Schools aren’t experienced through mission statements or curriculum guides. They’re experienced one interaction at a time.

• What are students experiencing?
• What are teachers experiencing?
• How do we know?

Coaches can help teachers and leaders gather evidence about experiences that often go unnoticed because they have become routine – or even unconscious.

Watch Marcela Andreas Diaz Revultas’ video here.

Find Tim Montalvo’s blog here.

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

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.340] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.

[00:00:29.820] – Steve
3 questions that can change your school. As schools open their doors this year, we should all be asking 3 important questions. The first 2 are: What are students experiencing? And just as importantly: What are teachers experiencing? Schools aren’t experienced through mission statements or curriculum guides.

[00:01:01.040] – Steve
They’re experienced one interaction at a time. Tim Montavlo, an assistant principal at Fox Lane Middle School in Bedford, New York, and an adjunct professor at Iona University and the College of Westchester, suggested in a blog that it’s our interactions with students that shape their sense of belonging their learning, and their success beyond any programs that we implement. While programs and structures can help, students do not experience school as a framework. They experience it as a series of moments. So what are students experiencing?

[00:01:52.310] – Steve
Well, they experience the greeting at a classroom door. They experience how adults respond when they make mistakes. They experience whether effort is noticed, whether questions are welcomed, and whether they are treated as learners or as problems to be managed. As I reflected on Tim’s message, I found myself asking the second question: What are teachers experiencing? The importance of that question was reinforced for me on a video clip by Principal, Marcela Andreas-Díaz Revueltas, who stated that as school leaders, your best ability is your availability over time.

[00:02:42.510] – Steve
She reasoned that trust isn’t built through grand gestures, but through small, consistent, day-to-day actions. Just as students don’t experience school through programs, teachers don’t experience leadership through mission statements, improvement plans, or opening day speeches. They experience leadership as a series of moments. They experience whether their principal is available when they need to think through a challenge. They experience whether a coach listens before offering suggestions.

[00:03:22.860] – Steve
They experience whether questions are welcomed or viewed as resistance. They experience whether mistakes become opportunities for learning or occasions for judgment. They experience whether their professionalism is trusted, whether their efforts are noticed, and whether they leave conversations with greater confidence or greater uncertainty.

[00:03:51.140] – Steve
Principal Diaz created a strategy to increase her availability. She calls it Principal on Wheels. With her laptop on a rolling cart, she positions herself in well-traveled hallways where teachers and students find easier access to her for those short conversations that are unlikely to occur when they require a trip to the principal’s office. She suggests that the key is for staff to feel seen and listened to. Staff want to be asked about their families.

[00:04:30.870] – Steve
They want leaders to know when they’re struggling, and they want to celebrate with them when they are successful. You’ll find the links to Tim and Marcella’s work in this podcast lead-in. The symmetry here strikes me. Students experience teachers. Teachers experience leaders and coaches.

[00:04:55.910] – Steve
And those experiences shape beliefs. And beliefs shape behaviors. Students who consistently experience trust, challenge, and belonging are more likely to engage deeply in learning. Teachers who consistently experience trust, support, and professional respect are more likely to create those same conditions for their students. We began with two questions: What are students experiencing?

[00:05:31.780] – Steve
And what are teachers experiencing? Let’s add a third question: How do we know? This may be a very valuable place for instructional coaches to contribute. Coaches can help teachers and leaders gather evidence about experiences that often go unnoticed because they’ve become routine or even unconscious. But there’s an important condition here.

[00:06:04.130] – Steve
Feedback is most powerful when it has been invited. When observations are requested, they are more likely to generate curiosity and reflection. When they are unsolicited, they may generate defensiveness and reduce future opportunities for coaching. What might a conversation with the teacher sound like that sets the stage for the collection of observations and reflections? Consider this conversation.

[00:06:41.520] – Steve
Teacher: I’ve been thinking about your question, “What are students experiencing?” Most of my class seems authentically engaged, but there are 3 students I’m wondering about. They are all reading below grade level, and I’m not sure what school feels like for them. Coach: tell me about them. Teacher: they participate when we’re doing hands-on activities in small groups, but when the activities begin to need reading and writing, they become much, much quieter. I’m wondering if they’re beginning to think at those times, this classroom isn’t really for someone like me.

[00:07:29.160] – Steve
Coach: That’s an important question. If we wanted to understand their experience better, what might we look for?

[00:07:38.880] – Steve
Teacher: I’d like to know whether they’re finding ways to participate that I’m perhaps overlooking. Do they volunteer less? Do they wait for others to answer? Are they avoiding taking risk? Are there other moments when they actually seem confident?

[00:08:04.490] – Steve
Coach: I could observe with my focus on those 3 students and the experiences they’re having during a lesson. Maybe I’d create a chart with a column for each student and capture as much as I can of their words, actions, and interactions. Teacher: Exactly. I don’t just want to know if they’re completing their work.

[00:08:29.900] – Steve
I want to understand whether they feel they belong as learners in our classroom. Coach: Well, afterwards, you could add my observations to your own. My notes may help you notice things that are difficult to see while you’re teaching. Then we can explore what those combined observations might be telling us about those students’ experiences. One of the things I find especially valuable about this type of coaching conversation is that the teacher doesn’t wait until after the lesson to extend her reflections.

[00:09:10.980] – Steve
The questions that the teachers generated actually guide their own noticing while they’re teaching. The coach brings another set of eyes and ears, but the teacher is already observing, wondering, and collecting her own evidence. I believe that is empowering. It strengthens teachers’ sense of professionalism because they’re leading the inquiry into their own practice rather rather than receiving someone else’s conclusions.

[00:09:45.420] – Steve
Let’s look at what a conversation might sound like if a principal reached out to a coach to gain feedback to help answer the question, “What are teachers experiencing?” When principals seek coaching from instructional coaches, they communicate that coaching is not something done to teachers. It’s a way that everyone in the organization learns. They also strengthen the coaching culture by modeling the coachability that they hope to see in staff. Principal: I’ve been thinking about your question, what are teachers experiencing? I’d like to understand that better.

[00:10:31.800] – Steve
It has me pondering. I know what I hope they’re experiencing. I just don’t know if they are. Coach: Tell me more. Principal: I want teachers to experience me as available and approachable.

[00:10:49.880] – Steve
I want them to feel comfortable asking for help, sharing ideas, telling me when they’re struggling. I’d like my evaluator role to be the least important part of how they experience my leadership. I’d rather they see me as a coach and a cheerleader for their success.

[00:11:14.070] – Steve
Coach: If we wanted to understand their experience better, what might we look for?

[00:11:21.090] – Steve
Principal: I’m wondering if during the next few weeks you could be extra observant for me. As you’re working with teachers in meetings and classrooms around the building, could you notice experiences that may be invisible to me because I’m part of them? Do teachers feel they can approach me with questions? Are they seeking me out when I enter a classroom or a hallway? What seems to happen?

[00:11:53.410] – Steve
Is it possible that I appear rushed? Do teachers seem uncomfortable sharing concerns or asking for support? Are there moments when I unintentionally communicate something different from what I intend?

[00:12:12.160] – Steve
Coach: So you’d like me to pay attention to what I see you saying and doing, what I observe teachers saying and doing in response, and comments I hear from teachers throughout the week that you wouldn’t normally have an opportunity to hear. Principal: Exactly. Then afterwards, I’ll add your observations to my reflections. Your observations should help me better understand what teachers are experiencing and perhaps raise new questions for me. Coach: I’m thinking of organizing my observations into 3 categories: What I observed you saying and doing, what I heard and observed from staff at that time, and then comments that I hear from teachers throughout the week that you wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to hear.

[00:13:11.290] – Steve
Principal: That sounds right on. Thank you. Coach: One thing I’d want to be careful about is protecting teachers’ confidentiality. Principal: Absolutely. I’m not looking for you to report on teachers.

[00:13:29.140] – Steve
I’m asking you to help me understand the experience teachers are having in our school. If I want teachers to be open to feedback and reflection, I need to model that myself. Notice what happened in both these coaching conversations. Neither the teacher nor the principal asked the coach to evaluate effectiveness or recommend solutions. Instead, they invited the coach to help them understand other people’s experiences.

[00:14:05.510] – Steve
In one conversation, it was the experience of 3 students. In the other, it was the experience of the staff. In both cases, the coach’s role was to gather observations that the teacher or principal could combine with their own observations and reflections. The goal wasn’t to reach conclusions. The goal was to generate better questions, deeper reflection, and a clear understanding of the experiences that shape the learning and the culture of the classroom and the school.

[00:14:45.570] – Steve
As you begin this school year, I encourage you to carry these three questions with you: What are students experiencing? What are teachers experiencing? And how do we know?

[00:15:00.550] – Steve
When we become intentional about answering those questions, we move beyond assumptions, we begin creating schools where the experiences we hope people are having become the experiences they actually have. Too often, we don’t intentionally create the right experiences. We unintentionally create some experiences. Coaching can help to make the invisible visible. Because in the end, schools aren’t remembered by the programs they adopted.

[00:15:44.010] – Steve
They’re remembered by how people experience them. Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear how you are experiencing barkleypd.com, blogs and podcasts. Drop me a note.

[00:16:04.360] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn @SteveBarkley or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.

(Guest blog, Timothy Montalvo)

Tim Montalvo is an assistant principal at Fox Lane Middle School in Bedford, New York, and an adjunct professor at Iona University and The College of Westchester. A former social studies teacher and teacher leader, Tim’s work centers on middle-level education, belonging, student voice, literacy, inclusive practice, and Tier 1 systems that support the whole child. In hos blog, Tim provides an outstanding exploration for school leadership teams and staff to explore as they plan for kicking -off a new school year.

What Are Your Students Experiencing? The Interactions That Shape Belonging, Learning, and Success.

A student walks into class a few minutes late.

The lesson has already started. A few students turn toward the door. The teacher looks up and says, “Glad you’re here. Grab what you need and join us.”

The student nods, picks up the handout, and settles into his seat.

In another classroom, the same student enters a few minutes late. The teacher pauses and says, “Late again?”

A few students look over. The student shrugs, gives a half-smile, and walks more slowly to his seat.

Both adults may care deeply about the student. Both may be managing a real pattern of lateness. Both may believe they are holding the student accountable.

But for the student, the experiences are not the same.

One interaction redirects him back into the learning environment. The other risks making his mistake part of his identity.

What if Tier 1 support isn’t primarily about what we add, but about what we notice, name, and protect?

That question required us to rethink how we defined intervention.

Instead of viewing Tier 1 as a set of universal programs delivered to students, we began to see it as the daily relational environment students move through—one shaped largely by micro-interactions between adults and students.

When educators hear the phrase Tier 1 support, they often think about systems. They think about advisory periods, behavior expectations, social-emotional learning programs, intervention blocks, and schoolwide initiatives. These structures matter. Effective schools need them.

But students do not experience school as a framework.

They experience it as a series of moments.

They experience the greeting at the classroom door. They experience how adults respond when they make mistakes. They experience whether effort is noticed, whether questions are welcomed, and whether they are treated as learners or as problems to be managed.

The more we reflected on our own practice, the more we realized that some of the most powerful Tier 1 supports were not things we were adding to students’ schedules. They were experiences embedded throughout the school day.

This shift changed the questions we asked.

Instead of asking only, What programs do we need? we began asking, What are students experiencing?

Do they feel like they belong?

Do they understand what is expected?

Can they access the learning?

Do the adults around them respond consistently?

