Paul Magnuson shares what his feedback to teachers sounds like after he quit trying to point out weaknesses and trying to show that he knew what those weaknesses are; after he quit sitting across from younger teachers telling them what to do. Hear what he can share by picturing himself standing side-by-side with teachers, staring out across an education horizon that is messy, multi-faceted and fabulously intriguing. Experience how teachers find appreciation from his observation.
Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!
Podcast Transcript:
[00:00:00.240] – Steve [Intro]
Hello and welcome to Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud. Together, we’ll explore ways to support teacher growth, elevate your coaching practice, and boost student success. Each week, I’ll share my own insights as well as conversations with inspiring guests to help you lead with confidence. Thanks for listening.
[00:00:29.460] – Steve
Observing Building Classrooms with the Wonder of Learning. I connected with today’s podcast guest, Paul Magnuson, when he commented on a LinkedIn post of mine concerning teacher observation. I had posted the following from a podcast I had recorded with Matt Renwick: “The question isn’t whether we should observe instruction. It’s whether we can observe it with curiosity rather than judgment. As learners alongside our teachers, rather than as evaluators standing apart from them.” When Paul read that, he responded back to me, “I wholeheartedly agree, and even spent the last two years writing observations of wonder, not evaluation. Happy to share them with anyone who’s interested.” So guess what? I was interested. And I reached out to Paul, and I’m looking forward to a conversation around his writing and his experiences. Paul has created a research department at his Swiss boarding school years earlier, where he clears the way for teachers to pursue their own interest and to share those interests with others.
[00:01:43.880] – Steve
He does the same now online with teachers from around the world in a professional learning space called Sandcastle. Paul sent me some of his writing, and I found this statement that I thought we could use to kick off our conversation. Paul wrote, “Here’s the big change. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I’ve quit trying to point out weaknesses, and I have quit trying to show that I know those are weaknesses. I’ve quit sitting across from younger teachers telling them what to do. Instead, I picture myself standing side by side with teachers, staring out across an education horizon that is messy and multifaceted and fabulously intriguing, one that is properly called complex adaptive system. I let myself get engaged in my personal wonder of learning, of the myriad of social interactions involved in teaching of learners noticing what they haven’t yet noticed.” I’m really looking forward to this conversation. Welcome, Paul.
[00:02:54.140] – Paul
It’s very nice to be here. Thank you very much.
[00:02:57.000] – Steve
Thanks so much for joining me today. I really want to hear more of your insights. As I read some of your observations, I could quickly see teachers valuing those observations and engaging in reflection as they consider your words. What led to your initial decision to capture observations in this format?
[00:03:21.900] – Paul
I think probably just the number of observations one does in professional development and working with teachers, and then just the process of getting older and wiser. [laughter] Getting a little bit older allows you to back off. You don’t have to prove yourself. You find out that you don’t know nearly as much as you thought you might have. You don’t have the pressure to show people that you’re worth the time to be in their classroom and to talk with and so on. It’s really quite freeing. And one of my questions when I think about it is, how do we give that sense to younger people working with teachers? How do you get a mature outlook on interaction acting in class when you are young and going to be doing it for a long time?
[00:04:20.460] – Steve
That really lines up with when districts ask me about… They’re in the process hiring an instructional coach, and they ask me what they should look for. I say, number one top thing you’re looking for is somebody who’s really excited about what they’re going to be able to learn from this experience. If somebody says, oh, my God, I got a chance to have a job here where at least 50% of my time is spent watching teachers and talking with teachers, the amount that I could learn is mind bogging. Somebody who shows that in an interview, that’s where you want to move in. The person who’s excited to take their 20 years of knowledge and experience and put it out to others, the cautionary flag goes up.
[00:05:10.320] – Paul
Yeah, be careful. Right, exactly.
[00:05:13.160] – Steve
Paul, I really, really enjoyed your writing style. I’m so glad you sent me several of these to read. I thought it would be great if you could share a sample for listeners to get a feel for what teachers receive from your observations. Could you pick one for us and just read it the way you’ve written it and handed it to the teacher?
