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

Visit The Society of Childhood Entrepreneurs website here. 

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

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

Podcast Transcript:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[00:07:14.700] – Steve
Very cool.

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

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

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

[00:08:23.227] – Steve
[laughter]

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

[00:08:49.880] – Steve
Real life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tim Smyth, a high school teacher, shares his strategies for regularly surveying his students to build valuable connections. Hear some of the questions and approaches that tap information about his students. Tim has experienced knowing students better, having students know him, and at times knowing students who need emotional help. Instructional coaches can use Tim’s voice to spark teachers’ thinking about the possibilities. Tim started this process as a professional growth plan –  that might be a great option for other teachers.

Read Tim’s article here.

Find the blog on the 4S’s interview here.

Visit Tim’s site here.

Email Tim: historycomicsguy@gmail.com

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

Podcast Transcript:

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

[00:00:25.340] – Steve
Knowing Students Builds Engagement. Our podcast guest today is Tim Smyth, whose post in Edge Utopia grabbed my attention. It’s titled, “Surveying Students Regularly Can Yield Valuable Connections.” Being a promoter of creating ways to know students and having students know that they are known, I immediately sent an invitation to Tim and was pleased to get his quick response. Tim has been teaching for over 20 years and is an author and educational consultant. He focuses on making one-on-one connections with students by surveying them to gather information about their goals, challenges, and everyday lives. Tim shares his own lived experiences and passions, such as comics and all things hip hop, as he encourages students to share their own experiences and passions in the classroom. Welcome, Tim.

[00:01:35.200] – Tim
Good morning, Steve. Good afternoon. Thanks for having me on the show.

[00:01:38.920] – Steve
Well, I’m excited that you’re here. As I read your piece, you shared that serving students began as part of a professional growth plan. I’m wondering how you arrived at that idea. I do a lot of work with schools on building professional growth plans, and I talk about a professional growth plan should be the testing of a hypothesis. I’m wondering, what was the hypothesis you had in mind as you laid out your growth plan?

[00:02:08.540] – Tim
So the PGS, something that we have to do, and it’s a really interesting way to do it rather than traditionally being observed, like you said, is coming up with that hypothesis. My idea was getting to know my students more on a human level, getting to interact with them weekly, bi weekly, as much as I could, what would the impact be on the learning in my classroom? I have found that it has had an immeasurably positive impact and effect with these surveys. If I don’t do them often enough, a lot of the times the students will say, Hey, Mr. Smyth, we haven’t done one of these in about two weeks. Can we do another? And so it’s been a really impactful thing to build community in my classroom and really just for the students to know that they’re not just a number in my classroom. It’s not just a percentage of what their grade is. I’ve gotten to know them in ways that when you’ve got five classes and 30 kids in each class and you’re going bell to bell, it’s just not possible to do it in an ordinary way.

[00:03:09.640] – Steve
I’m really glad to have you label that because frequently, secondary teachers share with me the overwhelmingness. I’m afraid too often, put it aside as something that can’t be done instead of looking at an alternative way to do it.

[00:03:32.940] – Tim
And that doesn’t take the place of…I try to physically interact with kids and talk with them and, “Hey, nice shoes. What’s that book you’re reading?” Those kind of things. But if you’re lucky, you might be able to, if you’re doing it purposeful, maybe hit 20-25% of the kids every day. But this way, I can hit 100% of the kids once a week, like I said, in just a way that is just not possible.

[00:03:54.840] – Steve
Well, talk to us about some of the ways that you do this. In your article – and by the way, we’ll make sure that your article gets tied in with a link here so that people can go find it, but you mentioned several different strategies that you use. So you want to walk us through a couple of those?

[00:04:14.680] – Tim
Yeah. And it’s cool to write articles for Edutopia because technically, you get paid by George Lucas. So as a giant nerd myself, it’s a neat thing.

[00:04:25.165] – Steve
[laughter]

[00:04:25.480] – Tim
And I say this all the time when I work with teachers – if we don’t share what we’re doing in our classrooms, it’s not bragging, but we’re letting others control the conversation about education. And so as many times as we can share, that’s a powerful thing to do. So I started doing this. I’ve been around for a while, and I was brought in with the idea of, don’t let them see a smile until Christmas kind of thing. Make them fear you at the beginning of the school year. As the year goes on, you can open up a little bit more, all those kinds of things. And I wish I could go back and change all that for maybe the first 10 years or so as I was teaching. Not that I wasn’t kind and things like that, but I had never really taken the human aspect with this. And so at the end of the school year, I would always show this great video, and that’s in the article. The gentleman’s name is Rick Rigsby, “Lessons From a Third-grade Dropout.”

[00:05:16.370] – Tim
And he talks about how his father was, quote, unquote, only a third-grade student, and then he dropped out of school. But it’s all about what his father taught him and how to overcome these obstacles in life and all these things. And it focuses on making making as much of an impact on this life as you can while you’re here. At the end of the year, you know the kids. It’s great. It’s easy to do. I’m a giant introvert. But by the end of the year, you build your small family there. And then one year, my students made me promise to begin the school year with this video and the discussion. And so I did. And it was a terrifying experience to open up when I don’t know these kids. I have anxiety, I have depression. I talk very openly with the kids about this and as an introvert. But then we also talk about not letting these things get in your way. And so for me, that video is a way to open up those conversations. I would always give that get to know me survey at the beginning of the year. What books do you like to read?

[00:06:18.420] – Tim
Where are you into? All those things that we do as teachers. Then you read through it, and then you put it in your binder and you forget about it. Now, I do it about once every two weeks. I change up the questions, and I tie it into current events. In the video, like I said, he focuses very much on how you live in. That’s the title of my survey. It’s just how you live in. It might be as simple as watch a short five-minute video about the news, give me some feedback about it, and then honestly, just, how are you doing? What’s going on this week? Sometimes it’s as simple as that. Other times, I might throw at them a six or seven question survey, and it might be things like, towards the end of a marking period or when there’s midterms, and I’ll say things like, what are your major obstacles to finding success in school this year? It’s not just about my classroom. It’s about the holistic approach of everything going on that I’m finding out. Because in a high school, you’re not on a team. There’s days go by where I don’t really talk to other adults in the building because we don’t interact as much.

[00:07:24.640] – Tim
It gives me a peek into these other classrooms. Then I’ll say things like, another And the question is, what do you need the most help with? And it doesn’t have to be with school. It could be with time management. It could be with studying, it could be with another teacher, it could be with my classroom. And then I ask, and this is always a hard one for them, “Where are you finding your greatest success in school right now?” And for them, they’re so used to, “Oh, I only got this grade, and I only got that grade…” Forcing them to talk about what they’re doing that they’re successful at. And so when I give grades out, I can’t get to see a D, even an F. I always find something in their work that was done well. I’ll put stickers on their work and things like that. They’re not just that grade. Also in the survey, I’ll ask, “What is the one thing that you wish that I, as your teacher, knew about you?” That can be anything from, they might answer something silly to it might be something really serious, it might be something that they’re really…they want to have a chance to share, but they’re too shy to share in class.

