Exploring innovative, personalized, student-centered school change
Author: Life LeGeros
Life has worked in various roles in K-12 education, including classroom teacher, assistant principal, math department head, state agency administrator, and school board teacher representative. His dissertation focused on the impact of math teachers' knowledge on the growth of their students. He believes in teacher leadership, student empowerment, and challenging the status quo. He loves being immersed in tech-rich and outdoor environments, though not simultaneously. Find him on Twitter @lifelegeros.
John Dewey once famously said, “We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience.” As the Tarrant Institute for Innovation Education (TIIE) sunsets as an organization, we found it appropriate to reflect and share some tidbits of what we have learned.
Here are some thoughts and reflections from former TIIE staff (alphabetized by last name) when asked:
“What is one important thing you learned through your connection with TIIE that you’d like to share with middle level educators?”
Penny Bishop, Dean of the College of Education and Human Development at University of Maine & former Founding Director at TIIE
TIIE helped me understand the extraordinary nature of middle grades educators. They literally change the world each day they believe in, connect with, and elevate young adolescents.
Katy Farber, Assistant Professor of Education at Saint Michael’s College & former Professional Development Coordinator at TIIE
TIIE taught me that school change is possible, that small groups of people — when connected, when encouraged, when joined with instead of told — can create schools that work against the systems that have dominated for so long — and grow community, grow connections, purpose, engagement, and meaning. Centering the voices of students, amplifying their stories and brilliance.
I learned about the strength, power and persistence of VT educators, who show up in all the ways they can everyday for their students. To help them, in any way, was the purpose and privilege of working at TIIE.
Susan Hennessey, Technology Integration Coach at Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union & former Professional Development Coordinator at TIIE
In reflecting back on my time at the Tarrant Institute, I am struck by just how much can be accomplished when a team commits to meeting norms, working agreements, and protocol driven structures to complete complex and creative tasks. Our collective commitment to the work in this way allowed us to be innovative risk takers.
Emily Hoyler, Operations Manager at UVM’s Institute for Agroecology & former Managing Director at TIIE
I learned and grew so much during my time with TIIE. I think the most important thing that I will carry with me is the importance of nurturing relationships and tending to “the container,” whether that “container” is our classroom community, the adult culture in our building, or any community that we find ourselves in. I’ve learned that how we do the things we do is as important as what we do and that showing up with self-awareness, compassion, and vulnerability are essential ingredients for thriving. I feel so much gratitude for being part of such amazing work in the Vermont education community over the past six years.
Life LeGeros, Equity Scholar in Residence at the Institute for Liberatory Innovation, former Professional Development Coordinator at TIIE
I have deepened my understanding and personal interpretation of the beautiful struggle. The day to day work of teaching, school and district leadership, systems transformation: these are incredibly hard things to do. The products of our efforts aren’t often readily apparent and don’t always manifest. But the power of this work lies in its potential: working together based on shared values rooted in equity, learning to better love ourselves and others, freedom dreaming about a better tomorrow, and showing up every day as our true selves striving to make each moment as human/e as possible. Successfully changing social systems is not guaranteed, so the struggle itself may be all we have; and that’s okay because when we enact hope together, it’s beautiful.
Rachel Mark, Director of Academic Support at Vermont State University- Castleton & former Professional Development Coordinator at TIIE
As a result of my time working for the Tarrant Institute, I’ve learned so many things. Perhaps what strikes me most of all is what I’ve learned about attending to the way we work in teams and systems. The process of working together as people in systems is just as important as the content of the work. Perhaps we learned this together because we lived and worked through a pandemic, when so much of our world was unpredictable and in turmoil. I learned that we needed to surface our emotions and take care of one another as we worked through this time. Fortunately, we never let go of working this way.
Our agreements and working norms as a Tarrant team are extraordinary, and I hope to carry them with me into all of my future endeavors. Two of my favorite agreements are “Take space, make space, hold space” and “Welcome our fully human selves”. I’m forever grateful for the opportunity to learn from and with you all.
Steve Netcoh, Coordinator of Extended Learning Opportunities at Farmington High School in Connecticut & former Postdoctoral Associate at TIIE
The most important lesson I learned through my work with TIIE is that the community is an invaluable source of meaningful learning opportunities for middle grades youth. From offering relevant questions and issues that can serve as the foundation for curriculum to providing experts who can help youth explore their passions and interests, the community is essential for helping to foster purpose, identity, and engagement for young adolescents within and outside school walls.
Mark Olofson, Director of Educator Data, Research, and Strategy at Texas Education Agency & former Graduate Research Fellow at TIIE
Often I think about how middle school is a transformative time period for students, where they change and are changed – but working with TIIE I saw educators and other professionals change, and be changed through collaborative and purpose-driven action. I guess – it’s not just the students having transformative experiences.
Jeanie Phillips, Senior Associate at Great Schools Partnership & former Professional Development Coordinator at TIIE
The biggest takeaway I have from my time at TIIE is RELATIONSHIPS! This work allowed me to develop deep, meaningful, lasting relationships with my colleagues, educators around Vermont, and students. I learned so much from all the people I worked alongside in schools and beyond, and I cherish those connections. AND I watched as educators nurtured relationships with students, colleagues, families, community members, and those of us at TIIE – building strong learning organizations rooted in belonging and care. I’m deeply grateful for Vermont educators and students for the opportunity to connect and learn with you!
Scott Thompson, Director of Curriculum at Franklin West Supervisory Union &former Professional Development Coordinator at TIIE
Middle School Matters! Developmentally, academically, socially, and emotionally it is such a unique time that has had long impacts on YA’s. In my time with TIIE and as a middle school teacher, when students feel welcome, cared about, and involved in their education is where I have seen the most benefit. Despite all the pressures of testing and rigor, I’d offer to focus on the students. The rest will fall into place,
There is a reason that we’ve written so many stories about students doing cool projects in and with their communities! Relevant, real world learning experiences are highly engaging for young adolescents.
The learning and work feels meaningful, and youth feel energized with their emerging sense of agency: I can make a difference in my community. Here and now. This matters.
Seriously, there’s no way we can capture them all here in this toolkit, and it’s likely that almost any post makes at least some reference to students engaging with the larger community. You can find the permanent link to the toolkit here.
But whatever you call it, when it has the essential ingredients of real world, student driven, making a difference and, crucially, engaging with members and organizations in the local community. Community engaged learning is a huge boon for student students and for communities – it’s a win-win!
Manchester Elementary and Middle School 5th graders created profiles of compassionate community members. To illustrate, includes video and examples of student work.
Burke Town School 8th graders spent a semester connecting with community members and creating art to honor them. To illustrate, includes video and examples of student work.
Crossett Brook Middle School’s Brainado project allows an 8th grader to connect with a local mechanic (and parlay it into a summer job!). To illustrate, includes video.
Burke Town School 8th graders connect with community leaders and use the UN Global Goals to contribute to the community. To illustrate, includes video.
Lyndon Town School 6th graders participate in a town-wide planning process to improve the community. To illustrate, includes video, lesson plans from teachers, and learning scales.
Burke Town School students in grade 3-5 work to reconnect their community after pandemic school closures. To illustrate, includes video and lesson plans.
Manchester Elementary Middle School 7th graders used oral histories and 3D printing to create mini documentaries about local history. To illustrate, includes description and video.
Students at Harwood Union High School partnered with community members to facilitate a community conversation about the name of a primary school in the district.
Podcast episodes (and transcripts) about Community Engaged Learning
We have a saying around here that “middle school is not a building” and we also believe that classrooms do not have to be rooms. There are so many benefits to being outside for humans’ wellbeing and for students’ learning. We’ve collected our favorite blog posts – find the toolkit’s permanent link here.
Revamp the Ville project from Lyndon Town School 6th graders
Waking Up Gently: Using the Post-Winter Landscape as a Guide for Educators
Teaching Place-Based, Decolonized Ecology in the Middle School Classroom
De-Colonizing Place-Based Education
Outdoor & Place-Based Education in the Now
Connecting students to Vermont's rich dairy history in Cabot
How to make real, sustainable change in the Northeast Kingdom
Learning Manchester's history through storytelling and 3D printing
How can students make global connections?
What does service learning look like in Vermont?
Building a chicken coop at The Dorset School
The Crossett Brook Legacy Mural
What is the Cougar Co-op?
Meet the Humans of Burke
Burke Town School on: Hydroelectric power
Should Vermont host the next Olympics?
Wilderness Semester
The value of community mentors
Vermont's Race Against Racism
Planning The Harvest Dinner at Stowe Middle School
Measuring air quality in Shelburne VT
How to make National Park green screen videos with students
Studying hurricanes in a 1:1 iPad environment
Making geology games with ARIS
The Digital Anthropologists of Cabot, VT
Meet the Digital Cartographers of Cabot
Meet the Digital Historians of Cabot, Vermont
Wild City Project @ Edge: Year 2
Welcome to the Wild City Project
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Outdoor and place-based learning are tightly connected with so many other things we hold dear. Understanding our place in the wider outdoor world is important for building community together and for students to explore their identity. The outdoors are a great place for engaging in reflection , while thinking deeply about our relationship with the environment and the legacies of a place are powerful ingredients for equity. And so many fabulous project based learning experiences take place in part or fully outside.
We hope you enjoy digging in here, and, of course, getting out there!
Example from Leland and Gray Union Middle and High School that walks through their service learning process. See this short video about the project, too.
Describes how students from the Cabot School regularly work at Molly Brook Farm as part of their Cabot Leads service learning program. Includes a video.
Examples of other forms of outdoor and place-based learning
Equity is the moral imperative behind all of the work we do here at the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education. In this new toolkit, we have collected many of our favorite posts about equity, including analyses and syntheses about equity in general, how to support equity in professional learning and in classrooms, and examples of student projects with equity at the center. Find the toolkit’s permanent location here.
Equity is the basis of the middle school movement that we hold dear, which originated as a challenge to the status quo of junior high schools. As progressive educators, we promote shifts in education to bring more equitable outcomes, more humane learning spaces, and expanded opportunities for students to analyze and act to bring greater justice to our society.
And an important shift in the middle school movement over the last decade is the recognition that equity needs to be explicitly centered in order to be effectively pursued. While it may be a driver behind the work, and there are important practices that promote it, equity itself demands to be named, analyzed, researched, learned, taught, and applied. Please see below for some of our favorite blog posts that address equity head-on.
Considers ways to de-center quantifiable data and focus more on qualitative data and human experience. Draw heavily on ideas from the book Street Data: A Next Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and Transformation.
Describes professional learning in South Burlington School District that asks educators to reflect on their personal relationship to equity and systems.
Christie Nold’s 6th grade social studies unit. Includes some of Christie’s curriculum materials, interviews with students, and a poetry reading by a student.
Lindsay McQueen’s presentation at the 2021 Middle Grades Conference. Includes video and slides from the presentation, slides used with students during the unit, and an example of a student project.
Sam Nelson reflects on his inquiry question “How can students use social justice as a lens for designing curriculum?” He provides examples of how he and his student planning committee integrated social justice throughout the school year.
Grace Gilmour’s presentation at the 2021 Middle Grades Conference about a grade 7-8 Humanities unit. Includes video, transcript, description of activities, and student reflections.
Provides resources and tips for talking about race by tracing Christie Nold’s 6th grade student’s learning and actions related to hate speech at their school.
Dillin, a seventh grade student at Newark Street School (NSS), had this to say about starting school with 30 minutes of daily movement:
“So my perspective is, I really like it. It gets you healthy. Your heart beats, and then you get ready for the day you have after you’re done doing it. Like you get to take all your energy out.”
Asked what would happen if he didn’t get his energy out, Dillin replies, “Oh, it’d be different. I’d be annoying. … With Power Hour, my brain is ready to learn – it, like, observes more.”
This 30 minutes of daily movement is called Power Hour (along with 15 minutes of breakfast and a 15 minute morning meeting). The school started it this year along with Exploratory Fridays, which devotes a half day each week to activities such as hiking, canoeing, or skiing.
These programs are having a positive impact already. Students seem to love it, especially students like Dillin who need to “get their energy out” or others who aren’t able to regularly access these activities because of cost or other barriers. The school has seen benefits in terms of student engagement, academic achievement, and behavior. Let’s take a look at how it works and why it is readily replicable.
Power Hour
The structure for Power Hour is simple: every day starts with 20-30 minutes of a movement-based activity. For K-2 students, it is similar to a recess. For students in grades 3-8, they get to choose among a number of activities. During warmer seasons, the choices could include biking, walking, running, or playground games. During the winter, there’s snow shoeing, cross country skiing, calisthenics, and sports in the gym.
Shared by Tim Mulligan, principal, and Ty Mulligan, grade 8 student, in a presentation at the 2023 Middle Grades Conference.
After exercising, students have breakfast and then circle up for morning meetings to get ready for the rest of the school day. In several interviews with students and adults, there was widespread agreement that Power Hour carries benefits throughout the school day in terms of focus and social connection. More on that later.
Exploratory Fridays
Once a week, students spend half of their school day engaging in experiential activities that often have a recreational or creative emphasis.
In some cases Exploratory Fridays are extensions of Power Hour. For example, students might bike each day around the school, and then head to the Kingdom Trail network on Fridays. I accompanied one of these trips and students conveyed that the daily biking was fun but that the Friday trips were the place where they got to see their skill and stamina gains pay off.
Shared by Tim Mulligan, principal, and Ty Mulligan, grade 8 student, in a presentation at the 2023 Middle Grades Conference.
In many cases, Exploratory Fridays involve community partners to provide more supervision and structure. Many of the activities plug students into established offerings that in past years may have been accessed more as one shot field trips.
Tatum, an 8th grade student, noted that while Power Hour is all about exercise, Exploratory Fridays was better described as “personalized learning.” It is less about getting the heart rate up as it is about leveling up.
Why does it work
There is solid scientific evidence behind the theory that daily movement prepares the brain for learning. Tim Mulligan, principal of NSS, had encountered this evidence in the book Spark, written by Dr. John J. Ratey. In a recent presentation at the Middle Grades Conference, Tim summarized Ratey’s evidence for the benefits of daily movement:
Opens neurological pathways that prepare the brain for learning
Cardiovascular activities actually create new neuro-pathways. The best way to take advantage of this is to engage in academics following sustained movement!
Provides therapeutic effects for everyone!
Especially for students with ADHD, anxiety, depression and other mental, emotional, and social health conditions.
Increases cardio-respiratory fitness
Develops a healthy habit that reduces risks of many chronic diseases.
Supports a healthy body composition
Promotes greater sense of self-worth and esteem
Creates positive social interactions and builds a stronger community
Tim has not been shy about sharing the research rationale for daily movement with teachers, students and community members. Mary Jane, a 7th grade student, had this response to a hypothetical skeptic that worried about a loss of “academic” time:
“Actually, studies show that biking or walking, or doing anything that exercises your body in the morning helps your brain learn better which will make our grades go up compared to having less movement in our day.”
Quite convincing!
As for Exploratory Fridays, the focus on doing is exactly what many students need, especially young adolescents. According to the Association for Experiential Education,
“Experiential education is a teaching philosophy that informs many methodologies in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people’s capacity to contribute to their communities.”
The approaches used in Exploratory Fridays, such as outdoor learning and place-based education, are squarely in the experiential learning umbrella. Middle grades students at NSS reflect weekly in their personalized portfolios to make connections to their learning and lives.
Shared by Tim Mulligan, principal, and Ty Mulligan, grade 8 student, in a presentation at the 2023 Middle Grades Conference.
Early evidence of impact
So far, these programs appear to be living up to the promise of the research that is behind them. The principal cites several indicators heading in the right direction:
Attendance has improved
Test scores are up
Bullying incidents and misbehavior is down
There is a positive vibe about the programs. In interviews, students shared things like:
“I’ve noticed that when you are active, your brain works better” (Andrew, grade 6)
“I really enjoy it, and I do feel a difference in wanting to be at school earlier, and being more motivated to get up in the morning, get dressed, eat breakfast, and pack my bag” (Tatum, grade 8)
Yeah, it puts me in a better mood, because it’s waking me up. And I just like that moving in in the morning before I do school.: (Graham, grade 7)
“I would encourage other schools to do it, because it’s just so much fun to not just be in a classroom and just to be outside and doing all of these things.: (Ava, grade7)
These positive comments align with the survey feedback that NSS solicits from students and parents every few months. The vast majority of responses show that these programs are perceived as enjoyable and that students feel well supported. For those few who respond otherwise, the principal follows up to improve things for those students.
How do they do it
Tim Mulligan, principal at NSS, has worked with local community members to defray the costs of these programs. Through monetary and other types of donations (like letting students ride bikes on their land, or parent volunteerism), the cost of these programs to the school budget is kept to $15,000 per year.
Shared by Tim Mulligan, principal, and Ty Mulligan, grade 8 student, in a presentation at the 2023 Middle Grades Conference.
Morgan Moore, the Director of Experiential Learning for the district, supports Tim with some logistics and in making connections to community organizations. The district uses grant funds and deploys staff from their after school programs to support these types of experiences in other schools. Morgan brings in students from the Outdoor Education program at Northern Vermont University as well. At Concord School, Applied Academics teachers are the backbone of Exploratory Fridays.
Morgan notes: “Every school is different for how they can make this work. But it’s so important to make these opportunities available during the school day. Every student deserves to be exposed to these skills, the land, these local organizations, and of course Transferable Skills like teamwork.”
Making these opportunities a priority is perhaps the most important element in making them widespread and equitably available. Tim points to the challenges facing schools as the ultimate justification for innovation:
“How are we meeting the needs of all of our kids? ADHD, mental health, depression, the trauma so many have experienced. And all of us adults going through the same things? We have to try something different than what we’ve done in the past.”
So every school is different, and it is time to try something different. Getting students moving and exploring is a great place to start, however you do it.
How will you get students moving and exploring at your school?
The sixth grade team at Lyndon Town School were looking for an end of year interdisciplinary project. They wanted students to reconnect with the community after two years of pandemic schooling.
The Town of Lyndon was calling for community members to help generate ideas about how to improve downtown. They were in the “consider” phase of the Revamp the ‘Ville, a year-long “community-driven planning process.”
Students, town officials, and community members intermingled. Connections ensued. And a whole slew of fantastic ideas were developed, shared, and celebrated.
Read on for a play by play of this magical month of project based learning, along with reflections and tips from the students and adults who made it happen.
Breaking out of COVID isolation
After a year of pandemic schooling in 2020-2021 with social distancing and many students opting for remote rather than in-person learning, everybody was ready to get back to something more normal. The beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, however, saw a rise in cases that caused more disruptions and further cautionary measures.
By the end of the year, things were feeling more settled. Going into the spring, the sixth grade team knew they wanted to do an interdisciplinary project. They also wanted to help students make connections across content areas and with the community. Tyler Willis, the Humanities teacher, enrolled in a graduate course about project based learning. As a result, he was able to bring resources and ideas to the team in line with their goals and use his assignments in the course to further the project planning.
Tyler explained the connection impetus this way:
We felt that through the years of Covid, we’d strained the relationship between our parents, our community members, and the school. So much was Covid focused that we really wanted to try and open up what we did as a project. We wanted to bring our kids back into the community and bring the community back into our school.
In line with this reconnection goal, the team wanted the project to feel like a celebration of sorts. They were committed to asset-based approaches in their everyday teaching and through structures like Student Led Conferences.
Luckily, the Revamp the Ville process underway in their community was highly aligned with their goals. It was an asset-based, action oriented, inclusive community project. The team just needed to figure out how to bridge the gap so that the students could meaningfully participate while also learning what they needed to for school.
Interdisciplinary clarity and collaboration via the Transferable Skills
The team had big ideas of all the directions they could take the project. They wanted it to be vibrant and emergent in a way that would be impossible to completely preplan.
With this in mind, the team decided to use Transferable Skills (cross curricular proficiencies) to craft their learning objectives. More specifically, they chose one: self-direction.
“Less is more”, Tyler reflected later. Focusing on self-direction provided cohesion across content areas. The team created a scale for self-direction and then provided additional detail to students based on task. For example, the task sheet for planning and project management provided indicators at each proficiency level that could be used during work sessions. Over time the students developed an understanding of what self-direction looked like in different contexts so that they could self-assess, provide feedback to peers, and understand feedback they received from others.
By focusing on self-direction, the team could calibrate and collaborate effectively. Tyler explained “we tried to break it up as a team so that we didn’t have to assess every single student we had in front of us every single day. We had conversations about what are we seeing from different students so that it almost took on like a team based assessment kind of thing.”
Furthermore, this type of collaboration felt like something the team had long been striving for in their Professional Learning Community (PLC). Tyler observed that whereas it is hard to look at data together from different content areas, “this feels like a way to tackle a true PLC model. Are we really data driven? We can be if we are focusing on Transferable Skills.”
On a beautiful Monday morning at the beginning of May, the sixth grade team took a bus to downtown Lyndonville. In small teams led by one or two teachers, students walked around town snapping photos and taking notes. The scavenger hunt asked them to observe and record the pros and cons of their town in three areas: business and economy, recreation opportunities, and attractiveness.
Each group stopped by the Aubin Electric office, where owner CJ Aubin gave them a quick history lesson. Students were enthralled to hear that he remembers coming to the building as a kid when it was a train stop, where you could earn 10 cents a bag to help unload goods. After one group left, CJ waxed poetic about his enthusiasm for the project:
These kids just need to be pointed in the direction to see that their dreams and goals can benefit everybody around them where they live. It all comes down to their dreams – they can make it happen and it all starts now.
By the end of the day, students were already coming up with ideas for improvements to the town: more trashcans to reduce litter, more community events to bring people together, brighter crosswalks, and better food options. Before heading back to school for lunch, students and teachers played lawn games together on the town green.
Forming and brainstorming
Over the next few days, six community members visited the team to give students varied perspectives on the history, values, assets and needs of Lyndonville. The esteemed presenters included:
Eric Paris – A local dairy farmer and Vice President of the local historical society.
Joe Benning – A state representative and candidate for Lieutenant Governor (who eventually took the students on a field trip to the State House).
Beth Kanell – A historian and novelist.
CJ Aubin – A community member and business owner with multi-generational family connections to the community.
Ben Mirkin – Associate Professor of Outdoor Education, Leadership, and Tourism at Northern Vermont University.
Nicole Gratton – Director of Planning for the town of Lyndon. She brought an understanding of logistics, and connection to all of the research, zoning bylaws, and other relevant town information that had come up in the information-gathering phase.
It was a whirlwind week, but worth it, as noted by Tyler: “There was a lot to plan for the teachers a lot of logistical stuff but by the end of that week all of us, the kids and the teachers, were motivated and happy. Teachers were feeling like it was like one of the best weeks we had all year. After that we were like, okay, now, we have really started.”
By week two, students were ready to run with all sorts of ideas. Some students started to naturally group themselves into pairs for projects that they wanted to work on together. The team then clumped students into topic groups so that students could share resources across projects.
Let’s get organized
Before completely opening things up for students to chase their dreams, the team did some foundational learning together and established some structures.
First, students did some research about community improvement. A worksheet guided their exploration of resources organized on a padlet. The resources ranged from general ones about what makes thriving community to specific articles about Lyndonville, many of which were written by presenters from the previous week. Students contributed to a JamBoard as a centralized brainstorming spot.
Next, the team solidified the expectations and products that students would be asked to complete. Students participated in a Humanities workshop about the persuasive product that they would create and a science workshop about the model they would build. Students studied and unpacked the rubrics for these products that linked to the Transferable Skills of self-direction and communication. These experiences and tools made it clear how the products would serve as evidence of learning.
Along the way, students completed tasks to receive concrete feedback about self-direction (the main focus). For example, one day they created a business plan and logo that connected to their early ideas about improving the town. These tasks expanded students’ understanding of the expectations for self-direction and built skills that could be applied again later.
Finally, students created an initial project plan. They explained their project, made a case for working with a partner if this is something they wanted to do, and started costing out materials. Teachers conferenced with students to provide feedback and approve plans.
The foundations had been fully laid and it was time to get messy.
The messy phase
The third week of the project brought lots of work time. Teachers supported students in everything from making connections to their content areas to getting in touch with people and resources in the community.
Michelle Bechanan, math teacher, noted: “As a math teacher involved in this project it can get messy because the math each student might need can be very different, and this makes it both energizing and challenging trying to help all of the students with the different math they need.”
Yes, it’s messy, but it’s also a math teacher’s dream to have students asking to learn math to do something that they care about. This is the intrinsic motivation that is the holy grail of education, and one of the main reasons why PBL is such a powerful, research-based pedagogy.
As put by Temperance, a sixth grade student,
“This was the most engaging things we did all year. The reason that I am the most engaged in this project is because it means a lot to me.”
The momentum of meaningful learning carried students through this work period. Teachers arranged for some “stress test” moments along the way, where students would reflect and provide feedback to each other about how realistic their projects were.
Eventually, students learned that they would be presenting their ideas to mentors from the community. They did some warm up pitches in a Shark Tank-style activities, reflecting on how to create short persuasive presentations. Students tamed the messiness of the work week by condensing their project ideas into digestible pitches.
Mentor Day!
Before submitting their persuasive products and models, and a week before exhibition day, students shared their projects with mentors from the community and received feedback.
Tyler explained,
“We didn’t want students to just present finished projects to community members. Ou goal from the beginning was to have community members be a part of the projects and actually work alongside kids.”
Community mentors circulated to students, heard their ideas for improving the community, and offered verbal and written feedback. Comment cards encouraged mentors to be as specific as possible
Justin Smith, the Municipal Administrator for the town, focused his feedback on feasibility. “It was a great experience for both sides, an opportunity for understanding why things can be done and why can’t they be done.” He came away impressed by students and their ideas, with some good ideas injected into the town project: “These real life experiences are very important. It’s a give and take – I’m getting a lot of great ideas and they are getting some real life lessons about the expectations you can have for some of these projects”
The Final Exhibition
After incorporating feedback from Justin and other mentors into their products, students were ready to share. The team invited mentors, community presenters, families, and other teachers and students to learn and to celebrate.
And they didn’t disappoint. The library was abuzz as students showed off their models, made persuasive and informative pitches, and even modeled some real life shwag with logos that they had designed.
“These 6th graders have great ideas!” exclaimed Justin after the exhibition.
“They came up with unique things to do for our city and our town that us adults wouldn’t necessarily think of. It’s great to have kids throwing ideas at you … I can take these back and ponder: is there a grant for this? Is there a doable project here?”
After the excitement of the exhibition, students completed a self-assessment that asked them to reflect on their learning and to provide feedback to teachers about the project. Overwhelmingly, students expressed that Revamp the Ville had been the most important and fun part of the school year.
CJ Aubin, who had been involved since day one, was still floating after the exhibition had wound down. “There are some great ideas in the air. The dreaming is what I really like. To see them spend time on thinking up ways that can improve the lives of other people in the community that means so much to them.”
Take-aways
When asked to offer some tips and lessons learned, Tyler came up with six:
1. Depth over breadth for cross-curricular proficiencies
For cross-curricular learning objectives like the Transferable Skills, don’t worry about coverage or comprehensiveness. Pick one or two and provide students with multiple opportunities to unpack them. All of this practice will help students understand these complex expectations better and position them to self- and peer assess, gather relevant evidence, and meaningfully reflect.
2. Community connections pay big dividends
Bringing the community into school, getting students out into the community, and allowing students to work on improving community are all huge motivators and sources of learning. There are lots of examples for the power of community connections and it is always worth it.
3. Create a feedback rich environment
The sixth grade team set up many layers of feedback so that students could hear from peers, teachers, community members, exhibition attendees, etc. Feedback is crucial for proficiency-based learning generally, and in this case the team wanted students to understand that a crucial component of self-direction is the ability to incorporate feedback from others. There was also a helpful division of labor: teachers focused on self-direction and external mentors were looked at the products and ideas.
4. Set time aside to plan and collaborate
Making magic like this is not easy. The team gave themselves ample time to work together so that they could be responsive to student needs and to the emerging aspects of the project. Tyler put it this way:
“Try to be conscious of just enjoying the time you have with the kids and to not overplan.”
You can get a jump by looking at sample projects like this one and others.
5. Your students will love it!
Michelle, the math teacher on the team, had not used a project based learning approach before Revamp the Ville. She shared afterwards: “Through my experience with project based learning I have found that the students are more engaged with their learning. They take more ownership to their learning because they see a real life application to what they are doing. Making the project something that they feel like they can have some say in is powerful! … I would highly suggest teachers do at least one of these projects a year.”
Students echoed this sentiment. Let’s let them have the last words:
Arie – “It was actually fun, how we were interacting with the community in a way. It was cool how they involved us, because it is not only adults that should be able to make decisions.
Nevaeh – “Students like hands on things. Rather than just doing it on your computer. Because we can work with your friends.”
Jamion – “I hope we do more of this kind of project because it can help build community.”
Temperance – “In the future, I think we should do this literally every year. Because it teaches kids that not only are you helping the world, but you could help yourself.”
The beginning of a school year is a great time to explore and reflect on identity. For teachers who are working with students for the first time, exploring identity is a great way to get to know them and to build relationships. For teachers working with returning students, well, they may have changed a lot during the summer! In any case, identity work is good for relationships, developmentally spot on for young adolescents, and can provide a foundation for engagement and social justice learning.
We have compiled our best Identity blog posts to support educators doing this important work. You can find the resources below or go straight to the updated toolkit. Enjoy!
Testing helped me be successful in school. And it was horrible for my learning.
I was good at tests. The more standardized, the better. Multiple choice questions were my jam. I specialized in figuring out the correct answer even when I didn’t understand the material. My *bs* abilities were off the charts, which helped for open response questions. I could memorize all sorts of stuff I didn’t care about. For just long enough to ace a test, anyway.
But wow did this eventually catch up with me. I vividly recall an intro literature class where my new college roommate, who hailed from a nontraditional schooling background, waxed poetic about a poem. We were looking at the same words on the page, but he saw things there that I didn’t. Later that night we were hanging out and he made a bunch of connections between the poem and a song we were listening to. He hadn’t just been putting on a show for the professor; he was simply thinking and relating to the world on a different level than me.
Where had I gone wrong? I realize now that it wasn’t just me. Our school systems over-value easily quantified measures of educational achievement. We need to rethink the ways we collect, analyze, and act upon data and evidence so that we can rebalance education and restore the humanity that should be at its core.
Data: Less satellite, more street
It took me a couple of years to get my footing intellectually at that school. I had a lot of catching up to do, however good I looked on paper.
As students internalize these measures, they subscribe to narrow ideas about learning. They too often end up boxed in to superficial extrinsically motivated pursuits of success. Or even worse, they believe the messages the system sends them about how they aren’t good enough.
This is an equity issue. In the book Street Data: A Next Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and Transformation, Shane Safir and Jamila Dugan make the case that our obsession with thousand foot view indicators like standardized test scores and drop-out rates has gotten out of hand. While that kind of quantitative “satellite data” still has its uses, they argue that it has outsized influence and is overly simplistic.
By attempting to distill the kaleidoscopic process of learning into a metric and promoting a narrow discourse of achievement, satellite data contribute to a long, racist history insinuating students of color have lower intellectual capacity rather than differential access to opportunity.
From Street Data, p. 56.
Instead, they urge that we center qualitative “street data” that represent the full complexity and nuance of human experience. By widening our conception of actionable data to include interviews, observations, and artifacts, we gain a richer understanding of the situation. This is especially important for addressing equity challenges, which are tied deeply to layers of context and identity that are too fuzzy from a bird’s eye view.
To address equity challenges and fully honor the humanity of our students, superficiality will no longer cut it. To get to deep learning and real belonging, we need to operate at street level.
Relational over analytical
When done well, the very act of gathering street data is an act of equity because it prioritizes humanity and connection. For example, educators strengthen relationships with students while they interview them about their aspirations, observe them with an appreciative eye, or examine their work to uncover genius and opportunity.
In contrast, gathering satellite data is often an impersonal and, for too many students, inherently harmful process. Hours spent taking standardized tests send wrongheaded signals about what is valuable about learning and reinforce for some students their perception that they aren’t smart.
There is emerging evidence that the preoccupation with analyzing satellite data has been a colossal waste of resources. Jill Barshay reported on several recent studies that examined the effectiveness of teacher teams analyzing standardized test data. All of these studies showed no or minimal improvement in student learning. This despite huge investments in standardized and “interim” assessments, data analysis programs and protocols, and the time teachers spent getting trained and performing the analyses.
Barshay summarizes the downfall of the analytical approach,
Why doesn’t data analysis work? All three researchers explained that while data is helpful in pinpointing students’ weaknesses, mistakes and gaps, it doesn’t tell teachers what to do about them.
Jennifer Barshay
On the other hand, the street data approach rejects a deficit view. It allows educators to prioritize relationships and affirm the dignity of the humans involved. Street data “are asset based, building on tenets of culturally responsive education by helping educators look for what’s right in our students, schools, and communities instead of seeking what’s wrong” (p. 57).
We must partner with students throughout the change process because they are at the heart of educational systems. And if we are focused on equity, we must center students who are being marginalized by inequitable systems.
Safir and Dugan recommend Equity Transformation Cycles that start with listening in order to collect street data. After digging into the data to understand root causes of inequity, we reimagine new systems together. Unlike other design and inquiry processes, street data involves students and other stakeholders throughout the cycle. Again, equity is seen as a process, not just an outcome. Those who are most directly impacted by inequitable systems are involved as partners and change agents in order to avoid paternalism and saviorism.
This radical inclusion is one of the reasons why Jennifer Gonzales in a Cult of Pedagogy blog post about Street Data said that she had “never seen an approach that [she] thought was more promising.” She summarized her appreciation this way:
With that data in hand, all stakeholders co-design a path forward, building something that meets the unique needs of their learning community with the unique assets of that community. This is what makes the Street Data approach so special: It’s not a one-size-fits-all ‘program’ that all schools can follow for improvement; it’s a method for study and reflection that will give every school a customized solution, one that will keep evolving over time.
