I have been a long-time promoter of engaging students in real-life (project-based) opportunities. That’s driven from my own experiences as a 4-H participant in my elementary and high school years and having observed teachers and students tackling powerful learning through doing live event projects. Those experiences generated my interest to learn more when I was introduced to The Society of Childhood Entrepreneurs. Leah Ellis shares how even young elementary students can learn important life skills as entrepreneurs.

Visit The Society of Childhood Entrepreneurs website here. 

Find Leah’s book, “Sparks to Stars: The Story of Astra & Zeke” here.

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

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.300] – Steve [Intro]
Hello and welcome to Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud. Together, we’ll explore ways to support teacher growth, elevate your coaching practice, and boost student success. Each week, I’ll share my own insights as well as conversations with inspiring guests to help you lead with confidence. Thanks for listening.

[00:00:30.000] – Steve
Powerful learning through entrepreneurial opportunities. I’ve been a long-time promoter of engaging students in real-life, project-based opportunities. That’s driven from my own experience as a 4-H participant in my elementary and high school years, and having observed teachers and students tackle powerful learning through doing projects. I’ve recorded a number of podcast with teachers and students who tackled solving real problems, such as the fourth-graders who designed their playground so that it was accessible to students in wheelchairs. They also held events all year long to generate the funds for the design to be implemented. Those experiences generated my interest to learn more when I was introduced to an article about the Society of Childhood Entrepreneurs. Joining our podcast today is the founder of the Society of Childhood Entrepreneurs, Leah Ellis. Leah an experienced early childhood and elementary educator and the mother of four children. Welcome, Leah.

[00:01:37.280] – Leah
Hi. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:39.240] – Steve
Thank you so much for joining us. Why don’t we just jump in for a starter to work from then. Give us a little description of the Society of Childhood entrepreneurs.

[00:01:50.720] – Leah
It’s a Society of Child Entrepreneurs. We teach kids how to start and run their own businesses. But it’s not just those lemonade stands that you’re used to. I have kids that graphic designers, 3D printers. They’re really kids who have an idea and the tools to implement it. Then I teach them the skills to make sure they implement it well and it can be sustainable as they get older.

[00:02:13.520] – Steve
What led to your initial focus on students as entrepreneurs?

[00:02:18.480] – Leah
My daughter – it’s a little bit of a long story, so bear with me.

[00:02:22.920] – Steve
Go ahead. We got time.

[00:02:24.800] – Leah
Before COVID, I ran an in-home daycare, and I taught essentially an all girls engineering curriculum because that’s just how our program had fallen together. I loved it, and I loved teaching STEM to little girls and pushing these girls outside of the traditional boundaries of what they expected little girls to learn. Yes, our water bottle Rockets had lots of glitter, but they still learned about propulsion, and it was amazing. But then my house flooded, and I had to move into a hotel. You cannot run an in-home daycare out of a hotel room, so we temporarily shut down our daycare. Unfortunately, our grand reopening was March 17th, 2020. At the time, we lived in Los Angeles County, and that is the exact day that they issued the stay at home order. So we never got to reopen. And then the city that we lived in opened a free for essential workers’ childcare within walking distance of my house. So then even my tiny glimmer of hope that maybe we’ll get the essential workers went away because they had a free option less than a mile from me. That meant I needed to pivot and figure out something else to do.

[00:03:31.620] – Leah
Since I’m reasonably entrepreneurial, my husband and I had decided to start a financial coaching company together. I would watch small business trading videos and entrepreneur mom stuff, videos like that on the big TV in our living room because my husband was deployed and I was home alone with an 18-month-old and a four-year-old. Then, maybe April, May, my four-year-old looked at me and said, “Mom, I want to start a business, too.” Of course, my initial gut reaction – “Four-year-olds can’t start businesses. No.” Then she did that one word that is the top of every four-year-old’s vocabulary, that they all…it’s their immediate reaction to everything, “but why?” I had no good answer for why she couldn’t start a business. And we were trapped at home anyway. So what was the risk of experimentation? It was going to be, at the very least, a learning opportunity for her. So we sat down and we brainstormed, and she went even into some Facebook groups and had voting and polls on what name she was going to select with her business and everything. And she finally settled on, Custom Drip Art from Melody Paints. After the world reopened for COVID, Melody ended up having some opportunities to be a featured artist for some city art shows.

[00:04:45.260] – Leah
She continued doing her outreach. We were invited to our first children’s business fair, which she loved. Then we left California and we moved back home to Kansas, and I hosted a children’s business fair as an opportunity to get connected with some of the other people who were doing similar things with their kids. When I finished it, I was not nearly as satisfied as I had been at the first Children’s Business Fair because as the organizer, I realized all the things that we weren’t doing. Because we had to put on this beautiful event, the kids had all made tons of money, sold amazing things, and then they left, and there was no more learning. And that, as somebody who takes child development and education so seriously, really frustrated me because we had opened this wide door of excitement and then not used it. We created the Society of Child Entrepreneurs to take that big excitement of their first fair and then build an entire educational program around it so that they’re actually learning sustainable entrepreneurship, financial literacy, leadership skills, confidence, all of those skills that they learn as entrepreneurs while they’re still kids.

[00:05:55.700] – Steve
Could you tell us some of the projects that students have taken on as their business?