Those questions eventually led us to a simple realization: effective Tier 1 environments communicate four messages to students every day.

You belong here.

We will help you understand what is expected.

We will make learning accessible.

The adults around you will respond consistently.

When those messages are present, students are more likely to engage, persist, take risks, and recover from mistakes. When they are absent, schools often find themselves searching for interventions to address problems that may have begun as gaps in the universal experience.

So what does that look like in practice?

Protect Dignity While Maintaining Accountability

One of the most common misconceptions about belonging is that it requires lowering expectations.

It does not.

Students need accountability. They need boundaries. They need adults willing to hold them to high standards.

But accountability and belonging are not competing priorities.

Consider a student who calls out during a lesson.

One response might be:

“You always do this.”

Another might be:

“That’s not meeting our expectation right now. Let’s try again.”

Both responses address the behavior. Only one separates the student from the mistake.

Students are far more likely to respond positively to correction when they trust that the adult delivering it still sees them as capable, valued members of the community.

A student can be wrong without becoming “the problem.”

That distinction matters.

Narrate Growth, Not Just Performance

Many students receive feedback only when something is wrong or when they achieve something exceptional.

As a result, they often come to view success as something fixed rather than something they build.

One of the simplest shifts educators can make is to notice and name productive learning behaviors.

Instead of saying:

“Good job.”

Try:

“I noticed you stayed with that problem even when it got difficult.”

Or:

“You asked for help when you got stuck. That’s what successful learners do.”

These comments may seem small, but they help students develop an identity rooted in growth and persistence.

Over time, students begin to see themselves differently.

Not simply as students who succeed or fail.

But as learners who can improve.

Create Predictability Before Intervention

When schools discuss student support, conversations often focus on what happens after a student struggles.

A more useful question may be:

How predictable is the experience before they struggle?

Do students know what success looks like?

Do they know what to do when they need help?

Are expectations consistent from classroom to classroom?

Are routines clear?

Many challenges that eventually require Tier 2 or Tier 3 interventions begin as Tier 1 clarity issues.

Students cannot consistently meet expectations they do not understand.

Predictability creates psychological safety. It reduces unnecessary friction and allows students to focus more energy on learning.

The goal is not rigidity.

The goal is creating an environment where students know what to expect and where to find support.

The Work Hiding in Plain Sight

None of these practices require a new initiative.

None require additional funding.

None appear particularly dramatic in isolation.

Yet collectively, they shape the culture students experience every day.

They influence whether students feel seen.

Whether they trust adults.

Whether they take academic risks.

Whether they believe they belong.

That is why I have come to believe that some of the most important Tier 1 work happens in places we often overlook—not in programs, but in interactions.

Not in the large events we plan, but in the moments between them.

The most powerful Tier 1 interventions may not always be the ones we purchase, schedule, or implement.

They may be the ones we protect.

Every day, students are asking a silent question:

Do I belong here?

The answer is rarely delivered through a curriculum guide or intervention plan.

It is communicated through hundreds of interactions that tell students who they are in our classrooms, hallways, and schools.

The margins, it turns out, are where belonging is built.

Thanks Tim. You can connect with Tim at: tmontalvo5119@bcsdny.org

During a recent podcast conversation with Mitch Weisburgh, the author of “Mindshifting: Stop Your Brain from Sabotaging Your Happiness and Success,”, I found myself connecting his ideas to a challenge instructional coaches and school leaders frequently encounter. At times, teachers come to a coach asking, “What can I do?” while simultaneously believing there is little they can do. They have already concluded that the situation is unlikely to change, that the causes are beyond their control, or that there simply isn’t a workable solution. Before they can consider new strategies or a different approach, they frequently need to rethink how they are understanding the challenge.

• Students aren’t engaged.
• A lesson didn’t go as planned.
• A new instructional strategy isn’t producing the desired results.
• PLC members are not collaborating

Weisburgh described mindshifting as recognizing when our thinking has become trapped in habitual patterns, assumptions, or automatic reactions that limit our options. Rather than immediately searching for an answer, mindshifting invites us to step back, examine the lens through which we are viewing the situation, and consider alternative perspectives. When the lens changes, new possibilities often emerge.

As coaches, we frequently recognize possible next steps because our experience has provided us with ideas, strategies, and examples that might help. The temptation is to move quickly toward offering a solution to the problem. But our coaching experience has reinforced an important coaching adage: go slow to go fast. The quality of coaching is often determined less by the coach’s knowledge of how to solve a teacher’s problem and more by the coach’s ability to generate reflection that leads to possibilities.

Effective coaching questions slow down thinking. They create space between an automatic conclusion and a thoughtful examination of what might actually be occurring.

Consider a teacher who states, “My students just aren’t engaged.” A coach offering strategies to increase engagement is assuming that the teacher’s diagnosis is accurate and complete. If it isn’t, the teacher is ill-prepared to effectively assess a coach’s suggestion.

A coach seeking to promote a mindshift might instead ask:

What are students doing that leads you to conclude they are disengaged?

Are all students demonstrating the same behaviors?

When during the lesson did you notice the greatest engagement?

What might students say was happening for them during that time?

What else might explain what you observed?

Notice that none of these questions provide a solution. Instead, they encourage the teacher to examine assumptions, consider additional evidence, and explore alternative interpretations. That shift in perspective is what opens the door to new possibilities.

The conversation might sound something like this. The coach does not begin by offering engagement strategies. The coach first helps the teacher examine the assumptions embedded in the statement, “My students just aren’t engaged.”

Coach: What are you seeing that leads you to describe students as not engaged?

Teacher: Many aren’t participating. When I ask questions, only a few students offer to respond.

Coach: Are all students demonstrating the same behaviors?

Teacher: No. There are always a handful who participate, but more of the class doesn’t.

Coach: Tell me about the students who are participating. What are they doing?

Teacher: They’re answering questions, talking with their partners, and volunteering ideas.

Coach: During the lesson, was there a point when more students seemed involved?

Teacher: When students were discussing examples with partners, there was more energy in the room.

Coach: What was different about that part of the lesson?

Teacher: They were doing the talking instead of listening to me explain.

Coach: If I asked students what was happening for them during that portion of the lesson, what might they say?

Teacher: They’d probably say they had something to figure out and someone to talk with about it.

Coach: What do you make of that?

Teacher: It could be that they’re less engaged during the parts of the lesson when I’m doing most of the talking. They need the information, but maybe I’ve been thinking too narrowly about how they get it. I’m wondering how I could involve them more while they’re learning it.

Coach: How does that shift the question you’re trying to answer?

Teacher: I’m wondering how I might redesign parts of the lesson so students are doing more of the thinking and processing.

Coach: What possibilities come to mind?

Teacher: I could shorten my explanations and have students discuss key ideas with a partner before moving on. I might also have students generate examples rather than providing them myself.

Coach: Both of those ideas seem connected to what you noticed about students being more engaged when they had something to figure out together. I wonder what might happen if students encountered an example first and worked in pairs to identify patterns before your explanation.

Teacher: That could be interesting. They’d be doing some of the thinking before I introduced the concept.

Coach: Is that a possibility worth testing? What would you want to watch for if you tried it?

Teacher: I’d want to see whether more students participate in the discussion and whether they ask different kinds of questions during the explanation.

At this point, the coach is no longer helping the teacher reframe the challenge. The coach has joined the teacher in exploring possibilities. The possibilities emerge from the teacher’s observations and thinking rather than from the coach’s expertise. The conversation has shifted from solving a problem to designing an experiment.

Notice the mindshift that occurred. The teacher began with the conclusion, “My students just aren’t engaged.” Through reflection, that conclusion became a new question: “How might I redesign parts of the lesson, so students are doing more of the thinking and processing?”

When conclusions become questions, possibilities emerge.

By slowing down, examining assumptions, and creating space for reflection, coaches help teachers move beyond habitual thinking and discover new questions worth exploring. Those mindshifts often become the starting point for meaningful learning and change.

Michael Hernandez, the author of, “Storytelling With Purpose: Digital Projects to Ignite Student Curiosity” and “The Uncheatable Assessment Course,” shares insights on authentic learning. How can we create learning tasks and assessments that encourage and strengthen students’ curiosity – supporting them in becoming engaged and inquisitive scholars and citizens.

Read Michael’s article, When Assignments Invite Wonder here.

Find his book, “Storytelling With Purpose: Digital Projects to Ignite Student Curiosity” here.

Find the Uncheatable Assessments Course here.

Contact Michael: LinkedIn | Instagram | michael@storytelling-with-purpose.com

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

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.340] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.

[00:00:29.800] – Steve
Learning With Wow, Awe, and Wonder. Those who follow this podcast and my blogs know that the connections around experiencing wow, awe, and wonder leading to or leading from learning are areas that I return to frequently. Thus, when seeing a blog titled, “When Assignments Invite Wonder,” I had to reach out to its author, Michael Hernandez, and invite him to join the podcast. Michael has been a teacher of journalism and film production where he embraced the work of helping young people find their voice to tell stories that make a difference. Today, he is an international speaker, author, and curriculum designer who helps individuals and organizations discover and share authentic stories that matter. Michael is the author of, “Storytelling with Purpose: Digital Projects to Ignite Student Curiosity” and is currently offering an online cohort course, “Uncheatable Assessments.”

[00:01:39.720] – Steve
I really enjoyed our get acquainted call, and I’m looking forward to our conversation today. Welcome, Michael.

[00:01:48.200] – Michael
Hey, thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.

[00:01:50.690] – Steve
You bet. So for starters, you’ve got an interesting background, so how would you describe your earlier and later teaching experiences, impacting the work that you’re doing today?

[00:02:06.280] – Michael
Yeah, well, I was a media arts teacher in high school at a public school in Los Angeles area for 26 years and so that’s like my formal teacher experience, but I had been a TA in college before that and also very fortunate to have some really great teachers growing up. I grew up in Fresno, California, Central California. And as I became a teacher and worked with students, kind of tapped those experiences to sort of inspire me moving forward. And I think what was interesting – once I got into teaching, I mean, it’s sort of in my blood, I guess, because both of my parents were teachers. My mom was an elementary teacher, my dad was a middle and high school teacher, so I couldn’t escape it. But it was funny because I went to film school and I finished film school, and then I found a job teaching film and journalism. And I thought to myself, okay, this is great, this will be the 5-year plan, you know, I can pay off my student loan debt and work on my own projects and all the spare time the teachers have.

[00:03:13.940] – Michael
So that was the 5-year plan, and then it turned into the 26-year plan. I just sort of fell in love with it and had a great time. And so I remember when I started out teaching, of course those first couple years are really hard for everybody, and I found myself at this high-performing school, high socioeconomic status school where everyone’s going to 4-year colleges. I really found myself trying to prove myself an elective course teacher – that I was worthy, that the course was quote-unquote “rigorous,” that students and parents should sign up to take the class. And so there was a lot of, I’m not sure what the right word is for it, but just kind of trying to prove myself and show that the course and the curriculum and myself were worthy. And so I gave a lot of really hard traditional assignments coming out of college. It was like textbooks and quizzes and a lot of written assignments and all of this stuff to prove it. And I didn’t realize until later that it wasn’t the written work and the quizzes that really mattered, it was the work that the students were doing in the real world.

[00:04:25.140] – Michael
And as my experience grew, as my learning from other teachers grew, and other teachers outside of my school, which was very important, I realized that a lot of teachers and students were struggling with why they should show up to school and why they should show up with integrity. So they were physically there, but not always intellectually or emotionally there. And this is long before COVID and long before screens.

