of responsibility or optimal learning model, it’s kind of an adaptation of that.

Steve: 16:12 The whole concept of identifying a priority is critical in coaching for the one-on-one relationship. And I would say equal – I do a lot of work with professional learning communities and I’ve actually been voicing a phrase for the last couple of years of goals before norms. That there’s a tendency when you bring this group together, you’re gonna put together a set of norms for everyone to operate with. Norms are important but it’s a whole lot easier to agree on norms if we got some common reason for being there.

Steve: 17:04 And I was doing a coaching call with a new instructional coach earlier today and she’s talking about an experienced teacher who’s just kind of like stuck where he is at. He’s at an okay spot and not moving on. And my conversation with her is, you’ve gotta be able to move the conversation to where there’s something important for him to make happen for kids that isn’t happening. And if you can get him to voice what that is, then now you and he can work together because you got something to make happen. So that spot that we’re moving towards is critical in coaching.

Matt: 17:35 And that’s what’s nice about a framework too, is there can be opportunities within that for a teacher to, I wanna work on this, and everyone’s working on something and I think that’s really important. And I wrote down the goals before the norms. I think that that’s a good point of making sure form follows function.

Steve: 17:56 Yep. The third one you mentioned was affirm promising practices.

Matt: 18:02 Yeah. There was just an article I read on Twitter – it’s more of a business journal I think and they just basically said, when you give critical feedback, people either do one of two things. They forget it, or they remember it and they don’t do anything about it. And I just think of some of the critical feedback I’ve received and like, I remember being resistant and because I have this belief and I am very good at what I do and that’s what we want in teachers. We want them to be confident but how do you get there? And so that’s where affirming promising practices is to start with what are they doing well, and it’s validated. It’s not – if you remember the Saturday Night Live clip, Stuart Smalley, you know, good enough, I’m smart enough…

Matt: 18:51 Where’s the evidence on that? It’s not just a pat on the back it’s, here’s what you did, and here’s the impact that it had on kids. And that’s objective reality, right? That’s not something I’m just sugar coating. And so, again, with that teacher, when you allow that student to identify the title for their book, you empower them as a writer and that’s gonna carry forward the rest of the way. When I visit classrooms, 95% of the time, I’m writing notes. You can see on the cover of my book, in the book, you have some examples of instructional walks. They’re not walkthroughs, I’m not checking boxes. I’m not looking for certain things. I’m just documenting what happened. And then near the end, I’m affirming what they did well, and the impact that it had on kids. And that for me is the entry point to those coaching conversations and which we can talk about practices, that may be worth pursuing for improvement.

Steve: 19:59 So I’m guessing that ties closely then to the fourth element, which was communicate feedback. So those two kind of get paired together?

Matt: 20:09 Yeah. Communicate is a key word. And that’ll certainly help create that coach acronym, but it’s not giving feedback. It’s not delivering feedback. Like you said before, principals might come in and just say, here’s, what’s going well, here’s what you need to improve on. It really is communicating it in a sense that I want teachers to hear it. And often that feedback isn’t coming from me, it’s coming from their own sources of knowledge, it’s their own experiences and things that they have forgotten about, maybe they got in a rut and then we start talking and they’re like, “oh yeah, I did that unit five years ago and I did that practice and I wonder why I stopped doing that.” And so when we say communicate feedback, it’s through that conversation that we have, and it’s often through questions, right?

Matt: 21:02 I have a new teacher whose classroom library was very – it looked like a public library. All the spines were out, and none of the books were facing out. So I withheld my assumption and just said, “Hey, how’s your classroom library going? What are you liking about it? What what’s challenging you?” And she’s like, “oh, it’s been great because the kids wanted it this way. They are the ones that said, well, I want all the series books together and we didn’t have enough room to face them all out, but the kids are reading more and taking care of the classroom library.” I’m like, “that’s great.” And then I realized she needs, maybe she needs more shelving. So that led into that conversation of what do you need from me then? But through that conversation, she was able to reflect on her process and her decision-making. And I think the point there too is it’s not just communicating feedback to the teacher, it’s the teacher communicating feedback to me.

Steve: 22:03 I was just gonna say, as I was listening to you, you’re describing she was reflecting, but I think I’m hearing you were reflecting too.

Matt: 22:10 Oh yeah. I’m learning as much, if not more than the teachers because I’m not in their classroom. I’m in there 1%, 2% of the actual time. It would be very pompous of me to say I can come in and a matter of couple hours, here’s all the things you need to work on. It’s just not possible. So I’m coming in there trying to do these conversations around once every two to three weeks. It’s been a little bit slower with the pandemic, but these conversations accelerate my learning. So when it comes time for evaluation cycles, observations that are more formal, nothing’s really a surprise. And for the teacher too, and it’s really a lot less stressful when we have to engage in that work and a lot more accurate when I’m actually adding evidence into those systems.

Steve: 23:06 It’s interesting that when I flagged you to can communicate feedback, one of the first words you went to was questions. And it’s probably not what would jump out at people when they first consider the word communicate.

Matt: 23:22 Yeah.

Steve: 23:22 But it really is what makes it communication. Because it creates the conversation.

Matt: 23:27 Yeah. And the cognitive coaching work training I’ve done, I remember an activity, “What are the five forms of feedback and which do you think are most effective?”, and the number one is mediative questions. Not to say that there isn’t a time where I just need to say something, you know, because there is something that’s going on that’s just either really great or I do have concerns about. But even then, I can approach it with a thoughtful question.

Steve: 23:55 It comes out of the conversation.

Matt: 23:59 Yes.

Steve: 23:59 It in effect emerges out of the conversation so it feels normal.

Steve: 24:05 Whereas when you’re in that evaluation process, it was kind of like, where did that come from?

Matt: 24:09 Yeah. It feels like you’re talking about the weather and it’s a lot less stress-inducing. And I remember one activity in a classroom, it was probably culturally insensitive, it wasn’t terrible, but I remember talking to them about it. I recognize that they’re bringing in diverse texts and they are facilitating conversations and the kids are doing research and this and this and all these affirming things. And then I finally said, and this was actually a question that my coach, my executive coach, my leadership coach helped me craft because I knew I was gonna ask this coming in, “how might a person of color come in and view this activity you’re doing today?” And it wasn’t accusatory, it wasn’t affirming, it was truly curious because I wanted to know what they were thinking when they went into this activity. And then they explained it and then I did finally leave with, here’s kind of a next step is just continue to ask yourself that question whenever you’re designing any of these activities. And I appreciate your efforts here to diversify our curriculum and I think that’s important. And it did improve. So it’s a much more respectful, I think, way to engage in these types of things.

Steve: 25:29 Alright. And the last one that you had was to help teachers become leaders and learners.

Matt: 25:34 And this is kind of a meta-strategy, I guess. It’s incorporating all of these things. The note-taking, the paraphrasing, the pausing, questions. And I think this really comes to some advice I was given, which I think is for principals in particular to hear, is to stick around in your schools, to not hop around. To really commit to five to seven years at a minimum of being in that school. Because that seems to me, and I don’t know your experience, Steve, but that seems to be how long it takes to really kind of right the ship or get it going into the direction we all wanted to go.

Steve: 26:13 Build a team.

Matt: 26:14 Yeah, as a team.

Steve: 26:16 How do you build a team in a year and move on?

Matt: 26:19 Absolutely. Yeah. There’s it really isn’t any way. But that’s what I’ve noticed. In my previous school where I was there for five years, in my current school where I’m at for six years now, really starting to see teachers stepping up and becoming the leaders. And right now we’re looking to go through a curriculum renewal process for literacy and my coach is setting up site visits and I probably had a dozen teachers giving their opinions on one of the resources we looked at and everyone felt fairly safe speaking out, but I don’t think that would’ve happened five years ago. So in that chapter, it’s a shorter chapter, but it highlights one school and one district that through their commitment over the long term, really saw some profound change. And so it can happen, but there are no overnight successes in education.

Steve: 27:15 Well, Matt, I appreciate you taking the time to lay this out here for us. I’m wondering if you could tell the listeners the best way that they might communicate and follow up with you.

Matt: 27:26 I am on Twitter. I enjoy puns and wordplay. So it’s @ReadByExample. I have a particular focus on literacy and leadership. I can also be found at my newsletter blog, readbyexample.substack.com, and the book can be found at Corwin or Amazon or wherever else they sell these books. But I’ve appreciated meeting you. I’ve heard your name before and just getting to know a little bit more about your work, it’s something I might pursue more as well. So thank you.

Steve: 28:04 You’re very welcome. We’ll be sure to put the sites that you just mentioned into the lead into this podcast so folks will be able to find you good luck to you.

Matt: 28:13 Thank you, Steve.

Steve: 28:14 Take care.

Steve [Outro]: 28:16 Thank you for listening. You can subscribe to Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud on iTunes and Podbean. And please remember to rate and review us on iTunes. I also want to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter @stevebarkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit readbyexample.substack.com

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This adapted excerpt from my new book, Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H., questions the tendency for educators to seek fail-safe instructional practices in a search for certainty.

During a conversation I once had with a district administrator about adopting a scripted curriculum program, one of their arguments for the resource was that it was based on “best practice”.

This stance invites resistance. Educational researcher Dr. Viviane Robinson notes that “appeals to adopt ‘best practice’ imply that current practice is less than best, and such implicit evaluations are more likely to generate mistrust and suspicion than enthusiasm for change” (2018, pg. 39).

Related, who gets to determine what a “best practice” is in education? Education is evolving, considering new research, changing environments, and technology. As a colleague of mine noted, “If someone has figured out the best way to teach, everyone would be doing it and education would be fixed.” This stance leads to a raft of problems, including retroactive guilt teachers might feel from previous teaching decisions and the difficult argument one tries to make in defending their practice.

Both issues surface the reality that teaching is dynamic and holds too many variables to ever deem one teaching practice, resource, or strategy as the epitome of our profession. There will be scenarios in which almost any teaching practice situated in a specific classroom fails to help students learn. For example, feedback may have less of an impact if a relationship has not first been established between teacher and student, or the goal for a lesson has not been clearly articulated.

This example confirms the theory of practice described in this very book: that every school already has the professional capacity to address their unique challenges. And yet the last thing I would proclaim to one reader is to follow this theory to a “T”. No one can possibly know with certainty how teachers will respond to these strategies in a school. While there is “nothing more practical than a good theory”, it is only as effective as its flexibility and adaptability to unique situations. Yes, trust is a foundation for this work. Yes, it is hard to move forward together without some type of priority. Yet trust can be fostered in a myriad of ways. Every school has its own specific needs to prioritize around.

So instead of developing the typical plan, breaking it down into objectives, and following a linear process to success, we can instead remain somewhere between curiosity and certainty by focusing on promising practices in the classroom and how we as leaders can affirm them when we see them during instructional walks.

Three Tenets of Promising Practices

“Promising practices” strikes me as the right balance between confidence in our classroom practice and remaining open to new ways of instruction. It is a paradox of belief: that we have both trust in ourselves and curiosity toward other possibilities.

With that, what makes a practice promising? I see three criteria.

1. The practice is aligned with the district’s vision and a school’s shared beliefs. It is important that whatever teaching strategy, method or approach is employed schoolwide, that it is coherent with what the faculty believe to be true. For example, in our school we believe that phonemic awareness can be taught with students’ own writing. That does not preclude a teacher from using direct instruction of phonics. But if isolated skill development is the only way in which phonemic awareness is developed with students, then that is not a promising practice. Word study removed from an authentic context is not aligned with our beliefs.

2. The practice has evidence to support its effectiveness. As a professional, we must look to current research to make an informed decision about what practices enter our curriculum and classrooms. Dr. John Hattie (2021) offers a list of the most effective practices (visiblelearning.com) based on a summary of many studies on each approach at his Visible Learning website. Any practice that is considered promising should also have evidence that is peer reviewed and independently evaluated; the publisher or company was not involved in the study of its effectiveness.

3. There are situations in which the practice may be ineffective. This rule would seem to apply to almost any practice in education. For example, summarization has a high impact on student learning. But what text or content are the students being asked to summarize? Is it relevant to their lives, or simply a generic passage assigned by the teacher to address a standard? Further, were students able to select the information to summarize, as motivation also has an impact? In addition, did the teacher engage in some type of shared demonstration of summarization prior to releasing the responsibility? Implementing a promising practice is not like taking a pill prescribed to you by your doctor; the nuances and variables of teaching and learning are too great to accept any practice as infallible.

So how can we find agreement on anything? By leading like a coach and affirming the process of teaching and learning: noticing and naming what is going well and getting curious about where we might seek improvement.

What others are saying about the book:

“This is a book all leaders should read. It could be transformational.”

• Kelly Jones, instructional coach, Madison Metropolitan School District

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If you prefer to listen to my conversation with Regie Routman instead of watching it, here it is. We explored this question related to my new book, Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H., available through Corwin now (30% off through March).

What people are saying about Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H.

Matt Renwick is the principal we all wish we had and the one we all want to be. His ideas about walking alongside teachers to grow them in the same ways we want them to grow students are just-right advice. He brings the research on trust and collective efficacy to life through concrete ways to operationalize rituals and routines of observation, goal setting, and planning with teachers.

Samantha Bennett

Learning Design Specialist, Instructional Coach and Education Consultant

Matt Renwick makes a compelling case for deeper inquiry and more thoughtful engagement around teacher practice. Full of rich, compelling examples from Matt’s real-world experience, this book will help readers reconnect with their purpose as instructional leaders. Highly recommended.

Justin Baeder

Director of The Principal Center, Author of Now We’re Talking!

Matt Renwick offers readers a rich, practical how-to book supported by current research. This book should be within easy arm’s reach of school administrators wishing to increase their skills of performing their major responsibility: increasing student learning.”

Arthur L. Costa and Robert J. Garmston

Professors Emeriti, California State University, Sacramento, Co-Authors of Cognitive Coaching

Matt Renwick reminds us of a key element of our shared professional leadership work: we can’t do it alone. He keeps us focused on the value of coaching tools and the pillars he references to keep instruction at the center of the work of educational leaders. This book draws on an extensive research base as well as Matt Renwick’s own professional experience to provide an accessible entry point for school leaders as they consider what it means to lead like a coach.

Jason Drysdale

Assistant Superintendent, River East Transcona Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

Research is clear: Principals can have a tremendous impact on student success by focusing on job #1: ensuring every student benefits from great teaching in every classroom. Drawing upon his vast experience as a successful leader, Matt Renwick provides compelling insights, practical tools, and real-life examples for how to effect real change in schools. Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H. is a must-read playbook for any principal seeking to improve student outcomes—not by forcing change from outside in, but rather by unleashing it from the inside out through trust, compassion, optimism, and an unrelenting focus on excellence.

Bryan Goodwin

President & CEO, McREL International, Author of Building a Curious School

Renwick unpacks conversations by describing what he said in a coaching situation and then sharing his reasoning for why he chose the actions he took. This book is not just for people who are in the positional role of leader; it is for anyone who wants to develop their leadership capabilities.

Bena Kallick

Co-Director, Institute for Habits of Mind, Co-author of Students at the Center

This is exactly the book educators need to build trust while navigating the tensions in today’s school systems. Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H. will provide you with strategies that humanize leadership and bring joy to the work. This is an excellent book to read with your school teams to build the leadership pipeline essential to sustaining organizational excellence and a positive culture.

Anthony Kim

Founder and CEO, Education Elements, Co-author of The NEW School Rules

An inspirational guide for school leaders, this text provokes discussion and reflection among leaders who see themselves as as co-leaders in school communities. School vision becomes a reality when school leaders coach school faculties in a collaborative and collegial way in order to create a comprehensive and cohesive learning environment for students. An excellent book that is accessible to all principals.

Allyson Matczuk

Early Literacy Consultant and Reading Recovery Trainer at Manitoba, Education and Training

Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H. provides a framework that engenders trust and fortifies commitment to instructional excellence. Matt Renwick helps readers envision and rethink roles and routines. Most of all, his strategies, stories, and practical approach take the burden of trying to be an 'exert of everything' off of principals' shoulders. If you want your school to be a place where teachers and students want to be, this book is for you!

Cris Tovani

English teacher, literacy consultant, Author of Why Do I Have to Read This?

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In this excerpt from my book Leading Like a C.O.A.C.H., I described my experience observing a book club-style discussion via Zoom. I learn as much as anyone when I visit classrooms with a stance toward curiosity.

Instructional walks offer a responsive and authentic approach to continuous professional development for all educators.

This development includes principals. I have learned as much as my teachers have from my regular classroom visits. Until instructional walks became a priority, my background in literacy was limited to the resources I read while teaching full time.

For example, during an instructional walk in an online middle level classroom, I observed students discussing the books they were reading for their clubs. Within the video conferencing tool, they would take turns sharing their thinking about what they had previously read, prompted by their teachers (Dalton Miles, Kris McCoy).

As the group transitioned to a whole group reading strategy lesson, I thought to myself, “The teachers devoted significant time for students to share their understanding. Would it have been more efficient to give a quick quiz?” This thinking was partially based on this new platform (Zoom); instruction seems to require more time when online. Yet I knew my role was not to judge but to notice what was occurring through an appreciative lens. So, I continued to observe as the teachers demonstrated their thinking processes for one of the books they were reading.

Later, I emailed my notes to the teachers, acknowledging the opportunity they gave their students to share their understanding of what they had read so far. I also wondered why they devoted that amount of time to check for understanding.

Through our conversation, I learned that public check-ins help everyone construct meaning about the text. In addition, the teachers would use their responses as teaching opportunities. For example, a student shared their observation from Legend by Marie Lu that mortality rates were high in their science fiction story. Dalton responded: "Things aren't great in this dystopian American society." This follow-up affirmed the student’s thinking and included genre-specific terms in the discussion for the group to hear.

My initial belief was to maximize instructional time in the form of direct teaching and brief assessments. What I learned is that giving students the opportunity to share their thinking about their books is instructional time. The teachers’ responsive approach to facilitating conversations around books also encouraged them to identify as readers.

With an open mind during the walk, my understanding improved. I remembered the importance of assuming a teacher believes they are doing the best they can for their students, and then recognized the authentic environment they created for readers.

Had I come into the classroom with only my pre-existing thinking about reading instruction (which does not include any experience teaching these grades), our conversation may not have led to a better understanding on my end, nor the teachers affirmed in their practice. Our conversation around their decision making was supported by my curiosity.

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If we teach a skill or an idea, and students didn’t learn it, how do we respond?

Often we lean on more time or individual/small group support. Yet if the problem is the instructional strategy itself, more of the same will not be helpful. A student may need something different that is more effective at meeting students’ current needs.

This is where cognitive science can help. Bryan Goodwin, co-author of Learning That Sticks: A Brain-Based Model for K-12 Instructional Design and Delivery (ASCD/McREL, 2020), provides a model for teachers to prepare instruction with intention.

During our conversation, we discussed:

What “brain-based” actually means,

Why it’s wise to identify what’s in it for kids when preparing instruction, and

How to revitalize units of study to make them more effective and engaging.

Effective teaching is not only knowing what to do; when and why are just as important.

Related Resources

Audio + Transcript

Also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts (and give a rating!)

Purchase Bryan’s book

Check out more resources on the McREL website

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick (00:06):

Welcome Bryan.

Bryan Goodwin (00:09):

Good to be here. I'm glad to have this conversation with you.

Matt Renwick (00:12):

You're the president and CEO of McREL International, a Denver-based nonprofit education, research and development organization. You're a former English teacher, correct?

Bryan Goodwin (00:21):

That's right.

Matt Renwick (00:23):

And former journalist. And you've been at McREL for over 20 years and you previously served as a chief operating officer and director of communications and marketing. You've had several books out; you write regularly for Educational Leadership. I know I've used a couple of your articles when I taught curriculum leadership at a university, I've used some of your content and that's great. I appreciate how well you distill down these complex ideas into things that are manageable.

Bryan Goodwin (00:53):

Appreciate that. That's great to hear.

Matt Renwick (00:55):

And this book really helps people manage brain-based instruction: Learning that Sticks: A Brain-Based Model for K-12 Instructional Design and Delivery. And you wrote it with Tonia Gibson and Kristin Rouleau.

Bryan Goodwin (01:09):

Kris Rouleau, yep.

Matt Renwick (01:12):

I guess that would just be the first question is, how do you define brain based?

Bryan Goodwin (01:19):

That's a good question. Really, what we were looking at is a combination of cognitive psychology, the science of learning, and some neuroscience, but cognitive science has been around like for decades now. What cognitive science tries to just figure out is, how do our brains actually process information? So there's something in cognitive psychology called the information processing model and the six phases are based on that. I'll give you an example: One of those early studies where they figured out one of the keys to memory is actually repetition. They figured that out entirely by accident. They were quizzing people to see, when do they forget things?

Bryan Goodwin (02:02):

They found that the more they quiz people, the more they actually remembered something. So that becomes one of those key principles that comes out of cognitive science: that quizzing to remember, or repetition, is the key neuroscience. Meanwhile, in a newer endeavor, maybe only the last 20 years or so, but in neuroscience, we figure out why that works. So the cognitive science tells us how the brain works. Neuroscience often gets down to the chemical level of why that works. For example, with repetition, we know from neuroscience that there's a substance called myelin that's basically a fatty substance that wraps itself around our neurons, kind of insulating them like electrical wire. Well, that means those neurons can start to fire together better. So we now know from neuroscience what we found out in cognitive science actually works. So we've combined both of those things in this book to hopefully provide teachers with the clear sense of how this process of learning actually happen in my own brain, but more importantly in my student's brain. So we can design learning accordingly.

Matt Renwick (03:01):

Yeah. I remember that in your book too, you've mentioned that often instructional plans are designed more from a teacher perspective, like what kind of strategies do I want to use to teach this content? And you're suggesting, recommending that we think from the student's perspective, what's going to benefit them the most, the content and the skills.

Bryan Goodwin (03:20):

Yeah. I think that's a key paradigm shift, that you start to think about students' brains and what's happening there. One example is learning objectives. What we all know is we have to have learning objectives. We put them on the board, but that's like a tree falling in the woods with no one to hear, if the students don't actually take that learning objective and make it their own learning goal. And so as we think about what has to happen in students' brains, we go, "Oh, that's students need to set a goal." So that we also know from brain science, when they achieve a goal, they get a dopamine hit. Right? So there's a reward that makes learning fun, enjoyable, even addictive in all the right ways.

Matt Renwick (03:56):

So, instructional design and delivery...how does that look different when you overlay it with a brain-based model?

Bryan Goodwin (04:07):

In addition to thinking about, "What's happening in students' brains?", we also want to make sure that we don't skip a step or that we don't move on. If we realize our kids aren't making sense of this, we need to give them more time to make sense of arguments. That's the fourth phase of learning, but the six phases basically are this: the first phase is saying, let's get kids interested in learning. That's the first thing that has to happen because there's a million distractions. Our brains are really good at ignoring stuff. And there's a pecking order that they follow and, believe it or not, 'Turn in your books to page 42" is nowhere on that pecking order of interest for kids. So we have to make learning interesting. We have to make the environment feel emotionally safe, too.

Bryan Goodwin (04:44):

Emotions are the first trigger. Once we feel safe to learn, then we want to be interested in learning. So that's the first phase. The second phase is we know that our brains are kind of inherently lazy. Daniel Kahneman, one of the giants in the field of cognitive science, writes about this, that learning is a lot of effort, that we have to power on our brains. People are listening to this podcast right now. You're having to keep your brain powered up. This is probably more difficult than say, listening to music, right? So your brain has to stay powered up. That means we need to convince our brains all the time. "Hey, keep paying attention." So that's where goal setting becomes so important, right? That we have to tell our brains, "Hey, this is important enough that I need to stay focused on this." The next phase is really focusing on new learning.

Bryan Goodwin (05:23):

We've learned a lot of things from cognitive science, about what's called dual coding. We process information better when it's visual and it's verbal. So we think about what that focus on new learning phase looks like. Then we know that our brains always work by connecting new learning with prior learning. So we need to give kids the opportunity to process their learning in small groups, oftentimes through their own reflection in writing, but give kids a chance of process learning. Then we know that repetition is the key. Like I mentioned, myelin, right? We've got to give kids opportunities to repeat over time, not cramming. Cramming leads to fast learning and fast forgetting. And then ultimately, I think what's missing in a lot of classes, and maybe this is the biggest difference with really designing learning with the brain in mind, is that extension/application activity.

Bryan Goodwin (06:07):

Right? So, we have to actually not just repeat information, but come at it from different angles and like, "Oh, now I'm going to take this new learning, I'm going to apply it to solve a problem, or I'm going to do some creative synthesis of this, or I'm going to do a writing project or a research project," and to extend and apply is really key. And that's what overcomes what John Medina writes about this, that students typically forget about 90% of what they've learned in the classroom within 30 days. Well it's because we don't provide that final phase of learning. So I think that's how learning looks different. We were thinking about the brain and saying, "Well, it's not just about teaching something kids study. We give them a test that's going to lead to fast forgetting. How do we really design learning that that keeps kids brains actively engaged throughout the entire process?"

Matt Renwick (06:52):

A lot of the shifts you suggest are not huge shifts. Like you said, it's maybe adding a visual with the text and that helps cement some of that knowledge into your long term memory.

Bryan Goodwin (07:03):

Exactly. Yeah.

New Speaker (07:04):

What about content? Like, no matter how hard you might work, there's just maybe certain content or skills that just kids aren't going to find relevant. I mean, do you ditch it? Do you reformat it? I mean, how do you deal with that situation?

Bryan Goodwin (07:21):

yeah,

Bryan Goodwin (07:22):

I think about myself as an English teacher. I remember teaching The Scarlet Letter to kids. I was in the Virgin Islands and like trying to get them to relate to this and honestly I didn't have it figured out. I didn't have what we talk about as a marketing term called "What's In It for Me?", WIIFM is the acronym, what's in it for me. And if you don't have that figured out, it's really difficult to teach something. And honestly, I think back about the travesty that I perpetrated on my kids, trying to teach The Scarlet Letter when I didn't actually know what's in it for them. Why should they read The Scarlet Letter? I was like, "You know, the Puritans are interesting. I don't know, but had I thought about it and sometimes where you get through that with them is, were what's the enduring understanding?

Bryan Goodwin (08:00):

What is it that I want them to learn when they're 18 that they'll remember when they're 80? Thinking about how do adults apply this in the real world and, honestly, if you come to the answer, you're not bereft if you don't read The Scarlet Letter. Maybe you cut it out and say, it's not really important anymore to teach. Or if you do, it's like you're thinking about those key themes, those key ideas that I really want kids to be thinking about. And so I think, you know, with mathematics or science, there's some practical application, but you really do have to get to why, why do adults learn this stuff? And why is it important for you to know? And if you can't answer that question, I think it is really difficult to do that. So then maybe from moments of reflection...I've teachers and workshops where we do this, having maybe an existential crisis, like "Why do I teach asset theory?" Right? I need to figure this out. And if I don't have it clear, I know my kids won't figure it out. So I think short answer, you have to dig deep into what is, why is this important to teach? And if you honestly can't answer the question, then you probably should talk to colleagues and others and say, why are we teaching whatever.

Matt Renwick (09:02):

It might be. That's a good point too: if you don't just assume there's not some kind of an enduring understanding, theme, to take the time to look into it. Kind of walk us through the phases of a brain-based model. How do we know that these phases support student growth and achievement?

Bryan Goodwin (09:24):

Yeah, that's a really good question. In fact, something that we've done a bit in the book Learning That Sticks, but also we're actually doing right now - I'll forecast something - we are reexamining research that supports a title we've had out there for quite a while called Classroom Instruction That Works. So we're looking now at empirical studies and here's what we can find from empirical research in classrooms, that something like goal setting has tremendous effect sizes for learners. And so it is getting kids to set their own personal goals, to track their own progress. And so we know that works as a classroom instructional strategy. If you understand how the brain works, then you see why that would work, right? Now. I understand, "Oh, I'm helping kids get those dopamine hits," right? When they achieve a goal or I'm helping them and sometimes set small goals...

Bryan Goodwin (10:09):

...so that every day they're moving, they're making progress towards where they wanna get to. And I'm helping their brains to: "Hey, this is important. Stay focused, persevere, you know, productive struggles. So we do actually know kind of each step along the way. And that's where in the book we have provided those evidence-based strategies. We also know, for example, like queuing cognitive interest or getting kids interested in their learning has tremendous effect sizes. Also we actually know from neuroscience why that is true because there's a dopamine reward when you're curious about something and you solve your curiosity, resolve your curiosity: You get a dopamine hit. We also know neuroscience studies have found that we tend to learn things that are even unintentional, that there's accidental learning that happens. It seems that somehow how curiosity primes our brains for learning. So we learn more. So we can see both from like laboratory studies that are cognitive science studies, but also classroom studies, why each of these spaces are really important.

Matt Renwick (11:08):

You've spoken about this already, just why we need to get kids first interested and committed to learning. Maybe to that question then, just what we've noticed in our schools, and I think other educators are noticing this too, is kids have had a harder time getting back into independent reading, writing, even holding a pencil for younger kids because they just haven't had that practice. Any ideas of what as we, as educators can do to get them reinterested and recommitted to some of these more independent and kind of solitude-centered, I guess, activities, like you said, in a world of connections. That's been a challenge for us. Any thoughts on that?