[00:06:02.860] – Leah
My favorite one is, I actually have a girl who does the plushies that she crochets, and they are so soft and so beautiful. They look amazing. I looked at her and I was like, “How do you make these? How long does this take?” She was like, “Oh, it takes an hour and a half.” I was like, “Wait, what?” I have another girl who does custom pens. I really love her pens. I have one in my desk that says, “She is fearless.” We have two young gentlemen who run 3D printing companies. I have another boy who is an avid reader and very frustrated that at 13 years old, his classmates aren’t avid readers anymore. We all know that around fourth grade, that reading for pleasure drops off. But he still really loves reading, and he wants his classmates to read with him. So he created this business called Troy’s Top 10. And if you tell him a genre that you like, he will give you books in your recommended genre that he would recommend you read next. That way, he can keep his classmates reading because they’re not reading boring books. He’s already identified the books that they’re going to be interested in.

[00:07:14.700] – Steve
Very cool.

[00:07:15.740] – Leah
Yeah, he’s a future educator. He just doesn’t know it yet.

[00:07:20.180] – Steve
[laughter] There’s a term that I use in my work with teachers that I call, “live event learning.” I use that term to describe students working on projects where there’s a real consequence for the choices that they make. There’s also some unknowns that are present. I think those are both key elements to the learning. I think it’s why extracurricular activities in schools are so often a great learning experience for students. It seems that all applies to your entrepreneurial focus.

[00:08:00.160] – Leah
Oh, absolutely. I mean, we literally put on live events open to the public where these kids have to put on their customer service hats and talk to strangers. And we don’t know how many people are going to show up. We don’t know who’s going to show up. We don’t know what they’re going to say. I had one guy tell me at a renaissance festival that he would not support our organization because he did not support child labor.

[00:08:23.227] – Steve
[laughter]

[00:08:23.560] – Leah
And the kids were like, What? I had to be like, I don’t think you understand our program. But it was a great opportunity for the kids to be like, no, this is not child labor. This is mine, and I want to do it. It’s always fun because we never know what we’re going to hear at an event, and the kids have to learn how to pivot, how to think on their feet, how to communicate.

[00:08:49.880] – Steve
Real life.

[00:08:50.500] – Leah
How not to laugh at grownups who say we don’t support child labor.

[00:08:54.380] – Steve
Yeah. I read on your website that the experience is build learners’ confidence, communication skills, and resilience as just a few of the positive traits that you mentioned. Would you expand on that a little?

[00:09:09.280] – Leah
Right. If we think about entrepreneurship as an adult, you’re the face of your company, which means you have to have great communication skills because you have to be able to identify what your company does and explain it to other people in a way that they understand. You have to have confidence to know that you’re describing it in the right way and that you are the right person to do that job. And then you have to be resilient enough to know that some days there are going to be bad sales days and you keep going anyway. All of those things still apply to my kids when they learn. One of the biggest opportunities for one of our kids to learn resilience. Actually, it’s a little bit of a sad story. We had what we thought was going to be an amazing market set up. Our city does a fall festival, and we bring in 10,000 to 15,000 people from the neighboring big city to our small town in two days. It’s a massive event. I had gotten the opportunity for our kids to be able to have booths at the event. It was free.

[00:10:09.400] – Leah
It was just for our members. We were anticipating it was going to be the biggest thing that had ever happened for our little baby organization. But at the last minute, the city moved all of the adult vendors to a different location, which meant the area where our kids were was crickets because there were no vendors around us. We were just in this empty building by ourselves. The unfortunate part of all of it was it also took place on my daughter’s 10th birthday. So on my daughter’s 10th birthday, she woke up that morning prepared to make hundreds of dollars, talk to thousands of people, and just have a blast selling her business. And over the course of the day, she probably saw three people and got four or five pity sales. And she obviously was incredibly disappointed at the end of the day. That was her birthday, and it had not gone the way she wanted it to. Then we had another fair the following month, and she came home and she was like, “okay, so these are the steps I want to take to make sure that the November fair goes better than the October fair did.”

[00:11:12.080] – Leah
How easy would a 10 years old to have been like, “That sucked. I’m never doing business again.” She’s learning that resilience of, okay, sometimes things don’t work. What do we do to make it go better next time? The November fair was a little bit better, and she did make some more sales.

[00:11:28.360] – Steve
Well, you can tell your daughter that you met a gentleman who got on an airplane in New Jersey and flew to Washington, DC, and spent a small fortune to speak at a conference, and no one came to his session. [laughter]

[00:11:50.580] – Steve
I know her entrepreneurial pain and learning from that.

[00:11:57.700] – Leah
Right. What entrepreneur doesn’t know the experience of a bad event or a bad sales day. It’s part of saying, this is a part of life. Even if you’re not an entrepreneur, there’s going to be bad days in whatever you’re doing and that resilience to be able to say, what do I have ownership that I can fix to make it better? It’s not even just the resilience, but also that problem solving skills and that locus of control of what do I manage.

[00:12:26.680] – Steve
I earlier recorded a podcast with the authors of a book called, “Leaders of the Class.” They focus on schools developing leadership skills for all students. Their focus was high school and traditionally, there’s a select group of students who go through high school learning leadership skills. Their focus was on our need to greatly increase that opportunity. It strikes me that entrepreneurial approach can create a lot of those similar opportunities for kids.

[00:13:06.380] – Leah
Right. Especially because as an entrepreneur, not only are you learning to lead your business, but part of our curriculum teaches social entrepreneurship and how as an entrepreneur, you have the opportunity, and I would even say the obligation, to work on making your community a better place. In one of our books that is yet to be published, the main characters help a girl identify a field in their city – we have all those fields, and it’s like an empty field in between buildings, and it’s full of plastic bags. So how to take that field and turn it into something that the community can use. And this young entrepreneur leads the project to turn it into a community garden in a playground. Entrepreneurs have the opportunity to do those things because we already have outreach in our community. People already know us as the person who does that business. So they already understand the report. They’ve already built some relationship. They want to help us with other projects.