Jennifer Gonzalez about Street Data: A Next Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and Transformation
The Street Data ethos can be applied at all levels of an education system. Let’s end by considering a few examples.
Example 1: Classroom street data via self- and peer-assessment
At the instructional level, teachers and students constantly generate data as part of the assessment process. Proficiency-Based Learning environments reject ranking and sorting in favor of partnering with students to center growth. Grace Gilmore’s grade 7-8 social studies classroom, for example, used student self-and peer- assessment to create a feedback rich environment where reflection on data and evidence was the norm.
Trevor McKenzie sees student ownership of assessment as an inherently asset-based approach. In a recent voiceEd podcast he asked teachers to reflect on the question of “does your assessment culture tell students that they can, or they can’t.”
Mackenzie asks us to go beyond self- and peer-assessment to imagine an assessment culture where students have a voice in reporting to families. This is the type of transformation that Street Data opens the possibility for. The classroom is a start. But we must think about change as interconnected and systemic if it is going to be transformative.
Example 2: Team street data via listening sessions
One team that I worked with as a school change coach asked me to help them take a Street Data approach. This group of 8th grade teachers were at wits’ end trying to figure out how to repair the classroom culture of a particular cohort of students.
How could we start restoring community with these young adolescents? Ask them for their ideas.
Listening sessions
We embarked on an Equity Transformation Cycle by studying Safir and Dugan’s concept of listening sessions. Then I and others covered classes so that teachers could have one-on-one listening session conversations with select students. In the past I might have gathered this data and brought it to the team. But these sit downs between teachers and students directly strengthened relationships and built community.
The data gathering was an act of equity in and of itself. And the uncovering stage was an eye opener for teachers. Each teacher collected their data on a chart and came together to look for themes. They had been braced for negative feedback. But they found that the concerns communicated by students were primarily about their peers. Even the most disruptive students expressed that they wanted to strengthen their learning community.
This type of chart can be used to gather data during listening sessions.
Coming out of the listening sessions, the team decided to immediately implement time for clubs during the school day. Clubs would strengthen relationships and community in the short term. One teacher noted “it was incredibly powerful to take this time to really listen to students. Though I know this is just the beginning, it feels like something is already shifting.”
School breaks and other things got in the way of us fully building on the momentum. We weren’t able to reimagine alongside students the types of sustained changes that would transform the team culture. But this experience reinforced for me the potential of Street Data. What if listening sessions were the cornerstone of continuous collaborative inquiry to advance equity and inclusion?
Or, to really dream, what if listening and an expanded definition of evidence were the basis for a new model of school quality?
Example 3: Systems street data via better school quality measures
Testing isn’t just bad for individual students. Ask almost any teacher or paraeducator, and most administrators, and they’ll tell you that testing hurts the entire education system.
This is the premise of the book Beyond test scores: A better way to measure school quality, by Jack Schneider. Schneider details the ways that “test-based accountability” doesn’t work: it hasn’t improved schools generally, it has actively harmed many schools by shaming and/or closing them, and it provides very little useful information to families about what they truly care about.
Schneider noted that “We have two decades of evidence that current approaches to educational measurement are insufficient and irresponsible. Each day we fail to act, we ignore the fact that we can do so much better” (p. 13).
Over the past several years Schneider has acted. He has worked with researchers and educators to create the Massachusetts Consortium of Innovative Education Assessment (MCIEA). The eight MCIEA districts are piloting a School Quality Framework that goes far beyond test scores. It includes five areas: three “inputs” of teachers and leadership, school culture, and resources; and two “outputs” of academic learning and community and wellbeing. The latter are measured using performance assessments and surveys of teachers and students.
At a systems level, what if we were committed to moving beyond satellite data at all levels of our improvement efforts? I wish for a world where we could put humanity and equity at the center, redefine our goals at each level of the system, and then seek the evidence that matches our ambitions.
Take it to the street
In Vermont, our state has a robust plan for using multiple indicators for school accountability. Yet this remains lip service when test scores continue to drive the conversation. While I wait for the state to implement its own plan, or perhaps take notes from models like MCIEA, I will keep working in whatever spheres of influence are available.
One thing I will fight internally, and every time I hear it come up, is the learning loss narrative. In some circles, the disruption of the pandemic has brought satellite data, testing, and deficit views back stronger than ever. In a panel related to lessons learned from pandemic schooling, high school student Celilo Bauman-Swain spoke eloquently about her experience:
I think the biggest part for me, though, was the emotional aspects. Because my favorite part of school is my relationships with my teachers, and I consider teaching an act of love, and it was just really heartbreaking to have to kind of leave that relationship and go into Zoom.
Celilo Bauman-Swain, high school student
This is an important piece of street data. We hear a student seeing teaching as an act of love. Let’s love her and all of our students back by prioritizing their humanity. Not from a thousand foot elevation, but up close. Listen, learn, and legitimize their experience by recognizing it as every bit as crucial as any metric available. I firmly believe this is our route to rebalance, restore, and partner together toward transformation.
What if we could give more time to educators, many of whom are overworked and in danger of burnout? The Kingdom East School District (KESD) did it, and other districts could too.
Recognizing that educator wellness is the foundation for student wellbeing and learning, KESD added ten early release days to their calendar. Teachers use the time as they see fit: to pursue professional learning, tick some items off the to-do list, reconnect with colleagues, or just take a breath. And the district leveraged existing community partnerships to provide educational options for students so that families aren’t left in the lurch.
The plan came together surprisingly quickly and has gone smoothly so far. Teachers are giving it rave reviews. Let’s take a look at KESD’s approach to understand why and how they did it. And then let’s make it happen everywhere.
Educators need time
During the pandemic, our schools have remained operational due to an extraordinary amount of day-to-day effort by educators. Illness and quarantine has led to short staffed buildings. The overall workload has increased significantly with extra duties, such as the need for more supervision during lunches and recesses to keep students separated and socially distanced. Fewer people and more work means that everybody is doing more. And this is in a context of high levels of stress and trauma as a baseline during a global pandemic.
High social complexity (lack of clarity around the social expectations, cultural norms, and how to navigate the expected social realities of a situation) + low form predictability (confusion about what is going to happen moment to moment, day to day, week to week) = stress reactive behaviors (fight-flight-flock-freeze-appease or signs that the amygdala, the lizard brain, has taken control and the prefrontal cortex—the part that learns and plans and creates—isn’t fully engaged).
Laura Thomas in EduTopia
Thomas suggested that educators acknowledge current challenges, try to make things as predictable as they can, extend grace to each other and themselves, and slow down to the greatest extent possible.
There’s one thing that can help educators slow down and take some of the pressure off: more time.
Carving out time in the calendar
KESD district and school administrators came up with the idea of finding more time for teachers because they were worried about them. Curriculum Director Theresa Pollner recalled that they were hearing cries for help that were significantly different than the last couple years of pandemic schooling.
People were telling us, this is beyond anything I’ve ever experienced. I’m not just going to shake it. We need something from the outside to help us.
Theresa Pollner, KESD Curriculum Director
The administrative team and instructional coaches brainstormed possibilities. The existing time set aside for professional learning still felt important, since most of it was devoted to collaborative work time that most educators greatly valued. It would be difficult to convert full days because the state had already signaled that waivers would be unavailable for offering fewer school days to students.
The Superintendent tasked Theresa with preparing a request for the School Board. She knew that she would need to make a solid argument.
A rationale that rests on learning and wellbeing
The proposal to the School Board highlighted the district’s priorities related to academic learning as well as social and emotional health. The text included links to several articles about teacher burnout and wellness for context. The proposal was first shared with a sub committee of the board, the Academic Excellence Committee. This committee was instrumental in supporting and advocating for it to the full board.
Theresa explained that while principals and other leaders were doing all they could to create supportive environments, there were few things as concretely supportive as more time. If educators were going to build relationships with students and do the hard work of creating an environment full of care and rich learning opportunities, they needed to be cared for and grounded themselves.
The rationale aligned with Alex Shevrin Venet’s thinking about trauma-informed practices during the pandemic, which emphasizes a systems-level approach, including attention to working conditions for adults.
[Venet] refers to trivial moves towards teacher wellbeing as “cutesy wellness” practices because they don’t actually address the sustainable changes teachers need in order to experience long-term positive mental health. Venet champions time, money, autonomy and support as ways school leaders can show up for their teachers.
Nimah Gobir, in MindShift
The School Board unanimously supported the proposal. They granted ten additional early release days even though they were only asked for eight days. Clearly the rationale was persuasive.
Optional programming for students
KESD had strong community connections in place through their experiential summer learning program and the Kingdom East Afterschool Program (KEAP). In order to ensure the burden of the additional early release days didn’t fall on families, KESD extended the KEAP program to provide programming during the times that students would typically be in school.
Each family received a packet inviting their students to participate in KEAP. For grades 5-8 students, this meant offsite activities such as free skiing and other outdoor recreation.
The leveraging of community partnerships to free up time for teachers is not a new idea in KESD. Theresa Pollner reflected:
We’ve talked for several years about the need to change the structure. We have been working on strengthening our experiential learning program so that teachers can get more time for planning during the day. That was the seed of a vision that we brought into this year. Students outside doing experiential learning, teachers observing it to see how students respond, or inside meeting and planning. I envision us building that stronger in the future. It is so important to help make teaching more manageable within the school day to provide relevant and meaningful learning opportunities for students and collaboration and planning time for teachers during the work day. This isn’t a COVID problem. It has illuminated how we need to help teachers by doing this, and now we have the Board’s attention.
Theresa Pollner, KESD Curriculum Director
Courtney Murray, KEAP Coordinator, noted that while the program has successfully supported the early release days, staffing has been challenging. “A lot of KEAP staff have other jobs or are already instructional assistants in the schools.” But she is happy with the widespread student participation and their enjoyment of the offerings.
#WINning
The district framed the additional early release days to date as self-directed “WIN” days. Educators have the autonomy to pursue “What I Need” – individual tasks, collaborative work, or even participating in the ski program. The district has provided resources that teachers can tap into, including office hours with instructional coaches and compilations of links for professional learning and planning.
Teachers took full advantage of the time. On a recent exit ticket, when asked “how did you use the time today?” with the option to check all that applied, the responses indicated that:
67% engaged in independent instructional planning
57% engaged in collaborative instructional planning
56% caught up on stuff
55% met with colleagues about logistics
11% did some winter sports or other self care
Open responses included a wide range of responses, from “prepping for remote learning next week” to “taking time to breathe, laugh, and Marie Kondo my classroom.” It is a very basic and winning formula: give professionals time and they will use it well, in the ways it is most needed.
Teachers’ appreciation
And boy howdy, educators appreciated the extra time. Here are a few representative teacher comments:
I was nervous at first about having the extra time, but now I REALLY enjoy it. I am making the most of it and using it productively. It makes me feel good to accomplish things on my huge “to do” list that never seems to go away or get smaller! Thanks, it’s what I need.
It is helping with my stress level and mental health! Thank you!!!
I certainly have felt that the district leaders are keeping our well being and the students well being in the forefront of decision making.
It’s great to have time to do work so I can spend my weekends with self care and family time.
I really appreciated that I could set my own schedule and prioritize what I needed to work on the most.
On that exit ticket mentioned earlier, 97.4% of respondents picked “agree” or “strongly agree” for whether the time was helpful.
When asked for feedback about what support they need in the future, over half of the responses essentially said “more time like this.” It’s clear that WIN time is a win.
All educators deserve more time
KESD Curriculum Director Theresa Pollner said “this is absolutely doable in other places.” She credited a good relationship with the School Board as being helpful. At a recent Board meeting she reported, “I can say at this early stage that it is working for the intended purpose, which was to give people a lifeline. So that they know hey, we care, we want to support, we don’t have all the answers but we are taking a stab at doing something that might make a bit of difference and genuinely help out here in ways asked for by the teachers themselves..”
If she was to do it again, Theresa would want to think more carefully about impacts on all staff. In the current model, for example, instructional assistants are required to work with students during the early release days. She also noted that some teachers are worried about lost instructional time, and so she’d want to support them in reframing how these days are beneficial to students.
But she’s also excited to see how things evolve. During the last early release day, Kristen Huntington, an art teacher at the Concord School, sent an email to colleagues.
I am hoping to spend around 20-30 minutes of my WIN time tomorrow in the gym getting a little exercise, and I wanted to extend the invitation (thank you, Sam, for saying it is okay!). I was thinking of just running for a bit, but all forms of movement are encouraged: walking, dancing, basketball, maybe stationary biking?! We could blast music and warm the place up on a freezing cold day!! 🙂
KESD teacher in an email to colleagues
The response was enthusiastic. Colleagues gathered to move, sweat, laugh, and be human together. Everybody needs and deserves more of that, but especially educators.
How will your district give teachers the gift of time?
Need more student engagement and wellbeing? Join the club!
Educators are always looking for ways to get students more engaged with school. In this third school year impacted by the pandemic, engagement and wellbeing are more important than ever.
Ample research links extracurricular opportunities to student engagement and to social emotional learning. We also know that access to these opportunities is often inequitable. Cost, transportation, and availability can all be barriers to access.
How can we give every student access to these sites of engagement, relationship strengthening, social skill building, and interest-driven learning? Build it into the school schedule, of course.
Several schools across Vermont are setting aside time for clubs during the school day, with positive results. Here are the steps for getting clubs going in your school.
Be clear about purpose
At Orleans Elementary School (OES) in Barton, Vermont, the middle school team designed the schedule to include an hour per week of club time. Their goals for clubs:
Provide students with voice and choice about the activities they want to pursue.
Build community amongst students in grades 5-8 and also between students and staff.
Practice targeted skills within the cross-curricular proficiencies (communication, problem-solving, perseverance, citizenship) in a low-stakes, informal environment.
Lyndon Town School (LTS) in Lyndonville, Vermont, was looking to adapt structures they’ve used in the past. The middle school leadership team looked at clubs as an alternative to the Genius Hour projects that have been part of their Enrichment Block for the last couple of years. They saw clubs as a mellower version of Genius Hour, with no required product at the end. And more mellow was exactly what this year needed.
At White River Valley Middle School (WRVMS) in Bethel, Vermont, they were looking for a way to replicate successes from the past.
In the pandemic we were in pods with 13 kids and an adult spending the majority of their day together. Our behavior from last year showed fewer write ups than ever before. Students love to connect with teachers and peers in small groups.
Sarah Fisher Snow, teacher at White River Valley Middle School
This year, WRVMS continues to have three hours per week for “pod projects.” These are group projects that go in whatever direction the pod decides to take things. Clubs complement pod projects by providing a space where “teachers are purely auxiliary members,” according to Fisher Snow. The hope is that clubs help scaffold toward the student leadership needed for negotiated curriculum in pod projects and classrooms.
Now that you’ve justified carving out time and highlighted connections to other goals, things get fun.
White River Middle School: sports club; information and inspiration from Gender Sexuality Alliance; and improv exercises in Theater club,
Get student input on club offerings
While the heart of clubs is socialization, it is driven by shared interests. Offering good choices is a key to success. How to figure out what students are interested in? Ask them.
The club concept at OES came from exit interviews with outgoing 8th graders at the end of the previous school year. Those students also seeded a few ideas for which clubs should be offered. Teachers used that list to pick a few to start the year, and after a few weeks the current students were in a good position to brainstorm choices for round 2.
At WRVMS, students filled out a Google Form at the beginning of the year. There were a couple of teacher generated ideas on there with an open response where students could make suggestions. The range of student ideas represented the spectrum of interests among young adolescents – from the socially conscious to the downright goofy. Though they couldn’t quite pull off welding, teachers put together a solid list of initial offerings.
Sign up students
The process of student input ideally generates excitement and curiosity. WRVMS students Matthew and Conor, grades 7 and 8 respectively, recommend introducing the choices a week or two before students need to make their selections.
It’s clear why some think time would be important based on the extraordinary list of initial offerings at WRVMS:
Spanish cooking
Cozy club
Dungeons and Dragons
Board games
Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA)
Japanology – anime and Japanese cooking
Mystery and detectives
Outdoor club
Team sports
Theater
Leadership
Students ranked their choices and everybody was assigned to one of their top two. Teachers grouped students in new ways that didn’t match their classroom cohorts or typical social groups.
Ideally, the social mixing happens not just across clubs but within them. Kyle Chadburn, Humanities teacher at OES, observed during a session of game club “seeing where students are sitting right now, the groupings are different than they usually are. That’s exactly what we wanted to happen.”
Have fun!
“I love clubs!” “Clubs are the best!” Tristan and Lucien from WRVMS talked over each other in their excitement, but they got their point across.
This sentiment was echoed by almost every single student we heard from across these three schools (20 interviews and 20 survey responses).
Students. Love. Clubs.
Here are a few representative responses from OES students when asked why they like clubs:
“It’s like having fun instead of constantly working” (Dominic, grade 6).
“It’s like a recess but 10 minutes longer and we decide what we want to do together” (Shian, grade 6).
“More clubs should be done all around the world” (Maddie, grade 7).
“Clubs take pressure off students and are something fun to do… it really makes a nice end to the day and makes the day go by fast” (Thayer, grade 6).
“I think it’s a pretty good thing for when it’s almost to the end of the week and we have that one time to have fun at the end of the day, socialize, and become better friends with kids in other grades” (Preston, grade 7).
Teachers who are supervising clubs need to provide materials and keep an eye out for safety, but otherwise approach the clubs as a participant. Keep it light, connect with kids, and have fun!
[Gallery caption: Orleans Elementary School clubs.]
Rotate and mix it up
Clubs at these schools typically run on a 4-8 session cycle. Although some clubs may repeat across cycles, new clubs come and go as students come up with new ideas. Another major factor is the weather – some clubs work better outside or during particular seasons.
Rotating clubs exposes students to more activities and to different peers. Ava, a 6th grader from LTS, noted that social connections during clubs can be unique.
We get to know each other in a different way. We get into our club activity, calm down, and talk about all sorts of things.
Ava, 6th grade student at Lyndon Town School
Clubs are about expanding connections. Creating a rhythm of novelty will help more humans connect around more interests.
Don’t overthink it
Resist the temptation to “schoolify” clubs. When students were asked what they learned in clubs, besides becoming familiar with the central activity, most had a hard time pinning down what they were gaining. One student summed it up by explaining that “it’s not your average learning … I guess you are learning in some sorts of ways. Not the ways you’d think about it in school, but yeah it’s learning.”
Though many of the positive outcomes may be undefinable, there is plenty of evidence to provide a rationale for clubs in middle school. Such as:
The research base about the benefits of extracurriculars. Why not bring some of these activities into the curriculum?
The trend among schools in Vermont to incorporate clubs during the school day. This includes high performing schools such as Champlain Valley Union High School and South Burlington High School. If these highly rigorous academic environments are prioritizing clubs, then certainly middle schools can justify carving out the time.
Perhaps the strongest reason came from an anonymous 7th grade LTS student. They said that the best thing about clubs is that “I’ve learned it is good to take time for something you like to do.”
Indeed, carving out time purely for enjoyment and social connection is something we could all use a lot more of in schools. Let’s prioritize simply being our human selves, together. Because the human being club is one that we are all automatic members of.
How are you going to get clubs going at your school?
The recent issue of the research journal Middle Grades Review was extraordinary for two reasons. First, it focused on the intersection of personalized learning and social justice education. And second, Vermont educators authored all but one of the articles.
I encourage folks to peruse the entire issue, but this may not be realistic in the busy lives of this blog’s readers. So I’m providing highlights from each article and a few overall takeaways in case it is helpful. If the timing isn’t good right now for going deeper (or even reading this post), perhaps bookmark it for the future. It is a hectic time, to be sure.
But go forth with one juicy and inspirational takeaway in mind: there are a lot of great things happening in middle schools, in Vermont and beyond.
Why Vermont?
The Middle Grades Review is edited by James Nagle, from St. Michael’s College, and Penny Bishop, who was at the University of Vermont until this year. In their introductory editorial, they note that Vermont is uniquely situated to study the interplay between personalized learning and social justice education.
Vermont has a robust policy framework to support personalized learning (especially Act 77). The three pillars of personalized learning work in tandem: personalized learning plans, flexible pathways, and proficiency based learning. Ideally, we aren’t talking about personalized as “individualized,” – we are emphasizing the “personal.”
Vermont’s investments in the middle school movement create an environment where the personal interests of students and the socially meaningful impact of curriculum are naturally intertwined. Vermont’s educators and students have long taken a personal interest in social justice education.
The editors conclude:
collectively, the articles in this issue on personalized learning for social change describe how personalized learning can be autonomous, collaborative, and authentic, while enabling young adolescents to address today’s social, economic, and environmental issues.
How does personalized learning support democratic education? (Or not?)
Channeling John Dewey: What would Vermont’s philosopher of democracy have to say about personalized learning? by Kathleen Kesson – This essay is heavy on theory and philosophizing as a foundation for the other articles. And it is practical in the sense that it is applying Dewey’s classical ideas about democracy and intrinsic motivation to the modern personalized learning movement. Dr. Kesson points to the promise of personalization and interrogates its potential pitfalls.
Social justice themes and choice as basis for student agency
Using a social justice lens to connect the past with the present in a personalized learning environment by Kyle Chadburn and Andrea Gratton at Orleans Elementary School – Kyle and Andrea describe their approach to teaching Humanities based on broad themes. For example, they used the theme “Race in America” and look at the historical aspects (slavery, Black Code laws, the unfulfilled promise of Reconstruation) alongside present day impacts. The article also details the way that they provide students with choice and scaffolding for self-directed learning.
News flash: young adolescents have lots of questions about injustice
Student agency through negotiated practice by Meg O’Donnell at Shelburne Community School – Meg walks through the negotiated curriculum process that her team uses, based on the work of James Beane. She explains how students work together to identify questions they care about, first individually and then collectively. Eventually the learning community selects a question that serves as a theme, inevitably social justice oriented, for organizing their learning. Meg focuses on how student voice factors into assessment and provides examples of structures for student self-assessment and reflection.
Principles of personalized pathways for sustainability education: Educate, act, connect, and communicate by Don Taylor at Main Street Middle School and Kevin Hunt at Williston Central School – Through their work with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Don and Kevin have co-developed this robust approach. In the article they explain the principles of educate, act, connect, and communicate. Then they describe the components of a personalized learning system, which include a personalized learning framework, personalized learning plans, and flexible pathways. They provide case studies of flexible pathways from each of their schools in the form of powerful projects they’ve facilitated with students.
Using a Makerspace to learn ELA and pursue Social Justice
Integrating School Makerspaces into the English Language Arts Curriculum by Lou Lahana, the Makerspace Coordinator at the Island School in New York City – Lou details his collaboration with a middle school ELA teacher in his school to utilize the existing social action-themed makerspace as a learning site. The article provides background on the potential for Makerspaces in terms of personalized learning and social justice education. And then it walks through the process of this case by showing us what happened during class meetings along with the focus of collaborative sessions between the teachers. Lahuna shares student work from throughout the process, along with links to some amazing finished products.
More please!
As I’ve read and returned to the amazing things going on in these educators’ heads and classrooms, I am so happy for their students and communities. And I want these types of experiences to be available to every single student.
Looking across this collection of Vermont perspectives, I noticed a few patterns that support their work.
Thematic curriculum
None of these educators are following topic-driven pacing guides. They aren’t locked into chronological accounts of history. They have the autonomy as professionals to organize curriculum in standards-aligned ways that make sense for them and their students. Chadburn & Gratton (2021) explicitly referenced the “luxury” (p. 2) of their district’s thematic curriculum. This should be standard practice, especially in a proficiency-based system. Lahana provided details on the adaptation of ELA curriculum to address social justice themes and incorporate more multimodal representation. This was only possible due to flexible requirements.
Relationships first
All of these educators invest heavily in relationships with and between students. Each of these schools, for example, have robust advisory programs that center community building. Trust is especially important when delving into complex and troubling social justice issues. It is also important when employing personalized learning approaches that are so different from the way school often operates. Administrators recognize that the teacher role itself may need to be reconceived. As O’Donnell (2021) says about negotiated curriculum and student led conferences, “This process is one that requires teachers to wear many different hats – part parent, part counselor (for children and sometimes parents), cheerleader, and boundary holder, resource creator, humorist, and education consultant” (p. 8).
Identity at the center
Each of these classrooms recognizes that student identity needs to be explicitly explored and continuously affirmed. Taylor & Hunt (2021) employ a robust Personalized Learning Framework where students examine themselves, their community, and set goals for both. They conclude,
When teachers know students and their families deeply, when they understand the principles, values, and concerns that the community is bringing to the classroom, and when they are able to build student achievement through those foundations, the stage is set to address significant issues of social justice that will come to bear on our students’ lives throughout the 21st century.
Once students and teachers deepen understanding of identity, they can shape the learning environment to uplift student identities. For example, Lahuna (2021) stressed, “Within The Tech Café there is a conscious effort to think of our work with students as ‘amplifying’ their voice rather than ‘empowering’ or ‘giving’ them a voice” (p. 5).
Responsive Assessment
Almost all of these positive examples are happening in proficiency-based learning contexts. Both Chadburn & Gratton (2021) and Taylor & Hunt (2021) reference “project based assessment.” Lahuna (2021) had students “co-create learning trajectories” (p. 4) that integrated their interests with the ELA content requirements of their class. We see portfolios / personalized learning plans used to drive assessment, reflection, and sharing with families (via student led conferences). In addition to portfolios and conferences, O’Donnell (2021) details other practices that center student voice, including self-assessment, student feedback on learning partners, and students writing weekly reflective emails home.
Community connections and impact
Social justice education doesn’t end at the classroom door. Each of these educators support students in applying their learning by making the world a better place. To make learning personal, and make social justice real, we can connect students with the people and organizations working locally to build better systems. Kesson (2021) highlights this when she concludes, “But perhaps most important, this approach to teaching and learning could maximize the utilization of the intellectual capital and practical wisdom of our communities, bringing forth as teachers folks who are on the cutting edges of social transformation, whether they be artists, solar engineers, musicians, legislators, computer software designers, or holistic healers. … I get excited about diversified, decentralized, localized ecosystems of personalized educational opportunities.”
Take social justice personally
I’m convinced that personalized learning and social justice education go hand in hand. To me, the connection is that we are centering humanity – our social systems and institutions should affirm and connect with every person. This is nowhere more true than in middle schools, full of young adolescents who are actively figuring out who they are and how the world works.
If you are a teacher, I hope you can learn from this research and/or see validation of your own approach. I know many teachers aren’t in a place to deepen practice or try something new right now, and that’s okay. But at minimum, I hope that these glimpses are thought provoking for the future.
If you are an administrator or community member with the power to influence systems, first make it clear to your entire school community that you prioritize personalized learning and social justice education. And that you will back your teachers up if and when they receive pushback. Then, please make it your personal mission to enable and cultivate these types of classroom practices. Put in place supportive structures such as thematic curricula, portfolios, student-led conferences, and proficiency-based assessment.
Teachers can do great things but they need the right conditions to thrive. They (and their students) deserve it.
What we can learn from Kingdom East School District’s summer camp?
The 2020-2021 pandemic school year was uniquely challenging and extraordinarily exhausting. As the summer of 2021 got underway, the typical summer break excitement was tempered for many families due to tapped out energy sources and monetary resources.
Vaccine rates were climbing and some aspects of life started feeling more normal. Yet students walking away from surreal school experiences may have wondered what summer had in store for them. Kids who had participated in virtual academies were especially eager to reconnect with peers, which isn’t always straightforward in spread out rural communities.
Supporting families by connecting students to peers, learning, and fun
The Kingdom East School District (KESD) saw a variety of needs and moved decisively to create an ambitious summer camp to serve the community. It would support families with childcare, strengthen student social connections, and provide engaging learning activities. It would be five full days per week, free of charge, and draw on resources throughout the community. And it would be fun!
One catch: KESD had never done anything like this before. Here’s how they pulled it off and what they learned.
Summer camp priority number one: create compelling experiences
Morgan Moore masterminded the 2021 summer camp as the Director of Experiential Learning and Summer School Program Director. This newly created position sent a clear signal that meaningful experiences were going to be at the heart of summer camp. As Morgan explains it,
I think experiential learning opens so many doors. I think project based learning, and personalized learning really fall under experiential learning. Say you are a student who’s taken on a project and you have an idea like “I want to start a community kitchen in my community.” You’re going to start with that idea and go through those cycles where it might not work out right and then you kind of start over again. So you’re learning through those experiences.
Morgan Moore, KESD Summer Camp Director
Experiential learning was the guiding philosophy of the summer camp. Days were logistically split into morning academics and afternoon recreational activities. Regardless of format, the main design principle was to create concrete and memorable learning experiences for students. This allowed teachers to focus on fun and engagement. And it provided a steady stream of novelty and excitement that provided rich soil for social connections.
Hiking the Sugarloaf Trail.
Tap into community partners
If compelling experiences were the heart of the KESD summer camp, connectedness was its soul. Community partners provided the possibility of connecting kids to something bigger than themselves – the community, the land, and personal interests.
Look at this amazing list of activities that appeared on the registration form:
Theater supported by Vermont Children’s Theater.
Mountain biking
Swim & tennis lessons at Powers Park and Kiwanis Pool
Junior Lifeguard Course, including CPR and First Aid, at Powers Park pool
Counselor in Training for middle school students
Outdoor exploration supported by the Northwoods Stewardship Center, and teachers
Athletics, including swimming, basketball, running and soccer
Art supported by art teachers, local artists, and Catamount Arts
Hula hoop dancing
Stop motion animation
Gymnastics supported by Kingdom Gymnastics
To assemble this extraordinary array, Morgan started with some tried and true organizations she had worked with in the Burke Outdoor Club. KESD administrators and teachers offered suggestions through a district-wide survey seeking staff for the camp. And some staff members developed offerings based on their own passions and hobbies, such as art, hula hooping, and hiking.
The work was well worth it, according to Morgan.
Community partnerships were a huge component of the success of our camp. Utilizing community partners allowed us to provide field trips, lessons, books, and experiences that wouldn’t have been possible without their support. Partnerships gave students access to off-campus learning and allowed teachers to focus on planning the morning academic time, and just support the afternoons.
Morgan Moore, KESD Summer Camp Director
Choice for the win
Based on her work with young adolescents, Morgan knew that the ability to choose activities would be crucial for engagement. Her original vision included weekly choices. The registration asked students to rank their top three choices for the first week.
“It was pretty incredible. We sent out the registration forms and they just started rolling in. The administrative assistants were updating the list constantly and we were like, ‘Oh, this is gonna be big.’”
Ultimately, 500 students registered and about 300 showed up consistently five days per week. Students were allowed to come for any amount of camp that they wanted, which made things a little hectic but also maximized participation.
Due to the high number of sign ups, Morgan changed the plan to streamline the logistics and cut down the transitions for students. K-3 students would rotate through all of the activities as cohorts over the course of the five week camp. Grade 4-8 students would have two main activities throughout the five weeks, with two days devoted to each activity each week. The fifth day would involve a full day of off site trips with their grade level cohort.
Vermont Children’s Theater supported interested students in putting on a play.
The first week required a lot of patience and responsiveness. Morgan and the camp staff worked hard to help each student settle into activities that were a good fit. After several days of negotiating, swapping, and in many cases just encouraging students to give something a fair try, things smoothed out.
Student survey data and attendance reflected that middle school students enjoyed their activities. Morgan reflected, “It was worth the work to sort students into these activities so they felt agency over the skills they were building in the afternoons.”
Connectedness is key
The staff collaborations and connections started the week before camp during orientation. The 50+ staff, including high school students and multiple administrators, participated in circle activities that modeled how each day of camp would start. They were exposed to community partner offerings and trained in student-centered pedagogy.
These collaborative relationships were essential for the teamwork required to pull off summer camp. Many of the connections have continued well into the school year.
I love the district wide community that summer camp built and I can only imagine these same connections, and more, are going on between students, and between students and staff.
KESD Summer Camp team leader
Indeed, many teachers note that the connections they made with students at camp have been big plusses for starting the school year. A sixth grade teacher enthused, “I am really glad I did the summer program. I have five or six of the students from my group in my homeroom. It really makes a difference that we spent all those mornings working together, and those afternoon activities – we have strong relationships now.”
Swimming at the local public pool was a popular activity.
On the exit survey, students raved about the social connections they made with peers. Morgan saw this as a key outcome:
“With a lot of our schools, being small schools sometimes students have really close relationships within their class. But sometimes students might not find someone in their class to be close to. For summer camp we had the whole district together at one school. And so it just kind of widens the pool. We saw students making pretty good friends at camp. In some cases they may not live too far from each other but they had never met.”
Loop in families
Families surely appreciated having a place to send their children each day where they were fed breakfast, lunch, and an afternoon snack. Morgan worked hard to make sure families knew that their children were well cared for and enjoying themselves. She sent a weekly newsletter home with lots of highlights alongside important information about bus routes and other logistics.
Weekly newsletters kept families in the loop.
Hopefully families were looped in directly by students as well. In exit surveys students shared that their favorite things about camp, in addition to socializing, were the STEM challenges and the recreational activities. Some of the accomplishments were very concrete, such as one student who went from being unsure how to shift gears to conquering some challenging mountain bike trails.
I think camp helped me with what I notice in math class because we did number talks at camp with Ms. K and now I notice those topics more in my math class. —Student
Families also noticed the lasting benefits of summer connections. One parent relayed that usually the beginning of the school year is a struggle for their family but this year felt different. Her child was ready, and happy to go, because he was used to the transitions and friendships from camp.
Other areas of growth may have been a bit more subtle. One K-3 classroom of students, for example, listed the biggest thing that they learned as “courage.” #Priceless.
What if…
What if free school-provided summer camp could become the norm? And, what if the best parts about this model started informing the way that we do school? Engaging pedagogy, positive social connections, and community-based opportunities – yes please!