Bryan Goodwin (11:53):

Yeah, I think that's where also goal setting is really important. We work with schools a lot on making the shift from learning objectives to success criteria. And that's not a new idea, but for a lot of teachers, it's not until I define how will I know when kids know it, how will they know when they know it? That usually then also kind of forces that question about, so why are we asking kids to learn this? And I think we do need to spend time helping them become interested in learning. There are also things we know from studies, like "What does peak curiosity?" Well, things like mysteries, right? Trying to solve a mystery. So sometimes we might wanna flip history around, like, "Why did the Roman Empire fall? Let's figure that out," right? When actually there's a debate.

Bryan Goodwin (12:35):

That's the other strategy that creates curiosity, is controversy. When kids realize that historians still don't agree two thousand years later why the Roman Empire fell, or just 1700 years later. So we can use controversy. We can use things like cognitive conflict when something doesn't quite square with our expectations. I live here in Denver, Colorado. And interesting that what happens in the wintertime is when the wind is blowing out of the mountains, it actually makes Denver warmer. It's Chinook winds, but that seems contrary to what we would think, because it's cold in the mountains. Why does that work, right? So posing those kind of conflicts, I think also we can use like just even suspense, right? Literature is full of suspense, or a science experiment. What do you think is gonna happen? I actually write about this...

Bryan Goodwin (13:19):

...in some of my books. My daughter, Molly, who's now a freshman in high school, years ago - I think she was in second grade - snowy morning here in Denver. She's coming down the stairs as I'm going up the stairs. And she asked, "Dad, is it a school day?" You know, I'm thinking she wants it to be a snow day and I have to inform we're in Denver. So it's gonna have to snow sideways before it's a snow day. Right? So like Wisconsin, I'm sure. So, no, it's still a school day and I thought she'd be dejected and bummed out. But she pumps her fish, like she's excited, right? She can't went to go to school and it wasn't because of the cafeteria or seeing friends. It was like they were doing an overnight science experiment. It was that that made her want to come back to school.

Bryan Goodwin (13:56):

So I think what we have to recognize is that our kids' brains, these days have more distractions than ever, right. There's so much media that's out there. We have to figure out how do we cut through all the noise with the signal that makes them say this is interesting, right? The good news is that we don't have to teach curiosity to kids. We're all born curious. And so if we can tap into that, that's a good way to start the whole process. And then you build in the rest of the six phases of learning. But I think to your point, I mean, if you skip that first (phase) - get kids interested- the train leaves the station without them, right? So we want to figure that out. It's worth spending some time doing that. And honestly that tends to be more of a collaborative activity. Teachers should come together to say, "How do we hook kids' interest in, you know, American literature or American history, whatever it is - that's what I used to teach, right- so how do you get kids interest in that?

New Speaker (14:46):

So I hear the three Cs: curiosity, controversy, and conflict.

Bryan Goodwin (14:53):

Yeah, exactly. And it's productive conflict, right? So another great example is, "Should we list the wolf as an endangered species?" You can hear what environmentalists have to say about that. You can hear what ranchers have to say about that. That's actually a study that was done and found kids were so interested in learning about the wolf in that frame, they would stay in from recess to watch a film and to learn more about it, because we all want to sort out ideas in our minds of where do we stand on this. So instead of shying away from controversy, there are certainly some very productive conversations kids can have around controversy.

Matt Renwick (15:32):

You can weave in reading, writing, speaking, and listening...

Bryan Goodwin (15:34):

Absolutely.

Matt Renwick (15:38):

That would be a relevant topic here in Wisconsin too. The final question is, what does this look like? You work with schools and teachers...what do you see when you see teachers engaging in this brain-based model for instructional design?

Bryan Goodwin (15:57):

I think one of the key things that happens, Matt is, it's intentionality. Teachers become metacognitive in their practices. I think about my first year as a teacher. You would've seen me doing some of the right things, right? Cooperative learning, but if you'd ask me, "Brian, why are you doing cooperative?" I'd say, "I've been lecturing all week. You know, I need to do something different." That's not why we do cooperative learning. It's not Cooperative Wednesdays, right? It's, "I'm at a point in the learning process where I want my kids to pause and process together and make sense of their learning." So I think that's the first key shift is teachers become more intentional. I think something else that we see oftentimes though is while there are six phases and several teaching strategies that hang under each, sometimes schools will say, "We just need to focus on one thing right now."

Bryan Goodwin (16:43):

And sometimes it is. So those success criteria, let's be really clear about why we're asking kids to learn this and why we'll know that they've got it, how they will know they've got it. And it's those "I can" statements, but embedded with this idea of "what's in it for me?". So we find that sometimes it's great for schools or teachers to have the overall model in their minds, but then say we're going to work on one phase right now. That seems to be where learning is breaking down. That's another way to think about this, is like when learning is breaking down or doesn't seem to be happening, is it because kids aren't interested. So maybe we start there. Is it because no, we, we got their attention, but they don't seem to stay focused. We're going to think about that commit to learning phase for wherever it may be breaking down. So sometimes it becomes a really great diagnostic tool as well. If learning isn't happening the way we think it should. what phase did we miss? You know, when did the train leave the station without the kids, and let's go back and be sure we got that figured out.

Matt Renwick (17:36):

I remember using the Classroom Instruction That Works book for professional learning in my first stint as an administrator, as an assistant principal. And we followed what you mentioned now that you mentioned it: I think there were like nine, correct?

Bryan Goodwin (17:50):

That's right.

Matt Renwick (17:50):

So we focused on three per year, over a three year period. And then within that, a teacher could pick one. And really made it personalized, but also schoolwide and we're kind of moving together.

Bryan Goodwin (18:02):

I think it's a great strategy, to have PLCs come together, a grade level team come together to say, "Yeah, let's get really good at this one particular phase of learning." Becaise we think now it's the biggest inflection point for us, if we can do this well consistently and intentionally.

Matt Renwick (18:17):

Well, your book lays it out very nicely in Learning that Sticks: A Brain-Based model for K-12 instructional design and delivery. Where can we learn more about your work, Brian?

Bryan Goodwin (18:27):

Just come to our website, www.mcrel.org. There are a lot of free resources. There's in fact a free download that relates to this book. You can find lots of materials there. You'll find me there as well. So you can reach out to me. I'm always happy to answer questions and to chat with folks about this work.

Matt Renwick (18:47):

And you also have an eCourse that can goes with this too.

Bryan Goodwin (18:50):

That's correct. Yes. We have an online course that provides an overview of this and we've designed it also really to be effective professional learning. So ideally, you know, teams would come together, do the eCourse, but then have a chance to meet together. So that one of the things we talk about is the importance of processing learning in a group. So we've designed the eCourse that way too.

Matt Renwick (19:11):

I saw you had some discussion boards in there and so you’re trying to practice what you preach, right?

Bryan Goodwin (19:17):

Exactly. That's right. Modeling the practice too.

Matt Renwick (19:21):

So thanks Brian. It was good to talk to you and I encourage everyone to check out this book.

Matt Renwick (19:26):

Thank you so much, Matt, for the opportunity. And I look forward to hearing from listeners too.

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What can we learn about literacy from our nation’s past?

Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, author of Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy, shares her findings from her dissertation work on black literary societies and their relevance for today’s educators.

In my conversation with Gholdy, we discussed:

her professional learning journey researching this important topic,

the four pursuits of this pedagogical framework teachers can follow, and

how to be a culturally responsive teacher in these challenging times.

This is an episode you won’t want to miss!

Relevant Resources

Buy Gholdy’s book

Read our book club contributions around Cultivating Genius from this summer

Learn more about Gholdy’s work on her website

Follow Gholdy on Twitter (@GholdyM)

Listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts (and give a rating!)

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick (00:07):

It's nice to meet you Gholdy. Dr. Gholdy Muhammad is the author of Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy through Scholastic. She has her PhD in Literacy, Language and Culture at the University of Illinois, Chicago where she's also an associate professor. I came across your book actually through Lois Bridges. She was your editor, I believe on your book.

Gholdy Muhammad (00:41):

Yes, she was my extraordinary editor. I really enjoyed working with Lois.

Matt Renwick (00:46):

And I worked with Lois on a project, Bring Me a Book. I said, I'm looking for some titles for the summer book club and I mentioned yours as one. And she's like, "Oh, it's phenomenal. It's transformational. You have to do that one." And that was it. If Lois says read it. I read it. But yeah, it's such a unique book. What drew you into that study?

Gholdy Muhammad (01:11):

Yeah, I was at the time I was in graduate school and studying for my PhD in Language, Literacy and Culture at UI-C. And, you know, like a lot of people I'm always searching for solutions, answers, better ways in education. And I was really interested in the collaborative literacy spaces that are created, like book clubs and writing groups. And that's what my research was on: these literacy collaboratives and a professor pointed me in the direction of this rich history of literary societies. And I came upon the work of Elizabeth McHenry who wrote the book Forgotten Readers, and she captures these literary societiies throughout this history of the 19th street. Dorothy Porter, who was a librarian for Howard University, was also one of the first people to write about these literary organizations. But when I was reading them, I was reading them like a K-12 teacher. Elizabeth McHenry, her scholarship has less of carry over into education and library studies and things like that.

Gholdy Muhammad (02:35):

And English studies and humanities and things. But I was reading it like a teacher and I would read and come upon artifacts after artifacts. I would read something, then it would direct me toward another archive and then another one and another one. And it was like this beautiful sort of scavenger hunt of knowledge and information. And as I was reading about our ancestors, it was helping me to become a better teacher, a better scholar, a better thinker. I'm a better doer of my research, you know, instead of just writing about it, helping to show action, right. To improve communities. And so that's kind of how it came about. When I started reading, I just couldn't stop. I couldn't stop reading about it, writing around it and studying these spaces.

Matt Renwick (03:27):

The framework that you create for this, around culturally and historically responsive literacy, it's a curriculum framework, right? How do you take some of these ideas and put them into action in the classroom?

Gholdy Muhammad (03:40):

Yeah, it's a pedagogical framework, and it's focused on creating curricular pursuits, teaching and learning pursuits. And I think even if we think about pedagogical and teaching and learning, it can be used across different grade levels in spaces, right? It depends on where one is teaching and where one is learning. So, you know, even though this is initially designed for K-12 education, I've seen it with three-year-olds and pre-K, I've seen it with higher education, adult education have adopted using it, companies using it to think about their internal work around diversity, equity and inclusion. So I also think it has some wider manifestations, in addition to how we use it as teachers and leaders in schools.

Matt Renwick (04:34):

I shared with you before: I saw that it's sold over a hundred thousand copies, which in the educational publishing world is huge. So you've definitely offered something that people are looking for, and just reading some of the examples too, it feels like it just couldn't have come at a better time. People are overwhelmed and stressed, as well as societal, civil unrest too. Just the, kind of the simplicity of it, it doesn't feel overwhelming when I read some of your examples. Some of the lessons and units you've designed, are you finding that when you work with teachers that they're finding this refreshing?

Gholdy Muhammad (05:16):

And leaders, because I want principals to write a sample read-aloud lesson plan or unit plan with the model and try it out too, because they are teacher leaders. And I feel like that's a big part of it. But what I find is, I think anytime we introduced a new model or a framework, as you know Matt, teachers may feel like, "Oh, wait, something else, how am I supposed to do something else in addition to everything else I'm doing?" And they're absolutely right. You know, we have introduced a lot of models, frameworks, strategies, theories to them. But a lot of these models have never sort of captured cognition with social cultural news, with critical theory, with equity, with justice. But also with reading skills and math skills and STEM and all of these things that my model does.

Gholdy Muhammad (06:17):

And so I think at first, it may feel overwhelming, but then when I'm with teachers and I have them practice with it, what they create is such genius because our teachers are geniuses too. And they create these learning experiences, not activities, but experiences with children that are so enriching and meaningful. I mean, things that I think children will remember for the rest of their lives. And they're like, "Oh yeah, this is doable." Like you were saying, I could do this. And in many ways I've been already doing this part of it. There are lots of teachers who have centered identity in the learning, but they have not gone as far as assess it oftentimes. So I think this has been elevating the pedagogical practices of teachers across the nation and in other parts of the world that I've been able to work with.

Matt Renwick (07:16):

So you're blending different philosophies of education that have come through historically and to allow teachers to be empowered, and our kids. There was one term in there that was pretty new to me. It was criticality. Can you describe that term? You do a nice job in the book, but I think so everyone's aware of the importance of criticality when you're creating curriculum and instruction.

Gholdy Muhammad (07:49):

Yeah, criticality...Like the root word critical. And I talk about critical, like as upper case C critical, not just deep and thoughtful, analytical thinking, but deep, thoughtful, analytical thinking as it relates to justice, equities, inequities, representations, conscious power. That's what criticality is; to have criticality means that you have an understanding of oppression, anti-oppression. Sometimes people send messages out and they said, "How can I be a disruptor of oppression? That's just horrible. And we're going to let everybody know." And I said, "Oh, oppression is hurt, pain and harm. If you're not a disruptor of oppression, what would you like me to be? You either want me to be silent on someone else's or my own hurt, or you want me to contribute to it." And so I talk about oppression in that way, because I think you can oppress or hurt the land and the air by polluting and littering.

Gholdy Muhammad (09:01):

I think we should be teaching students about that. I think you can oppress living organisms like animals and plants. I think we should be teaching students about that because if we don't teach them how to disrupt it, we may not have a planet for them to live on, right? I teach them about the hurt, pain, and harm, where we can often inflict to ourselves, like saying negative things to ourselves. Like "I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough." And then I think people can hurt and harm other people like through racism, sexism, ableism, religious discrimination, classism, and things like that. So criticality the way that I use it and take it up in my work, it is the naming, the understanding, the questioning, the disruption of hurt and harm in the world and humanity to understand it and name it enough and disrupted enough that you're working everyday to make the world better, to make our lives better and the lives of others better. And that's what criticality is. It pushes for a better humanity for all, not just for black children or white children or brown children, but for all of us, because we have to be in this together in harmony. And so that is my short, maybe longer, but shorter description of criticality.

Matt Renwick (10:29):

That's perfect. It's broad enough that you can apply it to just about any unit of study, whether it's history or whether it's the current reality, like you said. So it seemed like an entry point I think that teachers are looking for. I want to talk about some of these issues, but I feel like I can't, because I'm going to get, you know, blasted by someone in the community or I'm even at risk of losing my job. And so they've been there, maybe they're feeling like they're stuck and they don't know where to start. I feel like, I feel like your work would allow them to do that.

Gholdy Muhammad (11:05):

And you know, sometimes I have to, we have to think about ourselves, but we should not have systems and structures that make teachers think about losing their jobs. If they are trying to teach in equitable ways that should make you keep your job. But our system has been a little bit reversed in that sense.

Matt Renwick (11:28):

And if in some ways it can avoid some issues where we end up being insensitive to a group or around a topic, because we're just not, maybe we're not versed in it or just don't feel confident in it. So it just feels like the framework really does help. Can you quickly walk through your four steps to develop the unit?

Gholdy Muhammad (11:53):

So I call these steps more so like pursuits, right, and criticality is one of them. So I like to start with an intellectual prism. What are students becoming smarter about, and pushing back against practices that have only taught skills in isolated ways? Like we teach children how to read that are devoid of texts, sometimes of texts connected to their lives, to the world. Sometimes we teach mathematics decontextualized to students' identities and to the world. So it's kind of pushing back on that notion where I think, what do I want my students to be smarter about? I'll give you an example. Maybe last week I wanted my students to learn about sugar and the history of sugar: where it's grown, the history of sugar and freedom. There's like a rich history in Louisiana of sugar, among communities in color.

Gholdy Muhammad (12:52):

And that was the starting point. And then I go to identity: what does sugar have to do with the identity of my students? Well, a lot of children consume sugar, but do they sort of monitor their conception and know what they're putting in their bodies? And so to me, I made a goal of that students will consider their daily and weekly intake of sugar and compare it to what doctors say are norms of what children that age need. And then I go to identity matters because we should for the reason of authentic purpose, children want to know what does this have to do with my life? And we should be creating spaces where students get to understand who they are and who they are destined to be. They might grow up and say, "You know what, I need to cut back on my sugar intake."

Gholdy Muhammad (13:47):

The third pursuit that our ancestors gave us are skills. So I went to the skills goal and I said, "Well, what does sugar have to do with skills?" So I used two different skills. One was a science skill of studying the molecule and being able to learn how to dissolve sugar through experimentation. That was the science goal. And then I'm at literacy. I mean, I'm always bringing more literacy in. So I also would want students to learn how to read and write a lab report that one would do as a scientific expert. The fourth pursuit, which we already mentioned, is criticality. And what does sugar have to do with harm and hurt? I won't say oppression, but sometimes I feel like sugar oppresses our body because it does: it can harm the body, certain sugars, right? So I would have students look at unhealthy forms of sugar.

Gholdy Muhammad (14:52):

Sometimes doctors call them bad sugars versus good sugars. Those that are, you know, in processed foods and things like that. And they will look at the harms of what it does to the body. You know, I'm thinking about, sometimes they show these images of pouring sugar in these containers and how much sugar is in this and this and this. I think it was like a Parks and Rec episode where they had this sugar, this fast food place. I was like, oh, there's sugar in it. But you know, we would think about the harms of the sugar, of the body, of certain sugars. And then for a joy, I added a fifth element to the model. I know it would be written about in my next book. It's joy: what's the beauty, the aesthetics and the topics we're teaching children need? Joy. Teachers need joy, parents need joy.

Gholdy Muhammad (15:47):

We all do. And so I would maybe then focus on the healthy sugars like fruits and vegetables. A lot of children don't know that there's sugar in certain vegetables. And so collectively, it just started with sugar, but we're able to teach intellectualism, skills, identity, criticality and joy. So now I'm teaching the whole child and I'm taking sugar. I could have easily just taught them, "Hey, this is sugar. We're going to dissolve it." But look, now I'm giving them a richness of history of sugar, where it comes from. I'm intellectualizing it because they are scholars, the children.

Matt Renwick (16:30):

It's a relevant topic. And it's like you said, it's so much more than "This is what sugar is. Don't eat too much." And of course they're going to go home and do it, a lot of kids do it, and I have myself. There are so many other...I'm just, as you were talking, I'm thinking other, so many other pathways you could take. You can look at the history of where sugar came from, is currently coming from. And as the kids get older, right, taking a critical look at the working conditions, of how it gets to your store. So yeah, just very interesting. It was great to hear that joy is an added piece to it. When is the book coming out?

Gholdy Muhammad (17:23):

I don't know. You know, I didn't know when Cultivating Genius was going to come out. You know, I have learned to move in the world to just feel like when it's time, it will happen. And that's what happened. You know, I've been training and doing work with cultivating genius for 12 years, even though the book is almost two years old. And so, you know, the way I write, the way my art is, when it comes, whatever my mind tells me, it's time to write, then it'll probably just pour out. But I'm hoping sometime next year, in 2022, that would be lovely, if not sometime after. But focus on unearthing genius, enjoy more connection on joy and how to take now the model that teachers are learning and go deeper into it, but also give leaders the tools to support teachers in doing this work as well.

Matt Renwick (18:28):

That's key. I know for me to know we're going in the right direction, because just like you said, there are so many initiatives that we have to be careful. Gholdy, where can they find more about your work and to learn more about you?

Gholdy Muhammad (18:47):

Social media is a good place like on Twitter and Instagram, it's @GHOLDYM. And like my sugar unit draft, I just posted teachers too. They're just doing amazing things with the model. So I like to share their lessons and units and ideas. I'm at the University of Illinois at Chicago and I'm always inviting people to come study with us, I have amazing colleagues doing such great work there, so they can also reach out to me that way.

Matt Renwick (19:28):

Awesome. Well, this was a treat for you to join me today and thank you for doing the work that you do.

Gholdy Muhammad (19:36):

No problem. Thank you for the invitation and thank you for your work. We need this kind of work to come together, to give our educators more tools and more understanding and do it in collaboration. And that's what I feel, when I see the work that's happening. So I just want to say, thank you.

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Leading schools in the 21st century can be overwhelming. More is being added to our plates while our resources and time feel depleted.

In a highly complex world, a framework for leading schools is needed. Devin Vodicka, author of Learner-Centered Leadership, offers “A Blueprint for Transformational Change in Learning Communities.”

We talk about this topic, including:

why trust is foundational,

how schools can see the whole child, and

why both teachers and students need to be empowered for this work.

A 20th century education model still exists in too many schools. This episode introduces a pathway leaders can follow toward true success for all learners.

Relevant Resources

Audio + Transcript

Purchase Devin’s book

Check out Devin’s article on trust (Principal Leadership)

Learn more about Devin’s work here and here.

Also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts (and give us a rating!)

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick:

Welcome Devin Vodicka. I came across your work through your article through, I think it was the Principal Magazine. Is that right?

Devin Vodicka:

Yes.

Matt Renwick:

A summary of your dissertation on trust. I'm interested in learning a little bit more about that as it relates to the book that I have coming out. But you also have a book out Learner-Centered Leadership: A Blueprint for Transformational Change in Learning Communities through IMPress. Welcome Devin. If you just say little bit about yourself, your work, what you do for schools.

Devin Vodicka:

Well, it's great to connect. I'm Devin Vodicka. I'm the CEO of Learner-Centered Collaborative. We partner with schools and districts to help them make the shift to learner-centered education. For us that's all about beginning with whole learner outcomes and designing meaningful learning experiences and creating the enabling conditions to bring all of that to life.

Devin Vodicka:

We're working with 130 something school districts across the country. Seeing lots of great innovations during this interesting time. Before my current role, I used to be superintendent of Vista Unified School District which is where I live, San Diego County. School district of about 25,000 students. Then prior to that, I had a whole bunch of admin roles and I was a teacher in LA Unified at the beginning of my educational career.

Matt Renwick:

What a time to be in this business. Supporting that shift. I mean, not surprised you're that busy. Why did you pick trust as a topic for your studies and dissertation and the frame that you came up with the 4Cs?

Devin Vodicka:

At the time that I was working on my dissertation, I was a principal. I was fortunate to open a new elementary school and a new middle school. I was really interested in organizational development and how you measure the progress of an organization.

Devin Vodicka:

I looked at a lot of different models, a lot of different frameworks and ended up becoming really interested in the field of social capital. Social capital essentially says that, there's a benefit from connections that we have. Because they enable the exchange of resources and expertise.

Devin Vodicka:

There's a lot of research in many in fields that shows that when you have higher levels of social capital, those resources flow more freely and you end up with higher levels of effectiveness. I had this hypothesis that social capital could be a way to think about organizational development.

Devin Vodicka:

I got pulled into a research study that was through SRI International. It was funded by The National Science Foundation. They were looking at the feasibility of using this social capital lens to look at school reform and technology integration. Sure enough, it turned out where you have a lot of connectedness, you have the space for a diffusion of innovation and reforms and change efforts stick.

Devin Vodicka:

That led me to then wonder, well, how do you create social capital? If that's a way to think about the readiness of an organization. What does it take to build it? When you really start asking the question about how do we build connections? It quickly leads you to trust and relational trust more specifically.

Devin Vodicka:

I became then very interested in, well then as a school leader, how can I create higher trust in this environment? How can we create relational trust? There's a lot of research in this area and that all led me to develop this synthesis which says it really takes four elements that have to be in place.

Devin Vodicka:

Consistency, compassion, competence, and communication. It's the interplay between those four elements that creates relational trust. If you have relational trust, you're then generating social capital. If you're generating social capital, you're creating the conditions for more meaningful change. That's a quick fly through of my intellectual journey.

Matt Renwick:

I remember that article too. I remember you, I think writing you can't have just compassion or just consistency. You have to have all four. It's a layered approach to building that foundation.

Devin Vodicka:

Totally right. Well, I give the example of sometimes when we talk about trust, we generalize it. But it is highly situational.

Devin Vodicka:

My wife and I have been together since high school. We have a very high level of relational trust but she knows what I'm good at and what I'm not good at. Competence being one of those four elements for example. If our car was broken and needed repair, she would not trust me to fix it because she knows I'm not competent in that particular area. But if she needed a bill to be paid or she needed one... there are lots of things that I can do.

Devin Vodicka:

It's important to remember that it's very situational. It's dynamic. It's two parties that go into it. I can do everything that I can to try to build trust but ultimately it's the interaction between two or more people that really generates that social connection.

Matt Renwick:

Communication's going to be a huge part of that as well.

Devin Vodicka:

Communication is huge. It cuts across the three other dimensions. Your consistency, your compassion and your competence are all influenced by how you communicate. The research in this area really reinforces the importance of receptive communication. Are we able to be a good listener?

Devin Vodicka:

That tends to be a higher predictor of trust than your ability to express yourself? As it relates to leadership, school leadership in particular, I think we're always confronted with the myth of the charismatic, eloquent leader who carries a message and inspires people through that.

Devin Vodicka:

But when you really look at the research, you find out people are often more inspired by someone who cares about them as a person, listens to them, understands their perspective, is able to balance consistency with compassion to get things done. Communication is huge.

Matt Renwick:

I saw that throughout your book too, in the learner-centered leadership in your blueprint. Speaking of communication, you talk about a... you introduced the book by telling a short story about Diego and just how you were able to find out about his situation. Can you just describe that just briefly and how it led to this concept?

Devin Vodicka:

Yeah. The story in the book is about Diego which is not his real name. But he didn't want to be identified. We'll call him Diego. He was a student at the school where I was an elementary principal. We knew each other when he was really quite young.

Devin Vodicka:

Then I ended up going to the district office. Moved to a neighboring district to be superintendent. He ended up at a high school in the district where I was superintendent. I made it a priority to be in schools a lot as the superintendent. I would wander through the schools and every time I saw him, it was a sense of reconnection. It was just great to see how he had grown over time. We had, I'd say a friendly but not super close connection.

Devin Vodicka:

Then I got a call from his mom one day who shared with me that his dad had passed away. She was very ill. He was a senior at that time. He was working to support his family and falling behind in school. I went and checked in with him. It turned out that he was carrying a lot.

Devin Vodicka:

As soon as we knew about it, there was a whole team of people, the principal, the counselor, the teachers all sort of sprang into action and set up all kinds of supports and interventions. He ended up graduating, going to college. He's doing quite well now. But it was shocking to me that he had been in school and none of us knew about his situation.

Devin Vodicka:

His story to me is just such an important reminder of how relationships have to be first in everything we do. Because with that relationship, we can understand the whole person and how we can be most helpful for them. That's the story. That's the takeaway. That's part of why I think we need just more humanity in our educational approach.

Matt Renwick:

Relevance seemed to come up for me too as I was reading your book. Your own story is not the same as Diego's but you were also a first generation citizen. You talked a little bit about that too with how you viewed school coming through in the United States. How did that form your philosophy where you are today?

Devin Vodicka:

In the book, Learner-Centered Leadership, I also share the story being from an immigrant family growing up in a small town and just how strange it was. I noticed it at a young age. I was probably seven, maybe eight years old that I had these very distinct cultural differences that were completely unrecognized in the learning experience.

Devin Vodicka:

Not just culture being unrecognized as a form of individual difference but I had friends that picked things up quickly or slowly or had different interests. It just struck me as very strange as a very young person that we would be getting sort of one size fits all treatment. When it was really clear to me that we were unique as individuals. As a learner, what it made me feel like is that I was unseen or invisible.

Devin Vodicka:

When I connect that back to Diego, I think about why didn't he tell somebody about his situation? But when you feel like you're not seen in the educational experience, you don't feel compelled to reach out. You withdraw is the natural tendency.

Devin Vodicka:

That happens to so many kids in our school system. It's one of the reasons we've had almost 20% of our students not graduate from high school for 50 years. It's not that they're not capable. It's students disengage and they withdraw. It's often because we're not seen as people. We don't have those connections that will help us to really flourish.

Matt Renwick:

Your blueprint talks about some of the elements that will help us meet every kid's needs for learner-centered leadership. Could you walk us just through each element? I think there was four, should leaders be looking for to help guide their teachers in their community toward a more responsive experience.

Devin Vodicka:

Well, part of it is the context. That context is really important that it is characterized by high levels of trust, social capital as we go talked about. I encourage leaders to be deep listeners. No matter what your role is, we can all learn from one another in that listening mode.

Devin Vodicka:

If you have a high trust environment that's characterized by really trying to understand one another, leaders need to have a strategy to move forward. I define leadership as an intersection of purpose, participation and feedback.

Devin Vodicka:

The way that you get to that is by aligning what I call a framework for the future. What's your vision? Where are you going? What's your mission? How are you going to contribute to achieving that vision? What are your values? Which is how you'll behave. What are your goals? So that you know if you're making progress towards your aspirations. Then roles and responsibilities. Who's going to do what.

Devin Vodicka:

Then lastly, you need a plan of action. In communities where you have alignment of vision, mission, values, goals, roles, plan and you have high trust, incredible things can happen for learners.