[00:14:00.000] – Steve
Very cool. I’m wondering how you would envision teachers making entrepreneurial opportunities for students. I know some teachers do a thing that they call a genius hour, where it gives kids a freedom and autonomy to tackle anything they want. As I was thinking about the work that you’re doing, I could envision an entrepreneurial hour a couple of times a week, falling into the schedule where kids could engage in their entrepreneurial venture.

[00:14:40.480] – Leah
Absolutely. In fact, I cheated a little bit on this one because I’m writing a curriculum. So the best way to put it in your classroom is wait 24 months for me to publish the rest of what I’ve written and then just put my curriculum in your classroom. But no, really, it’s all about just starting to ask questions and let the kids build the solutions. Tell the kids, we have this problem, how can business solve it? And then letting them slowly build businesses that solve those problems that they see in their community. And then taking those to the public and collecting money and being very proud of themselves for earning their own money. With our curriculum, it starts out very simply with, what is an entrepreneur and what does an entrepreneur do? Then by the end of the school year, they actually put on their first market where they’re selling the product that they’ve invented that school year.

[00:15:26.960] – Steve
Very cool. What’s the best way for a listener to find out more about your Society for Childhood Entrepreneurs and follow up with you personally on some questions and follow that curriculum you’re working on and the books you’re working on?

[00:15:43.600] – Leah
Our website is is soceict.org – if you follow on that, I post stuff on our blog. Then our Facebook page, the Society of Child Entrepreneurs, I post regularly in there on what the kids are doing and what’s going on. Those are the two places that you’ll catch on the quickest when new things arrive. Then my email address is just leah@soceict.org. You can always email me and be like, I need to know more. Then, this is new – I didn’t tell you about this Last time we talked because it wasn’t a thing yet. But the first Astra and Zeke book is now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. You can actually buy the first book in the series and at least meet the characters.

[00:16:25.960] – Steve
Tell us a little bit about that book.

[00:16:28.360] – Leah
Astra and Zeke the mascots that I created for the Society of Child Entrepreneurs. One thing that we talk about when we’re the Society of Child Entrepreneurs, it can’t just be adults telling them what to do because that’s just bossing them around, which is what we’re trying to avoid. So I created Astra and Zeke, 10 and 12-year-old business coaches who work together to teach entrepreneurship to kids. They’re the staple of our curriculum. They’re the staple of most of our programming. And so this first book is the story of who they are, how they meet, and the origin of their business coaching company, “From Sparks to Stars.”

[00:17:05.340] – Steve
Well, terrific. We’ll put the links to those things in the lead-in to this podcast, make it easy for folks to find.

[00:17:12.160] – Leah
Also, I got incredibly lucky. I have the best illustrator, so the book is just beautiful.

[00:17:17.500] – Steve
Terrific. Terrific. Thanks so much for joining us.

[00:17:20.820] – Leah
Thank you so much for having me.

[00:17:24.060] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.

Explore how teachers and students can be empowered with the implementation of student documented learning. Jennifer D. Klein, teacher, administrator, and author of “The Landscape Model of Learning: Designing Student-Centered Experiences for Cognitive and Cultural Inclusion,” provides examples across grade levels. Her concrete examples illustrate the how as well as the “why” benefits. When students take accountability for documenting their learning, motivation often increases, and important life skills are practiced.

Connect with Jennifer to learn more and find her blogs, videos & books here.

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

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.000] – Steve [Intro]

Hello, and welcome to the Teacher Edition of Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud. The complexity of teaching is both challenging and rewarding, and my curiosity has piqued whenever I explore with teachers the multiple pathways for facilitating student engagement in the exciting world of learning. This podcast looks to serve teachers as they motivate and support their learners. Thanks for listening. I’m delighted that you’re here.

[00:00:30.060] – Steve

Students Documenting Learning. Our podcast guest today is Jennifer D. Klein. She is an experienced teacher, school administrator, the author of “The Landscape Model of Learning: Designing Student-Centered Experiences for Cognitive and Cultural Inclusion,” and an educator workshop facilitator. Her work is focused on student-centered pedagogy that amplify student voice. I’ve asked her to join us and talk about how student responsibility for documenting their learning is empowering to both students and to teachers. Welcome, Jennifer.

[00:01:17.100] – Jennifer

Thank you so much, Steve. It’s a pleasure to be here.

[00:01:20.080] – Steve

I’ve read that as a student, you were engaged in the type of high-engaged, empowering learning opportunities that you promote in your work today. Can you share a little bit of that background with us?

[00:01:33.610] – Jennifer

Absolutely. Well, I feel very fortunate because my parents recognized from a young age that I was one of those kids who would always have an answer that was outside of what the teacher was expecting. So anytime the teacher asked a question or I was handed a test or something like that with a limited number of options, I would immediately go after 15 other really good possible right answers with really strong logic. My IQ was high, I was a precocious kid. And my parents, actually, as creatives and intellectuals themselves, really didn’t want that to be crushed out of me. They didn’t want me to go to schools where teachers would say, that’s not the answer I’m looking for. I attended two schools in the course of my childhood. The first was the school in Rose Valley outside of Philadelphia, which is a wonderful little, I think they’re now Pre-K-8 private school or independent school doing a very student-centered holistic education. When we moved to Colorado, my sister and I were both enrolled in the Open Living School here in Colorado, or the Open School now, which is a public alternative school. It was the second public alternative school in the US, actually, to be doing student-centered and expeditionary, I guess you would call it, project-based learning.

