PODCAST TRANSCRIPTSteve [Intro]: 00:01 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: 00:34 A mindset during COVID-19. I found a diagram that labels indicators for assessing one’s mindset along a continuum from fear to learning to growth, as it relates to this time during the COVID-19 quarantine and pandemic. Reflection allows one to decide what conscious decisions one wants to take to generate the desired mindset. You’ll find a link to this diagram in the lead-in to this podcast. It’s structured in three zones. The first zone called, “the fear zone” is identified with these statements. In the fear zone, I grab food, toilet, paper and medications that I don’t need. I spread emotions related to fear and anger, I complain frequently, I forward all messages I receive and I get mad easily. When I enter the learning zone, I start to give up what I can’t control. I stop compulsively consuming what hurts me, from food to news. I identify my emotions.

Steve: 02:15 I become aware of the situation and think how to act. I evaluate information before spreading something false. I recognize that we are all trying to do our best. Moving to the growth zone, I think of others and see how to help. I make my talents available to those who need them. I live in the present and focus on the future. I am empathetic with myself and others. I thank and appreciate others. I keep a happy emotional state and spread hope. I look for a way to adapt to new things. I practice quietude, patience, relationships and creativity. As I thought about the three areas of fear, learning and growth and reflected on my own behaviors, I decided that overall, I’m pretty much in the learning zone and I’m trying to consciously stretch to the growth zone as frequently as I can. I know that my fear zone is triggered by my inability to travel to my daughter’s family.

Steve: 03:49 My grandkids are growing so fast and being in Switzerland while they’re in New Jersey has meant that for both of them having birthdays this past month, I had to watch presents that Amazon delivered being opened on FaceTime. I’m pretty sure that I complain too frequently. Having spent the last 35 years rarely having a week that I wasn’t on a plane, the last eight months of no flights feels pretty strange. Time for reflection is important for me to be working in that learning zone. Fortunately, being quarantined in Switzerland, there’s forests and a culture of walking present. My daily hikes that were initiated as a weight control strategy have developed into a time for the examination of my emotions and a time to be aware of the situations and think about how I’m going to act. I believe that thinking about and helping others is probably my personal strongest pull into the growth area.

Steve: 05:15 While reflecting on the areas of fear and learning and growth on the continuum, I made a connection to earlier work and writing that I did around the topic of optimism. You can find my blogs and podcasts about optimism by simply searching the term optimism on my website at barkeleypd.com. I read the book called, “The Power of Optimism” written by Alan Lloyd McGinnis and he pointed out that if you consciously implement the behaviors of an optimist, you can begin to be optimistic. See, that was important thinking for me, because I thought it was being optimistic led you to the optimistic behaviors. But what he shared was when I’m not feeling optimistic, if I took on those optimistic behaviors consciously, in other words, I acted them out, it created that sense of optimism for me. I think the same is true if I look at that list of behaviors for the learning zone and the growth zone. If I consciously take on a behavior, such as making my talents available to those who need them, there’s a good chance that other growth indicators like a happy emotional state and spreading hope will emerge from having taken on that other behavior consciously.

Steve: 06:50 If I consciously look for ways to adapt, I believe that I tap into my creativity and discover changes that I can make in my practice that may lead to things being better than they were even prior to the pandemic. I believe there’s many families that consciously instituted some behaviors during the pandemic that they’re going to want to hold on to as family behaviors and events when things return to some sense of “normalcy.” Beyond guiding our own reflections, we can use the fear, learning, growth diagram to provide a way to identify and empathize with our children, family, and community members. Consider what ways you can create opportunities for the people that you’re supporting to consciously practice a growth behavior and to gain the reward of new, unconscious growth area outcomes. One school that I partnered with arranged for the members of their staff to join together in school shirts and masks and distanced to take part in a local cancer fundraising walk. I’m certain that growth elements emerged from consciously taking part in that activity. I wish you well as we navigate these times. Learn and grow. Thanks for listening.

Steve [Outro]: 08:45 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 : 00:00 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]: 00:26 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: 00:49 Dr. Mark Wilson shares observations on where we are. I’m excited today to be joined in this podcast by Dr. Mark Wilson. I first met Mark when he was the principal at the Morgan County high school in Madison, Georgia. And while there, he was named as the national principal of the year by the National Association of Secondary School Principals. Today, Mark provides training and coaching for school administrators and principals and he has a great website at principal-matters.com. And Mark, I’m excited to have you with us here today, so welcome.

Mark : 01:42 Thanks so much, Steve. It’s always good to be with you and to learn with you.I just appreciate your work through the years. You’ve been an inspiration to me and a bit of a role model so I’m honored and humbled to join you on your podcast.

Steve: 01:52 Well, thank you. So Mark recently had a newsletter piece that talked about three observations of where we are today as this school year is beginning. And I had it in my mind for a while that I wanted to invite Mark to join me on a podcast. And when I read this this newsletter piece, I dropped him a note as soon as I finished reading it and said I would love to do a podcast around these. So Mark, I’d like to – I’ll just kind of take us into this one of your observations at a time and if you gave us a little thoughts on on describing it. And then I’m really interested on this podcast, for your thoughts and recommendations about how your observations should be influencing what what instructional coaches and administrators are doing in their work today.

Mark : 02:57 Absolutely.

Steve: 02:59 The first one that you shared was teachers are overwhelmed, tired, and exhausted. So what have you been observing?

Mark : 03:08 So Steve, usually this is the time of year that we begin to take an appraisal of where we are anyway, when we’re not doing a global pandemic and it’s – the new of the school year has passed. We’re able to really make that assessment at all levels, right? With students, with our instructional coaches, with our schools. When we started this school year, I’m not sure where we thought we were going to be in October, Steve, because I live in Georgia and we start school very early every year. And we’re finishing in nine weeks, as you and I talked today. This is the last week of those nine weeks for a lot of our schools in the Southeast. So usually, we have a pretty good idea of where we would be at this point, but back in August when we started, we weren’t sure that we would be open. As a matter of fact, like, I think if you wanted to get on a betting circle at some schools, they were picking dates of how long they thought we would be in school.

Mark : 04:11 And to be very honest, I think given what happened to us back in March, there was a lot of guessing that we may not be able to keep school going. Well, you know what? We’ve been able to keep school going, but we’ve done so on the backs of our teachers in great part. Our teachers have adapted to face to face learning, to virtual learning. People have been asking me, so what’s it like in schools now? And I remind them, hey, you know how homecoming is different in every town you ever go to? Well, that’s what school is like now. There’s so many different varieties, Steve, of what people are doing from place to place in that whole variety of mix of face to face virtual. We’ve got some school systems, completely virtual. We have some that are all face to face.

Mark : 05:06 And I think the third and most difficult are the places where well-intended people are trying to operate both systems with the same set of personnel. I’ll give you an example. I’ve got a high school I work with and we have 180 school systems in Georgia. In 120 of them are 5,000 students or fewer. So you don’t have a whole lot of schools. So it’s a one high school County. And in that school, the people who teach science, that’s the people who teach science. And so if you offer virtual and face to face, well, it’s the same cast of characters. What happened was we, I think, globally under undervalued how much effort and energy and time it takes to be a virtual teacher. And so I think what I’ve seen in this high school is a good example of it. The same teacher, whichever students wanted to come to school face to face, they’re teaching them face to face. But they’re also attempting to teach those students who they and their families decided to take the virtual option while they’re monitoring their progress and working with them in that virtual setting.

Mark : 06:23 I have teachers who report, like, they’re teaching six out of seven class periods, live, face to face and getting 150 emails a day. It’s not reasonable and it’s certainly isn’t sustainable. And that’s one example of what many of our teachers, not just in Georgia, but in all the places that are having that system, it’s a challenge.

Steve: 06:54 Would you add to that, that the places where they have all the kids back at school they’re still teaching differently?

Mark : 07:06 Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, you’re, you’re exactly right. And because when they have all the students back at school, they still don’t have all of the students back at school. And the truth is, we all kind of became preppers to a degree after our experience back in March because every teacher everywhere is being reminded by administration, we need to be setting aside our plans in case we have to shut down. And what has seemed to be – I don’t – I think it played out this way more so than by design, but it looks like we’re really pretty firm on having school. But as long as we keep kids in their own germ pods, we can quarantine a particular class and that’s happening. I was on two coaching calls this morning before joining you and one of them, the principal asked, “who’s the worst person to get COVID in your school?”

