Podcast: Strengthening Professional and Organizational Capacity

Strengthening Professional and Organizational Capacity

Allie Rodman, the founder of The Learning Loop and author of “Still Learning: Strengthening Professional and Organizational Capacity,” explores critical elements for teacher, team, and organizational learning. Consider the roles of stillness, pause and reflection in generating educator learning. Explore learning as an individual educator, team member, and as an organization.

Listen to earlier podcasts with Allie:

Professional Learning—Let’s Not Go Back to Normal!

My Professional Learning – How Do I Make the Most Of What I’ve Learned During Virtual and Hybrid Teaching

Connect with Allie & visit The Learning loop website here.

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:01.130] – Steve [Intro]

Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you have a challenge to guide continuous teacher growth that promotes student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from our experienced guests and insights that I’ve gathered across many years. I’m thrilled you’re here. Thanks for listening.

[00:00:27.480] – Steve

Strengthening professional and organizational capacity. Returning to the podcast today is Allie Rodman, the founder of The Learning Loop and the author of, “Personalized Professional Learning: A Job-Embedded Pathway for Elevating Teacher Voice,” and a just released book, “Still Learning: Strengthening Professional and Organizational Capacity.” Allie, thanks so much for joining us.

[00:00:56.080] – Allie

Thank you, Steve. It’s wonderful to be back here and have an opportunity to connect.

[00:01:00.560] – Steve

Tell folks a little bit about the work that you do through The Learning Loop.

[00:01:05.370] – Allie

The Learning Loop really focuses on ways that we can personalize professional learning for educators across the system. So that means working with systems’ leaders to understand their data, not just from a student perspective, but also an observational one, and then figure out what professional learning opportunities we should be offering whole school or whole system, and those that should be more personalized, and then also working with facilitators, whether that be building leaders or teacher leaders, to help them craft really meaningful and intentional learning experiences for educators that strengthen both their professional capacity as well as the capacity of a system as a whole.

[00:01:41.840] – Steve

Well, Allie, I’m excited that you’re returning to the podcast, and in an earlier podcast that we did, you talked about the role of coaches and leaders building teacher voice, co-creation, social construction, and self discovery into the designs of professional learning. I’m wondering if you could touch on those as a little bit of a review for us, and I’ll be sure to place the link to that previous podcast in the lead-in to this one. So folks who come across this here can go back and listen to that one as well.

[00:02:16.520] – Allie

Absolutely. So it’s crazy to think that the last time I was on the show was a few years ago, and our educational systems and the ways that we go about learning, both for our students and our teachers looks quite different than it did the last time we spoke. So I think those elements of voice and co-creation and social construction have really sort of evolved in terms of what that means in our schools. And I think now more than ever, teachers are looking for a voice in their professional learning offerings that goes beyond just completing a survey. They want to be able to have a space to come to the table and say, this is the topic that I want, but also this is how I learn best. I think the past few years have really opened up for us a variety of different learning opportunities, not only in terms of function and what teachers actually need and coaches need, but also format. We’re so much more open to different learning formats because of the comfort level of being in hybrid and zoom environments than what we were talking about just three years ago. So I think the voice there, yes, is around topic for educators, but it’s also around, is this synchronous or asynchronous?

[00:03:27.910] – Allie

Am I coming to a space physically, or is this a chance for me to engage in a virtual environment? And then beyond that voice, having a space for them to co-create what happens in the learning experience. Are they there helping to define the success criteria? So I know that you’ve done a lot of work around forming learning hypotheses and having that drive the professional learning process. So really bringing individuals into that conversation rather than defining those components for them with the hope that ultimately it does lead not just to social construction from educator to educator, but also this sense of self discovery where they want to continue to push themselves through ongoing learning loops that make their practice that much stronger.

[00:04:15.040] – Steve

So what’s going through my mind is I know that historically, in the field of professional development, we’ve seesawed back and forth between teachers having a major voice in the what of professional development and the school having a need that had to be addressed and balancing that. How do you put those two pieces together?

[00:04:47.240] – Allie

So it’s really interesting, Steve, I just co-facilitated a session with Isabel Sawyer at Learning Forward, where we examined professional learning through the decades. And what we sort of dug into with participants is exactly what you just described. You know, I even made a reference at one point in the session, it felt like a Britney Spears song where it was like, “Oops, I Did it Again.” Things just kept coming back around. And Isabelle and I both published books on personalized professional learning in 2019. So to then kind of sit back and see where we went and then how we came back and how we’re evolving again has been really interesting. And I think there are some things that we absolutely should be bringing back from that practice. In November, December 2019, we were just getting to that point of teacher voice, but then there are components where, as you note, maybe that practice doesn’t serve us as well. So I think sometimes with the professional learning experiences that were completely open ended, we didn’t have that level of structure that was necessary to not just move the needle on teacher practice, but then ultimately help our students progress.

[00:05:57.300] – Allie

So there definitely needs to be a balance when co-creating with educators and leaders together as to what are the components that we need, because it’s going to really push students forward. But then what are the things that we want in terms of our own growth that now more than ever is going to help to protect and promote teacher retention? Because I think that’s a new challenge that’s on the table that exists in a much scarier place, I think, in some ways than several years ago. We just can’t fill a number of the positions in our districts.

