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.
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?
At the Tarrant Institute, we write a lot about Project Based Learning (PBL). We consider it one of the engaging and meaningful instructional pedagogies that we endorse. As an approach, PBL offers many of the traits that address the important needs of young adolescents. It engages students in thinking about real-world problems, gives time for inquiry and research, and suggests that students create their own solutions to questions. Which is why we’re so excited to share our new Project Based Learning toolkit with you. Find it in its permanent location here.
Before anyone sets out to implement PBL, we encourage you to build the culture for this learning. This blogpost about creating a PBL culture in your classroom shares strategies and activities. Our Community & Culture toolkit can also provide you with some resources and strategies to prepare your learners to engage successfully with Project Based Learning.
But even when you build the culture, we know that teaching and learning with PBL can be messy. Students are collaborating in groups. They have varied paths they want to follow. There is trial and error. It isn’t easy! We have worked with countless teachers and schools to help them tell their PBL stories. And we have learned from their work to help guide us forward.
In this toolkit, you will find topics that might resonate with your own inquiry about PBL. Attached are some of our most valuable and relevant resources to help you on your journey towards understanding and implementing PBL with students.
PBL How-To
These posts offer suggestions, steps, and planning tools for how to build and implement PBL in your classroom.
When the pandemic forced students to be at home, we got creative about how to keep PBL alive and well. While students are in person now, we can still learn from this time.
Like a lot of teaching strategies, we have learned from our mistakes implementing PBL. Here are some resources that address some of the potential pitfalls.
It’s that time again! One of our favorite times of the year around here: our annual Winter Reading post. This year, for your listening pleasure, a few of us have also included podcast recommendations! Oh, and as an extra special surprise, we have guest contributions from a few former colleagues! So without further ado, may we present our lists…
Rachel Mark
I love to read, and that’s no secret. But what I have recently realized is that I love the actual hunt for discovering the right book. As we head into this winter, I think I have really nailed it in finding some “right books” for me.
At the top of my stack is Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus. This novel sounds like an endearing story about a female chemist in the 1960’s whose trajectory takes an unexpected turn. Its description as “funny” and “feminist” has made me eye it for months. In fact, I received two copies of it from separate gift givers for my recent birthday. That hasn’t happened since I unwrapped six copies of Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume for my 12th birthday, so it must be a solid choice.
Another fictional pick is on my list is Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow: A novel by Gabrielle Zevin. I must admit it was the beautiful and creative cover art that drew me to this book. But the story involves an intersection of love, success and video game design that sounds fascinating. Indie Bound gives it “rave” reviews. I can’t wait to crack its cover.
To satisfy my professional side, I plan to read Leaders of Their Learning: Transforming Schools Through Student-Engaged Assessment by Ron Berger, Leah Rugen, and Libby Woodfin. In part, I’m reading this book to become more attuned and aligned with a specific school district’s work and goals. But it’s compelling to me for other reasons. This book will contribute to my long-term passion project around empowering and engaging students. Its particular attention to student-led conferences, passage presentations with portfolios, and standards-based grading will be relevant and will deep my own learning.
The latest book by Maira Kalman, Women Holding Things, is also on my to-read list this winter. This is not your average book. It contains extraordinary and whimsical illustrations, paired with witty and wise words. I think this book speaks intimately to me. Kalman writes, “What do women hold? The home and the family. And the children and the food. The friendships. The work. The work of the world. And the work of being human. The memories. And the troubles. And the sorrows and the triumphs. And the love.” If you’ve never read Maira Kalman or looked at her artwork, I highly recommend that you do. Her book And the Pursuit of Happiness is one of my favorites. Happy Reading!
Life LeGeros
I write this in the throes of World Cup fever. My love of the beautiful game (soccer) is only matched by my appreciation of a good book. Throw in middle school and equity and I’m hopelessly hooked. I was long ago devoted to Front Desk series, and yet the fourth installment, Key Player, had me particularly excited. Hearing author Kelly Yang recount the famous match at the Rose Bowl between the United States Women’s National Team and the Chinese team was so fun. And then learning that this book was just as autobiographical as the others was simply amazing.
I’m currently reading Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life by sister scholars Karen E. Fields (historian) and Barbara J. Fields (sociologist). The book is a collection of essays that are chock full of brilliant scholarship and exquisite writing. They challenge some of my ideas about how identity operates, about how and why anti-Black racism arose in America, and about whether ideology is about belief or, as they argue, is grounded in day to day practices. It’s good to be challenged and I look forward to reading their recommendations for action.
As I get ready to grow my To Be Read pile here at the end of the calendar year, I need to circle back to some of the books that have been in that stack throughout 2022. One of my kids pulled Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor off the bookshelf the other day to use to prop up the book she was reading. An acclaimed book by one of my favorite authors, that I had forgotten that I own? Perfect! Thank you, universe.
I’ve been working with schools in the Northeast Kingdom this year, which has made for some lengthy and very pretty drives. Here are my favorite podcasts depending on mood:
For deep learning about race and whiteness, the Seeing White season of Scene on Radio was a life changer for me, while Teaching While White has taught me a ton and continues to put out new compelling episodes.
For inspiration and insights about life, apparently podcasts featuring sisters are my thing. I enjoy How to Survive the End of the World with adrienne maree brown and Autumn Brown; and We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle who along with amazing guests often invites sis Amanda Doyle and wife Abby Wambach.
For amazing journalism about crucial topics, my go tos are Reveal for investigative reporting and Throughline for historical context on contemporary issues.
For story telling you can’t beat Snap Judgment and it’s scary story spinoff, Spooked.
For Vermont-centric stories that are as good as anything out there, Rumble Strip is illuminating and mesmerizing while Brave Little State is a treasure. The special series Homegoings, focused on Black musicians in Vermont, is especially powerful.
I’m not always in the mood for a podcast, though. There’s live radio, music, or just sitting in silence with my thoughts. However you like to exist, I hope you get plenty of it this winter.
Emily Hoyler
I confess: I’ve been quite swept away with reality TV these days. I seem to go through phases, and currently I’m not in a book phase. Actually, that’s not quite true. As a doctoral student, I’m doing a lot of reading. But it’s not the wind-down-take-it-easy kind of reading. It’s you-better-have-a-dictionary-and-deep-focus kind. Hence the current Survivor obsession. But given that stacks of books are the key element in my home design aesthetic, there are plenty around, and a few titles that have drawn me in lately.
When it does come time to snuggle up with a book, I am prepared. Not only do I have books, but I have a puppy to snuggle with. As such, Herbs for Pets is on my reading list, as well as Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo, recommended and loaned to me by my friend Samantha. I also optimistically checked out a stack of books from the library as well. I’m really excited to dive into this stack, which includes The Paris Apartment by Lucy Foley, Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley, and All Adults Here by Emma Straub.
As for listening, the pandemic really crushed the commuting time during which I listened to podcasts. But I still manage to stay caught up with a few. Current favorites include Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt’s Hot Take, which keeps me current on the unfolding climate crisis with some amazing dad jokes thrown in – keeping it light, folks. When I’m up for more unsettling, I listen to Ayana Johnson’s For the Wild: An Anthology of the Anthropocene, which blends sweet music with interviews of visionary activists and changemakers. Lately though, I’ve been feeling saturated, and choose music instead. (Hello, Taylor Swift.)
Bonus Features!
Katy Farber
I was gobsmacked by the brilliance of this book: Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. It was a bit slow moving at first, but the writing is so gorgeous, lyrical, and descriptive, I’m glad I stuck with it. By the end, I was exclaiming to the woods, my cat, how these stories and worlds came together, through decades, gloriously human and beloved characters, connected to this earth, a story, and each other. I just can’t believe it. If you would have asked me if I was interested in Ancient Greek texts I’d say nope. But this? A book that is dedicated to librarians, present and future? It pulled me along and then sailed me through the last 200 pages like a fast boat ride. Books connecting people, saving people, transforming people. So much love and humanity in this. If you have read it, my goodness! Would love to hear what you thought.
Shout out to Aggie in the background. Best reading partner!
Jeanie Phillips
I’ve got a cozy stack of books awaiting the first snowy days, and one I’ve already begun that I’m loving. Let’s start with that one.
Ruha Benjamin was such an amazing speaker that the Rowland Foundation invited her to be the keynote at their annual conference not once, but TWICE! Her latest book, Viral Justice, is just like her keynotes: warm, personal, and beautiful but also insightful, inspiring, and revolutionary. She weaves together research, policy, science, and her own story — encouraging us to make small changes that will coalesce to make the world more just and humane for everyone. I’ve been listening to this one on audio (read by the author!) but had to have a print copy to annotate and underline. Plus – the cover!!!
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu was recommended (and loaned) to me by my friend Rhiannon. Pausing here to say I just love reading books recommended by dear friends — I love the shared experience of a book and the many conversations that follow — it’s a kind of kinship that brings me so much joy! Interior Chinatown is a satirical look at race and assimilation. It’s the perfect follow-up to the book I’m currently reading: Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts, where assimilation is policed by a patriotic America that has no tolerance for difference.
I’ve got a memoir in the stack, too: Deborah Copaken’s Ladyparts. This one comes to me via my friend Emily who assures me that it is both hilariously funny and powerfully feminist (just like Emily!).
And then there is Inciting Joy! Ross Gay is a poet, but his book of essays, The Book of Delights, is one of my most favorite books ever. In it, he conjures delight from the most mundane things: the roots of trees, pick-up basketball games, two people carrying a shopping bag together — 1 handle each. His essays, like his poems, stir deep gratitude in me and remind me to savor small things.
Here is wishing you joy this winter — in your reading, your gathering, and your resting.
It’s no secret we’re big fans of advisory around here.
And we don’t just mean the time on the schedule that’s called “advisory,” but the practice of circling up with students to build relationships and connections, share ourselves, and laugh, play, and maybe occasionally even cry together. Which is why we’re so excited to announce our new Advisory toolkit. Find it in its permanent location here.
Young adolescents are deep in the throes of exploring who they are, both individually and collectively, and we have the wonderful privilege of stewarding this process. It can be a tricky time for students to navigate increasingly complex social relationships, not to mention juggling multiple teachers (and homework assignments). Advisory is one of the key ways we support our students.
Advisory, done well, is a core middle grades practice
Despite its name, the morning meeting can happen any time of day. And it can “fit” into whatever time is available, although 20-30 minutes a day is ideal. It’s a time to build relationships and community through greeting each other and being greeted, sharing about our lives, and having fun together. Nothing builds engagement like an enlivening round of Is This Seat Taken? or Silent Ball.
But it’s not all just fun and games in advisory
Advisory is often the structure schools use to create a “home base” for students, most of whom have many more teachers in their schedule than they’ve had in the past. The role of the advisor is to deeply know, advocate for, and celebrate their advisees. Advisors often serve as the key home-school contact, and co-facilitate student-led conferences. In this way, we can make sure that every student is connected with a caring adult at school.
And advisory isn’t just about a circle of chairs. It’s about building relationships and community all day long. That’s why our Identity toolkit, Community & Culture toolkit and our Adult Culture toolkit also have wisdom to offer on this topic.
How do you use the advisory structure to build community and relationship?
Advisory How-To:
These posts offer suggestions, insights, and research on how to build and facilitate advisory.
The pandemic reinforced what we already know: social connections are essential. And some of you got really good at virtual advisory. Here are a few posts sharing those strategies.
Still not convinced? Or need to convince your colleague to invest in this highly effective best practice? Read this series from middle level expert Nancy Doda.
You know the vibe when you walk into a classroom where everyone is engaged and buzzing with learning, and the room is humming with good energy? It’s not accidental. Culture takes deliberate work to build and grow. Learning is happening. Collaboration is smooth. Laughter is present.
How do we get more of that?
Building community, all day, every day
We know that a thriving learning community is essential to student success and wellbeing. And a connected class brings more joy to each school day. But how do we build and maintain an engaged, respectful, and curiosity-centered classroom culture?
Slowly. Daily. With patience, clarity, and laughter.
Community & Culture is such an important topic that we’ve written about it a lot and often. So we are especially excited to present our new Community & Culture Toolkit. Find it in it’s permanent location here.
Building the Culture & the Beginning of the Year
We all want to get off to a strong, solid start. These posts share ideas on how to build the foundation of a strong learning community from the beginning.
See also our tool kit on advisory for more ideas on how to build culture through advisory.
A positive and thriving learning culture must be tended throughout the academic year. These posts address keeping things fresh and real in pursuit of a learning community.
The pandemic may not be over, but we have certainly progressed from the early moments of 2020 when we pivoted to remote schooling. We’ve moved past the mask mandate and daily case reports, into now, the as-yet undefined third year of pandemic schooling. While many things have returned to ‘normal’, we are changed. This collection of posts by middle level expert Nancy Doda offers rumination on what we’ve learned, what’s important, and what we should still be asking ourselves.
A positive and collaborative adult culture is essential to a positive and collaborative student culture. As educators, we must attend to both. We believe that a thriving adult community in schools is essential, so we built a special toolkit just for that topic.Find it here!
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. (And check out the video too!)
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.
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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.”
Many schools and classrooms across the country identify student skills for success. Ideally, those skills cut across content areas and are grouped within grade bands. They are communicated and prioritized within the learning community. While Vermont’s AOE has identified five Transferable Skills, some learning institutions choose different ones – sometimes also known as “21st century skills”.
Because these skills apply across content areas, they are high leverage opportunities for learning and teaching. Learning to communicate and collaborate effectively will serve students well across their learning and life. And, because these skills transcend specific disciplines or content areas, they are easy to apply to personally meaningful learning, increasing student engagement. Win-win.
A popular framework is the Essential Skills and Dispositions: Developmental Frameworks developed in 2015 by the National Center for Innovation in Education and the Educational Policy Improvement Center. This framework includes four essential skills – collaboration, communication, creativity, and self-direction in learning. We lovingly call them the “ES & D’s”
We have gathered some of our favorite resources to support you as your students work on developing these skills in this Essential Skills & Dispositions Toolkit. (You can also find it in its permanent location here).
When a learning community can focus on a few essential skills for students, powerful things can happen. It’s possible that students can chart their own growth, reflect on their development, and take ownership over learning. If other tools such as PLPs and Student-Led Conferences are used, students can demonstrate, share and report on their development of essential skills and dispositions.
Please connect with us and share your work with essential skills.
A positive and collaborative adult culture is essential to a positive and collaborative student culture.
As educators, we must attend to both.
We can’t expect our student culture to thrive if that quality is not present in our adult community. As adults, we set the tone. Schools should be places where everyone is a learner, where everyone collaborates, where all voices are heard, and where we share responsibility and power.
But how? Below we share our favorite resources on a few essential elements of a thriving adult culture: effective teaming, better meetings, culture-building and self-care.
Effective teaming
If you’ve been fortunate to work as part of an effective teaching team, we don’t need to convince you of the power and benefit of such deep collaboration (not to mention the moral support!). According to The Successful Middle School,
A signature component of middle schooling is the interdisciplinary team of two or more teachers working with a common group of students for a shared block of time, ideally in proximate space. Effective teams serve as the foundation for a strong learning community…They can provide young adolescents for the sense of belonging, social bonding, and connectedness. They can also lead to improved student achievement, improve family engagement, and other positive outcomes. (p. 51)
But the benefits of effective teaming require a strong foundation.
To achieve these benefits of teaching teams require daily common planning time. Educators need regular opportunities to discuss how – and how well – they are meeting learners’ needs. During common planning time, teachers plan how they will integrate curriculum and personalize learning. They analyze and reflect on assessment data and student work, discuss current research, and reflect on their team’s effectiveness. (p. 51)
Whether you’re just getting started or have been teaming for years, these resources can help you as you collaborate with your colleagues:
If you are an administrator looking to support your teaching teams, we are also fans of Elena Aguilar’s work, especially The Art of Coaching Teams.
Better meetings
Once you have your teaming structure established, and have carved out regular time for collaboration, it’s time to think about making the most of this time together.
Time is a precious resource, and we often feel like we don’t have enough if it. Collaboration works best face to face, yet if we spend out meetings reviewing logistics or getting sucked into fruitless discussions we might not be making the best use of the time we do get. This series of posts can help you and your team build a better container for collaboration so you can bring your vision to life.
We love the School Reform Initiative’s protocols so much, we even use them in our internal meetings. Don’t forget the debrief, it’s essential! Reflecting on how our meeting and discussion worked – or didn’t – gives us valuable insight we can apply to future meetings.
Culture-building
How we show up matters. A lot.
Are you showing up as a captive or a curious learner?
The energy we bring impacts the collective energy of the group. Think of someone whose presence always lifts your spirits. We need to decide, each day, each moment, how we are showing up, and to be aware of how our energy is impacting the collective.
It’s also important to play and laugh together. This is what humans – young and grown – often seek in their free time. Why not begin faculty meetings by teaching each other favorite advisory games? This serves double purpose: not only do we laugh together, but we’ll have new ideas to bring to our students.
It’s hard to give what we don’t have. You’ve heard it before, the thing about putting your own oxygen mask on first. Sleep. Movement. Nourishment. A good therapist. Care work is hard work. Take care of yourselves out there.
Our work as educators is undeniably challenging under the best circumstances, but it can also be incredibly rewarding. Especially when we feel connected to and supported by our colleagues.
Knowing each student well is essential to a year of flourishing for students and educators. It’s a prerequisite to ensuring equitable access to belonging and wellbeing, a culturally-responsive learning environment, and deep learning. And it enriches the relationships so central to a thriving school. Personal learning plans (PLPs) can drive a rich and sustained process of knowing each student well. Teachers, peers, parents and other important adults—and certainly the student—will appreciate the evolving insights PLPs can offer. And students’ learning experiences from the summer, team development activities to launch the school year, and identity units will help you use PLPs to know students well.
We’ve pulled together our favorite blog posts and other resources to help you launch or deepen your work with PLPs. You’ll find this and plenty more in our updated toolkit. Below you can get a taste of some of the highlights. Enjoy!
Introducing our updated PLP Toolkit
According to Vermont’s Agency of Education, “A PLP is a plan created by a student, with the support of parents/guardians, teachers/mentors and peers, that defines the scope and rigor of academic and experiential opportunities that will lead to secondary school completion, postsecondary readiness, and civic engagement. Creating Personalized Learning Plans provides students the opportunity to reflect upon their learning and shape their future, and enables the adults in their lives to better understand each student as a unique individual…. PLPs not only help articulate and clarify students’ goals and needs but also are a reflection of the importance of student agency in learning as they work to meet graduation proficiencies.”
Clarify Your Purpose
Clarifying your own purposes for PLPs is key to unlocking their power. In our book, Personalized Learning in the Middle Grades: A Guide for Classroom Teachers and School Leaders, we invite educators to begin their planning for PLPs by first asking themselves a number of questions. These questions are meant to invite thinking about critical gaps in current schooling, especially for students poorly served by current practices, that PLP work can help to fill.
What life opportunities do I hope my students will engage in when they launch into adulthood 8-10 years from now? As citizens, wage earners, and family members?
What kinds of learning would I like to see more of in my classroom or school?
What kinds of learning do I wish were valued more by the rest of my school system?
What kinds of evidence of learning and growth do these learning opportunities produce?
How can I welcome this evidence into a system of student record-keeping?
Who are the stakeholders in my educational community and what evidence or experiences do they need in order to support the learning I want for my students?
And remember, PLPs aren’t just for the teacher. Here are some ways we think PLPs can help various stakeholders. Notice the many ways stakeholders can use PLPs to know students well.
Consider these purposes and discover new ones as you explore the resources below. Start by hearing what students have to say about PLPs that work for them.
Foremost among the lessons we’ve learned from teachers and students, PLPs must center the learning students’ find most meaningful. That often means learning at the edges of or beyond regular school-based curriculum. Moreover, while most facets of schooling serve other stakeholder priorities, PLPs are meant to focus on learning that students value most.
Exploring personal and collective identity is a cornerstone of PLPs, essential for healthy adolescent development, and helps teachers know students well. It’s also deeply engaging for students.
Activities in which students explore and express their identities can be large or small, cross boundaries of curriculum and instruction, and help students pursue critically important questions about equity and justice.
The learner profile, a standard element in most PLP designs, is an invitation to engaging, multi-modal, and deeply personal learning experiences.
Build Powerful Opportunities into the Process
A robust PLP process is rich with depth, complexity and culture. In the following examples we see educators and students embrace that richness with processes that are collaborative, reflective, and iterative–the same traits we seek from each students’ PLP experience. PLPs to know students well yields benefits across the curriculum and the school community.
Regular reflection, goal-setting, documenting evidence of learning in multiple ways are foundational practices in their own right. They are also integral to PLPs.
Teacher Katie Bryant’s action research reveals the power of integrating PLPs and student-led conferences.
Borrow from Others
Growing a PLP program responsive to the needs and interests of students, educators, and families must be iterative. Fortunately, embracing iteration is easier now more than ever. You’ve got plenty of rich examples to draw upon. Some are fully formed systems honed over years. Others speak to creative approaches to critical elements.
A PLP program from Don Taylor of Main Street Middle School in Montpelier
A commitment to meaningful learning and student ownership of PLPs opens many avenues for scaffolding key skills students will need for PLPs and their lives ahead.
It is important (and helpful) to remember that PLPs make sense within a larger system meant to spur deeper and personally-meaningful learning. We’ve found that PLPs often falter without meaningful learning opportunities and authentic assessment that values them.
Around this time of year, many middle schools begin to prepare for a fall student-led conference. This conference serves as a valuable tool for getting to know your students and connecting with their families. It can be a truly memorable experience, but it takes work, too. We have gathered some of our most important resources to support you and your students. Enjoy this updated Student-Led Conferences Toolkit. (You can also find it in its permanent location here.)
Student-Led Conferences
A student-led conference (or SLC) can be a magical opportunity for teachers to engage deeply with a student and their family. It typically involves a middle schooler gathering some evidence of their learning, strengths and challenges, and possibly their goals and aspirations. They assemble that evidence along with reflections into some format; many use a slideshow or PLP, but there are many possible ways – even papers in a binder or journal! Then, the teacher helps facilitate a conversation and sharing process between student, family, and teacher. Many factors help determine its success. Here are some of our favorite resources to help you.
We teach a precious and somewhat precarious age group. Our middle grades students are in the throes of one of life’s most pivotal and seminal periods in human development. They are growing faster than at almost any other time in life, and are grappling with some of life’s most significant milestones which will come to shape how they see themselves, others and the world. These are the “turning point” years of life.
Growing up has always been hard work, but for today’s young adolescents, it is well…simply harder. We do not need volumes of research to convince us of this. The past two years of trials and challenges in managing the not-so-post pandemic school world offer plenty of evidence. Students need us more than ever to help them navigate the challenges of growing up well.
As middle grades educators we have long celebrated the importance of positive relationships and social and emotional learning in middle school. We know and research substantiates that when our young people feel well known, valued and included at school, they are more likely to be fully invested in learning, make better choices, and feel happier at school. (CDC, 2011). Moreover, for young adolescents, being connected to others is essential for healthy identity development. A productive search for self is inextricably linked with positive adult and peer relationships. And, since our age group is vulnerable to bullying, ridicule and exclusion, they depend on us to ensure school is a socially and emotionally safe place so they can take the risks needed to grow in such important ways.
The Advisory concept has long been celebrated as an essential program feature designed to safeguard our young adolescents. While there are many models of Advisory, the twin aims emphasize quality peer relationships and personalized adult support. The hope is that every child has one caring adult advocate, feels connected to a caring peer group, and is afforded the opportunity to develop social skills in a safe haven.
Over the past decade, educators have learned even more about the value and leverage of Advisory programs. Perhaps most significant, is the fact an Advisory program can transform a school’s culture creating a sense of connectedness; a key ingredient in school success. Connectedness takes shape when schools deliberately attend to quality relationships and make time to help students do the same. (See this resource from AMLE for more: Creating a Culture of Connectedness through Middle School Advisory Programs.)
Finally, there is no doubt we all aspire for a softer and kinder world. Living through the pandemic has made abundantly clear the need to help kids learn to care about themselves, others and their world. Advisory is one special opportunity to help us show young people how to be caring members of a community: to listen well to others, to understand others with empathy, to learn to be kind, and to learn about the value of a civil community.
Advisory Going Forward
So let’s say you are on board with all the possible benefits, but last year’s Advisory left a bad taste in your mouth. You felt like you were managing chaos most days and the occasional good days were not enough to bring you back into enthusiasm. You’re not alone.
The last school year will long be remembered as one of the toughest we have ever faced. And, it wasn’t only Advisory that lost ground. Advisory however is a unique beast. It’s too relational to be unstructured; too intimate to be unplanned. And, with a huge decline in student social skills and a rise in problematic student behavior, it’s no wonder many of us were wondering if Advisory was really worth it.
Here’s what some fellow middle grades teachers and students have learned that might help us recommit to our Advisory and keep it relevant and manageable:
Revisit your most positive Advisory memories. Sit with this. When did you witness growth? Can you recall faces of students who flourished over time? What were some moments of joy? Did your students discover emerging new friendships? When did things work well?
Establish routines and celebrations that will keep you sane all year. How do you hope students will enter and leave the Advisory time, gather in a face to face circle, behave during the share time or activities, take turns, act as co-leaders, set up and clean up messes? These routines are so important, that if you had a rough year, look back and consider what routines you had in place from the start. Then, consider how you might take steps to address this during the first month of the school year. Rituals and celebrations are also vital to keeping Advisory going. Could you plan one or two fun celebrations to hold the year together? Monthly special food sharing? Monthly cross Advisory play? Goofy days
Spend more time up front on building relationships and belonging. A few ‘getting to know you’ activities is not enough. Commit to a month of steady relationship building work. Take lots of pictures of the journey and share. And, keep in mind students are always growing and changing so ‘getting to know you’ activities can and should happen all year long
Engage students early as helpers and leaders of Advisory. Start with 3 simple roles needed to keep Advisory productive. Examples: News and Announcements, Check-ins or Greetings, and Set up/Clean-Up. Add on over time. Student voice matters in all our classes, but Advisory can fall apart without it
Balance and structure what you do in Advisory. Focus on blending structured discussions, with free flowing productive play. Use both as opportunities to teach social skills, as simple as manners, to good listening skills, and appropriate discussion skills.
Have a simple plan for every week. Don’t over-plan, but have a focus for the week’s Advisory with some talk time, activity time, play and reflection. If you find you are without a plan, ask a colleague to borrow an idea or check the Advisory calendar. Try using components that give Advisory more structure. Here’s one example: Morning Meeting Components – Cambridge Public Schools
Talk often about Advisory as a faculty. What we talk about is what matters to us. No less than once each 9 weeks, faculty should have a chance to share ideas, debrief what’s working or not, and learn one new thing. Even 10 minutes can yield ideas and inspiration. In between, try starting each faculty meeting with a different check-in. Without this needed talk time, and added modeling, we will risk losing momentum.
Focus on face to face. When in doubt, leave technology out. We live in a world where technology is ubiquitous. While there is no full escape, Advisory ought to hold sacred time for face to face relationships. Eye to eye, knee to knee will have a greater impact on student behavior in Advisory and throughout the day than any technology platform could achieve.
Last words
Every one of us joined the teaching profession to try to make a positive difference in the lives of our students. This has always been hard work. Today, however, it’s not only harder for students to grow up, it is harder for all of us to reach and teach every child. In these challenging times, we need every tool available if we are to make that difference. We need many ways into the hearts and minds of young adolescents. Advisory is one powerful way in.
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!
We at the Tarrant Institute look forward to summer reading every year, but THIS year… this year we all deserve the BEST books, the BEST swimming holes, the BEST summer adventures, and the BEST time with friends and family. We’re sharing our book lists and our wishes for summer joy and relaxation with all of you. Enjoy!
Jeanie
Lately, I haven’t been reading like I usually do, friends. I’ve been distracted by work, the pandemic, and my doctoral studies. And I’ve missed it, so I’ve got big plans for this summer- plans that involve hammocks, beach chairs, and books – lots and lots of books! Here are a few on my list:
Summer books in my favorite summer reading spot.
My college-aged son read Caste by Isabel Wilkerson for a class this past semester. He loved it, the book and the class, and it made for many great dinner conversations. He passed his copy along to me and it is top of the list for this summer. Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns was such an amazing history of the Great Migration – I learned a ton! I’m sure this one will also be an education.
I adored Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo – it swept me into the world of a Cuban American actress and her complicated relationships, with lovers but also with the public. Malibu Rising will be my second book by Jenkins Reid – and it will be perfect for the beach as it is about a family of famous surfers. Who knows, if I love it I’ll follow it up with Daisy Jones & the Six.
Two dear friends, Emily Hoyler and Jory Hearst, recommended Hospicing Modernity by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira. Turns out the author also goes by the name Vanessa Andreotti and I’ve read a ton of her scholarly work in my program and I am a HUGE fan! Her HEADS UP framework reminds me to be suspect of uncomplicated solutions, paternalism, ahistoricism, and other shortcuts to social justice. This book, written for a broader audience, asks us to be reflective as we address complex social issues and injustices.
Most years I reread a classic. This year it’s Kindred by Octavia Butler, but I’m listening to the audiobook on libro.fm. It was powerful in print when I read it thirty years ago, and it is already so good as a listen. (PS> libro.fm has a great audiobook listening copy program for educators – check it out!)
My summer reading list would not be complete without a few YA titles. I’m looking for recommendations – please send them my way!
Emily
Folks, I do a lot of reading. And since I’ve become a student again, things have only gotten more intense. It seems that my to-be-read pile grows faster than I can keep up. Honestly, it’s both a little exciting and a little overwhelming to have so many ideas lined up to engage with. This past winter I decided to carve time out for reading by rising early, so it’s up at 5am I go, coffee in hand, to settle into my armchair and dig into something. These somethings are almost always non-fiction. I guess that is my preferred genre. Huh.
Except that’s not the reading I want to talk about — or do — right now. I want to talk about summer reading: potato chip beach books. Easy fiction reads that I fall into so easily it feels effortless, almost like binge watching Netflix. Stories that sweep me away, pull me under, and lull me to stillness in the summer heat.
Unfortunately, I need some help here! What should I read? The decision fatigue is deep this year, and when it comes to books the struggle is real. I don’t have the stamina to wait for a book to pull me in. It needs to happen in the first 3 pages. I know that’s a lot to ask. But I also know it’s possible.
Luckily, my local librarians have a shelf for their picks, so my current read was plucked from that shelf: This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel, which is the story of a family with a secret that undoes them. It’s certainly pulled me right in, I’m halfway through already!
My daughter came home from the library the other day with a stack of books. At the top was The Best At It, by Malik Pancholy. I had heard a chapter read aloud during a session of the school-wide read at White River Valley Middle School and had been pining for it ever since. (Even more after reading Jeanie’s Twitter thread about the author visit!) I’ll be borrowing it as soon as my daughter is done.
I’m looking forward to delving into the many stories told in The Most Costly Journey: Stories of Migrant Farmworkers in Vermont Drawn by New England Cartoonists. It is the result of an amazing project where cartoonists were paired up with migrant farmworkers to provide visual representation of their powerful stories. The project was supported by some fabulous Vermont organizations and has been chosen as the Vermont Reads 2022 book by Vermont Humanities. I can’t wait to talk to others about it during a book group at the Middle Grades Institute next week.
I associate summer with pop music that makes me want to dance. Janelle Monae creates music that compels boogeying though it’s far too complex to classify as pop. I knew about her brilliant acting, too, but gave an audible squeal of delight when I came across her new book. The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer. It uses her concept album Dirty Computer (and emotion picture) as a launching point for a series of short stories, many of which she co-wrote with amazing people. This is going to be one to savor, preferably with Monae’s beats and melodies in my ears.
And finally, I have nearly 800 pages of pure bliss to enjoy in The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty. It is the third and final book of the Davaebad Trilogy, based on Islamic mythology and written with unparalleled richness and imagination. They are the type of books that I can get completely lost in. The type that get into my dreams and inspire djinn-filled daydreams. I can’t wait to return to this enchanted realm with the magic of summer reading.
Rachel
Like my colleagues, I read a lot. In fact, I am reading this post to take note of their reading lists, too.
To start, I am reading The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon. My daughter was reading Yoon’s books this spring, and she inspired me to read this one. Truth be told, I think that I have already read it, but I remember nothing. This time I’m slowing down, so that I can talk about the book with her. It’s a love story, but it’s also about complicated relationships with family, immigration in America, and so much more. I eat up this YA fiction like candy.
Next on my reading list for this summer is We Run the Tides by Vendela Vida. My mother caused me to read this after her own book group selected it. Though she didn’t expect to like it, I helped my mother find it in the bookstore thanks to kind staff. That scavenger hunt to find the book (without knowing its title), has endeared me it. Goodreads describes it as, “both a gripping mystery and a tribute to the wonders of youth, in all its beauty and confusion”. That (and it’s beautiful cover art) has me hooked.
Speaking of cover art, I am noticing the resemblance between We Run the Tides and another book on my list. What’s Mine and Yours by Naima Coster has a cover that looks really similar. Which makes me think that sometimes I do judge a book by its cover! This book came from my friend’s list of books to read. I love that it’s about mothers, the complicated choices they make for their children, and their fight for a better future for their kids.
Last but certainly not least, I can’t wait to read All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks. When hooks died at the end of last year, it made me regret not reading more of her work. Originally published in 2000, this piece of her writing strikes a resonant chord with me these days. She wonders….what if we view love as a verb, rather than a noun? I am so drawn to the way that hooks persuades us to change the way we think about love and one another. We need that kind of love now.
Readers, please enjoy this period of rest and rejuvenation. After this year, you deserve all of the BEST relaxation, the BEST adventures, and the BEST books.
The school year is almost over and this one may well be remembered as your toughest yet. If hardship makes us stronger, we’ve got that covered. And, we have learned lots about how to be, live, and teach in this challenging time. My first two posts nudge us to consider slowing down and rethinking what we teach. Here I want to remind us to stay “real”.
Lesson Three: Authenticity
One of the most refreshing aspects of the pandemic was that it helped to strip us of some pretense. We were all equally vulnerable. When virtual, we saw some of our children’s homes, their pets popped in, and there was something endearing about getting closer to our real selves. We were all afraid together, all trying to be safe, all feeling loss and grief. This is the kind of humanity we don’t want to lose.
This first flush of pandemic authenticity was short-lived and it has already faded. Being real in school is tough. Even during the peak pandemic lockdown, there were very few structured opportunities for teachers and students to talk about the pandemic. We discussed COVID facts and protocols but left the authentic at home: hopes, fears and feelings. With the zillion questions we all had about COVID and the pandemic, I don’t know a single school that engaged students or staff in an active exploration of the very thing that was consuming all our lives.
Of course, this was partly due to the sensitive nature of COVID. Moreover, we didn’t know how to talk about a pandemic. We’d never lived through one before. Finally, we avoided it because we were in survival mode. But this difficulty in being real along the way left us with greater wounds to heal right now.
“What is really going on in school now?
Middle schools today are still oozing with anxiety that has been accumulating since the start of the pandemic. Today, young adolescents are in school without masks. Like many of us some wonder, is this going to be okay and safe? Can I really relax? Is this really almost over?
Over the past fall, schools have reported significant behavior challenges they have never seen before. Students who once were engaged, have been observed checking out and refusing to do any work. One school in northern Vermont observed that work refusals have tripled in this school year. (VPR, Eric Heilman, March 9, 2022)
Likewise, many teachers report that some students who never struggled with behavior issues, struggle to care. When students do behave badly, many who would have once been eager to set things straight, fail to apologize. Some taken for granted manners have gone by the wayside. Teachers have observed that many students have lost the social skills needed to work with others and to be kind in social interactions. We have schools filled with both children and adults who have experienced trauma. That is the real deal.
We are all dancing as fast we can, using every possible resource to manage these challenges. The line at the door for comfort and help was too long before the pandemic; now it feels daunting. So exhaustion continues and anxiety is unabated. What can we do?
We might start by allowing ourselves to recognize where we are. And, we can make the social and emotional well being of every member of our school including ourselves, our top priority. This doesn’t mean we stop caring about academic learning, but we should worry less about students falling behind academically, and worry more about students falling behind emotionally and socially. Here are a few ideas:
Building Community With Student-Driven Conversations
Figure out ways to bring mindfulness, or relaxation or social and emotional checks into your classroom routines. Starting or ending a week with reflections can be a simple but powerful way to monitor the emotional pulse and open space for students to be real. This 60 second tool is worth checking out. As are these posts on bringing mindfulness into the classroom and 7 mindfulness activities for advisory.
One school found that by starting each faculty meeting with an Advisory-like activity, they were able to help teachers learn new Advisory protocols while building good feelings and trust across the faculty and school community. What if most meetings began with such authentic moments? Are we willing to find ways to fit this in? If we keep burying all the feelings and avoid authentic conversations, we will continue to find ourselves depleted and stuck. (Feltman, 2021, The thin book of trust)
Being Authentic in the Classroom
Being real of course has its greatest power when we are able to be real with students. Share yourself. Tell your own real stories. Middle school students are perennially curious about us, but more than ever before they need for us to be authentic and real, modeling how best to do that. Recall how delighted students were to see the background of a room in your home when we were all virtual. That window into your life was a gift. We want to hold onto that in the years ahead.
There is such a need for schools to become more authentic places where we all can be real, and where it is safe to share our true selves. Let’s use this pandemic to shift from peril to promise.
Lovely listeners, welcome back. I’m Jeanie Phillips, and on this episode, I get to talk about “The Last Cuentista”, a book by Donna Barba Higuera.
It’s a fantastic middle grades book that touches on the tension between technology and organic life, duty and desire, along with what we know about identity — and how we know it.
It’s also a book that asks us questions, like: how are you keeping the young people in your life plugged in and growing? And: Do you know the stories they tell about themselves? And most importantly, do you know how to help them tell those stories?
My guest today is Ornella Matta Figueroa, who works to support storytellers out of trauma, with Safeart, out of Chelsea, Vermont. She’s also part of the Vermont Education Coalition.
This is Vermont Ed Reads, a show about books, by, for and with Vermont educators. Let’s chat.
Jeanie: I’m Jeanie Philips and welcome to #vted Reads, we’re here to talk books, for educators, by educators and with educators. Today I’m with Ornella Matta-Figueroa. And we’ll be talking about The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera. Thank you so much for joining me Ornella. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Ornella: Thank you so much for having me. My name is Ornella Matta, and I’m coming to you from the Vermont Education Coalition, also co-director of Safeart, which is a nonprofit based out of Chelsea. We address trauma and communities to creative expression and storytelling.
Jeanie: I can’t think of anybody more perfect than to talk about this book, The Last Cuentista. But before we get to this one, what are you reading? Right now, Ornella?
Ornella: Right now, I’m revisiting bell hooks Teaching to Transgress, and seeing it with these eyes that have gone through the pandemic and have lived the last few years is a totally different experience. And trying to figure out how do we create liberatory classroom? So that’s my work of the moment.
Jeanie: We can always learn more from bell hooks I find every time I read her, I have a new full body learning experience.
Ornella: Same. Absolutely.
Jeanie: Well, let’s it’s tempting as it would be to talk about bell hooks right now let’s, let’s come back to The Last Cuentista, which is a book that starts the very beginning of this book, we know that the world as we know it is ending, a comet is going to strike Planet Earth in the year is like 2060 something and I wondered if you wanted to just give our listeners a little snapshot of who our main character is and what’s happening in her life.
Ornella: So, how old is Petra?
Jeanie: I think she is like 13.
Ornella: She 13 or 14 years old?
Jeanie: I think she’s on the cusp. She’s like 13?
Ornella: Yes. So, we have Petra, and the book opens up with storytelling and this very moving goodbye between Petra and her grandmother. And there is a lot of you know, anticipation of what is going to happen next? What is it that we have to do? We start and see the relationship between Petra and her family, and we start to understand the earth. It is a little bit, you know, prophetic almost in a sense of, ooh, “A lot of this introduction sounds a lot like the worsening of the earth today.” And yeah, so the main character is Petra. And we meet family. In the beginning of the story, I would, I would say that.
Jeanie: And Lita, her grandmother is a storyteller. And, and Petra aspires to be like her when she grows up.
Ornella: A lot of inner conflicts we’re seeing between the family, what the who Petra wants to be versus who her family wants her to be? While all of this chaos is happening, and they’re trying, you know, they’ve been selected. And there’s also this new one, so who gets to live and who gets to die?
Jeanie: More about the selected – what are they selected to do? Petra and her family.
Ornella: Selected to be leaving Earth and one of these shuttles, that’s supposed to be, you know, going to repopulate or, you know, populate a different planet. After being increased thesis and like, all this kind of technology. It’s definitely a sci fi novel.
Jeanie: Yeah, I would call it speculative fiction. Right? It’s got this sci fi fantasy more than fantasy and this world is ending.
Ornella: Dystopian edge to it a little bit, too.
Jeanie: Did you say Dystopian Edge? Yeah.
Ornella: Yeah. For me, it has a little bit of that Dystopian Edge. Yes.
Jeanie: But what’s unique about is it’s so rooted in the traditional storytelling of her family, the quaint those her grandmother Lita shares with her it’s so rooted in sort of ancestral wisdom for lack of a better word. So, it’s got this like futuristic and this past.
Ornella: And something I noticed with that, the values that reinforce are all really beautiful values. Even in the edges are so a way in which Petra’s retelling of the story is even like, in a healthier context, that her grandmother, as we hear her interpretations, and how she’s kind of like in the future in the story, frames the context of what’s happening to the people she then storytellers to is, like, with kindness and the priority of like, you know, those VA hosts and everybody went to the VA feels to ask for advice. And there’s this way in which service and compassion and gratitude is kind of like a framework in how the storytelling is shared, or like the morals underneath the storytelling.
Jeanie: I love that I hadn’t thought about it in that way. Because those stories operate on so many layers and it starts with just a new said before we started recording the whole book is Petra grieving, in gentle and not so gentle ways the whole book is grieving, for Lita, who’s being left behind for this planet, this place that she loves, and for humanity, as she knows, it’s going to have all of it. And so, there’s a way in which part of her grieving is to hold on to the stories part of her way of mourning, Lita is to hold on to the stories and to want to be like her. And her grandmother gives her some really good, great advice, I thought, she says, you have to make your stories your own. And I was struck by this concept of stories changing over time and about how we use the wisdom of folktales and sort of our family stories and the stories from our backgrounds, and how we adapt them for a modern world or for a changing world.
Ornella: When I think about stories here is so interesting because something I’ve noticed very recently is that if we don’t have the story to make ourselves good as a human beings, based on the choices that we make, we don’t there’s no way in which stories that we’re even told about ourselves, that we tell people really shapes how we reflect, and mirror and observe ourselves. And, yes, there’s so much beauty in this book and how its honor’s the ancestry, and also allows for the creativity, to give the community what it needs, for their community to be healthy, and to be able to see themselves or whatever wholeness they need to see.
Jeanie: You’re really inspiring me Ornella to think about how, when I work with schools, when we at the Tarrant Institute work with schools, we often encourage them to start the year with identity with questions of who am I and who do I want to become? And this book holds all of that, who am I? Who are my people? What are my passions? And what are the values of my upbringing? And who do I want to be in the world? And how does that help me be the person I want to be in the world?
Ornella: Absolutely, I see that in Petra. She’s such a powerful leading character, and in the ways in which she really perceives and views her world with such curiosity and kindness and such honesty with where she is and what’s happening in front of her. And there’s this just like sincere vulnerability and the ways that she’s interacting with what’s happening, a way in which it keeps her alive. It keeps her hopeful. It keeps her working towards like, the less of this move me ahead, right, like that kind of feeling in which there’s something behind her moving her ahead.
Jeanie: Well, in that, that strength comes with a real vulnerability, and I’m thinking particularly about a physical vulnerability. Because as Petra and her family are boarding the Pleiades Corporation ship, we find out that she has a disability with her vision. So, she doesn’t see very well. And so, her family, she has clearly adapted to this disability and to making it invisible to others. She uses certain strategies about how she navigates the world so that people don’t notice that she doesn’t really have wide-angle vision, right? And her family’s like holding on to her and they’re trying to hide it because there’s a sense that she won’t be able to board that they won’t take her if she’s and I’m using air quotes here, listeners if she’s defective. And recently it brought eugenics to mind.
Ornella: Oh, yes. You know, many actors, so many agents have gotten the story about, like, who are we and who do we want to be as a community? And what is the difference between we all choose, and we are all the same? And it is so beautiful, how in this world beautiful and terrifying and striking, and how it plays out in the story. Yeah, you know, they are able to hide her ability or, you know, they are able to, and even she becomes so valuable, that even when it’s discovered her skills are indispensable. There’s nothing, you know, it doesn’t matter anymore at that point.
Jeanie: When there’s a moral there, there’s a theme there about her value as a person and she would have been left on earth to die if they had discovered that she couldn’t see because they consider that as like weakening the gene pool, which is like directly the language of eugenics and the Holocaust, right. I wonder about that as an opening to start talking about eugenics in classrooms. And I think it’s a really tricky subject to navigate about how to discuss it, how to bring it forward. And I’m thinking about the legislature moving towards doing some truth and reconciliation, owning the story of eugenics in Vermont a little bit. And I don’t know, in your work with the ethnic studies coalition, how does that land for you, is this book an opportunity to sort of talk a little bit about our history in Vermont?
Ornella: I think any opportunity is an opportunity to talk about it right? I think that there’s a line here that we could go there as part of what we can discuss when talking about this book, and it is a beginning opportunity, it’s an opportunity to talk about our history and be honest and real about what has happened. And also observe the ways in which it affects us still today. Like, what are the inner shames and the inner pieces and our lack of being able to connect with ourselves because of our ancestry? And how many families in Vermont are still hiding? And not being honest about their ancestry? Or even French-Canadian ancestry? Yeah.
Jeanie: Or its might not even be not being honest, but have lost that connection because of the need for assimilation? Because they needed to assimilate to survive, I wonder if that reached out to? Could you say that again?
Ornella: There may be a delay. I was saying that my experience in Puerto Rico is also similar. Like it’s part of the history of so many different places. This genetic “cleansing”, you know, it’s a part of a lot of different histories.
Jeanie: Right in Vermont, the movement was about building a better Vermonter. And sterilization was about deciding who was unworthy to pass on their genes. And we’re not the only ones that have that story. I think you’re saying, and although it’s not about sterilization, this selection of who gets to board, this ship was very much about whose genes do we want to send into the future? And who’s who, who are we sacrificing?
Ornella: And what they do with the genetics later on? It’s also super interesting in this story.
Jeanie: Oh, well, let’s talk a little bit because I think for that we need, you know, the United States government at the time is making these decisions. But there’s this movement afoot, that infiltrates called the collective. Let’s talk about a collective. So, before they leave the US, Petra, the collective is often on the news, it’s sort of fringy. I think I got the impression that it was a little bit fringy. And Petra’s father says about the collective that it sounds like what they want is good, they talk about equality. And he says, Yeah that sounds good. It’s how they’re going to get there. That’s problematic. And so, he says, equality is good. But equality and sameness are two different things. Sometimes those who say things without really contemplating what it truly means that dogma runs a thin line. And so, the collective really has this, like, this stance, this ideological stance that we have to be the same in order to be equal. And they’re willing to do a lot.
Ornella: You know, they’re willing, and it was, I didn’t see them as a fringe, I saw them from the perspective of a progressive family. So, I didn’t see them as fringe as much as I saw them. Back to buy one of the billionaires in the story, which is how the collective ends up on one of the ships, right, like there’s a way in which capitalism and money also has a huge piece and what’s happening there with the collective. I’m trying to figure out where to go next with that, because sameness is such a big thing. It’s like such a big conversation.
Jeanie: The whole book is about, I mean, we’re going to look at it from lots of different ways, but it’s about identity and being yourself or being who people want you to be. And the collective wants people to be a certain way. From their names, their whole identities, they want people to be same.
Ornella: Because we’re all the same. And if we are all choosing to be the same, then there won’t be any conflict. They see the differences as the foundation for conflict, or the focus on the differences as the foundation for conflict. And, you know, the book spans a few 100 years. So, there’s also a lot that happens, which is something I always think about. When I frame 200 years I always joke and tell my kids when I’m homeschooling you imagine if Hamilton talked about it, and we’re fighting, we’re talking about it right now, you know? So, Hamilton did it. And now we’re talking about it in the Supreme Court, you know, and I go back again, and I was like, oh, let’s talk about Jesus and the Council of Nicaea over a year, and how many years that took after Jesus died, before he was declared the Son of God. And then we have so there’s like this huge number of years. And when we meet the collective at the beginning of the story, and where we see the collective later on. And what it started, is not what ends up on the other side, either.