Mark : 08:07 And I said, “I don’t know.” And she said, “it’s the school nurse.” And that’s who went down for her yesterday.

Steve: 08:14 Oh, wow.

Mark : 08:14 Yeah. And so, she spent about eight hours, the principal and the counselor, watching video, contact tracing, trying to figure out who had been with the nurse. And those kids, they’re on quarantine now for 14 days. But we’re crossing our fingers. I mean, of course, first and foremost, those children don’t get sick because we don’t want children to be sick, but should they, they represent, they’ve sent 20 kids home. So this is 10 or 12 classrooms that had the potential for that. Now, the school isn’t going to close, they’re going to keep going. And I think that’s what we’re seeing is, for the most part, I think our plan is we’re going to keep having school and we’re going to make it work. But the make it work part is completely dependent upon the good naturedness, the missionary hearts of our teachers who continue to – you know, Steve. You you’ve been doing this for, for longer than I have and our teachers were already exhausted before we got here. But now, teaching virtually is just so much more. And I think that really nice school system leaders, I think because they never have taught virtually that they really didn’t understand what they were asking their teachers to do.

Steve: 09:48 My wife has also added just the wearing the mask all day long and what that takes as energy from a teacher just physically, in and of itself added another whole twist. And then it’s like this whole set of other things the teacher has to be thinking about besides the delivery of lesson.

Mark : 10:16 Right.

Steve: 10:18 How close can I have the kids get and, oh, wait, I can’t do that activity because I can’t pass the materials from this group to that group.

Mark : 10:27 Absolutely. And it’s that mental exhaustion, Steve, that I think, you know, I’ve been doing a lot of work for the last few years about the stress of leadership in schools. And I have a program called Live Well, Lead Well, which is just exactly what it says to be is, we need good living habits because we need to live well, if we want to lead well. Our teachers are really experiencing so much of that chronic stress that I’ve been noting in administrators for some time, our teachers have had it before too. But what you just described with your wife is that whole notion of there is no respite, it’s just stressful the whole time. And it wears on people. And my greatest concern for us educationally, there are a lot of things to be concerned about quite honestly, but my greatest concern is, our teachers have always been the bedrock of our success or lack of, and if you exhaust them, if you wear them out, what are you going to have? And I think for instructional coaches, for administrators, it is so critical for them to find genuine and meaningful ways to support our teachers during this time.

Steve: 11:54 So I’ll just reinforce that and move us onto your next point. But my my wife as a school counselor, the teachers are part of her tasks now. I think that always was there. I mean, she gets a note in the morning, you know, from a teacher that says, you know, I’m not sure I can handle this first thing this morning. And you know, she’s stepping in and doing something with the kids to let the teacher kind of regroup and move ahead.

Mark : 12:28 And Steve, that to me, if we’re going to offer practical applications for administrators and instructional coaches, what your wife did, the gift of time is probably the greatest thing that I think we can offer. That and listening. Without trying to solve this, this isn’t something we’re just gonna come up with a fix with. Their exhaustion is real. And without a tremendous amount of resources that we just don’t really have available, it’s not going to be remedied easily, but I think people can withstand just another day if they have listening administrators, counselors, instructional coaches, and the biggest thing I’ve been telling principals, Steve, is offer your time to your teachers. And you can’t give all of it every day, but make a spreadsheet, rotate it, think of all the assets that you have available but it may be a lot.

Mark : 13:32 I think it is. If you can tell a teacher, “hey, 30 minutes sometime tomorrow, I’m going to come and think about what I can do for you.” Maybe it’s just come in where you can leave for 30 minutes. But I think – I’m a big fan of the woot woot wagon, I’m a big fan of grilling for teachers. I’m a big fan of those things, but I think that we have to really consider where they are now and the antidote for exhaustion is rest and respite. And so if you’re an administrator and you want to do something good, offer your time with no strings attached.

Steve: 14:14 Let me move us on to the second item that you mentioned, Mark. You’re doing great things, but everything’s not okay. What’s your reflection there?

Mark : 14:24 So, I do want to be positive and remind the leaders that I reach out to you really are doing great things. You’re providing – we’ve made it further into the school year than many people believed. We’ve met a lot of needs for a lot of kids. We’ve done a good thing for our communities by starting school. But I’m very concerned that a lot of people at school system level, they’re ready to start evaluations. They’re ready to talk about assessments. And I just want to remind everybody that everything is just not okay. To go back to business as usual now, really goes back to that first point, Steve. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I don’t know, even if you’re the kindness of administrators and you have great relationships with your teachers, I don’t know how happy they’re going to be when you mentioned to them, well, now it’s time for us to launch into our evaluation program.

Mark : 15:31 I’m going to observe you. And even if it’s completely benevolent and kind and uplifting, just the whole notion of I’m going to observe you. For a teacher who is giving up so much already, giving up time, giving up, sleep, giving up all the things. I don’t know how much they’ll enjoy being trifled with her right now. And that’s kind of what I mean by everything is not okay is, I really caution school leaders for over stretching where they believe we are right now, because we should be proud that we are able to do what we’re doing, but there’s so much that isn’t okay. We have, and we’ll get to this in the third point – we have kids that are missing out on a lot of instruction, things aren’t just okay. Our kids are under tremendous anxiety. Many of them have undergone a great deal of trauma or at least secondary trauma.

Mark : 16:38 It’s not just okay. And and I would really caution people from their desire for us to go back to normal. That may actually keep us from getting there if we rush ahead, act like – we still are in an emergency situation. And I feel like we should behave that way at our schools. I know that some people will disagree and say that the best thing for us to do is to make everything as normal as possible. I just caution that notion and just encourage leaders, listen to your people and do what your people need to support your people as they give so much to the kids and to the community.

Steve: 17:25 When I read your comments there, I mean, I thought if time is tight and stress is present teacher evaluation probably moves pretty far down on the list of things that you would need to be putting out there, which is really no different than teachers need to be looking at students. And what sense does this make based on how it is that the student needs to be working with this?

Mark : 17:54 I agree.

Steve: 17:55 You know, I just heard a session with international school heads today and they were having the conversation that it really isn’t anything we’re going back to. It’s a real serious decision making of what’s the most important thing to do and what do we want to gain from here? And again, I think it’s very similar for teachers. I think it’s similar in defining the parent/teacher school relationships and roles. There’s a lot of newness.

Mark : 18:35 Absolutely. And Steve, I hear a lot of people, particularly here in the Southeast, they talk about in January, we will…in January…Look, viruses don’t have calendar. January is probably the same thing as October.

Steve: 18:54 [laughter]

Mark : 18:54 I want us to move forward too, but the reality, and I think that’s where administrators can best find themselves is we’re not going to be all like we were on March the 12th and January, February. I certainly, I follow and read virologists and epidemiologist and they give no indication that we’re going to have a school year in 21, 22 that will be like the one we began in 2019 and our adaptation to that,iIt’s kind of a simple proposition isn’t really Steve? We can’t make this go faster just because we want it to go faster. And if we can really do what we say we believe in that is to take care of our people and to support them, then that that’s the path forward and well beyond the whole notion of just because it’s January that it’s better. I know a lot of school systems and they’re excited that students are going to come back from virtual learning in October and they’re really excited because they’re going to get almost all of the kids back in January. Those circumstances are still going to provide an unusual experience for teachers and it will be different, but we still are going to have parents who are gonna want to have their kids at home for a number of reasons. Many of them after having done this are gonna prefer virtual learning.

Steve: 20:34 I just listened as I was describing that head of school conference while I was walking today, I was listening in on it. And one of the schools had their they surveyed their parents and it came in at exactly 50/50. 50% wanted them to open the school and 50% didn’t want them to open the school. So now create, you know, create something that’s going to that’s going to work. And make all the decisions you want, there’s this thing that mother nature is going to tell us what the real rules are that we’re going to play by.

