PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Steve [Intro]: 00:00 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: 00:28 Challenging teacher growth in the upcoming spring semester. I was delighted to join Cory Camp on “The Coach Replay Show” to explore coaches, engaging with teachers. We both share our thinking and our experiences in the following.

Cory: 00:50 So today we’re talking about how do we, you know, everybody is, if they’re not already off for winter break, they’re going to be within a couple of hours probably. And they’re going to be hopefully resting and rejuvenating and reenergizing. So when we come back after winter break and come back together and we’re back in our classrooms, whether those are in-person or virtual, how do we make the most of our spring semesters, finish out the school year really strong? How do we maximize that energy that those teachers are coming back with after having the break and really grow our teachers and, and our students?

Steve: 01:37 So I’m going to jump into this with what might seem a little bit strange to the energy piece, but I’ve been I’ve been sharing it with people and I’ve gotten quite a few head nods from it. When Jim Collins wrote the “Good to Great” book, he had a piece in there of an interview with Admiral Stockdale and it it’s been labeled the Stockdale paradox. And Stockdale was a prisoner of war during the during the Vietnam war. Top ranking officer there a long time. And when Collins interviewed him, one of the things you asked him was who are the people that did not do well
with the crisis of being in the prisoner of war camp? And Stockdale’s response was well, that’s easy to answer. It was the optimist.

Steve: 02:36 When I read that the first time, it it like totally threw me because I would have had the opposite belief. But he described the optimists as those people who said “well, we’ll be out by Christmas.” And then Christmas would come and go and they’d say, “okay, well, we’ll be out by Easter.” And then Easter would come and go. And with enough of those repetitions, a piece of depression fit it. So Stockdale described you needed two things. One was an ultimate belief that you will succeed, okay? Combined with a brutal acceptance of the reality of what you’re dealing with. And that connected with me because I had done quite a bit of work with optimism and I – favorite book of it by Alan Loy McGinnis called, “The power of Optimism.” And he describes that that one of the behaviors of optimists is that they aren’t surprised by trouble.

Steve: 03:43 And I thought that really connected back to Stockdale’s issues. And so, as I look back, I think in last spring, when COVID hit, as educators, we said, “oh, okay, well, we can survive this. We’ll get to June, the summer’s going to be here and then fall, we’ll be back in school.” And then fall came and it wasn’t there. And now I’m afraid that that that the vaccine being present may put another group of people into that mode of everything’s going to be here quickly. And I think instead, we need to put those two pieces together. What’s the belief? I believe that I can teach students better next week than I taught them this week. And next month, better than I taught them last month. And next year, better than I taught them this year. I’m going to combine that with the brutal reality that some kids are still having trouble making connections, some kids aren’t having the supports that they need. Those are all the realities I’ll work with, but with all of those issues I can learn and get better. So that’s why to me the whole piece coming out of this is learning.

Cory: 04:58 Yeah. And it’s so funny that you bring that that lens to this conversation because I was just having this exact conversation with my team right before this call. We were talking about how we’ve, you know, we’ve been interacting with some of those folks who are like you know, this is temporary. And I mean, in last spring I was like that. I was like, we’re going to be out for a month or so, but then we’ll come back. Everyone will finish the school year, teachers wholeheartedly believed they were going to finish out the school year, go into summer vacation, having seen their students. And that was a really hard hit when that didn’t happen. And then it was, well, kind of starting back, everything will settle out over summer and we won’t have that remote instruction starting in the school year.

Cory: 05:46 Well, then that didn’t happen. And we continually – we equate it being from Texas to, a place in Texas called Enchanted Rock, where it’s like, you go up the hill and it doesn’t look so bad and then you get to the top of that crest and realize there’s another hill. More to go. And you get to top of that and you’re like, there’s still more. Like, when am I going to hit the peak? I did this and then smooth sailing down. Enchanted Rock is a beautiful place. It’s sounds like a great idea, especially on a nice summary day. And it’s the worst idea ever, especially on a nice summary day. But I mean, yeah, that’s exactly it. And that starts to chip away at our teachers, especially those that makes so much sense about our optimists.