Jeanie: Right? Well, well, Petra and the other children and families who were selected to, to populate this new world are sleeping in stasis. Another group of people infiltrated by the collective are many of them of the collective are caretaking them and having and giving birth and having families on the ship to get them there. So that they can all populate this new world. And as they’re on this ship floating in space, trying to reach this planet called Sagan, they’re reproducing, and they don’t have any natural sunlight. So, their skin is really pale. They’re like, they’re like their genetics are changing, the way they look is different, say, say that, again.
Ornella: They’re changing their genetics or altering their genetics to be able to survive in a spaceship.
Jeanie: So, like, so there’s so much, so much so that when Petra, when they wake Petra up several 100 years later, they’re like, what is that she has freckles, and they call it a skin disease from Earth. And then one of the collective members says, we’re not supposed to talk about Earth, right? Like it doesn’t exist, because they’re erasing their own history. They think erasing history will solve their problems. And so, there’s like all these layers of how much they’ve changed and become different just from being on this ship. With this ideology that they’re following.
Ornella: Yes, because too, they believe that if they study history, it will only fuel their observation of difference. And those differences are what caused conflict.
Jeanie: In their opinion, not yours, Ornella.
Ornella: No, no, no, not, in my own opinion. Thank you for clarifying that. I’m the complete opposite. I’m like, Hey, how could we have none of the up you? How do you figure out and connect to your own purpose? If you follow your own inner guidance? Yeah, and I’m the complete opposite of that is interesting, how it echoes a lot of the current dualities in binaries, right, like it’s one of those ways in which our society oversimplifies the complexity of creating community. And what it takes for us to be socially connected in difference.
Jeanie: It what you just said reminds me and this thing about history in the book reminded me of that almost cliche, those who don’t know history are bound to repeat it. I’m sure I didn’t get that quite right. But it makes me think about this current argument in our society about the notion that we can’t teach the real history because it will make us proud of being American or right versus this other. Other people, including myself, would view that like, we have to grapple with our mistakes so that we don’t keep making them that we can both we can hold, and we must hold the pain and the mistakes of our past in order to get to become the people we want to become.
Ornella: Absolutely. What that evokes for me, as you’re speaking is shamelessness and how shame is socially constructed. So, it can only be socially deconstructed. So, there’s no way in which for us to be able to sit with our mistakes or the things you know we need to like to be in this face of this is not everything I am I am valuable. This is only a part of my history. This is not defined everything I will do in the future. Richer, you know, and how do we reconcile that we need to be way kinder to one another and to ourselves, I would say just to start.
Jeanie: Right and that shame only dissipates when we let the light in. And in order to let the light in, we need to tell the truth, we need to because otherwise it just sits their investors, right? We need to ask forgiveness, we need to like, own what happened and tell the truth about it. And when we don’t when we what’s the word I’m looking for? When we clean up our history? Right, when we sanitize it, that shame still exists, because we’re not telling the truth. Whether that’s about genocide, or eugenics, or racism, or the entire all of the complicated truths of our history.
Ornella: Yeah, and we need to figure out what’s enough, right, like, there’s a point in which we need to be self-accountable, we need to tell the truth about the many, many histories and the many layers of oppression that we what’s the word I’m looking for? That we’ve imposed on one another, that especially colonial folks, you know, we’ve, there’s a way in which we really impose a lot of aggression in this column reality. And as I see it, it’s really hard to take responsibility, when there’s no clarity around what that’s going to, like, you know, what that’s going to do what that’s going to be for people. There’s a way and a story in which is perceived as never enough. And then there’s so way and a story in which it in which you can heal, right, there’s like, and then there’s a way in a story, in which we create and construct a whole new future. And we can look at the history while also building something else. Yeah.
Jeanie: Yeah. And so, the collective, the collective wants to build something new without learning from history by just flushing history down the toilet. But there’s also a way that the collective is approaching the individuals, especially those in stasis, those young people and their families that are being transported to populate this new world. And so, Petra’s family, her father and her mother, both scientists, and there’s a flashback in the book that I just loved, where Petra and her father out hunting for rocks together and they were looking for Jasper had to look up what Jasper was, it’s a kind of rock. And his father says, as they’re looking for the Jasper, the rock will tell us who it is not the other way around. And he goes on to talk about how each piece of Jasper has its own spirit, and that those differences make things beautiful. Some of the Jasper is like yellowish or amber with a red stripe and some is greyish and there are all these different shades and colors. And that theme becomes really central to the book, especially when I realized that Petra comes from a Latin word, which means rock. And so, in a way, it’s also about Petra, just like her grandmother says, The Rock will tell you know who you are, it’s not for other people to tell you who you are. And those other people telling Petra who she is, is happening within her family and then also with the collective.
Ornella: And there’s something really beautiful about how Petra stays Petra. And one of the many possibilities is because Petra insists on what she wants to the very moment you know that she’s put in cryostasis, or whatever it is. She insists on the fact that she wants to be a storyteller, and she tells everyone and makes it, so this becomes a priority when it hadn’t been to anyone um, the world is ending. And she’s walking into this room still saying, this is what I want you to do. And it kept her alive like it kept for herself all the way through. That’s one of the many possibilities.
Jeanie: Well and Petra’s mother wants her to be a botanist. Right, a scientist like herself. And Petra keeps insisting she wants to be a storyteller. But there’s also as Petra is waking up from stasis. Wait, the the members of the collective are waking her up. We’re going to talk about this in a minute, this cog that she has inserted in her spine in her brain keeps repeating the same thing. “My name is Ada one. I’m here to serve the collective. I’m a specialist in rocks and plants” or something like that. I’m not quite getting it right. But as, she’s hearing it, she keeps repeating it. My name is Petra Pena, right. Like I come from I left Earth in 2061. You know, and like she keeps reclaiming her identity even as this technology is trying to erase it. It’s a real powerful act of resistance.
Ornella: Oh, yes. And that, you know, that scene with the library in our mind.
Jeanie: Let’s, let’s talk about Ben, and the library in her mind.
Ornella: Oh, my gosh, Ben. What can we say about him?
Jeanie: Well, his real job right is caretaker of these young people. His job is to keep them alive.
Ornella: While they’re plugged in, and they’re not there. They’re in these pods. The information that gets fed into their cogs.
Jeanie: And he knows Petra. He’s but he’s also so he’s caretaker right. He’s my favorite kind of person. He’s caretaker, but he’s also a librarian. He loves books. And he knows that Petra wants stories. And so, he selects all these stories for her and sort of illicitly illegally against orders. Make sure she has access to them. And I love there’s this whole scene in the book where there’s like the naming of the authors. Did you love this too? Where it’s like Louise Eldritch, and Toni Morrison and Kurt Vonnegut.
Ornella: Yeah, I thought it was love. It was really well done. It was really, really well done.
Jeanie: But then I love as a librarian, I don’t know if you know this, but I was a school librarian for a long time. As a librarian, I also just loved where Ben is like, Oh, well throw some RL Stein in there too. And I don’t know if you recognize that author. But RL Stein wrote all the Goosebumps books that I couldn’t keep on the shelf when I was a school librarian. Like, we essentially, Ben was saying, you know, you need your silly books and your romance to those stories are worthwhile to.
Ornella: I love that. I thought it was so well done, it was really well done.
Jeanie: It would be if I were using this book with kids, I would want them to curate the list of stories and authors that they would think should be, you know, blasted into the future in somebody’s brain.
Ornella: Absolutely. And also, you know, a little bit of awareness, you know, of how kind of heavy the book is, for some young people with this too. Like I was thinking it’s like, okay, so I have two 11-year-olds and a 13-year-old. And I can see one of my 11-year-olds really doing this, well, my 13-year-old doing well, but maybe the other 11-year-old, not so much. When we’re looking at, you know, identifying what books they’re going to do in the future, you know, they would want to hold on to forever. And especially because the book is really so full of grief. That it’s, you know, it’s a little loaded.
Jeanie: Right, the world is ending. There’s loss, like real loss of entire civilization, but then also, and we are not going to spoil much of the book, but also people Petra is close to there’s a lot and there’s not much time or space, and there’s certainly no ceremony for grieving in the book. And so, it is there is a real heaviness to it.
Ornella: An active part because it’s very true to how grief surprises us. So, it’s very genuinely told us that way. If it’s very genuinely told, from that perspective, in which grief surprised as Petra, often throughout the story, and there’s all of these things happening, and then all of a sudden, we’re overwhelmed with grief. And there’s like this way that for the reader as well, the grief can come on fairly, suddenly out of nowhere, just because we’re living patriarchs experience to-
Jeanie: Charlie’s bark came on quite suddenly there too. And I think he had something to say about grief, my dog. So, I feel, I feel that, and I appreciate you naming that this book might need it’s really a middle-grade novel, but it might be upper middle grades 6-7-8, and not four or five, because there’s a lot of heavy talk of mortality, really, there’s a lot there. And it might require connecting with a school counselor, or someone who knows about trauma, and being aware of how you’re making space for students to explore that grief and the trauma that happens in the story.
Ornella: I think it depends on who’s in your classroom. Right? We know, you know, teachers know, their students, and who’s in your classroom? And what are the losses and the experiences that have happened right now, because we’re living in a pandemic reality. And there has been so much global collective loss, I notice that there’s a bit of this storytelling and this trend that’s very attractive to kids in that 13, 14, 15, 16 range, there’s a darkness to what they want to be consuming. They want the scary, they want the sad right now. And also, there’s, you know, slow is good. I wouldn’t rush through it; I would probably slow it down. So, it’s not like, it’s not as much of a binge read, as it is a paused and thoughtful pace.
Jeanie: Right, and Ornella. What I hear you saying, is that it I want what I wonder about what you’re saying is that kids are drawn to these books, because they need time to process what’s been happening. And in our rush to go to call it post pandemic, are we rushing them past the opportunity to process the grief and the loss, whether it’s the loss of social life, or the loss of a loss of innocence, that the world feels more dangerous right now? Or the loss of real loved ones? Who is the loss of connection, you know, being able to see family and friends and people who matter to you? So, there’s so much less that we haven’t I know, I’m not processing? And that I would love an opportunity to slow down and process with a text like this?
Ornella: Absolutely. And I think that young people, I think that they if we just take our lead from them, most of the time, they can tell us where to go next. Yeah.
Jeanie: Yeah. So, there’s also that I don’t want to paint this as a really sad book, though, because there’s also a lot of action and power, Petra is a very powerful character, both in how she resists the stripping of her identity, and also how she sorts of, without giving it away rallies and nurtures the identity of the other young people she ends up in, in a kind of community or family with as they’re headed towards Sagan. And so, I don’t want to look past just the sheer embodied strength of this rock of a character Petra.
Ornella: Petra uses storytelling SOA, to exactly like a “storyteller should”, right? Like, she’s such a storyteller. And she does it so well. Her vulnerability, and her seeing people for who they are, and really loving them. There’s such sincerity in the description of the characters. And I remember the moment in which she says, so far, I think we’ll all be good friends. I really liked them all. There’s a way in which she can see people and love them, and like who they are, and, and that’s so beautiful. And so, I don’t know, felt new to me. Because there’s such little judgement, involved in the way in which Petra interacts with other people.
Jeanie: She builds belonging, she builds, she does some healing, she does this nurturing with these stories, that’s really powerful. I agree. And sort of helps them reclaim their identity, which I think makes me really want to use this book at the start of the year with kids to talk about identity and what’s it means to create identity affirming spaces? And how do we take care of each other in ways that build this kind of belonging and, and how do we become the person we are instead of the person people are telling us we should be and, and so there are so many like layers of how she models that, and how this book models that that are really important. But there’s this other thing we have to talk about. Because I’m an educator, we got to talk about cogs. So, there’s this device, and whether the author use this device as a convenience, or what I think it would be really interesting to talk about in the classroom. So as these young people are entering their, their pods, they’re given cogs with knowledge. It’s a kind of education device, it’s this mechanistic thing that like shoots into there I imagine it’s like the back of their neck. So, I imagine it connecting to their spine. And it’s basically like they’re supposed to wake up with all this knowledge, right. And it like very much portrays education as like just like dumping stuff in brains. And we know that like learning doesn’t happen like that learning doesn’t happen by we can’t just give you a shot or put something in. And so, it both like bugged me. But I thought it’s a really great opportunity to have a discussion about could we really learn by cogs? How does learning happen, which feels like a really important conversation in a classroom or a really important way to get at some like brain science at some like what’s it means to create a learning.
Ornella: Absolutely, I thought so too. It’s interesting, because it was very useful. Very useful technology, if it would work, which people want it. I’d be curious to see what young people would say about this. Because their realities so much. It’s so different. It’s so full of tech. Yeah, that I wonder if they would opt for it. And then how much sleep would you need afterwards? You know, like, is it possible? Can you code or like, brain live the experiences? I bet there’s a science that could recreate it, but
Jeanie: Well, there’s this like sense of like, they learn all the knowledge. There are all these facts in these cogs, but they have to apply it in this real world. Like they have to go to Sagan and apply this knowledge, whatever it is, they all have different specialties. And like, is knowing and applying the same thing. I just think it get into some really interesting conversations about how we learn and what it looks like.
Ornella: Absolutely. And I imagined that when I heard it as something that both dump information and create an experiential experience, like practice of it, kind of like in The Matrix, that’s how life lived. So, I thought that the reason they were able to wake up and do it had because they’d been in this imaginal space, doing all of these things.
Jeanie: While they slept. Wow, they loved it.
Ornella: That dream learning if on lack of work, yeah, I wouldn’t have imagined that at the pouring of information, because then it wouldn’t have worked. The ways I envisioned that was as in like, Dream learning. Yes.
Jeanie: Well, and the thing that they don’t know, the parents don’t know, the kids don’t know, and that they haven’t consented to is that these very same cogs that are filling their brains with botany and, and geology, etc., are also removing their individuality.
Ornella: Brainwashing them? Absolutely Oh. So, think brain? That’s really what it was, was it? It was?
Jeanie: It takes me back to Ben, right. And one thing that I was struck by, you know, this, like removing of stories, we don’t need stories in history. And this, like brainwashing that you just referenced is this moment right now, where in states across the country, librarians and teachers and young people are standing up, and parents are standing up against the banning of books. And so, you know, there’s this other theme that’s very much linked to current events about who gets to stay, who gets to say what story survive, what stories we share, and the kind of power that happens when we say, when we, when we, when they when the collective wouldn’t be blood power. Decide some things go in the trash can and other things go in, in belong in our kids’ brains?
Ornella: Absolutely, this is one of those things that I feel is so dangerous about extremism, and pedagogy that’s not framed in real conversation, and dialogue, and good healthy confrontation and reflection. And you know, there is a way in which right now the absolutes are really making it so we’re not getting well-rounded education possible like we don’t have it’s like we it’s not possible based on some the standards set at the moment, Vermont’s in really good shape, but when we look at other places in the nation, it’s a very different story.
Jeanie: Listeners, if you could see Ornella’s body language right now, it’s spoken volumes. I wish they could see the way that you just visualized that there’s a like, can we talk a little bit about heavier we haven’t mentioned much but he’s Petra’s brother or younger brother. And he plays an important role in the book and as they’re boarding this play these corporations spaceship thing, that’s very complex. They’re allowed to bring they have like one set of clothes; they and they’re allowed to bring like one special thing. And Petra brings a necklace her grandmother gave her, but Javier brings a book, which even in 2060, she says it’s an actual book. And it’s rare, right? Because they tend to have these electronic books. And it’s a picture book by Yuri Morales called Dreamers. And maybe we could just draw some connections about why the author might have included this specific book as the book. Do you want to talk about you neither one of us has a copy of Dreamers, but we sort of know what it’s about? Do you want to talk a little bit about what it’s about and why it might be significant?
Ornella: Absolutely, yeah, Dreamers. It’s my understanding that it’s talking about immigrant families that came to the United States who achieved citizenship ships through the dreamer’s program, the dreamer’s legislature, and it is an immigrant story about coming to a new nation and making you know, it’s like the traditional American eating. Yeah, this American tale of starting over and being able to build a life in freedom and being able to have the choices to be who you are. And it is a bit of criticism, let’s take a little bit of the nostalgia because it’s also a little ironic. As an immigrant boy, I’m not an immigrant, because I’m Puerto Rican. But as a person who was born in a different place, who’s also had to figure out how to fit in the United States. I also know the illusion of this American dream. So, there’s like that those two, like the irony of it being the book he brings, while it also being very limited to admit it legitimately a very valuable and important story, while it also having both the value for it for heavier and another very sweet character that we have later on named Foxy. For what look to me different reasons. Foxy with this whole what Earth mothers used to have and raised their own babies, right, 300 years later.
Jeanie: And seized on the spaceship, right. So, he hasn’t had a mother. He’s born in this like, realm of sameness in the collective and born on the spaceships. So, he’s like, shocked at the relationships in this book.
Ornella: Yeah, for what it means to have a mother to have a family. Yeah.
Jeanie: For me, this book evokes something else a, I did a podcast episode a while back with a friend Amy Randy Stinson on the book The Dark Fantastic by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, are you familiar? And Ebony Elizabeth Thomas talked about how books about black and brown young people are usually about struggle and about history and not about the fantastic or they’re not often the heroes of their future stories, right. And it’s really limiting. And so, in a way this book dreamers also evokes this idea of like, putting black and brown young people in the center of the story about the future, and not just the past, and, and giving Petra all this power, and not just making her a victim.
Ornella: I love it, I think it’s a beautiful way to look at it. Thank you for sharing it. Yeah, I’m also, I haven’t gotten all the way through the back fantastic yet. But I am getting there. And really thinking about it, as I am, you know, looking at different books, and reflecting on my own childhood literature and seeing the ways in which these stories, that the ways in which we story ourselves really matter. And we have when we have these stories of powerful young people boldly living, even though struggle, we are able to reflect that back into the world. And I love the idea. And I see it in my own children that if it doesn’t exist, they write it. And I this is, which I know everybody else have discussed this in the book is this fanfiction, this ability to like, share and these writing communities? And yeah, it’s part of what makes this book so special is the ways in which I can see myself as a Hispanic girl living in the world, you know, and how many of those books that I have growing up? Not very many.
Jeanie: Yeah, that’s really important. And I feel like you just gave me the enduring understanding for the unit about this book. And it is and the identity unit about this that engages this book and maybe some other stories too. And that enduring understanding what you said, I made, I declared as the enduring understanding for this lesson. Right now, proclaim the ways in which we story ourselves matters. Oh, yeah. And what a better enduring understanding for young people. Your story and the way you tell it matters. And then you also led me to what was the second thought I had about this other oh, another lesson or extension activity was writing, you know, the book, the book ends, we’re not going to give anything away on Sagan as there it’s like a new beginning. And I can imagine young people writing fanfiction about what happens next.
Ornella: What happens next? Absolutely.
Jeanie: There’s such a great opportunity there. Yeah.
Ornella: Oh, another piece of that is the role of the educator in it. And I’m helping students see themselves in complexity and have complexity be okay.
Jeanie: That’s beautiful.
Ornella: They’re so way as educators and as caregivers and as teachers in the world, that we help students do that, and that when we allow for this complexity, and they’re able to be good, they’re able, you know, whatever good is to them, they’re able to be good in whatever context that is.
Jeanie: We all want to be valued. And we all want to do our piece. We all want to have impact right in the world. And so being able to have strengths-based approach to our stories helps us do that.
Ornella: Absolutely. Yeah.
Jeanie: What other books would you recommend you have the three middle grades young people, three young adolescents in your life? You’re a reader. What other books would you recommend for middle grades? Learners and readers and the people who love them.
Ornella: Oh, there are so many for the people who love them. I recently read Hunt, Gather, Parent , which I thought was very, very just connecting for me, in my interest, giving different ways of viewing parenthood, and viewing our relationship with young people that we think are the little ones what can we what have the little ones been reading lately? You read this let me look. I just finished The Actual Star which I thought was also incredible. Definitely not for middle grades. But it is a beautiful book by Monica Byrne. Emergent Strategy for the grownups. Also, Atlas of the Heart, which I also finished over the last few. For shame work, you are your best thing. It is a compilation of essays about shame from Tirana Burke, and also curated by Brene Brown, with Tirana Burke. Trying to think about what the little ones have been reading.
Jeanie: I just love that you call your children the little ones.
Ornella: Not so little anymore. I mean thanks. I don’t know why I can’t think of any of the books I’ve been reading. I’m looking here have they been reading? And it’s okay. Yeah. Right now, they’ve been reading the Mysterious Benedict Society.
Jeanie: Oh, my son loved those books.
Ornella: Yeah, so they’ve been reading that. And I think under Kindle they’ve been reading. They’re like into this Graceling series.
Jeanie: Oh, those are intense. Yeah. They like their fantasy, don’t they?
Ornella: Yeah, no, they really do. Right now, we’re doing the roaring 20s. So, there is some talk, some talk about which books we’re going to do for the roaring 20s. We’ll see.
Jeanie: Well, to be continued, we’ll have to hear more. Thank you. So, thank you so much for bringing your perspective and your experience and your wisdom to this discussion about this book The Last Cuentista, which I loved so much. It’s so lovely to tell you.
Ornella: Thanks for inviting me here. Thank you for sharing your thoughts too. Have a blessed happy season.
Jeanie: It’s a pleasure. I’m Jeanie Phillips and this has been an episode of #vtedReads talking about what Vermont educators and students are reading. Thank you to Ornella Matta-Figueroa for appearing on the show and talking with me about The Last Cuentista. If you’re looking for a copy of The Last Cuentista, check your local library. Many thanks to Audrey for all of her behind the scenes work on the podcast. To find out more about #vtedReads, including past episodes, upcoming guests and reads and a whole lot more you can visit vtedreads.tarrantinstitute.org, follow us on Twitter and Instagram at vtededreads. This podcast is a project of the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education at the University of Vermont.
This is the second in a series of mini blogs with attention to priorities in the not-so post pandemic world. In the first blog post, Nancy Doda nudged us all to consider how we might slow down in all aspects of school life. This second post examines curriculum and how the pandemic invites us to rethink what we teach.
Lesson Two: Rethink What We Teach
All of a sudden, the pandemic challenged us to think about so many aspects of our lives in new ways. The world is no longer the predictable place we took for granted. This is an uncomfortable place to be. As Pema Chodron once notably said,
“Chaos can be extremely good news.”
It slams us up against old patterns that hold us back.
Before the pandemic, we were long overdue for a serious closet clean out when it comes to what we teach in our schools. One old pattern needing our attention is that of holding on to what we have always taught. In my decades of work with middle schools, no matter what city or state, we always seem to add more and delete almost nothing.
Even with the advent of 21st century skills, or what we call in Vermont, transferable skills, we have had a hard time letting go of our volumes of content. While we value the attention to transferrable skills, it turns out they still don’t rank above the books we have always taught, the units we love, and the archives we inherited.
After the Common Core declared it had cut back content load in math, I was hopeful. Yet little changed in the volume of middle school mathematics. We are all still buried in way too much to teach.
The Mile Wide and Inch Deep Curriculum
While teachers often share that they’d love to change this, they feel pressed to prepare students for the tests. One science teacher told me she had to cover 65 topics in 42 days. Speedy curriculum coverage was once translated into curriculum by mentioning, “I mentioned it, so I am moving on”, sustaining the yet untouched mile wide, inch deep United States curriculum.
Knowledge keeps growing, expanding and changing. The “Knowledge Doubling Curve”, as it’s now known, was created by Buckminster Fuller in 1982. Fifty years ago, we were told that we were witnessing a knowledge explosion. Human knowledge was doubling every 13 months.
Today, with the help of the Internet, we face the doubling of knowledge every 12 hours. To put it into context, in 1900 human knowledge doubled approximately every 100 years. By the end of 1945, the rate was every 25 years. It’s 2022.
It’s been said that “facts are stubborn things,” but maybe not as stubborn as we think. New facts are replacing outdated ones at an accelerated rate as the tsunami of data continually yields new discoveries and information. It’s time to change.
Discernment, critical thinking, and relevance
COVID offers a superb example of the dramatically changing nature of knowledge as our collective understanding of the virus, the vaccines, the protective measures…. you name it, changed dramatically and fast. Achieving consensus about COVID truths often feels like ‘trying to nail Jello to a tree.’
We have been called to be nimble with ever changing information. We have witnessed the public’s struggle with deciphering truth: distinguishing fact from opinion, remaining open to new truth, and seeking to really understand.
Most importantly, we need a curriculum dominated by attention to lifelong learning skills and a hardy respect for the ever-changing nature of knowledge. Specifically, our students need our help learning to access and evaluate a wide array of knowledge and to decipher fact from opinion. Our students need abundant opportunities to put knowledge to work in real ways.
Decluttering the Curriculum
How can we Marie Kondo our curriculum— declutter by removing anything that doesn’t spark joy? If we asked that home organization expert, she’d likely advise us to cut our volume in half.
Imagine if we held curriculum conversations around units that we have always taught. What if we asked ourselves: Why do we hold on to them? Do they still seem essential for our students today? Do they inspire students to learn more? (Mehta and Peeples, 2020)
These are thorny questions. Aside from broad agreement about some of what is worth knowing, there’s considerable debate. Who decides what’s worth knowing? What knowledge will best support preparing students to live well and participate more fully in our world?
One sure way to move forward towards a more compelling curriculum that is not a mile wide and an inch deep, is to start with the voices of kids. As many advise, start local. Like the slow food movement, we need to localize and personalize our curriculum. We can only do that with the help of those we serve.
Engage Student Voice in Curriculum Decisions
We can find powerful guidance by helping students help us. I don’t mean just the kind of voice we often solicit from students in choosing writing topics, books to read, or research topics. I mean we need to know what concerns, wonders, questions our students have about their own lives and our world.
This is not only done to engage students more fully. It is done because in a democracy all citizens and all voices matter. We need to organize curriculum differently by using their questions and concerns to help us map a living and richer curriculum. Some of these instructional practices are shared and discussed in this blogpost on Negotiated Curriculum.
Maybe both teachers and students repeatedly ask questions about climate change, or about money, or about racism, or about happiness or health to name a few likely themes. It is not the individual curiosities here that matter as much as the shared questions regarding issues in our ever changing world.
Imagine then assessing the merit of our content focus in terms of how it can inform these shared questions? Like Marie Kondo, we can toss out what fails to have both personal and social significance to us and our students. After all, there are many roads to assessing standards. Or to quote Blake, “To see a world in a grain of sand…”
Why not?
Do we worry that building some of the curriculum around the concerns and questions of our students will derail rigor? To me, standard curriculum coverage might be the greatest roadblock to rigor. So much of what we teach lacks a context that is meaningful to students. Content without a meaningful cause is content lost.
Why are we learning this? What does this have to do with anything? How can I put this knowledge to work in real ways? As NELMS award recipient James Beane once observed:
“The rigor in a middle school curriculum lies not in painful abstraction but in its capacity to engage the intellectual curiosity and imagination of young adolescents.” (Beane, 1998).
Content without a meaningful cause is content lost.
Rooting into here and now
Therefore, let’s ask ourselves just how what we teach explicitly connects our shared questions about the world with our content standards. Instead of planning units around topics or standards, let’s consider planning units around vibrant questions drawn from the real local and world issues that baffle us all.
After that, we design the learning activities so students are called to draw upon a wide array of content to address these questions. When we approach the curriculum this way, it shows students that school knowledge is vital to addressing the compelling questions in our lives and world. Knowledge really matters.
Lastly, this on-going pandemic has me feeling like I live in a changed and ever changing world. What kind of curriculum will matter in reshaping the future world to ensure peace, sustainability, civil discourse, and health? What will our students most need to know and be able to do to lead us all towards a better, saner, more just world? As we craft lessons and units, let’s pause to consider the end in mind and rethink what it is we teach.
Sources:
Beane, J. (1993) The middle school curriculum: From rhetoric to reality. AMLE. Columbus, OH.
Feltman, C. (2021) The thin book of trust, 2nd ed. The book publishing, Bend, OR.
Roy, Arundhati. (2020) The pandemic is a portal.
Mehta, J. and Peeples, S. ( 2020). Marie Kondo the curriculum. In Shankar blog, June 25, 2020.
Sable, M. (1995) Maxims and various thoughts in The timetables of women’s history, p 174.
This is a the first in a series of blogs with attention to education priorities in the not-so post pandemic world.
The Crisis
I have been immersed in middle school education for decades. I have always been grateful to belong to such an amazing community of educators who share the same magnificent obsession. Because this community is passionate about the welfare and education of our young adolescents. And it’s committed to building a kinder and more just world. I am full of gratitude and admiration for my fellow educators who have managed to keep going, caring and persevering during this very challenging time. This has been tough. It still is.
To say that things are in good shape would be dishonest.
Are any of us feeling like we are solid? Public education is facing a crisis unlike any I have seen in decades. This fall, when most schools resumed face to face, many educators began to realize that we and our students were in a rough place. I think we need to try to unpack what has happened and what most needs our attention as we move ahead.
Unpacking the Pandemic’s Impact
The pandemic has pressed our faces to the glass. We now see how fragile we were before COVID arrived. Over the past decades student needs have been mounting exponentially. Data on the mental health of our nation’s young adolescents has shown us that children are struggling in significant ways. Many teachers have shared with me their concerns about epidemic levels of self-centeredness accelerating in students.
Likewise, many teachers and principals have been concerned about declining student engagement and investment in school learning. I hear from many that the true joys of teaching feel like a thing of the past. Teachers are buried under the mandates and prescriptive guidelines that were created to improve student engagement.
Last, not least, the inequities in every system of our society have been on full display during this pandemic. Our America is not equally beautiful for everyone. Before COVID arrived, these were some of our unresolved challenges now magnified tenfold.
Educators by nature persevere. We don’t give up. But we all stand on shaky ground. Can we use the pandemic to help us see more clearly what we most need to honor in this not so post-pandemic world? As Arundhati Roy (2020) wrote:
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smokey skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.
Adjusting the Lens
Recall that at the start of the pandemic, songs were written and sung, talks delivered, and articles poured forth. Art was created, and it all attempted to lift us up and help us manage the sadness, the loss, and the fear. Many of the efforts tried to cheer us up and give us hope. Some inspired us to think differently about how to live well.
For a time, we lived life more slowly. Traffic came to a halt, animals came out of hiding, and we tried not to eat too much or snap at those we loved who we discovered were more challenging than we’d ever remembered. We felt united by our humanity. Everyone was searching for answers about the pandemic and the meaning of life. Beauty, nature, love, family and friends suddenly became more precious.
In schools, after some time in this quieter place, we were catapulted into craziness. Virtual teaching, hybrid teaching, masks. We had to hold on as we rode the COVID protocol roller coaster. Exhaustion was commonplace, and burnout rampant. One gifted and always cheerful teacher I have admired could no longer smile at the start of year two. Another dedicated teacher told me she was thinking of quitting, but instead decided she just had to stop caring. It was all too much.
Today, as we find ourselves back in schools and the most dire COVID news lessening, can we begin to sort it all out? Can we rethink our priorities? Here is what I think matters most in our (almost) Post-Pandemic World.
Lesson One: Slow Down
One clear message from the early months of the pandemic was the realization that doing less and slowing down can bring us back in touch with many things that seem to matter a great deal. We were forced in our personal lives to be still as there was less doing and going —less going out to eat, less traffic, less driving kids to practice, less shopping in stores.
People had more time: with those we love, time to play, time to really cook good food, time to listen well, time to care, time to revisit new and old hobbies, and time to think. Humans did as Thich Nhat Hanh once advised: “….unplug from the speed and complexity and noise of everyday life and … return to being in peace.” ( TNH)
That taste of slow was a good thing. Many of us noted an engendered calm. We noticed that less can be more, and that slow can be better: more productive, happier, and saner. Sure, at first we might have binge watched TV series, but soon most of us got busy and productive. Slow didn’t mean unproductive, but it meant we didn’t live at a crazed pace. How might we learn from that that calmer time and bring more slowness into our work?
Perhaps we finally reconsider our schedules and abandon the 45-minute period day, where we whiz students through seven different subjects with seven different teachers and move towards longer, more flexible blocks of learning time.
Maybe we have a daily Advisory time that is more responsive and less scripted, where students can talk more and we talk less.
Could be we have snack breaks in and outside.
Perhaps it means we make time for recess every day.
Maybe we don’t pursue multiple initiatives all at once.
Maybe it calls for us to have faculty meetings where teachers can really think and talk about what’s working and what’s not.
Could be we try to add a little mindfulness into our fast-paced school days.
Finally, perhaps we should try to declutter our curriculum – teaching less, not more.
Everyone benefits
I know principals and teachers would agree that school life would be significantly more satisfying for everyone if we could slow things down. Some teachers have decided they can no longer teach and are considering leaving the profession. Many are barely holding on trying to get through the days and recover what they once felt about this important work. We have a crisis in our schools that calls for bold thinking. As Roy said, we have a gateway.
Is there one way you might slow things down in your school? If you are a leader, can you find ways to shrink rather than expand the to-do lists for your schools and teachers? If you are a teacher, can you find steady ways to check the emotional pulse of your classroom? I urge you identify the places within our system and classrooms where we can slow down and focus on what matters.
This is the first education lesson from the pandemic.
Welcome, listeners, to another episode of vted Reads: talking about books by, for, and with Vermont educators. In this episode… we own an oversight.
On this show, we are dedicated to breaking down systems of inequity in education. We administer flying kicks to the forehead of intersectional oppression! But we haven’t yet talked about disability.
So in this episode, we fix that, as we chat with Dr. Winnie Looby, who coordinates the graduate certificate in disability studies at the University of Vermont. Dr. Looby also identifies as a person with a disability, which is important, listeners, because the rallying cry of disability advocacy has long been “Nothing about us, without us.”
So we’re here, we’re clear, and we’re talking about “Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice,” by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Let’s limber up those kicking legs, folks, and talk about how disability too, is an equity issue.
I’m Jeanie Phillips, and this is Vermont Ed Reads. Let’s chat.
Jeanie: Hi, I’m Jeanie Phillips, and welcome to #vted Reads. We’re here to talk books for educators by educators and with educators. Today I’m with Dr. Winnie Looby. And we’ll be talking about Care Work, Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. Thanks for joining me Winnie, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Jeanie: Right, so what I’m hearing from you, Dr. Looby, is that we need to be informed by others what they need and embrace that information, moving it from, I guess I have to ask you what you need to make this work from you, to like, I really need you to help me help you learn.
Winnie: Exactly.
Jeanie: And I think about K to 12 schools I can probably even place myself back when I was a school librarian and thinking, Oh, we’re going to go on this field trip, and then realizing it’s not going to be accessible to the kid who has mobility issues, say, and then instead of begrudgingly say, well, I guess I can’t do that field trip; finding ways to create this collective joy, and how do we make sure that everybody is able to have fun?
The Disability Rights Movement simultaneously invisiblized the lives of peoples who live at intersection junctures of oppression, disabled people of color, immigrants with disabilities, queers with disabilities, trans and gender-nonconforming people with disabilities, people with disabilities are who are houseless.
Jeanie: Yes, I love that section of the book. And what you’re making me think about, is for me, especially, but I think for a lot of people reading is a real act of empathy, and reading, #OwnVoices stories by people with disabilities is really helpful to building empathy and understanding about what the world’s like for someone who’s different than you. It creates what routines into what Bishop calls a window into somebody else’s experience or even a sliding glass door where you can really have under the answers step into their experience.
Jeanie: Some friends recently recommended a podcast that I listened to. And I’m not going to remember the person’s name, but I’ll put a link in the transcript. It was an On Being podcast and it was about asset framing. And the idea of asset framing really was what this person’s aspiration is? And what’s the obstacle to that? So instead of seeing them as the obstacle, what are the obstacles or them as the problem? What’s the thing they want to accomplish? And what’s the thing getting in the way of that? And so that removes the problem from the person to the environment, just like you’re saying, but there’s this other side of it, too, which is that there are things we can learn really big things we can learn from people with disabilities because of their experience of the world. So it’s not just that we don’t see them as a deficit, but also that we see their assets and their strengths and the things that they can teach us. Do you have examples? Do you have ways people might think about what they can learn the what the author calls the cultures and histories and skills and the ways that we might tap into that and open ourselves up to learning from people with disabilities?
Jeanie: I really appreciate that. I think for me, one of the tension points is–so I’m going to use Outright Vermont as an example. One of the programs that Outright Vermont offers in schools that I think is really powerful as they have queer kids come and sit on a panel and answer questions and talk about their experience in schools. They used to, I imagine they still do, but when I was in school, they, you know, we have in common it was really powerful for people. The tension for me is about like, it’s not really their job to educate me. And so how do we learn from and with without expecting people with disabilities or people of color queer folks to do the work for us? So, there’s a real tension for me about like being open and I think that’s why your suggestion earlier about seeking out personal narratives that people have written, seeking, seeking out books like this one is really helpful, right? Because that’s out there. And I’m not asking people to do additional labor. And so I guess I’m just wondering how do you grapple with that tension, the both and of like, I want to learn from you, and I don’t want you to have to do a ton of work for me to learn like I should be doing the work.
Jeanie: Yeah. But there’s a scholar I really love named Vanessa Andreotti, she’s from Canada. And she uses this thing called the Heads Up framework. I can’t tell you what each of them stands for, ‘H’ is hegemony. The one that always sticks with me the most is the easy solutions, right? And easy solutions, which I think we all want, because we want to solve the problem, right? Is actually a red herring, right? Like, they’re often a sign that we’re not actually dealing with a real problem. An easy solution is often not the is almost always not the answer. And as you alluded to earlier, and as we talk a lot, working towards justice is a messy, messy system. It’s a messy process because these aren’t simple problems that we’re solving, right. And they’re also not only systemic, but they’re also the way that the systems we live in have shaped who we are and how we show up how we are in the world. And I was listening recently to a Hidden Brain episode, I’ll link to in the transcript about what happens when change decision making from ethics, like our moral decision making to financial, to sort of this, which a lot of our decision making in our current capitalist world is really financial. And it shifts the part of the brain it works. And we make decisions that don’t help us make better decisions. And in fact, so often, the example they use is if an after-school program charges you, if you get paid, charges you a fine if you’re late picking up your kids, and they set for a lot of people, they’re just like more people were late because they felt like they could just pay the fine. So it had the opposite impact.
And I think a lot about the decisions we want kids to make at school, we turn to this sort of financial decision-making, right like through a token economy. And we say, well, you get a reward if you do this thing, or you’ll get a punishment. If you do this thing. Instead of saying this is the right thing to do. This is the way we take care of each other, let’s be our best selves. And so gosh, I just went on a long tangent, but my point was, I did have one doctor, maybe I did. I guess my point was that these easy solutions often shift us into our worst selves, right, and we want this quick way of fixing something wrong. Really what we need to do is grapple with whom do we want to be? How do we want to be in this world? What kind of moral-ethical person how do we want to show up? And I think you keep reminding me that there’s no single easy pass through all this injustice, we just have to wade in and get messy. Thank you for bearing with me and that nonsense I just spoke.
Jeanie: Dr. Looby, your book feels like one I really have to read and want to read and can’t wait to read. I hope that when it’s published, you’ll come back and talk to us about it on the podcast.
Winnie: Absolutely. Absolutely. I’m hoping to be done with it before another couple of years.
Jeanie: As you spoke, our listeners can’t see this because they’re listening, but you put air quotes around normal. Oh, yeah. I really appreciate that. Because I think what you’re reminding us is that with those air quotes, what I read from that, and I’ll ask you if I got it right, is that normal is a myth that normal doesn’t exist that normal. In many ways, I took the next leap and thought, well, normal is what we used to keep the status quo as it is, and the status quo doesn’t serve all people.
Winnie: Exactly. Exactly.
Jeanie: And I did a podcast with my friend Emily Gilmore about the End of Average which really describes why this norm reference to this norm normal really is, is related to averages, right? Doesn’t serve any of us, none of us are really normal, right? And so that this notion of normal, and this privileging of this notion of normal, is problematic just because it doesn’t exist, it’s reusing, right? It’s using statistics to describe people, and that just doesn’t work. There’s a fallacy. It’s very hard, it’s that.
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.
From Street Data: A Next Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and Transformation.
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.
From Street Data: A Next Generation Model for Equity, Pedagogy, and Transformation.
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.
As we move through another calendar year impacted by COVID, I find myself taking stock of what’s important for our young people. While this pandemic has irrevocably changed all of us, it has perhaps impacted children and young adults even more significantly. What’s more, our schools have been tasked with nearly impossible charges. Keep humans safe and healthy. Monitor them and test them when necessary. Communicate to all as health and safety issues arise. Recover any slides in social and emotional skills. And teach young minds to learn. It’s clear to me now that schools can’t be asked to do it all.
Why do we need to focus on well-being now?
We must support schools to prioritize critical areas of importance and need. In our schools, what could be more important than creating opportunities for human connection? Is there anything more valuable than making space for overall well-being? In response to what students and teachers were needing, Rutland Middle School (RMS) created and implemented their first year of a new program called Lifelong Sports. In this program, every student at the middle school would be able to choose and participate in some exercise or sport that can be done well into adulthood.
While some places have been able to pull off ski and outdoor programs, a full program involving all students had never happened at Rutland City Middle School. Within a global pandemic, this took a lot of vision and orchestration to execute. But the school staff, students, and community all pulled together to make it happen.
Connecting beyond the classroom
For six weeks this winter, all of the 7th and 8th grade students were able to participate in a wide range of activities in their local community. Students could choose to go indoor rock climbing or virtual golfing. Others learned to ice skate, curl and play ice hockey. Some chose to learn fitness and take exercise classes at a local gym. Several students learned bowling and racquet sports. Quite a few students went out in the snow. They snowshoed or went nordic skiing at Mountain Top or alpine skiing or snowboarding at local Pico Mountain. The school’s Physical Education teacher, Geoffrey Bloomer, and Director of Student Engagement, Erica Wallstrom spearheaded this first take on the RMS Lifelong Sports program. The two purposely chose activities for students that they could enjoy throughout their lives: hence, lifelong sports.
What’s even greater than giving kids these opportunities? To also give teachers the opportunity and chance to participate with them. Because, building those connections between students and teachers out in the read world is invaluable. “The program has allowed students to see their teachers in a different setting and it has allowed our teachers to make a rapport with the students that is not subject specific,” says Bloomer. Another teacher commented that her students were able to see her as a learner, too. That shift in perspective can be huge.
Students can gather great empathy when they see that adults are often learning new things, too. Teacher Chris VanSciver noted,
“It’s an invaluable lesson for a young person to see an adult literally fall down, brush themselves off, and try again.”
Another teacher echoed his sentiments. She also saw kids become cheerleaders for their learning teachers.
“It’s great to hear students encouraging me down the mountain.They knew I was a new learner. It was also great just to have outdoor time with the kids and to encourage them when they were learning a new skill. I laugh a lot more outdoors” teacher Roxane Johnson-deLear.
Laughter is the best medicine.
Focusing on everyone’s wellness
Building connections among students is important, as well as developing bonds between teachers and students. But this program pushed other crucial outcomes. One of the goals was to inspire students to focus on lifetime wellness activities. Wallstrom and Bloomer selected activities because they were something both local and doable into adulthood. Students initially learned how to do the sport or activity of choice, and then were able to advance into more fun and challenging levels of fitness. Ultimately, students were also exposed to the resources and connections for continuing this wellness activity after the program’s end. One community sponsor – Pico Mountain – generously offered their ski school passes to extend through the season, including rentals. That was a big deal to some of the kids!
This program wasn’t just good for the participants, but it benefited the community, too. Many teachers at Rutland Middle School noted the enthusiastic support of their community partners. These organizations and businesses were thrilled to open their doors and slopes to students. They kindly made their programs available for a nominal cost. District and school administrators pulled this off by allocating both school funds and grant funding. As a result, teachers were both proud of their students and proud of their community sponsors. This whole endeavor shows a real commitment to both personal wellness and community wellness. Well children are an indicator of a well community.
Want to start your own Lifelong Sports Program? Here are some quick steps:
Brainstorm – Start a list of providers of lifelong sports in your community.
Ask and (hopefully!) You Shall Receive – Simply approach the organizations about their interest and availability for your programming.
Negotiate Your Price – Be upfront with the organizations about what you can afford to pay. Some may have school rates already in place. If you are able to come at non-peak times, many places are able to offer huge discounts.
Grant and Sign – Because of the nature of the activities, all kids and parents had to complete all sorts of waivers and permission slips in order to participate.
Organize and Group – A ton of google spreadsheets were utilized in this process.
Just Do It – Teachers and students put on their sneakers, ski boots, and bowling shoes to learn together and have fun!
Reflect – Make sure to leave time for teachers and students to reflect on what worked and what could happen differently next time.
Educator Wellness for the Win
To close, I want to note that educator wellness is an important issue at the moment. And it appears that this program helped the RMS teachers feel more…well. In addition to getting some exercise and fresh air, teachers reaped the benefits of smiles and laughter. If you want to learn more about other steps schools are taking towards educator well-being, read about how one district gave teachers more time. It resulted in teachers and faculty feeling less stressed and burned out. And in another early-pandemic post, we share how schools can center care and love during these tense and unpredictable times.
Because these are still tense and unpredictable times. And we need systems that support the well-being of our teachers and students alike.
Now, I’d love to hear from you.
How have you seen a school prioritize wellness?
What structures have been created to make space for human connection?
Now, you might be wondering what The Other Talk actually is. As many of you know, black people and other people of the global majority frequently have to have “The Talk” with their children about how to survive when they’re stopped by police in America. That’s right, when they’re stopped by police. It’s the talk about how to survive that experience. Parents often draw the meat of it from their own experiences of brutality and loss. But what talk do white people have with their children? Lovely listeners, this episode goes out to everyone who believes in young people, as Jess Lifshitz puts it, more than they believe in adults. Don’t get us wrong, adults, you are salvageable. But boy, there is work to be done. I’m Jeanie Phillips, and this is #vted Reads; a podcast about books by, for and with Vermont educators. Let’s talk.
Thank you so much for joining me, Brendan, Christie, and Jess. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Brendan: Well, I’m honored to have been chosen to go first. So well, it’s great to be here. Thank you. I’m Brendan Kiely, the Author of The Other Talk: Reckoning with Our White Privilege and other novels, including Co-Authoring, All American Boys with Jason Reynolds. It’s really great to have an opportunity to talk about issues and ideas and heartfelt feelings that I care deeply about. I hope to ground this conversation as often as possible in the notion of lived experience as opposed to an intellectual exercise about the damage that racism causes in our country. And I say that, because I’ve been thinking a lot about how often I didn’t think about my own lived experience when I was thinking about conversations about race and racism in America. So that’s why I’m sharing that.
I also just have to share, since we’re also talking about books that I’m currently reading is The 1619 Project and I’m just taking it in chunks at a time and I’m not trying to read it all at once. I’m going in between other reading, as well. But it feels like maybe the single most important book to read right now as a grounding point and as a as an effort to say, we all should be reading this. This should be canon in our educational experience. And when I’m taking a break from that, I’m reading Love and Other Poems by Alex Dimitrov which is just beautiful.
Jeanie: Well, thank you so much for that. How about you, Christie?
Christie: Everyone, it is so great to be here and be here with all of you. My name is Christie Nold. I use she/her pronouns and I am zooming in today from Abenaki Land here in Vermont. I am a white educator in a predominantly white school that is less than five miles from my childhood home, which is by intention and design. And so, I’m excited to be part of this conversation and talk about one of the things that I read in the wonderful book, The Other Talk about what it means to have my whiteness show up with me every day at school.
And what I’m reading right now is from the wonderful Mr. Tom Rad from Twitter, Raising Ollie: How My Nonbinary Art-Nerd Kid Changed Nearly Everything I Know. And one of the things that I love so much about this book is that on the face of it, it is the story of this one incredible kid, but in the depth of it really is truly a story about education and who it serves and who it doesn’t and why. I’m really challenged to think differently and deeply by Tom in this text. And it’s pulling at some of my heartstrings around public education, which I so deeply believe in, but what happens when that public education isn’t serving every kid. So, it’s a great book to challenge my thinking and I certainly recommend it.
Jeanie: Thank you so much, Christie. Jess?