Mark : 21:17 I think that’s so true, Steve is that there’s mother nature at work. But I’ve also been mentioning to the administrators I work with that after the pandemic, we’ll still have the parents. And what they’re going to most remember is how they were treated during this time. And I hope that while yeah, we would – I think most of us would like for most of our students to be back in school, but those who prefer differently, we are at risk as a school system if we discourage that or don’t acknowledge it. When we went into it, Steve, somebody asked me what kind of percentage of kids should I expect to go virtual? And I said, look, all I got for you on this – because we haven’t done this before, is normal distribution. So 16 to 20% maybe? And it kind of played out like that. Now, I think we may be facing that same piece, even when it’s a matter of choice now that we’ve offered this is, it may be somewhere around there.

Steve: 22:28 There’s a group of students who did better virtual. And so whatever it is we create going back, it can’t take away from the students who ended up doing better. So we’re gonna have to work our way through that. But I don’t think that makes us a whole lot different. I keep sharing the example, Joe, who’s the sound person making the tape here with me, we haven’t been in the office since March and we’re accomplishing 99% of the work our company does. There’s no way we would ever be able to tell our employees they need to be back in the office eight hours a day, five days a week. It would just be totally unexplainable. So I don’t know what it’s going to look like when that can happen, but if it’s not something that used to be.

Mark : 23:18 And I’m sure that you and I could just enjoy our really long chat on regardless of pandemic or virtual, how school days last too
long in the US already. There are a lot of pieces that are all coming together, right?

Steve: 23:34 Yeah. That’s why I’m saying there’s not going back to a normal, it’s just discovering the things that we’re learning, that we were forced to learn and now what are we going to do with them. So let me take into our last one here that you shared. You said students are all over the place, literally and figuratively.

Mark : 23:53 They are. I work across our state of Georgia, Steve, with leaders at every corner and in all in between and ths part of their experience is very similar. They may be doing school differently from one place to another, but this particular piece, we have kids that they’ve opted for virtual, but they’ve opted for virtual and they’re not answering the phone. That’s a problem. And I think one of the challenges for us is how do you, how do you inspire? How do you motivate kids that you can’t get to? Many of the things that we typically would do are off the board because of our COVID precautions.

Mark : 24:49 But also, many of the things that I would think that we would begin to work on, we’ve stretched our teachers so thin teaching multiple delivery systems that we can’t ask them, “oh, and by the way, in your spare time, go help us find these kids. You’ve got a good relationship with them, help us with this.” Because see, this is one of the things that’s happening in so many places. Our teachers are teaching face to face, they’re teaching students who signed up for virtual, and then when a quarantine happens, they have another set of kids that really represents a third group. Inside of all that, administrators, school level administrators, they are all telling everybody that they did not know what contact tracing was a year ago, but they are now bonafide experts because they really spend so much time talking to parents, talking to their local departments of public health, addressing those pieces. That’s kind of where it leaves us, Steve, is we we’ve run out of people.

Mark : 25:47 And you know, that that’s nothing new either. That we we’ve always been doing more with less for, it seems like ever. But we we’ve hit the point here where we’ve literally – we don’t have any other cards to play. And we have kids that, they probably need us the most. And when I think of the equity piece of the pandemic and where that’s left us is, is that certainly kids who have the fewest resources are the ones that are the hardest for us to reach in every community that I speak with. And those students that need both, the academic support, but also the emotional support that school brings to them, we’re not able to get to them. And so they are all over the place literally, but academically figuratively, they’re all over the place because here’s the truth.

Mark : 26:50 And you said it a minute ago, Steve, we’ve had some kids that have thrived under this. And I think we’d be remiss to ignore that because I think particularly middle school, middle school’s hard. There were people who say I’d love to be 17 again. I’m not one of them, but I’ve never heard anybody say, gosh, if only I could be a seventh grader again. Like, no one has ever said that. Middle school’s hard and I love middle school and I loved working at middle school, but a lot of our kids, a lot of the things that have created so much anxiety and stress for them, they’ve been mitigated by the fact that they are able to do what they’re doing now and have school at home. And I’ll tell you, one of the pieces that makes this even more enticing, I think, is that most school systems that I know, the kids who are doing virtual schooling, they still are permitted to be a part of afterschool events with sports and with music and with arts. And that gives the best of both worlds to a lot of kids. And again, they’re not the only ones, but what comes to mind those middle school kids, Steve.

Steve: 28:05 I’ll give you one that that blew me away. Several weeks into the pandemic, we did a call with all of our staff as that how the folks who had kids were handling it. And I was blown away when one of our staff said that he and his wife were loving the decrease in stress. And that was like the last thing I thought I would hear. And he said, you know, he said, “we get up in the morning and and the fact that we don’t have to rush the kids through breakfast in order to catch the bus or drop them off at school, or us get to work, there’s just like this, you know, this peaceful thing around the house.” And that was with mom and dad, both working online while they had two elementary kids at home.

Steve: 28:59 And it struck me, I thought, oh my goodness. You know, it could be a set of parents coming back out of this who are thinking, yeah, I really don’t know that my child needs to be in school six, seven hours a day, five days a week. You know, maybe there’s a different a different design here. And that was not that I wanted to homeschool, but I want to be part of the school, but do this thing differently. So I’m really pondering if our moving ahead – I mean, I really liked the fact that you use zeroed us in on here’s what we’re observing and here’s where we are. Moving ahead, I think really means rethinking, how do we learn, how do we teach and how do we lead? Those three things all being explored together.

Mark : 29:50 That’s such a good lens for people to consider Steve, because I and again, I love the good school people that we have everywhere, and I understand why they’re doing what they’re doing, but so many of them are racing as quickly as they can to try to put it all like it was on March the 12th. And that to me, is a big part of where I see where we are is, that’s not where we are. We were in a place where we have students who are going to have – they have increasingly widen gaps of learning. We knew that. But we also have, as you, as you described, I think about those kids we have in rural areas, Steve, that for them to do a 7:50 schools start to 3:00, it means they’re waking up before 6 in the morning, every morning for the bus ride.

Mark : 30:47 And I think that schools should be viewed as the entirety of that time, right? Is like, it’s not just an eight hour day for the kids for a lot of our kids. And again, particularly our rural kids and many of them are rural kids with limited resources, school is a 12 hour event for them. And that’s even before we add in the other pieces of the great things that we offer them for afterschool activities. But I’ve heard a lot of people who are just like the friends you were talking about, like, you know, why would they want to go back to fighting with their kid at 6 in the morning to get up when? And it’s so interesting to me that this great opportunity, I hope that people can really open their minds and really think about how do we serve people.

Mark : 31:42 And if we can get beyond the idea of controlling things and controlling people, I think we can get in a better place to serving them, because why is any middle schooler in America or 9th grader being asked to log on at 8 o’clock? Well, they’re way too smart for that, Steve. They’re going to log on and go back to sleep. And I don’t know who we’re fooling, but like, but wouldn’t it be more genuine and better like their body clocks are already at 10 and now we, there’s no reason not to do it that way, except we are always – I am certain that the power of we’ve always done it that way is about 10 powers greater than gravity.

Steve: 32:26 We’ve always looked at and explored knowing that we we have kids with really wide differences in what it is they need and how school had to adjust and modify to that to get anywhere near a picture of equity. And I think now for me, it expands out to say it’s the same way with families. So while there’s that family that we describe who being able to be home and be with the kids like that was an extra bonus, we got people on the other end who can’t do their job if the school didn’t provide a spot where the kids could be safe and protected and fed and all the other things that had to happen. So for me, it’s a time of learning. I’ve shared in many places for folks now, I’m at the spot where I could be stepping aside here towards a retirement, but I think the next three to five years are just unbelievable as to what it is we can learn, but we’ve got to stay focused on making that learning happen. And I know that, I know that you’re playing a role in that in the, in, in the work that you’re doing. And I really appreciated you joining me here to to carry that message forward.

Mark : 33:31 It’s my pleasure, Steve. Always good to see ya.