Cory: 06:34 As an optimist, I can definitely see that. And really, I love that you, you know, you take that reality and that belief and make sure that we’re kind of pinning it to that learning. And it really is all about the learning. And that’s been the hard thing that’s been – I know a lot of the coaches I’ve been working with are, you know, their teachers absolutely need their support. And in some cases they’re asking for them, in some cases they’re asking to be left alone. But the support is not at the deeper level that they’ve done in the past. I myself have been doing a lot of micro-coaching and creating a lot of micro-learning content rather than, you know, bigger sessions or more kind of, I’m trying to cover a lot in some time I’m trying to cover just a little bit in as little time as possible so they can grab it and go with it. And it makes me think about, you know, how do we get teachers to get back into that learner mode instead of that survival mode, which is where they’ve been?

Steve: 07:37 I think the key phrase is reflection. I’ve been doing some work for folks in in resilience and I found a COVID continuum that says, there’s this phase of being in fear. And then if you can move out of fear, you move into learning and then with learning, you move into an area they called growth. And as I looked at that, I realized the key to move from fear into learning was reflection. So it’s identifying your emotions, identifying what’s important, identifying what you have control over and what you don’t have control over. And once you’ve done that, you can begin to see your, your way into into growth. I’ve shared my personal example of it was being being quarantined here in Switzerland. The one thing they didn’t close when they quarantine was the forest. And there’s forest everywhere, and everybody’s supposed to be out in the forest. It’s part of the culture.

Steve: 08:49 So I built into my quarantine time, a good 90 minute walk in the woods every day. And when I starteded it, the purpose of my walk was exercise. But I then began to realize that’s my reflection time. And once I could identify how angry I am that I can’t see my grandkids, realizing I don’t have control over that, what do I have control over? So my granddaughter is studying German in middle school for the first time and so am I, so we’re texting each other back and forth in German that we have to translate. I don’t think if it were for the quarantine and I was visiting her the way I usually am, I don’t think we’d be doing that. So I think we’ve actually grown. I know that my work has become much more personalized during the quarantine and I know that I’m going to keep that.

Steve: 09:48 I’m on three or four new projects now and every one of them I’ve built into the beginning of it, a one-on-one interview with each of the participants before I start the program. When I was flying in and doing my workshop, that didn’t happen. Yeah. But that’s a piece I think that is going to have to carry over. So I really think the job of coaches and administrators who are looking to support teachers right now is engaging that teacher in the reflection and getting the teacher to decide that the there’s a piece they could do tomorrow that would make their instruction and their student learning stronger than it was today.

Cory: 10:31 I want to hit on a couple of things that you said. First is as you shared your own practice of reflection being in your walks through the woods, I think that sometimes, as we’re – and I study – that’s the work I do is all about reflection and I’ve studied it a lot. And there are specific methods, some that work better than others depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. There’s a whole cycle of reflection. And so I have the science of reflection down that I used to share, but me as well, I’ve been finding just small moments of reflection. It doesn’t have to be this big thing. You don’t have to have this, go buy a journal and, you know, do a reflective…it’s just making sure that you are taking time to reflect. And it doesn’t have to be sitting alone in a room meditating or something. It can be as you’re doing other things or as your chatting. My sister-in-law and I chat frequently, more frequently when I was in Texas and on the road all the time. But that was my key reflection time was just in conversation with her. I was thinking out loud and we both kind of reflected on our practices as educators and coaches. And so I think that’s really important.

Steve: 11:42 Yeah. Label that as the coach’s role and create that reflection moment for the teacher. I was just working with a district office person today looking at administrators who are doing walk-throughs virtually now and they’re sending teachers notes. And I said, if I could make one suggestion, stop the notes and buzz the teacher. And if you brought the teacher up on Zoom or you grab the phone and call the teacher and you said, “here’s when I was there today. What did you see during that time that pleased you? And what did you see during that time that if you could get it to go up one notch, it’d be cool to get it to go up one notch? Tell me about that thing.” And that 10 minute conversation got a whole lot further than anything you’re going to write up or questions you’re going to send out to that teacher. And that the reflection will live on beyond your 10 minute conversation.