[00:08:20.600] – Tim
And so it gives them that voice with me. And then I’ll ask, “Reflect on our class this year. “How are we,”and that’s really important – “how are we doing? Not just you as a student, but how am I doing as a teacher? What’s working? What’s not working?” I’ve been teaching long enough that I’m okay with stopping a lesson right smack in the middle of it if it’s not working. And if there’s a principal in the room, it doesn’t phase me no least. I think that’s an important piece of education is that I fail, too, as a teacher. That’s also being human. “What’s a goal you have set for yourself this year?” It might have nothing to do with school. It might have to do… I’ve heard about weight lifting. I’ve heard about wrestling, swimming times. I’ve heard about marathons. I’ve heard about entering into contests. I’ve heard about all kinds of neat things that the kids are doing outside of my classroom. And by the way, this helps a lot when I write college recommendations as well, because I’m not just writing about grades and things.

[00:09:22.240] – Tim
And then the only other one that I really change up with is, and I found a lot of value in this because I got really upset, you give the kids a lot of feedback, you give them an assignment, and some of the kids look at it, and then they throw it in their bag or they never look at it. I don’t give them a grade for major assignments. They have to grade themselves. And so part of that survey is, what did you do well? What do you need to work on? Those kinds of questions. So that they’re forced to use specific evidence, textual evidence, high school teacher, from my feedback. And then they get to share what they did well, what they need to work on. They pair share with a partner, and then they have to grade themselves. And usually I find the students grade themselves way too harshly. They’re way too hard on themselves. And it’s really neat to say they grade themselves, and I gave myself a B or a C. I’m like, oh, no, actually, this is the grade I’m going to give you. And so then you see them puff up, you see them to be very proud of themselves, and it makes them part of the process rather than just they come in, there’s an assignment on their desk, and then you just teach.

[00:10:27.260] – Tim
It’s a lot different to have them part the conversation.

[00:10:31.400] – Steve
Wow. You’ve pumped a whole bunch of things out here for me to follow.

[00:10:36.100] – Tim
Sorry.

[00:10:36.900] – Steve
No, I’m really glad. The first one I got to tell you is the timing is very interesting because I’m working with three different schools currently with teachers taking a look at feedback to students on work and that issue that kids don’t pay any attention to graded feedback is one of the first ones that that we jump into. I’m wondering, because you’re surveying the kids and getting their input along the way, I wonder when you bring that around to an assignment where you’re asking them to give their assessment of their work, whether they jump into that a little better than students would if a teacher just begins with asking them to look at their work and and figure out the feedback they got from the teacher.

[00:11:33.180] – Tim
Yeah, that’s an important piece of it. I think COVID really brought this home for me because even though my kids were at home and on the computers, we had already built this community, and so we were still able to maintain those relationships even that was on the screen. The way that I do this, I don’t know if I said this in the beginning, but we have Schoology for our learning platform, whatever you might have, chalkboard, whatever. But they submit this in writing digitally. Most of the things I do in my classroom does not involve computers, but in this case, I do. It’s just the kids get used to it. It’s part of the pattern. It’s nothing new for them. But you’re right, because in the beginning of the year, it’s funny when you look because their get to know me survey in the beginning of the year, really short answers because here’s this old guy up in front of the room. I don’t know who he is. But by this time in the year now, the answers I’m getting, wow, that I just I would never have gotten at the beginning of the year. And then they continue I need to get deeper and deeper and deeper as the course of the year goes.

[00:12:32.640] – Tim
And there’s some kids that will never go beyond a couple of words, and they don’t feel comfortable sharing a whole lot. And that’s fine, too. It’s not a forced therapy session. That’s not what I’m here for.

[00:12:44.760] – Steve
That probably tells you something as well, though.

[00:12:47.120] – Tim
Yeah, I agree.

[00:12:48.280] – Steve
The degree of what they share with you. Well, listening to you now, you triggered another piece that I had written down here. And it sounds like there’s some risk-taking and vulnerability that’s necessary. I think I heard you say you model that. Then I’m guessing as the time goes on, students become more and more comfortable taking that risk and being vulnerable in their responses to you.

[00:13:13.840] – Tim
Yeah. I just got a note in my mailbox to start today on Monday, and it was a note from a student. And you get a handwritten note from a teenager like, wow. But the gist of it at the end, she said this one sentence of, “Thank you so much for sharing about your vulnerabilities and some of the struggles in your life, I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one.” And that, yes, I want them to write five paragraph essays and research papers, and I want them to know about our government and question things and be civically engaged. But I also want them to know that they’re a human being and that they’re seen.

[00:13:46.900] – Steve
Yeah, powerful. The other one, I’ll stick this in for the listeners, a resource. But I’ve pointed people a couple of times to a piece, a presentation from Search Institute that looks at student relationships. They have something that they call the 4S’s interview. That the teacher working, especially looking at a student who’s struggling, or the teacher has questions about them, but they talk about uncovering the student’s four S’s. The four S’s are: Sparks, strengths, struggles, and supports. The spark is, what’s your passion? What are you interested? What do you see as your strengths? What do you see as your struggles? Then what are the places or the people who support you? As I was listening to you go through the various questions you’re asking kids, it sounded to me like all four of those are likely to pop up at some time.

[00:15:02.380] – Tim
Yeah, I like that, though, that idea of, like Mr. Rogers would say, “look for the helpers.” I like that. I might actually work that into my surveys. Who’s that around you? Who’s helping you? I love that.

[00:15:12.600] – Steve
Yeah. Because if a kid says nobody, then you know you got one you really need to zero in on.

[00:15:22.040] – Tim
Yeah.

[00:15:23.240] – Steve
I touch on that when I work with high schools looking at advisor advisee programs. We’re a teacher serving as an advisor to a group of kids. I share that you don’t have to be the kid’s person, but you need to know who that is. If you know the kid is into baseball and they got this connection with their coach, and you know that if a problem comes up, that’s the person you can turn to. But if what you uncover is that a kid has nobody, then as an advisor, that comes a spot where you really got to look at how zero in.

[00:16:01.320] – Tim
Yeah. We do a lot of mentor relationships as well. A lot of times the kids will sign up for it on their own, and they give a listing of their different interests and things, and we try to match adults with them. It’s a really, really powerful experience. On top of everything else that we have to do as educators, but there’s certain things that are just more important.