[00:04:55.530] – Steve
Yeah.

[00:04:56.830] – Steve
Going through the motions is sort of what school has become. And so, so many times I’d be like in the copy room or in the faculty lounge or something and hearing these teachers like talking about the latest cheating scandal. You know, all these kids were suspended because they stole the answer key or whatever. And these teachers are stressed out over like, “Oh my God, these kids are so disrespectful. Why would they do this?: And I’m like, “why don’t you guys just design an uncheatable assessment?” And they sort of stared at me blankly like, what are you talking about? And for me at that point, I had realized that the quizzes didn’t matter, that what really mattered was can the students actually apply the knowledge that they learn in the class? Do they know what to do with it? And do they know how to make good ethical decisions with that information? And I never had a problem with cheating because my classes were project-based. And people have their stereotypes and preconceived ideas of what that means. We’re going to get into that a little bit later, I think.

[00:05:57.290] – Michael
But essentially what this means is I don’t do pretend. We don’t do simulations. We have exercises where we learn how to do things and make mistakes, yes, but ultimately this is all gearing the students up for creating something real and tangible, what we call “authentic,” something that matters to other people, that other people beyond the classroom will use or see or experience. And that just sort of elevates everything and it makes school worth coming to, worth doing. So I guess it’s sort of, in a large nutshell, my teaching journey.

[00:06:37.330] – Steve
Yeah, you triggered two pieces for me that I want to explore with you. The first one is you said it was pre-COVID, and then you described – I think you used the term “was happening” with school. But I have to tell you, as I was listening to you Michael, I was in high school in the ’60s and in college in the ’70s, and it wasn’t any different than what you just described.

[00:07:06.120] – Michael
Yeah.

[00:07:08.210] – Steve
I don’t think I ever really thought that through deeply until I heard you put the description out there.

[00:07:15.740] – Michael
Yeah, and it’s not to say that you shouldn’t do traditional kinds of lessons and assignments.

[00:07:21.610] – Steve
Well, the word that caught me was it was compliance.

[00:07:26.860] – Michael
Compliance, right.

[00:07:28.510] – Steve
My authentic work I did in music and I did in sport, I did in leadership and social things, those pushed me authentic in ways that the classroom never did.

[00:07:45.920] – Michael
Right, yeah. And I think you can still have project-based assignments that are still compliance-based. So you’re not really escaping it. So it’s not just that the kids are making a project, it’s that there’s a lot of other dimensions to it and factors that are involved.

[00:08:00.320] – Steve
I think that takes me to the – I think that what you just said now takes me to the second point I was going to come up with. And I was going to ask you to play with the word rigor. Because if I heard correctly, what you thought you were doing in the early days, you used the term hard and lots was rigor, but it turned out that wasn’t the rigor. Would you talk a little bit using that word rigor?

[00:08:24.850] – Michael
Yeah, I think that word is just another word for hard, and I think we’ve also conflated pain and suffering with good learning. Like, we think that good learning has to be painful just for the sake of it, or boring just for the sake of it, as opposed to something that is joyful and meaningful and experiences meaningful, joyful, and has a purpose is seen as frivolous or not academically rigorous. So I think that sort of comes from this generation of teachers and parents who grew up after No Child Left Behind, where the whole point of school was to take a test. There was no room, and there still is no room for exploration, for wonder, for experimentation, for creativity, for collaborating or for doing anything other than test prep, because that’s what teachers are evaluated on. That’s what schools are evaluated on and that metric drives everything. So to get to your question, what is rigor? I mean, to learn something, you always have to struggle. There will be pain and suffering, but I try to make the analogy of like, if anybody has played a sport at a high level or plays a musical instrument, you know that there is pain and suffering that goes into both of those activities, right?

[00:09:44.890] – Michael
In sports, you could literally, like, break an arm or, you know, get physically injured in this journey to play a sport. But you’re willing to go to the weight room and do cardio trainings and run drills that are repetitive and boring, honestly, right? But you do it because you’re passionate. You do it because you know that there is a goal and a purpose to all of this hard work, which is to prepare you for that competition or that exhibition. If you’re a musician, you practice for hours and hours and hours. You hurt your fingers. Maybe you sprain your wrist even. It’s a lot of practice to get to that performance, but you do it because you love it. And that’s what we’re talking about here, is not to say that you get out of doing hard work or productive struggle. You absolutely have to. You can’t learn without it. The point is to say let’s just remove this test that has no purpose for anyone. There’s no reason for it, and replace it with something that does have a purpose and a reason. That is probably harder. And so, in my work with journalism students, for example, that is probably, I would argue the hardest class you could ever take.

[00:10:58.720] – Michael
It’s harder than AP Calculus. It’s harder than chemistry. It’s harder than AP Lit. And the reason is all of the other dimensions that you have that go into this. You’re still doing research, you’re still doing critical thinking, you still have to write very precisely and have command of language. But it’s all these other legal and ethical dimensions and collaborating with other people and time management and all these things that relegated to “soft skills” that we’re finding out now in the age of AI are actually the skills that will help us survive and help us stand out when the machines can do the writing and the math for us. We don’t need to memorize all of those things after all. What matters is discernment, good judgment, and ethical decision-making.

[00:11:49.400] – Steve
So as I was listening again, it struck me that it’s hard work and pain and suffering to be an effective teacher.

[00:11:59.310] – Michael
Yeah, it is hard work.

[00:12:00.590] – Steve
Yeah. And it’s that – you can’t, you can’t read the book and do it. Pretty similar to be a sport or a musician.

[00:12:11.930] – Michael
Well, absolutely. And that’s what I argue in my book and my course, “Uncheatable Assessments” is that this idea that I have around students creating, in the case of the book, “digital stories,” which I much prefer to call multimedia research projects, is a form of storytelling, and it’s a form of teaching. And the research actually says that what we know as teachers, the best way to learn something is to teach it. And so what we’re asking the students to do in these non-fiction stories – we’re not making fantasy stories and doing poetry, as much as I love that – but what we’re asking students to do is to synthesize all of these concepts and ideas for a lay audience, for someone who doesn’t know what this is, and present it to them in a way that’s clear and concise. And I think there’s a quote from Einstein also who said that, “If you can’t explain something clearly, you don’t understand it.” This is like the most, smartest mind ever saying this. And so I think we conflate again not just pain and suffering, but volume of work and minutes in a chair as learning, when those things don’t actually directly relate to quality learning.

[00:13:24.350] – Steve
Years ago, I read about a high school, non-traditional, but their grading system was to earn an A, you had to teach it to someone else. And that really fits what you’ve said.

[00:13:43.090] – Steve
Now I know you understand it. If you could teach it to somebody else, that’s the highest level of understanding it.

[00:13:49.920] – Steve
There was a quote in your article that caught my attention that I’d like you to expand on. “Across grade levels, I found that many students are out of practice when it comes to curiosity, especially asking strong generative questions in school.” Expand on that a little bit?

[00:14:13.000] – Michael
Yeah, so, like I said, I taught high school for 26 years and I noticed a definite change over that time, especially in the last 10 years or so, where students were increasingly incapable of managing a project on their own, managing ambiguity, asking good questions. I mean, it’s always tricky as a student to like, you know – the younger kids ask plenty of questions. When you get to high school, that’s been sort of squashed or drained. And many people smarter than me have talked about that extensively. But I feel like the whole point of learning is about asking questions. It’s about wonder. And so even, you know, when I teach journalism, this is a series of questions. And I actually make a parallel between journalism and the scientific method. I think they’re actually the same. You observe the world and ask questions about it. I see this thing happening, this phenomenon, and I wonder about it, and I’m going to find out why it is what it is and what’s causing it and what’s impact and all those things. And so, journalists and scientists do the same thing.

[00:15:21.620] – Michael
I hypothesize, I’ve got this question and I’m going to research it, and I’m going to test it, and I’m going to experiment, and then I’m going to report the synthesized results and the findings, right? And so, wonder is just another way of making maybe a more soulful type of question, like, I wonder why, or I wonder how. And I think the problem, because of standardized testing and also because of the volume of work teachers are asked to cover, the curriculum is so vast and, and unrealistic, we don’t have time for questions. It’s just like the fastest way is to deliver it quickly and to take a quick test or a quiz to check for memorization, and we don’t make room for wonder. And then we wonder why students are showing up – or not to school, bored or not really putting in the effort because we haven’t asked them to, we haven’t invited them. And it’s just an innate human trait that we’re squashing. And so we’re draining the humanity out of school. And that’s really what this is about, is like, how can we bring humanity back into school?

[00:16:36.420] – Michael
And again, speaking of AI, that’s what the founders of Anthropic and Google Education are saying in the age of AI, they need people who aren’t coders, and they need people who are liberal arts majors, people who are philosophers, because that’s going to be the future. And so that is about asking questions and about testing boundaries and questioning things. And that doesn’t jive so well in our current political climate either. It’s not just school, it’s also all this outside pressure to not rock the apple cart or to offend someone by questioning status quo. And that gets a lot of people in trouble, even though it’s well-intentioned and important for any kind of endeavor. If you’re in business, like, I’ve got a question, the status quo, why is this? Is there a better way? And everybody needs to be okay with having their status quo questioned. If I can just add, I think everything comes back to psychology. Everything comes back to ego. Teachers, politicians, students, everyone, all of us. And so can we maybe sort of let go of that a little bit in, I guess, the endeavor of making ourselves better and making our, our communities better?

[00:18:02.740] – Michael
And making our world better. And it’s to say, it’s not about me. It’s like, if there’s a better way, please let me know. And having that flexibility and openness and willingness to do that. And I tell my kids, it’s like, in these project-based learning assignments, there’s a lot of oral feedback. There’s a public display and the students critique each other’s work and, and we talk out loud about it. It’s not trying to keep the learning a secret. Like, normally you’d give an assignment and you’d write your notes on the paper and give it back to the kid. And nobody sees that except that one student. But they probably don’t even look because they’re just looking for the grade. But everybody else can learn from it. And so how do you give and receive constructive feedback? And that’s one of the foundational skills of being a member of society. And that’s what we sort of, you know, try to foster here in these assignments. It’s not, can you memorize my curriculum? Because again, let’s just – sorry, I’m going on a rant here, but let’s pull back for a minute and think about what is the purpose of school?

[00:19:00.070] – Michael
The whole point of school is to create productive citizens, period. Not test takers, not chemists, not poets. Maybe some of them, but you and I are not chemists or poets, and we’re still functioning members of society. I want somebody who can ask good questions, be curious, pivot when it’s time to pivot. How many times in the last 5 or 6 years have we had to pivot hard? As educators, as parents, and foster resiliency and mental agility. That’s what this is about, and that’s why I’m so passionate about what I’m doing.

[00:19:41.770] – Steve
You mentioned problem-based learning or project-based learning. I don’t know, sometimes I flip both those back and forth. But you described a little broader definition of it than may exist with some folks. So how you like to label project-based?

[00:20:00.700] – Michael
Yeah, I think a lot of people have preconceived ideas of what project-based learning is. Some people call it problem-based. I know a lot of folks call it challenge-based learning. There’s maybe some other terms as well that are floating around out there. For me, I just kind of take like an umbrella sort of approach to it. The semantics don’t really matter to me. What matters to me is, are students working on something? Their assignment is more than just worksheets and text-based assignments. It’s creating something that could be a physical artifact, or it could be a performance or a system that they’re designing, but something that is real and tangible. They’re creating something. And I don’t mean creating like painting, like an art project, and I don’t mean you know, a poster just to hang on the classroom wall and then throw it away and put it in the trash either. But I think it’s a multimodal experience, sometimes individually and sometimes collaboratively, to create something original in the world. And I think that’s really important because that’s how the world works. You and I as educators, we create something, we create curriculum, we create a syllabus, we create learning experiences that are intangible, but we’re still creating something.