[00:06:33.740] – Steve

I work with quite a few places where they’ve now built PLC learning goals, and usually those PLC goals have some connection to what the school has set as goals for student growth. And then teachers, particularly one of the schools I work with, they have the school goal, they have the PLC goal, and then teachers have their individual goals. And in some cases a teacher will line all three of them up so that they’re all closely tied together, where in other areas, teachers will be part of a PLC goal, but then they’ll have a separate teacher goal that has got another area that’s critical specifically to that teacher. As I was listening to you and thinking about it, it’s kind of I need the teacher voice across the board. If the teacher’s voice is part of setting school goals, then it makes sense for the pieces to line up. If it doesn’t get to the teacher’s voice until we’re at the teacher making a choice, it seems like that may be a spot where it’s missing.

[00:07:44.970] – Allie

Yeah. And a lot of this is grounded in the culture of each school, too, in terms of, is this a space that really values collective inquiry and individuals feel comfortable asking the tough questions? Or is it one where there is a lot of top down decision making? The balance of structure and agency within a school as a whole, I think plays a major role in the degree to which you’re able to sort of flex and move to have perhaps a different PLC goal than an individual teacher goal and so forth. When I work with school leaders around developing needs assessments for educators for their professional learning needs, one of the first things I say is do not give out this survey unless you’re actually going to use the data and be very clear with folks about the data that you’re going to be able to employ in the short term versus where you’re collecting information for long term planning. Because I think historically, and this isn’t unique to education, this happens in so many fields where we give out surveys or we ask for people’s opinion or voice, and then we do absolutely nothing with it.

[00:08:47.860] – Allie

And that just erodes buy in over time. So being very thoughtful about where that voice is actually going to count and drive decision making versus where it really is just an information gathering exercise.

[00:09:00.040] – Steve

Well, your new book, the title jumps right out at me, so I wanted to break it into two pieces. The first part catches my attention, “still learning.” You want to talk about where that piece comes from?

[00:09:12.250] – Allie

Sure. So it was a lot of fun to kind of workshop with some other authors and thought partners around. This is what I want the work to convey. How do we do that? What does that sound like? And so often as educators, we value constant learning. We know that we are truly models of learning for our students. And with that, though, in a culture and a society that values busyness, I think sometimes that gets sort of misplaced with this idea that learning always needs to be in this constant state of movement and progress and doing something, whether it’s reading the book or going to the workshop or attending the conference. And we overlook how much learning can truly happen in the moments of pause and reflection. It’s something that we ask our students to do, to reflect back on how they did in a particular unit of study. It’s something that we will at times ask educators to do at the end of their year teaching or their year coaching, but I don’t know that we value that stillness as much in our ongoing professional learning. So it was really important to me, particularly as we’ve seen the field and just our workings in general evolve over the past several years, that we continue to value that ongoing and constant learning that we know is our professional responsibility and is very much a part of the work that we do, but that we also recognize and elevate in some cases the value of pause and reflection, recognizing that if we can make space for that type of work, we are able then to make decisions that are that much more thoughtful and intentional and hopefully accelerate progress for both students and teachers.

[00:10:52.300] – Steve

It’s interesting I, as of late, am making reflection a bigger part of my work in coaching. I knew it was always there, but I think pulling it out and getting both the coach and the teacher to recognize that. I like your use of the term pause. You can’t get the reflection without a slowing down.

[00:11:22.520] – Allie

No, you really can’t. And I facilitated a conference session several months ago and a superintendent came up to me afterwards and he said, thank you so much. No one has ever given me permission to put time for reflection on my calendar, to be able to recognize the value and the role that that plays professionally not just for leaders, but for coaches and for teachers to say, it’s okay to stop and to consider, is this the best next step or are there things that I could be doing that would be a more intentional use of time?

[00:11:56.420] – Steve

Take us on to the second part of the title, then. “Strengthening professional and organizational capacity.”

[00:12:03.540] – Allie

So I wanted to ensure that this book wasn’t just for leaders, wasn’t just for teachers or coaches, but that it truly touched on the needs for all educators to continue to grow, to value those moments of pause, and to think about for themselves at the individual, the team, and the systems level, what that looked like. So the book is organized across five different disciplines and really looks at from those different lenses, how do we know ourselves better as learners? How do we make intentional decisions about how we’re spending our time? But then how do we also pay more attention to our team dynamics and the ways that we’re growing as learning organizations so that we’re as effective as possible, but also our organizations that truly thrive, that we’re not these places of burnout where people just keep churning from day to day today and don’t feel that sense of fulfillment.

[00:12:56.740] – Steve

Well, if it’s okay, let’s look at it in those five pieces that the book is laid out to. So, the first one, you use the term, “attunement.” That was a new term for me.

[00:13:10.110] – Allie

Yeah. So I wanted to make sure that individuals, first and foremost, know themselves as learners. It struck me as I was going through a lot of the research and really thinking about education as compared to other fields, that we look to educators to be model learners for students. But we don’t really spend time to give educators the opportunity to know themselves as learners. So, whereas in a business space, it’s very common to complete different type indicators, such as a Myers Briggs type indicator or a Clifton strengths finder, for whatever reason, that’s not much of a common practice in our educational spaces, to be able to understand, from a personality standpoint, a team dynamics one, as well as just a strength based approach, who we are and how we thrive and what that means. So, attunement really looks at do you know who you are as an individual, your identity, your growth profile, the things that motivate you? And then are you able to attune or bring that full self to your professional space? Because I think in many places now, there are individuals who have to filter parts of who they are as a learner as well as an individual within their professional space.