Matt Renwick:

With this framework you encourage leaders to constantly reexamine it and adjust it to your local, like you said, situation instead of context. I just wrote it's personalized learning for ourselves too. It's not just for the kids but we have to be learners along with them.

Matt Renwick:

Sometimes districts or schools will be told, no you need to follow this curriculum or you need to follow this framework. Somewhat, I would say rigidly. But you don't advocate for that. You actually advocate for personalizing it to of your context. What are the benefits to that?

Devin Vodicka:

Yeah. For sure. Well, it's a really hard change because we're conditioned by these industrial era systems that do promote compliance where I think what we need today in the world is much more agency which is part of personalization. That agency is really purposeful action that each of us can take individually.

Devin Vodicka:

If we want to see that for our students, it needs to also be in place for our teachers, for our school leaders. It needs to be we have integrity in the system. Having gone through the experience of moving towards more personal learning for all students, you have to align those outcomes, the experiences and the conditions. The conditions need to reflect the outcomes you want to see. If you talked about empowering learners to drive their own future, you have to promote that for everyone in the system.

Matt Renwick:

You have to give them space to make decisions.

Devin Vodicka:

Correct. Well, the flip of this is some people I think worry that if you take this empowering approach where you're promoting agency and choice and flexibility, that you're going to have chaos and that it will be unstructured. This is where having strategy, vision, mission, values goals, the elements I talked about, are important to put guardrails around the process and establish some expectations about how we're going to coexist together.

Devin Vodicka:

Where you have that balance of structure and flexibility, you get tremendous growth. But that requires ongoing feedback which is why listening continues to be important. Because just when you think you've found that balance... we're dynamic people. We exist in dynamic context. We need to be listening in this kind of inquiry mode to make adjustments. Sometimes adding more structure. Sometimes removing structure. But keeping those boundaries in place to have purposeful action in the direction of what we're trying to achieve.

Matt Renwick:

It takes time. I mean, I'm in my sixth year now. We're still, exactly what you said, just trying to re-examine why we're here? What we're doing? I almost got a sense just reading your book too that, it's not just maybe changing what you currently have but almost not to throw out what we've done but like you said, it's a pretty substantial shift to go here.

Matt Renwick:

Any specific strategies? You mentioned deep listening which I 100% agree with. Any other strategies a leader might take to start accelerating that shift so that we can get there sooner just for our kids right now?

Devin Vodicka:

Yeah. I mean, the way we start with most of our partnerships is talking about what are we really trying to achieve? What do we really want for our learners? If you engage in that conversation, you say, what does success really look like for one of our students?

Devin Vodicka:

Invariably, they talk about we want them to be knowledgeable. They need to be literate. They need to have foundational skills in math and science and social studies. Those things are necessary but they're not sufficient because we also want our students to have a sense of purpose.

Devin Vodicka:

We want them to know how to interact well with others. To be empathetic. To be effective communicators. We want them to be creative. We want them to be problem solvers. We want them to contribute in their communities. Once you start getting into that conversation, you just say, well, how would we know that that's actually happening?

Devin Vodicka:

It leads you into a very important and urgent conversation around what are the metrics of success that are going to tell us if we're making progress? As soon as you start anchoring on the whole learner as what you're trying to achieve, you recognize that all of these other things must shift if you're really serious about achieving those ambitions.

Devin Vodicka:

It starts and ends with the learner always. But outcomes is a great way to get started quickly to do the urgent work that needs to occur.

Matt Renwick:

It can't be just test scores. There has to be other ways to measure this. Correct?

Devin Vodicka:

Yes. Test scores are not bad but if you think of a different setting like healthcare, imagine if the entire industry focused only on your weight. That was the single measure that was the exclusive focus of all of your health efforts. We would end up being less healthy than if we also incorporated other inputs like, what's your blood pressure? How well are you sleeping? What's your emotional state? These are all things that are important.

Devin Vodicka:

It's critical to have multiple measures to guide progress. I will say along those lines, when we started shifting schools to more personal learning, we often saw initially that academic achievement would go down. But we were tracking multiple metrics and measures like attendance and discipline, attitudes about school.

Devin Vodicka:

Those were going off the charts in a positive direction. It gave us the confidence to say, well, if we're seeing higher levels of engagement, ultimately that should translate into more academic achievement. Sure enough, it did. When the academic metrics bounce back, they went to higher levels than we had ever seen before. But we wouldn't have persevered through that if we weren't oriented to more than one input. Very important to have multiple metrics.

Matt Renwick:

The multiple measures not only gave you feedback on how you were doing, but it also helped you sustain that journey so that you stuck with it.

Devin Vodicka:

Completely. Just like in the health field, if you optimize around one metric, you might suboptimize around other things that are also important. We do the same thing in education. There's a lot of great research that says that countries that do really well with improving test scores have students who are disinterested in the subject or not motivated.

Devin Vodicka:

We need to be thinking about the holistic effects and impacts of what we're doing. Just like I was talking about trust and how there's these competing dynamics, it's similar in this respect. We need to be thinking holistically and globally if we really want to better serve one another as humans.

Matt Renwick:

Well, this is complex work but in your book Learner-Centered Leadership, you nicely frame it. I think leaders can read it and they start to do this work and feel confident going forward. Devin, where can we find more about your work online?

Devin Vodicka:

Well, the good thing about having a name like Devin Vodicka is there's not many of us. I'm pretty easy to find on Twitter or LinkedIn, social media. But I also have a website called learnercenteredleadership.org. I try to do pretty regular blog posts. Then the website for our organization is learnercentered.org. Learnercenteredleadership.org gets to my website, learnercentered.org is our company's website.

Devin Vodicka:

We look forward to staying connected and eager to learn from all the great things that others are also doing to better serve kids.

Matt Renwick:

Devin Vodicka, it was great to talk to today. Thank you.

Devin Vodicka:

Appreciate it. Thank you.

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Communicating feedback to teachers is one of the most challenging aspects of leadership. How do we influence instruction in a positive way while maintaining trust and respecting teachers as professionals?

Dr. Viviane Robinson, author of Reduce Change to Increase Improvement (Corwin, 2017), offers readers sound research and rich examples for supporting teaching and learning in all classrooms. In this episode, we discussed:

The difference between “change” and “improvement”,

Why feedback needs to be anchored first in student outcomes, and

How to engage in conversations with teachers that builds trust.

Educational leadership is difficult work. The ideas and strategies described here can help make this work a little easier and a lot more effective for instructional improvement.

Related Resources

Audio + Transcript

Dr. Robinson’s university webpage

Purchase Dr. Robinson’s book

Preview her previous book, Student-Centered Leadership

Check out all episodes on Apple Podcasts (and give a rating!)

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick (00:05)

I'd like to welcome Dr. Viviane Robinson. She is the distinguished professor emeritus at the University of Auckland-New Zealand. She's also the director of Viviane Robinson Consulting Limited, and the author of the book that we're talking about today, Reduce Change to Increase Improvement and is part of the Core Impact Leadership Series. Welcome Dr. Robinson.

Viviane Robinson (00:30):

Thank you, Matt. It's lovely to be speaking with you.

Matt Renwick (00:33):

And I picked up your book at a conference and I was really interested in your title. It's Reduce Change to Increase Improvement. It's an interesting frame, and I was just curious, change and improvement can be sometimes synonymous. Could you just explain the distinction and why it became the topic of your book?

Viviane Robinson (00:54):

Well, it became the topic of my book, Matt, because in my work with school leaders it seemed, in school improvement, I've seen too much change that has not led to improvement, and you'll be familiar with the cycles of reform that happened in our schools. One set of reforms after another that have patchy results at best. So, I think that that's very debilitating, for the effort, energy and motivation of teachers and leaders, but it's also not serving our students well, because the problems that these reforms were designed to solve persist. And the one I'm thinking of in particular is the equity problem. Change is simply the process of doing something different. That's all. Change means that we're doing something different. The thing we're doing different could be the same or worse or better than what happened before improve.

Viviane Robinson (01:55):

If we shoot for improvement rather than change, it means right from the outset, we have to say, "What's wrong with the status quo?" Okay. And many leaders bring in changes without saying why teachers need to be going through all the hassle of that. So we need to, if we're talking about improving, we need to be upfront right from the beginning about the fact that we want things to be better. Doesn't mean they're terrible now, but they have to be better. That's usually driven by student results, social outcomes, academic outcomes. And then if we're talking about improvement, we'd better have a jolly good idea about why, what we're proposing is going to be better because it takes a lot of time, money, and effort. So I want to encourage leaders to be more forthright in their intention, more honest and more ambitious. They're not interested in change, or they shouldn't be, they should be interested in improvement.

Matt Renwick (03:10):

That sounds great. And I think the way you frame it and I read it, but just hearing it again, just helps me remind myself of the distinction as they prepare for a new school year too. So thank you for explaining that. In your book you cited a previous meta-analysis that you were involved in, thinking about change, you noted that the one leadership practice, "leading teacher learning and development", had the largest impact on student outcomes. What about this practice is so powerful for student learning?

Viviane Robinson (03:42):

Well, I think there's a number of reasons. When I ask leaders why they think it and teachers why they think it's so powerful, they tend to say because of the symbolic importance that the leader can spend time being involved with the professional learning, then that sends a very powerful symbolic message to teachers about how it must be important. And that's true. But I actually think that there are other reasons as well. One of the most powerful ways a leader can gain influence with teachers is through helping them solve their problems of teaching and learning. The more leaders know, the more they themselves learn, the more able they are to help teachers solve their classroom problems. And that increases the sphere and intensity of influence that leaders have over teachers. So teachers come to them and seek help and they learn from the leader or with the leader - together - with the leader.

Viviane Robinson (04:57):

So that's a second reason. The third reason is that if we're going to succeed and solving the equity problems that bedevil all of us, then that's hard work. Lots of very smart and dedicated people have failed to solve those problems before us. And the reason why we are not very good at solving them is because we don't have sufficient specialist knowledge. If you want to improve maths problem solving or literacy, secondary level science literacy, for example, that's a very specialist area. And I think we underestimate how much we need to learn in order to solve those problems. Most of the difficulty is not about teacher will. It's about teacher capability, teacher and leader capability. So school culture, which has a culture of dedication to professional learning, not as a menu of opportunities - that's hopeless - but as professional learning to solve problems that are anchored in student outcomes, that is a powerful school culture. And it's a powerful way of leading.

Matt Renwick (06:31):

Yeah. When I speak with my teachers, when I visit classrooms, it would be hard for me to have a conversation with them without having that same set of knowledge and skill development that, you know, we're both trying to go through.

Viviane Robinson (06:45):

Yes, yes. And you said both trying to go through Matt and I think that's the point, especially at secondary level, even at primary. I'm not asking leaders to know everything; that would be ridiculous. We're not going back to heroic leadership, that I am asking them to lead a very focused, intense, collaborative learning process, where people stick at it until the student outcome problem is solved.

Matt Renwick (07:19):

That is part of it too, is committing to it long-term. And having that patience to follow through. I highlighted one quote from your book that kind of relates to engaging teachers. In those conversations, you said "Careful inquiry into teachers' theory of action gives leaders insight into teacher's concerns and enhances access to the levels of change." And could you just say more about that and what this inquiry might look like?

Viviane Robinson (07:46):

Yes. In the book I've got transcripts of the actual conversations to illustrate what you actually say. I think in order to have these conversations, the starting point for leaders, all the relations with teachers should be the experience or outcomes of students. That's your starting point. So for example these particular teachers, students are very good at maths fluency, but they're very limited in their math problem solving, right? So to know that, that's your starting point and this connects to your question about feedback as well. Then your next step is to investigate, inquire into what might the teachers of those students be doing and not doing. So that directs your inquiry, your observations with the collaboration, of course, into their practices. How are they teaching maths in a way that might connect with the low scores in maths problem-solving, okay?

Viviane Robinson (09:08):

So you then focus on that. You may need some specialist help and knowing what to look for when you go into that classroom. Then you discover how they're teaching. You summarize it. You get agreement with the teacher that yes, that's how they're teaching. Now, normally leaders stop at that point. But if they're doing a deep inquiry, they [leaders] say, "Can you talk to me about why you're using so many quizzes and worksheets? Talk to me about why you're not using rich text." Then you will discover a goldmine of beliefs, fears, anxieties, prior experience, horrible experiences that that teacher will talk to you about. And when you can connect the teacher's beliefs with what they do and don't do, and the outcomes for students, then you have knowledge of their theory of action. And boy, that's powerful because it's the causes of their practices.

Matt Renwick (10:18):

So critical too, to have that trust. I think for them to be able to admit, these are my concerns, these are my beliefs.

Viviane Robinson (10:26):

Well, when we teach this in our leadership development courses, we've got videos that show how to do this in seven minutes. And the transcripts in the book are no longer than that. So it's about the leader's skill and incorporate the latest ability to say, "Look, I really want to know why you're just using quizzes and worksheets, and this is not a blame game. Unless we can together talk about this and understand the barriers you've experienced," - notice my language - "the barriers you've experienced, then I can't suggest any way of helping you, because I need to know what's important to you." Now that sentence, that sentence creates trust.

Matt Renwick (11:19):

Yeah. It's a very empathetic response, and it takes their perspectives. And I very much appreciate that, but this is a tough skill too. I mean, it's something I've worked on. And I know in your book, you talk about the two approaches that leaders take: bypass versus engagement. And why do leaders like myself at times tend to default to the former approach, to bypass, even when we know at some level that engagement with teachers' thinking and actions are more effective.

Viviane Robinson (11:49):

Well, there's a number of reasons. One is that your bosses, your superintendents probably expect you to implement this reform, have this professional learning in your school, do this, fix this, fix that. Now I don't know Matt, what sort of school you run and what your situation is. But that happens to a lot of leaders, in other words, the "fix it mentality". And the fix it mentality means that you see the results and then you immediately move to, well, what are we going to do? That's different. What changes are we going to make? So they have pressure which leads leaders to bypass the theories of action of teachers. And it produces this churn of reform as teachers comply or not, and still have their fears and anxieties about doing it, and what's going to happen with their students and their classrooms unaddressed.

Viviane Robinson (12:59):

So that's one reason: the pressure to fix it. Another reason is the one you've spoken about, which is that, people are not very good at empathic inquiry, at actually discovering a theory of action. And they believe that it's going to take a lot of time, which it doesn't, as I said: all our videos about how to do this take no longer than seven minutes. And that's a lot less time then pushing and pushing and pushing and getting nowhere. So that belief that it's going to take too long, and then leaders fear that they're going to upset their teachers. If they do causal inquiry at all, they will inquire and they will get responses about students' background and the previous years' teachers and things like that. And they will be very reluctant to say, "Well, actually, I wonder whether there's something that you're unwittingly doing or not doing in the class that may be contributing to this. I'm not saying it is, but let's explore that because we need all hypotheses on the table." And again, notice my language: "hypotheses". All right? Now that takes one sentence to make that shift from talking about what's wrong with the students to raising the possibility about teaching in class.

Matt Renwick (14:39):

Much more objective and evidence driven, which can really help with having those conversations and keeping the, I guess, the ego out of it is as much as possible. And just be more evidence-based. We were previously exchanging in a conversation around how to effectively communicate feedback to teachers. And I appreciate you encouraging me to continue to expand on this concept, you've had some nice examples in here. Any other suggestions for getting started in this process, and to experience some kind of quick success with it, so they [leaders] want to keep doing it?

Viviane Robinson (15:21):

I think rather than again, making it very complicated reform around instructional walks, you might eventually get to that, but you keep it simple: feedback should be anchored in what's happening for students. Okay. That's what it should be. So what's your purpose in giving feedback? Your purpose is to help the teacher do a better job for particular students. That's its purpose. It's not surveillance, it's not compliance. It's not checking up. It's not because the state requires a principal to make so many visits a term or a semester to every teacher's classroom. It's because you're there, it's because you and the teacher are examining your impact on students. So if you've got students that have a poor relationship with a teacher, then your feedback to their teacher, you start negotiating a process of trying to figure out why that is.

Viviane Robinson (16:32):

And you direct your feedback towards investigating that. Now often that's not about observing in the class. That might be about talking with the student either together or separately or both. So the first step is that the teacher and you agree there is a student problem to be solved. And I don't mean a problem with the student. I mean, a problem in the interaction between the school and the student or the teacher and the student, or the way the subject is being taught and the student, that's the starting point, that's the purpose. And that builds common ground and trust. And then together you're investigating, what's the cause of that problem. And the feedback is about that based on your evidence. Again, it's not, "I'm coming in with a checklist or a protocol, and I'm going to go through the protocol and give you feedback because that's the protocol."

Matt Renwick (17:37):

It seems like a more responsive and grounded approach to the actual classroom. There's an actual problem of practice they're trying to solve. Well, this has great. I enjoyed your book. I appreciate that it was just a shade over a hundred pages. As a busy principal, that was wonderful. Where can we learn more about your resources that leaders could take advantage of?

Viviane Robinson (18:06):

There's a previous book. You talked about the meta-analysis that had shown that leading professional teacher learning is a very powerful form of leadership in terms of its impact on the students of the teachers who are participating in the professional learning. And that's all written up in my 2011 book, Student-Centered Leadership. All the professional development work that we're doing is commercial. And if you want to be part of that or to talk about that, you'd probably need to do that in partnership with your district.

Matt Renwick (18:49):

Well, thank you, Dr. Robinson.

Viviane Robinson (18:50):

You're welcome.

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How do we ensure all students can access the curriculum plus find it relevant and engaging?

Angela Di Michele Lalor, author of Making Curriculum Matter: How to Build SEL, Equity, and Other Priorities into Daily Instruction, offers a guide for teachers and leaders to begin this work.

In our conversation, we discuss:

Why it is important to prepare for an uncertain future,

The five lense for viewing our instructional plans, and

How purchasing curriculum resources is not enough.

As Angela points out, “curriculum can impact student learning because it's more than just a product; it's a process.”

Recommended Resources

Audio + Transcript

Purchase the Book

Angela’s Website

Listen on Apple Podcasts and Leave a Rating!

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick (00:00):

Welcome Angela to the podcast. I'm excited to have you here.

Angela Di Michele Lalor (00:11):

Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Matt Renwick (00:13):

I was just sharing with you just how I came across your work. I was teaching curriculum courses for UW-Superior, The University of Wisconsin-Superior. I used your first book, Ensuring High-Quality Curriculum as our primary text. And I appreciated how you described the steps to engage in that work. You made it very clear, lots of examples. So I was excited to learn that you're coming out with a new book and it's now out, Making Curriculum Matter: How to Build SEL, Equity, and Other Priorities into Daily Instruction. It's also through ASCD. If you want to share a little bit about your role in education and how you work with teachers, schools, and districts...

Angela Di Michele Lalor (00:55):

Sure. So I have been in education now for about 25 years. I started off as a classroom teacher and then started to do professional development with teachers from all different grade levels and subject areas. It was kind of a life transition. I had the opportunity to start working with teachers and share my own story about how I was engaging students in my classroom, using projects and performance-based assessments, and at the same time had my children and was able to make that transition. I've always found that working with educators to be a very satisfying job, because as I have worked with them, I've learned from them. And unfortunately, you know, educators don't have the opportunity to travel from one classroom to the other. And so I have always made it my goal and my mission to share the stories of educators as I traveled from one school to another, and to share their best practices and what I've seen.

Matt Renwick (02:03):

Yeah. Your book, your newest book, Making Curriculum Matter, it has a lot of nice examples from different grade levels and different subject areas, which I know it can be very hard, especially for an author to highlight all those different stories. So it's relevant to anyone who's reading it. And I thought they were really nice. I liked how you juxtaposed [how] this is what it might look in the beginning, but here's how you can improve it through these five lenses. That's what you offer in the book: practices, deep thinking, social and emotional learning, civic engagement and discourse, and equity, which we can go over in a little bit. I wanted to start in the beginning. You talk about your family a little bit and just how the pandemic gave you a new perspective, especially with your daughter working in the medical field in New York, correct?

Angela Di Michele Lalor (02:51):

Yes. She was a frontline worker and I have to say, I deeply respect everyone in the medical field: frontline workers, first responders who went through everything that we've gone through in the last two years. And to see my daughter who was a new nurse. So 22 years old, going out every day and working to save lives. That's really what it came down to. As a parent, that was a difficult experience and we wanted to do anything that we could to support her. So, when you ask me that question, there's a lot of things that come to mind, you know, how that whole experience has impacted us as a family, how it's impacted my view on education and just life in general.

Matt Renwick (03:54):

How did your experience with your daughter, how did that influence your beliefs about education? You mentioned the flying pigs example and what's possible.

Angela Di Michele Lalor (04:04):

Yeah, initially we weren't sure what was going to happen. And it was very easy to believe that we were, that it was gonna be really difficult to come out of this situation and to see that perseverance, to see the commitment. That's really the piece that stayed with me and that's about, anything is possible when my daughter would go into work. She really did not know what was going to happen while she was there. It was unpredictable. And she would come home sometimes and just say, "Wow, I didn't know if I was going to make it." Because she was used to being an ICU nurse. She was used to having unstable patients, but never so many at the same time. And so I think about that in terms of education. It made me realize that we have to really think about schools as places to prepare kids for the unknown, because this was completely unexpected. No one could predict what was needed, what was necessary. And we were asking people to make decisions based on what limited knowledge they had. And so that's something we had to prepare everyone to do. So I think that's the challenge of education. How do we prepare for a future of unknown?

Matt Renwick (05:27):

Yeah. Going into this year, 2021 and the fall, we know more. So we feel a little more competent, but then we have all these variables too. Are they masking? Are they not? And I think we're still going to be living that unknown. It kind of related to your book. You have this word cloud of all the initiatives and issues that educators have to deal with and it was just enormous. And I could relate: how do you manage all of these ideas and education? But in your book, you focus on these five ideas. How did you come up with...how did you decide on these five ideas to help frame the book and frame curriculum development?

Angela Di Michele Lalor (06:06):

So when I wrote Ensuring a High-Quality Curriculum, that was really about, what are the elements of a quality curriculum that could impact student learning? And from there, I started to think about, is this about what the curriculum should look like, what should we be addressing? What are the valued outcomes that need to be addressed in every single curriculum? Because I truly believe that curriculum is a tool that teachers use to make informed decisions about what happens in their classroom. And if that's the case, then we need a curriculum that does more than just focus on content because teachers are expected to do more than just focus on content. And so I started to think about all the professional development initiatives that I've facilitated over the years and the different topics I've been asked to come in and speak about and to work with teachers.

Angela Di Michele Lalor (07:00):

And that started to really help me to formulate some of those areas of focus, some of the elements of a curriculum that matters. So often I'm brought in to work with subject area teachers and the subject area teachers, discipline-specific teachers. They really know their content very deeply and very well, but there's a part of their content that really is about working with information. And that is the practices. So often I was coming into schools to work with practices. How do we take historical thinking skills, the standard for mathematical practices, and really tie them into content specific practices and use them in the classroom. So part of the different part of the process for me in identifying these elements was on that experience. I was doing a lot of work with districts on developing critical thinkers. So I started to think about the kind of the buckets in terms of what I was being asked to do. And then I was also starting to do a lot of work around the vision and mission of schools. So we started to look at what is the vision and mission and how are you taking your vision and mission and carrying it out in school buildings, and how does your curriculum tie to that? And so that also brought a new way for me to think about what are these main categories that I'm seeing consistently over different, in different places around the country.

Matt Renwick (08:32):

It's really that lived experience working with all these schools and then seeing their mission and vision, and so very practical. When I read these five, I could not disagree with any of them. And I see a lot of that language in many of the missions and visions as well. So you make a point to, and I think it was important, [that] you're not adding more to the curriculum, but really it's about changing the lens. From the book, "changing the lens for viewing, discussing, and implementing the curriculum" Can you just say a little bit more about that?

Angela Di Michele Lalor (09:09):

Sure. So one of the things with these categories is that it it's a category. So it allows each school to look at what's in their vision and mission, what's in their curriculum in a way that's very localized and personalized to that school.

Matt Renwick (09:25):

I want to piggy back off that and say, as a principal, I appreciate having these elements and ideas for myself to view the curriculum and help with the implementation of it. Because I can focus on practices or deep thinking or social emotional learning in any classroom. I think you speak to that in the book and here as well.

Angela Di Michele Lalor (09:52):

Yeah. I think what happens is that when you categorize something, we're putting it into category, but the lines are really blurry. And that's where you get into that concept of changing the lens. So in order to do something well, we have to be able to identify it, talk about it, and then look at it in terms of implementation. So you need the category in order to do that. Um, and so I think that changing the lens makes it more manageable. You can begin to say, okay, so I'm looking at practices which is taking a look at what professionals are doing in the real world is going to help you to make a connection to the ultimate goal of any curriculum, which is to provide students with equitable learning experiences. So we have to be able to see each of the lenses in the curriculum, which is why we're not adding more, we're being able to identify it, to do it more intentionally in order to build equitable learning experiences for all kids.

Matt Renwick (10:58):

And I think all five can lead to that. And I just thought, if you could take a moment just to briefly expand on each idea, what it is and why it's important for making curriculum matter. If we can start with the first one, practices.

Angela Di Michele Lalor (11:17):

I spoke a little bit about practices. Every discipline has a set of practices. And I think when I use the term practice, I guess the best analogy is really thinking about sports or music, right? So I spent a good portion of my life driving my kids to practice. And what did they do at practice? They did drills so that they can improve in a lot of ways. That's what we want to see happen in a classroom. So practices are the kinds of things, strategies that students can use so they can improve in their learning.

Matt Renwick (11:49):

It's not necessarily teaching practices. Although those are also important. It's the disciplinary...if you're studying, writing, you know, it's the practices of a writer.

Angela Di Michele Lalor (12:02):

Exactly. And so if we want to grow as writers, then we have to practice writing and we have certain strategies we can use to do that. And when we repeat them, they become a way or a process to become a writer to grow as a writer. So it seems like a logical place for schools to start to really look at their curriculum, because if the practices are not there, it's hard then to build in the other elements. It's not impossible, but it's just checking to see, are they explicitly identified or do we see practices as being, for example, the mathematical practices. Are they not listed in every single unit? Then we're not really emphasized and focusing and giving students tools that they need to access high expectations, which is one of the components of an equitable curriculum.

Matt Renwick (12:56):

And it makes it more relevant, I would think too, that the practices are associated with that career or vocation of that unit. The next one is deep thinking, where you speak about different levels of cognition and also knowledge.

Angela Di Michele Lalor (13:14):

Yes. We talked about deep thinking. It's a combination of both. I think about Bloom's revised taxonomy. I think it is an excellent tool for really understanding deep thinking because it's taking in what kind of thinking am I doing? And what am I thinking about? And so any kind of engaging meaningful task is going to require deep thinking because engaging meaningful tasks are usually multiple steps. The other thing is that we engage in deep thinking, when we really want to make sense of something and we want apply new knowledge, we have to recognize when we're giving students the opportunity to engage in deep thinking,

Matt Renwick (13:56):

Third, social emotional learning. I have personally sometimes struggled with, how do we weave that part of it into the more academic side of things? What are your thoughts on that?

Angela Di Michele Lalor (14:07):

So the quick answer is there's two ways that we can do it. One is we can look at what we're teaching students. So you think about the book students are reading or history or the historical figures that they're studying. And you use them as examples or non examples of how social emotional skills and competencies have been used. So when a character makes a responsible decision, you point that out to the students, "What was that decision making process? What did we learn from watching the character making them make that decision make?" Go through that decision making process that you can use yourself. So that's one simple way of how we incorporate it. The other is that we are, [and] it goes back to engagement, if we're truly asking students to engage in their learning, they need to monitor themselves. And so we can't assume that students know how to do that. Multi-step tasks, multi-step projects require students to think about, "I have to do this as a priority first, and when that's done, then I can move to step two." So actually getting into the responsible decision-making and that management process is easily integrated into the curriculum.

Matt Renwick (15:24):

Yeah, the way you describe it, that seems like a natural fit. Civic engagement and discourse, probably more needed than ever. What entry points do you see with the curriculum?

Angela Di Michele Lalor (15:40):

So this is one of the elements that came from the vision and mission of schools. Every vision and mission I've read has always said, "We want our students to be responsible, we want them to engage, to be responsible citizens." And then I would ask, "So how, how do you do that?" Most schools don't have have students engaging in the local community or making some kind of contribution to an organization that they choose and they feel that they need to support. And so when I asked that question, "How do you see it?", this is what led to that civic engagement being part of the curriculum. It calls for project-based learning and for students to engage in curriculum embedded assessments, where they are actually engaged in projects that they are learning while they're doing and that become a form of assessment that's real life, authentic experiences.

Matt Renwick (16:45):

Yeah. I recall one example you put in there about studying a bill that's currently being discussed and debated, and then actually writing a letter to your local representative. And I appreciate that just for the authenticity of it, but also it could actually make an impact. I mean, you could change someone's mind, which is really powerful.

Angela Di Michele Lalor (17:09):

I've discussed this with other educators and sometimes I'll get the question: "Do you engage in discourse first or in the action itself?" And it's not that one goes in front of the other. It's just a natural integration of both. And I think it's important. We have to teach students how to speak to each other. We have to get them to really understand how to use evidence to support their thinking. And that's part of that civic engagement and discourse that should be completely integrated into all content areas.