[00:05:35.600] – Paul
Yeah, I’m really happy that you asked, actually, and that gives us some nice context here. This is one from an English learners’ Classroom, and I titled it, “Sending English Language Learners Out to the Hall and into the World.” Friday morning, another week. Weeks feel slow and fast, both. There are five blonde wood tables in the room. New purchases. It’s the beginning of a school year. No graffiti, no scratches, no loose legs. Matching blonde wood chairs and a card with a student name on each table. The large screen is projecting warm-up questions for journal writing under big words in the school’s official maroon branding. Welcome back to ELA, literature and reading. The school logo is even in the upper left corner of the slide. This is an organized teacher. The door shuts, Mari tells me, so she can meet each student individually and have them put their phones away. There is light music without lyrics, I’m sure that is on purpose too, coming from her laptop. The students enter, drop their phones in storage at the door, say hello to me, and start journaling. Many years ago, I sat in the same room observing a teacher, Mark.
[00:06:49.740] – Paul
We had talked quite a bit about giving the students time to learn during which we as teachers are not teaching, or at least not teaching how we usually think of teaching. We that things are going well if you can leave the classroom for a cup of coffee without the students realizing you have left. At some point during that class, Mark left and got himself a cup of coffee. The students and I didn’t notice. When he came back into the room, he hid his smile behind the cup as he saluted me with raised eyebrows and laughing eyes. Mari could have left just now as the students were journaling. Coffee cup. Teaching by organizing in such a way that you don’t have to teach, at least not in a luxury way. Next Monday, the students are going to present in front of the class. So when the time for journal writing is finished, Mari asks the students to get up in front of the class. She takes a seating the back. The students approach the stage she has created in the corner, defined by a carpet, and ask them to walk across it and look at her.
[00:07:49.020] – Paul
Just some eye contact. Then they walk across the stage again, now laughing a little, feeling more confident, and they strike a silly pose. The tempo increases. Mary keeps up the applause as they cross the stage a third time. They’ve been asked to shout out a hello, which they do. “Hello!” This is scaffolded practice to work on poise, on being in front of peers and others, on learning how to handle yourself when all eyes are on you, when you are the center of attention. A skill that goes far beyond ELA literature and reading. A skill that will come in handy in any class, any social situation, any job. Next, they practice eye contact. Mari asked them to move out into the hall to practice. No chance to settle into your chair and get bored here. They try three different exercises. I noticed the students aren’t particularly comfortable with this, nor particularly good at it. It’s cultural in part, differences between countries, but there’s more. There are differences of ages of who has the power. Being in the hall, moving, look at each other or not is excellent practice. So poise, eye contact, and we come back into the room, the students stay standing.
[00:09:03.340] – Paul
They practice reading from the board without any gestures at all. No hand waving, no shifting from one foot to the other. Then they practice with just a few gestures, gestures that might help them make a point, might animate their presentations just a bit. After gestures, speed. How fast should you speak? Mari leads the students in some examples. First, they all read far too fast. It’s a jumble of student voices. It’s so obvious that this is not what to do. No one would present this fast, so it’s a little silly, which means it is also safe. Of course, we don’t speak this fast. Then they practice presenting far too slowly. It’s painful. One word at a time. Ugh. No one would present that slow. Certainly not us. They finish by reading at a comfortable pace before reviewing the presentation skills they’ve practiced. Poise, eye contact, gestures, speed. Brilliant. So often we assign a student presentation but forget to provide any training. Then on presentation day, it is, well, painful. These folks won’t be experts next Monday, but they’ll be a little removed from being pure novices. Monday’s class won’t be painful. And I think to myself, again, they are practicing in this low intermediate English class, the stuff of life.
[00:10:30.420] – Paul
The formal teaching, all quite informal actually, is over now, and the final slide is a to-do list. The work for the rest of the hour is clear and self-guided. Mari begins moving from student to student.
[00:10:44.980] – Steve
Oh, man. Thanks. I almost want to break into applause. [laughter]
[00:10:50.360] – Paul
Oh, go ahead. [laughter]
[00:10:52.020] – Steve
Your writing style – I’m not a really high visual person, but the movie is running in my head the whole time that you’re reading.