Steve [Outro]: 33:46 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 TRANSCRIPTAnnouncer : 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. Academy for educators.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 Teachers’ Emotional needs. “Teachers Are Anxious and Overwhelmed. They Need Social Emotional Learning Now More Than Ever.” That’s the title of an article by Christina Cipriano and Marc Brackett from the Yale center for emotional intelligence. You’ll find the link in the lead in to this blog. In March, they surveyed 5,000 teachers asking them for their three most frequent emotions.

Steve: 01:27 The five most frequent emotions that were mentioned were anxious, fearful, worried, overwhelmed, and sad. Anxiety was the most frequently mentioned emotion. An interesting part of their article is that in 2017, a similar survey of the top five emotions were reported as frustrated, overwhelmed, stressed, tired, and happy. In 2017, teachers reported not feeling supported by their administration around challenges related to meeting all of their students’ learning needs, high stakes testing, and in ever changing curriculum as well as work life balance. Prior to the pandemic, 85% of teachers reported an imbalance in work life time and that that imbalance was affecting their teaching. Additionally, approximately 30% of teachers were leaving the profession during the first five years of teaching. So prior to the pandemic, teachers were already burning out.

Steve: 03:03 And all the new expectations that came with distance learning and the ever evolving demands of teachers’ own families, it’s no surprise that these researchers found 95% of the feelings that were reported recently were rooted in anxiety. The research done by the Yale center for emotional intelligence identifies how emotions drive effective teaching and learning, decision-making, classroom and school climate and educator wellbeing. So first of all, emotions affect our attention memory and learning. Positive emotions promote greater engagement. Prolonged negative emotions from stress diminish our ability to be effective educators and undermine student learning. Emotions also influence our decision making. When stressed areas of our brains that are responsible for decision making can become hijacked, where pleasant emotions can increase our mental flexibility and creativity, which are key to solving critical problems and making critical decisions. Emotions impact our relationships. How we feel and how we interpret the feelings of others influences the messages that we send both non-verbally and within our voice tones. This can influence a teacher’s ability to build relationships with students and with parents.

Steve: 04:49 And during the virtual learning time, our ability to build strong relationships with parents and families has become an increasing importance. Our emotions influence our health and wellbeing. How we feel influences both our physical and mental health. As educators, we need the ability to regulate unpleasant emotions and experiences. This is critical for the development of persistence, which is highly needed in building our resilience. And lastly, our emotions impact our performance. Chronic stress is shown to be a link to decrease teacher motivation and engagement. As educators, we need to be models of healthy self regulations for our students and their families. The researchers identify two important steps us to have as a focus. One is to assist teachers in developing emotional skills. With those skills, teachers tend to report less burnout and greater job satisfaction, keys to being successful in impacting student learning. And secondly, we needed administrators who have developed emotional skills because they then show fewer negative emotions and more positive ones.

Steve: 06:32 Teachers are more likely to build relationships with such administrators. Those teachers are likely to have stronger relationships with their students, which are critical to their students’ success. When we find out how people are feeling and how they want to feel, that gap between those two provides information to drive decisions, changes, programs that we might look to implement. When the researchers asked the teachers what they needed to have a greater emotional balance, they said that they needed more time to make the adjustments to virtual learning and ways to make virtual learning fun and engaging for their students. They also expressed a need for honesty, respect, kindness, flexibility, and patience from school administrators. I have written and recorded earlier podcast about the value of knowing – K N O W I N G, knowing our students, knowing our colleagues, administrators knowing teachers, knowing parents as critical to creating the emotional environment that’s necessary to maximize learning. This school year creates a a unique experience because in the past year, when the quarantine happened, teachers had already spent substantial time with their students and so relationships and expectations were in place.

Steve: 08:21 For many teachers, they’ll be starting this new school year with new students virtually and having to look for ways to build those relationships. Building knowing will be a critical element. CASEL, the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning, has produced a roadmap for educators to explore in designing the reopening of schools. I’ve placed a link to that roadmap in the lead-in to this podcast. They describe the need for a personal connection and relationships in order to be a culturally responsive educator and to create the opening for engagement in learning. They’ve provided an outline for a suggested five minute chat with each student individually, suggesting that these chats could happen face to face or virtual. The purpose of the chat is to hear students’ experiences and perspectives so that we can know them and that we can be responsive to their needs and learning from them can benefit decisions that we make about instruction.

Steve: 10:01 I’ve also included the link for you to the chat outline. Their outline suggests five steps. Initiate, open, personalize, invite feedback, and close. In the initiation, you provide a reason for setting up the chat – letting the student know and inviting them to take part. In the opening, you share your enthusiasm for having the opportunity to interact individually with the student. Personalizing it has you asked students questions that allow them to provide you with information. And inviting feedback, you’re asking the student to make suggestions that might be important to your decisions about how to structure a classroom or how to structure your virtual instruction. In the closing, you’re looking to close on an optimistic note. Now for elementary teachers, there should be an opportunity to have this chat with each of your students. Those of you at the secondary level may find that you need to work as a team.

Steve: 11:16 So the middle school team might divide students up so that each teacher makes calls to a different group of the students and a middle school or high school structure with an advisory, this would be a great opening advisory activity. Having each student get that individual call, provide that individual feedback, just has I think awesome opportunities. As I read through the chat, it dawned on me that the same structure might be used for school leaders to look at how they’re connecting with staff members. Again, a principal in a smaller school might make a call to each teacher individually, perhaps the principal and assistant principal and maybe the instructional coach splitting up the the call list. In a larger school, this could be spread out to more leaders, including the department heads. The critical element would be that each person received that call and had the opportunity to share their experiences. Let’s consider how the same five steps would would apply. Initiating, could be done through a an email that went out to staff members, asking them to register a time that they would be available and explain the reason for wanting to have the one on one conversations.

Steve: 12:59 In the opening, you’d be looking to share your pleasure that one, they put the time aside to have this conversation with you and your interest in in getting a personal connection with folks to start the year. As you begin to personalize further with them as an individual, you might ask a question like what have the summer months been for you? What might you say is your biggest source of pleasure right now? Your source of stress right now? Key here is allowing people to share as much as what they want to share without without pushing back. Probably best to also hold back from sharing your experiences and make this mostly a time of listening. In inviting feedback you might ask, what do you think that we should learn from the quarantine time that ended this past year? What are your thoughts on how the leadership team might best support you as teachers, might best support you as a teacher? Look to close on an upbeat, positive note. What’s the most positive thing that’s come out of the quarantine time for you?

Steve: 14:27 What message do you want your students to get? In sharing your own optimism that knowing the support and collegiality of the staff, you’re sure that we can create a environment where we as a team will support each other? CASEL shared a a few additional considerations while you’re having the chat. And I think these apply both to chats with students as well as with teachers. Kind of keep a probe happening from time to time with a statement like, “tell me more about that.” Communicate care and your own calm, emotional stances is important. Your expectations that we as a school will be successful because of the way we will support each other. It’s important to validate the emotions that that people share. So being empathetic. I had several teachers throughout the quarantine share with me that they extremely valued the empathy that they received from their administrators.

Steve: 15:43 You want to keep this conversation solution focused. So even if you don’t have a solution to a problem that the teacher currently raises, being able to communicate that that we will tackle that that issue. And again, close out on your own upbeat positiveness as you wind down the conversation. Perhaps thanking them for sharing the information that they’ve shared with you, because it will be helpful in making the countless decisions that need to be made in the coming weeks. My coaching connections in the recent past weeks with school leaders and instructional coaches really highlights the difficulty in planning for the start of a school year with so many unknowns being present. A focus on teacher, student, parent, and your own emotional wellbeing should continuously be on the top of any agenda. I wish you well. Thanks for listening.

Steve [Outro]: 17:02 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 : 00:00 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 Looking forward. This is a time when all of us need to be thinking about the future and looking forward. Today, I’m excited to have joining me on this call, David Furlow. He’s a data strategist with the ACS international schools. I’ve had the privilege over the last couple of years of working with David several times, both in London and in Doha. And I was recently listening in to a international heads of schools conference call, and David was on that call and he raised some interesting questions for those international school leaders to to ponder and I immediately dropped him a note and ask him if you would join me here and he’s agreed so welcome, David.

David: 01:46 Thank you very much, Steve. It’s really a pleasure to be here. I’ve always enjoyed our work together and I was pleasantly surprised when you sent me that note.