[00:02:52.360] – Jennifer

We didn’t have those terms for it in the ’70s and ’80s, but that really was what we were doing. We were learning by being in a given place, by coming in high school, that thing, we did basically all of our own documentation of every project that we designed, and we designed them ourselves with the support of teachers. My college transcripts, just to give you an example, my high school transcripts to be able to get into college were 50 pages of written narrative that I had written about every learning experience that I had had in the years of high school. Of course, in 1986, there were two universities the US that would consider a kid with no grade point average, no grades of any kind. I also refused to take the SATs because I believe the SATs weren’t going to show me off very well and just because the learning I had wasn’t the learning that shows up on those sorts of tests, and because I could drive myself crazy with a million possible answers. And so I wrote my entrance essay for Bard College on the basis of why the SATs couldn’t capture the capacity of the an experiential student.

[00:04:01.760] – Jennifer

So, yeah, I feel really, really fortunate that my parents made those decisions. I’ve always been a learner for learning’s sake. The first time I ever received a number or a letter grade was university, and I’m deeply grateful for that.

[00:04:14.580] – Steve

That’s great. Then you go into teaching and school leadership. How did that reinforce the way that you went to school and the directions you took?

[00:04:28.200] – Jennifer

Well, I will say I There’s a little bit of a hiatus in there as I was doing my master’s degree. I was a student of literature and creative writing. That was my thing growing up. It’s actually a little bit unusual that I would have ended up becoming so in love with education. When I finished my master’s, I moved to Costa Rica, and I actually just recently wrote a chapter for a book on this topic for Barbara Brae’s new book about the moment that I entered my first high school classroom in Costa Rica, living in Central America. It was a fairly traditional school and I think what helped me to stand out was not just the fact that the English class is the place where you can talk about everything, but even more importantly, the fact that I really wanted to hear their voices. I wanted to know their experiences. I wanted them to be honest with themselves and each other and me and to come to understand themselves through the literature that we were reading. And so even back, this would have been ’95, ’96, ’97-ish, I was using portfolios, I was using creative presentation strategies, I had students tracking their own growth.

[00:05:39.790] – Jennifer

I think that helped me to stand apart from very early on in my career. I taught here in Denver also for about 11 years in an all girls high school. Again, very similar experiences. I know I have a lot of students, for example, who have said that my classroom was one of the safer places in school, one of the places where they knew they were seen for who they really were. But again, I found myself using all these strategies for my childhood. It felt very much very natural to have them have more voice to have them make more decisions. Every once in a while, it was a very special… it is still a very special school here in Denver, but every once in a while, I would hear students talk about a teacher who didn’t give them choices or who didn’t open up different pathways and avenues and possibilities, or who just had their own idea about how things needed to be done and just insisted on it, frankly, who took on the load of doing all the correcting and all the reviewing and all the feedback giving instead of leveraging the minds in the room and getting students to help each other.

[00:06:50.000] – Jennifer

I will say that I found it a little confounding initially as a teacher that there were so many teachers who kept such tight control over every single move. I guess understand it over time. As a leader, I definitely came to understand it. I left teaching in 2010. In 2017, actually, I’ve been consulting and writing and all of that for years. In 2017, I moved to Bogotá, Colombia, where I became a head of a school. That was a school that was trying to shift from a more traditional model, humanistic, but still more traditional model, toward a more project-based model. But in a country where the majority of what universities care about really are grades. It’s only within the last year or two that they’ve started opening up their minds to more than just grades and national exam scores and are looking at portfolios and considering other things. But it’s a system that’s very much an educational system that’s very much based on standardized checks and balances. To bring in the project based in that context was tricky. I think the biggest fear of teachers, and I see this everywhere in the world, Steve, is If I put them in charge, they’ll do less.

[00:08:04.910] – Jennifer

If I stay in charge, they’ll do more. And I can be assured of a certain level of quality if I force that level of quality. Again, I wouldn’t say a teacher would ever use the word force necessarily, but I think that’s what the mindset is. If I keep control over this, then great things will happen. If I let them make more decisions, then it’s going to be chaos, and they’re going to run loose, and nothing good is going to happen. And I don’t think that’s true. I think it’s actually the opposite. I think when we step back, and we have to scaffold the skills, we have to practice, we have to work on it, it’s not something that a third grader knows how to do instinctually on the first try. But when we take that step back and empower them to make more decisions and to be in charge of more of the elements of documentation and ideation and all of those things, I really do believe that we get more from them as opposed to less.

[00:08:58.220] – Steve

I discovered you through a video clip I found that you had done on student documentation. I’m wondering if you’d give listeners a definition of what you mean by student documentation.

[00:09:11.710] – Jennifer

Absolutely. Student-led documentation, and that video that you’re talking about is one that I did for what school could be, which is a wonderful organization I certainly recommend to your listeners with lots and lots of wonderful videos, student-led documentation is something we focus on in the sixth chapter of the Landscape Model of and it’s something that I’ve been teaching teachers how to do for decades already. The whole idea is that rather than assuming that the adult is the one who needs to do all evaluation and needs to see every single piece of homework and needs to see every single draft and all of that, student-led documentation is all about students being in charge of tracking their own learning. So this can include a wide variety of different elements. It can include things like students maintaining task logs for example, where they’re tracking within their given groups who’s doing what and what has gotten done and what still needs to get done. Those task logs can also be designed so that they set goals for the next day or the next work day, things like that, so that they’re really in charge of saying, Okay, what needs to get done?