[00:21:23.360] – Michael
It’s a system, it’s a flow, it’s a type of storytelling, actually. We ask scientists to create things, we ask writers to create things, books and articles and things like that. And so what we’re doing is just sort of, you know, honing those skills and strengthening those skills to do that. And I think it just gives the work a purpose and a meaning. So much of school is purposeless, meaningless. The purpose of it is so that I can check the box to say that you’ve achieved whatever standard that the state has mandated that we cover. And I think we can do all of those things. I think that’s really important too, is like, you don’t just throw away what you’re already doing. This is like, yes, and I can do all of these things. And actually, the research says that project-based learning actually improves standardized test scores, right? So I know there’s a lot of – like, in my high school, a lot of kids took AP classes. Well, project-based learning inside the AP class actually raises test scores as much as 10%age points.

[00:22:29.870] – Michael
So that’s huge. And so this isn’t just me just sort of ranting as the hippie guy in LA. It’s just like, this is like scientifically proven. We’ve got tons of research on all of this stuff to back it up.

[00:22:44.260] – Steve
There’s an old story shared with me that I just need to reinforce what you just said. Years ago, a teacher that I had met in Texas had a project that she did with her 4th graders every year where they studied this piece of property that abutted the school that was a nature preserve. And the big push came on test scores, and she got the student data and her students were way behind. And so she made a decision that she wasn’t going to have the time this year to go do the projects that they normally did in that. And then she said one day into the fall when she and the kids just could not stand each other anymore, she sent them out there. And their task was to measure the silt in the bottom of the water that flowed through the creek. And when they came back and looked at the previous years, the silt had increased dramatically. And so it led to this whole pondering, which led to just unbelievable investigations, government hiking property, uncovering things, and at the end of the year, she ended up posting the greatest increase in test scores of anybody across her school.

[00:24:11.690] – Steve
So it really lived the point that you said. Kids struggled through reading a piece of material because they needed the knowledge from it to apply to what they were doing.

[00:24:23.220] – Michael
100%. Yeah. And that’s what I say in my course, “Uncheatable Assessments,” like the 3 qualities of an uncheatable assessment is originality, right? The learning artifact has to be one of a kind. It can’t be the same as everybody else’s. Personal connection. So there’s a way for students to somehow either have agency over this or see for themselves the impact, and then purpose. So they’re doing something that matters beyond just performative test-taking or quiz-taking. And you’re absolutely right, and the research backs that up too.

[00:24:58.360] – Steve
Yeah. Michael, a lot of the listeners to this podcast are instructional coaches or teacher leaders, administrators at the school level. I’m wondering what thoughts you have about what’s the support that those folks should be looking to provide to teachers who are maybe just first putting their foot into being more along a project-based learning route or teachers who are taking a bigger step?

[00:25:30.090] – Michael
Yeah, I mean, that’s a big complicated question because I know administrators are also under pressure from parents and from policymakers to do those test scores or do things a certain way. And when you deviate or introduce something new, there’s resistance from your faculty as well as from parents who are like, what is this? You know, because they’re afraid or they don’t think it’s just another initiative that I’m gonna have to just go through and get through because then there’s gonna be another one next year and it doesn’t really matter. So I would say, first of all, acknowledge that, and say we’re not dispensing with anything else and we’re going to introduce and try something that is going to solve the problems that we’re facing right now, which is all the things we’ve been talking about: students’ attendance, engagement levels, passion. We’re going to lower discipline issues because kids will want to show up and find that there’s a reason to be there. So many times, I can’t tell you how many times, like, kids will tell me, “Oh, I’m sick today, but I showed up to come to your class,” right?

[00:26:31.560] – Michael
Or students who moved to my school district just to take my course. And so make a reason why kids should show up. Now, logistically on the ground, what does that mean? First of all, make it okay for teachers to experiment, to make mistakes, and not be clean and pretty and concise. You cannot measure all of the things that happen in a project-based learning situation. Right? So don’t try to like get the stopwatch out and like, “Well, I saw so many kids on task and so many not on task,” or “Why are all the kids talking? They should be quiet. “You know, all of these things that you hear all the time, those are about compliance. It’s not about learning. And remember that real learning is messy. It is individualized. Every student works at their own pace and has different skills and traits. And that’s the thing that we’re honoring is that humanity. Remember that. Standardized test is not human. It is inhuman. It is saying that everybody is the same when in fact we are not. And every learner learns in different ways and has different strengths and weaknesses.

[00:27:40.860] – Michael
And so make it okay for kids to be on different activities at the same time. They have different rates of completion. It’s okay to constructively have a “noisy room” where students are collaborating and talking and exploring and Saying wow out loud. That’s gonna look different for juniors in high school than it would for third graders, for sure. But make it okay and give them time and space to do that. I think that’s the biggest piece is the space. A lot of folks do need sort of a refreshing of their memories of what this means and what this looks like. So you can’t just say, go make a project. Because they won’t know what to do with that. Because they’re outta practice, or some of them have maybe never experienced a really high-quality project-based learning experience that is highly structured. This isn’t a free-for-all. It takes a lot of work and thinking to have it work. So can you find examples of that? Can you find resources to help folks ramp up to that? And it’s another reason I published my book is it’s sort of a manual and guide for teachers about how to do these kinds of projects and integrate them into everyday classroom.

[00:28:56.460] – Michael
Starting with something very, very small and simple and easy that only takes a few minutes. You can just start with something super small, like having students ask questions. Just start with that, which is the foundation for the bigger projects later. Then you can start to introduce a sort of very familiar variation on something that you already do. Like in the book, we talk about things like an explainer video, which is essentially just a recorded class presentation. So if you already ask students to make a slide deck and do a presentation, just do the same thing you’re doing, just have them record it, and then we can listen back to it. So, kind of ramp people up to that. Don’t make it such a huge out of the unusual, out of the norm kind of thing, but just sort of like, how can I introduce things that are going to be that work for them? And also, like we do with the students, is give them a choice about what’s right for them. For their classroom, for their students, for their department. Because what’s right for the math teachers might not be right for the social studies teachers.

[00:29:59.390] – Michael
And so I think that’s really important. Now, what does this cost? That’s what you’re asking. Cost in like consultant fees, programs that you’re buying, PD days, which everything is like scarce right now. So, you know, again, there are easy ways that you can do it affordably, like, book studies are a great way to do it. I have resources for that for my book too. Like, here’s like a bunch of questions you can ask around the book and get things started. And then decide how much resources you have to do this. Do you do a cohort model and have lead teachers sort of introduce it to their department or to grade level expertise or something like that? And I think that’s the thing, but I think the biggest challenge, whenever you’re doing any kind of PD is mindset. Like, are we open to this and do we understand why we’re doing this? And make it about those teachers’ classrooms and the challenges they’re facing right now. How is this actually going to work? So, yeah, I think that’s the biggest nut to crack.

[00:31:06.920] – Steve
I’m hearing that project-based teaching is project-based learning on the teacher’s part.

[00:31:12.760] – Michael
Yeah. Well, I mean, it is, right? We already do that.

[00:31:15.130] – Steve
The same criteria that you said that the – you named 3 criteria earlier that you need to keep in mind, or that tell you – it sounds to me the teacher’s got to be going through the same 3.

[00:31:27.060] – Steve
What were those 3 again?

[00:31:29.940] – Michael
Originality, personal connection, and purpose.

[00:31:32.830] – Steve
Yeah. So if I’m a coach, that’d be pretty critical that I keep that in mind as I look at the teacher, while the teacher’s keeping that in mind for the students.

[00:31:42.620] – Michael
Yeah. I mean, we have all these conversations around differentiation, Tier 1 instruction, you know, multimodal learning. That’s what this is about. You can’t do all of that with an essay. You can’t do all of that with a standardized test. It doesn’t work. And it’s mandated by law that you have to make your assignments accessible. And this solves all of those problems. It checks a lot of boxes. We just have to get out of that mindset that quote unquote rigor means, you know, a 5-page essay or you know, a 100-question multiple choice test. That is not rigor.

[00:32:19.750] – Steve
Michael, I was looking forward to this, and I’m excited that you came and you shared this. Talk to listeners a little bit about how they can follow up with you, kind of learn more about your book, more about the course.

[00:32:32.870] – Michael
Yeah, you can find me on socials. I’m on LinkedIn quite a bit, posting content there. My website michaelhernandez.net. And also I speak at a variety of different conferences. I speak at Learning Forward Conference, ISTE, and ASCD. You can find me there. Subscribe to my newsletter. I publish ideas and resources monthly at Changing the Narrative. And yeah, definitely stay in touch. Email me, DM me on LinkedIn. Love to support what you and your team are doing at your school.

[00:33:06.990] – Steve
Well, I will put the link to the article that caused me to reach out to you in the podcast notes, and I’ll put your website in there as well so people can find that just in case they’re listening while they’re out for a walk and didn’t get it.

[00:33:25.870] – Michael
Yeah, and you can find my book,”Storytelling with Purpose” anywhere you buy books. So it’s on Amazon, Barnes Noble, Bookshop, all the places.

[00:33:33.930] – Steve
Terrific. Well, thanks again.

[00:33:36.190] – Michael
Thank you.

[00:33:38.390] – 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.

 

“It’s time to treat curiosity as the superpower it is. We can build students’ ability to use this learning power by giving them the tools, time, and encouragement to wield it effectively.”

Dr. Teresa Hill, the superintendent of South Holland Schools in Illinois and the author of, “The Instructional Leaders Guide to Closing Achievement Gaps: Five Keys for Improving Student Outcomes,” highlights the “why and how” to empower learning with curiosity. Curiosity is a key to her motto, “All children can learn….. Period.”

Read Dr. Hill’s ASCD article, “Curiosity Is a Superpower” here.

Find Dr. Hill on LinkedIn here.

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

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.340] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.

[00:00:29.580] – Steve
Wondering and Wondering for All Learners. Our podcast guest today is Dr. Teresa Hill, the superintendent in South Holland, Illinois since 2012. Dr. Hill started her career teaching a kindergarten class of 31 students in an urban school. She has served as an assistant principal, a principal, an assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, as well as her current role as superintendent. She’s the author of, “The Instructional Leader’s Guide to Closing Achievement Gaps: 5 Keys for Improving Student Outcomes.” And her motto: “All children can learn, period.” In a post that Teresa wrote for ASCD titled, “Curiosity is a Superpower,” she shared this statement: “It’s time to treat curiosity as the power it is. We can build students’ ability to use this learning power by giving them the tools, time, and encouragement to wield it effectively.” I’m anxious to explore the underpinnings of that statement.

[00:01:50.090] – Steve
Welcome, Teresa.

[00:01:51.850] – Teresa
Thank you very much for having me.

[00:01:54.130] – Steve
I’m wondering if you’d start by sharing just a little bit about the South Holland schools and what’s the focus that led to your book on closing the achievement gap.