Cory: 12:54 Yeah. If you’re still doing all the heavy lifting, right? And we want to take that off, whatever we can off of our teachers right now, but now’s not the time to do all the reflecting for them or they won’t learn from that, right? It’ll be something – okay, I’ll remember that the next time I do this, hopefully I don’t do it again because I’m not going to be in pandemic teaching next year, right? If we can really, yeah, just those just simple reflective questions just to open up a conversation, doesn’t have to be anything big, informal. This is where, like this year, if I’m able to Zoom through and observe instruction, whether it’s in person or online, I’m trying to record those moments so that they can look back at that and hey, I’m gonna give you a call in 10 minutes, take a look at this video real quick, and then let’s just chat about it. Just to get them to look back, not at the whole lesson, but just to kind of be that great artifact for that reflection. So what other factors do you think to create that space for reflection and start that conversation for us as leaders can we do? What are some crucial things for us to think about?

Steve: 14:07 Well, I’ve been writing about the leaders need to create the environment. And Simon Sinek has a great statement that leaders
aren’t responsible for the results, they’re responsible for the people who are responsible for the results. Now, I like that because that’s where the teacher has to be right now, too. As a teacher, you aren’t responsible for the learning that happens. You’re responsible for the kids who are responsible to make the learning happen. We’ve got to create, you’ve got to create that environment. So the role of the administrator having empathy, of having a a high expectation that the teachers can cause an ever increasing amount of learning to happen. I’ve been big on taking things off teachers’ plates, but recognizing that the reason you took something off the plate is so that more energy could be focused on something that was on the plate. So it’s not just backing off, but it’s having that – again, it’s the reflection time to prioritize that there’s something really important that I want to that I want to make happen for my students and for my learners.

Cory: 15:40 Yeah. And I know one of the things that you kind of talk about in a few of your blogs is the use of pre-conferencing as a way to set up some of those coaching conferences, set up the stage for teacher kind of openness and reflective practice, right?

Steve: 16:01 Yeah. Well, my favorite is the pre-conference is the one that people want to skip when they’re short on time. And so I’m recommending that if you’re short on time, just do the pre-conference, right? Even if you can’t do the observation and you don’t have time for the post-conference, at least do the pre-conference.

Cory: 16:22 Well, and that’s so much more proactive, right? If we think about it.

Steve: 16:28 If we have the pre-conference, the teacher now goes into the lesson with focused consciousness that came out of the pre-conference and you’ve set the stage for a piece that they can actually coach themselves. Now, I’ve been working with some coaches right now working virtually do the pre and the post without doing the observation.

Cory: 16:52 Yes. I’ve been doing a lot of that, too. Yeah.

Steve: 16:56 And then after the lesson is over, now you’re gonna have the post and the observations you’re working from are the teacher’s. So now
you use the post-conference to increase the teacher’s reflection on what happened, even though you didn’t observe it and collect any data.

Steve: 17:15 Thanks for listening. I hope the coming weeks and months provide reflection for your growth and the growth of those whom you are coaching.

Steve [Outro]: 17:26 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.

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Announcer: 00:02 We are all facing the unique challenges of working and learning from home. The near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools or NESA is holding it’s next networked learning series featuring Steve Barkley. “Personalized Coaching With Steve Barkley” will address the unique challenges and opportunities instructional coaches, administrators, teacher leaders, and mentors are presented with during this time. Take your skills to the next level with this online, facilitated, personally coached, six week program with Steve Barkley. Learn more at barkleypd.com.

Steve [Intro]: 00:43 Hello and welcome to the Parent Wellbeing and Student Learning During School Closures Edition of the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. With the extended closing of schools, we as parents have entered into a new territory regarding what we have known as “school learning.” With this and future podcasts, I’ll look to share my experiences as a teacher, educator, parent, grandparent, and continuous learner.

Steve: 01:16 Tapping learners’ interests and passion. This podcast topic was triggered by a note that I received from a colleague and a mom, so I asked her if she would join me at the beginning of the podcast to introduce it. So, Jen Jordan, welcome to the podcast.

Jen: 01:33 Thank you Steve. Thank you for having me.

Steve: 01:36 Jen, you raised a question that really caught my attention. You asked, “what can we do with this gift of time?” And I just love that thought of a gift of time. What were you pondering when you sent that off to me?