Matt Renwick (17:43):

And how to listen. That flip side to speaking. I don't see it taught a lot in schools, how to listen. So I appreciated seeing that in there. The last one, equity... It seemed like everything listed here kind of leads toward equity. Is that how you designed it with the book?

Angela Di Michele Lalor (18:04):

Yeah, absolutely. That's where it goes. Changing the lens is so important. So as you are changing the lens to look at each of these different elements, you begin to see how they really are engaging students in learning. And then looking through the lens of equity gives language and actions to what we are doing. We are building a curriculum in this way because it's the intentionality that leads to the equitable learning experiences. But equity is an element in and of itself. Just because you have quality learning experience, doesn't allow for all students to engage in equitable learning experiences. There is an examination of self that needs to go into this. There's an understanding of culturally responsive practices. It's a deep understanding of who the students are in front of you. And that's why it is the ultimate goal, but it's also an element in and of itself.

Matt Renwick (19:07):

Yeah, your list and your descriptions caused me to already change our professional learning plan this year. I think I need to go back to practices first. I was looking at equity first, and I think we can talk about it, but just going through your resource here it's been helpful for me to think about where to start and where we want to go. So I had one more question for you, and this is just more of a lived experience here. Curriculum development is time-consuming work. I'm sure you've found that. And I have heard educators who are engaging in this work ask, "Why are we doing this?" You know districts will buy a program off the shelf and call it the curriculum. So what about this work helps ensure the curriculum matters to students and teachers versus just finding one and adopting it.

Angela Di Michele Lalor (20:01):

So I think that curriculum can impact student learning because it's more than just a product; it's a process. And so that's why it's worth the time, effort and energy to take a group of teachers and have them really think about what they're teaching, why they're teaching it, and what students are learning as a result - how students are engaged in that process. So it is something that is ongoing. You're never done once you're done. It's time to start again, even in districts where they do purchase a program. I think it's still important to develop some type of document that really highlights what's most important. This program: Why did we choose this program? How can we use this program to meet the needs of the students who are sitting in front of us? Because if we want equitable learning opportunities for all students, then a pre-packaged program is not going to do that because it doesn't know who the students are, who were sitting in front of the teacher. So even just being able to say, this is how we see, this is how we modify. This is how we can use this program. What's in it to meet the needs of our students is worth the time and effort of going through the curriculum process.

Matt Renwick (21:26):

You're not against purchasing a resource, but what you're promoting is to make sure you personalize it and make it relevant and meaningful and equitable all your students. Well, I've enjoyed listening to you. I've been taking notes for my own work as you've been talking and should be rereading parts of your book, Making Curriculum Matter: How to Build SEL, Equity and Other Priorities into Daily Instruction. I would also encourage any listeners to check out her previous book, Ensuring High-Quality Curriculum. Where can we go to learn more about your work, Angela?

Angela Di Michele Lalor (21:59):

So I have a new website, it's adlalorconsulting.com. There's some resources there, some tools, there's also a blog that I occasionally will add to, but that's the best place to find more information about me.

Matt Renwick (22:18):

Well, thank you Angela and good luck with this upcoming school year.

Angela Di Michele Lalor (22:22):

Thank you. Thanks for having me, Matt. I appreciate it.

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We follow up on our previous conversation for Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Dr. Gholdy Muhammad, I am joined by contributors Gen Arcovio, Ryanne Deschane, Rhonda Precourt, and Carrie Thomas.

We used the following three questions to guide our conversation:

What takeaways did you gain from this book?

What questions do you still have?

How have you changed after reading this book?

This wraps up the book study. Thank you for your readership and leadership!

Relevant Resources

Listen on Apple Podcasts (and Give a Rating!)

Order Cultivating Genius from Scholastic

Dr. Muhammad’s Website

Dedicated Page for Book Study

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick:

So, I want to welcome everyone to the second of two book discussions around Cultivating Genius by Gholdy Muhammad, and I have several guests with us today. We're just going to go around the room and introduce yourselves, and we'll start with Ryanne.

Ryanne Deschane:

My name is Ryanne Deschane, and I am a first grade teacher in northern Wisconsin.

Rhonda Precourt:

I can go next. I am Rhonda Precourt, and I am a reading recovery teacher/K-2 literacy interventionist, although this past school year, I did teach kindergarten, and I teach in upstate New York. I also blog with Gen at literacypages.wordpress.com, and we also have a Facebook group. You can search Literacy Pages. And we also have a Twitter. You can follow us on Twitter @literacypages, too.

Gen Arcovio:

I think it makes sense for me to go next. I'm Gen Arcovio, and I am also a literacy specialist interventionist and trained reading recovery teacher in upstate New York. I work in the same district as Rhonda, and I am the co-creator of the Literacy Pages blog.

Carrie Thomas:

Hi, and I'm Carrie Thomas. I am a reading specialist/literacy coach in a small, private school outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Matt Renwick:

Well, I am excited to be with Ryanne, Gen, Carrie, and Rhonda here. They've already posted their posts at this point, and they've been well-received by readers. In response to the book, Cultivating Genius... seemed like just such a timely text. I realize it came out last year, but it's been very helpful for me as I think about preparing for the 2021-2022 school year. So, I thought we'd just go around the room and just everyone share one response to each of the three questions around the book. The first one is what are one, two, or three key ideas that you took away from Cultivating Genius? And we'll start with Ryanne.

Ryanne Deschane:

Okay. So for me, it's a very complex text, but think my biggest takeaway is the histories of marginalized people are important for us to understand our present educational system as well as a path forward. If we don't understand the history, then we don't understand maybe where some of those systemic inequities have came from and what we need to do to move forward in a new direction. So, that was my big takeaway.

Matt Renwick:

I would concur with that.

Gen Arcovio:

I'll go next, because what I was going to say connects to what Ryanne was talking about. I think you can't read this book without taking away the fact that White educators need to do more research themselves. And I think it's been a few years in the making for me, culminating now with reading this book, to really understand how inequitable my own education was, except I was the one that benefited from it and didn't even realize that it was at the expense of other people. And it kind of brings up some anger to be at this point in my life and only just be realizing how inequitable it was in so many ways.

Gen Arcovio:

And then, when I read Cultivating Genius, to realize how much history there is in Black culture regarding literacy and learning that I am only just now knowing. So, it's my responsibility now to kind of redefine my own identity as an educator and do more research in that regard.

Matt Renwick:

I appreciate the honest perspective, Gen. Carrie or Rhonda, do you want to share kind of key ideas here?

Carrie Thomas:

I'll go next. One of the things I took away and I thought was really fascinating... So, Gen, you brought up the literary... and how Black folks have a history of these literary societies. And actually, Philadelphia has a ton... has such a rich history of Black literary societies. And me being right outside of Philadelphia, and I teach students who come to my school from Philadelphia schools and in the city, and so it just kind of is like this natural way to connect the students with literacy history and be like, "No, actually, there is a rich history."

Carrie Thomas:

And I think it's like you said. I'm a White educator, and I teach mostly Black and Brown students. And so, to have this history of these literary societies that now I know about, and it is my responsibility to be like, "Oh, here is this fantastic history, and here are things we've learned from these literary societies that we can take into schools now and really lift up and celebrate what all of our students have to bring to the table."

Matt Renwick:

Yeah. You're well positioned, Carrie, within this context of the book, as well as where you're located.

Rhonda Precourt:

Something I really took away was just this whole idea of teaching kids how to have a positive identity about themselves, because that's not just for people of a different color. There're so many different things within identity that serve a minority like women, like homosexuals, students who are learning English for the first time. All of these groups really could serve to have this focus on knowing who they are as people and understanding their culture and background. It leads to more acceptance of yourself and others being accepting of you and feeling like you belong and have a place in the classroom and in your world. So, I found myself reading that part about identity over and over again, because it just really, really made me think.

Matt Renwick:

Yeah. For myself, I appreciate the distinction that the author made between culturally-relevant and culturally-responsive literacy instruction. I don't think anyone that I've read yet has differentiated between the two. I mean, culturally-relevant seemed more like more on the curriculum side of things, and culturally-responsive more on the instruction side of things. But like you said, Rhonda, I need to reread it to make sure I'm understanding it correctly. But yeah, a lot of rich ideas that you've all illuminated.

Matt Renwick:

And you talk about identity. Thinking about one or two changes that you might want to make or you've already made since you've read this, I'll just kind of throw out for the whole group. I can certainly go first. I think I've always... I teach in a predominantly White area, and I've always thought I need to make sure that I'm representing in our texts and our instruction a lot of diverse representations, I guess, but it really hit home for me that even if this is what our population is, how critical it is for those one or two or three kids that do come in our schools. I mean, I wouldn't say it's more important, but it's just really important for those kids to see themselves when they live in an area like I live in. Other thoughts on that, and just changes you've made or you're planning to make?

Carrie Thomas:

So, I'll speak. I actually just submitted my post about this today, but I thought of two... And it's funny, because I actually picked up this book right when it came out. I saw it, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to get this. It's going to be great for my students. It's going to be great for my school. And so, I have... On the cover, it says "An Equity Framework," and I have literally used this book for the framework to design the literacy program at my school. Before I got there, there was no real comprehensive, cohesive literacy program, so I was kind of tasked with building one from the ground up. And so, I had to do a lot of digging into, what had already been there? What materials are we using? What does the curriculum look like? How are we assessing our students?

Carrie Thomas:

And what I found out, especially from after reading this book, I realized that a lot of the materials we were using, a lot of the ways we were assessing the students and finding levels and doing all that stuff you have to take data on and everything was not very culturally-responsive at all. Matt, you talked about being in a predominantly White area, and I kind of ran into the problem where I teach mostly predominantly Black and Brown students, but the texts that we were using still featured mostly White people on the cover, or animals, right? Because animals have a higher percentage of being on covers than Black and Brown students.

Carrie Thomas:

So, I kind of had a similar problem that I had to start finding texts and finding materials where the students could see themselves at all represented, because they just weren't seeing themselves in anything. Weren't reading stories about themselves, weren't getting assessments that they could recognize names or situations or anything like that.

Carrie Thomas:

And so, one of the biggest takeaways was the identity and just reinforced how important it is where students can see themselves in the text and really make that connection. Once I started showing students books with characters that looked like them, and they were like, "Oh, my gosh, this character looks like me, and I know what it's like to go to the barbershop and get my locks taken care of." Or, "I know what it's like to see an LGBTQ character doing this, because I can relate to that." It just kind of reinforced the importance of that seeing themselves in the text.

Matt Renwick:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Gen or Rhonda, what are your thoughts on this in terms of changes you might make or you already have?

Gen Arcovio:

I think there are some quick changes that I can make. A higher focus, even though I'm an interventionist, and so I'm primarily working with individuals or small groups of students, I can still do more work with identity. I can still use this framework to look at my lessons every day and see if I am accounting for all of these areas that she's talking about. Building identity, building intellectualism, all of those pieces that she's talking about. This book is really a call to action for us all to critique what we're doing, and I can do that right now with what I'm in control of where I work.

Gen Arcovio:

I think asking daily, "Does what I'm doing right now today with this student or these students really develop their intellectual wisdom, or is it telling them what to be or do?" And so, that's something quick I can do now, but then there comes the systemic part. How do we disrupt the system to favor all students? That's the bigger change that has to take place that requires a bigger group of people. So, that will be on our plates to make sure that what we've learned here goes someplace else besides my room and the students I work with.

Matt Renwick:

Yeah. I like that call to action, and I think that's a great, great way to see this book. Rhonda, did you want to add to that?

Rhonda Precourt:

Yeah. There was a part in the book about how students are often described kind of in a negative way, Black students, especially, in urban areas. And so, I think too, as a literacy specialist, you meet with teachers a lot, so it gives us the opportunity to model that positive talk. Leading with the student's strengths rather than starting with the things that they need. So, that's one way I think that I could make a change. Well, it's something that I'm doing, but to be a little bit more intentional about it, maybe.

Rhonda Precourt:

Another thing I was thinking about is to maybe just question things more. This book made me think about so many situations that I've come across as a teacher, and one situation that just popped in my head today was I had a parent contact me before school started, and they wanted to know if there were going to be any other Black children in the classroom, because her daughter was Black. And I feel like at the time, I just... I was kind of like, "Well, okay," but I don't think I really thought about it the way I should have. Now I'm thinking, what was that parent's experience like in school? Most likely, she grew up in that same area in the same classrooms with lots of White people.

Rhonda Precourt:

Even just think about my own kids, if I had to advocate for them to be in a setting where they would be with other kids like them so they would feel like they belong. If education looked different, and we already had things in place, it wouldn't matter, I feel like, if you were in a classroom with people that... wasn't very diverse, if it was set up in a way that they could still see themselves in different ways, if that makes any sense.

Matt Renwick:

For sure. One of the posts, I can't remember whose it was, but it started to question just a typical practice that they've had in their school. It might have been Gen. Was it you, Gen?

Gen Arcovio:

Yeah, the "what you want to be when you grow up"?

Matt Renwick:

Yeah.

Gen Arcovio:

Yeah.

Matt Renwick:

You almost seemed like you were looking at that event through new eyes, and I thought that was a nice example of what Rhonda's talking about. And I think kind of leads into our last part, which is just, what's one question you have still after reading this book? And for me, it's... I don't know why I get stuck on these things, but I wanted to see the unit template. She talked about units and lessons. I'm such a concrete thinker in some ways, but I wanted to see, what was the unit template looking like? Her lessons were great in the back, but just from a book standpoint, what was that progression of learning? What was that kind of story that you can create around historically-responsible literacy instruction beyond just the one lesson? But it was just that a question I had. What about you? Ryanne, what do you think?

Ryanne Deschane:

I'm going to be the elephant-in-the-room person. Mine is for administrators or principals and other colleagues who haven't yet begun to grapple or delve into this work who maybe come from a stance of, "You're going at this too fast, and it's very politically charged." How to shift that mindset to beginning the work and engaging and investing in learning more. I think that's a difficult challenge, especially where I'm at, because we don't have a lot of diversity, so sometimes, the narrative is, "Why does it matter?" I guess years ago, I probably was on that same wavelength, because it's like Maya says, do what you know until you know better, and then do better. And so, I'm trying really hard to do better, but I don't quite know how to get others there. And so, that's my big question of, how do we do that?

Matt Renwick:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). That culture is huge.

Rhonda Precourt:

Ryanne, Ryanne, I think I was thinking along the same lines as you. I think that we do have a pretty big push in our area to attack this type of work, but I don't... How do we get to the place where we're not just kind of going through the motions of learning about these things or even doing a book study, but it doesn't really meet the need that... or meet the purpose that we really want to meet?

Ryanne Deschane:

Yeah. I want that call to action to be now. I want everybody to be on that same wavelength of, "Hey, we need to jump in with both feet." There is no, "People aren't ready for this." Come on. Let's just do it.

Gen Arcovio:

And it's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. And when you see something that doesn't look like it will be equitable, or it looks like it may support oppression in some way, it's uncomfortable to say something, but we have to say it. I think that's my... my goal for myself is to always say something, but you're right, because not everyone is in the place to hear it. And so, I had that down as a question, too. How do we get this in front of people who need to see it? Like you're saying, the ideas, we need to go fully, we need to build this up, we need to make everyone comfortable, but there have been millions of people who have not been comfortable for a very long time. So, that's also my question, too. And then also, where do I look next? What resource do I go to next to help with that?

Carrie Thomas:

So, yeah, I feel like I have a similar question, right? Like, how do we get other people on board with this? Because it's one thing for us all to be sitting here having a book club and talking about the book and like, "Oh, we're going to read this," but what do we do? And so, that's something I've been thinking a lot about this year. At my school, I'm one of the founding members of our diversity committee, and so we are very committed to action steps as part of the group, because it's like we just need to do something, and as small as it is, it just has to be something.

Carrie Thomas:

So, we take small actions, like, "What can we do?" I frequently send out booklets and highlight some celebrations that are coming up. You know, "It's Ramadan, so here's a book list for Ramadan that's coming up." Right? "It's Eid, so here is what we do on Eid." Just these action steps and getting it into just everyday language. This is what we're about now. This is what the school is about. This is what instruction is about. And really, when the question comes up, because it always comes up, like, "Why do we have to do this? We've been doing this for 30 years. I don't know why we need to change things." And it's because it always comes back to the students. It's like, "Well, look at the students. What is the best thing for our students? What do our students need?" Because that's what we're doing in school, right?

Carrie Thomas:

And so, I think that's kind of where I tie everything, and sometimes it's difficult for people to get on board with that, but I think really just being strong, and this is for our students, and this is the world our students are growing up in, and this is what they need to know, and this is how to prepare them to be out there. So, I think my question is kind of like, how do we get other people on board, and what size is the action step? Where is that line between too little and then too much, and how do we navigate that area of action there?

Matt Renwick:

I think the fact that we're recording this, and we're going to post this publicly, our thoughts, I think is a great first step. I think when we talk about this as a group, we normalize it, just like we would do in a school, and it just gives permission for everyone else to start talking about it, too. And little things that you're doing in your schools to make it part of your culture and to be the leaders that you are. I don't think of any of you as just teachers. I think of you all as leaders, too, and your willingness to put your thoughts down publicly, I think, is courageous. So, I want to thank you all for doing that and thank you for being here tonight.

Carrie Thomas:

Thank you.

Gen Arcovio:

Thank you.

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In this special episode, I am joined by Gen Arcovio and Rhonda Precourt in a conversation around this summer’s book study selection: Cultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Dr. Gholdy Muhammad.

We used the following three questions to guide our conversation:

What resonated with you?

What surprised you?

What questions do you have?

This kicks off the book study. We hope you can join us for the month of July as we read and respond in writing to this excellent and essential resource.

Relevant Resources

Audio + Transcript

Also Listen on Apple Podcasts (and Give It a Rating!)

Order Cultivating Genius from Scholastic

Dr. Muhammad’s Website

Dedicated Page for Book Study

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick (00:04):

We are here for a discussion around the book, Cultivating Genius, our book study for this summer. And I've got two colleagues with me here today, if you want to introduce yourselves.

Rhonda Precourt (00:20):

I'm Rhonda Precourt. I am a teacher in the upstate New York area. I have been for a big chunk of years previously been teaching in the literacy area, but this year I am teaching kindergarten

Matt Renwick (00:40):

And Rhonda, you've been blogging with us for a couple of years now, too.

Rhonda Precourt (00:45):

Yeah, we blog at literacypages.wordpress.com and that is also our Twitter handle @literacypages. We also have a Facebook group as well.

Matt Renwick (01:01):

And you brought along your esteemed colleague, Gen.

Gen Arcovio (01:05):

Hello, I'm Gen and I am a K through 2 literacy specialist also in upstate New York. I work with Rhonda and both of us are trained in Reading Recovery, active reading recovery teachers typically, although not this year. And like she mentioned, we blog together and we extend our learning together in all kinds of ways.

Matt Renwick (01:33):

Everyone's doing different positions this year, or it's just adding on new roles. I had our art teacher teaching second grade, our phy ed teacher teaching fifth, just to make these new times work. So it's great to have you both join the discussion and I found three questions that I think will start to get our thinking going about around the book, Cultivating Genius by Dr. Goldy Muhammed. And the first one is, what resonated with you? If anyone wants to start us off, otherwise I'm happy to chime in.

Rhonda Precourt (02:17):

I think what is resonating with me the most is just how far we haven't come in a long period of time. And it's a little bit depressing read it. I love reading about the history. I think it's so powerful, but then it just strikes you about how similar the times are that they're talking about to where we are right now.

Matt Renwick (02:46):

Yeah. She even mentioned the expectations were higher back then, back in the 1800s, at least for these literary groups. And the other thing that resonated for me was just how they combined everything and it wasn't, here's your reading, and then we're going to do some writing here, and we'll practice some speaking and listening. It was all integrated toward a kind of purpose, which was to empower themselves and cause change. So that was just something that resonated with me. It makes it easier for us to teach reading here and writing there, but it's not always conducive for kids, especially from what I understand from the book, students of color. It can make it more challenging. Well, what about you, Gen? What did you find just compelling?

Gen Arcovio (03:43):

I was thinking two things. One of them along the lines of what you were saying, and what Rhonda was saying, that the history that I'm reading in this book, a lot of it's new to me and that's astonishing to me and it's causing a significant amount of self-reflection. I think that's one of the more important pieces of this book, is the amount of self reflection that it causes you to do in your own teaching and everything they've done up till this point and what you want to be as a teacher starting today. And then also the integrated approach that Rhonda and I write about all the time, but to see it laid out in this way and how significant it is to teach literacy in that way, so that you have a way of teaching that is empowering everybody. Rhonda and I work in a district that is predominantly white, but when you reading, this has really brought to light the fact that if you teach in this way, you are preventing discrimination in the future for everybody that you teach. This is such an important read. I love it.

Matt Renwick (05:15):

And you and Rhonda, that's one thing I like about Reading Recovery. With my last school, we had it and it takes an integrated approach, right? I mean, you're doing some reading, some writing, you are doing word work and so you have some of that background. But even with your extensive background, you still found it surprising and caused you to really rethink some of your practices.

Gen Arcovio (05:40):

I think the purpose, having a purpose for what you're reading and writing is what stood out to me. And it's making me think a lot about what I've done and what I'm going to do. What is the significant purpose for the reading and writing that makes it engaging for them and helps them to grow in their own identities?

Matt Renwick (06:03):

Yeah, what's the why.

Matt Renwick (06:05):

The second question, as I mentioned was, what surprised you? I could go here. Tt didn't really surprise me, but I guess I realized how much I didn't know about how persons of color were prevented from, even in the Northern states, prevented from engaging in literacy practices. It was like an editorial, I think, or a column, an essay about, he was a free man, but he wasn't really a free man, because of all these limits that had been put on them because of their race. We have, at least in the elementary level, a kind of a simplistic view of history, like "In the Northern states, they did not have slavery and then the Southern did," but it's more complex than that. They had to contend with those challenges throughout. So that's one thing, I guess that surprised me just like you were saying, Gen, how much I didn't know. So glad we picked this book.

Gen Arcovio (07:33):

It's almost what's surprising is not necessarily how much you didn't know, but what you thought you did know that isn't aligned or lining up with what's really happened. You know, I think that's something we need to take a good, hard look at in our curriculum across the board. Because I think a lot of us walked away from our education with a different view of where we are in education, in equality, in everything.

Matt Renwick (08:15):

Okay.

Rhonda Precourt (08:19):

I was familiar with the term literacy societies, but honestly I had no idea about black literacy societies and how they grew from just a small number of people to these huge groups of hundreds of members. And I was looking at, I just kept reading those 10 lessons from black literacy society. I just was so blown away. I mean, these things that we can learn from them are just so amazing. Like there was the one about how we teach each other, how then they came together, they taught each other how to read. They taught each other how to become better writers. It was just such a collaborative environment. And we do try for that, but I think especially as kids move up in grades, the way our schools schools are set up in education is very competitive. You're always trying to get in the top 10, or you're trying to get the best grade there. It's not like this where you're, where you're looking out for each other, trying to teach each other so you can better each other.

Matt Renwick (09:36):

Yeah. It's definitely something to aspire to with our classrooms and school. Questions that you had?

Rhonda Precourt (09:53):

I keep asking myself, because there's a lot of examples so far of how to apply this. I picture more of a middle school or high school setting. So I keep questioning, how can I bring this down to the younger students that I work with? What would that look like there? Because I definitely think you can, you can start this really early from the beginning. What would it look like?

Matt Renwick (10:21):

Yeah. It had some nice examples in the back to reference, the lesson plans, but yeah that's a good question. How do you talk about this? I mean, I think third grade and lower. That's a good question.

Gen Arcovio (10:37):

I keep asking myself, how do we get everyone talking about this, and acting on it, I think is the key because early on, I think somewhere in chapter two, it talks about how cultural models and cultural curriculum can't be an add on. And I think we see that all the time, you know, let's just put these few books into our libraries or into our read alouds. This is saying literacy was always connected to social justice and you can't connect literacy to social justice with five new read alouds in your curriculum. She wants us to be asking ourselves, how does this help them understand their own identities and how does it lead to social justice in every lesson and in every piece of your curriculum. And so, how do I help move this where it needs to go actively?

Matt Renwick (12:02):

I think those are great questions for future articles in July, if it moves you that way. I wish I had a good answer for that. The question I just had is, how do we create safe spaces in which people can talk about it and, you know, not fear for making mistakes or saying something stupid and then it coming back on you as being insensitive or worse. I think about that, I guess even just now talking about it. I just want to make sure I'm being respectful and at the same time that's part of learning, is making mistakes. It just seems like a really charged atmosphere right now with everything going on, legislation coming through and what we can and cannot teach. It's a unique time. So this has been a great book so far. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of it and writing something around it. Again, thanks Gen and Rhonda for joining us. And I'm looking forward to what you have to share.

Gen Arcovio (13:17):

Thank you for having me. I'm really enjoying it. Such an important read.

Rhonda Precourt (13:22):

Thank you so much. I agree.

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Where do we start when striving for equity? What does this concept mean in everyday classrooms? How does a relevant curriculum lead to a more equitable education?

I explore these questions with Dr. Chaunté Garrett, superintendent at Rocky Mount Preparatory School in North Carolina. She is an instructional leader with building- and district-level experience in transforming schools and leading students to high achievement levels.

This episode offers practical ideas for any teacher or leader to apply, for example asking students what they want you to know about them as the first question of the school year. When we approach our roles as a learner first and create holding spaces for others, students can create their own narratives for success.

Enjoyed this post but not subscribed? Sign up today for weekly publications around literacy leadership. Most articles and all podcast episodes are free.

Relevant Resources

Audio + Transcript

Dr. Garrett’s Educational Leadership article, “Relevant Curriculum is Equitable Curriculum”

Dr. Garrett’s website

Connect with Chaunté on Twitter

Listen to this episode on Apple - and rate this podcast!

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick (00:00):

Where do we start when striving for equity? What does this concept mean in everyday classrooms? How does a relevant curriculum lead to a more equitable education? I explore these questions with Dr. Chaunté Garrett, superintendent at Rocky Mount Preparatory School in North Carolina. She is an instructional leader with building and district level experience in transforming schools and leading students to high achievement levels. This episode offers practical ideas for any teacher or leader to apply, for example asking students what they want you to know about them as the first question of the school year. When we approach our roles as a learner first, and then create holding spaces for others, students can create their own narratives for success.

Matt Renwick (00:43):

Welcome Dr. Garrett, thanks for joining me today.

Dr. Chaunté Garrett (00:47):

Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be with you. Thank you.

Matt Renwick (00:51):

You are a superintendent of a K-12 charter school district in North Carolina and also taught high school math. Anything you want to add?

Dr. Chaunté Garrett (01:01):

To that? No, I just positioned myself as a learner, in the spaces that I have the privilege of serving in, even capacities, you know, such as spending time with you this morning. So I collect all of my experiences as learning opportunities in order to be the best and wherever I am sent in that time or the next time.

Matt Renwick (01:29):

And that's how I came across your work, as you very much presented yourself as a learner. What a powerful story in that Educational Leadership article. It's titled Relevant Curriculum is Equitable Curriculum. And I just thought it really nicely encapsulated what equity needs to be about, for all of our students. I loved your story about being accelerated, I don't know if that's the appropriate word, to sixth grade, and just seemed life altering. Can you just share that part of your learning journey and just how it made a difference for you?

Dr. Chaunté Garrett (02:11):

Yeah. You know, when I taught high school math, I would open up my high school math class with a story related to that, to my time in Mr. Bryant's sixth grade elective. Because I struggled in math and that was one of the reasons why I became a math teacher, because I finally found a space where I excelled in math and really realize math was something that I could do and not just do, but do well. And so even, you know, the story reads I was placed in Mr. Bryant's math class by happenstance. And I don't know if you saw, but I was able to present Mr. Bryant with a framed copy of the article, because that was the least I could do for what I gained as being in his math class.

Dr. Chaunté Garrett (03:06):

But one of the things I shared with him in that moment is that I wasn't Chaunté Garrett, the smartest of a sixth grade class that got placed in Mr. Bryant, seventh grade elective, that wasn't the case. We all came to Mr. Bryant's class, that was just a space where it wasn't questionable, whether we could do math. It was just our ability to enjoy it. You know, being able to enjoy it. When we got to that classroom, our ability to do math just was not a question. He treated us like we could do math. He taught us like we could do math. He coached us, like he expected us to do better in math. And he created understanding for us as though we were supposed to do math. He had extremely high expectations for us. And that was just the context of the classroom period. So, you know, I walked into a space where I was carrying this baggage of the struggle I was going to have, the challenges, how long was it going to take me to do the assignments and all that kind of stuff. And it just opened up this world of not only I can do this, but I can actually excel. And every last one of us sitting in the seats, in those classrooms, we're no different.