[00:02:04.690] – Teresa
Sure. So our South Holland School District, we are a small school district in the south suburbs of Chicago. So we serve 4 different communities that come together in our schools, and we have children in pre-K through 8th grade. The big thing about our schools and our community, we have an amazing community that is extremely supportive. At the same time, where our community is and who we are as a community, most of our families are working families, working parents, or working grandparents that are raising their children. And so one of the big things about our school district is we know our students can do amazing things. We also know that our students need our schools to be places that provide great environments for them and that provide some of those extra advantages that some other families and other communities are able to provide outside of school. And so that has been a big part of what we have done within our school district is making sure that we build into what we do, the experiences and exposure to help our students really be able to see what’s possible for them in their future, and making sure that we do that without students being limited in those things because of costs or because of the time that their parents have, because their parents are working full-time and sometimes more than one job.

[00:03:43.800] – Steve
So you described Curiosity as a superpower. Take us a little further with that.

[00:03:51.580] – Teresa
Yeah. So I think the big thing that we should remember about curiosity is that what I believe it does is it enhances many of our other cognitive and academic powers, right? So the first thing curiosity does is it really enhances our powers of observation. If you think about it, when you’re curious about something or you’re interested in something, you start to notice everything that relates to that topic. You start to explore and ask questions. So having that ability to be curious about something in particular gives us that extra power of focusing our observations on things. It also helps enhance our ability to remember. Also, if you think about it, there are areas of study that you’ve participated in, things you’ve read that kind of went into one ear and out the other. But when it’s something that you’re curious about, that you’re interested in, you remember the details, you remember all of the big questions and the concepts. And so it enhances our ability, our brain’s ability to focus our memory on particular things. But the other thing, and I think this is really important, especially nowadays when we have all kind of gotten into this situation where we’re working with computers and technology and social media.

[00:05:25.550] – Teresa
And we’ve gotten to a place where pretty much we focus our time and energy and thought on things for about 60 seconds or less. And the other thing that curiosity does is it gives us extra stamina to think about and learn about a particular idea or topic. So whereas normally we would, you know, get bored after 60 seconds with something and go ahead and swipe to the next thing, when we’re curious about something, it makes us want to spend more time and more mental energy on thinking about it. And I think those things put together make it so that when we’re curious about something, all of those other natural things that we’re able to do are enhanced and they come together to make it so that we can learn faster, we can learn better, and we have more motivation to keep going.

[00:06:22.200] – Steve
You just triggered two very recent current events for me as you went through that. My almost 4-year-old grandson is visiting right now today the curiosity that starts with all the why questions, and you’re hitting the point where it’s about to drive you crazy when you suddenly realize how focused his attention is on that piece that he’s asking about and staying with it. And so as I was listening to you and I was thinking how many times I’ve lived through that in just in the last couple days with them, it then triggered that I’m actually the same way, that my wife is gonna hear about something that I read because when I read it, it sparked my curiosity, and that’s the reason I’m holding onto it. And it’s gonna be a day, it may even be 2 days later, when I get, “Oh, I gotta bring this back up to you,” compared to all the different things I would just read through the paper or catch online that I would drop. So those are two very different age spectrums there between my grandson on one end and me on the other end, right?

[00:07:43.500] – Teresa
Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah. And when we think of curiosity, often we’re thinking of, yeah, little kids, you know, the 4-year-old, the 6-year-old asking, so why do we do that? Well, how come? And I want to know and all of those types of things. But really, that’s something we have with us from birth and we carry it with us throughout our lives. It’s a question of do we build on that or do we squash that because we’re so busy focusing on other things that we have to do or have to learn?

[00:08:18.880] – Steve
So when you’re in the classroom and curiosity is present, what is it that you are likely catching if I’m observing the students? What flags you that curiosity has been caught?

[00:08:37.010] – Teresa
I think the biggest thing – so one of the things I hear from leaders often is that they think of these things in terms of, okay, well, if I go into the classroom and the students are talking and interacting with each other, that ties with curiosity. And I would say that yes, sometimes. But sometimes they are talking and interacting about, you know, those things that we’ve said specifically, we need you to learn this or talk about this or question this. And as we think about all of our students and all of us as human beings, we’re all very different. So for some people, that curiosity shows up in, you know, let’s get into a conversation and let’s discuss and let’s debate and things like that, which are great things and great skills to have. For other students, it’s a much more quiet, introverted kind of thing where what we see is an intense level of focus. And that’s really what I look at for all of the students, whether they are the extroverted, loud, let’s have a discussion type, the type that is quietly sitting to themselves thinking things through. What I look for is, what is their focus on and to what extent are they asking their own questions?

[00:10:06.690] – Teresa
And I think that’s what I look for. When we stop and talk to a student in the classroom, it’s not necessarily just what are you working on, but what are you trying to find out? What are you thinking about? What other questions have popped up for you? Those are the kinds of things that allow us to see, are they really engaging their curiosity and are they really focused in an area that they want to learn about?

[00:10:32.860] – Steve
Boy, I’m so glad you pointed out that difference between the extroverted curiosity jumping in versus getting quieter because I’m curious. I’m ringing back to a long time ago, Phil Schlechty, who wrote a lot about engagement, basically described that you really can’t figure out engagement without talking to the student. And that kind of rings true in what you’re laying out there. So I could have a quiet student, highly engaged, deep in thought, very curious. And if that’s not my style, I’m not picking it up exactly the way that I would that more extroverted student. So if curiosity is present in the students, what is most likely the teacher has done or is doing that’s creating that spark?

[00:11:35.490] – Teresa
Well, I think the biggest thing is, typically what we see is that when curiosity is present, teachers have engaged the students in asking real and authentic questions. Many times, especially with younger children, they have modeled that process and started that process together so that one student’s question can spark another student’s question, but it’s important that teachers don’t leave it there, that we model that, we have students come up with different questions, but then we give both time and impetus for all of the students to come up with their own questions. So what is it that you would like to know? What is it that you would like to explore more about this particular topic? We know we have topics that we need to teach about, and we can’t just throw away everything that we need to talk about. But what we can do is we can make it clear that every topic, everything that we learn about, there are different areas that students may come up with that they have a question about or that they’re curious about this particular aspect of what we’re learning about.

[00:12:55.950] – Teresa
And that engaging every student, whether they’re the ones that raise their hands with, oh, I have my question, I want it on the board, or the student that just quietly writes their question down, that every student is engaged in that questioning process of thinking about what could I explore more about this? What specifically do I want to know? Or what area would I like to see more about as it relates to this topic?

[00:13:26.410] – Steve
I think I’m hearing the teacher is showing interest in the student’s curiosity.

[00:13:32.690] – Teresa
Absolutely, absolutely. And just recognizing how important that part is to the student learning. In the end, we spend a lot of time with our students, right? But what we’re trying to do in the time we’re setting, we’re working with them, is we’re trying to set them up to continue learning after school, on the weekends, in the summertime, in their future. And so in order to do that, we do have to pay attention to that aspect of their learning. How do we engage their curiosity? How do we pay attention to what they may want to learn? Again, not that we can, you know, say, well, you can learn this instead of that, but that that is a key part of engaging children and helping them become the lifelong learners we typically say we want them to be.

[00:14:31.580] – Steve
So in the article, you said that we need to provide students with tools, time, and encouragement to wield curiosity’s power. So I’m wondering if we could take just a moment or two on each one of those, kind of one at a time. What are you thinking about when you say tools?

[00:14:47.710] – Teresa
So tools has two sides, right? So first, of course, there’s the tools like it’s good to have a library. It’s good to have access to the internet and to AI if you’re using that, depending on the age of your students. It’s good to have the tools where when I ask a question, I have a way to gather the information. But the other part of the tools is the internal personal cognitive academic tools, which are the skills to not only have a wondering about something, but to then formulate that into a meaningful question that we can then take to the internet or take to the library or take to AI and start asking questions and seeing where it leads. So that tools part is two-sided. I think sometimes we provide the technology and books and physical tools without ever really working with our students directly to develop the skill tools that they need.

[00:16:03.490] – Steve
So I need to learn how to follow my curiosity.

[00:16:06.750] – Teresa
Absolutely. Right.

[00:16:08.770] – Steve
I need to learn how to turn it into something.

[00:16:11.100] – Steve
You gotta turn my curiosity into action.

[00:16:14.230] – Teresa
Yes, I need to learn how to take my curiosity, formulate that into a real question that I can then take and do research on or gather information about. And to know that my “I wonder” is not just as sometimes happens when we get to school, “Oh, you wondered that? Oh, that’s great that you wondered that. Now let’s move on to the next thing.” But to know that no, following that wonder and following that up on that question is a key part of how we do the learning process. And that also leads into the time part of it, which is very often in schools we have so much that we’re supposed to get through that it becomes very easy to, “Oh, you had that question? Great.” Either I don’t know, or maybe at some point you can look that up, and then we have to move on. So I think, really thinking about how we build in those pockets of time for not only wondering and asking questions, but also for doing research and finding answers to our questions into your school day, into your week, into the schedule for your curriculum, whether that takes place at the beginning of the day when we’re doing attendance, and we can allow the students to get into their journals and write down their questions.

[00:17:48.820] – Teresa
And whether we build that into when we’re doing our writing lessons and okay, we’re focusing on writing and we’re teaching you these writing skills, but what you write about can really tie into those things that you’re interested in. So thinking about how we allow and structure into our day time for these things, because we know in schools that if we just say, “We’re going to give you time,” that time is often taken up, whether it’s by bathroom breaks or something took too long or we had to do this test or whatever the case may be. So we have to structure that into what we do. And then the encouragement is just really making sure that students understand that that part is important too. Yes, we have these standards that we’ve written on the board, things that we have to work through, but we want students to know that the process of exploring and gathering information and building knowledge is an important part of what they do, and that we want to, when they have a question, we want to encourage that. We want to, even if we can’t do it right then, we want to have them write that down.

[00:19:04.540] – Teresa
We want to be able to put that in a place where we can come back to it and we can engage with that as opposed to what often happens, which is, “Huh, that’s an interesting question, but it’s not really about what we’re doing right now, so we need to move on.”

[00:19:21.060] – Steve
I’m wondering, do parents raise any questions or concerns when teachers implement a learning approach that seems to take curiosity – I’m wondering if the time thing maybe comes into parents’ minds, that if they’re taking time to do this, they’re missing time to be doing something else?

[00:19:41.320] – Teresa
You know, my experience has been that most of the time parents are very supportive and excited about it. And the reason for that is because, first of all, when the kids are excited about studying something or learning something—

[00:19:57.440] – Steve
That’s was gonna be my guess, yeah—

[00:19:59.720] – Teresa
That is the best possible thing.

[00:20:02.380] – Steve
You know my child’s excited.

[00:20:04.090] – Teresa
Exactly. The thing that they’re curious about is the thing that they’re going to talk about, as opposed to saying nothing when the parent asks, what did you do in school today? And so, parents have been typically very, very supportive of that. And then I think the other thing to remember is that in schools, we’re often worried about these specific standards. For the most part, parents aren’t worried that, you know, are you sure you covered XYZ standard. What they want is their child to be happy and engaged in school. They want their child to continue to grow. They want their child to do well. And these kind of strategies actually are more likely to have students do well than eliminating curiosity in classrooms.

[00:20:56.660] – Steve
I want to circle back. Would you just do a little bit more on curiosity as the superpower connected to closing achievement gaps? Because I think there’s a natural tendency for people to, in too many cases, see curiosity as the extra thing we can move on to if we’ve closed the gap, rather than it being the piece to close the gap.