Jen: 01:51 Well starting with, I have two daughters. Lola is 13 years old and she’s in 8th grade and Emma is 10 years old and she is in 4th grade. And I started receiving a lot of work from the teachers and I thought this is great, we have a lot of have to do’s right now. But, what I really wanted my kids to do during this time is to kind of take a step back and appreciate this gift of time that we have. And a lot of times we’re running from school, to activity, to activity that you know, sometimes it’s hard to even sit down and have dinner as a family. So now, being that we’re been all together every single day,

Steve: 02:32 [laughter]

Jen: 02:32 I really want my kids to enjoy this time. So I try to tell them, this is a gift to work on things that you might not have the time
to do in “normal life,” but more scheduled.

Steve: 02:47 You mentioned, you mentioned in your note that you were introducing creative time, I think you were calling it. Tell us about that.

Jen: 02:57 Yeah. So, I said, today going to have mandatory creative hour and I was met with groans and grumbles.

Steve: 03:05 [laughter]

Jen: 03:05 And “what are you going to make us do?” And I said, just follow me here. So I said, today, from three to four, you’re going to have – you’re going to work on something that you want to work on. Not that the teachers want you to work on it, that I want you to work on, no chores. So pick something that interests you and that you want to do. And they kind of hummed and hawed for a little while. And Emma said, well, can I use my iPad? And I said, well, what are you going to do? And she said, there’s these drawing tutorials that I’ve been wanting to try. And I said, perfect. I said, let’s get some pencils and some paper together and some crayons and here we go. And she was immersed in this drawing, teaching tutorial that she had found on YouTube and she became really excited about it and she produced some really great things that she was really proud of and sent pictures to our family and posted it on her Instagram. So, that was something that she kind of dove into. And before, you know, time went by and it was over an hour that she was doing it.

Steve: 04:10 Yeah. They call that flow. F. L O. W. – so that task took your daughter in the flow. And that’s when a time kind of flies by and that’s the neat thing that you caused to happen there. Go ahead with the other example.

Jen: 04:26 Yeah. So my other example of creative time – my daughter Lola is 13 and my husband’s actually a physician in Buffalo, New York. And right now, across the country, you know, there’s a shortage of protective gear and whether or not the protective gear is actually protecting them or not, there’s a shortage of it. And we just feel better if Dad had a mask on. And so we’ve had a sewing machine sitting in our basement and she decided she was gonna make Daddy a mask and the nurses that he works with. And she went downstairs, pulled up a YouTube video, learn how to thread a bobbin, learned – basically taught herself how to use this sewing machine in a matter of a couple of hours, came upstairs with several masks that were pretty darn good.

Jen : 05:17 And it was just one of those moments where I said that’s something that she wanted to work on, that’s something that she was passionate about. She wanted to do something for somebody that she loved and right now it’s really hard because we can’t, you know, be in contact with a lot of people. And she wound up feeling very proud of herself and I was really proud of her and maybe she’ll make me some pillow covers and curtains next, who knows. But, she found something that she has passion for and she loves to do. It passed a lot of time during the time where we have extra time. So I just thought this was probably one of my best ideas as a Mom, was creative time. And even though I had a little bit of frustrated children in the beginning,

Steve: 05:54 [laughter]

Jen: 05:54 they definitely embraced it and are learning to love that time to themselves.

Steve: 06:00 Well Jen, you gave a perfect example of what schools have been implementing over the past few years called genius hour. So in the rest of this podcast, I’m going to spell out for parents a little bit of understanding about genius hour. We’ll change the term to genius time and we’ll give some examples of how they could get started. So thanks so much for triggering my thinking and for sharing your ideas. Appreciate it.

Jen: 06:32 Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it too.

Steve: 06:36 Genius hour had its roots in what was known as 20% time. I found this short history. The 3M company started the process back in the fifties with their 15% project. The results of that project were post-its and masking tape. Google is credited for making the 20% project what it’s known as today. Google asked their employees to spend 20% of their time working on a pet project, a project that didn’t necessarily fit into a person’s job description. As a result of 20% time, we have G-mail, AdSense, Google News, and Google Teacher Academy. Using 20% time in the workplace allows for innovative ideas and projects to flourish and or to fail without the bureaucracy of committees and budgets. Catch that statement, flourish and or fail. You see, it sounds like the right time without the concerns of a grade or a project due date, a passion or interest that a student has could be explored in depth.