Matt Renwick (04:35):

And that seems to define equity. I mean, at least an outcome of what we would want to see. And, I really liked your definition in the article. I've shared it with my teachers. They can actually, when I forget one part, they can say, oh, it's meeting students where they are. You define equity as giving students what they need to support their success, meeting students where they are, or/and breaking down barriers to success. So what does that look like in your classrooms or school-wide in your district?

Dr. Chaunté Garrett (05:08):

So, you know all schools and districts have been really challenged. You know, this year I haven't met a leader that hasn't dealt with inequities. And even before that time, we know that they existed. I remember times where we just have to say out loud in professional development. We're not dying on the hill of the pencil. The kid comes to class without a pencil, give them a pencil and let's keep this movement. Like we're not losing instructional time over this. So what we're talking about, giving them what they need to be successful, it is that matter of resources. So one of the things with this pandemic that we did this year was, each quarter we sent home school supplies. I don't just mean like, their textbooks and, and we did the devices, but it was so much more than devices, right?

Dr. Chaunté Garrett (06:11):

It's what happens on the other side of the device and the ability to access school and learning when we got the devices when they were in the kids' hands. And so we, whatever it is, were are they going to need crayons? We sent home crayons. How are we going to assess their learning? We sent home whiteboards and markers so that they can hold them up in the screen until we came up with the better solution. We were trying to send home document cameras, but they became at a short supply as well. And so it was making sure that however, we have to do education, we set our scholars up for success by making sure that their access to materials was not going to be a barrier.

Matt Renwick (07:01):

That's a great idea. Just the quarterly supplies home, access what they need. Um, so it's a challenge, and we talked about this prior, but the challenge with making a curriculum relevant and equitable is you want it to be consistent as well. And sometimes teachers are given scripts to follow and consistency is great, but they can also create gaps. Just in your experience, help teachers work within these constraints to make instruction meaningful for kids.

Dr. Chaunté Garrett (07:29):

Yeah. In the article, I talked about the way Mr. Bryant made math live for us, but he made math live for us because he attached it to things that we knew. He attached it to things that we valued within our communities. He attached it to people that were images and reflections of who we aspire to be within our community. And so when we talk about relevant, so often we can get stuck on the script. They'll talk about basketball, baseball, soccer, dance class, and think that they're creating relevance around these activities that may not even be inclusive for all the students that may sit in a classroom. And so the onus is on us as educators to know what our students, we call our students scholars, what our scholars and what our families value and make that a part of the curriculum. So how does this live out in your day to day life? Not just monitor or not just the way this curriculum manual states it, because there's so much more.

Matt Renwick (08:44):

And I liked that question you had in there. Near the end of the article, I think it was, "What's one thing that you want me to know about you?", At the beginning of the year. I think would just set the tone for not just your instruction, but the entire community in your classroom.

Dr. Chaunté Garrett (09:02):

You know, we're starting a college and career academy and yes, that is very much about becoming more equitable, a more equitable community in terms of access to opportunity. But we opened that meeting with, "You are here tonight. What is it that you want for your scholar to have at the end of their high school experience?" And while there are some things that were the same, there were also some variations because that's what matters in those families, cultures in their lives, and in what they're trying to pursue. And that's a great way to start a connection, but it's also a great way to build understanding of even where to go to build this context. Yes, this takes work because we don't all live in each other's world, but it's the work that's worth doing when it comes to educating our students.

Matt Renwick (10:03):

Nice, and you kind of related, you talk about the harm we might cause when we strive to create equity in our classrooms in schools or help us not always helpful. Can you say more about that, and just maybe what educators might want to be aware of as we strive for equity.

Dr. Chaunté Garrett (10:19):

Yeah. So when you're really striving to, one of the terms that we here use now is hold space. So we want to create space for kids to be processing what what's happening in our world. The racial trauma, the injustices, all of those things that are taking place and realizing that they may not impact everyone culturally the same, but it is impacting everyone, period. And so you have to one, which is also one of the reasons why I'm positioning myself as a learner right now, is you have to position yourself as a learner, as an educator. Try to understand and gain understanding as to what these events may mean. You also have to position yourself in truth because there are some things that have become political that just are not political.

Matt Renwick (11:31):

There's not two sides to certain things.

Dr. Chaunté Garrett (11:35):

Exactly. So, you know, one of the things when I had a teacher come up to me and say, "Dr. Garrett, how am I going to hold a conversation about this?" You're going to hold it in truth. We will stand in front of our kids and teach truth every single day. And it's making sure that we are not recreating trauma, the images of black men dying in the streets and being beaten. They don't have to be the images that we put in front of our children in terms of holding space. They've seen enough of that. They have it at their fingertips with their phone. Facilitating that process of healing does not start there. And I want educators to be careful about recreating traumatic experience in the name of helping people understand. And I'll also want educators to be thoughtful about making sure and being intentional about placing affirming identities in front of students or affirming students' identities by placing affirming images and opportunities in front of them.

Dr. Chaunté Garrett (12:55):

So when we talk about cultural relevance in our school community, we talk about it from the responsive perspective. We don't ignore what's happening in the world, because we want our scholars to be able to process and critically think about their role in making change in terms of relevance. We get to know our scholars and their families and their backgrounds, and that becomes the context of their learning. It doesn't mean that you don't follow standards. It means we show them how they, their lives, their cultures contribute to the learning that they are seeking and what they are learning about the world. We affirm their identities and the identities that they are developing and becoming for themselves. And that means that we don't place images and in contexts that is harmful and traumatic, and we help them attach themselves to those images and contexts that are affirming as they are pursuing.

Matt Renwick (14:02):

And then the way you described this makes it very doable. I think sometimes we try to overthink this or try to think of what topics or subjects are we going to bring in, and we just need to listen to our kids and our families and start with an opening here. So just to kind of wrap things up, you've listed a variety of ideas here to create a more equitable space and help kids feel valued. What's one thing that you would recommend a leader or a teacher do just to continue to hold that space, that holding environment and within their communities.

Dr. Chaunté Garrett (14:46):

This is where we always start year. Know the story before you create the story. And so it's going straight to the source. And as Brene Brown says, "We always come up with our first draft. Nix the first draft; go straight to the source." And that's where you start, with your understanding to begin the work that needs to be done within your community. And if you have a minute, I want to go back to the number two. Because it's about the resources, but it's also closing those gaps on experiences too. Just like our kids come to school with varying abilities to fulfill the supply list and all that kind of stuff and get the tools, part of that resource gap is those experiences and exposures.

Matt Renwick (15:52):

Background knowledge

Dr. Chaunté Garrett (15:53):

Exactly. You know, there are things that affluent families have access to, you know, even if it's piano lessons, participating in different types of athletics, outside of school, you know, music, what have you, those things outside of school that enhance what's being learned inside of school and creates those opportunities for acceleration. And so it's about our schools developing those partnerships. If you can create them within your community, that also adds those additional exposures and experiences. It's about hosting those clubs and creating space and time to be more inclusive so that more students, especially those that may not have access to them outside of school, can have access to them. And that's another way to break down the barriers, but it's also about having those hard conversations around our policies and our practices for many of us, you know, that technology policy slapped us in the face when the pandemic came. And so what are those other things that aren't serving our marginalized and minoritized communities well, and having hard conversations about the why and dismantling those.

Matt Renwick (17:26):

Well, thank you. This has been very helpful for me, as I am a learner too, and to continue to expand my perspective. So thank you, Dr. Garrett.

Dr. Chaunté Garrett (17:40):

Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm glad to be with you.

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In this special episode, recorded during our third and final writers group, we talked shop - writers workshop - with Tom Romano and Regie Routman.

Tom is the author of several books on writing, including Write What Matters: For Yourself, For Others.

Regie has also authored many professional literacy resources for educators, most recently Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence, and Equity for All Learners.

So get out your notebooks, settle in with a favorite beverage, and soak up the wisdom from two excellent teachers of writers and writing.

Related Resources

Transcript + Audio

Tom’s article we discussed: “Giant at Reds”

Regie’s article we discussed: “Roaming Around the Known” (plus her website)

A book Tom recommended about writing memoir: Inventing the Truth

Check this episode out on Apple below, and give the podcast a rating!

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick:

In this special episode recorded during our third and final writers group, we talk shop - writer's workshop - with Tom Romano and Regie Routman. Tom is the author of several books on writing, including Write What Matters For Yourself, For Others. Regie has also authored many professional literacy resources for educators, most recently, Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence, and Equity For All Learners. So get out your notebooks, settle in with a favorite beverage and soak up the wisdom from two excellent teachers of writers and writing.

Matt Renwick:

Again, feel free to chime in, any questions or if you want to piggyback, for Tom or for Regie. And you both spoke to this just now, which is great. And in your pieces that I shared out too, involve story. Is that a great place to start with writing or do you see it as more than just a tool for your own writing purposes I guess? I'll start with Tom on that.

Tom Romano:

There is very little I write that doesn't have story in it some way. If I'm writing that piece about the night the giant visited, I mean, it's pretty much all story, except, I think the last part in the last paragraph and that version of, did I say about giants all around us and teachers, I guess there I'm being a little bit expository. But I can't imagine writing anything that doesn't have at least the kernel of story in it, because stories appeal to us all. They are how we know the world. I mean, think about the trial that just ended. There were two stories, two arguments, but here's the story of how this went down, here's another story of how this went down.

Tom Romano:

For me, it's just, the story is bedrock. I guess that's why I always, when the Common Core standards came out in Ohio, well, I guess they were nationwide, and then they got rid of them, and then pretty much states just use them anyway and call them their own standards. They seem to me to really disrespect story and how I know story work in people's writing. So what did I just read? I just read an Anne Lamott book that was published in 2017 or 2018. And she said, "Story abideth." Tom just ran out of gas here, go ahead Regie.

Regie Routman:

No, I agree with everything you said. A story for me, I'm looking at it in a little bit different way. I'm trying to be an anti-racist like everybody else, not just talking about it, but trying to do something. And one of the ways I think that's very powerful is valuing every child's story and having them write their story and honor that story, their language, their culture that goes with it through poetry, through a vignette from part of their life, writing about something that happened that, the story of their life. And using story in a way that even though that story that you've just written was very painful perhaps, you're working with older kids, your story is not foretold by what's happened so far. But your story can be changed. And using story in that way is a part of what I'm working on now, that you have the power to rewrite your story. That might seem preordained because of your circumstances, because of your housing, lack of resources, but it's not.

Regie Routman:

So I see our job as educators, as being opportunity makers. And one way to do that is to get kids to write and first to value their own stories, which is so, so powerful. And then I would model, of course I would share one of my stories that shaped me. And it would be probably about my grandmother who never went to school, but never got past fifth grade because she had to support her family and didn't consider herself a writer. But when I would stay overnight with her, she'd pull out this big brown box from the top of her closet, and she was writing her stories down, but didn't consider herself a writer.

Tom Romano:

Wow.

Regie Routman:

But she was.

Matt Renwick:

You both speak to a sense of self-empowerment too, with Tom writing in the study halls and your grandmother writing, but not identifying as a writer themselves. And I noted in Tom's book here on page four, just your first activity here, Tom says, "Give yourself 15 minutes long if you need it, write about why you write, what you get out of it, and what rewards writing holds for you. Maybe you've not articulated that before, don't be afraid to ramble, Joey wasn't. With faith and fearlessness write through to the truth." I've heard that phrase before, "Write through to the truth." Tom, can you say more about that?

Tom Romano:

Write through to the truth. From last June until January, I wrote a memoir that I'm trying to find a publisher to read, and that's not always easy since it's not really a Heinemann book, or a Stenhouse book, or Scholastic book. But a lot of times I'm just trying to tell things as truthfully as I can, the way I remember, the way that I imagine it. Like that giant story, I was thinking about that. I mean, I think there's truth in there. There's a lot that's made up. And what I mean is, I don't remember that... Like I say, Joe Keester, there's a character who said, "That's Paul Bunyan" right off the bat. Well, I don't remember that happening, but my dad had a friend named Joe Keester and I found out some way that that wrestler was Paul Bunyan. And so I invented that.

Tom Romano:

There's a book called Inventing the Truth and it's about writing memoir. So there's a lot of places in there where I think I did invent the truth. Although I stayed close to the emotions, I'm pretty sure I remember feeling. And some of the things that were indelible memories, like when he would, I think I wrote that, "He would put forward and all his hair would go over his face and then he would go like that and comment like that, and then push it forward." That's an indelible memory. I really believe in those for sure. Now I want to get kids, whether they're elementary school kids or graduate students in a class, I want them to start trying to find those indelible moments or indelible memories. They don't usually last very long. And I want them to write about those.

Tom Romano:

I think the last two or three things that I have published in English Journal came from me, writing in my college class with my undergraduates. I asked them to find indelible moments. And I did that too with them and develop that into a piece of writing, which I'm trying to stay close to how I remember and how I think. Yeah. Writing through to the truth.

Regie Routman:

I think one of the, I used to tell the kids the secrets of what writers do, is that when they write memoir, I remember working with fifth graders on this, that you can't possibly remember what was said, what somebody said five, six years ago.

Tom Romano:

No.

Regie Routman:

So you have to invent that dialogue, but the feelings are true. And as long as you stay true to those feelings, right, it's going to work because you can't remember exactly what happened. But you do, those feelings are there.

Tom Romano:

You mentioned dialogue, Regie. I always thought in schools, that's the great underused form of expression, that kids don't put dialogue in their pieces. And I love dialogue. When I'm reading a novel, I love turning the page and see those indentations. I want to invent that dialogue that moves my story along. I think that makes for good reading.

Matt Renwick:

Really reveal characters and what they're thinking, and then move things along and apply. And as you said, evoke that feeling. And you've both used journals, notebooks, I should say, how do you use them specifically? Everyone has a different method to help, not just document experiences, feelings, and moments, but also to generate more writing and document your reading. Regie, how do you use notebooks specifically and why do you...?

Regie Routman:

I specifically grab my notebook and let me just find it. Start with Tom or someone...

Matt Renwick:

All right.

Tom Romano:

I have friends, Penny Kittle and Linda Reef. Their notebooks are just beautiful. I mean, they write in them, but they also draw in them and they're aesthetically pleasing on their own, I think what they're creating. And I also know that Penny, a lot of times will, if she's writing the piece for Voices From the Middle or any other publication, that she will often draft in the notebook. I don't do that. I can't do that. If I have a piece I know I'm going to write, I might doodle a little bit in the notebook, but I would get out of a yellow pad. And part of the reason I use a yellow pad instead of drafting on the computer is because I like to drink coffee and I don't want it to get cold too quickly. So I could write with my left hand and drink coffee with my other hand.

Tom Romano:

The way I use the journal is pretty much to collect things. People say things I noticed rambling around in my thoughts. As I told you, that I would start to write on a note pad if I had something that I wanted to write for publication. I just thought of an exception to that. When I came home from Italy in 2018, my wife and I spent two weeks in Italy and we came back, I had some things to write about and I wrote about them discursively in my notebook, went on for several pages. When I was writing in this memoir and I came to the chapter that had to do with that subject matter, I went to my notebook and typed a lot of that stuff that I used for the chapter then. I guess once in a while, I might start an article or a chapter in there. Regie, what about you? How do you use that notebook?

Regie Routman:

Well, it depends what's going on in my life, right, at the time. So like the article that you have for me, Roaming Around the Known with an Adult Learner, I'm working right now twice a week, tutoring, a 54 year old man teaching him to read. And so that's been pretty fascinating. And so you've got the start of the story there. Now we've been working together for 10 months. And I've always worked like this. So I have a notebook and it's just messy. But every time that I'm working with them, I'm writing down everything that he's saying, everything that we're doing, thoughts that come into my head. This is like almost a full notebook just from working together.

Regie Routman:

And at some point, you can see just a lot of writing there. What happened, what I'm thinking. I use it a lot for reflection and I know I'm going to write something from that. I have no idea what it's going to be. But it's the only way I can remember. I used to tell teachers, "Even though you've got all those kids in front of you, tell them, show them your notebook." Okay. Kids take out your book. I write down what just happened because I don't want to lose it. You just can't remember even the actual words that somebody said. And a lot of the kids will start keeping their own notebook. I think of it more as a place to reflect. Then I go back and look at it.

Regie Routman:

But this is such an intense thing that I'm involved in right now. So I have a whole notebook just devoted to that. And that's been really helpful because there's no way I could remember some of the gems that he says, it helps me with my planning and also the writing. And then I feel like I have a body of work there.

Tom Romano:

I mean, who knows if I'll write another book. But when I'd have a professional book, I wanted to write, I would go back to my notebooks from where the last book ended. And I would read through everything for maybe three, four years just to see what I could pick up. And invariably, I picked up stuff that I had completely forgotten about, that I was able to then use in the book.

Matt Renwick:

This is great. I can listen to this all day. And normally when I have more time, I send the questions ahead of time for doing a podcast or something like that. But we can tell Tom and Regie had no problems speaking very knowledgeably about this topic. But does anyone else have any questions for Tom or Regie?

Virginia Soukup:

Not a question. I just wanted to comment about Regie's notebook, since you encouraged me last time to start one. I have. And so I keep one at school about the different things that teachers are doing just to... Because that's what I like to write about. It's the work. So you inspired me to start that.

Tom Romano:

Regie, what gave you the idea to start writing in a notebook regularly? When did you start that?

Regie Routman:

I have no idea. I don't ever remember being told that I was a writer. I always wrote poetry for some reason, but it was the rhyming poetry. Of course, it's all free verse poetry. I don't know. I think it was... When I started this first grade book flood, what was called this experiment in this school in Shaker Heights, where the kids were all failing in literacy, I just did it. I got introduced to Don Graves' work. Maybe it was something I read from him. I don't know. But it just seemed to make sense. I wasn't smart enough to remember everything. And so I had to write it down. What are the kids saying? What are they doing? What's the plan for the next day?

Regie Routman:

It wasn't a notebook in the sense of the way Penny keeps it. It wasn't like I'm thinking about writing ideas. It was, here's what I'm thinking about my life, about one of the things that I did because I want those of you that are teachers like me to also be bringing your life into the classroom. So in my last book, Literacy Essentials, I interwove stories, professional and personal stories into my book and then recorded them to speak them, which I think is really important because for... And you can find that on my website, if you wanted to see that. I think for kids whose stories are not valued, their culture is not valued, and even if they're having struggle with reading and writing, they can record their stories. That's so powerful. Oh my goodness, look, I'm a writer. And then they see it in writing and it makes them feel like they're a writer.

Regie Routman:

So it's been always important to me to bring my life, not separate my life like this and cooking from my husband and not having hugged my grandkids yet and what that's like to bring that into school as part of the stories that I tell. And that helps kids value. "Oh, she's just writing about hugging somebody. Well, I could write about that." Or just not to separate it as their school writing and then there's home writing. I think of it as teaching, learning and living and they all go together.

Tom Romano:

That is a good title, Regie.

Regie Routman:

I know. I'm thinking about my next book because I think we separate it too much. We separate it too much. And Matt knows. We've talked about this a lot because we've become good friends over the years, is always all about relationships. Kids are not going to bare their soul if they haven't developed a trusting relationship with us, right?

Tom Romano:

Right.

Regie Routman:

And so that's true with school and it's true with real life, right? Everything is about trusting relationships. So I think they all go together. And so I don't know, I just write whatever comes into my head. So then I don't want to forget it. And then I can go back to it. I have like this. I probably have about eight notebooks over... One notebook might last me, I don't know, six months, it might last me three months, it might last me two years. And I keep everything in one notebook so that I can find it. And then I just read. So if I go to a conference, my notes are there. So I can always find what I'm looking for by the date. So I think it's a little different than just whatever works for you. But they can also keep just a simple notebook and reflect on their life and ideas and what they're thinking. And it doesn't have to be complicated.

Matt Renwick:

Just get it down.

Tom Romano:

Can I say one other thing about that?

Matt Renwick:

Please.

Tom Romano:

I think that writing in a journal notebook taught me how to write better. I wish that a teacher had told me, that had me in high school, "Keep a notebook. Start keeping a journal." Because I didn't start writing in a journal until I was about, I would be about 24 years old in the summertime I was taking classes. I read Daniel Fader's Hooked On Books. And one of the things that, he had them reading paperbacks, huge new thing then, right. Having these juvenile delinquent kids read paperbacks, and then also keep a journal. And I thought, this is just the thing for... I had some kids in a class ignominiously titled Basic Skills for juniors in high school would not turn you on. But I thought, this is perfect for those kids to help them write a journal. And then I thought, well, I better do this myself if I'm going to have them do it. And man, I've been hooked on that ever since.

Matt Renwick:

Yeah. Both of you as the adults in the room or the teachers in the room, you go first and then the kids follow.

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It is no secret that some traditional teacher evaluation systems are less than effective in supporting professional growth. Faculty want feedback, and yet tired policies and lack of imagination can prevent leaders from seeing what is possible.

Consider a different approach to this area of instructional leadership. Matt Cormier, an elementary principal in Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado, takes more of a coaching stance to his work, including:

feedback that is focused on the future and on teacher growth,

how documentation can show alignment between teachers’ beliefs and their practices plus current research, and

engaging in more conversation and less judgment around instruction.

Enjoyed this episode? Share it with your colleagues and your PLN. If you post this podcast on Twitter and include my handle (@ReadByExample), you could win a one year subscription to Choice Literacy.

Related Resources

Transcript + Audio

Matt’s District Webpage, Bio

Matt’s Recommended Sources for Research: The Marshall Memo, The Main Idea

Matt’s Coach, Samantha Bennett (Linkedin)

Literacy Walks e-course (Choice Literacy)

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick:

It is no secret that teacher evaluation systems are less than effective in supporting professional growth. Faculty want feedback, and yet tired policies and lack of imagination can prevent leaders from seeing what's possible.

Matt Renwick:

In this episode of Read by Example, I talk with Matt Cormier, a principal in Jefferson County Public Schools in Colorado about his unique approach to teachers who provision. It is teacher driven, aligned with mutual goals, and focused on improvement instead of only evaluation.

Matt Renwick:

Hey, Matt, thanks for joining me today. And we spoke before about just this unique approach you have to staff supervision and evaluation. And so I asked if we could connect again and just kind of lay it out and just think about how this might work for teachers and you. Anyway, it's quite different, but can you just explain just your staff supervision and evaluation approach and what is it and why did you move toward it?

Matt Cormier:

So I would definitely say the theme of the approach is that my feedback to teachers is not about the lesson I just watched. It's not about today. The focus is really about tomorrow. You've got to go in with that mindset that it isn't about what you just saw. It's about what the teacher will do with feedback and what tomorrow might look like.

Matt Cormier:

The other thing too, I think foundationally, I have to say, I would never use this process with somebody I didn't know, or somebody that I was concerned about their performance. I don't believe that that's the right direction to go. With folks that you don't know, I think that it's important to have to utilize the formal process that's been approved by the school district and by the association. And I think that's key. And for somebody who you're concerned about their performance, I think that you have to follow that as well.

Matt Cormier:

Now, my situation, like many others I have a stable staff. Some of the folks that I'm working with, I've worked with the entire time I've been here. So this is my seventh year. And as I kind of reflected last year about their performance, I could go down the list of my staff and say, at the end of the year, my guess is this staff member will end up as effective. This staff member will end up as highly effective. Just I know them, I've worked with them long enough to know that would be the case. And so it kind of felt like that the structure that we had in place was going to lead to that ending, that maybe there was an opportunity for a different structure, something that felt different to everybody.

Matt Cormier:

So I guess I would say that one of the pieces of this process is that I still need to do what the school district says that I have to do, which is have a formal observation of every teacher by the end of semester one. And for people who are probationary, I have to have two formal observations by the end of the year. And so the way that I do that is they self-evaluate their work against the 23 indicators in the school district. And they submit their self-evaluation to me of those 23 indicators. And generally, I ask for that to be done by Labor Day.

Matt Cormier:

And then between Labor Day and the end of September, I take their ratings from their self-evaluation. I put them in the formal observation document. I take a look and I compare how they rated themselves against their most recent evaluation that I did using those 23 indicators. And I say, does this align with what I know about this person? Does this make sense? And if it does, I send them back their formal document. I say, "This looks good to me. Does it look good to you? Let's have a meeting."

Matt Cormier:

So in that meeting, it could be a long meeting, but not about the formal, the fall observation. The conversation about the fall formal goes like this. "Hey, do you agree with all these ratings in here? Yeah, you do? All right. That sounds good. Would you sign the document for me? Okay. Send the document. Now let's talk about what do you want to get better at?"

Matt Renwick:

Right.

Matt Cormier:

Because if I'm going to come into your room, say I'm going into come in your room six times, seven times this year, and I can look for whatever you want and I'm going to then look for research that backs up what you're doing. What do you want me to look for? What is it you want me to pay attention to? And that's where the length of the conversation happens for folks in the fall.

Matt Cormier:

So basically one of the things I love about this is I'm done with everybody's fall formal document by the end of September. There's no problem, nobody worrying about whether I've got my documents done at the school district. They're done. I probably could do everybody at this point. I could do everybody's spring formal if I needed to do that for the probationary folks. And honestly, I could start to work on the finals evaluations right now, too, because I'm just literally going to take the fall formal ratings and put it into a final document and have a very similar conversation in April. "Hey, do you agree with all these ratings? You do? All right. Now, let's talk about the other things. You told me you wanted to get better at this. Let's talk about that."

Matt Renwick:

Yeah.

Matt Cormier:

That's why I say, part of it is understanding that what I do is get what is required of me by the school district done very soon, very quickly so that I can engage in this process of writing letters of reflection after doing observations, which leads me to my next key piece here, which is when I write a letter of reflection, I am making sure that there is alignment between a teacher's philosophical beliefs about education and who they are as a teacher. So there's alignment between their beliefs with actually what they're doing. The teacher moves that I notice in class, and then I match that with research. So those three pieces.

Matt Cormier:

So we got to take one step back because in August, when all teachers come back, I asked teachers to write me a context letter. And the context letter is filled with their beliefs about what it means to be a teacher, their beliefs about good teaching and what gets them out of bed in the morning? Why do they choose to do this job? And so everybody is asked to write that and submit that to me before Labor Day so I have that. And then as I go into.. I reread everybody's context letter. Every time that I go, every single time I read the context letter, I talk and say, "These are the teacher moves that I noticed. And here's the research that backs you up. This is what the researchers say." And generally I look for opportunities to look for the things that they asked me to look for.

Matt Renwick:

There's a real shift in the power dynamic when you have teachers self-assessing and telling you what they want you to look for. Did you have any initial concerns as you shifted to this approach? You're releasing some of that, I wouldn't say authority, but you're just sharing it, I guess more than anything.

Matt Cormier:

Yeah. I mean, I think there were concerns, both from teachers and for me. The biggest concern for teachers was sitting down and writing a context letter. It's almost like, I would say to them like, literally, "Wake up before the house wakes up. Get a cup of tea or a cup of coffee. Sit down and write your beliefs about being a teacher. When you're done, you will say that was the greatest time you spent, because nobody's asked you to do that in a long time. And it feels good to try to reflect on who you are, why this matters to you." But teachers were nervous. They were nervous about it. And they said, "Are you going to check my spelling and grammar?" I said, "No, I just want your thoughts."

Matt Renwick:

Right.

Matt Cormier:

So in hindsight, I think I probably should give a devoted time and say, "I'm serving you the tea and coffee. Now we're going to sit and you're going to do this incredible thing."

Matt Renwick:

There you go.

Matt Cormier:

For me, I think the toughest thing was the idea that everybody delivers a train wreck of a lesson. And there are times where I've gone in to go through this new process and write a letter of reflection. And it's a train wreck. And I know it, and I'm hoping to God, the teacher knows it too, because if the teacher knows it, the teacher looks at me and says, "Oh my Lord," then I feel great. Then I feel great. Like yeah, nothing went the way you wanted it to go, or the moves felt awkward today. And if the teacher could just say to me, "Oh Lord, do overplays," then I would feel so much better because a lot of times I have this piece of where I'm actually wondering, do they know it was a train wreck because in the process that I undergo, I don't sit there and go," Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. That was a train wreck." Instead, I look at the positive pieces.

Matt Cormier:

And so it does become hard when you want to say like, "Hey, I think that was in your blind spot. You missed a great opportunity there to create a letter that might give that feedback," but it also makes the teacher want to get up the next day and do this again because teachers pour so much of who they are personally into their work that sometimes feedback about their work feels like feedback about them. [crosstalk 00:11:30].

Matt Renwick:

Yeah. In the traditional approach, they're not asking for feedback. It's just something you have to do. And when they write that context letter and then say, "This is what I want you to look for," the early shifts and the feedback becomes something that they want, versus something they're going to get. I liked reading your context letter, and I'm very interested in history. And you're very open about your history and your philosophy and approaching that. Being vulnerable with them, I'm sure helped them craft their own letters and feel okay about it. And you mentioned that you read their contexts letters. How else do you use that when you go into classrooms and give them the reflection letter itself?

Matt Cormier:

I often will think through, because the idea is to try to match their beliefs with the teaching moves. And so sometimes I've read the context letter before I go in and I think I know I'm going to pull out these beliefs, but then I'll actually observe something and be able to go back and say, "Wait a second. I remember seeing that," and then pull out another component there where you're just...