[00:21:26.140] – Teresa
Absolutely. And I think this is the big thing. One of the big misunderstandings of the achievement gap is this idea that when students are not performing as well as we would like, the response should be to distill what we’re teaching down to the base level and then essentially drill the particular skills or the information for those students. And what that actually does is it does the opposite of what we want to do with students who may struggle in a particular area. If we think about it, the main sources of the achievement gap is not necessarily internal to the particular student, right? So the main sources of the achievement gap that we see in schools is often students having less experiences, less exposure, a smaller vocabulary that they have been a part of, less general knowledge that forms the foundation for them participating in lessons or them understanding something that they read or something that is read to them. And so, where yes, it’s important that, you know, we build up the reading and decoding skills and all of the skills, when we take away that opportunity to build curiosity, if you think about it, all those superpowers that we talked about, we are missing out on.

[00:23:05.980] – Teresa
So, that superpower of having those extra powers of observation, you don’t get those with just, okay, we’re going to do another lesson on this topic that you struggled with before. That doesn’t come into play then. The ability to remember more information and understand concepts that is enhanced by curiosity is no longer there. And then that ability to have the stamina to keep going, to keep trying to learn, to keep asking questions, all three of those parts of it of curiosity as a superpower are missing when we don’t do that with students who may show struggles. And so we essentially are handcuffing ourselves and our students when we pull them out of those opportunities. And so it’s critically important, more so for them than anybody else, that we really engage them in that, because what they often have is some catching up to do in those experiences, in the wonderings and following through on questions and putting in that extra effort to find out about what I’m interested in. And very often, by the time we know that they may be struggling in areas in school, they have missed out on that from the time they were in kindergarten.

[00:24:34.320] – Teresa
And so there’s a lot of catching up to do by the time they’re in 4th or 5th grade and we’re concerned about them and the achievement gap. So I believe that it’s critically important that as a part of addressing the achievement gap, we make sure that that group of students have extra and structured and clear access to that kind of teaching and curiosity and development of their knowledge. And that we make sure that we don’t just say access by, you know, oh yeah, we gave them access. We told them that they could go to the library with their parents on the weekend, but that we provide authentic access, which means that while they are with us, we really start teaching them those skills and engaging them in that process.

[00:25:32.180] – Steve
So I’m guessing as a school leader, generating teacher curiosity is a superpower to enhance teaching. A lot of the listeners to this show are instructional coaches and building principals. What role do you see they play in making curiosity a teacher’s superpower?

[00:26:01.430] – Teresa
Well, I think there’s a couple of things. First off, I think it is – and I know this is going to sound like something, yes, we all know, but it’s hard to do in practice. Some of the same things that we expect teachers to do with their children, we have to do with our teachers. Number one, we have to get to know them and what their particular, you know, skills and areas of expertise are. We have, you know, basic skills that we expect of all teachers, but we’re all human beings, so we all have different styles. We all have different areas where I love this particular subject or this particular area. We need to get to know that so that we can build on those for our teachers, just as we want our teachers to build on those for our students. I think the second thing is we have to engage in discussions of these topics with our teachers as professionals, and we have to listen to what they say, which that listening part is really difficult because we all have these expectations and things we have to do and checkboxes we have to check off.

[00:27:24.710] – Teresa
But really listening to their views of, okay, how can we incorporate this into our classrooms, as well as what are the things that you as teachers, as professionals are curious about as it relates to what we’re all doing in our schools? What are those areas where you have said to yourself, man, I’d really like to try try this. And to bring that out of just, okay, a teacher by themselves having that conversation with themselves and never being able to get around to it because they got a million other things to do, to, okay, let’s talk about that. How might that work? How could we do that as a team? How could other people contribute to that? And then how will we know if it gets the kinds of results that we want? So engaging teachers in those kinds of real meaningful discussions and giving them the permission, quite honestly, to be able to ask those kinds of questions and think about how that can be incorporated is really important because sometimes it’s, for a teacher, most teachers that I have ever met want to follow the rules.

[00:28:46.280] – Teresa
They’re going to do what they’re allowed to do and not do what they’re not allowed to do. So we have to formally have that discussion and give them the permission to explore these things and what they can mean in their classrooms.

[00:29:01.610] – Steve
You gave me some great reinforcement. I’ve been working with several schools to redesign their professional growth plan for teachers to be focused on a hypothesis rather than focused on just the outcome goal. So the teacher forms a hypothesis, and then they set up a plan and look for the support of their coach and their administrator to carry out their hypothesis. And a couple of the schools I’m working with, actually, they end the year with an exhibition.

[00:29:36.650] – Teresa
Oh, that’s amazing.

[00:29:37.630] – Steve
Where the teacher exhibits, here was my hypothesis, And here’s what I uncovered. Here’s where my hypothesis was wrong. I think I’m gonna go back and modify it. And seeing that rather than being evaluated. So when you said find a way to encourage it, so a teacher’s curiosity leads to the teacher forming a hypothesis. Now let’s go check it out.

[00:30:04.150] – Teresa
Yeah, and what I love about that is it brings we know that teachers have to make hundreds and hundreds of decisions every day. And there’s so many things that they’re doing alone and so many things that they’re thinking about alone. And what that does is it brings this great thinking out of the shadows.

[00:30:28.100] – Steve
Yeah.

[00:30:28.420] – Teresa
And it makes it a shared thing, which means not only do they benefit from being able to share it and being able to talk with others about it, but everyone around them benefits from seeing what worked for them, what didn’t work for them, and that can impact their own individual practice.

[00:30:46.470] – Steve
That’s almost the professionalism, um, and linking back to your use of the term encouragement. So the fact that we’re going to support your hypothesis and you carrying out your hypothesis says that you’re thinking, your curiosity is important to us. So it comes back to your issue of you got a model for the teachers, what we’re looking for the teachers to do with the students.

[00:31:12.130] – Teresa
Exactly.

[00:31:14.280] – Steve
Well, I was looking forward to this conversation, and you’ve certainly lived up to every expectation that I had here. I’m just wondering, before we close out, is there anything about curiosity and the issue of the achievement gap here that we didn’t put forth that you want to share as a part of a closing?

[00:31:34.820] – Teresa
You know, I would just say it’s important to recognize that the children that we work with are whole human beings, right? And so the work we do in schools – it’s very important that we teach them the skills and the knowledge and the behaviors that will help them to be successful. But one of the things that we also have to teach them is how to move forward and how to carry forward, how to build their knowledge and their learning with or without us and with or without the technology tools and things that we provide. And as long as we remember that that is a part of the core just as well as reading, writing, math, etc., then we will have the ability to put things in place that will help, you know, close achievement gaps, but also help set our students up for success throughout their future and throughout their lives.

[00:32:42.950] – Steve
Wonderful phrasing of it. I really, really appreciate you laying it out here for us. I will put a link to your article in the podcast lead-in. What’s the best way for a listener who wants to follow up, maybe come back to you with some questions or thoughts to connect with you?

[00:33:01.750] – Teresa
The best way would be to connect with me on LinkedIn, and I’m T.D. Hill, EDD.

[00:33:08.490] – Steve
You got it. We’ll put that in the lead-in too. Thank you so much.

[00:33:12.810] – Teresa
Thank you very much. It’s been great talking with you.

[00:33:17.940] – Steve [Outro]
Thanks for listening, folks. I’d love to hear what you’re pondering. You can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn @SteveBarkley, or send me your questions and find my videos and blogs at barkleypd.com.

 

Tania Lattanzio from Innovative Global Education examines the impact of real objects and the real environment on student learning:

When real objects and real environments are the starting point:

• Curiosity leads the learning.
• Questioning feels purposeful.
• Wonder is protected.
• Understanding grows from evidence.

It communicates that learning is not about receiving information, but about making sense of the world. Honoring students as thinkers.

Visit the Innovative Global Education website and connect with Tania here.

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

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.340] – Steve [Intro]
Welcome to the Steve Barkley Ponders Out Loud podcast. As instructional coaches and school leaders, you are tasked with guiding continuous teacher growth to create student success. This podcast looks to support you with strategies from experienced guests, as well as my own insights that I’ve gathered over the years. I’m thrilled to have you with us. Thanks for tuning in.

[00:00:29.650] – Steve
Real Objects, Curiosity and Inquiry. Our guest today is Tania Lattanzio, an author, international educator, and consultant who has a background as a teacher, curriculum coordinator, and a manager for the International Baccalaureate. Tania now serves as the Director of Innovative Global Education supporting schools worldwide for over 15 years. Welcome, Tania.

[00:00:58.600] – Tania
Thank you, Steve. Thank you very, very much for having me.

[00:01:01.840] – Steve
So I reached out to you after reading a post you had on LinkedIn around the use of real objects and lived experiences to increase inquiry in lesson design. So I’m wondering if we could start with given us a description of inquiry and learning and maybe the connection between inquiry and curiosity.

[00:01:26.860] – Tania
Yeah, I think when we think about inquiry, it’s that idea that it has rigor, right? Inquiry is about promoting children’s thinking. It’s about them making sense of their world. It’s about them seeing connections, seeing patterns. It’s about them discovering things really for themselves. I think there’s this myth that inquiry is we just hope children learn something and, you know, good luck with that, where it’s very carefully orchestrated by the teacher. Not in terms of it being that structured that it’s like this, but there’s always this idea of teachers having very, very clear intent of the purpose of inquiry. But it’s that idea we want students to be predicting, we want them to be questioning, we want them to be wondering, we want them to be critically thinking and all of those things that really to me match what rigor is. And so to me, inquiry really gives us that rigor. And I think the other thing that inquiry does is it motivates students to want to learn. When you’re curious about something, you are naturally going to learn because you’re motivated to do that. And if we’re putting that at the forefront of our learning, then our students are going to be motivated to want to learn.

[00:02:40.490] – Tania
We’re not going to have to force this idea that you have to learn this. And that’s where the objects come into that as well.

[00:02:48.370] – Steve
So I’m working with a secondary school right now that’s focused on – the label they’re using for it is moving more of the cognitive load, more of the carry to the students.

[00:03:05.410] – Tania
Yeah, that’s exactly it.

[00:03:08.850] – Steve
Inquiry would play a role in that.

[00:03:11.830] – Tania
Yeah, absolutely. Because I always say, when I work with teachers and I work with 3-year-olds all the way up to high school, it’s that idea of who’s doing the thinking in the classroom, because it should be students. They should be doing the thinking, they should be doing the collaboration, the discussion around ideas, the making sense of, like I said, the predicting, all of those things that we know inquiry promotes. It shouldn’t be the teacher having to do the thinking, because again, when we want learning to stick, it’s that idea that we want students to think and make sense of that learning.

[00:03:47.760] – Steve
And then the other thing that hit my mind as you were describing the curiosity element, I can connect curiosity with perseverance. So the student’s more likely to stay with the rigor of thinking.

[00:04:08.780] – Tania
Yeah.

[00:04:09.240] – Steve
Sparked by the curiosity.

[00:04:11.340] – Tania
Definitely, definitely. You can think about that even being an adult. When you’re curious about something, you take that time to find out. Susan Engel, actually – I mean, I’ve got this book here if you are really interested in more curiosity. Susan Engel wrote a book called, “The Hungry Mind: The Origins of Childhood,” and she talks about, we know that people learn more when they’re curious. She goes on to talk about she can’t understand why in schools we’re not putting curiosity at the forefront of of what we do in our learning. And that idea that if you have awe and wonder about something, you’re going to find out about that. I mean, we do it every day. If we’ve got a question, we’re trying to find the answer to it. And that idea of putting that at the forefront of learning can really promote that motivation for students.

[00:05:03.170] – Steve
Kind of natural at the early childhood stage, and we somehow get away from it.