Jess: Hi. I’m Jess Lifshitz. I am coming in tonight from near Chicago sitting on Kickapoo, Peoria, and Potawatomi Land. I use she/her pronouns. I teach fifth-grade literacy. And then you said, we’re supposed to say who we are and what we do, and my first thought was mostly I’m just trying to survive each day, which I feel like captures a lot of what we’re doing right now. In terms of what I’m reading, just minutes ago, (and this is true, I’m not just trying to suck up), finished Stuntboy, in the Meantime, written by Jason Reynolds, and illustrated by Raul the Third and it is a beautiful book in all the ways. I just finished it tonight, but I book talked it to my students earlier today. And they could not get to it fast enough. And if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. It is beautiful to look at and it is a beautiful story. So that is what I just finished.
And then as I’ve been walking to try and deal with the world, I’ve been listening to an audiobook to Clint Smith’s How the Word is Passed. And I feel similarly to how Brendan was speaking about The 1619 Project, that is how I’m feeling about Clint Smith’s book as well. He actually reads the audiobook, and he has such a melodic voice that he’s saying these hugely transformational, powerful things. He sang them in this beautiful voice as well. And he speaks so much about how education has been used and abused in the past in order to try and – or attempt to cover up our racist history. And it leaves you feeling angry about that, but it also leaves you feeling like then we can use education to do better. And so those themes really connected to The Other Talk as well. So that is what I’m reading.
Jeanie: I just couldn’t agree more with Jess, with your sentiment about that book and it made me think about how I love that book so much and it’s so reflective as Clint Smith is visiting places. And Brendan’s book similarly is so reflective as he revisits his memories. And so, the memory I’m going to start with is what you start with at the beginning of the book. What’s it like to be friends with Jason Reynolds? I mean, I would die to be friends with Jason Reynolds.
Brendan: Well, you have to remember too that we became friends before really either one of us had much of a career. And it’s a different kind of story to be a part of a process of a career evolving and growing and a person too who evolves into the role that he plays. And so, I think it’s so funny. I mean, I giggled as you asked the question because I obviously get asked that question all the time. And I love it because I love him.
And I’m so grateful that his mother and I swap letters when we are in the same town, we take time so that we’re just ourselves and away from all the public. And it feels like exactly what we set out to do when we sat down to write All American Boys. We had rules that we came up with. And Jason offered the first rule, and I almost want to cry repeating it right now, because he said, “The first rule has to be the friendship always comes first no matter what happens in the business.” And that is true to this day. And it’s recently been his birthday, so happy belated birthday man.
Jeanie: I love that. Thank you for fielding that. I needed to start with something a little softer, because the question I had as my first question is not. So, I’m going to throw that out there next. You write about what it means to be white in America and I know that Jess and Christie and I think about that a lot. But you have some quotes in here from page 23 said,
Living as a white person is white privilege.
And then a little further on page 27, you say,
We, white people are getting away with something that we know is wrong.
And I was strongly reminded of a podcast conversation with Dr. Helms on the Teaching While White podcast about white racial identity development. So, I went back and listened to that. And I’m wondering if – maybe all three of you but starting with Brendan- could talk a little bit about your own racial identity development and how you came to understand yourself as white.
Brendan: I really appreciate grounding the conversation in this way, because I think people and white people in particular are often afraid to begin to have a conversation about their own, and our own racial identity because it’s so strange. It’s not part of the talk that we often have when we talk about racial identity at all. And I think that’s part of the problem. It’s been masked in some ways even though the construction of race as we all know is a construction that’s for our benefit as white people. And so it seems so insidious that the motivation for it is so well hidden and the result there is then a kind of invisibility or a disconnect from my own racial identity.
So, all that’s to say, thinking about my own racial identity, then it comes in moments of shock and shame and guilt and messing up and recognizing, my gosh, this is tied to my racial identity. So, for example, shortly after Barack Obama was elected president, I was in a conversation with a group of friends that a house, the room was a multiracial mix of people. And in particular, the folks in the room who were black were listening to me speak about how I kept using a phrase like, the poor guy, the poor guy, and not realizing how it landed in the ears of some of the folks who were celebrating Barack Obama, not just for the election and for his policies, but for who he was as a member of a community that they felt a part of. And I went on to claim something to the effect of, well, Barack Obama is more my President, I’m more Barack Obama or something like that than I am George W. Bush or some phrase like that. And not speaking intellectually and not recognizing the difference of lived experience in the room. I share that anecdote because that wasn’t all that long ago. I mean, now it’s a little bit long ago, but it wasn’t all that long ago. And I was a shameful adult to be not being aware of myself in the room in that way.
And I feel like that’s the process from when I was younger that there are moments that I was shocked into some awareness of my white racial identity and that I will be tomorrow and the next day as well. And that it’s a road of growth. And I’m curious to hear what Christie and Jess have to say, because I’m not in these kinds of conversations often with other white folks, I’m not often into engaging and sharing in this way and I think that’s honestly part of the problem.
Christie: One of the things that I love so much about Dr. Helms model is the way she talks about it as statuses which I feel like I just heard in your anecdote, this idea that it’s not a linear process, but rather these statuses that a person might drop back into. And that leaving one status doesn’t mean you won’t revisit it again later. And there’s that first encounter status that status as you described of this idea of shock. And this is Christie, by the way.
And one of the things I – that’s – it’s being in that status that I think I remember most often. Some of the other statuses aren’t always as clear to me. But a moment from that status that I remember fairly clearly is also a more recent moment, after the murder of Trayvon Martin, in which I was reflecting with a white friend about how that could have been one of our students. And I was really stuck on this idea of Trayvon and his murder and how just the horrific nature of it all.
And my friend very quickly responded, “It’s far more likely that we are teaching future Zimmerman’s than teaching a future Trayvon,” given the fact that so many of our students in the district that we were working in together at the time identified as white, identified as students of privilege and although Zimmerman himself doesn’t identify in that way, when thinking about racial violence, so many of the folks who go on to perpetrate that violence are white body people. And so it was that moment of transition for me from thinking about these outward facing conversations which I’d been involved in from a very savior narrative place and hadn’t quite realized until that moment switched toward a more inward facing conversation of what does it look like, what would it look like if my work were with and among white folks to disrupt that cycle of violence rather than tending to this idea of savior of potential victory to violence. And so, as you were talking, that was the story that was coming to my mind and thinking about my white racial identity and this idea of ideally movement out of or at least certainly recognition of times when I’m sitting within some white savior complex.
Jess: It’s so interesting, because I was taking notes to get ready tonight. And I also identified the moment of Trayvon’s murder as one that was transformational for me. And of course, it is hard to admit that it took such a tragic, horrific event to get me to that point. But for me, there was what I remember so vividly was actually hearing black mothers speak about the talk that they gave to their specifically sons is what I remember. And I remember realizing that I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that that talk existed. And when I started to unpack that, I realized how very much by design my world was kept very white. And not because I have racist parents, I have lovely, wonderful parents who made choices in these racist systems that kept my world so white.
And so, for me, it was a moment that made me realize how many voices my life was lacking. And it started me on this sort of journey. And where it took me was online to Twitter and allowed me to find the voices that had not been a part of my life. And just the – it’s why I say no one has an excuse to not seek out stories from a wide variety of people any longer, because for as much as – as problematic as social media is, it also allows us access to all sorts of voices and all sorts of lives. And for me, that’s where the journey started is really finding voices like Val Brown’s and Dr. Sonja Cherry-Paul and Dr. Debbie Reese. And hearing perspectives that were never given to me in school and that it was by hearing how my whiteness and the whiteness of others impacted people’s lives. That’s what started my own racial identity and understanding, because you’re right, we don’t have these conversations.
And the last thing I’ll say is I often share this story that when I do identity webs with my students, and my students, I teach in a district that is mostly white, high socioeconomic status. And so, when we start unpacking identity, it’s often the first time my fifth graders have had these types of conversations. And I begin by sharing my identity with them. And I put on there that I’m a lesbian and at this point, no reaction. It’s sort of like, yeah, okay, no big deal. I then say that I’m white. And there is this audible gasp and you’re like, really, that’s what you’re surprised by that you didn’t know. But they had – they are so not used to hearing people name, race as a facet of identity. It’s like if we can’t even name it without gasping, how can we start to really understand how our whiteness is impacting others? And so, we use that, right? We unpack that. Why are you gasping? What did I just say? How are you feeling? And why are you feeling that way? And it’s really a powerful moment. So, to watch young people start to wrestle with that is a powerful thing.
Jeanie: Brendan, did you want to say something?
Brendan: I was just responding to Jess’s comments, because there are so many moments where, whether it’s Jason and I presenting together or I’m presenting on my own and I’m telling a story and I launch into the phrase, “White Boy”, that is the moment of gasp in a predominantly white auditorium. Sometimes if it’s not a predominantly white, and it’s predominantly non-white, it’s more of sometimes chuckle, sometimes something else. But its recognition, because of course, like that naming and knowing and witnessing my whiteness is so common for people who are not white. And I appreciate your use of the word impact a number of times, because I think for me also part of the thinking about my white racial identity is a question of accountability, because my racial identity by default affects other people’s lives. And so, I just appreciate what you both were saying and forgive me sweeping back in there, but it was just so visceral, it’s so real. I feel that too.
Jeanie: Well, and it’s a perfect segue to my next question which is that I probably like many people listening grew up – many white people listening grew up as a white person with a sense that being not racist meant that you didn’t talk about race and you wouldn’t say that race didn’t matter, right? And I no longer believe that. But it’s still really common when I was in a school library to hear kids say things that I still found in your book over and over again. And so, I appreciated that your book, one of the many things I appreciate it is that it forces us to focus on reality that the way that race matters in our world. And you invite us as white folks to be reflective about our own experiences through a lens of race in a way that I think we’re not accustomed to. And I wondered if you might read a little bit starting on page 34. Do you have a copy of the book with you, Brendan? Do you have a copy of your own book?
Brendan: Yes, I do.
Jeanie: I’m looking down…
Brendan: I have too many copies.
Jeanie: I’m looking down at the second paragraph to the bottom. And it starts, “But one thing I do know for sure is that.” And I wondered if you could read up to the end of that little section on the top of page 35.
Brendan: “
But one thing I do know for sure is that I have to tell all my stories now more truthfully– by always including my whiteness and asking how it plays a role.
And I get it, it can feel weird– really weird. Hard, maybe. It can even hurt. But even if it hurts a little… yup, we still have to give it a try. We still have to go there.
And just to be clear: talking about being white, talking about white privilege, isn’t anti-white. It’s just being honest. If I’m honest with myself– about being white– I can learn; I can grow. I can do better.
Because that’s what I want to do: do better.
Jeanie: I really appreciate that framing. And I wonder if we could talk a little bit about what your hopes are for when kids are reading this book.
Brendan: I’d be curious actually to throw that to Jess and Christie if you don’t mind, because you’re in a position to be with those young folks more immediately than I am. And I’m envious of your situation, I used to teach, and I no longer do, and I missed the classroom.
Christie: One of the things that I have actually been wondering about gets back to this question of audience. I was curious as you were writing who you might have had in mind. And I went back and forth around this. One of the things that was on my mind was this line that I got from Dr. Leilani Sabzalian who in talking about indigenous communities, she names this idea of outward facing work, that is the amount of time and energy that indigenous folks and researchers have to spend convincing people outside of community that there is a problem and that their lives and experiences matter. And she describes the way in which so much effort and energy goes into proving or providing evidence that there’s little energy left for the inward facing toward community love and celebration.
And I found in your text lots of moments where it was and here’s the evidence, let me show you the evidence, here’s the overwhelming evidence. And so, I went back and forth in my own mind between are you writing for for young people, for young white people potentially who already see and might understand their whiteness and might understand race as a social construct? Or were you writing for a white student who might be rejecting that and are providing evidence? Or are you hoping that this book becomes an umbrella that could hold both of those students within it? And so, I’m going to toss your question right back potentially, because when I sat with your text, I kept thinking in my head, this is the perfect book for X student. And then I’d read a little further and think no, no, no, this is the perfect book for YA students. And so, in my mind, this whole time has been this question around who you imagined picking up this text and engaging with it.
Brendan: Jess, do you have anything you want to add before I respond?
Jess: No, go ahead.
Brendan: Okay. I appreciate that. I’m often a fan of switching from either or to both and I am going to do that again here and I’m going to go even further, because the idea – I hope the book works as a kind of not unlike how with our – we were talking about the statuses and how you can move in and out in – when you’re grappling with your white racial identity as a white person. I think that there are times in which no matter how much you already have an instinct for or an understanding of the impact of white privilege and the world around you, evidence is helpful sometimes even just to arm yourself in conversation with others. And so, I personally found that I wanted to accrue that kind of evidence in a way that wasn’t just assumed but was concrete in a way that if I were talking to family members as I do every Thanksgiving. I would have some concretes as opposed to just emotional outbursts, which is usually where it starts and ends.
In addition, I think there’s also a kind of moments where people who are just being introduced to it can access it through emotion. And so it isn’t about evidence, as much as it’s about anecdotal stories and here’s me messing up, maybe you have had a similar situation. And it doesn’t make us horrible people, it makes us worse people if we know it and then don’t reflect on it and don’t try to do anything about it and not make the mistake again. But it doesn’t make us horrible people to not know and make mistakes and not knowing it’s the then knowing that’s important, I think. And how we – Jess, as you mentioned before too, begin to seek out the wisdom of others in a way that we may not have had before. And so for me, I’m hoping that the book works in that kind of push and pull and back and forth. And there are some moments of the book that would work for this particular white student and other moments that would work for another white student.
Now, I clarify that by saying these different white students, because, yes, primarily, it’s a book for an assumed white audience in the same way that the talk that we referenced earlier, the talk that Jason’s mother gave Jason was not even assumed, it was directly a conversation about black identity and interactions with law enforcement. But also, that talk expanded, right, it’s not just about law enforcement, it’s about his existence in a day-to-day world.
And so, while I primarily am trying to do something similar for white students and white families, I also hope that on some level it can also be a book that for readers who are not white like me and my family, there it can be an opportunity to say, this is someone who has listened to that thing that I said, this is a moment of somebody who has heard. As some of my friends and I have discussed, when you hear the call to action, do you just keep it inside or do you do something about it? And so, for example, in conversation with Renee Watson, she and I have talked about this quite a bit that that call to action demand some public action and acknowledgement of having heard it. And so, my hope is that the book also offers that opportunity for non-white readers as well. That’s a leap. That’s a leap I understand. And again, primarily, the book is to open up those conversations with white readers. So, I hope that answers your question, because I think the initial question and the compounding more complicated follow up to it, I love, so thanks.
Jeanie: Thank you for that, Christie, thank you for deepening the question. And now, I’m going to lob it to Jess and ask, what are your hopes for kids who read this book?
Jess: I will be honest that it is hard to find hope these days in the educational space, I think just in the universe space. This book made me hopeful. And I don’t say that because the author is sitting right here, I mean, many miles away, but via Zoom. And I had a very emotional response to the section that you just read. And I think the part that I responded to is this trust you have in young people and the whole book read that way that you trust that young people can handle discomfort. And so much of the pushback that we’re hearing from white folks right now is this need to protect comfort and it’s connected to so many things, right, mask wearing, the teaching of accurate history, all of those things. And it’s – this needs to protect comfort. And what you start to wrestle with in the part you just read is this idea that it’s okay to feel discomfort, especially when that discomfort comes from a reckoning, an awakening, a recognition of the fact that you were born into a system that you have benefited from.
And I often think about how all those folks who are screaming about protecting kids from discomfort maybe have never had the privilege of witnessing children when they start to finally understand what’s been hidden from them, right. When – as a fifth-grade teacher, I have watched as children for the first time recognize the privilege. When they recognize they’re not lucky, they’re benefiting from a system that was designed to operate. So, it benefited them while taking away from others. And it is empowering. Kids are empowered, because once they recognize they’re part of a system, they realize they can change it, they can work to change it, that they’re not these helpless bystanders.
The discomfort comes when they realize all the adults around them have been keeping the truth from them, because they wouldn’t say it’s because they don’t trust them to deal with it, right. I like to think it comes from a place of love and desiring to protect your own child. But when there is a righteous anger that comes when kids start to see the truth and then that anger is often followed by this empowered feeling of, okay, so you’re telling me that this is the way things are, let’s figure out how we can change it. And I think so much of this book speaks to that that constant refrain of you have to understand it so that you can understand how to make it better. And that makes me hopeful, because I believe in young people way more than I believe in adults these days. And this idea that if we can help them understand things, they want to change them and I believe they will, because certainly no one taught me these things as I was growing up.
So, what do I hope for kids? I don’t know that my fifth graders are ready to tackle the book themselves. But I hope that the adults around them read it. And I hope it inspires them to trust children. And I think there are certainly pieces of it we can dig into together. But my hope for kids is that they have adults around them who trust them the way Brendan has trusted his audience in the book. So, it left me very hopeful. That’s my long answer.
Brendan: No, I really appreciate that, because there are so many more anecdotes that I can share about young people that I’ve met all across the country, whether it’s in Anchorage, Alaska, or parts of Florida, or other students – the students that I met in Baton Rouge, or whatever the case may be who have that instinct for, what do we need to know so that we can do better. And that they’re kind of hungry for that which has been hidden from them or any access to more information.
I mean, this might sound odd, but I feel like the same instinct for one’s want to belief in a kind of – in magic as a young person, right, is a search for a kind of truth, is a search for something out there that can provide solutions to the problems that I feel all the time around me. And what feels really negligent on the part of adults in our country right now is to deny kids access to the very tools that – and information that can help lead to that fairer society. So, I’m with you 100%. Let’s trust them. I don’t see another way out. I mean, there was that – I don’t know if you saw that article in the Washington Post last summer that was about all the hubbub in Traverse City, Michigan. And The New York Times interviewer interviewed a second grader and the second-grader who was white was grappling with what she had learned about racism. And she said, “Although it hurt to hear about it and learn about it, it made me want to learn more so that I could do more.” If a second grader can do this, then God, can’t we as old broken people, I guess?
Jess: I actually, really appreciate that you say there were so many more anecdotes of children taking action or young people taking action that you wanted to put in. I actually so appreciated that the action chapter didn’t come until the very end. I think it was maybe chapter 20, because I think the mistake so many white adults make is that rush into the action. I think we saw that. I think this extreme pendulum from the summer of 2020 to the summer of 2021 with evidence of the danger of white folks rushing to action to check it off a checklist. Well, what do we do? How do we fix it? Without doing all the understanding first and that the action comes from understanding. And I felt like your book, the way it was structured, I actually really appreciated that the action didn’t come until much later on. And yes, I think you could fill many volumes of the beautiful actions young people did. But the power of the book was really – well, let’s get to the understanding that leads to that action.
Brendan: I really appreciate that, because that was the point. And to undergird all action with four chapters of listening first, because the listening is, I think, an action. And it’s the action that at least folks like me need to do a lot more before I engage in any other of that public action after I’ve heard that call to action. But speaking of listening, Jeanie, I see you hovering by the microphone.
Jeanie: Right, totally hovering. Before you get to listening, though, you do this really important paradigm shift. And I actually took pictures of these pages and the cover and sent it to my friend Erika Saunders, because she’s the person who said to me, “You know, white privilege is a rather sanitizing phrase. It covers up all sorts of evils.” And then you really articulate it really well. And I’m going to read from page 60. I’m going to read this time, because I’m a librarian and I love that.
When I was growing up, I was taught that racism denies. It denies people their voting rights, their access to more valuable housing, their ability to compete for higher-paying jobs. The list of things racism denied was long– it is long.
But I never looked at it the other way around– I was never taught to look at it like this: if racism disadvantages some people, then it also advantages others. Think about it:
If one person is denied more valuable housing, another person gets it.
If one person is denied a higher paying job, someone else gets it.
And if you deny one person something, you’re giving the advantage to another person. Or privileges, right. And with racism, the denials give those advantages to– you guessed it– white people. So, the privileges go to white people… and we are right back to white privilege.
And I think that’s really important given what Jess said, is that we talk about racism in this generic way. But we never talk about how it impacts us as white folks, how we are complicit with it. And I really appreciated that you shift that paradigm. And I wondered if you could talk a little bit about that comes really early in the book, before the listening, way before the action and I wondered if we could talk about that as a group a little bit.
Brendan: Yeah, I really appreciate that, because I grappled with the term white privilege in and of itself, because I often think that it sanitizes the extreme horrors of white supremacy and a culture that is so good at making its white supremacy, because that is imbedded, encoded into our legal system from the inception of our Constitution. And so, I grappled with using that term, because I think it’s important to name white supremacy. And because I want the book to be an invitation for folks who may be wrestling with it, I was consciously making a choice to use a term that I felt like was more widely understood and even if it’s challenged or whatever it might be, it might not feel as threatening as naming it as white supremacy. And I have heard criticism about that. And I really hear it and take it to heart, but I made the choice that I wanted to share that with you all to see what you think too.
But I also wanted to think about it in a way where you could talk about advantages as privileges, because I also want to use the term privilege that white folks who are not economically advantaged often, they’d rub-up against that word privilege and they say, well, I’m not privileged. But I wanted to talk about what social privilege looks like that has nothing to do with economics. And so, I felt like it was a term that I could go in both directions with it in a way that – and talk about it.
And as I mentioned in the book, I wanted to use the phrase from Claudia Rankine, like, it’s just white living, it’s living as a white person. And in earlier drafts that actually littered the text a lot more, but it became pretty redundant, and you have to cut some things. But I’m curious. I’m curious what everybody else thinks about that. I really appreciate this question. So, I’m curious to hear your thoughts.
Christie: One of the things that I’m thinking about goes back to that idea or question of audience and what it means to provide an onramp for folks who are entering into conversation. And a good friend and mentor of mine, Paul Yoon, talks about this metaphor of a flower opening or closing. And in his work, he talks about the need to allow for that opening in order for anything to penetrate and get through. And that, even in moments where he wants to be brutally honest and use language in its most precise form, he’s recognized that if that same language closes a person off from being able to hear that important message, then he’s lost his potential for that audience. And so, it’s tricky, because in your book, you do such a beautiful job talking about how language impacts our ideas, impacts our behaviors, impacts how we move through the world as white folks and so there is this desire or need for precision of language and there is the desire or need for onramps.
And I think that in some ways, the older the person the more gradual the onramp has been, in my experience, the more gradual that onramp is needed. So, when I think about, for example, my previous work mainly with sixth-graders, their walls of white supremacist construction were still really porous. They hadn’t solidified yet. And so, it was easier to penetrate through, because they didn’t have this sense of unlearning that my graduate students who are teachers needed to do when confronted with the exact same material. And so, when confronted with this idea of race as a social construct, my sixth graders were like, “Cool, it’s like gender. Moving on.” My graduate students were like, “Wait, biology, phenotype, what?” And so, it just makes me think about for your text that the onramp that I want to offer and provide for folks, I – in some ways, I wanted this text to be in the hands of adults more than young people, because I almost think that young people in that I’ve encountered could handle a more brutal onramp. I think you offer a really kind, compassionate and thoughtful onramp for folks. So, it makes me think about Liz Kleinrock’s Start Here, Start Now and how clear in her author’s note she was about that text offering onramps for educators who are coming into the work.
And I do feel that that has been missing a bit from what’s available to folks. I see a lot of 201, 301, 401 type of texts, I don’t see as many 101 texts that are honest and authentic, and that I feel comfortable putting in people’s hands. And I think this to me was that beautiful onramp that folks can take into the conversation to then continue through.
Jess: That I agree with Christie.
Brendan: It connects us everything you said earlier though to Jess when you were talking about teachers and we were talking about the audience for the book, as you were saying Christie. And honestly, one of my hopes is that it’s really read by a lot of teachers. That’s exactly what I mean it’s a book that’s published, it’s a YA book. But the hope is that it’s read by the people who work supposedly for and serve young folks the most. And it’s interesting, because I like the term onramps and I like the idea of that flower opening, I think that’s a beautiful image and I hadn’t heard that before and I really appreciate that.
And I’m thinking about a white boy that I met in Orlando, Florida who after reading All American Boys was grappling with the stories that his family had told about his white grandfather who was a cop in the Bronx, in the 1970s. And if – even for him, I think, if I had been too precise or the novel had been too precise or in the presentation at the school had been too precise, it may have closed down an opportunity for him to arrive at the – at what he shared with me after the presentation, which was, why can’t two things be true? Meaning, my family says we have to talk only about him being a hero, only he’s a hero, he’s a hero, he’s a hero. What if he was a hero for some and not for others, and possibly was the villain in other people’s stories? Can’t he be both? And that’s a 17-year-old boy who was grappling with just the real complexities of life. And I feel like if you create onramps and not to say, and you should be ashamed, and you should be – you should feel guilty and you should feel horrible and you should stop talking to your family, like that doesn’t get us anywhere when he can now be a more active member and maybe over dinner conversation can help complicate that story in a loving way with more family. And I think that’s the hope is that that’s to me what the other talk is about. It’s about creating the expansive sense of what that white racial identity is and how it’s impacted the lives of people in our communities, but also ourselves in our families. So, I really appreciate that so much.
Christie: One of the things you have me thinking about is a recent interview with Clint Smith to get back to Jess’s comment about his text earlier. He talks about this idea of white folks using history as a kind of family heirloom and that when history becomes an heirloom, this thing that’s passed down and is untouchable, the harm that can come from that. And what I’m also reflecting on as your speaking gets back to the initial question around white folks speaking with other white folks, I don’t expect my friends of the global majority to have the patience that offering an onramp might require.
I am at no time and I see like lots of nods in the Zoom conversation that the listeners can’t see of like that particular role that I believe white folks can play in the intra-racial, right, those conversations among white people to offer the grace, the patience to sit together in that shame, in that guilt, in those different statuses and not ask that that sitting with happen, the part of our friends who are black, brown, indigenous folks of color, both in the U.S. and abroad, because I understand that that in that on ramping a lot of harm and messiness can take place and happen. And it’s my hope that young people in particular, young white people who are grappling with this and developing their own racial identity are met by a compassionate elder in the work or compassionate young peer who can sit together with them through that messiness and keep them going up that onramp and keep them in the work. And again I don’t hold that expectation of any friends of the global majority. But I do hope for other white folks listening who might have read the book and be in that place of like, what do I do, I want to do something. That can I think be a really concrete place to put some time and energy is sitting together with white peers, white colleagues, with young white people in that kind of learning, unlearning messiness of the onramp.
Jeanie: And I think that that is especially true of white educators in this moment, in this political climate, in this moment we are living in, because I will tell you, it – there have been moments this school year where it has seemed like the work has become impossible. And when I say the work, I mean the antiracist work. That is how do we move forward? How do we move forward when we are under attack with very little support from so many places that have power and privilege and could be supportive? And what I come back to is the words of I know one of Christie’s heroes and many people’s Carla Shalaby, who talks about the power of collective resistance. It used to feel like enough to go in my classroom and close my door and do my antiracist teaching and feel good about it. And it’s no longer working, because one, it’s no longer safe in multiple ways even with all the privilege I as a white educator am wrapped in, it’s no longer safe. And two, it’s not changing the system. So, then it starts to feel impossible when we get to that handwringing stage which I don’t like.
And I come back to that’s why we keep talking to other white educators, because the way to move forward is to do it collectively, right, to join forces and to stand alongside BIPOC educators who have been doing the work and shouldering such a different heavy burden. And then as a white educator, what can I do, like Christie said, I can keep talking about it. And I somewhere wrote down what Brendan said too, that idea of start having these conversations about white privilege and racism all the time, right, be that annoying hand raiser in a staff meeting, keep bringing it up, keep pointing out the problems, keep suggesting a better way, keep sharing the work that students are capable of, because we have to get other white folks to join us. It no longer feels like enough to me to just go in my classroom and close the door. I have to bring folks, and when I say folks, I mean white folks into the work with me. And then collectively we push on admin, we push on school boards to vocally and visibly support us, because that’s how we move forward, right, that’s how we do the work. So, I don’t remember what question I was answering, but…
I just got to – sorry. I know I said you all should do all the talking. But there are a couple things that are like really bubbling for me. And one is Brendan brought up this holding of this kid holding like the hero and the can-do bad things. And I was thinking in your book, especially in chapter six, you really explored the paradox of race that it scientifically doesn’t exist, but that socially it does and has huge impact, right? And so, in a way that kid – that 17-year-old kid is able to like hold paradox. And this book really asked kids to hold paradox. So that’s one thing.
And then I’m thinking just about what you just said and feeling, like, and I am so guilty of this- about the problem with politeness. How often as white folks we defer to politeness instead of standing up and saying, hold on, wait a minute? And Brendan, you give a really great example in your book of that inaction. And how much it takes for us as white folks to stand up and say, what you’re doing right now is racist, like, because we’re so worried about politeness that we forget that they’re harming people in our midst. And who are we protecting with that politeness?
And then the third thing, and then I’m going to shut up and let you all say your brilliant words, because they bubble up in such interesting ways. And thinking about this book is such that your onramp really to borrow Christie’s words, your onramp is your humility in sharing your own stories from your youth, again, and from your adulthood, frankly, again and again and being willing to say, my God. Like, to put yourself out there in this vulnerable way and notice how race and racism shows up in your own life. And I just have such big appreciation for that, and whether it’s about politeness or about the dawning of paradox, or about just your own experience, I just so appreciated that. I don’t have a question. I’m just going to open the floor and mute myself again.
Christie: I’m trying to remember who I first heard the phrase ‘creative noncompliance’ from, but that is also really coming to mind for me, this idea of the many subversive ways that educators can continue in this moment and within the system. And so, it calls to mind. I think one of the sections of the book that stood out to me most was that moment, because I think I recognize myself in it the most, was that moment at the white privilege conference. When asked to “Stand in solidarity by leaving,” this decision made by a white participant about what this indigenous woman might need or want in that moment. And then to have that woman say, like, “No stay, I want you to stay. This is what you meaning white people always do, you get up and leave.” And it makes me think about something that – and again, I’m trying to call to mind, this comes from another person, this idea that if you – if a person were to walk away from whiteness in one situation, you’re likely to just run into it in the next that there isn’t a walking away from whiteness and yet that is in so many ways what white folks keep doing.
And so, one of the things that I hear from educators who are now (white educators in particular) being confronted with this idea of bans on critical race theory is like, well, I’ll just leave. And I want to invite white educators who are sitting with that, I’ll just leave sentiment to consider what it looks like to stay in the same way that the woman asked you to stay in that moment. What does it look like to be in this moment to be subversive to take a risk by teaching what necessarily needs to be taught to our young people? And I want to be really clear here. I’m not asking educators to stay in toxic environments that are actually dangerous to them, and to their health and wellbeing. But what I am asking is in particular for white educators who have privileges within this system, as much as possible to stay and make it better if you’re able.
And again, for folks who are stepping away for reasons of personal health, for reasons of family health, for reasons of wellbeing, for reasons that their school or their environment is too toxic, yes, do those things. And also, if the reason a person is stepping away is to say the system is too white, and the person stepping away is also white, again, I just want to invite a pause before fully pulling away and a request to really look around and consider that perhaps it is in that place that you can do the most work. And perhaps that place really needs you.
Jeanie: It’s okay to call each other in or call each other towards our better selves. And in fact, a lot of the smart people in our lives who can do that, and we shouldn’t expect people of the global majority our friends who are not white to do that for us. But we can lean on each other as white folks to pull us into that place we want to be when we slide and slip and slide in our own indoctrination in white supremacy, because we both got that, right? So, I just wanted to pull out that phrase, loving accountability.
And then I am one of those people who early on in the – what I’m going to call the critical race theory whiplash would say, my goodness, come on, schools aren’t teaching critical race theory. I’m learning about critical race theory in my doc program. That’s not what schools are teaching. Now, I’ve been rethinking that a little bit, because one, I think it’s not very helpful and, two, because it isn’t really accurate. And so it may be that schools are not teaching critical race theory. But while reading your book, I was really seeing what schools are teaching is what critical race theory helps us see, which is the ways in which racism is systemic or you used on page 66, the word systematized.
And so, I really appreciated the way you pulled out historical outlines, legal outcomes, your grandfather, I felt a real kinship to that, that’s my own working class grandfather’s story and his benefits from being in World War II. And you sort of lay out the way in which just like critical race theory would that the nature of racism in this country isn’t about a few bad apples, a few individuals who feel icky things. It’s really about legal precedent and systems at work to produce the outcomes that are racist. And I guess that’s what antiracist teachers are doing, right? They’re teaching accurate history that demonstrates the systemic nature of racism.
And so, I wanted to talk a little bit more than Christie just did about how teachers might continue to do this really important work while preparing themselves for challenges from – in Vermont, what’s happening is anti-CRT folks are calling in to school board meetings on Zoom from like states in the West, right, like – so how can we prepare ourselves for what’s going to happen? What we know is going to happen, because when you disrupt inequitable systems, people are going to push back. What might we do so that we’re ready for that? And Jess, I’m going to invite you to speak first.
Jess: Me? So, I think I said most of what I have to say about this earlier on that I don’t have a good, easy answer. And I think the truth is, I think sometimes educators do need permission to know that sometimes it is too much and there is a threat. And it is unsafe. And listen to that too, because I think part of why we need to rethink saying, well, schools aren’t teaching CRT is that it’s really dismissive, because it’s so beside the point. Nobody cares really if we’re teaching CRT or not. That was never the point, right?
So, I think we were also unprepared for that argument that we were like that was our first response, like, what you’re talking about? That’s – I don’t even know what that is. I’m not doing that. But again, that doesn’t matter, because it’s again that desire to protect, protect your children, protect their comfort, but also protect the systems you’ve benefited from. And so, I do want to say that I think sometimes it isn’t safe and to know that and trust that too. And then we build that collective resistance.
And I will also say this: before I dig in with my students to any conversations about racism or racist systems, we first celebrate the heck out of identity, and we celebrate who we all are as individuals and facets of identity, and we talk about the many parts of us. And we celebrate so much, because that means more than hanging a rainbow flag on my wall, right? That doesn’t create a safe space. What creates a safe space is naming identities. Being able to give space to conversations about all pieces of identity, modeling my own identity and talking about it.
And then once we celebrate identity, then we built on that foundation, because we have these sturdy legs to stand on them, right? And then we move into how does our identity impact how we move through the world? And I make it so clear that there are some parts of our identity that in some situations make it harder for us to move through the world. But that’s not because something is wrong with who you are, it’s because something is wrong with this world, right? So, I’m not saying that protects us. But I think it’s sort of contextualizes teaching about systems, because we look at it through a lens of who we are impacts how we move through the world, right?
And so, again, that’s not some magic solution, but it can help when we start there, it becomes a little bit more just what we do here, right? We just celebrate who we are and we are honest about who we are. It sometimes makes things easier and sometimes makes things harder and we’re going to look at all of that together and there’s space for all of that together here. So, it can be kind of a good place to go to when it’s starting to feel like, there is nothing I can say that’s going to not be attacked. And certainly, there will be people who attack but it can kind of cushion some of that.
Christie: I think, to what both of you are saying, I think one of the great lies that has been perpetuated is this idea that it’s deeply rooted in shame and guilt. And although there are places in the statuses that one can point to in which a person might be feeling shame and guilt. And also, I want a name that I can’t control how the curriculum I teach in my classroom lands on my students. And so, I aim for joy, I aim for opportunities, for lightness, for those breathing moments. And also, I know that the same lesson can strike five students in five entirely different ways. And I don’t want to pretend to control for that. But I do want to offer that I am willing to sit with any student and the authentic reactions that they’re having to what I’m teaching.
And I want to name that in their really beautiful text Radical Dharma which has been foundational to my own understanding. I just love the way in which Lama Rod Owens and Angel Kyodo Williams talks about the harms of white supremacy to all people across racial identity and society. And they name really beautifully that white supremacy harms all of us. It harms people at different rates and in different ways. So, I don’t want to pretend that the harms of white supremacy that I’ve experienced in my white body are the same harms of white supremacy that friends of the global majority experience. But I do want to name that I think there are opportunities and ways in which when white supremacy is named, and the harm of it is named that white students, young white people, white professionals, academics, educators, all of us can name the way that this has harmed us too, has harmed our relationship, has fractured relationship, both with people of the global majority and with one another, has harmed our familial lineages in the way in which our families have broken from their ancestry in order to meld itself into this project of whiteness that exists here in the United States.
And I think that there is a real beauty and and joy that can come in naming this universal harm that folks have experienced through this project of white supremacy. That is to say that critical race theory and this teaching is about restoring and repairing from that harm and moving toward a place of healing. And as they name in their text, a place of true collective liberation in which it’s about all of us in solidarity moving away from the harms of white supremacy that hurt all of us toward a more bright and beautiful future in which every person can be more whole in their bodies, and in their lives and in their relationships with others. And so I think my hope is that in teaching the truth, it’s actually a practice of healing as Shawn Ginwright might name. And that my hope is that it’s a practice of practicing liberation as Dr. Carla Shalaby might talk about. And so how is it that together as educators and young people, we can practice liberation in our classrooms toward that more whole and beautiful vision, which is not about loading people with guilt and shame, but instead is about actually moving away from those things that harm us most towards something that’s really going to be better for everybody.
Jeanie: My goodness. Thank you for this joyful and hopeful conversation about this amazing book that I think white folks should read, lots and lots and lots of white folks should read and my dog agrees. And we only just touched on a little bit of the text. There are so many more. I’ve got all these like bookmarks in here where I wanted to quote other sections. Christie’s got a gazillion post it notes. We’re only just getting started. And yet this feels like the perfect place to end. Christie, Jess, Brendan, thank you so much for joining me to talk about this. I so appreciate it. And Charlie does, too.
Jess: Thank you for having us. This was a soul-filling conversation.
Brendan: This is fantastic. Thanks so much to all of you. This is great.
Christie: Thank you, Jeanie. Thank you, Charlie.
Jeanie: I’m Jeanie. And this has been an episode of #vtedReads talking about what Vermont’s educators and students are reading. Thank you to Brendan Kieley. Did I do that right?
Brendan: Yes, thank you. Thank you so much.
Jeanie: Jess Lifshitz and Christie Nold for appearing on the show and talking with me about The Other Talk. If you’re looking for a copy of The Other Talk, check your local library. Thanks to our Audio Engineer Audrey Homan and to Life LeGeros and Rachel Mark for their podcast support. To find out more about Vermont Ed Reads including past episodes, upcoming guests and a whole lot more, you can visit vtedreads.tarrantinstitute.org. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @vtedreads. This podcast is a project of the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education at the University of Vermont.
I’ve had to work really hard to learn how to collaborate. Yet, my K-12 teachers always gave me A’s on my collaborative work. Why? Because I got stuff done! In fact, I often took over, doing most of the project myself. My classmates let me. And my teachers routinely stamped my report card, “works well with others.” If you are an educator, then you have known kids like me.
It wasn’t until I took a Collaborative Practices course that I realized I wasn’t collaborating at all. True collaboration, after all, means that everyone contributes, that everyone participates, that together we create something we could not have created on our own: a project, a conversation, and understanding.
What might my teachers have done instead of throwing me in a group and hoping I shared power, responsibility, and airtime with my classmates? How might they have built collaborative capacity, mine and my classmates?
Here are two strategies for developing and deepening collaborative skills that are not group projects.
1: Hexagonal thinking
Easily one of my favorite collaborative activities with kids or adults, hexagonal thinking fosters dialogue and collective meaning-making. It requires a bit of setup before the magic happens, and even then it can be hard to imagine, so let’s start with a short video of what it looks like in action.
First, identify key vocabulary and terms you want to focus on. For example:
Characters, places, and plot points in a story
Elements of the water cycle (or rock cycle, or life cycle)
Historical (or current) people, places, and events
Parts and functions of government
You can do this ahead of time or work with your participants to identify the words and terms you put on your hexagons.
Second, print and cut out your hexagons, or create your hexagons online, putting one term or phrase on each hexagon. Be sure to leave a few blank hexagons so groups can add additional terms as needed.
Third, provide a prompt or question for your groups. Instruct them that there is no one way to arrange the hexagons, their job is to make meaning together to understand the relationships between the terms. Each hexagon has six sides, and when two hexagons share a side it indicates that they are related in some way. Remind them that they can add additional terms as needed on blank hexagons.
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Finally, be sure to lean on your class norms or agreements to ensure that all participants have a voice in the conversation.
Participants work together to discuss the relationships between words, creating a visual map of the concepts. Each hexagon has six sides, limiting the number of hexagons it touches and participants must decide how the various hexagons are related to one another. Once students begin to move the hexagons around the room should buzz with conversation. As an instructor, I tend to walk around and observe, checking to make sure that everyone is participating. If a group gets quiet I ask them a question, “why did you put that hexagon there?” That prompt is usually enough to get the conversation and the hexagons moving again.
When to use hexagonal thinking
I’ve found this collaborative meaning-making to be useful in all kinds of ways. Sometimes we start a unit with vocabulary and terms and see what we already know, a kind of pre-assessment. It also comes in handy mid-unit as a kind of formative assessment: what concepts are your students understanding? What ideas and understandings require reteaching? Hexagonal thinking can also be used as students move towards summative assessment as a pre-writing strategy to organize their thoughts. I’ve even bookended an instructional unit with hexagonal thinking, giving students an opportunity to reflect on their learning.
However, you use hexagonal thinking, consider ways to capture students’ thinking:
Snap photos of their hexagonal maps.
Have students take videos as they share their thinking about why they arranged the hexagons the way they did.
Encourage groups to glue their hexagons on paper and take notes on the meaning of their arrangement.
Don’t forget to debrief!
Leave time for the class to reflect on their experience. What went well? What could they have done better? Did everyone contribute to the conversation? What collaborative skills did they use? Were there things that got in the way of collaboration? How might they improve? Without this reflective conversation students may not grow their collaborative skills – this step is crucial!
2: Tiles
I learned about this collaborative strategy from Emily Rinkema and Stan Williams, authors of The Standards Based Classrom: Make Learning the Goal. It’s similar to hexagonal thinking in that groups of students move pieces of paper with key vocabulary around in order to make collective meaning and deepen their understanding. It’s also a little bit easier to prepare: slips of paper are way easier to create than are hexagons.
Tiles how to
Prepare your tiles. Either with your participants or ahead of time, identify keywords or phrases related to the topic or area of study. Put each of these words or phrases on a slip of paper, and include some blank slips of paper for additional terms that emerge during the conversation.
Do some sorting rounds. Ask your learners to sort the tiles in some way. You can give them a way to sort the tiles (such as people, places, and things) or let them create their own way to sort the tiles. Once participants have sorted the tiles, ask them to share out their method of sorting them with the class. Follow this with another sorting round, organizing the tiles in a different way.
Use tiles to make meaning. Ask participants to arrange their tiles in a way that communicates their understanding. This could be a flow chart, an image, a mind map, or some other kind of representation. They might use them to outline the plot of the story, explain a phenomenon, or show a cause and effect relationship, for example.
Again, take time to have groups share their thinking with their peers and learn from each other. Tiles, like their cousins the hexagons, can be used as a warm-up, formative assessment, or to prepare for summative assessment. And participants can capture and share the results using photos, videos, or glue and paper.
Finally, just like with hexagonal thinking, take time to debrief the activity and process collaborative strategies and areas for growth.
Collaboration is hard – and requires practice!
Group projects are great ways to leverage collaboration in the classroom, but students need to learn and practice collaborative skills in smaller ways in order to leverage them in larger ways. How do you prepare your students to collaborate?
Why, when our minds can be so clear on the direction we want to go and the actions we want to take. We can be clear that we want change, and what that change is, yet somehow we fall back into old patterns. Habits.
I’m not talking about changing others, or changing the world. Though often I sure wish I had that power. No, I’m talking about changing myself. Changing the way I do things. The changes I want to make in how I show up so that things feel better. Flow more smoothly. Yield more satisfying results.
If you are someone who thinks about self-improvement too, then this post is for you
In my work as a professional learning facilitator, I work with a lot of educators who want to make changes in their teaching practice and school. Some want to give students more voice and choice. Others want to create learning that is more engaging for students. And most want to identify and disrupt inequitable systems and practices – in their own classroom and in their school.
And we all know that making these changes is hard.
In many cases, there are a lot of forces keeping the status quo in place. Things like school schedules, grading and reporting practices, and even public sentiment. Or a global pandemic. Often, these “systemic forces” work against the changes that we are trying to make. These constraints take significant focus and sustained effort to shift and this discussion of habit hacking is less relevant here. And even so, many of these educators persist to make headway and improve the quality of learning in their classroom and school.
Yet in other cases, even with some of these constraints removed, we have a hard time making a change. We see and understand the change we want to make, we are clear on why it’s worth it, and there don’t seem to be any significant barriers. We have control! Yet we make only small, inconsistent, unsustainable progress toward these goals. And it’s not for a lack of effort.
How habits might be key to change
I think I might have stumbled onto some information that might help us stick with the change process. One key might be to make small, intentional shifts in our daily habits.
And our systems are made up of our habits. The small, daily, subconscious acts that make up most of our behavior. Our operating system.
So it’s not that our goals aren’t important — they are. It’s that they are insufficient. It’s that we’re on autopilot most of the time — which is a very good thing from an evolutionary standpoint. It helps us conserve energy. It’s our amazing brain doing the amazing things it does to help us be the amazing human being that we are.
Except when autopilot gets in the way of us making the changes we’re seeking. Because we fall back on our subconscious habits. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
Getting curious about our patterns
You are probably pretty clear on your goals. But how much do you know about your systems? Those constellations of habits that make up the way things shake out?
The first step in adjusting our habits is becoming aware of them. What are the ways we are habitually showing up in our lives? Where are the patterns in our behavior? We can’t adjust something unless we’re aware of it.
When I was teaching sixth grade, one of my goals was to share power with my students. But in order to achieve that goal, I needed self-awareness. I needed to understand how power was showing up in my classroom and in my practice. And I needed to be able to see the habits that made up the system of power in my classroom. What were the small ways that I was — or wasn’t —sharing power?
With your goal in mind, consider your practice. How do you interact with students in your classroom? What are the patterns of behavior you notice? How do you “usually” do things?
Are there actions that you take each day, phrases that you use? Where are you on autopilot?
Once we have revealed some of this unconscious behavior to ourselves, it’s easier to begin to think about how to shift it.
Sometimes engaging others — colleagues or even our students — can help us see our blind spots. What if you and your students investigated the habits of your classroom together? What might you discover? It may be helpful to focus on routines and rhythms of daily life. What happens at the beginning of class? At the end? What are your goals for these times?
Now that we can see our patterns, it’s time to think about which habits we have control over and are also getting in the way of our goals.
Part of sharing power with my students means giving them more autonomy and responsibility in the day to day operations of our classroom. So I know that I want my students to have more voice and choice, but notice that I am in the habit of planning and facilitating each morning meeting, it seems quicker and easier. Now I’ve discovered one of the habits that could be getting in the way.
We will probably notice all sorts of habitual patterns in our behavior and in the systems we’re part of. Some of these patterns will be super helpful. Others will be getting in the way of the changes we want to make. Some will be both — it’s quicker and easier if I plan morning meeting, but it also doesn’t give my students a chance to lead. So we need to sift through these insights to figure out what might make the most impact.
Then choose. The key here is that we want to go small. Big change is hard. Small change is less hard. We want to identify one habitual pattern that we want to shift to bring our teaching practice closer to our goals.
Building systems for success
Once we’ve zeroed in on the shift we want to make, it’s time to create a new pattern. This is hard. This takes effort. This chafes against what we’re used to. Our brain will tell us it’s easier and faster if we just do it the old way. (It’s not wrong, that smart brain!) That’s ok. Keep going. Remember that these small habits make up our system, and “we don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.” (Thanks again, James.) So let’s tune those systems!
So if I want my students to gradually take over planning and running morning meetings to give them more voice and choice, I need to scaffold the process. I’ll need to teach them how I plan the meeting, selecting a greeting, share topic, and activity. We’ll need to compile a list of all the greetings, shares, and games we know. I may need to create a planning form and calendar, and coach and remind them to use these tools. It will take time. It might take a couple of weeks to build the systems, and a few more weeks of practicing before it’s happening smoothly and relatively effortlessly. But this gradual release of responsibility will help them gain power, and it will help me share power.
Over time, together, we will develop a new habitual pattern: students in this classroom plan and lead our morning meeting. We share power in this space. And once we’ve figured out this new habit, we can look for another small habit to tweak to continue to pursue sharing power.
A practice, not a perfect
Teaching is a practice – not a perfect. So is changing our habits. Once we’ve become aware of a habit pattern, and become intentional about why and how we want to shift it, change becomes more possible. Not easy, but doable.
In habit changes, consistency trumps intensity, so making small, wobbly, persistent progress toward a new habit is much more effective than making grand and short-lived efforts toward change. Sometimes keeping track of our progress helps us persist (and even celebrate) in change.
Change is hard. And we can change.