Steve: 07:59 As children, we all tend to be curious and intensely observant. As parents, you’ve all had the opportunity to have your child see or hear something that we wish they hadn’t because they lock in on it. Too many of us tend to shut down that natural curiosity that’s driven by our observation and questions. We begin to look for, too quickly, solutions and at school, correct answers. The term that’s been used as teachers have applied 20% time in classrooms has been labeled as genius hour. Sometimes it’s an hour a week and sometimes it’s an hour a day. The goal is to give students a chunk of time that they can invest in learning, problem solving, producing, something that is totally driven by the student’s interest. As I share with you how educators have been looking at genius hour, let’s change the term to genius time and you begin to think about the adjustments you might make from these ideas to work with your learners.

Steve: 09:18 Consider the length of time that you might want to establish adjusting it to your child’s age and independent learning perseverance. What pieces of genius time would you look for the student to tackle on their own and where might you as a parent work with him or her and maybe where does their project turn into an entire family learning activity? Here’s a few guiding thoughts to have as you begin to work with your child in genius time. One, is there a driving question? What is it that the student would like to learn or learn to do? Two, the genius time should require research. For older students, that can mean online YouTube, Twitter searching. What questions might they post online? Do we know people who have the knowledge that the student needs that they might interview over Skype? Are there family members or friends that we could tap as a resource for students gaining the knowledge that they require?

Steve: 10:40 Many people now have extra time and would be available and probably anxious to connect with your learners on such a task. Remember that for younger students, research can mean trial and error, such as what happens if I make the clay wet? What happens if I make it wetter? How’s it different if I work with dry clay? And the third item to consider is can the results be shared? Going public with my discovery, with my learning, with my production, always carries a an extra bonus, an extra motivation. So how could the results be shared? Might I post it? Who can I tell? Can I share it with my teacher? Might my teacher decide to have me share it with my class? Can I take a picture and post it to share? Here are some genius time questions or projects that might trigger you or your learner’s thinking.

Steve: 11:50 How do things work? Is there something that I could take apart and try to put back together again to find out? Years ago I worked with a teacher who kept a bicycle in back of his room and across the time frame of the whole year, two students first were given the task of taking the bicycle apart into all of its pieces and then two other students put it back together and then it passed on to two who took it apart and put it back together. He had that genius time activity going across the whole year. How far back can we trace our family history? Could you write a biography of your grandfather or grandmother? Is there a piece of clothing that you’d like to refashion or would you like to design a fashion for a piece of clothing? What can I train my pet to do? How intelligent is my pet rabbit?

Steve: 12:51 How does his or her intelligence compare to a dog or a cat? With a budget from my parents, what family vacation might I plan for this summer? With a daily schedule and everything in the budget spelled out. Lots of research to do there. Some high schools have a dedicated time for students to do learning through interest. Students explore their strengths, weaknesses, goals and career interests. Those reflections lead to questions explored through research, finding and working with mentors, setting goals and developing plans. How might you and your middle school or high school student, use this gift of time to possibly unlock an ongoing future impact? If you Google genius hour, you’ll find many posts by teachers and education writers with examples and guidelines that you can modify for use with your learner at home. Let me close with some reasons to explore genius time.

Steve: 14:12 First, it can be fun. Hard work can be fun when it’s driven by my passion. Genius time will likely be different from what many of the assignments are that your learner is receiving from school. We learn most by doing versus hearing. Especially when it’s something we want to learn. Learning how to learn is one of the most critical life skills for students to develop today. And here’s a side benefit. As your learner engages in learning, you may find that it creates some independent learning and or working time for you. Here’s a place you might start. On YouTube, checkout Caine’s Arcade, that’s C. A. I. N. E., Caine’s arcade on YouTube. You might want to watch it with your learner. It’s about a young boy who taps in to his passion and creativity and learning. Thanks for listening.

Steve [Outro]: 15:28 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.