With federal funding for COVID recovery available, this is a good time for districts to launch their own summer programs based in experiential learning. Kudos to KESD and others who are forging this promising path.
St. Johnsbury School District is committed to building on their assets, seeking input from all stakeholders, and planning in phases to seek sustainable transformation. Nationwide, education leaders are planning for the conclusion of one of the most challenging and weirdest school years ever. Simultaneously, they are working on medium and long-term planning for post-pandemic schooling. Much of this work will show up in proposals related to the influx of money from federal funds.
The federal government will provide financial support for education in unprecedented ways over the next several years. The timelines for providing concrete plans for those funds are incredibly tight. The pressures from all corners are intense and in some cases contradictory. How best to address “learning loss,” transform schooling based on lessons learned from the pandemic, and avoid saddling community budgets with obligations after the funds run out? It’s a tall order, no doubt.
Let’s hear how one Vermont district is approaching things in a way that prioritizes the process.
Recover? How about reignite
“We are calling our next phase in St. Johnsbury, Reigniting Education. This idea came from our Director of Learning Design, Jodie Elliott, and it captures more accurately what we are aiming to do in the next few years. I refuse to begin any work from a deficit mindset, and this is no exception. Our students and their families deserve nothing less than starting from the strengths of this past year.”
So wrote Brian Ricca, Superintendent of St. Johnsbury School District, in a blog post titled All Is Not Lost. That was at a time when the main theme going around Vermont education circles was “recovery.”
This is a powerful reframe, Brian. Reigniting captures the imagination. It fuels progress, creativity, and energy. Words matter … your team nailed this.
Lydia Cochrane, PK-3 principal at St. Johnsbury School, noted: “People’s blood sweat and tears went into making this year work. So to call it like a lost year just felt disrespectful. I mean obviously everyone needs to recover from this year, but that just felt demeaning to all the teachers, all the educators, and all the kids.”
Jeremy Ross, 4-8 principal, added: “I think the key to reigniting as opposed to recovering is that …A lot of really good learning happened this year. It may have looked different. It may not have been the same pace that it always would have been. But it may have required our students and teachers to really think outside the box and approach their learning in a different way than what we would normally have expected.”
This overarching asset-based framing is accompanied by a couple of big ideas.
Relationships and knowing students well
Brian emphasized relationships as the key to ending this school year and starting the next one well. “The number one thing where we’re going to really need to put our effort is to make sure that we’re taking the time to rebuild relationships. Reforming connections and knowing our kids individually [allows us] to help support them and meet their needs wherever they are.”
Brian shared that teachers learned a lot about what some students were capable of this year. He provided a hypothetical of what a teacher might have learned based on shifting teaching formats. “Wow this student was shining in a class size of nine. And then that might have dwindled because we all wanted everybody back in school. And then there goes that student back to being a wallflower, because it’s a much larger group and he doesn’t feel as comfortable and doesn’t have that extra time and attention.”
Seeing students adapt and respond differently in various formats drew attention to the way that the school system interacts dynamically with individual student needs. Educators are more determined than ever to get to know individual students and create responsive learning environments.
Growth orientation
Lydia noted that the concept of focusing on student growth has been strengthened over the last year. “One of the opportunities that it’s provided for us as a school is to think outside of student growth in terms of where they should be when they come in for a grade and where they should end. And instead really think about where the student is coming in and what would be the expected growth for annual growth.”
Jeremy agreed. Both principals anticipate working to build teacher skills and school structures around the measurement of growth.
Brian tied the concepts of relationships, growth, rigor, and equity together in another recent blog post.
“…We meet our students where they are and help them grow and learn from there. In this case, the emphasis on relationships means a greater level of expectations, not less. By knowing our students as well as our faculty and staff do, we are able to know what they are capable of, and if they’re not meeting their potential, we know something is amiss. The emphasis on relationships makes us expect more, not less. The emphasis on relationships makes us stronger, not softer. The emphasis on relationships welcomes the whole child, not just the student.”
Process matters
The St. Johnsbury administration is in a similar situation to others. The past year has been incredibly hard but has also offered some lessons learned. Looking toward the future, they don’t want to go back to “normal” but they also know teachers and students are craving some simple things like stability and reconnection. They want to do deep and thoughtful planning that involves all stakeholders but the timing and timelines aren’t helpful in that regard.
This conundrum became glaringly obvious at a full day retreat involving a district leadership team and community members. As Brian reported in a blog post titled In Gratitude, after a morning of thoroughly structured productivity, the community members asked to slow down and leave more room for open exploration. As a result, “conversations and discussions were richer, had more depth, and sounded more productive.”
That retreat day is a metaphor for how the district is approaching the rest of the planning process. They want to have a process that is inclusive, with room to breathe and detour as needed. Brian explained his ideal process this way:
“Here’s the process: we start with students. Principals will do a listening tour. We’re going to send out a survey to faculty asking what they need and want. We’re going to take that raw data and sort it a little bit on the leadership team end. … Then take it to our reigniting team with community partners. And then we say to our community and our families: these are the themes that emerged, what are the most important things that you see.”
But what about the planning timelines? They’ve got a plan for that.
Planning in chunks
St. Johnsbury is taking an approach that they’ve dubbed “chunking.” By the looming deadline of June 1 for submitting a Recovery Plan, they will detail their plans for this summer. Then they will add details in the early fall based on an intensive and inclusive planning process. Their approach has been approved by the Vermont Agency of Education.
Brian explains it this way: “I remind my team and my board all the time: we have the ability to do something truly great here in a focused way that meets the needs of our students or adults, our families and our community. We can’t miss this opportunity. So we do want to take it slow.”
A lot of people are talking about thinking outside of the box to transform education. St. Johnsbury refuses to be boxed in by a rushed planning process.
The chunking approach allows for short term stability with an eye toward long term transformation. Brian is clear about expectations: “I think if somebody comes in next year to this school district, they’re gonna look around and be like, huh, pretty much the same. But I think in two years. I want that same person to come back and go, this is different. And I don’t know what that’s going to look like yet, but I want to be bold.”
This toolkit from the Vermont Education Justice Coalition promotes extensive community engagement in the name of equity.
Dream big as long as it’s sustainable
St. Johnsbury District’s approach seems like a reasonable one. Brian expresses awe when he talks about the amount of funds that will be available to his district over the next few years. He wants to be ambitious about the opportunity while remaining pragmatic about the process and the aftermath.
“This is really a once in an educational lifetime opportunity to transform what we do on behalf of kids and adults. How often have we said, oh there’s no money for that? … Now, you could come to me with a mulit-million dollar idea and we can actually sit down and think about how to make it work. The only limitation I’m offering is that we can’t saddle ourselves with obligations beyond the federal money. But other than that we can be as bold as we want to be.”
Here’s hoping that St. Johnsbury’s “go slow to go fast” approach allows them to build on their considerable assets with broad stakeholder input.
And that this “recovery” period ignites the transformation, in St. Johnsbury and beyond, that our students deserve.
If you want to know what an organization prioritizes, examine its budget. If you want to know what educators care about, look at their curriculum.
Curriculum is perhaps the most concrete representation of educational values.
Students’ day-to-day experiences are rooted in their direct engagement with this bundle of lesson plans, materials, and assignments. We package these bundles into units that, in their finest form, have the emotional heft and narrative arc of good stories.
The stories our curricula convey have a huge amount of power in terms of how students learn to think and navigate the world. A culturally responsive curriculum seeks to ensure students think appreciatively and critically about themselves and others. And that they see themselves as positioned to make the world a better place.
Culturally Responsive Practices
Culturally responsive practices (CRP) are the best way we know to create equitable educational systems and develop critical consciousness in all of our students. We’ve highlighted four themes from the research literature:
Be transparent and intentional about culture.
Take an appreciative stance.
Provide mirrors and windows.
Educate about and for social justice.
Let’s take a look at a couple of units to see how these themes show up in well designed, culturally responsive curricula.
Equity, Identity, and Art
Christie Nold teaches 6th grade social studies at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School in South Burlington. She designed a unit that centered social identity. It culminated with students working with teaching artists to express their learning.
She designed the unit based on standards, starting with an appendix to the C3 standards which include the expectations that students can “Explain the social construction of self and groups.” And she relied heavily on the Social Justice Standards from Learning for Justice (formerly Teaching Tolerance).
Above all, Christie intentionally positioned this unit at the beginning of her curricular sequence so that students applied their learning throughout the school year.
“I find it’s really important to start by knowing ourselves…it was important to me that students have this opportunity to dive pretty hard into who they are and how that informs the way they see the world before they then started looking at other aspects of parts of our world.”
Early in the unit, Christie introduced tools that would allow students to tackle challenging topics and discuss them in a mutually brave space. Learning and dialogue about race are supported by the agreements and compass from Courageous Conversations (See the page on community building at the NMAAHC Talking About Race site if you are interested in checking out those tools.)
1. Be transparent and intentional about culture
The entire unit is based on social identity. Cultural identity is an aspect of social identity in so far as cultural markers show up as part of who we are.
For example, in the video one of Christie’s students explains the cultural iceberg. And she does this without looking at notes or props. In essence, she did it right off the top of her head. In effect, her grasp of culture and social identity outpaces that of most adults. And that’s because of the intentionality of the unit design.
2. Take an appreciative stance
Educators show trust in their students when they engage them in complex and potentially challenging learning.
As students explored their identities in this unit, they learned to appreciate different facets of those identities:
Those they were born with.
Parts they had the power to choose.
And the way society shaped and viewed facets of their identities.
When they shared (what they wanted to) with classmates, it was in a context of mutual appreciation for each others’ differences. As a result, the underlying theme was that diversity is a collective asset.
Students learned that the unchosen aspects of their identities make them no better or worse than anybody else. Taking an appreciative stance means uplifting every part of identity or culture that is supportive of equity, inclusion, and love.
So for example, while white racial identity may be connected to a history of oppressive acts, students learned about ways to build an anti-racist white identity. Students can critically examine how their identities are positioned within society while choosing to leverage and lean into the most positive versions of those identities.
3. Provide mirrors and windows
Christie used literature to expose students to a diverse array of identities. Over the course of the unit she used two readaloud texts, Refugee and Ghost Boys to expose students to central questions about identity and equity.
Additionally, Christie taught students directly about the windows and mirrors concept. Then, students filled out influencer charts about the books they read and the relationships they had.
And finally, Christie was mindful of her own identity and the fact that most teachers are also white women.
“The impetus for the project was really to allow space for students to engage with who they are as people in the world and what that means and also to engage with folks closer in identity to them or farther in identity from them but either way don’t often represent the trajectory of educators that they have in their lives.”
The teaching artists who worked with students at the end of the project brought their whole human selves to the work.
4. Educate about and for social justice
Christie’s students explored, discussed, and applied powerful concepts such as bias in advertising, the pyramid of hate, and systemic oppression.
In the culminating project, students influenced the world through art. Students used poetry, storytelling, or visual art to express their learning about their own identities and/or the change they hoped to see in society.
As students reflected on the unit, their commitment to social justice came through loud and clear.
“It was great to learn about who I am and where I fall in this society and how I can affect others with what I do.”
“We are the next generation of adults so we have to move our world into a better place.”
“Since we are young we should know about this right now.”
In another powerful example of culturally responsive curriculum, Lindsay McQueen, a health educator at Edmunds Middle School, in Burlington VT, used the equity literacy framework to transform a 7th and 8th grade health unit. The original unit was about personal choices and health. But Lindsay’s revised unit critically examined health disparities, along with the systemic conditions that lead to them.
Unit questions:
To what extent is health determined by individual choices and behavior?
Factual: What is the difference between health equity and inequity/disparity?
Conceptual: Why do health disparities exist?
Actionable: What is important to teach our community about health and equity?
Using the Health Rainbow and carefully planned instruction, Lindsay moved her students from focusing on individual factors and behaviors impacting health to the social, economic, and political factors impacting health. Certainly, this is a powerful reframing and one that incorporates all four of the themes of culturally responsive practices.
1. Be transparent and intentional about culture
By moving from individual factors to social factors, Lindsay challenged the assumption of cultural sameness. She intentionally named and examined different cultural experiences.
For example, living and working conditions, public services and infrastructure, and social, economic, and political factors all combine to create social determinants of health. As a result, students looked closely at systems of privilege and systems of oppression and how they impact cultural groups.
2. Take an appreciative stance
Lindsay deliberately named the social systems and structures that either foster health or promote illness. In doing so she shifted blame for poor health from individuals to systems that disproportionately over-serve some and under-serve others. This curricular shift moved Lindsay and her students away from a deficit approach. It helped them better understand systemic inequities that lead to poor health outcomes. Thus, instead of judging the choices of individuals, especially marginalized individuals, they examined societal factors limiting personal choices and exacerbating health issues.
But in addition to using a strengths-based approach to frame the content of the unit, Lindsay extended an appreciative stance to her students by engaging them as problem-solvers and engaged community members. Then, students chose areas of interest and created PSA’s or took action to educate their communities about health disparities.
3. Provide mirrors and windows
Lindsay reports that most health curricula focus on individual behaviors: diet, exercise, substance abuse prevention, and stress management. But she asked students to consider that our choices are not made in a vacuum. Instead, they happen in the context of widely varying environmental and cultural conditions. Lindsay shares: “We watch this short video and really identify that health disparities are avoidable and unjust, and they are differences in health among groups of people.”
Instead of assuming everyone has the same conditions as themselves, students examine conditions experienced by others. For example, how close is the nearest supermarket, or how many e-cig ads are you exposed to?
Specifically, her students examine the systemic conditions relating to health for various cultural and identity groups. Moreover, her instruction asks students to step into the shoes of those whose lived experience is different from their own. Finally, they consider the health outcomes of such experiences.
4. Educate about and for social justice
A critically conscious approach often begins with essential questions. Lindsay’s unit questions asked students to consider issues of justice. Classroom activities like Unfortunate or Unjust encouraged students to use a justice lens to think deeply about health. As a result, the dialogue allowed students to practice applying critical consciousness to different topics. Lindsay says:
“There was some really interesting conversation among students. It’s not necessarily at that point in time that we say this is definitely unjust, but it allows for the conversation to happen where some say, well, that’s just too bad, but someone has to. Not really understanding how communities are intentionally placed. Not understanding yet that where landfills are built or power stations is intentional.”
And so some of that again is just sparking that raising that critical consciousness around what they’re thinking. Why sometimes some of the unjust statements would actually start off as kids thinking that they’re unfortunate.”
And finally, returning to the health rainbow allowed them to put it into the context of oppressive systems like racism and sexism.
“Kindness Kits” for the win
One group of 7th graders interested in the impact of gender inequities on health created “Kindness Kits.” Each kit includes menstrual pads and they are available to anyone who needs them. Other students created slideshows and video PSAs. Here is what students said about their learning:
“I would hope that it would help open a conversation about gender equity.”
“I hope that from my PSA, people who are part of the LGBTQ+ community will ask for help when needed and can talk to anyone and feel more comfortable around anyone.”
“It will help raise awareness to racism because it’s not talked about enough.”
“I think the main idea was to educate people on this issue [mental health and the criminal justice system] because it is not talked about enough.
How might you make your curriculum more culturally responsive?
In conclusion, critically examining units of study can be a first step to developing culturally responsive curriculum. As a result, you can revise and reframe your instructional plans like Lindsey did. Or adapt commercially designed curriculum materials. Or you might be starting from scratch. Whatever your starting point, we hope these questions will guide you as you work towards more just curricula.
Be transparent and intentional about culture
What cultural perspectives are represented in your instructional materials? Is there a singular perspective or are diverse points of view included?
Do you name dominant cultural narratives or traditions rather than assuming they apply to all and thus reinforcing them as the norm?
Does the curriculum present diverse ways of knowing and being?
Take an appreciative stance
Who, individually or collectively, play leadership roles or have agency? Who is portrayed as powerless or as a victim?
Are cultural strengths from different identities and groups highlighted and celebrated?
Who feels empowered and affirmed? Who feels disempowered?
Provide mirrors and windows
Who is represented in the materials you use? Who isn’t? Are you being transparent about representation with your students?
Does the unit or curriculum include visual images? Will every student see people like themselves? Similarly, will every student see people different from themselves?
Are the experts and examples you cite diverse and representative?
Educate about and for social justice
What critical questions focus the unit? How does the unit explicitly challenge the status quo?
Are there opportunities to examine and question systems and structures that oppress or elevate some groups and not others?
Do learners have opportunities to take action to make their community or the world more just?
Consider checking out these Culturally Responsive Curriculum Scorecards for an even deeper dive. And let us know how you are making your curriculum more culturally responsive, we’d love to learn with you!
This post is the third in a four-part series. In part one we identified four aspects of culturally responsiveness: cultural transparency, an appreciative lens, windows and mirrors, and a focus on social justice. In part two we used these four aspects to explore culturally responsive learning environments. In part four we use the four themes to look at instruction and assessment. The series is co-authored by Jeanie Phillips and Life LeGeros.
Equity. In Vermont and beyond, educators and administrators are talking about equity. But what does equity look like in practice? Most importantly, how do we stop talking about it and start doing it? Culturally responsive practices are a concrete way to do equity work in the classroom.
So what are they and what do they look like?
What we are calling culturally responsive practices (CRP) come from an array of research and pedagogies:
culturally relevant teaching;
culturally responsive pedagogies;
and culturally sustaining pedagogies.
To name a few.
In the 1990s, Gloria Ladson-Billings, one of the leaders in this movement, studied eight teachers who were positively impacting academic achievement among African American students. Her profound findings inform the work that continues to influence us today.
At the heart of CRP is this truth: education is not a culturally neutral practice.
Naming this forces us to reckon with reality: when we fail to acknowledge culture we are silently but powerfully endorsing dominant cultural narratives and sustaining the status quo.
4 aspects of culturally responsive practices we’ve identified from the research literature.
These themes will guide us as we move towards more equitable classrooms.
Be transparent and intentional about culture.
Take an appreciative stance.
Provide mirrors and windows.
Educate about and for social justice.
Let’s look at them one by one.
1. Be transparent and intentional about culture.
Randy Bomer defines culture as “a group of peoples’ way of life”. It includes patterns of communication, values, behaviors, habits of being, and ways of belonging and interacting. The default, in schools and beyond, is dominant culture. In the United States that means white, middle class, heteronormative, and able-bodied.
The problem isn’t culture itself, it is assuming that everyone shares the dominant culture. If we assume dominant culture is THE culture, we alienate some students from our classrooms.
This lack of belonging is a precursor to the school-to-prison pipeline. As a result, when we foster a sense of estrangement for some students we are unintentionally sending a message. That message is that some people don’t belong, are not intelligent, or that school has no relevance to their lives.
CRP asks us to name culture, talk about it, and make it plural rather than singular.
Culturally responsive classrooms embrace diversity as an asset. As a result, they welcome cultural strengths from all students. They move from monocultural to multicultural by naming cultural perspectives. They make it clear that there are many ways of being, doing, and understanding the world.
CRP forces us to acknowledge all students’ lived experiences by planning learning experiences that are personally meaningful and relevant. We must build on their cultural understandings.
2. Take an appreciative stance.
Learners come to us with so many strengths from their lived experiences. As a result, we can only begin to understand these when we seek to know students and their communities well. This understanding becomes the foundation upon which to build new skills, knowledge, and understandings. As well as strengthening the skills, knowledge, and understandings that are a part of their cultural heritage.
It’s important to note that relationships are at the core of a culturally responsive classroom. Being in genuine relation with our learners and their communities is complicated.
For instance, it means seeing their assets and strengths, not their deficits. Griner and Stewart talk about this as closing the divide between home and school.
“CRP builds bridges of meaningfulness between home and school experiences as well as between academic abstractions and lived sociocultural realities” (p. 589).
For educators, this often means we must acknowledge and confront the stereotypes we hold about our learners in order to see them in all of their glory! An appreciative stance allows us to appreciate what they know and can do while moving them towards their next steps for learning.
3. Provide mirrors and windows.
Rudine Sims Bishop gave us the metaphor for windows, mirrors, and sliding doors when thinking about literature. Books serve as mirrors when they allow us to see our experience represented in their pages. They become windows when we see the lives of others come to life on the page. And sliding doors help us build common ground across differences.
Sims Bishop says,
“When children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read, or when the images they see are distorted, negative, or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part. Our classrooms need to be places where all the children from all the cultures that make up the salad bowl of American society can find their mirrors.
Children from dominant social groups have always found their mirrors in books, but they, too, have suffered from the lack of availability of books about others. They need the books as windows onto reality, not just on imaginary worlds. They need books that will help then understand the multicultural nature of the world they live in, and their place as a member of just one group, as well as their connections to all other humans” (p. 1).
The metaphor of windows and mirrors has salience beyond the books we share.
In short, all learners should see themselves in the curriculum, environment, and instruction in their classroom. And all learners should see perspectives different from their own in these areas as well. If our goal is to prepare our students for participation in a diverse democracy, we should be providing windows and mirrors from the moment they enter our schools.
4. Educate about and for social justice.
CRP seeks to support students’ immediate success while also providing them with the tools to make a positive impact on their communities and society.
From the inception of Critically Relevant Teaching, Ladson-Billings identified sociopolitical awareness as a central component, alongside student learning and cultural competence. Yet in the recent book Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World, Django Paris and Samy Alim observe that “critical consciousness is the neglected component of CRP.”
CRP is often used as a proxy for good teaching, but without systems analysis and active anti-oppression, it is more of a bandaid than a long-term solution.
Further, Paris and Alim bring us back to the need for CRP in a pluralistic democracy:
“Robust learning environments must address goals beyond cognitive skills alone [and also focus on] the problems of sustaining a democracy, resisting stereotypes, engaging in activism for that which is just, and learning to be resilient in the face of changing and evolving sources of threat.” (p. 270)
In CRP classrooms, students learn how to critique and dismantle oppressive systems. They have the opportunity to make immediate impact in their communities. Furthermore, they can make connections to the long-term project of transforming society so that inclusion and justice for all is the norm. They are not just learning how to be successful individually, they are learning how to live and grow collectively.
Culturally responsive practices are for all students
Ladson-Billings developed Culturally Relevant Teaching for Black students. The concept and practices have evolved for the primary purpose of supporting students who are marginalized inside and outside of schools. As white authors, we are sensitive to the danger here of centering whiteness and appropriating ideas into spaces that they aren’t designed for.
One strategy is to make sure we are clear about where the ideas and research originally came from. That’s why we will be quoting and citing extensively in this series.
“One fallacy is that criticality is only for Black and Brown people, or others who have been oppressed across the world… Perhaps the people who need criticality the most become those who share identities with the greatest oppressors of the world. But in truth, given the complex identities of youth, all students and teachers need culturally and historically responsive education” (p. 121-122).
Similarly, in a review of research, Equity and Cultural Responsiveness in the Middle Grades, editors Kathleen Brinegar, Lisa Harrison, and Ellis Hurd emphasize that culturally responsive approaches need to extend to white students as well:
“Two questions to guide this work might include: Does the middle grades concept sustain all aspects of students’ identities? And does it prepare students with dominant identities to be critically conscious? Given that its founders began the middle grades movement to create more equitable schooling experiences for young adolescents, it is time to revisit those activist roots” (p. 343-4).
Educating for and about social justice is for all students, and CRP is the best way we know of to get there.
A note on culturally responsive pedagogies in predominantly white schools
In Vermont, most schools serve predominantly white students and communities. We think that culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies are an important tool for furthering equity in these schools.
But we want to keep a few things in mind:
Our Black, Indigenous, and Students of Color (BISOC) deserve CRP in all educational spaces. This applies to predominantly white institutions, perhaps especially so. For example, Vermont is often referred to as a “white state.” This framing erases our BISOC students and their educational needs. Yet 10% of our students identify as BISOC – that’s more than 8000 students! And we know they have less access to opportunity and are harmed more by punitive policies than their white counterparts. Even if there is only one BISOC student in a classroom or school, that student has the right to fully inclusive and effective education.
White students have cultures too. Being transparent about culture means interrogating whiteness and also going beyond race and ethnicity. A white student may participate in youth culture, Vermonter redneck culture, sports cultures, etc. Like heritage cultures, these cultures can provide curriculum relevance, broaden perspectives, and strengthen identity and self-awareness. They are deserving of both honoring and critique.
White educators need to start with themselves. The “cultural excavation” work of white teachers, as Paris and Alim put it, is especially important since the pervasiveness of white culture makes it even more difficult to see. This is ongoing work of unlearning and learning history, interrogating whiteness, and recognizing biases in beliefs, perceptions, and actions.
The cultures and identities of students, educators, and their communities must be kept front and center.
We hope you join us.
In future posts, we will look at three aspects of schooling one by one: the learning environment, curriculum, and pedagogy. For each, we will apply the four themes that we’ve explained in this post. We will share practices and examples that can make CRP in Vermont and rural schools as concrete as possible.
How are you enacting or promoting culturally responsive practices?
This post is the first in a four-part series. We use the four aspects (cultural transparency, an appreciative lens, windows and mirrors, and a focus on social justice) to explore culturally responsive learning environments in part two . We use the four aspects to take a look at culturally responsive curriculum in part three and instruction and assessment in part four. The series is co-authored by Jeanie Phillips and Life LeGeros.
References and further reading
Bomer, R. (2017). What would it mean for English language arts to become more culturally responsive and sustaining? Voices from the Middle, 24(3), 11–15.
Brinegar, Kathleen, Lisa Harrison & Ellis Hurd (Eds.). (2019) Equity and cultural responsiveness in the middle grades. Information Age Publishing.
Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Gorski, P. C. (2017). Reaching and teaching students in poverty: Strategies for erasing the opportunity gap. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Griner, A. C., & Stewart, M. L. (2013). Addressing the achievement gap and disproportionality through the use of culturally responsive teaching practices. Urban Education, 48(4), 585–621.
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491.
Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: A.K.A. the remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 74–84. DOI:10.17763/haer.84.1.p2rj131485484751
Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (Eds.). (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. New York, NY: Teachers College Press
My mom is into homeopathy and I am part Japanese. So for Christmas she gave me a book by Japanese scientist and holistic thinker Masaru Emoto called The Secret Life of Water. This guy has been taking photographs of ice crystals for decades. The photos reveal how different things impact the formation of these crystals and show up visually. Things like the words taped to containers, the part of a river where the water was collected from, the music played to the water, even the pictures placed near the water. It’s part of a practice called Hado. Absolutely wild and unbelievable.
But using rice I saw (and smelled) it myself.
I ran a little experiment. I took some leftover rice and put half of it in one Mason jar, and half in another. Then I put a a piece of tape on each and wrote “hate” on one and “love” on the other. And I put them on the counter next to each other and waited.
After a couple of weeks there was no denying the difference. The love jar wasn’t perfect (or edible, probably!) but the hate jar was relatively yellow with lots more obviously rotting spots. As a result, you could see it from across the room. And the smell was very different, too. It turns out, love smells faintly of vinegar and hate is distinctly blech. The labels had actually changed the chemistry!
So what does this mean? I returned to the book with renewed interest to understand his explanation for these phenomena.
Dr. Emoto points to Hado, which is the Japanese word for vibration. He offers three words to understand Hado: frequency, in that everything in the universe vibrates at its own unique frequency; resonance, due to the fact that frequencies between connected things or beings tend to synchronize; and similarity, where the macro and micro resemble each other like fractals.
One curious finding from Emoto was that the crystals formed by the concept of unhappiness were quite beautiful. He notes that unhappiness and happiness are two sides of the same coin, rather than opposites. He posits that appreciation and love are the keys to navigating our unhappiness and raising our consciousness to find true happiness.
As I write this I am watching the inauguration.
Joe Biden just asked for a moment of silence for those impacted by the pandemic, and then noted the challenges ahead such as America’s standing in the world, climate change, and systemic racism. My emotions are all over the place with grief, hope, worry, and joy intermingled.
Hado teaches me to seek resonance with positive vibrations. To find the love within myself that reverberates throughout the universe. Not in a toxically positive sort of way, but at the level of the fundamental connection of all people and things. As educators have shown in the last year and forever, we can face difficult challenges while vibing with authentic love.
Like Hado, we can be real while being extraordinary.
We can be pragmatic AND hopeful.
As I close this note, Amanda Gorman, National Youth Poet Laureate, brought me to tears.
She ended with these poignant words: “There is always light if only we are brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.”
How do we effectively engage people in our community who aren’t already predisposed to discuss race and the impacts of racism? How do we pull people into a community conversation on race? Especially people who aren’t already striving to be more antiracist? I’m not entirely sure, but I do know that the more community conversations we have, the more likely we will bring a greater portion of our community to the table… eventually.
I live in a predominantly white, rural community where many people do not explicitly experience the harmful impacts of racial bias nor understand the complexities of structural racism.
So I was intrigued by this email I received from a historian about the namesake of our local elementary, Thatcher Brook Primary School:
“I wonder how people in town would feel if they knew that Partridge Thatcher and his wife had held people in slavery.”
Indeed, how would my community react to this new information? That would become the guiding question for a community conversation that brought together students, educators, community members and historians to talk about real world, meaningful change.
How it started:
I received the email in response to an inquiry I had sent to Dr. Elise Guyette. I had written to her after hearing her on the Brave Little State podcast Remembering Vermont’s 19th Century Black Communities, which was largely based on her research. At the end of the episode she invited people to contact her to receive her database of early Black Vermonters.
Just a few weeks before I had been part of the formation of the Waterbury Anti-Racism Coalition (WAARC). I had been invited due to my role in facilitating a monthly series of Race Conversations for the Waterbury Public Library. Over the course of the prior year, a few dozen community members had participated in discussions of Ijeoma Oluo’s excellent book So You Want to Talk About Race?
Now, I believe in the power of dialogue about racism to help lay the foundation for transformational action.
As Oluo taught me, one of the reasons racism persists is because people, particularly white people, are not able to talk about it. Learning and unlearning how racism operates are the first steps toward dismantling and disrupting it.
Even so, upon learning this new information about the direct connection between the elementary school that my daughters attend and the institution of slavery, my first reaction was that we needed to take immediate action to get the name changed. But when I brought my obsessively assembled historical research to my WAARC friends, cooler heads prevailed. We were looking for inroads to raise awareness about racism and strengthen the collective antiracism commitment in our community.
Rather than rush to action, we decided to use this new information as a catalyst for collective learning and coalition building. It was time for a community conversation.
8 lessons learned from a community conversation on race
Now that I’m on the other side of the event, I’m happy to report that it was a success. Here are eight tips for anybody who wants to organize a community conversation about an issue related to racial justice, based on our experience.
1. Form a committed planning team
It was Ellie Odefey’s idea to focus on learning, rather than pushing right away to change the name of the school. She’s a student.
She’s also a member of WAARC and a student leader in the Rooted Organizing Committee (ROC) chapter of Harwood Union High School. ROC is a student-led socially justice oriented organization based in Vermont with a presence in several secondary schools. ROC focuses on grassroots strategies that will create change “from the roots up.” One of their values is community.
Ellie recruited some ROC student leaders to join WAARC members as a planning team. We had a multi-generational cross-racial group with plenty of experience organizing for change and facilitating conversations. We scheduled a weekly one hour meeting for the five weeks before the conversation. And then we were off to the races.
2. Learn from others
As we began planning, we researched how other processes have played out. We looked at the powerful project-based learning approach (.pdf) to renaming a school taken in Brookline, Massachusetts. We read up on efforts to rename schools and streets across the nation. And we reached out to folks in Vermont such as the Rename Negro Brook Alliance for tips.
Judy Dow generously provided guidance in the early stages of our planning. She is the Abenaki educator and activist who led the effort to change the name of the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award due to the links of its namesake to the eugenics movement. She drew on her experience to emphasize the importance of having the background research compiled and clearly presented. “There will be pushback. Be ready.”
She also helped us understand the importance of involving students. Judy is an expert at supporting project-based learning that involves students in primary research about Vermont history. She recommended that some of the educators involved in the planning group bring the Partridge Thatcher history directly to their students.
Luckily, Ellie already had a plan for that.
3. Start the conversation in school(s)
When Ellie came up with the idea to make this into a learning experience, she wasn’t just talking about the community conversation. From the beginning, she wanted to bring the idea to Harwood Middle and High School students as well. She volunteered to create a lesson plan and worked with school administrators to distribute it to all 50 advisory teachers.
When Jonah shared Ellie’s work with the planning team, educators from other schools asked permission to adapt the lesson for younger grades. Eventually students across our district in multiple schools learned about Partridge Thatcher’s past and discussed connections to modern day racism.
For me, that is such a powerful example of a student exploring a Flexible Pathway to learning. An example of a school community being able and willing to support that student’s learning. And a way to tie a student’s passion for learning to real-world, authentic change.
Ellie’s lesson plan allowed students to process their own reactions and prepared them to participate in the community conversation. We hoped that they would go home and talk with their families about it as well. Because there was plenty of buzz well before the event.
4. Anchor the conversation
We wanted to make sure that the conversation wasn’t purely theoretical. But we weren’t trying to organize a debate, either. We wanted people to grapple with the implications of our community’s ties to slavery and racism in a way that was respectful and learning-oriented.
Educators on our planning team who had been teaching about racial justice busted out tools to support productive dialogue. We ended up using the agreements and compass from Courageous Conversations (for an example of these in action in a classroom, check out this unit on equity and identity from 6th grade social studies teacher Christie Nold).
We also wanted to make sure that people entered the conversation with the same basic historical facts at hand.
In response, I developed a packet of historical information. The packet presented the information in multiple ways, with a visual timeline, select quotes, and related background reading. Dr. Guyette provided feedback to ensure accuracy.
We wanted to provide people access to the information in whatever way best suited them. For some people, the bare basics might suffice, while for others they were going to click through to the source material. And some folks may not want to read at all. For them, we created an interactive timeline.
Jonah Ibson, a Harwood teacher and planning team member, worked with students to create audio clips to bring choice quotes alive.