What habit shifts might help you reach your goals for improving your teaching practice?
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?
Listeners, I’m going to ask you to bear with me on this one. This is one of my favorite episodes we’ve ever recorded because, in it, you’ll hear students at U-32 school in Montpelier, Vermont, get to bring their questions about the book “Dig”, by A.S. King, directly to the author.
If you haven’t read it, “Dig” is a powerful young adult novel talking about white experiences of white supremacy in the United States. And from the questions these students brought author A.S. King, it resonates deeply with students as they work to dismantle racism in this country.
So why am I asking you to bear with me?
We recorded this conversation over Zoom, and all the students in this episode, along with fabulous librarian Meg Allison, were in their school, so all were masked. Let me draw you a picture, listeners: A.S. King in her attic bower, me in my lovely home recording space, and Meg and her students gathered around a library table in the school library in Montpelier. As the students all come up to the laptop to talk with King, you may hear chairs scraping or shoes scuffing, the laptop being jostled — the whole deal.
That’s why we’ve also made this episode available as a full captioned video on our YouTube channel, so if that’s more your speed, you have that option available.
Thanks for bearing with us and remembering how much educators and students have to bear right now.
I’m Jeanie Phillips, and this is Vermont Ed Reads, talking about what educators and students in Vermont are reading.
Meg: To be able to talk to the author of Dig! We have spent the last month talking and reading about it, and it has sparked so many conversations. Students are invited to come up and ask a question. Really, thank you so much, Amy, I want the kids to take this away.
Amy(AS King): I have a question, though, for you. What made you decide to do this? What made you like it, what started this whole thing?
Meg: After I had read this book, I found it like it’s an essential book. It’s an essential book for young people to read. And so, we are hosting book groups here as well. It’s just, I think it actually should be like a part of our curriculum. And I know some of our students are going to talk to you about that. But especially in Vermont, we are a school that flies a Black Lives Matter flag out on our flagpole.
Amy: That’s why I want to move there Meg, that’s why I want to move there.
Meg: We’re a school that successfully raised a student-led campaign to ban the Confederate flag on our campus, not just the parking lot, but on campus. And it sparked conversations in our school. And as we evolve in these conversations towards equity and racial justice, really thinking about like, what is our role as white students, white people, white humans? And in your book, just like Jeanie, and I were speaking before you get on the call, we can’t think of another book that unpacks the roots of white supremacy and the way that you do. So, this is a conversation sparker that we hope continues throughout our building.
Amy: Awesome. All right, let’s give it to the students. And thank you for that explanation, because I didn’t know where exactly this started. So good morning, guys. How’s it going? How’s Vermont today?
Students: Cold.
Amy: Awesome. Throw questions at me. Ask me whatever you want. I’m an open book, no pun intended.
Elijah: Yeah. So I’m Elijah. And so my question basically comes down to this. So I’m currently talking with English teachers here about putting this book as part of our curriculum because it’s far better than some of the other books we’re reading. But I want to know about your decision to write it as a young adult book?
Amy: Ah, brilliant question. Excellent. Thank you. Nice to meet you, Elijah. Great question.
Well, here’s, here’s the deal. It’s funny. I found myself writing young adult literature. I’ve been writing books for 15 years, and it took me, well, took me 15 years to get published. And so I’d written about eight or nine novels. And at that point, I was getting rejected a lot, because my books were weird. And I am female. And it sounds like a very strange combo. But it’s very realistic for me to explain to you that this book, like this book, will not make me much money come into the future. You know, I’m saying. It’s not, it’s not a business in that way for me, because I am a woman and I write books like this. If I was not a woman, and I wrote surrealist or strange fiction, it would be a little different now. Anyway, shoot, what was my point?
Anyway, so when it came to how I ended up in young adult literature, is that one of my books when I finally got an agent, was very weird. And somebody called him up and said, you got anything weird? And he said, yeah, I got this book. And he sent this one weird book called The Dust of 100 Dogs to this, this editor, but the editor published ya work, young adult work. And so we got on the phone. I had been writing for 15 years thinking I was writing adult work, which I think I am, I think it’s a mix. And I think my main characters are teenagers. And there’s a reason for that. And he, his name is Andrew Carr, the person who bought that first book, and also the person who published this book.
Okay, so we had a bunch in between where I was with different publishers, but I came back home to Andrew, he is, he is my favorite, and he understands me. But we define and he defined at the time young adult work as being about young adults versus for young adults. And for me, my original plan,
when I first wanted to be an author, I was in eighth grade, and I wrote down on a legal tablet that I wanted to help adults understand teenagers better and help teenagers understand adults better.
And I believe that that is exactly what my work does, because if fully formed adults, whether they be grandparents or parents. And if adults would read these books, then they would get a glimpse into young adult literature, not like most things are young adults’ life should say. And like most things teen in our culture, we roll our eyes, right.
And also young adult work can also be, you know, a little bit like snack food in spots. But so can adult work. Like go in any bookstore, there’s snack food everywhere. But then you’ve got your shelves where there’s more, more thoughtful, I don’t know, not more thoughtful everybody, it’s hard to write a book no matter what kind of book you write. But when it comes to why this ended up in young adult, it’s a. because I was there and b. it’s the one place a weird woman can publish, Elijah. Okay, I’m really being serious, I would not be able to publish my surreal books. And like Switch, which came after it, are those sorts of more surreal ideas. If I wasn’t in young adult literature, because women don’t, aren’t usually allowed on that playing field.
But the biggest one is because I care very much about teenagers, the mental health of teenagers. And I believe that your generation, a generation15, if you start thinking you’ve already been thinking about social justice issues you’ve already been thinking about, about equity and inclusion, you’re already thinking about that. My generation doesn’t care.
We’re Generation X. And we’re like, we were losers from way back. We want this to happen, but we seem to have no power or control. That’s how it feels. We’re all in our 40’s and 50’s. So it’s like, for me, the reason I want to love up teenagers so much is because I think the more support that they get from adults, the more likely they are to change the world and continue to move forward. And I just refuse to roll my eyes. I actually write this for teenagers, because I know you’ll understand it. And many adults instead will write a review that said this makes white people feel bad and do not understand how ironic that review is. Now I will shut up. And thank you for that question.
Elijah: Thank you.
Amy: Thanks for that question.
Jeanie: That entire answer was quotable.
Amy: Oh, good. Let’s go to it.
Esther: So. Hi. Hi, my name is Esther.
Amy: Hi Esther.
Esther: And I just wanted to ask about like, kind of like, books we read in school and curriculum and what your take on reading the classics is? I know that in U-32 right now, there’s a lot of debate over which of the classics are acceptable to read in class. A specific example is Heart of Darkness, which was recently removed from the curriculum. And we also wanted to know, just like, where you think a book like Dig could fit into a curriculum, and if there’s a genre of the classics that it could replace?
Amy: Okay, great question. Okay, so I might have an antiquated or controversial view of the classics. And because the classics can cover so many things, like I mean, we are not talking about Shakespeare, we’re talking about largely, I think, dead white men, you know, I think that’s what we’re talking about 20th century and a lot of times, white dudes. I think, I think they fit in, in a weird way.
You know, here’s the deal. I love teaching grammar, so I can break the rules. I love teaching what good writing what acceptable or good writing rules are so that we can break them. And so in a way, I think that we wouldn’t understand a book like Dig if we didn’t have a read-along, if we didn’t have something else, right. So To Kill a Mockingbird is a fantastic example. It’s a beautiful book. I’m sorry, it is. It is now steeped in white saviorism. It’s steeped in so many things that we have words for now that other people had words for then, but we didn’t use them, white people didn’t use them then, you know. But To Kill a Mockingbird is a beautiful story but it’s got problems. We’ll use that that Bo Burnham problematic word. It’s problematic for a bunch of different reasons. However, I think it’s still worth reading as long as we read it with an eye with the lens right with the be able to look at it and then discuss what is problematic about it. So for me, when we read classics, it’s good to be able to look at what’s problematic.
For example, if we read John Updike, which most people don’t. I come from John Updike country, but, you know, we should talk about his problematic representation of women and in fairness most of those books, we should talk about the problematic representation of women and people of color. So it’s good to have a little bit of knowledge of the classics. as for where Dig would fit in, I think it’s nice to read it alongside something. It has been read alongside To Kill a Mockingbird in at least two schools from what I understand. It’s certainly more modern, it’s edgy, it’s going to be tough to get past certain, you know, certain people where we are at the moment, all of our schools but I know here in Pennsylvania, we’re really dealing with this large uptick in book challenges and things like this. So even if there’s a swear word in it, there’s a problem, let alone if there’s any sexuality discussed, or any sort of things like this. But more importantly, if white supremacy is discussed, it’s also getting banned, which is really quite disheartening, but also telling. Let’s be fair, I mean, we know what fight we’re fighting, right? We can say states’ rights all we want when we talk, you know, people like the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, it was about states’ rights. And this is kind of the same thing. It’s like this is about appropriateness because of the books. I don’t think it is if you’re banning books based on the fact that the author is, you know, is black in the case of, say, York, which is just over the river.
But anyway, I think it has a place in schools, and probably upper grades, because of the content. I would definitely say, you know, not to say that ninth-graders can’t read it. But some ninth-graders might not be mature enough to have the discussions that we’re having now. And it’s not no offense to ninth graders, either. I have one, a son, he’s very mature. But I think that it’s upper grades. And I think that it’s, I don’t know, it’s right now being used as a freshman summer read for a good few college programs. And I think that’s a really great way to walk into college to understand what college you’re walking into, to think about your own privilege before you get on a campus is a really great thing to have. So I think that though, that would also transfer to where we could use it in schools. So but as for classics, it’s funny, and there’s some that we really need to let go of. And I think that classics heavy curriculum canon for like, if you’re looking at like 9 to 12. And if it’s if there’s more than 50% classics, I think that we need to rethink that because it’s not, they’re not going to connect as much with today’s teens, more so than even us. Like for me, I could read a book from the 40s and connect more because I still had a phone connected to the wall. I still, I was walking down the street in New York this week. And the amount of times my son and I were like, oh, I wonder what that was. And I just said, Hey, Siri, blah, blah, blah, and ask the question, and she answered it. It’s a different world now truly a different world. It’s not just that we move forward, it’s that it really is a different world. And I think that our literature and our canon needs to reflect that.
Esther: Well, thank you very much.
Amy: Hey, thanks, Esther. Great questions and I’m going on and on. But that’s me.
Maya: Hi, I’m Maya. And a few years ago, we spoke with another author. And she talked about using sensitivity readers before publishing her book. And I was wondering if you have any sensitivity as readers before publishing, because you take a lot of characters and a lot of different perspectives. And yeah, I’m just wondering how you dealt with that?
Amy: I’m very lucky to have the editor I have. Andrew Carr is incredibly conscientious when it comes to all of those things. And we talked about sensitivity readers more than once. The character in the book, Ian, who’s really the only character of color in the book, that was intentional, because I wasn’t talking about race in the way that I you know. I’ve been wrestling with this, I just want to say this, like, I’ve been wrestling with the idea of race and whiteness, and what to do about racism since I was a very young kid growing up where I grew up, because it was very, I luckily had a very anti-racist parents and because I had anti-racist parents, I certainly noticed this stuff more. And, before I graduated high school, I’ve seen people in full Klan robes, you know, you need to understand, in fact, before I graduated high school used to deliver pizza to the grand dragon of the Pennsylvania Ku Klux Klan, so, and to meetings in his house where he had, you know, Nazi flags, and he was also a member of the American Nazi Party and, and had portraits of Hitler and things like this. And so I have been grappling with race a long time, so give me a second. Sometimes my grief brain gives me what was your question again, Maya.
Maya: If you use any sensitivity readers?
Amy: Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Alright so, when it came to Ian’s role, I was terrified when I published this book. Cause I didn’t know if anybody was going to, you know, take the opportunity to run me through the painful machine of Twitter, and other places like that. But we didn’t use a sensitivity reader. I suggested it more than once. Andrew read it. We combed it pretty well. I think he probably had a few people maybe to bounce some ideas, but maybe not. I honestly don’t know. Between the two of us we realized what needed to be done to make sure that it was exactly what we wanted it to be. I tend to not write out of my lane very much. The experiences in the book beyond just Ian are things that either I’ve experienced or are close to me via the volunteer work that I do. I’ve written or I’ve worked with, I’ve worked with a great many survivors and I am a survivor of a great many things. And so because of that, I feel that I can write points of view like Loretta’s family, or Malcolm’s family or Malcolm’s you know, and even just the completely fractured family that the whole family is. I have lived through that. And what’s interesting is that I wrote the book, it came out in March 2019, right.
And in December of 2018, so only three months prior, my entire family was exploded, my birth family. And my own family was had exploded that the year prior, through meddling with, like, it’s funny, I tweeted today something about how we were all taught, we’re taught that a good life is uncomplicated and free of villains.
It is not. You will have villains in your life, you will have people in your life that really screw with you, that really stir the pot and can in fact decimate your family. And that is what happened to me. I had one agent decimate both my family and my larger family. So when it comes to sensitivity readers anyway, about those sorts of traumas, I don’t need them, because I’ve experienced them. And I work with people like that. And then I’ve worked with people like that for decades, decades and decades.
Maya: Thank you.
Amy: You’re welcome. Thanks, Maya.
Kristen: Hello, I’m Kristen.
Amy: Hi Kristen.
Kristen: So, Dig has so many layers and small intertwined details. So I was wondering, like, was your writing process to write the book and how many drafts did it take?
Amy: Oh, boy. Well, Kristen, a trillion drafts, a trillion drafts. So it started okay. The writing process was pretty simple. It was the usual Amy stuff. First of all, I use, I didn’t realize it was surrealist writing that I wrote, like, 27 books before I have a student interview me and told me about the surrealist writing process. But basically, I sit down, I have a feeling, I make a character out of my feeling. I often say basically, that my characters are thesis statements. If you wrote an essay about something you cared passionately about, my characters are those thesis statements personified. Sounds weird, right?
Anyway, so I started writing exactly the order it’s in. Marla and Gottfried and then the Marks brothers, who, you know, are loosely based on people I knew and went to school with. And then I started writing The Shoveler. And then about 60 to 80 pages in The Shoveler,
The Freak showed up and everything and bummed the cigarette off of them and all that stuff from the early scene. The Shoveler stopped telling me stuff. I was like, super bored. I was like dude, you are not even telling me stuff. So I threw the book out. I was like, forget it. I have to start, I have to write another book.
So I started reading another book another week. And it’s it was about this girl named Can I help You. And she worked at the drive-thru at Arby’s, and everything was great. And she goes off with her friend and into the park. And then this kid shows up with a shovel, and he’s shoveling, and there’s no snow and I’m like, that is an A.S. King novel, pull The Shoveler back out of the trash can, and then try and figure out how they all fit together.
So honestly, the early parts I can’t even tell you, like, I don’t even remember when Malcolm showed up. And I don’t know if he showed up in order. I think he did. I think he showed up in order. Suddenly, the book started to come out in order, but I didn’t know where it was going. To give you a good idea of how clueless I am when I write my books, this book took about three and a half years to write. And still at the, like, late two-year mark, I keep notes and track changes for myself. And there was a note next to; I don’t want to give too many spoilers, but there was a note that said, “who is this girl?” And that’s it that was to do with The Freak. Who is she? And then only a few pages later, it said, who’s the fifth cousin? Why do you keep saying five cousins? Who is the fifth one? So that’s how clueless I am in a way as I’m working through a book, right? A lot of that has to do with the fact that I had to pull myself out to teach every month which I’m not sure serves a book and or me very well.
But either way, you know, the layers. I also do really, if you want to see a visual let me just do I have a visual. I have, yeah, let me show you.
Photo credit: the Horn Book: https://www.hbook.com/story/5qs-for-as-king-feb-2020
I do things like this, Kristen, that and this wasn’t for Dig. This was for the book that followed it: Switch. Dig’s was ginormous. It’s actually, if you go to the there’s a place called The Horn Book, it’s a review site. They have this online, with me holding the one for Dig. But, and Dig had a lot more colors. In fact, I ran out of colors because they only make so many highlighters, right. But each part would be color coded. These are the names of chapters. Okay, so this is just a table of contents. And that’s how I do it, right. So I log the timeline like, because we have to stick into a calendar, right, we still have to do time inside of stories, right? I do all that. But then these are each threads, each one of these are threads.
With Dig it was different points of view. So Marla and Gottfried got a certain color, but again, a different color. So revision is everything. And I’ve always said this all my writers. Revision is the sport. And so for me, that’s where things come together. And that’s what I really learned about the book. So when it comes to how many drafts every day is a draft, like every five minutes is the draft, you know. But with this book, I trusted my gut. That’s the biggest thing, having the confidence to trust your gut. And from there, it was just three years of a mix of everything, writing new stuff, and revising and getting whole new ideas, cutting huge chunks, all of it.
Maya: Thank you.
Amy: Yeah, you’re welcome.
Addy: Hi, I’m Addy. I was curious about the tunnels in Dig, and just like, how they operate like, are they a metaphor for like an actual place? And like, they seem to kind of mean different things to each character. So like, yeah, how does that work in the story?
Amy: Excellent. So I didn’t catch your name because things glitch out. What’s your name again?
Addy: Oh, Addy.
Amy: Nice. Hi, Addy, all right Addy, tunnels. Funny you say that. Alright, so let’s go straightaway just to the really obvious one. So when The Shoveler, Marla also has it too, when the, The Shoveler talks about things that really stressed him out the blocks of text get smaller and smaller. Okay. So when I was first writing this book, and I wish I had the little notebook near me, but I don’t. When I first started writing this book, I thought that it would be in shapes. Not concrete poetry, really. But I just thought that maybe there’d be shapes and tunnels running along the bottom of it, which is funny because I think that might happen. The book I’m writing right now, a lot of my books have tunnels in them. Because I think we live a lot of our lives underground. And I do believe that’s a quote from another one of my books. But that we live our lives underground, again, because often we’re pretending something isn’t happening when it is happening. And that is a story of my life, which is I don’t want other people to have a lifelike, that’s part of the reason I write. But um, so the tunnels meant different things to different people with The Shoveler and Marla in those parts that were very visual. They were meant to represent anxiety and, and panic. I had suffered from panic disorder for just a small period of time.
And I certainly had situational anxiety for quite a bit of time. And it always felt a little bit like I was in a tunnel that was getting smaller, a little bit like when I first tried and first and last one time tried spelunking, that was the end of that as the as if somebody has shoulders my width? Or with shoulders this wide that is not made to be a spelunker.
But other than that, they really the tunnels represent a great, that’s a great question. Because I mean, there are many in my books that you don’t know that Addy, but like they are in many of my books. Tunnels represent where we live our lives, I think, where we really live our lives, I guess it’s a metaphor for everything, everything from the way we think about ourselves, what we really think of ourselves, what we think we deserve, what we do, what we do behind the scenes to ourselves and to others in our own minds. I think the tunnels might, I think the tunnels might actually be a metaphor for the mind. I don’t even know now that you’ve asked this. I’ve usually asked more, more kind of concrete questions about them, but on a wider level.
Like, I wrote a book called Gloria O’Brien’s History of the Future, and people can people keep mentioning that this week due to the Supreme Court situation at the moment and women’s rights. And in the end, the women, the women who were eventually forced out due to many different laws, forced to live on their own in the forests and eventually fight a war in the tunnels. That’s where they fight the war.
So I think we fight wars in our own minds all the time. You know, I think that’s what the tunnels represent. So one of the funny part about this, about Dig was that sinkhole at the end. And it’s funny because my entire town is built on sinkholes. In fact, our high school is built on a sinkhole. I think that’s hilarious, and that will come into a book one day, but my car really got swallowed by a sinkhole in front of my house a few years ago. And that’s why I got interested in sinkholes. So when that happened and this, you know, I don’t know. And he could look down there and The Freak could find that egg. You know what I mean? And all that stuff. It’s a connection between the terrestrial world where we have to be good people and, and not good people good. We have to look good. We have to look good, right? So in the terrestrial, it’s all about curb appeal. It’s all about what you’re wearing, right. But in real life, I think the real-life is lived in the tunnels. There you go. You just so you just heard me work out an answer to a question and work out my own metaphor right in front of you, because you asked a great question, Addy. But yeah, that’s what it represents. But it also represents anxiety, depression, anything that puts you in a place that’s you that we’re not allowed to talk about. Right? And we’re not allowed to talk about this. And we do now we talk about them, but we people still look at us kind of funny, right? Like, I’m normal. What about you? It’s like, we’re all normal. What’s normal? So, yeah.
Addy: Thank you so much.
Amy: Yeah. Thanks for that question. Eye-opening as always. It’s always eye-opening questions from people that make me understand my own work better. Thank you.
Jeanie: Thank you for mentioning Glory O’Brien.
Amy: Oh, hey, I’ll show it to if you want. It’s right here. Just saying I got more letters about this book in the last week. Well, first when Donald Trump got elected, I got a lot of letters about this book. Anyway, alright, Elijah is back. What you got.
Elijah: Because what you just said in the last two questions was too interesting. So okay, let’s see if I’ve got my notes correctly here. So you were talking first off about how characters are your theses and that you really write as you go along. So and also that you like this, this this theme of tunnels that you talked about, you share across a lot of your books, and a lot of your books have the same idea of tunnels running throughout them. So how do you work out the, it’s easy to say that Dig has a lot of symbolism and thematic elements to it. So how do you tend to work those into writing processes? And how do your books share these ideas and these symbols and thematic elements across each other?
Amy: Great question, Elijah. All right, so here’s the deal. I never try when it comes to theme. When it comes to theme, if I’m trying, it feels shoehorned. It feels fake, right. And I refuse to feel fake. It’s one of the things that freaks people out about me. It’s one of the reasons I’m divorced, that’s for sure. Like, hate to say it, but it was like, I but it also is one of the reasons I have lasting friendships that are 45 years old. It’s because if there’s a problem with something, I’ll go, hey, there’s a problem with something and my friend go oh, oh, okay. Whereas, you know, some people aren’t as willing to, to work out just real stuff. Honestly, that takes place in real-time and can be sorted out in five minutes. But some people will make a big deal out of that. Some people like hiding that anyway.
But when it comes to sitting down, so I don’t fake it. And when the tunnel shows up, or when a metaphor shows up, I roll with it. Like at the moment, Elijah, I’m writing a book. Speaking of tunnels, that was based on this drawing right here, it says system, it’s a hamster tube. And then inside the hamster tube, there is a chair. Okay, that’s all you need to know. I’ve been staring at this for a year, it’s been here for a year. And I’m like, I know what this means. What this means is that I’m going to write about a woman who’s sitting in a dinner chair that’s in a system of pneumatic tubes that are human-sized. And that’s how she is carried around her home. It’s a metaphor for when you’re living with a controlling or abusive person, they take control over you – they emotionally separate you from your children.
It’s a very, very common thing that happens in an abusive household. And so mom then is like, in this case, it’s a metaphor for mom being in the tunnel and everybody going, “Why isn’t mom available? Like this is ridiculous” But in actual fact, mom’s there the whole time. It’s just, you know, in this case, dad has has made the children iffy on her. So that metaphor is just bam, right? It’s obvious. It’s like, it’s like a punch in the face that one, like if you look at it, and this now as it’s coming out, it’s coming out even more brutally on the page than I expected it too. But honestly you trust it? So here? Here’s an interesting one. All right so that book that I started writing, see those? Okay, that looks like a plotting sort of thing, and it kind of is but it’s not. It’s just a lot of different ideas that are kind of in order like I’ll know something has to happen. I haven’t written the end part and I haven’t been any post-it notes up there yet. Right. But for me, every single thing that’s written on those post-it notes was there from that day that I sat down and went blah, that I sat down and just sort of vomited out my feelings, my words in character, though, like so we go back to that thesis statement, I’m very upset over this idea that abusive men separate their children from their mothers. What effect does that have on the mother? What effect does it have on the children? Go.
And so immediately it comes out in a character. And there’s this character named Jane and she is pissed. She is so angry. And she has just discovered at age of 16, that this happened to her and that her mother was there the whole time. But she just thought the wrong crap about her, she is so angry. And yet she knows she’s going to take her dad down. And she knows she’s going to rescue her mother somehow. She knows all this, but she doesn’t know how yet. And we’re about to find out. And so am I, because I haven’t written the I’m only 17,000 words into the book, right?
But every single idea that’s up there is already in the book from that moment when I flushed it all out of my system, they’re all hints, and they’re all there. Right now I’m 70 pages in. Everything I need to know about that book is already in it. I have to go in with my archaeologist tools and find it. So I know, “I do not lie to God” is her first line, right? But then it says, “my father is a liar, a thief, a traitor, a brute, and a killer.” And I’m like, a killer that could be a mystery. That’s a fun book. And if you know my books, Dig included, they are kind of strange mysteries in there, like who did this? And you know, how did that happen? And so all of those are hints that are already in the book. It is a cosmic process for me, Elijah, I have to trust what comes in through my crown chakra, and my brain sends to my hands, and I write it down. And then I go from there. So it’s truly cosmic. I trust in an untrustworthy world. It’s gotten me into a great deal of trouble in my life, but it’s also brought me the most joy.
Elijah: Okay, I’m going to ask one more question. I’m going to take more time for myself. So people often thought about reading books, or like a lot the entire works of an author, right? So they can like look at the author’s, like, changes and thoughts over time, look at how these books connect. What would you think about your books being used like that, or taught like that? Or what, what do you think with that with this, these connections of themes? And also, how, what, do you do with all of that?
Amy: Wow, well, I mean, I would welcome that. I’d probably say, hey, bring me in, zoom in, like I did now. Um, but also, I mean, I do have people who do that, not in classes, I have academics who do this. And I do have academic, I have academics who teach me in their young adult literature classes, and they might teach three or four, two or three, three, usually three titles of mine. And probably absolutely talking about those things. But yeah, that’d be fantastic. I mean, what would I think of that? That’d be awesome. And I think that they would discover a great many things. I mean, now I’m only 51. So I’m like, look, I got at least another 30 years of writing and me so this is going to be interesting. Especially now because I’ve become very empowered over the last few years and I feel a prolific bout coming on. And if I’m to believe my astrologist I believe that’s what’s about to happen and so I don’t, I don’t know where it’s going to take me hope maybe I’ll finally find my way out of the tunnels. Elijah, what do you think?
Elijah: Thank you. I’ll go back to letting other people talk to you as well.
Amy: Don’t apologize for your space brother never apologize for taking space.
Avery: Oh, hi, I’m Avery.
Amy: Hi Avery.
Avery: And I was sort of connected to like relationships and Loretta. Actually, The Ring Mistress, and like I’m very curious about what’s the deal with the flea circus, like is that magical realism or is that actually happening in the book?
Amy: In the book, it’s actually happening. Flea circuses are a real thing and they do still travel around America. And there’s actually there was one recently here and I didn’t go and see it which I kicked myself. Oh, it was COVID, that’s why. I don’t even know if it oh, I don’t know if it came but I think it did but it was mid-COVID.
You know I don’t know where the flea circus came from. I wish I knew. I wish I knew where half of these ideas, they just came, they come up but I’m part of it is because I mean I know a circus family, and I spent a lot of time at the circus in Ireland when I lived there. So, I, having been behind the scenes, having been nearly stepped on by an elephant once, having been and also seen you know different elephants being very sad and you know standing in one place rocking. and just tiger escapes and all that but also sequins and you know all the different talent, the different acts over the decades. So I think circus life is amazing, but I think it was for me I think it was a metaphor for obviously, you know, trying to escape and what she was in. But the flea circus itself I mean. Well, do you want to hear the deep metaphor behind that that just came to me? Here you go. You got Loretta right. Loretta is in this horrible household, let’s call it horrible, there’s really no other way to put it because that’s really quite full-on abuse that’s going on in that household. Not to say other abuses and full on like the one I just described and the pneumatic tubes also full on but not as brutal right. This is out and out brutal. And what does Loretta have? She has fleas. What do they do? They eat her blood.
And when you come from a household like Loretta’s, you are primed to land with people who will absolutely feed off you. Those people I mentioned earlier, the villains, there are villains in our lives. And there are people who attract the villains. I didn’t know this until I attracted so many villains myself. It made me stop and go, what is wrong with me that I keep attracting these people? It could be a little bit of codependence, it could be because I’m just massively nice and I mean that in the nicest way. I’m that nice to everyone. But now, I’m sort of like I have my boundaries. I know how to draw them. But I also refuse to be a dick. If I’m allowed to say that on podcasts. Okay, I can? Okay, good. I don’t want to be one of those. So but with Loretta, that I think that was an unintentional or at least fell into place metaphor for the fact that she’s preparing herself for what she’s about to endure. You know, I mean, a lot of people are like, oh, Lord, I can’t wait to save her. I’m like, well if you save her, you better buy her, like, a decade’s worth of therapy. She’s going to need it, you know, some deprogramming and other things. But I think that that’s really the deal with the flea circus.
Yes, it was real. Yes, it kept her. It gave her friends, it gave her companions, it helped her. Having that audience that was in her mind really helped her. I think it helped her understand that what was happening in her house wasn’t normal. But what’s about to happen to her and what she really is, is she’s going to be fodder for other people if she doesn’t watch out. She’s going to walk straight into it, probably like the rest of us. Most survivors of early childhood trauma walk straight into it.
So yeah, deep, but deep, but there’s my answer.
Avery: Thank you.
Amy: Hey, you’re welcome. Thanks for a great question. I love talking to people who read books, because like I said, I end up learning more about my own books. It’s fantastic. This is the best part of being a writer. That’s why, that’s why, I’m like, hey, zoom me in and I can learn more about what the heck I put in that book.
Kate: I’m Kate. And I was wondering about, you’ve been talking a lot about how you write with like surrealism, and I was wondering how that helps. That writing technique helps you unpack the themes of white supremacy, and patriarchy, and all the other themes in Dig. How do you use that to your advantage?
Amy: Well, you know, great question. The surrealist writing method is about two things. Now that I understand it a bit better and again, I don’t want to call it that. It’s almost like giving Andre Breton and the surrealists credit for what I did for like 26 years, without even knowing about them, right.
At the same time, one of the images I want to give you about the surrealist writing method is this. Okay. Andre Breton and Louis Aragon were in a field hospital in Paris during World War I. Now try and smell that for me. Try and see that for me, right. It was bonkers. It was horrific. World War I was a bloody war. All wars are bloody wars. But World War I was particularly gross. And so there they are. And there’s a great, like, drawing of this somewhere, there are a few of them. You can actually look it up somewhere online. But there are all these dudes, all these soldiers on the floor and on, you know, litters probably on little, you know, we call them litters is the best I got anyway. And they are in different states of disarray. They are wounded soldiers that could be missing a leg, that could have a belly wound, there could be whatever, and they’re all bandaged up. And in the front of the room is a stage and on it is an upright piano, and someone playing it. And somebody else has like a top hat and a cane and they’re entertaining. Stop and tell me how messed up that is. That’s the most surreal thing ever.
And yet, these men on the floor, the trauma they’re going to carry with them is bonkers, right? It’s huge. They’re going to come away with PTSD, complex PTSD, so many different things that I mean, they could split. The mental health issues the soldiers have are A. very serious, B. very ignored in our world, which is why we keep having wars but then not having to deal with this. It’s amazing. The guys, who start the wars, never have to really deal with the PTSD, or anything else.
But anyway, so for me, go back to why do I write? I write because I live with trauma. I’m still living through trauma. I also write because I care very much about other people with trauma.
And I like to talk about trauma because in our culture, we don’t talk about trauma, and then it trips us up and we go through our lives thinking that a good life is an uncomplicated drama-free life.
How many people talk about oh, no drama, really? What kind of interesting life are you living? Really? What kind of lie are you living? Every one of us has drama and weirdos and villains come in and out of our lives. So when I want to talk about trauma, especially with young people, one of the best codes, right, is in surrealism because young people are willing to go what the heck is this about and dig deeper versus go, this is stupid, I feel bad for being right on putting it down and clutching their pearls and walking away.
But when I want to talk, I want to talk to young people about their trauma because most adults don’t. And they don’t take it seriously. And because they didn’t take their own trauma seriously. And this, again, has to do with our generations, right, we go back to generations 11 and 12, and then mine 13. And now yours 15. And we get to this place where it’s like when are we finally going to take the intergenerational trauma that we’re all carrying with us seriously. And if we want to take that away, I want to be able to shift that here we are, we’re white people, okay, for the most part, I’m no offense, I don’t want to make any assumptions. But we’re all you know, I’m a white person. Now imagine the intergenerational trauma that comes with being a person of color in America. Imagine the generation to generational trauma that comes from being a native person, an indigenous person in America. And I believe that the pain in the blood and is in the soil, and here’s the deal, it seeps up through our feet. So if you’re a person of color, that’s a different type of feeling. If you’re indigenous, that’s a different type of feeling. But if you’re white, there’s a lot of shame and guilt, and trauma in the fact that our ancestors did what they did. So that we can say we’re the greatest nation on Earth, which is a bunch of bunk if you ask me, we’re a good nation, we could be better, we could be so much better.
And so the reason I use surrealism is to touch the trauma. It’s one of the best ways to get into trauma. It’s one of the best ways to talk to young people about it and to get to all readers. I mean, this is one of them. And this family, when I think about this family, this family is trauma from the very top, what happened to Marla was so minor, but that Uncle laughing at her and how it all went down and how that affected her shame because we’ve walked around with it. So we’ve got this big shame organ and one person goes ping when we’re eight, like, pings it, right, flicks it. And next thing you know, for the rest of our lives, we’re an asshole. Imagine if we could at least go oh, we have this shame. Oh, the shames because of this. Oh, okay. And then be better off instead of being a jerk about it, you know?
And that’s why, that’s the long answer and short answer of why I use surrealism in order to talk about trauma, because trauma needs to be talked about and I will go to my grave screaming that because it’s how we get better. And it’s how we do live good lives. We can live good lives by facing the complications and facing the villains in our lives. And then moving forward despite them.
Kate: Thank you.
Amy: Awesome, thank you. I want to stay here all day talking to you guys.
Jeanie: I am in love with this conversation.
Amy: Great. I am too.
Jonah: Hi, I’m Jonah. I want to ask if you experience any backlash for Dig or like white rage fighting back.
Amy: All right. Hey, Jonah, how’s it going? Here’s the thing I did on April 10, 2010. I stopped reading online reviews by amateurs. The only reviews I read are those from trade magazines. And in those, I saw nothing.
I did happen to go to Amazon one day, this is way back, like soon after it was published. And I went to grab something else from that page. And for some reason, I saw there was one one-star review. And I did this thing I hadn’t done since 2010. I was like well if it’s really long and really bad, you know, I guess I’ll just check it out anyway, and it was very short. And all it says is don’t read this book because it makes you feel bad about being white or something. And I thought, “oh good, I did my job.” Other than that, I have not received any hate mail as of yet.
On the banned book list from the guy, the representative in Texas that’s been circulating through, I would call them hate groups actually, I don’t know what the name of their group is. But it’s basically to destroy things versus build beautiful things. But one of my books landed on that but Dig did not which shows you that they’re not reading, they’re just, they’re just pulling books off of other lists. So I have not gotten any backlash yet. But let me tell you Jonah the minute somebody reads this from that crew, I will be I’ll let you know, but it’ll come at some point, and or maybe I finessed it enough. I mean, this is the thing. Like I’m not really here to say these people are bad. I’m more just to say here are these people, what do you think? In a way right and you guys read it went oh, okay. These people — these people, you know, these people have problems. They do have problems. But you know, I don’t know, I get a lot of love for this book from 70 years old to 14 years old saying, “well, how did you know my family and I’m so glad you wrote this.” So I get more of that. But so far no backlash, yet. But I tend to be soft censored. This is the other thing I should say. Like, when I’m censored in a school, or banned, I’m banned softly, which means they’ll go on to Amazon or another place like that. And if they’ll read the one-star review, specifically, to see if there is any like, is there F words? Are there this or that? Is there any sort of sexuality? Oh, no, none of that for the teens- because that never happened. Like, I roll my eyes or other things, you know, but because it’s about white supremacy, I think somebody is going to get their hands on it one day, but let them clutch that their pearls. So far, it’s been okay, but I don’t know other than that, except I stay in a very safe little bubble so I can continue writing books about trauma for young people to free them. I prefer to stay in my bubble. Yeah, great question. Thank you.
Jeanie, my stomach is growling and you’re probably going to pick it up. Good. I’m glad your mic isn’t picking it up. Hello.
Elly: I am Elly. So, my question is if politeness is wielded as a tool of white supremacy culture in two very different ways. In Marla’s case, it is kind of used for control. And in Can I Help You’s case it kind of gives her a sense of worth. So was that intentional and could you talk about it?
Amy: You said politeness, right? I’m just making sure.
Elly: Yeah.
Amy: You guys have great questions. Um, politeness? Well, I mean, Can I Help You is a fantastic rep. Like that’s a metaphor right there for politeness. Right. And her mother has the bell, which I actually have downstairs. I did not smash it with a hammer yet. I’ve yet to do it. COVID came and for some reason, the bell lived. But not to say,I had written anti-racist parents. That came from a grandmother who wasn’t so anti-racist. But politeness is used constantly. Actually, it’s one of the reasons well, polite, polite conversation, let’s go into that. Let’s go into that term. Right. What is polite?
Yes, Jeanie asked me, the bell is real. It’s downstairs. It’s very small and very touristy. It’s ridiculous.
Anyway, polite conversation. Let’s think of that. Polite conversation. Well, we just talked about trauma. Can’t talk about that in polite conversation. Racism, can’t talk about sexism can’t talk about that. I actually mentioned the other day that I was, had had a man published, and Switch or any of my surrealist titles that they would be lauded for. And I’m not saying I’m not lauded. I’m not here to like, I don’t care. I don’t mind. I like writing the books I write, I’m very happy with my life. I’m just saying that the business and the culture would elevate a male writer for writing what I write and they wouldn’t kind of bench him. As far as they concerned
they think YA is a bench I think it’s actually a hot air balloon that takes me higher and higher.
But most of the things I talk about period are not polite conversation. And so I think that’s one of the things that keeps everybody down, but keeps white people in a place of privilege, keeps men in a place of privilege. Absolutely. But politeness, on a whole, is the reason we don’t talk about things. And I honestly, to me, that is the most bizarre idea that I can’t even argue against it. It’s just sort of like looking at somebody going, what are you talking about? Like, I kind of just have this horrible look on my face. Like what like, ooh, like, who would? How are you interesting? What do you talk about, then? Just the nice, you know country music or something. And, you know, I don’t know what people talk about if they don’t talk about problems. If we’re not talking about our problems. I don’t know. But you’re right. And that’s not considered polite. And so that’s how we wield it, I guess.
I mean, we wield it by saying, well, it’s not polite to talk about race. It’s not polite. I mean, that’s been said many times, oh, you can’t talk about race because we’re all white people. So we can talk about race, actually, we can very much talk about race. All white people are concerned about whiteness, which is our race. If we have to check a box there’s a box it says it, you know. I like a lot of times it says Caucasian. I’m like, that’s not actually what that word means. By the way, there’s a place in Asia that those people come from and that those are Caucasian people. We are white. Let’s just call it what it is, but we don’t like that. We politely call it something else. How weird.
So, we already know there’s a problem with it. That’s why we put Caucasians on the thing. But we don’t want to talk about the problem with the word white. Because we’re white. It’s so weird. It’s just to me like that. That is like I love your question. But at the same time, the idea of it right the concept of it is just so bizarre and not bizarre, there’s a better word for it. Farcical, the idea is so farcical that I want to leave it over there where it belongs? Yeah, kind of, in a way, I don’t know what to say about it. Because I just don’t live that life. I never have it’s one of the reasons why I have the friends I have and the people surrounding me or the people surrounding me, you know, I’m saying by this age, the people know what they’re dealing with. I’m a real in Jamaica, they call it real, real, real, not just real. I’m real, real. And it’s true. And but I don’t like hopefully I don’t bring like downer conversations to Thanksgiving either. I also can have fun. But it’s real fun. Because I’ve already dealt with the trauma. See, it’s not fake fun. That’s the reason we do this right. I help you. I got another I got an idea. I’m running do it to it.
Jeanie: Well, there’s this contrast, I don’t know if Elijah is going to mention this, between not politeness is not talking about something and gimme.
Elijah: That was exactly what I was going to ask about.
Amy: Ask.
Elijah: So, I mean, yeah. So, there is this contrast between the politeness of Marla which is exactly what you talked about, but there’s also this whole thing with Can I Help You like wanting people to say please. And then talking about this whole thing with gimme, gimme in, and also that whole code word with please, to buy weed? Yeah. And so, just how does that factor in? Because I mean, I call that, like, I think I’d use the same word, but I think they are two different two entirely different things. So it may not make sense to use the same word for them. But how does that factor in with this?
Amy: Okay, I think I think you’ve nailed it. I mean, Can I Help You? I mean, don’t forget she is not? She doesn’t like those gimme people. Well, I mean, look, that’s a privilege, right? And it’s so funny because we’re all taught to say please, and thank you. But then we get to the drive-thru. And I know this because I listen, and I used to run a drive-thru at Arby’s, but I didn’t sell weed through the window. Because that’s, that’s the fun part of writing fiction. I wasn’t, I didn’t think about that then. But anyway, just kidding. We are gimme gimme people. We are. I had a person, you know, I had a guy step right in front of me recently. And I had a guy who decided he was going to get in the carwash line in front of me just like just to do it. And then he sat there, and he didn’t move forward and go into the – he didn’t even know I was there. He didn’t know I was there. And so I think that I mean, gimme is I mean, that’s a privilege – that’s privilege right there. You know, and yet politeness, it’s funny because we live a double standard, all of us, for the most part, okay. And that’s one of the things that drives me a little bit bonkers about a lot of things.
I mean, I can go off on it when it comes to my relationships with men we’ll say. Why am I making it sound like there was more than one? There wasn’t, I was married a very long time. But yeah, I was married a very long time. But in that relationship, you know, you’d look at that sort of privilege and what people expect – the expectations. And the expectation in my life was that I wasn’t going to talk about the truth, which makes no sense. Because if you know me, you know, I’m going to talk about the truth. And that would, but it was it’s always framed as that’s politeness. You know, it’s polite, and you’ve hurt me if, if you’re talking about the truth, and I’m like, that’s weird, because you’re hurting me if you’re not talking about the truth.
I feel like almost there’s two different types. It’s a little bit Star Wars, right? It’s a little bit black and white of me to say this, but that there is like they’re the people who are willing to talk about this stuff that’s happening because people who aren’t and what we do, though, to shame the people who are willing to talk about what’s really happening as we said, it’s impolite. As for the gimme people, they’re the first people to complain when somebody doesn’t say please or thank you. They didn’t send me a thank you note for the gift I gave them. Really are you literally saying gimme to a child because you sent them a gift? In my world, a gift is something given. You don’t give gifts to get thank you notes. If you give gifts to get thank you notes you’re bonkers and you’re overdoing it. You know, there’s no reason like I’m sorry. There are times to send thank you notes. Absolutely, I will send you a thank you note at the bottom of my heart when I want to thank you. If you don’t give a gift because you’re giving it what are you doing? You’re manipulating? Right and that’s exactly how politeness is used. Right? It’s manipulating all the time.
Its constant manipulation. We are manipulated so much by every corporation, every politician, sometimes every family member, every person we meet. Manipulation is kind of the backbone of our language, right? When we speak, how we speak, how we do things, because why? Because we want to get things because technically it’s gimme, underneath all of that is gimme. And it’s interesting because the same person that uses that manipulation will turn around to you and say, you know, you really should be more polite? Or are you going to mow your grass? Or, or, you know, use a few leaves in your flower bed. I live in a town now. It’s so weird. People are so worried about leaves. I used to live on a farm. No one cared about my leaves before. People care about my leaves. Now, I’m like, and I do that once a week, like when the truck comes in, sucks them up, which right there also hilarious to a farm girl like – a truck come sucks up leaves. Mind blown, but I get it, and they have to manage their town. It’s wonderful.
But this is the thing – people think that me sucking up my leaves is polite. But talking crap behind my back about, say, my life, my situation. People talk badly about my household because my daughter died. How about that one? We don’t talk about death enough in this country. So that and people want sympathy when their mom goes or when anybody goes. But when I lose my daughter, suddenly it’s like, oh, well, that’s a sin, first of all, and it must have been a very nice home. Like that is the first thing we do. I don’t mean to like drop that information on you. But it’s just a very interesting way to look at the double standard of politeness. Because these people want politeness and then they’ll treat my family like this. It’s so weird.
But they don’t understand that that can happen to them any day, either. I know this because I work with people who’ve lost, same as I did. And they don’t understand that. Oh, that can’t happen to my family. Oh, oh, that’s not true. And that’s the problem. Eventually, it catches up with us. But I don’t know if I just went off on that. But yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s it. That’s, that’s how they that’s how they work. It is a double standard. It’s just a massive double standard.
Elijah: I think I’m actually done
Amy: One more question. Alright, cool, because I got to go to a training session.
Avery: So when I was reading it, obviously reading it with the book group, but my mom was really at the same time as me. And there’s so much to dig into. And even though like she’s older, and some people will say wiser, we still had like, the equal amount of talk about. So what would you say to people who mistakenly believe that YA literature is too easy and doesn’t have rigor?
Amy: Oh, boy, well, I will say that people who say that YA literature says is anything haven’t read enough YA literature. I teach YA literature. And I teach literature for young people. And what you’ll find if you actually study it is that there is as many different types of literature for children as there are for adults. So, if you want to walk into a bookstore and say all books suck, then that’s your that’s you’ve been oversimplified. That’s what I would say to that person. You’re you know, if you’re saying all YA literature is blah, that would be like saying, All literature for adults is whatever, I guess to put down romance the most right? Or fantasy or paranormal romance or God knows, I don’t know, whatever, whatever they want to put down, they’ll put it down.
Adults will put down things for teenagers before they’ll put down anything else, though. They will roll their eyes at you faster than anything else they will they will make you small. I don’t understand it. You are only coming into your adulthood and your lives. The whole point of our existence as adults is to lift you up, not to bring you down. So the first thing I’d say to anybody who’s saying that is wow, you don’t respect teenagers. What a shame for you. Why are you working with them?
That’s the first thing I would ask them. Why are you working with teenagers? Why are you on a school board? You clearly do not understand teenagers, nor do you care about them. You see, you see them as so small.
It’s the exact same as if they want to make fun of, I don’t know, I’ll say Justin Bieber, but that’s not what kids listen to anymore. But you know, what, whoever it is, they’ll roll their eyes and in my days it was Culture Club or Prince. Oh, God, you know, like, like none of us understood what Prince was talking about. Every single one of us knew what Prince was talking about. You can put a big sticker on the front of it and saying parental warnings, Prince says stuff that you already do. Whatever.
Anyway, as for people thinking that books written about young adults shouldn’t be in schools being read by young adults especially. I’ll say literary novels, I would consider this a more literary novel. If we wanted to put subcategories the way that we do in adult work which we should I don’t know what to say to them? With a, you know, you’re going to get your Shakespeare, you’re going to get to read The Merchant of Venice, you’re going to get to read perhaps Mockingbird, perhaps oh, I don’t know, whatever classics are in your canon. The idea is, is that teenagers feel seen.
The idea of reading a book is to feel seen. The idea of reading a book is to open your mind to a new world because you see yourself in it, if that makes sense. And also, to learn about other people, right?
I would hope that people who read something like Dig might read something that’s certainly more commercial, more popular. But something like The Hate U Give, which was published only, I think, maybe two years before it. And allows you to see and feel what it feels like to be a person of color and a community where you know, where the world is different, that’s for sure. For human beings that live in the same place as we do. And we’re so privileged, we don’t see that. So it’d be a great conversation, both for adults and teenagers. But I don’t know. The idea that people would think that something like Dig wouldn’t be for teenagers makes me understand that I already know this. I hear this lot. They don’t understand teenagers, and they don’t want to. They don’t want to stop and understand that teenagers, you know, the idea that people don’t, here’s one for you. But if someone says the word sex in front of a teenager, everybody freaks out. First of all, without it, those teenagers wouldn’t exist. Let’s start there. None of us would. It’s like periods, people freak out over periods. Why? Without them, none of us would exist. Makes no sense. But we freak out over it. And not only have that, like 51% of, let’s not go there. But they have them you know, but like, this idea that we can’t talk about drugs, oh, don’t talk about drugs.