[00:16:20.980] – Steve
Bingo, bingo, bingo. Actually, that takes me into my next question then. I frequently I’ll really talk when you’re asking people to look at something that they might do in their teaching, what I call the cost-benefit link. If you’re going to take this on to make this change in your teaching, what’s it going to cost you to do it? And then you’re weighing that cost against the benefit. I’m wondering, as you look at the work that you’re doing here, what do you see as the cost? I know that you’re reading that the benefits are outweighing the cost to you.

[00:17:04.000] – Tim
Most days. It can be a lot. For one thing, if you’re asking the kids to share information with you, you can’t look at that a week later. It’s got to be that day. They might be sharing about a sports game over the weekend. They might be sharing something that they’re stressed out about. You got to set other things aside when you put those whatever is out there. If you let it go a week, the kids are not going to buy in anymore. Sometimes I’ve had to get kids some serious help. You don’t want a kid walking out the door on Friday and they say something that needs to be addressed. Sometimes we’ve had to do that. There’s that. It’s an emotional toll. They talk a lot about that in education that we’ve got. I forget what it’s called, but we have that secondary stressors coming from the kids. I my own children at home, too, and those stressors and things. If you’re just getting your feet on the ground, and I’m a mentor to new teachers as well, and maybe this is not something that you get as involved in. Maybe it’s something a lot simpler in terms of just ask the kids, say, “Hey, what’s something going on this week?”

[00:18:17.250] – Tim
Maybe not make it on that deep of a level if you’re not prepared for that. Because if you’re not prepared to respond, you’re going to break that trust with the kids. I say all the time, you can be a well-meaning teacher, but if you’re not prepared for things, things to have certain conversations, you could actually do more harm. So this is something that, again, I’ve been teaching for a long time now. I would not have done my first couple of years unless I had somebody else to talk to who’s had this experience. I could share those kinds of things with me. But yeah, in terms of the benefits, it reminds me on a weekly basis why I’m a teacher. It reminds me and lets me connect with these kids and the laughter. And I have best piece of advice I ever got was to have a good news binder when I first started teaching and now I have multiple binders. And so a lot of these things I will print out, the cards, the emails, the things that we forget about because teachers are really hard on ourselves. And if something goes wrong, it can ruin my entire day or week or what have you.

[00:19:15.180] – Tim
But I’ll go home and I’ll flip through that good news binder. And so for me, it’s not just about saving the kids. It’s literally also saves me, too.

[00:19:24.000] – Steve
Wow. I hadn’t thought about the benefit that way. I think compassion fatigue is what you were – is that the phrase?

[00:19:33.260] – Tim
Yeah. Compassion fatigue.

[00:19:34.970] – Steve
This is actually an antidote to compassion fatigue. You’re seeing the payoff and the benefits from that stress that comes from tying into the lives of the kids.

[00:19:49.920] – Tim
Yeah. It also opens up the conversation that their teachers are people, too, and their principals, and their guidance counselor. Everybody in that building is going through something every day. I think if we see the world that way, it changes the way we react, because a lot of times those negative interactions really have very little to do with me and that child. It has to do with external type things. This has helped me to be much more understanding of that.

[00:20:18.880] – Steve
Early on, you used the word human, and that’s powerful. Let’s find out one new piece about you. When I went to your website and I saw that you were called, The History Comic, was it?

[00:20:35.200] – Tim
Yeah, on social media, that’s me, History Comics. And my email is historycomicsguy. And I always say I should switch my legal name to That Comic Guy, but yeah.

[00:20:44.400] – Steve
Tell us a little bit about that.

[00:20:46.940] – Tim
So this all came hand in hand. I had years ago, long story short, was on my way out of teaching. It was an awful year. It had nothing to do with what was going on in my classroom. And I started looking around for who knows what else I was going to do. And I realized if I was at that point, then I want to teach the way that I want to teach. And I’d never brought in… I’m a rule follower. I never brought in hip hop. I never brought in comics, those kinds of things. And when I started to, I had students who reacted in ways that just opened up the door. The nerds like I was in school that didn’t have an outlet. And here’s this old white guy talking about hip hop. Just staying relevant with the kids. And I just started doing my thing. I started writing articles for PBS News Hour. I traveled around the country, and I present at comic cons and libraries. I do professional development for school districts. I’ve taught at the University of Pennsylvania. I worked for the US State Department. We did work across the world on comics and education and things.

[00:21:50.440] – Tim
If nothing else, I would say, find that thing that you’re passionate about as a teacher. If you can bring that into your classroom, it changes everything. It really made me fall in love with teaching all over again. My administration, my district has been very supportive, and I do my thing. Yes, we do everything else. I’m a very challenging teacher. You can ask my kids, they’ll tell you that. But because I’m passionate about things, they’re passionate about things, and you put it all together, and it’s really been cool.

[00:22:20.600] – Steve
Well, this has just been great, Tim. What’s the best way for listeners to get back in touch with you or follow up if they have a question?

[00:22:30.400] – Tim
My website, probably the easiest thing is teachingwithcomics.com. You can reach out to me there. I’ve got lots of free lesson plans and ideas and resources and all that stuff that’s there. I would say just start there. That’s an easy thing to do. I’m always happy to talk to people about these types of things.

[00:22:48.620] – Steve
We’ll make that happen. Thanks so much.

[00:22:51.620] – Tim
Thank you, Steve. A really great conversation.

[00:22:55.700] – 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.

I heard about a great experience illustrating awe in learning that was shared by a group of middle school students and their teacher in Grand Island, New York. They joined me on this podcast sharing their reflections and insights. As you hear their story consider where these elements of Awe appeared:

• Awe occurs when we experience something much larger than ourselves
• Awe leads to the need to reframe one’s understanding of the world.
• Awe often brings forth emotions of humility, gratitude, and compassion.
• Awe is linked to prosocial behavior: people are more likely to help others after experiencing awe.

Connect with the teacher, Lora Randles: lorarandles@gicsd.org

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

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.000] – Steve [Intro]
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.

[00:00:29.540] – Steve
Find Leading Awe While Learning. While I’ve been involved in writing a chapter for a book about awe in learning, I heard about a great experience generated by a group of middle school students in Grand Island in New York and their teachers. Their superintendent posted about their work with a note that said, “The students were learning with heart and leading with purpose.” As you hear their story, consider where these elements of awe connect. Awe occurs when we experience something much larger than ourselves. Awe leads to the need to reframe one’s understanding of the world. Awe often brings forth emotions of humility, gratitude, and compassion. Lastly, awe is linked to pro-social behavior. People are more likely to help each other after experiencing awe. I’m excited to have Lora Randalls, an ELA middle school teacher, and her students, Fiona and Logan, sharing their stories with us today on the podcast.

[00:01:49.540] – Steve
Welcome, folks, and thanks so much for joining us.

[00:01:52.840] – Lora
Hi. Thanks for having us.