[00:14:20.850] – Allie

So really creating that opportunity for safety and belonging where individuals not only know themselves, but then can bring their full selves to the workplace and not be yet another source of things that make them tired, where they’re always sort of filtering and having to sort of watch different components of that.

[00:14:40.680] – Steve

I want to check if it lines up with something that I’ve been exploring. I’m thinking that that’s been a piece missing post Covid. The word I’ve been using is satisfactions. Teachers, during the whole Covid piece, kind of lost hold of where they get their satisfaction from the hard work, teaching and they’re back doing the hard work, but it’s not connecting with the satisfaction. Is that on the same wavelength of knowing yourself?

[00:15:13.840] – Allie

Absolutely. So it’s that satisfaction and it’s also, and we’ll talk about this a little bit as we shift from attunement to alignment. But knowing what brings you joy. What are those things that are going to continue to fill you up? So, for know, if I look at some of my own Clifton strengths, one of them is futuristic. I always want to sort of be looking on the horizon of what’s next and seeing what’s possible. And if I were to be in a learning environment that didn’t provide an opportunity for me to do that and to ask the tough questions of why not and how not, and be able to engage in that type of dialog, that might be a difficult place for me to continue to grow as a professional.

[00:15:53.680] – Steve

So is alignment making choices based on what you identified in the attunement – finding out about yourself?

[00:16:01.220] – Allie

Exactly. So it’s giving individuals in educational spaces the opportunity to really set purposeful goals for themselves in the professional space as well as the personal one. So when you talk to educators and they say what motivates you? What gets you up in the morning? We always say our students. And while, yes, that should absolutely be a driving force, unless we’re taking time to say, where do you want to grow professionally and what’s important to you personally? And are those purposes that you’ve established, whether that’s through a smarter goal or some other goal driven mechanism, are those things driving your daily practice, or is your inbox driving what you’re doing day to day? Are you just looking at that task list at the end of the day and it’s longer than where you started? How are you engaging, not just in good goal setting practices, but then having the structured time and the disciplined action to make sure that you’re making progress on those goals on a day to day basis? So that there’s that alignment between your purpose and your practice.

[00:17:02.350] – Steve

I have to say, there’s several schools I’ve been working with where I’m actually, in short, one on one calls with teachers establishing their growth goals before they go into the administration. And the number of teachers who get on that call expecting to get something done that they need to get done, and within 15 or 20 minutes, uncover something that they, oh, my God, I really want to do this. And I think time is part of somebody listening to the conversation.

[00:17:38.560] – Allie

It is. I mean, I’ve worked with groups of building leaders where we sit down and I kid you not, we make bucket lists together. We say, okay, what do you want to do personally? And just even someone valuing that as a part of the growth experience for those individuals is a big part that’s missing from the conversation right now.

[00:17:58.500] – Steve

Somebody asking about it and listening to it.

[00:18:01.480] – Allie

Yeah. And providing sort of the mechanisms and the structures to help individuals make that happen. So some of the work that I’ve been doing with educators in this space is around time blocking. So if you say that this is important for you, how are you blocking time on your calendar for it to happen? How are you establishing really good habits and daily rituals that enable you to not necessarily find more time, but make the best use of the 168 hours that you have each week?

[00:18:29.360] – Steve

So let’s move into the next one then. Perspective.

[00:18:32.720] – Allie

So as we look at perspective, I think sometimes in the busyness of the work that we do, it’s tough to step back and understand that while teaching is an incredibly isolating profession. We go into the classroom, we close the door, it’s us and however many students. There is a lot of richness to be said for the varied perspectives across from classroom to classroom or from office to office. And I wanted to make sure that at the team level, we were equipping educators with the tools and some of the protocols necessary to be able to engage in really good perspective taking together, to not just have that safe space where you can be yourself as a learner, but then also have the awareness to be able to bring others into that conversation as well. So this particular chapter drew on a lot of Dan Coyle’s work around looking at the cultures of spaces and how those team dynamics play out together. We looked at how do you help teams become better listeners so that we’re not just sort of reflecting back what other people are saying, but truly hearing and amplifying those conversations so that we can, over time, ask tough questions that lead to better collective practice.

[00:19:52.070] – Allie

So whether it be something like is this an equitable grading policy that we have? Is this the best way to monitor student progress over time? Are we having a master schedule that meets students where they are? Or are we just following the same traditional blocks and shifts and scheduling approaches that we were doing 30 years ago? Unless we’re willing to be able to sort of step back and have the tools necessary to take the perspectives of others, as well as to openly share our own, I don’t think we’re ever going to find ourselves in a place where we can ask those types of tough questions and continue to move forward as a profession.

[00:20:31.640] – Steve

And I guess that sets up the collective efficacy then, is the next one.