[00:11:05.360] – Paul
It’s actually re-running in my head. I can so see so many of the things that were happening when I look back at that.
[00:11:15.120] – Steve
I have to imagine that that exact same thing is happening for a teacher reading that when you hand it back to them, compared to getting a written evaluation.
[00:11:32.340] – Paul
Right. I absolutely think so because for the teacher, it’s a different experience than for me, obviously, as the observer. But for the teacher, they’re seeing the classroom not from a student’s eyes exactly, but they are seeing it from a participant’s eyes. So what thoughts are going on by somebody who’s watching?
[00:11:52.260] – Steve
Yeah. They’re inside your head, as you’re imagining yourself a little bit inside the teacher’s head and inside inside the kids’ heads.
[00:12:01.240] – Paul
Yes. And of course, it’s not just any observer. It’s an observer who’s quite familiar with education, right? So that’s probably helpful.
[00:12:09.000] – Steve
Familiar – but I guess the word I want to add is appreciative. There’s a magic happening in that classroom, and you’re appreciative of the magic, both the magic on the part of the learners and the magic on the part of the teachers. And I sense that that’s what you’re capturing.
[00:12:28.540] – Paul
Yeah. And It’s much more fun to go in and watch a class looking for the magic than looking for anything else. I don’t have any of my observations where there wasn’t some magic. There’s always some magic on.
[00:12:44.920] – Steve
For sure. Do you remember, particularly, this teacher that you’ve read to us, that teacher’s response?
[00:12:53.680] – Paul
This teacher has really lit up the school in the first two years that she’s been here. She’s written, she’s got some things published. We were together at a conference. She’s just really switched on and really, really appreciative of having feedback. She’s not afraid of it. She invites me to come. If she’s doing something new or interesting. She wants somebody to be there. She’s connected with a lot of her peers and goes and observes in other classrooms. She’ll follow some of her students to other places. Yeah, she’s got all the energy that I wish I had.
[00:13:37.920] – Steve
And her response, particularly to this class, when she had a chance to read what you…
[00:13:54.920] – Paul
Oh, it’s that heartwarming, thank you so much for coming and seeing the good stuff – for caring. She, I think, was actually… I mean, she’s so good. She actually mentioned like, well, do you think this part was good? Did they get enough out of this? Should I do this next? It’s that response as well.
[00:14:09.420] – Steve
Yeah. It pulls the teacher into a reflection. And I love the appreciation word. When I’m at a school promoting peer coaching, and I said, if the only thing that came out of teachers being in each other’s class classrooms was the sharing of appreciation for the work that a person is doing, because teachers working in isolation, you can get excited about your kids getting turned on, but no kid is sitting there analyzing how I made that happen.
[00:14:50.220] – Paul
Right. We say all the time to teachers, your students need to feel seen and heard.
[00:14:57.200] – Steve
Exactly.
[00:14:58.470] – Paul
But so do the teachers.
[00:15:00.000] – Steve
Bingo.
[00:15:01.920] – Paul
It’s not the quality of being seen and heard. If it’s an administrator dropping in for an observation that results in tick boxes or suggestions of what to change or something, that’s a different seen and heard than a person who’s really, well, looking for the magic, like we said before, sharing in that experience.
[00:15:25.400] – Steve
It loses the link that the things that are in the tick boxes or the things that are in a formal evaluation system, there’s a connection between some of those teacher moves and the magic happening, but that connection gets left out in the observation. As I read other pieces and I listened to the one that you read for us, there’s almost a weaving in and out where at times you’re describing what you’re seeing and feeling, and then you give some hint as to how the teacher made that happen.
[00:16:06.880] – Paul
Yeah. And I can’t quite remove myself from hints, right?
[00:16:12.680] – Paul
But I think there’s real power.