Really, we used to have, we used to have commercials with a frying pan and an egg and this was your brain on drugs. Like, and then I have my kid we were walking around the other day. And he was like, so like, how come you can, people can like have a drink, but then they don’t become alcoholics? But then people say don’t touch heroin, because you’re going to get addicted, like what’s the deal? And like, he didn’t know the basics about drugs, because we’re no longer teaching it in health classes anymore, because oh, we’re too polite to do that. Which to me goes back to what young adult books are really doing? They’re delving into the ideas, and the things that teenagers need to discuss, to have healthy lives. So whether it’s something and a lot of times its heavy material, yes, there’s death. Yes, there’s even like, oh my gosh, suicidal ideation, self-harm, mental illness, but also race, but also love, also maybe some, some relationship abuse, or maybe a really great relationship. That’s what books are for – to model really good things for us and to warn us of the bad things and to help us see what’s really going on.
Why you would want to keep that from teenagers, I do not know. That would be someone who as far as I’m concerned is anti-intellectual, anti your intellectual freedom as young people, which is why public libraries and libraries and schools and librarians are heroes because they care about your intellectual freedom. Teachers as well. For the most part, depends on where you are, I guess, because not all teachers, I guess, would but I would think young adult books are for our for young adults because you’re going to see themselves and I think young adults are for adults because they’ll see their teenagers in them and better wake up and understand that the world has changed, and they might better be able to have better conversations. And better relationships with their teenagers, which is incredibly important, and as someone who lost a teenager who had a really great relationship with my teenager, I knew the situation with my daughter, she struggled for a very, very long time. And we talked a lot. And I do this work, you know, I’ve done this work for a long time, long before I lost my daughter. And I would not have been able to have the conversations I had with her had I not had an open mind to the teen experience. The idea that we were all perfect as teens is ridiculous. But the fact that we’re still trying to snow them into believing it, it’s not new at all. They’ve been doing that for generations. So what would I say? I would say, oh, grow up. That’s what I would say. To anybody saying that young adult books shouldn’t be read in schools, I’d say grow up.
Avery: Thank you.
Amy: Yeah, thank you. I got to go get trained. I’m going to go down to Mental Health America and be trained to run a support group. Otherwise, I would sit here Jeanie, and talk to you all day, you guys, students that just ask me questions. I know people are going and coming. But thank you very much for your questions. Meg, wow!
Meg: I’ve got tears in my eyes, I’m shaking. I mean, what a champion you are for our young people, Amy. You are a gift to us, your gift to librarians where I can give a book to students with my whole being and my whole heart and open a door to the world that you create and honor them through, by being real, by being fun, by being honest and telling them the truth that they’re not hearing in other places. So thank you so much.
Amy: Thank you so much for supporting me, it’s a huge deal. I got a lot of, a lot of teachers and librarians who back off of me and I’m cool with it, I get it. But…
Meg: We’ve got all your books spread out on the table. We’ve got your whole collection here. Maybe Elijah and I will design the A.S. King curriculum.
Amy: Well, listen, whatever happens when you do anything A.S. King again, let’s just do this, let’s zoom me in. That’s, that’s what I do. I like to connect and I’m about to be on the road again and do stuff. I think I’m just going to like staple an N95 mask to my face and just start traveling again. I miss being with young people and going into schools and talking. And just being able to talk openly about stuff and blow their minds in what I call the trauma comedy show. But they don’t know it and I don’t want to ever bum anybody out. You know, I always just want to help. I always just help.
Jeanie: I really appreciate what you just said because when rereading Dig I laughed so hard. And I also am aware that you’re writing about trauma and, like, the capacity to hold both the humor and the trauma in one place is really powerful.
Meg: Thank you, Amy.
Amy: See you guys. Thanks for your great questions. Thanks for reading the books. Thanks for being champions. You’re amazing.
Many of the routines of the school day have been frayed by the pandemic. From kids unable to engage in work to walking out of class altogether, we are seeing norms and relationships stretched and tested like never before. This might even be described as “normal” right now — as in that it’s the norm, it’s typical and (sort of) expected (note: not “normal” in the more colloquial sense of ‘the way it’s supposed to be’). It makes me wonder if intentionally centering relationships and routines could help ease things?
That’s what teaching is, isn’t it? It’s about being in community with young people. At least that’s what has been true for me. Sure, it’s also about “teaching” them things – but a wise person once said we don’t teach subjects…we teach children. And they sure teach us a lot, too.
Wobbles
It took me a while to learn how to be with my students. My first year teaching, I danced between tight control and laissez-faire. My students waffled from rebellion to no boundaries. (Spoiler: neither really worked out like I’d hoped.) It was kind of a mess. But it was a caring and connected mess. We had fun at least. But I still hadn’t figured out how to be. What was my role as the “adult” in the room? As the teacher?
Sometimes we call this part of teaching “classroom management”, but the more I think about that term and what it implies the less I like it. I don’t want to “manage” students; I want to nurture their learning. I don’t want to have “control” of my class, I want to engage them. I don’t want to instill a culture of “compliance,” I want to co-create a community of caring and curiosity.
Routines that become…routine
In the summer following my first year teaching, my team attended a Developmental Designs professional development workshop. And it was a game changer. (Full disclosure: I am such a believer in the Developmental Designs ways that I have become a trainer.) I learned a different way to be in relationship with my students. I learned how to share power and scaffold responsibility so that my students could partner with me and one another in co-creating our learning space. And I learned very concrete ways to accomplish these aspirations.
It was in this workshop that I first learned about Boynton & Boynton’s research on classroom management and the importance of proactive management. Essentially, the Boyntons found that if we spend 40% of our time building relationships with and among our students, and 50% of our time establishing and practicing routines, we’ll only need to dedicate 10% of our management time to reactive strategies — dealing with things that aren’t going as intended.
Too good to be true?
It kind of sounds too simple, doesn’t it? But after aiming for that formula for several years (and practicing routines ad nauseum), I found it to be mostly true. And while these numbers may not hold up in the collective trauma that is school-during-covid, I still believe that we find our power to fly in relationships and routines.
But how?
According to Boynton & Boynton’s research, approximately 50% of our “management” efforts should be directed to developing and practicing routines. In my experience, no routine is too small: how to sharpen a pencil, how to move a chair, what to do when the bell rings. All of the seemingly small, inconsequential things that somehow halt the flow.
Are you noticing any patterns of where things are going not-so-well? Is it when students enter the room? Is it transitions? Is it independent work time? Make a list of important routines (bonus if you can do this with your colleagues and students). Then, hone in on a couple of these routines and think about how they should go. What are the steps to success? Break it down into super small parts. First do this yourself. Then together with students — leave room for their ideas and suggestions. How could we make this better/more effective/quicker/less disruptive? What are the benefits to us as a group if this goes well? Why would it be important to make sure this happens smoothly?
Practice, Practice, Practice
Then, practice. And practice some more. Like, literally get up and do the steps you just articulated. Have the students practice. It will feel silly! That’s ok. It’s also ok if it takes half (or all) of your class to get this important routine down. Because this is an investment in the future. As they say in Developmental Designs, “go slow to go fast!”
Then tomorrow, perhaps a quick reminder of how the routine goes. And don’t forget to notice success! If it took 17 fewer seconds for students to transition today, that’s something! If you accumulate enough of that “saved time” you could even celebrate with a game of silent ball!
Finally, when routines begin to slip again (and they will, especially after a long weekend or vacation, but really any time), practice again. Invite students to review the routine, why it matters and take a minute to practice. Rinse. Lather. Repeat.
Building relationships & community, all day, every day
The other 40% of proactive classroom management, according to the Boyntons, is building relationships. Getting to know these young humans with whom we spend our days. Sharing our stories, laughing together. And thriving learning communities are built of strong relationships.
You probably already have structures for building relationships in place. Advisory, anyone? But the magic of advisory can be woven throughout the day when we take the time to get to know one another. Consider how PLPs or identity units might help you get to know students, or how student clubs might pique interest and engagement.
Some teachers do a check in at the beginning of class – a quick whip around where everyone is invited to say whatever’s on their mind. They make time for games and to have fun together. They ask students about their lives, their passions, their worries, their hopes. All of this. Because how we show up matters, so let’s cultivate a culture of caring with and among our students.
According to the Boyntons’ formula, if we dedicate 90% of our energies to relationships and routines, then we’ll only need to spend 10% of our time responding and redirecting behavior. While that number may seem comically low this year, there’s something to be said for investing our energy in building things in the direction we want them to flow rather than playing Whack-a-Mole when things go awry.
So I’m curious what happens right now, in this unprecedented moment, if we recommit to routines and relationships? While it surely won’t be a panacea, it can’t hurt, right? And it will probably bring some comfort, too. How might you strengthen routines and relationships this week?
Lovely listeners: today is a work day. Now, we all know that talking about anti-bias work is a vital component of the kind of school change that makes our classrooms safer and more engaging for students of color. Doubly so when we are white educators, and when we teach in predominantly white spaces, in predominantly white communities. But sometimes, it feels like all we do is talk, and then assure ourselves that the work is done. It’s not. It’s really, really not. Real change in dismantling bias in our classrooms can only come about when talk turns to walk. When we are serious about change, we share our own journeys, with all their missteps, rocks in the shoes, and joy-filled leaps and bounds. We share, and we listen, and only when we see what the work takes can we make the change we want to see in the world. On this episode, we welcome Emma Vastola and Emily Gilmore to the show, as they share their own journeys and all the work they take on, that they do each day to dismantle bias — and before we go any further I ask that you take a moment and hold these two Vermont educators in gratitude with me. <breathhhhhhe> Now, we’re going to be using Liz Kleinrock’s “Start Here, Start Now: A Guide to Antiracist and AntiBias Work in Your Community” to guide our conversation, and as you listen, I want you to consider — reeeeeeeally consider — these two questions: one, how can YOU share your own work in this way? and two, what’s stopping you? I’m Jeanie Phillips. Welcome to another episode of vted Reads: a podcast about books by, for, and with Vermont educators. Let’s chat.
Jeanie: I’m Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads. We’re here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today I’m with two fabulous educators, Emma Vastola and Emily Gilmore, and we’ll be talking about Liz Kleinrock’s Start Here Start Now: A Guide to Antibias and Antiracist Work in Your School Community. Thank you so much for joining me, Emily and Emma. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Emily: I’ll start off. This is Emily Gilmore. I use she/her pronouns. I am a cis, white, former social studies teacher, now working for Great Schools Partnership, as of this year. I was in the classroom for nine years. I live in Winooski, Vermont, land of Abenaki and I’m really excited to be continuing conversations with Jeanie and Emma.
Emma: Thank you, Emily. So my name is Emma Vastola. I am a cis white female. I am currently teaching a multi-age fifth and sixth-grade classroom at a preK – six school in Mount Holly, Vermont. I am really excited to be here to talk with Jeanie and Emily today.
Jeanie: Thank you both so much for joining me. As you know I love to read and I love to expand my to-be-read pile even though it’s practically toppling over now. What’s on your bedside table? What are you both reading right now? Emma, why don’t you go first?
Emma: Okay, so let’s see. I, like you Jeanie, have a topple-like bedside table with lots of books on it. And so I’d have to say the one at the top is Dr. Wayne Dyer’s Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life. That is one I go back to repeatedly that’s always there. Another one that I have been reading is Adam Grant’s Think Again. And I usually have a book of poetry at my bedside table, and I am not going to remember the name of it.
Jeanie: What are you reading Emily?
Emily: Well, I have been driving a lot more for work. So I have been shifting to audiobooks, I normally mostly listen to podcasts. So I’m super excited and started listening to Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley and it is unbelievable as an audiobook. Oh, my goodness, highly recommend. Especially since I spent time in Sault Ste. Marie two or three years ago, and so to be able to situate myself on the same land that the story takes place on is really powerful. And Michigan is just my happy place. So it just, it’s a beautiful story. And I can picture it all which is even, even better for me. And then…
Jeanie: Emily, I loved it so much. I read it twice. As soon as I finished it I turned back to page one. It’s so good. It’s so good. It’s so good.
Emma: I also read it Emily definitely. And on audiobook it was exceptional.
Jeanie: Everyone needs to listen.
Emily: And then the author Taylor Jenkins Reid, I just love. I love Daisy Jones & The Six. I love The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. And I just started Malibu Rising and it knocks it out of the park again, it’s just one of those books. She’s one of those authors that just like can kick start me into reading 1000 books all at once. I think I’ve read all of her books like within 24 hours. And so I’m really excited to just dive in again.
Jeanie: Oh, that just adds a whole author to my list. I’m really excited about that because I haven’t read any of those. Thank you.
Emily: You’ll love The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo. Like Love, love.
Jeanie: Got it. I trust you. Thank you both for those recommendations.
So this book, Start Here Start Now: A Guide to Antibias and Antiracist Work in Your School Community by Liz Kleinrock starts with acknowledgments. And I wanted to start there too. What I love about this is that Liz writes a lot of acknowledgments. And she takes time to thank her parents and her colleagues and a host of writers and activists and educators. And I’m going to read a little bit that really touched me when I was reading this,
To my ancestors: it has taken me a long time to connect to you and hear your voices. While my life has taken many different turns, and some have felt determined by chance, I have no doubt that I am where I meant to be, doing what I’m meant to be doing. I recognise the strength I draw coming from a line of ancestors who have been colonized, enslaved, and persecuted across continents for centuries. I would not be here today if not for your strength, resilience, power, and sacrifice.
To every student who has come through my classroom door (both in person and virtually) in Oakland, Los Angeles, and DC, I love y’all so much. I hope you never forget that once you’re my student, you’re always my student. You are the real change makers, and I cannot wait to see what impact you have on the world.
I read that because it’s beautiful and because it’s true. But I also just had a conversation with you Emma in your classroom about creating a culture of acknowledgment and giving credit. And I just love how Liz Kleinrock models that here and how it centers her identity, which seems especially important to this book, and I wondered if either of you had any responses to the acknowledgment section of the book, to the beginning of this book.
Emma: For me, I think it really brings up the importance of like that thoughtful space to connect your past to your present, and acknowledging that those stories that are in those individuals and land have impacted you. And, and to give those credit, those credit and to acknowledge those who, who have really helped you grow into the person that you are. So that is a section that really is meaningful to me and really has impacted I think the way that I’ve structured and thought about structuring my classroom.
Emily: I really see the connection to what she models through starting her class with identity work, and that starting the book with identity work just feels really appropriate. And just already, like, creates an ease as the reader of knowing who the person is how they’ve been influenced. I think it’s just really powerful and accessible like, especially as teachers thinking about the impact that we have. The things that have impacted us, but also like the lasting impact that we then have as teachers just really feels full circle to me.
Jeanie: Thank you both for that. I think I’m a librarian by training. And so often, when we think about giving credit, we think of work cited and bibliography. But I wonder, especially for K – six if we didn’t start with citing sources in that in that sort of APA or MLA format kind of way. But we started just by acknowledging the folks that have influenced us, whether we created a piece of art, or did a project or wrote a story, like did we have a mentor text? Is there an author we love that we’re inspired by? Is there a classmate who gave us feedback that we want to give kudos to? Do we want to thank our parents or our teachers for inspiring us? And so to me, that’s all a part of this culture of giving credit. And I know that for you all, like me, I think a lot about who I’m citing. I try to cite people of color and especially black women.
And I just think that Liz does something really lovely at the beginning of her book, by citing Audrey Lorde, right, and her parents and her students. And so thank you for indulging me in my little librarian riff there.
The book really gets started with a focus on how do you even begin if you’re new to antibias, antiracist work. And I know that the two of you have been sort of doing this work for a while. So how did you get started? Or what might we learn, what resonated for you from Liz Kleinrock’s perspective that we might share with our listeners? Emily, you want to go first?
Emily: Sure. So I this will take me back to where I come from. So I grew up just outside of Chicago. My mom grew up in a Jewish household, her father’s very religiously Jewish, her mother is culturally Jewish. And so she leans more culturally Jewish. My dad was raised very Presbyterian, very English, Scottish mindset. And so that left a lot of obscurity for me in terms of what it meant to grow up with a Jewish identity what that means. And growing up in a community that was predominantly Catholic, it was a very stark difference to what celebrating holidays looked like for me, especially lots of friends and CCD on Wednesdays and going to Mass and how that changed our soccer schedules. And so that also left me really vulnerable to being the target of a lot of microaggressions. And just explicit anti-Semitism throughout my childhood, that it took a long time for me to really understand the impact that that had on how I viewed myself and my place in the world. But it did make me really empathetic to people who also identified as other that just ever since I was in preschool, I just always sought out stories of people who didn’t fit the norm.
And so as a social studies teacher that just was already ingrained in me is thinking about fair and not fair. S I know what fair not fair felt like. And so that really just exploded when I became, I really found myself in my voice as a teacher.
Jeanie: Thanks for that. How about you, Emma, where did this work begin for you?
Emma: Oh, that’s such a good question. I think for me, I was born and raised in Southern Vermont. Actually, I work in the school that I went to as an elementary school. And I feel like I was always kind of different in the sense even though it’s been, you know, pretty much white, small, rural town.
But my father started an organization, a non-profit called volunteers for peace. And they did international exchanges with different groups of people throughout the world. So they would bring people together for two to three weeks to work on short-term voluntary service projects that were focused on anything from helping, you know, build houses for people, or working in different kitchens. And each year starting from the time I was two, I think it was 1982. Actually, they started they brought a group of international volunteers to our small town. And so at that time, it was usually 7 to 12 people who would come together from different countries all over the world, predominantly from Europe, but I just got a sense of difference and embracing that.
And I love to listen and learn and be kind of this observer to learn about people and I think that I embraced difference moving into high school. Anyway, in college, I think that bringing groups of people together to talk about kind of challenging conversations always kind of drove me. I felt comfortable in that, and respected. And I think that that work has kind of driven me in finding who I am as an educator now. I think that’s where it started.
Jeanie: What I hear from both of you is this idea of difference as an asset, as strength. And what I really appreciate from Liz, is this idea of looking at our students through an asset lens – through an appreciative lens. And really seeing their strengths and seeing kids for what they are, instead of what they aren’t.
I know when I started doing identity work, it’s so much easier to be to talk about and be in touch with the sides of you that are disadvantaged, right or that don’t have power, right? Because then we can live into that myth of like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps that this country loves. And for me, the work was really being in touch with the parts of myself that hold privilege and power and, and who are wrestling with that a little bit. And so I think that’s what I see when I work with teachers. And adults too, is that that’s really hard for them, that it’s really challenging to notice where you hold power, and then to hold yourself accountable to that power. And so what I really appreciate about Liz Kleinrock’s approach is that she walks us through how to do that.
And that leads to a lot of great identity work, which I know we at the Tarrant Institute often talk to teachers about how to do that work with our students, because it helps us know students well, it helps them understand themselves better, it helps build community in the classroom. It helps us cultivate a critical lens on the world and understand difference and how it plays out. And I know that you have both done identity work with your students. And I wondered if you would share some examples of what that looks like. Emma do you want to start by talking about your Where I’m Frompoems and the other work you’ve been doing this year?
Emma: Sure. And I actually used Start Here Start Now because I actually read this book right at the beginning of the school year, and it was such a great kind of refresher on focusing on identity. And she actually uses some really good examples of I am from poems or bio poems. And so we used bio poems, or I from poems to really kind of think critically about where they were, who am I and where do I come from. And that process in itself, I think helps students kind of get thinking critically about their own identity. But also at the same time through sharing out within the community helps them learn from each other, and helps them build community and respect within the context of the community that you’re creating, especially at the beginning of the year.
Jeanie: Emily, do you want to talk a little bit about the work you’ve done at in social studies with identity?
Emily: Yeah, so ever since my first year of teaching, I had students write me letters at the beginning of the year. So before we really did any community-building, before I really introduced myself, I would ask the students to introduce themselves to me before there were any judgments or spaces for students to get into the habit of, or to continue the habit of like negative self-talk.
Especially with high school students that just feels like that’s the default in a social studies classroom. It’s either I love social studies, I’m so glad to be here. And then I don’t know anything else about them. Or they hate Social Studies, and they don’t share anything because they feel like there’s already this negative association. And so that was something that I started really before my real journey with antibias, antiracism work.
And as I started to read the responses that students would give, I would give it back to them at the end of the year and they would really start to especially like, ninth-grader, I started with 10th graders. So they were, by the time that they’re juniors, they’re essentially seniors.
And so the ways that they saw themselves through the lens of their older selves, I started to really see that identity work happening. And then that became an explicit unit of study. At South Burlington, with the ninth graders, was having them look at their identity, looking at culture, and the different ways that it shows up and pivotal events and how they’ve shaped their lives, those three things together to start every year with those pieces, the students were so and part of that, too, was building a community of, of protection for each other. Acknowledging when we cause harm, and really focusing on how do we have meaningful conversations. Those have to go together, especially when we’re asking students to share pivotal events and where, where they came from things that have had an impact on themselves, and then sharing it with others that they felt comfortable, took a lot of really explicit work.
A lot of that having to do with SRI protocols and modifying them for the classroom like those, those pieces, really, there’s a lot of pieces together. But by doing that internal work, first, we were able to really dive deep into the historical topics that we covered. And having that sense of empathy was much easier to do, rather than the years prior, where I was trying to teach empathy, without those pieces in place.
Jeanie: Oh, I love that so much. And what I’m hearing from both of you is the sense that like, we can’t get to who are we and how do we behave together without doing the work around Who am I? And how am I showing up? And the reciprocity between those two feels really important. I think sometimes we try to jump like you said, right to the like, who are we? And how are we going to behave here without doing any of that introspection necessary to know what we’re bringing to the space? That feels really important.
I also really appreciate that because I think so often, when we talk about personalised learning, we put the emphasis on the individual, but I actually think the emphasis needs to go on community. And so this is a way of building community by also doing that individual work.
I look forward to putting some special links in the transcript for folks to go find that lead to Emma and Emily’s work in the classroom. Thank you both for that. So the other thing that comes up, Emma, did you want to add something?
Emma: Yeah, I would actually love to add, I love what Emily was saying. Just about the time, like evolving into, you know, spending the time on who am I and then evolving into who are we is so important.
I know I went into this this school year, I’m thinking about like, so much of being a teacher is, is oftentimes kind of fighting time. Okay, I, you know, we have to get this done. And this done, and this done. And this done, And I was really mindful going into the school year that no, we’re just going to take our time,
they’re going to take the time that they need to really know each other
And I think it was, at least this year, I feel like it was probably around 10 weeks and after doing lots of different identity things: a brand identity, learning about who am I and who we are, that it felt like we could have courageous conversations where we’re really having these I think that was Kleinrock, she talks about pulling in instead of pushing out in terms of having those conversations that are hard. So taking that time to spend on identity I think is really crucial. And it’s okay too.
Emily: I really agree with you. And I think that there’s, there’s this pushback with ABAR [antibias, antiracist] work in particular that it’s, it’s taking away from content. And I think it’s this duality of I got to know my students way faster and at a much deeper level, so that I was able to personalize their learning, understand what they needed to feel successful. I knew how to reach out to parents or families, caregivers, special educators. The students felt comfortable disclosing things that were going on in their personal lives, especially last year when everything was mayhem of like, we, the number of conversations we had about like mental health was so much more significant in a time where it felt like people were talking about mental health. And this really surface level like self-care will help you not feel burnout. It’s like, no, no, we’re actually talking about mental health crises right now.
And we’re working together as a classroom, to anchor really complex conversations.
While monitoring our friends, the ways that they’re showing up, despite wearing masks where, you know, there’s this sense that you see less of a person, but, you know, being able to see each other’s eyes and being able to really feel the energy in the room. It just would have been a totally different experience, had we not gotten to know each other. Through identity Yeah, I just, there’s just, I can’t say enough about how important it is to, to actually know and not make assumptions. Because that’s something that is so easy to do as teachers because we’ve seen so many young people in front of us that it’s easy to fall into that trap.
Jeanie: Oh, gosh, I so appreciate the depth that you two are going with this. And this idea that this difference between thinking we know our students, and really knowing our students and allowing them to voice who they are, as opposed to us assuming or falling into tropes that we carry in our brain because we’re seasoned teachers.
It also brings up the next issue that Liz addresses in the book, which is this issue of time. Specifically, how do I do this kind of work ABAR work and by ABAR just for listeners, we’re talking about antibias, antiracist work? How do I make time for that? While also teaching all the things (I am doing some air quotes here) need to teach, right? Like whether you think of that as covering content or staying on course, with proficiencies and curriculum? How do you also prioritize this kind of work? You’ve already let us know that sometimes you have to slow down and really get to know kids in order to do the important work that comes ahead. And have those relationships that mean you’re really being an impactful teacher. Or help them have those relationships with each other that helped the classroom sing. And having just been in Emma’s classroom last week, I can say the results of that deep work she did with her students is really paying off in how they show up and have been able to have conversations and relationships with each other.
But how else do you deal with that issue of time? With that issue of teaching the proficiencies you need to teach and embedding antiracist antibias work into the curriculum? Emily, do you want to go first this time?
Emily: Sure, I was just turning to page 24. In Start Here Start Now where Liz Kleinrock provides a really beautiful graphic organizer for ways to think really critically about what you have to do and what you get to do.
And that’s something that this is actually something I use in my work with Great Schools Partnership, working with other schools, as they think about their journey, whether it’s with equity work, or proficiencies, personalized learning. This is a disclosure: I love proficiency-based learning. That is also how Jeanie and I know each other is through our role in work. That was my focus, with my role in research was using student voice with proficiency in personalized learning. And so to see this chart that Liz has that, and I’ll read the header, so she talks about your identifying your state standards, and how your students will meet that standard, the subject that you teach, what do I have to do in order to do what I want to do? How can I tackle this through an ABAR lens? And what and where can I supplement/substitute.
And I think this is such a great, easy model to follow of like, these are things I have to do.
But when you really look at the language of standards, the opportunities are endless for the ways you can reach that standard. And that’s something that just made teaching, really fun to think about giving those same standards to students. And really think critically about why we’re doing what we’re doing. And how we can get to do the things that we want to do by thinking critically about the systems that are created.
In full transparency, we talked about the four I’s of oppression pretty early on in my curriculum with students. And so we are always thinking about where is that institutionalized oppression? And who’s deciding what we are learning with that ideological oppression? Where are those ideas coming from? How does that show up in our internalized selves? And that how does that interaction with each other really show up and the ways that oppression and liberation can be in place? And so I just, if there’s one thing in this book, it’s this, and then for the STEM teachers who are like, well, she’s a social studies teacher, so I’m ignoring her. Go to the back of the book, on page 129, because there’s a whole section for you stem folks.
Emma: So one way that thinking about this kind of work through a lens in terms of thinking of building a classroom, of trust and reflection. I just actually presented with Jeanie and another amazing colleague of mine, Margaret around personalized learning plans. And part of my reflection around that was on reflection, how it also ties into having students reflect really gets into then them knowing themselves, but also you knowing them really well.
The other piece of that, for me, too, is the beginning of the year, we spend quite a bit of time, actually using SRI protocols that are kind of rewritten at the level of our students so the students within our community can access kind of thinking about how do we want to feel in our community. And I’m going through like a negotiation of brainstorming ideas individually, and then collectively coming up with some ideas about how we want to feel as a community and then continuing to reflect on those feeling words throughout the time that we’re spending together. I think it helps to also bring in at least in you know, the elementary setting, to the ability to think about actions and choices and if they are meeting the feelings that we want to feel in my classroom. And I think it’s helping that that social and emotional piece that I think is also really critical, it’s not just another thing, it’s all the same.
Jeanie: I really, I really appreciate that from both of you this idea that it’s not another layer. It’s how you do the things you’re already doing. And whether that’s how you select books and articles and topics to focus in on and or the perspectives you bring to those things is really important to the conversation that kids are having in your classroom and the critical lens that they’re building up over time so that they can begin to identify racism and bias and then do something about it. So thank you both for that.
Emma, you’ve already alluded to the fact that if you’re going to do this kind of work, you’re also going to have to have difficult conversations in the classroom. And there’s a nice chapter in here about how to do that, how to hold space for hard conversations. And I wonder what has worked for the two of you when things get prickly? When you’re asking kids to think in ways that maybe are uncomfortable or when you have differences of opinion in the classroom?
Emma: Well, I think that I’m going to circle us back to making sure that there is that safe, caring community by doing like, starting with who am I, who are we and then identity work, I think creates that safe space to be able to call in. When having conversations about I think, even like in the elementary school setting, we’re really talking and I would say in any setting any educational setting, where we’re having tough conversations, the ability to do that is because there is this feeling of safety, to be able to take risks, and to be vulnerable, to ask questions and to share kind of vulnerabilities around certain topics. Because it’s a safe space for people to do that and for students to do that.
Jeanie: How would you build on that, Emily?
Emily: Yeah, I think there’s, so part of that part of what I’m thinking about is how power shows up in the classroom. And that was something that I was always pretty explicit about. I called myself a benevolent monarch, that I have been selected to be here. It was your destiny to be in this classroom, I have all of the power, but I can choose to be kind. And so I never wanted students to feel like I am giving them this false sense of reality of having a say in the classroom. Because ultimately, that’s, that’s just not true. I’m legally responsible for them. And so that was always something that I leveraged to really think intentionally about the conversations that we’re having in class, like, what are the things that were explicitly saying out loud? And what are the things that we’re saying to one another? And what are the things that we’re writing down and processing?
I think about the nuances between a safe space and a brave space.
And ultimately, it’s down to those in a classroom because we just you, I don’t have, I cannot control the brains of others. And so acknowledging that was really important for me in the students, first and foremost.
We had a unit on the history of race, racism, and oppression. That was a lot of journaling. Because I didn’t want my particularly white students verbally processing what it must be like to have a marginalized identity, when there are students who have marginalized identities, sitting next to them being like, cool, this is a space for you. But really, to make it complex to think about what are the actions that we’re taking? Like? Yes, we’re reflecting. But what is we all have power? Because I’m giving you, I’m actually giving you power right now. What are you going to do with the topic that you’re researching, or how you’re choosing to demonstrate your knowledge understanding that is going to be making the lives of others and yourself better? And so really frame and that’s, I mean, kind of the benefit of the classroom is like, this is a place that’s not out in the real world where there are more limitations to what you can say or do but this is the place where if you want to write your legislator, let’s do it. If you want to, you know, go talk to the principal about something you want to see changed. Let’s do it.
If you want to just read and process that’s really important, and so that being able to think about the avenues to take so especially when something hard and problematic comes up. It’s not a surprise, but there are also next steps to take. And I think what Liz talks about that I wish I leveraged was bringing her families, her community in with her. And that’s not something that I had even come close to doing as a classroom teacher, but it’s something I’m thinking about now, in my role.
Jeanie: I just feel like I’m in the presence of such genius between Liz and her words on the page. And the two of you, like, I’m just learning so much. And also just really appreciate Emily how you frame that as you are the benevolent monarch. Like you have power, and you have the power to do what Emma’s talking about, which is set agreements with your students. So that the culture can hold such things. And then also to make space for people to process this new learning in ways that are appropriate for themselves and for the other people in the classroom. I just really appreciate that so much. Thank you both so much for that.
And this leads to my next question, right? Because we are in the midst of a whitelash right now. I’m just going to call it what it is. We’re in the midst of a whitelash against critical race theory and all things equity and inclusion. We hear about it on the news. It’s all over social media. People are showing up at school boards, people not in the area, not from the community are showing up at school boards. And, and so that’s all of the work that Liz is talking about the antibias, antiracist work, is getting a lot of pushback in our racist society.
And so I guess, my question for you, and it’s not brand new, this has been ongoing. Emily, you taught at South Burlington as they were changing the name of their mascot, and they’re flying the Black Lives Matter flag. And so there’s been a lot of pushback in the past. So how do you approach this kind of work in that climate? How do you keep parents and caregivers informed and deal with criticism and still continue to do the work and not just give up?
Emily: I’ll just start by saying that it’s really hard. It is. It would be a bold-faced lie to say I had any kind of answer. I profusely sweat through my clothes when I teach the history of race, racism, and oppression to my students for fear of pitchforks. I’ve gotten Heil Hitler’s in class when I’ve said that I’m Jewish. You know, like, there are clear responses that have happened and will happen, unfortunately. And it’s, it’s really complicated.
But I think what is really important is making sure that we’re constantly learning, I think, especially as a white woman, there’s so much to learn and unlearn. Something that I always, I always feel like prevented me from pushing my curriculum forward more was that fear of backlash, and not being able to say the right thing about why what I’m teaching is important. And that is harming students. I know I caused harm to a student that is something that I continue to process and work through. Because I hold a lot of implicit bias, I hold a lot of unconscious bias, like there are a lot of problematic things with me. I am a white woman. I hold racist ideas. I have to work through those and make sure that I’m not continuously causing harm. And I think that’s one of the hardest parts is acknowledging that first, to then just hold that as a line of like, why I can’t continue that same pattern, I need to make changes, which can be hard, but it’s important to your students. And that’s what always kept me centered.
Jeanie: Before we move on and hear from Emma, could you just talk a little bit about the bar we work that you do as a part of that process of processing your own bias and assumptions?
Emily: Yeah, so Christie Nold, who’s a fellow educator at South Burlington and just wonderful human and Jennifer Belisle, who was also a wonderful human, also in South Burlington, we, and Raechel Barone, she was also a part of it too. Christie really spearheaded the initiative. June of 2020, I think she reached out to us and introduced the idea of creating a BARWE group, which is Building Antiracist White Educators, creating our own branch of the organization that’s based in Philadelphia, the website is https://www.barwe215.org/. And creating a space for white educators to come together monthly to discuss topics that are coming up for us.
For this month's BARWE, we focused on Indigenous knowledges – here are the slides @Queen_Gilmore @jenjgb73 & I used to guide the conversation alongside 28 educators/administrators/board members in the South Burlington School District:https://t.co/sAOjVf3Ent
It became a really powerful space for responding to racialized incidents in South Burlington, thinking about how we can be co-conspirators together, looking at student achievement data and the impacts of racism and how that’s showing up in the students who are leaving our schools. It was has been and is continuing at South Burlington, and there’s been a lot of schools that have started their own, across Vermont. And it’s just a really powerful organization that is just for white identifying educators to be messy, and learn together without causing harm to our colleagues of color.
Jeanie: Thank you for that. Now, I’d really like to invite Emma in because I know she has things to add to.
Emma: Yeah, I would love to and I was really connecting to what you were saying, Emily.
The work of acknowledging yourself and your own biases within the context of your classroom and as an educator is really critical. And it’s hard. It’s hard work. It takes a lot of space to reflect and to generously listen, not just to yourself, but also to others in order to do this work.
And Jeanie, you were saying, you know, when there’s conflict and disagreement. For me, I feel like it really I, I tried to seek to listen and engage in a conversation around how to advance this work. I think it really starts with you. And I think that’s one of the big things for me and the big takeaways. And this is really hard work. And it really starts with individuals. And making space and time to, as Emily said, learn from others and reflect on who you are helps the practice grow.
Jeanie: You know, I work with schools and school districts around change, school change. And one of the recommendations I have for people is to get to know your district policies. And so for example, Kingdom East, a school district has a really excellent equity policy. And I think that can be really leveraged. If you get pushback about this work, right? Like you can look at your school and district’s equity policy and use that to defend yourself against critique, knowing that you’re doing the right thing. And so I think it’s really important for teachers to know who has their back, and to make sure that policy has your back. And it’s really easy. Having been a librarian, it’s really easy for districts to ignore their own policy sometimes. So like if somebody pushes back on a book in the collection, it can be a knee-jerk reaction for administrators just to want to remove the book to get rid of the conflict. But we have to remember that conflict is a really good thing too, right. When conflict is happening
it means we’re doing something, it means we’re shifting ideas, it means we’re doing the work if people are pushing back a little bit, and that that pushback can be a really good thing.
But also be familiar enough with your policies to know that you can go to the school board or you can go to your administrator, your superintendent and say the policy says this, that the policy supports what I’m doing in my classroom. So I just say that because I think it’s really important to know when you’re supported, and, and that policy has implications, and we should be pushing for equity and inclusion policies. Thank you both for your thoughtful responses.
One of the sections of this book I really appreciate living in Vermont, I hear over and over again from educators: “well, my school is mostly white, so we don’t need to deal with that.” And I’m like, if your school is mostly white, you especially need to have conversations about race and racism because that’s where it’s mostly invisible. And so I really appreciate chapter six, What Does ABAR Look Like If All or Most of My Students Are White? And I wondered if you could share your own understandings of why it’s important to do antibias antiracist work with white students, and what that might look like.
Emma: I think, for me, with at least with a predominantly white school, where I’ve taught most of my career, is I think it starts with the diversity. Acknowledging diversity and different perspectives and where we see diversity, even though you may be white. It’s like that idea of the mask identity mask, like what you see on the outside, versus what you see on the inside, and having conversations about that those aspects of identity. But also engaging in conversations and learning around how this has come up in the past for marginalized communities and people who have been marginalized to help the white students understand the context of what’s happening today and their place in the world, in a safe space?
Emily: Yeah, I think what I ended up finding most helpful was thinking about it through like a deficit mindset of like, if we’re only in the mindset that we’re only teaching white students, then that’s definitely not true. And that also means that the lens that we’re looking at our curriculum is going to be through this whiteness lens. And so whose voices are not represented, whose bodies are not represented, whose contributions to the world are not represented, when we’re not thinking beyond how we show up every day, and not critically evaluating what we’ve been taught. Because that’s what I feel like it’s most accessible to, to teachers in particular of like, well, why do you teach what you teach? And generally, there’s a response. And it’s either well, I’ve always done it this way, or I had a really bad experience in school. And so I want to make things better. Like, generally, I find teachers fall into one of two categories. They love school, and so they’re back in it, or they hated school, and they want to make it better. And both of those conversations lead to a critique of well, how did you learn what you learned? And when we think about, well, what’s especially histories, I always feel like it’s a really good access point of like, what’s the last history that you actually learned in school? And usually, it’s like the 1970s.
And when I taught chronological history, I never taught past the 1970s it was impossible to go from Mesopotamia to modern-day, what happened yesterday. And so to offer that as an entry point of like, well have significant things happened since 1972? Today, and just thinking about like, well, you know, how are we really thinking about who is in our curriculum, and that’s what I found was interesting, in conversations with science teachers, in particular of like, well, okay, so what type of science are you? Do you talk about the scientists and where those ideas came from? And, you know, that’s a part of sciences, who’s creating it, and where did those ideas come from? And if you’re not talking about, you know, the Ming Empire and what was happening in China, or you’re not talking about out the Muslim creations of math inside, like, we’re, there’s just so many pieces that are missing. And I think it goes back to that acknowledgment piece of if we’re not authentically teaching like we’re just wrong for not including those perspectives. It’s just wrong. It’s, it’s an inaccurate depiction of science. They’re hard entry points, but it’s that self-reflection piece that can be so helpful when thinking about how whiteness is showing up.
Jeanie: One thing that I was thinking about Emily through what you were saying was the power, the danger of the single story, and I think that’s something that Liz Kleinrock brings up on page 101. She actually uses some really great charts that she, she uses with her young students.
Just thinking about certain topics, and using a single story and the meaning that they can make. Something that I did recently with my students is they looked at an image of the first Thanksgiving, and just reading that image through a critical lens and then questioning well, is that accurate? Is that an assumption? Or is that something that you see? And so being able to differentiate between those two things was really powerful. And I think it’s hitting on kind of what she suggests in the book to really get at, like, what that looks like teaching in schools with predominantly white students.
Emily: Absolutely, that reminds me of something I used to do in class. Around this time was, we would watch what would the Mayflower episode of Charlie Brown. And I would first ask like, okay, so who’s seen Charlie Brown? Who knows who Charlie Brown is? And then we’ll watch the episode like, so what is the message that we just learned about Thanksgiving? And, and students will have all these ideas? Like, what are some things that you thought were weird? Like you are teenagers, you definitely thought that this cartoon was weird. What were some things that you thought were weird? And then we’ll start to unpack those. And then by using primary sources, Learning For Justice has some pretty incredible primary sources to help facilitate conversations around Thanksgiving for all age levels. And so we would use those to talk about so here are some indigenous First Nation perspectives on what Thanksgiving means to them. And now, what might they observe when watching Charlie Brown? What might this actually mean to them? They’re like, oh, no, did you just ruin the Christmas episode too? And I was like, as a Jew? I sure did. I sure did.
So we would have those like, really meaningful conversations. Like perspective matters. And if we’re not thinking about those different perspectives, and who’s being represented in how, what does that mean, the next time that you’re just cruising through Netflix, like what are you going to be looking for, in the characters that are represented and the movies that you’re watching? And that just continues to grow?
Jeanie: You’re both bringing me back to one of the scholars I cite most often. And that’s Rudine Sims Bishop and her ideas of windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors, which she wrote about literature, right. And she said we all need mirrors: ways to see ourselves in literature. But the same could be said about science, math, social studies, right? Like we need to see ourselves represented in the field. We also need windows: we need views of other people represented in those ways in our literature, in our social studies, in our science, in our math. And for white folks, especially, we get a lot of mirrors, white students get a lot of mirrors into the world. They need windows and sliding glass doors to understand how other people experience the world in order to be balanced humans.
And I’m hearing that from both of you. Thank you for that. So, Emma I have a question that’s really specifically for you, because you have taught first and second grade and now you’re teaching fifth and sixth, and this book really is meant for sort of early middle and elementary schools where it’s, it’s Liz Kleinrock’s really writing for teachers of those grades.
And so she specifically has a chapter on what does ABAR work look like with younger students? And I wondered if you had any perspectives on this as somebody who’s taught down to first grade. Yeah, I don’t like the way I just said that. I just want to say I think kindergarten and first-grade teachers are amazing. And say I just want to rephrase that and say, as someone who has taught amazing first and second-grade students?
Emma: They are amazing. They teach you so much. I feel like those younger students, and they don’t like it when I call it younger either. So I might switch that into first and second graders. But I think that it really goes back to looping back to some of the conversations that we’ve had around getting to know your students. Well, I think oftentimes, as educators of primary students, we have this like, idea that they can’t engage in difficult conversations because they’re young. And I would argue that I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. And when we’re protecting them in that way. What does that story tell them? And how does that impact the choices as they get older?
So what I’ve found is it’s really about the process in which you have the conversation with them around certain topics. So choosing essential questions that really engage them in the topic, they do have a lot to say, around it. And I think you can do it in a way that’s engaging and sensitive at the same time. Because they do want to talk about it, and not to offer them spaces to do that, I think challenges our educational system.
Jeanie: I’ve taught K to six before I moved up to a 7 to 12 school, and I love first and second graders, they’re so earnest, and they’re so full of kindness and love. And I think actually we miss a prime opportunity to engage them in the work of being fully human if we don’t have them have these conversations about difference. And especially with an appreciative lens, so I’m grateful for your answer.
One of the things about equity work and antibias antiracist work for me is it keeps me on my growth edge. It keeps me always learning because I never fully arrive. Which I think can feel exhausting, but I actually love it right? It keeps me on this journey to learning more and more about myself, about the world, about how to do a better job of it. And I wonder what you’re learning edges are right now. The two of you who’ve been doing this work in different ways. Where is your growth point right now?
Emily: I’m there. So I mean, especially just with Kyle Rittenhouse. And I don’t even have words to process that right now. But there’s just so much that feels the way that I respond. I know that there’s that’s a lens of privilege, and that’s a lens of whiteness.
Jeanie: Just to be clear, you’re talking about the verdict, the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict that just came out. And so you’re saying your response to that is one of privilege because I imagine like me, you responded with like, what the heck, how is the verdict? And yeah, okay.
Emily: A few more expletives. But yes, I’m just really thinking about also the privilege of not having to acknowledge that as a classroom teacher. I am in this space that I’m in right now my office and my house feeling very protected. And working through that, that feeling of I don’t have to go into a classroom tomorrow and explain to students what just happened and that’s also a way that kept me growing was knowing that I was being held accountable by teenagers who look to me for an explanation and a lens to look at the world.
I think about how little I really understand about the land I live on. And just the ways that the Abenaki have been treated and just there’s so much just so much that every day I am breathing through like a stretch. Liz has been working on her split. And I feel like that’s where I am is like how can I breathe through? Just stretch.
Jeanie: Thank you for that. I really appreciate that. I’ve also been trying to do some learning about the Abenaki and the land that I’m on. So I’m really grateful for that. But how about you, Emma? Where are your growth edges right now?
Emma: I think it’s hard to really zone in on one edge. But I guess what’s really coming up for me as not only a classroom teacher, but a leader in our district too is thinking about, I think this is less so maybe in middle and high school, but in elementary schools, we use programs quite a bit. And I’m really trying to think about programs critically through an ABAR lens of how, who are they serving, what students are they serving? And who are they written for? And using them critically. And are they going to serve students? And are they always going to serve all students is the question. And I think that my learning edge also – so this is actually the first year I’ve taught middle school in quite some time – for fifth and sixth graders is when I’m all like, making sure that I’m designing experiences that bring in the voices of marginalized communities whether or not it’s choosing books that are written by women, or American Indians or other perspectives. And I know that I’m making mistakes all the time, but at least I’m trying to, you know, push myself to learn about how I can make, you know, more spaces that are like healing spaces where people’s voices are acknowledged, and people can lean into vulnerability in order to learn more about themselves and about each other.
Jeanie: I really appreciate that. That notion of healing spaces, and I really appreciate the way that brings us around to this idea that antiracist antibias work is healing work, the work of healing ourselves and healing our communities and, and helping our students learn to heal themselves in their community. So thank you both so much for this really nurturing conversation about doing this work together. Thank you so much for talking with me about Start Here Start Now.
I’m Jeanie Phillips and this has been an episode of #vted Reads talking about what Vermont educators and students are reading. Thank you so much to Emma Vastola and Emily Gilmore for appearing on the show and talking with me about Start Here Start Now: A Guide to Antibias and Antiracist Work in Your School Community. If you’re looking for a copy of Start Here Start Now check your local library. Thanks to Audrey Holman, audio engineer and so much more. To find out more about #vted Reads, including past episodes, upcoming guests and reads and a whole lot more you can visit vtedreads.tarrantinstitute.org. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @vtedreads. This podcast is a project of the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education at the University of Vermont.
We are rolling into that time of year when we hope that you find time to get cozied up to a good book. These short amounts of daylight should beckon us to find warm and bright spots within our homes. For many of us at TIIE, that means getting into your favorite chair and curling up with something wonderful to read. Here are some of our winter reading recommendations for keeping the bookworms warm and cozy.
Emily Hoyler
What are my reading preferences, if not eclectic? Truth be told, I am still working my way through some of the books that have been in my to-be-read pile throughout the pandemic. So many books and so little reading time. Perhaps my progress is so slow because my time is so divided. I am reading no less than six books at present, and that’s just what I can remember right now! Here’s to winter reading!
Unsettling is also a theme in my reading lately. Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War by Lisa Brooks which tells the tale of the “first indian war” – now known as King Phillip’s War through the stories of a woman called Weetamoo who was a female leader of the Narragansett anong a couple of others. What’s most fascinating is how scholar Lisa Brooks is able to interpret land and documents to bring forward an indigenous perspective.
My Kindle is what I turn to in the wee hours when I can’t fall back to sleep. Perhaps it would make sense to read romance novels at this time of day, but no, not me. Instead, I’m reading Mothertrucker: Finding Joy on the Loneliest Road in America by Amy E. Butcher, which follows the author as she joins the now deceased Alaskan Ice Road trucker Joy “Mothertrucker” Wiebe in a true story about redemption, overcoming fear, and domestic violence. (Huh, maybe that’s why I can’t fall back to sleep?!)
For the past year, I’ve been a bit obsessed with the question of how humans can work toward collective goals. Because clearly we have some problems, and the only way things are going to improve is by creating a better future together.
Facilitating school change is my jam, and adrienne maree brown has taught me so much about holding space and ushering transformation. Her book Holding change: The way of emergent strategy facilitation and mediation is a collection of powerful voices extending and actualizing the Octavia Butler-inspired emergent strategy approach. I’ve heard a few of the guest authors on the podcast that brown does with her sister, To Survive the End of the World, so I’m looking forward to reading these essays, poems, and recipes.
I love the central thesis of Peter Block’s book Community: The structure of belonging. He proposes that the fragmentation of our society can be cured one community conversation at a time. I so very much want this to be true. But if nothing else, I find this mindset makes it easier to approach each conversation and opportunity to connect to my community with the vital presence they deserve.
For fiction fun, I’m enjoying The sentence by Louise Erdrich, though I suspect that I’ll be haunted by a bit more than the ghost at the center of the story since it spans November 2019-November 2020. The Ojibwe narrator is a strong, funny, and intriguing voice with plenty of excellent book recommendations or her own.