[00:10:18.080] – Jennifer

What are the steps that need to be taken? Who’s in charge of what? They’re tracking it in a way that allows the teacher very easily to look and see what has gotten done, what hasn’t, who’s been responsible for what. Another element that I often recommend are things like agreements in the classroom. And agreements, of course, are a very valuable tool regardless. This is a replacement for what we used to refer to most of the time as rules in the classroom. Rules were normally imposed by the teacher. Here are my rules in my space. I even did this myself as a teacher for some reason, though my rules were really different from anybody else’s. But it was things like trust your instincts and things like that. But agreements are something that we come to with the students. We come together and make decisions about how we’re going to make sure that the work we’re doing is effective, that we’re effective as a community, as a classroom, that everyone is respected, not because the teacher said so, but because we came together and agreed that for this classroom to be a safe place for everyone to grow and learn and take risks, we need to function in a certain way, and we all agree that that’s true.

[00:11:29.590] – Jennifer

And students generally, when we ask the right questions, they have great answers about what a community needs to function. I’ve seen that at all ages. A kindergarten or a preschooler will say, we need to help each other. We need to be friends. We need to be kind. It’s not about age, their ability to intellectualize that. Lots of classrooms take it a step further, and they have students actually create contracts when they’re doing group work. Each time they’re in a new group, they would be reestablishing a contract together. Again, not just a list of things they have to agree to, but a list of questions they have to answer. How will we make sure that everyone’s listened to with respect? What will we do if that doesn’t happen? What are the steps that we need to take? What will we do if somebody is not doing their work? And what are the steps that we need to take if they are not doing it? Those kinds of questions elicit really high levels of metacognition for the students. They’re really incredible skill builders in terms of their autonomy. Perhaps most importantly, they take, again, a little bit of the work out of the hands of the teacher because, ideally, these contracts, the students have thought in advance as they were crafting these contracts about what their steps will be.

[00:12:44.130] – Jennifer

So the teacher doesn’t have to be involved from the moment something goes wrong. In fact, if the students come forward and say, oh, so and so is not doing their work, the response is, Well, what does your contract say? Have you taken your first step yet? And really put the onus back on them. It’s all of this. It’s also documentation. It’s in the sense of collecting evidence of my growth as a student. Portfolios are the big picture version of that. But even within a small experience or class or semester, students can be asked to track their growth, to collect their best evidence, to put that evidence into an effective order to show their growth, to explain their process as well as what they learned. Australian educator Guy Claxton talks about in his work about the power of teaching students to speak the language he calls “learnish,” which I love. I think that’s such a great way of framing metacognition. If everyone spoke learnish and could actually articulate, here’s what I’m good at, here’s what I’m still working on, here’s what I’m really not very good at yet, and I really need to put some more attention to that, and could be in charge of the kinds of decisions and steps that need to be taken, involved at the very least in a conversation with the teacher about what needs to come next, I really think it would make a huge, huge difference in terms of what they get out of education, but also their skills for adulthood.

[00:14:15.520] – Steve

I’m wondering if you could give me some examples of student documentation that are on a continuum. So a teacher who hasn’t been doing this and just starting out, what’s something they might be implementing? And then as they got further along, and then when you get to the highest complex level, what does that look like?

[00:14:36.740] – Jennifer

Yeah, absolutely. And I appreciate that question because I often leap to the highest level. So very valuable to slow down and say that. I think some of the first steps might be something like task logging when they’re doing group work, that they keep a log during every work session that they have where they are writing down and documenting what’s happening, what’s being discussed, who’s in in charge of what. Those kinds of things, I think, can be really valuable. That’s, of course, for students who write already. I think we can do a lot in terms of student-led ideation and the documentation of their ideas, even with a very very young, through pictures, through conversations. It’s not going to be done through writing. Maybe it’s a short video of each student expressing what it is that I’m working on, what it is that I want to get better at. I think the idea of peer reviews is another area where, and again, this doesn’t necessarily obviously tie to the term documentation, but it is about this idea of moving more of the work to the students themselves. When I would do peer reviews in class, in my English classes, students would be reading each other’s work, providing feedback, and I had documentation of the conversation because they were using some a format that I’d put together.

[00:15:56.630] – Jennifer

If I had thought about it or had the time, I would have even maybe had the students involved in putting together that form. What are the things that we should work on? Or designing the rubric with me. That would be ideal. But for somebody who’s starting out, maybe it’s as simple as we do a couple of rounds of feedback and revision through peer review and students document as they’re going. Another easy one is a journal. I know that I, as a student of writing and literature, of course, I always love journaling. Not every student loves it, but it’s one of the easiest ways to give them low-stakes writing practice. A journal shouldn’t be graded. It doesn’t even need to be read entirely by the teacher. In fact, in my classroom, one of my strategies, and this connects more to inclusion, but one of my strategies was always that students were invited to fold the pages when they ended up writing about something that got too personal. But that documentation, what I would do is always ask a question about the literature and a question the reading from the night before and a question that connected the reading to them personally.

[00:17:02.870] – Jennifer

Sometimes it would get too personal, and they would fold the page and know that they were safe to not share certain things if they didn’t want to. But I could look at a glance and I could analyze writing skills. By looking at it, I could see pattern errors that I needed to work on with them. I could see whether they were reading and comprehending what they were reading. They were documenting their journey through the literature simply by having them journal a couple of times a week for 15 or 20 in minutes. Those are just a few examples, simple approaches.

[00:17:35.310] – Steve

I have to tell you a thought that you’re triggering for me in some writing that I’ve been doing. I’m looking at teacher autonomy I’ve been using the phrase, what can administrators and school leaders do to replace supervision with accountability? What’s the difference between between responsibility and accountability. As I’m listening to you, that accountable piece is ringing for me. The more the students designed in the creation of the process of the tracking of the rubric, the more likely the student is to be holding him or herself accountable to it rather than the teacher implementing it more from that supervisory evaluative role.