[00:16:18.560] – Steve
What you want to understand is it’s a… I used to use an example of a teacher like a magician. The magician has all these moves down, and they know why they’re putting them together to make something happen. The design the teacher’s using or the decision a teacher’s making on the spot, we think of the hundreds and hundreds of decisions that a teacher makes in a 45 or 75 minute class. There are moves that the teacher is deciding to make in order to get the magic to happen. The teacher’s reading what’s happening. So I think there’s excitement on my part as a teacher reading what you’ve written that you did see the magic happen, but it wasn’t just magic.
[00:17:10.980] – Paul
No, it’s probably letting somebody know that the stuff that they’ve started doing that’s very automatic now for them, they maybe can see that thing that’s automatic that I don’t think about the fact that it has that effect. It’s like, yes, I’ve really matured to the point where it’s natural for me to do that. I wouldn’t do it a different way.
[00:17:35.280] – Steve
I label that as the teachers hit the spot of being unconsciously skilled. They’re not consciously aware of all those moves that are making this happen. In a time of difficulty, they can hopefully drop down to a conscious level and make a conscious decision to bring it back. But when it’s really happening, it’s almost like the teachers in the zone, as the sports folks talk about, the teachers in the zone, and you’ve captured that piece that’s happening there.
[00:18:10.380] – Paul
It makes me wonder if the stories would be useful for someone who’s more of a beginning teacher.
[00:18:17.000] – Steve
I can’t believe you just said that.
[00:18:20.480] – Steve
Having looked through your work, that thought had it hit me. But as you were reading this to me now, as we were recording it now, the thing that struck me is the power of taking that one that you just read and having a beginning teacher read that from an analytical point.
[00:18:44.400] – Paul
Yeah, I haven’t thought of that before, but it’s that thing of when you watch somebody who’s so good at something and it makes it look super easy. I remember writing about this in a different story, Adam in an IB biology course. It’s actually making me a little emotional to think about it. Everything that he did was so easy. But for a beginning teacher, they would have just said, oh, teaching is super easy. But no, he was doing it because he had just automatized all of that teaching ability that he had.
[00:19:23.420] – Steve
Often, you can reach the point where a teacher who’s at that level isn’t really helpful to the new teacher.
[00:19:32.760] – Paul
They might not be able – it’s like a native speaker of a language trying to explain how their language works.
[00:19:39.520] – Steve
I describe them as being unconsciously talented. I describe the difference between being unconsciously talented and unconsciously skilled. But I bet it’s… Unconsciously talented, you can pull it off, but you can’t break it down into those pieces. So the new person watching you that doesn’t gain a lot from it. I use the comparison of very often highly successful athletes don’t make it in coaching because most of their talent existed as a talent. And very often, the great coaches are people who work hard to break it down, internalize all the parts. And so they’re really prepared to help another person learn the skillset.
[00:20:23.880] – Paul
Sure. It might be really good for an experienced teacher to be able to practice breaking it back down. It might be also good advice when we say, go observe somebody, not to always send to the absolute best teacher, but to somebody who can still voice what they’re doing and trying.
[00:20:43.920] – Steve
I say that all the time. For most teachers, the person you want to observe is the person who’s a couple of steps ahead of you.
[00:20:49.980] – Paul
Sure.
[00:20:50.820] – Steve
Because when you go observe the people who are really… Now, it’s great to observe the master people and put that picture in your head and say, that’s where I want to get to. But when you observe that masterful teacher, very often, there’s few things you can take out of there and go back to the point that you’re at. But that person who’s a couple of steps ahead of you, it’s much easier to pick up what it is that they’re doing that gets them….
[00:21:17.240] – Paul
It’s like scaffolding. You don’t want to have the steps be so big, you take too much effort getting between them or the rungs of the ladder is so far apart that you fall right through.
[00:21:29.360] – Steve
Absolutely. When I was studying training mentors, one of the things I found is if you took mentoring all the way back to the apprentice days with the blacksmith, they identified that when a person took on an apprentice, it extended their professional career. I describe that part of the reason that happens is that apprentice takes you back to the conscious level. So that apprentice is trying to figure out how you just did what you did. You weren’t thinking about it when you did it.
[00:22:02.700] – Paul
It makes you stop and reflect.