[00:20:36.730] – Allie

It does. So when we talk about alignment, it’s really that idea of self efficacy. And can you sort of put the stars up on the board and say, yes, I did this, I checked this off for myself? But then from a collective efficacy standpoint, creating a space for teams to experience that progress. You mentioned PLCs, setting goals. Then what do the check-ins around those goals look like? What are the lead measures and the lag measures that are enabling teams to sort of measure their progress over time? And how are we helping individuals to set weekly commitments within their team so that there is sort of this sense of forward motion? When I work with educators, when I talk about self efficacy, I often refer to Pizza Hut’s “book it” program that many of us were familiar with where you read a certain number of books, you get the coupon for the personal pan pizza. And how are we doing that then on a team level as a collective? How are we thinking about what’s going to motivate us, and how are we having those moments of progress and celebration together so that we’re moving forward from a place of both strength as well as vulnerability that also creates trust where we can engage in really tough conversations as a team.

[00:21:48.880] – Steve

And then I like that “organizational capacity” was in the title and then “organizational learning,” it’s been a phrase that I’ve come back to quite a bit with looking at goal setting and teacher professional growth. So talk about where you take it with that part of the book

[00:22:08.260] – Allie

So I wanted to make sure that when we looked at individuals and teams, it wasn’t just about the collective, but it was also about forming real learning ecosystems. So could our schools be places that were not only models of what student learning could look like, but ultimately, I would love them to be models of what learning looks like for adults as well. So that businesses are looking to schools and nonprofit organizations are looking to schools as sort of this hallmark of this is how we train adults, this is how we create learning cultures where individuals continue to thrive, so that it’s not just about the four walls of a school, but instead what does it really look like to be a deliberately developmental organization? How do we support individuals with their personal mastery, but then also build team mental models that over time really make those conversations richer, deeper and more meaningful? And that’s a place that I just don’t think we’ve gotten to yet as schools. But when I talked about being futuristic earlier, that’s certainly an aspiration that I have, is how do we create these places where schools are hallmarks not just for student learning, but for adult learning as well?

[00:23:21.930] – Steve

It’s interesting, a little while back I did a podcast with the authors of the book open system, and they describe the school being open, that the community is part of it. I’m kind of hearing that in what you’re laying out there.

[00:23:43.380] – Allie

Certainly. It’s sort of like that laboratory model where we have classrooms that serve as laboratories for some folks where they can come and do those types of observations. But I think there’s a real generative opportunity here for schools to play the same role and to truly be models of what that looks like. And it’s something within the profession I would certainly like to push us forward in that direction.

[00:24:07.020] – Steve

So I’m wondering if the recent presence of AI has got your brain stretching out as to where we could end up going here.

[00:24:18.660] – Allie

It certainly has. So I would be lying if I said I hadn’t played around with Chat GPT and some other tools, particularly as it relates to professional learning. So in the same way that I know many teachers have plugged in, “write me a 40 minutes lesson plan focused on this learning objective for this number of students,” I have seen what it can produce in terms of what would it look like for a 60 minutes workshop focused on this topic. And I think it’s good as a starting point, and it certainly provides some structure and some ideas. But for me, it’s been more helpful in, I think, expanding my thought process around reflective questions or to get back to sort of that idea of personalization and also perspective taking. Is there a perspective here that I’m missing that AI could supplement? So if I’m constantly writing reflection questions or forming action planning tools from my perspective, could that perhaps deepen and also widen the perspectives that are brought into my professional learning sessions? So that, I think has been the more recent way that I’ve been using the tool is to think about could I be more inclusive here in the ways that I’m crafting and designing professional learning?

[00:25:33.400] – Allie

And are there possibilities that I’m just overlooking entirely, recognizing that I am one individual from one perspective and there’s some value there in thinking about new ways to personalize.

[00:25:45.660] – Steve

I’ve been wondering on my own if the places that it saves teachers time allows that time to be invested more in the teacher’s learning or the teacher’s exploration, all of which comes back to learning.

[00:26:04.790] – Allie

Certainly. And I think the thing that has struck me most poignantly in this work is that the tool is only as good as the questions that you ask. And I know that you’ve done a lot of work in this area. So thinking about how do we coach teachers and also leaders to think about, are we asking the right questions? So often some of the questions that we ask in team meetings, whether that’s at the teacher level or the leader level, feel safe. And I think that’s why in parts of this book I really wanted to help folks create places of belonging where you could ask the tough questions. And when we look at AI, it really is only as good as the initial question and then the follow up questions that we’re able to ask. And I think that’s the real task, if you will, for professional learning that lies before us is how do we help people ask the tough questions and be more specific and really dig into what’s going to give us more intentional and personalized responses.

[00:27:07.000] – Steve

Well, you led me into my wrap up question.

[00:27:11.000] – Allie

Perfect.

[00:27:12.600] – Steve

I wanted to ask you if you had a question or two that you thought instructional coaches and school leaders should be asking themselves as they look at their role in supporting teacher learning?

[00:27:27.420] – Allie

Certainly. So one, I think goes back to that initial conversation about stillness. Are you valuing and making space for reflection the same way that you’re making space for bell to bell professional learning, if you will. So that teachers have time, and it’s not just that 32nd reflection at the end of a PLC session or at the end of a workshop to say what is your key takeaway, but that it’s truly valued within the context of professional learning. So are you making space for stillness? And then secondly, are you doing everything that you can to make your team time as meaningful as it can be, whether that’s helping your teacher leaders be better facilitators, implementing and helping people utilize protocols effectively, or ensuring that they have the action planning tools necessary to take those conversations and that work forward. So really looking at the intentionality of that team time because we know how precious it is within our schedules to make sure that that’s being maximized in every way possible so that both through that reflection and then that effective use of team time, we’re able to drive student achievement that much further.