Steve : 01:54 Well, David, you made a statement that I thought might be a good spot for us to jump in here. You said that this time is a clear meaning of the statement not wanting to waste a crisis when I explore a little bit what you mean by that phrase?

David: 02:12 Well, I think, you know, certainly when it’s something like a pandemic and a health crisis, we have the first duty and
responsibility, you know, keeping faith with our students and our parents to go for health and safety. But when we get beyond that, and we think beyond student wellness and parent wellness and teacher wellness, when we’ve created a safe space, then the next thing to think about is not so much what’s impossible, but what is becoming possible and to try to look for openings there. So in a crisis, people are de-routinized and their normal patterns of behavior are disrupted. And that leaves an opening for new things to come about and new ways of thinking and doing and being. So that’s really what I meant by that is we have an opportunity now that, you know, thankfully doesn’t come along very often, but at the same time, it is an opportunity to make something new and hopefully something sustainable.

Steve : 03:08 David, you shared a couple of at least, initial questions that school leaders should be exploring with with staffs and that they resonated with me because I’ve been seeing this as a extremely important time for leaders to be facilitating these conversations. Getting people, first, listening to each other, sharing their experiences, finding the common elements within their experiences and where they can move ahead with those. You want to go into one of those first couple of questions suggested that the heads consider?

David: 03:48 Yeah, we try to keep people focused on positive attributes of the experience because, you know, usually if you – we asked folks to do a retrospective analysis, like what things did we get from going to distance learning overnight? So, you know, we were in the state where we had everybody on campus and then suddenly the rules changed and everybody had to be online and distance learning, and that was traumatic. But we asked people to reflect on what we had realized with distance learning that we had never done before, and that we would value enough not to want to lose it if everything went back to, you know, fully normal, the way things were before. What would we keep from that experience? And then the second question we asked was about what things did we miss from before the pandemic and before we went to totally online learning that we had not yet figured out how to either reinvent or replace with something else? And then finally we asked the question, what was consistently good through both parts of the experience and therefore we could consider it to have consistency or to be reliable so that we would have sort of a foundation for the future going forward?

Steve : 05:02 I’m wondering if you got an example back on that first question as to something people found that they wanted to keep. There’s one that’s ringing in my head was, I had a teacher who’s in her 45th year of teaching and she excitedly talked to me about using Flipgrid with her second grade kids. And she had said to me, if somebody had asked me six months ago about showing me Flipgrid, I would have told them to flip. And now she was saying, put me back in the classroom, and I’m going to be having Flipgrid with my by second grade kids. So a crisis led her to a kind of small discovery there that she wants to keep.

David: 05:44 Well, I’ve had a lot of comments like that. And actually the way that we’ve been gathering this material in our own community is to use a tool called Mural. And in the retrospective, we let people post sticky notes. And I can’t tell you how many sticky notes have been about increased teacher flexibility being one of the main things and surprisingly, things like one on one, not one to one relationships beause we really discourage people from having one-to-one online meetings, but detailed knowledge of a student’s understanding of something that’s coming about by increased focus on communications in an online classroom type of experience. And it’s more collegial, like teachers working with students as coworkers in a way. And that point you were making about new tools is really fascinating because over the years, we’ve all heard, you know, people say about teachers, especially the ones with 45 years of experience, they don’t try anything new, you know? They’re doing the thing that works for them and they’re stuck in their ways.

David: 06:46 And I think it’s really interesting that so many people that we might’ve thought that about, who said to us, you know, “hey, we’ve got this new tool” and it could have been any of the tools that you mentioned and their reaction might be, I’m not going to do that because I’m really good at what I do. I’ve been doing it this way for a long time. And I don’t need technology because it’s much better to be human – human contact. And you know, in the missing column, we consistently see loss of human contact. But to the compliment to the dedication, the spirit of teachers, they flip the whole argument around and they start by saying, I need to have contact with my students. How can I do it? Oh, there’s a technical tool? Where’s the manual? So, you know, they go to a completely different part of the spectrum and start embracing the challenge of learning something new. And that’s really a wonderful thing to see. Teachers as learners, emergency learners.

Steve : 07:33 I’m wondering if in that example that you just gave there, if that’s a connection to your second question about the piece that people were were missing and they still need to work on. And I’m wondering if that student relationship fits in there. And one of the things that I’ve been pondering with people is what does it look like if you have to start the year with a new group of kids that you don’t have relationships with, compared to what happened this year is, people kind of had a solid chunk of the year where they built those relationships and then they were able to pick this up. I just wrote recently, our school leaders thinking about how do you orchestrate new staff coming to the school who may make their first meeting with their colleagues that they’re going to be working with in an online fashion compared to being there for those three days of everybody being together to start the school year.

David: 08:41 And you know, so much of that is about if you go through the notes that people have left for us during this exercise, there’s so many things about the loss of contact and the loss of like being able to look over someone’s shoulder and give them rapid feedback, kind of care of the community and the spontaneity, that sort of stuff. And you think to yourself, there’s a couple of things like what you’re talking about with transitions. When a new kid arrives at school. Now, normally, we’re an international school. We have high mobility. One of the main things that we concentrate on is making sure the students get into the accelerated pace immediately. And we try to make it comfortable and make social connections. And, you know, in talking to students, we’re hearing consistently, I really miss all the accidental things that happen.

David: 09:26 We used to, you know, I’d be in the lunch room when I have to sit with someone I never met before, I’d meet them, we’d have something in common, something would happen socially or something would happen academically or sports and extracurriculars. And all those things have been, all those mechanisms and rituals and structural encounters are gone and we haven’t replaced them and it’s an interesting challenge to think about how we might do that and how we layer those things into learning experiences or project based learning or social events. So there’s quite a bit there to work with, but, you know, it’s just as difficult with those rituals to say, can we reinvent that or is it going to happen in a different way? A good example of that is something like graduation. You can look all over the world and see all the different approaches that we’re taking.

Steve : 10:18 It almost sounds a little silly, but it really clammers out at me. A number of schools in the States did a drive by parades for kids. So the teachers all got in their cars and they drove through the community, hoking and blowing their horns while the kids sat down and waved as their teachers drove by. And so many parents wrote about the impact that had on their kids, the connection that it made, and then it dawned on me, like, why couldn’t we do that anyway? Did we really need a pandemic to say, we really need to come up with a way of showing the kids how special they are to us.

David: 10:59 And what you just said is, to me, that’s the model that needs to take place in our thinking, is to say abstract, what that provided. So state what you miss, mourn than the loss of what you miss. There’s such an important emotional element to that. Mourn than the loss, and in mourning, express what you think you’ve lost. And in that expression, you’re going to find the abstraction that you are going to put into the hopper to try to invent the future that includes that abstraction. And it may be similar, it might be that you’re enacting the physical sequence of events, or it might be that you’re just creating the emotions again. But the thing that you’re challenging yourself and your colleagues and the people that are involved in the experience with you, to create something new that carries something valuable from the past. And that’s a wonderful challenge. If you can take joy in that, despite the negative news and the frankly appalling tragedies that are going around all over the place. But that’s a part of living, isn’t it? To do that?

Steve : 11:53 Another one that’s jumping out at me – for years, for years, I’ve been frustrated with grading and reporting having to occur by the calendar. So, I meet a teacher who’s getting a test ready, and she tells me the kids are ready for the test. If you know the kids aren’t ready for the test, what are you giving the test for? Well, Tuesday’s the end of the marking period and I have to have my grades in Friday you know, before I go home. And I just used to really struggle with know, aren’t we at the level with technology now where every time it was appropriate to give parents feedback on where the kids were at, they could get it?

Steve : 12:46 So you might get biology feedback on Monday, and it may be six or seven days later that you get feedback from algebra because that was the time that the unit assessment was done and the teacher had the information. And interestingly, I found a school that did their parent teacher, student conferences in Zoom meetings. And they were so impressed with the partnership and collaboration, that they know that that is now going to be a fixed part of their practice, moving forward. We don’t have to have all the parent conferences on one day when we closed the school and mom or dad are out of town this week, so the whole idea that teachers could be relaxed and have a schedule structured with parents and kids to be doing this over some extended period of time. But it was a discovery and people know they want the parent support, they want the communication, they want to engage the kids. That is the piece they want. And it’s kinda like they accidentally discovered how to get more of what they wanted.