[00:22:05.060] – Steve
Yeah, and takes you back. And now what happens, I think, is what I captured as I read through your writing is the person is realizing the powerful moves that they made that they may have made unconsciously. And you both caught the powerful move and you caught the student reaction to the powerful move.
[00:22:29.300] – Paul
Maybe that’s why the reaction to the stories is generally so good from teachers, too, because it’s a little shot in the arm saying, somebody is recognizing the things you’re doing. And especially if you don’t recognize them yourself anymore, you get to go back and remember that you’ve learned a bunch of stuff in the job that you’ve chosen to do, that you’re getting to be an expert or that you’re an expert.
[00:22:54.880] – Steve
Exactly. So as I read through, I pulled out a couple of thoughts that are in my mind when I’m engaged in coaching observations and conversations, I’ll bounce the statement off and you respond to it. Does it fit for you? You see it a little bit different? I’d love for you to add your thoughts to these. So one of my thoughts is that generating the learning experience is extremely complex. And because of that complexity, I observe with curiosity. Very often, new coaches are asking me, how did I come up with the questions I asked the teacher? Or, how did I come up with the conversation I engaged in? I said, it’s curiosity. I’m amazed when teaching and learning is happening. And in my head, I reflect on what is it that’s going on here? It’s the complexity and the curiosity.
[00:23:49.820] – Paul
Yeah. And that leads you to be genuine and honest. And that feedback is going to get you way further than any dissembling, if that’s the right word. Trying to show that you have something smart to say is just going to get you nowhere. Being genuinely interested in looking for things where you’re learning yourself, it’ll get you farther, I think, with just the task of talking about teaching and learning, but it will also just be far more rewarding for anybody involved.
[00:24:25.680] – Steve
In my pre-conferencing, I try to get the teachers to describe the movie that ran in their head as they did the planning. Then in the post-conferencing, comparing what happened to that movie. I was describing that there’s times that I go into a teacher’s classroom with maybe three other teachers observing. And then just taking the three teachers out with me, not the teacher who was teaching, but taking the three people observed, they’re blown away when they discovered that they all saw something different.
[00:25:01.640] – Paul
Yeah. And they all learn a ton, right? By hearing what the other people have to say.
[00:25:06.400] – Steve
Yeah. But they ended up focusing in. So boy, to do what you’re doing, two or three people doing that, and the teacher being able to read those writings back would be….
[00:25:18.560] – Paul
It’s actually one thing that I wonder about. So this is something I do because I’m a writer and I enjoy it and so on. I’ve brought together different aspects of my life into one But I wonder, could one train… I don’t know if train is the right word, but could one get other folks in schools to be doing something similar, to go in and really do a – I usually limit myself to 40 minutes, or I don’t start writing right away, usually. I give some time and stuff. But just to go in and have that same experience, you called it wonder, you called it being curious, right? Just being there alongside. It would be hard to imagine that somebody without quite a bit of conversation would take it up as a observation technique. Yet it’s really powerful. It might be too far out of expectations about education and observing and being an administrator and previous training and all of that. Yet, I wonder if it’s actually not more powerful than trying to use some of the systems that we do use or rubric or anything else.
[00:26:38.500] – Steve
I’ll tell you the comparison I made for myself as I read through your things. In many ways, I think I’m trying to create the same teacher reaction that you are. Mine comes through questions and conversations, which yours comes through in in the writing. One of the pieces that’s in my mind is I share my pondering and my thinking in a conversation with the teacher, but I always work to know the teacher’s pondering and thinking first. Before I share with the teacher what I saw, I’m asking what they saw, what I’m pondering, I’m asking what they’re pondering. You described a little bit in the opening piece that I read there about being a partner side by side. I frequently describe mine as a thinking partner.
[00:27:37.100] – Paul
It’s a really important image. It’s like you’re not faced off for one, and you’re not over. You’re looking out at possibilities together. And more times than not, you’re going to learn something if you’re in that position yourself. Because, well, you said it. It’s like teaching is such a absolutely complex phenomenon that we’re making all kinds of decisions, and some of them are good and some of them are less good. And we just want the overall impact to be heading in the right direction. It’s a complicated thing.