Matt Cormier:

And I'll write sometimes in the section where I write about teacher moves, instead of saying, "Hey, I'm going to match your move to research. I'm not going to tell you which researcher has got your back, but I'm going to tell you that your belief system has your back. When you say you want to do right by all kids and then I noticed that you made an adjustment in the lesson at the moment, because you were clearly teaching to one group of kids and you noticed it. And in the moment you said, 'Wait a second, I got to adjust something right here,' that's a point where when I write about that teaching move, I will say in your book that that is so aligned with your belief system."

Matt Cormier:

The other thing I love about the context letter is it says, I see you, I see who you are as a person. I see who you are as an educator because often teachers will share with me personal stories in their contexts letter. What gets them out of bed in the morning might be an experience that they had as a young person. Think of the, Thank You, Mr. Falker, Patricia Polacco book, right? A lot of teachers have that book, their own book written, and they might share something with me. And then you can see them treat another kid in the way that they were treated. And to say, "Look at how you believe and look at what you did for that kid," there is alignment.

Matt Cormier:

And I think a lot of times what I'm saying is I see you, I see you and I hear you. And I know you as an individual and as a professional. I think there's a lot of... My teachers have given me a lot of feedback that this process, they don't put on a dog and pony, they're not trying to hit all 23 indicators and be like, "I know if I say this, I've hit an indicator to see." Instead, it feels very different for them.

Matt Renwick:

Yeah. They're showing you the real deal. And again, I think it comes back to what you did with your own context letter of revealing your own experience as a teacher. And it wasn't always perfect. That's got to be huge. So I think you started with one teacher, right, Matt, to try it with, and it sounds like it's expanded, more teachers are electing for this more authentic approach. Is that all your teachers now are on it, or how many?

Matt Cormier:

Everybody's on it. Last year, it was opt in. You had to say yes. And I had almost all teachers opt in. And when I asked some teachers, "Why didn't you do it?" They said, "I'm nervous about writing the context letter."

Matt Renwick:

Writing. I gotcha.

Matt Cormier:

But I thought to myself, but you wanted the 23 indicators where I rate you, you wanted that. Who wants that? So this year it was opt out. This year it was, this is what I want to do. You can opt out. Nobody opted out.

Matt Renwick:

Yeah.

Matt Cormier:

Nobody at all.

Matt Renwick:

Kind of a passive permission in a sense, maybe that little nudge for those people who are still unsure. That's a cool way to think about that. You mentioned your teachers give you feedback. What do they say about this process now that you've got it now a couple of years?

Matt Cormier:

I think mostly what they would say is that it doesn't feel stressful. That it feels safe. And so that's probably the most powerful thing that I've gotten out of this period of time. Because I think that if we can create a very safe environment... Probably a lot of us as principals say the same kind of thing, right? It's that idea that why don't we learn through failure and success? Why don't we learn by trying? And we say all those things, but there are all these immense pressures on teachers to take those risks. That can be a big step for a lot of people because there's way too many other pressures.

Matt Cormier:

And so, if really what I've gotten out of this period of time, just a little over a year with the pandemic lockdown down in the middle of that, is that everybody feels safer about when I come into the classroom, then I'll take that without a doubt. I do get some really good back and forth conversations because when I write a letter of reflection, it always ends with, "Now, tell me what you're thinking. Tell me what you're thinking about, what I said or the research that I shared." Sometimes where I quote research, I'll actually make a copy of that article, put it in their box. "And what do you think?" And we can end up with a back and forth conversation.

Matt Cormier:

Some of my favorites are honestly, where I might have a question that does challenge. I recently observed a teacher who wasn't posting learning targets and freely admitted it. "I haven't posted a learning target in a while." And it was a great opportunity for me to say, "Tell me why. Why is it that you didn't do that? Philosophically, what is it that stopped you from doing that?" Because to me, a learning target is foundational to a good lesson or a bad lesson. To any lesson at all kids need to know what they're working towards.

Matt Cormier:

So this was a great moment for me to say like, "This is not a gotcha moment. I actually really want to know what is getting in the way." And obviously the feedback could actually be time, but my response on time is my son called me today and said, "Dad, I need you. I've just been in a car accident." I would get out of this building and go. He is that important to me. To me, in lesson planning, the learning target is that important. I would never, ever not create a lesson plan that didn't have a learning target and success criteria that everybody moved towards. So it was fantastic for me to ask, "What stopped you from doing that? What is your belief system?" And I think that is rich to have it be a place where teachers don't feel scared to engage in that. It's not a gotcha.

Matt Renwick:

And you're feeling safe too, it sounds like to share your own belief system about learning targets, but in a way that's not confrontational, just here's where I'm at. Here's where I understand you're at. And we're just trying to engage in a conversation versus a battle of wills.

Matt Cormier:

Because here's the truth. This teachers' evaluation around learning targets has already been written, right? It's already been written. Whatever rating that we agreed upon, she's gotten. And if somebody were to say, "Well, Matt, but what if she doesn't do learning targets?" Well, here's the thing. If I were to do a scheduled observation and rate her 23 indicators, do you think she'd have her learning targets up on that day? She'd have her learning targets up on that day. So the fact that she did it on that day, that I came in out of compliance around a 23 indicator rubric, that is not as rich and meaty as the conversation I get to have with her, when she admits I haven't posted them in a while. And I get to say, "Why?"

Matt Renwick:

Yeah, you have established trust and relationships. And you're clear about what you're working on. And yeah, no, that's powerful. The clear distinction between the traditional approach and you're more learning-centered structure, what skills did you need to development, Matt, in order to make this process successful?

Matt Cormier:

There's so many. I laugh because I am just struggling every day in this and it feels great. It's the best part of my day is to engage in this struggle, which is writing a good reflection letter. At first, when I thought about, I have to see if there's alignment between beliefs, actions, and research, I thought, how on earth am I going to do the research? I spend most of my evenings watching woodworking videos. I don't just peruse educational publications or read articles for fun. I don't do that.

Matt Renwick:

I was going to ask, when do you read the research? But you mentioned the Marshall Memo was one way you can kind of stay on top of current studies.

Matt Cormier:

Yeah, that was probably one of the biggest benefits, was somebody who was saying, "Get access to the Marshall Memo." That's an incredible resource because you just, you know you want to give somebody feedback about shifting of the cognitive load or you know you want to give somebody some feedback about their feedback. And you can only quote John Hattie's effect size on feedback so many times. You're like, "Somebody give me an article that quoted John Hattie. There we go." And so the Marshall Memo has been incredible. And then, now the gifts that I've received. My boss gave me a gift of access to Jenn David-Lang's summaries of books. That was a great gift.

Matt Cormier:

The other thing that I would say that I really benefited from is every time my boss walks into the building, I look and I say, "Hey, no chitchat. Let's get in classrooms." And then we go into a classroom and she helps me write that letter of reflection. And that has been one of the best gifts because to have two people writing a letter of reflection and me getting to benefit from when she looks for articles. Now I've got that article in my repository that I can pick. And actually she's doing that for a lot of people. So that was the hardest part was to write a really good letter of reflection and find some good research for folks.

Matt Cormier:

And then I came across this idea that my school district had put out these look-fors for when teaching moves were effective. And each of the 23 indicators, they've got quite a few bullets of look-fors underneath those. And I just thought there's some language. I don't know that I have to... When I write about the teacher moves that I noticed, and I want to write something that feels like it's worth people's time of reading and it really kind of matches what we want to say in an educational world and a professional world, well, there it is. I was able to say, "When you're adapting, okay, let me look at the look-fors. I'm seeing those things. Why don't I just pull that right in to my document of feedback?" And that's been a nice way to marry the old process of rating 23 indicators with this new process of saying these are the teacher moves that I noticed and using some of that language.

Matt Renwick:

It gives you the language to make it evidence-based and it's aligned and it takes a little bit of the thinking work and try to be creative, which I struggle with sometimes. What do I want to say exactly here? And just having those terms up is helpful. So I assume you would never go back to your former model.

Matt Cormier:

No.

Matt Renwick:

No. But if someone is thinking about, like me, truly kind of marrying authentic feedback and growth with an evaluation system, what would be some first steps in getting started in the process that you would recommend?

Matt Cormier:

I think I would ask you to reflect on this question that I was challenged with. So this, everything I'm talking about came from one of the most amazing intellects I've met in recent years, Ms. Sam Bennett, and that's who challenged me to think differently about this work. And she challenged me with this question. I would ask everybody to think it through as well. "Do you think that your current process is getting you the results and getting teachers the results they want?" And I actually, honestly, I answered back very quickly. I said, "Yes, it is. Because when I rate teacher ineffective or partially effective, the next time I go in, they have absolutely made a change."

Matt Cormier:

But then, the question I think, came up was "Well, what happens if you go in the next time or the time after?" And I thought, no, it's compliance. Right? The current system I have is about compliance and it doesn't feel good when I hear teachers say to me is they're nervous. Even the very best of them who say, "You can come in anytime you want, Matt." Because we've all heard that. "Come in anytime you want. I don't want to change a thing." The fact is when I walk in, I notice a change either in the voice or just in some of the moves. If I've got a computer with me, there's a change.

Matt Cormier:

And so I recognize that the old system, wasn't what I wanted. I didn't want a compliance-based system. I didn't want to worry in November if I had gone through all the pieces the district required me to do or again in April. And how many of us have written evaluations on Saturday nights in April? I didn't want to do that anymore. I didn't want to worry about compliance. I'd worry about authentic growth, something that the teacher wanted. And so that's what I would say to everybody first to get started, ask that question of yourself. Are you getting what you want? Are your teachers getting what you want? Because if you're not, then that is the definition of insanity.

Matt Renwick:

Yeah.

Matt Cormier:

You have to think about something different. And my guess is your school district, like my school district probably offers some flexibility around how you do that.

Matt Renwick:

Yeah. And especially this year with observing Zooms and all kind of creative ways to get in the classroom. Well, this is very helpful, Matt. Remind me, which district are you out of? You're in Colorado.

Matt Cormier:

That's right. Best district in Colorado. I'm in Jefferson County, Jeffco Schools, which is on the west side of Denver. We're a good sized school district, over 80,000 kids. And I'm super proud of this district. I've been here 20 years. No, 19 years. 19 years. But I think it's forward thinking, forward looking and definitely been given some grace around thinking through the different process here.

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What world are we preparing our students for? The future is difficult to predict, yet we are confident that a capacity for lifelong learning, including a willingness to take risks and make mistakes, will be essential.

One approach to developing fearless learners is described in The Genius Hour Guidebook: Fostering Passion, Wonder, and Inquiry in the Classroom by Denise Krebs and Gallit Zvi. Both classroom teachers, Denise and Gallit share their experience in supporting students’ ideas and independence, including:

the importance of first building trust and community,

how Genius Hour can foster critical thinking, and

favorite picture books for inspiring readers and learners.

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Full Transcript

Matt Renwick:

Welcome Gallit and Denise, thank you for talking with me today. You are both practicing teachers, correct?

Gallit Zvi:

Yeah. Well, I'm on maternity leave right now, but until I had my baby, I was.

Matt Renwick:

Congratulations.

Gallit Zvi:

Thanks.

Matt Renwick:

And where are you specifically located?

Gallit Zvi:

So I am in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada. So a suburb of Vancouver. Wonderful school district up here in BC.

Denise Krebs:

And right now I'm located in Bahrain teaching in a bilingual school, Arabic and English speaking school.

Matt Renwick:

And just with your classroom work, the first edition of your book, The Genius Hour Guidebook was born out of your work in the classroom, as well as networking with other educators online. And I think this was how I came across the first version of your book on Twitter. And at that same time, my wife was teaching second grade and she had a few students with some significant needs, especially around behavior. I suggested The Genius Hour Guidebook and its apprentice for her at the end of the school day, as part of her action research project. She implemented it and the results were impressive. For one student, their behaviors were reduced by 70%, seven, zero since implementing Genius Hour.

Matt Renwick:

And when she asked kids what made the difference, they noted that they just wanted to think at the end of the day. Your second edition of the book is out now and I wanted to make other educators aware of the power of Genius Hour in the classroom. And so with that, there's certainly more to it than just wanting to tinker, but what is Genius Hour and why should teachers incorporate it into their classrooms?

Denise Krebs:

Yeah, I'll go. It is tinkering as part of it, but it's a time in the school week when students are given autonomy, they're empowered to do their own learning. They get to choose what they want to learn at the time when teachers get out of the way and let them learn purposefully. That's why those second graders felt empowered. They didn't want to misbehave because they were entrusted to wonder, to learn, to create, to do research, to take action, to produce things they can spend time mastering. They choose the learning adventure. So, we think they become fearless learners. They make learning visible then by sharing their projects or what they've been doing and the process. So a lot of times with a larger global audience or just at their school level or with people. It's hard to just put it in a few words, but Gallit, do you want to add anything?

Matt Renwick:

That's good.

Gallit Zvi:

I think the short version of it for me always is it's passion-based and inquiry-based learning smushed together.

Matt Renwick:

And you mentioned too, trust. That you're trusting the kids to use this time for their own passions and interests. And I believe at some point it was mentioned Genius Hour should be proceeded with building community and relationships. And how did teachers know when kids are ready for self-directed learning?

Gallit Zvi:

Good question. So, we talk about that early in the book where we talk about how for us, we don't start a Genius Hour project with a new class until we've spent some time building community in the classroom. And so how do when you build that community? I guess it's just a feeling you have, it's hard to say that X, Y, and Z has to happen before for you go, but for me, if I have a new class of students, I generally spend the first few months working on building community. So having classroom meetings, going outside and doing leadership challenges, playing games together, just spending that time, getting to know each other and building that trust before we say, "Hey, we want you to do something that can be a little bit risky, to take the chance and work on a project and share the obstacles you're facing with the rest of the class."

Gallit Zvi:

That's some vulnerable work that they're taking on. And so we want them to have that sense of community first. So I thought about this before. I don't know that this happens and then you know you've built it. It's more of that feeling you get where you know that there's some trust here, the kids are getting along well, there's a sense of community. And so for me, our school year goes September to June. So generally I would spend September, October, November, and then not really bothered starting in December because we're only there for half the month. So usually a Genius Hour, we would start when we come back in January after winter break.

Gallit Zvi:

But that being said, I've also had the pleasure of teaching the same students for two or three years in a row. And so if I have the same group of kids or mostly the same group of kids, we usually start way earlier then, because they already know what it's all about and they're eager to start. They don't want to wait until term two. They're ready to go. But I guess you as a teacher, every class is going to be different. And so you get that feeling with your kids when you know that.

Matt Renwick:

You can tell when the kids are already by that level of trust between each other and among each other too, because you're asking them to make mistakes and try new things.

Gallit Zvi:

Yeah.

Matt Renwick:

I like this quote you included in the book, it's from Alan November, from his book that I've also read and enjoyed, Who Owns the Learning. He said, "If we teach one skill to prepare our students to survive in a web based world, it should be that of critical thinking and the analysis of online information." Survive is a strong word. And I would agree with that verb choice. How does Genius Hour strengthen critical thinking with students?

Denise Krebs:

Yeah. We know these last few years in America, especially navigating online information, misinformation, disinformation, it is so critical. It is a matter of survival, isn't it? We have people who are believing conspiracy theories and going doing crazy things. So critical thinking is a key to healthy living and healthy choices to make needed changes in the world. We have to have critical thinkers. And of course, Genius Hour is no panacea for that, but it is a step. It's one step in a process of students learning to trust themselves, to solve their own learning dilemmas, to make good choices and have a mentor facilitator teacher with them as they do it. So, yeah, it can happen and talking about that quote was about online, but, but yeah we have to teach critical thinking.

Matt Renwick:

And speaking of online information or any information, I love that you devoted an entire chapter to picture books, then inspire kids to engage in Genius Hour. This is a literacy leadership site, any titles in particular that you would highly recommend for any classroom K-12

Gallit Zvi:

Yeah. We love picture books there. They're our favorite. We love them so much. So in the book we talk about 16 different titles. There's way more of the course that you could use for Genius Hour. And so I was thinking about that, like which one would be the one go-to one and it's so hard to pick because there's so many wonderful picture books out there. And I totally believe in using picture books all the way up to any grade level when I taught education students at university, we use picture books there too. So, definitely encourage the use of picture books for all grades. I think the one I've used the most is called, The Most Magnificent Thing with a little girl that is working on her own project, trying to create the most magnificent thing. So she's is a little maker and she gets quite in the book when things don't go right.

Gallit Zvi:

And this little project falls apart. And so that's the one I've probably used the most in class to teach persistence and I'm sticking to it. She gets quite frustrated, but she goes for a walk and takes a break, takes a breather from her project and then comes back at it with fresh eyes. And so we have a good conversation with the kids around that book because a lot of them do get frustrated. They've chosen a topic or an inquiry question and they go at it, and then part way through, they're like, "No, I want to quit. This is stupid. It's not working. I can't do it." And so just going back to those character traits that we learned from the picture books and talking about what that little girl did in The Most Magnificent Things. So that for me as a personal favorite, I really like that one. But goodness, there's so many. Rosie Revere, Engineer, Anything by Peter Reynolds. There's so many good choices.

Denise Krebs:

Yeah. My favorites are The Dot and The Word Collector by Peter H. Reynolds.

Matt Renwick:

I think I brought several of those home with my own kids based on that list, I was at the public library and checking out those books and just made them available to read on their own and get some inspiration. So it's a very helpful curated list. Thinking broader with a crowded curriculum and even greater constraints with the pandemic, how can leaders convince or persuade teachers at least to incorporate Genius Hour as part of their day?

Denise Krebs:

I love the way you worded that question actually, because I feel like teachers, if they know about it and want to do it, they just want permission. So if a leader is willing to let them try, then I think they're going to jump all over that. But you're right that curriculum is crazy. We went from... I only had seven periods of English in fifth grade. We went down to two in the pandemic. So, how do you even begin to teach? We're not teaching the curriculum really, anyway? We can't make even justice of it, but I did do Genius Hour last spring. And it was just such a fresh air for the learning environment. The kids were so happy and it was just out of the routine and they were just at home working, so they had all their supplies handy and they made the messes at home. It was easier for me too, that they did art and cooked and learned music and languages and played and sang. And it was just beautiful.

Denise Krebs:

And not only that, they were doing English curriculum, because we're a bilingual school. These are second language learners. So they were defending their proposals, they were doing these beautiful presentations on Flipgrid and giving good feedback to each other. So much English language going on as well. And I think if the leaders are willing to let them do it, it is a beautiful, healthy way to spend some of this pandemic curriculum. And we can still find... We're always finding curriculum ties. It is curriculum. Giving them permission to learn on their own.

Matt Renwick:

You bring up a good point that you don't have to separate Genius Hour from the rest of it. It can be a part of it and really an independent opportunity to apply those skills. And you list quite a few standards in the book and how this applies really in any subject area. What is one thing you would recommend to a teacher new to Genius Hour and wanting to give it a try and experience initial success?

Gallit Zvi:

My gut reaction is to say, you just do it. That's the one thing. Just don't be scared and just give it a try. You can reflect afterwards as we do on any lesson or unit that we teach. Reflect afterwards and say, "Okay, what could I do to make it better next year or next term?" But give it a go. Don't be afraid, it's my first reaction. And then the second one would be, okay, now slow down and take your time with it. Really introduce it properly, read the picture books, watch the inspiring videos, do your own Genius Hour project and share it with the kids, and then let them go and then just have fun and see where they end up and you'll learn along the way. And then at the end reflect and just figure out, okay, what can we do differently next year to make it better?

Gallit Zvi:

I know the first Genius Hour project we did in our classes, that was quite a few years ago, Denise. I don't remember the year, but it was... I don't know. It was a long time ago.

Denise Krebs:

10 years ago.

Gallit Zvi:

No, 10 years ago. Yeah. And the way I do it now is a little bit differently than the way I did it then. It's like, you learn as you go each time and make little tweaks and changes and improvements to make it better suit yourself and your current group of kids too. It's different depending on your class. But yeah, I guess number one tip, just do it, just go for it, have fun, jump in, don't be scared, and part B to that is now that you've just jumped in, slow down a bit and take the time to properly introduce it. You don't need to jump right to doing projects. Get excited first, get inspired, brainstorm, do all those steps first that we talk about in the book.

Matt Renwick:

And the idea of the teacher doing a Genius Hour project in front of the kids and the kids seeing the teacher excited about a personal project, it has to be impactful for the kids, right? Well, thank you, Gallit and Denise, the book is The Genius Hour Guidebook, it's in its second edition, which always means a lot of teachers got their hands on the first edition. And so there's a lot. I've read both editions, there are more information in this current version and I would highly recommend it for any teacher, any grade level. So thank you for putting this out in the world and good luck with you and the rest of the school year.

Denise Krebs:

Thank you, Matt.

Gallit Zvi:

Thank you, Matt.

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Walkthrough forms and rubrics are tools we are sometimes pressed to use as leaders. Yet these tools do not facilitate teacher growth alone. It is the conversation between professionals, supported by classroom evidence, that actually leads to improvement.

Justin Baeder, author of Now We’re Talking: 21 Days to High-Performance Instructional Leadership, gives leaders a clear pathway toward our shared goals. I recently had a conversation with Justin on the subject, including:

why dialogue is more effective as feedback than only leaving notes,

the many benefits we see when we make classroom visits a habit, and

why it is essential that faculty are clear on effective practices.

If trying to faciltiate professional growth has felt out of reach, check out Now We’re Talking. It is a solid approach to supporting teachers in the classroom.

Take care,

Matt

P.S. Share this post on Twitter and include my handle in the tweet (@ReadByExample) to enter a giveaway for a free copy of Justin’s book!

Recommended Reading and Resources

Justin also runs The Principal Center, a website with many resources for leaders to explore for their school.

Student engagement is one area of instruction that garners a lot of attention. I along with other educators wrote about engagement for Education Week.

One of my favorite learning experiences is when students help organize the classroom library. Check out my brief video presentation (along with three other educators) for Choice Literacy on empowering choice.

I discovered this interesting leadership profile about President Biden from last year (The Daily Beast). Biden is known for having both high expectations and a high tolerance for mistake making, which has led to strong loyalty from his staff.

I have an upcoming course on Literacy Walks for Choice Literacy. Full subscribers - stay tuned for further details.

Full Transcript

Matt Renwick (00:04):

Welcome to the podcast. We're happy to have you here and be here. I've had the pleasure of working with you through our local educational organization on instructional leadership. It's been very informative for me to watch you lead groups and just learn a little bit more about what principals need and how we can use, I wouldn't say simple, but I would say very practical strategies to be just more effective and making me think about ways to rethink my days. So a lot of this work is based on your book, Now We're Talking: 21 Days to High Performance Instructional Leadership, but you also have The Principal Center and you do a lot of work out of there. And you work with many principals from what I understand, can you just say more about The Principal Center? What it's about? What do you do and how do you help leaders?

Justin Baeder (00:55):

Absolutely. So at The Principal Center, it's our mission to build capacity for instructional leadership and a big part of that has always been around helping school leaders regularly get into classrooms because I believe that that's where the true work is being done. Right. You know, if we are to be instructional leaders, it only makes sense that we would spend a significant amount of time in classrooms where the instruction, where the learning is taking place. So that's a big part of what we do. And through all of our programs through the book, as you mentioned, it all comes down to those key interactions between instructional leaders and the teachers that work with.

Matt Renwick (01:34):

In the title of your book as it's suggested, professional growth occurs through conversation around practice. So how do frequent visits to classrooms help these discussions?

Justin Baeder (01:50):

Yeah, that's a great framing there that professional growth occurs through conversation because you know, it makes sense. We nod our heads and kind of agree with that, but a lot of instructional leadership really isn't based on that assumption, a lot of what's out there of what's being done in the name of improving teaching and learning is much more along the lines of directive feedback, or kind of drive-by feedback or, you know, feedback that's left on the doorstep or left on a sticky note or left on a form rather than a true conversation. So I think to have a true conversation adds a human dimension that really gets at how we change, how we make decisions as humans. So I don't want to understate the importance of the conversation aspect there, because it is something that often we overlook, we think, "Well, I'm the principal, of course, they'll listen to me."

Justin Baeder (02:42):

It can be a one-way conversation, but really, if we want people to truly be open to change, we have to be open to listening as well, and it does have to be a conversation. So to your question about how does our practice of getting into classrooms more contribute to that? I think a lot of it comes down to context, right. As a principal, you're required to be in classrooms X number of times a year, and X is usually a pretty small number, right? The one or two formal observations. And I have to ask Matt, when you were a teacher, did you ever get visited much more than that, or was it pretty minimal when you were a teacher?

Matt Renwick (03:22):

It was pretty minimal and, to be fair to my leaders, that was just the standard practice. I mean, I think walkthroughs are just coming into prominence. But it was once, maybe twice a year. Yeah.

Justin Baeder (03:35):

It's my experience as well. And I think that's the experience of almost everyone that you just don't see your principal or assistant principal who evaluates you all that often. And of course that's because they're busy, right. There are a million other things to do. There are fires to put out, metaphorically speaking, and sometimes literally, and there's just so much else that instructional leadership is always one of those important but not urgent kinds of things. But I think when it's always not urgent, we lose the frequency that makes it not really true that we can have quality over quantity. You know what I mean? There is this idea that like, "Oh, if you spend quality time with your kids, you know, it's not about the quantity." Well, I mean, to a certain extent, maybe quality matters more than quantity, but you can't really have quality without quantity.

Justin Baeder (04:24):

You know, if I'm going to spend time with my kids, I want it to be frequently, right. I want it to be all the time, not just a little bit here and there, but very high quality. I'd much rather have a lower stakes, more frequent opportunity to get into classrooms than just that big once a year everybody's prepared for it, we've protected against any interruptions. I would rather run the risk of being interrupted or getting sidetracked or not seeing something that's all that interesting by coming more often and having more chances because it's in that frequency that you get the context that you need to really understand what you're seeing to be able to put it all in perspective rather than just be kind of a stranger to the classroom. Just like, I don't want to be a stranger to my kids and say, "Hey, I'm, I'm here for some quality time." We really got to invest that time in the relationship and in building the awareness of what's going on in every classroom, what's going on with our curriculum, knowing our students and what they're working on as learners. So I think all that context is hugely relevant for the feedback that we provide to teachers in those conversations.

Matt Renwick (05:29):

That's a good point you make is, I'd rather be interrupted while I'm in classrooms and at least I'm making the time, prioritizing that. And if I have to be pulled away, so be it, but at least I'm making that attempt. And as you mentioned, you value efficiencies of getting in there frequently, as well as the effectiveness. They seem to work hand in hand, the more times we're in there, the more context we receive. How did you arrive on three visits per day?

Justin Baeder (06:01):

Yeah, I think three a day just seemed to be the sweet spot for me. It's not impossible to keep it in your head, like you can kind of tell if you've done three visits a day. It's enough that you have to really strive for it. It's not going to happen that easily. You have to really push yourself to get into classrooms three times a day, but it also gets you around to each person on a pretty regular basis if you have about 30 teachers, I think 30 is a typical kind of average. Some people have 45 teachers and some people may only have 15 that they supervise. But if you think about an average number of teachers that a given administrator supervises, you can get around to everyone roughly every two weeks, if you visit three people a day. Sothat to me is what makes it the sweet spot andgoing two weeks without seeing somebody it's not too much and it's not too little. They're not sick of you if you've dropped by every two weeks, but you also are not a stranger to the classroom.

Matt Renwick (06:56):

That's exactly, I have 30, around 30 in my school. And especially during the pandemic I've noticed when I have not been there as much because of just the situation, I feel a little like I'm missing out on what what's happening. We don't have an instructional pulse as they call it. So in order to have these conversations be productive, we were talking before about school-wide expectations and having clearly spelled out practices or strategies, a framework to be able to have conversations around. So what strategies do you find effective? Not just for clarity, I think is important, but also for commitment of everyone to say, "Yeah, I, I hear what you're saying but also that I agree with that practice and I'm going to try it."

Justin Baeder (07:44):

Yeah, I think establishing a common vocabulary really is the first step. And sometimes we think we have a common vocabulary, but what we really have is common buzzwords or common terms without common definitions. I think the biggest opportunity in most schools is to simply get more familiar with the existing evaluation language. You know, it's easy to be reminded to pull out the evaluation rubric at the beginning of the year for goal setting and at the end of the year for writing the final evaluation. But if that's the only chance we have to use that language as our vocabulary, when we're talking about practice, it's just not going to be that familiar to us as leaders. And certainly not to teachers. You know, if they're only using this language for a two hour window every year, then it's just not going to reach that level of a shared vocabulary, a shared understanding.

Justin Baeder (08:39):

So I encourage people to look at their existing evaluation criteria. If you have a rubric like Charlotte Danielson's very high quality rubric that describes very clear criteria, you know, very clear areas, it's broken into domains and components. Those are all broken out very, very neatly. And then there are levels of performance for each component. And when we use that language on a frequent basis, we look at that rubric and we say, "Okay, I see this word is in this column to describe this practice," we start to sharpen our vision and get on the same page in a conversation so that we're not just using a common buzzword. We're not just saying, well, we both use the term differentiate. So we know what that means. We're using language in a more precise and leveled way because we're drawing from that common document that serves as our shared framework.