David: 13:43 Well, we have the, you know, we have a couple of points relevant to that in the everyday experience. You know, people think, well is learning worth the same amount of money in class learning? And you kind of wonder what you’re paying for. Are you paying for the time you spend in a class, whether it’s, you know, if you’re bored out of your mind in a class, is that valuable? Probably some people are thinking of it as childcare, that’s to be expected. But I mean, from my point of view, if I do what I was doing before and say I mourn something, and then the abstract level, I say, well, geez, what I want is I want to see a kid who’s engaged in their learning and that learning is relevant to their future and they’re happy, you know, and ideally they’re learning skills that are for the future. So agile skills are really good. I had a parent this morning in one of these sessions saying, you know, you guys don’t let kids chat in Zoom and the kids really need to chat. So, of course you probably know that they’ve set up a completely alternative systems so they can collaborate while you’re talking.

David: 14:52 So I think the kids are showing the way. They’re resilient. They’re like water. They flow toward the making their lives, livable.

Steve : 15:05 That’s cool.

David: 15:05 You know, they also need encouragement to stay relevant but that’s up to us as it always has been to mentor and to lead and to set examples and to model curiosity and inquiry, and, you know, to get to the point where every kid knows where they are, where they’re trying to go and has a couple of strategies for trying to get there. And what am I going to show when I get there that tells me and the teacher that I’ve achieved what I was trying to achieve in terms of understanding. So, you know, that thing about the test is, the test is not ready for the kids.

Steve : 15:41 [laughter] There’s a way that I’ve been processing this and wonder if this fits. A dilemma that I think we need to be exploring is, there are kids for whom this four month of going virtual advanced their learning rather dramatically. And so I think we need to figure out what that was and how do we keep it. And then there were kids for whom this didn’t work and we got to figure that out. And the part that I’m scared of is meeting at some not real good place that sit in the middle. In other words, that some suggestion that we’ve got to take away, something that was there that worked for one group in order to give the other group what the other group needs. My question, making sense?

Steve : 16:29 Yeah, the zero sum analysis, that would be problematic. So there, again, we need to think of what resources are available. Now, in the scenario that we’re in right now where the pandemic waves are coming and going and we could easily see ourselves catapulted back and forth between out of school and in school or we may have to do that for density reasons that we’re basically saying, you know, only half of the kids will fit in the space safely, so when we’re looking at those scenarios, we need to be good at transitions. And the characteristics that you’re talking about right now, tell me that we need to make a soft transition for those kids into the other mode. Now, whether that involves coaching from their peers who Excel in the other dimension, or making sure that every student collaborates with every other student at some point during the year, or if it’s some specific ritual that we have, that that says, you know, you used to use social grease in the classroom to be feeling confident.

David: 17:24 And this is really about the building of competence. So if you’re on your own, we’ve had lots of kids say no more distractions. Those kids that are making noise and, you know, pulling on someone’s hair or throwing spitballs or whatever, those kids are not keeping me from doing stuff. And there’s kids going, “I want to go to school. I want to see my friends.” And there’s other kids saying “I’m getting so much work done, I’m learning so much.” So then you kind of say, okay, well, it was ever thus to differentiate the kids on the basis of where are they getting that confidence. Because that’s really the labor that takes you from, I’m not engaged to I’m engaged, I’m confident I’m getting something I want and I feel good about it, you know?

Steve : 18:03 Another real simplistic one – I’ve met middle school guidance counselors who are getting much more interaction with kids because all the kid has to do is hit a button and say, I’d like to connect. And for some kids, that’s totally different than walking down the hall, past the office to go to the counselor’s office. But there’s another kid who needs to see the counselor in the hall and you know what I’m saying? So how do we create – it seems like we shouldn’t have to have one of these worlds or the other that we can create this space to maximize everybody’s success.

David: 18:41 Well, you could really do experience design on what you’re talking about. And, you know, it’s a beautiful thing to sit down and try to optimize the aspects of anonymity that helped you to ask for assistance when you need it. And the aspects of credit that make you feel good when you’ve done something well, but here, we’re going to have the same issue that you’ve heard a million times, where will I find the time? So then, then you kind of have to make, this is some kind of joyous teamwork exercise. I talked with a teacher in Bolivia last night and she had invited students to come in and do an agile exercise to design the school that they’re going to two years from now. What’s in that school, how does it work, what tools do you need, you know? And the kind of thinking that comes out of that says, well, I don’t really have a class anymore.

David: 19:31 I’m in a bunch of different learning groups. And, you know, we have, each of us has a council of kind of like learning mentors and advisors that we can go to. And if one of them is not available, we can go to another one. There’s always somebody who’s available. And we’ve got content oriented specialists in that group. So we’ve got, you know, a math expert, we’ve got a language and literature type of expert, but we also have a psychologist or motivational person. And we have a, someone who knows about the pragmatics of vocational looking stuff, or thinking about future, thinking about jobs or thinking about universities and that sort of thing. So it becomes more like, you know, we talk all the time about bubbles as if they’re protective things, but we don’t talk about bubbles as if they’re supportive things. And maybe that’s another aspect of it. You know, we can use the metaphor more than once, and maybe that will give us some more balance going forward.

Steve : 20:24 David, you wrote a little bit about our desire for normal comfort and how do we deal with that desire for normal comfort at the same time that we’re looking at what I would call the world of the possibles here?

David: 20:41 You know, I think that sort of process of abstraction is really useful. One of the first things is, you definitely have to acknowledge that emotional loss of what’s happened because normal is not coming back. It isn’t going to be like it was. And, you know, facing that fact is really difficult. And it’s so difficult in some cultures that they’re spreading the pandemic because they refuse to change their behavior and that’s because of the downstream effects of it are too far away for the feedback to be immediate. But, you know, we’ve got to let go of that. We’ve got to move forward. And as we’re moving forward into some new pattern, which is going to involve a lot more flexibility than we had before, I think it’s key that we give up the idea that it’s just a habit and, you know, we’re valuing what we’re getting from the experience, but we’re willing to adapt it and keep in mind the value rather than just the structure.

David: 21:38 So I think when we, when we have the idea that we can’t go back to normal, we have to think about where we are going. And that enables us to think about inventing a new future. And therefore, we’re looking forward, we’re not looking backward. And we’re also not looking as educators, we’re not just being tactical, we’re being strategic, we’re looking ahead, we’re looking forward to what we want in the future. And we’re using, hopefully we’re using the sense of being able to write the story of how we got to the future. So another exercise we’ve been doing a lot, and this seems to work really well is to say, put yourself in January of 2021. What is it that has made you arrive at a place where you were amazed at the progress that has been made and the new world that is emerging?

David: 22:23 What is it that is keeping you feeling really hopeful and positive at that point? And tell us how you got there. Or even farther in the future, especially with the kids two years from now, where are you, how did you get there? What was it that happened? What’s the story? Give us a couple of bullet points. Now, if you start the other way and you say my goal is X, then you tend to see the obstacles to getting there and it’s far away. And if you start in the imaginary and you write the story backwards, maybe there’s a little bit more ability to overcome the obstacles that are often in the foreground and to think of “yes, and” situations as opposed to “yeah, but” situations and that’s another thing we’ve been doing in terms of trying to plan the future, embrace the constraints.

David: 23:10 Okay, we always said small classes were good. Now we can only have small classes. So small classes are good and we’re going to use that by what and that – you know, so it’s that kind of like, thinking positively and I’m not reducing it to simple optimism because I don’t think that optimism at the moment is it’s not going to be that helpful. Things are not going – they’re not going swimmingly. Things aren’t looking like, you don’t have to do anything. It looks like to make the future good, you have to do something. And that means defining what you know, good is for you and your colleagues, especially in an educational environment and then acting to make those things real. What a moment, such a disruption has occurred and you can be thankful about that beause this is disruptive and violent and tragic, but at the same time, you still can’t waste that crisis.