[00:18:31.790] – Jennifer

Absolutely, Steve. I think that’s a really important piece to all of this. I think it really is what shifts education from an external pressure to an internal desire. Because students, when they’re involved in that way, they’re owning their own experience. It’s not even about our giving them ownership, because that suggests that we have all the power and we hand a little bit to them when we feel like it. It’s more like they are truly in every regard, learners, and this is their journey. And so I think it’s certainly even in context where grades are really important, where there’s a culture of you’ve got to have the best grades all the time, which happens in a lot of schools, or that culture of, oh, my gosh, I’m always failing at everything, which is the other end of that spectrum. I think these kinds of strategies can really help to move the reason why we’re doing what we’re doing away from the teacher. The teacher is going to give me an F, or the teacher is going to give me an A, or my parents are going to give me an iPad for Christmas if I get A’s, or whatever that external motivator is, it moves it to the child.

[00:19:42.870] – Jennifer

Again, obviously, this is going to look different with a three-year-old than it looks with an 18-year-old, but I believe strongly that we can do it with all of them. As we look at the other end of that continuum, Steve, as you were requesting, I think we get students more and more and more involved in making decisions. I mentioned having them involved in designing a rubric, and I offer some strategies for how to do that in the landscape model. It includes things like students being able to make decisions about due dates, even for the things that are due in class. I ran an advanced creative writing class my last semester in the classroom, high school English or creative writing, but advanced creative writing. I had 18 extraordinary young writers in that space. What I did was I put together a calendar that was clipped. Today, I would do it digitally, but I had it clipped to the board. Basically, what I told the students was, okay, each of you is responsible at some point for doing a presentation on a writer none of us have heard of before, or most of us haven’t heard of before, who you love, and tell us about their work and teach us and get us excited about this writer.

[00:21:05.220] – Jennifer

Each of you needs to make sure that you bring a piece to workshop, a piece of your own to be workshoped by the class to receive feedback. I’m going to ask you to do each of those things once a quarter, twice a quarter. I don’t remember the details anymore. Then I put the calendar up. All I did was I identified workshop day and presentation days on the calendar. Then I told the students we shouldn’t do more than three per day. Then they would be the ones to go sign up. This might sound like a really small thing, but it actually was massive for them, especially for the kids who were doing theater, for the kids who were doing music for the kids who had athletics for three hours after class and games on the weekends. They could make decisions about when things were due based on that. I saw it happening. I saw them going up with their agendas in their hands, looking at my calendar, looking at theirs, and figuring out what was realistic. That’s true accountability in the adult sense of the word. Those are skills that they’ll be able to carry now in terms of time management that they can use throughout their lives.

[00:22:15.540] – Jennifer

They got it through something as simple as actually being the ones to decide when they were going to go. I think that’s a really powerful way of shifting our thinking about education.

[00:22:27.570] – Steve

As I’m listening through these pieces, I’m guessing somebody working in a school where this isn’t common practice and they begin to make their own classroom movement in this direction is is going to run into some resistance. I’m wondering if you just talk a little bit about maybe some strategies they need to keep in mind or some guidance to minimize that resistance so they don’t get shut down and get enough practice to prove themselves.

[00:23:04.100] – Jennifer

Right. Absolutely. Well, I think part of it is about communicating what you’re trying to do effectively. So it may be that you need to send a message home to parents and say, Listen, I’m going to be trying a strategy that I’ve read about this. I know that it’s got good science behind it. I know that there are teachers out there who have been able to make this work really powerfully. I want to see whether it can work for me. And so when you want updates on how your kiddo is doing ask them and let me know how they’re doing in terms of how they’re reporting back. So the parents are actually involved as opposed to surprised by it, because any parent, of course, whose child comes home and misinterprets what’s going on, “oh, we’re just doing our own thing now, and we’re in charge of everything,” is going to freak out, and understandably so. So I think involving the parents in that way, helping the parents figure out the difference between doing for them and coaching, so that when your child comes home and says, “nobody will collaborate with in my group. Nobody will listen to me in my group.”

[00:24:01.800] – Jennifer

You ask more interrogatory questions and find out more about what’s going on, as opposed to assuming everybody in this group is ignoring my child. 90% of the time when a student has reported that at home, it’s actually been them who’s been over-controlling the group. And they’re not listening because they’re tired of the fact that the student is constantly trying to control everyone else. So these are the things that we have to interrogate to understand better. And I think that’s an important piece. The other piece, I would say, I really do think that the agreements are probably the core of all of this. I even really encourage that at the beginning of the year that you do this as a class, that you have the students actually do whatever display you’re going to have in the classroom in their own handwriting, and when they’re younger, their own artwork to represent this is what respect looks like. That’s a really abstract concept, obviously. You’re going to get all sorts of funky things, but that’s cool. I I think it’s really powerful to walk into a room and not see a list of rules either from a store, those premade things, or a list of rules entirely in the handwriting of the teacher.

[00:25:12.390] – Jennifer

Again, I think it is more internalized when you see that students have actually been involved, not just in establishing what the agreements are going to be, but also in creating displays for the classroom with those agreements. I think those are some really great ways to help other people understand it then, too. So that when somebody walks into the classroom feeling resistant, I’m not talking about student resistance. Trust me, when I say students are not going to be resistant to having more of what they perceive to be freedom to make decisions, they’re going to love it. But if my boss walks in and sees the agreements are up, they’re just done differently, that opens an opportunity for me to have a conversation with my boss about why I’m doing it this way and the impact that I’m seeing. And I always encourage other teachers, leaders, parents to ask students, not the teacher, how is this working for you? How is this different? What do you like about it? What’s challenging about it? And find out that way, too.