Even people who didn’t attend the event were able to learn a lot from the informational materials.
5. Get the word out
About three weeks before the event we started advertising. We used multiple channels:
Front Porch Forum – each Friday, volunteers posted to this local message board site
Flyers – we created a simple poster (.pdf) and put it up around our community
School newsletters – principals announced the event in their messages home to families
Public library – the Waterbury Public Library co-hosted the event and included it on their website and in their emails to members
Social media – we made announcements on the WAARC FaceBook page and some members tweeted about it
Special invites – we sent customized email invites to local community leaders such as the School Board, Select Board, and historical societies
There was a lively discussion on Front Porch Forum about the event. Most of the comments were skeptical, but a few people also expressed support. I wrote directly to many of the commenters to encourage them to join the discussion. In two cases people realized that they were being interpreted differently than they intended and they wrote follow up posts for clarification.
The pre-conversation conversation had begun.
6. Provide facilitators with plenty of support
Kathy Cadwell, philosophy teacher from Harwood Union High School, joined the planning team early on to lend her expertise on organizing community dialogues. She has worked with students to offer several Socrates Cafe events over the years. And she has an amazing website about strategies for scaffolding dialogue and her expertise and enthusiasm were invaluable.
We envisioned facilitator pairs made up of one community member and one student leader. Students from the planning team recruited fellow students who had facilitated other dialogues. Almost all of the adult volunteers ended up being educators from our school system.
The week before the event, we held a 90 minute facilitator training where we:
Talked through the flow of the event
Introduced tools such as norms we would be relying upon
Provided time for the eleven pairs to meet their co-facilitator
Role played a conversation and debriefed it
Based on the feedback at this training, we refined the facilitator guide. Most co-facilitator pairs met before the event to discuss roles and make sure they were totally set.
I can now say with certainty that they were well prepared. Because on the big night, they were amazing.
Agenda from the facilitator notes.
7. Execute your plan with purpose and flexibility
We asked participants to register via Google Form. In addition to giving us an idea of numbers, we were able to gauge what type of crowd we were going to have. We were able to see, for example, that the vast majority of people who had signed up were coming due to genuine curiosity about the subject.
Alysia Backman, a WAARC member and fantastic educator in her own right, handled the tech for the evening. She created Breakout Rooms on Zoom by asking the facilitator pairs to put their assigned number in front of their name. During the introduction, she randomly assigned all 80 participants and matched co-facilitators.
Gavin Thomsen, a student provided a powerful land acknowledgment;
an educator went over the agreements;
and Dr. Guyette did a quick review of and commentary on the historical materials.
Having Dr. Guyette provide historical perspective was incredibly powerful. She had put me in touch with one of the descendants of people who Thatcher had enslaved. I was honored by the fact that this woman, Karen Henry, and her husband, Dean Henry, attended the event. As Dr. Guyette presented they sent me a private chat message and asked to say a few words. The Henrys then shared the story of how they had learned about their ancestors’ connection to Thatcher. And they thanked the community for grappling with its past.
We had planned our agenda to the minute yet this unexpected portion of the evening was one of the most powerful parts. Many participants shared on the exit survey that this was something they would never forget.
How it’s going:
Our stated goals were to learn together and build community. And our exit survey suggested that we accomplished that. More than 90% of respondents answered positively on questions about whether the event it was a good use of their time and whether people were respectful of each other. The Waterbury Roundabout did a favorable follow up story as well.
Next, our planning team will go to the School Board to recommend that they initiate a process for changing the name of the school. We will recommend that they do so through a process that centers student leadership and collective learning.
We had Select Board and School Board members participate in the event and I’m optimistic that the renaming process will continue to be a source of growth for our community.
I’d imagine that some families had conversations about race that broke new ground. Perhaps some students took ideas home or adults picked up on the hubbub or some combination thereof. Although there was a lot of focus on the event itself, I’m hoping that the ripple effects had positive impact as well.
The biggest obstacle to fighting racism in my community is that many people deny that racism exists here. But to me, each community event about racism is part of an ongoing reckoning. For things to change, we’ll need every community, including predominantly white ones, to acknowledge the harmful impacts of racism. Especially on people of color but ultimately on all of us.
This event was a step toward normalizing consequential conversations about race in our community. As we learn together as a community, we build shared understandings and commitments to more effectively work towards racial justice. Together.
It’s not you; difficult conversations are a lot right now. While it’s fair to say that the history of the world consists of “being a lot” at regular intervals, right now is a moment where multiple unlikely catastrophes have collided, exposing deep rifts in conventional society. A lot of people we know and love hold diametrically opposed viewpoints, and they aren’t afraid to defend them.
And that’s where you come in, dear educators. Because a lot of those people with those viewpoints are the students in your classes. And you want to talk with them about what’s going on, and how it’s affecting them as learners. How they can affect the situation themselves, as participating members of this society. But how? Is it even possible to have those conversations? And what happens if something goes wrong?
Why address controversial issues?
Every Vermont teacher interviewed for this blog post came back to the same reason for addressing controversial issues in the classroom: for the sake of our democracy. Kathy Cadwell, a philosophy and history teacher at Harwood High School in Duxbury, got right to the point:
“Dialogue is the heart of democracy. Civil discourse is the heart of community. …Why we engage in the art of dialogue, it’s not only to develop those personal skills but to develop the skills of citizenship and engagement in community.”
Kate Toland, social studies teacher at Peoples Academy Middle Level in Morrisville VT, added that in a democracy we ned to engage in collective problem solving.
“Real problems require deep thought and deep thought requires being able to swim around in a topic instead of trying to build a wall that builds your point…who does that benefit? Thinking deeply with many people who see an issue differently or from different perspectives is where many solutions can lie and practicing being in discussion like that is I think what we want students to be doing and helping each other do.”
In her Open Letter to a Parent Afraid of Anti-Racist Education, English teacher and equity expert Christina Torres pointed out that this is not something new. “Teachers don’t just teach ‘content.’ We never have. For generations, we have also taught our students to listen, share, and be empathetic. Teachers don’t just help students understand themselves and the world around them, we also model how to have constructive discussions with one another.”
In a world of polarized politics and abundant hot takes, these difficult conversations may be more important now than ever. “Today, students are already inundated on social media with this stuff, so it is important to provide them with a space to explore these issues deeply in structured, safe ways. It is also important to begin combating digital tribalism and echo chambers as early as possible,” noted Paul Kramer, who teaches Humanities at the Harwood Community Learning Center.
Middle School too? A big yes
Students should start delving into controversial topics as early as possible. We know, for example, that teaching about race and racism should begin as soon as students start attending school. They are already forming their ideas and without guidance those ideas will reflect the misinformation, biases, and white supremacist ideology that permeate our society.
Middle school is particularly crucial, in part because students are becoming naturally more aware of the world. As Meg O’Donnell, 7-8 grade Humanities teacher at Shelburne Community School, in Shelburne VT, noted: “It’s all around us. These topics are what kids hear in the news and see play out in social media. It is so important to create space to talk about these things.”
Young adolescents are more exposed to the world and actively working to formulate their identity. This combination puts them in a unique and in some ways ideal position to learn how to engage in dialogue.
Kathy Forrestal, 7th grade Humanities teacher at Lyndon Town School (Lyndonville VT) put it this way: “They are starting to question the world. They are noticing the world around them in slightly more mature ways. They are questioning who they are and how they fit into the world. Looking at who they are at home. And realizing that they are allowed to have a thought about it.”
For the sake of our democracy, students need to discuss and learn about controversial issues. And we need to get serious about this in middle school. Because they will be talking about these issues anyway.
Lucia Johnson, Spanish teacher at Lyndon Town School, has seen and overheard some troubling examples this year:
I’ve had third grade students start a ‘Build the wall!’ chant while walking to computer class, sixth grade students declaring ‘I speak Taco Bell’ or ‘I speak American,’ and 7th graders ‘speak Spanish’ by putting on an exaggerated accent and making up fake words. Often they don’t understand the full impact that these words have, or the full context behind the issue.
Lucia noted that when she talked to students involved in these incidents individually, “about 75% of the time they didn’t understand what they were saying or how it could be interpreted.” She saw these conversations as crucial: “If you don’t talk with them and offer context and other perspectives, a massive opportunity for change is lost. These conversations are happening among even very young students, with or without the guidance of teachers.”
Gina Ritscher agreed. As a math interventionist she works with students across Lyndon Town School. “Teachers should address these issues because kids are already hearing about them and thinking about them. Sometimes in biased versions.”
The same logic of talking about race and racism can be applied more broadly: in the absence of purposeful instruction, youth are left to form their ideas largely on the basis of confusing and often problematic messaging from society.
Outside events entering the classroom
When big stuff is happening in the news, teachers are forced to decide whether and how to explicitly address it in the classroom. When those events have a partisan charge, or relate to something that is personally affecting, it can complicate a teacher’s calculus.
The recent Presidential election was a good example. Many schools and classrooms that had mock elections in the past skipped it this last round. Some teachers cited the fact that with everybody already stretched thin by pandemic schooling, the focus was on maintaining community and supporting social emotional safety. They didn’t feel up to inviting the divisiveness of the outside world into their classrooms.
Andrea Gratton and Kyle Chadburn addressed the election in the grade 5-8 Humanities classes they co-teach at Orleans Elementary School. Before the election, they mostly focused on the basics of the electoral process. They also helped students connect learning they had done about personal biases to the presence of bias in media sources. Afterwards, they used classroom time to hold space for students to ask questions and process their reactions.
One question that often comes up for teachers is whether to reveal their own views in the classroom. All teachers interviewed for this post tended to keep things close to the vest. Kate Toland captured this approach well:
My advice to myself at the beginning of the year is to relax and realize there is absolutely no need to convince anyone of anything. It is not our job to create a particular set of political beliefs; it is our job to help students find their voices and express their thinking respectfully and to use and explore reliable and trustworthy evidence to make our decisions about issues.
This view aligns with what unabashed anti-racism educator Christina Torres noted in a recent interview on the Have You Heard podcast. She drew a sharp distinction between the way she approaches tough topics with adults versus her students. She noted that in her classroom the emphasis is on skill building: “’Here’s what a lot of people think, what do you think?’ I don’t present my own views. I’m not going to say what a 13 year old is doing is racist. I’m not saying they can’t be racist, but I’m not going to name it that way usually. Because I want them to come to realize that themselves.”
Even when current events are partisan and complex, and perhaps especially then, teachers are in a position to provide students with the space and skills to navigate the world.
Spontaneous classroom discussions
In many cases, students bring up controversial issues at times and in ways that teachers aren’t expecting.
Kathy Forrestal shared a recent example where a student brought up Black Lives Matter.
It vaguely related to the topic at hand but the classroom was quickly embroiled in a passionate conversation. Students expressed that they wanted to talk about racism and inequity in the context of current events more often.
Kathy asked them why.
“Because we are the next generation”
“We’re the generation that is going to be in law enforcement and government when you’re like 80”
“This generation is growing up with [conversations about racism] and knowing what’s going on is important”
“People are not addressing issues because they’re not knowledgeable about them – so we need to be knowledgeable so we can find solutions that are mutual”
“Adults are uncomfortable talking about this stuff because their parents were uncomfortable talking about this stuff, so if we talk about this, we won’t be”
Students get it.
Meg O’Donnell shared a different sort of example, where the class learning was focused on politics, but the conversation went in a direction she hadn’t anticipated. Students were looking at historical polling data that showed the large extent to which views on various issues had become polarized. After a few minutes of introducing the data, Meg noticed that a contentious discussion had blown up in the chat related to one of the issues on the list.
“It’s like when you are stuffing the Thanksgiving bird and the skin rips. I realized that the norms I thought were established in my class was more of a thin veil. They weren’t tightly woven as I thought, or integrated into daily practice. … When we were tested we didn’t have a strong enough scaffold.”
Meg noted that the norms in this classroom were particularly tested by external stressors and by the online environment. “There’s something about this moment. This interface. This child would have never said that in person.”
It can be tough when things go sideways
But Meg, as a consummate professional, simply redoubled her efforts. She reached out to colleagues to process the experience and for advice on how to reinforce norms and scaffold discussion skills on a daily basis.
This recent incident has reminded her of something she’s always known:
“Norms can’t just be a cover, they need to be a foundation. Norm setting is not something you do in a day and move on, but something you hit every day, every opportunity. How to ask a question, how to respond to something when it lands hard on us. How to understand the speaker and the perspective but not just shout louder.”
So what do we do?
We have to be intentional about having tough and timely conversations in classrooms. We may still overhear stuff that needs addressing. And students will surely keep surprising us by bringing up topics when we least expect it.
But every situation will go more smoothly if we’ve scaffolded the art and skills of dialogue.
Laying the ground rules for the hard stuff? Starts with the easy stuff.
From day one, you’ve worked with your students on learning who they are, where they come from, and what matters most to them. As a learning community, you’ve built norms for interacting. These likely cover everything from seating choice to restroom breaks, device check-out and unlimited testing re-takes.
In case they don’t also cover face-to-face (or mask-to-mask as the case may be) communication, here are three sets of norms to consider in creating or revisiting conversational norms.
3 sets of conversational norms:
1. The Craig Ferguson Route
Three simple rules:
Does this need to be said?
Does it need to be said by me?
And does it need to be said by me right now?
2. Four Phrases for Kindness
Perhaps the most powerful phrases in any language are:
“Please.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m sorry.”
and
“If I’m understanding you correctly…”
Those first three might seem overly simple, but in the heat of conversations about emotionally charged topics, these phrases can be key in dismantling tension. Especially if as a group, you all are used to using them.
Especially that fourth one.
Let’s take a moment:
“If I’m understanding you correctly…you just stated that you believe aliens have landed in Bellows Falls and replaced all our regular coffee with Folger’s Decaf? Is that correct?”
While we’re all going to be extremely lucky if decaf-bearing space travelers are the 2020 topic causing conversational mayhem, the key here is that you can use this phrase to do two things in the discourse: 1) slow it down, and 2) ask for clarification. Both these approaches can be life-savers.
Sometimes, we misunderstand people.
Sometimes, we don’t hear everything they’ve said because of background noise, a lag in our speech-to-text device, a momentary distraction or because what we think we hear the person saying has whipped up our emotions to the point where they’re difficult to manage.
Additionally, the rise of social media has created what Kathy Forrestal refers to as “Tik-Tok understanding”: the idea that we can fully grasp nuance and context from social media soundbites. They’re so short! So easy to make! So easy to consume! And yet, without rigorous online information safeguards, they can also be misleading, biased, or flat-out wrong.
Another slide from Kyle Chadburn & Andrea Gratton. Used with permission.
Social media in general can cause us to speed up or gloss over our comprehension in actual, real-life conversations, whether online or in-person. As Meg O’Donnell put it: “They have the soundbites, the kernels, but don’t always have the historic thread or the depth beyond the soundbite. They have the retort, but not the wisdom behind it.”
Building background knowledge using a range of sources can help. Regardless: there will be points where it’s time to throw the handbrake.
“If I’m understanding you correctly…” is your handbrake
When you use it, what you’re doing is creating a space in the discourse to focus on one sentence, or one idea, and ask for additional detail. You’re creating a space where you can connect with the speaker more directly by establishing a feedback loop. That feedback loop, in turn, can help the speaker understand if what they said came out right.
Oh, we have all been there.
Perhaps what they meant to say came out wrong. Perhaps their own emotions overwhelmed them during the discourse. Now they have a chance to connect with their listener (or listeners; this absolutely works in a group setting) and clarify.
Even if (and this is key), in those few seconds where they hear their own ideas repeated back to them, they realize that they’d like to retract, or amend their statement.
Give them that opportunity. Give them that grace.
Breathe in, breathe out. Listen well. Accept retractions, amendments or apologies in the name of preserving or re-establishing community.
3. Would you say it to your mother?
Part of learning is the importance of recognizing context. Again, during conversations where emotions are running high, it’s easy to get carried away, that’s why we’re all here in this article. But if students already have a known and used norm of thinking about whether they’d make a certain utterance to a specific loved one, that can slow down the derailment.
Let’s unpack, just a little. First of all, we’re going to recognize that the mother example will not just not work for every student, but can, in certain cases, be traumatic for students for whom their mother is a traumatic figure. That’s absolutely something to negotiate and work around.
The key aspect of the strategy deals with the idea that when our emotions carry us away from staying present and focused on who we’re speaking to, it’s helpful to have this norm which encourages us all to identify and re-presence one individual, one particular person in our lives whose opinion we respect, and to whom we always try to present our best selves: our mother, our beloved grandfather, our cousin serving in the Navy, our priest, etc.
This We Believe:
Now, that all said, part of your classroom norms discussion inevitably covers what’s up for discussion, and what’s not. Diana Hess and Paula McAvoy, authors of The Political Classroom, refer to these as “open” vs “settled” issues. (We love this NPR interview with them.)
As a community, you and your students sat down and decided on items that are established facts and firm beliefs; they are not up for discussion.
Black lives matter. Climate change is real. COVID-19 is not a hoax.
These are things that you can decide are simply not up for debate. They are settled issues. Instead, what could be up for debate are questions such as what to do about anti-Black police brutality, how to solve climate change, and what science says about preventing the spread of COVID-19. Those are topics that you can (and likely should) discuss.
When things go wrong (because they will)
Despite our best intentions, conversations will go awry. We’re all a little frazzled, we’re all 300% done with Zoom meetings. We’re all sad and scared and anxious and unsure. And while we’re all doing our best, we are in a situation where a lot of improbable events have congregated in one place and are cha-cha-ing all over our mental health. At the best of times, we all sometimes mis-speak or get carried away. And these are not the best of times.
Someone’s going to say something that hurts someone else.
Pause.
That is the crux of miscommunication. As communication seeks to build connections, miscommunication severs them. So then the task we want to address is rebuilding that connection.
Let’s look at a couple ways to do that.
Learning to accept the consequences of your own actions, especially when they’re not always perfect, is a hard skill. Hard but necessary.
Rabbi Danya’s Guide to Repentance
Apologizing is a skill. And like other skills, you have to learn it. At the heart of every true apology lie two things: a recognition that you caused injury, and a focus on how you are going to atone for doing the injury.
Sounds simple. Too bad human emotions tend to get in the way.
Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone puts it this way: “No matter where it took place — in the workplace, the street, on Instagram or in someone’s DMs — if you hurt someone, you need to make it right.”
What makes a good apology?
Choose your venue: should you write it out on paper and share it with the injured party? Should you call them? Should you apologize face-to-face with authority figures involved? Does a text cut it?
First of all, the feelings and safety of the injured party are paramount. What feels safest to them? What would make them feel heard and attended to? And above all else, what will make sure to not compound the original injury?
Rabbi Danya Rutenberg has a thought-provoking thread unpacking teshuvah (תשובה), a process of forgiveness, atonement and repentance.
I want to distinguish between "atonement," "forgiveness," and "repentance," which are three different concepts in Judaism. The critical one, in my view, is repentance, where the real work is on the person who has done harm.
She focuses in her argument on how there is a large amount of very specific work for the injuring party to do, both on themselves, and in their community. How can your existing classroom and school norms support working through personal growth? If a communications breakdown occurs, what resources can your school bring to support examining the root cause of the utterance?
Calling in, rather than calling out
The prevalence of online communications, with its unfettered approach to crowd discourse, has given rise to a tendency to call people out on their utterances.
Instead: what does it look like for someone to misstep in a conversation, and for us to recognize that not only does the listening community need support in processing the impact of the hurt done, but that as we value every member of our community, we also need to attend to the hurt experience by the speaker that in fact causes the utterance?
We call people in, rather than out.
There are a number of educators doing amazing work around restorative justice in schools. At Randolph Union High School, in Randolph Center VT, students manage the school’s restorative justice system (video), which includes restorative justice circles.
But it’s worth it.
Students need to be able to engage in productive discussions about complex and controversial issues. They’ll be learning and talking about these things whether we address them in our classrooms or not. But with guidance they can build crucial skills in communication, problem solving, critical analysis, conflict resolution, etc.
We are obligated to “go there” for the sake of our democracy, but there are some short term benefits as well.
At the Harwood Community Learning Center, for the last several years teachers have set aside time in the daily schedule to talk about current events. Paul Kramer is amazed at how much students grow over time.
Students begin each year tentatively – not volunteering topics, passively listening – but as time progresses, we do see a change; students begin looking for content to share and engaging with each other using probing questions … it becomes a strong bonding experience for the group … I have actually come to view these discussions as a behavior support for my classes. They provide such an important outlet for some kids.
The world is a scary place. But when done well, delving into the controversies in our society and making sense together of the mess of misinformation can be hugely compelling for students.
At the beginning of the school year, members of the middle school leadership team at the Lyndon Town School (LTS) in Lyndonville, Vermont, were doing what they do every week: reflecting and planning.
Unlike most schools in Vermont during the current pandemic, from day one they were working with students in person five days each week. And even though they had almost all of their students in school, something was missing.
Although teachers were focusing on building relationships in their classrooms, how would they build community as amiddle school? In the past, a key strategy had been to gather everybody together in the cafeteria once a month for a Town Meeting. Obviously that was off the table during pandemic schooling.
Or was it?
Getting creative about Town Meeting
Like many other schools in Vermont, the Town Meeting at LTS had multiple purposes, including:
Build community across grade levels
Serve as a forum for announcements
Provide an authentic audience for student presentations
Invite students to help plan and facilitate an event
Inject some fun and laughter
Once the leadership team thought through these purposes together, they realized two things. First, Town Meeting was an awesome tradition that they needed now more than ever. Second, perhaps they could capture enough of this magic using a different format to make it worth it.
They resolved to do what Vermont educators have done so much of this year, by necessity: they put students first and, one way or another, made it work.
After kicking around some ideas, the outlines of a plan began to emerge. Each homeroom (advisory group) would join virtual town meetings via Zoom. The new schedule allowed only 30 minutes (compared to nearly an hour in past years), so they shortened the announcement section considerably. But they would do it every single week rather than once a month.
As the group considered this new format, they began to see some potential benefits. For one thing, more frequent meetings may lead to a stronger community building routine overall. For another, the new format might allow more student leadership than in the past. When the whole middle school gathered, it was often tough for students to effectively address everybody due to shyness, microphone awkwardness, etc. And the announcement portion of proceedings often took up a lot of time.
The new format could potentially solve some of these problems. The team designed it to be tightly structured and easy to engage with in terms of planning, facilitation, and participation.
De-centralized planning
A key priority for the leadership team was to avoid overwhelming colleagues with another planning task. Time for collaborative planning amongst teachers was at a premium.
They created a structure that would allow homerooms to “plug and play” on a rotating basis:
Each week belonged to a different grade level
Meetings followed a predictable flow with three distinct roles – host; quotes, celebrations, and announcements; and activity facilitator
Each homeroom would sign up for a role on the week that their grade level was in charge
The leadership team wrote up the plan and shared it with colleagues via email. Homerooms signed up for roles, filled out the corresponding part of the slide template, and they were off and running.
So far, so good
The new Town Meeting format seems to be working pretty well. Some people even like it better than the old format. Like many things during the pandemic, it requires adaptability and a commitment to making the best of the situation. As one student noted, “I don’t really like having to do it online but we kinda have to.”
Mollie Falk, guidance counselor extraordinaire, summed up the requisite attitude this way:
Recognize that it will be far from perfect, but for kids (and adults) craving connection, it doesn’t have to be. Embrace mistakes, laugh at yourself, go with the flow.
A few particular lessons have emerged.
Focus on fun
When asked what they enjoy most about virtual town meetings, students were pretty clear that the activity portion is the star of the show. So far this year we have seen quiz competitions, an estimation math challenge, Scattergories, and an on the spot haiku contest.
The most straightforward format for interactive portions such as greetings and activities is for most of the action to take place within the homerooms themselves. As one teacher put it, “Something that works well, is to give a task or activity for each advisory to complete, then they share out with the whole group via chat or one at a time.”
For some students, this allows them to feel more connected. Several students echoed this comment: “I love being able to work with my homeroom to try and win at games.”
Teachers agree that the smaller groupings draw some students in more than the larger gatherings of the past. “Being in separate spaces make it easier to compete in competitions and get full participation. It’s easier to see if someone is not participating, since each group is smaller.”
Keep it fresh
The “plug and play” structure serves its function well. On a busy week, if necessary, each of the three homerooms at a grade level can plan separately for their role and the meeting can come together fairly seamlessly.
But some weeks demand a little something special. For Halloween, for example, music teacher Johanna Fournier designed a themed Town Meeting. Allied Arts teachers introduced themselves with Halloween themed facts about themselves.
In another example, each homeroom had developed banners and advertisements during their advisory time. It was a fantastic project and Town Meeting served as the perfect venue to showcase the ads. They tended to be both meaningful and hilarious, well deserving of the authentic audience that virtual town meetings can provide.
This advisory ad for Tammi Parker’s 8th grade advisory, otherwise known as “The Robparkarians,” was a hit.
Get your tech squared away
Most teachers are running the Zoom on projectors or Smartboards so that everybody can easily see. In some cases teachers will have two computers going, especially if they are playing the hosting role.
There are a couple of homerooms that have bandwidth issues, which can be frustrating. As one student put it, “The wifi is really hard because sometimes it lags a lot so you can’t hear but you just have to be calm about it and don’t get all mad and upset.” Indeed.
The technology integration specialist helped teachers with initial set-up. A few weeks in, she conducted a survey to understand ongoing technology problems. She is troubleshooting the issues one by one, and the school is upgrading wifi, so hopefully these issues will be ironed out soon.
Share the love
Since these virtual town meetings are shorter in duration, more frequent, and less of a production than in the past, they feel a bit lower stakes. Students can participate from the comfort of their homeroom. This draws in more students and draws out more creativity.
As Mollie put it, “Town Meeting is fun, different and creative each week as a result of rotating who is hosting. There are lots of fun ideas and now we all can share them with each other, rather than it being hosted by the same individuals each week as it once was.”
Hopefully this new format can continue to strengthen community both within and across homerooms/advisories. And once restrictions are lifted, perhaps there will be some aspects of this new format that can inform the next generation of face to face Town Meetings. But until then, LTS middle school will continue to make the best of the situation.
How can you build community across classrooms and grade levels in your school?
In spring 2020, during statewide “emergency remote learning” due to the pandemic, many districts and schools changed their approach to grading and reporting.
The shift was toward a “do no harm” model. In a moment when everybody was reeling from ongoing collective trauma and uncertainty, this made a lot of sense from a purely human standpoint. And with so much variation in student access to technology and other resources, evaluations of performance were bound to be hugely inequitable.
The report cards that families received often looked quite different than in the past. In many cases there were no letter or number grades. Often there were narrative comments and feedback that was new or more detailed than before. And the emphasis was likely to be on student assets, growth, and encouragement.
So how about now? Are these shifts still in place or are we snapping back to pre-pandemic practices? The answer is a bit of both.
Why should grading change?
When some schools let go of letter and number grades last spring, there was an understanding that these seemingly precise measures were crude representations of learning. In the midst of collective trauma, and with so many variables at play, it seemed unnecessarily reductionist to quantitatively summarize students’ experiences.
Yet doesn’t this logic extend beyond the pandemic? Evaluating a student with a number pulls them into a paradigm of comparison. And comparison begets competition. Winners and losers, rather than growers and learners.
In a recent article, Tony Winger and Kimberly Race trace the costs of grading, which include teachers acting as gatekeepers for success, the proliferation of fixed mindsets, and the toll it takes on students’ wellbeing. They cite research showing grades as the biggest factor, by far, in students’ stress levels.
We don’t want to produce undue anxiety. But perhaps this stress is justified because it motivates students to learn? Unfortunately the extrinsic motivation of grades is not a solid motivator for the long term.
Fundamentally, though, grading and reporting reflect our beliefs about the purpose of schooling. As Winger and Race ask: “Do we wish to serve as gatekeepers, sorting and ranking students as they compete for status and resources? Or do we wish to help all students grow to be healthy and happy humans, self-sufficient and creative workers, collaborative problem solvers, and engaged citizens?”
For those pushing school systems to become more equitable and student centered, the choice is clear. Grades gotta go.
Why are grades sticking around?
Based on interviews with several districts for this blog post, it appears that report cards in Vermont this fall will look very similar to how they appeared before the pandemic.
There seemed to be a near consensus among instructional leaders that the long term vision was to ditch grades and focus entirely on narrative feedback. Especially at the elementary and middle levels.
And there was unanimous agreement that the main barrier for going grade-less was culture. The culture of our society in general and of our schools in particular. Families simply aren’t ready for this shift. Especially certain privileged families that want to maintain their competitive advantage.
Andrew Jones is the Curriculum Director of Mill River Schools and President of the Vermont Curriculum Leaders Association. He visited several schools in Maine near the end of 2019 as a follow up to visits he had done during his Rowland Fellowship five years prior. He wanted to understand why Maine had reversed course legislatively on Standards Based Grading.
“For schools where there was a big pushback on proficiencies, we found that letter grades were the thing that broke it. Some schools changed practices and did fine, but schools that changed the outside facing stuff, that’s what sank it. I talked to somebody who sat in every legislative hearing, and it was all about letter grades, transcripts, and colleges.”
Logistics too
The transition from high school to college is the ultimate sticking point. There is a logistical dilemma of how to transfer information so that colleges can run an admissions process. There are some models emerging but they are not yet proven or widespread.
In her article A Perfect World is One with No Grades, Susan Brookhart noted that “administrative functions that come with doing education at scale” may require some level of sorting and ranking. Even a strong proponent of going gradeless like Brookhart acknowledged that doing so at a systems level may be a bridge too far at the moment.
Some promising shifts
There may not be dramatic changes to report cards this year. But instructional leaders around the state are adamant that proficiency based learning practices have accelerated. Here are a few areas that jumped out across several interviews:
Narrative reporting
Grades in the form of letters or numbers are still present. But the emphasis on descriptive narratives from the spring has carry over benefits.
In Two Rivers Supervisory Union, teachers engaged in the “GPS model of feedback,” so called by the former Curriculum Director Michael Eppolito. “What’s your goal? Where are you now? And what’s your next step?” Teachers wrote a Student Growth Report for progress reports in the spring and at the end of the year. This practice allowed them to “change their practice and move toward a more proficiency based mindset,” according to Michael.
Mike Moriarty, Curriculum Director of Orleans Central Supervisory Union (OCSU), similarly cited the benefits of teachers experiencing a full cycle of purely narrative reporting. Although OCSU will be bringing back their 1-4 scale on performance indicators for this year, they are keeping the narratives. “We received a lot of positive feedback in the spring about our reporting and about overall communication with families. We are going to build on that this year.”
Guaranteed and viable curriculum
Many districts reduced the amount of content that teachers are being asked to cover.
As described by Jal Mehta, Harvard professor and co-author of a prominent paper on creative solutions to schooling during the pandemic, “The key idea is to just focus on the essential knowledge and skills that kids need to learn in a given year, and then let go of some of the rest… Focusing on essentials allows opportunities for teachers to go deeper, create space to form relationships, build communities, support social emotional learning, extracurriculars, and all the other things that are going to be critical in this upcoming year.”
Andrew Jones noted that “it is absolutely crucial that we get to a guaranteed and viable curriculum. That we set a limited number of learning targets that we can realistically teach and assess in a school year.” Emily Rinkema, instructional coach at Champlain Valley Union High School, pointed to this as a major shift: “all courses have reduced the number of learning targets… Last year, full credit courses had between 8-12 learning targets; this year, they have between 4-6 learning targets.”
Fewer learning targets = more depth. And that’s a good thing.
Transferable Skills have been part of the plan for implementing proficiencies since the passage of Act 77 in 2013. Reducing the amount of content that needs to be covered opens up time and energy to incorporate Transferable Skills meaningfully.
In addition to Transferable Skills, Emily Rinkema explained how the pandemic brought socio-emotional learning (SEL) to the fore. “Teachers are so much more focused on SEL and have been willing and eager to let go of some of the things they worried about in the past. For example, there was a lot of talk last year pre-pandemic about how we can ‘grade’ executive functioning. And now, they are more interested in how to support executive functioning skills.”
Orleans Southwest Supervisory Union (OSSU) is putting SEL at the center of professional learning this school year. Superintendent Adam Rosenberg noted that, “We worked hard to lay the SEL foundation at the beginning of the school year with the understanding that it’s not just for two weeks and then move on, but that these strategies will become habits of practice.”
Student-centered instructional models
Teachers moved mountains in the spring to transform instruction at the drop of a hat. Instructional leaders are hoping to build on some of the successes that emerged in those extremely challenging circumstances.
Mill River Schools has started the year fully remote. Curriculum Director Andrew Jones has asked teachers to organize instruction using flexible learning modules. These are one week cycles that end in a “formal formative assessment” which guides remediation and enrichment. Modules are developed using a common template to make things easier to follow for students and families. The focus is on feedback and student growth, which Andrew expects will continue with face-to-face learning.
In OSSU, although most students opted into face-to-face learning, Superintendent Adam Rosenberg asked teachers to “teach all students through the lens of remote learning.” The district had been working on “cultivating learner agency through reflective practice” for some time, but serving students remotely has strengthened the rationale for putting student self-direction and agency at the center. The district’s recently developed Learner Agency Teacher Rubric is being used for reflection and collective implementation in a way that is beyond where the conversation likely would have been otherwise.
Onward
While grading and reporting may not look hugely different than a year ago, there seems to be movement in the right direction with some acceleration in key areas. It is worth noting that many often cited “best practices” are already fairly widespread practices in Vermont. It is common to find learning scales, opportunities for retaking assessments, and separate evaluation of Work Habits from academics.
In a recent article Tom Schimmer emphasized the incremental nature of changes in these areas: “Grading reform doesn’t happen overnight; we aren’t simply going to snap out of habitual practices… Short-term wins can add up to a seismic shift in grading and reporting.”