Justin Baeder (09:31):

And then I think we can also establish that kind of language that's unique to our school. You know, there are certainly things in every school that distinguish your school from other schools that make it a unique place. And being able to describe that in specific terms, if you think in terms of that Danielson framework format, if you can break an expectation into components and then describe levels of performance for those components, you're going to be in great shape and you're not going to be limited to just the buzzwords. And I think that's the key thing is to really be specific about what you mean. And I think the commitment comes just from having input, having a voice in developing those expectations.

Matt Renwick (10:11):

So you can take some of that language and make it your own thing, is what you're saying, as long as it's aligned with how we're being evaluated, but also really how it's related to success for kids as well. But you can parse out that language too, to make it work within the identity of your own school. So it's not just lockstep with an evaluation tool.

Justin Baeder (10:32):

Yeah. And I think people should feel free to add to it, not to say that we have different standards here, but we have unique things that we care about here that are more directly applicable to what our teachers are teaching. You know, like one thing to keep in mind about Danielson and other evaluation frameworks is that they're designed to cover everything for every subject, every grade, K through 12. And that means that they're easier for us to use as administrators, but they're not very specific as to what teachers are doing. So if you have a math department or if you have a kindergarten team, they are going to be doing things in particular ways that are worth getting on the same page about that are worth establishing common expectations for, but it's not the level of detail that you're gonna find in an existing rubric, like the Danielson framework. So being able to develop that in-house is just an incredible professional development exercise. And then you have an asset that you can use for improvement. It's a great tool to have developed internally.

Matt Renwick (11:27):

And that's where the ownership comes in because you're absolutely creating an agreement around those kind of terms, but on your terms. In Your book, you note this too and I could definitely relate. You said as expertise grows and you've addressed some of that low-hanging fruit right away, they're more easy wins, leaders sometimes feel this sense of urgency to be critical. And that's not always the best approach. How do you resist that stance in what should we do instead?

Justin Baeder (12:00):

Yeah. Great question. So this is a hill that we're all going to encounter in our climb to get into classrooms more, you know, the first opportunity is that low-hanging fruit, right? Like if maybe you're new to a building and your predecessor did not get into classrooms very much at all. Well, you start getting into classrooms, you're going to see some opportunities for quick wins that have been missed for years, and you're gonna be able to provide feedback that makes a big difference right away. And that's going to feel great. You're going to feel like a true instructional leader. Your teachers are going to be hopefully pretty happy about it. Maybe you've had to shake some things up a little bit, and people have gotten the message that they're not just going to be totally ignored and left alone, but after you've taken advantage of those quick wins, you're in a slightly difficult position because it's like, what do you do next?

Justin Baeder (12:47):

Do I continue to just kind of ratchet up the pressure? You know, if the next opportunities are a little harder one, if it's not going to be quite so easy to make those improvements, because we already solved the big problems we already took advantage of the easy opportunities. Do we just get more critical? And I think especially for experienced teachers, it can be really hard to find something that would constitute a big improvement. You know, we can make a little suggestion. "Hey, have you thought about doing this instead of that," but often the teacher has thought about doing this instead of that, they're an experienced professional. They've been down this road before. They've tried a lot of the things that are going to occur to us to try, and it can start to feel a little bit like we're just trying to find fault.

Justin Baeder (13:32):

And I think that's especially true when we don't have expertise in or experience in the same grade level or same subject area as the teachers we're working with. They can feel like our well-intended efforts to lead continuous improvement are just an unending kind of ratcheting up of the criticism. So I think that's a challenge that could on the one hand encourage us to kind of back off and give up. But I think it's an opportunity to get more curious and to say, "You know, the problem is not that teachers need to worry about smaller and smaller things and I needed to be more and more critical. The challenge for me now as an instructional leader is that I need to get more curious and I need to be willing to go deeper into our curriculum, deeper into the pedagogy of subjects that I've never taught." So that my feedback that I have is going to be based on a deeper understanding than I had before. It's not that we need to be more critical; it's that we need to go deeper to really understand the kinds of decisions teachers are making once they've solved those kinds of low-hanging fruit issues.

Matt Renwick (14:38):

I was just in a first grade classroom. I don't know if it was first grade; it was a primary grade that they were doing some letter writing and they had scaffolded parts of the letter. And I had never taught primary. It was intermediate. And so maybe in the past, I would've said, "That's too much scaffolding," or not enough. And I just instead asked, "How do you decide how much scaffolding, how many sentence stems do you decide?" How do you decide that? And she went into just a very great explanation of, we've been out for a month and a half, and I felt like I've had to increase my scaffolding so kids can be successful right away. She was able to explain that and explain her thinking, but maybe she'll walk away and say, "You know, maybe the kids are ready sooner." I don't know. But I liked that suggestion of being curious. I also liked the suggestion in your book of clustering your classroom visits, at least in the beginning around a grade level or department. And you mentioned before creating context, and how does that work when you're in the same subject area or age level, and how does that help your visits?

Justin Baeder (15:44):

So a lot of it is context and some of it's just efficiency, right? If you are heading out of the office to go visit classrooms, in most schools, there's some sort of geographic clustering. You might have a first grade wing or a science building. If you're on a large high school campus, you might have a fifth grade hallway, so just geographically, it's easier to go from one room to a room right next door to it. But it also does provide context in the sense that often teachers are teaching the same subject at the same time. So you can see one part of a lesson in one classroom, and then the continuation of that same lesson in a different classroom. And you'll know more about both clips of instruction that you saw, so to speak, because you were in that other classroom, you can see an entire lesson. Sometimes it would work.

Justin Baeder (16:32):

It doesn't always work out this way, but sometimes it works out that you spend 45 minutes visiting three classrooms, you see an entire lesson, you just see a different part of it taught by three different people. And that gives you, you know, it saves you the difficulty of being in the dark about where this was going, or what happened before, earlier in the lesson. You have three times as much context for the lesson that way. I would say the other thing that it allows is more direct comparison between the approaches of different people, because when you see side-by-side, same curriculum, same age group of kids, same day. It allows you to see more clearly the contrasts between different people. And sometimes your feedback can just be advising the person to do what you just saw there. You don't even have to tell one person that you're getting this from their teammate next door. But it really helps with the specificity of the feedback, because you can see those, you know, those comparisons between classrooms.

Matt Renwick (17:30):

That's kind of had an influence on professional learning communities, for example, when you're then meeting as teams and you're a part of that community, that collaboration versus using their time to have them explain to you what what they did, and you can let me get kind of a continuation. The last question I had is, it's just an ongoing debate of whether informal classroom visits should be evaluative or non-evaluative. I've always tried to approach it myself, as what I write up, my notes are not going into your evaluation. I mean, you could put it in there as an artifact and you walk and teachers have, but-one teacher said, but you can't unsee instruction. Right? And you can't forget about it. I mean, that has to influence your judgment, and she's not wrong. So where are you at, on this issue right now with walkthroughs and where it falls along, the support versus judgment spectrum.

Justin Baeder (18:33):

That's just it, right. That you can't unsee something. Once you know, it, it's going to factor into kind of your holistic judgments. You know, even if it's not a specific criteria that you evaluate someone on, if you develop a concern or if you see something really great, you're going to remember it, it's going to affect the way that you pay attention. It's going to affect what you notice and how thoroughly you document. So I advise administrators to never say that their visits are non-evaluative. Like, never say that anything is not evaluative because truly nothing really is not evaluative, if you're aware of some facts are going to factor in. But what we don't want is for everything to feel high stakes, right? We don't want every single walkthrough to feel like the teacher is on trial. And part of the whole point of getting into classrooms more frequently is to avoid this problem of those one or two formal observations, being "it" right? Feeling like this is a high stakes opportunity. This is my one chance to show that I'm competent for the administrator. This is my one chance to give the teachers any useful feedback. Like the frequency is inversely proportional to the stakes, right? The more we're there, the lower the stakes. The less we're there, the higher the stakes of each individual visit. So I feel like those go together.

Matt Renwick (19:48):

That's a good point too. You're going to see a lot of good things too. And those could be also a part of someone's portfolio of artifacts, if that's something that you have to collect. And so it does go both ways, but I do like that point too, just the more you're in there. And I have noticed that too, people are just used to me coming in and it really is lower the stakes when I'm actually coming in with the formal observation. It's just, "Oh, it's Matt again." No more different. It's just another day. And he's been in here how many times? So the book is Now We're Talking: 21 Days to High-Performance Instructional Leadership. I've been applying these ideas myself working with Justin. I have found them very helpful. And where do you find The Principal Center resource? And you have a lot of nice resources on that site.

Justin Baeder (20:40):

Yeah. We have a lot of free resources. If you just go to theprincipalcenter.com, and down at the bottom, one in particular that I think would be for your listeners is the note cards, just for keeping track of classroom visits. And we have software and everybody's got software they use for this, but I found that a lot of people really liked just having a physical note card. So we have a note cards template that you'll see there, at theprincipalcenter.com/notecards, where you make a note card for each teacher and you take three of those note cards every day, you visit those three teachers, write down the date and then put those note cards on the bottom of the stack every day, you've got your three teachers to visit and you keep that consistent rotation. However you want to organize them by team or department or whatever. It's a great way to make sure that you don't skip anyone. There are some feedback questions on the back. So highly recommend checking those out.

Matt Renwick (21:27):

And the principals in our group have been using those. And they've said that same thing, I feel like I'm in the classrooms more and they liked that quick opportunity for feedback. Really it's kind of an accountability system just to make sure I'm getting in classrooms. Well, thanksJustin. This was great. Thanks for being here.

Justin Baeder (21:47):

Well, thanks, Matt. It's been a pleasure.

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Every teacher knows these students: the reluctant reader, the class clown, the resistant writer. Cris Tovani, author of Why Do I have to Read This? Literacy Stategies to Engage Our Most Reluctant Students, views these masks that kids wear as entry points into understanding who they are and then responding to their needs.

In my conversation with Cris, we talk about:

developing a partnership approach to teaching and learning with our students,

planning literacy instruction long term so we can anticipate challenges, and

how our own interests and questions can be models for our students’ inquiries.

Related Resources:

Purchase This Book

Transcript + Audio

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Stenhouse Podcast with Cris and Samantha Bennett, instructional coach

Transcript of Conversation

Matt Renwick (00:04):

Welcome Chris to the podcast.

Matt Renwick (00:10):

I was just sharing my introduction to your work. This is 20, almost over 20 years ago. Now your first book, I Read It, But I Don't Get It. I was a newly minted fifth and sixth grade teacher. And I realized I had to teach readers and not just reading as a subject area. And I wasn't sure what to do. So I found your book and read it a couple of times. I had so many post-its in there, kind of taking it to heart, what you recommend. And the text was much thicker with all the post-it notes inside of it after I'd read it a couple of times. I've enjoyed every one of your books since then. Your newest one is Why Do I Have to Read This? Literacy Strategies to Engage Our Most Reluctant Students. So tell me if you can, tell us what prompted you to write this book?

Cris Tovani (01:02):

Well, thank you for reading my book. I do appreciate that and for your time. You know, I guess I think for me, there was always, there's always been kids that I just struggled to hook and I really wanted to dig into to those kids to figure out what, you know, how do I get, how do I get those students engaged? And we were just talking about my instructional coach and friend Sam Bennett, and I think when she would come visit, that was one of the things that she would always ask me, you know, who did you get smarter about today and what did you learn about so-and-so? And that so-and-so was usually a kid who was disengaged. And so it became a sort of curiosity for me to think about, okay, what's that? What does that student need to, you know, just to dig into the text, to dig into writing and discussing them, just really participating in school.

Matt Renwick (01:59):

You mentioned Sam in your Stenhouse podcast and she noted that it took her four years or around 40 classroom visits before she could actually ask you a question that you cared about, or make a point that changed how you. What happened in those first four years? Was it around building relationships and professional trust?

Cris Tovani (02:20):

Well, if you don't know Sam, she's a little hyperbolic and I don't think it was four years. We always had a good relationship. We always laugh and had fun. I think what I started to really let her coach me was when she started sharing questions, she was truly curious about, and it became more a partnership than somebody facilitating people running through my classroom. And I think that's when it became fun because I was taking all these risks, letting visitors observe. Until she started taking risks, sharing what she did, what she wanted to get smarter about it, that's when things started clicking.

Matt Renwick (03:00):

So when she was sharing her own inquiries with you, it became more of a level playing field, so to speak.

Cris Tovani (03:08):

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, we laughed because I introduced her the first few times when she started facilitating visitors for me as my coach. What I was really trying to do was give her credibility to these kinds of crusty high school teachers that had been sent there to be fixed by their principal. I didn't really intend for her to be my coach, but she took that to heart. And so initially it was like, "Wait, what are you doing? What, what are you telling me? Is this for, what are you asking me this for?" We sort of had to redefine our roles and she, she just didn't give up on me either. That was the other piece too. I think she just kept coming back and coming back with questions. And finally there was some things that I started to care about. I saw how much she could really lend them on instruction.

Matt Renwick (03:55):

Yeah. That story with her pushing you to rethink that one class and honorable of you two to open up like that. So that, I think I just felt very affirming when I read that. And I think anyone can read this book and just feel like I can do that and nd it's okay to make mistakes. Speaking of trust, um, you kind of use the metaphor of masks, which I'm sure you, weren't thinking about when you wrote this to our current reality. The mask, more of a metaphor of just the personas and personalities that kids wear when they come into your classroom. The mask of apathy and anger, for example. But they all seem to relate to relationships and trust that that we have with our kids, especially in the beginning of the year. What makes a teacher trustworthy to help pull off the masks with kids?

Cris Tovani (04:53):

You know, it was weird. There was that, that we wrote about masks, because we turned the final draft in way before COVID. I think for me, one of my core beliefs is that students would, if they could. That nobody wants to look like a loser or fail. And so when I would see kids coming in angry or fooling around. I just didn't want to label them as that way all the time, because I had seen them in different contexts. I had seen them around the school or on the football field, and they didn't have that same mask on. And so when they would come into class with that mask on, it was just this kind of fun challenge, really, to figure out, "Okay, what is this kid going to need to take this mask off and be serious like he is when hewhen he's on the field with his football team, or when he's in the cafeteria talking to his buddies?" How can I, you know, get him to really be vulnerable too and what his needs are or how he'd like to get smarter?

Matt Renwick (06:03):

Hmm. I'm thinking about Mauricio is one example from your book in the beginning. All these kids were trying to develop their identities at the secondary level and who they are while trying to fit in and avoid looking dumb. What you talk about there, it seems like entry points with these kids, not as necessarily bad things, they bring a different mask to your classroom, but as ways to engage with their level. So Mauricio did not want to finish his writing, and he was done. But you presented that authentic audience to him and that engaged him to write a better piece through the writing process. Can you say more about that?

Cris Tovani (06:47):

Sure. Yeah. Mauricio was a really great kid, but he really just intended to graduate from high school. Part of it was because he was undocumented and for college really wasn't an option at that point for him. He was just trying to get by with minimal effort. So when I think about myself, like when I'm just trying to get by, or when I'm doing something that I don't like to do, or that's hard for me to do, I've got to have a real reason to dig back into it. I think that having an audience that, that we send you, I send writing out to people, because I think that gives you an urgency to make it better. I don't know, it just seems like if a real person is going to read it, you're going to try better and you're going to revise it. You're going to put some effort into it. The kids all knew I loved them. So, you know, it was like, "Okay, whatever, this is good enough." But for other people, that seemed, an authentic audience, seemed to lend some urgency to kids wanting to redo and revise.

Matt Renwick (07:49):

So then that leads into the heart of the text is developing curriculum that you can anticipate, CYA. It was an interesting approach. You have expectations for kids, right. But sometimes those can be reflected in our curriculum. So how does your approach with curriculum so that we're not, I guess, selling them short, how does your approach to curriculum, CYA, help you keep your expectations high?

Cris Tovani (08:19):

Well, I read when I was writing a book, Sam gave me a little excerpt from, um, Steven Wolk's book, Being Good. He cites two researchers in there, deMarrias and LeCompte's, and their definition of what curriculum was. I didn't really know the curriculum was everything teachers do. I just thought it was, you know, the stuff you had to read or write or view. I didn't realize it could also be the way you arrange the seating in the room or talk to kids. And so it sort of opened my eyes, that curriculum is so much bigger. We were, Sam and I were sitting there doing a little revising, she helped me with the major editing of this book, and she said, "Okay, when you go in to do demo lessons, how do you prepare for these kids that you've never seen before?"

Cris Tovani (09:11):

Like, like how do you plan for that? And I just looked at her and I said, "Well, I gotta cover my ass." We'd start laughing, at CYA. So we started to take that Curriculum You Anticipate for mixed audiences. I know it was of gotten to like a PG rating now on your podcast. But to think about, if you're not one for longterm planning, which I wasn't, I didn't want to waste my time planning for kids. I didn't know yet, which was a big mistake because once kids come to the class, you hit the ground running. I realized that if I did a little bit of long-term planning, it was going to give me more time, in class doing individualized teaching or instruction because I wasn't trying to coax a kid into doing what I wanted him to do.

Cris Tovani (10:00):

And so, you know, you've taught and you've been a principal. You just start to accept that, you know you're going to have struggling readers. We're going to have at least one, and you know you're going to have somebody who's going to say, "This is stupid. I really learned this." And you know you're going to have somebody who says, 'Why do I have to read this?" And, you know, you're going to have somebody who wants to know, is this good enough, they need a model. So if I started anticipating some of those questions, as I planned units, I would have that text ready for the kid who struggled. I would have a reason to say, "Okay, here's why we're digging into this." I have a case study that, the one I had chosen to use as a model for the class didn't work, I would have another case study I could share with the kids. So he could see a reason. Those kinds of things in the CYA structures helped me with the long-term planning. So during the day when I'm with kids, I can make those tweaks. And those small changes to re-engage kids who have kind of dropped off a little bit.

Matt Renwick (11:06):

And you carry those plans for year after year, as any curriculum, but you adapt them to each group of kids that you get?

Cris Tovani (11:18):

Yeah. And so you thinking about, you know, I'm trying to couch, I'm trying to really cradle all standards in compelling topics.

Matt Renwick (11:30):

The cradling of the standards. I think that for me, that made a lot of sense,

Cris Tovani (11:34):

This is all that equity work we're talking about now, and fairer standards to different populations of kids and just trying to think about, if I can find a really compelling topic, that's going to be timeless. So work from the previous year that I don't necessarily have to change. The fun work would be, you know, opinion articles and updating the text. I am just trying to build onto each year, onto what I've done the year before, but not to a point where you forget what it was like on a first read. When you read the same book over and over again with kids, you just forget what it was like, and then you are not as patient. So I tried to model a couple of those in the book for teachers. So they could see that not every year they were having to throw everything out and start over again, because that is just grueling in terms of planning. And also, I think articulating what you've done between grade level as well. If every year the teachers are doing something different than, than they did a year before, then it's hard for 10th grade teachers to know how to build onto that.

Matt Renwick (12:35):

So you want that articulation through, throughout the grades too. Is there a tool or a template that you liked? That was one thing I was wondering too, is do you use a curriculum mapping tool or do you use more just a Microsoft word document? Where do you keep these plans?

Cris Tovani (12:57):

Well, I have a format and I have it in the book. I think I have it in the book, where I just kind of go through all those six keys. I literally just write them out. And then I have that workshop wheel where the work time is a major part of the time I'm with kids. And that's where I start thinking about, okay, what are kids going to read, write and talk about during that period? So, I guess I have two tools. I have one to kind of do a long range plan, and then I've got a little daily plan that is very simple that there's some days I don't do it every day. But I don't have to because of that long-term plan in place. I know where I'm going.

Matt Renwick (13:44):

You got two things in place. You've got the unit of study, but you've got the framework of the workshop model that kind of drives your daily instruction. I remember a quote that I appreciated too. Early in your teaching career, you felt like "Everyday it felt like starting over again." That's when you started and I felt the same way teaching too. in my first years. You started to integrate more purpose in your workshop beyond just becoming just better readers and writers, which is not a priority for every kid in our classroom. But looking towards something. You just saw that larger purpose. Workshop connotes making something, right? And so you talk about the makes and the dos in your tasks with them.

Cris Tovani (14:27):

Yeah. You know, I was an elementary school teacher for 10 years before going to high school. The last grade I taught was first grade before I had high school. I had learned a lot and had the privilege to study a little bit with Donald Graves and Donald Murray. And so I brought a lot of that old-school workshop to high school with me. I think my mindset was okay, I'm gonna use workshop to make them into better readers and writers so they can survive their other courses. I thought the strategies as really tools to access content. The problem was, you're right, when you say that that's not enough for a lot of kids. I wasn't giving kids a chance to use those tools to do real work. And I think that's where, planning with long term plans with compelling topics in mind, really gave kids an opportunity to read and write and talk about authentic things that were happening.

Cris Tovani (15:34):

I think it goes down to these reasons, like kids need more than one reason to really read a lot of times. I could get kids to do things just because they like to, but there was always three or four, especially 10th grade girls that would I just annoy, I don't know why. But it wasn't enough for them. But Once there was an audience that they were writing for that hooked those three. Sometimes it was controversial questions that didn't necessarily one right answer that hooked another three kids. Choice of texts with another few kids. So I started thinking about, okay, how can I give kids more reason to read and write? I think then that's when the workshop really started coming alive, they were making things that they saw a purpose in.

Matt Renwick (16:21):

You seem to add more structure to a workshop model in a sense, in terms of your long-term planning. I mean, you were very fluid in your daily instruction, but adding more maybe entry points, I guess, to the unit of study itself. That was what I took away.

Cris Tovani (16:35):

Yeah. I interview people all the time formally and sometimes more informally. I just started realizing how many people just didn't choose to read or like to read. And it didn't matter if you gave them the hottest YA book there was, or the best seller on the New York Times, just because you said it was a good book that wasn't going to be enough. Especially when I would talk to men or young men, they were like, "I want to read for reason, I want to read to be able to do something." And that kind of really hit home with me, that a lot of kids in my intervention classes were ones who just, who didn't read for enjoyment, who didn't read, because somebody said this is a great book. But they would read if it was something that was going to empower them.

Matt Renwick (17:28):

The stories from the book are great. And you kind of walk the reader through every process, from where they started to using these tools to be successful, empowered. This quote from page 67, I highlighted: "Our questions drive how we build our prior knowledge about a topic. Our goal is not to memorize facts, dates, names, or places; it’s to study a real-world problem that can affect how we vote, the health of the economy, and how we respond to an international issue." So you made a good point there too about providing students with background knowledge that, that they genuinely care about. What is your process for collecting this information and knowledge to be able to give them those additional entry points? I know you're active on Twitter, for example, you pull up permission from there. What is your reading diet like?

Cris Tovani (18:20):

I tend to get a lot of, I read a lot of nonfiction. I read a lot of newspapers. I don't read as much fiction and I probably should, because I think I like some of those young men of my classes, I like to read and get smarter about something. I think that that whole background piece: there's a study I read by Hattie and Yates and they talked about how background knowledge is the number one predictor of success. The faster you can assess what kids know, the faster you can build it so they can go deeper. And I thought, Okay, so what would that look like if we were trying to build background knowledge about an issue that you didn't have a lot of information about? So what I write a lot about in the book is Syria.

Cris Tovani (19:10):

I had just kind of heard snippets of the Syrian refugee crisis, and I didn't really know what it was about. But I thought, Okay, I think that would be a really interesting unit to build, and while I'm building that, I can watch how I build my own background knowledge. That will inform how I share with how I can teach kids to build their own. So I think as a teacher, and I learned this from Debbie Miller, an amazing first grade teacher in Colorado, Debbie said, "My job isn't to build background knowledge for these first graders. It's to show them how to build their own background knowledge because that's going to empower them." And so watching what I need to get smarter about an issue or a topic informs them what I want to share with students.

Cris Tovani (20:00):

It's like Syria. I really wasn't even quite sure where on the map it was. I mean, I knew it was in the Middle East and I wanted to know like what the big deal was and why Obama was crying because of the chemical weapons that had been dropped. I started asking all these questions and then those questions led me to nonfiction, but then the questions I had helped me sift and sort what part of that non fiction I read. It was such a big topic that even though I had to study that for two months before I taught the unit, there was so much more I didn't know about it. That then provided that sort of shoulder-to-shoulder collaboration that I could do with the kids. "Here's how I found this out. Maybe you can find your answer to your question, trying the same process." So I think it's like being more collaborative and just modeling those thinking processes for kids.

Matt Renwick (20:54):

Sounds like a similar partnership, relationship between you and your coach.

Cris Tovani (21:00):

Yeah. I mean questions, right? Questions drive, our curiosity drives what we give our time to and what we decide to read and what we decided to skip and what we decide to read more of. I think it's just a lot of it's reigniting that curiosity with high school kids. They're curious, just not necessarily about the topics we want them to be curious about. We have to create that curiosity.

Matt Renwick (21:26):

The concept of engagement has been around a while. But I think this book presents it in a whole new light and just allows the reader, educator to dive deep into your process and kind of walk out of it feeling like they can do it. The book is Why Do I Have to Read This? Literacy Strategies to Engage Your Most Reluctant Students by Cris Tovani. This is your fifth book, correct? And each one - they're all good - but each one gets a little better, a little more personal, a little more real, and funny. Thank you, Cris.

Cris Tovani (22:11):

Thank you for your time today. I appreciate it.

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Before you focus on collective efficacy or school climate, start with trust.

Trust in school is not a simple concept. There are many facets to this construct: benevolent, open, honest, reliable, competent. And for trust to be fostered within an educational community, it needs an intentional effort by the leaders and teachers in the school.

My conversation with Megan Tschannen-Moran, author of Trust Matters: Leadership for Successful Schools (Jossey-Bass, 2014) reveals why trust is so important. She defines it in the context of schools, shares strategies for cultivating trust, and offers suggestions for all educators currently teaching and learning from a distance.

Recommended Resources

Purchase the book

Transcript with audio

Author’s website

Additional publications by Megan and her husband, Bob

Also available on Apple Podcasts (leave a review!)

Transcript

Matt Renwick (00:01):

In this episode of Read by Example podcast, where teachers are leaders and leaders know literacy, I spoke with Dr. Megan Tschannen-Moran, professor of educational leadership at the William & Mary School of Education. A former principal, Megan is also the author of Trust Matters: Leadership for Successful Schools. During our conversation, we discuss what sparked her interest in researching this topic, specific strategies to foster relationships and reliability, and why trust matters more than ever.

Matt Renwick (00:43):

Welcome, Megan. Glad to have you on here. I wanted to talk to you about trust. You seem to be one of the foremost experts on it. As I was sharing with you before we started recording, it is something that you can't really see, but you know it when there's a problem. How you define it in the book is a willingness to be vulnerable to another based on the confidence that the other is benevolent, honest, open, reliable, and competent. So trust is complex. When you first started researching this concept, were you surprised at how complex it was?

Megan Tschannen-Moran (01:23):

Yes. It was really a process of discovery for me. I started out studying trust for my dissertation. And so the first thing I needed to do was find the definition of trust and a measure.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (01:37):

And it turned out there was really not anybody or any research. There were two or three articles that my chair Wayne Hoy had done with a couple of his students in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but that had kind of fallen away. And so I wanted to pick up that line of research and carry it forward. But looking around for a definition, I found that many scholars just assumed that everybody would know what trust was and didn't bother to define it. And when they did define it, everybody defined it in a different way. You know? So, because there was so little research in educational leadership, or even in education more broadly, I ended up looking across psychology and business literature and philosophy, across many different fields. And that's where I found many different definitions.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (02:35):

And so I started collecting those definitions and then eventually did kind of a qualitative analysis, kind of a sort of the different facets that were raised across the different literature. So this definition really isn't original. To me, it's really a composite of other people's thinking to other people's ideas, but taking those facets that seem to be most salient across definitions and then testing them with some quantitative analysis, and it turned out all five of those facets do co-vary. When one falls down, you know, trust falls down and they all tend to be low. And if one's high, they all tend to be high. So they do seem to operate as a set of criteria, at least within the context of educational leadership. I can't make that claim.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (03:31):

We don't want to make that claim more broadly. There may be fields, like how you trust a surgeon or how you trust your accountant, all those five facets might not be relevant. But within school leadership, the work that we do, those five facets have empirical evidence, both quantitative and qualitative, having affirmed that those are important for both school leaders and for teachers, for educators.

Matt Renwick (03:56):

I wonder too, if your definition with the five facets helps it align with the incredible complexity of being a school leader,. You might need it to be that wide and that nuanced. That's what I appreciate about your book. You took those five facets throughout the entire text, but then supported it throughout the way with a lot of quantitative types of studies that, as you said, supported what you were finding.

Matt Renwick (04:26):

You were an elementary principal, correct? In Chicago?

Megan Tschannen-Moran (04:30):

In Chicago, yes.

Matt Renwick (04:32):

And how long were you a principal there?