David: 24:04 You have to make hope emerge and the whole past will be based on something that you really value. So we’re in the fortunate position of having tried to imagine the future for a long time. I know you have and you know, I know that we have frequently encountered a lot of inertia, but at the moment the inertia is in the direction of what can I do? What can I do as opposed to, what can I not do? So, you know, it’s, it’s tough to keep it that way beause the rules change overnight. We talked to people in China who closed their schools down on less than 36 hours notice and did distance learning pretty effectively and then came back to school and had their summer term, finished the term in school and had their summer term lined up for summer school to make up for lost time.

David: 24:49 And at 10:30 on the night before they started, they got a call from the government saying, we’re shutting down, you’re back on distance learning. Who’s resilient enough to deal with that. And I hear a lot of professionals saying we have to plan these things and you know, but the fact of it is we have to plan the scenarios, but we can’t plan the triggers or the pivots. So we have to be really ready to go and competent that we can handle those situations. The kids, some of them are traumatized by that and some of them are traumatized by other things, recognizing that social emotional care is the first priority.

Steve : 25:26 I circled that you use the words, our need to be kind and gentle.

David: 25:31 Yeah.

Steve : 25:32 It’s kind of kind and gentle, yet shining the light in the direction that we need to go.

David: 25:42 And purposeful and intentional. As we always have said, intentionality is a good thing because it allows you to, so think about efficacy. Are you getting, are you going in the – is it the right direction? Are you effective at going in that direction? One thing that, you know, and it’s interesting to think about things like standardized assessments, things like math, there’s in some quarters, people say, Oh, don’t do those because it’s not authentic. The kids are at home and you can’t be sure they’re answering the questions. But then on the other hand, that sort of points to the culture that we’ve got, which is we’re thinking of an assessment that’s meant to be formative as a summitive assessment. And we really want to know the thing that you were talking about before, which students have really excelled during distance learning. They did way better than we thought they would have if they were in class. So, you know, by not doing that, we could lose that milestone and that’s a difficult thing. To some extent, it’s a teaching moment for stuff like that, but we’ll see what happens in the fall because it’s quite likley that many people will still be in the same situation.

Steve : 26:46 Yeah, or in a blended that it gives them even more intriguing questions to answer. Well David, I really appreciate you spending this time with me and I will look forward to that next conversation.

David: 27:08 Great. Thank you, Steve.

Steve [Outro]: 27:10 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 : 00:00 Take a deeper dive with Steve Barkley in one of his five books. Available in electronic and printed formats, add Steve’s books to your district’s resources or to your personal collection at barkleypd.com/books.

Steve [Intro]: 00:14 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 : 00:42 Working together. In a podcast from future ready, superintendent, Matt Miller, from the Lakota local school district in Ohio, stressed how the collaborative spirit of staff and community was critical to the problem solving efforts that went into action. as COVID-19 quarantine closed school buildings. I’ve put the link to that podcast in the lead-in to this podcast. In many districts, administrators, teachers, bus drivers, kitchen staff, and volunteers work together to strategize and then deliver meals to students. Some teachers rode with bus drivers, delivering computers to students’ homes. Simultaneously, many teachers were diving into brand new teaching roles online. As one teacher put it, after 25 years of teaching, I’m now a first year teacher again. I’ve heard many reports from administrators and instructional coaches regarding the way that professional learning communities that were effective and strong prior to the quarantine used their strength as a community to solve new teaching and learning problems.

Steve : 02:18 But interestingly, PLCs that previously had not functioned team-like, began to open up to each other, being vulnerable and working together in ways that they hadn’t prior to the quarantine. I believe it’s vital that we capture the valuable practices of teaming that were implemented during the quarantine and examine how we can utilize that understanding to maximize student success as we move back into some form of blended or students fully engaged in school in classrooms. Judy Smith, a crisis manager states, “There is always an opportunity with crisis. Just as it forces an individual to look inside oneself, it focuses an organization to re-examine policies and practices.” I’ve been a fan of Margaret Wheatley’s writing. She focuses on organizational development. In a book titled, “A Simpler Way,” she described three critical areas for building successful organizations. One, the flow of information throughout the team. Two, rich and diverse relationships among team members and with the broader community and three, a common vision that unites the team.

Steve : 04:10 When these three items are in place, a synergy emerges. It leads to creativity and new ideas about how to proceed, emerge. As teams experiment with those new ideas, the experiments create new information, often introduce us to new relationships, perhaps cause us to strengthen or expand our vision. This all leads to continuous improvement. Let’s look at each of those three items in a little more detail. A common vision that unites the team. When meals and technology had to be distributed to students on a very tight turnaround timeline, a common goal was easily established and thus pull teams together. I’ve heard people describe those teams as no job title, no egos being present. So everyone chipped in and did whatever had to be done at the time. As a new school year approaches, it’s critical for school teams to form clear consensus around the driving common mission and vision.

Steve : 05:38 If schools are working virtually or in a blended format, what are the goals that move us toward providing the best possible learning results in those conditions? Have the experiences of 2020, a worldwide pandemic, social injustices, a new focus, increased focus on equity, have they caused a new look at a school’s mission, vision and goals? What exists in our current mission that’s been reinforced? Are there additions that we need to make? How will leadership express our commitment to the vision? The second item, the flow of information throughout the team or organization. I described this flow of information as having a goal for everyone to know everything and that goal can’t be achieved, but it’s what we’re constantly working to make happen. Interestingly, many educators have shared with me that their Zoom meetings have led to increased communication flow. Some leadership teams that met once each week or 10 days were now meeting daily on zoom and we’re often more focused.

Steve : 07:10 People were speaking one at a time and often sharing more information than they usually shared when they were meeting face to face. I know some schools placed individual phone calls to parents and to students. Schools and teachers sought more feedback from parents and students during this time and frequently responded back to inform people about how their input led to decisions and implementation plans. Some teachers reported that during this time, their administrators visited the teacher’s instruction more frequently online than it had happened back within the school building. And that teachers received more feedback on their instruction during this time from administrators. And every person that mentioned that to me, valued it and appreciated it. Where was information flow strong during your school buildings being closed and how might you retain those strengths as the school doors opened back up? One school shared with me that during this time, they held Zoom parent – teacher, student conferences and that the payoffs of those conferences, the amount of communication, the three way communication parent, student and teacher surpassed what frequently occurred when they held those conferences face to face. That school has already planned that it will be a continued future activity to hold those parent teacher conferences in a distant format.

Steve : 09:18 When you think about it, rather than a teacher, having all the conferences jammed into one day, parents having to decide which parent might take off time in order to be able to attend the conference. There’s now a more relaxed timeframe. It can be spread out and purposely planned at times to increase participation. Critical, a component in increasing parent involvement as a member of the teaching learning team. The third item from Wheatley was a rich and diverse relationship among team members and with the broader community. My key approach to relationship building is focused on increased knowing, K. N. O. W. I. N. G., knowing each other better. How do we create opportunities for staff to know each other? Too often, our team building activities can be too focused on doing when talking and listening are the keys to increased knowing. Wheatley states that the greater, the strength and diversity of relationships, the easier it is for an organization to deal with change thrust upon it from the outside.

Steve : 10:55 That sure sounds like a school to me. Change thrust upon it from the outside. The crisis of COVID-19 forced us to build some new relationships. Teachers worked with parents in new ways. Opening a school, this coming year, perhaps with social distancing and some form of blended instructional delivery, may require many of us to work in new ways with new people. Some teachers may need to start the year building relationships with students and parents online, an issue that most did not have to deal with this previous year. Some new staff members will need to meet and work with their colleagues online before they have an opportunity to meet them face to face. How might your leadership team stress the importance and provide support for the building of relationships across your school and school communities? Here’s some questions that you might use to begin the reflection and planning with your leadership teams, as well as with staff.

Steve : 12:24 How did the COVID-19 crisis bring about a strengthening of teamwork among staff and community? How might we establish those practices as natural, ongoing elements of our school culture? How might classrooms become centers of teamwork for teachers and students? How can parents in the community become ongoing team members for maximizing student success? The bottom line – how can we act more crisis like in non crisis times my best wishes as you build the teams that will serve your learners.