Andrew Jones pointed to eight years of implementation as a threshold where “the real work can begin.” From conversations with schools in Maine, Washington, and Oregon, he consistently heard that it took about that long for communities to get past active resistance to the transformations inherent in authentic proficiency based learning.
By that measure, most Vermont districts have a few years of this first phase of implementation. If we keep moving steadily ahead, hopefully the culture of schooling will reach a point where equitable gradeless feedback rich practices are not only accepted, but expected.
How do you center descriptive feedback rather than grades?
How can educators manage PLPs in remote learning? What goes into a Learning Management System? And what does it look like to effectively tie the two together in a smooth workflow? Seesaw + Google Classroom is one increasingly popular combination.
SeeSaw can complement Google Classroom, which excels as a day to day home base to keep the classroom workflow organized.
While the functionality of these two platforms overlaps considerably, they are potentially most powerful when used in tandem.
Playing to strengths
Google Classroom is a fairly simple, generally effective, and free LMS. It allows teachers to push out work, collect it, provide feedback, and track completion. It works seamlessly with other Google tools such as Google Docs, Google Drive, etc.
Comparing the two side by side?
Google Classroom
Seesaw
Home base
Day-to-day workflow
Assigning tasks/work
Collecting work
Grading and feedback
Artifacts & reflections
Choice in how to reflect
Share work with families
Receive comments on work
Tagging (folders)
Student-led conferences
Families can sign up to receive weekly emails from Google Classroom that summarize the assignments completed and owed by students. But families can’t access the details or see their student’s work inside Google Classroom. That’s a serious drawback.
SeeSaw, in contrast, excels at bringing families into the learning cycle. It’s built on the premise that sharing student work with families will deepen connections and ultimately help the work be more meaningful to students.
(I’ve experienced this with my own children. I get notified when their teacher approves work and I get to check it out and comment on it. Sometimes we have a back and forth exchange via comments (text or audio). And this can also lead to conversations at home.)
The other major thing that SeeSaw does really well is provide kid-friendly tools for posting in a variety of modalities. Students can easily explain or reflect upon work via drawing, audio, video, text, or combinations thereof.
The interface is quite clean and straightforward, with posts organized chronologically from top to bottom that families can scroll through. Students can post spontaneously or in response to teacher assignments, with the stream representing an ongoing cumulative portfolio of their work.
SeeSaw as a PLP
Middle school teachers can use SeeSaw as a PLP portfolio with key artifacts and reflections, separate from the day to day assignments in Google Classroom.
At Lyndon Town School, in Lyndonville VT, for example, middle school teachers have agreed that students will post at least one artifact per unit into SeeSaw. This will include a piece of evidence (for example, a performance task) and a reflection.
Students can tag their posts so that they can access them in an organized way. Tags are called “folders” in SeeSaw, and teachers can set up a classroom to include folders such as subject, transferable skills, or other organizational schema.
For a PLP, the folder system may include things like “About Me” or “Goals.” And perhaps most importantly for typical PLP workflow, there would be a folder/tag for curated work. For example, the Lyndon Town School teachers have a folder for “Conferences” that will include work to be shared during Student Led Conferences.
These are the categories Lyndon Town School chose for organizing student work in SeeSaw.
So from a students point of view, they will regularly use SeeSaw to post evidence and reflections related to class work and goals. And occasionally they will go back through their stream to mark work that they want to share during their conferences. Families would be able to engage with work along the way and then see how students synthesize their learning and reflect on patterns.
Just what a PLP is supposed to do.
Keep it simple
The most straightforward way to use SeeSaw as a portfolio is to create one class called something like “Portfolio and Reflection.” Each teacher of a student would be co-teachers in the class.
Teachers would use assignments, called “activities” in SeeSaw, to keep themselves organized. For example, at the end of a unit a music teacher could create an activity called “Music Artifact 1.” When they log in they can review student work from that activity in order to give feedback and approve posts. They can ignore work assigned by other teachers.
Since folders sit within classes, this allows a student to use the “Conferences” folder in their “Portfolio and Reflection” class to curate their work. In theory, if a student wanted to pull in work from another class, they could grab a link to that SeeSaw post. But keeping the PLP in one place streamlines the workflow.
This is especially useful for teachers who are new to SeeSaw. Teachers who want to use it more extensively could potentially create a separate class.
Start and end with Google Classroom
For teachers who want to use Google Classroom to stay organized, they can have students access SeeSaw activities through Google Classroom assignments. Students will click on a link and be taken to their SeeSaw account where they can complete the activity (without needing to sign in again). Then they can mark the assignment as complete in Google Classroom.
Chrissy Park, an educator at Burke Town School, in East Burke VT, does an excellent job of illustrating how Google Classroom and SeeSaw can work together in this screencast.
One lingering question
And that is: how to support spontaneous SeeSaw posts.
The vision for authentic student-centered portfolios is a world where students are learning, in and out of school, and they throw evidence in their PLP whenever they are inspired to do so. But if there are a bunch of co-teachers in one class, they will likely have notifications turned off, so how will they know? If they are using Google Classroom and relying on activities in SeeSaw then there’s no loop there. Students could send an email but it would be nice to automate it.
Are you using these two tools together? What’s been your experience so far?
All three of those categories are unacceptable. Each supports systemic racism. Each supports the status quo.
We need to seriously pursue a fourth option: anti-racist white children. And schools have a huge role to play.
What can this look like in action?
As the education world seems poised to take steps toward anti-racist education systems, it is important to learn from teachers who are already centering antiracism and equity.
And their students.
For example, take Christie Nold, 6th grade social studies teacher at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School in South Burlington, VT. A trio of her 6th grade students led a group of educators from around Vermont through activities in bias-awareness and social identity at the 2018 Middle Grades Conference.
Once the students learned a vocabulary for antiracist education, they turned around and taught others. Not just peers, but educators.
Christie Nold has also generously shared a how she built a social identity unit. And again, her students have generously shared their learning, and their insight.
“The kids we have around us today, they’re going to be the leaders of tomorrow. And the adults and teachers, they’re not necessarily responsible, but they kind of are, because what they say and teach really impacts us.”
–Abbey
Watch these students. Listen to their wisdom. And imagine what we could do if all students were engaged in anti-racist education from a young age. Starting from today.
Schools are committed to bringing anti-racism into curricula and systems more than ever before. Even in predominantly white schools there appears to be a growing acknowledgment that anti-racist education is crucial for all students.
Big changes seem to be underfoot. And that’s a wonderful thing.
But there will be pushback. White fragility and white rage will ensure a range of resistance to anti-racism. Some of it will be coded and couched in other concerns. But some of it will come in the form of violent, ugly, and harmful backlash.
We need to be ready.
For educators, whose first priority is their students, we need to have a plan for students who struggle to incorporate anti-racism into their current worldview.
For those students caught in the middle of the inevitable backlash, we need to be ready to provide support. What might a system of intervention look like for anti-racist education?
Systematic support for anti-racist teaching and learning
Let’s start with the premise that our goal is for students to be active citizens in our pluralistic democracy. And that in order to do that, they need to understand anti-democratic systems, starting with racism. This is so they can analyze, navigate, and transform our currently imperfect system for a more just and democratic future.
A widespread concern in Vermont, and central to this blog post, are our anti-racism goals for white students. In her book Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America, Jennifer Harvey draws on the work of racial identity scholars Janet Helms and Beverly Daniel Tatum, both Black women, to define “healthy white kids” as anti-racists.
“A healthy white identity is nurtured through experiencing the growth, freedom, and power that comes from taking anti-racist stances and learning to negotiate different racial spaces.”
With the goals clear, what would it take?
To help students become anti-racist democratic citizens, we need to mobilize such systems and strategies as:
Curriculum that includes identity work, people-centered history, systems analysis, and tons of transferable skills. Something based on the Teaching Tolerance Social Justice Standards, for example.
Professional learning on the above content. This is especially important for teachers who will center this content in their classrooms (social studies, history, humanities). But really all teachers will need to learn much of this because it impacts how they approach the world.
Professional learning on student-centered, asset-based teaching methods. Such as Gloria Ladson Billings’ Culturally Responsive Pedagogy. For white teachers in particular, this would include reflection on their racial autobiographies, a deep dive into their social identities, and constant examination of their biases and impacts.
System changes including discipline policies, dress codes, diverse representation in the halls and literature, honoring student voice and agency, etc. Students learn from what they observe and experience.
Engagement with the community in new and deeper ways. Many families will have powerful assets to bring to this work. Some of them are the same families that may have felt alienated or been marginalized by school practices in the past. And other families will be resistant, overtly and covertly.
This last point brings us to our present focus.
In a predominantly white state and school system like Vermont, we will have a lot of white families, white students, and white-ness to consider. If we are teaching about anti-racism we are going to need a serious system of intervention.
White children
If students are going to learn about anti-racism, they will have a lot of unlearning to do, too. They will hear contradictory stuff at home and from the world around them via every type of media (social media, news, music, magazines, radio, etc).
White students in particular are unlikely to have encountered sophisticated thinking about race at home. In the article What White Children Need to Know About Race, Ali Michael and Elenora Bartoli noted that
“The research suggests that for fear of perpetuating racial misunderstandings, being seen as a racist, making children feel badly, or simply not knowing what to say, many white parents tend to believe that there is never a right time to initiate a conversation about race.”
If families don’t teach their kids about race, society will.
As Jennifer Harvey put it,
“White children are living in a society that is racially hierarchical, divided, and unjust. It seeks to draw white people into collusion with hierarchy and injustice every step of the way” (p. 100).
Put together the tendency for families to avoid talking about race with the damaging messages of society? We can start to see why we are where we are. When we consider how and what white people learn about race? It’s clear that we have a lot of work to do.
White-dominant culture: “How white people and their practices, beliefs, and culture have been normalized over time and are now considered standard in the United States.”
Internalized dominance: “Describes the experience and attitudes of those who are members of the dominant, privileged, or powerful identity groups. Members of the [dominant] group accept their group’s socially superior status as normal and deserved.”
White supremacy: “An ideology where white people are believed to be superior to nonwhite people.”
So for white children there is a cycle where they are raised in white-dominant culture which socializes internalized dominance and ultimately upholds white supremacy ideology. And that bestows benefits on white people, thus reinforcing white dominant culture. The cycle keeps chugging along.
In a future where anti-racist education is widespread, all students will deal with the contrasts between anti-racism and white-dominant culture.
And this is why we will need to think carefully about intervention.
White students will be struggling to counteract their internalized dominance. And this is a particular problem we have to account for in the intervention model.
Plus, for a small set of white students, that internalized dominance will be especially extreme. These are the students where white supremacy is *explicitly* part of their home environments. Where a loving caregiver espouses white supremacist ideology, for example.
There is a danger that without strategies and systems in place, these students may be pushed harder toward white supremacy. Which underscores the importance of this work. Schools may be the only chance for intervening in a life course based on white supremacist beliefs and actions, harmful to them and potentially ruinous or deadly to others.
The stakes are that high.
We have literacy support, math support, executive functioning support – all critically important. Yet without adding a layer of support around this work, I worry.
Schools have systems in place to support students who are struggling with math, literacy, or behavior. Schools often call them multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS). This is based on the premise that students receive different intensities of support based on their needs.
What if our goal was a healthy relationship to race?
Based on the work of racial identity development scholars such as Janet Helms and Beverly Daniel Tatum, Jennifer Harvey envisioned the end goal this way: “A healthy white identity is nurtured through experiencing the growth, freedom, and power that comes from taking anti-racist stances and learning to negotiate different racial spaces.”
So what would a multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) look like to help develop anti-racist students with healthy white identity?
Christie Nold, 6th grade social studies teacher Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School, imagined how anti-racist teaching might map onto a MTSS model:
“Tier 1 is what everybody gets in classroom instruction. I have a long way to go in my practice to make it true. Responsive, relevant, and sustaining pedagogy for all students. That’s the goal for Tier 1.
Tier 2 for me is collecting formative data throughout instruction, what higher level instruction for groups of students who are grappling with certain aspects of identity or with learning in a pluralistic society. I imagine in Vermont this is particularly important because not all students are getting natural exposure because I imagine many of them live fairly segregated lives.
To me the Tier 3 level is who are those students who are showing red flags and pushing back against Tier 1 and 2 instruction.”
Here’s a visual of a pyramid model of multi-tiered systems of support for anti-racist education:
Tier 1: Universal Instruction
Culturally Responsive Pedagogy used to teach all students:
Personal and social identity
Non-Euro-centric history
Anti-racist, anti-bias, social justice education
Transferable Skills such as critical thinking, citizenship
For students repeatedly pushing back on Tier 1 and Tier 2 instruction
A couple of things to notice from the pyramid
First, as in a traditional MTSS system, the main emphasis is Tier 1. As Christie put it, “I wonder if students were getting high quality Tier 1 Culturally Sustainable Pedagogy from Pre-K on, we start to lose the need for Tier 2 and Tier 3.”
In contrast to math and literacy intervention, however, with anti-racism we will have schools swimming against the tide of the dominant culture in our society. Denial is the heartbeat of racism, to paraphrase Ibram X. Kendi. So students will be learning about things that many of their home families haven’t come to grips with.
Especially white students.
On this point, Christie referenced the example of recycling. She noted that it became standardized practice through schools. Students learned about it at school, went home, and shamed their parents into it. Perhaps adults could become enlightened about anti-racism and oppression through their kids.
Another difference with applying the Tier 2 concept to anti-racism: identity and social identity really matter here.
Students will “struggle” with Tier 1 very differently depending on their relationship to racism. For Students of Color, especially those in predominantly white institutions, Tier 1 anti-racist instruction is likely to trigger some of the trauma they’ve experienced living in a racist society. They will need “healing centered spaces,” as Christie calls them, such as a racial affinity group facilitated by a skillful mentor where they can process together.
When white students struggle with the ideas and skills of Tier 1 instruction, at times they may do so in a way that could be harmful to Students of Color. Consider a misconception such as the idea that it is post-racial to believe that “I don’t see color, I treat everybody the same.” This can be harmful because it invalidates the impact of race and racism. If a student clung stubbornly to this stance, a teacher could not allow it to enter class after class. The lived experience of Students of Color is not up for debate.
An example of Tier 2
Christie recounted one student who was struggling and whose comments during class were doing harm. “Luckily in this case I already had a strong relationship with the student and family, so when I contacted them we were able to work out a plan.” The plan involved the student writing down responses rather than objecting out loud when certain ideas surfaced. The student then decided whether to give the writing to Christie and whether he wanted feedback from her.
If the student was severely struggling to engage with a certain topic, or couldn’t contain what was likely to be harmful commentary, there was a plan in place to involve the school counselor.
Happily, Christie reported that the student made a lot of progress, and “came out on the other side.” She also noted that this kind of success was rare. Often there weren’t resources or receptive families available.
When Tier 2 doesn’t work
Christie shared that,
“Every year I can identify at least a few students who this is going up against something they have learned, something they have already built up walls about. They are being conditioned into white supremacy culture – in 6th grade there may be walls but often I can break them down in Tiers 1 and 2. But for some they have cemented too much. Two or three years later I hear ‘oh this student was involved in an incident,’ and I’m not surprised.”
These are not students who hold common misconceptions. They aren’t merely blundering as they grapple with complex concepts. Instead, they are students who are “pickling in white supremacy at home,” as Christie put it, drawing on a term used by her friend and mentor Shadiin Garcia. “They are hearing something very different from at least one caring adult in their life. It’s not their fault that they are confused – they are just kids.”
These students, typically white males, are in a tough spot. These are the type of students who Christie may expect to hear about later. She wondered aloud “What would a system look like to prevent the harm that student perpetuated? And also the harm they perpetuated on themselves? Because this system hurts everybody.”
How do we provide Tier 3 intervention for these high priority students?
Before we get to the how, let’s consider the who.
I brought in Netdahe Stoddard, a racial bias consultant from Cabot. His specialty is working w/white students who support the Confederate flag, as a self-avowed redneck.
We dreamed up a new cause: Rednecks for Racial Justice.
Netdahe Stoddard lives in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, where he grew up. He describes himself as a “Vermont rednecky dude who makes a living with [his] hands.”
He has fought racism in all aspects of his life for as long as he can remember, and has been working with schools for the past few years. This work takes many forms but the place where Netdahe feels like he has the most impact is intervening with white boys who are doing harm through racist behaviors. “As a member of the in group I can help them disentangle the ugly racist parts from the beautiful things about being a redneck.”
He calls himself a Racial Literacy Interventionist, based on a term used by psychologist Howard Stevenson to describe the skills required to defuse stress caused by racism.
The system will surely be stressed if we are going to seriously take on racism in Vermont. We are going to need a lot more people in this role.
A success story
To illustrate how Netdahe operates and why who he is plays such an important role in the work, let’s dial back to a time before he worked in schools. Netdahe has worked for more than 20 years on job sites where mostly white men labored together to build, chainsaw, and dig whatever the job required. And one of his main rules was that “I won’t tolerate racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, or any of that sh*t on a job site.”
This has caused a certain amount of tension with some of his co-workers.
Which is why this random text last week, from an unknown number surprised Netdahe:
He called the number and sure enough it was a man that he had worked with years ago. They had clashed repeatedly as Netdahe called him out for racist behaviors. At one point things nearly became violent between them.
But now? “I consider you a friend,” the man told him by phone.
Netdahe recalled that he had stood up for this man when it looked like he might lose his job. “I had treated him like a human and showed I cared enough to try to help him grow.”
Netdahe reflected on their relationship: “We had a bunch of hours together as fuller humans, busy being humans together in the world. That allowed us to come to this heightened place after almost becoming violent with each other. And over time we chose to engage in more depth around these issues.”
Believing in humanity is the crux of Netdahe’s approach with students as well.
In fact, Netdahe worked with this man’s son a few years ago. He talked to his former co-worker before meeting with the 8th grader, and the man hadn’t been super happy about it. After a two hour conversation Netdahe had told him to please follow up with his son, and to circle back if there were any questions.
In that case, the student had gotten in trouble a few times for flashing a Confederate Flag. Eventually the school asked Netdahe to help when he asked whether it would be okay to wear a Confederate Flag in rainbow colors.
The school assumed the student was intentionally pushing buttons.
Netdahe, on the other hand, approached the situation with curiosity. “The kid told me ‘this is a flag that I identify with and that I care about. I don’t understand how it is tied to hate. Other kids have Black Lives Matter flags or Pride flags, and this is mine.” Eventually the student came to understand that the other flags did not exclude him or other people, which is what set the Confederate flag apart as a hate symbol.
In another case he worked with a student who wore the flag out of pride for a great-great grandfather who had fought in the Civil War. Netdahe made space for them to admire what it must mean to fight in a war as a young man, and to connect to other soldiers around the world throughout history with the courage to risk their lives. “I tried to get him to realize that rocking the flag might actually get in the way of people respecting his ancestor.”
These stories illuminate the importance of the identity, or “social position” as Netdahe calls it, of the interventionist when we are talking about racism. The socialization process is strong and internalized supremacy can build thick walls. Netdahe’s background, his connections in the community, and his social identity as a white man make a difference in his ability to successfully intervene.
He also has a deep grasp of the literature. He’s developed a range of practical strategies. And he’s built a system of support and accountability so he can carry out his work with integrity.
Building Fearless Futures
As long as he’s been working in schools, Netdahe has partnered with educators of color to do so. He does this to help guard against the ongoing influence of white-dominant culture on the way he carries out his work.
As he put it, “I’m a broke white dude from Lyndonville, VT. I exist as a middle-aged man with white skin. No matter what I know about racism, I’m having the experiences of a white skin man in our society.”
Natdahe and his partners recently created a non-profit organization called Building Fearless Futures. They take a team approach where the process looks something like:
A school calls in Netdahe, and they provide him with a description of the situation. Usually a student is in trouble and being forced to meet with him as part of a package of consequences.
He drafts a plan and then consults with one of his educator of color partners. They provide feedback on his approach with particular attention to any ways he might be inadvertently reinforcing white-dominant culture or white supremacist ideology.
He meets with the student.
He consults with one of his educator of color partners to process the session. They help him make a plan for any future sessions.
If the student’s actions harmed students of color, one of Netdahe’s partners may come in to meet with them, and hold a space for healing. The educators of color get compensated for their time, while Netdahe doesn’t get paid for the pre and post-session consults. He considers it professional development.
Key skills for racial literacy interventionists
Netdahe’s approach to working with students boils down to honoring the positive parts of Vermont rural culture while exposing and extracting the racist and oppressive parts.
His main strategies:
Build relationships by leading with love. “When I meet a student I want them to know that I’m super excited about these things. I love talking about them. All kids are genius and beautiful souls. I have no history with you but I’m just pumped to be here with you. What are you thinking? What are you interested in?”
Seek common cultural ground. “What are you proud of as a Vermonter? Family, making it work, hunting and fishing, having fun with friends? Me too.”
Show students how their expressions of rage and violence, although projected as strength, actually display weakness and insecurity. “I let them know I see through it because I am them. Underneath that rage is someone who doesn’t yet know how to love or believe in themselves fully. They fear living in a world with folks of color, unless those folks are limited, controlled and harmed, and they fear living in a world where women have full control of their own bodies. This says something sad about us. Luckily we have the power to shift our thinking. You can actually just live in a world with equal rights and still be a whole person in the world.”
Use analogies with zero emotional triggers. “I might explain intent versus impact by showing them my split thumb and explaining that though I intended to hit the nail, I sure feel the pain of hitting my thumb on accident. I don’t need to feel ashamed about it but it doesn’t do any good to deny it either.” Another favorite of his is the Christmas tree: he could have a great Christmas without one. And rednecks can live great Vermont lives without the Confederate flag.
Celebrate successes. “I hold them up intellectually every chance I get. And they may not hear much of that in school. Every tiny bit of ability to pop out of that bubble they are in, I tell them ‘you impressed the hell out of me.’”
Be ready for the rhetoric. “I keep up with the media put out by white supremacists so I know what these kids might be encountering.” And he’s ready to break it down.
Build class consciousness. “I show them examples of how racism is used to justify policies that hurt them.”
Show them examples of collaborative efforts between races to reach share goals. “I hold up Black, brown, and white people in every era who fought back against injustice.”
This approach is a powerful alternative to purely punitive measures. A suspension may feed resentment and reinforce the narrative that the world is against a student. It also gives them time to potentially expose themselves to online recruitment by white supremacists. Whereas the Building Fearless Futures roots their approach in humanity, dignity, and learning.
Netdahe is clearly a special guy. He has developed strategies and has resources and readings at the ready to tailor his work to each student.
Now: imagine many Netdahes deployed as interventionists to support Tier 3 services in anti-racist MTSS systems.
Netdahe thinks he could teach his approach to other people who occupy his social position. “I have three or four righteous broke white dudes I can think of off the top of my head who I could train up to do this work.”
In this same vein, is a recent blog post by self-described hillbilly Adam Jordan (who happens to have a PhD). He spoke directly to people across Vermont: “Folks throughout history, usually rural folks, who have felt economic oppression, and who have pushed back against that oppression through collective action or self-reliant practices.”
Then for the call to action: “If you fall into this description of redneck or hillbilly, and you benefit from whiteness, I’m talking to you. Consider this a hillbilly roll call. We have work to do.”
Yes indeed, there’s a movement afoot.
Wrap around anti-racism
Netdahe and Christie have strikingly similar pictures of what a dream system of anti-racist education in predominantly white schools could look like.
They both talked about schools becoming more connected to communities and providing an array of wraparound services, similar to the Community School model.
Both affirmed the crucial role of healing spaces for students of color such as affinity groups.
And they both described diverse teams of interventionists that could work with students and support teachers.
It may sound far fetched but if we are going to get serious about creating anti-racist education systems, we need to take seriously the investments required. Intervention to support anti-racist education is even more necessary than math and literacy. While math and literacy intervention is meant to close gaps, to do something similar to what Tier 1 is meant to do with more intensive structures, racial literacy intervention provides alternate structures such as affinity groups that serve entirely different functions than Tier 1.
And as we’ve pointed out, the stakes are high.
In her seminal book on racial identity development, Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Alone in the Cafeteria, Beverly Daniel Tatum talks about how we need to support the development of an identity she calls “white anti-racist.” Truly committing to anti-racism in education would mean that the typical categories of white identity identified by Tatum – ignorant, colorblind, or racist – would all be viewed as unacceptable outcomes.
We are in this together
To create a less racist society we will need to redistribute resources to people of color and transform systems to decrease white privilege. AND, racism is a problem caused by white people. So we will need to invest in changing white people’s beliefs and behaviors.
Both Netdahe and Christie agreed, as would almost any educator, that children are not at fault for their internalized supremacy. They should be held accountable for their actions but they are fully redeemable.
“Simultaneously with our commitment to disrupting and dismantling structures that degrade humanity, a commitment to the practice of engaging the humanity of people wed to perpetuating those structures must co-exist. Whether by arrogance, ignorance, or fear, we must bear witness to their suffering as our own. Challenge what is unjust. Invest in their basic goodness. Always moving toward integration. Without this commitment and practice, we merely mirror the destructive forces of polarization and power.” (p. 203)
In the most extreme cases, for those students being misguided by their caregivers toward a path of white supremacist ideology, we must ensure schools “invest in their basic goodness” by providing the intervention they deserve.
Ah, the end of a school year. Always frenetic, and beautiful, and tear-filled and inspiring. Filled with rituals that educators and schools have developed with and for their community to bring closure.
And now, this year.
How can we develop new rituals or modify existing ones to honor everyone’s hard, hard (hard) work at the end of this particular year?
We can respond by taking what we know works, and fitting it to the tools we still have on hand in spades: kindness, curiosity, courage and the genuine excitement of meeting this important milestone once again.
1. Student reflection
End-of-year reflection allows students to consolidate their learning.
It allows them to document their learning to share with their communities. And in the current moment, it is a vital process that allows everyone to process their emotions and prepare for the transition to summer break.
Teachers learn so much from these final reflections — what has worked well and what needs fine tuning. Families find out more about who these wonderful creatures in their home really are. And in some cases students add a capstone piece to their PLPs for the year.
Schools such as Burke Town School, in West Burke VT, have used online student led conferences as a way to wrap up the year.
Or if this feels like too much, perhaps consider the toned-down student-led check-in. “Informal conversations that connect school, home, and student” that can pivot around these prompts:
What are you most proud of from this school year and why?
Where do you think you’ve shown the most growth?
What are your goals for next year?
How can your family and teachers better support you?
Coordinating conferences or check-ins does bring a host of logistical issues. There are many different ways to frame student reflection within the context of a class or team. Check out the six ideas shared by Facing History and Ourselves:
Final journal entry
Digital portfolio
Notes of appreciation
Digital goodbye graffiti board
Hopes and fears related to summer
Email to self
You know your students and what will work for them in this moment in terms of depth and format. Even a very simple and low-key prompt or activity can promote reflection and inform your planning for next year.
2. Celebration
One of the most amazing things about this current time is the creativity some educators and leaders have shown in bridging the distance to celebrate their students. John Craig, assistant principal at South Burlington High School, in South Burlington VT, has a joy that cannot be contained.
Literally.
He is out and about (safely and masked up), driving to his students’ homes and making joyful noises right outside.
Now, many of the existing traditions from your team or school may translate into remote environments with a bit of a creative twist.
Snail-mail a surprise for each student to open together at a virtual gathering. One of the five ways to end the school year remotely from Maneuvering the Middle is to mail awards home and have students open them at a virtual gathering.
Don’t discount the virtual exhibition of learning. If students are working on long term projects or products, you can still have an exhibition! Online culminating events can still be a go.
Looking for a meaningful 8th grade graduation? Many of the ideas in this edutopia post related to high school graduation are applicable to middle school as well. Lyndon Town School is looking at the possibility of a car parade while Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School is compiling a video.
At Randolph Middle School, the 8th grade team developed The Last Hurrah mini-project. Students develop a one page reflection with photos, quotes, and reflection on learning. These will be compiled as a sort of digital yearbook that will serve as a collective celebration.
The example of the Last Hurrah from Mike Gray, 8th grade teacher at Randolph Middle School. Click to hear his audio voice over.
One last note about these celebrations: bring thoughtfulness and creativity to making sure that all students are included. Students with disabilities, students without internet connectivity, students who have been less than fully engaged with remote learning, etc. all need to participate to make this a truly collective celebration.
3. Transitions
For transitions into or out of middle school, the Association for Middle Level Education has some guidance. Some of their practical tips include arranging student or adult mentors for transitioning students. They also mention the possibility of current students writing letters or emails to incoming students, which would be a form of student reflection as well.
This year will be different and more difficult, but it is important to try to make the best of it in order to provide students with some semblance of closure.
4. Grading & assessment
Yes really.
Now, grades communicate to students and families the educator perspective on where each student is at the end of the year. They are, right or wrong, their own particular form of closure.
But assessment? That’s where you as an educator can tell your student in detailed terms what their learning journey has meant to you. You can bring your knowledge of each student, the amount of time and effort you’ve seen them bring to your classroom and to this hard moment, up to the light. You can present that feedback to them and their families as a kind of portrait of who that student is right now, in this time.
And right now? It’s especially important to show that students are seen, known, and cared for.
Grades-wise, there is widespread consensus and guidance from the Vermont Agency of Education to “hold students harmless” during remote learning. For elementary and middle schools, this means that letter grades or proficiency scores are unnecessary right now. Many schools are using pass/incomplete determinations with the assumption that students will receive “incomplete” in only the most extreme circumstances.
Most schools are including some sort of narrative or comments for each student. These can be on a narrow range of indicators, as shown in this example from the Two Rivers Supervisory Union:
Or the feedback can be more holistic.
Districts and schools can frame the end of year reporting in a way that does not overwhelm teachers while helping them focus on what’s most important.
At Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School, in South Burlington VT, teachers are given two half-days to write narrative comments for each student.
The teacher leadership team worked with administration to create a guidance document that laid out the purpose, rationale, expectations, and supports for the end of year narrative comments.
The Kingdom East School District built support for teachers right into the Educational Engagement Summary template. The template provides guiding questions and links to external resources. It notes that the purpose is to “celebrate our students and show parents/caregivers that we have been care partners in wellness and education during this remote learning time.” At the middle school level, teacher teams can decide whether to write a holistic narrative or to provide subject specific feedback.
And these comments can be personal and heartfelt. Now is the time, today is the day: tell the student what you’ve seen of them as a learner, as a do-er and as a try-er.
Draw on student reflections to mirror what students are noticing and feeling. It will make those students feel seen.
5. Educator reflections
We know you didn’t get a lot of notice before we all went into this emergency distance learning dance. But now that we’re moving out of it, into summer, there’s space to process the highs and lows of the last few months. This is helpful on a basic emotional level but also to inform what you might want to keep or change when school starts again. In whatever form that takes.
In some cases this reflective moment will be an individual one, such as through the evaluation process. Or it may be through informal conversation with a trusted colleague. It can be purely private via a journal or scrapbook.
As a community of educators, you can think about and discuss what has been working for remote learning. A survey can work well for this, both to check in on needs and also surface thoughts on what has been successful or which practices are worth keeping in the fall.
Responses to the survey question “what has worked for you in remote learning?” was literally student-centered at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School.
Conversations on this can be vital.
At Bethel Middle School, during a virtual staff meeting teachers were provided with time to create a slide that responded to two prompts
When did you feel at your best when teaching in a remote environment? And what should we carry forward?
Then the facilitator opened up space to have a conversation. The “what’s working” portion generated positive energy and reminded everybody that their hard work and steep professional learning curves would have benefits in the future. The responses were summarized so that they could inform planning for next school year.
We hope that educators reflect on the way that we’ve have collectively reprioritized relationships and equity. Educators have gone to great lengths to stay connected to students. Schools have brought creativity and urgency to ensuring that systems are in place so that no students are slipping through the cracks in terms of what they need for mind and body.
May that energy continue, no matter what comes next.
Give yourself credit
Alex Shevrin Venet provided some amazingly helpful advice at the beginning of this emergency remote learning period: educators should take care of themselves first, so that they have the emotional capacity to provide students with what they need.
As this school year wraps up, we hope educators will exercise self-care by processing what we’ve all been through and giving themselves full credit for their amazing learning and accomplishments.
You should be proud of everything that you’ve accomplished in getting to the end of this year, no matter what.
The need for trauma-informed practice is particularly salient during the current global pandemic, when many if not all of us are experiencing trauma daily. And educators are working hard to translate trauma-informed practice to emergency remote learning.
Luckily, we have experts like Alex Shevrin Venet engaged in the current moment. She’s a local Vermont educator with global reach, writing on trauma-informed education at her blog, on twitter, and for publications like edutopia.
In concert with Tim O’Leary, co-director of What’s the Story, we organized a “Lunch n’ Learn webinar” for Alex to take a global audience a little farther in unpacking trauma-informed distance learning. We asked attendees to read a couple of Alex’s recent articles, then tune in for an hour and send Alex their questions. The 500 seats at in our Zoom room filled up in a matter of hours. The questions? Were amazing.
Tim produced a video of the conversation with Alex, and a full transcript is available below. Spend some time listening to Alex and her recommendations for how we as educators can be responsive in supporting students with trauma-informed distance learning.
Alex: Hi, everybody. Hi, everyone. Welcome, welcome everyone. I’m Alex. I’ll introduce myself more in just a moment. Welcome to all. I want to draw your attention on the slide in front of you that we have a link to a resource page.If you were tweeting, this launch and learn, feel free to use the #vted hashtag. That’s our Vermont education hashtag and we love to see your thoughts on there.
A couple of quick introductions, I’m Alex Venet, coming at you from Winooski, Vermont. I’m a professional development facilitator and educator. I teach community college. And I teach in-service teachers through graduate courses, and I write and I do a bunch of other stuff. My focus is on trauma informed education and social emotional learning and equity.
Life, do you want to introduce yourself?