I can’t wait to delve into Kwame Mbalia’s Tristan Strong punches a hole in the sky. I’ve had my eye on this book for quite some time and now the only question is whether I’ll read it on my own or with one of my daughters.
I look forward to finding what human connections, including books of course, await in 2022.
Robin Merritt
If you are like me, reading choices are a direct reflection of the many hats I am wearing. Recommendations from trusted friends, colleagues, and family are providing new titles upon my nightstand and filling my curiosity niche right now. I am finding that curated reading is providing me with more than just a good book. They are also providing me with a much needed connection to friends, family, and my community. A special shout out to my colleagues and friends, Jeanie Phillips and Life LeGeros, who have recommended two of my winter reading titles! Always trust a librarian and Life. 🙂 So here is what is in my winter reading stack, with credit given of course!
When speaking with my Tarrant friends, I mentioned wanting something good to read. It could be a piece of literature, historical narrative – just something well written. Jeanie and others immediately recommended some titles. As a little surprise on my swing through, Jeanie left this book on her porch for me to borrow. The story is set in 1920s Bombay with a female protagonist. She is one of the first female lawyers in India. I am excited to delve in and be transported in time.
This is another recommendation from a trusted colleague, Life LeGeros. I was in luck when my local library had it available. I haven’t started reading this yet, but am so intrigued by its genre. It’s described as science fiction, as well as a “slave memoir, fantasy, and historical fiction.” Hmm, it’s a curious combination. But reviewers indicate it to be a successful merge.
Our one room local Winooski library is filled with gems and friendly librarians. They know our family by name and continue to introduce a variety of genres onto our shelves. Prominently displayed in our library, “Hey, Kiddo” is a story of one kid’s experience with family addiction and mental health. I picked this up because my 10 year old has been interested in exploring various challenging topics through graphic novels. After bringing “Hey, Kiddo” home from our library, I placed this book in his room. He flew through this story and then recommended that I read it afterwards. I love reading books that my kids enjoy and having discussions about the messages we each took away. And check out our #vted Reads segment on Hey Kiddo here!
Again, a recommendation from my 10 year old who read “Wonder” in school and then watched part of the movie. And Winooski Library for the win again! While browsing titles prior to a road trip for break, my son asked to listen to this as a family. I am rediscovering the power of a great audiobook once again.
And lastly, my 7 and 10 year old sons have asked me to read the Percy Jackson series aloud to them before bedtime. We are always looking for a good series to read together. This sparked an interest in Greek mythology and prompted our purchase of “The Complete Guide to Greek Myths.” My kids had the idea to cross reference each god or goddess that Percy comes across with the Greek Myth book. We pause to read the background story of the god/goddess he meets. It’s a great introduction to cross-referencing that will make any librarian proud.
Happy reading!
Rachel Mark
My reading picks for this winter are heavy on the fiction side. I do love a good story!
I recently finished The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Dare about a teenage Nigerian girl. While she ends up as a maid, she really aspires to go to school. Adunni’s strong and vibrant narration is infectious and inspiring. As Jenna Bush Hager said on television, she will “break your heart and then put it back together again”. I loved this book and learned so much about contemporary life in Nigeria. I could see teachers giving this book to upper middle school and high school students, too.
My daughter has me reading The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Van Glaser. Because I love to read along with her, I agreed. It’s a cute story about some eccentric children trying to save their families’ brownstone apartment rental. They have eleven days at the end of December to convince their Scrooge-like landlord to renew their lease. The children must convince him to let them stay in the only home they have known. Something about this book has me wanting to see Wes Anderson bring it to film fruition. I can picture the quaint, cramped and messy New York City apartment brimming with these charming characters.
To satisfy my mystery obsession, I plan to read State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny. It seems like I read about one Louise Penny book a winter. Probably so that I can spread them out and make them last longer. This political thriller is co-written by Clinton. Naturally, it features a new female Secretary of State. She finds herself scrambling to handle a terrorist crisis and an internal conspiracy. While the possible real-world connections may be unsettling, I suspect I’ll enjoy flipping through every page.
For nonfiction pleasure, I’m planning to read The Black Friend: On Being a Better White Person by Frederick Joseph. I have heard so many friends recommend and rave about this book. I also love that it’s written for a young adult audience. Hopefully, there are passages and nuggets of wisdom that I can share with schools and students. And this book has some of the best cover art that I have seen – huge credit to Zharia Shinn.
Lastly, I’ll admit that I hope to begin “reading” this Self-Love Workbook for Women: Release Self-Doubt, Build Self-Compassion and Embrace Who You Are by Megan Logan. Truthfully, I am terrible at doing things for myself. As a middle-aged woman who works, studies, and manages a family and life, all sorts of things come before taking care of me. It’s likely that these patterns have gotten even worse over the pandemic. And yet I willingly let that happen. It’s way overdue for me to spend some time working on my own self. I look forward to this workbook and guide for self-exploration.
Jeanie Phillips
I love to give books as gifts. And I also adore browsing local independent bookstores. It delights me to select the perfect (to me at least) book for each recipient. And I most especially love when they call/text/write to tell me how much they enjoyed reading it!
This year the recipient of my book giving is going to be ME! And I have thoroughly enjoyed selecting these titles for my winter reading!
Picture books are one of my favorite gifts for folks of all ages. I listened to the audio of The 1619 Project: Born on the Water (thank you libro.fm for the free copy!) and now I HAVE TO HAVE the picture book. The text is so powerful, I can’t wait to spend time with the illustrations.
The Marrow Thieves is one of my all time favorite reads, and Cherie Dimaline has published a companion book. I am so looking forward to spending more time with French and his chosen family. My copy of Hunting By Stars is waiting for me at Phoenix Books – but I think I’ll leave it there until the Solstice because once it is in my house I won’t be able to resist it.
Finally, I cannot wait to dive into Louise Erdrich’s newest book. I’ve been reading her for decades and she has made me cry countless times, but from the excerpts I’ve read of The Sentence, this book promises to make me laugh out loud. Louise has a bit part in this one, which delights me as a long time fan.
Whatever you read this winter, I hope it’s delicious and warming and good for your soul, and I’d love to hear all about it!
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.
Lyndon Town School: Smoothie Club, Outdoor Club, and Salon Club. Images courtesy of Journalism Club students Lane and Owen.
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?
Lovely listeners: we’re baaaaaaack! And we missed each and every one of you.
To celebrate our return, in this episode we brought back guests from *Vermont* Reads, a statewide program that encourages everyone across Vermont to read one book each year, and then turn and, you know, talk to one another. We are HUGE fans.
And yes, the names are confusing. They’re Vermont Reads — reading across Vermont — and we’re Vermont *Ed* Reads, reading across Vermont, but make it education. (Please imagine my jazz hands as I say that).
Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup returns to the show this time with Lizzie Lyons, the Children’s Advocacy Coordinator at the Vermont Network, an organization focused on addressing domestic and sexual violence across the state. Together, we’ll be talking about We Contain Multitudes, by Sarah Henstra, a book about boys, poetry, queerness, and how the artist formerly known as Prince refuses to stop changing lives, wherever he appears. (Hint: stay tuned for dance party details.)
Now, as you might’ve guessed from Lizzie’s presence, We Contain Multitudes contains some mention of domestic violence, which we touch on briefly in this episode. It’s an important topic, and part of the work this year with Vermont Reads is providing educators and other adults with tools and resources for supporting students (and more specifically LGBTQIA students) who are dealing with this issue. There are minor spoilers for the book at the 39-minute mark, but we feel like we did a great job yelling SPOILER ALERT! at the top of our loving lungs. Jog ahead two minutes and you’re fine.
But don’t jog too far ahead, because we really did miss you, and we missed this, and we are so happy to be back having these important conversations.
So! Without further ado: I’m Jeanie Phillips and this is #vted Reads: talking about books by, for, and with Vermont educators.
Jeanie: I’m Jeanie Phillips and welcome to #vted Reads. We’re here to talk books for educators, by educators, and with educators. Today I’m with Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup and Lizzy Lyons and we’ll be talking about We Contain Multitudes by Sarah Henstra. Thank you so much for joining me, Christopher and Lizzy. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Christopher: Hi, Jeanie and hi, Lizzy. It’s great to see you both. I’m really excited to be here to talk about We Contain Multitudes. I’m the director at Vermont Humanities. I’ve been around now for about 4 years. So, this is the fourth Vermont Reads book that I’ve worked on, and might be my favorite. One of the things that really speaks to me about it, that I feel like I should tell people about right up front, is that this is the first LGBTQ youth choice in Vermont Reads 19 year history. And maybe coincidentally, I am a queer-identified person. And so, this book speaks to me pretty specifically and reminds me a lot of some of the experiences that I had as a young person.
Lizzy: And my name is Lizzy Lyons. I’m really excited to be here. I was approached by Christopher at Vermont Humanities when they chose this book. As part of the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence because of some of the themes in this book. And we have been invited to be a partner in some of the programming that’s happening for this book, and we’re really excited about that. The Vermont Network is working alongside 15 different statewide organizations in Vermont and we work around themes of domestic and sexual violence and working toward a violence free Vermont.
There’s a lot of different programs of support that are happening statewide that I am excited to talk about in relation to this book. Also to let all of your listeners know that there’s supports out there, whether that’s just for you or her family members and shelter and other sorts of programming available stuff exciting.
Christopher: Yes. Lizzy, you might know this, but I don’t think Jeanie does. I was one of the founders of Safe Space in the early 2000’s which is the member of the network that serves LGBTQ Vermonters who are experiencing same sex, domestic, and sexual violence.
Lizzy: That’s right. The Vermont Network has Pride Center as one of its members and it’s also doing a lot of work with Outright Vermont, which is also another partner in this book.
Jeanie: Excellent. I’m so grateful to be talking with community partners that also work with our schools in a variety of ways. And you two both serve community partners that reach into Vermont communities in really meaningful ways. So, I’m delighted to have you here. One of the questions I always ask at the beginning is, what’s something you’re reading right now, if you could each share something that’s captivated you at the moment, that would be awesome. I like to expand my to-be-read pile!
Lizzy: Well, I’ll go first because I was really excited about telling you this Jeanie, but I found Octavia Butler this summer. And so, now I’m, like now I’m just like insatiable but I’ve bridged off and I am reading Adrienne Maree Brown, her starting from the beginning the network library that we have, has all of her books. So, I’m starting with Emergent Strategy and I’m about halfway through that. So, that’s exciting.
Jeanie: I am a huge Octavia Butler fan, which means I’m also a huge Adrienne Maree Brown fan. Thanks for sharing that. Have you read Kindred yet?
Lizzy: No.
Jeanie: Add that to your list. What about you Christopher?
Christopher: Oh gosh. Well, I am in the middle of a huge pile of choices for Vermont Reads 2022, but I’m not sure I should say anything about them yet. There might be some spoilers in there if I do, but me and the team are each over the next three weeks reading, three different choices. So, we have 12 on our shortlist. That will then go to the community advisory committee. But in my personal life right now, I’m rereading The Lord of the Rings, which to me is always go to as the sky gets darker in the year and I just love rereading it and finding more and more about this ecological story, that is at the heart of that novel from the 1950s.
Jeanie: Well, I love a good reread especially in the fall, it’s a good season for rereading and that brings us to this book because I reread it. I read it twice. I liked it so much, which happens every now and again, that I read something twice, right really quickly. And so, I loved it and have no doubts. It’s the perfect Vermont Humanities Council 2021 Vermont Reads book but why did you all choose it?
Christopher: Well, you know, we start our process really early. And so, you know, we had a long list of 20 or 30 books that we were reading a year and a half ago, and it slowly got whittled down to about five different choices. And part of what we do is we really look for opportunities to work with the community. And this book really stood out to us as an opportunity to work with Outright and with the Vermont Network and the Howard Center and Recovery Vermont on issues that are really important in Vermont right now. We’d also never done an LGBTQ book before. We rarely if ever made LGBTQ Grants and we felt like this was a population that was really missing from our work and deserves some love and attention.
Jeanie: Excellent. Well, I’m so excited to talk later on about some of the things that are happening in the community. But let’s introduce our listeners who may have not read the book yet, because once you hear more, you’re going to want to read it. So, let’s set the stage a little bit, Ms. Kang is a high school English teacher in Minneapolis, and she introduces her students to this mailbox that she’s really excited about in front of her classroom. She has them pair up with a younger or older student. The 12th graders are paired up with a 10 grade students to become pen pals of sorts, and their assignment is to write to each other once a week. They have to fill in at least the front side of a piece of paper but she’s not going to read them.
She just checks to see that they’ve written and she puts them in the box. So, they’re very private which feels really rare, actually in school to write something that somebody is not going to read, a teacher is not going to read. And so, the pair in this book are Adam Kurlansky, who’s a senior and Jonathan Hopkirk, who’s a sophomore. I wondered if each of you would choose a character and read a portion of one of the letters, that they write to each other. It might be the whole letter. So, that we could get to know these two characters a little bit.
Lizzy: Yes. I chose a letter from Adam Kurlansky to Jonathan, and as you will find out pretty early in the book when you read it. Adam nicknames Jonathan, and Jonathan nicknames Adam. And so, Adam for most of this book is called Kurl, and Jonathan’s called Jo. So, Kurl writes to Jo.
These letters I’m writing are starting to feel like one long ongoing letter in my head. I should tell Joe about the time I saw the Red Eft, I’ll think, or, I forgot to tell Joe about these birds actually look magnificent in the sky. And then I’ll read one of your letters and think, People have no idea what I’m like. I mean the gap between what people see and what’s actually in my head,sort of shocks me when I read your letters. I guess everyone has this gap. It’s just that they don’t come face-to-face with it very often. It’s a shock to hear that people are still talking about stuff that happened last year.
We Contain Multitudces, page 45
and he goes on to talk about some of those gossipy things that are happening in high school, which is pretty fun.
Jeanie: Lizzy, would you tell me the page number you just read from, I love that letter.
Lizzy: Absolutely, this is from Adam’s letter on Monday, October 5th and it shows up on page 45.
Christopher: I’m going to read a letter from Jo to Kurl, that’s the letter that he wrote on Saturday, October 24th and I’m going to read a passage, that begins on page 92, and it’s actually a really good follow up to Lizzy’s passage because Joe is talking about when Kurl came over to his house for dinner, and it’s one of the first times that they really met in person, they spent a long time just writing to each other but eventually they do meet in person, and Jo is describing, what happens as Kurl is cooking for Jo’s family. Starts on page 93.
And your face Kurl, as we discussed the food! You can’t possibly be unaware of how hard we were all working, the whole evening, to see this change come over your face. Not just Shayna and Bron and me- even Lyle makes more jokes when you’re around, trots out his most reliably crowd pleasing stories for you. We’re all bending over backwards to get you to crack a smile, because when you smile it feels like the sun is coming out. You will point out, of course, that everyone does this. Everyone wears a different face at school. And you’ll point out that the extent to which I have trouble switching faces explains much about how I get treated at school. You’ll be right on both counts. But somehow with you the changes more extreme, like two different people. I wonder, Kurl, when you look in the mirror, do you ever get to see the unguarded face? Because I wish you could. It’s a wonder to behold.
We Contain Multitudes, page 93
Jeanie: What you captured just there, with those two letters is why this book is so good. These letters are so good. There is such reciprocity, and give and take, and knowing and learning, and unlearning in these letters and I am not a person who really likes an epistolary novel. I’m not really a person that gravitates to novels in letters. But I found these, like they swept me away. Why are they so compelling?
Christopher: I think, for me, one of the reasons why they feel compelling us is because these kids are being so honest. They’re being so truthful with each other in a way that I think rarely happens with any relationship. And just to see Jo and Adam really sharing is unique. I also think that you know there’s this expectation that Adam’s just a dumb jock, that’s set up right from the beginning of the book, right? He’s the star of the football team and it appears like he’s always getting into fights, and nobody believes in him but as soon as he starts writing to Jo. Joe believes in him because he can see the unguarded Kurl.
Lizzy: And it’s still not unguarded though, I mean I think these letters are interesting because there’s, there are secrets throughout this book and there are also secrets in between these two people, who are sharing so much back and forth in these letters. But there’s so much that is left for, like your own conclusions. So, like sometimes letters aren’t there and one of them will start imagining what the other one is thinking. And it also feels so authentic in that way of, like you know not knowing. We had lots of conversations about this with youth advocates who are working with young people around the state, who have experiences of violence.
And but also like from my own experiences of when you’re in high school or you’re a young person and you’re figuring out, like do I? Do I not? What do I do here? How about here? Like what am I thinking now? And it goes from these very big extremes of emotions, all the way through the book. When I was rereading this book, just remembering some of the special passages. About how happy or how bad or how upset they were at different points.
Jeanie: You make me think about two things, and one is, Christopher what you said made me think about, how this is the perfect book to update The Outsiders unit. So many schools still read SE Hinton’s The Outsiders. But this book feels like a modern, a more modern version of the outsiders. Kurl and Jo are both kind of outsiders in their way, in their Minneapolis school community, for different reasons. And there’s something like really vulnerable about this book.
And then, Lizzy, what you made me think about is, like they don’t make great decisions in this book all the time. Like they’re like your average young person, sort of winging it along, you know making decisions. Both of them at various times make really troubled decisions. And as a reader, I think it gives you real empathy for how hard it is to make those decisions when you’re 16, 17, 18.
Christopher: And I, you know I think an interesting thing at least in the first half of the book is how angry Adam gets at Jo for being so open about who he is in school, and not trying to hide. And that results in a lot of violence that happens against Jo in school, that Adam saves him from, on more than one occasion. Even though, there’s no reason why you should have to do that, right? Like they’re completely unconnected kids in the beginning of the book.
Jeanie: Christopher, did you happen to mark the passage about the “gable?”
Christopher: I didn’t, but I can find it.
Jeanie: I wonder if that would be the perfect passage to read aloud, that really gets at that sort of tension between Adam’s, like could you just hide a little bit to keep yourself safe. And Jo’s feeling of, like I have to be authentically who I am because the end game is bigger than high school, because my focus isn’t on high school. My focus is on being myself in the larger world.
Christopher: Yes. I remember the gable very well, right? From my own high school experience and probably we all do. So, what they’re talking about is where the gay kids get segregated in the high school cafeteria, that they have to sort of huddle and protect themselves, and you know in my case this was a long time ago. This was the 80s, there were no out gay kids but the gable still existed. Very much, so. And it was the kids who went to the music room and ate by themselves, right?
There’s a small group of kids, who just would not go to the cafeteria because it was an unsafe space, and Jo, I think is really standing up for himself in that passage when he says, I don’t want to sit at the gable. I think that’s discrimination, that is saying that we should be segregated, but that there should be apartheid, and that’s not who I want to be in my life. So, I don’t I don’t want to sit there.
Jeanie: Thank you for giving that so much context in your own experience. Could you turn to page 28, and maybe read the last two paragraphs?
Christopher: Sure. This is a letter from Jonathan and he’s just been bullied in the cafeteria. He’s had a number of bullies dump their milk out all over him, and all over his tray, and Kurl has just rescued him, essentially. So, Jo says,
You picked up my milk-flooded tray and stood looking at me. For about one millisecond there was the tiniest flicker of something troubled across your face– I don’t know, I’ve thought it over quite a bit and I can’t puzzle out what it might have been. Maybe you were considering whether to ram the trade down my throat. You said, why aren’t you sitting at the gay table?” And then, you turned and stalked off. My answer? I’m squarely with Bron on this one, Kurl. The Gable is Discrimination 101. Designating a specific area of a supposedly common space for a minority group, even unofficially, implies that the rest of the space is off limits for that group. But in the interest of being forthright, I do know what you meant. You meant, “Why are you putting yourself in the path of these monsters, and if you found yourself in that path accidentally, why are you staying here?” Answer? Choose one of the following. A. Stupidity. B. Stubbornness. C. Fatalism. D. Masochism. E. All of the Above. Yours truly, Jonathan Hopkirk.
We Contain Multitudes, page 28
Jeanie: Thank you for that. And that really leads into the next question I was going to ask, which may or may not actually be a question. One of the reasons I read YA and middle grades books is to understand young people better, right? To step into their shoes for a while. And that example, what you just read is one of those things, like we as adults in the lives of young people may not understand, what they’re facing in their day to day lives. Like I suspect most teachers in this school are completely unaware, that Jo is getting bullied on the regular or they might have that same sense that Kurl has about him like that he’s doing it to himself, that he’s setting himself up.
And this allows us to really step into the shoes of Jo, and of Jonathan and see what’s really happening for him, and what’s really happening in his brain. And another example that really shines from this book is that, these kids have so many interests that are really like strong interests, that nobody in the school knows about or connects with the learning they have. And so for example, Kurl is really interested in the Taliban and the war in Afghanistan because his brother served and was injured in Afghanistan. And while occasionally, he gets to use that in some aspect of his studies.
I suspect, he’d be a much better student, if that got worked into his history classes, his social studies classes, his science classes. And similarly, Jonathan is really interested in poetry and music. And again, that’s something he does in his outside time and writing poetry and studying poetry. And he talks about poetry in ways that made me wish schools taught it better. On page 19 he says,
Poetry’s like that, Kurl: slippery and coy. It means different things to different readers. You shouldn’t feel embarrassed if it makes you nervous. You’re not alone in that reaction.
We Contain Multitueds, pages 19-20
And I thought, what if a teacher taught poetry that way. I think I would have loved it so much more than I did. And so, I guess my question for you is did this book help you see kids in ways that you might not otherwise have seen them?
Lizzy: Yeah. I mean, I think this conversation came up in two different ways. I mean, I think it is interesting that, what you’re talking of Jeanie, like there are, there are songs that happen in different settings in this book, whether that’s like concerts or whether it’s the character singing in their living room or, you know strumming inside of a tent. And there’s poetry that’s turned in for class assignments. And there’s also poetry that these two boys write to each other and say to each other. And so, I think it is interesting, how we show up in different species. I think, what is interesting throughout this book, is the fact, that this is entirely a world of young people, like there are very few adults that show up in any real big way.
And Jo’s dad is one of them and part of that family dynamic, and then Kurl’s family has some drama that is happening alongside as well, but adults that are interacting and showing up for these kids in this book, they’re not there. And so, we had some conversations about that at the Network. There’s really great curricula around being an Askable Adult and what does it mean to put yourself out there as somebody who has young people, who you can show up for. There’s also a coach in this book and there’s some really great material out there called Coaching Boys into Men and about how coaches play a really influential role in young men, and can use that as part of the work to create less violence. So, I put those two out there for you all listeners to consider looking into two.
Christopher: Yes. I think, Kurl’s coach is a really interesting example of somebody who is really trying to show up for Adam, and Adam doesn’t let him in and that’s pretty devastating, actually. You know, I think, one of the things you pointed out Lizzy is really interesting, as we were having conversations with Sarah Henstra, who wrote the book, she said that part of her inspiration for writing the book was about listening to young people, particularly her own kids, talking when they didn’t think adults were listening, and what they, what kinds of things that they were saying to each other in the absence of a grown-up world, and I think that really does come through in this book that the grownups are functionally not there. Those kids are making all of those choices, largely on their own.
Jeanie: Yes. The grownups are pretty faulty, even those with the best of intentions are pretty faulty in this book. I know Dr. Laura Jiminez, who you had on for a Vermont Humanities event, talked a little bit about that. I’m a huge fan of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. It is one of my favorite books from a long time ago. I read it to my son when he was younger and we both loved it, and one of the problems with that book is the adults are so good in it, the parents are so almost perfect and this book, and I think that’s not really realistic for a lot of kids. And so, I appreciate you pointing that out. I’m also really curious about becoming an askable adult.
So, the other thing that this brings up is Sarah, when you mentioned Sarah Henstra, this isn’t an own voices story. I mean, this is a book written from the perspective of two adolescent boys. They are queer and Sarah Henstra is neither of those things. So, it’s not a story that we would call own voices, and I guess I’m wondering about what might we watch for in a book like this, that’s written by somebody who’s outside of that marginalized identity. How do we make sure it’s a book worth reading?
Christopher: Yes. I think, Lizzy, you might also have some things to say about this but I’ll start as a queer person reading this book, who had a queer youth experience. So, much of it rings true to me. That I am very deeply trusting of Sarah’s work to understand who these boys are, and how they are making the choices that they’re making. She talked to us a lot before we chose the book about the research that she did, particularly around the issues of domestic violence and sexual violence in the book and consent. Which are all problematic pieces of the work of the story, and that it was very interesting to hear her talk about that.
And it was also very interesting again to hear her talk about her own experience as a mom of teenage boys, and what it was like to hear them talking to their friends when they didn’t know she was around or when they didn’t think she was listening, you know when you’re a parent driving kids around in a car you’re essentially a robot, right? They don’t listen to you. We also brought this question of own voices to outright specifically and a bunch of folks that outright read the book and they said, this book feels truthful. Sure, it’s great when they’re our own voices selections and we have some to talk about, that are on the list of ancillary reading. But this book is something special.
Jeanie: I really appreciate that if you’re not writing an own voices book, you have to do due diligence, right? You have to be diligent about how you’re representing the community of which you’re not a part. And I feel that Sarah clearly did that in the way that the characters show up. And then, also as a reader, there’s some kind of diligence that’s required of us to make sure that, the author isn’t using tropes or stereotypes or, right? And so, and to notice that. And so, I sometimes I have avoided books like American Dirt in the past. I still haven’t read that because it has been labeled as problematic by the people whom this author is attempting to write about, and who she doesn’t share an identity with.
So, I appreciate that answer, Christopher, thank you so much. So, that gets to another question, when I was in library school, one of the things we would often hear and this was a while back. I hope things are changing is that, boys are not going to read books with girls as main characters, is one of the things they used to trot out in the early odds if you will. And so, I hope we’ve gotten past that. I hope that we’re beginning to have kids read books about identities that they don’t share, and certainly, girls were always reading books with boys as main characters, right? And so, similarly, this book for some of our students is going to be a mirror, right?
For queer students who are reading this book, this book is going to be some sort of reflection of a world they might be a part of, for kids who are not, who don’t identify as queer, this book is going to be a window into a different kind of reality. And then for some kids, what we hope is that, it becomes a sliding glass door, where they have empathy and really step into the shoes of the character. What do you say? If somebody says, oh, well if this book features LGBTQ characters. It’s not for every kid.
Lizzy: I mean, I have some strong feelings here. So, I’ll start. I agree 100% with what you just said Jeanie, like the windows the sliding glass doors and the mirrors are incredibly important for all readers. And I did once hear that they did a study about having more empathy if you are a greater reader and I think a lot of that has to do with the many opportunities that we have to step into other people’s shoes. But I also think that these characters were more than just one dimensional, it wasn’t just an LGBTQ book, it wasn’t just a young person book either and it dealt with real complex life issues and it took you along for an emotional roller coaster. Like I said earlier, I was just looking at some of the quotes I had written down, like earlier like they write to each other like we laughed anyhow, both of us helpless with it. “The swift secret, the joy and then like going all the way to like my whole body was trembling for a moment or for a minute or two, I couldn’t get a deep enough breath. Are you panicking, you asked. And I tried to say, no it wasn’t panic but I don’t know what happened, suddenly I was falling like it just takes you up and down” I feel like that those types of emotional roller coasters can speak to so many people, even if the specific family situations that were happening in this book are not ones that you have experience with.
It takes you along for the complexity and the thinking that goes through when you have family secrets and what do you do, who do you share that with, the kind of wrestling you go through as you have this experience in your life and you’re not sure who to trust. I think all of that was real. Just really grabbing for a reader and I read this book in just a couple of days. I couldn’t put it down. So, I definitely enjoyed it.
Christopher: Lizzy, this might be a good time actually to bring in Walt Whitman, a little bit when we’re talking about windows, mirrors and sliding glass doors, right. So, Jo is the poet and he is obsessed with Walt Whitman right from the very first pages.
Jeanie: He even dresses like Walt Whitman.
Christopher: And he dresses like Walt Whitman which is part of what gets him in so much trouble in school because he always looks like I think Kurl calls him a 19th century chimney sweep at one point. And you can imagine how that goes over in any particular school. But he’s obsessed with Walt Whitman and Walt Whitman is really known as the greatest American poet, right. That he is the poet through whom the American experience is filtered for all time. And three leaves of grass that he continued to write and revise for decades throughout his life. You know he was alive during the 19th century. He experienced the American Civil War.
He lived in New York at the time of great growth. And I think we often look to Walt Whitman as sort of the ultimate window, mirror and sliding glass door in literature that you can really find anything you want in leaves of grass and inside of myself. And that experience that he had of writing and revising that work over and over again over decades really became the story of America. Could I read another little passage?
Jeanie: Please do.
Christopher: So this is from Wednesday, November 25th and it’s on page 132 and Kurl has been asked to write an essay for his English teacher. And he chose to write about Walt Whitman and he didn’t really know anything about Walt Whitman before he met Jo and started writing letters back and forth to Jo. But what resonated with Kurl about Walt Whitman’s story was that he worked in an army field hospital during the civil war. And that really resonated with Kurl’s interests around the war in Afghanistan and what happened to his brother who was injured in the war. So, I’ll try not to, well, we’ll see how far we go.
Wednesday, November 25th. Dear Little Jo, I wrote about grass actually. Probably the most straightforward part in Walt’s whole Leaves of Grass book is where he talks about the actual grass. Except the more I read it the less straightforward it seemed to me. I mean he starts it off simply enough, describing how a child grabs a handful of grass and asks him, What is the grass? And Walt gives a bunch of possible answers. Just sort of trying them out. And at one point he goes, I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. What he means is it’s the symbol of his personality. I didn’t put this in my essay but if grass is the flag of anyone’s disposition it would be yours, Jo. Not a tidy mowed lawn either. I think Walt is picturing that kind of long grass on the riverbanks. When the wind comes along it churns and sways sothat it looks like another river running alongside the real one. What I wrote in the essay was about grass growing from the mouths of corpses. The beautiful uncut hair of graves, Walt calls it. This is the part of the poem that got me thinking about Mark in Afghanistan. When you take the train up to the mall, you pass the VA hospital and on the other side is the military cemetery. Watch the cemetery when the train goes past and you notice two things: One, it goes on forever. All those matching white crosses. All those dead. I mean Mark must ride that train and think, How did I ever not die over there? Why all of them and not me?
We Contain Multitudes, pages 132-133
We’ll stop there. But it goes on. And it really is such an opportunity through Walt Whitman to walk through that door to see yourself reflected in the story of America.
Jeanie: I love that passage and I love that explanation so much. Every time they talked about Walt Whitman in the book, I think we should be reading this book as we’re teaching poetry because the poetry really comes alive in the letters between these two young men. I also want to cite black women. I want to cite Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop who came up with this concept of books that could be mirrors, windows, and sliding doors. And we use that a lot, that metaphor a lot. I used that metaphor a lot and I want to make sure that I give credit.
And then I want to share a story from my own experience as a school librarian and a handful of years ago, when I was at Green Mountain Union High School, down in Chester Vermont as a school librarian. The book is called Beautiful Music for Ugly Children. I don’t know if you’re familiar with this book by Kirstin Cronn-Mills; it was on the Green Mountain Book Award list and I had a student check it out and I thought I don’t know how she’s going to respond to this book. She, at least for my perception came across as a little bit conservative maybe.
And the book was about a young person who’s trans, Gabe. And I just wasn’t sure how this student who I’m not going to name would respond. And a couple days later she came back and her whole world had been blown open. She had such empathy for Gabe and his experience in the world. And she really started to get involved with the gay straight alliance at our school which we called Circle. And I think it really like was this transformational book for her. And so I would just offer that we don’t know who books are going to be a window and mirror for.
Not all kids are out in high school. They’re also maybe not out in their own families like they might have queer parents who are aunts and uncles or friends, and they need to see those people in these books too. And that we have no idea who’s heart is going to change, somebody who may have been homophobic or not understood what it meant to be a little bit different for whom this book could open new doors. And so I would just add that this story is about much more than the sexual orientation of these two boys, but it also is an opportunity for kids to sort of see people like or unlike themselves in ways that can transform their futures in their worlds and that feels really important.
Christopher: Yes. Just briefly, I would say, you know the mirror of Kurl’s story with his family and his uncle is hugely important in this book and we haven’t really talked about it much. It’s kind of a big spoiler. You don’t really know what happens until about two thirds of the way through.
Lizzy: Can we just say a big spoiler alert here, folks, if you want to jump ahead a minute to avoid the spoiler because you haven’t read the book. Go ahead and do that.
Christopher: Lizzy, can you talk about it? What’s happening?
Lizzy: Yes. I mean I agree if there’s a build up there and there’s little breadcrumbs that are dropped along the books path but both I would say, this is again like, this part where both these boys are talking about their sexuality and that is a big theme through this book. But meanwhile, their families are continuing to experience like their own dramas and so that definitely comes up. So, there is a reveal that happens to Kurl to Jonathan and then Kurl to Jonathan’s sister and Jonathan sister’s friend. And it happens in such a way where basically, it just is put out for everyone to see and Kurl goes into a little bit of a crisis about it, he’s like do they see, do they actually see what is in front of them.
And they do. And what he is letting them in on is that his uncle has been hurting him and in a lot of ways. He has been taking that abuse away from his mother and later on in the book, there is another very common experience. Kurl is thrown out of his family home for his sexual orientation and is homeless. He is fortunate enough to have a lot of really good friends around him and his brother becomes a great support to him, both in escaping the abuse that he was facing at home as well as giving him a safe place to be out and to be open about his sexuality.
So, both of those are really good resolution to a very difficult situation and also one of those places, where we spoke earlier about how adults aren’t really a big part of this book. There is a conversation that Kurl has about how he didn’t tell his coach about what was going on even though his coach tried many different ways at many different points to support Kurl. He did tell his friends and his peers and we were able to do a conversation for Vermont Humanities with Outright Vermont. And I would say that the experience of youth advocates as well as I would say.
What we heard from Outright Vermont was that peers talk to peers and so a lot of that support can come from spaces like GSA’s, which I heard you say gay straight alliances, which I’m familiar with as well, but are now often called gender and sexuality alliances in school and Outright is doing awesome work across the state supporting them in school. So, that young people have safe spaces with peers to access. And youth advocates are doing great work in similar fashions because young people aren’t always so easy to tell what is happening at home and behind closed doors. And so that is a big part of this book.
And there’s another, we haven’t even spoken of another big reveal. Family life is complicated, and I think this book captures that well.
Christopher: Yes. I think it’s really interesting how through much of the beginning part of the book, you’re really led to believe that Jo is the person who’s experiencing all of this physical violence and he is, right. He’s getting beaten up at school, his bike gets stolen and all kinds of things but it’s really the big jock who is struggling the most with violence and he just doesn’t show. He just doesn’t tell anybody. He actively hides it.
Jeanie: I really appreciate you bringing up the way this book kind of subverts stereotypes and tropes. I really appreciate how you bring up that how these two characters subvert sort of tropes and stereotypes. I guess I’m really wondering and maybe Lizzy can answer. I guess that one of the questions I have for you is how my teachers prepare themselves to support young people who maybe have experienced domestic violence or sexual assault in their homes or in their communities as they’re reading this book. Are there resources or folks you might connect them with?
Lizzy: Yes. That’s a great question. This is, you know, I could imagine that some people who are thinking about using this book to start a conversation might feel a little thrown in the deep water with some of these themes but Vermont Humanities has requested and Vermont Network has provided a bunch of resources to go along to support conversations about some of these things in the book. Already up on the website is a book guide that was created by Vermont Humanities that does cover some of these themes that come up through the book around violence and provide some resources there.
And then I think just knowing that those conversations can be big and making sure that you know who your local resources are in your community. And there always is the opportunity through Vermont Humanities to have these conversations supported by those local resources. Vermont Network is a partner in this book and many of our youth advocates across the state have had the opportunity to read these books and are excited to support some of those more difficult conversations.
Christopher: Yes. We’re sending, this is a little bit new for us in Vermont Reads to have this kind of direct partnership with other organizations. Typically, we just sort of let communities kind of do what they want . We started to feel like a different model is necessary when we were working on The Hate U Give last year and we further refine that this year with We Contain Multitudes and so when we shipped books now, they’re not just getting a box of books, they’re getting a full box of resources about domestic and sexual violence about LGBTQ youth and gender identity issues, about recovery and addiction.
Especially recovery and addiction and how it affects families and how it affects young people. So, all of that is there. And any community that wants to invite somebody from the Vermont Network or Outright or Recovery Vermont to come to their community can do so. And we’ll support that, we’ll pay for that right.
Jeanie: Christopher, how does one get signed up if they don’t have it already. How does one get signed up to receive this box of books and resources? That sounds so fabulous.
Christopher: You would go to vermonthumanities.org and click on Vermont Reads 2021 – We Contain Multitudes – and there’s a short application form on there that you fill out and send back into us. We’ll ask you a few questions. We’ll call you back and ask you more if we have more questions and encourage you to think about what kind of projects you want to do in the community. A lot of folks are already promoting work with their GSA, with their gender and sexuality alliance. A number of them started asking Outright if they would come to their community even before we announced that that was a possibility.
So, there’s plenty of options out there. We should also say that Vermont Reads, it’s not just for kids, it’s not just for schools, it’s for adult communities as well. And we hope that public libraries around the state and adult community centers and senior centers will take advantage of this opportunity as well.
Jeanie: As an adult who reads YA, I will highly recommend. I think a lot of adults really enjoy young adult literature and they can really help them understand the kids in their community. And so I highly recommend. This is a book for adults through the public library or some other forum to talk about issues that impact young people and families. I also really appreciate that you all have updated my language about GSA and gender sexuality alliance since I appreciate that. Is there any programming you have planned that may involve music or other things that you’d like to share?
Christopher: Since you’re leading us. And yes, we’re excited to have Sarah coming to Vermont next spring. She’s coming for four days. Sarah Henstra is the author of the book and she’ll be doing events with the partners around the state. She’ll be doing some work as part of our first Wednesday’s program presenting to more adult audiences. But we hope to close it out with the party and one of the other wonderful poets that’s very present in this book, which takes place in Minneapolis, his Prince. And so our hope is that we’ll close out our year with We Contain Multitudes with a Prince inspired dance party somewhere.
And if there’s anybody out there listening that wants to work on such a party with us, please give us a shout and tell us there’s an awesome Prince tribute band right here in Vermont that have said they really would love to work with us. So, if you want to plan a party, talk with us about that. We’d be happy to get you set up on that committee.
Jeanie: I’m getting my purple ready.
Christopher: Awesome. Lots of purple. And of course, it fits right into the themes of the book as well. You know, Walt Whitman and Prince are two of the great American poets and also two of the folks who really slid through lots of different identities and their lives and their experiences and so, they’re both meaningful. Walt Whitman is a little bit more foregrounded but Prince is very present in this book as well. It happens to take place the year that he passes away.
Lizzy: I have a quote that I just wanted to slip in here too. Kurl writes about Jo while they’re at a Prince concert and Kurl writes on page 97, “Now that I’m thinking about it, Prince sort of reminds me of you, Jo. I don’t know. Obviously it’s not the stilettos and spandex or his little wild wired glasses but there’s something, how he created himself maybe. How he invented a world to live inside.”
Christopher: I had that passage marked too.
Jeanie: I love that, Lizzy. Thank you for sharing that.
Christopher: Yes.
Jeanie: It reminds me why I love both of these characters so much. Their appreciative lens on each other, how they see each other and how they find a world to live in to inhabit. So for readers who may have read this book and loved it or who are going to now read it and love it because you’re going to love it, people. I kind of guarantee it. Are there other books that you all recommend that are about dealing with trauma or domestic violence or sexual violence, family addiction, issues around consent? Do you have titles you would suggest?
Lizzy: I do. I actually put this list, I put this question out to our youth advocates to see if I would get any good responses. And I got one from Carey who is one of our youth advocates over at Circle in Washington County. And she recommended Grown by Tiffany D Jackson. They’ve done it as part of one of their book clubs there and she let me know that it’s about a teen girl, who’s dating a much older famous musician and covers all sorts of topics that would be interesting. And she said she feels like it’s kind of inspired by the R. Kelly situation.
So, there’s that. I also wanted to put out a recommendation myself. It’s a little different because it’s more of a dystopian fantasy type situation, which I really enjoyed. And it’s called The Fever King by Victoria Lee and she has a follow up book The Electric Heir. And I thought this was a really compelling book, the main characters do fall in love and they’re both boys. So it does have themes similar to We Contain Multitudes but there’s witchcraft and powers involved. There’s also a refugee crisis going on. So, it’s very political, it’s very dark.
And it has some other troubling themes similar to We Contain Multitudes. So, I definitely put that out there as a fun but troubling book to read.
Christopher: Yes. I’m going to continue the dystopian theme actually with my recommendations. And the first one I want to throw out there is a book. Spoiler alert, it’s called They Both Die at the End and it’s by Adam Silvera, and he is a Latinx queer writer. And it’s a dystopian novel about a near future world in which you are told at midnight the night before you’re going to die. And it’s about two boys who don’t know each other before they get the call but find each other through an app called Your Last Best Friend and what happens to them over the next 24 hours. It is crazy compelling.
It’s definitely super sad and in fact they both die at the end. And then the other one that I had is one that I found recently, actually when I was in Minneapolis. I’m starting this book called Jay’s Gay Agenda and it’s by a non-binary writer named Jason June. And it’s about a young boy who moves from a very rural community, like many other communities here in Vermont, where he was the only gay boy from a bigger city where he suddenly finds himself kind of in Candy Land. And what happens to him there. So those are my two recommendations for folks that are interested in these themes.
Adam Silvera, of course, has a lot of books out there in the world. And they’re all pretty dystopian but they’re all pretty good.
Jeanie: Excellent. I feel like I can. I’m really excited about the list you just gave me because I haven’t read any of them and I’m just going to add them all to my list. When I interviewed a bunch of kids a couple years ago at – what’s that amazing event called for young people, it’s Teen Lit Mob. Anyway, I interviewed a bunch of kids and from around Vermont and one of the things they said over and over again is they want books with better with more representation, even if they aren’t about social issues.
They just want a wide variety of characters represented. And one of the books they loved was The Sword in the Stars which is by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy. And it is a futuristic science fiction and legend story where the King Arthur in the story is female. And there’s lots of representation racially but also by folks that are non-gender non binary or trans and or queer and I loved it. Kids loved it. So, that’s one of them that I’m going to suggest and the other one is, I feel like Andrew Smith’s Winger and the sequel Stand Off do such an amazing job of talking about consent amongst other things.
And I feel like consent to something we need more books about. And so those are my suggestions, listeners. Any last words from you all about We Contain Multitudes or any last passages you’d like to share?
Lizzy: I really enjoyed this book and I think everybody should read it. That’s my share.
Christopher: Can I close with one last little passage?
Jeanie: Please. Tell us what page it’s on.
Christopher: Obviously, I think everybody should read this book because we bought 4000 copies and you all need to read them. But this is a letter from Kurl to Jo on page 98 and it’s shortly after they have gone to Paisley Park to see Prince perform. He says,
Watching him it suddenly hit me how rare and amazing it was to be able to see something being made out of nothing. Up close like that. It reminded me how it felt watching you sing when you didn’t know I was in the room. Halfway between dirty and holy. I don’t know. But I suddenly found myself smiling like an idiot and looking all around the room and thinking, Anything, anything is possible in this life. This moment is everything. Right now. I mean you must have felt it too, because when I looked over at you there were tears on your face.
We Contain Multitudes, page 98
Jeanie: That’s the perfect way to end. Thank you both so much for joining me to talk about this book.
Take a moment to think about a learning experience that was meaningful to your students. How do you know that it was meaningful? How did they communicate that to you?
In the Two Rivers Supervisory Union (TRSU), middle grades students are documenting their meaningful learning experiences using PLPs. You can check out some examples here.
Developing a district wide PLP
A couple of years ago PLPs were new to TRSU middle grades teachers and students. We started by coming to a consensus on what a PLP was (and wasn’t!). We looked at examples, talked about the purpose of PLPs, and thought about how they would best serve our learners.
The results: a list of non-negotiables.
TRSU PLPs begin with student identity. Students add evidence of learning connected to transferable skills. All kinds of evidence. And they reflect on that learning. It’s simple, really.
Except it’s not. If it were that easy every student in Vermont would have a rockin’ PLP.
First, there is the problem of getting started.
How would teachers introduce PLPs to their students? And how would teachers stay on the same page? Enter the PLP slideshow, two actually.
These slides served as conversation starters – providing enough information for students and teachers to discuss PLPs and hopefully get excited about them.
Second, and more importantly, is the problem of keeping going!
If the PLP was really going to engage students in their learning, it needed to be more than an online filing cabinet. It needed to be a kind of pet – something that needs routine care and feeding. So we set some goals. We would:
Reserve 30 minutes per week to feed the PLP
Use the language of the transferable skills ALL OF THE TIME, in ALL OF OUR CLASSES, not just during PLP time
Talk about the PLP in relation to student learning and class work
A bigger toolbox: Margaret Dunne’s experience
When we first began it felt like PLPs were just one more ball that I needed to keep in the air. My main focus was unpacking what the transferable skills meant for 8-10 year olds and even for myself. Does creativity just mean art? At this point the PLP wasn’t really connected to our other work but it was a start.
Over time It became clear that I needed to center the PLP in the work of my classroom and not view it as an add-on. I thought of the PLP as an artist’s portfolio – a collection of greatest hits.
Through regular care and feeding the PLPs were growing, but some of the posts didn’t fit my idea of a “greatest hit.” I struggled with this, but eventually came to realize that it was not my role to be the gatekeeper of what could or could not be students’ PLPs. What was important was that students’ posts were meaningful to them. I was beginning to relinquish control and share responsibility with my students.
Now my understanding of PLPs has grown even more and I now see PLPs as a tool that can transform my teaching to be student-centered.
One of the major advantages of PLPs is that they center around developing transferable skills, while our report cards focus on standards and content. PLPs raise awareness of the transferable skills and make sure everyone – students, families, and teachers – know these skills are essential.
But, it is not like they are totally separate. While students document growth in the transferable skills they do it in the context of all content areas, from PE to Math. This work challenges me as a teacher to be more student-centered and be open to all of the meaningful learning inside and outside of school.
PLPs allow us to see a student holistically, as a whole person, and they capture the messy complicated story of learning and growth a lot more than a score on a report card. They also help students know themselves better and be known by others, which helps build our learning community. PLPs are truly a transformational tool!
Emma Vastola’s Experience
The PLP process has been empowering for students – giving them opportunities to choose what matters to them and set personally meaningful goals. An important part of this process is self-reflection.
To grow their skill of reflection students are provided many times throughout their day to reflect on a task through the lens of a transferable skill. The more students are asked to reflect on their own self within the context of a task, the deeper their sense of self becomes.
As you might expect, some students are automatically more proficient reflectors, while others need tools to develop the skill. Choice boards, reflective prompts and reflective learning scales are some tools that have been developed as scaffolds for students.
These reflection tools have helped students gain a deeper understanding of themselves. By being mindful of intentionally teaching reflection and metacognition as a literacy/communication skill, students get better at finding evidence of their work and reflecting on their progress over time.
When students focused on identity in their PLPs, they showed more agency and ownership of their learning.
By focusing on identity students are centered in their learning. They are better able to set actionable goals. These become a natural starting point for care and feeding of the PLP. The system becomes both implicitly and explicitly student-led.
A timeline like the one pictured here helps set the stage: where the PLP is woven into the fabric of everyday life in and out of the learning environment. Routine PLP work became more prevalent over time and students began to identify work that was “PLPpropriate” and communicate this work at a Student-Led Conference. Student-Led Conferences have become an opportunity for students to share work they are proud of.
Finally, let’s hear from students!
Here is a reflective “letters to my PLP” from a 6th-grade student:
Dear PLP, Thank you for staying with me throughout the year. I once thought you were hard to deal with the constant updating. But now I love hanging out with you; you’re almost like an academic therapist. We are the best of friends, and I hope you stay with me throughout all of my years. I think you are awesome! I hope you think I am too. You have seen me grow throughout 2021. And I have seen you evolve. I am proud of you, for you are one of my most outstanding achievements. Good-Bye PLP, but only for now.
And here is a poem from another 6th-grade student:
To draw on a well worn cliche, PLPs are about the journey, not the destination!
TRSU teachers have found that that journey can be transformative, but routine care and feeding of the PLP are necessary to sustain it.