[00:05:09.030] – Tania
I know, I know. Because I think in early childhood where we’re looking at this idea of seeing the image of the child or these confident, creative, capable students, and then something happens when children start to write that we forget that that’s still a really important part of learning. We still want to promote that curiosity and that need to want to learn and that desire for wonder, really, that experimentation, that working things out for yourself. And you can do it. I mean, I work with, as you do, I work with schools all the way up, and it can be done. It’s just thinking about, what is it you put in front of students to promote that curiosity.

[00:05:52.110] – Steve
Yeah. So how do real objects and lived experiences then look at impacting curiosity and inquiry?

[00:06:01.380] – Tania
Well, I think there’s a very, very big difference, I think, between having an image of a typewriter and having a real typewriter in a room. In particular for students today, because most of them haven’t seen a typewriter. They’re just like, “What is this? What’s it do?” But there’s something about when you can touch something, when you can see it, that just naturally builds a curiosity. In particular if it’s something that you don’t know what it is, that you’re curious, you want to find out more, or you’re seeing something for the first time and there’s that just that sense of awe and wonder. And when you can when you can touch it, it’s so much more powerful than having an image of something. And I think that’s the key difference, is that it does bring up those natural, authentic questions for students. You can say to a group of 6-year-olds, “Do you have a question?” And they’ll probably have a question. Might have nothing to do with anything. You know, when you work with 6-year-olds, you’re just right, you’re going, how did we get here? I’m so confused.

[00:07:04.480] – Tania
But, you know, when you’ve got that real objects and that real sense of curiosity, the questions, the theories will naturally come. And I think the other thing that it does is that it really promotes that idea, I think, of slowing down and observing, like taking the time to observe. I like to put a lot of magnifying glasses out when we’re using real objects as well, and just getting students to really take the time and say, well, what are you really noticing here? And, you know, that’s such a big part of learning, right? That’s slowing down, actually really noticing details. So just seeing something and going, “Oh, that’s what it is. I finished now, let me move on.” And so I think you’ve got a lot of it, and I think it just promotes such wonderful discourse and discussion as well. When we think about using real objects in our learning, even if it’s as a starting point for the learning that’s to come, everyone can access them. I mightn’t know much about the unit that we’re moving into, but I can access real objects and I can talk about them. I mightn’t have the correct vocabulary just yet, but it’s that idea that everybody has this lovely entry point into the use of real objects.

[00:08:14.040] – Steve
So I’m gonna make a really big jump off of what you just said. But I have to tell you what it triggered for me. So I do a lot of work with building professional learning communities of teachers. And I’m real big that at the professional learning community, the student work has to be on the table. So there’s a big difference between looking at the data from math results versus looking at the student’s actual piece of paper.

[00:08:48.080] – Tania
Exactly. Yeah.

[00:08:50.070] – Steve
Looking at rubric scores versus looking at the student writing or listening to a video clip of the student reading a passage, and I’ve got 4 adults sitting there talking about it. It’s just totally different experience.

[00:09:07.960] – Tania
Absolutely. And I think that’s the other thing, right? When we’re using real objects, we are tapping into that prime knowledge of students, like what do they already know? And such a big key part of that is to find a way to gather what students have learned from that experience, you know, whether you’re doing a graffiti board or Frayer model, but something that’s gathering that information. And then, of course, exactly as you say, you’re bringing that along. I think the big difference really to me a lot of the time between inquiry and not inquiry is to me, inquiry – we’re planning in response to students, so we are bringing in that evidence of learning. Where are students? Where are these students? What vocabulary do they already have? What vocabulary don’t they have? What do we need to do next? What misconceptions do we have? And I think that’s that idea of, you can have a unit completely planned out and have some nice inquiry engagements in there, but if it’s not including that student voice in there, then it is a teacher-directed unit ultimately. Yeah.

[00:10:15.520] – Steve
So as I read your post, I noted a switch – I labeled it as a switch in the sequence of learning. So you described a 3rd grade lesson around traits and variation, and you noted that by using the real objects and inquiry, it led to noticing preceding naming and vocabulary following understanding. Would you expand on that a little bit?

[00:10:46.060] – Tania
Yeah, that was a lovely class. I think elementary teachers, go contact your secondary science teachers. You’ll be amazed what they have at their fingertips. So we had these skeletons of seahorses and just these amazing creatures that kids were so excited about to see. And it’s that idea that you’re – so I think what we put up there, we’re like, what do you notice about this? What do they have in common? What might their differences be? So they’re talking about it, they’re noticing differences, they’re noticing things that they have in common, and they’re writing these down and they’re having these rich discussions about them. And then that’s when you walk around and you start introducing, well, these are variations and these are traits. So the language comes with something students already have, and then you’re introducing the scientific language that matches with that in time. Kathy Short used to talk a lot about we do a lot of just-in-case teaching. I’m going to teach you this just in case you need it.

[00:11:47.770] – Steve
Before we – [laughter]

[00:11:48.340] – Tania
Yeah, exactly. Just in case. I’m going to teach you this vocabulary just in case you might need it. Whereas I think what we can do when we use real objects is that that beautiful vocabulary or that scientific vocabulary or the vocabulary of the learning can come out in that moment and we can start talking to students about that because they’ve made sense of it themselves. And then you can introduce that word to them in terms of what the scientific language is.

[00:12:15.270] – Steve
So I want to explore for a moment the teacher’s thinking process when planning for an increase in inquiry. And I work in my explanation with teachers, using a backwards planning process. And in my backwards planning process, I talk about, okay, here’s the, here’s the outcome. This is the learning you want the kids to walk away with, the understanding, the values, whatever that piece is. But then when you work backwards from that, the thing that precedes that outcome, it took me a bunch of years to get this labeled, but I finally labeled it as student learning production behaviors. In other words, if this is what we’re going to achieve, then what is it that the student has to do that would cause that to happen? And then you’re ready to step backwards and say, okay, now what’s the teacher gonna do in order to cause that to happen for the student? So when I first began clicking with that, I realized teachers were looking at planning a lesson and they were looking at the outcome and they were asking, how should I teach this?

[00:13:27.580] – Tania
Yeah.

[00:13:27.820] – Steve
And I suggested that the question was, how should students learn this? Or how could students learn this? And then when I understood that, then I was ready to back up and figure out the teacher’s behavior. So as I was reading your piece, I was trying to decide what are you suggesting is the thinking process the teacher uses to build that inquiry?

[00:13:53.470] – Tania
Yeah, definitely. I think that the thing is I have a book on assessment called, “Leveraging Deep Learning,” and it’s all about this idea of that one of the first things we should be looking at is developing those – exactly as you talk about, like those – whether you’d call them understanding goals, essential questions, lines of inquiry, conceptual questions, essential – there’s a thousand words for the same thing in education, which can take a long time to get through. But that idea of what would evidence be if students understood this. Like, what would we be looking – and it’s not an activity, it’s an actual understanding. So we might be looking for them to compare and contrast, to explain, to reason, to justify whatever it is we’re looking what you’re looking for, and then everything that you plan should be leading to getting students there, but done in a way that is very inquiry-based. I call it the difference between – because if we don’t have that backwards by design piece, and thank you to Wiggins and McTighe for first putting that out there. If we don’t have that backwards by design piece, like if we don’t know what evidence we’re looking for, we are planning activities.

[00:15:04.920] – Tania
And there’s a very, very big difference between planning fun activities versus planning meaningful learning engagements that get to the learning that we’re after, but get to deep conceptual learning as opposed to a ton of different 5,000 things that hit very surface area. And then once you’ve got that, that’s when you’re designing the learning and saying exactly as you said, how can students come to that understanding? And more importantly, what can I do in the start of the unit that’s going to provoke that interest and that curiosity.

[00:15:37.350] – Steve
So the inquiry behaviors are the student learning production behaviors?

[00:15:42.270] – Tania
Absolutely.

[00:15:43.110] – Steve
Okay, because I recall observing a lesson where the teacher had up on the board kind of the purpose, and she said, today we’ll compare and contrast and summarize. And I realized at the end of the lesson, the teacher compared, the teacher contrasted, the teacher summarized.

[00:16:08.180] – Tania
Absolutely.

[00:16:11.470] – Steve
But if I watch the kids, I didn’t pick up – so now the real challenge then is, what is it that I have to do that’s going to cause kids to engage in comparison?

[00:16:24.720] – Tania
Absolutely. And that idea, I think, also is that, you know, I don’t want to see 25 students do the exact same thing.

[00:16:32.580] – Steve
Yeah.

[00:16:33.460] – Tania
That idea that, once they understand what compare and contrast means, that they’ve got a multitude of ways to demonstrate that understanding and that learning based on where they’re at and what they’d like to do. And that’s, I think, one of the joys I feel of teaching conceptually is that you can bring that beautiful creativity into so much of the learning as well.

[00:16:56.390] – Steve
One of the questions I use when I’m in a pre-conference with teachers looking to uncover that, I describe it – if I had a magic finger and I could walk around the room and touch kids on the top of the head and hear what’s going on inside there, what is it that you want going on inside there?

[00:17:14.850] – Tania
Yeah.

[00:17:16.200] – Steve
And sometimes I find teachers who can’t tell me, and then they’re in serious trouble because now they can’t plan a lesson. Other than them doing the work.

[00:17:26.880] – Tania
Absolutely. And I think, if I’m just bringing inquiry down to something quite – I would say, is this something I need to tell students? Is there something I can put in front of them that promotes that discourse, that discussion, the starting to build vocabulary and understanding? And they tell me, and then from there I can plan. And it doesn’t mean that there’s not some explicit instruction in inquiry, but it’s that idea of just in time, as Cathy Short talks about, rather than just in case. So yeah, this group here is struggling with this, I might need to do a little bit more here with them. This group is struggling with this, I might need to do a little bit more with them to help them then move into that inquiry piece of it. And of course, also sometimes you have to start with the explicit instruction. I always talk about PE teachers, there’s so much safety involved. You’re not just going to say, yeah, here’s a few javelins, go fire into that, see how you go, good luck there, right? And so there’s this idea that, of course, explicit instruction has a place in inquiry, but it’s certainly not the whole time, and it’s certainly not the teacher standing up the front talking most of the time.

[00:18:37.960] – Steve
So sometimes it sets up the inquiry, the explicit instruction?

[00:18:42.520] – Tania
Yep. It can definitely set the inquiry depending on what it is. Sometimes it sets it, sometimes it comes a little bit later based on students’ needs, depending on what you’re teaching, but it’s a part of it. Definitely. I think we’re in these kind of pedagogical wars at the moment, and it seems so, you know, to me it’s just like, it’s not this or this, it’s this and this as required and as needed based on the needs of students, which is why, as you were talking about, having that student work out and talking about it, that’s the key to doing really, really good teaching and hitting the needs as they come up.

[00:19:23.490] – Steve
Where does student agency fit into this conversation?

[00:19:27.580] – Tania
Yeah, look, I mean, I think the thing is when you’re talking about inquiry and you’re talking about objects, it naturally provokes students’ questioning and wondering. I think when we talk about student agency, people talk about it as voice and choice, and they are two very different things. Choice is where teachers say, “Here’s a menu, you can choose one of these things.” Voice is where students are making the decisions, and that’s a very different thing. Garth Boomer, an Australian educator from years ago, he talked about this idea of you negotiate the curriculum with students, but that we should be including students’ interests and their questions into that learning. And if students are genuinely curious and they’ve got questions and they’re wondering, they should be incorporated into the learning, whether that’s you’re doing small inquiry groups based on that, whether it’s being incorporated in an ongoing basis, and you’re making this very clear to students as well. So that negotiating of the curriculum is taking place and they’re making decisions about what they want to learn. And I think that the key is, when we talk about putting objects in front of students, they’re connected to the learning.