[00:26:15.880] – Steve

Well, Jennifer, I appreciate the time you’ve given us and the thoughts and ideas. I’m wondering if you’d fill listeners in on a way that they might follow up with you with questions or to find out more about the work doing and the books that you’ve published.

[00:26:33.100] – Jennifer

Absolutely. I have a website which is Principled Learning Strategies. Principled as in to have principles, not to be a principle, just for the spelling there. Never occurred to me that that was a bad idea when I knew the company. But principledlearning.org is the website. All of my non-copyright writing is there. All of my blogs are there, translated into Spanish and French as well. Then anything that I’ve published online is there linked as well. Certainly, as somebody who studied writing, I love that my first calling card is always the writing that I’ve done from my perspective. Although these podcasts are super fun, too, of course. I love getting chances to talk about the ideas as well. But I think my writing is where I’ve put a lot of my focus in terms of leaving a legacy of work. On that website, you’ll find a for the Landscape Model of Learning, and there are links to buy it, and you’ll see reviews and testimonials and things like that. Same thing is true for the Global Education Guidebook, which was my first book in 2017. And once my third book is finished, you’ll see that on there as well.

[00:27:47.840] – Jennifer

There’s a contact form. There’s information about how to reach out to me. I certainly welcome the conversations, and I particularly welcome conversations with schools, school leaders that are really looking to shift some of the ways they do things in their communities. Again, with that encouragement that I gave at the beginning, that when we step back, students actually really do step up, and that that sense of trust in learners is actually what drives the best education that we can ever imagine and hope for. And so part of my work is about helping teachers know how to do it. But a lot of my work is about, even more probably, is about that mindset shift. What does it look like to really trust your learners, even when you know that they’re going to make mistakes, even when you know they’re going to make some bad decisions along the way because they’re kids? What does it look like to trust them and trust them to learn from their mistakes as much as their successes? I think that’s the most exciting and motivating part of education for me.

[00:28:46.620] – Steve

Well, it’s been a pleasure. Let me know when that third book gets published, and we’ll have you back on the podcast.

[00:28:55.650] – Jennifer

You got it.

[00:28:56.790] – Steve

In the meantime, I’ll be sure to put the link to your website in the lead-in. In case people missed it while they’re listening, they’ll be able to go back and find it there.

[00:29:07.650] – Jennifer

Excellent. Thank you so much, Steve.

[00:29:09.720] – Steve

Appreciate it. Bye-bye.

[00:29:10.770] – Jennifer

Bye.

[00:29:14.050] – Steve [Outro]

Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn at Steve Barkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.

Students can gain many benefits from cross-grade mentoring and peer-pal opportunities in academic, social emotional, and life skills success. Research shows such programs can generate a school environment that is more inclusive and supportive. Hear the results reported by educators at both the elementary and secondary levels.

Watch the video, “How to Elevate Your Buddy Program” here.

Read the article, “This High School Matches Freshmen With Senior Mentors. They All Get Course Credit” here.

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

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.300] – Steve [Intro]

Hello and welcome to the teacher edition of Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud. The complexity of teaching is both challenging and rewarding, and my curiosity is piqued whenever I explore with teachers, the multiple pathways for facilitating student engagement in the exciting world of learning. This podcast looks to serve teachers as they motivate and support their learners. Thanks for listening. I’m delighted that you’re here.

 

[00:00:32.680] – Steve

Creating cross grade partnering opportunities for students. I was recently coaching and consulting with a small K-8 school, exploring learning opportunities that would impact student success in academic, social, emotional, and life skills. One of the options that we examined was looking at ways that students from upper grades could take on tutoring and mentoring roles with younger students. For example, we considered pairing grade eight with four, seven with three, six with two, and five with one. I’ve always been a promoter of the benefits that can be achieved by creating these experiences. Most of the learning that students engage in outside of school is in a multi age setting. In areas like athletics and scouting, choirs and bands.

 

[00:01:35.950] – Steve

Much can be gained by both the younger and the older student in these opportunities. Here’s the list of benefits I was able to find as I combed through some of the research. In the areas of academics, one benefit is a diverse perspective. Cross-age peer tutoring programs provide students to learn different perspectives that come from the different grade levels collaborating. They each can bring something unique to the learning opportunity. For example, the younger student may offer a fresh perspective or an innovative solution, while an older peer can provide a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Cross-age tutoring can provide reinforcement of skills. When older students tutor their younger peers, they revisit and reteach foundational concepts which can help them retain and apply that knowledge effectively. Cross-age tutoring can also offer individualized support. Tutors can adapt their teaching to cater to the specific needs and learning styles of the student they’re working with. The personalized approach can be particularly beneficial for students who are struggling. Studies have shown that peer tutoring, especially in cross-age settings, can lead to significant improvements in academic performance.

 

[00:03:14.730] – Steve

Students being tutored typically experience better understanding of the subject matter. They tend to have an increased motivation to learn, which actually has resulted in higher test scores. Additionally, the tutors benefit from experience as well as the teaching reinforces their own knowledge and understanding of the material. Cross-age tutoring has also shown to enhance communication skills. As tutors, students must explain more complex concepts in a way that the younger peer can grasp them. This process fosters clarity and adaptability in their communication. For the student being tutored, they frequently learned to ask questions and seek clarification, improving their active listening and comprehension abilities. This is another set of benefits that are found in the area of social-emotional, and life skills. These cross-age programs empower students to take on leadership roles and responsibilities. Older students, as tutors, are entrusted with guiding their younger peers, which promotes a sense of responsibility and accountability. Interacting with students from different grade levels can foster empathy and compassion. Older students often develop a greater understanding of the challenges faced by their younger peers, leading to a more compassionate outlook.