Life: Sure, thanks, my name is Life LeGeros. I’m in the foothills of the Green Mountains here in Vermont, in South Duxbury. I use he/him pronouns and I’m just so excited to be here. Thank you, Alex for inviting me. I know how much your work is respected across Vermont, with partner educators who I work with as well as across the country and the globe. I always learn a lot from you, so I appreciate it.
Alex: So, Life and I are going to be basically just having a conversation about our current state of emergency distance learning, and trauma, and how we navigate all of this.
A couple of logistical things:
I’m going to do a couple of really quick getting ready to learn things activities for us to get in this space together.
Then I’ll have just really quick opening thoughts just to situate us.
And then we’ll really dig into some questions and answers, including questions that you all have asked ahead of time as well as questions that folks in the webinar, put into our Q&A, which I’ll talk about again in a second;
then we’ll wrap up.
With that we’re going to do a couple of really quick getting-ready-to-learn pieces that I like to do whenever we start our learning experience.
First, I like to take a moment and just get grounded. Check in with yourself.
In a moment what I’m going to do is turn off my camera for 30 seconds and just take a second to get settled. And I encourage you to take that moment for yourselves as well.
Some things that you might do:
you might drop your shoulders;
or see if your jaw has clenched throughout your day;
you might want to notice your breathing and just kind of check in with how that’s going;
you might want to stretch, or move your body a little bit.
If it doesn’t feel right to check in with your body right now, maybe just look at your surroundings. Ground yourself in where you are, what’s around you or what’s in your environment.
And if you’re in need of a little bit of an energy, you can do just this really simple exercise: rub your palms together to create a little energy and heat, then press one hand over your heart. Just feel that energy that you have.
Or you can just sit there and stare or check Twitter — or do whatever — for 30 seconds. It’s really up to you. But I’m going to take that moment for myself and I will see you back here in 30 seconds.
**thirty seconds pass**
And I’m back. I hope that was a good grounding moment for you.
The other piece that I like to do as we come into any learning experience is to check in with those around us and see what folks are bringing to the learning space.
So, the activity I like to do is called Rose and Thorn. Really simple, you just say a Rose, which is something going well for you today, and a Thorn, which is something not going so well.
If you are watching the livestream, feel free to drop your rose and thorn on Twitter, using that VTed hashtag or turn to someone in your space and share a rose and thorn or just think about what that is for you today. Life, what’s your rose and thorn today?
Life: My rose? This morning I woke up to a coating of fresh snow. It was really refreshing and nice. And it’s kind of interesting because yesterday that same thing happened and was more of a thorn for me. So to me that shows we’re very quick to adapt, and also things hit you differently in different moments.
For my thorn… I think you know this is an amazing opportunity. We have people all over the globe who are joining us. That’s super cool, but now that we’re actually here and chatting, I wish we were together. You know, I wish we were hanging out. I could talk to you about this stuff forever, maybe in a big room with all these folks too. But we’ll make the best of it.
Alex: My thorn is that snow from this morning. Partially because here in my town it didn’t stick, so we didn’t even get the benefit of it looking nice outside or anything. And my rose would be just this opportunity. I guess my rose and thorn are exact opposite of you; my rose is the opportunity to talk to folks this morning.
So actually we ended up with a weirdly great example of how the same exact events can just hit really different for people. I’m seeing in the chat that a lot of people also have roses and thorns connected to the weather. Thorns connected to the stress and isolation that we’re all feeling. Roses include some of the connections people are having.
Life: I see a lot of roses around hiking and getting outdoors more these days. things like that. Which is really important.
Alex: I like the rose and thorn activity in part because it allows us to just be mindful of what other folks are bringing to a learning experience, or to a collaboration experience. I highly encourage folks to use the activity when you go out to other meetings and gatherings.
All right. So: a couple of reminders here before we get started, around taking what you need.
The first is that anytime that we talk about trauma, mental health, or stress, it can be difficult or stressful for people to engage with that topic. So feel free to give yourself permission to take breaks. To step away from this if you need to. Just take care of your needs.
I am definitely not here to tell you what to do. You are the person who knows you and your students; you know your situation best. I’m here to offer some thoughts and take what you need out of them. And I also just want to clarify that we’ll be talking about trauma, and maybe some things that might be traumatic. But I won’t be sharing any specific stories or details or images of traumatic things.
And finally, I want to remind folks that this is the public space. So if you’re asking questions or using the chat, just encouraging folks not to be sharing any personal information or stories about students that are not yours to share.
So with that, I’m just going to talk for a quick moment about some overall thoughts around trauma in our current situation.
I hope many of you have had the chance to look at the resources that we provided. And really, you know, my thoughts are going in many places these days, but I keep coming back to this idea that: we can be mindful that trauma looks different for everyone. But as a globe right now, we’re kind of living through a large community trauma. And that’s going to impact everybody differently.
So as educators, we really want to think about how to center care in everything that we’re doing. We want to be responsive to the hardship that a lot of people are going through.
I have these things I call Four Priorities and those are really my guideposts for how I think about my trauma-informed practice. Those are:
Predictability
Flexibility
Connection
Empowerment
I really come back to those a lot of times when I’m thinking about how to structure an activity, or how to do outreach or change policies or anything like that. So I may be referring back to those as we chat.
Now let’s just dive into some of these questions we have.
Life: Fantastic, thank you Alex. I so enjoy the readings. And I appreciate the opportunity today to dig a little deeper or to expand a bit.The first question we’re going to start with: Alex, a lot of your writing — not all of it, but much of it — is directed towards supporting students who have experienced trauma.
How can districts and schools support educators who might be experiencing their own trauma during this time?
Alex: This is such an important question and sometimes this is the last consideration that we get to when we talk about student trauma. When in fact, it really should be the first. If we as caregivers are not well, it is really hard and sometimes impossible to really provide care for others.
So one thing I want to say to every person out there, whether you’re a teacher or a parent or really any role of humanity ever, is that, it is okay to not be okay right now. Ae all need to drop the expectation that there is an okay right now.
We’re living through a global pandemic. And regardless whether on any given day you feel safe, or settled, or not safe or anxious. We’re still in this big context where the planet is not okay right now. I keep seeing this phrase “The new normal.” And I may have even used that one myself, but there isn’t really a new normal. Because this isn’t normal. So I think the starting point really is validating that all of that is all right and starting there.
Beyond that, you know, I kind of think about two layers, right?
So, one is directly speaking to teachers. Reminding folks that it is important to take care of ourselves so we can take care of the kids. But that doesn’t mean you have to somehow elbow through on your own, you know? Healing and resilience comes through our community and our relationships with others.
I encourage folks to think: who are your support people? How might you be vulnerable and lean on them?
I highly, highly, highly encourage everyone to check in with your therapist, if you have one. And if you don’t have one, therapists are moving things online. There are apps like Talkspace, where you can access somebody, virtually.
If you have a faith leader you connect to. If you have a supportive group of folks you can talk to. Or if you have a partner or a family member or friend. Really reach out. It’s okay to ask for help.
I encourage folks to use those supports and to take it slow, right? We’re in a marathon, not a sprint. So don’t burn yourself out in these first few weeks. Because this is going to be a little while that we’re all doing this.
The other thing I want to say in response to this is around school leaders.
For those of you who are watching this who are maybe administrators or principals, or have any type of leadership role in a school, I want you to think about: what is the community care that you can offer to your teachers?
I know that you as an administrator are pulled in many directions right now. But it really needs to be a priority to care for your teachers. So:
Actually check in with them without an agenda. Don’t tack a check-in onto a business meeting. Actually make time and really listen to what’s going on for your teachers.
See what you can take off teachers’ plates. Let them focus on what matters. See if there’s any way you can pull some of the, you know, administrivia (or whatever) off their plates.
Remind them what resources are available. So many schools have an EAP — employee-assistance program — hotline that teachers can call. Those are those supports available to them.
Also: model your own self-care and your work-life boundaries. Don’t email your teachers at 10:00 at night and expect that they’re going to get back to you right away. Encourage your teachers to step away from the computer in the evening. It really has to be a community effort really to take care of ourselves.
Life: Thank you, that was so interesting. As for boundaries, I’ve even seen districts go so far as giving guidelines for how much time teachers should be putting into their school work per day. Like I saw one district said, you know, teachers should only be working five hours a day. And I’m wondering from, you know, educators’ perspectives. Do you have tips for people to be in touch with themselves, to understand when they’re nearing, kind of a burnout point?
Working with educators, I see them work so hard; they’re so dedicated. Just on the regular day-to-day, without this whole pandemic thing hanging over them.
Any signs people should be watching for within themselves that kind of say like, oh, that’s a sign that I should be slowing down a little bit, or I should be taking a break?
Alex: I mean, it’s tough to answer that. Because with the general context of what’s going on, I think it’s probably going to be hard for people to separate out like:
What is my general anxiety about our world right now?
And what is my anxiety connected to work?
I think the simplest way is to just take breaks. Check in with yourself throughout the day.
There’s different apps you can use that are like mood-tracking apps, if that’s something that folks are interested in. Or you can literally just set a timer on your phone so that every two hours, you’re going stop, turn to a piece of paper and just write a sentence about how you’re feeling.
But if you’re with your family or a partner, try to have a consistent check in each night. Maybe reflect on your rose and thorn of the day or your high and low. “On a scale from 1 to 10, how did I feel today?” Kind of create routines so you can witness each other’s states. How you’re doing. I think it’s truly just taking that time.
know for me it’s very easy to just get sucked into the computer. It feels like there’s an endless stream of things I could be doing on my laptop all day. So those lunchtime breaks have been really helpful to check in with my partner. It has been really helpful in just slowing down.
Life: Awesome, thank you. So, this is another question that came up before today. A lot of people were interested in this. It references the fact that you focus on relationships with students as an important part of educator practice, and a key to resilience during this time.
How can teachers foster relationships among students during remote learning?
Alex: Yes, so this focus on relationships if you look at, you know, all of the literature and what we know about trauma-informed practice, relationships help.
Bruce Perry, who is a leading child trauma expert researcher, says that the best intervention for trauma is anything that increases the strength and number of relationships in a child’s life.
So I recommended to people to really center that relationship. I think many of us can think of ways to do that as teachers, right? We can be working with students and connecting with them and things. So, this question about how do we encourage other relationships for kids *in between* students is a great one.
One asterisk I put on all of this right is that we don’t want to force anything, right? And something I think a little bit about is students who were stressed about social interactions before. They may actually be enjoying their reprieve from that right now. Or they may continue to be stressed because social media is daunting. So they’re still experiencing the stress of those social relationships.
We don’t want to get into like a forced group work situation where kids are now having more conflict because they have to collaborate on something, they didn’t really want to collaborate on. So, couching it in that choice.
But beyond that, I think about, you know, what are the things that your students connected with when they were face-to-face? Did you have class in-jokes? Did you have fun, silly things that you would do? Or did you have routines around, you know, stuff that you would do as a class together? Did you have circle time where there were specific things that you talked about?
I would really think about any of those things that will feel familiar, how can we continue to incorporate that. And just making space for that silliness and fun, right?
So, I think sometimes I know when I sit down to type up instructions for my online learning stuff, I sometimes will go into this really formal register where I’m like first one must enter their password into the Google classroom. Like it just get really formal for some reason.
But try to write like you speak, use gifs, use emojis, make a video of yourself, put a sound recording. Try to create that like human centered space and synchronize ways too that kids can check in.
I know in my Community College class that I had to move online, we used to start with rose and thorn every week. Now I just put up a rose and thorn discussion every week. And they check in with each other.
We’ve also started doing a little extra each week where like last week we shared Spotify playlists that we liked. And then we shared TV recommendations. This week we’re talking about what video games and apps we’re all playing at home. So, really just anything that helps kids connect.
And then the last thing I’ll say about this is remembering that the students at your school are not the only peers that your students have.
So, many kids are involved in extracurricular sports youth groups, all those kinds of things. And so, you might prompt your kids to be, you know, writing postcards or sending the emails or selfies or whatever it is. But it doesn’t have to live just within your class.
Life: That’s such a great point. I love the asynchronous ideas around check-ins. And I’ve seen teachers doing that with tools like Flipgrid or Padlet where students can leave pictures or links or in some cases little videos to each other. And it’s actually a very strong way to connect when you just start talking like, you know, like this and you can see each other do that.
Alex: Yes, I would shout out our friend Christine Nold, middle school teacher extraordinare! She’s been sharing on Twitter each day the prompt that she’s using in her advisory class. I think there’s like 21 days that we’ve been doing so far? So there’s lots of ideas in there, different prompts and reminders. Just a great example of someone expressing care through those posts.
TA: Day Twenty-Three – Owls at night, birds at the feeder, and the beginning of break! pic.twitter.com/NmxB9ERbTA
Life: Yes! I love one of the lines from one of your pieces of writing where you say: “You know, the way that you are delivering distance learning is an expression of care right now.” And that includes both through these kinds of things as well as curriculum. Awesome.
So, the next question that we flagged is kind of somebody sharing a personal example; I’m asking for your take on it.
A teacher was noting that they had a student who was upset with them, specifically that the teacher had shared information with the student’s guidance counselor.
Now, this is a case where the teacher and the student didn’t have the best relationship in person before remote learning. And now this information-sharing has hurt the relationship. So, the teacher is asking for advice on how they can improve their relationship with the student now.
Alex: I just appreciated this question because it highlights just how complicated things are, always! But especially right now, around boundaries and information-sharing. What is the role of a teacher?
So, I get really excited about boundaries.
This is a topic I’m really interested in. Especially when we talk about trauma-informed practice.
I think a lot of teachers wonder: does trauma-informed practice mean I should be engaging in therapeutic interactions with my students? Does this expect me to become a social worker?
And my answer to that is no.
It’s important for teachers to have strong boundaries. And to be able to recognize when should I pass along information to someone who has the skills, training and expertise to better respond to it. If you want to prevent a situation like the on described, I really, really strongly encourage people to be checking in with your administrators and school counselors about what are the information-sharing processes and expectations right now.
I think about that especially because teachers are mandated reporters.
So if there are things that cause you to suspect neglect or abuse for a child, you’re mandated to report that. And every state has guidelines about how that happens.
But, then there’s a whole category of other kind of concerning stuff that comes up in school.
Oftentimes, we address those things more informally at the end of the day. Maybe I wander into my colleague’s room and I say: “My students have this thing today and it’s kind of bugging me. What do you think about it?” And we have that kind of check-in and then can make those decisions about passing things forward.
While we’re all in our separate houses, I think that’s harder to do.
So I really encourage people to be proactively communicating about that stuff and figuring out when and how should I be passing along information and what types.
We should also be really transparent with students about that information-sharing. In what situations do we pass forward information, and what should students be aware of when sharing info?
And it’s a great time to have that conversation, because we’re also online! So, there is a difference between sharing a thought in a classroom circle and sharing a thought on Google Classroom where one of your peers could screenshot your post and share it to Instagram, right? We should just be openly having those conversations.
All that doesn’t answer this teacher’s question because this has already happened for them. If you have a rupture in a relationship with the student the thing to do is try to repair that. The principles of restorative practicesoffer some really nice guidelines of how to do that. But really looking at who is impacted and how we can make it as right as possible.
I would just add that, if you didn’t have strong relationships with students before, it is going to be hard to build those relationships, but you shouldn’t stop trying.
Maybe add some extra time to your week to reach out and connect with the students.
Life: I’ve also heard teachers talking about cases where all of a sudden, they’ve seen their relationships with students blossom. They’re connecting with students in a way that they didn’t before, with particular students.
But thinking about what you said about drawing boundaries, being really clear about guidelines, and transparent with students around that, have you seen any really good models out there from a school or district that you would want to shout out for people to see? Do you have a couple in mind?
Alex: Yes. So, you know, I think this isn’t an area where a lot of folks are proactive. And I haven’t — I can’t call to mind a specific school example where I’ve seen something they’ve put together. One article is have is Role-Clarity and Boundaries for Trauma Informed Teachers. That’s about boundaries and information-sharing. And I think it might help people conceptualize how to talk about this stuff.
I’m also a big fan of encouraging people to use the local resources available to you. Child abuse prevention organizations which many of you have in your communities. Local chapters of Prevent Child Abuse, a national organization that has all kinds of stuff about internet safety for kids. They have stuff about not keeping secrets with kids, that kind of stuff. Schools could be reaching out to those groups and collaborating on things that could then be passed on the kids and families.
Life: Looking at the Q&A we have a few questions that have popped up during the chat. There’s one here that I think might be interesting to talk about. You mentioned the importance of pass-fail grading, and they have a question about it.
If school boards or administrators are requiring something other than pass-fail grading, do you have recommendations to ensure the least amount of stress on students and teachers in terms of assessment?
Alex: Great. So, the most recent post on my blog is about pushing back against unjust policy that’s happening. And in that I use as an example pass-fail grading.
When we look at issues of equity right now, it feels very odd to be using a letter grade because there’s so many factors going into whether a student can engage in their learning right now, and what resources are available to them.
For instance, I know that schools have been really scrambling to try to provide special education services with varying degrees of success. So it just feels like: how could we really capture all that in better grades?
I have seen some great examples that different districts and schools are moving to pass, fail, or to complete/incomplete kinds of grading. I can’t say for sure what is going to be right for your school, or your classroom, or your environment. But overall, I think that these are conversations we need to be having.
That post goes into a little bit more about if you’re worried about how you’re supposed making decisions about this stuff. I have a couple of conversation starters. How to maybe send a message to your school board or your principal to say,
“I have some questions about this because the way that we’re operating doesn’t feel like it lines up with our values.”
Life: I love that post! You have this phrase: “creatively non-compliant”. I don’t know if you came up with that but that’s such a cool turn of phrase.
Alex: I saw that phrase originally in a book by Debbie Meier who is a great education thinker and progressive educator. She gave examples of: “I’m technically complying with this thing. But actually, I’m doing what I know is right for my students and what is in line with my values.”
And that phrase just has always stuck with me.
Life: Just on that, I’m wondering, with the pass-fail or the complete-incomplete: how do you define the criteria for incomplete? I was trying to think like, what would be fair? What would be fair for assigning a student an incomplete? And I was trying to think like, you would have to in some way determine that that student had, you know, every opportunity and all the resources needed to be able to complete the work. Otherwise, like you mentioned, you’re just grading their environment there. And then I was thinking: how could you do that? Do you confer with the guidance counselors? Or their families? I was kind of a little bit stuck on that. I don’t know if you have thoughts.
Alex: Yes! I mean all this stuff about grading — I really feel for all of you who are in positions to make decisions about this policy stuff, because it feels like every choice is the wrong choice.
I linked to Chris Lehmann who is a principal in Philly. He wrote this really wonderful post about leadership at this time, and he talks about making the least bad decision that you can right now. And I think that’s a great framework.
But when I think about like, how do you assess, like what resources the kid has? One understanding from trauma that I come back to is that you can’t ever really know if someone else is having a traumatic response to events.
You might *think* that you can know because some of the symptoms may look more obvious, like depression or anxiety or aggression. These may be things you could observe. But one of the other symptoms of trauma response is perfectionism. Kind of doing the best that you can so that you can float under the radar and just get through.
I don’t know that there’s a way to look at a kid — I should rephrase that. I *know* there’s not a way to look at a kid and know what’s really going on.
So it just becomes really complicated to then try to make judgments about these kids. Did they do the best given what was available to them at the time?
Again, I don’t know what the right answer is around grading, but I do know that we can’t just keep doing what we’ve been doing. Because it’s not going to work.
To me it’s like we just have to lean into the nuances and lean into the mess and just get comfortable with that mess. Because there is really not going to be any one size fits all approach is going to help us through this thing.
Life: You know, the mess we’re in impacts people differently. Here’s a question from our Q&A:
How can we best support students of color? Black, Indigenous, Asian, students of color who are experiencing equities and racism through an online platform.
When you’re thinking about trauma informed education, you have to consider not just trauma outside of school, but the trauma that students experience *within* schools, and even sometimes *because* of our school systems.
So! Thoughts on supporting students of color within the context of remote learning?
Alex: Yes. Great question. And I think that there’s been a lot of really interesting conversations about how this is all impacting students of color differently. Like there’s the impact of, you know, systems of oppression and racism, meaning that students of color and their families might not be getting access to the same medical support,and other types of supports. And they are being put more at risk through those systems of oppression.
There’s also some interesting perspectives about how some students of color may be experiencing a *more* affirming educational environment being educated by parents or family than they were at school.
I would go back to that and think about, you know, again, leaning into that complexity. Just think about all the different experiences. Just listening and talking to our kids and their families about what’s going on for them.
It sounds like the specific question was around harassment or racism on an online platform. And I don’t know the specifics around that question. But I would say that if that’s happening in your online platform, right, in your Google Classroom, that’s your responsibility as a teacher to be shutting it down.
Maybe that’s what you need to do to ensure safety. But it’s your responsibility to be addressing that the same way it would be if folks were saying stuff in school.
And if your school has not talked about this, like if your group of faculties or your principal’s, whoever has not had a conversation about this yet, that would be a great one to put to the group and say, how are we addressing this as a school?
Given that whatever we were doing for discipline before is not a thing now in remote learning, how are we addressing this? How are we making sure that students of color are not experiencing this? Or if they are, they’re having some kind of repair happen.
But yes, it’s all complicated. I would say that, you know, we do have to pay attention to this. We do have to talk about this. Go back to your faculty and say: let’s talk about this proactively. So, should something happen, we’re not caught off guard.
Life: Yes, and, you know, that makes me think about how so many schools in Vermont and across the country are doing lots of anti-racism teaching. And anti-bias teaching. Really thinking about diversity, inclusion in new ways. And it’s just as this thing has hit, you know, so much of that really complex important work in some ways kind of got back-burnered for a moment while people were just trying to deal with the transition.
So how ambitious should people be with what they’re trying to teach students in this moment?
Whether it’s anti-racist teaching, whether it’s project-based learning, you know, the things that we know are so engaging and authentic for students. Do you have thoughts on how people can strike that balance?
Alex: Well, I want to pick up for one second on your comment that for some folks, some of that diversity, equity and inclusion stuff has been back-burnered.
Because for a lot of folks it’s not on the back burner, right? They’ve put it really at the center of how they’re designing things for this moment. Equity, inclusion and access are really at the heart and center of what I’m doing.
And I think there’s a lot of tension for folks where schools that have been talking about this but maybe not doing it, *did* put it on the back burner. Which then kind of indicates that it didn’t really stick yet, right? If we truly care about this, it’s not on the back burner. And so, I think that’s an interesting tension that’s happening right now.
As you said, I’m really interested and passionate about this idea that to be a trauma-informed school you can’t just look at trauma that’s happening outside of school that would be impacting kids when they come in. You also have to ensure that what you’re doing as a school is not traumatic. That it’s not causing trauma or perpetuating it within the school walls. So, that’s one thing I’m thinking about.
In regards to the curriculum piece?
Again, you know, it’s going to be something so different for everybody, but I think that as much as possible, folks should be thinking about how do I engage in having kids *do* stuff and *make* stuff and *explore* things as opposed to just *completing* things.
And I think that especially if we’re not feeling that comfortable with technology, it can feel like, well, maybe what’s easy for me is to put up, you know: Video! Response! Article! Response! I totally get that. Sometimes I’ll default to that if I’m just like: “I’m so stressed! I don’t know how to do this right now!”
But I saw a model of picturing your online space as a journal, and looking at helping kids think about what they’re actually doing and engaging with in whatever space they’re living in right now. Then they can come back to just journal and report out on what they did.
Can students go build something in the living room, snap a photo and report it back?
Can they have an interesting conversation with somebody and then come back and talk about it?
Or can they make a TikTok and then, you know, show us what they made or talk about, how it felt to do it?
And my caveat to this is that some kids are going to feel really anxious and overwhelmed by being asked to engage with learning directly *about* the pandemic. Some other kids are going to feel really excited and empowered to be engaging in that learning and thinking about the stuff that’s really happening.
Life: So, to handle that, would you say that you give students an option?
Or if it’s just like overwhelming, that there’s another thread or something that they can pick up?
Alex: Yes, and in general I would say, you know, going back to those Four Priorities, right? Two of them are Flexibility and Empowerment. And so, I think about the students really having options for basically everything.
If you do need kids to be creating a certain product, then giving them choice about what’s in the content, right? We learned about differentiation; you might differentiate the process, the product or the content.
But really just going back and differentiating, providing choices and also recognizing that one of those choices is to *not* choose a thing. So you may have kids or families that say, “You know what? We’re actually going to do this other thing.” Or: “We need to rest” or “we need to take a break”. Really honoring that, and giving that space.
Life: I love what you said about the different tasks around documenting things. It really reminds me about something I strived for as a math teacher, to give tasks that have a low floor and a high ceiling. Everybody can enter. You can take a picture of something, or you can just go with it and create a cool little movie or something if you want.
One question that caught my eye and got quite a few upvotes from webinar participants was one that described where teachers are holding an online meeting and there’s something happening in the background that’s concerning. It could be abuse, could be family disfunction, and teachers feel that they might need to follow up in other ways. But I think the question here is:
What can a teacher do when they see something inappropriate to prioritize that student’s dignity and well-being in that actual moment?
Alex: Yes. One quick answer is that if you are running a Zoom meeting, you can mute other people’s videos. And you can do that from the participants panel. Ideally you have the ability to just help kind of give students that privacy screen by muting their video.
But then in the follow-up? I encourage people to think: what did I see, that was concerning? And why did it feel concerning? This is where having accountability partners, co-teachers, checking in with the school counselor, administrator can be really helpful.
Because we also really have to be checking our own biases and assumptions right now. Something that maybe feels unusual or different to you, that could be totally normal and fine. We have to check those implicit biases, you know differences just in how people are in their homes and families.
I would also add that we shouldn’t be requiring students to have their video on if we’re doing synchronous calls. Really give students the ability to have some privacy. If they don’t want their classmates or their teacher looking into their home, we shouldn’t require that, right? That’s really a basic privacy thing.
Knd of going all the way back to one of our first questions: follow through on the information-sharing. Talk to the school counselor. Talk to the administrator, whoever it is you’re supposed to be sharing information with, and make a game plan together about what you can do.
So liiiike I tried to start with images but then I just tried to write down everything I took away from @AlexSVenet’s important yet so very soothing conversation on Trauma-Informed Distance Learning. #VTEDpic.twitter.com/32SyZRFtuS
Life: The last question is about how to work with colleagues in this moment, to help them provide empathy for students.
This person is saying:
“I’m at this webinar learning a ton. How can I open dialogue with colleagues? What’s the best way to try to help bring other people into this conversation?”
Alex: I think about using kind of those sentence starters of: “I notice…” and “I wonder…” with their colleagues.
If someone is sort of, you know, going off on, “Well, this kid? I know that things are fine for them. You know they’re just not trying hard enough!” Or whatever it is.
Can you reflect back to them like:
“Hey, I notice that you seem to be really frustrated with this student. What’s going on for you? Can you tell me more about this? Hey, I wonder, even though we may assume that things are cool with this family. I wonder if there’s hardships that could be happening?”
I recommend posing some of those questions and trying to dig in a little with people.
Also, if you’re comfortable with it, using your own vulnerability can be powerful. The more we can model that piece of it’s okay to not be okay.
I’m also really passionate about the idea of de-stigmatizing topics around mental health, and getting mental health support. Could you say to your colleague like,
“Yeah, you know, it might look like things are fine, but just to be transparent, *I* look like I’m fine but I’m only that way because I had a call with my therapist and I have access to self-care resources. It must be *really* hard to be a kid and not necessarily have that. You know?”
Can you use your own vulnerability to help just increase people’s awareness that what things maybe look like on the surface isn’t there beneath?
Life: I love that. And again, I just appreciate so much the conversation.
Alex: So, here are my last couple of thoughts.
First of all, I just really appreciate everyone who took the time to be here today. And I really appreciate the organizations that made this happen. Huge, huge, huge shout out to Tim O’Leary, who was behind the scenes in all of this and really made all of the technical logistical stuff happened. I really appreciate you. And thanks to Life, for being here.
For those of you who are really interested in learning more about trauma-informed practices, I have a resource round up on my website that has a bunch of different kind of getting started resources. I’m also on Twitter literally all the time and so you can always ping me on there if you’re looking for something in particular.
And I just encourage people to really look at all of this as a learning journey. There is no final version of being a trauma-informed educator perfectly.
It’s more about embracing the complexity; embracing the challenges and leaning into some of the nuances.
I’m just encouraging people to ask questions, have conversations and keep your students at the center.
The last thing that I will say is just that this is hard for a lot of people. This current situation we’re in is just really difficult. So encourage folks to reach out to people around you to get help — or to offer help.
Keep up your connections. And please forgive yourself for anything that you do these days, even if it doesn’t feel like the best version of your teaching self. Because it’s hard to be the best version of your teaching self in a pandemic and that is fine.
I just really encourage people give yourself some grace, give one another some empathy and grace, and keep going. We all got this. So, thanks again for being here. I really appreciate all of you and I hope to stay connected.
I’m waving hello from my seat on this roller coaster called the “new normal.”
We got the message on Sunday evening during dinner, just a few hours after my wife and I were notified that our COVID-19 test results were negative. Our district was closing schools immediately. As I considered the complexities of homeschooling I lost the appetite that I had only recently regained from being ill.
On Monday morning my two daughters, 7 and 10 years old, developed a schedule for “Super Sisters Academy,” (.pdf) as they named it. The first week went surprisingly well. We refined our schedule and processes day to day, and solidified it over the weekend.
Going into week two we were feeling like the homeschool part of things might be more manageable than expected.
You see where this is headed, right?
On Monday #2, homeschool started late. Somehow we were all exhausted even though we have been “sleeping” extra hours. When we finally got things underway, I suggested we start with math, hoping to recapture the “how I got my math teaching groove back” feeling of week one. Oh how naïve I was.
Within 30 minutes, we had one girl expressing hatred of math and the other claiming that she was bad at it. There were tears, bursts of anger, blaming and shaming. I soon found myself alone, head in hands, wondering where it had all gone wrong. My own children had been possessed by negative math mindsets!
I had failed as both an educator and dad, two of my most precious identities.
So yeah, this stuff is hard.
I’m in touch with enough teachers to be able to say that pretty much everybody is struggling right now, regardless of how impressive some folks seem on social media.
Super Sister Academy righted itself eventually (adding a morning meeting has been a huge help), but I feel like every day brings new highs and lows. I’ve been focusing on a three-part mantra to keep me going:
Go easy on myself – I’m doing the best I can. Don’t compare myself to anybody else. Whatever I manage to pull off, it’s enough.
Stay compassionate – Other people are doing the best they can too. Everybody is dealing with the current moment in different ways, and that’s okay.
Be human – Fully feel all the things: fear, joy, pain, laughter, sadness, love, vulnerability, empathy. Connect with others as authentically as possible.
Vermont educators have managed to center compassion amidst all of the technology overhauling, problem solving, and paradigm shifting. Even as teachers, administrators, and school staff have worked incredibly hard to set up infrastructure and new processes, our schools and communities have emphasized relationships and emotional well-being.
Mr. Rogers’ mom told him to “look for the helpers” during a crisis. Don’t forget to look in the mirror, folks. Thank you for everything you do.
The middle school movement has been a powerful force for positive change. It’s rooted in progressive education, with special attention to the developmental needs of young adolescents.
In Vermont, we are ahead of most other states in implementing middle school systems and associated student-centered practices. That’s a good thing. Relative newcomers to this place, like me, should give big props to so many educators here who have championed innovative learning environments.
Yet there is a flaw at the heart of the middle school movement.
In the fervor to be maximally responsive to the developmental needs of young adolescents, it has downplayed the individual identities and complex contexts of our students.
For middle school educators who look to the movement for guidance, we may be missing the trees for the forest. And this is causing us to miss out on fully apprehending the strengths of our students. Or giving them them the guidance they need to meet challenges and to thrive. For middle school movement equity, we must strive to combine the developmental with the cultural to create an approach that is more authentically personal.
Engagement for whom?
While there is consensus that student engagement is paramount, we can’t truly put students at the center without being very specific about who they are.
In an editorial titled “Engagement for Whom?” in AMLE’s Middle School Journal, Lisa Harrison, Ellis Hurd, and (Vermont’s own) Kathleen Brinegar posed this key question. As a team of editors, they asked us to support every young adolescent “by shifting the conversation from focusing on middle school organizational structures in general, to contextualizing them within broader social, cultural, and political contexts.”
The school-to-prison pipeline is flowing – Students with disabilities, Black students, and Native American students were suspended up to three times as often as their counterparts. They were also more likely to be referred to law enforcement by school staff.
Opportunity to learn gaps persist – The average standardized test score gaps are 18 percent by race and 25 percent by income. Schools graduate marginalized students on time at significantly lower rates.
Schools are not safe spaces for too many students – Students of color and students who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBTQ) are two to four times as likely to miss school because they don’t feel safe there.
In middle schools specifically, we continue to have too many students from marginalized backgrounds who are don’t feel valued or like they belong. This is despite the fact that structures such as advisory programs and teaming are fairly widespread.
We simply can’t assume that by changing school structures and improving instruction generally, we will achieve equity.
This report synthesizes baseline information on educational inequity in Vermont.
Beyond generic engagement
In the past I believed that if we could raise the overall quality of our systems and instruction, that equity would take care of itself. For example, take my blog post from 2016, Equity begins with engagement. I argued that educators could tackle systemic inequality by “lighting a spark” in every student. In effect I pointed to personalized learning as a panacea that could battle inequity in all its forms.
Now I recognize that personalized learning is limited if it doesn’t focus on dismantling oppression.
And that means we need to do the hard work of truly centering the identity of each of our students, in all their complexity and cultural depth.
Middle school movement equity at the moment isn’t as helpful as it should be in reorienting us to active anti-oppression. But there are a growing number of scholars and educators trying to change that.
“If middle level education wants to remain relevant and truly embrace education as a tool for empowerment, then we must focus on researching and sharing middle level practices that work to disrupt the status quo. This includes racism, classism, xenophobia, religious discrimination, heterosexism, ageism and other forms of oppressive structures within society.”