[00:28:40.340] – Steve

Yeah, it’s striking me that too often, people don’t see team time as learning time. They see it as work time.

[00:28:50.250] – Allie

They see it as work time. We’re going to swap lesson ideas. We’re going know, share this particular tool. But for all practical purposes, we’re still, I think, you know, if given the right facilitation and action planning tools, it really is a learning opportunity.

[00:29:06.860] – Steve

Well, Allie, thank you so much. Want to tell folks best way for them to get in touch with you, find out more about your new book?

[00:29:14.980] – Allie

Certainly. So check out my website, www.thelearningloop.com. And I’m also across social media channels at The Learning loop and always look forward to the opportunity to thought partner with folks and think about professional learning together.

[00:29:29.200] – Steve

Well, great to be back with you and I will look forward to our next time.

[00:29:33.700] – Allie

Wonderful. Thanks so much for the invitation, Steve. I appreciate it.

[00:29:36.530] – Steve

Take care.

[00:29:38.920] – 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.



Podcast for Teachers: My Professional Learning – How Do I Make the Most Of What I’ve Learned During Virtual and Hybrid Teaching

Professional Learning should be personalized. Allie Rodman, author and founder of The Learning Loop, identifies ways that teachers can maximize the value of their ongoing learning in the post pandemic setting. How do you tap into, direct, and personalize your learning opportunities?

Visit Allie’s website, The Learning Loop, here.

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTSteve [Intro]: 00:00 Hello, and welcome to the teacher edition of the Steve Barkley ponders out loud podcast. The complexity of teaching is both challenging and rewarding. And my curiosity is peaked. Whenever I explore with teachers, the multiple pathways for facilitating student engagement in the exciting world of learning this podcast looks to serve teachers as they motivate coach and support their learners,

Steve: 00:30 My professional learning: How do I make the most of what I’ve learned during virtual and hybrid teaching? On today’s podcast, we are joined by Allie Rodman. She’s the author of, “Personalized Professional Learning: A Job-Embedded Pathway for Elevating Teacher Voice,” and she’s also the founder of The Learning Loop, an organization that designs facilitates and coaches professional learning. Welcome Allie.

Allie: 01:00 Thank you, Steve. I appreciate you having me on the show.

Steve: 01:03 I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about your background and what led you into focusing on educator professional learning?

Allie: 01:13 Certainly. So I have experience as a high school teacher and instructional coach and a school leader. And one of the things that continued to bother me in the professional development space is that as much as we were nudging and pushing teachers to design differentiated and personalized instruction for students, we were still offering a one size-fits-all, sit and get PD for them. And I knew that we could and we had to do better as a profession. So I have been spending my work really focused on the coaching of leaders as well as facilitators to ensure that that process is more personalized than what it is presently.

Steve: 01:54 So on your website, Allie, you talked about the importance of learner voice, co-creation, social construction, and self-discovery as it applies to professional learning and I’m wondering if you could kind of take those each one at a time and if I’m a teacher, how do I reach out and look to build those things into my own learning as an educator?

Allie: 02:26 Certainly. So these concepts come from Bena Kallick and Allison Zmuda’s work focused on personalized learning for students. And I wanted us as educators to think about how we might apply those through an andragogical or an adult learning lens to support our work as facilitators, but also as learners ourselves, to ensure that those experiences we’re engaging in, feel more personalized and are meeting us exactly where we need to be with the content that we need. So when we talk about learner voice, I want to that teachers feel empowered not only to have a say in the topics of professional learning that they are selecting, but also the types of activities that are a part of those sessions and the ways in which they are engaging both during and after the session itself. And that’s what really led to this piece around co-creation. Learners should be there side by side with the facilitator, establishing what the learning goals for the professional session are, as well as what the success metrics are going to be.

Allie: 03:33 If I’m doing this practice, if I’m engaging in this work effectively in my classroom, what should it look like? What should it sound like? What should it feel like? So I want to make sure that the teachers feel as though they have that voice, not only in that part of the process in selecting the topics, but also in the co-creation process as well. Then as a teacher, once you get into that professional learning session itself, whether it’s synchronous in a classroom or asynchronous in a Zoom room, you want to ensure that you have time and space to get messy with the other learners in the room to socially construct around the concepts and the content together so that you’re not only thinking about and planning around what it’s going to look like in your classroom, but you’re also pushing one another to troubleshoot there in the moment so that you’re able to kind of poke holes and find solutions together while you’re in that space with your peers. And then finally, I want to ensure that our professional learning leads to self discovery. So that as a learner, you’re not just kind of tying a bow on that individual session, but that it’s leading you to new questions and a desire to continue exploring and pushing your practice forward.

Steve: 04:48 Allie, I know that you had in your background experience, you spent some time as an instructional coach. And as I was listening to you, I was thinking about what an instructional coach does to support those things. But now I’m also wondering if I’m a teacher and there’s an instructional coach in my building – instructional coaches available to me, or if not, and I’m looking at my colleagues as peer coaches, how best would a person reach out to available coaches to build and support the kind of learning that you’ve that you’ve just described?