 

[00:04:48.730] – Steve

These programs can promote a sense of belonging and support within the school community. Students, both as tutors and two tutees, form meaningful connections with peers from various grade levels, which can combat feelings of isolation or alienation. This sense of belonging contributes to a positive school environment and enhances students well-being overall. Confidence and self esteem can be increased from these partnerships. Tutors gain confidence in their abilities to teach and help others. While the tutees experience increased self esteem as they gain new concepts and improve and enhance their learning. These improvements in self confidence can have a lasting impact on students academic as well as personal lives. These cross age match ups can also provide opportunities for practicing problem solving and conflict resolution. Collaborating with peers from different grade levels can expose students to various perspectives and ideas, which can lead to constructive discussions and problem solving. They can learn to navigate differences in opinion and resolve conflicts peacefully. These conflicts resolution skills are valuable life skills, aiding students in their personal relationships and even in future professional endeavors. I came across a program at the secondary level which reinforces this same list of benefits.

 

[00:06:31.340] – Steve

Cumberland Regional High School in Bridgeton, New Jersey, has a program that’s over a decade old that matches senior mentors with incoming high school freshmen. The freshmen and the senior mentors are enrolled in a class that meets for 80 minutes each day during the first semester. Freshmen get credits as a general course. For seniors, it’s an honors elective course. The overall goal is for seniors to provide guidance to their younger peers about day to day stressors and challenges, but also to teach incoming freshmen important academic skills, including study habits, organization, time management, goal setting, conflict resolution, interview preparation, and note taking. The freshmen complete projects throughout the semester. They use a college and career readiness program, which analyzes their skills and interest and possibilities for future careers. Students do a research project about potential careers, and they present their findings to the class. The senior mentors are graded based on weekly written reflections, in which they reflect on their work and progress with their freshmen. They also receive grades from their teacher who oversees the class based on projects they helped a freshmen complete one on one counseling skills during the weekly meetings with freshmen and the final exam.

 

[00:08:17.130] – Steve

Research would certainly support schools looking at such crossed-grade mentoring opportunities. The freshman year is often the most challenging socially and academically for students. The highest course failure rates generally occur in grade nine, and students who fail freshman year are at best, about half as likely to graduate with their peers who post better grade point averages. I like this quote from the high school principal: “One of the things that we tell our senior mentors is that the class is not academically rigorous, but it is emotionally rigorous because you’re not just responsible for yourself. You’re responsible for 2 or 3 other freshmen, and now their success means something to you. And them not doing well means something to you.” Wow. I find that really powerful to give high school students the opportunity to step into that level of responsibility and understanding about being of service to others. I’ll place the link to the article about that program in the lead-in to this podcast, as well as another link to an Edutopia blog that provides some suggestions for starting an elementary buddy program.

 

[00:09:59.400] – Steve

Several years back, I had the opportunity to work with a K-5 school that implemented Peer Pals. Here’s some of the comments that teachers shared with me after only 12 weeks of implementation of the program. A fourth grade teacher, wrote: “after the student’s first few Peer Pal meetings, I have been amazed with the results. All of my doubts have been erased. Low confidence students have found a leadership role as they work with their first grade peers, these students transform into confident mentors. As I walk through the classroom at our last meeting, I heard many fourth graders talk in a tone that I hadn’t heard before. A tone of self-assurance and fearlessness. They are proud of their relationships with their peer pals, and they take initiative to plan activities for their pals.” A first grade teacher wrote: “schoolwide relationships have strengthened. I have witnessed the fourth graders begin to step out of their fourth grade bubbles and take initiative to form relationships with students in younger grades. Today, as my students were waiting in the hallway to switch to their next class, our Peer pal first graders walked by and as they passed, huge smiles appeared on everyone’s faces.

 

[00:11:19.500] – Steve

Students were high fiving and giving fist bumps left and right. The strengthening of student relationships across the school is remarkable.” Lastly, another teacher at the school has noted: “Peer Pals has helped our excelling students as well as our struggling, less confident students. Our students that excel in academics have been able to use their skills to teach their younger pals. Our students who are struggling or who are less confident in their academics, have gotten a boost of confidence through being able to help their younger pal. The relationships that are forming through the program are solid and extremely beneficial to both age groups. I have heard students ask, ‘can I go and check on my peer pal to make sure they’re having a great day?’ Or, ‘can I check on my peer pal on their math facts?’ Students are truly seeing the rewards of helping others and building others up.” These peer pals and mentoring programs offer a great opportunity for a school wide program, bringing staff together to make these opportunities happen.

 

[00:12:42.270] – Steve

But if your school isn’t ready, I think individual teachers can reach out with just one colleague and generate an opportunity for your students to experience the many benefits that can come from stepping into these peer mentoring relationships. Give it a try. I’d love to hear your thinking about it. You can always reach me at barkleypd.com. Thanks for listening.

 

[00:13:18.820] – Steve [Outro]

Thanks for listening in, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter @stevebarkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.

 

Sparks are skills, talents, or interests that one finds deeply motivating. Students who get joy and energy from using their sparks and learn valuable life skills from their sparks are more likely to do well in school, be more engaged, and be more hopeful about the future. Identify a process that you can use to engage your students in sharing and building upon their sparks.

Read the article, “Finding the Student Spark: Missed Opportunities in School Engagement” here.
Read the article, “Anchor Activity: Identifying Sparks” here.
Watch Peter Benson’s Ted Talk here.

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