[00:01:55.220] – Steve
Lora, you shared with me earlier that this unit, built around the book, “A Long Walk to Water,” has been part of your instruction at the school for a few years. Would you share with us how it was selected and what you’ve learned about the power of the book across the years with students?

[00:02:16.540] – Lora
So it was about 16 years ago, and New York State had just started implementing this new curriculum and one of the books in their curriculum, they called them Modules – and they were leaning towards these four modules. And one of the books in a module was “A Long Walk to Water.” And I had never read the book before, but as I began delving into these new standards, I started by reading the book. And if you want to talk about an awe moment as an educator, it’s actually sitting in a staff development, probably should have been paying more attention to the speaker, but got caught up in this book, which is an appropriate middle school level. So I ended up finishing it in that setting and thinking to myself, I don’t love the module that New York State’s prepared, but this book’s a keeper. And I knew from that moment on that this book was going to be both changing in my life as an educator, but also for the lives of my students. But what it did is just so much more than I could have ever anticipated – this impact that it’s had on them and me personally in my life as well.

[00:03:30.000] – Steve
Logan, as you read the book, what impact did it have on you?

[00:03:38.620] – Logan
When I was reading the book, it was just very wild to think that kids my age were going through that stuff. I go to school, I go home, I have fun. And kids over in South Sudan were running from wars and stuff. And it was really wild to think about, but just hearing saw the story was so impactful. He’s just such a powerful person. He came from being in war, being in this war-set environment to now helping everyone in South Sudan and those places without water. It’s just super changing of what he’s done.

[00:04:23.280] – Steve
Fiona, talk about a piece that especially caught your attention.

[00:04:28.900] – Fiona
Just how lucky we are to have running power and electricity and heat and water and air conditioning because it never really occurred to me how lucky we are because these kids have to go and get a bucket and fetch water every single day for their village. And even when they go and walk the entire day to get the water, it’s filled with harmful bacterias and sicknesses. And so that’s just a really big struggle. And I didn’t really realize how lucky we are to have clean water and fresh water, and that we don’t have to spend our entire day walking to get water that’s just filled with bacteria and that’s going to make us sick anyways.

[00:05:13.600] – Steve
Lora, what led to the move from reading the book to the decision to engage in the Water for South Sudan project?

[00:05:23.520] – Lora
Well, I feel like I would be amiss if I didn’t say a little bit about the book.

[00:05:28.240] – Steve
Yeah, please.

[00:05:29.400] – Lora
Okay. The book itself was written by Linda Sue Park. Salva is a true person. He was a Sudanese refugee who became known as the Lost Boys back in the ’80s. When these boys from South Sudan were relocated to America, they began their lives here. As Logan said, Salva has now dedicated his life to bring water back to the people of his original country. Reading the book, Salva as a real person, and he speaks it like engagements, church, civic organizations, schools, and he had to gather a lot of money to get his project started. It just so happened that Newbury, a winning author, Linda Sue Park, was in the audience at a church in Rochester when Salva was speaking. She was so moved by his story that she decided she wanted to write a biography about him. But she wanted to write it for middle school students as that was Salva’s age when his journey began. So as Salva gets separated from his family at about 11 years old, he flees to what they call in Africa as the Bush, only to never return home. And Salva travels for 11 years over thousands of miles of the wild truck of Africa swamp lands, areas inhabited by dangerous lions, crossing rivers filled with crocodiles to different refugee camps, only to find life they’re not as much better than just his survival in the wild.

[00:07:16.320] – Lora
When the United States found out that this was happening in other countries around the world, they started to bring these Sudanese refugee kids over to America. But they couldn’t have been a soldier. They had to be orphans. And Salva met criteria, and they had to have a vision. They wanted to bring something to America. They wanted these people to come to get educated. And Salva learned English from one of the workers in the park. So he comes to America, and he’s relocated right here in Rochester. And the family that he lives with helps him adjust to life in America. He goes to Monroe Community College, graduates with a business degree. And then all of a sudden, after he’s lived in America about six, seven years, he checks his email. This is a fun point in our lesson when we’re like, How far Salva has come? Now that he’s checking his email.

[00:08:06.270] – Steve
[laughter]

[00:08:06.860] – Lora
He realizes that an old cousin from his back in Sudan says he thinks that he’s found his father at a clinic suffering from some waterborne illness from drinking the water. Salva and his new family in the United States help him get all the paperwork in order.

[00:08:24.410] – Lora
He travels back to South Sudan, finds out, yes, this, in fact, is his father. He gets spend a week with his father. It’s very moving. It’s a very powerful moment. And Salva then has to return to the United States, not knowing if he’ll ever see his father again. So at this point in Salva’s life, he realizes he wants to give back. He wants to do something. And his dream is he wants to bring water to the people of South Sudan. So things like that are happening to his father don’t happen to others. So to do this, Salva needs to start a nonprofit organization, and he needs to do it from scratch. He needs to start at the beginning. So he starts, as I started my story, by talking to civic organizations and schools. And it takes him a lot of years to raise enough money to bring his first well to South Sudan, which would be built in his original village of Lunarik, and where he was reunited with his mother and his sisters that he hadn’t seen at that point in over 20 years. So at this point now, after all these years have gone by, and Water for South Sudan has now been up and running for about 20 years, he’s brought more than 600 wells to South Sudan.

[00:09:41.980] – Lora
He teaches hygiene with water, planting crops with water, how to preserve water, how to maintain wells, and all of these components. And the well is never to be used just for one village, and they have to share it with anybody who comes. So Linda Sue Park writes this manuscript, and it’s 900 pages. She’s like, okay, this isn’t going to apply with middle schoolers.

[00:10:07.650] – Steve
[laughter]

[00:10:07.650] – Lora
This is a fabulous story of Salva’s life. She goes back to the drawing board, and I tell my students this, too, not once, not twice, nine times.

[00:10:17.260] – Steve
Oh, wow.

[00:10:18.050] – Lora
Nine times until she gets this version of Salva’s story that she’s satisfied with. So it’s condensed to about 120 pages. She’s still not satisfied. Linda Sue Park says there’s just something missing. She goes, yes, this is a story about Salva, about water. But when we’ve learned about the water in Africa, it’s really the girls whose lives revolve around the fetching, the gathering of water, the boiling of water, washing with water. The girls are the ones who have to transport using their lives. The boys hunt. They are more likely to get an education. So Linda Sue Park created a composite character. She created a fictional character, a girl about Salva’s age, and she named her Nia, which is just a popular name in South Sudan.