Allie: 05:28 Yeah. So Steve, as a coach, one of the things I always used to share with my teachers was invite me into your most challenging section. Take me behind the curtain, show me the messy stuff, because that’s where we have the opportunity to grow the furthest and the fastest together. If I’m able to be, you know, have the opportunity to see those messy points, that’s where the learning is going to get real and we can develop a truly authentic relationship that that pushes practice forward. So as a teacher, you know, communicating with their coach, that would be my first piece of advice is to, invite them into, you know, all the messy stuff, let them see that. And then second, it would be to have a willingness to take risks and to try new things. So even if it’s outside your comfort zone, don’t shut down a suggestion or a practice simply because it doesn’t feel exactly aligned to your typical teaching style or practice, but instead see it as an opportunity to stretch yourself and to grow.

Steve: 06:32 A word that hit me as I was listening to you go through the learner voice, co-creation, constructions and self-discovery is reflection seems to be a critical element. Thoughts or comments on building increased reflection into this process?

Allie: 06:57 Certainly. So I think that’s one thing that the pandemic left us with, right? That I hope doesn’t go away, is more space for reflection in that we weren’t caught up in the busy-ness of classroom changes and, you know, hallway transitions, but instead we’re able to kind of step away at certain points and think about what was working, where did we need to improve? What practices should fall away and where should we perhaps dig in more deeply? So my hope is that we take that with us as we transition back to physical spaces and that that becomes a part of our new normal, is that increased time and space for reflection.

Steve: 07:37 So maybe as a teacher, I actually have to look how to create that for myself, if I’m in a system that isn’t creating it.

Allie: 07:47 Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I had my moments as a teacher where I would during my planning period, go into my room, close the door, turn off the lights and sit on the opposite side of the room so that no one knew that I was there, right? I think in some ways, we need to empower ourselves to make those choices even if they feel a little misaligned at times with what’s happening in the busy-ness of what’s around us, being busy doesn’t always equate to being productive or being effective and we need to give ourselves permission to create that reflection space for ourselves even if others aren’t crafting it for us.

Steve: 08:25 Allie, what do you think teachers may have discovered about their own learning during the quarantine that while they were teaching virtually in hybrid, that they might want to carry forward with them even if it means the doors are opened up and we’ve got the students back in front of us?

Allie: 08:46 So I think we all discovered that we’re stronger risk-takers than we ever imagined we could be, right? You know, come the shutdown, we were all first year teachers, first year coaches, first year administrators. There was a lot we needed to figure out, but in that sink or swim type of environment, I also feel as though at all levels of the system, we found a bit more resilience than perhaps we realized we had. So for teachers, I would just encourage you, keep exploring, keep trying new things and taking those risks and failing not only forward, but through because it has truly empowered, not only our adult learners in the system about where they can stretch their capacity, but you’re modeling that learning for our students and that is something that we just cannot put a value on.

Steve: 09:38 Exactly. The number of teachers who were reaching out and asking their students, in effect, for coaching feedback. You know, “I tried something I’ve never done before in our Zoom room today, so how did it go?” To build that into our our constant ongoing growth process would be a powerful piece to take away.

Allie: 09:59 Yeah, absolutely.

Steve: 10:01 Well, Allie, I’m wondering, are there some resources that teachers might tap into through your website if you tell them a little bit about that and how they can connect with you?

Allie: 10:12 Certainly. So the one thing I want to encourage teachers to do is first and foremost, maintain a reflection space for yourself. And I think sometimes we default to that always being a journal. And I’ll tell you, I am not a journaler. I have tried so many different versions of it, and I just can’t find one that works for me. I like voice recording, right? Others like vision boards or having kind of a sketch pad, but I want to make sure that teachers as model learners have that reflection space for themselves in whatever form it might take. And then on my website, I have some guiding questions to help teachers think about their own points of recovery. So how are they ensuring that professionally, as well as physically, they’re giving themselves the opportunity to not only recharge, but actually recover? And the nice thing about those questions is that they’re framed in such a way that teachers can take them to a coach or take them to a leader as an entry point to facilitate that conversation at a broader level than just the classroom level.

Steve: 11:13 Oh, that’s great. And how do they find your website?

Allie: 11:16 So my website is www.the learningloop.com and you can also connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at the learning loop.

Steve: 11:27 And we’ll we’ll put all of that into the into the lead-in to this podcast. Thank you so much for for sharing your thinking as you were describing the reflection piece there. When I started blogging, people told me I would learn from doing it and I didn’t believe it, but I did. And the same thing has come over to the podcast. So yeah, creating as many ways for educators to stay involved in that possible. So I’ll look forward to another chance for us to connect.

Allie: 11:56 Thank you so much, Steve. I appreciate you having me on.

Steve: 12:00 You bet. Take care.

Steve [Outro]: 12:03 Thanks for listening in folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on twitter @stevebarkley or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.



Podcast: Professional Learning—Let’s Not Go Back to Normal!

steve barkley ponders out loud, Professional Learning—Let’s Not Go Back to Normal!

Allie Rodman, the author of Personalized Professional Learning: A Job- Embedded Pathway for Elevating Teacher Voice and founder of The Learning Loop, shares ways that school leaders and instructional coaches should be building learner voice, co-creation, social construction, and self-discovery into their designs for professional learning. What are we learning as leaders in the time of virtual and hybrid days that should we carry forward?