In late October, the middle school 7th and 8th grade team at Flood Brook School realized that the 2021 school year was off to a rocky start. Students and teachers alike were pretty miserable. So, they bravely brought their entire team community together – that’s teachers, students and support staff – for a three day off-campus retreat. They needed to figure out how to to be more joyful together. Maybe you, too, need a radical reset…
The backstory
The middle school teachers at Flood Brook had been experiencing the fall of 2021 as a “tough year.” In their eyes, students were really struggling with the transition back to five days a week in school. They had kids coming back to the school after more than a year out of the physical building. They had staffing changes both planned and unexpected. And they felt like uncertainty was the only thing they could count on. Additionally, students expected to return to a physical school experience that might be a relative “return to normal”, but their hopes were crushed by the delta variant.
The climate in the middle school had been steadily declining, behavior problems were increasing, and student engagement was in danger. Moreover, the adults and students were growing disillusioned. It was clear that something needed to be done. Finally, Taconic & Green District’s Success Program Director Sarena Barausky pitched a golden idea that immediately found traction.
A “Radical Reset.”
What is a radical reset?
After days of discussing ideas, brainstorming opportunities, and debating an approach, the team made a plan. The radical reset became a fall retreat – a three day off-campus outdoor educational opportunity. The goal was for students and staff work on team building, enjoy each other’s company, and brainstorm community expectations for building a safe, fun, and engaging school year. Instructional coach Tracy Zaino reframed the work at hand for the group by connecting in-school learning with real-world implications.
That’s what this middle school does well — connect learning to real life.
When students began the year with an integrated studies unit that focused on human needs, the driving question was, “How can we build a sustainable, equitable community?” Inspired by the work of Andrea Gratton and Kyle Chadburn of Orleans Elementary School, the Flood Brook team asked students to use Maslow’s hierarchy of needs in order to design model communities. Naturally, Zaino suggested that they return to the same inquiry for students. What if the radical reset asked students to design a sustainable and equitable middle school using the same framework of human needs?
Community Building, Reflection and Lots of Student Voice
Student voice, reflection, and community building were the essential ingredients of this Radical Reset. Sunshine, fresh air and nature helped! The primary goal of this retreat was to build community – again. While this team did their share of team building to start the year, they needed more. They needed to have fun together and laugh, play and work cooperatively. So the Flood Brook students played games, made meals, had an evening campfire, and went for hikes.
Don’t see anything here? Good. That’s because kids are playing the game Camouflage. And nailing it.
Another vital component of this retreat was reflection. It was important for everyone to reflect on this year so far and discover what’s working and what needs improvement. Students made journals and had lots of time to write in these beautiful outside spaces. The teachers refreshed students about Maslow’s five levels of human need. Then students journaled and discussed the degree to which their school day was meeting each need — regarding physiological needs, for example. These middle schoolers considered how the school day did and didn’t support their need for food, water, shelter, sleep, and going to the bathroom. Yes, going to the bathroom was discussed.
Certainly, this outdoor retreat would only be successful with abundant student voices. The teachers gave students this platform and opportunity to negotiate what they needed from school. So, they stepped up and gave them their voices. They discussed basic needs, social needs, behaviors and consequences, and teaching and learning. And all from their own uncensored perspectives. For example, students asked for more choice and flexibility in their WIN or FLEX block. They asked for more variety of offerings and choices. They wanted to be able to see different teachers and to have the opportunity to be with different mixes of kids. In addition, they asked to bring back a former team structure – Passion Projects. Passion Projects allowed students to explore topics of their own meaning and interest. All this time, their teachers listened, took notes, and asked questions.
Will this radical reset work?
It’s too soon to tell. We write this piece exactly as this retreat is wrapping up. But I think it’s safe to say that the adults feel things are shifting already. Over the course of the days, they saw students looking more invested. They saw students treating one another with more appreciation, and they felt like this outing forced them all to slow down and get back down to what really matters.
The Flood Brook 7th and 8th grade team went into these three days knowing that a one-off event would not “fix”, “solve” or “cure” anything. Essentially if this radical reset is going to work, the real work is yet to begin. This team is committed to working towards implementing student voice more authentically. They’re hoping to continue to engage the students as they work to implement the suggestions they made. By periodically planning novel events throughout the year, they’d like to pause and celebrate successes this year as they continually revisit the work of building student centered humanizing education at Flood Brook.
Please connect with us about this radical reset.
What do you need to reset? What radical things will you try?
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.
Nagle & Bishop (2021), p. 3.
From the Tarrant Institute for Innovative Education blog.
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.
From Chadburn & Gratton (2021)
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.
A model of personalized learning co-developed over many years
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.
From Lahuna (2021)
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.
Taylor & Hunt (2021), p. 6.
From Taylor & Hunt (2021)
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.”
One of many student projects linked in Lahuna (2021)
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.
“When shown a picture of a cow in a pasture, most Westerners will see a picture of a cow. Most Easterners, on the other hand, will see a picture of a pasture.”
Rushkoff refers to this as “figure” and “ground.”
A shift in focus: from figure to ground
When educators talk about transferable skills, we often focus on the figure – the student. We talk about assessment, measurement, and how students demonstrate these skills.
What if, instead, we focused on the ground – the conditions in which students develop these skills? What if we started by talking about the ways in which educators can foster, nurture, and grow these skills?
This shift seems especially important given current conditions: students are struggling. Now is not the time for more assessment. Now is the time to nurture and grow students’ strengths.
That is just what some teachers in the Two Rivers Supervisory Union are doing. TRSU uses the Essential Skills & Dispositions framework as their transferable skills. Middle-level teachers there are doing a deep dive by reading more about each skill with two questions in mind:
What does it look like when kids are demonstrating this skill?
What teacher moves create opportunities for students to grow in this skill?
Then they are committing to small steps to nurture that skill in their classroom.
What does it look like to foster communication?
Let’s use communication as an example. With the questions above to guide them, the teachers read all about communication. Then they surfaced their answers on a Padlet. After discussing their responses as a group, each teacher committed to one specific next step to foster communication with their students. And finally, they brought examples of teacher moves and student work back to examine together and discuss.
First, let’s check our assumptions
I reached out to educator and equity advocate Rhiannon Kim to check our biases about our learners, and to glean some insight into what it means to foster communication. Here are some of her thoughts:
Wait time
Be aware of your pacing to ensure that students are not trying to “keep up”
Encourage students to practice slowing down as well
Ensure modes of presentation that are accessible for Deaf and hard of hearing students, for non-speaking students, and for augmentative & alternative communication (AAC).
Work with students, their families, and other specialists who can support this.
Recognize that students are not always ready to “be on.” Read more about this here.
Some students are more introverted than extroverted; in what ways can your classroom honor and recognize the different ways students communicate?
What we learned about teaching communication:
Communication has three main elements: expressive communication, receptive communication, and reflective communication. There is overlap, for sure, this is definitely a three-way Venn diagram situation! But let’s look at each element one by one.
Expressive communicationis often what we think of when we say communication: it is the talking, writing, expressing part of the skill.
It involves many things including using appropriate body language, facial expressions, voice and tone. Communication skills show up when we engage in dialogue: asking questions, making comments, building on what others have said, and making connections. Communicating requires using appropriate vocabulary, evidence, and visuals to express our ideas.
So how might we foster expressive communication in the classroom?
One suggestion is to allow students to practice, play, or tinker with different modes of communication and then reflect on what worked best for them. For example, they could try expressing the same ideas using verbal and non-verbal signals or spoken and written formats. Other communication methods to try: quotes, metaphors, flow charts, graphic organizers, sketchnotes, and non-linguistic representations.
Some teachers intentionally engage students in dialogue using structures like Harkness, Socratic Seminar, or Protocols. Others are playing communication games with their learners:
Finally, many are building on the communication skills they are already practicing by having students consider their audience or using thoughtful prompts in advisory.
Receptive communicationskills are those that often get lumped together into “listening.”
They include things like interpreting verbal and non-verbal signals, recognizing different perspectives, and drawing inferences. This is where meaning making happens, so learners have to grow their skills in listening to understand and maintaining engagement. They might also work on analyzing setting, context, and source in order to interpret messages.
What might it look like to foster receptive communication skills in the classroom?
Educators are always modeling communication skills in the classroom, and modeling receptive communication and thinking out loud about it is a great way to foster communication in the classroom. Other ways to practice listening skills include using podcasts in the classroom or playing listening games:
Teachers are also thinking about analyzing communication skills used in picture books, class read alouds, current events, scientific articles, charts, and data with their students.
Reflective communication skills help us become better communicators and learners.
Learners demonstrate reflective communication skills when they consider how their communication choices impact others, when they monitor their communication and adapt it to better convey their message, or when they reflect on what is working well and what isn’t when they communicate. Another critical reflective communication skill: using feedback to improve.
In what ways might teachers grow the reflective communication skills of their students?
Some educators are being more intentional about how they engage the feedback cycle in order to foster communication skills. They are giving feedback for growth that is targeted, timely, and actionable and providing students with opportunities to reflect on the feedback. They are accepting and celebrating revisions. And they are soliciting feedback from students, reflecting on that feedback, and sharing their own growth with their classroom.
Other teachers are focused on building more opportunities for reflection. They are asking their students to consider:
How is your work adapted for the audience, setting, and purpose?
What was easy?
Hard?
What next steps might you take?
And students are reflecting out loud, on their PLPs, or with their peers to further strengthen their communication skills.
A teacher friend of mine says, “You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.” This is wise counsel at any given time, but especially in the midst of a pandemic. What is one small shift you might make to focus on the ground and nurture your learners’ communication skills?
Even in the best of times, October can be a tough month for teachers. And it’s hard to call covid times the best. In the latest issue of Educational Leadership, noted teaching coach Elena Aguilar suggests several ways to boost teacher resilience. Paired with understanding what personal efficacy looks like for young adolescents, teachers and students can build resilience together in this challenging year.
Core values build resilience
Perhaps Aguilar’s most powerful suggestion is to decide what matters most. Feeling forced to make decisions without enough information, she writes, “can send us into a tailspin, questioning ourselves, deliberating endlessly, or acting impulsively—and sometimes we don’t make the best decisions.” Instead, Aguilar notes that “when we can take actions that are aligned to our core values, we feel more confident, competent, and able.” She then challenges us to consider, “how can your core values guide the decisions you need to make this school year?”
“How can your core values guide the decisions you need to make this school year?”
By tying together core values with confidence, competence, and ability, Aguilar highlights a most basic human need: to feel a sense of efficacy. And teachers know better than anyone how fundamental personal efficacy is for students, especially young adolescents. So how do we decide what’s most important to focus on and what we can let go of?
Exploring efficacy to build resilience
Just what do we mean by ‘efficacy’? Chris Stevenson described the Five Basics of Personal Efficacy for Young Adolescents as: competence, responsibility, awareness, affiliation, and an ethical sense of self. The power of this framework, though, lies in the simple-yet-powerful sentence starters offered for young adolescents to complete (see table below).
The framework’s student-friendly “I” statements invite youth to consider their lives and learning beyond the classroom or school. As a result, their focus shifts to what they do and value (and away from what teachers design for them). Students are invited to think about the competence and responsibility they demonstrate before and after school. They may care for siblings, complete farm chores, or practice at sports, music, or video games.
Students experience awareness, affiliation, and an ethical sense of self as they connect with peers, community members, and social media. For instance, caring for an elder, participating in a faith group, or joining a campaign to improve their community drives their sense of efficacy.
Ken Bergstrom noted that when we scan across students’ experience with competence, responsibility, awareness, affiliation, and ethical sense of self, we see that each entails cognitive, social, psychological, and physical aspects of development. They are dynamic and ever changing. And when we apply this lens to our students, “we see more than a static picture of a human being at age twelve or thirteen. Instead we catch a glimpse of a young person in the act of becoming his or her imagined self.” (Bergstrom, p. 9)
“We see more than a static picture of a human being at age twelve or thirteen. Instead we catch a glimpse of a young person in the act of becoming his or her imagined self. ”
Ken Bergstrom
So as we consider Aguilar’s advice to focus on core values, centering our attention on the five basics of personal efficacy makes sense. These many ways of knowing, doing, and being are learning. They are often also highly engaging. And we might wish we had time for them in our teaching. Yet they frequently happen for students without us. What if, instead, we can simply look and listen for where they are already happening?
Students show off their first planting in the community garden, of seeds they started themselves in the greenhouse!
Listening for efficacy so we can “teach” less
What if we honor these experiences for what they are: part of the essential human experience of becoming? Students are generally quick to produce powerful evidence of their learning, in the form of photos or videos, mementos, and recorded or written reflections. These artifacts are ideal documentation for portfolios or PLPs. Moreover, during student-led conferences, or even a Best Part of My Week routine, the powerful narratives students generate about efficacy resonate strongly with parents.
Aguilar’s other recommendations are helpful as well. “The educators I observed who quickly curtailed the symptoms of burnout were those who set boundaries,” she wrote. This includes expectations for ourselves in our work. The pandemic fundamentally disrupts the systems of schooling. As a result, our students’ and our own ability to meet ordinary expectations is compromised.
What if we shifted our expectations to focus on the five basics of personal efficacy?
Would that create more space for us to be who we want to be with our students? How can seeing a broader range of learning experiences promote student growth and lighten our “teaching” load? How might we reset our boundaries for what learning means? In answering these questions right now, perhaps we can foster our own resilience even as our best teaching may seem out of reach.
Fostering resilience by seeing efficacy
Finally, Aguilar writes that resilient educators reflect:
The most resilient educators whom I coached in the 2020–2021 school year were those who paused and explored their experiences and emotions, and who through that process were able to say things like, “I need to prioritize building community with my students,” “I love teaching—just not virtual teaching,” and “I want to make a change in my work life.”
Elena Aguilar
The truths we uncover through reflection, Aguilar concludes, are empowering. As the pandemic continues its assault on our sense of efficacy, perhaps a focus on our students’ efficacy can foster resilience for students and educators alike. Because as Ken Bergstrom named so powerfully: “To be truly seen with one’s greatest possibilities is one of the most powerful gifts that a good teacher can give a child.”
“To be truly seen with one’s greatest possibilities is one of the most powerful gifts that a good teacher can give a child.”
Ken Bergstrom
Aguilar, Elena. (2021). What does the resilient educator do? Educational Leadership. 79(2). https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/the-resilient-educator-what-does-a-resilient-educator-do
Bergstrom, K. (2001.) Attending to the rhythm of early adolescence: Five basics of personal efficacy. In K. Bergstrom, P. Bishop, & J. Carr (Eds.), Living and learning in the middle grades: The dance continues (pp 7-15). Westerville, OH: National Middle School Association.
Stevenson, C. (2002). Teaching ten to fourteen year olds (3rd ed.). White Plains, NY: Longman.
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 Sugerloaf 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.
A student-led conference that brings together the student, teacher, and parent or guardian is a very powerful thing. It puts the student in the driver’s seat. This format varies a bit from the traditional parent-teacher conference. There is no mystery and student anxiety as they sit home and wait to find out what teachers said about them. Along with the teacher and their caregivers, the student is part of the process. In fact, the student is leading the conversation as they share about themselves and their learning.
This fall, I want to help you create your best ever Student-Led Conferences. All the while knowing they may be virtual. We may not be able to sit together around a cozy table and see each other face to face. Whether you are meeting in person or facilitating the screens of a video call, here is how to harness the power.
Collect information before the student-led conference
Before the conference, reach out to your students’ caregivers and ask them some questions. Craft these questions so you get to know their home environment, the strengths they bring to supporting their child as a learner, and to learn what they may need from you in collaboration during this year. In this blogpost about making pandemic conferences work, we suggest that this little bit of connection and work before the conference occurs pays off.
You might choose, for example, to send a questionnaire home before the conference. That may look like giving a paper copy to the student and asking that they deliver it to home. In some cases, creating a Google form to collect information or sending the questionnaire directly to parents via email makes sense. Do whatever you can to ensure that parents and caregivers can access and participate in that questionnaire before the conference. Of course, find a simple way for them to return it to you, whether that’s by email or physical drop-box. Here’s a sample questionnaire that you may use.
Use a clear structure or outline
We know that when we set clear expectations and outline a clear process for students, they can successfully share about themselves.
When we moved to remote learning in 2020, our team wrote about how to engage students and families in effective conferences over the computer. We suggest that using a formal outline or structure helps the conversation move smoothly. You might try this format:
Possible agenda: • Welcome! How are you? This is so hard! What do you need? • Student presents work • Family asks questions • Teacher asks questions or makes comments • Celebrate student progress • Ponder next learning steps together • Close with gratitude for everyone
Many schools have found success in giving students a slideshow template. The students copy and then create to make it their own. Then the slides prompt and guide the conversation for all. See the example below.
Create intentional engagement for caregivers
Caregivers want to be engaged at a student-led conference, so set up intentional structures for their participation. It’s possible for you to build in prompts for the student to ask their guardians for their thoughts and feedback. Notice how the suggested agenda above gives specific time for caregivers to ask questions about the student work. Another option is to develop a slideshow that allows students to add contributions from their family. The slideshow that we shared does embed caregiver engagement.
When we create intentional engagement structures for parents and guardians during the conference, there is room for their feedback. Caregivers should feel like there is time for their questions and concerns. Hopefully, there is space for them to give some pats on the back to their student. After all, that may be the very ultimate outcome for a student-led conference. Wouldn’t it be amazing if every student felt validation and admiration as a result? This blogpost and video show how explicit parent engagement can make the conference a true celebration.
Note that the conference shared in this video took place prior to masking and social distancing measures.
Let’s imagine that you have these 20-30 sacred minutes to facilitate a precious conversation. I hope that you can add these tools to your toolbox, so you can create a sense of community during that time. Most importantly, use the time to amplify your student’s voice and invite the other voices to contribute to this moment about growth and possibility.
I mean, duh! And of course! And who else am I gonna be?!
[Also it makes the librarian in me nuts because it is often attributed to Oscar Wilde, but there is no evidence he ever said it. Additionally, he doesn’t seem to have written it anywhere. But that is a story for another day.]
Honestly, every time I see those words plastered on a wall or shared on social media I think, what does that even mean? What, in fact, does it mean to be me today? Yesterday? Tomorrow? Life, it seems, is about figuring out how to be oneself.
ESPECIALLY in Middle School.
Because early adolescents are experiencing tremendous growth: physically, cognitively, socially, emotionally, and psychologically. And they are asking big questions:
Who am I?
Who do I want to be?
What am I good at?
Who are my friends?
How do I fit into this classroom, this school, this world?
“Build opportunities for identity exploration into the curriculum, both within traditional academic classes and through exploratory classes where students might be introduced to new interests and future passions.” (pg. 64)
“adolescents need opportunities to explore different aspects of their identities and exercise the social and cognitive tools that allow them to develop agency over their lives. Educators must consider how they shape learning environments and practices to support healthy identity development and provide students with opportunities to direct their own actions and learning.” (pg. 10)
So what does that look like in the classroom?
Let’s start with the basics before we explore some examples in practice.
Identity refers to the characteristics that make us who we are.
There are plenty of ways to define those characteristics, and it often helps to start with some pretty simple prompts. For example:
What are your likes, interests, hobbies, and talents?
Who is your family?
Where is your home?
What traditions and celebrations are important to you?
What are your strengths?
How do you hope to grow?
Teachers can invite students to surface and reflect on these aspects of identity in a variety of ways:
Some characteristics that can help us better understand our identity are defined as social identifiers or identity markers.
These include things like age, race, gender, religion, and more. For many students, these concepts require some unpacking.
OES teachers Kyle Chadburn and Andrea Gratton have an excellent slideshow they use with students. Mount Holly educator Margaret Dunne found that her 4th and 5th grade students loved learning new vocabulary for talking about identity.
As you explore social identity markers with students, you might engage them in reflection on their own identities:
No one should have to share their identities with others unless they want to. For example, when I use identity wheels with adults I encourage them to share ONLY what they are comfortable sharing. The tools above are for reflection, and students have every right to leave categories blank or to not share their work with others, including the teacher!
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s connect this work to the content we already teach!
Use identity markers to analyze characters in class read aloud or book group books. Mount Holly teacher Emma Vastola’s class is reading The Flight of the Puffin and mapping the identities of each of the four characters in the book. Similarly, OES students apply what they know about identity to character studies.
Who Am I?: a science, social studies, and language arts project about identity and heredity.
Go beyond identity to community: moving from me to we!
Knowing and understanding ourselves is the first step to knowing and understanding others. Identity work is a great way to begin the year because it helps know and be known, fostering community and belonging. And it’s also a fabulous first step to building community routines and norms. A few fun protocols (yes, protocols can be fun!) can help students share more about themselves as they consider how to work well together:
Take it one step further: from identity to diversity to anti-bias and justice!
Learning for Justice’s Social Justice Standards outline a trajectory towards more just and equitable schools and communities, and it all starts with identity. Use the grade-level learning outcomes to guide you as you extend identity work into learning about taking collective action for a more just world. And check out these examples from Vermont classrooms:
Student-centered and personalized learning begins with knowing our students well.
In sum, identity work, to borrow a phrase from the legendary Audrey Homan, is a seed that feeds many birds! Because, of course, students not only learn more about themselves, they also learn more about each other and can share their understandings with their teacher, families, and communities (hello PLP and Student-Led Conference!).
And so we can’t wait to see all of the ways your students express how they are “being themselves.” After all, everyone else is taken!
As we begin the year with students in our classrooms, it’s important to start with a focus on building the culture. Whether it’s by building the culture for advisory, or building the culture for project-based learning, or just building relationships in the classroom and team, one thing is certain: time spent now on building culture will pay off in the end.
They say in the Developmental Designs approach, “Go slow to go fast!”
Let’s review what we know about building culture.
Building Culture in Advisory
Many teachers use advisory as a place to build culture and relationships. In this blogpost featuring Brattleboro Area Middle School, we share a common format called the Circle of Power and Respect created by Developmental Designs. By using this format that contains daily news, a greeting, a sharing exercise, and an activity, students encounter powerful rituals and routines.
What’s more, students feel a sense of predictability and awareness when we use a particular format for advisory. White River Valley Union Middle School used a CPR format for advisory, and it eventually led to students creating and designing advisory activities. Learn more about this student leadership and their role in building the advisory culture. When students lead advisory and community meetings, it results in even more ownership of the culture.
Advisory can also be the space where you build a culture that is responsive to all identities and perspectives. In this blogpost about culturally responsive learning environments, TIIE staff Jeanie and Life suggest that advisory and community meetings are spaces where teachers and students can just be together.
Building the culture for learning
First, Suzie Boss and John Larmer identify four strategies for building PBL culture in their book, Project Based Teaching: How to Create Rigorous and Engaging Learning Experiences. One of them is around creating a community of learners through shared norms.
You probably know that the culture of a school can really impact many things – student learning, teacher happiness, and family involvement to name a few. So, how does one go about improving the culture throughout a learning system? To get more insight, we can listen to this #vted reads podcast episode where Jeanie talks to Bill Rich about the book, The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups.
Jeanie and Bill discuss the book and explore how this non-education book can be applied to education environments. The book is divided into three sections, also identified as skills for building culture.
Build Safety
Sharing Vulnerability
Establish Purpose
While these skills are more overarching and broad, we can see how we might apply them to schools and classrooms. For example, we might associate “building safety” with the way that we establish and create a sense of belonging in advisory.
If you build it, they will come
I must admit that I’m misquoting this infamous line from Field of Dreams. But I only learned that by watching Jeopardy last night.
You truly build the culture that you want for your students. If you dream it and build it, your students will enter it and feel like they belong in the culture. Because what we all want is to feel safe, to feel known, and to feel competent – adolescents and adults alike. Take the time to establish agreements, develop routines, and build a place of belonging right from the start. It really will pay off in the end.
It’s that time of the year again – the beginning of a new school year. The launch of a new school year has always felt like another occasion to wish everyone Happy New Year! (Confession: I have definitely been known to exuberantly exclaim ‘Happy New Year’ to colleagues and students in the hallways this time of year.) It feels like a great time to get geared up and aligned for a fresh start. The weather is (hopefully) cooling off, and there’s a crisp alertness in the air.
This year, of course, is different. Again. After enduring arguably the toughest year ever to be a teacher, we’re heading out again into further uncharted territory. Maybe we’re excited. Perhaps we’re anxious. We can’t wait to see our students. And likely, we’re feeling trepidation about how all of this will unfold. As my eight-year-old quipped on her way to summer camp: we’re nervicited.
So, dear educator, this blog post is our love letter to you. Your New School Year care package, if you will. Filled with our wishes, hopes, and dreams to support you in the year ahead. There will be highs and lows, and we’ll be right by your side.
Ready
And knowing many of you, you’ve been at it all summer. Reflecting, planning, preparing. And hopefully taking some down time, too. Time to recharge, refresh, and renew your spirit and body. We’re all familiar with the metaphor of putting our own oxygen mask on before helping others. These days, more than ever, that remains important.
With our feet solidly under us, we can do anything. To get yourself ready and grounded, here is some food for thought:
In To the emotional resilience of educators Katy Farber reminds us of the toll that care work takes on us, and what to do about it (hint: boundaries, resilience, and pausing are key strategies)
The tips shared in Pandemic teaching: self-care edition are (unfortunately) still relevant. Someday we’ll look back on these years as a specific era that came to an end, but for now, we’re still in that tunnel. Taking care of our big rocks (sleep, nutrition) and ‘settling the ball’ can help us navigate another unusual year.
Image by Pexels from Pixabay
Steady
The world is an exciting and dramatic place these days. To the point of exhaustion, really. If the education-centered hubbub on your social media feed raises your anxiety level, you’re not alone. Equity work in schools is essential and important. And change is hard. As poet Maya Angelou said, ‘when you know better, you do better.’ And that’s what educators are all about. So as you anticipate challenging conversations about your commitment to students and to equity, here are some supporting words:
Finally, are you experiencing pushback in your equity work? It’s an expected part of doing this work, and it means we’re doing it right. This is one of my favorite posts on how to handle these situation: Student intervention for anti-racist education
Go
After readying and steadying ourselves, we’re eagerly anticipating the good part: being with our students! As we launch into this next school year, our students remind us of the reasons we’re here. How can we engage them in meaningful and relevant learning that will also boost their mental health and resilience? Here are a few ideas:
Why and how to teach education for sustainability explores an approach to learning that engages youth in improving the quality of life in their community here and now. In an era when many things feel out of our control, feeling empowered to make a difference…makes a big difference.
Want to hear more about service-learning? Then you should definitely give the #vted Reads episode All about service-learning a listen. There, host Jeanie Phillips chats with our colleague Katy Farber about the what, how and why of service learning. (Bonus points if you pair your listening with a walk in the woods. Forest bathing, anyone?)
So, dear educator, happy new year! While we don’t yet know what this year will hold, we can be assured it will be dynamic, evolving, and full of growth. For all of us. We’re sending you off into this fresh, new year to keep doing amazing things for and with your students. We see you, we support you, and we celebrate you! Welcome back. Happy new (school) year! You got this.
Hooray for summer! Sure, we usually say something along those lines this time of year, but this year? ONCE MORE WITH FEELING. And with that, we turn to our Tarrant correspondents for a peek into the reading bags, shelves, carts and– *squints* — trees, that keep our folks out of trouble.*
We’re off reading and resting for the summer, on our annual publishing hiatus. We’ll rejoin all you fine folks come autumn.
Without further ado…
IT’S THE SUMMER READING GUIDE 2021 EDITION
*fires off airhorns*
*launches coffee pot into the air*
Jeanie Phillips
I cannot wait to dig into summer reading, and paradoxically, I wish I had waited on two books because I’d love to read them again for the very first time!
Angeline Boulley’s The Firekeeper’s Daughter is a mystery set in an Ojibwe community in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. I read it quickly for the plot and then reread it to soak up the indigenous ways of knowing and being. It was definitely my very favorite YA book of the year…
Books come to us in so many different ways. Sometimes we find them the old fashion way: perusing library shelves.
Right now I’m reading The Kingdom of Copper, which is the second book in a series. I found the first one randomly, without ever hearing about the book or the author, and it is one of my absolute favorites. The author, S.A. Chakraborty, is an expert in medieval Islam and she is such a good writer that I can’t put it down — it is one of the rare books where I put all my others aside until I’m finished. I might just have to listen to the Hidden Djinn podcast to stay steeped in djinn lore.
A new way that I’ve been finding books in the last few years is when a friend or colleague is published. Alex Shevrin Venet’s Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Education falls in that category. I’ve learned so much from Alex over the years, and followed (from afar) her writing process. To now have her book in my hand, and to see the education world going gaga over her genius, is so exciting. The parts that I’ve read so far are as profound and practical as I’d expect from somebody with Alex’s brilliance, compassion, and experience.
Then there are those books that you just need. Like when you need to talk to your tween daughter about something complicated or embarrassing.
That’s how I found and ordered (to my local independent bookstore, of course) Fourteen Talks by Age Fourteen by Michelle Icard. She seems to have a good handle on adolescent psychology so I’ll be leaning on this one heavily for the next few years.
More and more often I have the experience of being introduced to books (and music and TV shows) that my daughters bring home. Interestingly, both of my daughters recently brought home books from the library that center trans characters.
Ayla, 9 years old, says I simply must read Zenobia July.
And Zoe, 11, has invited me to read with her Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story, which is a memoir by Jacob Tobia (who apparently played a character on one of our family fave shows, She-Ra).
Here’s hoping that some good books make their way to you and that you have as much time to read this summer as you’d like. You deserve it!
Susan Hennessey
Shifting into summer mode sometimes is nuanced. Even when I’m no longer in scheduled meetings or following a strict timeline, I still find myself stuck in a schedule mindset.
A kick in the pants for me to shift modes is my summer reading stack.
This summer I am eager to start a new book, revisit two old favorites, and dig deep into something I only skimmed the surface of.
And just like every Zoom meeting I’ve engaged with over this past year, my cat Tink needs to make her presence known. She’ll be right there with me while I dig in.
Editorial note: there is, in fact, a cat in this picture.
We Contain Multitudes by Sarah Henstra tops my list because who doesn’t want to dive head first into a first-love love story revealed through letters exchanged, and one that alludes to Walt Whitman’s writing throughout.
Last summer I bought a camping hammock, the kind that comes with its own straps and fastens anywhere fitting. It’s an essential summer reading accessory for me.
And being slung between two trees is an especially apt setting for my some of my summer reading selections.
And of course there will need to be some escape fiction. Of course.
While much of that will be determined impulsively and intuitively, I can not wait to get my hands on Chris Bohjalian’s Hour of the Witch.The most disappointing part about this choice is that it will probably be devoured in a day. Good thing that there are so many other treasures waiting to be discovered!
Scott Thompson
For those who know me… I’m a list person. I need them to keep me focused and on task but I get stressed when they get too long. The book list follows a different set of rules. I’d say a book a day gets added to the “you need to read this” list. So when summer rolls around the list gets some special attention. When things slow down a bit, here are my first two reads for the summer.
How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with The History of Slavery In America by Clint Smith.
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson
Rachel Mark
I love reading in the summertime. For one, reading during the day always feels like such a luxury. Whether I’m in the backyard, in a beach chair, or just reading in bed at 8 am, it feels like a delicious treat.
These are the books that I hope to devour this summer.
Too Bright to See by Kyle Lukoff is one of our MGI reads for this June. I am already into this middle grade novel, and I know it’s so good. The main character, Bug has experienced an important loss and she’s grieving and searching for her identity in a small town in Vermont. It’s a great story that involves some ghosts, gender identity, and coming of age. I highly recommend it to teachers!
Another book on my list is You Are Your Best Thing: Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience edited by Tarana Burke and Brene Brown. This book is an anthology of essays by black writers discussing topics on shame and healing. I have deep respect for these two women and know that this book will shape my heart and my head.
My book group has chosen to read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I don’t know too much about this except it’s the fictional story of an old Hollywood icon – probably loosely based on Elizabeth Taylor. I was eager to read it since I loved the author’s book Daisy Jones & the Six.
The final book on my summer shortlist is The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave. I chose this book as my “candy” reading. It looks like a page-turner mystery about a woman whose husband goes missing. She has to discover his hidden past and protect his daughter. While reading this book is not going to raise my IQ, I can’t resist; I can just get lost in the story and let time fly by. Isn’t that what summer reading is about?!
Audrey Homan
Hoo. This particular summer reading list’s a little bittersweet. After 11 years at the Tarrant Institute, in July I’ll be leaving to join the crew at the UVM Center on Disability and Community Inclusion (CDCI). I could not be more excited about the chance to work with the team there. Could not.
At the same time, I am intensely grateful for the chance to have worked with the kind and generous people both at the Tarrant Institute and in every classroom generous enough to invite me in for a chat. I have learned so much from all of you.
So what’s in the reading to-go bag?
I Didn’t Choose The Late-Night DJ Life…
It continues to choose me, even while recording from home.
Oh! And in case that wasn’t enough, I’ve finally gotten hold of the final book in Joyce Krieg’s Sacramento-set radio mystery series, Riding Gain.
It’s Never the Sharks’ Year, Dude
At the point of this writing it’s 108 days until October 12, 2021, also known as the start of the NHL 2021-2022 season. A little light hockey reading should tide me over.
Like so many students this past year, the 7th and 8th students at Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury, Vermont, were in a hybrid mode of learning due to Covid restrictions in their school. They spent two days in the school building in small group pods and three days learning remotely from home. The three days at home were extra challenging, as only one of those days they had zoom class with their classmates, while two whole days were alone at home with email based assignments.
When my 7th grader left school at 2:30pm on Tuesdays, he did not return to the normalcy of school and friends till the following Monday at 7:30am. That is a long time for a 7th and 8th grader to stay self motivated and positive.
Eventually, something had to be done. I was part of a group of parents connected to our Parent Teacher Organization (PTO) who worked together to provide opportunities for students in our community.
Let’s get organized
The fall of 2020 wasn’t too hard. The weather was tolerable for outside masked activities and everyone was still adjusting to this new schedule. But when the days grew dark and the temperatures dropped, many middle school parents began to report concerning behaviors for their children.
Some kids were finding refuge in their rooms playing video games and not changing out of their pajamas. Others reported that their kids were less engaged with daily activities, not wanting to talk as much to family or friends.
And even more started to share their concerns about depression, complacency, and substance abuse. Students were even caught sneaking out, smoking pot, and sexting.
By the end of February, parents were reaching out to other parents for support. What was normal? What should we do? How can we help our kids? Do we need to seek counseling? Local organizations began to report a marked increase in requests for counseling and therapy services for our youth.
And a small group of parents connected to the PTO decided we had to do something.
After a one hour call on a Sunday morning in early March, this small group had developed an action plan. We would organize, fundraise, and communicate an engagement plan for these middle school students based on the ideas that we all know “Covid Sucks” so let’s do something.
Making it happen
“Get Out! Get Creative! And Get Involved!” These kids needed to play outside with friends, help our community with service projects, and use their artistic minds to create, and so this group made it happen. And it was inspiring!
In two weeks, this PTO group raised over $3,000, got multiple community organizations involved, and launched the program. It was a simple yet effective grassroots effort. The program plan was as follows:
Every 7th and 8th grader got a short Google slideshow every Monday morning for 4 weeks. That slide show linked them to 3 different activities/challenges happening that week.
Activities to GET OUT included bike rides, forest fort building, dodge ball, lawn games, and just outdoor fun (fully masked and distanced).
Challenges to GET CREATIVE had students building cardboard creations taking photos of outdoor sculptures, and creating laundryscapes.
Opportunities to GET INVOLVED had students volunteering with local organizations. If students participated, they were entered into drawings for cash prizes.
Slide decks describing the weekly challenges were sent out on Monday mornings.
By the end, 85 students participated 395 times in these activities. That’s roughly one third of student in grade 7 and 8!
It takes a village
In that short period of time, the “village” came together. The CBMS PTO became the lead organizer and fundraiser for the project. The Town Cemetery Commission hosted 45 students in 2 different cemetery clean ups. The Conservation Commission had students identify special outdoor places in our community and write up short advertisements to why these are special. Hannah’s House, a local nonprofit dedicated to promoting mental health, became a significant organizing partner and funder. The MakerSphere, a local nonprofit dedicated to foster creativity in our community, hosted the creative challenges but also did the prize drawings and the weekly video announcements. Mud City Adventures, a local outdoor recreation group, hosted all the Get Out activities in a safe but adventurous setting. The Alchemist Foundation gave a generous donation for the cash prizes. And many community members volunteered either time at activities or organizing to make the whole program happen.
By the April school break, one month into the project, the reviews from parents and students were in. We heard “wow, how did you do this?”, “this was great”, “my kid really needed this”, and “thank you”.
The truth is, it wasn’t that hard: it just took some legwork and creativity.
It also punctuated the importance and nimbleness of grassroots community organizing. The PTO group didn’t ask permission, they decided that something needed to get done, so they did it. They identified the need, and sprung into action.
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The new normal
As we begin to return our schools to some form of “normal” in the fall, I hope we don’t forget these important lessons learned over the last year. Our communities are filled with amazing people and organizations that have resources to share and needs to be met. These real world learning experiences are vital for kids to feel included, empowered, and needed. Kids need more opportunities to try different things, not just more of the same. That we don’t need to wait around for someone else to address or solve problems. If you see something that needs to happen, you can start to do it.
And it will be even easier if you ask others in your community to help!
How can we keep promoting community-based learning for middle school students?
How do you engage students in an exploration of the ways that art impacts social change? Sounds challenging. Right?!
But the teachers at Rutland Middle School decided to tackle the task anyway. Through this exploration, students learned more about the UN Global Goals for Sustainable Development, visited local murals in their community, and had some fun creating their own art for action.
We know that middle schoolers enjoy learning about real world problems and issues. Especially given their need for justice, middle schoolers are hooked by relevant and authentic learning. This We Believe by AMLE states that in successful middle schools, “Instruction fosters learning that is active, purposeful, and democratic”. Some teachers choose to tap into this strength by engaging students with the UN Global Goals, and then let students explore what feels compelling and important to them.
At RMS, students explored four social issues in need of change. Each issue corresponds with an outcome for 2030 in the UN Global Goals – Zero Hunger, Quality Education, Reduced Inequalities, and Climate Action https://www.globalgoals.org. Each of these four goal areas can connect to multiple content areas. Through instructional lessons, students explored the global, local and community impact of these four issues.
Real world art
Rutland Middle School students explored how artists in their community and in our world have conveyed the need for social change through their art. Some of it lives in their own backyard, like these Rutland City murals. Murals like “We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest Until It Comes” and “Greta Thunberg”, both by LMNOPI show students just what it’s like for an artist to create work that inspires social action and change. The coolest part of this unit was to watch the students grasp a new appreciation of the creations around them. They may have walked by these murals dozens of times, but once they knew the story and vision behind them, things would never be the same.
“Greta Thunberg” by LMNOPI at the Vermont Farmers Food Center.
“We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes” by LMNOPI at the Center Street Marketplace Park in Rutland.
Then, students went out and saw art!
Finally, students created their own pieces of artistic expression to convey or inspire change in one of these areas. They displayed their works of art at the Art for Action Fair – inviting their school community and 6th graders from the neighboring school to explore and engage with these pop-up galleries.
The culmination was a celebration of art and passion for social change. Students wrote poems, built conceptual pyramids, and made paintings and drawings. Their art called for gender equality, climate action, quality education, and so much more.
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Are you inspired to try this at your own school or classroom? Here are some resources that might help you get started.
Margaret Dunne, a fourth and fifth-grade educator at Mount Holly School in Mount Holly VT, originally presented “Exploring Identity with 4th and 5th Graders” in January 2021. She presented it as part of the 2021 Middle Grades Conference at the University of Vermont.
Below please find a video recording of the workshop, optimized for solo or team playback. Additionally, Margaret shared her slides for your use.
WHOOSH! Imagine rows of students using medieval replicas of catapults and trebuchets to hurl objects across an open field. An energetic celebration of the outcomes of researching, designing, and modeling applications of statistics and probability. This is the experience of fifth, sixth, seventh, and eight graders at Miller’s Run School in Kingdom East School District. This integrated STEM and Humanities project was the final in a series of integrated learning opportunities throughout the year that engaged students in research, designing, and engineering. Teachers threaded a focus on claims and evidence throughout.
With a goal of engaging students in authentic learning experiences, the middle school team at Miller’s Run School designed this final project. Students researched catapults & trebuchets. In addition, they engaged in the design process of building them, with a math and science focus on statistics & probability, and via technology integration with Scratch and Stop Motion tools.
Gerry Whitaker, middle level humanities teacher, shared, “The engagement was high, I’d say almost 93% of students were invested in the project.” Furthermore, “…kids learned a lot with several students remarking that their teachers were teaching almost the same thing, and because of that they learned more.”
This project highlighted the importance of cross-curricular projects. Student engagement and drawing connections between skills and concepts was key. And, it brought clarity to students about the what and why of their learning.
In addition, to work towards grade level skills and content knowledge, students researched how catapults and trebuchets might inform solutions to solve the energy needs and demands of today’s society.
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STEM connections
This project allowed for students to authentically engage. They built confidence in and applied grade level math standards as well. It also allowed for differentiation and acceleration with science content. Alan McGrath, middle level math & science teacher, had great success with the Virtual Trebuchet Simulator students used to calculate payload and test design configurations. Want to launch a similar project in your school? Check out this Wakelet collection of resources.
Building on success
The middle school team of educators at Miller’s Run School plans to continue this work. They’ve committed to engagement in authentic learning through integrated projects. How will you propel into the next school year to engage your learners in authentic cross-content learning experiences? Learn more about integrated project planning here!
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.
This year, for Teacher Appreciation Week 2021, we decided to do something different.
We love and respect and miss and admire teachers so much, and really, nothing we could do this year could adequately express that. You all deserve everything your heart desires. Certainly you deserve so much more than you’ve gotten. And that got us thinking: who were the teachers we’re still appreciating? Who were those educators who rocked our middle school worlds, and made us the education nerds we are today?
Reader, we have them.
Also some truly spectacular photos from our younger years. Truly.
So for Teacher Appreciation Week 2021, we salute educators everywhere fighting the good fight. And we have a couple special shout-outs for a chosen few.
Susan Hennessey
“Mr. Camille’s reputation as a tough and demanding English teacher was well known. Seeing his name on my 9th grade course schedule instilled fear in my heart. But it turned out to have been wasted energy on my part. His love of language, constant punning, and acrobatic word play was as delightful to me as was his demand we understand how to use gerunds properly. It was his modeling of matching your work life to your passions that inspired me to become an English teacher. Forever grateful!”
Emily Hoyler
“Mr. Hamilton, my second grade teacher, played the guitar for us, cooked squid for us, and most memorably brought us to the small copse of woods behind the school and had us hug trees. (We also watched them change throughout the year, did bark and leaf rubbings, and sat under their boughs to write poetry.) I eternally grateful for these experiences and know that they shaped who I am and my work today.”
Life LeGeros
“Mrs. Vasa put up with a lot from me in 5th grade. I’ll never forget how empathetic and kind she was about my unsatisfactory behavior grades at conferences with my parents. She encouraged me to write my irreverent and borderline inappropriate stories. She once let me “read” anime comic books my grandma gave me, even though I didn’t understand Japanese. And she allowed me to perform my rap song that was misaligned with the assignment and probably far off the beat. And that time I accidentally spontaneously told her “thanks, I love you” in front of the entire class, she laughingly defused my humiliation. She had competed to be part of the Challenger mission and when our class watched the disaster unfold together she found a way to comfort us without shielding us from reality.
Thank you Mrs. Vasa for being a real one, and for letting me be me.”
Rachel Mark
“When I was in 7th grade, my math teacher Anthony (Tony) Stanco made a lasting impact. He was an unusual man and was unlike any teacher that I’ve ever had. Mr. Stanco was silly, creative, curious, and a divergent thinker.
I remember most that Mr. Stanco was completely authentic and unique. He encouraged me to find that same confidence in being who I was. I now realize that he truly created an environment where I felt like I belonged. For that, I am forever grateful.
Mr. Stanco only stayed a year in this teaching position. Turns out he was a bit too quirky and divergent for some of the parents and school board members in my school. When he left, I was devastated. I felt like this teacher who really saw me and accepted me unconditionally, was being taken away. Because of my heartbreak, I could not adequately say goodbye and thank him for all that he’d done for me.
In the thirty years since, I’ve unsuccessfully tried to find Mr. Stanco on the inter webs. I hope to someday to find him and let him know that he made a difference in my life.
Thank you, Mr. Stanco. And thanks to all teachers who make a difference in a child’s life.”
Robin Merritt
Mrs. Kus was my middle school physical education & health teacher and my middle school volleyball coach. She created an atmosphere in PE where regardless of ability, we all found a way to love being active. And in health class, she approached the topic of sexual education (tee hee!) with ridiculous humor, exaggerating the awkwardness of it all… mostly so we didn’t have to feel self-conscious about our own awkward feelings toward and questions about the subject.
But the personal influence that Mrs. Kus had in my life was during my 8th grade year when we had a conversation helping me to weigh my future high school athletic options.
You see at Sweet Home High School (yes, that was truly the name of my school), girls volleyball was a powerhouse. One that saw many female athletes earning athletic scholarships to universities all over the country.
As an eight grader planning my future, I asked Mrs. Kus straight out if she thought that I could eventually be a scholarship volleyball student-athlete.
In her typical positive and humorous way, she painted the pathway of possibility as a volleyball player who is really good in a specific position, perhaps a setter or defensive specialist.
And she pointed to the reality of my genetics.
The tallest person in my family generously stood at 5’6. At the time, I was approximately 4’6 and needed friends’ help to reach items on the top shelf of my locker.
She painted the picture of the other path, highlighting the accolades that I had already earned as a field hockey player and then shared her own story. The legendary volleyball coach, Sally Kus, was a field hockey player. She confessed that she had learned the rules of volleyball out of a book after being asked by the athletic director if she would consider coaching.
Mrs. Kus encouraged me to choose with my heart, to put in the hard work, and I left that meeting feeling that whatever I decided to do, she believed in me, believed that I could reach my goal. I did eventually reach my 8th grader goal, and did it as a field hockey student-athlete.
I am so grateful for Mrs. Kus’s honesty and guidance, while also oozing confidence in me. Above all, she is a mentor and an educator. She cared for all of her players and her students. And made sure we all knew it.”
Jeanie Phillips
“I will never forget the year I fell in love with reading: 4th grade with Miss Polink. Everyday she read aloud to us from a novel: Island of the Blue Dolphins (a problematic choice and one I would no longer recommend), Charlotte’s Web, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory…
I had already learned how to decode and read text, Miss Polink taught me that stories could take your breath away, provide an escape from reality, and transport you to another time and place. When we finished a novel she would loan it to me so I could reread it at home on my own.
I did not come from a family of readers. I am forever grateful that she shared her love of reading with me, a gift I treasure and cherish and aspire to share with others. Thank you, educators, for all of the read-alouds and the seeds they plant!”
Scott Thompson
“I am forever grateful for my 11th grade chemistry teacher, Mr. Michael Revison. Affectionately know as ‘Rev.’
Fair to say I was a late bloomer with school and Mr. Revision was the first teacher that helped me be excited about learning. He was a lot like Bill Nye the science guy. Lots of flash but incredible knowledgable. It was his passion for science that inspired me. Every day he had me captivated, curious, and consumed with the material. It wasn’t like that in other subjects. He was also a real person with personality and emotion. He also took a real interest in me. And he was the first teacher I felt I could just have a conversation with. I knew he cared about me and my success. Plus I emailed him a few years ago to say thank you and he remembered me. I am grateful for him.
Sometime you never know the true difference you make in someone’s life. But know you DO make a difference. Thank you for all you do educators. Keep inspiring!”
Virtually every night around 8 pm, I hear two teenage boys shouting. They’re yelling commands and occasionally letting expletives fly. The noise echoes all round our house.
And I love it.
This year has been a hard one for my teens. It’s been hard for all of us, but imagine living through your formative years of social learning in isolation and quarantine.
Not only is that lonely and depressing, but it’s potentially damaging (.pdf). When adolescence is a time for social interaction and building your identity as a social being, you need those opportunities.
And they are sorely lacking right now.
That’s why when my boys started gaming in real time with their out-of-state cousins every night, it made me happy.
There aren’t many opportunities for my kids to socialize right now. We’ve been on near lockdown due to COVID for months. I’m grateful that they go to school a few days a week in person. But many of the pivotal experiences for exploring identity and social learning are gone. There is no hanging out at someone’s house, no gathering at the pizza house one night, no sleepover after a basketball game. But there can be connection with others through technology.