[00:20:44.090] – Tania
We’re very, very – like, we’re specific, we’re intentional. It’s not just, I’m going to put out rando things and hope, you know, there’s nothing to do with the unit. You’re very intentional. And you’re using prompts or something that guides that kind of really critical thinking of where you want to go with the learning. And so those questions then come in and they should be incorporated into the learning, but you should always be giving students’ decisions in their learning and what they learn, how they learn, when they learn, and always thinking about where does that look like and where does that fit in within the context, of course, of the learning because we have constraints. You know, I go into classrooms a lot and teachers say, “Oh, look, here are these great student questions on the wall,” and I’ll be like, “What did you do with them?” “Oh, we ran out of time.” We don’t want to say to students, we really value your questions, but not really, because at the end of the day, I want to get through what I want to get through, as opposed to valuing your voice within this planning and this orchestrating of learning.

[00:21:52.670] – Steve
So I’m wondering what concerns teachers share with you as you do your work of encouraging more inquiry in the PD that you provide?

[00:22:06.210] – Tania
Yeah, look, I mean, I think one of the biggest concerns is the coverage of curriculum, right? How we’ve got so much curriculum to cover, we’ve got to do this. And a big part of this is – and Kath Murdoch talks about this – is that you’ve got to know your curriculum. You’ve got to know it really, really well, because the more you know it, the more flexibility you have with it. Right? You might be moving down something like, okay, the kids are taking this there, that means I was going to do that later, but now I don’t have to. The other thing is unpacking those standards. The amount of times I plan with teachers and they know, well, this means this, and, you know, we’ve got to do this, and when we actually look at the standard, it doesn’t say that at all. So teachers are sometimes adding things into units that are not necessarily there, which means then students aren’t getting that choice really in that. So a big part is knowing your curriculum, and then I think it can take that sort of fear away a little bit that you’re so worried about getting through it.

[00:23:09.190] – Tania
The other thing I think is time constraints. I’ve never ever in my life heard a teacher say, I’ve got too much time. And I think also, you have parents and their concerns about what are my children learning because it should look different to when they went to school. And so it’s an idea of how do you bring all of that in. And then of course the other one is this control. Often it’s like, oh, but I don’t want to do that because this might happen, or I don’t want to try that because this, you know, or this child might, or this…. And it’s just sometimes I think just giving things a go and having permission to get it wrong. And, and also, when you are looking at your curriculum, it’s like there are some things that are worth inquiring into and taking time. There are other things that that may not be, that they might just be – actually, this is a really good one to just watch a beautiful video about… and the inquiry can come through that.

[00:24:08.110] – Tania
And so, it depends what it is. Inquiry can be really quick. I think that’s the other thing that people think an inquiry process is very different from an inquiry in a moment as well. And so you’re always thinking, who’s doing the thinking?

[00:24:23.030] – Steve
You triggered a story from my past, and it’s too long ago that I can remember the author to give credit to, but it was a gentleman who was a high school English teacher, and his instruction was the students publishing a magazine on the history of people living in this rural community. And he described that on the wall of his classroom, he had the curriculum and he signed it off as they got to it.

[00:25:05.580] – Tania
Yes.

[00:25:06.180] – Steve
So whenever the issue arose in what the students were working on, that’s how you have to know your curriculum. So we’re not going to follow the map through the curriculum. I’m guiding the students, and when I see there’s something we’re not getting to, then I’ll figure out a way to ask a question or put something in front of the students that takes us there.

[00:25:29.900] – Tania
And that’s the thing, right? If you know it, you can say, ah, we haven’t hit this yet. Okay, I know what I need, right? And it’s just being – it’s really knowing it. And yeah, being okay with it. I think, also, and realizing, well, what’s essential, you know? And sometimes it’s very contextualized. I mean, I live in Singapore. Weather patterns are like rain, hot, rain, hot. You’re not going to do a whole massive inquiry over a year into weather patterns like you could do in Switzerland, for instance. And so again, you’re saying, well, what do you then spend more time on? So you’re always negotiating, I think, with yourself of where to spend that time.

[00:26:14.280] – Steve
So where your school is should be driving a chunk of the learning.

[00:26:19.360] – Tania
Absolutely. Absolutely. In particular, if you are looking at – I always talk about when we think about inquiry and we think about children as researchers in inquiry, that research is beyond books and the internet, right? And ChatGPT. Research is real people, real places, real objects. And so the more we know our community and the more we can link our learning to the community, the more we’re developing those interviewing skills, surveying, gathering real data and things like that that are just so important for research and that authentic research and a reason to want to know as well.

[00:27:00.230] – Steve
So a lot of the listeners to this podcast are instructional coaches, building-level administrators, and teacher leaders. I’m wondering what what suggestions you’d make to that group of people as to the support they should be providing to teachers.

[00:27:18.750] – Tania
Yeah, I mean, ultimately, when we think about inquiry, it’s that idea that it’s a stance as a school, that it’s that we believe that this is the best way that students learn, right? And that idea that that permeates through everything from your professional learning to your meetings with teachers. And so it’s, it’s kind of at the forefront or if you really believe in curiosity, you curated spaces around the school that promote curiosity, right? So I think it’s thinking about what do we mean by this. I think the other thing that is really, really important is a very, very clear understanding, whether you’re using inquiry, whether you’re using Backwards by Design, whether you’re using concept-driven curriculum, that every single teacher in that school has the same understanding of what that means. So often, you know, you’re hearing different things which just can get confusing. So I think it’s making sure that there is a really shared understanding about the language of inquiry and what we mean by that. And then of course, you know, in particular as coaches, like, our role is to model that in classrooms.

[00:28:28.860] – Tania
You know, what does it look like in classrooms? Because I think this is where teachers struggle, it’s like, just show me what it looks like. What does it look like? Help me. And so I think a big part of that role is also modeling, but then developing protocols. So what would we see in an inquiry classroom? Okay, people opening up their classrooms and taking that risk and allowing people in and having teachers involved in the construction of that as well in terms of what we might be looking for. And so I think it’s just a really clear idea that as a community this is what we believe, and then we’re going to put structures and processes in to make it happen. But I think as coaches, I know that the teachers really value that idea of seeing it in action. And I do a lot of that with the schools that I work in, where I’ll go in and model inquiry in the classroom, but I also have them have the teachers there as part of that planning process so they can see that shift. So this is where we started.

[00:29:33.330] – Tania
This is my thinking. This is why I’m doing what I’m doing. This is how I’m gonna do it. And then of course the lesson. And then really important is that reflection. What worked? What didn’t work? What can we emulate again?

[00:29:46.820] – Steve
A lot of my work is with coaches, and you just labeled a piece there that I reinforce – modeling without the teacher being part of the planning of what’s being modeled. It’s kind of a show and tell maybe, but the teacher needs to know the thinking of the person that they’re now watching the model so that they could process that. And also, as I was listening to you, in effect, effective coaching is engaging the teacher in inquiry so it should be modeled, it should be modeled right there

[00:30:19.950] – Tania
Yeah, absolutely. All the time. So, like I said, how are you bringing inquiry into meetings? How are we bringing inquiry into our professional learning? So it kind of sits as this forefront of as a school community, this is what we really believe. And the teachers are questioning, they’re modeling wondering in their own classrooms. So everyone’s kind of modeling this idea of what it means to be an inquirer. And I think that’s a big part of it as well. When we think about inquiry, what are people doing when they inquire? And having those indicators, because I think the thing is, teachers are doing so much inquiry already, they’re just not aware of it sometimes. And I love that moment with the teachers where you’ll be looking at – we’ll be developing kind of ideas of indicators of what students are doing in an inquiry class. I’m like, “I do some of them!” Look, of course you do, everybody’s doing parts of inquiry.

[00:31:18.970] – Tania
And so I think it’s also having, in particular for those coaches, making teachers realize that it’s already happening, but how do we make it happen more?

[00:31:28.670] – Steve
Well, Tania, before we close out, I want to give you an opportunity here. Is there a message around all of this that you didn’t get a chance to put forth in our conversation up to this point – I give you open door here at the end.

[00:31:44.010] – Tania
Yeah, I think when we think about inquiry, I think it’s number one, not being scared of it, and also number two, you’ve got to take risks. Not everything is going to be perfect. It can be messy sometimes, and that’s okay as well. I think that’s really important. I think the other thing is, is if you are looking at implementing inquiry, and I always talk to people about this after professional learning, it’s like, if you’re going to do something, something needs to go away. You can’t just keep adding on to what you’re going to do, right? It’s that idea that we need that balance in teaching. So if you’re going to say, well, yeah, what I’m going to do is I’m going to use more objects, more real objects to promote curiosity and wondering, then what you’re not doing is doing a lot of the talking. So that’s going to go away, right? Because you can’t just add that on to everything else that you’re doing. And so you’ve always got to be balancing it. If I’m going to do more of this, what goes away?

[00:32:47.130] – Tania
Or I’m going to include student questions. Well, therefore, I’m not going to plan the whole unit in full, right? So I think what I always say to teachers, I always think, if you’re doing this, what does that mean you’re doing less of? And always trying to keep that balance. Otherwise – and it happens in schools, right? Oh, that was a great performance. Oh, now we’ve got another one. Oh, now we’ve got – oh, another reporting. And then all of a sudden there’s 5,000 things going on because no one’s thinking then what needs to go away. So that would be it. And also just start – I always say have your really short-term goals. Next week I’m going to use real objects here and see what happens. And just start small and don’t try and do everything at once. I think that’s it. And don’t overplan.

[00:33:34.720] – Steve
So you triggered a phrase that I put out there sometime,s and I’m feeling that I want to run it by you for getting an okay on it. I sometimes describe that to do some of the things you’re talking about, a teacher has to – I call it trust kids’ brains, in that students will learn things that I didn’t teach.

[00:34:02.400] – Tania
Oh, absolutely.

[00:34:05.620] – Tania
I mean, that’s the joy. Yeah, that’s the joy. And I think, when you leave that space for students’ learning, when you really look at this idea of awe and wonderment, I always say students get to blow your mind with what they come up with. Like, they get to blow your mind. You’re just like, how? But if we are closing learning into a box, we don’t see that.

[00:34:33.060] – Steve
Yeah. Well, Tania, thank you so much. I was looking forward to this, and you certainly lived up to every expectation and beyond.

[00:34:41.280] – Tania
Oh, thank you. Nice to see you. Thank you for the opportunity. It’s been wonderful.

[00:34:44.960] – Steve
What’s the bezt way for listeners to connect with you, find out about your books and the work that you’re doing?

[00:34:52.400] – Tania
Yeah, so I have a website called Innovative Global Education and https://www.innovativeglobaled.org/ is the website, but that’s got a lot of other podcasts I’ve done, my books on there, and a lot of blog posts that I have written as well. And also obviously you can connect with me on LinkedIn, Tania Lattanzio and or and Instagram, @taniaconnects, as well. And I’m always interested in what schools are doing.

[00:35:20.940] – Steve
We’ll put your website in the lead-in to the podcast to make it easier for folks to find. Thank you so much. Have a great day.

[00:35:28.800] – Tania
You too. Thank you so much again. And yeah, I hope everyone found this useful. Thank you.

[00:35:35.750] – Steve
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.