Steve [Outro]: 13:26 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 : 00:00 Take a deeper dive with Steve Barkley and one of his five books available in electronic and printed formats. Add Steve’s books to your district’s resources or to your personal collection@barkleypd.com slash books.

Steve [Intro]: 00:14 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: 00:42 After COVID-19 impacts: options and flexibility. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been asking questions of educators and our staff at Performance Learning Systems focused on two topics. One, what have we discovered? And two, what do we want to do about it? I found an article in Fast Company written by Diana Vienne that provided me a framework for some of the responses I’ve been hearing and some of the observations I’ve made. Her article was entitled, “Five Changes to Expect in The Workplace After COVID-19.” Diana Vienne is a senior partner with Global Change Leadership Consultancy company, Notion Consulting. I’ve attached the link to her article in the lead-in to this podcast. She opens with this statement rather than waiting for entry and being reactive leaders need to prepare setting expectations for the ways of working that will benefit the organization down the road. As I read that, I thought it’s exactly where we as educational leaders need to be focused today.

Steve: 02:06 She describes this time as a great opportunity for positive change and a time that has the possibility of negative impacts if we ignore the need to make shifts. The first change that she described was full digital transformation supported by a truly virtual workplace. During these past weeks, parents and students have discovered how vast amounts of work and learning are capable of being accomplished in a distance. At the same time, they’ve discovered that in some cases, we, as schools were unprepared to maximally profit from digital learning and communication. In addition, we’ve uncovered certain critical elements of the physical face to face learning environment and need to consider how those come into play.

Steve: 03:12 When I look at this changing time, I consider a colleague sharing with me that prior to the outbreak of COVID, insurance companies did not cover his 93 year old mother seeing the doctor through an online virtual format. And so she had to make the trip, sometimes dangerous, to that office. Now that those changes are in place and there’s a great increase of doctors’ willingness to work with patients online, I don’t see things turning back. Now think about that from a school vantage point. In many cases, communication with parents and students has been greatly increased during this time. Do we turn the clock back on that? I had one principal share with me, do you think when we’re back at school, that we’ll be back to all the principals having to get in their car and drive to central office for every one of our administrative meetings?

Steve: 04:24 How much did we accomplish with Zoom meetings during this time? And how might we be able to decrease that amount of time of traveling to the district office site and leaving our buildings? Critical, just like all learners, all needs, couldn’t be met in the distance. We’ve got to sort out where can we take advantages of what we’ve learned and how might that increase the time that we have and the energy that we have to invest in those face to face connections and relationships that need to also be a focus. As an example, I spoke with the middle school guidance counselor, who shared that there were quite a number of students who increased and opened up to counselors when all they had to do was click on a box that set up a opportunity for the student and the counselor to conference with each other.

Steve: 05:37 That difference of not walking down the hall to the counselor’s office, made a difference for some students. How do we keep those kinds of open doors? Vienne’s second area was a focus on outputs versus face time. She states, “the key is what gets done versus time spent.” This requires a clear set of learning outcomes and the ability to assess student progress on the outcomes rather than on work completed or the time spent. One teacher shared with me that she was currently working with a student who prior to the aurentine, continually complained in class about her explanations and her instruction. And now online, the student is plowing through learning and producing a quality of work that the teacher didn’t see when that student was in the classroom. Again, note that there were students who deeply needed her explanations and her instruction. Do we go back to a system where everyone needs to receive what some people need?

Steve: 07:03 What learning opportunities must we provide educators so that they can maximize student learning opportunities? What kind of autonomy do we need to provide to teachers, administrators, parents, and students to create real, personalized learning options. Right now, at some locations in the world, schools are opening up. There are parents who are not yet ready to send their students back to school while there’s other parents who need and can’t wait for the school doors to open up. How do schools respond? Can we have options and flexibility, or must we respond to everyone the same way? The third item in the article was titled “Respect for Work, Life Blend.”

Steve: 08:01 I found it interesting when a colleague shared with me that he and his wife were finding less stress while the two worked from home with their two young children at home. I was intrigued and found I had to listen carefully. He described the switch from hectic mornings, getting two kids, fed, packed, and off to school, and then getting to work on time. He talked about the extra and flexible time with kids and that while he and his wife didn’t necessarily have more time together, just seeing each other during the day seemed to be valuable. Again, at the same time, there were parents who were unable to work at home and struggling to find childcare for kids, not in school. How do we as employers and schools respond with flexibility and options? I know that at PLS 3rd Learning, we’ve always provided people the “opportunity” to work at home in order to solve a problem.

Steve: 09:12 In other words, somebody had a repair service scheduled. They didn’t know what it was going to happen and so they’d work at home from that day or they had a sick child and they would work at home that day. I know from the experiences that we’re having right now, there’s no way corporately, that we could begin to require all of our staff to be in the office. So we’re going to have to go through a redesign of thinking as to how we respond with options and flexibility. And at schools, we’re going to need to look at similar ways of personalizing our services more. How do we create an opportunity so that I need to be at work, or I need to be at school when I “have a need to be there.” In other words, when that place and that time location will better allow me to produce and to learn.

Steve: 10:18 And how can we create options and flexibility when someplace else at some other time actually causes greater production? How do my flexible school schedules impact work family and learning time? Vienne’s fourth item was stronger communications. COVID-19 closing school buildings moved to many educators into increased communication with parents, students, the community and interestingly, with each other. I just had the opportunity to listen in on a conversation this week between an elementary, middle school and high school guidance counselor working in the same international school who shared that they were now communicating with each other online and had increased their communication from when they were working at the same site. And their realization was that scheduling that same online time when they’re all back in their offices was probably a critical element to build in. At many schools, a monthly parent meeting was moved to a weekly parent letter from the principal.

Steve: 11:49 Weekly surveys went to parents and students at some schools, webinars were held with parents so that they could share questions and thoughts from weekly occurrences. Teachers began requesting feedback from students at a personalized level that was, in most cases, greater than the feedback that was being requested from students when they were present in the classroom. Increased communication leads to shared goals, shared responsibility and shared accountability. I listened into a worldwide weekly conference call of heads of international schools from around the world. As I listened on those calls, there’s a high degree of sharing, questioning, exchanging ideas and resources. These educators are rooting for each other’s success. And I believe in many cases, this is replacing a past where competition may have been more, the norm. Improved communication leads to the final element that Vienne presented, and that was increased trust, transparency, and empathy. She stated, “now leaders and employees must understand and support each other, like never before.” People are sharing more about their personal situations with colleagues and as a result, they are creating an expectation of humanity, active, listening, support, and connection.

Steve: 13:34 I have heard empathy in the voices of administrators as they have shared their concerns about the lives of their students, their staffs, and their parents. There’s been a tendency for leaders to be more understanding as to how individual circumstances impacts a teacher’s ability to respond to certain tasks by certain deadlines. I recall a conversation with two teachers who were both working from home and they had four children all learning from home. So just the negotiation for wifi time was a critical issue. And the teachers shared her administrator’s understanding of how those conditions were impacting her ability to meet deadlines. Equally students found in many cases, that their teachers were sharing much greater empathy and understanding as to how students’ conditions at home were having an impact on students’ ability to perform and meet deadlines or requirements that were placed in front of the students.

Steve: 15:09 I’ve heard teachers complementing principals and students, complimenting teachers as they’ve sensed that increased personalization, support and expectations. The question is, will we hold on to this as the new normal develops as the school doors open? Because many of the individual circumstances will still be there. Those two teachers with four kids and that student who’s dealing with special situations at their home still exist. The question is, will we take the time to do the listening that we tended to do during COVID quarantine? Because it’s that listening that I believe produces the understanding and the empathy without the opportunity to listen. We don’t know without us taking the time to ask so that we can listen to people’s circumstances, we don’t know and therefore we frequently overlook an opportunity to be more supportive and more understanding. Personally, I’m excited about the current advances that are possible in learning, teaching, working, and living if we will act on what we’ve discovered. If we will keep a continuous learning, continuous improvement and a willingness to transform as a focus, we will all be better for what we’ve experienced. Thank you for listening.

Steve [Outro]: 17:05 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.