Subscribe to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast on iTunes or visit BarkleyPD.com to find new episodes!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Announcer: 00:00 Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud is brought to you by Academy for Educators. Online, professional development for teachers and leaders. Online courses, modules, and micro-credential programs for teachers to enhance their skillsets. Now featuring the instructional coaching micro-credential including five online modules framed around the work of Steve Barkley. Learn, grow, inspire. Academyforeducators.Org.

Steve[Intro]: 00:25 Hello and welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. For over three decades, I’ve had the opportunity to learn with educators at all levels, both nationally and internationally. I invite you to listen as I explore my thoughts and learning on a variety of topics connected to teaching, learning, and leading with some of the best and brightest educators from around the globe. Thanks for listening in.

Steve: 00:53 Professional learning—let’s not go back to the old normal. I’m excited today to have Allie Rodman, the author of personalized professional learning, a job-embedded pathway for elevating teacher voice, join us on the podcast. Allie is also the founder of The Learning Loop, an organization that designs, facilitates, and coaches professional learning. Welcome, Allie.

Allie: 01:20 Thanks so much for having me, Steve. It’s a pleasure to be here today.

Steve: 01:24 I’m wondering if you would just start telling us a little bit about your background and what led you to form the Learning Loop?

Allie: 01:32 Certainly. So I was a high school teacher and both Richmond, Virginia as well as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I worked as an instructional coach and a school leader and through each of those roles, one of the things that continued to bother me was how despite the fact that we were asking teachers to differentiate personalized learning for their students, we were continuing to facilitate one-size-fits-all sit and get professional development for them and I knew that not only could we do better, but we had to do better on behalf of those teachers.

Steve: 02:08 Well, on your website, you describe the importance of professional learning including learner, voice, co-creation, social construction, and self-discovery and I’m wondering if you could kind of walk us through those considering what role should administrators and instructional coaches play in making those happen for teachers?

Allie: 02:38 Certainly. So those four key elements of personalized learning come from Bena Kallick and Allison Zmuda’s work as they coach teachers around what it looks like to personalize instruction for students. And as mentors of mine, I really turned to them to think about how could we reimagine those same key concepts of personalized learning, but in the andragogical or the adult learning space. So in my work with both leaders as well as coaches, in thinking about those professional learning spaces, we use the elements of voice, and co-creation initially to bring teachers into the process, not only to select the topics of professional learning that are interesting to them, but also to truly be co-creators in the process of design. And then from there, we want to ensure that the professional learning sessions themselves, whether those are happening synchronously or asynchronously. Provide opportunities for teachers to socially construct to get messy with the content, not just go through a series of strategies and deliverables. So that ultimately, when they leave that session and go to implement the work in practice, it leads them toward a self-discovery where they continue to extend that learning loop both as a group, as well as individually in their practice.

Steve: 04:01 One of the phrases that I frequently use in my work with professional learning communities and then tie it back to teachers developing their professional growth plans is the question, what do my students need me to learn? I’m wondering how you see that student needs or student goals entering into the work of professional learning.

Allie: 04:31 Yes. So Steve, typically when I’m working with a district or school leader or a professional learning facilitator, I encourage them to use multiple data sets to guide their planning processes. And one of those sets is a teacher needs assessment. So that’s the sort of teacher want part of the equation, right? That choice and that voice, in the process. Another part as you noted, is our student achievement and growth data. So from what we’re seeing related to student progress, what are our students mirroring back to us that they need from us as learning facilitators for them? And then third, I also look at with those leaders and coaches, the observation and evaluation data that they’ve collected both formally and informally over the course of the year because I want to ensure that when we identify what the student needs are, we’re also matching them up with the teacher needs. Where are the gaps in practice that we need to address to ensure that teachers have the capacity, the skills and the mindsets necessary to meet that student need as effectively as possible.

Steve: 05:36 Allie, how has the pandemic impacted your work that you’re doing?

Allie: 05:44 Well, I’m spending a lot more time in Zoom rooms, I have to be honest there. Less time working directly in schools and in conference spaces. In some ways, I like to refer to this time as sort of the pause and the pivot, right? And I think we’ve overused that word pivot possibly, as much as we possibly can, but we were moving to this space and professional learning where things were becoming more personalized, not only for teacher professional learning but also for coach and leader professional learning. And in some ways, we kind of halted, right? We paused and went back to, as we did in student instruction, to some of our old practices where it was much of the same, one-size-fits-all, you know, work. However, where we were able to pivot, and I hope that we’re able to keep some of this is that we started rethinking how we use time and space in professional learning. So whether that was making some shifts in our learning and our coaching platforms or becoming comfortable with new modes of communication, I feel as though the pandemic gave us an opportunity to reimagine how we use, not only the content part of professional learning but the time and space elements as well.

Steve: 06:59 I’m wondering how we look at what we learned that we need to hold on to as we move ahead. And I found that I was forced to actually more personalize my work over Zoom and I’ve expanded that. I just put a project together this week where I’m consulting with a school that’s looking to redesign their professional growth plan with teachers and there are seven administrators. And so the project is going to start with me having a one-on-one conversation with each of the seven administrators so that when we go into the first meeting that I’m facilitating, I’ll go into it with all that background. That’s something I never would have done when I was jumping on airplanes and flying off, but I think I need to keep that when I start getting on the plane and flying off. And I can still Zoom it, you know, on the front end. But what are you thinking we need to do to kind of stop and see that we don’t go back to that old normal and really take advantage of the things that we’ve learned?