[00:11:07.960] – Lora
Nia’s story was told at the beginning of every chapter, much shorter, maybe a page to two pages, just telling about Nia’s very monotonous, very mundane life of gathering water, coming back for lunch, gathering water again, having to teach her little sister how to gather the water, her little sister becoming ill during the rainy sees in them having to move to an area closer to a lake bed. But then there’s tribal wars on top of the Civil War. So there’s all these components going into the story. So at the end of the book, When Salva is working on building his wells, Nia is from a rival tribe. So at the end of the book, the little girl Nia is asking her, Uncle, why did Salva bring the water to our village? Why would it Dinka to bring water to the newer tribe. Her uncle said, Well, he wants to bring water to all the people of South Sudan, not just to his own tribe, the Dinka. At the end of the book, Linda Sue Parks creates this very moving moment when Nia goes up to Salva and thanks him for bringing the water. I cry every year.

[00:12:20.040] – Lora
It’s just such a lovely full circle moment. At this point, these kids are engaged. They’re engaged in Nia’s story, even though it’s fictional, they can relate to this arduous task of having to gather water day in and day out, and they see what Salva has done in the world to make a difference. That is the story of why Linda Sue Park wrote the book. Now, her and Salva are very close. They do speaking engagements together. Prior to these students I have with me today, Logan and Fiona, we actually taken a group of students that we were able to see Linda Linda Sue Park and Salva together and talking about the creation of the book. I’m going to let Logan tell you a little bit about when we saw Salva this last time and how his message now has changed a little bit, if that’s appropriate for this point in the conversation?

[00:13:18.900] – Steve
Yeah, I have to tell you, I’m awed. I’m awed listening to the story from you, and I love the passing on of awe. Linda Sue Park gets odd the first time she hears Salva, and then she writes the book that puts you into awe, and now you’ve got this great opportunity sharing it with the kids. I’d love to hear Logan’s insights.

[00:13:44.600] – Lora
This year, Salva came – it was a Sunday, so we couldn’t take a field trip. So voluntarily, students were able to just go hear him speak at a local church. So Logan was one of the students who came out to meet Salva. So I’ll him tell you about that day.

[00:14:01.680] – Logan
So I remember going in there and then just actually seeing him in person was just like, wow. Because you think about all that he’s went through, and now he’s here in front of you, telling you about what he’s doing with the water for South Sudan and everything. Then after he was done explaining how he helps people and makes wells, he actually sat down and then he would sign books and meet people. There was a line to him because, of course, there’s a line. Then it was so big. To just think, when I was getting closer to it, I think, I’m going to meet him. It’s just so like, wow, like what I said before, of what he’s been through, and now I’m going to shake his hand and stuff.

[00:14:53.140] – Steve
You’ve given a great description of awe for our listeners.

[00:14:58.120] – Lora
Definitely. He’s very great gracious. One of my students who drew him a picture, and Salva was kind enough to let my student bring the picture up for him. He’s like, Salva, I drew this picture for you, and he was very gracious, and it was very sweet.

[00:15:16.120] – Steve
Fiona, I’m wondering, how did you get engaged with raising the funds that your class raised?

[00:15:25.340] – Fiona
I went home that day and I was telling my parents Salva’s story, and they were very touched by it. And so I also called up some of my relatives, and I told them Salva’s story and just how hard his life was and how hard life is still for people in Sudan. And they were crying on the phone. They were so touched and awed by his story. So they donated to the fundraiser. And we did a walk the entire seventh grade, our entire team. We did a walk around the track a few times. It was in the hot sun. And I couldn’t imagine walking in the hot sun every day to get water for your entire village because I was barely walking in the hot heat on our track because it was so hot. But we walked for water, and we did that all as a community. It was a really cool thing to just see so many people get together and actually care about his story and what it means.

[00:16:27.140] – Steve
I really hear the awe experience keeps rippling out to other people getting engaged in it.

[00:16:37.720] – Lora
One of the local Aquanis Club heard about the story, and then they donated a couple of thousand dollars to support the kids. So by the end of the walk, the kids had raised all of this money going towards a second well that we would bring to South Sudan. And so we were really proud of them.

[00:17:00.660] – Steve
Very cool. I’m wondering, Logan and Fiona, do other times at school and other projects that you’ve been engaged in, can you connect to another time that you got that awe experience? Anything come to mind?

[00:17:22.180] – Logan
It was actually in Mrs. Randall’s classroom again. At the beginning of the year, we were reading this book called “The Outsiders,” and It’s like the whole book’s made up, but it’s about the Greasers back in the ’60s. I did not expect it to turn out how it did. I love the book so much. I had to buy the copy of it. I’m actually going to see the Outsiders play this weekend.

[00:17:55.620] – Steve
Very cool.

[00:17:56.370] – Lora
The Outsiders, the Broadway musical is Buffalo this week.

[00:18:01.080] – Steve
Oh, wow.

[00:18:01.890] – Lora
The Outsiders’ book, I’ll let you, Fiona tell you a little about it, but it’s just a great novel in not judging a book by its cover. It’s these really poor, beat-up-looking kids, and the rich, popular kids taunt them and jump them and things. It’s just a really great book for the kids as well.

[00:18:26.660] – Steve
Fiona, I’m wondering what words of advice you might offer to teachers as well as students about the opportunities to be engaged in those kinds of learning experiences that create awe?

[00:18:45.700] – Fiona
Just that it’s very important to learn about other people’s stories and points of view because you don’t really know what others are going through because you can’t really tell until you read about it or they tell you about it. I feel like reading a story about somebody else’s life, it doesn’t even have to be “A Long Walk to Water.” Another book about somebody’s struggles during a hard time or some event in history can really help you open your eyes and see what’s going on in the world around you and what happened in the world around you. It can make us learn from that and move on from that.

[00:19:28.380] – Lora
I know in eighth grade, you’re going to read Diary of Anne Frank, so that might be impactful, too.

[00:19:33.240] – Steve
For sure. Fiona, I want to tell you, you just gave a great description that matches what the researchers are writing about awe, and that it gives you a perspective of the world around you that you didn’t have before. You clearly labeled that. Logan, any words of advice to teachers and students about these kinds of learning opportunities?

[00:20:04.900] – Logan
I mean, some of the most important things with teachers is the teachers have to… They cannot just read the book and be done with it. They have to incorporate some of the book with their classes, and they have to actually make the book fun. Because during “A Long Walk to Water,” when we first started reading it or we walked around the school with holding a water while walking.

[00:20:35.350] – Lora
We also made these hay canoe things, which it’s taking that stuff from the book and turning it into something that you could do in class just makes learning about it so much better.

[00:20:48.640] – Logan
So you’re not just sitting there bored out of your mind. You get to actually not experience it, but kind of experience it.

[00:20:57.220] – Steve
Well, Logan and Fiona, I I can tell you the two of you are ready to do a workshop for teachers. I’ll look to sign you up. I’ll tell you this, you’re giving your teacher awe as she gets to listen to you because I can sit here and watch it happening on the screen. Lora, I’m just wondering any closing thoughts of advice you’d give to teachers about stepping into these kinds of opportunities?