Megan Tschannen-Moran (04:34):

18 years.

Matt Renwick (04:36):

Okay. So you've got that lived experience of leading school. How did your experience as a principal pique your interest in trust, as an eventual focus for your studies?

Megan Tschannen-Moran (04:47):

I set up a nice school in Chicago that I founded, and it was a small school, just 64 students in four multi-age classrooms, kindergarten through eighth grade in this low income neighborhood that had one of the lowest performing schools in the city of Chicago. And so we were working with kids who were living in difficult circumstances, and we wanted to have the opportunity to try out progressive teaching methods and see if our results might be different. And really we found that they work and we had this lovely, lovely school. And we lived off of hand-me-downs from the North shore of Chicago and all throughout Chicagoland. There would be material being thrown out, you know, perfectly good library books and science equipment and things. People would think what a shame to have that go to waste. And so they packed up their cars and drove down to donate them to us.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (05:48):

And, and so that's how we've had school, but inevitably when they would come in to drop off their donations, they'd spend a few minutes. And within only a few minutes, you know, five minutes or something, they would say, "This is an amazing place". And, and I was curious about that. I know that; I live here, but you have only been here five minutes. What are you seeing? What are you feeling? These are educators from some of the wealthiest districts in the nation coming in saying, "This is amazing that the feel of the place was something really special." And so that evoked some wondering for me, it was like, "What is that they're noticing that they're seeing and how do you get your hands on it? How do you have language around it?" Any of the teachers in my school were going to graduate school and they come talking about these concepts that were so fascinating to me. Well, one principal from the North shore that I knew was doing his dissertation on something that seemed like such a novel idea at the time was called student engagement.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (06:50):

And he's like, "You've got it. Your students are just so highly engaged." I was like, "Well, of course they are, you know, we're doing fun things where were teaching in ways with hands-on and manipulatives and making it engaging and relevant." But it's like, you know, things get wild if they're not engaged, we need to make them engaged. But anyway, so I set off to graduate school with this question in mind. What is that, that thing that people are noticing, what's it called? What's their language about that? And so fortunately for me, when I arrived at The Ohio State University, and there was a new faculty member, Wayne, who was the leading expert in this thing called school climate. And my first class was with him and he started talking about his new book on school climate. Like, that's it, that's it, that's what you call it.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (07:41):

That's what people were noticing. That was the feel of it. And before long I asked Wayne if he needed any help with his research, that I was so curious about it, and I wanted to be a part of that. And so he hired me. And my first day on the job, he had given me an assignment to look into something. Again, I'd never heard of something called teacher self-efficacy. I don't want to look stupid on my first day of work, but I don't know what the heck that is. And so together, we did a review of the research and that ended up really bringing together all bodies of knowledge that took off. Well, having done all that everybody knew I was going to do my dissertation on teachers' self-efficacy, right, because I'd already done the lit review, but it was like, "No, going back to my little school in Chicago, it's like there was something else there that made it such a special place that you could feel that was palpable when you came in in the doors."

Megan Tschannen-Moran (08:44):

This was a very rough neighborhood. So you feel the contrast when you came in and that was trust. So it's the, no I'm going to set aside this whole lit review I've done on teacher self-efficacy, although that was some of what was the magic that was happening at my school as well. But I was curious about trust. It seems like nobody's talking about that. And I think if we're going to take to scale the kind of results that we were having in my little incubator school, that we were going to need to know a lot more about trust. And so that sent me on a path for the last 25 years of studying this construct.

Matt Renwick (09:23):

You hear that too. I've had in my own school - not this school but my past school - we would see similar things. They would have a feeling, someone described it as a well-oiled machine. I didn't know how to take that. I think I might've been some various issues of trust because it can go both ways too. If there's not enough autonomy with the teachers, it can be kind of a cold place too. And you described that in your book, which was very helpful to kind of give a narrative feel to the text with Fred, Gloria, and Brenda. Fred is the very laissez-faire deferential type of leader. Gloria is more of the command and control. Someone described this type of leader as a bull in a china shop - just not a lot of empathy toward how others are feeling perceiving reality. And then there's Brenda, who's not perfect. You nicely described her as human, like the rest of us, but has that kind of balance of both support and challenge leading the school. So that kind of gets into the brass tacks here. What are some strategies of being a Brenda, at the top of your mind that people can employ today, tomorrow, for achieving them and maintaining this balance of support and challenge, which builds trust.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (10:45):

Yeah, and all three of those principals were real people. And I interviewed teachers from their schools and described it. And it was only later when I was analyzing the data, I was like, "Oh, wait a minute. These really fit with the scheme of leadership of, on this continuum of relationship, high or low in relationship and high-low in task. And so we saw the disastrous outcomes, a very well-meaning Fred and Gloria were both very well-meaning, but Fred was too willing to give up on the task dimension of his work, in the interest of having positive relationships with other, but which ironically then led to not positive relationships. Although people liked him, they were really annoyed that he wasn't doing his job. He wasn't stepping up to the plate and doing what they needed him to do to hold people accountable. And then there was Gloria, who, you know, let go of the relationship dimension.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (11:42):

So I think holding in mind, we have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. We have to hold in mind the critical importance of the task that we are charged with, and the trust that we are given, when we are handed the keys to a school and given a leadership role in that school. But also don't lose sight of the humanity of the people who are doing that work to recognize as a school leader. You're not the one delivering the core mission of the school; it's the teachers are at the top. So when I talk about professionalism versus bureaucracy, we think of a pyramid, an org chart in a bureaucratic organization where the leaders are at the top, and there's certain assumptions people make as they move up through the leadership ranks, but in a professional organization, I like to flip that and say, it's those who are delivering the core mission of the organization, who are the ones who, whose work is the most essential to our collective outcomes. And so in schools, those are the teachers.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (12:45):

One principal I talked to, there's only two kinds of people in the school. There are the teachers and those who support the work of teachers. And I like that notion of school leadership, because I think it lends us to a professional orientation where we, our work is we're not stepping up into leadership. It was coercive authority to make people do things and issue orders. We are there to support the work of professionals and do everything that we can to make sure that their work is buffered from interruptions, from other things that would distract from the quality of their work, because that's everything. What's happening in those classrooms is everything for us. And we have to honor that and recognize that that is happening through the people who are delivering that instruction, the teachers and the other staff, in people in different kinds of roles, but we need to have positive relationships with those people.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (13:44):

So we need to earn their trust if we're going to ask them to take the risk that trying out new instructional strategies or implementing a new curriculum involves. We need to recognize that we're asking them to take risks and create an environment of safety and of caring so that they can feel confident in trying something new that may or may not work out. Like, let's do our best thinking about this. But first couple of times, we can expect an implementation dip. It's going to get harder before it gets easier. So people, teachers need to know that their principal is there to back them up.

Matt Renwick (14:27):

We are experiencing significant implementation dip right now, as you can imagine. With just the situation with remote or hybrid. And we have been in virtual in my own school for now two weeks. And it just seems like trust matters more than ever because we're at a distance and people need our support, but it's hard to get that support when we're all in different spaces. I'm sure you would agree that trust matters more than ever. Any specific recommendations for online spaces, for their relationships.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (15:01):

Yeah, I think it's become much more difficult because we've lost those informal interactions, the exchanges that just happen as we pass in the hall, or we first greet each other in the morning. So the ways that we can convey benevolence in asking about somebody's family member, who's ill or things that we're aware of, or just even some shared jokes that we can kind of banter, a little bit of banter with each other as we engage for the day that conveys, "I like you, I care about you. You matter to me as a human being," before we start the day before we start our task, let you know, I want to convey that, um, that you're somebody who matters to me. And so when we get in online spaces, we're very task-focused. I mean, we tend to be, you know, we get on there at a certain time, we get our work done this way.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (15:55):

We're all aware of Zoom fatigue. So we try to get in and out as quickly as we can. And so that has lended us, we're leaning over to Gloria's point of view here, you know, that sort of all tasks and little relationship. So we've got to be intentional about the ways that we cultivate that sense of care for people, trying to balance that out with then saying, well, I want you to show up for more time on zoom so I can let you know, I care about which may or may not be. I mean, maybe they really would like some help and support. And so being available as an instructional leader, if you're having trouble with this or that, let's, let's talk about it. I want to be your thinking partner, but there may be other ways that we have to invent to convey a sense of benevolence in and genuine caring for the whole person for what's going on, because this is such a stressful time for people just in lives in general. And that certainly affects our teachers.

Matt Renwick (16:59):

We still have our monthly staff meetings. We do them on Zoom. Just thinking about being intentional with showing that we care, we've started our meetings with just, you know, what has your attention right now, and trying to embed some humor. And at the end of the session, it's optional, but we have a mindful moment, where people can stick around and just take some time, some reflective meditative activities, to kind of take care of the social, emotional side of all we're already thinking about next year. I'm looking forward to being back in physical classrooms. But one of my fears though, is that I see some inequities have really surfaced from this, you know, in terms of access and home environment, just some spaces are just not designed well for learning.

Matt Renwick (17:49):

And we're seeing that, to the point where we're trying to even bring in a few kids who we just know aren't going to be successful online and we're taking that risk. But once we get back, we want to make sure we're trying to address some of these issues that have come up. And I as read your book, trust mitigates some of the effects of trauma, poverty, other life factors, to the point where it's not as significant a factor if high levels of trust are precedent in terms of student achievement. So that's very good.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (18:24):

It's a significant factor, but we can get through that. It won't take as big a hit on learning.

Matt Renwick (18:30):

Yes. And so then, so trust becomes even more important for those, like the school that you were in, it enhances that, and hopefully helps it make it better. How might schools change going back? You know, seeing some of these inequities, especially around access to various resources, to better partner with families and communities or some things you did as a principal, or what did you see other principals do in your research to, to develop that?

Megan Tschannen-Moran (18:59):

Yeah, I think what we're doing now is going to impact how things are then, because families are gonna know. I think we're just going to have to work a lot harder to demonstrate our care now when families are in such distress, but if we make food available, if we take go the extra mile to make learning materials available, to be doing things, to demonstrate our care and for the whole child and really for the whole family, not just "Here's, let me help you make sure you get your math homework done this week," but let me care for the whole child. That's going to live on. So the legacy of what we're doing or not doing now, I think it's going to impact how things are when they come back. It's going to be hard to say, "Oh, we haven't seen you for a long time because you didn't have internet access and, oh well, now you're back, let's accelerate you.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (20:05):

And, by the way, I really care about you. You know, I think that's, that's going to ring hollow. So I think it's challenging. It's challenging because ultimately someday we may choose to structure schools differently. We've really inherited this, factory model of schools where we batch students by age and moving them through. And it may be that some creative, new solutions grow out of this, this time of hardship, where we are finding that we have to rely on technology. Well, it may be that we discover some ways of organizing, learning differently, making use of the affordances of technology, but then enriching it was what we're all missing in our being together in physical presence. And to really cherishing those times, when what are the affordances of face-to-face that we've really been missing? How do we capitalize on that?

Megan Tschannen-Moran (21:06):

So as a university professor, we were really thinking about that, what parts of our courses can we move into online spaces? And then in that hybrid model, what is the best and highest use of that, those questions, times when we're together, face-to-face. I hope we're going to think about face-to-face instruction differently than we don't just go back to what we were doing, but figure out what is technology best for? And let's use that so that we can make the face-to-face time even more engaging, even more relevant, even better than it has been at accomplishing our larger goals of deeper learning.

Matt Renwick (21:52):

You mentioned your multi-age model that you used in Chicago. And I think some of those can be beneficial. In terms of flexibility, that's something I've noticed just with our grade levels. And you mentioned, um, more of a factory model that has maybe limited us in terms of how flexible we can be and adaptive to the needs now. So it'll be interesting, what comes of this.

Matt Renwick (22:20):

Near the end of the book, you note the importance of trust repair through specifically apology. Can you say more about that and why apology is so important?

Megan Tschannen-Moran (22:32):

Several different people. I interviewed to all told the same story of a time when Brenda had apologized to a teacher when she, after she'd been kind of snippy with that teacher short with her. And that just struck me because there seems to be a mythology among leaders: Never apologize. It will make you look weak. And yet, what I was seeing in my research was that it was very powerful. It was powerful enough that several different people raised it as a story that led them in telling me, "Why did they feel like they could trust Brenda?" And so that struck me as important. And that's why I included in the book, to counter this narrative of never apologize. I think really sincerity is what's at the heart of it, when should you apologize. If you genuinely regret having done something that has hurt somebody else to say that.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (23:35):

And I think perhaps enriching our vocabulary of not just, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." But, deeper, using compassionate communication models that I've talked about to talk about. "I'm grieving that to hear that you, you were so hurt, what was done or said. As we are approached by people who have been hurt to be taking the time to really listen carefully and well, and to reflect the feelings and needs that are emerging from the story that they're telling us. I think it's that attention, giving our full attention and respectful understanding of empathizing with the impact of what decision. We may regret the impact, but it was a decision we still stand by, or there may be times when we think, "Well, yeah, that wasn't a great decision. I wish I'd made a different decision." I think its that quality of listening and care of giving our full attention when somebody is sharing with us. That they were hurt or angry or upset by something that we did are sad, just that openness. So I don't think it's really the words, "I'm sorry," that are so helpful in those situations. I think it's demonstrating our care.

Matt Renwick (25:07):

And the routine, that the protocol, that you provided in the book, the four steps I have now used, I found it very effective and again, our care and our thoughtfulness and being a reflective practitioner really.

Matt Renwick (25:21):

Thank you, Megan, for joining us. The book is Trust Matters: Leadership for Successful Schools. It's in its second edition and trust is a critical aspect of leadership. And I would say it's deserves our full attention and priority before we can engage in a lot of the other work that we do. So thank you for sharing your work and your experiences.

Megan Tschannen-Moran (25:45):

Thank you, Matt. I appreciate this opportunity to share.

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We experience daily challenges while leading in our school, yet what really is the problem? Do we understand it clearly enough? Whose perspective do we need to consider as we test ideas?

Jethro Jones, author of SchoolX, provides a brief explanation on how leaders can apply design thinking within their positions to start to solve these vexing challenges. We also discuss the importance of professional networking as well as his Mastermind program for school leaders. Listen here or subscribe on Apple Podcasts.

Episode Resources

Original Transcript with Audio

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Check out Jethro’s site, including his podcast and his Mastermind program

Thanks for listening! If you haven’t already, sign up for this newsletter for weekly original literacy/leadership content plus a weekend round up of what I am writing and reading. Premium subscribers receive additional seasonal content, such as the Create Your Ideal Curriculum series from this summer.

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What counts as “good”? This question gets at the heart of engaging in productive conversations as we describe effective literacy instruction. We explore that inquiry in this episode with Rachael Gabriel and Sarah Woulfin, authors of Making Teacher Evaluation Work: A Guide for Literacy Teachers and Leaders (Heinemann, 2017).

During our conversation, we discussed:

why people get stuck on singular definitions for anything in education,

how we can use our mismatches between beliefs and practices as entry points for professional inquiry,

the larger role of schools in society and how that complicates things, and

taking a more mindful approach to supervision in an era of accountability.

You can purchase Rachael’s and Sarah’s excellent book here.

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Official Transcript

3 Minute Video w/ Rachael and Sarah: “The Need for Making Teacher Evaluation Work” (Heinemann Blog)

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All students are made for learning. What they bring to our classrooms should be valued as entry points for instruction and even beyond. It is the teacher who co-constructs and sustains the environment to help make this possible.

In this episode, I talk with Brian Cambourne and Debra Crouch, the authors of Made for Learning: How the Conditions of Learning Guide Teaching Decisions, about:

How they define engagement,

How teacher language is critical for creating these environments, and

The importance of understanding our own beliefs about teaching and learning.

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The podcast transcript

Order Made for Learning today: https://www.rcowen.com/conditionsoflearning.htm

Check out, rate, and subscribe to this podcast on Apple.

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To operate in an uncertain world, it is essential to have practical guides and sound processes.

In this episode, I talk with Anthony Kim, co-author of The New School Rules: 6 Vital Practices for Thriving and Responsive Schools (Corwin, 2018), about our current challenges and how leaders might respond.

We unpack the question, “What’s safe enough to try?”

We reinforce the need for a common language.

We consider who is needed for decision-making and how this process is communicated.

We rethink success points for our work toward a common mission.

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Complete Audio Transcript

The New School Rules website

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We have more time in the school day to engage in authentic literacy experiences than we think. Transitions, snack breaks, and walking in the hallways can all offer opportunities for brief yet effective interactions around text and with each other.

In this episode of the Read by Example podcast, Dr. Jackie Witter Easley shares how educators can capture these literacy moments. She offers specific strategies, such as:

setting up the classroom environment to invite students to notice and wonder,

including kids in the development of literacy spaces and tasks, and

re-envisioning what authentic literacy activities can become for remote learning.

Once we see the school day not as a series of subjects but rather as an opportunity anytime for literacy, time seems to be more on our side.

Suggested Resources

Transcript

Check out Literacy Moments on Goodreads

Connect with Dr. Jackie Witter-Easley on LinkedIn

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Why do some students become less engaged in reading, writing and learning in general over time? Kathy Champeau and Merry Komar, two co-authors of Engaging Literate Minds: Developing Children’s Social, Emotional, and Intellectual Lives, K–3, talk about the classroom environments that students need: places where everyone’s thinking is valued and each member of these communities is a teacher to others.

Related Resources for Podcast (links available on original podcast page):

Audio Transcript

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Join the Engaging Literate Minds 2020 Book Study

A special thank you to Stenhouse Publishers for sponsoring this episode!

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In this inaugural podcast, Regie Routman, author of Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence, and Equity for All Learners, shares her thoughts on what we need to focus on right now during these difficult times. We talk about poetry, about addressing the unique needs of everyone, and how we can embrace “Good is good enough.”

Important Links (available on original site only):

Transcript

Purchase Regie’s latest book

Regie’s poetry videos: Nurturing Writers in Uncertain Times

Regie’s writing project: A Notebook for You

Transcript

Matt: Thanks Regie for joining me today and this conversation about what's essential right now in education.

Regie: Thank you for inviting me, I’m delighted to be here.

Matt: This is Regie Routman, author of many texts on literacy and leadership most notably, most recently Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence, and Equity for All Learners. This was a book that we did on the blog as a book study two years ago, and this is the inaugural podcast episode and I couldn't think of a better person to have here then Regie.

Regie: Very kind, thank you.

Matt: Just a little bit of background: I came into the elementary principal position in 2011. That school was a high poverty school that had already embraced Regie's work. The teachers had said, “You really need to come to the Literacy and Leadership Institute in Madison”. I resisted at first, saying that I have the schedule to get ready and I've got to get the budget square away first and I didn't buy in right away. Once I saw it in action and the teachers were the leaders in the professional development, I just said, “Wow”, this is real, kids are going to be engaged by this, it just makes sense. I went the next year and that's when I met you. So we've been colleagues, friends...I consider you a mentor and I'm very grateful to be able to talk to you today.

Regie: Thank you Matt. I think we are equals, we’re educators, we're learning from each other. It has been a joy to watch you change, to watch your beliefs shift over the years in what you find essential now (and this is true for all of us) is not necessarily what we saw as essential years ago.

Matt: That's very true. Now, what’s essential now is the big question related to your book Literacy Essentials and we want to take time for that: what you would tell someone in education what we need to focus on right now with everything going on with the pandemic. You have a cool project out now with Gail Boushey on poetry and nurturing writers in uncertain times. When I first saw this come out, Nurturing Writers in Uncertain Times, I thought, “Regie is going to choose poetry,” and you did! Why did you choose poetry?

Regie: (laughter) It’s such a good question and really an easy question for me. These times are so different and full of so much fear and trauma for so many people. I was plagued, it kept me up at night, “What can I do to make things easier for families and students and teachers?” The equity issue pulled at my heart as it always does. I’m in Seattle and the public schools are giving out food and books for the neediest schools. I was concerned about kids that didn’t have computers, access to the same literacy advantages as other kids, so I came up with the idea of donating notebooks to these same sites. You can find that at regieroutman.org along with my writing project with Gail Boushey. The idea was to get students pencil and paper, it’s still good technology and to get kids writing about things that matter to them during this time. In all the years that I’ve been teaching, I have found poetry to be the great equalizer. For kids that are struggling, that are having great difficulty with following the rules, they take to poetry like a duck to water. I am talking about starting in kindergarten. The other thing I love about it is, one of the biggest shifts and hardest shifts for people to make in education and the kind of work kids are being asked to do, this is not a time to worry about following the rules, to worry about, “Is their spelling correct? Are they using capital letters?” This is a time to celebrate, and I say that word meaningfully, to celebrate what kids can do and have them soar. Poetry does that. They don't have to write a lot, they don’t have to follow the rules, and it’s very enjoyable. What we’ve done in this video series is to take you through how you might do that at home, as a parent, a teacher, a family member, and everyone is successful, it’s comforting. It’s joyful. It’s freeing.

Matt: I found myself engaged while watching, especially when you were writing the poem, “Dandelions”. You said “lowly weed in the world,” and I wrote that down. I wanted to tell you that it was such a cool line that you said, and then you incorporated those ideas with weed and flowers. You mention nurturing and not following the rules, and I think that can cause anxiety for any writer when trying to following the rules when you just want to get words down on paper. Poetry seems to allow for that, gives them an entry point into writing.

Regie: And also because poems tend to be shorter, instead of, say, an essay. It can be just a few words. In the video series, I demonstrate my writing process. You can see me do it on the screen, the thinking and the revising, and what’s going on. Writing is hard, and the satisfaction you feel from writing is great. Kids get that. I also love it because you start with the whole. I see that shift that all teachers and leaders have to make for teaching and learning to become joyful and meaningful for all students. You start with a whole poem, a whole idea, I tell the story first, and everyone is successful, even kindergarten kids who may only know a couple of letters and sounds. So I love that. It’s so critical right now.

Matt: You base that on something your noticing - dandelions - which gives every kid, that everyone can notice something. You picked out something as simple as dandelions, but you make it into this rich text.

Regie: I was very careful. I wanted it to be a neutral topic. “What are you noticing today, or now, that you didn’t notice before?” and to model something positive. I’m noticing the natural world a lot more. We are inside, looking outside, and I am really looking at something as I take a short walk. This is what I call choice within structure. I’m modeling a poem about dandelions (which I’ve never noticed until now), and the message to kids and parents is, “What are you noticing?” They can take that same process and they choose the topic. What’s very important right now is something Larry Ferlazzo says on a wonderful video he’s done through Education Week, to just throw out the regular curriculum and to ask your kids what they are interested in. What do they want to learn and start there. Don’t worry about the skills in isolation. I think some of the things we need to be concerned about now are kindness, being kind to ourselves, to our kids and families we are working with, and making whatever we are doing with them relevant. Easy - this is not the time for complex projects. I think putting people first. In Literacy Essentials, in the engagement section, that is where we need to start. I have four parts there: developing trusting relationships, accelerating learners, creating a thriving learning environment, and teaching with purpose and authenticity. This is where we can start, with this home-school connection and what parents are doing with their kids at home. You’ve got to set up a culture in your home, in our virtual classrooms now that allow for that kind of trust and celebration and purpose. A lot of that is offering choices and being a really good listener. What is it that they need? Keeping close relationships with the kids and their families. It’s hard.

Matt: You mentioned the home-school connection. I am meeting with staff in weekly meetings; we’re making them optional. They are noticing that kids are not as engaged as much right now and I think people are feeling some sense of, getting worn out and not noticing what's going well. So I think that's just really an important point of involving the families and how to create that structure together and noticing what's going well.

Regie: That’s really hard to do. I was noticing in a New York Times article recently on the front page that parents are having a very hard time teaching their kids at home. They didn’t know that teaching was so hard.

Matt: For any family that has thought about homeschooling, they are getting a real experience right now. Although I feel for the families trying to juggle jobs and homes, or parents who are unemployed. They are dealing with unique stressors right now.

Regie: This is a hard time for parents. I don't know if your teachers are doing this, or for that matter even for you to do, it would be great to just start each day or each lesson with a read-aloud. Even if you're teaching high school, to pick a book that allows you to talk about it and to jump off and write something about it to just start off with something relaxing. Kind of a beginning to the learning day. One of the books that I like is Be Kind. It is a picture book by Pat Zietlow Miller about kindness. It would take less than 5 minutes to read it and then I might ask the kids to reflect on what's a kind act that someone did for you or that you did for someone else. Let’s talk about that. Let’s write about that. If there's a way for you to do some demonstration writing in front of the kids, do that because that's really helpful too, the kind of modeling that you're expecting.

Matt: What you did in the videos is such a cool example, I shared that with my staff yesterday, where you pulled up your whiteboard and you had a picture in picture. You were talking as you were writing, at the same time, and they can see the process of writing. You could see poetry kind of in action, the development of it. I think that's a simple shift that I think teachers could do in keeping things manageable enough for kids and for themselves.

Regie: I think what's really important there is that there wasn't a lot of planning for me. I talked about the fact that writing is a recursive process that it's not linear. So when I was done with that, I was really done because I was revising it as I went along. I was re-reading it, I was rethinking, I was talking out loud, and I think it's important for kids to see our thinking. That thinking aloud and seeing our struggle that we go through, that it's not perfect, and that that's okay.

Matt; Yeah, listening to kids, like you were saying, and having a conversation about what they're noticing and with kindness and even doing some shared demonstration. My wife, she teaches special education, and she was dictating a letter to a friend they haven’t seen in awhile since we've gone to remote learning. Doing it in front of him and putting up the whiteboard, there’s a lot of options that I think your video, as well as the conferring conversation with Gail, it was just a cool example that anyone can do tomorrow, today.

Regie: I think so and that's really why I love poetry and I think it’s really a great way to start a lesson. In fact, I thought it was quite interesting that, in the New York Times which I read every day because I am from New York, the national desk now, when all the reporters get together and talk about what they are going to write about, they start by reading aloud a poem every day. And so I thought that’s just wonderful to read that poem, to get people in the mood, and relaxation, and the beauty of words, settling down, to soothe your soul before you have to do this hard work. I think that's such a great way to start a lesson. So the read aloud could be a poem and it could be a poem that you’ve written together, perhaps as a class. That’s easier in some places than others. I also like poetry writing because if you just have paper and pencil at home, you can do that, you can put together a poetry anthology by stapling papers together. It could be a writing record, it doesn’t have to be poems, a writing record of what you did during these uncertain and difficult times. I think the hardest thing is to keep the celebration and joy part of whatever it is you’re doing - as a principal, as leaders, as teachers, as kids, and how do you do that and bridge that digital divide. That is why I like poetry. The other thing I would say is I think this is hard to do but I would include in my lessons every once in a while, “Let's talk about gratitude, we’re all struggling, we’re tired of being indoors, but what are we grateful for?” Maybe writing a letter to somebody telling them how much you care about them. Or even, if you can do this, especially where not all the kids have computers or a hotspot, actually writing a letter to each of your students. At the elementary level, I think that's doable and enclosing a stamp and having them right back to you. I think that whole connection, we need to keep our kids and family socially and emotionally whole, which is so difficult to do and to put that before any mandated curriculum.

Matt: I couldn’t agree more. That leads to what’s essential right now for educators. You’ve mentioned celebration and stopping and being grateful. I’ve tried to do that with team meetings, starting with what’s going well, or checking in. One teacher yesterday shared that a fox family had taken up residence on their property. She was sharing pictures and it brings in those positive experiences and what’s going well right now. You mentioned parent involvement. What else is essential right now for us in education?

Regie: I think that those are the most essential things, that we do right now. Our social and emotional well-being, the strong connections with families and listening to where people are kind of at. Making sure that the curriculum allows some choice, asking kids what do you want to learn about right now and being adaptable. Not worrying so much about tests. I just read recently, which I thought was great, a professor at Stanford University who was, up until the last minute, was going to give a final to his students, decided it was just too much. Everybody was in an emotional state including him. So instead of a final, he had each of his students submit a photo of something from the natural world and that was the final. They were gorgeous, of sunsets and a bird or maybe just the way the light hit a tree, and they posted all of those photos for all students in the class to see and that was, I thought, just terrific. Anything we can do to help people feel successful. Sometimes it feels like the world is ending. We are going to come out of this eventually, but we want to help families and kids come out of this as whole as possible. And then finally Matt, and this might be a good place to end: Years ago when I was teaching and I would go into a school and the teachers were always, you know how we are, we have high expectations, that's great, but I never heard a teacher say “You don't have to do anymore. It’s fine as it is.” But it’s always, “Improve, improve, improve”. When I left one of the residencies, I had a teacher give me (I have it on my wall) this huge necklace that was handmade with paper. It says on it, “Good is good enough.” That was the message they took away which I was thrilled about. We are all trying to do the best we can. We need to slow down, breathe, find moments of joy, do the best we can, and accept that our families and student are doing the best they can. Good is good enough. So, I wish everybody peaceful days during these very hard times. Thank you Matt for this opportunity to talk with you. I appreciate our friendship and collegiality so much.

Matt: “Good is good enough.” I am going to write that on the cover of my journal.

Regie: I am going to send you a photo of that.

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