I interpreted this as a provocative challenge: if we are all about equity, then let’s fight for it directly. We don’t need to rely on entry points like engagement. Our middle school movement equity needs to actively promote equity both instructionally and institutionally.
Just as we must avoid over-relying on engagement as an entry point, we must come to terms with the limits of developmentalism. The middle school movement’s focus on early adolescence as a stage of life may have caused us to lose sight of knowing the individual students in front of us.
This is why the Middle School Journal editors call for a course correction. They argue that in Phase II of the movement:
“While we need to celebrate and be responsive to the unique characteristics of early adolescence, we cannot do so without recognizing and celebrating the unique identities and lived experiences of every young adolescent who enters our schools. When we do, we are recognizing that our job as middle grades educators is to empower each student to transform themselves. Such empowerment has the potential for youth to become critically conscious, which in turn supports their development as producers of knowledge and transformers of society.”
Let’s get radical
Critical consciousness is an ambitious goal.
In Critical consciousness: The key to student achievement, Aaliyah El-Amin and others describe critical consciousness as “the ability to recognize and analyze systems of inequality and the commitment to take action against these systems.”
Paulo Freire popularized critical consciousness 50 years ago. It is a key component of many asset-based pedagogies, including Culturally Relevant Teaching, developed by Gloria Ladson-Billings.
Yet some people may be alarmed by the idea that middle school education would seek to teach students to dismantle systemic oppression. This is why the push for Phase II is a big deal. It is unabashedly anti-oppressive. Though it is not partisan, it is political in the sense that it seeks to redistribute power to fully support students from marginalized communities.
Getting serious about middle school movement equity will indeed challenge the status quo. And that’s never an easy fight.
The Middle School Journal editors’ call to action: Ellis Hurd, Vermont’s own Kathleen Brinegar, and Lisa Harrison.
Revisiting our beliefs
The middle school movement intended to challenge the status quo from the beginning. When This We Believe dropped in 1982, it represented forceful advocacy for ideas that had been swirling around for at least a decade. The document challenged the junior high school model that was dominant at the time. What young adolescents needed were radically different and very much in line with the values of progressive education: lots of socialization, student choice and voice, and real world relevance.
I have personally found This We Believe incredibly helpful and have used aspects of it to drive professional learning numerous times. Yet recently I have become more acutely aware of flaws in this foundational document.
It’s time to talk about race
Let’s consider how race is addressed in This We Believe. And just as importantly, how race is not addressed.
Starting with a race-focused critical lens is important and instructive for many reasons. First, racism is arguably the primary oppressive force in this country. Second, studying the way racism operates and how to fight it informs all other anti-oppression efforts. And third, racism is really difficult to talk and think about. So if we don’t start with race then we are unlikely to go there naturally.
Using critical race theory, Christopher Busey systematically analyzed what is said and unsaid about race in This We Believe. He concluded that the text upholds two problematic narratives:
There is no story about race.
Racial difference as deficit.
For the most part, race is not an issue for young adolescents. But when it is, it’s a problem.
Ignoring race doesn’t make racism go away. Quite the opposite. Per Busey: “This We Believe’s colorblind ideology is complicit in constructing a racial reality of disproportionate discipline, culturally desynchronized curriculum, and hostile learning environments for early adolescent children of color.”
Color-evasiveness (often referred to as colorblindness) is problematic and has demonstrably racist impacts. Race impacts everyone, even if some white people don’t realize it or perceive impact in their own lives. When somebody says “I don’t see race,” they are not acknowledging the racial realities of people of color. When teaching students of color, color-evasiveness is a barrier to curricular connection and harmful to relationships.
Alternatively, a deeper understanding of how race operates allows us to be critical of the systems of inequity in which we participate. We may be able to start to understand how schools privilege certain ways of acting and learning that unnecessarily disadvantage many students. And we may be able to take steps to move from deficit- to asset-oriented mindsets that help middle schools become places where all students can thrive.
Busey offered three belief statements in opposition to This We Believe:
We believe race is central to identity development.
We believe smartness is a racialized construct; racial difference is not a cognitive deficiency.
We believe race matters in creating positive school environments and subsequently, socio-emotional and psychological development.
These crystal clear belief statements directly address racial equity. If we don’t say this stuff out loud and commit, equity won’t happen organically. Busey’s statements leave less room for accidentally perpetuating racial inequity.
It’s about impact, not intent
Racism and other oppressive systems do not require overtly bad intentions. Impact is what matters. The authors of This We Believe, while they were mostly white men, meant for the document to align with equity. But as Stephanie P. Jones put it in her recent article Ending Curriculum Violence,
“The notion that a curriculum writer’s or teacher’s intention matters misses the point: Intentionality is not a prerequisite for harmful teaching. Intentionality is also not a prerequisite for racism.”
In that spirit, I must recognize that my reliance on the ideas birthed in This We Believe has made me complicit with racism and oppression.
It hurts me to say this.
But once I’ve recognized this as a problem I need to put my energy into fixing it.
Beyond developmentalism
Seeing our students as young adolescents is not enough to be responsive to their needs. We must seek to understand race and other social forces that impact their lives and their learning.
“Let me be clear: I do not think White teachers enter the profession wanting to harm children of color, but they will hurt a child whose culture is viewed as an afterthought.”
We must center the aspects of identity that are most important to each student. In some cases that is race. In other cases and moments it may be gender, class, sexuality, and the intersections thereof.
Simply put:
“Middle level educators must realize that culture and identity often matter more than age in shaping the experience of young adolescents.”
The above statement appears in Chapter 1 of a recently published book called Equity & Cultural Responsiveness in the Middle Grades (edited by Brinegar, Harrison, and Hurd). It compiles research from twenty some scholars delving into the themes of this blog post.
This straightforward statement represents a call for recalculating the weight of developmentalism in the middle school equation.
This recent Handbook compiles research to fuel the Middle School Movement Phase II.
Where does cultural responsiveness (or the lack thereof) play out in middle schools?
Consider how important considerations have been left out of the mainstream discussion of the three major areas of adolescent development.
Physical Development
Emphasizes traditional Eurocentric standards of beauty
Emphasizes heteronormative understandings of gender and sexuality
Minimizes the impact of food and housing insecurity on physical development
Cognitive Development
Lacks culturally responsive pedagogies
Fails to recognize the limitations of monolingualism and benefits of multilingualism
Overrepresents culturally diverse students in special education
Social-emotional Development
Downplays or ignores the influence of cultural identity on belonging
Uses predominantly color-evasive approaches, particularly by white teachers
Fails to pay attention to the importance of creating affirming spaces for students with historically devalued and marginalized identities
If we aren’t sufficiently aware of the social-historical forces operating on layers of identity, we are in danger of seeing differences as deficits.
We are more likely to see deviations as bad or abnormal when adolescent development is framed in general terms. We need to connect developmental and cultural responsiveness.
And the first best thing we can do is to broaden our understanding of identity. We need to deepen our understanding of students so that we see can clearly see their assets. The middle school movement helped shine a spotlight on the positive potential of young adolescence. Now we need to commit to being equally responsive to cultural and social aspects of identity.
The way forward
If we are willing to do the work, we can draw on any number of well established asset-based approaches. These are deep pedagogies that require attention to self and systems.
… engaging in social justice work requires the acknowledgement that equity frameworks such as culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 2014), cultural responsiveness (Gay, 2000), culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012: Paris & Alim, 2017), equity literacy (Gorski, 2017) and reality pedagogy (Emdin, 2011, 2016) are not just lists of practices or strategies, but philosophies or ways of being and thinking. There is no list of silver-bullet strategies that make us equitable, transformative educators or that make our curriculum socially just (p. 1).
We can continue to celebrate and cater to the developmental characteristics of young adolescents. We also have the opportunity to more fully honor the assets that students bring with other aspects of their identities.
In practice, taking into account the complex array of characteristics for any given student boils down to seeing them as an individual. Not just in a “celebrating diversity” sort of way, but recognizing that each student’s individuality has a context. Each student carries an intersection of identities and many of those identities are culturally situated.
If we can create learning environments that validate, affirm, draw upon, and sustain those identities, our students, schools, and communities can thrive.
Always, always, start with ourselves
Lest our own blindspots and biases get in the way, it is incumbent on educators to constantly critically analyze our beliefs and practices. This is especially important for educators such as myself who carry privileged social identities. Whether looking at my internal blind spots, my external mistakes, or the impacts of systems and organizations in which I participate, I resolve to stay committed in the face of inevitable pushback.
I am also excited to work with others who are trying to bend existing and emerging systems to the equity task at hand.
Middle school structures such as advisories, curriculum integration, and teacher teams continue to have a lot of student-centered potential. And in Vermont there is much change afoot via promising personalized learning strategies like Personal Learning Plans, Flexible Pathways, and proficiency-based learning.
We need to make sure that anti-oppressive education is the driving force of systems change rather than an add-on or assumed byproduct. We need to build on the work of educators and scholars of color who model how to make equity our primary unapologetic orientation.
In essence, we need to develop our own critical consciousness so that we can (1) instill it in our students and (2) disrupt inequity in our systems.
So let’s get critical, get conscious, and get to work.
How will *you* contribute to middle school movement equity?
References
Brinegar, Kathleen, Lisa Harrison & Ellis Hurd (2018)Becoming transformative, equity-based educators,Middle School Journal,49:5,2-3,DOI: 10.1080/00940771.2018.1524253
Brinegar, Kathleen, Lisa Harrison & Ellis Hurd (Eds.). (2019) Equity and cultural responsiveness in the middle grades. Information Age Publishing.
Busey, C. (2017, April). Arrested development how This We Believe utilizes colorbind narratives to neglect the racial realities of early adolescent development and middle grades education. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Antonio, TX.
El-Amin, Aaliyah, Scott Seider, Daren Graves, Jalene Tamerat, Shelby Clark, Madora Soutter, Jamie Johannsen, and Saira Malhotra (2017) Critical consciousness: A key to student achievement. Phi Delta Kappan 98 (5), 18-23. https://kappanonline.org/critical-consciousness-key-student-achievement/
Emdin, C. (2016). For White folks who teach in the hood… and the rest of Y’all too: Reality pedagogy in urban education. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York, NY: Herder & Herder.
Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Gorski, P. C. (2017). Reaching and teaching students in poverty: Strategies for erasing the opportunity gap. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Harrison, Lisa, Ellis Hurd & Kathleen Brinegar(2018)Middle school movement phase II: Moving towards an inclusive and justice-oriented middle level education,Middle School Journal,49:4,2-3,DOI: 10.1080/00940771.2018.1490569
Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93–97.
Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (Eds.). (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Sometimes pursuing systemic equity in education can feel a little like the carrot vs. the stick. Since No Child Left Behind, federal education policy has talked about equity while applying punitive measures to schools based on students’ aggregate performance. We have been largely mired in deficit-based policy that is ineffective for spurring transformation and generally demoralizing. That’s the stick.
At the same time, for many educators the fight for equity is real and heartfelt. Every student, every day. And when a young person feels truly seen and supported, when a spark is lit, it’s pure gold. We strive for it and we know it when we see it. That’s the carrot.
But realistically: how do we get that carrot to grow in a garden that too often suffers from the infertility of systemic inequity? How can we help educators support the students who need them most when we art part of a larger system with demonstrably inequitable impacts?
One way is to make it personal. We can ask educators to make sure that we each examine our own biases and work on a personal level so we’re better equipped to fix the system. We need to test our soil for pests and pesticides, folks.
Let’s dig in.
(PUN ABSOLUTELY INTENDED.)
Self work
Educators in Vermont are increasingly doing what Susie Merrick, the Healthy Schools Coordinator for South Burlington School District (SBSD), calls “self work.”
Susie pointed to the Beyond Diversity (BD) training from Courageous Conversation as an exemplar of self work. “BD training is, in my mind, absolutely essential training for anybody who works in schools or with young people. It involves the self work: how do I look at my own race, my own implicit bias, and then use this learning to address and dismantle systems of oppression and inequity wherever I work.”
Self work might include:
considering the existence of and ongoing implications of our implicit biases.
thoroughly examining our personal and professional complicity in racial oppression.
raising our awareness of micro-aggressions and other ways that we are harming colleagues, students, and families.
thinking about the ways that our own identity impacts or limits our ability to effectively support all students.
Learning and unlearning
The starting point is to acknowledge that we are all products of and participants in our inequitable society. Formal institutions such as schooling, as well as more diffuse social influences such as media, have shaped our perceptions and understandings. Our beliefs, both implicit and explicit, impact everything. From classroom decisions to how we analyze school policies.
This is especially true for white people who have been shaped by the system and privileged by it. To become forces for equity, good intentions and kindness are not enough. White educators need to interrogate our beliefs and actions. We have to unlearn things we’ve taken for granted as true or natural. We have to start with ourselves.
Dean Melen, a school counselor at the Chamberlin Elementary School in South Burlington, sees self work as personal yet essential. “Every thread of who we are will be impacted by what we do with our new learned understanding. White privilege is not new to most communities. We know this and continue to dream about equity. We know too, that dreams are not enough. The voice from our students, families, staff, administration and community must out shine our lack of understanding from the past.”
Let’s look at how SBSD, along with other Vermont districts, is putting personal identity work at the center of their systemic change efforts.
Diversity / Equity / Inclusion in South Burlington
Five years ago, in the 2013-14 school year, a group of SBSD administrators and staff attended the We All Belong training by CQ Strategies. The training focused on cultural competence. Based on this learning, SBSD created a Healthy Schools Coordinator position. Then they merged four mutually reinforcing programs: diversity/equity/inclusion, wellness, mentoring, and mindfulness.
Four distinct programs merged in South Burlington School District to create Healthy Schools.
SBSD hired Susie Merrick as the first Healthy Schools Coordinator. She was very clear that Healthy Schools built on important legacies already in place.
“The creation of the Healthy Schools positions was certainly not the start of the equity work we are doing in South Burlington. When I was hired, I had the gift of hearing how dedicated many past and current staff were to social and racial equity, including our Superintendent David Young. I also witnessed first-hand colleagues doing courageous work alongside students that reflected their deep and genuine commitment to equity. But we still had a lot of work to do, like any place.”
A community conversation about equity
During the Healthy School’s first year of existence, conversations about race and identity took center stage due to broader forces in the community. The Student Diversity Union (now the Student Justice Union) at South Burlington High School, co-chaired by students Isaiah Hines and Madison Premsagar, led a movement to change the “Rebel” identifier.
Susie noted that every community has its own story. She recalled “Here in SB what really jump started conversations about race on a deeper level was our story connected to the Rebel identifier.
As staff, we became more aware of how racial inequity was harming our students — and they were the ones leading those discussions because they were courageous enough to speak up. I believe student voice pushed us as staff to more authentically address issues in our schools such as implicit bias and microaggressions.
Courageous Conversation for transformation
The fight over the Rebel moniker raged for over a year. In February, 2017, the School Board changed the name to “Wolves.” Principal Patrick Burke supported the name change unequivocally. He was quoted in an article by the student newspaper: “When I have kids of color saying, ‘I’m not comfortable with this,’ then I have to listen.”
During that school year, SBSD administrators and staff participated in training related to implicit bias facilitated by external providers. The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee (which had grown out of the team who attended the original We All Belong training) recognized the need to build internal capacity in order to create sustainability. SBSD secured grant funding to send a team of 10 staff members to the Courageous Conversation National Summit in Detroit in the fall.
The national summit was a transformative experience for the educators who attended. Susie identified the summit as a pivotal moment in her journey.
“As a white woman, I had never experienced training of this kind. Robin DiAngelo talks of ‘white women’s tears’ in her amazing book ‘White Fragility’: the idea that white people are so uncomfortable discussing race that we get defensive and/or experience guilt. My own white fragility showed up as tears throughout the conference.
The training helped me understand my reaction, try to address it with integrity and then work to build my skills and use my privilege to address issues of inequity in my professional and personal life. This has been an ongoing journey for me.
Other educators who went to Detroit had similarly transformative experiences. The question was how to bring that back home to the entire staff.
Bringing it home
The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee recognized that equity work, especially self work, first and foremost required a safe learning community. So during the 2017-18 school year the district allocated 90 minutes of each district-wide gathering (Convocation and two in-services) to relationship building. They called it “Coming Together”. The 400+ staff gathered in small groups and shared stories about things like family, life goals, and their hopes for the world.
In the following year, the district increased investment in this work and put in place several important structures:
The Detroit group, who had continued meeting regularly, formally took on the design of professional learning related to equity and became the “Equity Planning Team”.
The district brought in a Courageous Conversations trainer to offer the foundational Beyond Diversity course so that more educators could do deep self work. Nearly 60 educators volunteered to participate.
The time allotted for equity work during the district inservices was doubled to three hours per session.
So now the district had substantial internal capacity to support the work. The inservices included time where educators presented in the auditorium. They talked about changes they were making in their practice to further equity, using the Teaching Tolerance Social Justice Standards to help guide their presentations. And then educators gathered in cross-district small groups, facilitated by Beyond Diversity trained staff, to process, deepen, and personalize the learning.
Agreements
To support authentic engagement in this intense work, SBSD adopted district-wide group norms. Rhiannon Kim, Speech Pathologist for SBSD and Adjunct Professor with UVM and Saint Michaels College teaching Mindfulness Based Practices, developed a set of agreements. She used an extensive process that included multiple rounds of trial and feedback from various stakeholders.
The agreements are relevant far beyond the inservice sessions. Staff across SBSD have used the agreements in a wide variety of settings. For instance, the agreements have supported collaborative team meetings, book discussion groups, the District Level Committee Meeting, and even classrooms.
In the future, funding will continue to be invested in building internal capacity. The district plans to continue offering the Beyond Diversity training to develop more facilitators for district-wide work.
The conversations will continue. And the impacts have already been far reaching.
Beyond conversations
The district level work in South Burlington has made a difference in practice..
For example, the two educators from Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School who were part of the original Detroit group have continued to deepen the work in their own classrooms and beyond.
Curriculum and student leadership
Christie Nold has developed powerful curriculum that addresses social identity and equity in her 6th grade social studies class. She has also worked with several colleagues to launch and facilitate a student leadership group called S.O.A.R. (Students Organized Against Racism).
Christie reflected: “In many ways, I find the district level work we engage with sets conditions in the soil. It is not until the fruits of that labor begin to grow that we are able to identify the impact we’ve had on creating conditions. For me, the most beautiful fruit has been our Students Organizing Against Racism. This does not mean we have finished our work, but instead is an indication that we are feeding our soil well.”
Collaborative learning about Culturally Sustainable Pedagogy
Jeff Novak has worked to diversity his classroom, from the books assigned and available for students to the posters on his walls. Also, he presented at one of the in-services this year. He shared a story from the Beyond Diversity training in Detroit as an example of a transformative experience.
Jeff found a way to continue to deepen his own learning in collaboration with colleagues. He co-facilitated a professional learning strand about Culturally Sustainable Pedagogy for a dozen of his middle school colleagues. He and his partner Lauren Bartlett presented about their experience as facilitators at two different conferences.
A slide from Jeff Novak and Lauren Bartlett’s presentation at the Dynamic Landscapes Conference.
Jeff noted that he wouldn’t have and couldn’t have made this much progress on his own. “The district had taken a firm stand on the issue of racial inequity in our system: that it’s a real problem baked into everything and most of us are just waking up to the extent of it. I’ve felt supported and buoyed by the district and faculty who are steeped in this work and feel heartened by our efforts to address the racism in our systems. It’s humbling work without any sense of completion or achievement, but the community that’s formed around this work has been the strongest and most supportive I’ve experienced in teaching.”
The intentional building of relationships and community has been a key aspect of SBSD’s equity work. And we see more and more communities being built across Vermont for this same purpose.
The movement in VT
Consider the work of Lamoille South Supervisory Union (LSSU). During this last school year, Drs. Kathleen Brinegar & Hannah Miller, from Northern Vermont University, worked with all educators Pk-12 from LSSU. LSSU dedicated half of each of three in-services to this work.
Tracy Wrend, Superintendent of LSSU, saw the need for self work alongside the systemic.
We quickly discovered that the continuum of readiness to incorporate culturally sustaining practices and the range of emotional and experience with racial and social justice–particularly inequity–was hugely individual, personal and emotional. In order to support our students, we needed to take a step back and reflect on the ways our own experiences shape our views as educators, practice listening deeply to the voices of others, and ensure a safe, respectful adult culture where we can have uncomfortable conversations about our personal and systemic educational practices.”
Personal equity projects and district goals
Kathleen described the content: “The in-services focused on defining equity and understanding systemic and structural inequities based largely on the work of Gorski, Ladson-Billings, Django & Paris, the National Equity Project, and our own research. Educators throughout the district engaged in community circles focused on identifying inequities within the district and exploring their own bias.”
Educators engaged in self work and critical analysis of practices within the district. Based on their analysis, each educator developed a personal equity project. They worked with small accountability groups to help develop their projects and process together.
The year’s work ended with the development and unpacking of the following four goals for LSSU:
Educators take proactive steps towards recognizing the ways they perpetuate and reproduce inequities.
All learners have access to the supports, tools, and opportunities they need to grow.
Youth and adults can safely construct their identities.
Educational experiences are transformed by listening to the words, actions, and silences of youth.
The work with educators across the district will continue next school year. The district plans to add specific sessions for district administrators as well.
Self work and systemic change efforts are mutually reinforcing
The self work increasingly happening in districts and schools can complement professional learning focused on systemic equity.
For example, the theme of the Middle Grades Institute this year, is “Advancing Equity”. Rebecca Haslam from Seed the Way will facilitate an opening workshop. The workshop will lead each of the 150 participants through social identity exercises. Kathleen Brinegar will close the week long institute with a keynote about equity. Faculty will continuously ask participants to connect their efforts to fight systemic inequity with their self work.
Vermont educators will have ample opportunities for external professional learning about equity. For example:
Based on requests from member districts, Champlain Valley Educator Development Center is offering the Courageous Conversation “Beyond Diversity” workshop twice this fall, plus an in-depth series for administrators.
Rhiannon Kim is offering a week long strand at the BEST/MTSS conference called “Mitigating Bias in Our Schools and Uncovering Unconscious Bias.”
Paul Gorski will likely be back next year to continue spreading the word about his Equity Literacy Framework, after offering multiple events organized by various prominent organizations last year.
The Agency of Education developed an Equity Literacy Grant program and published a set of supportive Equity Literacy Resources.
District sponsored self work is a critical component of this broader equity movement. When time and funding is put into the self work, it sends a strong message about priorities. It also makes sure that all educators are involved instead of just those who seek it out on their own.
And those educators who do seek out additional learning about equity are better prepared on a personal level to understand and apply their learning.
Embrace the challenge
As the equity work becomes more personal, the challenge intensifies. Susie Merrick is quick to point out that the work in South Burlington School District is by no means perfect. It has been emotional and raw and nearly overwhelming for staff at times. She shared that “I am heavily steeped in both conviction and humility. Not a day goes by that I don’t wonder whether I’m the right person for the job.”
Yet, she has persevered and she has learned a lot along the way.
Tips for taking a personal approach to systemic equity
Susie offered three tips for school systems that want to do this work.
“Make sure to give staff an opportunity to do the self work first. Talk to white staff about the fact that this is not the job of our staff of color to lead this work or to turn to in order to get answers to our questions. I would have named something different two years ago but to me that’s the most important. It’s been a game changer for us to have increased numbers of white staff do their own hard work.”
“In South Burlington it’s been helpful to work toward allowing a critical mass of staff in all five schools to get the same equity training. I am so inspired by our staff developing a common language, becoming familiar with the Courageous Conversation protocol and sharing a set of guidelines for courageous dialogues. A growing number of our staff have even been using this learning in classrooms with their students.”
“If you are an aspiring racial and social equity leader in your school community, really honor self care as you do this work and remember that change is hard and takes time. The work can be lonely, so be sure to find a group of colleagues with whom you can connect. Hold close the awareness that you are working toward allowing every single student in our schools to show up as their full selves. I want to make sure that I’m holding space for those reminders because not honoring them can impact well-being. There is an urgency to the work that doesn’t lend itself to pausing, but the pause is so important.”
Challenging ourselves so we can transform systems
“Embrace discomfort” is one of the Courageous Conversation agreements. This norm acknowledges the inherent challenge of self work. Confronting our implicit biases, our problematic beliefs, and our complicity with inequitable systems is hard. But it can be liberating. And it is oh so necessary so that we can transform ourselves, and then our systems, to give all students the opportunities they deserve.
How will your school system give time and support for educators to do the self work needed to advance equity?
Identity. Oppression. Social justice. Structural racism. Liberation. These are some intense ideas to grapple with at any age.
Yet 6th grade student Deng isn’t willing to wait: “We need to learn about this stuff early on before it gets pushed off and becomes a problem. We are the next generation of adults.”
Christie Nold and her 6th grade students have tackled these topics together as a courageous learning community that was built intentionally over the course of the year. They showed that not only can young adolescents handle it, but they thrive when given the chance to go deep into identity and equity. Let’s take a peek into Christie’s classroom at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School in South Burlington, Vermont, to see how she did it, what kids got out of it, and the art they created as a result.
Social identity learning for young adolescents
Young adolescents work hard at figuring out who they are and how they fit into the world. They may not know it, but they are constantly learning about social identity — the way that their concept of self is based on the groups they belong to.
By teaching about social identity in school, Christie sought to provide a safe and supportive environment for students to explore these complex yet deeply personal ideas. She also connected identity to larger ideas about society and history – social inequality, structural racism, Civil Rights.
And finally, she gave students the opportunity to process and to act. At the end of the unit, students worked with teaching artists to express their learning. And what they created was amazing.
Starting with self
Christie wanted students to learn about identity in the context of equity and diversity.
“The impetus for the project was really to allow space for students to engage with who they are as people in the world and what that means and also to engage with folks closer in identity to them or farther in identity from them but either way don’t often represent the trajectory of educators that they have in their lives.”
A poetry workshop with teaching artist Rajnii Eddings.
In addition to the teaching artists, students met guest speakers such as Kiran Waqar, a member of the slam poetry group Muslim Girls Making Change. This inspired two students, Brianna and Zina, to start writing poetry together. Zina noted that Kiran “taught me what it means to stand behind what you really want to say to the world.” Later, the girls were thrilled to work with Rajnii Eddins, who had mentored Muslim Girls Making Change through the Young Writers Project.
Christie also saw the social identity unit as an important first step in her curricular sequence. She wanted students to think about their own identities as a basis for exploring other cultures.
“I find it’s really important to start by knowing ourselves. I think often without a solid understanding of who we are and also an understanding of at least bias if not our own biases it can be really easy to do a unit on cultures and just continue to engage in stereotypical thinking.
And so it was important to me that students have this opportunity to dive pretty hard into who they are and how that informs the way they see the world before they then started looking at other aspects of parts of our world.
Standards-based social identity learning
Christie used the social studies standards as her starting point. The unit addressed standard D2.His.1.6-8 from the College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: “Analyze connections among events and developments in broader historical contexts.” The C3 Framework also includes a Sociology Companion Document with competencies such as “Explain the social construction of self and groups.”
Christie knew that the social studies standards had her back. And she knew that she could design a unit that would provide ample opportunities for students to develop Clear and Effective Communication, which was the Transferable Skill she was working on within her proficiency-based classroom.
The Social Justice Standards
For detailed learning targets directly related to social identity, she turned to the Social Justice Standards from Teaching Tolerance. Identity is one of the four major domains of the Social Justice Standards and includes five anchor standards. Christie used the 6-8 outcomes, derived from the anchor standards, to craft her unit.
The Social Justice Standards gave specificity to the framing Christie had already done based on the C3 standards and Transferable Skill proficiencies. And it connected her with resources. She could access resources from Teaching Tolerance such as this PD module on the website or a PD cafe from the magazine. And she could network with educators all over the world who are helping their students dive deep into identity.
The 6-8 Identity outcomes from p. 8 of the Social Justice Standards by Teaching Tolerance.
Christie received a grant from Teaching Tolerance to fund the teaching artists. But before creating an artistic representation, students delved deeply into the social identity learning.
The arc of the unit
Christie wanted to make sure that her 6th graders were able to engage with complex and intense ideas in a thoroughly supportive environment.
Laying the groundwork
Very early in the unit she introduced resources from the Courageous Conversations protocol which is designed “for effectively engaging, sustaining, and deepening interracial dialogue.” Students explored and upheld the agreements (norms) during discussions and collaboration. And they frequently relied on the Courageous Conversation compass to process intense material by considering whether they were in the feeling, believing, acting, or thinking quadrant.
The classroom community added a norm that basically gave permission to “lie” when exploring identity. When writing, students were told to “put on the page only what you are comfortable putting on the page.” Most of the verbal sharing was also optional. Students controlled what they wanted to disclose. This maintained the personal and intellectual safety of the classroom.
Each trimester I ask the same questions. This is the question I ALWAYS go to first… it is something I find unwaveringly important: pic.twitter.com/5Gf5t2DJeY
Christie also used two read aloud texts to ground the learning throughout the unit. During the first part of the unit that was focused largely on identity, the class read Refugee, by Alan Gratz, which is a story about three young refugees from different nations and eras. During the second part of the unit, the class read Jewell Parker Rhodes’ Ghost Boys, about a young black boy killed by a police officer. Ghost Boys served as a reference point for learning about implicit bias, systemic oppression, and civil rights.
Activities and ideas
With these structures as a backbone, students explored complex concepts by:
watching this video on the iceberg model of culture and filled out an accompanying worksheet to learn about the explicit and implicit manifestations of culture.
learning that identity is socially constructed (i.e., it is created in interaction with others).
looking at various aspects of identity, such as race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and citizenship.
creating identity pie charts including various social identity and cultural markers, for Refugee characters and then themselves, which they shared with each other if they felt comfortable doing so.
considering dominant and minoritized identities by watching videos about people featured in Ghost Boys such as Emmet Till and Tamir Rice; then looking at the positionality of aspects of their own identities.
critiquing bias in advertising by looking at ads that are problematic and ads that are trying to change the paradigm, such as the Gillette ad about the #metoo movement.
encountering the concept of microaggressions and watching a video about Black parents giving “the talk” to their children.
Take a moment to marvel at the bullets and bolded words above. Consider what a shift it would be for most adults if they took time to learn about these things. Then watch the videos and see how students truly internalized and learned these complex concepts.
Students considered the social identity of their influencers.
Assessment
Christie assessed understanding in several ways. Formatively, in addition to the ongoing reflections and discussions, she has administered a survey three times over the course of the year. The questions were based on the Social Justice Standards. Christie saw significant growth base on student responses.
For summative assessment, students wrote about social identity and made connections to the Ghost Boys book. The performance assessment included a vocabulary bank that students were expected to use in their responses.
Application through art making
After the written performance assessment, students were ready to process and express their learning in a completely different way.
As Christie put it, “I think that because it was so deeply personal and it was about who we are, I wanted to allow students the opportunity to think really expansively. … I had had the opportunity to collect the data and understand how my students were performing. Which then opened up the space for this project to be truly expressive without the confines of an evaluation from me.”
Leading up to the teaching artist experience, students chose the medium that they wanted to explore. Then they connected with a teaching artist for a 45 minute workshop: Rajnii Eddins for spoken word poetry; Max Jennings, a teacher and Moth Grand Slam winner, for oral story telling; or Allison Treston, an art teacher at the school, for visual arts. Students started their projects during the workshops and then used one work day to finish before the exhibition.
One student, Myra, seemed to agree with the non-evaluative approach:
it’s nice to do art because whatever you were doing it’s right because it is about your identity.
Myra created a collage about her identity and shared things that she had never shared at school before. “Identity is not just one thing, it is many things layered on top of each other. … I wanted other kids to learn about who I am and realize that there are parts of me that are different than what they expected.”
I am so deeply blessed. Today was an incredible gift. Our @Tolerance_org grant is working magic through brilliant teaching artists – manifesting in the work & words of our students.
Though his hands were shaking beforehand, Jesse was proud to hear his story greeted by gales of laughter. He thought that the art project helped show what he had learned in a different way: “writing an essay would show what you know but telling the story we shared what we have learned about identity. The story was about our identity and an essay would just be about the unit’s identity.”
The exhibition was a powerful example of true student engagement that included emotional, intellectual, and behavioral dimensions. The event perfectly blended deeply personal expression with a public display of deep learning.
And the sense of community was palpable. Yorda noted, “I learned so much from my classmates and it was inspiring to see their passion.”
Deng shared:
My classmates gave me courage because they put out tough stuff about their lives so I thought if they can do it I can do it.
And Will captured the selflessness of a volunteer performer. “I shared my piece not for a response but just to spread awareness and positivity.”
Ready for the tough stuff
Christie’s students impressed Rajnii. He commented that “they seemed particularly primed to explore to a deeper degree issues of our identity and to connect to issues of our humanity in vibrant ways.”
In interviews, students validated Rajnii’s reflection on their readiness and eagerness to learn.
From Abby: “Kids around the world and even younger kids should learn about this because we are the future leaders. Christie and Rajnii are so important because they help us learn about ourselves and let us form our own ideas but that can help us see what we want to do more clearly.”
Yorda agreed that combatting bias should start early:
Young people should learn it so they can teach others. It’s easier to learn when you’re young so you don’t have as many bad biases in your brain yet.
And it’s not just preparation for a far-away future. Many students emphasized how they feel empowered to make change now, through art or otherwise. Brianna observed, “children are not just people who learn something and put it in their mind and put it away, they are ready to think about what’s happening and do something about it.” Zina added, “we might be young but we can make a difference.”
Young adolescents can certainly have an impact, if they are given the knowledge and the opportunity.
Where to start
Christie’s main suggestion for educators who want to help students learn about identity and equity is to look inward first. “Start with self and return to self early and often. And so as much as I am reading about Critical Race Theory, as a white woman I’m reading about whiteness. Understanding what it means to deconstruct the system of whiteness. Not just my White racial identity but the system of whiteness from within myself and within the greater system and world that I move between and around.”