And while some aspects of schooling via computer devices does still concern me, I’ve now realized that not all screentime is bad. Particularly during a global pandemic, computers are necessary and valuable. Screentime in a pandemic can make provide human connection. Screentime in a pandemic can work. It just depends how it’s being used.
Banish the word "screentime".
It groups valuable activities, such as talking to friends, enjoying art, and paying bills into one word, "screentime", which describes none of them.
It's like grouping reading books, origami, and opening mail together and calling it "papertime".
— Virginia (she/her) (parody) (@vafnord) March 1, 2021
I can’t believe that I’m saying this, but I’m perfectly okay with certain forms of screentime, now.
I know, I know! Let me make some distinctions.
I am careful that our kids are not using a screen to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. I encourage my kids to use technology and screens to connect with friends and family. Connection is necessary. We have enough isolation right now.
So I wonder about my previous beliefs. I’m curious about my old fears.
In the years before COVID, what made me fearful about kids and screentime?
Here are my hunches.
I think I was afraid that my kids would choose time with a screen over time with a person. I think that I worried that playing on a device would be more alluring than playing in the real world. And I suspect that I was afraid that my children would choose isolation over connection. Now I just wonder: has this pandemic forever changed us?
Let’s hope so.
I hope that when restrictions are lifted and it’s deemed safe enough, I will always choose connection. And I predict my teenagers will, too. Playing video games online with cousins is good enough for now, but it’s not the same as being together.
So what was I afraid of before? When we fear too much screentime?
Right now the problems of the world can feel so very big. And we can feel small. We can feel powerless. We can wonder: what’s the point? To which we say this: one person is the key to systemic, lasting change. One person is enough. Because the power of one multiplied by many? Changes everything.
The pandemic and the political upheaval across the United States, the fight for climate change and a deeper conversation on equity, have made a lot of us take a closer look at the here and the now. And what we can do about it.
And an integral part of that entails us believing that one person has the power to change the entire world, whether that world is our climate, our town, or our systems of schooling.
We know, it’s a lot.
Just as it can be overwhelming to consider our own place in the scale of the universe, it can be equally demanding to consider how to respond to the call to be the change we wish to see in the world.
We feel so small. And these problems are so very big.
But we’ve realized one crucial thing:
The only way we can begin to tackle these problems is if we show up and try.
Think of a fern: the frond of the fern contains a pattern of leaves, and each leaf replicates that pattern at a smaller scale.
And each petal of each leaf holds that pattern again in miniature.
“How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale. The patterns of the universe repeat at scale. There is a structural echo that suggests two things: one, that there are shapes and patterns fundamental to our universe, and two, that what we practice at a small scale can reverberate to the largest scale.”
From this, brown suggests that by living and being in our own lives the way we want the world at large to be, we can create a pattern at the smallest scale which can replicate across the system.
brown quotes her mentor, Grace Lee Boggs, as saying: “Change yourself to change the world.”
And that?
That we can do.
And you can too.
When we get overwhelmed at the scale of the problems, we make it smaller. We reflect on how our actions are aligned – or not – with the change we want to see. From there, we can adjust and create the reality we want to manifest. It turns out there’s often plenty of work we can do on ourselves and our immediate surroundings.
Mary DeMocker, in her book The Parents’ Guide to Climate Revolution, tells us that if we have a choice, “We should always choose systems change over lightbulb change.”
Now, what we might not realize is that in a lot of cases, doing one pulls us closer to the other. Small individual actions are the flywheel that powers systems change.
This is already a game of hope and faith.
When we think about the change we hope to see in schools, we are thinking about systems change. How can schools better serve all students? How can schools move to proficiency-based learning, and towards creating communities in which all students feel welcome, appreciated, and supported as learners?
When we choose to try out a student-created unit in class, or connect a learner with a community organization — or even just figure out how to give credit for a student making that connection, we are making systems change.
Deciding to simply eliminate out-dated terms from our everyday speech, we are making systems change in miniature.
But those choices add up, and they move mountains.
Everything is terrible, and all we have is us
Finally, environmental studies professor Sarah Jaquette Ray, in her book A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety has more sage advice that resonates with our work as an educators: we need to redefine action, the way we measure our efficacy at making a difference.
As educators, we know that the impacts of our work — the seeds we’ve helped cultivate — may not be visible or obvious for years to come. Just like we don’t give up on our students even when we can’t see the evidence of our efforts, so too must we persist in our fight against systemic oppression and racism in the systems we’re part of.
And like that student who shows up in your doorway years, or even decades, later and tells you that you made a difference, our work now to disrupt inequity and create might not reap fruit for a long time.
But this is a marathon. And we know how to play this game of hope and faith.
Digital peer mentoring at Lamoille South Unified Union School District
As the coordinator for my school district’s full-time virtual option this school year, I knew that I’d be spending much of the year in problem-solving mode, likely for problems I couldn’t even imagine yet. While not every problem has an immediate solution, we have found one simple yet powerful way to move steadily toward solutions: student-to-student mentoring.
How it’s done
Specifically, in our school district we have piloted a virtual mentoring program that pairs high school student volunteers with full-time virtual students in lower grades for twice-weekly sessions on Google Meet.
The setup is easy: several pairs of students meet simultaneously while a teacher is on the line, muted and camera off, supervising the interactions and available if the need arises. After each week’s meetings, our high school mentors email the student’s advisor and academic teachers with updates. They receive feedback from these adults on areas they need to focus on in the next session.
Most of our high school mentors are not in the full-time virtual program themselves, but instead are in a hybrid model that has them in the school building two days per week and remote for three days per week.
We have yet to settle on a satisfying name for the program.
At times I’ve called it “tutoring,” and at other times, “mentoring.” I think the difficulty in settling on a name reflects the wide variety of interactions going on in these sessions.
At the online mentor orientation, we laid out four goals for the sessions:
1. Social-emotional support
Our students are isolated. Especially for younger students without a cell phone or a driver’s license, they are lacking the social interactions that normally happen during a school day. And one or two group Zoom calls a day just doesn’t make up for this.
The relationship between a younger student and older peer mentor is a different one than the student-teacher relationship. The solid one-on-one time with a high school student twice a week can help our younger students feel connected to the world outside of their homes, as well as giving them someone trusted with whom they can share the difficulty of getting through the pandemic.
To build this relationship, our high school volunteers will play video-chat-friendly games, such as online Pictionary, or come ready with a fun joke or puzzle to share at the beginning of the session.
2. Developing executive functioning skills
The demands of virtual learning on students’ executive functioning skills are extremely high. Students must manage their own time, prioritize tasks, and stay focused in order to succeed.
Younger students without an adult available at home to help teach these skills struggle immensely to meet these demands. High school students have had to practice these skills throughout their K-12 schooling. With some coaching, our high school volunteers can pass on developmentally-appropriate, bite-sized versions of these skills to younger students.
We have all mentors work with their students on building a personalized weekly schedule using a template, as well as preventing overwhelm by identifying the “next action” that needs to be done for each content area. Many of our mentors have also coached students through emailing teachers to clarify assignment guidelines.
3. Academic Support
Students’ academic needs vary widely, but one concern that keeps resurfacing in virtual learning is reading comprehension. In any online platform, there is a great deal of reading necessary to navigate and understand the instructions for asynchronous learning. In addition, teachers present much of the learning material across content areas in written form.
For students who struggle to read at grade level, the weakness in reading begins to affect their retention of new learning across subject areas.
For students who are struggling to comprehend and make meaning from written material in their online courses, our high school mentors will use a variety of strategies to work through the text with them: having the student share their screen and taking turns reading aloud, pausing and asking questions at different points in the text, modeling how to look up unknown words, etc.
4. Alert system
Without seeing students in person each day, we as a school system lose many contact points that could give us important information about a student. From small things like noticing a child is without a warm jacket, to larger, more serious things like concerns about physical abuse, we worry about how much we just don’t see when students are not at school.
Our high school mentors, who get a full 60 minutes of one-on-one time with students each week, serve as an extra set of eyes and ears to alert the adults to potential problems or concerns. Students are often more comfortable turning on their cameras with a mentor. This ultimately gives us a better idea of that student’s learning environment through the mentor’s feedback.
Students rise to the challenge
Our high school students are an amazing resource, and their maturity and care in working with younger children this semester has been an inspiration and an enormous help for our virtual teachers. I’m sure some of our readers will be curious about specifics with regard to how we identified students in need of mentoring, recruited and trained mentors, and structured the work.
What makes it work?
There are a few key elements I’d like to share with other teachers and school leaders who are looking to implement a similar idea:
When considering which students would benefit from mentoring, we first identified students who were struggling academically, and then spoke with parents about the program. Parental understanding and consent for the mentee’s participation is key, as the sessions will be happening essentially in their home.
To recruit mentors, we emailed the student body at both high schools in our district, Stowe High School and Peoples Academy High School, offering community service hours (a graduation requirement) for their time. We had a familiar adult from each building be the one to email their own school’s students, hoping this would increase response. In a year when many community service opportunities are unavailable due to the pandemic, students were eager for the opportunity. We had more volunteers than we could use!
We provided an initial 45-minute training to the high school volunteers, available on two different days when students would all be remote. The training, developed collaboratively between Peoples Academy school counselor Lindsey Yablonowski and myself, covered the goals of the program, principles of confidentiality, and strategies for working with students.
For the first three weeks (six meetings), we designed “agendas” for tutors to use to guide their work. These were essentially lesson plans, but we allowed tutors flexibility in how closely they followed the agendas. Elements of the agendas were connected to the four goals of the sessions outlined in the training. After the first six meetings, mentors generally had a good sense of their students’ needs and were able to continue on from there.
After the first month, we gathered mentors together for a Zoom meeting to discuss challenges and strategies for working with students in breakout rooms and as a whole group. We plan to continue with several meetings like this in the spring semester.
In general, the biggest challenge tends to be the younger students not showing up for the sessions. This often corresponds with disengagement from academics in general — less time on the learning management system (LMS), less consistent attendance at class meetings, etc. The mentor’s email letting the adults know that the student missed a session is an effective early alert for us to look at other data points and see if an intervention is necessary.
Now that we are almost halfway through the year, we are re-evaluating student pairings for the mentoring program, getting feedback through Google Forms from both the younger students and the mentors, and determining which pairs will continue for the spring semester, and which tutors’ time might be better used with a different student.
Can this model work for you?
I hope that by sharing our experience from this year, we can help other schools looking for a simple way to increase student support in these difficult times. This general model and the four focus areas could be adapted to so many school contexts, and it’s something we are hoping to expand and continue beyond this year and beyond the pandemic. In the past, scheduling conflicts and transportation issues thwarted attempts to set up mentoring between school buildings.
One silver lining of these strange circumstances has been to upend all of our assumptions about what school is and where and when it takes place, making room for simple solutions that were, it turns out, right under our noses all along!
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.”
At the start of a new year, we often think about our hopes and set resolutions. Is setting goals passé now? Not for students. And especially not for young adolescents, regardless of what else is happening in the larger world. Goals make the world manageable. They make managing your own passionate, independent learning doable. Did we mention how important that is for young adolescents?
For instance, we know that in Vermont schools implementing Personal Learning Plans (PLPs), student goal setting and reflection is a key component. Now let’s make it easy for you to set goals for the new year with your students.
Let’s look at three strategies to help it work smoothly.
Strategy #1: Choose a particular format to scaffold setting goals with students
Setting goals can be daunting, and if no guidance or structure is provided, some students can draw a blank and get stuck. Luckily, there are plenty of great formats and templates out there to try.
Some people like using the WOOP format for goal-setting. This format guides participants to identify a:
Wish
Outcome
Obstacle and
Plan
for setting goals. Plus: it’s super fun to say.
Down at Ludlow Elementary School, educator Heidi Betz is WOOPing with her students. Together, they’re evaluating their aspirations, strengths, challenges, and motivations in order to set goals. The goals take into account the class’ pursuit of essential outcomes related to the Transferable Skills.
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Or maybe you want to be SMART about your goals?
When students set goals using the SMART format, they identify a goal that is:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant and
Time-Based.
At Williston Elementary School, in Williston VT, educator Lissa Fox described how she piloted a structure for using SMART goals with her middle school students. She discovered how important it is to *actively* cultivate a goals mindset with middle schoolers. And furthermore, she also discovered that her SMARTs had to be a team approach.
Pick a format, y’all. And stick with it!
Setting goals is hard. Students need a structure, template and format in order to develop the skill.
Strategy #2: Invent ways to make the goal visible and stick to it
After you help students set their goals, there is more work ahead. Students need to be able to take steps and develop actions towards reaching their goal.
One year while teaching middle school down at Manchester Elementary-Middle School (MEMS), we had students make large graphic labels that captured their goals. We taped those labels to the front of their school laptops. Because they use that object so frequently in school and at home, students had frequent reminders of the goals they had set for themselves.
Another strategy we’ve used is to devote a small chunk of time at the start of a school day for students to chart progress on their goals. Students can go into their digital PLPs and write an entry describing any concrete actions or steps they had taken in order to reach their goal that week. It’s a powerful measure of accountability and reminds students of the goals they committed to.
Strategy #3: Encourage students to reflect on what works
Students can engage in written reflection in their PLP. They could create video reflections that describe their progress and steps towards attaining goals. Teachers can also provide 1:1 conferences with students to check in around their goals.
But Tarrant Institute, we seem to hear you say. New Year’s resolutions don’t work!
That’s absolutely correct. For a lot of people, the best of intentions gets mown down in the middle of the busy road of everyday life. Honk honk! BLAP!
Resolution roadkill.
And that’s another valuable skill to focus on: what happens if you don’t meet your goals? Do you sob or wail? Clean out the Hannafords of peanut M&Ms? Or do you reflect on what you did and what went wrong (there’s that pesky reflection again) and you offer yourself grace. You tell yourself that you tried hard and you’ll try again. You look at what went wrong and think about how you’d handle the same situation in the future.
And you go back and set new goals. You start again. Even if it’s February. (Especially if it’s February).
(Did we mention the grace bit. We should mention the grace bit. Ahem: please help your students offer themselves grace on goals. Offer yourself a double helping of grace as well. Grace for everybody will go a long, long way right about now.)
Anyway, when teachers engage students in these strategies for goal-setting, they are helping them develop a life-long skill.
Every new year, we read and listen to adults talk about their resolutions. Maybe we’re the adults in question. But we’re pretty sure most adults do not stick to their resolutions. But if we engage students thoughtfully in effective goal-setting practices in their adolescence, there’s hope for the New Years’ resolutions of 2030 and beyond.
As long as there’s still a new year to set goals for. But that’s another blogpost.
In the midst of a global pandemic teachers are adapting in a multitude of ways. We have had to fundamentally change the way we teach, learn, and engage with each other. While feeling overwhelmed and underprepared for many of these challenges, I found that I was also able to slow down and reflect more deeply on my own teaching practice. And one of the greatest resources that I had at my disposal to do this was action-research oriented professional development. Two such opportunities that I found invaluable in the transition to teaching in a pandemic: Learning Lab VT and the Middle Grades Institute (MGI). Here’s what I’ve taken away from PD in a pandemic.
1. The ability to design my own learning
I signed up for Learning Lab and MGI because I knew that these programs would give me and my colleagues time to think big picture. They would give us space to create a common set of goals, conduct research, and create a plan that suited our needs. These PD experiences gave me a framework to work within that helped me identify and plan for my goals. And then they handed me the reins to direct my own learning.
2. The ability to connect with teachers from across the state
Powerful professional development emphasizes collaboration by asking teachers to share their ideas, practices, and results in a way that’s informative and low risk. For instance, Bright Spots and Belly Flops were a series of posts Learning Lab members shared with one another. The posts highlighted the successes and challenges of our projects. The Middle Grades Conference later this month is similar. It’s an opportunity for educators to share innovative teaching practices they’ve tried. And in the time of abundant stress and heightened responsibilities, crowdsourcing ideas and practices feels more important to me than ever.
3. Emphasizing student voice
Great professional development embeds the expectation that students’ voices are a part of our planning. This element feels even more necessary as the pandemic has turned how we “do school” on its head. My Learning Lab VT team of students was invaluable to my transition to remote learning. I met with my students and then adjusted my own teaching to be more responsive to their needs. I gave them the opportunity to share what was working and what wasn’t. At MGI this past summer when meeting with the student consultants, we, as teachers, were given feedback from students across 5-8th grades about how to structure our first weeks back in school.
4. Emphasis on equity
The most critical component of MGI is the requirement that educators construct action research projects. This year, the emphasis is on equity. The experience challenges teachers to analyze their projects through Gorski’s Equity Literacy framework (.pdf). Schools are not neutral spaces, nor have they ever been. The pandemic is exacerbating existing inequities inside and outside of our school buildings. And this PD pushed my team to recognize inequities in our project plan. It gave us the opportunity to actively cultivate equitable opportunities for students.
There is no denying that taking on additional work, in the face of all we are experiencing right now, feels daunting. However, participating in professional development during this pandemic has given me the opportunity to take a step back, reflect, and move forward with an intention I would not have had on my own.
As ever-increasing cracks in the foundation of our democracy reveal weakness and corruption, so too do these revelations allow the light of justice and truth to penetrate. As educators, our work to help young people learn to communicate across differences, think critically, and work for justice is as important as ever. This remains an apt time to reconnect and reflect.
And an even more apt time to talk about what’s happening with our students.
Rest assured, they know something’s going on, but they’ll need your help to begin processing.
What’s happened now:
On January 6, 2021, a group of white supremacist terrorists infiltrated the US Capitol building and briefly shut down Congress. They committed many criminal acts, yet news outlets have portrayed them variously as “criminals”, “protesters” and “heroes”. What’s the truth? And who decides?
First of all: you’re not alone in this. Teachers nationwide are talking about this with their students. We are all trying to make sense of this at the same time as our students do. We’re the adults in the room, so we’re having to do the thing.
And we’re also here to provide some resources and strategies for talking with your students.
Looking for resources to talk about who’s at the heart of our conversations on what matters? Need help evaluating critical sources for bias, or just jumping into anti-racist education?
One important portion of the events of January 6th was the role of the then-President, both in video messages and on social media. Looking for resources for unpacking the role online communications has played?
Teachers, we see you and we appreciate you. None of this is easy, but responding to moments like these are incredibly necessary. Education is necessary for democracy to be successful. We have a role to play in the health of our democracy and supporting our students. Our investment matters.
Editorial Note: This post was scheduled for publication prior to the events in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021. As ever-increasing cracks in the foundation of our democracy reveal weakness and corruption, so too do these revelations allow the light of justice and truth to penetrate. As educators, our work to help young people learn to communicate across differences, think critically, and work for justice is as important as ever. This remains an apt time to reconnect and reflect. For support on challenging conversations with your students, please see How to Have Difficult Conversations about the Election for resources and ideas.
“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” –Leonard Cohen
This year may be Very Different, but the mile markers are the same. And right now, we’re at the beginning. A fresh new calendar collection of 12 months yet unwritten.
Returning to our familiar traditions and rituals can keep us feeling balanced and rooted in the familiar. As we consider our own intentions for the year ahead (or maybe just for this month, week, or even just today), we can also invite our students into this space of reflection, hope, and growth.
These crystalline days of early January offer us a chance to reconnect with one another, and reset our learning environment. To regroup, reflect and reach.
Reconnect:
Whether you’re in-person, hybrid, or remote, caring relationships are the bedrock of a thriving classroom community. And Morning Meeting is one of the best times and places to intentionally build these relationships.
Young adolescents need connection and fun to thrive. With everything else we’re juggling, it can be easy to let making time for games and activities fall to the wayside. Students are brilliant at coming up with fun activities, but if you need a few more ideas to get started, check out:
14 socially distanced advisory activities to liven up your connection time. Kindness Bingo, Heads or Tails, and Two Truths & a Lie are just a few of the gems highlighted here. Consider establishing a class DJ to open your morning meeting, or open the floor up for knock-knock jokes and riddles! (Laughter = good.)
But solid relationships are built on more than just games:
5 resources for building community features ideas on how to engage your community in meaningful dialogue, whether the topic is self-reflection, planning for success, or current events, these ideas will help you scaffold conversations. And if current events turns to politics, check out:
7 mindfulness activities for advisory shares movement and breathing exercises to help students cultivate grounded awareness. Mindfulness also happens to be a great strategy for mitigating stress. These practices could also be the opener to a classroom discussion about healthy ways to handle stress.
Reset…
We often speak of the first six weeks of school as the key time to establish routines and expectations so that learning in community can run smoothly. It’s also important to *return to* these explicit guidelines after breaks. If we’re proactive about setting clear success criteria, there’s less chance things will go awry. And when we co-develop these evolving expectations with students, they are much more interested in carrying them out.
Hey, yeah, you’re older and more capable than you were in September, students! How should we change it up? What’s working? What could be better? What can we let go of?
New year? Time for a reset reviews both the why and how of re-establishing routines for student-directed learning. Whether in the classroom or learning from home, clarity is kindness.
8 Tips for creating classroom routines and norms gets into the nitty-gritty details of how to build these strategies into your day. Even if you created norms at the beginning of the year, it’s a great time to check-in and reflect on how well they are (or aren’t) helping everyone reach their goals.
Establishing behavior expectations in a 1:1 is a bit of a throwback to the Before Times, when each student having 1:1 access to a computer was a new thing. BUT! There is still plenty of relevant advice in here about helping kids learn to manage their technology, which is more important than ever these days (as we all know).
Reflect & Reach
This turning of the year is a great time to look backward and forward, to reflect on how we’ve grown and changed, and to set new goals for the year (month/week/day) ahead. If your students already have personalized learning plans (PLPs) or portfolios set up it will be even easier to document and reflect. (If you’re just getting started with PLPs, check out The Definition of a PLP for some ideas.) Ready to reflect and reach for new growth?
8 year-end reflection tools and activities offers some creative ways to reflect, celebrate, and plan. No need to wait until the end of the year, there’s no time like the present, right? Don’t miss the Adobe spark- it’s beautiful and simple to create.
What makes for good goal-setting in a PLP? Turns out it’s simple, if not easy: provide structure, make it personally meaningful, provide some individual support, and…make time to return to the process for reflection and further goal setting.
Setting and tracking reading goals – and no, it doesn’t include reading logs! Hurray! Seriously though, this one has some great ideas and it even touches on how math and self-direction can play into our reading plans.
Despite a year like no other, these seasonal rituals can bring meaning, inspiration and grounding. And they will ensure that this new year gets off to a strong, connected, and aspirational start.
Maker doyenne Lucie delaBruere is choosing “Regroup” as her word for 2021.
Whatever you decide to focus on, the key point is that we need to have explicit conversations with students about how we want things to roll, and refine together how we will manage ourselves, our spaces, and our resources. Plan for success. It’s our best shot.
How are you moving into this new year with your students?
Featured image: “The Return of the Light”, by Emily Hoyler 2020. Used with permission. All photo rights reserved.
And everything seems to have gone terribly wrong that can
But one breath at a time is an acceptable plan
She tells herself
And the air is still there
This morning it’s even breathable
And for a second the relief is unbelievable
We stepped back and walked away. We went outside. And we cried for the people and energy and love 2020 stole from us all, and then we sat down in the snow for a while and just looked up at the sky.
Maybe this is sounding familiar. Maybe this is sounding cliché. Happy new year.
But as the days passed, one by one, with no notifications ringing our phones and disrupting our long walks, we began to see the bigger picture.
And that’s this: this new year can only be managed in tiny chunks.
There’s no way we can make resolutions for the full year ahead because who even knows what that’s going to look like. Just asking the question feels like inviting disaster.
But we also know that we need a plan. We need to support educators and students, school communities and families.
Once we stopped wandering around in the snow and came back inside, one of the first things to greet us on twitter was this:
A bubble in an inhospitable environment survives by accumulating ice crystals. Crystals appear, one by one, as the bubble struggles against this hostile environment. They grow, as much as they are able, and most likely in ways and environments they hadn’t anticipated.
(There’s a joke in there somewhere about “snowflakes” and current politics that we’re not even going to touch.)
Known as “the snowglobe effect”, the process is actually kind of violent: as a bubble continues to grow, in freezing temperatures it also freezes, with the still-liquid parts ripping ice crystals off the frozen parts and tossing them around. Which… may feel kind of familiar to educators.
It shouldn’t, no, but after the past year, it probably does.
And that’s the energy we’re moving forward with right now: one crystal at a time, one bubble, one breath. Growth that depends on adapting to an inhospitable environment. Growth that depends on coming together as best we can, even when we’re prickly and icy and fraught.
And that takes slowing down. It takes being in the moment. It takes prioritizing today, this morning, the next hour, the next sip of coffee. The very next breath.
We nearly asked "What book are you most looking forward to reading *this year*" but if 2020 taught us anything, it taught us one step at a time… https://t.co/PYz1fRxsoR
Small, intense focus necessarily means letting go of the longer term stuff *for now*. What with Everything Going On Right Now, trying to hold onto everything that was and that could be — both good and bad — feels overwhelming.
To-do lists that cover a day first, rather than a week. And when that feels like too much, to-do lists that cover a morning, or the next hour. Whatever makes right now feel manageable. Because the past year was so extraordinary, it’s time to regroup, and slow down. Reconnect with our purpose as an organization, and as citizens in our own extraordinary communities. Revisit why we do what we do.
Even when that means saying no to extra activities. Even when that means not becoming an astronaut this year, or the next. That letting go of things makes more room for people. That one breath can be used to say hello, how are you, to our colleagues, and to students and their families.
No, the next breath says, “How are you *really*?” Because we’re thinking of you and holding you in the frozen bubble of our right now.
But we’ll just sit over here and think for a bit on what one word could, for us, encompass so much unknown and so much that needs to be done, fixed, broken, fixed better, gathered, mourned, celebrated and boggled at?
This morning it might be “flexibility”, but looking at the day’s to-do list, we’ll get back to you tomorrow morning with any changes.
(You might say we want unlimited re-takes on choosing a word for the year. That’s true; that’s one of the things we’ll become proficient at this year.)
One breath at a time.
For your convenience, an audio version of this post is also available below.
While most of the time, we’re looking forward to the winter part of our winter reading break, this year it’s really more about the break. This year, a lot of us leaned into the escape, the support, and the love that we get from books. We hope you are too.
This year we took a little different tack on our reading roundup. We asked some of your favorite professional development coordinators to take their current reads and assemble what we’re calling “bookzibits”. They’re based on Rachel Kloos & Lisa Highfill’s #BookBento assignment.
For each book, the reader assembled some items they feel are related to the story, or connect with where they are in this beautiful magical dumpster fire of a year.
Theydies and gentlethems, without further ado:
2020 UVM Tarrant Institute Winter Break Reading
Jeanie Phillips
“Tea is all about connection in this book. The Kellner family regularly gathers around pots of tea: Persian tea with hel (cardamom pods), Moroccan Mint tea, and all sorts of other brews from Rose City Teas. Darius and his friend Chip sip tea while they study. And Darius has many pleasant memories of the tea he shared with his family and friends in Iran.
I think of tea as the medium through which Darius shows his love, and as a tea lover myself, this book inspired me to drink more tea!”
Emily Hoyler
“It all started during a pandemic summer when one of my kids had an itchy bug bite and we had run out of Afterbite. I mixed together some baking soda, water, and a couple of drops of tea tree oil. Instant relief! I began to wonder what other home remedies were at my fingertips.
Around the same time, we decided to stop mowing the majority of our yard. As the summer bloomed, the now-field was covered in wildflowers: yarrow, St. John’s Wort, chicory, evening primrose, fleabane..and many more. (How did I know? I used an app called Seek by iNaturalist to identify many, many of the plant friends who live near me).”
Robin Merritt
“My son’s violin: As Langston grapples with loss, bullying, and city life, he misses the red dirt of Alabama, his grandma’s home cooking, and the slow-paced culture of the rural south. Yet with a new world at his fingertips, opportunity for knowledge awaits. His path seems like it comes with some obstacles. I’m excited to see where it leads.”
Life LeGeros
“Broken Places is about how Okorafor became a writer. She has written for youth and adults, sci-fi and fantasy, books and comics. Everything I’ve read by her is pure magic.”
Rachel Mark
“I adore this book series by Louise Penny. This winter, I’m reading Book 12, A Great Reckoning. The protagonist might like listening to my father’s old jazz collection — on vinyl, of course.”
Scott Thompson
“The author, Nic Stone, was inspired to write this book for many reasons. One being that in high school she didn’t get to read about many characters that resemble her. She didn’t want that experience for other African-American students. When we look into a mirror we see our reflection. What if that reflection was not you, and no one like you. How would you feel?”
Susan Hennessey
“The hippocampus acts as a short-term information store but fills up quickly each day: a USB drive.”
Audrey Homan
“Winter’s a great time for swapping tires, conditioning bearings, cleaning the chain (srsly: clean your chain), and generally love on yr bikes!
(Also, could someone remind me to clean the basement *before* I do a photoshoot next time?)”
Well, there you have it. That’s our winter reading 2020!
We would LOVE to see your own #BookBento or bookzhibit! And to get you started, here’s a quick guide to using Thinglink.
If we can provide any of y’all educators some of the love and support we got from books this year, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Many schools have an advisory structure to promote strong relationships and a sense of close community. And advisory already serves many purposes. It can be a place for close bonds, adult mentoring, connection and also great fun! But have you ever thought of advisory as a place for practicing mindfulness?
Stress levels are pretty high in schools right now.
Both students and teachers are complying with stringent regulations in order to keep schools safe. Given the tone of stress in the world, it makes sense to bring a little calm and peace to school structures.
When schools start the day with advisory, why not embed mindfulness strategies? Especially now, when stress levels are high. It can be helpful for students and teachers alike. Mindfulness is not only about bringing peace, calm and stress reduction. It also slows the pace of interaction and behavior to support social-emotional learning. I’m so grateful to counselors at Rutland Middle School, in Rutland VT, for bringing me this high powered and simple strategy.
Here are seven mindfulness activities for advisory.
1. Rainbow Walk
A Rainbow Walk is great because it combines movement with careful observation. Follow the directions here to engage in a walk that involves paying close attention and being present. It’s a simple activity: get your advisory outside and turn them individually loose for a set period of time. As they walk, ask students to take note — either internally or with paper and pencil, or even a phone to snap photos — of one item that’s red. And one item that’s orange. An item that’s yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. And finally, violet.
If you pulled all those phone photos together, for instance, where could you store your students’ crowd-sourced rainbow? How could it inspire further moments of mindfulness throughout the day?
2. Yoga!
You can show this six minute video to your students, and all practice together. It involves very small movements and stretches that can be done at your desk. Or try a more explicitly Gentle Chair Yoga practice at your desks, or get outside (yes again) and stretch all over. Yoga plus direct sunlight? Yes please!
3. Following a Breathing Board
Either print out or send to devices the diagrams and visuals in this document (.pdf) to assist in breathing in and out. Just sit for a hot second and… breathe. When was the last time any of us made time for that?
4. Mindful coloring
Very slow and deliberate coloring can be a great way to reduce stress and focus. Use the resources from this site to help yourself and your students find peace and calm.
This is a recognized exercise that people often use to de-escalate anxiety, and it’s quite possible we all could use having something like this in our back pockets right about now.
6. “The Gift of You” Exercise
This exercise may work better with younger children, but there is still something lovely to be learned about the “gift of yourself”. Try it.
7. Box (or square) Breathing
I first learned about “the box breath” from Rising Strong, by Brene Brown. She learned it from Mark Miller, a Green Beret who teaches the breathing technique as it’s used in the military. This explains it well. But basically, you use inhalations and exhalations to construct a virtual box that helps you focus on actually feeling the effects of breathing on your body. It’s an amazing and simple relaxation and mediation strategy.
But you do you.
These are just seven of many mindfulness activities out there that can be embedded into an advisory routine. You might try an activity for a day or two, or you might engage your students in a whole week focused on mindfulness strategies. Whatever you do, make it accessible for the educators in the room, too. Mindfulness is one of many self-care strategies that our teachers need now, too. It deserves to find a time and space within the school day.
I’d love to hear from educators who are using mindfulness in the classroom. Is anyone out there practicing it in advisory? Tell us your stories.
Spoiler alert: When we adjust learning conditions to be more in sync with the known laws of brain-based learning, learning improves. Momentum builds.
Trust the science
For 15 years I’ve been helping Vermont educators and school systems apply what we know about the brain to inform what we do in our schools. And for 15 years, I’ve watched a variation of the same story unfold.
Initially, there’s excitement. Everyone loves learning about the brain, especially educators. Most teaching teams never get the chance to sustain a multi-year conversation about what contemporary science has to say about why and how people learn.
The findings inspire educators to try out strategies more compatible with the way learning works. Early results are positive.
But then, the inevitable rub. As educators take an increasingly science-based approach to learning design, they run afoul of our industrial-aged operating system: great for running factories constructing Model-Ts, but not-so-great for running programs cultivating young minds.
It’s a matrix moment. Educators grasp how incompatible our operating system is with the known laws of learning. The journey continues — once you grasp the science of how people learn, it’s hard to let it go — but with a checked enthusiasm and diminished expectations.
And so it goes. No exceptions.
But educators aren’t the only ones checking their enthusiasm. When asked to review the Schlechty Center on Engagement’s description of the “five different types of involvement” students bring to their school work, the Vermont educators I’ve surveyed for more than a decade report that the majority of their students display a mix of compliance, avoidance, or rebellion.
How did we get here?
Why do we keep working so hard for such meager results?
And what would working smarter look like?
A Ridiculously Brief Yet Highly Instructive History
For millions of years our earliest ancestors learned by acting in the world and working with the world’s feedback. Our brains changed as our understanding grew. Around 200,000 years ago the modern human emerged. The universe’s most advanced known learner. Our secret sauce? Socializing to solve pressing problems so we might lead more satisfying lives.
We learned so much, we needed to categorize our understanding into disciplines that specialized in making sense of different dimensions of our experience. And then, just within the last couple thousand years, we created schools. Why put up with the mess of constructing your own learning, when experts can explain the way the world works?
By the late 19th century, the Committee of Ten committed to our traditional model of school, the operating system that bedevils us today.
That operating system — of and for its time — efficiently sorts students according to a narrow view of intelligence to determine who continues with schooling and who heads to work. It also takes a narrow view of teaching and learning, reducing learning to a transaction: teachers give expertise to those students capable of receiving it.
In that time period, Edward Thorndike and John Dewey embodied two vying visions of education.
Thorndike called for a mechanistic, teacher-centered, data-driven system, rejecting Dewey’s case for a more organic, student-centered, community-based system. “To understand the problems in education today,” writes Ellen Condliffe Lagemann in The Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Education Research, “one must understand that Thorndike won and Dewey lost.”
Since then, our faith and belief in measurement has grown.
Never in the history of education has any country required students to take as many standardized tests as has the United States. The results? Abysmal.
But let’s give credit to Vermont, home to the vanquished but still influential John Dewey.
For decades Vermont has led national efforts to make schools more compatible with our contemporary understanding of how people learn, and the purpose of school. Vermont’s Act 77 and Education Quality Standards testify to our efforts.
Yet, these ongoing initiatives are like so many pieces of sophisticated software. The old hard drive just can’t run them; the new fix bogs down an already overwhelmed system.
And educators — accustomed to coverage-based professional development that moves onto the next initiative before getting the current one right — bring a mix compliance, retreatism, and rebellion to the work. A mix that’s strikingly similar to that brought by their students.
And then, to bring this speedy history up to date, COVID arrived.
Interestingly, the initial shock of it all caused many schools to drop the pretense of business as usual. Slow down; simplify; relationships first.
In less than a year, we’ve learned creative ways to connect across distances and differences.
In less than a year, we’ve developed a profound appreciation for the vitality of in-person connections.
And in less than a year, we’ve become more aware of and empathic about the pre-existing conditions that have been inflamed by the pandemic.
Many more of us, for example, are now aware of the mental health crisis plaguing so many adolescents, as described so well in the first ten minutes of Princeton Professor Laurie Santos’ pre-pandemic presentation to the National Council for Behavioral Health.
After all we’ve been through, do we really want to return to our pre-pandemic state? Wouldn’t we rather apply what we’ve been learning to design a better way of operating, one that makes the very most of our time together and apart?
Describing the resilience and creativity that early Vermonters brought to the hardships they faced, historian Zadock Thompson wrote, “They were aroused to their highest energies by the difficulties they were compelled to encounter.”
And we are doing the same! We are adapting and evolving in ways we can’t even recognize or appreciate yet. As bad and scary as it feels and is, we are making remarkable discoveries.
And I sense that all of us — students, educators, and families — are more ready than ever to adopt a contemporary educational operating system. One compatible with the science of why and how people learn. One in sync with what our communities need, and one that adheres to, rather than violates, fundamental laws of learning.
What are these laws of learning? And how would school be different if we operated according to these scientific findings?
Let’s take a look at five of them.
1. Humans continuously learn from and adapt to their experience.
This means that we are all learning all the time.
Even when we’re sleeping — especially when we’re sleeping, it turns out — the process continues. It is relentless. You cannot stop it.
Our nervous system attunes to our ongoing experience, getting and generating a feel for things. These non-verbal sensations stem from the older parts of the brain, which regulate our body systems and generate feelings that impact our states of mind.
These states of mind determine what we do, far more than that slim-but-mighty cortex, the relative newcomer to the brain that enables us to problem-solve. We like to think that it’s this rational part of our brain that’s driving the bus, but that’s not so.
And here’s why this is so, so, so important for educators: while it’s true that learning is relentless and cannot be stopped, it’s also true that learning is hard to direct or control. Learning is wild, and like most wild things, resists being corralled and coerced.
You can bring students to school, but you can’t force them to learn what you want. And we as educators are no different. You can require teachers to attend professional development, but you can’t control what they learn.
And here’s where so much organized learning goes wrong. When you take away learners’ sense of agency, you cut them off from their biological inheritance: that insistent and thrilling urge to explore, experiment, and work with others to make sense of their most pressing concerns.
So they adapt to school, learning how to game the system to meet their needs, conserving their highest energies for what matters most to them. This is evolutionary biology at work, not the willfulness of students who just won’t pay attention. They are paying attention! Just not always to what we want.
Wise educators design experiences that tack with, rather than tamp down, these biological, gale-force winds.
Our Industrial-Age Operating System:
A Brain-Based Operating System Would:
Creates curricula that are disconnected from, and often discounting of, students’ pressing questions about their experiences and interests.
Design learning experiences in sync with students’ emerging conceptions of and questions about their experiences and interests.
Rewards students for demonstrating grit and persistence in the pursuit of short-term learning.
Inspire students to tap their highest energies as they pursue long-lasting learning.
Makes learning a private, individual, and competitive race that celebrates getting into a good college.
Make learning a public, social, and collaborative celebration of learners’ growth and their current aspirations.
2. We learn best by performing badly at something we want to get better at.
When did you learn the most about teaching? Was it in the courses leading up to student teaching, during your student teaching, or throughout your first year of teaching?
And when did you learn the most about using technology to facilitate learning? Was it during the last ten years of occasional professional development? Trying it out and having to Google what went wrong?
Or has it been during these months of actually having to use technology to facilitate learning?
We all learn the most by doing the actual thing, or a very close approximation. We want to learn. Learning how to play a new game? Don’t spend too much time reading the rules. Jump into a game with people who know how to play. You’ll pick it up in no time.
But schools tend to be places where we’re taught the directions and information we’ll need for playing a game that’s years away. And we are bad at this; it is not how we learn. We have a hard time paying attention because, well, we’re paying attention to the games we’re in right now, the ones that matter most to us.
The most vibrant programs in our schools — those that cultivate the kind of full-throated buy-in that generates the energy enduring learning requires — are those that invite students to prepare for public performances. Just look at the performing arts, and athletics. The more real the performance and the larger the audience, the greater commitment on the part of the learners. Learners conserve and invest their highest energies for these kinds of challenges.
Creating opportunities for students to perform for real audiences generates engagement. Without this purpose, teachers exhaust themselves lugging students up the plodding path of compliance, avoidance, and rebellion.
Our Industrial-Age Operating System:
A Brain-Based Operating System Would:
Separates most learning from a real purpose, performance, and audience.
Connect most learning to a real purpose, performance, and audience.
Perpetuates the misconception that learning is a linear process that begins with knowledge acquisition rather than “getting in the game.”
Enact the scientific finding that learning is a nonlinear process that works best when we’re “in the game.”
Practices massed learning, disrupting sleep and well being in ways that cause fatigue, forgetfulness, and anxiety.
Practice spaced learning, improving performance, memory consolidation, and well being.
3. Why and how we measure learning impacts learning.
When and how to shine the light of measurement on learning is a tricky topic. Given how sensitive our nervous systems are, we shouldn’t be surprised. When we know we’re being observed and measured, we adjust what and how we’re acting and thinking.
Since learning is wild, it can be skittish. The bright light of measurement can cause it to recede.
So we should be wary of why, how, and when students see this light headed their way. Too soon, and we’ll elicit the self-consciousness reflex, pushing students back inside themselves to study the rules, rather than drawing them out to play.
So why, how, and when should we measure learning? The answer lies in the latin derivation of the word assessment.
When students experience assessment as an ongoing conversation with a trusted and caring community that wants what’s best for them, enduring learning thrives.
But when students experience assessment as compensation for doing daily tasks and a system for ranking them according to a GPA, compliance, avoidance, and rebellion take root.
One of the charms of very young learners is their unabashed enthusiasm. Despite continual bumps, bruises, and bellyflops, they persist at falling until they can walk. Relentless and unstoppable, indeed.
But as students get older, their brains change. The curse of self consciousness kicks in, and if we’re not careful, this wild thing called learning retreats to its inner den. Sometimes for years. And sometimes while managing an impressive GPA and stellar test scores.
Our Industrial-Age Operating System:
A Brain-Based Operating System Would:
Creates a culture of compensation that incentivizes extrinsic learning, conditioning students to invest only enough energy to earn the pay (scores) they want.
Create a culture of communication that incentivizes intrinsic learning, conditioning students to invest their highest energies to achieve their personal best.
Requires teachers to determine and report students’ quarterly learning and provide an annual report summarizing the year’s learning with a single grade, number, or symbol.
Require students to document and share the story of their learning, creating a portfolio that provides a current and long view of who the learner has been, who they’ve become, and who they are becoming.
Prepares students for valid and reliable standardized tests, which narrow learning to content that can be measured (and forgotten) easily.
Prepare students for life by engaging them in the complexity of their current lives, which expands learning by inspiring students to become their best selves.
4. Human beings construct their own understanding of the world.
When we listen to another’s expertise — especially when the expert is skilled at simplifying complex ideas — we experience the illusion of learning. We think we’re learning, but more accurately, we’re getting glimpses of someone else’s learning, which feels like it will last, but that sensation should be accompanied by a flashing warning sign: temporary access only.
Even if we take good notes and then study for the test, we’re practicing short term recall. Until we’ve integrated ideas into our own schema through experience and application — constructing our own learning — these fleeting insights fade into the dustbin of short-term memory (sometimes within days of acing a test).
One of the drivers of our outdated operating system is a fundamental commitment to schools being teacher centered. Most university and high school classrooms are designed for learners to sit facing and listening to their teachers. The older students get, the more their classrooms look like performance spaces, where their teachers take the stage to do the work.
A contemporary educational operating system would be learner-centered.
Students would come to school to be studied. Three, recurring questions would spiral throughout the k-12 experience:
Who am I?
Why am I here?
What will I do?
Of course students would learn from their teachers, but the ongoing focus would be on the learners’ evolving stories. Each year students would become better known and better understood, and each year their particular affinities and aptitudes would be nourished and leveraged to work on areas of challenge.
Our Industrial-Age Operating System:
A Brain-Based Operating System Would:
Perpetuates a model of teaching and learning that assumes that students learn by listening to experts.
Enact a model of teaching and learning that assumes that students must construct lasting learning.
Resorts to “never enough time instruction”, racing over content in the name of coverage and test prep.
Employ “just in time instruction”, staying in sync with their learners’ emerging conceptions in the name of enduring learning.
Creates a culture of overload and fragmentation; students study disconnected disciplines out of context and with no connection from year to year.
Create a culture of coherence and connectedness; students practice disciplines to help them answer the recurring questions, Who am I? Why am I here? What will I do?
5. Expectations impact performance.
If you’re not familiar with the expectation effect — how our expectations and the expectations of others impact behavior — watch this remarkable three minute video.
Educators’ expectations get shaped over time not by the wild learner within all of our students but, tragically, by the adaptive behaviors students exhibit within the corralled confines of school. And as educators begin expecting and planning for seemingly inattentive and apathetic students, they begin messaging this expectation, perpetuating a self-fulfilling prophecy that sustains our operating system’s failures.
Our Industrial-Age Operating System:
A Brain-Based Operating System Would:
Expects that most students are not capable of or ready to call on their highest energies to learn deeply.
Expect that all students can learn deeply, when they experience challenges that call on their highest energies.
Focuses on creating structures and systems that punish disengaged students and reward gritty students.
Focus on creating structures and systems that inspire, respect, and celebrate the wild learner in all our students.
Narrows expectations to get data that show whether same-aged students are meeting particular content-based proficiencies each marking period.
Expand possibilities by engaging students in long-term projects and require the development of transferable skills and the enduring learning of content.
Now what?
If you’ve never seen the backwards bicycle video, it’s a humorous and visceral reminder of how tight a grip our long-practiced habits and beliefs have on us. Even when we are highly motivated to change our operating system, we wobble, stumble, and fall. It’s awkward, even embarrassing.
Teaching and learning during the pandemic has made us all novices. It has not gone smoothly. It has not been pretty. And it sure hasn’t felt good.
But it has activated our brain’s most miraculous feature: its plasticity. The ability to imagine and create better ways of operating, when confronted with difficulties that call on our highest energies.
One reason why so many of us are so wiped out? We’ve been giving it our all.
Fortunately, our exhausted minds don’t need to imagine novel solutions. The jury’s been in for a long time now about how to create learning experiences compatible with why and how people learn. Rather than conjure new initiatives or launch another reform effort, what if we looked backwards to promising but poorly implemented ideas and committed to getting them right? What if we got rid of those practices and structures that interfere with what we and our learners need?
We can do this, but we need to resist the siren song of the status quo. We need to trust our secret sauce.
As counter-intuitive as it feels, we need to slow down. We need to simplify. And we need to connect.
In this way, educators and their students can regain their sense of agency and bring their highest energies to the difficulties we’ll continue to encounter throughout our lives.
Final Thoughts
Before signing off, I’d be remiss if I didn’t share some resources to help you take some doable next steps, regardless of where you are in your education journey. I hope these three collections help you find what you need.
It takes courage to trust and apply the findings of cognitive science, which often run counter to how our current schools run. And it takes commitment to confront the generational poverty of pedagogy that we’ve inherited. That industrial-aged mindset that saps, rather than inspires, learning.
“Until one is committed,” Goethe reminds us, “there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.” But when one commits, “…the entire universe conspires to assist you.”
Let’s commit to bringing an end to the Sisyphean tragedy of teaching in ways incompatible with how learning works.
And finally, let’s commit to making school a place that leverages what millions of years of evolution have bestowed in all of us: the relentless urge to work and play together to solve pressing problems so we might lead more satisfying lives. What a difference this would make in our students’ lives, our communities, and our world.
As we enter the week of Thanksgiving, please take care of yourselves and find time for rest and solace. You have been working so hard. Along with so many others, I’m grateful for you.
When I feel depleted of my human energy, I find relief by looking deeply at nature. Not only because nature is calming to my brain and my soul, but because being in nature reminds me that I am part of something so much larger and bigger and more forceful than myself.
So much of our social lives has changed and perhaps feels restricted. Like so many of you, I will be spending a Thanksgiving holiday like none other. For once, I will cook a meal and gather only with the humans under my very own roof. And while that is very different, the forces of nature outside of me carry on.
I hope that you can spend some time feeling the joys of the nature around us. Try just listening to the sounds outside – hear the birds and the sounds of the wind. Feel the air move over you. If you are able, listen to the never-ending sound of the push and pull of water from the ocean. And take a moment to gaze and the sun or the moon and the stars. They are there every day — rising and setting — even when we can’t see them.
I’m so grateful for the forces of nature. Their stability makes me remember that I am so small and temporary on this earth. The sun and the moon, the tides and the wind – they rise and set and return every day. Without any of my effort or striving.
Educators — principals, teachers, bus drivers, staff, administrators, paraprofessionals — you are forces of nature. You deserve a break. Please enjoy some rest and find comfort in the nature around you.
With so much admiration,
Rachel & the staff of the UVM Tarrant Institute
A blog exploring innovative, personalized, student-centered school change
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