[00:21:28.740] – Lora
Well, I feel like this book really speaks for yourself itself, and it touches a lot of people. Taking that little extra step and connecting with Water for South Sudan network – they give a lot of educational opportunities communities, and they provide a lot of different ways for educators. So whether it be a walk for water, they have a literal walk for water, sorry. They have what’s called the Iron Draft Challenge. So schools are able to raise funds and if you raise a certain amount, you can win a visit with Salva, or you can win a visit with Linda Sue Park. So they offer incentives. Because of the popularity of the book, it’s really been the success of Water for South Sudan. And then they give other ideas just for curriculum, and they also give different ideas for fundraisers for kids to try to help, even if kids are… I mean, our fundraisers turned into something school-wide and something rather big. But even if it’s a small fundraiser where students are raising $20, it’s still showing the students the power of giving, the power of that they are able to do something, that this doesn’t have to happen. This is what’s happening in the world, and they can make a difference.

[00:22:48.850] – Lora
I tell them the story, I’m Salva’s age exactly. While I’m teaching the story, I refer to Salva as 11-year-old, and he’s escaping in the bush running for his life and finding water, finding food, hiding from soldiers, trying not to get kidnapped. So he has to fight. And I went to middle school like them. And the next year, when Salva lived in a refugee camp, I went to high school where they’re going to go. And I tell them this is the year that, to remember the song “We Are the World?” “We Are the World” gets released. So at this point, it was directly talking about the children of Ethiopia. But as middle school students ourselves, we didn’t know that there was a crisis in Africa, the same as these kids. And it wasn’t until that time in my life that I realized that there are people in the world that don’t have food, that don’t have water. Just from this song, “We are the World,” that brought a lot of awareness. I feel like the book brings a lot of awareness. The organization Water for South Sudan, it’s not just fundraising. When you’re walking around with a T-shirt on, you bring an awareness to these causes that are bigger than you and things that humble you and make you really appreciate what you have and the life that you’ve been given.

[00:24:13.160] – Steve
You’ve just labeled awe. Bigger than you. Appreciate. It’s very, very powerful. Lora, I’m wondering, is there a way that you’d be okay with any listeners touching base with you if they had questions and wanted to learn more you?

[00:24:30.940] – Lora
Sure, of course. They could email me right at my school email address, which is just my full name. Again, none of my name is spelled normal, so lorarandles@gicsd.org.

[00:24:57.160] – Steve
Thank you so much. And extend a thank you to your superintendent for putting the post on LinkedIn and allowing me to find out about it.

[00:25:04.800] – Lora
I will. Thank you so much.

[00:25:08.000] – 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.

Teachers looking for a strategy to increase students’ engagement in learning and instructional coaches looking to support those teachers can find ideas and encouragement from Katie Brooks. She shares her experiences that led her to say:

“By making podcasting a part of my ELA curriculum, I’ve seen students finally comprehend complex materials, have a blast learning and using their creativity, and take ownership of their learning in a way that traditional assignments don’t always allow. Students who struggle with traditional tasks have become more invested in their learning when given the opportunity to express themselves through audio storytelling.”

Read Katie’s Edutopia article and find her resources here.

Email Katie: katiejoybrooksyt@gmail.com

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

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00.000] – 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.

[00:00:29.460] – Steve
Learning Through Listening and Creating: Podcasts in the Classroom. I invited today’s guest to the podcast when I read this statement in an article she wrote for Edutopia: “By making podcasting a part of my ELA curriculum, I’ve seen students finally comprehend complex materials, have a blast learning, and using their creativity and take ownership of their learning in a way that traditional assignments don’t always allow.” That quote comes from Katie Brooks. She has a master’s degree in teacher leadership and serves in multiple leadership roles in her school. Passionate about fostering creativity, literacy, and Student Empowerment, she is a strong advocate for technology integration, striving to enhance student learning by leveraging digital tools to inspire innovation and engagement. Welcome, Katie.

[00:01:32.620] – Katie
Thank you. Thank you for having me.

[00:01:34.680] – Steve
Well, thanks so much for joining us. I’m wondering, for starters, would you tell us a little bit about your school community that you’re in right now, maybe the structure of your school, and then a little bit about your student body?

[00:01:50.660] – Katie
Yeah. Well, I teach at a public school in Texas. So I teach in the fifth grade team, and we have five classrooms in fifth grade. So we have a triad and a duo. I’m in the triad. I teach English. I teach ELA for three different classes of about 23 students. Our student population is pretty diverse. We’re right next to a Samsung and Dell headquarters. There’s a lot of immigrants, which has been really cool. I love getting to talk to and meet people from everywhere. It’s very supportive, very supportive parents, very just community-based school, supportive staff. It’s been really a great transition.

[00:02:38.720] – Steve
How did the exploration of using podcast for learning – where did that start?

[00:02:46.600] – Katie
I’m actually very fortunate. I student taught at my first school in Ecuador, and my mentor teacher was really into instructional technology, so much so that she ended up being the following year, an instructional technologist for the secondary school at that international school. I ended up taking her spot in fourth grade, but we still had this really good relationship, and we still shared ideas and everything like that. She ended up moving to secondary, but she kept going to all these different conferences and technology-related PDs. She ended up going to one that talked about podcasting. She came back, and it was around the start of COVID time, she gave all the teachers at that school a PD about using podcasts in the classroom and just some tools that we could do while we’re all virtual, something that they could do on their computers. I thought, oh, that seems like a cool idea. We’ll just try it out. And one thing I like is that there’s a really low barrier to entry. It’s very accessible. It could be about anything. It doesn’t have to be some giant project with really big production action quality or anything like that.

[00:04:02.200] – Katie
But I just started it as something to do, as a little extra thing for them to do during COVID. And since then, just after seeing all the benefits and how into it the kids get, I’ve used it most of the years since then.

[00:04:19.140] – Steve
I think when I read your article, you talked about having the kids listen to podcast, and then you talked about the kids making podcast.

[00:04:32.340] – Katie
Yes.

[00:04:33.200] – Steve
Where was your starting point?

[00:04:36.620] – Katie
Yeah. Well, first, when she talked about making podcasts, I would say at that time, podcasts, at least for kids, weren’t necessarily as popular as they are right now. I think in my classroom now, a lot of kids have these set podcasts that they listen to. So initially, I just started saying, hey, let’s everyone make a podcast. And they were all like, what’s a podcast? What are we supposed to be doing? So it was really I had to go out and seek more podcasts for younger kids. And so now, usually, we start by listening to podcasts, whether it be little… There’s podcasts with stories in it from around the world. There’s podcasts of history lessons and just stories that they would otherwise not hear or just come to life in a different way when presented in that format. Usually, I start by using podcast as comprehension tools, listening instead of just reading the material. Usually, we start with those. Then, yeah, taking it that one step further. Usually, I don’t have to say anything, and they ask, can we make one? Or, how can we make one? Or, oh that’s cool I could share a story or things like that.