Allie: 08:31 Well, one of the points is certainly those connection elements that you referenced, Steve, right? In some ways, you and I are coaching in schools that we’ve never stepped physical foot into, right? And that’s a completely – when you want to talk new normal for us, we’re used to walking the halls, shoulder to shoulder with a leader, getting a sense of the space and the culture, and then stepping into a professional learning space with teachers and leaders. So that part certainly feels different but I think as a facilitator, much like you, it’s pushed me out of my comfort zone to re-imagine new ways to make those connections and better understand the culture and the feeling of particular learning organizations. Along with that, there are two other elements that stand out to me that I want to make sure we don’t lose.

Allie: 09:17 One is space for reflection, in some ways, being away from the hustle and bustle of, you know, moving from class to class, meeting, to meeting room to room, it’s given us an opportunity at all levels of the system in some ways to pause and to be able to reflect on the procedures and the practices that have had the greatest impact on our work and those that we might be able to let fall away in order to make space for the most critical elements. And second, is that in some ways, much like you described kind of that personalization and those one-on-one touchpoints, this time has given us permission to exclude individuals from particular sessions in a meaningful way. In Priya Parker’s work, “The Art of Gathering,” she references this principle of excluding well in order to ensure that our gatherings together are as meaningful and as authentic as possible. And I think sometimes in education, we bring everyone to the table without the thought and intention about whether it’s the right people in the right space at the right time. And by putting people into different teams and rooms and breakout sessions, we’ve had to get much more careful and intentional about those moves and I hope that that piece continues to serve us well, whether we’re in virtual spaces or physical ones.

Steve: 10:52 That’s powerful. I’m just thinking back to the very beginning of my career as a – I was still full-time classroom teaching and doing some PD services, and I would plan out what I was going to do with the central office person who was hiring me and then I’d show up and there’d be people in the audience – that was making absolutely no sense at all.

Allie: 11:25 It’s clock hours, right? We feel like everyone has to be there and it’s not respectful, it’s not thoughtful and it’s certainly not what we would do with our students so we shouldn’t be doing it with our adult learners either.

Steve: 11:38 I have not thought of this in years till I was just listening to laying out, but I was actually asked to do an at 90 minutes session on bringing hands-on into the primary science classroom and I was having people go around and introduce themselves and this person said, “I’m a high school English teacher.” I stood there with my mouth open and I didn’t know what to say. I was like, embarrassed that – it certainly wasn’t my responsibility that they were there, but…

Allie: 12:14 In the same breath, we’re coaching teachers to put students into very intentional, small groups that are based on learning objectives. I mean, we can do the same for adults also.

Steve: 12:25 As we move along here to close it out, I’m wondering if you’ve got one top suggestion that you’d like to offer to those who would be planning professional learning pieces that might be available to teachers this spring yet?

Allie: 12:44 Certainly. So it would include the learners, not just in the selection of the topics. So often when I work with leaders, they’ll say, “well, I’m incorporating learner’s voice. I gave them a menu of topics to choose from and then they picked.” That’s a good first move, and I don’t want to lose that, but I also want to ensure that those teachers are co-creators in the process as I referenced earlier, so that we are bringing them in early when we are planning the design to make sure that the series of learning activities that we are outlining, that the types of resources that we’re bringing in and the ways in which we’re conceiving that learning continue beyond the synchronous engagement, considers their individual needs and learning preferences as well along the way.

Steve: 13:32 You just tapped me, I’m going to have to pass on a compliment. I had a first phone call with an administrator last night who was looking for some information about some PD. And to my surprise, when the Zoom room had opened, there were five teachers there that he had invited to talk to me before we got into any other discussion. So I will be dropping him a note to share your words there. And it was powerful. I must say it stepped me it stepped me back.

Allie: 14:18 Who better to inform the learning than the learners themselves? They should be a part of that design process.

Steve: 14:23 If I’ve ever if I’ve ever experienced that before, it’s probably because I sought it out. So I was surprised that they had
stepped forward and built it into the design.

Allie: 14:35 It’s exciting to see.

Steve: 14:37 Allie, I’m wondering if you would share with folks a little bit about your book and some information about your website and how
people can connect with you.

Allie: 14:46 Certainly. So my book is personalized, professional learning, a job-embedded pathway for elevating teacher voice. It’s available from ASCD as well as on Amazon. And it really serves as a guidebook for both leaders and facilitators to walk them through the steps that they might take to design, as well as continue, a more personalized model of professional learning at all levels of the system. And individuals can connect with me on Twitter or Facebook and Instagram @thelearningloop, as well as a check out my website, www.thelearningloop.com. This spring, I’m going to be offering a virtual course specifically for facilitators. So we’ll walk through step-by-step, what does it mean to craft professional learning engagements that don’t just feel like one-time events, but truly personalized experiences for our learners.

Steve: 15:45 Well, Allie, thank you and I’ll make sure that we have your website posted on the lead-in to this podcast in case folks are out walking as they’re listening and didn’t catch it, they can go there and find it. Thanks again for sharing your thinking and expanding your mind. It was a real pleasure.

Allie: 16:06 Thanks so much, Steve. I appreciate you having me on.

Steve[Outro]: 16:09 Thanks again for listening. You can subscribe to Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud on iTunes and Podbean. And please remember to rate and review us on iTunes. I also want to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter @stevebarkley or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.