[00:28:18.940] – Steve
For me, and I feel a little bit of this in the things I’ve read from you, it’s really getting people to switch their focus from teaching to learning.
[00:28:30.380] – Paul
Sure. Yeah. No, I think that’s a fair statement.
[00:28:33.630] – Steve
I work with one school that actually switched their word from teacher to facilitator. So they actually called, here’s the person facilitating the science course. They don’t use the word teacher to describe their colleagues, their facilitators.
[00:28:53.380] – Paul
Often, coach sometimes has replaced teacher, too. As long as the actions actually follow, right? As long as it’s not marketing.
[00:29:02.160] – Steve
I’m with you.
[00:29:05.040] – Paul
Can I share one other example of really how this has changed me a bit? I work with adults as well, folks who are either working on their initial teaching license or in master’s programs online with Morland University. And because it’s online and because we have one hour a week that’s synchronous together, most of my feedback is also writing. You mentioned these stories are like written feedback as opposed to the conversation, and they’re relying mostly on the written feedback. So too with online teaching in my particular circumstance. So I do an awful lot of commenting in the margins of Google Docs. I have, basically in the last five years, really switched to overwhelming wonder and curiosity and what if’s with the occasional, after I feel like I’ve built up a whole lot of credit, with the occasional, maybe don’t do this thing that I saw you doing. But most of it has turned into, for me, as an instructor, trying to do this same wonder in the margins like this. After a couple of weeks with a student, I start getting comments on the comments, which is so easy to do with Google Docs, and it becomes an asynchronous conversation.
[00:30:40.860] – Paul
And then from some students, I start to get separate emails just as they continue to play it out. I’m pretty sure that if I were taking the approach of trying to nail each technical thing that could be different, that I wouldn’t get those follow-up comments. I wouldn’t get a conversation going. I certainly I don’t get the emails. So it’s part of the life trajectory, like I said at the beginning, of shifting how I go about feeling like I’m being a good instructor.
[00:31:16.180] – Steve
It matches a sequence that I use of conversation, reflection, and action. That’s what generates growth. So the conversation generates the reflection. So in my case, I’m mostly using questions to spark that. And in your comments and writing, that’s happening. In your story, that’s happening. So the conversation generates the reflection. And then coming out of that reflection is the person deciding something that’s next. So whether the next thing is doing more of what I did in this lesson because of the insights I got or playing and experimenting with some difference. But it’s the growth that comes out of that action piece. So what you just described there to me falls right into that.
[00:32:10.880] – Paul
There’s a quote that you see often online, “It’s not the experience. You’re not learning from the experience. You’re learning from the reflection on the experience.” So generating that in whatever way you can, that’s probably a good way to go.
[00:32:30.920] – Steve
Well, Paul, this has been great. How can listeners follow more of what you’re doing or follow up, maybe even get a chance to read some of those things that you’ve written?
[00:32:42.960] – Paul
Yeah, I actually have posted all I have these on LinkedIn, and they’re all posted also on the international educator blog page. Those are two places to go, tieonline.org for the blogs or following me on LinkedIn. So if anybody would want to be involved in one of these self-directed loose processes, I have this Sand Castle project that you mentioned. It’s basically a course with no curriculum. It’s like a study group or a book club. You come with your book that you’re working on or that you’re reading, and you can talk about it. But in this case, it’s you come with the self-driven teacher project or what’s your current question. You come to our group, and if you want, you can talk about your thing and get some feedback or some help or find some colleagues who will continue to support you. If you just want to come and listen to other people, that’s great, too. You can find any of that on my website, magnusonedstudio.org. You can email me there, too, if any of these resources are not things that you can find, paul@magnusonedstudio.org.
[00:34:04.020] – Steve
We will put all that in the lead-in to the podcast.
[00:34:07.120] – Paul
That’d be great. It’s so nice to talk to you. I saw you at an ECIS conference in Nice, probably about 15, 16 years ago, and have followed you ever since. So thanks for all your work.
[00:34:21.960] – Steve
Thank you. Thank you. Have a great day.
[00:34:25.720] – Paul
Yeah, you too. Bye.
[00:34:29.200] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.