[00:05:50.800] – Katie
Usually, I don’t really have to bring it up. It’s pretty easy buy-in for them to want to do it.

[00:05:57.960] – Steve
In the article, you said this about podcasts – you described it as one of the most engaging and empowering tools that you’ve brought into your classroom. What do you think it is about the podcast that makes them that engaging and empowering?

[00:06:13.920] – Katie
I think creating their own podcast just gives them so much autonomy and choice in, sadly, a world that’s very test-centric. I think they’re used to doing a lot of tests or fill this out or do this activity. Even though we try to make it as teachers, autonomous, and we try to give them as much choice as possible, we still have to go buy a state curriculum and all of that. But just having them come up with ideas for the podcast, be the ones to write their scripts, be the ones to know, okay, what should I say here? I think the whole project aspect of it, they get really into it, and they feel like, oh, I have responsibility for this, and this is something that I can see from the ground up, from the very beginning of, what are we going to do our podcast on until the end of, oh, wow, now the whole class gets to listen to this podcast, or now this is on our Google Classroom for the whole class to hear. I think they get really excited about seeing that finished product. They’re the ones responsible for researching. They’re the ones responsible for proofreading.

[00:07:19.260] – Katie
It just really combines all the aspects of ELA into one project. Then they get to hear other people, and they get to bounce ideas off of each other. Whenever I say, oh, it’s time to work on a podcast, there’s usually not a lot of, oh, I don’t want to do that. Usually, they’re really excited to get going. I think there are a lot of projects where one person ends up taking all the work and other people can cruise by. But I think with podcasts, it’s one that each member has to be very involved in.

[00:07:53.400] – Steve
I have to tell you a reinforcing story of another person that I on a podcast. She was a secondary teacher.

[00:08:03.520] – Katie
Oh, yeah.

[00:08:04.420] – Steve
She announced to her students, untruthfully, she announced to her students that they had the choice for the next assessment of either making a podcast or writing the traditional essay response to this question. All of her students but 1, signed up to do the traditional essay.

[00:08:34.680] – Katie
Really?

[00:08:35.740] – Steve
And then she informed them that it was a survey, and they really didn’t have the choice. They had to do the podcast.

[00:08:45.180] – Katie
Interesting. Okay.

[00:08:47.100] – Steve
And at the end, when they had all finished their podcast, she came back with the survey, and if you had it to do again, and this time, all but one kid picked the podcast.

[00:09:04.200] – Katie
Oh, that’s really cool.

[00:09:06.020] – Steve
Yeah. She had written an article about assessment could be fun.

[00:09:11.540] – Katie
Yes.

[00:09:12.520] – Steve
That’s really interesting. Initially, the kids knew that making the podcast would be more work than the traditional essay to answer the questions. So they went the other way. But when they got engaged and had the pleasure from it. So when I read your article, it really reinforced that for me.

[00:09:35.420] – Katie
Yes, that’s really interesting. I have wondered what it’s like in secondary. I know that a lot of the high schoolers now can just be like, okay, whatever I can do by myself that’s the least amount of work or interaction. I think also just been, fifth graders are very social – if there’s ever a chance that I’ve seen for them to work together, they take it. They love working with partners or trios. I think that’s really interesting to see how it’s different over that. But they love it. I think it’s encouraging to see them work with each other and encouraging to see how they do feel empowered by it. They do feel like, oh, this is my responsibility. This is something that I’m making that I can see from just the idea of conception until the final product. So it’s interesting.

[00:10:29.100] – Steve
Your article identified several different ways that you use podcasts to engage students differently in the ELA skills. I’m wondering if you’d share some of those for us.

[00:10:40.460] – Katie
Yes. As mentioned before, every skill that you imagine that goes into ELA can be involved in the podcast right from the beginning. Analyzing podcasts and using those comprehension skills is a big one. Even just when you make your podcast, you have to write out a script, you have to listen to others, you have to just critical thinking, what is it that I’m going to choose to say, summarizing, researching skills when you’re doing the research. I think it depends on the podcast as well. So one that I really enjoyed is we do a unit or novel study on this book, “Schooled” by Gordon Corman, that the kids love. So one of the comprehension activities or assessments at the end is they can choose two in the book to do a podcast. And so they pretend to be those characters, and what would their podcast be about? So really getting in the minds of other people, which then involves empathy, right? Trying to have those empathy critical thinking skills. What would these people say? What would this person’s response be? So that’s really interesting. And then when they have more research-based podcast to do, it’s really interesting to see a okay, well, there’s the whole research aspect of it.

[00:12:02.740] – Katie
What should we include? What should we not include? Are we getting our information from credible sources? How can we rewrite this into our own words? How can we make it engaging so people will want to read it? At the beginning, I think when they started listening to their podcast, they realize, oh, I’m really monotone. I’m really going over everything in a very boring way. Then by the end, to do another podcast, it’s much more engaging, they’re learning about public speaking. They’re learning about listening to other people’s podcast. It’s really great to incorporate pretty much everything they’ve learned throughout the year.

[00:12:40.840] – Steve
You also talked a little bit about how folks from other contents… I mean, the ELA, as you said, jumps out that all your standards are there. You want to share a couple of ideas you had for people from other contents?

[00:12:55.720] – Katie
Yes. When I was in Ecuador, I didn’t just teach ELA. I taught every the subject. My first podcast experience was doing it with renewable energy sources. They had to pretend. I think it was in groups of four. They had to pretend that one person was the mayor of a city, trying to think of which energy source would be best. He was interviewing all these experts. One person pretended to be a solar energy expert and the wind energy expert. They had this interview, and they bounced ideas back and forth. For this city, it’s on a plane, so there’s lots of wind that comes in. It was really interesting to see. Honestly, they went off script. They had, of course, the points that they what I planned to do, and they had their script, but it was really engaging to see how they… Oh, actually, I didn’t think about that until just now, and so how they went about that. That was my first project. Then I realized from there, wow, there are so many, first of all, a podcast already out there for so many different types of subjects. One of my favorites is The Past and the Curious.

[00:14:11.580] – Katie
It’s a history podcast for kids. That they really love to listen to. They love to hear stories. I think a lot of the kids, when I ask them the beginning of the year, what are you interested in learning about? They usually say the Titanic or World War II, very specific. Then after hearing these podcasts, they’re like, Oh, that’s so interesting. I never even thought about that. Or they think, oh, I don’t like social studies until they hear some of this story. That has been really interesting. I think analyzing those and then also being able to see, hey, what am I interested in that I could share with the world? And getting those storytelling tips, public speaking tips, and putting that all together is interesting. But it could be used for anything – math, science, social studies.