For White educators in particular who want to start by looking inward:
Christie recommends working in community with others to learn together and care for each other.
One of the things I think I’ve learned in this work is if I think I’ve got it right I don’t. So the closer I am to being convinced that I am doing it in the right way probably the farther I am from doing it right. … a lot of this involves being able to sit in your discomfort and the mess that is trying to undo hundreds of years of systemic racism. Find communities of practice and and folks who are willing to hold one another lovingly accountable. It gets really hard and if you don’t know who those people are.
Christie adds that she is available to connect. “I’m always excited to meet people who are willing to do this work. I think that that is what keeps me going and give me faith and hope. I love meeting other educators who despite how challenging this could be understand that it’s the most important thing that we can do.”
There is a movement afoot in Vermont and beyond to bring these critical conversations into schools. Classrooms like Christie’s show that learning about social identity is not just possible but essential for young adolescents.
How will you and your students learn about social identity and equity?
Lizzie Stockbridge, a 6th grade math teacher at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School in South Burlington, Vermont, gives students 15 minutes every week to write an email home.
But when she started she had no idea how powerful this simple routine would turn out to be.
Unicorn stories!
Here’s a recent snippet from an email by a student who writes about “Herald the Unicorn” each week:
As you recall last weeks event’s were brutal for Herald this week though they get even worse as I must have reader advisory for this because its so scary it will make you look around and wonder if there really was something moving around in that closet, so creepy it will make you want to run away and actually do that homework that you were told to do if you choose to keep reading you have been WARNED.
John, nearly all of your sentences in this week’s submission are run-ons, but all is forgiven. Why? Because this work is simply fabulous. Foreboding, tense and yet simultaneously humorous. You are juxtaposing genres here, with touches of theater, fable, horror and, dare I suggest, even poetry.
Lizzie’s students are really engaged in this routine. They use their weekly emails to express creativity, raise red flags, reflect on academic learning, process intense events — all sorts of things.
Melding student voice & family connections
Lizzie is a first-year teacher but she recognized the importance of connecting with families. And she knew that the key was to follow the lead of students to make sure it was meaningful.
At the end of the first week of school, students hadn’t yet delved into the math curriculum. When Lizzie read the first set of emails, she found that “they were just so excited about everything that had happened. Before school, after school, how there’s sports here now, how there’s clubs, blah, blah, blah. All the different teachers that they talked to. … Once I saw how invested they were in these other things, I just rolled with it.”
That’s responsiveness. And her instinct to let her students lead planted the seeds of the good things to come.
How does it work?
There are a few simple components to Lizzie’s approach.
The gift of time: Students write for 15 minutes on Fridays. Lizzie sets a timer and students are asked to reflect on their week. Otherwise there are no constraints on topic or format. Some students use speech-to-text and some even use emojis rather than formal writing.
Email buddies: Each student has at least one “email buddy” to serve as their authentic audience. Lizzie had originally thought she would require the email to go to somebody in the home, but she quickly realized that this didn’t work for everybody. Lizzie makes sure that every student has at least one person to email. For a couple of students this meant connecting them with an external buddy who had some time on his hands: Lizzie’s father. And a few students chose to email teachers within the school with whom they have close relationships.
Responses encouraged: Lizzie periodically reminds email buddies that responding makes a big difference for students’ buy-in. When students do receive a response: “It’s clear that they’re excited about sending the emails and the parents who respond often start the email by saying, ‘I love your Friday emails. They brighten my day.’ Then I hear the kids come in and they’re like, ‘They got my email. We talked about this. We talked about that,’ which is great.
Teacher CC’d: Lizzie receives all of the emails as well. She skims them over the weekend. “I usually do it on Saturday morning and I’m just sitting there on my computer like, ‘…That’s so cute.’ Yes, it’s nice, yes.” This part is key. So many positive things flow from the fact that Lizzie takes the time to look through the emails.
8 positive impacts of weekly emails
In addition to strengthening family communication, here are eight more benefits of students writing weekly emails home.
1. Teacher student relationships
Lizzie values learning about her students. This was big part of the reason why she altered her original math-focused email plan.
When I saw how they enjoy me talking to them on Mondays being like, “Oh, how did that football game go?” Like, “What? You know I played football? You read my email!” Which is really cool. Instead if I’m like, “How did ratios go last week in Math?” They’re like, “I don’t want to talk to you about this.” That was my major switch.
As a former math teacher, I was always jealous of ELA teachers who learned so much from students’ writing. The weekly emails do this for Lizzie.
2. Curricular relevance
Lizzie uses what she learns to directly support math learning as well.
It makes teaching math so much easier to me. Because if I notice the kids not getting it, I can make connections. “Okay, I know that you have watched Spiderman this past weekend because I saw it in your email.” And so I’m like, “Okay, what if Spiderman needed to save someone and they needed – what do they need to make the suit? …when I ask them to create their own problems, they can easily do it and they connect it to things that are going on outside of the class. Where I feel like last year if I ever ask my students to create anything, it would just be surface level class pencils to markers, but now, I feel like they know that they can talk to me about everything that’s going on because they know that I read it.
3. Crisis prevention & support
In several cases, Lizzie has come across information that was helpful to her team mates for supporting a student.
It helps in other classes, I noticed, because I found some emails, some red flag emails, and I immediately just contact the team or I contact whoever needs to be contacted. Also, for kids who shut down in class, they don’t tell us anything but then they’ll email about it. It’s nice to see that I can see what they’re thinking without them having to verbally tell me.
In one case a student noted that “my teachers hate me.” Lizzie notified her teammates and they talked to the student about it. The positive change was immediate. “She’s like a completely different kid. She comes in all bubbly and says hello to us every day now.” Listening is a powerful strategy and the emails give students another venue for voice.
4. Students connecting with their families
Lizzie was hoping that students and families would talk about school more at home due to the Friday emails. Her action research suggests a moderate shift based on parent survey responses.
Lizzie did see some interesting exchanges however:
A lot of students think ahead to their weekend. …they often talk about what they hoped to happen in the weekend. They send a list home of things that they want to happen. … It’s something they usually send an ask home of, “Can we eat popcorn while we watch our movie?” Or, “Can we watch this movie instead of that movie? Could we go outside? Can we go sledding? Could we…” It varies, but they are usually sending a list and then asking something of the people they send their emails to.
Kids getting a jumpstart on weekend negotiations suggests that they saw this as a legitimate communication tool for the stuff they care about.
5. Student learn life skills
Lizzie was amazed at how little her 6th graders knew about the tech skills related to emailing. Students needed to learn how to use Outlook, how to create a signature, how to enter email addresses, and how to access responses.
It became apparent several months into the school year that she had forgot one important aspect. A parent pleaded, “Can you please teach them how to reply?” Students had been creating new emails each week. Contributing to an ongoing threaded conversation is certainly a 21st Century life skill!
6. Student reflection
Lizzie framed the emails as a form of reflection:
I do call it an email reflection, and so now when they hear the word reflection, I think that they are correlating the, “Okay, now I have to process what I have done.” I don’t know if it’s true in all cases, but I’ve noticed that whenever I say reflection to them, they know exactly what’s expected of them.
In some cases students were focusing their reflection on academic learning. In many cases they were just thinking through the day-to-day tribulations of young adolescence.
I’m thinking that it’s a way for them to process what has happened to them this week, and if that is school related or if that’s something outside of school, that’s up to them, but taking that time to think about what they have done for the week or what they have done for the hour is really important.
In a school-wide survey, Lizzie’s team received positive responses relative to other teams. Parents were impressed with the family communication and students were enthusiastic about reflection. Lizzie and her team mates consider the Friday emails to be an important contributor to the encouraging feedback.
7. Kids like it
If Lizzie has to skip a Friday, she gets a lot of push back from students. Students sometimes finish their emails in study hall. And students have sent their Friday email when they were sick or traveling.
Some students have gotten really creative. One student created the idea of “Girl Power Industries,” where her weekly learning is framed as world-changing. And if you check out a typical email from her then you might believe that this girl is indeed likely to change the world!
8. Families like it
Lizzie has received good feedback from families as well.
This comment on the survey seems to capture the parental gratitude:
And Lizzie has felt the difference in her interactions with families.
Parents are constantly reaching out to me. Every week, I at least have five parents reaching out to me. It can be simple things, concerns, or just check-ins … When I see parents and introduce myself. They’re like, “Oh no, we know who you are.” Immediately they’re like, “Yes. We know you. You’re the math teacher. We know exactly who you are. We hear about you and see your emails,” which is really cool.
It’s so important to be seen and to be known. For teachers, for students, and for their families. Sometimes the simplest routines can help us be human.
Action Research
Please check out the screencast below to see Lizzie’s presentation at the Middle Grades Conference on her approach, her action research, and her findings.
How could you empower students to reflect via email?
Meet Grace Gilmour, and her proficiency-based classroom.
“Oh yay. I was like: yay, my heart.”
This was Grace Gilmour’s response to a student’s honest appraisal of her class: “I love it in here because I always feel like I know the next steps on the road to improving.”
Grace teaches social studies to 7th and 8th graders at Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, Vermont. Like teachers across the state, she has been working hard to implement proficiency based learning in her classroom.
If you ask her how it’s going, Grace will likely smile and whisper, “it’s working.”
We are big believers in including student voice in our storytelling. Usually we ask students to talk about a specific project or experience that we are featuring. But what if we left it open ended? We wanted to find out what students would talk about in a free-flowing conversation about what is meaningful for them about school. We learned a lot, and we hope you do too.
A full transcript appears below.
Rowan: School shootings: like that happened and it was just yesterday. I’ll come to school knowing that just happened, I’m not okay right now. If we talk about it in class, then when I go to sleep at night I’m not worrying about it anymore because I know that I can change that or that I can be part of the change.
Narrator: Today, on the 21st Century Classroom, we are going into listening mode. We want to feature student voice in a new way by asking students to talk about school. Our questions are open-ended and our agenda non-existent.
We bet that educators will be able to learn a lot by tuning in to a free-form of conversation among adolescents.
Our students today hail from Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, VT. 250 grade 5-8 students from Duxbury and the larger town of Waterbury attend the school. These two towns form a rural community that sits on the east slope of the Green Mountains right under the majestic Camel’s Hump, Vermont’s second tallest and most recognizable peak. Looking at the school from the scenic Route 100 highway, you see a modern looking structure surrounded by soccer fields with a forested hillside as a backdrop. A long driveway lined with maple trees leads to the school. You might also notice the chicken coop of the school’s signature sustainability program, colorfully decorated by a student-created mural.
Although the school sits geographically on its own – most everybody needs to drive or take a bus to get there –
Our students today talk mostly about how much they want their schoolwork to connect to the community and the real world.
Let’s meet them.
Shyannah: My name is Shyannah. I am an eighth grade.
Damien: My name is Damien and I’m in seventh grade.
Jordan: I am Jordan and I’m in eighth grade.
Rowan: I’m Rowan and I’m in seventh grade.
Narrator: So these four wonderful students were somewhat randomly selected by social studies teacher, Lori Morse, who is on Team Prodigy, one of two 7-8 grade teams in the school. As the discussion ensues, don’t worry about trying to track who is saying what, just roll with it as a group conversation. Try to tune in to what these students express when given an open opportunity to share.
The first question was simply: what is meaningful to you in school?
Jordan: Any opportunity to grow and learn in the area of kind of just outside world like sustainability and Ms. Morse does a really nice job with, you know, she actually changed the world as an opportunity to donate money to humane societies or maybe just make our community better.
Shyannah: Yes. I think sustainability helps us to notice what’s going on around the world that we’re not really aware of. I definitely think that it’s good that we have something like that and Ms. Morse just teaches a lot about like how it’s good to be a good person and to help in the little things that could change a person’s life.
Rowan: This Civil War project that was due recently, that whole thing, just even the little bits of the video, things that may have liked researched at home, all those little things. Even though they were like in the past you can still kind of– I don’t really know what the right word is but like, kind of like apply it to what’s kind of happening now and kind of like some things, not all things–
Damien: Yes, if we don’t know what happened in the past we don’t know what we’re going to do in the future like we’ll never learn from our mistakes. She kind of tells us– In the beginning she told us like this happened to get rid of slavery but racism is still real and stuff like that. Sexism, and a whole bunch of other things.
Narrator: What kind of connections did you make from the Civil Warup to what’s going on now?
Shyannah: I noticed that even though the confederates were fighting for like slavery, it’d still be going but not all of them were bad. I’d like to think that they were all for it, they just lived there. Because I’m African-American, I hear a lot of racist things but I don’t let it ruin my life because African-Americans then were treated a lot worse than I am. I’d like to think that I had it better than they did.
Damien: I agree. I’m also African-American and although racism isn’t all the way gone, it’s nothing like it used to be. I hear some things that are nasty or bad, but African-Americans used to be treated much worse than we are now. So it’s kind of not really nice to think about but and I’m not sure I want to talk about it because it’s kind of a sensitive topic. Someone might not have the same opinion but I think the way he targets his audience is people who feel vulnerable or want something and he targets them by saying something they want to believe.
Rowan: They kind of feed it.
Damien: Yes, like he feeds them false information and they want to believe it so they do believe it’s true. If you heard something like I don’t know, like if you heard something you wanted to believe you want to believe it.
Rowan: Like a rumor that you like, I don’t know. I’m not sure if like is the right word but, yes.
Narrator: Does she just tell you these things because she has really strong opinions or how does it actually play out–
Shyannah: She does like to talk about if there’s school shootings she’ll make sure that we’re okay and that if we ever want to talk about it we can–
Rowan: It’s okay.
Shyannah: Yes, it’s open to talk about it.
Rowan: Because it’s something that’s happening now and it could be like somebody has changed the world. You can kind of openly talk about it in her classroom and kind of hear other people’s opinions, her opinion, what everybody has to say about it. Sometimes you may have like this giant weight on your shoulders because of it and after that you’re kind of just like, oh, good.
Narrator: That was interesting because I started up by saying what’s kind of the most meaningful stuff for you. I thought you’d maybe talk about something that’s really fun but you guys talked about sustainability and kind of some heavy stuff you’ve been looking at, social studies. Help me understand that.
Do you think students like to deal with serious stuff?
Damien: I don’t think we like enjoy it but it’s not like something I’m going to talk about all the bad things for fun but it’s like–
Rowan: Like a reality check.
Damien: Yes, it’s like reality check and when you talk about it it takes the weight off your shoulders.
Narrator: Help me understand that.
Shyannah: I think it’s helpful because if your parents don’t watch the news and there’s something that like bad happened–
Rowan: And we just hear it from around.
Shyannah: Yes, and we talk about it, I think that feels really helpful because I don’t like to watch the news because there’s a lot of politics and I don’t like to think about politics because I’m still too young to vote. I definitely think it’s helpful because if there’s a school shooting you’ll hear about it but it’s not totally clear. If you know someone from where it is, it’s definitely helpful so that you can check up on them and it’s scary to think that there are so many things wrong and that we’re not doing anything about it. I think that she should try to help us understand that.
Narrator: I’ve had conversations about these kinds of heavy things before where I came away feeling like overwhelmed. You guys said sometimes it makes you feel like it’s a weight off your shoulders. I don’t know if you’ve had both of those experiences or if you know what makes the difference for moving it towards kind of the more positive.
Rowan: Sometimes I come to school kind of knowing back to actually the school shootings and like that happened and it was just yesterday. I’ll come to school knowing that just happened, I’m not okay right now. If we talk about it in class, then when I go to sleep at night I’m not worrying about it anymore because I know that I can change that or that I can be part of the change and then sometimes it’s like even if there’s not a little bit of talk about it like how you can change it, sometimes I’ll just go to sleep feeling, oh my gosh, a lot.
Shyannah: I think it helps to talk about tough stuff. It feels like it takes a weight off the shoulders.
In sustainability class last year, we all wrote letters to ourselves. About what we wanted to do when we grow up and how we want to change the world. I said to be more sustainable and not use a lot of electricity because of what it’s doing to the Earth. Part of my letter was like I want my children to be able to drink water. To be able to see animals that are still around because they’re dying off because of what we’re doing to the earth. It’s a lot of pressure for us because we’re still young. But we can still do things about it. It does put a lot of pressure on us. But it kind of lifts like the weight off when we talk about it and when we actually do things.
Jordan: Adding on to what you said, also they’re educating us about this because they want us to pursue a job in the future that can help lead these global causes and help us keep animals, keep the giraffes and stuff in the places that are being destroyed. I think that is probably, I mean when you think about it and you watch the news and stuff, at first it’s not great but I think one leading to another,
You have to feel not great first to feel like the weight is lifted off your shoulders once you do something about it.
Narrator: Do you get a chance to do stuff about in school?
Shyannah: Yes, like change the world. You pick a topic and you can do anything. I’m doing something with animals. I earn money and give it to the homeless shelter. I also would want to go there and just see the animals. See how they’re treated because they might not be treated well. And if they don’t get a home they usually get put down, so…. I think that we should offer the teams to do change the world because we could do a lot. And like other schools too. We could change the world so fast if we had a lot more people involved.
Narrator: It’s a cool idea. That’s like my next question.
In your wildest dreams, what would school be if you could just like make it out from scratch?
Jordan: I think that math is great, science is great, language arts is great, and social studies is also really good. But, if I could add something it would probably be a class about global problems or something like that where each student pursues a problem and find something to do about it. I think that’s what partnership for the goals is when it comes down to the global goals. I think that they could definitely benefit from that.
Shyannah: I think that if we have like a class to teach us about… not really business but how we’re going to go into life not closed-minded, be like more open-minded.
Rowan: Knowing what we’re going into and kind of not that we’re closed off from the world right now but kind of being more that class when in my mind we would like open up and allow us to understand what we would be going into.
Narrator: What about beyond the subjects?
Do you have ideas about how school would be better like if the way teachers taught was different?
Damien: I think teachers do a pretty good job with this already but more hands-on learning like projects. I think it would be a lot better instead of writing on paper if we did some sort of project. Which I feel like in social studies, in science we do that a lot.
Shyannah: I feel like if we– Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off. I feel like if we did a lot more things off of electronics. And you did a lot more paper. Because all we’re doing is sitting on our phone book most of the day. It’s really not good for you.
Also, to add what classes we should have I think band and chorusis definitely helpful because since I’ve started band I’ve been getting a lot better grades.
Rowan: You have to learn fast. You have to keep up, you have to keep practicing, and you have to learn the pieces. You only have maybe one or two months to learn that a piece and you have to learn it well or, you know, we are kind of going to just be not blowing and just kind of figuring off.
Narrator: It’s really performance.
Damien: Right.
Shyannah: It makes us feel good when we’re all together and we’re all doing well even though that sometimes we’re not totally focused on what we’re doing in band. We’re all learning and we’re learning to work together with people even if we’re not friends.
Rowan: You kind of nail that piece eventually and you’re like, I just did that.
I can do that in all my classes and then you succeed in every one of your classes. It’s great.
Narrator: If I can see a theme, it sounds like a lot of the stuff you are saying is about connecting to the world. With sustainability and change the world, you’re all doing stuff on the road. You’re in a band, you’re actually performing for raw audience. Is that too big of a generalization to say that–
Shyannah: No. And I think chorus is also very good, too. Because this year I got a solo and it was like adrenaline. I was really proud of myself. I was able to stand up and sing in front of a bunch of people that I didn’t know.
Even though I was nervous, I was still proud of myself. It like pushes us to do stuff that we might not be comfortable with. It pushes us out of our comfort zone.
Rowan: It’s kind of, oh right.Miss Dubois, she does the musical. You do have to audition but this year it was Ms. Dubois and Ms. Morse and they’re really supportive. They’re like you did a great job. That’s really nice to hear but then there’s only two people. Then once you finally get on stage and start performing the night of the show … I was terrified this year because I never had a big role. It’s kind of like you’re performing in front of, I don’t know like–
Shyannah: Hundred?
Rowan: Maybe a hundred people that you don’t know over half of them. Once you do it, you’re kind of like–
Damien: It’s really cool to have out of school communities and I really had fun in school this year kind of having the music weirdly.
It was just nice knowing that if I’m like down, if I’m not doing well or something I can just think of it. If I could like get this role in musical and if I can do this then, yes. I don’t know, it’s just really nice.
Narrator: Wow, what a great conversation.The last comment in particular was so interesting. I later found out that this student had recently played the lead in the school play. He had worked hard to get the part, and then worked hard to make sure he did an awesome job. No wonder he plans to look back at that when he’s having a tough time. Basically he’s built that resilience. The resilience that comes with having been challenged, truly motivated to try, and then supported to succeed.
My big take-away from this conversation is that these kids are asking to be pushed out of their comfort zone.
They don’t want school to be a sheltered place – they want as much contact with the real world as possible. Students want to talk about tough things, like slavery, modern racism, climate change, and school shootings. They want to face authentic challenges, like making a positive impact on their community, or performing for an audience.
So let’s give it to them – the real world, warts and all, with opportunities to make it better. This conversation makes me confident that the young adolescents of today will rise to the challenge.
Thank you to the Crossett Brook Middle School Chorus for that wonderful rendition of the state song.
Elizabeth Tarno asked her students for feedback about their math class at the end of 5th grade. Then she did something incredible: she completely redesigned her classroom to address what students asked for.
Elizabeth teaches both 5th and 6th grade math (and science) at the Warren Elementary School. She spent her summer working to rethink her approach through the lens of personalization.
The result? She turned her 6th grade math class into a self-paced course that came to be known as “Choose Your Own Adventure Math Class.” Students worked individually or in partners, used printed or digital materials, and took assessments only when they decided they were ready. They even created their own homework.
Elizabeth listened, she personalized, and her students responded positively. By the end of the initial experiment, Elizabeth had thoughts on how to improve this new approach. But she was clear about one thing: “I’m not going back.”
“What is important to know about me to help me learn?” Every student at Frederick H. Tuttle Middle School attempted to answer this question last year.
Student responses took many forms: poems, videos, sculptures, visual art, and more. At the same time, teachers crafted their own projects in order to inspire students. As the “About Me” page of a Personal Learning Plan (PLP) is making itself a rite of passage for Vermont adolescents, this school used a school-wide identity project to invoke creativity and maximize meaningfulness.
Let’s look at how Tuttle staff created a number of powerful, courageous and deeply personal scaffolds to launch this work with students. As a result, students wound up creating some amazing products to put the “personal” in PLPs.
In this era of personalized learning, it’s not just the jocks that find P.E. enjoyable.
At Crossett Brook Middle School and Shelburne Community School, students employ cool technology, develop creative projects, and pursue personal interests and goals while developing autonomy, healthy habits, and deep understandings.
Beyond the Passion Project: Clara wanted to do something amazing for her final Brainado project. She wanted to push herself and leave a “remembrance,” as she called it, commemorating the sustainability program at her middle school. She envisioned painting a Crossett Brook mural on the newly constructed, pristine greenhouse. She only had one small problem: “I have no artistic ability.”
But she went for it.
She found a partner, a community mentor, and unexpected help. She made mistakes and fixed them. And she worked far beyond the project period, up until the last week of school. The mural is amazing to look at but has impact far beyond the visual. Clara thought she was painting her legacy but she was also expressing the legacy of the educators who cared for her.
Educators never feel like they have enough time to do all the things they want to do with students. But for Team Quest at Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, Vermont, the constraints of traditional subject area, schedule and process had become unbearable. So this two-person grade 5-6 team decided to opt for radical transformation.
They changed the who, what, and when of their teaching.
Town Meeting Day is a Vermont tradition: once a year, everyone in towns across the state pack into the town hall and talk face-to-face about the issues affecting their community.
But Warren Elementary School, in Warren VT, holds Town Meetings on a weekly basis, using the tradition to cultivate citizenship and community.
Last year two educators at Crossett Brook Middle School undertook an amazing action research project that directly improved their interactions with students.
Mollie Burke-Bendzunas, speech pathologist, and Melanie Zima, special educator, took a three-day class together during the summer. The class focused on structured teaching as a strategy for working with highly autistic students. Mollie and Melanie thought that it could be applied more broadly to address a wide range of student needs.
Rather than trying to get students to care about existing PLPs, some schools are revamping their PLP process to start with what students care about. They are asking students to pursue their passions by crafting projects based on their personal interests and deepest curiosities.
The new recipe that is emerging: start with a cool personalized project and then build the PLP around it.
How did an 8th grader turn his passion project into a summer job?
I found Connor in the tech ed room during the first session of Brainado, a school-wide Genius Hour at Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, Vermont.
He was taking apart a lawn mower. When asked why, he shrugged and mumbled something about how another student might need an engine part for their project. His Brainado project was undefined. He didn’t seem to have much of a plan other than tinkering.
Fast-forward four months and Connor is getting paid to work part-time at the Waterbury Service Center garage. He knows his way around the shop, has learned about persistence and problem-solving, and gleaned plenty of life lessons from Albert Caron, the owner and lead mechanic. But how did Connor get from Point A to Point B?
But it’s one thing to come up with a bunch of great ideas. It’s another thing to make sure they happen. For this group of students, follow through was not a problem. They met during the summer to keep the momentum going, convened daily during the first few weeks of school, then rolled out the new PLP process to their peers.
A trio of students at Crossett Brook Middle School, in Duxbury VT, have spent the past two years building a go-cart. When their first cart snapped in half on its maiden voyage, the students took that incident as a challenge, and the next year, they figured out what had gone wrong, and better yet, what would make it go right.
Think middle schoolers are too young for a QSA? Think again
At the Queer Straight Alliance (QSA) at Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, Vermont, young adolescents have carved out a space where they can be their authentic selves. While that’s critical during middle school, it’s especially crucial for LGBTQ students.
As we kick off the third season of our podcast, let’s hear more about Crossett Brook’s QSA by listening to one of the students instrumental in its formation, as well as some of the educators who support them.
The Crossett Brook PLP student leadership group presented their recommendations on PLPs to the teaching staff at the end of the school year. The educators received the students’ ideas well. It was pretty cool to see a roomful of teachers rapt on a hot afternoon during the last week of school.
Creating sustainable systemic change is hard work. Yet there are readily available, free, renewable resources right in your classroom. Students are embedded experts, creative geniuses, ruthless truthtellers, and intrinsic futurists.
Here are four examples of students as partners in school change: partners in building a makerspace, redesigning PLPs, serving the school community and negotiating curriculum.
In Sam Nelson’s classroom, students choose what they learn, and how. Through the use of learning scales and targets, Nelson sets guidelines for students to demonstrate proficiencies in whatever they choose to study. Between the two systems — flexible pathways and proficiency-based learning — students negotiate a curriculum that keeps them engaged and satisfies their curiosity about the world around them.
Every teacher should consider making time for Genius Hour (sometimes called 20% time or Passion Projects). We know that when students are given the opportunity to explore their own topics, they gain skills in self-direction.
But I’ve come to believe that the ideal Genius Hour involves as much of the school as possible. Here’s what it could look like.
What’s special about a proficiency-based environment? Practice, that’s what.
I know, it sounded weird to me too. As a former math teacher, I thought of practice as the mind-numbing repetitive stuff that students had to do in order to attain fluency. Practice was for straightforward procedural skills.
But Sam Nelson, a social studies teacher at Shelburne Community School, has broadened my perspective on practice to encompass all formative assessment, including complex skills and concepts.
A learning management system (LMS) can be used to manage classroom workflow, create self-paced differentiated units, and collaborate within or across classrooms and schools.
As teachers in Vermont and elsewhere grapple with how to create proficiency-based learning environments, they are looking for new strategies and routines. Let’s explore some of the features of the Schoology LMS particularly suited to proficiency-based learning.
Whether the inspiring teacher examples from my last post roused your inner researcher, or you’re just one of those continuous improvement people (as most teachers are), it’s exciting to think that we could have some potential new knowledge creators out there.
5 benefits of doing action research in the classroom
Teachers are constantly tinkering, creating, learning, and growing. Action research is a slightly formalized version of what skilled teachers do every day.
By honoring action research as systematic professional inquiry, we empower teachers to improve their practice. It’s easy to get started undertaking a small, powerful action research project in your classroom. Let’s see what it can look like.
School systems in Vermont and elsewhere are in the midst of a shift to proficiency-based learning. At the early stages, this transformation can feel overwhelming even for educators, even if they’re excited by the idea.
Genius Hour is a leap of faith in which educators set aside their most precious resource, time, for students to pursue their passions. It doesn’t get much more student-centered than that.
But there are actually several aspects of Genius Hour where students can be involved as partners to amp up the genius quotient.
Student reflection with Adobe Voice and Explain Everything
Students at Fayston Elementary School worked hard this year with their team of teachers, not just to implement personal learning plans (PLPs), but to understand them to such a level that they could tell their stories. Using the digital tools Adobe Voice and Explain Everything, students crafted video explanations of their individual PLP projects to share with their families at student-led conferences.
5th and 6th graders from Fayston Elementary School took their personal learning plans (PLP) in extraordinary and unexpected directions this year. All because of trust, dedication, and team work by their teachers.
This livecast of a presentation at the Dynamic Landscapes conference exemplifies the approach. You will hear students presenting the nuts and bolts of the PLP process with ownership, eloquence, and insight. The attendant educators, Amy Jamieson and Jason Stevenson, provided behind the scenes scaffolding and support while making sure that students were front and center.
Announcing the 1st annual Tarrant Institute twitter read-along
Summer is a great time for camping, sunsets and creemees. A great time to relax.
It’s also a great time to sneak in some professional development — especially if you get to do it online and with your peers, while strengthening your professional learning network. Take time to turn off and tune out, or, read Coherence: The Right Drivers in Action for Schools, Districts and Systems. With us. On twitter!
Organize research materials digitally and collaboratively
Tiffany Michael, from Crossett Brook Middle School in Waterbury, Vermont, describes how her use of Padlet evolved to eventually revolutionize the way that she teaches students to conduct research.
I love her story because it has something for everybody. In addition to practical and actionable advice for teachers who want to try to use Padlet, Michael also describes her journey in a way that is informative for coaches, tech integrationists, and administrators.
Care about equity in education? Start with engagement
Educators care about equity. We all want to bring out excellence in our students, but the thing that keeps us up at night is our constant striving to do that for ALL of our students.
There are many systemic barriers to equity. Our students and schools mirror society, so the efforts of educators slam up against macro forces such as generational poverty, distressed families, institutional racism, and other forms of social injustice.
A few months back, I wrote about how the Washington West Supervisory Union (WWSU) here in Vermont had initiated a series of conversations with the community with a kick-off film screening and discussion. I noted that “the most exciting thing about the conversation was the feeling in the room that we, as a community, could transform our schools. People were clearly ready and willing to have a conversation, and the general vibe was that we wanted to find a way to empower students to do great things within and beyond our schools.”
I’m happy to report that those positive feelings of community engagement coalesced into a sustained and profound exercise in participatory democracy. More than 100 community members came together during four two-hour Monday evenings in March. They worked in groups to examine their own beliefs, learn about school transformation efforts already underway, and ultimately provide recommendations that will be considered by the school system’s leadership team.
Today we hear from a grade 5-6 team venturing into the world of personal learning plans (PLPs) using Google Tools.
Jared Bailey, math teacher, and Joy Peterson, English Language Arts teacher, provide concrete details on how they rolled out PLPs this year, including links to such resources as graphic organizers that they used for goal setting and an assignment (including rubric) on identity.
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This comment on the survey seems to capture the parental gratitude:!["Thank you so much for taking the time to create the weekly reflections with the kids. It's a wonderful glimpse into our child's week through his own words and memories. It seems harder these days to tease conversation about school out of him, this really gets the ball rolling around the dinner table. Thank you and keep them coming! [redacted]](https://i0.wp.com/tiie.w3.uvm.edu/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-11-at-1.57.58-PM.png?resize=525%2C63&ssl=1)
“Oh yay. I was like: yay, my heart.”
Educators never feel like they have enough time to do all the things they want to do with students. But for Team Quest at Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, Vermont, the constraints of traditional subject area, schedule and process had become unbearable. So this two-person grade 5-6 team decided to opt for radical transformation.
A trio of students at Crossett Brook Middle School, in Duxbury VT, have spent the past two years building a go-cart. When their first cart snapped in half on its maiden voyage, the students took that incident as a challenge, and the next year, they figured out what had gone wrong, and better yet, what would make it go right.
Creating sustainable systemic change is hard work. Yet there are readily available, free, renewable resources right in your classroom. Students are embedded experts, creative geniuses, ruthless truthtellers, and intrinsic futurists.
In Sam Nelson’s classroom, students choose what they learn, and how. Through the use of learning scales and targets, Nelson sets guidelines for students to demonstrate proficiencies in whatever they choose to study. Between the two systems — flexible pathways and proficiency-based learning — students negotiate a curriculum that keeps them engaged and satisfies their curiosity about the world around them.
Every teacher should consider making time for Genius Hour (sometimes called 20% time or Passion Projects). We know that when students are given the opportunity to explore their own topics, they gain skills in self-direction.
A 
Whether the inspiring teacher examples from 
School systems in Vermont and elsewhere are in the midst of a shift to proficiency-based learning. At the early stages, this transformation can feel overwhelming even for educators, even if they’re excited by the idea.
Genius Hour is a leap of faith in which educators set aside their most precious resource, time, for students to pursue their passions. It doesn’t get much more student-centered than that.
A makerspace can take many forms, but fundamentally it should be a locus of student engagement and creativity.
What if an entire school set out to maximize student engagement?
Students at Fayston Elementary School worked hard this year with their team of teachers, not just to implement personal learning plans (PLPs), but to understand them to such a level that they could tell their stories. Using the digital tools Adobe Voice and Explain Everything, students crafted video explanations of their individual PLP projects to share with their families at student-led conferences.
Summer is a great time for camping, sunsets and creemees. A great time to relax.
A few months back, I wrote about 