[00:15:03.180] – Steve
The word that jumped out at me as I was listening to you was their thinking.

[00:15:08.580] – Katie
Yes, that’s very good. They’re doing a lot of thinking.

[00:15:11.330] – Steve
I didn’t think of that till now. So It’s a good indicator that the podcast has got you making something happen that you want to make happen.

[00:15:20.220] – Katie
Yes, that’s very true. They have to be engaged, really.

[00:15:24.620] – Steve
Thoughts for teachers that haven’t haven’t ventured into this area before as to what might be a good starting point?

[00:15:37.240] – Katie
Yeah, I would say two things. I would say the first one being, if it’s intimidating, you can start by listening to podcasts. I put in my article several different examples that they could to start by listening and just asking questions to the kids and comprehending. There are some that are only 5-6 minutes, so it could be used even as a morning or first portion of class activity. Then second thing that they could sometimes find it intimidating would be it’s really not this big production. I think sometimes we hear a podcast and we hear, oh, we have to have sound. We have to have all this big material. Maybe we have to pay for a subscription service. But truly, we just use this website, vocaroo.com. It just records it. There’s one button on the home platform. They just record on there and an easy copy link to Google Classroom or wherever. But it doesn’t need to be this huge production. It could be starting as, hey, let’s share our favorite books. It’s just a 5-10 minute podcast sharing your favorite books. A lot of times, teachers will do activities like, hey, write a diary entry from the perspective of this character.

[00:16:56.220] – Katie
Or maybe instead of a diary entry, why don’t you do a podcast with the character interviewing somebody else. So I think it really can be scary at first, but I think the first time you do it, you realize, oh, okay, this isn’t bad at all. It’s really easy, and the kids will enjoy it.

[00:17:16.660] – Steve
Well, I know that you had those resources in your article, so I will put the link to your article in the lead into this podcast. Make it easy for folks to find. If people want to learn more about what you’re or follow up with questions that they might have, what’s the best way for them to be in touch with you?

[00:17:37.140] – Katie
Yeah, they could email me. My email is katiejoybrooksyt@gmail.com. Then I have an education Instagram called msbrooksandherbooks.

[00:17:51.720] – Steve
All right. We’ll put the links to those in the podcast leading as well.

[00:17:56.960] – Katie
Thank you so much.

[00:17:58.240] – Steve
Thank you so much. It’s It’s delightful. I hope that you’ve, through this podcast, get a chance to spark some other teachers to have their students get engaged. Thank you.

[00:18:13.240] – Katie
Thank you so much. It was great to meet you.

[00:18:17.000] – 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.

When are you more of a managerial leader verses an inquiry leader in the classroom? There are important times for each. What do students learn from your approach? How conscious are you of the practices you are implementing?  Jessica Vance, the author “Leading with a Lens of Inquiry: Cultivating Conditions for Curiosity and Empowering Agency,” describes why “inquiry is an approach to teaching and learning that honors the learner.”

Connect with Jessica here. 

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

“If you listen to kids, they’ll give you a different perspective. They are the primary clients.”

(Principal, Kambar Khoshaba)

I had the opportunity to record a podcast with Kambar Khoshaba, an experienced middle school and newly appointed high school principal. I learned about him while reading an article in Education Week, titled Students Sought Changes at Their Middle School. Their Principal Listened.

I asked Kambar about his focus on listening to students.

Kambar: “I use a business mentality of listening to my client to design a customized product for them. And the clients, of course, are the students. They’re the primary clients. Teachers, parents, community members are also clients, but it’s really the students, who, if we design programs for them, we need to hear their voice on whether or not they’re receiving our product the way we intended it to be. So obviously, it’s been several years since I’ve been a middle school student, so I can tell you what I think they would enjoy, but they’ll shoot straight and tell me whether something’s working or not working and how to make it better.”

I inquired how Kambar initiated his plan for listening.

Kambar: “I started off with the staff. We created a social justice council with them. We met for five weeks and just took an article about leading equity through COVID and beyond. We spent some time talking about it. It went so well. I thought let’s see if we can extend this social justice council to students, not covering the same article, because we’re not talking about leading equity, but let’s see what’s on their minds and talk about some social justice issues. The students quickly identified our dress code as being racist and sexist. Under representation of minority students in honors classes was a second major concern.”

One of the students suggested that she worried more about being dressed within the code than about what she was going to learn. Kambar challenged the students about their thinking, and they came back with six articles from around the country, illustrating that students of color are getting hit with more dress code violations than their counterparts and girls are getting dress code violations more than boys.

Kambar: “So why are we creating a situation that is overly oppressive? If I have students feeling that way at my school, and I allow that to continue happening, then shame on me for being the principal of that kind of situation. I asked them along the whole way, I wanted to empower them to see that they have power in their voice. This is the first time that they really got to practice the democratic process of putting their voice out there. They did a presentation for our faculty, sharing four different dress code items they wanted to have adjusted. None of the faculty disagreed. I shared the results with the parents, asked them to contact me if they had any concerns and of course worked in collaboration with my central office. We changed the dress code policy. Four leaders of the social justice club did a presentation on the changes to their peers. They got all the credit because they deserved it. It was an inspiring story to see 12-, 13-, and 14-year-old students take a risk and put their hearts on the line, knowing that the adults had this policy in place for at least two decades without changes. They took a chance and it paid off.”

I asked Kambar to share the equity question that emerged and how he responded.

Kambar: “Well, when we got to the social justice council, the kids said they didn’t see diversity in our honors and gifted programs. So, I got the data and again, they were right. On the year that we started this, our school was 37% black, and our honors program was 24% black. We had a 13% disproportionality rate. with zero being perfect proportionality, we were minus 13.”

Kambar asked teachers to identify characteristics of successful students in honors and gifted programs. They listed seven criteria including organized, independent learners, ambitious about learning. Students who are avid readers, not advanced, but they want to read. Sharing the criteria with students and phone calls to parents, led to 83 students who hadn’t earlier enrolled in honors classes, enrolling. An additional change that the school implemented was modifying scheduling so students could take one or two honors courses without taking a complete honors track.

Kambar: “And this year, we went from a minus 13% under our proportionate rate for our black students, to plus 2%, over-identified black students in honors classes. I’ve had kids come to me this year on an individual basis saying, is there anyway, is it too late? Can I get an honors? I’m like, yeah, there’s no timetable on this. It’s all about kids who are ambitious, who want to secure a better future for themselves and us bulldozing any barrier that’s in front of them to allow them to realize their potential.”

I encourage you to listen to the podcast with Kambar and google his name for several articles he has published. You can contact him at skkhoshaba@fcps.edu. He reminded me that the value in seeking student voice is to listen and act.